The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight: A summary of today's news; a report on the fighting in the Middle East; an update of Secretary Powell's peace mission; differing looks by Anthony Lewis and Norman Podhoretz at Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank; a report from India on stem cell research; a conversation with Richard Rodriguez about his new book, "Brown"; and a reprise of Robert MacNeil's report on "Portraits of Grief," part of the "New York Times" 9/11 coverage that won a Pulitzer Prize today.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Israeli forces will begin withdrawing from two West Bank towns on Tuesday. The defense ministry announced it late today, hours after President Bush again urged Prime Minister Sharon to end the offensive. Earlier Sharon said the campaign would go "as quickly as possible," but he said it would end only when Palestinian militias had been defeated. Fighting raged on today in Jenin and Nablus. And a standoff continued in Bethlehem, at the Church of the Nativity. Mr. Bush repeated his demands of the Palestinians and Arabs, as well as the Israelis, during a trip to Knoxville, Tennessee.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: First of all I meant what I said to the Prime Minister of Israel. I expect there to be withdrawal without delay. And I also meant what I said to the Arab world: That in order for thereto be peace, nations must stand up, leaders must stand and condemn terrorism and terrorist activity. There is a mutual responsibility to achieve peace. And it's going to require leadership on both sides, and the United State is firmly committed to achieving peace and is firmly committed -- and I am firmly committed-- to what I expect from both parties.

JIM LEHRER: In Jerusalem, Special Envoy Anthony Zinni met with Sharon to deliver the President's message. And in Morocco, Secretary of State Powell demanded "a clear statement" that Israeli forces are leaving Palestinian lands. He met with Morocco's king on the first leg of his trip aimed at ending the Middle East violence. He'll travel to Jerusalem later in the week. We'll have more on all of this in a few moments. Iraq said today it would halt oil exports for 30 days, or until Israeli forces leave Palestinian territories. President Saddam Hussein urged other Arab nations to follow suit, but there was no indication OPEC member states would do so. Under UN sanctions, Iraq is allowed to sell oil to pay for humanitarian supplies. The US Energy Department today played down the effects of an Iraqi oil cutoff. But Energy Secretary Abraham voiced concern about a spike in gasoline prices. They're up nearly 25 cents a gallon in the past month. The Department predicted the average price this summer would be $1.46 per gallon. In Afghanistan today, a bomb exploded near the defense minister's convoy in Jalalabad. He was unhurt, but the blast killed four people and wounded 18. A news camera captured the moment of the explosion. Government officials said it was meant to kill the minister and destabilize the country. At the Pentagon today, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said the attack does not mean the situation is "unraveling."

DONALD RUMSFELD: If you're going to try to hold Afghanistan to a standard of tidiness and stability that you're going to find in the United State, you're not going to find it. Does that mean something is unraveling? No. Indeed it is that the environment there, compared to six months ago, is so much better than it was that the very thought... I don't know how your mind even found that word to characterize what's taking place. It's such a stretch.

JIM LEHRER: Today's bombing followed several attacks on international peacekeepers in recent days, and an alleged coup plot that was foiled last week. The Arthur Andersen accounting firm will lay off 7,000 people, about one quarter of its US workforce. The announcement today was the latest fallout from the Enron scandal. Andersen was indicted last month on a federal charge of obstructing justice for shredding documents related to Enron. It has also been losing clients. The Pulitzer prizes were announced today. In the arts, Suzan-Lori Parks won the drama prize for "Topdog/Underdog"; Richard Russo, the fiction award for "Empire Falls"; David McCullough, biography, for "John Adams"; Diane McWhorter, nonfiction, for her book on the civil rights revolution in Birmingham, Alabama. Also, Louis Menand won for history, Carol Dennis for poetry, and the music prize went to Henry Brant. In journalism, the "New York Times" won a record seven Pulitzers. The "Washington Post," the "Los Angeles Times," and the "Wall Street Journal" also won. We'll have more on one of the "Times" winners at the end of the program tonight. Also coming: A Middle East update, the Powell mission, Podhoretz versus Lewis on Israeli withdrawal, India's stem cell research, and "Brown" by Rodriguez.

UPDATE - ON THE GROUND

JIM LEHRER: Now the Middle East. We begin with this report from Lindsey Hilsum of Independent Television News.

LINDSEY HILSUM: Israeli commanders on the rooftops overlooking the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem. At dawn this morning, smoke was still rising from a fire in the compound, which started during shooting in the night. Two Israelis were wounded, and one Palestinian killed. The Israeli army says Palestinian gunmen fired first from the church. But we spoke by phone to the governor of Bethlehem, who's inside the church. He said Israeli commandos tried to break in through the roof, and the grenade they threw started the fire. The Israelis searched Palestinian firefighters before letting them extinguish the blaze. This morning we found the streets leading up to Manger Square shattered and almost deserted. Only a few dare pick their way through the wreckage of the Israeli onslaught. And the Israeli snipers are still around. This afternoon, the Israelis briefly lifted the curfew, but only in part of Bethlehem. Anyone out on the wrong side of the line quickly learned their mistake. There's been shooting to the right of me, down this road down here. It seems that the Israelis are trying to warn the Palestinians in Bethlehem that they should go back into their houses, they should not come outside. Nonetheless, everyone came out into the streets for a few hours to go shopping, just to get out of the house, to talk to their neighbors.

