The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. Leading the news this Tuesday, Presidents Bush and Gorbachev said in Madrid they would not impose a Middle East peace agreement. Arab gunmen killed three Israeli soldiers in Southern Lebanon and the U.S. economy grew for the first time in a year. We'll have the details in our News Summary in a moment. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: After the News Summary, our lead story is the U.S.- Soviet meeting in Madrid. Charlayne Hunter-Gault talks to Oleg Derkovsky of the Soviet Foreign Ministry about the Mideast talks and two analysts examine the rapidly changing relationship between Bush and Gorbachev. Business Correspondent Paul Solman reports on efforts to promote ethnic diversity at Xerox, and essayist Anne Taylor Fleming talks about date rape. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: Presidents Bush and Gorbachev met in Madrid today on the eveof the Middle East peace conference. They vowed to play an active role in the peace process but both said they would not force a settlement on the parties. Their comments came at a joint news conference.

PRES. BUSH: The American position is well known. The Soviet position is well known, but what is important here is getting the parties together. And one way you don't do that is for either the Soviet Union or the United States to try to impose a settlement. We are here to be a catalyst. And that, and I think the worst thing we could do is reiterate our own positions to such a degree that one side or the other became disenchanted before they even talked to each other.

PRES. GORBACHEV: [Speaking through Interpreter] This is very tough for them, very difficult meetings where they're going to have to maybe do quite a bit of work, all of them, so that they all come out to a final positive conclusion. This does not mean that we are simply going to stand on the side and that it doesn't really make any difference to us what happens. No, that's not at all.

MR. MacNeil: Israeli Prime Minister Shamir arrived in the Spanish capital today with his delegation. He will meet with both Presidents Bush and Gorbachev before the conference officially opens tomorrow. The 14 member Palestinian delegation arrived yesterday. Their chief adviser has signaled new flexibility in the Palestinian position. He said they might settle for autonomy for now, rather than demanding immediate statehood. Another Palestinian adviser said the delegation was encouraged by remarks by Prime Minister Shamir indicating a willingness to negotiate the future of the occupied territories. She spoke in an interview.

HANAN ASHRAWI, Palestinian Delegation Adviser: We were pleasantly surprised by some hints in his speech that the land is negotiable, that there are two people who claim rights to the land. So at least, he has placed both claims in a position of symmetry, and, therefore, we can discuss, we can discuss in a position of equality and symmetrical discussions whether, who has the right to the land and whether we can exist side by side or not. I'm firmly convinced that we can exist side by side and I think that Mr. Shamir has to come to that realization now.

MR. LEHRER: There was more violence back in the Middle East today. It was between Israeli soldiers and Arab guerrillas at the edge of the security zone in Southern Lebanon. It followed yesterday's attacks in the West Bank and Turkey aimed at disrupting the peace talks. We have a report by Colin Baker of Independent Television News.

MR. BAKER: On the West Bank this afternoon Palestinian children were organized to march for peace bearing olive branches, this in the occupied territories where two Jewish settlers, one a mother of seven children, were shot dead by a Palestinian gunman last night, this also on a day when three Israeli soldiers and two Arab guerrillas were killed in fighting in South Lebanon. The soldiers died when their tank was blown up by a roadside bomb. In another incident, six soldiers were injured and two gunmen shot dead when a patrol came under fire. For almost 10 hours, the Israeli forces exchanged sporadic fire with gunmen from the fundamentalist Hezbollah movement. They have threatened to do all in their power to hinder the Madrid talks. The Israeli security forces have called for vigilance in the critical hours before the conference formally opened. Around Jerusalem, there were road blocks. All Arabs entering from the West Bank were stopped and often searched. The determination of PLOminority factions to stop the talks is taken seriously.

MR. LEHRER: There was also violence in Beirut. Gunmen fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the U.S. embassy there. There were no reports of casualties. Damage to the building was described as minor.

MR. MacNeil: In this country, there was mixed news on the economic front. The Commerce Department said the nation's economy grew at a 2.4 percent rate in the third quarter. That's the first time the Gross National Product has risen in almost a year. The GNP is the broadest measures of the country's output of goods and services. The increase was attributed to a rise in consumer spending. The Treasury Department today reported a record budget deficit of nearly $269 billion in the last fiscal year. The report said the deficit was due in part to lower tax revenues during the recession.

MR. LEHRER: Vietnam today agreed to accept the forced return of boat people from Hong Kong. Thousands of Vietnamese refugees in the British colony could be affected. We have a report from Mark Austin of Independent Television News.

MR. AUSTIN: Almost every day now they're demonstrating in the camps, peaceful protest against the forced repatriation they've always feared. But today the Hong Kong government announced they finally hammered out a deal with Hanoi. Thousands of these people will be sent back to Communist Vietnam whether they like it or not.

ALISTAIR ASPREY, Security Secretary, Hong Kong: This is what we have been seeking for the past three and a half years. The future of the non-refugees must be in Vietnam.

MR. AUSTIN; And they're determined to go ahead with the plan, regardless of any American government opposition to the use of force.

ALISTAIR ASPREY, Security Secretary, Hong Kong: The Americans have not been party to this agreement. The Americans have been briefed on the agreement.

