The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MS. WOODRUFF: Good evening. I'm Judy Woodruff in New York.

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Monday, officials of the three warring parties in Bosnia explain their view of the international peace plan, Tom Bearden reports on Kansas City's struggle to desegregate its schools, and we close with some words about Arthur Ashe. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton announced the first details of his economic package today. He said he would send Congress legislation extending emergency unemployment benefits program which expires in March. It provides workers with 26 weeks of benefits beyond the standard 26 weeks. Mr. Clinton said he was also ordering improvements in federal programs to retrain workers. He spoke before convening a meeting with his economic advisers.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: No short-term solutions to the problems of the unemployed is adequate. Many unemployed workers are what we call permanently displaced, and they need much better access to re- employment services that will provide them the information and the changing skills necessary to compete in the changing world. The old ways of doing business are simply not good enough anymore. Unemployment compensation must now be shot a short-term life line for workers and a long-term link to the skills that it will take for them to get where they want to be, back in the work world.

MR. LEHRER: White House officials said it was unlikely the President's economic package would include a freeze on Social Security cost of living increases. Press Sec. Dee Dee Myers said increasing corporate taxes was an option being considered. President Clinton created a new White House Office on Environmental Policy today. It replaces the Council on Environmental Quality. Vice President Gore joined the President for the White House announcement. He said the new office would coordinate the policies of the various departments that affect the environment.

VICE PRESIDENT GORE: One of the most serious problems with environmental policy development and policy making in the past has been that the environment has been treated as an after thought to be dealt with only following the creation of economic policies, domestic policies, foreign policy, et cetera. This new frame work will ensure that environmental considerations are brought to bear at the earliest stages in the development of every policy that the President and his staff and his cabinet look at.

MR. LEHRER: The Vice President said the new office would be smaller than the one it is replacing. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: President Clinton today rejected charges that his administration has tougher standards for female cabinet appointees. So far two women have withdrawn from consideration for attorney general because they hired illegal aliens as household workers. The issue helped kill the nomination of Zoe Baird, and last Friday, Federal Judge Kimba Wood announced she was withdrawing her name from consideration. But, unlike Baird, Judge Wood had violated no laws. At the photo session with an economic team, Mr. Clinton was asked if he was applying a different standard for women.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Absolutely not. For one thing, this issue was never an issue, and it never occurred to anyone to make it an issue until Zoe Baird voluntarily disclosed it. So no one knew. No one was subjected to a double standard. Since that time the attorney general, which should be held to a higher standard than other cabinet members on matters of this kind, all of our interviews of men and women alike have been conducted in totally even-handed fashion, and finally I think Judge Wood has been somewhat unfairly treated inasmuch as what happened to her happened in the ordinary course of the vetting process. It's happened to many other people in the months that we have been working on this. She was singled out only because it was wrongly reported that she had been offered a job that she had not been offered by me.

MS. WOODRUFF: The special prosecutor in the Iran-contra case today said a now cancelled trial would have exposed new evidence that Ronald Reagan knew about the illegal arms for hostages deal. Lawrence Walsh made the statement in a report to Congress. He said former Sec. of State George Shultz and former Chief of Staff Donald Regan would have testified that the White House rearranged the records to hide the President's knowledge. The cancelled trial Walsh referred to was that of former Defense Sec. Caspar Weinberger. President Bush pardoned Weinberger and five other Iran- contra figures on Christmas Eve, an action Walsh called "inappropriate."

MR. LEHRER: A gunman opened fire in a Los Angeles hospital today. He shot three doctors, critically wounding at least one of them. He is still in the building and holding at least two hostages. A police spokesman said the man burst into the emergency room at Los Angeles County University of Southern California Medical Center. He shot the doctors at point blank range with a revolver. The hospital has been surrounded by a SWAT team and other police units.

MS. WOODRUFF: Aid flights resumed to Bosnia's capital of Sarajevo today. Fourteen planes brought more than 130 tons of food to the city. Flights were suspended Saturday after a German relief plane was hit by ground fire. There was shelling in Sarajevo today and heavy clashes were reported in eastern parts of the country. The United Nations Security Council in New York today began consideration of an international peace plan for Bosnia. The U.S. today asked U.N. human rights officials in Geneva to investigate the rape of Muslim women in Bosnia by Serbian soldiers. The U.S. offered to contribute $1/2 million to the inquiry. A U.S. delegate to the U.N. Human Rights Commission said that it should try to identify Serbian commanders believed responsible for ordering the rapes. He said there was evidence but so far no proof that the rapes were part of an organized terror campaign. We'll have more on the war in Bosnia right after the News Summary. Two Palestinians were shot to death by Israeli troops in the occupied West Bank today. Another was killed last night. Since Friday, ten Arabs have died in a surge of unrest in the occupied territories.