LINDSEY HILSUM: As the director of the Peace Center, what are you (gun fire)... what are you telling people here in Bethlehem that they should do?

MICHAEL NASSER, Bethlehem Peace Center: I'm telling people to hold on, this is not going to last forever. If we lose part of our people, we will still stay and Palestine will always remain.

LINDSEY HILSUM: In the Knesset in Jerusalem, the Israeli Prime Minister showed parliamentarians documents he said proved that Yasser Arafat finances suicide bombers.

ARIEL SHARON, Prime Minister, Israel (Translated): Arafat has established in the territories under his control a regime of terror that, in an organized and an official manner, trains terrorists, finances, equips and arms them and then sends them to murderous operations and activities in Israel.

LINDSEY HILSUM: Troops did pull out of the village of Yatta today near Hebron. But elsewhere, fighting is more intense than ever. Tonight, as the extent of the destruction becomes apparent, the US Envoy, Anthony Zinni, went to see Mr. Sharon to say George Bush says, "Stop now." But most Israelis support the continued assault on the West Bank. They see Palestinians captured and think, "This makes our lives safer." "Each one could be a potential suicide bomber." At Nablus, where fighting was intense in the Central Casbah, dozens of Palestinians surrendered today. Ariel Sharon believes "Operation Protective Wall" is working.

JIM LEHRER: The diplomatic mission of Secretary of State Powell, and to Elizabeth Farnsworth.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Secretary Powell began his mission in the North African kingdom of Morocco. For an update we go to Todd Purdum, the chief diplomatic correspondent of New York Times, by telephone. He's in Casablanca where Powell was scheduled to meet with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, author of an Arab peace plan.

Thanks for being with us, Todd. Why did this trip start in Morocco, and what is being asked of the Moroccan king?

TODD PURDUM: Well, Elizabeth, it started in Morocco in part because there's a long tradition of sympathy for both American interests here and sympathetic interaction with Israel. When Henry Kissinger began his shuttlediplomacy, at the end of the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, his first stop was in

Morocco. Secretary of State Jim Baker made a stop here as he was building support for the Gulf

War more than a decade ago. So Secretary Powell came here today to speak with King Mohammed to help build support among moderate Arab states, to put pressure on Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians to stop

suicide bombings, to stop the tactics of terror that have prompted the Israeli occupation that has so upset the Arab world. That's what Secretary Powell is hoping to do in the beginning of this week before he heads to Jerusalem.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The King reportedly asked Powell, "Don't you think it was more important to go to Jerusalem first?" What did Powell respond to that?

TODD PURDUM: He did, the King did ask him that, and we did not hear, in the meeting, Powell's direct response to the King, but afterwards Secretary Powell told reporters traveling with him that he had explained that he felt it was important to come visit the Arab leaders and go to a meeting of European Union officials in Madrid on Wednesday and Thursday to pave the path toward negotiations when he gets to the Middle East, and to make clear that America expects help from its Arab allies, that it stands in solidarity with its European allies in trying to end the violence, and that the downside-- which Secretary

Powell did not say-- is that the American administration clearly realizes Israel is going to take some time to conduct the withdrawals. They expect them to begin, as the President said, without delay, which Secretary Powell said means now. But the worst thing, from the Bush Administration's point of view, would be to have Secretary Powell arrive in Jerusalem and have the occupation still running full steam ahead. So there is a hope that by the time he gets there on Friday, some progress will have been made on the ground already.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: I want to get into more about the upcoming week, but first, what about the big demonstrations today in Morocco? Some reports are saying they're the largest so far.

TODD PURDUM: You know, I'm not too aware of demonstrations today. We've been in the bubble with

the Secretary, but there were very large demonstrations on the streets of Rabat yesterday, half a million people or more, which officials-- both American and Moroccan officials-- tell us were the largest demonstrations in memory here. They were described as largely peaceful with some chanting of anti-Sharon and anti-Israeli slogans, some burning of American flags on the fringes of the demonstrations, but no notable violence apparently, and no breaching of American facilities.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: There are some reports here, now, going to what happening in the talks that are coming up, that what the Secretary wants to do is to get together some kind of multilateral discussions based on the Saudi peace proposal. Is that what you're hearing?

TODD PURDUM: You know, you hear it both ways, Elizabeth, and it's just not possible for me to tell you

what's going to happen until it happens, and I think the Administration is holding out all possibilities.

President Bush has made it clear that Secretary Powell has a wide latitude on this trip, that if he thinks it's useful to conduct some kind of multilateral discussions, that's all right. Of course, Israel has always

been reluctant to have any kind of solution that would be seen as being imposed by a multinational body.

Ten years ago, the first President Bush got a peace process started by them, the Madrid Conference. I think some in the Administration would be willing to envision a successor to that. I think it really all depends on how much progress Secretary Powell feels he can make in negotiations between the

parties themselves, between Israelis and Palestinians, and to see if there might be progress that could be further gained from an international group.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And can you give us any idea of what specifically he wants to talk with Crown Prince Abdullah about? I think he's just about to meet with him or is meeting as we speak.

