The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MacNeil/LEHRER NEWSHOUR SHOW #4344 THURSDAY, MAY 28, 1992

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

MS. WOODRUFF: And I'm Judy Woodruff in New York. After our News Summary, we examine what the international community should do about the fighting in Yugoslavia. We hear from diplomats and policy analysts. Then a report from Seattle on sexual criminals, and essayist Jim Fisher with thoughts on the greatest loss of all.NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: The House of Representatives voted today to lift the ban on using fetal tissue for transplant research. The vote was an overwhelming 260 to 148, but short of the 2/3 needed to override an expected Presidential veto. The ban prohibits spending federal money on research using aborted fetal tissue to treat Parkinson's and other diseases. Here's a sample of the debate that preceded the vote.

REP. HENRY WAXMAN, [D] California: I urge my colleagues to overturn the ban to bring hope to those people who are suffering from diabetes, spinal cord injury, Alzheimer's, other diseases. We need to understand these diseases and treat them in a way that can give the gift of life. Just as we allow transplant of organs, we should allow transplant of fetal tissue.

REP. HENRY HYDE, [R] Illinois: The problem with this bill is it will create a market for fetal tissue. It advances abortion by providing a rationalization to an indecisive and vulnerable woman who is pregnant to go ahead and have the abortion because at least the dead baby's tissue will be put to some good use.

MR. LEHRER: President Bush has said he has no objection to using tissue from miscarriages and tubal pregnancies, but the other side claims much of that is unusable. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Children in the United States watch too much television and don't read enough at home or in school. Those were among the conclusions of an Education Department report released today. President Bush called the findings troubling. At a Washington news conference, Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander offered some advice to parents and teachers.

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Secretary of Education: The main result of this report is to say that parents especially and teachers as well that with a few, simple changes in the way we live we can make dramatically different strides in how our children read. If parents will read to children and with children, help them get a library card, and limit television watching, and if teachers will give students more writing lessons about what they read, that alone, this report says, should help us make a lot of strides in the 1990s. So we're not where we need to be, but we're perfectly capable of it.

MS. WOODRUFF: The report found 25 percent of fourth graders watch six or more hours of television a day and more than 60 percent watch at least three hours. The report canvassed 38,000 students around the nation in grades 4, 8, and 12. A group of students who probably watch a lot less television and do a lot more reading than the national average were on TV today. They were finalists in the national spelling bee, which was held in Washington. Thirteen-year- old Amanda Goad of Richmond, Virginia, won the contest. The winning word she spelled was "lyceum," meaning "a hall for lectures or discussions."

MR. LEHRER: There was more fighting in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo today. This evening Bosnian Radio said the city was under bombardment by surface-to-surface missiles. There were no immediate casualty reports. Early in the day, residents said artillery and machine gun battles raged around several bases of the Serbian- dominated Yugoslav army. Those clashes began just hours after yesterday's mortar attack, which killed 16 people waiting in a bread line. The European Community imposed sanctions against Serbia after that attack. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary.

MS. WOODRUFF: President Bush today ordered all U.S. ports closed to ships that ignore a trade embargo imposed against Haiti. The President said in a statement that he is also considering other steps to strengthen sanctions against the illegal military regime in Haiti. At the same time, the State Department announced that it was phasing out its Haitian refugee camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A spokesman said the camps were acting as a magnet, causing more Haitians to try to reach it in boats. Nearly 12,000 refugees are there now, a number the U.S. has said has over taxed the facility. In a shift of policy, the U.S. this week began returning to Haiti any refugees picked up at sea. The administration has come under increasing criticism for doing so. Lawyers for the refugees today asked a federal judge in New York to block the Presidential order forcing their repatriation.

MR. LEHRER: New charges were filed today against three men already accused of beating a truck driver during the Los Angeles riots. The new charges include robbery and assault with a deadly weapon against 12 other people at the same street corner where the truck driver was beaten. The victims include two firemen, a seven- month-old baby and his mother. Secretary of Transportation Andrew Carr today promised new procedures to deal with aircraft icing by the start of next winter. The rules would dictate when U.S. planes could take off in snow or sleet, how often wings must be de-iced, and where they should be de-iced. He said the March 22nd crash of a U.S. Air flight on takeoff from LaGuardia Airport in New York City was the catalyst for a two-day conference on the subject which began today.

MS. WOODRUFF: In economic news, the Labor Department reported new claims for unemployment benefits hit a seven-month low in mid May. They fell by 4,000 to 403,000 for the week ending May 16th. It was the sixth time in eight weeks that claims have either fallen or held steady. That's it for the News Summary. Just ahead on the NewsHour, what the rest of the world should do about the civil war in Yugoslavia, sexual predators, and thoughts on the loss of a child. FOCUS - STOPPING THE SLAUGHTER

MR. LEHRER: The spilling of blood in Bosnia-Herzegovina is our lead story again tonight. Bosnia, once part of Yugoslavia, is now an independent republic being torn apart by ferocious ethnic warfare. The question we ask tonight is what the United States and the rest of the world should do to stop that killing. Sec. of State Baker sounded a tougher U.S. policy over the weekend, saying, this humanitarian nightmare in the heart of Europe must be ended. The United Nations Security Council is now considering sanctions against Serbia, whose forces are fighting to keep control of Serbian-populated areas within Bosnia. Late today, Bosnian Radio reported Serbians were firing missiles at the city. Our coverage begins with a report from Lindsay Taylor of Independent Television News. It was filed before that latest attack.

