The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MS. WOODRUFF: And I'm Judy Woodruff in New York. After tonight's News Summary, we return to the bloodshed in Yugoslavia and look at one proposal to bring in outside force to stop it. Top U.N. official Marrack Goulding, Sen. Richard Lugar and Congressman Jim Moody join us. Then today's House floor debate on the amendment to require a balanced federal budget, and finally the first in a series of Charlayne Hunter-Gault conversations on race in America: Can We all Get Along? NEWS SUMMARY

MS. WOODRUFF: A U.S. soldier was killed in Panama today when three gunmen with assault rifles opened fire on his jeep. Another U.S. soldier was wounded in the attack. It happened on a highway in the town of Chilibre, about 30 miles North of Panama City. The U.S. has 10,000 troops in Panama, which it invaded in 1989 to oust dictator Manuel Noriega. President Bush condemned today's killing, but the White House said that his visit to Panama would go ahead as planned. He will stop there for several hours tomorrow on his way to the Earth Summit in Brazil. Student demonstrators in the capital burned a car and blocked streets today to protest the Bush visit. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: The House of Representatives began its great balanced budget debate today. The issue is whether to mandate balanced federal budgets by constitutional amendment. Tomorrow's vote is expected to be close. President Bush urged support for it this afternoon in a speech transmitted by satellite but aimed at no particular audience. White House Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said it was for anybody who wanted to pull it off the satellite. Here is some of what Mr. Bush had to say.

PRES. BUSH: A balanced budget amendment is real action and it will work. We should not be willing to risk our grandchildren's future on sound bites that merely sound real. The deficit is what's real. Congressional inaction is what's real. A constitutional amendment mandating a balanced budget is what's needed.

MR. LEHRER: House Budget Committee Chairman Leon Panetta opposes the amendment. He said it will not reduce government spending. He spoke during today's floor debate.

REP. LEON PANETTA, [D] California: You can't achieve this through magic solutions. You can't achieve this through gimmicks. The only way you reduce the deficit is through tough votes on issues, tough votes. And if you're not willing to take on the constituencies that are out there that have to be told the truth about the nature of our budget, if you're not willing to take on those constituencies, a constitutional amendment is not suddenly going to produce a midnight conversion.

MR. LEHRER: We'll have extended excerpts from the House debate later in the program. Last night, the House passed an extension of unemployment benefits. The vote was 261 to 150. It provides up to 26 weeks of additional money for 1.5 million people whose regular benefits start to run out next Saturday. President Bush has threatened a veto. He has proposed a 20-week extension. The Senate is considering its own version of the proposal.

MS. WOODRUFF: In Yugoslavia, a U.N. team trying to reopen the Sarajevo Airport reached the besieged capital of Bosnia today. They arrived amid reports that 31 people had been killed and 129 wounded in the past 24 hours of fighting there. David Simons of Worldwide Television News narrates this report.

MR. SIMONS: The convoy left at dawn for Sarajevo, where the situation is reported to be desperate. Before leaving, the U.N. commander, Lou MacKenzie, said on Yugoslav Television that it was probably the most difficult mission he'd ever undertaken, and gaining control of the airport could mean the beginning of the end.

GEN. LOUIS MacKENZIE, U.N. Commander: But if we are successful in opening the airport and we are successful in bringing in humanitarian aid and medicine, that surely has to be a very important break in the cycle of violence in Sarajevo.

MR. SIMONS: As the convoy approached Sarajevo, there were conflicting reports about the fighting there. Sarajevo Radio said Serbian troops had pulled back from the airport, but others reported the fighting was continuing. Meanwhile, in Belgrade, thousands of students turned out to demonstrate against the Serbian government and its role in the bloody conflict. They staged a sit- down protest and demanded the resignation of President Slobodan Milosevic. Similar protests were also reported in neighboring Montenegro.

MS. WOODRUFF: Senator Richard Lugar today called on the United Nations to authorize military action against Serbia if it does not agree to a cease-fire. The Indiana Republican said the Bush administration should take the lead in pushing for such a resolution in the U.N. Security Council. We'll have more on the war right after the News Summary.

MR. LEHRER: The Pat Robertson UPI deal collapsed today. Robertson withdrew his $6 million offer to buy the financially troubled news service. He said that after examining UPI's financial records, the economics just don't seem to make a great deal of sense. He offered to buy the UPI name and two of its small services. That was then rejected by UPI. Its executives said the 85-year-old company could shut down as early as this weekend if another buyer is not found. The nation's commercial banks earned record profits in the first three months of this year. William Taylor, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, said 93 percent of all banks were in the black, but he said the profits might not be enough to save some banks troubled by bad real estate loans.

MS. WOODRUFF: White House Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said today that the U.S. will sign the so-called "Rio Declaration" at the Earth Summit. U.S. officials had earlier indicated reluctance to sign the document outlining broad moral principles on the environment. It is still unclear how the differences will be resolved between the U.S. and developing countries over providing aid in return for preserving forests. The U.S. has been sharply criticized for its refusal to sign a separate treaty on so-called "biological diversity." Fitzwater said the President will offer some hard truths during his trip to Rio, in particular about his belief in the need for balance between environmental protection and economic growth.

