The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MR. MacNeil: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After the News Summary this Thursday we discuss Bill Clinton's latest cabinet appointments. Elizabeth Brackett samples public reaction to the Clinton economic summit. We have a report from a town in Bosnia threatened by the ethnic warfare, and in Somalia, Charlayne Hunter- Gault gets a U.N. view of how the U.S.-led intervention is working. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: President-elect Clinton announced two more cabinet selections today. He picked former San Antonio, Texas Mayor Henry Cisneros to be Secretary of Housing & Urban Development, and Jesse Brown, a disabled Vietnam War veteran as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. He is now executive director of the Disabled American Veterans Organization. Hershell Gober, Arkansas's director of Veterans Affairs will be Brown's deputy. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: U.S. and French troops expanded their humanitarian mission in Somalia today. We have a report narrated by Richard Vaughan of Worldwide Television News.

MR. VAUGHAN: Having reached Baidoa, the U.S. Marines began escorting food convoys deeper into Somalia's famished heartland. This 10-truck convoy of wheat was bringing to relief to four villages within 30 miles of Baidoa. Before the foreign troops arrived last week, a convoy trying to reach the villages was attacked by gunmen and no food got through. Now military fire power kept any would-be bandits at bay. The trucks carried enough food to feed seven and a half thousand people for a month in a zone ravaged by clan warfare and famine. In Mogadishu, French troops reclaimed what's left of their embassy building badly damaged by fighting, looters, and squatters. French diplomats and workers were evacuated almost two years ago at the outset of Somalia's nightmare of civil war, disease, and starvation. Truckloads of aid were becoming commonplace in the capital. Relief flights landed without problem in Baidoa, but U.S. Marine presence kept most but not all of the Somali bandits off the streets.

MR. MacNeil: Just after that food was delivered some of it was stolen by Somali gunmen. Reuters News Agency said thieves filled trucks with sacks of food in at least two villages after the troop escorts left. Relief officials said violence and looting continued in other parts of the country despite the growing number of foreign troops in Mogadishu and Baidoa. The Associated Press also reported that in the capital U.S. and French troops had stopped searching cars for weapons and more residents were openly carrying guns. In this country, Bush administration officials said the United Nations should immediately begin preparing a peacekeeping force to take over when U.S. forces withdraw. The remarks came in the first congressional hearings on the U.S. intervention in Somalia. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Herman Cohen, said U.N. officials were currently working on plans for the peacekeeping mission.

HERMAN COHEN, Assistant Secretary of State: We're expecting that plan within a few days, and it's not going to be a traditional U.N. peacekeeping force likely armed with the very, very passive rules of engagement. We expect it to be heavily armed with the very robust rules of engagement. All U.N. forces there must be stronger at all times than any potential threat that can come from armed thugs coming back from across the border where they've been hiding. We cannot allow a situation that existed before where the U.N. was weaker, where the Pakistani forces at the airport were virtual hostages.

MR. MacNeil: Later in the program we'll have another update report from Charlayne Hunter-Gault who is in Somalia.

MR. LEHRER: New claims for unemployment benefits rose by 22,000 in the first week of December. It was the first increase in four weeks. The nation's trade deficit narrowed 18 percent in October to just over $7 billion. The Commerce Department report today said exports grew by $1 1/2 billion, while imports shrank slightly. President Bush signed the North American Free Trade Agreement this afternoon in Washington. Canada's Prime Minister Mulroney and Mexican President Salinas did the same in their respective capitals. The agreement would create the world's largest and richest free trade zone. It still must be ratified by all three countries' legislatures.

MR. MacNeil: Israel today deported nearly 400 Palestinians accused of belonging to militant fundamentalist groups. They took the action despite international criticism and a last minute court challenge. The expulsions were a response to the kidnapping and murder of an Israeli policeman by Muslim fundamentalists earlier this week. Jane Bennett Powell of Independent Television News reports.

JANE BENNETT POWELL: Since the Israeli authorities transported the Palestinians through the night to the northern border with Lebanon, detainees have been kept on the 22 buses which brought them, the subject of 18 hours of legal argument. Bound and blindfolded, they could be only at the start of the long shuttle since the Lebanese authorities have refused to take them, and the chance of an Israeli-Lebanese military confrontation can't be ruled out. Human rights lawyers who petitioned the High Court in the emergency session questioned the attentive expulsion of unprecedented numbers of Palestinians. The Israeli military authorities said it was to count on mounting terrorist attacks. The Israeli government alleges the 418 have links with Hamas, the militant Islamic group, to justify its action. Instead, it's attracted widespread condemnation.

MR. MacNeil: In Washington, the expulsions caused the Palestinian delegation to boycott today's session of the Mideast peace talks. A spokeswoman called the Israeli move a willful violation of the peace process. The chief Israeli negotiators said the deportees were terrorists who threatened the existence of Israel. President-elect Clinton talked about the situation at his news conference this afternoon.

PRESIDENT-ELECT CLINTON: Let me first of all say that I share the anger and the frustration and the outrage of the Israeli people at what has happened, and I understand how they feel they have to deal very firmly with this group Hamas, which is apparently bent on terrorist activities of all kinds. On the other hand, I am concerned that this deportation may go too far and may imperil the peace talks.

