The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

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

MR. LEHRER: And I'm Jim Lehrer in Washington. After our summary of the news this Thursday, we go again to the growing horror of the Rwandan refugees. Charlayne Hunter-Gault reports on what Middle East peace means to Arab-Americans, and World Bank President Lewis Preston marks his organization's 50th birthday. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MAC NEIL: Cholera is now reported to be raging out of control among the refugees from Rwanda and tens of thousands of lives could be lost within days. That warning was issued today by medical workers who are desperately trying to contain the highly contagious bacteria among the million Rwandans crammed in squalid camps along the Zaire border. Eight hundred people have already died just a day after the first case was reported. Scores of unburied corpses, contaminated water, and starvation are adding to the threat. Today some U.N. food supplies reached the refugees but the world body called on individual nations for help. The U.S. began its own relief flights to Zaire today. Late this afternoon at a White House ceremony President Clinton spoke about the Rwandan crisis.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Just before I came over here today I had a briefing from the administration -- the administrator of our Agency for International Development -- our aid program -- Brian Atwood. We have already provided over $120 million to help the refugees, and we are conducting airlifts there as well, flying in needed supplies. But we are very concerned about the new health care problems that are presented by all the refugees that are there. There are a growing number that are dying of cholera, and many, many more who are at risk of that. So we are going to participate, indeed, in trying to lead the United Nations in responding to the cholera problem and in dealing with the other aspects of this human catastrophe. And I have asked the national security adviser and Mr. Atwood and the Pentagon to implement quickly a practical plan of action that can make a difference on the ground in these camps in Zaire.

MR. MAC NEIL: Later, Administrator Atwood said the U.S. would increase its assistance to nearly $200 million. The money would provide 30,000 metric tons of grain, logistical support, and help for orphans of the tragedy. Atwood said the U.N. will appeal to other nations for more than $1/4 billion in additional aid. We'll talk with Brian Atwood and others about the crisis after the News Summary. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: UN relief flights to Bosnia were suspended today after three of the planes were fired on by Serb forces. A UN official said French peacekeepers also came under fire at the Sarajevo Airport. They were caught in a crossfire between Muslim and Serb forces. UN and NATO officials are discussing punitive actions against Bosnia's Serbs for their rejection of an international peace plan. Today Bosnia's Muslims withdrew their unconditional support for that plan following the Serbs' rejection. In Turkey today, Defense Sec. William Perry said the Serbs' failure to approve the peace plan may force the escalation of the Bosnian war. He said the plan's sponsors will consider tightening sanctions on Serbia first.

MR. MAC NEIL: The United States announced today it's seeking a Security Council resolution authorizing a multinational force to restore democracy in Haiti. UN Amb. Madeleine Albright said the force, if approved, would be led by the United States. The resolution is similar to one passed before the Gulf War. The ambassador described the resolution to reporters at the United Nations this afternoon.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, UN Ambassador: It envisions a two-phase process, the first phase being a multinational force whose job it would be to secure a stable environment and would, we presume, include language providing all necessary means. The second phase would be to carry out a United Nations operation whose job it would be to preserve that secure environment.

MR. MAC NEIL: Albright emphasized that no decision had been made for an invasion and no deadline had been set. She said she hoped the Security Council would adopt the resolution by the end of the week. U.S. and North Korean diplomats met today to agree to resume talks on the nuclear issue in the near future. Those talks broke off earlier this month after the death of North Korean Leader Kim Il-Sung. That news came as Assistant Sec. of State Robert Galucci met with South Korea's foreign minister. They were discussing future relations with North Korea and its nuclear program.

MR. LEHRER: In the Middle East today Israel reopened its border with the Gaza Strip. It was closed five days ago after rioting at the main crossing point. Sec. of State Christopher met with Yasser Arafat in Gaza today. He also briefed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the latest peace efforts. Israeli and Jordanian negotiators wrapped up a week of peace talks. They discussed a free trade zone and agreed on a series of monthly meetings. Prime Minister Rabin and Jordan's King Hussein will hold a summit meeting Monday in Washington.

MR. MAC NEIL: Jupiter was hit by four more fragments from the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in a span of 20 hours. Astronomers had expected three hits but the so-called quadruple whammy was produced when Fragment Q broke into two parts before impact. Those two chunks were followed by Fragments R and S. The four pieces struck in such a close area that they created what appeared to be one large fireball. Seventeen of the twenty-one comet fragments have battered Jupiter so far. The remaining four are expected to reach the planet by tomorrow.

MR. LEHRER: And that's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to more on the Rwanda tragedy, peace comes to Arab Americans, and World Bank president Lewis Preston. FOCUS - EPIDEMIC TRAGEDY

MR. MAC NEIL: First tonight, the Rwanda story, the tragedy there, and whether the rest of the world is responding promptly enough to prevent even more deaths. Thousands of Rwandans in refugee camps are threatened by a cholera epidemic. Calls mounted for urgent action from the West and from the United States. And President Clinton today promised action. We start with a report from the refugee camp at Goma. The correspondent is Robert Moore of Independent Television News.

