The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, October 27, 1992- Page 7
Call-in
* abortion
vote flops,
938- call
by David M. Powers
Daily Staff Reporter
Middle East peace talks
resume amidst violence
What was intended to be an op-
portunity for thousands of people na-3
tionwide to voice their opinionsv
about abortion turned into a turmoil-
filled event, organizers said.
About 56.4 percent opposedy
abortion rights and 43.6 percentr
voted in favor of them in The First
National Referendum on Abortion, a
national telephone call-in.
But organizers said the results
had little merit because only 938
people responded. Project Co-direc-
tor Mary Galvin said the organiza-
tion was hoping for more than
100,000 callers. w
Galvin blamed the small turnout'
on poor media exposure, opposition
from political bodies associated with
the issues, and the inability of many
college students to dial 1-900 num-
bers from their campus phones.Y
Galvin also said she felt that for
some political groups the argument
has become more important than the
actual issues. "Nobody wants to vote Stairs as chairsMOLLYST
or, this. They just want to perpetuate t ~a
a civil war.... Without facts anyone LSA sophomore Matt Denbar sits on the stairs taking notes durin
can claim to be on the side of the "History of the Vietnam War" class. With midterms approaching,
majority." previously empty seats are beginning to fill, forcing students to sit
aisles in the Natural Science Auditorium.
10 Speaker: Icudn genderwith
Sve
hate X10 ence afts Eace iissues
WASHINGTON (AP) - Syria's delegate to the
Middle East peace talks accused Israel yesterday of ne-
gotiating in bad faith, but his Israeli counterpart said
three hours of discussions produced progress toward a
joint statement.
After a three-day recess, the talks resumed in an at-
mosphere charged by the deaths of five Israeli soldiers
in southern Lebanon and Israel's retaliation with at-
tacks on suspected guerrilla bases in the region.
Syrian delegation spokesperson Mowaffaq Allaf
emerged from the discussion blaming Israeli occupa-
tion policies for violence and saying there was "no real
attempt" by the Israelis to ensure progress during yes-
terday's talks.
Ile said Israel either does not want progress at this
time or the Israeli delegation has been instructed not to
move forward. Not only was there no progress, "there
might be some regression," Allaf said.
Israeli delegateItamar Rabinovich differed sharply
in his account of the meeting, expressing surprise on
learning of Allaf's remarks.
"We agreed on some points, we kept reservations
on others," Rabinovich said. "And certainly we didn't
have a sense of regression, but a sense of working se-
riously towards a joint statement."
He sought to dismiss the differing interpretations of
the meeting with a joke: "We were not in the same
movie."
Arriving for the talks yesterday, Allaf said he was
concerned about a statement by Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin that Israel does not plan to pull back
fully from the Golan I leights.
"If Israel is not considering withdrawal, that means
in other words that Israel is not considering peace,"
Allaf said. "Peace without withdrawal is impossible,
and it is a precondition for peace really for Israeli
forces (to) withdraw from all occupied territories."
"Israeli public opinion needs to be persuaded that
our Arab negotiating partners are in it for real and with
good intentions," Rabinovich said. "And this type of
violence is not at all helpful."
"The only responsible thing for such incidents is
occupation itself," Allaf said. "End the occupation and
then you have no similar incidents."
He added that resistance to occupation "is justified
by the international law, by the United Nations Char-
ter, and by international legitimacy."
In a separate set of talks, Palestinian delegates pre-
sented Israel with a paper outlining procedures in 12
areas aimed at enhancing protection of the human
rights of Palestinians in the occupied territories.
The head of the Palestinian delegation, Ilaidar Ab-
dul Shafi, told reporters the he wants guarantees
against Israeli deportation of Palestinians, demolition
of homes, destroying trees and sealing roads and
homes, administrative detention.
The head of the Israeli delegation, Elykim Ruben-
stein, promised to give the Palestinian proposals care-
ful attention.
g his
the
t in the
Tourists become targets of
terrorists in Egyptian battle
by Ken Dancyger
Calling the prevention of hate
crimes a top priority, Loretta Ross,
director of the Center Democratic
Renewal in Atlanta, said including
gender under this label could hinder
the country's battle against racism.
Ross spoke to approximately 50
students at a forum last night as part
of the Sexual Assault Prevention and
Awareness Center's (SAPAC)
Sexual Assault Awareness Week.
Ross said if the government defi-
nition of hate crime included gender,
she believes there would be an in-
crease in the number of centers for
hate violence as well as an expan-
sion of services at existing centers.
However, placing more impor-
tance on gender will give people an
excuse to ignore issues of racism,
Ross said.
"You cannot have democracy in
its true form if you tolerate racism.
... If gender is included in hate
crimes, it will diminish (the issue
of) racism and raise the gender is-
sue," Ross said. "America always
wants to ignore racism."
"The issue of hate violence is an
issue we have been hearing more
and more about," said SAPAC
Director Debi Cain. "For us to deal
with the problem of sexual assault,
both men and woman have to be in-
volved. This speech will make ev-
eryone aware."
Ross, herself a rape survivor, de-
scribed violence against woman as
being "underscored by society" and
criticized the government's inaction
toward hate crimes.
Ross said that the movement for
sexual awareness does not have any
ties to the civil rights movement.
"The civil rights movement has
not addressed any sexual tensions
within its movement," Ross said.
"(The movement) has become in-
creasingly homophobic and anti-
Semetic. We have to know how and
why the civil rights movements have
these problems."
Ross, who describes herself as a
"feminist fighting the KKK," con-
tinued by speaking about her experi-
ences combating white supremacist
groups, including attending KKK
rallies.
