The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, a Newsmaker interview with White House AIDS czar Patricia Fleming about the new strategy, a report and a debate about bad fruit juice, two views of the way the Chinese defense minister was received in Washington, and a conversation with Cara De Silva, editor of a cookbook filled with memories. It all follows our summary of the news this Tuesday. NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: President Clinton announced a new strategy to combat AIDS today. It sets ultimate goals of finding a cure and a vaccine, guaranteeing care, and fighting discrimination against those with the disease. The President's 1997 budget has $8 billion devoted to federal AIDS programs. We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. The President also talked today about donations to his legal defense fund. There were news stories yesterday about the return to an Asian-American businessman of more than $450,000 contributed to the Clintons' Whitewater Defense Fund. The President spoke this morning at a White House photo session with Irish Prime Minister John Bruton. Mr. Clinton said he supported the decision to return the money.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I think, you know, in all these fund-raising endeavors, the rules should be that all the checks should be checked to make sure that not only fact but any even appearance of impropriety should be removed. And that's why the decision was made. That's what our campaign did, and as the Democratic Party's people have said, that's what they should have done. But the campaign did it. The Legal Defense Fund did it. And I think it was handled the appropriate way.

JIM LEHRER: The donations were considered questionable by Michael Cardoza, executive director of the Clinton's Whitewater Defense Fund. The businessman who delivered the money is a Little Rock restaurant owner who the President said today was a friend. He's also the owner of an international import-export company and has worked as a fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee. The U.S. Supreme Court granted a temporary stay of execution today to a man scheduled to die tomorrow night in Virginia. Joseph O'Dell was sentenced to death by lethal injection for the 1985 rape and murder of a Virginia Beach woman. His lawyers argued DNA tests done after the trial provide evidence of O'Dell's innocence. A Supreme Court review of the appeal is expected in January. Winter storms hit the Northern plains today. A blizzard closed major highways and schools in parts of Wyoming, Minnesota, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. Thousands of people were stranded in their homes as temperatures reached record lows. Police advised motorists to stay home because of the low visibility on the roads. The United Nations General Assembly today elected Kofi Annan of Ghana Secretary-General of the U.N.. His name was placed in nomination by the man he will replace, Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Annan currently serves as undersecretary-general for peacekeeping operations. He was chosen by the Security Council on Friday. He takes office as the seventh secretary-general on January 1st. Six Red Cross workers were the latest victims of the fighting in Chechnya between rebels and Russian troops. The aid workers were from Norway, Spain, Canada, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. Five of them were women. They were killed at a Red Cross hospital. We have more in this report from Lawrence McDonnell of Independent Television News.

LAWRENCE McDONNELL, ITN: Today the bodies and belongings of those murdered overnight were driven out of the hospital compound. The killers, wearing masks and using silencers, shot their victims as they slept in their beds. The Red Cross described the attack as an assassination. As a result, the aid organization is evacuating all its international staff from Chechnya. The worst ever single assault on the Red Cross comes at a time when the republic was preparing for elections, and Russian President Boris Yeltsin had finally agreed to withdraw all troops from the region. The aid workers died at a time when peace was just returning to Chechnya. Local leaders said all the signs were that there was a political motive behind the killings.

SPOKESMAN: [speaking through interpreter] All their valuables and personal possessions were left where they were. The murderers weren't interested in them. This was a provocation designed to de- stabilize the situation in the republic.

LAWRENCE McDONNELL: The hospital compound in Novy Atagy, 10 miles south of the capital, Grozny, was set up just three months ago. The Red Cross regarded the area as relatively safe and well located to serve not just the capital but the outlying villages.

JIM LEHRER: Forty patients were in the hospital at the time of the shooting. A Red Cross spokesman in Moscow said the organization had reduced its staff in Chechnya earlier this month because of security concerns. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to an AIDS strategy, bad juice, the Chinese defense minister's trip, and a cookbook written by memory. UPDATE - FIGHT AGAINST AIDS

JIM LEHRER: The new White House AIDS strategy is first tonight. President Clinton signed on to a six-point plan today, and his point person is here to explain it. She's Patricia Fleming, the President's national AIDS policy director. Welcome, Ms. Fleming. Let's go through these major goals, first of all, to find a cure for AIDS. How close is that, and what is the strategy designed to do about it?

PATRICIA FLEMING, National AIDS Policy Director: Well, the strategy has six goals which are overarching and rather general. They set out what the President would like to do in his second administration. The goals are, first of all, to conduct research leading to a cure, a vaccine, and better treatments. The second goal is prevention, to reduce the number of infections until there are none in whatever length of time that takes but as quickly as possible. The third is access to high quality treatment for all of those who need it. The fourth is to try to do something about discrimination against people with HIV and AIDS. The fifth is to continue our leadership in the international area in a fight against the global pandemic of HIV and AIDS. And sixth is to translate the results of research into better prevention and medications for people living with HIV and AIDS, and to prevent infection.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Specifically, what is the strategy designed to do in terms of finding a cure?

PATRICIA FLEMING: Well, it proposes to, for example--let me give you an example in the area of vaccines. One of the things that it does is underneath the overarching goals that I just outlined are specific opportunities for progress, such things as, for example, the vaccine initiative that was announced last week. David Baltimore, the Nobel Laureate from MIT, is going to have a new task force to consolidate and expand the research on a vaccine to prevent HIV infection. Another example would be our desire and intention to target women, injection drug users, and youth, which are new prevention programs.

