Quistopher
eIIrs little
pris for
Sya rl
Los Angeles Times
JERUSALEM - Secretary of State
Warren Christopher's meeting yester-
day with Syrian President Hafez Assad
earned barely a shrug of the shoulders
from Israeli Prime. Minister Yitzhak
Rabin, who once set peacemaking with
Syria as his government's top priority.
"It repeats itself," Rabin said when
reporters asked what he thought of
Christopher's first meeting with the
Syrianpresident since June."Every time
Christopher is on his way to Syria, the
Syrians set preconditions for continu-
ing the peace negotiations."
Rabin said before the three-hour ses-
sion in Damascus that he did not expect
it to produce an agreement to resume
military-level talks with Israel, last held
in June. And he did not seem alarmed
that t:he negotiations are deadlocked
oversecurity arrangements on the Golan
Heightsthe plateau Israel captured from
Syriain the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
Two vents that unfolded over the
weekeid underscored the increasing
marginalizationofSyriain Rabin's stra-
tegic planning.
One -was the assassination of Dam-
.ascus-based Islamic Jihad leader Fathi
Shikaki on the island of Malta. The
ether was the opening of a regional
economic conference in Amman, Jor-
dan, that Syria refused to attend.
,Chosing to harbor Shikaki - an
ideologue dedicated to destroying Israel
' n4building an Islamic Palestinian state
a-and to boycott the eonomic confer-
eflce made Assad look like a man in-
creasingly out of step with a region that
* Survey indicates one-third
users are women; more t
half are 16 to 34 years of
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON - A major survey
Internet released yesterday indicates that i
extended far beyond a small cadre of elite
users and is becoming increasingly pop
the general population.
Theppll--conducted by Nielsen Media
CommerceNet, a group of businesses inter
ioting lectroniccommerce-concludedt
million people in the United States and C
accesstothe Internet-representing about I
the total population more than 16 years o
through work,athome,throughfriendsorvi
cial on-line service such as America Onlin
Ofthat number, some 24 million adults h
in the last 90 days to the Internet, the public
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The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, October 31, 1995 - 7
Yeltsin's health in
question; election
boycott threatened

AP PHOTO
An Israeli soldier checks the documents of a Palestinian man as another soldier looks up during clashes with Israeli troops In
the West Bank city of Hebron yesterday. Palestinian protesters used rocks and burning tires to block roads.

" The message was: Killing can be a
two-way street. "
- Moshe Maoz
Hebrew University professor

has grown tired of holy wars and eager
for economic prosperity, said Uri Dromi,
spokesman for the Israeli government.
"Syria is speaking for all those voices
of the past that are becoming more and
more obsolete," Dromi said. "People in
the Middle East are finally starting to
turn away from those things that brought
so much devastation, and they are turn-

ing toward those options that will bring
prosperity. Except the Syrians. So they
look obsolete."
If Islamic Jihad is right and Mossad,
Israel's intelligence agency, killed
Shikaki, then the assassination can be
read as Israel's blunt way of warning
the Syrians they are in danger of be-
coming obsolete, said Hebrew Univer-

sity Prof. Moshe Maoz.
"It was a message to Assad," said
Maoz, a specialist on Syria. "The mes-
sage was: Killing can be a two-way
street."
Israel has for months complained that
Assad continues to harbor an array of
Palestinian rejectionist factions that are
violently opposed to the September
1993 peace accord signed between Is-
rael and the Palestine Liberation Orga-
nization. It has bitterly complained
about Syria's support for Hezbollah,
the militant Islamic militia keeping up
a guerrilla war against Israeli forces in
southern Lebanon.

