The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

MARGARET WARNER:

JIM LEHRER: Good evening, I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, a look at the opening of the new round of Syrian-Israeli peace talks; Gwen Ifill examines the Putin prospects and the Yeltsin legacy in Russia; and Terence Smith manages a farewell to Charlie Brown and his "Peanuts" friends. It all follows our summary of the news this Monday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: Israel and Syria resumed peace talks today. Negotiators met just outside Shepherdstown, West Virginia, about 70 miles from Washington, DC. President Clinton oversaw the first day of meetings between Israeli Prime Minister Barak and Syrian Foreign Minister Sharaa. State Department Spokesman James Rubin said this.

JAMES RUBIN: We do not expect to be able to achieve a core agreement in one round of negotiations. What we are hoping to achieve is to have an opportunity to discuss all of the outstanding issues, all the issues that have not been discussed face to face with experts in all the areas for four long years, at the end of which we would certainly hope that we are able to achieve real progress towards closing some of the gaps and towards making this historic opportunity more possible.

JIM LEHRER: Syria has long demanded that Israel return the Golan Heights. Israel captured that territory in the 1967 war. Barak has indicated he'd give it back for peace, but he faces opposition. There were protests throughout Israel overnight, and today, hundreds of Druze Arabs from the Golan also demonstrated. They wanted Druze prisoners released from Israeli jails. We'll have more on the peace talks right after this News summary. In Russia today, acting President Putin fired Boris Yeltsin's daughter from her post as "image advisor" at the Kremlin. She had been a focus of corruption allegations. Yeltsin resigned the presidency Friday, and named Putin his successor. We'll have more on the change in Russia's leadership later in the program tonight. There was an attack today on the Russian embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. A police officer and one of the attackers were killed. Six people were wounded. We have this report from Neil Connery of Independent Television News.

NEIL CONNERY: Troops surround a building after gunmen start firing grenades and bullets into a crowd near the Russian embassy. As the army tightens its cordon, one of the gunmen is shot dead. Crowds are pushed back as Lebanese troops begin to finally storm the building after a gun battle lasting two hours. By the time the siege had ended, police discovered there was only one gunman inside. The others had fled the scene. The dead Palestinian discovered had a note which read "I martyred myself for Grozny." It's believed the embassy had been targeted in response to the war against Muslim rebels in Chechnya. (Sirens) In Russia, the Kremlin's deputy chief of administration condemned the attack. Moscow is worried by the risks faced by its diplomatic staff abroad. Last week, Beirut newspapers said those loyal to the Muslim rebels in Chechnya were being trained in Lebanon.

JIM LEHRER: In Chechnya today, Russian forces continued trying to drive rebels out of the center of the capital city, Grozny. Artillery and planes also pounded rebel strongholds in the southern mountains. India's prime minister charged today that Pakistan was behind the hijacking of an Indian Airlines jet. He urged the international community to declare Pakistan a terrorist state. Pakistani officials rejected that allegation. They also said they don't know the whereabouts of the hijackers. The five gunmen had forced the plane to fly to Afghanistan. They disappeared Friday after India released three Kashmiri militants from jail. The first major business day of 2000 passed with few signs of computer problems. President Clinton's chief Y2K advisor, John Koskinen, said businesses and the federal government operated as planned. He said that proves it made sense to spend billions of dollars upgrading computer systems. He spoke at a news conference in Washington.

JOHN KOSKINEN: The fact that everyone worked at this so well and cooperatively and that we have had this great success has led some not to declare a victory and say it is a marvelous accomplishment, which I genuinely believe it is, but to say it must not have been a problem. People must have spent a hundred billion dollars naively. Corporations don't naively spend hundreds of millions of dollars. And boards of directors and CEO's and heads of information technology departments don't waste money if they can avoid it.

JIM LEHRER: Admiral Elmo Zumwalt is dead. He died yesterday of complications from chest cancer surgery. He was 79 years old. Zumwalt commanded naval forces in Vietnam and then became chief of naval operations. He ordered the spraying of Agent Orange to defoliate Vietnamese jungles. He later said he believed it caused the cancer that ultimately killed own his son. The younger Zumwalt commanded a river patrol boat in Vietnam. The last daily "Peanuts" comic strip ran in newspapers today. Its creator, Charles Schulz, retired himself and the strip after he was diagnosed in November with colon cancer. He's 77 years old, and had been writing the daily strip for almost 50 years. We'll have more on Schulz's creation at the end of our program tonight. Between now and then, the Middle East peace talks, and the big change in Russia.

UPDATE - PATH TO PEACE

JIM LEHRER: The new round of Israel/Syria peace talks. We get our update from David Makovsky, executive editor of the Jerusalem Post and Hisham Melhem, correspondent for the Beirut newspaper, As-Safir.

Is it your impression that matters remain, in general terms, that matters remain on track for a mission?

HISHAM MELHEM: Absolutely. This time the focus is going to be on the details, last time the talks in general terms to set up the agenda and to define the issues of contention. This time they brought with them the advisors, technicians, military people to discuss in details and in depth, border issues, border demarcation, legal issues, normalization, economics and what not. It is -- the focus is going to be on those issues.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree, David, that nothing has happened since the Blair House meetings here in December to change the momentum toward a deal?

DAVID MAKOVSKY: That's correct, I think there is political certainly on the Israeli side, I think on the Syrian side, the basic parameters are basically know, but the devil is in the details and there are differences.

JIM LEHRER: Staying to the general for a moment, we'll get to the details, what about the politics from Barak's point of view? Have they changed any since he was here? Are the people of Israel behind him basically?