JIM LEHRER: But in terms of--just so we understand where we are, from your perspective and from the general AIDS community's perspective, how close are we to finding a cure?

PATRICIA FLEMING: How close are we to finding a cure? That's very, very hard to say. Right now, we have drugs that are successful in treating HIV infection and in many cases getting people out of bed and going back to work. It's really remarkable. But we have a lot of unanswered questions related to those drugs. We don't know when to begin treatment, in what combination, and how long it will be successful.

JIM LEHRER: Does this strategy--

PATRICIA FLEMING: That's not a cure.

JIM LEHRER: Sure. Does this strategy lay out some specifics as to how all the work that's being done now to try to find a cure will be more effectively done, or--

PATRICIA FLEMING: That's not the purpose.

JIM LEHRER: That's not the purpose. Okay.

PATRICIA FLEMING: No. The strategy is a blueprint. It's what the President wants to do during his second term and specifically during the coming year. It does not give direction to the scientists who are looking for a cure.

JIM LEHRER: Or a vaccine.

PATRICIA FLEMING: Or a vaccine. What it does is it sets up mechanisms to help move that effort along farther and more quickly.

JIM LEHRER: There have been several AIDS organizations that have issued statements today about this strategy and make that very point, that the weakness here is that it is not specific, that it's going to be another report, very general, that's going to be put on a shelf, and it's going to just gather dust. Is this going to be any different than any other of those reports?

PATRICIA FLEMING: Well, first of all, it's not a report. It's an action plan. It has steps. It has opportunities for progress. It lays out what the President intends to accomplish. It's the first time the President of the United States has ever gotten behind a plan to achieve the goals that he has laid out. Now it's going to be impossible to say by which date we will have a cure or a vaccine. We don't know that. It depends on the science. What it does is it pushes the science ahead farther and faster.

JIM LEHRER: Do you think this really will push the science?

PATRICIA FLEMING: Yes. I do. There's no question.

JIM LEHRER: How will it push the scientists to find a cure quicker, or to find a vaccine quicker?

PATRICIA FLEMING: The departments and agencies that have responsibility for the programs dealing with HIV and AIDS in every area, research, prevention, care, and so on, have marching orders from the President. This is what he intends to accomplish in his administration.

JIM LEHRER: And are there going to be follow-ups to make sure that his strategy is implemented--

PATRICIA FLEMING: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: --in specific ways?

PATRICIA FLEMING: As a matter of fact, the strategy was developed by my office in conjunction with community people. I spent a lot of time traveling around the country, talking to people with HIV and AIDS, to care givers, to families, and here in Washington, to national AIDS organizations and to the presidential advisory council. So I have brought together a lot of opinions and interests and needs into this, and then in conjunction with the agencies responsible for carrying it out, we put together this strategy. Now, as I said, it's action steps. It's not a report to sit on a shelf. It's a guide. It's a blueprint. It doesn't spell out day by day, line by line, dollar by dollar what must be done. It cannot do that and have it stick. But this is something the agencies have bought into, and the President is behind. It's something that we have needed and has been recommended and asked for for years.

JIM LEHRER: By whom?

PATRICIA FLEMING: Well, for one thing by the commission on AIDS that was appointed by President Bush, by congressional committees that wrote reports, one of which I was part of when I worked for Ted Weiss in the House, and by the President, himself.

JIM LEHRER: Which is one of the House subcommittees on health.

PATRICIA FLEMING: Oversight of health.

JIM LEHRER: Oversight. Right.

PATRICIA FLEMING: Right.

JIM LEHRER: Another point that's been made today after this strategy has been issued, that it doesn't speak to the question of needle distribution to combat the spread of AIDS by drug users. Why did this report not speak to that issue?

PATRICIA FLEMING: Well, I'll tell you what it does. It identifies injection drug users as one of the most important target populations for prevention efforts and for attention generally. And that means more access to treatment, treatment as a form of prevention of HIV infection, more--a way of getting people who do shoot drugs up to use clean needles, a stop on the importation of drugs from other countries, to control drug use in that way, as Barry McCaffrey, the AIDS czar has--I mean, the drug czar, has outlined. And then, it doesn't close the door against needle exchange at all. In fact, it talks about needle exchange as a program that has been successful in many cities. It leaves the door open.

JIM LEHRER: But as we sit here now, the use of federal funds is banned, has been since 1992, I believe, is that right?

PATRICIA FLEMING: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: And President Clinton has indicated in the past that he was going to try to overturn that, but there's no mention of that. That's not part of his strategy to do that.

PATRICIA FLEMING: No, it's not specifically part of the strategy. Congress--

JIM LEHRER: Why is that?

PATRICIA FLEMING: The Appropriations Committee in the last appropriations process asked the secretary of HHS to provide a report to the committee--to the Congress on needle exchange. It asked two questions. One is, does it reduce the number of new infections, and the second is, does it increase drug use, the needle exchange program?

JIM LEHRER: Which has been one of the criticisms of needle exchange.

PATRICIA FLEMING: That's right. It has been. The scientists will look at all the evidence and determine whether those two criteria have been met and report back to the Congress in February. This is not something that I felt the Office of National AIDS Policy or the President ought to interfere in. This is something that is a scientific review that has to take place to respond to those two questions.

JIM LEHRER: In general terms, Ms. Fleming, this has been referred to as a new strategy on combating AIDS. What is new about it? How would you characterize the new elements to this?

