The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. I'm Robert MacNeil in New York.

MS. WARNER: And I'm Margaret Warner in Washington. After the News Summary, we focus on the latest efforts to bring peace to Bosnia. Then Correspondent Jeffrey Kaye reports on the Reginald Denny trial in Los Angeles. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: A team of 18 doctors today separated seven-week- old Siamese twins in a highly complex operation in Philadelphia. The surgery on the infants named Angela and Amy Lakeberg lasted over five hours, and, as expected, one child, Amy, died on the table. Doctors said it was too early to predict the long-term chances for the second baby. The twins shared a liver and a deformed heart. Doctors had said without surgery neither would have survived more than a few weeks. The twins' case has raised sensitive ethical questions. Doctors at the Chicago hospital where they were born opposed separation because of the low chance either twin would survive. Children's Hospital in Philadelphia agreed to do the surgery. It also absorbed the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would cost, because the parents, Kenneth and Retha Lakeberg, had no health insurance. Margaret.

MS. WARNER: Police in Oklahoma have arrested a woman accused of shooting a doctor outside his abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas. Thirty-seven-year-old Rochelle Shannon, who is from Grants Pass, Oregon, was arrested as she tried to return a rental car at the Oklahoma City Airport. She was charged with attempted murder in the shooting of Dr. George Tiller. Dr. Tiller was treated for minor wounds and was back at work today. His clinic has been a frequent target of anti-abortion protests. Activists on both sides of the abortion controversy condemned the shooting.

REV. PATRICK MAHONEY, Operation Rescue Spokesman: Operation Rescue does not condone or endorse or support the kind of vigilante activity we saw in Wichita early yesterday evening. Operation Rescue has had over 72,000 arrests nationwide with not one conviction of an act of violence at a Rescue activity.

PATRICIA IRELAND, National Organization for Women: While the National Right to Life Committee was quick to condemn the act, Rescue America is basically saying it may teach him a lesson, and we know that all of the anti-abortion movement as they continue to use rhetoric calling abortion providers murderers and child killers must take responsibility for the violent consequences that follow.

MS. WARNER: This afternoon, White House Spokeswoman Dee Dee Meyers called the shooting reprehensible. She told reporters in Martha's Vineyard that the President remains committed to abortion rights and safe access to clinics. Abortion clinic representatives said today they plan to continue pressing the Justice Department for federal protection. In March, a Florida doctor was shot and killed outside a Pensacola Clinic, and an anti-abortion activist was charged with the murder. Attorney General Janet Reno hasn't promised federal protection for clinics, but she has asked for legislation authorizing federal prosecution for such crimes. The bill is pending in Congress.

MR. MacNeil: Mediators at the Bosnian peace talks in Geneva offered a compromise proposal today and gave the three warring factions ten days to respond to it. The Serb and Croat leaders indicated they would support the plan which is aimed at resolving territorial disputes blocking the peace settlement. The Bosnian Muslim president said he was unhappy with the plan, because it would reward Serbian ethnic cleansing of Muslim territory. The plan divides the country into three separate states, giving Muslims 31 percent, Serbs 52, and Croats 17 percent of its territory. Croats forces blocked a U.N. aid convoy today from reaching Muslims in the southern Bosnian city of Mostar. Croats sealed off the Muslim section of the city after fierce fighting broke out there two months ago, and since then, no aid has gotten through. A convoy was allowed into the Croat section of the city yesterday. The U.N. Security Council met today to consider candidates for the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal. It was reported that 38 countries have nominated more than 40 jurists, including three Americans, for the 11-judge panel. The tribunal, based in the Netherlands, will try those accused of murder, rape, ethnic cleansing, and other war crimes in the former Yugoslav federation. Final selections for the panel are expected to be voted on next month by the U.N. General Assembly.

MS. WARNER: Israel's chief judge today put off the release of John Demjanjuk for at least two weeks. He did so to give Nazi hunters and Holocaust survivors time to seek a new trial of Demjanjuk for alleged war crimes. The retired Cleveland autoworker was acquitted three weeks ago of being the Trablinka Death Camp guard known as "Ivan the Terrible." He wants to return to the U.S., but the Justice Department is trying to block his re-entry. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin today vowed not to let yesterday's attack on Israeli soldiers derail the Mideast peace process. Nine soldiers were killed yesterday by radical Shiite guerrillas inside Israel's self-declared security zone in southern Lebanon. A Rabin spokesman said holding the talks hostage to such attacks would give the guerrillas control of the peace process.

MR. MacNeil: Russian President Boris Yeltsin today delivered on a promise he made yesterday and formally proposed early parliamentary elections. It was the latest salvo in his power struggle with the legislature, which is dominated by hard line opponents of his reforms. Yeltsin, who toured a factory today, said holding elections this fall, nearly two years early, was the only democratic and peaceful way to resolve Russia's political stalemate. The parliamentary speaker, Yeltsin's main foe, quickly rejected the idea and suggested instead an early election for president.

