The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington.

MR. MacNeil: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After the News Summary this Wednesday, two aspects of the situation in the former Yugoslavia, another major battle looming for the city of Sarajevo [Focus - Siege of Sarajevo], and the U.S. threat to intervene if the Serbs carry the war into Kosovo [Focus - Wider War?. Then Charlayne Hunter-Gault [Conversation - Somalia Diary] talks to the head of the Save the Children Federation in Somalia. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: President Bush announced today that he will meet with Russian President Yeltsin Saturday and Sunday in Russia. He said the meeting will be at the Black Sea resort of Soshi. Mr. Bush said they will discuss a number of issues and then conclude by signing the newly negotiated START II Treaty, which reduces nuclear arsenals by 2/3. After his announcement, reporters asked Mr. Bush if he viewed the new treaty as vindication for his strong attention to foreign policy.

PRESIDENT BUSH: I view it as a great step for mankind, and it's not -- certainly it's not a personal achievement. The people standing here with me have worked hours, endless hours, to bring this about. So it's not, it's not personal, but I, I take great pride in this accomplishment because I think it's a very good treaty, and I'm proud that this team was able to work it out.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Bush also responded to questions about his Christmas Eve pardon of former Defense Sec. Weinberger and five others implicated in the Iran-contra Affair. A reporter asked if it gave the appearance government officials were above the law.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Nobody is above the law, and I, I believe when people break the law that's a bad thing. I've read some stupid comment to the contrary, and of course I feel that way, but the Constitution is quite clear on the powers of the President, and sometimes the President has to make a very difficult call, and that's what I've done, but I'm glad you asked that because I've read some rather frivolous reporting that I don't care about the law. I pride myself on 25 or more years of public service of serving honorably, decently, and with my integrity intact, and certainly I wouldn't feel that way if I had a lack of respect for the law. And I don't think there is one single thing in my career that could lead anybody to look at my record and make a statement of that nature. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to clear it up.

MR. LEHRER: A White House announcement afterwards said the President had hired former Attorney General Griffin Bell as his legal counsel in dealing with Iran-contra prosecutor Lawrence Walsh. Walsh said last week Mr. Bush was now the subject of his investigation. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: There was mixed economic news today. The Commerce Department reported the Index of Leading Indicators jumped .8 percent in November, the sharpest rise in 10 months. The index foreshadows economic activities six to nine months in advance. In a separate report, the Department saidnew home sales fell 8.3 percent last month, the worst drop in eight months. Lower sales in the South and West were offset by a rise in the Northeast. A severe snowstorm hit California and Nevada today. Deep snow, poor visibility, and the danger of avalanches closed several highways in the two states. The Reno airport was shut down. Arctic weather also swept across much of the Northern Rockies and the Great Plains, creating icy conditions.

MR. LEHRER: The president of Yugoslavia sent a letter to U.N. Secretary General Boutros Ghali today claiming a Muslim offensive was underway against the Serbs. There was no independent confirmation of that claim. President Cusic said his forces would join the Serbs in Bosnia unless international mediators could quickly negotiate a truce. We'll have more on the Yugoslavia story right after this News Summary.

MR. MacNeil: U.S. Marines tightened security in Somalia today in anticipation of President Bush's visit. Mr. Bush left Andrews Air Force Base this morning and will arrive in Mogadishu tomorrow. For security, he'll spend the night aboard a Navy ship. On New Year's Day he'll travel to the inland towns of Baidoa and Bale Dogle, where he'll meet troops and famine victims. We have a report narrated by Vera Frankel of Worldwide Television News.

MS. FRANKEL: Bush's trip abroad is almost certainly his last as President, and the country he's coming to see is probably the most chaotic and lawless on earth. U.S. Marines and Secret Service staff are rushing to prepare for his New Year arrival. Security has been tightened, and the Marines are extending their control of Mogadishu, where nightly gunfire is still a regular feature of life. Concern for the President's safety begins here at the airport, where Bush is expected to arrive Thursday from Saudi Arabia. Marines are busily laying out razor wire to keep curious Somalis at bay. Ordinary Somalis seem happy at the prospect of Bush's visit. About the only people who are not are the bandits forced underground by the American presence. The sending of U.S. troops to Somalia was one of President Bush's last foreign policy decisions. Washington's troops came well equipped and expecting the worst, but operations have gone so well it now seems much of the equipment brought in isn't really necessary. Confident the situation is under control, the Army is shipping out hundreds of tons of artillery and armored carriers. Much of the equipment will go into the Gulf, where tension has risen since an American fighter shot down an Iraqi warplane.

MR. LEHRER: Israeli Prime Minister Rabin suggested today that a third country take the 415 Palestinians stranded between Israel and Lebanon. He made the proposal in a meeting with United Nations Envoy James Jonah. A spokesman for the Palestinians rejected the idea. Israel expelled them 13 days ago for alleged ties to Muslim military groups. In Geneva, PLO Leader Yasser Arafat called the deportation a war crime, and said the Middle East peace process could be at stake.

MR. MacNeil: That's our summary of the news. Now it's on to two fronts in Yugoslavia, Sarajevo and Kosovo, and Somalia. FOCUS - SIEGE OF SARAJEVO

MR. MacNeil: The possibility of a U.S. and European involvement in the war in the former Yugoslavia is our main focus tonight. We start where the fighting has been sharpest, in Bosnia. Today forces loyal to the Muslim-dominated Bosnian government gathered in an apparent effort to break the Serbian blockade of Sarajevo. That led to a threat of further action by the pro-Serbian forces. Correspondent Gaby Rado of Independent Television News has this report.

