The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MR. MacNeil: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After tonight's News Summary, we examine new ideas and what role the U.S. should play to reduce the suffering in Bosnia. We have a report on Russian politicians grappling with new techniques in their upcoming elections. Political analyst Mark Shields and others assess what the Congress accomplished this session, and we have a Jim Fisher essay on change. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: This day after Thanksgiving was marked by unusually severe winter weather in parts of the country. Ice, snow, and freezing temperatures caused accidents and travel delays from Texas to the Northern Plains. At least 14 deaths have been blamed on the weather since yesterday. In Dallas, planes were requiring de-icing before they could fly. American Airlines cancelled its morning flights because of the weather. Yesterday's ice storm left traffic snarled and walking dangerous throughout the Dallas area. The day after Thanksgiving is traditionally a big Christmas shopping day, and this year was no different. Most analysts are predicting a good season for retailers this year. Some stores opened early, luring shoppers with special promotions. It was also the first day on the job for many department store Santas. Margaret.

MS. WARNER: This was another day of bloody conflict in Israel's occupied territories. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has warned that the violence might delay Israel's scheduled December 13th withdrawal from parts of the region. We have a report from Robert Moore of Independent Television News.

ROBERT MOORE, ITN: Israeli forces are still hunting down the Islamic militants. Another Palestinian gunman was shot dead this morning. As his body was taken away, fresh clashes broke out. All of this as Israel's military occupation of Gaza and Jericho draw to a dramatic close, the final weeks, the handover, are probably going to be difficult and tense. Gaza today caught up in a fresh wave of violence on the eve of its historic transition to Palestinian autonomy. Soon, if all goes according to plan, the Israelis will be gone, the latest in a long line of occupying armies to have pulled out. Palestinian youngsters are harassing the troops to the end, images reminiscent of the height of the Palestinian uprising. The mood here is solemn. The 1 million Palestinians who live in Gaza face an uncertain future. The euphoria of the PLO Israelis feel has faded fast. Now the questions are about whether Yasser Arafat can really bring discipline and democracy to the Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Rabin has hinted that Israel's withdrawal may have to be delayed unless the peace negotiations make rapid progress.

MS. WARNER: PLO Chief Yasser Arafat urged Israel not to delay its pullout from the area, despite the killings. He said the best way to stop the escalating violence was for Israel to make good on its promise to withdraw. In Cairo today, Egyptian police detained nearly 200 Muslim militants in connection with yesterday's attempt to assassinate the country's prime minister. The prime minister escaped injury in the car bomb attack, but the blast killed a school girl and wounded 20 others. A militant Islamic group calling itself Jihad claimed responsibility. But police concede they have no specific evidence yet linking the detained militants to the attack.

MR. MacNeil: A U.S. diplomat was kidnapped in Yemen last night. Haynes Mahoney, the United States Information Service station chief, was taken at gunpoint as he left a reception in the capital, Sanaa. Yemen is located on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula. A statement from the interior ministry said the kidnapping was ordered by a tribal chief from an oil-producing region with grievances against Yemen's government. Iraq today formally agreed to allow long-term monitoring of its weapons program. It did so in a letter to the United Nations Security Council. Such monitoring was required under a UN resolution passed after the 1991 Gulf War. Iraq had been barred from selling its oil supplies until it acquiesced.

MS. WARNER: That's it for the News Summary. Now it's on to the deadlock in Bosnia and the election in Russia, then the week's political analysis, and a Jim Fisher essay. FOCUS - ENDING THE SLAUGHTER

MR. MacNeil: First tonight we return to the situation in Bosnia. A diplomatic effort to end the deadlock on the former Yugoslav republic is taking shape in European capitals. The diplomats are spurred by growing concern about the human cost of the Serb-Croat- Muslim civil war now entering its second Balkan winter. Nearly a thousand women, children, and elderly civilians were supposed to be evacuated from Sarajevo today. They gathered, said painful good- byes to friend and family, but in the end were prevented from leaving because of a dispute between local military commanders. It was yet another blow to the humanitarian efforts to alleviate suffering in the war-torn country. The season's first snow blanketed Sarajevo last week. While its beauty could be appreciated in most places in the world, Bosnia is not like most places. Civilians in the war-torn nation now face the prospect of a second winter without enough gas, electricity, water, or food, a winter relief officials predict many will not survive. By U.N. estimates some 2.7 million people have become dependent on its aid shipments. International aid flights to the capital have now gone on longer than the Berlin airlift after World War II, but the flights alone are not enough. The U.N. can only get in adequate supplies by land. Yet, all three warring parties persist in blocking food aid from each other, effectively using it as a weapon in their brutal civil war. The tactics have created a dilemma for the U.N. protective force which at times has had to take lives in order to save others.

COL. ALASTAIR DUNCAN, U.N. Peacekeeper: We have shot a number of people. I'm not proud of that at all. I'm not proud of killing people, but it was necessary at the time. We had to demonstrate robustness. We were getting farther, and under the U.N. mandate, the rules of engagement, we fired back to save lives not only ourselves but the people we are protecting.

