The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MS. WARNER: Good evening. I'm Margaret Warner in New York.

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Friday, U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright discusses developments on Haiti and North Korea. Charles Krause reports on the U.S. Navy's enforcement of the Haitian trade embargo. Mark Shields and Paul Gigot analyze the politics of the week, and Lee Hochberg updates a logging agreement in the Pacific Northwest. NEWS SUMMARY

MS. WARNER: President Clinton took new steps today aimed at forcing Haiti's military leaders from power. He toughened economic sanctions by barring most financial transactions between Haiti and U.S. banks. He also imposed a ban on all commercial air traffic between the two countries beginning June 25th. Mr. Clinton made the announcement at the White House this afternoon.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: These steps represent an important new stage in our efforts to restore democracy and return President Aristide to Haiti. The message is simple: Democracy must be restored. The coup must not endure. In the past month we have taken steps to advance the interests of the Haitian people and the United States. Our national interests to help democracy thrive in this hemisphere and to protect the lives of thousands of Americans who live and work in Haiti require us to strengthen these efforts.

MS. WARNER: We'll have more on the story right after this News Summary. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Sec. of State Christopher said today the United States will ask the U.N. next week to impose economic sanctions against North Korea. The proposed sanctions are in retaliation for North Korea's refusal to allow wider inspections of its nuclear program. Christopher made the statement in Turkey, where he's attending a NATO meeting. He also endorsed a Russian proposal for an international conference on the North Korean stand-off. We have a report narrated by Vera Frankl of Worldwide Television News.

VERA FRANKL, WTN: A new development emerged as United States Sec. of State Warren Christopher and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev met in Istanbul, where they're attending NATO talks. They agreed to support a motion calling for United Nations sanctions against North Korea.

WARREN CHRISTOPHER, Secretary of State: We talked about North Korea. As you perhaps know, our two Presidents discussed that subject on the telephone, and I think we're proceeding to work together on a sanctions resolution that will contain both reference to sanctions as well as to at some point in the process an international conference.

SPOKESMAN: I will not venture to guess where we go from here.

MS. FRANKL: The International Atomic Energy Agency has voted to suspend technical assistance to the country which his believed to be developing nuclear weapons.

YUN HO JIN, North Korean Representative: We have discussed resolutions. There is no compromise.

MS. FRANKL: North Korea's envoy, Yun Ho Jin, insisted nuclear inspectors must now leave his country. Increasingly, South Korea is on a war footing. U.S. Patriot missiles are now fully operational, ready to repel an attack by North Korea's SCUD missiles.

MR. LEHRER: China announced today that it carried out its second underground nuclear test in less than a year. The Chinese government gave no details about the size of the explosion. The United States and Japanese governments issued statements condemning China's action.

MS. WARNER: Back in this country, the Labor Department reported that wholesale prices fell slightly last month. The .1 percent decline was the second straight drop in producer prices, but if food and energy prices aren't included, then the index of remaining wholesale prices rose by .4 percent. So far this year, inflation at the wholesale level is running at 1.9 percent.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Dan Rostenkowski pleaded "not guilty" today to a 17-count indictment. The Chicago Democrat was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Washington on charges he corrupted his position in Congress and diverted more than $1/2 million to his private use. Rostenkowski was forced to give up his chairmanship of the House Ways & Means Committee while fighting the charges. At today's arraignment, he was accompanied by his new lawyer, Dan Webb, a former U.S. attorney from Chicago. Afterwards, Rostenkowski spoke to reporters outside the courthouse.

REP. DAN ROSTENKOWSKI, [D] Illinois: I entered these pleas because I am not guilty. I will fight these false charges and will prevail. I will wash away the mud that has been splattered upon my reputation. Some ask: How could you have done these things? The answer is simple. I didn't do them. Talk is cheap. Allegations come easily. In court, they will be subjected to a higher standard. And when all is said and done, they will fail the test, and I will be vindicated.

MR. LEHRER: U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson released Rostenkowski on his own recognizance. No trial date was set.

MS. WARNER: Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko arrived in the United States today for a 16-day visit. The first stop in their 11-city tour was Atlanta, where they were greeted by Georgia Gov. Zell Miller and a crowd of about 700 people. The royal couple is here at President Clinton's invitation, and they will visit with him at the White House next week.

MR. LEHRER: And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to Amb. Albright, making the Haiti boycott work, Shields and Gigot, and logging in the Pacific Northwest. NEWSMAKER

MS. WARNER: Foreign policy is first tonight. We have a Newsmaker interview with U.N. Amb. Madeleine Albright to discuss two major challenges facing the United States; North Korea's nuclear threat and Haiti's military government. We begin with Haiti. This afternoon, President Clinton and special adviser William Gray announced a further toughening of U.S. sanctions against Haiti. The moves include stationing monitors along Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic, cutting off most U.S. bank transactions with Haiti, and ending scheduled U.S. airline service in and out of the country. Special adviser Gray discussed the new sanctions with reporters this afternoon at the White House.

WILLIAM GRAY, Special Adviser on Haiti: Sanctions create an environment where we hope we will be able to have a diplomatic breakthrough. As you know, the sanction under U.N. Resolution 917 were only imposed about three weeks ago, and they are having a significant effect. These additional sanctions are targeted in such a way to have a maximum effect upon the coup leaders and those who are their supporters. And it is our belief that they will further create that kind of an atmosphere where we can have a diplomatic breakthrough and a solution where the coup leaders step down.

BILL PLANTE, CBS News: How long is it going to be before you expect to see any kind of results from the additional sanctions. How long are you going to give it before you know if it works?

WILLIAM GRAY: Well, we're going to be analyzing and reviewing the situation daily and weekly in Haiti to determine the effectiveness of these sanctions as well as those that are now in place and determining what our next steps should be.