ROBERT MOORE, ITN: Amid the crowds and the vast numbers there is also a terrible loneliness, that of the orphans abandoned, with no one to protect or feed them. Looking at these heartbreaking scenes, one refugee said to me, "We're all, all going to die." There is no easy way to say it but large numbers of people are simply waiting for death, knowing that the volume of aid required is simply not here.

AID WORKER: All the persons who need IV's go on this side.

ROBERT MOORE: The cholera epidemic is sweeping the camps with terrifying speed. A few lie attached to drips supplied by the French, but most are just abandoned. The fact -- and it is a brutal one -- is that the humanitarian operation underway is far too little and far too late.

PANOS MOUMTZIS, UNHCR: We have to continue screaming. We have to continue raising our voice. We have to, to ask everybody who is listening right now, please, do something, do something to get some aid here. Government, people, civilians, it's the largest crisis that UNHCR has had since its creation. We have never had so many people crossing the border in such a short time. I've never seen anything like this before in my life.

ROBERT MOORE: French military trucks are touring, picking up the bodies. I saw hundreds of corpses this morning on just a few miles of the road out of Goma. The smell hangs in the air, even the refugees forced to wear face masks. The situation is becoming more harrowing by the hour. In the search for fuel, they are stripping the forest all around them, leaving a desolate environment even less able to sustain such large numbers of people. Aid workers here say they have two, possibly three days in which to organize a massive airlift of food. If that does not materialize -- and there is no sign of it yet -- then the battle to save many of these refugees will have been lost. At least there is now a humanitarian operation to pluck the orphans out of this nightmare, to take care of them, to try and save them from certain death.

MR. MAC NEIL: Now three views on this crisis. Dr. John Sundin is a surgeon who just returned from Rwanda as a volunteer for Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross. Lionel Rosenblatt is president of Refugees International, a refugee advocacy organization in Washington, he returned this week from spending 72 hours on site at Goma. Brian Atwood is the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. He also visited refugee camps in Zaire earlier this week and briefed President Clinton on the situation this afternoon. Mr. Atwood, the President has asked for a plan. Do you have one, or do you need to create one?

MR. ATWOOD: We are obviously developing it. This is a crisis that occurred within the space of six days. I think our country is rallying the international community. We're moving on it. We announced today $41 million of additional assistance. We are going to be responding to the appeal that the United Nations is putting out tomorrow. We are landing aircraft in Goma with all sorts of things, including food and medicine in particular to try to deal with this cholera problem which could become a very serious epidemic. We're going to be taking over the handling of the water facilities which, of course, is a key to handling this. We're sending 20 million packets of oil rehydration salts to deal with the diarrheal diseases and the cholera, and we're about to open an airhead staging facility in Entebbe to handle not only this situation in Goma but the entire refugee situation on the borders of Rwanda.

MR. MAC NEIL: So this plan the President's asked you and the national security adviser to implement involves the State Department and the Pentagon, is that right, and what other U.S. agencies?

MR. ATWOOD: Well, I think the Pentagon is key here, U.S. Agency for International Development, which I head, has been taking the lead in terms of disaster response. We can't do this alone. We're working obviously with U.N. agencies, but the Pentagon is going to play a very big role here.

MR. MAC NEIL: How long do you think it'll create your plan and bring it on line?

MR. ATWOOD: Well, you know, when you talk about a plan, we're talking about a humanitarian response. That response is already underway. I want to emphasize that. I do --

MR. MAC NEIL: I guess I mean get it fully up to speed as you would wish to do.

MR. ATWOOD: Well, we don't have a lot of time here. I do understand the frustration of the relief workers. I was in Goma three days ago. They haven't seen a lot of food in there. We only have 10 percent of the food that's needed. We need more medicines. We need a water supply. We need all of those things. We're going to be operating on the ground within a few days, and already the aircraft are landing in Goma.

MR. MAC NEIL: Mr. Rosenblatt, you were very critical in a talk this morning of President Clinton for not taking the lead in this situation. Are you satisfied now that he has?

MR. ROSENBLATT: I think we've taken some initial steps, but I think we've got to move far more speedily and massively to deal with the problem. We just heard aid workers on the ground saying there are two or three days left. We have sent people up a road to a camp where there are no services to sustain life. We have to alter that in the next two or three days. The steps outlined by Brian Atwood are a step in the right direction but not nearly massive enough. What I had hoped to hear today was a presidentially led effort that would unite the Pentagon, AID, and state, in a top priority crash program to have the situation rectified. This is the worst humanitarian disaster on the face of the earth now. The steps I've just heard don't measure up to the need.

MR. MAC NEIL: Do you want to respond to that, Mr. Atwood?