MR. LEHRER: The King of Thailand chose an interim prime minister today. He is Anon Panyarachun, a retired diplomat who was forced by parliamentary election results to step down as prime minister just two months ago. His new appointment is until new elections are held in four months. They were called after last month's bloody pro-democracy protests that ousted the military-backed government and left more than 40 people dead.

MS. WOODRUFF: That's it for our summary of the day's news. Just ahead on the NewsHour, stopping the bloodshed in Yugoslavia, debating a balanced budget constitutional amendment, and a Charlayne Hunter-Gault conversation on "Can We All Get Along?". FOCUS - STOPPING THE SLAUGHTER

MS. WOODRUFF: We focus first tonight on the violent unraveling of Yugoslavia. The United Nations is trying to relieve the besieged city of Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia. And in the United States and some other countries, there are increasing calls for even more dramatic action than U.S. sanctions to stop Serbian militias from taking territory in Bosnia and Croatia. Serbia and its president, Slobodan Milosevic, have denied being behind the latest fighting in Bosnia and Croatia, but they are increasingly being blamed by foreign governments for the violence. A week ago, Correspondent Gaby Rado of Independent Television News interviewed Milosevic.

GABY RADO, ITN: Mr. President, how do you answer the accusation that in the statements that you, yourself, have made over the past four years you've created an expectation amongst the Serbian population in Bosnia and Croatia that you'd support them in breaking away from their own republics?

PRESIDENT SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC, Serbia: How that was not -- you can check very, very strictly what was our policy. We had a policy to have a continuation of Yugoslavia, to present Yugoslavia as a country which existed. And Yugoslavia, we were -- we are blamed that we want to create greater Serbia. That was not in any time our policy. And we were very clear explaining that Serbia doesn't have any territorial pretention.

GABY RADO: What effect do you expect the sanctions to have on Serbia?

PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC: Sanctions will have a very bad effect in terms of economy. We are not an island. We are cooperating. Our environment is world market, but I hope that sanctions will be lifted after clarification of a situation in Yugoslavia, after truth come on a scene, now on a scene, on a political scene are interest in power, not truth and justice.

GABY RADO: How concerned are you about the possibility of foreign military intervention here, and what steps are you taking against it?

PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC: I really wonder how anybody can start with any military intervention against country in which it exists peace on every square centimeter and which is not having any armed personnel anywhere out of that country. We are not phantoms. We don't have army which can have secret actions. We cannot hide that in front of our citizen. If we had any soldier out of Yugoslavia, we could have protests of our citizens, of parents and relatives, and it is very clear to all our people, all our citizens in Serbia that we really do not have it, and how anybody can find the basis for any intervention against us for not having any military action to anybody, all our lives.

GABY RADO: But do you think it's a possibility? Do you think it's a possibility?

PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC: Well, that can be absolutely unjustful and kind of aggression to our country. If that happen, I don't think that the international community can support something like that.

GABY RADO: If the best path to peace now seems to be your own departure from office, your own resignation, would you take that path?

PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC: Absolutely. If it is a price for lifting sanctions or justful solution, that is the cheapest way for that. There is no problem at all. And I'll say it to you, who can be the happiest for that, my family, my children, my wife in that case is not a problem. A problem is absolutely different. Problem is continuation of existing of our country and right of our people to put in order on their own will how they are going to live together, not to be dictated from outside.

GABY RADO: It must concern you thought that you're not trusted by the world community. People say that you're not believed. Does that concern you? This is the attitude from the outside.

PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC: Absolutely. Absolutely. But just because of that I'm saying don't trust me. If you don't trust me, please send people and check. Trust your own eyes, not to me.

MS. WOODRUFF: The world's response to the Yugoslav crisis has increasingly been organized by the United Nations. Two weeks ago the U.N. Security Council adopted stiff economic sanctions against Serbia. Two days ago, the Security Council directed U.N. Secretary General Boutras-Gali to deploy U.N. peacekeepers to reopen the airport in Sarajevo and permit relief supplies to reach that city. For more on the U.N. role, we turn to Marrack Goulding, the United Nations Undersecretary General for Peacekeeping Operations. He joins us from the United Nations studio. And thank you for being with us. I want to ask you about the situation in Sarajevo and in Yugoslavia right now, Mr. Goulding, but just first, what is your response to President Milosevic's comment -- you just heard it -- in which he indicated that his government really has nothing to do with what's going on, that it's not a case of aggression, that they're not trying to take over any territory?

MR. GOULDING: We have a conflict of evidence here. President Milosevic has said that many times. He's said it to Mr. Vance. He's said it to me. On the other hand, there are member states of the United Nations who are absolutely convinced that what is going on in Bosnia-Herzegovina is being run from Belgrade. Opinions about that vary. I don't think anyone can say with absolute certainty what the truth is. What we're concerned with in the United Nations at present is not blaming those who are thought to be responsible. We're trying to find a practical way of dealing with this really very severe humanitarian crisis in Sarajevo by getting the airport open and getting relief supplies flowing in.

MS. WOODRUFF: And that's exactly what I wanted to ask you about. You've been in touch, I understand, with the team that reached the airport today. What did they tell you?

