.Serbian police crack down on protesters NATION/WORLD The Michigan Daily - Monday, December 2, 1996 - 5 Los Angeles Times BELGRADE, Yug6slavia - In a bid to inthni- date the huge crowds marching daily against Sertian *esident Slobodan Milosevic, police arrested a group of demonstrators yesterday and state telMi- sion likened opposition leaders to Adolf Hitler. Issuing an unusually harsh condemnation of a protest movement it has virtually ignored, televi- son controlled by Milosevic accused demonstrators of using "pm-fascist hysteria and violence" to "introduce - terrorism" onto the treets of Belgrade. The commentary was Protest accompanied by repeated footage showing a small group of demonstrators Democratic pa destroying government property and a warning ftom police headquarters that it will no longer tol- erate illegal acts. All of the demonstrations, tech- nically speaking, have been illegal. The warning and the harsh language, coupled ith the first reports of arrests in the protests, ppeared to signal an imminent crackdown. Until yesterday, Milosevic had officially ignored the biggest-ever sustained protests against his authoritarian rule. Independent media were largely gagged and state-controlled media had mostly ignored the unrest. But as international pressure mounted - and as the largest crowd yet filled downtown Belgrade on Saturday - Milosevic apparently decided to up the ante. Dozens of busloads of police from southern Serbia were seen moving into Belgrade, which is both the Serbian and Yugoslav capital, last night. Whether or not Milosevic actually orders police to repress the next round of marches, yesterday's warnings chilled opposition passions. "They are trying to nibble away" at the protest movement, said Miodrag Perisic, vice president of the opposition Democratic Party. "They see the TrI trying to my (a8-t the iovement)E" - Miodrag Perisic rty vice president determination of the peo- ple who come out every night, and they are trying to play on the fears of the people." A smaller crowd than on previous days turned out yesterday in Belgrade as the protests - which began after Milosevic annulled the opposition's landslide elections in municipal elections - entered their second week. In an interview that occupied a third of the rightly newscast, Dragan Tomic, speaker of the Serbian parliament and a frequent proxy for Milosevic, labeled the opposition coalition "Zaedno" (Together) a collection of "pro-fascist grdups and ideologies" that simply could not accept defeat in the elections. Opposition leaders said five demonstrators, were rounded up by police and being held without access to lawyers or family members. Attorney Milojica Cvijovic said he was con- cerned they would be rushed through a quick judi- cial procedure that would send them to a remote prison within hours. GOP to raise opposition to Clinton plans Republican legislators say there will not be significant changes to the new welfare law WASHINGTON (AP) - Sen. Don Nickles, the Senate's second-ranked Republican, ruled out fundamentally chang- ing the new welfare law, as the White House wants. Even Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Democrats' leading expert on welfare, reluctantly agreed yesterday it won't hap- pen in the coming Congress. Nickles, appearing with Moynihan on NBC's "Meet thei Press' also said the GOP doesn't want first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton actively involved in the welfare debate. Clinton pledged when he signed the Republican-crafted welfare overhaul bill last August to fix aspects he said were too severe - particularly cuts in food stamp spending and benefits for legal immigrants. The White House is now considering a plan to restore $13 billion of the projected $54.6 billion in savings from the new law of over six years. The law shifts responsibility for welfare programs to the states and sets time limits for how long peo- pIe can remain on welfare rolls. "I think Congress is going to be very cool to make those changes," said Nickles (R-Okla.), the Senate Majority Whip. "I think you'll see technical corrections this year. But signif- icant reforming or undermining the welfare bill? No." Moynihan, asked if he believes Congress would go along with White House-proposed changes, responded, "No. None. Whoever said that?" The New York Democrat strongly opposed the legislation, predicting that ending welfare enti- tlements will significantly increase poverty in the United States. Moynihan urged Clinton to concentrate on protecting chil- dren, who he foresaw as the first victims of a smaller social safety net. "If the president can produce a national awakening about the condition of children and not get us into fussing about eli- gibility for food stamps, we may pull it off," Moynihan said yesterday. "If not, why, we have a calamity, I believe.' Clinton emphasized in his weekly radio address Saturday, "Now that we have ended welfare as we know it, let the change not be to have even more children in more abject poverty but to move people who can work into jobs.: On the House side, Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer (R-Texas) said last week that House Republicans would fight "with energy" any attempt by Clinton to alter the new law significantly. During the election campaign Clinton raised the prospect of Mrs. Clinton participating in welfare policy, and the first lady told Time magazine last month she plans to "speak out about welfare reform and write about it." "She has suggested she would like to see what is happen- ing on the ground out there, and that's good. I'm for it" Moynihan said. But Republicans, highly critical of Mrs. Clinton's lead role in promoting the White House's failed national health care legislation in the administration's first two years, have warned that the first lady would not be welcome in the welfare debate. AP PHOTO Belgrade students walk through the streets during a peaceful protest in Belgrade yesterday. Thousands of students continued to participate in a series of protests against Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Mai hovers on verge of nkruptcy, takeover, The Washington Post MIAMI - When the picture-postcard skyscrapers gleam in the warm winter sun, it's tough to imagine the specter of bankrupt- that looms over Miami this week. But in the aftermath of a sordid civic cor- ruption scandal that saw the city manager arrested on bribery and corruption charges, local and state officials have uncovered a massive financial mess. The city, which has an annual budget of about $200 million, pro- jects a deficit of at least $68 million in the fiscal year that ends next September. Money may run out as early as February. The city's once-strong bond rating has sunk to junk sta- tus. Some activists have gathered enough sig- natures to force a special election on whether the city should disincorporate and become just a part of Dade County. The mess has been thrown into the lap of Gov. Lawton Chiles (D), who aides say is likely to declare a state takeover of Miami in the next few days. Chiles has been forced to act because locd efforts to boost revenues and reduce spending have failed. The city could soon be under a financial control board or it might file for bankruptcy protection. How did it happen? Although corruption appears to have played a role, many of the underlying reasors are similar to those that have caused financial problems in other cities: an unwillingness to reduce city ser- vices in the face of falling revenues; a declin- ing downtown real estate market; difficulties in raising revenues; and ineffective oversight by elected politiciars. "This is a classit story for the history books of what mismaanagement and corrup- tion will do to a city," said Mayor Joe Carollo, who was elected in July following the death of his predecessor. "Before it's over, it will be a classic story that should be told to every municipal administrator so this will never happen again." Miami is a city of about 350,000 people, two-thirds of them Hispanic, many of them poor. It sits in the midst of affluent Dade County, which has almost 2 million residents. Those expensive condominiums full of afflu- ent retirees are outside its city limits. Despite the cluster of tall flashy office buildings downtown and a few wealthy waterfront neighborhoods, Miamians overall are the fourth-poorest city dwellers in the nation. Affluent Hispanic families have fol- lowed their white counterparts to the sub- urbs. The city has been left largely to the poorest Hispanics --the elderly and recent immigrants - and to native and immigrant blacks, who often are even poorer. But until recently, the city government was painting a rosy budget picture. "During the past 11 years, my foremost challenge as city manager has been to provide quality services to city residents while containing costs," then-manager Cesar Odio boasted in July. His goals for the year, he wrote in a summa- ry in the city budget, were to "maintain fiscal soundness and improve city reserves" and "maintain or improve the city's current A credit rating." 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