The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MS. FARNSWORTH: Good evening. I'm Elizabeth Farnsworth in Washington.

MR. MAC NEIL: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After tonight's News Summary, we focus on the American-led NATO bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serbs. We have a Newsmaker interview with Defense Secretary William Perry [Newsmaker], then four former senior officials [Focus - Peace Under Fire], Lawrence Eagleburger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Leslie Gelb, and William Hyland, discuss the chances of success. Next, Eliza Hobson reports on the pressure on new mothers to leave hospitals [Focus -Overnight Delivery] a day after they've given birth. We close with a Roger Rosenblatt essay on the newly ungregarious Americans [Going It Alone]. NEWS SUMMARY

MS. FARNSWORTH: Russia today accused NATO of committing genocide against the Bosnian Serbs. A statement released by the Russian foreign ministry said, the survival of the present generation of Bosnian Serbs is called into question. NATO started bombing Serb military targets 14 days ago to try to force the Serbs to withdraw heavy weapons from around Sarajevo. The Russians have circulated a draft resolution to the UN Security Council demanding immediate suspension of the raids. Secretary of Defense William Perry addressed their objections today during an interview with the NewsHour.

WILLIAM PERRY, Secretary of Defense: The claim of genocide is just flat wrong. Not only is it wrong, it's just 180 degrees in reverse. The actions of NATO are there to prevent the genocide. The genocide that was occurring when a thousand shells a day were being lobbed into Sarajevo, just indiscriminate shelling of civilians in the city, to the extent anything could be called genocide, that was close to it.

MR. MAC NEIL: So how many civilians do you believe you've killed- -NATO has killed?

SEC. PERRY: We have no evidence that we've killed any, and I'm very, very skeptical--

MR. MAC NEIL: Any?

SEC. PERRY: We have no evidence that any have been killed, and I'm very skeptical of the Bosnian Serb reports.

MS. FARNSWORTH: We'll have the rest of our interview with Sec. Perry right after the News Summary. Undersecretary of State Strobe Talbott will travel to Moscow late today or tomorrow for high level talks. Meanwhile, NATO's Operation Deliberate Force continued in the former Yugoslavia. Allied warplanes attacked Bosnian Serb ammunition dumps at Voguska, just Northwest of Sarajevo. A NATO spokesman said the list of original targets had been expanded, and the raids would continue until the Serbs exceeded to UN demands. Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: The Commerce Department today reported that the quarterly trade deficit from April to June was the worst in history. The second quarter figure jumped 11.8 percent to $43 billion. In brighter economic news, the Labor Department reported that wholesale prices fell .1 percent in August. It was the third straight month without a gain, signalling little inflation pressure. A New York City landmark may soon be under new ownership. Financially-strapped Japanese owners of Rockefeller Center are walking away from their billion dollar investment. The Mitsubishi Estate Company said it will transfer title of the 12-building complex to a real estate investment trust that includes General Electric, Walt Disney, and a Chicago investor in distressed real estate. A bankruptcy court must approve the deal.

MS. FARNSWORTH: A Senate committee held a hearing today on so- called drive-through deliveries. The Labor & Human Resources Committee listened to mothers who said they were forced by their insurers to go home too soon after giving birth. Committee Chairwoman Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas has introduced legislation to end such practices. Democratic Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey is a co-sponsor of the bill. He described the measure at today's hearings.

SEN. BILL BRADLEY, [D] New Jersey: It will guarantee that hospital stays are decided by the mother and by her doctor, not by the insurance company. The bill requires insurers to cover a minimum 48-hour stay after a normal birth, and a 96-hour stay after caesarian section, if either the mother or the doctor request to stay that long. Women are free to go home earlier if they wish, but they should not be forced from their hospital beds by some insurance bureaucrat.

MS. FARNSWORTH: The health insurance industry opposes arbitrary time limits on hospital stays. A spokesman said there is no conclusive evidence that longer hospitalization benefits infants or mothers. We'll have more on this story later in the program.

MR. MAC NEIL: Today was the fourth day of Senate hearings into the fatal 1990 shootout at the cabin of white separatist Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. Weaver's wife and son were killed. Henry Hudson, the former director of the U.S. Marshal's Service, told a Senate subcommittee he had a plan to take Randy Weaver peacefully into custody for firearms violations, but the U.S. attorney's office in Idaho rejected the idea.

HENRY HUDSON, Former Director, U.S. Marshal's Service: I felt that Mr. Weaver would eventually come down off that mountain, and we could arrest him in town, without his family present. That, to me, seemed like a sensible approach. I contacted the United States attorney's office--Marshal Johnson was there when I made the phone call--and asked them to consider that approach.

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER: And what was the response of the U.S. attorney's office?

HENRY HUDSON: They declined. They indicated that the judge was resistant to it, they thought it was improper, and would not allow us to go along with it. I asked at that time whether or not we could resume any kind of negotiations with Mr. Weaver, and they were opposed to that.

MS. FARNSWORTH: That's it for our News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the NATO bombing campaign against Bosnia's Serbs with Defense Sec. William Perry and four former senior officials. Then a look at shorter hospital stays for new mothers, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. NEWSMAKER

MR. MAC NEIL: Bosnia is our lead focus tonight. We'll talk to four foreign policy thinkers about the latest peace initiative and the impact of ongoing NATO air strikes in a moment, but first, a Newsmaker interview with the Secretary of Defense, William Perry. I spoke to him this afternoon.

MR. MAC NEIL: Mr. Secretary, thank you for joining us.

