WORLD NEWS
2 sweethearts found dead near Columbine High School
by Judith Graham
Knight-Ridder Newspapers
February 15, 2000
LITTLETON, Colo. This
shell-shocked community awoke
to another horror Monday, Feb
ruary 14: the slaying of two teens
at a Subway sandwich shop in a
strip mall only blocks from Col
umbine High School.
One victim, Nick Kunselman,
15, worked at the store; Stephanie
Hart, 16, was his girlfriend. Both
were sophomores at Columbine.
As teachers told stunned stu
dents of the deaths, some broke
into sobs or became distraught.
"People are extremely upset.
There is a sense of, 'Not again,
not another senseless tragedy, —
said Rick Kaufman, spokesman
for the Jefferson County School
District.
Police said they received a call
just after midnight from a Sub
way manager, who was driving by
the shop and saw the lights on,
long after the 10 p.m. closing
time. She went inside and dis
covered the teens, dead from ap
parent gunshot wounds, accord
ing to the sheriff's office. The
time of death has not been deter-
IRA pull
by Fawn Vrazo
Knight-Ridder Tribune
February 15, 2000
LONDON The Irish Republican
Army pulled out of Northern Ireland
disarmament talks Tuesday, February
15, plunging the peace process into
deepening crisis as the British and
Irish governments struggled to re
spond.
However, the IRA made no sugges
tion that it would end a cease-fire that
has held since July 1997. 1n those 31
months, the paramilitary group has
called off its decades-long attempt to
force the British out of the province
with guns and bombs.
The pullout from disarmament talks
followed the suspension Friday, Feb.
11, of the province's new power-shar
ing government of Roman Catholics
and Protestants. Britain suspended
the nine-week-old government rather
than risk a walkout by Protestant poli
ticians angry that the IRA has made
no move to turn in its illegal arsenal
Bin Laden may give
by Mohamad Bazzi
Newsday
February 21, 2000
NEW YORK Osama bin Laden
may be preparing to hand control
of his terrorist network to one of
his top lieutenants, several Islam
ists and analysts in the Middle East
say.
The deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri,
has lived with bin Laden in Af
ghanistan for three years and
serves as his personal doctor. He
stepped down last month as head
of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the
group that assassinated Egyptian
President Anwar Sadat in 1981 and
later waged a violent campaign
aimed at toppling the Egyptian
government.
Al-Zawahiri's move coincided
with reports in the Arabic press
that bin Laden is ill and has diffi
culty performing daily tasks. That
may be a cover story devised by
bin Laden's inner circle so that he
can take a back seat under grow
ing American pressure, according
to Islamists living in Europe and
observers in Egypt.
Al-Zawahiri's possible ascen
dancy may not be good news for
the United States, as he has a his
tory of planning large terrorist op
erations, such as the 1995 bomb
ing of the Egyptian Embassy in
Pakistan.
Still, these developments reflect
the success of U.S. intelligence
agencies in squeezing bin Laden's
network since the 1998 U.S. Em
bassy bombings in East Africa.
One of bin Laden's key allies, the
Jihad, suffered a major blow as
dozens of its members were ar
rested around the world and extra
dited to Egypt. The crackdown
caused internal divisions that led
to Al-Zawahiri's resignation.
"This talk about bin Laden be
ing sick might pave the way for Al-
mined
Police were tracking informa
tion about a young white male,
dressed in a red jacket and flared
pants, who was seen leaving the
area. They said there was a se
curity monitor in the store but
would not comment on whether
a tape was recovered. Late Mon
day, Feb. 14, no suspect had been
identified. Sheriff's office
spokesman Steve Davis said au
thorities had not pinpointed a mo
tive but had ruled out a murder
suicide.
Officials have assured school
officials that the slayings are not
related to the massacre by Eric
Harris and Dylan Klebold at Col
umbine High last April, which
left 12 other students and one
teacher dead.
But the feeling that there is
some kind of connection, if only
because of the violence, was
shared by several people who
spoke Monday, Feb. 14, of living
under a cloud that casts a dark
shadow over the community.
In the early afternoon that Mon
day, Beth Nimmo, whose daugh
ter, Rachel Scott, was slain in the
Columbine school shootings,
stood in the large parking lot
s out of disarmament talks
of weapons, a goal in the 1998 Good
Friday peace agreement.