MR. LEHRER: An Iranian airliner collided with a military jet near Tehran today, killing all 132 people on board. The fighter pilot and co-pilot were also believed killed. It happened just after the commercial airliner took off from Tehran's main airport. The wreckage fell in a military complex, but caused no injuries on the ground. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to ending the war in Bosnia, desegregating the Kansas City schools and remembering Arthur Ashe. FOCUS - ENDING THE QUAGMIRE

MS. WOODRUFF: We begin tonight with the prospects of peace in Bosnia on a day when new fighting broke out there and when the U.N. Security Council in New York tried to renew peace negotiations among Muslims, Serbs and Croats. On the table is a plan put together after months of negotiations to create ten autonomous ethnic provinces in the former Yugoslav republic. Bosnia and Croat negotiators have accepted the plan, and the Bosnian Serbs have agreed to part of it. But the Bosnian Muslims so far have not signed on, arguing that the map gives too much land to the Serbs, whom they label as the aggressors. The plan was mediated by former U.S. Sec. of State Cyrus Vance and former British Foreign Secretary Lord David Owen. On the NewsHour last week, Lord Owen explained each side's position regarding their proposed solution.

LORD OWEN: There are some obvious compromises between the Serbs and the Muslims. Each can give each other some territory which would help each other sign up for this deal if the real commitment is to do it. The problem is there are within both elements, both Serb and Muslims, who want to go on fighting, who think they can take all the spoils, and in the case of Muslims, they don't want to settle now because they think if they could get in a better position on the battlefield, then they would be able to get a better position out of the deal.

MS. WOODRUFF: But you're saying that with the sufficient pressure from the United States, from the United Nations, from the European Community, if that is all there, then you think the parties will stop fighting?

LORD OWEN, European Community Envoy: [February 2] I think they will sign up for this agreement, yes, because the Croatians, we haven't mentioned, they sign up for everything, and they are getting increasingly irritated and fed up with the Muslims for not signing up to it, and they're a very important force because they are meant to be fighting together with them against the Serbs, but we've seen in recent weeks much too much fighting between the Croats and the Muslims. Nothing is easy in this problem. I mean, I have never known such a complicated issue.

MS. WOODRUFF: The Clinton administration has said that it wants to improve the Vance/Owen plan but has not publicly offered many details. Over the weekend, at a conference in Germany, Defense Sec. Les Aspin sounded out European officials about the new Clinton policy and said it probably will be made public this week. We had hoped to bring you the views of all three negotiating parties tonight, with the representative of the Bosnian Muslims. We now get the views of two of the Bosnian negotiating parties, the Croats and Serbs. The foreign minister of the Bosnian Muslims, Horace Salasic was supposed to join them but decided not to just a few moments ago. We start with the Bosnian Croats. Joining us is Mile Akmadzic, the had of the Croat delegation at the U.N. talks. Is Lord Owen right, Mr. Akmadzic, that you are and the people you represent are increasingly irritated at the Muslims for not agreeing to some of this plan?

MR. AKMADZIC: Yes. Lord Owen is right. I should say also that I am prime minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina, of the state.

MS. WOODRUFF: Thank you for making that correction.

MR. AKMADZIC: And I should say that my government at the beginning of November has put in the program that it's necessary to undertake all necessary measures that will end the war, i.e., find just peace. And we have given full support to the Geneva Conference, to the negotiations in Geneva, to everybody who can contribute to the peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina. All of us, really the complete population of Bosnia-Herzegovina, is so to say tired of war. We'd like to stop the war, to make cessation of hostilities and to find a just peace and internal management of Bosnia- Herzegovina to the inspection of all three nations, of all three people.

MS. WOODRUFF: Why, what is it about the Vance/Owen plan that is good in your eyes?

MR. AKMADZIC: According to our opinion, according to opinion of government and the opinion of the Croatian delegation, or the delegation of Croats, of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the circumstances in Lord Owen's plan is the best one, not only the best one, but the only one plan that is on the table you know. And there is no alternative to it. Nobody has given any other proposal, and I think that all those who like to make peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina should give support to this plan.

MS. WOODRUFF: Are you saying that's the best thing you can say about it is that there is nothing else available at this moment?

MR. AKMADZIC: I think the alternative to this plan is war. So we must support the plan because it's really good plan. Mr. Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen has stated well all the position, all the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In cooperation, in coordination with all three delegations they have prepared the three documents which are according to my opinion the only solution at the moment. If anybody has better plan, let him put it on the table.

MS. WOODRUFF: But what about the Muslim argument, the Bosnian Muslim argument that it cements in place too many of the territorial gains that have been made by the Serbs?

MR. AKMADZIC: You know, the map is only one part of the complete document, and we can even further discuss about the map. I think the maps are also well prepared, because if you change anything, the maps, then you can, it's like magic tube. If you change something, then you lose everything, you know. I think the Muslim side has got -- if we can say so -- has got the most wealthy part of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the most developed part of Bosnia- Herzegovina. Serbian side has got the biggest part of Bosnia- Herzegovina but not as well developed. Croatian side has got southern part of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the part in which the Croatian population is prevailing in a certain way, you know. So I think all three sides should be satisfied with the plan, with the map included in the plan.

MS. WOODRUFF: What makes you think that this plan has a chance of holding when the agreement that Cyrus Vance put together a year ago for Croatia is not -- it held for almost a year, but it has just come apart in the last few weeks?

MR. AKMADZIC: This land consists, you know, of principles of a regiment of Bosnia. That's a very important thing. The Serbian side has accepted to these principles.

MS. WOODRUFF: In principle?

MR. AKMADZIC: Yes, but principles on arrangement. Bosnia- Herzegovina is an independent state, you know. The Muslim side has also accepted signing the principles too, has accepted Bosnia- Herzegovina as a state of three constitutive nations, people, of three constitutive people. That's very important. It's approaching of attitude, you know, and the Croatian side has signed everything, all the documents.