MR. AUSTIN: The plan is last in, first out. New arrivals will be screened for refugee status in the normal way. Those determined to be economic migrants will be put on flights back to Hanoi, and waiting in the camps, another 20,000 boat people who have already been ruled out. Another 40,000 have yet to be screened, but most, say officials, have little chance. Most refugee workers do not oppose the repatriation plan as long as it's carried out in a humane way.

MR. LEHRER: President Bush today issued an executive order halting all commercial trade between the United States and Haiti. The only exceptions were certain types of food commodities. A White House statement said the action was aimed at putting pressure on the military leaders who overthrew Haiti's democratically-elected President last month.

MR. MacNeil: The Ukrainian parliament voted today to close the Chernobyl nuclear power plant within two years. In 1986, the plant was the site of the world's worst nuclear accident. At least 30 people were killed from an explosion at the facility, but thousands more are believed to have died from radiation exposure. The plant was scheduled to close by 1995 but lawmakers demanded an earlier shutdown after a fire there this month. That's it for the News Summary. Now it's on to the Madrid summit, ethnic diversity at Xerox, and Anne Taylor Fleming. FOCUS - THE SOVIET ROLE

MR. LEHRER: Our lead story tonight is the Madrid summit and the new role being played by the new Soviet Union. It is a co-sponsor of the event, along with the United States. Earlier today, Charlayne Hunter-Gault talked with a diplomat who was a Soviet main point man in setting it up. He is Oleg Derkovsky, deputy director of the Mideast Bureau of the Soviet Foreign Ministry.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: On this, the eve of this very historic meeting, how surprised are you that it's gotten this far?

OLEG DERKOVSKY, Mideast Bureau, Soviet Foreign Ministry: I'm not surprised because I was involved in the whole process, like I say, since January, more specifically since March, when Sec. Baker came to Moscow on his visit and shared his views with the Soviet side on how to proceed with the peace process in the Middle East. From that very moment, we were working very hard on a daily basis to make this thing possible. And I am very happy that we are on the eve of this event which you called historic.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You don't?

MR. DERKOVSKY: Well, I'm a very superstitious person. Let us get there. Let us move slowly towards success. Let us move slowly toward success. Let us have certain accomplishments and after that we can call it historic. I'm simply cautious.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is your caution based on your concern about the readiness for peace on both sides, and do you feel that both sides are really ready for peace?

MR. DERKOVSKY: My caution is based on common sense. It would be too premature to make judgments about the outcome of the process. We worked really hard to make it possible. For the first time in the history of the conflict all the sides involved in the Arab- Israeli conflict are going to get together in one hope and later on around negotiating tables, therefore, I think it is an accomplishment in itself, but I assume that it will take us some time before real progress could be reached.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: How concerned are you over this last minute barrage of uncompromising statements and quarrels about procedures? Is this just posturing, or does it signal some more significant problems?

MR. DERKOVSKY: I wouldn't call it a last moment barrage because since we, since the moment we started to discuss the modalities of the conference we had very serious discussions with all sides involved on a number of options, and, therefore, it was a lengthy process. So I wouldn't call it last moment barrage. It was just the continuation of the process we started which ended by the consent of all the parties involved to go to the conference.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you have a sense that there is room for compromise on the Israeli side regarding land for peace, on the Palestinian side regarding the future of a Palestinian state, for example? Do you see room for compromise here?

MR. DERKOVSKY: I am convinced that there must be a room for compromise, otherwise, there is no sense in getting together at the negotiating table. It is only natural that sides come to the conference with their negotiating positions which are obviously different, but I do hold that as a result of the negotiations which will acquire their own logic and dynamic the parties will come to give and take and will come to mutually acceptable compromises.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is it your view that the U.S. and the Soviets see this process with the same vision, that you have the same concerns about how it proceeds?

MR. DERKOVSKY: This is a joint venture, a real joint venture. It would be impossible to have what we have today without American active involvement, and it would be equally impossible to have the accomplishment we have to date without Soviet role which we are playing, which we have been playing and which we are playing right now.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Where do you see the Soviet strengths in this process, and where do you see you have leverage say that may be different from the United States?

MR. DERKOVSKY: Well, all the parties involved in the conflict have displayed a keen interest on having the Soviet Union as a co- sponsor of the whole process of the peace conference, so this is our leverage. Of course, there is a differentiation here and I do believe that we enjoy a greater trust on the part of Syrians, for example, and Arabs in general, in particular Palestinians, and, therefore, we worked with this probably in a more active fashion than the Americans, though we understand that the Americans invested a lot, lots of efforts working with all sides involved.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, it's been said that, for example, the Syrian side might be one of the most difficult. What leverage does the Soviet Union have anymore? The Soviet Union has no more economic aid, no more weapons, no more arms to offer. Where is the leverage?

MR. DERKOVSKY: Well, there are certain stereotypes about the positions of the parties to the conflict. It seems to me we might be very much surprised by the positions the parties set up during the negotiating process. We do continue to have friendly relations with Syria. We really want to have friendly relations with the countries in the area, without exceptions. Probably you have heard that we have reestablished recently diplomatic relations with the state of Israel, and now we have equal access to all the parties involved in the conflict. We want to acquire new friends in the area without losing old ones. It's a difficult one, but I believe we can manage.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: If the process, as some have discussed, breaks down during the bilateral talks that will follow this ceremonial meeting, what role will the Soviets play? Will the Soviets come in along with the United States to act as honest brokers?