DAVID MAKOVSKY: Well, I think there is a general perception that a deal is in the works and that somehow the details will be ironed out. And now they're already talking about the politics of can Barak win a referendum to gain public approval, and that -

JIM LEHRER: Which he has to do.

DAVID MAKOVSKY: Which he has to do. He has committed himself to do it.

JIM LEHRER: He's committed himself to do it, right.

DAVID MAKOVSKY: And that is very unclear because at the core it comes down to one idea -- which is that the public needs to be convinced in Israel that the peace that they're going to receive from Syria is every bit as tangible and irreversible as the land they are going to yield, and that they are not convinced of yet.

JIM LEHRER: So that - I mean, that's where matters stand; they're still skeptical?

DAVID MAKOVSKY: That's the key, yes.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. Now, the Syrian, what is the Syrian momentum at this point, Hisham?

HISHAM MELHEM: Syrians came here with the first item on the agenda is withdrawal and maybe security arrangement. The Israelis came to Shepherds Town - the first item on the agenda is normalization. And that's why both of them came here with different priorities let's say. And they will iron out the differences now. It is still possible to say that this thing is not 100% sure. It's not tight enough. And things could crumble. And that's why today, for instance, one of the main issues that was discussed was to set up the agenda and also try to define what is going to be the American role in these talks. The Syrians would like the Americans to be in the room. The Israelis would like the Americans to be in an adjacent room, intervening only if the situation requires that.

JIM LEHRER: So they want the Americans, the Syrians want the Americans to actually preside over the meetings?

HISHAM MELHEM: Preside, yeah, preside, open the meetings, take notes, to be a witness, and that's why they will tell you in 1996 or 1994 rather, when Rabin gave the Syrians some sort of a pledge that he withdraw to the June 4th border, 1967, he did that through the Americans. There always need to be American witness to these talks. And that's why the American role has been very crucial.

JIM LEHRER: And it's your understanding that has not been resolved yet?

HISHAM MELHEM: Hasn't been resolved -- I just came --

JIM LEHRER: You just came from Shepherds Town.

HISHAM MELHEM: Yes.

DAVID MAKOVSKY: I think where I would differ just a bit from Hisham here is that Rabin spoke of the idea of withdrawal but it was clearly pending security arrangements and water and some of these other difficulties which have to be ironed out. The Syrians have to -- there was an agreement. Now it's ridiculous to believe -

HISHAM MELHEM: Actually the Syrians would agree that one reason, for instance, Assad did not jump on the agreement is that because they hadn't settled one of the main issues concerning the security agreements which is the fate of the Israeli spy station or monitoring station on the Golan.

JIM LEHRER: Security -

HISHAM MELHEM: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: Let's go back to what they're talking about now and you say the devil is in the details.

DAVID MAKOVSKY: Right.

JIM LEHRER: What is the most devilish detail that has to be worked out?

DAVID MAKOVSKY: I think Hisham is right; one of them is Mount Herman, the early warning station.

JIM LEHRER: Explain why that is important -

DAVID MAKOVSKY: And it's also linked to the deployment of Syrian armor formation on the Golan. It's all really the same issue. It comes down to this: Syria has a larger standing army than Israel. Israel is based on a citizen's army of reserves. Now to call up reserves when there is a surprise attack takes 48 hours. So, therefore, you have to got to configure a deal that if the Syrians all of a sudden make a surprise attack it will take them 48 hours to cross over into Israel. If their formation is right up there or if you are kind of blinded because you don't have access to early warning, they could just cut right through you. So you want to have a situation that (A), you have early warning capability and (B), that their armor formation, their offensive units are far enough from the Golan that Israel can mobilize when it has to. It is at that disadvantage, where Israel is at, and those are why those two issues are key. But they all linked to the same point.

JIM LEHRER: They're all the same issue.

HISHAM MELHEM: Speaking of offensive, I mean, the Syrians see it as very offensive in the extreme.

JIM LEHRER: Why?

HISHAM MELHEM: To allow Israelis to man a spy station on the highest mountain in the Golan, a spy station that can monitor moments in everybody's bedroom down in Damascus which is less than 55 miles away -- kilometers, rather -- to monitor the phones, to monitor everybody's agreement. I mean, in the age of missiles, in the age of other ways of early warning, the satellites and what not, this is really an obsolete form of early warning. The Israeli army, everybody in Israel - a study recently said that the Israeli -- Syrian army is not powerful enough to threaten Israel. So the people who are involved in security issues in Israel will tell you publicly nowadays that the Syrian army is not a threat to Israel.

JIM LEHRER: But the whole assumption here, David, is still that there may be war. I mean, these are two enemies sitting down to try to negotiate how to handle a war, rather than how to handle a peace, am I right about that?

DAVID MAKOVSKY: Well, that's correct, but people have to prepare for like the worst case scenario. I would - some of the details - but I want to go backward -- to answer your question, I think that there is a lack of trust here. These people have been enemies for 50 years, Syria has been Israel's most implacable foe. I mean, even little gestures, like when Rabin died, to send a condolence card to his wife, or when there's a Palestinian terrorist attack, to condemn it - little things - and they can't bring themselves to do that or Arafat hasn't brought himself to visit Israel or to lay out his vision of peace -- it makes people skeptical saying this is the same Syria that shelled Israeli Kibbutzim in Mosheim from 1948 to 1967. And we have --

HISHAM MELHEM: What is that? Look, even the Israelis themselves will admit now that in most cases -- almost 80% of the time when the clashes occurred between Syria and Israel from 1949 to 1967 were because of Israeli encroachment on the demilitarized zone. And the Israelis always wanted to take over the demilitarized zone - that issue. But the point is, yes, these are implacable areas. Yes, this is not going to be immediately a warm peace. We are not going to embrace and fall in love with each other. International relations are not based on love; they are based on legal, contractual agreements, and the Syrians have shown -- regardless of what they think of their government, regardless of they think of their regime, they have shown that they, when they commit themselves to agreements, they stick by those agreements, and the United States is going to be a guarantor. There is no Soviet Union now -

JIM LEHRER: What does that mean, the United States is going to be a guarantor? How does it guarantee anything?

