The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, day four of peacemaking and -keeping in Kosovo. Tom Bearden summarizes the day's developments, followed by three takes on American public opinion: Elizabeth Farnsworth talks to a group of citizens in Denver, Andrew Kohut lays out the results of a new poll, and Elizabeth Brackett reports on Serbian-American views in Chicago. Then come a look at a damaging new computer worm, and an update on the search for an AIDS vaccine. It all follows our summary of the news this Tuesday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: The Serbian Orthodox Church today demanded Yugoslav President Milosevic and his cabinet resign. A written statement said the interests of the people and their salvation were at stake. And NATO troops found more evidence of atrocities: Shallow graves around one town, charred remains in another, as Serb forces continued to withdraw on schedule. We'll have more on Kosovo right after this News Summary. A South Korean ship sank a North Korean torpedo boat and badly damaged five others today in the Yellow Sea; 30 North Korean sailors were believed killed. Others on both sides were injured, according to a Pentagon official. This is the eighth day of a standoff between the Koreas over choice fishing grounds. U.S. Navy and Air Force planes patrolled the area, but took no action. In Washington, Pentagon Spokesman Kenneth Bacon said this:

KENNETH BACON: We don't see signs of a wider North Korean alert at this stage. Obviously the U.S. position is that the North Koreans should refrain from provocative acts and that both sides should be as restrained as possible in -- in not allowing disputes that occur from time to time to spin out of control.

JIM LEHRER: Russia also urged the two Koreas to settle their differences at the bargaining table. Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering arrived in Beijing today for some hard diplomatic work. He and a team of experts will present a detailed report on the accidental bombing last month of China's embassy in Yugoslavia. Three Chinese citizens were killed. The U.S. apologized for the attack, blaming it on inaccurate maps used by Air Force pilots. U.S. nuclear weapons programs should be placed under new management, a presidential advisory panel said today. It recommended formation of an independent or semi-independent oversight agency to prevent breaches of security, like the recent allegations of Chinese spying. Energy Secretary Richardson immediately rejected the idea, but President Clinton said in a written statement he would review the recommendations. The Senate today approved some Y2K liability protections. The bill gives companies 90 days to fix problems before they can be sued for damages caused by computers that misread the year 2000. The bill also limits damage awards. The House has approved similar legislation, but President Clinton has said he'll veto it because it doesn't pro protect consumers. Rosa Parks was presented with Congress' highest civilian honor today, the Congressional Gold Medal. The 86-year-old civil rights heroine was lauded by President Clinton, members of Congress, and civil rights leaders at a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda. She was arrested in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The event sparked a year-long bus boycott organized by the Reverend Martin Luther Ling. President Clinton said this:

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Freedom's work is never done. There are still people who are discriminated against. There are still people -- [Applause] -- there are still people that because of their human condition are looked down on, derided, degraded, demeaned. And we should all remember the powerful example of this one citizen. And those of us with greater authority and power should attempt every day in every way to follow her lead.

JIM LEHRER: The actual medal Parks is to receive will be cast and delivered at a later date. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to a Kosovo peace summary; a three-part look at public opinion on the war, from Denver, from the polls, and from Serbian-Americans; plus the deadly computer worm, and an AIDS vaccine update.

UPDATE - PEACEMAKING

JIM LEHRER: Tom Bearden has our Kosovo News Summary.

TOM BEARDEN: KFOR troops are finding new evidence of atrocities throughout Kosovo as they advance into the province. Dutch and German troops found some 20 charred bodies in the village of Alika Crusa near the City of Prizren.

CAPT. FRANK ENSCHERMANN, German KFOR Medic: There is a leg there and head there. You see a torso over there and it's very - it's horror, just a horror.

TOM BEARDEN: Three more mass graves were discovered just off a road in Koronica, six miles West of Jakovica town. Residents said they may contain as many as 150 bodies. Meanwhile, NATO said the withdrawal of Serbian military forces was continuing on schedule and will likely meet tonight's deadline for their complete evacuation of Southern Kosovo.

LT. COL. ROBIN CLIFFORD, KFOR Spokesman: Our close surveillance has indicated that by certainly yesterday evening about 20,000 Yugoslav personnel, half the total we were expecting to find in the area, were withdrawing or had already withdrawn. And we can also verify that over 115 armored personnel carriers, 65 artillery pieces and 37 tanks have with withdrawn, all this despite some severe traffic congestion, breakdowns, and shortages of vehicles, including heavy lifts.

TOM BEARDEN: Serb troops are apparently burning houses as they retreat. Reporters accompanying British troops photographed houses burning in the area near Podjevo. There are reports that the Kosovo Liberation Army is also burning Serb homes in other villages as residents depart. A scuffle broke out as a Serb convoy was departing the town of Niljane. French troops tried to keep back jeering Albanians who pelted a car. A hand grenade was tossed into the middle of the crowd and several people were wounded. The KLA claims to control Prizren, the second largest city in Kosovo outright; however, their commander said they would accept KFOR orders and would not harass Serbs.

REXHA EKREM, KLA Commander: We never hurt civilians, we never hurt children, females and old people. We never had against them -- nothing. All the men who have been involved in war crimes will be responsible for that activity. All others, they are free to stay. We don't make pressure to anyone but we will not keep anyone to do what is his wish.

TOM BEARDEN: The KLA are a potentially thorny problem for KFOR because the U.N. resolution that governs the international peacekeeping mission calls for the KLA to be demilitarized. But the KLA commander said they have wouldn't disarm without orders from Kosovo's provisional government. That issue was also on the mind of Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, who met with Boris Yeltsin this morning. Later, he spoke with reporters about efforts to resolve differences with NATO over the role of Russiantroops in the peacekeeping operation.