MS. WARNER: In economic news, General Electric's jet engine division announced today that it will cut 4,000 jobs by 1994. That's in addition to nearly 4,000 cuts announced earlier this year. GE blamed the new cuts on reduced orders for commercial and military engines. A majority of the layoffs will involved salaried employees at the company's headquarters in Ohio. That's it for the News Summary. Still to come, Bosnia's bloody struggle toward peace, and the second LA beating trial. FOCUS - PROSPECTS FOR PEACE

MS. WARNER: We begin tonight with the Bosnia story. The former Yugoslav republic that was recognized 18 months ago as an independent and multi-ethnic nation is on the verge of disappearing, both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. Today in Geneva, international mediators presented a new blueprint for their plan to partition Bosnia into separate ethnic areas for Muslims, Croats, and Serbs. Today's negotiations focused on how to ease the isolation of Bosnia's capital, Sarajevo, under the new arrangements. We begin with a report on the negotiations from Correspondent Gaby Rado of Independent Television News.

MR. RADO: The co-chairmen kept the discussions firmly on the share out of territories. One the one hand, they had the twin Muslim principles of an economically viable land and no reward for aggression. On the other was the reality of military conquest by Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats, territories they regard as theirs by rights. In the absence of agreement, the co-chairmen today proposed their own solutions.

JOHN MILLS, Conference Spokesman: Based on the constitutional and related documents already worked out and the discussions over the last two days, the co-chairmen have given the three sides a package containing the constitutional papers and a map reflecting the discussion that has taken place among the parties. They will return home to explain the maps and to come back to Geneva for a final meeting on Monday, the 30th of August.

MR. RADO: President Tudjman, the first to leave the conference, was not pretending all the parties were satisfied.

FRANJO TUDJMAN, Croatian President: The package is a compromise as every compromise as good as it is possible in nowadays circumstances.

MR. RADO: The assembled journalist went over her statement again and again to put meaning between his lines. When President Milosevic left, he dodged the question on whether everyone was happy about the deal.

SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC, Serbian President: The package is completed, and it is now up to parliament to say yes or no. But my opinion is I'm really convinced that package is an honest and fair solution, compromise which is equally protecting interests of all three sides.

MR. RADO: By now, there was a frantic search among old and recent maps to put flesh on the package. The real map hadn't emerged. But the Bosnian Serb leader gave some hints.

RADOVAN KARADZIC, Bosnian Serb Leader: At London conference, I promised that Serbs are going to roll back some territory, up to 20 percent, that's just about it, and I do hope next Monday, the 30th of July, would be a great day for the peoples, all of the peoples in Bosnia.

MR. RADO: He got the month wrong, but how much land would the Muslims get?

RADOVAN KARADZIC: Not less than 30 percent.

MR. RADO: The man everyone was really waiting to hear from was last out. He seemed cheerful, but he had nothing to say. He was not going to recommend the package to his parliament.

MIRZA HAJRIC, Bosnian Government Spokesman: We have finished the current round of talks, and I have to say that we are not satisfied with what we've been offered. According to this proposal, the Serbs will not return ethnically cleansed territories which were taken by force. Also, the siege of Sarajevo has not yet been lifted. Innocent civilians in our country cannot continue to be held hostage to a political solution.

MR. RADO: The talks threatened to end when journalists, desperate for details of the package, mobbed the conference spokesman and a rostrum collapsed.

LORD OWEN, EC Peace Negotiator: We have got now a new agreement basically. It draws on the Vance-Owen plan, but it is firmly based, of course, on three republics, but all the constitutional ingredients are there, and there is substantial movement on the map. And there is no doubt, this is not the isolated enclave people thought. It does have access to this harbor and to the sea. But in terms of its territory overall, it still doesn't meet some of the basic wishes.

MR. RADO: The main Muslim objection to the map seems to be the fact that not all their enclaves in eastern Bosnia are joined on to Sarajevo. Gorazde is, but Srebrenica and Zepa are still isolated. Nor does the Muslim territory have a land link to the Adriatic, and the amount of Bosnia that allocated falls well below the 43 percent they demanded. The Geneva peace talks are over for the time being, but after nearly four weeks of this current round, there's still no result.

MS. WARNER: We now discuss the fate of Bosnia and its consequences for the West with four people. Catherine Kelleher is a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. During the Carter administration, she served on the National Security Council staff. Patrick Glynn is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. He has written extensively on U.S. policy and the Yugoslav conflict. John Scanlan was U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1985 to 1989. He is currently a vice president with ICN Pharmaceuticals, a company with substantial holdings in Serbia. The company is owned by former Yugoslav prime minister Milan Panic. Also with us tonight is Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a leading Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He leaves this weekend for a tour of European capitals to discuss the Bosnian situation. Sen. Lugar joins us from Capitol Hill. Sen. Lugar, I'd like to start with you. Let's, first of all, take a look at what's being negotiated in Geneva. The parties have been talking almost as long as they've been fighting. Are these talks any different? Do you think they're going to produce an agreement, and is it something we should pray for?