MS. WOODRUFF: But my question is, when another agreement -- granted, it's a different agreement -- peace agreement for Croatia has fallen apart in the last few weeks -- what makes you think this agreement, if it were signed, would hold, that the Serbians and others would respect it?

MR. AKMADZIC: I think it's up to the Security Council to take resolution about implementing all the, all the documents, how to implement them. One thing is to bring resolution, and another thing how to realize it, how to implement it in the situation there. I think that Security Council and all the member councils of the Security Council should think about it, to find instrument, to find the means how to realize the resolutions of the Security Council and the document which we sign.

MS. WOODRUFF: As you know, the Clinton administration has delayed endorsing this, and there were reports today out of the United Nations that the administration was going to offer some modifications, including a stronger humanitarian relief effort, making some map changes to favor the Muslims, tightening some sanctions against Yugoslavia. If the Clinton administration did this or insisted on this, would that -- how would that -- how would you respond?

MR. AKMADZIC: The response, whoever has something better than is suggested as proposed by Mr. Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen is accepted, but at the moment, we don't know what it's about. You have only this proposal an no else. I talked today to the American ambassador to the United Nations, Mr. Walker, and I explained to him situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The situation is tragic.

MS. WOODRUFF: Which ambassador did you speak to?

MR. AKMADZIC: His name is Walker, ambassador of United States.

MS. WOODRUFF: One of the U.S. representatives to the U.N., yes.

MR. AKMADZIC: Yes. Yes. I talked to him and explained to him situation there. The situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina is tragic. Everybody who is concerned for Bosnia should do something to stop the war.

MS. WOODRUFF: What is the main hold up at this point? You and the people you represent obviously support this.

MR. AKMADZIC: Yes.

MS. WOODRUFF: What is the hang up? What's the hold up?

MR. AKMADZIC: Serbian side and Muslim side, they don't accept complete set of documents, you know, and they think that they lose something.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is there one side that you think is more responsible than the other?

MR. AKMADZIC: I think both sides are responsible, both. Everybody is responsible who doesn't accept the plan, the proposal you'll see.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is there something that you think could be done to improve the plan that would make it acceptable to them? Do you know of something?

MR. AKMADZIC: I think improvement of plan is only the implementation of the plan now. The plan is very good according to my opinion.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right.

MR. AKMADZIC: Now the plan doesn't foresee any implementation of it, any power, any means how to implement it in reality. For example, the Serbian side has accepted and signed document of cessation of hostility. But next day they have broken the plan, and they started fighting again. That's not okay, you know. They should think about how to stop the war completely and how to sign document and implement it.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. Well, Mr. Akmadzic, we thank you very much for being with us. We turn now to Dr. Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs and the head of their delegation at the United Nations talks. He joins us from a studio near the U.N. Mr. Karadzic, you heard what Mr. Akmadzic was saying, that, among other things, the last point that he made, it's not helpful when the Serbs say that they like this plan or that they liked it in principle and they sign a cessation of hostilities agreement, but then they turn around and break it by initiating hostilities.

MR. KARADZIC: No, as a matter of fact, Serbian side never initiated any violation of hostilities because we don't need it. We protect the whole territory that is Serbian, and we don't need any war. We are just waiting for political solution.

MS. WOODRUFF: Why have you signed on to this agreement in principle when it does reduce the territory that the Serb forces hold, from what, 70 percent to a little over 40 percent?

MR. KARADZIC: Well, one thing is what we hold and other things is what we own in terms of private ownership. Serbian farmers own 64 percent of territory in Bosnia-Herzegovina. And we can't pursue them to belong to Muslim or Croatian provinces and to be national minority there. Their maps are a matter of democracy as well as a matter of private ownership. Now there is a very big confusion in the West about Serbs and Bosnians. We didn't come from Serbia and conquer the Bosnians. We live in Bosnia. Bosnia was our state and our country, and Serbian farmers own it. This is private ownership as it is in United States, in Texas, for instance.

MS. WOODRUFF: But my question is: The proposal that Mr. Vance and Mr. Owen, Lord Owen, have come up with would reduce the Serbian controlled territory from 70 percent of Bosnia to a little over 40 percent. Is that acceptable?

MR. KARADZIC: That's unacceptable because people don't accept it. Simply, people don't accept to be defined to live as a minority in Muslim or Croatian provinces. That's what I said about it. And the plan is very good in terms of constitutional principles, as well as military privilege may lead us immediately to the peace. That should be the matter of democracy and a matter of expert groups and a matter of private property, and that should be only basis for further negotiations.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, are you saying that you insist on the 60 some percent of the land that your people live on? Is that what you're saying?

MR. KARADZIC: The Serbs live as a majority on 65 percent of territory, but some of those areas are deep in Muslim and Croatian territory, and they can't belong to Serbian provinces. But many of them can belong to Serbian provinces, and those lands of the provinces are going through Serbian territory not on the edge of Serbian territory or between Serbian and Muslim territory or Serbian and Croatian territory, as it should be when we delimitate three national communities that are antagonized.

MS. WOODRUFF: Let me ask you this. If what Mr. Owen said is correct, that some -- even if this plan were tocome into being, some Serbian elements want to keep on fighting no matter what. How does the rest of the world know this plan would hold or some version of this plan?