SERGEI STEPASHIN: [speaking through interpreter] In the coming days a meeting between Russian and U.S. defense ministers is due to take place. We hope that by the nd of the week all the difficulties will be solved. The main condition is the U.N. resolution on disarming Albanian armed groups, which are already performing some terrorist acts.

TOM BEARDEN: A contingent of about 200 Russian troops continues to occupy the airport at Pristina. They were resupplied today by a small convoy of trucks. And they asked for and received water from KFOR troops. At the State Department in Washington, Spokesman James Rubin cautioned against making too much of their presence.

JAMES RUBIN, State Department Spokesman: I know there is tendency for everyone to focus on the negative, but let's remember that this is 200 troops, and NATO's forces are now up to 16,000 and will soon be at 25,000, so this is a very tiny fraction of the peacekeepers in Kosovo. And they are basically staying in one place and now working on arrangements for their integration into a unified command structure.

TOM BEARDEN: Rubin said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Defense Secretary William Cohen would meet with their Russian counterparts in Helsinki, Finland, on Thursday to discuss the Russian role. Kosovar Albanian refugees are lining up by thousands as the borders again, but this time to return, this despite pleas from United Nations aid officials who insist it is not yet safe it did so. One elderly woman was killed and her husband injured by a land mine when they tried to return to their home from Blace, Macedonia.

ASTRID KAHN, UNHCR Spokesperson: At present, there are more than a thousand people trying to return to Kosovo. Yesterday already 350 have returned. UNHCR is extremely concerned about this, because the situation is not safe at all in Kosovo. NATO is still deploying troops. They're trying to find out whether the areas are safe or not. There are a lot of mines everywhere and UNHCR is only just setting up their offices, and we cannot give protection at the moment to these refugees that are returning now.

TOM BEARDEN: U.N.-chartered aircraft have begun delivering medical supplies to the battered cities of the province as relief agencies work to restore the medical system.

OMAR RABIN, UNHCR Spokesman: In the last two and a half months, there have been no health facilities at all. The doctors have to run for their life, and there was no supply of drugs and the system has completely collapsed.

TOM BEARDEN: The U.N. will also begin using helicopters to deliver urgently needed food to the estimated 1.5 million ethnic Albanians that are homeless inside Kosovo. Officials of the World Food Program said some people in the hills are surviving on boiled grass and wild berries. Kosovar Serbs are also becoming refugees, abandoning their homes and moving towards Serbia.

DENNIS McNAMARA, U.N. Balkans Envoy: The Serb minority population are getting into tractors and covering themselves with plastic just like the Kosovars did a few weeks and months ago. That's a tragic sight for us.

TOM BEARDEN: In Yugoslavia, President Slobodan Milosevic made only his second public appearance since last October in the town of Alexinoc. The Serb leader said 30 civilians were killed by NATO bombs here and that the rebuilding of his country and reconciliation with the rest of the world would begin here. But in Belgrade, opposition leader Vuk Draskovic was calling for urgent political reforms for Serbia.

VUK DRASKOVIC: It means creation of a transitional democratic government, European-oriented, on republican level and on federal level.

TOM BEARDEN: At the same time, the influential orthodox church called for Milosevic's resignation.

FOCUS - PUBLIC OPINIONS - VIEW FROM DENVER

JIM LEHRER: Now, the first of three takes on American public reaction to the situation in Kosovo. It comes from a group of citizens in Denver that we have gone to from time to time. Elizabeth Farnsworth spoke to them last night.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: It's good to see you all again. Thanks for being with us. Eric Duran, on this program last week, Secretary of State Albright said, "Americans should be proud of achieving the peace in Kosovo." Are you proud?

ERIC DURAN: I'm extremely proud of what happened in Kosovo. I mean, what we're talking about is a situation where the Americans or the United States didn't have, you know a vital economic interest and we were just taking a stance on what was morally right and what is morally correct, and the President did a good job of bringing NATO together for the first time to utilize its force to bring peace about in Kosovo, without sustaining any real military losses, and the U.S. achieved all of its objectives. So I'm proud of, of what our country's done there.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Are you proud, Chris?

CHRIS GOODWIN: Not in the least. I think this policy was a big mistake from the very beginning, and it's turned into a disaster -- over 800,000 refugees, probably more to come; the destruction of Yugoslavia; devastation in Kosovo. I, I think this was another case of American foreign policy really being a, a military policy, one of shoot first and ask questions later.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And you're not proud of, of NATO basically using all its force on behalf of refugees and on behalf of human rights here.

CHRIS GOODWIN: No, I don't. I, I have a lot of questions about what the real motives were behind this whole policy. I think it had as much to do with trying to justify the existence of NATO as anything else.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Dee, how do you feel about it?

DEE CISNEROS: I felt that it was the right reason to go in, it was the right way it was handled militarily, and I thought it was, everything was done the right way, just exactly what they should have done.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So you're proud, as an American you're proud.

DEE CISNEROS: I'm very proud, yes, I'm very proud. I think we, we saved those people from genocide; it's better for refugees than to have them wiped out. And no body bags -- that was a big improvement over other wars. And I was happy that the ground troops did not go in. I think if, if air wars are the new thing, I think we should we go along with that.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Linda Stahnke, how do you see this peace?

