The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, we have Newsmaker interviews with two American officials on important missions abroad, Adm. Leighton Smith, the commander of NATO forces in Bosnia, and Thomas Pickering, the U.S. Ambassador to Russia; then another stump speech, Lamar Alexander's is tonight; and an update on the medical fight against AIDS from a researcher and a reporter. It all follows our summary of the news this Thursday. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: The House and Senate passed the telecommunications reform law today by overwhelming margins. The House vote was 414 to 16. It was 91 to 5 in the Senate. The law would deregulate most cable TV rates in three years and would require manufacturers of new TV sets to put in the so-called V-chip that can block violent programs. It would also let cable and telephone companies compete with each other for the same business. Republicans and Democrats praised the measure.

REP. JACK FIELDS, [R] Texas: This is a historic moment because we are decompartmentalizing segments of the telecommunication industry, opening the flood gates of competition through deregulation, and most importantly, today we are giving consumers choice.

REP. JOHN DINGELL, [D] Michigan: Mr. Speaker, I would observe to you that this bill lets everyone in the telecommunications business and everyone who wishes to be in it to compete. It establishes a fair, level, and even playing field. I would urge my colleagues to recognize that no one in the telecommunications industry opposes this bill.

MR. LEHRER: President Clinton has already said he will sign the bill into law. The House was also set to authorize funds tonight for March Social Security payments. The bill will create temporary borrowing authority for $28.5 billion no matter whether the debt limit is extended by March 1st. House Speaker Gingrich told reporters Social Security checks would go out on time.

REP. NEWT GINGRICH, Speaker of the House: We are giving the President the ability to send out all the checks for Social Security on the 26th or 28th of February without any question, and Treasury, I am told, has cleared the language. There's no question it's the right language, and that will allow the checks to go out.

MR. LEHRER: In economic news today, the Labor Department reported consumer prices rose 2.5 percent for all of 1995, the lowest yearly increase in 10 years. In December, consumer prices were up just .2 percent. The CPI, as it's called, is one of the principal measures of inflation. The President of France was in Washington today. Jacques Chirac is the first French president to make an official state visit to the United States in 12 years. He was greeted by President Clinton at a formal ceremony on the White House lawn. Mr. Clinton called the French president a great leader of a great people. Later, Chirac addressed a joint meeting of Congress and spoke of nuclear nonproliferation.

PRESIDENT JACQUES CHIRAC, France: [speaking through interpreter] We must promote disarmament and combat the proliferations of weapons of mass destruction. France has ended once and for all its nuclear testing. [applause] Let us join our efforts to make 1996 the year of the signing of the complete and definitive test ban treaty.

DR. PAUL: Many countries, including the United States, had criticized France for its recent underwater nuclear tests in the South Pacific. In Bosnia today, two American soldiers were injured by a land mine explosion near Tuzla. U.S. troops were inspecting a mine field supposedly cleared by the Serbs. Both soldiers are reported in stable condition at a military hospital. And a French NATO--and French NATO soldiers killed one sniper and arrested another in a Sarajevo suburb. It was the seventh sniping incident there since Sunday. The commander of NATO forces in Bosnia warned there would be swift retaliation against such sniper attacks. Adm. Leighton Smith was in Washington to brief President Clinton. He also spoke with Charlayne Hunter-Gault this morning.

ADM. LEIGHTON SMITH, NATO Commander, Bosnia: The parties signed up to this agreement. It is up to them, in my view, to control that kind of behavior just as much as it is up to us.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But if they don't control it?

ADM. SMITH: Well, if we see the perpetrator, we'll attack, no warning, attack.

MR. LEHRER: We'll have the rest of that interview right after this News Summary. In Russia and Ukraine today, more than a million coal miners went on strike. They were demanding hundreds of millions of dollars in back pay. We have a report from Ian Glover James of Independent Television News.

IAN GLOVER JAMES, ITN: Two hundred miles East of Moscow pre-dawn, sub-zero, exhausted coal miners were off shift and off the job. Thirteen hundred miners here, across Russia three quarters of all coal miners going on strike and blaming the way Boris Yeltsin is running Russia. "They promise to pay our December salary next month," says this miner. "I have to go to the elderly, to the pensioners, to borrow money to buy bread and milk for my family." Miners, once the best paid in the Soviet era state industries, have been virtually abandoned in the new Russia. Trade union leaders say a strike is their only weapon.

WORKER: [speaking through interpreter] I think that our strike will exert some pressure on the government and on the President.

IAN GLOVER JAMES: Far from Moscow, in Russia's remote regions, Yeltsin's standing is at an all-time low.

MR. LEHRER: We'll talk with the U.S. Ambassador to Russia later in the program. And in space news today, some astronomers said they have found the most distant galaxy ever. It's 14 billion light years away. The discovery was made by researchers at the California Institute of Technology. They said the galaxy came into existence within 1 billion years of the Big Bang. That was the huge explosion astronomers believe formed the universe 15 billion years ago. And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to Adm. Smith, Amb. Pickering, an Alexander stump speech, and an AIDS update. FOCUS - WORLD VIEW NEWSMAKER

MR. LEHRER: We go first tonight to separate Newsmaker interviews about two foreign policy situations of prime importance to the United States right now. The first is with the commander of the NATO peacekeeping force in Bosnia, U.S. Navy Admiral Leighton Smith. Charlayne Hunter-Gault interviewed him earlier today.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Adm. Smith, thank you for joining us.

