The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. LEHRER: Good evening. Leading the news this Thursday, Senate leaders and the White House agreed on a clean air bill, the Seabrook Nuclear Plant was cleared for operation after a 20 year legal battle and Sec. of State Baker said the administration would consider cuts in aid to Israel and Egypt. We'll have details in our News Summary in a moment. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: After the News Summary, we examine [FOCUS - WAR AND FAMINE] the renewed threat of famine made worse by the war in Ethiopia. We have a documentary report and analysis from Andrew Natsios, Director of the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, and Congressman Tony Hall, Chairman of the Select Committee on Hunger. Next a News Maker interview with Charles Haughey, Prime Minister of Ireland, and [NEWS MAKER] president of the European Community, Education Correspondent John Merrow reports [FOCUS - FRIGHTENING LESSON] on how students cope with the threat of violence around inner-city schools, and finally Essayist Jim Fisher [ESSAY - THE KANSAS CITY TIMES - FINAL EDITION] says good-bye to the Kansas City Times. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: A deal was struck today on a new clean air bill. It was between the leadership of the Senate and the White House. Their compromise places tighter restrictions on emissions from cars, power plants, and factories. It was reached after three weeks of closed door negotiations. The announcement was made at a Washington news conference.

SEN. MITCHELL: Under this agreement, there will be significant improvement in the quality of the American air. The requirements are far more comprehensive and stringent than under current law.

WILLIAM REILLY, EPA Administrator: Measured in terms of public health, measured in terms of the ecology of the country, measured in terms of visibility, this is a great milestone. The long stalemate that has characterized the clean air debate throughout most of the last 10 years has been broken. Let me join in extending a very heartfelt tribute to Sen. Mitchell and to the leadership here, all of the Senators involved on behalf of the President, we could not be more pleased with this bill.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Mitchell said he will urge quick passage of the bill when it reaches the Senate floor next week. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: There was another move today in one of this country's longest running battles over a nuclear power plant. Seventeen years after it first applied for a license, the Seabrook Nuclear Plant in New Hampshire was given the go-ahead by the federal government's Nuclear Regulatory Commission to operate at full power. The plant was completed more three years ago at a cost more than $6 billion, six times the original estimate. But it was left idle because of safety challenges. Opponents of the plant were out again today protesting, as they have done throughout these years. The Attorney General of the neighboring State of Massachusetts said he will challenge the decision in court.

MR. LEHRER: Sec. of State Baker said today the United States would consider reducing aid to Israel, Egypt, and other countries. He said that would free up money for Panama, Nicaragua, and Eastern Europe. He told a House hearing earmarking money for longtime recipients left little for the emerging democracies.

JAMES BAKER, Secretary of State: We are willing to stand up and be counted on the issue of total elimination of earmarks. We're willing to stand up and be counted on the issue of shaving earmarks, provided it's done in a non-discriminatory manner across- the-board, and this is not directed at any particular country or countries. At the same time, we must find a way to respond to the remarkable changes taking place in Eastern Europe, to the changes taking place in Panama, to the changes taking place in Nicaragua.

MR. LEHRER: In Egypt, there was a major fire this morning at a Sheraton Hotel in a Cairo suburb. At least 16 people were killed, including 1 American. The fire began in one of the hotel's restaurants. It spread particularly fast because of strong winds. Many people jumped out of windows to escape the flames. Some survived by climbing down bed sheets. The hotel did not have fire alarms or a sprinkler system.

MR. MacNeil: In Beirut today, a two week lull in fighting between Christian militias exploded again into all out war. Seventy people were killed and at least a hundred and fifty injured. Both sides used tanks, artillery and rockets. Several residential areas came under heavy fire. Pres. Bush today denied reports of secret U.S.-Iranian talks over the American hostages in Lebanon. He called the reports ridiculous. They first appeared in a London-based Arab newspaper. Mr. Bush added, "I don't spend a day that I don't think about the hostages. I will do everything I can to win their freedom."

MR. LEHRER: This country's only national inner-city bus company may shut down tonight. Drivers and other employees of Greyhound Lines have set a strike for midnight. Talks between the company and the union continued today in Scottsdale, Arizona, but there was no word on a possible settlement. The main issue is salary. The Dallas-based company, which also includes Trailways, plans to use newly hired drivers to operate a limited schedule if there is a strike. Greyhound serves 10,000 cities and towns. It carried 22 million passengers last year.

MR. MacNeil: More than 2 dozen after shocks hit Southern California today following yesterday's earthquake, but there were no reports of serious damage. The epicenter of yesterday's quake was the town of Upland, 40 miles from Los Angeles. The tremor, which measured 5.5 on the Richter Scale, caused the most damage in several towns in the San Bernadina Mountains. It caused rock slides and damaged buildings. Officials warned of more aftershocks over the next three days. That's our summary of the news. Now we move on to preventing new Ethiopian famine, the President of the European Community, violence around schools, and a Jim Fisher essay. FOCUS - WAR AND FAMINE

MR. MacNeil: Our lead focus tonight a new threat of mass starvation in the African nation of Ethiopia. Warnings this week of another famine follow a new turn in Ethiopia's 28 year civil war. Rebel forces are battling the Central Government of Haile Mengistu in Addis Ababa for independence of the Northern Provinces of Eritrea and Tigre. Recently rebel forces isolated the city of Asmara stopping distribution of food from there to the people of the North. The rebels have captured the Port of Masaua which has been the main delivery point for the delivery of foreign food supplies. Yesterday U.S. Officials told Congress that hundreds of thousands may die unless ways can be found to get food to the North in two to four weeks. We will discuss that warning in a moment after this report from Tigre Province by Correspondent Peter Sharp of Independent Television News.

