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News stories on Hunger - 12/24

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Jim Rosenfield

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Dec 25, 1992, 12:06:00 PM12/25/92

/* Written 4:31 pm Dec 24, 1992 by jnr in igc:hunger.general */
/* ---------- "News stories on Hunger - 12/24" ---------- */
Newswire Stories re: Hunger 12/24/92

The following file contains stories gathered since 12/18 from
Associated Press, United Press International, Washington Post and Reuters.
(Permission has been obtained from UPI and AP, and is pending in the
case of Reuters and WP).

If these stories are useful to you please let me know by posting
a response to this topic or by e-mail.

The stories are contained in the first response to this topic in
full-text form (270kB) in the following order:

Svc Date Headline
--- ----- ----------------------------------------------------------
UPn 12/17 UNICEF chief calls for government, media attention
RTw 12/17 UNICEF PRAISES BANGLADESH FOR WORK WITH CHILDREN
RTw 12/17 CHILD SURVIVAL INCREASING WORLDWIDE - UNICEF
RTw 12/21 SOMALI WARLORDS MOVING GUNWAGONS FROM MOGADISHU
RTw 12/21 FRENCH TROOPS WOUND THREE SOMALIS NEAR BAIDOA
WP 12/21 African Eye Brings a Multicultural View to the Marketplace
WP 12/21 Somali Muslims Seek Fundamentalist Islamic State
APn 12/21 Homeless Scouts
APn 12/21 Banning Homeless
APn 12/20 Somalia-Shambles
RTw 12/17 CHARITY WORKER COMPARES FRANCE HOMELESS TO THIRD WORLD
RTw 12/17 SOMALI GUNMEN LOOT FOOD AS TROOPS LEAVE
RTw 12/17 SOMALI GUNMEN HOLD UP WESTERN JOURNALISTS
APn 12/17 Somalia-Language School
WP 12/17 Castro Uses Stiffer U.S. Embargo to Justify Economic Straits
RTw 12/17 REPORT SAYS 14.3 MILLION AMERICAN CHILDREN ARE POOR
WP 12/23 Nader Asks Federal Purchasers to Go `Green'
UPn 12/22 Urban unrest causes remain 27 years after Watts riots
APn 12/21 Somalia-Next Famine
WP 12/21 Public health threat: AIDS, Drugs & Tuberculosis.
UPn 12/24 US Marines, French move deeper into Somali famine zone.
APn 12/24 UN plans to take over Somalia relief operation
UPn 12/24 Uncle beats toddler to death for spilling hot sauce
APn 12/24 Charity Decline
APn 12/24 The Green Prince
RTw 12/24 U.S. MARINES ENTER SOMALIA FAMINE TOWN OF BARDERE
APn 12/24 Homeless Voting
RTw 12/24 MINES AROUND BARDERE MAKE RELIEF WORK HAZARDOUS
WP 12/24 First American Casualties in Somalia...hit a Land Mine
APn 12/24 State-by-state list of 228 "Blue Ribbon Schools"
RTw 12/24 LIBERIA'S CHILDREN BEAR MENTAL SCARS OF WAR
UPn 12/24 Vitamin supplement may help prevent birth defects
APn 12/24 Somalia-Future
RTw 12/23 BRUNT OF FRENCH TROOPS TO REACH SOMALIA BY DEC 31
RTw 12/23 CHOLERA SPREADS IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
RTw 12/23 JORDAN SENDING HUNDREDS OF TROOPS TO SOMALIA
UPn 12/23 AIDS may leave 80,000 motherless by year 2000
WP 12/23 A Note on `Ethnic Cleansing'
WP 12/23 U.S., U.N. Differ Over Best Way To Silence Somalia's Guns
WP 12/23 Urban Newspapers: Zoned Editions With a Hometown Feel
RTw 12/22 U.S. CUTS TROOPS FOR SOMALIA, BUSH ANNOUNCES VISIT
APn 12/22 Somalia-Thorny Christmas
APn 12/22 Madagascar-Democracy
RTw 12/22 SOMALI WARLORD AIDEED MEETS ETHIOPIAN LEADER
UPn 12/22 Imprisoned Tyson still gives to poor
RTw 12/22 HUNGRY ZIMBABWEANS SEIZE TRAIN, STEAL FOOD
APn 12/21 Somalia-Groundwork
WP 12/18 Strongest Get U.S. Food Aid;Newly Delivered Wheat Disappears
RTw 12/20 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER BLASTS GUATEMALA ABUSES
RTw 12/20 KISMAYU AID WORKERS WANT TROOPS TO FAN OUT FAST
APn 12/20 Treating Chickenpox
RTw 12/20 U.S. MIND MEN TELL SOMALIS ABOUT THE WEATHER
APn 12/20 Homeless Shelters
RTw 12/20 RED CROSS LOSES 30 FOOD TRUCKS IN NORTH MOGADISHU
RTw 12/20 LONE BRITISH PILOT AT SHARP END OF SOMALI OPERATION
RTw 12/20 FLOODS CUT FOOD SUPPLIES TO 180,000 IN KENYA
WP 12/20 Food Glut Seen as Way to Thwart Somalia's Bandits
RTw 12/19 BIG FOOD CONVOY HEADS FOR SOMALI FAMINE CENTRE
APn 12/20 Beyond Somalia-Other international "hot spots"
APn 12/20 Salvador - A Survivor's Story
UPn 12/19 Experts rule out combat in Salvadoran massacre
APn 12/19 Child Abuse
RTw 12/19 GUNMEN SURRENDER BATTLEWAGONS TO U.S. TROOPS
UPn 12/18 Blame man, not mother nature for African famine
APn 12/18 Somalia-Setback
RTw 12/18 INDIA SENDS NAVAL TASK FORCE TO SOMALIA
APn 12/18 Homeless Abuse
WP 12/18 Lucky Somalia; UNICEF'S new promise for the Children
APn 12/18 Status of Children
APn 12/18 Somalia-Medical

Jim Rosenfield

unread,

Dec 25, 1992, 12:06:00 PM12/25/92

/* Written 9:06 am Dec 25, 1992 by jnr in igc:hunger.general */
UPn 12/17 1759 UNICEF chief calls for government, media attention

MEXICO CITY (UPI) -- A "dramatic transformation" in the handling of
children's health issues is possible by the year 2000 with increased
support from governments and the media, UNICEF Executive Director James
Grant said Thursday.

In giving the organization's annual "State of the World's Children"
report, Grant asked governments worldwide to double their financial
assistance towards children's health matters and help avoid needless
deaths.

"The biggest single obscenity in the world today is the fact that 35,000
children are dying each day, two-thirds from readily preventable
causes," Grant said.

"A revolution is under way in the world's attitude towards its children
and a dramatic transformation is possible by the year 2000 if there is a
sustained political commitment and competent management of this change,"
Grant said in a news conference beamed around the world on satellite.

Grant said about 10 percent of domestic spending around the world and
less than 10 percent of foreign aid goes toward children's issues, such
as education and health matters.

"What is now required globally is a doubling of expenditures on this by
governments and within foreign-aid programs," he said, terming such a
change a "modest financial shift."

He set the annual price tag to control major childhood diseases, cut
child malnutrition in half, give all children a basic education and
bring clean water and sanitation to all communities at $25 billion.

If the goals were reached, some 50 million infant lives could be saved
this decade, he said.

The success of an increase in financial support "depends on the pressure
that is brought to bear by politicians, press, media and the public in
all nations," he said. "That's what the central call in this report is,
to call on the public, the media to join in this effort."

Grant said, "There has been a tremendous increase in political will in
the last four to five years" on children's matters, but he noted that
youngsters "are obviously in great trouble in some parts of the world,"
particularly Somalia, Bosnia-Herzogovinia and Liberia.

He offered specific praise to Mexico, the site of Thursday's conference,
for its attempts to address child health issues, particularly in cutting
the country's child death-rate in half.

Having met with Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, Grant said,
"Mexico is a country demonstrating that it is changing words to deeds.
We have seen in the last three years a one-third increase in the budget
for the social sector despite all the difficulties."

DHAKA, Dec 17, Reuter - Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest
countries, has made great strides in child care, but over half its
children are still malnourished, a senior UNICEF official said on
Thursday.

"Over 70 per cent of Bangladeshi children are covered by a national
immunisation programme, known as EPI, and it saves the lives of 72,000
children each year," said Rolf Carriere, head of the U.N. children's
organisation in Bangladesh.

"EPI in Bangladesh has shown one of the fastest rates of increase in
coverage recorded anywhere in the world," Carriere told a news
conference to mark the launching of the 1993 State of the World's
Children Report.

He said Bangladesh had attained significant success in reducing the
number of births, child mortality and maternal deaths.

"Even so, almost 50 per cent of pregnancies are unplanned, and often
unwanted, and that represents an enormous challenge," he said.

Carriere said 55 per cent of Bangladeshi children were moderately and
severely malnourished, the largest proportion in the world. He suggested
a well-coordinated child feeding programme.

"Such a programme will also involve education for behaviour change
regarding distribution of food within the family and monthly weighing of
babies."

Carriere praised Bangladesh's success in bringing safe drinking water to
80 per cent of the country's 110 million people, but he said only a
quarter were provided with sewers.

"(Yet), I would like to stress the many positive possibilities we see
for Bangladesh's children," he added.

The UNICEF resident chief said most of the child and healthcare projects
in Bangladesh were implemented through the local government.

"Such projects are often politically influenced or influenced by
personalities," he added, but gave no details.

Carriere said UNICEF had adopted a $25 billion-a-year plan, effective
from January 1, aimed at saving more than 4 million children around the
world annually.

"UNICEF suggests that two-thirds of the $25 billion be met by the
developing countries themselves, with the other one-third coming in
aid," he said.

"The goals include control of the major childhood diseases, reducing
malnutrition and maternal mortality by 50 per cent, a one-third
reduction in infant and under-five death rates, safe water and
sanitation for all, universally available family planning services and a
basic education for every child," he said.

UNICEF will spend $120 million over the next three years to achieve
these goals in Bangladesh, Carriere said.

REUTER AN JXK JB <<>>
RTw 12/17 2028 CHILD SURVIVAL INCREASING WORLDWIDE - UNICEF

ATLANTA, Dec 17, Reuter - The number of children dying each year before
the age of 5 has declined worldwide from an estimated 14.7 million in
1980 to about 12.7 million in 1990, the United Nations Children's Fund
(UNICEF) said on Thursday.

But more than eight million of those annual deaths could be prevented at
a total cost to the world of only $25 billion, the agency said.

In a report released at the offices of the U.S. Centres for Disease
Control, UNICEF said the number of young children dying each day in the
world had dropped from 40,000 per day in 1980 to 35,000 per day in 1990.

More than 60 per cent of the 12.7 million annual deaths are caused by
pneumonia, diarrhoea or diseases which could be prevented by vaccines,
UNICEF said.

"We know that three million lives a year are being saved by the efforts
to vaccinate children in the 1980s," according to Dr William Foege,
executive director of the Task Force for Child Survival. "We could save
many more for a worldwide expenditure of $25 billion."

By comparison, Foege noted, Europeans spend $50 billion per year on
cigarettes and Americans spend $31 billion for year on beer. "You could
solve many of the health problems of children under 5 in the world with
just two weeks worth of the world's expenditure on weapons," Foege said.

Foege said even massive tragedies such as the war and famine in Somalia
have little impact on the total worldwide. "If you consider that 250,000
children under the age of 5 are dying every week, even a Somalia doesn't
have that much effect," Foege said. REUTER JS JAS <<>>
RTw 12/21 1137 SOMALI WARLORDS MOVING GUNWAGONS FROM MOGADISHU

By Alistair Lyon

MOGADISHU, Dec 21, Reuter - Two Somali warlords started to haul their
"technical" battlewagons out of Mogadishu on Monday under a
U.S.-brokered peace deal, a U.S. officer said.

A French military spokesman announced plans for 350 French legionnaires
and 150 U.S. Marines to move into the famished inland town of Hoddur on
Friday, Christmas Day.

U.S. military spokesman Colonel Fred Peck said hundreds of Marines would
leave Mogadishu at dawn on Tuesday for Baidoa, Somalia's famine capital
and the launchpad for planned task force deployments to other hungry
towns.

"It's a big convoy packed to the gills with all the equipment they need
to go north," Peck said.

Relief agencies have been pressing the multinational force to act
swiftly to curb lawlessness and gun rule, particularly in north
Mogadishu and other parts of Somalia where clan gangs have looted food
aid meant for the starving.

A U.S. officer said militia leader Mohamed Farah Aideed had moved 30 to
40 technicals out of south Mogadishu on Monday and his chief rival, Ali
Mahdi Mohamed, would move a similar number from the north on Tuesday.

"This is a Somali agreement and it's being coordinated by the Somalis,"
said Marine Colonel Michael Hagee. "That in itself is a large step
forward."

Freelance bandits and factions not aligned with Aideed or Ali Mahdi
would be told by radio and newspaper announcements to get their
technicals out of town fast.

"What we are trying to do is to get the factions to bring their arms
under control so we do not have a confrontation between the combined
task force and the Somalis," Hagee said.

Ali Mahdi and Aideed agreed on December 11 to move "all forces and their
technicals" outside Mogadishu as part of a seven-point peace plan
reached two days after the multinational force reached Somalia to secure
relief routes for the starving.

U.S. officials said any technical sighted after the accord had taken
effect would "automatically be considered a threat."

American and French troops have in the past opened fire when they have
perceived a direct threat from technicals.

In the latest such clash, French troops shot and wounded three Somalis
after a battlewagon fired on their observation post four km (two miles)
northwest of Baidoa on Sunday night.

"A French sniper stopped the vehicle dead and there was an exchange of
fire," Colonel Jean-Paul Perruche told reporters.

He said a French platoon sent to reinforce the post traded fire with
gunmen one km (600 yards) south of the position.

More French troops went in with two U.S. helicopters in support and
found three wounded Somalis armed with AK-47 assault rifles. Seven other
gunmen in the pickup had fled.

There were no French casualties. One Somali had serious stomach wounds.

Perruche called the attack deliberate but said he did not believe it was
aimed specifically at French troops.

"It seems to me that some people of the region of Baidoa are not very
happy at the presence of U.S. and French forces in this country. Before
they had all the power to terrorise and rob the people. Now they cannot
act like that," he said.

U.S. and French troops took the famine-hit town of Baidoa, dubbed the
"City of Death," last Wednesday.

Perruche said a joint U.S.-French force, under French command, would
push on to Hoddur, 150 km (90 miles) north of Baidoa, on Thursday and
enter the town on Christmas morning.

<<>>
RTw 12/21 0739 FRENCH TROOPS WOUND THREE SOMALIS NEAR BAIDOA

By Paul Holmes

MOGADISHU, Dec 21, Reuter - French troops wounded at least three gunmen
when they came under attack in southern Somalia, a French military
spokesman said on Monday.

Relief agencies urged U.S.-led forces to push into lawless north
Mogadishu and force weapons off the streets.

A French military spokesman said troops opened fire when 10 gunmen in a
"technical" battlewagon charged towards their observation post near the
inland famine town of Baidoa under cover of darkness on Sunday.

"It was a concerted attack," said Colonel Jean-Paul Perruche.

He said a French sniper stopped the vehicle in its tracks.

The three Somalis, found with Kalashnikovs by French paratroops, were
taken to hospital, one with severe stomach wounds. No French soldiers
were hurt and the other gunmen fled.

The clash highlighted continued insecurity in Somalia, where U.S.-led
forces have intervened to keep pillaging gunmen and feuding clan
militias away from food for victims of Africa's worst famine this
century.

Relief agencies on Monday piled pressure on the U.S. military to extend
their security umbrella to north Mogadishu, nominally controlled by
warlord Ali Mahdi Mohamed.

"It's literally teeming with AK-47s and teeming with technicals," said
Mark Thomas, spokesman for the U.N. Children.s Fund (UNICEF).

"Any military presence at all would help as long as it is a show of
force. They said it would happen soon but would give us no definite
date," Thomas said.

U.S. troops who secured Mogadishu port and airport at the start of
Operation Restore Hope on December 9 have escorted food convoys across
the bombed out Green Line that divides the capital but do not operate
patrols in the north.

Relief agencies have withdrawn virtually all their foreign staff from
the enclave because of the insecurity.

Thomas said the Irish aid agency Goal told a U.S. military liaison
officer at a daily meeting on Monday that it was considering suspending
operations in the north.

"UNICEF supports what Goal said about insecurity. We cannot send more
supervisory staff in until the situation improves," Thomas told
reporters.

U.S. Marines and their coalition allies have established security
bridgeheads for the relief operation in Baidoa and at a military
airfield in Bali Dogle and on Sunday swept ashore to do the same in the
southern port of Kismayu.

But U.S. commanders say their mission is not to disarm a country awash
with weapons after two years of clan killing and gun rule. Overall
commander General Joseph Hoar said last week that security would improve
as more troops arrived.

Sunday's attack on the French observation post, northwest of Baidoa
airfield, occurred a day after U.S. and French troops seized six
battlewagons and disarmed 45 heavily-armed gunmen who had massed at a
compound just outside Baidwa, 250 km (150 miles) west of Mogadishu.

A Marine patrol in Mogadishu also shot and hit a gunman in a technical
who trained a machinegun on them near the Green Line on Sunday. It was
not clear if the man was killed.

"We're not in the investigation business," said Navy Commander Jim
Kudla, a U.S. military spokesman. "The squad perceived a direct threat
to them, they fired and that's it."

REUTER PAH AL DJG <<>>
WP 12/21 xx African Eye Brings a Multicultural View to the Marketplace

By Marianne Kyriakos

Washington Post Staff Writer

Though the Christmas shopping season is drawing to a close, Africa's
multicultural marketplace is open 365 days a year and has found a home
in the United States.

"I think it is very important to recognize how linked we are to other
people in the world," said Mozella Perry Ademiluyi, an owner of African
Eye, with stores on Wisconsin Avenue in upper Georgetown and at Prince
George's Plaza.

Ademiluyi is an immigration attorney turned entrepreneur. Three years
ago, Ademiluyi and sisters Shirley Perry Michael and Katherine
Adeniyi-Jones opened their first boutique, one of a growing number of
similar businesses showcasing Afrocentric fashion, art and collectibles.

Ademiluyi said her mission is to promote understanding of the cultural
and ethnic diversity in the United States, especially of things African.

"Everybody can name four or five European designers," she said, "but you
don't have too many people - black or white - who can name four or five
African designers."

Ademiluyi describes her business as part cultural-educational experience
and part retail establishment. Beyond the bolts of exquisite,
hand-silk-screened fabric from West Africa, soapstone from Kenya and
a'dire place mats from Nigeria, Ademiluyi is trying to market what she
calls "outreach."

"You must have an appreciation of other cultures, a tolerance," she
said. "A lot of people really don't. They really don't want to tolerate
anything that's not American."

To help bridge that gap, she said, a nonprofit affiliate of African Eye
soon will be up and running. The African Eye Cultural Education Program
will sponsor a speakers bureau and other international events for area
schoolchildren. Ademiluyi envisions a broad program that will include
matching District schools with affiliate schools in Nigeria or Ghana.

"It's only when you get to know something that you can come to
appreciate it or come to respect it," said Jackie Kakembo, boutique
manager and fashion coordinator of African Eye's Wisconsin Avenue store.
"Prior to that, it's not in your frame of reference. Once your eyes are
opened up, you can see."

Ademiluyi describes the clientele as "black, also white, also Asian."

"If there is a stereotype (in Afrocentric marketing) it can be that
there there isn't anything of value coming out of a particular place,"
Ademiluyi said. "You can show that's not true by example. We try to
present the best that we can."

The merchandise includes jewelry from Peru and trousers from Pakistan -
pieces the owners feel blend well with the African line. A young man in
Nigeria, a physician, is creator of a line of bathrobes - one of the
store's hottest-selling items.

Entrepreneur Dorothy White said the demand for ethnic goods is making it
easier to market Afrocentric culture. White is an owner of Blackberry, a
retail chain with four locations in the Washington area.

"I think that black people, like anyone else, appreciate things they can
identify with," White said. "We have lots of children's books that both
white and black (customers) buy, and we think that's a good sign."

Ademiluyi said, "You know, as a society, we've gone through all the
different phases, and now this is okay." She pointed to a shelf full of
gifts for Kwanzaa and Christmas, including black Santas and black
angels. "It's really important for our children to witness this."

"In our case, we are marketing the African diaspora," Kakembo said.
"What we all bring to this total scene or to the world picture or the
universe now is influenced and impacted by our African roots."

What she likes most, Kakembo said, is the chance to be involved in
projecting a positive image of Africa in a very stylish ambience.

African Eye has remained profitable through the recession, the owners
said. The best-selling merchandise is the clothing line.

"The interesting thing is, when people think of African fashions,
flowing prints is the concept," Ademiluyi said. "Our collection shows
that the clothing is actually beautiful and versatile."

Much of the cloth is woven by hand. "There are a lot of labor-intensive
arts and crafts and textiles coming out of Africa," Ademiluyi said.

Kakembo recently returned from Paris, where she attended a ready-to-wear
show highlighting fashions for the spring of 1993. She said it was the
first time that African designers had been invited.

But the store's continuing success, the owners hope, lies in its
international appeal.

"There is so much beauty in our differences," Ademiluyi said. "How else
does one survive with understanding and appreciation in an international
world ... but by recognizing them?"

By Keith B. Richburg

Washington Post Foreign Service

MERCA, Somalia - At the run-down port in this steamy coastal town,
scores of workmen, shirtless and sweating, struggle under silver tins of
cooking oil and heavy sacks of rice. They are unloading a Red Cross
barge, under the watchful eye of a handful of sullen sentries, some with
red-and-white Arab-style kaffiyehs covering their heads, all with AK-47
automatic rifles dangling from straps on their shoulders.

The port guards are members of the Islamic Union Party, or Ittihad,
Somalia's armed Muslim fundamentalist group, which has established a
toehold here in this Indian Ocean trading post where, according to
legend, Islam first touched Somalia's shores. Since their arrival here
earlier this year, the fundamentalists have been credited with
establishing a strict security system that has all but eliminated
wholesale looting of relief food meant for the country's millions of
starving people.

Food still gets stolen in Merca, usually from truck convoys the moment
they exit this port. But inside the port's perimeter, the Union Party
exercises strict discipline and control. "For security, they are good,"
said Jama Ali Kahin of the Somali Red Crescent relief group. "They are
popular because before they came there was a lot of looting."

Elsewhere around the country, cities have been torn by anarchy, looting
and clan violence; in the few pockets where the fundamentalists have
moved in, they generally have managed to impose order on the chaos. The
Union Party arrived in the small Wadajir district of Mogadishu, the
Somali capital, six weeks ago and imposed its own strict brand of
sharia, or Islamic law, and, said Somali journalist A.M. Ali, "it was
very, very successful - no theft, no problem."

In accordance with sharia, however, Ali and others said, looters
captured by Union Party members in Wadajir had their hands amputated.

"They are harsh, but they are extremely structured and they are
disciplined," said Rakiya Omaar, a human rights activist and former
executive director of Africa Watch. "People are sick and tired of war,
they are sick and tired of looting, and no one is providing social
services."

The Union Party is still considered a minor faction in Somalia, a fringe
movement at best that so far has attracted little popular support. But
its method in Merca, in its northern stronghold and elsewhere has been
to move into locations where there is a power vacuum and win converts by
demonstrating how a return to Islamic fundamentals can bring an end to
the kind of violence and banditry that have wracked this country for
nearly two years.

The fundamentalists' goal in Somalia, according to a Union Party
spokesman here, is to establish an Islamic state based on sharia. "Islam
and sharia," said spokesman Abdulkadr Abdulle. "We want people to obey
the sharia."

But now, the Union Party feels a threat from an unexpected source: the
intervention in Somalia of U.S. and other foreign combat troops who have
come to protect relief supplies and help feed this country's starving
millions.

The Bush administration and U.S. military officials have called the
intervention strictly humanitarian, a response to the searing images of
emaciated, starving women and children digging into the ground for a few
extra grains of rice. But to the Muslim fundamentalists, the
intervention is akin to an invasion, whose ultimate goal is to crush the
budding Islamic movement.

"Of course it's an invasion - nobody asked us," Abdulle said. "Strange
enough, the Americans during the Reagan administration used to help
(ousted dictator Mohamed) Siad Barre. But when the war came to
Mogadishu, they left. Now they are coming with 30,000 men. Most of the
guns are from the United States. Most of the mortars that destroyed
Mogadishu are from the United States."

During Siad Barre's rule, according to Abdulle, Islam was suppressed as
the regime tried to impose the ideas of the West. After two years of
bitter clan warfare that has created one of the modern world's worst
famines, Abdulle said, "Now, we are seeing the whole society wants Islam
as a way of life. . . . Everybody is saying they want sharia. We have
tried capitalism - it failed. We have tried communism - it failed. We
know there is no other solution but Islam.

"That is why the West is intervening," he added. "Because they see Islam
coming to power in Somalia."

His viewpoint is shared by other fundamentalists and their sympathizers.
"We are very suspicious," said Abdikhadir Abdi Gutali, a reporter for
Qaran, one of Mogadishu's daily newspapers. "We worry they will be here
a long time, and maybe make a new colony."

During the 12 days since the first Marines came ashore, the troops have
been greeted like conquering heroes. But if there is any opposition from
any sector, if the initial heady expectations wear thin, it will likely
come from these fundamentalists.

Union Party adherents are not saying they will fight the American
intervention. They concede that the arrival of U.S. troops here is still
widely popular among a people beaten down by continuous warfare and
hunger. But that popularity, they predict, will change. "We want to
orient our people," Abdulle said as other Muslim clerics and Koran
scholars seated around him nodded their heads in agreement. "If the
society becomes ready, maybe we'll fight."

Abdulle said the Union Party already is working to turn Somali opinion
against the U.S.-led intervention. "We know how to propagate. We know
our society," he said. "We go to the markets. We go to the old people.
We write."

The prospect of Islamic fundamentalists waging a holy war against U.S.
Marines on a faraway, hostile shore immediately raises the image of
Beirut in the early 1980s, where U.S. troops first arrived as "peace
keepers" and later became the target of terrorist bombs and mortar
attacks.

Here in Somalia, the threat looks distant. The intervention is still
welcomed, the fundamentalist movement still considered small. But it is
a threat that lurks in the minds of many American military and
diplomatic policy makers.

During the recent Somalia aid conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,
special U.S. envoy Robert Oakley told a reporter he was "sure" the
American military presence in Somalia would be used as a propaganda tool
by the fundamentalists. But he said he also was certain that an
"overwhelming majority" of Somalis would reject the fundamentalist
appeal.

Other analysts are not so certain the fundamentalists can be easily
dismissed. They point out that in neighboring Sudan, the fundamentalists
were considered only a minor irritant, but through discipline and sheer
tenacity they have managed to outlast the old dictatorship and establish
in its place one of the world's staunchest Islamic republics.

Here in Somalia, in the view of some foreign and Somali analysts, the
fundamentalists' anti-American message may find a more sympathetic
audience depending on how long the U.S. forces stay and how effective
the troops are at meeting the heightened expectations for change.

"If they don't meet the expectations of the people, the only way to
challenge the Americans will be through fundamentalism," said Hussein
Mursal, a Somali working with the Save the Children Fund.

Omaar said the fundamentalists may be a small minority now, but "you
don't need a lot of people. . . . They are potent. They are extremely
disciplined, and they are answering deep-seated social grievances."

"Somali people like the Americans," journalist Ali said. "I don't think
(the Union Party) or any other organization can fight against them.
People are welcoming them."

But, he added, "maybe in the long run, the fundamentalists will grow in
number. This fundamentalist way of Islam in Somalia has just started."

Special correspondent Jennifer Parmelee contributed to this story.

By MELANIE BURNEY

Associated Press Writer

ELK TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) -- Six-year-old Edith isn't a typical Girl
Scout.

