The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, the Kosovo conflict's many developments -- we have full coverage of the military and the growing diplomatic parts of the story -- plus a Betty Ann Bowser look at the Colorado shooting's effect on schools elsewhere, and on the occasion of the Japanese prime minister's visit to the US, a Paul Solman report on Japan's troubled economy. It all follows our summary of the news this Monday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Diplomatic talk about ending the bombing dominated the Kosovo news today. Russian envoy Victor Chernomyrdin brought a message to President Clinton from President Yeltsin; Jesse Jackson brought another from Yugoslav President Milosevic. He got it while arranging the release of three US Army POW's. President Clinton held separate White House meetings with Chernomyrdin and Jackson late this afternoon. Before that, the President said NATO military operations will continue. He spoke at a joint news conference with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Obuchi.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Three Americans are home. Their families, their friends, and the American people whom they have served faithfully must be grateful. But nearly one and a half million Kosovars are not home. In fact, two days ago, as our prayers for our soldiers were being answered, Serbian soldiers were entering the Kosovar town of Prizren, going door to door ordering everyone to leave or be killed. In a few hours, all 10000 who lived there were forced to flee. When will these people see their homes again, with the safety and rights, Mr. Milosevic has often pledged but never delivered? Remember what is going on in Kosovo is part of a decade-long policy of ethnic and religious subjugation and cleansing, involving expulsion, destruction of records and symbols of history and culture and ultimately, rape and murder. Our air campaign cannot stop until Mr. Milosevic shows he is ready to end the nightmare for the people of Kosovo.

JIM LEHRER: We'll have much more on Kosovo developments right after this News Summary. Mr. Clinton also said at the news conference he was prepared to keep Japanese steel out of US markets. He said Japan had to reduce its steel exports to levels set prior to the Asian economic crisis. We'll have more on Japan's economy later in the program tonight. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached another benchmark, closing over 11,000 for the first time, at 11,014 after a gain of 225 points. In Colorado today, Columbine High School students returned to classes, but at another nearby school. Columbine remains a crime scene two weeks after two students killed 12 others, a teacher, and themselves. The Columbine students were welcomed today with balloons and banners. Eight to ten friends of the two killers were told they were not welcome and would be assigned tutors, according to sheriff's spokesman Steve Davis.

STEVE DAVIS: We, the Sheriff's Office, did not exclude them from going into school. I think what happened was we advised the school of who the close friends and associates appear to be and then the school made a determination to ask them to seek their education elsewhere.

JIM LEHRER: Davis also said a 22-year-old man was arrested and charged with supplying a handgun to a minor. He allegedly sold or gave a semiautomatic pistol to the students who did the shootings. We'll have more on the story later in the program tonight. And that's it for the News Summary. Now it's on to our extensive coverage of Kosovo war developments, the Colorado shootings impact on other schools, and Japan's economic troubles.

FOCUS - CAMPAIGN FOR KOSOVO

JIM LEHRER: Tom Bearden begins our Kosovo coverage.

TOM BEARDEN: The three American soldiers had a joyous reunion with their families at an American air base in Germany. Medical examinations revealed that Staff Sergeant Andrew Ramirez of Los Angeles has two fractured ribs, and Staff Sergeant Christopher Stone of Smiths Creek, Michigan, has a fractured nose among other minor injuries.

SPOKESMAN: I think it's hard to judge right now. We know that one has had some stitches. One appears to have a leg problem. One has some bruises. But I don't think we know enough yet about the circumstances of when they got these and how they were treated. That's one of the things that will come out as the investigation continues.

TOM BEARDEN: The Clinton administration said NATO would not release either of the two Yugoslavian prisoners captured by the Kosovo Liberation Army at this time. The air campaign had a dramatic impact on the average citizen last night when most of Serbia was plunged into darkness. Serb engineers said NATO planes dropped bombs that rained graphite on power stations in Obrenovac and Kostolac. Graphite conducts electricity, and when dropped on a switching facility such as this one seen in file footage, it causes massive short circuits.

SPOKESMAN: The fact that the lights went out across 70 percent of the country, I think, shows that NATO has its finger on the light switch in Yugoslavia now, and we can turn the power off whenever we need to and whenever we want to. And we can use this to severely disrupt, degrade, diminish the capacity of the Yugoslav armed forces to operate over long periods of time; delay their ability to repair the essential power systems, and of course, by disrupting in this way, the integrated air defense, improve the safety of our pilots flying over Yugoslavia.

TOM BEARDEN: Three more NATO strikes caused civilian casualties over the weekend and into today. Serbian media reported that a NATO bomb struck this bus near the city of Pec in Western Kosovo. Reports are that least twenty people were killed and ten injured. NATO Spokesman General Walter Gertz:

GENERAL WALTER GERTZ: I too have seen the reports. I have read them. But I do have no information on if that's true or not. So I will have to come back you again until we find it out. So far it's only in the press.

