Monday, March 8, 1999

THE POST

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Obed Zilwa/AP
South Africans wait in line at the Department of Home Affairs in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, to collect their temporary registration certificates for the nation's second all-race elections held in June 1999. Yesterday was the last day available to register for the elections.

GOP criticizes government for 'lax' national security

WASHINGTON - The Clinton administration has displayed "lax attitudes toward national security," the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman said, citing reports Chinese stole U.S. technology to produce a better nuclear bomb.

The committee already is investigating commercial technology transfers Sen. Richard Shelby and other GOP leaders contend could help the Chinese upgrade their missile forces.

The new allegations "will certainly" mean more hearings, said Shelby, who criticized the administration for the attitudes.

"We have been on top of this lax security for a number of years. We've been pushing, we've been prodding the administration to do more, to tighten up security," Shelby said on NBC's Meet the Press. "I think they are beginning to, but ... they waited a long time."

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott predicted Congress would be "very aggressive" in dealing with the administration.

"I think Congress is going to have to toughen up in dealing with this administration, particularly when it comes to China and the violations that have occurred there," he said on Fox News Sunday.

The New York Times and Newsweek magazine reported over the weekend China had obtained from Energy Department nuclear laboratories knowledge of America's top-secret W-88 miniaturized warhead.

U.S. approves sale of missiles to Saudi Arabia

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - The United States agreed yesterday to sell Saudi Arabia sophisticated air-to-air missiles in response to worries about military threats from Iraq and Iran.

Defense Secretary William Cohen also agreed with his Saudi counterpart, Prince Sultan, to increase joint military training to include ground forces from the two countries. The move breaks a long Saudi preference for avoiding overt shows of joint military force with the United States.

The details of the sale of Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles, or AMRAAMs, remain to be worked out, including how many missiles will be transferred and how much they will cost. Congress must approve the sale. But the deal only would add to a U.S.-to-Saudi foreign military sales program that already is the largest in the world, totaling close to $3 billion last year.

Saudi Arabia has requested the weapons for years for use with its fleet of F-16 fighters. Earlier in his eight-day swing through the Middle East, Cohen agreed to sell Bahrain 26 AMRAAMs. He also planned to discuss arms sales with other Persian Gulf partners.

Bosnian Serb halt discussion for city's status

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina - In a challenge to the Americans and Europeans, Bosnian Serb lawmakers yesterday rejected the firing of their hard-line president and suspended cooperation with federal institutions until a decision to remove a strategic city from Serb control is reversed.

The parliamentary action followed Friday's twin decisions to place the city of Brcko under joint Serb, Muslim and Croat authority and to fire the elected Bosnian Serb president, Nikola Poplasen.

Poplasen told The Associated Press the decision to remove Brcko from exclusive Bosnian Serb control "annuls" the 1995 Dayton agreement, which ended the 3 1/2-year Bosnian war.

Carlos Westendorp, the chief international official in Bosnia, fired Poplasen Friday for allegedly refusing to honor terms of the Dayton accord. Westendorp oversees the implementation of the Dayton deal.

Following a daylong debate, the lawmakers declared by a 57-15 vote with six abstentions that Westendorp's dismissal of Poplasen was unconstitutional and "therefore not accepted."

In a separate vote, the lawmakers also refused to accept the decision on Brcko, saying it was "unjust and completely against the Dayton peace agreement."

The Brcko resolution, adopted by a 62-16 vote, instructed Serb officials to "cease their work" until the decision is reversed. The decision means Serbs will suspend cooperation with the Muslim-Croat Federation, which along with the Serb republic forms Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Britain prepares for Lewinsky book tour rush

LONDON - And thus begins the Monica Lewinsky road show.

Today, at the landmark London department store Harrods, the world's most famous former intern kicks off a two-week tour across Britain to promote Monica's Story, her just-published biography.

For those willing to brave long lines and a crush of journalists at 19 bookstores from Bristol, England, to Edinburgh, Scotland, the prize will be an autographed copy of the tell-all book to keep for posterity.

''It's already attracting more interest than any book signing in years,'' Harrods spokesman Laurie Mayer said of Lewinsky's inaugural event.

Monica's Story, written by Princess Diana collaborator Andrew Morton and chronicling Lewinsky's affair with President Clinton, climbed quickly to the top of some Internet best-seller lists upon its release last week, although British bookstores reported only moderate sales.

But even if the books aren't disappearing from the shelves, interest certainly is high in the book tour, which will take her from some of London's largest bookstores to quiet British towns bracing themselves for the onslaught of attention.

40 Haitians presumed dead in boat sinkings

MIAMI - Two boats carrying as many as 43 Haitians in an apparent bid to smuggle them into the United States sank Saturday off the South Florida coast. Rescuers found only three survivors.

The three men rescued in the choppy Atlantic waters off West Palm Beach told U.S. Border Patrol officers that one boat, carrying 18 Haitians, broke down and that the other boat, carrying between 18 to 25 more people, approached it to help. Both boats then went under, the survivors said.

"Forty are presumed dead or drowned," said Art Bullock, a border patrol officer in West Palm Beach.

The Coast Guard planned to continue its search for survivors until midnight, at which time the situation was to be re-evaluated.

The sinkings became known about 2 a.m., when crew members on a passing freighter reported hearing screams from the water about 30 miles east of West Palm Beach.

A Coast Guard cutter recovered the bodies of two men and crew members saw two other men's bodies sink below the surface.

"It's a lot of people," Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Ron LaBrec said. "We will keep searching until exhausting all hope to find people alive."