MR. RADO: The aftermath of another morning of indiscriminate shelling in Sarajevo. The body covered by a sheet is left on a street corner almost unnoticed, a part of everyday life. After nine months of seeing pictures like this from Bosnia, first world public opinion and now the world politicians are saying that something must be done, if necessary by force. In paying yet another visit today to the Serbian strong man, Slobodan Milosevic, the U.N. peace envoy Lord Owen was clearly still putting some faith in negotiations as a way to end the war in Bosnia. But elsewhere it was becoming clear that peaceful options were running out, and foreign military intervention was being seen as inevitable. The stakes were being raised most dramatically by the British foreign secretary Douglas Hurd's article for the Daily Telegraph. In it he uses the undiplomatic phrase "bloody minded cruelty of the Serbs in the Bosnia," and goes on, "I have always distrusted the idea of military intervention by the West to force a settlement in Yugoslavia. I still do. But the Serbs should note a change. They have brought even those of us who hold that view to the point where we can imagine armed action against them to prevent a general Balkan War." And in the European newspaper, John Major also hints at a change in Britain's so far restrained policy towards what he calls "Serb arrogance." "Their response has left us with no choice to increase the pressure," he writes, a clear change of tone from the normally cautious British and recognized as such in Belgrade, where the Yugoslav army chief of staff replied in equally stark terms.

GENERAL ZIVOTA PANIC, Yugoslav Army Chief of Staff: [speaking through interpreter] The enormous power of the federal republic of Yugoslavia is prepared to give an adequate response to any aggression. The people are ready to move to the defense of their homeland.

MR. RADO: The reports of Muslim forces massing for a counter offensive in the hills above Sarajevo have still to be fully confirmed. But they've given the Serbian side political ammunition. The Yugoslav president, Davritza Caucic, up to now seen as a moderate, today aligned himself squarely with the hard-line Serb nationalists by demanding that the U.N. Secretary General reins in the Muslim fighters. But he added, "Should your intervention in the next few hours be fruitless, we cannot assume responsibility for the consequences that will inevitably arise."

MARTIN McCAULEY, School for Slavonic Studies: There's very little hope now that the negotiations will, in fact, result in anything tangible. The Serbians appear to believe that they have nothing to fear from the West, that they can go ahead. They're going to go for military victory, if possible. And they have their eyes on Kosovo, and nothing, in fact, in Washington or London has scared them off that yet.

MR. RADO: The escalation of United Nations involvement in Bosnia so far restricted to protection of aid convoys could be at several levels. The most widely talked about option so far has been to enforce the no-fly zone. The main Bosnian Serb air base is at Vanya Luka. U.N. planes would over fly the entire area of Bosnia controlled by Serbs to ensure there were no violations of the ban, but if the air force from Serbia proper were to step in to help their Bosnian brethren, then that would render Serbia a legitimate target for U.N. military strikes.

PROFESSOR TREVOR TAYLOR, Royal Institute of International Affairs: Any effort to enforce a no-fly zone would, I think, almostinevitably be drawn to involving Serbian territory. Basically, it would require that Serbian territory be monitored, presumably from AWACS aircraft, and then that aircraft be attacked somewhere between taking off in Serbia and their destination. Now, already the Americans have made clear that they find it rather difficult to envisage attacking aircraft only in the air, and they would prefer to attack aircraft on the ground, presumably in Serbia, itself.

MR. RADO: A formal dramatic escalation of U.N. involvement in Bosnia would involve creating safe havens for Muslims. At the moment, the lion's share of the republic is controlled by the Serbs, with the smaller area to the West under Croat rule. The small pockets still held by Muslims, if turned into U.N.- protected areas, would have to be made secure enough to persuade hundreds of thousands of refugees that they could return safely. As the unhappy inhabitants of Sarajevo carry on their daily struggle just to survive through temperatures plummeting to minus 15 degrees, dreams of safe havens seem very far away, but images like this will continue to disturb the conscience of the outside world.

MR. LEHRER: To assess the Bosnian situation and the possibility of outside intervention, we have Bruce Van Voorst, diplomatic and national security affairs correspondent for Time Magazine, and George Kenney, the State Department's desk officer on Yugoslavia until August when he resigned to protest U.S. policy. He's now a consultant at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. First, Bruce, what are U.S. intelligence sources saying about the possibility of this final big battle over Sarajevo?

MR. VAN VOORST: They're confirming pretty much what we have just seen here, and that is that the Muslims have, in fact, put together a military force of some 10,000 troops, and are very serious about their intention of trying to break the siege of Sarajevo. The scenarios that we see as well are much like we've just -- that were just suggested. The first thing that we have to do would be the enforcement of the no-fly zone. Of course, we've failed all week at having a United Nations meeting to get enforcement resolutions, so again it would be a situation where the U.S. is almost forced to do this unilaterally unless Mr. Major's comments this afternoon suggest that he's going to go along with us. But that would be the first action.

MR. LEHRER: Have you picked up any change in U.S. Government attitude about this in the last 24 hours or so?

MR. VAN VOORST: Not only the last 24 hours, but the last three weeks or so. We've seen it growing focused on this issue, both in Sarajevo and in the South. But with respect to Sarajevo, I noticed that Brent Scowcroft went public on the weekend with a statement that no-fly enforcement action would involve not just taking aircraft out of the air but actually going and hitting aircraft on the ground at Banga Lupka, for example, and wherever else is necessary. That would be including not just the aircraft there but also would take out the communications system, some of the fuel dumps and things. That's a fairly aggressive action.

