The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MARGARET WARNER: Good evening. I'm Margaret Warner. Jim Lehrer is off today. On the NewsHour tonight, the President's Memorial Day at Arlington; allegations of slavery in Sudan: A report on a rescue effort, and reaction to it; beating traffic jams: Seattle has a high-tech solution; and finally, a David Gergen dialogue with historian Stephen Ambrose about the citizen soldiers of World War II. It all follows our summary of the news this Memorial Day.

NEWS SUMMARY

MARGARET WARNER: There were new accusations of civilian deaths today in the NATO bombing campaign for Kosovo. Yugoslav media reported at least 16 people were killed when bombs struck a sanitarium and retirement home in a city southeast of Belgrade. Serbian Television said ten more people died when NATO attacked an apartment building in another city south of the capital. Kwame Holman has our summary of the day's events.

KWAME HOLMAN: On this 69th day of the NATO air assault, A-10 tank buster aircraft took advantage of good weather to launch low-level daylight attacks on Serb troops near the Albanian border. But the last 48 hours of newly accelerated attacks brought more reports of NATO-caused civilian loss of life. Serb officials blamed NATO for the deaths at the sanitarium and adjacent retirement home in Serdelica and said other people may be buried in the rubble. And Serb authorities said the NATO missiles that struck the apartment building in Novi Passar in southwestern Serbia may have been aimed at a printing press and television facilities. On Sunday, a midday bombing hit a bridge in Southern Serbia that Yugoslav officials said was crowded with shoppers on foot and in cars. At least nine were killed according to Serb media. Also Sunday, NATO bombed a tunnel entrance near Prizren in Kosovo killing one person and injuring other members of a convoy of western reporters.

SPOKESPERSON: Definitely an aerial bombardment. We saw the planes. We heard them flying very low. A couple of second later, big explosions.

KWAME HOLMAN: NATO said the bridge was a valid military target and acknowledged bombing in the areas of two of the other incidents. In Brussels today, the reports of new civilian casualties brought this response from NATO Spokesman Jamie Shea.

JAMIE SHEA: We have been engaged in this because the government in Belgrade has been deliberately targeting large numbers of its own civilian population for months. We have made it clear that we would prefer to solve this through other means except the use of force. But we are not going to be deterred.

KWAME HOLMAN: Meanwhile, the Serb News Agency confirmed Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's acceptance late last week of the principles of a peace deal offered by the Group of 8 industrial nations. A statement said Yugoslavia would allow peacekeeping forces to enter Kosovo. But it did not indicate whether NATO troops could be part of that force; that is a condition NATO continues to insist on.

SPOKESMAN: No NATO, no go. Why? Because it is to us, absolutely crystal clear that if there is not an effective security force in Kosovo, nobody is going to trust that force -- no Serb, no Kosovar, nobody.

KWAME HOLMAN: The Serbs continued to release ethnic Albanian men from prisons in Kosovo; some 150 arrived in Albania yesterday with tales of torture and beatings at the hands of the Serbs. Another 50 came to Macedonia. This man said he was pulled from a convoy of refugees attempting to flee Kosovo.

MAN: (speaking through interpreter) I stayed in jail for a month. We were separated from a convoy of people. They beat us. Look how they broke all my teeth. They put my dentures on the ground and they smashed them. They were hitting me on the head and I was bloody. Now I'm an invalid and very sick.

KWAME HOLMAN: The former prisoners reported thousands more men and children remain in a prison compound near the Kosovo capital of Pristina surrounded by military equipment parked there by the Serbs.

MARGARET WARNER: President Clinton urged Americans this Memorial Day to support the U.S. military campaign over Kosovo, saying it was a "big test of what we believe in." He spoke at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington. He began the visit by placing a wreath at the tomb of the unknowns and observing a moment of silence. He then told a crowd of several thousand that to ignore ethnic slaughter in Kosovo would be to repeat the mistakes of the past. We'll have excerpts from the President's speech later in the program. In Turkey, Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan urged judges at his treason trial to spare his life. Speaking from a bulletproof glass cage on the trial's opening day, Ocalan offered the government a deal. He said he will end the armed rebellion by Kurdish separatists if he is spared, but he warned that hundreds of thousands will die if he is not. Ocalan stands accused of leading a 15-year war for Kurdish independence. India agreed today to talk with Pakistan about Kashmir, but said Indian air attacks would continue over the disputed territory. India has conducted six days of air and ground assaults on militants in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir. India contends the guerrillas are funded and directed by Pakistan. Pakistan denies the charge. No date was set for the talks. Firefighters struggled to control blazes in four states today. In North Florida, flames have scorched some 50,000 acres in the Okefenokee Swamp, and spread into Georgia. In Arizona, wind gusts of up to 50 miles an hour have fueled two wildfires that have burned more than 24,000 acres. And in California, fires have consumed 13,000 acres at Joshua Tree National Park. Forestry officials say those fires have now been contained. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the President's Memorial Day message; slavery in Sudan; outsmarting Seattle's traffic; and a Gergen dialogue about America's citizen soldiers.

