The Michigan Daily - Thursday, December 8, 1994 - 9
.Russian plan
for economy
won't work,
9Ai 9
official says
The Washington Post
MOSCOW -Russia's proposed economic plan
for 1995, already dismissed by parliament as too
austere, is in fact not tough enough to put the nation
on a road to recovery or to qualify for Western aid,
a senior official of the International Monetary Fund
said Tuesday.
Stanley Fischer, first deputy managing director
of the IMF, cast doubt on Russia's chances of
*qualifying for up to $12 billion in IMF loans that
Moscow is counting on to get through next year.
"The arithmetic doesn't add up to a program
that would work at a low inflation rate," Fischer
told reporters after meeting with senior govern-
ment officials here. "Some additional cuts or addi-
tional revenue are needed."
The prospects for Russian reform next year are
particularly vital because parliamentary elections
are set for December 1995 and presidential elec-
tions for six months later. If average people by then
see few benefits from reform, they are more likely
to vote for authoritarian and ultranationalist candi-
dates, many analysts say.
Fischer's comments followed apessimistic U.N.
report Monday, which forecast growth in East
European economies but continued stagnation in
Russia and most of the former Soviet Union. The
U.N. Economic Commission report said Russia
needs a "radical, coherent and credible economic
program," but it questioned whether the govern-
ment has a wide enough political base to win
support for such a program.
Three years after abandoning communism,
Russia still wavers between radical reform and
fidelity to old-style command economics. There
has been progress in some areas, such as
privatization, but also falling production, growing
unemployment, roller-coaster inflation and blos-
soming corruption.
A government pledge last fall to stabilize the
0 economy in order to attract investment brought
monthly inflation rates as low as 5 percent this
summer, compared with nearly 30 percent last
year. But then a reversion to old habits - handing
out credits and tax exemptions to favored factories
and industries - brought the monthly rate back to
15 percent in October and 14 percent last month.
In the face of resurgent inflation, and a resulting
plunge in the value of the ruble, President Boris
Yeltsin and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin
again vowed to finally stabilize the economy by
France asks for
troop withdrawal
Bosnia negotiations called futile
The.Washington Post
PARIS -France announced yes-
terday it has asked the United Nations
and NATO to make detailed plans to
withdraw the 23,000 international
peacekeeping troops from Bosnia
because the situation there is becom-
ing unbearable and mediation efforts
have proved fruitless.
Declaring other options ex-
hausted, Foreign Minister Alain Juppe
told the National Assembly that the
presence of U.N. forces, including
nearly 4,000 French soldiers, has be-
come so hazardous and peace negotia-
tions so futile that there is no other
choice but to pullout the peacekeepers.
"The decision we are being forced
into will mean war, more unhappi-
ness and more suffering," Juppe said.
He warned that removing the U.N.
forces would be "a high-risk opera-
tion that will require reinforcing troops
on the ground first" and could end up
"setting the Balkans ablaze tomorrow."
Juppe's strong comments, al-
though not the first suggestion of a
French pullout, were seen as a mea-
sure of European concern over pos-
sible changes in U.S. policy from the
Republican-dominated Congress set
to take office nextmonth, particularly
a proposal to exempt the Bosnian
government from the international
arms embargo on the Balkans. The
French ultimatum also seemed de-
signed as a final attempt to pressure
Bosnia's warring parties to agree to a
lasting truce before any U.S. action
on lifting the embargo, which France
believes would intensify the war.
Shortly afterJuppe spoke in Paris,
British Foreign Secretary Douglas
Hurd told Parliament in London that
his government hopes the peacekeep-
ers can remain in Bosnia but that
planning for their possible withdrawal
is moving ahead following the latest
reports of hostage-taking and other
forms of harassment.
U.S. officials traveling with Sec-
retary of State Warren Christopher in
the Middle East said British and
French officials had indicated these
moves during the past couple of days,
at both a NATO meeting in Brussels
and the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe in Budapest.
The U.S. officials described the al-
lies' declarations as an effort to pres-
sure the Serbs into signing a peace
accord with the Muslim-led Bosnian
government. They said they expect
no imminent withdrawals.
The conservative French govern-
ment recently has seemed eager to
move ahead with a withdrawal of its
forces from Bosnia so it could be
concluded well in advance of a presi-
dential election scheduled next
spring. French military sources said
the cabinet's discussions have fo-
cused on ways to avoid further casu-
alties.
More than 300 U.N. peacekeep-
ers are being detained by Bosnia Serb
forces as "human shields" to thwart
further punitive air strikes by NATO
warplanes. Meanwhile, a U.N. request
to withdraw up to half of the 1,200
Bangladeshi soldiers stuck in the
Bihac enclave of northwestern Bosnia
was held up when rebel Croatian
Serbs, who control access from the
north and the west, refused to provide
clearance.
A British army foot patrol came
under Serb fire yesterday in the east
Bosnian Muslim enclave of Gorazde,
and a U.N. observation post near the
town of Kalesija in northeastern
Bosnia was nearly demolished by Serb
mortar fire.
The United Nations
and NATO may
withdraw 23,000
peacekeeping troops
from Bosnia.
"We are at a critical point. We
have far too many soldiers who .we
are not able to supply with food, fuel
and equipment," said U.N. spokes-
man Paul Risley. The U.N. command
"is faced with very stark choices re-
garding their future ability to operate."