PATRICIA FLEMING: Well, I tell you, though, actually, Jim, this is not totally new. A lot of the things in it are things that we have been doing that need to be continued, that need to be strengthened, that need to be put forward in a different way. What's new about it is that it's been all brought together in one document, and the President has given it his imprimatur. That's the major thing that's new about it. It's the first time.

JIM LEHRER: In general terms, do you feel that the war against AIDS, the drive to find a cure, a vaccine, prevention, all of the things that are part of the strategy, is moving--has there been progress? Is the movement upward in this?

PATRICIA FLEMING: It is. And I'm sure that you and many of our viewers are very aware of the new drugs that have been approved in recent months. We do know that the infection rate has not dropped. It has dropped from a hundred thousand some years back, a hundred thousand a year down to about forty thousand a year now. We need to bring that lower. But we have seen some successes. For example, in pediatric AIDS, where the transmission is from mother to child, we have seen a drop in that. And one of the reasons it that we have discovered, scientists have discovered that AZT can block transmission in some cases from mother to child. The President wants that to be expanded so that there will be ultimately no more pediatric AIDS cases, no more vertical transmission from mother to child. That's an achievable goal, and that's part of the strategy.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Well, thank you very much.

PATRICIA FLEMING: A pleasure. FOCUS - PRESSING RISK

JIM LEHRER: Now, is unpasteurized juice safe to drink? That's the question behind some Food & Drug Administration hearings in Washington this week. Our coverage of the issue begins with this backgrounder from Spencer Michels in San Francisco.

SPENCER MICHELS: Odwalla, a California firm specializing in natural, fresh, unpasteurized juices, began recalling its products from store shelves in late October. That was after reports of illness among juice drinkers in Washington State. The culprit was found to be a bacteria called E. Coli-015787, a sometimes lethal organism, transmitted to humans through food contaminated by animal feces. The Food & Drug Administration found it in an unopened bottle of fresh apple juice. Odwalla's chairman, Greg Steltenpohl, reacted quickly.

GREG STELTENPOHL, Chairman, Odwalla: We feel at this time that it is very prudent to advise the entire industry that production of fresh apple juice is not prudent.

SPENCER MICHELS: Eventually, sixty people in seven western states and British Columbia became ill, including a two-year-old California girl, who suffered kidney failure. She now is much improved. But in Colorado, 16-month-old Anna Grimstead died of heart and lung failure caused by the E. Coli after drinking a Smoothie made with unpasteurized juice.

SPOKESMAN: We're just deeply, deeply sorry it happened.

SPENCER MICHELS: Odwalla, severely hurt by the recall, since 50 percent of its product contains apple juice, began flash pasteurizing the juice to get it back on the shelves. That's a process of quickly heating the liquid to kill bacteria and immediately cooling it. In normal pasteurization, the heating is longer and hotter. Most juices sold today are pasteurized, but the market for natural or untreated juice, promoted as healthier, has been booming. The unanswered questions in the Odwalla story, how the E. Coli bacteria got into the juice and whether that is likely to happen again, have produced a mixed and very uneven reaction among juice drinkers, producers, and sellers. At Country Fresh, a blender and bottler of unpasteurized juice in Sonoma, California, owner Jim Williams says some stores he sells to have refused deliveries of his product. He says the public and retailers have panicked.

JIM WILLIAMS, Juice Bottler: The public perception is that the whole apple juice industry may be unsafe. And some of the stores are not wanting to sell fresh apple juice because of the possibility that no one has really pinned down that there may be a problem.

SPENCER MICHELS: William says unpasteurized juice, which is often frozen to preserve it, tastes better and is more nutritious than pasteurized. He believes washing the fruit can prevent E. Coli contamination.

JIM WILLIAMS: Scrubbing the apples, using sanitized wash processes, just general sanitation. We have done some pasteurization in order to give the consumer the choice. They have the pasteurized or the unpasteurized. It's not something we want to do.

SPENCER MICHELS: According to Williams, it's especially important to wash apples that have fallen on the ground, where they could be contaminated by contact with animal feces. At Twin Hill Ranch, a popular apple farm open to the public, the fruit is washed before it's dipped in caramel sauce for candied apples and before Darolyn Davis, one of the owners, bakes her apple pies. They also sell unpasteurized juice here, which, even after the Odwalla scare, far outsells the pasteurized variety.

DAROLYN DAVIS, Apple Farm Owner: [Laughing] It doesn't scare me at all.

SPENCER MICHELS: Why not?

DAROLYN DAVIS: Well, I know that our apples are clean. And I know where our apples--our juice that's produced is clean, and so I don't worry about it. I think it's kind of a flukey kind of a thing.

SPENCER MICHELS: At a nearby juice stand, a new sign assures customers that the juice sold here is safe. The manager is a retired poultry and meat compliance officer for the Department of Agriculture, well aware of the dangers of E. Coli.

DOUG GADDIS, Juice Stand Manager: If it's pasteurized, we won't have that there problem. It kills the bacteria. I'd rather be safe than sorry. Pasteurization, you know, you have to have pasteurization.

DAROLYN DAVIS: I don't think it's a good idea to make it law. I think it's up to the person who's drinking it.

SPENCER MICHELS: Most of those involved in the apple juice business, including Odwalla, say they welcome the FDA meetings as necessary to try to find answers to some hard questions.

