The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro JIM LEHRER: Good evening. Leading the news this Thursday, President Reagan and Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone vowed to resolve the trade dispute between their countries. The House passed a new trade bill with tough retaliation measures, and C. I. A. Director designate William Webster was questioned again about his actions as F. B. I. head. We'll have the details in our news summary in a moment. Charlayne Hunter Gault is in New York tonight. Charlayne? CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: After the news summary, the News Hour focus segments begin with the Japanese view of the high stakes Nakasone visit. Then a documentary on the invisible war and famine in Mozambique. And reaction from the State Department key Africa man Chester Crocker. Then the Pulitzer Prize winning author of ''Fences,'' August Wilson. And essayist Roger Mudd has some thoughts on why presidential libraries are built.News Summary LEHRER: This was Nakasone day in Washington. The Japanese Prime Minister spent the morning at the White House with President Reagan, the afternoon with Congress on Capitol Hill. At both places the subject was trade between his country and the United States. His major mission was to reverse the U. S. imposition of 100% tariffs on a group of Japanese products in retaliation for what the U. S. charged were unfair trade practices by the Japanese in the semiconductor industry. Today, in welcoming remarks on the White House lawn, Messrs. Reagan and Nakasone talked of listening to the other and resolving their problems. White House spokesmen said after the hour and 10 minute meeting, that the Prime Minister told the President he had ordered the Bank of Japan to lower domestic interest rates. The purpose is to stimulate the Japanese economy and is something the U. S. has been urging Japan to do for some time. The trade story then shifted from the White House to the Capitol. Nakasone went there for a meeting with the Senate leadership. Senators Byrd and Dole presented him with a cutting from a Japanese cherry blossom tree. Later in the afternoon, the House of Representatives presented him with something else -- a new trade bill. The measure retained the tough Gephardt Amendment, passed yesterday. It would trigger retaliation steps against countries like Japan that have trade surpluses with the United States. Today's vote was 290 to 137. President Reagan has already said he will veto it if it passes the Senate and comes to his desk. Nakasone returns to the White House for a series of meetings with Mr. Reagan tomorrow. He also has a meeting with the House leadership on his schedule. Charlayne? HUNTER-GAULT: Also in Washington, F. B. I. Director William Webster was recalled before the Senate Intelligence Committee for more testimony in the Iran contra scandal. The committee, which was considering Webster's nomination to become C. I. A. Director, is concerned about the information the F. B. I. shared last year with then National Security Aide Oliver North. During the hearing today, some committee Democrats expressed concern that the Webster nomination is being pushed through too quickly. In response, Democratic Senator David Boren, the Committee Chairman, told senators they would be allowed to ask as many questions as they wanted. He said he would not push for an immediate vote on the nomination. LEHRER: There were developments in the marine spy affair today. At Quantico, Virginia, outside of Washington, one of the Marines accused of espionage was the subject of a closed door investigative hearing. The Marine is Corporal Arnold Bracy. And the Senate Intelligence Committee held a closed door session with Arthur Hartman, the former U. S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union. It was during his tour that Bracy and other Marine Embassy guards allegedly allowed Soviet agents access to the embassy. Attorney General Meese also told another Senate Committee the Justice Department was examining the possibility that some State Department personnel may also be culpable. HUNTER-GAULT: An Iranian Embassy employee has been kidnapped in West Beirut, and is captors have offered to trade him with missing Anglican Church Envoy, Terry Waite. This, according to the magazine ''Ashara,'' the weekly that broke the story on the U. S. secret arms sales to Iran. Iranian Embassy officials claim the kidnapped man didn't work for them. The kidnappers were not identified. In Vienna, the Austrian Foreign Minister said today that he had summoned the U. S. Ambassador to his office and demanded to see the documents justifying the U. S. decision to bar Austrian President Kurt Waldheim from this country. LEHRER: Back in the United States, Education Secretary William Bennett today endorsed mandatory AIDS testing for several groups of Americans. He spoke to university audience here in Washington.