MR. GOULDING: Alas, they didn't reach the airport. The convoy which you filmed just now setting off from Belgrade this morning got within about 10 kilometers of Sarajevo. They arrived at a base of the General Mladic, who commands the Bosnian Serb forces around Sarajevo. We sent out from Sarajevo, from our people who are already there, some armored vehicles to bring them in and the armored vehicles were shot on. They found the road that they were to go along was mined and they had to turn back. So the party from Belgrade are stuck in the barracks overnight. We hope to get them into Sarajevo tomorrow morning, but that, of course, illustrates the problem that we have. Both sides deny any responsibility for that firing. They deny any responsibility for the mining of the roads. And this is the great difficulty in Yugoslavia, is pinning down who is actually responsible for blocking the efforts of the United Nations and other international organizations to deal with, as I say, this very severe humanitarian problem.

MS. WOODRUFF: But your -- the people in charge of the convoy, Mr. MacKenzie, who we heard in that earlier piece, did have a conversation with the head of the Serb, the Bosnian Serb forces?

MR. GOULDING: I assume that he did. I assume that General Mladic is out of his barracks but we haven't had a direct report from Gen. MacKenzie. We've had an indirect report from the people who went out to try and fetch him in.

MS. WOODRUFF: Why is it so important that that airport be secured?

MR. GOULDING: I think it's important in practical terms and it's important in symbolic terms. In practical terms, if you would get that airport open, it would provide a means of flying relief supplies directly into Sarajevo, where there is real hardship at present. The symbolic importance would be that this would be real evidence that the conflicting parties there are prepared to have a cease-fire and are prepared to take practical steps to help the delivery of relief supplies not only to Sarajevo, but to other places in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where there is real suffering. And I think if we get the airport open, then that would open the way to the delivery of supplies by road as well, which, of course, permits one to bring in a much greater volume of food and medicines and so on.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, are you and Gen. MacKenzie optimistic that that can be accomplished?

MR. GOULDING: I think optimism isn't really the question. What we're trying to do under the direction of the Security Council is somehow to get a cease-fire to hold and to get the airport open. We had an agreement. It was a good agreement negotiated by the U.N. and signed last Friday evening. Unfortunately, it has not so far been respected by either side. The first point in the agreement was the cease-fire. As everyone knows, there's been intense fighting in and around Sarajevo since the agreement was signed. We have to persevere. We have to go on trying. In the case of Croatia, it took Mr. Vance a very long time to get a cease-fire that held. It was the 16th cease-fire, I think, which finally held and made it possible to deploy United Nations peacekeeping troops. We will go on trying.

MS. WOODRUFF: What do you think it's going to take? I mean, the U.N. forces there you say just on the outskirts, what, 10 kilometers from the airport, is that right, what's it going to take to get the two sides to stop long enough for your people to move in?

MR. GOULDING: We've got to approach this in stages. That group who went down today include Gen. MacKenzie, who has been appointed commander of the new Sarajevo sector that we've set up. His task is to negotiate with the two sides to get them to honor this cease- fire agreement. That's the first step. Then there's another group who are due to go in tomorrow who are a team made available by France, experts in aircraft security whose task is to go and survey the airport, see what condition it's in, see what new equipment has to be provided to make it operational. Then the next step which we hope will take place over the weekend is the deployment of a group of military observers whose task will be to make sure that the parties do what they've said they will do, which is to remove all anti-aircraft weapons out of range of the airport in its approaches and to concentrate the heavy weapons which are in the hills around Sarajevo in places decided by us where they will be monitored by the United Nations. Only when that's done can we get the airport open and functioning.

MS. WOODRUFF: But that's a pretty heavy task that you're describing that has to be achieved in the next few days, isn't it?

MR. GOULDING: It's a heavy task. It ought to be achieved in the next few days if supplies are to be brought in to the suffering people of Sarajevo. The fact that it's difficult doesn't mean that we shouldn't go on trying to do it. And we will go on trying to do it.

MS. WOODRUFF: What is it -- normally, peacekeeping forces are there to keep a peace that has already been achieved. You don't have that in this situation. What does that mean about what your men, your people, are doing there?

MR. GOULDING: In this case, we've been both peacemaking and peacekeeping. It was we who mediated that agreement that was signed on on Friday evening. We're now trying to make that agreement stick. But we can't get the airport open unless the two parties are persuaded to honor the commitments they've entered into in that agreement. This is not military intervention. It is not peace enforcement. It is helping parties to carry out something they've agreed to do.

MS. WOODRUFF: What are your thoughts on this proposal by Sen. Lugar and others who feel very strongly that now is the time for the U.N. to move with military force, that there has to be outside military intervention now in order to force something to happen, that it's not enough to just keep talking?

MR. GOULDING: I understand the frustration that causes people to say that sort of thing. We're frustrated ourselves. We've done a lot of talking. We haven't produced the goods yet. I hope that the talking will succeed, that we will make that agreement of last Friday's stick and that it won't be necessary to undertake military intervention to get relief supplies in. As the Secretary General said in a recent report to the Security Council, that sort of operation without the agreement of the parties involved deploying very large numbers of troops properly equipped for combat missions. And that's quite different from the kind of peacekeeping operation which we're trying to set up or extend in Sarajevo at present. And I say extend because it's not always realized that we've had something like 90 U.N. troops in Sarajevo right through the thickest of this fighting. It was the fact that they were there which made it possible for us to get that agreement on Friday.

