The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MS. WARNER: And I'm Margaret Warner in New York. After the News Summary this Wednesday, we sample congressional reaction to the CIA's spy story, next, a Newsmaker interview with the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, and finally Charlayne Hunter-Gault talks to anti- hunger campaigner Billy Shore. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. LEHRER: Sec. of State Christopher told the Russians today to quit spying on the United States. He said it was unacceptable. His remarks followed the arrest of Aldrich Ames, a veteran CIA official, on charges of selling secrets to the Soviet Union and Russia since 1985. White House Press Sec. Dee Dee Myers called on Russia to remove embassy employees in the United States who worked with Ames. She said if they don't take action, we will. This afternoon, President Clinton said he would wait for the official Russian response before deciding what to do. At a White House news conference he was asked about the seriousness of the case.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: This man was not just a spy. This was a person who was a 31-year veteran of the CIA. So quite apart from the Russians, this is a very serious offense against the United States of America by one of its citizens. I do not think the facts of this case at this time undermine in any way, shape, or form the policy we have followed for the last year toward President Yeltsin and his government and the forces of change in Russia. I do not believe that, but this is a very serious case. And it has to be pursued aggressively, and we will do that.

MR. LEHRER: In Moscow, a spokesman for the Russian government said the United States should not be overcome by what he called a new wave of spy mania. On Capitol Hill, Senators of both parties called for cutting off aid to Russia.

SEN. ROBERT DOLE, Minority Leader: The Russians tried to minimize this affair, and that is a grave mistake. Russia cannot have it both ways. If they want to pursue Cold War business as usual, the American Congress and the American taxpayers will not keep sending billions for aid. Russia can and should take immediate steps to correct their policy. If the security services are under the government's control, these steps could be taken immediately. In my view, such steps are a bare minimum for a recipient of massive tax dollars in the United States.

SEN. DENNIS DeCONCINI, [D] Arizona: I think a 60-day freeze would give an opportunity to do a true damage assessment with and in cooperation with the Russian authorities. The big deal is that the United States is contributing almost $14 billion between 1991 and through 1994 in various types of assistance to this country. I don't think that's asking too much that they cease all that type of operations here.

MR. LEHRER: Sec. Christopher was asked about Russian aid at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.

WARREN CHRISTOPHER, Secretary of State: We're not at all illusioned about Russia. We understand that there are forces there, regressive forces there, and their intelligence services are probably operating as they have been in the past despite their change in name. But we give aid to Russia to the extent we do not as charity, not as something that we're doing for them, but as something that's in the American national interest. It's in our interest to promote reform in Russia of a political character, of an economic character, of a foreign policy character. I think what we must, all we do, Senator, is to measure whether or not our aid is serving American interests, not Russian interests.

MR. LEHRER: We'll have more on this story right after the News Summary. Margaret.

MS. WARNER: Back in Moscow, Russian President Boris Yeltsin faced a new challenge today from his political enemy. Robert Moore of Independent Television News has our report.

ROBERT MOORE, ITN: Boris Yeltsin was remembering Russia's war dead, but politically he was wounded himself today. His new parliament in which he invested so much help had voted to pardon his bitterest enemies, those that led the mutiny against his rule in October. He took the salute, but his mind must now be on the confrontation and possible conflict that lies ahead. It was the first major step taken by the new parliament, an overwhelming vote to grant an amnesty to the armed rebels of last year and those that plotted against Gorbachev in 1991. The extremist Nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky in military uniform was a major supporter of the amnesty. As one radical MP warned, the vote was a declaration of civil war. But it is not clear exactly when leaders like Rutskoi and Khasbalatov will be released. They led the old parliament before it was crushed and now again may be able to bring militants back on the street. On Moscow's streets this evening several thousand old Communists march against reform, against Yeltsin, backing the parliament's latest moves against the Russian president.

MS. WARNER: This evening, Yeltsin issued an angry statement denouncing the pardon as a dangerous path that contradicts the national interest. He's expected to address the parliament tomorrow. Bosnia's warring Muslim and Croat forces accepted a U.N.-sponsored cease-fire today. The agreement, which was signed in Zagreb, takes effect Friday. Both sides agreed to move their heavy weapons away from the front lines or turn them over to UN troops. UN forces will monitor the troops. Today's agreement does not involve Bosnian Serb forces. In a Newsmaker interview, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, said Bosnian Serbs would not object to a confederation between the Muslim and Croat areas as part of an overall peace agreement.We'll have the full interview later in the program.

MR. LEHRER: Another winter storm has struck the central part of the country and New England. It brought a foot of snow to Nebraska yesterday and moved East. Ten inches fell in Chicago today. The Federal Aviation Administration ordered 2/3 of the flights in and out of Chicago's O'Hare Airport cancelled because of blowing snow and poor visibility. USAir cancelled 20 percent of its East Coast flights. New York City was covered with snow for the 13th time this winter. Up to a foot was expected today in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

MS. WARNER: President Clinton is promising more help to communities damaged in the California earthquake. Today he offered more than $500 million in new loan guarantees. The guarantees will help local governments borrow the matching money needed to qualify for federal disaster aid. That's it for the News Summary. Now it's on to the political fallout from the Russian spy story, the Bosnian Serb leader, and a conversation about feeding the hungry. FOCUS - FRIEND OR FOE?

