The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, Ray Suarez looks at the Pope's pilgrimage to Greece and the Middle East; Kwame Holman updates the saga of a black judge on a federal appeals court; Gwen Ifill talks to the war crimes prosecutor who wants Milosevic; Jeffrey Brown profiles the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music; and Robert Pinsky has some poetic words about money. It all follows our summary of the news this Tuesday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: China will not allow the U.S. to fix a damaged surveillance plane and fly it home. The foreign ministry made the announcement today in Beijing. The plane remains on Hainan Island after colliding with a Chinese jet fighter April 1st. China's decision may mean American technicians will have to take it apart and ship it home in pieces. But in Washington a White House spokesman said U.S. officials haven't given up on flying the plane out. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld today announced moves to strengthen U.S. military operations in space. He said a four-star Air Force general would now oversee all military space efforts. Those already include communications and intelligence, and they could include a space-based missile defense some day, but Rumsfeld would not discuss the timing for such a program.

DONALD RUMSFELD: On the one hand, someone says, gee, you've got to consult; on the other hand, they say, why don't you quit dancing around and just announce it? Now, the fact of the matter is you can't have it both ways in life. People think, you know, my goodness, they obviously have something in their heads that's all firm and all fixed, and they're going to suddenly pull open a curtain and there it is. Not true. These consultations are serious; they're real. This is a big important issue for people to discuss. It is going to take some re-learning.

JIM LEHRER: Before becoming Secretary Rumsfeld chaired a space commission created by Congress; it concluded military conflicts in space are inevitable, but it said national leaders have not paid enough attention to the problem. It said that failure leaves the country vulnerable to a space Pearl Harbor. In economic news today the Labor Department said productivity fell in the first quarter of the year at an annual rate of .1 percent. That was the first drop in six years. The report also showed labor costs rose at a rate of 5.2 percent in the first quarter, the most since 1997. Most postal rates will go up July 1st. The Postal Governing Board made that announcement today. A First Class stamp remains 34 cents after a 1 cent increase last January, but the cost of sending a postcard will rise a penny to 21 cents. Postage for advertising mail, magazines and newspapers will increase as well. The Postal Service has warned it could lose nearly 2 1/2 billion dollars this year. British Prime Minister Tony Blair today called national elections for June 7th; that's almost a year early. Blair had delayed the announcement several weeks as the foot and mouth livestock epidemic swept the countryside. We have a report from Jo Andrews of Independent Television News.

JO ANDREWS: Instead of the traditional announcement on the steps of Downing Street, the prime minister went to an inner London gold comprehensive and told an assemblyward full of pupils that the election was on, but this wasn't the usual rallying cry. Instead, Tony Blair asked for another election victory for this purpose.

TONY BLAIR: To create a society in which everyone - not just a few people - everyone gets the chance to succeed and make the most of their God given abilities.

JO ANDREWS: There's been little mystery about the timing of this election since the prime minister decided to delay the poll because of the foot and mouth crisis. The weeks ahead will show whether or not his gamble has paid off. William Hague began his campaign immediately. He and his wife - this is exactly the kind of middle England seat the Torries must win if they're to dent Labor's majority. For the conservatives this election is about Labor's broken promises.

WILLIAM HAGUE: When Tony Blair called the election this afternoon he wasn't running on his record - is running away from his record - and asking for a second term is asking for a second chance.

JO ANDREWS: Labor goes into this well ahead in the polls but today is just a start in this campaign and the unknown factor hanging over this election is the worry for all the parties that up to a third of the electorate will not bother to vote.

JIM LEHRER: The Labor Party won a landslide victory in 1997, ending 18 years of Conservative Party rule. Macedonia's political leaders announced a national unity government today. But, later, the main ethnic Albanian party said it needed more time before joining the coalition with majority Slavs. Separately, government forces continued an assault on ethnic Albanian rebels near the border with Kosovo. Macedonia's ethnic violence began in February. The military opened a new offensive last week after rebels killed eight soldiers. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to traveling with the Pope, a judgeship appointment, going after Milosevic, and the Pulitzer winner for music, and a poem about money.

FOCUS - HISTORIC PILGRIMAGE

JIM LEHRER: Ray Suarez looks at the Pope's journey.

RAY SUAREZ: After several history making and sometimes controversial days in Greece and Syria, Pope John Paul II arrived this morning in the small Mediterranean nation of Malta. It's the last stop on his six-day pilgrimage tracing the biblical footsteps of the apostle Paul. The Pope, who turns 81 later this month, began his tour Friday with Greece, where about 95 percent of the population is Orthodox. He's the first Roman Catholic leader to visit the country since Christianity split into two estranged branches - Orthodox and Catholic - just under a thousand years ago. After that break, Catholic crusaders sacked Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine empire. The Pope offered a sweeping statement of regret for sins of action or omission by Catholics against the Orthodox. But some were not so quick to forgive. Hundreds of conservative Greek Orthodox took to the streets to protest the Pope's visit. During his visit to Syria, the first by any Pope to this mostly Muslim nation, the Holy See called on Christians, Muslims, and Jews to respect one another.

