The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MAC NEIL: Good evening. I'm Robert MacNeil in New York.

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Thursday, four Haitians speak to the task of reconciliation in Haiti. Simon Marks reports on the economic problems in Boris Yeltsin's Russia, Elizabeth Farnsworth examines a new discovery about humankind, and essayist Roger Rosenblatt considers his own birthday. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: NATO planes attacked a Bosnian-Serb tank near Sarajevo today. It followed a Serb grenade attack on a French U.N. armored personnel carrier. We have more in this report narrated by Louise Bates of Worldwide Television News.

LOUISE BATES, WTN: On the ground in Sarajevo, U.N. troops forced on red alert. Serb forces as well as Bosnian government troops have been firing artillery and mortars with growing impunity. On Thursday, two French peacekeepers were wounded when Serbs opened fire on a U.N. patrol. It was just one of several seemingly deliberate shooting attacks against U.N. personnel.

FRED ECKHARD, U.N. Spokesman: UNPROFOR lodged a very strong protest at the Bosnian side, warning that appropriate measures could be taken in view of the seriousness of the incident.

MS. BATES: And retaliatory measures were taken. Out of the sky, American and British fighter planes swooped. Senior U.N. officers had authorized NATO air strikes. The jets bombed a Bosnian Serb tank just west of the capital and reportedly inside the U.N.- declared heavy weapons exclusion zone. It's the fourth time this year NATO's been called in to strike a Bosnian Serb target, a reflection of increasing international exasperation with flagrant violations of the weapons free zone as well as concern to protect the lives of U.N. soldiers.

MR. LEHRER: Today's NATO attack was the second on the Serbs in less than two months. Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: U.S. troops began dismantling the Haitian military's heavy weapons today. They did so as more American reinforcements poured into the island nation. We have more from Charlayne Hunter-Gault in Port-au-Prince.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: As Day Four winds down, the American occupation forces are slowly but surely gaining more control over this island nation. Some 750 U.S. military police are now patrolling the streets of Port-au-Prince. Their job is to prevent violence between Haitian police and civilians. Last night, U.S. special forces troops began occupying Camp D'Application, where most of the Haitian military's heavy armaments and ammunition are stored. Beginning today, the U.S. military started towing away some of the Haitian armaments to be dismantled. The base itself would have been a prime target if the U.S. had invaded Haiti, according to Army Brig. Gen. Dick Potter, who is overseeing the operation to neutralize the base.

BRIG. GEN. DICK POTTER, U.S. Army: If they want me to spike the rest of the weapons, fine, I can do that. If they want me to blow the weapons, I can do that. If they want to take 'em all out, we can run another convoy in here and do that.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: While the U.S. is stepping up its efforts to control the Haitian police and military, Haiti, itself, continues to be quiet. Meanwhile, the Haitian military Junta announced plans for new parliamentary elections to take place long after they have stepped down. They also call for a special session of this parliament to grant amnesty to all members of the military and their supporters for crimes committed during their regime. And Col. Joseph Michael Francois, a member of the military Junta which ruled Haiti and also head of Port-au-Prince police, met with U.S. military officials today. He did not sign the Carter agreement, which allowed U.S. forces to enter Haiti peacefully, and his whereabouts have been unknown since Sunday. Francois is not the only person to come out of hiding. The increased American presence is making some supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide who soon will be returning feel more secure.

FATHER JEAN JUSTE, Aristide Supporter: Up to last Sunday, I felt that I was like a person gagged. I wasn't able to speak out. I was like a person held hostage, prisoner, physically not being able to go around. And since Monday morning, it's like coming from a nightmare to a beautiful reality, so I really enjoy that.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: By the end of the day, the U.S. force level should be around 9,000, two thirds towards a goal of 15,000.

MR. MAC NEIL: It was Haiti's de facto president, Emile Jonassaint, who said he would ask parliament to grant amnesty to the country's coup leaders and their supporters. The head of the military, Raoul Cedras, told CBS last night he would not leave Haiti when Jean-Bertrand Aristide returns to the presidency by October 15th. Defense Secretary Perry said today the U.S. would not force the Junta to leave, even though it would be preferred. He also said the cost of the U.S. mission in Haiti would be about $250 million over the rest of the year. We'll have more on Haiti right after the News Summary.

MR. LEHRER: The Pentagon issued a report on U.S. nuclear weapons policy today. It recommends to President Clinton that four Trident nuclear submarines be retired and that the fleet of B-52 bombers be cut from ninety-four to sixty-six. At the Pentagon, Defense Sec. Perry spoke about what made those cuts possible.

WILLIAM PERRY, Secretary of Defense: Now with an end to the Cold War, there have been fundamental changes. We've had a dramatic reduction in resources from $50 billion a year heading down to $15 billion a year and a corresponding reduction in personnel working on this program. Now, instead of competition and build up of weapons, we have cooperation and build down. We have about a 50 percent reduction in strategic weapons and about a 90 percent reduction in tactical nuclear weapons.

MR. LEHRER: Perry said the cuts would not keep the United States from maintaining its nuclear edge even if the political situation in Russia should change.