JOHN McWETHY, ABC News: Mr. Gray, can you pull apart for us the financial aspects of what you're trying to accomplish? In the past, when the administration has tried to freeze assets, most of the assets have been gone. When you tried to block the flow of money, it's proved to be very difficult. Who are you going to go after? Do you believe that there is anything to really get at this point, and what about other governments such as France, the Bahamas, and Switzerland, are we going after them as well?

WILLIAM GRAY: Let me begin by starting at the rear of that question and moving backwards. Last Friday, in a communique, the Friends of Haiti at the United Nations issued a statement supporting this kind of action that President Clinton is taking today. Also last Monday, in Brazil, the Organization of American States issued a statement supporting this same kind of action. It is our expectation that other nations will be doing the same, those nations where such actions can have such an effect. For instance, not every airline in the world flies into Port-au-Prince. There are essentially five that do: American Airlines, Air France, Canada, the Dominican Republic, and the Dutch Airlines. And so, therefore, these actions have to be taken bilaterally by individual nations as opposed to an organization such as the OAS or the United Nations. We expect that other nations would also join us in this activity with regard to isolating the coup leadership and supporters and the Haiti situation. With regard to financial transactions, we are talking about the prohibition of hundreds of millions of dollars on an annual basis. That includes prohibitions such as carrying amounts of cash into the United States, wire transfers, trade financing, such as letters of credit, dollar clearing, and a host of other types of activity. Since the United States dollar is an international currency that is very important in trade, we think it will have a very significant impact.

MS. WARNER: We now take up today's developments on Haiti and North Korea with Madeleine Albright, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Welcome, Madame Ambassador. Thanks for being with us. Let's start with Haiti. Do you have unity? Do you have agreement from these other countries to cut off all airline traffic into Haiti and to stop all bank transactions, not just bank transactions with the U.S.?

AMB. ALBRIGHT: Well, Margaret, we said that we would tighten the noose around the military Junta in Haiti, and we are doing that. On this particular last step, that is something that we are doing unilaterally, and we expect that other countries will go along. But what is very important here is that we have made tremendous progress, as the President said, and Bill Gray said, in terms of making sure that the Dominican Border isn't porous and that these various sections are in place. And on that, we really do have unity and a resolve among the Friends of Haiti and the U.N. and the other countries.

MS. WARNER: But it sounds as if you don't necessarily have agreement from all these other countries, that they're going to do exactly what we did today?

AMB. ALBRIGHT: Well, we have taken the lead on this, and that is our role, and this is not a U.N. action this time. This is one that we took, and the other countries, we strongly believe, will take their own steps to do the same thing. But on the airline travel, for instance, 75 percent of the airline travel is American, so it is very important that we took this leadership position.

MS. WARNER: I see. Now today the State Department also urged or said all dependents will be taken out, all American dependents from the embassy, and some embassy employees, and also urged all Americans on private business they ought to come home. Why?

AMB. ALBRIGHT: Well, as far as the embassy's concerned, what we want to do is have a group there that can really work on the processing of refugees. Those issues that are important we have - - have been noted. There's the fuel problem. So you don't want to have an embassy that has more people in there than exactly those that are needed for this processing, and then the other is a precautionary measure. I think that it's important for us to make sure that Americans are safe, and I think that it's important that we show our resolve on Haiti as we did through these sanctions, the multilateral ones, and then what we just did and just generally maintain a very firm posture.

MS. WARNER: But does the U.S. government have any reason to believe that American citizens in Haiti are in danger or will be with these types of sanctions?

AMB. ALBRIGHT: Well, one never knows, and I think it is the responsibility of the President and the Secretary of State to make sure that Americans are always safe.

MS. WARNER: Now, one reporter tried to get Bill Gray to answer this question, and he wouldn't. But let me try with you. How long will these steps be tried before you consider a next step?

AMB. ALBRIGHT: Well, first of all, there is a technical part at the U.N., which is that by the end of this month, the Secretary General will report to the Security Council about the effects that these sanctions have had, at which point we will see what next steps we have to take. But this is very much written into the sanctions resolution, and there are these steps after that. There are months of reviews that will be taken. So we are going to be watching this practically, you know, on a bi-weekly basis, monthly basis, really to see the effects the sanctions are having. And I think the effect here is that the noose is being tightened, and we are seeing oil prices going up and increasing problems for the military Junta.

MS. WARNER: But there have been stories saying that the Haitian elite which does not want Aristide to return thinks they can just wait this out until his term expires, which I think is only nineteen or twenty months from now. Any chance they can do that?

AMB. ALBRIGHT: Well, I don't think so. I mean, we don't think so. I mean, the point here is that increasing these sanctions, as we did today, I think will make it much tougher on that elite. So there is plenty of time here to make sure that President Aristide and democracy will be returned to Haiti.

MS. WARNER: And finally, President Aristide, himself, as you know, has long refused to say he would endorse military action, recently, I think, this week, said he didn't think sanctions were going to work, and he called for what he called "surgical action" to get the military rulers out of power. Now, does that have any impact on administration decision making?

AMB. ALBRIGHT: Well, we make our decisions according to what we think will be the most effective policy in Haiti. We are pursuing these sanctions very, very actively, but we're not ruling anything out.

MS. WARNER: All right. Let's turn to North Korea, because it was a big day on that front. First of all, we just saw the clip from Warren Christopher and Andrei Kozyrev at Istanbul saying you all are going to be ready to present a sanctions proposal at the U.N. next week. Have you agreed on what that sanctions proposal will be either within the administration or with our allies? Is there a firm one now, and, if so, what is it?

