-- The Michigan diy - Tuesday, March 31, 1998 . }EE ontnued from Page1 he letter has been mailed. "For us, this doesn't seem right. You lon't have a problem with us. When we nail the letter, you have a problem with he secretary of state" Law first-year stu- lent Jackson Lewis said. MSA officials replied with frustration o the Law students' stated intention of vithdrawing from the proceedings. LSA sophomore Bram Elias, co-chair >f the Student Regent Task Force, said hat while the Law students spent a few .ours drafting the letter, the complaint vould mean much more work for MSA. Envoy ends talks with Israeli, Palestinian officials in stalemate See More. Spend Less. Specialfares for student& and facultyfrom DER Travel Services - , mmf, JERUSALEM (AP) - U.S. envoy Dennis Ross was left empty-handed yesterday after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused a U.S. proposal that he with- draw troops from 13 percent of the West Bank. The American mediator's fourth and final meeting with Netanyahu ended last night with no deal. He was to depart Israel early today. Earlier, Ross suggested American patience was running out and the Clinton administration would not keep up the mediation effort indefinitely. "At some point we have to bring this effort to a conclusion;" he said. David Bar-Illan, a top adviser to Netanyahu, said the prime minister "flatly rejected the idea of a 13 percent withdrawal." But Bar-Illan insisted that "progress was made" in the meet- ings with Ross. "We believe there is a much greater understanding of our position on the part of the Americans," he said. Palestinian Planning Minister Nabil Shaath said it was too early to say whether Ross' mission had failed. "Each side pre- sented their conditions and perceptions of the minimum things they can accept"he said. In the West Bank, where frustration is growing over Washington's inability to break the deadlock in the peace talks, Palestinians chanting "Death to America!" stoned Israeli troops. Israeli troops fired tear gas and metal pellets to disperse hundreds of protesters in the West Bank towns of Bethlehem, El Bireh and Ramallah. Several Palestinians were injured. Palestinian police, meanwhile, rounded up several support- ers of the Islamic militant group Hamas to question them about the explosion of a car reportedly rigged with 110 pounds of TNT. The car bomb, apparently intended for use in an attack in Israel, went off prematurely Sunday in an industrial zone of the West Bank town of Ramallah, killing one Palestinian. The blast reduced the car to a ball of twisted metal and leveled the garage it was hidden in. A gun and a hand grenade were found nearby, Israel's Channel Two television said. Ross was meeting with Netanyahu to try to get his backing for Washington's proposal that Israel withdraw from 13 per- cent of the West Bank in several stages over 12 weeks. The Palestinians would meet each stage with new efforts to pre- vent terror attacks in Israel. Bar-Illan said Israel made no counter-proposal to the American proposal of 13 percent. Netanyahu says Israel can give up no more than 9 percent of the West Bank, and has denied Israeli media reports that he had made a compromise offer of 11 percent. The prime minister and Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai explained to Ross in detail why Israel cannot give up more territory, Bar-Illan said. But Bar-Illan said the meetings focused largely on Israel's demands that the Palestinians do more to combat terrorism, and that a concrete mechanism to verify those measures be established. Ross said the stalemate in the peace talks was beginning to "diminish the hopes that people have for seeing a very differ- ent Middle East and for building and achieving peace." Palestinian leaderYasser Arafat blamed Israel for the dead- lock and asked the United States to use "its international and regional weight" to find a solution, The peace process has languished because of "the obsti- nate positions and policies of the Israeli government, which contradict the spirit of peace" Arafat said in a speech in Rotterdam, Netherlands. AROUND THE NATIOCN Filibuster stops campaign finance bill WASHINGTON- From the start, House Republican leaders merely wan ed to put the issue of campaign finance reform to rest as quietly as possibl Instead, their attempts to do so have succeeded - far more than the painsta ing efforts of the legislation's sponsors - in pumping new drama into th debate. Because the leading bipartisan proposal is trapped in a Senate filibuster, there i tle chance that a major campaign finance bill will become law this year. But the tactics of GOP leaders - which lawmakers say were aimed at fulfillin promises to address the issue without risking passage of legislation they do not wai - have triggered a ferocious response from both Republican and Democratic spo sors, drawing renewed attention to the issue and assuring that it will not go away qu etly. "Suddenly it's surfaced as a hot-button issue," said Rep. Sherwood Boehlert ( N.Y.). First, the leaders drafted an alternative of their own but postponed action on it th past Thursday when it appeared they would lose key procedural votes and open t way for passage of the bill they oppose. Then, a day later, they reversed course at scheduled votes for this week under procedures that appeared destined to p gridlock on major changes. Unlimited rail travel in 17 countries. From Unlimited rail travel From in the most popular $216 European countries. . - * - . 5 rail travel days in one month. Airfares at low "consolidator" rates. DER Travel Services on the web at www.dertravel.com NADER Continued from Page 1 he views citizen action as a form of human happiness. "Striving for justice is a way of striving for a society to give more and more people happiness - it's the great work of human beings on Earth;' Nader said in an interview before the speech. But the role of citizens has been clouded in recent years by a society that is "growing up corporate," Nader said. The persuasiveness of corpora- tions' influence in the everyday lives of U.S. citizens is not widely recog- nized. But the levels of crime, vio- lence and regulation by corporations far exceed the publicized street crimes, violence and government reg- ulation, Nader said. "It's a government of the Exxons, for the General Motors and by the DuPonts," Nader said. Nader asked the audience members to learn about the courage displayed by par- ticipants in previous social movements. "There were no other