MR. LEHRER: But as a practical matter, Bruce, what do the U.S. military experts think the outcome would be if these ten thousand or so Muslims do try to break the siege?

MR. VAN VOORST: That's a terrific question. I don't know that anybody's got a clear answer, because the troops we're talking about are not formal military troops, trained with organization and structure and everything. It's pretty much of a freelance group. And it's hard to say how effective they would be. You can predict that they could put us in a real bind if the Muslim offensive stalemates and we get in a situation where then the Bosnians and Muslims appeal for outside help, either with a lifting of the embargo or again with the --

MR. LEHRER: So they could be armed, which is --

MR. VAN VOORST: The keeping -- this intended offensive could put the squeeze on us if it stalemates and we'd have to move in -- they would be -- imagine a lot of people being killed, and they would just put everything back on the front burner.

MR. LEHRER: Mr. Kenney, you just returned from a trip to, to the old Yugoslavia and spending two days in Sarajevo. What's your assessment of the, of the possibility of the Muslims being able to break the siege, No. 1, and what kind of -- to use Bruce's term - - what kind of squeeze that it would put on the United States?

MR. KENNEY: First of all, I'd say that we should call them the Bosnian Government, and not the Muslim side. Unfortunately, our negotiators have tended to equate the Muslim side with the Bosnian Government. There is a significant difference. We recognize the Bosnian Government. We should have an embassy in Sarajevo, but in any case, as far as the situation on the ground goes, I think the build up, whatever reports we have around Sarajevo, is important, but perhaps more important only in the sense in which it affects diplomatic negotiations. Militarily, I don't really know how much chance the Bosnians have of breaking through the siege of Sarajevo, but there are other areas as well in Bosnia, where they are making some advances. The Serbs, in my view, are stretched a little too thin. They can't very well hold a Northern corridor to resupply their occupying forces in Croatia, or to resupply a lot of their fighters in Bosnia, and they're having trouble a little bit along the Eastern side of Bosnia as well. So --

MR. LEHRER: There's a map up that shows what you're talking about there that orients us a little bit as to what you're saying.

MR. KENNEY: There's a road which runs rights across that Northern border of Bosnia and Croatia, along the Salva River. It's the supply corridor for the Serbs, but they're hemmed in on each side by, by Bosnian and Croatian forces. At the narrowest point, the Serbs control maybe two kilometers of territory around that road. That could be cut off. It's a very weak link in their military situation.

MR. LEHRER: Well, did you come back from your visit with a feeling that a, a major breakthrough was coming one way or another, and as far as Sarajevo and Bosnia were concerned?

MR. KENNEY: No. My view is that the siege of Sarajevo will continue for some time. I'm quite optimistic though, after having seen Sarajevo, I believe that the people there can hold out under siege for at least several more months. The morale there is very high.

MR. LEHRER: Among which groups?

MR. KENNEY: The morale among which groups?

MR. LEHRER: Yeah.

MR. KENNEY: Among the Bosnians in general in the capital. I took two tours of the city. I didn't talk to very many people in the street, but talked to people in the government. My sense is, just from what I could see of people and from those few conversations, that people are not beaten down by the siege; they're going about their business. You see in the morning lots of people going to work. You see some factories working, a bread factory continues to work. Life is going on, not as normal, but it is going on.

MR. LEHRER: What is their expectation, if any, about outside intervention from the United Nations, NATO, or the United States?

MR. KENNEY: That's hard to say, Jim. I think, obviously, they would like to see Western military intervention, but I don't believe they're really counting on it. It's hard to believe what the West is saying now about military intervention when we've issued so many statements before and not backed them up. I would look to some real evidence that Bush means what he says. For example, are we pulling diplomats out of Belgrade to clear the decks before military action? No. Are we making preparations to protect U.N. forces on the ground if we should enforce a no-fly zone? Not really. So in my view anyway, what Bush is saying is simply more of the same, and I don't think that there is much behind it.

MR. LEHRER: But as a practical matter, Bruce, the United States, as long as the United Nations doesn't act, the United States can't really do very much unless they did it strictly on its own.

MR. VAN VOORST: Which of course nobody wants to do, and that's been the dilemma for weeks now. And of course, another consideration we haven't touched on is that the Bush administration really is in its final days, as you saw on your news segment, and the real question to them is whether he would want to drop this, take action before the end of this administration and dump an ongoing military operation on poor Bill Clinton, or whether he'll just let it go and let the new administration make the decision, but these things, by the way, everything that George has mentioned have -- are being discussed in the Pentagon, for example. A lot of people are suggesting that we should close up the embassy in Belgrade, get the people out of there so that they wouldn't be hostages in case a military action starts.

MR. LEHRER: And that would be specifically if the no-fly zone was enforced, and they did start, particularly start action, air action against Serbian planes on the ground.

MR. VAN VOORST: Exactly, because the next step beyond the no-fly zone if we want to keep this as an air operation is to take out some of the, the civilian undertakings such as electrical grids, fuel tanks, possibly even some, some bridges, so there are, there is a whole gradation of possible military action there, and might be provoked then if the Muslims, as suggest in this, this undertaking they're begin now gets stalemated, and a lot of them are getting killed. That's what would change it from everything up until now.

