The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news in the Persian Gulf War this Wednesday, Iraq said it would send its foreign minister back to Moscow soon with a reply to the Soviet peace plan. Sec. of State Baker said anything short of an immediate unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait was unacceptable. U.S. troops captured hundred of Iraqi prisoners as ground action intensified. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: After the News Summary we have a News Maker Interview with an official from the Soviet embassy in Washington. Then a Judy Woodruff report on the administration's new energy plan, plus an interview with Energy Sec. James Watkins. Then we close with Charles Krause's report from Saudi Arabia on preparations for the ground war, and Tom Bearden's look at the role of artillery in the war. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: Iraq said today it would send Foreign Minister Teraq Aziz to Moscow soon with its reply to the Soviet peace plan. Baghdad Radio said a decision was made late today at a meeting of the Revolutionary Council chaired by Saddam Hussein. Earlier in Moscow, Soviet officials kept up the pressure on Iraq for an early reply. We have a report from Tim Ewert of Independent Television News.

MR. EWERT: Soviet officials are now impatient to hear from Baghdad. Time is running out for their peace proposals.

SPOKESMAN: And whenever we feel the need to remind them of a need for an urgent reply, we'll do that.

REPORTER: Do you feel the need now?

SPOKESMAN: I'm not going to say.

MR. EWERT: But with no sign of a return visit from the Iraqi foreign minister who went to the Kremlin two days ago, there's mounting anxiety that a ground war will scuttle Mr. Gorbachev's hopes for a negotiated settlement. After fierce criticism in the Supreme Soviet yesterday that Moscow should have done more to protect Baghdad, Mr. Gorbachev's backers were today emphasizing their support for the allied coalition.

SPOKESMAN: Because really we have a lot of fools which like to criticize, politely criticize our foreign policy. Now the majority of people do understand that Saddam Hussein is a butcher.

MR. EWERT: It was a theme taken up by former Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. He said people who talked about the destruction of Iraq forgot the suffering of Kuwait.

MR. MacNeil: The Soviet proposal appears to have the endorsement of one allied coalition member. Italy said the proposal appears fully in line with the United Nations resolutions. The comment came from a top aide to Italy's prime minister. He also revealed that the plans calls for Iraq to begin withdrawing one day after a cease-fire goes into effect, and he said it promises Iraq that its troops will not be attacked as they leave Kuwait. In Washington, Sec. of State James Baker said the war would go on until Iraq withdraws unconditionally from Kuwait. This is how he put it at the State Department this morning.

SEC. BAKER: Iraq must leave Kuwait immediately, totally and unconditionally, and Iraq must comply fully with the other applicable Security Council resolutions. Anything short of that is unacceptable. Anything short of that contradicts, indeed rejects the expressed will of the international community. So now one way or another the Iraqi army of occupation will leave Kuwait. And one way or another, the army of occupation of Iraq will leave Kuwait soon. And so Kuwait will be liberated soon.

MR. MacNeil: House Speaker Tom Foley said Pres. Bush would face a tough decision if Iraq accepts the Soviet proposal. Foley told ABC he didn't know how Pres. Bush could refuse an unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait. Mr. Foley said the White House was worried that leaving Saddam Hussein in power could threaten the region's security for years to come. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: U.S. forces destroyed an Iraqi bunker complex today just North of the Saudi border. They did it with two teams of army helicopters. The U.S. Command said thirteen to fifteen bunkers were destroyed and four hundred and fifty to five hundred Iraqi prisoners were taken. They did not say how many Iraqi soldiers were killed. A U.S. soldier was killed and seven others were wounded in another border skirmish just inside Saudi Arabia. The incident occurred when Iraqi gunners hit a U.S. anti-aircraft gun and two Bradley fighting vehicles. The commander of U.S. forces, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the Iraqi army was hurting and hurting very badly. Our assessment is that they are on the verge of collapse, but at the Pentagon this afternoon, Army Lt. Gen. Tom Kelly said Iraq was still a combat threat.

LT. GEN. KELLY: You can't plan for the best case. You've got to plan for a pretty severe case because if you don't, sure as guns, it's going to turn out that what you didn't plan for is what happened, and that's got to be in the mind of a commander. And Saddam Hussein is the kind of man who has accepted terrible casualties in the past, 10,000 in one day I believe during the Iran-Iraq War, and yet, was able to continue. We think we've done a good job on him, but we can't be certain of that and we have to prepare as though the forces he had in theater were capable of conducting a cohesive military operation. That's the only wise and safe thing for us to do.

MR. LEHRER: Iraq's information minister also responded to Gen. Schwarzkopf's comments about the Iraqi army. He said the army stands proudly, skilled in combat, to deter and crush any criminal aggressor. In Saudi Arabia, the deputy commander of French forces said he was not aware of any new military offensive planned for the next 48 hours.

MR. MacNeil: The allies continued to pound Iraq from the air. For the second consecutive day, the City of Baghdad came under heavy bombing. Also today, Iraq released pictures of bomb damage in the Northern City of Mosul. We have a report narrated by Louise Bates of Worldwide Television News. These pictures were cleared by Iraqi censors.