POPE: We all know that real peace can only be achieved if there is a new attitude and understanding and respect between the peoples of the region, between the followers of the three religions.

RAY SUAREZ: Syria's President, Bashar Assad, called on the Pope to take the Arab side in their dispute with Israel, referring to what he described as Jewish persecution of Jesus Christ in a hard line address that reflected deep rooted hatreds in the region.

PRESIDENT BASHAR ASSAD: (speakingthrough interpreter) So we see our brothers in Palestine being killed and tortured. We think that justice is being violated; lands are being occupied in Lebanon, the Golan, and Palestine.

RAY SUAREZ: The Vatican did not directly respond to Assad's comments. But officials in the United States and Israel called Assad racist and anti-Semitic. Sunday marked another Papal first when Pope John Paul visited a mosque in the walled city of Damascus. He removed his shoes and donned white slippers out of respect for Muslim custom and entered the Umayyad Mosque, accompanied by Syria's top Muslim cleric. Yesterday the Pope traveled to one of the most bitterly contested areas in the Middle East, the Golan Heights. He prayed for peace between Arabs and Jews from a crumbling church in Kunaitre, a city Syrians say Israeli forces sacked in 1974. Thousands of Syrians were bussed in to greet the Pontiff outside the Church where he watered and blessed a small olive tree to be planted as a symbol of peace. After presiding over beatifications tomorrow in Malta, the Pope heads home to the Vatican.

RAY SUAREZ: To continue our look at the Pope's Mediterranean pilgrimage John Esposito is director of the Center for Muslim Christian Understanding at Georgetown University; Imad-ad-Dean Ahmand is president of the Minaret of Freedom Institute, an Islamic think tank; Susannah Heschel is chair of the Jewish Studies Program at Dartmouth College and author of "Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus" and George Weigel is a Roman Catholic theologian and author of "Witness to Hope, the Biography of Pope John Paul II."

What was on the Pope's agenda beyond the list of public stops preaching and blessing?

GEORGE WEIGEL, Ethics & Public Policy Center: This was, as you accurately described it, Ray, a religious pilgrimage, this was the completion of the great biblical pilgrimage that John Paul began in Sinai and the Holy Land last year. In this phase of this great jubilee pilgrimage he wanted to walk where Saint Paul had walked, pray where Saint Paul had prayed, preached on the Ariapagos, in Athens, where Saint Paul had preached his famous sermon on the unknown God. In the course of that pilgrimage I think it's obvious that the Pope wanted to lift up two of the great themes of this Pontificate, namely the quest for Christian unity, which was so high on the agenda in Greece and I think took a significant step forward, and the imperative of interreligious dialogue as a foundation for religious freedom in the 21st century and as the basis of building tolerance.

RAY SUAREZ: I think in the West people reading the newspapers might have been surprised how little some of these groups are willing to let very old conflicts drop. How has, for instance, the fight between Eastern and Western Christendom followed Catholics and Orthodox Christians into the 21st century? What is there still to be worked out?

GEORGE WEIGEL: Well, there's a lot of history obviously that is on particularly the minds of Orthodox Christians, a great set of animosities to be worked through. But what's so interesting about John Paul II is that he refuses to take no for an answer. He refuses to believe that it's impossible for the Christian East and the Christian West to come together again, and I think what we saw is that his very presence in these situations changes the dynamics of these situations. People are willing to talk again and talk the way that they had not talked before because of the power of his personal witness to the truth of Christian unity.

RAY SUAREZ: John Esposito, the Pope then moved on to the Middle East, where perhaps a purely religious visit might be a little more difficult to pull off.

JOHN ESPOSITO, Georgetown University: Yeah, I think so. I think that - but I think we all know realistically, given the politics in the Middle East and particularly what's happened today in Palestine Israel - one could have expected that however much this was a religious visit the political issues and overtones would wind up being raised, as they were raised very much up front in Syria.

RAY SUAREZ: But here we see the Pope not only doing things very heavy with symbolism, visiting a mosque, which has been a church in the past, which is home to some of the remains traditionally of John the Baptist, but we see him in the contested Golan Heights praying at the ruins of a church in a town destroyed by war. A more difficult visit?

JOHN ESPOSITO: I think it is, but I think that one has to really note the significance of what was being done. I think that when you look at the visit to Syria as to the other areas, the Pope was responding to all of the monotheistic traditions, and so for example, it's important to note that the Pope first went to a synagogue in 1986. Now he goes to a mosque, the Umayyad Mosque, 2001, and it's the first visit, so you have that long period of time. It's a trip that, you know, was - was meant to be. On the other hand, I think that, you know, going to the Golan Heights was the Pope's way of, I think, taking his own and asserting his own position with regard to the area, but always within the context that he would always fall back, despite the fact that there was controversy about this occasion or that occasion on his calling upon Muslims, Christians, and Jews to move towards peace, to move towards reconciliation.