AMB. ALBRIGHT: Let me say, we are putting that sanctions resolution together, and we will be prepared to present it next week. That is in addition to the consultations that I have been doing all this week with the other members of the Security Council. But if I could -- might say this Margaret, what -- there's no doubt in my mind among all the important issues that we are asked to work on at the Security Council, this is clearly the most important issue that I'm going to be dealing with. And it is one that we are paying a tremendous amount of attention to. And I think there's been an awful lot of confusion already about what we're doing, where we're going, what it's all about, and I think the best way to explain this is this is a story with three parts: the past, to make sure that they have not diverted some of this nuclear material; the present, to make sure that they cannot make weapons out of it; and the future, to make sure that they will not have a capability to make more weapons. And the problem that we're dealing with is the past at the moment. As we were told by Mr. Blake, from the IAEA, in the process, there was a period when the North Koreans shut down their facility in 1989, and we do not know whether they diverted any material at that time. And the role of the inspectors had been to find out whether in the -- as they unloaded these rods whether they could reconstruct the history. What Mr. Blake said when he came to report to the Security Council was that the best way for reconstructing that history had now been destroyed. And the question is: Whether there is any way that we can change that. Now, the question is: What are sanctions for? What is this all about? I think the issue here is sanctions are not an end. Sanctions are a tool so that we can make sure of several things. One is we want the North Koreans to come back to the negotiating table. We want to be able to set up some way to reconstruct this history and then to protect so as to do something about restoring the past. But the more important or as important part of this is to protect the future so that we can make sure that they do not have the capability to produce more weapons grade material and weapons, themselves.

MS. WARNER: Let me interrupt you right there, because I gather one of the points of disagreement in the administration has been some think it's more important to sort of punish them for the past, and other parts of the government are saying, if there's a trade- off here, we'd rather make sure monitors stay over there and at least prevent them from, from diverting more fuel and starting to build weapons for the future. Now, today in Vienna, of course, this vote to reprimand and cut off technical aid to the North Koreans, they seem to be threatening that if you're going to punish us for the past, then we're kicking your inspectors out. Forget about the future. I mean, aren't the North Koreans trying to say, you can't have both?

AMB. ALBRIGHT: Well, you know what's interesting is that they are, they have not, in effect, broken the international law as far as the present and the future is concerned.

MS. WARNER: Not yet.

AMB. ALBRIGHT: Not yet. And I think we are not taking as definitive what you have just showed on what happened in Vienna, and we believe, that as a result of this that the sanctions resolution will be able to affect the behavior for the future because the issue here is that the sanctions are designed or will be designed I think to really show that they do not have a stake in any kind of further deviation from the international norm. And so that is what we're going to be working on. But as far as disagreement, there isn't. I mean, I think what I can tell you -- because we've all been meeting at some length -- is this is an issue with which all parts of the administration on national security are dealing. We are talking about it. We had a very good meeting with the President about this today. We will be prepared to have the elements of a resolution during the week working on the resolution, and the resolution is going to be, I think it's another part that we have to get across. Everybody kind of thinks that we'll have a resolution in a couple of days. The point here is that in the past we were very time sensitive, because what we were doing in the U.N. was warning the North Koreans not to cross a particular line. Now, it's more important to really gather the consensus of the international community on this and have a concerted approach to this. So, you know, when we get asked, will you have a resolution tomorrow or the next day, we probably won't. It's going to take days, if not weeks, to put the sanctions resolution together.

MS. WARNER: And does that also mean then that if to satisfy certain members of the coalition, the sanctions have to be more gradual at first, the U.S. would be willing to accept that, rather than going whole hog and saying, shut off all oil, shut off all remittances from Japan?

AMB. ALBRIGHT: Well, what we're doing is basically sorting out what the right strategy, tactic, and timing is. That's what I've been consulting about all week.

MS. WARNER: And you're not going to tell us where you are on that? Okay. Now let's go back to what happened in Vienna. You're saying you don't take what the North Koreans said there as definitive. Why not?

AMB. ALBRIGHT: Well, I mean -- this was a man making a statement as he exited a hall. What is very interesting was the vote on that was pretty good, and the Chinese abstained. I think that that's a very important point, and also it is -- I don't want to predict what the North Koreans will do -- but the important part here is that we believe it is important for those inspectors to stay there, and we'll make a judgment on that as we see it evolve. But I think it's very clear that the international community wants them to stay there, and the last voice out of the Security Council on this was that we passed a statement that indicated a resolution which we said we wanted the inspectors to stay there, so that we are clear on that.

MS. WARNER: Now, the North Koreans -- I think it was the foreign minister who's traveling in Ukraine this week said they were ready to let inspectors in to inspect the facilities if the U.S. would agree to resume talks. The State Department rejected that right away. Why? Isn't it possible they're trying to build an opening here, make an opening here?

AMB. ALBRIGHT: Well, one of the things that we've been trying to do is we have held out to them any number of times the possibility of talks, but it's not a freebie. We know that one of the things that they wanted to establish dialogue with the United States, but the issue here is that that has to come after they do a certain number of things. And so we have to be very careful in terms of how we work that one out.

MS. WARNER: And what specifically are the U.S. conditions for resuming talks at this point?

AMB. ALBRIGHT: Well, I mean, we have wanted them -- I mean, part of it is that we want them -- these inspectors to stay. But, again, this is part of what we're working on. This is a -- really a process that we're involved in in trying to figure out what the best tools are to get them back to the negotiating table in an honest way so that they are prepared to negotiate and not just make demands. And so the negotiating process, as you know, is a very complicated one and one in which we have to make sure that we're getting what we want.

MS. WARNER: Well, as you know, critics on Capitol Hill and elsewhere are saying that this administration just has too much faith in negotiations and talks. The North Koreans have made their predilections pretty clear and that we should be much, much tougher. What do you say to that?

