The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 10

10 THE AGE THURSDAY 3 AUGUST 1995 World' News In Brief Imton vows to veto Bosma arms hi I west At a crisis meeting with his Croatian Serb counterpart, Mr Milan Manic, in Drvar, western Bosnia, late yesterday, Dr Karadzic said: UN troops have withdrawn from Bosnia pr 12 weeks after the Bosnian Goverment follows through on its threats to demand their withdrawal. Even then, Mr Clinton can ask for unlimited 30-day waivers if there are still UN troops in Bosnia. The White House has committed itself to deploy 25,000 American troops part of a force that could number as many as 70,000 to help evacuate the 22,000 lightly armed peacekeepers from their vulnerable positions in Bosnia. In Bosnia, the Bosnian Serb leader, By phiujp McCarthy, New Vbrfe, WMnMday President Clinton today was heading for a foreign policy showdown with Congress, after pledging to veto a bill to lift the Bosnian arms embargo. In a rejection of Mr Clinton's policy on Bosnia, the House voted 298-128 yesterday to lift the arms embargo so the Muslim-led Government can better defend itself.

The Senate approved the bill 69-29 last week. Both margins were large enough to override a presidential veto, but the White House said Mr Clinton was chipping away at the margin. Officials identified several bill supporters who were likely to sustain a veto when it comes. To override a veto, both the House and Senate must pass the bill again by' two-thirds majorities. That is at least 67 votes in the Senate and 290 in the House, if all lawmakers vote." Yet some Democrats may switch votes and stand with their President on an override.

After the vote, the White House spokesman, Mr Mike McCurry, issued a statement announcing that Mr Clinton was disappointed at the vote and was determined to veto it. Mr Clinton has 10 days In which to do this. If the measure becomes law, it could trigger the withdrawal of United Nations peacekeepers from Bosnia. Mr Clinton is anxious to head off moves that could eventually force American troops Into Bosnia to pull out the peacekeepers. In unsuccessfully appealing to congressmen to reject the; effort to lift the embargo, Mr Clinton said he thought the new command guide-lines would strengthen the UN mission, provided Congress did not further complicate the equation.

"I think this new strategy will work If we can hammer out a negotiated settlement," he said of peace moves in Bosnia. "There's a new effort there." 1 If Congress overrides the'PresI-' dent's veto, the bill does not require Mr Clinton to end American participation in the embargo immediately. Key caveats in the bill state that the embargo should not end until the Shattered museum a monument to Balkans hatred halt the fighting and make peace. Addressing the Bosnian President, Mr Alija Izetbegovic, Mr Milosevic said: "It needs more courage and strength to bring about peace than to start a war." Pointing to the massive exodus of refugees from both sides, he added: "Each one of us has to ask how many I times these scenes will be repeated before we find the courage and the strength necessary to stop the War." Mr Milosevic said he had "implored" General Mladic "and the 1 leadership of the Serb Republic to stop the war and to conclude imme- diately the hostilities with the members of v. y.

with agencies) Picture: AP closer to their stronghold at Knin. she says. "People here never particl-i pated in what happened at the but the Serbs claimed that we did:" After 1945, Tito had Jasenovac camp bulldozed in the belief that the, two, communities would forget He caiifB iu gfips wiuv.yviiai nap: pened here, and, neither did the country he forged. Its people are making the same mistake. began examining her religious beliefs.

"Curiosity won out' Before you throw something away, you want to-know what it is you are throwing away," she said. She left her job, freshened up her Hebrew and headed to Israel, where she found new religious, inspiration. Rabbi Wyler studied in London and New York, and was invited by Oldenburg and Braunschweig congregations (also 100 members) to be their rabbi a year before her ordination. 1 Wyler also will teach Jewish studies at the University of Oldenburg. AP PETER ELLINGSEN ratist Serb state carved out of Cro- atia, to prepare Serbs for the Croat assault they claim is imminent.

