The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. In the headlines this first day of April, President Duarte claimed a sweeping victory in El Salvador's National Assembly elections. Toronto, Canada, was crippled by threats from Armenian terrorists. Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone said new trade concessions to the United States are coming. And there was a settlement in the lastest strike threat at Pan Am Airways. Robin?

MacNEIL: Here's what you'll find on the NewsHour tonight after the news summary. A focus section on Armenian terrorism with a security expert in Toronto, and an Armenian and a Turk. Next, a documentary look at the problem of the Sudan and its relations with the United States. We have an interview with Jimmy Carter about prospects for peace in the Middle East, and two essayists look at farm problems with very different eyes. News Summary

MacNEIL: Thousands of police patrolled the Toronto subway system after a bomb threat from an Armenian extremist group. The group called itself the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Our Homeland. They threatened to bomb the subway system in Canada's largest city today unless authorities released three men charged after an attack on the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa last month. In that attack three gunmen killed a security guard, blew up the embassy door with explosives and held 11 people hostage for four hours before surrendering. Here's a report from Toronto by Vickie Russell of the CBC.

VICKIE RUSSELL, CBC [voice-over]: Toronto's transit system looked like an armed camp today. Police were all over the system, searching cars, making sure garbage cans were sealed and washroom doors locked. They were on the alert, looking for anything suspicious. What they found, though, were many false alarms. At this station, for instance, they spotted an unusual package, so they blocked off traffic and exploded it.

OFFICIAL: One, two, three!

RUSSELL [voice-over]: Turns out it was just a harmless alarm clock and some wires. Then, in this downtown bus stop police eyed an abandoned suitcase. They couldn't figure out what was in it, so to play it safe they wired it and blew it up. Many Torontonians were afraid of a bomb. So many, in fact, that there were 35 fewer people who took public transit this morning. Some subway stops were virtually deserted. More people decided it was safer to drive to work. That meant clogged streets. But there were people riding the trains, and they did so for many reasons. Although the morning rush hour went smoothly, police are not relaxing. They'll continue to watch until late tonight.

MacNEIL: In our lead focus section after this news summary we examine the growing use of terrorism by Armenian extremists with a Canadian security expert who has investigated them and with Armenian and Turkish views of the motives behind the violence. Jim?

LEHRER: There were more air raids on Teheran today. Iraqi spokesmen in Baghdad said there were two attacks within seven hours on the Iranian capital city. Iranian officials later confirmed both raids and said 15 people died and 121 others were wounded. Iraq also said its planes hit a large naval target, which in their parlance usually means a super oil tanker near Iran's Kharg Island oil terminal. There was no further confirmation of that attack.

In Lebanon the body of one of several kidnapped Westerners was found. He was a Dutch priest who disappeared three weeks ago in the Bekaa Valley. His body was found in a ravine near where he was last seen. Yesterday a French Embassy employee was released by her kidnappers. The woman was seized March 22nd. There were no details of her release. Also, a British oil company executive was released on Saturday after being held by other kidnappers for two weeks.

MacNEIL: In El Salvador the party of President Jose Napoleon Duarte claimed victory today in yesterday's election to the National Assembly. Based on their own poll-watching, Duarte's Christian Democrats said they expected to win 33 of the 60 seats, giving them a working majority in the Assembly. The claim was supported by exit polling by the Spanish International network but disputed by the right-wing coalition led by Roberto D'Aubuisson. It claimed it had defeated Duarte by a margin of two to one. There will be no official figures until tomorrow.

In Bhopal, India, there was panic in the slum areas outside the Union Carbide factory today when residents smelled leaking gas. The United News of India said some people fled from the area but there were no reports of casualties. Last December a leak of methyl isocyanate gas killed more than 2,000 people in Bhopal. Union Carbide in the United States said it had no information on today's reported leak.

LEHRER: The president of the Sudan called on the President of the United States today and came away with what he wanted, the release of some badly needed aid funds for his financially troubled, drought-stricken African nation. President Nimeiri and President Reagan agreed on $67 million now with more to come. President Nimeiri expressed his gratitude afterward outside the White House.

GAAFAR NIMEIRI, President of the Sudan: I have spoken with President Reagan about our needs in all fields and, with the generosity typical of the American people, he assured me that this country will do what it can to help the Sudan in Africa and all the refugees. So to all Americans, on behalf of all those who are starving and suffering in Africa, I say thank you and may God continue to shower his blessing upon you.

LEHRER: Later in the program we will have a documentary look at President Nimeiri's problems back home in the Sudan. Those problems grew today in fact with the decision of several other professional unions to join a one-day general strike called by doctors to protest Nimeiri's rule.

Another African leader, Samuel K. Doe, head of state in Liberia, said today he barely escaped an assassination attempt led by the deputy commander of his presidential guard. According to Liberia's news agency, Doe said gunshots hit his cap and his jeep but missed him. Doe was a sergeant major in the Liberian army who seized power in a coup five years ago.

MacNEIL: In economic news today the White House said that two envoys the President sent toJapan over the weekend had secured new commitments on trade. Spokesman Larry Speakes said the President welcomed this but details of the commitments wouldn't be released until he'd evaluated them. The administration is pressing Japan to open up markets to U.S. goods, specifically telecommunications, forestry products, medical equipment and electronics.