WILLIAM PERRY, Secretary of Defense: My pleasure, Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: NATO has now made more than 3200 sorties. Is there any hint of Serb--Bosnian Serb compliance?

SEC. PERRY: We have--I want to go back to the whole objective of what we're doing there. Compliance with what? We have--

MR. MAC NEIL: Those demands the United Nations, backed by NATO, has made on the Bosnian Serbs.

SEC. PERRY: Besides this military objective, we have a peace objective going on, a peace offensive going on as well. The two have some relation to each other. For the first time in the year and a half of being secretary, I'm cautiously optimistic that we're moving towards a peace settlement in Bosnia. In the meantime, we still have the objective of keeping down the casualties. The shelling of Sarajevo is a case in point. The bombings are directed to stop that shelling of Sarajevo. So far, they have already been effective, i.e., the bombing, the substantial shelling that was taking place there has stopped. But we--the UN demand is that the Serbs pull their artillery pieces away from Sarajevo. That has not been met yet.

MR. MAC NEIL: Why, if the Serbs won't move their guns away from Sarajevo, don't you target those guns in these air attacks?

SEC. PERRY: We do target the guns, and not necessarily with bombing raids. There being the guns that fire, there still are some occasional shellings in Sarajevo, are being targeted by the Rapid Reaction Force ground artillery. They use artillery tracking radars to track, backtrack where the shells are coming from, and they have an instant fire on those shells. And that's a very effective way.

MR. MAC NEIL: Have any of those guns been disabled by that at all?

SEC. PERRY: We believe so, yes. More importantly, the guns have stopped firing.

MR. MAC NEIL: Have stopped firing. Yeah. If Gen. Mladic moves the guns that NATO and the UN insist he moves, won't he thereby surrender all of Sarajevo's territory, part of which is a major Bosnian Serb claim, ownership of part of which is a major Bosnian Serb claim? Won't he, thereby, by default just be giving all of the area around Sarajevo?

SEC. PERRY: No. I don't believe so, Robin. He's only being asked to move them 12 miles from the city, and they could be moved back in again. It just means that they cannot be in a position to fire into the city, but if, for example, he were faced with a Bosnian government offensive, threatening territory he now holds, then presumably he would move those pieces back in again.

MR. MAC NEIL: So if the Bosnian--suppose he moved the guns out, because--in order to stop the bombing, and the Bosnian government forces moved in, then NATO and the UN would stand by if he reattacked those positions and moved the guns back in again?

SEC. PERRY: Yes.

MR. MAC NEIL: It would. It would not countenance the Bosnian government moving into those positions if Mladic moved the guns out?

SEC. PERRY: I don't think I can say that as precisely as you're saying it, Robin. It just depends on the circumstances. First of all, we are discouraging the Bosnian government forces from making an offensive.

MR. MAC NEIL: Although they have a little bit, haven't they? They did retake one small sector.

SEC. PERRY: A small amount, but we want to keep our eye on the major action now, which is not the bombing, it's the diplomatic efforts, the peace negotiations. And as long as that is the major effort, we do not want that to be sidetracked or derailed by the military action. And that has to do with the actions the Bosnian government takes, the Bosnian Serbs make, as well as NATO responses.

MR. MAC NEIL: Is fear that the Bosnian government might move in hindering you from targeting those guns with air power? I mean, you have amazingly precise aerial weapons now, if you wanted to, am I right, you could take out those guns with air power?

SEC. PERRY: We could take out some of them. You have to see them to take them out. And the Bosnian Serbs have been doing their best to hide them not only successfully but sometimes. They've also been positioning them close to churches, to hospitals. And for all of those reasons we are very careful about targeting anything that's near a civilian area or particularly near a church or a hospital. So targeting the artillery pieces is possible, and it can be done. But as long as we are successful in stopping the shelling by the threat of doing that and by the response from the artillery pieces, it's not clear that thatis the best strategy to use.

MR. MAC NEIL: But the United Nations will, will be flouted as long as Mladic does not remove the artillery pieces beyond the twelve and a half mile exclusion zone.

SEC. PERRY: To this point, the United Nations, I think, and NATO combined have been very successful and very effective. They have stopped the principle activity which they were concerned with, which was the shelling of Sarajevo. That has been stopped now. It would be better if we could get the artillery pieces moved out beyond artillery range, and we're still pursuing that as an objective. But the big problem, which was the shelling of Sarajevo, has, indeed, been stopped. In addition to that, there can be no doubt in the minds of anybody, particularly in the minds of the Bosnian Serbs, of both the willingness of NATO and the UN to use military force and the capability of that military force.

MR. MAC NEIL: No doubt so far, but what's to stop Mladic just hunkering down and holding out until NATO's unity cracks on this continued offensive?

SEC. PERRY: Nothing is to stop him from hunkering down. That's not a position which gets him anywhere, though, because hunkering down is a purely passive position and doesn't move him forward. I think he sees the same thing that most other observers of the scene see, which is he is holding a losing hand right now, and that his best objective, we think, and we hope he thinks also, is to try and negotiate a peace settlement at this point. He's not going to get any more out of it than the peace terms that have been offered him now, and he might get considerably worse if he tries to hunker down and wait it out.

MR. MAC NEIL: Why might he get worse if he hunkers down to wait it out?

SEC. PERRY: Because I believe the forces are operating against the Bosnian Serbs right now. I think they believe that also. They reached their high water mark sometime ago, and they have lost the military initiative. They've lost that to the Croatians. They've lost the--they have thought that they were--they had the NATO forces stymied by their hostage taking. That has not proven to be effective. In short, Robin, I think when they went into Srebrenica and Zepa, when they took the hostages, when they started shelling Sarajevo, I think they overplayed their hand in poker terminology. And having overplayed their hand, they have provoked a response from NATO and the United Nations which is effectively--which they were not prepared for and which is effectively to stop those actions.