MR. DERKOVSKY: We are co-sponsors of the process and from, beginning from tomorrow co-chairmen of the peace conference. We have strong determination, together with the American side to work together in order to make the bilateral negotiations go and we will work very hard, very actively with all sides involved, trying to persuade them, to condition them into thinking in the right direction.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You say that there may be some surprises. Does that mean that you have already been working with the Syrians or, I mean, just what exactly --

MR. DERKOVSKY: On the basis of our contacts with the parties to the conflict, specifically with the Syrians, we are convinced that the Syrian government is very serious about the peace process, that they are entering the peace process with serious intentions, that I believe that it will be ready to negotiate in good faith and to contribute to the success of the conference. Syria needs peace, they badly need peace, and they want peace, and I'm sure that they will negotiate from this position, therefore, I mean, these stereotypical notions about, about the position of Syria or Israel I think it's a delicate moment. We shouldn't try to describe their positions, because we all know how the parties were moving to the conference. Of course, they view the process in a different manner, but the major accomplishment for today is that they are gathering together under one roof.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: There are also concerns though about the Soviet Union, about President Gorbachev's hold on power and whether or not he can back up anything he wants to do, any process he sets in motion. Are those, how valid are those concerns, and how do you think they will affect the Soviets' ability to be effective in this process?

MR. DERKOVSKY: This is a fair question. Yes, we have enormous domestic problems, but strange as it may seem, our ability to play a very active role in the Middle East is not affected by the domestic problems. And it would be wise to utilize our ability to play an active role, therefore, I would like to repeat, yes, we have problems back home, but we have invested in the Middle East heavily during the previous decades. Therefore, we can use the dividends we have in order to push forward the peace process.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Where do you see it ending?

MR. DERKOVSKY: I see it ending in their concluding peace treaties between Israel and their Israeli neighbors. I see it ending in lasting and comprehensive settlement, which would include the realization of legitimate rights of Palestinians, and their realization of well known concerns of Israel and other parties involved. So it must end some way down the road by comprehensive peace.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Why now when this hasn't been possible for over 40 years? What are the conditions that are going to make what you just outlined possible now, compared to all the times in the past?

MR. DERKOVSKY: Because as Sec. of State James Baker indicated on a number of occasions, we are having a window of opportunity. This window of opportunity has been prepared by a number of events. First of all, successful resolution of the Kuwaiti crisis; secondly, awareness in the area that it is high time to do something with the peace process, because parties to the conflict are tired of military confrontation. And one major element which contributes to a window of opportunity is our totally new nature of relations between the Soviet Union and the United States and the media. Actually we are playing a roll of partners and we are interacting, we are acting together. So the time when we used to confront each other on all fronts in the Middle East and ideological, military, political, this time is behind us. So there is a new era and it has come to the Middle East as well. We started from our bilateral relations arms control and other issues. Now, the time of new thinking on the part of the Soviet Union and the United States has come to the Middle East.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Mr. Derkovsky, we hope your optimism is warranted. Thank you for joining us.

MR. DERKOVSKY: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. FOCUS - NEW PARTNERS

MR. MacNeil: Now to the summit between Bush and Gorbachev today. Their six previous summits were meetings of relative equals, the leaders of the two nuclear super powers. In Madrid today, President Bush met with the President of a country that is breaking apart into its component republics. The Madrid summit was President Gorbachev's first foreign trip since the August coup attempt. At their joint news conference, both leaders were asked who speaks for the Soviet Union.

PRES. GORBACHEV: [Speaking through Interpreter] I'm still the President, nobody is taking my place. Everybody else is doing what they're supposed to be doing and carrying out their functions. Whether I am more calm and confident now than I was before I didn't lose my balance then and I haven't lost it now. I am fully confident that what we are doing is ultimately necessary, and I will do everything that's in my power to do everything necessary. Nobody is going to take me out of the action. The choice has been made.

PRES. BUSH: Let me respond to this. What I understand was the second part of the question. We -- I have had a history of very satisfactory negotiations with President Gorbachev, you're correct on that. Secondly, when the coup attempt took place, we stood up against that and thirdly, I sense no difference in how we talk and the frankness with which we exchange views, no difference in the, certainly from my standpoint, the respect level for President Gorbachev and we in the United States watch with fascination and keen interest the development inside the Soviet Union, the movement, the dramatic movement towards the reform that he, himself, committed himself to years ago.

MR. MacNeil: We now get the perspectives of two former players in U.S.-Soviet summiteering. David Aaron was Deputy Security Adviser during the Carter administration and took part in strategic arms talks in the Johnson and Nixon administrations. He's now a novelist and a senior fellow at the 20th Century Fund. He recently returned from a trip to the Soviet Union. John Lenczowski was a special adviser at the State Department and served as Director of East European and Soviet Affairs in the Reagan National Security Council, he's currently the Director of the Institute of World Politics in Washington. David Aaron, it seems strange after all the pomp and circumstance of recent summit meetings to witness this almost casual meeting as though it were Bush and Mitterrand or Bush and John Major of Britain or something. What has happened to U.S.-Soviet summits as we knew them?