MR. MacNeil: Last week leaders of the warring parties signed an agreement with the U.N. in Geneva guaranteeing safe passage for humanitarian aid convoys. This week shipments did begin reaching their destinations, particularly to Central Bosnia, which had been cut off from all aid for a month. But yesterday the U.N. said the Serbs already had begun to renege on the agreement, hampering the delivery of supplies.

LAWRENCE HOLLINGSWORTH, U.N. Aid Official: There's not enough coming in and getting it out to those people who really need it is a big problem.

MR. MacNeil: And even if all sides do cooperate, the weather will soon make some roads treacherous and even impossible for trucks trying to reach more remote area of the country. The bombardment of Sarajevo has eased in recent months, but an average of 20 people still die each week from sniper fire or sporadic mortar fire. Some of the most recent victims were children. Three were killed this week while sledding, several others when mortar shells crashed into their classroom. The Serbs' siege of the city continues, with supplies of gas, electricity, and water at best intermittent and often completely cut off. Gasoline and diesel fuel to run equipment such as hospital generators is only available on the black market and costs nearly $60 a gallon. Conditions outside the capital are even more bleak. Day after day the war grinds on, death and destruction now so commonplace the story rarely makes headlines any longer. In recent weeks, the most intense fighting has been between Muslims and Croats for control of territory in central and southern Bosnia. More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2 million left homeless since the war began 19 months ago. Serbs have captured most of Bosnia's territory, but all sides have been accused of ethnic cleansing and atrocities that have provoked international outrage. So far the conflict ostensibly over territory but fueled by age old ethnic hatred has frustrated all efforts to find a solution. Peace talks broke off in September after the Muslims rejected an international plan dividing the country into three ethnic states. European Community foreign ministers tried to jumpstart the peace process earlier this week. They proposed easing sanctions against Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, if Serbian President Milosevic would use his influence on Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to convince him to return more territory to the Muslims. The U.N. today said Karadzic, Bosnian-Muslim President Izetbegovic, and Croat Leader Matte Boban would return to Geneva on Monday for what's being called a last ditch effort to achieve peace. What remains unclear is whether this effort will produce the diplomatic breakthrough needed to spare Bosnia a second winter under war.

MS. WARNER: We now discuss the new German-French proposal to end the war in the former Yugoslavia and how the Clinton administration should respond. With me here in Washington are Immo Stabreit, Germany's ambassador to the United States, and Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton of Indiana, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. With us from New York is Les Gelb, a former State Department official and New York Times columnist who is currently president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and joining us from the studio in Charlottesville, Virginia, is Lawrence Eagleburger, secretary of state in the last months of the Bush administration. He's also a former U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia and now works as a private consultant. Welcome, gentlemen. Ambassador, let me start with you. Describe for us, if you can, this European, German-French European proposal that is going to be discussed on Monday in Geneva.

AMB. STABREIT: Well, it is now, as you know, a proposal of the European Union. The -- let me say a word first on the philosophy of it, or on the -- I think it is an attempt to stop the terrible bloodshed and the terrible fighting at a last hour. We are facing a situation -- we have just seen it on the screen -- of enormous hardships for the Syrian population. Winter is setting in, and if nothing happens, the -- one does not know but one can expect the civilian population to suffer grievously, and the possibility of dozens of thousands of dead people, freezing to death, starving to death, so it is an attempt that you come to a -- to come to a solution in the -- starting with Bosnia -- and also including, of course the flash point, Krajina. Now, the philosophy is that is - - so to say -- touched it off -- basically what we would like to see or to achieve is an agreement between the parties part of which would be a territorial settlement on the basis of the demands which the Muslim side had made after they were confronted with the invincible package --

MS. WARNER: In other words, giving them more territory than was granted them under the September plan?

AMB. STABREIT: Three to four percent more territory. On that basis, of course, if you have an agreement, a withdrawal of troops, a cessation of a cease-fire, the very important, a central part of it, an opening of the humanitarian supply routes, unimpeded, unimpeded access for humanitarian transports to feed the civilian population, and, and the Krajina, we would look for a modus vivendi which would also put this -- at least stop the fighting there, or the danger of -- immediate danger of fighting.

MS. WARNER: Well, Mr. Ambassador, let me ask you, what is the incentive for the parties to agree to this when, as we know, they've rejected -- one more or more of them has rejected every other agreement? What are you offering? What would this proposal offer?

AMB. STABREIT: Well, part of the package is -- part of the package is, of course, that we say that if an agreement can be -- which is only part, of course, of the larger picture. I mean, this agreement does not really solve all the questions that have arisen on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. But if we can have a first agreement along these lines, then we would propose a suspension of U.N. sanctions, a suspension -- I'll make this clear. So there is something that --

MS. WARNER: The U.S. -- the U.S. sanctions against Serbia?

AMB. STABREIT: Against Serbia and Montenegro, that's right. They would be suspended. The --

MS. WARNER: At what stage would they be suspended?