MR. MAC NEIL: To continue the poker analogy, your spokesman said you might send Stealth radar-deflecting planes there. Why? Is that just to awe the Serbs a little more, or is there a real military need for them?

SEC. PERRY: When we--

MR. MAC NEIL: Are you upping the ante?

SEC. PERRY: We would use the F-117's only for a particular class of targets, which is the air defense radars and the associated air defense systems with them. We have other systems which are quite capable of taking out those air defense radars. The advantage of the F-117 is it can do it without any danger of being tracked or attacked by the missiles on the ground. And so it's, it's just a better way of doing it than other ways.

MR. MAC NEIL: Has the decision been made yet to send them?

SEC. PERRY: No, it has not been made.

MR. MAC NEIL: What proportion of their air defense system, both radars and fire power, have been destroyed or rendered useless in the 3200 raids so far, or sorties so far?

SEC. PERRY: The air defense system in Eastern Serbia, Eastern Bosnia and Serbia, has been destroyed, rendered completely ineffective. Within a few days, at the present rate, that will also be true of the air defense system in Western Serbia. The command and control has been dramatically--I can't put a percentage on it- -but it's been dramatically impeded. A good many of their ammunition dumps have been destroyed, some significant percentage of them. So there has been a very substantial impact on the Bosnian Serbs.

MR. MAC NEIL: Would that mean that in two or three days NATO fliers could, could fly with impunity over Serbian space?

SEC. PERRY: They can fly with--within a few days, they will be able to fly with impunity over any Bosnia Serb space, provided they're flying high enough that they're not subjected to ground fire, ground fire--manned portable systems which are not being attacked in the system, of course, and which you never would know exactly where they're located.

MR. MAC NEIL: What precise information do you have on damage to civilians? The Russians today are raising fears of genocide against the Serbs. How many civilians have NATO raids killed?

SEC. PERRY: The claim of genocide is just flat wrong. Not only is it wrong, it's just 180 degrees in reverse. The actions of NATO are there to prevent the genocide. The genocide that was occurring when a thousand shells a day were being lobbed into Sarajevo, just indiscriminate shelling of civilians in the city, to the extent anything could be called genocide, that was close to it. The action NATO bombing is stopping is designed to stop that kind of shelling. Now, in terms of civilian casualties, we're being exceedingly careful on that, both in the selection of targets, the targets, we've picked the targets which in general do not have not just civilian populations in them but generally not military population either. We have avoided, for example, barracks, which we know where they're located. That would be a very easy target to hit. But we're not seeking to kill people; we're stopping to deter an action on their part. The weapons we've used have been precision-guided munitions. They've been extraordinarily accurate. I have seen literally hundreds of bomb damage assessment pictures, and as effective as we were in Desert Storm with these precision-guided munitions, we are more effective today, and we are hitting the targets precisely on the point that--

MR. MAC NEIL: So how many civilians do you believe you've killed- -NATO has killed?

SEC. PERRY: We have no evidence that we've killed any, and I'm very, very skeptical--

MR. MAC NEIL: Any?

SEC. PERRY: We have no evidence that any have been killed, and I'm very, very skeptical of the Bosnian Serb reports in that regard.

MR. MAC NEIL: Well, if some Serb--Bosnian Serbs were killed or have been killed, collateral damage I think is the Pentagon expression for this, is that excusable because of the Muslim deaths the Serbs caused, is there a moral equation in your mind?

SEC. PERRY: I wouldn't put it as a moral equation, but I would say that our objective is to stop the random killing of civilians, the suffering and the casualties in the civilians, and that this military action is for that purpose, and it has been effective for that purpose. We're doing it with the minimum casualties, attending casualties that are possible with it, and it we're doing, I think, quite effectively in that regard.

MR. MAC NEIL: How--what is your own guess about how long this could go on, weeks, months?

SEC. PERRY: There are two separate issues. How long the bombing goes on, it could stop in a day or two days or threedays if the United Nations becomes satisfied with the actions the Bosnian Serbs have taken relative to the shelling of Sarajevo, and Gen. Janvier would make that decision based on his discussion.

MR. MAC NEIL: If you're not satisfied, if Mladic continues--

SEC. PERRY: That could go on for a long time.

MR. MAC NEIL: A long time is what?

SEC. PERRY: Weeks, weeks, certainly. But more generally, this is all--this is related to the peace negotiations which are going on in parallel with this, and if we can get a peace negotiation--and now I'm hoping that's, again, weeks or months, not years from now, then, then there would be no point in military action.

MR. MAC NEIL: If a peace agreement results from all this, what figure do you, as Secretary of Defense, have in mind as to how many U.S. troops would be needed to police such an agreement? The figure used to be 25,000.

SEC. PERRY: NATO is--it's going to depend precisely on what the peace agreement is, but we have some view now as to what that peace agreement might be in terms of the map, the boundaries, what kind of missions forces have. Based on those assumptions, NATO's going through a calculation now of what force is required, and this is still not finally determined, certainly not precise yet, but I would--we're looking in terms of possibly a division of U.S. forces participating in that.

MR. MAC NEIL: The division is usually about half of 25,000, right? Are you thinking of 12,000, or are you thinking of--

SEC. PERRY: Well, in terms of ground forces in Bosnia, probably about a division. We have other forces involved. We have air forces in Italy.

