The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, looks at two parts of President Clinton's Asian trip, a new trade agreement, and U.S. relations with China, a report on downsizing at colleges, an update on the fight against prostate cancer, and our Monday night essay, Anne Taylor Fleming on young fathers. It all follows our summary of the news this Monday. NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: President Clinton went to Bangkok, Thailand, today. It was late at night there when President and Mrs. Clinton arrived at the Bangkok airport. The President went straight to a meeting with the King of Thailand. The 27-hour layover in Bangkok is the last stop on Mr. Clinton's 12-day Asia Pacific trip. The President began the day in Manila, where he posed with leaders who attended the Asia Pacific Economic Conference. The 18 APEC leaders signed an agreement to substantially eliminate all tariffs on computers and telecommunications equipment by the year 2000. Mr. Clinton also met yesterday with President Jiang Zemin of China. We'll have more on that meeting and the APEC trade summit right after this News Summary. No decision has yet been made on mounting the relief operation for refugees in Rwanda. That word came today from Defense Secretary Perry, who met with the Canadian defense minister to discuss the mission. Perry said several hundred U.S. troops stand ready to help airlift supplies.

WILLIAM PERRY, Secretary of Defense: We have deployed the advanced elements of an air bridge to provide the logistic support necessary for flowing humanitarian aid into the region as necessary. Those advance elements are still there. They amount to several hundred people. There are some in Entebbe airport in Uganda, including the operation of what we call a TALCE, which is a Tactical Air Control System. We also have similar system and a team to operate it at Mobasa, which is in Kenya, and we have a small liaison team in Kigali.

JIM LEHRER: The Secretary was speaking here in Washington. And official of the Rwanda government voiced objection today to the presence of a multinational military force to aid refugees. Rwandan officials have said the flow of refugees from Zaire has slowed considerably, but there are still many indications that tens of thousands of Rwandan Hutu refugees are heading in the other direction, deeper into Zaire. Colin Baker of Independent Television News visited an abandoned refugee camp in Eastern Zaire. Here is his report.

COLIN BAKER, ITN: The stench is two weeks old but still lingers heavily. Thousands of refugees come here for a few days and then disappear, but according to aid agents, upwards of 1/2 million Rwanda Hutu refugees have vanished. Local missionary workers bury the dead they left behind. Local villagers say around 300,000 Hutus have trekked west, deeper into Zaire, where the trails end and the jungle begins. It's a 200-mile journey from here, and some of the bridges en route have been destroyed. An international force would have much to rebuild before it even reached the refugees. And more evidence of the refugees' march West, a village deserted by its people who fled in fear as the masses approached, now hiding in the hills, afraid to return.

JIM LEHRER: North Korea will release an American man held on spy charges tomorrow. The U.S. embassy in Tokyo made the announcement today. Evan Hunziker of Tacoma, Washington, was arrested in August, after he entered North Korea from China. North Korea accused him of spying for South Korea. Both the United States and South Korea denied that charge. The President of the former Soviet Republic of Belarus won sweeping new powers in a referendum today. President Lukashenko's term was extended by two years until the year 2001, and he was given greater control over all branches of government. Demonstrators outside the parliament building in Minsk charged the vote was rigged, and the speaker of the parliament said Belarus is headed for a real dictatorship. In France, truckers were on strike for the eighth straight day. Drivers blocked roads and fuel depots, causing traffic jams across the country today. They are demanding higher salaries, earlier retirement, and shorter working hours. Former CIA officer Harold Nicholson was denied bail today. He's charged with passing secrets to the Russian government. A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, said Nicholson might flee, if given the chance, and could still give away valuable information. In his 16-year CIA career, Nicholson served in key positions in Romania and Malaysia, among other locations. Prosecutors said today Nicholson has more than $61,000 in a Swiss bank account. The government claims he received $180,000 from the Russians. Food & Drug Commissioner David Kessler resigned today. In a statement, Kessler said he appreciated the opportunity to serve the public but that it was time to return to private life. Kessler is a doctor and a lawyer who was appointed by President Bush. He has most recently led the government's new drive against smoking. Kessler said he would remain until his FDA successor is chosen. Winter storms have hit the Midwest. Snow and ice were blamed for scores of road accidents in four states over the weekend. Six deaths were reported in Texas, six in Oklahoma, three in Wisconsin, two in Missouri. Bad weather also caused major power outages and closed schools today. A hard freeze is expected in Texas tonight, with Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, and Michigan getting snow. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the Asian Pacific summit, U.S.-China relations, downsizing on campus, a prostate cancer update, and an Anne Taylor Fleming essay. FOCUS - PACIFIC RELATIONS - APEC

JIM LEHRER: We start with the Asia story. Over the weekend, President Clinton and leaders of Asian countries held two days of meetings that covered both trade and politics. Our coverage begins with some background from Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: President Clinton's first big trip since his re- election was to Asia. And today he wrapped up a week of visits in the region with a stop in Thailand. He was in Bangkok, joining the king of Thailand in celebrating that ruler's 50thanniversary on the throne. Mr. Clinton came to this booming Southeast Asian capital after a weekend summit in the Philippines with other leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum known as APEC. They met at the former U.S. Navy base at Subic Bay, now a bustling free trade center that has attracted more than a billion dollars in overseas investment. As has become customary at these sessions, the final photo opportunity featured the regional leaders sporting native shirts of the host country. In the Philippines, these shirts are called barongs. The APEC leaders gave qualified endorsement to a somewhat watered-down version of a U.S. call to eliminate tariffs on information technology by the end of the century. PRESIDENT CLINTON: I'm especially pleased that today the APEC leaders endorsed the early completion of an information technology agreement, which would cut to zero tariffs a vast array of computers, semiconductors, and telecommunications technology by the year 2000. These products are to the 21st century what highways and railroads were to the 19th century.