MR. TAYLOR: Pictures today from Bosnia show signs of continued shelling and heavy fighting triggered by yesterday's mortar attack on a bread queue which killed at least 20 people. Explosions were reported in many parts of the city today, despite the continuing diplomatic pressure for an end to the conflict. Local television showed people still on the streets, living under the constant threat of attack. By contrast, daily life for Serbs in Belgrade seemed unaffected by the newly agreed EC trade sanctions. Inflation is already rampant here. Milk prices shot up again today. But the EC measures announced yesterday will require time to take effect. Petrol shortages already exist and observers agree an oil embargo would severely hit Serbia and its war effort. But the planned measures so far do not include that. And the Serbian leadership insists any sanctions are totally unjustified.

SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC, Serbian President: We were not provoking or supporting hostilities. Hostilities are absolutely against interest of Serbs in Bosnia.

MR. TAYLOR: Britain is among those seeking further pressure on Serbia and a strong ally today in Hungary, where the conflict in the neighboring conflicts was discussed during John Major's talks with the prime minister. Britain said today military action has not been ruled out and despite having 400,000 ethnic Hungarians living in Serbia, Hungary would support such intervention.

LAZLO BALAZS, Hungarian Government Spokesman: Hungary's of the opinion that the world has not so far done enough to try and end the bloodshed.

MR. TAYLOR: With such calls for international action, the tension is focused on the U.N., where Western members of the Security Council are seeking the swift adoption of sanction. But China is said to be against the measures. Russia too has reservations, though it's thought that it will eventually come on board. But any sort of military action is still a long way off, at least as far as the United States is concerned.

DICK CHENEY, U.S. Defense Secretary: We are not contemplating at present, certainly because we've not been asked to, not contemplating any deployment of U.S. military forces to the region.

MR. TAYLOR: For the moment, the U.N.'s role in the former Yugoslavia is confined to actions like supervising the peaceful withdrawal of federal troops as here. The U.N. Secretary General has signed it and noted caution about further military intervention, leading some critics to claim that the U.N. position on Bosnia is inconsistent with its stance over Kuwait. As the rest of the world deliberates over what action to take, today in Sarajevo, people commemorated those killed in yesterday's mortar attack. With the defiant Serbian president tonight making it clear he won't bow to any outside pressure, people here can expect no let up in the killing.

MR. LEHRER: Earlier today, Charlayne Hunter-Gault talked with the British Ambassador to the United Nations. She asked him what the U.N. sanctions on Serbia might accomplish.

SIR DAVID HANNAY, U.N. Ambassador, Great Britain: The purpose of these sanctions is to persuade and compel the Serbians to control and stop the interference in Bosnia, to stop the fighting, and to come back to the conference table, where they were, the European Community conference table, both the conference in the whole of Yugoslavia chaired by Lord Carrington, and the special sub- conference on Bosnia-Herzegovina, chaired by a Portuguese diplomat, Amb. Cutelero. The object is to bring them back into those talks and to bring them back bearing conditions where the talks have a chance to succeed. That's to say when fighting has stopped. So those are the purposes of sanctions. The sanctions are not there to promise. Sanctions are there to influence.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But in the meantime, there are reports in the media today that civilians standing in a bread line were killed by bombing and attacks on the population. How much longer can this go on? SIR DAVID HANNAY: Yes, that is a horrific situation. But we have to face the fact that sanctions don't have an immediate effect, however powerful they are. They don't just have a cause and effect, sanctions one day, shooting stops the next day. It's not unfortunately quite as easy as that. What you're trying to do is to bring sufficient pressure and the prospect of further pressure to bear on the authorities in Belgrade to understand that it's in their interest as it is in everyone else's interest to stop the fighting.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What if sanctions don't work? I mean, under Chapter 7, the U.N. is authorized, as it did with Iraq, to use force.

SIR DAVID HANNAY: I honestly don't wantto speculate about that. You've correctly described the scope of Chapter 7 and you were right in saying that it has on occasion been used to authorize the use of force. But I frankly don't want to speculate about that. I think it would be irresponsible to do so. The issues and the situation on the ground is very different from the one in Kuwait, and I don't think any of our governments have yet taken decisions which would make it sensible for me to talk about it on camera.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: There are those who say that Bosnia and Croatia are just as responsible for the carnage. Why isolate Serbia?

SIR DAVID HANNAY: Well, I think it would be quite wrong to say that Serbia has borne all the blame for this all along. There have been mistakes and there have been wrongs done on every side. But the situation that has now developed in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the situation in the areas where the U.N. is already deployed is a situation where the wrongs are being committed by Serbs and by the Serbian authorities and by the Yugoslav national army and the Secretary General came to the council last week and told us for example that in the U.N.-protected areas, there were two parties to his agreements who are not performing, who are not compliant. And those two parties were the Yugoslav national army and the authorities in Belgrade. And in Bosnia-Herzegovina, itself, you have a situation where although the Belgrade authorities are purporting to have withdrawn the Yugoslav national army, they privately admit that they haven't withdrawn it; they're merely transforming it. It's being transformed into a military force under the authority of an administration which is not recognized by anyone, which is called the Serbian Republic of Bosnia. And these people are armed with heavy artillery which they get through the Yugoslav national army and they're pounding Sarajevo. That's the problem. So that's why they can't be disassociated from this problem.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Some critics say that these kinds of blood feuds are just not amenable to outside negotiation. What do you say to that?