The Commerce Department said that new orders received by U.S. factories fell 0.2 in February. It was the seventh decline in 11 months and reversed a similar increase in January. The Commerce Department said slower U.S. economic growth and the impact of imports were responsible.

In Glenwood, Minnesota, today about 1,000 farmers, union members and civil rights leaders, some bearing crosses, gathered at a rally to protest the foreclosures of local farms. They heard the Reverend Jesse Jackson urge farmers to unite with city groups to get Washington to improve farm prices and stop foreclosures.

Another strike on Pan American Airways was averted today when negotiators for 6,000 flight attendants reached a tentative contract settlement. Pan Am has just weathered a three-week strike by ground staff.

LEHRER: And finally in the news of the day, a big health and business story. The nation's largest private hospital corporation and the largest health care supply company are merging. The Hospital Corporation of America and the American Hospital Supply Corporation will become one in June. It will be accomplished through a stock swap, and the end result will be a health care company with assets totalling $7 billion. Armenian Terrorism

MacNEIL: For our first focus segment tonight we look at the threat by Armenian terrorists to set off bombs in the Toronto subway system. The threat was made last week by an organization known as the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Our Homeland. It demanded the release of three Armenians arrested on March 12th when they took over the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa, shooting a guard in the process. The embassy siege ended peacefully when the gunmen surrendered. In the last few years Armenian terrorism has become a major threat to peace in Western countries, most of it directed at Turkish diplomats. The anger that fuels it stems from events that began in 1915. Czarist Russia invaded the Turkish empire, a World War I ally of Germany. Much of the fighting took place in Turkey's eastern provinces, the center of Armenian civilization. Worried about subversion, the Turks ordered the deportation of all Armenians and organized forced marches to Syria. It's estimated that half the Armenian population, anywhere from 600,000 to 1.5 million Armenians, were killed. Armenia, which had only briefly existed as an independent nation in the 20th century, was engulfed by the Soviet Union and Turkey, and Armenian survivors were scattered. Now, 70 years later, many Armenians claim they were victims of the century's first genocide, a charge Turkey denies. The charge and the denial has in the past decade sparked a wave of Armenian terrorism against Turkish targets in the United States, Europe and now Canada.

We begin tonight with an expert on the Armenian terrorist movement. He is Peter Schoniker, a criminal lawyer who has worked with police forces throughout Canada on anti-terrorist techniques and advised Toronto police on the Armenian bomb threat there. He joins us tonight from Toronto.

Mr. Schoniker, in view of what happened today, do you think this was a hoax?

PETER SCHONIKER: Oh, no. It's no hoax. Any threat made by this Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Our Homeland or the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, as they've been known in the past, is no joke. We take it very seriously and so do the police forces up here. As you know, this terrorist organization is probably the most dangerous terrorist organization in the world. In 87 of the cases where they perpetrate an active terror, people die. When you contrast that with all other terrorist organizations in the world where there is only a 14 chance of death, we realize how dangerous these people are. We have no doubt that the threat that was made was made by ASALA and as such has to be dealt with with the utmost of caution.

MacNEIL: I see. The mere fact that no bomb was found today -- no serious bomb; there were those two, one with a fake bomb -- that does not mean that it was not a serious threat in your view? Or has to be taken as a serious threat?

Mr. SCHONIKER: No, it does not because the security program that was put into place, of course, has been in planning since the communique was first received last Tuesday, and because the security program has been so intensive, integrating the federal police force up here, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, with the efforts of the Ontario provincial police force and, of course, probably most importantly, the metropolitan Toronto police force, we don't know if the massive security program that has been implemented has indeed deterred the terrorists from carrying out what they had threatened to do.

MacNEIL: Let me just get a bit of background from you on these terrorists. How well organized are they?

Mr. SCHONIKER: They are a fairly well-organized terrorist organization. They are not as well organized as, let's say, the Irish are --

MacNEIL: The Republican Army?

Mr. SCHONIKER: Yes, the IRA. Or they're less organized than the Basques in Spain, less organized than the Red Army faction that operates out of West Germany and now in France. They are less organized than some of the South American terrorist agencies -- organizations, but they are a very deadly group of terrorists.

MacNEIL: How many are there in Canada and the United States, and are they linked?

Mr. SCHONIKER: It's very difficult to say how many there are. We don't know for sure. We do know one thing. There are connections between Canada and the United States. We had an attempted murder of the Turkish charge d'affairs in 1982 up here, a man by the name of Kani Gungor. The four people who were charged in that case, two of those people had indeed resided in Los Angeles and there were numerous telephone conversations lawfully intercepted by both the American authorities and the Canadian authorities between those two people and the two accused here in Canada. Those four people were all charged; three of them are now standing trial for the attempted murder of Kani Gungor.

MacNEIL: Do you know anything about where they get support?

Mr. SCHONIKER: It's very difficult to say. We know that they're trained in the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen or South Yemen. We know they're also trained in Libya under the guiding eye of Muammar Qaddafi. We know most importantly that they're trained by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and by the Japanese Red Army in those two centers. Those two organizations are known for the intensive training given to all terrorist organizations around the world. As to their financial assistance, we can't say with any degree of certainty. I think it's anyone's guess. Many speculate that the Soviet Union is behind most terrorist organizations seeking to overthrow Western countries, and I can't say one way or the other whether I agree or disagree with that because I have no evidence to indicate either.