LINDA STAHNKE: I don't agree. I, I think there are lots of bodies that are unaccounted for. There's a whole generation, maybe two generations of Albanian men who are missing. We don't know where they are. And I don't, I don't think our actions really served the refugees. I think Milosevic got what he wanted, and how it turns out from here, we'll have to see. I think justice is the most important thing, not a matter of a military victory, but if there is justice for Milosevic and for the paramilitary troops and whoever else is responsible for those who had to flee, those whose homes were taken away from them, whoever's burning homes as they're leaving now, and, and I think that's much more the issue than some kind of a military triumph that we can claim. We should have blockaded in the beginning. We should have had sanctions. There were other things we could have done before we brought out the biggest hammer.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How about you, Robert Taylor, how do you feel about it?

ROBERT TAYLOR: I'm very proud of the actions we've taken. I think looking for a war, any kind of military action with no damages, structurally or, or casualties is like looking for a toy that doesn't break after Christmas. It's unreasonable. There's always going to be casualties, there's always going to be death and destruction, and I'm very proud of the President. I think that if there's a role to be assumed by the United States and in the future military actions, it should be that of keeping peace.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Brent Neiser, do you see it as a victory for the U.S. and NATO?

BRENT NEISER: I think it's a -- an air power success initially, but this is just act one of a very long three-act play we're going to be in. The inciting incident was Milosevic going in with ethnic cleansing, which I deplore; and I'm glad NATO and others stood up to do something about it. But act two now is trying to achieve an, some stability, a peace. This is the Balkans, I mean this has a long history, but we have some other actors in here now because of some of our actions -- China, who is not involved directly, but that's going to include some of our actions and Russia is a wild card we have to play with a lot and that's act two. We've got to work all that out -- and the big costs, the big money issues associated with this. And act three is how does this play into the precedent we set as a nation and as NATO, this idea of a bully NATO kind of invading another country? It's never really happened before. We sort of skirted past the UN. There's some big international laws, some long-term issues, as well as our military posture as well. And it's going to take a long time to sort those out. We need to think what we're doing very carefully.

CHRIS GOODWIN: There's some serious questions about our own law too. The President conducted a war that I think was in violation of the Constitution and in violation of the War Powers Act itself. And I, oh, the long term effects of that I think are very serious. Is that going to continue? Is the President of the United States now free to conduct war on any country he wants without approval of the Congress? That's a very dangerous precedent.

RABBI STEVEN FOSTER: Does the President of the United States determine for the rest of the world how far one individual could go? If we in the United States had taken that step in the 1930s, in the early 1940s, perhaps we would not have had to face what we had to face when this was all over. Ethnic cleansing is -- this is not the first time ethnic cleansing has taken place in the Balkans and in Europe. I wish that President Roosevelt had taken the step in 1940, 1941 just to bomb railheads going into concentration camps. I think that our President did the right thing.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: One second --

CHRIS GOODWIN: I agree with that, but I think comparing what happened, what happened in Kosovo to, to the Nazi Holocaust, to the Holocaust committed against the Jews in World War II is, is ridiculous; that's not the same thing.

RABBI STEVEN FOSTER: It's not the same thing, it's not the same thing to you. It certainly is the same thing to those people who are being ethnically cleansed.

CHRIS GOODWIN: Those people were refugees, they were not -- they were refugees, they'd been thrown out of their homes. It's a terrible civil war. It should not have happened, but they were not herded into extermination camps and killed.

LOU LOPEZ: How can anybody sit back and allow atrocities to take place where hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people are slaughtered and, and we don't do a thing about it, you know? We're part of NATO. It was our responsibility to jump in the middle of this and try to resolve it. I just can't understand how anyone can say that there were not atrocities occurring over there, that those civilian, defenseless civilians were being slaughtered and we were standing by -- and we weren't going to do anything about it? I think that's ridiculous.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Dennis Coughlin, does the President deserve a lot of credit here? Let me just give a quote. The President was interviewed by Jim Lehrer on Friday and he said, "I'm confident that I did the right thing in the right way." Do you agree with that?

DENNIS COUGHLIN: I think he did the exact right thing, but I think the tough part is to come. I think that the easy part, not necessarily politically, but the easy part was the war. The tough part will be the peace. And that's when Americans can truly be happy and, and truly be proud of what we've done if we are successful in negotiating a long-term peace there. That's where -- but what he did, Elizabeth, I think was absolutely right.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Anybody concerned about this kind of warfare, Eric Duran?

ERIC DURAN: I think the one thing that does concern me is that now American people's expectations or the U.S. expectations, might be a little bit unrealistic. We fought a war in Iraq and we had few casualties and we now push the Serbians out of Kosovo without any casualties at all and, and so now I think our, our threshold of, our tolerance of pain is much, much lower, and I think we have greater expectations of our military.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Chris.

CHRIS GOODWIN: I think any time there is a military power who can exercise the kind of power we can exercise almost with impunity, the kind of technology we can use, I think that's a very dangerous situation; I think it breeds a certain amount of arrogance on the part of this country or any other country that possesses that kind of power. And that's real dangerous.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Just on that basis, the precedent worries you?

CHRIS GOODWIN: Yes.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Rabbi Foster.

RABBI STEVEN FOSTER: I'm not sure that we can even talk about winning a war, and I'm not sure that this was a war. It was one-sided, really, I'm not sure this was a war, but we've allowed Milosevic to escape any kind of responsibility for what caused this and we allowed Saddam Hussein to escape ten years ago.

DENNIS COUGHLIN: I would not want to have victory or defeat depended upon whether we killed or assassinated or removed from power one individual. I don't think that's where we should judge our victory or defeat. I think we really --

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: It doesn't bother you that Milosevic is still in power.

DENNIS COUGHLIN: No, I mean, obviously we would rather him not be involved.

RABBI STEVEN FOSTER: You don't think that we're going to be -- we're going to be responding to him again?

