Honolulu Star-Bulletin from Honolulu, Hawaii • 15

Star-Bulletin Thursday. December 9, JWJ A-IS I II THE WORLD N. Korea drops facade; admits economic crisis foreign exchange for essential imports such as oil and equipment and raw rials for industry. "This has not only caused serious damage to our economic construction, but has also made it inevitable to adjust the pace and balance of our overall economic development and made it impossible to fulfill the Third Seven-Year Plan as scheduled," the communique said. Kim Il-sung, whose watchword is "Juche" (self-reliance), also blamed the crisis on heightened military tensions over North Korea's suspected nuclear weapons program.

The United Nations has threatened sanctions unless North Korea grants access to nuclear inspectors. "Faced with the increasing danger of a new war on the Korean peninsula, we had to direct many things in the economic field to national defense," the communique said. announced the political resurrection of President Kim U-sung's younger brother, former deputy premier Kim Yong-ju, after a 17-year political eclipse. He was named the same day both to the Korean Workers (Communist) Party central committee and its executive politburo. What was clearly significant was the North's admission finally of what the outside world had long suspected, that its economy is in deep trouble.

The news was in a bluntly worded communique issued following a central' committee meeting and carried today by the official Korean Central News Agency Yesterday's party plenum, chaired by President Kim, decided to call a halt to years of propaganda claims that all was well in North Korea's "earthly paradise." Since the demise of the Soviet bloc, the communique revealed, North Korea has been forced to pay world prices in scarce N. Korean military paper tiger? A-1 6 Reuters HY. TOKYO Isolated North Korea acknowledged publicly for the first time today that its Stalinist economy had been devastated by the collapse of the Soviet Union and was now in grave crisis. One day after sacking the state planning chief, the ruling party leadership revealed the failure of huge sections of the economy, with industrial output sagging, power and steel production poor and unspecified serious farm problems. The party ordered two to three years of economic readjustment during which top fnriority will go to boosting agriculture, ight industry and the foreign trade essential to earning hard currency, i At the same time, an official statement Hsw typhoon will strike storm-weary Philippines MANILA A new typhoon bore down on already ravaged parts of the Philippines today, capping what could be the worst year for tropical storms In three decades.

Meteorologists said Typhoon Manny, with winds gusting up to 115 mph, is 185 miles east of the coconut-growing Bicol region and would strike the area tomorrow. Manny would be the 30th storm to hit the country this year, matching a record SO recorded in 1964. The typhoon season should be over by now, but another low-pressure system has been sighted in the Marianas Islands. Bicol took the brunt of Typhoon Lola which battered the southeast of Luzon Island Sunday and Monday. Lola killed at least 177 people, wrecked more than 50,000 homes and damaged $7.5 million worth of crops in its sweep across Luzon island.

A Cessna plane with two people on board has been missing since yesterday during bad weather around central Iloilo Clinfonwill meet with Syria's chief Associated Press DAMASCUS, Syria President Clinton will meet with Syrian President Hafez Assad in Geneva next month to try to restore momentum to the Middle East peace process, Secretary of State Warren Christopher announced today. At a news conference with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Sharaa, Christopher said it was "appropriate and indeed natural for him (Clinton) to meet with President Assad at this time." The meeting will be a diplomatic victory for Assad, whose country is on the State Department's list of nations that support terrorism. In Washington, White House spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers said, "The meeting is part of our overall effort toward a comprehensive peace in the region. The president has met with all the other leaders on all the other tracks Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Palestinians and now he'l meet with Assad." Christopher also announced that bilateral talks between Israel and the Arab parties to the peace process will resume in Washington at the end of January or in early February. The parties have held negotiations in Washington periodically over two years but have not met since mid-September.

Christopher refused to discuss specific allegations the U.S. government has made against Syria, including sponsorship of terrorism and involvement in drug trafficking. Myers said the meeting likely will take place at some point in Clinton's trip to Europe and the former Soviet Union in January, although a date has not been set. Sharaa said that Assad has received invitations to meet with every American president for the East 20 years. President Bush met with Assad to ring Syria into the military coalition against Iraq after it invaded Kuwait.

Also today, a top Palestine Liberation Organization official in Egypt said Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chairman Yasser Arafat will meet in Cairo Sunday to try to remove hurdles blocking the scheduled start of limited Palestinian self-rule next week. Nabil Shaath, head of the negotiating team with Israel, announced the meeting after talks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa. However, Rabin's spokesman Oded Ben-Ami In Jerusalem said the prime minister had not ruled out a meeting but added: "There is no decision yet" War aggression issue causes split in Japan AsaM Newt Service TOKYO Prime Minister Mori-biro Hosokawa's statements on the aggressive nature of Japan's policies leading up to and including World War II spurred heated discussions at meetings in Tokyo Dec. 8 to mark the anniversary of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Speaking at a peace rally in the Kanda area, a 75-year-old former army sergeant said, "Right-wingers have rebutted Prime Minister Hosokawa's statement, the first admission by a prime minister that the Pacific war was a war of aggression, but their arguments are the kind of sophistry used to talk people into accepting something white as black." He said he killed more than 100 Chinese while serving as an intelligence agent in China.

Referring to the killings, he said, "I didn't know better." Akira Fujiwara, former professor at Tokyo's Hitotsubashi University, expressed surprise that anyone could consider whether Japan was an aggressor to be an issue. "It is evident from common sense that Japan waged a war of aggression," he said. A group of 24 Hosokawa supporters, including Hiroshi Tanaka, professor at Hitotsubashi University, novelist Ayako Miura and stage actor Masakane Yonekura, issued a statement backing the prime minister's apology to the people of the Korean Peninsula and proposing efforts to improve Japan's relations with other Asian countries. At a lecture held in the Shinano-machi area, however, one of the speakers called the prime minister a "mentally deranged man." More province, officials said. Red Cross nurse shot to death In Somalia ROME A gunman burst into a first aid station in Mogadishu, Somalia, today and opened fire, killing an Italian nurse, officials said.