SIR DAVID HANNAY: Well, I think there is some truth in that. I think there is truth in the fact that there are some appalling conflicts around the world which are very difficult for any outsider, even the United Nations with the authority of the whole international community, to influence and to bring to an end. We have, for instance, the case of Somalia, not the same as Yugoslavia quite, but, nevertheless, a similarly deeply frustrating, horrific situation in which it is very difficult to get a purchase on it, because the United Nations is not a world government; it's not a world policeman. You can't just go barging in everywhere and it hasn't got the resources, the governments don't want to put their troops in a place where they might be killed in every corner of the world. So we have to understand the limitations of the system, even when they're trying to expand its influence and its effect.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So, David, why has the international community been so slow to respond to this crisis, I mean, even in the United States it's been only at the prodding of journalists, it appears, that there's been a response in the last few days.

SIR DAVID HANNAY: I think the sheer complexity of the problems in Yugoslavia and their novelty is what has baffled people for a long time. After all, the explosion, as it were, of a country into five or six separate pieces with wars breaking out between and within them is not something that happens every day. And it sets up very,very complex issues, ones that are not easy to face. It's not at all as black and white and straightforward as when Iraq walked into Kuwait and simply wiped Kuwait off the map. That was a straightforward black and white issue. This one is all shades of gray and it's been quite difficult to thread a way through it and see how best the international community can deploy its resources. But the European Community has throughout been on a two track strategy, one, to try to do the peacemaking, itself, through the conference under Lord Carrington, and the second to ask the U.N. to use all its resources for peacekeeping. And this two track strategy is still being pursued, but it now needs stronger measures to back it up.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you think there's any possibility that the U.N. would allow itself to go in and guarantee the delivery of foods and medicines to the region?

SIR DAVID HANNAY: Well, it's difficult on that. We saw last week just how difficult it is when the Red Cross negotiated all kinds of laissez passes and ways in, sent a convoy in, marked with Red Cross signs and everything, and was deliberately bombarded and the leader of the Red Cross in Bosnia was killed. Now, it's very difficult in those circumstances to ask people, even with armed guards, to go in. So we must re-double our efforts to try to persuade all the parties to allow humanitarian supplies to get through. And I think horrible events like yesterday's in Sarajevo are the sort of thing that sometimes provide the climate in which you can then get people to realize that this has gone too far and we must now try to re-double our efforts and yet, again, get humanitarian supplies in to the people of Sarajevo and the other people of Bosnia.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What possible scenario do you see to end this fighting?

SIR DAVID HANNAY: Well, back to the conference table is the only possible one, a conference that Lord Carrington has been trying to pursue and which will provide for the successor states of the old Yugoslavia to live side by side in frontiers that were laid down years ago and providing reasonable guarantees to their ethnic minorities. That's the most crucial issue of all. The idea that somehow you straighten out the minorities to fit the frontiers, what's been called ethnic purification, is absolutely repugnant, and it is a terrible idea, and if he's against that, among other things that the Security Council is moving to take sanctions, because in our last resolution we required that there should be a stop to these movements of population, these forced movements of population designed to make the people fit the frontiers if you couldn't make the frontiers fit the people. And we've got to put a stop to that, and the key to the future republics in this area of Yugoslavia is that they should be brought to treat their ethnic minorities, to give them a degree of autonomy, to let them run their own local affairs, so that they can live alongside, as they have done for hundreds of years, other ethnic groups without fighting. It's a tall order, but it's the only way forward.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: As you said before, this is a very complex situation. Many are saying that it is the first real post Cold War test of the international community and that it's failing that test.

SIR DAVID HANNAY: Well, it's not the first one. There have been tests in the Gulf War, which was a very considerable success. There have been tests in let us say El Salvador, where the United Nations is involved, which is going quite well, although they've still got some way to go. But I agree with you, that this is a very complex one. Funnily enough, this is unlike some of the others I've mentioned. It's not a problem that was caused by the -- by the Cold War. It's a problem that has been caused by the end of the Cold War, that's to say the removal of the dead hand of Communism has shown that there are great ethnic and national rivalries waiting to break out just underneath the surface. And we've seen some of these breaking out also in the former Soviet Union, in the strife in Armenia and Azerbaijan, and around that area. And so this is a problem that we're going to have to grapple with. Anybody who says that there are straightforward answers to it, I can tell you they don't know what they're talking about. There aren't straightforward answers to it. There are very complex answers and there are lessons to be learned by -- as we go on. We may still be quite low on the learning curve but if we walked away from these sort of things, if we simply turned our back on them because they were too complicated and too difficult, the carnage would be three times worse.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Sir David, thank you for being with us.

SIR DAVID HANNAY: Not at all.

MS. WOODRUFF: Now, we get three views on how to stop the war in Yugoslavia. Warren Zimmermann is the United States Ambassador to Yugoslavia. He was recalled to Washington from his post in Belgrade two weeks ago to protest the intransigence of the Serbian leadership. Alex Dragnich is a professor emeritus of European politics at Vanderbilt University and the author of "Serbs and Croats, the Promise and Failure of Yugoslavia," to be published in December. He is a Serbian American and served in the American embassy in Belgrade from 1947 to 1950. Leslie Gelb is a columnist with the New York Times. Amb. Zimmermann, the Reuters News Service just late this afternoon is running a story from the State Department, saying that the U.S. is going to be pressing the U.N. Security Council in the next 24 hours to pass a resolution. What is the language of that resolution that the U.S. is pushing?