AMB. STABREIT: They would be suspended after full implementation of the agreement, and conditioned on ongoing implementation of the agreement. In other words, if there would be a breach of the agreement, the suspension could be lifted again.

MS. WARNER: So in other words, you're describing sort of a step by step process in which --

AMB. STABREIT: Yes, yes.

MS. WARNER: -- after partial implementation, sanctions would be partially suspended --

AMB. STABREIT: Right.

MS. WARNER: -- and on through. Well, I should say we asked the administration to send a representative here and we weren't able to, so let me ask you, Congressman Hamilton, as the leading Democrat in the House on Foreign Affairs, what do you make of the European proposal?

REP. HAMILTON: Well, first I think it's quite clear that you have to have a negotiating track, that's very important, that you have a negotiating track. And the European ministers deserve credit, I think, for trying to deal with a very, very tough situation, keeping that negotiating track viable. Secondly, I think it's very important that the United States and the European Community stay together, that there be a common position. Third, I think there is not a common position yet with respect to the phasing, the easing of the sanctions, the sequence, and the timing, and probably not agreement yet with regard to how much pressure, if any, should be put on the Bosnian-Muslims. My understanding is that the European Community, the European ministers in the United States are drawing closer together here, and if that's the fact, that's an important development. I think basically what the United States is saying at this point is, all right, it's a good initiative, but go slow, not be too specific, not too explicit with regard to some of the conditions. And I don't think there is a large amount of optimism at this point that it will quickly lead to a solution.

MS. WARNER: Did Congressman Hamilton describe the American response as you have seen it? And do you think you're going to have the Americans, Mr. Ambassador, with you when you present this proposal in Geneva?

AMB. STABREIT: We have, we have explained and consulted this initiative very intensively with the administration. And whereas, of course, I cannot speak for the administration, I think we met with an open mind.

MS. WARNER: Sec. Eagleburger, let me bring you into this. What do you make of this new proposal?

SEC. EAGLEBURGER: Well, I don't want to be impolitic or impolite, but I think it's a lousy idea.

MS. WARNER: Why?

SEC. EAGLEBURGER: Well, look, all three sides, Muslims, Croats, Serbs, they've all been vicious, but there is just no question whatsoever that the Serbs in Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs have been the worst of the bunch. The one thing, the only thing we have remaining as a weapon against the Serbs for their conduct, and it hasn't worked, I don't argue that, is the fact that the sanctions are tough, and they ought to stay there for years to come. Frankly, I don't think if you've got this agreement that it would last for very long anyway. Karadzic and Milosevic have lied for three years, and I don't know why they would stop now. This simply relaxes sanctions on Serbia at some point. It certainly may proceed along the lines the German ambassador has described, but as soon as they change their minds and cheat on it, you watch how difficult it is to put those sanctions back on again, and in the meantime, they will have had a breathing space. I have no solution to the problem, don't get me wrong, and I guess I admire the continuing attempts to try to find one. But I think this is just going down the wrong track and is, in fact, rewarding the worst of the culprits.

MS. WARNER: If you were still Secretary of State, then you would be recommending --

SEC. EAGLEBURGER: I'd say no. Well, I would recommend to the President that he give a very loud no.

MS. WARNER: Les Gelb, what do you make of this proposal?

MR. GELB: I don't think much of it either. It's just another in a long line of proposals made to the lion telling the lion, you can eat all of the lamb except one leg. And, you know, the whole, the lamb except one leg should be enough for you, and tell the lamb at least you're left with one leg. It doesn't make any sense. And I don't admire the continuing process to try to figure out these kind of games playing solutions because they're all fake. They're all phony in the end. They're all designed to absolve us from the responsibility of dealing with genocide. And I agree totally with what Larry Eagleburger said about the Serbs cheating on this and our inability to then reimpose sanctions. And, besides, in the end you've just rewarded them for gobbling up Bosnia and they'll take the meaning of that when it comes to the next stage of fighting in Croatia and Kosovo and the rest of the Balkans.

MS. WARNER: Well, what about those objections, Mr. Ambassador, that it essentially justrewards aggression by the Serbs?

AMB. STABREIT: Well, I -- indeed, the track record of the Serbs is not a very good one, to put it mildly, but I think that we will see. I'm not judging the, the chances of success for this initiative, but I think we just think we have to give it one more try. And in face of the absolute catastrophe that could come now during this winter and which we would just have to watch, I mean, what is the alternative? What is the alternative? That is a question I would like to put to Mr. Eagleburger and Mr. Gelb, doing nothing.

SEC. EAGLEBURGER: Margaret.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Eagleburger, yes.