MR. AARON: Well, I think two things. First of all, the President has been interested in trying to make them more like the meetings with old friends and allies, and in some respects, Gorbachev is an old friend and ally. But I think it's also true that Mr. Gorbachev no longer represents the authority and power of the Soviet Union, in part because the Soviet Union, itself, is coming apart, and in part, because he now, his writ no longer runs all of the power and authority that exists in the country. He is essentially in charge up to a point of the foreign policy, defense policy, and national security apparatus, but he does so supported by a committee that represents other elements in the society. So while he's in Madrid talking about the Middle East, Mr. Yeltsin is before the Supreme Soviet of the Russian republic talking about real change and the painful changes that they're going to have to go through with the economy. We've got Mr. Outside and Mr. Inside.

MR. MacNeil: John Lenczowski, was this a real summit today, or a little play staged to make Gorbachev still look like a leader?

MR. LENCZOWSKI: I believe it's very much the latter, although the situation seems to be really ambiguous enough in terms of who is in charge of things in the Soviet Union that you have a situation of dual power right now, where apparently Boris Yeltsin seems to be the one with the greatest amount of power but seems to be unwilling to assert it to the degree to which one would think he'd be able to under the circumstances. And then you've got a very dubious situation with Gorbachev, whose legitimacy must seriously be questioned at the moment, particularly since the only foundation for him being in office now is that he was chosen by the now defunct Congress of People's Deputies, which in a very peculiar act eviscerated itself by an almost unanimous vote. And now he represents this committee, this state council, which many people throughout the Soviet Union are calling a new group dictatorship. Some of them are even calling it the Emergency Committee No. 2. And so I find it --

MR. MacNeil: The Emergency Committee was the name that the plotters against Gorbachev gave themselves in their short-lived coup.

MR. LENCZOWSKI: Yes. And I find it --

MR. MacNeil: So it's an ironic reference to that.

MR. LENCZOWSKI: Indeed, indeed. And I find it peculiar, given the dubious legitimacy of the current center that the Bush administration should be working as much as it has been to try to support it.

MR. MacNeil: That's interesting. If you read the whole transcript of the press conference today, and also it was shown on CNN, Mr. Bush spent a lot of time praising and building up Gorbachev, not just in the bit we saw. How do you explain that?

MR. AARON: Well, I think there's two things going on. No. 1, he needs the center to negotiate with. He doesn't want in national security matters to have to deal with 12 different republics. And I think it's also a way for him to remind leaders of those republics that they collectively do have an international responsibility. After all, he has signed very important arms control agreements and they've made other important nuclear initiatives.

MR. MacNeil: Just recently, very dramatic ones.

MR. AARON: Yes, recently, very dramatic ones, which can only be carried out if in some sense there is a center to carry them out. He's proposing to submit a START Treaty to the Congress. And the Congress is going to ask itself, you know, is there a Soviet Union to fulfill this agreement? So it's very important, I think, for the President not just to build up Gorbachev as an individual but to say there is a center that is required for you to fulfill your responsibility.

MR. MacNeil: So, in other words, treating Gorbachev as an equal, I mean, in part it's a show for the U.S. Congress as well, is it?

MR. AARON: It's a show for the whole world actually, the Congress, for the Soviet people, for the republic leaders, but at the same time, I think it's also quite clear that no important business got transacted at that two hour meeting.

MR. MacNeil: Well, why do you say that?

MR. AARON: Well, I think that if you look at what they said they did, you saw a series of sort of procedural initiatives, they're going to send Rege Bartholomew back to Moscow to explore what can be done. There's no announcements on economic assistance. There is no really structured proposals for how they're going to deal with these two nuclear initiatives they just put forward. They have a lot of things that are on their plate that they could negotiate, but I'm afraid that the Bush administration is being extremely careful about trying to hammer anything out with Mr. Gorbachev.

MR. MacNeil: Do you agree not much got done at this, today, Mr. Lenczowski?

MR. LENCZOWSKI: Well, I think that what got done in one sense is that the administration has been working precisely to boost Mr. Gorbachev and this, this illegitimate center, and for all of the apparently practical reasons for doing so, such as carrying out these different arms control agreements and encouraging the center to try to be the focal point or the catalyst for reforms throughout the entire union. This completely begs the question of who is going to be able to enforce these various arms agreements and who is going to be able to ensure that there's compliance, and how are we going to deal with Ukraine if it, indeed, decides to separate from the old union army and set up its own army of some 400,000 plus?

MR. MacNeil: Well, let me ask you by treating Mr. Gorbachev this seriously and with this dignity, can Bush actually enhance Gorbachev's power in Moscow? I mean, after all, there are forces in the Soviet Union among the republics which recognize some need to cooperate on a number of things, and that's the big argument about how much atthe moment. By treating him this way, can it play back into a stronger center for Gorbachev in Moscow?