JIM LEHRER: Charlayne Hunter-Gault has more.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Just how serious is the problem of E. Coli in juice, and what, if anything, should be done? We hear from two participants at today's FDA hearing. Eric Chittenden owns the Cold Hollow Cider Mill in Vermont. His company makes fresh apple cider and other food products. Caroline Smith Dewaal is director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington. Thank you both for joining us. Ms. Smith, how big is the problem of E. Coli in juice?

CAROLINE SMITH DEWAAL, Center for Science: This is a very serious problem. The bacteria involved is very hazardous. And it can even cause death in small children at very low doses. We've had two outbreaks just this fall, one in Connecticut and one in California, and in the western United States. And that indicates that this is a problem nationally. We hope that these outbreaks serve as a wake up call for the fresh juice industry and the FDA that they need tighter controls, microbial testing, and warning labels on their product.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Okay. I want to get to some of the specifics in a minute. But, first, I want to get to Mr. Chittenden, and see if your assessment of how serious the problem is squares with Ms. Smith Dewaal--I forgot the second part--with a hyphenated name I shouldn't do that. Go ahead, sir.

ERIC CHITTENDEN, Cold Hollow Cider Mill: After two days of hearings and discussion in this conference here in Washington, if you look at the whole industry, you look at the entire E. Coli problem, I would say that the problem in apple juice is relatively small. It truly is when you look at the number of cases that have erupted as a result of meat and poultry, the problem that was in raspberries this summer, the recent problem in Britain, where 12 people, I guess, died as a result of it. That isn't to say that those of us in the apple and apple juice industry aren't concerned about the public health. Most of us got into this particular line of profession because we like being around a healthy product, the image of the apple and fresh apple juices, and with that in mind, I think that the FDA has in each and every one of us that grows fruit and processes fruit a team member to maintain that image and certainly not only the image but the reality of a good, safe, healthy product.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: So you're saying that Ms. Smith Dewaal and the people who are concerned about it areoverly-concerned, or, in a word, what would you say their reaction is?

ERIC CHITTENDEN: I don't think we can be overly-concerned. I think Caroline brings a good point to the table in that any problem is a serious problem, and we have to take it very seriously. We also have to look at the reasonable risk with anything that we do, whether it's getting a flu shot and knowing that a certain number of people are going to die as a result of getting the flu shots, we still get them because the public benefit from that is greater than the public risk.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But, in effect, you're saying that this is overdrawn or overblown, the reaction?

ERIC CHITTENDEN: No, again, I really feel I share Caroline's concern about maintaining a healthy food chain and being a part of that. I would say that--and I think Caroline may agree with me-- that it may be premature to require pasteurization. But the--in the end, if people who are consuming the product feel comfortable and know their processor, know that they're using, that the processor's using good, clean, perhaps even treated fruit, and has good practices, there's no reason to be concerned about a safe product.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Ms. Smith Dewaal, is he right, that perhaps this is limited to very few places, that basically the concern is just for certain things, certain--

CAROLINE SMITH DEWAAL: We hope that the industry can take--heed this wake up call and address this problem quickly. There's been a lot of debate over the last two days about whether fresh juices, all juices should be pasteurized. And we're not sure that that's the right first step here. We'd like to see the industry take steps to put in place the highest possible standards for their product, using tree-picked fruit, making sure the fruit doesn't touch the ground, things like that, and making sure their plants are very-- maintained at very sanitary levels.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Because the fruit touching the ground, what is the problem there, that comes in contact with-- CAROLINE SMITH DEWAAL: We're concerned that some of the apples involved in these outbreaks might have been in contact with either cow or deer manure and that that's where the bacteria came from. That's what one of our major concerns is. Some of the scientists at the meeting have said that it may be more widespread than that. It may be in water, irrigation, water, some other things, and they're calling for pasteurization of the products. But we'd like to see the industry really step up to the plate, address this problem, and give consumers the information they need to know to avoid hopefully more deaths or serious illnesses from the products.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Mr. Chittenden, do you have any objections to the things that she's put on the table--let's leave pasteurized aside for the moment--but the health things that she says needs to be done and the other steps?

ERIC CHITTENDEN: No. I think Caroline brings up some excellent points, that if we keep in mind there are just under a thousand fresh apple juice producers in the country and many of these are small producers, perhaps there's an opportunity for the industry and for the states to implement GMP's good manufacturing procedures in their states, and perhaps FDA should require that in HCCP programs, which are Hazardous Critical Control Point programs, and--

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And you wouldn't have a problem with that?

ERIC CHITTENDEN: Oh, absolutely not. I think it's essential, and I think that anyone--it's important that we all are concerned about our food source and a good healthy food chain.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: What about labeling now, is this something you're calling on the FDA to propose?

CAROLINE SMITH DEWAAL: We would like to see at least for the immediate future labels on fresh juice products that simply say it's unpasteurized and that it shouldn't be given to children, the elderly, or people with a suppressed immune condition.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: All right. What do you think about that, Mr. Smith Chittenden ?

ERIC CHITTENDEN: I guess I could go on record as categorically opposing that because such a label would imply--it would be like a warning label. And, again, if good manufacturing practices are in place and you're starting with good, clean fruit, there should be no reason to expect anything but a good end product.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: No reason to expect but a good end product?

