The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

it's been hi i'm robert macneil the troubles of general motors and other us automakers paul simon on the signs of recession and a new threat of mass starvation in sudan all tonight on the macneil lehrer newshour urban burbs mm hmm

leading the news this thursday president bush said he is more determined than ever to force iraq from kuwait and a congressional reports and former housing secretary pierce steered federal grants to political friends were the details in our new summer in a mall problem on tonight's newshour we examine the problems of the us auto industry yesterday general motors america's biggest company announced its biggest losses ever tonight with a gm dealer a parts supplier labor editor and wall street analyst we discuss detroit's struggled to stay competitive then business correspondent paul simon reports in the signs of recession and one american town finally the dire warnings that millions may die from starvation in the sudan we have a documentary reports and discussion funding for the newshour has been provided by pepsico yes

yes and by the john d and catherine t macarthur foundation a catalyst for change and by at and t and made possible by the financial support of viewers like you and the corporation for public broadcasting president bush had more tough talk for iraq today is at the iraqi military had committed outrageous acts of barbarism referring to the use of western hostages as human shields he said i don't believe about all hitler ever participated in anything of that nature a political fundraiser in burlington massachusetts he said he was more determined than ever to drive the iraqis out of kuwait we are getting the sanctions the time the war and i hope that there will never be a shot fired in anger but let me be very

very clear there will be no compromise on the stated objectives of the united nations security council resolutions none at all cruel quality the brutality against innocent civilians will not be tolerated and will not stand saddam's clear violations of international law will not stand and that means yes his brutal aggression will not stand no one wants a peaceful crisis peaceful end of this crisis more than i do but no one is more determined to see this aggression turned back then i am and i will not change on that fundamental point crows crows later in the day the president was asked whether his tough rhetoric was intended to prepare americans for a war he said he would not rule out further options but was not trying to prepare the country for

war and iraqis spokesmen said mr bush's language was an excuse for an attack against iraq that could happen at any moment a memorial service was held today aboard the uss you were jim to one of the ten sailors who were killed in a boiler room accident earlier this week more than a thousand servicemen stood at attention on one gun salute bodies of the victims a ride back to the united states this morning at dover air force base in delaware forty three servicemen have died in accidents since operation desert you again their ranks information minister said today for sick or elderly american hostages will be released soon but he did not say when he also said us hostages have complete freedom to watch television rebuilt the newspapers and to enjoy the friendship of iraqi forces to letters from us hostages interact were released from the us embassy in baghdad one described conditions is very much like a medium security

prison in the united states barr's on windows doors on locking doors locked it said iraqis lived in adjoining rooms and guards with automatic rifles kept watch it tonight an iraqi official said today said yesterday rack might allow families of the foreign hostages to visit them over the christmas and new year's holidays state department spokeswoman margaret tutwiler reacted to that idea today in washington we think it's shameless with tickets cruel and insensitive he should not be discussing this that he should be discussing the immediate release today of all those held against their will what would you recommend to american families who might want to take him up on this with their loved ones are still stuck this is a very heart wrenching and difficult decision on sure yet number one let's begin with is it actually true number two americans are well aware of the fact that any number of times saddam hussein's government has issued new regulations on new rules and the rules

change before they are to be implemented the rules change in the middle and so the most americans what i think recognize there is indeed a risk associated with this a house committee today issued its report on wrongdoing at the department of housing and urban development during the reagan administration it said that under former hud second samuel pierce the department was in total disarray and woefully mismanaged it accused pearson steering money to his political friends and then misleading the government operations subcommittee about the report said at press secretary pierce was less than honest and misled the subcommittee about his involvement in abuses and favoritism in houghton funding decisions at worst he knowingly lied and committed perjury during his testimony the committee said it would lead to a special prosecutor to decide whether pearson welcome the laws versus lawyers said the investigation was politically motivated he said there was not one piece of evidence that there's was in any way add in anyway defiling the government mcdonald's will no longer use plastic

foam containers for its hamburgers the company made the announcement today said the environmental damage from the fall is not clear but it was taking the action because our customers just don't feel good about it the phone boxes will be replaced by paper containers at least thirty one more people were killed in india today in religious riots most died in battles between hindus and muslims are when police fired on crowds the violence has to do with a group of fundamentalist hindus who want to tear down a muslim was to build a temple in the province of radish police restricted access to the temple area today at least two hundred and ten people have been killed since the violence began last week britain's deputy prime minister jeffrey kahn resigned today because of differences with prime minister margaret thatcher over europe thatcher opposes a single european currency house supports it that you said she accepted his resignation lawrence solomon and anger and that's it for the newshour tonight now it's on to the troubles at general motors a pulse almond like a recession and

