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Politics : Clinton -- doomed & wagging, Japan collapses, Y2K bug, etc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SOROS who wrote (442)	9/23/1998 9:12:00 AM
From: SOROS	Respond to of 1151

Ha'aretz - Tel Aviv - 09/23/98 Netanyahu will address UN General Assembly, meet string of statesmen Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to New York last night for the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly and for meetings with key foreign ministers including U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Netanyahu spoke with Albright yesterday, telling her that progress had been made in peace talks with the Palestinians, particularly on the issue of 3 percent of the West Bank becoming a Palestinian nature reserve under an Israeli withdrawal agreement. But he warned that no further progress could be made unless the Palestinians change the parts of their covenant calling for Israel's destruction and fulfill all their commitments on security. On Sunday, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat called Netanyahu, President Ezer Weizman and Labor Party leaders Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres to wish them a happy new year. In Arafat's conversation with Netanyahu, the two discussed the state of the peace process, with both agreeing that more U.S. help was necessary to move it forward. No meeting has been scheduled for Netanyahu with Arafat this week while they are both in New York for the annual opening ceremonies of the UN General Assembly. But diplomatic sources have not ruled out a three-way Albright-Netanyahu-Arafat session - if progress is likely to be made. Meanwhile, Palestinian Local Affairs Minister Saeb Erekat was called last night to Gaza for a meeting with Arafat after resigning from his role as a negotiator opposite Israeli Cabinet Secretary Danny Naveh. Palestinian sources said Erekat's resignation came as a result of Arafat beefing up the role of Palestinian Legislative Council chair Ahmed Qeria, also known as Abu Ala, in the negotiations, giving Abu Ala the job of talking directly with Yitzhak Molcho, Netanyahu's personal attorney assigned to handle the negotiations for the prime minister. According to these sources, Erekat's resignation was not over the substance of the Palestinian negotiating position. These sources also indicate that Arafat is still the sole decision maker when it comes to the Palestinian position opposite the Israelis. Netanyahu aide David Bar-Illan said that a summit with Arafat in New York was a possibility that would signal significant progress after 18 months of stalemate in negotiations. Both Netanyahu and Arafat - who is scheduled to arrive in New York Saturday - will be attending the annual opening session of the General Assembly. Netanyahu is scheduled to meet Albright today in New York to discuss the withdrawal plan "and perhaps to arrange a summit with Arafat," Bar-Illan told the Associated Press yesterday. Albright was scheduled to meet separately with Arafat as well. "We hope there will be enough movement to make a summit productive, no one wants a summit that will be disappointing," Bar-Illan said.

