The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Good evening. I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth. Jim Lehrer is on vacation. On the NewsHour tonight, what is Yeltsin up to? Margaret Warner explores the shakeup in the Kremlin; a report on a rare agreement about development around the Grand Canyon; and a conversation with America's first ambassador to post-war Vietnam. It all follows our summary of the news this Monday.

NEWS SUMMARY

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Russian President Yeltsin today fired his cabinet, and said his newly appointed prime minister should become president next year. Vladimir Putin, who had been head of the Federal Security Service, said he will "undoubtedly run for the top post." Yeltsin sacked Sergei Stepashin who had been prime minister only three months. It was the fourth time in 17 months Yeltsin has shaken up his government. In Washington, State Department Spokesman James Rubin commented.

JAMES RUBIN: President Yeltsin's actions are consistent with the constitution. It's now up to the Russian parliament to consider the candidacy of President Yeltsin's nominee. We understand that this candidacy will be debated next week. We have focused our policy on the policies of Russian reform and the policies of the Russian government, not the personalities. We do have some experience with Mr. Putin and have a constructive relationship with him.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. Also Vladimir Putin's security forces tried to quell unrest in Dagestan, a republic in the southern part of the country. Hundreds of Muslim militants demanding independence took over villages there in the Caucasus Mountains. Russian troops failed to crush them over the weekend with artillery and rockets. The interior ministry claimed 40 rebels have been killed, and 15 government troops wounded. Back in this country, day- trading firms faced sharp criticism today from an association of securities regulators. The group said the industry was rife with abuses, and accused some companies of promising fast riches and making improper loans to traders. There are some 62 day-trading firms around the country. For a fee, they provide customers with computers and high-speed connections to trading networks. The Regulators' Association represents officials in all 50 states plus Canada and Mexico.

PETER HILDRETH, President, Regulators' Association: Our concerns are with day trading firms that aren't being honest with their customers about the risks, firms that play up the upside and down play the down side; firms that essentially say "hey, come on down, we'll sell you a training course for a couple of thousand dollars and you can sit in front of our computers and get rich." This is hucksterism. The odds are you won get rich. The odds are you'll lose money.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: An official at a leading day- trading firm said the criticism was unfair. He blamed it in part on the shooting rampage in Atlanta two weeks ago, committed by a day- trader who had reportedly lost big. Kenneth Starr said today he was wrapping up his five-year investigation of President and Mrs. Clinton. The independent counsel said he planned to have it done before the 2000 elections, and the First Lady's probable run for the senate in New York. Starr made the comments after giving a speech to lawyers in Atlanta. 4,000 firefighters struggled today to contain wildfires in Northern Nevada that have scorched more than one million acres of brush and grass. Forest Service officials said the worst fires were contained, and no longer threatened ranches. But lightning storms were expected as early as tomorrow, and could spark more fires. In Kosovo, about 500 ethnic Albanian protesters clashed with armed French troops on a bridge in Mitrovica today, about 20 miles from Pristina. It's the third day Albanians have tried to force their way across the bridge into a Serb district. The French soldiers used barbed wire and armored trucks to halt the demonstrators. The troops have tried to keep Albanians and Serbs from confrontations in each others' neighborhoods. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to shakeup in the Kremlin; development and the Grand Canyon; and an interview with the U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam.

FOCUS - KREMLIN SHAKE-UP

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The latest Kremlin shakeup. We start with a report from Lindsey Hilsum of Independent Television News.

LINDSEY HILSUM: This is the man Boris Yeltsin says should lead Russia in the 21st century. Vladimir Putin is head of the new KGB. He's not a person Russians know, let alone love, but today he's prime minister, tomorrow maybe president.

BORIS YELSTIN: (speaking through interpreter) Now I have decided to name a man who is, in my opinion, capable of uniting society, based on the broadest political forces, to ensure the continuation of reforms in Russia.