TOM BEARDEN: NATO did acknowledge that a stray missile struck another bus at Luzane, north of Pristina, on Saturday. Serb sources said 39 people, many of them children, were killed. And NATO missiles hit a residential area 400 yards away from an ammunition factory in the town of Valjevo, about 60 miles southwest of Belgrade. Forty homes were destroyed in the town of about 80,000 inhabitants, and a hospital was damaged. More than a dozen people were reported injured. The refugees streaming out of Kosovo have gone from freezing to sweltering. British forces warned that soaring temperatures mean new health threats in the desperately overcrowded camps in Macedonia and Albania. Serb forces sent three trainloads of people to Blace, Macedonia, last night, and this morning, part of a group of some 16,000 people who backed up the main border crossing.

SPOKESMAN: They are exhausted. They did not have food, they did not have water, they didn't rest, they didn't sleep. They were hiding and moving, hiding and moving for six weeks. And then yesterday evening they were forced on the train by the police in Pristina and sent over here.

SPOKESPERSON: This is actually the first time that we have seen such a large number of women that have been separated from their husbands and sons, and it seems that most of the men between 16 and 60 were taken and held, and it is unclear what has happened to them. The women also claim that they were beaten together with their men before they were separated.

TOM BEARDEN: NATO reported that the opposite happened to a group of people from Prizren in Southern Kosovo.

SPOKESMAN: We are concerned by reports from many refugees that at the border, the Serb police have separated women and children from the men. And interestingly, this time it is the men that have been allowed to move on, and the women and children who have been sent back -- in other words, the most vulnerable are those who are being forced to suffer the most.

TOM BEARDEN: On a tour in Macedonia, Prime Minister Tony Blair said Britain would double its aid to Macedonia to help that country cope with the refugees. Blair made the comments after meeting with British troops providing humanitarian aid.

TONY BLAIR: We are here for a very clear purpose, and that purpose is to be part of an operation that is going to prevent the ethnic cleansing, the racial genocide, the appalling acts of evil brutality that have been carried out against defenseless people in Kosovo just a short distance away from here.

TOM BEARDEN: NATO is feverishly constructing more camps, and said it planned to build space for another 160,000 Kosovo refugees. The Reverend Jesse Jackson arrived back in Washington this afternoon, fresh from his successful mission to free the US POW's. He spoke with reporters at Andrews Air Force Base.

REV. JESSE JACKSON: We are on the right side of history as we seek to stop the purging, the cleansing, we have the moral high ground as a nation. We must keep it. A Nintendo bloodless war leaves us without guilt. These bombs have also accidentally hit Bulgaria and Greece, which underlines the danger. We must not allow Milosevic to continue the expulsion in Kosovo. It is morally wrong. They still deserve our support. Demonization is a psychological warfare. We demonize Milosevic. They demonize President Clinton, and while there is no moral equivalent, the cycle of demonization must stop.

TOM BEARDEN: Jackson was asked about criticism that he was meddling in foreign affairs.

REV. JESSE JACKSON: I am an American. I have the right to speak within the law to matters of my world. We left our nation. And we were advised that we were urged not to go but we had a right to go. We left -- told that when we went we were in harm's way; bombs would drop. Bombs did drop. We saw them out of our hotel windows. And, yet, we were able to return to our nation and now go and meet our President. That's what makes America great. Furthermore, I cannot think of any American with a sense of care and moral legitimacy who would hope the boys would still be in jail. Without our support, they would still be in jail.

TOM BEARDEN: Reverend Jackson is scheduled to meet with President Clinton this evening and present him with a letter from Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

JIM LEHRER: Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin arrived at the White House earlier this afternoon, supposedly carrying a letter for Mr. Clinton from Russian President Yeltsin. It was said to have proposals for ending the Kosovo conflict. The Senate was also busy today debating how to achieve that goal. Kwame Holman has this report.

KWAME HOLMAN: Speaking on behalf of ten Senators from both parties, Arizona Republican John McCain brought to the floor a resolution authorizing President Clinton to use all necessary force in the battle for Kosovo.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: If Senators believe this war is worth fighting, then recognize that the President should exercise the authority vested in his office to use the power of the United States effectively, to achieve victory as quickly as possible.

KWAME HOLMAN: But even as he argued to grant the president expanded authority, McCain criticized Mr. Clinton for his handling of the Kosovo crisis today.

SEN. JOHN McCAIN: Publicly and repeatedly ruling out ground troops may be smart politics according to the President's pollster. But it is inexcusably irresponsible leadership.

KWAME HOLMAN: West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd, long the protector of legislative rights, argued against giving the President blanket authority to fight the war.

SEN. ROBERTY BYRD: If we were to adopt this resolution, we would be essentially committing the United States to pay an undetermined amount of money for an unknown period of time to finance an uncertain and open-ended military offensive. Mr. President, that, by any standard, is not sound policy.

KWAME HOLMAN: Minnesota Democrat Paul Wellstone also opposed the resolution and instead called for a temporary halt to NATO bombing to give diplomatic efforts a chance to work.

PAUL WELLSTONE: A brief and verifiable halt in the bombing, a cessation of what seems to be the slide toward the bombing of a broader array of military targets, a potential oil embargo and deeper involvement in a war that I believe we could come to regret.

KWAME HOLMAN: Republican Senators Specter and Lugar debated the logic of giving the President broader authority when both believe the President has not shown adequate leadership.

SEN. ARLEN SPECTER: Why is it sensible to, in effect, give the President a blank check when he's not asked for the resources and where he is not-- he has not demonstrated any capability to exercise leadership to effectively carry out that broad grant of authority?