MR. MAC NEIL: How many men are you thinking of as a division?

SEC. PERRY: A division depending on the reinforcements, whether it would be fifteen to eighteen thousand troops, we have other--we have air force and navy forces involved, as well, not in Bosnia- -but that would be in addition to it.

MR. MAC NEIL: When does President Clinton plan to discuss all this with the nation and with Congress?

SEC. PERRY: Well, he's been discussing it right along. I have had--he has had a number of discussions with the Congress. We have called--he's had congressional leadership over in the White House several times in just the last few months, so I think there's an ongoing discussion and if we get a peace settlement, and that peace settlement involves a NATO peace implementation force involving U.S. forces, then certainly that's going to be a very substantial issue to lay out to the Congress and the people.

MR. MAC NEIL: Sec. Perry, thank you very much for joining us.

SEC. PERRY: Thank you, Robin. Good to talk to you.

MR. MAC NEIL: The secretary's office called after that interview was taped to say that he meant to say the bombing of Bosnian Serbs, not of Serbia. FOCUS - PEACE UNDER FIRE

MS. FARNSWORTH: We get four views now. Lawrence Eagleburger served as Secretary of State during the Bush administration and ambassador to the former Yugoslavia during the Carter administration. Zbginiew Brzezinski was national security adviser during the Carter administration. He is now a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. William Hyland was a member of the National Security Council during the Ford administration and is former editor of "Foreign Affairs" Magazine. He is now a professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. And Leslie Gelb, a former "New York Times" columnist, is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He served in both the Johnson and Carter administrations. Thank you all for being with us. Mr. Eagleburger, is Sec. Perry right? Is NATO--are NATO and the U.S. on the right track now, do you believe?

LAWRENCE EAGLEBURGER, Former Secretary of State: They're on the right track if that means should they be bombing. Yes, I think they are on the right track. The question still is, and it's not clear to me what the answer is from the administration, what is their objective, and if, if Mladic does pull all of his weapons out, do they stop, do they continue if the Serbs are difficult at the negotiating table? But at the moment, in a general sort of inchoate way I have to say they're on the right track.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What do you think, Mr. Brzezinski?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, Former National Security Adviser: I would generally agree with what Larry said. I would add, however, that it's terribly important that NATO persist. If NATO falters, if we back off, then there will be real trouble. And in that connection, I have some problems with the way we're defining the objectives of the bombing. We are making the secession of the bombing conditional on Serbian acts, which means that if the Serbs don't concede, there is the danger of real division in NATO. I'd much rather have a definition of the purpose of the bombing be self-sustaining. For example, the purpose of the bombing is to degrade the Bosnian Serbian capacity to fight. It is not to get them to remove their guns around Sarajevo, because if they don't, then every day they don't they are winning.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And if they don't remove their guns from around Sarajevo but their capacity to fight is degraded, you would think that would be enough.

MR. BRZEZINSKI: I think that would be very good, in fact, because that's much more important in the long run, but the real danger is that if they refuse to remove their guns, some of our allies may begin to back off, or we might become intimidated by what the Russians are saying, in which case it will have devastating impact on the quality or the unity within NATO, itself.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Okay. I want to get into the Russians later, but just, if they don't remove their guns, though, doesn't that mean they can still attack Sarajevo, which is the purpose of, of the bombing, to remove that threat?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: That is correct, and I would favor attacking the guns, but I am not in favor of defining our objective as Serbian concession to us, because if they defy us and persist in defiance, then there is the real danger that the unity of NATO may begin to split.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What do you think about that, Mr. Hyland? WILLIAM HYLAND, Georgetown University: Well, I think--

MS. FARNSWORTH: Are we on the right track generally? We'll get into the NATO--the danger of a split later.

MR. HYLAND: I think generally we're on the right track. The problem with the bombing, I think we're too preoccupied with the day-to-day tactics of bombing. Suppose Mladic agrees, and they pull out 21 miles or something like that and the bombing stops? I think linking the bombing to this kind of tactical objective around Sarajevo is not a very good strategy. I'd rather just say we're bombing, we will--like to see the guns taken out. We definitely want to see some peace talks take place, the Serbs are going to have to make some concessions and so forth, rather than tying it so specifically to these mortars and so forth. And Secretary Perry was right. You can hide these things in a little shack, and we'll never really know unless we send in ground troops whether they've taken out twenty, fifty, a hundred, and soforth. So I think they're on the right track, but I'd also like to know more about the diplomacy, what Holbrooke is going to do back in Europe.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Mr. Gelb, just on the bombing, do you think that we're on the right track? Are you also concerned about the objectives?

LESLIE GELB, Council on Foreign Relations: I think the negotiating proposal makes sense. It's realistic and it's fair. The bombing campaign should be maintained, more or less, where it is in Bosnia. If we go beyond it, it should be for strategic targets, not for hit-and-run air strikes all around Bosnia. The comments made by Mr. Brzezinski and Mr. Eagleburger strike me, though, as fundamentally where we ought to be thinking. They say we're on the right track, but the important thing are the next steps. And it seems to me the next steps involve making clear exactly what the next military measures will be, and here, the next important one strikes me is providing arms to the Bosnians. We ought to put that in--back in our rhetoric, because it's something for the Serbs to think about. And the second part--

MS. FARNSWORTH: You mean, we should put--excuse me--you mean, we should be threatening to provide arms to the--

MR. GELB: Correct, correct, put that back on the table.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And Sen. Dole has actually said just in the last day or two that he would like to move forward on that.