FOCUS - SOLDIERS PRESENT, SOLDIERS PAST

MARGARET WARNER: President Clinton commemorated Memorial Day with a speech at Arlington National Cemetery. Here are excerpts of what he said.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: On the eve of a new millennium, we can see clearly how closely the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform in the 20th century are linked to the yearning for freedom that gave birth to our nation over 200 years ago, a yearning based on the then radical premise that we are all inherently equal, fully able to govern ourselves and endowed with a God-given right to liberty. That is our history, a history that beckons us especially on this Memorial Day, and especially here at Arlington. The most powerful evidence we now have that our country has accepted consistently the old adage that much is expected from those to whom much is given. From Concord to Corregadar, from Korea to Caisson, from Kuwait to Kosovo, our entire history is written in this ground. Today there is a new challenge before us in Kosovo. It is a very small province and a small country. But it is a big test of what we believe in. Our commitment to leave the our children a world where people are not uprooted and ravaged and slaughtered en masse because of their race, their ethnicity or their religion, our fundamental interest in building a lasting peace and an undivided and free Europe, a place which saw two world wars when that dream failed in the 20th century. Every morning on Memorial Day, I have a breakfast for leaders of the veterans community at the White House. And I stand there with eager anticipation as people who have fought or whose relatives have fought and often died in our wars come through the line. I noticed them today. There were Irish Americans and Italian Americans. There were Arab Americans and Jewish Americans. There were Catholic Americans and Protestant Americans. There were African Americans. There were Hispanic Americans. There were Asian Americans. Just look around here today at the kinds of people who are wearing the evidence of their service to our country. We are a stronger country because we respect our differences, and we are united by our common humanity. Now, we cannot expect everybody to follow our lead, and we haven't gotten it entirely right now. We don't expect everybody to get along all the time. But we can say no to ethnic cleansing. We can say no to mass slaughter of people because of the way they worship God and because of whom their parents were. We can say no to that, and we should. (Applause) It is important that you know that in Kosovo, the world has said no. I know that many Americans believe that this is not our fight. But remember why many of the people are laying in these graves out here -- because of what happened in Europe and because of what was allowed to go on too long before people intervened. What we are doing today will save lives, including American lives in the future. And it will give our children the better, safer world to live in. In this military campaign, the United States has borne a large share of the burden -- as we must -- because we have a greater capacity to bear that burden. But all Americans should know that we have been strongly supported by our European allies; that when the peacekeeping force goes in there, the overwhelming majority of people will be Europeans and that when the reconstruction begins, the overwhelming amount of investment will be European. This is something we have done together. And I ask you in the days and nights ahead to remember our brave pilots and crews flying over Serbia, to keep their families in our thoughts, and in the bright new century ahead, those who live free with pride in and without fear of their heritage or their fate will be very grateful to today's men and women in uniform. I thank you all. God bless you, and God bless America.

FOCUS - SUDAN'S SUFFERING

MARGARET WARNER: A civil war has raged for decades in the African country of Sudan. Now the government is being accused of condoning slavery. We start with a report from correspondent Tom Bearden on some elementary school students in Denver who helped draw attention to the issue.

TOM BEARDEN: It was a very special civics lesson: learning about the world by trying to change it.

This group of fourth graders in a suburban Denver school have launched a campaign to free the victims of modern slavery in Africa. Their campaign has made some big waves -- moving their Congressman to raise the issue with the Secretary of State, for example.

REP TANCREDO: Madame Secretary, I want to tell you something I'm very proud of: over a thousand of

those redeemed slaves have had their freedom purchased by some fourth grade students, believe it or not in a school in my district - Highlight Community School.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: Believe me, I know about the terrible human degradation that is taking place in Sudan. I admire those students and I will write a letter back to them.

TOM BEARDEN: Half a world away from the kids' Aurora, Colorado, classroom, Africa's largest country has been locked bitter in a civil war for fifteen years. The Islamic government in Sudan's North is fighting rebels in the South - most of them Christian or adherents of indigenous tribal religions. While the Sudanese government denies it, most human rights observers say independent militias fighting on behalf of the government have been encouraged to capture slaves during their raids among the Dinka people of southern Sudan. Yet slavery has been only a part of the staggering human costs of the war: nearly two million lives lost -- more than four million people displaced. The US media have reported on all this sporadically, but there hasn't been any sustained attention. Then a year ago Barbara Vogel read a small article in a Denver paper about the resurgence of slavery in Sudan.

BARBARA VOGEL:I brought the article in to my class and I said, "I have something I want to read to you today. I taught you that slavery was over and that's what our books said but I was wrong and so were they. They sat as I read that article and tears were coming down their face. Their mouths were open. And the very first thing that they said is ingrained in my mind. "What are we going to do about this?"

TOM BEARDEN: Vogel's kids responded in two ways. They started writing letters to important people from the President and the UN Secretary-General on down.

BARBARA VOGEL: You need to write the Secretary; you need to tell him.

TOM BEARDEN: They also started raising money -- donating their allowances -- selling their toys in the

schoolyard.

BARBARA VOGEL: Where did that dollar come from?

CHILD: From my tooth.

BARBARA VOGEL: From your tooth? Did the tooth fairy come last night?

TOM BEARDEN: They had seen reports that two Christian organizations were using the controversial tactic of actually buying slaves and setting them free, and they wanted to help. They sent their money to Christian Solidarity International, which converts the donated money into Sudanese currency. Then people like Christian Solidarity's John Eibner make clandestine visits to southern Sudan. He buys slaves from northern Sudanese traders. The going rate for a human being is the equivalent of 50 US dollars. The redeemed slaves are then free to return to their villages. The Denver Post did a story about the

children's fundraising efforts, which was then picked up by other newspapers and TV networks. Money began to pour in.