SEN. RICHARD LUGAR: The President clearly hasn't asked for the authority or the arms or whatever he needs. And we're saying he needs to do that. He needs to rapidly. And we cannot sit around and simply wish that he did so and then lament that he failed to. We have a responsible to act along with him. I hope and pray that he will do that.

KWAME HOLMAN: However, the senate is expected to avoid for now the issue of granting the President of expanded authority and vote tomorrow to postpone indefinitely any further consideration of Senator McCain's resolution.

JIM LEHRER: At his news conference with the Japanese prime minister, President Clinton fielded several questions about war and diplomacy in Yugoslavia. He was asked if he was seeking total victory or flexible negotiations.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: First of all, let me say, I don't think you can characterize it as total victory. That is not what I am asking for. What I am asking for are the minimal conditions necessary for the Kosovars to be able to go home and live in security with self-government. That is, they won't go home unless the Serbian security forces are withdrawn. And they won't go home unless there is a credible international security force in which NATO plays a role.

REPORTER: But does America have to be a part of it?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, I don't think that a lot of the Kosovars will go home if we are not a part of it. And on the other hand, I have always said from the very beginning that the United States was open to a broad security force. We would welcome the United Nations embrace of such a security force. We did -- that is exactly what we did in Bosnia. The Russians were there. I personally think it is quite important that the Russians, perhaps the Ukrainians, perhaps others who come from the orthodox tradition who have close ties to the Serbs be a part of such a mission. That's one of the reasons that it has been as successful as it has in Bosnia, and one of the reasons there's been as little violence as there has been there. And I have been quite encouraged by President Yeltsin's involvement here, by Mr. Chernomyrdin's involvement; I look forward to seeing him later in the day. And I'd like to also remind all of you and the people in Serbia as well, that perhaps the most important new element to come out of the NATO meeting last week was that all the NATO allies -- which means, in effect, the EU -- recognize that it was important not just to bring this terrible episode to an end on satisfactory terms that clearly reverse ethnic cleansing and repudiate that policy, but also to give the people of Kosovo, the people of the Balkans, the people of Southeastern Europe a larger future together than they have by continuing to fall out with each other and fight with each other, and then they would have if Mr. Milosevic continued to pursue his policies of ethnic and religious cleansing. So it seems to me that given those two things, there's plenty to talk about, to work on, for -- to engage not only the Serbs but the other people of Southeastern Europe. But on the basic core conditions, it's not -- that's not a prescription for a victory by NATO or the United States. That's a prescription for what it will take for the Kosovars to be able to go home and live safely and have a measure of autonomy. That is what is necessary. Terry?

REPORTER: Mr. President, Reverend Jackson seems disappointed that NATO did not suspend its bombing after he won the release of the three American servicemen, even calling it an arrogance of power. Do you think that the release of the three POW's suggests that Mr. Milosevic is looking for a way out? Or are you concerned that he might be trying to use this for a propaganda victory to exploit and divide the NATO allies?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, the truth is we don't know -- maybe a little of both. But I think that one of the things we have learned in dealing with Mr. Milosevic now for, on my part, over six years, is that you have to judge him by what he does -- and what he does in this case, not just with the soldiers, in terms of words, you know. We had words last October and before, where Mr. Milosevic made certain commitments and then they were abandoned. We have tried diplomacy. We have said that under the right circumstances, we would be willing to have a bombing pause, but we would need acceptance of the basic principles and at least the beginning of withdrawal of Serb forces. And I don't believe that we should change that position.

JIM LEHRER: Three assessments of the situation from two former Clinton Administration officials, Ivo Daalder, who served on the National Security Council staff-- he's now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution-- and Toby Gati, who was Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research; plus William Hyland, a national security official in the Nixon and Ford administrations, and former editor of the journal "Foreign Affairs." He now teaches at the college of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. Ms. Gati, so adding all of this up, do you smell a serious negotiation about to begin?

TOBY GATI: I smell the very beginning of a negotiation, actually, of several negotiations. One is the Russians among themselves. What is their bottom line? What kind of settlement do they want? What kind of role do they want to play? I don't think that's very clear. Primakov has signaled a much tougher line than Chernomyrdin, interviewed this week.

JIM LEHRER: Chernomyrdin is the former prime minister -

TOBY GATI: That's right.

JIM LEHRER: -- who is now the envoy. Primakov is now the prime minister.

TOBY GATI: That's right. I see a negotiation between the Russians trying to act as a shuttle diplomat

between the United States and Serbia, a role they'd like to play because it gives them stature. And I think there are a couple of negotiations just beginning.

JIM LEHRER: So you think things are moving.

TOBY GATI: Well, they're not moving fast enough to get the bombing to stop. And they're not moving fast enough to get any kind of agreement. I think they are moving-- diplomats would see movement. But the rest of us are going to see a lot more bombing.

JIM LEHRER: What do you see, Bill Hyland?