MR. KARADZIC: If the plan is not just, if the maps are not just, I am sure that people would not accept it. And that's why we are insisting to put maps aside and to achieve peace immediately. We can go to military paper and to achieve peace and the whole world would see who is in the favor of peace. And you will see that Serbs are in the favor of peace and Muslims would like to dominate over all Bosnia-Herzegovina. That is why they need war.

MS. WOODRUFF: So you're saying that the Serbs are for stopping the fighting right now? Is that what you're saying?

MR. KARADZIC: For more than four months, Serbs didn't have any offensive action. Since we have protected all of our territories, we have been waiting for political solutions, and we even don't make any counter-offensive.

MS. WOODRUFF: What -- the main argument that critics are making, as I know that you know, is that your forces, that Serb forces, no matter what agreement is reached, your forces would keep pushing for a so-called Greater Serbia. In other words, that the Serb forces in Bosnia just cannot be trusted. That is the argument that the Bosnian Muslims have made repeatedly.

MR. KARADZIC: That's not the truth because that's right, we don't accept, don't undersign something, because if we undersign it, we are going to carry it out. I will remind you that Serbs live there for centuries, and we are not going to make Greater Serbia. Our destiny as similar as the destiny of West Virginia, when Virginia wanted to join confederation, the people in Western part of Virginia didn't want it, and asked Abraham Lincoln to stay with union, and Abraham Lincoln allowed them to do that. That's why -- what we would like to achieve right now. We don't want to see Yugoslavia. We don't want to annex any part of Bosnia to Serbia. Yes, we want our own identity and personality within Bosnia and Herzegovina or within Yugoslavia. That's --

MS. WOODRUFF: And I just would -- I want to point out, as we reported earlier, the reason we're not hearing from the Bosnian Muslim representative is they chose just a few moments ago not to participate in the discussion. But I want to ask you, Mr. Karadzic, about reports today out of the United Nations that the Clinton administration is considering supporting a version of the Vance/Owen plan, but with some modifications, including making some changes on the map to further advantage the Muslims, as well as tightening sanctions against Yugoslavia. What would your reaction be if that is what the Clinton position is?

MR. KARADZIC: First, Yugoslavia we should discount, because Yugoslavia is not involved in this war. Then I do not believe that the democrat administration of United States would neglect the private property and democratic right of Serbian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We would like President Clinton to be as great President as it was Abraham Lincoln and to treat us as West Virginia.

MS. WOODRUFF: So are you saying if the Clinton administration endorses a position like what I've just described that you could not endorse that?

MR. KARADZIC: The main issue is that we are owners of 64 percent of territory. We are owners in terms of private ownership. And it should be respected, and the free will of people to live their own way should be respected because we have been suffering under Muslim domination during 500 years of Turkish occupation. Serbian people is not ready to accept Muslim domination any longer.

MS. WOODRUFF: What about reports, sir, that the United States has been exploring some sort of military role for the United States, whether it's enforcing the no-fly zone, lifting the arms embargo, or taking other military or near military steps?

MR. KARADZIC: Enforcing the no-fly zone is senseless because Serbian aircraft don't get any combat flights. Supporting Muslims in one civil war, I don't know why America would support one side to continue the war, why America don't support all of us to stop the war. And I don't believe that America will send their own troops in to make another Vietnam which may last for years and last decades.

MS. WOODRUFF: It sounds, Mr. Karadzic, from what you're saying as if the parties are much further apart than I think some people have been led to believe, is that right? I mean, are we, is it your view that you really are very a long way away from some sort of a negotiated settlement here?

MR. KARADZIC: Not really. What we accept we really fulfill, but we can't accept something that Serbian people would not accept. I am not lord of my people. I am servant of my people. I have to respond. I respond to our assembly and to people. So we accept everything which is acceptable to Serbian people, and we have to ask people whether they accept to be in a Muslim operation, in a province, since they can be in Serbian province.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is it preferable to you to keep on fighting rather than to come up with some sort of a negotiated settlement to end the fighting?

MR. KARADZIC: No. Fighting should stop immediately, but if we make unstable solution and if we make Nagorno-Karabakh, then we will have tensions every year, and we have many, many wars, and many, many uprisings. That's why we think that maps are very sensitive, that they should be studied and made according to free democratic will of people.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. Well, Mr. Karadzic, we thank you for being with us. And, again, as we reported earlier, we had also hoped to bring you the views of the Bosnian foreign minister tonight, who is Muslim, but he did decide not to participate at the last minute.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the Kansas City schools, layoffs at Boeing Aircraft, and a remembrance of Arthur Ashe. FOCUS - KANSAS CITY - A BILLION DOLLAR GAMBLE

MR. LEHRER: Now we look at one of the most sweeping efforts ever attempted to desegregate a city school system. Tom Bearden reports from Kansas City.

MR. BEARDEN: Meet Russ Clark, a soft spoken, gentle man, not the sort you'd take for a revolutionary, but a revolutionary is what he is. The Honorable Russell G. Clark, senior federal judge for Missouri's Western District, is the chief architect of perhaps the most ambitious school desegregation plan ever attempted. The place is Kansas City, Missouri. In the 1960s, its public schools went from mostly white to mostly black, and taxpayers stopped approving increases in school spending. By 1977, the whole system was in such bad shape that the American Civil Liberties Union launched a lawsuit on behalf of the students. A long legal battle finally ended when Judge Clark ruled that Kansas City was, in fact, guilty of segregating its schools.