MR. LEHRER: The CIA spy story is our lead story again tonight. Yesterday it was about the shock of the charge. Aldrich Ames, a 32- year veteran CIA counterintelligence officer, stood accused of working for the other side, the Soviets and the Russians, for nine years. Today the story moved to the fallout and to questions about how it might or should affect US relations with Russia. It is an issue President Clinton addressed this afternoon at the White House.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I have known about this particular case for some time. I have continued to see our policies of Russia because Russia, like other countries, is not a monolith. It is not a single force. It is many forces and many developments occurring at once. I still believe it is in the interest of the United States to support democracy, to support the movement toward economic reform, to support the absence of weapons proliferation, to support the denuclearization of Russia, and therefore I think we should be careful before we make specific determinations about aid flows. A lot of our aid flows, for example, are directly to individuals who are trying to privatize their businesses, having nothing to do with government or government policies. Most of our government aid is in the form of aid to take down the nuclear weapons. And I don't think anyone thinks we should slow that up. This is a serious case. It is an unusually serious one because of factors I cannot discuss, but I also believe that given all the facts, as I understand them, and I know, I think, quite a bit about it, that we are pursuing the proper policy.

MR. LEHRER: In Moscow, there was also reaction contained in this report by Ian Williams of Independent Television News.

MR. WILLIAMS: President Yeltsin marking Russian Army Day this morning back from an illness that has kept him out of public view for more than a week only to be rocked by a spy scandal abroad. The arrest of Aldrich Ames in Washington could be damaging to US/Russian relations, because he continued to spy for Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, his earlier client. And he's been described here as the highest level Russian spy since Kim Filby of the Cambridge firing in Britain. There is little sign of diplomatic embarrassment here, just a little regret that Mr. Ames got caught, that and a feeling that had the roles been reversed and America had such a high place spy in Moscow, then Washington is unlikely to have retired him just because the Cold War is over. In fact, last year, the American embassy in Moscow received a warning. It was asked by the Russian authorities to rein in its intelligence officers, the Russians claiming the West is doing more spying than ever. The reason for that fact, not disputed privately by diplomats, is that the former Soviet Union is a far more confusing and unstable place, and there are more opportunities to gather intelligence now that travel and other restrictions have been lifted, officials here hoping the latest scandal won't rock the boat.

YURI KOBALADZE, Foreign Intelligence Service: If it does, I'll be very upset really, because we treasure very much our cooperation with our counterparts in the CIA, and we say and we think that we can spy together against, you know, the common enemies.

MR. LEHRER: Now back to Washington and some congressional reaction. It comes from the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dennis DeConcini, Democrat of Arizona, and Congressman Dan Glickman, Democrat of Kansas, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, and from two Republicans, Sen. Hank Brown of Colorado, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Congressman Doug Bereuter of Nebraska, a member of the Foreign Affairs and Intelligence Committees. Sen. DeConcini, you want the United States to take some action on the aid issue, do you not?

SEN. DeCONCINI: I do, and I suggested today and to the administration directly that perhaps a 60-day freeze period on any further advancement or obligating of funds to the Republic of Russia be put on hold and that we attempt to engage them in the assessment of the damage that Mr. Ames and the Russians and particularly the Soviet -- former Soviet Union has caused. I am not suggesting that we break off relations or stop all aid, but it seems to me very important that the Russians get a clear message that if they want to continue the substantial foreign assistance that our country is giving, whether it's private or public or what have you, it's almost $14 billion by the end of this year, in the last four years, that this has got to cease. I don't think it's asking too much. I believe they will do that. We already have good contact with their intelligence people. We've shared some intelligence on other issues, and I would like to see the President take that type of position for our country.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Glickman, what do you think of that approach?

REP. GLICKMAN: Well, I don't have any objection to a short-term ending of aid, but I think the President is right. We have to make sure that Russian intelligence is not a separate and independent unit from the Russian government. And I don't at this stage think it's useful to penalize the entire government until we get the facts as to who's running their intelligence operation. And right now I'm not sure that President Yeltsin is.

MR. LEHRER: You don't think -- you think it's possible that, that Ames was working for the Russian government and Yeltsin and the top people in the government didn't know it was going on?

REP. GLICKMAN: Let me put it like this. I don't know. But I do believe that it was possible that Mr. Yeltsin and his intelligence operators are not necessarily one and the same on every issue. And I think that this is a period of time when we ought to do some analysis of it before we make any arbitrary decisions about cutting ourselves off from the Russians. The other point I would say is we have to be a little bit careful and not appear too hypocritical. We have a very big building out in Langley, Virginia, and that building does a lot of useful and important intelligence and espionage around the world. And so we have to recognize that when you get into this espionage business and it's unrestricted, which it's been in the Cold War period of time, this kind of thing, unfortunately, is bound to happen. What we ought to do is try to reduce the amount of espionage we are involved in in the world.

MR. LEHRER: In other words, Congressman, you're suggesting that along the lines of Sen. DeConcini, we sit down with the Russians, they say, okay, we want you to stop, and they say, fine, okay, we'll stop it if you stop it. You're saying that might hurt us more than it does them?

REP. GLICKMAN: Well, all I'm saying is that it's naive not to think that we don't try to get intelligence on what's happening over there. They've got a lot of nuclear weapons, and in the southern part of the old Soviet Union, there is a lot of potential worldwide terroristic activity occurring, so we do our fair share of finding out what's happening over there. And I guess my only point in all this stuff is we shouldn't be totally shocked that this kind of thing happened. We should find out how this man was allowed to be a CIA employee all these years, and we should let the Russians know that if, in fact, they were very much involved the last couple of years in this kind of intelligence activity, then we will not tolerate it.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. DeConcini, what about that point, that we, the question I just asked Congressman Glickman, that we may have more to lose here in knocking off spying than they do?

