The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington.

MR. MacNeil: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After the News Summary this Monday, we discuss the sex harassment charges against Sen. Robert Packwood, from Moscow, we have a documentary report on the political turmoil surrounding Russian President Boris Yeltsin, two Yugoslav journalists who've kept a newspaper running in Sarajevo discuss the situation there, and Correspondent Elizabeth Farnsworth reports on a scientist looking for new sources of food. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: The United Nations Secretary General said today only military force could ensure the delivery of food to starving people in Somalia. Boutros Boutros-Ghali said it in a letter to the Security Council. He also said a large U.S.-led operation was a possible option. Armed bandits have stolen much of the food shipped to the East African nation and attacks on relief workers are common. The United States has offered to send up to 30,000 troops as part of a multinational U.N. force. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Russia's constitutional court today upheld Boris Yeltsin's ban on the Communist Party's ruling apparatus, but it determined Yeltsin went too far when he also outlawed all party activity at the grass-roots level. James Mates of Independent Television News reports on the landmark trial.

JAMES MATES: For six months, former members of the Communist Party have been waiting for this verdict. When it came, it was confusing and inconclusive. The judges declared that President Yeltsin had been right to outlaw the party at the national level because it was substituting itself for the state but wrong to ban the party at a local level. Yegor Ligachev, once the second most powerful man in the Kremlin, appeared unmoved by the verdict. His party will continue to exist now even if it can never again become a monolithic, national structure. For the Moscow press corps watching in a room outside, the real significance of this is its effect on President Yeltsin. On the eve of a crucial meeting of Russia's highest parliament tomorrow, it's not he victory he had wanted.

GREGORY ARBATOV, Director, U.S.-Canada Institute: Whether it adds to his strength, I am in doubt, because his major problems are not those old victories about Communist Party. His major problems are the country's economy.

MR. MATES: The verdict may at least ease the personal battle between President Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev had refused to testify to the court, calling it a show trial. That was an accusation that infuriated Yeltsin and many in his government.

MR. MacNeil: President Bush telephoned Yeltsin today to express his continued support for the Russian President's reform program. White House Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said, "The President wanted to let Yeltsin know that he has our support if it's helpful to him." The U.S. has promised to contribute to a $24 billion international fund for Russia, but so far, little U.S. money has been spent. We'll have more on this story later in the program.

MR. LEHRER: The U.S. merchandise trade deficit bulged to more than $26 1/2 billion from June to September. It was the highest level in almost two years. A Commerce Department report today said U.S. exports hit a record high but they were outpaced by imports.

MR. MacNeil: The man who killed Exxon International president Sidney Reso during a botched kidnapping was sentenced today to 95 years in jail with no chance of parole. Reso, who was 57, died while being held in a box in a storage vault. A federal judge also fined Arthur Seale $1.75 million. Seale and his wife, Irene, kidnapped Reso from the driveway of his New Jersey home April 29th. Irene Seale began cooperating with authorities soon after the couple's arrest in June. She will be sentenced later.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Bob Packwood's office today issued a statement saying the Senator had entered an alcohol treatment facility. The Oregon Republican has been charged with sexual harassment by 10 women. Most of them worked for him and said he made unwanted sexual advances between 1969 and 1990. Packwood has said alcohol may be partially responsible for his behavior. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. Paul Tsongas confirmed today he has had a recurrence of cancer. The former Senator, a 1992 Democratic presidential candidate, said doctors had found a cancerous growth in his abdomen. He left the Senate in 1984 after being diagnosed with lymphoma. He underwent experimental treatment and said he was cancer free during his bid for the presidency. Today at a Boston news conference he talked about his prognosis.

PAUL TSONGAS, Former Presidential Candidate: The diagnosis, which isn't exactly complete, is that it is a lymphoma. It is a large cell lymphoma. That's the bad news. The good news is that it's contained, that every other test they've taken -- and I've been through all of them -- cannot find any trace of it anyplace else. So it seems to be limited to that lymph node. I guess I go through these every five years, apparently.

MR. LEHRER: The Supreme Court today agreed with a lower court that Guam's 1990 abortion law was unconstitutional. The Guam law banned nearly all abortions except in cases where two doctors determined a woman's life was in danger, or where an embryo developed outside the woman's womb. In a six to three vote the Justices refused to review a federal appeals court decision on the matter.

MR. MacNeil: The United Nations today slapped trade sanctions on parts of Cambodia controlled by the Khmer Rouge. It demanded the guerrilla group participate in a U.N.-sponsored peace process or face exclusion from Cambodia's first free election set for next May. The Khmer Rouge control an estimated 15 percent of the country. They've refused to disarm, claiming the peace plan is rigged against them. The Khmer Rouge killed hundreds of thousands of Cambodians during their brutal rule in the 1970s.

MR. LEHRER: A militant black group claimed responsibility today for a weekend attack on white party goers in South Africa. Four people were killed and twenty injured when gunmen opened fire at a Saturday night Christmas party. It happened in a town 600 miles south of Johannesburg. Police said a caller claiming to be from a black nationalist group told them it had carried out the ambush. U.S. officials in Liberia said today the bodies of three American nuns had been recovered. They were killed last month in the country's civil war. They were found in their convent on the outskirts of the capital, Monrovia. It is not clear who killed them, but the area was held by guerrilla forces at the time. Two other American nuns are still missing.