RUSSELL CLARK, U.S. District Judge: I have visited at least six different federal prisons, and the conditions of the federal prisons are far, far superior to the conditions of those schools. For example, in the winter time, one side of the building might be 90 degrees, the other side would be 35 degrees. The buildings leak. You go in the front door, you follow your nose, and you line up in the latrine. It's pretty bad.

MR. BEARDEN: The quality of education was pretty bad too. In 1985, Judge Clark began implementing a bold new plan to remedy the situation. To relieve overcrowding, he ordered the school district to hire more teachers. He raised teachers' salaries and brought art, music, and physical education, which had been cut due to lack of funds, back to the schools. To help foot the bill, he issued an order raising Kansas City's property taxes.

JUDGE CLARK: As a matter of fact, I hand carried it to Kansas City. And I filed it myself, and when I filed it, I don't mind telling you I had tears in my eyes, because I knew it would be extremely controversial.

MR. BEARDEN: And that it was. Judge Clark also angered state taxpayers when he held them jointly responsible for all desegregation costs, costs which thus far have amounted to almost a billion dollars. That's a billion dollars above the normal school operating budget. Kansas City's unprecedented desegregation plan envisioned a system of stunning new and remodeled magnet or theme schools, a system so special that white students would prefer it to suburban, parochial or private schools. For fine and performing arts there is Paseo Academy. This brand new high school has three theaters, separate rehearsal rooms for ballet and choir, and enough art materials to make it the envy of any suburban district.

TEACHER: [in classroom] Why does that allude to the conflict between himself and his wife?

MR. BEARDEN: For college bound high school students looking for a demanding curriculum and advanced credits, there's Lincoln Academy. For middle schoolers who want to improve their writing, there's King Middle, which specializes in teaching Latin. Elementary school students can learn French in Nicole Longan's total immersion program. There are also two montessori schools where elementary students can learn at their own pace. Kansas City currently has 56 fully equipped magnet schools, one for just about every taste. But the crown jewel of the new system is Central High, a $32 million building housing two theme programs, on one side computers unlimited, with one computer for every three students, on the other side what they call the classical Greek program, with facilities aimed at developing scholar athletes. There's an in-door track, a weight room, an Olympic size swimming pool and a lot more. The building has instilled a new sense of pride in the students.

SAMANTHA JONES, Student: I think everybody cares for it, especially since we've been in the new building, 'cause, I mean, the teachers have just a whole new attitude.

MR. BEARDEN: These are the same teachers?

SAMANTHA JONES: The same teachers. They just came -- they just came to the new building last year with a whole new attitude. They just wanted to teach. They want to teach now.

MR. BEARDEN: Building the new facilities has been the easy part. Dismantling the prejudice and fear that caused whites to flee in the first place has been far more difficult. Ben Davis came to Central for its classical Greek program.

BEN DAVIS, Student: My parents didn't go along with it at first.

MR. BEARDEN: Why not?

BEN DAVIS: Because they were, I don't know, they probably were a little scared sending me into the inner-city to go to school.

MR. BEARDEN: Scared of what?

BEN DAVIS: Just, there's a lot of rumors that go around and especially in Independence. There's a lot of prejudice there, and they don't like blacks a lot.

MR. BEARDEN: You said your mom was worriedabout you coming here. What specifically was she worried about?

ERIN RILEY, Student: That I'd get shot because, I mean, like I said, the stereotype is that all black people are in gangs, and all black people are drug dealers or things of that sort, and that everybody's bad. And it's really bad. And it's not.

MR. BEARDEN: Kansas City's generous budget means it can spend $3 million a year on security to allay those fears. It can also afford $900,000 a year to promote its schools.

COMMERCIAL SPOKESMAN: There's a school where Olympic hopefuls are coached by champion athletes, where students master the discipline and self control essential to maximum effort and achievement, where rigorous training of the body is second only to rigorous training of the mind, math, science, English, history, philosophy, debate. Where is this remarkable school? Right here in Kansas City.

MR. BEARDEN: For many educators accustomed to doing without, Kansas City has been a dream come true, a test case to prove whether big budgets can fix the problems of big city schools. But despite a generous bankroll, Kansas City is still a long way from achieving its goals, desegregation, for example. While some magnets have reached or are close to the target of 40 percent white enrollment, the system as a whole is stuck at 25 percent. That's roughly where it was seven years ago, before desegregation began. Walter Marks has been superintendent of Kansas City Schools for the past two years.

WALTER MARKS, Superintendent, Kansas City Schools: I think the dilemma we face is not whether we can attract white kids in. The issue to me is: Can we keep them if we get them here? And we're not doing very well on that. When I look at each year we're meeting, at least the two years I've been here, we have met our goal on attracting white kids in, but we have lost large numbers. Ones that are already in, we don't keep them for the next year, so we're bringing in, but we're losing out the back end.

MR. BEARDEN: Marks says he doesn't know why so many white students leave, but that high dropout rates are a common problem in inner-city schools. Kansas City is now doing a survey to determine more precisely why students drop out.

MR. BEARDEN: Are you disappointed that more white students have not been attracted back thus far?

JUDGE CLARK: Oh, of course. To be candid, yes. But I knew it would take a rather lengthy period of time. As a matter of fact, until the magnet program was completed and the capital improvement was completed, I never, I never really anticipated any great amount of success in drawing the white students in.

