The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. Leading the news this Monday, Bush and Dukakis criticized each other's national security positions, the pilot identified in court the killer of a U.S. sailor in the 1985 TWA hijacking and snow fell on the fires in Yellowstone National Park. We'll have the details in our News Summary in a moment. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: After the NewsSummary, we update the fire situation in Yellowstone and discuss what will be left of the oldest national park when the fires burn through. On the stump today we have speeches by George Bush and Michael Dukakis, then Burma, we view the prospects for democracy after weeks of popular demonstrations against one party rule. Charlayne Hunter-Gault talks to the people of Yonkers, New York, about the housing crisis that has paralyzed their city. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: This was National Security Day in the Presidential campaign. Both Vice President Bush and Gov. Dukakis had things to say about theirs and their opponent's approach to defense and foreign policy. Bush said Dukakis would leave international matters too much to the United Nations and other organizations. He said he doubted the Democratic nominee supported the military actions of the Reagan Administration.

VICE PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH, GOP Presidential Nominee: Do you remember Gadaffi when we found his international fingerprints all over the murderer of American citizens in Berlin? We punished Gadaffi, we acted, we were right to do that. And I will really admit to you that I am having trouble pinning down the liberal Governor of Massachusetts on his defense, he's all over the field. So my question of the day, does he support the attack on Gadaffi that has resulted in less international terror, and does he support the attack on Grenada that has given those people the freedom and democracy that sometimes we take for granted? I support those things. Now does he support them? Let's ask him that question.

MR. LEHRER: Michael Dukakis's foreign policy words were spoken in Philadelphia. He said Bush had failed three critical foreign policy challenges.

GOV. MICHAEL DUKAKIS, Dem. Presidential Nominee: In each of these three areas George Bush has failed. I want to be winning against our foreign competitors; he's willing to settle for second place. I want to crack down on terrorism; he knuckled under to the Ayatollah. I want a real war against drugs. His answer to drug kingpins like Noriega is J. Danforth Quayle.

MR. LEHRER: Also today Vice President Bush defended Frederick Malek who designed as Deputy Chairman of the Republican National Committee. It followed reports that while working for the Nixon Administration, Malek prepared a list of Jews who held high positions in the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Two of the persons were subsequently transferred because then President Nixon believed there was a Jewish cabal at the BLS that was hurting his Administration. Bush told reporters this morning that he knew Malek to be without one ounce of bigotry or prejudice in his makeup. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: In West Germany, the pilot of a TWA plane hijacked in 1985 testified today that accused Hijacker Mahammad Al-Hamadi was the man who shot and killed a US Serviceman and there was a related development to that hijacking trial in Beirut where West German hostage Rudolph Cordis was reportedly freed today. The West German businessman was abducted by a radical Lebanese group with ties to Hamadi and his brother. We have a report by Tom Brown of Worldwide Television News.

TOM BROWN: At the Frankfort courthouse, Capt. John Testrick, the pilot of the TWA jetliner hijacked in 1985 testified that he was certain it was Mohammad Ala-Hamadi who had killed one of the hostages during the seventeen day ordeal in Beirut. Hamadi faces charges of air piracy and murder. He denies killing American Navy Diver Robert Steadman which flies in the face of Capt. Testrick's testimony. Cordis's kidnappers claimthat the Islamic Government of Iran and Syrian Pres. Hafez Assad had guaranteed that the case of Hamadi and his brother Abbas would be cleared. The kidnappers claim that Cordis's release relies upon the deal being honored. The 55 year old businessman was captured last year.

MR. MacNeil: Late today Cordis was handed over to Lebanon's interior minister, Abdal Arrasi. Meanwhile in Damascus, the Associated Press reported that Syrian troops today rescued an America engineer who was abducted by gunmen. The report said the engineer based in Saudi Arabia had gone to Lebanon to marry when he was seized yesterday. After an all night search, Syrian troops freed him and handed him to American authorities in Damascus.

MR. LEHRER: Back in this country snow fell at Yellowstone National Park today. It caused the firefighters to rejoice despite the cold, because it helped in the effort to contain the fires that continued to burn in and around the park. The relief may not be permanent. Forecasters say dry warm weather is due to return tomorrow. Smoke from the Yellowstone fire has become trapped in the upper atmosphere and has traveled Eastward. Meteorologists say the smoke has made the sun appear very red and it's caused temperatures to drop as far East as New York City. Another fire is burning in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California. Ten thousand acres of brush and timber have already burned. More than 1200 firefighters are involved in the effort to stop it. The fire is centered 45 miles Northeast of Sacramento. It has destroyed already 13 homes.

MR. MacNeil: The government issued revised crop forecasts today, reflecting later assessments of the drought damage. Corn will be down 37 percent from last year, soybeans down 23 percent to a 12 year low and wheat, the wheat crop down 14 percent. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Public Health Service today advised all homeowners to get their homes tested for radon gas. Radon is an odorless, colorless gas resulting from the radioactive decay of trace amounts of uranium found in all soil. In large enough amounts the gas can kill people. The warning was issued after a survey of seven states found radon gas in concentrations exceeding EPA guidelines in one home in three.