MR. MacNeil: Today was supposed to have been the final meeting in the current round of peace talks. This morning, President Bush met separately with the joint Palestinian-Jordanian delegation, the Lebanese, the Syrians, and the Israelis. All sides said they'd expressed their thanks to Mr. Bush for his role in getting the talks started.

MR. LEHRER: NATO allies today rejected a U.S. offer to shoot down Serbian planes violating a non-fly zone over Bosnia. That offer came from Sec. of State Eagleburger at a NATO meeting in Brussels. The NATO foreign ministers did agree to help enforce the Bosnian flight ban if asked to do so by the United Nations. Russian President Boris Yeltsin made his first visit to China today. He said the two countries had great prospects for military cooperation. Yeltsin aides said Russia would sell fighter jets and anti-aircraft weapons to China, but they also said there would be no revival of the 1950s era alliance between the nations.

MR. MacNeil: Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Cambodia today released 21 U.N. peacekeepers they were holding hostage, but they seized 46 others just a few hours later. The 46 had entered Khmer Rouge territory for talks on how to avoid such conflicts in the future. It was the third such hostage taking in Cambodia since the U.N. imposed sanctions on the Khmer Rouge. The sanctions were imposed to punish the militant faction for failing to comply with the peace plan. Vietnam today handed over more important documents on America servicemen missing from the Vietnam War. They were delivered in Hanoi to Sen. John Kerry, who heads the Senate Committee investigating MIAs. Kerry said the information included shoot-downs, dates of deaths, and other critical information. Kerry said more information is promised when he meets with the country's president.

MR. LEHRER: The Children's Defense Fund issued its annual report on the state of America's children today. It found widespread poverty, lack of immunizations, and an increase in abuse and neglect. The president of the non-profit, private group, Marion Wright Edelman, spoke at a Washington news conference.

MARION WRIGHT EDELMAN, Children's Defense Fund: One in five of our children, 14.3 million, lived in poverty in 1991. This is the highest number of poor children that we have had in America since 1965, and I think it's important for all of us to recognize that these poor children are not just black. Most of them are not black. Most of them don't live in inner cities. They live in families where at least one parent works, and they live in rural and suburban, as well as urban America.

MR. LEHRER: The United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, offered a report today on the state of the world's children. It said about 13 million will die this year, mostly in Africa and Latin America, from malnutrition and preventable diseases. The report said a worldwide expenditure of $25 billion could save more than 4 million children and reduce the hunger problem by half.

MR. MacNeil: That's our summary of the news. Now it's on to Clinton cabinet choices, public reaction to his economic summit, a report from Bosnia, and Charlayne Hunter-Gault in Somalia. FOCUS - WHO'S WHO

MR. LEHRER: President-elect Clinton added two more names to his starting line-up today, and finding out more about those two is our lead task tonight. First, Henry Cisneros, the former Mayor of San Antonio, named Secretary of Housing & Urban Development. He had this to say after his appointment.

HENRY CISNEROS, Secretary of HUD-Designate: President-elect Clinton, Vice President-elect Gore, thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve your administration and your goals, to serve our country and to serve the ideals that have been for so long a part of my own life. I experienced a sense of urgency about our nation's challenges in 1992, first, in the civil disturbances in Los Angeles last spring, and then in experiences along the campaign trail this fall, where I saw the desperate straits of so many Americans, but also the hope in their faces as they worked for a new America. They seemed to say life in America can be more than crime and youth gangs, older people locked up in their own apartments, unsafe schools, declining industries, and tired cities and towns that so many Americans live in today. I sense that we have limited time for America, that we cannot talk about the economy and not talk about our cities and towns, about the poor of all races, and that we must use the best of technology and the best of our talents to pull it altogether to create quality of life settings together with people all across America. It breaks my heart every time I'm in a meeting and hear people talk about writing off neighborhoods or entire cities, or, worst of all, a generation of our youth. I'm glad to joint President-elect Clinton in his quest for inclusiveness in decision making. I'm obviously proud of my Hispanic heritage and understand the diversity that is America as it manifests itself in our society.

MR. LEHRER: For more on and about we go to San Antonio to Rick Casey. He is the page one columnist for the San Antonio Light, and he has been covering Henry Cisneros since the 1970s. Rick Casey, what does the country need to know about Henry Cisneros?

MR. CASEY: Well, you know, it's our impression from here that the country already knows a fair amount about him. He's a very articulate person, a very skilled politician. He is, by far, the most adept and successful politician to come out of San Antonio in the last, oh, perhaps half century.

MR. LEHRER: And what -- does he have a special insight or special experience in the area of housing and "urban development?"

MR. CASEY: Well, urban development much more than housing. Housing was never a major issue on his agenda here in San Antonio, but urban development was, and very much along the lines of bringing economic growth to San Antonio. He once told me many years ago he grew up in a very poor part of San Antonio, and he once told me that jobs, jobs for the people among whom he grew up was by far his highest priority. He would do whatever it took he said in order to bring more jobs to San Antonio. And that was very much the consistent focus of his tenure as mayor over a period of eight years.

MR. LEHRER: What was his, what's his style like, Rick? I mean, is he a man, does he get things done through confrontation, through compromise, a little bit of both? What, what's his technique?