MR. ATWOOD: Lionel was listening to the opening of the program. He did hear presidential leadership. I met with the President today. He's concerned. He's talking to international leaders who are operating not only on a humanitarian side but on the diplomatic side to try to create conditions so that people will go back to Rwanda as well. The President is very much in the lead. He is concerned. He's worried, and I can tell you that anyone in government who is working on this problem, including particularly myself, hears his message loudly and clearly.

MR. MAC NEIL: You're -- Mr. Atwood, you were supposed to brief the President tomorrow but that was moved up to today, and some of the wire services were suggesting it was because of the noise Mr. Rosenblatt was making earlier today, is that correct?

MR. ATWOOD: It is because of the cholera situation, there's no question about that. I just got back late last night so we clearly wanted to have a day to prepare for the briefing. We're still meeting tomorrow to talk about this with all of the agencies, with the President, and this is an ongoing crisis that we're attempting to manage as best we can.

MR. MAC NEIL: Let's talk to the medical side of it for a moment with Dr. Sundin. Tell us in simple terms what cholera is and how do you get it and how do you stop it.

DR. SUNDIN: Cholera is a pathogen. It's an organism that's passed through contaminated water, and once ingested, there's a three to six day incubation period. Then you have a sudden onset of profuse watery diarrhea, up to 10 liters a day. You become dehydrated. You begin to have agonizing muscle spasms because you're losing salt and calcium. Your respirations decrease, your voice turns to a whisper, and you are dead within ten to twelve hours. British soldiers in India in the old days, the mortality from cholera was 70 to 80 percent. That's why it strikes terror in people's hearts still.

MR. MAC NEIL: I see. What scale of aid do you think it will take to help there and how quickly is it needed?

DR. SUNDIN: Well, it's scary that a few days ago there were no cases and today there were 3,000. There have been 800 deaths. This epidemic expands expedientially, so the problems are water supply and sanitation and treatment.

MR. MAC NEIL: I heard -- you heard Mr. Atwood say that the U.S. is sending 20 million packets of rehydration salts. Now, is that a useful contribution to that on the scale that's necessary?

DR. SUNDIN: The needs are right now I hear 5 million liters of water a day and four times the amount of food that was needed in Somalia. Oral rehydration solution is the first treatment for it, but I might add that Mr. Atwood mentioned that this is a crisis that's been happening over the last six days. This is a crisis that's been happening since April 6th in Rwanda, and this is -- this is a major problem.

MR. MAC NEIL: Do I understand, Mr. Atwood, the oral rehydration, that means the liquid as well as the salts are necessary?

MR. ATWOOD: That's right.

MR. MAC NEIL: These are packages that contain -- so you don't need to go and find water to add to that. Can the -- go on, Mr. Atwood, about the other part of the situation. As I understand it, this is volcanic soil. You can't dig latrines, and there are no other water supplies there, apart from the contaminated lake. So what do you do about that?

MR. ATWOOD: Well, we're going to be looking. We have experts on the ground right now. I think we're going to have purification systems. The lake water contains methane and is not drinkable, but it can be filtered and purified. We hope we can get those purification systems in place. They do allow you, each one, to produce about 10,000 liters of water per hour. So we're very anxious to get those on the scene. We're also shipping what we call water bladders down from Frankfurt on an Air Force plane. They should be arriving as we speak. And it will handle about a million liters. Obviously, five liters per day per person is ideal. We have -- people have survived on one liter, but we're going to try to work this situation as best we can. The water and the sanitation are the key, as I'm sure the doctor knows, will tell you, on the cholera problem. Starvation is also a looming threat, and we're shipping 1500 metric tons right now through the ICRC. We have in the 41 million we've announced purchased 30,000 more metric tons of food. That'll be shipped in as well. That's why the staging operation in Entebbe is so important. I also have to tell you that while everyone is focusing on Goma, we still -- we've heard reports today that 800,000 people have streamed out in the South in Camanyola, which is near the Burundi border. That's a very remote area. It's going to be very difficult to deal with that, but we're going to have to do it.

MR. MAC NEIL: Mr. Rosenblatt, hearing more details, are you reassured now?

MR. ROSENBLATT: o, I'm really not. I know that Brian's been working flat out on this. He was out there on Monday, which was so important, but I still don't see the kind of top priority for this effort that we would like. Fifty tank trucks are what the UNHCR has asked for urgently as of 24 hours ago. I don't see any tanker trucks yet on the ground operating. We need to as well deal with food. We had hoped that the U.S. would deploy civil affairs personnel as they did with the Kurds to stabilize these camps. There's no order in the camps. Even when the food gets there, unless somebody provides a basis to distribute it, it won't reach the average person, particularly the weaker one, I don't see that. We don't see a presidential press statement on this, an announcement. This is something still coming out of AID that does not effectively mobilize the other agencies of government, particularly DOD, on the all out basis that we want. We need a Berlin airlift kind of response. We're not getting that yet.