MacNEIL: Well, what are the goals of their terrorism?

Mr. SCHONIKER: Well, the goals of the two Armenian organizations, the two which are the Armenian Revolutionary Army and then the Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia, are simply to have the Turkish government recognize that in 1915 there was an active genocide, and, secondly, to give either reparative payments andfior the return of a certain portion of what was Armenia to the Armenians living today. That seems to be the goal, and it seems to be as straightforward as that. Of course, the Turkish in no way, shape or form are considering capitulation to any of those demands.

MacNEIL: Have Western governments, to your knowledge, quietly said to the Turks, "You could stop some of this violence if you would fully ventilate teh events of 1915?"

Mr. SCHONIKER: It's difficult for me to answer that question. I don't know for a fact, and I can tell you that I don't know about our government up here. I do know that at the United Nations during the '50s, '60s and particularly in the late '70s and early '80s the Armenians lobbied quite strongly for support of the United Nations to put pressure on the Turkish government to rectify that harm which they felt had been done to them. The United Nations did not support the Armenian effort, and that's the only official advance that has been made by the Armenian people that I know of, and of course it has been rejected many times by the United Nations.

MacNEIL: To come back to the terrorism, why, if that is their goal, what would they have in common with the people in Yemen and the Japanese Red Army and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine?

Mr. SCHONIKER: Well, South Yemen and Libya are simply havens for terrorists. That's why they're trained there. The people of those two countries have nothing in common with the various terrorist organizations that are trained there, other than that they are havens for terrorists. As far as the other two organizations that we're speaking of, the Japanese Red Army and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, it's quite simple. Those two terrorist organizations are the most highly specialized in terms of perpetrating acts of terror in the world, and they train other less skillful terrorist organizations in assassinations, in bombings and in transit attacks and in massive, to our knowledge these days, in massive nuclear attacks.

MacNEIL: Have Western police in Canada and elsewhere found any effective way of penetrating or dealing with these terrorists?

Mr. SCHONIKER: To a certain extent the police up here have had some success with intelligence gathering. The intelligence gathering system is massive up here now with respect to the Armenian terrorist organizations, and it is becoming more and more effective. In the last five days it has been shown to be effective as there were many individuals who had been targeted as potential ASALA members, and because of that they were able to be isolated and surveilled and their movements were kept to a minimum, and consequently possibly preventing them from perpetrating any acts of terror. Secondly, the major step that's been taken is strict target hardening with the potential targets, such as the embassy in Ottawa which, up until March the 12th when it was attacked by the three terrorists, had just been protected by a single Pinkerton guard who had 34 hours of training in crowd control.

MacNEIL: I see. Well, Mr. Schoniker, thank you very much.

Mr. SCHONIKER: It's been a pleasure.

MacNEIL: Jim?

LEHRER: For more on the dispute between Armenians and Turks, Ross Vartian, executive director of the Armenian Assembly of America and Ali Sevin, vice president of the Assembly of Turkish-American Associations. Mr. Vartian, do you support the terrorism?

ROSS VARTIAN: No, we do not. The Armenian-American community as well as our organization condemns it. We don't believe it serves a constructive purpose and it certainly will not solve the problem that exists between the Armenian people and the Turkish government. The Armenian-American community has been, for the past 70 years, seeking peaceful political solutions to the issue, and I believe as the expert indicated, the support does not come from the Armenian-American community nor any other established Armenian community.

LEHRER: Do you support the goals of the terrorists as outlined?

Mr. VARTIAN: The goals of the terrorists in terms of recognition by the Turkish government that a prior government, the Ottoman government, committed a crime of genocide, most definitely. But the means obviously we do not support.

LEHRER: What about the second part of that, the restoration of land in Armenia, the old Armenia restored to present-day Armenians?

Mr. VARTIAN: The balance of the issue will have to be resolved through direct dialogue between the Armenian community and the Turkish government. But that dialogue cannot begin until such time as the genocide is recognized.

LEHRER: Is the genocide going to ever be recognized as genocide, Mr. Sevin?

ALI SEVIN: Of course the Turkish government must speak for itself. Just speaking as a Turkish-American, I would say that it would be very, very difficult for the Turkish government to recognize something which is being debated by reputable historians as not being a genocide at all. In fact, the opening remarks used like 600,000 to 1.5 million Armenians were killed, and the latest authoritative work on that is by Justin McCarthy of -- he's a demographer from Louisville, Kentucky, University of St. Louis. His book, a study of the Anatolian populations of that era, says there could not have been more than 600,000 Armenians in a terrible time of conflict where the Armenian uprising within the Ottoman Empire, according to Armenian historians, was able to raise 100,000 people under arms to fight alongside the Russians, and it was an insurrection within the ranks. So, according to Justin McCarthy, there was a terrible time of massacres on both sides where the Muslim population was decimated by 2.5 million, whereas no more than 600,000 Armenians could have possibly been -- could have possibly perished, according to Justin McCarthy.

LEHRER: So there was no genocide -- so there was no --

Mr. SEVIN: Now, he concludes that that doesn't look like genocide to him.

LEHRER: Well, what do you conclude as a Turkish-American?

