NATION/WORLD
*Israelis
rally for
*pace
Los Angeles Times
TEL AVIV, Israel - Singing peace
songs and cheering the leaders of the
Israeli left, thousands of demonstrators
gathered here yesterday to denounce
the hard-line policies of Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and
voice support for the faltering Middle
East peace process.
In an odd juxtaposition, many of
the peace supporters walked to the
rally past a nearby open-air display
of military equipment, watching
delighted children climb on top of
tanks in the square where Yitzhak
Rabin, the late Israeli prime minister
and peace architect, spoke last
November just before he was assassi-
nated.
But the rally, held against the
*backdrop of a crisis-like Israeli-Arab
summit in Washington to try to
resuscitate the peace process, easily
outdrew the military exhibit. Police
estimated the crowd at the peace
demonstration at 20,000, more than
double the number of those who
stopped Tuesday to see the tanks and
other military vehicles.
David Reeb, an artist and teacher
from Tel Aviv, said he came to the
rally to help show Netanyahu that
thousands still support the peace
process with the Palestinians, despite
the violence that spread last week
throughout the West Bank and Gaza
Strip and into predominantly Arab
east Jerusalem.
Three fhore people, including two
Palestinians and one Israeli, were
reported yesterday to have died of
wounds suffered in last week's fight-
ping, bringing the death toll to 74 - 59
Palestinians and 15 Israelis, the latter
all soldiers. More than 1,000 Israelis
, '4004
The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, October 2, 1996 - 7
Afghan rebels
rt <2 shake up neighbors
Los Angeles Times
MOSCOW - The deadly triumph of
Taliban rebels in the Afghan capital,
Kabul, has frightened Russia and for-
mer Soviet republics in Central Asia,
prodding nervous leaders who once
backed a Communist regime there to
call yesterday for action to halt the
spread of bloodshed and Islam at their
borders.
With 25,000 Russian troops
deployed along the volatile Tajik-
Afghan frontier, the Kremlin has long
considered events in the Central Asian
country -
which it tried-
and failed to We are
conquer -- to
be of the most neighbors
serious, direct
political inter- cannot be
The Soviet Union invaded
Afghanistan in 1979 and fought a proxy
Cold War against U.S.-armed rebels.
The Kremlin's troops were forced to
withdraw almost a decade later when
former Soviet leader Mikhail
Gorbachev's policy of "glasnost"
(openness) brought this country's
involvement and its staggering losses to
light.
Although authorities in Moscow all
have denounced the summary execu-
tion last week of Najibullah, the former
Afghan Communist leader, some
.i
direct
... and we
indifferent
Russians with
first - hand
involvement
in the Soviet-
era occupa-
tion have
been urging
renewed, if
more limited,
intervention.
R u s s i a n
Security
Council chief
AP PHOTO
Some of the tens of thousands of peace activists cheer during a rally held in downtown Tel Aviv yesterday, calling for Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to implement the Oslo peace accords.
est.
fn M dI44
and Palestinians were wounded in the
fighting.
"Many of us are really confused and
concerned' said Reeb, who carried a
hand-painted sign urging the govern-
ment to dismantle Jewish settlements
in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
"Things that took so long to put
together seem to be falling apart so
rapidly. We need to stop the deteriora-
tion and move forward."
In three months, added Elisheva
Lernau, 83, of the Tel Aviv suburb Bab
Yom, Netanyahu "has succeeded in
almost killing the peace process,
which took three years to create. I
don't believe this government wants
peace at all."
An opinion poll published yesterday
showed that an overwhelming majority
of Israelis want the peace negotiations
with the Palestinians to continue. In
the survey by the Maariv newspaper,
79.5 percent of those polled said they
favored putting the existing Israeli-
Palestinian peace agreements into
effect.
Yaron Ezrahi, a Hebrew University
political scientist, urged the prime
minister to rethink his policies, saying,
"I think Netanyahu should know that
he does not have the Israeli public
behind him to escalate a conflict with
the Palestinians.",
At the demonstration in a central Tel
Aviv park, speaker after speaker called
on Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing
Likud Party, - to return from
Washington with a concrete agreement
with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat,
and a new agenda for peace.
Otherwise, warned Yossi Sarid, a mem-
ber of the Israeli parliament from the
leftist Meretz party, "we will concen-
trate our efforts only on one thing:
Bring (Netanyahu) down, bring him
down!"
Many at the rally, organized by
the group Peace Now, also stressed
their anger and feelings of betrayal
over reports that a number of
Palestinian police officers fired their
weapons at Israeli soldiers during the
fighting, causing most of the Israeli
deaths.
"I feel furious about what the
Palestinian _police did," said Shai
Foguel, who attended the rally with his
wife and daughter, 3. "But we are not
as naive as the right-wing has tried to
make us. We know that these people,
many of them, were former terrorists.