DENNIS COUGHLIN: Well perhaps we will, or perhaps we won't, but I, I don't think that this particular conflict should be judged on whether he is or is not in power as I don't think that Saddam Hussein, whether he is or is not in power should be the measure by whether we win or lose. I think really what we will do is, can we maintain peace there? Are we and those people in a more secure position? Did we establish some kind of moral authority that, that the United States and NATO and the other 13 countries are not going to allow ethnic cleansing?

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay, that's what I want to pursue. Is this a new era that we're in?

LINDA STAHNKE: I'm concerned about uh, the principle here. It seems like we've reacted emotionally to, to the circumstances of the ethnic cleansing, but we've really picked and chosen because this has happened elsewhere. This is not a one-time, a one-shot thing. You know, we had, we claimed -- you know -- we were helping the Kurds when it was Iraq and, and now there's this one, but what -- there are other things going on in, in the world similarly, so are we establishing a principle whereby the United States always jumps in? Or do we jump in every other time, or do we jump in only on the times where we feel like we have some sort of an interest or we have allies that we are obligated to help, and are we the leader, or are we the support for the neighboring countries? I think we should be the support for those neighboring countries, not, not the leading edge all around the world.

ERIC DURAN: Well I, I disagree with that. I think you have to pick and choose your battles. We can't go into China and, and, and go to war with China because of what they did in Tiananmen Square. But we can act prudently and properly when we see a smaller country that we think we can use our military effectively to implement and protect people for their human rights. We can't have one broad generalization policy because that will lead to, to world war. But I think when we see a smaller country that's, that's being abusive and committing atrocities, then, then we do have to take a more, a more --

CHRIS GOODWIN: And the small countries can't defend themselves against the U.S. military -

ERIC DURAN: Who are doing ethnic cleansing - absolutely --

CHRIS GOODWIN: And the larger countries who commit human rights violations get trade deals and arm sales to the --

ERIC DURAN: That's the unfortunate reality of the world unless you're --

CHRIS GOODWIN: Well it's a reality that needs to change. It's not something we accept and make part of our policy.

ERIC DURAN: Well we, we're trying to change it but we can't declare war on China.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: One second, Rabbi Foster, the Russian standoff that is occurring at the Pristina airport. How worried are you about Russia right now?

RABBI STEVEN FOSTER: I'm not worried about Russia. I'm more worried about China, to be honest

with you. I think the Chinese are the ones that have lost something here, and that was very emotional for the Chinese. I'm not sure that the Chinese are just going to sit back and say, well, we've accepted the apology of the United States or of NATO and everything will be okay. I'm, I'm not quite sure exactly what's going to happen, nor do I think that any of us here know exactly what's going to happen.

LOU LOPEZ: I would hope that we're not looking at another East Berlin type situation where the Russians all of a sudden declare -- and build a wall and here we go again. You know we're looking at another --

DENNIS COUGHLIN: I think that Russia is a very different country today. They've got an awful lot of internal problems. I -- I just don't think that they are a major threat, and, therefore, I am saying I think a lot of this is just posturing. I think the more people, the more nations that they can bring to the table and to be part of the peace process, the better chance the peace process has of working. So I'm, I'm all in favorof having the Russians in there.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay, thank you all very much for being with us, it's good to see you

again, as always.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, two more public takes on Kosovo, a deadly computer worm, and an AIDS vaccine update.

FOCUS - PUBLIC OPINIONS

JIM LEHRER: Our second look at public opinion and Kosovo, and to Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Andy, overlay your-- you have a new poll, that you have just finished -- overlay your poll findings over what we just heard those folks say in Denver.

ANDREW KOHUT: Well, if I had had the good judgment to ask our representative sample, are you proud of this action, the Albright quote, I think we would have gotten a yes and a no. Our poll suggested people are glad that we did what we did, are glad that we made the effort, but they have mixed view of whether we're successful or not. In fact, they're not sure whether we've been successful or not. If you look at the overall numbers support for the air war rebounded from 52 percent back up to 62 post -- post the peace settlement. But when we asked people did we achieve our goals, it's a very mixed rating. 46 percent say yes. In fact, we have a slide on this.

JIM LEHRER: We put up the wrong slide a minute ago. We got ahead of ourselves. Here's the one we want.

ANDREW KOHUT: 46 percent say yes, 40 percent say now. And the Gallup Poll has a comparable question where they say, does this represent victory, and 40 percent of Americans say yes. So, while there's a general view we did the right thing in trying this, and the air war was the right thing to do, there's still significant questions as to whether we achieved our goals and whether we're there.

JIM LEHRER: Now, to the question, in fact, that the first slide was out of place on, which was the U.S. participation in the peacekeeping force. Folks are in favor of that.

ANDREW KOHUT: That's a strong measure of support, 56 percent favor, 37 percent oppose. ABC has the similar results, so does CBS. All of the polls, unlike support for ground war, all of the polls support peacekeeping. Now, that's quite different than four years ago in 1995 or 1996 when we went into Bosnia when the public was divided, sharply divided over peacekeeping. So there has been kind of a change in thinking about what our -- how much participation we should be involved in with regard to these humanitarian conflicts.

JIM LEHRER: Could that be a shift in -- I mean, a real shift in the way we see our role in the future, this new era we're in?

ANDREW KOHUT: Well, it could be a learning process. I mean, the American public saw these pictures, saw what happened in Bosnia. And now when we ask people, do we have a moral responsibility to do something in Europe when one country or one group commits genocide against another, 60 percent say yes about the same percentage who support this notion. This is very different than the response we had to Bosnia a while ago. It represents a change.

JIM LEHRER: And particularly as the folks in Denver represented, the idea that if we can keep the peace, be peacekeepers, without jeopardizing any American lives, that's the new wrinkle, right?