the politics of famine in the sudan i denied our major focus more bad news in the auto industry the nation's largest automaker general motors announced plans to close up to nine factories which employ tens of thousands of workers as a result of the closings the company announced its largest quarterly loss ever almost two billion dollars for the third quarter of this year chrysler posted losses of two hundred and forty million dollars ford turned a profit of a hundred and two million its worst quarter in eighty years here the recess when sailing the american auto industry are john lippert labor writer at the detroit free press and a former autoworker who spent nine years in gm mr leppard joins us in public station wgbh in detroit also in detroit is gordon stewart president of to chevrolet dealerships and co chairman of the upcoming detroit auto

show joining us from public station w k r in east lansing michigan as cotton guthrie chairman and ceo of true mark incorporated an auto parts manufacturer and supplier to the big three american auto companies and workers in new york is maryann keller an auto analyst at the newark brokerage firm affirm themselves and author of a book entitled rude awakening which looks at general motors in the nineteen eighties ms keller the gm news of the closings and the three billion dollar losses beings i've seen in the press today as both a healthy development and a sign of continued sickness in the auto industry can it be both well i guess you can there are really two pieces of news yesterday in the world is focused only on the write off but really i think the bad news was the operating condition of the company the right off really was sort of a ketchup general motors has four of those factories closed under the uaw contract recently approved company now has the right to officially call them permanently close instead of indefinitely either which meant they had to be written off for accounting

purposes in addition general motors about a year ago notified the union that they were a number of factories for which it did not have future projects once the current model run and did these plans had nothing to build the union also by virtue of the income protection that was one under the contract now has really no qualms about seeing these plants close as far as the operating conditions the company i think that that was really what distressed people this is a company that had a monster operating loss in north america in the third quarter which meant that these restructuring charges are coming rather belatedly just taking this big hit now an end and call in the loss the loss and does it now ended jim's problems are now now general motors' problems are structural their organizational they are the fact that general motors has among the worst productivity in the united states the fact that it takes fifty five hours to build a mid sized gm car analytics twenty nine hours to build a ford car

that you don't tour with a ride off like this it took six to seven years to cure general motors europe and to make it the moneymaker that it is now it's a huge moneymaker it's going to take at least that long to really deal with the fundamental issues that gm faces during the nineteen eighties general motors kept trying to solve problems with magic bullets by hughes aircraft spend money and robots things of this nature it really never got to the core issues but didn't gm hasn't in some furniture slightly increased its share of the american life in europe in this case the more cars they sell them or they lost the increases in market share came as a result of increased sales to daily rental companies companies like davis and national they lose money on every one of those transactions so while the market share numbers look pretty good they were just simply losing money on every sale so in effect they block market share i don't necessarily think that that's a bad strategy you gotta keep your factories open but nevertheless it's an odd position to be in mr stuart a nerd and a trite you sell the

year the gm products how do you see the plant closings in the two billion dollar loss in the sign of general health of gm we'll probably slightly different than mariam does i do with that is a very healthy step we have to deal with a tremendous overcapacity ministry we can't ignore that for the factories to be of manufactures to be in and the proper frame of mind and positioned properly financially they just can't be structured in such a way with such tremendous overhead that they can support those kinds of plants that build an antiquated product they're also not even close to the quality of build of the modern plants i as we have the fluctuations in the economy and we're going to have them for certainly through the next decade is we haven't every decade before us the manufacturers are most able to respond to the increasing production of quality automobiles rather than just sheer increase in numbers is going to be the clear winner by the same token those that manufacturer that can withdraw our retract its forces as expedient lee is as

possible as also didn't want your sales gm product tell you about the competitiveness of the cars they make in the market today well in detroit in october for example my two stores or fifty percent more than fifty percent increase in sales over last october yesterday were on the east coast that especially in the new jersey new york area you get an entirely different answer is you may in california i have two members of the heartland united states women affected by the savings and loan scandal anywhere near like the coastal city set ourselves the seven songs and it makes a big difference to car sales because the availability of money for example on the east coast dealerships it is almost exclusively to the captive finance arms of the banks on the west coast financing or don't have money to provide for retail senate's paper only the captive finance arms are out their financing image of purchases that does not create the best competitive environment for the consumer and trite the consumer has a choice is