LINDSEY HILSUM: As parliamentarians muttered, one commentator described Mr. Yeltsin's designation of his heir apparent as a "normal surprise," while several politicians said it was lunacy.

BORIS NEMTSOV, Former Deputy Premier, Russia: I think this is very, very big mistake for Kremlin and one of the consequences of such decision is the disintegration of the country.

LINDSEY HILSUM: This is Russia's sixth change of prime minister in 18 months. Chernomyrdin, Kiriyenko, Chernomyrdin again. Primakov was the last hope for stability, then he was pushed. Now Stephashin has gone. Can today's man, Mr. Putin, stay standing? He has no constituency outside of Russia's security apparatus. But today he denied that he'd use it to retain power for himself and his political godfather, the quixotic Boris Yeltsin.

VLADIMIR PUTIN, Russian Prime Minister: (speaking through interpreter) There is no reason whatsoever to insinuate that there will be a rule of force or forceful measures of which the country will become a victim. All elections will happen as scheduled according to the constitution.

LINDSEY HILSUM: Why all this now? Maybe because of the mayor of Moscow, Alexander Luzhkov. He's spent years trying to gain popularity. Last week he teamed up with regional governors to form a powerful anti-Yeltsin alliance ready for presidential elections next July. While the politicians maneuver in Moscow, the country's burning. Muslim separatists in Dagestan are ever bolder and more violent. It's an echo of the war in Chechnya, where thousands of Russian soldiers were killed. And it's getting worse. The outgoing prime minister, Sergei Stepashin said today there was a real danger that Russia would lose Dagestan.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Margaret Warner takes the story from there.

MARGARET WARNER: For more on this latest shakeup in Moscow, we turn to Marshall Goldman, director of the Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University and Professor of Russian Economics at Wellesley College; Lilia Shevtsova, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, working out of its Washington and Moscow offices-- she's the author of the recent book, "Yeltsin's Russia: Myths and Reality"; and Allen Weinstein, president of the Center for Democracy, a nonprofit foundation-- he was in Moscow earlier this summer. He's also the author of the "Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America." Marshall Goldman, as we just saw, as we all know, this is the fourth time Boris Yeltsin has fired his prime minister in the last 18 months. Why this time?

MARSHALL GOLDMAN, Wellesley College: Well, why not? I mean, you know, I spoke to one of my Russian friends today and they said it's normal. Yeltsin is predictable in the sense that he's going to do these unpredictable things. There are all kinds of reasons. I think has your report said from Moscow, the coalition that was just created by Mayor Luzhkov is very threatening to them. It does look like for the first time now the Yeltsin line will be broken. And they're worried about charges of corruption, of stealing, of different things. And this is a way to kind of put somebody out to try to make some stance for Yeltsin.

MARGARET WARNER: I'm sorry, let me interrupt you. Explain that about the charges of corruption and why having a new prime might protect president Yeltsin.

MARSHALL GOLDMAN: Well, one of the things that Luzhkov has threatened to do is to go out after some of the people that surround Yeltsin - Boris Barisovsky, for example, one of the oligarchs. He has until recently been under indictment by the government under Primakov. So there's worry. And there's also worry about Yeltsin himself. There are charges that he has accounts that have been set up for him in Switzerland, the attorney general in Switzerland will come back from a vacation in a day or so and may announce that. There are also some concerns that the administration of the government has signed large contracts for the building, rebuilding, of the Kremlin, of the White House, after it was shelled and that a lot of money was thrown back this way. So there's great concern here.

MARGARET WARNER: Allen Weinstein, what would you add to that in terms of what Yeltsin's thinking might have been in doing this?