MS. BATES: Iraqi officials said the latest raid on Mosul took place last Friday. They blamed American planes for the attack in which dozens of buildings, including schools and shops, were reported destroyed. Casualties were given as four people killed and sixty wounded. Local people insist there are no military installations in the area, the claim which like the casualty reports cannot be independently verified. But there was no mistaking the widespread damage. The Christian Church, Saint Joseph's, was one of the buildings hit, its roof smashed and the interior filled with rubble and dust. The Iraqis said a mosque was also hit during Friday prayers. International relief agencies are becoming increasingly concerned about the plight of the civilians, especially mothers and children. Here in a Baghdad maternity hospital, doctors say proper incubator care cannot be provided because of power cuts, and unreliable water supplies make feeding the infants a major problem. However, special shipments of UNICEF supplies, mainly medicine and diet supplements, have arrived from abroad. The main aim of the relief effort is to prevent the outbreak of contagious disease.

MR. MacNeil: In the Iranian capital, Tehran, the Italian embassy was bombed today. An Italian news agency reported that the embassies of Britain, Turkey, and Greece were also attacked. No casualties were reported in any of those attacks. The Turkish and Greek embassies suffered minor damage. The Italian report said all of the attacks occurred within the same few minutes.

MR. LEHRER: Pres. Bush announced his national energy strategy today. He called for reducing the demand for oil, while increasing domestic production. He said the strategy would encourage energy efficiency, conservation and diversification. He spoke at the White House.

PRES. BUSH: Instead of only finding gasoline at the corner station, we want Americans to be able to choose from a range of environmentally sound and cleaner fuels like ethanol, methanol, electricity, propane, natural gas, and cleaner gasoline. Where America's towns and cities were once able to buy electricity from only one utility company, we want to help spur competition in the electric power business and to bring lower prices to consumers and we plan for electricity produced from renewable sources to rise by 16 percent. We want to build an energy future that's based on a range of diverse sources, so that never again will this nation's energy well being be swayed by events in any single foreign country.

MR. LEHRER: We'll have more on this story later in the program. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan told a congressional hearing today he expects the nation's economy to rebound later this year. But he said weakness in the banking system and a prolonged war in the Gulf could worsen the recession. There were two economic reports out today. The Labor Department said consumer prices rose .4 percent in January and the Commerce Department said new home construction fell in January to its lowest level in nine years. The head of the General Accounting Office said today the savings & loan bailout needs another $30 billion. Comptroller Gen. Charles Bowsher told the House Banking Committee not to give the agency overseeing the bailout an open checkbook though, and this afternoon the nation's second largest bank, the Bank of America, lowered its prime lending rate from 9 percent to 8 3/4. The prime rate is the rate banks charge their best business customers.

MR. MacNeil: The Michigan Court of Appeals today upheld state funded abortions for poor women. In a 2 to 1 opinion, the Court struck down a ban on such funding, saying it violated the constitutional right to privacy of a 15 year old girl. The girl became pregnant after a gang rape. She sued the state after being denied funding for an abortion because of the ban. The U.S. Supreme Court gave new legal protection to immigrant farm workers. In a 7 to 2 decision, the Court ruled that immigrant workers denied resident permits must have opportunity to present their case to a federal judge. The ruling is expected to benefit thousands of aliens in the U.S.

MR. LEHRER: The Soviet parliament today denounced the Russian Federation Pres. Boris Yeltsin. It passed a resolution charging Yeltsin's call yesterday for Pres. Gorbachev to resign violated the Soviet constitution and created an extreme situation in the country. The parliament also gave leaders of the break away region of Georgia three days to put an end to bloody ethnic fighting. It said a state of emergency would be imposed in Georgia if it did not. More than 30 people have been killed in that fighting. Albania's president, Rami Zalia, announced today he will form a new government. It came in response to protests in the Albanian capital of Tirana. Thousands of pro-democracy protesters clashed with police in the city's central square. The protesters, unhappy with the pace of reform in Albania, stormed the square's huge bronze statue of Albania's Communist founder and brought it down. The statue, which had dominated the square for years, was later carried off by the protesters.

MR. MacNeil: A Chilean airliner with 72 people on board crashed shortly after take-off this afternoon. Television reports said 20 people were killed. Authorities said the plane carried mostly U.S. tourists and went down in freezing waters near Antarctica. Chilean military helicopters and navy boats rescued 54 passengers. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to a Soviet view of the Soviet peace plan, the administration's new energy policy with Energy Sec. James Watkins, and preparations for the ground war, and the role of artillery. FOCUS - PEACE OFFENSIVE

MR. LEHRER: We go first tonight to an official Soviet view of its Persian Gulf peace plan and where it may be headed. It comes from Leonid Dobrokhotov, the press and information counselor at the Soviet embassy here in Washington. Welcome, sir.

MR. DOBROKHOTOV: Thank you.

MR. LEHRER: There's a French report this afternoon which says that Iraq has essentially one more day to accept the Soviet peace plan or the ground war will begin. Is that your understanding of where we are tonight?

