THE BEHREND BEACON
East Timor guerrilla leader returns,
demurs on presidential ambitions
by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
The Washington Post
DILI, East Timor
guerrilla leader and later as a po
litical prisoner, Xanana Gusmao led
East Timor's independence fight for
18 years. Now that East Timor has
become the world's newest nation.
Gusmao has returned from seven
years in exile as a larger-than-life
hero, a charismatic and articulate
man whom many East Timm ese see
as their first president.
But Gusmao is being coy.
Asked at a news conference Satur
day if he wants to lead this country
after what is expected to he two or
three years of United Nations con
trol, he said "it will take time - to
decide.
What is clear, though, is that
Gusmao wields enormous political
power. He and his lieutenants are
in a position to significantly influ
ence the rebuilding of East Timor,
which was ravaged by pro-Indone
sia militias after residents voted
overwhelmingly on Aug. 30 to
separate from Indonesia. The
United Nations, whose Security
Council could decide as early as
Monday to assume full administra
tive responsibility for East Timor,
has had extensive negotiations with
Gusmao about the scope and direc
tion of it operations.
"There's almost nothing in the
planning process that hasn't been
bounced over to his staff. - said a
U.N. official.
Clinton
Security
by Robert A. Rosenblatt
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON -- Sparring with
Republicans over the volatile issue of
Social Security, President Clinton said
Saturday that he will ask Congress to
pass a rescue plan that would use fu
ture budget surpluses to holster the
massive retirement program.
Members of both political parties
have been maneuvering to position
themselves as friends and defenders
of the 40 million Americans who re
ceive monthly Social Security hen
e fits.
Republican leaders in Congress
had indicated that the President's
original Social Security plan had no
chance of passage this year.
But Clinton returned to the politi
cal offensive Saturday, offering a new
variation of the plan that he said
would take "the first big step toward
truly saving Social Security. It will
take the trust fund out beyond the life
span of the baby boom generation,"
he said, referring to the huge group
of Americans born between 1946 and
1964. The oldest of them, a group that
includes the President, will he eligible
to collect full retirement benefits in
the year 2012.
GOP leaders insist the President's
plan won't work.
Hurricane Jose wallops Caribbean Islands
by Carol Rosenberg
and Martin Merzer
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico Hurri
cane Jose walloped Antigua and a string
of other Caribbean islands with a direct
hit Wednesday, Oct 20, and threatened
to deal at least a glancing blow to the
Virgin Islands Thursday, Oct 21.
Forecasters said the powerful storm
could brush past Puerto Rico without
inflicting much damage. Nevertheless,
residents stripped stores of supplies and
canceled everything from bridal show
ers to school openings. Flights farther
south also were canceled.
Long-range forecasts suggested that
Jose soon would curve out to sea and
WORLD AND NATION
Gusmao, 53, is the president of
the National Council for Timorese
Resistance (CNRT), the once-Out
lawed political arm of the Falintil
rebel group, which he headed from
1981 until his capture by the Indo
nesian army in 1992. He was sen
tenced to life in prison, but was re
leased after the independence vote.
First as a
"There's almost nothing in the planning
process that hasn't been bounced over
to his staff"
-U.N.olhual
Born Jose Alexandre Gusmao,
he adopted the nom de guerre
Xanana after joining Falintil in
1975, when Portugal decided to jet
tison its colonies. A former journal
ist. he fled to the mountains after
Indonesia invaded later that year.
Within a few years. Gusmao rose to
become Falintil's top commander.
After he was captured in 1992.
he used his trial as a forum to push
for a vote on East Timor's indepen
dence, saying at one point, "Who
ever is afraid of the referendum is
afraid of the truth."
Since his release from prison,
Gusmao has been East Timor's de
facto head of state. He traveled to
"Republicans will not allow the
President's desire for a legac) to su
persede the needs of the American
people, - said Rep. J.C. Watts. R-
Okla, chairman of the House GOP
conference.
Clinton's no+, plan drops his ear
lier proposal to use a portion of the
surplus for in‘estment in the stock
market, sti hich offers a higher rate of
return than Treasury securities. Cur
rent Social Security surpluses are in
vested in special Treasury bonds.
However, Republicans said Con
gress would never allow the govern
ment to invest directly in the stock
market, for tear this could eventually
lead to government control of corpo
rations.
Instead, many Republicans have
favored allowing workers to divert a
portion of their payroll taxes into in
dividual accounts. But this plan is un
acceptable to the President and con
gressional Democrats, who believe
that individual accounts are too risky
and could jeopardize the health of the
Social Security system.
The result, after months of debate
and private meetings. involving the
President and members of Congress,
has been a stalemate. Nearly every
one had agreed the chances for leg
islation this year seemed slim at best.
The Republicans have been sem-
present no threat to the mainland. By
Saturday morning, it should he parallel
to Florida but 900 miles away in the
Atlantic. Good thing, too. -- it could be
on the verge of becoming a major Cat
egory 3 hurricane by then. On Wednes
day, Oct 20, Jose brought its 100 mph
winds to Antigua and other islands, rip
ping roofs from houses, tearing down a
newly built church in Antigua and fling
ing debris through deserted streets.