WILLIAM BENNETT, Secretary of Education: Testing could be expanded in a variety of ways. Voluntary testing could be even more strongly encouraged and facilitated. I believe it should be. And I think there's a good case to be made for proposals to make testing a requirement for hospital admissions; to require tests as part of the treatment at clinics, perhaps particularly those serving high risk populations; to make it a requirement to secure marriage licenses; and for those seeking admission to this country; and/or to require an AIDS test for all persons convicted of a crime upon imprisonment and prior to release. HUNTER-GAULT: The Lutheran Church became the fourth largest Protestant denomination today, when the long divided groups of U. S. Lutherans merged. The historic action was taken at a gathering of some 1,000 delegates attending a conference in Columbus, Ohio. The united church brings together some 5. 3 million Lutherans who overwhelmingly approved the 100 page constitution and bylaws of the new church. The group is expected to choose a presiding bishop from a field that includes as many as 100 candidates. Meanwhile, Pope John Paul II began a controversial 5 day pilgrimage to West Germany. A major issue is the Pope's plans to beatify two Jewish born converts to Catholicism, one nun and a priest, both concentration camp victims. Beatification is one step toward probable sainthood. Some Jewish and Catholic protestors staged mock parades today to criticize the beatification, saying the church had no right to take the action without duly recognizing the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis. Still ahead on the News Hour, Nakasone's high stakes visit, Mozambique's invisible plague, Pulitzer Prize winning author August Wilson, and why presidential libraries. High Stakes Visit LEHRER: The Nakasone mission began in earnest today, and it is where we begin tonight. The Japanese Prime Minister is in the United States to make peace over trade. This morning on the White House lawn there were candid statements, unusual for formal visits between heads of state. He arrived the day the U. S. House of Representatives adopted the toughest legislation on trade since World War II, which was clearly aimed at Japan's huge trade surplus with the United States. A Japanese journalist with word on how Nakasone and the Japanese see the Prime Minister's mission is with us as we continue our week of U. S. --Japan trade war coverage. We will hear from him after this extended excerpt from the Nakasone Reagan morning greeting.

President RONALD REAGAN: Even the closest of friends have differences. Ours is the challenge of keeping trade and commerce -- the lifeblood of prosperity -- flowing equitably between our peoples. To do that, we must address the current unsustainable trade balance. It has spawned calls for protectionism that would undo the shining economic accomplishments we've achieved together. If history tells us anything, it is that great advances in the human condition occur during times of increasing trade. Conversely, it is also clear that interruptions in international commerce result in stagnation and decline. We recognize the domestic political pressures that play a part in the decision making processes of our respective countries. But we also know that it is the long term well being of our societies that must govern. Today, the trading system is in need of adjustment. Yet the answer is not in restrictions, but in increased opportunities. So together, let us seek positive solutions. As we've learned, progress will not happen on its own. Tangible action must be taken by us both. Mr. Prime Minister, I have heard outlines of new measures that you are considering, and I am most encouraged by what appears to be commitment to policies of domestic growth and the expansion of consumer demand in Japan -- something we strongly believe will have a positive effect on the trade balance. I look forward to exploring these new approaches with you in our meetings today. Americans firmly believe that the free flow of goods and services, accentuated with head on and aboveboard competition, benefits everyone. We would like to see Japan for example open its markets more fully to trade and commerce. Many of our companies in manufacturing, agriculture, construction, financial and high technology industries want to fully participate in the Japanese market. This, too, would also provide the benefits of lower prices in Japan. Mr. Prime Minister, there's an unseen bridge that spans the vast Pacific. A bridge built with the hard work, commercial genius and productive powers of our two peoples. We must strive to see that it is maintained in good order, that is traveled with equal intensity in both directions, carrying the goods and services that improve lives and increase happiness. YASUHIRO NAKASONE, Japanese Prime Minister: If our two countries are to fully discharge our [unintelligible] responsibilities, it is essential that our bilateral relations develop on unshakable foundation. I am deeply concerned that serious frictions on the trade and economic issues are on the rise between our two countries. We should not allow such a situation to undermine the friendship and mutual trust between our two countries. Throughout my visit, I intend to state clearly the policy measures Japan has taken so far, and will take in the future, for overcoming these problems. At the same time, I will listen carefully to the views of the administration, the Congress, the people of the United States. I have journeyed across the Pacific Ocean, knowing that at times one must sail on high waves. But I hope that my visit with everyone [unintelligible] will offer mutual beneficial results for our two countries. We, the Japanese people, have built our present nation desiring to occupy and honor the place in the international society and determine to contribute to our peace and prosperity. I am determined to exert all of my efforts so that our two peoples can dream heroic dreams together -- looking towards a bright future for all mankind. Thank you. LEHRER: Now to our Japanese journalist. He's Yoichi Funabashi who's been a reporter for 20 years with a leading Japanese newspaper, Asahi Shimbon. Mr. Funabashi is on a temporary leave now with the International Institute for Economics here