MR. CASEY: Well, he's very much of a broker between different groups. That's the role he played here very successfully. He's also very much the out-front man, the leader. He's the kind of person who when he walks into a room, people notice. He's got that certain star quality about him, but in terms of that --

MR. LEHRER: Where does that come from? What's your feeling about where that comes from? Was he born with it?

MR. CASEY: Well, part of it is a mother who was an incredible force in his life, something of a task master. He talked about early on when his friends would be out on Sunday afternoons playing ball, he would have to be inside, reading Ivanho. Now this is the stuff of which myths are made, but knowing his mother, I don't doubt that one. She is quite a powerful person.

MR. LEHRER: Is he, is he a guy with a personal political agenda? Does he -- in other words, would he be coming to Washington, would he have taken this HUD job because he, Henry Cisneros, wants to get something done, or would it be driven more by the fellow, oh, I want to be a team player with Clinton-Gore?

MR. CASEY: He's very much a person who has an agenda. He's also been very strong in agenda. Like Clinton, while he was in college, he decided that urban affairs, urban politics was what he wanted to do, and the parallels with Clinton are very interesting. While Clinton was at Georgetown, he was at Texas A&M, but then while Clinton went off as a Rhodes scholar, Henry became a White House fellow. He got a similar kind of recognition, and while a White House fellows earned a masters in Washington, went on to get a doctorate in urban affairs at Harvard, but from the beginning, from the time he was, oh, a senior in college, he knew he wanted to come back to San Antonio, again, a parallel with Clinton. He wasn't attracted to go to Washington. He went back home to build a political career here. But, you know, he started very young, and I think very early on he had much higher ambitions, and the trip to Washington is not at all a surprise I think to either him in terms of his long-term plans or to anybody who knows him.

MR. LEHRER: That's a long road from a poor neighborhood, a poor, Hispanic neighborhood in San Antonio to the presidential cabinet. Was there any particular thing that happened early in his life that caused everything to change and to make it possible for him to go to Texas A&M and then to get a masters and a Ph.D.? What happened early?

MR. CASEY: While he was from a relatively poor neighborhood, you know, you're talking about poor and lower middle class, and his family actually is not poor. His family was a colonel in the military, and a civil service worker. There was never a lack of material things or of education in his family. Their dedication to education was very, very powerful. They sent him to Catholic schools and to Central Catholic High School, which was economically the most demanding Catholic school in town, so the commitment to education was very strong from the beginning. Actually, he skipped a grade when he was in grade school. He wanted to go to the Air Force Academy but he was still too small to be admitted. He was planning on a military career like his father, but while at A&M, he attended a national conference, a student conference on political affairs, and got very much turned on to the idea of getting involved in urban issues. You know, you have to have grown, come of age in the '60s to appreciate how powerful a thing that was for, for young people in those days to think by solving the problems of the cities, we could really shape the future of the nation. Henry was very much turned on by that idea, and, and very disciplined then about shaping a career that dealt with it.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Following almost a pattern, similar pattern, as you said earlier, that Bill Clinton followed.

MR. CASEY: That's right.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Rick Casey in San Antonio, thank you very much.

MR. CASEY: Thank you.

MR. LEHRER: Now today's second major appointment, Jesse Brown, now the executive director of the Disabled American Veterans Organization, to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs. He redefined his new title when he talked to reporters in Little Rock today.

JESSE BROWN, Secretary of Veterans Affairs-Designate: President- elect Clinton, with pride, I accept your nomination. Reflecting your genuine concern and deep appreciation for the service that has been rendered on behalf of our nation's veterans and their families, I will be a secretary for veterans affairs, not a secretary of veterans affairs. [applause] We will move forward in an aggressive manner on behalf of the issues that are of vital concern to you and to the veterans of this nation, issues such as health care reform, quality health care, and an effective and efficient benefits delivery system. We will be innovative. We will be pro-active, not reactive, in our efforts. This is my pledge to you, President-elect Clinton. This is my pledge to the American people. This is my pledge to the 27 million veterans of our nation.

MR. LEHRER: Tom Harvey is here now to tell us more about Jesse Brown. Mr. Harvey, like Mr. Brown, is a Vietnam veteran. He was staff director for the Senate Veterans Committee and more recently was personnel director for the Bush-Quayle campaign. Mr. Harvey, what kind of person is Jesse Brown?

MR. HARVEY: Jesse's an inspired choice, Jim. He's really a great choice for this particular job. Jesse is an articulate, eloquent advocate for veterans. He has spent his life concerned about the welfare of other veterans his entire professional life since he was seriously injured in Vietnam. He lost the use of his right arm when he was there as a Marine corporal many years ago, and he's spent his whole life taking care of veterans. So I think he will be, and importantly will be perceived to be an advocate for America's veterans.

MR. LEHRER: And is that what this job should be, an advocate for the veterans, rather than an administrator for the veterans?

MR. HARVEY: It really should be. It needs to be, because all of these veterans, the 27 million that he spoke about, earned certain benefits from this country through service to their country and, indeed, the group that Jesse has been most involved with over the years, the Disabled American Veterans, were disabled in the service of their country. And so I think it's important that they perceive that there's somebody there who cares for them and is looking out for their best interests.

MR. LEHRER: But the other side of the coin, of course, Mr. Harvey, is that there are powerful veterans organizations that lobby the congress and lobby the administration for these benefits, and there are also people saying this whole system must be reformed. Is Jesse Brown the man to reform the system too? Can he make it all work, in other words, do you think?