LEE THOMAS, Environmental Protection Agency: We have a problem that is national in scope. I think it is clearly documented from the survey when you look at the results of last year's survey together and the problem is one that in some states is fairly widespread. When you're talking about states that have 40 to 60 percent of the homes that have elevated levels, that is a very widespread problem.

MR. LEHRER: A hurricane hit the Caribbean Island of Jamaica today. The hurricane was named Gilbert and it was blowing at a speed of 115 miles an hour, with gusts up to 140 when it struck this morning. Reports said the wind tore the roofs off homes and uprooted trees. The Weather Bureau said there was heavy damage at Kingston Airport. There was scant word on casualties, because telephone and most other communications were disrupted. Forecasters said they expected Gilbert to move next to the Cayman Islands Northwest of Jamaica before running out of steam.

MR. MacNeil: A giant U.S. Air Force cargo plane landed in Dhaka today, bearing the first American aid and medical help for flood ravaged Bangladesh, but distributing aid to the 40 million sick and homeless people in this Southeast Asian nation will not be easy. Desmond Hammill of Independent Television News has a report.

DESMOND HAMMILL: All across the country, the swollen rivers are still flowing strongly. Reports that their levels have dropped by a centimeter or two have little meaning out there. We were sailing South, heading for Bransharampour, about 50 miles from the capital, and this was the only way to get there, by a large motor launch. For 10 hours we sailed past scenes like these where the rivers stretched to the horizons, one merging with another. The big cities crammed with people are at least in reach of relief supplies. Out here the people are marooned, cut off. To be frank, they've been forgotten. The long-term problems will also be enormous. The crops of jute and rice here have been totally destroyed, and the next batch of rice seedlings which should be planted in two weeks' time, well, there's no hope of that happening. At Bransharampour, children were waiting, hoping for food or even some clean drinking water. Here we transferred to a small boat, rowing through the main square, not a dry piece of land in sight. In the local primary school, we found some of the 50 homeless families, but they're still knee deep in flood water here. School benches stacked on top of each other do give them a dry place to sit. Otherwise they walk around in the water and sit in the water. The health problems here are going to be enormous.

MR. MacNeil: More than 900 people have died in Bangladesh's three weeks of torrential flooding, including 160 people from diarrhea contracted through consuming contaminated food and drinking water.

MR. LEHRER: In Burma today, the government threatened to shoot people who handed out certain kind of leaflet. The announcement condemned as a lie a leaflet which said top leaders of the army and air force had defected to the opposition. The army can no longer tolerate this and will open fire on the group of people handing them out, said the government, which has agreed to elections for the first time in twenty-six years. In Chile, 50 people were hurt in anti-government protests. The demonstrations were called to mark the fifteenth anniversary of the military coup that gave power to General Augusto Pinochet. Two hundred people were arrested in the clashes between the protesters and police.

MR. MacNeil: That's our News Summary. Now it's on to a Yellowstone Fire update, Bush and Dukakis on the stump, political turmoil in Burma and the Yonkers housing crisis. FOCUS - UPDATE - FALLEN FOREST

MR. MacNeil: First tonight we focus on the fires in Yellowstone and the damage they're doing to the park. When we looked at Yellowstone last Wednesday, the fires had destroyed just over 1 million acres in the Greater Yellowstone area. In the past five days an additional 300,000 acres of forest have been burned. Although 30,000 firefighters continue to battle the blazes, the fire will continue to burn their way through Yellowstone's forests until snow puts them out later this fall. When the fires are finally extinguished, how much damage will they have caused to Yellowstone Park? Here to give us two views are the Governor of Idaho, Cecil Andrus, who was President Carter's Interior Secretary, he joins us from Boise, Idaho, and Paul Pritchard, President of the National Parks and Conservation Association, is in Washington. Mr. Pritchard, what will the park be like when the fires are finally out?

PAUL PRITCHARD, National Parks And Conservation Association: The park initially will be a very difficult place to see. There will be a lot of charred areas and a lot of burned down areas, but over a very short period, the forest will, in fact, revegetate. You'll see more vegetation, you'll see more ground cover, more wildlife, because you'll have open vistas which will give you a better sense of what the total landscape is like.

MR. MacNeil: How long will it take the park to regenerate to something like it was before the fires?

MR. PRITCHARD: We're looking right now at 100 years of accumulation of fuel which has not been burned out because of mismanagement in the past. The concept of allowing fires to burn themselves out and to eliminate this fuel base has just been evolving over the past 20 years. It's logical for us to assume also that fires like this happen about every 200 years. So it could take us five, ten years, before we begin to see trees and other vegetation, but during that period you're going to see a very exciting area. We're already seeing from the fires that started in late June and July revegetation and birds and other animals that are coming back in large numbers.