CAROLINE SMITH DEWAAL: Well, we don't know, we still don't know the source of the E. Coli bacteria in the Odwalla juice. They told us they had very high standards in place, so we want to make certain that consumers know about the risk, particularly to the elderly members of the family and even children. I mean, if you walked into a day care center today, you may find raw apple cider being served to those children. That's a real concern. And we need to let people know that they shouldn't be serving those products to the elderly or children in their family.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: And you have a problem with that?

ERIC CHITTENDEN: Well, if I may, I think we need to broaden the discussion a little bit because we have here many juice producers, and if you look at, in a sense, many restaurants, most restaurants in the country, in a sense, are juice producers. They advertise fresh-pressed or squeezed orange juice. We have on the West Coast juice-arias popping up everywhere. And it's with the idea that these are fresh, healthy, wholesome juices, and when you start these things, like lettuce and dairies and so on that are literally on the ground, some of them very difficult to wash--

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But the problem is with the juice, and you're saying that they should leave it up to the people who make the juice to--

ERIC CHITTENDEN: Well, no. That's probably part that's left out of the discussion is that the problem isn't necessarily the juice. It's actually on lettuce. In fact, in the Odwalla situation, the results aren't in yet. It hasn't been answered, and isn't, so lettuce was one of the things that came up in that situation.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Just very briefly, Ms. Smith Dewaal, what should consumers do in the meantime, just very briefly, before any rules are handed down?

CAROLINE SMITH DEWAAL: If you want to serve your family cider this holiday season, just boil it first. You don't even need to boil it. Get it up to 160 degrees for a very short couple of seconds, and you'll probably be fine. So if you serve your cider mold this season, it should be good, and then let the industry really tackle this problem.

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: All right. Thank you both for joining us.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the defense minister of China comes to Washington, and a conversation about an unusual cookbook. FOCUS - DEFENSIBLE FRIENDS?

JIM LEHRER: Now we look at the controversy surrounding the visit of China's defense minister to the United States. Charles Krause has the story.

CHARLES KRAUSE: The defense minister's 10-day tour of the United States was a major step in the administration's effort to improve tense relations between the U.S. and China. Minister Chi Hao Tian began his trip in Washington, where he met privately with President Clinton at the White House. The general was then accorded full military honors at the Pentagon, followed by a meeting with Defense Sec. William Perry. Before the meeting, Perry indicated that the U.S. would no longer confront China, but, rather, pursue what the Clinton administration calls a policy of constructive engagement.

WILLIAM PERRY, Secretary of Defense: When we find areas of disagreement--and we will--we will seek to resolve those areas of disagreement. But some of those disagreements we will not resolve. We will agree to disagree.

CHARLES KRAUSE: The defense minister's trip to the U.S. had been postponed twice since late 1994; first, in 1995, when China was angered by Taiwanese President Lee Tung-Hui's private visit to the United States, and the second time last March, when China staged military exercises, including missile launches, in the Straits of Taiwan to protest Taiwan's first fully democratic election. The U.S. responded by sending two aircraft carriers into the straits which separate Taiwan from the mainland. Sino-U.S. relations have been strained since 1989, when the Chinese government suppressed pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. At the time, General Chi was the Chinese army's chief of staff, and in that capacity ordered the military crackdown. In a speech at the National Defense University on Human Rights Day last week, Chi continued to deny that any civilians had been killed in Beijing seven years ago, calling the pro-democracy demonstrators "hooligans."

GEN. CHI HAO TIAN, Minister of Defense, China: [speaking through interpreter] I can tell you in a responsible and serious manner that at that time not a single person lost his life in Tiananmen Square.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Gen. Chi's statements notwithstanding, western human rights group estimate that hundreds, if not thousands, of student demonstrators and bystanders were killed by the People's Liberation Army during the suppression of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations. Yet, despite that record and the new controversy that erupted at the defense minister's latest remarks, his tour of U.S. military bases has continued without interruption, ending tomorrow at U.S. Pacific Headquarters in Hawaii. But the Pentagon has kept the defense minister under wraps and away from TV cameras since his war college speech last week.

CHARLES KRAUSE: With us now to discuss Gen. Chi's trip is Congressman Christopher Smith, chairman of the House International Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, and Ronald Montaperto, senior fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington. He helped Pentagon officials prepare for the Chinese visit. Thank you, gentlemen, for joining us. Congressman, you've been extremely critical of this trip. Why?

REP. CHRISTOPHER SMITH, [R] New Jersey: Well, first of all, this is a consequence, I believe, of President Clinton's engagement policy whereby human rights have not only been de-emphasized, they have been--we have had--we have capitulated on truly linking human rights in a meaningful way. Gen. Chi was in operational control. Amnesty International estimates that at least a thousand people were killed on or next to or in very close proximity to Tiananmen Square. Western journalists saw it, and now, in standard fare for a man of his caliber, he's stating that it never happened, that there was some pushing and shoving. That may sell in China, where there's no free media, and the organs of the media are propaganda organs for the Communist Party, but here, it certainly, I think, falls on deaf ears. The Clinton administration should have been absolutely up front and said, you know, this man is the butcher of Beijing. And that may sound impolite, but for the thousands of people who have died and then the ongoing crackdown that continued after that, where students and activists for human rights were hunted down, interrogated, tortured, and many of them still languish in prison, that's a very mild rebuke. I think his visit has been an embarrassment to his handlers and to his leaders and colleagues in Beijing, because he, like no one else, has put the Tiananmen Square massacre right back on the front table, and all of the human rights abuses will be, and the policy vis-a-vis China will be looked at as a result of this visit. It'll get new scrutiny and more scrutiny in the coming months.