MR. DOBROKHOTOV: Unfortunately, I don't know about this French information and I can't comment how true is this information, but I may say to you that we're waiting with great attention and a response from Baghdad, and we hope that this response would be positive.

MR. LEHRER: Do you expect it come within the next 24 hours? Is it true that Mr. Aziz, for instance, is going to go back to Moscow tomorrow? Do you know anything, can you add any light to that?

MR. DOBROKHOTOV: I may say we hope that very quickly it would be respond from Baghdad. What communication ties or personal contact of Mr. Aziz with the Soviet leaders Mr. Hussein will choose I don't know. But I believe that it's not important. The important is what reply and when reply we shall receive from Baghdad.

MR. LEHRER: Now you just said that you hope the response from Iraq will be positive. Is that just a hope, or have there been any indications from the first meeting that Pres. Gorbachev had with Mr. Aziz in Moscow, or since then, to indicate that the response, in fact, will be positive?

MR. DOBROKHOTOV: Well, see I prefer the word "hope", because I want to prevent any euphoria in our country, in your country, and in the world, because the situation is very complicated, and we are dealing with a very complicated person in Baghdad, but we have hope and we have some base for this hope, and maybe some indication is that the hope now is maybe more than it was weeks and months ago. And for this reason, we believe that the reply from Baghdad may be positive.

MR. LEHRER: May be positive?

MR. DOBROKHOTOV: May be positive.

MR. LEHRER: Now you saw in the News Summary just a moment ago what Sec. of State Baker said today, that it must be -- the response must be in agreement from Iraq for an immediate unconditional withdrawal from Iraq, from Kuwait, in accordance with all of the resolutions from the U.N. Security Council. Is that, in fact, the Soviet plan?

MR. DOBROKHOTOV: I may say to you because I can't comment in details in the framework of confidential character --

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

MR. DOBROKHOTOV: -- of messages of our leaders and our message to Baghdad too. I may not comment in detail all the features of this proposal, but I may say to you that the main and most important point in our proposal is unconditional and immediate withdrawal of Iraq from the territory of Kuwait and liberation of this country.

MR. LEHRER: Is the report true that the withdrawal would commence within 24 hours after a cease-fire?

MR. DOBROKHOTOV: I don't comment it.

MR. LEHRER: I see. Which doesn't -- I hear you. I hear you. Do you expect this to work? Do you believe that there -- based on what you know about the plan, based on what you know about the response thus far from Iraq, based on what you have heard through public media or any other way from the United States of America and the coalition partners, do you think this is going to work, sir?

MR. DOBROKHOTOV: I believe that it would be possible, the peaceful solution, and I hope very much in it, but first of all, I believe that maybe Mr. Hussein now is ready for withdrawal from Kuwait as a main part of the Soviet proposal, but as you know, United Nations adopted 12 resolutions and in all these resolutions, the withdrawing from Kuwait, it's not only one thing. They have, these resolutions have another problem that Mr. Hussein must realize. But I believe that we must improve step by step diplomacy if he will agree and we hope that he will agree to withdraw from Kuwait unconditionally and immediately, maybe after it he will be ready to other steps in the peaceful solution of the conflict. But in the same time, I want to say that we satisfied very well all the statements of the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, and the press secretaries of the Department of State and the White House that they trust the Soviet Union, that they don't see any principal differences in position of the Soviet Union and the United States in the Persian Gulf conflict, and in the moving peaceful solution of this conflict. But in the same time, I was deeply surprised, to speak plainly, to hear the statement from Mr. Pickering, United States representative of the United Nations when he said that United States has different roles in the Gulf than the Soviet Union and different interests. It's very contradicted to all previous statements of the United States officials and I was very surprised too to see in today's New York Times that anonymous official from the White House said that if all the response from Mr. Hussein for Soviet proposals would be positive and Mr. Hussein will withdraw from Kuwait immediately and unconditionally, it will create a great problem for the United States.

MR. LEHRER: You don't understand that?

MR. DOBROKHOTOV: I didn't understand that because as official representatives of the embassy I must believe only in the official statement of your administration. And for this reason, it's impossible to realize how the peace may be the problem for your President and for your government. I believe that the peace -- excuse me --

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

MR. DOBROKHOTOV: -- is the main task for all world community, for your people, our people, all over the world.

MR. LEHRER: If it is, in fact, unconditional.

MR. DOBROKHOTOV: If it would be unconditional, of course.

MR. LEHRER: Yes. Do you believe that the allied coalition should hold off on its ground war until this matter is resolved, until the Soviet peace plan, whatever course it takes, is allowed to run its course?

MR. DOBROKHOTOV: Well, we trust your administration and we have read with great attention all the official statements and your President and the press secretary of the White House stated that if Iraq will agree immediately and unconditionally to liberate Kuwait, United States will stop the fighting. And for this reason and in this framework, I believe that your administration will wait for response from Baghdad and only after it and to take this decision into account, they will decide about the ground war.

MR. LEHRER: Do you expect a response from Baghdad by this time tomorrow night?