ANDREW KOHUT: That is the new wrinkle and that's where the public's concerns are. 40 percent say we're very worried that we may incur casualties in peacekeeping, far less concern about cost. Only 20 percent say we're very worried about cost. And people see this as an inherently stable situation. And that's what troubles them. Only a third in the ABC/Post survey, for example, say that peace will be maintained. And people worry that the deal isn't really done and that we are still in harm's way. Yet, there is -- there is considerable support for peacekeeping.

JIM LEHRER: What is -- did you ask any questions about President Clinton?

ANDREW KOHUT: President Clinton did not get a boost. His, as you may know, his approval ratings went counsel down in May as the war seemed to be not going very well as the accidental bombings became widely known. His ratings slipped from the 60 percent level, which we've saw for so long during impeachment to the mid 50's. He did not get some big jolt that brought him back up into the 60's. So there's no sense that there's triumph. The American public is not triumphant over this as we were triumphant at the end of the Gulf War and other military conflicts.

JIM LEHRER: And remind us on that. I mean, President Bush got a tremendous lift, very famous lift in the polls as a result of the Gulf War, did he not?

ANDREW KOHUT: Well, he went to 90 percent one year before he was turned out of office, I might add, but he did go to 90 percent.

JIM LEHRER: But historically through the polls, in the polls, when something good happens in an overseas way, the President usually gets a big kick out of it, doesn't he?

ANDREW KOHUT: The President, particularly in the Cold War era, would always get a boost if he did something that was a success. But this is not the Cold War era and this is not in the views of Americans a clear success.

JIM LEHRER: And that's the difference here.

ANDREW KOHUT: That is the difference. And we do see a somewhat better evaluation for his handling of foreign policy. But the bottom-line indicator approval is still 55, not 60 or 62, what it was for so long during the impeachment time.

JIM LEHRER: And I'm interested in what you say, you passed over a moment ago, that the -- on your poll the people feel that we have a moral responsibility to stop genocide, is that right?

ANDREW KOHUT: Yes. And that's quite a different response than we had. We're feeling our way through -- the American public is feeling its way through the post Cold War era. That's clear. And they weigh very carefully both -- what we should achieve and what the costs are. And this American way of war, the woman in Denver referred to it as this new way of fighting a war, Americans feel comfort in that. They don't feel any embarrassment in not getting casualties. They worry about casualties.

JIM LEHRER: As long as there's a good result.

ANDREW KOHUT: As long as there's a good result.

JIM LEHRER: And for a good purpose.

ANDREW KOHUT: And for a good reason, which isn't to say we won't take casualties. I mean, prior to the Gulf War the American public -- the average American said about 10,000 casualties. That's very different from this situation.

JIM LEHRER: Absolutely. Andy Kohut. Thank you very much.

ANDREW KOHUT: You're welcome.

JIM LEHRER: Take three on the war: It comes from a group of Serbian-Americans who live in Chicago. Elizabeth Brackett of WTTW talked with them shortly after the bombing began, and again last week, after it ended.

CORRESPONDENT: A figure far lower than the 5,000 deaths NATO estimates -

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: It was a relief for Serbian-American Anna Pavichevich to hear that the bombing had stopped. Pavichevich had spent much of the last several months watching the war or protesting against it.

DEMONSTRATOR: Down with NATO! Down with NATO!

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: She disagreed with U.S. and NATO policy, and she disagreed with the President's claim of victory.

ANNA PAVICHEVICH: If they want to say they won, that's fine. I think that the Serbian people have shown the world that they are capable of taking it and of withstanding a tremendous, tremendous amount of agony and pain and suffering and to be able to maintain that with dignity. I guess I'm going to say that I think everybody lost this war. The Kosovo Albanians lost this war, their homes have been destroyed. And the likelihood of them being able to return to any life similar to what they had before is, I'm sure, significantly changed. NATO hasn't won anything. I think they've shown themselves to be evil.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Desko Nikitovic, a member of the opposition before he left Yugoslavia, didn't believe either President Clinton or Slobodan Milosevic's claim to victory.

DESKO NIKITOVIC, Serbian Unity Congress: Serbs lost, number one, because they've been greatly demonized like they've never been demonized in its history, throughout this war. Number two, Serbs risk now to lose their ancestral land, this is Kosovo. And basically 200,000 Serbs could be very soon refugees in Serbia, like we had 600,000 refugees from Croatia. Serbian infrastructure is almost leveled to rubble. So Serbia did lose a lot. Serbian people did lose a lot. There is no room for any celebration. This is not victory.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: President Clinton defined victory as the end of ethnic cleansing. But like most Serbian-Americans, Pavichevich never admitted that it was ethnic cleansing that forced the Kosovar Albanians out of Kosovo.

ANNA PAVICHEVICH: We have to understand that the Albanians did not leave primarily because the Serbian gun was pointed at them. They left because of the bombing.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Orthopedic Surgeon, Dr. Slobodan Vucicevic, was even angrier about President Clinton's claim that ethnic cleansing had been stopped.

DR. SLOBODAN VUCICEVIC: He is standing in front of the whole nation and world telling people what ethnic cleansing is all about. He doesn't know history, he doesn't know geography.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: It was the intensity of the bombing campaign that provoked much of the anger.

DR. SLOBODAN VUCICEVIC: We destroyed people's bridges. We destroyed people's houses. We killed so many Albanians. We killed so many Serbs. We had -- before the bombing, European commission had 2,000 observers on the ground. We should have put another 2,000, another 4,000 before we dropped the bomb.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Despite the anger, none of the Chicago Serbs we spoke to wanted to see Milosevic remain in power.