Theprospectof an imminent with-
drawal of the U.N. forces in Bosnia
just as winter starts could have devas-
tating effects on Bosnia's Muslim-
led government. It woulddeprive most
civilians of vital food aid and leave its
army vulnerable to further attacks
from Serb rebels, who have had an
overwhelming advantage in weaponry
throughout the 32-month-old war.
NATO ambassadors in Brussels
have ordered military authorities to
ask member states how many troops
they would be willing to provide for a
rescue operation to extract U.N. forces
from Bosnia under hostile conditions.
NATO military sources estimate that
at least 20,000 extra troops could be
needed to help remove the U.N. troops
over a period that could last several
months.
The United States would be called
upon to provide at least half the new
forces to assist in the withdrawal,
NATO officials said. The Clinton
administration has decided in prin-
ciple to dispatch U.S. ground forces
to help in such an operation if re-
quested by the United Nations, offi-
cials in Washington said last week.
Although withdrawal is far from im-
minent, an official explained, the is-
sue has taken on more urgency be-
cause of the deteriorating situation in
Bosnia.
Last week the United States sent
about 2,000 Marines and sailors
aboard the USS Nassau and two other
vessels to stand by in the Adriatic Sea
for a possible rescue mission. France
also has dispatched the aircraft car-
rier Foch from its Mediterranean base
at Toulon for possible service in a
rescue operation.
AP PHOTO
Two elderly Chechens hang a portriat of Dzhokhar Dudayev, leader of the separatist Chechen Republic,
on a wall of a house in downtown Grozny, the Chechen capital.
cutting spending and raising revenue. They also
promised to abolish export quotas for oil and gas, a
politically risky step but one that Western econo-
mists say is essential to put Russia on a free-market
footing.
Chernomyrdin's draft 1995 budget, when of-
fered to parliament recently, did indeed provoke
howls of outrage from the military and other lob-
bies that claim they cannot survive without more
government support. The State Duma, or lower
house, cocked a sympathetic ear to the lobbies,
shelved the budget draft and agreed to develop its
own version.
The government claims its budget would bring
the deficit down to 8 percent of the gross national
product, the economy's total output for the year.
But Fischer said IMF analysts believe it would
more likely lead to a deficit of 10 percent of GNP-
and that Russia should be shooting for at most a 6
to 7 percent deficit.
Suicidal man phones radio personality Stern
Stern keeps him
occupied on morning
talk show; police
nab him before he
* jumps from bridge
Los Angeles Times
NEW YORK - Shock radio per-
sonality Howard Stern, contacted by
cellular phone by a man threatening
to leap from the George Washington
Bridge here, kept the man occupied
during his morning show until police
could seize the would-be jumper yes-
terday.
"Once I determined this was a
jumper, I said I have to keep this man
laughing ... until the cops get there,"
Stern told a news conference.
"Who better to help someone who
is psychologically disturbed than
Howard Stern, who himself is psy-
chologically disturbed?" he joked as
police offered congratulations.
Police said Emilio Bonilla, 29,
walked to the middle of the bridge,
climbed over a railing and called Stern.
"Let me thank you for calling in,"
Stern told Bonilla. "I always wanted
to help someone who was about to
jump off a bridge."
As a national radio audience lis-
tened, they spoke for several minute#
while Bonilla threatened to plunge
into the Hudson River.
"I mentioned the fact I had a
movie coming out and he would miss
it if he would die," Stern said. "It
caused him to laugh. Butit also caused
him to say, 'Hey, wait a second. Maybe
I should stay around for the movie.'
At another point, Stern told
Bonilla, "You may think life's a bed
of roses, but it's not" and pleaded
with him to get "tuned into anything
is
::. }: .
~: ~ ric evaluation. He was charged with
cocaine possession and reckless en-
dangerment.
A spokesman for the Port Au-
thority of New York and New Jersey,
which operates the span, said there
was no evidence that what occurred
on the bridge was a hoax.
At the beginning, Stern wondered
whether the call was a joke and he
asked listeners on the bridge, which
links New York City with New Jer-
sey, to honk their horns. One driver
beeped his horn, verifying the seri-
ousness of the situation.
"There is tremendous pressure on
AP PHOTO an individual when someone is plead-
host on ing with you to give them a reason to
n live," Stern said at his news confer-
tes. ence. "Through my calm, through my
collected way, I was able to keep my
and was wits about me and, of course, save the
asychiat- day."
Howard Stem shows a sketch of a jumper who called the talk showr
a cellular phone and threatened to jump from the George Washingtor
Bridge. Police grabbed the man after Stern calmed him for five minut
in life" with "a little hobby or some-
thing."
Port Authority Police Lt. Stanley
Bleeker, who was listening to the drama,
sent officers to the scene. They found
that Helen Trimble of Brooklyn, an-
other listener, had stopped her car and
had wrapped Bonilla in a bear hug.
"I heard this man talking saying
he was looking at a police helicop-
ter," Trimble said. "...I was looking
on the bridge for a man talking on a
cellular phone. He was easy to pick
out...."
"I stopped my car in the middle of
the bridge, and put a hug on him.
...He was shaking and he was talking
to you and his face would lighten
every once in a while," she later told
Stern.
"I don't know what you were say-
ing to him. But he would lighten up
and slowly, slowly, he started to relax
a little bit more. ..."
Police said that Bonilla, a New
Yorker, was very distraught
taken to a local hospital for p
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