MR. DOBROKHOTOV: We are waiting for this response very quickly.

MR. LEHRER: And you think it could happen that quickly?

MR. DOBROKHOTOV: It's very hard to speculate, but I believe that Mr. Hussein understands very clearly, clearly, that it's very dangerous from his side to delay and to decide this problem very long, because the troops in the desert is ready to begin the ground war. And it's not in the interest of Baghdad, from my point of view, to discuss it very longer.

MR. LEHRER: And Pres. Gorbachev laid that pretty much on the line to Mr. Aziz, that view to get out now or be destroyed, is that essentially, was that the message?

MR. DOBROKHOTOV: I believe I -- as you know, I wasn't present during this conversation, but it seems to me that Mr. Gorbachev was very clear and open with Mr. Aziz and he told him that, please, decide it quickly.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Thank you, sir, for being with us.

MR. DOBROKHOTOV: Thank you.

MR. MacNeil: Still ahead on the NewsHour, the new energy policy, more preparations for a ground war, and the role of artillery. FOCUS - ENERGIZED

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight, today's announcement from Pres. Bush about energy. Judy Woodruff has the whole story. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: The President did today unveil his long awaited national energy strategy. The plan was put in the works 18 months ago and has gained added prominence because of war in a region that supplies one-third of the world's oil. In a moment, we'll talk to the man behind the new strategy, Energy Sec. Adm. James Watkins, but first, a look at the plan, itself, its defenders and its critics, and why it was necessary in the first place. The United States is by far the world's biggest oil guzzler. The country uses more than 700 million gallons of oil each day, almost double what the Soviet Union uses, the world's second biggest consumer. Petroleum products make up 43 percent of the country's energy needs and most of the oil goes to feed 150 million American automobiles. What's just as troubling is the fact that the U.S. has been getting more than half of its oil from outside its own borders. While only one out of every nine barrels of oil consumed in the U.S. comes from the Middle East, the entire world gets about one out of every three barrels from that politically volatile region, and when unrest there squeezes the supply, prices everywhere go up. Former Air Force Gen. Richard Lawson heads the National Coal Association.

RICHARD LAWSON, National Coal Association: Since '88 we've gone from being about 40 percent dependent on imports for our oil supplies to over 50 percent. And the rest of the Western world is just exactly like that. That can only give increased financial and political power to the people that control that oil, an increased opportunity of mottling in our affairs and others affairs and to play one against the other.

MS. WOODRUFF: That was one of the main factors that led Pres. Bush in the summer of 1989, well before the current crisis, to charge his Energy Secretary, Adm. James Watkins, with developing a national energy strategy.

PRES. BUSH: We cannot and will not wait for the next energy crisis to force us to respond. Our task, our bipartisan task is to build the national consensus necessary to support this strategy and to make the strategy a living and dynamic document responsive to new knowledge and new ideas and to global, environmental, and international changes.

MS. WOODRUFF: A year and a half and another energy crisis later, the national energy strategy is finally ready and the reviews are decidedly mixed.

SEN. AL GORE, [D] Tennessee: I think it's breathtakingly done, I'll say that. It's kind of like somebody who is addicted to alcohol or drugs confronting the problem and deciding that the solution is to get a lot more of it. That's been our policy, and apparently, with this new energy proposal, Pres. Bush wants to accentuate that approach.

JIM WOLFE, Alliance to Save Energy: It's totally producer dominated. There's really no balance, no initiative for conservation and efficiency. That's just not an equitable policy and that's not a good economic policy either.

MS. WOODRUFF: Representatives of domestic oil producers, on the other hand, were pleased with what they were told would be in the plan. The head of the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association was also supportive of the emphasis on production.

TOM HANNA, Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association: I don't know anybody who is suggesting that we ought to just run off and drill oil anywhere, any time for any purpose. But certainly within bounds there are ways to improve production, and anybody who argues strenuously against any and all attempts to improve energy supply is being unrealistic and I think not serving a good public purpose.

MS. WOODRUFF: In fact, the national energy strategy released today by the Bush administration encourages domestic energy production in several ways. It would open for exploration the 1 1/2 million acre coastal plain of the 19 million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. It would ease restrictions on oil pipeline countries and reduce the level of federal environmental review of natural gas pipelines. It would also speed up the review process for new nuclear power plants and reduce restrictions on companies that generate electricity wholesale. On the conservation side, it would give tax credits to producers of renewable energy and require owners of fleets of light trucks to use fuel that is not petroleum based. Jim Wolfe of the Alliance to Save Energy says his and other conservation-oriented groups are extremely disappointed.

MR. WOLFE: The policy looks like it's totally dominated by production-oriented incentives, increased drilling, streamlining nuclear licensing reform, but in terms of initiatives to promote conservation, renewable energy efficiency is totally lacking and Adm. Watkins, himself, said the loudest single voice he heard from the public during 18 months of hearings were cause for energy conservation and efficiency.

MS. WOODRUFF: Wolfe referred to a series of hearings held around the country and sponsored by the Department of Energy, but Tom Hanna, head of the Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Association, defends the Bush administration plan for acknowledging that efficiency can't be achieved in a vacuum.