JIM LEHRER: Professor, capitulated, an embarrassment, is this a mistake for the United States?

RONALD MONTAPERTO, National Defense University: I don't believe it's a mistake for the U.S. at all. First of all, we did not invite the operational commander of the troops at Tiananmen. We invited the defense minister of the People's Republic of China. We did that because we have vital national interests with which the Chinese and the United States are deeply, deeply involved. And in order to get some movement on those kinds of issues, Charles, it's necessary, if I may use the word, to engage. That's why he was here. I disagree with the Congressman. I do not think that we suffered in any sense in the esteem of the world. On the contrary, I think that the regions, certainly the Japanese, the Koreans, and the Europeans, would applaud the decision to have this visit, not because they want to see the defense minister be here, but because they'd like to see us do a better job of managing our relationship with the People's Republic of China, which is implications for the stability throughout all of Asia. And I think from that point of view, this trip was necessary, and we did not suffer one bit. I think we gained.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Should the President have met with the defense minister? Was that necessary? Was that the right thing to do?

RONALD MONTAPERTO: This trip was canceled twice, once by the Chinese desires and once by our desires. The Soviet's, of course, was Taiwan. In order to break the logjam in U.S.-China relations, it was essential that the Chinese defense minister make this visit. He had to come. That's really not the question you asked. Was it essential that that President meet him? That's anyone's call. I personally am rather glad that the President did meet him, because it sends the proper signal, which is that we are interested in constructing a useful relationship with the People's Republic of China, doesn't mean that we're going to leap willy-nilly into a relationship with the Chinese. It doesn't mean that we're going to lose track of our interests with the Chinese. It does mean that we can proceed in a measured way. This was a good first step in that direction.

REP. CHRISTOPHER SMITH: I would say that we had opportunities, and when President Clinton de-linked most favored nation status with human rights, he sent the signal to dictators that we are not serious. We need to build the relationship with China based on honesty, not dishonesty. That was a mostly dishonest remark. It reflects everything that this particular general and the rest of the dictatorship have been engagingin. How do you trust a dictatorship that so mistreats its people, is cracking down on religion, forced abortion, use of the gulags to make goods for export. When they say they're going to rein in on arms proliferation, and we know that they have sent ring magnets to Pakistan. We know there's problems with Iran. How do you really trust them on any of that when that kind of representation of a reality that you and everyone else carried live as it was happening at Tiananmen Square? Now, it begs the question. You know, we need to say, okay, the carrot isn't working. Making nice, and engaging in diplomacy based on fiction only leads to they saying, hey, these people will swallow hook, line, and sinker whatever we sell them. We need to use, I think, some sticks, and that's with a trade linkage to human rights. Again, denial is what they're engaging in. They're trying to say like the Holocaust people who said that there was no Holocaust. We all know that's untrue, and that's why Eisenhower said look at the camps, so no one ever can deny this. This man is directly responsible for the killing and maiming of innocent people, thousands, at least a thousand, many more.

JIM LEHRER: Professor.

RONALD MONTAPERTO: As difficult as it may be to bear the events- -to remember the events of Tiananmen Square, I think we need to keep focused on other issues. We need to be very careful about our perspective. I mean, we need, if we're going to deal with China, we need to take a larger, broader strategic perspective. To be sure, China's record on human rights is not all that it should be. We all agree with that. Nor do I believe even for one moment that the Chinese went home with a feeling that hey, human rights is no longer an issue in U.S.-China relations. It is. U.S.-China relations will always be influenced by their record on human rights, and simply will not change. Everybody knows that. This administration has made--many administrations have made that abundantly clear. Now, what about the other issues? What about the continued peace and stability of the Asia Pacific region? What about some kind of resolution on the situation on the Korean Peninsula? What about behavior in the Middle East? What about a whole range of other things that I could mention, but I think I've suggested them at least? Now, we cannot address those issues if we retreat behind this sense of moral outrage. Sometimes, I believe, it becomes necessary to make the next step and to go on to other things. In doing that, or to do that, to focus on the issues, does not in any way say that we condone or accept the kinds of things that Gen. Chi Hao Tian and his army were guilty of in June, in 1989.

CHARLES KRAUSE: In 1989. What you're describing, in effect, is the constructive engagement policy, which the administration has now enunciated. Let me just, based on what you just said, you talked about carrots. Didn't the Clinton administration try sticks to begin with, and isn't it now trying a different approach?

REP. CHRISTOPHER SMITH: There was no resolve. I led three human rights trips to China, one of them was midway between after an executive order which I applauded the President for at the time, where I said there had to be significant progress in human rights, or this trading benefit would no longer exist. Things deteriorated during that year. We heard many spokes people in the White House giving different messages, sending messages to the Chinese leadership, that there would be the linkage of human rights. Even our own ambassador to China at the time wrote to that effect. They said--and when I was over there in January, right in-between this executive order, I was being told by Chinese leaders we're getting most favored nation status, and human rights won't have anything to do with it.

CHARLES KRAUSE: I understand that, but how do you respond to the professor's point that we really need to keep these things in perspective?