ADM. LEIGHTON SMITH, NATO Commander, Bosnia: Thank you for having me.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The troops have been on the ground now for a little more than a month. How do you assess the mission so far?

ADM. SMITH: A success.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: How do you say that? Why do you say that?

ADM. SMITH: Well, first of all, we need to put this in the right context. I want to convey to you the military aspects of what we're doing. But we have seen compliance at D plus 7. We saw--

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What is that?

ADM. SMITH: I'm sorry. D-Day is the day of the transfer of authority, that day that I took command of the situation from the United Nations. D plus 7 we had 40 sites around Sarajevo, bunkers, observation posts, checkpoints that were to be gone. They all were gone D plus 8 basically, because it took us that long to get in and really look at 'em. D plus 30 was another milestone in the zones of separation, there's almost 950 kilometers of former line of confrontation. The peace agreement requires that two kilometers either side of that line be empty of troops and/or weapons. At D plus 30 most of those were gone. All of the troops and all but about twenty-five or twenty-three of the heavy equipment, and subsequent investigation, generally proved out that the equipment that was remaining in there was derelict, of no military value, so from a military perspective, we have seen compliance, a couple of dragging of feet in there, militarily though we're in pretty good shape. I'm not as sanguine about some of the other areas. The prisoner release I think is still--you know, that's tangled up, and the ICRC has got responsibility for that auditing trail for prisoner release.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: That is International Committee of the Red Cross.

ADM. SMITH: That's correct. I'm sorry, I use these little acronyms, but they believe that there is probably eighty-nine or ninety people who are still being detained that they have on their lists. Some of those may be suspected war criminals, and the sides do have the--they have the right to detain further those that are suspected of war crimes, but the ICRC, or International Committee of the Red Cross, is working on that problem.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But some have suggested that maybe some of the reasons have to deal with the side doing the detaining, getting some kind of leverage.

ADM. SMITH: Yeah, and that's what happened early on, Charlayne. We had--we had sides hanging conditions on the release of these prisoners. When you go to the peace agreement, it doesn't say anything about a conditional release.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Are you going to do anything about this? I mean, is that within your mandate, to go in there and say, let them go and let them go now?

ADM. SMITH: No, in fact, it's not in my mandate, and I don't think there's much that I personally can do about it from a military perspective. It was a political decision to release these prisoners unconditionally. It was a political decision that hungsome conditions on them as we got to the point where they should have been released; therefore, it is a political decision to comply. There many more real elements involved than just military, political, diplomatic, being--and economic being three. And so I would rather see the continued pressure from the political side on the political leadership that stills holds these prisoners. That's the way to get their attention here.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is your full complement of troops in place now? What is the number?

ADM. SMITH: Not quite yet. We're looking today at on the order of forty-five to forty-eight thousand IFOR troops out of the sixty that we expect to come in. But I think we're right on track, and it's good news.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And from how many countries?

ADM. SMITH: Well, my goodness. I wish you hadn't asked that question. Fifteen NATO countries, one of our sixteen NATO countries does not have an armed force, so we have fifteen countries in NATO and then there are probably fifteen or seventeen that are represented.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And the Russians are there now too?

ADM. SMITH: The Russians arrived in force. My understanding is this morning that they're all there, and they're now deploying up into what we call Multinational Division North under Gen. Nash's leadership.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Did any bells go off? I mean, this is the first post-Cold War engagement between the two former enemies.

ADM. SMITH: Well, you know, it's interesting there, Charlayne, we've got more than just Russians. There are Hungarians in there, there are Ukrainians in there. We're going to get Bulgarians, I think, if they sort out what they want to send. We've got a lot of former adversaries. We've got a huge base in Hungary that's supporting the U.S. forces that are operating out of Tuzla, in Bosnia. So it's exciting in that a lot of these former adversaries of ours are part and parcel to this peace process.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: With no problem?

ADM. SMITH: None.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What is the biggest problem you're facing now?

ADM. SMITH: False expectations.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: From whom?

ADM. SMITH: From everybody, frankly. We have--the problem is this. The peace agreement, the military annex to the peace agreement is very straightforward, what my mission is, what my tasks are, when they are to be accomplished. I can get in trouble from straying beyond that into "mission creep" just as quickly as I can for not doing my job. Unfortunately, a lot of people read our peace agreement and they interpret my job for me. And they are very happy to tell whoever might want to listen what my job is.

ADM. SMITH: Well, one of the aspects of the Bosnia--of the Dayton accord was freedom of movement, and there have been reports that people from different areas are not being allowed freedom of movement. What happens when some IFOR force is observing that one of the forces is not allowing freedom of movement? Do you get involved in that?

ADM. SMITH: It depends on what the situation is, Charlayne. I'll give you an example. The IFOR mission is to provide freedom of movement for IFOR forces, not for civilians throughout the country. One of the misunderstood parts of this is that there is no prohibition against a police checkpoint. Now, what those police do at that checkpoint we have a personal interest in. There's an international police task force that should be in position to monitor these police checkpoints to make sure that the police are conducting themselves in a proper way.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But I've been--I've read that only 40 of 400- -

ADM. SMITH: You got it.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: --are there. How much of a problem is that?

ADM. SMITH: Well, right now it's a pretty big problem.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Does it put a strain on the military?