MR. MacNeil: Federal authorities in Germany today said they'd arrested a teen-age suspect in a fatal firebombing. They said they were seeking at least one other person in the attack last week which killed a Turkish woman and two girls. It prompted an international outcry over the rise of neo-Nazi violence against foreigners in Germany. Sixteen people have died in such attacks this year. Nations of the European Community today rejected a request from Germany that they accept more refugees. EC ministers meeting in London expressed support for Germany in its effort to curb violence against immigrants. Germany, because of its liberal asylum laws, has received most of about half a million refugees attempting to settle in Europe. It had proposed a new quota system to more evenly allocate refugees among U.N. nations. Officials in Bosnia today released new casualty figures from eight months of war in the former Yugoslav republic. They said more than 17,000 people had been killed [17,466] and 134,000 wounded [134,132]; 110,000 are listed as missing. Those numbers under state the true toll because the Muslim-led Bosnian government reports only on the parts of the republic it controls, currently less than 1/4 of its territory. That's it for the News Summary. Now it's on to Sen. Packwood and sexual harassment charges, Boris Yeltsin's political problems, the personal view of the siege of Sarajevo and a report on a man of the prairie. FOCUS - CODE OF CONDUCT

MR. LEHRER: The Senate Packwood story is our lead tonight. It was announced today that the Oregon Republican has hired a lawyer, and he has entered an alcohol treatment facility. The actions follow charges he made unwanted sexual advances against 10 women employees or lobbyists. Yesterday, Senate leaders said the Senate Ethics Committee should move quickly to investigate the allegations and recommend action, if any, against the Senator. We look at the various possibility for resolution of this matter now with three people. Betty Roberts is a former Oregon Supreme Court Justice, a 1974 Democratic challenger to Sen. Packwood. She is the spokesperson for a coalition of Oregon groups hoping to remove Packwood from office. Norman Ornstein is a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Jean Dugan is an employee of the United States Senate, and a member of its sexual harassment task force. Judge Roberts, has Sen. Packwood done the right thing by entering an alcohol treatment facility?

JUDGE ROBERTS: Well, we appreciate the fact that Bob Packwood is trying to deal with the problem, but we do not agree that this is an alcohol abuse problem. It is -- it is an abuse of power problem. It was an abuse of power when he sexually harassed women who were on his staff, who worked for his campaign, who came to lobby him, at times when, according to these reports, there was no alcohol involved. And then there was no alcohol involved when he denied to the Washington Post that these allegations were not true, and when he attempted to smear the reputations of these women. There was certainly no alcohol involved when he told our local paper, the Oregonian, only a few days before the election that he had not been meeting and had had no communication with the Washington Post. So I think that what we see here is that Sen. Packwood has manipulated the election process in the State of Oregon. He was able to convince the press to withhold that story for a few days until after the election was over, and that was a deliberate act and an abuse of power. And that has nothing to do with what he may have when he claims an alcohol abuse problem.

MR. LEHRER: Now, Norm, the Senate Majority Leader and the Senate Minority Leader, George Mitchell and Robert Dole, on television yesterday said that the SenateEthics Committee is going to move on this, should move on this quickly. Explain to us what the possibilities are now for action against the Senator.

JUDGE ROBERTS: There are a number of --

MR. LEHRER: No. Excuse me, Judge. I'm asking Norm Ornstein here. I'm asking him that question.

JUDGE ROBERTS: I'm sorry.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Well, in 1991, in the Civil Rights Act, Jim, they set up procedures, an office of fair employment practices in the Senate, which is supposed to adjudicate instances where there's either employment discrimination or other such problems against charges lodged against Senators. One venue is to work through that office, and then there is also ultimate redress, although in a limited fashion, in the courts. Then there's the Senate Ethics Committee, and one can go through the office and then move to the Ethics Committee or the Ethics Committee directly if a charge is lodged, and it appears that it will be, Sen. Packwood now has asked the Ethics Committee to move in. Now clearly, you can move through an office that can assert that there are charges that are worthy here. We can have financial penalties going directly against the Senator now because of the 1991 Civil Rights Act. The Ethics Committee can levy charges that can range all the way up to expulsion, which is obviously not likely in a case of this sort, down through censure or denouncement or some kind of rebuke or chastisement in various forms. You've got public disapproval and shame all the way through financial penalties. And, obviously, we're going to see a lot of pressure that can't be achieved through legal means to force Sen. Packwood to leave office.

MR. LEHRER: Is there -- has the Senate ever dealt with this kind of issue, a sexual harassment case before against a member?

MR. ORNSTEIN: No, certainly not as an institution through the ethics process. We now have a number of Senators and an ex-Senator, Brock Adams, who've had serious charges brought against them. This is clearly not going to be the last time that we're going to have some of this come forward.

MR. LEHRER: The reason the Senate didn't deal with that, they said, is because he decided not to run for re-election. Ms. Dugan, what do you think about the process? You're on a committee there.

MS. DUGAN: I'm part of the Capitol Hill Women's Political Caucus which has the task force on this. The Senate, itself, does not.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Okay. But what I mean is you are monitoring this kind of, these kinds of allegations. What is your sense of confidence that the Senate of the United States will dispose of these charges against Sen. Packwood in some kind of meaningful and fair way?