in california the east coast a consumer does not it has one prepared offering taken leave of finance package and sometimes the restrictions can be quite severe and some of the economically a hard hit area so there's a real shortage of the money supply available for the source of those groups mr guthrie in east lansing as a supplier to gm and they are big three of parts how do you read the gm news as well as that from chrysler and ford this week well i think it's more of a bad thing we've seen this coming quite sometime symbols are not a new phenomenon and we yes it that are by a monitor percent general motors business in nineteen eighty five to now about twenty five percent so we can anticipate fee the thirty two that are fitted directions general motors but our key concern right now is making sure we diversify the other areas that are growing what kind of parched you actually make and sell or industry we manufacture metal parts such as bumpers to ford and he chills things along those lines to

be things that are underneath the body of the car with these moves been downsizing as it's called bcg and coming to the end of its troubles or still in them now the trouble are mounting one of the issues that was underlined james problems is the growth of the year at the transplants the japanese companies that are producing cars are in the us now and their share of the market has increased dramatically in just the past couple of years and with the japanese or the voting more of investment and the united states i see a tremendous pressure on their markets continued and how does that affect your system why are dramatically we're pretty much devoted to the big three are the requirements of the japanese companies are very different from the big three and requires a tremendous retooling to accommodate though so as the forges victory decline supplier such as myself how a hard time making that job also the transplant mr strick much of the supply base to japanese empires and we're in order to apply those companies will have access in many cases to supply the japanese companies mr leppert have the

detroit free press as a laborer editor why has there been no outcry from the auto workers over this announcement the senate with a lot of its products why is that that the shortages of they've been bracing for this for a long time as lance have that some of these plants it's been known for body or that there would be a product after a certain date and then try for thirty days ago the union signed a contract with gm where they are one's substantial incomes to charity for all these people and i was not most of people affected by this will earn virtually all their income for the three year period in a contract even as are five does cause salinas been bracing for a long time so this is this is really something new in a labor contract as it exits the union conniving and the downsizing of the workforce and the head andy and the industry why tonight in his canon of mosul were just too strong were collaborating in war are ours are recognizing

the inevitability of an idea it's been done before in a coal mine industry and the longshoremen's industry contraceptives are not entirely no but i think it's so this is the biggest and most lucrative contract of its kind ever how what is your reading about whether these moves yesterday should be taken as such as a sign of healthy development which will get gm out of the woods and able to compete with the japanese cars why this is a good man okay that it's so that's a much lower structural and that they have to change all their daily habits and are in the process of doing that the promises it's pretty boys show that one of things they have to do is share the part of the company they're clearly what they will survive and that's that's what they've done wrong but i think it's i think it i said gm isn't better i think by the mid nineties gm will be perceived to be in better shape than it took up is a more about all foreign cars are about a problem the key there is that the japanese have is that they can

bring new products to market quickly and they can hit niches as it develop and so the requests are right now is about a huge gap in the mid size saving another car line and obey will fill out for a couple years and forties bringing out a force torres it you came out in a sex is a huge hit but governor rick vetter redesign their car for eight nine years our i mean eight years after they were out there that's just as well because japanese or a corporate quarter and responding to a customs are just tell you like mr leppert more worried about fort carson your argument is correct i mean general motors certainly has the potential for for turning itself around it i think i'm very hopeful about the new management because they seem to have caused seem to be approaching the company with a dose of reality that's good i think that the problem that i see that might that worries me is that corporations typically when they see losses started sort of pull in the reins and they stop spending our new product and

that's an enormous risk all three companies in spite of the losses in spite of terrible results must then jon is right when he says that ford and chrysler have a kind of a gap in here in terms of the product the disorder come back to the japanese in a moment but this quickly go around each year in starting with unesco ask you how much of what has happened in this quarter is due to the recession and how much to the underlying problems of detroit adjusting to the new competition i think a good deal of a cyclical that mean in recession the recession but you know the japanese are just growing and growing and growing even through the recession so here we are in a cyclical downturn with japanese car sales happen so they'd exaggerate the cyclical problem <unk> much would you say i know you're doing well in detroit but generally speaking now those sales of gm and other us per car much as the down is the due to the recession or talk of recession at the moment how much do the long term ron's of competitiveness