ADM. SMITH: Not really, because what we're watching very closely- -but we can't--I mean, that's a big country, and people think, well, 60,000 forces, you, Smith, you can take care of that little problem, but when you start talking about the communicators we've got, the intelligence organizations, the size of the staffs, the engineers, the mechanics, the people that are supporting the organization above and beyond the soldier on the ground or in the Humvee that's going around checking these places, we don't have a lot of people to spread out all over that country. So we can't--we can't guarantee that a police checkpoint that's established, which is a right, is going to conduct themselves in a way that is acceptable. And we know that some of them have not, so we go in when we know that. We'll establish a presence, we'll watch what they do, and when we're there, they behave themselves.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The same thing apparently applies to the police force.

ADM. SMITH: Yes.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: There are reports of a lot of crooks and thugs and extortionists and all kinds of bad actors in the police force. What happens when they abuse the citizens in front of IFOR people?

ADM. SMITH: If we see clear cases of abuse, or police conduct that goes well beyond acceptable standards of behavior, we are authorized to step in, and we will step in. We're trying to get one police chief relieved. I've already written the president of the country about that, and I'll just leave it that. We won't talk about who or why, except the police chief, the wild part of it is that the police chief is clearly conducting himself in a way and has been conducting himself in a way that is unacceptable.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Let me just briefly ask you--because there have been reports of increasing sniper fire around one of the Serbian- held suburbs, and one of the attacks has been against an American, what is causing that and what are you doing about that, and how much of a problem is it?

ADM. SMITH: It's a big problem, and very early on, even before we went into Bosnia, we estimated that three of the principal concerns would be, one, mines, and they clearly have been and continue to be a problem, road traffic accidents, and the rogue elements that will take the law into their hands and try to disrupt this process. We saw snipers very early on, and we expected frankly to see snipers at about D plus 45. The area you are talking about is Ilidza. Ilidz is one of the suburbs of Sarajevo that is transferring from Serbs to Bosnians.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: In a couple of days.

ADM. SMITH: In just a couple of days. What we strongly suspect obviously is that there is a Serb or some Serbs in there, and all of them have arms. I mean, just about every male in the country has a gun. They're sitting back in the back side of some apartment and they're taking shots at our forces as they go through. We've had four incidents in the last couple of days.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is it to test the authority of your forces?

ADM. SMITH: I think it's a little of everything. It's a guy letting off steam. You know, that's the way they do business in some cases over there. It's a guy testing the authority of IFOR, but let me assure you, that we have one, anti-sniping teams and we will employ them. We are working with the mayor of Ilidza, who by the way, has published a letter, an open letter to his own people saying knock this off, this is really, I mean, this is crazy.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is that going to work?

ADM. SMITH: It might. But we also see that Bosnian--I mean, the Serb mayor of Ilidza, taking responsibility. I mean, he is going to put his police force against this problem. Let me make a point. The parties signed up to this agreement. It is up to them, in my view, to control that kind of behavior just as much as it is up to us.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But if they don't control it?

ADM. SMITH: Well, if we see the perpetrator, we'll attack, no warning, attack.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Have you and Richard Goldstone, who heads the international war crimes tribunal, worked out your disagreements about your role in monitoring the grave sites of suspected mass murders and of conducting safe passage for the investigators?

ADM. SMITH: Let me correct a misconception. We never had a disagreement. Judge Goldstone knows that we are not going to guard grave sites. It is simply not part of my job. And it is not something I can do. Charlayne, there are an estimated in some cases two to three hundred grave sites in Bosnia. Someone asked me, well, can you surround it with barbed wire, and just kind of wire it off- -the mines that are so popular that everybody talks about--not popular but certainly the mines where the potential site of this mass grave site--one small part of that mine is two kilometers by two kilometers--that's 8,000 yards roughly around--now, how am I going to put barbed wire around that? And it would take an enormous number of people to guard that grave site or any other. What we're going to do is we're going to work very closely with Judge Goldstone and his people. We've asked him to prioritize what's important to him in terms of sites. We have dedicated reconnaissance assets, both land and air, to include fixed wing and helicopters, to fly around so that we watch these sites that he gives us to try to make sure that no one is tampering with those. Between the 12th of January and the 27th of January, we flew over 45 events against some of these areas. So we can watch 'em pretty close.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: How do you assess the process of reconciliation in Bosnia today, and do you foresee that you'll be able to get out there in the year that you have set as the end point of the mission?

ADM. SMITH: Yeah. Well, let me make a couple of points. One, I didn't set the end point. My political master set that end point, and I don't think it's going to change. I think we can do the military part of this in one year. I tell the people in Bosnia, I can't bring peace to Bosnia. That's got to come from within. What I can do is to bring a force in here that will assist you in doing something you haven't been able to do, separate the warring factions, former warring factions, establish some confidence in your ability to remain separated and begin to trust each other that this force isn't moving here, therefore, this force has got to move there, first shot fired ten more come in, crazy. Yesterday, we put a Bosnian Serb and a Muslim and one of our own force's commanders in a helicopter and flew down a zone of separation. That's something that nobody could do before.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is it your sense that there is now a will for peace among the warring factions?

ADM. SMITH: I think the people of Bosnia fundamentally want to stop this fighting, they really do want to stop.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But the warring factions, different from the people.

ADM. SMITH: Well, I think not. I mean, the people make up the armies, and let's face it, in most societies of this world if the people want to stop fighting, something will happen to cause that to occur. Let me tell you, though, there's an enormous amount of hate, suspicion and fear, a lot of it, enough to go around. There are a lot of weapons in that country, so I don't know that, I mean, I can tell you that the military aspects of this peace agreement will be done in one year. I don't have much doubt about that. What I can't guarantee is that the political process within the parties will have matured, nor will there be sufficient visible reconstruction to cause everybody to say going forward is a lot smarter than going back. But I think Karl Bildt is on the right road. The World Bank is in there. We've got a lot of people working right now to get the elections on track, resettle refugees, that's the UNHCR, the International Community of the Red Cross is working. We see checkbooks, you know, I want to see checkbooks, cranes, and bulldozers; that's what's going to cause peace in that country, when they can see visible evidence of rebuilding a country that's been devastated by war. And they will want to go forward towards construction, rather than back towards destruction. I'm convinced of that.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Adm. Smith, thank you for joining us.