MR. BEARDEN: So you don't feel like you're tilting in a window?

JUDGE CLARK: No. You have to start somewhere.

MR. BEARDEN: Academic achievement has also been disappointing. The Desegregation Monitoring Committee, set up by Judge Clark to oversee the new schools, reports "Performance by students at the elementary schools is uneven and spotty and, at best, demonstrates only overall minimal improvement," and at the secondary level, students "continue to score at a level lower than the national norm in reading and mathematics for big cities." Dr. Eugene Eubanks is the chairman of the Desegregation Monitoring Committee.

EUGENE EUBANKS, Desegregation Monitoring Committee: We must recognize that we're in a very difficult situation here, and some progress has been made. The issue is whether progress has been made proportional to expenditure of dollars that we've made here, and I, for one, find that we have not made progress commensurate to dollars.

MR. BEARDEN: Many black parents are also critics. They applaud the new facilities but resent the push to attract white students, especially when they end up displacing blacks.

MR. BEARDEN: What is your view of the desegregation effort in the Kansas City Schools?

TOMMIE HART, Parent: Well, I really don't like it. I don't feel like that my kids should have to go way across the city to go to another school when there's a school a half a block from my house.

MR. BEARDEN: So you can't go to your neighborhood school?

TOMMIE HART: No. They have to go way out.

MR. BEARDEN: Superintendent Marks says a lot of the criticisms will disappear once the system is fully up and running.

SUPERINTENDENT MARKS: A great number of those magnet schools have only been implemented two years, and many of them do not have all four grades, high schools may have only ninth and tenth grade where we've really implemented the program. So I think patience is going to have to be the order of the day there. There simply cannot, we cannot expect 30 years of decay to be addressed overnight.

[CHOIR SINGING]

MR. BEARDEN: One of Kansas City's biggest problems has been finding and keeping good people. That's true from the classroom all the way up to the superintendent's office. In the past seven years they've had five permanent and interim superintendents.

EUGENE EUBANKS: Too often the school district's appointment, selection of personnel is a political process, and to be quite candid, the other issue is there perhaps are in education too many persons who are simply not up to the task which is placed upon them. That is to say, often there is combination when there is a dismissal. Combination often ought to occur at the appointment level because that's where we make mistakes. We appoint the wrong persons.

MR. BEARDEN: Even Arthur Benson, the attorney who filed the original discrimination lawsuit, admits the past seven years have been a sobering experience.

MR. BEARDEN: If you had this to do all over again, is there anything you'd do differently?

ARTHUR BENSON, Lawyer: I would propose that we would start out with a longer time frame in mind and leave more slowly. One of the difficulties we faced was trying to convert so many schools to magnets in such a short period of time, with many of the old personnel who are used to doing things in the old ways. And it was extraordinarily difficult.

MR. BEARDEN: Difficult also because of the politically charged atmosphere in which desegregation is being carried out. Recently, the Desegregation Monitoring Committee and Superintendent Marks locked horns over a proposal to increase the number of magnet schools. The Committee overwhelmingly supported a motion to kill the proposal. Later, during a break, Chairman Eubanks, and plaintiffs' attorney Benson went at it. "If Kansas City is to realize its potential," says Superintendent Marks, "those conflicts are going to have to end."

SUPERINTENDENT MARKS: It is not doable as long as we continue to fight each other, as long as we have a governing structure, I've got a school board on one side of me, and I've got a 13-member deseg monitoring committee on the other. I've got to answer to both of them. Then I've got plaintiffs who can walk in and propose anything any day whether you want it or not. And you can't run a school district by court order, which is what this one is being run by. I think if we don't take away all those trappings, then we're going to have great problems in achieving what's possible here.

MR. BEARDEN: Not giving any ground, Judge Clark says he's hopeful that everyone can learn to work together.

JUDGE CLARK: The Kansas City School District in the year 1991 got $217 million. Now if they're going to get that sort of funds, I feel that there's some responsibility on the person that provided those funds to see that the funds are spent correctly.

MR. BEARDEN: As you look over the past decade and the time that it's consumed for you in your role as a federal judge, was it time well spent?

JUDGE CLARK: Well, I certainly think so. I might say this. Of all the controversy that's been involved in the case, I have never lost one minute's sleep over it. I have done what I thought was right, and I've been upheld on appeal, and so I feel like -- No. 1, I feel like I've done the best I could. And No. 2, it's been affirmed.

MR. BEARDEN: Do you ever feel like the Lone Ranger out there?

JUDGE CLARK: Oh, not really.

TEACHER: [in class] Hank, can you hand the rhombus to Samantha?

MR. BEARDEN: Judge Clark has made many tough calls in the past, but perhaps the toughest one still lies ahead. Sooner or later he's going to have to decide whether the desegregation plan has worked, and if it hasn't, whether to spend still more money to make it work. Clark says he has no idea when or what he'll decide. FOCUS - BOEING - TURBULENCE

MS. WOODRUFF: Next tonight, a close-up look at the economic situation in Seattle. Boeing Aircraft recently announced layoff plans that are expected to affect fifteen to twenty thousand workers there. The news comes as President Clinton is weighing the options for his economic game plan to be unveiled in a major address to Congress next week. Correspondent Greg Hirakawa of public station KCTS reports from Seattle.

