The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MAC NEIL: Good evening. I'm Robert MacNeil in New York.

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Thursday, we have excerpts from President Clinton's news conference, Newsmaker interviews with Secretary of Defense William Perry and with Britain's UN Ambassador Sir David Hannay, and a report on free vaccines for children. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton today reluctantly accepted the military base closings plan. The proposal from an independent commission would close 79 bases, realign another 26. Nearly 95,000 civilian and military jobs would be eliminated. Almost $20 billion would be saved over 20 years. Some of the biggest losses would be at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento, California. At a White House meeting earlier today, the President sharply rejected the suggestion that he had delayed approving the commission recommendations for political reasons.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I am tired of these arguments about politics. My political concern is the political economy of America and what happens to the people in these communities, and are they being treated fairly. Now I do not disagree with every recommendation the Base Closing Commission made, but this is an outrage, and there has been a calculated, deliberate attempt to turn this into a political thing and to obscure the real economic impact of their recommendations in San Antonio and California, which were made solely so they could put back a lot of other things.

MR. LEHRER: We'll talk to Defense Sec. Perry about the base closings right after the News Summary. Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: Bosnian Muslim refugees today claimed they'd been subjected to ethnic cleansing by Serb forces. About 14,000 Muslims were driven from the town of Srebrenica in the last two days. They said the Serbs raped many of the women and shot young men. United Nations officials called the Muslim exodus to government territory a humanitarian disaster. We have more from Peter Morgan of Independent Television News.

PETER MORGAN, ITN: Hundreds of refugees are arriving in Tuzla every hour. They have walked 30 miles night and day across front lines in no-man's-land without any UN escort. For many of the elderly or infirm, the journey was an impossible strain. For the moment, the UN can supply some food but cannot minister to these people's despair. The first group of women and children expelled from Srebrenica arrived in Bosnian government territory early this morning. Tired and distressed after their overnight walk, they appeared short of food and water. The Bosnian Serbs allowed some injured men through, but the combined effect of two years under siege and this week's traumatic events have left their markon the people in Srebrenica. From Kladanj, the refugees were sent by bus to Tuzla. Around 14,000 people have been transferred so far, already one of the largest forced movements of people in the entire four-year Balkan conflict. Around half of this group have reached the UN Air base at Tuzla. The Bosnian government says these refugees are the responsibility of the United Nations, as Srebrenica was a UN safe area. UN officials retort that these people are everyone's responsibility. Tuzla is already home to more than 400,000 people; 230,000 of these are refugees from elsewhere in Bosnia. Much international attention, though, has now turned on the fate of thousands of Srebrenica's men, separated from their families by the Bosnian Serbs. The men haven't been filmed. They're believed to have been taken to the nearby Serb town of Gratinaus. The UN may be preoccupied with the humanitarian problem, but the military situation remains tense. The other eastern enclaves of Jepa and Gorazde are vulnerable. Their collapse could force the UN into an impossible position.

MR. MAC NEIL: The Serbs also stopped a food convoy from reaching thousands of starving refugees at the UN base near Srebrenica. And in the town of Jepa, another so-called safe haven, the Serbs attacked Ukrainian peacekeepers, wounding at least one. We'll have more on Bosnia later in the program.

MR. LEHRER: The American Medical Association attacked a major tobacco company today. The Journal of the AMA said the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company knew 30 years ago that nicotine was addictive and smoking caused cancer, but it concealed the results of its own research from the public. A company spokesman accused the AMA of using stolen corporate documents and of distorting data to suit its own anti-smoking agenda. In Washington, FDA Commissioner Kessler said his agency is looking at ways to regulate tobacco sales to minors. President Clinton was asked today about reports the FDA will recommend that nicotine be regulated as a drug.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: My concern is apparently what the FDA's concern is, and that is the impact of cigarette smoking, particularly on our young people, and the fact that cigarette smoking, it seems to be going up among our young people and certainly among certain groups of them, and I think we ought to do more about that than's being done. And I'm willing to do that, but I want to see exactly what their recommendation is.

MR. LEHRER: On Capitol Hill today, members of Congress from tobacco states defended the industry.

REP. HOWARD GOBLE, [R] North Carolina: These same manufacturers create thousands of jobs. I think that tobacco has been the convenient whipping boy on this Hill for too long.

REP. LEWIS PAYNE, [D] Virginia: I find it ironic that our government, as we move to make it smaller and less intrusive and more responsive to the American people, that the FDA would attempt at this very time to regulate tobacco. I'm hopeful that common sense will prevail and that this latest anti-tobacco effort will be soundly rejected.

MR. MAC NEIL: In today's economic news, the Labor Department reported wholesale prices fell a tenth of a percent last month. It was the first drop in eight months, and it was mostly due to big drops in prices for fruit and energy products. The space shuttle Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, today. Discovery's launch had been delayed five weeks by a pair of nesting woodpeckers who drilled 205 holes in the insulation of the fuel tank. The five astronauts on board completed their main taskthis afternoon, releasing a NASA communications satellite into orbit. The remainder of the eight-day trip will be devoted to scientific and technological experiments.