in Washington. (to Mr. Funabashi) What must the Prime Minister take back with him to Tokyo in order for this visit to be considered a success to him. YOICHI FUNABASHI, journalist: I think he already has got almost a half of what he had wanted to get -- the President, according to the briefing -- LEHRER: This was a White House briefing after the meeting today -- Mr. FUNABASHI: -- after the meeting -- the President said to Prime Minister Nakasone that he would end the sanction as soon as possible, and the [unintelligible] indicated that may be around mid May. And I think that would help Prime Minister Nakasone back home. But the Japanese people have watched very carefully, intensely, two things on this trip. First, whether the President would declare to end the sanction, and I think he has got this one. But another one is the strength of his Ron Yasu relationship, how viable, how durable it would be. And I'm not so sure at this moment whether Nakasone could persuade his fellows in Japan his Ron Yasu relationship still works most advantageous to the Japanese. LEHRER: How serious is the pressure on him at home on these two issues -- but particularly the second one? Mr. FUNABASHI: I think that he has gone through very serious setbacks in the past month or so. One is that he stated to enact that tax increase bill. And that was a serious one. And the second one was that unilateral sanction from his friend Ron and from Washington. And he has built his reputation on his international diplomacy, especially his relationship with the President here, and [unintelligible] management with President. And he has been very much proud of that. But this sanction has very clearly hurt his biggest political asset. LEHRER: But what about -- there's the problem of the President, but there's also the problem of the Congress. And of course the House today passed thattrade bill with the Gephardt Amendment in it which is aimed right at Japan. What does this do for him? Mr. FUNABASHI: Well, this is clearly very much an embarrassment to him, especially the Gephardt Amendment. Because the Japanese people have regarded this as a Japan bashing and a symbol of Japan bashing. And the Congress passing this Gephardt Amendment clearly is targeted against this timing. So it didn't help Nakasone at all. It undercuts his effort here. But at the same time, we should be reminded that that Amendment was passed by a very narrow margin -- only 4 votes. LEHRER: That was yesterday -- Mr. FUNABASHI: Yesterday. And I would say it is sort of a cheap vote in this town. And it's highly unlikely for that bill -- article, including this bill -- to be enacted finally after the conference between the Senate and the House. So I -- LEHRER: And the President said he would veto -- if it did pass. Mr. FUNABASHI: And he also told Prime Minister Nakasone today that he is determined to be opposed to that protectionist bill in the Congress. And so I think the President gave some assurance to the Prime Minister. LEHRER: We in this country understand how important the trade issue is from a domestic political point of view to the President and to the members of Congress. From Nakasone's point of view at home, is this -- is his political future wrapped up in this issue? Mr. FUNABASHI: Well, I'll say that his political days may be numbered. Even though this Presidential assurance to the Prime Minister could help Nakasone rebound -- LEHRER: But as we speak now, you mean you don't think he's going to last very long as Prime Minister? Mr. FUNABASHI: Well, it's much up to the Japanese political domestic situation. But even though it could give some ammunition to Nakasone, yet Nakasone may have to face a formidable test in Japan -- how he can deliver his pledge to boost the domestic demands with the fiscal package and Nakasone outlined his new strategy, but to what extent he has already persuaded that resistant bureaucracy remains to be seen. LEHRER: Well that, of course, is one of the criticisms that come from the members of the U. S. Congress -- particularly Senator Danforth. He said it on this program the other night -- he said we've heard all of this before, and the Prime Minister can't deliver on a lot of these things. Is that a problem for Nakasone? Has he got that one to deal with as well when he goes back home -- whatever deal he makes here? Mr. FUNABASHI: Well, that's a very, very difficult balancing act for any Prime Minister in Japan -- especially for Prime Minister Nakasone. Because that perception in Japan is a bit different from here. The perception here is that Nakasone has made too many concessions to U. S. ''demand. '' And even though he has been regarded to be a very strong nationalist -- he was once called the Japanese deGaulle -- yet his concessions to open up the market in Japan the past four or five years has caused some frustration, even resentment, among some of his peers or fellows -- politicians -- especially who are distinguished politicians who care about protecting their vested interest -- farmers, medium size industries, construction companies. So he has been -- he has placed a very tough challenge from those people. And he -- it's a good question whether he can still persuade those people that what he has pledged to President Reagan is in the best interest to Japan. LEHRER: Thank you very much. Mr. FUNABASHI: Thank you. HUNTER-GAULT: Still to come, war and famine in Mozambique, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of ''Fences,'' and why presidents build libraries. War and Famine HUNTER-GAULT: We turn now to a grim story of war and famine in Africa. This time the location is the southern African country of Mozambique. Almost since its independence from Portugal in 1975, Mozambique has been involved in a civil war between its Marxist government and a rebel group called Renamo. The rebels first had the support of the old white ruled Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. They now have the apparent support of South Africa. Mozambique, a country of 14 million, but rich in resources, has been driven to destitution, and the effects have been particularly severe in its northern provinces. BBC reporter Michael Buerk got through to some of the worst, most desolate areas. Here is his report on what has been called a ''green famine,'' starvation in a fertile land.