WILLIAM HYLAND: I agree with Toby. I think this is the beginning of the end. There will be a settlement of some kind. I don't know if it will take two weeks, three weeks, a month. But I think everything is now moving away from the military options towards political diplomacy. With Chernomyrdin, it's been about ten days or a week since Yeltsin talked to Clinton on the phone. Yeltsin has appointed Chernomyrdin, who apparently has his confidence and then Strobe Talbott, the deputy secretary, went to Moscow. And then Chernomyrdin went to Belgrade. Milosevic published a peace plan of some kind which is vague but still-- and then the Jackson mission, I think, is all part of this. And Chernomyrdin's here at the White House today.

JIM LEHRER: It may go to Belgrade tomorrow or the day after.

WILLIAM HYLAND: I think it's the beginning of Chernomyrdin playing shuttle diplomacy. I suspect from the way the President was talking today-- it sound to me like he's ready to try to negotiate something. He's talking about minimal conditions and that he was always for a UN force, which is a little surprising. And the bombing pause could happen under the right circumstances. All of that, I think, is signaling that it's going to come to an end.

JIM LEHRER: And yet, Mr. Daalder, the bombing was severe today. Was it as severe today as it's been anytime before - and they put the lights out in Belgrade. There have been stories all day today about all kind of emergencies and hospitals with infants and all of that.

IVO DAALDER: Clearly, if you want to negotiate, you need to have leverage. You need to have something to give up as you compromise as part of the negotiation. If our conditions that we have now are, indeed, the minimal conditions, that is, we want all the Serb forces out, we want an international peace force that has a NATO role, for NATO, if not NATO at its core, not a NATO lead, if we want all the refugees to come back, if those are our minimum conditions, how are we going to get Mr. Milosevic to sign up to those when he has consistently over the last six weeks rejected those conditions? So bombing in the intensification thereof, is part of this negotiation move, this move that we see how much damage we can do. You're really better off to talk to Mr. Chernomyrdin and to come closer to where we are.

JIM LEHRER: The Jackson mission specifically, the successful mission, the release of the three Americans-- does Milosevic deserve anything in return for that?

IVO DAALDER: Not really. He captured as part of a war-- he captured three Americans, whether they were in Macedonia or not is still uncertain. For a humanitarian gesture, he let them go. But I think the Jackson mission ought to be looked at as a purely humanitarian mission. We are very happy that everybody is back, that we have two POW's, which we might want to release if we want to make a gesture. But in the sense, strategically, nothing has changed.

JIM LEHRER: What do you make of all these blind quote, that's a Washington term for these high-level Clinton administration officials who were very upset that Jackson took on this mission and now they feel that it's boxed them in and all of that? What's the reality of this, do you believe?

TOBY GATI: I think the reality is that the policy in some way, is getting away from the Clinton administration and the arguments are being framed elsewhere. Milosevic lets the US POW's go. It looks like a humanitarian mission. But he can counterpose that to a bus that burns on a bridge and civilians are killed. The Russians look like the messengers of peace. They are the ones who can end war. And what's happening is the atmosphere is being created where the momentum and perhaps even our own allies may say a bombing pause may make sense. And at that point, we would either have to say we're not going to have a pause, and indeed, if we have to, we will take the next step. And the next step everybody knows is a step that nobody wants taken. The Russians don't want American troops or NATO troops in the area. And I think the administration also doesn't want to commit US troops. So there's a commonality of interest between some of the negotiators. But there's also a lot of tension. I can imagine that in Belgrade Milosevic is wondering what Chernomyrdin is actually saying because there is not a lot of love loss between those people either.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree, Bill Hyland, that there is this commonality in interest of not wanting ground troops in there, that that's kind of over the shoulder driving all these things too?

WILLIAM HYLAND: I don't know if I'd use that phrase. I think the Clinton administration certainly doesn't want that kind of war. The Russians don't want it in and neither does Milosevic. But they each have different interests for not wanting it. On the Jackson mission, the problem with the Jackson mission is that it's good humanitarian -- if it were my son, I'd be happy that he got a prisoner out. But it legitimizes Milosevic. I mean, here he is on TV two days with Milosevic holding hands and walking around with him and negotiating with him, thanking him, coming back with Milosevic's letter. If Milosevic is a war criminal -

JIM LEHRER: And he's being compared to Hitler.

WILLIAM HYLAND: And being compared to Hitler by a lot of people. Then this Jackson has badly undercut Clinton's strategy if there is a strategy. I think Toby Gati is right. I think Clinton has lost control of this war, if it is a war.

JIM LEHRER: Well, let's go back to where we started, possible negotiated settlement now. And you laid out, Mr. Daalder, the three-- those three demands that NATO has given from the very beginning. Can Milosevic afford to give those up?

IVO DAALDER: Not really. I mean, the three demands that we have, which is all Serb forces out and international, real international force with NATO at its core in and the refugees back, at least the first two of those are very difficult for Mr. Milosevic to accept. He wants to maintain Serb sovereignty over Kosovo. That's the number one reason that we're in this mess.

JIM LEHRER: Excuse me. And that also is what's keeping him-- it's helping his own political power at home because so many Serbs feel strongly about Kosovo being a part of Serbia.

IVO DAALDER: Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's something he cannot negotiate away. He might well be able to lose Kosovo in a war.