MR. HARVEY: I don't have a doubt in my mind that he can. He's an excellent administrator. He's been an administrator within the Disabled American Veterans, and by being and being perceived to be an advocate, I think that changes that he may attempt to make within the Department of Veterans Affairs will not be perceived as the threat that some others may be perceived.

MR. LEHRER: Because he's considered one of them?

MR. HARVEY: Because he is one of them and he knows that system, and he knows the benefits system, and he cares.

MR. LEHRER: Well, of course, the reason the question comes up is because Mr. Derwinsky, who had this job under President Bush was fired during the campaign, because the major veterans organizations got put out with him. And they showed their clout there. How will Jesse Brown deal with those folks, do you think?

MR. HARVEY: I think he'll deal with them very effectively. You know, I, in addition to working on the Hill, I spent three years as deputy administrator of the Veterans Administration. I used to have a number --

MR. LEHRER: Which was the predecessor organization to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

MR. HARVEY: Yes. I used to periodically have disagreements with Jesse, and I always learned something from those. We always kept those disagreements very specifically oriented towards an issue that was of concern, not personal, and I think Jesse is the kind of a guy who will be able to disagree with other, with the leadership of other veteran's service organizations and keep the disagreement very much focused on the issue and the problem that they are really trying to solve together, albeit from somewhat of a different perspective now that he's gone into the administration.

MR. LEHRER: Now, Hershell Goby was selected today also by President-elect Clinton to be Jesse Brown's deputy. He is now, of course, head of veterans affairs for the state of Arkansas, an old friend of, of Mr. Clinton, and worked in his campaign. What does he bring to this as a team player, do you think?

MR. HARVEY: I think one of the important things he brings is that long-term relationship with President-elect Clinton, having been a member of the President-elect's cabinet while he has been the director of veterans affairs for the State of Arkansas. That will provide him with sort of an access that Jesse Brown will not immediately have.

MR. LEHRER: Of course, Mr. Clinton came out of the campaign with, I don't know what the right word here is, but you tell me what the right word is, the view that the veterans had toward him because of his unwillingness to serve in Vietnam or in the military, there were some veterans organizations and some individual veterans had a lot of suspicions about him. Does the selection of Jesse Brown and Hershell Goby do a lot to allay those?

MR. HARVEY: I think it does a tremendous lot to allay those concerns that many veterans had about, about the President-elect's not having served in Vietnam.

MR. LEHRER: And they -- what do you think about the problem that Jesse Brown's going to have, a man working for him who's a personal friend of the boss?

MR. HARVEY: I think -- I don't know that I know anyone who is more self-assured than, than Mr. Brown is. I'm sure that he's not going to be concerned about that at all. I also am sure that he's going to do exactly what he feels is the right thing for that constituency, that he has been appointed by the President-elect to represent for him, and I think that President-elect Clinton will be very, very well served.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Tom Harvey, thank you very much.

MR. HARVEY: Thank you, Jim. FOCUS - VOX POP

MR. MacNeil: After President-elect Clinton's two day economic summit in Little Rock was televised earlier this week, many people called a Chicago radio talk show to comment. Correspondent Elizabeth Brackett later sampled their reactions.

RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: We're going to start taking your calls right now.

MS. BRACKETT: People watched, listened and at this Chicago public radio station wanted to talk, not about a major sporting event or a prime time TV show, but about the economic summit held by President-elect Bill Clinton. At WBEZ, lines were filled with callers wanting to share insights into the country's two-day economics lesson held by the President-elect.

CALLER: I'm 30-years-old. This is the first time I ever heard any kind of rationale public discussion of issues that are important to me on national television.

MS. BRACKETT: We decided to continue the conversation with some who had called in and others who we brought together in Chicago last night. Most, but not all, had supported Bill Clinton.

MS. BRACKETT: Did the economic summit change the way any of you view the economy? Did it change your minds as to before we had this two days of talk about the economy from the President-elect? Dick.

RICHARD KOSOBUD, Economics Professor: I don't think it changed my mind, but it deepened my understanding of some of the issues we have to face, that we can't leave things alone. Some things we could leave alone, but there are a number of issues, health care, education, productivity, distribution of income, that I feel better informed about now, and I'm going to be watching the Clinton administration to see how they do these very difficult areas.

MS. BRACKETT: Now you teach economics, so you're probably more informed than most of us are now.

MR. KOSOBUD: I would welcome Clinton on the faculty too. I think he did a very good job as a seminar leader, excellent job.

JOE GARDNER, County Official: I think he did. I think that the beauty of the summit was that deeply awareness and the understanding I think of rank and file Americans about these complex and very intricate problems, and de-mystified a lot of the terminology we hear, Gross Domestic Product, Gross National Product. I mean, the average American family worries about how can I, you know, cover all the checks that I've got to write this month.

BERNICE FRIEDMAN, Realtor: I thought it was going to be the end of the world if he got elected because I'm, you know, I'm very active, I'm a Republican, but I was also very interested in the fact that he had -- other Republicans there that underscored the one from Proctor & Gamble who underscored the quality of our labor force.

MS. BRACKETT: Did the economic summit change your perception of a Clinton presidency?