MICHAEL BUERK, BBC [voice over]: The tide of war that swept up and down the Zambezia Valley has washed up a million refugees, exhausted, ill, hungry, and hunted. They've been running from the soldiers for months, hiding in the bush, in the mangrove swamps, grubbing for nuts and berries. Now they can't run anymore. There are thousands now, flocked around the Villa Paradise. It's an aid post, guarded by soldiers just 8 miles from the provincial capital, unable to cope with so many naked and starving people flooding in from the bush. In a back room of the Villa Paradise, ignored by everybody, a woman is dying of pneumonia. Her husband has already been killed, her son is helpless. Batino and his young brother have no one left. The nation is desperate and dying, its leader already dead, killed in a plane crash last year, now entombed in Hero's Acre, along with the dreams that launched the Marxist Republic of Mozambique. Samora Maisela took over Mozambique from the fleeing Portuguese with swagger and style, but all the parades, all the slogans couldn't disguise the steady slide of his people into destitution, the widening gap between rhetoric and reality. They parade the pumps, but can't buy the petrol. A display of unobtainable products of dying industries -- this is how the wagons roll now, the railways have stopped. The wreckage of the railways, the rolling stock and the marshalling yards serve as shelters now for orphans escaping from the war. The railway network is in ruins. The rails themselves are becoming footpaths again. Mozambique isn't going anywhere. The children are traumatized, diseased and dying. Mozambique has the highest child mortality rate in the world -- 85,000, one every six minutes dies because of the war. Help is getting to some, but half the population is out of reach of relief workers. Late in the day the world is moving to rescue Mozambique, pouring in food Mozambique cannot grow and with its economy in ruins the government can't afford to buy. JOAQUIM CHISSANO, President, Mozambique: I think that all governments in the world commit mistakes sometimes bigger than ours. We cannot say that we did not commit any mistakes. Some of the mistakes were just excesses committed, practiced in the process of implementation of corrected decisions.

BUERK [voice over]: War, more than drought, incompetence or neglect, has brought Mozambique down, bloodied, close to death. Guerilla groups launched by Ian Smith's Rhodesia, taken over by South Africa, range across three quarters of the country. It's impossible to move into the countryside except in heavily armed convoys. Mozambique's army is ill supplied, ill disciplined and ill led. It cannot stop the guerillas. Yet the guerillas aren't strong enough to hold more than 15% of the country. A shapeless war and a shadowy enemy, whose leadership, ideology and present backers are impossible to pin down. But who continue their relentless destruction of Mozambique. The government expects the war will go on indefinitely, but won't negotiated. President CHISSANO: To negotiate what? In terms of who? In terms of Smith? In terms of South Africa? What to discuss? Who are they? What do they represent?

BUERK [voice over]: They represent the threat that makes the government spend half its puny budge on its ragtag army -- $400 for every man, woman and child. They represent the paralysis of Mozambique's most basic industries. At Moatize, the mines carry on producing coal, even though they know its going nowhere. Not a single lump was left here for four years. Two hundred thousand tons stockpiled, the grass growing over it again. The socialist framework of Mozambique was falling apart anyway. The peasants learned the songs and the slogans. But the party's attempt to point them towards scientific socialism hasn't worked. They turned the old colonialist estates into huge collective farms and bought expensive machinery from the Eastern bloc. But the whole program got bogged down in a welter of waste. The machinery was just not built for the conditions of Mozambique. The peasants didn't have the skills. The party didn't have the organizing ability. And the drivers didn't have the spare parts. Fifty broken down Harvesters here, one left working. The government's admitted failure, the peasants have returned to more primitive methods. But now war has compounded efficiency. This harvest will be the worst ever recorded. Ninety percent of Mozambique's food will have to be begged from abroad. Mozambique's health service was the major achievement of its Marxist rulers. From almost nothing they built a network of a thousand clinics -- less than 300 remain. The rest have been destroyed by war. The few hospitals that still exist are often filthy, poorly run and badly equipped. At Quelimane, the modern kitchens no longer work. The cooking is done in a gloomy yard out in the back. Little attention is paid to hygiene now as the hospitals run short of supplies and the pressures of war grow. Quelimane Hospital is full of the casualties of war. The emaciated babies brought in from the ravaged countryside are victims of the fighting as much as the cripples, maimed by mines and bullets that cry in the cloisters, that sleep in the corridors and pass their days here in helpless frustration. The voice is crying, ''Don't hit me,'' from a baby with a bayonet wound in his belly. The casual cruelties of vicious men. Maputo is a capital under siege. Once one of Africa's great trading centers, its port handling 7 million tons of cargo a year. Now it manages barely a million tons, and much of that is food aid. The slogans decry Apartheid, but the port lived on South African trade. And without it it practically died. Politics has left the workers with no work. Maputo's a decaying city, a long way from its gaudy colonial past. People here don't starve, but it's a nightmare finding and affording enough to eat. The markets have things to sell, since the government's stopped controlling prices. But supply can't meet demand because of the poor. A pound of vegetables can cost a day's pay, a chicken more than a week's wages for an ordinary working man. Every day long queues build up outside the bakeries. Bread is one of the staples whose price is