HISHAM MELHEM: The United States is going to foot the bill for the Israeli withdrawal from the Golan, so you and I as good taxpayers are going to foot the bill for the Israelis, who build the settlements knowing for years that these are legal settlements on legally occupied territories, but the United States also is going to create as they call a structure of peace, relations, guarantees, for the military of both countries. I mean, they could probably provide intelligence for the two countries at the same time.

JIM LEHRER: In other words, the CIA -

HISHAM MELHEM: Yes, Yes.

JIM LEHRER: Israel - and Palestinians -

HISHAM MELHEM: Monitor from the satellites, movements of troops - I mean, there are many ways, it's not really beyond that. When the Syrians said that peace is our strategic option, they meant that. The only difference is these are not like Egyptians or Jordanians - they were not willing at this stage to engage in this public diplomacy, public gestures before they get back their territory. Call it national pride, call it history, call it legacy of conflict -

JIM LEHRER: This matter is -- this matter deeply to Israelis -

DAVID MAKOVSKY: The public part is crucial. It's also the notion that Syria always kept its word. People have to realize something. You have the Golan Border who has been quiet all these years, as Hisham hinted, but the fact is by remote control Syria has allowed shipments to Damascus - to Hezbollah, Islamic guerrillas, and been blowing up Israeli soldiers since 1982. I mean, the point is, is one of Barak's reasons for doing the deal was to do a Syria-Lebanon package - was to hopefully change the region in the direction of peace. And no one has believed that all of a sudden that Assad has become a lover of Zion. But there are strategic reasons for doing the deal. I said that -- Barak is not doing it because he thinks that. My point is that the level of suspicion relates not to public statements but it relates to the fact Israelis have been blown up in Lebanon now for 17 years and that Assad is not really clean. He can say my Golan border is clean but by remote control to these arms shipments blow up Israel and Lebanon, so -

JIM LEHRER: All right.

DAVID MAKOVSKY: -- if he didn't kill you in New York, he kills you in New Jersey. The point is, if you want to do the deal - I don't want to make it sound like -- Barak will have support of the Israeli public for a deal will lead to regional peace, there's just skepticism to be overcome, but I think he has a vision -

HISHAM MELHEM: You made the Israeli army in South Lebanon, which is an occupying army, as a bunch of revelers engaged --

JIM LEHRER: You have provided a great public service this evening. You have demonstrated - for our audience at least -- how difficult it's going to be.

HISHAM MELHEM: It's not impossible.

JIM LEHRER: How long is it going to take?

DAVID MAKOVSKY: I think it will be possible. It might not be this round or next round. I think it will be done in short order in the next couple of months, because Barak needs to have a referendum; he needs to galvanize it. These things drag down into these details and the momentum is lost. That will hurt him for referendum and also he has got an agreement also set with the Palestinians for February 13. He would like, I think, these two things to converge and go to referendum on both.

HISHAM MELHEM: I think it can be done within six months.

JIM LEHRER: Six months?

HISHAM MELHEM: Yes. I think it can be done within six months, because most of the issues have been discussed. Everybody knows each other's positions on this -

JIM LEHRER: If we can get you two guys to agree on the history leading up to this we'll be in fine shape. Thank you both very much. Thank you.

FOCUS - POWER SHIFT

JIM LEHRER: And still to come on the NewsHour tonight, out and in, in Russia, and so long, Charlie Brown. Gwen Ifill has the Russia story.

GWEN IFILL: Russia greeted the new year with a new leader. He is Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent who was virtually unknown at home and abroad until four months ago, when Boris Yeltsin plucked him out of obscurity to become prime minister. After Yeltsin's surprise resignation Friday, Putin became acting president. Already leading in the polls as a candidate for the job, he now has the advantage of incumbency. He is heavily favored to win a full four-year term when elections are held in March. Russians have embraced Putin's tough handling of the war in Chechnya. Building on that popularity, Putin immediately traveled to Chechnya this weekend to visit Russian troops fighting there.

VLADIMIR PUTIN: (speaking through interpreter) Happy New Year to all of you, and all the best to you and your families. It took a lot for us to get here. We were meant to be flying here, but had to turn back. We finally made it by car. I have to apologize for the delay, but better to be late than never.

GWEN IFILL: That military campaign began after bombings in Moscow were blamed on Chechen separatists. Russian troops are now engaged in fierce fighting, closing in on the capital city of Grozny. Putin convened Russia's security council within hours of Yeltsin's resignation. (Speaking Russian)

VLADIMIR PUTIN: (speaking through interpreter) In the government and foreign ministry, the principles of everything that has been decided by the president recently, by the first president of Russia, will be fulfilled.

GWEN IFILL: Putin remains an unknown quantity abroad. U.S. officials have not hesitated to criticize the Chechen war.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: He's riding a tiger on this. I think there's no question. I mean, he has based a great deal of his style on what is happening in Chechnya and the fact that he went there. But I think we believe that there's a very dangerous aspect to this, in terms of quagmire, and that he needs to develop some kind of exit strategy.

GWEN IFILL: At 47 years old, Putin is now perceived as energetic and healthy in all the ways the 68- year-old Yeltsin was not. In his surprise resignation speech on Russian TV Friday, Yeltsin said he had been "naive" for believing Russia could transform itself overnight.