MS. FRIEDMAN: Yes, it did. I think he has an open mind, and he doesn't have the usual "tax and spend" philosophy that I feel was so detrimental. It was really causing the economy to damage.

MS. BRACKETT: Let's go to our other Republican in the group. Joe Morris, what did you think about the summit? Did it, how did it appeal to, to someone who had supported George Bush very strongly?

JOE MORRIS, Lawyer: It was a bully pulpit, a wonderful opportunity for a lot of competing interests to set out their desires, their concerns. What we didn't see was an agenda for Bill Clinton emerging. What we did see was a vast array of options from which he's going to have to choose.

BESS GALLANIS, Public Relations Exec.: The impact of the summit I think came as a bit of a surprise to many people. It was a wonderful, believed to be a wonderful public relations play on the part of Bill Clinton, and I get a lot of my information from taxicab drivers. And when you hear a taxicab driver talk very articulately about issues that were raised during the summit, it's evident that the Clinton administration, Clinton people are reaching out to embrace everyone.

MS. BRACKETT: Well, how much of this was a public relations event, and how much of it was a real discussion, did you feel, of the economic problems facing the country, and was there success, or was there not in attempting to begin to build consensus around what may or may not be done?

MR. MORRIS: There was certainly no consensus formed in this summit, save that the problems are serious, there are a lot of viewpoints about them, and Bill Clinton's listening, but we still don't know where he wants to lead us.

AMY BECKETT, Lawyer: I think that there was a very clear agenda. No. 1, he wants to get health care costs under control, and No. 2, to address the serious economic problems that he faces as a result of 12 years of deliberate disinvestment by the Republican leadership.

MR. MORRIS: Well, I'm sorry, when I said there's no clear agenda, I mean, we don't know how he wants to address the health care question. We don't know, we don't know how he wants to change the economy. We don't know what specific policies Bill Clinton --

MR. KOSOBUD: He did signal several areas --

MR. MORRIS: -- has in mind, what specific legislation he has in mind.

MR. KOSOBUD: He did signal several areas where I think you can expect action. A marginal investment tax credit I think is in the books. I think there may be an increase in taxes on Social Security benefits to well-to-do people, and I think in the environment area we're going to see -- and you mentioned, Joe Morris, that bigger government may be in the cards -- actually, I think the Clinton- Gore administration wants to use market forces to control environmental policy goals.

LOWELL DUNLAP, Human Resources Director: I felt the tone was the thing that I was worried about. There was at the end of the summit a woman from Hawaii who made the comment that she was almost afraid to identify herself as being part of the health care industry because of what went on in the last two days. If the issue turns into a scapegoating of the health care industry so that you can focus on something and say that's the problem, that's what we're going to do about it, I think that would be a very dangerous situation, and, and consensus would break down quite quickly if it ever got going in the first place.

ROBERT BURKE, Accounting Clerk: There are so many issues there and there are so many short-term solutions and there are so many different agendas from all the participants that it was tough, I think, to, for anyone who is watching to actually to maybe put together some type of idea of, okay, well, now that I've heard this, I believe this is what should be done, and this is what I'll watch for when he becomes president.

MS. BECKETT: It was the election that gave a lot of the Americans confidence about the future of the economy, and I think that the summit was just merely a confirmation and continuation of that building confidence. Clearly, people --

MS. BRACKETT: But if it was a building confidence that you felt after the summit, and so much of the summit was such a negative picture of where, where the economy is at the moment, how do those two go together?

MS. BECKETT: My confidence is that President-elect Clinton will take the advice of experts such as James Tobin, who are advocating stimulus. I want him to be a Roosevelt. I want him to take chances, and I hope that he'll hear the voices who are advocating those kinds of, of chances.

MR. KOSOBUD: I think it's possible to be optimistic about short run problems like getting the economy out of its present doldrums and getting a recovery moving. Public spending, the investment tax credit may do that. It's also possible to be pessimistic about some of the longer run problems like productivity growth. Is that going to help us have incomes increase for the average family in the long run so our kids can have a home and go to college? That's a much more difficult problem, and we're not going to get quick fixes, and there I think Clinton did hint that you can't expect miracles in that area.

MR. GARDNER: Part of it is the aura of having accessibility to the President-elect. I mean, that turns people on to be invited. I mean, the list of people who wanted to get to Little Rock was probably three times larger than the people who actually got there, and I think that's part of Bill Clinton, the salesman side of him. What he's got to be is, he's got to use the position of the presidency and his accessibility through these kinds of forums to say to the American people, hey, folks, there's no sound bite, quick fix solution to these problems. As you said, there are some things we can do in the short run. But we've got some serious structural problems that are going to take a lot of time and a lot of collective effort all on the part of the American people working together to solve this.

MS. BRACKETT: That you felt was the message that he got out.

MR. DUNLAP: My question is: Can he start his presidency with a consensus around long-term issues that will extend past his presidency, and if he does that, then there is some hope for some solutions. If, on the other hand, politically he goes the short term because that's the easy way to go, then by the time he gets around looking at long-term, he's gone, and so the question really is, I think in concert with the other people here in some ways, is the political structure capable of coming up with long-term solutions when the presidency is a short-term reality?