MR. LEHRER: And those, of course, Mr. Kenney, would be acts of war and that is, of course, one of the arguments that, that Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen and the others who argue against the enforcement of the no-fly zone because there'd be no way then to stop the escalation, you disagree with that, do you not?

MR. KENNEY: Oh, very strongly. I think that when we look to see who's responsible for the carnage and the trauma here, we have to look not only to Serbian strong man Milosevic, but also to our own Western leaders who have failed to directly address the problem. I think that the set-up of negotiations which we've got in Geneva is not productive. I think Vance's efforts and Owen's efforts are not productive. They're not treating the Bosnians seriously, as they would other governments. Unfortunately, we are going through sort of an appeasement plus process, in my view.

MR. LEHRER: Appeasement plus?

MR. KENNEY: Well, we had earlier appeasement where we, where we didn't talk very strongly, we didn't do anything, and now we're talking strongly and we're not doing anything.

MR. LEHRER: How would the U.S. Government react to that appeasement plus?

MR. VAN VOORST: They would not like that term at all, and, of course, George has been an outspoken representative of the criticism of the government, but -- and he's absolutely right. We've gone now for weeks and months and months with just declarations or statements, but one -- you have to make one point. This last statement by President Bush last week, which didn't get as much attention as it should have, the letter to Milosevic, was very strong, and it got buried in the hardened debate here, but he threatened military action in flat out words. FOCUS - WIDER WAR?

MR. LEHRER: And do we want to -- we want to talk about that now, because more than Bosnia is involved in this conflict and the fears as well within and about what used to be Yugoslavia. As Bruce said, President Bush confirmed today that he sent a letter to Serbian leaders warning about U.S. intervention if they widen the war. Mr. Bush would not be more specific, but the New York Times reported the warning was about the problems of Kosovo. It is sandwiched between Serbia and Albania, and for centuries has been the object of different claims by different ethnic groups. 90 percent of u population is Albanian, but the Serb minority today effectively controls Kosovo's government. Again, we have a setup report from Gaby Rado of Independent Television News.

MR. RADO: The Albanians have effectively set up an alternative state inside Kosovo. It's run from this small building on waste ground in the capital, Pristina. Underground elections held last May elected a parliament led by intellectuals who now want the U.N. to send in monitors or peacekeepers. They say the Kosovo crisis should now be internationalized. The ethnic Albanians also run a social infrastructure totally separate from the Serbs with their own schools and hospitals. It's necessary, they say, because virtually all Albanian speaking teachers and doctors have been sacked and replaced by Serbs. The weight of Serbian repression against the majority population with no access to weapons could spark off conflict at any time. By a tragic quirk of history, Kosovo, now predominantly Muslim in character, is also seen by the Serbs as a cradle of their Christian orthodox culture. The past year's bloodletting between Serbs and Muslims in nearby Bosnia has inevitably led to further worsening of relations between the two groups here. But since Kosovo lies in the internationally recognized borders of Serbia, Serbs resent the outside world's interest in the province.

RANKO BABIC, Serbian Radical Party: Sending international observers or monitors here in Kosovo is out of the question because Serbia is not in war. There is no mass conflicts, armed conflicts, exclusively terroristic attacks only from one side, and we didn't -- Serbian government and Serbian authorities didn't ask international community to send observers here.

MR. RADO: The immediate problem any U.N. forces would face in Kosovo is that of having to mediate between a heavily armed minority and an unarmed 90 percent majority. The international force would also have to be deployed against the wishes of the Serbian government, which would claim that the Kosovo crisis is its own internal affair.

MR. LEHRER: Joining Bruce Van Voorst and George Kenney now are Elez Bibaraj, the chief of the Albanian Service of the Voice of America, author of several books and articles on Albanian issues. He grew up in Kosovo. And Alex Dragnich. He's a professor, former professor at Vanderbilt University, author of "Serbs and Croats," published last month, and co-author of "The Saga of Kosovo, Focus on Serbian-Albanian Relations." First give us a brief history here what Kosovo means to Albanians.

MR. BIBARAJ: Kosovo was the center of Albanian nationalism going back centuries. The Albanians claimed that they were the original inhabitants of the region of Kosovo. Back in 1989, for example, when the Serbs lost the battle of Kosovo against the Turks, the Albanians were on the same side with the Serbs. In the last century, when the Albanians began to organize their national movement, the center of the national movement was in Kosovo. In the town of Presant, for example, in 1887, the formed the legal Presan. The struggle for Albania's independence was fought in Kosovo, and in 1904, when Albania became independent, proclaimed its independence, and as a result of the Balkan War, Kosovo and other Albania inhabited, dominantly Albania-inhabited regions in Montenegro, in what is today Montenegro --

MR. LEHRER: We've got a map there.

MR. BIBARAJ: -- right -- fell under Serbian and subsequently Yugoslav rule. And right now, as we heard in your report, the Albanians account for 90 percent of the population.

MR. LEHRER: They consider it Albania, do they not? They consider it their country?

MR. BIBARAJ: That is correct, yes.

MR. LEHRER: Now, the Serbs, Professor Dragnich, see it very much as a part of Serbia.

PROFESSOR DRAGNICH: Well, it is historically, Jim. In the Middle Ages, this was the center of the Serbian kingdom, and the Serbian kingdom was the strongest state of the Balkans for over 100 years. And it is there that the Serbians built their cultural, historical monuments, mainly Serbian monasteries, Christian monasteries, Christian churches, and it is there, it shows, Mr. Bibaraj says there were Albanians who fought with the Serbs, on the side of the Serbs when they fought against the Ottomans in 1389, which the Serbs lost, but in those days, the Albanian population was minuscule. It was -- Kosovo went from essentially a 100 percent almost Serbian down to what you've said now, 9 percent, 12 percent. Now, I think it is important for your listeners to know how did this go from almost 100 percent down to the present percentage.