ALLEN WEINSTEIN, Center for Democracy: Several factors. I think, first of all, as Marshall said, he's very concerned about this emerging coalition, because it's a coalition of -- called a moderate nationalist. You've got Luzhkov, you've got the regional governors, people of power, but you also have the figure in the carpet, namely former Prime Minister, Yevgeny Primakov, who could very well emerge as the presidential candidate of a broad scale coalition, including many of Yeltsin's previous supporters. In fact, Yeltsin has managed the extraordinary feat, it seems to me, of unifying virtually every forest within Russian political life in an anti-Yeltsin mood of one sort or another. And so at this stage in the game, poor Former Prime Minister Stephashin has had very little choice. But I don't think Mr. Putin has the last word on this. I think, in fact, his major assignment is to bring the regions back under control before the Duma election in December. And I don't think he can do that.

MARGARET WARNER: Why would having a new prime minister help Boris Yeltsin withstand this political onslaught from this new coalition, this new alliance?

LILIA SHEVTSOVA: Well, the most important problem is that Yeltsin's regime, we called it elected monarchy in fact.

MARGARET WARNER: Elected monarchy?

LILIA SHEVTSOVA: Yes. This regime can survive only through constant reshuffles irrespectively who is prime minister, he's doomed -- if he's strong and he's doomed if he's weak. So Stephashin was doomed because he wanted to be neutral. He wanted to stay above the fray, and he wanted to get his own political base. The moment he got his favorable approval reaching 6 percent, he was doomed. The problem was time. And of course Putin will be doomed. If he is too weak, he is doomed -- if he is too strong. This is the trap of the regime that Yeltsin created.

MARGARET WARNER: Marshall Goldman, tell us about Vladimir Putin. One view agrees doom, but who is he? Tell us a little more about him.

MARSHALL GOLDMAN: Sure. He had served as an agent of the KGB in Germany for many years. But then on the positive side, at east from my point of view, he came back to St. Petersburg - still then Leningrad -- and was part of the reform movement that formed under Mayor Subcek. Then he actually became the deputy mayor and was invited to Moscow. So there was the good side. But then the bad side is he was part of this organization that was administering Kremlin property. So he may be associated with some of the people that will be criticized and found guilty in Switzerland. Then he was put in charge of the KGB and then he was also made the head of the Security Council. That's why he had contact as your report earlier said, with the American government with Sandy Berger, the counterpart there. So he's got some good sides, he's got some bad sides from our point of view. But he is unknown. And will he be strong enough to move ahead? I should add one other thing. This goes back to what Lilia said, he did also work -- he was also in charge of the governors of the different regions and he was known as the great cardinal to some extent and was considered to be very strong. So maybe they think he can reign in some of the regional governors this way to help Yeltsin gain that stature. I'm doubtful but that's what they hope.

ALLEN WEINSTEIN: Can I add two points briefly? Everything Marshall said is correct. First of all, the last three prime ministers have been from the intelligence community, Mr. Primakov, Mr. Stepashin and now Mr. Putin. And presumably the fourth one -- the next one will be as well. I think, Margaret, if we had Mrs. Putin here, we would learn more about Mr. Putin than any of us know at this stage in the game in terms of his plans for Russia. Buthe has to rein in the regions, and then there is another dilemma he faces, because at some stage in the game, and Boris Nikolayev Yeltsin decides, well, perhaps he can't afford to give up power, there is still Mr. Lukashenko; there is still the potential of a treaty with Belarus in which you get this weird concept -

MARGARET WARNER: The President of Belarus.

ALLEN WEINSTEIN: The President of Belarus -- the dictator of Belarus at this stage in the game -- and you get this weird concept of a union which will allow Yeltsin to run for the presidency of the partially reunited Slavic lands. And it's bizarre, but I don't think any of us can fully rule it out given everything else that's happened in the last several months.

MARGARET WARNER: What do you think? What does this tell but the prospects for this transition to a post-Yeltsin Russia which was supposed to take place next year?

LILIA SHEVTSOVA: Well, appointment of Putin for me is an unpleasant sign simply because the Kremlin family corporation does not care about anything, does not care about how - you know, what kind of image they are creating, and if they do not care about anything, it means only one thing, at least for Russians, that probably they decided desperately to stick to power and to use all means to be the Kremlin, with Yeltsin, without Yeltsin. You know, appointment of Putin, a person without any kind of political base, without any kind of -- some kind of evident ideological views, the person is insignificant, that's why he has been chosen probably, simply demonstrates the Kremlin corporation may even use the extra constitutional means to stay in power.