MS. WOODRUFF: But if the talking doesn't produce the results you hope for -- and you've said, yourself, the situation is dire, the lack of food, medical supplies, and so forth -- doesn't there come a time when some next step has to be taken?

MR. GOULDING: Well, then there is a new situation. It's a new situation which the Security Council will want to face. And Sen. Lugar has come up with a proposal about what the United States should recommend to the Security Council. Other member states may have different views. But you're quite right. If our present efforts don't succeed, then there will be a need to find other ways of addressing this very severe humanitarian crisis.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, Mr. Goulding, we thank you for being with us.

MR. GOULDING: Not at all.

MS. WOODRUFF: Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Now we get two congressional views of how to stop this war in Yugoslavia, and one of them is from Sen. Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana. He's a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and as we reported and just heard, today he called for the use of military force to end the fighting. On the other side of that issue, Congressman Jim Moody, Democrat of Wisconsin, he worked for two years in Yugoslavia with an international relief organization. He traveled there recently and met with the leaders of all the republics. The Congressman and the Senator join us tonight from the Senate TV Gallery. Sen. Lugar, why do you believe the time has already come to seriously consider the use of military force?

SEN. LUGAR: To consider military force is the correct way to phrase that. My suggestion is that President Bush ought to recommend to the Security Council, the U.N., that this be an option, that the nation states of the world, the members of the U.N. be authorized, as they were before Desert Storm, to use military force if a cease-fire is not obtained. And we ought to set a deadline. The point I'm trying to make is presently the economic sanctions alone are not working, that it is not a credible situation in which the Serbian government of Yugoslavia or any other party is likely to move without there being the threat that military sanctions are possible. My hope is, as everybody else on this program, is for a cease-fire, for peace. But I do not see a possibility of that without at least the option of military behind it.

MR. LEHRER: What do you see? You mentioned Desert Storm. Draw the parallels between this situation and the situation that existed in the Gulf.

SEN. LUGAR: The parallel there was that Saddam Hussein miscalculated. He always believed that we would not use military force. I suspect he thought the Congress would probably not authorize even our President to use military force, despite the U.N. deadline of January 15th. It seemed rather ominous. Now, he miscalculated and that caused war. I would say in this particular situation there is no need for a repetition of that and very clearly overwhelming forces available of the NATO allies that are very closely juxtaposed, the smart weapons, the air superiority, the possibility of action from the sea, these are tactical options that ought to be explored and ought to be obvious really. Under those situations there is unlikely to be miscalculation.

MR. LEHRER: How big a force would it take to stop this war?

SEN. LUGAR: I have no idea. I've heard estimates by Gen. Galvin yesterday that it would take two divisions, 25,000 people, just to secure the airport at Sarajevo. Mr. Goulding has already said if you have to move beyond a peacekeeping operation to one of peacemaking, obviously, very superior forces are required. But in Desert Storm, we made certain that all parties knew that there were adequate air, sea, and land forces available. And we suffered very few casualties because we used those forces with skill.

MR. LEHRER: Now, continuing the Desert Storm parallel, over 90 percent of the forces, the man and women power as well as the hardware, were American. Would you anticipate a similar situation in this case?

SEN. LUGAR: No, I would not. Clearly, American forces might be involved. We are a very strong participant in NATO. We have the leadership role in the world. This is principally a European problem. Our leadership is required because Europeans have not been able to settle the problem and I see no prospects they will be able to do so. So as another order of argument, we have to define what our interests are. And they are, of course, in peace, in stability in Europe, and the ability to make certain that nations do not believe they can solve ethnic quarrels by warfare with the proliferation of weapons, other nations coming into the thing. These are all considerations, but we ought to play as minimal a role as possible after we've offered leadership in the U.N. and NATO.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Moody, what do you think of Sen. Lugar's idea?

REP. MOODY: I don't like it. I think the last thing we should be doing is setting to end violence by using violence. I don't think that will work in that part of the world where I lived for quite a while. I think we'll only drive the situation into more extreme, hardened positions and move further away the day when a peaceful and political settlement will be reached. And that's what has to happen.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman, how could the positions be any more hardened than they already are?

REP. MOODY: Oh, a great deal. There are a lot of places in this country that are not in conflict. The --

MR. LEHRER: Then you think --

REP. MOODY: The Croatian forces that are in Bosnia are substantial. They're not fighting at the moment. The Yugoslav army is technically out, although those Bosnian citizens of that army are still there, apparently operating without the direction of Belgrade, although that's a question. The recent U.N. report says that they are not under Belgrade control. That's why I have real problems with putting pressure on Belgrade to get a result in Bosnia, but that's another issue.

MR. LEHRER: So you believe if military force from NATO sanctioned by the U.N., as Sen. Lugar has outlined, if it came to that, that that would cause the whole country to go up into war?