MR. LEHRER: A record-breaking heat wave is moving through the Midwest. Temperatures in Chicago hit 102 degrees. It was 111 in Salina, Kansas, 112 in Nebraska City, Nebraska. Five heat-related deaths have been reported, and more than 1200 cattle have died from the extreme temperatures. The heat wave stretches from Northern Texas, through parts of Missouri, Illinois, and Minnesota, and it's moving eastward. The Washington Monument was closed today for the first time in history.

MR. MAC NEIL: Those are the top stories. Now it's on to President Clinton's news conference, Defense Sec. Perry, Britain's view of the UN and Bosnia, and a report on childhood vaccines. FOCUS - Q&A

MR. MAC NEIL: We begin with President Clinton's news conference today in the White House Rose Garden. He wanted to talk about welfare reform, but he also fielded questions about base closings and Bosnia. Here are some excerpts.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: We basically all agree on what ought to be in a welfare reform proposal. It isn't getting done because a few Senators with an extreme position have decided that it is in their political interest to block any welfare legislation. The United States Senate should not practice "just say no" politics on welfare reform. We can fix this problem. Every week that goes by, thousands of welfare mothers stay on welfare instead of going to work simply because they can't afford child care. Every week we don't make our child support laws as tough as we possibly can, we leave 800,000 people on welfare who could be off welfare if they got the child support to which they are legally entitled. Every day without welfare reform drains our economic strength, saps our community spirit, and prevents Americans from being able to live up to their full potential. We need to work together and get this job done. This coalition is growing. We're going to continue to work. We need help. We cannot pass welfare reform without Republicans and Democrats working together. It is time to move away from the extreme position toward the common ground of sensible welfare reform, and I thank all these people who are here for supporting that.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN: Mr. President, is it time for the UN troops to get out of Bosnia and for the U.S. to lift the arms embargo as Sen. Dole and others are proposing?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, first of all, let me comment on the events of the last few days. I am very disturbed about what has happened in Srebrenica. We are very concerned about the fate of the refugees, and we have been working hard for the last couple of days to determine what options there are to deal with the immediate humanitarian problems. And we intend to do everything we can on that. And that is the first and foremost thing. The truth is that the Bosnian Serbs should do what they did the last time this crisis arose. They should withdraw, and the United Nations should go back in there and re-establish the safe area, and the people should be able to go home. But we have to deal with the humanitarian crisis. Now, on the second issue, let me remind you of what my position has always been and what it still is today. The Europeans have tried to take the lead under the umbrella of the United Nations in minimizing the loss of life in Bosnia, in keeping the conflict from spreading, and in urging a diplomatic resolution of the war. They are still committed to do that. I believe if the RapidReaction Force idea which the French and the British have pushed had been fully implemented before this occurred, this problem could have been minimized. I still do not believe that it is in the interest of the United States to collapse and force the Europeans out of their willingness to put ground troops on the ground in Bosnia to try to minimize the loss of life and limit the spread. If the United Nations mission does collapse, then I believe that, together, the allies should all vote on the arms embargo. That is the best way to keep the NATO position unified, to keep the world position unified, and to avoid overly-Americanizing the dealings in Bosnia should the UN mission collapse. I am quite concerned about that. The Europeans have been willing to try to solve what is clearly the toughest problem they face on their own continent in the aftermath of the Cold War. I have tried to be supportive of that. There are serious problems now with this. Unless we can restore the integrity of the U.N. mission, obviously, its days will be numbered. But let's not forget that it has accomplished a dramatic reduction in the loss of life since 1992, and the conflict has not spread. It--this is a serious challenge to the U.N. mission. It must either be resolved or there will have to be some changes there.

MIKE McKEE, CONUS: Mr. President, how do you answer the charge that the White House has injected politics into the base closing process?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: First of all, it is absolutely false. I intend to answer it in the letter that I write today, but I'll--since you gave me a chance to do it, I'll answer it. Let's look at the facts here. Where is the politics? This Base Closing Commission made far more changes in the Pentagon plan than either--any of the three previous Base Closing Commissions, far more. They've been under a lot of political pressure, I understand that. I don't disagree with all the changes they made. They acknowledge, secondly, under the law they are supposed to take into account economic impact. Based on their report, which I have read, and I urge all of you to read it, if you haven't, before you make any judgments about where there was political influence, I urge all of you to read it, they took twenty-three bases of realignments off that the Pentagon recommended, off the list, and then put nine more on, three of which happen to be in California, with the biggest job loss by far in San Antonio at Kelly Air Force Base, rejecting the Defense Department's recommendation that instead of closing these two big Air Force depots, they take an across-the-board cut in all five of them. That's what they did. I'm not imputing motives to them. I'm just saying it's very interesting to me that there has been almost no analysis of anything. This whole thing immediately became, well, this is a big political story about California. This is an economic story, and it's a national security story, and there has been no analysis of what got put back and why and what got taken off and why. And I have been doing my best to deal with what is in the national interest. There are two considerations here. We have to reduce our base capacity. That's the most important thing. We have twice as much base capacity as we need, more or less, for the size of the military force we have. That is the national security interest. And that is my first and most important duty. But, secondly, under the law, economic impact was supposed to be taken into account, and as nearly as I can determine, it wasn't anywhere, never in these determinations, with the possible exception of the Red River depot, based on my reading of the report. Now, the question is: Is there a way to accept these recommendations because even though I think they're far--they're not as good as what the Pentagon recommended, and they do a lot more economic harm for very little extra security gain, is there a way to accept them and minimize the economic loss in the areas where I think it is plainly excessive? And that is what we have been working on. That is what I've been working hard on, but I just want you to know that I deeply resent the suggestion that this is somehow a political deal. I have not seen anywhere written, anywhere, that the state of California lost 52 percent of the jobs in the first three base closings and that this commission took 'em back up to nearly 50 percent, and this one, even though they only have 15 percent of the soldiers and their unemployment rate is 50 percent above the national average, I haven't seen anywhere what this was likely to do to the Hispanic middle class and to the people of San Antonio, Texas, unless we can save a lot of those jobs there, so that a lot of other things could be put back in ten or eleven places around the country. And I think that you folks need to look at the real impact of this. I am trying to do my job to reduce the capacity of the bases in the country consistent with the national interest and still be faithful to the statute requiring us to deal with the economic impact on these communities.