SEN. DeCONCINI: I don't think so. I don't think it's asking too much of a friendly country that is receiving $14 billion to sit down with us and help us first of all to make a commitment that they're going to cease doing this. That doesn't mean we have to make a commitment to cease doing it. We're not receiving billions of dollars from them, and I think it's only logical and reasonable to ask them to do that, and then to sit down and help us construct what kind of damage that this activity occurred. Most of it occurred prior to the Russian republic, but some of it did occur. And as the chairman of the House Committee, Mr. Glickman, knows, there is some activity that's been going on since the Russian republic has taken over and the Yeltsin regime is there. And I don't know whether he knew about it or not, but it doesn't make much difference. And I don't think you can argue that well, we do it, so they do it. It's a little different when we're the donor country here. I think we're not asking too much for them to cease that kind of stuff.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Brown, do you agree that we could, we have the right to expect Russia to stop spying on us even though we continue to spy on them?

SEN. BROWN: Well, I think it's a little more complex than this. First of all, the consequences are different. It appears in this case that this may well have led to the deaths of at least two people and the imprisonment and incarceration of four more. Those are deaths or executions that don't have fair trials, they don't have open trials, they don't have right to self-defense, defense counsels as we know it. It's quite clear here that some of the activity took place after the demise of the Soviet Union. And it seems to me this is a serious enough matter we're going to have to reassess our relationship with Russia just as we've done with other allies when these have come to light, and I think it's quite clear that the euphoria Americans have had about a new relationship with Russia is going to be dampened. This will have long-term consequences. Does it end the relationship? No. But it is not simply a quid pro quo, and it can't be simply shrugged off.

MR. LEHRER: Well, what -- give us a feel for what you think should be done. I mean, you heard what Dennis DeConcini has suggested. Do you have any other suggestions along that line about what the United States should do about this?

SEN. BROWN: I think we've got to sit down and reassess our relationship with Russia. We've got to do the same process that we did with another friendly country, Israel, in the mid eighties, when there was a similar problem of spying. We had some heart to heart --

MR. LEHRER: Excuse me. That's the Jonathan Pollard case.

SEN. BROWN: Yes.

MR. LEHRER: He was -- he worked for Navy Intelligence. He sold secrets to Israel. He's now in prison as we speak for that. Right. go ahead.

SEN. BROWN: We had some heart to heart talks with the Israeli government. It also changed the pattern of our behavior as to what kind of information was shared with them. And I believe we came to some sort of informal agreement with Israel, although that is not documented and it's not formalized in the treaty. We need to do that with Russia. We need to make it very clear this is something we're not going to tolerate particularly when we're paying the bill for a portion of their recovery.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Bereuter, what's your view? Do you think this justifies what Sen. Brown says, which is a complete reassessment of our relationship with the new Russia?

REP. BEREUTER: No, I don't. It's a serious matter. It's a grave compromise of our security, counterintelligence really of major magnitude. But no one in the intelligence community was surprised that the Russians are spying on us, and no one at top levels of the American government are surprised that the Russians are spying on us. But we have to focus on really is trying to correct the counterintelligence failures we had at such a crucial level in the Central Intelligence Agency. I do think --

MR. LEHRER: In other words, the fact that this guy got away with this since 1985 and bought all these fancy -- the big house and the car and all of that, and nobody noticed.

REP. BEREUTER: As a matter of fact, the FBI has been asking for additional authority in cases of national security to begin to investigate certain kinds of credit and financial transactions. That is requested before the Banking Committee and at this point in the Judiciary Committee it hasn't been granted. I suspect we ought to take a better look at that.

MR. LEHRER: You mean, you think they could have found these transactions, you mean, with the Swiss bank accounts of Ames?

REP. BEREUTER: I think when you have compiled $455,000 worth of charges on a credit card in a relatively short period of time that might catch your attention along with the other major bank transactions which could have then been investigated. But let me just say that I think that we really need to focus on correcting the difficulties we have. The Senator's proposal may, in fact, help calm the water, because I can hear the rancorous type of debate we have when we bring another foreign operation bill to the floor for foreign assistance. Unless we have some steps that the Secretary of State began to make today, unless we begin to have some political kind of actions in addition to correcting our problems in the Central Intelligence Agency, it certainly will damage our relations with Russia and the other republics of the former Soviet Union.

MR. LEHRER: If we continue down the DeConcini line, you mean, that road?

REP. BEREUTER: I think his step or suggestion is helpful because it is an evidence that we're going to take in a reassessment, but it also, I think, helped calm the waters so that we don't do great damage to the most important security relationship we have in the world right now, and that's with the former Soviet Union, especially Russia.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman, you said that the people in the highest levels of the U.S. government were not surprised to learn that Russia was spying on us, but I think I speak for a lot of the rank and file Americans who were surprised. We thought this thing was over with the Cold War. Why -- and various heads of the CIA have had trips back and forth, there's all this kind of thing cooperating on narcotics and all of that. Why, explain to us why we shouldn't be surprised.