Italian paratroopers guarding the nearby Italian Embassy fired at the attacker as he fled, critically wounding him, the Ministry said. A Red Cross spokesman in Rome, Marco Boracci, said it was not immediately known what precipitated the attack. The Defense Ministry said the attacker was armed with two pistols. RAI state television said the man fired wildly and several shots hit the nurse. The nurse was identified as Maria Cristina Luinetti, 24, from Cesate in northern Italy.

She had been working for the Red Cross in Somalia since Nov. 20 and was due to return on New Year's Day. Ivory Coast's prime minister has resigned ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast Ivory Coast's prime minister resigned with his government today, ending a power struggle with the country's self- Associated Press Defiance: A lone windsurfer braves German winter weather on Ammersee Lake near Munich today. Western and Central Europe Is in the grip of a winter storm that has killed at least 1 1 people In Great Britain and one in Germany. Thousands of homes also lost power.

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Enhancement Lamp, Remote Control, AV Dubbing Cassette, CO, Active Hyper-Bass, Full Logic uontroi, and High Speed Shutter. Remote i proclaimed president who took office after the death of President Felix Houphouet-Boigny. The secretary-general of the outgoing government, Albert Aggrey, said Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara decided to resign today after meeting with his ministers. Red-bereted commandos and anti-riot police went on standby around the building and nearby intersections in Abidjan. Houphouet-Boigny, who had ruled this nation since I960, died Tuesday, plunging the country into a political crisis.

Under a disputed constitutional amendment, the leader, of the national assembly Henri Konan Bedie is to serve out Houphouet-Boigny's term until elections scheduled in 1995. Malaysia ends Its war of words with Australia SYDNEY After whipping" up a war of words with Australia over a perceived insult, Malaysia's prime minister called it off just before it would, have damaged the economy. For more than two. weeks, Mahathir Mohamad adroitly or-, chestrated public indignation in Malaysia over an offhand remark that Australia's prime minister made about him being "recalcitrant" for not attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Seattle. Mahathir was the odd man out at last month's summit, boycotting it because he has been promoting an alternative Asia-' only trade group that would exclude the United States, Australia and New Zealand.

But Malaysian newspapers translated Prime Minister Paul Heating's remark into Malay as "kurang ajar," a phrase that, means one is ill-educated and had a bad upbringing. The Ma-' laysian public took Heating's faux pas to be far more vicious and insulting than it was. China: Britain must fix 'errors' before talks BEIJING China said today that talks on Hong Kong's political future could resume if Britain "corrects its errors" and backs down on plans to push through limited democratic reforms by itself "The Chinese side has always hoped to settle the issue of the 1994-95 election arrangements in Hong Kong through negotia tions," Foreign Ministry spokesman Wu Jianmin said. "That the talks have broken Control. ALL PANASONIC CAMCORDERS PRICED EXCEPTIONALLY LOW FOR THIS Reg.

$399.95 A 600 people, chiefly middle-aged or older men, attended. Tokyo University professor Kei-Ichiro Kobori said: "Japan has paid enough war reparations and extended enough overseas economic aid. We have sent volunteers overseas.1 On the strength of these efforts, the time was coming when we could say what we really wanted to say. But a single fool has blown it." Yeltsin's upset with NATO's expansion plan Reuters BRUSSELS Russian President Boris Yeltsin bluntly told NATO today that Moscow would not accept an expansion of the alliance to take in Eastern European states, setting the stage for a confrontation over security. NATO Secretary-General Manfred Woerner said after meeting Yeltsin in Brussels that, while he understood Russian fears of isolation, Moscow could not have a veto over expansion and that the 16-nation alliance would be open to new members.

The clash raised the prospect that NATO's careful attempts to 'i balance the fears of Russia, Europe's biggest power, with the desire of countries such as Poland and Hungary to join could be derailed before an alliance summit next month. "There will be a principle declaration at the summit on future enlargement This is nothing which is directed against the Russians," Woerner said. Yeltsin, facing elections on Sunday and under pressure from the military, told the West in a recent letter that taking on Eastern European states once under Moscow's sway would isolate his country and upset hardliners. He suggested that Russia and NATO should Jointly guarantee the security of the region, a proposal that has been rejected by the new democracies of Eastern Europe as they struggle with economic, ethnic and nationalist tensions. Yeltsin, in Brussels to sign a cooperation deal with the European Community, has previously said Russia might be interested in joining NATO itself.

But alliance offi- 1 cials say this is unlikely. The Russian delegation source, who asked not to be identified, quoted Yeltsin as saying the question of NATO enlargement could be resolved only as a "lengthy process and only if linked to the possibility of Russia itself Joining. PCX-130 Portable CD Stereo, Active Hyper-Bass, 3-Bartd SEA EQ, 8x Oversampling, Remote Control. Reg. $349.95 1 i 1.

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IT'S OUR DIG Channel unattended Ml MBA Ms OHMKOIW ZS? 11 S.J Tumi fcn 1 Mill )torft6rcans I down and cannot go on is en- tirely the fault of the British side. To resume them, the British side should change its course and correct its errors which have led to the breakdown of talks." From Star-Bulletin news services I idui imnj I 3 "VJ.UIn.. 'I lll.MI I i ill!.