MR. MAC NEIL: Mr. Atwood.

MR. ATWOOD: I have a lot of respect for Lionel. I saw him out there. He is rallying the world. You need to listen to people like Lionel Rosenblatt. He has unfortunately been back here as I have for the last 24 hours. There are tanker trucks on the ground. Planes are arriving. The President made a statement today. He'll make another one tomorrow. We're meeting with all of the government agencies. There is no higher priority in this government right now.

MR. MAC NEIL: Let's go back to Dr. Sundin. You spent a lot of your time in Kigali, in the capital of Rwanda where the new government is now installed. What do you think of the possibility of persuading these people to go home, rather than continuing to pour out of the country from your understanding of the relations between -- the new government contains Hutus as well as Tutsis.

DR. SUNDIN: Yes. The immediate solution is to deal with the logistical problems but the long-term solution is to get these people back home and form a political coalition government so they can get back to their homes and not be in, in Goma or Bakuva.

MR. MAC NEIL: What are you doing, Mr. Atwood, to try and persuade the people to go home?

MR. ATWOOD: Well, this is a complicated problem. There are two elements to it. One is to make sure that the new government will reach out to the Hutus in particular. They've made a good beginning. There is a president, prime minister. They need to form a cabinet that is representative both in terms of ethnic makeup and political makeup. We -- obviously that's part of it -- the rhetoric that they use, the messages that they send -- that the actions that they take -- they have a number of encampments of Hutu people inside the country. They need to let those people go out and, and harvest their crops. We need to put a UNIMER force on the ground that will provide security and give people confidence. We need to shut down this radio that is broadcasting and urging people to leave. These are all steps that are being taken as we speak. I still think it's not realistic to expect that people are going to turn around and go back within weeks, so we need to handle the humanitarian crisis first and foremost while working on the conditions that will encourage people to go home.

MR. MAC NEIL: Well, Mr. Atwood, Mr. Rosenblatt, and Dr. Sundin, thank you all for joining us. Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, Arab-Americans and Middle East peace, and the president of the World Bank. FOCUS - REALITY CHECK

MR. LEHRER: Next, more on the fallout from the Middle East peace process. In the space of a few months there have been major changes in the situation on the ground. Palestinians now govern parts of Gaza. Yasser Arafat is in residence, and the Jordanians and the Israelis are talking peace. Several weeks ago, Margaret Warner reported on the effect all of this is having on American Jews. Well, tonight, Charlayne Hunter-Gault looks at the impact on a special group of Arab-Americans.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Like conventioneers everywhere in this season of conventions, this group knows how to mix pleasure with business. But that's where the similarities end, for this is a group like no other, meeting at a time like no other. They are Arab-Americans, specifically Palestinian-Americans, and even more specifically Palestinian-Americans descended from the original five families that created the West Bank Town of Ramallah some 350 years ago. This Ramallah convention brings together exiles and refugees alike. In the past, they came together once a year to hold on to each other and to the culture and history of the land they left behind, a bonding made necessary by the fact that they had adopted America, but they felt America had not adopted them or their cause, legitimacy, official recognition, and a homeland for the Palestinian people. But today, as the historic peace accord between the Palestinians and Israelis creates a new reality on the ground in the Middle East, however fitful the process, the reverberations are being felt among Arab-Americans like these.

NAIM KAWWAS: After the second world war our people from Ramallah started coming in larger numbers to the United States.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Back in Detroit, a few days before this convention, Naim Kawwas, a retired engineer and one of the Ramallah Federation founders, told us about the convention's beginnings as he reminisced about Ramallah.

NAIM KAWWAS: This particular picture here shows my part of the family from my mother's side.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Oh, who are they?

NAIM KAWWAS: My grandfather here.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: This is your grandfather.

NAIM KAWWAS: My father, Isark. This is my mother, Naomi.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: This is the way of keeping the culture, the tradition, the history.

NAIM KAWWAS: Keep the culture and the history and the good part that we would like to maintain.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: It's easy to see why the old memories linger here in Detroit. Arab shops dominate the landscape in many parts of town, a consequence of the turn-of-the-century migration of Arabs who came as economic refugees. They were lured by the prospects of opening factories and shops. Their prosperity proved a magnet for the next generation of immigrants, political refugees fleeing the turbulenceof the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Today there are over 200,000 Arabs in the Detroit metropolitan area, the single largest concentration of the 3 million Arab-Americans in the United States. On a certain level they are well assimilated into American life even as they strive to preserve their tradition and in some instances their old way of life. Nowhere is that more evident than in the mosques of Detroit. Here, Muslims are about half of the Arab population, although they are 90 percent of the Arab population worldwide. The other half here are Christians, with the largest group being Palestinians from Ramallah. One of them is 37-year-old Terry Ahwal.