MS. DUGAN: Well, I'm certainly hopeful that for the first time the Senate will fully investigate a sexual harassment charge or multiple charges in this case. Unfortunately, the Office of Fair Employment Practices will not be able to help in this instance unless a woman comes forward with a more recent incident. The '91 law only allows for new charges or ones within 180 days before the law was passed.

MR. LEHRER: And these charges I think --

MS. DUGAN: Pre-date that.

MR. LEHRER: -- ended 1989.

MR. ORNSTEIN: And started 1965, '69, so we go back almost 25 years.

MS. DUGAN: So although there's a pattern of behavior, if a woman does not come forward with a more recent complaint, it's going to be the Ethics Committee that's investigating, and I certainly hope they investigate. I think they will find a pattern of behavior that he does not respect women and that his behavior in public -- in private is unacceptable, and his public behavior has not indicated that in recent years.

MR. LEHRER: What do you think -- now, Judge Roberts, your group is calling for the Senator to resign, is that correct?

JUDGE ROBERTS: Yes, we are.

MR. LEHRER: And nothing has happened in his actions today to change your mind on that?

JUDGE ROBERTS: No, nothing at all. We're still asking for him to resign, and it's not totally out of the hands of the voters either, Jim, of Oregon, the voters of Oregon. After all, this is really an offense against the voters of Oregon.

MR. LEHRER: But your position is that he should step aside, he should resign right now, is that right?

JUDGE ROBERTS: Yes, he should. Yes, he should.

MR. LEHRER: Now, Norm, what about that, the idea that before this thing is resolved in any kind of official way that he should, because of the newspaper stories and the allegations he should quit?

MR. ORNSTEIN: I just don't think that that's the case, Jim. I don't see that -- I don't like, first of all, the notion that charges are brought, before they're resolved through any of the methods that do exist in the Senate or outside, we force people to resign who've been elected. It may well be that the Washington Post made an error in not bringing this forward right before the election, although obviously these rumors have been around for years. Somebody could have done it a long time ago. The election was held. Sen. Packwood was re-elected. It's up to him to decide whether he wants to resign. He has now received front page, above- the-fold treatment in the Washington Post, and inside stories, stories all across the country. This has been made public. He's been humiliated in public. The question of what he does with his own office at this point is left to the judgment of the Senate or to the voters six years from now, and that's as it should be. If people can pressure him and he feels that he's forced to resign, it's their right to push him to do so. It's his right not to resign, and I'd hate to see that kind of a precedent established.

JUDGE ROBERTS: Jim, let me --

MR. LEHRER: Just a second, Judge. I just want to ask Ms. Dugan, what's your feeling about it? Do you feel that from, from your vantage point as a woman working on Capitol Hill that this thing should go through a process, or if he, if Sen. Packwood resigns, just like Sen. Adams did in not running for re-election, the whole issue died and the thing was never resolved, how would like this - - what's your ideal world?

MS. DUGAN: Personally, I would like to see it go through the process, but I hope that the Senate would do a good job, do a complete investigation, if there is a violation of Senate Rule 42 to censure him, which is --

MR. LEHRER: Senate Rule 42 is --

MS. DUGAN: Which says that you should not discriminate in employment based on sex and a number of other criteria. If he violated that rule, I think he should be censured. Probably it's unlikely he would be expelled, but if he's censured, it would be very hard for him to continue to do a good job serving the people of Oregon, and at that time I think he should seriously consider resignation.

MR. LEHRER: But Judge Roberts, you don't think it should go that far?

JUDGE ROBERTS: Well, I would hope it wouldn't go that far, but my point that I wanted to make, Jim, is that the people of Oregon are the ones who have been deceived. I know this has become a national issue, and people are looking to the Senate Ethics Committee as the only recourse. That's not true. We have the recall in Oregon, and weintend to pursue that. We think that the will of the voters of Oregon should be able to make this determination.

MR. LEHRER: Is that movement underway now officially?

JUDGE ROBERTS: Yes, it is underway. Yes, it is.

MR. LEHRER: What do you have to do under Oregon law to do that?

JUDGE ROBERTS: We have to file with the Secretary of State our intent to carry on the recall, and he has to certify that initiative. And we are talking with the attorney general. We are talking with the Secretary of State. We are building our legal case for him to issue that authority for the recall to go forward.

MR. LEHRER: And then you have to get so many signatures, is that right?

JUDGE ROBERTS: We have to get 167,000 valid signatures within 90 days. A new election then -- an election then would be held to determine whether or not he should be recalled. The people of Oregon are very upset about this. They feel they've been deceived. They feel they've been cheated out of a fair election, and though the Senate Ethics Committee should certainly take some interest in this and the investigation should go forward, and the complaints should be filed there, we should not wait for that to happen.

MR. LEHRER: Well, Norm, now that's a whole different -- is there any precedent for that?

MR. ORNSTEIN: No. And, in fact, there are very real constitutional questions as to whether a recall provision of this sort applies to federal officials --

JUDGE ROBERTS: Now wait a minute.

MR. ORNSTEIN: -- members are Senators -- and I'm very skeptical that it does.

JUDGE ROBERTS: Now, wait a minute. We just had an initiative in Oregon that, that the voters approved to limit the terms of office including United States Senators and the House of Representatives. The Secretary of State issued that initiative and allowed it to go forward. The Secretary of State will initiate this and allow it to go forward, at least I predict that. Certainly --

MR. ORNSTEIN: And it's not clear that the Constitution allows that initiative either. We'll get that adjudicated by the --

JUDGE ROBERTS: It may be adjudicated.