Mr. SEVIN: That's definitely our conclusion because, as we broaden our research we find evidence that just to the contrary, the Turkish government at the time tried to minimize harm to its Armenian population. There was, in fact, movement of Armenian populations from the affected areas to --

LEHRER: Well, look, let me ask you -- clearly we're not going to be able to resolve that thing tonight, but let me ask you this question, both of you, beginning with you, Mr. Vartian. How does this ever get resolved? If it can't be resolved on the MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour, when and where does it get resolved?

Mr. VARTIAN: It's going to be resolved when the Turkish government makes a new assessment on the basis of the entire Western world recognizing something which occurred and joining with the Western world in that recognition. This is not a creation of the Armenian community, the Armenian genocide. The Armenian genocide was recognized as it was occurring in full public view by the United States in a leading role and by Turkey's friends and foes alike during World War I. As to the allegation that it was done as a war measure, there were persecutions prior to that, which of course have been equally documented. There is just too much documentation to walk away from throughout the Western world, and the expectation that the Armenian community is going to forget how it got dispersed around the world is just as unrealistic perhaps. It just is not going to happen. So the Armenian community simply cannot back off the most serious event in its historical life. And the Turkish government is being expected to join the rest of the Western world in recognizing something which occurred in a prior regime, in a prior government and get it over with.

LEHRER: And all you're asking is the Turkish government to say it was genocide and 600,000 Armenians died 70 years ago? Is that it?

Mr. VARTIAN: At this stage the Armenian-American community isn't even asking for that. What has brought this all to the front in the United States at least is Armenian genocide resolutions, recognition by the United States, reaffirmation of their prior recognition of the event. And as opposed to that, we have a Turkish government-inspired campaign of denial which is really quite extraordinary. That is the issue for Armenian-Americans. The Armenian-Americans are justifiably proud of what the United States did to help try and prevent the genocide and to aid those who survived. And so from an American perspective we're quite interested in that period of history. And then of course from an Armenian perspective, how can we learn to prevent genocide in the future if we don't study the protypical example of this century? It's those two perspectives.

LEHRER: Mr. Sevin?

Mr. SEVIN: It's interesting that the Armenian community did not use the word genocide until about the '70s, where these terrorist acts began, 1973. Before that it was always "massacres". And I guess the Turkish government is recognizing that there was a terrible time of massacres from both sides. It was not as if the Turkish government woke up one morning and said, "We're going to slaughter all the Armenians."

LEHRER: Is that your position that that's what happened, that there was an overt decision made by the Turkish government to slaughter the Armenians?

Mr. VARTIAN: Yes, and there's documentation to that effect.

LEHRER: You say that didn't happen?

Mr. SEVIN: There is no documentation. There are three pieces of documentation which we're studying very, very carefully and they are proving to be falsifications during a time of intense propaganda. You have to put it in context at the time of the First World War. The Turks in the eyes of the European community were looked upon as if they were some kind of strange animal that's coming, a threat to the Christian world and all of that. And the Turks, the Ottoman Turks, were at war with the Western powers and there was a lot of propaganda going back and forth to raise money in the Western world. So there was a lot of falsifications of facts.

LEHRER: From your perspective, then, from the Turkish-American perspective, what is the solution to this?

Mr. SEVIN: I think we view the Armenian position, and I was glad to hear Mr. Vartian to say that the community does not support terrorism. While he says that, today in the Armenian newspaper, Asperez(?) there was an announcement that there is a committee formed in Canada to raise funds to defend the terrorists. Now, it's being done right now.

LEHRER: And that newspaper is the newspaper of your organization, Mr. Vartian?

Mr. VARTIAN: No, it's not.

LEHRER: It's not?

Mr. SEVIN: It's one of the Armenian newspapers. But if past is prologue, the same kind of thing happened in California where an Armenian terrorist was being tried, and the Armenian community there, through the radio programs, through the newspapers, calling these terrorists freedom fighters, raised money, presumably based on tax-free donations from American citizens. And we sort of resent that.

LEHRER: Should he resent that?

Mr. VARTIAN: I don't think he should resent a legal defense fund. I think anyone is entitled to a legal defense. Obviously the funds are being raised to provide legal counsel to an individual accused of a crime. If that person is prosecuted and a verdict is guilty, then that person should serve whatever time the crime requires.

LEHRER: So, gentlemen, to conclude what the two of you are saying, you've laid out what you want the Turkish government to do. You say the Turkish government will never do that because it's not justified. So the end result is going to be probably more terrorism, right?

Mr. SEVIN: The terrorists should not have the media coverage that they do because that's what they want. The more we give them coverage the more we'll have terrorism.

LEHRER: Are they helping or hurting your cause, Mr. Vartian?

Mr. VARTIAN: They're hurting it in terms of a peaceful alternative, in terms of a dialogue with the Turkish government, in terms of the Turkish government coming to a realization that the Western world is not going to back off on an historical reality. It does cause difficulty.

LEHRER: Gentlemen, thank you both very much.

Mr. VARTIAN: You're welcome.

Mr. SEVIN: Thank you.

LEHRER: Robin?