NICOLE DININO: We're freeing slaves. There are people that don't think that kids can make a difference but we are.

LINDY DE SPAIN: I've learned the power of one, and I've learned that even if you're standing alone, you

can make a big difference.

TOM BEARDEN: How big will that difference be? Vogel's class drew international press attention -

BARBARA VOGEL: In Japan, your achievements are well received by the Japanese people.

TOM BEARDEN: -- but also criticism. Francis Deng is a former Sudanese diplomat who's now a senior scholar at the Brookings Institution.

FRANCIS DENG: I find myself frankly in a serious situation of moral dilemma because to be going to people who are known to be slavers and therefore criminals whom the world should condemn -- to be doing business with those kinds of people I just find very difficult to accept. On the other hand, I cannot say that freeing children is wrong if they can, in fact, be freed -- and I think if we can make the link so that this business with slavers is only a source of providing evidence that can arouse the conscience of humanity - then it might be a good thing.

TOM BEARDEN: Jeff Drumtra, of the US Committee on Refugees, thinks that buying slaves may even perpetuate the slave market.

JEFF DRUMTRA: The money that goes into buying back slaves could possibly fuel the slave trade because this money goes to the same people who are doing the raids, abducting the children and by

buying back the slaves the question is are we paying money into a vicious circle that encourages more slave

raids.

TOM BEARDEN: Vogel says that fear is unfounded.

BARBARA VOGEL: We have actually researched this and there is no evidence that this purchasing the

freedom, the redemption of women and children is causing any slave market. The price of slaves has not

risen. As a matter of fact it has dropped.

SPOKESMAN: America, a country which tore itself apart over the issue of one man owning another, is nothing, if not an abolitionist nation. I don't --

TOM BEARDEN: Tactics aside, Vogel's class continues to find more and more allies in their crusade. They recently participated in a day-long video conference on slavery staged at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. The audience watched some of the news coverage from Sudan. They also heard

from Christian Solidarity's John Eibner.

JOHN EIBNER: The time is long overdue for people of goodwill, regardless of creed or color, to raise their voices in protest. The silence of our national leaders has so far been deafening.

TOM BEARDEN: A key goal of the teleconference and of the growing movement the children have sparked is simple consciousness raising. One of the oldest and most prominent American human rights group, Freedom House, has gotten involved by organizing college students. They hope to spur a nationwide protest movement. Because many of the enslaved Dinkas are Christians, Freedom House has found especially strong interest at Christian schools. Although Freedom House does not help redeem slaves, it held a conference at Georgetown University to hear from England's Baroness Caroline Cox, a

member of the House of Lords, who has organized her own slave redemption missions.

CAROLINE COX: A hundred and sixty thousand Christians have died for their faith each year -- our faith each year. Many of those are in Sudan.

TOM BEARDEN: Students also attended meetings on how to organize a letter writing campaign or set up a web page about slavery.

SPOKESMAN: Put the history of Sudan and like a map and like pictures 'cause pictures really

speak like a thousand words.

TOM BEARDEN: On other campuses early this year, some students set up mock slave pens and created newsletters about human rights abuses in Sudan. Freedom House's Nina Shea thinks all this will eventually have an impact.

NINA SHEA: There is complete silence from our political leaders. It's going to become politically

untenable for this silence to go on.

TOM BEARDEN: This new abolition movement may be growing, but it also faces a lot of apathy.

New Jersey Rep. Donald Payne has been trying to get Congress and the Administration to focus on the issue for several years. When Vogel's students wrote to him, he responded with a certificate of

appreciation and words of encouragement.

BARBARA VOGEL: " -- for your dedication as little abolitionists to end slavery in Africa."

TOM BEARDEN: Payne is pleased by the increased attention, but says it has been long in

coming.

TOM BEARDEN: When the anti-apartheid coalition was waging its campaign against South Africa, the protests were loud, the passion was evident. Where is the passion here?

REP. DONALD PAYNE: It isn't here. We haven't seen arrests. We haven't seen demonstrations at the

embassy of Sudan. I'm hoping now that we will start to see that. I think that once we start to demonstrate, the passion will build because the education of what is happening will become more widespread, and that's when you'll see people start to move forward.

TOM BEARDEN: Payne and others have decried the slowness of the world's response. Freedom House's Nina Shea is more specific. She points her finger at human rights groups in particular.

NINA SHEA: I'm very disappointed in the human rights community as a whole. They've barely uttered a word of protest about this slavery issue, and this is real slavery where children are being shipped by the freight carloads North to the slave markets.

TOM BEARDEN: Jeff Drumtra believes the sheer scale of the misery has made it hard to focus on a single response.

JEFF DRUMTRA: It's not that the human rights organizations are opposed to each other. I think that the issue is how do you get the American public and how do you get the highest levels of the Administration focused on this issue for a sustained period of time. For some people, slavery is what will compel them. For others, the idea that a hundred thousand people died of famine last year --in this day and age that people died of starvation.

TOM BEARDEN: Some civil rights groups have gone on the record opposing slavery in Sudan. Critics think they should be doing more.