MR. MAC NEIL: The President later signed the letters he referred to formally approving the list of bases to be closed. Still ahead on the NewsHour, Defense Secretary Perry, the British UN ambassador, and vaccinating children. NEWSMAKER

MR. LEHRER: Now to a Newsmaker interview with the Secretary of Defense, William Perry. I spoke with him this afternoon. Mr. Secretary, welcome.

WILLIAM PERRY, Secretary of Defense: Thank you, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Why did President Clinton finally decide to accept the Base Closing Commission's report?

SEC. PERRY: Because in spite of his concern about what he considered inequities in the commission's findings and recommendations, he believed that national security required that we go ahead with these base closings. We have excess capacity with the drawdown that has occurred with the ending of the Cold War, and if we don't close those bases, a big portion of the defense budget is going to be taken up in infrastructure and overhead, instead of buying real military capability. So we just--we're talking about a $20 billion savings over 20 years, and we just could not pass up that opportunity.

MR. LEHRER: So what does he mean when he calls the report an outrage? What's outrageous about what the commission did?

SEC. PERRY: The commission simply--we spent a year in the Defense Department, more than a year, putting those recommendations together, carefully researched and carefully studied it. The commission ended up deciding to keep open 23 bases which we had elected to close or to realign, a big change, no other commission has ever made a change of that magnitude. But then we wanted to have the numbers work out the same, and so they had to decide to close nine bases which we had decided to keep open. So there was a major change in that. It ended up with a net dollar savings of the same but considerably greater problems for us in terms of potential effects on readiness because of the disruption and because of the economic impact on the communities involved. As nearly as we can determine, the commission simply did not make a serious consideration of cumulative economic impact which the law requires, required us and required them to do as well.

MR. LEHRER: Is this particularly true in California, McClellan?

SEC. PERRY: Particularly true in California, in that the cumulative effect of the last three rounds of base closings, that California bore slightly over half of the total job losses. That's a pretty big hit in one state. We had further reductions this time, even with that, but the commission had three more bases to be closed in California, and that brought them up to the half, 50 percent level again. So we thought they did not take account of the cumulative economic impact, i.e., accumulating over the last three base closures.

MR. LEHRER: And you think that they should take it state by state, and rather than on a national basis?

SEC. PERRY: No. I--it's a regional, the law envisions that they will determine the economic impact on regions. Northern California, the Sacramento region has been very hard hit. The Los Angeles region has been very hard hit, and both of those were hit again very hard in these rounds. The San Francisco Bay area was hit enormously hard the last time, two major bases being closed. And they added another base this time out of the San Francisco Bay area. So if you look at it region by region basis, the effects are very--devastating is too strong a word--but they're very difficult for those communities to absorb.

MR. LEHRER: The President was also upset about the closing of Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio. Why?

SEC. PERRY: The problem there--his primary concern there had to do with the fact that there were--that Kelly Air Force Base supports one of the largest, if not the largest, middle class Hispanic communities in America. And they were going to be devastated by removing those thousands of jobs, and he was anxious to support that, if he could. The proposal made by the Pentagon, original proposal made, downsized, reduced the size of the Kelly Air Force Base, but it did not close it. And the proposal by the commission would have caused a closure of that base.

MR. LEHRER: So what happens? I mean, the President has agreed to, to pass this on to the Congress and so what the base commission has suggested, both in California, the closing of the McClellan depot, as well as the Kelly Air Force Base and these others, they're going to happen, right, there's no change?

SEC. PERRY: Yes. The President very seriously considered simply rejecting the commission's recommendations. As I said, the reason he did not do that was because of the profound impact it would have had on national security. He gave me the task of coming up with a plan to mitigate to a great extent the deleterious effects of the commission's recommendation. And what we came up with is a program called privatization in place, where we could carry out the mandate of the commission but avoid most of the disruptive effects by keeping the jobs in the area, still closing the base, bringing in an outside contractor to run the base--

MR. LEHRER: Rather than transfer--

SEC. PERRY: Rather than transfer the jobs from one state to another state, from one region to another.

MR. LEHRER: So those jobs will not be lost in Texas and in California?