MR. MacNeil: You sound very positive about it. You don't think that this great recreational resource has been, in effect, destroyed for the time being?

MR. PRITCHARD: I think is a natural disaster which of course we all wish had not affected the lives and the property of individuals who live around the park. It is a natural part of the system though that does happen in the forest and in the park areas. Much of this fire that you just mentioned is really a mosaic of areas that have been burned and some that have not and so you'll have islands within this that will allow, provide seeds, seeds that by the way require fire, these lodge pole pine, seeds require fire to be dropped and to be planted in what will now be a very fertile forest floor.

MR. MacNeil: Gov. Andrus, how do you see it? Do you think that the Yellowstone that is going to be available to visitors for the next generation is going to be a dead place?

GOV. CECIL ANDRUS, Idaho: Well, as Paul pointed out, its going to be a hundred years before you get it back to what we call normal. The short-term duration it'll take 10 years before you will have a visual picture that you can appreciate. It is true that the ground vegetation will come back rather quickly but those trees are 80 years of age and you can't put one of those back overnight, so Paul has to understand that this may have been a natural situation many years ago. The mistake was made in a blanket let burn policy by the current Administration that let the fire get a head start. Now if you're looking for a villain in this, Robin, the villain would be the policy. The heroes are these people who are out there, the men and women who are fighting these fires who have done a tremendous job working 18 to 20 hours a day to rectify a policy judgment mistake, but people will still come to Yellowstone National Park to see Old Faithful erupt on schedule. Next year it will not be a very pretty place. The next year you will have more ground cover, vegetation at the lower levels, but it's going to be a long time in those areas where it was burned and destroyed the trees before you will have a Yellowstone Park experience like Paul Pritchard or Cecil Andrus have enjoyed in our lifetimes.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Pritchard, you and Gov. Andrus just disagree flatly on the correctness of the policy of letting it naturally set fire, fires that occur naturally to burn out. Do you continue to believe it was right even in this year's circumstances with the enormously dry conditions and the very high winds and everything, do you still believe it was the correct policy?

MR. PRITCHARD: Robin, I want to say that I agree with Gov. Andrus on a very importantpoint and that is that there has been a lack of forethought and policy in Washington dealing with the resources needed by the Park Service and the Forest Service to deal with issues like this. On that we agree. Regarding the specifics of this fire, remember there are eight basic fires that are now burning. There were over 50 before during this year, over half of which were suppressed. The policy of the Park Service and the Forest Service is not to let fires burn. It is to control fire burning where it is in a safe and a logical place to do it, but the Park Service and the Forest Service have carefully managed fires in the past and we'll do so we hope in the future which will avoid crises like this, and if we do that, we won't have firestorms like we have now.

MR. MacNeil: Gov. Andrus, in --

GOV. ANDRUS: Let me respond to that because Paul Pritchard worked with me at the Department of the Interior when I was Secretary of the Interior. That policy was on the books from 1972 through currently, but it was not implemented or used during our tenure there, but I would point out a control burn is the proper way to remove this excessive fuel or to improve wildlife habitat, but you can't have a controlled burn in a drought area during the months of July and August. That's absolute insanity to permit that to go. Not all of the fires that we had out there were a result of the let burn policy. Some of them came about from lightning strikes and a couple from man cause in the other times.

MR. MacNeil: Well, if you could make the policy now, Governor, what would you say -- Sec. Hodel has hinted that there may be some changes in policy coming -- what would you say that policy should be hence forth?

GOV. ANDRUS: I would say that I agree with what Hodel said yesterday. Don Hodel said in Boise yesterday that the let burn policy is probably a thing of the past. It should not be a policy. You have to make a decision on each fire. You should suppress them, put them out, and then if you want a controlled burn, you do it in the fall after the rains and the snows start where you can control those areas that you desire to have burned.

MR. MacNeil: What do you think about that, Mr. Pritchard?

MR. PRITCHARD: Well, let me make it quite clear that these fires that are now burning were not fires started under the prescribed burn policy. These were fired, five of the eight started outside the park and actually burned into the park, and there were efforts to suppress these fires from the very minute they came into the park, and also in there in the forest so I don't think we're really disagreeing on the specifics of the fires that are occurring right now. However, the policy that needs to be implemented in the Park Service and the Forest Service is to give these people the resources they need so that they can properly manage the natural resources there and that will cost money. It will not be in having more bulldozers necessarily or more air tankers or whatever, and I agree also that we've got to right now commend that staff and give them the moral support that we need because that's really the issue today is how do we stop what's going on there?

MR. MacNeil: Let's talk about resources for a moment. Sec. Hodel has said that there is going to be an accelerated reforestation policy. Now you have maybe a million and a half or more acres burned. Is it remotely feasible to reforest that kind of area, Mr. Pritchard?