TODD PURDUM: Yes, I think he may be meeting, as we speak. He hopes to talk with him to flush out further details about the crown prince's vision for peace of Arab states with Israel. This was unanimously endorsed by the Arab League summit the other day. It basically calls for Israel to withdraw from lands it

occupied after the 1967 war in exchange for normal recognition, diplomatic relations with its neighbors, and peace in the region. There are many problems with this because it involves at the moment some conditions that Israel is not willing to accept, but Americans and Europeans and others around the world have seen it as a very hopeful note in being able to possibly move the process forward, so I think Secretary

Powell wants to talk about that with the Crown Prince. My suspicion is he also wants to talk with him rather candidly about what America feels the Saudis and other Arab states need to do to put pressure on Arafat, to put pressure on the Palestinian violence, and get that stopped so that the peace process can

move forward. Crown Prince Abdullah and other Arab leaders are facing significant domestic pressures

and discord within their own countries of unrest, and irritation prompted by the Palestinian conflict, and they are looking for help from America in that regard.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Todd Purdum, thanks for being with us.

TODD PURDUM: Thanks for asking.

FOCUS - ALLIES AT ODDS

JIM LEHRER: Now the issue of the United States and Israel, allies now seemingly at odds. Ray Suarez has that.

RAY SUAREZ: And with me to discuss the growing divergence between the United States and Israel are Norman Podhoretz, editor at large of "Commentary" Magazine. He was among 31 signers of a letter to President Bush urging the U.S. to stand by Israel; and former "New York Times" columnist Anthony Lewis. He's written a essay about the MidEast in the latest issue of the "New York Review of Books." Well, Norman Podhoretz, let's start with you. Should the Sharon government do what the Bush Administration has asked: Withdraw and do it without delay?

NORMAN PODHORETZ: Well, evidently, it has begun to withdraw, so I gathered from the latest news reports from at least two towns. But I think the entire demand is unfortunate. I think it's contrary to the interests of Israel and it's contrary to the interests of the war against terrorism being waged by the United States. It seems to me that what the Israelis are trying to do in those territories is no different, either morally or strategically, from what we ourselves have been trying to do in Afghanistan, which is to say: To root out a terrorist infrastructure which is protected by a regime, and that means toppling the regime itself just as the Taliban had to be toppled in order for us to get at al-Qaida, so I think the Palestinian Authority will have to be toppled and replaced by a regime that will not harbor, sponsor, nourish terrorism and therefore might conceivably be reply a regime that could make peace with Israel. There is no possibility of peace between Israel and the Palestinian Authority run by the thugs and murderers and terrorists under Arafat's command.

RAY SUAREZ: Anthony Lewis, should the Sharon government do what President Bush has asked?

ANTHONY LEWIS: Of course it should. It has no choice. The United States has been the main supporter of Israel since its founding in 1948, and it's unthinkable that an American President's strong and reiterated belief that what is essential for the security of the United States and Israel, inconceivable that that would not be done, and it will be done, I'm sure. I must say that I shudder when I think of what would follow Mr. Podhoretz-- and I believe he accurately reflects Mr. Sharon's ideas-- when he says the present Palestinian Authority must be overthrown and replaced. Most people on the ground and experts on the subject think it would be replaced by a far more extreme, angry regime, one that would reflect the overwhelming anger of all Palestinians. And, you know, most Palestinians are like you and me. They are not terrorists. They're ordinary people. But when your country has been occupied for 35 years and when tanks have smashed your cars and your homes and your television stations and everything else, you're a little angry.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, you began your answer by noting the long alliance between the United States and Israel. The United States also delivers aid. The two countries are part of a shared security umbrella. Is there an obligation on the part of the Israelis to take the American lead in this regard, Anthony Lewis?

ANTHONY LEWIS: I don't know about obligation. Israel has always quite rightly said we make our own decisions for ourselves. But it is a fact that Israel is where it is today because of American support -- American support on the edge in the 1973 War when Israel was very near losing, when more supplies of weapons were provided by the United States, just about on time, and, you know, I don't think any Israeli who knows something about the subject would want to be alone in the world without American support. But I don't think that's going to happen. The United States is not going to stop supporting Israel. We have an identity of belief and history. And Israel is not going to defy the United States for long. I just don't believe that.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, you noted, Norman Podhoretz, that a withdrawal of sorts has begun. It's from two smaller towns while the offensive continues elsewhere. But as the Powell trip approaches, what should the United States' attitude be toward Israel if the withdrawal is not complete by the time the Secretary is meant to visit Israel?