MR. MAC NEIL: The Northrop Grumman Corporation said today it will cut 9,000 jobs over the next 15 months through early retirement and layoffs. The defense contractor said the cuts will be made in California, New York, and Texas. About a thousand are directly related to the merger of Northrop and Grumman earlier this year. Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono met with Sec. of State Christopher this afternoon to discuss trade. Earlier, the foreign minister also met with President Clinton. The administration has threatened to consider trade sanctions against Tokyo by September 30th, unless Japan opens its markets to more American products.

MR. LEHRER: Another step has been taken toward understanding the origins of humankind. Anthropologists reported in the Journal Nature today about the discovery of fossils in Ethiopia that are nearly four and a half million years old. The scientists claim they represent an entirely new species that may be the missing link between humans and apes. Its remains are over a million years older than Lucy, the partial skeleton previously believed to be the earliest pre-human. We'll have more on this story later in the program.

MR. MAC NEIL: Pope John Paul II today canceled next month's scheduled trip to the United States. A Vatican spokesman said the 74-year-old pontiff, seen here today with U.S. bishops, has not yet fully recovered from bone replacement surgery last April. The trip has been rescheduled for November 1995 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. That's our summary of the top news stories. Now it's on to the chances for reconciliation in Haiti, the problems of Boris Yeltsin, a new human ancestor, and a Rosenblatt essay. FOCUS - HAITIANS ON HAITI

MR. MAC NEIL: First tonight: Can there be reconciliation in Haiti, and is a restored President Aristide the man to achieve it? To answer those questions we have Yvon Neptune, a Haitian supporter of exiled President Aristide and Haitian radio talk show host. Raymond Joseph is the publisher of the New York City-based newspaper "Haiti Observateur." He served as Haiti's charge d'affaires to the Organization of American States from 1990 to '91. Marx Aristide, no relation to President Aristide, is one of the directors of Creole Crossroads, a Haitian cultural organization. And Jacques Jonassaint is the chairman of the Democratic Forum on Haiti, a political organization promoting democracy there. He's also the nephew of the de facto president of Haiti, Emile Jonassaint. He joins us from Provo, Utah. Mr. Jonassaint, let's begin with people who are not particularly supporters of Aristide. Can Aristide, in your view, bring reconciliation to Haiti?

MR. JONASSAINT: Well, Robin, I don't think it is Mr. Aristide who ought to bring reconciliation. I think reconciliation has to begin with the Haitian community, and he will be a co-participant of that reconciliation, but he should not bear the entire burden of bringing reconciliation to Haiti.

MR. MAC NEIL: I guess my question was: Is he the man to preside over this process?

MR. JONASSAINT: Well, that is not for me to decide.

MR. MAC NEIL: I see.

MR. JONASSAINT: He is the elected president of Haiti. We have an agreement signed by the provisional president of Haiti. And that should be the agreement that is implemented.

MR. MAC NEIL: Mr. Joseph, what will Aristide have to do in your view to achieve reconciliation and democracy in Haiti?

MR. JOSEPH: First of all, you know that President Aristide, when he ran for the presidency, fought against reconciliation. The candidate who ran against him the hardest had a theme, "reconciliation of the Haitian society," and Father Aristide's theme was, "justice." And by justice, it was a code word to go after those that he figured under Duvalier caused more problem for the society. So unless Father Aristide has changed radically during his three months in Washington --

MR. MAC NEIL: Three years.

MR. JOSEPH: I mean three years, sorry -- three years in Washington -- unless he has changed radically, I don't know whether he can bring about reconciliation. If he has a very strong prime minister who believes in reconciliation and who can bring about a cabinet that is broad based, perhaps we can have reconciliation.

MR. ARISTIDE: I'd like to interject here.

MR. MAC NEIL: I'll come to you in just a moment. I just want to go to Mr. Neptune here first. Does Mr. Aristide, President Aristide, believe in reconciliation now? Has he changed in his time in the United States?

MR. NEPTUNE: It is rather how certain people in Haiti, certain politicians in Haiti envision what the reconciliation is all about, because Father Aristide, when he was a priest, when he was fighting for the betterment of the vast majority, he has tried to implicate in his -- the faithful in his church love. Love means also reconciliation but there is also another element. When you have a country that has been under repression for so long, the element of justice must be there in order to have meaningful reconciliation.

MR. MAC NEIL: What does justice mean to you, and in Father Aristide's eyes, what does justice mean?

MR. NEPTUNE: Justice means that the institutions in Haiti must have the latitude to operate freely from any other bodies in the country, whether the government, whether the military, or whether the priests.

MR. MAC NEIL: Mr. Aristide, what did you want to say about this?

MR. ARISTIDE: Yeah. I'd like to put this in some kind of perspective because when President Aristide was in power for the seven months that he was in office, human rights violations were reduced by 77 percent. And we have witnessed since the coup de ta more than 5,000 people have been killed. And I quite agree with Neptune that the backbone of any democratic society is the issue of justice, its ability, the society's ability to guarantee that the civil rights and the human rights of all of its citizens will be respected. And this goes to the heart of the flaw that is in the agreement signed between Mr. Carter and Raoul Cedras. It leaves a loophole to grant total amnesty to those who have committed atrocious human rights violations in Haiti. Now that does not pave the way well for reconciliation. In order to engage in reconciliation, all of those that committed human rights violations, they have to be judged, and they have to pay for their crimes based on democratic principles. This is the case in all democratic societies.