pegged, part of the rationing system that's supposed to provide everybody with 800 calories a day, the bare minimum for survival. Everywhere in Mozambique, even on what used to be the capital's most fashionable streets, there are signs of decay. In their pleasures and their pastimes, they have to make do with relics from the past that can never be replaced. The camera itself is a portrait of Maputo. Off the coast, Russian warships are the most visible signs of the links Maisela forged with the East. Mozambique's foreign policy has been more pragmatic than its internal programs. The Russians have not rescued Mozambique. Now it will take help from anywhere. The red flag has been bleached white by the African sun over the wrecked administration building in Ilongwe, 10 miles from the Malawi border. Twelve hundred rebels passed this way, burning and killing 35 people. They broke into everything and took 800 hostages to carry away -- all that was of value. The army arrived the next day, but the town, like so many others, was stripped and deserted. Only the slogans were left. Ilongwe is now derelict. There's no petrol, no transport, and nowhere to go. It can only be reached by air. This is the land of the famine, a green and fertile place, a land of impassable roads and abandoned fields, scourged by war. On the ground, hundreds of villages have been abandoned. More than a million people have just fled into the bush. More refugees here than in the whole of the First World War. These orphans are safe for now. They're in a village close to an army garrison that's not yet been attacked and where refugees can stop long enough to plant a few crops. The kind of place the aid workers and the government can reach. [on camera] But at every turn, every project, every policy, every initiative runs up against the war. Nothing conclusive can be done for Mozambique until the fighting stops. Until then, all anybody can do is work on the margins of Mozambique's misery. [voice over] At the Villa Paradise, Batino has been noticed. His mother is dead. He too is now an orphan, lost and bewildered. One of a hundred tragedies a day here. The help has so far been too little and often too late. So near to the capital of Zambezia, but there's no medical help here, not enough food, not enough clothing for the naked and the starving. Perhaps because we were there, Batino and Radia were given special treatment. There was no time to comfort them in their grief, just enough to strip them of their rags and clean them up. Nearly all the children here are hungry and have no clothes. Once they've been rubbed down with cold water, these two will get a meal and something to wear. After that, with Mozambique the way it is, who knows what will happen to them -- two orphans among so many. There is some attempt to process the refugees here. The struggle is to get your name on somebody's list. Only then do you stand a chance of a handout. Eight workers are making difficult choices of life and sometimes death. This is the cutting edge of Mozambique's disaster. As yet, only a handful of people here get anything at all. JULIAN QUAN, Oxfam: It's obviously a dramatic situation. A lot of people have arrived. They've been living lives of misery, either behind MNR lines, or living wild in the bush like animals for months and months. Some of them for nearly a year. People are incredibly vulnerable. There's a certain amount of disease, respiratory disease -- you can hear people coughing, you can see that a lot of the children have swollen bellies. People are sick, people are traumatized. HUNTER-GAULT: That report by Michael Buerk of the BBC. The United States is among the Western countries trying to help Mozambique. Judy Woodruff has more on that story. Judy?

JUDY WOODRUFF: The point man in the Reagan administration for dealing with Mozambique is Chester Crocker. He has been Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs since 1981. Mr. Secretary, that was a terribly depressing report. Is the situation as bad as it appears to be there? CHESTER CROCKER, Assistant Secretary of State: Mozambique has faced a series of naturally manmade disasters for some years now. But there can be no question the situation is indeed grave, is tragic, and is a real humanitarian disaster. As we sit here this evening, in Mozambique there can be no question of that. WOODRUFF: What is the United States doing to help? Mr. CROCKER: Well, we are providing the international leadership for the immediate humanitarian relief effort. It was our country which called for the appointment of a U. N. coordinator to bring about a conference for maximizing contributions from all over the international community -- to get the necessary foods and other kinds of relief, medical relief and so forth, into Mozambique. There now is in place a U. N. coordinator in Maputo. Secondly, we recently held in Geneva a large pledge in conference that flowed out of that exercise -- which led to contributions of something in the order of $200 million in food pledges that are now in the process of being delivered. We are providing $75 million of that total. WOODRUFF: And how much of a dent is all that making? Mr. CROCKER: Well, it will make a big dent -- as it gets delivered and as it gets distributed. Of course, the key is -- we're talking about a country whose infrastructure has been very severely damaged and is deteriorating again as we sit here as a result of the war. WOODRUFF: Meaning the roads to get -- the trucks, the roads, and so forth -- Mr. CROCKER: Yes, and the organizations to deliver it and the necessary coordinating mechanisms -- because there are many people who are seeking to help. I would point out that there are many American private voluntary organizations that are involved on the ground in Mozambique and have been now for two or three years. They will play a strong role. Our aid mission on the ground will play a strong role. The U. N. has a vital role to play in terms of the coordination. We wish that everybody would contribute more. We're doing a great deal ourselves. We are the largest single coordinator to Mozambique. The irony of this situation -- if I may just carry on for a moment -- is that here in country that started out its