NORMAN PODHORETZ: Well, I suspect that there will be anger in Washington unless there's another change in policy, such as we've seen now at least once, perhaps twice, not only in policy but in attitude toward the war against Israel that's been conducted really since 1948, since the birth of Israel of which this is just the latest campaign. To me, it seems that the Bush policy in the war against terrorism, which I support with all my heart and which I think he had been conducting magnificently, has now fallen into inconsistency and incoherence because the President is asking the Israelis to do exactly the reverse of what we ourselves are doing in response to exactly the same kind of attack. If anything, the attacks on the Israelis have been more persistent and in some ways worse than the attack on us because they've been happening on a daily basis and disrupting life to a greater extent than our lives have been disrupted. I think the United States would be wise in our own interest, in our own interest, to side with the Israelis in conducting this particular campaign. It's as though a front in the war against terror that the Israelis are fighting both for their own sakes and I think for the sake of the general cause. And, frankly, I believe that the United States has allowed itself to be deflected from the focus and clarity that the President had with admirable, awesome incandescence until Vice President Cheney's trip to the Middle East in which I think we allowed ourselves to be snookered by a fraudulent Saudi so-called peace plan into changing the subject from Iraq, which is what we were... which Vice President Cheney went to the Middle East to talk about, change the subject from Iraq to Israel which is exactly what the Arab world and the Muslim world wanted to happen. Here we are stuck in that morass instead of pursuing with vigor and determination and with, I repeat the word because it's important, clarity, the purposes that the President has several times enunciated as eloquently as any President before him has stated the objectives of the American policy.

RAY SUAREZ: Let me go back to Tony Lewis at this point -

ANTHONY LEWIS: Yeah. I'd like a word in edgewise here, Ray.

RAY SUAREZ: -- because I want to get his comment on your - on Norman Podhoretz's point that there is some - some similarities between what Israel is trying to do in the West Bank with what the United States is trying to accomplish in Afghanistan.

ANTHONY LEWIS: I was chilled when Mr. Podhoretz said it's in our security interest to support a continued Israeli assault on not just terrorists, which they are trying to find terrorists, but on the ordinary people of the West Bank in very large numbers, on their homes and on their... all of their structure. The water has been cut off for thousands, hundreds of thousands of people and so on. That's in our interest? We are going to... we risk, by doing what we're doing-- if we did that, if we sided with the extremist government of Mr. Sharon, we would risk the governments of all the moderate Arab countries being overthrown. That would be an immense blow to us, the most serious blow the United States security has suffered in years. Something has to be understood here.

RAY SUAREZ: Let him finish, please.

Go ahead.

ANTHONY LEWIS: Something has to be understood here. This is a situation in which there can be no peace unless and until the Israelis get out of the Palestinian territory or most of it that they have occupied for nearly 35 years. It's something none of us could even... Americans could even conceive of, could imagine, to have other people building homes and running tanks next door to you, and for 35 years. It's really terrible for the people who live there. And they're not going to accept it. There can be no peace unless Israel gives up that effort at colonization. That has to be part of any mission that an American Secretary of State brings there: An attempt to get back on the diplomatic track to really find peace. You know, Mr. Podhoretz dismisses the Crown Prince's peace thing. It's pretty important to Israel. Israel wants to live in peace. It doesn't want to live surrounded by war as it has for so many years. This is the best chance it has. Saudi Arabia, which has been the most anti-Israeli country, offering to make peace -- why would you reject that? I just don't understand it.

NORMAN PODHORETZ: The Saudis have offered to make peace on condition that the Israelis accept the so- called right of return for the Palestinian refugees. Translated into plain English, that means if Israel ceases to be a democratic state, the Arab world will graciously accept its existence, which it has never done before and still doesn't, for the most part. And as for the so-called moderate Arab regimes that Mr. Lewis is so concerned about, if you look at their media, their official media, I'm talking about, their state-sponsored and sanctioned media, they are full of the most vile anti-American, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiments that you can imagine. So that the notion that these... I'm talking about Egypt and Saudi Arabia, for example -- the notion that these are moderate countries in favor of peace is simply preposterous. It doesn't stand up under scrutiny. The evidence runs in the other direction. The plain fact is... the plain fact is, if I may, that there can be no peace unless the Arab world makes its own peace with the existence of a sovereign Jewish state in the Middle East. 98%... you would never know from Mr. Lewis that 98% of the Palestinian people have been living now for some years under the regime of the Palestinian Authority, not under Israeli occupation. You would never know from Mr. Lewis that this so-called colonization occupies about 1.5% of the lands that Israel took over in a defensive war against an aggression in 1967.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Anthony Lewis is going to respond to you right now, sir. Let me get one last comment.

And Anthony Lewis, go ahead. Quickly, please.

ANTHONY LEWIS: I don't think there's any point in answering such absurd misrepresentations of fact. The truth is, as everybody knows, that Israel roams all around the West Bank. The tanks are there today, the helicopters, the planes. You live as a Palestinian under constant attack and threat from Israel. And the only way to make peace is to let those people have their own country and to seize the opportunity.

NORMAN PODHORETZ: They were offered that and refused and made war instead 18 months ago when Barak offered them virtually everything they had been asking for...

RAY SUAREZ: Okay. Norman Podhoretz, Anthony Lewis, gentlemen, thank you both.

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight: Stem cell research in India, a conversation with Richard Rodriguez, and a "Portraits of Grief" reprise.

FOCUS - STEM CELL RESEARCH

JIM LEHRER: The stem cell story is reported by Fred de Sam Lazaro of Twin Cities Public Television.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: A year ago, Abishek Sharma was almost completely blind from a degenerative corneal disease found mostly in the tropics.