We know that maybe they didn't
change so much. The shooting they did
is a real problem now, but we have to
go forward."
Several said they hoped the meet-
ings in Washington could accomplish
what suddenly seems impossible,
bridging the growing gulf of mistrust
between the two sides and salvaging
the peace process.
Reeb said he, too, would like to be
hopeful. "The alternative," he said, "is
just too scary."
Four Russian IZ Su ni a
border guards
have been killed
in the past few
days by Afghan-
based Tajik rebels emboldened by their
Taliban allies' success in overrunning
Kabul.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin, from
his sick bed in the Central Clinical
Hospital here, urged the 12-member
Commonwealth of Independent States
to convene a summit to discuss a con-
certed response to the violence that the
former Soviet states consider a threat to
their own security.
Neither a date nor time was proposed
for the summit, but other Russian and
regional leaders have also weighed in
with deep concern about the possible
spread of Islamic fundamentalism into
their countries.
The Taliban takeover of Kabul has
also resurrected a complicated, divisive
political matter for Russian politicians,
who had a hand in the Kremlin's unsa-
vory Afghan policy that instigated the
irrepressible civil war.
situation."
- Zafar Saidov
Tajik spokesperson
Alexander Lebed, a decorated veteran
of the Afghan conflict, insisted to jour-
nalists here that Russia provide "the
necessary material and financial assis-
tance" to Afghan forces resisting the
Taliban Islamic movement. "If the
Talibs, supported by Pakistan, reach the
borders of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan,
part of whose territory, including
Bukhara, they want to annex, they will
sweep away Russian border posts and
open the road to the north across the
plains," he ominously predicted.
In Dushanbe, the Tajik capital, a
spokesperson for President Emom-'i
Rakhmonov warned of "serious reper-
cussions" for Tajikistan and said the
movement of the rebels northward was
cause for alarm. "We are direct neigh-
bors, with a border of over 1,500 kilo-
meters (almost 1,000 miles) and we
cannot be indifferent to such a situa-
tion," Zafar Saidov told journalists.
Mideast summit a far cry from 1993
-Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON -- The differences
*could not be greater between the cur-
rent Middle East summit and the
euphoric meeting of Arab and Israeli
leaders here almost exactly three years
ago that launched the now-troubled
peace process.
The first was a celebration that float-
ed on a giddy feeling of hope and suc-
cess. The current
meeting is spat-
in blood and
tered Ne
spawned by
despair. A na
The first was a
sun -- s p 1 ash e d
media event that unfolded on the White
House south lawn and crowned by the
handshake between old enemies. This
time participants met warily far from
public view in the ground floor White
House library that once served as a
laundry room. Only sketchy informa-
*tion of events was available to the news
media.
Yet, for all the depth of these differ-
ences, there is one significant constant:
President Clinton again stands in the
SUMMIT
Continued from Page 1
"Definitely it was clear the American
*side wants ... to set a final date. We were
saying it is impossible," said Natan
Sharansky, Israel's trade minister and a
member of Netanyahu's delegation here.
White House officials last night
declined to comment on Clinton's talks
with Netanyahu, but did not dispute
Sharansky's description of the U.S.
position on Hebron.
Sharansky also said Israel had ruled
out closing the tunnel in East
Jerusalem, but Israeli officials said later
that Netanyahu couldn't prevent Arafat
from raising that issue in their face-to-
face talks. Jordan has proposed letting
an international commission seek a
solution regarding the tunnel.
In the talks at Blair House, across
Pennsylvania Avenue from the White
House, Secretary of State Warren
Christopher and chief U.S. Middle East
negotiator Dennis Ross met senior offi-
13
middle, a powerful host, trying to nudge
old enemies to talk, not fight. Although
aides characterize Clinton's decision to
convene the meeting as a high-risk move
in the heat of an election campaign, there
is, in fact, little for Clinton to lose and
potentially much for him to gain.
To be-sure, the president is unlikely
to match the political bounce he won
from coaxing the late Israeli Premier
Yitzhak Rabin to
grip the extended
NS hand of his coun-
try's once-bitter
V SSadversary, Palestine
Authority President
Yasser Arafat. But
merely braking the slide toward chaos
would seem to be enough to declare the
summit worthwhile and add to Clinton's
prestige as a president engaged in
defusing world problems.
Even if the current talks collapse in
recrimination and the participants go
home with nothing but new acrimony,
the danger to Clinton seems minimal,
analysts said.
"The risks are in the region and to the
peace process and they are real. But the
risk for Clinton isn't that great," said
William Quandt, professor of govern-
ment and foreign affairs at the
University of Virginia and a Middle
East specialist, who served on the
National Security Council during the
Nixon and Carter administrations. "The
worst that can happen is that the Middle
East stays on the boil, and that isn't
going to be disastrous for Clinton."