MR. MAC NEIL: Well, apparently, apparently, Mr. Jonassaint, your uncle is going ahead with the call for parliament to, to pass the amnesty. What are -- how are Aristide's supporters going to react to that in, in Haiti?

MR. JONASSAINT: Well, quite frankly, there is a correction I would like to make to what Mr. Aristide just said. The agreement signed was an agreement signed between the republic of Haiti and the United States of America. That agreement is not signed by Mr. Cedras. It was signed by President Jonassaint, who is the provisional government, provisional head of government in Haiti. So we have to stop just bringing things that have really little to do with reconciliation and turn the page and start writing a new chapter. This very attitude of bringing back old miseries, images, is what is perhaps the most dangerous thing we can do in -- for the people of Haiti. What we must do, in my personal view, is that we must engage in civil, respectful communication, and when I mean engage, I mean serious engagement by both parties and by all parties concerned, and stop trying to belittle an agreement or person or persons of whatever clan, whatever group they come from, and move the country forward.

MR. MAC NEIL: Mr. Neptune, on the amnesty, Aristide supporters and Aristide, himself, were clearly unhappy with that part of the agreement. Now, apparently, the provisional government is going ahead with it, and it is part of the agreement. How are Aristide supporters in Haiti going to react to that?

MR. NEPTUNE: Before I can answer that question, I'd like to make some corrections. The agreement was not signed between the republic of Haiti and the United States. The agreement was signed actually between I would say the -- the delegation that was dispatched by President Clinton and the de facto powers of Haiti. That makes a very big difference. And as for --

MR. MAC NEIL: What difference does that make in a practical sense? does that mean that President Aristide when he goes back can disregard it if he chooses?

MR. NEPTUNE: No, I would not say that.

MR. MAC NEIL: Because he has a legitimacy that Jonassaint doesn't have?

MR. NEPTUNE: It has to be clear that Mr. Jonassaint and Gen. Raoul Cedras do not represent the majority of the Haitian people. They have taken over a government that the Haiti people, the vast majority of the Haitian people, has elected. That makes a very significant difference. So now being that we're dealing with the political solution where you have what you call l'apport de force, it is quite understandable that certain elements, whether within the Clinton administration or within the group that has taken over power violently, they will try to present it as an agreement signed between the republic of Haiti.

MR. MAC NEIL: Okay. Conceding that, but what is going to be the result of the amnesty if that -- which was a fundamental point in that agreement? What is going to be the result among Aristide's supporters if the coup leaders and their supporters are amnesty? I'll come back to you. Just let me ask Mr. Neptune.

MR. NEPTUNE: The question of amnesty, that President Aristide had never had any problem per se with the question of amnesty, is that President Aristide had problems with the extent of the amnesty. As a matter of fact, after the Governor's Island Agreement of July 1993, President Aristide issued a decree of amnesty based on his prerogatives as --

MR. MAC NEIL: So you don't have any problem with the amnesty?

MR. NEPTUNE: There is no problem with the amnesty. The question is the extent, the ramification of the amnesty. So how can you give total, blanket amnesty to people not only who have really taken over a government by violence, who have killed so many people, and who are still continuing to kill people?

MR. MAC NEIL: My question is -- let me ask it to Mr. Aristide - - if they do pass this blanket amnesty, Mr. Aristide, what is -- what is the reaction of the Aristide -- President Aristide's supporters in Haiti going to be?

MR. ARISTIDE: Well, we're talking about a country that went 30 years under Papa Doc and Baby Doc, atrocious human rights violations. And after the Baby Doc was overthrown, the people's call was for justice, basic justice. Now we're talking about a bunch of criminals whom President Clinton, himself, correctly said were nothing but criminals and rapists. In order for the country to move forward, we have to talk about ways, a structure, to implement a structure where these people would be judged and pay for their crimes. I think if we go on like this and just pave the way to grant impunity to these human rights violators, we are only stifling the people's aspirations, and sooner or later, this frustration is going to -- is going to explode, and --

MR. MAC NEIL: What does that mean? Let me interrupt you. What does that mean? Does that mean that President Aristide is going to go back, and whether amnesty has been passed by the parliament or not is going to disregard it and demand that Cedras and/or others be brought to justice?

MR. ARISTIDE: No. Here I do not speak for President Aristide.

MR. MAC NEIL: No. I'm just asking you what he's going to do.

MR. ARISTIDE: I'm thinking of the mother, for example, who has seen her son disappear, the father who witnessed his wife raped. These people, what they are calling for is basic justice. And what I'm saying and in order to move forward toward reconciliation, we cannot superficially erase all of these human rights violations. We have to go to the root of it, and in justice, in peace, conforming with the Haitian constitution to deal with these very basic issues of justice.

MR. MAC NEIL: Let me go to Mr. Joseph here. What kind of a problem do you see with the attitude you're hearing here if there is an amnesty passed by the parliament?

MR. JOSEPH: You see. This is the kind of attitude which has forestalled any solution of the problem for the past three years. President Aristide on February 23, 1992, signed an agreement to return to power. And that agreement in there had an amnesty clause. After he signed it on Sunday night, Monday night he was on a major chain, television chain in America, denouncing the amnesty. And for that reason, that agreement fell through. Now, we are seeing the same thing again. When the agreement in Port-au-Prince was passed for two days President Aristide would say nothing.