MARGARET WARNER: They also took some steps to advance their goal of creating the world's largest free trade zone by the year 2020. That goal was set at the 1994 APEC summit. If realized, it would embrace more than 2 billion people throughout today's 18-member nations and possibly more. Before the multilateral APEC sessions on trade, President Clinton held a series of side meetings with the political and military powers of the region, the leaders of Japan, South Korea, and China. Mr. Clinton's session with Chinese President Jiang Zemin yesterday was their fourth since the President came to office in 1993, promising a tougher line on Chinese human rights practices and its ongoing crackdown on dissidents. Sunday's session also followed a particularly tense year in U.S.-Chinese relations, especially over the issue of Taiwan. The U.S. Navy sent ships through the Taiwan straits last March, after the Chinese mounted military exercises there. But yesterday, the U.S. and Chinese presidents discussed efforts to improve relations between their countries. They agreed to hold reciprocal state visits over the next two years. Vice President Gore will visit China too next year. The two presidents also discussed trade issues and China's bid to join the World Trade Organization, but these bilateral trade issues and the regional ones discussed at the APEC summit will take years of negotiations to resolve.

MARGARET WARNER: For more on the APEC part of the story, we're joined now by Bruce Stokes. He's a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing editor at the "National Journal." Welcome. What is your assessment of what really was achieved at this summit?

BRUCE STOKES, Council on Foreign Relations: Unfortunately, Margaret, not very much. We, as you reported, had an information technology agreement among the various APEC nations. Unfortunately, what they did is they agreed to set this as a goal to have substantial reduction by the year 2000, assuming there could be some flexibility around that goal. And they would take that statement to the Singapore ministerial in December, where all the trade ministers in the entire world meet.

MARGARET WARNER: And that is the World Trade Organization meeting.

BRUCE STOKES: That's the World Trade Organization meeting. What the U.S. had hoped to get out of this meeting was a much more definitive call to eliminate all tariffs by the year 2000 on information technology products. That would have been very beneficial to the United States. For example, semiconductor tariffs in the Philippines or Thailand are 10 percent; ours are zero. Intel, one of our biggest companies on semiconductors, sells 30 percent of its Pentium processors to Asia. So if we could reduce to get a real commitment to reduce those to zero by the year 2000, we could have much more trade with the Asian region.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, I gathered that even this modified version it took the President's personal intervention to get that.

BRUCE STOKES: Right. The trade ministers who met late last week couldn't even come up with this agreement to have any kind of statement. So it took the President's personal intervention, and I think that's why it's important that the leaders of the region meet every year at the presidential level, because it took that kind of presidential intervention to get even this watered-down agreement.

MARGARET WARNER: But now just to be clear here, to make sure I understand, this is simply an endorsement of an idea. Let's say the World Trade Organization didn't take any action. Would these APEC members, nonetheless, be bound in any way?

BRUCE STOKES: No. You're right. Basically this is just a recommendation, and it's hoped that the trade ministers when they meet in Singapore in December can then agree around the world. And, of course, the important player who wasn't at Subic Bay were the Europeans, because the Europeans also have to agree, and they have, in general, said they would agree. There's some fight going on between the U.S. and Europe about what exactly the products would be that would be covered by this. We hopefully can overcome that. The U.S. and Europe are talking about that in Geneva even as we speak. But it would--it still requires an agreement to come in Singapore.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, who objected? Which countries were objecting at the APEC meeting and why? Who was dragging their feet?

BRUCE STOKES: There were a number of different countries who were foot-draggers. Malaysia felt that it was not necessary to set an exact date. They felt that different countries have different problems. Some are poorer than others, and they shouldn't be committed to an exact date. Korea had been a problem at one point in these discussions. A number of the less developed but rapidly industrialized countries felt that they did not want to give up the protections that their own industries gained from these tariffs too fast, and 2000 seemed very close. It's really only three or four years away. So it's one of those things where there is inherent in Asia, I think an inherent desire to protect some of these emerging industries. And we, of course, would benefit by reducing those barriers.

MARGARET WARNER: Now the other area they addressed was this goal that they agreed on two years ago to create, as we just saw on the tape, the world's largest free trade center by 2,020 or 2020. Where did they stand on this project before this meeting, and then what was achieved, if anything, at this meeting?

BRUCE STOKES: Well, they had--two years ago when they met in Indonesia, they had surprisingly endorsed this concept of a free trade area, the various nations that met in Indonesia. In Japan last year, the U.S. attempted to get the Asian nations to agree to some kind of timetable. We've had this goal. We've got to step by step get there. The Asian nations, again led by Malaysia, part endorsed by Japan, said, no, that's not the way the Asians do things, we are more consensus-building, we don't believe in this legalistic American philosophy. We'll get there. We just don't want to have to commit ourselves on a year by year basis. So we did get the Asians to agree that there'd be some kind of plans submitted at this meeting in Subic Bay, and some plans were, and action plans were submitted. Unfortunately, they're a very thin gruel. The Japanese, for example, said well, maybe we'll allow some English labeling on certain products. That's serious business. Now some countries, the Philippines, for example, did agree to a goal of reducing their average tariffs to 5 percent by the year 2004, which is a major improvement over current tariffs, but it's still not as concrete as we would like--it's still not as concrete as--

MARGARET WARNER: By "we," you mean the United States.