The homeless youngster is one of many boys and girls benefiting from a
growing effort to bring Scouting to shelters, housing projects and
migrant camps.

"There have been many changes in the society and the world," says
Barbara Smith, a spokeswoman for the New York City-based Girl Scouts.
"You have to keep up with what those changes are."

Edith and her 34-year-old mother, Charlotte, have lived for two months
at the Carpenter House shelter in southern New Jersey. The shelter is
headquarters for Girl Scout Troop 403, part of the "Project Me" outreach
effort started last year by the Holly Shores Girl Scout Council.

"I like it. It's fun," shy, pigtailed Edith said before rushing away to
participate in arts and crafts activities one day last week.

Similar outreach programs have produced troops in shelters in
Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Westchester County,
N.Y., Smith said. Troops have also been set up in a housing authority
project in Pikeville, Ky., and migrant labor camps in Dade County, Fla.

Troop 403 is among 214,000 Girl Scout troops in the United States and
abroad. More than 3.5 million girls, starting at age 5, and adults are
involved in Scouting.

"I was never really interested in Girl Scouts. It seemed corny," said
15-year-old Carla, who hopes to join Troop 403. "But if I really get
into it, I think I'll like it. It'll be fun."

Organizers requested that the girls' last names not be used.

The outreach troops participate in many of the same activities as
regular troops, including camping trips and earning merit badges. But
most activities and programs are tailored to meet their special needs.

At Carpenter House, youngsters ages 24 months to 15 years made
decorations at a Christmas party sponsored by Girl Scout volunteers.
Several boys and parents joined in.

Project coordinator Elizabeth Sparks said the troop isn't run in the
traditional sense -- with handbooks, a banner and uniforms.

"What we want to do is teach them life skills and allow them to do some
of the things other kids do," Sparks said. "We want to build up their
self-esteem."

In Florida, about 100 children of migrant workers participate in two
troops that meet after school in elementary schools in West Homestead
and Florida City, said Charlotte Latham, a spokeswoman for the
Miami-based Girl Scout Council of Tropical Florida.

The migrant program began in 1983 and was expanded from weekly to daily
activities in 1986, she said. It focuses on academics; volunteers
provide tutoring and help with homework.

"We're adapting to the needs of the community above and beyond just
taking care of the girls," Latham said.

Troops involving about 650 girls are also located in 18 Dade County
public housing projects; they emphasize career opportunities, Latham
said. The 12,000-member council also sponsors in-school programs for
physically and mentally disabled youngsters.

In Council Bluffs, Iowa, the Nishnabotna Girl Scout Council recently
held an eight-week program for 20 teen-agers attending an alternative
high school, said spokeswoman Amy St. Dennis.

The girls, who include working mothers, are full-fledged Scouts, but
instead of working for merit badges they receive credit toward their
high school equivalency diplomas.

The project, called "Side-by-Side," included four weeks of training in
work-related areas, stress management and parenting, St. Dennis said.

"There's so much more to Girl Scouts than what everyone thinks of --
cookies and candies," she said.

Working with disadvantaged youngsters has also been a learning
experience for dozens of volunteer scouts who visit the Carpenter House
shelter. The volunteers -- mostly middle-class youngsters from
surrounding communities -- donate supplies and troop leaders teach arts
and crafts.

"It broadens their outlook," says Betty Kravchuck, leader of Troop 203
in Mantua.

<<>>
APn 12/21 0000 Banning Homeless

By DEBORAH HASTINGS

Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- At the age of 19, Mary Kopp already has learned to
beg in silence.

In the predominantly white, affluent suburb of Studio City, this
baby-faced homeless woman quickly grasped street life's newest lesson:
Keep your mouth shut and stay out of the way. To do otherwise can get
you arrested or run out of town.

In growing numbers, overwhelmed cities and suburban communities are
dealing with homeless beggars by trying to make that condition a crime.

"They think we're scum, it's simple as that," says Kopp, sitting in the
parking lot of a local bank. "All these people with rich cars can't
stand looking at us because we're not like them."

Unlike many of the inner-city homeless, Kopp's clothes are relatively
clean and she does not carry her belongings in a shopping cart. On this
night, she has a place to sleep -- a hotel room rented by two fellow
transients.

She and her "family," as she calls them, sometimes sleep on the street
and sometimes in a cheap hotel. If they cannot afford a roof for the
night, they are careful to sleep out of sight of the police.

It is the increasingly hostile and intimidating beggars who have forced
people like Kopp into silence, and it is those aggressive transients
that communities are most adamant about forcing out.

Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle and
Washington, D.C., are among the major cities that have attempted to
enforce some form of anti-begging or anti-camping ordinances, according
to the National Coalition for the Homeless.

In Southern California, the American Civil Liberties Union and six other
groups have sued five cities -- Santa Ana, Orange, Fullerton, Long Beach
and Santa Barbara -- that have attempted to outlaw homelessness.

In Studio City, residents have asked police to use a public nuisance law
to sweep their neighborhoods of panhandlers.

Even the progressive coastal city of Santa Monica, known for years as an
unofficial homeless sanctuary, is cracking down on transients by
enforcing a state law banning lodging in public places.

Though this combative approach rarely stands up in court -- its most
recent defeat came last month with a Miami, Fla., federal ruling --
state penal codes are fast becoming as the preferred antidote to
homelessness.

In bad economic times, the reason is simple, said Allan Parachini,
spokesman for the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.

"There but for fortune go you and I," Parachini said. "People feel
economically besieged themselves. People are desperate. They want
homeless people out of sight and out of mind and they're willing to do
completely illogical and illegal things to do it."

The real solutions, say Parachini and national homeless support groups,
are housing, job training and health services. But the problem with
those solutions is funding.

"These things cost real money," said Fred Karnas of the National
Coalition for the Homeless, "and there are too few resources. So cities
are forced to choose between taking the homeless off the streets and
letting them get beat up by store owners and neighbors."

In addition to suing the five California cities in September, the ACLU
also threatened Santa Monica with legal action if the city made good on
its promise to prosecute homeless people under an "anti-lodging" law
enacted during post-Civil War Reconstruction.

"Making homelessness a crime cannot eliminate the problem of
homelessness," Harry Simon of the Legal Aid Society of Orange County
said in announcing the suits.

On Nov. 16, U.S. District Judge C. Clyde Atkins agreed. Ruling in the
Miami case, Atkins ordered the city to provide two "safe zones" for an
estimated homeless population of 6,000. In those areas, people without
shelter will be allowed to eat, sleep and perform other "harmless
activities" in public.

In Santa Monica, where the nightly homeless population has doubled to
nearly 2,000 since 1983, Police Chief James T. Butts Jr. said he isn't
worried by the ACLU or the Miami decision.

"This city has done more than any I know of to help and show
compassion," Butts said. "But there are limits and there has to be
standards."

Butts said his department has issued almost two dozen citations for
sleeping in public during the last few months, but made no arrests. "We
don't want to be punitive," he said. "We just want to have a balanced
use of public space."

Santa Monica's growing hostility is clearly reflected by the September
firing of 11-year city attorney Robert Myers, who refused to prosecute
the homeless for nonviolent acts such as sleeping in public.

"I've only been here 15 months," Butts said, "and people were pretty
bothered when I got here."

The police chief points to an increase in homeless criminal arrests as
proof that his city's disaffection is warranted.

Since 1985, transient rape arrests have risen from 6 percent of total
rape arrests to 50 percent, Butts said, and transient burglary arrests
have grown from 25 percent to 39 percent.

The Los Angeles Police Department does not keep figures on transient
crime, but North Hollywood division Capt. Charles Labrow acknowledges
there have been isolated incidents of thefts and assaults committed by
homeless people.

He does not, however, share the belief of Studio City residents and
Ventura Boulevard shopowners that such episodes have drastically
increased. Nor does he believe that using the state's nuisance law to
drive the homeless out of town is warranted.

To placate local residents and business owners, police now are trying to
identify area transients who "are out of control," Labrow said. "Where
it's appropriate, we're going to file criminal charges."

So far, no one has been arrested. Still, the mood is fearful among the
homeless working Ventura Boulevard.

"They see me and they leave," said Officer Rex Anderson, who rides a
bike up and down Ventura on his daily beat. "As long as they don't beg
and bother people, I let them alone."

Kopp remains in the parking lot along the boulevard; she will sit for 12
hours this day, letting a cardboard sign do her begging.

"They shouldn't harass people who are homeless," she says. "That's
stupid. It's not a solution. They won't even look at us. Look at me --
I'm just trying to get a meal for the night."

Her hope is that the Christmas holidays might melt some of the hostility
and indifference; it happened at Thanksgiving, when a generous man in a
fancy car handed her $20.

"We went to the store and bought dinner," she says. "And we invited the
security guard from the parking lot, who lives in his car."

End Adv for Mon AMs, Dec. 21

<<>>
APn 12/20 2348 Somalia-Shambles

By MORT ROSENBLUM

AP Special Correspondent

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Stripped of their killing gear, the Darth
Vader war wagons are harmless heaps. The roadside burial mounds level
off with the rains. Doors once bolted in fear now open, more every day.

In a moldering hut under the papayas at the United Somali Congress
compound, a sort of government seat for one of Mogadishu's warlords, a
green computer screen blinks.

Slowly, people are picking up the pieces. But very slowly. Despite
touches of normalcy, Somalia is in such shambles that those who try to
help find the country in a league with Humpty Dumpty.

"It may never be put back together again," said James Fennell, a CARE
veteran, explaining how betrayal and bloodshed among clans had rent the
fabric of Somali society.

Seifulaziz Milas, a Mozambican sociologist with the United Nations, was
slightly more hopeful: "Somalia could rebuild itself, but not any time
soon."

While the world looked elsewhere, a half million Somali children died or
starved past the point of mental recovery. The ruling class is dead or
in exile. Somalia, in the sense of a nation, is gone.

Now, Fennell said, outsiders must focus on the various pieces: getting
farmers home to villages; reopening schools; turning on power and water;
sweeping the streets of teen-age killers and other riffraff.

Toward this limited goal, some signs are encouraging.

The fall's rains were good, filling catchments and soaking parched
fields which have sprouted lush grain. Donated seed and tools are
trickling out to farmers.

A few former traffic cops in Mogadishu are back at work in hopes that
someone will finally pay them. Somali exiles are venturing home to
trade, bringing cigarettes and spare parts.

Donkey convoys carry garbage to be burned. Pharmacies are opening with
the rudiments of medicine. Where Islamic mullahs have taken charge, kids
carry schoolbags instead of AK-47s.

Mogadishu's water is back on. A tiny clan fought 11 battles over two
years to control the city's pumps. The U.N. refused to compensate them;
they refused to turn the valves. After months, the U.N. agreed that clan
members would be paid to run the waterworks.

Along the Green Line between north and south Mogadishu, the
well-connected and well-protected are restoring buildings among the
blackened ruins of the gracefully arabesque whitewashed downtown.

If a tenuous peace among clans can hold, the Green Line may disappear.

Many of these developments are because Somalis are fed up with craziness
and want something more. Some can be traced directly to the arrival of
U.S. Marines, followed by other U.S. and multinational forces.

World attention, at long last, has settled on Somalia. The media, along
with the aid industry, is also pumping cash into the economy.

Television and print coverage of Operation Restore Hope, in its first
stages, should cost about $20 million, as much as the largest relief
agency, CARE, spent here over the year, Fennell said.

The sudden income is a mixed blessing.

As people still die by the thousands for lack of a handful of food, and
entrepreneurs are pocketing millions of dollars by cornering the market
on essentials such as fuel and food staples.

Free-spending foreigners have distorted an already shapeless economy.

At Mogadishu airport, a porter hefted a visitor's bag 200 feet to a
taxi. Handed a dollar bill, he threw it on the ground. "That is no money
in my country," he said. He wanted $20.

At the Islamic orphanage in Baidoa, the visitor gave $20 to the
administrator, who beamed as though given an extra month's budget.

Supplies range from short to non-existent, and profiteers gouge
outsiders who pay any price. In Baidoa, gas is $40 a gallon and rising.

But Somalis who benefit from foreign cash are a scant fraction of the 6
million people who survived the war and famine and now must try to shape
themselves into a functioning society.

In urban areas, swarms of people amble the streets in search of an odd
job to help them scrape by another day. With neither industry nor
government running, the prospect is dim.

In the countryside, farmers sit idly by cleared and watered fields,
waiting until relatives, or relief workers, come through with enough
seed and a hoe so they can get back to work.

Everywhere in between, herders follow their camels back toward their
traditional wild pastures, trusting Allah more than the Marines to keep
the peace.

Before Somalia imploded, two-thirds of its export earnings came from
livestock. But the fighting wrecked veterinary services, closing the
crucial Persian Gulf market because of the fear of rinderpest, an
infectious livestock disease.

What happens next depends on how much foreign troops can scatter bandit
gangs and whether principal clan leaders can find common ground for any
sort of lasting government. It is anyone's guess.

For the present, the signs can be read in any way.

The road to Baidoa is dotted with a dozen makeshift roadblocks, grim
little checkpoints of junk metal and old tires. Last week, someone
decorated one with purple boughs of bougainvillea.

For travelers who had seen the road in another time, it was a cheery
note of hope.

Two days later, the deep purple had faded in the sun to a crisp brown,
and most of the petals had dropped to the ground.

<<>>RTw 12/17 1044 CHARITY WORKER COMPARES FRANCE HOMELESS TO THIRD WORLD

PARIS, Dec 17, Reuter - Homelessness is affecting more people in France
than in Third World countries recently hit by earthquakes, France's best
known crusader for the poor and destitute was quoted on Thursday.

"Two million people are either without shelter or are poorly housed.
About 400,000 sleep rough, which is worse than the situation created by
the recent earthquakes in Cairo and Indonesia," Abbe Pierre said in an
interview with Le Figaro newspaper.

The 80-year-old Catholic priest who is in France the nearest thing to
Mother Teresa said homelessness in this comparatively affluent nation
was "a national disaster."

French charities this week opened kitchen soups in an annual winter
campaign called "Les Restos du Coeur" (Restaurants of the Heart),
highlighting the plight of the growing number of hungry and homeless.

Abbe Pierre later told a news conference that if the military were to
erect a tent city near Paris like those set up for refugees around the
world "...I am certain you would instantly see 1,000 families come out
of hovels to live there because the comfort would be greater than where
they are now."

He was scathing about the centre-right controlled Paris municipality
which he said boarded up empty flats and tore roofs off houses due for
demolition to avoid squatters moving in.

He compared such acts to the burning of crops in rural France, which was
once a capital offence.

But the frail priest, regularly voted one of France's three most popular
men, was equally critical of the Socialist government, saying it had
offered only 10 flats of the 600 it promised last Christmas to shelter
families expelled from homes in the Paris area.

<<>>
RTw 12/17 1024 GUNMEN LOOT FOOD AS TROOPS LEAVE

By Aidan Hartley

MIIDOW, Somalia, Dec 17, Reuter - Somali gunmen began looting relief
food minutes after the departure of U.S. and French troops who escorted
it to starving bush villages on Thursday.

On their first mission into the villages surrounding Baidoa, the inland
town where they arrived on Wednesday, U.S. Marines and French
legionnaires accompanied a convoy of 10 trucks carrying grain for the
relief agency CARE.

Troops in four armoured vehicles and trucks mounted with missile
launchers and machine guns, backed by a Cobra attack helicopter,
delivered the food to four villages up to 24 km (15 miles) northwest of
Baidoa.

But within minutes of the convoy moving on, Reuter reporters saw armed
men move in to start removing bags of grain from village hut stores.

It was this sort of incident that led to the U.S.-led armed intervention
in Somalia to protect famine relief, and it was an indication of the
problems the eventual 35,000-strong force will face in the gun-swamped
country.

In the hamlet of Musibe, Reuter photographer Yannis Behrakis said he saw
several men, one carrying a gun, in a pick-up truck piled with bags of
food 10 minutes after the troops left.

The pick-up quickly drove away.

"Some villagers came running, waving their hands for help. They said the
men had come to loot the food the Americans had just brought," said
Behrakis.

In nearby Miidow village, this reporter saw a gunman near the village
food store which had just been filled with a truckload of grain
delivered about 30 minutes earlier under armed guard.

The man, carrying a semi-automatic rifle, ran off when he saw the
reporter's approaching car.

A woman stood nearby shouting in Somali and villagers looked agitated.
Sidow Ali, who said he was an elder of the village, told Reuters through
a translator the man was from a gang which had come to loot food.

"He wanted to take 10 bags of food. When he saw your vehicle he ran
away...he was waiting for his friends," Sidow Ali said.

REUTER AHH PAH AET <<>>RTw 12/17 0421 SOMALI GUNMEN HOLD UP WESTERN JOURNALISTS

BAIDOA, Somalia, Dec 17, Reuter - Three gunmen held up two foreign
journalists at a feeding centre for starving Somalis on Thursday.

They stole a television camera and sent hundreds of children fleeing in
terror by shooting into the air.

Visnews cameraman Mark Chisholm and Reuter correspondent Paul Holmes
were leaving the Islamic Al Eslah feeding centre in Baidoa, the "City of
Death" at the heart of Somalia's famine, when the teenagers brandishing
Kalashnikov rifles blocked the exit.

One gunman cocked his rifle and took aim at Chisholm, shouting "I'll
kill you." The other two grabbed the camera.

The gunmen fired several shots in the air as they fled over a back wall,
scattering children who had been sitting in lines waiting for food. No
one was hurt.

The journalists later returned to the scene with the local Somali
National Alliance militia which said it would try to find the youths and
recover the stolen equipment.

The hold-up demonstrated continued lawlessness in Baidoa, 250 km (150
miles) west of Mogadishu, despite the arrival on Wednesday of 900 U.S.
and French troops to provide armed escorts for food relief supplies.

Guns and the "technical" battlewagons used by marauding bandits have
vanished from the streets of Mogadishu and Baidoa since the troops'
arrival.

But several aid agency officials say robberies and muggings have
increased. Gunmen who previously pillaged food convoys for the starving
have switched to softer targets.

The United States has said it has no plans to forcibly disarm clan
militias whose bloody feuding over the past two years has turned Somalia
into a land of famine and anarchy.

France, which is contributing 2,200 men to an American- dominated force
which eventually will swell to 35,000 troops, insists the guns must be
seized to restore stability.

Scores of foreign journalists are in Somalia to report Operation Restore
Hope, which began last week.

Several of them have been held up by muggers with guns or knives in
Mogadishu. One, a Kenyan cameraman, was shot during a robbery.

"This sort of thing was bound to happen," said one Western relief worker
in Baidoa. "People see all these foreigners with their riches and think
there's money to be made."

REUTER PAH DJG <<>>
APn 12/17 0409 Somalia-Language School

MONTEREY, Calif. (AP) -- Only nine Somali speakers are enrolled in the
entire U.S. military. But fortunately for the Defense Language
Institute, one of them was only a few miles away.

The institute, the Defense Department's center of intensive language
instruction, needed help two weeks ago to develop phrase books and
language tapes for the Somalia-bound troops of Operation Restore Hope.

Officials performed a computer search of the military's ranks that found
a Somali-speaking soldier in the 7th Light Infantry Division at Fort
Ord, about 10 miles from the institute.

Army Chief Warrant Officer Robert Higgins said the soldier, whose name
was not released, spent two hours at the institute before he shipped out
to Somalia to serve as an interpreter and translator.

During his brief stay, the soldier made a 15-minute video and an audio
tape from which a phrase booklet titled "Surviving in Somali I" was
developed, Higgins said.

Since then, the institute has put together "Surviving in Somali II," a
more advanced version that has 100 pages.

The booklet provides sentences specific to the soldiers' mission in
Somalia, such as "Can you feed yourself?" Its final sentence explains,
in English and Somali, why U.S. military forces are in the country: "We
are the American forces, who are providing help so that the food can
reach those of you who are affected."

Higgins said most readily available language books on Somalia were
geared to vacationers who need to hail taxis or find a good restaurant.

"Our people aren't going as tourists," said Higgins.

<<>>
WP 12/17 xx Castro Uses Stiffer U.S. Embargo to Justify Economic Straits

By Douglas Farah

Washington Post Foreign Service

HAVANA - With Cubans facing the gloomiest holiday season in memory
because of blackouts, shrinking food rations and disappearing
transportation, President Fidel Castro is getting a boost by publicly
attacking his old and fierce enemy, the United States.

At the same time, angry crowds widely considered to be organized by the
government have targeted dissidents here, injuring one.

The the red flag that Castro is waving before Cubans is the Cuba
Democracy Act, also known as the Torricelli law, signed by President
Bush Oct. 23 to tighten the 30-year-old economic embargo against Cuba.
Officials, diplomats and even dissidents here say Castro has capitalized
on passage of the law to shift some of the blame for Cuba's economic
crisis away from the government and to the United States.

The law, named for Rep. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.), makes it illegal
for foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies to sell goods to Cuba and
bans vessels that land in Cuba from using U.S. ports for 180 days.
U.S.-based companies are already banned from commerce with Cuba.

Supporters of the law argue that tightening the embargo will force
Castro to change his politics, or fall. Opponents say it only adds to
the suffering of the Cuban people, while giving Castro a reason for
stifling internal opposition - and it complicates U.S. trade relations.

In part, the new public attacks seem to reflect the feeling by senior
government officials here that President-elect Clinton, who supported
passage of the Torricelli Law, will not make new overtures to Cuba, and
therefore they have little to lose while rallying internal support.

Following the U.S. elections, Deputy Foreign Minister Ramon Sanchez
Parodi told reporters that Cuba "did not expect" Clinton to change
policy, and said "our analysis of the situation in the United States
bears in mind that Washington is bipartisan and . . . a consensus
prevails among groups in power to continue the policy of anti-Cuban
aggressiveness."

Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union and its allies, which had
subsidized Cuba, the island's economy has gone into a tailspin, with a
70 percent drop in imports, leading to widespread shortages of petroleum
products, many foods and other basics. The value of imports plunged from
$8 billion in 1989 to $2.2 billion this year.

While public discontent grows and most people seem to hold the
government at least partly responsible, there is also a perception,
pushed by the government, that the United States wants to starve Cuba
into giving up its revolution.

"This (law) has just strengthened Castro's only argument to continue his
intransigent position," said Vladimiro Roca, the son of a revolutionary
hero and now a leading dissident. "The law is repudiated by everyone
here, and that is logical. It will have the opposite effect of what was
intended."

A U.S. official said:

"Castro has been able to portray the Torricelli bill as something
sensational, but that is in part of our own making. We wanted to portray
it as important, and both the administration and Clinton wanted to play
it up. It may have played into Castro's hands, but I think the advantage
will only be short-term."

The law has made Torricelli, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs'
subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, a household name here.

At a ceremony marking National Defense Day last week, where members of
the local militias across country go on parade, young children carried
signs saying "Down with Torricelli" and chanted slogans promising to
overcome the U.S. embargo and improve economic performance.

"We are more determined now than ever that only socialism will make us
free," a fifth-grade girl said in a speech to several hundred applauding
militia members gathered on a dusty field on the outskirts of the
capital. "Our loyalty is to Fidel. Down with the Torricelli Law.
Socialism or death."

Raul Taladrid, deputy minister of economic collaboration, said in an
interview that "90 percent of what we imported from U.S. subsidiaries
was food, such as basic grains, and medicine. It makes things more
difficult and more expensive for us to keep up things like health care
and education, but we are doing it."

The more heated rhetoric against the United States came as Cuba won
overwhelming support at the United Nations for a General Assembly
resolution condemning the U.S. embargo.

The U.N. vote dominated the news and is portrayed as another blow of the
Cuban David against the U.S. Goliath. At the same time, a group of U.S.
clergy brought in a shipload of food and medicine from the United
States, portrayed in the government-controlled press here as a
shattering of the embargo.

The timing of the Torricelli Law and the ensuing international
condemnation could hardly have been better for Castro. He has warned
that 1993 will be even more difficult than 1992 that the economic
crisis, officially called "a special period in a time of peace," will
continue for years.

While Christmas in this Marxist country is not widely celebrated, New
Year's is. But the traditional New Year's foods of chicken, meat and
pork have been unavailable for months and Cubans say there is little
likelihood of holiday supplies.

Instead, people here say they have been told they may get a ration of
canned meat, made in China, that resembles spam, and maybe an "I think
to make the system work, to avoid violence and bloodshed, there has to
be socialism with more democracy and economic openings."

- Cuban national hero Alvaro Prendes extra bottle of rum and some
butter. Soap, detergent, flour and cooking oil are all in extremely
short supply.

Across the city, people spend much of the day waiting for the infrequent
and crowded buses or state cars to take them to work or home, or waiting
in line for scarce rations. In line, they complain, arrange to barter
goods among themselves, and tell jokes with often biting punch lines
against the system.

"This is the worst Christmas and New Year's ever," said 26-year-old
Ester Maria. "We will just have to take what is given to us and see what
happens. All we have in abundance now is air."

The government recently announced that electricity would be shut off as
much as eight hours daily, up from the previous four, and that the
ration of gasoline for private cars, now about five gallons a month,
would be cut further.

"Over the past six weeks, Castro has been strengthened somewhat," said a
Western diplomat based here. "Enough so he could implement the draconian
power cuts, for example, and, at least temporarily, be a little more
oppressive at home and get away with it."

According to diplomats and dissidents here, the government has stepped
up its harassment of the small dissident movement, widely known outside
the country but virtually unknown here. Last Thursday, Elizardo Sanchez,
a human rights advocate, reportedly was detained and beaten by
government security forces and a pro-government crowd.

A crowd including state security officers blocked off streets leading to
his house, although he was detained in an apartment elsewhere. They also
ransacked the apartment where Elizardo was visiting.

Gerardo Sanchez, Elizardo's brother, said a state security officer
acknowledged holding Elizardo for investigation and that he was in the
nearby military hospital. Gerardo said witnesses told him that his
brother had been beaten and was dazed when detained. The government has
acknowledged the arrest.

At the same time, an angry crowd also surrounded the house of another
activist, Gustavo Arcos, and shouted obscenities, the dissidents said.

Also last Thursday, the government called in several reporters from
foreign news agencies, saying they were giving too much attention to
dissidents and were being too negative about the country.

The State Department said the actions were "clear violations of human
rights and are the acts of a repressive government that fears for its
control."

The arrest of Sanchez came less than a week after Alvaro Prendes, a
national hero of the 1961 Bay of Pigs attack, wrote a public letter to
Castro asking him to allow more economic and political freedom. Prendes
was an air force pilot who shot down three U.S. war planes during the
attack. His house was the object of angry pro-government demonstrators
on Friday.

In an study lined with medals, diplomas and pictures of himself with
Raul and Fidel Castro, Prendes said he still believed that Castro could
carry out the reforms.

"Cuba is in a critical situation from every possible point of view,"
Prendes said. "I think to make the system work, to avoid violence and
bloodshed, there has to be socialism with more democracy and economic
openings."

But Castro does not seem to be on the verge of any radical change.

"We are embarked on an epic struggle, and we have had to temporarily
give up many things," Castro said recently. "But there is something we
have not given up and will not give up, and that is hope. We are
convinced we will come through these difficult times and again continue
with the work of the revolution."

WASHINGTON, Dec 17, Reuter - One out of five American children lived in
poverty in 1991, the highest number since 1965, the Children's Defence
Fund said in its annual report on "The State of America's Children."

"Over the past 10 years we have witnessed the American dream shifting
into reverse," fund president Marian Wright Edelman said in releasing
the report.

The fund called on President-elect Bill Clinton -- his wife Hillary is
on the organisation's board -- and the new Congress to take steps to
help children by reviving welfare programmes, such as Head Start which
have suffered budget cuts, and enacting legislation blocked during the
Reagan-Bush years.

Among some of the problems detailed in the report:

-- 14.3 million children lived in poverty in 1991, the highest number
since 1965. The majority were white, most had a parent who worked and
most live outside large cities in rural and suburban areas.

-- the number of children reported abused or neglected has almost
tripled since 1980 to 2.7 million.