MR. GELB: Exactly. Let these Serbs think about that element. And secondly, give them a carrot. I think we ought to put a major economic package on the table right now. And we ought to tell the parties this is available over the next several months on a one- time-only basis. It's not going to be available for you in six months or next year, and use that as a carrot.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Mr. Brzezinski, are you worried that the United States has accepted the responsibility for producing an outcome here that we're involved in a way that we weren't before?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Not in the least. This is an important issue for the future of Europe, for the future of the Atlantic alliance, indeed, even for our relations with Russia. And American leadership is absolutely necessary. In fact, my greater worry over the last three years has been the absence of American leadership. Finally, we have taken the leadership. My concern now is that we sustain it, that we don't back off, and I think this is the real danger, because I think some of our allies will falter, there will be increasing Russian pressure, and I'm not yet--I hope I'll be wrong- -I'm not yet fully convinced that the administration has staying power.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What do you think about that, not so much the staying power yet, but the role of the U.S.? Is the U.S. too involved now, responsible for the outcome?

MR. EAGLEBURGER: No, we're not responsible for the outcome, unless we say we're responsible for the outcome. I agree, more or less, with what Dr. Brzezinski has said, but I do think there are limits beyond which I do not think under any circumstances the United States ought to go to try to realize a sensible outcome. For example, I don't want to see U.S. ground forces in Yugoslavia.

MR. BRZEZINSKI: I agree with that.

MR. EAGLEBURGER: And I suspect you would, so I mean, yes, we are trying to move things now. Yes, we have exercised some leadership. There's a long argument about whether we should have earlier or not, but we've exercised some leadership. I do not think that we should be held responsible for any outcome. I think we should make it clear we will do what we can, but this may be an issue where theparticipants are so benighted that it may be beyond the wit of man to solve it without using means that are just--that go far beyond what we ought to be prepared to do, so--

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Could I just jump in on this point, because that's an important point. I agree. We should not be responsible for particular outcome. In other words, we should not get ourselves in the position of saying this is the outcome we want and we'll stay involved only if we get that outcome. We should create the preconditions for the parties to the conflict to reach an outcome either because of fatigue with the war, or because someone begins to lose. But if we get tied to seeking a particular outcome, we could get bogged down for a very long time.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Okay. Mr. Gelb, let's move on to the peace plan, which allocates--what we know about the peace plan so far, it would allocate 51 percent of the Bosnian territory to the Muslim-Croatian Federation and 49 percent to the Bosnian Serbs. What do you think about the peace plan? Do you think it's effectively partitioned? Is there anything wrong with that, if it is?

MR. GELB: It is effectively a partitioning. Sure, it is.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Is there anything wrong with that, in your mind?

MR. GELB: It's not just. It's realism. And given the fact that we are not prepared, nor are our European allies prepared to do more to bring about a just outcome, whatever exactly that might be, it strikes me that partition along ethnic lines and allowing people essentially to live with their own kind is about the best circumstance we could hope for, given what we're prepared to do to bring about justice in the area.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Of course, Mr. Hyland, the administration said it's not partitioned, because it's one Bosnian government, and with the Serb state inside of it.

MR. HYLAND: Yeah. Well, that's rather silly. I mean, it's obviously partitioned, and I don't see anything wrong with the partition. We've partitioned other countries from time to time. That's probably the best solution.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Even though it is partitioned based on ethnic cleansing?

MR. GELB: Well, the ethnic cleansing has taken place not because of the United States but because both sides, especially recently, the Croatians, have engaged in it. Maybe that was the precondition for a settlement, after two or three years of fighting. I don't see any problem with that. I will comment, though, that I think we are accepting responsibility for this outcome. We may deny it, but it's basically a Clinton administration peace plan which was sold to everyone, surprisingly. Now, it's a Clinton administration bombing campaign. There would be no bombing if it weren't for the United States, certainly no Cruise missiles. So we have jumped in after two years of hesitation much further than I would have thought, and I'm not so sure I'm happy about it, but it's really now ours to bring it off, and I, I suspect we're going to do it.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Mr. Brzezinski, Anthony Lewis has said in the "New York Times" that the central provision of the peace agreement is a victory for racist fanatics. What do you think about that?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Well--

MS. FARNSWORTH: And this is the creation of a Serbian republic within Bosnia.

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Tragically, it's probably true. I don't want to be too technical about this, but I do have some reservations about the position we have adopted in Geneva. A few days ago in Geneva, we acknowledged the existence, and we recognized, in effect, the Serb republic. And it's the first time we used those terms. Now, this Serb republic allegedly will be part of a larger Bosnia, but it will have its own relationship with Belgrade. I wish we hadn't done this. I think this is a fundamental concession to the Bosnian Serbs. It may be the net end result, that we should have held it back, because a lot of other issues are yet to be negotiated.

MS. FARNSWORTH: You would have called it something else, a Serbian--

MR. BRZEZINSKI: I would have simply left it open, because if we now concede that fundamental objective of the Bosnian Serbs, then they're going to be very tough on other negotiating issues. We should have used that as leverage. Once we concede the existence of a Serb republic, we are, in effect, conceding the existence of the Serbian army, a separate Bosnian Serbian army, we are, in effect, conceding right now the partition, even before a peace settlement has been reached.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Mr. Gelb, do you think Bosnia is too divided, though, to live with this kind of arrangement? Do you think that they can make this work somehow?

MR. GELB: I hope so. This, this is a terrible situation, and we aren't sure, but it's not unprecedented either. Israel in 1947-48 agreed with the Palestinians to make a small Israel. They didn't want to, and they--but they traded land for peace, in effect. It didn't bring them much peace.