At the Yetton Beach Resort outside the
Antiguan capital of St. John's, a fero
cious wind howled through cracks in
boarded-up doors. A ceiling collapsed in
a two-roomed unit of the hotel. No one
was hurt in that incident.
Storm-weary islanders in neighboring
St. Kitts, where a few homes remain
returns to Social
offensive
OCTOBER 29, 1999
Washington and other Western capi
tals last month to build support for
a peacekeeping force. He evon ad
dressed the Australian Parliament.
CNRT officials have been meet
ing in Darwin, Australia, to plan
their involvement in the transition.
Gusmao has divulged few details
other than to say. "CNRT will he on
hand whenever it is needed and we
will play a role wherever it becomes
necessary."
They have heen discussing is
sues such as an official language
and a currency for the country.
which was a Portuguese colony for
400 years before Indonesia invaded
in 1975. Gusmao wants the lan
guage to he Portuguese. although
most of the population speaks a lan
guage called Tctun.
U.N. officials expect the CNRT
to create a high-level council that
will regularly consult with U.N ad
ministrators. The United Nations is
planning to set up a provisional leg
islature. perhaps with 40 or 50
Mg some political points recently
with claims that they favor a
"lockhox - that would keep Social
Security surpluses untouchable, and
they accused the Democrats of hack
ing spending plans that would eat
into the surplus.
Satu rda\'s radio ',lddreti Was an
opportunity for the President to re
turn the political lire. claiming. that
he and his party are stronger support
ers of Social Security than the GOP.
"If we value the financial well-
being of our parents and grandpar
ents, if we believe that all Americans
deserve to retire with dignity, if we
want to make sure we don't place an
unfair burden on the hacks of the next
generation of young parents, then we
must seize this moment of unprec
edented prosperity and budget sur
pluses to extend the life of Social Se
curity," Clinton said.
"Unfortunately, so far, instead of
making the tough choices to save So
cial Security and extend its life to
2050, the Republican majority in
Congress, especially some of the
House Republican leaders, have been
accusing the Democrats of spending
the Social Security surplus, - he
added. "They've also been claiming
that their budget doesn't spend the
Social Security surplus. As it hap
pens, neither claim is true."
roofless from last year's devastating
hurricane season, prepared as Jose bore
down. In a television broadcast, acting
Prime Minister Sam Condor told resi
dents of St. Kitts and Nevis to "prepare
for the worst."ln Puerto Rico, still reel
ing from last year's pummeling by Hur
ricane Georges, the National Guard
went on alert, deploying dozens of
forces to reinforce 15 penitentiaries and
juvenile detention facilities against es
cape, according to Maj. Frank Soto.
Shoppers stripped stores of water, dia
pers, batteries and flashlights. Residents
protected waterfront businesses and
apartments against breakage.
In the old cobblestone San Juan,
which has withstood countless hurri
canes, manager Ada Otero boarded up
members, many of whom likely
would he from CNRT.
Already, aid workers fre
quently ask CNRT leaders to dole
out rice and high-protein biscuits,
reasoning that the council knows
best which enclaves most need the
emergency supplies, and because
most Indonesian-appointed local
government officials have fled.
Although he has received a
passionate welcome from people
here -- more than 5,000 showed
up with less than two hours no
tice to hear him speak Friday --
Gusmao appears to want a low
key public role. "I'm not a sav
ior,- he said at Saturday's news
conference. "I didn't come to
solve all of the problems. -
He said he is proud to he a
member of Falintil, but that he
never wanted to be president of
CNRT. And explaining his ap
pearance in a camouflage Falintil
uniform, he said: "When I was ar
rested I was a guerrilla fighter. I
am coming hack as a guerrilla
fighter.-
Despite the military posture,
he said he remains committed to
ending the violence. After an Aus
tralian-led peacekeeping force
landed in East Timor last month,
Falintil fighters have largely
stayed inside their camps. But
Gusmao did not commit to dis
arming Falintil -- a condition set
down by the peacekeepers. "It is
our business, - he said.
The President said his plan
would pay down the national debt
with future budget surpluses. That
would mean reduced interest pay
ments by the federal government.
The savings from lower interest
payments would he used to help
pay Social Security benefits when
the 76 million baby boomers re-
The life of the Social Security
trust fund would he extended from
2034 until 2050, according to ad
ministration estimates. Currently,
the retirement fund is expected to
have a fiscal crisis in the year 2034.
At that time, payroll taxes will he
sufficient to pay only 75 percent
of the benefits promised under cur
rent law.
The problem with both the Re
publican approach and the
President's plan is that Social Se
curity cannot really be walled off
from the rest of government spend
ing. If the budget surpluses
counted on by the President do not
materialize later, it will be neces
sary to raise taxes or cut Social Se
curity benefits. The Republicans
would face the same dilemma,
since their lockbox also depends
on future surpluses.
the entrance of the chic Chef Marisol I
restaurant, not against the weather, but
against possible looting in the event
of power outages.
