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LOS ANGELES TIMES WASHINGTON EDITION FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9. 1994 A3 World Perspective Book on Young Mitterrand as a Rightist Leaves Many Shocked mi Reforms May Make Weather Disasters Worse Summer floods have killed 4,300 people and droughts have withered crops. With forced labor in decline, rural infrastructure has suffered. to 31. It documents, through letters and interviews with Mitterrand, the young man's decision to become an'active member of the ultranationalist movement Croix de Feu Cross of Fire in the 1930s.

Pean and Mitterrand explain his support for the far right as a natural result of the president's upbringing in a provincial, devoutly Roman Catholic and bourgeois family. And Pean points out that Mitterrand never supported anti-Semitic activity and never belonged to La Cagoule (the Hood), the extreme right-wing group that staged terrorist-attacks in prewar Paris. "In those troubled times, especially when one is young, it is very difficult to make choices," Mitterrand is quoted in the book. "I managed to come out of it rather well. It is unjust to judge people from errors which are explained by the atmosphere of the times." The book also describes Mitterrand's escape from a German prison camp in 1941, before he went to work for the Vichy government, as at least partly the result of his boundless passion for a young woman, to whom he wrote 2.400 letters over a three-year period.

She later broke off their engagement. After his return, Pean writes, Mitterrand wem to work as a civil servant in the Vichy government in a sincere show of support for Petain, then a popular World War I hero. Pean maintains that Mitterrand was not pro-German but "simply a Petainist." In 1943, Mitterrand began using his job as cover for his Resistance work, earning the praise of Gen. Charles de Gaulle as a liberation leader. For younger generations in France, the wartime collaboration was a black-and-white issue.

But many others who lived through the war agree with Mitterrand that politics then was a more complex business. And that has been debated hotly this year, the 50th anniversary of the liberation of France. Many in France can understand Mitterrand's continued war feelings for the late Petain. Yet they have trouble understanding his friendship with Rene Bousquet, the Vichy policy chief who ordered the arrest and deportation of tens of thousands of Jews and whose' funeral the president attended in 1986. fl F1 E3 E3 i A ill.

mm Associated Press street flooded by Typhoon Fred. flooding was caused by broken dams. Embankments along the coast and rivers broke at 770 places, official reports said. Hardest hit this summer have been half dozen southern and eastern provinces. In Guangxi province, next to Vietnam, about 6 million people were reported temporarily homeless from' the rains.

Economic losses in the province were estimated at more than $4 billion. "The lesson we have learned from this disaster is that strong flood control measures are vital, and that we have not enough effort into flood control works," said Wei Shaojin, a top Guangxi official. Floods have caused nationwide damage estimated at $17.4 billion so far this year, the official China News Service reported Wednesday. This means economic losses this year are even worse than in 1991, it said. In north China, meanwhile, peasants in many areas have seen crops wither- and die for lack of rain.

The seriousness of the problem was acknowledged by Premier Li Peng at a recent top-level government conference, according to the official New China News Agency. "This year's natural disasters have taught us once again that water conservancy is the lifeblood of agriculture," Li said, describing improvement of water conservancy projects as a "burning task" for the coming years. rn-i 'ti'l -wi. it t'r fi By DAVID HOLLEY TIMES STAFF WRITER BEIJING-When Typhoon Fred ripped into coastal Zhejjang province late last month, killing 700 and leaving 2 million people besieged by high waters, it marked just the latest in a string of floods and droughts afflicting China this summer. With a total of 4,300 people already killed by summer flooding, and weeks to go before the rainy season ends, this has been an especially bad year for natural disasters in China.

Nine typhoons have hit the country, compared with five or six in an average year. Stunned wonderment is the typical response of officials and ordinary people alike to the sudden devastation of the floods. "The deluge was so serious that it could happen only once in a century. People were not prepared," Li Dingkun, director of Hunan province's Civil Affairs Bureau, said after 10 million people in Hunan were hit by flooding. But what is often called "freak" weather strikes in parts of the country annually.

More than 1,000 people were killed by floods last year, and in 1991, the worst year in recent times, 5,113 people were killed, according to official statistics. As the death tolls and economic losses mount, more voices are being raised to say that something is wrong besides the weather. While market-oriented reforms engineered since 1978 by senior leader Deng Xiaoping have transformed China's economy, boosting rural output and bringing new prosperity to cities, the dismantling of the communes also made ijii.ti riOliifj iTi 'liiViO i I'M ni llll'HH "if ii 07 L-j 'krv-' is? Wenzhou residents paddle bamboo raft it more difficult in many areas to organize the construction or maintenance of dams, dikes and water irrigation channels. Farmers were freed to concentrate on maximizing production from their own plots of land. Village and town officials turned their attention to building rural industry.

But effective ways of replacing the forced labor of the past were often lacking. As a result, in many parts of the country, maintenance and improvement of rural infrastructure took the back seat. Meanwhile, in some areas, population pressures led to the planting of fields and even building of homes in areas known to be vulnerable to flooding- Now, when disasters strike, even relief funds may be subject to skimming by corrupt officials. When the Ministry of Civil Affairs announced last month that it was providing $81 million in disaster aid, it warned that the money should go for food, clothing, housing and medical care of truly needy people. "Anyone found to have embezzled, diverted or misused the funds will face extremely harsh punishment," the ministry declared.