MR. SHARP: It was only by traveling in the very center of Tigre that the full extent of the famine could be assessed. This is the Mission clinic at Agahamus. The life line for a 100,000 people run by two remarkable Irish nuns. What now has become a clearing station for the youngest victims of Tigre's famine.

NUN: The mother died because of anemia.

MR. SHARP: Her daughter had died two days earlier and all the old women could offer her grand child was comfort not sustenance. The European Community provided the tent for clinics food supplies. They are down to one weeks rations and they will have to stretch that to a month. Only the strongest are now able to reach the clinic. Children bringing in their sick brothers and sisters.

SPOKESMAN: Two months ago we had a great hope that there would be food, the people would be feed. Unfortunately that has not happened.

MR. SHARP: Even ordinary medical emergencies are life threatening in Tigre's famine. The pregnant women's baby had died and she needed a cesarean to survive, surgery that the nuns simply couldn't attempt. The hospital in Aragot was six hour walk away and her family was simply to exhausted to make the journey.With patrolling Mig 23 screening below the clinic meant that we could not take her away. The sisters said that she had less than five hours to live. WEe left as late in the afternoon as we dared, breaking all the rules by traveling in the daylight. She was still just alive when we arrived at the hospital. We never did discover whether she survived. The sisters like the aid agencies are doing all they can but the shear scale of the tragedy is swamping them sapping what meager resources they can provide. Up in the highlands of Tigre at the Village Church of Sassasi Father Gabriel's parishioners last had food three months ago.

FATHER GABRIEL: The people are getting weaker and weaker. So unless help arrives soon we are certain a lot of people will die.

MR. SHARP: This is the empty grainery at Gabriel Madias home. He lost his youngest son in the 84 famine. Now his whole family of ten are at risk. They last ate 7 days ago and he and his thirteen year old son Jaffa are the only ones strong enough to take on the 6 hour track to Addigrat where they hope they will find a night time distribution of food aid. For others it has already become to late. Family after family sitting outside their homes simply waiting to die. Inside the elderly had already given up hope. This was once home for a family of ten only two are left orphans. It has been a bitter harvest. All day she scratched in the fields searching for quinti, tiny seeds of grass. And upon on the hill at the Church yard at Massada they have dug the grave for the mass burials that will soon follow. The camel train leaving the town of Advt is loaded with food aid and we discovered its source at a merchants shop in the Village. Emergency aid that this shop keeper said were being sold by the Mengistu troops in the North. We want to buy this wheat. Do you know that this is relief aid.

SHOP KEEPER: Yes it is relief aid and it sold by the troops.

MR. SHARP: He is saying that he bought if from the military, from the Ethiopian troops.

SHOP KEEPER: Yes from the troops.

MR. SHARP: In the short term survival for the people of Tigre now relies on supplies of food purchased with in the borders of the province. Again this night time distribution is reaching a small percentage of those at risk. The aid agencies are doing what they can but it is simply not enough. Soon the people are going to start dying first in the 100s and then in the 1000s unless the Government grounds its fighters and opens the roads creating corridors of tranquility allowing this food to reach all the people. But at least for Gabriel and young Jaffa their six hour trek was rewarded. Filling their sacks with the grain that will ensure their families survival for another 30 days and the real tragedy of Tigre's silent famine is that no one can ask for more than that.

MR. MacNeil: Joining us now are Andrew Natsios Director of the State Department Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and Democratic Congressman Tony Hall of Ohio Chairman of the House Select Committee on Hunger. Mr. Hall took that job after its former Chairman Texas Representative Mickey Lealand was killed in a plane crash in Ethiopia last summer. Mr. Natsios is it the government or the rebels who are the main obstacle in getting the food through now or can't you choose between them?

MR. NATSIOS: Well they are all responsible for the situation in my view. The offensive by the rebels came in the middle of negotiations in which the government had agreed to let food through the five church organizations that were going to feed people in Tigre. So the offensive has interrupted what were going to be what we hoped the conclusion of negotiations to get the food through. But the government now controls the air and they can prevent shipments from coming in to Massalla which is in rebel hands or prevents shipments from going in to Assay which is in their hands. They can prevent the use of roads which are critical to get the food in to Tigre and Eritrea. So all the factions in the fighting bear responsibility in our view on what has happened.

MR. MacNeil: In your view just recapitulating your testimony to Congress yesterday. How many people are at risk in starving in a month or so if those obstacles are not removed.