i think that that long term problems to the competitiveness factor another significant is the hair is the talk of the recession there through the media right now the most the people in our market which is a good market i'm running a little bit scared of the fight and they're thinking they should pull in there horns are not sure why but then they hear the drilling boom is coming but i think that the saving grace of this whole thing is that the inventory levels are such in our business that they're going to have to build more products to fill the shelves we can have that deep recession because we're basically in in a low state of inventory in it disagreements and for us mr guthrie act is a recession or is it longer term problems or competitiveness how it up to slightly disagree with the other folks i think that the issues here are the majority long term issues of the automotive industry has undergone seven years less seven years been fairly good years and while we are currently enter recession if you look at the cars so far above the levels of the early eighties and the palms overseeing our accumulation of problems that have built up over the

years and will continue to come a lot more severe and we do see the bottom of the market which may happen in the year so i think that will indicate that that we've got a problem that can't be corrected dealing with cyclical issues long term issue to be overwhelming rooms to a birdwatcher recession hour or long term issues i would say that the raffish as corporate clearly a barrel of recognition of permanent changes in the structure of the us auto industry and who is there's always been a cyclical event said detroit it was pretty good at wrong with the punches and this is a recognition that but things are changing but i you know i think we should point out that there's a real good signs in terms of what is happening inside a gm has other companies i mean they have a ceremony a few blocks into us about two weeks ago and cadillac division general motors when a knuckle ball the only word to win an award you have to have world class kassa says employees to listen to your customers and has

responded customs and they had workers in applying hang from the rafters cheering for from this to supplement in terms of lessons are happening but as mayor said the problem is the pace of change in the band and you don't have time to do to make mistakes because the japanese are relentless in there mr leppert is the us industry is detroit now in a position to stop the japanese from increasing their share of the us market every year as they have done again this year now it's a narrow as if it's a i have a lot of hazard do the currency fluctuations but i don't think we were near the bottom i think a manager and we look we said many times in the last ten years that the japanese have about well are we wrong so true themselves competitive and of detroit is not to drop below ten years ago the japanese sold only small sub compact strange looking little cars and they seldom primarily on the east coast in the west coast today the japanese have strong dealer

networks across the whole country they're selling cars that spanned the entire product range from the smallest car to luxury cars they are very very well entrenched and they keep coming out with new products and there are nine of them it's very hard to compete with nine to liberate talented resourceful company some muscular mr rickert mr stewart mr guthrie theater were for jurors think you still to come on the newshour tonight all summit on recession and one massachusetts town and the politics of famine in the sudan general motors and detroit could be seen as only the latest casualties of the recession fever the current outbreak began in the northeast in massachusetts in particular and although economists may argue that we are technically in a recession business correspondent paul sonne and found a place where there's no such debate in massachusetts from the early

nineteen eighty eight hundreds for the great economic boom the massachusetts experience for much of the decade believe it had its own neck massachusetts america was felt throughout the state really most of new england people began to say that the area was recession proof with its rich diversity of industries from high tech the high finance higher education to defense or self bruce dern ruggeri was a fairly typical example experienced euphoric up side of the business cycle and it seemed especially well protected against recession since it featured one of new england's most time honored tourist attractions old sturbridge village here at old sturbridge village the miracle was a time of milk and honey the only problem was hiring enough people to handle the torrents of tourists we were competing for workers i think this is a good illustration of what happens in a period of high employment wages tend to be driven up because the supply diminishes but not the war coming to

make it work out right in and indeed we were able to show an operating surplus on a rather consistently sits just a few miles down the road from old sturbridge village is the very new galileo electro optics company the manufacturer of fiber optical devices for the military during the defense bill that the va has its workforce doubled sales quadrupled and the new wealth circled through the local community a dollar that comes that get sent to delaware tropics by its customer gets gives paid to our employees get spent down to the grocery store get spat over the gas station and get spent at the shoe store so that dollar floats to the community for five six times before it leaves and everybody's havin fun because everybody spending because there's lots of cash for its opposite and so the boom fed on itself more tourists and more workers with more money to spend resulting in more shops and

