The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 1

(2 INDIANA EDITION 56 PAGES COPYRIGHT 1994, THE COURIER-JOURNAL, LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY A GANNETT NEWSPAPER JULY 28, 1994. 35 CENTS Good eeishbor Bank reviving Chicago area is a model for Louisville By NINA WALFOORT Staff Writer CHICAGO The elegant yellow-brick apartment building anchors a busy street corner and looks like hundreds of others in Chicago's older neighborhoods. But this sturdy south-side building sat neglected and vacant for a year, its boarded windows and empty storefronts inviting vagrants. Scavengers tore out circuit boxes, radiators and bathtubs. It was a renovator's nightmare, and Alice Lamos had no illusions when she bought it in January.

"It was just me and the roaches and the rats," she said. "It was a very iffy project." But even though she had only one rehabilitation project under her belt, Lamos was able to borrow $350,000 from South Shore Bank to buy and renovate the building. She plans to rent the apartments for up to $550 a month, within the reach of most of the neighborhood's working people. Lamos accepted the risk because the ren ovated building will be worth more than she borrowed, and she is sure the area's assets mass transit, shopping, and Lake Michigan will attract tenants. Her belief in South Shore and her willingness to take a risk are shared by South Shore Bank, an innovative development bank that operates just blocks from Lamos building.

Louisville is starting one like it. While her project is ambitious, the bank has watched Lamos' progress as a rehabili- tator and was confident that she could get the job done, bank appraiser Michael O'Connor said. "Any time we look at a blighted and abandoned building there's some risk, but we feel more comfortable in this case because of her track record." That kind of familiarity with its borrowers is typical for South Shore, which has been described by one of its founders as "a philosophical return to the days when a bank was the pillar of its community and saw its role as investing in the community's future." Founded in 1973 by four socially conscious bank employees, the bank has the dual purpose of making a profit and promoting urban development. With its affiliates, the bank has invested nearly $400 million in South Shore and four other transitional neighborhoods. Its assets have grown steadily while it has made visible headway in turning around the See BANK Page 5, col.

1, this section TROUBLE SPOTS Track shortage thwarts water relief for refugees TWal' JUST HEIGHTS It pr WEST, Tel I bank; 'vi; Jerusalem A. Dead Sea STRIP (A I ISRAEL Jmm US! If i Bomb blasts in London Tuesday and one In Argentina last week prompt Israel to demand tighter security for Jewish sites worldwide. Page A 4. 7 CHINA Xff Pyongifano Seoul, SOUTH KOREA 1 tffi if apan Whitewater stories differ, fanning rift at Treasury By STEPHEN LABATON New York Times News Service WASHINGTON The Whitewater hearings have created a bitter rift between the Treasury secretary, the deputy secretary and the department's top lawyer that officials said yesterday would almost inevitably lead to a shake-up of the department. The three officials have provided investigators with conflicting accounts of their roles concerning contacts with the White House about the Whitewater case.

As word of the discrepancies filtered out in recent days, tensions within the Treasury Department have deepened to the point where the lawyer and her clients deeply distrust one another, administration officials said yesterday. The conflicts involve Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, the former senator from Texas who has sought to put himself above the Whitewater fray; Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman, a college friend of President Clinton who was seen as a likely successor to Bentsen until Whitewater exploded; and the general counsel, Jean Hanson, a Minnesota native and Washington newcomer who friends say is feeling increasingly isolated as the two others deny her version of events. Administration officials said that Bentsen was also displeased with Altman's handling of the case, but that for now, he is offering him at least a modicum of public support. They said that the Treasury secretary was awaiting the outcome of the congressional hearings and a review of the Office of Government See TREASURY Page 4, col. 5, this section Army to allow women in some combat posts By ERIC SCHMITT New York Times News Service WASHINGTON The Army plans to open to women more than 32,000 combat positions now closed to them, but protests from senior generals forced the Army secretary to retreat from a more ambitious plan.

The plan will allow women in some units that were previously off limits, but it will keep them far behind battle lines in many units and restrict their ability to compete for assignments necessary to rising to the Army's top ranks. Army Secretary Togo West and Gen. Gordon Sullivan, the Army chief of staff, clashed last month over how much to expand opportunities for women on the battlefield. West wanted to open virtually all positions not involving direct combat. Under West's original plan, positions would have been opened in such units as helicop "9 a ASSOCIATED PRESS A Rwandan child desperately tried to waken his brother from a diseased sleep in the Munigl camp outside Goma, Zaire, yesterday.

A defector says North Korea has five nuclear bombs and will have 10 by the end of the year, along with the ability to deliver them. Page A 2. Workers masked against the stench slung corpses into mass graves at Goma one tiny window on a tragedy many say has already reached unimaginable proportions. The flow makes even a body count impossible. r7 UNITED Atlantic STATES Ocean it Miami DOMINICAN pealed for more help from Washington to get bodies buried.