MR. LENCZOWSKI: I believe it does because I think it has a very demoralizing effect on the peoples of the Soviet Union. There are two different types of diplomacy here that are involved. One is traditional government to government diplomacy, and other is public diplomacy, which is having relations with other publics and other peoples and specifically the various different republics here. And many of these republics have very legitimate grievances against the center. They've suffered and chafed for decades under this center, which represents nothing now, except perhaps the discredited Communist empire. The one thing that seems, in my view, a little kafkaesque about this whole situation is that the center represents really nothing, except the original Communist vision and yet, the Communist ideology is no longer the legitimizing instrument of a state authority. It is no longer the glue that holds this whole thing together. And I find that, that there is a disquieting tendency in the Bush administration. For example, when the President went to Kiev and told those people over there that, that, you know, gee, you know, we really don't like the idea that you're trying to seek independence on the basis of ethnic hatred and suicidal nationalism, this is, this is something that is so contrary, in my view, to the spirit of America when legitimate nations have legitimate aspirations, particularly against such an odious system as is being uncovered every day by the Russians and the new, more open press in that part of the world.

MR. AARON: I think part of the problem is if you're looking at what the President's alternatives are, he can't just deal with Boris Yeltsin. If he does that, then all the other republics will become fearful of Russian imperialism, as opposed to the Soviet imperialism. So at the moment, he's got to play along as if there is a center, encourage whatever responsible tendencies may exist in order to carry out some very important national security objectives.

MR. MacNeil: Let me ask you. By harping on Gorbachev's lack of power right now and the emptiness of the center, are we really underestimating him, the man, and the situation? I mean, is there more reality there than we're allowing him, because it's in the nature of journalism, of course, to emphasis what is and what isn't?

MR. AARON: Well, you know, I just, as I say, you mentioned it, I just came back from the Soviet Union and I headed a survey mission for the National Democratic Institute. We talked to political leaders from every single party, tendency, movement in Moscow. And in a week's conversation, Gorbachev's name came up only twice, and very tangentially. He is really not a player in the central political economic drama of the country at the present time. There is no sense that he is in charge for those reasons. They seem to be perfectly content to let him go off and talk about the Middle East. They just don't want him to talk about the economy. They don't want him to talk about how they're going to organize their economic effort.

MR. MacNeil: Do you predict, John Lenczowski, that Mr. Bush will continue to go and stand up beside Gorbachev in the months ahead and treat him as a super power equal? Are there going to be replays of what we saw today?

MR. LENCZOWSKI: I would hesitate to make such predictions just on principle, but I believe that the President seems to have a real penchant towards personal diplomacy, particularly in the context of all of these U.S.-Soviet summits. And it's, I don't think it's a particularly constructive tendency in summitry and it, because it tends to put too much of an investment on the political future of one man and the relationship of mutual trust and the ability of that man to be able to undertake his part of an agreement. And all of that is entirely in the air.

MR. MacNeil: You mean it would be better if Sec. Baker or somebody else went around and saw Gorbachev and saw Yeltsin and saw other leaders of republics and on a less dramatic basis?

MR. LENCZOWSKI: I believe so, yes. I think that we have to look at what the eventual future of this place is going to be. And either we're going to support a future that involves some genuine democratic legitimacy over there, or we're going to stand by a discredited, totalitarian structure, as Yelena Bonner just put it a day or so ago.

MR. MacNeil: Do you think Mr. Bush is going to go on doing this with Gorbachev, or is the last time we will see that?

MR. AARON: I think it depends entirely on domestic Soviet politics and what happens there. I don't think that we can make a massive difference in whether Mr. Gorbachev survives or doesn't. On the other hand, I think that the republics all have so many difficulties and so many problems that they seem to be content at the present time to let Mr. Gorbachev play an intermediary role in dealing with the outside world. And this is not unusual in Russian history.

MR. MacNeil: Well, David Aaron, John Lenczowski, thank you. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Paul Solman on promoting minorities and an Anne Taylor Fleming essay. FOCUS - XEROX - STRENGTH IN DIVERSITY

MR. LEHRER: Now a story about one company's efforts to promote minorities to executive positions. Our Business Correspondent, Paul Solman of public station WGBH in Boston reports. [BLACK EXECUTIVES GREETING ONE ANOTHER]

MR. SOLMAN: Black executive, still a relatively rare breed in corporate America, but maybe, just maybe a key to this country's industrial competitiveness.

BILL HAMILTON: We in the African-American community understand the need for diversity. We've understood it for a long time. We've been trying to get in. But the question is: Does America understand the need for diversity and are they ready to embrace diversity for the strength of America?

MR. SOLMAN: This may be the most successful group of black managers in corporate America, executives, past and present, of the Xerox Corporation. They call themselves "the road show," because they're on the road constantly pushing the idea that America's ethnic diversity is a competitive strength, not a weakness. They converged on Boston because tomorrow every MBA student at the Harvard Business School will hear them tell the case history of the black network at Xerox.

KENT AMOS: Xerox senior management in its infinite wisdom somewhere along the line said we're going to empower these men and their associates to be who and what they are. And we aren't really sure where that's going to take us. They weren't sure. We weren't sure. But what they did was say, we're going to trust it, trust you and empower you to be African-Americans and bring that to the table. And it worked.