AMB. ZIMMERMANN: The resolution essentially gets to economic sanctions on Serbia. It calls for trade embargo. It calls for some other things as well, most important perhaps an embargo in oil supplies. But it's basically intended as a message to the Serbian leadership and to the Serbian people that they're going to isolate themselves economically if they continue in this aggressive course.

MS. WOODRUFF: Why the change on the part of the United States? I mean it was just a few days ago that the United States wasn't pushing for something like this. What happened to change the policy?

AMB. ZIMMERMANN: Well, I don't think there was as big a change as has been said. We started back in April when the first aggressive actions were taken across the Serbian frontier into Bosnia, and we and a number of Western countries recognized the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina. That was an act which was designed to give confidence to the expression of the will of more than 2/3 of the Bosnian people. It was also in the teeth of an intimidation campaign by Serbia to prevent that recognition. Then we sought to suspend Serbia, Yugoslavia, so-called Yugoslavia, from its seat in the CFCE meeting in Helsinki. What you're referring to started more recently than that. And I think the reason why we have moved now for comprehensive sanctions has been seen on the television screens over the last couple of days, the extraordinary carnage caused by the aggressive action of the Serbian leadership and its colleagues and its cohorts in Bosnia.

MS. WOODRUFF: A senior State Department official is quoted as saying, "We're taking the lead here because the Europeans couldn't get their act together." Is that what was behind this?

AMB. ZIMMERMANN: I'm not going to criticize the Europeans. They have a much more difficult problem, because they have to get 12 countries going in the same direction. In fact, we are going to need the Europeans for help in getting an effective Security Council action. So I think their role is very important, despite the fact that they've had a lot of trouble getting a consensus on this issue.

MS. WOODRUFF: But just to be clear again, we're talking about a total trade embargo, trade sanctions, an oil embargo, no trade, except for emergency supplies and food, is that right?

AMB. ZIMMERMANN: It's very close to that. That's right. There are some exceptions, but they tend to be humanitarian exceptions.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. Let me turn to you, Les Gelb. Is that the right course for the United States, for the United Nations to be pushing at this point?

MR. GELB: Well, it's too little, too late, but yes, it is right. And yes, it's not enough, because just as we knew weeks ago -- all you have to do is talk to people in the State Department -- just as we knew weeks ago that there would be precisely the kind of slaughter we're seeing now in Bosnia-Herzegovina, we know that the slaughter will continue even with these economic sanctions. At some point, I hope sooner rather than later, we make even more clear to Serb leaders that they will run the risk of military action against them if they continue to slaughter these people. I don't think in the end Serb leaders will understand anything else but the kind of fear that they're putting into the minds and the lives of the Bosnians. We've got to threaten them with the same kind of action.

MS. WOODRUFF: Why not -- why don't we believe that the sanctions, the oil embargo and the rest of it, will do the job?

MR. GELB: Because I think these kinds of actions take too long, and what the Serbs are trying to do is to create a reality on the ground there. They're trying to get rid of these people, to chase them out of their homes. And when that's done, that will be, you know, three months, six months, and by that time, maybe the sanctions will take hold, maybe not, but the facts will have already been created, the slaughter finished.

MS. WOODRUFF: Prof. Dragnich, what's your view, that the sanctions take too long and we need to do something more, or what?

PROF. DRAGNICH: Well, what I missed, Judy, is any mention of the basic issues that brought this whole thing about. There is the assumption here that somehow Serbs don't have any business in Bosnia. They, after all, were the ones who fought against the Turks and against the Austro Hungarian Empire to free those areas. Now, what I find also disturbing about the proposed action is that I don't think it'll be effective and if it is a prelude to military action, I don't --

MS. WOODRUFF: You don't think what will be effective, the sanctions?

PROF. DRAGNICH: The sanctions I don't think will be effective, and if they are a prelude to possible military action, as Mr. Gelb might suggest, I don't know of any military man who would cherish the idea of going into Bosnia and the Bosnian mountains with military troops to be slaughtered.

MR. GELB: It depends on the kind of military action you're talking about.

PROF. DRAGNICH: Let me just say one other thing, that I think the sanctions, all of this, it's a terrible tragedy. I condemn the violence, but there's been violence on all sides, Croatian, Muslims, Serbian, and unfortunately, in my reading of the press, it's usually the Serbian violence that gets reported, not the other. Now, I think this, the sanctions I think will send the wrong message to the Serbian people. The Serbian people hate Communism. They hate Milosevic, but these, this type of action has been driving them unwillingly into the hands of Milosevic, because the European Community and subsequently the United States has left Milosevic as the only one to articulate Serbian interests.

MS. WOODRUFF: I just want to quickly get back to the historical point that you made. Are you suggesting that the Serbs do have a place in Bosnia-Herzegovina?

PROF. DRAGNICH: Sure. Yes, I think they do. I don't condone the violence. One thing that I think the European Community might have done as well as the United States is to assure all peoples in Yugoslavia that they would be treated even-handedly, which was not done. I think if there had been some public announcement that in the final analysis with some kind of a peace conference, there should be plebiscites in contested areas so that the Serbs and others would have a choice to decide which way they want to go. I think that might have forestalled a lot of the violence.