MS. FARNSWORTH: No.

MR. GELB: But they made their call. In Cyprus, the Turks and the Greeks separated from each other, and there more or less has been peace and quiet there. So at least, this kind of settlement offers them the possibility of peace. What they have now is hell.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Mr. Eagleburger, what about fault lines within the alliance? Just about everybody's referred to them. Do you think that if the bombing goes on that there will be dangerous fault lines within the NATO alliance?

MR. EAGLEBURGER: I suppose there can be. A lot of that is going to depend on how tough the United States is prepared to be as the leader of the alliance. And if we make it clear to all of our allies that this is what we are going to do, and they're going to have to live with it, and we can do that with some sugar coating, I'm not too worried about it, although, again, I think Dr. Brzezinski is right. The longer this goes on, and certainly the tougher the Russians get, the more that is danger. I frankly think it is one that can be contained if we're prepared to be leaders.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What worries you most about the fault lines within the alliance, itself, before we get into Russia?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Well, clearly, the position of the Italians, and particularly of the British, and conceivably even the French might falter, although I believe that actually Chirac's coming to the presidency of France precipitated this action, because all of a sudden, France became very tough, and then the United States stepped into the breach and assumed the leadership. But my concern is that our European allies will begin to hesitate, and the Russians will put pressure on the European allies more than on us.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And then, in hesitating, we would settle for something we shouldn't settle for, which would mean all the bombing would have been perhaps for naught?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Yes. It would have been futile, but worse than that, I think the alliance will then be split, then there would be strong reaction in the United States against our allies, there would be recriminations, recriminations will come back from Europe. In effect, the price will be paid by the alliance.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And what about the Russians? There have been some pretty strong statements from, from Russia claiming that NATO is inflicting genocide on the Bosnian Serbs, and that sort of thing, and President Yeltsin, of course, didn't say that, but he, himself, said that this could threaten U.S.-Russian cooperation.

MR. HYLAND: I think there's hot hair from Yeltsin for his own domestic audience. He's always under pressure from nationalists to do something for their Slav brothers and so forth. I can't believe Yeltsin is going to jeopardize his relationship with all the western powers and the United States for the, for the Serbs, and interestingly enough, I don't hear any Serbs in Belgrade or elsewhere saying, come help us. I don't think they want the Russians in this. Now, the troublesome thing is, of course, the psychology of Yeltsin blowing off steam probably will affect the British and the French and the Germans and so forth. But if we hunker down, I think we're all right.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Mr. Gelb, are you worried about the Russians?

MR. GELB: I'm much more worried about what Americans are going to think is going on here than I am about the Russians. If you sit and listen hard to what the four of us have been saying--and we're not totally uninformed about what's happening--we don't have a good idea of what President Clinton is really trying to do, what his strategy is. And while, as Sec. Perry said, President Clinton may have talked to a lot of congressional leaders privately, he's not talked to the American people. And he needs to do that. American forces are in combat now in Bosnia. There are risks in relations with Russia, with our alliance, questions of our objectives, and what we're going to do next. And he must explain that to us.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Mr. Brzezinski, writing in "The New Republic" recently, you said, the character of the international order is at stake in how the war in Bosnia was handled. What do you think the way it's being handled now says about the international order?

MR. BRZEZINSKI: I think it says that the international community is willing to assert itself, finally, and I think that's a very important message.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Because at that time, it hadn't been willing, and you were very upset about it.

MR. BRZEZINSKI: Yes. When I was writing, we were essentially passive witnesses to genocide, were passive witnesses to armed mobs engaging in massive killings, organized rapes, and the international community was watching it almost in the heart of Europe. That's a devastating message to send to the world after the end of the Cold War. So I view what is happening as a belated success for the international community, provided we sustain it.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And what do you think it says about the international community as a whole, the character of what has been built in this post Cold War time?

MR. EAGLEBURGER: To a degree, but only to a degree, do I agree with Dr. Brzezinski. I think this is an awful mess. There is no question about that. I think there is a real question--and I think Bosnia is in a sense the example of it--there's a real question that we Americans are going to have to face and what I think is going to be a much more unstable world than we're used to, and that is, when do we become engaged, and how much do we become engaged, and how much do we expect others to carry the burden, and that's going to be a difficult question in every case. And I agree, standing back and watching this one for a long period of time has not put any glory in our, in our armature, but having said all of that, I think there's a real question that we're going to have to face time and time again, which is: How much do we become involved? Let me make one final point, which is, I think we also need to understand that even if this peace agreement works, and they arrive at a peace agreement, I've spent enough time in Yugoslavia to tell you I'd be prepared to bet a lot of money against a hole in a doughnut that this will not last, and that at some point--a year or two years, five years from now--they will be back at each other's throats. I think, you know, it is not the--this is the first time the Balkans has been a problem. Several Roman emperors and Bismarck, amongst others, had a lot of trouble with it. It's likely to continue for some time to come.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Well, on that uplifting note, I must say good evening to everybody. Thank you very much for being with us. Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: Still ahead, rushing new mothers out of hospital and Roger Rosenblatt on Americans going it alone. FOCUS - OVERNIGHT DELIVERY

MR. MAC NEIL: Next tonight, hospital stays for mothers of newborn babies. Today's Senate hearing featured testimony on a bill requiring insurers to cover a minimum 48-hour hospital stay for women who give birth. It would end the 24-hour rule that many managed care plans endorse. New Jersey's already passed a similar law, and other states may follow suit. But in New Hampshire, a new study may change the direction of the debate. Eliza Hobson of New Hampshire Public Television reports.