BRUCE STOKES: We, the U.S., or anybody who's interested in attaining this goal, and clearly there are some Asian countries who would like to attain the goal. Singapore and Hong Kong, for example, say they would like to attain the goal faster. But it is still relatively limited in its scope, and I think that the real test will be these leaders meet again in Vancouver next year, and with the harsh spotlight of all the media attention you'll get in Vancouver because it's close to the United States, I think then these leaders will be--there will be more pressure on them to put up or shut up.

MARGARET WARNER: So if you were looking at this goal of huge free trade zone by 2020 and it was a glass, and the old is it half empty or half full, it's obviously not even half full. How full is it?

BRUCE STOKES: My guess is it's probably about 10 percent full. There have been some measures taken by Asian countries in terms of very technical issues like customs harmonization and the freer movement by some businessmen in the region. All those are terribly important, but it's not enough to reach the goal of free trade in the region by 2020 at this pace.

MARGARET WARNER: And in the meantime, of course, the U.S. is running huge trade imbalances with some of these countries in Asia, correct?

BRUCE STOKES: That's right. We have--last year, we had a 59 billion dollar trade deficit with Japan, a 30 some billion dollar trade deficit with China. This year, for example, the current Chinese pace is that over the next 12 months we could run a $50 billion trade deficit with China, and China will soon surpass Japan as our most unbalanced trade relationship.

MARGARET WARNER: Explain to viewers who are not trade experts the average American would say is why does the United States let this happen?

BRUCE STOKES: I think the U.S. lets this happen for a number of reasons. One is its momentum. We've always--we felt we had security interests in the region during the Cold War, and we're willing to sacrifice some access to our market to maintain security in the region, maintain--keep these people in the capitalist western camp. Of course, the Cold War's over now. We cannot afford, I think, to continue to maintain such an unbalanced trading relationship. A third of our recent economic growth comes from exports. Nearly 25 percent of our job--recent job creation comes from exports. The U.S. is hooked on exports. We need to export to the fastest growing region in the world. And unless we can see greater progress in opening those markets to U.S. exports, I think that the pressures at home here in the United States to begin to question why we keep an open market when their markets are more closed is going to grow, and that's going to be a problem.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, thanks very much. Thanks for being with us.

BRUCE STOKES: Thank you. FOCUS - REACHING OUT - CHINA

JIM LEHRER: Now to the U.S. and China part of the Asian trip story. We get four views of the weekend meeting between President Clinton and his Chinese counterpart. Arthur Hummel is a former ambassador to China, a retired career Foreign Service officer. Sidney Jones is the executive director of Human Rights Watch Asia. Senators Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Dirk Kempthorne, Republican of Idaho, just returned from a Senate trip to China and other Asian countries. First, Senator Leahy, have relations with China been improved by the fact that these two presidents met the other day?

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY, [D] Vermont: Oh, I think that that is a step, and it is an improvement, and obviously, we're doing the follow-up things. The vice president is going there; the defense minister of China is coming here. There will be the heads of state meeting beyond. I mean, these are steps and will be seen as positive steps in China, and I suspect will be seen as positive steps here. But, as Bruce Stokes has said earlier, describing another aspect, it is still "only" a step forward and a relatively small step forward.

JIM LEHRER: A small step forward, Senator Kempthorne?

SEN. DIRK KEMPTHORNE, [R] Idaho: yes, but a very meaningful step forward. The Senate trip that you referenced, that Sen. Leahy and I and other Senators had last week, in China, where we met with the president of China, any time that you can sit down across from another individual and have a good conversation and look each other in the eye, you're going to improve your relationship so that when you have to deal with one another--and in this case, U.S. and China have to deal with one another, I think there will be less understanding. And so that dialogue has begun, and that's very important.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Ambassador, do you agree? ARTHUR HUMMEL, JR., Former Ambassador, China: Yes, I do. I think for a long time we've had a problem about how to balance our relations with China. A lot of people want to change and force changes now, particularly since the events of Tiananmen in 1989. At the same time, I think it's become more obviously, particularly in the last year, that we also have to get along with China, and we've got to try and do both. The American public demand that we must keep pressure on China, particularly on human rights, and we have to do that, but at the same time, we have to look through a long-term strategic situation when China will become a genuine power, superpower, and someone in Asia with whom we really ought to find ways to get along with, even though we disagree about a lot of things.

JIM LEHRER: Sidney Jones, what do you think of the meetings of the two presidents?

SIDNEY JONES, Human Rights Watch/Asia: We're concerned that the change of visits in a way throwing away the last form of leverage that the United States has. We're not saying that there should be an economic embargo of China. We're not saying there should be no summit, but we are saying that there should have been some kind of conditions placed on the announcement before it was made so that there's some concrete human rights improvements coming before an exchange of visits takes place.

JIM LEHRER: And you think that could have been engineered, or that could have been negotiated?

SIDNEY JONES: It could have been negotiated, and as I say, I think that the announcement means that the principle has been agreed to without any of the preconditions having been met. We still have acrackdown taking place in China. We have more arrests. We have heavier sentences. We have threatening moves toward Hong Kong. This was an opportunity to try and get some commitment from the Chinese government before going ahead with the summit.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think about that idea, Sen. Leahy?