MR. LEHRER: Over what period of time?

PROFESSOR DRAGNICH: Well, from 1389 and the time when the Turks - -

MR. LEHRER: That's a lot of time.

PROFESSOR DRAGNICH: -- when the Turks took over, then one of, one of the reasons, of course, was after the Albanians accepted Islam, they were the surrogates of the Turks, it was then that a lot of Serbs were forced to move North toward Hungary. It was in that period that the number of Serbs began to reduce, but especially in the 19th century. The latter part of the 19th century the archives of the, of the consuls, of the British consul, the French, the Russian, and others are full of reports in the 19th century of the persecution of Serbs in that area. Then came the second, if we jump down --

MR. LEHRER: Sure.

PROFESSOR DRAGNICH: -- if we jump down to the Second World War, you have a situation where the Albanians were assisted by Mussolini to form a greater Albania and there was even created a regiment, a corps of soldiers who fought on the side of the Germans. Now, it's true, the biggest change came in the Tito period, after the Communists came to power. Tito had promised those people down there they would help them, help Tito in a civil war. They would then get to have their opportunity to join Albania. Well, he reneged on that promise, but he created an autonomous province of Kosovo within Serbia. I think it's important also for your listeners to know that Kosovo is still juridically internationally a part of Serbia. It is an autonomous province within Serbia.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Now what happens then if -- now the president -- looking to the New York Times -- now, Bruce is there any other confirmation, other than the New York Times on this, that the president's letter specifically dealt with Kosovo?

MR. VAN VOORST: We, in our reporting this, we have established that that was what it said, and that's distinctly Sarajevo and Kosovo. This is specifically aimed at Kosovo, as we understand it.

MR. LEHRER: And the fear is that the Serbs will, in fact, do what? What is it the Albanians in Kosovo fear that the Serbs are now going to do that caused President Bush to write this letter?

MR. BIBARAJ: The Serbs are very concerned about the fact that the Albanians are deeply dominant majority in the region, and they're interested in changing by force the ethnic structure of the region. In fact, in one way, one may say that Kosovo, that Serbia has lost Kosovo. Since 1989, when the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic abolished Kosovo's province, Kosovo's autonomy, the province has been ruled directly from Belgrade. It has been under martial law. There was a report two days ago or, in fact, yesterday in the Belgrade newspaper, "Boorba," to the fact that since 1989, the Serbian government has spent something in the neighborhood of $6 billion in Kosovo to maintain peace and order down in that province. It is causing the Serbian authorities a million dollars a day to keep Kosovo under its rule. The Albanians fear that Milosevic, having more or less achieved his objectives in Bosnia, the Serbians now occupy 2/3 of the Bosnian territory, that he may now make an attempt to --

MR. LEHRER: Do the same thing there.

MR. BIBARAJ: That's right. To more or less expel the Albanians. Ethic cleansing --

MR. LEHRER: And send them, try to get them to go back to Albania.

MR. BIBARAJ: Right. I take issue with what Doctor -- my Serbian colleague said here earlier. The Serbian view is that the Albanians emigrated from Albania and settled into Kosovo. First of all, there were not that many people to begin with in Albania, and where do these people come from? The Albanians are the original settlers of, of the region of Kosovo, as well as the Serbians are.

PROFESSOR DRAGNICH: That is not true. They're not the original settlers.

MR. LEHRER: We're not going to resolve that one. Let me, let me take --

MR. BIBARAJ: With all due respect --

MR. LEHRER: Okay. We're not going to resolve that one here, but Mr. Kenney, you have written in the Washington Post and in the New York Times a worst case scenario if, in fact, the Serbs do just exactly what the Albanians fear they will do, play it out. What do you think might happen?

MR. KENNEY: It's hard to give any really good scenario, because there are so many possibilities. If you add up all the different possible scenarios, you get a pretty risky situation. One which I look at is that the Serbs start to ethnically cleanse Kosovo, the Albanians in Kosovo pour across the border into Albania, and also across the border into Macedonian. The Albanian government reacts. It can't do otherwise. It gets involved in a fight. The Macedonian government has to choose sides. It has a very tough choice then because if the West does not intervene, the Macedonian government is going to calculate, well, it's going to have to live with Serbia, on the one hand, and Greece on the other, two hostile neighbors. It might find itself forced to take sides against its own Albanian minority for a moderate government that would, indeed, be a very terrible decision. On the other hand, it might calculate that if it goes on the losing side that international pressure would build up for intervention and that it might be saved, but Macedonia would be dragged in, Albania would be dragged in. If Macedonia starts to be torn apart in the same way that Bosnia's being torn apart now, very likely that Greece would move in, Bulgaria. If Greece were to move in, Turkey has said that they would definitely support the people in the region. There have been agreements between the Turks and the Albanians. You could see a start up of fighting then in Cyprus or who knows what.

MR. VAN VOORST: That's really the big difference here between Sarajevo and Kosovo. Sarajevo is, tragic though it is, is really very much contained, and there's no great threat to a general European war. The scenario that we hear with respect to Kosovo is entirely different. That is -- that can explode in all directions. That brings us back to the summer of 1914 all over again.