Croats deplore Jasenovac, and feel persecuted by its legacy. Their President, Mr Franjo Tudjman, they say, was a partisan fighting the Ustashe. They are furious that thousands of Croats massacred as they fled Tito's communists in 1945 are remembered as murderers, never victims. Today, what is so arresting about the museum is the way it has been destroyed. Every pane of glass has been shattered, every shard ground underfoot Every filing cabinet has been violated, every exhibit case upended, every wall outraged.

All that is left of the monument to the dead is a string of sepia photographs, placed high on the bare walls. They capture the ravaged faces of young children, emaciated men and terrified women being pushed down the ramp of the rail head; other photographs show bodies grotesque-1' ly bloated, features defaced, floating in the. Sava River after torture and A was this place sq vandalised? The only be that a hate has arisen as fierce as the horror- trapped in the photographs, perhaps as a way of erasing a past no one Former Stasl head free Berlin, Wednesday Erich Mielke, who headed communist East Germany's legendary Stasi state security service for more than three decades, was released from prison yesterday. A Berlin justice spokesman said Mielke, who left Berlin's Moabit prison in an -ambulance for an unknown destination, was set free two days earlier than planned to prevent him from being pursued by hordes of journalists as he was during his trial. Crowds could also have endangered the frail 87-year-old, he said.

3, Rauter Sex slaves details A Chinese activist today made public what he said was a copy of historical documents that showed the Japanese army had forced Chinese women into prostitution in World War II. Mr Tong Zeng, a leading campaigner for 1 compensation for Chinese victims ot Japan wartime aggression, said the district court in the northern port of Tianjin turned over the documents to the city's archives In 1946. The court investigated 80 Chinese "comfort women" forced to serve as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers from 1944, he said. Beutar Snap, crackle, A cornflakes television commercial has run into trouble with Ireland's advertising watchdog. The Kellogg's Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes ad features a young man confessing to.a priest that he "succumbed to temptation while lying in His "sin" was eating a bowl of cornflakes.

When told it was not a sin, he says: "But Father, my girlfriend fell asleep waiting for me to finish." The advert prompted a complaint that it was distasteful and offensive. The Advertising Standards Authority urged 4 Kellogg's to take care with religious themes because they had "the potential to cause PA Presidential probe A congressional committee announced today that It would investigate Colombian President Ernesto Samper on charges, of accepting millions of dollars of drug money to finance his election campaign. The prosecutor-general has also asked the country's Supreme Court to investigate Defence Minister Fernando Botero, who was Mr Samper's campaign chief In last year's elections, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office Rautar Husband-killers More than 100 women convicts, one in 10, at Liaoning prison in i north-east China are serving terms for killing their husbands, the Beijing ibuth Daily said today. None was sentenced to death, the paper said. The heaviest was a suspended death sentence, while the lightest was five years in prison.

Most were physically abused by their husbands and killed them while -they slept Rauter UK soap opera British women are the cleaner sex more than one in three take a bath every day compared with less than one in four for men. The 1 naked truth is revealed in a survey of Britain's bathroom habits by 1m bathroom furniture manufactuer Armitage Shanks. It found that showers are more popular than baths 33 per cent of the 1000 adults questioned opted for a daily shower, 27 per cent for a daily bath; and more than one in three people still have no idea what a bidet is used for. PA 3 by president First content Inttlon of the zone (site tnd year) MWfOWUNO' jl 2 (WoMtor tNl btttts pto a i 0961199) taMn "Theinternational community must condemn and punish Croatia! behavior. Yugoslavia must help us by all the means It has because this Is no longer a civil war, but an aggression." Earlier yesterday, however, the Serbian President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, called on the Bosnian Serb military commander, General Ratio Mladic, and the Bosnian Government authorities to halt the war in Bosnia, Belgrade television report-.

ed. It said Mr Milosevic had sent a letter to the two men urging them to 1 V7 LL Croat and Muslim forces pushing trickling back to a place that housed 1200 people, them Serbs, she wants to forget "Serbs who did not betray us are 'welcome to come back, but I don't to see their faces," she sighs. At was port) alter Jasenovac camp closed with her mother-in-law having died at the hands of the Serbs, there is no guilt, Germany and there was a woman rabbi, Regina Jonas. She was murdered at Ms Schumann said gender was not a consideration when the congregation was looking for a rabbi. "We sought a well-educated, German-speaking rabbi," she said.