SPOKESMAN: Look down. Look up.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Surgeon Virender Sangwan decided the last hope was a stem cell transplant. Doctors at the L.V. Prasad Eye Institute cultured donor stem cells in the lab. These were then sutured on his damaged eyes. The stem cells used in this operation were from adult tissues, not the controversial ones from human embryos. Still, the pioneering experiment is one of the earliest indicators of the immense promise of stem cells. They are human physiology's most basic starting point, from which grow all the body's various tissues and organs.

SPOKESMAN: I would say you're doing really well.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Three months later, Dr. Sangwan says, the grafted stem cells, taken from Sharma's parents to lessen the chance of rejection, seem to be working.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Is he out of the woods, doctor?

DR. VIRENDER SANGWAN, L.V. Prasad Eye Institute: It's not really out of the woods, but we have to be on our own watch, and he has to be on a treatment toprevent rejection.

ABISHEK SHARMA, Patient: Dr. Sangwan is really God for me. He make me able to see, and now I can see and I can read. I can ride my bike, and I have come back to my normal life.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: About three dozen patients have undergone the procedure at the Prasad Institute in the south Indian city of Hyderabad. It's one of a handful of Indian facilities doing stem cell research, operating in relative obscurity until developments last summer in the U.S.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Good evening. I appreciate you giving me a few minutes of your time tonight so I can discus with you a complex and difficult issue.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: In August, President Bush announced a compromise plan on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Most scientists feel stem cells removed from embryos are more versatile than adult ones, but they are also more controversial.

DEMONSTRATORS SINGING: What a mighty God we serve.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: That's because embryos don't survive the extraction. Opponents say destroying embryos-- human life, in their view-- is morally unacceptable.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: We should not, as a society, grow life to destroy it.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The President approved 64 stem cell lines, or colonies, worldwide. He said these were already in existence, the life-and-death decision already made. Ten of the cell lines are in India, seven at the Bombay-based Reliance Life Sciences, a private lab headed by Dr. Firuza Parikh.

DR. FIRUZA PARIKH, Reliance Life Sciences: Well, our immediate goals are for peer review, for establishing efficient collaboration, and for putting India on this global scenario of biotech, especially in this field of stem cell research.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The stem cell lines at Reliance are in an early phase, not fully cultured into self-sustaining colonies, a delicate, uncertain process. Parikh plans to develop additional lines, and says she does not need U.S. Government funds to do so. Her lab is owned by a multibillion-dollar Indian conglomerate.

DR. FIRUZA PARIKH: At this point in time, what we are looking at for the next at least three or four years, is pure research. We are not looking at numbers that are generated commercially. Of course in the long run, when this research fits into hospitals and goes on to the patients, we would certainly look at revenue.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: The relatively recent arrival on the scene of embryonic stem cell research, particularly in commercial labs, has led to concern that there aren't adequate regulations to prevent abuses. Could embryos be sold, for example, or eggs removed from a woman without her consent? Could embryos be cloned? The government of India is only now drawing up guidelines for stem cell research, and laws have not always prevented abuses in a country where modern medicine and medieval poverty are neighbors. For example, many people are forced by desperate circumstances to sell their kidneys to a thriving transplant industry. (Ultrasound machine beeps) Like organ sales, it is against the law to use sonograms for sex selection. Still, they are routinely used to detect female fetuses, which are then aborted in a society that favors boys.

DR. D. BALASUBRAMANYAM, L.V. Prasad Institute: I think we are learn... we are a nation that is only very slowly learning about the ethical impact of this. And often I think in a society where you really have centuries of tradition, which suddenly are confronted by newer discoveries and inventions... well, generally technology runs at supersonic speed; jurisprudence is far more languid in its progress. And if it's also added on to traditions, deadening traditions, I think it's going to be an uphill, but hopeful, fight.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Dr. D. Balasubramanyam, research director at the Prasad Institute, says there's still time to develop enforceable guidelines governing stem cell work.

DR. D. BALASUBRAMANYAM: We are still yet to get onto a stage where the final product is so easily seen.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: You don't worry too much about this particular science because it's too distant into the future?

DR. D. BALASUBRAMANYAM: That would be right, yes.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Some ethicists say India faces more immediate basic needs, like clean water, sanitation, and adequate nutrition. Others, however, say there is also a need for new technology like stem cell therapy, to tackle indigenous diseases as well as those found in developed societies, like cardiac disease or Parkinson's. Dr. V.K. Vinayak is with the Department of Biotechnology, the chief regulatory agency.

DR. V.K. VINAYAK, Department of Biotechnology: We have lifestyle-related disorders like cardiac disease and diabetes. The age expectancy is going up. It's more than 60 years. So I see a very great potential for the stem cells.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: And you think that in India, it can be done in an ethically sound environment...as ethically sound as anywhere else?

DR. V.K. VINAYAK: I'm sure. Right, right, sure.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: No human cloning?

DR. V.K. VINAYAK: No human cloning. Right, right.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: No sale of embryos?

DR. V.K. VINAYAK: No sale of embryo, right.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Every research project has to get the government's approval?

DR. V.K. VINAYAK: Right. That's true.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Dr. Parikh insists the embryos she uses to create stem cell lines are voluntarily donated by former patients of a fertility clinic she runs. Donors also sign consent forms, as in the U.S., but unlike their American colleagues, Indian scientists are not caught in a societal debate over when life begins.