-- in 1989, the proportion of babies born at low birthweights and the
proportion born to mothers with late or no prenatal care stood at the
worst levels since 1976.

-- in most states, fewer than 60 per cent of two-year-olds are fully
immunised against disease.

Among some of the proposed remedies, the fund called for an immediate
increase in Head Start funding which would help pre-school childen with
education programmes, meals and health care. Edelman said funding should
be increased from $2.8 billion to $13 billion over five years.

REUTER RK GD MS <<>>WP 12/23 xx Nader Asks Federal Purchasers to Go `Green'

By Dan Southerland

Washington Post Staff Writer

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader yesterday called on the incoming Clinton
administration to use the power of federal purchasing to give a boost to
products that conserve energy, protect consumers and are gentle on the
economy.

Nader, releasing a new book on government purchasing, said a more
efficient purchasing policy has been delayed by "bureaucratic
stagnation," entrenched product vendors, an "unimaginative Congress" and
a "leaderless White House."

Nader said President-elect Clinton would have to devote "high-level,
courageous priority" to the issue if he wants to improve the purchasing
system.

Nader described public institutions - including the military and
federal, state and local governments - as the largest buyers in the
country, making purchases totaling 18 percent of the gross domestic
product (GDP), or nearly a trillion dollars a year.

Eleanor J. Lewis, coauthor of the new book titled "Forty Ways to Make
Government Purchasing Green," said the government had the power to
stimulate the development of new technologies, protect the environment
and create jobs by "routinely using energy-efficient and environmentally
responsible products."

The book lists 150 case studies of purchasing programs that illustrate
the government's potential power as a consumer.

As an example of the strategy she advocates, Lewis said the government
spends more than $120 million a year on disposable dry-cell batteries
but could cut the cost to $15 million a year if it switched to reusable
batteries that are recharged using solar energy. She said there would be
a onetime, initial investment of $86 million to develop the capacity to
make the switch to solar.

One benefit, Lewis said, would be "a dramatic reduction" in the heavy
metals from batteries that are discarded in landfills and incinerators
and pollute the environment.

According to Lewis, the Navy in 1986 identified 21,000 cost-effective
uses for solar energy that would save $175 million annually, but as of
late 1991 only about 1,000 of these had been implemented. But she said
that with increasing budget cuts, the Navy is using more solar energy.

The Navy's expert on use of solar power could not be reached for
comment.

Nader said that many vendors of products to the government, including
"entrenched corporate giants," were slow to provide safer products and
services and believe they have a "right to their current market niche in
selling to the government."

Nader said that one case of government purchasing that had a major
impact was a 1984 decision by the General Services Administration (GSA)
to order 5,300 air bags for automobiles used by the government. Ford
Motor Co., which supplied the air bags, made bags an option on several
of its models, prompting other companies to offer them.

Nader said that the GSA purchase broke a "logjam" against air bag
standards proposed by the Carter administration but blocked by the
Reagan administration.

By RAY ESTRADA

LOS ANGELES (UPI) -- Could the spring 1992 Los Angeles riots happen
again?

Less than three decades ago, the same question was asked of the summer
1965 Watts riots in South Los Angeles. In 1992 as in 1965 racially
charged issues coupled with economic hard times ignited what has become
the nation's worst urban unrest with 52 people killed and some $2
billion in property damage.

Because of the jarring TV scenes of merciless hoodlums, burning
businesses and scurrying looters, measures already are being taken to
prevent more widespread violence in Los Angeles County.

It was an unpopular Superior Court jury verdict in a neighboring county
that ignited the riots that began April 29. But the roots of the riots
could be found in other actions in the name of justice that seemed to
pit one racial group against another.

The 1992 riots began a few hours after an all-white jury in Simi Valley
acquitted four police officers of all but one of the charges against
them in the March 3, 1991, videotaped beating of traffic offender Rodney
G. King.

But another case involving a black teenage girl shot to death by a
Korean grocer also has been blamed for causing seething racial tension
in the city. In that 1991 case, blacks expressed outrage when Soon Ja
Du, who shot Latasha Harlins for stealing a bottle of juice, was given
five years' probation.

On the horizon is the Superior Court trial of four black men accused of
beating truck driver Reginald Denny during the riot in a scene captured
live on TV cameras. Denny barely survived the attack which occured after
he was dragged from his rig and bashed repeatedly by several assailants.

Supporters of the four black defendants in the case claim it is a stark
contrast to the trial of the police officers who thus far have escaped
criminal convictions for beating Rodney King.

Marcela Howell, special counsel to Mayor Tom Bradley, said plans are
under way to prevent a recurrence of the violence that followed the
April 29 acquittal of police officers charged with beating Rodney King.
The officers face federal charges expected to be decided in March.

"We are trying to do more than just prevent violence after the Rodney
King verdict by acknowledging the economic problems in the community and
providing accurate information through new leadership," Howell said.

Howell said the city is using mayor's office and state funds to hire
community "neighbor to neighbor" organizers who help keep things calm in
their respective areas. The Clinton administration will be approached to
help pay for job training, after-school programs and future summer jobs
to give riot-area residents a new direction, she said. These programs
are expected to start next month.

The mayor's aide would not estimate how much money will be spent on the
programs. "We will spend what we believe is necessary," she said.

City officials say while the Rodney King case could easily be cited as
the cause for 1992's urban violence, the 40 percent unemployment and
other harsh economic conditions also must be blamed.

The need for more jobs and training, better schools and improved
police-community relations were cited as the ways to prevent another
Watts. Ironically, unemployment, high dropout rates and police relations
appeared to be at the heart of the 1992 riots as well.

While South Los Angeles has seen many public works improvements since
1965, the area is hit more than twice as hard by the national recession.

South Los Angeles is the home of several violent street gangs which have
been warring with each other, Los Angeles police and county sheriff's
deputies for more than two decades. Gangs have been blamed for many
riot-related crimes.

Despite highly publicized "truces" announced shortly after the riots,
police acknowledge that gangs have returned to some of their past
activities. Los Angeles County gangs are best known for drive-by
shootings, frequently related to turf control, drug trafficking and sale
of stolen property.

Los Angeles Deputy Police Chief Matthew Hunt said, "There were positive
effects of the truces in the summer," so he remains "cautiously
optimistic" that gangs will continue to curb some of their criminal
activity.

"But we are hoping for real change with more jobs and job training and
to a large degree that is not happening," said Hunt, who is in charge of
the Police Department's South Bureau, the area hardest hit by the spring
riots.

County and state politicians say new job creation is high on the list of
riot prevention. But officials with the newly formed Rebuild Los Angeles
agency have been criticized for failing to hire Southside-based
demolition firms to clear the way for reconstruction efforts.

In response to that concern, about 90 percent of the 300 demolition and
recycling contracts worth a total of $4.3 million in the riot- damaged
area have been awarded to companies run by ethnic minorities or women,
according to the Los Angeles Community Partnership, which gave out the
contracts with the city Board of Public Works.

Since the riots and subsequent investigative reports on the causes of
the violence, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates has retired. He was
replaced by former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Willie Williams, who
has supervised the removal of 44 officers who have repeatedly been
accused of brutality.

Williams displayed his way of handling civil unrest Dec. 14 when a
protest turned violent near the intersection where Denny was beaten.
Williams declared a tactical alert, and riot police arrested 60 people
after a rock-and-bottle melee erupted. Williams blamed gangs for most of
the disruption.

(refiling)

x x x the disruption.

During the few months he has been on the job, Williams also has tried to
rebuild frayed relations with a myriad of community groups. During
Gates's two-decade tenure as police chief, relations were strained with
some black, Latino and gay segments of Los Angeles, as well as with the
mayor and some City Council members.

Police were not the only authorities blamed for handling the riots
poorly. National Guard troops brought in to help restore order were
labeled unprepared after an investigation ordered by Gov. Pete Wilson.
Guardsmen lacked proper ammunition for patrolling streets and had
"archaic" civil disturbance training, according to retired Lt. Gen.
William Harrison.

Although not widely observed prior to the riots, the civil unrest
underscored the growing diversity and cultural divisions within South
Los Angeles.

While Asian-American-owned businesses have steadily grown in the once
predominately black area for decades, Latino residents have exceeded
other minority groups in many Southside neighborhoods because of
relatively cheap housing.

As the city grows, black, Asian and Latino residents dominate the once
mostly Anglo metropolis, a trend that is expected to intensify through
the turn of the century.

Los Angeles is not the only large metropolitan area faced with the
prospect of urban unrest sparked by racially charged court case in the
coming year.

The Los Angeles riots had an effect on the retrial of William Lozano,
33, a Colombian-born Miami police officer suspended with pay pending the
outcome of his case.

Lozano faces retrial on two charges of manslaughter in the Jan. 16,
1989, deaths of two black men -- motorcyclist Clement Lloyd and his
passenger, Allan Blanchard -- in Miami's predominantly black Overtown
section. Lozano shot Lloyd, saying he thought Lloyd was trying to run
him down. Blanchard died in the ensuing crash. The deaths touched off
three days of rioting in Overtown and Liberty City.

A jury convicted Lozano, but in June 1991 a state appeals court ordered
a new trial, saying the trial judge should have considered moving the
trial out of Miami. The 3rd District Court of Appeal said the threat of
another riot if Lozano were to be acquitted hopelessly tainted the
trial.

On April 2, Dade County Circuit Judge W. Thomas Spencer moved the
retrial from Miami to Orlando. But on May 6 after the acquittals in the
Rodney King case sparked rioting in Los Angeles, Spencer moved the
Lozano retrial from Orlando to Tallahassee, where the trial will begin
March 1.

Spencer said many blacks in Miami believed Orlando is an inappropriate
place for the retrial because an all-white jury likely would decide the
case -- as happened in the California case.

Meanwhile, four Detroit police officers -- including a black sergeant --
are expected to go on trial in early 1993 for the Nov. 5 beating death
of Malice Green, an unemployed black steel worker and father of five.
Witnesses watched Green argue with police who beat him in front of a
suspected crack house after stopping the car in which he was riding.

Detroit Police Chief Stanley Knox suspended seven officers who were at
the scene. Four of the officers have been indicted for murder.

Uneasy race relations also dominated headlines in New York City in 1992.

Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn's Crown Heights outraged by days of racial
rioting in August, 1991, were angered in October when the lone black
youth charged in the slaying of an Australian rabbinical scholar was
acquitted by a jury.

The shooting of a suspected gunman in Manhattan's Washinton Heights in
July sparked days of angry protests in which cars were burned and stores
were looted by residents who claimed the officer beat and shot an
unarmed Hispanic.

Police said the victim was armed, and no criminal charges were filed
against the officer.

release at will

By MORT ROSENBLUM

AP Special Correspondent

AFGOI, Somalia (AP) -- In a headlong rush to save people, aid workers
have neglected the animals and the farms, exposing Somalia to a
potentially worse catastrophe next year, agriculture experts warn.

Already, sleeping sickness and rinderpest are killing cows that managed
to escape rustlers during two years of war. No one sprays the deadly
tsetse fly. Veterinary services have collapsed.

"They just forgot the animals," said Omar Ali Ainanshe, a
British-trained veterinarian whose drug stocks are down to some human
pain pills. "Somalia is finished without its livestock."

At the same time, irrigation canals off the Shebele and Juba rivers are
choked with mud. Relief agencies are reaching only a small fraction of
farmers with seed and tools for the coming rains.

"There is no coordination, no systematic coverage to get seed to
villages," said Hassan Khalifa of the U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organization. "Without it, they can plant nothing."

Khalifa, a Sudanese agronomist with 30 years' experience, works with a
Kurdish livestock expert, Talid Ali, at FAO's tiny mission in Mogadishu.
Both have received only modest promises of funding.

"You can feed people now, but if you don't save their animals and crops,
what do they eat next?" Ali said. "Two-thirds of Somali exports are
livestock. Without this, there is no income."

The International Red Cross, spotting the problem early, set up feeding
centers early this year in this bustling crossroads on the Shebele, just
west of Mogadishu.

"We felt that farmers had to keep up their strength," said Horst Homborg
of the Red Cross. "And we also wanted to attract people back to the
farms so they did not settle in the city."

Other agencies agree. "The most important thing now is to get people
back to their fields so they have food in June and don't have to move
again," said James Fennell of CARE in Baidoa.

Before the September rains, the Red Cross distributed seed to 250,000
Somali farmers, and other voluntary agencies reached scores of thousands
more. Corn and maize should be harvested next month.

But Khalifa said the donors need a massive program now so that farmers
can plant before the longer rainy season which begins in June. He needs
at least $3 million and cannot get it.

"We must coordinate," he said. "Agencies want to help, but some know
nothing about Somali agriculture." He said one agency imported the wrong
kind of seed, which can weaken local varieties.

For Ali, saving the livestock is an even greater priority. He estimates
that $28 million is needed urgently to set up animal health facilities
and vaccinate cattle against rinderpest.

Nearly 80 percent of all Somalis depend on camels, cattle, sheep or
goats for their livelihood. During drought, families survive on milk,
meat and the cash they earn from selling their animals.

An outbreak of rinderpest could deplete Somali herds and spread to
Ethiopia and Kenya, he said. Since tsetse have not been sprayed since
1988, he added, cattle are dying fast from sleeping sickness.

In Afgoi, the crisis is clear.

Over the last two years, more than half the cattle in the region were
lost to drought, disease or theft, according to Ainanshe.

Drugs can prevent and cure cattle of sleeping sickness, but none are
available. "I have had nothing for seven months," the veterinarian said.
"No rinderpest vaccine since 1990."

At the livestock market here, herders find the animals offered are in
bad shape, and they are getting worse.

Ali Haj Mohamed lost 40 camels to sleeping sickness in the last year.
His last 100 suffer from a skin disease he cannot treat. Ainanshe knows
why: Herders use the wrong drug for ticks. There is nothing else.

Dore Bale Alim, now who looks 75 at 60, dropped quickly from rich to
well-off, and he is plummeting toward ruin.

Before the fighting started, he had 150 cattle. He lost 40 to sleeping
sickness. More died for lack of grazing. He had to sell some to survive.
Rustlers took a cut.

"Now I have 50 head," Alim said. "If things continue as they have, I
will be down to zero. Then we will starve."

<<>>WP 12/21 xx Public health threat: AIDS, Drugs & Tuberculosis.

By Joseph A. Califano Jr.

President-elect Bill Clinton is scouring various health reform plans,
taking the time to mesh the best elements of each into a package sturdy
enough to navigate the treacherous straits of special interests and
ideological shoals on Capitol Hill. But one public health crisis demands
his immediate attention.

A sinister combine of AIDS, substance abuse and new drug-resistant
strains of tuberculosis has become an American Cerberus - a vicious,
three-headed dog, not only guarding the gates of the hells we have
created in inner cities, but also running loose into every part of our
nation. This combination threatens every man, woman, child and fetus in
America - and brings the nation to the cusp of the most dangerous public
health crisis in its history.

One million Americans are infected with HIV, one in every 100 men and
one in every 800 women. At least a quarter of a million AIDS cases have
been reported in the United States (twice that number by a proposed new
government definition); more than 150,000 Americans have already died.

AIDS spreads most rapidly through substance abuse and addiction. Up to 1
million Americans use heroin; 23 million have tried cocaine, and at
least 2 million are hooked, including more than half a million on crack.
Some 18 million are addicted to alcohol or abuse it; 5.5 million get
high on marijuana more than once a week; 11 million abuse tranquilizers
and other psychotropic drugs.

Kindled by the AIDS epidemic and fueled by substance abuse, TB is back
in our inner cities from New York to Los Angeles, Chicago to Houston,
San Francisco to Miami, Philadelphia and Washington. The number of
tuberculosis cases has climbed relentlessly since 1985. Over the past
two years, the incidence of TB among children has jumped 40 percent. In
pockets of poverty in America, TB rates are worse than those of the
poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Among blacks in North Carolina
migrant-labor camps, the rate is 3,600 cases per 100,000. A recent New
York City Health Department survey found 22 percent of adolescents in
poor areas of Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan infected with the TB germ.

The most sinister aspect of this public health crisis is that each of
these killers and cripplers goads the others to be more menacing and
more difficult to prevent, control and treat.

Through sharing needles and trading sex for drugs, and through
promiscuous and unprotected sex by kids who are high, substance abuse
has become the prime culprit in the spread of HIV infection. Intravenous
drug use is implicated in a third of all AIDS cases found in teenagers
and adults. Less widely recognized, but no less ominous, is the spread
of HIV infection among teenagers high on beer, pot or cocaine. They are
far more likely to have sexual relations - and to have them without a
condom.

People with immune systems weakened by HIV are more vulnerable to
tuberculosis and harder to diagnose. Alcoholics and intravenous drug
users are the most likely to develop drug resistant TB strains. More
than half the homeless Americans (some say as many as 90 percent) suffer
from alcohol and/or drug abuse and addiction. As a result, homeless
shelters, with their overcrowded conditions, poor ventilation and high
population of drug addicts, are often breeding grounds for TB and AIDS.
Most frightening, the American Cerberus of AIDS, substance abuse and TB
has turned every jail term, no matter how short, into a potential death
sentence.

Dramatic statistics from the big urban ghettos grab the headlines. But
AIDS, tuberculosis and substance abuse can be found in every part of
America. The human suffering is incalculable. The financial costs are
staggering:

By the end of next year, the cost of treating all people diagnosed with
HIV will top $10 billion annually.

It takes $250,000 to treat an individual with drug-resistant
tuberculosis. And that doesn't include high-ticket infrastructure costs,
such as isolation rooms and negative-pressure facilities.

The nation's bill for substance abuse alone tops $300 billion a year in
crime, reduced productivity and health care costs. The care of a drug
exposed newborn with HIV infection costs more than $5,000 a day.

And more and more Americans are afflicted with all three diseases.

A new public health campaign should be waged on every front -
prevention, treatment and research - and against all three killers.

The new president has the opportunity to spark a saturation campaign of
education and prevention about AIDS, substance abuse and tuberculosis,
based on the realities of 1993. Ideally, we may wish that teenagers
would not have sexual relations and that we had no teenage pregnancy in
America. The reality is, as the Centers for Disease Control report, that
29 percent of 12th-graders have already had sexual intercourse with four
or more partners. Teenagers, like the rest of us, are human beings, with
human natures, desires, strengths and weaknesses.

Parents want their teenage sons and daughters to abstain from sexual
intercourse and from using drugs. But is there a parent alive who -
faced with a child who had sexual intercourse or fell victim to drug
addiction - would prefer to have that child denied the chance to use a
condom or a clean needle?

The new president and Congress should provide reimbursement for
treatment of AIDS, substance abuse and tuberculosis. That means
additional resources. In this public health crisis, taking Peter's
treatment funds to give to Paul is like playing Russian roulette with
three killers. Providing substance abuse treatment for all who need it
will require a marked expansion of the system - but the costs will be
outweighed by savings in AIDS and TB prevention alone. We also need
legislation to limit the ability of private insurers to snatch health
benefits from those afflicted with AIDS, substance abuse and
tuberculosis, and to construct a seamless federal safety net.

The National Institutes of Health spend just over $1 billion a year on
AIDS research. Basic research for substance abuse gets less than half
that amount, a paltry sum against the fact that substance abuse and
addiction are the nation's number one health problem and the single
largest cause of new AIDS cases. Tuberculosis gets only $10.4 million
dollars; yet it is a highly contagious, deadly handmaiden of AIDS and
substance abuse - a disease you can catch from the person next to you in
a movie theater or classroom. And the small amounts we spend on
psychological and social research explain why we know so little about
how to prevent self-destructive behavior.

Few investments in America's future are likely to pay greater dividends
in saving lives and ending human misery than those the new president and
Congress make in prevention, treatment and research to slay the
three-headed biomedical monster of AIDS, TB and substance abuse.

The writer, president of the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at
Columbia University, was secretary of Health, Education and Welfare from
1977 to 1979.

By CHARLES DOE

United Press International

U.S.-led forces of the United Nations pushed deeper into Somalia's
famine belt Thrusday, securing one stricken town in the south and
preparing to enter another in the north.

"The town of Bardera was declared secured by the commander of the task
force of approximately 800 United States Marines that arrived," said
Marine Col. Fred Peck, a spokesman for the U.S. task force.

"There were no major incidents," he said, "and all is reported quiet
there now. They were well received upon their arrival."

One civilian U.S. government worker was killed and three others wounded
outside Bardera on Wednesday when their jeep ran over a land mine. The
Pentagon Thursday identified the death victim as Lawrence N. Freedman,
51, of Fayetteville, N.C.

Freedman was described as a civilian employee of the U.S. Army. The
three wounded were said to be State Department security officials. They
were going to Bardera to make preparations for the Marines' arrival
there.

The four were the first casualties of the armed relief effort, which is
intended to safeguard the delivery of food and medicine previously
impeded by armed factions involved in Somalia's multi-sided civil war.
The effort is in response to a U.N. Security Council resolution.

"A French-led task force with two French companies and one U.S. Marine
Corps company left...this morning bound for Oddur," Peck said.
"They...stopped...this afternoon approximately 30 kilometers to the west
of Oddur. They will continue tomorrow morning to Oddur."

That schedule would put the international task force in the stricken
city late Thursday EST.

Both columns in the armed relief effort took extra precautions against
land mines. The drive south to Bardera was led by armored vehicles
dragging tires behind them to detonate any mines encountered. The push
north to Oddur went by a circuitous route. Both towns are refugee
centers where scores of starving Somalis have been dying daily.

Both armed relief columns set out from the town of Baidoa, which had
been secured earlier in the operation which began earlier this month.

The American contingent on the ground in Somalia has reached 9,600, the
Pentagon has said, with another 9,000 sailors and Marines on warships
off the coast. Most of the ground forces are from the 1st Marine
Amphibious Force at Camp Pendleton, Calif. and the Army's 10th Division
of light infantry at Fort Drum, N.Y.

Some 13 other countries are now taking place in the Somalia relief
effort. The latest to arrive is an advance party from Australia.

In addition to the French and the Belgians who helped secure the
southern port of Kismayu last weekend, an Italian Army brigade is
currently arriving in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

A Canadian paratroop battle group is at the former Soviet airfield of
Bale Dogle, a major staging area for the armed relief operation.

Saudi Arabian and Moroccan troops are on patrol in Mogadishu, where
advance parties from Botswana, Turkey, Kuwait and Jordan are awaiting
reinforcement. A Pakistani infantry battalion, which was in Somalia
under U.N. authority even before the arrival of the U.S. forces, remains
on guard duty at Mogadishu airport.

Two British C-130 transport planes are taking part in a predominately
American airlift of relief supplies operating out of neighboring Kenya.
The airlift has delivered more than 18,000 metric tons of food and
medicine since it began last August.

The U.S. intention is to turn operations on the ground over to a United
Nations peacekeeping force as soon a large enough one can be assembled.
Defense officials have estimated that could take two to three months.

By PETER JAMES SPIELMANN

Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's staff
is drafting plans to gradually take over the Somalia relief operation
from the U.S.-led task force, officials said today.

No timetable or target date has been set for the changeover in command
of Operation Restore Hope, said a diplomat who attended Boutros-Ghali's
meeting Monday with U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, and
the U.N. chief's briefing Wednesday night of Security Council members.

The shift in responsibility will be gradual, and will probably involve
U.N. peacekeepers moving into areas of Somalia that have already been
pacified of roving gunmen as the U.S.-led troops advance on the more
dangerous regions.

The relief mission began on Dec. 9 with the arrival of the first U.S.
forces. Its goal is to help deliver food to Somalia, where famine and
clan warfare have claimed 350,000 lives and are threatening 2 million
more.

Marrack Goulding, the undersecretary-general in charge of peacekeeping,
and his U.N. staff of 22 are consulting with U.S. military officials on
the transition.

The Security Council will have to adopt a new resolution changing the
mandate of the Somalia relief mission to shift command and control to
the U.N.'s peacekeeping office.

On Monday, Eagleburger told Boutros-Ghali that the swift success of the
early stage of the operation should make it possible to move to U.N.
control of the mission relatively quickly, a source at the meeting said.

In late November, when President Bush announced U.S. Marines would be
the vanguard of the force to guard food and relief supplies from
Somalian looters, he expressed hope that U.S. forces could be coming
home by the time President-elect Clinton takes office in January.

That target date is unfeasible, as there is no firm plan for the U.N.
assumption of command in hand and no timetable for the takeover.

Bush himself is going to Somalia next week to boost the morale of about
18,000 troops on land and off Somalia's coast.

<<>>
UPn 12/24 1230 Uncle beats toddler to death for spilling hot sauce

CHICAGO (UPI) -- A South Side man who said he was taking his nephew to
see Santa Thursday faced murder charges in the toddler's death.

Van Dyke Johnson, 29, was charged with first-degree murder in the
beating death of Andre Bell Harding, 2.

The youngster was killed after he spilled a bottle of hot sauce on his
clothing.

Police said Johnson picked up his nephew Tuesday and told relatives he
was taking the youngster Christmas shopping and to see Santa at a
shopping mall.

Johnson, however, stopped by his home first and left the child sitting
alone at the kitchen table, where he got hold of a bottle of hot sauce
and soiled his clothing.

Johnson reportedly told police he became enraged when he saw the mess
and hit the boy. He then removed the child's clothing to launder it and
put Andre into the bathtub.

After giving the boy a bath, Johnson said he thought the toddler "looked
strange" and took him to Jackson Park Hospital.

Andre died in the emergency room at Cook County Hospital Tuesday night.

By FRED BAYLES

AP National Writer

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) -- The nation's hard-pressed charities face a
decline in annual contributions for the first time in two decades.
Donors are holding back -- because they fear lingering recession, and
because they don't trust some of the do-gooders.

Federal and state budget deficits have cut into the flow of government
grants to charities. Corporate giving has sunk with the economy. A
survey by Independent Sector, a Washington-based coalition of
philanthropic groups, found household donations down 20 percent this
year.

"Charities are having one of their hardest years raising money," said
Virginia Hodgkinson, head of research for Independent Sector. "I think
we're going to see a decline in giving this year over last year."

The effects are being felt at San Francisco's Haight Ashbury Food
Program, where donations are down 10 to 15 percent; at Mile High United
Way in Denver, which warned its 106 member agencies to brace for cuts of
up 30 percent; at "Toys for Tots" programs such as the one in San Diego,
where Marines have collected 43,000 toys, down from 115,000 last year.

The dip in fund raising, which increased steadily through the 1980s to
$124 billion last year, comes as demand for help is greater than ever.
Charities have not faced the prospect of shrinking resources since the
oil bust of the 1970s.

Beyond economic factors, charity watchers note a newer, more troubling
aspect to the decline: a wavering of public confidence in charitable
organizations.

Over the past year, once-trusting contributors got hard lessons in the
dark side of the charity world. Among them:

-- The $442,000 in salary and perks for the head of United Way of
America.

-- Warnings from state regulators about fund-raising campaigns that send
only a few pennies on each dollar to those in need.

-- Lawsuits alleging some charities use accounting alchemy to transmute
donations of old vegetable seeds and torn books into millions of dollars
in falsely reported aid to cancer patients and refugees.

As a result, nearly half those questioned in the Independent Sector
survey said they had a low degree of trust in charities.

"The public is more cautious about giving," said Kenneth Albrecht,
president of the National Charities Information Bureau. "One factor has
obviously been the economy. But a second factor is the stream of
disquieting news about the operation of some organizations."

This jitteriness is recorded at watchdog agencies where questions about
charities come in at an ever-increasing rate.

"Americans have been generous in the past, but because of the economy
and new concerns about accountability, they are asking tougher
questions," said Bennett Weiner, vice president of the Better Business
Bureau's Philanthropic Advisory Service.

The business bureau's office in an Arlington shopping mall is lined with
manila folders documenting everything from the IRS filings to
fund-raising brochures of some 6,000 charities. In about a fourth of
those files, researchers have found something to withhold their seal of
approval.

Usually it is an easily fixed procedural glitch. But increasingly it is
some sleight-of-hand accounting, done to make the numbers charities are
judged by -- money raised vs. money spent on programs -- more impressive
than their growing list of competitors.

