Arizona Daily Star from Tucson, Arizona • Page 1

Cafaiina High School had tough year MetroRegion, Page IB Broadway update Thunderous non-musicals Accent, Page 1G i. it i 1995 The Arizona Daily Star Vol. 154 No. 148 Final Edition, Tucson, Sunday, May 28, 1995 $1.50 U.S.$2.50 in Mexico 158 Pages UA career at end But Espinoza looks ahead Sports, Page 1C Ark Star onfrontatBO ibis er 1 Firenchme i Pamela Hale Trachta clutches a photo of her father, Capt. Robert Armstrong Hale, who was killed in action when she was not yet 2 years old.

Hale posed for the portrait below in 1943, two years before he was slain. er to the heart of the government-controlled city. Serb military spokesman Lt. Col. Milovan Milutinovic said the Serbs attacked because they believed the Bosnian army was planning to take over the position.

One French soldier was killed and 10 were wounded fighting for the observation post. Four Serbs were killed. Another French peacekeeper was killed by Bosnian Serbs react with fury, realism to the stronger U.N. stance. Page 16A.

a sniper at a nearby post, bringing to 39 the number killed in the former Yugoslavia. French President Jacques'; Chirac demanded a tougher mandate for U.N. peacekeepers and instructed French troops to resist! Serb aggression on them "by any; means." France sent warships yester-! day to the Adriatic coast, where; the U.S. aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt was dispatched earlier. In Washington, President Clin-; ton spoke by telephone with1 Chirac and British Prime Minister.

John Major about Bosnia, includ-' ing ways to strengthen the peacekeeping mission, said spokesman-Calvin Mitchell. Specific measures were to be discussed tomorrow night at a NATO foreign ministers' meeting in the Netherlands, Mitchell said. The meeting was moved up from Tuesday. At the United Nations, Security Council President Jean-Bernard Merimee said council members. 74 VV St 'v "'4 mm New tactic fuels, not quells, fight SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) The new U.N.

tactic of confronting the Bosnian Serbs escalated into a deadly gunbattle yesterday between Serbs and French peacekeepers for control of a U.N. observation post near the center of Sarajevo. Two French peacekeepers and four Serbs were killed in fighting that followed NATO airstrikes and the Serbs' detention of more than 200 U.N. soldiers. Some of the soldiers were chained to likely NATO targets as human shields.

World leaders were faced with the choice of getting tougher or backing off and possibly backing out of Bosnia. NATO said it supported a stronger U.N. mission. The U.N. Security Council said it would "not yield to blackmail" by the Serbs.

Early yesterday, Serb soldiers disguised as French peacekeepers complete with U.N. blue helmets and flak jackets infiltrated and took command of the U.N. observation post, located at both ends of a bridge over the MUjacka River. Hours later, French troops backed by six light tanks and armored personnel carriers recaptured one end of the 50-yard-long bridge. Serbs fired on the French from nearby buildings and held on to the other side of the bridge, putting them a step clos I 5 'c i 1 i if ii 11 1 ii liii David Sanders, The Arizona Daily Star Photo courtesy of Pamela Trachta expressed "their determination' not to yield to blackmail, and See BOSNIA, Page 16A Dl(al DUD SftDBil Tucsonan tracks down dad's war history Clinton's strategy for '96 puts focus on women voters 1 AJ "1 Mayor George Miller recalls the "total chaos" of battle and his wounding on Saipan.

Page 18A. By Enric Volante The Arizona Daily Star Pamela Hale Trachta didn't get to know her father until nearly 50 years after he died in battle. He was a young, handsome Air Force captain on the day enemy fighter planes blew his B-26 bomber out of the skies near Frankfurt, Germany. She was a chunky, sober-faced girl of 19 months too young to understand how her father's death would touch the rest of her life. Like others who lost their dads in World War II, Trachta will observe Memorial Day tomorrow by celebrating his life.

It was a life about which she knew very little as a child. "I had pictures of him tucked away in a little box, and I would get them out and look at them sometimes," recalls Trachta, now a 52-year-old Tucson consultant. But discussing her father "was a taboo subject in our family." Her mother had remarried and discouraged such talk. Trachta knew that Capt. Robert Armstrong Hale died after being shot down "It took me two more days to get up the guts to call him," she remembers.