DR. FIRUZA PARIKH: As yet, stem cell work in India is apolitical. In India, abortion is an accepted method of family planning. It is a very important need for our country, so I think the moral issues, the ethical issues have already been addressed by us several years ago.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: And, Dr. Parikh and other scientists add, it will be several more years before the many science issues and challenges are addressed. Stem cell therapy remains very much in its infancy-- years, if not decades, away from clinical application.

CONVERSATION

JIM LEHRER: Now, a conversation with an author-- a most familiar author-- of a new book, and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: The book is "Brown: The Last Discovery of America." It's described by its author as the final book in a trilogy on American public life as seen through his life. That author is NewsHour essayist Richard Rodriguez.

Welcome, Richard.

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ, Author, "Brown: The Last Discovery of America:" Thank you, Margaret.

MARGARET WARNER: Let's take the title "Brown." Now, on its own most obvious level, it refers to skin color, but to you it's a metaphor for much more.

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: Yes. I don't even see myself necessarily as brown, though probably people see me that way. I see brown as the mixture of colors. If you let... if the child leaves the Crayola box out in the summer sun, the child gets a very rich brown as a result. It's red and green and black mixed together. It's every color mixing together. For me, it is... when I speak of the brown in America, of America, I mean the mixing of all of us. It is not my particular color I'm speaking about in this book. I mean to exclude no one in this book. That's why so much of its preoccupation is with my relationship to African Americans, for example -- my relationship to other people.

MARGARET WARNER: You... on one level, it seemed to me this book did look at this experience through your experience, though, and there's a passage I'd like you to read about your growing up in Sacramento in the '50s. Maybe you could just read that.

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: Yes. This is quite early. "A boy named Buddy came up beside me in the school yard. I don't remember what passed as prologue, but I do not forget what Buddy divulged to me. 'If you're white, you're all right; if you're brown, stick around. If you're black, stand back.' It was as though Buddy had taken me to a mountaintop and show me the way things lay in the city below. In Sacramento, my brown was not halfway between black and white. On the leafy streets on the east side of town where my family lived, where Asians did not live, where Negroes did not live, my family's Mexican shades passed as various. We did not pass for white. My family passed among white, as in one of those old cartoons where Clara bell the cow goes shopping downtown and the mercantile class of dogs does not remark her exception. As opposed to Amos and Andy, whose downtown was a parallel universe of no possible admixture."

MARGARET WARNER: Are you saying you felt invisible?

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: In some sense, certainly in the years in which I was growing up, brown had no significance in America. This was a black-and-white country. And, in some sense, there was a freedom in that. There was also this sense that you didn't matter in the great American discussion, that your brownness was not the point of America. My particular brownness, of course, is so complicated because I come... my parents come from Mexico and the great brownness of Mexico is the mixture of the Indian and the conquistador, the Spanish and the Indian. That's a very brown country because it recognizes these two different colors, these two different crayons, within its own reality. In America, you were one thing or the other, and it was that difference-- that I had a mixture to me-- in a country that did not talk of mixture. It was so peculiar. I had no way within the mythology of America.

MARGARET WARNER: Didn't you say that when you got to college, for you and for all Hispanics, you ceased to be invisible, at least in political terms. What did that mean for you?

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: Well, for me, it meant that I became part of a numerical mass. Hispanics were suddenly announced by the Richard Nixon Administration, were suddenly announced as the new... as a new minority; Asians, also, at that time. We were suddenly... there was suddenly these new colors -- not simply white, black, but also red, yellow, brown. Most Americans to this day, though, regard Hispanics as a race. They miss our point. We are not a race. Most of us are of mixed races, and some of us are white and some of us are black, and so all the ways we have of talking about us as a group are wrong because they misunderstand our significance in the life of the country. We represent a new force, a new way of entering the American imagination.

MARGARET WARNER: Would you say that America to this day still doesn't know how to think about brown and how to think about Hispanics?

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: No, I think that's right. I think we're still at a very early stage, but clearly something is going on. I think, for example, just to speak as a journalist-- NAFTA represents the beginning of an admission within the United State-- a country that has been traditionally between an East-West country, beginning its history on the East Coast, moving chapter after chapter westward. We are beginning to see ourselves now as a North-South country, beginning to realize that we are related to Canada-- a country we barely understand, this white vacancy-- and to Mexico, this brown mass that we understand all too well. And we are beginning to realize that we have some connection to the North and to the South, to hot and to cold. These are new borders in our imagination. And they suggest to me that brown is very much the color of the future.

MARGARET WARNER: Now, you also write about your search through all your years as a writer to discover what your brownness or your Hispanicity meant to you as a writer. You have a line saying, "I have, throughout my writing life, pondered what a brown voice should sound like." What do you mean?