RAY SUAREZ: Susannah Heschel, is that a risk worth taking for the Pope?

SUSANNAH HESCHEL: Well, first of all, I think we have to look at this situation in historical context, and what's remarkable is we're having this conversation in the first place. In other words, that we're expecting the Pope to speak out on behalf of Judaism and against anti-Semitism; that historically is a remarkable fact. But that makes the silence on this occasion very troubling, the silence and comments that were made while he was in Syria. And the problem there is that first of all anti-Semitism has been condemned by the Church for a number of years, since the Second Vatican Council, so that when the Pope is confronted with a statement like this, he is confronted with someone who is, in fact, speaking against Church traditions and Church beliefs. Why would he not speak back on this occasion, just as he would probably speak out of if somebody said that abortion was permissible? So it was an attack on the Church, an affront, and that's troubling, and then at the same time, we have to say that the Pope on this occasion in Syria was confronted in part with the roots of Catholic teachings of contempt for Judaism. And this is very tragic. In my own experience I have students who are Catholic who've never heard that the Jews have been accused of killing Christ, because the Catholic Church has changed its school books in the last 25, 35 years. But in other parts of the world the Church has not overcome those teachings. And so the Pope was in a sense confronted with certain Catholic problems that have been sowed in our country, in our world.

RAY SUAREZ: The Pope's spokesman at the time said that no response directly to President Assad was necessary because the Pope has spoken out many times on this issue and his own beliefs are well known. Do we get into diplomatic questions here, as much as us trying to understand the implications of his silence?

SUSANNAH HESCHEL: Well, there are a couple of issues. First of all, the Pope has spoken out very forcefully against anti-Semitism, but he's spoken out most forcefully in a synagogue or in the state of Israel where he's surrounded by Jews. Now, what happens when no Jews are present in Syria? Will he still speak out as our friend and speak up to that commitment to the Jewish people, and that's a problem, and I think that's why so many Jews are very disturbed, and we can also ask on the political level, when he is silent, does he in fact give the Syrians a platform to spread their malicious statements about Judaism and Jews, so is he really used by them?

RAY SUAREZ: George Weigel.

GEORGE WEIGEL: I just want to add something to this. I think it is simply not accurate to say that the Pope was silent in the face of this vicious and awful statement from President Assad. Twice in Damascus and then again yesterday - the Pope laid out a vision of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish relations that is wholly different from the rant that President Assad got off in Damascus and that anyone with the ears to hear would have heard as a response to this.

RAY SUAREZ: By implication?

GEORGE WEIGEL: I think it's quite straight forward. I don't think it's implication. He's silent if we're not listening; if we're listening to what he's actually saying, he was - he was clearly countering Assad's awful vision of the relationships among the three monotheistic faiths with a much deeper, deeper nobler vision of Christians, Muslims and Jews witnessing together to the truth of the one God and working together to build the societies of religious freedom and tolerance. It's just not true that he was silent.

RAY SUAREZ: Imad-ad-Dean Ahmad, join us at this point because I wonder coming out of Syria what becomes the most significant fact of that trip - the difficulty during that one stop, or the fact that he was in Damascus -

IMAD-AD-DEAN AHMAD, Minaret for Freedom Institute: Well, I think the focus - attention has been given to these statements by President Assad that perhaps distracted us from more important things that were coming out ... The - the phrase that is objectionable and, as I said, it's actually just a reflection of the phrase that was used a couple of weeks ago by Israel Shamir, the famous Israeli writer, and he got criticized by the American Committee for Jerusalem here in Washington - and other Muslims -- criticizing for apparently being anti-Semitic and trying to beat a collectivist assertion and an identification between the persecution of Christ and the problem - the persecution of the Palestinians today. What's most interesting to me is what the Pope said and that was especially when he was leaving the airport on his way to Malta, and he said to President Bashar that the peace he was hoping to bring us all forward to through this trip was something that would have to be arrived at through the confines of international law and UN resolutions, and I think this is a very important thing because it's something that had to be said, so this was a ground breaking visit for the Pope on the one hand that he was meeting with leaders of the Eastern Orthodox Church after so much time - even today - feel some resistance, the fact that he was going into a mosque and after so much time and there was some criticism for that and now that he was trying to establish what is important if we want to move forward towards peace, and I think that that's the thing that people should remember, that it's allowed the dialogue to take place, that because of this exchange, even just a discussion like the four of us or five of us here are having, it is taking place, and maybe people are beginning to get a perspective that they never got before.

GEORGE WEIGEL: I think the Pope also went out of his way - I think it was the next day - in speaking to Syrian youth to emphasize that religion should not be misused to promote hate and violence, and so, you know, I think to the extent that he could, he played the role that one would expect, but one has to realize that when you step on the stage in Syria or you step on the stage - let's say if he was stepping on the stage in Tel Aviv, one can expect that political leaders on either side - we'd also be putting now in a line both the domestic consumption as well as national consumption and the Pope like any leader who's there is there to say what he has to say. Someone else says what they say, and then they make counter statements, that is, make a statement the next day which clearly indicates where he's coming from, but I think even in terms of protocol, you wouldn't gain say in a debate right on the spot; you wouldn't expect that, and that's not the style of I think this Pope or any Pope in terms of their office.