ADM. SMITH: Thank you for having me. NEWSMAKER

MR. LEHRER: Now, to our second Newsmaker interview tonight. It's about the situation in Russia. The Russian prime minister, Viktor Chernomyrdin, was in Washington this week for meetings with President Clinton and other U.S. officials. Our interview is with the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Thomas Pickering. Mr. Ambassador, welcome. THOMAS PICKERING, U.S. Ambassador, Russia: Thank you, Jim. Nice to be with you.

MR. LEHRER: First, on the prime minister's visit, was it a success from the U.S. point of view?

AMB. PICKERING: Yes, I think, in fact, it was a success from both points of view. This is a very, very important commission. It covers a wide range of activities, many, many projects.

MR. LEHRER: This is the commission that he and--

AMB. PICKERING: He and Vice President Gore chair, and the commission was able to solve some high-profile problems, but even more important, was able to continue some very very important work in a wide number of areas, everything from business to agriculture to health to space.

MR. LEHRER: Now what about the--on a higher level than that, in his conversations with the President and others about, about the status of his government there? How did he explain the replacement of, of reformers with hard-liners and all of that?

AMB. PICKERING: Mr. Chernomyrdin said in private on that subject what Mr. Yeltsin and he had been saying in public. They've said watch what we do; we're committed to keep the reforms moving; we are committed to keeping things on track; we're changing personnel; we did that two years ago; we kept on track two years ago, so give us a break and let us prove to you that we're going to keep things on track. And I think the President and Vice President are not gullible people, not naive people, but they said, well, you did it two years ago and clearly you deserve continuing support as long as you keep on that track toward reforms, democracy, and integration of Russia with the world community, things that President Yeltsin has said he is for, and so we will, we will obviously watch closely, maintain steadiness, keep our eye on what's going on, and give the leaders--after all, their democratically elected leader, President Yeltsin, of a country striving for democracy, give the leaders the benefit of the doubt, and see what they do, but actions in this case always speak louder than words.

MR. LEHRER: But the words being spoken by, I assume, by you in Moscow before he got here, and by the President and the Vice President after he arrived were words of concern, were they not?

AMB. PICKERING: Well, we're, of course, concerned. We're always concerned about what's happened. After all, look at the history of the last 40 years, and look at the place of Russia in it, and look at the potential of Russia for the future. One has to look obviously at the security implications of the future of Russia, and have great implications for us, so in a sense, it should be true, a watchword, that we're always concerned and watching very carefully about what's happening in Russia and where it's going to go because of the vital interests of the United States in its security, in its prosperity is closely tied to Russia. That's been, of course, the huge benefit of this dramatic change that's taken place in Russia in the last four years. And it has been traumatic, and it has been significant, and there are clear signs and evidence that it is continuing and that after elections in Russia Mr. Yeltsin follows this practice. He, he looks around, he sees folks that he thinks probably are either not pulling their oar any longer or that for domestic political reasons need to go, sometimes very good people go, like Mr. Chubais, Mr. Kozyrev; nevertheless, he does that.

MR. LEHRER: Kozyrev was the foreign minister--

AMB. PICKERING: Former foreign minister. Mr. Chubais was in charge of much of the economic planning and much of the economic stability.

MR. LEHRER: Both of them were reformers.

AMB. PICKERING: Clearly. And put new people in their place and certainly we can, as we always do, micro-examine the personalities under the stereoscope of historic and--the microscope of history and come up with our own conclusions. The press, of course, in Washington leaps to that. One finds as you move away from Moscow and toward Washington everything is simpler here; everything is blacker or whiter; everything is easier to see.

MR. LEHRER: But you already knew that, didn't you, Mr. Ambassador?

AMB. PICKERING: Yes, I did, but every time I come back I'm amazed at the capacity that Washington and New York and the press have of improving your capacity in that direction.

MR. LEHRER: Let me be very specific in that very regard. Primakov, the man who was appointed to replace Kozyrev, when that was announced, speaking of the press, William Safire, columnist for the "New York Times," wrote that his appoint, Primakov's appointment should send "a chill through the West." Did you feel a chill?

AMB. PICKERING: I did not feel a chill but I certainly had an opportunity to see Mr. Primakov and had an opportunity to ask him questions and had an opportunity to be part of a conversation in which he explained his objectives and his policy. Clearly, however, with Mr. Primakov, as with anybody else, the issue is not only what they say, which at this stage I can tell you is reassuring, the priorities in American policy are there, but clearly what they do and how they carry it out, and we have to be realistic about our policies with Russia, just as we have to be steady and objective in that policy.

MR. LEHRER: Let me explain for those who the name Primakov doesn't immediately come to mind, he, of course, was the head of- -

AMB. PICKERING: I thought it had already become a household word.

MR. LEHRER: Well, just in Safire's column and other similar places, but he was, of course, head of the new KGB, the intelligence service.

AMB. PICKERING: The foreign side of your--

MR. LEHRER: The foreign side of that.

AMB. PICKERING: --intelligence service.

