The Michigan Daily - Thursday, March 24, 1994 - 5
Balmy weather thaws
'U' out of hibernation
By KATIE HUTCHINS
DAILY STAFF REPORTER
Spring's first week has been a success around
Ann Arbor. Despite predicted rainfall, yester-
day turned out to be a glorious day to spend in
the sun, and students and faculty could be seen
celebrating all over campus.
The patches of grass near the
RackhamBuilding and Hill, Auditorium were
peppered with classes being held outside for the
first time in months as students relaxed in the
soft breeezes while taking notes on Spanish or
sociology.
School of Music sophomore Ben Abarbanel-
Wolff also took advantage of the warm weather
to grace the corner of State and North University
streets with his saxophone tunes. After playing
for nearly an hour, Abarbanel-Wolff said he
received money from only two passersby.
However, he said his playing wasn't for
money. "It's for fun," he said.
"I feel like a sense of relief. I'm happy that
it's warm."
Steven Fontana, an ISA junior, was also
appreciative of the weather, which gave him the
irst chance he's had in a while to use his
rollerblades.
. "It's not bad going to class when it's cold,
but it's really frustrating," he said. "Now that
it's warm and I want to go rollerblading and I
have to go to class and do homework, it's tough
to be disciplined."
ISA senior Sandy Yueh said she was happy
she could enjoy the weather before going to
work at Mrs. Peabody's Cookies and Ice Cream.
"It's been really busy," she said, adding that
there were lines going outside the store and that
the store was running out of frozen yogurt.
The Diag was much more packed, harboring
hundreds of walkers, bikers, dog walkers and
frisbee throwers during the entire afternoon. It
was even rumored that a bunny on a leash was
hopping around in the sunny courtyard.
Rackham student Eric Deweese and Engi-
'It's not bad going to class
when it's cold, but It's really
frustrating ... Now that it's
warm and I want to go
rollerblading and I have to go
to class and do homework,
it's tough to be disciplined.'
- Steven Fontana
LSA junior
neering senior David Zaret were entertaining
themselves and others with their juggling skills.
Both students have been practicing the art for
about seven years.
When asked why they were spending the day
outdoors, they cited sun and breeze as among the
best reasons.
"I have a shitload of homework, and this is a
great way to avoid it," he added. "There's noth-
ing like passing six clubs on a nice day."
There were several groups playing hackey
sack on the Diag as well. "The world is like a
hack circle," commented Tim Meinig, an Engi-
neering junior.
"I've been studying for the last three or four
days, and I decided to do nothing today," he
added.
When the afternoon began to fade into evening,
the Diag emptied of frolicking students, and the
grassy area was speckled with Stucchi's contain-
ers, scattered Dailies and Wendy's bags.
Engineering junior Brant Strand, who went to
the Diag to play with his Devil Sticks, was
disappointed. "You come out here and you see
everybody and they've kinda got the crunchy
environmental look ... and yet they don't back it
up with their actions.
"It's evident that it's nothing but a show," he
said.
Above: With
the arrival of
the warm
weather and
sun, a student
has reattached
a pinwheel to
his bike
outside East
Quad.
Right:The Diag,
as seen from a
nearby rooftop.
MARK FRIEDMAN/
Daily
'Israel never anticipated Hebron massacre, military chief testifies
LOS ANGELES TIMES
JERUSALEM - In an angry,
impassioned defense of his force's
role in last month's mosque massacre
in Hebron, Israel's military chief of
staff told a judicial inquiry commis-
sion yesterday that the military never
hxpected a Jewish settler to open fire
on Arabs.
But Lt. Gen. Ehud Barak -
Israel's highest-ranking military of-
ficer - flatly denied earlier testi-
mony from lower-ranking command-
ers that Israeli troops were under or-
ders not to fire on Jews, even if they
were shooting at Arabs. Barak sug-
gested that the commanders had mis-
understood orders.
"A massacre is a massacre is a
massacre, and there is no need for a
special order on the subject: If some-
body is carrying out a massacre, he
must be stopped," Barak testified to
the five-member commission inves-
tigating the killing of about 30 Pales-
tinian worshipers as they knelt in Fri-
day prayers in Hebron's Cave of the
Patriarchs on Feb. 25.
Referring to Baruch Goldstein, the
New York-born Jewish settler who
fired with an assault rifle into a room
full of praying Muslims, Barak added,
"We did not expect that a crazy per-
son would come out of the settlers and
carry out such an atrocity."
Throughout his public testimony,
broadcast live to the nation on Israeli
radio and television, Barak resisted
the commission's attempts to address
specific security lapses at the mosque
on the day of the massacre.