MR. PRITCHARD: It is feasible, it is expensive, and I think in this time and age with the federal budget as it is, one has to wonder whether wecan afford to do that. The Park Service has identified over $50 million of resource issues that should be addressed in the National Parks before these fires began. If you also then implement an accelerated forestry program, you're talking about millions of dollars.

GOV. ANDRUS: You're talking about a lot of money that is not going to be put forth in my opinion, but not all of these areas were devastated to ground level. There are pockets of seed sources that will help bring back the lodge pole pine species and the seeds in the ground will bring back the cover, but it's going to be a long time before you will be able to enjoy a real park experience in Yellowstone again.

MR. MacNeil: Just before we conclude, I'd like to ask Mr. Pritchard, you mentioned it was a natural disaster. You see something like this as something like Mt. St. Helen's, do you, that has its destructive effects, but also constructive ones and also something that man really can't hope to cope with, is that accurate?

MR. PRITCHARD: Those who are on the line have said that repeatedly, but even if they had had more resources they could not necessarily have done more to stop this fire. This was a fire with almost gale force winds, with natural standing trees that were so dry they were drier, they were drier than the timber that you can buy in a lumberyard, and with a dry environment because of no rainfall and no snow pack. So we have a very unusual set of circumstances and I think we have to be careful not to have a knee jerk reaction upon which we base policies for all the other national parks and forests.

MR. MacNeil: Gov. Andrus, finally.

GOV. ANDRUS: Very quickly, let me just say that in the initial stages the fires in Yellowstone were permitted to burn and they got a head start. I'm saying that's wrong. We've spent this entire time talking about Yellowstone National Park, and that's very important, but in the U.S. Forest Service lands, in my state, we've had a devastating year of forest fires and they're not out yet. We can resolve this with the Paul Pritchards later. We've got to help those people on the fire lines with the fires out and I'm afraid it's going to require rain and snow in order to do that.

MR. MacNeil: Well, Gov. Andrus, and Mr. Pritchard, thank you for joining us.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the Newshour tonight, a matching pair of Bush and Dukakis stump speeches, what's going on in Burma, and a Charlayne Hunter-Gault report from Yonkers. SERIES - '88 - ON THE STUMP

MR. LEHRER: One of our regular campaign features is the stump speech. Throughout the campaign we are broadcasting extended excerpts from what the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates are saying. Tonight we have two, one each from Vice President Bush and Gov. Dukakis. As we reported in the News Summary, Bush talked about defense today, but he also spoke about the economy at a rally in Union City, New Jersey.

VICE PRESIDENT BUSH, GOP Presidential Nominee: You and I remember where we were in 1980 with those prime rate of interests at 21 1/2 percent. Young people couldn't buy a home. Inflation lurked like a criminal, sneaking in the door of every house in America, robbing people of their buying power, wiping out the savings of old people. Inflation stole the value of Social Security checks from those older Americans and picked the pockets of families who were trying to put food on the table and it cheated every wage earner. But today it's easy to forget those times, but remember the lesson. The prime rate of interest is now half of what it was. The rate of inflation is below 5 percent, over half of what it was, and family income is growing, not shrinking. America has economic power. America has, we have economic power, economic power, and I'm not going to let them take it away from you. Let's keep America going forward. Let's keep America charging forward. You know, thank you, thank you -- you know, my opponent thinks things are awful. He ought to go to do some door to door campaigning and let him see some of the houses that people were able to buy after those rates came down. I think America is well and on the move. He thinks it's sick and getting worse, and his prescription, go back to the way things were, and that means more government, and if he does to us what he does to Massachusetts, that means more taxes and I will not raise your taxes. He says retreat and I say no, let's charge ahead. In 1981, here's the history, you remember it, we cut the taxes. Today the average American family pays $2200 less in income taxes than if the other party's policies had been in effect. Those tax cuts worked. In just six years we have created almost 18 million new jobs, new jobs for the working man and woman. Here's what he said, here's what that Governor said, here's what that Governor of Massachusetts said, he called the tax cuts, letting you keep a little more of what you earned, he called them one of the worst bills Congress could have ever passed and he said that, "The Reagan/Bush tax cut virtually destroyed our position in the world." Well, my friend, look, those are words of somebody who is itching to raise your taxes and we're not going to let him do it. You know, I'm glad to see Jim Corter and Dean Gallo here. If we had more like them in the United States Congress, we'd have that deficit down not by raising taxes but by getting that government spending under control. We need more like this right here. You know, here's the issue. Remember what we said down in New Orleans, I had fun down there at that convention, I said the Congress, big spenders on that Democrat side, they're going to push me about raising taxes and I'll say, no, and then they'll try again and I'll say no, and then they'll try again and I'll say, no, and then I'll say, read my lips, no new taxes!