MR. LEHRER: And he is known to be not--if not anti-American, certainly not pro-American, not pro-West. He's also known to have argued strenuously against what the United States did in the Gulf War and, in fact, tried to save Saddam Hussein, so this is the man you went to see when he was appointed foreign minister.

AMB. PICKERING: This is the man I went to see. This is the man who was head of the Russian Oriental Institute, a Russian Arabist, a man who grew up in the Middle East, a journalist, somewhat--

MR. LEHRER: I left out that he's been a journalist too.

AMB. PICKERING: I'm not his defender because, in fact, he doesn't need a defender. At this point, he needs to pursue steady and careful policies. He's lined those out. He's said he wants to solve some of the big problems around Russia's periphery. Russia needs chance. The other important thing is that Mr. Primakov is the steward of Russian foreign policy. Mr. Yeltsin is the architect, and I think it's important to keep that in mind, and--

MR. LEHRER: So Yeltsin--

AMB. PICKERING: --Mr. Primakov has been a close worker in his past in whatever incarnation he's had, including I believe in his work in the intelligence service, lately for Mr. Yeltsin, in the past for other leaders, and so I would expect a strong stewardship on Mr. Primakov's part.

MR. LEHRER: But to be specific here again, the policy under Yeltsin and under Kozyrev in particular was to have a good relationship with the West. The movement was all in that direction, would you not agree?

AMB. PICKERING: I believe it was, although, as you might know, since 1993, Mr. Yeltsin and others had been even more, I think, strong in their articulation of what they call Russia's interest.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. National.

AMB. PICKERING: National interest. Nationalism, and I think they distinguish themselves from Mr. Zhirinovsky, the radical nationalist, if I can call him that, and others by attempting to articulate Russian national interest. That of course has been an important innovation in Russian policy. I don't think that necessarily something we need to be afraid of. I as the American ambassador have an absolute obligation to the President and the people of the United States to articulate American national interests in Russia. The, the problems aren't that we are locked in eternal combat, but we have differences, and we need to work and explore those and to bring those together, and I believe Mr. Yeltsin has pursued that kind of a policy.

MR. LEHRER: But just in simple terms, do you have the feeling that Primakov is going to, part of his agenda is going to be to establish the independence of Russia from the big bear of the--no, we're not the big bear--what are we--well, the big, the big world power of the United States and--

AMB. PICKERING: I stay away from animals; it's an election year.

MR. LEHRER: You're exactly right. You're correct. But for political, internal political reasons in Russia, it makes sense for Russia to not be that--to appear to be that cozy with us.

AMB. PICKERING: Mr. Yeltsin, since 1993, has pursued that policy that he's pursued, a strong articulation of Russian national interest, so I don't see this as a huge departure, but I can tell you Mr. Yeltsin, Mr. Chernomyrdin, and Mr. Primakov have put emphasis on the relationship with the United States and their relationshipwith western countries and, indeed, the early visits that took place were West Europeans to see Mr. Primakov, made a point, I think, of doing that, but he also put emphasis on Russia's periphery, not an irresponsible policy. I would think he's got problems in Russia's periphery, and he will certainly want to help resolve those. Russians are also very interested in bringing these countries together again, they say not as the old Soviet Empire but in a customs unit and an economic relationship, but clearly that can't be done without the cooperation freely given, we believe, of the, of the other countries. And some of them have different views on this, but it's a--it's a policy that the Russians will have to evolve. It's a policy clearly--we will not want to see people forced back into something like the Soviet Union, but if there is a mutual gain and if the United States has still the access to the markets and relationships, then some coming together in an economic sense, in a customs sense might well make the--be valuable and mutually beneficial all the way around. It shouldn't be excluded.

MR. LEHRER: Big story of today, Mr. Ambassador, from Russia, which we reported in the News Summary a while ago was this one million person strike of the coal miners in Ukraine and Russia. That's a serious matter, is it not?

AMB. PICKERING: It's very important. The miners of course played a very important role in Mr. Yeltsin's rise to power. They are a significant factor in Russia. Their strike, I think, marks an increased need for attention, as Mr. Yeltsin's articulated it to things like wage arrearages, fair return. There have been a lot of people, including the miners, who've suffered. I had an opportunity to visit Vorkuta, the center of the Arctic gulag built around coal mines, a tough, tough place to live and very tough people, but they were suffering. And that was a year ago, in that horrible place, trying to pull coal out of the Arctic, so it is an important issue, and I believe Mr. Yeltsin in his statements about trying to make up wage arrearages and pension arrearages had very much his, his eye on that, as he has his eye on the elections coming up, although, as you know, he hasn't announced yet.

MR. LEHRER: But the report--we'll get back to that in a minute--there's no doubt that he's going to run, is there?

AMB. PICKERING: I don't believe so. I've felt that for a long, long time, and I think it only remains for him to articulate his final decision now.

MR. LEHRER: Is there a serious democratic alternative candidate to Boris Yeltsin?

AMB. PICKERING: There are. Mr. Yavlinsky is a very important candidate.

MR. LEHRER: Tell us about him.

AMB. PICKERING: Talking about him, I want you to know--

MR. LEHRER: Right.

AMB. PICKERING: --and be absolutely sure that we are not picking candidates.

MR. LEHRER: Right.

AMB. PICKERING: You and I are here talking about candidates.

MR. LEHRER: Your function as a reporter now.

AMB. PICKERING: My function as an observer perhaps.

MR. LEHRER: Right. Okay.