BORIS YELTSIN: (speaking through interpreter) I ask forgiveness for not justifying some hopes of those people who believed that at one stroke, in one spurt, we could leap from the gray, stagnant, totalitarian past into the light, rich, civilized future. I myself believed in this, that we could overcome everything in one spurt.

GWEN IFILL: But as part of his succession deal with Putin, Yeltsin will be immune from prosecution. Allegations of corruption have been directed at his top aides and family. Yeltsin's resignation came eight years after his former mentor Mikhail Gorbachev resigned, following the breakup of the Soviet Union. The rivalry between the two men dates back to the late 1980's, as Yeltsin, then a member of the Russian parliament, made clear in a 1989 interview on the NewsHour.

JIM LEHRER: In this country, Gorbachev is seen by many in heroic terms as a man of history, a man who is turning around a huge ship of state in a very dramatic way. Is that the way we should see him? How should Americans view Mikhail Gorbachev?

BORIS YELTSIN: (speaking through interpreter) You have some euphoria of the first two years of perestroika. You don't know the real state of affairs in the country. If you knew it, you would not be so euphoric now.

JIM LEHRER: What should we be? If not euphoric, what?

BORIS YELTSIN: (speaking through interpreter) More realistic, more realistic.

GWEN IFILL: By 1991, Yeltsin had fully grabbed the world spotlight, climbing atop a tank outside government house in Moscow to denounce an attempted coup against Gorbachev by hard-liners and the KGB. Four months later, the hammer and sickle was lowered at the Kremlin. The Soviet Union was dissolved, replaced by a collection of republics independent of Moscow. (Crowd chanting "Yeltsin, Yeltsin") Even as leader of a diminished Russia, Yeltsin was initially a popular president. But his popularity plummeted as Yeltsin's market reforms led to skyrocketing inflation and unemployment. But Yeltsin staged a remarkable political comeback, winning reelection in 1996, even after suffering two heart attacks. But his health faded again, and he underwent multiple bypass surgery. Relations with the United States grew frosty, weakened, among other things, by the NATO bombing campaign in Kosovo. But President Clinton had only kind words for Yeltsin after news of his sudden resignation.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, I liked him because he was always very forthright with me. He always did exactly what he said he would do. And he was willing to take chances to try to improve our relationship, to try to improve democracy in Russia.

GWEN IFILL: But in recent months, Yeltsin supported the Chechnya war, to the dismay of his colleagues in the West.

GWEN IFILL: For more on the situation in Russia, we turn to Michael McFaul, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and assistant professor of political science at Stanford University. He returned from Moscow two weeks ago. Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom, and author of "After the Collapse: Russia Seeks its Place as a Great Power." Leon Aron, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of "Yeltsin," a biography that will be published in March. And Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies at New York University, and author of "Rethinking the Soviet Experience."

GWEN IFILL: Let's speak first about Vladimir Putin, about whom we know very little. Michael McFaul, he is the first Russian president born after World War II, in much the same way that Bill Clinton was the first American president born after World War II. What does that tell us about him, if anything?

MICHAEL McFAUL: I think this tells us a lot. Boris Yeltsin was a transitional figure between the Communist system to this new political and economic system that we have in Russia today. Putin is not a transitional figure. He made his career, most of it, you got to remember most of his career has been in the post communist era - and I think says a lot about him. It says that when he turns to economic advice, he doesn't turn to Soviet bureaucrats or KGB apparatchiks, he turns to market reformers. It says when he looks to the outside world, the western world, he is not caught back in superpower Soviet American confrontation -- he is a new guy. And I think that's a very positive thing for Russia.

GWEN IFILL: Stephen Cohen, Michael McFaul says it's a positive thing for Russia, do you agree with that?

STEPHEN COHEN: Well, I hope Michael is right. What we know for the moment is what we know for the moment; that Putin is a career KGB officer and that at the moment he waging, he is the architect of a war in Chechnya which all the international human rights organizations say commits war crimes every day. That is what we know for a fact. All the rest is speculation.

GWEN IFILL: Dimitri Simes, what does it mean what we say he is a career KGB officer, does that mean now what it used to mean?

DIMITRI SIMES: Yes, it means exactly what it means, because first of all he was a career KGB officer, not just in intelligence but also in counterintelligence in political -- I do not know what exactly he had done, but it was at the end of the Soviet Union -- he was in Germany fighting the end of Communism then he went to work for KGB in Russia. When he was the director of KGB successor agency, working already for Yeltsin, I have to say he behaved very awful. In a typical KGB tradition, he was involved in activities which were very questionable morally and I would say legally, and he obviously on a number of occasions put interests of his boss, Boris Yeltsin, above the Russian institution and above the Russian democracy.

GWEN IFILL: Leon Aron, we just heard Madeleine Albright say that Putin is riding the tiger in terms of his war with Chechnya and sailing along on that. Is she correct? Is that a dangerous place for him to be?

LEON ARON: There are such things in democracies as popular wars. We all know examples - especially they start as popular wars, and then the media turns against it and the people turn against it usually when our boys begin to be killed in big numbers. Unlike the first war in Chechnya the Russians are trying to keep that number low. I think that Putin understands. I think he knows very well, for example, Yeltsin won presidency in '96 only in part because he finished the first war in Chechnya or at least put a stop to it. It was finished a year later. So I think we will see moves by Putin to end that war. But he has to be careful because the war, as you have mentioned, is very popular. It's considered by the majority of the Russians, 70, 80% as a just war as a response to terrorism, as a response to the death of their brothers and sisters who were killed -- peaceful citizens. So he cannot just say the war is over. He will have to, I think, take Grozny but my feeling is that he will open negotiations shortly after that. And I'm almost confident that one way or the other, this war will be either over or put in a very, very kind of slow basis by the time election comes presidentially at the end of March.