independent life closely aligned with the Soviet Union. At this recent Geneva conference I referred to, the Soviets pledged the grand total of $282,000 towards this target of over $200 million. The Mozambiquans have learned this lesson. They are moving rapidly towards broadening their relationships with the West, because they know that's where their future lies. WOODRUFF: They're moving away from socialism -- of course they don't have much of an economy of any sort now. How much of a problem is the war. It appears to be the major cause of what is -- of the situation as it's deteriorated -- this civil war. Mr. CROCKER: There are three factors. War is in many respects the most important because of the displaced people, because of the rebel attacks on infrastructure, on routes for transport and that kind of thing. Which leads to a compounded problem. You also have in some parts of Mozambique a drought, particularly in the north. And thirdly, you have a legacy of some years of government policies which have not encouraged production. That has begun to change. And Mozambique has now in place with the IMS and the World Bank -- one of the most dramatic policy reform programs of any country in Africa. But it's not yet produced those results. So the combination is what we see on TV. WOODRUFF: Much as we know as was reported in this piece -- the rebels -- the Ranamo -- are supported in large part by the South African government. Does the United States approve of that? Mr. CROCKER: Good heavens, no. We helped to bring about a situation where the Mozambique government would reach out to all its neighbors to try and find a basis for coexistence with those neighbors, including especially South Africa. South Africa signed an agreement with Mozambique back in 1984 to respect its territorial integrity, its frontiers and to desist from such kinds of support. I regret to say that it is our impression the South African government maintains a pattern of communication with and support to the Ranamo resistance. WOODRUFF: And is the United States able to do anything in terms of persuading the South Africans to change their policy? Mr. CROCKER: Well, South Africa is some 8,000 miles away, and it is a sovereign country. They know exactly how we feel about this. We've made our views very clear for a number of years now. And there can be no doubt in South African minds where this country stands on this issue. As I have said, we have also taken note of the fact that the South African government itself has said it wishes to continue to adhere to this agreement that I referred to. So perhaps the real question is would the real South African Government please stand up? WOODRUFF: But the result is they're still supporting the rebels and the war continues and the famine gets worse. Is that a correct perception? Mr. CROCKER: Well, you have a dynamic situation. The war has its ebbs and flows, and it's unclear how to predict it, say, a year from now, or two years from now. It is our impression that the international community -- by which I mean our Western Allies, virtually all the neighboring countries in black Africa -- are determined to lend their support to the government of President Chissano. And at the same time obviously would encourage any chance for peace to break out. But this is an internal situation inside Mozambique. WOODRUFF: What do you think ought to be done -- from where you sit, what ought to be done to bring Mozambique to a peaceful solution? Mr. CROCKER: We feel that all of Mozambique's neighbors should respect Mozambique's tragedy and give Mozambique a chance to get back on its feet. And we've worked hard to bring about that result. Secondly, we feel that Mozambique needs support at this tragic time. We are providing as much support as any Western country -- as any country internationally. And I might say we're doing so in the context of the Western Alliance, which is doing this in parallel with us. WOODRUFF: Are we doing enough, do you think? Mr. CROCKER: It's hard to say when you see films like that to say you're doing enough. We must do all that's necessary. And our President has said that there can be no question here. We do support the government of President Chissano. We had his predecessor here for a very successful visit with the President back in the fall of 1985. Hungry babies know no politics.We must get food to all those in need throughout that country, and we're going to do everything we can to see that that happens. WOODRUFF: And do you think that the government of South Africa appreciates that as well? Mr. CROCKER: I can't speak for the government of South Africa. WOODRUFF: Well, Mr. Secretary, we appreciate your being with us. Mr. CROCKER: Thank you. Building Fences HUNTER-GAULT: Next, conversation with August Wilson, a 41 year old poet and playwright who has said he wants to write a play about the black experience in America in every decade of this century. The first, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, was an award winning hit in 1985. Now he's done it again. This time, a Pulitzer Prize for his current broadway play, ''Fences. '' [voice over] ''Fences'' is set in 1957 in a slum neighborhood that mirrors the one where Wilson grew up -- in a coldwater flat in Pittsburgh. It revolves around the moments in the life of a black man who started out as a gifted ballplayer in the Negro leagues, but had to settle for being a garbage man. The play deals with the man's frustrations and conflicts of being black, illiterate, and trying to provide materially and emotionally for his family and himself. One of the main points of ongoing tension is between the man, played by James Earl Jones, and his son. The man wants a better life for his son, but his own bitterness and lost opportunities often intrude. scene from 'Fences' SON: Can I ask you a question: JAMES EARL JONES: What the hell you want to ask me for. Mrs. Stivicky's the one you got the questions for. SON: How come you never liked me? JAMES EARL JONES: Liked you? Who ever said that I got to like you? You ate every day -- got a roof over your head, and clothes on your back. SON: Yessir, yessir. JAMES EARL JONES: Why you think that is? SON: Because of you. JAMES EARL JONES: Hell no it's