MR. MAC NEIL: What is your -- to cut down to the nitty-gritty, as Americans say -- what is your anxiety, that they will pass an amnesty but Father Aristide will go back and encourage his or tolerate his followers rising up and taking justice into their own hands?

MR. JOSEPH: He will do exactly what he did on January 7, 1991, when his followers started to burn down the cathedral of Port-au- Prince, attack the nuncio, the papal nuncio, because he was against the Catholic Church, and the State Department at that time -- I was a charge d'affaires in Washington -- kept sending cables and asking for Father Aristide to say something.

MR. ARISTIDE: May I make a correction.

MR. JOSEPH: And he said nothing.

MR. ARISTIDE: There's a correction to be made.

MR. MAC NEIL: Mr. Aristide, yes.

MR. ARISTIDE: The incident that Mr. Joseph talks about on February 7 -- January 7, 1991, it occurred one full month before President Aristide was even inaugurated. So we have to make a distinction between fact and fiction here. President Aristide was in no way involved with that incident.

MR. MAC NEIL: Mr. Neptune, if what Mr. Joseph said is true, that doesn't sound like reconciliation.

MR. NEPTUNE: I do believe that --

MR. MAC NEIL: Will Aristide supporters accept the amnesty and move on to the future?

MR. NEPTUNE: I do believe the majority of the Haitian people, and I stress the majority of the Haitian people, not just simply Aristide's supporters, the majority of the Haitian people will be willing to accept the application of the law of Haiti, the respect of the constitution of Haiti, as it's not to its detriment. I would like also to point out that there has been misrepresentation of the facts represented by Mr. Joseph. After the agreement, after Father Aristide, President Aristide signed the agreement or what they call the Port-au-Prince Accord in Washington in February, 1992, he -- his position was that he is willing to give political amnesty to those who participated in the coup but not to common criminals.

MR. MAC NEIL: Let me just in our time remaining -- we can't obviously resolve this difference over the amnesty and the history, but let me just ask you, starting with you, Mr. Jonassaint, Aristide opponents say there can't be any reconciliation if he pushes the same agenda of social revolution that he did as president before. What is your feeling on that? Do you agree with that statement, and is that your anxiety, that this will happen again?

MR. JONASSAINT: Yes, it is a correct statement in the sense that if Mr. Aristide is pushing for social revolution or social justice, as he may have called it sometime, in the implementation of which necklacing is involved, obviously that will be appalling to me and to a number of people. I think, again, we have seen tonight, Robert, people talking about what happened two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, who knows when.

MR. ARISTIDE: Yesterday.

MR. JONASSAINT: The problem is acute. And I think what we need to do and what we must do is try to understand the law of forgiveness and move forward with the conditions established by that agreement which follow the U.N. Resolutions 1917 and 940 -- forgive me -- 917 and 940, and help implement those resolutions and help implement that Port-au-Prince Accord which is the best for the country and move Haiti forward. Let's forget about what happened.

MR. MAC NEIL: Okay. Mr. Aristide, what is the -- President Aristide's political program now? Is it to -- is it the same as his political program before?

MR. ARISTIDE: Yeah. Actually, I would like to go beyond the rhetoric and go to the facts. What was President Aristide's program, first of all, in 1991, when he was inaugurated? We have 85 percent illiteracy in Haiti. He sought to launch a massive literacy campaign. We have workers who earn 14 cents an hour, and he was saying let's raise the minimum wage to $5 a day, basic, basic programs. And this the kind of, this is the kind of program that he was trying to move forward to include all of Haitians, not just the small minority. And his program basically is one that is rooted in justice for everybody. And the cornerstone of the Lavalas movement was participation, transparency, and justice. One more thing, one more thing that I would like to say. When we talk, when we talk about justice, in what country, what democratic society in the world can we allow for soldiers, for a military regime to kill 5,000 people and pretend as if it never happened? I'm not -- we are only saying let us build institutions that can deal with these basic issues of justice.

MR. MAC NEIL: Well, I think we have just opened a book that has many chapters that we can't get to tonight. And I thank you all four for joining us. That is the end of our time. Thank you.

MR. MAC NEIL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Yeltsin's problems, a new discovery about the human species, and a Roger Rosenblatt essay. FOCUS - RUSSIA HOUSE

MR. LEHRER: Next tonight, rebuilding Russia's economy. It's the toughest domestic problem facing Russian President Boris Yeltsin, and a key agenda item when he meets President Clinton in Washington next week. Simon Marks reports from Moscow.

MR. MARKS: It was not the hot political summer of confrontation forecasters feared, rather a period of reconstruction for Russia. In the shadows of the Kremlin, an underground shopping mall is slowly taking shape. Across the Russian capital, huge public works projects are underway to repair old buildings and build new ones. And out of town, there's further evidence of Russia's apparent recovery. Swaths of land in the forests west of Moscow are now dotted with new weekend homes for Russia's nouveau riche. It all adds up to an image of growth and stability for Russia, a far cry from the bloody street battles between government and opposition forces less than a year ago. Jean Foglizzio is the chief representative of the International Monetary Fund in Moscow.