Rabbi Wyler had participated in a Passover service at Oldenburg two-, and-a-half-years ago and found it was "mutual love at first It was a big change for the woman who had once thought of giving up Judaism. Rabbi Wyler had worked as an agricultural engineer, a journalist and a public relations person for a Swiss chemical company when she MATTHEW GLEDHILL reports from Paris that the French Defence Department documents released yesterday admitted imperfections in the nuclear program between 1966 and 1973. In the most serious case, a part of the atoll Fangataufa had to be -decontaminated by scientists following an open-air test conducted from barge on 24 September 1966. According td Government files, two other trials led to "the beginnings of One balloon test on Mururoa Atoll in July 1966 spawned minor fallout, while another above-ground test in August 1973 had similar effects, i The Defence Department said the area was cleared of radioactive sediment The Information was contained in a 600-page document giving a detailed history of France's 204 nuclear tests conducted over the past 25 years. Hoping to quell rising internal and International discontent over -the nuclear issue, the Chirac Government claims the report's release matches a policy of "transparence" in regard to its arms program.

In Canberra yesterday, the Defence Minister, Senator Ray, who sparked the French decision to withdraw Mr Girard by excluding a French company from the defence 'contract, called on state governments to follow his lead as long as Australian Interests and workers in French-subsidiary companies were not harmed. "The real pressure now Is on some State governments who are doing a lot of business with French companies, such as Victoria with electricity," he said. "Let's let the Liberals put their mouth where their princi ples are and see what they do." hey mw Krajina Serb soldiers check a map wants to face. Croat soldiers now, guard the museum, but it is likely Croat militia billeted here did some of the damage in 1991, when the war broke out. The Serbs later shelled this place, retook it, and defaced the walls with graffiti.

Children were bought here before Yugoslavia imploded four years ago to learn the lessons of history. of Germany's conference of rabbis. "I invite Mr Bubis and the other critics to join us in a worship service before they paint me as the. devil," Rabbi Wyler, 44, said in an interview. But she said she was not part of the Orthodox tradition of Mr Bubis "where women do not have equal Jewish congregations are autonomous, and the choice of Rabbi Wyler, who is affiliated with the Worldwide.

Movement of Judaism, reflects the special character of the Oldenburg congregation. Women played a big part in founding the congregation in 1992, which replaced one that had died out after YomvoiT Stop US Afq our All evc-tye FaCifMC ed to have been decontaminated. This is the first time France has published details of its test program, which included more tests than foreign observers had detected. The publication comes amid con- tinued diplomatic pressure on France. Yesterday, France recalled its ambassador from Australia after Canberra barred the Dassault company from a big defence contract.

The Foreign Ministry listed a series of hostile gestures, including stopping mail to the French embassy, delaying diplomatic bags, allowing f. b- man rabbi brings a tradition back to Dr Radovan Karadzic, appealed yesterday for help from Belgrade to stop what he called Zagreb's attempt to create a "Greater Croatia" after recent Croatian advances in Bosnia's 'V as they plan action-against the allied no one wants even a frag'-;" ment of the past to remain." In nearby Jasenovac village, where Croats two months ago expelled the Serb's who three-and-a-half years'', earlier pushed out the Croats, houses) are being rebuilt, but not memories. Maria Mackovici secretary of the municipality, does' not want to talk about hate. Like the other 100 Croats being reorganised in 1945. The chairwoman of the Oldenburg group, Ms Sara-Ruth Schumann, said its 100 members ranged from 25 to about 40.