MR. LEHRER: Gov. Dukakis's speech of the day was in Philadelphia. His major topics were national security and terrorism.

GOV. MICHAEL DUKAKIS, Dem. Presidential Nominee: My friends, I intend to be a President with one overriding foreign policy goal. I want to restore respect for American leadership in a changing world. I want to restore American leadership and respect for that leadership in a changing world. It's not necessary that everybody agree with our policies all of the time, but if we are to lead in this diverse and dangerous world, if our words are to be heard and our warnings are to be heeded, we must be respected. We're not winning that kind of respect these days. To regain that respect, we must meet every challenge to our security, not only the military challenges that I'm going to be discussing on Wednesday, not only the challenge of the Soviet Union which I'm going to be talking about in Chicago tomorrow, but also the new challenges arising from new quarters in this rapidly changing world, the challenge of trade in an increasingly interdependent world, the challenge of terrorism in an increasingly vulnerable world, and the challenge of drugs in an increasingly corruptible world. In each of these three areas George Bush has failed. I want to be winning against our foreign competitors. He's willing to settle for second place. I want to crack down on terrorism. He knuckled under to the Ayatollah. I want a real war against drugs. His answer to drug kingpins like Noriega is J. Danforth Quayle. And in each of these three areas, my friends, in each of these three areas, the man who was given the responsibility by this Administration was the Vice President. No wonder he doesn't want to debate. No wonder he isn't eager to debate. Can we trust him to lead the fight against terrorism? I'll tell you where he went. In 1985 and 1986, he was the chairman of the special cabinet level task force on terrorism, a task force whose principal conclusion, and I happen to agree with it, and so do you, was that the United States should make no concessions to terrorists, it should not pay ransoms, release prisoners, change its policy, or agree to other acts that might encourage additional terrorism. During that same period, during those same six months, the Administration first considered and then decided to sell millions of dollars of deadly arms to the Ayatollah of Iran. And so the question arises once again, where was George? He says was out of the loop. But now we know that he was fully briefed on all aspects of the transaction, he had many meetings, he had time to think about it, he had an opportunity to advise the President, and he did advise the President and he was disastrously and completely and unforgivably wrong. I don't question Mr. Bush's terrorism -- that too -- I don't question Mr. Bush's patriotism, even though these days he seems to be questioning mine. But does this man, a man who would encourage the President of the United States to undermine American interest and prestige by selling arms to Iran have the judgment and steadiness required in the Oval Office? I think we can do better. I think we have to do better if we're going to restore respect for American leadership around the world.

MR. MacNeil: For the rest of the campaign, we'll be carrying speeches by the Presidential candidates and their running mates. FOCUS - STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY

MR. LEHRER: Burma is next, marking one of the few times Burma has ever been next on the American news consciousness. It is a Southeastern Asian country of 35 million people that is as big as Texas but with a much smaller persona. It has a national personality that appears to thrive on being ignored on its isolation from the rest of the world. The reason it is in the news now is because it is in a state of political upheaval. Correspondent Charles Krause has some background.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Burma has been isolated from the western world for 26 years, cut off politically and even more so economically from the West and from its Asian neighbors, but behind the picture postcard facade, which only a few foreign tourists and almost no journalists have been able to see, is substantial mineral and agricultural wealth. Though now desperately poor because of economic mismanagement, Burma which became independent in 1948 was once among the richest lands in the old British Empire. Hoping the doors will reopen, Asian entrepreneurs are eager to reenter Burma. Competition is building among Japanese and Australian businessmen among others to win contracts to mine the country's largely unexploited coal, oil, and silver resources. It was in fact 26 years of isolation, one party rule, and increasing economic troubles that led to the current upheaval. Growing frustration among middle class Burmese broke into the open last spring with campus riots and street demonstrations. The first casualty was the country's ruler, Gen. Une Win who had run Burma since 1962, the year a military coup ousted the country's last freely elected leader U Nu. Street violence escalated again this summer, killing an estimated 1,000 demonstrators before a civilian president, Mong Maung was brought in. He tried to restore calm with promises of political reform. But the demonstrations have continued and on Saturday the ruling Socialist Party promised free and multi-party elections within three months. The opposition has not been able to coalesce around one leader, however, and most experts think the real balance rests with the Burmese military. If the generals can control their troops and prevent them from joining the street demonstrators, they may ultimately choose Burma's next leader and help decide whether the country will end its isolation and its political turmoil.

MR. LEHRER: Now some American analysis of what's going on in Burma. It comes from Thomas Reich, the Burma Desk Officer at the State Department's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Mr. Reich, the ruling Socialist Party was in power for 26 years. Do you agree with what Charles said, it was basically economic factors that caused it all over to boil over now?

THOMAS REICH, State Department: Clearly those were probably the substantial basis for the kind of turmoil that we're seeing now in Burma. The country's economy has noticeably declined over the last 1/4 century of Burma's Social Program Party rule. Shortages have developed in various sectors, particularly fuel, the price of rice has gone up quite a bit, so economic factors were certainly an important part, but I don't think they explain completely what has happened.