ANNA PAVICHEVICH: I hope he's gone. I hope we never hear from him again. I have also said that I think that he's a lucky man to only be charged with war crimes. Originally I had visions of Ceasescu in my head as an ultimate result for this man and what I thought might end up happening to him.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: What do you see now as Milosevic's future?

DESKO NIKITOVIC: I believe that Milosevic doesn't have one. And I felt that he -- much earlier, he should be replaced, he should be removed from political scene. It was very clear long time ago that Milosevic is part of the problem, that he is not part of solution.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: But all felt that money for rebuilding Serbia should not be withheld if Milosevic remains.

ANNA PAVICHEVICH: If you are going to engage in the kind of bombing that you have, and if you're going to destroy a nation, if you're going to turn it into a ghetto, then it is incumbent upon you if you want to have any kind of moral stand left in the international community, at least in some way, to make amends to those people by providing them some kind of financial recompensation for the criminal acts that you engaged on them.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: So what stands out for you over the last 78 days of war?

DR. SLOBODAN VUCICEVIC: America doesn't realize what America has done. That is the saddest part of this chapter of American history. And somebody will sit down and write one day and will reflect and say, "Why did you do it?" And then fingers are going to be crossed and pointed, but it will be too late.

ANNA PAVICHEVICH: I don't trust my country anymore. I don't trust my country to do the right thing. And that although I love what America stands for, I don't love or trust my government.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The President said formidable challenges on the road to peace lay ahead. On that, these Serbian Americans would agree.

FOCUS - WORM INFESTED

JIM LEHRER: The mess made by a computer worm, and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: The worm in question is the third major computer bug to sweep through cyberspace this year. It's officially known as Worm.Explore.Zip, and it's spread through E-mail. Since last week, the bug has infected tens of thousands of computers in more than a dozen countries, destroying files as it goes. Major U.S. companies, like Boeing and General Electric, were hit. And some were forced to shut down their E-mail networks temporarily to guard against spreading the infection. Here to explain the new bug and its implications are Dan Schrader, vice president of new technology at Trend Micro Inc., the country's third largest maker of anti-virus software, and Richard Smith, president of Phar Lap Software, who helped identify the creator of another major virus this year, known as Melissa.

And, Dan Schrader, starting with you, how did this virus spread so fast? How does it work?

DAN SCHRADER: Well, it's a mystery how fast it spread. It showed up in Israel earlier this week, last week, bounced around Israel for a few days and then Thursday suddenly broke out, and we started hearing reports around the world. It's not really a virus. It's a type of computer program called a worm; that's a program that makes copies of itself from one computer to another. It spreads in two ways: First, it responds to E-mails. If you're infected and you receive an E-mail, it will respond to the E-mail, sending a note back to the person who sent it to you, including the infected file.

MARGARET WARNER: Let me interrupt you right there. We have a graphic showing the kind of thing you would get on your computer. And you get a message, essentially, an E-mail from someone, one, that you know and also you just sent an E-mail to this person, correct? So it's perfectly plausible they're answering you back.

DAN SCHRADER: Yes. It seems to be coming from a trusted source.

MARGARET WARNER: Yes.

DAN SCHRADER: It's responding to an E-mail that you sent. You have no reason not to trust it.

MARGARET WARNER: But if you open the attachment, which they ask, your friend asks you to, then boom.

DAN SCHRADER: Yes. The first thing it starts doing is it starts deleting files. Actually, it's worse than deleting files. It overwrites the files with another file of the same name, zero length, and that's particularly malicious because it's really hard too recover those files.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. And then it also, what, sends a copy of itself to anyone who sends you an E-mail?

DAN SCHRADER: That's exactly what it does. It sends a copy of itself to anyone who sends you an E-mail. Then, if you're on a computer network, say within a corporation, it will start searching out the network and see if it can copy itself on it other computers within your network using a technology that Microsoft provides in its operating systems called "shares."

MARGARET WARNER: And let me just interrupt you, because you have made a distinction between a worm and a virus. Is that the difference, that a virus infects when you actually send something to someone, whereas a worm is sort of self-propelling?

DAN SCHRADER: That's exactly the difference. A virus is a program that copies itself within your computer. It infects from one file to another file. A worm copies from one computer to another computer. Now, that's a nice, neat distinction. Unfortunately, the hacker-cracker community hasn't been so neat and they often combine the two. So, we see viruses with worm-like characteristics, worms that are spread as Trojans, a lot of different ways of mixing these different tools.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Richard Smith, how much damage -- why are people so troubled by this? What kind of damage does this cause? Has anyone tried to quantify it in economic terms?

RICHARD SMITH: Well, it's deleting people's document files and spreadsheet files and programming files. So it's stuff that you work on every day. And if you don't have backup, it could take, you know, many, many months to reproduce this information. It's particularly nasty in that respect. It goes after people's individual work. And it also -- the way that it deletes files, as Dan was talking about, overwrites them. So, if it deleted a more simple way, there could have been recovery tools to get it. But it doesn't look like that's possible. So, putting economic value on this is tough because you're looking at people's time and effort. But it can be very, very - you know -- it's just mean frankly because it could be individual's work, somebody's writing a novel or it could be a business plan. It's really hard to say put a dollar figure on it. But it's very nasty.

MARGARET WARNER: And is it fair to say that the fact that we're all becoming more and more networked, particularly through the Internet, is making the whole world of computer users just more vulnerable to these?

RICHARD SMITH: Yes. Exactly. That's what we're really seeing. The virus writers and the worm writers have really discovered the Internet and are sending around these things via E-mail. So, they get transmitted much quicker than the olden days when things were done by floppy disk. And so the interconnection of the world is really the story here.