MR. HANNA: In the long run, for conservation to work, it has to be driven by market forces, that is to say the price of fuels, and people's perception of what it costs them to drive an automobile, because if you by law require automobiles to get higher and higher miles per gallon and gasoline prices fall, people see immediately that their transportation costs are less, they drive more, vehicle miles traveled are up.

MS. WOODRUFF: Hanna says the auto manufacturers who are already squeezed by the recession are pleased the administration doesn't want to require them to raise gas mileage of new cars.

MR. HANNA: I a third of all of the models now offered in the United States for sale get over 30 miles per gallon, but of those cars over 40 miles per gallon, only 3 percent or less of car buyers use them, which is to say that to go to something like 45 miles per gallon in the tremendous market forcing initiative that that would take is frightening to us. We think it has a potential for economic disaster frankly.

MS. WOODRUFF: In fact, people who follow energy issues, like Jim Wolfe of the Alliance to Save Energy, say that the head of the Energy Department favored a plan to require car manufacturers to build cars that get more miles for each gallon of gas.

MR. WOLFE: Our understanding is that Adm. Watkins, the Secretary of Energy, in fact, has been advocating conservation policies, such as fuel efficiency standards for cars, issues on taxation of utility rebates, but people at the Office of Management & Budget, the Council of Economic Advisers, apparently vetoed him in the inter-agency in-fights coming here in Washington. I attribute it to what I call the theologians of the White House who just fundamentally believe there shall not be regulation, we do have free energy markets, and therefore, any initiatives to promote conservation or efficiency they fundamentally oppose.

MS. WOODRUFF: The charge is made that the White House gutted some of the most significant proposals originally put in the plan by Adm. Watkins and others in the administration. Democratic Sen. Al Gore.

SEN. GORE: This plan is notable for what it is missing that was recommended by the Secretary of Energy, by the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and by others within the administration who I would say know what they're talking about and all that's been taken out reportedly by John Sununu and the head of the Council of Economic Advisers, Michael Boskin, is insisting that nothing be done which might increase the political risk of a longer recession that might extend into the 1992 election.

MS. WOODRUFF: Former Defense and Energy Sec. James Schlesinger says the White House needs to overcome its reluctance to ask people to make sacrifices.

JAMES SCHLESINGER: I think that it would be highly desirable for the President to get out front and talk up energy efficiency to industry and to the householders. The President has been reluctant to do that, less reluctant than Pres. Reagan who tended to scoff at energy conservation, but still he has held back. We must, if we are going to achieve anything, reinstitute an ethic in this country, a country of energy conscience and conscientiousness.

MS. WOODRUFF: Another big complaint about the plan comes from those concerned about its impact on the environment.

SEN. GORE: It's based on the pretense that the way to solve our dependence on Middle Eastern oil is by producing more here at home and ecologically fragile areas, but the biggest field they could hope to find in Alaska, for example, would represent a few months worth of our consumption. And everybody who's looked at this proposal agrees after studying the numbers that if it's fully adopted, our dependence on imported oil will steadily increase.

MS. WOODRUFF: But Charles Dibona, President of the American Petroleum Institute, insists the Alaskan North Slope can be developed without hurting the environment.

CHARLES DIBONA, American Petroleum Institute: We're talking about a pinpoint of area and even in that area there will be no damage to the -- significant damage to the environmental wildlife. So this is not really an environmental issue as some people have claimed. This area could be developed and it could hold a tremendous amount of oil.

MS. WOODRUFF: The main concern of the Coal Association's Richard Lawson was that the strategy include a set of goals. But when he suggested that to Energy Sec. Watkins, he says he got a less than positive response.

RICHARD LAWSON: I was suggesting that a No. 1 goal of the national energy strategy must be to reduce our reliance on imported oil. And I thought we had to reduce it by an amount and date certain, and I suggested that an appropriate target might be reducing it to 40 percent from its current 50 percent by the end of the year '95, and a percent per year thereafter.

MS. WOODRUFF: And what was the reaction you received when you said this?

MR. LAWSON: I think it wasn't that he disagreed. I think he fought that based on his perception of the political history of energy strategies and so on whether it would be very difficult and he wasn't sure that it was actually possible to do the kind of thing that I was suggesting.

MS. WOODRUFF: Lawson says he hopes Watkins and others in the administration will change their minds soon.

MR. LAWSON: That's my great hope, that they will begin to perceive without that stated goal their program has the great danger of becoming a dust catcher on the shelf as every other energy program we've ever had has been.

MS. WOODRUFF: Joining us now is the man just referred to, the architect of the Bush administration's energy strategy, Energy Sec. Adm. James Watkins. Sec. Watkins, thanks for joining us.

SEC. WATKINS: Judy, nice to be here.

MS. WOODRUFF: Let me just pick up on what Gen. Lawson of the Coal Association was saying, that this plan runs the risk of being, as he put it, another dust catcher, as other energy strategies, policies have been, because you didn't set -- don't set a set of specific goals to reduce our dependence on imported oil in the next several years.