REP. BEREUTER: Of course, we're shocked that this failure existed within the Central Intelligence Agency. It's probably the worst we've ever had, but countries to conduct espionage against each other. Friendly countries conduct espionage against the United States much to our dismay, and our, our leaders would be crippled without gathering intelligence. I do think it's possible for us to reach some sort of an accommodation with the Russians in light of what's happened to begin to reduce the kind of activities which we conduct against each other, but to believe that there's going to be an end to espionage conducted by Russians against us I think is naive. I do hope that we have some better control evidence from President Yeltsin and his own intelligence mechanisms, because that relationship is quite unclear.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Glickman, do you agree that it's just naive to think we're going to be able to stop espionage between the United States and Russia?

REP. GLICKMAN: For the time being, I do. I wish I could say otherwise, but as I said, I mean, we've got things we've got to watch them. They've got thousands of nuclear warheads. The potential to deliver those warheads is still there or sell 'em around the world. So we're going to have to continue to monitor that. And as I said, we have a lot of terrorism that is emanating from the southern ranks, but I do think that we ought to sit down with them in the aftermath of this and try to talk about ways to reducing the amount of espionage. And I might also point out that I do believe that since the demise of the Soviet Union, the bulk of it has been reduced. There is still too much coming from their side. But our goal ought to be to try to reduce espionage everywhere in the world, but I am not so naive to believe that these other governments aren't doing it to us.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. Brown, do you think it's possible in this new environment, whatever -- everybody has a different view of what the new environment means -- but is it possible to sit down with Russia now and say, look, you either stop the following kinds of espionage that we know you are doing, or we're going to start, we're not going to give you as much money, we're not going to do this, we're not going to do that, is that the kind of thing that you think should be done now?

SEN. BROWN: I think you're going to see that. I believe the President will follow up in that regard and make it clear to Russia that this kind of activity is unacceptable. The real damage here is the enormous euphoria Americans feel, warmth towards the Russian citizens, an eagerness for closer contacts with an interest in their well being and enthusiasm to help them out. And that's -- we've had cold water thrown in our face. The real impact of this is kind of bringing us back to the reality of the real world that, that we still have to be a bit on our guard. But I think you're going to see in the months ahead the administration move in quiet negotiations to get some new ground rules for our relationship. And I think it will exclude this kind of thing. Let me also differentiate between the espionage and the information gathering. Espionage is a much broader term that implies a great deal more than simply gathering information. If someone says we're going to get information about each other, my guess is everyone would say, sure, that will go on, but espionage, I hope, is something that's going to be curtailed.

MR. LEHRER: Sen. DeConcini, let me ask you, what is it that the Russians -- we know what we want about -- Congressman Glickman just outlined the problems there, the internal turmoil that could result in all kinds of problems. We have -- we had a "legitimate need" to gather intelligence about that part of the world, the Russian part of the world. What is it that the Russians want here?

SEN. DeCONCINI: Well, let me just give you some hypotheticals of things that they might very well be interested in. I think they would be very interested in knowing what kind of conditions are discussed at the State Department and at the White House on potential economic and foreign assistance that would go to them. I think they'd like to know what the thinking is behind it, what kind of conditions are they going to have to meet, what can they do politically and posturing themselves to negate or to minimize those things. I do want to mention that I think Sen. Brown points out the severity of this. If you assume the worst, as you must under these sort of circumstances, the worst is that this man Ames disclosed everything that he had access to and probably more. And then if you assume the second worst, that when that has happened in the past with the Soviet Union, people have been summarily executed once they've been identified. And so if that is what has occurred here -- and I believe that probably will be confirmed through the assessment of damage and what have you -- then we have a very serious matter on our hands, that people have been executed because they were employed, in essence, by the United States. And we cannot just accept it saying, well you do it, I do it, particularly when you are now a partner with them in their economic development and their democratization.

MR. LEHRER: Congressman Bereuter, what do you think about that?

REP. BEREUTER: Well, I think that's absolutely a valid point. I would go for another point to suggest that during this period of time when we had so much turmoil inside the Kremlin we were sort of blinded because of the compromise of our intelligence operations by what happened by one man in the Central Intelligence Agency. And during that period of time we were not receiving information we needed. Beyond that, perhaps we were receiving disinformation. But at a period of time when the Soviet Union was collapsing and turmoil and the formation of Russia and the other republics, we were blind-sided to some extent. And our assessments will have to look at to what extent our, our operations were compromised and disinformation was used against us.

MR. LEHRER: In other words, some major decisions might have been made over the past -- since 1985 -- that were based on bad information?

REP. BEREUTER: That's very possible.

MR. LEHRER: Yeah. Is it probable?

REP. BEREUTER: I think it's probable. We've had difficulty understanding what happens in the Kremlin, even as we had changes in leadership in the Kremlin. It's hard to trace. It's hard to anticipate, and when our personnel were compromised, our operations in the whole Soviet Union, a large part of the crucial ones, and that's potentially what happened here, then, of course, we were at a great disadvantage. It was fortunate that matters didn't turn out for the worst.

MR. LEHRER: But what -- can you imagine that meeting that all of you all are suggesting when the, the leaders of the U.S. government sit down with the leaders of the Russian government and say, okay, now no more of this, Russians, no more, if you have any more CIA guys on your payroll, tell us about it, and let's get this thing over with, and they say, fine, do you have any of our folks on your payroll, you tell us about them, and we'll clear the bill. I can't imagine that happening, can you?