JIM LEHRER: He might get it bombed away. He could give it away -

IVO DAALDER: Exactly. You can't negotiate it away, which means he wants to have Serb troops in the part that is recognized by the international community to be Serbs. So, he won't accept having all forces moved out. He might accept a lowering of the number, as he did in October when we were down to about 25,000 total troops. But he won't accept a complete withdrawal. At the same time, he won't accept an international force that is more capable of the residual Serb force that is there. And that's our dilemma, because if we cannot overpower the Serb forces who are there, then refugees won't return.

JIM LEHRER: Bill Hyland, then on the other side of the table, how does NATO and the United States back off of any of these demands?

WILLIAM HYLAND: Well, I think it's begun to back off a little bit. We want Serb forces out. It's not clear we want all Serb forces completely out, whether there be some border guards. I suspect if their bargaining starts, if bargaining starts, that NATO will turn out to have a softer position than it put forward as the recent NATO summit. All refugees back, but under whose control? Are we going to escort them back?

JIM LEHRER: Isn't that kind of the most difficult point of all -- bringing 800,000 people back into this country?

WILLIAM HYLAND: How would you transport them back, under whose protection, and when they got there, who would be in charge? It would have to be a force of some size to protect them. I think Milosevic can agree to a lot of that because the basic thing he's achieved is not only as he cleansed the whole place which is a horrible catastrophe, but he also has achieved that Kosovo will remain in the Yugoslav Federation because NATO is not saying independence or partition. They are saying the opposite: Self-government, autonomy and all of that which is very vague stuff.

JIM LEHRER: If he's cleansed it, but if he has to agree to allow the Kosovars back in, he's-he's not back to zero because a lot of people have died but -

WILLIAM HYLAND: If a million refugees have left, the question in my mind would be how many would actually return? All of them? Doubtful. Half of them? The ethnic balance inside Kosovo has changed radically because of this Holocaust he's perpetuated.

JIM LEHRER: So when you look at a potential deal here, knowing these firm positions that have gone into this, where do you see it making it?

TOBY GATI: The first thing I would say is never underestimate the ability of a group of diplomats of coming up with a way of making this look like -

JIM LEHRER: Everybody wins?

TOBY GATI: Well, everybody semi-wins. I think it is possible that they will go back, but to where, which part of Kosovo? I think it's possible for the UN to get involved so that you're not exactly sure who is what on what side. Some of the proposals the Russians have put forward actually put the Hungarians next to Russian commanders, which is kind of ironic considering that Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic just joined NATO. The UN mandate is there, which gives the Russians a veto, not a voice, which is exactly the opposite of what was said under NATO. But I think NATO could claim a victory if it was able to establish the conditions in part of the Kosovo. I don't think it will ever establish them in all of Kosovo, for some of those refugees to go back. But I would remind you that in Bosnia, which is claimed as a great diplomatic success by many people, including the President today, the refugees have still not gone back.

JIM LEHRER: Well, what about Milosevic? How in the world does he claim victory in this kind of thing? Can NATO allow him to claim victory?

TOBY GATI: Well, of course, he will claim victory. He's still in power, which I imagine is the main point of victory for Milosevic. He will keep the Serb places that mean a lot in Kosovo to the Serbs. And if Russians are involved, and Ukrainians, the orthodox brethren, then those places will be kept under Serb control. And I can't imagine that there too many Kosovars who want to live there. And I don't think that too many NATO troops would want to turn their back to people who have returned to an area under Serb control.

JIM LEHRER: It's always said by professional diplomats that you can only make a deal when it's in everybody's interest to make the deal. Has that moment arrived?

IVO DAALDER: We're getting close to it. I think at the NATO summit, we had a basic decision. Were we going to put in ground forces and win this war in order to achieve our minimum objectives, or were we going to negotiate a compromise? We clearly decided we were going to negotiate. That's why we had the long telephone conversation that Bill Hyland talked about with Yeltsin and the Talbott mission and now the question is really what is the deal that we're going to have at the end of the road? Because Mr. Milosevic is in the driver's seat and we are not, he's going to get a better deal than we would other wise get.

JIM LEHRER: And the Russians come out of this -

WILLIAM HYLAND: The winners.

JIM LEHRER: The winners?

WILLIAM HYLAND: Well, almost the winners. About four weeks ago, five weeks ago, they were totally out. Primakov turned his airplane around. They were sulking; they cut off relations with NATO. He turned around many in mid-air. Now Chernomyrdin is in the White House talking with the President. The President is saying we have a lot to talk about. I suspect the Russians are back in the game, which is -- I don't see anything wrong with that. I think Clinton has lost this war.

TOBY GATI: I think not so fast. The Russians still have to deliver. After all, they came here saying "we can help end this war." The question is where is the beef basically? And what can you deliver?

JIM LEHRER: There's a familiar phrase from prior events.

TOBY GATI: That's right. And can he deliver Milosevic? Milosevic has, on several occasions, agreed to something which when you come back and say it to him, he says let's renegotiate.

JIM LEHRER: Thank you all very much for sorting through this for us tonight.

FOCUS - KIDS AND VIOLENCE

JIM LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, the Colorado shooting's impact on other schools, and Japan's economy. Betty Ann Bowser has the schools story.

TEACHER: I am on the floor.

DISPATCHER: Okay. You've got the kids there?

TEACHER: I've got every student in this library on the floor! Stay on the floor!

BETTY ANN BOWSER: On April 20th, it became the worst case of school violence in American history...