MR. SOLMAN: Compared to the rest of corporate America, Xerox's success at promoting African-Americans in the past 20 years has been graphic. Any way you count it, blacks make up less than 6 percent of U.S. management. At Xerox, more than 11 percent of all managers are African-American. More revealing still is a comparison of top managers. Here the national average appears to be around 1/2 percent for blacks, 1 percent for minorities in general. At Xerox, by contrast, of 196 top executives, fully 9 percent are black, 17 percent minority. At Xerox, they say they're not just trying to fill affirmative action quotas. At every level, the company claims to be getting the loyalty and sense of corporate community that's usually associated with the Japanese.

BERNARD KINSEY: We made a pact back in 1972/1973, I mean, the same group of guys here, and some that are not here, that we would never compete against each other. And do you know how difficult that is in a corporate setting, for people to say they're not going to compete against each other when we were all competing for the same job essentially? And you know what? We never did, and we all basically got our vice presidencies or directorships or plant managers, or whatever area we were at, because we always knew that our back was covered. In other words, we didn't have to look behind us because we knew everybody that we loved was in front of us.

MR. SOLMAN: The road show member who's risen highest thus far is Barry Rand, President of Marketing at Xerox, and one of its half dozen or so top executives. In Japan, workers join firms for life and form their own interpersonal networks. Rand says that's happening with blacks at Xerox.

BARRY RAND, Marketing President, Xerox: In the black culture, it just so happens that the major strategy that has allowed black people to flourish, to survive and then flourish, happens to be one of unity. We know that we historically have never been able to make it unless we unify and help ourselves.

WOMAN IN COMMERCIAL: [Putting on Eye Make-Up] I can't type. I don't take dictation.

MR. SOLMAN: In its sensitivity to women and minorities, Xerox has had to come a long way, as this early TV ad makes pretty clear.

WOMAN IN COMMERCIAL: My boss calls me indispensable.

MAN IN COMMERCIAL: Miss Jones.

WOMAN IN COMMERCIAL: Just a minute.

MAN IN COMMERCIAL: Will you make a copy of this.

MR. SOLMAN: But at Xerox, they've made an unprecedented effort begun in the late sixties only a few years after this ad campaign to get minorities to the top. Former CEO David Kearns.

DAVID KEARNS: We looked at where had the white male managers that were running the corporation come from and we thought of those jobs and said these are the kinds of experiences that we need if you're going to run a corporation like Xerox. As a result then, we said, over the years we're going to have to have women and minorities in those feeder jobs if we're ever going to have a broad range of executives to run the business. And that's exactly what we did.

MR. SOLMAN: In corporate America as a whole, after years of uniformity, companies have finally begun to recognize the need for diversity. Unfortunately, many of the attempts are half-hearted, if not half-baked, tacos in the company cafeteria, for instance, or the promotion of a few token minority members to executive spots created just for them. At Xerox, however, they claim they're trying not just to cope with America's ethnic diversity but to capitalize on it. Minorities are encouraged to use their ethnicity as a source of mutual support, of group identity, of corporate identity. African-Americans do it through a network known as the black caucus. Downtown New York, 5 PM, Xerox Middle Manager Val Mason has driven in from her Long Island office to help fellow Xerox blacks get ahead. This evening she's teaching management skills.

MS. MASON: [Teaching Class] As a managerand you're sitting in your office and you get one of your employees walking in and they close the door and start screaming at you, I don't need for you to get up and punch that employee out.

MR. SOLMAN: These after hours self-help groups started at Xerox back in the seventies with the road show. The caucuses are organized by members of different minority groups. They're voluntary. They're on personal time.

CLASS MEMBER: How do you handle having to give presentations to potentially a hostile place, such as a majority of males?

MS. MASON: You should, if you're the presenter, take control. You've got people in the audience who are hecklers or, you know, doing all of the things to distract you because they know that they want to challenge you. You may have to stop the presentation and just say, is there something that you want to say?

MR. SOLMAN: While some critics might think racial caucuses are divisive, President Barry Rand thinks they teach their members important skills, thus benefiting the firm as a whole.

MR. RAND: In the District of Washington, D.C., we had a sales rep that was failing. The other six sales reps went into the person's territory to help the person get more prospects, qualify the prospects, demonstrate 'em so that the person could get more orders, so that the person could be more successful and so the person could avoid either critiquing or making less money. Where in America would you find six people who would go and help another sales rep in the territory? An example, an expression of black pride, unity, and the value of excelling, of excelling.

RICHARD KIER: What Barry's talking about happened all over the country. It happened in Los Angeles where Bernard was, San Francisco, where I was, New York, where Art was. Everywhere in the country this was a common practice.

MR. SOLMAN: There are now 12,000 blacks at Xerox. 25 percent of its employees are minority members. To some, this is a multicultural success story. But with Hispanics and women now forming caucuses of their own, there is the potential for separatism within the firm. To Viette Warren, however, this is just networking, and it's all to the good.

VIETTE WARREN, Marketing Manager, Xerox: Why is it threatening if I do it, when you've been doing it all your life? You don't consider the good 'ol boy network threatening. Why? Because you're a member of it.