SEC. EAGLEBURGER: I've said before, I don't have an alternative. We haven't had an alternative for three years in this, short of massive military intervention, which I'm totally opposed to. I don't have an alternative, but when you take the step of announcing that you're going to reward the worst of a host of criminals, I think that needs to be brought about carefully. And your own program, your own piece just a few minutes ago showed three times in the course of that ten minutes where one party or another had cheated or lied or not proceeded with his agreement. This is going to happen again. Karadzic may or may not be able to control his local commanders. Milosevic may or may not be able to control, but whether they can or can't, they certainly will act as if they can't, and we'll get exactly the same kind of operation we've had here, as was shown in your own program. I don't have an alternative. I don't happen to believe that if you don't like what's proposed, you absolutely have to have an alternative. I don't have one. I think it's an awful mess. I think it's terrible. I think it's tragic. We haven't been able to stop it in three years. I don't think this will stop it.

MS. WARNER: Well, Congressman Hamilton, where do you come down on this argument? Is it worth one more try, as the ambassador said?

REP. HAMILTON: Well, of course, the fascinating thing is Mr. Eagleburger with all of his experience in Yugoslavia and great wisdom doesn't have an alternative. Mr. Gelb seems to say you've got to push back Serbian aggression. If you do that, that demands massive commitment of military power both air and on the ground from all of our military witnesses with respect to that.

MR. GELB: No.

REP. HAMILTON: So what do you do? Well, I think you push ahead. The criticisms of this plan I think have a lot of validity. But the fact is you're probably not going to get a very satisfactory agreement even in the end here. It's going to be messy and going to be very, very tough to implement. I think the United States has to push hard in the next few weeks and months on the humanitarian side, try to relieve as much of that suffering as we possibly can. Immediately that means trying to get the Tusla Airport open. Secondly, I think you have to push for negotiations. The proposal made by the Europeans has plenty of weaknesses to it, and as I said, I don't think it's a breakthrough, far from it. I think you have to be prepared to use force in support of the U.N. resolutions that have been passed, and I think certainly the United States now is going to have to engage in Bosnia. We can't ignore it, it's on the agenda, and push hard.

MS. WARNER: Les Gelb.

MR. GELB: I'm bewildered by this discussion because there is an alternative and there has been an alternative on the table for well over a year besides U.S. military intervention. I too am opposed to sending U.S. ground troops to go fight in the Balkan War. But what we can do, what we should have been doing for a long time now, is providing arms to the Muslims to let them defend themselves. If we aren't going to defend them, they should be able to defend themselves, create a level and fair fighting field. I know the Europeans don't want this, but it's better to let people who are being killed simply because of their religion defend themselves than to say the only alternative is to sending in U.S. troops. That's baloney. Secondly, we can use air power short of using ground troops, and air power wouldn't be decisive, but it too would make a difference, and finally, it is possible to create safe havens on the borders with Croatia where we can take Muslims who want to get out of the fight. So there is an alternative U.S. military intervention, and it's been on the table all along.

REP. HAMILTON: I don't think it's a very realistic alternative. In order --

MR. GELB: The present situation is realistically --

REP. HAMILTON: In order to lift that blockade, you have to put it through the United Nations. There are several countries ready to veto it. They're not going to let it be lifted, so you've got - -

MS. WARNER: A blockade on arming the Muslims?

REP. HAMILTON: That's right. It's a very practical block here to lifting the blockade, easy to say, impossible to do. So far I can see, there's a certain symmetry to it, as Les Gelb says, and maybe even a fundamental fairness about it, but how do you get it done? Secondly, there's all kinds of questions that have been raised about how you get the arms in, who supplies the, who trains them and all the rest of it that complicates it. Now with regard to the use of air power, there's a very strong view -- and I think it's a majority, maybe even overwhelming view in the U.S. military, that air power has enormous limits here. You cannot roll back Serb aggression with air power, nor can you use air power here to tip the scales. That seems to be the strong military opinion here. But here too you have very strong objections from the Europeans to the use of air power. And so how do get that done and still keep it, the solution to it, within a European context? I just think that there are enormous problems to what Mr. Gelb says even though they sound pretty good.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Ambassador, now under this European proposal, let's say it were accepted by all sides and went forward, would it require the use of American ground troops as part of a peacekeeping force to implement it?

AMB. STABREIT: I think that if you have an agreement, if you had, if you had an agreement on Bosnia which stuck, that, indeed, we would all be -- I think we would all expect the United States to take part in peacekeeping, in the peacekeeping in Bosnia.

MS. WARNER: And do you have any assurance from the administration that it's still willing to go forward with that commitment?

AMB. STABREIT: Well, we have no reason to doubt that what the administration has said, and this is not standing anymore, and we would hope that Congress would give its consent.

MS. WARNER: Would it?

MR. GELB: Not now. I don't think there's much doubt that the Congress would reject it. The President has said that we're prepared to help in the implementation of an agreement if the parties come to that agreement voluntarily and without pressure. We have never said -- the President has never said that we would commit blank number of troops. Figures have been tossed around, twenty-five to fifty thousand. Under current circumstances, it's very difficult for me to see that the Congress would approve sending twenty-five, fifty thousand American troops to implement the peace agreement, not impossible, but after Somalia and some of these other events very, very difficult. It would take extraordinary presidential leadership. The other side of this is that in discussions with the Bosnian Muslims, it seems to me that a precondition for their entering into an agreement is to assure that there will be American troops on the ground. So you have here a very difficult dilemma.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Eagleburger, before we leave, I'd like to end with you and Mr. Gelb. It's kind of curious here that for a year you were on totally opposite sides of this debate.