REP. CHRISTOPHER SMITH: Well, again, if you allow a country to- -if you buy into the idea that they will be trustworthy in other areas, like arms proliferation, which they have not been trustworthy in, and if you say they're not exporting prison-made goods, if they're going to be a force for good, and they lie and deceive, fool me once, shame on me, fool me--shame on you--fool me the second time, shame on me. We should say we want, you know, trust but verify, and this particular dictatorship has shown over and over again that they are not trustworthy. So what do you do? Do you deal with them? You deal with them diplomatically, but you say, wait a minute folks, we need to see some real improvements, or our markets--and there is a balance of trade of $35 billion between the PRC and the United States, all in their favor--so they're not going to find markets in Canada or anywhere else for that kind of dumping of goods. And let me say just one final point, Charles. Aggressive appeasement, in my view, characterizes this administration when it comes to China. They give on every turn with the Chinese dictatorship, and they know it in Beijing.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Professor.

RONALD MONTAPERTO: I think that's completely wrong. I see no evidence . I don't speak for this administration, of course. But there are plenty, plenty of sticks involved in all of this. What we are talking about is the beginning of a process. Now, take the relationship between our military and the Chinese military. There is no thought, for example, that there would be a transfer of weapons. There is no thought that there would be a transfer of sensitive technologies. There is no thought that there would be any kind of--that we would undertake anything that would turn them into a more efficient or a better fighting force. Our approach with the Chinese People's Liberation Army, the PLA, involves the discussion of strategic issues, a discussion of broad concepts of strategy and doctrine, things of that sort. That's a stick.

CHARLES KRAUSE: Is this a turning point in relations between China and the United States?

RONALD MONTAPERTO: It's too soon to tell. It's really too soon to tell. It is the hope of this administration, as I see it, that, in fact, we will now be moving into a different area, and that the series of peaks and troughs that we've seen in relations over the years will begin to smooth out and even out. It's too soon to tell.

REP. CHRISTOPHER SMITH: I would argue the dictatorship is getting stronger. People like Wei Xing Sheng and other leading pro- democracy activists have recently been re-arrested. Crackdowns are on the rise, not the decline. Religious freedom is on the rise, or persecution. This country is--

CHARLES KRAUSE: Gentlemen.

REP. CHRISTOPHER SMITH: Okay. Thank you.

CHARLES KRAUSE: I'm sorry. Our time is up. But thank you very much. CONVERSATION - IN MEMORY'S KITCHEN

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, recipes and resistance, and to Elizabeth Farnsworth, who recorded this conversation recently.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In this month of religious holidays, memory and food become especially important. In that spirit, we look now at an unusual book, "In Memory's Kitchen," which was published earlier this fall. The book is a collection of recipes compiled by women in the concentration camp Terezin, or as the Germans called it, Terezianstat. This was the camp in Czechoslovakia to which many prominent Jews were taken, among them a 70-year-old art historian named Mina Pachter. Before she starved to death at Terezin, she compiled a handwritten book of recipes and entrusted it to a friend, imploring him to get it to her daughter in Palestine if "he" survived. Here to tell the story of the book is its editor, Cara De Silva, a journalist and culinary historian. Thank you for being with us.

CARA DE SILVA, Editor, "In Memory's Kitchen": Thank you for having me here.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Tell us about Terezin. It was an unusual concentration camp, wasn't it?

CARA DE SILVA: It was completely unique in the camps of the Third Reich largely because Hitler somehow managed, in a ploy that would make Madison Avenue executives gasp, to position it as paradise ghetto, a model ghetto, a city for the Jews. And it was used to deceive the world, or he intended it to deceive the world, about what was actually happening to the Jews.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: So this was a place where "some" liberties were given--people gave plays and operas--but at the same time, Jews were dying at the same rate as in any other camp.

CARA DE SILVA: Yes. This was not a death camp. It was a weigh station to the death camps. Of 144,000 Jews who were sent to Terezin, 88,000 were sent to death camps. Thirty-three thousand, though, died in Terezin, itself, which is a great number of people. At times as many as a hundred people a day were dying in this camp. Yet, at the same time, people were allowed, partly because it helped to perpetuate this hoax, to engage in the most incredible artistic activities. It was a cultural ferment of a kind that's almost impossible to describe.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The people who died, many died of hunger, is that right?

CARA DE SILVA: Yes. Hunger and disease.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Hunger was a huge part of life in this ghetto, and Mina Pachter, among other people, made hunger, or dealt with her hunger partly by gathering recipes.

CARA DE SILVA: Yes. Mina Pachter and the few friends who wrote this book. Hunger was particularly a problem for the elderly because they were actually--for reasons I won't go into here--they were given less food than others because they were closer to death to begin with. And so they were--they are described in the literature as being in a terrible state, as scavengers. And we can't know for sure that Mina Pachter and her friends were in this condition but it seems very likely. We do know she died of starvation, and, therefore, we can assume that things were not going well, and that they did have to find other ways of dealing with their hunger.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: She called it platonic cooking at one point.

CARA DE SILVA: In a poem, yes.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Where the women would fantasize about the things they used to cook. And this was--they came from a culture in Central Europe that--the women--for whom food was a very important part of their lives.

CARA DE SILVA: I think to a degree that it's very hard for a contemporary woman to understand when we buy everything already chopped in the supermarket that for these women, cooking was a source of immense pride and importance. And it was a thing from which a woman very much took not all her identity but a great part of her identity was how she laid her table and what she put on it, and so for these women, the dishes they are remembering are part of that.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And their recipes for a potato herring dish, for goose necks stuffed with farina, for liver dumplings, would you read one of the recipes?