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: No. I--and I yield to nobody in my concern for human rights in China. But you have to have the meetings to raise these issues. Each one of us in the Senate delegation raised the issues of human rights in China.

JIM LEHRER: With the president?

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: Oh, yes, in fact, we had dinner with him, and we raised it at that. We raised trade issues.

JIM LEHRER: Did you say some of the things that Sidney Jones just talked about?

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: And human rights. I raised condition about a young named Nuang Chapelle, who's a Tibetan, studied in Vermont, and has been arrested when he went back to Tibet to film and record the culture, the music there. I thought it was an egregious thing and should be looked at. But it's just like--

JIM LEHRER: But, excuse me, that's an interesting story. What did he say? What did the president say when you raised it?

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: He was not overjoyed that I raised that. I reminded him that I had raised it with his deputy foreign minister earlier in the afternoon, who was sitting there, and that I fully expected a response. I got the impression that we will get a response, but you could only raise these if you are meeting, and I think there are so many areas where we need improvement. We need improvement in trade. We have too great a--

JIM LEHRER: Let's just stop on the human rights. Let me go back to Sidney Jones on that. What the Senator says, if you want to do something about human rights, you've got to talk to them first. Do you disagree?

SIDNEY JONES: No, we don't have any objection to that. What we're saying is talking is not enough. When we were dealing with intellectual property rights, it wasn't talk about the values of intellectual property that brought about some kind of negotiated agreement. It was actually threatening 100 percent tariffs, and that's what brought about the change. This time, we're not suggesting economic pressure, but we are suggesting that you've got to use something that the Chinese government wants very badly, which is a summit, to bring about some concrete improvements.

JIM LEHRER: Sen. Kempthorne, where do you come down on that? Why not get something in exchange for this exchange of visits from China?

SEN. DIRK KEMPTHORNE: The summit Sidney referenced, they want to talk about Most Favored Nation status. They want to talk about the World Trade Organization, a number of things. We want to talk about that, as well as nuclear proliferation, security in that region. So all of these things, in balance, will be discussed but never, Jim, at any of the meetings that we had with Chinese officials did we shy away from discussing human rights. And one of the things that I'd like to just point out is I think so much of the time we focus with regard to the demonstration in Tiananmen Square of how that demonstration was shut down by that government, but I also want to remind us the fact that there was a demonstration in the first place by so many Chinese citizens and that one of the symbols that they held up in Tiananmen Square was the Statue of Liberty, demonstrators, Chinese demonstrators quoting from Lincoln and Jefferson, by their exposure to the United States to these different opportunities to open up these channels of communication, they are realizing what they don't have. That's healthy. I think that the reform that we hope will happen in China will come about as more of the citizens are exposed to the opportunities that come through these different channels.

JIM LEHRER: And you think that the president of China coming here and the president of the N going to China will further that.

SEN. DIRK KEMPTHORNE: I do. I do, because I think that also will lead to other avenues of additional trade. The more that we open trade opportunities for U.S. companies in China, the less restraint or control I think the Chinese government will have over their own economy, and, again, that brings about a free marketplace.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Ambassador, how do you see the connection between the human rights problems--you agree that there are human rights in China, do you not?

AMB. ARTHUR HUMMEL, JR.: Oh, indeed, of course there are.

JIM LEHRER: So what is the connection between that and the way the United States Government should treat the Chinese Government?

AMB. ARTHUR HUMMEL, JR.: The connection really lies in the--on the American side in the very strong desire of the American people and the administration to change China, to change these human rights practices. The question is how. I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with Sidney Jones and what she said that it could have been negotiated that we would obtain some human rights modifications in China's position before we would allow a series of summits to be scheduled. I'm sorry, but the evidence doesn't seem to me to be that way, and--

JIM LEHRER: You mean, the evidence is that China doesn't react that way?

AMB. ARTHUR HUMMEL, JR.: China is not--I'm afraid that this is going to be a very serious problem in our relations, one that the American public isn't going to understand very well, I'm afraid, and it will be very difficult for any president to handle, and that is suppose--and I think it's likely--the Chinese are absolutely adamant about their human rights attitude. They seem to have spit in our eye sometimes. Just on the eve of Clinton's previous visit, they reacted very sharply. They--and I'm afraid that they are going to continue to arrest more Chinese as a demonstration of their intransigence on this issue. Now suppose they continue to be intransigent, as I'm afraid they may be, this presents a very serious difficulty for us in trying to balance the relationship between forcing change and getting along with somebody that we really ought to get along with.

JIM LEHRER: Sidney Jones, where would you draw the line between the need to get along with this huge country and the need to try to get them to change on human rights?

SIDNEY JONES: I think that it's true that we have to get along, but I see nothing incompatible with taking a forceful stance on human rights issues, because ultimately what's good for human rights is also good for the trading relationship. What we're seeing now is not just dissidents getting arrested. It's also people who've been involved in business deals. It's officials of the International Monetary Fund. If these kind of people can get arrested, it doesn't say much for the business environment in China either. I think what we're trying to do is to get China to play by the international rules in human rights, as well as in trade, as well as in security affairs. And if we send a message to China that we're going to back down on human rights when the Chinese become intransigent or when it becomes an irritant in the relationship, what lessons are the Chinese Government going to learn about security in trade? Are they going to just exert more pressure in order to get the United States to back down on those issues as well?