AMB. PICKERING: But Mr. Yavlinsky is an attractive young man; he played an important role in Mr. Gorbachev's reforms, designed the so-called 500-day program, his party got a little less than 10 percent of the popular vote for the parliamentary elections that took place in December. He was one of the four parties that passed over the 5 percent threshold, so he plays a role in the, in the new parliament, and has been an attractive candidate around Russia, and has some popularity. He's definitely running on a democratic and reform platform.

MR. LEHRER: If Boris Yeltsin decides to run, and now I'm going to ask you to play political pundit--if Boris Yeltsin does decide to run again, is it possible, probable, or fill-in-the-blank that he would be reelected?

AMB. PICKERING: I think that that's a very tough call, and you have to, of course, not entice me to play ex-Ambassador either. You have to recognize that I have a function--

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

AMB. PICKERING: --to perform for the President I haven't been relieved of yet and don't intend to. But I think it's, it's an election in which he will play a very, very important role. If, as you say, and we say, he makes that announcement to run, a lot will depend on the kind of campaign he conducts, a lot will depend upon what happens in the next six months, which is clearly very difficult to foresee and despite the fact that the polls all say his popularity ratings are down, I think it would be a serious mistake to rule him out as an important candidate. He has a health problem. We all know that, and he would be and Mrs. Yeltsin the first, obviously, to have to make the tough decision as to whether they could sustain that.

MR. LEHRER: But he has always been referred to as whatever else he is, even by his enemies, have always called him the master politician, which is what you're saying, don't count him out--

AMB. PICKERING: He is. He is a man who works best under pressure and stress, a man who has shown his best qualities as a democratic leader at the time when the situation seemed bleakest and worst.

MR. LEHRER: And he is--how would you summarize quickly his attitude toward the United States right now and toward you, toward communication with us?

AMB. PICKERING: Well, I think--

MR. LEHRER: Wanting to hear what we had to say.

AMB. PICKERING: His attitude has been consistent and steady all along, that he sees Russia as a state which has a major role to play in the world, that the model for major roles is in the West and in the sense that we're open societies, we're free societies, we're democratic societies, we're societies based on the fact that cooperation gets you a lot further than confrontation, that he has wanted Russia to play in that role. Russians want to be seen as part of the world community, not isolated and cut off, and pushed away.

MR. LEHRER: And if he can only get money to the miners and the other people, then everything would be moving much better.

AMB. PICKERING: Well, we're all--we're in the midst of an electoral campaign and obviously he's identified that as a serious problem and miners today have made their statement on that issue, so that's an issue he will really have to address, and I suspect he will be.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Mr. Ambassador, thank you very much. Good to see you.

AMB. PICKERING: Thanks, Jim. SERIES - ON THE STUMP

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a stump speech, and an AIDS update. The stump speech is one made by former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander and is part of a series of Presidential candidate stump speeches. Alexander delivered this one yesterday to the Iowa Pork Producers Convention in Des Moines.

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Republican Presidential Candidate: [Des Moines, Iowa, Wednesday] Just a week from Monday night, Iowans begin the process of choosing the first President of the next century. There's only one issue in that race, and that is what kind of future will we have, what kind of country will this be? I believe our country is hungry for a vision contest, a discussion about what is important to us in the year 2000 andbeyond, and for Republicans, we have a little bit of a different issue, and that is who can beat Bill Clinton, and who can help to reelect a Republican Congress and who can help us build a rising, shining America based upon Republican principles, which are job growth, more freedom from Washington, and personal responsibility. I offer Iowans a choice, a Republican from the real world. I've discovered, as I look at the challenges ahead and at those who seek to be the President, that it makes a difference where you come from not just because of geography but because where you come from often makes a difference in where you stand. Sen. Dole was in town the other day and observed that because Mr. Forbes flies to work in a helicopter from New Jersey that he might come from a world that's a little different than the rest of us. He could have mentioned some other things as well but probably the clearest indication that Mr. Forbes comes from a different world is his tax plan. It might make sense in Forbes' world, but it wouldn't make sense in the real world of Iowa agriculture. For example, it would devastate farm prices. Iowa state economist Neil Harrel says it would cost Iowan farmers $2400 to $4,000 a year at least. It would do that by reducing the value of farms and homes in Iowa by 10 to 25 percent. It would knock out charitable deductions just at a time when I believe we need more contributions to charity. It wouldn't raise enough money to balance the budget; in the real world of Iowa agriculture that means higher interest rates. For those in Iowa whose employers pay for health insurance, which wouldn't be many farmers, it would jeopardize health insurance. In other words, the Forbes tax plan might make sense in the world of Forbes, but it doesn't make sense in the real world of Iowa agriculture. Sen. Dole, whom we all respect, comes from a different world now too. He likes to say he's one of, one of us. I'm afraid that perhaps he's been in Washington too long, since 1960, and he may have become one of them. I would think he would be embarrassed to come to Iowa and run for the Presidency without having passed the Farm Bill. In the real world, planning decisions have to be made. Sen. Dole knows enough about agriculture to know that. And he and the other Senators should have made certain that before they began their political business, they should have tended to the farmers' business. What I would like to do is to suggest what would happen if we had a Republican nominee from a different world, the real world. I was president of our Land Grant University in Tennessee, the University of Tennessee, and as we worked in our state to try to increase our incomes, we tried hard to keep on the cutting edge of technology because that meant better products and higher products and more money in our pockets. In our state, we realized the importance of ethanol and focused on that with a credit. I think the country should do as well. And in our new tax system, which I think we should have, we continue to encourage employers to give health insurance to employees. We ought to make the same opportunities available to those who are self-employed, including farmers. In other words, our goal ought to be to try to create an environment in which business enterprises, including agricultural enterprises, can succeed, grow, and make a profit. That does include a new tax system, not one like Mr. Forbes. The problem with his is that it doesn't really tell the truth about what it does. It suggests that it cuts your taxes--or raises-- suggests that it cuts your taxes--but what it actually does in the fine print is raise your taxes and cut Mr. Forbes'. What I would rather see is a program along the line of the tax system suggested by President Reagan in the early 1980's, two low rates, cutting the tax rates in income and inheritance, and in capital gains, eliminate most of the deductions, cut the capital gains tax, reduce the impact of the inheritance tax, that would be a much simpler tax, it would be one that would benefit all Americans in some way, and it would be one that the Republican Party could proudly take to the American people in the fall. Agriculture's not the only area where it is important to have a President of the real world. If the Senators and others running for President have been where I'd been helping to create a company that today has 1200 employees, they will already have been active at cutting the capital gains tax. If they had worked as I did as governor to try to help create more good new jobs than we were losing in our state, they would have paid more attention to our job training programs which are really out of touch and which should be turned into work scholarships instead. They would be busier making sure that pensions and health care can follow workers from one job to the next. If the Senators and Mr. Forbes had been where I'd been fighting the teachers union for a year and a half to pay teachers more for teaching well, they would have already abolished the U.S. Department of Education and turned the responsibility for education back where it belongs, in local communities, and with parents, and if the Senators had done what I did, and gone to Washington for a few years and then come home long enough to be vaccinated but not infected, they would join me in passing term limits and calling for an end to million dollar congressional pensions and even cutting their own pay and sending themselves home and creating a part-time citizen Congress. I've noticed that every time I come to Iowa it's hard to escape a television ad, this candidate against that candidate, that candidate against this candidate, but it's important in the last few days to focus on what the real issue is for the country, for the country. It is to have a discussion beyond the budget and outside Washington about creating jobs, about strengthening families, neighborhoods, churches, and synagogues and schools. That is where the problems and the answers in this country are, and that is where the Presidential debate ought to be. And for Republicans, the issue is about which one of us has the best chance to defeat President Clinton and to reelect a Republican Congress and to build a future upon Republican principles of job growth, more freedom from Washington, and personal responsibility. I believe that will take new leadership, leadership from the real world. UPDATE - FIGHT AGAINST AIDS