Instead, in his 75-minute testimony
- which came after a longer, closed
session with the commission - Barak
sought to deliver a general defense of
the military establishment. He spoke
in the wake of a series of disclosures
to the commission, that suggested
chronic indiscipline and intelligence
lapses by Israeli security forces at the
sacred shrine.
His hour-long opening statement
focused on the difficult task confront-
ing the Israeli Defense Forces in po-
licing Arab territory that Israel has
occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli
War, particularly since the onset of
the intifada, or Palestinian uprising.
Under questioning by the
commission's lone Arab member -
the first time ever that an Arab justice
was allowed to interrogate Israel's
top military official - Barak appeared
to reinforce earlier testimony by the
acting commander of Israeli forces in
the West Bank that the massacre could
have been prevented if the military's
security plan at the site had been in
full force.
"I think that the security plan for
the Cave, as it was drawn up, if it had
been kept completely, it is very prob-
able that it would have prevented the
massacre ... or at least greatly reduced
the extent of the crime," the general
stated.
But he deflected specific ques-
tions from Judge Abdel Rahman
Zouabi, an Israeli Arab, which were
based on earlier testimony from the
acting West Bank commander, Maj.
Gen. Danny Yatom, who told the com-
mission that the massacre would not
have happened if the full contingent
of five security guards had shown up
for work. Just one of those guards was
on duty when Goldstein opened fire,
Yatom has testified.
Zouabi also questioned Barak
closely on Israeli military guidelines
for the thousands of Jewish settlers
who are permitted to carry arms in the
occupied territories - and specifi-
cally on why they were allowed to
carry loaded weapons into sacred
places of worship.
*El Salvador rocked by charges of election fraud
THE WASHINGTON POST
SAN SALVADOR - Leftist
former guerrillas yesterday expanded
their allegations of fraud stemming
from last Sunday's elections, focus-
ing now on a clumsy and unusually
slow vote count that they claimed was
4eing distorted.
Ballots have been voided during
the count, monitors' access to the
tallies has been restricted and ballot
boxes have apparently been stuffed,
members of the Farabundo Marti
National Liberation Front, or FMLN,
claimed as election authorities con-
tinued to delay release of official re-
sults.
Other opposition parties - in-
Wcluding an up-and-coming evangeli-
cal party - joined in many of the
complaints, demanding closer scru-
tiny of the vote count.
Preliminary results have given the
lead in the presidential race to the
government's right-wing party.
But a run-off with the left will be
held next month because no single
candidate has received more than 50
percent of the vote.
At stake still are legislative seats,
which are distributed based on per-
centages of votes and will determine
whether the left is an effective oppo-
sition force or whether ruling conser-
vatives have free reign.
Election authorities, already the
target of harsh criticism because of
the chaotic way in which they handled
El Salvador's first post-war elections,
abruptly cut off access to computer-
ized tabulations of the vote yesterday.
That action further raised suspi-
cions about whether the process is
above board.
Although final results have not
been released, the two top vote-get-
ters, Armando Calderon Sol of the
ruling Nationalist Republican Alli-
ance, or Arena, and Ruben Zamora,
who heads a coalition that includes
the FMLN, were summoned before
the official Supreme Electoral Tribu-
nal yesterday to begin planning the
run-off.
Both candidates demanded the ir-
regularities that tarnished Sunday's
f
3
C
voting be corrected.
Gerson Martinez, a senior politi-
cal strategist for the FMLN, said ini-
tial tabulations of the vote showed
that many ballot boxes contained more
votes than is legally possible.
Under the awkward Salvadoran sys-
tem, no more than 400 voters can be
assigned to each ballot box. Yet several
boxes from the LaLibertad and Usulutan
departments had two and three times
that number, Martinez said.
"The Tribunal is doing everything
behind closed doors because they have
serious problems," Martinez said.
"There are serious doubts about the
work the Tribunal is doing. (It) is not
trustworthy."
In San Miguel, one of El
Salvador's largest cities, the left
claimed that a group of Arena hard-
liners absconded with 15 ballot boxes.
And in a private school in the capital,
100 envelopes full of votes never de-
livered were discovered, a govern-
ment prosecutor said.
Arena representatives dismissed
the problems and claimed the FMLN
was looking for "ghosts" to compen-
sate for its electoral losses.
The suspicions surrounding the
count follow serious irregularities,
delays and other systemic defects that
prevented tens of thousands of Salva-
dorans from voting on election day
and have cast doubt over the election
process, the first since U.N.-brokered
peace accords ended El Salvador's
12-year civil war in 1992. Prelimi-
nary results have given Calderon Sol
around 49 percent of the vote, with
about 25.5 percent going to Zamora.
Doing the Wing Thing
aR"STA" " 0 SPORTS OA
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