The IRA move came on the eve of
new talks between British Prime Min
ister Tony Blair and his Irish counter
part, Bertie Ahern, leaving both lead
ers with no immediate way to rescue
a peace process moving nearer and
nearer to complete failure 'n recent
years, the British and Irish govern
ments have cooperated closely in try
ing to find a way to end Catholic and
Protestant bloodshed in Northern Ire
land, the six-county province that
came into being when Ireland was
partitioned into an independent south
and a British-controlled north in 1921.
An IRA statement issued late after
noon Tuesday, Feb. 15, said the out
lawed group had agreed to talks with
an independent disarmament commis
sion only if other aspects of the peace
agreement including the new gov
ernment remained in place.
"Those who have made the politi
cal process conditional on the decom
missioning of silenced IRA guns are
Zawahiri to assume control, at
least publicly," said Diaa
Rashwan, a senior researcher at the
Al-Ahram Center for Political and
Strategic Studies in Cairo, Egypt,
who closely monitors Islamic mili
tants worldwide. "There could be
a restructuring where Al-Zawahiri
would have a place next to bin
Laden or even above him."
Al-Zawahiri was indicted in
New York last year along with bin
Laden and 14 others in the U.S.
Embassy bombings in Kenya and
"It stands to rea
son that he would
begin his legacy
with spectacular
attacks, like he did
with the Jihad."
-Diaa Rashwan,
researcher at Al-
Ahram Center for
Political and
Strategic Studies,
Cairo, Egypt
Tanzania, which left more than 200
dead and thousands injured. Ana
lysts believe Al-Zawahiri would
want to make a big splash if he
took charge of bin Laden's net
work.
"It stands to reason that he
would begin his legacy with spec
tacular attacks, like he did with the
Jihad," Rashwan said.
Others noted that Al-Zawahiri's
departure from the Jihad exposed
simmering divisions within a
group that in recent years has
shifted from its original goal of
across the street from the Sub- mother they had to make sure his
way. Rachel had worked in the younger brother was safe.
shop, a popular hangout for high "He was angry, furious, going
schoolers. around saying we have to do
"It seems like lightning has something," his mother said, add-
Columbine High School students Nicholas Kunselman, 15, and
Stephanie Hart, 16, were found dead at a Subway shop near the
school.
struck more than once here," said
Nimmo. "It brings up a lot of
pain and ugly memories."
Rachel's brother Craig survived
the Columbine rampage by pre
tending to be dead on the library
floor. After he heard of the most
recent killings, he locked all the
doors in the house and told his
responsible for the current crisis in the
peace process," the statement said.
The statement accused the British
government of bowing to threats by
the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP),
Northern Ireland's major Protestant
political party.
Both the British government and
UUP leadership "obviously have no
desire to deal with the issue of arms
except on their own terms," the state
ment said. "Those who seek a mili
tary victory in this way need to un
derstand that this cannot and will not
happen."
Not only was the IRA immediately
ending its "engagement" with the in
dependent disarmament commission
headed by Canadian Gen. John de
Chastelain, said the statement, but the
group also was withdrawing all dis
armament "propositions" made to the
commission since talks began last
November.
There was an angry reaction to the
IRA pullout Tuesday night, Feb. 15,
from UPP President David Trimble
control to his deputy
establishing an Islamic state ii
Egypt to fighting a broader wai
against American interests. This
global focus reflects bin Laden's
influence on many Islamist groups.
"I don't believe that Ayman has
given up on the principles of Is
lamic Jihad, but he has decided to
focus on other struggles," said
Yasser Al-Sirri, an Egyptian exile
who has ties to the group and runs
the Islamic Observation Center in
London. "The Jihad is an idea. It's
not just one man. The Jihad ex
isted before Ayman, and it will
continue to exist after him."
A spokesman for U.S. Attorney
Mary Jo White, who is prosecut
ing the embassy bombings case,
declined to comment, citing the
ongoing investigation.
Although he has been Egypt's
most wanted militant for years, Al-
Zawahiri is largely unknown in the
West. He became the emir, or
prince, of Islamic Jihad in the early
1990 s after serving as the group's
military commander. Under his
leadership, the Jihad carried out a
series of high-profile attacks
against Egyptian military and po
litical leaders. Last year, he was
sentenced to death in absentia by
an Egyptian military court for or
ganizing an insurgency against the
government.
Al-Zawahiri, 48, fled from
Egypt in the early 1980 s, after he
was sentenced to three years in
prison for belonging to an out
lawed group. He spent time in sev
eral European countries as well as
Sudan and Afghanistan, where he
first met bin Laden in the late
1980 s. At the time, bin Laden, a
multimillionaire Saudi dissident,
helped train and finance a cadre of
"Afghan Arabs," Islamist volun
teers from across the Middle East
who fought against the Soviet oc
cupation of Afghanistan. Many of
them went on to fight in Bosnia,
ing that Craig had come with her
to the scene to leave flowers and
a teddy bear for the teens who
were killed.