MR. SOLMAN: Warren, with six promotions in thirteen years, is on the fast track at Xerox. To keep moving up the ranks, she relies on black caucus members like Al Martins, with whom she feels comfortable discussing ethnic problems.

MR. MARTINS: I don't want to get into your personal life, but have you decided yet where you're going to live?

MR. SOLMAN: Warren works at Xerox headquarters in Rochester, New York, where there are very few eligible black men, commutes home to the New York City area every weekend.

MS. WARREN: So my decision is not to move to Rochester, not permanently, and I really have been struggling, because as a single black female, Rochester is not conducive to my lifestyle.

MR. MARTINS: Does that being away cause you from not having an after five cocktail some evenings with some of the guys and some of the girls around the building?

MS. WARREN: No, I have been doing that.

MR. MARTINS: Okay.

MS. WARREN: I don't have a problem Monday through Friday. My concern is Friday night, what do I do between Friday night and Monday morning, and I don't think that Xerox owns that period of time.

MR. MARTINS: No, I don't. I understand that, but, you know, I don't think you should change but I think you should be aware that there are 52 weekends in a year and two years is 104 that you're expected to be on this new assignment. You can build up some pretty strong relationships on a couple of those weekends.

MR. SOLMAN: Martins wants to make sure Warren succeeds. It helps pave the way for other minorities, his daughter, for example, who's also a Xerox employee. They do it through mentoring, through caucuses, through a corporate culture that says diversity is important. And, in fact, Xerox has been very successful at achieving diversity on a marketing side of the business. In fact, diversity is credited with making marketing a great success within the firm. On the engineering side, however, according to some, Xerox is in trouble as its key technology is under attack from Digital Imaging. But in engineering, it's hard to find technically skilled minorities and many majority male managers are still stuck with the stereotypes of the past. So in engineering they work on these issues in management training. With the Cornell University theater troupe, they've turned racial conflict into a training skill.

WOMAN: [Talking to Man in Role Playing] Hello, Charles.

MAN: Gloria, hi.

MR. SOLMAN: Based on a real incident, a white boss is about to assign his new black engineer to a very junior technician. He thinks he's protecting her from failure. She thinks he's snubbing her.

WOMAN: You're telling me that Ray Montgomery is going to keep you up to date on my work, giving you weekly reports?

MAN: Yes, he will give me weekly reports, keep me up to date on how you're progressing, okay?

WOMAN: I see. Well, I can't wait to get started on that, Charles.

MAN: Well, good.

MR. SOLMAN: In fact, the engineer is offended as she explains in the debriefing session with the management audience.

WOMAN: You're really exhausted, confused, angry and tired.

MR. SOLMAN: Xerox's lesson here is that blacks must be allowed to sink or swim like everyone else. In character, the engineer delivers the message.

WOMAN: At this point, I don't need to be parented or diaper changed through my job. I'm a professional engineer. I know what I'm doing. All I want him to do, I'm not asking, okay, for the car, just give me the keys, let me test drive, okay.

MR. SOLMAN: At Xerox, they believe that managers like the Gloria character are worth accommodating. Vice President Debbie Smith says that's because diversity benefits the firm.

DEBBIE SMITH, Vice President, Xerox: A team that's made up of heterogenous individuals, of people coming from different backgrounds, who bring different talents and different abilities and different experiences to an organization allow to be more successful because they can contribute in so many different ways. They have the flexibility to contribute. And all of those ideas coming together does lead to creativity and innovation. And that I think is a competitive advantage for us.

MR. SOLMAN: Members of the road show think that black culture brings specific advantages.

KENT AMOS: In the African-American community there is no hierarchical kind of relationship, whether you are vice president of engineering or the custodian, the janitor, the hourly, it didn't matter. We don't have that title kind of thing, therefore, it's very comfortable for Bill as vice president and me as whatever level manager to eat together without any conflict. We don't get worried about who's who and all that kind of stuff, where if you talk about the historically traditional community, white community, that isn't it. That has beenbuilt into them, has been bred into them.

MR. SOLMAN: Racial generalizations can obviously be dangerous, even when they're positive. Are blacks really less hierarchical than whites? If so, is that an advantage? Do Asians have a special work ethic that somehow rubs off on other employees? Do Jews bring a special respect for education? You see how easily caricature could creep in here. And yet, different cultures, obviously, do have different strengths. Bring them together around a table and it simply stands to reason that you'll have a greater range of experiences and perspectives than, for want of a better comparison, a group of more homogeneous Japanese. But even if you don't buy all this stuff about diversity as competitive advantage, you still have to grab Xerox's main reason for nurturing it, the inexorably changing nature of the American work force.

BARRY RAND, Marketing President, Xerox: The issue is that America is in an economic war. It can't fight the economic war with one- third of its population, which is basically majority male. The issue is skills. The issue is ingenuity. The issue is: How do you take an under-utilized population that has been historically under- utilized, that has not had the opportunities, and bring them into, in this case, a work force where they can contribute to the corporation's objectives and goals?