SEC. EAGLEBURGER: I'm know. I'm scared now. I'm worried.

MS. WARNER: And how is it that you and Les Gelb are now in agreement?

SEC. EAGLEBURGER: Well, I'm not sure we're in agreement. I'll let Les speak for himself. We apparently are in agreement about our view of this European proposal. I happen to disagree with the alternatives that Les laid out and Chairman Hamilton has pretty well, in my view, demolished them already. The question of safe havens, by the way, which is the one he didn't point out, would itself require troops on the ground to protect the safe havens. So I don't think that Less has an answer. But as I have said earlier, I don't have an answer, nobody has found an answer at this stage. To some degree, when you have three ethnic communities intent on killing each other the way these people have been for the last several years, there is not a great deal we can do about it at a cost that any of us ought to want to pay. I think the Chairman is right again in saying we ought to pursue, as we can, humanitarian assistance and so forth. But let's not kid ourselves, that we can find some golden key to turn this thing off. They're all dealing with each other in a way they have dealt with each other for five hundred years, and it isn't going to stop for a while.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Gelb, let me end with you. Do you think that's really where the political reality, American policy is today?

MR. GELB: I think it's a terrible mistake, Margaret, because I think that your other guests, whom I know and like a great deal, respect a great deal, demolish their own arguments. They say, on the one hand, genocide is absolutely unacceptable, and on the other hand, intervention by U.S. troops is absolutely unacceptable, and what I'm trying to do is find some middle way to deal with that problem. I understand that there are practical objections to it, but let's figure out how to deal with the practical problems if the two alternatives are truly unacceptable as I think they are and as your other guests believe.

MS. WARNER: And do you think the current administration is trying to come to grips with that? How would you assess its policy?

MR. GELB: I don't, I don't think anyone is trying to come to grips with it now. They're all hoping Bosnia will fade away and that it won't trigger a wider war in the Balkans even though almost everyone thinks that's precisely what will happen.

MS. WARNER: Well, thank you, Les Gelb, Lawrence Eagleburger, Mr. Ambassador, Congressman Hamilton. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Ahead on the NewsHour, electioneering in Russia, political analysis in Washington, and change in Kansas. FOCUS - VOTE FOR CHANGE?

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight, we have an update from Moscow on the campaign for the Russian parliamentary elections. Today President Boris Yeltsin warned political parties to campaign on the issues and not against the new Russian constitution which is also on the ballot. The parliamentary campaign has some decidedly non-Russian political strategists. Ian Williams of Independent Television News reports.

SPOKESMAN: It's time for a change. It's time for labor.

MR. WILLIAMS: Neil Kinnock is not standing in the Russian elections. Neither is the Labor Party. But former and current campaign managers from the party and from the Toreys and Liberal Democrats were in Moscow to advise the Russians on how to win votes.

SPOKESMAN: One of the best ways we find in Britain of making things known is by party colors. Sometimes in other countries it can be an emblem.

MR. WILLIAMS: Officials from most of the 13 blocs contesting the elections have looked in on the British. Here, Sergei Kalmykov, who's working for a number of center parties, he was told about the importance of party leaders and getting them out and about to be seen with local candidates at local landmarks. On this point at least Sergei was not convinced. National politicians and parties are not so popular in Russia, he explained, and his election might be somewhat wild. Later, back in his office, he was more forthright. The Russian public so dislikes Moscow politicians that it might be dangerous for them to try and shake hands with or give rosettes to voters.

SERGEI KALMYKOV, Russian Political Consultant: Now there is a kind of dissatisfaction with the tiny groupings called themselves pashas here in Russia and even the label of party and politician is, in effect, degradated.

MR. WILLIAMS: The election campaign has got off to a rather faltering start. All seem agreed that the electorate is deeply cynical. The most coveted assets the party has been competing for is television air time. All of them sent representatives to the Central Electoral Commission for a lottery, a lottery which divided up the time available for political broadcasting. And this is the first outcome of that lottery, a new television program, "Public Opinion," which revolutionizes political coverage here. The leaders of each of the 13 blocs will be questioned in the order their names came out of the lottery. Viewers will then be asked to ring in and give their verdict. The program has been devised by Russia's first independent television company, TV Nerva from St. Petersburg. Its presenter and founder, Tamara Maximal, says that not only does it put politicians on the spot like never before, but the agenda is totally dependent on the viewers, its potential audience being 200 million strong. Half an hour before the program this week, the leaders began to arrive, among them the reformer, Sergei Shapry, and Anatoly Chubias, the minister in charge of privatization, Communist leader Ginardi Zugarnov, Nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and from the Centrist Civic Union Alexander Vladislavlav. "Don't forge to smile, make your eyes sparkle," Tamara urged them in a pep talk before they went on air, a suggestion that's challenged 70 years of Soviet political tradition and, as if to make the point, a sign above each camera read, "Convince me." As the program started, a battery of telephones began to ring, viewers voting on the subjects for discussion. First was inflation, the politicians penalized if they went over their allotted 30 seconds on each subject. Viewers were then asked who was most convincing before giving an overall view at the end of the show, the result, from more than 4,000 calls with pro-Yeltsin Russia's choice won with 45 percent, followed by the Communists with 30. But it is early days. The campaign has hardly begun. FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