MR. NATSIOS: There are 5 million people all over Ethiopia who are effected by the famine sufficiently that they would die if no food is brought in to the country at all. But all of them won't be at risk at the same time. We are estimating that within the next three to four weeks unless the relief corridors are opened up to particularly Eastern Tigre which is the hardest hit and least accessible areas.

MR. MacNeil: The area that we just saw.

MR. NATSIOS: That is right, that several hundred thousand people will die of starvation.

MR. MacNeil: Congressman Hall do you nay different view of the responsibility for these obstacles at the moment?

REP. HALL: I think there is enough responsibility to go around on both sides. I think to start pointing the finger at this time I think is too late. What we are dealing with here is the inability to do cross border feeding. We have no corridors of safe passage.

MR. MacNeil: Cross border feeding meaning from the Sudan from outside Ethiopia?

REP. HALL: From outside Ethiopia. The biggest port in Ethiopia is closed now due to the fighting. The ability to move food up from the South is practically nil. Nobody, including the aid donor want to work in this particular area because of the fighting and the bombing that is going on. So all of these people are at risk.

MR. MacNeil: What is the solution to this at the moment. I mean what can the United States do to use its influence with other countries to persuade the Government and the rebels to either cease fire or let food through.

REP. HALL: Well I think one of the solutions is that I think our government is going everything they can at the highest levels,they are working with Congress. We have had communication from the Soviets specifically Mr. Gorbachev?

MR. MacNeil: Your wrote to him together with a group of other Congressman a month ago asking him to use his influence. He has replied now has he?

REP. HALL: I wrote to him he replied yesterday in an oral communication which I think is very significant because the minister rushed it over and wanted to tell me about it and said some very encouraging things relative to stopping the fighting prepared to come in with food aid. But what I think is more important is that for the first time publically they want to work with us. It is only a first step in the talking stages but we need to go on much further. For months we have known that we only have three or four months in to the middle of march when things really start to happen and we have reached that particular area. So what happens in the peace talks which are very very important what we need now is at least at a minimum is corridors of safe passage for food to come in from all these different avenues.

MR. MacNeil: Mr. Natsios are you familiar with Mr. Gorbachev's response?

MR. NATSIOS: I am and we are very encouraged by the response.

MR. MacNeil: Do you think that the influence of the Soviet Union which has been arming and assisting the Marxist Government of Ethiopia that that influence could produce a break through in this situation.

MR. NATSIOS: We don't know at this point but we are encouraged by the response to Congressman Hall, Congressman Hall's letter. The Soviets have been very cooperative from late last year when we asked for their help in negotiating corridors of tranquility for passage of relief supplies. The Soviets did contribute a quarter million tons of grain in 1987 during the last Ethiopian famine. So they have had a history in assisting in humanitarian work in Ethiopia.

MR. MacNeil: Now I will just ask each of you the situation is not now a desperate need of food, I mean, the United States and other country had pledged or delivered food that is there if it could be delivered is that correct.

MR. NATSIOS: That is correct. In fact there are there right now 89 thousand tons of Western Food. A third of it from the United States at locations in Eritrea. The problem as I understand some of it was destroyed in fighting. Some of it was blown up, some of it was burned.

MR. MacNeil: And some of it is being sold apparently?

MR. NATSIOS: Apparently. All the centers from the church groups that we are using to distribute this food had to be withdrawn and the feeding programs that were under when the fighting began on February 8 have had to be withdrawn because they were in danger of getting killed. We had in fact 29 feeding centers and we were feeding something like 600,000 people in Eritrea alone prior to the fighting.

MR. MacNeil: So Congressman Hall what kind of effort is being made, U.S.m Soviet or wider United Nations in efforts to get the rebels and the Government to agree to let some of this food through, to prevent the disaster Mr. Natsios outlined.

REP. HALL: Well the United Nations at the highest level has people in Khartoum and there is conversations and a lot of good rhetoric going between the various nations. Our government is working very hard and pushing very hard. The Congress is involved. Mr. Gorbachev for the first time has reached out to a member of Congress and to our Government. I think at the highest levels we are doing everything we can to bring leverage on both the government and rebel forces to stop the fighting and at a minimum get some food in to these 4 or 5 million people.

MR. MacNeil: Is it fair Congressman to say that the interest of the rebels to stop now after many years of stale mate or very slow gains they are beginning to gain ground and people are predicting that the Marxist Government of Ethiopia is on its last legs and it may have a year to survive or something. Tactically speaking the rebels have very little incentive to stop right now. Do you agree with this?

REP. HALL: Well I agree that it appears that they have made headway but I think that Mr. Natsios and I agree on a lot of things and one thing we agree on is we are not taking sides. The fact is that there is enough blame to go around on both sides and what we are concerned about most importantly is the four to five million people who probably will die in the next three to four weeks if we do not get food in there.

MR. MacNeil: Do you agree Mr. Natsios with out taking sides that the rebels may be in a tactical position where they may be deaf to pleas to stop?