GWEN IFILL: Stephen Cohen, what is the danger of being a single issue president? This war is the only thing we know of him practically and what if the economy were to take a downturn or if the war were to take a downturn?

STEPHEN COHEN: I think what we know is the timing of Yeltsin's resignation was dictated by the concern that Putin's popularity - and after all Putin has been appointed as a kind of Praetorian minister to protect the Kremlin from any retribution for what has happened in the country -- that waging war is a form of electoral politics could not be sustained for six months, when an election was supposed to take place. So by resigning Yeltsin brought the election forward three months. It's now 90 days to the election. It's now manageable and you mentioned something else. There is disagreement about this. And I'm not sure. I mean, I don't have a final opinion on this, but there are some people in Russia, serious economists, that think that the ruble may collapse within 90 days or certainly within six months, and that would reduce the purchasing power of voters, and that would hurt whomever sits in the Kremlin.

GWEN IFILL: Mr. Putin -- Mr. McFaul, I'm sorry, I've just promoted you.

MICHAEL McFAUL: I don't want that job, thank you. Yes and no. I mean, yes, Yeltsin resigned when he did to help Mr. Putin become president. I think it is a slam dunk now that he will be elected but he will be elected because 75% of the Russian people support what he is doing. By the way, it's not just the war in Chechnya. If you look at opinion polls now, people feel much better about the economy. It's gone up to 55% say they are better off now than they were six months ago. When you ask the question have you adapted to the reforms of the Soviet Union, traditionally for the last ten years that number has been about 25%, under Putin it has jumped to 54%. That says that there is something else going on here. It is not just a one-issue guy; it is a young guy with a pulse in the Kremlin which they haven't had for a long time, and so people are cautiously optimistic about the Putin regime.

GWEN IFILL: And he is a tough talker, right, as well.

LEON ARON: You got to be both. But I agree with Michael. You know, the Russian economy is probably going to post the first real growth of the GDP, at least one and a half, probably 2%, the industrial portion of it has grown 8%. You know, 12 million Russians traveled abroad. They cannot all be oligarchs. If they are, the economy is really in good shape. You know, there are all kinds of indicators that might cautiously be judged as showing that the economy is clawing from under the crisis of the essentially the last ten years. So that plus let's not forget the generational factor is extremely important. Anybody who travels in Russia in the last few years across the political spectrum, across the board, they want somebody who did not spend their, his entire most of his life under the old regime.

GWEN IFILL: Dimitri Simes, today, Putin fired Boris Yeltsin's daughter, his image maker, who had been under a cloud of suspicion having to do with corruption. Do we know that Vladimir Putin is going to be able to tackle the corruption issue if his mentor may have been up to his neck in it?

DIMITRI SIMES: Up to now, Putin was covering up for Yeltsin's corruptions. A number of people, most notably the results came, Anatoly Chubais, were claiming that put Putin was in his pocket. Up to a point it was convenient for Putin because these people made Putin. These people funded Putin. TV stations controlled by these people promoted Putin. But now if Putin wants to establish himself as a genuine national figure, he has to develop his own identity and it is a very smart move on his part to get rid of Tatanya Duchenka. There is one minor point, however. I was told that Tatanya Duchenka -

GWEN IFILL: Yeltsin's daughter.

DIMITRI SIMES: Yeltsin's daughter -- obviously knew there was no place for her in the Putin administration because her whole role was based on her unique relationship with her father, so there is there a little bit less to this move than meets the eye.

GWEN IFILL: Let's turn to the Yeltsin legacy. Mr. Aron, Boris Yeltsin presided over seven prime ministers, three ruble crises, two wars in Chechnya, he survived two heart attacks and then shocked the world with the millennium eve resignation. What is his legacy going to be?

LEON ARON: Well, I think as the secondary and the tertiary kind of falls off history and as we take a longer distance, I think he will emerge as one of the last revolutionary giants of the past century and certainly somebody of that caliber will not be seen in a long time. He will be remembered I think as a man who took over a great country at the time of a mortal social crisis, imperial crisis, economic crisis in the fall of 1991. He was also - he will also be remembered as somebody who took over a decaying, fairly corrupt totalitarian state, decentralized it, demilitarized it, withdrew every last Russian soldier from Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and put in place elements, I repeat elements of democracy and real elements of markets economy, not sufficient but real and necessary. And I think this is enough to make a place in history for ten men.

GWEN IFILL: Steven Cohen, Boris Yeltsin's legacy?

STEPHEN COHEN: Let me be a professor. I thought you might ask the question so I took the liberty of a note so I don't forget. I think there is going to be three schools of thought among Russian historians about Yeltsin. The point to remember is they cannot separate Gorbachev from Yeltsin. The two are going to be evaluated together. The first school of thought is going to be to condemn both Gorbachev and Yeltsin for destroying the Russian state. The argument is going to be Russia must always have a strong sate and to destroy it is to destroy Russia. So they are both going to be condemned by historians. The second view is more or less Leon's view, it will be the Yeltsin the bold, Yeltsin the hero of history, Yeltsin who saw Gorbachev was too timid, wouldn't break with the system and Yeltsin who broke with the system. He will be Yeltsin the great and the third school will say this - that Gorbachev was a great reformer that his gradual, incremental approach to reforming Russia was the right way and whatever his failures, he gave, he bequeathed to Yeltsin in 1991 many opportunities -- all of which, most of which Yeltsin squandered.

GWEN IFILL: It sounds like the third school is your school?