MS. GALLANIS: All in all, after all the grousing and criticizing we have done, I did take away a small sense of hope to see so many bipartisans, so many people of competing interests and so many people who are politically opposed to one another. I did see, I took away some small ray of hope that some very tough decisions will be made, that there was a coalescing, a direction has been laid, and that Bill Clinton, I think he's the guy to get people marching in the right direction. He's going to need it. He has very tough decisions to make.

MS. BRACKETT: Thank you all very much. I appreciate it.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a threatened town in Bosnia, and Charlayne Hunter-Gault in Somalia. FOCUS - TARGETS OF WAR

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight, we turn to the fight for survival in Bosnia. The historic town of Travnik, located some 90 miles northwest of Sarajevo, has become a center for Muslim refugees fleeing Serbian forces. Among the victims of the fighting is the sense of community shared by the Muslims and Croats who live in Travnik. We have a report from David Sells of the BBC.

MR. SELLS: The flotsam of war, a Muslim refugee from the battlefields of Bosnia trips his whiskers in the autumn chill. Life here is spartan. The refugees are housed in an old school in Travnik. There are Croats here, but most are Muslims, driven from their homes, caught in the crossfire of conflict or "ethnically cleansed" by the Serbs. In Bosnia, it's the Muslims who are the great losers. The school is a barn of a building, unheated and dilapidated. Forty Muslims sleep in this one classroom, lucky to be alive, but homeless and disoriented. Travnik, itself, is no safe haven. It's within shelling distance of the Serbs. It is coping still with 10,000 or so refugees but can really be no more than a transit stop for most of them. A 47-year-old carpenter was typically despairing.

KASIM FIFIC, Refugee: [speaking through interpreter] I don't know what'll happen. I don't even know if the war will finish, how long it will last, or whether it will get worse. We don't know what we'll do next. We have nowhere to go. We have nothing.

MR. SELLS: With the war just down the road at Kurbay, a couple of miles away, refugees straggle into town, moving on if they have the horse power to do so, not trusting to Travnik to hold out against the Serbs. In Travnik, we see all the ambiguities of the Bosnian conflict, Muslims and Croats standing side by side against the Serbs, but wary of each other, the Muslims fearing betrayal. Even the Serbian shells are landing on their town. Travnik, itself, is hugely vulnerable should the Serbs try to take it. "They hold us," as one Bosnian solder told me, "in the hollow of their hand." The defense of Travnik is in the hands of the Bosnian army, a largely Muslim force, men like these, along with their Croatian allies. Muslim troops are poorly armed, compared with both Serbs and Croats, and to a man these soldiers will tell you that what they need from the West are weapons properly to defend themselves. Everything in Travnik goes in twos. There are two military forces, two mayors and two city governments, one Muslim and one Croatian. It is madness, but this is the reality of Muslim-Croatian cooperation in Bosnian, shot through with mistrust.

CAPT. AHMED KULENOVIC, Bosnian Muslim Army: [speaking through interpreter] The Croats in the republic of Croatia had in mind a different kind of war against the J&A, and they successfully prepared themselves by acquiring weapons. At the same time, Bosnia and Herzegovina was determined to find a peaceful solution to the problem by negotiation. So there are Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina who have a considerable amount of weapons, even more than the Bosnian army, therefore, there were tensions between them, but relations are now improving.

MR. SELLS: Travnik's old fort is pre-Ottoman, built before the days when Turks made Bosnia their frontier with Christian Europe, and Travnik for 150 years Bosnia's capital and principal garrison. During the later Ottoman years, Bosnia's Slav-Muslims were its ruling class, Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats subordinate. But for all its plentitude of mosques, Travnik's urban Muslims up until this war were notably a secular breed. Dr. Fuad Pashic, a consultant gastroenterologist, seems fairly typical, Muslim by old Yugoslav nationality, Muslim too by religion, though neglectful of it, rather like the average English Anglican, and hardly a mosque goer. When Tito ruled, educated Bosnian society was mixed and secular.

DR. FUAD PASHIC: [speaking through interpreter] There wasn't a great deal of difference between us before the war. We, Muslims, and a great number of Serbs and Croats did not believe in God. The majority of people were atheists. There were no major differences on all three sides. There were some differences in names, Saints days and festivals. Unfortunately, the backward tendencies of nationalism and chauvinism have awakened these base desires, and returned us to the middle ages.

MR. SELLS: It was less than 20 years ago that Bosnia's Muslims were recognized as a separate nationality. This was in Tito's day in the old Yugoslavia. That, a concession of nation identity is now in question, not in the minds of Bosnia's Muslims but rather in the view of the republic's Serbs and Croats. They justify their seizure of much of Bosnia's territory by casting doubt on the nature of the Muslim community here and hence, on its suitability to run a republic where Muslims are the most numerous people. Even at Friday prayers on the Muslim Sabbath, Travnik's main mosque was hardly jam packed, but so Serbian and Croatian propaganda has it, Islamic fundamentalism stalks the land. It plainly does not, not yet, but there is a danger here of a self- fulfilling prophecy. Leave Bosnia's Muslims with nothing and they will turn willy nilly to their religion. Already, the picture grows muddied, with even unbigoted Christians agonizing over Muslim aims. The Franciscans, whose Catholic Churches and monasteries first appeared here seven centuries ago, know their Bosnia. The order opposes Serbian and Croatian attempts to partition today's republic, but when Muslims speak of a purely Bosnian identity, our Franciscan, an academic and unchauvinistic Croat, grew uneasy.