TEACHER: [Gunshots in backgrounder] The gun is going off outside my door. I don't think I'm going to go out there.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Kids killing kids, here heard on the 911 tapes as a Columbine High School teachers frantically called for help.

TEACHER: I've got the kids on the floor.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Now, in the aftermath of those murders, there is a new nightmare. Last week in Alberta, Canada, a 14-year-old boy described as a misfit came into this school, shot and killed one student, injured another, and left yet one more parent heartbroken.

PARENT: We grieve for our son. We grieve for this community and for the sad state of a 14-year-old boy who could come to such a place as randomly taking another person's life for no reason. May God have mercy on this broken society and all the hurting people in it.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: In Oaklawn, Illinois, two rifles, a shotgun, and all these other weapons were taken from a 15-year-old who made threats against other students. In Lancaster, California, these two boys were arrested after threatening to blow up their high school. Police found bomb-making materials, a hand grenade, and a map that showed -

SPOKESMAN: -- how him and his friend would escape during the supposed blast that was to take place during a student assembly.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: And in Brooklyn, New York, five honor students were charged with plotting to bomb this junior high school.

SPOKESMAN: Their plan, as they articulated, was to bring an explosive device into the building to the top floor and apparently blow the building up.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: School Chancellor Rudy Crew said the five eighth-graders also had bomb-making instructions taken off the Internet, and hit list of students and teachers.

SPOKESPERSON: If your particular child is put on that list, will you as a parent be informed that your child is on that list?

SPOKESMAN: Yes, yes.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Kevin Dwyer, an experienced school psychologist, says all this is frightening because there have never been so many copycat incidents before.

KEVIN DWYER: Every time an incident like this happens, it gives people the thinking that, well, if they can do this, then I can do what I've been thinking about doing. It moves from thinking to action, and this gives them permission, if you wish, and those are the ones I'm most worried about, those youngsters who are already troubled and who don't know how to deal with that anger, and who may do something dangerous.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Dwyer is also concerned about another phenomenon. In the days since the Colorado shootings, schools in more than 20 states have received bomb threats-- not just one here or there, but hundreds. In Pennsylvania alone, more than 50 bomb threats have been made against public schools. In the District of Columbia, students at more than 25 schools had to be evacuated last week while police searched for bombs for hours. In Suburban Virginia, Fairfax High School was closed for a full day last week after someone wrote "Bomb 4/29" on a school wall, and in Montgomery County, Maryland, schools have had their hands full too.

SPOKESMAN: It's been incredibly disruptive. We've had 11 bomb threats in 11 different high schools, where we had to evacuate the schools and bring in the teams with the dogs. And you don't search a school in one or two hours. This is a new social phenomenon in America. These are youngsters from middle and upper middle-class communities, from the very finest communities in America, with parents, both of whom are very successful professionals, and they defy description.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Education Secretary Richard Riley is so upset about the rash of bomb scares that he is making a national appeal to young people whom he believes are at fault.

RICHARD RILEY: You young people must have your own sense of responsibility. The young people must stop this current wave of copycat bomb scares. There are hundreds of students in Columbine High School who are still grieving their classmates. And think what they must go through as they hear about a new bomb scare every day.

STUDENT: You said some schools probably need more security than others which is true. But how do you evaluate which schools need it, because like, for example, you wouldn't think Walt Whitman High School would necessarily need the security cameras and the metal detectors. But, then again, you may not think Littleton because it seemed like a pretty safe school. So, how do you decide which ones need it?

RICHARD RILEY: Some schools clearly need some kind of security. They have a history of having difficulties.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Riley is holding a series of meetings with parents, teachers, and students around the country to talk about what needs to be done about copycat crimes and bomb scares and school violence. And everywhere he goes, he uses the press to urge kids to report anything suspicious.

RICHARD RILEY: And if anybody has any inkling of anybody who is talking or boasting about something of that kind, please report it. Please let somebody know about it. It's very, very serious.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Students at this suburban Washington, DC, high school are encouraged to report anything suspicious, but since Columbine, some students say it's not so easy to tell the difference between what is serious and what is not.

STUDENT: Especially now after the fact in Colorado -- people are going to pay a lot more attention to groups like the ones walking around in trench coats. I mean, it may not be trench coats, it may just be different colors or dying hair -- you know, certain colors to get attention, things like that. But I think now a lot more people pay attention to it than they used to because right now a lot of people in the world, at least US, are nervous.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: What do you pay attention to?

STUDENT: Someone that's really quiet. Usually when they're to themselves, you kind of wonder about them - they're like, what kind of person is this? You know, it makes you think.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Homer Ailstock and Mischa Bilanchone go to the same school. They know how it feels to be ostracized by other kids. Like the two boys in the Columbine shootings, they listen to rock star Marilyn Manson, and they wear black clothing. The other kids call them Goths, short for Gothic, because of the way they dress, and since the Columbine shootings, they say, things have been weird.

STUDENT: People have come up to me or just like hinted slightly like, "Hey, Homer, are you part of that "Trench Coat Mafia," or whatnot, and I'm like, "no, stupid." And they'll just automatically think that I want -- like, I'm going to shoot everybody in the school one day or something like that.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Mischa has seen the violent movie "Natural Born Killers" 25 times, but says that does not make her want to go out and hurt other teenagers.