MacNEIL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a documentary look at the troubles of the Sudan and an interview with former President Jimmy Carter about the Middle East and two personal essays giving very different views of the plight of American farmers. The Sudan: Friend in Trouble

LEHRER: President Nimeiri of the Sudan, today's caller at the White House, is a leader with problems. There's the drought, a staggeringly high foreign debt, food riots and calls for a general strike and his ouster, among other things. President Nimeiri is a friend of the United States. Vice President Bush even paid a call on him in the Sudan last month as a prelude to today's meeting with President Reagan, which did result in the result of $67 million U.S. aid dollars. But the rest may not be that easy. Nimeiri of the Sudan, the subject of this focus documentary report by Gavin Hewitt of the BBC.

GAVIN HEWITT, BBC [voice-over]: President Gaafar Mohammed Nimeiri is one of Africa's survivors. He's ruled Sudan for 16 years, beating off 12 attempted coups. Nimeiri is a political maverick who evokes strong passions. He's a former communist who now espouses Muslim fundamentalism. Today he's beset by troubles: opposition to amputations and floggings, economic collapse, famine and civil war. His saving grace, as viewed from Washington, is that he's fervently pro-Western.

Vice Pres. GEORGE BUSH [March 1985]: Sudan is an important friend of the United States of America. We have many common interests. Sudan is a key country in a volatile region. Its health, its development, its stability are important to the region and thus to us.

HEWITT [voice-over]: To the Americans Sudan's importance is determined as much by its neighbors as by its geographical position. It is seen as guarding the back door of Egypt, a country central to stability in the region. To the Northwest is Colonel Qaddafi's Libya while to the east lies the Marxist state of Ethiopia. Sudan in its foreign policy has been stridently anti-communist. There are in Sudan no platforms for opposition. This is the People's Assembly. Although the majority of the 153 members are elected, they all belong to one party. When in July last year a majority of members rejected the president's proposal, bringing the Constitution into line with Islamic law, the speaker suspended the Assembly.

Frustration with growing economic shortages cannot so easily be repressed. It is difficult to show the true length of this line of taxis queuing for petrol. Taxi drivers are rationed to two gallons every two days. And to ensure they receive their meager allocation, every other night is spent sleeping in the queues. Ordinary drivers are allowed four gallons a week. Their resentment can only be glimpsed, for filming of petrol queues is officially discouraged. This is but the most striking example of an economy close to collapse. In recent weeks there have been riots over price increases, and with the African drought in its fourth year there is a serious food crisis in the making.

On the outskirts of the city of Omeurman across the Nile from the capital Khartoum, are thousands of tents spread out against the desert. These are the migrants from the drought that has consumed western Sudan. They have arrived hungry at the gates of a capital already suffering shortages. An estimated one million Sudanese are on the move in search of food. In their numbers they pose a risk President Nimeiri can ill afford. This was the government's solution. Last month 40,000 migrants were put in government trucks and taken back to their desert villages. Under the slogan of "the glorious return" they were promised that food, water and medical care awaited them. At the village of Rattaba(?) two days' drive from Khartoum, the last of those who had been sent back by the government arrive home to a somber embrace from the village chief. Over half the 1,500 people in this village had at one time been camping outside the capital.

Abdul Hassan(?) is the area doctor. Although he has no medicines he continues his rounds. The villagers had been without food for a week. They were living on water. This child was among those trucked back from Omdurman. The doctor told us that 1,000 people had already died in the area from measles, pneumonia and malnutrition. One of the old men told us "You can't disobey the government. When they tell you to go, you go." But the talk here was of returning to the cities, whatever the consequence. Tensions are already apparent. The political danger for President Nimeiri is what will happen when word gets out that there's not enough food in the villages?

This is what stands between the government and unrest -- massive American food aid. It is also what stands between the people and certain famine. This year the United States will give Sudan 800,000 tons of food. Even that is not enough. Sudan's internal food crisis has been compounded by the arrival of 1.5 million refugees from abroad, the majority of them from Ethiopia. Vice President Bush's visit was intended to keep the African famine in the headlines. He was at pains to credit the Sudanese for their generosity in playing host to thousands of foreigners while so many of their own people were suffering.

Vice Pres. BUSH: Dedicted work, my heavens. What you do for mankind!

HEWITT [voice-over]: The fears for the future remain. What if the rains fail again? What is there's a sudden influx of new refugees? These were all concerns echoed by the Vice President. But in private the Americans were equally worried about the political health of their unpredictable ally. President Nimeiri waits in the palace for the visit's political payoff. Mr. Bush did not disappoint.

Pres. NIMEIRI: Oh, Mr. Vice President, how are you?

Vice Pres. BUSH: Nice to see you, sir.

HEWITT [voice-over]: Washington's approval sealed with an embrace. In return, President Nimeiri had to listen to a litany of American concerns -- Islamic law, economic collapse and, in particular, Sudan's growing civil war. Sudan's most intractable problem is the division between north and south. The north, which accounts for 65 of the population, is Arab, while the south is decidedly African. Many of the Africans are Christian. Nothing has fueled their suspicions of the government more than the introduction of Islamic law. Last year the Catholic bishops wrote to the President saying that it reduced non-Muslims to second-class citizens without rights and without freedom.

Throughout the south government troops have to travel in convoy. In the past six months hundreds have been killed. But it's a war neither side can win. The troops garrison the towns while large swathes of the bush belong to the guerrillas. They are a shadowy group called the Sudanese People's Liberation Army. These are the only pictures of the SPLA, taken by the guerrillas themselves when they released a European hostage and her child. They have between 10- and 12,000 men supplied and trained by neighboring Ethiopia. The SPLA are fighting to overthrow Nimeiri and create what they describe as a democratic united Sudan. In this they have been handed a powerful card, for here in territory which has almost become a no-go area for the government, the American company Chevron has found sizeable deposits of oil.