STEPHEN COHEN: This school of thought will be called the Boris the squanderer and yes, I would adhere to that school of thought.

GWEN IFILL: Michael McFaul.

MICHAEL McFAUL: The fourth school is, it is a little bit of those two views, the problem with our discussion about Russia for the last decade, maybe for decades before my time has always been it's either black or it's either white. Yeltsin is either a good guy or Yeltsin is a bad guy. The real truth, the real historians will write something else. It is a mixed bag. He destroyed communism, that's a good thing. He destroyed the Soviet empire, that's a good thing. He started capitalism and democracy, those are good things. But then he also bombed the White House in October of 1993. That's a bad thing. He also went into Chechnya twice. I consider those bad things. I think we need to get beyond is it white or black and look at the totality of Yeltsin and judge him for both his strengths and his weaknesses.

GWEN IFILL: What does it mean that he resigned early and got this pardon deal?

DIMITRI SIMES: I think you are asking most of the question because how he left his office tells a lot about his going to be remembered in history. He is the first Russian democratically-elected president who had to arrange an immunity as the first after his successor who had to fix presidential elections to make sure that his chosen successor would remain in power because otherwise he would be persecuted for his misdeeds. I agree with Leon that Yeltsin was a very effective revolutionary. I think, however, he was a lousy nation builder. If you left off before he attacked the Russian White House in 1993, he would be remembered as a revolutionary for those terrible things he helped to destroy, but he will be remembered for six years as a Russian president between 1993 and 1999 for what he was building. He could build a very unattractive state and his chosen successor we were kind of hopeful that Yeltsin's successor would be a more vigorous and dynamic version of great democrat and Sakharov. Instead we got a younger version of Uri Andropov.

MICHAEL McFAUL: There is a giant difference between Uri Andropov and Vladimir Putin in that Vladimir Putin will be elected in a free and fair election in March.

DIMITRI SIMES: I have not seen fair elections in Russia under Yeltsin.

MICHAEL McFAUL: Compared to what? Compared to Andropov and the Soviet period.

GWEN IFILL: Let me step in. Leon Aron, the United States obviously has interests at stake here. Is it able to say what the United States will be able to get out of this or take from this?

LEON ARON: As far as Putin as concerned?

GWEN IFILL: Yes.

LEON ARON: I think it's a mixed bag and we better get used to it. On the one hand he is, I think he will be elected. We're forgetting that -in broad parameters -- he is following public opinion. It is a struggling democracy, imperfect democracy, but there are certain consensus on certain things such as free elections and free speech. Even the Communist Party doesn't want to renationalize the privatized property and so on and so forth. So Putin unlike the days of the Cold War, we can't practice criminology, and say Putin will do whatever we wants however he wants it -- there are very important constraints that cross the entire segment, the entire Russian political class, but following public opinion, in other words we got what we prayed for, I think he might be tougher than Yeltsin, for example, on a number of issues. Take the war in Chechnya. It's very popular. Putin is pursuing it because the polls are for that war.

GWEN IFILL: Whether the U.S. likes it or not?

LEON ARON: That's right, Yeltsin partly because of his upbringing in the party apparatchik could do things that went against public opinion such as when he helped in Kosovo to settle that conflict. I'm not sure that a popularly elected president such as Putin would be as amenable.

GWEN IFILL: Thank you very much. I feel like we've just scratched the surface but I thank you all for joining us.

FINALLY - SO LONG, CHARLIE BROWN

GWEN IFILL: Finally tonight, a farewell to Charlie Brown and the "Peanuts" gang. Media correspondent Terrence Smith has that.

CARTOON SEGMENT:

CHARLIE BROWN: I feel miserable. Nobody likes me. Why can't I have fun like everybody else?

TERENCE SMITH: For almost 50 years, Americans have empathized with Charlie Brown, the lovable loser and star of Charles Schulz' "Peanuts," the comic strip that spawned TV specials, films, and a merchandising empire. Although filled with self-doubt and anxiety, Charlie Brown never gives up: Hoping to win a baseball game, putting one over on his dog Snoopy, and getting the little red-headed girl he's madly in love with.

CHARLIE BROWN: "Dear little red-haired girl..."

TERENCE SMITH: Other "Peanuts" characters Schulz created have become as beloved as Charlie Brown. Like him, they have complicated feelings and appealing idiosyncrasies. Snoopy imagines he's a World War I ace.

CHARLIE BROWN: Aughh!

TERENCE SMITH: Lucy foils Charlie Brown at every opportunity...

LUCY: What do you want?

TERENCE SMITH: ...Charging him a nickel for empty psychiatric advice.

LINUS: The proof of the pudding is under the crust.

LUCY: Aughh!

TERENCE SMITH: Linus is the philosopher king who will never surrender his blanket. (Piano playing) there are also Schroeder, Marcy, peppermint patty, and many others. They live in a neighborhood like any in post-world war ii suburban America. There are occasional references to real events, like a bird named Woodstock.

CHARLIE BROWN: Good grief.

TERENCE SMITH: But with no Nintendo games or MTV, the "Peanuts" kid seems to be from a gentler, less sophisticated era.

LUCY: Blech!

TERENCE SMITH: It's the adult emotions that are expressed...

CHARLIE BROWN: My anxieties have anxieties.