JEAN FOGLIZZIO, International Monetary Fund: Psychologically, I think they are well. They are running the show well. Is there a problem? Yes. Are there risks? Yes. Is there danger? Yes. What will happen next month? I don't know. But what we are convinced of is that they don't have much alternative. And they are probably doing the best of what they can do in the given set of circumstances.

MR. MARKS: In Russia's industrial heartland, there is little support for that view. One hundred miles north of Moscow, the railroad car factory in the city of Tver remains in the state of crisis. Like industrial enterprises across the country, the factory is being strangled by a logjam of debt. It's owed around $17 million by its customer, the ministry of transport, and in turn owes its suppliers more than $6 million. The result: Production has been cut by 50 percent; salaries are being paid late; and the company has introduced enforced vacations for a work force which now has little faith in the future.

ANATOLY SOROTIN, Welder: [speaking through interpreter] We've been waiting for the government to make things better, but a better life just gets further and further away. We never seem to be able to reach it.

MR. MARKS: Vera Yefimova has worked at the factory for 15 years, looking down on operations from her crane above the shop floor. Now she's watching as some workers prepare to leave. For the first time in living memory, the factory is laying people off. Fifteen hundred of its ten thousand workers will lose their jobs by the end of the year. Another two thousand redundancies are expected to follow.

VERA YEFIMOVA, Crane Operator: [speaking through interpreter] It's terrible of course. If my husband is laid off or I am laid off, where are we going to go? People are being laid off everywhere. All the factories are laying people off. It's terrible, especially for those of us with children.

MR. MARKS: Factory director Alexander Burayev says the government must now intervene to bail is plant out to save the city's workers and prevent the social explosion widespread unemployment could bring.

ALEXANDER BURAYEV, President, Tver Railroad Car Factory: [speaking through interpreter] What's going to happen to those who are unemployed from this factory? They will be without work, and the government will have a big headache. How are they going to feed people? It's simply naive to think that people will resolve things themselves. They won't resolve anything. They'll simply break into stores, and everyone is afraid of that.

MR. MARKS: But President Yeltsin says it's the factory directors who are being naive. Last month in a tour of communities up and down the Volga River, he delivered a tough message: There will be no government support to save ailing industries. Any factories that can't succeed in Russia's free market will simply be declared bankrupt, and the first closures are imminent. The government says the unemployed will have to move to areas where private enterprise is creating work.

ANATOLY CHUBAIS, Deputy Prime Minister, Russia: The reform process, itself, is a painful process. And unfortunately, society and public opinion doesn't like to accept the pain.

MR. MARKS: Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais, who masterminded Russia's program of privatization, says the government is no longer cowed by the country's Soviet era industrial lobby. He says Russians must understand that the pain of economic transformation is now unavoidable.

ANATOLY CHUBAIS: Before, the problem number one was inflation. Now we are passing to a stage when the main problem will be the unemployment problem. And I believe that this government and the prime minister of this government will be able to overcome the problem of the unemployment, as well as overcome the public opinion and the problem about the inflation.

MR. MARKS: The latest figures bear out the government's contention that a recovery is underway. Monthly inflation is down to 5 percent, compared to 26 percent last year. Real incomes are rising, consumption is up, and so are personal savings. Russian government ministers say their hopes for the country's future now rest with the millions of people already enjoying the benefits of economic reform. The stability of the last few months has enhanced the government's reputation among those Russians whose lifestyles have been transformed by the moves to the free market, not just the super rich elite but also the emerging middle class. They can be found everywhere in Moscow now, upwardly mobile Russians prepared to spend around $20 a head on fajitas and taco salads in stylish restaurants like the Santa Fe. These Russians have traveled aborad on vacation this year in numbers greater than at any other time this century. They work in the country's new service industries, buy their clothes from foreign boutiques in Moscow, have invested billions of dollars in the country's private sector, and are making plans for the future. Bartender Alexi Sobolev is one of them. He earns 500,000 rubles a month and makes another 30,000 rubles a day from tips mixing marguerites at the Santa Fe. He takes home around $350 a month. That's three times the average wage. He owns a car and wants to open his own bar, a dream he says is achievable in the new Russia.

ALEXI SOBOLEV, Bartender: [speaking through interpreter] In our country right now there is a feeling that things are looking up. We've got through the crisis when we were sinking into poverty. We've got out of that now, and there are people who can afford to come to a bar, enjoy themselves, meet friends, have a coffee, listen to music. And there are more and more of them every month I'd say. That shows that our country's rising up off its feet, not very quickly because it's hard, but it is rising little by little.

MR. MARKS: And little by little, the number of Russians who can enjoy membership of the middle class is growing. Analysts say that's giving the Russian government new vitality, just as its political capital among industrialists and factory workers is being exhausted.

JEAN FOGLIZZIO: They are using their political capital, but they are also building it, because some people, lots of people, see that things are better. So now you have a big question is suddenly going to be one of the biggest questions of this country over the next twenty, thirty, forty years, which is a question of social inequalities. I mean, what is exactly the ratio between those who benefit and those who don't? And this, this is a delicate issue, certainly an explosive, potentially explosive one, as it is in other countries of the world.

MR. MARKS: Sensing signs of stability, foreign investors who once shied away from Russia are now rapidly entering the country. The government reports inward investment stands at $1/2 billion a month compared to $1 1/2 billion for the whole of last year. Moscow's largest exhibition center is now block booked with trade fairs through until the middle of next year. Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais says that at the Washington summit a reinvigorated Boris Yeltsin will emphasize that trade rather than aid is what Russia now needs.