MS. WOODRUFF: What about that, Amb. Zimmermann?

AMB. ZIMMERMANN: Well, I really disagree with the point that the Serbs are not getting a fair shake. There has been some Croatian involvement in the Bosnian war. That's been noted in U.N. resolutions. It's been noted in statements by the United States and the European countries. To say that the Croats are to blame also is not to say that they are to blame equally. The overwhelming burden of blame I think it's now totally clear devolves on Serbia and on the Serbian leadership's allies in Bosnia. Serbs live in Bosnia. They're a third of the population of Bosnia. What they claim and what they're very close to taking is 2/3 of Bosnia. That simple arithmetic I think says it all.

MS. WOODRUFF: What about that, Mr. Dragnich?

PROF. DRAGNICH: Well, I think the basic question that has bothered me is that I don't think the European Community and the United States have been even-handed. When Yugoslavia started falling apart, the European Community and the United States said we will respect the wishes of the people there. Now, it turns out they were saying, we will respect the wishes of the secessionist republics but not of the others.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. Let me --

PROF. DRAGNICH: I don't know any public statement that has indicated that the Serbs would have a right, for example, to a plebiscite in some of those areas.

MS. WOODRUFF: Les Gelb, what about that very point that he's making, that the West has tilted away from the Serbs from the very beginning?

MR. GELB: I don't think it's correct. I think, if anything, the Bush administration, in particular, was very pro-Serb, because it saw the Serbs as the way of holding Yugoslavia together, which was the goal of U.S. policy for a long time. And as far as being uneven-handed now, we should be, because the Serbs are doing most of the murdering. That's why they're getting most of the criticism. No one is attacking their right to be in that part of Bosnia- Herzegovina. They've lived there too. What we're doing is saying they don't have the right to kill these people and to evict them from their homes.

MS. WOODRUFF: Amb. Zimmermann, I want to come back to you on Les Gelb's earlier point, and that is that these sanctions, trade sanctions, oil embargo, are just going to take too long to have any effect and that eventually, and I think he's saying sooner rather than later, the U.N.. needs to think about some sort of military action in order to have any real effect on the Serb leadership.

AMB. ZIMMERMANN: There's another form of sanctions that I think needs to be discussed. It's not strictly in the U.N. framework, but to my mind it's at least as important. That's the desire of the Milosevic government to be recognized as the successor state to Yugoslavia. That's a decision that will have to be taken very soon, because soon they will have a new assembly put in in an election which will be grossly unfair in a few days, which the opposition in Serbia is boycotting. They will have a new president and they will have a new prime minister. The West will be called on to decide whether to recognize or not to recognize. I think that's a card we have. It's a kind of a sanction we have. At the moment, we've made it very clear that we don't think they have fulfilled the obligations that a new state has to fulfill.

MS. WOODRUFF: So you're saying that merely by not recognizing the new leadership that that will have some real effect on Mr. Milosevic?

AMB. ZIMMERMANN: I can't be sure of that, but what he is being faced with is economic isolation and political isolation, isolation from the entire world community, from the community of civilized nations. If he's prepared to live with that kind of isolation, then I think that we will simply have to wait. And as Amb. Hannay says, sanctions can take a long time. I don't see a military option as - - well, I see it as a very difficult choice. Our view is, it would be better to at least try to exhaust the political and economic options before we put ourselves into a quagmire which a military intervention would be.

MS. WOODRUFF: Les Gelb, a quagmire?

MR. GELB: I don't think Milosevic is showing that he's too frightened of the actions we've taken so far, or those being threatened now. And I'm not supposing a ground troop military intervention. What I'm saying is we've got to reopen the door to military action and some of the Western leaders are finally doing that, including Sec. Baker, and the British foreign minister. Secondly, I'm saying we ought to think about air action, that is, we ought to close the skies to the Serbian air force and we ought to let them know that their military bases are vulnerable. They've got to have some sense of military cost because right now all they're doing is slaughtering their opponents and creating facts on the ground and waiting for time to run out. And as far as they're concerned, Judy, they think that a year or two down the road, we'll deal with them anyway.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, Amb. Zimmermann, if that's the case, what good are the sanctions going to do?

AMB. ZIMMERMANN: Well, again, you have to ask if Serbia wants to be isolated economically and politically. That's a decision that may have to reach early rather than late. The sanctions may not have taken effect by the time that decision is upon Milosevic. As I say, we may have to be prepared to wait things out.

MS. WOODRUFF: Prof. Dragnich, what are you saying will work, what will stop the bloody violence?

PROF. DRAGNICH: Well, I think it appealed all the peoples of Yugoslavia to cease the violence. I think that's first. But I think --

MS. WOODRUFF: Hasn't that already happened time and again?

PROF. DRAGNICH: That has happened, but it should be coupled with a positive statement that the interests of all of these people, including Serbia, would be respected in the basic -- one of the basic failures of the Western powers was to say that the boundaries of these, the internal boundaries of these republics would not be changed. These boundaries were imposed by Tito. Yugoslavia before Tito was never divided into republics and when Tito came along, he carved up this, so that 1/3 of the Serbs live outside of the republic of Serbia. Now that is a sore spot. That's one of the major injustices of the Tito system.

