12 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 18, 1996
Bosnia's current president takes lead in election results,
The Washington Post
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Bosnia's
president, Alija Izetbegovic, took a commanding
lead in the race for the top vote-getter in Bosnia's
three-man presidency last night, leading Western
diplomats to predict Izetbegovic will chair
Bosnia's presidency for two more years.
Izetbegovic, a candidate from the increasingly
.Muslim-nationalist Party of Democratic Action,
was followed by an ultranationalist Serb candi-
date, Momcilo Krajisnik, who won the Serb part
of the race. Kresimir Zubak, who represented a
nationalist Croat party, was poised to win the
Croat section of the vote.
In announcing the result, Robert Frowick, the
chief of mission of the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe, which supervised
the vote, said Izetbegovic's lead "looks increas-
ing compelling."
The domination of Bosnia's election by
nationalist candidates representing political par-
ties that brought war to Bosnia was a strong indi-
cation that the country is moving toward a de
facto partition into three ethnically homoge-
neous states. All three candidates won about 80
percent of the votes cast by their respective eth-
nic groups.
Within a month, the three presidents are
supposed to meet and begin creating joint
institutions that are supposed to bind Bosnia
together after 3 1/2 years of war. An ethnical-
ly balanced national parliament; two local par-
liaments, one of Serbs and the other of
Muslims and Croats; a president for the Serb
part of Bosnia and local governments in the
Muslim-Croat federation were also elected in
Saturday's election. The results from those
races have yet to be released.
Izetbegovic's victory appears to have let the
United States off the hook, Western European
officials said. The American architects of the
Dayton peace accord that ended fighting here last
year envisaged that Izetbegovic would win the
chairmanship of the presidency. The peace agree-
ment was written so the top post in the presiden-
cy would not be passed on to another member
until the end of the first two-year term. This will
give lzetbegovic two years to rule a country that
he has fought almost four years to protect.
Monday night. OSCE officials had reported
that the race between Izetbegovic and Krajisnik
was close. Izetbegovic's political party had
threatened to reject the results of the elections if
he garnered fewer votes than Krajisnik.
Frowick said that with 85 percent of counting
stations reporting in Bosnia's Muslim-Croat fed-
eration, Izetbegovic had 629,439 votes. His clos-
est Muslim challenger was Haris Silajdzic,
Bosnia's former prime minister, who won
110,845 votes.
Krajisnik won 508,026 votes with 79 percent
of the counting stations reporting on the Serb
side of Bosnia's divide. Zubak garnered 245,047
votes among the Croats with 85 percent of the
stations reporting.
Netanyahu: Syria
pressing Israel with
troop build-up
Former official talks
of apartheid era
Analysts say moves
mean negotiations or
war
Los Angeles Times
JERUSALEM - Syria is redeploy-
ing troops toward Israeli-controlled ter-
ritory as a form of "psychological pres-
sure" to force Israel back to the bar-
gaining table with concessions, Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said yes-
terday.
Netanyahu has been reassuring
Israelis for days that they have nothing
to fear from the movement of several
thousand Syrian troops from Beirut to
the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon and along
the Syrian side of
Mount Hermon,
a peak on the
Golan Heights
territory that
Israel captured in
the 1967 Mideast .. .:
War.
Many Israeli
military analysts
agree that the
large Syrian rede- Netanyahu
ployment - the
first since Mideast peace talks began in
1991 - is muscle-flexing to warn the
right-wing Netanyahu government that
the alternative to serious negotiations is
war.
U.S. officials have appealed to both
Syria and Israel to use restraint and pre-
vent the situation from escalating,
while U.S. and Israeli intelligeice ser-
vices jointly monitor the Syrian troop
movements.
"The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces)
is taking all the necessary steps in
view of the Syrian moves," Netanyahu
said after briefing the Knesset (parlia-
ment) Foreign Affairs and Defense
Committee. "Bat it seems that the
Syrian intention is to put psychologi-
cal pressure on the Israeli people and
government so that they meet the
excessive promises the previous gov-
ernment made."
Netanyahu has asserted that, before
he was assassinated last year, Israeli
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin made a
secret, "hypothetical" promise to Assad
that he would return the entire Golan
Heights if all of Israel's conditions for
peace were met.