SEN. LUGAR: Well, it's not something we should pray for, and I don't know whether an agreement will come now. I suspect that in the event there is not a further intervention by NATO under the U.N. auspices or unilateral intervention by the United States, that the cards will be played out approximately as they now are with the partitions as now suggested, and then I suspect the world will have to wait for what I think will be repercussions of this, namely, massive starvation and privation for Bosnian Muslims that will still be penned up in very inaccessiblesituations, and furthermore, potential guerrilla warfare as the Bosnian Muslims resist at the margins, certainly more wholesale, as they have the ability what is a very impossible situation for them territorially. I think that we're at a point in each one of these discussions in which conditions are always worse than the week or the month or three months before when something might have occurred. Absent very considerable securing of the country by NATO, for example, last year, or absent the lift and strike option in which, in fact, the Bosnian Muslims had an opportunity to fight for themselves, we're trying to reduce to a situation which it appears that many countries in the rest of the world simply want to tidy this up, get it off of the agenda and hope for the best.

MS. WARNER: Do you agree, Catherine Kelleher, is this where we're headed, for better or worse?

MS. KELLEHER: I'm afraid so, and I think perhaps I am even somewhat more dismayed than the Senator at the object of petition. Remember the situation in the Middle East in the 1947/'48, when partition was agreed on but then implementing it was something else. One will have to deal with large movements of people, people who will be displaced from their homes despite the agreement to give them a chance to return to their homes. And this, I think, could be as tragic as many of the other circumstances we've already seen in the Yugoslav situation.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Scanlan, do you agree with this bleak picture?

MR. SCANLAN: I don't think I see it quite that bleakly. It's not a happy solution, but I'm not sure anyone can come up with a better solution than this one. The main thing is to get the fighting started -- or at least the heavy fighting stopped, not started, and I suspect that there will be some guerrilla warfare. I'm not certain that it need be as, as bad a situation in that respect as, as Sen. Lugar suggested. This is, I think, a step at least towards stopping the fighting, which is the first order of business, it seems to me.

MS. WARNER: Well, Patrick Glynn, do you agree that peace at any price is where we're headed?

MR. GLYNN: Well, I think it is, although I think it's any price, and it's not necessarily going to be peace. That is, you have, I think we have to focus on how unprincipled, almost unprecedently so, the solution is, i.e., you're giving 52 percent of the country to the Serbs who have -- the Serbian forces, who have undertaken this aggression. You've got a rotating presidency between the three partitions which ultimately means that a figure like Radovan Karadzic could be president of Bosnia. This is what the Muslims are being -- the Bosnian government's being asked to accept. And in a way, the U.N. is putting its stamp of approval on gains that have been gotten through the most violent methods, or really putting its stamp of approval on ethnic cleansing. Now, you say having surrendered all that, well, maybe in surrendering all of those things, you get something for it, but I don't think you will. I think, first of all, there's some question about whether it'll be accepted even formally, although it might be. But what you have is a still intrinsically very unstable situation. The plan is a kind of halfway house to annexation, and Serbia will move in that direction. Whether the, the desire of the Serb forces to link up in areas where they're still split apart is going to express itself in military action is still unclear. And finally I think that Sen. Lugar's absolutely right. So many of the, the men now who are fighting in the Bosnian forces and under arms have had families suffering so terribly, have lost their ancestral homes, that it's going to be virtually impossible to, to cool this situation down in the absence of a huge insertion of outside force in the form of peacekeepers or something of that sort.

MS. WARNER: Sen. Lugar, Patrick Glynn just raises an interesting point, which is, isn't this just a halfway house for the Serbs and Croats ultimately to annex their new portions to the countries of Serbia and Croatia? Do you think that's where it's probably headed, and would there be anything the West could do to stop it.

SEN. LUGAR: Well, there are many things that West could do to stop it, but I would suspect that things are headed toward annexation, and I think our worst fears are, of course, that the Serbians may, in fact, start ethnically cleansing other places, that this is not the end of the trail given this example. The principal thing I worried about that Patrick Glynn touched on in the last part of his statement is that at some point when you talk about peacekeepers, and Americans have been nominated by almost everybody else to be a part of that peacekeeping situation, and indeed, we've said if all the parties agreed we would be, to put Americans in harm's way of what I believe will be protracted guerrilla warfare would be a very bad decision. Whatever might have been the objection to lift and strike, that was simply American cover of a re-arming of the Bosnians to fight, themselves, that I think is still a preferred option. But to have Americans in harm's way, trying to patrol a very unstable and dangerous peace I think would be a very bad mistake.