CARA DE SILVA: Sure. It's always--it's always very hard to choose, but there is one with a line in it that I find particularly moving. I should explain, by the way, that these women were largely assimilated, that the Jews of Bohemia, however Jewish they felt themselves to be, were largely not kosher, so don't be surprised at the presence of one of the ingredients in this recipe. I read it largely because there's one line in it that is just so heart rending when you think about what these women were doing at the time these were written. "Cold Stuffed Eggs," Pachter. "Hard boil 10 eggs. Cut them in half. Remove yolks and press them through a sieve. Ad five decagrams butter, two anchovies, press through a sieve. A little mustard. Three to four drops magi"--which is a liquid seasoning--"1/8 liter whipped heavy cream, parsley, lemon juice. Now put eggs on a platter. Pour aspic over. Before pouring on the aspic, let fantasy run free." And the eggs are garnished with ham, smoked salmon, caviar, capers. "One can put the eggs into paper cups and serve them with hot, sliced rolls." Even the paper cups is a detail of a kind of fineness of cooking and imagining when you know what the slop that these women were living on, and how starved they were, it just--

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The recipes are in some cases not complete.

CARA DE SILVA: Yes.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And you've left them that way. Why?

CARA DE SILVA: Well, I left them that way, first of all, because this is a historical document, obviously, but also because the story of this book is as much or more in the mistakes than it is in the actual recipes because these women--and it shows particularly in the German--two translators have looked at it and told me that--but also just in the writing of the recipes that steps are reversed, things are served before they're cooked, ingredients are left out, and it's not enough to assume that they didn't have to say things because they were talking to people who "knew" all these recipes so that they could leave things out; these are mistakes. They're not just things that they had in common, so they didn't have to say them. And they're mistakes, I think, and others have thought because these women were in a state of decay, I mean, mentally, and the German--these were women, all of whom grew up speaking and writing German. And the German is just peculiarly troubled. And one has to assume that in old age, when you have no food, that your decline is precipitous.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How did this--how did this--these were recipes written by hand on paper. How did they finally get many years later to Mina Pachter's daughter?

CARA DE SILVA: It's the most dramatic and amazing story. These are hand sewn. They're written in faltering handwritings, and just before she died of starvation in Terezin, Mina Pachter apparently handed this--or we know through her daughter, who ultimately received it--she handed the manuscript to a friend of hers, a man, and asked that if he survived--she apparently felt that she was dying--that if he survived, he please get them to her daughter, who had gone to Palestine. She has refused to go with her daughter, saying, they'll never hurt an old person. And, of course, she was very shortly to find out how wrong she was. So the problem was that she didn't have an address for her daughter because of the war. You know, they occasionally communicated but very rarely. And so he was left with a manuscript and no way to find her. He took--he did survive, and he took it home to--or took it to his shop, which was in a small town in Czechoslovakia, and kept it for 15 years. And in the 15th year, a cousin of his came into the shop and said she was going to Israel. And he gave it to her. He made her the custodian. And she took it along, and only to find out that they had just moved to New York, when she got word of them. Another 10 years went by, and suddenly, a stranger, nobody knows who it was, a man from Ohio, suddenly showed up at a meeting of Czech Jews in New York, carrying this astonishing, important parcel with this unknown form of Holocaust literature. And he asked if anybody at the meeting happened to known Anny Stern, which was the name of the daughter. And one woman raised her hand. And she said, "Yes, I think I do." And she became the final custodian of the manuscript. And 25 years after her mother died--I can still hardly say it--after her mother died of starvation in Terezin, Anny's phone rang, and a stranger's voice said, "Hello. Is this Anny Stern?". And she said, "Yes." And the voice said, "Then I have a package for you from your mother."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What did she do then?

CARA DE SILVA: She said to me that--she died last year, but we came to know each other quite well--she said to me that she couldn't touch it, that it was like something holy, that she was afraid of it, that it was like her mother's hand was reaching out to her from the past. And she put it in a drawer. And she didn't look at it for years and years.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: How did it come to be published?

CARA DE SILVA: A friend of mine, Dalia Carmel, is a collector of cookbooks, and she was a friend of Anny's. And one day out of nowhere, Anny opened the drawer, and she said, "I have something to show you."

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And you all who have worked on this, you as editor, you've all worked free, pro bono?

CARA DE SILVA: Yes. Everybody did it pro bono. It was so important--I mean, we all felt such a mission to let these women's voices be heard again after 50 years.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You see this as an act of resistance, don't you?

CARA DE SILVA: Oh, without question, as a very profound act of psychological resistance. Food is such a powerful identity marker that when you remember, when you remember what you fed your husband, and what your grandmother fed you, and your celebrations of what went on around your table, you are reinforcing who you are. And in this situation, you are reinforcing who you are in the face of those who want to annihilate you and your culture and your traditions, and everything about you. We all have food memories that recall for us our childhood, our adulthood, you know, our marriage feast, whatever it was. And when we do, it's in a central part of who we are. And by writing this down, they were using these as weapons. They were using, you know, potato doughnuts and dumplings and stuffed eggs and caramels from Bonn, instead of bombs and bazookas.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, Cara De Silva, thank you very much for being with us. RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Tuesday, President Clinton released his plan for fighting AIDS that calls for a cure, a vaccine, and a guarantee of care and services for those with the AIDS virus. The President said he supported the decision to return thousands of dollars of questionable donations for his legal defense fund, and the U.S. Supreme Court granted a temporary stay of execution to Virginia Death Row inmate Joseph O'Dell. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.