Netanyahu, however, opposes
Rabin's policy of trading occupied land
for peace with Israel's Arab neighbors
and wants to keep the captured Golan
Heights. Assad demands a total Israeli
withdrawal and return of all the cap-
tured territory.
Former Prime Minister Shimon
Peres, ousted by Netanyahu in May
elections, said he could shed little
light on the Syrian actions. "It is pos-
sible the Syrian military pressure
comes to speed up negotiations or
because they despair for negotiations.
Nobody knows," Peres told Israeli
television.
Netanyahu said he had sent mes-
sages to Assad through Egypt and the
United States that Israel would like to
resume peace talks but "as of this
moment, we have yet to receive a clear
answer from Syria about resuming
talks."
U.S. envoy Dennis Ross arrived in
Cairo yesterday to meet with Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak in search of a
formula for restarting the Israeli-Syrian
negotiations.
In Israel, Netanyahu insisted that
Assad's psychological warfare "is not
going to work." But Israeli journalists
said the Syrian leader had succeeded in
putting the country on edge.
"Assad wants tension and he's got
tension," said Zeev Schiff, military
affairs analyst for the daily newspaper,
Haaretz.
There has been some speculation in
the press that the Syrians could be rede-
ploying to respond to any future Israeli
offensive against the Hezbollah guerril-
las fighting to oust Israel from occu-
pied-Southern Lebanon with the aid of
Iran and Syria.
Netanyahu has said his Likud gov-
ernment would react more harshly to
Hezbollah attacks than the previous
Labor government did. Israeli mili-
tary officials say that Hezbollah
attacks have dropped about 50 per-
cent since Israel launched its
"Operation Grapes of Wrath" in
Lebanon last April, but some fear an
upsurge after Lebanese elections end
this week.
The Washington Post
PRETORIA, South Africa - His
bluish-grey suit is of non-descript cut.
His hair swoops to the side, as if to cover
a spot of bald. His demeanor is awk-
ward. His voice is flat. His thick glasses
rest on a deadpan face. Eugene de Kock
cuts a figure so unremarkable that he
could be any pencil-pushing civil ser-
vant in the old South Africa or the new
- except that this week he is talking,
and his words are drenched with blood.
He talks of killing children, blowing
up bodies, bombing church offices and
being congratulated for his deadly
endeavors by a racist government bent
on ruling, as one general allegedly put
it, for "a thousand years."
Convicted last month on 89 counts
stemming from his self-confessed
occupation as an assassin during the
apartheid era of white minority rule, de
Kock promised to sing before he was
sentenced. This week, in an extraordi-
nary series of allegations about dirty
tricks under white minority rule, de
Kock told a sentencing hearing of his
work as a leader of a covert assassina-
tion squad that implicated former
President Pieter Willem Botha as well
as Cabinet members and a collection of
generals from the 1980s.
These officials, de Kock said, either
ordered, knew about or congratulated
the covert operations, which represent-
ed some of the apartheid government's
most brutal deeds aimed at stamping
out the underground guerrilla struggle
waged by the black majority.
De Kock is the first high-level white
security official to be convicted of
apartheid-era crimes and to attempt to
lay ultimate responsibility at the feet of
high-level political and security offi-
cials. In fingering higher level officials,
he seemed to be trying to get a reduc-
tion in what promises to be a heavy sen-
tence.
Yesterday, he described a 1987 order
to bomb the Johannesburg headquarters
of the then-new Congress of South
Africa Trade Unions (COSATU), a
black labor federation. Initially, he
balked at the order, he recounted, then
asked who authorized it.
"From the highest," he said he was
told. "From where, the state president?"
he responded. The answer, he said, was-
yes.
Botha was president at the time; he
served from 1984 until 1989. After the
bombing, de Kock testified yesterday, the
minister of law and order, Adriaan Vlok,
congratulated him at a barbecue held for
members of the covert unit. Botha, who
is 80 years old, has kept a low profile
since he lost the presidency ini 1989 and
has refused to take part in the new South
Africa's process of truth-telling.
A truth commission, led by former
Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
is attempting to ferret out the facts of
apartheid-era human rights abuses by
offering amnesty to perpetrators like
de Kock and reparations to victims.
But on a separate track, prosecutions
like de Kock's are being heard in the
courts.