AMB. ALBRIGHT: I say we're pretty tough. We have -- you've already shown that the Patriot Missiles, they are there. We are taking all appropriate precautions. We have made very clear that the security of South Korea is of major importance to us. The sanctions are -- as we discuss them, you'll see, will be pretty tough, will be very tough, and we think it's very tough to keep saying and doing what we have to to make sure that the, that the past is preserved and the future is protected.

MS. WARNER: And some members of Congress are also concerned that -- you take precautions are being taken, but we have 37,000 American troops over there, and if the North Koreans are serious or even out of miscalculation end up getting hostilities with South Korea, that our troops are not really prepared for a kind of surprise move by the North Koreans. Are they -- will they -- are they adequately protected now?

AMB. ALBRIGHT: Well, my understanding is that they are and that every precaution is being taken here. I think we've got to be incredibly careful not to just be kind of forced into some kind of a confrontation here. As I said earlier, this is not now time sensitive. The President made very clear that we would be -- that there would be very tough actions taken if there was anything offensive done by the North Koreans. The bottom line here is that it is now important to take all the defensive precautions that we can, make clear our interest and the importance of it, and proceed on the path of gathering the international community for a very tough sanctions resolution.

MS. WARNER: Well, I'm afraid that's all the time we have. Thank you, Madame Ambassador.

AMB. ALBRIGHT: Very glad to be with you, Margaret. FOCUS - TIGHTENING THE SCREWS

MR. LEHRER: We return now to the Haiti story and to efforts by ships from the United States, Canada, and Argentina to enforce the economic sanctions imposed against Haiti's military government. Charles Krause reports.

MR. KRAUSE: There are now 12 allied warships off Haiti, 10 of them American. Day and night, seven days a week, they patrol Caribbean sea lanes of the ocean coast, stopping merchant ships, large and small, en route to Haiti. Since the United Nations sanctions were tightened May 21st, the Naval task force led by the United States has boarded some 90 ships. Many of them are freighters, like the Atlantic Sea which was boarded and inspected earlier this week. At least 25 ships have been diverted because they were carrying petroleum or other products the U.N. has determined could help Haiti's military leaders remain in power. Several merchant ships have managed to slip into Haitian ports without detection, but with the recent addition of more war ships. Joint Task Force Commander Rear Adm. Steve Abbot says he's confident the embargo at sea is increasingly effective.

REAR ADM. STEVE ABBOT, Chief, U.S. Task Force: Since the 21st of May, which was the date when the enhanced sanctions were placed into effect, there have been only a handful of ships which have successfully evaded the embargo to our knowledge, and those are all relatively small vessels. I believe the largest of those is about 125 feet in length.

MR. KRAUSE: Do you feel fairly confident that it would be even more difficult now for a ship to evade your, your ships off Haiti?

REAR ADM. STEVE ABBOT: Yes. We know that the implementation of the sanctions has significantly reduced the availability of commodities in Haiti and petroleum products are an example, that the price of a gallon of gasoline in Port-au-Prince fluctuates, but it's substantially higher than it was prior to the sanctions regime. I think the most recent figure I saw was that it was more than $8 a gallon.

MR. KRAUSE: Adm. Abbot commands the Haitian task force from aboard the U.S.S. Wasp, but it's the guided missile destroyer U.S.S. Scott which is the flagship of the Haitian operation, itself. The ship's combat information center is the futuristic command and control room where computers are linked to sophisticated satellites and other communications systems. From here Commodore Albert Myers has the capability of tracking virtually every ship within reach of the Haitian coast. [strategy discussion] So far, most ships heading for Haiti have been cooperative. But Capt. Myers, who's in day to day charge of enforcing the embargo says he has the authority to disable or to sink a ship if that becomes necessary.

COMMODORE ALBERT MYERS, Joint Task Group: Force is certainly an option. It is available, and our goal is to rigorously enforce the embargo with zero tolerance for any ship that may be attempting to evade the embargo.

MR. KRAUSE: To ensure that the noose around Haiti remains tight, virtually every ship that shows up on the radar screen is inspected. The Gigi Trader, for example, last Monday afternoon, she was stopped by the Scott and the U.S.S. Monterey about nine miles off the Haitian coast. For security, civilians are not allowed to accompany a boarding party onto a ship, so we watched the operation from a small launch under the command of Lt. Patrick Delany.

LT. PATRICK DELANY, USS Scott Boarding Officer: This motor vessel, Gigi Trader, last port of call was Savannah, Georgia. Its manifest says it's carrying powdered sugar. It's a pre-cleared vessel. That means that U.S. Customs inspected the vessel before it left port and sealed the cargo hold, and they sealed them with serialized seals. What the boarding party will do is they'll go over and when they go in the cargo hold to inspect them, they'll verify that those seals are there and that they have not been tampered with. Right now, they're just making their approach to the latter, and once they get alongside of it, the boarding party will expeditiously get up the ladder, and then they'll get organized, and then they'll make their approach up to the pilothouse and up to the forecastle where the rest of the crew is standing by. The first thing you're going to do when you go on board a vessel is you're going to check for your own security. We don't know what we're going into on this vessel. We're getting information. The master's telling us he has so many people on board and that there's no weapons, there's no animals, no bombs. We don't know that till we verify that. So what they're doing is they're putting some people up high to get some kind of tactical positioning. There's not any hurry to get to the pilothouse. You want to be very comfortable with what you do. It's a very tight environment. If somebody were to pull out a weapon, it would be relatively easy to shoot one of those guys. So that's why they're wearing body armor around the vital areas of the chest.

MR. KRAUSE: What would happen if you do find some prohibited cargo on this ship?

LT. PATRICK DELANY: As boarding officer, if I find prohibited cargo, I'm going to notify the commanding officer of my ship. I'm in constant communications with him. What we're doing down here is if we find prohibited cargo, we're going to divert 'em, let him pick out what port of call he wants to go to, send him that way, just make sure he doesn't go into Haiti. Under terms of the U.N. embargo, off loading any type of petroleum product is illegal.