REP. MOODY: It could spread the conflict, absolutely, absolutely. You remember, Yugoslavia is a country, really a checkerboard of different ethnic groups. It isn't just in Bosnia. It's throughout Croatia and many parts of Croatia and parts of Serbia, as well as other parts. And this is a tinder box and anyone who knew this country knew that it was vital to get U.N. peace preserving and war preventing forces into Bosnia before this began. Unfortunately, this administration, which had been pursuing a very intelligent, careful policy of not allowing the Europeans, particularly the Germans, to dictate our policy, but withholding, withholding recognition pending a political, internal settlement, suddenly abandoned that policy, gave up our leverage and suddenly announced we are going to recognize Bosnia even though the forces inside had not been reconciled. That absolutely set off the conflict, as everyone who knew the situation knew it would. It was a very foolish abandonment by the United States of the only, of its role of being the only country that could seriously broker a peace settlement to head off the conflict. Now that that's gone by, I don't think escalating or bringing in violence from the outside is going to help a bit. In fact, I think it will make things worse.

MR. LEHRER: What will solve those? Everything else that's been tried has not worked.

REP. MOODY: To solve the problem in Yugoslavia, you have to go back to the roots of the problem. The roots of the problem are the Croatians do not want to be in the same country with the Serbs and the Serbs do not want to be under Croatian control, whether it be in Bosnia or in Croatia, because of the 1941/45 experience, and 800,000 Serbs, plus a lot of Jews and gypsies, were exterminated by a fascist Usta Croatian government. Now, that's not saying they're that way now, but the Serbs who lived under Croatian control or in Croatia or parts of Bosnia fear a repetition of that experience, particularly since Mr. Tudjman, who is the President of Croatia, ran an explicitly racist, anti-Serbian campaign when he ran his election. The Serbs who had hoped that this thing had died down realize that this thing has not died down and they feared going back under Croatian control with the loss of their physical safety. So both sides need to be assured. The Croatians need to be assured that they can live peaceably and not be dominated by the Serbs and the Serbians who live inside Croatia or other parts of Yugoslavia outside of Serbia, itself, need to be assured of their physical safety and their culture and political rights. Unless we address those basic issues, we are not going to bring peace and no amount of outside force will work. The foreign countries that have tried to subdue the Balkans by force, as Germany did in World War I and World War II, came to grief because it's a very, very tough terrain to fight in and the people there are very resourceful at fighting outside people. So I think that's the last thing we should do.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Sen. Lugar, what do you think about that, Congressman Moody's point that the underlying causes have to be addressed, it doesn't matter how many troops you send in there, if you don't address those, you're never going to have peace?

REP. MOODY: Well, he's absolutely right. And very clearly, my point is that you have to come to a point in which a cease-fire is credible and the parties begin to sort out where they're going to live, how they're going to govern themselves. There is no license in this situation that they ought to kill each other by the thousands or create, as may have been created, 2 million refugees, that the people of Serbia ought to be starved in the process. The point that I'm trying to make is that we're likely to have many such ethnic sortings out and we'd better set a pattern in the world in which we say it's unacceptable to do so by creating warfare and primitive conditions. I don't accept for a moment that there is inevitable fighting forever in Yugoslavia. I think there is a will on the part of many persons in that country to sort the things out, but they are going to need an assist. And I think our leadership and the United Nations peacekeeping operations are going to assist to get to the cease-fire and I simply say to have the military option behind the economic sanctions I believe is a good idea.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Moody, what about that? If they're not talking now, you've got to figure out a way to keep them from killing each other to force the two sides to do what you think they should do, which is to work these things out.

REP. MOODY: We as a nation, Americans, need to concentrate on our issues here at home, like health care and so forth, but insofar as we play a role abroad, I think we should try to reestablish the honest broker role that we had and we uniquely had it. The Germans didn't have it because of their history of trying to subdue the Balkans, and the Europeans had lost it because they had followed the German initiative, however, what's left of our credibility could be resuscitated, we could try to bring the parties together, not dealing with Belgrade, because that's what the Hague and others in EC tried to do, and that never worked, because the Serbs in Bosnia consider themselves under threat of their own. They don't take orders from Belgrade, in my experience. They fear going under that kind of regime that the independent --

MR. LEHRER: Now --

REP. MOODY: Let me just finish.

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

REP. MOODY: So what we should do is try to find the true leaders in Bosnia of the Serbian community, the leaders in Bosnian of the Croatian community and the Moslem community, perhaps have three countries guaranteeing the talks, such as the U.S., maybe France, that has always had a good relationship with the Serbs, and perhaps Turkey, or some other modern Moslem republic, sit down, the three of them, with those leaders in a distant location, Rome or somewhere, and try to work out an agreement where the country can be brought back to peaceful means of settling this dispute. Escalating the violence, shelling the hills by air, would do no more than we did when we shelled the hills of Lebanon with our big guns from the ships. That would not solve any problems. It would probably only intensify it. So there is a slim hope and I think we should push it.

MR. LEHRER: Senator, the Congressman has repeated what he said at the very beginning, that what you're proposing, well, not what you're proposing, what you're proposing that be considered, which is the use of military force, would actually ignite the tinder box of Yugoslavia and the whole country could be in war.