restaurants opening up which meant more advertisers for the local newspaper we tried to grow each year by either starting a publication reading purchasing from someone else so that for a period of a decade or so where are we at a nearly ten publications as business people like gil yon grew more confident they took on more debt believing that future growth would finance lawyers consumer advocates a rapidly escalating housing prices for example reassured buyers big mortgages were ok since owning a home seemed a foolproof investment things were booming we would show i was an ad in a day or less would be on deposit people were calling us in art everything was a fever or real estate call it a fever or if you prefer weather metaphor for the economy you could simply call a hot new england was enjoying an apparently endless summer of prosperity and so people forgot that after every summer there comes a fall it was in late nineteen

eighty eight degrees in the trees began to whisper recession doing usually experts to fight a recession has at least six months of shrinking gnp but for local bank economist mit we're in a recession is a reality that goes beyond the gross national product and gop its value is that it's a distraction and thats a real states problem is that it doesn't speak to real people look when you see things like home construction car sales declining business spending on new plants and equipment the climbing those are all the signs symptoms and components of a recession recently in the starboard south rich area there've been signs and symptoms of recession everywhere you look i want everyone in the company of the saints is that or we've been anticipating an economic downturn for quite some time in retrospect the

slump of galileo's of grass is inevitable the government like so many other somalis was running a huge deficit it had to go back and measuring and cutbacks in defense force galileo to lay off twenty percent of its workforce if this has made you could only borrow so long then you have to pay it back so the the rating asian with bow bow bow stimulate the economy at all costs and then i'm gonna go retire unless somebody else in america's problem and now we're wrestling with with that problem we've inherited what are we going to do with it because we can't borrow forever with caution now on the way and many new englanders began questioning the need to spend money on leisure activities like visits to walter reed as a result of a severe drop in attendance in the last few years to trim its workforce by twenty percent now this split is in a very kind of patient sitting on the market for

a while and customers anxious to sell it in fact many have shown what caused customers are anxious to see it but with the whales and people moving out of the area there just aren't enough people anxious to buy we know it would end but we didn't think within the diverse massachusetts economy supposedly recession proof just two years ago began to falter across the board the mass miracle started to look like a mass illusion the same spiraling crisis that took the massachusetts economy of the business cycle has now slipped into reverse and the spiraling economy back down in these times everybody's afraid despite the customers afraid to spend their for the companies afraid to spend their for the gas station guys have spent their for the local brochures afraid despair and everybody only buys what they need when they need it and it was among our main street here even by the serbian and the

video and the argument of the deal and buy these only our underlying situation where a long brown remembers when there were seventeen jewelry stores downtown now hers is one of two left what percentages business office i would say about forty percent diseases or forester yes definitely at it i don't think it's just us i think it's all over massachusetts that's an amazing drought that's right it is a bitter bitter expect would happen never expected not just that the advertisers actually yes we can we can put we have anything because the economy's new collection of course you're not getting any incentives that used to hearing that we went back to lorne purely on at the new casino is business was delayed if this isn't a recession are no more solutions when advertising on toyota had to sell two of the papers he acquired during the go go eighties guys were forced from

three sixty three hundred and freeze wages you can trust us again as the eeoc now by our knitting was one significant was born but cost cutting like this has for the repercussions are house news today painted and its peeling and there's more their mission is to be taken care of and i'm not doing it and i'm sure that the pain that normally would get my business can be effective because he's been in the business and so we'll be able to spend less downtown and that'll affect people who advertise in our paper and oh i'll be hurt by the fact that i'm not spending money on a my house even the south miami years are quote severe drop in local and state school superintendent to cancel all extracurricular activities and

athletics football is kept alive and recently one dollar fee each player plays participate things get worse they'll be no football at all that's clear contrast with other kind of money to put me through college and on china in oberlin college or whatever they can get you know sliced into a home and the average so it's not like i'm going to get all these other now scholarships and so so i really need or lionel and with the threat of that even taken away it would surely was called what i understand is why when this mess in the first place and who got us into this mess economist report is the first to admit that it's not much fun to be in a recessionary spiral if you've seen your worst things you're grateful for it feels like i don't know our sky diver with two ways jump out of a plane for scholarships on main street and throughout new england consumer confidence according to recent polls is adam goldstein well he's

now seventy three is this more severe depression really but while the great depression and all the sessions are measured the catalyst partners says that since world war two recessions intended to be much shorter and less wrenching and what the nation experienced in the nineteen thirties we've had at these episodes as well more to the latest in it till they typically have lasted four quarters like to forecast where the gnp has declined over the four corners in an interesting way in each of these cases the gnp has rebounded for a least a year after that recovery worldwide recession but some economists aren't even this reassuring song that we went to mit john sturm and because he studies the business cycle this isn't a