MARGARET WARNER: So you don't take Putin at his word when he said today, you know, "all elections will happen as scheduled according to the constitution."

LILIA SHEVTSOVA: Nobody in Russia takes somebody upon their words -- not even Yeltsin himself.

MARGARET WARNER: Marshall Goldman, how do see this - that issue?

MARSHALL GOLDMAN: Well, I think it's an important one. It may very well happen that KGB does begin to maneuver. But - you know -- I think what they think they can do is to use the media, the control of the media because Barislovsky, this oligarch that I referred to earlier, has just bought a new newspaper, controls the television. And they look back at what happened in 1996 and they see that they controlled the media and they kind of rescued Yeltsin, who was below 10 percent in the polls in January. And then by the time the election was finally held, he had 53 percent of the vote. And I think they can kind of craft, create an image, as it were, of Putin who would be strong enough to carry on this way. Let me add just one other thing, by the way. It's true that three of the last four prime ministers were associated with the KGB. But Kiriyenko, as far as we know, wasn't. That's just a small footnote, but I do think that Putin will have to be created and there is no political body there to support him.

MARGARET WARNER: Go ahead. Have I a question for you.

ALLEN WEINSTEIN: Okay. But Yeltsin is terrific of corrupting people. And one of the things we have to look for now is the possibility of a rapprochement with Primakov, because if, in fact, Yeltsin - one of the things he'll have to do in the presidential election is to break away a credible candidate. Mr. Putin is certainly not a credible candidate. And that may yet -

MARGARET WARNER: So even though the new alliance wants Primakov as their candidate you're saying Yeltsin -

ALLEN WEINSTEIN: Yes. I don't think with Marshall that the media is somehow or other going to transform this election the way it did earlier because earlier Yeltsin had a greater body of support within the Russian -- the center of Russian politics and Russian voting constituencies. At this stage in the game, the disillusionment is virtually universal.

MARGARET WARNER: Marshall Goldman, the administration, as you saw, reacted very calmly to this today.

MARSHALL GOLDMAN: What else are we going to do?

MARGARET WARNER: Should it? Is there cause for concern or alarm?

MARSHALL GOLDMAN: Well, there has to be. There has to be.

MARGARET WARNER: From the West's perspective.

MARSHALL GOLDMAN: Sure. Sure - because first of all, you don't want to invite the prime minister to this country to meet with Al Gore because he goes home and he's going to be fired. That's what happened to Stephashin and in a sense to Nevin as well. But - you know -- here they were talking about trying to move forward with arms control agreement - Salt II, Salt III -- that's all in limbo. And look at the Japanese. The Japanese were hoping to reach some kind of understanding about the islands. That's in limbo. How can you deal with somebody who -- the Russians call it Russian roulette. You know - you don't know who is going to be in the gun next. And you can't make policy this way, and you can't invest and it hurts the

MARGARET WARNER: What do you think the international implications are of this, if any?

LILIA SHEVTSOVA: Well, there can been international implications, simply deepest distrust for anybody sitting in the Kremlin and simply wait and see tactics. Everybody is waiting for Yeltsin to be gone. But here is an illusion. Yeltsin is not our major problem. The major problem is the regime and he's hostage of this problem and he's hostage of the illusion there might be a successor. Yeltsin can have no success at all. Even if Putin is elected president, he will try to consolidate his power by distancing himself from Yeltsin.

ALLEN WEINSTEIN: There's an immediate problem and that is called Kosovo. And you have Russian troops in Kosovo now. You have - in fact -- a leader of the Russian Duma going to Serbia to gather information now to indict NATO at the international criminal court. You have hostility on the part of the Russian military toward the behavior of the NATO forces in Kosovo and one hopes a flash point doesn't emerge, but given the volatility of Kosovo, that, to me, is almost the immediate trigger for something that nobody wants but that could escalate quickly.