BROTHER IVO CURAK, Church of St. Francis of Assisi: [speaking through interpreter] When you say I am a Bosnian, it can only be understood as Serbian, Croatian, or Muslim. Identity as a Bosnian on its own doesn't exist. A man who lives in Bosnia has identity according to which people or religion he belongs to and, therefore, you can be a Bosnian Croat, a Bosnian Muslim, or a Bosnian Serb. It's something which is common to these three groups, but it doesn't exist on its own.

MR. SELLS: Like it or not, the Bosnian war is all about identity for the living, that is. Death humbles the mistrustful communities into mute equality, black stickers for Croatian dead, green ones for Muslims. The siren signaled a Travnik shelling alert, a reminder how close the town is to the firing line. Most of the population, as a result, are living on outside aid, Croats feeding Croats and Muslims, Muslims. The Mehemet charity has 45,000 Muslims on its computer, residents and refugees both, and here we get a whiff of radicalization. Help is pouring in from Muslim countries. A new Islamic link is being forged. Would it persist post war, one wondered.

MUSTAFA INZIC, Director, Merhemet: [speaking through interpreter] I hope so. I believe this war has brought us closer together. Until now, I didn't think the Arab world knew there were Muslims in Bosnia. Wherever you look, it's evident this war is against the Muslims and against Islam, so I'm happy if this war brings us closer together.

MR. SELLS: And so Bosnia's Muslims are being nudged week by week towards a community of purpose and the Pan-Islamic identity that to many of them is anathema. Muslims they may be, but Slav, European, and secular for the most part, with all that this implies.

DR. FUAD PASHIC: [speaking through interpreter] Today, unfortunately, the majority of Muslims are not very religious people. Maybe this is one reason why this genocide is occurring so sharply. Faith could help us in this. We are fighting for our homeland. The term "Islamic fundamentalism" is basically from our enemies. I'm afraid Europe has also used that word to justify reasons for not hating us. We are not fundamentalists. We are returning to our religion, but we will not create an Islamic state here. On the contrary, we're trying to create a civil state where religion is a private matter for each person.

MR. SELLS: Crystal clear, but Travnik, this old and once Turkish town, with its stunning location at the head of a valley, for all that its Muslims and Croats are allied against Serbian attackers, is riddled with suspicion. Even friendly Croats doubt the ability of Bosnian Muslims to stick to their idea of a secular state. As a British armored patrol trundled through town on its way to show the U.N. flag to the besieged Muslim residents of Turvey, a Croatian mobile rocket launcher let rip with a salvo, targeting a Serbian military convoy on the other side of the hills, the Muslims, for their part, a pig in the middle, victims of their hunger for Bosnian recognition. The U.N. armored patrol looks good but is a slate of hand, the symbol of impotence. The West, having recognized the republic that wasn't a viable concern, has dispatched a peacekeeping force to an area clearly at war. FOCUS - SOMALIA DIARY

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, Charlayne Hunter-Gault's Somalia Diary. Today she talked to an official at the center of the relief effort.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: One of the biggest jobs around these days is coordinating among all of the groups trying to feed Somalia. This week a task force made up of all the groups started holding daily meetings to assure that everybody knows what everybody else is doing. One of the key players is Charles Petrie, a United Nations employee and former investment banker. His job is to act as a liaison between the military and the non-governmental organizations or NGO's. We spoke with him today at UNOSOM, the United Nations Somalia Headquarters.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: There was a sort of cautious apprehension, it seems to me, on the part of some of the relief organizations about just how they want to relate to the military. They told me they had their own way of doing things. Many of them worked out little accommodations. Now the Marines are coming in with a different order of doing things. What are you hearing about that marriage between the Marines and the relief agencies?

CHARLES PETRIE, UN Liaison: Now we have a new actor that has come in for the first time which are the unified forces, and that means that we, one, on the operational side we have to learn how to operate with them, because, I mean, if you take the, there's a number of relief personnel in Somalia. We must be between maybe three to five hundred expatriots in the whole of Somalia. When you consider that between thirty or thirty-five to forty thousand troops will be arriving, or will be close to Somalia, then there is quite a difference, so I think on the operational side what we're trying to do is find modalities and find ways of operating together, of dialoguing or interfacing. And once we interface, meaning that we can identify the needs that we feel have to be met and ask the military to intervene, then I think we, you know, we'll be able to move forward.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: How is it working now? I mean, give me an example of something that may have developed as a result of yesterday that you might not have anticipated, but something that illustrates this kind of new arrangement, as it were.

MR. PETRIE: What we're trying to do is, is set up systems, as it were. Right now we're in sort of the courtyard of the operational unit, the central operation unit. The role of the operation unit is to establish a structure that allows the relief community made up of the UN and the NGO's, allowing them to, to interface in dialogue with the military, and what we've done over the last few days is identify convoys or identify specific operations that would need military assistance. We've undertaken, I think, two or three convoys out of the port towards Mogadishu North. I mean, what we've been doing in Baidoa and I think has already happened today is identifying, again -- right now, I think the first phase relates to relief convoys or food convoys, so identifying areas of need, earmarking the food that has to go there, finding the trucks, et cetera, and then asking the military to assist us in taking those trucks to, to the designated area. Right now we're talking about relief, relief food, or food convoys, but it'll go much further hopefully, and there'll be, we'll need assistance in the transporting, the logistics in transporting other goods, but also helping us in, in to repair feeder roads or repair roads to certain areas, helping us in undertaking assessments of areas we've never been too. At the local levels, we're also setting up structures, I mean, similar structures where -- I mean, the main difference between the central and the local levels is then the local levels will also have community leaders participate, because there the needs will be very specifically identified. I mean, the village will need a well rehabilitated, and so I mean, I think there are a number of engineers coming; they could assist in the rehabilitation of the water supply.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Military you mean?