MR. NATSIOS: If something isn't done there are not going to be any people left alive in large portions of Tigre and Eritrea to govern. So I think frankly it is in the interest of the rebels to allow the food to come in because there is very little food left for large portions of their population. The famine is highly concentrated this time. It is not spread out across the whole country. It is in Tigre and Eritrea and Northern Walla and as a consequence of the devastation famine can have on the civil population is absolutely enormous in those restricted areas that are at risk. I might also add that the work that we have began since February 8, on February 8 everything had changed because we thought we had conclusive indications of agreement on the movement of these relief supplies in corridors of tranquility. That collapsed. Now we have an initiative through the AID and State Department to get the United Nations Flag to be flown on all the relief shipments from outside donations and relief corridors coming in from all areas of the world so they won't be bombed, And if we can get that agreement through the umbrella of the United Nations that strategy may result in food getting through. I met with Abi Falla the UnderSecretary of the UN last Thursday and we have been meeting with people on all sides quietly over the last few days trying to get them ready for these negotiations.

MR. MacNeil: If the crisis is as dire as you predict with in a month hundreds of thousands are going to start dying. Is the U.S. Government making an urgent a noise about it as it might have, I mean, has Mr. Bush done anything with Gorbachev. I know that you made a very eloquent statement yesterday. What do you think Congressman? What is you answer to that? It is still a fairly quiet crisis.

REP. HALL: Well, I think that it is quiet. I think that the media has a tendency to focus on things and go to different types of issues. What is going on in Eastern Europe today has captured the imaginations of so many people and they are trying to understand that and what has happened here is that the three to five million people at risk is not being covered and I think that it is important that these kinds of programs and what Mr. Natsios is doing and what we are all striving for. We need to educate, advocate and indeed tell people what hashappened. And it is a tragedy that is in the making and I suspect that we have only three to four weeks left.

MR. MacNeil: Okay Congressman, Mr. Natsios thank you very much for joining us. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight an interview with Irish Prime Minister Charles Haughey, report on violence around schools and a Jim Fisher Essay. NEWS MAKER

MR. LEHRER: Now a News Maker interview with Charles Haughey, the Prime Minister of Ireland. He currently serves also as president of the European Community, the 12 Western European nations who are planning a fully open market among themselves by 1992. He was in Washington this week for talks with Pres. Bush about European affairs. I talked with him yesterday afternoon before he flew home to Ireland. Mr. Prime Minister, welcome.

CHARLES HAUGHEY, Prime Minister, Ireland: Thank you.

MR. LEHRER: Are the nations of Western Europe ready to welcome the nations of Eastern Europe into their community?

PRIME MINISTER HAUGHEY: Not in the community, no. That's not going to happen. The nations of Western Europe, that's the community, the European community, welcome all the developments that are taking place in Eastern Europe and are determined to support them in every way and be of the maximum possible assistance to these countries to help them get towards a free enterprise economy and help them to rebuild their economies and adopt a new situation, but there won't be any question of these countries joining the community as member states.

MR. LEHRER: Why not?

PRIME MINISTER HAUGHEY: For a number of reasons. First of all, the community's present size is fairly big. It's 12 member states and the general view would be that the community must deepen its own coherence, its own unity, its own integration. It must get much closer together economically and politically before it could consider taking in new members, perhaps more than anything else, purely is a management problem than anything else. You know, it takes some business managing 12 separate member states from the economic and financial point of view, and until that is really sorted out and economic and monetary union is a fact within the community, it will be a bit unrealistic to start taking in more members. What I'm almost certain is going to happen, leave Germany aside for a moment, because that's a special case, East Germany and West Germany are going to unite into one state, but what's going to happen with the other Eastern European countries I'm certain is that the community will enter into an agreement with each one of them, a separate agreement with each one of them, which will enable them to relate to the community and trade with the community and receive assistance of all kind from the community.

MR. LEHRER: But as individual nations, not as a group?

PRIME MINISTER HAUGHEY: As individual nations. In fact, there will be a separate tailor made agreement for each Eastern European country. Now there will be a lot of elements in common between the five or six agreements that are to be made, but each one will be made, tailor made, separately for each new European country.

MR. LEHRER: Do these sweeping changes that we've all observed in Eastern Europe these last several weeks and months, are they going to affect at all the goal of Western Europe, of your community, toward your 1992 goal to integrate the economies?

PRIME MINISTER HAUGHEY: Only in a good way. First of all, there is a very very widespread view in the community that in order to be able to respond to the challenges of Eastern Europe, in order to be able to be in a position to provide the necessary assistance and support for Eastern Europe, these Eastern European countries, and to provide a focus of stability inside Europe, the community must quickly advance its own unity, in other words, a process, for instance, of developing the single market within the 12 member states of the community which will be expedited, will be pushed forward much more quickly, and the same with economic and monetary union. As you know, when the single market is completed, the next step will be economic and monetary union, complete economic and monetary union between the 12 member states of the community. Now it's almost certain that that would be pushed ahead much more quickly so that the community can be a more united, composite entity and stronger and in a better position to respond to the needs of Eastern Europe.

MR. LEHRER: Have you all discussed the possibility of what you would do if say Hungary came knocking on the door in a few months and said, I want to be No. 13?