TERRY AHWAL: Well, could we make a deal with city to have the city do that?

UNIDENTIFIED SPOKESMAN: Yes.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: For the past five years she has worked as the executive assistant to the top official of Wayne County. But like many Arab-American activists who have worked inside the system, until Terry Ahwal has always felt and in many instances been treated like an outsider. In fact, she told us there were those who refer to her as "Terry the Terrorist."

TERRY AHWAL: I've been called from terrorist to sly person to a person that is going to kill every Israeli, a hater of Jews. I mean, you could go -- the name calling goes on and on. I was among everybody, regardless of where we stand on the Palestinian issue, we were all the terrorists.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But Terry Ahwal told us that the Mideast peace accords changed much of that and more.

TERRY AHWAL: I became a human being, a person that has rights, a person, in fact, that Jewish-American Israelis consider me to be a person. A year ago I was a non-human who deserved every atrocity that was bestowed on us. It's amazing that after September, since the signing of that peace agreement at the White House, I received calls from the Israeli government inviting me as an honored guest to go to the embassy to -- for a reception for Shimon Peres. A year ago, I would have been a suspect, a person that is not allowed to talk or say anything about Palestinian rights or Palestinian problems.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Many of Terry Ahwal's friends reflect her optimism. We spoke with some of them later at the St. Mary's Antiochean Orthodox Church, a hub of the Christian Palestinian community in Lavonia, a Detroit suburb. Ahwal and Naim Kawwas were joined by Samir Mashni, an attorney with roots in Ramallah, and Radwan Khoury, president of the St. Mary's Church Council. He was born in Nazareth. They talked about the changes in themselves since the peace accords were signed.

NAIM KAWWAS: There is different opinions about the accord. I believe it is a positive step. We cannot walk till we crawl, and as far as my personal thinking of what's really gone on, we're talking of changing our attitude from a strictly political support point of view to what we can do to support this new nation, so to speak, academically speaking, culturally speaking, from an economic point of view.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But how did it affect you personally?

RADWAN KHOURY: I live most of my life in Ramallah and I have seen in recent years that I start to feel that I might carry a Palestinian passport down the road.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: So why is that important?

RADWAN KHOURY: It's very, very important because this is my existence, because, you know, when I was born, I lost my own history for a long time, and that particular identity has come back very strongly because I lived for so many years in a stage of denial.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: It's well known the kind of support that Israelis -- that Jews in America have given to the state of Israel over the years. Do you feel that -- you know -- that you have related to the West Bank and Gaza in that same way?

SAMIR MASHNI: I think the fact that we were supporting a movement prior to this new development is different than what we are about to do now. We're going to support an emerging state, and from that level, I think we will be as successful as the Jews in the United States. Before it was difficult to support a movement, a movement that was not accepted by the United States.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: The PLO.

SAMIR MASHNI: Yes. For a long period of time. It was only recently that the PLO has been accepted.

TERRY AHWAL: In fact, we were fearful of helping because we thought we are breaking some law, and at one point we are breaking some law, because the United States policy dictate that we could not cooperate with the PLO.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But you have been liberated from that now you feel?

TERRY AHWAL: Yeah. Official policy --

NAIM KAWWAS: Not totally I don't think so. We still haven't changed it but we are Palestinians looked upon as Palestinians. But I think there is some change even in the media, in the newspapers how they write, and I feel that many of our members of the Jewish community now look differently at our mood.

SAMIR MASHNI: The next agenda is what we're working on right now is to have public officials that will support the development of the emerging states. We have before us a very big task, a task that might be derailed at any, at any time because of all the influences that might derail it. So what we want is supporters in Congress that will back the development of a new state.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Has your approach to politicians changed now, I mean, and tell me how.

SAMIR MASHNI: We have members of our community that are very involved politically and have the say so and have the influence to be able to talk to these public officials.

TERRY AHWAL: We are becoming a sophisticated society. The politicians have recognized that and now we, the community, have recognized that and start participating.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: What happens to all of this feeling that you have about your new identity and entrance into the mainstream if this doesn't work out?

SAMIR MASHNI: I think it might be derailed. I would use the word derailed rather than not work out. I think eventually, whether it's in the short run or the long run, the Palestinian state is going to emerge. And our identity is going to be much more legitimized, and if we get derailed for any moment, I think the Palestinians within the West Bank, the Palestinians internationally are going to just get very much more powerful, that much more willing and that much more committed to the development of the full Palestinian state. We cannot go backwards.

[MEETING]

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But not all Palestinians are as hopeful. Take Hasan Newash, a quality improvement specialist at the Chrysler Corporation. Now in his early 50's, Hasan Newash was born in Ankaran, territory southwest of Jerusalem captured and claimed by Israel. Because it is not included in the current peace accords, it is a sore point with Arabs like Newash. He came to the United States in 1960, went to school here and worked as an engineer for Chrysler for many years. He went back to school for a Ph.D. in anthropology, became a poet and an activist, and then returned to Chrysler in his current job. Newash, a Muslim, is critical of Palestinians like those in the Ramallah group not because they are Christians but because, he says, nothing has changed.