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: Well, you know, part of the problem with this is that, you know, the presumption was that I knew what a black voice was. What was a brown voice, or for that matter, what was a white voice? This large question that looms over the book is what exactly does it mean to write brownly? And what I discovered in the course of writing this book... and one of the reasons I write this as a literacy performance, literary essays-- not sociology, not op- ed pieces for the "New York Times," but as this literacy performance; dense, baroque even-- is that I'm looking for a way to write brownly. And for me, "brown" means that we engage all the issues of our lives, that the issues of contradiction, the sense of irony that we have about our lives, the sense of inconsistency in our lives. I'm not only Hispanic, but I'm also, as I say in this book, a gay Catholic. I'm a homosexual man who also belongs to a church that regards homosexuals as essentially committing the sin of vanity with their love. I'm also... I belong to two civilizations. By birth and by ancestry, I belong to the Spanish empire. By citizenship, I belong to the English empire, and these contrary impulses within me that play on my imagination. That... it seems to me to write brownly is to admit that all of this confusion in a life belongs within the life, and that I should see my life as a whole rather than... a brown whole rather than as pieces.

MARGARET WARNER: And you resent, at the same time, being typed or categorized as an Hispanic writer or Latino writer.

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: Oh, I have to. I mean, I owe my existence to so many other influences. The notion that you would find me on a bookshelf somewhere far in the corner with other Hispanic writers denies that the writers who shaped me, D.H. Lawrence, James Baldwin... those writers... I want to be on a shelf with them. I want to belong with them. I want to write in a voice that continues their tradition. I'm very proud of this book in the sense that, you know, I don't know whether there are readers anymore for a book this... this dense, this literary, but in some way, I'm writing not for the future, I'm writing to line this experience up with the books that created me, to line it up with the past, in a sense. Do you know what I mean? I'm trying to glamorize this experience of brownness but also to give it its stature in America, this unspoken story of what it is to be brown. Not as the story of Richard Rodriguez, but as the story of someone who begins to see America as an impure experience and ... it glorifies that experience.

MARGARET WARNER: Thank you, Richard.

RICHARD RODRIGUEZ: Thank you, Margaret.

ENCORE - PORTRAITS OF GRIEF

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, a second look at "portraits of grief." The Pulitzer prizes for 2002 were announced today. Those for journalism were dominated by coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The "Wall Street Journal," the "Washington Post," and the "New York Times" were honored for work done on that story. One of the "Times's" awards was for its special section, "A Nation Challenged." It included "portraits of grief," profiles of the thousands of victims killed at the world trade center, at the pentagon, and in Pennsylvania. Robert MacNeil did a report on the making of the portraits last December. Here it is again.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Some 3,000 people died in the attacks on the World Trade Center, far fewer than originally estimated -- nonetheless, a devastating tally. In the days after September 11, family and friends of the victims kept up hope that their loved ones would be rescued from the rubble.

WOMAN: His name is Moise. He was dressed as a chef when everything happened.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Discovered in a hospital.

WOMAN: If anybody sees him or knows anything, his name is Andrew Stern.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Perhaps found wandering the streets with amnesia.

WOMAN: Please, if you can give me help with my sister. She has been missing since 9:00 in the morning.

MAN: My brother Tom Knox.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Grief stricken, they posted their flyers throughout the city, creating galleries of missing persons nearly everywhere you looked. As hope dimmed, the flyers became memorials, and also as the inspiration for a monumental series in the "New York Times." The paper had been struggling to come up with a way to write about the victims who were presumed but not yet declared dead.

JONATHAN LANDMAN, Metropolitan Editor: On Friday after the attack, we just decided to start using the posters that people had started putting up around the city.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Jonathan Landman is the paper's metropolitan editor, Christine Kay, assistant editor on the metro desk.

CHRISTINE KAY, Assistant Metropolitan Editor: We began the conversation of, okay, let's try to find one aspect of the person's life, whether it was a passion or the personality; this one thing you could really flesh out the person.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: And so began the Portraits of Grief. The portraits offered glimpse of lives curtailed, of people who, as the series introduction put it, set off for work on a dazzling September morning and something unimaginably horrible happened. The pieces have become obsessive reading for millions of Americans, myself included. More than 100 "Times" reporters have worked on the series. Janny Scott, David Chen and Anthony DePalma have, among them, written 100 portraits.

SPOKESPERSON: Mr. Feeney, 28, at a conference at windows on the world September 11. Tutored an illiterate adult, worked for campus security, a dorm counselor, representative on the university's board of trustees and worked for Habitat for Humanity. Even after he moved to New York, he kept up the pace of his activities. He was a rock climber; he was a scuba diver, a kayaker and avid inline skater. Loved gliding through Central Park.

SPOKESMAN: Robert Sliwak, who was a bond broker at Cantor Fitzgerald lives on in his three children. That's what his wife says to help them and her get through these days. Last Friday was their father's birthday. He would have been 43. And they went out for pizza to celebrate. The kids all had soda, a special treat, and they raised their glasses and toasted him.

SPOKESMAN: Vivian Casalduc lived to make her families eyes light up. She made gingerbread for a giant candy land each December shredded with coconut snow and the houses studded with lollipops and licorice. She would make it the first two days in December and let everybody look at it all month long. "On Christmas morning, she would let everybody ransack it," said her daughter.

JANNY SCOTT, Reporter: It was really, by the seat of our pants in the beginning and I think that the style of them evolved since then.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: What has evolved to me as one reader, is a kind of way of looking at an individual through the things that make him or her lovable to their... Is that... Does that...