TERENCE SMITH: ...The sadness, the longing, and rejection that many say account for "Peanuts'" universal appeal. Whatever the reasons, more than 350 million people read "Peanuts" every day in 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries. Peanuts products have been highly successful, toys, greeting cards and lunch boxes to name a few. There is even a millennium Snoopy. It's estimated that the cartoon's franchise generates $1 billion inrevenue each year, and that creator Charles Schulz's annual income from the strips, merchandise, and product endorsements is $30 million to $40 million a year. When Schulz announced a few weeks ago that he was retiring for treatment of colon cancer, and that there would be no new "Peanuts" episodes, there was a general outpouring of dismay, and the story made the front page of every major American newspaper. 77-year-old Schulz wanted to be a cartoonist from the time he was a small boy, a dream he pursued in spite of receiving poor grades in art school.

CHARLES SCHULZ: I applied for Walt Disney when I graduated from high school, but I got turned down.

TERENCE SMITH: The United features syndicate bought his idea for a strip in 1950, and, over Schulz' objection, named it "Peanuts." It made its debut on October 2 of that year. Since then, Schulz has worked on his strip seven days a week, six weeks in advance. He draws every frame and letters every bubble of dialogue, an uncommon practice today when many cartoonists employ other writers and artists. Schulz says he's a bit like all the "Peanuts" characters, but feels the closest to Charlie Brown.

CHARLES SCHULZ: All of the characters are a little bit of me, but I think Charlie Brown is the sort of nice little kid that I would have liked to have had as a neighbor when I was small, because he and I like the same things. And he's a decent kid. All he wants to do is to be left alone and play ball and fly his kite, and things like that.

TERENCE SMITH: United Media will rerun old strips dating from 1974 at least through the end of 2000, but today the last original "Peanuts" appeared. It is a thank-you note from Charles Schulz. He ends by saying "Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy... How can I ever forget them?" On NBC's Today show this in the morning Mr. Schulz recalled how he felt writing the last script.

CHARLES SCHULZ: Right at the end I wrote my name and then it said -- and I'll probably start crying, it said well, that was Charlie Brown, Linus and so-and-so and all of a sudden I thought, you know, that poor kid never even got to hit the football. What a dirty trick. He never had a chance to kick the football.

TERENCE SMITH: For more, I'm joined by two cartoonist friends of Charles Schulz. Wiley Miller is creator of the syndicated comic strip "Non Sequitur," which is published in more than 400 newspapers in 20 countries; and Jan Eliot is creator of "stone soup," which appears in more than 100 newspapers. Also with us is Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. Welcome to all three of you. Wiley Miller, what makes "Peanuts" so special?

WILEY MILLER: It's something that supersedes mere fame. There are lots of famous people and famous entities, but he supersedes all that. "Peanuts" became part of Americana, much in the same was as, say, Norman Rockwell or Mark Twain. And to achieve something like that in your own lifetime is remarkable in itself. That's usually something that takes place long after you're dead. But it's so ingrained in our culture that it is very much a part of our culture.

TERENCE SMITH: Mm-hmm. Jan Eliot, if that's the case, why? What's the key here?

JAN ELIOT: I think the key is that Charlie Brown is a simple, unaffected person. He's not a superstar. He's not a rock star. He's not a sports star. He's just a regular little boy who kind of reflects the regular everyday person in all of us, and we relate to him.

TERENCE SMITH: Robert Thompson, the "Washington Post" in an editorial said "'Peanuts is cute without being cloying, genuinely funny with an edge that does not cut." Do you think that's the key?

ROBERT THOMPSON: Well, you know, with all of this Normal Rockwellesque feel that "Peanuts" has, I think we have to recognize that sometimes that edge did cut. It just did it in this very kind and gentle sort of way. You know, Charlie Brown, this guy... It starts in 1950, and the strip was so far ahead of its time. Charlie could have been a poster boy for Prozac long before anybody had ever heard of the kinds of things that you needed to take Prozac for, much less with the drug invented. Here's this guy, before all of the ADD and Prozac, and all of these kinds of things, who is simply trying to get through life as a child. And, you know, in a lot of ways, he's got a little bit of Samuel Beckett to him. He waits for the Great Pumpkin, and the Great Pumpkin never comes. He's got Sisyphus to him. He tries to hit that football every single time, and he's never allowed to, in fact, make contact with it. There's a real sense in which we're seeing some very serious issues of childhood long before we really began to identify them. I think the real apotheosis of all of what Charles Schulz did was the 1965 Christmas special. It's won a passel of awards. And this is 1965, and we're hearing dialogue like Charlie saying, "You know, I'm really depressed. I don't know why. It's Christmastime. I ought to be feeling better about myself. I just don't feel right." If this doesn't sound like something right out of a therapy session in the late 1990's, I don't know what does. And he's doing this on national television in the 1960's. There was a continuity to what Charles Schulz did throughout the postwar era that went on in a geologic pace, but a real sense in which he's kind of the glue that ties together some... Society was changing a lot faster than that strip was.

TERENCE SMITH: Wiley Miller, that sounds like really adult angst coming out of the mouths of children.

WILEY MILLER: Well, yes, Charles Schulz said on many occasions that he has never written for children. It's not a children's strip. He is writing for adults, and he uses this juxtaposition of adults' angst through the eyes of children. And that's what made it work. That's what made it resonate, and that's what made it so deliciously subversive back in the 50's and early 60's.

TERENCE SMITH: Right. Jan Eliot, you know Charlie Schulz.

JAN ELIOT: I do.

TERENCE SMITH: Is he Charlie Brown?

JAN ELIOT: I think he's very much Charlie Brown, and I think he has said that. He is a sweet, kind, decent person, and he has often described Charlie Brown as a very decent person. He's a little bit anxious, a little bit depressed, and he's just a regular guy who wanted all his life to be a cartoonist, and he got his dream-- unlike Charlie Brown, who never has gotten the football, or the little red-haired girl. But he's very much Charlie Brown.