RAY SUAREZ: Susannah Heschel, is that the difficulty right there, he knows why he's there and what he means, but others may use it differently?

SUSANNAH HESCHEL: The difficulty is the Pope is expected to make a forceful statement to Jews when he is in Israel and then not take that statement to Israel's enemy, Syria; expect him to be just as forceful and that the message should not be compiled by implications or by symbols but through words, and this is a Pope after all who seems to be modeling himself as a religious person on the biblical prophet; they didn't simply go to a place that was full of sin but they went to a place and spoke out and faced their enemy, so we expect the Pope to speak out when he goes to Syria and unfortunately it seems to be - this violence in this case is not going to create peace.

RAY SUAREZ: George Weigel, this is the same man who scolded the Sandinistas on his famous visit to Nicaragua. Has been - in his younger years - very forceful in discussions with churches under pressure and under persecution in various parts of the world. Is part of the problem that in symbolic terms there's a lot of heavy freight being carried here but he is no longer the same vigorous man who can respond and take control of events -

GEORGE WEIGEL: No, I don't think it's the latter, Ray. I saw the Holy Father six weeks ago and he was taking me on top of his game for an hour and a half - over a very vigorous discussion of the future at large. He was not going to allow a pilgrimage to be hijacked by a politician for his political act. He kept the emphasis throughout the visit on religious dialogue and religious tolerance; he certainly left it up both in Damascus and Konaitre. The profound respect in the Catholic Church for Judaism, for Islam; he offered an entirely different vision of the future than was contained in that spewing of hate from President Assad, and I think the world will hear that in the months ago.

RAY SUAREZ: Does anything substantial come out of this, very briefly?

SUSANNAH HESCHEL: Well, I even hope it's him. I'm always concerned that the Pope should be criticized for not saying - engaging in an argument where there were hosts and on the grounds that he should speak - four flights up - Israel - you turn around too, onecan ask the question the comment that he made with President Bashar, shouldn't that have been a comment that he makes to Ariel Sharon or he mixed other leaders about the importance of Israeli observance of international law. I think - I'm hopeful that something good will come out of this because I believe the Pope began a process of constructive dialogue, and I think constructive dialogue is just that - it's constructive, and we'll hold hope that it will lead to something better in the future.

RAY SUAREZ: Guests, thank you all.

UPDATE - RACE & JUSTICE

JIM LEHRER: Diversity on a federal court. Kwame Holman has an update.

KWAME HOLMAN: Tomorrow afternoon President Bush is scheduled to send to the Senate his first batch of nominees to fill some of nearly 100 vacant federal judgeships, and one of the most closely watched decisions is whether the President will renominate Roger Gregory to a permanent seat on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. Gregory, a former Richmond, Virginia trial lawyer, already sits on the 4th Circuit, put there on a temporary basis by President Clinton just weeks before he left office. Mr. Clinton described it as an emergency appointment.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: In the last five years alone 4th Circuit caseloads have increased more than 15 percent, yet, 1/3 of its judgeships are vacant. This has left too many citizens waiting in line for justice.

KWAME HOLMAN: But President Clinton gave another reason for appointing Gregory - the five states that fall within the 4th Circuit's jurisdiction: Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, and South Carolina have a combined African-American population of 30 percent, yet, in the 100 year history of the Court not one of its judges had been black.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: It is unconscionable that the 4th Circuit, with the largest African-American population of any circuit in our nation, has never had an African-American appellate judge.

KWAME HOLMAN: In January, Virginia's two Senators, John Warner and George Allen, both Republicans, spoke on the Senate floor in support of placing Gregory permanently on the Court.

SEN. GEORGE ALLEN: Mr. President, I submit to you and to my colleagues that Judge Roger L. Gregory is an exemplary citizen of the Commonwealth of Virginia; he has a sense of the properly restrained role of the Judiciary, and is eminently qualified to serve with distinction.

SEN. GEORGE ALLEN: He has the added bonus; he brings the diversity of background to that court.

KWAME HOLMAN: But in March President Bush withdrew the names of all of Mr. Clinton's judicial nominees who had not been confirmed by the Senate; that included Gregory's nomination to a permanent seat on the 4th Circuit. Allen fears Gregory's chances of renomination will be hampered by bad feelings about other final acts of the Clinton administration.

SEN. GEORGE ALLEN: Obviously in the last moments of this presidency President Clinton once again makes this interim appointment, and, again, that's aggravating to a lot of people, and, unfortunately, Judge Gregory was just put in the whole tide of last minute appointments, last minute executive orders and so forth.