HASAN NEWASH: To me, it's still the same. We are still oppressed people, whether it be in the United States, this feeling prevails because of who we are. We are one people whether we are refugee in Lebanon or whether you are in West Bank, whether you are in Detroit. We still feel the oppression, we feel the struggle of our people.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Some Palestinians here have said to me that after the accords they, for the first time, felt that they were recognized. It was a liberating experience.

HASAN NEWASH: That's their own, their own interpretation because to me still the stigma of terrorism or terror, I mean, I'd like to question the American public, the mainstream today. Did they stop believing Palestinians are terrorists? I don't think so. It's just part of the racism that you expect. In any society there are racists against foreigners. During the Gulf War, shops were burned. And so you expect some of that.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Do you see any greater openings or more acceptance for Palestinians at the political level?

HASAN NEWASH: What has changed? Is the Clinton administration friendlier to us now? This is the first administration that does not declare that the settlements, the colonies in our land are illegal. This is the first administration. All the American administrations in the past declared that these settlements are illegal. And they are not settlements. Look it, I mean, we even get captivated by the Israeli lingo. This is the hostile society politically that we live in as Palestinians. I am not hopeful in a artificial sense for the peripheral step. I look for significant content. There is no change in content. I'm sorry to be so analytical but this is where I'm at.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Back at his home, Newash is joined by friends who share his views. Two of them are members of the Ramallah group. Except for Newash, all are Christians. George Khoury is an engineer. Bishara Freij owns a liquor store, and Rosina Hassoun is a biological anthropologist working on her Ph.D.. We talked about how their lives had changed since the accords.

ROSINA HASSOUN: It's a roller coaster ride every day, more so than it ever was. Before, something would happen in the Middle East and you get upset, and then things would clear up and it would be better. Now, it's up and down all the time and I'm really worried about the future more than I ever was, so I can be ecstatic one minute and depressed, extremely depressed the next.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Is there any sense that Arabs have now arrived? I mean, they're at the White House.

HASAN NEWASH: The disenfranchised, which I feel that I am part of, have been shut out of the White House, and they still are. With entry of Arafat, it's in a sense sort of a devastation to me. It's abandonment, a betrayal more or less.

GEORGE KHOURY: People look at it as an achievement to be on the lawn of the White House and yet, in my point of view, it's the opposite. It's the exact opposite to be an achievement to be on the lawn of the White House. It's the people in the White House who have put the Palestinians in camps because of their continuous help to the Israeli state. So, therefore, now I'm coming all of a sudden to change my feelings, reverse gears, shift backward as if I'm very happy about the very same people who still are doing the damage to the Palestinian people. They are still in their camps in Lebanon, Syria, and also in Jordan and elsewhere. And how in the heck somebody can really feel all of a sudden a sense of achievement it is a sense of a letdown in a way, because it was negotiated under distress, and he agreed with it.

ROSINA HASSOUN: I have a fear that basically what they did is they created -- instead of creating a situation where equality can exist between Palestinians and Israelis eventually, what they did is the Israelis want their idea of limited autonomy is let's make this little bantu stand here in Gaza and let's make another one in Jericho, and that's it, it's finished, and Yasser Arafat accepted, and that's the end of it, and I was afraid that no one again would pay attention to the Palestinian plight, no one to talk about the inequalities that exist inside the country. And so I -- I've been fearful all along that basically this is the world's way of washing their hands of the Palestinians.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Bishara, do you feel still left out, or do you feel more included in? I mean --

BISHARA FREIJ: As far as I'm concerned as an individual I'm not left out or in but I have many relatives who live in the West Bank and who are still suffering even more after the signing of the accord because Arafat did not help my people in the West Bank. He is not democratic enough to represent all the Palestinians. They are in a big prison instead of small prisons in Gaza Strip. It's going to take some time before we see any lights.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: None of you seems enthusiastic, to put it mildly, about the accord and what has happened to the Arab-American community and specifically the Palestinians in America since. But has anything happened in the wake of the accords that has changed anything among you?

GEORGE KHOURY: It's time to draw a new strategy. It's time to regroup to reorganize. There is an effort of many Palestinians to beckon to each other and they say, okay, the way we did it in so many years did not lead us into standing up to some event as such, so therefore, we have to change strategy, to change technology, to change whatever is needed to go into organizing ourselves, so we can become more influential for the kind of solution that we want will be on its way coming up.