PRIME MINISTER HAUGHEY: Yes. I would have to say that's not likely to happen. I mean, the immediate preoccupation is with the two Germanies, with Eastern Germany wishing to reunite with Western Germany, and there again what will happen is fairly clear. There will be a not a new East German state as a member state of the community, but Eastern Germany will reunite with Western Germany and that expanded Germany, united Germany, will be the member state of the community.

MR. LEHRER: Are you concerned at all about the power that this new Germany will have?

PRIME MINISTER HAUGHEY: Concerned, not necessarily concerned, but anxious to deal with the implications of it. There's no doubt that already Western Germany is by far the most predominant member state economically speaking. Western Germany accounts for about 25 percent or 1 quarter of the total Gross National Product of the whole community and of course the D-mark is the dominant currency in the community and German interest rates dominate the whole economic and the monetary situation throughout the community. So Germany already occupies a very strong powerful economic and financial position among the member states and the new Germany is going to be more so. It's going to be a more predominant economic entity, power in the community, but then the community has policies and mechanisms and procedures for dealing with all of that and we hope that they will have the necessary flexibility to accommodate a new Germany into the community.

MR. LEHRER: Nothing to worry about?

PRIME MINISTER HAUGHEY: Hopefully not, though mind you, one has to say that there will be in the short-term at least major implications. For instance, the question of the two Germanies will unite financially. In other words, the existing German D-mark will be related, united with the East German Ausmark. Now that'll cause, nobody's quite sure how that's going to be handled. In Eastern Germany at the moment there are vast, vast accumulation of savings by the East Germany people who saved their money because there was nothing else they could do with it, there was no goods for them to spend it on. So there's this huge volume of pent up savings in Eastern Germany. Now when the two countries are united and the two monetary systems are united, it's likely that the West Germany D- Mark will exchange one for one with the East Germany mark. And that will immediately unleash, unless some control is exercised, a whole wave of consumer expenditure into Western Germany and into the community and could cause major up surge of inflation. So that's a problem that has to be confronted. There are many problems like that.

MR. LEHRER: And the East Germany currency is almost worthless now, it will become worth something just by virtue of the transfer, right?

PRIME MINISTER HAUGHEY: It will become the equivalent of the most powerful currency in Europe and one of the most powerful countries in the world.

MR. LEHRER: The financial and economics aside, as the Prime Minister of Ireland, are you concerned about the additional factor of a strong Germany, the legacy of World War I, World War II, and the fact that Germany could become a powerful dominating force in political and even military terms as well?

PRIME MINISTER HAUGHEY: No, I have no particular worries on that score. There may be around Europe generally, and perhaps even here in the United States, some concern about the future but certainly there is no realism in any such fear as far as I am concerned. First of all, the key factor in the whole situation is that Western Germany, as it now is, and the United Germany will be a fully committed member of the European community. That is the big safeguard. As long as Germany is part, a committed, full scale member of the European community, I don't think we have anything at all to worry about, and both Chancellor Kohl and Herr Genscher, the foreign minister, have repeatedly said categorically that that is the position, that there is no question about German membership, continuing German membership in the European community, and as long as that is so, I think there is no real grounds for worries of any kind and again as Chancellor Kohl pointed out when he was here last weekend in the United States in Washington, Germany now has got forty-five, fifty years of full democratic good government and this is the guarantee for the future.

MR. LEHRER: What role do you see for the United States in this new Europe?

PRIME MINISTER HAUGHEY: A major role, and there's I think a very great wish throughout Europe that the United States will remain fully committed to Europe. After all the United States is the leader of the free world and Europeans, the community and Europeans generally would wish the United States to continue its full participation in European affairs, a factor for stability, and in the European security system, that's what we call the CSCE, the Conference of Security Cooperation in Europe, and the Helsinki process, the United States and Canada are both members of that frame work, and we hope there will be a meeting of that conference this year, and we hope that through that procedure and through that mechanism, a new frame work of stability and security will emerge, embracing all the countries of Europe. That's the hope for the future. Now we particularly want the United States to play a full part in that process to ensure that frame work of stability and security for Europe.

MR. LEHRER: What about the Soviet Union, do you want them to play a full role too?

PRIME MINISTER HAUGHEY: Absolutely. They're also members of that process, that's the CSCE, and of course their contribution and participation is vital. We want all the countries of Europe to find their stability and their security through that CSCE frame work.

MR. LEHRER: More parochial, the situation in Northern Ireland, is there any change there, is there any reason, new reason to be optimistic at all that peace may sometime come there?

PRIME MINISTER HAUGHEY: Yes, there are a number of possible optimistic indicators emerging, and when the Berlin Wall came down, that tremendously exciting, dramatic night that we all saw on our television screens, shortly after that, in addressing my own parliament at home, I said, we must find a headline here, we must find a headline to follow. If these countries, these people in Eastern Europe, having been divided in what seemed an immutable situation for fifty, sixty years, if they can suddenly tear down these barriers that have kept them apart and we can all see the wonderful beneficial results, the emotional results that can happen when these barriers are torn away, surely this has a message for us in Ireland, particularly for the people in the North. Surely they can see the good things that can happen when the barriers of mistrust and suspicion are swept aside and people come together and hopefully that will be a headline which increasingly will impact on public opinion on both sides of the community in Northern Ireland. In addition to that --

MR. LEHRER: Is there any evidence that that's happened?

