Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 2

NATION WORLD Detroit 4free Press A Page 5A April 12, 1994y Brooklyn replica symbolizes strong faith thing like that in Israel." Voila. It came to pass. Now used for offices, a bookshop and Torah study, the building is the Lubavitcher equivalent of "If you build it, He will come." Lubavitchers hold that Schneerson is about to unveil himself as the Messiah, come to Israel, rebuild the Jewish Temple and preside over a transformed world. This 770 gives "visual reassurance" that the Rebbe is coming. And the world's 200,000 Lubavitchers could use a little reassurance these days.

The Rebbe, after suffering a severe stroke last month, is paralyzed, comatose, all but brain-dead and in very critical condition. The Rebbe's health See ISRAEL, Page 7A ilies who live in one- and two-story, white concrete buildings. The 770 building is the sect's unofficial Israeli headquarters. "It's a little weird when you first see it, I guess, but you get used to it," says Jay Stillman, spokesman for the community and a Chicago native. "And you know, it is an exact replica, inside and out.

They built it from the original architectural plans from 770 in Crown Heights." The replica was built nearly a decade ago after Schneerson made an offhand remark. A follower admired the Brooldyn headquarters and the Rebbe, a name meaning great teacher and by which he is affectionately known, reportedly said something to the effect of, "They ought to do some themselves and the world that the 92-year-old Schneerson, who lies in a coma in a Manhattan hospital, is going to come to Israel and unveil himself as the Messiah. A Luba Rabbi Schneerson vitcher spokes- man said the rabbi's condition deteriorated Monday. The building is a surreal sight. The three-story, reddish-brown Crown Heights clone sits up on a slight rise, visible everywhere in Kfar Habad, a Lubavitcher settlement of 750 fam By neely Tucker Free Press Europe Bureau KFAR HABAD, Israel For most of the Lubavitcher faithful, 770 means only one thing 770 Eastern Parkway, Crown Heights.

That's the Brooklyn headquarters of the worldwide ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect, and home to the Rabbi Mena-chem Schneerson, whom followers consider no less than the prophesied Messiah. But for Israeli Lubavitchers, 770 is another entity as well. They have their own 770 an exact replica of the Brooklyn brown-stone, built on a dusty plain outside Tel Aviv, hard by an orange grove, standing alone in a rutted gravel lot. The Lubavitchers built it to remind MARC ASNINSpecial to the Free Press One of Rabbi Menachem Schneerson's followers, left, carries a rifle Sunday while praying at the Western Wall with other Lubavitchers. Report RWANMN REBELS ADVANCE grim portrait of poverty, neglect Better health care, more involvement urged paints Michael Levine, early childhood program officer for the Carnegie Corporation, said Monday.

But despite the dismal state of America's youngest citizens, the report offers hope. "There is a great deal of evidence that many of these statistics are reversible," Levine said. After three years of study, the Carnegie Corporation's 30-member task force of academics, educators, health professionals and policy-makers See CHILDREN, Page 7A By Alison Young Free Press Staff Writer Infants and toddlers are the most neglected group in U.S. society and their "quiet crisis" threatens the nation's future, according to a report released today by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The 132-page report details many grim statistics and calls for action in parenting, child care, health care and community involvement.

Among the findings: About one in four youngsters between birth and age 3 nearly three million children lives in poverty. Nine out of every 1,000 U.S. infants die before the age of 1 a mortality rate higher than 19 other nations'. About one of every eight children is born to a teen mother. The U.S.

has the highest adolescent pregnancy rate in the developed world twice as high as England's rate and seven times as high as the Netherlands'. "These trends are very disturbing and we are facing increased jeopardy in the next few years unless we act now," Rwanda Patriotic Front rebels in battle gear at the Mukarange base wait to advance on Kigali on Sunday. Leaders claim 20,000 rebels are moving in on the capital, with resistance disintegrating. Clinton's pollster busy on issues that can sell Refugees describe terrifying bloodshed Free Press Wire Services KIGALI, Rwanda Battles raged in Rwanda's capital Monday as rebel troops arrived and clashed with government forces. The ethnic bloodletting in which an estimated 20,000 have died also raged in the countryside.