MR. LEHRER: You mean the term limits?

MR. ORNSTEIN: Yes.

JUDGE ROBERTS: It may be adjudicated, but at least the people of Oregon will get to vote on it, and that certainly should have an impact on what the Senate Ethics Committee does. There's one other point, and that is that we will seek redress through the rules committee, asking the rules committee not to seat this U.S. Senator on the grounds that the Senate Ethics Commission should go forward with its investigation and that Sen. Packwood should stand aside. He should not be sworn in, into this new term, until the Senate Ethics Committee has proceeded.

MR. LEHRER: What's your opinion on that?

MR. ORNSTEIN: That's not going to happen, and there's no precedent for that either. We, we have procedures in place. Now, some of these procedures --

JUDGE ROBERTS: We can set a precedent I think.

MR. ORNSTEIN: -- are very recent and should have been in place a long time ago to deal with these kinds of issues. The Ethics Committee can handle this and I hope will handle it well, and we all hope that that's the case. Having him step aside, not take a seat until all of this happens is I don't think appropriate. It's perfectly fine for groups to go forward and push in whatever venue they want. I don't think the rules committee will act in that way and I don't think they should.

MR. LEHRER: Ms. Dugan, let me ask you finally just a general question, because there's been a lot of speculation too about what Sen. Packwood did is commonplace in some circles on Capitol Hill. Is that, in fact, true based on the work that your study group has done?

MS. DUGAN: What we found is that sexual harassment was happening on Capitol Hill. Congress was setting a bad example. They have moved to improve their procedures for reporting sexual harassment, but they still have quite a long ways to go, and how they handle this case I think will be very telling.

MR. LEHRER: Is the simple fact of reporting sexual harassment, has that improved? In other words, can a woman employee tonight, who feels that she has been sexually harassed by her employer, either a United States Senator or a member of Congress, can she complain in a way that her job security and all of that will be protected?

MS. DUGAN: Right. Right now if you report it within 180 days, there's a fairly good procedure outlined to do that. The problem is there's very little incentive to do that, because you're going to lose your job on the Hill. You are likely to be black-balled. It will be very hard to get another Hill job. You could recover some compensatory damages now. The Senate procedure is much better than the House procedure currently, and I think they need to bring those into balance so that they're comparable.

MR. LEHRER: So the climate is not conducive then to women coming forward?

MS. DUGAN: No. And you can see under the new Office of Fair Employment Practices, the House has heard four cases so far that went to the appeals process. None were on sex discrimination.

MR. LEHRER: A quick thing, Norman.

MR. ORNSTEIN: It's clear that this is true across the society. It's always difficult for a woman to bring this kind of a charge. It throws her job into jeopardy. For people on Capitol Hill in many ways though they're in more jeopardy than say an executive in a corporation or a lawyer or a doctor. You're not going to find one of those have a story of this sort come forward and be on the front page above the fold in the Washington Post.

MR. LEHRER: Okay. I hear you. Norm, Ms. Dugan, Judge Roberts, thank you all three.

MR. MacNeil: Still ahead on the NewsHour, a documentary on political turmoil in Moscow, the situation in Bosnia, and the search for new foods. FOCUS - YELTSIN'S PROBLEMS

MR. MacNeil: We turn now to the struggles of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who is trying to undo 70 years of communist rule. Yeltsin received a couple of pieces of mixed news today. A court upheld his 1991 decision to outlaw the National Communist Party, but said he'd gone too far in banning local party cells. One of Yeltsin's economic advisers said industrial production may have hit bottom and should start expanding next year. For his efforts, Yeltsin received a phone call today from President Bush who said the American people stand behind his fight for free market reforms. The phone call came the day before the Congress of People's Deputies, a relic from the communist era, starts a new session. We have a report on the political situation in Moscow from special Correspondent Simon Marks.

MR. MARKS: Eighteen months after he was swept to power as Russia's first democratically-elected president, Boris Yeltsin's honeymoon period is over. He's facing a growing number of challenges from a growing number of sides as his authority is called into question. The President's chief political adviser, Sergei Stankevich, says opposition to Yeltsin's rule was bound to rise.

SERGEI STANKEVICH, Yeltsin Adviser: We've had really transitional situation and we have to accept the reality for many years ahead. We shall have coexistence, involuntary coexistence of highly incompatible people, ideas, institutions, and forms of economic behavior. Let us accept it as relative.

MR. MARKS: The central issue for those opposing the president is his government's handling of the economy. They say the center of Moscow has been turned into one huge, anarchic street market with hastily constructed kiosks appearing on sidewalks everywhere. The reforms have seen an explosion of imported consumer goods, but Yeltsin's opponents say they have also brought a collapse in Russia's own manufacturing base. In the firing line, Yegor Gaidar, President Yeltsin's acting prime minister. As the man in charge of an economic program known as "Shock Therapy," he's lifted state price controls and moved to privatize the nation's industries as quickly as possible. He's the man the opposition wants demoted and ideally removed.

NIKOLAI TRAVKIN, Civic Union Party: [speaking through interpreter] Our main objection to Gaidar is that he tried to take an entirely alien theory, completely unrelated to our reality, and persistently applied it to Russia. If something didn't fit this theory, they simply tried to cut around it.