SEN. LUGAR: I would certainly think not if we thought very carefully about the military tactics to be employed. We're not obligated to go into full scale ground attacks or specific shelling as in Lebanon or any such thing. We would be obligated, it seems to me, to use the very best judgment we had on the pressure points that would bring about a cease-fire, that would somehow bring whatever parties -- and the Congressman may be correct, that we have to identify who these parties are in a very sophisticated way -- but there are at least at some point some people that are going to be prepared to talk about this. You can take a look at neighboring Czechoslovakia. And we may be in for a situation of a potential split there, but I would simply hope that people there did not take on the same attitude as they have in Yugoslavia or anywhere else. We really have to say, it seems to me as a civilized world, that aggression of this sort, this type of killing, is unacceptable, because the ripples out simply are dangerous.

REP. MOODY: May I add one point on that?

MR. LEHRER: Yes, sir.

REP. MOODY: We would squander our ability to be the leaders in bringing about a political solution if we unleashed weapons and entered into a military action. In fact, I think threatening the use of force by super powers, directly or through the U.N., reduces our ability to bring the talks together that I suggested.

MR. LEHRER: But Congressman Moody, the idea of -- the fact that people are still dying as we're speaking, people are shooting at each other, and what else can be done to stop -- in other words, don't you have to stop the fighting at this point, whatever the causes are?

REP. MOODY: Absolutely.

MR. LEHRER: You have to stop the fighting before you can do anything.

REP. MOODY: Well, I think you try to call the leaders to a point where you sit down with them. I think they would welcome him. I think the people, the Serbs in Bosnia, the Croatians in Bosnia, and the Moslems in Bosnia, overwhelmingly they want peace and don't want fighting. Irregulars, militia groups and leaders of bands want fighting and will continue, but if you can get the leaders that have some ability to control the outcomes to sit down together as soon as possible, the day will come sooner that killing be stopped. Killing won't stop tomorrow and it certainly won't stop if we start shelling or simply threatening to shell. That is not the way to go. We've got to pull together some kind of peace procedure as soon as possible. And that may take a while, but the time to get started is now. Having squandered our ability to do that earlier, we should not waste another day to do so. Threatening the use of force, to my judgment, is the wrong way to go.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Lugar, back again to your parallel with Desert Storm and the Gulf War, the President and others who supported the President, including you, made the case to the American people as to what the U.S. interest was in turning back the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, and that it was worth risking American lives to do so. How would you state the case, if it comes to that in this situation?

SEN. LUGAR: The problem here is that if we are not able to work out ethnic violence, we are likely to see that repeated elsewhere in that part of the world and especially in some of the former republics of the Soviet Union. We still have a situation in which Americans believe the Cold War is over, but a number of areas still have nuclear weapons. They still have very large armed forces, and the possibility with proliferation of weapons, that most nations are willing to sell and other nations willing to come in on behalf of these disputing parties could create a very difficult worldwide predicament for us. This is a time to draw the line and to say really this type of activity's unacceptable, and if we do so now and do so decisively, I think that we will cut our costs very substantially.

MR. LEHRER: All right, Senator, Congressman, thank you both very much for being with us.

MS. WOODRUFF: Still ahead on the NewsHour, debating a balanced budget and a Charlayne Hunter-Gault conversation on the divisions between the races. UPDATE - BALANCING ACT

MS. WOODRUFF: Next tonight, an update on the debate in Congress over adding a new amendment to the United States Constitution. It is designed to balance the budget and the House vote tomorrow is considered too close to call. Both sides agree the amendment is a last resort. Numerous other efforts to reduce the nearly $400 billion federal budget deficit have failed miserably and both sides agree the stakes are high. The anti-Washington, anti-incumbent sentiment that has swept this year's primaries is often attributed at least in part to the budget stalemate. Two House leaders today invoked the need for political courage to make their respective cases.

REP. LEON PANETTA, [D] California: Clearly we are embarked on what I believe is the most serious debate that the House of Representatives can engage in, which is the question of whether or not we amend the nation's most sacred governing document to require a balanced budget. I think what this represents, when you get to the bottom line of all of the arguments that are going to be made, is that there are many members here who are willing to make a giant river boat gamble with our economy and with our Constitution in order to inject courage into cowards and to place a spine into the spineless. I would just remind my colleagues that the Constitution already provides power to the people to deal with the gutless and those who are cowards when it comes to deciding issues related to our economy. It's called the right to vote, the right to vote. You don't have to change the Constitution to try to force courage into this institution. The people can do that through the right to vote, because as we take up this constitutional amendment, every member and every constituent has to ask some very basic questions. The first is: Is this really the only alternative, is this really the only alternative left, or is this just another excuse for failed leadership? Because that's the argument. When you get through all of the arguments here, the bottom line is we've tried everything else, why not try the Constitution? Well, what happens if the Constitution doesn't work? Should we go and ask for a papal edict, or maybe we should ask for leaches to be placed on every member who doesn't do the right thing!