PRIME MINISTER HAUGHEY: I think so, yes. It's perhaps intangible at the moment and it might be too optimistic to expect too much from it, but at least it's a factor, a new factor. At the same time, the emergence of the European community is having its effect and Northern Ireland elects its own members from the European parliament at Strassberg, for instance. They are now participating in a whole new European scene, a whole wider, broader, freer dimension of things. And this too must be reflected back onto their home base. And as the community moves towards 1992, towards one single market for all of Europe, for the whole 12 member states, and as the economic boundaries, frontiers disappear, which they will disappear by 1992, then the border between North and South must become less -- more meaningless and the interests, economic interests of North and South must begin to coincide. There are all these things happening.

MR. LEHRER: You mentioned Eastern Europe, but there are also terrific changes in the Soviet Union and its relationship with the United States. There have been the changes in South Africa, more recently, just in the last few days Nicaragua, and the one thing that seems to run in common is a kind of weariness on the part of the people with conflict and war. Have you, do you believe that there is also that kind of weariness among the combatants in Northern Ireland?

PRIME MINISTER HAUGHEY: I would hope so. I think there's some evidence. Certainly the normal population there are very tired of the futility and the sterility and the tragedy of the violence. I think there's also some evidence, I might be optimistic in thinking too much that it's there, some evidence that there is the side of the IRA and the violent people that there is some evidence that they too are beginning to tire of the futility and the sterility of violence and perhaps look for some way forward, some way out of this tragedy in which everybody finds themselves.

MR. LEHRER: I mentioned Nicaragua. A quick question on that. Sen. Lugar, Republican from Indiana, U.S. Senator, was on this program Monday night, and he said in the rebuilding of Nicaragua that he expected Western Europe to step to the table and help financially as well as the United States because Western Europe has been giving a lot of money to the prior government, the Sandinista government. Is that a realistic expectation?

PRIME MINISTER HAUGHEY: Well, the President mentioned the same thing to me.

MR. LEHRER: Pres. Bush?

PRIME MINISTER HAUGHEY: Pres. Bush, yes, when I was talking to him yesterday mainly about European affairs and the need to develop a better relationship between the United States and the European community. In fact, that's basically what I'm here for, to see if we can some construct some new arrangement, mechanism for a better consultation and dialogue between the United States and the community and he did mention that particular aspect of it. I wouldn't be in a position to say anything very specific to you about it at this stage. That's something that would have to be considered by the community as a whole through the normal procedures and consultation and whether at the end of the day the community would decide to contribute or not is something I couldn't tell you and you would have to keep in mind the fact that Europe, the community, is now going to be called upon to make massive contributions to Eastern Europe. We're going to have to put forward very considerable resources right across Eastern Europe to help them get back into a free enterprise economy and to build up economies, so Europe will have a lot of demands on it in the period immediately ahead for its resources.

MR. LEHRER: All right. Mr. Prime Minister, thank you very much.

PRIME MINISTER HAUGHEY: Thank you. FOCUS - FRIGHTENING LESSON

MR. MacNeil: It's a common occurrence in every inner-city, children murdered, students mugged on the way to school, innocent bystanders shot by warring drug dealers. For children who grow up in the inner-city, the threat of violence is always present. Our Education Correspondent John Merrow went to a New York City high school to see how the students cope with the fear of violence.

MR. MERROW: Five mornings a week at 6:30, Tina Montes leaves the safety of her home to go to school. Her 45-minute trip begins in New York City's South Bronx, a neighborhood of burnt out buildings better known for its drug addicts and prostitutes than for its young scholars. Her father, Angel accompanies her part of the way for protection.

ANGEL MONTES: I'm afraid that something might happen to her and I have known people that get hurt and she's a girl to begin with and the area where we live is fair, but it's not good, and at that time in the morning, there's no protection and she's on my way to work, so I do that every morning.

TINA MONTES: Going on the train and stuff I'm just about all the time with at least one other person. I mean, there's still the fear sometimes that something can happen because that doesn't just absolutely go away because you're with somebody, but I feel much safer knowing that I'm with somebody.

MR. MERROW: When Tina was younger, she was almost kidnapped. Some men in a van followed her and tried to grab her when she got separated from her friends, but she escaped. Damian Redman, one of Tina's classmates, has also been a target. He lives with his mother and uncle and mother in Bedford Stiveson, another of New York City's high crime neighborhoods. He's been mugged twice, once while on his way to school.

DAMIAN REDMAN: I do a little prayer before I come home and before I got out, you know, just in my head, saying, God, help me get it through this day, make it through this day, you know, no incidents, anything like that.

