12 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 14, 1994
Japan approves disp
humanitarian troop
Los Angeles Times
TOKYO - After an agonizing
two months of study, the government
yesterday finally approved sending
Japanese troops to provide humani-
tarian assistance to Rwandan refu-
gees in Zaire.
The dispatch will mark the fourth
time since the end of World War II
that Japan has sent troops overseas,
underscoring a new - although fum-
bling - commitment to involve its
people in foreign trouble spots.
Although Japan gave $13 billion
in support of the Persian Gulf war in
1991, it sent no personnel to the
Middle East while the fighting was
going on. Only after being stung by
foreign criticism of its "checkbook
diplomacy" did the country enact a
peacekeeping-operations law to sys-
---- tematize dispatches of non-combat
AP PHOTO troops to join U.N.-sponsored mis-
sions.
The dispatch of troops to Zaire
will be the first under Prime Minister
Tomiichi Murayama, chairperson of
the Socialist Party, which just two
years ago bitterly opposed passage of
the peacekeeping-operations law.
Japan announced July 25 that it
would provide $32.3 million in aid
for Rwandan refugees, but three dif-
ferent missions, one after another,
were sent to inspect refugee camps,
delaying for seven weeks the decision
to send troops.
Murayama's Cabinet decided to
assign 380 soldiers, airmen and mili-
tary doctors and nurses to transport
medicine and relief goods, dig wells
and provide 24-hour medical assis-
tance mainly at refugee camps in and
around Goma, Zaire. Another 100
troops in Japan will be assigned to
support the mission.
Although U.S. troops have left the
region and French troops are with-
drawing, about 800,000 refugees re-
)atchlng
s to Zaire
main in the camps near Goma where
tens of thousands have died since
fleeing Rwanda two months ago.
In August, Sadako Ogata, a Japa-
nese national who is the U.N. high*
commissioner for Refugees, asked
Murayamato dispatch the troops forsix
months, butthe Cabinet decided to limit
the mission to three months initially,
because of growing problems of secu-
rity in the camps. A decision will be
made later on whether to extend the
mission for an additional three months.
An advance party will leave Fri-
day, with the main body of troopse
departing Sept. 30.
Worries that the troops might in-
advertently get involved in fighting
remained so sensitive that the Cabi-
net spelled out precisely the weapons
the troops would be permitted to take
with them: 79 pistols, 163 rifles, and
one machine gun to be mounted on an
armored. It also forbade the troops to
enter Rwanda.
CA Zairian volunteer helps young children learn the alphabet yesterday on the shores of Goma, Zaire.
Y"
U.N. conference OKs population plan with partial
Los Angeles Times
f CAIRO, Egypt - Over a chorus of reservations from
Latin American and Islamic countries still troubled about
abortion and family issues, nearly 180 nations of the world
yesterday adopted a wide-ranging plan on global popula-
tion, the first in history to obtain partial endorsement from
the Vatican.
The plan, approved on the final day of the United
Nations population conference here, for the first time
;'attempts to limit the growth of the world's population, by
1"preventing it from exceeding 7.2 billion people over the
next two decades. It sets aside a focus on issues of
contraception and demographic quotas alone in favor of
broad new health care programs and the freedom for
families to choose how many children they have.
It establishes a controversial new category of "repro-
ductive rights" and emphasizes improving health, educa-
tion and living standards for women in the expectation
that they will then elect to have smaller families.
The Vatican, whose battle over the abortion issue
dominated the nine-day United Nations-sponsored con-
ference, elected not to support contentious chapters deal-
ing with abortion, extramarital sex and adolescent sex.
But the Holy See said there were enough positive
elements in the program of action - including its linking
of population to development, its stand against coercion in
population policies and its promotion of women's status
and the family - that the church wished for the first time
to join in an international consensus on population policy,
if only partially.-
The Roman Catholic Church has refused to join either
of the past two global population programs, adopted in
1974 in Bucharest, Romania, and in 1984 in Mexico City.