SEC. WATKINS: I think, Judy, that's a classic way to approach some of these things, global climate change, set carbon restrictions, certain date, time we'll be down by X percent. Now these are simplistic concepts. We're quite on the other side. We say those kinds of goals are nice to have, but let's have them outcomes of actions that we're really going to take and so as we reveal the strategy today -- and I think many of the comments we just heard on both sides of the argument indicate a lack of understanding of the real strategy rather than a few options that were debated heavily in the media that don't make up the strategy. For example, let's take the Dick Lawson scenario. We actually are going to reduce oil imports from the projected 65 percent, using all the current practices, law, Clean Air Act, reconciliation bill acts, and everything from 65 percent in the year 2010 to between 40 and 45, not unlike that which Mr. Lawson discusses. But it's an outcome of a lot of efforts, 100 different ideas converted to actions, to do these things, rather than some simplistic goal setting, which is really not the way to derive an energy strategy. And I believe that we have accomplished his objective without making that the keystone of the strategy but rather saying, yes, let's wean ourselves away from unstable oil suppliers, let's wean ourselves away from this veracious appetite we have for oil and this strategy has done that.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, one of the things you say that you want to do, for example, is raise domestic energy production I think you say to 12 1/2 million barrels a day by the year 2005, what is it, 14 years from now. Some people I talked to this afternoon said that's just --- I'm quoting what they said in here to play devil's advocate -- they said, "That's living in a dream world. On the path we're in now we'll be at 5 million barrels a day if we're lucky." And they say they don't see the elements in your plan that's going to get us where you say we're going to be.

SEC. WATKINS: Well, I think again I don't believe they have read the plan in sufficient depth to understand that in that plan we have all the analytic underpinnings that demonstrate with enhanced oil recovery, with the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, with going into those areas in the outer continental shelf, they're not restricted by the President, and several other initiatives, particularly those involved with collaborative research for the private sector, we believe it's very achievable and what our strategy comes out with, again as a product, not as a going in position, is that we can generate 3.8 million barrels of additional oil production every day by the year 2010 and at the same time we can reduce demand by 3.4 million barrels a day. That's just oil. And that is all documented in our plan, so it isn't flim flam, Judy. This is real stuff. And we can open up ourselves to all of the analysis that needs to be done, so we are very conscious of demand restraint as well as enhanced production at least for this next 20 year transition period while we find these alternatives to oil, which we are looking at very, very carefully now and think there's some very significant hope on the horizon for doing that.

MS. WOODRUFF: Of course, we can debate the numbers again. The people we talked to, some of them anyway, said they didn't see how you could arrive at some of those numbers, they didn't see the formula in there. But let me ask you specifically about something virtually everybody we spoke with talked about, and that is that Jim Watkins was in there pushing for the last year or more for more conservation measures in here. Specifically, they said you were pushing for higher fuel efficiency standards on the part of the auto, the motor vehicle manufacturers. That's not in the plan. They say the White House, Michael Boskin head of the Council of Economic Advisers, the head of the Budget Office and so on, that they get away with this because of ideology, concern about the free market and second, because of a concern about the effect on the economy. What happened?

SEC. WATKINS: Well, I think it's very unfortunate. You know, we a have very spirited, tough debate. This has been in debate on Capitol Hill for 10 years and they haven't come up with an energy strategy, and so what I'm saying is these are controversial issues. But I have to say, let's put the record straight. Michael Boskin's been very supportive of me. I got a letter today congratulating me on the energy strategy. He's helped me a lot. He's straightened us out on the economic analysis. The internal White House people have done a tremendous job in being the honest broker in forcing us to do our job right.

MS. WOODRUFF: But were you advocating greater fuel efficiency standards for cars than the White House --

SEC. WATKINS: We had an option paper that had different outcomes from the so-called "CAFE Standard". CAFE is the combined fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. This is a famous debate. It was last year. It was defeated during a Senate Hill action. We have divined with the Secretary of Transportation, Skinner and I, not the White House, an option that is in the strategy that deals with CAFE, it deals with it very realistically. It says let's get the safety envelope into the equation. The current law does not involve human safety and we think that's an egregious violation of good practices. So Skinner's studies all say that we've got to consider for energy production, and I think that is the telling analysis that came out of this. So if I hear all these words about we're not interested, it is simply not true, nor is it backed up by the facts in the energy strategy.

MS. WOODRUFF: But again what they're saying is that there aren't measures that force this or require this on the part of the American public.

SEC. WATKINS: Oh my, there are, Judy. There are all the way through it. We have chapter after chapter on efficiencies and the incentives for those efficiencies. We are pushing integrated resource planning, some call it least cost utility planning. All of that's being pushed with incentives, and I happen to hold under the Clean Air Act the power to ensure those incentives are applied. So there are many things that I don't believe the pre-announced critics really understand, and I think when they do, they'll respect it. Now when we work with many of the people on our energy committees, they understand -- we've already discussed it --

MS. WOODRUFF: And you're heading next to the Hill to see how much --

SEC. WATKINS: We're going to Capitol Hill tomorrow and I think we'll be able to explain all this.