MS. WARNER: And I want to get into a real discussion of what the U.S. role would be. But let me ask you, Mr. Scanlan, do you think that the new Serbian area of Bosnia, or the new Serb area of Bosnia and Serbia, itself, will not want to join together?

MR. SCANLAN: Well, let's talk about everybody that's involved, Croatians and Serbs. After all, the problems right now on the ground over there involve Croatians --

MS. WARNER: And the same goes for the Croatians, of course.

MR. SCANLAN: Yes. And I would -- there are three parties to this conflict, and I suspect that you're going to have a lot or rancor for a long time. Nevertheless, I think the important thing is to stop the fighting. Sen. Lugar over a year ago suggested that military intervention right when the siege of Sarajevo first started, he was an advocate of military intervention. I think he was right at that point. I think up front it would have been a lot easier to, to lay down a marker. It's gone so far now that it would require massive military intervention. It would like we're taking sides. In fact, it would be taking sides, and I think we would have been making the matter much worse. So the alternative, it seems to me, is for the United Nations to do what it can to make peace where it can, to help extend those areas as time goes by. There's no perfect solution. But any solution that stops the fighting in parts of the area and tries to extend those areas as rapidly as possible I think is the best possible solution we can have.

MS. WARNER: Well, are we all agreed that if there is an agreement, it will trigger the promise made by Sec. of State Christopher in February on behalf of the President, that the U.S. would put ground troops in there to help enforce it? Do you think there's any way the U.S. can get out of that commitment at this point?

MS. KELLEHER: I don't think so, and I, for one, would argue that that we shouldn't. I think we really have a continuing responsibility for whatever settlement is made, not just we, however, other states as well. And I think this is going to be the difficult part. Given the planning that was in place even before this particular settlement was agreed on, one's talking about a large number of troops, and that's means contributions from a number of countries.

MS. WARNER: How large do you think? From your NSC experience.

MS. KELLEHER: Well, it's always difficult to give a particular figure, and one's much easier with a range, but I believe Gen. Shali in his role as secure in NATO --

MS. WARNER: You're talking about the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

MS. KELLEHER: That's right. Who, in fact, talked about 60,000 as being the first phase that would be needed to, in fact, enforce the Vance-Owen settlement which had much longer lines to patrol. But still I think that's not a bad estimate of what would be required. I think, however, without that kind of commitment to, in fact, follow up on this settlement, I think that one could imagine a situation that would, indeed, be worse six months from now than it is right now.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Glynn, do you think that there's any way that U.S. and U.N. troops can really enforce a peace in Bosnia? You know, it's been compared to Cyprus. Do you think it's closer to Cyprus, where the parties were exhausted afterwards and wanted to end the fighting, or do you think it's closer to Beirut perhaps, where the parties want to continue fighting?

MR. GLYNN: I would say the latter. It's very dangerous. There's a huge paradox here which Sen. Lugar touched on, namely that if we had intervened using air power and arming of the Muslims, or the Bosnian government, not just the Muslim faction, we, the chances of our being involved directly on the ground are far less than pursuing the course of non-interventionism which is likely to drag us in. And I think that I pity the people, the forces who are going to be injected into this situation, and one of the big questions is whether they're going to have any more leverage than the present U.N. forces do who are basically essentially bossed around by the Serbs, or the Serb forces that have the real clout on the ground. But there's another question I think that Sen. Lugar is in a better position to address that, is whether the Congress is going to go for this, because I don't imagine that it's going to be looked on very -- as a popular thing on the Hill to send our, our guys into a situation in which the rules of engagement are bad, in which the U.N.'s approach to the conflict is incredibly bureaucratic, and, and often incompetent, and to have them in harm's way in a situation that's kind of roiling and boiling. So we -- by the path of intervention -- we've gotten ourselves into a situation where we could be exposing ourselves to far more serious dangers than if we had intervened with a little bit of courage and decisiveness early on. And I even think if we did it now, frankly, it would be easier than what we're facing down this peacekeeping road.

MS. WARNER: Well, let me ask Sen. Lugar, what do you think -- first of all, will the President have to come to the Congress for approval, and secondly, do you think -- I mean, you're one of the people who would have supported intervention. The President actually a core of support for military intervention, but you're, you know, not too interested in the peacekeeping role. What are his prospects for winning congressional approval if he needs it?