MS. WOODRUFF: Les Gelb.

MR. GELB: Practical is what you push politicians to do that they don't want to do. They don't want to do anything in this begin with. They're being pushed. They need to be pushed, because the stakes are enormous. The lives of these people and the rules for settling nationalist, ethnic disputes. And the question is: Who is going to set those rules? Will it be civilized, the civilized world? George Bush, John Major, Helmut Kohl, or will it be the killers?

MS. WOODRUFF: Finally, let me come back to you, Amb. Zimmermann. What do you think the prospects are tomorrow? Both the Russians and the Chinese have expressed reservations about these kinds of sanctions. What do you think will happen?

AMB. ZIMMERMANN: I think the prospects are good, because there's tremendous interest now coming from the concern about what's going on on the ground in getting a tough resolution, a resolution that really does contain comprehensive sanctions. I'm quite convinced that we have a good chance to get it.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, Amb. Zimmermann, Prof. Dragnich, and Les Gelb, we thank you all for being with us. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, dealing with serious sex offenders and a Jim Fisher essay. FOCUS - NO MERCY

MR. LEHRER: Now, a report on keeping dangerous sexual criminals in custody after they've served their time. It centers on the so- called "sexual predators law" in Washington State. Robin Minietta of public station KCTS-Seattle reports.

MS. MINIETTA: Bradley Ward is a convicted child molester.

BRADLEY WARD: And I just want to say that all the people that I have done sexual crimes against and so forth, that I am very sorry for that.

MS. MINIETTA: Rolando Aguilar has a long history of rape, attempted rape, and assault.

ROLANDO AGUILAR: I told you I'm not a sexual predator. I don't go out and stalk on women so to try to as to whatever may be assault, I don't do that.

MS. MINIETTA: And Andre Brigham Young has been found guilty of raping six women.

ANDRE BRIGHAM YOUNG: When I'm guilty or not is neither here nor there now. It really isn't, especially with the way I have been vilified and otherwise relegated to the status of a peon before the general public. Don't like it. Don't like it at all.

MS. MINIETTA: These men are being at the Washington State Reformatory Special Commitment Center. It's run by the Department of Health & Human Services. But it's located on prison grounds and secured by barbed wire, armed guards and locked doors. The men who are in prison here have already served time for the crimes they've committed, but under a new Washington State law, the only one of its kind in the nation, criminals who repeatedly commit sexually violent crimes can be locked away for up to life. The law does not impose new criminal sanctions against repeat offenders. Instead, they're brought to court for a civil commitment proceeding. In effect, the law labels some offenders as mentally ill and allows them to be sent back to a locked facility, even if they've already served their full prison sentence.

NORM MALENG, County Prosecutor: For too long we as a society have undervalued the seriousness of sex offenses, the traumatic impact that they can have on women and children, and it was time to really focus on that issue.

MS. MINIETTA: Norm Maleng is a county prosecutor and head of the Washington State Task Force that drafted the law.

NORM MALENG: And quite frankly, what we're talking about is people who are presently in prison who have served their criminal sanction, coming out and we know to be dangerous.

MS. MINIETTA: In other words, people like Earl Shriner. In the spring of 1988, Shriner cornered a seven-year-old boy on a dead end trail in this vacant lot. He raped and beat the child, cut off his penis and left him for dead.

HELEN HARLOW: I had absolutely no idea that such a person could even ever expect to be on the streets.

MS. MINIETTA: The boy's mother, Helen Harlow, was shocked to learn that the man who attacked her son had a long, documented history of sexual assault.

HELEN HARLOW: December of '88, he was released from jail for one of his minor offenses which, of course, followed his release from a 24-year history of offenses and incarceration, and our attack was in May. So it was not too long. And he, he did exactly what he had said he was going to do, not just said verbally, but had written down while he was still in jail.

MS. MINIETTA: These are the notes Shriner made while in prison, drawings of a special torture chamber built into a van, details of the materials he would need.

HELEN HARLOW: He wrote down exactly what kind of child he wanted to kidnap, what kind of crimes he intended to perform. He had it all detailed, a list of items that he would get to make sure he could do the job right. I'm sure he thought my son was dead when he left him. I read that list. I nearly puked.

MS. MINIETTA: Shriner was arrested and charged with rape, assault, and attempted murder. He was found guilty and sentenced to 130 years in prison. But for Helen Harlow, the stiff sentence wasn't enough.

HELEN HARLOW: [talking to group] And he's speaker of the house and he's the one that killed several of our bills actually.

MS. MINIETTA: Harlow started a campaign to radically overhaul the state laws that had freed Earl Shriner after he had served time for previous sexual offenses. Local talk show host Mike Siegel joined her effort. So did many of his listeners.

MIKE SIEGEL, Radio Talk Show Host: They were outraged. They didn't believe something like this could happen. It was shocking. I mean, this was I think the most shocking event that I've seen occur in all the years I've done talk radio in terms of its effect on the audience. As a result of that, there had to be a channeling of the energy.

MS. MINIETTA: Harlow and Siegel teamed up and led a march on the state capital. Protesters brought along piles of tennis shoes, some of which had belonged to victims of violent crime, to make a symbolic point about public safety.

WOMAN: These are the shoes of my three and a half year old niece. She was raped by her father when she was seven weeks old. He walked out a free man after serving only 37 months.