situation like a normal recession where manufacturers inventories close automobiles and sarah over accumulate because production is greater than demand for some period if that was the i will we be able to get rid of those access that's fairly quickly but here we've got a situation where for the boss the past decade the band adding to the stock of buildings overbuilding in the physical capacity was accumulated too much debt and asset prices for these kinds of commodities have been inflated well above their sustainable values those imbalances are going to have to be dissipated before the foundation was laid for sustainable recovery it was your gasoline it could be as little as a few more years it could last through the middle of the nineties or even a bit after that but it's not going away next year well we hate it and with such a gloomy scenario so we'll leave you instead with a bit of history old sturbridge village weathered america's first industrial recession the panic of eighteen thirty seven caused by over speculation and western real estate that downturn greatly reduced the demand for new england

farm products but the villages farmers and the nation is all survived that panic and all the subsequent booms and busts and it's a sure bet that we'll weather the next recession too in the long run unfortunately even the experts disagree as to how painful the short run is likely to be finally tonight the story of the coming of another famine to africa this time in the nation of sudan as always politics is involved then a seven year civil war between the predominantly muslim north and non muslim south united states has accused the sudanese government of blocking food shipments and some people are complaining those accusations our reaction was so that's it and support of the rack in the gulf crisis will get that discussion after a french film companies report on the

situation in the sedan won the home and america's every day for the past six months sudanese refugees and the ethiopian camp tang died of hunger or the diseases caused by in the morning in a tent called the health center the sec waded through a sea of mud for a visit from our midwife turned nurse and herself a refugee in nineteen fifty six outside those sick people who could still spend especially the children moved around waiting for the first of the day's food handout in some cases all they needed to fight their illnesses was to absorb sufficient hydration salt this

year's new year's eve every day martin discovers music people among her fellow refugees the twenty thousand sudanese in this part of the tank have arrived here from another campaign in the north last december when warplanes bombed that camp martha and her seven children were among those who fled here we get it you know the arrival of new refugee another seventeen thousand directly from the south of sudan it was as if after two hundred fifty thousand deaths in nineteen eighty eight alone the united nations year old effort called lifeline have no impact at all the road taken by the southern

sudanese when they escaped from their villages atkins for a long time with sports is a flight toward neighboring countries such as kenya uganda and ethiopia or even the northern capital of khartoum and last weeks or months with no help at all for the refugee woman explained the refugees subsist on eating leaves throughout their journey of the six million people of south sudan estimated two million remain there the new fundamentalists in our in june made no secret of their intention to islam eyes the entire country and so the eight year war getting re and a mistake or christian south against the muslim north laird again this man says we are treated badly by arab militiamen they take our property and whatever food there is hunger is killing a lot of people and a war even more at

hangar as elsewhere in ethiopia new refugees continue to arrive two hundred fifty thousand teng along yet the united nations commissioner for refugees says he has fewer and fewer resources to share the problem is that it did in the last decade is the road as many different things as a community and a fifteen million nine and the same thing that means that the resources for egypt it is hard for a while that's the problem we're facing working in sudan and in ethiopia in an effort to bring peace back to the region former president jimmy carter has tried for two years to bring government and rollers to the negotiating table

oh really as a mother character's son to a health center it was saturday and camp doctors were away until monday under the canvas more profoundly empty beds of those who had not survived the day but it did not surprise her any longer next our discussion which judy woodruff presided over yesterday now to three different views on this crisis ambassador akbar ahmed abdullah is sudan's ambassador to washington and the nazi us is the director of the office of foreign disaster assistance the united states agency for international

development he has been in charge of cornet in us aid to the sudan through the un program operation lifeline sudan am roger winter is the director of the us committee for refugees private voluntary organization in washington dc mr winter visited this sudan in august and september let me just begin by asking all three of you just how many lives are we talking about being a risk instead of asking well look become a book about animal lots of lives being a risk because i know of a nice body that has been made that would produce accurate figures for example i saw the figure nine million and saw three million one million you never really think the self image exaggerate if you're speaking of what were they allegedly call impending famine off i mean in the sublime and that the figures like five million that thinking to abolitionism million