ELIZA HOBSON, New Hampshire Public Television: Susan Quinn of Nashua, New Hampshire, had her first child, Colin, three years ago. She was discharged from the hospital after 48 hours. She's expecting her second child early next year, and she's horrified that her insurance company will now require her to leave the hospital in half the time.

SUSAN QUINN, Parent: It's pretty traumatic to the body, and 48 hours is really minimal for a woman to have to rest.

MS. HOBSON: Susan Quinn's insurance company has made a change that insurers in many states are making. Instead of paying for two days in the hospital, following a normal birth, they're reimbursing for only one. This cost-cutting measure strikes Susan Quinn as short-sighted.

SUSAN QUINN: The first day after I had my son, the actual day I had him, I had him in the morning, and I felt like I could have run a marathon. I felt fabulous. The second day I felt like I had been hit by a Mack truck. Everything--the adrenaline was gone, the pain started, and I had a very easy birth.

MS. HOBSON: Even an easy birth is exhausting, according to mothers in New Hampshire who feel they're being discharged from the hospital too early. They fear the health and well-being of their babies are at stake. They're gearing up to fight for passage of a law here which would force health insurers to pay for longer maternity stays.

WOMAN: I agree. There wasn't a really clear answer about that.

MS. HOBSON: Several New Hampshire lawmakers have joined the effort to reverse the trend toward early discharge.

STATE REP. KATIE WHEELER, New Hampshire: After 24 hours, you're exhausted from giving birth, and you're presented with this little infant, and you haven't--you haven't even been able to start breast feeding, and suddenly, you're at home.

STATE REP. MARTHA FULLER CLARK, New Hampshire: You may be a single parent. You may have no other support system out there in terms of society, and that's really, I think, the other side that's driving this.

MS. HOBSON: Responding to constituent calls, the legislators originally planned to come up with a mandatory length of maternity stay, but a recently completed study in New Hampshire has stopped them short. It suggests there is no need for longer stays, that very few babies discharged early develop problems, and that the dollar savings are dramatic.

DR. JUDITH FRANK: If you subtract the cost for readmission and emergency room visits, the total savings for health care for discharge early is $7.2 million.

MS. HOBSON: Until now, studies of early maternity discharge have not been conclusive. This one, by the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, is regarded as the first statistically significant survey available. Other studies used limited data. This one reviewed nearly 15,000 births at 26 New Hampshire hospitals. The author of the study is Dr. Judith Frank.

DR. JUDITH FRANK: The attributable risk is five per thousand, i.e., five readmissions attributed to early discharge. And I'll get back to that number again. That's an important one to remember.

MS. HOBSON: The data show that early discharge does increase the risk of readmission to the hospital and visits to the emergency room. But Dr. Frank stresses that the problems are treatable. Few babies are involved. None became seriously ill or died.

DR. JUDITH FRANK: So even with the additional increase in risk of readmission, we are still looking at less than 2 percent of the babies who are discharged being readmitted.

MS. HOBSON: Further, Frank found that early discharge produces major cost savings, more than $7.2 million in the small state of New Hampshire in 1993. And since maternity is by far the largest segment of overall hospital admissions, she concludes that early discharge is a sound economic move. Sherry Wood of Rye gave birth to both her children at home. She says most births are uncomplicated, the hospital is for sick people and not a good place to rest up from a healthy birth.

SHERRY WOOD, Parent: After I had my babies, there I was, right in my own bed, in my bedroom, with my family around me, being taken care of, and resting and just not having to move anywhere, not having to deal with people coming in and out of my room, and just the whole attendant care that's associated with being in a hospital, which is fine if you're ill and fine if you need that sort of monitoring and that sort of critical care.

MS. HOBSON: But Susan Quinn of Nashua points out that her newborn was diagnosed with jaundice on the second day in hospital. Untreated, this condition can lead to mental retardation. She wonders if she'd have noticed it in time if she'd been discharged early.

SUSAN QUINN: What I'm concerned primarily for is my child. I can come home. I mean, I'd go out in a field if I had to, but it's my baby, and I don't want to be that 1 percent statistic that is the negligible risk. That is not negligible to me.

MS. HOBSON: Medical experts point out that most newborn problems are not identified in the first two days of life. Dr. Frank calls this the strongest argument against legislating a 48-hour hospital stay.

DR. JUDITH FRANK: There are problems such as jaundice, plain physiologic jaundice, which doesn't peak in a term baby till three days of age, so that, therefore, many of the problems that are seen back in the emergency room or back even for the readmissions are not present with an additional 48 hours.

MS. HOBSON: While Dr. Frank favors early discharge, she warns that mothers and babies need professional follow-up care in the home in the first week or two after birth. Dr. Burt Dibble of the New Hampshire Medical Society also says it's critical.

DR. BURT DIBBLE, New Hampshire Medical Society: My opinion is that the standard of care should be adequate home care follow-up for everyone, whether they're discharged in twenty-four hours or four days, you need to have professionally qualified people in the home, making sure that those children are getting adequate nutrition and gaining weight properly and not having jaundice, as a way of assuring that they get the best start healthwise in their lives.

MS. HOBSON: While needed, the medical society says the government should not require postpartum care or micromanage any medical policies. At this point, lawmakers are considering whether to include postpartum home care.

STATE REP. SHARON NORDGREN, New Hampshire: We just need to find out what fits New Hampshire and what we might mold into this legislation, so I think we're not exactly saying 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours, or whatever, it's the whole system, and the whole support system that we need to look at.