REP. BOB MICHEL, Majority Leader: I believe that the proposed constitutional amendment on a balanced budget comes under the category of recognizing failure. It's not, in my view, a failure of any one party, although our current system of divided government certainly played a major role. It's not an exclusive failure of any specific branch of government, although the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch have failed to show real leadership here. It's, instead, what might be called the systematic failure, a failure of our democratic system in all its complexity and perhaps because of that very complexity. You know, the politicians blame each other about the deficit and thepeople blame the politicians. And when the Constitution refers to "we, the people," it means all of us, elected officials and those who elected them. There are no outsiders in our system of government. Each of us is part of "we, the people." No American citizen is outside the responsibility of how our system works. Each of us, elected officials and other citizens, bear a different kind of responsibility for the American system of government. And over the many years I've been in the House, I've heard many calls for a balanced budget, but very, very few calls from folks who say, I want a balanced budget and the first thing I want you to do is make a deep cut out of my particular favorite item in the budget. Everyone is for a balanced budget in general, but no one wants his or her specific item cut. I'm voting for this proposal, not because I think it's all that good in itself, but because I perceive a universal failure to make the tough calls. Let's, therefore, give the American people the chance to tell us through a constitutional process what they want done about the budget deficit!

MS. WOODRUFF: If the measure is approved by the House, it must then be approved by the Senate, and then ratified by 38 of the 50 states in order to become part of the Constitution. CONVERSATION - CAN WE ALL GET ALONG?

MR. LEHRER: One of the major questions to rise from the Los Angeles riots was that of racial division in America. In the words of Rodney King, "Can we all get along?". It was the acquittal of four police officers accused of beating King that triggered the riots. His question is the text for a new series of conversations we launch tonight and that will continue over the next several weeks. Charlayne Hunter-Gault reports.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Christopher Jencks is a sociology professor at Northwestern University, specializing in issues of race, poverty, welfare, and class. The former journalist and author is currently on Sabbatical, researching a book at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York, where we spoke with him. Christopher Jencks, how wide, in your view, is the racial divide?

CHRISTOPHER JENCKS, Sociologist: Well, it's clearly sort of a real chasm between blacks and whites at some levels, that is, people look at each other and they see the stereotypes across the divide, if you will. And then if you look at people's lives, they're really alike, you know. People live their lives most of the time in very similar ways, even though when they look at each other, they see very different things.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You say we're dealing with both perceptions and reality. Where in that zone does this divide begin?

PROF. JENCKS: Well, I think both blacks and whites have a kind of statistical vision about the other group. White people see black people and they -- they start to worry immediately. I mean, they see somebody who might be a mugger, if it's a man. They see somebody they think is probably a single mother and on welfare if it's a woman, you know. They have these kind of generalizations. And those generalizations have some limited statistical validity in the sense that it's more likely that you'll be mugged by somebody black than somebody white.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The statistics say that.

PROF. JENCKS: Yeah. The statistics say that that's true. On the other hand, very few black people mug anybody. Everybody knows that. Most black people are just going about their lives just like most white people are. And most black people aren't collecting welfare. They're going to work every day and so forth. The blacks in America I think also have these kinds of perceptions. They look at white people and they see somebody who is likely to discriminate against them, probably prejudiced against them. In the worst case, they see somebody who's going to treat them the way Rodney King got treated in Los Angeles, you know. And, again, they're statistically right. There is a lot of discrimination out there. There are a lot of white people who are deeply prejudiced against black people. And most white people don't feel that way in any strong way, and that's not to say most white people are completely free of prejudice. Who is ever completely free of prejudice? But most white people are not going to go out of their way to engage in sort of racial harassment and that sort of thing.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: A lot of black people I have talked to say that they believe, they feel that white people are just tired of hearing about the problems that they go through and they have just sort of turned a deaf ear.

PROF. JENCKS: I think that 20 years ago we thought this was all going to change, so there was a lot of hope that sort of with the civil rights movement and affirmative action and the great society and all kinds of things like that, people kind of figured, well, you know, we've kind of turned a corner, this is going to get better. But then when you see -- when you come to feel that it isn't getting better, a lot of people sort of throw up their hands. And I think that some people have thrown up their hands on both sides and said gee, you know, I just don't see how this is going to improve. I mean, in particular, I think it's very hard to see a solution to this problem as long as our schools and our neighborhoods are almost completely racially segregated, which is by and large true. And it's true not just that whites don't want to live in neighborhoods with lots of black people but that the large majority, not all, but a large majority of black people feel more comfortable living in neighborhoods where other black people live. And that's partly because of their experiences with racism and discrimination on the part of white people. They don't want to have to face that in their daily lives. Who would? And white people have the sort of opposite thing, that sort of they don't want to live around a lot of white people, particularly -- I mean, around a lot of black people and particularly around black teenagers, because they're afraid of them. And when I think about race in the United States, I think about a bad marriage, you know. I think people get into these fixes and they say, you always, and then the other one says, you always, and you know, and these things escalate and so forth. But the thing is in, you know, in the United States, the solution with a bad marriage is you get a divorce. We can't get a divorce. We're stuck with each other.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Christopher Jencks, you're an academic. You do research and I know that researchers generally like to research and not be in the activist arena, but in your own personal life, is there any experience that you've had with race that may inform this discussion?