ANATOLY CHUBAIS: Russia now needs the equal access to the world capital market which is a new task. And if we would like to have the foreign investment in Russia to be successful, we need technical assistance which will make this, this investment work in Russia. So I think that there are some new points which could be discussed, and I agree with you, that Yeltsin has something behind himself to be demonstrated not only to the President Clinton but to the whole world now.

MR. MARKS: The Russian government acknowledges that there are still risks that communities facing the closure of industries which have supported them for generations could rally round the country's extremist opposition. But the government hopes that by sticking to its tough reformist line it will win grudging respect as people realize there is no other way ahead. FOCUS - REMAINS OF THE DAY

MR. LEHRER: Now, new findings about our oldest known ancestors. Ancient fossils dating back 4.4 million years have been discovered, and scientists say they represent a new species of ape-like creatures linked to humans. The finding was made in Ethiopia, not far from the area in which the bones of the creature called "Lucy" were found. Up till now, the Lucy bones were the oldest in the search for the origins of mankind. The latest discovery was announced in this week's Nature Magazine. Here's a report from Andrew Veitch of Independent Television News.

ANDREW VEITCH: These, according to the scientists who discovered the fossils, are our ancestors: bonobos, pygmy chimps from the forests of Zaire. They can walk without stooping. The females have far less hair than common chimpanzees. Mothers and babies behave much as humans do. The evidence is that these are humankind's closest relatives. The records suggest that human-like beings, or hominids, evolved from these apes about 5 million years ago. Australopithecus ramidus lived in Ethiopia four million, four hundred thousand years ago. The hominid had a more human-shaped skull and had lost the eight canine teeth. The scientists have found fossilized teeth and fragments of skulls and arm bones from at least 17 individuals, both adults and children. They're nearly a million years older than Lucy, until the earliest human-like fossil. Scientists from the states, Japan and Ethiopia, unearthed the fossils near a village in the Awash Valley, northeast of the capital Addis Ababa. Another team of 20 anthropologists will continue the dig. This is now open country, but four million years ago the scientists believe it was woodland. The first hominid would have eaten fruit and leaves and slept in the trees.

MR. LEHRER: The expedition was led by Timothy White, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California at Berkeley. He's now with our correspondent, Elizabeth Farnsworth, in Oakland. Elizabeth.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Thank you for being with us, Professor White.

PROF. WHITE: My pleasure.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What do we know about our earliest ancestors after this discovery that we didn't know before this discovery?

PROF. WHITE: Well, this is a discovery that was made not by myself but by a large team of people that I work with, including Ethiopian scientists and Japanese scientists, American scientists, and we've been working in this area since 1981. We've been working to try to push the knowledge of our ancestry back into time. Previous to this, we've known that human remains could be pushed back to 3.6 million years ago. That's a species known as Australopithecus aparensis. But we didn't know what --

MS. FARNSWORTH: That's Lucy, right?

PROF. WHITE: That's Lucy, the famous Lucy fossil.

MS. FARNSWORTH: The fossil that we all know as Lucy.

PROF. WHITE: Right. And this new discovery pushes knowledge more deeply into the past. We finally broke through a kind of a barrier we've been up against, the 4 million year mark. And we've pushed back to 4.4 million years with this group of fossils from a place called Aramis, in the Offar of Ethiopia.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What did you find andhow did you find it?

PROF. WHITE: Well, we found the remains of several different individuals, actually 17, but they're very fragmentary, because they were out on a land surface 4.4 million years ago being scavenged by carnivores and so forth, very broken.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Show us how fragmentary. You've got --

PROF. WHITE: Well, these are some replicas. The original fossils are in Ethiopia, in the national museum. They are national treasures of Ethiopia. These are replicas, and they're, as you can see, very fragmentary portions. Here, for example, is the upper portion of an arm bone. This is a left arm bone from this hominid that died some 4.4 million years ago. Now, now by using --

MS. FARNSWORTH: They're not really bones that were found, right? They wouldn't have survived.

PROF. WHITE: They're bones that have turned to stone. They've fossilized. They're fossil bones. And these have been imbedded in the sediments laid down by ancient rivers and lakes and so forth. They've been imbedded for millions of years, and as the tectonic, or earthquake activity in this region happens, the elevation of the sediments above the valley floor causes erosion in these badlands that we work in. And these bones come to the surface. We walk and find the bones eroding from these ancient layers. And that's how we recover these.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And you actually find them as you walk. You don't necessarily have to do digs that are very, very deep. That's what I find so amazing about it.

PROF. WHITE: That's right. They were once deeply buried, but because of these great earth movements in the Rift Valley, we have them brought to the surface. And if we can just keep going back year after year, we have a new crop of fossils as the rains wash these ancient layers.

MS. FARNSWORTH: So what happened first? How did you find this particular group of fossils?

PROF. WHITE: Well, we've, we've been up against this four- million-year-old barrier for a long time. And we really wanted to push our knowledge back. We wanted to find out what species gave rise to Lucy. And so what we did was to concentrate on the part of the record that we knew to be older than four million. We started with a volcanic horizon, actually a lava flow. And we were working below there, finding many fossils, pigs, elephants, rhinos, but we couldn't find any hominids at all. And we worked for three weeks.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Hominids being?