be subject of an incident i think these are very much exaggerated figures they are not substantiated and i think they are unfounded and that because what we are speaking about the inverse of that is not fun and that's what i was thinking about in this event is an impending shortage will soon resulting from two ears or successive and in which has been below the evidence they know that inform evidence for the long form for longer is that what well i think it's mismanagement of the food shortage or famine of people enough to keep a diet whether you call it a shortage or famine fact is that there has been a massive reduction in crop of what we expect in the harvest that will take place in november and we will know by them into a curve there were very precise figures as to how much food will be required to feed people we estimate our mission and in khartoum that it could be upwards of a million tons of

food that will be required which is a huge amount of lives at risk well us estimate eighty nine million of them in times that are there estimates as high as eleven those five and it will be contingent on what results the famine show next month so massive crisis a massive disaster is what would argue that he has to win or how they get there well first what you have perhaps forty five million people who are at risk having been displaced by the civil conflict in sudan you have another something short of the millions who are refugees from outside sudan who are dependent on food assistance or primarily from ethiopia from eritrea were in supporting sudan as refugees and most of them have been there for some time but what is really happening is you have a new population which has been placed at risk this is a population which is more in the northern part of the country the western part of the

country and to some degree the east as opposed to the south where the many of the war displaced are and this is a population which has been placed at risk because of drought the drought has materialized we've been able get good handle on it primarily this summer july and august and september this is a newer population at risk whereas the war displaced have been at risk for some time and why why is it just now mr bassam irving i am sure there been stories of the last few months but why is it just in the last month or so that it's starting to get this much attention but the questionable food insecurity in this event is marked and in other parts of africa is more a new phenomena becomes so than whites popping indian marsh communicated ms fulton a defensive organization which he's a specialist agency and asked them to come to this event and to make a crop assessment it doesn't you're saying your government has awarded the rest of the world to the

city and mr wenner is not what's involved here whether dropped we all that we see a little differently it's a combination of things it is not entirely an accident of nature obviously the civil war is a manmade part of the disaster frankly the deterioration that's taken place in operation lifeline sudan which is the international relief effort has been substantial deterioration watched year that's part of the problem too but it is the case that in addition to those manmade hell once the drought the materialization of the drought the crop measurements making these predictions are something that have come upon us in july and august and september why the deterioration operation going on first there is one thing to happen in august you shouldn't stand there was a huge increase in temperature in the red sea province in north west north eastern part of sudan which was the breadbasket the country that produces large surpluses to feed a portion of the country the temperature went so high to large portion of the crops that happen in august which

was just a few months ago the second reason for problems is that the economy is in very bad shape reason of gas to move around because they need trucks to move from the government has not been terribly corporate there's been bombing of relief shipments of barges with relief food on them unable to function on shipments of them really really shy i don't subscribe to the fact that the government has been a bonding shipments of that if the government is a park in an operation lifeline so that it's a popular with the united nations that does administer an oral petition don't punish our lifeline is an operation overseas this relief that's taking place at the time or for there is no ceasefire then this other than that the war continues but all parties are committed to an openness a lifeline which was based on an agreement and at the final four i mean is the logistical problems due to critique an all boys and resorting to features that can make this petition a

lifeline was always ate cizik is a section in the fittest fears the second phase was always me think something the options and the subtleties of just expect they're impossible if it is to be expected and it has been built to his all along and backed instruments into it so he sang that it's it's just to be expecting a war going on the maturation survive here our food barges from the red cross the nile river there's nothing else a year and has no troops there now cities nearby where these barges are they repeatedly bombed that we can only conclude that the target was the barges says there's nothing else in those areas there are other examples though i have problems with relief shipments we have forty thousand tons of food we have stored american food in the sedan for the relief effort and that food was frozen by the sudanese government that is our food is not fooled weeds we gave to the city's gun rosen investors have not allowed to touch it and they said it was to be counted because of the impending food shortage of the fact the matter is for one month we cannot get it to the

test that food and there were severe shortages of food and some of the refugee areas are some of the displaced areas and cause when this problem why that happens or via my information is that you know because of impending global because of about you we always expect that the hike that high prices in them and in the end in the food commodities specialist oregon which is the main flutist they were or the seventies and because of the very high prices the government has been giving my information is that the government intervened to fix for by the us to take the information of what they look for them is available in the country and therefore they can barely put their hands on that and deposited it in this what i think of this was was was a car mechanic today yes i was called to the us that serve the public and the whole question was dissolved and then the onus on them is now going to do with the people actually the irony is that by that message mr winter there's another element of this which is raising taxes a seed and support for a racketeering the current gold prices why