SEC. PERRY: Even under the original Air Force proposal, there would have been a reduction in jobs. But under this proposal, there will not be an elimination of the jobs; there will just be--there will be that same reduction. There will be a reduction, but it will not be an elimination of the jobs. Now, with the privatization in place, our experience with that and the few other times that we have done it is when a private contractor comes in and takes over a facility, they can and will bring in other functions, other jobs, with them. And so there's every potential that new jobs will be added as a result of this. And that's what we believe and hope will happen.

MR. LEHRER: So why is the President so angry then?

SEC. PERRY: He believes that the proposal to simply close down these facilities just did not take these effects into account. We've had to work very hard to come up with a plan to, as I say, mitigate those effects. And I believe it's going to work, but it's been very difficult putting this together.

MR. LEHRER: Generally speaking, Mr. Secretary, do you think this Base Closing Commission approach is the way to go, or would you prefer just to do it yourself, take the heat for it, politics, et cetera?

SEC. PERRY: It's the only approach which has ever worked. Secretaries of defense have been trying to close bases for decades and have never succeeded, and so I support this legislation. I've always supported, continue to support it, and the President also supports it, because it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to close those bases. In fact, I would like to see one more round of base closing towards the end of this decade. That would require new legislation, but I would certainly recommend that legislation when the time comes.

MR. LEHRER: So you don't like the end result this time, but you still like the process?

SEC. PERRY: I think it is the right process; it's the only process that has been shown to work.

MR. LEHRER: Let's go on to--well, one more question. If the President had, in fact, rejected the commission's report, recommendations, particularly as it related, because of what happened in Texas and in California, is it your opinion that this would have destroyed the process or set it back in some way?

SEC. PERRY: I didn't--my concern was I did not see how we could salvage, I did not see how we could go back to the potential for closing down the bases which the commission does allow us to close down, and that, I thought, was too high a price to pay. It is essential that we close these down. I did not see a way that was going to happen unless the President accepted this recommendation, so my recommendation to him was that he proceed with this process, accept the commission recommendation, and I would work very, very hard to mitigate the effects not only on the Air Force, because of the disruption, the disruptive effect of the transfer of all those people, but also on the communities, themselves, and I've taken on that responsibility.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Mr. Secretary, let's move on to Bosnia. Sen. Dole said today that the United Nations must begin preparations immediately to withdraw. Do you agree with that?

SEC. PERRY: I do not agree with that. I have a profound sympathy for the Bosnian people who have suffered much and continue to suffer much. I have, I might say, relative to the particular incident in Srebrenica, I have respect for the Dutch peacekeeping battalion who was there, who were not there to fight the Serbs. They're not there to fight a war. They were there to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid, and they're still there trying to help the refugees. And I have outrage for the Bosnian Serbs, not only for what they did to the refugees in Srebrenica but their unprovoked attack on the peacekeepers. But taking my personal outrage and personal sympathy and translating into national policy was very different. We have to keep our eyes on what our national security interests are. We have believed from the beginning and continue to believe that they do not warrant sending--the United States entering the war as combatants--sending ground forces in there, and we greatly fear that the alternative proposed by Sen. Dole would lead to that unfortunate result. So people who want to do more in Bosnia now fall into two categories: Those who simply want to pull out and get out of it, and they're willing to let the humanitarian disasters continue; and those who want to send-- understand that to try to really change the situation in there we'd have to send in hundreds of thousands of ground troops. I am not prepared, I do not believe the Congress or the American people are prepared to send large numbers of ground troops into Bosnia to become a combatant in this war. The alternative of simply withdrawing the UNPROFOR will either lead to humanitarian--

MR. LEHRER: The peacekeeping force, yeah.

SEC. PERRY: Peacekeeping force--will either lead to humanitarian catastrophe, which will make what we're seeing today seem pale by comparison, or it will lead to the introduction of U.S. troops to stop that.

MR. LEHRER: What do you say to Sen. Dole and others who say what's going on now is a farce, that the UN is supposed to be over there keeping peace and having these safe havens, et cetera, and I think it was Sen. Dole who said the only people who are safe over there are the Serbs, the only havens that are safe are safe for the Serbs, and the mission is not working?

SEC. PERRY: The UN mission, the UNPROFOR mission, is to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid. It is doing that successfully in most parts of the country. Quite obviously, it has failed to do that in Srebrenica, dramatically failed in Srebrenica. And the question is because it has failed in Srebrenica, should we write it off as a total failure and give it up for the rest of the country? Srebrenica is, first of all, the most difficult area in Bosnia to defend, and it's a relatively small part of the total population. And I do not believe that a failure in Srebrenica warrants giving up on Bosnia. It's not just giving up on the UN mission; it's giving up on being able to deliver that humanitarian aid in Bosnia.

MR. LEHRER: What about the simple humiliation factor, Mr. Secretary, that the United Nations, which represents the whole world, cannot even keep a place with 45,000 people safe from the Serbs and what this says about the United Nations and its, and its role?