To: SOROS who wrote (442)	9/23/1998 9:13:00 AM
From: SOROS	Respond to of 1151

The Telegraph - London - 09/23/98 By Marcus Warren in Moscow Rise of Moscow's Iron Lady RUSSIA'S financial crisis spells doom for a whole new civilisation of rich and burgeoning middle-class entrepreneurs. It was fun while it lasted; but the "new Russians" and their culture are slowly dying, destroyed by a catastrophe few foresaw and many will not survive. Their death agony is best witnessed on the streets and shopping malls of Moscow, their capital. Its consequences will be felt the world over. For this was a nomadic tribe, one that swept through Europe and Asia spending huge sums of money in wads of dollars or via shiny new credit cards. That is all history. Their companies face bankruptcy, their bank accounts are frozen and the roubles they earn have collapsed in value against foreign currencies. Many have lost their jobs; the lucky ones have had only their salaries cut. "The proportion of middle classes in the population as a whole has fallen from 25 to two per cent," said Alexander Chipurenko, an academic specialising in small businesses. "And there is no hope of the situation improving for at least a year or so." Their playgrounds, Moscow's bars and clubs, are half empty. Shopping centres that catered for their luxury tastes are almost deserted. Staff at the capital's new Haagen-Dazs ice-cream parlour outnumber customers. The Max Mara, Nina Ricci, Kenzo and Givenchy boutiques in Petrovsky Passage, a place of pilgrimage for the affluent shopping classes, are still open for business. But the sales assistants spend most of their time varnishing their nails. Earlier this month, its graceful aisles played host to what with hindsight will go down as the last gathering of the tribe, the launch party of Vogue's Russian edition. A dancer in a toga tottered on top of a giant pillar in a classic display of new Russian vulgarity. But the gossip over the canap‚s was about how much salt, matches, flour or pasta the beautiful people would need for the winter ahead. The Moscow concert by the Rolling Stones a month ago was the last time the new middle classes were out in force. Within days, Russia had devalued the rouble, crippling the country's importers, and defaulted on its short-term debts, almost destroying its banking system. It will take years for the middle classes, defined by one expert as those earning more than œ600 a month in Moscow and œ300 outside the capital, to recover from the shock. Andrei Krylov, who lost œ18 million in Russia's crash, now ponders a future as a bankrupt, a fugitive from Mafia hitmen, or an emigre - or all three at once. It took him a couple of years to build up an empire importing medicines worth millions of pounds. It took a a few days to lose the lot. "I was a rich man, even by international standards," he said. "Now I'm back where I began and feel like a 17-year-old boy starting out in life." At the age of 33, he is certainly young enough to start his business again from scratch. Whether he will ever have the opportunity is another matter. Every day he sinks deeper into debt. He needs dollars to pay his foreign suppliers but the roubles he earns selling imported medicines are rapidly losing their value. And in Russia debts can be tantamount to a death sentence, collected as they usually are with the aid of threats, brutal force, beatings or worse "Russian banks would not hesitate for a moment to use violence to call in debts," he said. "Foreign creditors are quite capable of selling their debts to Russian companies for as little as 30 per cent of their value. And they would then use force to call the money in. "I've always tried to avoid crime and criminals. My business is clean: I've always paid my taxes and customs duties. But this is what I'm most afraid of now: having to go underground to hide from creditors." We dined on Italian food and fine wine in Angelico's, but, even by the standards of recent weeks, the day had been particularly trying. He had been forced to sack more of his staff. He had paid their wages in full and sent them on their way. But what happened next had been profoundly shocking. His former employees had gone to a nearby bar and got drunk. They then returned to the warehouse and picked a fight with his armed security guards. "These were not some scum from the streets," he said. "They are good people who worked hard and who I trusted. What is happening to this country?"

To: SOROS who wrote (442)	9/23/1998 9:14:00 AM
From: SOROS	Respond to of 1151

Washington Post - 09/23/98 By Anwar Faruqi UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Iran's leader called for increased U.S. investments Tuesday but Mohammad Khatami said his government remains cautious about improving ties with Washington. Khatami, who addressed the U.N. General Assembly on Monday, told reporters he sensed a more positive U.S. tone toward his country, but that was not enough to improve formal ties. ''Just as we sense a change in tone, we also see the allocation of funds in the U.S. Congress to hurt Iran,'' said Khatami, a moderate cleric who has improved Iran's image since his August 1997 election. He was referring to a $20 million allocation by Congress for covert operations in Iran. Sitting in the flowing robes and turban of a senior Shiite cleric and speaking between mouthfuls of a a cheese-and-mushroom omelette, Khatami said Iranian assets in the United States that were frozen after its 1979 revolution also contributed to strained relations. He reiterated the need for cultural exchanges between the United States and Iran as a way of promoting better understanding. ''We would like these kinds of exchanges to extend to U.S. industrialists and investors as well. Iran has the right conditions for foreign investment,'' said Khatami, whose government is grappling with weak oil prices that have played havoc with the economy. He said U.S. sanctions that ban investments in Iran were hurting U.S. companies more than Iran. ''This is a big world and problems can be solved without the need of the United States,'' Khatami said. Khatami, asked whether Tehran would lift its death sentence on author Salman Rushdie, said his government had already pledged not to enforce the fatwa. ''Iran has officially declared that in action it has no decision on this matter,'' Khatami said. In 1989 the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini accused Rushdie of blasphemy against Islam in his book, ''The Satanic Verses.'' He issued an Islamic ruling calling for Rushdie's death. In recent years Iranian officials have said that they cannot lift the execution order, but have pledged not to actively seek Rushdie's death. Although critical of the United States, Khatami repeatedly expressed his ''respect for the great American people.'' His tone is markedly different from other Iranian leaders. The last Iranian president to speak at the General Assembly was Ali Khamenei, who in 1986 blasted the ''The Great Satan,'' as the United States is still called by many officials in Iran. Khatami said that what Iranians remember about the United States is its support for the late shah, who was ousted by the 1979 Islamic revolution. ''Given this history, I think we have the right to proceed cautiously about any talk of resuming relations,'' said Khatami. Asked about his country's military standoff with the Taliban militia that controls nearly all of Afghanistan, Khatami said Tehran was trying its best to avoid a war. Iran massed 200,000 troops on its border with Afghanistan after the Taliban killed eight Iranian diplomats and an Iranian journalist.