"Competition can bring out the best in a charity, but it can also bring
out the worst in an organization that cuts corners in fund raising and
tells white lies in its publications," Weiner said.

Competition for funds is fierce. With the rise of new causes, from child
abuse to AIDS, the number of groups that receive donations grew from
561,000 in 1989 to 632,000 in 1990; for every charity that closed its
doors in that time, three sprang up.

Sometimes the competition gets nasty. Save the Children, a
Connecticut-based charity, takes Feed the Children of Oklahoma to court
over name infringement; Easter Seals and Christmas Seals knock heads
over similar fund-raising techniques.

"I see it happen all the time where two groups competing in the same
area will badmouth each other," said Seth Perlman, a New York lawyer who
specializes in charities. "It's an issue of money and power."

The greater competition for fewer dollars has turned many charities into
savvy marketers of their cause. Some buy heart-wrenching ads with
toll-free numbers. Phone appeals, once limited to local charities, have
been taken up by national organizations. More turn to direct mail
campaigns and micro-marketing, buying or trading lists of those
demographically suited to their pitch.

The rush to raise money can push charities to the edge. Smaller
organizations hire professional fund raisers who often keep 90 cents or
more of every dollar raised. Recently, California officials charged one
fund-raising group with creating its own charities to make money.

To avoid such dodges, donors are urged to look at a charity's numbers.
How much money did they raise? How much money did they spend in raising
it? How much of the funds actually went to aid programs?

Watchdog agencies recommend at least 60 percent of a charity's donations
go to aid programs. But some charities have countered with creative
accounting that puts their numbers in a better -- and often false --
light.

To look good in this number game, some charities stuff throwaway
information about cancer prevention or the evils of drugs into their
solicitations, then write off the cost of printing and postage to
education programs rather than fund raising.

"All the legitimate charities feel under pressure to enhance their
accounting lines. People are being forced to count things in ways that
are questionable," said Stacy Palmer, managing editor of the Chronicle
of Philanthropy.

Others cook their books with donated materials that have little to do
with their charity. Connecticut and Pennsylvania recently brought
charges against a half dozen charities accused of writing off donations
of expired seed packets and discarded textbooks as aid to cancer
patients and drug therapy.

One charity valued damaged paperbacks at their original retail price of
$1.2 million; expired baby food donated in this country was given the
retail value of food sold in British Columbia where prices are 25
percent higher.

The donated goods were then either handed along to another charity or
distributed to people who were said to be in need. In either case, using
these inflated values, the charity claimed 75 percent of its revenues
went to aid programs. State regulators claim the actual number was
closer to 3 percent.

"Beyond the question of inflated values, we're asking what in the heck
does a lot of this stuff have to do with what these organizations say
they're all about," said Mark Pacella, a deputy state attorney general
in Pennsylvania.

Such cases still represent a very small percentage of all charities. But
there is fear these extremes will taint the majority. Struggling
charities with good programs but marginal numbers are vulnerable in this
new climate of cynicism.

"People will ask, `What's your percentage?' They don't know that our
programs take time to get results," said Caroline Williams, the head of
fund raising for TechnoServe, a small, well-respected group that
provides technical advice to Third World farmers from spartan offices in
Norwalk, Conn.

But larger charities also struggle with the same issues of proving their
worthiness to the public. In his spacious Red Cross office overlooking
the White House Christmas tree, head fund raiser John Thomas considers
how to meet changing public perceptions of charities.

"It's terribly important for us in philanthropy to educate people about
what we do," he said. "We have a tremendous responsibility to earn their
trust, not because we're good at asking for money, but because the
services we're providing are exceptionally good."

<<>>
APn 12/24 1212 The Green Prince

By KARIN DAVIES

Associated Press Writer

AVONMOUTH, England (AP) -- A biting wind carried a whiff of sewage
sludge, tumbled dry in huge drums. "My work takes me to the most
interesting places," Prince Charles quipped.

It was a few weeks before the announcement that he was separating from
Princess Diana, and the 44-year-old heir to the British throne was
pursuing a cause close to his heart: preserving England as a green and
pleasant land.

And the day after the announcement, Charles, pursued by the royal rat
pack of tabloid reporters, was back at it: 20 feet underground to open a
new testing lab at an East London sewage-treatment plant.

With the separation behind him, the prince's admirers say they hope his
interest in serious issues will no longer be eclipsed by the media's
obsession with his marriage.

"What he offers is a platform for eccentric views in a political culture
that is becoming far too centralized ...," journalist Simon Jenkins
wrote in his column in The Times.

Since his first public speech in 1968, which was devoted to caring for
the land, Charles has taken on modern architects, educators and
liturgical innovators. He even implicitly criticized the government by
talking about inner-city poverty, homelessness and care of the elderly.

"Green" issues seem especially dear to him.

He was enthusiastic as he toured Wessex Water's new plant that processes
sewage sludge into a commercial fertilizer.

"I'm thrilled because this is exactly what is required," Charles said at
the plant, 115 miles west of London. "It seems to me to be more
efficient to use it rather than to just waste it."

More than any royal since his great-great-great-grandfather Prince
Albert, Charles has immersed himself in public causes. His blood has
given him a pulpit, as well as stewardship of estates where he can
practice what he preaches.

Charles once joked to a television interviewer that he talked to his
plants -- an image that has endured in cartoons and jokes.

But he has won respect from the public.

When the Gallup polling firm asked Britons who would make the best
environment secretary, Charles was in first place. More recent polls
indicate a majority still want him to become king, with or without
Diana.

Charles sees himself as a one-man pressure group, "not in an arrogant
way, but in a genuinely humble way, in a facilitating way," said Richard
Sandbrook, director of the International Institute for Environmental
Development.

For instance, Charles organized a meeting aboard the royal yacht
Britannia -- rigged with a biological sewage-treatment plant -- off
Brazil last year to help set the agenda for the U.N. Earth Summit in Rio
de Janeiro.

"Heritage isn't to him wearing funny clothes and driving around in fancy
cars, it comes from the land. He is deeply concerned about the loss of
species and the loss of landscape," said Jonathon Porritt, an
environmentalist with whom the prince has consulted for years.

At times, the monarch-in-waiting could pass for just another child of
the '60s slouching toward middle age. He's into organic farming,
alternative medicine and health food; he frets about ocean pollution and
the ozone layer and whether his two sons will inherit a liveable planet.

But Charles has applied his ideas on organic farming, promoting animal
welfare and blending the traditional with the modern at Highgrove, his
estate 100 miles west of London that is part of the vast Duchy of
Cornwall lands he administers. Most of the 130,000 acres are leased to
farmers and businesses, providing the prince an income of $3.2 million
in 1991.

Half of the 1,000-acre Home Farm has been converted to organic
cultivation, and the changeover is scheduled to be complete by 1995.

"I remain astonished at just how many other farmers still look at
organic farming as some kind of drop-out option for superannuated
hippies," Charles has said.

He has had limited success, however, in encouraging his tenants and
other farmers to develop markets for "green" products, those grown with
an eye on limiting damage to the environment from pesticides,
fertilizers and the like.

His most recent project is a range of Duchy Original crackers, made from
organic oats and wheat harvested on his farm and sold at premium prices
in a few high-class stores.

The crackers follow the success of bread made of organic grain grown on
the estate. Tesco, a major British supermarket chain, sold an estimated
70,000 loaves in a marketing test before the grain ran out last year.

Tesco, however, decided in November to quit selling lamb produced under
animal-welfare guidelines promoted by the prince. Priced 15 percent
higher than regular fresh lamb, the "Nature's Choice" brand simply did
not sell, said a Tesco spokeswoman, Sue Spencer.

Organic farmers now contribute less than 1 percent to the total output
of British farming.

David Conning, director general of the British Nutrition Foundation,
says there is no evidence that "green" food is safer, tastier or more
nutritious. The only possible justification would be that it is better
for the land than conventional farming, he said.

That is the point, Charles argues. He tells farmers theirs is not "just
another business," but rather involves "the long-term stewardship of a
precious natural resource."

<<>>
RTw 12/24 1130 U.S. MARINES ENTER SOMALIA FAMINE TOWN OF BARDERE

By Frances Kerry

BARDERE, Somalia, Dec 24, Reuter - A force of U.S. Marines rumbled into
this famine town on Thursday in the heat and dust of Christmas in
Somalia.

A column of 800 troops in armoured vehicles, trucks and jeeps secured
the dirt strip airfield of Bardere, a southern town where Somali gunmen
have committed some of their worst excesses.

A U.S. official in Bardere said the 160 km (100 mile) journey had been
incident-free despite bad roads and the danger of mines. U.S. spokesmen
said that earlier they had erroneously put the column's strength at
about 1,000 soldiers.

Bardere was the fifth town secured by U.S.-led forces in their military
intervention to keep looting gunmen away from food for victims of a
famine that has killed 300,000 people.

In Mogadishu, military spokesman Marine Colonel Fred Peck said a smaller
force of French and U.S. troops was poised to enter a sixth town,
Hoddur, early on Christmas Day.

Both columns set out at first light from the town of Baidoa, inland
capital of Somalia's starvation.

The convoy for Hoddur had halted about 30 km (20 miles) west of Hoddur.
"They will continue on in tomorrow morning to secure the airfield and
the town of Hoddur," Peck said.

Ragged children emerged from mud huts and wrecked buildings in Bardere
to watch the marines arrive in mid-afternoon.

"It was pretty rough in some spots and a very hot and dusty ride," said
Lance Corporal Grose Close. "But mind you I'm from Arizona and I'm used
to it."

An American civilian employee of the U.S. Department of the Army was
killed on Wednesday when his vehicle hit an anti-tank mine just outside
Bardere. A second mine was found nearby and Peck said both had been
identified as old Soviet ordnance.

Three U.S. State Department security officers who were seriously injured
in the explosion were flown to the United States on Thursday, Peck said.

Bardere was fought over bitterly in October by two of the clan warlords
whose battles have wreaked ruin, famine and killing on Somalia in the
two years since the overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

The area around the town has been sown with mines by both warlords,
Mohamed Farah Aideed and Siad Barre's son-in-law Mohamed Siad Hirsi
Morgan. Relief workers say the mines have made some famine pockets too
dangerous to truck food to.

Some 60 to 70 a people die daily in Bardere alone.

Peck said U.S. and other foreign forces would give priority to
rebuilding roads, clearing mines and repairing Bardere's dirt and gravel
airstrip for the humanitarian relief operation.

Troops would also start as soon as possible escorting food convoys out
into a huge area of countryside, Peck said.

"We'll jump to that task as quickly as possible. We want to start
branching out as fast as we can in each one of these sites that we go
to, to avoid those cities becoming magnets...for more people to come in
from the countryside."

Since landing in the capital Mogadishu on December 9, the multinational
force has already moved into Baidoa, Bali Dogle airfield and the
southern port of Kismayu.

The towns serve as hubs for the troops to fan out into the countryside
riding shotgun on food convoys.

The multinational force has faced no serious opposition from Somalia's
gunmen and their "Mad Max" battlewagons but problems with looting have
continued where the foreign troops have not yet arrived.

The representative of the U.N.'s World Food Programme (WFP) in the town
of Sacco Huen, just 70 km (45 miles) south of Bardere, asked to be
evacuated on Thursday.

Gemmo Lodesani, the WFP's deputy director of operations in Somalia, said
the reason for the request was not clear. He said it might be linked to
recent food airlifts to the town.

Operational planners have identified eight sites in central and southern
Somalia where foreign troops will establish bases for Restore Hope.

After Hoddur, the towns of Jalalaksi and Belet Huen, both north of the
capital, are expected to be secured by December 28, three days before
outgoing U.S. President George Bush arrives on a flying New Year visit
to American troops.

REUTER PAH JCH <<>>APn 12/24 0701 Homeless Voting

By PATRICK O'TOOLE

Associated Press Writer

CHICAGO (AP) -- A new Illinois law allows homeless people to register to
vote by presenting only two forms of identification and a mailing
address.

The law, which went into effect Wednesday, was applauded by homeless
advocates, who said it's the first of its kind in the nation.

"It is significant because voting is a way of restoring the citizenship
of homeless people," said Fred Karnas, executive director of the
National Coalition for the Homeless in Washington, D.C.

"The people who are homeless consider it a great victory," said John
Donahue, executive director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

In several other states, court orders or written policies guarantee the
right to vote for the homeless. Four states have considered but failed
to pass homeless voting laws.

Under the Illinois law, two forms of ID and a mailing address, such as a
homeless shelter, are all a homeless person needs to register. The voter
must return a prepaid post card affidavit to verify registration 45 days
before each election.

"If you are homeless you should still have the right to see who will
lead this country," said Billy Miles, 29, a homeless man who works as
security guard at a shelter, the Pacific Garden Mission.

Local advocates estimate there are 40,000 homeless people in Chicago and
100,000 across the state.

Since 1986, a consent decree has allowed the homeless of Chicago to
vote, but Chicago Board of Elections attorney Mickey Levinson says only
350 have registered, partly because many homeless are unaware they can
register.

Nationwide, about 2 million homeless people are eligible to vote but
aren't registered, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless.

<<>>
RTw 12/24 0444 MINES AROUND BARDERE MAKE RELIEF WORK HAZARDOUS

By Frances Kerry

BARDERE, Somalia, Dec 24, Reuter - Mines litter the roads around
Bardere, blocking distribution of food aid to starving villages.

Relief staff working in one of Somalia's worst hit famine centres hope
1,000 U.S. Marines due to arrive on Thursday will start clearing them
quickly.

The danger was graphically illustrated on Wednesday when a U.S. civilian
working with the Department of Army was killed and three State
Department officers were injured. Their vehicle, on a reconnaissance
mission, hit a mine on a dusty track just outside town.

The marine convoy of up to 50 vehicles was expected in town before dusk
after a journey over badly rutted roads from Baidoa, 160 km (100 miles)
to the northeast.

David Stables, deputy team leader in Bardere with the aid agency CARE,
said security in the town was better than in some parts of Somalia,
where clan fighting, armed gangs and looting have played havoc with aid
efforts.

"Here, the main problem now is mines," he said.

A CARE vehicle hit a mine a week ago. Although the staff in it were only
slightly hurt, the incident made drivers even more reluctant to travel
out of town, Stables added.

For the moment, he said, CARE was delivering food to villages only to
the west in unmined areas. It was managing to provide for some 45,000
people in Bardere and surrounding areas. But some places were too
dangerous to go to.

"There's also the problem that the roads are in very poor condition
because of the rains," said Stables. "Let's hope with the arrival of the
marines we can get the roads upgraded."

The marine column sent to Bardere is part of a Christmas push by the
U.S.-led multinational force in Somalia to ensure food aid reaches
remote areas.

Since landing in the capital Mogadishu on December 9, the task force has
already moved into Baidoa, the airstrip at Bali Dogle and Kismayu.

The mines around Bardere were mainly planted by in October during a
power struggle by rival bands of gunmen for the town -- a bleak and
dusty settlement about 350 km (200 miles) west of Mogadishu.

A faction loyal to General Mohamed Siad Hirsi Morgan, son-in -law of
deposed dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, took over the town then from
General Mohamed Farah Aideed, one of the leading warlords in Mogadishu.

The fighting undermined efforts to save the town's famished population.
Relief workers were forced to pull out and the death rate soared to as
many as 300 a day.

Refugees ebb and flow through Bardere and the population varies from
15,000 to 50,000.

Stables said that with relief workers back and supplies flowing again
and relative stability in the town, the death rate was now down to about
60-70 a day.

"We're not complacent about that, we've got to get it lower."

Aid workers say that by Somali standards the town has been comparitively
safe since the October battle, with only occasional shooting incidents
and isolated looting.

It even boasts a fledgling police force and a relief aid committee.
There are still guns around, although most were likely to be kept out of
the way when the Marines arrived.

But the mines and consequent reduction of food deliveries to villages up
to 80 km (50 miles) away from Bardere add to misery of 12,000 refugees
in a camp just outside town.

They rely on feeding centres run by CARE, the International Committee of
the Red Cross and the French charity Action Internationale Contre la
Faim (International Action Against Hunger).

About 30 people a day still die in the camp, most from malaria and
pneumonia. Deaths from starvation alone are now rare.

REUTER FK DJG <<>>
WP 12/24 xx First American Casualties in Somalia...hit a Land Mine

By Keith B. Richburg

Washington Post Foreign Service

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Dec. 23 -A civilian working for the U.S. Army was
killed today and three State Department security guards were seriously
injured when their truck was blown up by a land mine in the
famine-stricken western Somali town of Baardheere. They are the first
casualties of a two-week-old U.S.-led operation to restore security and
protect food supplies to this starving, war-torn nation.

The incident occurred at the start of the allied military's push into
Somalia's "famine belt," a region wracked by hunger that for months has
been in the grip of warlords and gun-toting young thugs. The American
victims were in Baardheere in advance of the expected arrival of a main
contingent of U.S. Marines there Thursday.

Military officials here in the Somali capital refused to say exactly
what the four Americans were doing in Baardheere, 200 miles to the west,
when their vehicle struck the anti-tank mine less than a mile north of
the town's dirt and gravel airstrip.

Col. Fred Peck, a Marine spokesman, said only that the four, who have
not been identified pending notification of relatives, were involved in
a mission in support of Operation Restore Hope and were helping with the
military's preparations for the move into Baardheere.

Peck said the military is investigating whether the mine was left over
from Somalia's two-year-long civil war, or was recently planted and,
therefore, possibly directed against the U.S. forces. He said a second
mine was found in the same area.

The dead and injured Americans were flown by a U.S. military helicopter
to the USS Tripoli off-shore. One of the wounded men was reported in
critical condition and the others were listed as serious but stable.

After the incident, U.S. special envoy Robert Oakley went ahead with a
scheduled visit to Baardheere.

The town has been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting over the
last two years, as two rival Somali warlords - Gens. Mohamed Farah
Aideed and Mohamed Said Hersi Morgan - engaged in a seesaw battle for
control of the country's southwest border region.

While Baardheere itself is a dusty crossroads of little strategic value,
the two warring generals made it a focal point of their personal feud,
and the result has been a severe food shortage and disruption of relief
aid that in recent months has caused up to 300 civilians a day to starve
to death.

The area around Baardheere was heavily mined by both Aideed and Morgan
during their fighting. Peck cautioned today that landmines remain a
serious threat in the region, even though military advance teams thought
they had identified most of the minefields and marked them.

American troops continued to move out from Mogadishu today for Baidoa,
and a Marine convoy was expected to continue its push at dawn Thursday
on the dangerous road to Baardheere, in time for a planned arrival
Friday. At the same time, French Foreign Legionnaires are expected to
move northward from Baidoa to Oddur.

The twin moves, following last weekend's push into Kismaayo, a southern
port city, would put foreign forces in most of the major Somali towns in
the region worst affected by famine and civil war. Still, however, there
remain thousands of smaller towns and villages - some isolated and
inaccessible from main roads - where the misery is as great but foreign
intervention remains days, if not weeks, away.

If the move into Baardheere follows the pattern set for Baidoa and
Kismaayo, the Marines are not likely to find any of the menacing Somali
gunmen or their war machines called "technicals." Instead, they are
likely to be met first by crowds of journalists and television camera
crews - some already on hand to chronicle the "Christmas Day liberation"
of the famine-hit Muslim town - and by cheering, jubilant Somalis who
have been waiting for deliverance from the time the United States first
made its troop offer in late November.

By widely telegraphing their moves beforehand, the Marines seem to be
following the tactics in old western movies, making sure that all the
gunmen get out of town before they arrive. That way, the Marines have
been able to fan out slowly and deliberately throughout Somalia's famine
belt while avoiding any direct confrontation with the armed factions.

But some relief agency officials say they are worried that by giving the
gunmen time to move out, the Americans might be creating larger problems
of instability in areas of the countryside outside U.S. control.

For example, the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said
today that there has been an increase in violence in areas of northeast
Kenya, as some of the Somali gunmen have fled across the border and are
terrorizing refugees and disrupting relief efforts. The U.N. refugee
office spokesman in Nairobi today called the situation in Kenya "very
serious," and said five of his agency's vehicles have been hijacked by
Somali gunmen in Kenya in recent days.

There are similar fears in Ethiopia, which has a long, loosely
controlled border with Somalia, that Somalia's chaos could spread there
and that Ethiopia could become a "safe haven" where the Somali gunmen
could wait out the U.S.-led intervention. Some of the fleeing gunmen
reportedly are massing with their armed vehicles on that border.
Copyright 1992 The Washington Post <<>>
APn 12/24 0129 State-by-state list of 228 "Blue Ribbon Schools"

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A state-by-state list of 228 "Blue Ribbon Schools"
named Wednesday by Education Secretary Lamar Alexander:

ALABAMA

Gadsden -- Eura Brown Elementary

Homewood -- Edgewood Elementary

Irondale -- Grantswood Community

Pinson -- Pinson Elementary

ARIZONA

Scottsdale -- Sandpiper Elementary

Scottsdale -- Sequoya Elementary

Show Low -- Show Low Primary

Tucson -- Craycroft Elementary

ARKANSAS

Fayetteville -- Root Elementary

CALIFORNIA

Agoura -- Oak Hills Elementary

Agoura Hills -- Willow Elementary

Alamo -- Alamo Elementary

Bakersfield -- Quailwood Elementary

Canyon Country -- Rio Vista Elementary

Concord -- Monte Gardens

Fairfield -- Oakbrook Elementary

Fresno -- Fort Washington Elementary

Irvine -- Brywood Elementary

La Mesa -- Glenn E. Murdock Elementary

Los Altos -- Santa Rita School

Los Altos -- Saint Simon School

Los Altos Hills -- Bullis-Purissima School

Los Angeles -- St. Thomas the Apostle School

NAS Lemoore -- R.J. Neutra Elementary

Pasadena -- Mayfield Junior School of the Holy Child

Pinedale -- Nelson Elementary

Poway -- Chaparral Elementary

San Diego -- San Diego Hebrew Day School

San Jose -- Graystone Elementary

San Luis Obispo -- Charles E. Teach Elementary

Santa Rosa -- Village Elementary

COLORADO

Colorado Springs -- Pioneer Elementary

Englewood -- St. Mary's Academy of the Sisters of Loretto

CONNECTICUT

Riverside -- Eastern Middle

Storrs -- Mansfield Middle

Unionville -- Union School

Vernon -- Northeast Elementary

West Hartford -- Eric G. Norfeldt School

DELAWARE

Wilmington -- St. Matthew School

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Bunker Hill Community School

FLORIDA

Cooper City -- Griffin Elementary

Coral Gables -- Gulliver Academy

Coral Springs -- Westchester Elementary

Fort Myers -- Heights Elementary

Jacksonville -- Oak Hill Elementary

Miami -- The Cushman School

Miami -- North Dade Center for Modern Languages

Miami -- Thomas Jefferson Middle

Sanibel -- Sanibel Elementary

Sunrise -- Nob Hill Elementary

Tampa -- N.B. Broward Elementary

GEORGIA

Adel -- Cook Middle

Graysville -- Graysville Elementary

Lilburn -- R.D. Head Elementary

Marietta -- A.L. Burruss Elementary

Marietta -- Arch H. McCleskey Sr. Middle

Norcross -- Pinckneyville Middle

Savannah -- The Savannah Country Day School

St. Marys -- St. Marys Elementary

HAWAII

Honolulu -- Princess Miriam K. Likelike Elementary

Kaneohe -- Kapunahala Elementary

Mililani -- Mililani-uka Elementary

Pearl Harbor -- ASSETS School

ILLINOIS

Barrington -- Grove Avenue School

Lake Bluff -- Lake Bluff Junior High

Lake Forest -- Sheridan School

Libertyville -- Adler Park School

Lincolnshire -- Laura B. Sprague School

Mundelein -- Washington School

New Lenox -- Arnold J. Tyler School

New Lenox -- Caroline Bentley School

Northbrook -- Northbrook Junior High

Oak Forest -- St. Damian School

River Forest -- St. Luke School

Roselle -- Trinity Lutheran School

INDIANA

LaPorte -- Harold Handley Elementary

Princeton -- Brumfield Elementary

South Bend -- Edward Eggleston Elementary

West Lafayette -- Klondike Elementary

IOWA

Cedar Rapids -- Grant Wood Elementary

Iowa City -- Regina Elementary

Latimer -- CAL Elementary School

KANSAS

Leawood -- Leawood Elementary

Olathe -- Countryside Elementary

Olathe -- Indian Creek Elementary

Overland Park -- Oak Hill Elementary

Overland Park -- Oxford Middle School

KENTUCKY

Fort Campbell -- Marshall Elementary

Fort Thomas -- Robert D. Johnson Elementary

Louisville -- Virginia Wheeler Elementary

LOUISIANA

Harvey -- Saint Rosalie School

New Orleans -- Gentilly Terrace Creative Arts

MAINE

Biddeford -- Biddeford Middle School

Bowdoinham -- Bowdoin Central School

Portland -- Howard C. Reiche Community

MARYLAND

Beltsville -- Frances R. Fuchs Special Center

Germantown -- Lake Seneca Elementary

Greenbelt -- Greenbelt Center Elementary

Rockville -- Candlewood Elementary

MASSACHUSETTS

Andover -- Henry C. Sanborn School

Boston -- The Advent School

Chelmsford -- Lighthouse School, Inc.

Southborough -- The Fay School, Inc.