MR. KRAUSE: That's your principal mission at this point?

LT. PATRICK DELANY: Yes. Right now, these two gentlemen you're looking at are sounding one of their fuel tanks. They're going to take a lead weight attached to a tape measure, and they're going to let it hit the bottom, and they're going to haul it back up, and they're going to mark the level of oil, and from that, the ship should have diagrams showing how much fuel it has in the tank. And we'll determine how much fuel the vessel has on board, and we'll record that, and then when the vessel leaves Haiti, we're going to come aboard -- board it again and check and see how much fuel they have on board, determine how much fuel they should have burned based on their engines, their times underway, generator usage, and from there we're going to make a determination did they off-load any of their own fuel while in Haiti. We make it very clear to them, the terms of the embargo, and that it's prohibited for them to off-load any petroleum products in Haiti, and it's prohibited for them to import and export any cargo from Haiti, except those exceptions for humanitarian products and food.

MR. KRAUSE: A typical boarding takes anywhere from two to four hours. And during that time, the boarding party is in continuous communications with the USS Scott.

SPOKESMAN: This is Echo. I recommend clear. Standing by.

MR. KRAUSE: Last Monday, it was Capt. Myers who made the final decision to let the Gigi Trader proceed.

SPOKESMAN: We got the final report on motor vessel Gigi Trader. The cargo does match the manifest. They do have their pre-clearance documents on board. Master and crew were very cooperative. They are recommending clearing this vessel. I concur with the recommendation.

CAPT. MYERS: Very well, clear the vessel.

MR. KRAUSE: The purpose of this embargo is to force the military government out of Haiti. How long do you think it will take for that to happen?

REAR ADM. STEVE ABBOT: That's a question that I simply don't feel competent to answer. I can only hope that they will see that the United Nations and the United States are intent on maintaining the sanctions as long as it's required to see that they, in fact, do comply, and I don't have any direct information on any plans on their part. It would be speculation for me to say so, but I believe that the strategy is an appropriate one and that, in fact, it can be effective.

MR. KRAUSE: Adm. Abbot's assessment is shared by policy makers in Washington. Again today, they said they're hopeful that tightening the sanctions will force Haiti's military government from power. What was clear from several days at sea is that the Clinton administration has now assembled a formidable fleet of warships across the Haitian coast. If the embargo fails, it's a force that's clearly capable of even more direct military action.

MS. WARNER: Still ahead on the NewsHour, the political week and Pacific Northwest's logging. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

MR. LEHRER: Now, Friday night political analysis from Shields and Gigot, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigot. First, gentlemen, on Oliver North, yesterday the Senate Minority Leader, Robert Dole, said he supported Virginia's Senate candidate, Oliver North, and not only that, would go to Virginia and campaign for him, if asked. That was some change from five days ago. What do you think happened, Mark?

MR. SHIELDS: I think it was an act of conscience, and Bob Dole's party was on the road to Damascus. I'll tell you exactly what happened.

MR. LEHRER: Lightning came through the window?

MR. SHIELDS: Bob Dole, Bob Dole is still thinking in two terms, macro terms, rather than micro, he's thinking first of all he's got a chance of being Senate Majority Leader, and he's got to have Republican Senators and the Senate Majority and --

MR. LEHRER: Whether he likes him or not.

MR. SHIELDS: Virginia is a pick up, that's the state that they've got targeted. That's certainly one of them. But secondly, it's presidential politics 1996 style. The evangelical conservatives who backed Ollie North's candidacy so enthusiastically are to the Republican Party in the 1990s what the anti-war secular left was to the Democrats in the 1970s. They're the people who bring intensity, passion, stuff the envelopes, ring the doorbells, distribute the brochures, are there all the time, and their impact is enormous in caucuses and limited primaries a lot more than it is in general elections. But they're the foot soldiers of the party, and Bob Dole doesn't want to alienate them or their leadership if you're thinking about 1996.

MR. LEHRER: How do you read it, Paul?

MR. GIGOT: I think it's a flip flop worthy of Bill Clinton, somebody we know in the White House. I think what happened is Sen. Dole was over in Europe for the D-Day ceremonies on a plane with John Warner, the Senator from Virginia, who is at war with some of the religious conservatives in his party, and had attacked Ollie North, and he --

MR. LEHRER: Said he wouldn't support him anyway.

MR. GIGOT: Said he wouldn't support him.

MR. LEHRER: Doesn't want to serve with him.

MR. GIGOT: And Bob Dole probably said, well, John Warner's whispering in my ear and heard some of that and was cautious when he first talked about endorsing it. He got back, and the rest of the Republican Senators in the caucus went up to him and said look, we want to get to 51, Mr. Leader. He's the Republican nominee. You have to support that nominee. You may not like him. We may not agree with everything. You have to support him.

MR. LEHRER: What do you think of the Shields theory about the split within the Republican Party between religious right and the more mainstream people, in other words, the Warners and the Millers?

MR. GIGOT: In the Virginia case, I think it's overstated. You had a candidate, Jim Miller, who was his opponent, Ollie North's opponent, who got actually about 40 percent of the evangelical vote. It really wasn't a left/right split there. It was more an outside --

MR. LEHRER: Jim Miller is very conservative as well.

MR. GIGOT: More conservative on abortion. He had a more restrictive abortion policy than Ollie North. It was a much more outsider/insider dispute. Jim Miller had been budget director under Ronald Reagan. Ollie North, the outsider, running against the establishment, both the Republican Party establishment in Virginia, represented by John Warner, and in some sense the political establishment in Washington, both parties.

MR. LEHRER: The Democrats are really tickled to death about Oliver North being the Republican nominee of the U.S. Senate from Virginia, are they not, Mark?