In a tobacco shop across from
the Subway, Tricia Chaudion
fought tears. She had had to leave
her job as a maintenance worker
at Clement Park, next to Colum-
"We have seen the republican move
ment squander the best opportunity
they have had to date in order to re
solve this issue . . I wonder if they
have any idea of the damage that is
being done to the process."
The suspension of Northern
Ireland's new government last week
by Northern Ireland Secretary Peter
Mandelson has produced new cracks
in the cooperation between the Brit
ish and Irish cooperation on North
ern Ireland. Irish leaders had urged
Britain not to suspend the Northern
Ireland government, and instead to
explore a last-minute proposal made
last week by the IRA.
The Irish government lobbied
strongly against suspension, arguing
that any new IRA offer should be ex
plored before Mandelson pulled the
plug on a new government that
brought together such diverse parties
as the UUP, Sinn Fein and the Demo
cratic Unionist Party of anti-Catholic
hard-liner lan Paisley.
Chechnya, Algeria, and in other
places. They now form the foun
dation of bin Laden's network.
In 1997, Al-Zawahiri rejoined
bin Laden, 43, in Afghanistan and
has been at his side ever since. In
February 1998, six months before
the embassy bombings in East Af
rica, bin Laden announced the for
mation of the World Islamic Front
for Jihad Against Jews and Crusad
ers, a coalition of militant groups
that called on Muslims worldwide
to attack Americans. The coalition
included Islamic Jihad, another
prominent Egyptian organization
called Gama'a al-Islamiya and
three lesser-known groups based in
Pakistan and Bangladesh.
U.S. prosecutors and some inde
pendent observers believe the
Jihad is the most important mem
ber of bin Laden's coalition. And
that has brought the group into di
rect confrontation with the United
States. After the embassy bomb
ings, dozens of Jihad members in
Albania, the United Arab Emirates,
Azerbaijan, and other countries
were arrested, sometimes with the
involvement of U.S. intelligence,
and extradited to Egypt.
This crackdown reportedly
crippled the Jihad's infrastructure
and created divisions among its
leaders, especially those living in
Europe, who complained that Al-
Zawahiri did not consult them be
fore signing on to bin Laden's
front. They blamed Al-Zawahiri
for causing an unnecessary battle
with the United States.
"The Jihad has been undergoing
a crisis since the embassy bomb
ings, when the Americans went af
ter many of its members all over
the world and got them sent back
to Egypt," said one Islamist in
Cairo, who asked not to be identi
fied. There's a difference between
fighting the Egyptian government
and taking on the entire world."
F BR ARY 2
bine High, after the April
shootings because she was so up
set. "And now it's right in front
of my face again," she whispered.
Jefferson County District Atty.
Dave Thomas said investigators
were exploring "every possible
motive" for the double slaying
but declined to give details.
"It's like it's never going to
end, sometimes," he admitted.
"It's one event after another in
this community."
Littleton has struggled in the
past several weeks with the kill
ing of 11-year-old Ray Davalos,
who was found frozen and
stuffed into a trash bin at a shop
ping center near Columbine
High. Also, just before Christ
mas, Time magazine's report on
chilling videotapes made by Har
ris and Klebold before their kill
ing spree sent waves of distress
through the area.
An Internet message from a
Florida teen to a Columbine High
student threatening to "finish the
job" Harris and Kiebold had be
gun, prompted authorities to close
the school, and legal proceedings
against the teen have received
considerable media coverage in
Littleton. In October, Carla
Venezuela
rebuild region
destroyed
by Serge F. Kovaleski
The Washington Post
February 18, 2000
CARMEN DE URIA, Venezuela—
An unsettling silence, punctuated
by wisps of wind, hangs over
Carmen de Uria. Almost all signs
of life have vanished. What was
once a town is now a crater, strewed
with boulders, mounds of dirt,
crumpled cars, and annihilated
homes.
The signs of destruction make a
numbing testimonial to the feroc
ity with which flood waters, tum
bling rock, and mudslides un
leashed by last December's torren
tial rains cut a swath through
Carmen de Uria from the nearby
Avila mountain range.
Most of the town's 5,000 resi
dents have moved to shelters or
housing elsewhere, and at least 500
of their neighbors were killed in the
catastrophe. But a handful remain,
determined to rebuild, while others
intermittently return to sift through
the debris amid reminders of lives
torn asunder: a shredded wicker
rocking chair, a mangled bird cage,
a bunk bed snapped in half.