DAVID CHEN, Reporter: It rings true, I think because when we talk to the families, invariably, they will not sort of summarize the person's resume. And all the other things that we tend to talk about in sort of this type "a" city...

ROBERT MAC NEIL: It also makes the people live. It produces the kind of details that appear in a novel.

ANTHONY DE PALMA, Reporter: Sure. What you try to do is to show a part of that person's life rather than tell about it -- and to do it in an almost familiar way, not the formal style of the "New York Times", which would be in an obituary, and it allows people to connect, people who are desperate to connect to all that's happened in some way or another.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: People not related.

SPOKESMAN: Not at all.

SPOKESMAN: People also say that they wish they had known this person after reading this particular profile. I find myself sort of smiling, actually, at some of the anecdotes that the families tell me.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: On his birthday, insurance executive Herman Broghamer allowed himself to be dressed in alpine shorts and lederhosen as 15 couples roasted him to the strains of "The Sound of Music." Ralph Licciardi could stuff his ear lobe into his ear and then wiggle the ear until the ear lobe fell out. Bill Wren, the World Trade Center's director of fire safety, liked bill wren, the World Trade Center director of fire safety, liked to go to art museums and watch Sister Wendy's art lectures on TV. Diane Lipari was so cheerful, friends teased when she woke in the morning, birds chirped around her.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Everybody I know has been terribly moved by these mini- obits as they've appeared. Some people I know start their day with them and some can't stand it because it's so emotional that they end their day with them.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Janny, how do you feel writing them?

JANNY SCOTT: When I first started, I approached them with some trepidation. You're bumbling into some stranger's life at an incredibly difficult time, you're a stranger over the phone calling out of the blue and asking them to talk in detail, in great detail and hopefully with some emotion and feeling and recollection of events and humorous moments and idiosyncrasies to talk about in detail about a person who has just died. So every time I picked up the phone, there was a certain hesitation, and yet once you got people on the phone, almost invariably, they rose to the task and began to talk in the most wonderful ways and describe these people with such depth and feeling that there was something very invigorating about it.

DAVID CHEN: On the other hand, you know, just speaking for myself, it's difficult to do it for an extended period of time because each profile is so draining and--

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Drainingof you?

DAVID CHEN: Yes, it's very draining.

ANTHONY DE PALMA: The thing about this is that there is no doubt in my mind that this is important work. And so while it's draining, it does also make it easy in the sense that you know the worth of it.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Oddly enough, the easiest portraits to write, say these three journalists, are often the most difficult ones to report. For David Chen, it was the one about investment banker Chris Murphy, a long lost college friend. Janny Scott's was the portrait of firefighter Thomas Hannafin. His brother, Kevin, found his body in the wreckage.

JANNY SCOTT: He said "I took the helmet and walked down this long line of rescue workers and followed by my brother's body in the basket." And he said, "I was a member of my brother's company on that day the proudest moment of my life." That was just extremely hard story to hear told.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Then there was the story of insurance executive Michael Egan and his sister Christine who was visiting that morning from Canada. They called Michael's wife after the planes hit the Towers.

DE PALMA: And he's saying, "we're okay but I'm not sure what is going to happen." As they were talking, she is in New Jersey watching the television and she watches the building fall while she's on the phone with him. I lost my breath. I didn't-- I had to say look-- she was sobbing. I said, "I'm sorry. At this moment I don't know what to say, but that I'm sorry."

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Nearly 1,600 portraits have been written. From A, for investment banker Gordie Aamoth, who on Monday, September 10, completed his biggest merger deal ever, to Z for Abe Zelmanowitz, who stayed with his paraplegic manager at Blue Cross/Blue Shield until the Towers collapsed.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Is your aim, if you can, to get everybody?

JONATHAN LANDMAN: Yes. But realistically we know that won't happen. We have been 20% or 25% -- something like that - are just saying no to us. A certain number we just can't find. So we will continue to do it as long as we still have people do, but we won't be able, at some point, not too far from now, to be able to do it every day.

CHRISTINE KAY: If it's shown us one thing, it is that nobody's life was ordinary, that everybody is unique in their own way, and interesting.

ROBERT MAC NEIL: Howard Kestenbaum was so worried about the homeless, he spent nights in shelters to see what it was like. Katie McCloskey moved to Manhattan in June and wrote in her diary that she had found an awesome job in an awesome place in an awesome city. Mark McGinly's memorial service was planned for 500 families and friends. 1,500 people came.

SPOKESPERSON: "Moses Reeves had dreams, big ones. He went after what he wanted. Of course he got the girl, and he and Elizabeth married and had two children, Moses Junior four and Moisha two. A 29-year-old immigrant from Ecuador, he wanted to become the next Emeril, so he took a job as chef at "Windows of the World." He also wanted to be the next Ricky Martin, so he wrote songs and became lead singer for an up and coming band and made a CD and, boy, he knew how to dance. He had some kind of moves. I wish he could come back. I wish he was with me right now. That's the only thing I wish."

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major developments of this day: The Israeli defense ministry announced troops would begin leaving two West Bank towns on Tuesday. A White House spokesman said it's a start. And the Arthur Andersen accounting firm announced it would lay off 7,000 people. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.