i i Although it is new, and the members are, young, the congregation is returning to a German tradition by choosing a woman rabbi, Ms Schumann said. "I respect the Orthodox view that up until now has marked congregational life in Germany, but changes bring enrichment," Ms Schumann told the weekly magazine Der Spiegel "Before World War II, there was rabbinical education for women in protesters to obstruct access to the embassy and delaying French: ships in Australian ports. "The French Government de- nounces these discriminatory measures, asks that they be brought to an end, reminds the Australian Government of its responsibility under international law and is studying measures which could be taken in response. It is recalling its ambassador for consultations, it said. "These decisions will be announced this afternoon to the Australian ambassador who has been summoned to the Foreign Ministry for this purpose:" i The loss of the potential contract for 35 to 40 light fighter jets was the most serious economic price Paris has yet had to pay for its testing.

"Nuclear tests, should not be mixed up with the question of arms industry contracts," the Defence Minister, Mr Charles Millon, said in a radio interview yesterday. Australian officials said Dassault had little chance of winning the deal. But a senior French official said Can-berras barring of the company on political grounds was "the last I Indepandwrt French exports New Zealand In the longer term." It was the first public admission by a minister of concern that the French could block exports In response to the Government's cam-, paign against nuclear testing. United New Zealand leader Mr'; Cllve Matthewson told Parliament the move amounted to a "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" policy. By ANTJE SCHWARZ, Oldenburg, Germany, Wednesday Ms Bea Wyler became Germany's -first female rabbi since the Holocaust when she took charge of two Jewish congregations in Lower Saxony state yesterday.

Rabbi Wyler's invitations from the. three-year-old congregation in Oldenburg, and the congregation in nearby Braunschweig, were not without controversy. Mr Ignatz Bubis, the chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has said he would not attend a worship service presided over by the Swiss-born Rabbi Wyler, and his influence is expected to keep her out Zagreb, WMnaaday Croatian troops are lounging close by with AK-47s cradled In their arms. Four hundred metres away, across the Sava River, Serb snipers have binoculars trained on the bank. Neither group is much interested in the devastated building between them.

That is a shame because more than anywhere else in former Yugoslavia, the museum at Jasenovac evbkes the source of the enmity poised to engulf these fighters in the bloodiest fighting of this war. 'No one is sure how many people died in the bucolic fields behind the museum. Serbs insist the figure is Croats say it is no more than 40,000. Independent researchers plump for 200,000. What is not disputed is the bestial slaughter carried out here, 90 kilometres south of Zagreb, by the fascist Ustashe in World War U.

hostility between Serbs and Croats goes back to the early years of the Yugoslav state after 1918, the Ustashe's extermination of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and Croatian communists at Jasenovac set the scene for the genocidal killings and other atrocities that surfaced in 1991. rail head that brought the victims in sealed wagons to Jasenovac from 1941 to 1945 is now derelict. But the memory of so many innocents burned in brick ovens, or shot in the back of the head, has never grown rusty. The Serbs hold on to Jasenovac as proof of Croatian brutality; their leaders-used It' their, obscene Even-yesterday the past was being revived in Knin, capital of Krajina, the sepa- Dudayevls moves keep Chechnya peace deal under cloud Confusion surrounds the Chechen peace process today after Chechen President Dzhokhar Dudayev ordered rebel commanders to start implementing the military agreement with Russia to end nearly eight months of war in the breakaway republic, a news agency said today. The order follows an earlier decision by Mr Dudayev to sack the head of the Chechen peace delegation whom he had accused of betrayal.

"The document has been approved in general and accepted for execution," Mr Dudayev's spokesman, Mr Movladi Udugov, told the Itar-Tass newsagency. If confirmed, Mr Dudayev's approval would represent a breakthrough in the search for peace. Reached on Sunday after lengthy negotiations, the military agreement is considered a prelude to a political accord. Yesterday, Mr Dudayev abruptly sacked the head of his peace delegation, Mr Usman Imayev. Mr Imayev led the Chechen delegation that represented Mr Dudayev in negotiations with Russia and signed the peace deal.