REP. BEREUTER: Well, it's worth trying, but I suspect everybody's going to have their fingers crossed behind their back and suggest that it's not going to happen.

MR. LEHRER: I'm sorry. Who was talking there?

SEN. DeCONCINI: I was just saying I don't think that's going to happen. I think what you have to do is address the particular issue before you. And the issue is here is Mr. Ames, and you need to get the Russian government and their intelligence people to help us confirm what the damage is, just how much information did they receive from him so we know how to correct the problem here. That's what we want primarily here, and also to get some public statements that they're not going to do it, realizing they very well might continue in some aspect or some time in the future.

REP. GLICKMAN: And Jim, one other thing which Doug Bereuter says, we need to focus on internal management failures in the Intelligence Community to figure out why and how this was allowed to occur for such a long period of time when they have mechanisms like polygraph tests and personality profiles that are supposed to check this kind of behavior.

SEN. BROWN: I agree with the Congressman.

MR. LEHRER: I hear you. Okay. We have to leave it there, gentlemen. I'm sorry, Sen. Brown, but thank you all four very much.

MS. WARNER: Still ahead on the NewsHour, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, and a conversation about hunger. NEWSMAKER

MS. WARNER: Next tonight, a Newsmaker interview with the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic. Sarajevo remained peaceful today as Russian troops continued patrolling with other U.N. peacekeeping forces in and around the capital. On the diplomatic front, Russian President Boris Yeltsin called for a big power summit to resolve the Bosnian crisis, and the Bosnian Serbs' two opponents, the Muslim-led government and the Croats, signed a separate cease-fire. Mr. Karadzic spoke to us this afternoon before that truce was announced. He was in the city of Pale outside Sarajevo.

MS. WARNER: Hello, Mr. Karadzic. Thank you for joining us.

RADOVAN KARADZIC, Bosnian Serb Leader: Thank you for the opportunity to talk to the American.

MS. WARNER: I'd like to start by exploring with you what impact you think this new active role by these big powers, namely the Americans and the Russians is having on the situation in Bosnia. First on the ground, what role do you think the Russian troops are going to play? Do you see them there as protectors of the Serbs?

MR. KARADZIC: Well, not really. We didn't need them to protect us, but we need the United Nations forces, some that we could trust. And it happened that we can trust Russians in the United Nations framework, and they are going to be under UN command. We do not need Russians to make any advantage to us. We do not need advantages. We just want somebody reliable that Muslims are not going to take advantage out of that action of removal of weaponry.

MS. WARNER: So do you expect them to act any differently than any other peacekeeping troops in UN command?

MR. KARADZIC: No, I don't think they will act differently. We rely also upon Gen. Rose of Great Britain, and he is an excellent officer. And he is going to command to the Russians too.

MS. WARNER: Now then turning to the negotiating table, the peace talks, what role do you think the Russians are going to play there? How will their new involvement change the atmosphere or dynamics of the peace talks do you think?

MR. KARADZIC: Well, I'm afraid that Russians are just to press Serbs since Americans are expected to press Muslims, so I don't think they are going to protect Serbian interests, but I do think that nothing could happen without Russians or without Americans, two of the greatest powers, and they have to help us to stop this war.

MS. WARNER: So are you feeling pressure now already from the Russians to make certain concessions at the peace talks? Is that what you're saying?

MR. KARADZIC: Well, during all these negotiations Russians have been trying to pursue us to give more territory for the Muslims, so I don't think they are biased, but we need them for the balance of the approach to this, to this conflict.

MS. WARNER: Now turning to the American role, do you see the Americans as at the peace talks acting as the defenders and protectors of the Bosnian government, or do you expect the Americans to pressure the Bosnians, as you've just referred to?

MR. KARADZIC: So far, American administration, even previous administration, was purely biased in the favor of Muslim side. Now so far they have been also biased, but they should appear to be impartial right now. I don't know how they are going to be biased and impartial at the same time, but anyway, I do think they will now press Muslim side more in favor of peace not in favor of the war. Honestly speaking, some people from American administration have encouraged Muslims to go on with fight so far. I do hope that Americans will be now for peace.

MS. WARNER: Have you seen any evidence yet that the Americans have changed their positions at the talks and are now pressing the Bosnian government?

MR. KARADZIC: No, I did not, but I know that Muslim prime minister is in Washington, and will he take some instructions I suppose. I will tell you if the International Community wanted this war to stop, it would stop far before this moment, and if America has decided right now to stop the war and Russia has decided to stop the war, we can stop the war within few weeks.

MS. WARNER: Let me ask you about the NATO ultimatum around Sarajevo. Do you think that still stands? Do you think that NATO and the U.S. are still resolved to carry out the threat of air strikes if there should be some -- if the Serbs should break the condition of the ultimatum?

MR. KARADZIC: Well, we always have taken those threats very seriously but not because of our behavior but because of the internal troubles of NATO. You know very well that there was no reason for the threats against the Serbs, since Serbs did not make this massacre in the market place. It was done by the Muslims. Governments in NATO knew the truth, but they wanted to scare Serbs and to threaten small community of one million, five hundred thousand people. I don't understand how NATO is doing that.

MS. WARNER: So, Mr. Karadzic, you're saying that you believe NATO knew for a fact that the Bosnians launched that attack on their own people and still went ahead with this ultimatum?

MR. KARADZIC: I am positive, since there is existing a UN report on that matter, and the French television have published it, so NATO could have known the truth if they had been interested in it.