MR. PETRIE: Military engineers.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You mentioned local leaders, but there's no government. I mean, how do you relate to -- who do you relate to - - whom do you relate to at the local level?

MR. PETRIE: Maybe one of the misrepresentations of the situation here is the feeling that this is a completely antarctic environment, that there are no structures. At the local level, structures do exist, and I mean, you have community structures that exist. I think when talks about no government, one is more referring to government in a political sense, but there are organizations there, there are cooperative structures in villages, there are village elders who are still functioning, and there are even regional sort of interest groups that operate. In a sense, it's a bit like being in Europe or America, where you have locally elected officials. I think though the challenge they face here is that you have a number of roving technicals who come in so sort of --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: People with arms?

MR. PETRIE: Yeah. The warriors who come in and sort of disrupt the environment. The local fabric doesn't break up for as much. I mean, it gets strained and these are elements that have to be taken into consideration, cause a great deal of destruction, but the local, and the local structure still does exist.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Yesterday though the relief among the people in Baidoa just seemed palpable. They seemed to be so relieved when the Marines came in, and they told us on the street that, you know, they were so glad that there were no roaming bands of bandits and so on, but they also said that they had gone, these technicals, into the countryside. What kind of intelligence are you getting, and what's going to have to happen to keep that element away and to allow for the kind of constructive building you're talking about? I mean, is that being discussed?

MR. PETRIE: That's the challenge we're all facing, and I mean that's the question we're all asking ourselves. I think what we're seeing is as the deployment sort of spreads out into the countryside, so do the technicals retreat. I keep on referring to coffee growers, farmers in Latin America. I mean, we are trying to get them to grow potatoes, which is sort of is not as lucrative as crop. You know, you imagine these technicals walking around the countryside or been in urban centers for the last few months making hundreds of thousands of dollars. Are they going to be -- is it going to be easy to make them work on a food for work project? I mean, it is a very significant challenge and one that has to be addressed by all of us. If it's not addressed the moment the unified task force leaves, then we're going to be faced with an even worse situation.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What's your own sense about how long it's going to take to put some kind of structures in place that could effectively deal with that challenge?

MR. PETRIE: Well, it's going to take very long. We really should be talking about -- I mean, something like would take years to put in place, but there are various phases to the operation. I mean, this phase should be a disarming phase which will at least put a dent in their capacity to come back once the troops leave, but there are other phases may be coming up with -- I mean, we've been talking about a police force, trying to integrate them into a structured useful force, instead of a structured destructive force, and there are many things that have to be considered, opening schools. We have to try and open schools, and that will absorb, because a lot of them are young, the young teenagers that would possibly be willing to go to school to be trained to do something else.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: One of the great tragedies of the failure of the international community to move was the thousands of people who died in the interim. Where does that stand now?

MR. PETRIE: I mean it hasn't stopped it yet, because the action is only a couple of days, possibly a week, a week today, old, and if it could resolve it in a week, and it wasn't really a serious problem, but I would say that there are two elements. One is that there have been rains and that there will soon be some harvests, so I mean, the situation will stabilize, although to some extent in certain areas. Maybe now instead of talking about the whole, a whole area being a famine-stricken area, we'll have to talk about very serious pockets of famine. And I think what's interesting about Baidoa is to realize now that 2/3 of the people dying, I think, the rate is around fifty to sixty people dying a day are actually adults now, which means that the targets in the past, they were mainly women and children, or the weaker elements of the society, but the --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What does that mean?

MR. PETRIE: It means that the target into intervention is actually working, but there are -- there will still remain and there still remains some very serious areas. Baidoa is an extremely hard hit area, and I was there a couple of weeks ago. They had, I think, a population of eight thousand, eight to nine thousand, and there were close to two hundred people dying a day.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But would you look at an area and say, all right, here's Baidoa and here's Bardera, and for the sake of argument, say two hundred are -- I mean, will you do a triage, in effect, to help make your decision?

MR. PETRIE: No, we won't need to, because we'll have local communities in both areas, and there will be local community leaders or Somalia, Somalian representation on these communities to help us prioritize maybe certain areas if there is a need to do that.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Charles Petrie, thank you.

MR. PETRIE: You're welcome. RECAP

MR. MacNeil: Again, the main stories of this Thursday, Bill Clinton named former San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros as Housing Secretary and Vietnam Veteran Jesse Brown as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. U.S. and French troops escorted food convoys to four Somali villages, but some of that food was later stolen by looters. Palestinians boycotted Mideast peace talks in Washington to protest Israel's deportation of nearly 400 suspected Muslim militants. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Robin. We'll see you tomorrow night with Gergen & Shields, among other people and things. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.