is that become a problem that to what extent is that a problem getting food and sit and well i think in a way it's complicated the relief situation in the sense that the number of donors have sort of backed away from sudan to back away because of problems with operation lifeline sudan in the belief that the syrian government wasn't cooperated adequately with the relief effort but now with that golf crisis in the position sudan has taken it's sort of complicated things a lot of people who are not thinking very discreetly about this confuse the people sedan with the government of sudan and if they react negatively to the policy of the government they withhold food from the field the people sort of countries is that the united states is the one that is very clearly as generous more generous than anybody else the number of european donors have backed away from supporting operation life once it and that's sad but we want to understand

why hey if it isn't as as clean i think as has been been portrayed here in terms of government cooperation with lifeline sedan the rebels don't have an air force somebody has been bombing the relief sites in south sudan and some of those bombings have occurred with red cross and un planes and personnel on the ground that's a clear problem that signals to donors something is wrong here in addition for example there has been a train the famous within our business the famous trained to a wheel which was packed in september of nineteen eighty nine and has still not been able to travel to office there was a lot of houses a shallow the relief supplies like an outlier are a myriad of excuses that run from medal for team to the inability to mobilize an army a security a capacity to accompany the track but nobody can can can tell me at least that a train

load of emergency relief supplies can't move for fourteen months and there isn't a real problem in terms of saying that i'm saying that the government survey does not adequately committed to seeing lifeline work but the beauty the second half of robots are lifelines for them the government of sudan hilde it is received by then at the nation's fifty four thousand pounds of food and is blm held a visit received twelve thousand pounds of food and this is the information from this this department that high percentage of duty video food which it from bad look at the mall because fifty four thousand to the present more than seventy five percent and torsos and the present more than seventy percent or so that has been distributed by the petition lifeline so than the last six months so i'll come up and see that yes there is this apartment will be spent my information is that this that it says that it is going to an area where it has been a difficult for the army to protect it and don has always be saying that

that that they visible one kilometer long because the publicity parks in it the city they lose and the government has been saying that we're in it in addition to some logistical problems that it is becoming very important very difficult for the thoughtful the government to protect that they're informed the backs of the bill's were hearing a lot of her several different point here what i would do about pets here's what happens now if last two years we've distributed through operation like one seven hundred thousand tons of film ever take a few thousand next year a million times be needed not all of relief when both commercial from his well we believe we can't possibly do that without extraordinary measures being taken within the country we can't do this ourselves we have to have it active the enthusiastic support of the city's them and we don't see that happening is not a function simply the government not helping us we need their help actively not given so you're saying people are going to die because the government said and now cooperate not doing as much as it should do exactly unlike an issue that the government of

sudan is comedy competition lifeline it's committed to its principles it's going to these tweets including get into the implementation actions and it is committed to do the maximum possible that got under the circumstances of all that's going on there i'm under the circumstances over poor infrastructure in the city under the circumstances all logistical support for the whole thing i can assure you that the saddam government is in no way in tennessee pretty sudanese people die is i love of insurance for those in the independent relief organizations like yours in these other actions speak louder than birds we've heard a lot of words over the last few months about this issue what we would like to see is the government as well as the us appeal a co operate to save sudanese lives at best we're talking about an emergency we may be talking about a disaster and it could become a catastrophe if both of those parties don't get together cooperate with us on this project mr winter

mr nasser of all instances we think you'll things like that once again thursday stop stories president gore said he is more determined than ever to get saddam hussein out of kuwait but he said he still hopes for a peaceful solution and congressional investigators concluded that former president reagan's housing secretary samuel pierce steer contracts to his friends and then misled congress about imagine not robin was say tomorrow night with the judy woodruff election report from iowa and third in and she rolls on jim lehrer thank you and goodnight funding for the newshour has been provided by at mt at and to connect them equipment working on computers to communications at and t the right sure and by the john d and catherine t macarthur foundation

a catalyst for change and by pepsico and made possible by the financial support of viewers like you and the corporation for public broadcasting many thanks video cassettes of the macneil lehrer newshour are available from pbs video call one eight hundred four to four seven nine six three s tsui cbs fb it's

been