MS. WARNER: Well, Mr. Karadzic, the UN investigation found that it was a mortar attack; they simply could not determine from exactly where it came. I don't know the existence of any report that justifies or supports your view that it was definitely the Bosnians.

MR. KARADZIC: You are talking about public report, but I'm talking about a secret report that was unveiled by French television.

MS. WARNER: I see. Well, let me get back to the role of the Americans and the Russians, and NATO here. Now, President Yeltsin today called for a meeting, a summit meeting of world leaders, himself, President Clinton, and three other European leaders. What could a summit like that do that your talks in Geneva can't?

MR. KARADZIC: Well, this is much higher level, and I do think that this crisis may end also with an international treaty, not only with agreement of three warring sides. On the basis of agreement of three warring sides, there should be an international treaty, and we do need Russia and America, and European Union, or at least France, England, and Germany in it, because we are making obviously new borders of a new reformed state, and we need treaty that would guarantee new borders.

MS. WARNER: But why can't this arrangement be done simply by the parties? I understand your point that in terms of guaranteeing the borders, you need the larger powers, but what is it that at a summit like this could be arrived at that you can't do in Geneva?

MR. KARADZIC: Well, I think all of us need somebody to pursue us to accept a new situation. And the Muslims are very ambitious to control the whole Bosnia. I think we need bigger international framework to settle down new situation. First of all, we need to make a state for the Muslims, then to resolve Serbian-Croatian dispute, which is much bigger than it is Bosnia, and there will be new international borders here, and we do need big powers to guarantee it.

MS. WARNER: And as you point out, Americans will be expected to be part or supply some of the peacekeeping troops for that operation. Do you think that American peacekeepers on the ground would be special targets in any way, would be in more danger than other peacekeepers once an agreement has been reached, and they came?

MR. KARADZIC: Well, not really. As you may know, Serbia and America have a hundred and twenty years of very good relations, and we have been always allies. I could not imagine Serbian soldiers fighting weaponry against Americans, but I do not -- I think that we do not need too many foreign troops once we sign peace and new boundaries, we do not need too many troops except some military observers. But we do need guarantees from America and from Russia.

MS. WARNER: Mr. Karadzic, let me ask you a couple of specifics right now on where these negotiations are going. One of the things being talked about now by the United States government and also by the Bosnians is the possibility of a Bosnian-Croat confederation which would not include the Serbs within Bosnia. How would you react to that? Would you support something like that?

MR. KARADZIC: Provided that their own agreement is not -- on Serbia of course, we have nothing against their own agreement to be thesame state or to make federation. Simply, we don't want to accept Muslim domination, and we have our separate state that is functioning already two years, and we would be happy if Muslims and Croats stop their own fights and find some common solution.

MS. WARNER: So you don't mind at all if the Serbian state is separate but the Bosnian and Croat entities are joined in some arrangement?

MR. KARADZIC: Not at all. We would be happy if they reached an agreement as soon as possible.

MS. WARNER: Now a year ago when you were on this program, you said that your Serbian, your Bosnian Serb state wanted to stay in a confederation within Bosnia and did not want to join Serbia for a Greater Serbia. Is that still the case, or have you changed your intentions?

MR. KARADZIC: Well, that was at the beginning. We have had much lower ambitions at the beginning, but since we had two years of the war, we simply see that it's impossible to save any Bosnia as a state, so the most natural would be Bosnian Croats to join Croatia and Bosnian Serbs to join Serbia or to be in very close relations with Serbia.

MS. WARNER: Let me finally ask you two or three things about the situation on the ground. This weekend you said that if what happened in Sarajevo was successful, the model could be extended and expanded to cover other areas of Bosnia. Are the Bosnian Serbs ready to lift the siege of other Bosnian town such as Srbrenica? Are you ready to let the airport at Tuzla be reopened?

MR. KARADZIC: Well, that would be very dangerous. Who would guarantee the safety of our people? Our civilians would be killed. But once we make peace arrangement, we would be ready for any, any arrangement. Concerning Tuzla airport, we are ready to think it over and to negotiate it. The only concern of ours would be if these airports would be used for armament of Bosnian Muslims. Then the opening of these airports would last this war longer, so we need a good control of these airports and all airports, Tuzla, Banja Luka, and Mostar, should be opened the same day.

MS. WARNER: And if the NATO ultimatum were expanded, the threat of air strikes were expanded to cover some of these other Bosnian towns, would that change your mind?

MR. KARADZIC: Well, neither this time we accepted a NATO ultimatum, that was agreement and proposal from President Yeltsin. We are a small community, and we shouldn't be threatened by NATO at all, and NATO is illegal to make any ultimatum out of the boundaries of NATO nations. United Nations should keep a leading role, and we are dealing only with United Nations.

MS. WARNER: I see. So it would make no difference to you if there were another NATO ultimatum?

MR. KARADZIC: No. We would not accept any ultimatum. We are dealing only with United Nations, and United Nations are not making ultimatum; they are negotiating with us.

MS. WARNER: Well, thank you, Mr. Karadzic, for joining us. CONVERSATION - SOS

MR. LEHRER: Finally tonight, a conversation about fighting hunger. Charlayne Hunter-Gault has more.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: For 13 years, Billy Shore was the ultimate political handler. He helped run the campaigns and offices of Gary Hart and Sen. Bob Kerrey. But last fall, Shore took on a different persona, starring in television ads about hunger.