SEC. PERRY: What it says to me, Jim, is that it's essential that we move quickly, the United Nations move quickly, the French, British, and Dutch move quickly to establish their so-called Rapid Reaction Force. They decided about a month ago to send that force then to, precisely to protect the UN forces from this kind of an attack. They're in the process of putting that force in that, but it is not there, it is not now in place. It won't be in place until early in August. That may very well have something to do with the timing of the Bosnian Serb initiative in Srebrenica. But in any event, I believe it will be a very different situation when that Rapid Reaction Force is in place.

MR. LEHRER: Is the United States still prepared to help the United Nations peacekeeping force withdrawal if, in fact, that decision is made?

SEC. PERRY: We are first of all and most enthusiastically prepared to help them strengthen the UN forces by assisting and facilitating, sending in a Rapid Reaction Force, so--and we continue to provide the close air support to the UNforces. That's our first objective. If that fails and if the contributing nations to the UN decide to pull out, not our decision, it would be their decision, if they decide to pull out, then we have committed to help them in that withdrawal.

MR. LEHRER: Are there any indications since Srebrenica that, that these--that these other countries are thinking seriously about getting out of there?

SEC. PERRY: We hear mixed reports on that, Jim, but my contacts with my counterparts, the ministers of defense in Britain, France, the Netherlands, all say that they believe that UNPROFOR--they agree with me, they agree with our view that the UN forces are playing a vital humanitarian role, that it's important to keep them in there, and we should work to strengthen them, not to pull them out. They all recognize that Srebrenica was a failure, but I say, again, that Srebrenica we always understood was the weakest link in this chain. It was very difficult to try to hold onto that particular enclave because of its isolated location, because of the relatively few number of UN forces there, because it was comprised largely of refugees.

MR. LEHRER: About 400 and some--

SEC. PERRY: Four hundred plus, four hundred and fifty perhaps Dutch peacekeeping--and I said--I want to repeat that I have great respect for those Dutch peacekeepers. They did not cut and run. They stayed with the refugees they were there to help. And they're still there for the refugees. People have criticized them because they did not stand up and fight and defeat the Serb army. They are not there to fight the Serb army. They're there to help the refugees.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Secretary, there is so much misunderstanding and confusion about this, is there not, in the United States--

SEC. PERRY: Yes, there is.

MR. LEHRER: --about what this is all about? And I used the term "humiliation" and "farce" is the word that Sen. Dole has used. Is, is there a public problem coming on this too as well as just the basic problem on the ground?

SEC. PERRY: There is a public problem. There has been for some time, as a matter of fact, but I think the events in Srebrenica will simply put a very sharp focus on that problem. And it has to do with people feeling that somehow we or NATO, the United Nations, have lost, and they keep losing sight of what the objective is. Our objective, first of all, has been from the beginning, is to not get ourselves as combatants in a war, and we should not let ourselves get sucked into a war in Bosnia; secondly, to keep that war from spreading, which fortunately we have been successful in doing so far--a wider Balkan war would be a catastrophe of great--of enormous dimensions--and third, to relieve the suffering, to mitigate the suffering on the civilian casualties, and the UN forces have been quite effective in doing that so far, even considering the results of the last few days, that on balance, they have been effective in doing that. It's not that we had a choice of attractive alternatives. What we are choosing between is a bad result and a truly catastrophic result. And the truly catastrophic result will occur if the UN forces pull out of there. That's why we are trying to keep them in there, do what we can to support them.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Mr. Secretary, thank you very much.

SEC. PERRY: Thank you, Jim. It's good to talk to you again. CONVERSATION

MR. MAC NEIL: Next, a British perspective on Bosnia and other issues confronting the United Nations. It comes in a farewell interview with Sir David Hannay, who became the British representative to the UN in 1990, just as that body was dealing with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The UN has taken on many crises since, but its most controversial intervention has been in Bosnia. Amb. Hannay, thank you for joining us.

SIR DAVID HANNAY, UN Ambassador, Great Britain: Good evening.

MR. MAC NEIL: Is the U.S. position which we've just heard outlined satisfactory to Britain?

AMB. HANNAY: Yes, indeed. That is a very helpful position from our point of view, and one would that we thoroughly concur with, particularly the judgment that this is a choice of difficult courses of action, none of which offer at the moment brilliant results, but the ones we're pursuing, containment, helping the humanitarian problem, and trying to get a peace process moving looks still to us a lot better than any of the alternatives.

MR. MAC NEIL: Take the alternative that's been proposed now for many months by Sen. Dole. What, in Britain's view, would that achieve, i.e., withdrawing the UN force and lifting the arms embargo?

AMB. HANNAY: Well, it doesn't seem to us a policy. It seems to us a reaction of despair, really, and it would certainly, in our view, undercut the three objectives of the present policy, one of which is to head off the possibility of a wider Balkan war, the other of which is to provide relief to the millions of people in Bosnia who cannot support themselves without the help of the UN, and the third is to keep a peace process, however unpromising it may look at the particular point in time, on the rails, going, moving along, so that when pieces click, as they often do, for example, over Arab-Israel, as they did a year or two ago, then the UN is ready there to try to put together a peaceful Bosnia in place of the warring Bosnia we have now.

MR. MAC NEIL: And you say that would be a policy of despair. Do you not think that the populations of the United States and Britain and France and the other countries watching this every night on television should not despair over the effect of allied policy there?