MR. MacNeil: Now for our weekly political analysis. This week marked the end of the year-long congressional term. What Congress did this year and its relationship with the Clinton White House is where we turn next with syndicated columnist Mark Shields. He's joined tonight by Vin Weber, former Republican Congressman from Minnesota, and president of Empower America, a GOP research group, and veteran Congress watcher, Norm Ornstein, from the American Enterprise Institute. Mark, how do you rate the session of Congress just ended?

MR. SHIELDS: I rate the session of Congress historic, historic not because of anything that was passed, Robin, not the Brady Bill, or Family Leave, or anything like that, but because for the first time in 12 years we truly have something refreshing in Washington, accountability. For 12 years we've gone through a choreographed professional wrestling, where conservative Republican Presidents submitted an unbalanced budget to a liberal Democratic Congress which excoriated him, roasted him for doing so, then passed the budget that he had submitted for which the Congress was then roasted by the President's supporters for being wasteful. Now we have accountability. We have the deficit grew out of proportion,

MR. ORNSTEIN: Well, of course, we got a budget plan that was not quite at the level of Ronald Reagan's first year budget, but when you include the tax changes and the budget changes and the second wave of more modest ones this time, very substantial changes in policy and in the budget. We have the North American Free Trade Agreement. Those were the two centerpieces, of course. We have the Family and Medical Leave Bill that Mark mentioned. We had the Motor Voter Registration Bill which is a significant piece of legislation. The National Service Act, the first major innovation in Se a period of time. We had at the end of the session, of course, the Brady Bill and movement towards what will be a sweeping crime bill and movement towards completion -- we're not quite there yet -- but almost certainly we will get there -- of a whole series of reform packages, campaign finance reform, lobbying reform, and pretty major congressional reform. Those are all I'd say 85 to 90 percent of the way there, and that's a lot for one year.

MR. MacNeil: Vin Weber, doesn't that impress you?

MR. WEBER: No, it doesn't particularly impress me. In passing, I've been there passing a lot of different bills. It's not always impressive. It's -- the question is the substance of the bill. Yeah, I think that the Democratic Congress and the Democratic President were able to produce some things. The important thing about the list that Norm listed is nothing on that list really resonated very positively with the public, and at least one item on that list, the President's economic package, resonated very negatively with the public. So here we are at the end of the year, we've broken gridlock, we passed all this legislation, and the country still says they're very intensely negative about the Congress. I think simply that they're not doing the things that the public wants them to. I have to say though, having made that point, if I were still in the Congress, I'd be very uncertain going home right now about what it was I wanted to say to my constituents at town hall meetings and things because after a couple of years of this anti-establishment, anti-incumbency, I'm not quite sure exactly what it is that people want. And I know that most members of Congress who worked very hard this year and tried to produce a package that they thought was good for the country are, are sort of at wit's end trying to figure out how they quelled this intense, anti-incumbency at the grassroots level.

MR. MacNeil: Mark Shields, after all the public hostility last year and that Vin Weber says still exists, do you think that the Congress deserves to win back some public respect, or is it -- is it out there, you know, unable to win back respect? Just what do you think? Do all the accomplishments Norm and you have paid some tribute to, do they deserve more respect from the public?

MR. SHIELDS: Well, I think they probably do, but I don't think they'll regret it, and I don't think they'll get it, Robin, for a couple of basic, historic reasons. For 20 years, the route to election to Congress has been to run against the institution. Ever since Watergate, one did not emphasize that he or she was going to Washington to achieve great legislative ends, to be an effective member of Congress, to work with other Congressmen. You went down there to emphasize your difference from that institution, that you didn't like the way things were, and that's how you, that's how you ran, that's how you got elected, and that's how you got reelected. As long as we had this divided government for 12 years, it became the political imperative for each institution of government in control of one party to attack the institution controlled by the other party. For example, the Democrats loved to attack the executives when the Republicans held it. Excesses at the Pentagon, failures at the White House in the national security area, and Republicans loved to attack the Congress, whether it was the speaker being forced out, the whip being forced out, House banks or whatever, so that Congress is an unpopular institution. I don't think anything that Norm or Vin and I say tonight or any night probably will persuade the public that it's -- people there do work hard. Vin put his finger on it. He's absolutely right. He worked hard when he was there. They do work hard, but until there's a collective responsibility which I think is emerging out of the necessity of Democrats having their fate, fortune, and future tied together, I think we'll continue to beat up on the Congress.