JIM LEHRER: So you see the evidence differently. You believe that China, if pressured properly on human rights, would, in fact, change its human rights policies?

SIDNEY JONES: I think we have evidence of that in 1993 and 1994, when at the height of the Most Favored Nation status debate, there were prisoners being released, because there was a credible threat being made by the United States. There are negotiations underway with the International Committee of the Red Cross. Those negotiations stopped as soon as the pressure eased up.

JIM LEHRER: Sen. Leahy.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: Well, I would argue that one of the things we can do is in the trade, itself. China has a huge balance of payment.

JIM LEHRER: $50 billion, as Bruce Stokes just said.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: With us. I mean, we're paying for a great deal of their economy. Basically what they say is we'll export to you whatever we want, but we'll only let you export to us what we want you to. Now, we know that some of their goods are produced through prison labor, basically through slave labor. I think that all of the major trading partners are to present at least a unified front, what kind of goods we'll buy, how we'll buy them. That, in itself, could force a major change in human rights, a very positive change in human rights to stop the exploitation of prison labor and stop the kind of working conditions that we see there. Now, that's something that China should have to expect if they're going to be part of a real world trading organization.

JIM LEHRER: Now, Sen. Kempthorne, did you get the impression from your visit that the Chinese understand that point, not on the human rights thing but on the trade part, that they've got to play by the rules? We've got a $50 billion deficit, and they've got to play-- they've got to be fair in their dealings with us?

SEN. DIRK KEMPTHORNE: I think they fully understand, but that doesn't mean that they're not tough in their position. I think they're going to be tough, but they fully realize that there's no way that I believe the United States could support China becoming part of the World Trade Organization with the current inconsistencies in place, because if we freeze those and freeze the status quo, we'll be at a terrible disadvantage five and ten years from now. So there are a number of things that have to be corrected with regard to trade now before they become part of the World Trade Organization, and I think that also on the table will be other issues from human rights--that point--nuclear proliferation. There are a number of things on the table that we still have significant leverage, but we have to be discussing it.

JIM LEHRER: And what is our leverage?

SEN. DIRK KEMPTHORNE: Leverage are the things that they want. They want to have Most Favored Nation status.

JIM LEHRER: On a permanent basis. They get it now on a yearly basis, more or less.

SEN. DIRK KEMPTHORNE: That's correct. They also want to be allowed entry into the World Trade Organization. They feel that's very significant for them.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think about that, Mr. Ambassador? If we want to do business with China, and we want them to play by the rules, how do we get 'em to do it?

AMB. ARTHUR HUMMEL, JR.: Well, we tell them what the price is of their joining the WTO.

JIM LEHRER: So you agree with the Senator on that?

AMB. ARTHUR HUMMEL, JR.: I do, indeed, and I think--

JIM LEHRER: Because that's very important to them, right?

AMB. ARTHUR HUMMEL, JR.: Yes. It is middling important. They're doing quite well the way they are, and there are penalties for joining the WTO, opening up their state industries to competition from the outside as we force the opening of their market to us and to other countries. We are not alone in this issue. We are alone in many issues relating to China, because we tend to be tougher on them for a variety of things, but on this issue, our partners in Western Europe and in Southeast Asia agree with us entirely, that we cannot allow the Chinese just to walk in easily, and the normal negotiations with set timetables for the relaxation of different tariffs in different sectors.

JIM LEHRER: So you think that's where the weapon--that's a crude word to use in this respect--but that's the way--if we're going to get China to play the way we want them to play, that's where you think it ought to be, rather than in a human rights thing?

AMB. ARTHUR HUMMEL, JR.: This is just one thing.

JIM LEHRER: One thing.

AMB. ARTHUR HUMMEL, JR.: And I'm afraid it's not as potent a lever as some people have suggested. As I said, the Chinese are ambivalent. The costs are quite high for them.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think of that, Sidney Jones, using that?

SIDNEY JONES: I think that if we're going to play hard ball with the Chinese and the world Trade Organization, why aren't we willing to play hard ball on the human rights front? The two in some ways are linked, and, as I say, I think that a good business environment depends on protection of human rights. It depends on the rule of law. We should be forcing China to play by the rules on international human rights as well and using the summit as leverage to try and get some of those rules observed is one way to go about it.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Well, thank--yes.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY: And I think on the summit, human rights will be a major part. It has to be a major part as long as the United States is a party.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Well, thank you all four very much. FOCUS - LOSING TENURE

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, changing the rules about tenure, a prostate cancer update, and an Ann Taylor Fleming essay. Fred De Sam Lazaro of KTCA-St. Paul-Minneapolis has the tenure story.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: To the 48,000 students at the University of Minnesota test scores are perhaps the top priority. For students and alumni, sporting results also rank at the top of the list in importance. But to state lawmakers, the top priority is money. And the university is a massive enterprise, with hundreds of buildings, 19 colleges, and a Fortune 500-size payroll. But in times of tight budgets and a changing economy, legislators like Becky Kelso say the university hasn't adjusted to the new realities.

REP. BECKY KELSO, Minnesota State Legislator: There is not enough money for the status quo, and there hasn't been for a while and no reason to think that there's going to be. The University of Minnesota is a classic case of a situation where they're doing too much of everything and not enough of anything to maintain quality.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Kelso would like the university to engage in what she calls strategic downsizing, beefing up programs for which the university's well regarded, like the medical disciplines and engineering, and scaling back those for which it's not so well reputed. The chief obstacle, she says, is the university's tenure code. Faculty members must pass a probationary period of about six years. Then they're protected by the code fromlayoffs for anything short of criminal activity or an extreme financial emergency. No other university employees are given tenure.