TERENCE SMITH: Robert Thompson, many characters, of course, have come into our culture through "Peanuts," even notions-- Linus and his security blanket. That was ahead of its time as well.

ROBERT THOMPSON: Absolutely. This was a pantheon of characters that we really used to define the national character and the various representations that that character took in individuals. Short of Disney, I can think of no other group of characters that sort of acted as the American popular culture icon. It's interesting to compare it to, I think, the next generation. Bart Simpson is in many ways a lot like Charlie Brown, but in the age of entitlement. Charlie Brownwas an underachiever and depressed about it. Bart Simpson, of course, is an underachiever and proud of it. It's a whole different attitude that one sees as we got to the later part of the century. But in many ways, those two characters are exploring some of the same real estate.

TERENCE SMITH: Wiley Miller, the script, of course... The strip was only part of it. He was this immensely creative man. He is this immensely creative man who burgeoned out into all these other media. Have you seen anything like it in the cartooning business?

WILEY MILLER: Oh, no. Well, long before Charles Schulz, there was always licensing and all that in comics. I think he just took it to a new level. But what made him unique in this is that he remained true to the art itself. First and foremost came the comic strip. All the other stuff-- all the, you know, the television shows, the books, the licensing, plush toys-- all that stuff, that was all secondary to him. What was always number one was that comic strip, and doing that comic strip day in and day out without any assistance on it.

TERENCE SMITH: Jan Eliot, you knew him. Was he... You know him now. Was he to you, when you first met, an encouraging person to a younger cartoonist?

JAN ELIOT: He was actually extremely encouraging. I first met him at the 50th Annual National Cartoonist Society Reuben Awards in 1995, and he didn't know me at all. Lynn Johnston introduced him to me. He was standing there with a cup of coffee and a Danish, shaking a little bit, looking for a place to sit. It was a rather awkward meeting. It was fairly unsatisfying. But after I got home from that weekend, I sent him a note thanking him for taking time with me, and he, within just a couple of days, called me at my studio, and had my work in front of him, and gave me compliments and gave me suggestions, and asked me for my opinion about what he was doing. I was extremely flattered and extremely surprised, and it was amazing from someone of his stature to get a phone call like that so early in my career. I think the most impressive thing that happened to me, though, was about a year later when I was in Santa Rosa at one of his ice shows. And he and I were sitting together the morning after the ice show at breakfast. He has a cartoonist party every year at the ice show, and we were all having breakfast together. And he chose to sit next to me out of all the people there, and asked me how it was going. I expressed to him that I had some concern at the number of papers I had, and that it seemed to have plateaued, and though my syndicate had done a great job of getting me started, I was worried about where the strip was going. He said that for the first five years of "Peanuts," he was stuck at 45 papers, and he was quite frustrated. But in the beginning of "Peanuts," Snoopy was just a little dog off to the side, a pet, not really a contributing character. And at about the five-year mark, Sparky thought to have Snoopy stand up and have a thought. And he looked at me at breakfast and he said, "you know, the strip really didn't take off until Snoopy stood up."

TERENCE SMITH: Became a person, in effect?

JAN ELIOT: Yes, yes. And then he said, "you need to find the thing in your strip that's like having Snoopy stand up." And I expressed some reservation and hope and mumbled. And he said, "You can do it, Jan. I believe in you." And I was floored, because he didn't really know me very well, and yet he was willing to say he thought I could do it. To this day, I have a sign in my studio that says, "Quit whining. Make Snoopy stand up." And that's my hope.

TERENCE SMITH: Robert Thompson, in effect, "Peanuts" is one long, unending story line in which not a great deal really happens. I mean, is that part of the magic?

ROBERT THOMPSON: It sure is. You know, I think in all the talking about the ending of this strip, we sometimes forget that this is arguably the longest story told by a single artist in human history. You know, sometimes the Wagnerian opera seems likes it goes forever, but it doesn't, it stops -- the same with a Dickens or a Tolstoy novel. There are some soap operas that have gone longer. The "Guiding Light" has been going for 62 years. But I don't know of any other story that has been told by one human being for 50 entire years, and it ended today, and that really is a milestone. And it's not just a 50-year-long story. It's a story that took its time. It's a whole different way of telling a story. And it's, I think, one of the things we're going to always remember that was nice about the 20th century.

TERENCE SMITH: Wiley Miller, imagine drawing a strip seven days a week for 50 years, and doing it all yourself. I mean, for you, that must be an exhausting thought, I would think.

WILEY MILLER: Well, that's why we don't think about it. He really showed the way on that. In the part of the preview here, he talked about this being unusual for a cartoonist doing this without any assistance. Actually, that's incorrect. It's unusual for a cartoonist to have assistance producing the comic strip. And Charles Schulz pretty much led the way on that. In the older days, you did have these adventure strips and story lines where these cartoonists did have a staff of people helping with the writing and art, because it was a much grander scale back then. We don't have that today. We all pretty much work on our own. There's only a handful of cartoonists who do have a staff. But we all do it ourselves, and so we can relate when we think of doing it for 50 years as "gee, that's a long time."

TERENCE SMITH: Finally, Jan Eliot, will cartooning be different without Charles Schulz?

JAN ELIOT: Oh, I think cartooning is different because of Charles Schulz. He has given us all new insights into where we can take it and how we can do it, and he's made a real mark on the field of cartooning that all of us can only hope to improve upon.

TERENCE SMITH: Okay. Thank you all three very much.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the other major stories of this Monday: Israel and Syria resumed peace talks in West Virginia. A State Department spokesman said an agreement was not expected during this particular round of meetings. And Russia's Acting President Putin fired Boris Yeltsin's daughter from her job as "image advisor." She'd been accused of corruption. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.