MR. MARKS: Nikolai Travkin has been taking that message across the country in the last few weeks. He's one of the leaders of Civic Union, a coalition of communists and industrialists who say President Yeltsin is on the wrong track. Civic Union has the ear of Russia's captains of industry, men who fear the move to the market may force the closer of uneconomic factories they run. Civic Union wants President Yeltsin to fire two members of his cabinet and change course to take into account the concerns of Russia's industry chiefs.

NIKOLAI TRAVKIN: [speaking through interpreter] People are tired of all the fighting. People are angry because of the constant quarrels between the highest echelons of power. In some branches of industry we've now fallen so far we can't fall any further, so today, the President has an opportunity to correct all these mistakes. The question is whether he will do it or not.

MR. MARKS: The answer is that President Yeltsin does seem ready to strike a deal with Russia's industrialists. At a meeting with them, he promised to compromise on policy, and said he'd under- estimated the power of the industrial lobby. Its leader, Arkady Voksly, outlined the industrialists' concerns.

ARKADY VOKSLY, Union of Industrialists & Entrepreneurs: [speaking through interpreter] No one could have supposed that the economic situation would deteriorate so quickly and that the slump in production and fallen living standards could have led to such disintegration.

MR. MARKS: Sergei Stankevich, President Yeltsin's adviser, now describes the industrialists as real partners in the Russian government, and he says because of their input there will be policy changes.

SERGEI STANKEVICH: If we speak about one or two years of reform, we can go ahead as liberal crusaders, but the time schedule for us is at least for fifteen or twenty years of very serious structural reforms, and one cannot imagine society that can afford fifteen or twenty years of shock therapy. It's impossible. It's unbearable. So President should take another strategy, and he should find strategic partner for this strategy.

MR. MARKS: But cutting a deal with Civic Union, President Yeltsin risks alienating some of his other supporters. Konstantin Borovoi heads the Economic Freedom Party. The founder of Moscow's stock exchange, he works from the party's plush offices built on the profits he made as a pioneer of Russia's free market. The party claims 3 million supporters across the country and has previously backed President Yeltsin. Now its leader says the president is mixing with the wrong people.

KONSTANTIN BOROVOI, Economic Freedom Party: [speaking through interpreter] Today to rely on the Soviet Union is dangerous. It really is dangerous because, of course, it doesn't represent a significant part of society. Its basis is rather elite part of society, former party managers. Here, I think, the president is making a mistake.

MR. MARKS: Another mistake, according to President Yeltsin's critics, is his style of leadership. Since being sworn in, he has increasingly relied upon a key group of unelected ministers and advisers to help him make decisions. A small body called the Security Council meets regularly behind the Kremlin's walls to consider all aspects of policy. Its own secretary has likened it to the old Soviet politburo in terms of the influence it wields. Now, there's a move on to restrict the president's freedom to make decisions. The legislative branch of the government, the congress of people's deputies, wants more involvement in the day-to-day running of the country. Twelve months ago, the members of parliament meeting here granted President Yeltsin sweeping powers that allowed him to rule by decree and make key government appointments without seeking parliamentary approval. President Yeltsin now wants the congress to renew those powers for another year, but many deputies oppose the move, saying it's time the president became accountable. The president argues that the congress, elected in 1990, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, no longer reflects public opinion, but with fresh elections not due for another three years, many deputies say President Yeltsin must learn to work and live with the parliament. Ilya Konstantinov, with the hardline National Salvation Front, is one of those who has felt the effects of President Yeltsin's special powers. His organization is banned, outlawed at the stroke of a pen by the president he's dedicated to overthrowing. The ban was announced even though the Front does not have widespread support and has found little public sympathy for its demands for the restoration of the Soviet state.

ILYA KONSTANTINOV, National Salvation Front Party: [speaking through interpreter] The special powers were granted to him for one year. In our view, he has not used them in the best way. And Yeltsin can only get his way at the congress if he uses blackmail and threats, but now I don't think even that would help him.

MR. MARKS: The president who rose to power backed by those who manned the barricades during the attempted coup justifies his executive powers by saying his government is now under threat. He's spoken of dark forces waiting in the wings to oust him from power, a claim his opponents say is over-exaggerated.

NIKOLAI TRAVKIN: [speaking through interpreter] These are Yeltsin's old Bolshevik tricks. When someone in power doesn't know what to do, he starts looking for an enemy. So much wrong has been done over the past year, so many empty promises and so many mistakes it's very much in his interest to say that he didn't do something just because someone was preventing him.

MR. MARKS: The president's allies say no matter how much opposition he faces, Boris Yeltsin still has one major advantage over his opponents, the confidence of the Russian people, and a mandate from them to act in their interests.

SERGEI STANKEVICH: The president is enough political support to withstand any pressure. He cannot be forced to do anything right now and even Civic Union, even industrialists cannot cross certain limits in trying to bargain with the president. He is the most legitimate politician now in the country, and he can appeal directly to our public in case of any necessity, and he will have, he will have enough support.

MR. MARKS: The last man to rule here, Mikhail Gorbachev, has been a persistent and vociferous critic of President Yeltsin. Now some of the president's other opponents say the world should take care not to treat the Kremlin's incumbent like it did his predecessor.