MR. LEHRER: Because those -- to go through the Kenney scenario, if any of those -- the argument that I have read at least is that most of those countries would have no choice. I mean, they wouldn't be sitting back, you know, thousands of miles away. They would have to come in. Turkey would have to come in if this happened. Greece would have to come in if that happened, et cetera.

MR. VAN VOORST: And two NATO powers. And that involves Greece and Turkey both. It would face us with an extraordinarily difficult decision of how to react to this, therefore, the compulsion to settle this thing and to prevent it from breaking is enormous. Now that explains the President's strong language in his letter.

PROFESSOR DRAGNICH: I would like to appeal for a little more time here because these gentlemen have been talking and I have not on this, on this issue.

MR. LEHRER: I was just going to ask -- may I ask you a question?

PROFESSOR DRAGNICH: Yes, certainly.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Do you believe that the Serbian leaders, who might, in fact, instigate the kind of action that we've been talking about understand the chain of events that this could set off?

PROFESSOR DRAGNICH: Yes, I think so. And I don't think the Serbs want -- and the world doesn't want another battlefield, another, another problem. I think the basic thing is that, that there's a question of whom might provoke it. One of the things that the Serbs fear is that, is that the Albanians may provoke some conflict in the hope then that the world will, will blame Serbia, will demonize Serbia. You know, you hear all these things. For example, it was said here that Bosnia Serbs occupied 2/3 of Bosnia. Before any fighting began, the Serbs had been there, lived for centuries, and they've, they had over 60 percent of Bosnia-Herzegovina before any fighting began, as if these people moved in there from the moon or someplace.

MR. LEHRER: So you think the Serbs are mostly concerned that this -- you don't think the Serbs are going to do anything on their own?

PROFESSOR DRAGNICH: I don't think so.

MR. LEHRER: Do you think the --

PROFESSOR DRAGNICH: But if they're provoked, the Serbs will fight because that, for them, that is holy ground. It's just as important to them as, as Jerusalem is to the, to the Jews.

MR. LEHRER: What do you think the chances are of that happening?

MR. BIBARAJ: There are no chances that the Albanians in Kosovo would take any action in this direction.

MR. LEHRER: Why not?

MR. BIBARAJ: First of all, it would mean national suicide for them. They're in no position whatsoever, because unlike the Slovenes and the Croatians and the Bosnians in the initial status of the conflict with Serbia, the Albanians do not have any force of their own. For example, they do not even have their own police forces. There's not one Albanian policeman in Kosovo. And for the Albanian leader in Kosovo, Dr. Ibrahim Ragola, to call for a national uprising, it would amount to national suicide in Kosovo. And there is no chance of that happening.

PROFESSOR DRAGNICH: The Serbs --

MR. BIBARAJ: If I may just continue for one more -- for a second on this, the question of ethnic cleansing, ethnic cleansing is underway in Kosovo and has, in fact, been going on for the last year or year and a half. First of all, the Serbian authorities engaged in what one might call bureaucratic ethnic cleansing. They've removed all the Albanians from all leading positions in the economy, in the government, in the cultural sector, what have you. They have fired in the neighborhood of 100,000 workers, Albanian workers since September 1991, and are through their pressure tactics are forcing the Albanians to leave Kosovo. There are thousands and thousands of Albanians who are leaving and going to Western Europe.

MR. LEHRER: Is that what you understand to be the Serbian solution, would be to get the Albanians to return?

PROFESSOR DRAGNICH: That is not the Serbian solution. I must protest this ethnic cleansing business because if we're going to use that term, for 40 years of the Tito regime, the Albanians engaged in ethnic cleansing of the Serbs, forcing hundreds of thousands of people out of that area, destroying churches, desecrating graveyards, desecrating monasteries. So that the Serbs don't want to see bloodshed there. The Serbs have got enough to do in Bosnia and elsewhere in Serbia proper. They do not want any fight in Kosovo. Now, admittedly, it's not an easy problem, Jim. 90 percent, as opposed to 10 or 12, whatever, there needs to be some kind of a solution, and it should be done on a negotiated basis, so that Kosovo can really retain significant autonomy to handle practically all of its affairs.

MR. LEHRER: But as a part of Serbia, not as a part of --

PROFESSOR DRAGNICH: At the moment, yes, I think that's true.

MR. LEHRER: Is -- based on your experience as a diplomat in the United States Government and being very much involved in this, do you think that kind of solution is possible?

MR. KENNEY: No.

MR. LEHRER: That's what I call a one-word answer. Do you agree with that, Bruce?

MR. VAN VOORST: I'm afraid that's the true. I agree. There has been some ethnic cleansing taking place, and this is in part what President Bush is complaining about in his letter. The Serbs have moved additional police forces into the region. They have -- there are some additional military there. We hear reports of military on the border there as well, but the Serbs are -- they're in power and they're sort of squeezing it.

PROFESSOR DRAGNICH: But can you blame them, can you blame the Serbs, in view of 40 years of ethnic cleansing of Serbs in that Kosovo region?

MR. LEHRER: So what happens, Mr. Kenney?

MR. KENNEY: Well, in my view, we have to understand what's going on in Serbia and address that problem before we can deal with any of the other aspects of this crisis. There's a kind of a national psychosis going on in Serbia right now, very much like what happened in Germany in the 1930s. You can talk to people who are ordinarily rational, your friends who are Serbians, or whatever, but you start talking about the war and the curtain comes down and there's no more discussion. Serbia basically needs to have shock therapy to bring it back into the point where it can talk to people, and the only way to do that is to use military force.