MS. MINIETTA: In the face of public pressure, the legislature passed and the governor signed what's commonly known as the "sexual predators law." But the law has its critics. John La Fond, law professor at the University of Puget Sound, has lectured internationally on the consequences of the law.

JOHN LA FOND, Law Professor, University of Puget Sound: These people have served their sentences fully, have paid their debt to society, and are entitled, under the law, to their release.

MS. MINIETTA: La Fond wrote a court brief challenging the detention of Andre Brigham Young, the first person to get sentenced under the new law. He argues that civil commitment is not the way to deal with repeat offenders.

JOHN LA FOND: What one ought to do with any sex offender is to announce in advance, if you commit a second or a third or fourth sex crime, we are going to hammer you and you may never see the light of day again. That's how we deal with people like Andre Young who may have committed several rapes. We do not, in effect, say, you stay with us in this psychiatric prison for the rest of your life just in case you might re-offend.

MS. MINIETTA: Public defenders Jennifer Shaw and Annie Englehart represented Young during his commitment trial. They argue that the decks were stacked against their client before he even stepped foot in the courtroom.

JENNIFER SHAW, Public Defender: The jurors come in and the first thing they hear is it's a sexually violent predator case, this person's been convicted time and time again for the same behavior, and so they see an animal. They have to. They look over and they see a rapist. They've never seen a rapist before. Now, they're seeing a rapist in the flesh.

MS. MINIETTA: Despite the opposition, prosecutors have won every case they've brought to trial.

TIM BLOOD, Deputy Prosecutor: We are talking about dangerous individuals here.

MS. MINIETTA: Tim Blood is the deputy prosecutor and has the job of proving to a jury that the men who come before them should be locked away.

TIM BLOOD: They have to find, to commit this person under the law, they have to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the person has been, No. 1, convicted of a sexually violent offense at sometime in the past, at least one sexually violent offense. Most of these offenders that are targeted under this law have actually been convicted of more than one crime and multiple crimes; No. 2, that the person has a mental abnormality or personality disorder; and No. 3, that that mental component makes a person likely, that is, more probably than not, to reoffend in a sexually violent predatory way in the future if he were at large.

MS. MINIETTA: It's not an easy case for a jury to decide since there's little direct evidence to be presented by either the defense or prosecution. Instead, the trials usually come down to a debate between experts. Alma Clark was the jury foreman in the Andre Brigham Young civil commitment trial.

ALMA CLARK, Jury Foreman: One expert would say this information shows us that, no, they would not be likely to offend, and that very same information given by the other expert would tell us just the opposite. So basically the expert testimony didn't do us a whole lot of good.

MS. MINIETTA: For Alma Clark and the rest of the jury, the decision ultimately came down to a gut feeling.

ALMA CLARK: All we could go by was what we know, what we knew to be normal as far as we're concerned. And we felt that -- we didn't feel that it was normal behavior, whether it's a mental abnormality or not, if you'd want to call it that, to go into a stranger's home and molest them, that for 12 jurors who kind of have to decide what's normal and not normal didn't seem normal to us.

MS. MINIETTA: Reaching a consensus about mental illness and sexually violent behavior eludes even professionals. Dr. James Reardon is a psychiatrist who works with mentally ill prisoners at Washington State Reformatory.

PRISONER: I was on it before I came here --

DR. JAMES REARDON: [talking to prisoner] Oh,yeah.

MS. MINIETTA: He's also the spokesman for the Washington State Psychiatric Association, which opposes the new law. The Association argues that sex offenses are a form of criminal behavior and don't necessarily stem from any kind of mental illness.

DR. JAMES REARDON, Washington State Psychiatric Association: We do not see sexual deviancy as a mental disorder or as a personality disorder. The legislature is trying to say that sexual offenses are an unusual type of criminal behavior that reflects some type of mental disorder. And we are saying, no, that criminal behavior is criminal behavior and should be treated as criminal behavior.

NORMAN MALENG: What we're saying is that these people are different. They're not the classically mentally ill and they've got to be treated as sex offenders. So in this whole area of treatment of sex offenders, if we don't have the answer today, we're going to keep trying, because the consequences are so very, very serious.

BRADLEY WARD: I want the help and that I desperately need to get going in my life. I've been in like three or four other treatment centers and they really haven't worked.

MS. MINIETTA: Bradley Ward knows he has a problem. He admits to sexually assaulting at least 20 children. He was committed to the Special Commitment Center voluntarily and is participating in weekly hour long therapy sessions. Andre Brigham Young disputes his rape convictions and refuses to participate in the treatment program. And Rolando Aguilar, who claims that his past convictions do not make him a sexual predator, is up front about his reasons for participating in the program.

ROLANDO AGUILAR: See, my reason is only being up there is to try to see if there's anything that's going to get me out. I haven't seen anything that's going to get me out, other than the court, itself.

MS. MINIETTA: David Weston is the superintendent of the Special Commitment Center.

DAVID WESTON, Special Commitment Center: The legal mandate we have is for the control, care and treatment of individuals. Treatment, certainly this kind of treatment cannot be forced against a person's will. If the person chooses not to participate, we still have a responsibility to provide for their care and control.