NIKOLAI TRAVKIN: American society and American policy made the mistake once already of staking everything on just one person in the Soviet Union, of connecting everything which happens with just one man. Today Gorbachev is gone and again they are staking everything on just one person. It's not right.

MR. MARKS: When he came to power President Yeltsin's public appeal rested largely on his reputation as a maverick. Now his freedom to operate independently has been restricted by opponents who have had time to move against him. He's striking deals with what his aides call the nation's constructive opposition, taking partners into his government as Russia's new political system slowly takes shape. CONVERSATION - OSLOBODJENJE - WAR STORY

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight, one newspaper's effort to keep publishing amid the shelling and killing in Sarajevo, Bosnia. In eight months of civil war in the former Yugoslav republic at least 17,000 people have died. Some of the worst fighting has taken place around the offices of the newspaper Oslobodjenje, or Liberation. It's modernist building has been gutted. It's journalists have been attacked by missile fire. Six staffers have died. Serbian snipers keep rifles trained on the newspaper's entrance. Like Bosnia, itself, the newspaper staff is composed of Muslims, Serbs, and Croats. They now work in a basement shelter, producing the paper by candlelight. The newspaper's two editors are in the United States this week and tomorrow will receive the 1992 Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation, and they join us now. Kemal Kurspahic is the Muslim, is the editor in chief, and was able to leave Bosnia for medical treatment. Gordana Knezevic, a Bosnian Serb, has been acting editor in chief while her colleague recovers. She was allowed to leave Sarajevo on a United Nations flight to accept her award. Congratulations on the award you will receive tomorrow. Can you just tell us as fellow journalists a little bit of how you put this newspaper out. You don't have electricity very often. How do you see, apart from candlelight? How do you run the presses if you don't have electricity?

MR. KURSPAHIC: We have some power generators, but you know we have to save it because we don't have enough oil to operate, so it works for four or six hours a day in order to print the paper, to allow our printers to do their job. All the rest of the day we work under candlelight because the offices are in shelter underground and there is no natural light.

MR. MacNeil: They're in, I read, a nuclear shelter, a shelter that was designed for nuclear war, is that correct?

MS. KNEZEVIC: That's right. That's right. And --

MR. MacNeil: And are you all living there too?

MS. KNEZEVIC: We are working on shift system so few people are sleeping and working there for seven days, and we are changing this shift, but another clue for our survival is our tough editor in chief. You know, he at the beginning of the war, he told us that he doesn't know how many of us would survive, but that we have to have an issue every day, and that's how we operated for eight months.

MR. MacNeil: Apart from it's your profession, why is it so vital to you to keep the newspaper going for Sarajevo?

MR. KURSPAHIC: There is first responsibility to our readers, and I would say to the idea of free press, you know, you can't allow some people just come there to push you out and to stop publishing the paper which has 50 years tradition, and the other thing is that keeping "Oslobodjenje," which means liberation, alive gives also some psychological support to people in Sarajevo. "Oslobodjenje" is now the only thing left you can buy each morning in Sarajevo. There is no bread anymore. So that's the last remaining of pre-war normal life there, and people live with us and they keep it as their, as being newly born each morning when they see the paper coming out of flame, out of ashes of our building.

MR. MacNeil: You get 10,000 editions -- 10,000 copies out a day?

MS. KNEZEVIC: That's right.

MR. MacNeil: And how do you get them to people in a city that's so often under shell fire and bombardment?

MS. KNEZEVIC: We have a special system. There is no driver in Sarajevo who would drive to our building to pick up the copies, but the journalists, themselves, are driving a few cars early in the morning, and then some other people are waiting for them at certain spots of the town and they are doing big distribution, and those 10,000 copies are sold in half an hour. And we could sell double than that but we have to spare the paper, so someone might say what is our situation in the paper.

MR. MacNeil: How are you getting paper?

MR. KURSPAHIC: We didn't get any since the beginning of the war, which is the beginning of April, and in order to prolong our life we had to use number of pages and to reduce circulation, because our pre-war circulation was about 60,000 a day, so we had to reduce this to 1/5 in order to live longer, and --

MR. MacNeil: How much have you got left?

MR. KURSPAHIC: I almost shouldn't say so because, you know, we are trying to smuggle some paper in the city, and I think we'll live till the end of the war.

MR. MacNeil: It is -- all the stories I've seen about you suggest that the Serbian attackers are really aiming at the paper. I mean, hundreds of shells and missiles have hit the building. They continue to keep the entrance to the building under fire. Why did they want to so clearly stop you from publishing?

MS. KNEZEVIC: What we think is the main course of these severe attacks is just the structure, ethnical structure of "Oslobodjenje." We are real proof that it's not possible to only live together but to work together, just because we are some Serbs, Croats and Muslims trying desperately to keep a company alive, and that makes them very nervous.

MR. MacNeil: Because that was the reality in Bosnia, and particularly in the city of Sarajevo before the, the Serbian attacks began.

MS. KNEZEVIC: That's right, and in that sense, "Oslobodjenje" is somehow a symbol of this Sarajevo before the war, a symbol in a sense of common culture, of multicultural, multireligious, multi- ethnical place.

MR. KURSPAHIC: And you know I think that our staff reflects that picture, I mean, ethnic picture of Bosnia almost ideally. There is almost ideal percentage of Serbs, Muslims and Croats living together, and on the other hand, the basic idea of aggression is to destroy that possibility of different nations living together.