MS. HOBSON: New Hampshire's managed care companies which discharge early say they already provide a wide range of support services for new mothers and babies. For example, Healthsource New Hampshire pays for four hours of light housekeeping and eight hours of home nursing, if deemed medically necessary. Donna Lencki is the chief operating officer of the health maintenance organization.

DONNA LENCKI, Healthsource: One of the things that was clear in the Dartmouth study is the belief that it certainly is appropriate to have a medical length or a target length of stay, as long as there's a comprehensive home health care policy in place. And, in fact, that's what we have for our members.

MS. HOBSON: But it's not clear how many new mothers receive home nursing care through Healthsource. The company declines to give out those figures. No matter which side mothers take in the debate over hospital stays, they tend to agree that insurance companies should pay for a package of postpartum home care.

SHERRY WOOD: Say it's a visiting nurse, and it's for this amount of time, and it's a lactation consultant for this one consultation, and it's, you know, four hours or eight hours of light housekeeping or whatever is involved in that part, you could--I don't think it would be that difficult to package, and I think it would result in a cost savings to them. I don't think it's an unrealistic solution.

MS. HOBSON: The Dartmouth study on early discharge has fueled the debate in New Hampshire, but some say more information is needed. Mike Hill of the New Hampshire Hospital Association feels scientific data are lacking on exactly how dissatisfied people are.

MIKE HILL, New Hampshire Hospital Association: We know of anecdotal cases where somebody was unhappy with their experience, thought that they should have stayed longer, but as far as having good evidence that you really should have for making laws to govern these kinds of things, the evidence doesn't exist.

MS. HOBSON: The Hospital Association believes laws which govern maternity care set a bad precedent for managing other medical conditions. But State Senator Jean Shaheen says government should act in this case.

STATE REP. JEAN SHAHEEN, New Hampshire: Government doesn't step in when things are working right. Government steps in when things aren't working, and I think the concern on the part of us and other legislators and consumers out there is that this is one place where they're not getting the kind of coverage they need.

MS. HOBSON: In other states, laws on early discharge have been passed quickly, but that won't happen here. New Hampshire's legislature is onrecess until January. And the lawmakers say they've still got a lot of homework to do. ESSAY - GOING IT ALONE

MS. FARNSWORTH: Finally tonight, essayist Roger Rosenblatt with some observations on the limitations of rugged individualism.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: A fascinating article appeared last spring by Robert D. Putnam called "Bowling Alone, Revisited." It narrowly concerned itself with the news that more people than ever are going bowling, but that they are bowling alone and not in bowling leagues or groups. Putnam's wider point is that Americans have stopped joining leagues and groups in general, and clubs and associations and civic organizations. In the 1830's, Tocqueville noted that Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. He related that tendency directly to the health of the republic. Americans, as natural joiners, knew how to make free associations work. When they applied that skill to the country as a whole, America, itself, became one great civic organization. But now, in the past few decades, Americans have stopped joining up and have decided to go it alone. A Roper Poll shows that since 1973, the number of people who said that they attended town meetings had dropped by 1/3. Church going is down. Labor union membership has fallen steadily for 40 years. Membership in the PTA is way down, so is membership in the League of Women Voters, the Elks Club, the Shriners, and the Masons. Membership in the Boy Scouts is off 26 percent since 1970. Membership in the Red Cross 61 percent. "We are bowling by ourselves," says Putnam. And, indeed, we are. We may read the trend in the use of compact discs that simulate the sounds of concert halls, and the use of videos that allow people to make movie theaters of their homes. The explicit declaration of the enormously successful Home Box Office, and of other pay-TV movie channels is: Do not go out and sit in a movie theater with others. People clamp a Walkman on their heads to drown out the world, or they pop on a helmet that gives them "virtual reality," which takes the place of "real" reality. Parked at a computer terminal, they enter cyberspace, where they gladly link up with those whom they will never touch or see. To be a joiner has always been thought of as a mixed virtue. It has implied a certain lack of intellectual or moral independence, a conformist streak. One can join terrible groups in America, like the Ku Klux Klan, and claim no civic improvement. And yet the best of life is usually involved in association of some sort: A marriage, a family, a bunch of friends at the office, a religion, a group of people with similar interests or conditions who simply like one another's company. If Americans are no longer joining associations, it says something both about associations and ourselves. Maybe the baby boomers who now dominate the population have changed their slogan from: "Don't trust anyone over 30," to "Don't trust anyone," since they are now well over 30 themselves. Maybe they have changed "Do your own thing" to "Only do your own thing." But it isn't the boomers alone who are going it alone. It's their elders too, and generation X, it's everybody. If Tocqueville was right, the effect of this mass of solitariness would be disastrous. Without membership in organizations, there can be no sense of the cooperation organizations require, the complexities of management and of leadership and of followership, the subtle balances, the common purposes, the good a group can do. "Citizenship" means "others." Yet, we are jogging alone, and doing research alone, and living alone--and we are bowling alone. So strange an activity: You choose your ball; you stare down the alley at the pins; you watch the ball roll, you wait. If a bowling pin falls in an alley, and you are there to hear it, does it make a sound? I'm Roger Rosenblatt. RECAP

MS. FARNSWORTH: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday, Russia accused NATO of committing genocide against the Bosnian Serbs as bombing raids continued against Serb military targets. And the U.S. trade deficit for the second quarter of this year was more than $43 billion, the worst in history. Good night, Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: Good night, Elizabeth. That's the NewsHour for tonight, and we'll see you again tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.