MISCHA: I think it's disgusting to be lumped into this category and to be automatically assumed to be, you know, you're automatically assumed to be a druggie, or you're automatically assumed to be violent or you know, you're automatically assumed to be any number of things simply because you look the way you do, and that's wrong. It's wrong to generalize people. It's wrong to stereotype people.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Secretary Riley has acknowledged there is an atmosphere in which people may be overly sensitive to the way kids dress, and he has urged teenagers not be judged just by their appearance.

RICHARD RILEY: Our young people may dress differently and certainly have different musical tastes than most of us, but they are not a weird generation or a lost generation. Remember that. This is not a lost generation. This is a wonderful generation. [Applause]

BETTY ANN BOWSER: Riley and other educators say schools need more programs like this one at Eisenhower Middle School in Laurel, Maryland. Every seventh-grader here is taught how to settle problems through conflict resolution classes. They use workbooks and role playing to learn how to avoid violence. In this case, one group of students pretended to bully another.

STUDENT: You know what, man! I'm sick of you, all right?!

BETTY ANN BOWSER: A local police officer who's been trained in conflict resolution by the federal government's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, shows the kids how to settle things peacefully.

OFFICER: This is a life skill. This is something we all have to go through. I had to go through this; you all are going through this. We all learned how to do this. And now this is your opportunity. This is your job, your responsibility as students, to learn how to deal with conflicts in a positive way.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: University and foundation research shows some of these programs work and some don't. But even critics say the programs at least get kids to think about what they're going to do before they act. And in the wake of the Columbine shooting, there is a growing chorus of voices asking that anger management become a required course at every school in America.

FINALLY - FALLEN STAR

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, Japan. The prime minister of Japan came to the US today to meet with President Clinton and others. And the major topic was the hard times Japanese economy, which is also the subject of this report by our business correspondent, Paul Solman of WGBH-Boston.

PAUL SOLMAN: It's been almost a decade since the Japanese economic bubble burst. In 1987 when we did a series there, this piece of Tokyo was going for $22,000 a square foot. Today, you could get it for under $4,000. And when real estate began to fall, it was just the beginning. The landslide in values imperiled Japan's banks. Collateral for huge loans, the real estate was suddenly worth far less than the loans themselves. Japan's stock market nose-dived with its banks, in turn bringing down the country's fourth largest stock brokerage. And since consumers were pessimistic they did not spend. No wonder the Japanese economy has basically stalled out, growing at barely 1 percent a year in the 1990's, and falling nearly 3 percent in 1998. In short, the Japanese economic miracle itself seems to have been discredited, which has been especially sobering to a journalist like me, since it's a miracle I had hailed here on the NewsHour in our 1987 Japan series. You may even remember some of the images we showed you back then: Loyal, well-trained workers who ran rather than be late to work; focused, efficient businesses; farsighted investors; and working with them hand in glove, brilliant government bureaucrats whose long-term industrial policy, Japan Inc., discouraged everything American from large discount stores to boxers weighing more than 140 pounds. But maybe we were making and watching the wrong movies. That's Itami Juzo, noted director and film star in "Tampopo," his 1986 send up of Japanese monomania this case, for noodles. By 1987, Itami's films like "A Taxing Woman" had become to satirize the Japanese economic system which beguiled so many of us. You didn't have to read between the lines. [Japanese] Itami cast the Yakuza, Japanese organized crime as a key player in Japan Inc. Itami had spelled it out. The banks loaned money to crooks. Crooks bankrolled politicians, politicians let the banks run wild, making uneconomic loans that helped inflate the bubble. [Japanese] Yoshi Tsurumi, a source of ours in the 80's, says he began to understand the extent of the problem in 1992, after Itami's film, Mimbo pushed the corruption theme even further. That's Itami's wife, Nobuko Miyamoto, in the leading role. After the film's release, the director himself was attacked by hoods.

YOSHI TSURUMI: Itami Juzo was really slashed on his face by Yakuza, who thought the movie was too realistic for them to be comfortable. That was a time I noticed-- oh, my goodness, we are under estimating because of our naivet perhaps, unprepared for the seamy side of Japan.

PAUL SOLMAN: Unprepared for what's now called crony capitalism: You scratch my wallet, I'll scratch yours. But, of course, we saw only the most superficial aspects of Japan, Inc. So we interpreted what we saw as costly but basically advantageous, an economy based on mutual, even generous gift-giving.

PAUL SOLMAN: That's just a regular melon

KEN OHMAE: Pretty good melon.

PAUL SOLMAN: It better be.

KEN OHMAE: It's so precious that it comes in a wooden box.

PAUL SOLMAN: This is a fancy gift.

PAUL SOLMAN: But a gift economy with its private webs of obligation, deal-making and secrecy can be even more costly than it seems, says Yoshi Tsurumi.

YOSHI TSURUMI: It's the dark side of gift economy. Especially the gift economy-- you don't look into a gift horse's mouth, right? That means you turn the blind eyes to the seamy side. And you don't recognize unpleasant things.

PAUL SOLMAN: So we didn't see the seamy side and played up what we did see, Japan's ace bureaucrats, for instance. While Japan fans hailed the bureaucrats, however, Itami's films derided them. And so did some others. Seth Sulkin covered Japan for the Wall Street Journal in the 80's.