MR. MacNeil: And ethnically cleanse.

MR. KURSPAHIC: Yes.

MR. MacNeil: Ethnically distinct groups.

MR. KURSPAHIC: I think they, they want to destroy "Oslobodjenje" just to prove that there is nothing left of that culture of living together in Sarajevo.

MR. MacNeil: Do you feel being right there in Sarajevo that there is going -- that this is going to stop because of a negotiated settlement? Can the U.N. get these -- ultimately get the cease-fire to work? I mean, there was another one negotiated for the weekend and it was broken again today.

MR. KURSPAHIC: Unfortunately, I don't expect a lot from those negotiations. You know, our experiences don't give us very much hope on that. I think we deal with the project and with the people who understand only the language of force, so, in my opinion, if international community, if it still exists because from our experience we doubt it, if international community wants to do something, then I think it's time either to intervene to some measure or to allow us to arm ourself to defend the country because it's hypocrisy to tell that there is already too many arms there. There is but they're all in one hands, in hands of aggressor. I think that advantage is at least one hundred to one in all measures in arms sense. So I think that --

MR. MacNeil: What is your reaction then when -- you know this has been debated a long time here and the Bush administration has said, we couldn't go in there effectively without getting bogged down. They want to go into the risk of getting bogged down as they did in Vietnam -- what is your reaction when you hear that reason given for the U.S. not --

MS. KNEZEVIC: People in Sarajevo I can tell you generally start to forget about the outside world, and they feel very lonely, and they feel very helpless, and there is a lot of bitterness inside Sarajevo at the moment. Just because they thought that their cause is obvious and just because people of Sarajevo are not a side in a conflict, there was not any armed forces inside the city once the city was attacked, you know, and maybe they even didn't give a lot of arguments to the rest of the world, just because they thought that the cause of Bosnian people was so justified, and why should they produce an argument to prove that, so this general mood is very much shown in the reaction over U.N. presence in Sarajevo. People sympathize with them, don't expect much of them, and they just feel that there is a long, long winter coming and nobody sees the end.

MR. MacNeil: What is your reaction to the reasons the Bush administration has given for not intervening militarily?

MR. KURSPAHIC: I think there are ways to intervene without taking so much risks. There are specific military targets. There are artillery positions which each child in Sarajevo knows. We are exposed to that. They shell apartment buildings. They shell hospitals. They kill civilians there, and everyone in Sarajevo knows where the fire comes from, so I think even limited air strikes against strictly military targets, artillery positions, air fields from which they operate, and some similar things might be done in 48 hours because those people understand the unusual force and that will be a strong message to them. I think it's high time if it's not, of course, for many of us it's too late, but I think that's the only way to send them a message they will understand.

MR. MacNeil: The -- there's going to be elections in Serbia on December the 20th. There is talk that Milan Panic, the prime minister who used to live in the United States, is going to run against Milosevic, the Serbian leader. Do you -- would that make any difference to the war if, if he ran and Milosevic were defeated? Would that make any difference?

MS. KNEZEVIC: I must admit I am not hopeful. It looks like Panic is just another good player on the Serbian stage and at least we in Sarajevo, we don't think that there is a real gap between Milosevic and Panic in the sense that Panic is to talk about peace and Milosevic is to proceed with the war, so we -- we don't think that they have different national program.

MR. MacNeil: They're both in favor of a greater Serbia, in other words --

MS. KNEZEVIC: That's right.

MR. MacNeil: -- you believe?

MS. KNEZEVIC: That's right. So in that sense we are not hopeful in any political change in Belgrade.

MR. MacNeil: Well, I must thank you both and end it there, and wish you both good luck. Thank you. FINALLY - PRAIRIE GENIUS

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, a story about a man who spends most of his time thinking about food. Correspondent Elizabeth Farnsworth met him earlier this fall in Salina, Kansas.

WES JACKSON, Plant Geneticist: Look at some of these things; they're six and seven feet tall.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Plant geneticist Wes Jackson is a man with a mission, a prairie prophet with a radical message in conventional Salina, Kansas. He wants to change the way people farm and maybe even what we eat because, he insists, present farming techniques are damaging the environment. Agricultural chemicals pollute soil and groundwater, he says, and tillage exposes bare fields to erosion by wind and water. As an example, Jackson shows visitors the Smoky Hill River, which runs through his property near Salina. After a rainstorm, the river fills with silt, evidence of erosion on farms further upstream.

WES JACKSON: We've lost about half of our soil.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Half of the topsoil in the whole United States?

WES JACKSON: In the whole United States, we've lost about half. Those are the figures that, you know, one keeps seeing. So with the first tobacco planted at Jamestown as an export crop we have, we have been trading topsoil for the so-called "good life."

MS. FARNSWORTH: To accomplish his mission, Jackson is trying to develop a new way of farming based on the native prairie, that sea of grass that one covered the American heartland. The prairie ecosystem worked wondrously well for eons. Wild grasses and flowers withstood drought and fire and built up the rich soil that Jackson said is now being lost. The key to a sustainable future, Jackson says, can be found in copying successful ecosystems like the prairie, not trying to dominate them.