MARGARET WARNER: Marshall Goldman, do you see that as a danger?

MARSHALL GOLDMAN: Yes, I do. I think it's a possibility. I wouldn't rank it higher. I think right now in fact the greater danger for the Russians and indeed for the international community is what's going on in Dagestan, Chechnya, and in Gozetia. If those areas unite, create a fundamentalist Muslim, Islamic republic there's going to be bombing. It wasn't good under the Chechen War - during the Chechen War, and the world community cannot stand by and watch what took place there. And that's what, of course, the Russians were so worried about when they were criticizing what was happening in Kosovo. Will NATO decide it should be the policemen in Russia as well? And there I agree with Allen that it could be really a very serious international issue.

MARGARET WARNER: In your book you have a phrase "Russia's unstable stability." Do you think Russia is politically unstable?

LILIA SHEVTSOVA: I think Russia is strategically very unstable because Russia still has a choice where to go and Russia is before a dilemma -- whether to return to the attempts to effectively implement world democracy or find consolidation of the power through the crush of returning -- this is a big question - for Russia still.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well are thank you all three very much.

FOCUS - RARE DEVELOPMENT

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Next, a rare accord between environmentalists and developers over one of the nation's most prized natural treasures: The Grand Canyon. The U.S. Forest Service on Friday approved a proposal to build commercial facilities adjacent to the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. But the local townspeople are not pleased. Ted Robbins of KUAT-Tucson has the story.

TED ROBBINS: When Teddy Roosevelt stood at the rim of the Grand Canyon in 1905, he called it "the one great sight which every American should see." It's not likely he meant all at the same time. Almost five million people now visit Grand Canyon National Park every year, putting a strain on roads, natural resources, and park employees. Tourism at the Grand Canyon started in 1901 when the railroad began delivering a few thousand people a year. By 1914, cars were already showing up. By 1951, the parking lot at the canyon's premiere hotel, El Tovar, was filled, and it's remained filled ever since. Six thousand private vehicles enter the park on a typical day in July and August-- 6,000 vehicles competing for 1,500 parking spaces along the canyon's South rim -- one space for every four cars. It's a scene being repeated at other large national parks as well-- Yellowstone, Yosemite, Zion. Grand Canyon Park Superintendent Rob Arnberger says the park experience is subtly being eroded into a parking experience.

ROB ARNBERGER, Superintendent, Grand Canyon Park: We want people to come to parks, but parks and that park experience should not be the same experience that you have driving down your street in Elm Street U.S.A. or going to your Wal-Mart.

TED ROBBINS: Twenty years ago, the Park Service closed one road to private vehicles, the popular West Rim Drive. Shuttle buses take visitors to viewpoints. Beginning in 2002, the shuttles will replace cars on all roads within the park. Visitors with hotel reservations inside the park will leave their cars at their hotel. Everyone else will leave their cars on this land outside the park and ride a privately funded light rail system to the park's new visitor center. Work has already begun.

GUIDE: Hello. How is everybody? Good. Welcome to Grand Canyon. Where are we from?

TED ROBBINS: Many of the Grand Canyon's 4,000 public and private employees have been waiting for relief for years from the strain caused by increased tourism. Kate Allen recently began working here as a museum technician. At the moment, she's cataloguing snake specimens. When she finishes her day, she goes home to one of a number of trailers, nicknamed dumpsters.

KATE ALLEN: They're transit huts. But I don't know how they got the name the dumpsters - I think it's because they're green.

TED ROBBINS: Kate Allen's situation is indicative of substandard housing throughout the national park system. The Park Service bought these trailers as surplus in 1961 after the Bureau of Reclamation finished using them for workers building nearby Glen Canyon Dam. The rent is cheap: $110 a month. But Kate Allen has no choice. There is no private housing option inside the park and no other government housing available.