MR. SHIELDS: Democrats outside Virginia, because the Democrats really haven't had a pin-up boy to run against. They haven't had that villain to put in the direct mail people. I mean, Ronald Reagan's gone back to the ranch. George Bush is in Houston. You've got to have somebody. Jim Watt is somewhere out West. I mean, you have to have somebody to try to get the juices running, run to the point where they pick up their pen, write out a check and send it into the party. Ollie North is the villain, and you say, this is what the Republican Party is, what the Democrat --

MR. LEHRER: What's the line going to be on?

MR. SHIELDS: It'll be here, they come, this is Iran-Contra. There's a lot of buttons you could punch here. It's Iran-Contra. It's the fear and apprehension that a number of Democratic contributors have that the Republican right wing is going to be taken over by a religious group. These are the Shiite Muslims of the American political --

MR. GIGOT: A subtlety like that really --

MR. SHIELDS: That'll be the pitch. That'll be the pitch. I think, I think quite frankly, in Virginia, Jim, that a four-way race, which appears to be heading up right now, Democrat Chuck Robb, the likely contender, the incumbent, also entering the fray, former Democratic Governor, first black elected to governor, Doug Wilder, and as well, Marshall Coleman, the last Republican candidate for governor prior to this past year the former Republican attorney general. I think in a four-way race Ollie North becomes more formidable. It becomes a lot more difficult in a four-way race to attack somebody. In other words, if I attack you, how can I be sure that Paul isn't going to be the beneficiary, rather than my attacking you if Robb went after --

MR. LEHRER: You get every benefit?

MR. SHIELDS: That's right.

MR. GIGOT: It's also about intensity, and Ollie North has a base. He has people who really will not listen if you attack him. They will say, well, let's that just establishment in Washington, and he's not running against St. Francis of Assisi and Chuck Robb here, and the Democrats are as divided.

MR. LEHRER: What do you think of the polls? The polls show, or at least the poll that I saw today, one poll, I don't know if there are any other ones, showed that, showed Robb defeating North one on one. But when he gets beyond that, do you agree with Mark on that?

MR. GIGOT: I think one on one, even Ollie North, supporters say, a very tough time beating -- I mean, you know, they both have got sky high negatives. But in the three-man race even, I think Ollie North has a real good shot. I think in a four-man race who knows what will happen? You can't predict.

MR. LEHRER: I can imagine North and the United States Senate looking at these guys that he's been running -- like John Warner - - how does he serve with John Warner?

MR. SHIELDS: I think there's a couple of things, Jim. First of all, it has an effect beyond the borders of Virginia in this campaign. It's got to be tough for the Republicans to run on the, on theme of we are the party of reform and anti-corruption that the Democrats or these moral lepers, and we're the party of moral and traditional values, when one of the most basic moral and traditional values is telling the truth, especially under oath in public, something that Ollie, quite frankly, acknowledges he didn't do. He had to break the law in order to save it.

MR. GIGOT: So he's not running for President.

MR. SHIELDS: No, but I think -- I think it makes the Republicans -- I think it does put the Republicans in a little bit of bind, that this is going to be a great moral crusade in 1994.

MR. LEHRER: Speaking of President -- Paul, how would you assess President Clinton's D-Day anniversary speeches and appearances? How did he do?

MR. GIGOT: I think he did well. He was fulfilling not the political role, policy role as President. He was performing the chief of staff role, and it's good for him when he does that because in a role that here domestically, he sort of de-mystified the presidency in a lot of ways with the accusations of the women and the boxers -- that sort of thing. And so for him to play that role overseas I think is good for him. Now, most of the business he did over there was symbolic. It was not substantive. So I don't know that it's going to give him naturally the poll lift, because really the substance of issues like North Korea, Haiti still exist, but I thought he gave a very, very fine speech at Omaha Beach that was one of the best of his presidency, if not the best, very moving, and it was a theme of gratitude, I thought well placed, good strategy.

MR. LEHRER: But, Mark, he drew some heat for stopping at Oxford, coming back. Does he deserve heat for that? What do you think about that?

MR. SHIELDS: I think it was bad scheduling, I really do. It was a D-Day remembrance. I think Paul's absolutely right. I think he did do well. He handled the ceremonial aspects of it well. And the Oxford, it was like we had a frequent flier trip and let's stop in and see Uncle Harry at the same time, and I've always wanted to go back and get the degree anyway. And I just, I just -- after saluting, I thought very convincingly, persuasively, sincerely, the, the men who took on that enormously difficult assignment -- and you talk about bravery and uncommon courage --

MR. LEHRER: It was all there.

MR. SHIELDS: It was all there. It was all there on Omaha and --

MR. LEHRER: It really transfixed the country.

MR. SHIELDS: It really did.

MR. LEHRER: Two or three days remembering that.

MR. SHIELDS: Absolutely. But to do that and, you know, what you did in the great war, and then there was almost an implicit message, now here's how I spent my war. And I thought it probably got --

MR. LEHRER: But some would argue that that was honest, Paul.

MR. GIGOT: Well, maybe it was, but I don't think it went over well. It was the one sour note, I thought, when he had an interview with NBC and Tom Brokaw, and he said, well, I almost feel badly that we didn't have a war to fight, because, because we wound up watching war movies. There was that self-reverential, baby boom aspect to that remark that didn't sit very well with a lot of people I thought and was the one bad note of the trip.

MR. LEHRER: But -- yes, go ahead.

MR. SHIELDS: One of the Bill Clinton's closest political advisers said to me that he remains to this day ambivalent about what he did during 1968.

MR. LEHRER: He, Clinton.

MR. SHIELDS: -- Clinton -- 1968-69 on evading the draft and --

MR. LEHRER: For political reasons.