NARRATOR, Chevron film: In a speech to his people the president emphasized not only the value of oil but the importance of national unity and of the Sudan's alliance with Chevron.

HEWITT [voice-over]: These were the sunny days of 1980, when oil production started. Today the dream of national unity lies in tatters. The oil fields are closed, the area controlled by rebels. The crisis in the south was the one touchy subject on which George Bush chose to speak out publicly by recalling America's own experience of a north-south civil war.

Vice Pres. BUSH: And so as an American who was born in our North and first went to work in the oil fields of our South, I urge you to take up the openings for dialogue that are on the table, to reconcile your differences, to develop your resources -- in this instance, your oil -- as we did ours, and to allow all the people of this country full participation in the building of the greatness of Sudan.

HEWITT [voice-over]: Beneath the bonhomie the Americans are deeply troubled by the loss of the oil fields. They're also worried at Marxist backing for the rebels and have told Nimeiri to negotiate before it's too late. Nimeiri, heeding American prompting, recently offered the rebels a ceasefire. Not surprisingly, it was rejected. So the United States faces a classic dilemma. Should they stick with Nimeiri and risk falling with him, or should they back change? For the moment they're backing Nimeiri. Prescription for Peace: Jimmy Carter Interview

MacNEIL: We turn now to a newsmaker interview with former President Jimmy Carter, whose new book on Middle East politics, The Blood of Abraham, was published today. Since leaving the White House Mr. Carter has maintained a strong interest in the politics of the Middle East, where he achieved what many consider his single greatest success as president, the Camp David accords he negotiated with Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin of Israel. A recently completed study by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut ranked the Camp David agreements as the most successful U.S. foreign policy initiative in recent years. Mr. President, welcome.

JIMMY CARTER: Thank you.

MacNEIL: To the average American hearing the daily reports of violence and almost despair from many parts of the Middle East, it must seem -- the situations there must seem very far beyond any effective American intervention. Do you agree?

Pres. CARTER: No. We've completely lost our presence and our influence in the area north of Israel, Lebanon and Syria, and we've been replaced there by the Syrian influence and indirectly with the Soviets. This was a result of our misadventure in Lebanon. But I think that in the southern part of that line, that is, Israel, the occupied territories, Jordan, Egypt, we still have a major role to play. And although it would be foolish to be optimistic about the prospects for peace in the Middle East, there are two factors that are very encouraging. One is that the people themselves want peace even in Syria. When I'm on the streets in Syria there's a great outpouring of people thanking me for progress toward peace, even though Assad and the government and the official news media condemn me as one of the authors of the notorious Camp David accords. And I think that another thing that's very important is that there's a great common ground that exists among the major documents that have been officially accepted by the different governments involved. U.N. Resolution 242, the Camp David accords, the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, President Reagan's statement of September, 1982, the response by all the Arab leaders at Fez and Morocco in the same months September '82, and, even more recently, the agreement that was reached beween the Jordanians and the Palestinians. So there is a hope, I think, that we can bring peace to the Middle East.

MacNEIL: That common ground does not yet extend, though, to a recognition, an open, overt, explicit recognition of Israel's right to exist by the Palestine Liberation Organization and a number of Arab states, does it?

Pres. CARTER: That's right. There is a long way to go. Israel has not yet tried to define its own permanent borders, and when you ask moderate Arabs even, you recognize Israel, the question is, which Israel? Is it the Israel that includes part of southern Lebanon, the Golan Heights, or the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, or is it the Israel of the '67 border? So that's a decision that has to be made. Secondly, what's going to be done about the Palestinian question? Third, who is going to negotiate with Israel and under what framework or umbrella? And obviously there's a lot of dispute about this. Also, there's a limit to what any particular leader in the Middle East can do with the political constraints on them. How far can they go without an adequate response from their adversaries? How far can they go without alienating their own basic supporters and, in effect, the Arab brotherhood? These are questions that also have to be answered, and I think that when the -- when any element in the Middle East makes a tentative step forward, that there has to be a catalyst or coalition or a mediator who can join them as a partner to take the next step. And in the past this has always been the United States. Right now the United States' role I would say is uncertain at best.

MacNEIL: Just to go back a moment, one of the grounds you expressed for hope is that all the people want peace. But don't all people everywhere want peace and it's people who are leading them or politically manipulating them or inspiring them or defining what peace is who are really going to have the say?

Pres. CARTER: That's right. Sadat said --

MacNEIL: I mean, the people on the streets of Damascus who cheer you as a peacemaker aren't going to have the say in what Syria does.

Pres. CARTER: That's exactly right, and this is a point that Sadat often made. He is the one that I heard say many times the people want peace; it's the leaders who are the obstacle. I made the same statement when I made a speech to the Knesset in the spring of 1979 when we were putting together the final stages of the Israeli-Egyptian treaty. But I think that's accurate to say that there is an overall -- that's an encouraging factor but it is obviously a factor that's not adequate.