"This was paradise, but you may
as well stick a sign in the ground
that says. 'The ghost town of
Carmen de Uria,"' said Douglas
Berrotera, 30, who recently came
back to salvage belongings from a
heap of concrete that used to be his
house. "This is science fiction
turned into reality. Our small cor
ner of the world has disappeared
and will never exist again. All we
can do is hope for some sort of sal-
vation."
Venezuelans are grappling with
the enormity of the devastation
caused by the nation's worst natu
ral disaster in memory, which has
made sparsely populated waste
lands of numerous communities
such as this one along the hard-hit
northern Caribbean coast 25 miles
northeast of Caracas, the capital.
As the cleanup grinds on, other
towns throughout the region remain
without electricity or telephone ser
vice and reliant on aid shipments
of food and drinking water. Night
time looting is said to be spiraling
out of control in certain areas as the
number of troops providing public
security has thinned from the ini
tial days of the emergency. The
government is spending approxi
mately $5 million a month to put
up 14,000 families in shelters.
In the meantime, the government
of President Hugo Chavez and lo
cal officials try to decide how to re
construct what they have vowed
will be a new and reconfigured Ven
ezuela.
Although an accurate assessment
of the death and destruction re-
ANALIIA: 1 B rt
Hochhalter, mother of wounded
student Anne Marie Hochhalter,
fatally shot herself in a crowded
Denver pawnshop.
Meanwhile, new details con
tinue to emerge about the Colum
bine massacre. On Friday, a Col
umbine commission established
by Colorado Gov. Bill Owens
heard testimony from the
Littleton Fire Department that
Harris and Klebold had stock
piled 90 weapons, far more than
previously disclosed, including
80 explosive devices in the school
and ten at Harris' home.
Among them were 11, one-and
a-half-gallon propane containers,
two duffel-bag bombs with 20-
pound gas tanks, 27 pipe bombs,
48 carbon dioxide bombs, and
seven devices with 40 or more
gallons of flammable liquid, the
fire department confirmed.
Both of the boys' cars were
filled with large amounts of ex
plosives set to go off at noon,
when the boys calculated that stu
dents would be streaming out of
the flaming cafeteria into the
parking lot, fire department offi
cials explained. Neither those nor
many of the other bombs worked.
tries to
by floods
mains elusive, authorities say
10,000 to 30,000 people were killed
in several days of rain that began
Dec. 15. Many of the victims were
buried under mudslides or washed
away by floods. About 150,000
people lost their homes. The cata
clysm laid waste about 40,000
homes and destroyed or damaged
roughly half the agricultural infra
structure.
Government officials, who will
attend an international conference
next week in Madrid to try to ob
tain more foreign assistance, esti
mate it would cost as much as $3O
billion to rebuild the devastated ar
eas. Most of the money would go
to this small state of Vargas. Home
to Venezuela's largest commercial
seaport and a once robust tourist in
dustry, Vargas suffered the greatest
toll in terms of loss of life and de
struction to its towns, fishing com
munities, and vast neighborhoods
of illegal mountainside shanties.
Since mid-December, the state's
population has declined so precipi
tously from about 380,000 to
less than 250,000 as a result of
deaths from the storm and people
leaving that government officials
are considering reincorporating
Vargas into the Federal District,
which includes Caracas.
Some are concerned that Vargas
may no longer be viable as a state.
Furthermore, it may become
smaller under an ambitious reloca
tion initiative slowly being imple
mented by the President to ease a
population glut on the Caribbean
coast, where about 70 percent of the
country's 23 million people live.
In the town of Los Corales, where
rows of abandoned luxury apart
ment buildings are engulfed by
banks of dried mud and a sea of
boulders, the resolve to rebuild was
captured in graffiti that declared,
"VARGAS WILL NOT DIE."
For now, however, Los Corales
remains desolate. Other than work
ers operating bulldozers and dump
trucks, as well as some army troops,
only an occasional resident can be
seen plodding across what looks
like a lunar landscape.
Some signs of normalcy, how
ever, are gradually returning to less
devastated pockets of the state. In
the coastal town of Naiguata, where
about one-third of the population
had left, a pharmacy, bakery, and
grocery have reopened, and street
vendors selling fruit and fish are
starting to reemerge. Some resi
dents are trickling back to town.
While optimistic that a new but
different Vargas could reemerge
within a decade as a hub for inter
national and local tourism, as well
as service industries, Gov. Alfredo
Laya lamented, "Everything has
changed here, forever."