MR. MERROW: Last year, more than 140 students were killed in New York City, but only 1 was killed while in school. One possible explanation, many city teen-agers, like Tina and Damian, attend schools that are far from their homes, far from the supervision of neighbors and relatives. Another reason, the nation's inner-cities are becoming ever more violent. For children who have to grow up amid all that violence, fear is a constant companion.

MR. MERROW: Are you scared a lot of the time?

DAMIAN REDMAN: Yeah, because I've had -- yeah, because you don't know when it's going to strike. I guess you could say I've been lucky so far, you know, and thank God that I have been, but you don't know when something will happen. Things just happen like that.

MR. MERROW: Damian Redman and Tina Montes are students are Murray Bergtrom High School, a public school that specializes in business career training. Most of their classmates in Mr. Mott's 11th grade student leadership class live in inner-city neighborhoods and they too are afraid.

MR. MERROW: How many of you have been mugged? [LOTS OF STUDENTS RAISING HANDS]

MR. MERROW: It's about a third of you maybe. Specially selected by Mr. Mott, the students are good kids who study hard and try to stay out of trouble. That's not easy to do when so many of their friends are preparing for it.

MR. MERROW: How many of you have friends who carry some kind of weapon? [LOTS OF STUDENTS RAISING HANDS]

MR. MERROW: So again it's almost everybody.

THURAYYA FRETT, Student: My sister, she carries a razor to school.

MR. MERROW: How old is your sister?

THURAYYA FRETT: My sister is 14.

MR. MERROW: Fourteen years old?

THURAYYA FRETT: Yes.

MR. MERROW: Why would she carry a razor?

THURAYYA FRETT: Because she has to be on the alert all the time and they snatch change every day, change, watches, any kind of gold, even down to a little ball earring in your ear, they will snatch off you and if you don't give it to them, they'll beat you up, cut you up, anything they could do.

MR. MERROW: That's why she decided to carry a razor?

THURAYYA FRETT: My mother told her told to, my mother.

TINA MONTES: I used to carry a weapon; I don't carry one now.

MR. MERROW: What did you carry?

TINA MONTES: I carried a knife.

MR. MERROW: A little knife, big knife?

TINA MONTES: It's about five to six inches, the knife, itself, like this, and then the handle.

MR. MERROW: Why did you carry a knife?

TINA MONTES: Because I would always go home late and from the experience and things that happened around where I live, there's always, I have to have some type of protection.

MR. MERROW: Do you think the world has gotten safer or more dangerous in the last two or three years?

THURAYYA FRETT: It's getting worse and worse every year and the thing that bothers me is that there's so much of a free access of these guns. How are they getting them? You know I know a person who has three guns and not handguns either.

MR. MERROW: Your age?

THURAYYA FRETT: Yes, my age, 17. I'm 16, around my age, 17 years old. He has a big one. I think it's called an Oozie, and he has a Pump and he has a 48, or a 44, you know, one of those forty something guns. And the thing that kills me is that he brags about this. It's like having a gun makes you a big man or a big woman or something. People look up to you when you have a gun. I guess that's how you get power these days when you have a gun, you know, you have the decision to say, well, I could shoot you, you do what I say.

MR. MERROW: For many inner-city children, gun shots, crack addicts and wasted lives are as much a part of their growing up as dating and rock music. In the worst neighborhoods, children become desensitized to pain, mistrustful and full of rage, but not always. Researchers who study children and violence say that a great many children show a remarkable degree of resilience. Even in the worst neighborhoods, a surprising number survive and succeed in spite of their surroundings. It's usually a strong parent or adult role model who keeps a child on the right path and clear of trouble but children also learn quickly to look out for themselves. Tina tries not to travel on the subway alone. Tamisia takes her jewelry off when she rides the subway. Damian has a more elaborate survival strategy. When he's on the subway, he tries to look tough so kids won't pick on him. He also tutors students after school, in part so that he doesn't have to risk taking the train home when it's mobbed with kids.

DAMIAN REDMAN: I get on at a time where all the people get off work, it's older people and they're less likely to bother you. I get home at rush hour, you know. Sure, it's more headache, but you feel more safe because there's more people.

MR. MERROW: Damian also changes his route frequently to make his goings and comings less predictable to anyone who might have it in for him.

DAMIAN REDMAN: I just make sure I don't take the same thing too often. Like last week I took the same train all week, but, you know, I wouldn't, I'll take a train for two weeks, and then I'll take something else the next two weeks.

MR. MERROW: But even the most elaborate precautions are not always enough. This memorial service is for Donald White. Donald was 17, an honor student and a classmate of Tina and Damian at Murray Bergtrom High School. Donald got up early one Sunday morning to do the family laundry. On the way to the laundramat, he was shot and killed.

STUDENT: [At Memorial Service] I love you, man, and I will never forget who you are. My heart is the home of your name. From it, this cannot depart. I am devastated that you are gone but our friendship will never end. I will always remember you, Donald White because I love you, my friend.