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, an update on the medical fight against AIDS. Elizabeth Farnsworth has that story.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Scientists in Washington this week for a conference on retroviruses reported some promising developments in HIV and AIDS research. Here to bring us up to date on the latest developments are Dr. William Paul, the director of the Office of AIDS Research at the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Lawrence Altman, medical correspondent for the "New York Times." Welcome, gentlemen. Dr. Paul, what kind of findings were announced that you think were very important at this conference this week?

DR. WILLIAM PAUL, National Institutes of Health: I think the most striking finding were the results announced by two of the large drug companies in the United States, Merck and Abbott, describing two new drugs that are members of a new class of drugs. These drugs are called protease inhibitors. They're called protease inhibitors. They inhibit a key step in the virus's development, the step in which the virus chops part--its parts into small pieces that can be used. Without protease, no virus can be made that is infectious, so the inhibitors have a potentially very powerful role, but what was exciting that we heard today and early in the meeting was that these drugs when used together with AZT and another drug very much like AZT have the capacity to reduce the amount of virus in an individual by a hundred to a thousand fold or more. Quite remarkable in comparison to what we have seen before. In a much smaller study, a so-called efficacy study, aimed at determining whether this drug, one in particular, Retonovir, could actually aid or help patients, this study admittedly small, was able to demonstrate that in very late-phase patients one could reduce the risk of death by about twofold over a relatively short period of time. So we need to caution people though that it's still early days, that the results are very promising, but we also have to look to see how they will play out.

MS. FARNSWORTH: One of the protease inhibitors was okayed by the FDA at the end of last year, but these are two new ones that are more powerful?

DR. PAUL: Yes, these are--the drug you're referring to, Sequinovir, from Roche, was previously approved by FDA for use in combination. These two drugs, Indinovir and Retonovir, which I believe will be considered by FDA in the very near future, although equally potent in the test tube, appear, at least as we have seen them to be, somewhat more active, or possibly even considerably even more active in people and it will remain to be seen how the three agents that are coming on to the scene will be used which will prove in the long run to be the most effective, but it certainly a day that we feel that we should greet with optimism.

MS. FARNSWORTH: You reported in the "Times" that one person who took Indinovir had no detectable HIV for a hundred and twelve weeks?

DR. LAWRENCE ALTMAN, New York Times: Yes. But that was one patient out of four.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Uh-huh.

DR. ALTMAN: And--

MS. FARNSWORTH: So give us caveats and the worries that--why shouldn't we be very excited about this?

DR. ALTMAN: Well, you should be very excited particularly for that patient and looking at that as a model for what might be done, but it's still one out of four. We don't know what will happen in the one hundred and fourteenth or fifteenth week or thereafter, and we don't know what the long-term toxicity will prove to be even if it is effective in checking the virus, so that's the reason why Dr. Paul said we need caution.

MS. FARNSWORTH: I want to talk about the toxicity in a minute but you've been to many of these conferences. You've been covering this a long time. Is there a--was there a different feeling at this conference, is there more optimism than you've seen before?