Typhoon Fred was especially destructive in Wenzhou, a freewheeling commercial city in Zhejiang that has prospered under free-market reforms. Buildings collapsed, and widespread "i i "I believe we took a step forward today," said Padraig Flynn, a member of the European Union's executive commission. "There's a genuine willingness to convert words into action." It is an irony of history that Thursday's meeting which included former Communist states of Central Europe occurred on the same day that Chancellor Helmut Kohl and an array of other dignitaries bade farewell to the last of the U.S., British and French military forces who successfully defended the city for more than four decades from a more visible enemy to the east. Thursday's "Berlin declaration" singles out drug trafficking, trafficking in human beings, the rise in cross-border auto theft and Europe's most frightening new problem the smuggling of radioactive nuclear materials. The main target of these measures are highly sophisticated criminal gangs, which in general have been far faster than Europe's governments to exploit the new freedom of movement that has come with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Cold War.

The ministers also approved a plan agreed to Wednesday by the 12 EU states, specifically aimed at curtailing nuclear smuggling. That plan calls for: Using existing along a put Protestant Groups Won't Match IRA By SCOTT KRAFT TIMES STAFF WRITER PARIS In almost 50 years in political office, the last 13 in the Elysee Palace, President Francois Mitterrand has carefully shielded his past, cultivating an image of intellectual rigor and compassion, aloofness and inscrutability. He has been, in other words, the Frenchman's Frenchman. But these days the 77-year-old president, with just nine months left in office and in ill health, is putting dents in the very image he created. To the shock of many in France, where political mysteries often go to the grave, Mitterrand has cooperated with a writer whose book, released last week, portrays this socialist icon and Resistance fighter as: a supporter of right-wing causes before World War II: a willing participant at first in the Vichy government, and a devoted lifelong friend to the Vichy police chief who ordered the arrest and deportation of tens of thousands of Jews.

"A French Youth Francois Mitterrand 1934-1947," by Pierre Pean, has created a stir across the country with its text and its cover photo. It shows a young Mitterrand shaking hands in 1942 with Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, the head of the Vichy government that collaborated with the Nazis in World War II. Perhaps the biggest surprise for the French is the willingness of Mitterrand, the country's longest-serving president, to showcase the past that he had declined to discuss and risk clouding the image many in France have of him. Author Pean says' Mitterrand just wanted to come clean. "At the threshold of his entry into history, the time had come to lay everything out at the end of his last term," Pean has told newspapers here.

Indeed, Mitterrand, who recently underwent a second operation relating to his prostate cancer, said in an interview published in Paris on Thursday that he would not have time write an autobiography. Pean's book, hailed by critics as exceptionally evenhanded, covers Mitterrand's early years, from ages 18 6fM 'MI'i'Wll'1 Cease-Fire Kanther said Russian and German officials had already agreed, during bilateral talks last month, on several of the issues discussed Thursday. Among. the first tasks outlined. in the Berlin declaration is to determine where and how much nuclear material exists in the part of Europe that was once the Soviet empire.

"We've got to develop a picture of what's out there," Kanther said. "We still don't know where the Munich material came from. It can't be exactly determined. That's a simple example of just how at the beginning we are." Kanther was referring to the largest seizure so far: about 10 ounces of weapons-grade plutonium, apparently from the former Soviet Union, last month in Munich. Winfried Kloeckner, an official in the safeguards division of Euratom in Luxembourg, confirmed Thursday that despite tests, the exact origin of the- plutonium remains unclear.

German officials said EU justice and Interior ministers, meeting Wednesday on their own, also made progress on the creation of a new European law enforcement agency, dubbed Europol, although member states remained divided on the exact role of such an agency and who should have ultimate control over it. i 1' Safety of Canadian Blood Supply Is Questioned By CRAIG TURNER TIMES STAFF WRITER TORONTO Canadians were questioning the safety of their blood supply Thursday after disclosures that U.S. and. Canadian health officials had detected that appeared in Thursday's unionist Belfast Telegraph, Reynolds said: "The Irish people want no hand, act or part in any attempt to coerce or cajole a majority of the people in the north into a united Ireland against their will." Insisting that unionists in Northern Ireland have nothing to fear from the IRA truce, Reynolds added: "The announcement of a complete cessation together with the IRA's declaration of a definitive commitment to the success of the democratic peace process clearly means, in plain English, that the cessation of violence will be permanent." Reynolds said that preparations for the all -party peace talks that London and Dublin have been trying to arrange since December included no secret paramilitary input into the- "framework" document being readied by Britain and Ireland. "The only deal that will be done in Northern Ireland and that can be contemplated will be between the two governments," Reynolds said, "and between constitutional parties sitting around the table, with the consent principle paramount in all discussion, and possible agreements." At the same time, the Belfast Telegraph published what it called the first details of the framework document setting out the two governments' ideas for the future of Northern Ireland.