MR. LEHRER: What else is there?

MR. REICH: Well, there seems to be no doubt judging from what's been said by the demonstrators over the past few weeks that there's a political imperative involved here, that is, a genuine desire for democratic reform in the country, and that seems to be really perhaps a more important part than the mere economic basis.

MR. LEHRER: Let's make sure we understand who the players are here. Tell us about the Socialists, the people who have been in charge. Who are they? What are their occupations? What are their backgrounds?

MR. REICH: Well, the ruling party, the Burma Socialist Program Party, is largely a creation of the military following a 1962 coup which installed Gen. Nez Win who was commander of the armed forces. He overthrew the last civilian prime minister of Burma, U Nu, who is still in Burma and is now a leading opposition figure. The BSPP was created by the military. It's been largely staffed by former military officers and has installed a fairly rigid system in Burma since then.

MR. LEHRER: What kind of system? Can you characterize it in any way? In other words, do the buses run on time? Is there electricity? How does the government function under these people?

MR. REICH: It's been what we would term here largely a command economy which emphasizes a one party rule which has not permitted any opposition to the system from outside the BSPP. Economically there has been a series of rationing, a rationing system which has gone into effect. Today of course that system has largely broken down. The government appears to control very little outside from a few office buildings in Rangoon. There are very few public services of any kind still going on and the writ of the government is very very small.

MR. LEHRER: Now the elections that were announced Saturday in three months, does that mean the return of democracy? What does it mean?

MR. REICH: Well, judging from the reaction we've seen so far, from people in the streets, they are not convinced at all that what President Mong Maung announced on Sunday is going to lead to real democratic reform. Essentially, it appears that the demonstrators who number apparently many hundreds of thousands in cities throughout Burma are simply not trusting the government in its express desire to hold a multi party general election at an early date. Apparently, there is absolutely no trust in any solution to democratic reform that involves the Burma Socialist Program Party.

MR. LEHRER: Is this, this opposition is not very well organized, is that true?

MR. REICH: Well, there are four major opposition leaders and there is no evidence that they have coalesced to form any one organization.

MR. LEHRER: Is there any evidence that the Burmese people will participate in the election and take this seriously?

MR. REICH: That remains to be seen. Just judging from the popular reaction as evidenced by the demonstrators in the streets, one might reasonably conclude that for the moment at least the public doesn't appear willing to accept what the government has announced.

MR. LEHRER: What is the U.S. interest in Burma?

MR. REICH: Our interests have been fairly limited. Burma under the BSPP system was pretty much a closed society. It was rather isolationist. Foreign investment was prohibited and therefore, the United States or any country for that matter has not had much of an economic stake in Burma. So our involvement there has been extremely limited, our interests there have been limited. Potentially, the United States and other countries could have much broader economic interests in Burma. Burma is a country of immense natural resources. It until fairly recently was an oil exporter and almost certainly has the capacity not only to meet its own needs but to become an oil exporter again. In spite of the turmoil that's been going on recently and under the BSPP system in general over the last 1/4 century, it is very bountiful in terms of its agricultural product and generally has fairly substantial surpluses of rice and other food products. It has large reserves of precious gems and other minerals. Tourism could be another major birth industry. If there is any one benefit from the past quarter century of rule by the BSPP is that there is very little modern development going on in Burma, so there's no skyscrapers or anything like that. Tourist sites and architectural sites have been largely preserved in their natural state.

MR. LEHRER: But the U.S. in terms of what happens over the next three months and the governmental side, the political side, we are mostly spectators, is that right?

MR. REICH: Well not entirely. Certainly we aren't getting involved in domestic Burmese politics and no one else is either. I don't think that any county really sees that there is latitude for involvement in what's taking place in Burma. We've expressed on several occasions over the past month and a half or so first our condemnation of the violence which occurred on the week of August 8th to 12th, and later on our support as we have expressed in general terms throughout the world for democratic reform in Burma. We've done a couple of other things. Immediately after the week of violence, we had an emergency delivery of medical supplies to care for those wounded there.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Reich, thank you very much for being with us.

MR. REICH: My pleasure. FOCUS - YONKERS - A TIME FOR HEALING?