Number could be used to trace user identities

WASHINGTON - Microsoft Corp., whose software runs most of the world's personal computers, admitted yesterday that its latest version of Windows generates a unique serial number secretly planted within electronic documents that could be used to trace the authors' identities.

In a disclosure with enormous privacy implications, Microsoft also said it is investigating whether it is collecting the serial numbers from customers even if they explicitly indicate they didn't want them disclosed.

''If it is, it's just a bug,'' said Robert Bennett, Microsoft's group product manager for Windows. "If it is indeed happening, ... we'll absolutely fix that."

A programmer, Richard M. Smith of Brookline, Mass., noticed last week documents Smith created using Microsoft's popular Word and Excel programs in tandem with the Windows 98 operating system included within their hidden software code a 32-digit number unique to his computer.

The number also appears in a log of information transmitted to Microsoft when customers register their copies of Windows 98, even if they say they don't want details about their computers sent to the company.

Microsoft's Word and Excel programs are among the most widely used, and its Windows operating systems run roughly 85 percent of the world's personal computers.

"Nobody to my knowledge has had a database that would allow a piece of written material to be traced back to who wrote it," said Smith, president of Phar Lap Software Inc. "I don't expect Microsoft to do that kind of tracing, but it's sort of unprecedented."

McDougal hopes trial turns tables on Starr

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Whitewater figure Susan McDougal remains adamant.

She says she has no pertinent information on President Clinton and the first lady's business dealings in Arkansas and insists she's ready to go back to prison.

She's already served 18 months on a civil contempt citation, and now McDougal goes on trial today facing a three-count indictment alleging criminal contempt and obstruction of justice for refusing to answer Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's questions about the Clintons.

If convicted, she could get more prison time and face a fine up to $750,000. Nevertheless, her lawyer, Mark Geragos, said McDougal stands ready.

"I would say that Susan's resolve is as strong as it's always been,'' Geragos said. "She understands the consequences.''

In the other corner stands Starr and his deputies. The trial might be the last bit of business for Starr's Little Rock office in his 4 1/2 year investigation of Whitewater.

U.S. District Judge George Howard Jr. said last week he would consider allowing evidence of "prosecutorial misconduct or outrageous government conduct," specifically whether Starr wanted McDougal to lie about the Clintons.

Lewinsky says discussions betrayed Clinton

WASHINGTON - Monica Lewinsky, in an interview with Time magazine, says she betrayed President Clinton by telling Linda Tripp and other friends about their affair.

"Only telling 10 people was being pretty discreet for me," she said in the Time edition appearing on newsstands today. "I betrayed the president in that way. I didn't have the foresight to see what the possible ramifications of this could be."

Tripp, appearing yesterday on ABC's This Week belittled Lewinsky's accounts of the affair, saying they have "almost no bearing on reality."

Lewinsky, as in her interview with ABC's Barbara Walters aired last week and a new biography by British author Andrew Morton, tells Time she "didn't have the maturity to realize exactly how serious" the fallout of her affair with Clinton would be.

But she also said the outcome of the affair could have been different had the president been more forthright about his efforts to distance himself from her in 1996 and 1997. That's when she was reassigned to a Pentagon job and was unable to win back a position at the White House.

"I think he has a desire to please everybody, and he is also an ostrich in that he avoids confrontation at all costs." She said it "would have changed things a lot" if he had been more honest "instead of stringing me along."

Lewinsky again denies Clinton tried to buy her silence or otherwise obstruct justice, a charge that led to his impeachment."

Cancer database lacks funds to analyze data

COLUMBUS - The state has collected data on almost every case of cancer diagnosed in Ohio since 1992 but isn't providing the money needed to analyze the information, The Columbus Dispatch reported yesterday.

The Ohio Cancer Incidence Surveillance System has information on some 250,000 cancer cases. Ohio hospitals, including Veterans Affairs hospitals, and nearly 400 private practice physicians provide the information to the state health department.

Cancer registries allow health officials to track cancer trends, locate trouble spots and identify education and prevention measures. But without analysis the data has little use, health experts told the newspaper.

Since 1992, the cancer surveillance program's director, Robert Indian, has requested about $1.2 million annually. Internal funding decisions at the Health Department have cut that figure by 75 percent or more.

This year, for example, despite Indian's request, the state health director asked for $265,916. The state ultimately appropriated $264,366.

The program's ratio of staff to cases is about 1-to-7,000. "We're paddling as fast as we can," Indian said. "But we are still losing ground."

Experts estimate Ohio needs a minimum of $560,000 annually to operate a basic cancer surveillance program and more than twice that effectively to track cancer treatment and outcome.

Ohio man hopes to solve Mt. Everest mystery

COLUMBUS - It's one of the oldest mysteries surrounding the peak of the world's highest mountain.

Now an Ohio man hopes to find answers to the question of who the first person to set foot on top of Mount Everest was.

Andy Politz, of Columbus, leaves for a base camp in the Himalayas at the end of March and plans a climb to the top of Mount Everest with 13 other climbers in May.

Led by Eric Simonson, of Ashford, Wash., the climb commemorates the 75th anniversary of the attempted ascent by Englishmen George Mallory and Andrew Irvine.

A member of their expedition observed the two heading briskly upward just 900 feet from the 29,028-foot summit. They never were seen again.

Simonson's expedition will be looking for the body of a man a Chinese climber discovered in 1975.

The climber discovered the body on a snow terrace below where an ice ax belonging to the pair was found. He said the body was "English Dead" and dressed in old-fashioned clothes.

The following day, the Chinese climber died in an avalanche on a section of Mount Everest known as the North Col.

Politz said the team also will search for a camera Mallory carried, believing the two would have photographed each other had they reached the summit.

"Finding the camera would be phenomenal," he said.


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