TOM REAGAN, University Board of Regents: Now faculty members should have a job for life is what our present tenure code says.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Tom Reagan is one of several allies the legislators have on the Board of Regents, 12 citizens appointed by lawmakers to oversee the university.

TOM REAGAN: The current code just doesn't give the university the flexibility it needs to meet the rapidly changing circumstances in higher education.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Earlier this year, the Regents Board proposed a plan to toughen the tenure code. It would allow administrators to lay off tenured professors if their programs were reduced or eliminated.

TOM REAGAN: If we should identify a unit we want to close, we will do the following things: First is, you know, they're going to have to make a case we should close the administration as to do that. Okay. If we agree, yeah, we ought to examine it and we're going to close it, then we tell the faculty we're going to fit you- -we're going to put you someplace in the university where you fit. We're not going to take somebody who doesn't fit. We're not going to take a surgeon and put him in the History Department. If there is no fit, or you don't want to, or for some reason we just can't keep you on, then we think maybe it's best after a good severance package is given to them to just sever the relationship.

HY BERMAN, Professor: I hate to say it, but I think everybody here knows that this Board of Regents as presently constituted is a cancer in the university. This Board of Regents has to resign, or we have to fight with the union.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Faculty members responded with a vehement rejection of the Regents' plan. They launched a drive to organize a union.

HY BERMAN: On the question of individualism versus the community, anybody want to take a crack at that? Do you want to take a crack at that?

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: History Prof. Hy Berman says the Regents are trying to shift power to set academic priorities, that power traditionally has rested with the faculty, and the plan would give it to regents and administrators, people he says who are not qualified to decide issues as colleges.

HY BERMAN: If you had to have a heart transplant surgery, would you go to an MBA to have that done? Would you go to a person with a Ph.D. in education to have that done? No. You go to the best heart surgeon you could find. Similarly in the academic enterprise, are you going to go to a chair of the Board of Regents who is a political hack to determine academic content?

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Berman says the tenure system came into widespread use in the forties. At most universities today, it covers about 60 percent of faculty members. Berman says tenure protects academic scholars from powerful outside influences and preserves the integrity of research. It provides the freedom, for example, to unveil research results that could hurt the sales of a powerful company or industry. Also, tenure protects academics whose political views may be out of favor, a fear Berman has under the regents' proposed tenure revisions.

HY BERMAN: It's no secret that I have been in a controversial conflict mode with some members of the Board of Regents. What would prevent them from saying that we are going to eliminate the program in 20th century U.S. history, U.S. labor history, and Minnesota history. And by saying that, they're eliminating my position and firing me, in other words, politically firing me, although say they're doing it for programmatic reasons. I'm just giving that as an example of how, in fact, the guarantees of tenure and academic freedom would be undercut.

TOM REAGAN: It never happened in Minnesota. This society is much too open. Our faculty is very aware of that. They'd make a phone call to you. They'd make a phone call to others and say what they're trying to do, and that board member or that board, I think, would find themselves in serious trouble.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: One big source of trouble for the regents has been the administrators. Although the regents' plan would give university President Nils Hasselmo new flexibility to lay off faculty, Hasselmo says he doesn't need it. Hasselmo, who plans to retire next year, says normal attrition will more than allow for streamlining. He fears embittering a faculty that is both academically and financially crucial. Researchers at the university raise some $350 million in grant money, and Hasselmo says they need the job security provided by tenure.

NILS HASSELMO, University President: It has been proven over many years that if you are going to get productivity from our most creative minds, you need to create an environment where they can invest their time and talent and their futures after a grueling apprenticeship period, they can invest that time and talent on a long-term basis. And I think that's exactly the way a corporation like 3M deals with its creative people, those who are involved in product design.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Facing resistance from their own administrators, loud criticism in the public, and with fears the university's reputation is being damaged nationally, the board earlier this month approved a compromise tenure plan. The new code applies only to the university's law school. Its 31 faculty members are not part of the collective bargaining election. The new rules allow the university to reassign law professors, even place them at another institution, with the university making up for any lost wages. And it allows for pay cuts in the law school in financial emergencies or for poor performance, although peers must concur with this evaluation. All this could make the new plan palatable to the rest of the staff of professors, according to faculty Senate member Virginia Gray.

VIRGINIA GRAY, Faculty Senate: There is no layoffs. There is reassignment authority but no layoffs, and that was very important to us. And the second thing that was extremely important to us was due process.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: No one's sure whether the region's compromise plan will stave off faculty unionization, or exactly what protections a union would provide. That union election is expected in a few months. UPDATE - GENETIC LINK

JIM LEHRER: Now to some new information on prostate cancer and to Charlayne Hunter-Gault.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Prostate cancer is the second most deadly cancer for men in this country. Lung cancer is the main one. Forty- one thousand men die from prostate cancer each year. More than 300,000 American men will be diagnosed with it this year. Doctors have grappled with questions about the causes of prostate cancer for years. But now researchers think they are finding at least some answers. A new paper in the journal "Science" reported on Friday that researchers have found the general location of the gene that may yield a clue about who gets the disease. To discuss that finding and the implications, we are joined by Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Center for Human Genome Research, which is mapping out all 80,000 human genes. The center was involved in the study. Doctor, thank you for joining us. First of all, tell us exactly what the prostate is, where it is, and what its function is in the body.