jobs available if (the protesters) were fired," Nader said. "They put it all on the line for col- lective bargaining for a decent standard of living." Besides learning history, students need to be well educated in civics so they can "enjoy civic action instead of having to be pushed into it by civic duty," Nader said. Nader became widely recognized as the founder of the national con- sumer movement when he published "Unsafe at Any Speed," a best-selling book that exposed General Motor s' unsafe production practices. He signed his recent book "No Contest: Corporate Lawyers and the Perversion of Justice in America" at the theater last night. In addition to his publications, Nader has founded more than 30 non- profit public interest organizations and campaigned for U.S. president twice, most recently in 1996 as the Green Party nominee. Rackham first-year student Jason Weller said Nader has been one of his heroes for years. "I've always been impressed by the things he's advocated for from con- sumer protection, to environmental pro- tection, to sustainable development," Weller said. LSA first-year student Charles Luftig said Nader addressed several important social issues, but he mis- represented many economic issues. "Corporations do more good than (Nader) makes it out to seem," Luftig said. "He talks about the growing inter- dependence and globalization and how that's hurting us as citizens, but these multi-national corporations actually do improve development of third-world countries, for example." Cigaettes said to be s er than in past ST. PAUL, Minn. - An R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. researcher, who has been a key witness in sev- eral lawsuits that the tobacco indus- try has won, testified yesterday that a single charcoal-broiled steak con- tains the same amount of the toxic chemical benzpyrene as is found in the smoke of 600 cigarettes. David Townsend, RJR's vice president for product development, made the state- ment as he testified here about efforts that Reynolds and other cigarette manu- facturers undertook to make their prod- ucts safer during the past four decades. Townsend, who has worked on ciga- rette design at Reynolds for 20 years, said RJR and other companies made numerous attempts to selectively reduce or eliminate hazardous elements in cigarettes - including benzpyrene, a carcinogen that has been known to be in cigarette smoke for many years. He said the amount of benzpyrene had been reduced to a very low, safe level. But, Townsend said that industry se entists concluded by 1980 that the wise course of action was to try to reduce the potentially hazardous components cigarettes simultaneously becau "selective" reductions sometimes h the unintended consequences of gene ing other problems. Gore to celebrate 50th birthday WASHINGTON - Memo to vi president's staff: Bring hamme and saws to work for his birthd today, overalls optional. On his 50th birthday, Al Go plans to have breakfast with his ents in Tennessee before flvini Washington to help Habitat f Humanity fix up a house Washington, spokesperson Lar Haas said yesterday. "The entire staff has been invit to join him at the project," Ha said. "I imagine many will go." The staff also plans to throw t boss a party. AROUND THE WORL..D I I Problems emerge in Armenian vote YEREVAN, Armenia - Armenians voted yesterday in the decisive runoff round of the country's presidential elec- tion. While the outcome remained unclear, it was quickly apparent that there were problems in holding a clean vote. Voters were choosing between two men who emerged from a 12-candidate field in the election's first round: Prime Minister Robert Kocharian, who has served as caretaker president since last March, and Karen Demirchyan, a former Communist Party first secretary who governed Armenia when it was a Soviet republic. The result of the runoff is not expected until today. Workers at Demirchyan campaign headquarters, who predicted a close fin- ish, said they were receiving complaints from around the country of poll watchers being ejected from precincts and of efforts to stuff ballot boxes. Kocharian campaign officials, who claim their can- didate will win by at least seven percent- age points, said that Demirchyan was trying to disqualify the outcome advance. Armenians and foreign diplom regard the vote as a key step toward m ing regional peace and solving dee nomic problems. But if the result judged invalid, the new president ' lack the backing to make difficult de sions, observers say. BMW to buy Rolls- Royce in$570M deal LONDON- Rolls-Royce is go foreign, bought yesterday by G automaker BMW in a $570 million At the Rolls-Royce plant in cen England, the workers who build the I ury cars - handmade to orders 'pla by oil sheiks, film stars and tycoons jokingly greeted each other yester with the phrase "Guten Morgen." "The spirit of the car won't chant vowed Mike Garnett, who started v Rolls-Royce as a teen-age apprent "It's still our hands that make th British." i RAd I I i Expose yourself to something really bright this summer-the chance to wrap up a required course or get a jump on finish- ing your degree-at Loyola University Chicago. Enroll in our Summer Sessions (May 18 - June 26 and June 29 - August 7) and get something that outlasts a tan: " A superior education with top-quality faculty at Loyola, rated as one of the nation's "best" universities. * A wide choice of under- graduate courses in business, arts and sciences, education and nursing, including Political Science (PLSC) 101: " Flexible class schedules- days, evenings and week ends-at Loyola's four Chicago-area campuses, plus a convenient touch- tone registration (TTR) system. Summer Sessions May 18 - June 26 June 29- August 7 Enroll now. IbE The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during the fall and winter terms by students at the University of Michigan. Subscriptions for fall term, starting in September, via U.S. mail are $85. Winter term (January through April) is $95, yearlong (September through April) is $165. On-campus sut scriptions for fall term are $35. Subscriptions must be prepaid. 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Floyd, Joy Jacobs, Jessica Johnson, John Kraft, Dana Linnane, Emily Nathan, Nathan Ruffer, . Stilman.PaulTalanian, Adriana ugovich ONLINE Chris Farah, Edit STAFF: Mark Francescutti, Marquina Iliev, Elizabeth Lucas, Adam Pollock. GRAPHICS Jonathan Weitz, Edit STAFF: Alex Hogg, Michelle McCombs, Jordan Young. BUIESSAFFMeganMore i:..l h , ra