KWAME HOLMAN: The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals sits in Richmond, Virginia. It hears cases as one of the twelve regional federal circuits, the last stop on the judicial trail before the Supreme Court. Legal experts consider it to be the most conservative in the appellate system. President Clinton made several attempts to place an African-American on the Court during his administration. One of them was James Wynn, a North Carolina state appeals court judge.

JUDGE JAMES A. WYNN, JR.: Diversity is important, and not so much from the perspective of just having an African-American, of having someone of color on it. It's important because our citizens need to be able to believe the Court reflects the look of its citizenry to give the citizens at least that opportunity to feel the concerns that they have, there's someone up there that perhaps has that level of experience.

KWAME HOLMAN: As reported on the NewsHour last year, it was North Carolina's Democratic Senator John Edwards who requested Winn be nominated to the 4th Circuit Court.

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS: He's an outstanding judge, has been for many years, well respected by all lawyers who appear before.

KWAME HOLMAN: But Judge Wynn's nomination ultimately was blocked by North Carolina's Republican Senators.

SPOKESMAN: Senator Jesse Helms.

KWAME HOLMAN: Senator Jesse Helms was able to block Judge Wynn's nomination through a Senate device known simply as the blue slip. It gives either of the nominees two home state Senators almost absolute power to block a judicial nomination.

JUDGE JAMES A. WYNN, JR.: Thus, in effect, a veto. Some say a delay or whatever, but it's veto, and it's a veto that I certainly have to respect.

KWAME HOLMAN: The nomination of Judge Wynn no longer is pending, and recently he talked with us about his meeting with Senator Helms and the reason Helms gave for blocking his nomination.

JUDGE JAMES A. WYNN, JR.: I met with Senator Helms and he informed me that through his information provided by Chief Judge Hobby Wilkinson the Court didn't need any more judges; that the work that they were doing was very effective and even though there were four and soon to be five vacancies, the Court didn't need any more and that he had nothing against me, and I took the Court's word on that, and that's all I could do. He's never committed any grief, presented any issue to me that his decision was based on race.

KWAME HOLMAN: There were several vacancies on the Court when Judge Winn was nominated, and there were no judges from North Carolina, the largest state in the Circuit, yet, at that time Chief Judge Harvey Wilkinson told us he had all the judges he needed.

HON. J. HARVIE WILKINSON, III: If you have a court of 12 people, you can reach a decision much more quickly and efficiently than if you have a court of twenty to twenty-three people, and on our court before an opinion is released, you have - every judge acknowledges that opinion or signs off on it, and if we continue to expand the number of judges on the court's circuit, it's going to make that process more cumbersome.

KWAME HOLMAN: When we talked with Judge Wilkinson by phone last week he said his position on the size of the court hadn't changed and that troubled Judge Wynn.

JUDGE JAMES A. WYNN, JR.: Well, I certainly accept that Chief Judge Wilkinson has a responsibility of determining the administration of the Court. I do believe, however, ultimately that is the responsibility of the United States Senate, as well as the chief justice, and he has a conference that's specifically designated to do that. The danger, I think, Kwame, of having this role of the chief judge versus the administrator of the court is that the chief judge is a player. He is one of the judges who makes decisions on the Court and ultimately, if you have a role in determining who and when can come to the Court, you may, in fact, be able to affect the decision-making process, and I'm not saying he is, but that possibility exists there.

KWAME HOLMAN: Judge Winn says he's hoping Roger Gregory will succeed where he couldn't and become the first permanent African-American judge in the history of the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. And with vacancies currently on the Court, Winn says there's room for more.

JUDGE JAMES A. WYNN, JR.: The Court has an allocation for 15 members. I certainly hope it's not offensive for the Court to have two or perhaps three African-Americans of fifteen, and I'm from the state of North Carolina, and we have no judges whatsoever at the court, and that is I think something that's far more compelling to consider than something you should embrace.

KWAME HOLMAN: But the focus of Virginia Senator George Allen is Roger Gregory's nomination.

SEN. GEORGE ALLEN: And what I'm trying to do is to get my colleagues, including, in fact, the President and the Bush Administration to look beyond the aggravation of these last-minute appointments and last-minute executive orders and look at Roger Gregory, examine him as the man, as a human being. And I think that they'll come away as impressed and as comfortable with Roger Gregory as I am.

KWAME HOLMAN: Marshall Wittman, an analyst with the conservative Hudson Institute in Washington, says there's hope for Gregory. He says President Bush has good reason to nominate him.

MARSHALL WITTMAN: President Bush wants a grab bag, and the 4th Circuit is a perfect example of that. Choose some moderates or even some Democrats who will sway the Democrats and then choose some conservatives who will make the conservatives happy. His task is to make everyone happy in an evenly divided Senate.

KWAME HOLMAN: But that process could prove difficult for President Bush. Fresh partisan disagreements recently erupted in the 50/50 Senate over how to move judicial nominations even before Mr. Bush sends up his first candidate.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, prosecuting Milosevic, the Pulitzer winner for music, and a money poem.