PROF. JENCKS: Well --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: I mean, do you socialize with blacks? Do you get invited into black homes? Do black people invite you to their homes? I mean, how much social interaction do you, yourself, experience?

PROF. JENCKS: Well, I have a lot of social interaction with other black academic colleagues, particularly at work. I mean, we do things together. We work on problems. We organize programs. We do all the things that people always do at work together, and that means we have some social interaction off the job. But I think basically, if you were to look at the life of American academics, it's not a very different story than what you'd find among middle class people in America generally. I mean, they have a certain amount of contact with blacks at work and a good deal less outside of work. We always want to reduce race to something else, especially academics, you know. It's class. It's money. It's family structure. It's something or other. It's not race. It's whatever else it is. And I think we all struggle with this problem, you know. You imagine what the world ought to be and then you try to behave that way and you see that it isn't going to work and you don't know why or how or wherefore, and I've certainly done that with limited success. I was trying to think about -- I think you see these things -- many of us probably see these things most vividly when we watch our children go to school and we see these kids start school in a racially mixed school and, you know, they have friends every which where, and then gradually these groups pull apart, you know, and as the kids get older, you know, the black kids' friends seem to be mostly black, and then nearly all black, and the white kids' friends seem to be mostly black -- I mean mostly white. And you know, you see this sort of growing apart going on in a setting where everything the school is overtly doing is working against this and sort of dutifully encouraging people to understand one another and having all the sort of the right occasions and the right curriculum and, you know, everything anyone could think of to do, they're doing, and yet this sort of cultural chasm is too deep a word, but divide at least is opening up in these kids' lives.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is the melting pot a myth? I mean, has it always been a myth?

PROF. JENCKS: No.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Was it just an interesting term?

PROF. JENCKS: The melting pot mostly worked for most people who came to America, and it melted a lot of Europeans together. And if you look at what happened to all those immigrants, you know, in the third generation, their incomes are practically indistinguishable, and where they are distinguishable, they're in very surprising patterns, you know. The people, economic success in America is now almost completely unrelated to your ethnic background if you are white. Even so, a hundred years ago, the anglo saxons were on top and we keep talking about the WASP establishment. And there's still a little bit of that in a few fancy clubs and board rooms and so forth, but if you just look at the average income of people who are of anglo saxon descent, it's now lower than a number of other ethnic groups in the country. And the melting pot may work for Asians too. But it certainly hasn't been working in anything like the way we imagined for blacks, and I think that may be part of our racial problem in a way, that Americans can't think about two groups living together with any model except the melting pot model. And what that means to them is black people should become like us. That's what the Italians did. That's what the Irish did. That's what the Poles did. Why don't these black people do it too?

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And why don't they?

PROF. JENCKS: They're black.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And that means what?

PROF. JENCKS: That means that, in fact, we won't let them. They can't pass the way the Europeans could. We keep on their case even after they get to be middle class and that sort of makes it essential for survival that there be some kind of a sense of separateness and pride and separate culture and all kinds of things that make the melting pot image not work right. But you have to think about organizing the society so both groups get a fair share and have a stake in the society, rather then that they're just all going to become alike. But the melting pot is very deep in our imagery of how to solve all these problems.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And that was the wrong image?

PROF. JENCKS: Yeah. I think at least it's proven to be the wrong image. I wouldn't have had the wisdom to say that it was the wrong image back in 1960. I thought just like lots of people that that was the right image, but I think that was a mistake.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you think we can learn from our mistakes?

PROF. JENCKS: We can if we admit that we made any.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you think we need a commission or a study or a panel or something that focuses specifically on this problem of race?

PROF. JENCKS: Well, I think what we need is not a commission or a study. I think we need a thousand little ones, because I think what really makes a difference in people's lives is not that some group of people appointed by the President issues a report, but that people in each particular school or each particular neighborhood try to get together and start talking about these things. And I think it does a world more good to have a group of parents in a multiracial school struggling with these issues in each of those schools around the country than it does to have a report, however distinguished it may be, because that's where these things are going to become fought over and cried over and struggled over really. It's when individual Americans are struggling with each other, not when they're reading the newspapers or watching the television and sitting comfortably at home, thinking about these problems. And the question is how you catalyze that, I mean, how do you get people to take a risk of dealing with people who are unfamiliar with them and putting themselves in situations which almost always are somewhat painful, and I think almost anyone who has spent time struggling with racial difference and racial conflict has found that they came home in the evening and people had said awful things to them and they were not happy. this is not like going to the Mets game, you know. It's hard. And you have to somehow find a way of motivating people to do something that is very difficult.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Christopher Jencks, thank you for joining us.

PROF. JENCKS: Thank you. RECAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Again, the main stories of this Wednesday, a U.S. soldier was killed and another wounded in a shooting attack in Panama. Three gunmen with assault rifles staged the ambush on a highway frequently used by U.S. soldiers outside of Panama City. The White House said President Bush would visit the country as planned tomorrow on his way to the Rio Summit. The House of Representatives debated adding a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. It is expected to vote on the amendment tomorrow. Good night, Jim.

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