KATE ALLEN: I like to live at the Grand Canyon. That's a lot of fun. So I don't really mind that I live in "the dumpster," and my roommate moved out, so now I have it to myself; that makes it a lot more pleasant.

TED ROBBINS: Rob Arnberger, however, thinks it's a disgrace.

ROB ARNBERGER: I have some of my employees living in some of the most deplorable housing found in the entire national park system. And that has been -- it's one of the few things people can agree on here with my employees, or in Congress, or in the administration. The Grand Canyon is an embarrassment regarding the housing that we put some of our employees in.

TED ROBBINS: Congress appropriated money for new housing here during the early 1990's, but the park is still about 250 units short. To alleviate that shortage and to provide visitor services not available inside the park, the U.S. Forest Service approved a plan to develop 300 acres just outside the park, perhaps the first community of its kind. Teri Cleeland is the district ranger.

TERI CLEELAND: This land that we're walking on right here is slated in Alternative "H" if the land exchange occurs to be part of Canyon Forest Village, which is a planned development community for the Grand Canyon area; it will include retail, hotels, housing, and community infrastructure.

TED ROBBINS: The controversial Canyon Forest Village, Alternative H, would contrast with the small town of Tusayan, a hodgepodge of hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops now outside the Grand Canyon. The privately-owned village would be a so-called green community. To save ground water that feeds the Grand Canyon ecosystem, for instance, two-thirds of the village water would be recycled. The remaining third would be brought in by train. Canyon Forest Village is the brainchild of Scottsdale, Arizona, developer Tom DePaolo, who knew he had to at least overcome an image problem.

TOM DE PAOLO: We recognized we're developers and as such would not have a high degree of credibility with the public. It was important to find groups and individuals who have clearly at the top of their chart, if you will, that desire for high standards.

TED ROBBINS: So DePaolo went to eight environmental organizations, such as the Grand Canyon Trust in Flagstaff, Arizona, where Brad Ack is program director. He went to national organizations such as the Wilderness Society and the Environmental Defense Fund. He got them to support Canyon Forest Village.

BRAD ACKNOWLEDGE: You know there's going to be development out there. The only way to stop that would be to buy every piece of private land in the region at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. So we could hold out for some ideal position-- no development-- and lose, which we've done over and over in the past, say no and lose, or we could find something to say yes to and win.

TED ROBBINS: They have not won yet. Tusayan land and business owners, such as restaurant owner Eric Gueissaz, bitterly oppose Canyon Forest Village.

ERIC GUEISSAZ, Tusayan Restaurant Owner: There's always a certain fear. I mean, if suddenly you have a small community as it is today that is here and then suddenly you have a community that all of a sudden triples the number of population in the area, certainly it's competition.

TED ROBBINS: In reality, the town of Tusayan is owned by roughly a half dozen families who have been able to build with little oversight to suit the demand for 30 years. Few community services exist. Tusayan leaders now want to build their own community facilities. The town will continue fighting Canyon Forest Village through local government and, if necessary, the courts. It's a situation Brad Ack finds unusual, to say the least.

BRAD ACKNOWLEDGE: To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time a group of environmental organizations are supporting a gateway development near a national park while the opposition is largely from the real estate and developer and hotelier community. It's kind of turned the world on its head.

TED ROBBINS: A gateway community, light rail, no cars. Much of the management plan will use private money, but implementing the public portion will still cost taxpayers $300 million. Some say it's too grand a scheme for the Grand Canyon. Since the mid-1990's, the number of visitors here at the Grand Canyon has actually been flat, a little less than five million people a year. The Asian economic crisis may have kept some international visitors away. Publicity about overcrowding-- it's been in most of the guidebooks-- may have kept domestic visitors away as well.

TED ROBBINS: Is this still necessary then? Or why is it necessary?