REV. CHUCK SINGLETON: It's not a matter of popular democracy when it comes to human rights.

TOM BEARDEN: One black leader who has spoken out is Reverend Chuck Singleton of the Loveland Church in California.

REV. CHUCK SINGLETON: Human rights come by demand. Human rights come because somebody resists the powers that be and say it's got to change.

TOM BEARDEN: The anti slavery folks say they've approached some of the black civil rights organizations in this country and they've not been interested in the issue. Is that the case, and, if so, why?

REV. CHUCK SINGLETON: I think that's an exaggeration to say they're not interested, but that they haven't responded on the level that we would expect, I think that's accurate to say. Leaders tend to get busy. When they get busy they become maintenance people. They've got to keep going what they got going already. So to call their attention to and they get them to change directions or add another agenda

item is a very difficult thing to do.

TOM BEARDEN: The kids are singularly unimpressed with the adult arguments over competing agendas.

CHILD: They say we're wrong, and we think we're right.

TOM BEARDEN: They don't claim to have solutions to problems that have baffled world

leaders for years. But they are absolutely convinced that if they continue to speak out, they can

make a difference. In fact, awareness campaigns have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars

to free slaves. And although the Sudanese government still denies slavery even exists, it has recently

established a committee to end what it calls the abductions and forced labor of women and children. As political movements go, this one is very young. It has no national leader, no cohesive tactics, no unified

agenda, no nine point program. It is not yet a mass movement--but it is growing. Some believe it's likely

to fade in the face of apathy -- but Mrs. Vogel's fourth grade doesn't intend to let that happen.

CHILDREN SHOUTING IN UNISON: Let freedom ring!

MARGARET WARNER: Phil Ponce explores the subject further in this discussion taped last week.

PHIL PONCE: We get three views: Elfatih Erwa is Sudan's Ambassador to the United Nations; Olana Otunnu, a veteran diplomat and a former foreign minister in Uganda, is now the United Nations special representative for children in armed conflict; and Philippe Guiton is director of World Vision Sudan, a private relief and aid organization. Mr. Ambassador, we just saw a piece, which suggests that there is an active slave trade in your country. For the record, is there slavery taking place in Sudan?

ELFATIH ERWA: I would say no slavery as such, and I would like to first of all put the record that I don't question the innocence and the good intentions of those children but I question those who have hidden political agenda behind it, and bringing this camp to show to those children. I just would like to put two or three points that would put things in its own precise logic. First of all, I would say abduction between tribes, these Northern or Southerners among themselves, even Southerner against Southerner or Northerner against Northerner, this practice has gone on for ages, and the government has worked hard to eradicate it. There is no - all the laws in the government will not condone this and the country punishes it.

PHIL PONCE: And so, if I can interrupt you, Mr. Ambassador, you're saying, abductions are taking place, but they do not constitute slavery?

ELFATIH ERWA: Yes, this is what we believe, so - and because now I am almost approaching my 50 years, I have never seen a slave in my life in my own country. The second thing, I would like also, the most important point is that this is not only part of the civil war that is going on; it's a tribal conflict, because the civil war is a political war, and more than 95 percent of the displaced people of the South. They go to the North and find refuge there, instead of going to the neighboring countries. The third point I would like to put is that all these practices which we are seeing - people buying slaves or freeing slaves I think is a sham, because if address two major points, we will know the reality of it. First of all, these people, they have entered Sudan through the rebel-held areas. They have never been into the government areas. We have - we are facing two situations: Either the rebels are participating on these kinds of trades, and you can imagine that people will want to buy from someone who has thousands are slaves under the control, the military control of an area.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Ambassador, when you say that it's a scam, the video that we saw of a person with Christian Solidarity International, handing over money, are you saying that that is not an accurate portrayal, that that is a scam?

ELFATIH ERWA: I believe it is not accurate because I challenge them to tell us how did they enter. They entered through the rebel-controlled areas, so if they entered through the rebel-controlled areas, how could you hold the government responsible? Why did the rebels allowing such trade to take place in that area?

PHIL PONCE: In other words, that videotape that we saw is not to be believed, in your opinion?

ELFATIH ERWA: In my opinion, either it is scam, or the rebels are participating in this trade.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Guiton, what is your reaction? Is their slavery taking place in Sudan?

PHILIPPE GUITON: Yes. I think we can play with the word. Some people are speaking about abduction and then forced labor. To me, when you're taking people, abducting people, taking them away from their place and forcing them to work without any hope of freedom and without salary, I'm calling that slavery, so I think there is still slavery happening in Sudan today.

PHIL PONCE: And, Mr. Guiton, what kind of work are the people who are abducted forced to do? They're taken from the South of Sudan to the North of Sudan typically, and then they're forced to do what?

PHILIPPE GUITON: Well, they're taken when there's a raid, when there is a military action.

PHIL PONCE: When there's a raid?

PHILIPPE GUITON: Yes. When a military action has taken place in southern Sudan, or at the border in the North and the South where the conflict is going on at the moment, usually the raiders are taking cattle and people with them, mostly women and children, taking them into the North, and where they are forced to work usually for people in their houses as free cheap labor.

PHIL PONCE: They're used as domestic servants, for example?

PHILIPPE GUITON: That's what I heard. Yes.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Otunnu, in the taped introductory piece we saw this practice of redeeming the people who have been abducted, paying for their freedom; is that a good idea?