MacNEIL: Let's come back to a point about the catalyst. Jordan and Yasir Arafat, head of one big faction of the PLO, recently got together. Then Egypt's Mubarak came here and said to the United States, "Why don't you entertain a delegation of the Jordanians and the PLO before there are peace talks with Israel?" The Reagan administration first appeared to be saying no, then it seemed to be saying it would consider it. Now, what do you think differently Mr. Reagan should have done to become the catalyst in that situation?

Pres. CARTER: I presume that the final answer has not been forthcoming from the White House, and my hope is that the Reagan administration would take advantage of this potential opening and move to meet with such a delegation. The Camp David accords, as a matter of fact, prescribe that in future negotiations you not only have a separate Palestinian delegation from the West Bank and Gaza, but that within the Jordanian delegation and within the Egyptian delegation there shall be Palestinians. And there was a clear understanding at Camp David that the credentials of these Palestinians would not be examined by the Israelis. In other words, that some of them might very well be PLO members if they didn't come officially as --

MacNEIL: But they just wouldn't be wearing big badges?

Pres. CARTER: That's exactly right.

MacNEIL: Well, does that mean that it's time -- you think that the United States should drop the precondition of the PLO renouncing its struggle against Israel, recognizing, overtly recognizing Israel's right to exist, that the United States should drop that precondition before recognizing or dealing with the PLO itself?

Pres. CARTER: No, the commitment is that we will not officially recognize nor negotiate with the PLO unless they accept Israel's right to exist and endorse U.N. Resolution 242. I don't think we ought to officially recognize them as a separate political entity or negotiate with them, but that doesn't preclude us having conversations to explore what they really mean by this Jordanian-Palestinian agreement. We have had dealings with the PLO in the past. For instance, when our hostages were first taken in Iran, we asked the PLO leaders, including Arafat himself, to intercede with Khomeini to protect our hostages from injury and death. When President Reagan was faced with withdrawing a lot of American citizens from Lebanon in 1982, he also got the PLO to help get those Americans out safely. So I think that this is a possibility for the future without violating any agreement, without any official recognition.

MacNEIL: And yet, when your U.N. ambassador, Andrew Young, sat down with the PLO it caused a tremendous political furor here.

Pres. CARTER: Well, sometimes you have to face political furor. I think in this recent agreement that you describe between Hussein and Arafat --

MacNEIL: Excuse me interrupting again.

Pres. CARTER: Sure.

MacNEIL: Are you suggesting by that that Andrew Young in fact did that with your knowledge and approval at that time?

Pres. CARTER: No, Andy Young at that time was the president of the U.N. Security Council, which was a rotating position every month. And the PLO is a very major entity within the United Nations, and Andy Young didn't meet with them to negotiate concerning the Middle East; he met with them in his official capacity. I think it was perfectly legitimate. But anyway, within this Jordanian-Palestinian agreement there are three interesting potential elements. First of all, a willingness to negotiate, which implies a recognition of Israel; a statement that all the U.N. resolutions can be acceptable by the Palestinians, which includes U.N. Resolution 242; and, third, a clear statement they would consider a confederation with Jordan instead of the long-standing demand that only an independent Palestinian state would be acceptable. How much substance there is to these three points, nobody yet knows. And that's where I think we could explore further to see what is meant by this proposal.

MacNEIL: May I nally ask you this? In a review of your book in The Washington Post today it suggests that you were soured, to use the word, by Mr. Begin's position on the West Bank settlements, Israel's right to continue settling the West Bank, and that it has changed your view and that since then you've been more critical of Israel's position, more favorable to the Arab position. Is there any truth in that, that there's a legacy from Camp David that has swung you more favorably towards the Arab position in this?

Pres. CARTER: No. When we came out from Camp David I was disappointed with some of Begin's subsequent statements and also the fact that he very quickly began to build settlements in the occupied territories, contrary to what I consider his promise to me. But after that occurred, three months later, when I nally went to Cairo, to Alexandria and also to Jerusalem to conclude the final terms of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty -- and that shows that I was not embittered by Camp David and that I was able to treat that complicated interrelationship fairly. And I think it's fair to say too that Begin was practically euphoric in his acceptance of a treaty. Anyone who attended the signing ceremonies and the ceremonies thereafter would agree that there was a great and genuine degree of friendship, mutual gratitude, mutual trust that existed among me, Sadat and Begin.

MacNEIL: Mr. President, I have to leave it there. Thank you very much.

Pres. CARTER: I've enjoyed it. Thank you.

MacNEIL: Jim? The American Farm: On Borrowed Time

LEHRER: We close tonight with back-to-back essays by two good men who see the same question differently. The question is a familiar one to anyone who has been paying attention to the news the last few weeks at least. Many farmers in this country are angry over the trouble they are in right now. The question is, who in Washington, if anybody, should do what, if anything, about it? Here is essay answer number one from novelist Douglas Unger, author of Leaving the Land, among other things.

DOUGLAS UNGER, essayist: American farmers are right now facing their worst crisis since the Depression. The Reagan administration wants to cut the monstrous budget deficit it has caused by overspending on defense combined with the tax reduction of '81. The President is saying that if family farmers have to go out of business for this short-term goal, then so be it. But what social price are we going to pay in the long term in order to cut a few dollars now?