Also, expectations for this crisis
summit are low, They have been kept
that way by Clinton's staff to minimize
his political exposure and make any
achievement, however modest, look
more momentous. Indeed, managing to
get Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu to meet over a
three-hour lunch yesterday was enough
to fulfill the White House's minimalist
definition of success.
"in our view, it was very, very funda-
mental to this process to see if we could
not get these two leaders to re-engage to
begin to address the substance that
divides them and we believe we've
made a positive step in that direction
today," White House spokesperson
Mike McCurry told reporters yesterday.
As Clinton met with the Middle East
leaders, Republican challenger Bob
Dole charged from the sidelines that the
White House session was nothing more
than a "photo op." In a statement, Dole
said: "Our friend Israel must not be
asked to make concessions as a means
of restoring order."
At his White House news briefing,
McCurry initially declined to respond
to Dole, then said: "I can understand
(Dole's) frustration in wanting to try to
make some news today, but I'll leave his
comments and try to stay focused on
the work the president's doing."
Clinton's role is one of the few con-
stants that run through the two summits.
The new Israeli leader, Netanyahu, is a
reluctant, deeply suspicious supporter
of the peace process launched by Rabin
three years ago and his relationship
with Arafat was virtually nonexistent
before yesterday's meeting.
For Arafat, embarrassed by the slow
pace of implementing the agreement
that is aimed at giving Palestinians
greater autonomy, even showing up for
yesterday's meeting was politically dif-
ficult.
Preparing for a career in academe?
Pearingfr a career in academe?
Plan to attend the......
Academic Job Search
Symposium
Friday, October 4, 1996 (8:30am - 3:00pm)
Michigan Union
1
. 00
tat
t
r
k0
Sessions include: 0
0%L
cials from the three delegations. Among
the most sensitive issues, a senior
administration official said, would be the
drafting of a statement describing what
progress had been made at the summit.
Continuing the U.S. effort to keep expec-
tations low, the official said it is possible
this statement would avoid specifics, and
talk of the need for discussion.
The issue of how firmly to press
Israel to move the peace process for-
ward is the subject of political contro-
versy in the United States. Republicans
have pointedly warned Clinton against
putting undue pressure on Israel to
accommodate Palestinian grievances,
and GOP presidential nominee Bob
Dole declared Monday, "Our friend
Israel must not be asked to make con-
cessions as a means of restoring order."
Campaigning in Ohio yesterday,
Dole accused Clinton of conducting a
"photo-op foreign policy."
Clinton has said he does not want to
cast blame or apply pressure in the dis-
pute, but instead wants merely to facil-
itate renewed dialogue.
FEE
Continued from Page 1
be open to everyone."
But some members said raising the
student fee at the request of only a
handful of student groups would set a
dangerous precedent.
"As an assembly member, I think it is
a good idea to put it on the ballot and let
the students decide," said LSA Rep.
Andy Schor. "As a student, I hope other
students do their jobs and vote this down
- otherwise we'll have every group on
campus asking for an increase and soon
the student fee will be like $1 million."
Members also questioned whether
the assembly would lose its power to
choose which student groups should
receive funding.
LSA Rep. Dan Serota, who drafted
the ballot question, said that even if the
ballot question passes, MSA will still
retain some power over the allocation
of the additional revenue.
"The assembly will still have some
say about how these two groups will
spend this money," he said. "This ballot
question empowers both the students
and the student government."
Students said they had mixed feelings
about paying an increased student fee.
"I suppose I am in favor of paying
$1.50 for a good cause," said LSA
senior Carrie Smith. "It won't make
that much of a difference on my
$25,000 tuition bill."
Others said making the entire student
body pay for an increase that would
benefit the members of two groups is
not a good idea.
"I wouldn't be in favor of an increase
at all - $2.69 is enough," said
Engineering senior Wade VandenBosh.
"It is unfair to make the entire popula-
tion pay for something that will benefit
only 4,000 students."
Project Serve is a student-run
University department that works with
about 4,000 students, faculty and staff.
It sponsors programs such as
Community Plunge and Alternative
Spring Break.
" Academic Job Search Strategies
" Alternatives Within Academe
" International Students: Job Search Strategies and Issues
" Women in Higher Education
" Grant Proposal Writing
Pre-Register today!
" Registration materials available at CP&P or your department
" Pre-register by September 25 to assure space in your preferred sessions
" For additional information visit or call CP&P at 764-7460
Co-Sponsored with:
Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Sti
Association of Multicultural Scientists
Center for the Education of Women
Medical School
Medical School Graduate Council
School of Nursing
School of Public Health
School of Social Work
Students of Color of Rackham
Career Planning Plac ent
Dix ision of Student Affair
- 1. _, m"' _-.. m-."' -r U
114
7 11
iu
a