PROF. WHITE: Hominids are the ancestors of human beings.

MS. FARNSWORTH: They stand upright. They walk on two feet?

PROF. WHITE: That's right. And that includes ourselves, a zoological family. So the oldest hominid, previous to this discovery, was the Lucy hominid, the Lucy species aparensis. So we moved back, way back, to beyond the 5 million year mark. We were looking very hard. We couldn't find anything. We finally gave up after three weeks. Many fossils of many mammals, but no hominids. We moved up a little bit in the stratigraphy, i.e., the layering of rocks, and we were walking about noon one day out across an area called Aramis, which is a catch-mitt, an area where rain falls and drains down to the modern Awash River, down past a little Offar village. The Offar people live there today. And a Japanese colleague of mine, Ginsua, from Tokyo University, found a molar tooth, and right away, he realized this is a human ancestor, this is what we've been looking for.

MS. FARNSWORTH: How would he know looking at a tooth that it's not a chimpanzee tooth?

PROF. WHITE: He could look right away at the occlusal surface, i.e., the chewing surface of the tooth, and he could see that it wasn't crenelated, and that's a key character that differentiates chimpanzees from humans. And this team of collectors I work with is an amazing group of people. They know the difference between not only chimpanzee and human but between all the other mammals as well. We have everything from bears to bats to rhinos that we find fossilized in these layers. And their fragmentary bones are all over the surface.

MS. FARNSWORTH: But if he sees a tooth, why isn't it a tooth of somebody who just happened in there and died and, you know, maybe fifty years ago or twenty-five years ago?

PROF. WHITE: Right. Because it matches the other teeth of the other mammals eroding right out of those layers. And not only that, the tooth is fossilized. It's turned to stone. The color has changed. It's much heavier, and so he says this is what we've been looking for. Then as we concentrated in this, in this particular region of Aramis, we found additional individuals, the remains of additional individuals. And we realized very early on -- in fact, when this small fragment of jaw, this is a jaw of a child that died when it was about three years old.

MS. FARNSWORTH: A fragment of a jaw?

PROF. WHITE: A fragment of a jaw, and this has one baby tooth in it. This is a milk molar. And that's a key, key tooth, because we can compare that to the milk molars known from the Lucy species. This is so much more like a chimpanzee that we realized that we had a new species on our hands, something -- a creature that was completely new to science. And so it needed a new name, and we gave it an Offar name, and it means "root," because we think this species is at the root of the human side of the family tree.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What can you tell us or what do you think you know now from these fossils about how this ancestor of ours lived? Where did they live? What did they walk like? What did they eat?

PROF. WHITE: Well, one of the interesting things about this particular locality is for the first time we have hominids, i.e., human ancestors, in a more forested environment. And the reason we know that is that we have fossil wood, fossil seeds, and we also have the remains of other mammals who only inhabit the forested places like kulubus monkeys and kudos. These are antelope that love bushlands and woodlands. So here we have an ancestor that's now out in the middle of a treeless savannah, rather, it's a woodland or forest dweller, something closer in habitat to a chimpanzee, something closer in anatomy to a chimpanzee.

MS. FARNSWORTH: But does that mean that this creature lived partly in the trees, or do you know that yet?

PROF. WHITE: That's one of the things we want to learn with further research. And I think the important thing to remember about this discovery is it really is the first chapter in what should be many chapters. We, for example, don't have any bones from the pelvis. We, in fact, have nothing from the waste down of this creature. It's new to science, but we hope that further research there, and we have the support of the National Science Foundation for two more years of research in this area, we hope to learn a lot more about this ancestor. We're just getting started in learning about it.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What do you know about -- one of the things I wanted to ask you is, is -- Are you positive that this is evidence of one of our earliest -- or of our earliest ancestor known so far -- are you positive, or is there still -- are there still some large questions?

PROF. WHITE: Well, we're pretty positive about this. And the reason for that is that we have a very good record between three and four million years, including the famous Lucy fossil. So that forms the comparative basis, and we can compare these fossils to chimpanzees and other apes, and we can compare them to the Lucy fossils. And what we find, for example, in this arm bone when we compare this part of the arm to the Lucy skeleton, this individual's about 20 percent bigger but it matches Lucy anatomically. Clearly, here we have the ancestor of Lucy.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Hm mm. So you don't think that the skeptics are now going to come out tomorrow saying, this is not Lucy's ancestor, this is not in the direct line from humans, this is something altogether different?

PROF. WHITE: Oh, I'm not naive enough to think that. This is anthropology, after all, and there are as many different hypotheses as there are workers in anthropology almost. But we've received quite a bit of actual good, good quality commentary. Dr. Wood from London commented on our publication in London today, and he said this, more than any other fossil, looks like a link to the common ancestor that we share with the African apes.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And speaking of the common ancestor, how likely are we to find that common ancestor? Does this bring the scientists much closer to the common ancestor, this being the common ancestor between us and our ape cousins?

PROF. WHITE: That's right. We know from studies of DNA and other biomolecules that we shared a recent common ancestor. We're very closely related genetically to the modern African ape.

MS. FARNSWORTH: How closely are we related genetically?