MICHIGAN

Bloomfield Hills -- Eastover Elementary

Bloomfield Hills -- Harlan Elementary

Brighton -- Carl H. Lindbom Elementary

Grosse Pointe Farms -- The Grosse Pointe Academy

Howell -- Southwest Elementary

MINNESOTA

Apple Valley -- Highland Elementary

Minnetonka -- Clear Springs Elementary

New Hope -- Hosterman Middle

St. Louis Park -- Susan Lindgren Elementary

St. Paul -- Mounds Park Academy-Lower School

Wayzata -- Deephaven Elementary

MISSOURI

Blue Springs -- James Lewis Elementary

Chesterfield -- River Bend Elementary

Columbia -- Midway Heights Elementary

Creve Coeur -- Bellerive Elementary

Knob Noster -- Knob Noster Elementary

Olivette -- Old Bonhomme Elementary

MONTANA

Havre -- Havre Middle School

NEBRASKA

Scottsbluff -- Longfellow Elementary

NEVADA

Las Vegas -- Vegas Verdes Elementary

Reno -- Brown Elementary

NEW JERSEY

East Brunswick -- Lawrence Brook School

Kendall Park -- Greenbrook School

Mine Hill -- Canfield Avenue School

Moorestown -- George C. Baker Elementary

Moorestown -- Moorestown Friends School

Port Elizabeth -- Leesburg School

Princeton -- Eden Institute

Spotswood -- Mill Lake School

NEW MEXICO

Las Cruces -- Loma Heights Elementary

NEW YORK

Ardsley -- Concord Road Elementary

Buffalo -- Herbert Hoover Elementary

Lake George -- Lake George Elementary

Lancaster -- Como Park Elementary

Lynbrook -- Davison Avenue School

Manhasset -- Shelter Rock Elementary

Pearl River -- Evans Park Elementary

Riverdale -- Salanter Akiba Riverdale Academy

Rye -- Osborn School

Voorheesville -- Voorheesville Elementary

Wantagh -- Wantagh Elementary

Yonkers -- PEARLS Elementary No. 32

NORTH CAROLINA

Raleigh -- Lewis H. Powell Gifted and Talented Magnet Elementary

NORTH DAKOTA

Fargo -- Clara Barton Elementary

Grand Forks -- Belmont Elementary

OHIO

Canton -- Canton Country Day School

Centerville -- Normandy Elementary

Cincinnati -- Hoffman School

Cincinnati -- Kilgour Elementary

Cincinnati -- Sharonville Elementary

Cincinnati -- St. James White Oak School

Columbus -- St. Andrew School

Grove City -- Our Lady of Perpetual Help School

Mentor -- Bellflower Elementary

North Olmstead -- Pine Elementary

Parma Heights -- St. John Bosco School

West Chester -- Freedom Elementary

West Chester -- Hopewell Elementary

Whitehouse -- Lial Elementary

OKLAHOMA

Oklahoma City -- Quail Creek Elementary

OREGON

Burns -- Slater-Filmore Grade School

Medford -- Washington Elementary

PENNSYLVANIA

Bala Cynwyd -- Cynwyd Elementary

Horshan -- Dorothea H. Simmons School

Pittsburgh -- O'Hara Elementary

Sellersville -- John M. Grasse Elementary

Swarthmore -- Swarthmore-Rutledge School

Upper St. Clair -- Boyce Middle

Wyncote -- Ancillae Assumpta Academy

PUERTO RICO

Carolina -- Francisco Matias Lugo School

Coto Laurel -- Collegio Ponceno

RHODE ISLAND

East Greenwich -- Dr. James H. Eldridge Elementary

SOUTH CAROLINA

Charleston -- Ashley River Creative Arts School

Greenville -- Baker's Chapel Elementary

TENNESSEE

Knoxville -- Sacred Heart Cathedral School

Nashville -- Brookmeade Elementary

Nashville -- Glendale Middle

Whiteville: Whiteville Elementary

TEXAS

Austin -- Highland Park Elementary

Austin -- Laurel Mountain Elementary

Austin -- Live Oak Elementary

Austin -- R.E. Lee Elementary

Corpus Christi -- Mirabeau B. Lamar Elementary

Corpus Christi -- St. James Episcopal School

Dallas -- Good Shepherd Episcopal School

Dallas -- Robert S. Hyer Elementary

Farmers Branch -- Montgomery Elementary

Fort Worth -- Tanglewood Elementary

Garland -- Kimberlin Academy for Excellence

Houston -- Bunker Hill Elementary

Houston -- Francone Elementary

Houston -- Lowery Elementary

Houston -- Nottingham Elementary

Houston -- River Oaks Baptist School

Houston -- T.H. Rogers School

Lewisville -- Christa McAuliffe Elementary

Lubbock -- All Saints Episcopal School

Plano -- Huffman Elementary

Plano -- Saigling Elementary

Plano -- Shepherd Elementary

Plano -- St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic School

Plano -- W.H.L. Elementary

Wylie -- T.F. Birmingham Elementary

UTAH

Farmington -- George Q. Knowlton Elementary

VERMONT

Richmond -- Richmond Elementary

South Burlington -- Chamberlin School

VIRGIN ISLANDS

St. Thomas -- Antilles School

VIRGINIA

Roanoke -- Highland Park Learning Center

Williamsburg -- Rawls Byrd Elementary

WASHINGTON

Bellevue -- Eton School

Des Moines -- St. Philomena Catholic School

Ferndale -- Skyline Elementary

Renton -- Hazelwood Elementary

Renton -- Spring Glen Elementary

WEST VIRGINIA

Charleston -- Tiskelwah Elementary

Huntington -- Our Lady of Fatima School

St. Albans -- High Lawn Elementary

Wheeling -- Elm Grove Elementary

WISCONSIN

Janesville -- St. Paul's Lutheran School

Madison -- Crestwood Elementary

Madison -- John Muir Elementary

Menasha -- Jefferson Elementary

WYOMING

Casper -- Crest Hill Elementary

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE OVERSEAS DEPENDENTS

Coevordon, Holland -- Coevordon American School

END SCHOOLS-LIST, 2 TAKES

<<>>
RTw 12/24 0017 LIBERIA'S CHILDREN BEAR MENTAL SCARS OF WAR

By Gill Tudor

MONROVIA, Dec 24, Reuter - Five-year-old Duo has hardly spoken since
Liberia's civil war flared up again in October.

He lost a leg at the age of three in a tribal massacre, when troops
slaughtered 600 people in a Monrovia church.

Now he cowers silently behind a chair every time he hears the boom of
artillery.

In another part of Monrovia, another Duo -- 10-year-old George -- is a
prisoner of war.

Sent to the front by the rebel National Patriotic Front of Liberia
(NPFL), he surrendered to West African peacekeeping troops when he got
tired and hungry in the swamps running through the capital.

"They've lost their childhood -- they need somehow to be given that
childhood back," said Father Joe Glackin, a Scottish missionary working
with orphans and former child soldiers.

"It's on such a huge scale, that's the scary thing. You're talking about
thousands and thousands of kids who've been affected."

In conflicts across Africa, from Liberia to Somalia to South Africa,
circumstances or cynicism have thrust children into the frontline of
violence.

"They've grown up in an environment where problems are sorted out with
guns. If they disagree with you they'll use a gun to try to make you see
reason," Cole Dodge of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) told
a conference on Africa's children.

No Liberian has remained untouched by the country's three-year-old civil
war, where tribal hatred and hunger for power and wealth weigh more than
any ideology.

Everything that adults have suffered, the children have witnessed too.

They have seen relatives and friends killed before their eyes, seen
bodies rot in the streets, felt the terror and uncertainty of being a
refugee.

Schools were closed during the height of the war in 1990 and have shut
again since October, depriving them of education.

Some have joined in the slaughter, by choice or coercion.

All Liberia's main warring factions have recruited children, especially
the NPFL, which has a special Small Boys Unit. Some are no taller than
the assault rifles they carry.

NPFL child fighters captured by the ECOMOG peacekeeping force say they
were drugged and forced to fight for rebel chief Charles Taylor --
charges the NPFL denies.

Many young NPFL fighters are tattooed with a distinctive scorpion
symbol, making it potentially lethal to desert to the other side.

Social workers struggling with the psychological consequences say
training rituals are designed to brutalise.

"One guy said he was forced to slit a woman's throat. Now he sees her in
nightmares," one social worker said. "It was a proper brainwashing they
were given. At one breath they're full of remorse for what they've done,
the next moment they're telling with great glee what they did in the
war."

Healing the mental scars is an immense and sometimes impossible task.

UNICEF has taken charge of a dozen recent NPFL captives under the age of
15, installing them under guard in a house where counsellors will try to
rehabilitate them into some semblance of normal life.

Missionaries like Glackin and other groups, like the local Children's
Assistance Programme, have worked with traumatised children since the
height of the war in 1990.

Many youths have learnt practical skills such as carpentry and now help
relief efforts for the thousands of displaced people in Monrovia, making
bricks and digging latrines.

But some went straight back to the war when Taylor attacked Monrovia on
October 15.

UNICEF consultant Len Capozzi, who has worked with children amid the
violence of inner-city Chicago, said the symptoms of trauma included
nightmares, flashbacks, phobias, clinging behaviour, aggression and
learning problems.

The signs sometimes take months or even years to show.

"At the moment it's a question of immediate survival for a lot of them,
hustling for food and shelter. When all that's finished and they begin
to think, that's when you get real problems," Glackin said.

The hatred bred by the war fill many people with despair for Liberia's
future. Old ethnic splits have widened into bloody tribal feuding.
Youngsters have come to accept violence as the norm.

"Too many of our children are dying in the swamps; too many are dying on
the streets of hunger; too many are going to waste because they cannot
go to school, or because someone there does not care," Monrovia's daily
Inquirer said in an editorial.

"What does our nation become when these potential leaders grow up?"

REUTER GT DJG <<>>
UPn 12/24 0020 Vitamin supplement may help prevent birth defects

By KAREN KLINGER

UPI Science Writer

BOSTON (UPI) -- Women who take supplements of the vitamin folic acid
before conceiving and in the initial three months of pregnancy
apparently reduce first-time risks for two types of birth defects,
researchers say.

A study conducted in Hungary and released Wednesday found that daily
doses of folic acid, a form of vitamin B, appeared to prevent spina
bifida and anencephaly, which are "neural tube defects" that affect
brain and spine formation in embryos.

Although past research has indicated that folic acid supplements may
prevent a recurrence of such defects among women who have already had at
least one child with the disorders, the new study suggests they also
should be taken by women who have not had an affected infant.

Among 2,104 women who received a daily vitamin supplement containing
less than a milligram of folic acid, no infants were born with neural
tube defects, said a report by Drs. Andrew Czeizel and Istvan Dudas of
the National Institute of Hygiene in Budapest.

By comparison, there were four cases of anencephaly and two of spina
bifida among 2,052 comparison women given a daily supplement containing
the trace elements copper, manganese and zinc and small amounts of
vitamin C, the scientists reported in The New England Journal of
Medicine.

Spina bifida, also called "open spine," is one of the most common
serious birth defects in the United States, affecting as many as 2,000
babies annually. In affected embryos, a structure called the neural tube
fails to close by the fourth week after conception.

As a result, babies with the condition are born with malformed spinal
columns and defects in the spinal cord and nerves that can cause varying
degrees of paralysis.

Anencephaly is a fatal defect in which babies are born without most of
their brains and skulls and typically live only hours or days. The
condition affects about 800 babies born in the United States annually,
or one in about 5,000.

Dr. Irwin Rosenberg of Tufts University in Boston, who wrote an
editorial in the medical journal calling the study a "landmark in the
definition of the requirements for vitamins," said it will likely
influence the way doctors advise women who are planning to become
pregnant.

"If I had a patient who was expecting to get pregnant and asked me what
she should do, I would carefully go over her diet to see if it was
adequate in folic acid," he said in an interview. "If it were not, I
might very well recommend vitamin supplements."

Dr. Michael Katz, vice president for the March of Dimes, went even
further than Rosenberg, urging all women of childbearing age to take
folic acid in anticipation of becoming pregnant.

The organization, whose mission is to prevent birth defects and infant
mortality, has seen "increasing scientific evidence, including this very
good study, of the things a woman can do before she is pregnant to help
ensure that her baby is born healthy," he said.

Rosenberg said it is not known how folic acid may prevent neural tube
defects, although he said some scientists think it may affect genes that
could play a part in causing the disorders. The vitamin is thought to
play an important role in developement of embryonic and fetal nervous
systems and blood cells.

Dietary sources of folic acid include leafy vegetables, citrus juices,
some grains, milk and liver. Although it is possible for a woman to get
enough folic acid from food alone, Rosenberg said "there is some
question about how much can be done just with diet."

The U.S. Public Health Service, acting on the basis of a preliminary
report about the Hungarian study and other evidence, recommended on
Sept. 11 that all women of childbearing age in the United States who are
capable of becoming pregnant consume .40 milligrams of folic acid per
day.

Rosenberg said this is half the amount used in the Hungarian study, but
because the optimal dose has not been established, "I think the Public
Health Service recommendation is a good number."

Most multi-vitamins available in supermarkets, pharmacies and health
food stores contain enough folic acid to meet the agency's guidelines,
he said. The Food and Drug Administration also is considering a proposal
for folic acid to be added to enriched flour, he said.

By CHARLES J. HANLEY

AP Special Correspondent

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Behind the walls of flowery villas, Somalia's
faction leaders are maneuvering to produce a homegrown scheme for
running their wretched land.

If they succeed, American and other troops might be able to go home
within months. If they fail, they may turn this country into a long-term
ward of the world.

Each faction is plotting strategy in advance of a national
reconciliation conference scheduled for Jan. 4 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Other governments, meanwhile, are putting on the pressure.

Squads of hard-eyed Marines control key intersections in this steamy
capital. Trucks flying the U.N. flag, meanwhile, rumble into the
countryside bulging with food for the starving -- taking away a lethal
weapon of Somalia's warring clans and movements.

One of the two main rival warlords, Mohamed Farrah Aidid, is reported by
local newspapers to be pushing to postpone the all-parties conference.
But in recent separate meetings, U.S. envoy Robert Oakley and Ethiopian
President Meles Zenawi are believed to have pressed the ex-general to
stick to the schedule.

"Oakley must have told the parties simply to stop playing games," said
Seifulaziz Milas, a political analyst for the United Nations here.

In the coming days, the shifting alliances of clans, subclans and
movements in Somalia could grow even more kaleidoscopic in preparation
for Addis Ababa. But at least one well-placed politician believes the
dozen or so factions meeting in Ethiopia may come up with a consensus
plan.

"I'm 90 percent sure they will," Hassan Sheik Ibrahim, a former member
of Parliament, said in an interview after emerging from a lunchtime
meeting at his villa with elders of the Rahanwiin, an important clan
representing perhaps 25 percent of the Somali population.

Somalia has been devastated by years of civil war whose impact turned a
drought into a catastrophic famine in the past year.

The conflict, which climaxed with the ouster of dictatorial President
Mohamed Siad Barre in January 1991, finally ground to an armed standoff
earlier this year between Aidid's forces and those of interim President
Ali Mahdi Mohamed. The two are members of different subclans of the
major Somali clan called the Hawiye.

The Marines landed Dec. 9, leading a U.N.-authorized force, now
numbering more than 15,000, that is restoring a food distribution
network.

Several major attempts at reconciliation of the factions have broken
down in the past two years.

Somalis and knowledgable outsiders alike agree that enlisting an
individual of national stature and respect as a transitional leader
would speed reconciliation.

But "there's no national figure on the scene, no one who can transcend
clan lines," said Lee Cassanelli, a Somalia specialist at the University
of Pennsylvania.

Ibrahim said his Rahawiin clan, whose Somali Democratic Movement has
divided its loyalties between Aidid and Ali Mahdi, plans to push a
program at Addis Ababa that would establish a two-year transition during
which the four major clans -- Rahanwiin, Dorod, Hawiye and Issak --
would share power on a five-member council, whose fifth member would be
a "national figure" or a representative of smaller clans.

During the transition, a long-overdue census would establish the
population of each clan, and a new national Parliament would then be
elected by proportional representation according to clan.

This brand of Somali democracy would be based on "self-interest and
subclan interest and clan interest," as Milas put it. In other words, it
would institututionalize clan divisions.

In an impoverished society with just 24 percent literacy, expecting more
might be unrealistic.

Motor oil peddler Salat Elmi has a clear view of Somali politics.

"God's will" is what determines whether a comprehensive peace settlement
can be reached, he told a reporter who stopped by Mogadishu's noisy
street market.

But then he added, "There have been surprises, like the Marines. Maybe
we truly can have a political settlement."

If not, said Ibrahim, the United Nations is standing by.

"If Somali leaders don't settle their dispute," he said, "I think a
solution of U.N. trusteeship would be inevitable."

And that's why he's optimistic: "For Somalis, it's very hard to renounce
sovereignty, to go under the U.N."

<<>>
RTw 12/23 1150 BRUNT OF FRENCH TROOPS TO REACH SOMALIA BY DEC 31

PARIS, Dec 23, Reuter - The main body of French forces for Somalia will
arrive there over the next few days and their number will reach 2,400 by
December 31, the army said on Wednesday.

A company of French Foreign Legion paratroops was the first non-American
unit to join the U.S.-led international famine rescue force when it
landed in Somalia earlier this month, and there are some 500 French
soldiers in the country now.

Army headquarters in Paris said troop-carrying aircraft would arrive in
Mogadishu directly from France on Thursday while two ships would dock
with more soldiers and combat helicopters.

Their commander, General Rene Delhomme, will set up headquarters on
Saturday at Hoddur near the Ethiopian border following the expected
arrival of French troops there on Friday.

The French detachment will deploy in a wide area around Hoddur during
the first week of January after its 700 vehicles, 50 of them light
armour, have arrived, the army said.

REUTER BE CAM <<>>
RTw 12/23 1114 CHOLERA SPREADS IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

HARARE, Dec 23, Reuter - Cholera has broken out in at least three
countries in southern Africa and health officials said on Wednesday the
disease could spread further.

Cholera, which swept Zimbabwe's eastern border with Mozambique a month
ago, is spreading southwards. At least 37 people have now been killed in
that epidemic, officials said.

Health officials said 1,000 people had gone down with the disease. It
started in a Mozambican refugee camp in Chipinge district in late
November and killed 24 refugees among its first 25 victims.

A senior health official said most the cholera cases recorded were in
the camp housing Mozambicans fleeing war and famine in their homeland.

"The disease is already out and spreading to other areas in the south
and it could be worse as lots of people move across the country during
the Christmas holiday," he said.

Lusaka medical officer Dr Matilda Ruwe said 60 people had died of
cholera in the Zambian capital since the first case was reported two
weeks ago.

Nearly 850 had been treated in shanty towns around the city for the
disease, which was being spread by contaminated water.

More than 500 people died in a cholera outbreak in Zambia's Copperbelt
region earlier this year.

In Swaziland, the Health Ministry reported the first outbreak of cholera
in the kingdom since 1982. It confirmed 13 cases in the northeastern
Lubombo disctrict where there are thousands of Mozambican refugees.

There have been no reports of cholera in South Africa so far but the
National Health and Population Department warned people in rural areas
to boil water and observe strict personal hygiene.

REUTER CTC IHM JNC <<>>
RTw 12/23 0931 JORDAN SENDING HUNDREDS OF TROOPS TO SOMALIA

AMMAN, Dec 23, Reuter - Jordan is preparing to send hundreds of troops
to the United Nations force in Somalia to protect famine relief from
gunmen, government officials said on Wednesday.

"Jordan received an invitation from the United Nations to take part in
the operation and we are going to send our troops soon," one official
said.

He refused to give further details and army officials were not
immediately available for comment on the troop's size, expected to be
slightly fewer than 1,000 men.

REUTER RFS DJG <<>>
UPn 12/23 0406 AIDS may leave 80,000 motherless by year 2000

By ROB STEIN

UPI Science Editor

WASHINGTON (UPI) -- The AIDS epidemic could leave more than 80,000
American children motherless by the turn of the century, creating a
"social catastrophe" of unprecedented proportions, researchers said.

"Almost unnoticed, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been responsible for the
creation of a new, large, and especially vulnerable group of motherless
youth -- children, adolescents, and young adults whose mothers have died
of HIV/AIDS-related complications," David Michaels of the City
University of New York and Carol Levine of The Orphan Project in New
York City wrote Tuesday.

The pair designed a mathematical model to estimate the number of
children and adolescents in the United States who have been or will be
left motherless by the AIDS epidemic, which has been increasingly
striking women.

By the end of 1991, the AIDS virus already had killed the mothers of
about 18,500 children and adolescents, the pair said in a report in the
Journal of the American Medical Association.

In fact, the deadly virus was responsible for an estimated 13 percent of
children and 9 percent of adolescents who had lost their mothers for any
reason, they said.

Those numbers will rise to 17 percent and 12 percent by the end of 1995,
when the AIDS virus will kill the mothers of an estimated 24,600
children and 21,000 adolescents in the United States, they said.

Unless the course of the epidemic changes drastically by the year 2000,
the number of motherless children and adolescents from the epidemic will
exceed 80,000, they said.

Although those numbers are staggeringly high, the estimates are probably
low, they said. The researchers based the estimates on the assumption
that the number of women dying from AIDS would level off, which is
unlikely.

"We are being deliberately conservative. We didn't want to be accused of
crying wolf or causing panic," Michaels said by telephone. "But even so
these numbers are very frightening."

The findings indicate that already overburdened social service
organizations would be taxed further.

"The implications are quite profound for all the social service
agencies," said Levine. "I don't think that at least in recent history
we've had such a rapid increase in the number of motherless children due
to a single disea, and it's a stigmatized disease."

Already, the AIDS epidemic has come to rival or surpass other important
causes of death of mothers of young children. Among women under age 50,
cancer kills about 4,200 mothers of young children and 8, 700 mothers of
adolescents annually.

Motor vehicle accidents kill 3,200 mothers of children and 1,900 mothers
of adolescents. AIDS, in comparison, will kill 3,900 mothers of children
and 3,400 mothers of adolescents each year, they said.

"The future is even more ominous, bringing with it a mounting cumulative
total of affected youth. Not surprisingly, these motherless youth will
be concentrated in those urban centers where AIDS and HIV infection are
most prevalent. The majority will come from communities of color," they
wrote.

For example, 39 percent of the total number of children and 42 percent
of the total number of adolescents whose mothers had died from the AIDS
virus through 1991 lived in New York City, the researchers said.

"Unless increased attention and resources are devoted to this vulnerable
population, a social catastrophe is unavoidable," they said.

In an article accompanying the report, Drs. Stephen Nicholas and Elaine
Abrams of Harlem Hospital Center in New York called for action to deal
with the mounting problem.

"The sobering estimates...which probably underestimate the true extent
of the problem, are noteworthy because of the tragic aura that surrounds
these young survivors," they said.

"Most of them, living in that complex place called poverty, have a whole
range of unmet social, educational, and health needs," they said.

THE TERM "ethnic cleansing" showed up in this paper for the first time
about a year and a half ago, and has been in regular use since to
describe what Serbian forces have been doing in parts of the former
Yugoslavia. At first the expression conveyed a certain blood-chilling
irony, but by now most people have become numbed by it. There are many
other words that better describe what's going on in the Balkans today:
murder, rapine, pillage, aggression, plunder come immediately to mind.
In the future we'll make more use of them here, and less of "ethnic
cleansing."

The idea of "cleansing" and "purification" - whether it meant clearing
out particular ethnic groups, social classes or religious communities -
has played a big role in some of the worst crimes against humanity in
this century: in Germany, the Soviet Union, China and Cambodia, to name
some of the worst. Hitler, especially, was obsessed with the purity of
the German people and with his desire to rid vast conquered areas of the
"inferior races" that inhabited them.

Most people have never accepted that terminology, probably for the same
reason that we find "ethnic cleansing" such an unsatisfactory
descriptive for the violence inflicted on Bosnia: because it makes it
sound like some impersonal historical process, a clearing of the decks,
an inevitable change that may even - who knows? - prove in the long run
to have been beneficial.

Of course the reality of such "cleansing" is anything but impersonal. It
is families being routed from their homes and separated, children
orphaned and killed, women raped, people packed into trucks and railroad
cars, penned up, exposed to the elements, starved, methodically worked
to death. There's never anything neat or clean about driving people out
of the place where they live; it's an offense against civilization.
Crimes and atrocities are what we're talking about, not cleansing.

Despite Opposition to Arms Buildup, Rep. Dellums Widely Viewed as a
`Pragmatist'

By Kenneth J. Cooper

Washington Post Staff Writer

Rep. Ronald V. Dellums (D-Calif.) came to Congress in 1971 as an active
opponent of the Vietnam War, and the Bay Area liberal criticized every
subsequent U.S. military intervention abroad until the current
humanitarian mission to Somalia.

Throughout his 22 years in the House, Dellums also has opposed nuclear
weapons systems, while advocating steep cuts in the defense budget as a
way to finance domestic programs. Rarely have his views on military
matters prevailed.

In the new Congress that convenes next month, this peace advocate and
longtime critic of the military establishment is in line to rise to the
chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee by virtue of his
seniority and President-elect Clinton's choice yesterday of Rep. Les
Aspin (D-Wis.), the current chairman, as defense secretary.

House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) has said he would support
Dellums for the position when Democrats meet next month to pick Aspin's
successor, and as of yesterday no competitor had emerged. Spokesmen for
four other senior Democrats on Armed Services - Reps. G.V. "Sonny"
Montgomery (Miss.), Patricia Schroeder (Colo.), Dave McCurdy (Okla.) and
John M. Spratt Jr. (S.C.) - said they would not seek the chairmanship.

Dellums, 57, ranks second in seniority behind Montgomery, who barely
held on to the chairmanship of the Veterans Affairs Committee earlier
this month. A House member cannot chair two standing committees.

In announcing his candidacy yesterday for the Armed Services
chairmanship, Dellums said he hoped to help the nation "chart a course
for the future that is based upon new world realities."

If the Democratic Caucus backs him, Dellums would become the first black
chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and the second African
American - along with Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Colin L.
Powell - to be part of the upper echelon of nation's defense hierarchy.

Despite his relentless opposition to many weapons programs, Dellums has
achieved a measure of acceptance from the Defense Department because of
his pragmatic chairmanship of two Armed Services subcommittees in the
last decade. Among those praising his anticipated chairmanship were a
former defense official in the Reagan administration, a retired admiral
and a defense industry lobbyist.

Still, Dellums has his conservative critics, including those who two
years ago criticized the appointment of him to the House intelligence
committee.

"I obviously think he would be an ill-considered choice for the
chairmanship of that committee," said Baker Spring, a defense analyst at
the Heritage Foundation. "He would essentially leave the United States
with an unbelievably weakened military posture compared to anytime in
recent memory."

Spring described Dellums as "outside the mainstream" in supporting a
$400 billion cut in defense spending over five years, about four times
what Clinton proposed as a presidential candidate. Dellums "believes in
a defense budget that's far and away smaller than what Clinton would
request," Spring said.

Bob Brauer, a spokesman for Dellums, said that former CIA director
William E. Colby has endorsed defense cuts as large as those Dellums
favors.

Spring acknowledged, however, that Dellums has been a fair chairman of
Armed Services subcommittees that oversee miltary construction and
weapons research.

"I think he'll be a great chairman," said Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow
at the Brookings Institution. "Don't forget he's been on that committee
for 20 years. He's been chairman of a couple subcommittees. He's gotten
bills, he's heard them, he's listened to all sides."

Korb worked with Dellums, who chaired the military installations and
facilities subcommittee from 1983 to 1989, when Korb was assistant
secretary of defense for manpower, installations and logistics under
President Ronald Reagan.

"He wouldn't use the power of the subcommittee chairmanship to thwart
the will of the majority," Korb said. "He wasn't wild about 325,000
(troops) in Europe. But he never stopped us from constructing the
facilities they needed."

In his earlier days as a lawmaker, many saw Dellums as a prototypical
radical from the liberal Bay Area, but more recently he has been
described as a moderate. "When Reagan was running wild, `evil empiring'
and doubling the defense budget, Dellums was a strong voice for
moderation," said retired Rear Adm. Eugene Carroll, deputy director of
the private Center for Defense Information.

Robert Andrews, a lobbyist for Rockwell International Corp., a defense
contractor, said Dellums opposed the B-1 bomber until it was deployed,
but then supported it as an alternative to the expensive B-2. "The guy
is a pragmatist," Andrews said.

Opinions may have shifted, but one thing has not changed about the
lanky, loquacious lawmaker from Oakland: His passion for peace. Brauer
said Dellums opposed U.S. military intervention in Grenada and the
Persian Gulf and seriously questioned past involvements in Lebanon and
Panama, but he supports the anti-hunger objectives in Somalia.

In January 1991, the day after the air war began in Iraq, an impassioned
Dellums told House colleagues the news made him cry.

"I shed tears of outrage because I continue to believe resolutely that
we did not have to go to war and that there is an alternative to killing
and dying," he said.

By Barton Gellman

Washington Post Staff Writer

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Dec. 22 - To Marine Brig. Gen. Tony Zinni, who
follows this city's bustling Bakaaraha market like a trader, the
dwindling value of assault rifles is a sign of hope that Somalia and its
war-ravaged capital may have started on a path to normal life.

The price of a decent AK-47 fell to $100 today - one-third its cost when
the first U.S. Marines landed 13 days ago, said Zinni, the chief
operations officer for U.S.-led military relief force here.

The rifles' devaluation appears to indicate that Mogadishu's plentiful
weapons are being sold off by the city's hordes of unemployed thugs -
who Zinni called "the people we don't want to have them." But a sell-off
also means that guns remain readily available. And that, in a nutshell,
is the difference between the American approach to security here and
that of the United Nations.

The American leaders of Operation Provide Hope, which was sent to
Somalia by the United Nations after 300,000 people had died in a famine
caused by clan fighting and looting of food aid, describe their
relationship with Somalia's militias and free lance gunmen only in terms
of "arms control." They reject proposals to divest Somalis of their
personal weapons, and they point to the plunging weapons market as
evidence that individual disarmament is as unnecessary as it is
dangerous. But United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
has insisted since Nov. 29 that disarmament is precisely the objective.

"The spirit that we're after is all of the weapons off the streets. And
when I say all of the weapons, I mean all of the weapons - including
down to pistols and knives and slingshots," said Col. Jim Cox, a
Canadian infantry officer who commands U.N. troops in Somalia.