SEN. LUGAR: Well, the President had better try to find out very shortly, because the commitments are being made by our Secretary of State or by anyone else, it seems to me that the Congress is very likely to take a dim view of that. The War Powers Resolution clearly pertains to sending Americans into harm's way. This is sending Americans into war. This is not peacekeeping. It's peacemaking, and literally fighting people to maintain the peace. I think we need to get that point clear to the Europeans. I, for one, am very disappointed with our NATO allies who by dragging their feet, interminably talking about the fact that intervention at almost any stage was impossible, inappropriate, or will put their people in harm's way and we ought to furnish three or four thousand ground troops to show good faith, as Lord Owen suggested at one point, we need to get that argument straightened around. It isn't straightened around even as we sit here, and there is still this role to be played by our Secretary of State in getting a NATO position on this situation that is not simply drift.

MS. WARNER: What is your -- you are going to these European capitals, leaving tonight as we announced earlier. Is that what you're going to tell them? What's your mission?

SEN. LUGAR: Well, clearly, I will express that point of view, but I want to talk about NATO, itself. I believe we have to redefine the mission and statement of NATO into so-called "out of area," which includes the Balkans and includes into the Middle East or southern Europe. It may include more members. In other words, it is time for us to take a look at what NATO is all about if the United States is going to participate seriously for many more years in this situation.

MS. WARNER: Well, that raises the question, of course, of the long range implications of what's happened in Bosnia. First of all, if we just look at the Balkans, do you think, Mr. Scanlan, that the Serbs either within the Kosovo province, which is, of course, the province within Serbia that is primarily Albanian, or that the Serbian leader, Mr. Milosevic, will take this as a green light to sort of increase what he's doing now, sort of quiet ethnic cleansing? Or do you think that's been overblown?

MR. SCANLAN: I think it's been overblown, and I think we concentrate too narrowly on, on various pieces of real estate. This is a big regional problem. In the Balkans right now, you have three million Serbs living outside the borders of Serbia, one million Croatians living outside the borders of Croatia, three million Hungarians living outside the borders of Hungary, and two million Albanians living outside the borders of Albania. All of these problems should be looked at together, and we should try to approach them regionally. We should tell the people there we expect to approach them regionally. There's a problem of economic region, of regional economic cooperation that should be addressed, that hasn't been addressed, and until you start working on these problems, you're just going to have a continual situation of little local guerrilla wars popping up here and there. I do not think, however, that there's an immediate danger of any spillover into Kosovo. And I'm delighted that we took the step we took of putting what I would refer to as a stopper force of American troops in northern Macedonia, which I've advocated for a long time. I would - - may I address this, this rules of engagement. And I agree that the force should be at least 60,000.

MS. WARNER: This is the peacekeeping force now back in Bosnia.

MR. SCANLAN: You couldn't do it with less than 60,000. I'm convinced of that. But the rules of engagement should permit United Nations forces to respond with the full force of the fire power to any attacks upon them, or any attacks in the areas where they're keeping the peace, regardless who provokes those attacks. And we have to be totally even-handed here and not get involved in taking sides. But we must, it seems to me, make a case for enforcement credibility which has been lacking, and there again I agree the President cannot say that we will do something in this type of a situation and then later on find a reason not to do it, despite the fact that I agree with Sen. Lugar. I don't like putting American troops in harm's way.

MS. WARNER: Well, Mr. Glynn, what do you think are the implications for, for western leadership in the Balkans or anywhere else? Do you -- is this a situation that's really sui-generous, and it's not going to have implications down the line, or do you think that U.S. and U.N. credibility and NATO credibility's been damaged?

MR. GLYNN: Well, we learned a lot in the 20th century, in the couple of world wars, and the Cold War, and the one thing we learned is that you do not surrender to an aggressive dictator and then expect the problem to stop. I'm much more pessimistic than Amb. Scanlan is about the situation even in the Balkans. There are signs that Serbia is stepping up ethnic cleansing in Kosovo already. The international monitors that were there, the few of them have been kicked out. Ibraham Ragova, who is the leading representative of the Albanians there, has recently been detained. It is moving up, and we don't know exactly at what level. It's certainly not very good for the Albanians there. But the, the broader thing is that we have surrendered the sort of principles that we laid down about the territorial integrity of Bosnia, the sacredness of democracy. This country really did arrive with a very good human rights record and democratic procedures. And we have surrendered here to a program of aggression which is very clear. And the implications are global. I think you've already seen signs in Russia of an echo of this. The Russians have been watching this situation very closely. Of course, Russia had a relationship with Serbia through much of modern history. The Russians now use terms like "ethnic cleansing" describing the situation of Russians in Latvia. There have been a couple of Estonian towns where the dominantly Russian population has declared autonomy. And Yeltsin, himself, has behind the scenes offered some very bellicose warnings to these little states. Now I'm not saying that the Estonians are totally maybe in the right here. I think that there's room for change. But the -- the example that we set for other aggressors with an ethnic agenda of some kind here is very clear that if they move fast and move resolutely, no one's really going to stop them. And I also think that because President Clinton was kind of half in and half out of this, saying it was important and saying it was unimportant -- and Secretary of State Christopher the same way - - I think the whole credibility of our deterrence, you know, when we warn people and threaten things, has eroded, and this could affect us even in places like Asia, where our behavior when we're faced with a difficult conflict is watched very carefully. And if we seem to be weak, somebody may well test it.