AMB. HANNAY: Well, I hope not. The British parliamentary support for our involvement in Bosnia has been very steady. All leaderships of all three parties continue to support that policy. Of course, there are people, voices raised in Britain, as there are here, questioning that policy, but the broad spectrum of opinion says that what we're doing in Bosnia is worthwhile. We're saving lives. We're preventing a wider war, and we're trying to get a peace process going. And that has wide support.

MR. MAC NEIL: Sec. Perry seemed to be putting some hope in the early deployment of the Rapid Reaction Force, Britain, French, and Dutch forces, which you've been building up. Yet, I gather from the recent meeting in London it is not yet agreed exactly how that force will be used, is that so?

AMB. HANNAY: The discussions on how to use that force go on all the time. At the moment, the planning process is underway with the generals in charge of UNPROFOR and with the new troops who are coming in. The advance party for our brigade is in the theater now, and the main brigade will deploy very soon. It's being held up, in fact, largely because the Bosnian federation, that's the Croat part of the Bosnian federation, has made a lot of difficulties which we have now, I'm glad to say, overcome.

MR. MAC NEIL: Would it be fair to say, as Sec. Perry seemed to be implying, that if that force had been there, or in future situations like Srebrenica, it would be able to react with force to stop the Bosnian Serbs from taking over one of the safe areas?

AMB. HANNAY: Well, I don't want to get into military decisions. That will be up for the force commander, Gen. Smith, there to decide whether a particular operation in a particular enclave made military sense with the resources he had available or not, but we do believe the Rapid Reaction Force. It'll be about 12,000 troops potentially, 4,000 of them on stand-by in France would make a difference. It will be armed quite differently. There will be artillery. There will be attack helicopters, and so even within the mandate, which is self-defense and protection of the UN missions, it will operate rather differently from the troops who've been there up to now. So we think the potential is good, but it mustn't be overstated. It's not going there to fight a war, and it's not got a magic wand that can solve every single situation.

MR. MAC NEIL: But it would--you hope--have a deterrent effect on the Bosnian Serbs, who would expect to get some rather tougher reaction from it than they've had from the UN?

AMB. HANNAY: We would certainly hope that, because the object of this exercise is not to fight but is to make peace. And in the past, new reinforcements into Bosnia have tended to have a deterrent effect. The trouble is it wears off. But let us hope that on this occasion too it will have that effect, it will help to sustain the UN in Bosnia, because we think that is still important. It will, in particular, we hope help with the problem of the strangulation of Sarajevo and the very difficult humanitarian situation there.

MR. MAC NEIL: What do you believe, having seen the United Nations operation now at close hand for five years, what do you believe that Bosnia is doing to the credibility and effectiveness of the United Nations?

AMB. HANNAY: Well, it's not doing a lot of good--that must be clear--partly because the reporting of it is very negative, and the positive side doesn't get much of a showing. For example, I haven't often heard it noted that in 1992, before the UN got to Bosnia, 130,000 Bosnians lost their lives in the war. In 1994, when the UN was operating throughout Bosnia, 2,400 people lost their lives. Now, that's 2,400 too many, but it's a lot less than 130,000, and it's something for the UN to be proud of. But you don't hear a lot about that. The UN, like any organization involved in very difficult, very intractable situations like this, is always going to have failures. It has successes too, whether it was over the Iraq--reversal of Iraq's aggression--or whether it was bringing Cambodia back to some form of democracy, or whether it was in Mozambique, where a 14-year civil war was brought to an end and the new government elected, and even now in Angola, which has suffered appallingly for about 20 years, the UN is now currently deploying 6,000 peacekeepers and the cease-fire and the wind-down of that civil war is going on under UN supervision. You don't hear a lot about these things, but they're going on all the time, along with the difficult ones like Bosnia.

MR. MAC NEIL: Particularly with the effect on public opinion in the United States, where the usefulness of the United Nations is so much questioned in some political quarters, how serious a crisis is Bosnia for the UN's future viability, do you think?

AMB. HANNAY: Well, I think it looks very serious at the moment, but you do have to keep a little bit of perspective. Public opinion is pretty fickle. It moves on from crisis to crisis. What was a huge crisis one week is sometimes not quite as big in six months' time. But Bosnia is a big show, because it is the worst crisis in post Cold War Europe, and it has a potential to get a lot worse, hence, the key importance of the containment factor. It really would be bad news for all of us, bad news for Europe, bad news for the United States, if this, this fighting spread, spread back into Croatia, spread on down into Kosova, where the Albanian population are very restive, into Macedonia, and there are many wider risks than that.

MR. MAC NEIL: Some Americans in the Congress argue that if the United Nations is not soon drastically reformed or reinvented, the term some of them have used, we will witness its slow death. Do you agree with that?

AMB. HANNAY: No. I don't agree with the slow death point. I do agree with reform being necessary, and I am cautious about reinventing. As you know, there is a phrase about reinventing the wheel, and I rather think that we could spend a lot of time reinventing and ending up with a wheel which wasn't very different. Now, I think what we've got to do is to get down to a process of reform, which is what the group of eight industrialized nations at Halifax said was necessary. They set out some parameters for that. And we're going to move forward together in company with other members of the United Nations to try to reform the finances, which are pretty inequitable at the moment, have led to many problems with Congress, to try and reform the Security Council, to make it a little bit larger, to try and reform the way the UN handles development issues, so that there's less overlap and waste and better value for money, to try and reform the secretariat so that it's a leaner and more effective instrument.