We've heard the cold rhetoric of David Stockman. The administration is using the newspeak ideal it calls "the free market" to justify the loss of as many as 200,000 farms in the near future. This situation isn't the farmer's fault. He didn't bring low prices and high interest rates on himself, and now that he needs help the most our government is turning its back. The President wants to get the government out of farming, to cut off aid and to consider farm markets free in world trading that is anything but free.

Our farmers rely on foreign sales, but it's a rigged market. Japan restricts grain imports. It heavily subsidizes the domestic production of rice, a policy it believes in for cultural reasons. The Common Market favors European farm products over ours. Argentina, Brazil and other nations support grain sales. With this kind of subsidized competition, now is not the time for our government to get out of farming.

The administration says that farming is a business like any other business, but that's not true. Farming is a part of our culture as much as a business, and the administration's crash program of yanking subsidies out from under farmers will destabilize small-town America.

This is Newell, South Dakota, population about 300, a town near where my own fa,mily used to farm. It's a small example of the hundreds of towns in the Midwest that may be marked for extinction by Reagan administration free market proposals. One out of every five farms in this region is in danger of failing. The center of town shows the effects of hard times. The wool exchange, the place where my family sold its harvest, is now abandoned. There used to be a furniture store here, also closed. The implement dealership is threatened. If it goes under, it's a 30-mile drive to the nearest tractor parts. Faces here show a harvest of pain. Where can farmers go if they're pushed off their land? What are the people who live here supposed to do?

If the President has his way, the bigger farms will survive. They will be able to out-compete small farms for credit in a market of commercial banks that unfairly favors bigness. This will happen even when hard evidence shows that large-scale farming is an ecological problem on its way to becoming a catastrophe.

To base a farm economy on free markets alone encourages careless farming, big and small. Consider soil erosion. Topsoil is a fragile ecology, the precious few feet of loose dirt and humus on the earth's surface on which our food supply depends. In times of low prices, without government controls that pay farmers not to plant some of their acres, many are forced to plant fenceline to fenceline in order to maximize short-term profits. This practice is causing more soil erosion each year than the Dust Bowl. Without the government to intervene, at present erosion rates thetopsoil in most of the state of Iowa, our richest farmland, will be depleted in less than 100 years.

Family farmers who labor with the idea of preserving the land for their children put our nation's valuable resource of topsoil into the safest hands. Skilled farmers are a national resource, too, and the cost of losing them is far greater than any short-term savings. The warning is as ancient and prudent as the verse from the book of Isaiah which reads, "Woe to those who add house to house and join field to field until everywhere belongs to them and they are the sole inhabitants of the land."

LEHRER: That was Douglas Unger's view of it. Now here is the different one of Jim Fisher, a columnist for the Kansas City Times.

JIM FISHER, essayist: We can stand here and debate to eternity what should be done about the family farm, whether it should be "saved," how much the government should ante up, whether farm debts should be forgiven. But really that's all talk. The reality of the American farmer in this spring of 1985 is that some farmers, between four and 13 percent, are going under. Hearts are being broken. Land in the same families for generations is going under the hammer. Yet, some farmers are doing fine. Maybe not making what they did back in the 1970s, but surely not fighting off the bankers and the implement dealers come to collect what's owed. Still, you'd have to be Scrooge not to feel for some of those people at the auctions watching a way of life disappear with the auctioneer's chant, their neighbors watching.

But here I have a problem. Caught in the dilemma between more programs for farmers and a lower deficit, I'll have to come down on the side of a lower deficit. A lower deficit would mean a cheaper dollar overseas and better prices for farmers. In the end, that's what farmers need -- better prices, lower interest rates, not tradition, mysticism or nostalgia. And a lot of farmers, when you really get to talking to them, would tell you the same. They need price, not propping up. They're as amazed as you or I when they read some farmer with 1,000 acres of land and $405,000 in debts. Oh, they understand how he got there. Bad weather, overpriced land and high-interest loans that were rolled over again and again. But still they shake their heads. So much money! No way that a farmer can ever pay that back, they say, not even with $5 wheat. Oddly, the news media, which has discovered the farm problem this winter, figured it was the big story, rarely mentions that millions of acres of wheat are in and growing or that what some call this year's shakeout is hardly new.

Fifty years ago one out of every two Americans lived on the farm. Now it's barely one in 10. What the news can't show because it's history now, is the credit managers, bankers and loan officers who should have been put in the looney bin for even thinking a man with a 1,000 acres could hope to pay off a $405,000 debt. But the most important thing the networks and the newspapers never talk about is this.

This land we're standing on is mine and my wife's, about 80 acres south of Kansas City. We live here, raise horses, make a little money. It's a business. Oh, compared to some of the farms we've been talking about, this place would be harder to find than a grain of pepper in a cowpile. But in a sense we play by the same rules. I didn't pay a whole lot for the place in 1968, what it was worth. It's all but paid for now. And that's really the key. An old farmer told us early on never to borrow more than the land was really worth, meaning what it could produce, notwhat some pencil can figure out on paper, not what some real estate guy told it was worth or what you thought it might produce, but what it can really give forth. And we believed him, even in the 1970s when people were trying to throw money through the door, still Kay, my wife, and I are children of the Depression, born in the '30s. Debt was a dirty word. And occasionally we talk now and think that if we'd just signed our name three or four times, well, there could be one of those grim-faced auctions right here tomorrow.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour tonight. We'll be back tomorrow. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.