Somalia cannot be secure, Cox said, until "we are actually able to haul
a weapon out of a person's hand."

"Are we into closets, are we into bedrooms, are we chasing people in the
countryside, are we shooting at them as we do?" he said. "Speaking as a
soldier, obviously I would like to have all the tools available in
carrying out the mission."

The Americans, on the other hand, consider disarmament of individuals to
be fraught with dangers foreseen and unforeseen.

"Does anybody realize what a horrendous undertaking that would be?"
asked one senior officer with access to top-level thinking. "If we go
out and try to physically disarm people who don't want to be disarmed,
we're talking about going to war against all the factions in Somalia.
That isn't what we came over to do. I'm not saying it can't be done, but
it risks a serious escalation of violence."

Rather than going after weapons carried by individuals, the American
strategy aims to drive only the most threatening heavy weapons into the
countryside, then

spin a web of agreements and institutions to bring peace to the towns.
Even "technicals," the stripped-down jeeps mounted with machine guns and
rocket launchers, may be exiled but not destroyed.

A technical banished from a town poses little threat of returning, Zinni
said, because its owner is "going to be out in the hinterlands, living
pretty humbly, trying to maintain a Toyota. If he gets in our way, he's
going to have a lot of trouble maintaining it."

(Boutros-Ghali met with Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger on
Tuesday to discuss what the secretary general has described as
"differences" between U.S. and U.N. strategies, special correspondent
Trevor Rowe reported from the United Nations.

(U.S. Ambassador Edward J. Perkins - who called use of the word
"differences" a "misnomer" - described the meeting as "pretty fruitful."
He said that "the secretary and the secretary general are in complete
accord on how this is going and that there will be issues that must
continue to be discussed and that they're working very well together.")

By Monday, according to current operational plans, the task force will
have seized control of eight strategic hubs chosen for their proximity
to roads that provide relief convoys a route to unfed millions
throughout Somalia. Around each of these hubs - Mogadishu, Bela Dogle,
Baidoa, Kismaayo, Baardheere, Oddur, Jalaaqsi and Beledweyne - the
military plans to extend a measure of protection to ever smaller and
more remote food distribution points.

The first four hubs are already in the task force's hands, and officials
announced today that U.S. Marines and French Foreign Legionnaires will
move into Baardheere on Thursday and Oddur on Friday.

If the task force follows the same strategy employed in Mogadishu, the
initial approach in each town will be to use powers of intimidation and
persuasion to broker an agreement among local clan leaders to remove
their technicals and heavy weapons. The last of 80 such weapons under
the control of warlords Mohamed Farah Aideed and Ali Madhi Mohamed left
Mogadishu today under such an agreement and are expected to remain idle
in closed cantonments.

A logical next step, Zinni said, would be to broker an agreement to
eventually destroy the technicals.

Gunmen who keep technicals in any town after such an agreement takes
hold will be treated as rogues. "We're at the point now where any
technical still in town, we feel, is threatening," Zinni said. ". . .
The tolerance level for those technicals that haven't been removed is
going to be very, very low."

Once towns are ridded of their technicals, the Americans will pursue a
broad, four-part strategy, coordinated closely with special envoy Robert
Oakley, that begins with political settlements among the dominant groups
in each region or population center to eliminate large-scale, organized
conflict.

As a second priority, the task force is concentrating on rebuilding
Somalia's shattered peace-keeping institutions.

Already around Mogadishu, some policemen have reappeared, directing
traffic in their gray-and-white tunics and blue berets. U.S. officials
say the policemen have not been paid but simply pulled old uniforms out
of closets and turned out in the streets when American troops arrived.

Oakley told reporters today that the United States is prepared to fund a
Somali police force on an interim basis, and that Germany has agreed to
train a permament replacement force.

A third major thrust is rebuilding at least the rudiments of Somalia's
infrastructure in the hope of restoring its collapsed economy. Roads,
ports and airports will be improved by military engineering teams and
private contractors.

"The best way of getting anybody to surrender their weapons is to
provide them another method of income generation," said Ian McLeod, a
UNICEF official here.

The final major thrust is to make food less valuable, and therefore less
attractive to looters. The military plans to help push so much grain and
beans into the countryside that the commodities will no longer be worth
hoarding, looting or diverting into black markets.

By Howard Kurtz

Washington Post Staff Writer

ELLICOTT CITY, Md. - The future of the newspaper business may lie in a
small, cramped office here on a barren stretch of North Ridge Road.

The nameplate on the door says "Howard County Sun." In fact, there is no
such newspaper; it is a locally tailored edition of the Baltimore Sun.
But the 20 people inside are trying to produce a daily paper with a
hometown feel.

The metro section is filled with information about the minutiae of
suburban life - marriages, births, senior citizens' activities,, school
plays, road closings - once beneath the notice of major metropolitan
newspapers. But the Sun, a storied institution with eight foreign
correspondents, a 15-person Washington bureau and such illustrious
alumni as H.L. Mencken and Russell Baker, is betting the franchise on
this sort of Zip Code journalism.

As Editor John Carroll described the new mission: "We're going to tell
you if there's been a burglary on your block."

The subdivision of the Sun, which launched zoned editions for Howard,
Anne Arundel and Carroll counties in late September and plans five more
next year, is part of a growing trend toward suburbanization of big-city
newspapers. Publishers are pushing deeper into outlying communities,
determined to lure readers who live and work 50 miles or more from
downtown.

The industry has been consumed by a debate over what people want from a
newspaper in the video age. As urban papers struggle to preserve their
franchise in an information-saturated society, many have decided to
clone themselves in an effort to chase upscale suburban readers and the
merchants who serve them.

"If you let a whole lot of little papers ring your city and take the
advertising from the wealthiest areas and leave you only with the core
city, you're going to be in deep trouble," Carroll said.

The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Atlanta Journal and
Constitution, Hartford Courant, St. Petersburg Times and Philadelphia
Inquirer are among major papers that produce multiple editions, and the
Inquirer plans an even more ambitious effort.

"Most sizable newspapers are zoning to some extent," said industry
analyst John Morton. "That's really where the growth is going to be.
It's advertisers who are driving it . . . . Papers are worried about
presiding over a declining urban core."

The Orange County edition of the Los Angeles Times has 200 reporters and
editors and remakes every section of the Times. Local stories sometimes
lead the paper, and the top-left corner of Page 1 is devoted to an
"Orange County Newswatch."

"Finally, the Times realized they were going to have to drastically
change the way the paper was put out and consider this a community of
its own," said Carol Stogsdill, the Orange County editor. "We don't put
any L.A. news in the metro section."

The St. Petersburg Times publishes 11 regional editions, one of which,
in Tampa, is simply called The Times. "We're trying to be the local
newspaper to an area that is 100 miles long and 30 miles wide," Editor
Andrew Barnes said. "We feel our franchise is detailed local news. It
also provides split-run advertising, which, frankly, is profitable."

The Atlanta Journal and Constitution papers were so aggressive in
blanketing suburban Gwinnett County that the Gwinnett Daily News, owned
by the New York Times Co., shut its doors last summer.

The Washington Post has been studying the issue since the 1970s and has
not ruled out zoning part of its Metro section. For now, however, zoning
is limited to the eight Weekly sections published on Thursdays.

"This is still a relatively cohesive metropolitan area that does not
have the geographical divisions of, say, Los Angeles," said Executive
Editor Leonard Downie Jr. He said that "to give people in Fairfax County
a Metro section, or a newspaper, that is largely about Fairfax County .
. . is not what our readers want."

Downie said reader interests seem to diverge more along age, gender and
ethnic lines. "If you cut out District news from papers going to Prince
George's County, a large number of Prince George's black residents would
be very unhappy, because they're very interested in District news," he
said.

Indeed, some readers in the Sun's suburban zones, where Baltimore news
is curtailed, have complained about being shortchanged.

"Some people are not that much interested in local news," said Ernie
Imhoff, the Sun's ombudsman. "While people may live in Howard or Anne
Arundel or Carroll County, they work in Baltimore, or have friends in
Baltimore, or grew up in Baltimore. They intuitively know there's more
news in Baltimore as a big city, and they don't want to miss that news.
People like to read about the troubles in Baltimore from their safe
haven."

Many reporters also dislike the intensely local coverage. One sarcastic
staffer tacked a story about a dog theft in Anne Arundel to the wall of
the Baltimore newsroom. "Here we are in a city that has about one murder
a day, and we're assigning reporters to cover stolen dogs," a reporter
sniffed.

The first casualty has been the Evening Sun, which competed with the
morning Sun for decades but now shares the same staff. The Evening Sun's
circulation has plummeted from 153,000 to 119,000 in the past year as
readers noticed that the two papers are nearly identical, and Carroll
said the evening paper may be dropped at some point. Morning circulation
dipped 8,000, to 228,000, and both papers undoubtedly were hurt by a
price increase from 25 to 50 cents.

"Traditionally, local news for this paper meant Baltimore city and
Baltimore County, and primarily Baltimore city," Carroll said. "I had
very little sense we knew what was going on in this vast area. We were
only covering the big things - if someone murdered five people."

The Sun has more than doubled the news space in the metro section and
doubled the size of its suburban bureaus. The sports section also has
been expanded to accommodate increased coverage of high school games, a
sure-fire circulation-builder. And small retailers now can buy ads in a
single edition.

In Howard County, where the Sun sells 20,000 copies a day, there is an
"associate publisher," Joan Tyner, who has joined the Chamber of
Commerce and arranges charitable donations. Her picture and phone number
appear in the paper each day.

The bureau has a local editorial writer, a "Seniors Datebook," a
"Volunteer Notes" and a "Neighbors" column, which recently observed that
"the art displayed at the Savage Library has changed this month . . . .
Roberta Laric, Forest Ridge Elementary's art teacher, has hung works
from second-, third- and fourth-graders."

There are daily reports from each of five sections of Howard County,
including such upbeat fare as "Pioneering spirit helps parish thrive,"
"African-American bazaar boosts restoration effort" and "Supreme Sports
Club succeeds by leaps and bounds." But bureau chief Lee Horwich said
his staff also tackles growth and environmental issues of statewide
interest.

"My attitude is that a community of 185,000 people should easily be able
to support a daily section," he said.

The vacuum cleaner approach pays dividends. One reporter learned from
attending a routine health department session that several guests at a
wedding had contracted salmonella and one died.

"Most of the exclusives I've gotten are simply because I was there,"
reporter James Coram said. "I went to the meetings, and I listened to
these people and cared about their concerns."

The competition is unimpressed. "They're getting down to the micro-level
of break-ins, marriage licenses, divorce filings," said Tom Graham,
editor of the weekly Howard County Times. "They're taking local news to
a new height, or depth, depending on your perspective."

Vernon Gray, a County Council member, said the Sun is "straining to find
news. There must not be that much news going on in Howard County, or
they're not digging deep enough."

But Charles Acquard, former chairman of the nonprofit Columbia Council,
said: "I look forward to picking up the paper and finding out what's
going on in the community. . . . They really are down to the
neighborhood level."

The zoned editions have been plagued by production problems. When a
police helicopter crashed, the Anne Arundel edition ran the same story
on the front page and the metro page.

And many suburban staffers feel cut off from the main newsroom. "It's
kind of like being lost in space," Coram said. "Some of my stories have
been buried so deep in the paper I don't think the CIA could have found
them."

By Paul Holmes

MOGADISHU, Dec 23, Reuter - The United States says it has cut the number
of troops it will deploy in Somalia, where its armed intervention is
forging ahead with American-led forces fanning out to two more famine
towns for Christmas.

In Washington, the White House said George Bush would visit the Horn of
Africa country for New Year to meet U.S. forces on what was likely to be
his last foreign trip as president. He arrives on December 31 and leaves
on January 1.

"The president's visit will demonstrate United States concern for the
people of Somalia, our commitment to humanitarian assistance and our
support for American and United Nations forces," a White House statement
said.

An estimated 28,000 U.S. troops had been expected to spearhead a
multinational coalition which began securing Somali towns, ports and
airfields on December 9 as launchpads for the armed escort of food for
the starving.

Marine Colonel Fred Peck, military spokesman for Operation Restore Hope,
said the total would be cut by an unspecified number.

Operational commander General Robert Johnston had made "a firm
commitment on scaling back the amount of U.S. forces that are going to
be needed," Peck said.

"We've basically turned the tap and closed off the flow of forces from
the United States," he told reporters on Tuesday.

Peck said so many other countries had offered to join the force,
expected to total 35,000 soldiers from more than a dozen states, that
fewer American combat troops would be needed.

He also made it clear the task force was facing less resistance than
expected from the feuding clan militias whose civil war has plunged
Somalia into anarchy and from the armed bandits who have looted food
relief.

The first phase to secure Mogadishu and seven towns in Somalia's central
and southern famine belt for the relief drive was two weeks ahead of
schedule after just two weeks on the ground and was expected to be
completed by December 28.

"We are extending ourselves, willing to take some risks," Peck said.
"Our risk assessment is that we can go into places with much lower
levels of force than we anticipated."

In a break with the military secrecy so far adopted for task force
operations, Peck said 1,000 Marines would enter the town of Bardere on
Thursday, Christmas Eve.

A combined French and Marine force under French operational command
would move into the town of Hoddur on Christmas Day.

U.S. officials have said some American troops now in Somalia will
already have left by the time Bush hands over the White House to
President-elect Bill Clinton on January 20.

More signs emerged that Bush would bequeath Clinton a potential dispute
with U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali over the role of the
U.S. troops.

The U.N. chief, in a report to the Security Council, said American
forces should spread out across Somalia beyond the hunger zones and
disarm clan fighters and bandits.

He rejected a request from Washington to plan immediately for U.N.
peace-keeping troops to replace American forces when they start to
withdraw.

REUTER PAH FK ABD <<>>
APn 12/22 1911 Somalia-Thorny Christmas

BAIDOA, Somalia (AP) -- Marines stationed at Baidoa's airport are
looking for a few good Christmas trees. So far, their only specimen is
covered with vicious spines.

Staff Sgt. John DiDomenico, 29, of Monroeville, Pa., said Tuesday that
several men had been "punctured" trying to decorate the scrawny, desert
tree that sits among tents next to a parking lot.

That hasn't deterred the Marines.

The first tree is hung with plastic water bottles, cans of Coke,
Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper and Copenhagen snuff, an assortment of colored
ribbons, trinkets and messages scrawled on cardboard.

Lance Cpl. E.T. Chavez of Denver wrote: "Merry Christmas from Somalia.
Love you, Arline and Vincent." Attached was a photo of a baby boy,
presumably Vincent.

"To Ellen, hi Baby, I miss you and I love you. Merry Christmas and Happy
New Year," was written in felt pen by Cpl. Dave Karp of Van Nuys, Calif.

And even though the only trees in sight were as prickly as the first,
the soldiers were hoping to find others to decorate.

"We're sending out a tree detail tomorrow," DiDomenico said.

<<>>
APn 12/22 1320 Madagascar-Democracy

By CHRISTIAN CHADEFAUX

Associated Press Writer

ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar (AP) -- Opposition leader Albert Zafy took a
commanding lead over Madagascar's longtime military ruler in the first
round of presidential voting, according to election results released by
the High Constitutional Court.

Zafy, a 54-year-old surgeon, led a democracy movement that forced the
elections through a nine-month general strike and riots last year on the
impoverished island nation, off Africa's southeast coast.

The court announced Zafy won 1,846,842 votes to 1,194,967 for Adm.
Didier Ratsiraka in a first round of voting Nov. 25. Because Zafy won
less than 50 percent of the vote, a second round is scheduled before
Jan. 21.

Five other candidates shared an insignificant percentage of votes in the
elections, where 4.5 million of the 6.1 million registered voters
participated.

There were no reports of violence after the announcement. For a week,
newspapers have been carrying reports from Zafy's coalition, Active
Forces, accusing Ratsiraka supporters of handing out weapons to force a
confrontation if the president does not win.

The admiral, who has ruled the former French colony for 17 years, lost
votes to Zafy in all major cities and towns except his northern hometown
of Tamatave.

Any new government will inherit a bankrupt treasury and nation
impoverished by a grandiose socialist program that Ratsiraka modeled on
North Korea.

It also must deal with the effects of a three-year drought that has left
960,000 of Madagascar's 12 million people hungry. The hungry are
receiving enough rations from the U.N. World Food Program to stay alive,
but most have sold their oxen, rice fields and even cooking utensils.

Ratsiraka gave into the demands for democracy after his soldiers
initially fired on a crowd trying to force its way into the presidential
palace in August 1991, killing about 100 people, then refused to
continue attacking protesters.

<<>>
RTw 12/22 1004 SOMALI WARLORD AIDEED MEETS ETHIOPIAN LEADER

By Tsegaye Tadesee

ADDIS ABABA, Dec 22, Reuter - Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed paid a
surprise visit to Addis Ababa on Tuesday and held talks on aid and
factional violence with Ethiopia's President Meles Zenawi.

The Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) said the two men discussed ways of
speeding up aid to one million Somalis facing death by starvation and
the clan violence which has hamstrung efforts to get relief to the
needy.

Ethiopia will host United Nations-sponsored talks on January 4 to get
Somalia's feuding factions to talk peace and end the anarchy which
followed the ovethrow of President Mohamed Siad Barre in January 1990.

The Ethiopian leader has repeatedly appealed to clan leaders in
neighbouring Somalia to end violence and talk peace.

Aideed's visit follows one by his former arch-rival, self-styled
President Ali Mahdi Mohamed, on Saturday.

The two warlords are widely held responsible for the blood feud that
wrecked much of southern Somalia and created a famine across Somalia.
The U.S.-brokered peace agreement between them earlier this month.

The two warlords met in the ruined capital, Mogadishu, after American
and French troops arrived to restore law and order and end the
plundering or relief for one million starving people.

Ali Mahdi's weekend talks also covered humanitarian aid and ways of
ending factional violence, ENA said.

Both Aideed and Ali Mahdi will attend the January 4 talks, which could
be hosted by U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, according to
diplomats in the region.

Previous attempts to get all Somalia's feuding factions to the
conference table have failed because of clan rivalry.

Aideed had refused to meet Ali Mahdi until Washington launched Operation
Restore Hope under a United Nations banner to stop the plundering of
relief.

More than 35,000 troops from a dozen countries are due to take part in
the operation and thousands have fanned out into the countryside to stop
looting.

REUTER TTE AJH JNC <<>>
UPn 12/22 0743 Imprisoned Tyson still gives to poor

INDIANAPOLIS (UPI) -- Boxer Mike Tyson will make his annual giveaway of
Christmas turkeys to the poor, even while remaining imprisoned just west
of Indianapolis.

Tyson and promoter Don King Tuesday will give out 1,500 turkeys to needy
Indianapolis families with the help of the Indiana Black Expo
organization, its officials announced. The group's "We Can Feed the
Hungry" program planned to hand out 1,000 of the birds and additional
food items in holiday baskets, as well as toys, at a location known as
the West End.

The Indianapolis Baptist Ministers Alliance will distribute the other
500 "Team Tyson" turkeys Wednesday, officials said.

Last year, Marion County prosecutors criticized Tyson's turkey giveaway
as a ploy to sway opinion for his upcoming rape trial. Prosecutor
Jeffrey Modiset later apologized for the remark.

The former heavyweight champion was sentenced in February to a six- year
sentence in the Indiana Youth Center for the 1991 rape of Desiree
Washington, a Miss Black America pageant contestant. He is appealing the
sentence.

HARARE, Dec 22, Reuter - Dozens of hungry villagers seized a train and
stole bags of maize in southern Zimbabwe, police said on Tuesday.

They gave no details of the incident last week. But Zimbabwe's Herald
newspaper said villagers in Masvingo province stormed the train, defying
heavily armed police to loot the staple food.

Zimbabwe has been gripped by a drought which has forced more than 5.4
million people, half the country's population, to depend on state food
handouts.

REUTER CTC FIM DJG <<>>APn 12/21 1256 Somalia-Groundwork

By G.G. LABELLE

Associated Press Writer

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Behind the dramatic air and sea landings in
Somalia's unruly cities, U.S. officials are trying to nurture a broad
political leadership that can pull the nation back from anarchy.

But Somalia's banditry and clan rivalries are so entrenched that U.S.
troops could have to stay far longer than originally hoped before
political stability is established. And ending the famine that has taken
an estimated 350,000 lives goes hand in jand with ending the political
chaos.

A day before Sunday's take-over of the southern port of Kismayu by
Marines and Belgian troops, U.S. special envoy Robert Oakley held
meetings with political and religious leaders in the city.

He held similar meetings before troops entered Mogadishu and Baidoa.

In Kismayu, Oakley met privately with Col. Omar Jess, the warlord whose
militia constitutes whatever fragmented rule there is. But he also met
with women's groups, Muslim sheiks and clan elders.

These groups once served as a check on Somalia's ferocious clan
rivalries. Bwt as warlords and their militias gained power -- and armed
thugs took over the streets -- the sheiks and clan elders lost their
role in the hierarchy.

Now, the United States wants to see them regain their moderating
influence.

The idea is to create an alternative to what many Somalis want the
United States to do: strip the militias of guns and set up an interim
government with U.S. power behind it.

Such a move might leave American troops in Somalia for years.

Instead, U.S. officials want the troops to create the machinery to cure
the country's famine, then leave it in the hands of a smcll U.N. force
and at least the seed of a responsible Somali leadership.

The famine was wrought more by man than nature. Drought played a part,
but it was marauding militiamen and looters who drove farmers from their
fields and into overburdened cities.

Reversing the process is a delicate enterprise.

The United States has to get the machinery firmly established, without
winding up having to stay to run it.

And it must take away the militias' heavy weapons, by force or
negotiation. No one really expects all light arms to be seized.

So far, the humanitarian effort is directed at taking over ports and
airports so food can be delivered to the truly needy and not fall into
the hands of looters.

The next step will be helping to repair roads and irrigation systems so
the economy can be restarted and the country will not depend entirely,
and eternally, on food aid from abroad.

On the political level, the United States has let militia leaders know
they must cooperate if they want a role in the future power structure.
It helps that no single militia is strong enough to confront the 30,000
U.S. and other foreign troops being injected into the country.

In Mogadishu, Oakley has been trying to stabilize the situation by
mediating between Mohamed Farrah Aidid and Ali Mahdi Mohamed, the two
leaders who control rival sides of the capital.

The two men helped oust dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991, then split
in a power struggle. Getting them back together would reduce chances of
more war between two main clan-based militias.

But one American official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, stressed
that the United States is not sending nearly 30,000 troops to Somalia
just to hand power to Aidid and Ali Mahdi in a revived alliance.

The official said this was the message being driven home to religious
leaders and clan elders by Oakley -- that they, too, bear a
responsibility for the country's security.

But will it work -- this idealistic, political balancing act?

It won't be easy.

First, the big guns have been hidden but not seized.

Second, the mainly teen-age gunmen did not grow up with respect for clan
elders and religious leaders.

Finally, clan rivaly is a part of Somali life. And it is a country
where, since its inception in 1960, foreign aid has played a large role
in the economy.

------

EDITOR'S NOTE -- G.G. LaBelle, the AP's news editor in Jerusalem, has
been reporting from Somalia for the past two months.

From: Executive News Svc. [72341,3027] Subj: WP 12/19 LAPD
Tries Bullets Made Of Rubber; Weapon Helped ...

LAPD Tries Bullets Made Of Rubber; Weapon Helped Quell Disturbance
Monday

By Leef Smith

Special to The Washington Post

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 18 - The Los Angeles Police Department, far from the
forefront of technology in recent years, has added controversial rubber
bullets to its arsenal in an attempt to suppress quickly civil
disturbances such as the one that erupted here Monday.

The cylindrical, foam-rubber bullets, dubbed "knee knockers," are about
the size of 35mm film canisters. They are fired at the ground in rounds
of five from a gas-propelled handgun to help police disperse crowds
without using more lethal firepower.

Police fired them with success Monday when crowds gathered at the
intersection of Florence and Normandie avenues in south-central Los
Angeles for what began as a peaceful demonstration and degenerated into
rock- and bottle-throwing at police and the media.

The intersection was the flashpoint of rioting here April 29 after the
virtual exoneration of four white police officers accused of beating
black motorist Rodney G. King.

The LAPD has been characterized recently as a relatively large force
suffering with outmoded equipment. Under the direction of the legendary
William Parker, its chief from 1950-1965, the LAPD was a small but
mobile force that could rely on the finest equipment available.

This was the third time the LAPD has used the relatively untested rubber
bullets, which were approved by then-Police Chief Daryl F. Gates after
the April-May riots, and police said no serious injuries have been
reported when they were used.

Hubert Williams, president of the nonprofit Police Foundation in
Washington, D.C., and co-chairman of the special panel that investigated
the riots here, said that, with the proper training, more police
departments are likely to begin using rubber bullets to combat civil
disobedience.

"One of the things the (rubber bullet) gun does is constitute a means by
which the police can stop someone who is dangerous or poses a threat"
without killing them, Williams said.

Different types of rubber bullets have been employed to control crowds
for years in other countries, particularly Ireland, Israel and South
Africa. In the United States, however, their use has been limited.

"The real issue is the need is for guidelines and policies," Williams
said. "Officers must be adequately trained so they know the
circumstances under which they should and should not use these bullets.
. . . If an officer isn't justified in using his weapon, it doesn't
matter what kind of weapon he used."

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has used a form of rubber
bullets for about two years. Unlike the ricochet method employed by the
LAPD, sheriff's deputies are trained to fire the projectiles directly at
suspects to "incapacitate" much the way an electric "stun gun" would be
used.

"This less-than-lethal device is designed to be just one more tool to
help us perform our duties," said Deputy Michael Centofante, a weapons
instructor. Used correctly, he said, "rubber bullets are a very
effective weapon."

Used incorrectly, the weapon has caused deaths.

Clarice A. Younger, 61, of Adelphi, Md., died last August when a Prince
George's County sheriff's deputy fired a rubber bullet at her when she
refused to drop a large knife as she was being served with psychiatric
evaluation papers, authorities said.

Younger, who had osteoporosis, a bone disease, died after the projectile
broke her ribs and a bone splinter punctured her heart, authorities
said. A sheriff's department spokesman said the weapon had been used
about half a dozen times over more than two years without incident.

"Aspirin isn't meant to kill people, but it can," Centofante said.
Rubber bullets "were designed to be nonlethal, but different things can
happen." Copyright 1992 The Washington Post <<>>
WP 12/18 XX Strongest Get U.S. Food Aid;Newly Delivered Wheat Disappears

By Barton Gellman

Washington Post Staff Writer

BISLE, Somalia, Dec. 17 - In this tiny, wasting village of camel
herdsmen, Timmer Hassan held a 5-year-old son too weak to stand and
watched a convoy of American armor roar up to her stick-and-mud hut.

The convoy brought soft wheat in 110-pound bags from the European
Community, unloading the bags into the roofless remains of the only
stone building in Bisle. Just as quickly as they arrived, the troops
were gone. Whether Hassan and her fellow villagers would ever taste the
wheat seemed gravely in doubt.

"If the Americans go back, we will not get the food," Hassan said just
before the Marines departed. "We don't want any more trouble, because we
are fed up with trouble. So if you have brought food, please and please,
distribute it for us. Do not leave to Somalis."

An hour after the convoy rolled off, Hassan and other village women
still stood with empty sacks, hoping mutely for a share. About two dozen
men argued over the spoils. Gradually the stronger among them began
hefting sacks of grain and carrying them off. Later, nearly everyone
agreed, gunmen would take the rest. As the Marines escorted food convoys
to Bisle and three other isolated villages, reaching the countryside for
the first time, the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington opened
the first congressional hearing on the Somalia operation. In Bonn,
meanwhile, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl announced that Germany will
send 1,500 troops to join the relief effort, the first dispatch of
German troops outside the NATO area since World War II.

Bisle's problem, and Somalia's, is a comprehensive breakdown of civil
security that will take far more than nine days of foreign intervention
to restore. There were signs of progress today, and places in which the
American-led mission has made a difference. But there were also signs of
the enormous challenge ahead.