"Its not necessarily their num-
bers, but the ability they have to en-
courage other people," she said.
"Their impact on society has us
worried at the center.
"People who stand with sheets on
their head in a cow pasture are just
reflecting America's failure to edu-
cate. ... The Klan is making a serious
impact on society."
ASSIUT, Egypt (AP) - For the
first time, foreign tourists are finding
themselves targets in the escalating
battle between Egypt's secular gov-
ernment and Muslim militants who
want to create an Islamic state.
Tourism this year became Egyp-
t's No. 1 earner of foreign exchange,
contributing $3 billion to the coun-
try's economy. So doing damage to
the tourist trade could be a potent
weapon for the fundamentalists.
"The attacks on tourists symbol-
ize attacks against the security sys-
tem and against the economy," said
No'oman el-Dab'e, a law student
who described himself as a moderate
but appeared to have militant
sympathies.
"Tourists are immoral. They
drink alcohol. Their men and women
mix freely. We are against all that,"
said Sheik Mahmoud, a fundamen-
talist preacher and a member of the
Islamic Group - el-Gama'a el-Is-
lamiya - a loose national organiza-
tion of militants.
"If they come here just to visit
the historic spots, that's fine," said
Sheikh Mahmoud, interviewed at his
mosque near Assiut, 200 miles south
of Cairo and a militant stronghold.
"But they must behave themselves."
Islamic Group members and
sympathizers are believed to number
about 150,000 to 200,000. About
10,000 of them are believed to en-
gage in violence.
During the summer, extremist vi-
olence and police reaction to it left
more than 70 militants, police and
Coptic Christians dead. Now the ex-
tremists vow to keep after the
tourists until the government re-
leases jailed fundamentalists and
abandons what they say are brutal
tactics against them.
The trouble is concentrated in a
130-mile stretch of the Nile from el-
Minya south to Sohag, about 250
miles south of Cairo.
Both the U.S. State Department
and the British Foreign Office
warned their nationals to avoid the
area.
Last week, terrorists ambushed a
tour van from a canefield at Dairut,
north of Assiut. A vacationing
British nurse died in the gunfire, the
first foreign fatality.
Over the weekend, a suspected
extremist injured three Russian
tourists, one seriously, as they pho-
tographed a mosque in Port Said on
Egypt's north coast.
Most of the more than 200 cruise
boats on the Nile ply the relatively
safe route from Luxor to Aswan, 400
miles south of Cairo. Few cruise the
el-Minya-Sohag corridor.
Two long-distance boats have
been fired on this month, with no
serious injuries.
The main north-south highway
runs through the troubled area, and
Gen. Abdel-Wahab el-Hilaly, Assi-
ut's provincial security chief, said
checkpoints along the busy Nileside
route would be reinforced.
He expressed doubt that every
tour bus and boat can be given
armed guards or accompanying se-
curity vehicles, as government offi-
cials have promised.
Publicly, security officials play
down the importance of the assaults
on tourists and other acts of vio-
lence. Privately, some police say the:
extremists may be gaining the upper,
hand.
* Lawmakers: Banking
crisis is not impending
WASHINGTON (AP) - Plenty
of troubled banks remain in danger
of failing, but no banking crisis
threatens to explode just after the
election, senior regulators said
yesterday.
"A significant number of com-
mercial banks remain troubled, and
their assets are substantial. However,
there should be no so-called
'December surprise,"' Federal
Reserve Board Gov. John LaWare
told a rare post-adjournment hearing
of the Senate Banking Committee.
Andrew Hove Jr., acting chair of
the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.,
predicted 100 to 120 banks with $37
billion in assets will fail this year
and an additional 100 to 125 banks
with $76 billion in assets will fail in
1993.
But the $16 billion in reserves
established by the agency, $6 billion
a year in deposit insurance premium
revenue and a $30 billion line of
credit to taxpayer funds should be
enough to pay for failures, he said.
Hove said it was "simply not the
case" that regulators are deliberately
holding back on declaring failures
before the election.
The wide gap between the inter-
est rates on deposits and on loans
produced a record $15.7 billion in
bank profits during the first half of
this year. These profits have post-
poned or avoided many of the fail-
ures that the FDIC had predicted for
this year, he said.
New regulatory standards taking
affCr, Tan. 10 ..ill not t-n. a n ia
brink of healing itself. Some say it's
on the brink of a major crisis," he
said.
But the ranking Republican on
the panel, Sen. Jake Garn of Utah,
and Treasury Secretary Nicholas
Brady issued statements rebuking
Riegle for politicizing the issue.
"Perhaps the senator finds it po-
litically opportune to jump on the
bandwagon of the fearmongers and
doomsayers," Brady said.
Garn said, "It is a mistake to
frighten the public about the condi-
tion of the banking system for politi-
cal advantage."
But Riegle was defended by pri-
vate experts who appeared after the
regulators and contradicted some of
their testimony.
"You deserve a world of credit,"
R. Dan Brumbaugh Jr., a San
Francisco economist, told Riegle.
He said data showing recently
failed banks had spent a much longer
time on the FDIC's troubled bank
list than failed banks a decade ago
may indicate that bank regulators,
like the savings institution regulators
before them, are delaying the closure
of insolvent institutions.
"Denial, understatement, and
other forms of forbearance pervade
the official handling of the prob-
lem," he said.
Boston College finance professor
Edward Kane said lax accounting
standards, which he compared to
"the rigged scales dishonest butchers
nown t nnrrharcre their clientc_" anrd
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