MR. MacNeil: Norm, how about Bill Clinton's relationship with this Congress?

MR. ORNSTEIN: It's been almost like a roller coaster for Bill Clinton generally during the course of the year and certainly with his relations with Congress. He hit the ground stumbling in his first few weeks, and the assessment that most people in Congress had was this guy isn't going to measure up, and struggling, as he did, through the economic package. I think that was reinforced, but now at the end of the year, he's shown that he's a failure, and he's shown when the big issues have come up that he's a winner. And he has a lot of grudging respect now -- and of course you could see it from what Newt Gingrich said about him through the NAFTA fight. He's got a couple of problems that remain though, Robin. One is that many of these issues, he's waited until the very end to work hard and to pull it out. He's put out the fires beautifully. He's the Red Adair of politicians in terms of putting out fires. He hasn't shown yet that he can prevent the fires from occurring in the first place, and that's meant that everybody's had to mobilize at the end, and it's also meant when you need those votes at the end, that members of Congress have you over a barrel individually to extract more things from you. If he can get a little more assertive in the next year and anticipate problems, then he'll continue the momentum that he's got. But how he's gotrespect with somebody who knows how to play inside politics.

MR. MacNeil: Do you see him as a fighter and a winner, Vin Weber?

MR. WEBER: Yeah. I think he fights hard. I think he's smart. I think he won on a couple of important issues. But at the end of the day, my assessment is, I think, different than my colleagues. I think that what this session proved is that the Congress is in the saddle when the Democrats are in the White House. I think that the victories that the President achieved, not that he didn't fight hard for them, not that he's not a capable guy, but they were mainly congressionally delivered victories. The Clinton economic program was not rested in my judgment by efforts of President Clinton. His fat was pulled out of the fire by congressional leaders. The passage of NAFTA on which he worked heroically, nonetheless, was delivered to him by the Republican whip in the House, Newt Gingrich. And I think that that is a dynamic that is going to continue to be the case next year, and it's a very important thing to think about if the Democrats actually lose a significant number of seats in the 1994 election, as some of us think they will, because then the institution that's really been driving the Clinton agenda of the Congress, in my view, is not going to be doing it for him anymore.

MR. MacNeil: Mark, do you think Congress is driving, Congress is in the saddle?

MR. SHIELDS: No, I don't, Robin. I think that Bill Clinton was a lot smarter at the end of the year than he was at the beginning. Norm's right. He did start stumbling. He caved early on things like grazing fees and the BTU tax, and he didn't on the big fight of his first year, NAFTA. He showed that he could play the game as effectively and persuasively and winningly as anybody. I think what he's done, quite frankly, is to transform the Democratic Party from a congressional party for the first time in 25 years to a presidential party where, in fact, we haven't had that. We've had a Congress where members have been freelancing and running on their own and with a diffuse accountability and really no responsibility. Now I think Bill Clinton has transformed the Democrats into a presidential party where their fate, fortune, and future does all lie with how well this administration does do, and Democrats on the HIll are increasingly coming to that understanding.

MR. ORNSTEIN: You know, Robin, it's been interesting, if you go to the first big victory that he had, it was entirely Democrats, the first time ever that a major piece of legislation that is passed with not a single vote from the minority party. His second big victory he got 75 percent of the minority party and only 40 percent of his own. Next year, we're going to see whether he can build a more stable coalition, and that will have to be, I believe, a coalition somewhere in the middle. He's going to need Republican votes. Can he do that and keep his Democrats who are grudgingly coming to the belief that they need to have a presidential party, which means they have to subordinate their own desires and not lose them off the reservation if he moves to the middle? That's the test for him.

MR. WEBER: I think it's going to be difficult too because in the last hours of this Congress, the President slapped down Tim Penny from my state of Minnesota and John Kasich from Ohio, Republican, on a budget reduction package. And in doing so, he had to slap down a bunch of conservative or moderate Democrats that would be the logical partners for him in exactly the kind of alliances that you talk about.

MR. MacNeil: Let me just ask each of you, in concluding, I don't know how much you heard of the discussion on Bosnia -- what do you think, Congressman -- Mr. Weber, of the -- what is the feeling in Washington about doing something about Bosnia in the sort of political Washington? They just want it to go away as Les Gelb said at the end?

MR. WEBER: I think that the feeling in Washington is generically that we certainly ought to be doing something and it's horrible that we're not, and anything specific that's proposed, we're against. And that sort of is unfortunately the case with, with post Cold War foreign policy. Most people don't want to simply turn inward in theory, but in practice they don't see a place where -- a role for America, they don't understand what our vital interests are, and nobody, frankly, in my view, in either party has done a very good job of helping to define that in the future.

MR. MacNeil: Mark, how do you see as everybody watches these pictures every night, the winter coming on, what do you think political sentiment is in Washington about doing something about it?