Voting your conscience
Estrella Prison inmate Jared Brady waits for Bob Dole to arrive as he lays
on his bunk, where he had hung a sign supporting the candidate: Brady
said he would vote for Dole If he could, because Dole is tougher on crime.
China tightens control over Internet use
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The Washington Post
BEIJING - Two weeks ago, a
Chinese student posted a message on
one of the computer bulletin boards that
link more than 200 Chinese universi-
ties, and the reverberations have not
stopped yet.
The student called for a demonstra-
tion today at the Japanese Embassy in
Beijing to protest Japanese actions con-
cerning five tiny East China Sea
islands, the Diaoyu Islands, possession
of which is disputed by China, Japan
and Taiwan.
Messages then spread by word of
mouth with computer speed; demon-
strations have taken place in Hong
Kong, and hundreds of thousands of
Chinese have signed a petition express-
ing their outrage. Alarmed, the govern-
ment banished a leader of the petition
drive from Beijing to remote Qinghai
Province last weekend, and it warned
students that they need permission
before they can hold a public demon-
stration.
Although permission might be need-
ed to protest on Beijing's streets, rules
of the road for expressing opinions on
the information highway are still being
worked out in China.
"The government was shocked by the
power of" domestic bulletin boards -
many of which are accessible via the
Internet -and by the outpouring of
support for the Diaoyu protest, said one
computer analyst here. While the
Chinese government shares popular
anger about Japan's nationalist attitude
toward the Diaoyu Islands, China's
leaders do not want ad hoc public
demonstrations organized on-line.
The incident spurred government
efforts to tighten control of computer
communication. Computer technicians
have been ordered to monitor the
Qinghua University computer bulletin
board and delete offensive articles and
messages. Anything outside "education
and research" -
politics, enter-
tainment or
humor -should
be erased. More control i
cian t
the whole
than a week ago,
the Beijing
University bul-
letin board was
shut down entire-
ly.
The new
moves against
computer bulletin
- Tang Mingfeng
President, International
Network Platform
w e e k s.
Typically, 50 to
150 computers
in China down-
loaded between
400 and 1,000
items from the
U.S. govern-
ment-run web
site every
week, and
those items
would be
other users once in
as the Voice of America (VOA), The
Washington Post, Los Angeles Times
and Cable News Network, among oth-
ers. A popular discussion forum
called China News Digest; run from
North America, was also blocked.
The effort to prevent certain for-
eign material from reaching Chinese
citizens has had a considerable effect.
Chinese access to VOA's web site has
dropped substantially in the past three
Ministry of Post and
Telecommunications' Chinanet, or the
Ministry of Electronics' Golden
Bridge, or the State Education
Commission's university-based ser-
vices. Those computer gateways, also
called "routers," typically have soft
ware that can check the source and
destination of information by examin-
ing its numerical "address."
To block a particular web site, the
person managing the router need only
program the machine not to allow data
to or from a specific address. That way,
when people connected to the Internet
via that computer try to call up the web
site, they are told that the computer
doesn't recognize the address.
But computer analysts here not
that while China can hinder the free
flow of information, it cannot stop it
completely.
"They can't do it," said Tang
Mingfeng, president of International
Network Platform, a Beijing computer
consulting firm. "They can control sev-
eral sites that are not friendly or are
pornographic.... But they can't control
the whole thing."
Kern, from VOA, notes that while the
Chinese government has hindered
access to the VOA web site; it hasn't
stopped it altogether.
Moreover, Kern said, many other
institutions, including foreign universi-
ties, copy the contents of the VOA web
site and make it available on the
Internet throug their own sites.
boards come just
retrieved by many
after China's government started
blocking access to dozens of foreign
World Wide Web sites. Using soft-
ware that blocks access to specifical-
ly designated sites at China's limited
number of computer gateways to the
Internet, the government kept thou-
sands of Chinese computer users in
Beijing from reading web sites run by
human rights groups, exiled political
dissidents, pornographic magazines,
the Taiwan government information
office, as well as Western media such
China. Two weeks ago, however, the
numbers dropped to 22 computers
downloading 218 items. Last week's
numbers were in, the same range.
"These figures ... convince me that
something is definitely interfering with
access from China," said Chris Kern, a
computer expert at VOA.
All companies seeking to market
Internet access services in China must
transmit all information through one
of a handful of computer gateways in
and out of the country, such as the
U II
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