MS. WOODRUFF: Well, Sec. Watkins, we thank you for being with us.

SEC. WATKINS: Thank you very much, Judy, a pleasure. FOCUS - GEARING UP

MR. MacNeil: We close tonight with a two part look at the continuing preparations for a ground war in the Gulf. First, Correspondent Charles Krause has a report from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

MR. KRAUSE: Since Monday, these Marines and thousands of other GIs have taken forward positions along the Kuwaiti border. They're now within striking distance of the Iraqi defense perimeter. U.S. military sources now say a full scale ground war could begin as early as this weekend. The Marines say they're ready.

MARINE: I'm confident that we'll be able to do the job.

MARINE: We're going to take 'em out. We're going to push 'em out. We're just going to keep moving until we get to Baghdad. When we get there, we're going to find a pay phone and call home.

MR. KRAUSE: In addition to repositioning, fighting has intensified this week on the border, U.S. and other allied forces have begun a series of probing or softening up assaults against enemy positions. On Monday, the British launched their first ground operation, an artillery assault that disabled or knocked out four Iraqi artillery batteries. Meanwhile, U.S. forces began a series of Apache helicopter raids. These attacked are aimed at detecting weaknesses in and destroying wherever possible Iraqi bunkers, resupply depots and other enemy positions. At the American briefing in Riyadh today, Brig. Gen. Richard Neal described the latest Apache raid which took place this afternoon.

BRIG. GEN. NEAL: Initial reports indicate thirteen to fifteen bunkers were destroyed. Approximately four hundred and fifty to five hundred EPWs were taken prisoner. As we speak, CH-47s with security forces are picking up these prisoners and returning them to the Saudi side of the border.

MR. KRAUSE: According to U.S. military sources, the Apache raids and other skirmishing this week are a prelude to ground war, if it comes. The allied strategy, according to these sources, would probably be to smash through Iraqi weak points, then envelope or surround the enemy before defeating him. Despite some lingering uncertainty over when and if a ground war will actually begin, Neal said morale among U.S. and allied troops remains strong.

BRIG. GEN. NEAL: The troops are ready to go. Make no mistake about it. They've been ready but they're getting -- every day they even get more ready and I've heard some comments about, you know, they can't lean forward for too long or they'll lose that edge. I think there's an aggressive, and I think -- I know there's a very aggressive training program going out there and our leadership has that situation well in hand. They're ready to go right now. They can go two weeks from now. There will be no diminution of their capability, whether it goes today, tomorrow, or a month later. Morale I don't believe is an issue at all.

MR. MacNeil: The French ground commander in the Gulf said today that heavy artillery fire will herald the beginning of a ground war. In that case, as Correspondent Tom Bearden reports, the two sides could be more evenly matched than they have been so far.

MR. BEARDEN: American artillery on the move. It's a scene soldiers have been familiar with since the Civil War. It's even what the army's song lyrics are about, "When the Caissons Go Rolling Along". Traditionally the big guns have been used to soften up the enemy, to prepare for a ground assault. Col. Robert Scales is the chief of staff at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, the home of the U.S. field artillery.

COL. SCALES: In the last three wars we've fought, well over half of all the casualties that we've caused on the battlefield have been caused by artillery. Artillery is the greatest killer on the battlefield and the commander that uses his artillery well is usually the commander that wins.

MR. BEARDEN: Americans have been trading artillery rounds with the Iraqis since the earliest days of the war. Saddam's artillery capability is viewed with respect.

COL. ROBERT H. SCALES, JR., U.S. Army: These are not amateurs. These are people, soldiers who have used artillery for eight years and particularly towards the end of their war with Iran, they used it with great skill.

MR. BEARDEN: Not only does Iraq have more experience, it has more artillery than the allies, and much of it is as good as anything in the American arsenal. Seth Carus, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says some of the Iraqi weapons are actually superior.

MR. CARUS: I'm referring specifically to the G-5s, the 155 millimeter tote gun howitzers, has a very long range, seems to be pretty accurate, and they've got good munitions for it.

MR. BEARDEN: The G-5s use a special ammunition to shoot more than 23 miles. The equivalent allied howitzer shoots some five miles less.

SPOKESMAN: There's a difference between being able to shoot a great distance and being able to shoot a great distance effectively. The difference with our systems is that we can shoot out to 30 kilometers, but we can do that effectively and with a great deal of precision. Now he may be able to shoot slightly longer than that, but since he doesn't have good target acquisition, his effectiveness beyond that 30 kilometer mark is pretty questionable.

MR. BEARDEN: But there is another reason to fear Iraqi artillery, chemical weapons. Steven Zaloga is a defense writer with Video Ordinance.

MR. ZALOGA: It's very well known that they do have chemical warheads for their artillery and that can be used to deliver two types of munitions, nerve gas agent which is the worst of the two. It requires more elaborate type of chemical protection suit or blister agents such as mustard gas, which is a less lethal type of munitions but still one that requires the infantry to don face masks and to be careful when in the presence of the aerosol cloud of the gas.