BILLY SHORE: Children under weight, possibly under-sized in this country, there's just no excuse for that kind of tragedy.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The ads talked about American Express's support of a nonprofit hunger organization called Share Our Strength. Shore founded SOS ten years ago to raise money to fight hunger. It was an unusual effort for an unconventional approach. Each year, for example, SOS hosts an event called "Taste of the Nation." Chefs all across the country donate food and their time to help raise money for hunger. SOS also publishes books by authors who contribute their work to the hunger cause. I recently spoke with Shore about his methods and his particular madness in his Washington office.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Billy Shore, thank you for joining us. You are known or were known as the quintessential Washington insider, and yet, you left all of that world inside politics and got involved in, in hunger, and it was an emotion, I read. Tell me a little about it.

BILLY SHORE, Share our Strength: Well, it was really an impulse, I guess, more than anything else. I had worked on the Hill for about seven or eight years at that point in late 1984. I had worked for Gary Hart for all that time. I was kind of an insider and not an insider. I had only worked for one person, had only worked in one person's campaign, so I wasn't going to go political consultant, although I was steeped in the ways of Washington. But after Hart's 1984 Democratic nomination race, I decided to -- we spent a little bit of time just reflecting about what I was going to do next. I knew that I was going to continue to work for him, and at the same time, there was a terrible famine going on in Ethiopia. And there was -- and then there was an article in the Washington Post that was significant mostly to me for what it made me feel. It said something like 200,000 were going to die that summer in Ethiopia, and I started to think about it. And the first thing that I realized was that I had a thought of my own for the first time in five or six years, and it just seemed to me kind of shocking that this would be in the paper, and there would be nothing else about it, nothing in the news, no follow-up the next day, and I thought there might be an opportunity, again, just feeling myself, well, what does this mean that I feel so strongly about this, I thought there might be an opportunity to try and put together an effort that incorporates creative people, motivates them, serves as a catalyst for them getting involved. I mean, not all that different really from starting a grassroots presidential campaign. A lot of those same skills ended up being incorporated in the building of our organization.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Now tell me what the approach is and how you decided to go that way with it. I mean, why not just send a check to a hunger relief effort?

BILLY SHORE: The initial idea was that there'd be a real logical connection between the restaurant and food service industry and this country and an issue like hunger relief, whether it was overseas or here in the United States. And that's what I started to think about when I saw the numbers of people who were victims of famine overseas, is that boy, there must be some, there must be some community, some industry, some group of people in the United States who would really feel connected to this issue more than just the kind of professional hunger community. And I thought about the restaurant and food service industry, because they're people who make their livelihoods from food, they're connected to it. They know how important it is. And in a way, it was a hunch, but it turned out to, I think, really result in something. I mean, we tapped into a group of people who really did want to get something back to the community and just needed to be shown a way how.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, I read somewhere it was described as an impassioned, impoverished idea that went from being just that to something very successful. Briefly, describe to me the process. What did you do? You called people up and said, hey, people are dying in Ethiopia, and collected some food, or what?

BILLY SHORE: Well, the first thing we did was actually we were trying to raise funds to send overseas, and we started to write letters to people, and we didn't get a big response initially. Finally, Alice Waters, the chef out in California who's very well known for her innovative cooking, she sent us $500, and a note saying, "Let me know what else I can do to help." And we immediately asked her to start sending letters instead of me which turned out to be a lot more effective. And we started to hear from some of the most prominent people in the food service community. The idea was really to find a group of opinion leaders, again, not just kind of nonprofit organizers or social workers, but a group of opinion leaders in the food industry who would reach out to others, who would reach out to that next kind of concentric circle, and then that circle reach out to the next, and build an organization.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And send money?

BILLY SHORE: And to send money. That's how we started. It subsequently evolved into getting them to participate in, in a more "hands on" and participatory way, but the real idea was that that community would respond to this issue.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: I've also seen it described as an intersection of altruism and self-interest. Now, tell me how that -- explain that to me.

BILLY SHORE: We very much try and find what we call an intersection between private interest and public interest. The idea, for example, with the restaurant and the food service industry is to have them get something out of their participation as well, whether it's more exposure, and more visibility, public relations, I think that's fine, as long as we're finding a way for them to contribute.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So you then switched your focus to the United States. How big is the problem here?

BILLY SHORE: Well, we've discovered that it's a big problem. And it's actually gotten worse probably almost every year for the last five or six years. It's starting to get a little bit better now with the new administration, but most people in this country when they think of hunger, they think of, they almost always equate it with a person they see -- a homeless person they see on the sidewalk, somebody they see at a subway stop who is panhandling for money. And you realize the problem is so much deeper than that both in terms of statistical evidence and just anecdotal evidence. You know, there's twenty-seven and a half million Americans on food stamps now, more than 10 percent of the population for the first time in American history, and that's a lot of people, almost none of whom are homeless. I mean, homeless people typically don't get food stamps, don't have an address, and are transient, and so forth. So when you realize boy, there's more than 10 percent of the population on food stamps, meaning they need food assistance, and surveys that show twenty to thirty million Americans applying for private food assistance above and beyond that, hundreds of soup kitchens and food banks and pantries and so forth, you realize it's --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Many of them children.