She reached him on the anniversary of the day her father died. Trent, by then in his 70s, retold the story of that final mission, much as he'd told it in a 1945 letter to Trachta's mother. The weather had been clear on Feb. 21, 1945. Leaving the U.S.

base at Cam-brai, France, Capt. Hale piloted "The Sack Queen," a B-26 Marauder decorated with the usual pinup picture of a scantily clad brunette, eastward over Germany. An escort of fighter planes was on hand to defend the big bombers from German fighters. But on the way to the second of two targets, Hale's group of six bombers fell behind the rest, their crews unaware that the fighter escort had turned back after running low on gas. "We were jumped by about 15 enemy fighters," Trent would write later.

"They hit us hard and fast, and all three of us in the rear of the plane were wounded, but still able to fight them. Soon the fighters started hitting us from the front and we started down. "I looked around to discover (two See FLIER, Page 18A By Stewart M. Powell 1 1995 Hearst Newspapers WASHINGTON Has President Clinton decided to kiss off "angry white men" in favor of courting American women in his bid for re-election in 1990? Evidence emerging from the White House points strongly to that conclusion. Increasingly, the president is spotlighting government policies that benefit millions of working women and mothers at home.

He is tackling headline-grabbing issues such as abortion rights that concern women activists who lead organizations capable of delivering voters on Election Day. He is encouraging first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to take on duties that highlight her prominence in the administration without antagonizing her critics. In March, he sent her to a 150-nation summit in Copenhagen and on a 12-day, five-nation trip to South Asia to highlight issues affecting women and children. A vivid symbol of the president's new campaign: Betsy Myers, sister of former White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers, is moving from the Small Business Administration to a new post at the White House that Ls devoted solely to forging ties with women and women's organizations. Another clue: The president has narrowed the scope of the White House review of federal affirmative action programs that was launched in February with an eye toward easing the workplace preferences for women and minorities that have alienated the "angry hite males" who defect-See WOMEN, Page 5A at age 27.

She knew little else. As she grew older, she wanted to know more. In 1992, after her mother and stepfather had died, Trachta began seriously piecing together details of her father's short life and death. With the help of the Pima Air Museum, she tracked down a mailing list of the survivors of her dad's 585th Bombardment Squadron. She found a phone number next to a name she recognized: Sgt.

Donald Trent, the tail gunner who'd been shot down with her dad. WEATHER INDEX Popular opposition candidate puts PRI's survival to test today Clearing skies. Today's weather is expected to be sunnier with west winds of up to 20 mph. Look for a high in the mid-908 and a low near 60. Yesterday's high was 91.

The low was 59. Details on Pagre 15A. Forest fire control Trying again. Five years after an aborted attempt to reduce the threat of a devastating forest fire in Oracle, federal officials are talking about meetings this fall to discuss burning tree-covered federal land on Oracle's outskirts. Page IB.

Accent 1-12G Home I l-10f Classified 1-34 Money 1-SH Comment 1-40 Movies 5G Crossword 10G Sports 1-14C Dear Abby 2G Travel 1-W Home 1-6E World IS-17 polls for today's state elections that he already is being touted as a formidable presidential contender for the year 12000. "If the PRI loses, it will be the start, the beginning, of the inevitable death of the Mexican political system." said Professor Luis Miguel Rionda of the University of Guanajuato. "If the PAN wins, it's a death announcement for the PRI." Voters nationwide have been turning to the PAN for some time. A series of PAN victories during the past seven years has earned the part' four of 31 state nouses and more than two dozen city halls, breaking the PRI's more than five-decade luck on most offices. With the PAN running strongly in Guanajuato and in Yucatan, a southeastern state also holding gubernatorial elections today, the electoral tide seems to be shifting the PAN's way.

On the campaign trail, thousands pack rallies for Vicente Fox Quesada, the personable rancher turned gubernatorial candidate seen as a hero since he first ran for governor in 1991. Siiice that election ws contested violently, the state hxs been led by an interim PAN governor. But popular feeling has stayed with the 53-year-old Fox, wlio was locked out of the governor's mansion and has been See MEXICO, Page 17A By Esther Schrader Knijjrt-Ridder Newspapers GUANAJUATO, Mexico In this state at the geographic crossroads of Mexico, a battle for the governor's chair has become a test of whether the country's authoritarian political system can survive growing national discontent. With the country five months into a punishing economic crisis, the power of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) is surging while the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) is in disarray. The PAN charismatic Guanajuato gubernatorial candidate has taken such a commanding lead in 7 jlllil 7.