MR. MAC NEIL: Do you leave inspired or disillusioned with it?

AMB. HANNAY: I leave believing that the one thing that matters in running international organizations is persistence and perseverance. You get nowhere by short-term fixes. You get nowhere by swinging, by allowing the pendulum to swing between ecstacy and despair. That's rather what's happened to the UN. After the Gulf War, people thought it could do anything. Now, people think it can do nothing. The truth of the matter is somewhere in the middle, and I think you have to keep plugging away. You have to keep the institution in good repair, which means you have to keep adapting it to the circumstances of the time, but I believe that we all need the United Nations, and I believe, although it's presumptuous of me to say so, I believe that's true for the United States, as it's true for Britain.

MR. MAC NEIL: Of course, in the Gulf situation, the United States played a very different role than it has in--has in Bosnia. Do you- -how much is the future effectiveness of the United Nations dependent now on the United States?

AMB. HANNAY: Well, the United Nations has always depended a great deal on the United States. It's the largest member state. It makes the largest financial contribution. It's got the largest armed forces. It's active all over the world. The idea that you can have a United Nations without the United States as an active and constructive participant is an absolute illusion. That's the--the primrose path that leads us back to something like the League of Nations, and we all know how that folded partly, not exclusively, but partly because the United States didn't play a role. And that was a United States that was far less predominant in the world than the United States of today. So we have to engage the United States in the United Nations, and the United States needs to give us some leadership there. As you know, we in Western Europe, have always looked to United States leadership. We still do. We still set store by it, and we hope that it will be available in the future.

MR. MAC NEIL: Do you think that the present hostility of some political areas in the United States of a lot of American politicians at the moment threatens the United Nations in the way that the League of Nations was threatened two generations ago?

AMB. HANNAY: The League of Nations was threatened principally by aggressors, by tyrants, dictators, who were not interested in the rule of law and wanted the rule of the jungle in which they were the large beasts who would devour the smaller beasts. But its capacity to stand up to them was terribly weakened by the fact that the United States was not participating, and Britain and France, which had been exhausted by the First World War, could not do it on their own. Well, things have changed a lot, but some of those things haven't changed, and that's one of them.

MR. MAC NEIL: You mention the--the criteria that were set up by the eight nations in Halifax. You do have--after working closely with it for five years--do you have your own prescription for what would cure what ails the United Nations right now?

AMB. HANNAY: Not really. There's no quick fix. I've mentioned the areas where you do need reform: Finance, development, the structure of the secretariat, and the responsibilities, the overlapping responsibilities and waste between a lot of the agencies. That's a big program of reform, but it's best approached in a calm and focused way, not in a search for some Holy Grail called UN reform, which you can just go around enough corners and suddenly find it, and it'll tell you what sort of UN you need.

MR. MAC NEIL: Well, Amb. Hannay, thank you very much for joining us.

AMB. HANNAY: Thank you. UPDATE - KEEPING KIDS SAFE

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, an update on the Clinton administration's plan to distribute free childhood vaccines. Fred De Sam Lazaro of public station KTCA-St. Paul-Minneapolis reports.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: President Clinton took up the cause of universal immunization soon after assuming office in 1993.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: The United States has the third worst immunization record in this hemisphere. Of all the nations in this hemisphere, only Bolivia and Haiti have lower immunization rates for their children than the United States of America.

MR. LAZARO: The President charged that vaccine prices, which haven risen tenfold in the past decade, have become unaffordable to many parents, and he blamed vaccine manufacturers.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: We cannot have profits at the expense of our children. These practices have got to stop. [applause]

MR. LAZARO: The administration's response under Health & Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala was the new Vaccines for Children program which significantly changed the way vaccines are purchased and distributed. Doctors who accept Medicaid reimbursement and others enrolled in the new program now estimate how many uninsured or underinsured patients come into their offices. The federal government provides free vaccines for these patients. They pay only the doctor's fee. In the past, patients who could not afford market prices for vaccines were referred to public health clinics. Also, the federal government, which buys large quantities of vaccine at a 50 percent discount, extended that hefty discount to state health departments which had traditionally bought the drugs at market prices. The vaccine's program came in almost immediately for criticism. Vaccine makers who saw profits plummet said those profits will be used to develop new vaccines. The companies declined to be interviewed but Robert Goldberg of Brandeis University says the companies were unfairly blamed for low immunization rates.

ROBERT GOLDBERG, Brandeis University: And this "us versus them" dichotomy, which was imposed upon this whole issue, has now poisoned the entire relationship to the point where companies that at one point were gung-ho in developing better pediatric vaccines, that will provide kids with more immunizations, with less shots, and longer protection, their attitude is: Why the hell should we do it?