MR. HIRAKAWA: The Boeing Company two weeks ago announced it'll be cutting back production by 1/3 over the next 18 months. Boeing officials would not disclose layoff figures, but industry analysts, always willing to speculate, estimate fifteen thousand to twenty thousand of Seattle's one hundred thousand Boeing workers could be without jobs. Boeing last year had already laid off 2,000 people and eliminated 6,000 positions. Union rules say last to come on, first to go off.

DAVE JENSEN, Boeing Worker: The seniority lists were the hottest item at Boeing right after that announcement, and things really struck home then.

MR. HIRAKAWA: Dave Jensen has been with Boeing six and a half years.

DAVE JENSEN: I really don't have anything set as far as secondary employment at this time, and the way Boeing affects the economy around here, not a lot of people are going to have their doors open anyway.

MR. HIRAKAWA: Bruce Spalding came to Boeing 14 years ago. He had planned to make his career here. Now he is beginning to have second thoughts.

BRUCE SPALDING, Boeing Worker: To be able to build a pension and to try to ride out a job for 30 years, yeah, those are my intentions, to retire and to be able to provide for myself after retirement.

MR. HIRAKAWA: Even the announcement of huge Boeing production cuts causes ripples in related aerospace companies. Seattle-based Eldec Corporation makes electronic sensors and power supplies for Boeing and other aircraft manufacturers. Since 1990, Eldec has laid off about 400 people. Company President Thomas Brown says more layoffs are now likely.

THOMAS BROWN, President, Eldec Corporation: I think we'll see a continuing slide-off, you know, just as we've experienced over the last two years. So it would not be surprising to see another 10 percent off over this next year.

MR. HIRAKAWA: Boeing is the world's largest commercial aircraft manufacturer. It is heavily dependent on sales to U.S. airlines, which have lost an estimated $9 billion since 1989. In fact, industry figures show U.S. carriers have now lost more money in the past few years than they made in profit since the beginning of commercial aviation. Boeing spokesperson Bill Curry.

BILL CURRY, Boeing Spokesperson: It's an ugly market out there for the airlines. They're losing billions of dollars. There's no relief in sight. I mean, you can find some pin points of hope in a rather dark environment. But no one knows when the airlines are going to turn a profit. And they're going to have to earn money again before they start ordering a lot of new airplanes.

MR. HIRAKAWA: Problems in the airline industry have come less than five years after the industry placed record orders with Boeing for new planes. An anticipated surge in air travel prompted many airlines to expand their fleets. Carriers began ordering new planes, whether they needed them or not, says analyst Bill Whitlow.

BILL WHITLOW, Pacific Crest Securities: The airlines ordered so many airplanes in the late '80s, they got into what's generally considered a feeding frenzy. One airline would make an order for 100 airplanes, and then the next airline would say, hey, you know, if I don't get my order in, I'm not going to be able to get an airplane for four or five years. So there were probably too many orders placed in the late '80s. The backlog probably got to be a little bit ahead of where it should have been based on just airline growth.

MR. HIRAKAWA: The backlog of orders eventually swelled to nearly $100 billion or about six years' worth of production for Boeing. Such good prospects propped up the Seattle economy. As the country began sliding into recession two years ago, Seattle continued to grow according to economist Richard Conway.

RICHARD CONWAY, Economist: Yeah. Our economy, it appears, is about a year behind the national economy, which meant that when the national economy was slumping, we were still expanding. Between 1983 and 1990, Boeing headed about 50,000 jobs. To make a comparison, if, if our manufacturing sector had grown at the national rate for manufacturing during that period of time, we would have only created 5,000 jobs. But Boeing, one company alone, created 50,000 jobs.

MR. HIRAKAWA: Now word that possibly 20,000 Boeing workers may lose their jobs has rekindled visions of 1970, when the company was forced to lay off 65,000 people or 60 percent of its work force. Industry officials and local economists agree that Boeing layoffs this time will not be that bad, and they're hoping rising economic indicators nationally will cushion the impact of Boeing cutbacks. At the up scale Nordstrom Department Store, company vice president Blake Nordstrom says despite the ominous warning signs, sales remain steady.

BLAKE NORDSTROM, Vice President, Nordstrom: I think people still are somewhat conservative, but if you got down right to it, I think people are optimistic about the outlook, and I think the folks that are being affected by Boeing, my guess of it is, are going to look to other avenues for employment. And I think this economy could hopefully accommodate most of these folks.

RICHARD CONWAY: If you look at the part of the economy that's not related to Boeing, if you look at the rest of the economy, it actually is doing reasonably well, pick up in home sales, relatively strong Christmas sales. Those are indications of, of what's going on there, and that's why I believe that that part of the economy is going to cushion us from the shock.

MR. HIRAKAWA: But reviving the U.S. airline industry on which Boeing is so dependent may require more than an economic recovery. Industry experts say bankrupt airlines drive down ticket prices by offering service at below break-even costs, while bankruptcy laws protect those same airlines from being liquidated. Regional carriers like Reno Air can add to the cut throat pricing by scheduling their own flights on routes already served by major carriers. Aviation industry analyst John Nance believes the government should step in to stop the airline's downward spiral.

JOHN NANCE, Airline Industry Analyst: This is all we need to solve it. One, whenever people start pricing themselves below the price of the product, what it costs to produce, they've got to be stopped, and No. 2, we can't permit more carriers in a particular market than there are passengers to fill those carriers to a reasonable level. You take care of those two things, we'll solve the bleeding in the airline industry.