MOSCOW (AP) - Boris Yeltsin's
prime minister gave mixed signals about
the hospitalized president's health yes-
terday, insisting he was fine but dis-
closing that top Cabinet officials were
no longer reporting to him.
Adding to the uncertainty of Russia's
political scene, major parties were
threatening to boycott Dec. 17 parlia-
ment elections in protest over a ruling
this weekend that disqualified Yabloko,
a top reform party.
Yeltsin is hospitalized with heart
trouble for the second time in four
months, and it is not clear how involved
he is in government affairs.
"We coordinate on important issues,"
Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin
said during a tour of a Moscow oil
refinery. Yeltsin's wife, Naina, attended
the opening of a cosmetic boutique and
said, "He's better."
Doctors have allowed Yeltsin to see
only family members and his politically
powerful bodyguard. But his deputy chief
of staff, Sergei Krasavchenko, insisted
there was no "information barrier" be-
tween Yeltsin and his aides.
Yeltsin reportedly has done some pa-
perwork since being hospitalized Thurs-
day for acute ischemia, a condition that
restricts blood flow to the heart.
The ITAR-Tass news agency, citing
unnamed hospital sources, reported he
would be hospitalized for at least three
weeks, even though "there are signs of
improvement" and the blood supply to
his heart had stabilized.
Chernomyrdin insisted the
president's condition was improving
and said Yeltsin was "making decisions
on all the important state matters."
But Chernomyrdin also said the for-
eign, defense and interior ministers, as
well as the head of the Federal Security
Service, which replaced the KGB, were
now reporting directly to him instead of
to Yeltsin.
The leader of Yabloko, Grigory
Yavlinsky, claimed a group "with roots
going as far as the top echelons of
power" was trying to derail the elec-
tions. He vowed to appeal his party's
disqualification in court.
There were signs such achallenge could
be successful. The Supreme Court yester-
day overruled the election commission's
decision barring the Democratic Russia
movement from the elections.
Communist, nationalist and other
hardline groups opposed to Yeltsin's poli-
cies are expected to do well in the elec-
tion. Reformers say that gives some presi-
dential aides amotiveto disrupt elections.
Others say the election commission
wants to weaken Yeltsin's potential ri-

Stemet extending to general population

A guard opens the gate for a car at
Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital
where Boris Yeltsin is hospitalized.
vals, who include Yavlinsky, in the
1996 presidential race. Yavlinsky still
can run for parliament as an indepen-
dent, but the loss of his party would hurt
his chances next year.
Polls say he is more popular than
Yeltsin, whose standing has been bat-
tered by his erratic personal style, eco-
nomic woes and the war in Chechnya.
Yeltsin hasn't said whether he will run
for re-election, but he has been acting like
a candidate and is widely expected to be
a contender - if he is physically able.
Yabloko's exclusion would be a seri-
ous blow to reform parties because it
was the only one that appeared pertain
to get the minimum number of votes
required for seats in parliament.
Yegor Gaidar, a leading reformer,
said his Russia's Choice party would
boycott the election "farce" if the ban
on Yabloko isn't revoked.
Chernomyrdin, whose Our Home is
Russiaparty is lagging in the polls, urged
the commission to reverse its "ill-con-
sidered decision." He said it was "seri-
ously damaging the whole election cam-
paign and democracy in Russia."
The commission also disqualified the
Derzhava party of another presidential
contender, former vice president
Alexander Rutskoi. He said it was an
attempt to rig the election.
In Washington, White House spokes-
manMike McCurrysaidthecommission's
rulings were "a source of concern."
"The fact that Yabloko and Derzhava
have both been disqualified for what
appear to be procedural reasons limit
the choice available to the voters of
Russia," he said.

about the
ts reach has
computers
ular among
Research for
ested in pro-
hat about 37
anada have
7 percent of
id - either
aacommer-
e.
ad signed on
c network of

computers worldwide, according to the survey results.
And about one-third of users are women - a higher
ratio than had been conventionally believed about a
medium long dominated by male users. More than half
of the Internet users are between 16 and 34 years old.
"Companies and people have been broadsided by
the Internet and have not had a real benchmark about
what it can mean for them yet," said Paul Lindstrom,
Nielsen vice president and director of the project.
"This helps establish a real baseline about what is
really going on, which is very important."
But all the data do not quite support the red-hot
hype surrounding the Internet, including the idea that
individual consumers are its most active and daily
users. According to the Nielsen poll, more than two-
thirds of users link up from the office rather than from
home and only one-third of users signed on more than
once a day, indicating less regular usage.
The new poll - called the Internet Demographics
Survey and released yesterday at the Internet World
trade show in Boston - is one of many in recent

months attempting to give businesses a better under-
standing of whom exactly is using the Internet, which
has been touted as the next big marketing opportunity.
But many still question how fast-or even whether
- it will become a mass medium like broadcast or
publishing. To add to the confusion,'many polls show
trends pointing in different directions.
The Internet's proponents and several earlier sur-
veys show that typical users are more affluent and
highly educated and thus more likely to buy goods via
computer. But a wide variety of businesses selling
goods on the Internet have been disappointed so far,
hindered by security issues and a cautious attitude
about commerce on the Internet among users.
"Basically, a lot of people want to make money off
of this, but know little," said Jorgen Wouters, associ-
ate editor 'of Information and Interactive Services
Report, a Washington-based newsletter. "All that's
really known is that this is something consumers want,
but everyone is still feeling around for what that is, so
there seems to be a new poll every week."