MS. WARNER: Mrs. Kelleher, do you agree, has the credibility of our deterrence been weakened here in a general sense?

MS. KELLEHER: I'm really less concerned about specific follow-on and more concerned about what we're going to learn out of this crisis.I think that really the Clinton administration faced a situation in which there were few good solutions left, that what has to be learned is the lesson that wasn't clear to the Bush administration, namely, if a crisis develops, the best way to deal with it is early decision about how important this crisis is, what the goals are, what the outcome is to be sought, and then steadfast, direct application of political and economic pressure from the outset towards that outcome, and perhaps even the consideration of whether it is worth the use of force. I think what we've seen unfortunately too much in the last two years is too little, too late, and, in fact, the willingness to bluff when we, ourselves, hadn't made basic decisions. And I think certainly in terms of the discussions going on now within NATO, I think the kinds of discussions that Sen. Lugar will lead while he's on his trip, will go to the point of what is it that we have learned in this crisis and how will we be better prepared in the next crisis to, in fact, act decisively and early to make sure that it doesn't reach this level of atrocity.

MS. WARNER: Sen. Lugar, she raises of course that all important point that the U.S. deliberately let the Europeans lead here for a long time and that it does go back to the Bush administration. What do you think of the long range implications for U.S. leadership within Europe and within the NATO alliance?

SEN. LUGAR: Well, it's very important that President Clinton take the opportunity at the December of January summit conference of NATO to set forward a bold program for reformation of NATO. I certainly support him doing that and will try to be helpful in a bipartisan way for a very strong American stance. I hope other nations, Great Britain, France, Germany come to mind, will also be thinking along these lines constructively. We really have to have something as a stopper before the next crisis comes, or even worse still to contain the one that I think will continue to simmer as we've been discussing it this evening.

MS. WARNER: And Mr. Glynn, let me just end briefly with you. What do you think should be the lessons here for the United Nations?

MR. GLYNN: Well, I think that the United Nations really is only as effective as the members of the Security Council are effective, and we've seen that the Security Council is only as effective as the United States is resolute enough to know where it's going. We had a pretty good example during the Gulf War where we stood up, we took the lead. We had the help of Britain. At that time it was Margaret Thatcher, and in this instance we've allowed the U.N. bureaucracy to sort of go its own way and the Security Council, and the result has been a total mess.

MS. WARNER: Well, thank you very much. Mrs. Kelleher, gentlemen, Sen. Lugar. Back to you, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Still ahead on the NewsHour, the Denny trial in Los Angeles. FOCUS - L.A. STORY

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight, we focus on the trial of two black men charged with beating white truck driver Reginald Denny and others at the outset of the Los Angeles riots last year. The first witnesses will testify on Monday. Correspondent Jeffrey Kaye of public television station KCET reports on the opening of the trial yesterday and concern in the black community.

MR. KAYE: Defendants Damian Williams and Henry Watson are charged with randomly attacking eight people when rioting broke out on April 29, 1992.

LAWRENCE MORRISON, Prosecutor: We will see these victims here live in the courtroom, and they will tell you what happened to them at theintersection of Florence and Normandy Avenues in south central Los Angeles. That intersection, like the date, is now part of our nation's history.

MR. KAYE: In his opening statement yesterday, prosecutor Lawrence Morrison said he will prove the defendants assaulted unsuspecting and innocent people, including truck driver Reginald Denny, whom he said they attempted to murder. Morrison showed the jury graphic video freeze frames of what he called "terrifying acts of violence," violence which occurred the afternoon that police officers were acquitted of state charges in the beating of Rodney King. In his statement, Williams' lawyer, Edi Faal, offered a defense strikingly similar to that of the officers in the King beating case. He claimed the pictures don't tell the whole story.

EDI FAAL, Defense Lawyer: The videotape that the prosecution will show you is not a true account of the events that took place at Florence and Normandy as they were taking place.

MR. KAYE: Defense lawyers said their clients cannot be positively identified from the pictures, a contention disputed by the prosecution. Some black activists complain that Williams and Watson have been treated harshly because they are black. Judge John Aldekerk rejected a pretrial motion by the defense to dismiss the charges on the basis of alleged discriminatory prosecution. For many in the black community this case has become a symbol of what they see as a long pattern of mistreatment by the criminal justice system, by the courts, and particularly by the police.

BLACK WOMAN: In Los Angeles, if there's four black men in a car, you can't roll with four black men in a girl, 'cause the police is gonna pull you over. They see flour black heads in a car, they're gonna pull you over.

MR. KAYE: Has it happened to you?