ROB ARNBERGER: Yes. Well, if you want to make the assumption for the next 20 years, for the next 50 years, that visitation will always be at 4.5 million people, then I suppose you might make the case that there's no reason to do anything other than to manage what we've got, to stay stagnant. Well, stagnant is death for this resource and stagnant is the eventual loss of a visitor experience here. The Grand Canyon is one of the most visited natural sites on the face of the earth. And we have to plan for the future, not for just what we're seeing here today. But we have to plan for the year 2010, for the year 2020.

TED ROBBINS: The second part of Teddy Roosevelt's admonition to see the Grand Canyon was to "do nothing to mar its grandeur. Keep it for your children," he said, "your children's children." That balance between protecting the grandeur and accommodating the growing number of people who want to experience it is the major challenge facing those who manage not only the Grand Canyon but all of America's national parks. The Grand Canyon management plan may be grandiose; but if it works, it may be a model for achieving that balance in the next century.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a conversation with the U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam.

CONVERSATION

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Next, a conversation with America's first ambassador to post-war Vietnam. When Douglas, or as he's usually called, Pete Peterson arrived in Hanoi as the first postwar U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam two years ago, he promised to continue the search for missing American soldiers and work on improving trade between the two former enemies. Late last month, Vietnam and the United States reached an agreement in principle on reestablishing normal trade relations. The pact, which took three years to negotiate, will give both countries increased access to each other's markets. Details are still being worked out, and Ambassador Peterson was in Washington last week briefing Congress, which must approve the pact.

SPOKESPERSON: Good afternoon.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: But its successful negotiation was a key step in finally normalizing relations between the two countries 24 years after the end of the Vietnam War. President Clinton had ended a tight trade embargo in 1994 and restored diplomatic relations in 1995. He appointed then-Congressman Peterson as the first U.S. Ambassador. He's a former Air Force pilot who was shot down on a bombing mission near Hanoi in 1966. He was captured and spent nearly seven years as a prisoner of war. Peterson's appointment was welcomed by the few Americans then living in Vietnam.

RUBY TRANG, American Business Executive, Vietnam: Well, I believe Peterson's arrival in Hanoi is the greatest symbolic leap between U.S.-Vietnamese relations in the last three decades. However it's perceived by the Vietnam, it will certainly mean deeper, more cooperative relations politically and economically.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Peterson took office in a country, which remained Communist politically, but seemed to be opening up economically with great promise for American investors. They rushed in hoping to take advantage of very rapid growth in the mid-1990's, but the promise has yet to be realized. The reasons vary, but American executives who have returned home from Vietnam cite corruption and other bureaucratic and political obstacles. They also say the new trade bill will help. I spoke to Ambassador Peterson late last week.

FINALLY - SUMMER READING

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Finally tonight, NewsHour regular Robert Pinsky, Poet Laureate of the United States, suggests how to while away a lovely summer evening.

ROBERT PINSKY: There's a peculiar association between summertime and reading. Many of us think of summer as when we will catch up with books we have been meaning to read. Sometimes "summer reading" indicates triviality, the pleasures of fluff. In his beautiful poem "The House was Quiet and the World was Calm," Wallace Stevens associates summer and reading in a way far different and more penetrating than the notion of brightly colored paperbacks and magazines on the beach. "The House was Quiet and the World was Calm." "The house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became his book; and summer night was like the conscious being of the book. The house was quiet and the world was calm-- the words were spoken as if there was no book, except that the reader leaned above the page, wanted to lean, wanted much most to be the scholar to whom his book is true, to whom the summer night is like a perfection of thought. The house was quiet because it had to be. The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind: The access of perfection to the page. And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world, in which there is no other meaning, itself is calm, itself is summer and night, itself is the reader leaning late and reading there." I wish you some of that feeling.

RECAP

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Again, the major stories of this Monday: Russian President Yeltsin fired his cabinet and said his newly appointed prime minister, Vladimir Putin, should be elected president next year. In this country, a report by state securities regulators criticized day-trading firms for financial and ethical abuses. And Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr said he would wrap up his five-year investigation of President and Mrs. Clinton before the 2000 elections. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth. Thank you, good night.