FOCUS - PURSUING MILOSEVIC

JIM LEHRER: Gwen Ifill has the Milosevic story.

GWEN IFILL: Early on the morning of April 1, Serb police surrounded Slobodan Milosevic's house in Belgrade. Deadlines for his surrender had come and gone. At 4:30 A.M., Shots were fired, and a few minutes later, the former strongman and president of Yugoslavia was on his way to prison. Milosevic's arrest came almost two yes after the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Netherlands indicted him. But his arrest did not come as a result of that indictment. Instead, Yugoslavia's new president Vojislav Kostunica, insists that Milosevic be tried at home, not in the Hague, and on charges of domestic corruption.

GWEN IFILL: The international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was established by the UN Security Council in 1993. Its mission: To investigate and prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, dating to 1991. Since 1993, the Tribunal has indicted almost 100 people for war crimes, but of those, 27 are still at large, including the notorious Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic, both Bosnian Serbs accused of genocide in the Bosnian war. The chief prosecutor for the tribunal, Carla del Ponte, is in Washington this week, hoping to gain U.S. support for her campaign to extradite Milosevic to the Hague. Today she met with Secretary of State Colin Powell and Senators on Capitol Hill.

GWEN IFILL: And Chief Prosecutor Del Ponte joins us now. Welcome.

CARLA DEL PONTE: Good evening.

GWEN IFILL: How were your meetings today?

CARLA DEL PONTE: It was I think an important meeting because I'm coming again to Washington to put a request for the victims of crimes committed from Yugoslavia, and so I'm asking to allow the tribunal to complete its work, and so we need to have full support, full cooperation from Yugoslavia.

GWEN IFILL: What does that mean, full support and full cooperation, not only from Yugoslavia but also vis- -vis the United States?

CARLA DEL PONTE: That means the international community and particularly the United States must oblige Yugoslavia and the other states to cooperate with us, because, as you know, I am prosecutor without judicial prowess and so I need to complete our investigation with the help of all other states.

GWEN IFILL: Are you hoping that the United States will withhold money, aid, to Yugoslavia until it extradites Milosevic?

CARLA DEL PONTE: I think that the United States can do a lot for us, not only with resources but with pressure to Yugoslavia for the transfer of Milosevic.

GWEN IFILL: What kind of response did you get from Colin Powell today and from Senators on the Hill?

CARLA DEL PONTE: I would say that all are promising us full cooperation, full support, and though I think that I can expect some results as soon as possible.

GWEN IFILL: Does that mean that they committed to you today that they will set a new deadline for when Milosevic should be extradited?

CARLA DEL PONTE: No, it was not set - a deadline. But I was asking, especially Secretary of State, to ask tomorrow President Kostunica, when he's visiting, is coming to Washington, to ask him to tell us the date that Milosevic can be transferred.

GWEN IFILL: And he said he would do that tomorrow?

CARLA DEL PONTE: Yes.

GWEN IFILL: Why should Milosevic be tried in the Hague?

CARLA DEL PONTE: Milosevic is one of the most responsible for the crimes committed, and it was - it is under indictment. We are waiting for trial against Milosevic in the Hague, and so I think that Milosevic must be treated the same as the others, and so we are expecting that he's transferred to the Hague to stand trial.

GWEN IFILL: President Kostunica has said often that he thinks that Milosevic should be tried at home and that, in fact, there is some bias involved in the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague. What's your response to that?

CARLA DEL PONTE: It is impossible that Milosevic can be tried in Belgrade for our indictment, for our crimes, for our charges, because, as you know, ICTY, our tribunal has primacy - about that I must say it's just a word because President Kostunica must be more explicitly and not generally speaking against the tribunal.

GWEN IFILL: You came to this position from, among other things, as attorney general of Switzerland. Do you understand their argument - or do you give any merit to their argument about the sovereignty of them being able to try Milosevic themselves?

CARLA DEL PONTE: I'm not contesting that maybe at once the Belgrade authority can put Milosevic in trial for crimes committed in Belgrade and Serbia, but we have no jurisdiction. But, as I know, they're not prepared now; they didn't issue an indictment against Milosevic, and so I think we are traveling for Kosovo indictment or it will be time that he's now transferred to the Hague.

GWEN IFILL: There seem to be some lingering concerns as well that the tribunal did not pursue war crimes, complaints against NATO for the 1999 bombing. What's your response to that?

CARLA DEL PONTE: I'm a prosecutor working with the elements I have and it is not elements against NATO, so it's absolutely not a question anymore.

GWEN IFILL: Do you think there is any sentiment that exists in the United States or in European countries, anyplace else you've been traveling in your campaign, for tying international aid to any decision to send Milosevic to the Hague?

CARLA DEL PONTE: I think really not, I think really not, but I think it could be possible, because it is - it is now for our tribunal a very important moment that the international community obtain the transfer of Milosevic, and so I'm expecting from the international community and especially from the United States a great support.