BLACK WOMAN: It has happened to everybody.

BLACK MAN: You just did a drive by.

OTHER BLACK MAN: If they see four black males, females in the car, it was stolen or you just did a drive by, a robbery or something.

BLACK WOMAN: They're gonna pull you over and just gonna say you done anything.

SGT. WHIT PAULY, Los Angeles Police Department: It's been my experience that you can't have a whole lot of people, or, you know, saying one thing and there not be something there.

MR. KAYE: LA Police Sgt. Whit Pauly and Officer Maria Marquez work out of the 77th Street station in an area where much of the 1992 rioting took place.

SGT. WHIT PAULY: You know, I'm not saying that it's a perfect world or that we don't make mistakes, but I see it as a real movement where for an example we went on a radio call tonight, and we detained two young black males, and I think they felt in their mind that it was completely inappropriate that the police officers stopped them and detained them and searched them for a gun.

MR. KAYE: The incident cuts to the heart of the frequently heard complaints. Shots were fired during an attempted car theft. The gunman got away.

SPOKESPERSON: Billy's saying that the suspects were male Hispanic in a white Toyota.

MR. KAYE: Police quickly learned the suspects were male Hispanics. But even knowing that, they handcuffed two young black men.

BLACK MAN: You don't even got a search warrant.

OFFICER MARIA MARQUEZ, Los Angeles Police Department: You know, why don't you just calm down, okay?

BLACK MAN: Well, ain't nobody --

OFFICER MARIA MARQUEZ: Well, we don't know that, okay. And we're conducting an investigation. When we get done here, we'll explain everything to you, okay? Do you have identification, sir?

BLACK MAN IN HANDCUFFS: I sure do.

OFFICER MARIA MARQUEZ: And where is it?

BLACK MAN IN HANDCUFFS: In my pocket.

OFFICER MARIA MARQUEZ: Can I get it?

BLACK MAN IN HANDCUFFS: Go ahead.

MR. KAYE: One of the handcuffed men was a security guard.

BLACK MAN IN HANDCUFFS: Why don't you go to somebody else now?

OFFICER MARIA MARQUEZ: Well, let me tell you what happened, okay? We got a call of shots being fired in progress. I mean, somebody's out here shooting.

BLACK MAN IN HANDCUFFS: [security guard] I know that, but --

OFFICER MARIA MARQUEZ: Right. Two houses east of the person that supposedly called the police, turns out nobody around here called the police. And we get here and we see you -- we got a right to investigate it. We don't know what's going on.

SECURITY GUARD: [still in handcuffs] But you ain't got the right to handcuff nobody.

OFFICER MARIA MARQUEZ: If you're going to cop an attitude and not cooperate, yeah. We don't know.

SECURITY GUARD: [still in handcuffs] We didn't did nothing. I mean, dang.

OFFICER MARIA MARQUEZ: You're just somebody that said we didn't do nothing, you guys didn't do anything, you. How do we know that? We don't know that until we're done investigating, right?

MR. KAYE: You certainly knew. At least, officers at the scene knew that the call had gone out about four Hispanic men who had driven off in a car. Yet, the two people with cuffs on them were two young, black men. Doesn't that speak volumes in terms of how they see their relationship?

SGT. WHIT PAULY: Well, in terms of having that information, that wasn't information that I had when I got out of the car.

OFFICER MARIA MARQUEZ: In my mind, I was thinking, well, we have these two people here who are the location where supposedly the shot were being fired at. Chances are that they very easily could have been armed.

SGT. WHIT PAULY: So what did we do after we found out that they were male Hispanics? They, they were unhandcuffed, and I personally unhandcuffed one of them, and I apologized, sorry, which is kind of getting into our community-based police mode.

SPOKESMAN: An informant states the suspect is wanted for a serious crime.

MR. KAYE: The beating of Rodney King was supposed to usher in a new era in police community relations, a new police chief, increased civilian oversight, community-based policing. But young blacks especially say they have seen little progress. Telicia Parham is 21 years old. She works summers as a youth counselor. She has strong feelings about the justice system.

TELICIA PARHAM: We don't have no justice. It's like, it's the black law and it's the white law. It's not really written down in books, but it's like everybody, everybody don't want to look at it like that, but it's like really, it's two different sets of laws, a set for the black man and a set for the white man.

MR. KAYE: Telicia introduced us to her close friends. Just about all, it turned out, had been in trouble with the law, Telicia included.

TELICIA PARHAM: My grandma said the other said, she said, I'll give you a hundred dollars right now if you could tell me one person you know ain't never been in jail. You know, I couldn't tell her nobody. [laughing] I was like damn. I said my baby.

BLACK MAN: My mama.

MR. KAYE: Telicia and her friends describe themselves as former gang members.

MR. KAYE: Do you think if you were the police you would have reason to be suspicious about you?