MR. SOLMAN: Here's where the growth in the U.S. work force is coming from. Between now and the year 2000, 92 percent of all new workers will be either women, Americans of color, or immigrants. The white male is becoming more and more of a minority. The question some people are asking: Will these new groups produce the kind of skilled work force America needs for global competition? To help his community, road show member Kent Amos has informally adopted some 70 teenagers in a particularly tough part of Washington, D.C. [AMOS TALKING TO KIDS]

MR. SOLMAN: Amos has invested personal time and his own money in the belief that blacks need to help each other on to and up the ladder. He believes the black community must upgrade itself first at home, then on the job.

KENT AMOS: When it comes time to promote, promote one of your own. There's nothing wrong with that. The issue is not whether they're competent or not. Everybody who's vying for the job ought to be competent. That's not the question. The question is: What's the difference? The difference is somebody's going to be loyal to you and can also make a difference in your community. That's very important.

BERNARD KINSEY: As white corporate America begins to open up its system to other black people in other groups as we approach the year 2000, they'll find that the kids won't see their role models as Magic Johnson, they'll see their role models as Barry Rand and others, do you follow me, which is true in other groups. And I think for our society really to change that we're going to have to begin to provide another vehicle for kids in our community to be able to see that they can get out, other than being one out of twelve thousand in bouncing a basketball.

MR. SOLMAN: The task is, obviously, enormous, but the road show and Xerox at least seem to be making a dent and more to the point, they think we have no choice.

ART CRAWFORD: We don't understand that this is our last time at bat, that the numbers that you will project in your charts or that people have heard about in terms of what this work force 2000 is going to look like, no one gets to vote on that. That's the way it's going to be. When 2000 shows up, that's the way it's going to be.

MR. SOLMAN: Ever since the David Kearns era at Xerox, the idea has been to capitalize on diversity instead of just compensating for it. And to road show member Kent Amos, the Xerox story shows how to do it and why.

KENT AMOS: So what it says is you can do all these things and win, and win! That's what's critical here that we understand. You don't lose by doing this. You win by doing this. ESSAY - DATE RAPE

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight, Los Angeles writer Anne Taylor Fleming has an essay on violent relations between men and women. [SONG IN BACKGROUND]

MS. FLEMING: Holly Dunn might have thought she was offering up a harmlessly coy, flirty refrain, nothing to get very excited about. Her video, after all, shows seemingly innocuous images of women playing hard to get, on the surface all white, silly stuff. But a lot of women found Dunn's lyrics to be little more than a taunting invitation to male aggression, or worse, to date rape. There's that loaded phrase again, date rape, the one that's been all over the media of late, one that at first glance sounds like an oxymoron. The word "date," after all, conjures up sweet things, kisses and corsages, movies and moonlit nights, okay, a little drinking maybe, but not a full scale blurry-backed now that ends in forced sex. But increasingly, we're told that's exactly how dates are ending up all over the country, on college campuses, and playgrounds like Palm Beach, where William Kennedy Smith stands accused of rape. Date rape statistics, themselves, are a subject of current controversy. Some say, for example, that one in six college women will be the victims of sexual assault. Others say those numbers are dramatically inflated. Clearly though, like all violent crimes against women, date rape is on the rise and juries are having a hard time trying to judge it. In another, much watched date rape trial, three students from St. John's University in New York were acquitted of sodomizing and sexually assaulting a young woman after getting her intoxicated. The jury decided that, drunk or not, she had given her consent to sex. Consent -- there's the loaded word. We live in such a highly eroticized world now, a world in which rape is an entertainment staple, while female bodies are used to sell everything from cereal to beer, from cars to cosmetics, one big coast to coast come on, the post feminist impression is that men and women are forever different, doomed to be strangers, doomed to play out the old combative sex roles. This has all had a profound effect on how young people form their ideas and opinions about how men can treat women. For example, in a recent survey of Rhode Island ninth graders, one-fourth of the boys and one-sixth of the girls said that if a man spent money on a woman, he was entitled to force her into having sex. Hello date rape. We're not talking cajolery here, the back seat of the automobile "will she/won't she" stuff. We're talking forcible penetration. Those are the words. That's the definition of rape. How did we get here, out of what misbegotten marriage of sexual liberation and reactionary rage? I look back with fondness on my own college days of the late sixties. We didn't even talk about rape. Dorm rooms were safe. Boys were scruffy and bed bound, but with rare exception not sexually violent, and the music of choice as rock'n roll and peace anthems, not the nasty woman-bashing rap of today. Obviously, there's a lot of anger at women out there and danger. So what then should women tell their daughters? Not to be naive, not to dress provocatively, not to go to a house full of men and drink a lot and expect to come out unscathed, not to play any Holly Dunn "yes, no, maybe, please overpower me" sex games. All of that should be said. And what should men be telling their sons? That women are not for the taking at will and that even if you think she means maybe, that's not a license to physically force her into sex. I long for the nice men to speak out, to be heard about rape and date rape, so the subject just doesn't end up as always being seen as another one of those women's issues. It's not. It goes to the heart of who we are. I'm Anne Taylor Fleming. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday, Presidents Gorbachev and Bush held a joint news conference at the site of the Middle East peace talks in Madrid. They said they have not come to impose their will or a settlement on the party. And the government reported the U.S. economy grew in the third quarter for the first time in almost a year. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. We'll be back tomorrow night with two key voices from the Israeli and Palestinian sides of the Middle East peace conference. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.