WES JACKSON: I think that we can safely say that there is more to be learned from a few square feet of native prairie in terms of the future of food productions in America and in the world than there is to be learned from all of the experiment stations of the country. We've got a tremendous body of knowledge here. That's why there has to be, in my view, a marriage of ecology and agriculture.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Jackson has written a series of books and articles marrying ecology and agriculture, and his work is gaining increasing attention nationwide. In 1990, Life Magazine named him one of eighteen Americans likely to be recognized in a century as wave makers, and this year he got a $335,000 MacArthur Foundation fellowship, commonly referred to as a "Genius Grant." The Land Institute in Salina, which Jackson founded with his wife, Dana, in 1976 owns 100 acres of prairie which have never been plowed. Interns and research scientists cross-breed plants in an attempt to find a perennial prairie-type species that people could eat.

WES JACKSON: The perennial is a plant that has roots that are going to hold even when the top part dies for the winter, and so that is sort of a living net in a prairie seed that will hold hard won nutrients in place, whereas, with the annual, you tear the ground up every year and expose the soil to the forces of wind and rain.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Crops like corn and wheat, America's staples, are annual grasses. They produce lots of seed, the kernels of corn, for example, which humans eat. At the Land Institute, researchers are keeping track of the seed yield of hundreds of prairie-type plants. Their goal is to come up with a perennial that would, like corn, produce plenty of edible seed.

WES JACKSON: The important thing is we're taking the cue from what was here. This is what we mean when we say we're consulting nature, or using nature as the measure.

MS. FARNSWORTH: All this in Salina, Kansas, whose economy is based on conventional farming Jackson wants to reform.

DON TIMMEL, Grain Company Official: [on phone] Well, and he did the corn business too last night with Russia.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Don Timmel, vice president of Wright/LaRenge Grain Company, says he and other grain dealers will look closely at the end result of the Land Institute's research, but, meanwhile, a hungry world must be fed.

DON TIMMEL: If you didn't farm and you had a grass planted, such as we were back when the Indians were here, we would, we'd have probably no erosion, but we wouldn't have food either. These are things that Wes has to look at. Who are we going to feed with this product that he's developing? Can he produce a product that can feed an ever increasing population worldwide, which is the market that we're, we want to serve?

MS. FARNSWORTH: Timmel defends America's farmers as superior stewards of the land, but recognizes that they're caught in a dilemma. Prices for crops are low, he says, and sometimes the only way to survive is to farm so intensively that land and water are damaged in the process. Chester Peterson, who farms 800 acres near Salina, lives daily with this dilemma. He doesn't know Wes Jackson and is slightly suspicious of the institute's research, but he's a lifelong conservationist who's planted some of his more erodible land in prairie grasses as part of a government conservation program.

CHESTER PETERSON, Kansas Farmer: Some of this land which is broke out should never have been plowed. Now we'll get it back to what it should be, what it was when the Indians were here and the buffalo, and now we're getting back to that.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Peterson would like to keep his erodible land in native grasses but the government program paying for it is slated to end soon.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What will you do if at the end of this period the government's not paying you to keep that land idle anymore?

CHESTER PETERSON: That is going to be a major question, and there are a lot of people working on it right now trying to come up with some alternative ideas. I'm on a committee that's trying to come up with some ideas on it too. It's going to be an economic thing. So you can just see there's going to be a lot of pressure to break it out again.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Chester Peterson is making a go of his 800 acres, but economic hardship has forced thousands of his fellow Kansans off the land and de-populated many small towns. Wes Jackson is trying to do something about that too, and he's chosen to do it in Matfield Green, a town about two hours Southeast of Salina. Matfield Green is almost a ghost town, a victim of the economic pressures that have de-populated much of rural America. Jackson and the Land Institute have bought seven houses and an abandoned school here for a total of $11,000.

WES JACKSON: We're talking about a beginning of a discussion among the concern, about a different way of thinking of the world. This isn't any different than the kind of discussion that went on with Jefferson and Madison and Adams as they were trying to get our country set up and running. It's just, it's just an engagement facing the, the realities that are ahead of us, the realities that are already here, ozone hole, acid rain, global warming, an exploding population, and so on. What are we going to turn to?

MS. FARNSWORTH: Jackson urges returning to places like Matfield Green because he believes people living in small groups close to nature can more easily solve big problems. He says the long-term goal is to re-settle America.

WES JACKSON: The settlement of America, what I'll call the re- settlement, can't be done with the same set of ideas that we settled in the first place. It's going to have to be done without the assumption that the forests are inexhaustible and that the soils are inexhaustible, and that the continent will go on forever.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Somebody who hears your vision here might think, well, this is just one more guru trying to start some kind of an ideal community and people are real skeptical about that sort of thing. How do you respond to that?

WES JACKSON: Well, first of all, I ain't no guru. And second of all, we're not talking about an ideal community in the sense that it's a utopia. I've read the history of utopian attempts. Essentially, all of them fail. I'm not talking about changing anything overnight. All I'm doing is validating smallness as a way to go.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Wes Jackson's work in Matfield Green and Salina may take years to complete. Its success or failure will be difficult to judge until then. But meanwhile, Jackson has accomplished a key goal in raising what he considers a crucial question for our time: Can people farm more in harmony with nature and live without damaging the earth? RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major story of this Monday, the U.N. Secretary General said only military force could ensure the delivery of food to starving people in Somalia. He said a large U.S.-led operation was a possible option. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour tonight and we'll see you again tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.