BLACK MAN: Man, you got to be suspicious about everybody right, you know what I'm saying, but just because you got to be suspicious about them don't mean that you shoot 'em -- put your hands on 'em.

MR. KAYE: Officials say they are well aware of the continuing complaints.

RABBI GARY GREENEBAUM, President, L.A. Police Commission: As I've gone around the last many weeks talking to various community organizations and community leaders, one of the real concerns, particularly in the minority communities, is that there's not a full sense of trust of the department.

MR. KAYE: Rabbi Gary Greenebaum is the new president of the LA Police Commission, the civilian body responsible for overseeing the police department. Voter-enacted reforms give the commission more authority. At a recent meeting with Police Chief Willie Williams commission members and their executive director discussed implementation of promised reforms.

CHIEF WILLIE WILLIAMS, Los Angeles Police Department: The city operating funds are just not going to support the huge amount of dollars that are involved in trying to make some changes.

MR. KAYE: In an interview, Williams admitted the pace of change has been slow.

CHIEF WILLIE WILLIAMS: You have to understand between the federal trial, between the Denny trial, between the sentencing, and the worldwide publicity that was focused on the city of Los Angeles, it's been very difficult to move forward. We've been just trying to stop back sliding, so it's going to take a little while before major change occurs here in LA, but it can occur, and it will occur.

MR. KAYE: Comparisons between the treatment of defendants in the King and Denny beating cases have created a deep schism in Los Angeles. Four policemen were charged first with assault. Two were convicted of federal civil rights violations. All remained free on bail. Bail for Denny defendants facing attempted murder charges is as high as $580,000. Prosecutors resent the comparison, saying police had the legal authority to use at least minimal force on King, while rioters beating motorists were completely out of bounds. In a recent jail house interview, defendant Williams proclaimed his innocence.

DAMIAN WILLIAMS: I'm a scapegoat for the whole rebellion.

MR. KAYE: The term "rebellion" is used commonly by those who believe the unrest was a political statement.

REV. ANDREW ROBINSON-GAITHER: April 29th was the further expression of people's unhappiness with many of the problems that perpetuate uneasiness within the community. And April 29th, it was like people are saying, I can't take any more of this, I won't take any more of this. That does not justify the beating of Reginald Denny.

MR. KAYE: The Rev. Andrew Robinson-Gaither supports a committee headed by Paul Parker, a group which speaks out on behalf of those accused of engaging in violence at Florence and Normandy. The two believe the current case has the potential for more violence.

REV. ANDREW ROBINSON-GAITHER: Oh, yes. If these brothers are sent up the river, if these brothers are given the book or the possible life terms that now linger in front of us, I shiver to think how the community will respond.

PAUL PARKER, Free the LA 4 Plus Defense Committee: I feel it is gonna be another war, as we call it rebellion. Some put it in the terms of a revolutionary sense just like say back in the days of the Boston Tea Party, it was revolution. I definitely feel that way.

TONY THOMAS: It's gonna be somethin'. I don't know what. But, uh -- there's gonna be some raging fire, I believe.

MR. KAYE: There will be. What do you mean, raging, why?

TONY THOMAS: I mean, I mean, if there's no justice, there's gonna be no peace.

MR. KAYE: What does that mean?

TONY THOMAS: That means --

BLACK WOMAN: Just what it says.

TONY THOMAS: -- just what it says, no peace. No justice, no peace.

MR. KAYE: Police officers are aware of the potential for further violence. They hear it not just from disillusioned young people but from constituents at a community meeting. These people are supporters of the police, yet they too feel there is a double standard of justice and fear rioting after the trial. Their sentiments are a measure of the depth of frustration in this community.

CATHERINE WILLIAMS: If they convict those young men and gave the officers the time that they did in jail, you can look for another riot that's going to be worse.

MR. KAYE: You think so?

CATHERINE WILLIAMS: I know so.

ALBERT SAMPTON: Well, I know what's she's saying is just about what's going to happen, because they don't see any justice, because if I strike you, it's the same thing as me striking you as if I strike this man. It's the same thing, no different. I hit either of you. So if I'm going to be punished for hittin' this man, I should be punished for hittin' you too.

MR. KAYE: This case will be judged by a racially diverse jury, an anonymous panel composed of five whites, three African- Americans, three Latinos, and an Asian American. The prosecution is scheduled its first witness Monday. RECAP

MS. WARNER: Again, the major stories of this Friday, a team of 18 doctors in Philadelphia separated seven week old Siamese twins in an operation that has raised sensitive ethical questions. One of the infant girls died during the procedure, as expected. Doctors say it was too early to predict the outlook for the other child. And a woman suspect was arrested in shooting of a doctor outside an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kansas. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Margaret. That's the NewsHour for tonight. Have a nice weekend, and we'll see you on Monday night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.