OLARA OTUNNU: Slavery is of course an abomination, regardless of where it is being practiced and by whom. We absolutely must repudiate that. But having said that, actually buying a person like buying a cattle presents a moral dilemma. Are you not participating in this practice and trade, the point that was made by Francis Deng, and I share his views entirely, but also --

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Deng, the gentleman who we saw in the introductory piece?

OLARA OTUNNU: That's right. He's himself actually from the Sudan. But also are you not fueling and creating the very market that will then make people take slaves in order to have them be redeemed? In a country like Sudan, where so many people are so poor, 1 dollar a day per person, sometimes a day per family, and you bring in 50 US dollars at one girl, this could create a whole market, a whole condition. So this I find troublesome. But more fundamentally, the real eradication of this practice does not lie in the redemption by financial means. It lies in prosecuting those who are abducting children, women; it lies in ending the conflict, the civil war in Sudan, which creates conditions that fuels this practice. We must not divert our attention from this central task of bringing pressure on the parties concerned not to abduct, to tell them they cannot expect goodwill from the international community, to prosecute those who are found to be guilty, but above all, to bring the parties to the conference table and end the conflict, which makes this possible.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Ambassador, staying with the issue of the payment, is this publicity that your country is getting, is this putting any pressure on you to address this issue with the formation of this committee last week, for example?

ELFATIH ERWA: Actually, we find ourselves obliged to address this issue whether - whatever form it is on -- because we are the responsible government; we do not condone such practices.

PHIL PONCE: Is it embarrassing to your government to have these stories?

ELFATIH ERWA: Actually, it's not, as such, because the stories, themselves, I question the integrity of the stories. As I said, we have problems among the tribes, and this tribal thing is going -- is not only among North and South, only between the Southerners, themselves. And, as I said, you cannot go and find someone to buy 1,000 slaves from him, unless this man is guarding his slaves with an army. And this is why I think this story is a little bit exaggerated. Though we confess that there are problems between tribes, happening between Southerners and Southerners, between Northerners and Southerners in the - in those areas, and other areas, or even not - in non-zone areas - it happens between tribes --

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Guiton, I'd like your reaction to the issue of payment. Is that a good idea, to pay for somebody's freedom?

PHILIPPE GUITON: I think buying the redemption of slaves is not going to help ending slavery and ending the trade -- this horrible trade still going on in the 21st century. I think it's part of a solution, and at that time I think we have to focus on what will be the solution to end slavery into Sudan, which is - and I agree with Mr. Otunnu - which is to focus on finding peace for Sudan, ending the conflict in Sudan. Is the conflict ends in Sudan, we will be able to address this issue efficiently, the issue of slavery.

PHIL PONCE: Some people are saying that you can't wait until there's a political settlement to do something about people who find themselves abducted and forced into - forced into mandatory labor. How do you react to that?

PHILIPPE GUITON: I think what should be done is to, I think, what the government has put in very recently is - started in a good direction, to establish a committee to go investigate and take the people who are practicing the slave trade and doing slavery into court and try them and put them into jail. That may mitigate this effort. I think buying back, introducing money in the slave trade, money from outside the country, is not going to help ending slavery now.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Otunnu, are you optimistic about this special committee that was announced last week to look into the issue of abductions and forced labor?

OLARA OTUNNU: Well, first of all, I'm very glad that the government of Sudan is recognizing and addressing this issue. But, secondly, the composition of the committee is encouraging because it is very broad based, including members of civil society, including associations, including for people from some of the ethnic groups like the Dinkas, who have been among the major victims of this practice, so this is encouraging. But of course, we must wait and see what they do in practice before passing judgment. But in my view, the first line of action is to prosecute those who are responsible under these laws. There should be no impunity. Pressure, political pressure should be brought to bear on all parties in the conflict who are practicing this when there is evidence of abduction of people. But above all, above all, we must mobilize an international movement of peace in the Sudan; we must bring the parties to the conference table and end the conditions of atrocities and impunity that makes it possible for this practice to flourish in the Sudan.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Ambassador, is your government committed to bringing the power of the law to bear on people who are engaged in this practice?

ELFATIH ERWA: Absolutely, the government is very committed to the issue of peace in Sudan. I think this is the first government in Sudan that realizes the importance of peace and it has - when to put the real solution, which is self-determination for the Southern Sudan, and this self-determination will let the Southern people themselves decide whether they accept unity or separation and having their own state. And I think the last statement by my president, which was very recently -- that for Sudan a unity with war, we prefer the peace with separation than unity with war.

PHIL PONCE: Mr. Ambassador, I thank you very much. Mr. Otunnu, I thank you, and Mr. Guiton, thank you.

MARGARET WARNER: Still to come on the Newshour tonight, beating Seattle's traffic, and a Gergen dialogue on soldiers.

FOCUS - SMART TREK

MARGARET WARNER: There are some new high-tech ways to avoid traffic congestion. Rod Minott of KCTS, Seattle, reports.

SPOKESMAN: Well, it's certainly the case that we don't have too many blocking problems, but below traffic, lots of it.

ROD MINOTT: Richard Gillman may be the commuter of the future. The 51-year-old software consultant uses a small palmtop computer to check on traffic congestion. Before leaving his home, he must choose between one of two major highways that lead into Seattle.