MR. SHIELDS: He said for personal reasons. He said he really both admires and almost envies those who came down of his generation who came down on one side or the other, either those who answered the call and went, or those who, who risked prosecution by --

MR. LEHRER: Went to Canada.

MR. SHIELDS: That's right -- and that he kept almost a foot in each camp, and it still bothers him.

MR. LEHRER: Quickly, finally, the Bob Woodward book about the Clinton administration, particularly on the economics thing, Paul, why is it getting so much attention? Is there anything really that new or startling in that book?

MR. GIGOT: Well, conceptually, there isn't a lot new. I mean, we have the chapter headings in a sense. We have some of the text. But he fills in an awful lot more of the text. He fills in the quotes and anecdotes, which nobody is really denying right now. Everybody is more or less saying he got it right. It fills in that story, and it shows with great candor the President, himself, the President of the United States denouncing his own economic program as a turkey inside the White House. I mean, can you imagine Ronald Reagan doing that? That's not the --

MR. LEHRER: Does that hurt the President? Does this book hurt the President?

MR. GIGOT: I think it confirms some of the suspicions a lot of people had. I don't know if it will with the broad American public, but I think the people who read it, they'll get a sense that, boy, this is, this is a disorganized mess, and he's not really sure where he wants to go. And I think the worst message that a lot of people on Capitol Hill take away from is this was the first year, the economic part of his program, they say, it's happening again on health care.

MR. LEHRER: What do you think, Mark?

MR. SHIELDS: I think there's few pluses in the book. All right. I'll say this, that compared to his predecessors, he is, unlike George Bush, who was accused of being uncurious, he's obviously curious. He's come through as very involved, fully informed, perhaps even too knowledgeable. Unlike the gipper, Ronald Reagan, he's not disengaged, but I think, I think there are real things in there that should bother the White House. I mean, the fact, first of all, Jim, that there hasn't been a rebuttal, I mean, silence, which is almost assent at a time like this, and Bob wouldn't -- but the second thing was that the description, I thought, a very telling description by one of the senior White House aides, a description by the White House staff under Clinton. It's like watching 10-year-olds play soccer, and --

MR. LEHRER: I've done that a lot.

MR. SHIELDS: Okay. And what they do is they forget whatever position they're assigned to, and they follow the ball, wherever the ball is, and if the ball is Haiti or the ball is health care, or the ball is tax reform, or the ball is Whitewater, that's where they are. But the other thing is you cannot accuse them of stonewalling. They leak like a sieve. I mean, when they --

MR. LEHRER: It's all in that --

MR. SHIELDS: Boy it is, it sure is.

MR. LEHRER: Mark, Paul, thank you all very much. FOCUS - COSTLY CUTTING

MS. WARNER: Next tonight, updating the fight over turning trees into logs. Last April, the Clinton administration unveiled the plan to preserve the woods for endangered species while still letting loggers try to make a living in the public forests of the Pacific Northwest, but neither side is satisfied. Correspondent Lee Hochberg of Oregon Public Broadcasting updates a report first aired earlier in the spring.

MR. HOCHBERG: The people at the McColloch chain saw repair shop in rural Mollalla, Oregon, have been waiting anxiously to see if President Clinton can restore the way of life they love.

DAN LEFEVER, Saw Shop Owner: You couldn't hardly walk around here. There'd be saws laying everywhere, logging saws. There was a lot of times we worked till 10, 11 o'clock at night. It felt good. It felt like we were doing something, keeping people working.

MR. HOCHBERG: Loggers in Mollalla haven't used their saws much since 1991. That's when Federal Judge William Dwyer ruled the government's program to cut and sell trees in Northwest public forests didn't consider the effect of logging on endangered species. The judge banned logging on millions of acres in Oregon, Washington State, and California.

DAN LEFEVER: I mean, we've got lots of lawn mowers back here to work on right now, but when chain saws come in, we fix them before we work on the lawn mowers.

MR. HOCHBERG: Last year, the President led a much-heralded forest conference in Portland. At a local mill, Interior Sec. Bruce Babbitt said the administration would try to draft a new forest plan that would restore logging jobs and help people like this mill owner.

BRUCE BABBITT, Interior Secretary: I think he's looking for a timber supply. He's looking for federal policies that say all I need is timber supply, I don't need federal handouts, just need a viable source of timber. That's the problem, and I'll tell you after an hour in this mill I really understand it.

MR. HOCHBERG: Now, the administration has drawn up a new forest plan. It permits commercial logging in only 15 percent of the Northwest's remaining old growth forests. 80 percent is left standing as habitat for now famous spotted owls and other forest creatures. Since the plan does consider logging's impact on endangered species, Judge Dwyer lifted the logging ban.

TOM TUCHMANN, U.S. Forestry Office: This plan is about much, much more than just spotted owls. It's about all the plant and animal species associated with old growth forests. And the plan attempts to protect those species before they get put on the Endangered Species Act list.

MR. HOCHBERG: The point man on the President's most important environmental initiative, Tom Tuchmann, says the administration opened as much forest to logging as it could without violating the Endangered Species Act. It even allows loggers to take selected trees from otherwise protected forests.

TOM TUCHMANN: We may take this tree out here, which might get a little bit of -- which will open up the stand for the trees surrounding it, like this one over here, and allow it to grow faster and more effectively. This tree will also, obviously, provide a job for an individual.

MR. HOCHBERG: But the Clinton plan still will slash logging jobs in the Northwest by almost 30,000 from 1990 levels, a harsh blow says Oregon lumber mill manager Chuck Stensrud.

CHUCK STENSRUD, Lumber Mill Manager: Well, basically what they have did, they've taken a car going 60 miles an hour down the highway and thrown it in reverse instantly. It's a pathetic compromise with us, if that's what they want to call it, trying to pacify everybody.