Mr Dudayev reportedly accused him of betraying Chechnya's interests in the peace talks. In hiding, Mr Dudayev has not appeared publicly for months and it was not clear why he had approved the agreement after firing Mr Imayev, who had signed it on his behalf. The peace plan covers a ceasefire, surrender of weapons and withdrawal of Russian forces. But the key problem, Chechnya's status, is unresolved. Russia is due to begin pulling out its troops within the next 10 days.

Colonel General Yevgeny Podkol-Zin said Russian paratroopers would be the first to leave Chechnya. Some Interior Ministry forces will stay behind under the deal. There are signs of severe fractures In the Chechen camp. Mr Dudayev and other commanders had bitterly opposed the peace deal until today, while others were ready to support it The Chechen forces chief of staff, General Asian Mashkhadov, yesterday ordered his supporters to stop fighting, release prisoners and end any terrorist acts. AP, ttobyn Dixon pledges to keep heat on Chirac slides in polls as test opposition mounts at home fi Number of lasts IS II -K v- OwtodiOtfi II 1 (isem II OwjHtavMos 44 Way ahead fEittii tc (07441) lJ Ifv A ITS I I Fnnfoii IMvTOnd By MARY DEJEVSKY, Paris, MMnMday Opposition to President Jacques Chirac's decision to resume nuclear testing appears to be mounting in France.

According to an opinion poll published in this morning's Le Parisien. 60 per cent of French people think Mr Chirac ought to renounce his decision. Only 29 per cent of those asked thought he should persist A week ago a poll for the Journal du Dimanche showed Mr Chirac's popularity in. France had fallen 10 points in one month, largely because of his decision on testing. Yesterday's poll findings were published soon after the Defence Ministry issued a document that, it said, contained full Information about France's nuclear testing program from the beginning, including the admission that three tests had caused some contamination.

In the document, France admits to having conducted 204 nuclear tests, in the atmosphere and underground, in the Sahara and Polynesia from 1960 to 1992. Three tests, in 1966 and 1973, caused radioactive contamination. The affected zones were report- f) ffWtf tn tj turn, ty He said It was "probably a good thing" that Mr Girard had been re- called to allow him to tell his Govern-ment of the depth of Australian feeling. "Some people have said Australia's response hasn't been strong enough. Well, this is the only country they've wihdrawn their ambassador -from so I think it probably indicates the Government has got the response right," Senator Ray said.

The Opposition's foreign affairs spokesman, Mr Downer, supported the decision to exclude the French company Dassault from, the aviation bidding- process but cautioned against the states stepping up the protest because the French companies involved were part of larger con-sortlums. "It would make a point against the NZ fears defence ban will hit French companies but it would be attacking Australian companies," Mr Downer said. "There is no point Aus- -tralla cutting off its nose to spite its face on this Issue." The Australian ambassador in Par- is, Mr. Alan Brown, was yesterday called in by the French Foreign Ministry to be told of France's displeasure at the protests In Australia. He received an uncharacteristlcal-' ly stern reproach from the French Government, which demanded that Australia "put an end to these criminatory While the French were angered by Senator Ray's decision to bar Dassault, It was seen as the last straw after mail bans on the embassy since 14 July, two delays in the delivery of diplomatic bags and obstruction of the embassy by protesters.

By DAVID BARBER, Wellington, WMneaday With exports to France at record levels, the New Zealand Government is refusing to rule out future purchases of French military equipment for fear of economic Last year, New Zealand's exports to France reached SNZ222.7 million. The Minister of Defence, Mr Warren Cooper, said today that the Government had frozen decisions on de-, fence purchases In which French companies were interested. "The whole question of military procurements Is on ice," he said, "There's hardly any chance that the French can retaliate against the Australians. They can do things to 8.