SPOKESPERSON: What's the traffic look like?

RICHARD GILLMAN: Well, it looks like 520's stop-and-go, but I-90 looks clear.

ROD MINOTT: The computer software and wireless modem download color- coded maps from the Internet that enable Gillman to pick his route.

RICHARD GILLMAN: There's 520, and those black areas mean stop-and-go.

ROD MINOTT: Black and red indicate heavy traffic. Green means an easy commute. The maps are constantly updated, giving current data on accidents, construction, and road closures.

RICHARD GILLMAN: I like to check the traffic before I leave somewhere because, you know, the traffic around here's pretty tough. You have a choice of which bridge to take across Lake Washington to get into Seattle, and if there's an accident on one of the bridges, you're way better off taking the other bridge. So if I can check in advance and see if one of them is jammed up, then it saves me a lot of time.

ROD MINOTT: The traffic information is provided by Smart Trek, an $18 million pilot project designed to fight automobile congestion. It's funded by the Department of Transportation's Federal Highway Administration. Kenneth Wykel heads that agency.

KENNETH WYKEL, Federal Highway Administration: As we look to the future, the 21st century, we need to find a new solution so that we do not build more roads. I mean, building our way out of this congestion is not the answer. We think the answer is intelligent transportation systems, and they will be the interstate system for the 21st century.

ROD MINOTT: Seattle's Smart Trek program ties together a vast network of traffic monitoring technology. Much of it was installed by state, local, and federal planners over the past 20 years, with all the elements now packaged together in Smart Trek. It includes radio transmitters on buses, 300 cameras mounted along highways, and 3,000 sensors buried under roads. Smart Trek collects the data, processes it on a central computer, and then makes it available to commuters on the Internet. The data can even be transmitted on other high-tech gadgets, including a specially crafted watch.

SPOKESMAN: So this would indicate that at I-5, there's a level one incident southbound at northeast 130th.

ROD MINOTT: Dan Dailey designed the computer networking system for Smart Trek, and now works at the University of Washington as an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering. He demonstrated how a program called Bus View works.

DAN DAILEY: Here, we're seeing a picture of the university district map. As you can see, there's a fairly large number of buses in the "u" district.

ROD MINOTT: Bus View tracks up to 1,000 buses equipped with radio transmitters. The buses are displayed on a map on the Internet.

DAN DAILEY: The application itself has a couple friendly features. You can click on a bus and get what we call a progress bar, which allows you to actually see the progress of the bus along its route.

ROD MINOTT: Then, at actual bus stops, commuters find another Smart Trek feature called transit watch. TV screens display bus times, letting commuters know if their bus is early, on time, or late, in the same way monitors at airports show scheduled and actual arrivals and departures.

JOE MENTELLE, Commuter: Well, I missed my other bus, and so it's kind of nice to be able to have an idea when the next bus is going to be here, and if it's running on time or if it's late, or if that one was the one I wanted and it's early.

SEAN DANAHER, Commuter: Well, I find it pretty useful, considering I don't carry a watch or bus schedules. So I think it's pretty useful, yeah.

ROD MINOTT: King County Counselwoman Maggie Fimia is skeptical. She says she hears something different from other commuters.

MAGGI FIMIA, King County Council: What they tell me is they want more buses. They want to see not real time, they want to see real buses coming down the street to pick them up.

ROD MINOTT: Smart Trek also reports traffic over a cable TV channel that broadcasts maps and live pictures of congestion on freeways. Dan Dailey of the University of Washington:

DAN DAILEY: The TV display, the information on the TV display, is updated every 20 seconds, so it's truly real-time information about the highway. This is different than what you might get on a radio traffic report, where the information can be somewhat old because it requires a series of steps to get that information to you.

ROD MINOTT: Private companies are being encouraged to participate in and profit from Smart Trek with innovations of their own.

SPOKESPERSON: Traffic.

SPOKERSPERSON: Traffic, one message.

ROD MINOTT: One company manufactures a computer that mounts into the dashboard of a car. It's called Auto-P.C. Using data beamed over F.M. radio and satellite, it can alert drivers to traffic jams along their route. The system responds to voice commands.

SPOKESMAN: Select.

COMPUTER VOICE: Intersection State Highway 522 and 68th Avenue Northeast. February 11, 1999. 10:13 A.M. Incident, slow traffic extent. One-fourth mile duration. Two hours.

ROD MINOTT: The big question is, will commuters pay for all this? The price tag on the Auto-P.C. is between $1,500 and $2,000 to buy and install. Subscribers then pay another $5 a month for the traffic reports. Tom Schaffnit is with Cue Data Network. The company beams the traffic data to Auto-P.C.'s. He thinks the public is willing to pay for his service.

TOM SCHAFFNIT: The feedback we've been getting from the market is the level we're talking about, $60 a year, is below the threshold of pain, if you will, for people. We think that a lot of people get this traffic service in using our data receivers, and then they will want to have messaging services, like E-mail delivery to the Auto-P.C. or to handheld P.C.'s, or they'll want to have alphanumeric paging come onto their P.C.'s and then capture that information. So we think that, you know, the bundle of services is where we'll make money.

ROD MINOTT: Richard Gillman says it's worth $60 a year to receive traffic reports over his palmtop computer.