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight we have a documentary update on a housing desegregation battle in Yonkers, New York, a city paralyzed and driven to the edge of bankruptcy because four city councilmen refused to obey court orders and were subjected to escalating fines. Over the weekend, two members changed their minds. Charlayne Hunter-Gault reports on the aftermath. Charlayne.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: In the last few days, the people of Yonkers had begun to personally feel the pain of resisting the housing desegregation order by Federal Judge Leonard Sands. The city had reached $1 million in court fines, bankruptcy loomed, and service cutbacks and layoffs had started. In the face of mounting public pressure, defiant Republican Councilmen Nicholas Longo and Peter Chema switched their no votes to yes, creating a bipartisan majority in favor of a compromise plan. Essentially the plan still calls for building some 1000 units of low and moderate housing in predominantly white middle class areas of the city. Just hours after the decision we went to Yonkers to see how the city was taking the news. This unusual outdoor Mass at our Lady of the Rosary had been planned to celebrate the end of the season, the transition from summer to fall. [Outdoor Mass]

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But coming just hours after the Yonkers City Council ended its defiance of the court-ordered housing desegregation plan, Father Joseph Sexton found himself preparing his parishioners for a different kind of transition from the painful polarization that has divided this predominantly Catholic town for the past months to healing the wounds that suffered during the battle.

REV. JOSEPH SEXTON, Our Lady Of the Rosary: My thoughts go to what has been happening here in Yonkers, what may be happening in the future, and some tie-ins that I see with the scriptures. I think when Councilman Longo decided to change his vote and say yes instead of no to the housing remedy order, he said the reason he did it was because now it became concrete, now he was dealing with real people, where before it had been hypothetical. Our faith has to be shown in real action.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Until the weekend compromise, the real action had been the pitched battles in and around the Yonkers City Council chambers. The battling further polarized the city already divided what the courts affirmed as a 40 year history of housing and school segregation.

BLACK MAILMAN: I'll sum it up in two words. These people are living in the past. They don't want to go forward.

YONKERS WHITE RESIDENT: You get a halfway decent home, you try to put your kids through a decent school, and then they're going to come and tell you they're going to put in low housing which brings in crime, prostitution, dope. It's very unsafe for kids.

BLACK MALE RESIDENT: There's a lot of good people here. There's a lot of good people here that's stuck here that would love to get out, love to live in the nice decent area, have their kids brought up in a nice decent area, go to a nice respectable school, but the chances of that happening is based on the city.

WHITE MALE RESIDENT: Where you work for your money, that's where you should live. If you can't afford to live in an area that you can't live in, you shouldn't be there. Nobody should get nothing for nothing.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But on a Sunday morning in the West side Church that reflects the diversity of this city, Father Sexton was trying to change such hearts and minds.

FATHER SEXTON: [Speaking at Mass] And we can't wait for somebody out there to do it first. It has to start from here. I don't mean sell out on your principles. I don't mean be a doormat.What I mean is to follow the Lord Jesus, who said to God, "Not My way, God, I'll try to do it Your way."

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Those words had special meaning for Danny Fox, a 20 year old assistant mechanic at the police garage. He had already been notified that he would be in the first wave of layoffs.

DANNY FOX, City Worker: I am worried, yeah, I am worried a little bit. It wasn't the workers' faults, it wasn't the employees' faults that the fines went up and everything, it was the councilmen's.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So who do they blame for this situation?

DANNY FOX: They blame the judge.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Where do you see it ending?

DANNY FOX: When it gets too out of hand, when people are starting to get killed and hurt.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you think that's possible?

DANNY FOX: Maybe, maybe.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But from what you've heard, I mean, people are talking like this?

DANNY FOX: Yes, yes.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: For another parishioner, Paula Peden, the possibility of violence gives urgency to her concerns. She teaches in the parish elementary school. She and her husband have two teenage daughters and she worries.

PAULA PEDEN, Teacher: Because behind the issue are people and I don't know how much the people's feelings have changed just because the remedy is going to go through.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What do you mean?

PAULA PEDEN: Well, the people I hope feel differently but they may, they probably still feel the same as they did. I'm very very happy that things have been settled at city hall, but I don't think that that means it's the end of the issue.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do think this whole battle has led to any greater understanding?

PAULA PEDEN: Certainly, because they were forced to look at it, because things got so dramatic. Before they could ignore it if it didn't particularly apply to them. But when libraries are closed and your neighbor is being laid off and as you can see, our garbage has not been picked up yet this week, that's very close to home.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: In past years, people have never talked about this?

PAULA PEDEN: I always have personally. Our Church has always been very active socially, I think, not socially dancewise, but in this area. We have had good leadership since I have been back in this parish for the last 16 years because we are a mixed parish. You know, we live this this whole issue in this neighborhood all the time. This is not something that I am afraid of because people I don't know are going to move in next door to me.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you think that's what's the problem in other areas?

PAULA PEDEN: Oh, sure, oh, sure. It's because they don't know. I've worked with minority kids for ten years in this school and they're kids before anything else, you know. The sameness is so much more than the differences that if only everyone could be brought to see this, but people are genuinely afraid.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What do you feel about this when people say that the attitudes that have been expressed here are really not any different from those in the deep South of Jim Crow?