MS. MINIETTA: Under the provisions of the new law, inmates have the right to request an annual court review of their commitment. They must to prove to a judge that they no longer meet the criteria of a sexually violent predator. A number of residents at the Special Commitment Center, including Andre Young, have appealed their case to the Washington State Supreme Court. The court is expected to hand down a decision late this spring. Prosecutors, meanwhile, are watching impending prison releases and say they will continue to file commitment cases against anyone they feel poses a significant danger. ESSAY - GREATEST LOSS

MS. WOODRUFF: Finally tonight, essayist Jim Fisher of the Kansas City Star, with an image of a spring gone by.

MR. FISHER: Morning in Central Kansas, one rich with all that this spring season brings, new calves, growing grass, a breeze out on the South. And there in a cedar tree is something that brings joy to people hereabouts, a wooden cutout of a little girl doing what little girls should be doing, swinging, something most little girls seem to take delight in, knowing intuitively that the rhythmic portion of their gender is already set, one so different from the little boys who flit around like water bugs. Ahead for many is marriage and children and more, becoming the buttress of what becomes a family, the one who some day will push a swing for another little girl, maybe in a polka dot dress too, like the wooden cutout that swings beneath the cedar. The cutout is generally called yard art, something you see outside people's homes, but not something you see in a cemetery. The grave below is that of April Dawn Shoemaker, 18 when she died in her sleep just a year ago while away at college, 90 miles West of her. The cause was an undetected aneurysm inside her heart. Karen Buttonhoff, her mother, remembers.

KAREN BUTTONHOFF: That was one thing that April and I used to talk about was how hard it was to see her go when it come time from high school to college. And she used to tell me, now, mom, mom, you know, you've got to let go, you've got to let go. And I said, it's just hard, because I said, you know, when you're a mother, you're, you're there through thick and thin. And I never dreamed I was really going to have to let go like this.

MR. FISHER: Everybody knew April, the pretty girl so full of life, the high school homecoming queen, the smiling face who worked part-time at the convenience store, and even washed school buses to pay for her college education. The death of a teenager, it happens 56 times a day in this country, or roughly 20,000 times a year from car accidents, from AIDS, from cancer, even by their own hand, and more and more in places so alien from little Lincoln, Kansas, from guns. Still, it's not supposed to happen. Teenagers are supposed to have life as a carpet rolling out in front of them, good times to be had, work to do, mistakes to make, hearts to be broken, victories to savor. Even death in middle age, having seen at least a good part of life, seems more equitable, fair.

KAREN BUTTONHOFF: When I deal with the days of sayin' she is dead and that she won't come home ever again and that she isn't going to marry and bring her husband home and bring grandkids home for me, I don't like to dwell on those days very much. I like to think about, like I said, just, she's just away.

MR. FISHER: To deal with her pain, the Buttonhoffs joined a support group called Compassionate Friends, parents who have lost children. At the meetings, they were amazed by the numbers who came, so many children, so much loss.

MR. KING: I'm Duane King and from Tesket and my daughter, Darcy, died in 1982 from a playground accident. She was five years old. And I -- January the 6th of this year, our youngest son, Terence, died in the Marine Corps. He was 18.

MR. DRYLINKS: My name is Leo Drylinks, my wife, Caroline. In 1975, April of 1975, we lost our oldest son and youngest daughter in an accident at Lake Wilson, and then in 1985, in March, our son chose to commit suicide.

MR. FISHER: People could talk to ask, what if, and why.

PARENT: I think the greatest pain I know comes from knowing how he suffered and it will always be very difficult for me to understand why this had to happen to Joe.

MOTHER: I was like you. I was so angry. I said, God, to me, it was just like I had this -- like you could imagine this beautiful crystal bowl, I guess I could explain it that way, and I gave it to someone that I trusted, wholeheartedly, and he dropped it and he broke it, and I was so angry, and I told God that. I said, you dropped it and you broke it. You let it break.

MAN: Hopefully you get to the point that why isn't the issue that it was and I think in my case it was finally, it was forgiveness, I guess. I had -- like on our son that committed suicide, I mean, I was very hurt because he did that, you know, and I guess maybe I had to forgive him, but more important than that, I had to forgive myself.

MR. FISHER: Still there came a day when April's tombstone was placed above the grave on the Eastside of the cemetery here. For Karen, it wasn't enough.

KAREN BUTTONHOFF: I kept thinking about, I want to do something different, but I didn't know for sure what I wanted to do. I drove by Don Panzer's one day and I seen the yard hard that he makes and I seen the little girl swinging from the tree, or, well, he had it hanging on his porch, and so I told myself, that's what I wanted. When I think of a little girl in a swing, I just think of April and I think of the laughs we had. I can think of the times pushing her in a swing. Life is very precious and the things that I thought used to be important don't mean anything anymore, because I have, I have lost the most important thing in my life. And you can't buy life.

MR. FISHER: Has it only been a year? Where once there was a laughing, bubbly youngster is there now only the chirping of the birds, the silence of a Kansas cemetery? But, look, what's that beneath the cedar tree? Just polka dots painted on some wood, or more, a life recalled, a life still celebrated? I'm Jim Fisher. RECAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Again, the main stories of this Thursday, the House of Representatives voted to lift the ban on using fetal tissue for transplant research, but not by a large enough margin to override an expected Presidential veto. The Education Department released a report concluding that U.S. children do not read enough at school or at home and spend too much time watching television. 25 percent of fourth graders surveyed watched at least six hours a day. The report also found that children whose parents read a lot at home had the highest reading proficiency. Good night, Jim.

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