RICHARD GILLMAN: I find it, you know, if I have some day where I'm going to several places around the county or something like that, it's great, you know, for checking, you know, sometimes, you know, "well, I don't think I'm going to leave right now. It looks pretty bad traffic- wise."

ROD MINOTT: But David Hodge, a transit expert at the University of Washington, doesn't think technology holds all the answers.

DAVID HODGE: At best, it's going to help us accommodate additional growth, maybe make it no worse than it is now for some number of years, but it's certainly not going to roll it back and make it easier for us.

ROD MINOTT: Instead, Hodge worries high- tech transportation tools used by Smart Trek may actually end up encouraging more drivers on the freeway. Already, Seattle traffic is considered among the worst in the nation. Since 1970, the population around the Seattle metropolitan area has jumped more than 40 percent, to about 3.2 million people. In that time, the number of cars has swelled 60 percent, to 2.8 million vehicles. Across America, it's a similar story. According to the Federal Department of Transportation, traffic has grown 30 percent in just the past decade. Between now and the year 2008, the number of cars on the nation's roads is expected to increase by 50 percent. The University of Washington's David Hodge says the money going to Smart Trek would be better spent on public transit or promoting alternative types of commuting, such as carpooling, toll roads, or telecommuting. But he says even that won't have a major impact.

DAVID HODGE: Again, we're talking about single-digit changes, typically, in the proportion of people doing anything. We're not going to see a reduction in congestion. The question is, how can we cope with growth?

ROD MINOTT: Smart Trek planners remain convinced their program will reduce traffic delays. Similar systems are now being tested in Phoenix, San Antonio, and New York City. Other states may soon see their own programs. The federal department of transportation plans to install smart traffic systems in 75 major cities by the year 2006.

DIALOGUE

MARGARET WARNER: Finally, this Memorial Day, we reprise a Gergen dialogue. Two years ago, David Gergen talked with historian Stephen Ambrose. He had just published what would become a best-seller, "Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany."

DAVID GERGEN: Steve, in recent years, this country has twice celebrated the heroics of the men who took the beaches at Normandy in 1944, in appropriate celebrations. But now you come along and say there's a fascinating story about what happened after D-Day in the 11 months until the Germans surrendered.

STEPHEN AMBROSE: Well, we got ashore on D-Day, and that was the big thing. It was a very tenuous hold, however, on the beachhead, and now the job was to expand it. It went very slowly, because we had not recognized how tough those hedgerows were going to be to clear out of Germans.

DAVID GERGEN: What was a hedgerow?

STEPHEN AMBROSE: Hedgerow is a mound of earth about six feet wide and four to six feet high with trees and brambles and rosebushes, et cetera, growing up it, and it's impenetrable, and it encloses little tiny fields. Now, each one of those little fields was a fortress, and the Germans were in the corners of the field, with their machine guns dug in, and they had dug tunnels through the dirt at the base of the hedgerow to sight their Panzerfausts, their anti-tank rockets, and the Americans had had no preparation for this. We hadn't seen the hedgerows in an intelligent sense, and hadn't done any training in them in how to fight there, so everything had to be improvised-- the use of tanks. Those tanks would get into the hedgerow country and drive up the hedgerow and expose their belly like this, and the German with the Panzerfaust over there went boom into that unarmored belly, and there goes that Sherman tank. The solution to this problem came from a kid who had been a mechanic in Boston before the war. Joe Cullen was his name. He was a sergeant in one of the armor divisions. He said, "let's take steel rails and weld them to the front of that tank, and they'll dig into that hedgerow, and it won't go belly up, and then those big Chrysler engines are powerful enough that it can go right through that row, and then at that point, they can start turning that cannon at the corners, where the Germans are with their machine guns, and they can start spraying the hedgerow with their .50-Cals, and you can work your way forward in that way. Now, Rommel didn't have a suggestion box outside his office door, not the way the Germans fight a war. Bradley did. Cullen had that idea on a Monday; by Tuesday afternoon, it had gotten to Bradley; and by Wednesday morning, they were putting those steel rails onto those tanks, and it worked. So that kind of improvisation finally got us through the hedgerows. And at the end of July, the German line broke on the far right at Saint-Lo. They did trap most of the German army in Normandy. A lot of individuals got out, but the Germans were now disorganized; they had lost their unit cohesion, and they left their equipment behind. So now, from mid-august on, there was no opposition left in France. The battle of France was over. The Germans were in full retreat, back eastward, with the allies as coming as close behind them as they could.

DAVID GERGEN: But they stopped them at the Siegfried line.