GWEN IFILL: Does that mean there's no room for compromise say prosecutors from the Hague agreeing to join the prosecution of Milosevic in Belgrade?

CARLA DEL PONTE: No, absolutely not. It's not compromise possible, no. Milosevic the same treatment as all the others.

GWEN IFILL: So that's off the table?

CARLA DEL PONTE: Yes.

GWEN IFILL: There has been discussion that there may be other indictments imminent regarding Milosevic.

CARLA DEL PONTE: Yes, we are working since -- months for two other indictments and against Milosevic crimes committed in Croatia and Bosnia, and that is not important that I know when Milosevic will be transferred because I need to issue these other two indictments, and I think it will be possible to do that in a couple of months.

GWEN IFILL: You also have other people who you were seeking to bring indictments - or you have brought indictments against. Where does that stand - other indictments?

CARLA DEL PONTE: Yes, we have other indictments already; there are other indictments issued, and I can tell you that our fugitive actually 38 and as prosecutor I must say I have too many fugitives

GWEN IFILL: You mean, indictments that have been brought against individuals who for some reason cannot be found?

CARLA DEL PONTE: I think that most of these people - these fugitives - we know where they are - almost, but it is important that the authority or even SFOR - NATO -- are looking for because you cannot expect to find them very easily because if they know that they are under arrest warrant - but I would suggest that especially SFOR must be much more proactive in the location of fugitives.

GWEN IFILL: Ms. Del Ponte, thank you very much for joining us.

CARLA DEL PONTE: Thank you.

SERIES - WINNER

JIM LEHRER: Now, continuing our coverage of this year's Pulitzer Prizes in the arts. Senior Producer Jeffrey Brown reports.

JEFFREY BROWN: With a fistful of Grammies, an Oscar, and now this year's Pulitzer Prize in Music for his Second Symphony, John Corigliano is one of the most celebrated composers of the day. (Music in Background) The child of a pianist mother and a violinist father, the 63-year-old has been around music all his life and a working composer since the late 1950's. He spoke with us recently in his New York apartment, where he lives and works.

JOHN CORIGLIANO, Pulitzer Prize, Music: My whole life I've been writing concerts, and so the Pulitzer is the award that a composer looks at and says, gosh, I wish I had one of those.

JEFFREY BROWN: You have said that when you're thinking about taking on a piece of music, or when you're just beginning with it, that you like to ask really basic questions. What is a concerto? What is a clarinet?

JOHN CORIGLIANO: Right, right. Well, you see, today, the interesting thing about this time is that all music from every age, from every country and every place in the world is instantly available to us. We can go to Tower Records and buy East Indian music, Balinese music, African drumming, medieval chant, 20th century music from all over the world, so we're at a very different time than Beethoven say or Mozart. Now, if we hear all of this world of music, then we have a tremendous amount of choices open to us. We can say I can write anything, what do I want to write next?

JEFFREY BROWN: Corigliano's choices have led him in many directions and to many musical forms. His style has been called eclectic, taking things from the past and present, making something new. His first symphony was written in 1988 as a response to the AIDS crisis. It is by terms "angry, lyrical, and mournful." (Music in Background) It's become perhaps the most performed American symphony written in the last half of the 20th century.

JOHN CORIGLIANO: When my friends all started to die of AIDS, I felt I had to say something in music, and the only piece that's epic enough for this kind of tragedy is the symphony, which is our novel, our form.

JEFFREY BROWN: For Corigliano, there must be an emotional and intellectual quality to all his work. He likens himself to an architect filling a space with sound, and he begins to write only after he's thought through the entire structure of the piece.

JOHN CORIGLIANO: The first question is not what melody am I going to use, what rhythm am I going to use. The first question is: I have this 30-minute block of time; I had a symphony orchestra. What do I want to do there? And, in fact, one of the big criticisms that I've heard made of modern music is it doesn't go anywhere because the composers are manipulating three or four notes and then seven or eight notes and then ten or twelve notes and altogether it makes ten minutes of music, but there was never this - this idea of those ten minutes having a shape that can be accomplished by the human perception.

JEFFREY BROWN: So when you begin, you know where you want to get to?

JOHN CORIGLIANO: Oh, absolutely; absolutely. If you don't know where you're going, how can you go there convincingly? It's like writing a detective story or a murder mystery not knowing who killed the person at the end and writing it to the end and saying, whom, I wonder who the murderer was in the last three pages - no, you've got to know that at the beginning.

JEFFREY BROWN: Sometimes the beginning is this: Corigliano will sketch with colored pencils, trying to draw what he wants to express. These lines eventually grew into music for his opera, "The Ghost of Versailles," a major hit when presented by the Metropolitan Opera Company in 1991. (Music in Background)

JEFFREY BROWN: Your parents were musicians.

JOHN CORIGLIANO: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: And yet they tried to keep you from being a composer.