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS, Human Genome Project: That's one of those body parts that people don't think about too often. It's a walnut- sized gland that in men sits just underneath the bladder. If it enlarges, it can lead to problems, sort of obstructing the outflow from the bladder, but it is also a site where cancer can develop, and, in fact, a very common site where cancer develops with something like one in five men developing this disease sometime during their lifetime.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Common and yet so deadly. Why so deadly?

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: Well, in some men, it certainly can be. It spreads outside the prostate into the lymph nodes and into the bones. It can certainly be fatal, and all too often, that's the case, with 40,000 men a year dying form this disease. In others, it may be much more slow-growing and indolent, especially in elderly men, who may be diagnosed with the disease in their 80's or so and never actually require any intervention, just close monitoring. In fact, if you look at 95-year-old men at autopsy, virtually 100 percent of them have prostate cancer, but in the vast majority, it was not going to lead to any problems. It was very small and confined.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: All right. So tell us about this new research finding and the impact on it of it.

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: Well, we had had suspicions based on the clustering of cases of prostate cancer in certain families that there might be a genetic link. But that had been a hypothesis up until now. And those of us working on this, which was a collaboration between the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins University, and investigators in Sweden felt a little bit like Columbus setting sail out into the Atlantic not knowing if we were going to find land or fall off the end of the earth, trying to pursue a disease of this sort. It's difficult, because the disease is so common. It's sort of like mapping the genes for old age to try to map the genes for prostate cancer. But it was successful. And what it showed, that in a subset of families, where there seems to be a strong genetic link, with multiple-affected men, oftentimes having their disease come on in their 50's and 60's, there is a genome chromosome one, which seems to confer a substantial fraction of that risk. Now, those men, as I'm saying, often had their disease earlier than the average. This doesn't account for all families, and we haven't found the gene, itself, yet. We've just found its neighborhood.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: So, having found the neighborhood of the gene, you have found a gene--you now have to find the gene?

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: Right.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And the gene will help you determine who is going to get prostate cancer.

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: Potentially, this will play a role in predicting who's at highest risk. Finding a gene of this sort has been likened by me and others to sort of finding a burned-out light bulb in a basement in a house somewhere in the United States. You can imagine, it's quite a detective story to go after that. And what we've done here is to sort of narrow it down to the correct county and the correct state. But we haven't found the house with the light bulb yet. And that will take another couple of years. Once--

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Just a couple of years?

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: Well, it's a little hard to predict. Serendipity plays some role here, but I would guess it's somewhere in that neighborhood.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And what is the relationship of this to- -to heredity? I mean, is it that you have been able to determine that the gene passes from--this cluster you described passes from one generation to the next?

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: That is the expectation, and we estimate that about one in five hundred men is walking around with a misspelled copy of this gene we call HPC-1, for hereditary prostate cancer, gene number 1. A man in that situation probably has about an 80 to 90 percent chance of developing prostate cancer by age 80, a rather high risk, indeed. That means there's probably about a quarter of a million men in the U.S. in that circumstance. Now, the hope is that finding that gene will allow us to develop a test that identifies those at highest risk in order for them to take advantage of close medical surveillance to pick up that prostate cancer while it's still small and curable, because that is the way that prostate cancer is cured, is by early detection.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And it can be cured.

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: It can be. Most men with prostate cancer do not die of their disease, especially if it's detected early. But we haven't been too sure who ought to have that kind of close surveillance. There's a test called PSA, Prostate Specific Antigen, which is pretty good at picking up a small tumor, but people have argued about who should you use it for, because sometimes it picks up a tumor that's not going to cause any problems, and then you've created a lot of anxiety.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: So how will you determine now who should take the test?

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: The genetic test, of course, will not exist until the gene, itself, is found, which will be two or three years from now, I would estimate. Even when it is found, the test will have to be considered as far as its benefits and risks, and it certainly won't be appropriate initially for people who don't have a strong family history. One of the concerns is that somebody who takes the test and is found to have an altered gene may then be at risk for discrimination in health insurance or in employment, a serious circumstance which is being faced right now for breast cancer, where such a test has recently become available. We need to solve that problem urgently. This prostate cancer gene discovery creates a new cohort of 1/4 million men who are potential targets for such discrimination. That isn't fair, and we need to solve that, and we need to solve it legislatively at the federal level.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But the flip side of that is that you can get these tests done earlier and perhaps save the lives of a lot more people. What percentage of the men you think will be tested will have this--might have this gene, altered gene?

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: Again, it's going to be a small fraction. Maybe one in five hundred men has this. Many of those will have a strong family history, so if you focus on men who have that family history, you're more likely to find this alteration. The hope would be you have that diagnostic test available, a man can take it when he's in his 30's say, find out if he's at that high risk, and then begin his close surveillance and perhaps find that prostate cancer in his 40's or early 50's that otherwise would have killed him in his 60's.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And then he has other options that he has to work on.

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: Right, because early detection is possible if you know who to focus your attention on. This is preventive medicine sort of in a very individualized way. As opposed to telling every man to do the same thing, this is an opportunity to figure out who's at the highest risk and offer them the opportunity for a very specialized kind of follow-up.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And briefly, does this in any way, whenever it gets full developed, point in the direction of a cure, or is that another set of research?