PAULA PEDEN: I don't think that that is true for everyone, but I certainly think there have been elements of it and unfortunately, those elements got the press coverage; people screaming in front of city hall are bound to get more attention. When we go out and people say where are you from and you're from Yonkers, right away of course they say, ah, Yonkers, big trouble down there, and depending on their own leanings, it will either be well, you know, Judge Sanders is a real son of a gun or you know, isn't it terrible that it is just like Alabama, so we're getting two very dramatic readings of the issue, and I think that it's somewhere down the middle.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: New parents Richard and Swan Ronde, also members of Father Sexton's parish. They too have been deeply touched by the crisis. He is a law school graduate who did his masters thesis on cooperative housing. She is a clinical psychologist.

SWAN RONDE, Psychologist: In terms of healing the city, you don't hear people talking about let's get together and try to work together, work this out. Maybe there are things we haven't explored, we don't about these other people, them, those people from the West side or the minority people. You don't hear them talking about that, so I don't think that the city has healed. I don't think that there's the work that has to be done if this is going to be affected, it hasn't even been begun.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: How would you describe the condition of the city right now? I mean, what does it feel like to live in Yonkers now and be black?

RICHARD RONDE, Legal Assistant: It's a city that borders on lawlessness and it borders on ignoring certain parts of its, primarily the West side, but I think also people have to really see that they have been blaming the so called wrong people. They've been blaming the people who will be in this housing as opposed to really looking back and saying, well, this is a pattern of discrimination that has occurred over the past four decades.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Some people have predicted violence. What do you think is going to happen now?

RICHARD RONDE: There may be some as they call them loose canons out there who might want to do something, but I think if the city lets everyone know that that kind of behavior will not be accepted or tolerated, then that will be something that will go toward helping some sort of peaceful resolution of this whole thing.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: As a clinical psychologist, how has this gone through your mind?

SWAN RONDE: What I do when I process that is I think that it's lack of exposure that creates fear. We're talking about people who by one thing or another don't have exposure to minority people or people of a certain class, more than casual exposure, and they'd rather not get to know them any better, and there's a loss there on both sides. To be here in this city and see people who haven't learned what someone can do when they get the opportunities, it's upsetting. It breaks my heart really to look at this city and see what people are doing. I think lots of help needs to be applied, not only economic, not only housing. I think people need counseling on both sides. There doesn't just need to be counseling for people to learn how to live in housing that's better housing. There needs to be counseling on the East side, what is it that we're afraid of? Who is that stranger on the other side of the city, on the other side of the wall? And I might say that that's the kind of work that clinical psychologists and people in the behavioral sciences do. That needs to be applied very much on the East side, very much in the city. So it's --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What happens if you don't do that?

SWAN RONDE: There will be violence. There will be behaviors that continue and perpetuate the myths and perpetuate the expectations. People will behave in one way with people who move into the neighborhood, for example, and get the expected reaction. There will be violence that will emerge and people will move out and maybe there will be a laxity on the part of the leaders in the government and less responsible people will move in, and the people who have been living there will say, you see, look what we've got, we've got a deterioration of our neighborhood. So that we're talking about healing that's not only economic but also social and psychological, emotional. People need to really explore. The meetings that we have gone to that have come out of this parish have gotten us to hear what the other side has to say and I learned myself. I thought that I knew what people are reacting to, but I had to hear someone from the East side talk in a very sincere way about her concerns, her struggle to buy her little house, and her fears of what it's going to mean to have the unknown happen to her. I couldn't have anticipated my reaction without hearing that. I mean, I heard a person who wasn't necessarily a racist, but somebody who had fears and who might be going along with things that she heard from her family when she was a child and as she's grown up, seen things that fit into that, puzzle pieces, and said, yes, this belongs here, because this is what I heard and this is what I see in the press and they're coming to my neighborhood.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And what did you feel?

SWAN RONDE: I understood her. I felt some kind of compassion for her and I didn't go to that meeting thinking I was going to feel compassion for the people on the East side, and I was irritated when I heard most of them. She got through to me.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And so what does that mean? Does that mean anything?

SWAN RONDE: It means if it could happen for me, it could happen for other people, but there needs to be an openness and as Richard has been saying, I think some of that needs to happen through the guidance of leadership, really pushing. Let's simmer down and look at the issues. Let's hold off on our emotional reactions to things and let's analyze what's going on. Leaders do help.

FATHER SEXTON: [Saying Mass] The decision has been made here in Yonkers to accept the housing remedy order, but there's a lot of work that has to be done to implement it. There is a lot of conversion of heart that has to go on. There is a long, hard road towards better mutual understanding among all the different groups. [Singing -- There's a time for renewing and a time for reconciling. There's a time for binding up the wounds of the years -- ] RECAP

MR. MacNeil: Once again, the main stories of the day, Vice President Bush and Gov. Dukakis attacked each competence in the national security field. In the TWA hijacking trial, the pilot said a hijacker on trial was the killer of a U.S. Navy diver. And snow brought temporary relief to firefighters in Yellowstone National Park. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Robin. We'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.