French troops have been working feverishly to dig mass graves, using earth-moving equipment and explosives to blast through hardened lava. But the 2,500 French soldiers are too few to handle the burials and protect refugees from ethnic slaughter their original mission. "The digging isn't keeping up with the death toll, which is obvious from the bodies all around us, on every road, in every field," said Ray Wilkinson, the U.N. refugee agency's spokesman in Goma. He said Tuesday U.N.

officials pressed Brig. Gen. Jack Nix, the American Army commander in Goma, and the U.S. State Department to assist the burial effort "within 48 hours." Wilkinson said they needed 25 to 30 trucks for body collection, bulldozers and backhoes for producing mass graves, and teams of burial specialists for Goma and See TRUCK Page 5, col. 5, this section By SHAWN POGATCHNIK Associated Press GOMA, Zaire The Rwandan relief effort ran into another colossal hurdle yesterday when U.S.

Army engineers churned out 46,000 gallons of clean water, only to find out there weren't enough trucks to deliver it. Millions of gallons of clean water are needed to beat the cholera crisis that is sweeping through refugee camps, killing thousands of people and threatening tens of thousands more. But yesterday only a trickle left for the camps from the U.S. operation at Lake Kivu, which is contaminated with parasites and floating bodies. U.S.

Army engineers said the rest of the water was stalled because U.N. officials were able to round up only two leaking, half-derelict tanker trucks. Yards away from where the engineers worked, refugees continued to fill up cans from a spring contaminated by human waste. U.N. organizers, overwhelmed i Port-au-Prince Caribbean Sea by the crisis, said they were searching for tanker trucks in Zaire and shipping in about 10 tankers from Uganda and Croatia, but were able to rent only a few from gasoline-shipping companies yesterday.

"Of course we're disappointed because we have worked day and night to produce this water like the U.N. wanted, and it's just sitting here. We're really kind of stunned," said Maj. Eric Hanson, a supervisor at the Army plant producing purity out of putrid Lake Kivu. The Army specialists flew in from Germany late Monday and had both of their water-purifica tion machines pumping out 1,200 gallons of clean water an hour by midday Tuesday.

U.N. officials last week urgently requested help in providing clean water to the estimated 1.2 million Hutu refugees, who fled to eastern Zaire from neighboring Rwanda this month as Tutsi-led rebels emerged victorious in the civil war there. The camps became immediate breeding grounds for disease and death a process accelerated by the mounting toll of rotting, un-buried bodies. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said more than 18,000 people died in the camps in the past week. It ap The U.S.

wants to patrol the Dominican Republic's border with Haiti to stop smuggling. If successful, a Haiti invasion may not be needed. Page A 2. Human error cited in roller-coaster crash that hurt girl ter groups that lift special-operations troops into combat. But many generals argued that women were not physically fit for such units and would cause morale problems.

Under the compromise plan, women will be assigned to air-defense artillery battalions, helicopters that fly cover for tanks and combat battalion headquarters, Army officials said. But women still will be barred from more than a quarter of the Army's jobs, including operating an advanced field-artillery weapon, called the Multiple Launch Rocket System, and flying helicopters carrying special-operations troops. If approved by Defense Secretary William Perry, the plan would effectively block women from advancing along the three main routes to the Ar- See COMBAT Page 5, col. 3, this section By ANDREW MELNYKOVYCH Staff Writer An operator's error is being blamed for a roller-coaster accident Tuesday afternoon at Kentucky Kingdom that left a 7-year-old girl hospitalized with serious injuries. Kentucky Kingdom officials said yesterday an operator of the Starchaser indoor roller coaster allowed two of its four cars to go through the ride too close together.

One rear-ended the other after another jerked by the coaster's abrupt turns, according to a Courier-Journal story. But Kentucky Kingdom officials insist the ride is safe. More than 2 million people have ridden the Starchaser safely, they said. An automatic system normally keeps cars a safe distance apart, stopping the ride if they get too close. Both crashes have been caused by human error, Hart said.

A May 1993 crash See OPERATOR Page 5, col. 4, this section operator noticed the problem and activated an emergency braking system. The girl, riding in the second car, suffered internal injuries, including a lacerated liver. The girl, whose name was not released, was in serious condition yesterday at Kosair Children's Hospital after undergoing three hours of surgery, hospital spokeswoman Pam Greer-Ullrich said. Five other people riding in the two cars were treated and released Tuesday at area hospitals.

"The young man (the ride operator) made a mistake," Kentucky Kingdom President Ed Hart said. "He feels worse than everybody else." The Starchaser runs in almost total darkness inside a five-story building. The operator was in a lighted area where the cars load. The crash was the second in 14 months on the Starchaser The previous crash caused no severe injuries. In 1990, the Starchaser also was the subject of complaints from four riders who contended they were injured when Tm 9 mm II RECYCLED DREAMS Twenty-six years after he and his MILD CHILD INDIANA: Variably cloudy today, with a chance of showers and a high south near 80.

Partly cloudy tonight. Lows, upper 50s. Partly sunny tomorrow. High, lower 80s. Details, 2 BUSINESS C1 CLASSIFIED D6, F1 COMICS E4 DEATHS B5 HORSE RACING D7 LOTTERY A2 PEOPLE A2 TV, RADIO E2 parents started building a house in AMERICANS LOSE In another defeat for U.S.

amateur basketball players, the Americans lost 81-72 to Italy and were eliminated from championship contention at the Goodwill Games. Sports, 1 boutnern Indiana, award-winning designer Clifton Nicholson will finally move in. 1 a.