PROF. WHITE: The gorilla and chimpanzee.

MS. FARNSWORTH: I mean, how -- what have you found?

PROF. WHITE: We share 98 percent of our DNA with the chimpanzee. In fact, Jerrod Diamond from UCLA has said that we are the third chimpanzee we're so close to the pygmy in common chimps. But what we find is that there is a genetic similarity. Now we have fossil evidence going to 4.4 million years, and we seem to be converging anatomically on the common ancestor. We hope to be able to go into this study area back down to that basalt flow at five million years, look underneath it, and maybe we'll have more luck in even older rocks this coming season.

MS. FARNSWORTH: What is the work like for you? Where do you live? How do you get there, and who pays for it?

PROF. WHITE: We live in a tent camp. We organize things --

MS. FARNSWORTH: How many of you?

PROF. WHITE: A camp of about 20 scientists and local people. We start in the capital of Ethiopia, in Addis Ababa, where we work at the national museum. Our research is funded by the National Science Foundation with assistance from the National Geographic Society. and this work goes on every dry season, which means October, November, December, because there are no roads in this area. It's all four-wheel drive.

MS. FARNSWORTH: And just before we have to leave, we have only a moment left, how would you summarize the significance of this? What is the real significance of this discovery?

PROF. WHITE: The most important thing about this discovery is that it opens a window on the very deep past, and it's a window that we're going to be able to look through and learn about our human ancestors through as the time -- as the next few years goes on.

MS. FARNSWORTH: Well, thank you, Prof. White. Congratulations on the discovery and to you and all your colleagues, and thank you for being with us.

PROF. WHITE: Thank you. ESSAY - HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

MR. MAC NEIL: Finally tonight, essayist Roger Rosenblatt reflects on growing older.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Happy Birthday to me. Today I am 54 years old. No big deal. Except when I realize that my 54 years covers about 25 percent of my country's entire existence, 25 percent, a considerable fraction. I'm becoming an old man in a young country. What to make of that? I mean, individually, I know I've gone about as far as I'm going to. I'm not going to get any smarter, not going to get any wiser, certainly no sprier. Been there, done that. Frankly, it's been downhill for a while for me. But my country is still a spring chicken. It has the same ambitions it was born with, the same Constitution, give or take a few additions. It is beset with the same problems which it has both solved and not solved and solved again. It has the same attitudes about itself, and its possibilities. It has never relaxed its touching adolescent search for identity, even as its identity lies right under its youthful nose. It's young. America is always young. Let individuals become Dorian Gray's portrait rotting in the attic; America, itself, is Dorian, not corrupt or especially tormented, just fresh as a daisy. This is not to say that changes don't occur within the youthful republic.

MARTIN LUTHER KING: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Civil rights impulses become civil rights laws. The middle class grows so wide and thick it enters both the upper and lower classes simultaneously. The gift for making inventions takes the shape of phones, then cars, then phones in cars. The national gates are opened, and in walk the newcomers, as they always did. First, the Irish, Germans, Polish, Italians, Jews; now, the Dominicans, Haitians, Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Mexicans. New blood, new bloodshed. Wars are won and lost, and won and lost. Wars with other places, wars with ourselves, It's not that we have lacked for action in the 200 plus years of our adamant childhood. But generically, just about everything has gone in circles, and the country remains stuck in place with itself, like those kids in "Reality Bites." [music playing] Good-hearted, a little confused, decent, desperate, forever hunting for love and authenticity. There were immigration problems a hundred years ago. There are exactly the same problems today. Race once tore the nation in two, and it is doing so right now. Rich one decade, poor the next. Big government, small government. To intervene or not to intervene, in Nazi, Germany, or Russian Czechoslovakia, or Bosnia, or Rwanda, or Haiti, that is the question, as it has been the question over and over. The same ups and downs of mood, the same debate between isolation and world responsibility, the same ambitions for equality, and the same gains and slippage. Other countries establish cultural identity by getting older. We do that by staying where we are. So what does it mean to grow old in a young country? In France or Italy, in Greece, or England, a 54-year-old man would never feel older than the country he belongs to. Here that happens all the time. He can feel that he's gained some self-knowledge, knows what he likes and what he can readily discard. He can feel that he has moved from here to there. His country, meanwhile, moves from here to here, which makes him feel that he is passing it by. Or is it passing him by, by standing pat? "That is no country for old men," said Yates in the poem "Sailing to Byzantium," to which he traveled in his aging mind to try to find a form in which he could feel young forever. He should have sailed to America. One thing to say about this country's youth, it remains so rapt with its dreams of improvement, everyone feels those dreams, owns them, even if one has seen them dashed on the rocks like birds eggs. Even after 54 years, America asserts itself in the triumph of hope over experience. America bites reality, recycles itself, has multiple face lifts, always tries one more time to get it right. I grow old in a country that refuses to grow old. Happy birthday to me. I'm Roger Rosenblatt. RECAP

MR. LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Thursday, NATO jets attacked a Bosnian Serb tank near Sarajevo. It came after the Serbs fired grenades at U.N. troops. And U.S. troops began dismantling the Haitian military's heavy weapons. Good night, Robin.

MR. MAC NEIL: Good night, Jim. That's the NewsHour for tonight. And we'll see you again tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.