To: SOROS who wrote (442)	9/23/1998 9:16:00 AM
From: SOROS	Respond to of 1151

BBC - London - 09/23/98 The United States and Russia have agreed to set up a joint project aimed at transforming Russia's decaying nuclear weapons plants into thriving commercial enterprises. The aim of the Nuclear Cities Initiative is to create civilian jobs, some 50,000 in the next five years, particularly for Russian nuclear scientists, who might otherwise try to make a living by selling their knowledge on the black market. "I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to us all that economic hardship does not drive Russian nuclear weapons scientists into employment in places like Iran and North Korea," US Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said. The deal was signed by Mr Richardson and Russia's Minister of Atomic Energy Yevgeny Adamov during the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) annual general conference in Vienna. The project will focus on the 10 most secret locations - known as closed cities - that form the core of the former Soviet nuclear weapons establishment. It is here that plutonium production, uranium enrichment, weapons design and assembly are all concentrated. More than a million people live in these cities whose future is increasingly uncertain. In the first year projects will be developed in three of the 10 cities. Funding will come from US Government agencies - $30m in this year - and, it is hoped, from the private sector. But the BBC's defence correspondent, Jonathan Marcus, says that so far the US administration has not won extra money from congress, and the Russian Government, given the economic chaos, is going to be hard put to find its share of the funding. The United States is already heavily involved in helping Russia to secure and store nuclear materials retrieved from its massive stock-pile of weapons. Mr Richardson said that the US and Russia had already identified 100 tonnes of plutonium and nearly 700 tonnes of highly-enriched uranium as surplus to defence needs, and that they had pledged never to return these materials to military use.

To: SOROS who wrote (442)	9/23/1998 9:19:00 AM
From: SOROS	Respond to of 1151

Wall Street Journal - 09/23/98 By JATHON SAPSFORD TOKYO -- As Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi prepared for a summit with U.S. President Bill Clinton, his fellow politicians in Tokyo extended a bitter feud over banking reform, a conflict that has thrown this country's Parliament into a state of paralysis. The problems in Japan's banking industry have been the dominant theme of Mr. Obuchi's meetings in New York, and Japan's Nikkei Stock Average staged a modest rebound on hopes that somehow the talks might yield something to break the political deadlock back in Tokyo. But it will take quite a charge to break the logjam, which has brought discussion of crucial bank-reform laws to a standstill. "We can't continue talks for the time being," said Hajime Ishii, chief of the opposition Democratic Party's legislative-affairs council, at a news conference. His counterpart in the ruling LDP concurred, saying that nothing can move forward until the basic framework of the talks is clarified. "The preconditions have not been met," said Hideyuki Aizawa, a senior member of the LDP and head of the Lower House's financial-stabilization committee. Behind the stalemate is an extremely tenuous agreement reached Friday between the ruling party and the opposition. The agreement was so vague that arguing over the details started immediately after it was announced and has continued ever since. The agreement was supposed to be Mr. Obuchi's gift to President Clinton at the summit. But the prime minister added to the confusion when in New York on Monday night he told a group of Japanese journalists the government would use some form of public money to rescue the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan Ltd. That helped lift share prices in Tokyo, but it angered opposition-party members who had thought the LDP promised them Friday that LTCB would be nationalized rather than rescued with taxpayer funds. The U.S. has said repeatedly that the use of public money, provided the right conditions are attached, is justified in dealing with a problem as big as the one Japan faces. Conservative estimates put Japan's bad-loan crisis at about $600 billion. But the opposition parties see the use of such money, which would be injected into weak but still viable banks, as a way of protecting the ruling party's vested interests. Yoshiro Mori, another senior LDP official, was forced to hold a news conference to explain the party's position after he had publicly questioned at the weekend his party's agreement to abandon the use of public money. He said the LDP will settle the LTCB problem just as the opposition has requested. "It is regrettable if I caused any misunderstandings," he said. But the opposition said Mr. Mori's clarification only confused issues more than ever. "The point of Mori's press conference is not clear," said Tsutomu Hata, the Democrats' secretary general. These days in Tokyo, very little involving banking is.