In Baidoa, about nine miles east of here, a festival atmosphere brought
throngs to the street Wednesday night and all day today. Hundreds of
people gathered at the main market square, laughing and dancing with
their arms in the air. Many paraded behind a banner, hand-painted on a
bedsheet in blue: "We have faith and we want peace."

Nearby, others sang a song of celebration that one man translated this
way:

"A bird, when it enters in the water, it cannot fly the wings," he said,
and explained: "We are praising the Americans and telling the men with
the guns this is the end of the day."

Baidoa, in fact, was a town transformed. The last time CARE of Australia
sent trucks to Baidoa from Mogadishu, on Nov. 11, the convoy "was shot
out from under us and 40 people were killed," said team leader Lockton
Morrissey. Only last weekend, a dramatic increase in machine-gun
assaults against the relief agencies forced CARE and several others to
evacuate.

Last night, on the other hand, "I got up and walked across the street to
the office," said Bill Bergquist, the 46-year-old team leader of
Catholic Relief Services. "I wouldn't have done that a couple of days
ago."

But despite a marked reduction from the usual 35 daily gunshot
woundings, the Marines' first day and night in Baidoa still saw six
Somalis shot in separate incidents. Gunmen also robbed a South African
crew from Britain's Visnews television agency of its expensive equipment
and used assault rifles to extort $3,600 from a group of American
journalists.

"Right now it's our impression there are some gangs that have not left
Baidoa, that have not been completely intimidated by us," Col. Greg
Newbold, commander of the Marine operation here, said in an interview.
"Weapons are not only still on the street but still are being used.
We're patrolling by vehicle, we're patrolling on foot, we're going to
have overflights by helicopter. We're going to demonstrate very clearly
that the town belongs to the people."

The Marines hosted a meeting today of more than 100 village elders and
local officials, attempting to draw up a new set of rules.

"The bottom line is that all `technicals' have to be out of town by
tonight, and nobody with a weapon can be on the street after dark," said
Col. Werner Hellmer, who is coordinating civil affairs for the Baidoa
operation. `Technical' is the street slang for a car or truck equipped
with a heavy machine gun.

In recognition that Baidoa and the roads to and from it are not yet
secure, the Marines allowed weapons to be checked like coats at their
guard post at the entrance to the airport. Upon presentation of a
written receipt, the Marines gave back AK-47s and pistols to departing
drivers. Among the cars bristling with lethal hardware were those
carrying relief agency employees and reporters.

"Just taking the guns and giving them back is not good," said Abdi
Abukar, who watched the process with disapproval. "What we need is, as
they take the guns, do not return back to them."

"Our country - destroyed, ruined," agreed Ahmed Ali. "We want
(Americans) to take all the guns, all the army."

Both men's histories suggest the pernicious effects of lawlessness on
Somalia's economy. Each once owned a small shop: Abukar sold ice, Ali
television sets. Abukar was driven out of business by gunmen who twice
stole his ice-making equipment. Ali's shop was entirely destroyed.

"My TVs, all they took," he said.

The commanders of the American-led intervention understand that there
can be no economy for Ali and Abukar to participate in until Somalia's
chaos is broken.

The strategy that seems to be emerging aims to push security perimeters
ever outward, driving the technicals and other heavy arms out of the
population centers that sustain them. In tandem with that military
effort is the diplomatic thrust by U.S. special envoy Robert Oakley to
broker an accord of sorts among Somalia's warring clans.

"If there can be political agreements with factions where they can
create (national) security forces, the forces outside the country will
have no place to come back to," Col. Newbold said.

A critical milestone will come in three months, when the next planting
season begins.

"When the big rainy season resumes in March, April, with any luck these
people can do their planting," said Bergquist of Catholic Relief
Services. "If the rains are okay, a year from now, this could be a
wonderful place to live. This was the breadbasket of Somalia. Remember,
this is not a drought-produced famine. It is a military-produced
famine."

But security comes on many levels, as the Marines are finding out.

The road to Bisle had not been safe for convoys carrying food, and the
Marines changed that today with a few armored vehicles. But there are
not yet enough Marines in all of Somalia to safeguard the food once it
has been delivered. Copyright 1992 The Washington Post <<>>
RTw 12/20 2104 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER BLASTS GUATEMALA ABUSES

GUATEMALA CITY, Dec 20, Reuter - Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta
Menchu, spending her first Christmas in Guatemala in 11 years, on Sunday
called for an end to human rights abuses in her country.

"Human rights abuses must stop right away," she told hundreds of
wellwishers at Kaminal Juyu, the ruins of an ancient Mayan capital on
the outskirts of Guatemala City.

"Mothers can't live with their hearts in their hands thinking that their
sons and daughters may disappear on their way home from work," she said.

Human rights groups say Guatemala has the worst record of abuses against
native-born Indians in the Western hemisphere.

Peace talks to end a 32-year-old civil war in Guatemala between leftist
guerrillas and the government, in which more than 100,000 people have
died, have been deadlocked in 1992 over blame for human rights
atrocities and safeguards to prevent future abuses.

Menchu arrived in Guatemala this week to spend her first Christmas in
her homeland in 11 years. She fled the country to live in Mexico in 1981
after her parents were killed, allegedly for their support of Indian
rights.

In her first statements on her aspirations for Guatemala since she was
awarded the Peace Prize in Oslo last December 10, she also called for
fairer land distribution.

"The clamour for land should be the clamour of all Guatemalans. A
country with hunger is a country without peace," she told about 500
people gathered to hear her talk.

Coffee and banana farmers and wealthy families are thought to own up to
90 per cent of Guatemalan land, while the Indians live largely in
landless poverty.

REUTER EE/JF WS GE <<>>
RTw 12/20 1826 KISMAYU AID WORKERS WANT TROOPS TO FAN OUT FAST

By Paul Holmes

MOGADISHU, Dec 21, Reuter - Aid workers in the Somali port of Kismayu,
secured by U.S. and Belgian troops, want soldiers to fan out fast and
put on a show of force against gunmen stalking the remote and starving
countryside.

"It doesn't need much because they are so overpowering. Send a couple of
tanks and you've done it," said Sean Devereux, the U.N. Children's Fund
project officer in Kismayu.

The 330 U.S. Marines and Belgian commandos swept in from the sea on
Sunday to secure the southern town's Indian Ocean port and airport,
vital starting points on the food lifeline to villagers in the
starvation-hit Lower Juba Valley.

A first wave of the 460 Belgian reinforcements due in this week was
expected to leave Brussels on Monday. U.S. troops from the 10th Mountain
Division will pass through the town on their way to the wild interior.

The operation opened a fourth bridgehead for the U.S.-led forces in
Somalia and passed without a shot being fired.

But marines in Mogadishu shot a young Somali in a gunwagon on Sunday
when he turned his 50 calibre machinegun on them as the vehicle fled
from a patrol.

The shooting, the second in which American troops have inflicted
casualties, happened seconds after two bursts of automatic fire were
aimed at the marines from the old Parliament building in the capital.

"The vehicle sped away...they just saw they hit him and he went down,"
said U.S. military spokesman Marine Colonel Fred Peck. It was not clear
if the gunman had been killed.

Peck said U.S. and French troops in Baidoa, Somalia's inland famine
capital, had also taken away from gunmen on Saturday six gunwagons and
an arsenal of weapons, including an anti-aircraft gun mounted on a
truck.

He said clan elders in Baidoa had told troops the 45 gunmen and their
battlewagons were massing just outside the town.

The leader of a committee of clan elders in Kismayu said he also wanted
to see the multinational force disarm militias.

"People are fed up with technicals (gunwagons) and weapons," said Abdi
Dulawi, 42, who described himself as a sultan.

"Since we have no ability to cope with this security situation in the
region and in Somalia, we see the Americans as friends who came here to
help us," he said.

Kismayu warlord Colonel Omar Jess, who claims 5,000 men and 250
gunwagons, said he saw no reason why battlewagons not hostile to the
Americans should leave town.

He said it was also unacceptable to disarm Somalia, a goal United
Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali says is part of the task
force's mission.

Kismayu was one of Somalia's most violent towns in the clan carnage and
looting that has gripped the country for two years. Gun rule there
virtually paralysed famine relief efforts.

Alex Ramseyer of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
said up to 1,000 people may have been killed by clans settling scores in
the past two weeks.

But he and Devereux said the threat posed by pillaging gunmen had
shifted from the towns to the countryside.

"The towns will be secured, Mogadishu, Kismayu, Baidoa and so on," said
Ramseyer. "The countryside will be more dangerous - - exactly the
opposite to what we had before."

Kismayu, 380 km (240 miles) south of Mogadishu, has been swelled beyond
its normal 160,000 population by an estimated 63,000 refugees from the
Lower Juba valley.

Devereux said UNICEF would fly four staff into Kismayu on Monday,
boosting numbers that had been slashed because of insecurity.

The agency wants to return displaced Somalis to the Lower Juba valley
with seeds, tools and shelter materials but only if the task force can
make the area secure.

"The Lower Juba valley is one of the most fertile parts of Somalia.
Hopefully with the presence of international forces, we'll be able to
create the necessary pull factors to get these people back into
productive use."

REUTER PAH LS <<>>
APn 12/20 1845 Treating Chickenpox

By CLIFF EDWARDS

Associated Press Writer

CHICAGO (AP) -- Most children with chickenpox don't need treatment with
a drug the government approved this year for use against the infection,
a pediatricians' group said Sunday.

The American Academy of Pediatrics said the marginal benefits of taking
the drug acyclovir, plus the time and money involved in getting a
prescription, make it a needless expense in most cases.

Two pediatricians not associated with the academy's opinion agreed. But
the drug's maker, Burroughs Wellcome Co., criticized the academy's
statement.

"Because of the impossibility of predicting who will have serious
disease and who will not, it is a well established modern medical
pediatric practice to treat and vaccinate many children for certain
diseases," spokeswoman Kathy Bartlett said.

Nearly every American child gets chickenpox, with about 4 million
youngsters infected annually. Only a few suffer complications, and fewer
than 100 deaths occur each year in children with no other apparent
ailments, the pediatricians' report said.

Some children may suffer complications because of impaired immune
systems that make them especially vulnerable to varicella zoster virus,
which causes chickenpox and also causes shingles in adults.

Chickenpox usually makes children sick for several days with a rash on
the trunk, arms and face, and possibly a mild fever; adults often get
much sicker.

The 45,000-member academy, based in suburban Elk Grove Village, said
physicians should use acyclovir for chickenpox patients older than 12
who are not pregnant and those with impaired immune systems.

Acyclovir was approved for treating chickenpox by the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration last February, after research showed the drug, sold as
Zovirax, can hasten recovery by about a day and relieve some symptoms.

The approval came seven years after the FDA had authorized acyclovir for
treating genital herpes, which afflicts 5 million to 20 million
Americans and is caused by a virus similar to the one that causes
chickenpox.

Burroughs Wellcome estimates treating chickenpox with acyclovir can save
the economy $400 million annually, mainly by getting parents back to
work faster by lessening the time they must care for their sick
children.

But the pediatricians say treating 4 million people yearly will cost
$200 million to $312 million, given an individual drug cost of $50 to
$78.

Added to that cost would be an estimated $30 per patient to visit the
doctor to get a prescription, said John Modlin, professor of pediatrics
and medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, who was not associated with
the academy statement.

The drug also appears to be effective for only a certain period, said
Ann M. Arvin, professor of pediatrics and microbiology at Stanford
University.

"The thing is, if you do decide to treat, the drug has to be initiated
within the first 24 hours" of a rash appearing, said Arvin, who took
part in clinical studies financed by Burroughs Wellcome.

<<>>
RTw 12/20 1314 U.S. MIND MEN TELL SOMALIS ABOUT THE WEATHER

By Paul Holmes

MOGADISHU, Dec 20, Reuter - American mind men put a newspaper on the
streets of Somalia on Sunday that tells locals about the U.S.-led armed
intervention and -- in case they don't know -- the weather.

"It's hot and sticky. That must be the easiest job in Mogadishu, being
the weatherman," said Marine Colonel Fred Peck, explaining one of the
features dreamed up by the U.S. military's "psychological operations
unit" to put in the daily Somali-language newspaper.

"Willard Scott doesn't have to worry about any competition from here,"
Peck said in a reference to the weatherman on NBC's Today programme.

The single-sheet newspaper, called Rajo (Hope) as in Operation Restore
Hope, was the latest product pumped out by the "psy-ops" unit for a
largely welcoming population since the first Marines landed in Mogadishu
on December 9.

Radio Rajo also began twice-daily 30-minute broadcasts of reports from
the newspaper, said Peck, the U.S. military spokesman.

Five thousand copies of the newspaper were given away in Mogadishu, in
Bali Dogle and Baidoa, and along the route of a food convoy which U.S.
troops escorted from the capital to Baidoa.

The inaugural issue contained U.S. President George Bush's policy
statement on Somalia, as well as features on the relief effort for
Somalia's famine and the role of the U.S.-led forces.

U.S. military commanders have made a point of stressing that the troops
come as friends of Somalis rather than to fight them -- unless they are
armed looters spoiling for a battle.

U.S. military vehicles fly the Somali flag of a white star on a light
blue background as well as the Stars and Stripes.

Leaflets about the size of a dollar bill have also been dropped on towns
where U.S.-led forces are about to move in, showing a helmeted Marine
with an M-16 rifle shaking hands with an unarmed Somali.

Similar leaflets telling Iraqi troops how to surrender were dropped on
Iraqi lines in Kuwait during the Gulf War.

Peck said Rajo would not cover foreign news and would appear only in
Somali.

"It was part of the charter that the psychological operations unit that
puts this out works under," he said.

REUTER PAH AET <<>>
APn 12/20 1144 Homeless Shelters

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Demand for shelter has risen dramatically since the
recession began in 1990, and the problem of homelessness will be
aggravated by cuts in federal aid, says a report released Sunday.

"Until more realistic proposals for permanent solutions are forthcoming,
cuts in emergency programs will only mean more misery, pain and deaths
on America's streets," says the report by the National Coalition for the
Homeless.

The report examined trends in 18 states and the District of Columbia but
did not attempt to assess how many people were homeless. That would be
impossible to ascertain, it said, since many homeless people rely on
friends and family rather than seeking public assistance.

The report found:

--Every state and Washington, D.C., reported an increase in demand for
shelter over the past two years, and many reported that the largest
increase in demand came from families with children.

--Many shelters could not meet the demand and had to turn away large
numbers of people.

The Emergency Shelter Grants program administered by the Department of
Housing and Urban Development has been cut from $73.2 million to $50
million for the current fiscal year. At the same time, the Emergency
Food and Shelter program run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency
has been trimmed from $134 million to $129 million.

"The federal cuts are even more damaging because they come at a time
when many local and state governments are also cutting back and demand
is growing," the report said.

<<>>
RTw 12/20 0836 RED CROSS LOSES 30 FOOD TRUCKS IN NORTH MOGADISHU

MOGADISHU, Dec 20, Reuter - The International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC) lost 30 trucks laden with food north of the Somali capital at the
weekend in an apparent case of looting, a U.N. relief official said on
Sunday.

The vehicles were believed to have been loaded with rice donated by
French schoolchildren for victims of Somalia's famine, said Ian MacLeod,
spokesman for the U.N. Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM).

He said the trucks went missing on Saturday in the port of El Man, 12 km
(seven miles) north of Mogadishu.

Other aid agency sources said an ICRC representative reported the
trucks' disappearance on Sunday to a daily joint meeting of U.N.
agencies, non-governmental organisations and military liaison officers
from the U.S.-led task force in Somalia.

"Someone asked the ICRC man if they had lost what was on the trucks and
he said the trucks and the stuff on them," one source said.

An ICRC official said he could not confirm the incident.

U.S. troops in Mogadishu are under increasing pressure from relief
agencies to establish a presence in the capital's northern enclave,
controlled by warlord Ali Mahdi Mohamed, because of continued gun rule
there.

The forces escort food convoys into the enclave but do not patrol it.

MacLeod said a number of relief agencies wanted the U.S.-led forces to
establish "secure corridors" across the Green Line dividing north from
south Mogadishu because of big problems they had crossing.

"They (the U.S. military) say they will establish a footprint in north
Mogadishu but they won't give a timetable," MacLeod said. "The issue
perhaps wasn't addressed as fully as some relief agencies would have
liked."

REUTER PAH AET <<>>
RTw 12/20 0714 LONE BRITISH PILOT AT SHARP END OF SOMALI OPERATION

By Alistair Lyon

KISMAYU, Somalia, Dec 20 - When British pilot Paul Denning's Cobra
attack helicopter came under fire from Somali gunmen in Mogadishu, he
and his weapons officer had no doubt about how to respond.

They turned the U.S. helicopter's powerful arsenal on their attackers,
killing at least two of them and wounding three in a clash that
destroyed three of the makeshift battlewagons used by clan gunmen to
pillage food intended for the starving.

"We were directly under threat so we had no choice. We responded
straight away and hit the vehicle with a 20 mm gun," Denning, 31, told
Reuters.

Denning describes last week's clash, one of only two involving
casualties since the U.N.-mandated multinational force landed in
Mogadishu on December 9, as a "simple act of self-defence," but adds:

"There have been no major incidents since then. It served as a warning
and they (gunmen) took it as such."

The Royal Marine Captain, half-way through a two-year exchange
attachment to the U.S. Marines, believes he is the only British combat
pilot in the U.S.-led military operation for Somalia.

He was speaking after flying cover for U.S. Marines and Belgian
paratroopers swarming up the beach at the southern port of Kismayu.

"As part of the Cobra team, my mission is to fly reconnaissance and
provide fire support when necessary," he said.

British pilots are flying two Royal Air Force C-130 planes carrying
relief goods for starving Somalis and some Britons may be serving in
French Foreign Legion units stationed in Somalia.

But Denning thinks he is the only member of the British armed forces in
a combat role here. "The Marines have accepted me as one of them, so I'm
an honorary yank, actually."

Denning, who lives in Bath, England, will not be seeing his wife Sarah
or their three-week-old third child this Christmas. He gets no leave
until his deployment with the Marines ends in April.

REUTER AL NJP <<>>
RTw 12/20 0320 FLOODS CUT FOOD SUPPLIES TO 180,000 IN KENYA

NAIROBI, Dec 20, Reuter - Up to 180,000 people in north-east Kenya are
in urgent need of food supplies because floods have cut roads there,
Kenya radio reported on Sunday.

The District Commissioner at Garissa, quoted by the radio, appealed for
an airlift to move food to areas cut off after several weeks of heavy
rain.

The local famine relief committee estimated that 180,000 people were at
risk as it was not possible to transport food supplies to feeding
centres.

The radio said the Kenya army was being asked to organise an airlift.

The floods also threatened to disrupt Kenya's December 29 multi-party
elections. Local officials said voters and electoral officers may not be
able to reach polling stations.

REUTER CH NJP <<>>WP 12/20 Food Glut Seen as Way to Thwart Somalia's Bandits

By Barton Gellman and William Claiborne

Washington Post Staff Writers

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Dec. 19 - The U.S.-led military force in Somalia
sought new ways today to prevent the theft of food delivered to famine
victims, while U.S. Marines and Belgian paratroops prepared an
amphibious landing at the violence-wracked port of Kismaayo.

Leaders of the 30-nation force, which was sent here to ensure delivery
of relief supplies in a country ravaged by starvation and civil war,
acknowledged reports that some early food shipments were looted after
military escorts had dropped them off, and they conceded that troops
could not prevent Somali gunmen from stealing food intended for their
starving countrymen.

Marine Col. Fred Peck, chief spokesman for Operation Restore Hope, said
the task force now plans to disseminate so much food that scarcity no
longer gives looters a reason to steal. "Our idea is to accept some
losses . . . but to get so much food out into Somalia that people are no
longer fighting over it and people are no longer using it as a weapon,"
Peck said.

The first major test of that approach was scheduled for Sunday, when 300
metric tons of wheat are to be trucked before dawn from the port of
Mogadishu to Baidoa, a town in the heart of Somalia's famine zone.
Previous food shipments undertaken since U.S. Marines arrived in the
country 11 days ago have been much smaller, ranging from a single ton to
roughly 20. The Baidoa convoy will carry more than twice as much food as
can be flown in a day into Baidoa's airport.

While the international task force has made progress in central Somalia,
Somali gunmen have continued to terrorize aid workers in Kismaayo, on
the country's southern coast, paralyzing relief efforts there. More than
60 people were reported killed in clan warfare during the past week.

Sunday's expected pre-dawn landing there would give the task force its
first presence in the port city, which - with its deep-water harbor and
an airfield capable of handling the largest transport planes - has been
targeted as a major entry point for future food shipments to the
interior.

Peck refused to discuss the landing today, saying it would not be
"militarily prudent." But Navy Capt. John W. Peterson said a joint force
of 224 U.S. Marines and 100 Belgian paratroops would land and attempt to
secure the port and airport, news services reported.

An advance contingent of U.S. forces has been deployed at the city's
airport for several days while U.S. special envoy Robert Oakley has
negotiated with local elders and clan leaders for a peaceful handover.

Such talks were pursued before the Marines moved into Mogadishu and
Baidoa and took over a former Soviet air base at Bela Dogle. They are
aimed at ensuring that the task force's movements will be unopposed,
while giving gunmen allied with Somalia's factional warlords and
free-lance bandits time to withdraw with their weapons.

"We try to broker, diplomatically, a safe passage and safe arrival of
our troops," Peck said.

The Reuter news agency reported today from aboard the USS Juneau off
Kismaayo that an advance team of Navy Seals heard gunfire on a beach
there, but a Navy spokesman said it was unclear whether they were the
targets. An American officer told the Associated Press that there were
an estimated 1,600 gunmen in the city.

There have been reports that one of Somalia's factional warlords,
Mohamed Said Hersi Morgan, was moving gunmen from his small enclave
around Baardheere toward Kismaayo, which is under the sway of another
warlord, Omar Jess. However, relief workers in the port city reported no
sign of Morgan's militia.

A move on Kismaayo by Morgan, who is former dictator Mohamed Siad
Barre's son-in-law, presumably would be aimed at consolidating power
there before the Marines arrived so he could negotiate favorable
handover terms.

However impressive the reopening of airfields and relief convoy routes
has been, relief agencies here emphasize that the point of the
unprecedented military intervention in Somalia is to feed the hungry.

"They're very well aware of the entire relief community's concerns that
they don't focus entirely on the convoys and getting the convoys from
point A to point B," said Ian McLeod, spokesman for U.N. relief agencies
here. The effort, he said, must focus on getting food "from the
warehouse to the distribution centers (and) into people's stomachs."

The task force's newly announced strategy of glutting the country with
food appeared to be an effort to answer that concern without raising
expectations of security in every village.

In part, the strategy is economic: When enough grain is made available,
it should become less valuable for resale by looters. But World Food
Program spokesman Paul Mitchell said the idea was broader than that.

"Once they see regular supplies of food coming in," he said, "the whole
psychology of what's going on is going to change. People were always
saving up food all the time. Once they see there's going to be a regular
flow of food and there's going to be lots of food, they won't feel the
need to hoard it and they won't feel the need to try to take it to
market."

The 300-ton convoy that is to go to Baidoa on Sunday could feed 100,000
people for a week. When civilian relief agencies last attempted the
passage, on Nov. 11, their convoy was ambushed south of Baidoa and more
than 40 people were killed.

The actions of gunmen in several towns today offered conflicting
indications of how they will respond to coming military relief
operations. Near Baidoa, about 100 men turned in their weapons in a
prenegotiated deal that Peck could not describe in detail. He said he
did not know if the gunmen were paid or otherwise compensated.

But in Wajid, gunmen who said they had driven their stripped-down,
heavily armed vehicles - called "technicals" - from Baidoa, 60 miles
away, demanded 25 bags of food at gunpoint. World Food Program officials
negotiated a bounty of "one or two bags" instead, spokesman Mitchell
said.

By Paul Holmes

MOGADISHU, Dec 20, Reuter - United Nations trucks carrying 300 tonnes of
food left under armed U.S. escort for the Somali town of Baidoa on
Sunday.

Two helicopter gunships hovered above the convoy of 20 white trucks, led
by two U.S. light armoured vehicles, as it left the port in the capital
Mogadishu on its 250 km (150 mile) journey at 6 a.m. (0300 GMT).

U.S. marines in jeeps mounted with machineguns rode shotgun with the
convoy, which carried enough wheat to feed 100,000 hungry mouths for a
week.

The journey was expected to take about five-and-a-half hours.

It will be the first big convoy of food to reach Baidoa, the "City of
Death" at the epicentre of Somalia's starvation, since July.

The last convoy, on November 11, was hijacked by looting gunmen on the
outskirts of the southern town. Only two of 32 trucks on that mission
made it into Baidoa.

"We believe that this convoy is in fact the beginning of the end of the
humanitarian crisis here," Paul Mitchell of the U.N.'s World Food
Programme (WFP) told Reuters.

"It's what we've been looking forward to doing all along," he said.

Some 900 U.S. marines and French legionnaires thrust into Baidoa on
Wednesday in the first big push inland since American-led forces landed
in Mogadishu on December 9.

Mitchell said the WFP planned to run similar convoys three times a week
to Baidoa and to operate sorties to other towns in Somalia's famine belt
as soon as the multinational force had extended its security umbrella to
them.

Until foreign forces arrived in Somalia on their mission to keep
pillaging bandits at bay, food had reached Baidoa only by a far less
efficient and more costly airlift from Kenya.

The trucks in Sunday's convoy, airlifted into Mogadishu from a WFP
transport fleet in Ethiopia, will take the food to 20 distribution
points in Baidoa as soon as they arrive.

The load they carried included 150 tonnes of wheat from the WFP and 150
tonnes from the Australian branch of the international relief agency
CARE.

U.S. and French troops escorted their first food convoy into the bush
around Baidoa on Thursday.

U.S. General Joseph Hoar, overall commander of Operation Restore Hope,
later acknowledged that about 15 per cent of that relief had been looted
by gunmen minutes after it was dropped off in two hamlets.

U.S. military spokesman Colonel Fred Peck said such losses were
inevitable and that foreign forces in Somalia, set to swell to 38,000,
could not "watch over every grain out there."

"Our idea is to accept some losses...but to keep pumping food out at the
maximum rate," he said.

"Our end game is to devalue food as a currency of power in this
country."

Two years of clan warfare and anarchy in Somalia have created Africa's
worst famine this century, killing 300,000.

Marauding gunmen and lawless militias have preyed on the subsequent
international relief effort, looting convoys and extorting food
kickbacks for safe passage.

Mitchell said of the large-scale food convoys:"If we can start running
out all of the requirements we can really break this famine crisis
here."

REUTER RMG JXK MH <<>>
APn 12/20 0000 Beyond Somalia-Other international "hot spots"

Here's a partial list of international hot spots, just a few of the many
nations in which relief agencies have documented severe drought,
political killings, civil war, widespread poverty or starvation:

--Sudan: More than 600,000 people have died in a bloody, decade-long
civil war. The two main warring factions have terrorized citizens and
denied relief workers access to an estimated 9 million famine victims.

--Former Yugoslavia: Civil war has claimed more than 40,000 victims,
evidence of "ethnic cleansing" has been documented, hundreds of
thousands of people have been displaced and relief convoys attacked.

-- Mozambique: Torn by years of war, more than 1 million people have
died, 3 million have been displaced, 3 million are threatened by famine.
One-third of all children never see their fifth birthdays.

--Peru: Civilians are caught in the cross fire of Maoist Shining Path
guerrillas, drought, severe economic depression and a cholera epidemic.

--Burma: Still in power despite a 90 percent vote against it in the last
elections, the Rangoon regime continues to expel Burmese Muslims in a
campaign of terror that includes rape, beatings and executions.

--Liberia: Fighting has again broken out in the capital of Monrovia,
claiming an estimated 3,000 lives since mid-October. One group of 15,000
refugees has been found to have a malnutrition rate of 43 percent -- as
bad as in Somalia.