QUEBEC
Continued from Page 1
fuel the nationwide call for reforms that
would end decades of constitutional
wrangling.
"We have to put an end to to this
business, the referendum," said
Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow.
"We have to make accommodation with
respect to the province of Quebec. My
part of the world wants change."
Comments like that will place heavy
pressure on Prime Minister Jean
Chretien, a Quebecer committed to na-
tional unity, to develop some strategy
to meet the demands for change.
Chretien was to convene his Cabinet
today to assess the impact of the vote.
Bouchard said all Quebecers should
take pride in the campaign- one of the
few times in world history where citi-
zens were offered a vote on whether to
secede.
"We demonstrated in Quebec that we
are a democracy, that we can talk to
each other," Bouchard said.
"The problems of victory are infi-
nitely preferable to the problems of
defeat," Fisheries Minister Brian Tobin
said on Canadian television shortly af-
ter the outcome was decided.
The narrow federalist victory leaves
defeated nationalists looking for scape-
goats and crafting a future campaign to
build a sovereign, French-speaking na-
tion.
A separatist victory could have
spelled economic turmoil for Canada
- and perhaps the greatest political
crisis of its history. The nation would
have lost one-fourth of its people and
one-sixth of its land.

"Tomorrow, almost half of Quebec
will be mourning either what was or
what could have been," Quebec-based
columnist Andre Picard wrote in the
Toronto Globe and Mail. "The wounds
will take a long time to heal."
In Verdun, a working-class suburb of
Montreal, unemployed Bertrand
Fontaine explained his "Yes" vote.
"I worked 18 years for a company,
and now I've been unemployed for two
years," he said. "That's enough. Maybe
with new companies here, I'd have new
chances. I have nothing to lose."
Annette Dupuis said she was proud
to cast a "No" vote in the Montreal
suburb of Anjou.
"My country is Canada," she said.
"This is very important to me. If the
'Yes' vote wins... I will shed tears. It
will be the death of Canada."
"I'm hopeful forthe 'No'," Elizabeth
Stewart said after voting in a largely
anglophone Montreal neighborhood. "I
have a lot of relatives who are French-

speaking and are on the 'No' side -
they just don't say it in public."
Quebec's argument over secession
springs from conflicting views about
how to best preserve the province's
French language and unique culture
amid English-speaking surroundings.
Separatists argue that nationhood is
the only way Quebecers can assure their
own destiny. Canadian federalists say
the advances of French in the last 30 to
40 years - it is the dominant language
in all aspects of Quebec life - show
what can be achieved within Canada,
avoiding the economic risks and other
uncertainties of independence.
Following a second constitutional
debacle, the nationwide rejection of the
1992 Charlottetown Accord, which also
would have granted Quebec special sta-
tus, the separatist cause began to build
a head of steam. In 1993, in the elec-
tions that brought Prime Minister
Chretien and the Liberal Party back to
power in the federal capital, Quebecers

for the first time sent to Ottawa a large
delegation of pro-separatist members
of Parliament.
The Bloc Quebecois, founded and
led by Bouchard, has the second-larg-
est number of seats in the House of
Commons, which makes it Her
Majesty's Loyal Opposition. Many in
English Canada find it treasonous that
such a state of affairs should be allowed
to exist, and never more so than now.
Last year Parizeau led the Parti Que-
becois back to power in the Quebec
National Assembly, the provincial leg-
islature that has retained the name it had
before Canadian confederation, and set
the stage for yesterday's referendum.
Chretien and pro-unity forces inside
and outside Quebec branded the ques-
tion deliberately confusing and mis-
leading in its suggestion to voters that
they might retain their privileged asso-
ciation with Canada.


The University of Michigan
BASKETBALL BAND
AUDITIONS
Auditions will consist of a sight-reading excerpt.
Men's Basketball Band Rehearsals -Tuesdays, 7 -8:15 pm
**Women's Basketball Band Rehearsals -Tuesdays, 8:30 - 9:45 pm
Positions open for:
Drum Set
Piccolo
Clarinet
Alto Saxophone

AP PH1
Supporters of Quebec remaining within Canada wave Quebec and Canadian flags
as they take part in a caravan through the streets of Montreal yesterday.


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