BILLY SHORE: Many of them children. You know, we don't have kids starving to death in the United States on the streets, in the fields, and so forth, as you see in other countries, but we've got kids who are not growing properly, who are literally turning out to be damaged physically, mentally, and neurologically, and most people don't realize that.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So tell me the programs that you developed to address some of these things, starting with, well, was the Writers' Harvest one of the first, or was it the Taste of the Nation?

BILLY SHORE: Yeah. Taste of the Nation probably came first, and the idea was to find a vehicle, a participatory event which the food service industry could really get involved. And this event consists of about six to eight thousand of the best chefs in the United States who will get together and put on the food and wine benefits. We weren't the first to invent food and wine benefits, and they don't -- you know, they won't end with us either, but we were the first, in effect, to try and organize them all around the country at the same time and on a really broad scale. We do about 120 of them in 1994. The event last year raised $3.5 million after all expenses. So we give away 100 percent of that. And we're the - - I think we're the only organization that does such a thing, so it makes us very popular both with the people who come because they know that 100 percent of their ticket price is going to a good cause and to the chefs who donated an enormous amount. And what you realize is that a chef who comes to this dinner probably spends between nine hundred and fifteen hundred dollars on that night bringing the food and so forth. Everything is donated. It's easier to get somebody to do that than it is to get them to send us $125 once a year. They feel connected to it. They really feel like they're doing something. I mean, all of us get hit up for so much direct mail and different solicitations, and, you know, you can put a check in the mail and send it to an organization that you don't have any other contact with, and we really don't know what's being done with it.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You also involve writers, the Writers' Harvest. Is that -- how does that work?

BILLY SHORE: Well, same kind of thing. We involve writers in two ways really. One is we publish a number of anthologies from different publishers around the country, Random House and Harcourt Brace and Harper Collins. We have writers donate their work to us.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You get them to write things specifically?

BILLY SHORE: Yeah.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You commissioned them to do these things?

BILLY SHORE: Well, we ask them to write, to donate original writing to us. For example, we do a volume of short stories called Louder Than Words. And, again, the psychology of this is very interesting to me. Ann Tyler, who won a Pulitzer Prize, lives in Baltimore nearby here. She gave us a short story for one of our anthologies that we first sold to the Ladies Home Journal I think for $4500, and then included in a book, we get, you know, magazine rights on them too.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is it about sad things, or homeless people, or hungry people?

BILLY SHORE: No. It's just give us your best story.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Good story.

BILLY SHORE: It's give us your best story. But if I had called Ann Tyler and I'd asked her to send me a check for $4500, I don't think it would have been a very long conversation even though she's incredibly generous. I was a complete stranger, but she loved the idea of writing a story.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: I read somewhere that you said you said or somebody described it as people waiting to be exploited.

BILLY SHORE: People waiting to be exploited. God, I hope I didn't say that, but I think --

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But it was in the most positive way.

BILLY SHORE: Yeah. I think people are waiting to be tapped. I think people are waiting to be shown a way which they can contribute through what they do.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Can you tell me a little more about that.

BILLY SHORE: I've been thinking about it a lot actually, and I don't really have all the answers yet. I mean, I know that from somebody who was in politics for a long time like myself I know that politics is increasingly an avenue which I think people don't see as accessible to them. It's become captured by professional political consultants, and really almost like a political elite, if you will. I think the average person who once would get involved politically now thinks that that avenue is not open to them. So I think, you know, people are looking for a way to get involved.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: How do you respond to people who say that this kind of glitzy show is almost obscene, given the nature of the problem that you're addressing?

BILLY SHORE: A couple ways I guess -- I don't really think it's all that glitzy. I mean, we've got about 70,000 contributors around the country who contribute on the average thirty-five to forty-five dollars. Some of our events and activities cost more in the hundred dollar range. Most of them are in the thirty, forty-five dollar range. So there's nothing really glitzy about that. But fundamentally, you know, I always think of the bank robber Willie Sutton, who when he was asked why he robbed banks, he said, "That's where the money is." And the reason that we go to people with resources is because that's -- whether it's individuals or large companies, who we also work with, that's where the resources are to solve this problem.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So what impact do you think your effort is making, and how do you keep people engaged if you say that I think that's been one of the traditional problems that people look and they see that the problem is so complex that it's almost so overwhelming that they end up doing nothing, I mean, how do you keep that from happening?

BILLY SHORE: You put your finger on what I think for us is the end game. I mean, our impact is on a couple levels. One is we know we're getting food to a lot of people. We know we're getting a lot of kids enrolled in the school breakfast program who previously weren't enrolled. We know that we're getting a lot of kids seen by clinics who need to see kids suffering from malnutrition. So at that level, we know that we're having an impact. The most important thing though that can result from our work is twofold: One is we can get a lot more creative people from all walks of life beyond just government and kind of the social work sector involved in this cause. We can show people that there's a role for everybody and a way that they can give back to their community. You know, there's a lot of issues that don't lend themselves to that, but I think hunger does.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Well, Billy Shore, thank you for being with us. RECAP

MS. WARNER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday, President Clinton resisted calls to postpone U.S. aid to Russia because a CIA officer allegedly spied from Moscow. Mr. Clinton said it was in America's best interest to help democratic reform in Russia, and Bosnia's Muslim and Croat leaders agreed to a cease-fire that will take effect on Friday. On the NewsHour, Bosnia's Serb leader said he would not object to a confederation between Bosnia's Muslim and Croat areas as part of an overall peace agreement. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Margaret. We'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you, and good night.