--Cambodia: The Khmer Rouge refuses to disarm in a civil war that has
damaged crop production and littered the countryside with land mines.

--Iraq: Baghdad has effectively cut trade links and imposed an internal
blockade on the population in the Kurdish north. The military has razed
some 4,000 villages, repeatedly used poison gas against civilians and
caused as many as 180,000 "disappearances."

--Haiti: Decades of violent repression, severe deforestation and an
international embargo imposed following the 1991 coup d'etat have
widened the gap between rich and poor.

End Adv for Sunday, Dec. 20

<<>>
APn 12/20 0000 Salvador - A Survivor's Story

Rodolfo-Sioson's mother has a harder time rationalizing what happened to
her only daughter, whose wry wit and soft features remind her of her
husband, who died when Miya was 20 month old.

"I don't know whether I will ever get over it," she says. "It's like
somebody died in some respects."

"If you had any expectations that life would go well as long as you
behaved yourself and treated people well, those expectations are 100
percent gone."

"Though we tell our children life isn't fair," her mother adds, "we
don't internalize it until something like this happens."

It's a different injustice that concerns Rodolfo-Sioson -- the plight of
those caught in El Salvador's civil war.

"It makes you so angry you have to do something," she says, "even if
you're not going to change the situation but just convince a few people
that you're right."

Rodolfo-Sioson had intended to move there before the shooting and
continues to lobby for Central American causes on campus. She plans to
attend graduate school, focusing on Latin American or Third World
studies.

In Year One, she has to learned to press ahead with her work -- and not
hide her frustrations.

"I think my family realized I can't always put on a brave face and act
like it's nothing, I can handle everything," she says. "It's unfair to
me. I did try to do that."

She says she never forgets she was given a second lease on life, while
others were not.

"All those widows, they don't have anything of their husbands except
memories and pictures," she says. "Compared to them, I'm really, really
lucky."

But in a reflective moment, her friend, Gharib, yearns to turn back the
clock.

"There are times when I wish she could get up and run one more time or
dance once again," she says. "I could go days or weeks at a time ...
then, all of a sudden, it will hit me again. This is forever for Miya."

------

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Sharon Cohen is the AP's Midwest regional reporter,
based in Chicago.

End Adv for Sunday, Dec. 20

<<>>
UPn 12/19 1623 Experts rule out combat in Salvadoran massacre

By DANIEL ALDER

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (UPI) -- A team of Argentine forensic experts
have ruled out the possiblility that more than 100 children whose bodies
were exhumed at the site of an alleged massacre were killed in
crossfire, a team member said Saturday.

"All of the information gathered points to the idea of a massive crime,
in which no evidence was found that could support the possibility of a
confrontation between two sides," Mercedes Dorotti said, reading from a
report presented this week to the Salvadoran courts.

The foreign experts were brought in to assist the investigation into
what has become known as the "El Mozote massacre," in which up to 1, 000
civilians are thought to have been killed by the army during a December
1981 counter-insurgency operation.

Dorotti spoke following a news conference Friday, in which she dispute
comments made by the head of El Salvador's Institute of Legal Medicine,
Juan Mateo Llort. Llort told reporters the report concluded the victims
died in "massive violence."

Dorotti said Llort had misinterpreted the report.

"In the context of massive violence, you cannot rule out the possibility
of combat between the two sides," Llort said during a news conference on
Friday.

Llort told United Press International that "this report is going to make
some people angry."

A handful of survivors of the alleged massacre say that the Atlacatl
infantry battalion systematically killed residents of El Mozote and four
other villages during the operation aimed at dislodging leftist rebels
from their stronghold in the eastern province of Morazan, some 72 miles
east of San Salvador.

The Salvadoran government denied the massacre took place and their
supporters at the U.S. State Department questioned the accuracy of press
reports written by journalists who visited the site several weeks after
the killing.

The Salvadoran government never investigated the allegations and the
case lay dormant until the Archdiocese of El Salvador's Catholic Church
took the few surviving witnesses to see a judge in 1991.

The Atlacatl was one of several special Salvadoran counter-insurgency
battalions designed and trained in the early 1980s by U.S. military
advisers. It was disbanded earlier this month as part of a negotiated
settlement to end the 12-year conflict in which some 75,000 people were
killed.

The Argentine team worked on just one site in the village of El Mozote,
a collapsed one-room mud and tile house adjacent the church that served
as a residence for nuns. Within the 42-square-yard structure, the
anthropologists discovered the remains of more than 130 children, six
women and one old man.

In the cases where the cause of death could be determined the victims
were found to have died from gunshot wounds.

Dorotti said investigators found several hundred casings for M-16
ammunition manufactured in the United States between the years 1978 and
1981. The Atlacatl battalion was armed with M-16 guns provided by the U.
S. government.

By MARY PEMBERTON

Associated Press Writer

BALTIMORE (AP) -- Three to four children die each day in the United
States from child abuse or neglect, and more than half are under age 1,
a new survey says.

The number of child abuse or neglect cases reported in 1991 rose to 2.7
million, up from 2.5 million in 1990, according to a survey released
Friday at the Child Abuse Prevention Center in Baltimore.

The statistics showed 1,383 children died from abuse or neglect, a 54
percent increase in six years. Seventy-nine percent of the deaths were
among children under 5 years old, and 54 percent were under age 1, the
survey found.

Experts blame the recession for the sharp increase.

Unemployed parents may be despondent, social services are scaled back, a
parent might not be around because they are working, and parents who
can't afford proper day care leave their children with people not
trained to properly handle them, experts say.

"It is the economy, there is no doubt," said Robert Weneck, a spokesman
for the National Exchange Club, a community service group that sponsors
more than 81 child abuse prevention centers nationwide. "All the centers
are showing increases when Mommy and Daddy are out of a job."

Dr. Eli Newberger, director of family development at Children's Hospital
in Boston, also blamed too much media-generated violence.

The statistics are compiled annually by the Chicago-based National
Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse, which gets its figures from
state agencies, Weneck said. Officials do not yet have statistics for
all of 1992.

The survey found 48 percent of the deaths were from neglect, including
lack of clothing, food, and medical care, and the effects of substandard
housing and homelessness.

Weneck cautioned that the holidays make things harder for parents.

"It gets very bad at Christmas," Weneck said. "The kids are screaming
and crying, and you don't have the patience, so you haul off."

Parents should not be afraid to sit down and explain to their children
why they won't be getting as many presents as their friends. Children
will understand, he said.

The problem arises when parents don't communicate with their children,
he said.

"They don't understand why Daddy is being chintzy," he said. "They
think, `Last year, Daddy bought me a bike and this year he can't even
buy me a tire.' "

<<>>
RTw 12/19 1208 GUNMEN SURRENDER BATTLEWAGONS TO U.S. TROOPS

By Paul Holmes

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Dec 19, Reuter - More than 100 Somali gunmen
surrendered their weapons and "Mad Max" battlewagons to U.S. and French
troops in the southern town of Baidoa on Saturday, a U.S. military
spokesman said.

Marine Colonel Fred Peck said the handover took place at an arranged
meeting point six km (four miles) outside Baidoa, the "City of Death" at
the epicentre of Somalia's famine.

"That's good news," Peck told reporters.

He said it was "very encouraging that voluntarily and without a shot
being fired" the Somalis handed over their weapons and their vehicles --
gunwagons known as technicals -- to the troops.

U.S.-led forces on a mission in Somalia to keep looting gunmen away from
food aid for famine victims say they will not disarm the country, awash
with weapons used during two years of clan warfare, anarchy and
pillaging.

But overall commander General Joseph Hoar said on Friday that the
operation would try to achieve "arms control," working where possible
with leaders of Somali militias and factions.

In Mogadishu, Ambassador Robert Oakley, the U.S. special envoy to
Somalia, has brokered a peace deal between rival warlords Mohamed Farah
Aideed and Ali Mahdi Mohammed, whose power struggle has shattered the
capital and spread devastation and death through much of Somalia.

Representatives of the two warlords met at Oakley's residence on
Saturday for more talks on a seven-point accord they reached on December
11.

A U.S. official said Saturday's talks concerned the removal of both
sides' technicals from the city but no agreement was reached.

"We're still working on it," said the official, who asked not to be
named. "It's a very difficult problem."

The surrender of weapons in Baidoa followed the arrival there on
Wednesday of an advance guard of 900 U.S. Marines and French
legionnaires to start escorting relief agency food convoys to the town
and outlying areas.

Troops are due on Sunday to escort 20 trucks carrying 300 tonnes of
wheat to Baidoa from Mogadishu for the United Nations World Food
Programme (WFP).

The convoy will be the first sent to Baidoa by the WFP since November
11, when only two of 32 trucks from Mogadishu made it into the town
after looters raided the convoy on the outskirts.

Five of the trucks sold off the food before reaching Baidoa, according
to the WFP.

Peck said the new consignment of food, enough to feed 100,000 people for
a week, would be escorted by 15 U.S. military vehicles, including two
armoured troop carriers.

Two U.S. helicopter gunships would provide air cover for the 250-km (150
mile) journey.

A second convoy to Baidoa is scheduled for next Wednesday.

Aid agencies say land convoys are a far more effective means of getting
food to starvation areas than airlifts because more relief can be moved
at less cost.

REUTER PAH AET <<>>
UPn 12/18 1659 Blame man, not mother nature for African famine

By WILLIAM M. REILLY

UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- To starving Africans, 1992 will forever be
remembered for the continent's worst drought in a century, but the rest
of the world may recall it as the year fighting starvation became a
worthy military goal.

For the first time in U.N. history, a military force was authorized to
make sure food gets delivered to a starving nation, in this case
Somalia.

"It's the first time the U.N. has intervened for humanitarian reasons
(in the internal affairs of a nation)," said Salim Lone, editor of
Africa Recovery, which tracks economic issues for the United Nations.
"Even in the former Yugoslavia, the forces are there to keep the peace.
They have no authority to use force. What this bodes for Africa is a
watershed in relief efforts."

U.N. officials estimate that the famine's death toll in Somalia in the
past two years at 300,000, including one out of six children.
Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, calling the tragedy
"unprecedented," pushed the Security Council to accept an offer from the
United States to lead a mission of mercy to the Horn of Africa.

The numbers of starvation deaths in Africa is an elusive total to pin
down, but the cause is often attributed to man, not nature. "Drought
does not automatically turn into famine unless there is instability in
the country involved," Lone said. "One of the key causes of famine in
Africa is large-scale political violence. These political conflicts have
very deep roots."

Lone credited an unlikely, but historically linked, source of early
support for an international relief effort directed at Somalia --
Ireland.

"Ireland is not one of Europe's strongest countries," Lone said, adding,
however, that the tiny island nation has "a great tradition" of famine
relief, perhaps because of Ireland's own potato famine of 1845-1849,
which claimed a million lives.

Irish President Mary Robinson, the only head of state to visit the
starving in Somalia, angrily declared what she witnessed as
"unacceptable."

"I felt ... so outraged that this would be happening in the 1990s, that
I'd be beside a woman and children, and the children would be dying in
front of me."

She carried that message to the U.N. and Boutros-Ghali, sparking action.

This past year has seen famine not only in the Horn of Africa,
traditionally a drought-stricken region, but in Central Africa and in
the southernmost tier of nations as well.

An estimated 20.7 million people in portions of Djibouti, Kenya,
Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan have been affected this year. The
victims needed 2.19 million tons of food but fell 174,000 tons short on
pledges in October to December, according to Africa Recovery.

"So many of the famines in Africa -- Mozambique, Southern Sudan and
Liberia -- are serious famines, although none worse than Somalia," Lone
said. "Potentially any one of them could become worse than Somalia
because these countries have much larger populations."

Lone said that contrary to general perceptions, African food production
has kept pace with food production around the world, but Africa's food
production has not kept pace with the continent's booming population.

"As a result, agricultural and food production per capita have fallen by
about 15 percent in sub-Sahara since 1970 while food imports per head
have had to rise to maintain consumption," he said.

Lone also noted that there are nations suffering famine that do not
report it because to do so would be to admit a disruption, at the least,
in government services.

Alex de Sherbinin, an information specialist on Africa with the
Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C., said there are 654
million people in all of Africa.

According to the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF), nearly half of them are
under the age of 16, about one quarter under the age of 5 are
underweight, the growth of about 35 percent is stunted by poor nutrition
and 10 percent show signs of wasting.

De Sherbinin said the population in Africa will double "in 28 to 30
years." Nearly half the sub-Sahara Africa population lives in households
suffering from a lack of food, he said.

Salahuddin Ahmed, of the U.N.'s World Food Program, said that in the
"hunger zone" of central and southern Somalia, where civil war has had
the greatest impact, up to 80 percent of all children under 5 suffer
from severe malnutrition.

Ian McLeod, a UNICEF official in Mogadishu, Somalia, said even if grains
and other regular foods become available, this will not help many of the
children, since their emaciated bodies can no longer handle such bulky
items as corn, rice or beans. "Specific high-energy foods for children
are needed," he said.

Africa Recovery said that in Zambia about 70 percent of the nation's
crops were wiped out by drought, and it was expected the country would
have to import more than 1 million tons of food.

However, there will not be a famine in Zambia, the publication said.

Most of the countries of the Southern Africa Development Community of
Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania,
Zambia and Zimbabwe suffered some drought, but were expected to stave
off widespread starvation, with the notable exception of Mozambique,
where a 17-year civil war ended Oct. 4.

The 16-year Angolan civil war officially ended in May 1991, but fighting
has since flared between the government and the rebels, who rejected the
results of the nation's first democratic elections in September. The
parties agreed to talk in December but hope for a peaceful settlement is
not high.

Warring in Angola, Ethiopia, Liberia, Mozambique, Somalia and Sudan
crimped relief efforts, and more than 18 million people in the region
needed emergency food aid.

One million people have fled to Malawi in recent years from Mozambique
and another 500,000 into South Africa since the onset of the drought.

South Africa itself was hard hit, particularly the nominally independent
black homelands.

Operation Hunger, a national relief organization in South Africa, says
it is feeeding more than 2.3 million people throughout Southern Africa.

Normal rains are expected in Africa following a year of weather
dominated by the "El Nino," a global phenomenon born in the South
Pacific.

However, the rains which have already started in some areas bring their
own problems to overgrazed land and land lain fallow where erosion and
topsoil loss will be disastrous, as the damaged areas have no ground
cover.

release at will

By MORT ROSENBLUM

AP Special Correspondent

BAIDOA, Somalia (AP) -- So far, U.S. efforts to rescue starving Somalis
amount to something of a setback because the Marines have disrupted
crucial supply lines without replacing them, aid officials said.

"We can't get to people we used to, and they are dying," said James
Fennell of CARE. He praised Operation Restore Hope for securing ports --
but said excess military caution is costing lives.

During the months that relief workers waited for United Nations
protection, they built a fragile spider web of delivery routes into the
bush to bring food, primary medical care and seeds to desperate
families.

They hired guards to ride shotgun on trucks and jeeps, losing some
supplies to looters -- but also reaching many thousands of people who
were too weak to seek help in feeding centers.

The Marines' first move in famine-stricken Baidoa was to disarm the
airport security force, tough ex-soldiers CARE had hired as escorts.
Other free-lance guards hid their weapons and temporarily retired.

Tibebu Haile Selassie, deputy director of UNICEF in Mogadishu, predicted
improvement once the military is in place. But for now, he said, "the
situation is worse than it was before."

Although continued stocks are needed in Baidoa, relief workers say,
their urgent priority is to reach more of these isolated pockets where
whole villages hang by a thread.

But many of these deliveries have stopped, not only because no armed
escorts are available but also because the Marines have driven bandit
gangs out of Baidoa into the most vulnerable hinterlands.

"The military thinks convoys because it looks and sounds very good,"
said Ian MacLeod, U.N. spokesman in Somalia. "But there are also mobile
medical teams, and others, who have to move quickly."

Along with food, he said, children need vaccination against measles and
treatment for acute diarrhea, both deadly diseases in Africa. Also,
water engineers, sanitation experts and evaluators make quick forays
into the bush.

Like others, MacLeod said the threat to relief work was much less
heavily armed units to be met with force than it was hit-and-run
"moryan" -- bandits who prey on unguarded targets of opportunity.

Col. Fred Peck, spokesman of the Unified Task Force, said troops would
be available to escort all relief vehicles when they arrived in
strength, but he acknowledged the temporary difficulties.

"We're caught between a rock and a hard place," he said. "They scream at
us to disarm the bad guys, and then when we do they say they need their
guns back."

Operation Restore Hope's mission is to secure main ports, airfields and
convoy routes so that an uninterrupted flow of food and medicines can
move to distribution centers around the country.

When a regional base is established, troops are detached to escort
relief supplies delivered by voluntary organization and U.N. agencies.

First signs are not encouraging, aid workers say. The agencies waited
more than a week for troops to move from Mogadishu, where they landed,
to the frontier crossroads of Baidoa, 150 miles west.

"We told them all they would need was two men and a dog, and we'd supply
the dog," Fennell said. Rick Grant, also of CARE, said the delay
bordered on criminal negligence.

On Thursday, the day after a 70-vehicle convoy finally arrived, U.S.
Marines and French paratroopers escorted its first load: two small
pickups half full of biscuits and meal to a nearby orphanage.

They deployed six light armored vehicles, Humvees, and a truckload of
troops, with TOW missiles, mortar launchers and heavy machine guns. A
bewildered Baidoa was paralyzed by traffic jams.

The dilemma is affecting much of the relief effort in Somalia, from
urgent first-aid care in the bush to longer-term rehabilitation teams
who are trying to restore food production.

"I went to Nairobi leaving behind a Land Cruiser with a built-in
technical (mounted gun) and came back to find nothing," said Hassan
Khalifa of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

His guards hid their vehicle for fear of losing it at a checkpoint.

"Now it is more dangerous than ever out there, and I can't even leave
town," Khalifa said. "The Marines are busy. Are they going to take me
out with my seeds? Or my friend with cattle vaccine?"

He shook his head and answered his own questions: "I doubt it."

<<>>
RTw 12/18 0741 INDIA SENDS NAVAL TASK FORCE TO SOMALIA

BOMBAY, Dec 18, Reuter - India on Friday despatched three warships and
180 marines to join United Nations famine relief and peacekeeping
operations in Somalia, an Indian Navy spokesman said.

He told reporters it was the first time the Indian navy had taken part
in U.N. peacekeeping operations.

The ships, under the command of Commodore Sempath Pillai, will arrive
off Somalia on December 25. The task force will help protect U.N.
supplies and provide logistics support, he said.

MORE JPC MVB GD <<>>
APn 12/18 0513 Homeless Abuse

By PAUL NOWELL

Associated Press Writer

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- A federal jury convicted two former police
officers of abusing homeless people by dousing them with oil, coffee and
urine. A third officer was acquitted.

The jury deliberated just three hours Thursday before it found Steve
Phillips guilty of conspiring to violate the civil rights of street
people and using his authority as an officer to assault them. Kyle
Shepard was found guilty of the assault charge, and Mark Gibby was
acquitted of both charges.

Four other former officers from the Gastonia Police Department have
pleaded guilty in the case. Three testified for the prosecution as part
of their plea bargain.

All six will be together in January in U.S. District Court. Phillips
faces up to 11 years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Shepard faces up to
a year in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Street people began to complain about police harassment after officers
allegedly poured lukewarm cooking oil on Norman Ben Hannah as he slept
beneath a railroad bridge in October 1990. When Hannah pressed assault
charges, police and the FBI began looking into the allegations and five
officers were disciplined.

Hannah committed suicide in December 1990.

Prosecutor Gerard Hogan, in his closing argument, said the officers
hunted down the homeless like animals.

"This is a classic case of one-upmanship," he told the jury. "After
time, it starts to get boring just slapping people. You have to devise
new methods and new tactics to revitalize the hunt."

A lawsuit filed in October 1991 said as many as 29 officers were
involved in a campaign of harassment and intimidation, which included
striking street people, spraying them with paint and dousing them with
motor oil.

Last March, the city paid $98,250 to settle the lawsuit, with the money
split among six street people and Hannah's estate.

<<>>
WP 12/18 xxx Lucky Somalia; UNICEF'S new promise for the Children

Lucky Somalia; UNICEF'S new promise for the world's children.

By Stephen S. Rosenfeld

Feeling grim about Somalia? But at least its agony got discovered, and
international help is on the way. The fact is, its ordeal is merely a
more dramatic and televisable form of the desolation that is the normal
and largely unattended condition of several billion people. The number
of Somali deaths that has galvanized the world - 300,000 - is about the
number of preventable child deaths that is quietly racked up every week
every year in the poorest reaches of the Third World.

It is sobering to contemplate the quirks by which crisis deaths can draw
more sympathy and resources than routine deaths, although
underdevelopment is the root cause of both. One who refuses to be numbed
by the irony is James Grant, single-minded chief of UNICEF, the
international lobby for children. For his holiday gift he has
brilliantly packaged, in his annual report, the contention that it is
now possible to achieve "one of the greatest goals that humanity could
ever set for itself - the goal of adequate food, clean water, safe
sanitation, primary health care, family planning and basic education for
virtually every man, woman and child on Earth."

You read it right. Grant terms it feasible within a decade to give
almost all the world's children a fair start - "to bring to an end the
age-old evils of child malnutrition, preventable disease and widespread
illiteracy." Money-wise, it would take about $25 billion a year extra,
he figures, to be spread among poor countries, rich countries and the
international banks.

Grant is a preacher, but here he is not just preaching; he is drawing an
analysis from some little-noted developments of the past decade.

The success of UNICEF and others in extending immunization programs lets
him say that the "outreach capacity" now exists to put the basic
benefits of scientific progress at the disposal of the vast majority of
the world's poor - and even in the poorest countries. Here it matters
greatly that community health workers are cheap to train and field.

Falling fertility rates let him argue that with the annual number of
births soon to be stable or declining, health and education providers
can break out of the discouraging trap of having to run just to stay in
place.

By the world leaders' summit for children it organized in 1990, UNICEF
helped local advocates extract an extra measure of pro-child commitment
from their political leaders. To steer that commitment from paper to
reality is the promise now. With his eye on the global surge of
democratic, women's and environmental movements, Grant suggests that
popular demand can alter the ethical climate and make the current daily
toll of 40,000 preventable child deaths as repugnant and unacceptable as
racism.

In the big development agencies there is a tendency to admire (though
sometimes to bristle at) Grant's style of advocacy and to feel that he
emphasizes the small picture of child health over the big picture of
society-wide development. Grant finds this argument "inhuman" for
denying the poor the "few dollars per capita" that would prevent their
children from becoming "malnourished, blinded, crippled, mentally
retarded"; and off target in failing to recognize that childhood
afflictions are causes as well as symptoms of poverty.

You will see that this is not simply a discussion of differences in the
development set, although it is partly that, but a political argument.
Not that they're ideologically hard-hearted, but the development
agencies necessarily speak first for their bankers, the developed
countries. Grant, a missionary's son, runs an international agency but
speaks first for a "constituency" of at-risk children.

This is how he becomes impatient: with economists who oppose his
preference for "specific targeted interventions" for children; with an
international order that puts expensive weapons into the hands of poor
governments and that expects those governments to pay their debts; and
not least with journalists who do not meet his call for "a new kind of
journalism-against-poverty."

"If today's obvious and affordable steps are not taken to protect the
lives and the health and the normal growth of many millions of young
children," says Grant, "then this will have less to do with the lack of
economic capacity than with the fact that the children concerned are
almost exclusively the sons and daughters of the poor - of those who
lack not only purchasing power but also political influence and media
attention." Abrasive, overstated and, at its core, true.

By SONYA ROSS

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Economic and social reforms that help families are
the key to erasing the impoverished conditions in which one of every
five American children lives, says a study by the Children's Defense
Fund.

In releasing its annual report, "The State of America's Children," the
fund on Thursday offered President-elect Clinton a list of suggestions
that can help children. Hillary Clinton is a former chairwoman of the
advocacy group.

The suggestions included raising the minimum wage, guaranteeing health
care and housing assistance for poor families with children, offering
income tax credits and increasing the federal government's share in
funding education.

"The federal government has to become a strong partner ... in seeing
that our country is healthy again," said fund President Marian Wright
Edelman. "There are certain things America is going to have to do."

Clinton has suggested giving middle-income taxpayers a choice of either
a modest tax break or an expanded deduction for children.

Among other things, he's proposed improved access to health care for
poor families and fully funding the Head Start early education program
and the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program.

The fund said 14.3 million American children -- one of every five --
lived in poverty in 1991, the highest number since 1965. The majority
were white children living in rural areas or suburbs with at least one
employed parent.

The report also said the median income of young families headed by a
parent under 30 fell 32 percent between 1973 and 1990. About 2.7 million
children were reported abused or neglected last year, and 429,000 were
in foster homes, group homes or institutions.

"We are in danger of becoming two nations -- one of First World
privilege and another of Third World deprivation -- struggling against
increasing odds to coexist," the report said. "What are the true values
of a wealthy, democratic nation that lets infants and toddlers be the
poorest group of citizens?"

"This study is another wake-up call, and America is running out of
time," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Labor
and Human Resources Committee.

Fund researchers suggested that Clinton work to ensure that immunization
and child care programs are available to the poorest families, and that
he create a "national child support assurance system" to tighten
enforcement of child support payments. He should also set minimum levels
of support that absent parents must pay, they said.

The fund also sought more community recreation programs for children and
teen-agers, and for stricter gun control measures.

Edelman, a close friend of Mrs. Clinton, said she is confident the
president-elect will pay close attention to the initiatives her group is
proposing.

"Nobody has gotten any specific promises, (but) we've been getting a
very responsive hearing," Edelman said. But she made it clear that she
would take Clinton to task if she finds he's not doing enough to help
children.

"My job is to speak for children ... regardless of party, regardless of
administration," she said. "I am going to continue to say what needs to
be said."

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APn 12/18 0101 Somalia-Medical

By WILLIAM C. MANN

Associated Press Writer

MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) -- Dr. Craig Iriye came to see a reporter
carrying a stethoscope and a flyswatter. "I'm fighting disease," he
said.

The medical section of Operation Restore Hope can afford a little
joking. So far in the weeklong famine-relief campaign, its staff has had
very little to do to keep the U.S. forces in top form.

"Our sick call is about 10 a day. Hospital corpsmen can take care of a
lot of it," said Iriye, a Navy lieutenant from Denver in charge of the
Battalion Aid Station at Mogadishu International Airport.

The story is much the same at Mogadishu seaport.

"Basically we have no medical problems. The Marines are following the
rules and taking precautions to the letter," Dr. Mike Burleson said.

Both doctors said high morale keeps the sick call low. Most soldiers,
Marines and air personnel in Mogadishu speak with pride of helping
Somalis defeat their society's twin scourges of famine and wanton
violence.

Iriye said the main complaints he hears are about skin conditions like
heat rashes, sunburn and severe burned lips. One reason is that
doxycycline, a tetracycline derivative the troops take to ward off
malaria, makes the skin more sensitive to sunlight.

The medical system follows normal military routine. The first level is
the hospital corpsman, an enlisted doctor's aide, who treats many
conditions himself and refers what he cannot handle to the the aid
station doctor.

Once a patient's condition is stabilized, the patient can be transferred
to a collecting and care unit before transfer to the helicopter carrier
Tripoli, on station in the Indian Ocean within sight of the airport.

Such a unit is being set up at command headquarters in the reclaimed
U.S. Embassy building.

The carrier has the area's best medical facilities, including two
operating rooms, two intensive care beds and 25 beds expandable on short
notice to 125.

Until Wednesday, the force had met no resistance in securing key
installations in Mogadishu, the famine-struck central city of Baidoa or
relief food shipments to hungry Somalis in both places.

Late last week, the airport detachment sent to the Tripoli seven Somalis
wounded when the truck they were in crashed into a roadblock and came
under fire from French Foreign Legionnaires and Marines. The next day
the detachment sent out a Kenyan journalist shot and wounded outside a
mosque.

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