"Sometimes the vandals come,"
said Otero, who canceled all dinner
seatings for Wednesday and Thursday.
"This is just in case. If everything
goes fine, we'll open on Friday." Jose
Crespo, 20, an engineering student at
the University of Puerto Rico, said he
wasn't disappointed that a hurricane
named for him could turn out to be a
wimp, at least in the capital of this
100-mile long island.
"Georges was a beast, it tore the is
land in half," he said. "Jose doesn't
worry me. It's a baby compared to
Georges."
Another market
bombing
The Washington Post
On Aug. 28. 1995, a Serb mortar
shell landed in the marketplace of
Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. Three
dozen civilians were killed instantly.
CNN broadcasted devastating images of
the carnage, and millions of people
around the world were outraged. The
marketplace attack helped push NATO
finally to intervene to end the war.
On Thursday of last week, Russian
missiles landed in the marketplace of
Grozny. the capital of Chechnya. A
nearby maternity hospital also was re
ported hit. More than 140 people were
killed, including children and teen
agers, new mothers and their infants.
But there are very few television crews
or foreign correspondents in Chechnya:
images of carnage were not beamed
around the world; outrage is decidedly
muted.
Russian leaders and military brass
at first denied the attack, then said their
troops could not have been responsible,
then admitted responsibility hut denied
there were civilian casualties. The tar
get had been an "arms bafaar, - they
said, and only criminals and terrorists
could have been killed. Or maybe the
Chechens had blown themselves up to
make Russia look had -- some officials
tried that one, too.
It should come as no surprise that
the Russian government would lie in
such a blatant way. It lied just as bra
zenly during its previous war against
Chechnya, hack in 1994-96, even
though at that time a sizable Russian and
foreign media presence in Grozny rou
tinely debunked the official version of
events. Now, with a diminished media
presence, no fiction is too ludicrous for
Moscow to put forward.
Something else has changed since
the last war, too. The Russian public is
eager for a military victory and ready,
IBM loss could put 218,000
students through Harvard
by George Gunset
Chicago Tribune
October 22, 1999
With the market value that IBM
lost when its stock plunged Thursday,
Oct 21, its shareholders could have
bought more than 85,000 Bentley
Azures the world's most expen
sive car at $350,000 a copy.
The stockholders of International
Business Machines Corp. may he
grim for a while following the stock
retreat of 15 percent, which knocked
more than $29.9 billion off the value
of Big Blue, the world's largest com
puter maker.
But they should put the loss in per
spective. After all, it was less than the
gross domestic product of Sudan
$31.2 billion. And IBM's new, re
duced market capitalization $l7O
billion still far exceeds the $7O
billion of Microsoft Corp. stock
owned by the software giant's chair-
at least lOr now, to believe that success
can be achieved at little cost. Many
Russians do not flinch at'articles like
the one in the official newspaper
Rossiskaya Gazers that talks about the
"criminal scum - in Chechnya and con
cludes: "To wipe the terrorist rabble off
the face of the earth and rid life of fear
and violence seems like the only solu-
Such yearning for simple solutions
is understandable, if not pretty.
Chechnya is, or was, a province of Rus
sia on its southern border. Much of its
Muslim population, having resisted
Russian conquest for more than a cen
tury and then been nearly wiped out in
Stalin's terror, never accepted
Moscow's domination. Its government
declared independence in 1991 and
eventually fought the Russian army to
a humiliating defeat, with President
Boris Yeltsin agreeing to live with an
autonomous. if not formally indepen
dent, Chechnya. But attacks from
Chechnya into other parts of Russia,
and terrorist bombings that Russian of
ficials blamed on Chechens, led Mr.
Yeltsin to renege on his agreement and
launch a new war.
It is understandable, too, that Rus
sian officials want to hold their coun
try together. But the only apparent strat
egy of this latest war is to kill many
Chec hens and force many more to flee.
Officials count at least 170,000 refugees
having crossed one border alone, almost
certainly an understatement. This is not
an "anti-terrorist operation," as the Rus
sian government maintains, but a crime
against humanity. The Clinton admin
istration was eloquent in its condem
nations of Slobodan Milosevic's attacks
against civilians. It was reassuring to
hear Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright beginning this weekend to
express similar criticisms about the
Russian operation.
man and world's richest person, Bill
Gates. Of course, Microsoft's stock
market value, $475 billion, far ex
ceeds IBM's.
IBM stockholders also might take
comfort in the fact that the
government's gold stockpile at Fort
Knox, KY., at market prices, totals
$44.9 billion, some $l5 billion more
than Thursday's IBM loss.lßM
shares, totaling more than 1.86 bil
lion outstanding, dropped $l6 to
close at $9l following a dreary earn
ings forecast.
Put another way, the IBM stock
loss was enough to finance 218,000
students for a full four years at
Harvard University, an average of
$137,000 per student, based on the
current college year's tuition and
other estimated costs. Those of a
more nautical bent would calculate
that $29.9 billion would pay for close
to 60,000 Hatteras 50-foot yachts
selling at about $500,000.
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