ROSINA HASSOUN: One interesting thing that happened to me is I got a call from a lady who was organizing for the opening of the World Cup games here in Detroit, and she wanted Palestinians to participate in the opening ceremonies of the World Cup games. And we went and we did, and for the first time I was standing there dressed in Palestinian costume and I was next to American Indians and people from all over the world. I mean, we had an incredible array of other people, and I thought finally, you know, I'm in this family of nations, and I don't know if anybody will recognize my costume and know who I am, but I am here. And so I don't think that would have happened before, but it's like your foot is in the door and now the responsibility to do something with it

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: And that was part of the agenda of the Ramallah Convention back in Washington. Some of them visited top government officials, received briefings on Mideast policy, and pressed for more economic aid to the new Palestinian authority now ensconced in the West Bank and Gaza, so that while some Arab-Americans plan to keep the feet of public officials and other arabs to the fire, others are determined to keep their feet wedged firmly against the cracks in the door. CONVERSATION - 1944-1994 - WORLD BANK

MR. LEHRER: Now a conversation with a man who runs the world's bank, the International Bank for Reconstruction & Development, otherwise known as the "World Bank." It was 50 years ago this week that the bank was created at the famous Breton Woods Conference in New Hampshire called by the United States and its allies to begin planning a post World War II economy. Lewis Preston became president of the World Bank in 1991, coming from a private banking career that included holding the job many consider to be the most powerful one in American banking, chairman of J.P. Morgan & Company. I spoke with Mr. Preston earlier today. Mr. Preston, welcome.

MR. PRESTON: Well, it's nice to be here.

MR. LEHRER: How does the World Bank of today, the one you run, compare with what the founders had in mind 50 years ago?

MR. PRESTON: Well, I think at the time it had 40 members. It now has 177 countries that are our shareholders. There are two countries that aren't members: One is North Korea and the other is Cuba.

MR. LEHRER: But the plan for the World Bank was to help it -- when they talked about it at Breton Woods in 1944 -- it was to help reconstruct Europe, wasn't it, after World War II? But things changed, the mission changed, did it not?

MR. PRESTON: The mission -- the vision of those founders was to - - it started out exactly as an instrument for the reconstruction of Europe and Japan. Then it moved into infrastructure lending, and then into adjustment lending, and the debt crisis hit Latin America, and finally, to help rebuild the states of the former Soviet Union.

MR. LEHRER: And basically you're in the development business now, is that right? Is that an oversimplification? Explain what you do.

MR. PRESTON: Development may be for the parts of Africa and South Asia, where the population numbers overwhelm any attempt to increase per capita income. But in the transition countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union our role there is both as adviser to try and create a structure, a legal structure so that ultimately the private sector can function, and then we use our financial resources to be a catalyst so that the private sector can come in and take over from the World Bank.

MR. LEHRER: But basically you are lending money and in bank terms you are lending money to governments, is that --

MR. PRESTON: The IBRD, the International Bank for Reconstruction & Development, can only lend to governments. We had the flexibility under the articles to create an affiliate, the International Finance Corporation, which lends only to the private sector, and then the third arm is the International Development Association where we lend to the poorest countries at 40-year terms with no interest.

MR. LEHRER: Now on the development side, as you know, you have your critics and they have organized into an organization which says 50 years is enough and that the World Bank has outlived its usefulness, and they particularly criticize the areas and the environment and social concerns that you all have been so concerned with helping government build these infrastructures, that you haven't paid enough attention to the environmental price that is being paid and in some cases social costs, relocating people and all of that. Are you guilty as charged?

MR. PRESTON: No. I think that they're single issue critics basically. Our problem is a billion people who are living on less than a dollar a day. Two out of five people in the, in the developing world don't have clean water or sanitation. And the population problem is absolutely gigantic. In the year 2030, there are going to be three billion, seven hundred and fifty million more people on this earth, and they're going to live in urban areas, 90 percent of them, and there's a lot to be done, and we ought to get started now.

MR. LEHRER: What does the World Bank do to alleviate these problems? I mean, in other words, when you sit down every day, you and your colleagues at the World Bank, what part of a problem are you trying to solve for these 3 billion plus people who are going to be coming into the world?

MR. PRESTON: Well, what we're trying to do is sustainable development so that if we lend agriculture, we're lending in such a way that the next generation can also farm on that particular land. If we're building irrigation systems, they're built to survive again for the next generation. So that literally everything that we finance is targeted to relieve the poor of this world.

MR. LEHRER: And, and that is your mandate. That's the World Bank's mandate now, is that correct?

MR. PRESTON: The visionaries put the word reconstruction and development in the title, and it's "and development" that we're doing today.

MR. LEHRER: No reconstruction per se unless you would add in -- do you consider reconstruction what you're doing in Eastern Europe specifically? Is that a reconstruction?

MR. PRESTON: I think you could use that definition because for instance in Russia we're lending on road projects to facilitate the movement of agricultural goods and transportation. We've lent to their oil producers to try and help the drop in their oil production, which is very serious indeed. It's about 15 percent a year, and if they don't arrest that decline, instead of being an oil exporter, they'll become an oil importer, and then there isn't enough money in the world to solve the problem.