STEPHEN AMBROSE: Well, then two things happened. The Germans got back to a prepared defensive position, the Siegfried line-- all kind of fortifications. Hitler loved poured concrete. He thought poured concrete could stop anything. So they got back into prepared positions, and they pulled off what they called the miracle of the West, the German army did, in getting itself reorganized, in coming back together and getting units to take positions in the line. The other thing that happened was that we ran out of gas, literally. The tanks were getting less and less as lines stretched out from the Channel Coast, and as more and more Americans and Brits came onto the continent, the supply situation became critical, so we ran out of the gas just at the point that the Germans got behind their fortification, and now, a stalemate ensued. In fact, Hitler was gathering reserves and reinforcements and drawing them from the Eastern Front over to the Western Front, and preparing for the last great German offensive of the 20th century. And now the Battle of the Bulge was under way. The first few days of the Battle of the Bulge, the American army had become very cocky. It was full of hubris and thought of itself as the best army in the world, and had the best intelligence in the world. Had been badly fooled and had been attacked where the men were spread out far too wide, because nobody thought there would be an offensive in the Ardennes. The result was, we lost two divisions in the first two days, big losses, and the result was, there were breakthroughs; and the result was there were German tanks on the loose behind the front lines; and the result was the humiliation for American generals; and the result was a lot of G.I.'s went into P.O.W. camps, and a lot of them got killed. So Hitler launched this attack with great initial success, and something close to panic set in on the allied side. But the real story of the Bulge is, the one that captures everybody's imagination, is Bastogne and the 101st Airborne being surrounded there, and rightly so, but it's a bigger story than that. It's an American lieutenant with a platoon over here and an American corporal with a squad over here saying, "I ain't going to retreat no more. We're going to stand and fight here." And they held up German columns all across the front, and threw the German timetable completely out of kilter. And eventually, some clear weather arrived. And with clear weather, trucks could move on the roads; planes could fly and hit at the Germans. And it was done, and the Germans were hurled back from the Battle of the Bulge, so that by January of 1945, the end of January, the lines were back to where they had been in September. Then they get to the Rhine River in March of 1945, the greatest river in Europe, and it looked like it was going to be a very, very tough proposition to get across this river, and any bridgehead over it was going to be pure gold. An American lieutenant named Karl Timmerman spotted the biggest bridge over the Rhine River; it was a railroad bridge, the Ludendorf bridge. Timmerman saw it, and without hesitating, he took a squad that was a really wonderfully American squad-- there was a polish sergeant and an Irish corporal and a couple of Germans and an Indian in it and -- America. And Karl Timmerman-- Timmerman, of course, Timmerman American-- saw that bridge, and he said, "let's go." And he led his men across that bridge in one of the greatest actions of the second world war-- machine gunfire cutting everywhere. They knew the bridge was scheduled to be blown up. They expected it to be blown in their faces. What apparently happened, David, was a stray bullet cut the wire leading out to the demolition charges. Timmerman got across, took the bridge. Now we were over the Rhine, and then it was time for the exploitation and rolling across Germany till we met with the red army at the Elbe River in April of 1945. Phew.

DAVID GERGEN: (Laughs) this is a remarkable story. What did you learn about American character in this story of warfare from D-Day on?

STEPHEN AMBROSE: Well, you know, the fathers of the young men who fought world war ii had fought world war I, and they had a feeling that people of our age have about the young: They're not as tough anymore; they couldn't do what we did. And that was very much the feeling in 1940, 1941, 1942, and it was certainly Hitler's feeling. Now, you take these young Americans-- 1943, they graduated high school; in 1944, they graduated high school. 18- And 19-year-olds drafted, given insufficient and inadequate training, not well clothed for the rigors of what they were going to face, sent into the line as individual replacements in a foxhole in Belgium. Now, a foxhole in Belgium in the winter of 1944, 1945, meant down to ten below in the Fahrenheit scale at night, about 40 degrees in the daytime. That meant that your foxhole was alternating between three and four feet of water and ice. It meant your -- the boots they had were all leather, so the boots froze at night on them. They did not have adequate overcoats. They didn't have adequate sleeping bags. They weren't getting any hot food, and it was dark starting at about 4:15 In the afternoon, and it didn't get light again until about 8:30 In the morning. And they had to stay up all night, and they couldn't move around, couldn't exercise, couldn't smoke a cigarette, couldn't eat anything, had to be watching always for Germans coming on. Now, how did they do this?

DAVID GERGEN: How did they do it?

STEPHEN AMBROSE: How did they do this? The strongest motivating factor was their buddies, the unit cohesion, the guys that they had trained with, gone overseas with, fought with. And what was unacceptable to the GI in that foxhole was letting his buddies down. They went into this combat with this fear: That they were going to be afraid. Every combat veteran I've ever interviewed tells me his biggest fear on going into combat was that: That I'm going to be afraid. What everyone found out was "I'm afraid." Fear is inevitable. It's the natural reaction. The point is, you've got to learn to control that fear and work with that fear and conquer that fear, and act. And these guys were able to do it. And in the end, to me, the GI of World War II was a child of democracy who had grown up knowing the difference between right and wrong. And, you know, I've had a lot of them tell me, "Steve, I was 19 years old. I was 20 years old. I had my life ahead of me. I didn't want to live in a world in which Hitler ruled Europe and was threatening the united states. I knew that if I were going to have a good life, we had to win this war, and I had to do my part to see to it." They knew the difference between right and wrong, and they didn't want to live in a world in which wrong prevailed.

DAVID GERGEN: Steve Ambrose, fascinating story, fascinating men. Thank you very much.

STEPHEN AMBROSE: Thank you.

MARGARET WARNER: Stephen Ambrose's latest book is "Comrades: Brothers, Fathers, Heroes, Sons, and Pals."

RECAP

MARGARET WARNER: Again, the major stories of this Monday: Yugoslav media reported NATO bombs killed 26 civilians in two cities south of Belgrade. President Clinton, in a Memorial Day speech, called Kosovo a "big test of what we believe in." And federal and state firefighters battled blazes in four states. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Margaret Warner. Thank you, and good night.