because of me. Why you think that is? SON: Because you like me? JAMES EARL JONES: Like you? I go outa here every morning, busting my butt, putting up with them crackers all day long because I like you? You're the biggest fool I ever saw. It is my job. It is my responsibility, do you understand that? A man's got to take care of his family. You live in my house, you sleep your behind on my bedclothes, you put my food in your belly because you are my son -- you are my flesh and blood -- not because I like you. It is my duty to take care of you. I owe a responsibility to take care of you -- now wait, let's get this straight right now. Don't go along any further. I ain't got to like you. Don't you go through life worried if somebody likes you or not. You best make sure that they are doing right by you. HUNTER-GAULT: I've seen so many interpretations of what the play is about. What -- let me get it from the source. AUGUST WILSON, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright: I wrote the play because it occurred to me that particularly my generation of blacks knew very little about our parents. And they had shielded a lot of things from us -- the indignities and things that they had suffered. And I thought by writing a play I might be able to examine the reason why they made some of the choices they made that in turn affects our lives. HUNTER-GAULT: I also read that it's about personal responsibility. That's one of your favorite themes. Mr. WILSON: Yes, responsibility is very seminal to my work, it's in everything that I do because I think that blacks as a people have to become responsible 1) fortheir own presence in the world and for their own salvation. I'm telling you, this is a very important part of what I do. HUNTER-GAULT: You were a high school dropout, grew up in a coldwater flat in Pittsburgh -- do you see this all as an improbable progression? Mr. WILSON: Improbable? No, I don't. I think when I was -- Napoleon was a great hero of mine in history. And it was Napoleon's will to power -- that's Victor Hugo's [unintelligible]. But I always felt if I applied myself and if I continued to work -- I've been writing 22 years -- and if I continued to work that I would find some avenue of exploration that would allow me to do what I wanted to do and be successful -- and I am. It may seem improbable, but I feel I've always been pointed in this direction. HUNTER-GAULT: You've been described as part Dylan Thomas, part Malcolm X, a lyric poet fired in the kiln of black nationalism. Is that accurate? Mr. WILSON: It is very accurate -- in the sense that -- in 1965 when I began writing, I was very much influenced by Dylan Thomas and all of the poets in America -- any poet who was writing in America -- mostly the European tradition and American tradition of writing poems -- and about '65, '66, I began to become aware of who I was in America -- as a black person in America. And I became involved in the Black Power movement in the late '60s, early '70s. I called myself a Black Nationalist then, and I still consider myself a Black Nationalist. HUNTER-GAULT: As you probably know, another Pulitzer Prize winner, Alice Walker, took some heat for what some thought as her negative portrayal of black men. She denies that, but do you think there's an image problem with black men -- or black people? Mr. WILSON: I think all blacks in America have problems of image now, which is why as an artist it's very, very important what image you project and what image you put on stage as a playwright -- out there. HUNTER-GAULT: So you think the black artist has a responsibility to create positive black images? Mr. WILSON: I do, yes. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you do that deliberately? Mr. WILSON: Yes, in particularly in ''Fences,'' I wanted to show a man who -- here again, the idea of responsibility -- a man who was responsible despite the situation and circumstances of his life that he couldn't run off and leave his family, etc. Which is a lot of the ideas you get about black males. So I try in all my plays in particular to present a very strong positive male image. Because I am a black male. HUNTER-GAULT: What do you think is missing in the portrayal of blacks -- men, women, whoever? Mr. WILSON: I think basically -- for what I see what's most missing is the portrayal of their basic humanity -- that they are not allowed that -- people do not see them. One of the things I find surprising -- people always for instance talk about ''Fences'' and are surprised to find the universality in the play as though black life existed outside of the universals. HUNTER-GAULT: I seems to me that you consciously attempt to get your messages to transcend color -- Mr. WILSON: I think art is a process where you look at art first, where you work at creating a work of art, which has these commonalities of cultures when in turn transcends the specifics of the experience. HUNTER-GAULT: Is that something that would have been cool in the '60s? Mr. WILSON: In the '60s, it was very didactic, very clinical work whose major thrust was outward, and the anger was pushed out. And I think in the '80s what I'm trying to do is a self examination. Saying that maybe through art and through playwriting we should look at ourselves and the choices that we have made as a people and see if maybe there aren't some other choices that we could have made and given them benefit, which is one of the reasons I set my plays in the past because we have the benefit of historical perspective and all, which helps illuminate that. So one is a turning inward, where the other to me was a pushing out. HUNTER-GAULT: You say there's been sort of a metamorphosis from being black and angry to being what? How would you put it? Mr. WILSON: Being black and concerned. I don't like the word anger, because anger to me implies that you're out of control. I'm certainly in control and very concerned about some issues and some things. But I'm not angry, because I'm in total control. HUNTER-GAULT: What do you believe the Pulitzer Prize and all this attention you're getting is going to mean? Is it going to make any difference? Mr. WILSON: I don't think it's going to change me much. What it won't do, though, is add fuel to the