The document, the paper said, calls for replacement of most ministers in the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) with locally elected politicians, and an 85-member Assembly that would take over most of the responsibilities now administered by the NIO. The Assembly would be responsible for the departments of agriculture, environment, economic development, health and social services, education, finance and personnel. Security would remain under the British -run NIO. The province would also have a bill of rights protecting religious freedoms, cross-border consultative bodies between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, and a commitment by Dublin to remove from the Irish constitution territorial claims to the north. Northern Ireland: Militants loyal to Britain say they want proof the IRA is committed to peace.

By WILLIAM TUOHY TIMES STAFF WRITER BELFAST, Northern Ireland Protestant paramilitary groups loyal to Britain issued a statement here Thursday saying they would not declare a cease-fire to match the one observed by the outlawed Irish Republican Army for the past week in Northern Ireland. The Combined Loyalist Military Command, which wants continued British rule in the province, said that before calling a cease-fire it would need proof that the IRA's armistice is holding and that no secret peace deals were made with the Irish nationalists by the British government. The group also wantsuarantees that Ulster, as the Protestants call Northern Ireland, would remain in the United Kingdom after a peace settlement. However, political observers noted that no loyalist attacks have taken place since Sunday, and that the paramilitary groups may well be observing a de facto cease-fire without publicly committing themselves to one. Eric Smyth, a unionist city council member here, said of the announcement: "They're being careful, keeping people guessing.

But the very fact they used the language of cease-fire is to be welcomed." Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds, who this week held an unprecedented meeting with the IRA's political spokesman, Gerry Adams, had called on the loyalists Wednesday to participate in the cease-fire. And in a message to Northern Ireland's Protestants Major European Nations Combine to Combat Crime substandard practices at collection centers. Officials at Health Canada, the federal health department, acknowledged Thursday that they had ordered four collection centers to halt some procedures for as long as two weeks because of noncompliance with regulations. However, the department declined to specify the problems and identified the sites of the four centers in Montreal; London, Ontario; Regina and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan only after a public uproar. The violations surfaced after the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.

reported earlier in the week that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had suspended some shipments of plasma from Canada to North Carolina for processing. The FDA acted after inspectors found improper procedures at a Canadian Red Cross blood center in Toronto. FDA spokesman Lawrence Bachorik said in a telephone interview that a routine inspection found mislabeling of blood; failure to check some donors for needle marks, which could indicate a greater risk of HIV infection; and failure to trace earlier donations of those found to be HIV-positive. The plasma in question would have been shipped to North Carolina for processing and then returned to Canada.

The processing is done in North Carolina because Canada lacks an equivalent processing facility. There is no threat to the U.S. blood supply. The revelations come as a national commission investigates procedures in the 1980s that led to the infection of rrftre than 1,000 Canadians with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS, from tainted transfusions. Critics of the Red Cross and Canada's health department were quick to suggest that the latest disclosures show that little has been done to correct past mistakes.

"The whole blood business in Canada has this attitude of 'We know what's best for you and we'll take care of it," which is what got us into trouble in the past," said Janet Conners of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, whose husband contracted HIV from a transfusion and then transmitted it to her. "That scares me, to think that four centers were shut down and they won't say why," Conners said in a telephone interview. "Not only are we angry at the Red Cross, we are very concerned about what our health protection branch at the federal government is doing because they're the watchdog for blood safety in this country." said Lindee David, executive director of the Canadian Hemophilia Assn. in Montreal. Policy: Drug trafficking, auto theft and the smuggling of radioactive materials are specifically targeted.

International crime is a growing threat, the justice and interior ministers say. By TYLER MARSHALL TIMES STAFF WRITER BERLIN Justice and Interior ministers from most major European nations embarked Thursday on their first joint attempt to combat the growing threat of international organized crime, which has mushroomed in the post-Cold War era. At a news conference, German Interior Minister Manfred Kanther hailed the meeting as "an extremely important day for Europe and for the coordination of its internal security." The initial steps, however, were modest. Ministers from 22 European nations agreed on a declaration committing their countries to a series of measures aimed at forging closer cooperation, technical assistance and a more exhaustive information exchange. Western economic assistance to improve controls on all nuclear materials in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe; undertaking all possible efforts to prevent nuclear materials from crossing international, borders, and intensifying cooperative efforts between law enforcement agencies of European member states.

"The illegal trade in nuclear material is one of the most alarming features of the new European order. declared British Home Secretary Michael Howard. "It presents a potential for evil that is hard to A series of highly publicized incidents this summer involving attempts to smuggle radioactive plutonium and uranium out of the former Soviet Union to Germany sharply increased public awareness of a problem with potentially disastrous consequences. According to EU figures, the number of incidents of attempted nuclear smuggling across the old East-West divide has risen steadily, with four cases in 1990, 41 in 1991,. 158 in 1992 and 241 last year.

Technical-level officials from the United States, Canada, Switzerland and Morocco also attended Thursday's meeting. Russia and Ukraine, believed to be the main sources of smuggled nuclear materials and home to some of the best-organized, best-financed gangs, were absent..