MR. BEARDEN: Despite concern about Iraqi artillery strength, the U.S. army has a number of high-tech systems that could give it a decisive edge.

COL. SCALES: This is a Q-37 radar. This is the radar that we use mainly for counter battery work, to shoot the enemy's artillery.

MR. BEARDEN: American units use radar like this to track enemy artillery shells as soon as they leave the gun. Computers calculate the firing point and display the enemy battery's location. The operator flashes the coordinates to a friendly battery which fires back, sometimes while the enemy shells are still in the air. American officers say that since most Iraqi artillery in Kuwait is stationary it's particularly vulnerable to counter battery fire.

COL. SCALES: This is the army's eight inch howitzer. It's the largest howitzer that we have in our inventory. This piece is particularly good at shooting at enemy guns. It can shoot 20 miles and it fires a 200 pound projectile. It's the most accurate, the most precise field artillery weapon in the world. And, therefore, we find it best for doing such things as taking out bunkers at a great range, a 200 pound projectile fired with great precision into a bunker is going to destroy.

MR. BEARDEN: Another advantage for U.S.artillery is that unlike these Iraqi guns, most of it is self-propelled rather than towed. They can move quickly after shooting and thus avoid becoming targets for Iraqi radar. American artillery can also fire sophisticated ammunition to increase its effectiveness like the copperhead.

PIERRE SPREY, Defense Consultant: This is our version, an artillery man's version of a laser guided bomb. It's a laser guided projectile.

MR. BEARDEN: A forward artillery observer team working inside a small armored vehicle locates a target for a copperhead like a tank or a heavily reinforced bunker. Then they paint the target with a laser.

COL. SCALES: You fire it and as it goes down on the downward leg of its trajectory, it'll seek out that laser, reflected laser energy and homed directly on the laser spot.

MR. BEARDEN: Copperhead is supposed to give American artillery the unique ability to hit moving targets, but defense consultant Pierre Sprey doesn't have much confidence in it.

MR. SPREY: When you have dust and a laser beam shining on the target, the near edge of the dust cloud reflects the laser beam. That becomes the target and now here comes the copperhead and sees this nice illuminated spot on a dust cloud and it will head right for that illuminated spot and blow a big hole in the dust cloud.

MR. BEARDEN: Sprey says at more than $42,000 per round, those are expensive holes. Col. Scales says dust is not a serious problem.

MR. SPREY: It might on rare occasion be a problem. It might give you a couple of percentage points worth of miss, but all in all, when you look at the numbers of copperhead that we have numbers of lasing devices that we, I don't think it's going to be a serious problem.

MR. BEARDEN: The other major advancement in ammunition since the Vietnam War is called ICM, or improved conventional munitions. They're the equivalent of cluster bombs. Artillery shells are filled with small bomblets, usually called "grenades" which are effective against armor as well as troops.

SPOKESMAN: When they come down, they scatter over a much larger area, so if you have infantry in trenches which will be the case in competition with Iraq, the Iraqis do prefer to fight from entrenchments. This is a very deadly weapon because it gets into all of those trenches over a much wider area.

MR. BEARDEN: The army will also be fielding new rocket weapons for the first time. One of them is the multiple launch rocket system, or MLRS. It's designed to put heavy fire power onto a large area at ranges up to 20 miles. The army has an even larger rocket called the Army Tactical Missile that can shoot up to 60 miles. The Iraqis also have rockets. The newest system is called Astros, made in Brazil. Iraq also has several different types of Soviet rocket launchers, most of which are fairly inaccurate. Col. Scales says the biggest revolution in fire support doesn't have much to do with hardware or technology, but with organization. He says since Vietnam, the military has learned that to the soldier on the front line it doesn't matter where the supporting fire power comes from.

COL. SCALES: If we've done nothing else in the last 20 years, it's we've been able to cut through all that, all the inter-service bureaucracy that delivers these systems, so that a man on the ground when he calls for fire power, destructive fire power, will get the right system, and someone up this chain will make the decision on whether or not it needs to be an air delivered, sea delivered or ground delivered piece of ordinance.

MR. BEARDEN: And so while American officers view Iraqi artillery with respect and believe it will cause considerable allied casualties, they're also confident of their own combat capabilities.

MR. MacNeil: Yesterday Defense Sec. Cheney told a congressional hearing the allies believe they have eliminated 40 percent of Iraq's artillery pieces since the war began. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again the major stories of this Wednesday, Iraq said it would send its foreign minister back to Moscow soon with a reply to the Soviet peace plan. The announcement on Baghdad Radio gave no indication of what that response might be. Sec. of State Baker said the United States would not accept any solution short of Iraq's immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait. And U.S. troops captured four hundred and fifty to five hundred Iraqi prisoners in an attack on an Iraqi bunker complex just inside Kuwait. Finally tonight, the Pentagon has identified four more U.S. military personnel killed in the Persian Gulf War. As we have in the past, we close tonight's program with their names. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour tonight. We'll see you tomorrow night with full coverage and analysis of developments in the Gulf War. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.