PROFESSOR DRAGNICH: Also, this brings us back to why are we in this mess today. We're in this mess because of a precipitous recognition of secessionist republics, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Western -- the West simply did not, or the West said, everybody else has national interest but not the Serbs, and this is what brought us to this position.

MR. LEHRER: All right. We have come to the end of our time. That's the position we are. Thank you all four very much. CONVERSATION - SOMALIA DIARY

MR. MacNeil: Next tonight, a conversation about the situation in Somalia with a man who's spent his professional life working in the Horn of Africa. He is Willet Weeks, regional director of the Save The Children Federation. He spoke with Charlayne Hunter-Gault shortly before she left Mogadishu last weekend.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Willet Weeks, thank you for joining us. I'm told by this weekend certainly the eight areas that have been deemed the most serious famine areas will be secured. Is that -- how important is it to secure those, and where do you come down on the debate over whether securing those eight alone is enough, or what is the U.S. position, or the U.N. position, which is that the whole country has to be secured?

WILLET WEEKS, Save The Children: Yeah, the idea of a few secured zones, and that's it, really solves no problems in Somalia. If we have a few secured zones in the country and the American presence or some sort of disciplined military presence isn't just about everywhere in Southern Somalia, I think we're in a lot of trouble. I can speak about lower Sabeli, for example, where Save The Children has its own programs, and there that's not a priority zone, even though it lies right along the main Mogadishu/Kismayu Highway, and as a result, a lot of bad people are coming in there. A lot of starvation has started up again, where we had seen it come almost to an end, because displaced people are coming in from adjacent areas where fighting has broken out again. I was sitting down there last week, and while we were sitting around like we're sitting here, we heard shots next door, and the last of the relief food in Koriali Town, which is where we were, was looted, and so this sort of thing is going to be happening over the country. The bad elements, as they're called, will regroup, move into other areas, and, and lead them, and nothing really would be solved, so I think that we definitely feel at Save The Children and at most of the aid agencies that there has to be a military presence, a stable presence of some kind, everywhere in the country.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is that the biggest and most immediate concern of aid agencies like yours?

WILLET WEEKS: It certainly is a very big concern. We have to have some sort of stability and some sort of security within which we can then work with Somalis and Somalis can work among themselves to rebuild their country. But in itself, it's a necessary but not a sufficient condition to try and bring about some sort of normalization in this country. I would be broken-hearted if after investing our resources and risking the lives of our soldiers, we then said, well, we've stabilized a few towns and now we can pull out because the whole process of reconstruction of Somalia would not havebegun the only way it can be begun, which is during a period of relative stability. And I'm afraid that a lot of the stability that we had would fall apart as soon as the Americans left.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is it your sense that the United States is heading for a crisis of rising expectations?

WILLET WEEKS: I think the expectations have already risen. I mean, there has just been a huge rise in hope and huge rise in euphoria since the announcement of the American intervention, and I think if that started, if some of, if all of those hopes were betrayed, if the Americans came, stayed for a while and left again, without bringing some sort of political normalization and social normalization, and economic normalization, then the bitterness that would follow would be tremendous and could overwhelm us all and overwhelm any good work that had been done.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: It's my sense that the United States hopes within a relatively short period of time, two to three months or so, to hand over the next phase of this, after having secured all of these zones of famine to the United Nations. Is that a realistic expectation on the part of the U.S.?

WILLET WEEKS: I think they're going to have to be very flexible about the time frame in which they do that. Right now because of what's gone before and perhaps to some extent unfairly, but there is certainly a lot of evidence the U.N. is not held in a great deal of respect by many people here in Somalia. I think that's something that could change because I think the U.N. is working very hard to improve the quality of their work alongside the American intervention.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Have they made a difference in their approach and, therefore, in their result?

WILLET WEEKS: Well, in the approach, yes. Result, it's too early, but a lot of new staff have been coming in much more qualified and dedicated people than we'd seen before. We're seeing on the part of that staff a great deal more openness and willingness to collaborate than we had before, and so while it's late in the day, I think that there's hope that the U.N. could pull together a UNOSOM II is what everybody is saying, UNOSOM being the United Nations Operation in Somalia, a UNOSOM II that would be much better than what had gone before, but that's going to take a lot of time, and building up reasonable confidence among Somalis that that's something that would work is going to take even longer, so I hope the Americans aren't in too much of a hurry.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: As you know, President Bush is scheduled to come here. Is that -- how important is that, and what must he do when he arrives?

WILLET WEEKS: If it's just a quick visit to meet the troops, that's important for the troops and the troops are important for here, but it will have no real effect on Somalia. You know, Charlayne, there's something here that really bothers me and has bothered me since the very first day of the intervention, and that is that, you know, most of your viewers were watching the landing on the beach, the Seals getting out of their landing craft, soldiers swarming ashore, helicopters coming. Somalis didn't see any of that. Okay. There's been a whole aspect to what has happened to Somalia in which Somalis didn't participate.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You mean people are here making plans for Somalis and not involving --

WILLET WEEKS: They're doing things to Somalia, and the degree to which Somalis are involved in that at present is, is very, very marginal, and that's something that I really worry very seriously about, and I think it's vital that the consultative process be expanded as much as possible not just to intellectuals and professionals but really to, to ordinary Somalis, who have very strong feelings about how they want to see their country going and are very anxious that the Americans help put the country back on the tracks. I think they're scared that that's not going to happen right now. I think there's a lot of apprehension even among ordinary people out on the street that you talk to. And I think that it's vital that their voice be heard somewhere soon.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What do you think is the potential for Somalia, its land and its people, in terms of the existing structure, to help people get, the people and the nation get back on their feet?