MR. LAZARO: Goldberg and other critics say the price of vaccines has little to do with poor immunization rates. They say most epidemics are in populations already eligible for free vaccines, usually under Medicaid. These critics argue the real barriers are other factors, like a lack of education on the part of both parents and doctors. Parents don't perceive the urgency and almost instinctively want to avoid subjecting their infants to the discomfort or fevers that often follow shots, plus, it takes some 15 different immunizations by age two to bring a child up to date. Keeping track of them, especially in families with several children, can be daunting, and there's no coherent system by which clinics follow up or remind parents.

ANNE KUETTEL, Public Health Nurse: People hear from their doctors that they're up to date. Say they bring in their two-month-old, and their doctor says they're up to date. They're only up to date until they become four months old.

MR. LAZARO: Doctors, meanwhile, often miss opportunities to immunize children when they see them in their office for other reasons. Dr. Paula Franklin is with the Children's Defense Fund.

DR. PAULA FRANKLIN, Children's Defense Fund: Then there are also cases where physicians actually do not immunize children who could be immunized because they have a sickness that they feel is a contraindication to immunizing that child when, in fact, they could immunize a child with a mild fever or other such illness.

MR. LAZARO: Accessibility or the delivery system is another major shortcoming. Even though shots are available free in public clinics, many parents lack transportation. The clinic is invariably understaffed and has hours inconvenient for working parents.

ANNE KUETTEL: Other families may have such chaotic living situations, they're moving a lot, mm, they're in a lot of crisis that getting shots and going to the doctor is just not top on the priority list.

MR. LAZARO: In June, the General Accounting Office criticized the Vaccines for Children program for not taking into account many of these factors. The GAO report said the vaccines program was poorly managed, plagued by delivery and distribution problems and a lack of accountability. For example, the report found many doctors in the program exaggerating the number of low-income or under-insured patients to get free vaccines, and on perhaps the most contentious issue, the GAO report concluded that the cost of vaccine has not been a major barrier to immunization, something critics of the program, like Wisconsin Republican Congressman Scott Klug have long maintained.

REP. SCOTT KLUG, [R] Wisconsin: If you want to get these kids immunized, you need to keep public health clinics open longer, you need to have nurses on staff, you should allow us to buy vans to go around neighbors, you should have education programs to educate parents, you should have education programs, in some cases, to educate physicians. But there was very little evidence two years ago and there's very little evidence today that the cost of the vaccine has anything to do with the pockets of kids not getting immunized. Most of them are already eligible to get free shots because most of them are on public assistance.

MR. LAZARO: For their part, Clinton administration officials have responded to the GAO report with a scathing criticism of the methodology, calling it flawed on many points, although they admit the vaccines program could stand to be improved in some areas. The administration declined the NewsHour's invitation to participate in this program, referring, instead, to state health officials like the Texas health commissioner, Dr. David Smith. Dr. Smith insists the cost of vaccines is a major barrier to immunization. By providing free vaccine in private doctor's officers, instead of public health clinics, he says the new program has improved immunization rates.

DR. DAVID SMITH, Texas Health Commissioner: This is about keeping all of the child's health care together. What if that child is an asthmatic or a diabetic that also needs immunizations? Well, the fact that I send him downtown, across town, through town to get immunizations on the fourth Thursday of every month and diabetic care is back up town, around town at the private doctor's office means something often gives.

MR. LAZARO: Besides making it convenient to provide shots, Smith says the new program has lowered vaccine costs for the state, freeing money for outreach, like clinics where people collect vouchers under the Women, Infants, & Children feeding program.

DR. DAVID SMITH: A hundred thousand children were immunized last year in WIC clinics. Why? I could move money that I used to spend on vaccine, get the nurses. I could also train my WIC staff folks to say, you need to check Mrs. Smith's immunization record and make sure it's up to date. If it isn't, it must be, or you're going to talk to them about whether or not they're going to continue to be able to get services there.

MR. LAZARO: However, congressional Republicans are convinced that kind of outreach can only get better through a state-run program, instead of one run by the federal Centers for Disease Control, which the GAO report blamed for many bureaucratic problems.

REP. SCOTT KLUG: Will the Vaccines for Children's program, as conceived by the Clinton administration and passed by Congress exist a year from now? I don't think so. Will there be a federal program to get kids shots and to target better immunization rates in this country? Absolutely. But the program, as written by the Clinton administration, the General Accounting Office, I think, has made absolutely clear doesn't work. And it's my hope that if we give money back to the states for Medicaid in terms of a block grant for health programs, we'll rope off some money very specifically for kids' immunization program.

MR. LAZARO: Administration officials acknowledge start-up problems, but say, aside from minor corrections, they are opposed to changing the Vaccines for Children program. Both sides are convinced their approach is more efficient and expedient in bringing immunization rates into the 90 percent range. That's a threshold experts call "herd immunity," since it virtually ensures against the spread of infectious disease. RECAP

MR. MAC NEIL: Again, the major stories of this Thursday, President Clinton accepted the military base closings plan. Seventy-nine bases will be closed, another twenty-six will be realigned, nearly 95,000 jobs will be eliminated, many in Texas and California. And Bosnian Muslim refugees claimed they had been suggested to ethnic cleansing by Serb forces. About 14,000 have been driven from the town of Srebrenica in Eastern Bosnia. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Robin. We'll see you tomorrow night with Shields & Gigot, among other things. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.