DR. ALTMAN: Yes. I think this meeting ended on an upbeat note, and this meeting was different from certainly in the last couple of similar meetings here and elsewhere. There is usually one meeting a year up until last year, the international AIDS meetings, and I think if you went back and looked at that, you would find a real roller coaster in terms of scientist enthusiasm and pessimism and scientists are human, and everyone has got their moments of frustration and their moments of enthusiasm, and there's no difference between the scientist and anyone else when you're in a very tough situation.

MS. FARNSWORTH: This--

DR. ALTMAN: Trying to fight the wiliest virus that we know.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And this was a more enthusiastic moment.

DR. ALTMAN: Yes. Some people weren't cautious; others were; and I think you just have to tease out why those who were enthusiastic were and why those who weren't and we got a different reaction from a lot of people.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What about possible side effects?

DR. PAUL: Well, we've heard that there are side effects of course, any powerful drug does. The protease inhibitors, on the other hand, seem to be relatively well tolerated. The drugs are metabolized in the liver; that's where they're broken down, and indeed, it appears that there are some individuals who develop some liver toxicity relatively mild. One of the two drugs tends to cause kidney stones but patients seem to be able to continue to take the drug while on them. So far they're--as I said--relatively well tolerated, probably the toxicity seemed to be less than those in the previous class of drugs, the AZT class.

MS. FARNSWORTH: How available are they?

DR. PAUL: Well, now they're just coming on to line. It's an interesting story. These are very complex drugs to manufacture, and the amounts patients will need to take quite large. The companies have had basically to build new factories to bring these drugs in the market; they've actually shown tremendous confidence by building these manufacturing facilities before they've received FDA approval, indicating their commitment, in this instance, to bringing these drugs or making these drugs available, but they have not been widely available until now. The amounts had been limited. In the near future, we hope that will turn around.

MS. FARNSWORTH: They're very expensive, aren't they? How will people get these drugs? How will they pay for them?

DR. ALTMAN: That's a big question. Very few people will have the insurance or personal fortune to be able to pay for them, but the vast majority of people are going to have a very hard time, and that's going to be an issue for the government and you certainly can expect activists to be speaking up and wanting--but we're in age now where we have health maintenance organizations and there are a lot of places that have limits on the amount that doctors can spend for drugs in the pharmacy and there are going to be some very difficult issues.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Even with the caveat and with the problems, there is a kind of change in that people are living much longer and you can--I mean, it's quite amazing but you can get the virus down to such very low levels for a while, is there--do you think, a scientist, a change as a scientist, do you see a change in the way people around the country and around the world are seeing AIDS? I thought about this with Magic Johnson's return to the Lakers.

DR. PAUL: Well, I think it's a very good point, and I think we need to think of two situations. Here in North America and Western Europe you're quite right; people are living longer; they have better quality of life; they have the prospects of better drugs coming on; we now know that during the period of time when people are not symptomatic, they can lead normal lives, and I think Magic Johnson is a perfect example of an individual doing exactly that. I think it's a wonderful illustration what patients with HIV infection can do, and it also illustrates how far we have gone in beginning to understand this. But there is another face to this epidemic in the poor parts of this world in sub- saharan Africa, in Southeast Asia, in India, possibly in China, we can look forward to almost an explosive epidemic where these drugs no matter how effective they may be may not be available because of cost. And this is in a sense the other face of the epidemic and one that I think we here need to spend much more effort and energy thinking about how we are going to respond to that.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What does recent data show about how much the virus is spreading both here and abroad?

DR. PAUL: In the United States, it appears the epidemic has reached an overall stabilization although the new groups are coming in, new groups being affected so the dynamics have changed, and numbers of new infections are stabilized but stabilized I would say at an unacceptably high level. However, in the rest of the world, in sub-saharan Africa, of course, it's been estimated that death rates or I should say rather life expectancy in individual countries may fall from 58 to 30 because of this one disease. For the first time this year, there appear to have been more new cases in Southeast Asia or in Asia as a whole than in Africa. So we're looking in the rest of the world to an entirely different issue, an issue which we really need to give great, great attention to.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And I noticed that there wasn't a lot of talk about a vaccine at this conference, am I right about that?

DR. PAUL: Yes, that's--there was some discussion of course and some of the scientific sessions dealt with various approaches to vaccines, but it is clear that we need a substantially greater investment in the vaccine area. There are vaccines in the pipeline; we'll know much more about them I hope in the next year, but there is no doubt that a greater creativity, a greater energy has to be put into the vaccine program.

MS. FARNSWORTH: It's partly the structure of the virus; it's a very difficult kind of virus to find a vaccine for because of many factors, right? Just what are a couple of those factors?

DR. ALTMAN: The virus mutates and that makes it very difficult and there has not been a good animal model. The news from this meeting is that for the first time a chimpanzee did develop AIDS but it took over 10 years for the chimpanzee to develop AIDS, and chimpanzees in the wild are endangered species, so there's a question of how practical they would be as a laboratory animal; nevertheless, they are important because they do show that the HIV virus can cause AIDS, and this further strengthens the arguments against the critics who say HIV doesn't cause AIDS.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Well, thank you both very much for being with us. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Thursday, the House and Senate overwhelmingly passed a sweeping reform of the nation's telecommunications laws. The bill now goes to President Clinton, who has said he will sign it, and in a NewsHour interview, the commander of NATO forces in Bosnia warned of swift and harsh action against snipers. We'll see you tomorrow night with Shields and Gigot and a look at the impact of the new telecommunications law, among other things. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.