The Michigan Daily - Friday, September 9, 1994 - 11 ,Iliness of French president unsettles Paris political scene T ne wasiungton Post PARIS - Eight months before he is scheduled to leave the Elysee Pal- ace, an end-of-term mood is rapidly engulfing Francois Mitterrand's presidency, leaving French voters per- plexed and agitated about whether they will have to choose his successor sooner than expected. 0 As he recovers from his second operation for prostate cancer and un- dergoes debilitating chemotherapy treatment, Mitterrand appears to be paying closer attention to squaring his accounts rather than tending af- fairs of state. Close friends said he seems consumed by a quest to settle old scores, burnish his place in his- tory and map the country's future before his resources are exhausted In an interview with the conserva- tive daily Le Figaro, Mitterrand did little to quell rampant speculation that he may not finish out his term in offering some candid ruminations about his sense of mortality. "Everybody is aware of my ill- ness," he acknowledged. "I think it (cancer) will be obliging enough to allow me to complete my term. That's what I believe. Perhaps I may be wrong." The 77-year-old leader expressed profound regrets that he may not have enough time left to write books in which he wanted to record his reflec- tions for posterity and quoted the Bible: "You are dust and you will return to dust." In contrast to President Georges Pompidou, who kept his illness hid- den from the French public until his death in 1974, Mitterrand has taken pride in issuing regular medical bul- letins signed by his doctors. He has frequently promised that he will never allow his illness to interfere with car- rying out the duties of the presidency. When he skipped some of yesterday's ceremonies in Berlin marking the departure of Western Allied troops, for what a German spokesman described as "health rea- sons," Mitterrand's office issued a hasty denial and insisted that he had never planned to attend a commemo- ration of the 1948 Berlin airlift or the nighttime military parade. Meanwhile, Mitterrand has coop- erated with biographers exploring the most controversial phase of his life: his years in the 1930s as a rightist student and then during World War II when he served as a minor function- ary in the Vichy collaborationist re- gime headed by Marshal Philippe Petain before joining the anti-Nazi resistance. Revelations by thejournalist Pierre Pean in his book "A French Youth: Fran ois Mitterrand 1934-1947" have shocked and dismayed many of Mitterrand's leftist supporters. Even though rumors have circulated for years about Mitterrand's ambiguous sympathies, Socialist Party members were stunned to learn that their leader maintained a friendship with Rene Bousquet -- the former Vichy police chief who until his assassination last year was struggling to avoid trial for his role in rounding up Jews during the Nazi occupation. Mitterrand insists that his service in the Vichy regime, which awarded him its highest honor, was part of an elaborate effort to construct an alibi for his resistance work. But the expla- nations have sounded hollow to his supporters. Lionel Jospin, a former Socialist Party leader, said, "What I can't un- derstand are the links he (Mitterrand) maintained right through the '80s with right-wing personalities, particularly Bousquet." Mitterrand, while trying to set the record straight about his past, has also dedicated much of his time and en- ergy in the twilight phase of his presi- dency to influence the course of his country's political destiny. -p Al Cinton tries to calm South Korean fears 4 ,y Two-party system emerges as Japan plans special election about talks Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON - President Clinton moved personally yesterday to try to calm fears in Seoul about the deepening U.S. dialogue with North Korea, promising South Korea For- eign Minister Han Sung Joo "we'll be there with you," according to Han. The president's remarks, at the end of a White House meeting, were the latest and most significant in a series of efforts by the Clinton admin- *stration to reassure South Korea that its ties with the United States will not be harmed by the talks with Pyongyang. "The (South) Korean public needed a little assurance," Han told the Los Angeles Times in an inter- view after the White House meeting. "South Korean people have been used to an almost exclusive relationship With the United States over the past 0 years. It takes repeated reassur- ance to adjust to a new situation in which the United States talks to North Korea." Last month, U.S. and North Ko- rean negotiators in Geneva agreed on the outlines of a possible settlement of the dispute over North Korea's nuclear program, a dispute that began last year when North Korea threat- ned to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and