PHILLIP MOTT, Teacher: Donald was killed on a Sunday and the next day, Monday, the kids, four or five young people came to my office with tears streaming down their face, yelling, screaming, you, meaning me, are always saying, stay in school, get a good education, do well, and what does it matter, look what happened to Donald, he was trying to do the right thing and he was killed, all of you lie all the time, there's no point in us staying in school, I mean, Donald wasn't even involved in anything bad, he was a good kid, and he's dead. And I didn't have any immediate words for them.

MR. MERROW: In fact, those students are still in school. They did not drop out. Recently, as they prepared to leave on a class trip, Donald's classmates were back to their normal carefree selves. Life goes on. But so too does their anger at the kind of world they have to live in.

TINA MONTES: I know there's nothing that we can really do about it, about all the crime and stuff, but I think it's really really unfair how we have to grow up all the time being afraid of to do this and to go here and there because wondering wow, maybe somebody will come out, and try to kill me or try to rape me or whatever.

DAMIAN REDMAN: I don't like the fact that I'm young and living where I do having to worry about these things, because I was wondering, does this, do people in Kansas think about this, you know.

MR. MERROW: What do you mean?

DAMIAN REDMAN: You know, a quiet place like Wichita, Kansas, where there's not so much drugs and crime, do they worry about it, what do they think about? They're probably just thinking about oh, who am I going to take to the prom or whatever. You know, we're not thinking about that, we're thinking, you know, are we going to see our prom, you know. ESSAY - THE KANSAS CITY TIMES - FINAL EDITION

MR. MacNeil: Finally tonight essayist Jim Fisher of the Kansas City Times says good-bye to the Kansas City Times.

MR. FISHER: Jesse and Frank James, Eugene Field, Ernest Hemingway, there's a set of disparate names, yet, there's a legacy concerning all of them in this old brick building behind me, a place where for most of its existence a newspaper named The Kansas City Times has been published. It's a paper with its own vibrant history. The Jameses Daltons and Youngers, all local boys, were heroes and so depicted in its columns. It was the voice of the lost cause of the confederacy, catering to those defeated and unreconstructed rebels out here who refused to forget the Civil War or temper their hatred of the blue bellied yankee invaders. The Times was home to Eugene Field who wrote wonderful children's poetry, Winkin', Blinkin', and Nod, that was Field. Hemingway, he was in Kansas City before he went off to World War I. He claimed that Pete Wellington, the Times's night editor, taught him how to write, high praise indeed. Still there comes a time when history just stops like this week when the Times ceased to be. That was when the afternoon Kansas City Star, beset by declining circulation, changing demographics and increased competition from television, became the new morning paper by slapping its flag in place of that of the Times and the Times simply disappeared.

SPOKESMAN: [In meeting] Once the papers merge, one of the things we need to judge is how we are doing against the suburban papers.

MR. FISHER: It's being called a merger or a combination. There have been meetings and meetings, desks moved around, artists redesigning how the paper will look and naturally, more meetings. No job layoffs. Instead, the word used is attrition. The paper will be bigger, brighter, easier to read, more attuned to the '90s, all of which is true. Afternoon papers don't cut it anymore. Figures don't lie. Two hundred and seventy-nine have died since 1946. Only 10 or so afternoon papers remain in major metropolitan areas. Just last fall, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner went belly up. Unlike the Herald Examiner, the end of the Kansas City Times isn't exactly a classic newspaper death, the kind that brings the anguished screams and post mortems from editorial writers on other sheets, sad pictures of reporters and editors cleaning out their desks, condolences from civic leaders and yawns from the public who'd rather turn on the tube in the evening than read a newspaper. But it is hard, a newspaper, my newspaper for 30 years, and the one my father worked on before me, won't be around anymore. Plans are to put a plaque on the side of the building. People put up plaques for all sorts of lesser reasons today. It'll say, "In this city, a pretty fair country newspaper was published for over a century." Yet, no plaque can compensate for the memories of old typewriters and clattering linotype machines, the low pay, the scowling editors who made boot camp seem like a picnic, the ink and noise from the rumbling presses that literally shook the building when they roared to life, and the parade of characters who inhabited the Times's newsroom. Now it's all computers and video display terminals. There are multi-line telephones, laser printers, and fax machines, and since Watergate, the new people who've swarmed into what is now called the newspaper profession, a fancy word for what really is no more than a crowd, and whose mission seems to be to write about things, not people. Circle the stories about things in your paper and compare the number to the ones about human beings. You'll be surprised. Yet, the real pain is that the end of the familiar name will neatly bracket my youth and early middle age. Now inexorably will come the subtle deadening of memories, some funny, some bittersweet. A plaque on a brick wall on a downtown street, it seems hardly enough for a paper called the Times, that for all those years met that morning had arrived in a goodly part of Missouri and Kansas, and that underneath that wonderful gothic script was at least one story that fulfilled the daily dream of any reporter and editor, one that made a reader say, well, I'll be damned. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Thursday, White House officials and Senate leaders agreed on a compromise clean air bill, the government issued an operating license to the long delayed Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant in New Hampshire, and Secretary of State Baker said the administration was willing to discuss cutting foreign aid to Israel and Egypt in order to meet new demands in Eastern Europe and Central America. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Jim. That's the Newshour tonight and we'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.