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: It certainly does. The Human Genome Project exists to make things like this happen and make it possible to map genes that cause disease, then identify them, and then what comes after that fairly quickly is a diagnostic test. But the real reason to do all of this genetic research is to actually use the information about those genes to understand these terribly frustrating diseases and develop better treatments.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Doctor, we'll be seeing you again, I'm sure. Thank you for joining us.

DR. FRANCIS COLLINS: Thank you very much. ESSAY - MAKING FATHERS

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, or Monday night essay. Anne Taylor Fleming has some thoughts about young fathers.

STEVEN: My name's Steven. I'm 16, and I have a son. He'll be eight months on the 17th.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: They are here--these young men at the Bienvenidos Family Center in East Los Angeles trying to learn to be fathers. Week after week, they come voluntarily, teenagers struggling to be there for their own children. Quite obviously, these are not your trendy, upscale soccer-coaching dads. These are the hard-scrabble young men of the inner city who are desperate to defy the odds and the stereotypes about teenage dads.

RICHARD PACHECO, 18 Years Old: Because I go to school, and people tell me, you look like you don't even belong here because I look so old. And I'm there, and I'm not thinking about what the teacher's talking about. I'm think about what am I going to make for dinner. To be honest, I don't really got any goals. I don't know what I want to be 'cause I look at my life, and it just evolves around him. So every step I make it's like with him; it's not by myself. It's not solo. It's with him. It's like we walk together, not one, one up. Maybe sometimes I'll be ahead of him, but I'm holding his hand and pulling him with me, you know.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: This Conlos Padres program is funded through a $100,000 grant from the California Office of Criminal Justice Planning. The young men who come through these doors are given help staying in school and are also given $50 a month, money earmarked for the support of their children. They know the statistics, the skyrocketing number of out-of-wedlock births, a divorce rate that has doubled in 30 years. They know them; they live them. All around them, young women get pregnant. All around them fathers disappear. Long gone is the briefcase-toting, bread- winning sitcom dad of the post-war era, he would work faithfully from marriage to gold watch in order to look after and provide for his wife and children. He is now a gauzy figure in gray flannel, an object of nostalgia. In just 30 years, from the 1960's to the 1990's, the number of children living apart from their biological fathers has nearly doubled from 17 percent to 36 percent. Half of today's children will spend at least part of their growing up years without their fathers, regardless of economic or racial class, and everyone agrees, without dads around, children are much more likely to get into trouble, do badly in school, shoot up, drop out, and have kids of their own outside of marriage, just like the young men in this room.

MARTIN MOYEDA, 16 Years Old: If I were to go back, you know, and be with my friends and not focus on my baby's life, I'd be going back to the same situation my dad did with me. My dad was never there for me, so he'd go out with his friends. He'd drink, get drunk. You know what I mean? He didn't care where we were at. I'd be doing the same thing. I mean, so it'd just be like pulling on a chain, you know.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: For most of them, it is the absence of their own fathers that has driven them here, their sometimes inarticulate, sometimes very eloquent young male pain so palpable.

STEVEN LOPEZ, 16 Years Old: Because when I was little, I didn't always have my dad there, and so it hurts a lot, not seeing your dad.

ANTHONY GONZALES, 16 Years Old: My dad was a teen dad too. My dad had my brother when he was 17. So like my dad wasn't really around, so if he was around, he would have told me the experience that he went through, and I would understand.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: Whether they'll make it or not over the long haul, whether they'll stay connected emotionally and financially to their children, no one knows. They are a work in progress, men trying to hang in, make a family, be part of one.

MARTIN ROMOS, 18 Years Old: I mean, I think about it all the time, and sometimes when I really do want to see and I can't see her, she'll call me and she'll just tell me she loves me. It tears me up inside when I can't be there for her to tell me that she loves me face to face. I don't know. It makes me real sad sometimes until I can't even talk about it, because it tears me up so bad, where she only lives two blocks away, and I can't go, because I don't want to get in a fight with her mom or with her parents.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: In Orange County, California, about 50 miles down the road from here, the social services agency working on the same theory obviously was found to be helping underage young women marry the men who had impregnated them. We're talking in some cases about 13 year old girls and 20 year old men. When the story broke, there was angry reaction, including from the governor of the state, who would rather see these fathers prosecuted for statutory rape, that is, for having sex with a minor, than see them married. These are such thorny issues, such hot-button, polarizing issues, there are no easy solutions, certainly none that are universally agreed upon. This is a sexed- up country but one with such a complicated, squeamish edge, part MTV, part Bible belt taboos. And in the middle are our children having children, some of whom, like the young men in this program, are trying to become the fathers they want to be.

HECTOR SERRANO, 18 Years Old: And if you aren't there, you know, who's going to be there for him, you know? Who else is going to be there for your kid if you're not there, the mom? That's only the mom, you know. A kid needs two people in his life--mom and dad--no matter what--regardless, you know. I think two people, if the two people are there, and they're willing to do the work for that baby, a lot of wonders could happen out of that baby. I mean, he could even become the President, you know.

ANNE TAYLOR FLEMING: I'm Anne Taylor Fleming. RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Monday, President and Mrs. Clinton arrived in Thailand for a one-day visit. The APEC summit meeting ended with an agreement on information technology among 18 Pacific Rim countries, and Defense Secretary Perry said no decision had yet been made on whether to deploy a multinational force to aid Rwandan refugees. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.