refused to account for material that could be used to build a nuclear weapon. As part of a nuclear accord, the Clinton administration said it is pre- pared to move toward setting up liai- son offices for the United States in Pyongyang and for North Korea in The Washington Post OKAZAKI, Japan - In keeping with years of political tradition, the candidates wear white gloves on their hands, broad white ribbons across their chests, and flowing scarves wrapped fighter-pilot style around their heads. They bow deeply to each voter who passes by, and they carry folding fans to beat the heat during a long day on the stump. In style, at least, the campaign for Sunday's special election looks like every other Japanese political cam- paign for the last 50 years or so. But thepolitical setting is completely new. Political pros and pundits have declared that the election to fill a vacant seat in the upper house of Japan's national Diet, or parliament, constitutes the first page of a whole new chapter in Japanese politics. Unlike any previous election, the campaign is mainly a two-party con- test, with a reform-minded liberal and a status-quo conservative battling over issues and broad policy questions. ForAmericans, of course, that is what campaigns are supposed to look like. But in Japan, this is unprecedented. For four decades after World War II, Japan was a one-party democracy, with the Liberal Democratic Party, the most conservative of Japan's ma- jor parties, controlling every parlia- ment and electing every prime minis- ter. A clutch of smaller parties swam in its wake, never strong enough to challenge for power. But in the historic election last July, a coalition of reformers took advantage of the popular hunger for change and dumped the Liberal Demo- crats from power. Since then, control of the government has seesawed back and forth from the reform group to an ad-hoc coalition centered on the rem- nants of the old ruling party. Meanwhile, the Diet has passed a sweeping anti-corruption bill that will rewrite the nation's political map and force far-reaching change in election campaigns. The new political system was designed to turn parliamentary elections into issue-oriented two-party contests. And sure enough, that seems to have happened in Aichi Prefecture, an industrial area surrounding Nagoya, roughly midway between Tokyo and Osaka. The special election here is the first campaign for national office since the formation of the two warring coa- litions. There are seven candidates running for the vacant Diet seat, but the two dominant figures are a pair of political newcomers representing the two coalitions. The ad-hoc coalition that currently runs the national government - a marriage of political convenience between the old Liberal Democratic Party and its long-time adversary, the Socialist Party-is backing an Ameri- can-educated former U.N. official, Jiro Mizuno. Mizuno is a wooden campaigner but he has the conservative line down, pat. "We need stability to make progress," he told voters yesterday. "We can't race around changing ev- erything willy-nilly." The opposition, about 10 political groups from the anti-Liberal Democratic coalition, has unified around the candidacy of Yuzuru Tsuzuki, a veteran of Japan's elite federal bureaucracy. Tsuzuki, a forceful orator, hits hard on the issues that are central to the reform coali- tion, such as deregulation and con- sumers' and women's rights. To emphasize that they represent a break from the past, both candidates decline to declare what party they belong to. AP PHOTO Nine North Korean loggers who defected in August held a joint news conference yesterday and said more North Koreans would defect because of hunger and growing knowledge of the outside world. North Korea attempts 'to drive a wedge' between the U.S. and South Korea, one diplomat says. The scheme will fall, U.S. officials pledge. Washington, the first step toward es- tablishment of diplomatic relations. "They (the South Koreans) are really very worried," observed one Washington-based diplomat who fol- lows Korean affairs. "The State De- partment has been doing its best to reassure them, to say the talks with North Korea are just exploratory and that the liaison offices won't be opened now. But ever since the talks began, it has been consistent North Korean policy to drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul." The South Korean foreign minis- ter was hurriedly dispatched to Wash- ington this week, shortly after the Clinton administration announced that it was holding new, working-level talks with North Korea this weekend. South Korea has been urging the Clinton administration to make sure Washington's diplomacy with Pyongyang proceeds only as fast as Seoul's own, separate talks with its northern neighbor. 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