Foreigners continued to escape, and UN efforts to broker a ceasefire between the rebels and the army failed again. The rain-drenched central African city reverberated to exploding artillery and mortar shells. Heavy machine-gun fire cracked through dirt streets as fighting intensified; rebel troops at a stadium and government troops at the parliament building exchanged mortar and machine-gun fire. Armed men, many of them clearly drunk, staffed checkpoints and went house-to-house looking for victims. Spokesmen for the rebels of the Rwanda Patriotic Front, who are primarily members of the nation's Tutsi minority, said 20,000 soldiers were closing in on the city from three directions.

They claimed that resistance was disintegrating. Front chairman Alexis Kanyar-engwe said: "Our forces are advancing. Government soldiers do not have the will to put up resistance, so we shall know in days what the resolution is." Kanyarengwe said the RPF wants to establish a transitional government. Other spokesmen have ruled out a cease-fire. Rwanda's military and police named an interim civilian government Friday, drawing its leadership from the ranks of the previous coalition government.

Fighting has raged since Wednesday, when the presidents of Rwanda and neighboring Burundi died in a plane crash following a meeting aimed at ending trouble in each country between Hutu majorities and Tutsi minorities. The crash following a rocket attack, the government says ended a fragile peace between Rwanda's Hutu-led government and Tutsi-led rebels. Butare, Rwanda's second-largest city, 50 miles south of Kigali, remained calm. Two French convoys evacuating foreigners were shot at Monday as they went through what they thought was a safe area of Kigali. There were no injuries.

"From the roof of the French school, while evacuees were being loaded on trucks, you could look across a valley and see people, especially women, being hauled out of houses and being beaten to death on the road," said Mark Huband, a reporter for the London Guardian, by telephone from Kigali. U.S. officials said all of the 250 Americans, mostly missionaries and aid workers, who wanted to leave Rwanda had been evacuated by late Sunday, along with hundreds of French, Belgian and other An unidentified American family walks from a plane in Nairobi, Kenya, on Monday after being evacuated from Rwanda's war-torn capital. JEREMIAH KAMAUReuters Fighting endangers mountain gorillas BY MANOAH ESIPISU Reuters NAIROBI, Kenya Some of the last mountain gorillas, made famous by the film "Gorillas in the Mist," are endangered in Rwanda because of the bloody fighting there, a U.S. scientist evacuated from the area said Monday.

Western veterinarians and others who provide medical care for the gorillas and protect them from poachers have fled. At the same time, Rwandans fleeing the carnage are entering areas where the gorillas live in the northern portion of the country. There about 650 mountain gorillas in the world, divided between northern Rwanda and impenetrable forests in Uganda. Gorilla researcher Amy Bevis arrived in Kenya from Rwanda, sobbing for the plight of the primates she left behind. "The gorillas are in grave danger.

If the war goes on, they will be in plenty of trouble," Bevis said after arriving in Nairobi by way of Zaire and Burundi. The 25-year-old U.S. researcher said she abandoned the gorillas she worked with near the northern Rwandan town of Ru-hengeri on Friday after fighting broke out nearby between government forces and rebels of the Rwanda Patriotic Front. Bevis said the escalating war threatened the survival of the gorillas, which were featured in the hit 1988 film "Gorillas in the Mist." The film told the story of gorilla researcher Dian Fossey, played by Sigourney Weaver, who devoted herself to studying and saving gorillas in Rwanda; her murder in 1985 has not been solved. by angie Cannon Free Press Washington Staff WASHINGTON More than any previous president, Bill Clinton uses polling to help find out what people are thinking and to sell his message on policy issues.