MR. HIRAKAWA: Industry watchers believe the current downturn in airplane production should be temporary. Carriers will need new, quieter airplanes to meet tighter federal noise standards. Local opposition to new airports means few are likely to be built. Airlines will need larger planes to carry more passengers to existing facilities. The number of foreign carriers in the market for new planes is also likely to increase. All this may be little consolation to Boeing worker Jeff Shirley, who doesn't know if he'll have a job.

JEFF SHIRLEY, Boeing Worker: It's to the point now where we're in the limbo zone, where it'd be tough to lose it all. If we did, we'd start over again, but we're ahead so far, we don't want to start over again.

MR. HIRAKAWA: Workers like Dave Jensen think some of the Boeing cuts this time really will be permanent.

DAVE JENSEN: Things are different than the layoffs in the past because they always knew or had a feeling that they would be back; they just didn't know when. Whereas, Boeing has made it very clear that with the new updated manufacturing techniques that they have now, stuff like that, a lot of people that go out the door won't be coming back at Boeing, that those jobs will be eliminated and they're not going to be, there's not going to be openings in that particular area anymore.

MR. HIRAKAWA: These workers say they have seen cutbacks at Boeing before. What they say they have never seen are so many orders for new planes, and so few airlines able to pay for them. ESSAY - TRUE CHAMPION

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, a remembrance of tennis champion Arthur Ashe, who died from AIDS complications Saturday at age 49. It comes from essayist Roger Rosenblatt.

"EIGHT MEN OUT" SEGMENT: Say it ain't so, Joe. Say it ain't so.

MR. ROSENBLATT: The reason that "Say it ain't so, Joe" is one of the best known pleas in American folklore has to do with the mysterious virtue people expect of athletes. Joe Jackson broke the nation's heart because he had claimed that heart's devotion merely by being good at baseball. The City College basketball fixing scandal had the same effect of a team having first raised the public's love, then tossed it in the trash. Paul Horning, football's golden boy, turns out to be made of lesser metal. Mike Tyson, a champion of the world, goes to jail. When a politician or a financier shows himself to be a cad or a crook, who is surprised? But an athlete, the one whose body was breathed into by God to do remarkable things, undreamed of things, when such a person falls, the national sigh of disappointment blows ice on every field. Arthur Ashe, on the other hand, was the good athlete. In the more frequent use of the term, he was the good athlete from the moment he started playing in the juniors as a kid in the late 1950s. By the early '60s he was playing Davis Cup. He eventually captained the team. In 1968, after having graduated UCLA and still in the army he won the U.S. Open at Forest Hills, the first time a black man had ever won a grand slam event. It was all up from there, culminating in a No. 1 U.S. ranking. Cool as you please he knocked off Jimmy Conners at Wimbledon in 1975. In 1991, he appeared on ABC's "Nightline" in a jovial discussion of Jimmy Conners as the aging wonder boy of tennis, Ashe offering no hint, except by the exceptional thinness of his body, that he, a man in his forties, not much older than Conners, was dying. When a few months later the press improperly revealed that Ashe had contracted AIDS in a messed up blood transfusion, he characteristically did two things right. He complained about the invasion of his privacy, thus perhaps protecting future public figures from similar invasion, and he immediately went to work as an advocate for AIDS research and prevention. The good athlete was always the good public man. He spoke out for black athletes, their future opportunities and historical honor.

ARTHUR ASHE: Black athletes have changed every single sport that they decided to get into in a big way, every single sport. In basketball, before Bill Russell came about, nobody blocked shots. In Major League Baseball, within four or five years of Jackie Robinson coming in, the books, the records on stolen bases were completely rewritten.

MR. ROSENBLATT: He condemned apartheid South Africa and any country's policy that tolerated that place. He was, in person, the gentlest, the most self-effacing hero imaginable, and funny, and lose, and old-fashionedly nice. When he went after a wrong, therefore, it was with the double force of selflessness and principle, the right thing standing by itself. Such a person is rare enough anywhere, but especially in sports, which in spite of the moral expectations that attend athletes has a way of letting the public down. Seen out of cold eyes, baseball is a game for overpaid prima donnas, hockey for thugs, basketball for showboats, boxing for gangsters, and tennis for cry babies. It is only in the people's dream that the grace shown by a player in a divine move corresponds to inner qualities, a perfect swing, a perfect pass, a perfect jump shot. One imagines for sports what cannot exist elsewhere in art or life, once so unrealistically elevated, one prays that reality ain't so, Joe, because one ascribes to reality all that is mean and cheap and disappointing. Yet, sometimes reality fools you, and there appears quietly, as if in the corner of a raucous stadium, a person who is as graceful as his moves. It was strange to think of Arthur Ashe undergoing quadruple bypass heart surgery in 1979, strange to think of his ticker in trouble when one saw him on the court, tough and incautious, or when one saw him off the court, tough and incautious, the good athlete still playing like a champ. To look at him at those times one would have thought the man could live forever. That impression was correct. I'm Roger Rosenblatt. RECAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Again, the main stories of this Monday, President Clinton said he would send Congress legislation extending emergency unemployment benefits and a gunman shot and wounded three doctors at Los Angeles County USC Medical Center. He remained in the building and was holding at least two hostages. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Judy. We'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.