MR. SHIELDS: Political sentiment, I just want to say amen to what Vin said. I think he said it well, and I think he said it accurately. The reality is that we are all made uncomfortable. We watch them reluctantly, and we know the pains that people are going through, but when a specific proposal is proposed, a specific line of action is endorsed, we shrink from it. And it's -- it to me, it is a sad commentary on us and our times.

MR. MacNeil: Anything to add to that, Norm?

MR. ORNSTEIN: Yeah. You know, Congress is grappling as the President is with a new foreign policy for America in the post Cold War era. We've got some bad cases here, and we may be making bad law out of them. They're trying to find out how to be internationalists with examples where we're not finding policies that will enable us to do so, and that, of course, is focused especially on Bosnia. We've got a real danger here. We got by it, I believe, with NAFTA. We moved more in an internationalist and open direction, but when it comes to any kind of military involvement or help in that regard, there's a different sentiment inside the Congress, and Clinton's going to have to lead there to make it work.

MR. MacNeil: Well, thank you. Sorry to interrupt, gentlemen, but I must leave it there. Thank you all. ESSAY - VICTIM OF PROGRESS

MS. WARNER: Finally tonight essayist Jim Fisher of the Kansas City Star with some thoughts about what's lost when regions change.

JIM FISHER: This is Johnson County: Kansas, traffic, national branch offices, cranes erecting even more buildings amid the high rises that have moved the metropolitan center of gravity west from nearby Kansas City, Missouri. It's one of the richest counties in America, barely slowed by the creeping economic recovery and corporate layoffs. Olathe is the county seat. It could pass for a thousand other towns: franchises, car dealers, malls. Olathe has two dominating structures, one the courthouse, the other a multimillion dollar jail, almost new but already overcrowd. Not surprisingly, the jail resembles the rest of Johnson County, up to date. Not these buildings. That's right. It's an old grain elevator, the Farmers' Union Coop. It closed last month and moved 10 miles south, out to where there are still farms. Oh, there's still a little feed grinding going on, leastways until the property is sold. Hard to believe just weeks ago the coop was full of chick starter and horse chow, oats and calf supplement, hog feed, and salt blocks. Now it's mostly empty and hushed, all but a memory. This was always a neat place to come, sort of an oasis away from what now seems routine in America, the fast-talking salesman and the aggravated sales clerks. The old coop though remained rural Kansas, smiles and willing help, a world away from what's just across the street, in-fighting over alimony and kids, and locked up dope dealers. The closing was inevitable and simple. Johnson County is being paved over, subdivided for homes, turned into malls. Why, men just in their 70's can remember Olathe as a little farming community that prided itself on having 3,001 residents. Now it's 15 times that number. Johnson County as a whole has almost a hundred times that many people, all of which is nothing new. It's happened all over the country, people leaving the old cities, looking for something new, something with some space, and now, something they increasingly talk about, safety. What's being gobbled up is also nothing new, productive farmland, some of the best dirt in Kansas, land that even in the dustbowl 30's could make a crop. What is different is that part of American history is disappearing. Johnson County was where the thousands upon thousands of oxen, mules, and horses grazed a century and a half ago, fattening themselves for the Santa Fe and Oregon Trail, traces that would ultimately alter how Americans viewed themselves. And Johnson County was the scene of bitter internecine warfare, acted out almost a decade before Fort Sumter. Abolitionists and pro-slavery camps pumped themselves up by saying they killed each other over slavery or states' rights. That was partly true. But they were also murdering each other for possession of land like this, rich and fertile, a place a man could put down roots. History books will tell you that William Clarke Quantrill and his irregulars burned Lawrence, Kansas. They usually fail to mention that he burned and looted Olathe too. People don't see the past. They see subdivisions snuggled up against harvested soybean fields and wander who will turn that field into the next set of tract homes. Horses and oxen and mules being fattened for the trail, bleeding Kansas, that was a long time ago. And you can't get upset. People are just being people, too busy with their own lives to worry about all that old stuff. But at the old Farmers' Union Coop, at least until it's sold, you can see a little of what's happened. It's not over a hundred and fifty or a hundred and thirty years, and in just the last sixty or seventy, it's called change, inexorable, never ending, amidst the dust left over from millions of bushels of grain or an empty shed that not long ago held tons of chick starter, horse chow, and oats. That change is evident, only here it's quieter, less intrusive, an old mill, the once bright checkerboard pattern fading atop the old elevator, a now unused scale that no so long ago weighed part of the riches of a nation, and beyond, asphalt and lawns, houses and schools, businesses that deal in paper, and freeways passing over land, where tens of thousands of oxen used to graze and men died for lofty ideals or fruitful soil. I'm Jim Fisher. RECAP

MR. MacNeil: Again, the major stories of this Friday, severe weather in the plains states and Texas have caused the deaths of at least 14 people and disrupted travel throughout the region. Israel's prime minister warned that violence in the occupied territories could delay the December 13th withdrawal of Israeli troops from the area, and Iraq accepted long-term U.N. monitoring of its weapons programs. Goodnight, Margaret.

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