WILLET WEEKS: If you take the food that's produced in areas like where we work down in lower Sabeli, the grain, the vegetables, the cash crops for export, and you take the enormous wealth in livestock that's the rock bed of the Somali nation and its wealth, Somalia was a pretty self-sufficient country as countries in Africa go, and Somalis knew that and they were proud of it. They don't like depending on other people. They certainly don't like feeling that they're dependent on relief handouts, so they want to get back to being self-sufficient but before the war that really consumed most of the last two years, the civil war, the country had such a rotten, quite honestly, government that was so predatory that most of that self-sufficiency was already badly undercut and then came the war and came the looting and came the destruction, and just about anything that gave Somalia hope economically for the future was just trashed, and that's what has to be rebuilt. And that can't be done in a night, and that can't be done with an international force that just comes in, sets up a few feeding centers and leaves. Now I know that's not really their intention, but it's not clear to us what the intention is at this stage and we're worried about that.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What should the international community outside of the political and military structures that are operating here, when they -- I mean, they still see the pictures of the starving people of Somalia and they still see that there are enormous problems in this country. What should the international community be doing now? Should they be sending food? Should they be sending medicines, clothes? If people are touched and want to do something, what should they be doing?

WILLET WEEKS: Well, the food and medicines are going to be very important for a while. They're keeping, kids who could have died last week are being kept alive this week because the food is there. So certainly support to the aid agencies that are doing those kinds of projects is important, but I think thinking people who care about the future of Somalia should also be supportive of us, the private agencies, like Save The Children in our efforts to help rebuild. We have plans this year to rehabilitate agricultural programs over a very wide area affecting 200,000 people, and if we're lucky, if we get some good breaks in terms of security and the resources available, we'll have those people back on their feet by next year. They will be producing food for themselves. They will be self-sufficient. They will be producing surplus for export to other parts of Somalia, and it's that kind of process that really has to be put in place all over the country. To do that, you've got to have security. In the last three weeks since the American intervention was announced in our area, in lower Sabeli, as I said to you earlier, security has gotten worse, and that's affected our ability to do the program. Unless it's improved, it starts to improve again, we're sunk. We're not going to be able to do it, and that will mean one more year of relief food, one more year of dependence, one more year of death and killing, and nobody can afford that, certainly not the people living in that area.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Willet Weeks, thank you.

WILLET WEEKS: Thank you, Charlayne. ESSAY - PICTURE PERFECT

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, essayist Jack Perkins has some thoughts about the art of photography.

JACK PERKINS: For me, the photographs of Ancil Adams have always inspired an appreciation not only of nature but of photography as an art form. Art form? Critics used to scoff. All he did was take pictures of beautiful places. Compare their snapshots of Yosemite with his. Critics said his most famous pictures like Moonrise Hernandez were mostly lucky timing. Adams said, "Luck happens when preparation meets opportunity." He was prepared. Ancil Adams loved what he saw and had the consummate craft to make us love it too. It was meeting him some years ago doing a story about him that put the idea into my mind that some day I would like to learn something of his craft, his kind of seeing, and so just at the time that camera makers are coming out with their new CD cameras and computer imaging is all the vogue, I found myself headed off to school to study the old-fashioned, large format photography, to learn how to duck beneath a dark cloth and peer through a view camera. The instructor at the main photographic workshops was Tillman Crane, an accomplished photographer who does some images of nature, rock and root pictures he likes to call them with playful derision, but his favorite body of work recently involves America's great train stations. With their grand vaulted architecture, these splendid spaces, he feels, were the cathedrals of our industrial age. And so he portrays them with reverence. Another instructor each year at the workshops displays quite a different style. John Sexton has a book out called "Quiet Light," referring to the time just before the sun rises and just after it sets. Working those special hours, Sexton, who for years was Ancil Adams' assistant, has become the preeminent rock and rooter of today. Whatever the subject matter, the task of the fine art photographer, his self-assumed duty, is to find and record the beauty which most of us mostly overlook. Sexton finds it in the glowing symmetry of corn lilies. Crane in an abandoned pump station. Adams in the receding rage of storm cloud. This kind of photography isn't point and shoot. It takes time to set up, to view the image inverted and reversed in the ground glass, possibly to make camera adjustments to alter that image, to measure luminances, and select zone placement. Now this is not picture taking. Here and later in the creative work to be done in the dark room this is picture making. You know going in that the results won't be the quality of Adams or Crane or Sexton. But that's all right. First, because one always needs something to aspire to, but second because for the photographer what's important is not the image that ends up on paper, but the one that is printed indelibly on the mind. This kind of photography makes one see. Because of that, no one gets more out of photography than the photographer. Those who will later view the apprehended beauty may be moved by it, but only he who first discovers it touches the soul of the original artist. I'm Jack Perkins. RECAP

MR. MacNeil: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday, Presidents Bush and Yeltsin will sign a historic missile reduction treaty in Russia this weekend. President Bush defended his Christmas Eve pardon of six officials implicated in the Iran-contra Affair. A government barometer foreshadowing the course of the economy posted its sharpest rise in 10 months in November. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Robin. We'll see you tomorrow night with an extended conversation with and among our six regular regional editors and commentators. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.