MARGARET WARNER: So, Dan Schrader, how does one guard against it? How does an individual guard against it; how do companies guard against it?

DAN SCHRADER: Well, the answer is the same as we've been saying for the past few years, following safe computing practices -- not opening up file attachments if you don't know why someone sent it to you; not responding to E-mails that you don't know why someone sent it to you. However, in this case, it's coming from a trusted source. And so the answer is running up-to-date computer software. Unfortunately, this worm was spreading faster than you can update your virus protection products, so we have a problem here. And that is the malicious code is spreading at Internet speed, and it's very hard to stay up to date with it.

MARGARET WARNER: You mean, so most of us who work in companies that have computer systems, it runs a sort of computer virus program. But what you're saying is, what, this was just outstripping the ability of those programs to stay up with it?

DAN SCHRADER: Sure. The anti-virus industry is a reactive industry. We find a malicious bit of code and we find a way of detecting it and curing it, and we distribute that patch, that update to all of our customers.

MARGARET WARNER: And that's, you get that little thing on your screen saying do you want to receive this, is that right?

DAN SCHRADER: Exactly. There's a lot of different ways of distributing it. Sometimes it tells the users, sometimes it doesn't. Some products require the users to go up to the vendor's web site and to download the latest patch. It's a lot of different technologies. The point is that it's reactive. And a lot of end users, a lot of people don't have time or the knowledge to go and update the virus protection products.

MARGARET WARNER: So Richard Smith, what's the answer then?

RICHARD SMITH: Well, right now really it's a to stay away from file attachments. I mean, you really have to make sure that if someone sends you something that you expect to get it. I took a look at this particular worm and it was a very clever -- it changed the icon also. And I almost opened it up by mistake.

MARGARET WARNER: Wow.

RICHARD SMITH: So it's -- you have to be very, very careful with file attachments. I think overall there's different kinds of viruses out there. And I think in the operating system level and some of the application areas like in E-mail readers we need to pay more attention to preventing these things. This particular one is a tough one though.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, You were credited in many news reports as having helped track done the creator of the last very tough virus, Melissa. How hard is it to track down, how hard will it be to track down who did this is this and how do you do it?

RICHARD SMITH: Okay. Well, this particular virus is going to be tougher to track down than Melissa. Melissa was a word document. And it turns out that Microsoft Word leave as lot of personal information in files. So anybody who writes macro viruses is probably going to be discovered because their name is in the files or identifying numbers. This particular virus is sent out as an executable though, and I've looked at it, and there's very little -

MARGARET WARNER: I'm sorry you have to explain that. What's an executable?

RICHARD SMITH: Well, like a program file. It's like a program, a regular program file, a regular program that's sent. And there's no -- doesn't appear to be any kind of information about who wrote it in there. I think the -- probably the key to locating this person will be to try to find the first infection, which I call infection zero -- possibly over in Israel -- to find the person, the author, who sent the worm to the first victim. And that might be some of the anti-virus companies who got -- first heard about this worm -- they'd be the one that maybe could help track this down.

MARGARET WARNER: Dan Schrader?

DAN SCHRADER: Well, I agree that it's going to be the way to track this particular bit of code down. Unfortunately, the virus writing community has gotten to be very good at hiding their tracks. We got lucky in the case of the Melissa virus. I don't know if we will now. But I think the solution to this is going to be integrating virus protection into the infrastructure of the Internet. We need to have people calling their ISP's and saying --

MARGARET WARNER: I'm sorry, ISP's?

DAN SCHRADER: Their Internet Service Providers, the people who actually give them the connection to the Internet and say, okay, I'm paying $20 a month, give me a virus-free connection. And when we start getting that, we'll be able to contain these problems much, much faster.

MARGARET WARNER: So, you mean, make it system-wide, rather than within the individual companies or certainly the individual user?

DAN SCHRADER: Yes. Any security expert will tell you if you're relying on the end user to update his software or follow safe practices, your security is going to be vulnerable. You need to build security into the infrastructure of the organization. If it's a company, you should have Virus protection as part of the E-mail system. If it's an individual, then they should be getting their Internet connection from a company that provides a virus-free Internet connectivity.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, thank you Dan Schrader and Richard Smith, thanks very much.

RICHARD SMITH: Thank you.

DAN SCHRADER: Thank you.

UPDATE - AIDS VACCINE

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, an update on the search for an AIDS vaccine. Fred De Sam Lazaro of KTCS-St. Paul-Minneapolis, reports.

MARY FOOTE, Volunteer: Do it on the first shot.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Mary Foote is not H.I.V.- positive, but for almost a decade, this 40-year-old mother of nine has come in to be tested for the AIDS virus.

MARY FOOTE: My husband had full-blown AIDS. He's also diabetic. I'm one that takes care of all of his sores, and I come in contact with his blood, which puts me at high risk. We are sexually active; that puts me at high risk. He's also on insulin, and I have gotten stuck with his needles, which puts me at high risk.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Mary Foote and her doctor, Keith Henry, have always assumed she'd become infected someday, but late last year, they became more optimistic. That's when Foote became a volunteer for the largest trial so far of a vaccine against the AIDS virus.

DOCTOR: You understand that of course we don't know -

MARY FOOTE: Right.

DOCTOR: -- that the vaccine actually protects you against HIV infection?

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The vaccine Foote volunteered to take is called AIDSVAX, developed by a private California firm called Vax Gen. The vaccine works as sort of a decoy. It contains certain proteins from the virus, and is supposed to trick the human body's immune defenses into high alert. Don Francis, a well-known vaccine specialist, is Vax Gen's president.