SETH SULKIN: I spent a lot of time interviewing Japanese bureaucrats. And what struck me about bureaucrats was that they didn't know very much about what they were regulating, what they were supposedly overseeing.

PAUL SOLMAN: Eugene Dattle, a US investment banker in boom-time Japan, says the bureaucrats he met were smart but inexperienced.

EUGENE DATTLE: There is a personal rotation system where every member is rotated to a different job every two to three years and it's a function of their culture which basically denigrates the individual. So you don't want someone with specialized skills. And it's impossible to either have a proper supervisor, proper regulator or proper participant in the financial services industry, either government or private sector without specialized skills.

PAUL SOLMAN: Moreover, says Dattle, in modern service economies, you need skilled public regulation, not cozy private relationships. It's as if we had projected Japan's obvious factory finesse and manufacturing savvy onto the rest of the economy.

EUGENE DATTLE: IfToyota makes a bad car, you know it's a bad car. Whereas, in the financial services industry, we are dealing with abstractions. Think about it; a country that's predicated on secrecy so that all mistakes are generally covered up.

PAUL SOLMAN: Which gets us back to the dark side of Japan, Inc., and perhaps the main insight that comes from rethinking it. That is, capitalism starts with capital, wealth invested productively to generate more wealth down the line. Japan was doing plenty of that, but if financial institutions were also funneling lots of money to politicians, gangsters and corporate cronies, that money wasn't being invested productively. Once investors start to notice, their faith fades, and an entire economy can falter. Again, Eugene Dattle.

EUGENE DATTLE: The Japanese financial institutions, which we thought were dominant, were actually extremely flawed and were squandering the nation's wealth.

PAUL SOLMAN: Squandering how?

EUGENE DATTLE: In the sense that they were misallocating funds in terms of particular industries and also actually losing money in terms of investments overseas and in terms of investments in Japan. And what financial institutions are supposed to do basically are two things: Either discipline companies or provide money for growth. In a sense, these Japanese financial institutions were not able to do either.

PAUL SOLMAN: In other words, when we were impressed, we should have been wondering. The Japanese paid a king's ran some for Rockefeller Center, didn't they -- for Sony Pictures. This scene from the Bob Newhart Show should have suggested things were out of whack.

ACTOR: I'd like to buy your town and turn it into a golf course.

ACTOR: No, Mr. Tagadashi, this is one town you cannot buy.

ACTOR: I'll give you one million dollars for each home.

ACTOR: Bring on the freaking bulldozers.

PAUL SOLMAN: One last question: Do Japan Inc.'s formally ardent admirers feel the same misgivings about its economy? Not really.

EZRA VOGEL: No, I don't feel I was wrong.

PAUL SOLMAN: Ezra Vogel wrote "Japan as #1" 20 years ago.

EZRA VOGEL: What I said in 1979 was that the Japanese do things extraordinarily well and I listed a number of things like they have very good compulsory education. They are very good about getting information around the world. They have a lot of loyalty to their companies. They have first-class high-quality bureaucrats. And they have a very low crime rate. And when I said Japan was number one that didn't mean they were the biggest economic power. It meant in all those areas, they handled things as well as any other country. And I think that's absolutely true. And it's still true.

PAUL SOLMAN: Indeed, Japan is a rich country these days, for all its problems. Maybe as its population ages it's experiencing the aftermath of prosperity. Maybe it can't juice its economy, even with an interest rate near zero because its exports abroad have become too pricey and Japan's own people are afraid to consume.

PAUL KRUGMAN: Fundamentally, people are not spending enough. The Japanese government has been very slow to appreciate that that's the nature of their problem. And they're still not really coming to grips with it.

PAUL SOLMAN: Prominent economists like M.I.T.'s Paul Krugman have been saying for a while now that Japan should goose its economy with tax cuts and government spending; the Japanese seem at last to be listening. They have been spending, bailing out troubled companies and banks. Their stock market has risen, almost 25 percent in the past few months. They have been letting unemployment rise. But critics like Tsurumi say there's been no fundamental change. To quote him "the same people are in charge, including the Yakuza." But since Paul Krugman was a Japan skeptic long before the rest of us, I'd thought we'd go to him for a final dose of perspective. As it happens, he's still a contrarian.

PAUL KRUGMAN: Right now, we're riding high in the US and we're feeling we're right; that should be a good indicator that three years from now, you'll be back and we'll be talking about America, what went wrong and we'll eel be talking about some people who look hopeless, the French or somebody talking about it. What is it that they do right? But, you know, it's -- we idolized the Japanese. We took a run of success, exaggerated it, and turned everything that was a virtue into the only virtue and ignored the weaknesses of their system.

PAUL SOLMAN: It a thought to keep many mind as the prime minister of Japan's still troubled economy visited high-riding America.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the other major stories of this Monday, President Clinton said NATO bombing will continue, despite the release of three US POW's. He met separately with Jesse Jackson and Russian envoy Chernomyrdin, who urged an end to the attacks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed over 11,000 for the first time and in Colorado, a 22-year-old man was arrested for supplying a semiautomatic pistol to the Columbine High School killers. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.