MR. LEHRER: On the development side, this program and everybody else's program, anybody who's paying attention to the news today and in the last several weeks and months has been reporting on tragedies in Africa and Rwanda and Somalia and, and at Burundi and other countries. What's the World Bank's job in those areas?

MR. PRESTON: Well, in the first instance, the relief agencies are really responsible for trying to save these poor people from starvation, which is obvious risk in terms of these migration numbers that are starting to appear. But we will start to try and develop a plan to help reconstruct those countries in the sense that basically they're agricultural economies. What we will do probably is to help in -- when they disband these armies give them funds to buy a plow, buy some fertilizer and go back to work and to make a living for themselves.

MR. LEHRER: But that is a World Bank function?

MR. PRESTON: That is a World Bank function.

MR. LEHRER: And can the World Bank move quickly enough to move in in these emergency situations, or what -- how does that kind of thing work?

MR. PRESTON: Well, that's the whole thrust of what we're trying to do because the problems are now so vast and changing so quickly that we have to become more agile, we have to become more cost conscious, more cost effective, because not only do we owe that to the developing countries but the richer nations, the industrial nations are all now in the middle of serious budget problems, and we have to be perceived as being lean and mean and having an organization that can respond quickly.

MR. LEHRER: And the developing countries are essentially the ones that provide the funds that you all use?

MR. PRESTON: The developed countries.

MR. LEHRER: I mean developed right, not the developing.

MR. PRESTON: Right.

MR. LEHRER: The developed countries. So you -- and they're putting heat on you, are they not?

MR. PRESTON: They are absolutely right in that they are going through their own budget difficulties. They are making savings in their own civil service, et cetera, et cetera, and they have every reason to expect the international organizations to do exactly the same thing.

MR. LEHRER: Is it easy to change an institution like the World Bank?

MR. PRESTON: It's a lot easier in the private sector, which is where I came from, but you can energize and motivate people and build a consensus for change, and that's what we've been able to do at the World Bank.

MR. LEHRER: Explain the differences between running something like J.P. Morgan and running the World Bank.

MR. PRESTON: Well, four or five of you may agree that that's a direction you want to take the firm, and then you can incentivize people to move that way.

MR. LEHRER: What do you mean?

MR. PRESTON: If there's a much quicker response time and you can reward people with, with the compensation system, which you can't do at the World Bank.

MR. LEHRER: So how does it work if those -- to take a similar situation, a similar kind of decision, how would you get it done at the World Bank?

MR. PRESTON: Well, I think what you really do is build a consensus, build a consensus to change, and that's what we've been able to do, and so instead of resisting change, they now welcome it. We're looking at our process to see that if we can shorten the time it takes us to make a loan, if we should have people in the field, rather than here in Washington, we will do it.

MR. LEHRER: Well, the word has always been and the reading that I did today about the World Bank is that the bureaucracy at the World Bank resists change, just as -- I mean, that's what you have apparently discovered when you got there in 1991. Is that still the case?

MR. PRESTON: I don't think so. I think you can energize and motivate people.

MR. LEHRER: All right. And do you think that your successor 50 years from now will be sitting here talking about the World Bank? Do you think the World Bank is an institution that will always be needed, there will always be need for development, always will be need for reconstruction and a World Bank?

MR. PRESTON: Well, the true test of its success is on the ground and the fact that if people don't need us, they what we call "graduate" from the bank. In other words, they've got their per capita income up to a certain level, and then they leave the bank, and the more graduates we have, the more successful we've been.

MR. LEHRER: Leave the bank, meaning they go into the private --

MR. PRESTON: They use the private market and it's interesting - - Japan graduated from the bank in 1967. Today they're the second largest donor right behind the United States.

MR. LEHRER: They no longer qualify?

MR. PRESTON: They no longer qualify.

MR. LEHRER: For help from the World Bank.

MR. PRESTON: They're reversed the process. They're the second largest donor of international assistance in the world. Spain graduated in 1977. They contributed to the soft loan window for the first time this year. So it's very exciting when they move from clients on the borrowing side to donor countries. That's a source of great satisfaction to all of us.

MR. LEHRER: Well, Mr. Preston, Happy 50th Anniversary to the bank and good luck for the next 50 years.

MR. PRESTON: Well, I hope I'm hear to enjoy it.

MR. LEHRER: I hope I'm here to interview you. Thank you very much. RECAP

MR. MAC NEIL: Again, the major stories of this Thursday, medical officials in Zaire said tens of thousands of Rwandan refugees could die within days from cholera. President Clinton ordered his administration to come up with a plan to deal quickly with the epidemic and the U.S. is seeking UN approval of a multinational force to restore democracy in Haiti. Good night, Jim.

MR. LEHRER: Good night, Robin. We'll see you tomorrow night with Shields and Gigot, among other things. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.