JOHN CORIGLIANO: As best they could, which is why I became a composer, of course. You know, that's how it works. My father was the concert master for the New York Philharmonic for 26 years; he was a wonderful violinist, but my father saw composers being booed; he saw orchestras hating to play their music; he saw the fact that they don't make any money and they're not going to live, and he said, become a doctor or a lawyer, or do something where you can really earn a living and have some security and not go into the composing business.

JEFFREY BROWN: Today, Corigliano is secure -- while the classical music world is anything but. The litany has become common, smaller and aging audiences, less recording and rare programming of new music. As this recent New York Times article put it, classical music is in trouble, and unless some basic things change, the troubles will continue in the 21st century. Corigliano says the composers who alienate audiences haven't helped.

JEFFREY BROWN: You say - "it's been fashionable of late for the artist to be misunderstood; I wish to be understood."

JOHN CORIGLIANO: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: What did you mean?

JOHN CORIGLIANO: Let's put it this way: If there are 3,000 people in a concert hall, it should in some way be talking to those people. Let's look at a man like Beethoven. Beethoven talked to you from the very first moment of a piece; he grabs you by the shoulders; he emotionally shakes you; his directions are clear, because he sketched them out, he really worked on that. Now, that doesn't mean that's it for Beethoven. You listen to it once and you've found out Beethoven. The good part is that he also had layers underneath of many, many relationships that are quite complex and intellectually and emotionally stimulating that we get to if we listen to him enough. So when I say we should be understood, I don't mean that a listener comes in and hears a piece of mine and says oh, I got it all. I mean I got something; I got something there that made me want to hear that again.

JEFFREY BROWN: Corigliano has tried to pull in audiences from the start. He worked on the renowned young people's concerts with Leonard Bernstein. Later, he composed music for the big screen. His score for the 1981 film "Altered States" gained an Academy Award nomination. His music for the "Red Violin" want an Oscar last year.

JOHN CORIGLIANO: What is modern music? It's music being written now, and unfortunately the term "modern music" has all of the onus or fear attached to it. I have to say I think that the right of the audiences has been taken away. For example, when they don't like a piece of music, they feel ashamed, embarrassed, and inadequate. And when they like a piece of music, they feel guilty that this music might not really be that good because they like it. We have to -

JEFFREY BROWN: They feel they can't like it?

JOHN CORIGLIANO: Yes, because it should be above them. And I say this because I think that we have to give them back their right to like or dislike something - the same way with a novel, or they go to a play or any other aspect of the living world around us; their opinion counts.

JEFFREY BROWN: This year's Pulitzer was awarded for Corigliano's Second Symphony. It was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra to celebrate the centennial of its famous concert hall. With Sagi Ozawa conducting, the symphony received glowing reviewed when performed last year.

JEFFREY BROWN: Is composing hard?

JOHN CORIGLIANO: It is the hardest thing I know of. It's facing your inadequacies and trying to surmount them. It is looking at a blank page and having no ideas for a long period of time and not being able to move so that even though you spend a week - spending morning to night - sitting in that room, you get nothing done, and yet, at the end, you know, when the piece is written, there's also nothing more fulfilling than saying, you know, out of nothing, really nothing, just dots on a page, something happens. One can only hope that in our classic music field that the people running this field should use the composer in a positive way and composers write in a positive way, knowing that three thousand people want to hear you write for them without sacrificing anything of your integrity or talent. It can be done and it's the goal.

JEFFREY BROWN: John Corigliano, thank you, and congratulations again.

JOHN CORIGLIANO: Thank you very much.

FINALLY - MONEY

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, with the stock market and the economy uncertain, NewsHour contributor, former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky has a poem about money.

ROBERT PINSKY: Money, the lack of money, the fear of losing it, the power of it can be frightening, and that fear can be embittering. Sometimes values like friendship and personal loyalty can seem frail compared to sums and numbers. Worries about the stock market or the economy will call the voice of Billy Holiday singing "God Bless the Child." With money that song says you've got plenty of friends crowding around your door but when the money's gone...and the spending ends, they don't come around no more. That same idea is anticipated in the grief stricken, angry, ironic poem written by Barnaby Gouge in the 16th Century. Gouge's poem is only 10 lines long. It's entitled simply: "Of Money." "Of Money." "Give money me, take friendship who so list, for friends are gone come once adversity, while money yet remaineth safe in chest, that quickly can thee bring from misery. Fair face show friends when money doth abound. Come time of truth, farewell, they must away. Believe me well they are not to be found if God but sends thee once alone in day. Gold never starts aside but in distress finds ways enough to ease thine heaviness." Well, let's hope, as I feel both Billy Holiday and Barnaby Gouge hoped, that it isn't true.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday: China announced it will not allow the United States to fix a damaged surveillance plane and fly it home. That could mean U.S. technicians will have to take it apart and ship it in pieces. The Labor Department said worker productivity fell slightly in the first quarter for the first time in six years, and late today the manager of California's electrical power grid ordered rolling blackouts for the second straight day. Up to 300,000 homes were affected. We'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.