"Nothing that the Holy See has done in this consensus
process should be understood or interpreted as an endorse-
ment of concepts it cannot support for moral reasons,"
Archbishop Renato Martino cautioned.
"Especially nothing is to be understood to imply that
the Holy See endorses abortion or has in any way changed
its moral position concerning abortion or on contracep-
tives or sterilization nor on the use of condoms in HIV/
AIDS prevention programs."
A flock of nations shared the Vatican's objections but
elected nonetheless to simply record them and join in a full
consensus on the plan of action. The reservations - from
Vatican support
Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, the
United Arab Emirates, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salva-
dor, Guatemala, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Brunei.
Malta, Libya, Yemen and Iran-diminished the broad
consensus that U.N. officials had hoped for.
Several other nations, including Egypt, Pakistan;Al
geria, Afghanistan, Syria, Kuwait, Ghana, Jordan, Malay-
sia, Djibouti, Maldives, Indonesia and Tunisia, empha-
sized that the plan could be implemented only in the
context of their Islamic laws, religion and culture.
Timothy Wirth, U.S. undersecretary of statefot
global affairs and head of the U.S. delegation, Was
nonetheless upbeat. "The consensus was much broader
than anything we thought was going to be possible," he
said.
Investigators focus on
explanations for USAi
Newsday
An engine suddenly in reverse.
Unevenly applied air brakes. A loose
engine. Each of those official theo-
ries, safety experts say, are unlikely
as causes of last week's deadly
USAir crash.
But then, so is an accident un-
likely in which an airplane traveling
at 221 mph is apparently thrown so
suddenly out of control for no appar-
ent reason that it drops 5,800 feet in
just over 20 seconds and crashes with
such force that it and the 132 people
aboard virtually disintegrate.
So, unlikely or not, it is upon those
three possible explanations that fed-
eral safety investigators are focused
as they try to find out why Flight 427
out of Chicago never made it to Pitts-
burgh.
A key reason is inadvertent thrust
reversal: Investigators in Pennsylva-
nia have found physical evidence that
reverser of the Boeing 737's right
engine might have been partly de-
ployed. The reverser consists of two
cowls, or doors, that are operated hy-
draulically and move backward to
redirect the engine's rearward thrust
sideways and forward, slowing the
aircraft.
Pilots activate the reversers with a
lever attached to each throttle, says
Ted Selken, a retired Pan Am pilot
from Connecticut who flew 737s and
served for a time as a safety coordina-
tor for the Airline Pilots Association.
"You pull the throttles to idle posi-
tion, then reach forward a bit and
extend those other two levers." Nor-
mally, reversers are not used in flight,
at least not on the 737, he said.
Experts say a full deployment of
one reverser, perhaps the result of a
mechanical malfunction, could cause
a plane to roll, by slowing one side of
the aircraft more than the other. But,
3 possible
ir crash
in this case, it would be the right wing
that is slowed and that would cause a
roll to the right, not to the lefj a.
witnesses on the ground have repoted
and the flight recorder has confirmed.
"Af this moment, knowing -whal
we know, I wouldn't put much md-
ibility into the right thrust reverse]
being deployed," said Paul RoitA, a
former pilot from Greenwich, Conn..
who has flown737s and other aircraft
and now is an aviation consultant.
Some experts said, however, that
if the reverser had closed partially
the thrust would be redirected at a 90-
degree angle from the fuselage and
could cause the roll.
In any case, particularly at theii
relatively high altitude, the USAii
pilots should have been able to deal
with such a problem, byreducing the
engine's throttle and/or counteract-
ing the roll with ailerons and other
controls.
GOLD RING SALE
0 ! 0
Ill
WE'LL GIVE YOU 10 WEEKS.
i
I°t t 1 T . _ _. _. __ i_ i. ___ .
- /L