Last year, Clinton, through the Democratic National Committee, paid nearly $2 million to his pollster. That's more than the $1.7 million the Republican National Committee says it spent on polls for George Bush during the four years he was in office. Clinton political adviser James Car-ville says Clinton is polling more because he is doing more. "If you were Bush, what did you have to poll on?" Carville said. "He wasn't doing anything.

Nothing to ask people about." Still, some analysts fret that Clinton is too concerned with polls, even scripting his speeches from polls and focus groups. Republican pollsters cite Clinton's use of the "security" theme last fall when he talked about "economic security, health security and personal security." That word was popping up in their own research at the time. "The whole security theme wasn't part of the political lexicon until Bill Clinton created it," said Republican Frank Luntz. "I can tell when Bill Clinton's speeches are focus-group-driven. To me, it's scary." Ed Goeas, a leading Republican pollster, recalled how Clinton last year initially referred to his economic plan as a "jobs package," then later called it a "deficit-reduction package." "That specifically came from research," Goeas said.

He also attributed a recent White House public service ad about gun violence killing children to surveys showing a shift from broad crime concerns to more focused concerns about juvenile crime. The public service ad "is directly out of wjiat we are seeing in focus groups," he said. Focus groups are gatherings of a dozen people who discuss issues under the direction of a communications professional. The aim is to gauge why people feel a particular way. Clinton pollster Stanley Greenberg conducts three or four surveys and three or four focus groups a month, experts estimate.

The results usually are not made public. Greenberg set up a focus group in Dayton, Ohio, to watch Clinton's State of the Union speech in January. The participants had meters and were told to move the dial when they heard something they liked or something they didn't like, the Wall Street Journal reported. The meters registered high approval when Clinton talked about the three-strikes-and-you're-out proposal to lock up repeat felons for life. The meters also zoomed upward when Clinton talked about transforming the old unemployment system into a re-employment system.

Carville insists Clinton isn't a slave to polls. The White House, he says, has gone against the popular grain, notably on the balanced budget amendment and the North American Free Trade Agreement. "It's one thing to take a poll, quite another thing to follow it," Carville said. Certainly we try to assess what's on the American people's, the public's mind. And I don't think there's anything wrong with knowing what people think." Greenberg has said that most of his work involves presenting the administration's initiatives to the country health care, reinventing government and welfare.

"Those subjects are derived from the president's vision," he said at a recent American Enterprise Institute forum on polling. "At no point have I been engaged in any exercise where we try to figure out what the initiatives bf the aclministration will be." GEORGE MULALA Associated Press ROGER HICKS Detroit Free Press dence. Rwanda was plunged into terror and chaos last week when an airplane carrying the presidents of both Rwanda and Burundi crashed in Kigali, Rwanda. Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana's fiercely loyal presidential guard unleashed a campaign of terror against Tutsi, suspected of involvement. Burundi has largely remained calm.

Ruhengeri Rwanda Burundi Bujumbura gff A C0MP1EX SYSTEM Free Press Wire Services Unlike many countries in Africa, Rwanda and neighboring Burundi were not artificial creations of colonial rule. They had been organized kingdoms for centuries before being incorporated into German East Africa in 1899. In each kingdom, the minority Tutsi ethnic group held sway over the majority Hutu in a complex system that largely avoided bloodshed. Cattle-owning Tutsi dominated agrarian Hutu, but traditions limited the degree to which the Hutu could be exploited. Intermarriage was common.

Then and now, Tutsi made up only 10 percent to 15 percent of the populations of each country; Hutu, 85 percent. But the system that had maintained relations between the two groups was gradually eroded by colonial rule, first by the Germans and later by the Belgians, who governed both nations as protectorates from 1916 until independence in 1962. With the Belgians gone and their self-governing system destroyed, the Hutu and the Tutsi in the small, poor countries began shedding blood in periodic massacres in a struggle for political and economic power. Hundreds of thousands have been killed in each country. Tutsi authority in Rwanda ended around the time of indepen-.