MR. HOCHBERG: Stensrud's troubled mill is only a stone's throw from the mill Sec. Babbitt visited last year. Three years ago, it produced $25 million in finished wood products. Today it can acquire only enough wood to produce $12 million worth of building studs. Stensrud has laid off 100 of his 150 employees.

CHUCK STENSRUD: And next year it's hard to say if we'll have anybody working here. It just tears me inside out, because you have people who have families.

TOOTIE SMITH, Mollalla Logging Activist: Right now we're so pessimistic and so depressed.

MR. HOCHBERG: Those families in Mollalla and other Northwest logging towns are stunned after the optimism generated by last year's forest conference.

TOOTIE SMITH: Of course, we were led on. Of course, we were betrayed. We were stabbed in the back. We were lied to. There's not a person in town that'll tell you different.

TOM TUCHMANN: The people in this nation have said they wanted these forests managed differently.

MR. HOCHBERG: The administration denies it's dealt with timber communities unfairly. Tuchmann says growing public pressure for preservation of national forests left the administration a clear mandate.

TOM TUCHMANN: We're running out of room to be able to have as much of everything as we want. The frontier is over. We have to make the tough decisions about how much of each resource used we want within the context of protecting the ecosystem for future generations.

MR. HOCHBERG: The administration has coupled its plan with a $1.3 billion program to help provide transition work for displaced timber employees. In Oak Ridge, Oregon, for example, a logging town devastated by the timber crisis, a new federally funded industrial park is rising on the site of a closed, derelict lumber mill. Margie Kebhart, unemployed after 17 years working in the wood, now has a job building planter boxes, toys, and furniture.

MARGIE KEBHART: It's a beginning, a place to start again.

BOB ADKINS, Shop Owner: My goal is to have twenty-five employees at this site within five years. And that would be remarkable.

MR. HOCHBERG: But the forest industry argues $7 an hour jobs like these won't replace the $20 an hour jobs being lost in dozens of Northwestern towns. So it's preparing to shout down the Clinton plan. Already, the industry filed suit against the government, folks like James Geisinger charging the wildlife experts who advised President Clinton are biased against timber harvest.

JAMES GEISINGER, Timber Industry Spokesman: They have biologists sitting around a table, each of which had very narrow focuses and very narrow ranges of expertise. And they used a process that essentially satisfied each and every one of those special interests. And when they were done giving away land for every one of those, there wasn't very much left for the people.

MR. HOCHBERG: In March, Federal Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, in Washington, D.C., agreed the administration made no attempt to fairly balance the membership of its panel of scientific advisers. He said those advisers were pro-ecosystem management, having minimal sympathy for the forest products industry. The industry now has sued to have the forest plan declared illegal. Though loggers consider the plan anti-industry, some environmentalists consider it anti-environment. Environmental groups have filed four lawsuits against the plan. They say it doesn't go far enough to protect animals.

REGNA MERRITT, Environmentalist: In its current form, this plan is not legal in that it does not meet the standards set by law for species protection.

MR. HOCHBERG: The Oregon Natural Resources Council argues any logging in the region's already depleted old growth will cause extinction of lynx, pileated woodpeckers, and pine martin. And the Clinton plan will not prevent extinction of spotted owls, according to a report released last month by 19 independent research scientists.

UNIDENTIFIED SPOKESMAN: The rate of decline is now on the order of perhaps 5 percent a year, and if anything like that persists for very long, the population is in deep trouble.

MR. HOCHBERG: Still, some ecologists are praising the administration for taking a new approach to forest management, emphasizing ecosystem preservation rather than timber harvests. The plan, for example, considers the impact that logging has on such things as fish stock. The Clinton plan bans logging within 100 feet of small, intermittent streams like this one. That should better protect the habitat of the imperiled runs of Northwest salmon.

BOB DOPPELT, Pacific Rivers Council: Salmon go up into the headwaters of these streams to spawn and rear, and much of the best habitat that remains is up in these national forest areas, and so the hanging onto our forests and the streams that are in the forest is vital to having any hope of maintaining the Pacific salmon at all. Without that step, we don't have a chance.

MR. HOCHBERG: But underscoring the complexity of managing the Northwest forests, leaders of the $90 million regional ski industry have declared the same stream side protections that ecologists praise an attack on their business.

TOM LEONARD, Northwest Ski Association: The impact on us will be clearly to limit expansion and improvements to the facilities in an environment where the public is demanding better and better facilities.

MR. HOCHBERG: Twenty-six ski areas in Oregon and Washington State are on national forest land. The head of Crystal Mountain Resort says the President's plan will sabotage proposals to expand Crystal Mountain into a lucrative destination resort.

TOM LEONARD: If, in fact, anywhere that man goes there has to be zero impact, then you're going to be removing highways, you're going to be removing park systems. It will change dramatically the entire use of the forest.

TOM TUCHMANN: I know there's a lot of change ahead. It's a tough time for a lot of you.

MR. HOCHBERG: The administration's Tuchmann is traveling the Northwest, trying to sell the plan as the best way to balance the many competing interests. At the recent Redwood Region Logging Conference in California, he got a dose of the continuing opposition that lies ahead.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: We will not have anyone in the woods, from what I can see, at the earliest by August, which means that our community is going to be devastated. We can't eat promises this summer in Trinity County. We are done.

MR. HOCHBERG: With all sides in the dispute far apart, Dan LeFever is readying for many more months of repairing lawn mowers. Though the Judge Dwyer has removed the injunction against logging, the administration fears lengthy court challenges from all sides will keep chain saws throughout the Northwest idle for months to come. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major story this Friday was President Clinton's announcement of new sanctions against the military government of Haiti. Good night, Margaret.

MS. WARNER: Good night, Jim. That's it for the NewsHour tonight. We'll see you Monday evening. I'm Margaret Warner. Good night.