fire. The day I found out I had won the Prize, I went and put a piece of paper in my typewriter and started writing a new play. So I feel -- HUNTER-GAULT: How does it start? Mr. WILSON: It started with the line -- a guys says, ''When I left out of Jackson, I said I was gonna buy me a V 8 Ford, and then I was gonna drive by Mr. Henry Ford's house and honk the horn. If anybody came to the window, I was gonna wave. '' I started with that line, and I don't know who's talking and what they're talking about -- I have no idea. HUNTER-GAULT: How long is it going to take you to find out? Mr. WILSON: I hope to be finished -- I gotta do it sometime between now and September. So this summer, I'll sit down and spend a couple of months this summer working on it. HUNTER-GAULT: I have a final question. This may or may not relate to anything, but why do you live in St. Paul, Minnesota? Mr. WILSON: Hey, I was there a couple of months, and I actually felt something lift up off me, and I think it was the tension and what not that you experience in a city like Pittsburgh, which is not a city like St. Paul. I've been able to write things for the first time in my life when I moved there to relax. And that is what has enabled me to finally get to the real work that was inside me that I'd always wanted to do. HUNTER-GAULT: There's too much tension in the city, a big city? Mr. WILSON: I think so, yes. HUNTER-GAULT: So you're going to stay there? Mr. WILSON: I'm going to stay there. I've been able to do good work there, and I don't want to change anything. HUNTER-GAULT: Is that how you feel about your life right now, you don't want to change anything? Mr. WILSON: I certainly don't, no. Shrine to the Chief LEHRER: Finally tonight, a Roger Mudd essay. His subject, those special libraries we build for former Presidents of the United States.

ROGER MUDD: Why is it that every time a President and his rich friends announce plans for a Presidential Library and Museum Complex there is so much controversy, so much opposition, from university faculties, from historians, from environmentalists, from congressional overseers, from just plain neighbors. You would think that a well planned, goodlooking, nicely landscaped presidential center would only enrich the college, the town, the tourists, and the economy. But President Reagan and his friends found out just last week that a Presidentand his papers are not welcome just anywhere. In this case, it was Stanford University's fear that taking in the Reagan Museum and Public Affairs Center, along with a Library, would somehow dilute its academic independence. So the Reagan Memorial is homeless, wandering around Southern California, looking for a friendly landlord. The fact is, presidential libraries spell controversy because of presidential vanity. Each one we read about seems bigger and grander than the last. As Doris Kerns, the Johnson biographer, says, ''They all start competing against Lincoln as the greatest president. '' The building becomes the symbol, the memorial to the dream. Until Herbert Hoover, all the Presidents left most of their papers to what was then the logical repository, the Library of Congress. Their documents were not voluminous, and there seemed to be plenty of room in the manuscript division. From Washington to Coolidge, the papers were simply bound or boxed, without ceremony or glorification, and were available to scholars and those entitled to use the manuscript room. But in 1940, when Franklin D. Roosevelt decided he wanted his own library in Hyde Park, New York, the Presidential competition to capture the attention of history began in earnest. The first four libraries, Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower, were modest enough. But it was the Kennedy Library in Boston that brought the first fullscale move toward the grandiose. Ninety five thousand square feet it was, with a nine story atrium. Then came the Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum in Austin, Texas. One hundred seventeen thousand square feet -- with Johnson so anxious to draw the tourists that he once suggested free doughnuts. Even Gerald Ford, after only 2 l/2 years in office, has a 78,000 square foot library at Ann Arbor, and a separate museum at Grand Rapids. The most recent -- and of course the largest -- is the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta. One hundred twenty thousand square feet, complete with prerecorded Presidential answers to pre selected questions from the tourists. These eight libraries, all built by private money, are staffed and maintained by the National Archives at public expense -- $16 million a year. The Archives are involved to preserve the Presidential papers, because they belong to the public, and also to help scholars in their research. But it's the presidential museums which draw the crowds, and last year, tourists outnumbered scholars 150 to one. The least popular were Hoover and Ford, the most popular Kennedy and Johnson. Lyndon Johnson would be pleased if he knew his memorial is outpulling Kennedy's two to one. And now comes the Ronald Reagan Library -- as big as the Johnson complex, ten times more expensive. Members of Congress have called it an ego trip, and have raised the question of whether presidential shrines should be maintained at public expense. But Ronald Reagan could not be talked into scaling down his library. Last year, the Congress voted limits on the cost of presidential libraries, but the Reagan White House kept the bill bottled up until the boss's library was exempted. It's not too late, however. What better testament to the fabled frugality of this administration than for the President to announce that he was abandoning plans to build himself a museum of self glorification and would instead be content with a modest, but goodlooking, library on the campus of his alma mater, Eureka College in Illinois. HUNTER-GAULT: Once again, the tops stories on this Thursday. President Reagan and Japanese Prime Minister Nakasone vowed to resolve the trade dispute between their countries. And the House passed a new trade bill with tough retaliation measures. Good night, Jim. LEHRER: Good night, Charlayne. We'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.