DON FRANCIS, Vax Gen: You take the outside of the virus, you make an imitation through recombitant technology, we inject that into individuals, they produce antibodies, and those antibodies then will kill the virus when the individual gets exposed to it later -- really classic vaccinology.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It sounds pretty straightforward, but HIV, constantly mutating, has managed to elude many attempts to block its path, including one by an earlier version of AIDSVAX. The Vax Gen Company insists its new improved vaccine will work better because it contains pieces of the two most common strains of HIV found in North America. What really distinguishes AIDSVAX from several other trial vaccines is it's the first one the federal government has allowed to move beyond lab studies and small-scale human studies.

DOCTOR: Ready?

PATIENT: Mm-hmm.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: 5,000 volunteers across North America will receive the injections every six months for a three-year period. Two-thirds of them will get the vaccine, the rest a mock dosage, or placebo. In Thailand, 2,500 volunteers will also participate in a parallel study that will test AIDSVAX against the HIV strain most common in that nation. Worldwide, some 16,000 people are infected with HIV every day. Dr. Frank Rhame, a veteran Minneapolis AIDS physician, says Vax Gen is a no-lose proposition, even if it doesn't work.

DR. FRANK RHAME, AIDS Physician: And it might work, you know. I'm saying even if it doesn't work, we're going to learn a lot. So even if it's only 50 percent effective or 30 percent effective, if we can tease out from the immune responses, the laboratory study of the immune responses, what components are protected, that will be a tremendous advancement.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The first step for Dr. Rhame has been finding volunteers, a task for which he hired public health counselor Kevin Sitter.

KEVIN SITTER, AIDS Counselor: Hey, Charlie, it's Kevin calling. 3:30. Okay. You need to be done by what time?

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: To enroll, subjects have to test negative for HIV but be at high risk for infection. Uninfected partners of AIDS patients, like Mary Foote, are obvious candidates, but there are relatively few in number.

KEVIN SITTER: So this is about the vaccine study that's started in town. It's a national study of an HIV vaccine that will hopefully keep HIV-negative people negative.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Mostly, Sitter is working places with so-called high-risk populations, like this gay-themed gift shop.

KEVIN SITTER: Some of those places are bars, social events. They include cruising space. So I go out to parks and places where people cruise, offer condoms, talk about the vaccine, talk about safety.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: But some critics see a contradiction between talking about vaccines and talking about safety, since the study is counting on unsafe behavior to see if the vaccine works. Ethicist Arthur Caplan worries. Will scientists stress the safe-sex message? Will volunteers be lulled into engaging into more high-risk sex?

ARTHUR CAPLAN, Medical Ethicist: When you put seat belts in the cars, people drive a little faster, because they know they have got that protection margin -- protective margin; put air bags, and they go a little faster still. If you're giving out vaccine, you may say, "Unsafe sex, well, I wouldn't do that too often, but once in a while I fall off the wagon. Now that I'm on the vaccine, probably it's helping me a little bit, maybe I'll do it a little more."

DR. FRANK RHAME: I can guarantee you I have done everything I can do to make them have less risk by virtue of this interaction.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: In fact, AIDSVAX scientists say overall, participants in AIDS studies usually show lower levels of infection because of the counseling they receive. But unfortunately, no safety campaign is ever 100 percent effective, which is why a vaccine is needed.

DR. FRANK RHAME: Human nature is such, our ability to deal with sexuality is such that I'm afraid people are going to continue to expose themselves and take risks no matter how irrational that is. This whole process of taking risks, of having exposure when you know it's unwise, is something that people don't like to self-acknowledge.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Most people also don't like to acknowledge their risky behavior to a researcher, which is one reason the Minneapolis study site has had trouble attracting volunteers. Sitter says a second reason could be complacency brought on by the recent cocktail of anti- retroviral drugs, which have greatly extended life for many AIDS patients.

KEVIN SITTER: People aren't afraid of getting infected as much as they used to be. It's no longer this lethal, deadly virus. It's manageable, it's treatable. It's, "I'll take the cocktail."

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Dr. Henry says those at risk for AIDS need to realize that anti-retroviral drugs don't work for everyone. They didn't, for example, for Mary Foote's husband.

DOCTOR: He has some evidence of resistance to the drugs. He probably has, for example, a virus that's resistant to some of the protease inhibitors. We're starting to have more and more people who are failing the cocktails, and even having people who are becoming infected with strains of the virus that came from people who are already on the drugs and it failed them. So the best way to prevent that from happening is, like, a vaccine or not to get infected, because I can see the future is going to get only more and more complicated.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: That future is likely to be complicated even if the AIDSVAX study shows positive results, since the vaccine will most likely protect only against some strains of HIV. That will create a new dilemma, says Arthur Caplan.

ARTHUR CAPLAN: I think we're going to be in an era where we'll see vaccines come along, but they'll only bring partial efficacy. Either they'll only work in some people with certain genetic makeup and they won't help others, or, for reasons not well understood, they're only going to confer partial protection. The tough moral challenge down the road is, what do we do with a partially effective vaccine? Do you give it out and say, "Hey, better than nothing"? Or are you going to give it out and diminish your commitment to public health campaigns or safe-sex campaigns, because now this thing is out there, and "Well, that's the better way to go. Put the money on that?" We've got some hard choices in front us.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Officials at Vax Gen say they expect the results of their study to come in in about four years.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday: The Serbian Orthodox Church demanded Yugoslav President Milosevic and his cabinet resign. NATO troops found more evidence of atrocities including shallow graves and charred bodies. And a presidential advisory panel said oversight of U.S. nuclear weapons programs should be placed under a new agency to improve security. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.