The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, Ray Suarez looks at President Bush's efforts to sell missile defense to Europe, Jeffrey Kaye recounts the growing troubles of the fishing industry in California, Gwen Ifill examines the electoral mandate for reform in Iran, and Robert Pinsky views the Middle East conflict through the language of poetry. It all follows our summary of the news this Wednesday.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: President Bush talked with NATO leaders today about missile defense and the Balkans. He said the Brussels meeting produced progress in overcoming doubts about his missile defense plan and a vow to stop the fighting in Macedonia but without NATO military intervention. The President on the second day of his European trip also said the U.S. Will not suddenly leave peacekeeping missions in the Balkans. We'll have more on the NATO meeting right after this News Summary. Israel said today it would begin implementing a U.S.-brokered cease-fire plan. The Israelis and Palestinians approved it in principle on Tuesday after six days of mediation by CIA Director George Tenet. The plan was meant to shore up a ten-day-old truce. It was the Bush administration's most intensive effort yet in the Middle East, and in Brussels, the President said it was just the beginning.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The fundamental question is will parties take steps to peace, concrete actions that will help build the confidence necessary so that peaceful loving countries can say the cycle of violence has been finally broken. And then there is the opportunity to have political discussion. Until the cycle of violence has been fully broken -- as the Mitchell report calls for that we'll delay political discussions -- it's important that the parties, take the document that has been signed and implement it with concrete actions.

JIM LEHRER: The Israeli defense minister said the military would immediately ease blockades on Palestinian travel and commerce. But a Palestinian security official said the Israelis had not gone far enough. Also leaders of the militant Islamic group Hamas said they would not honor the cease-fire. Hamas has carried out a series of suicide bombings, including a June 1 attack that killed 20 Israeli civilians. Violent crime in the United States fell 15% last year. The Justice Department reported that today. It was the largest drop since an annual survey of crime victims began in 1973. The survey found there were 7.4 million crimes -- such as rape, assault and robbery -- in the year 2000. That was about one million fewer than the year before. The remnants of Tropical Storm Allison pushed North today after battering the Gulf Coast. Eastern Georgia got up to eight inches of rain, and the Governor declared a state of emergency in 14 counties because of flooding. The storm was blamed for at least 31 deaths from Texas to Florida. It has also caused an estimated $2 billion in property damage, half of that in Houston. And forecasters said it could regenerate when it reenters the Atlantic Ocean. Blood from a newborn's umbilical cord can fight leukemia and other fatal diseases in adults. That finding is being published tomorrow in the "New England Journal of Medicine" by researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. They found blood cells from an umbilical cord can replace diseased bone marrow and rebuild a body's blood supply. And there's less chance the body will reject the transplant, even from an unrelated donor. That's it for the News Summary tonight. Now it's on to the missile defense argument in Europe, troubles in the fishing business, changing Iran and Palestinian and Israeli poetry.

FOCUS - FRIENDLY PERSUASION

JIM LEHRER: Ray Suarez has the NATO story.

RAY SUAREZ: On the second day of his European trip, President Bush met with fellow leaders of the NATO alliance at the group's headquarters in Brussels. During their meeting, the 19 leaders talked about adding new members to NATO and new fighting in the Balkans. And Mr. Bush also lobbied for his missile defense system. While demonstrators, kept well away from the NATO meeting, demonstrated against it. At a press conference with NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson, the President was asked if he would abandon the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty for a defensive system that has not yet been tested or built.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: First, it's important to... For people who are following this issue, to understand that we're not asking our allies to sign on to a specific system. We're asking our allies to think differently, and asking Russia to think differently about the post-Cold War era. The ABM Treaty is a product of the Cold War era. It was a time when the United States and Russia were bitter enemies, and the whole concept of peace was based upon the capacity of each of us, each country, to blow each other up. The new threats are threats based upon uncertainty, the threats that somebody who hates freedom or hates America or hates our allies or hates Europe, will try to blow us up. And the fundamental question is, will freedom-loving nations develop a system to enhance freedom, to prevent that from happening? And I make the case, yes.

JOHN ROBERTS, CBS News: Are you prepared to say here and now, sir, that you will go ahead with a limited missile defense, with or without the agreement of NATO and the European Union? And are you prepared to unilaterally abandon the ABM Treaty, or is it crucial for you, sir, to have Russia's agreement on that point?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: John, I have made it clear to our friends and allies that I think it's necessary to set aside the ABM Treaty, but I will do so in close consultation with not only members of NATO and E.U. countrieswho are not members of NATO, but as well with the Russians. I believe strongly it's necessary to move forward. I think it is necessary to do so in order to make the world more peaceful. I can't imagine a world that continues to be locked into a Cold War mentality when the Cold War is over. Along these lines, I'll also assure our allies and friends that we will move to reduce our offensive weapons to a level commensurate with keeping the peace, but one that is below where our levels are now. And I believe we're making progress. I don't think we're going to have to move, as they say, unilaterally. I think people are coming our way. But people know that I'm intent upon doing what I think is the right thing in order to make the world more peaceful.

RAY SUAREZ: After the President spoke, some European leaders reiterated their skepticism about a missile defense system.

PRESIDENT JACQUES CHIRAC (Translated ): It's obvious that anyone who wanted to attack another country and was confronted with this defense shield which would hold back some of the missiles fired, would have a natural reaction to send more missiles to hit the targets. So instead of sending three, they would fire ten to make sure that three would hit their targets. This is a fantastic invitation to proliferate.

GERHARD SCHROEDER (Translated ): I want to make clear that in the post-Cold War era we need to examine new ways to defend ourselves, but we also have to make sure that disarmament reaches new levels of momentum, and on that we are all agreed.

RAY SUAREZ: Tomorrow, President Bush meets with many of the same political leaders at a European Union summit in Gothenburg, Sweden.

RAY SUAREZ: Now, four perspectives on the President's efforts to persuade the Europeans missile defense is a good idea. Jacqueline Grapin is the President of the European Institute, a European American public policy organization in Washington. Dieter Dettke is the executive director of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which is affiliated with the ruling German party, the Social Democrats. Alexander Pikayev is an advisor to the defense committee of the Russian Duma and is a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center. And Richard Perle was Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration, a foreign policy advisor to candidate George W. Bush, and will be named head of the Defense Policy Board, an advisory group to the Secretary of Defense, though the views he expresses tonight are his own.

Well, we had Secretary Powell in bud pest a few weeks ago talking to many of the same countries. Secretary Rumsfeld and Assistant Secretary Wolfowitz, now the President. Is the Bush administration making any headway, Dieter Dettke?

DIETER DETTKE: Yes, probably, but we have to keep in mind that, of course, for Europe it is essential to look at the consequences of a possible abrogation of the ABM Treaty. That could have grave and serious consequences. And Europe, no doubt, benefited from arms control agreements, international arms controls agreements in the past. And we want, of course, to try to make sure that we can keep these benefits because it contributed so much to our security. Now, if it is abrogated unilaterally, the ABM Treaty, of course, then we have to look and see what consequences on the Russian side are -- whether that puts us in a more difficult situation and security terms, whether there is more instability and we have less security than before. That is an important consideration, I would say, so for Europe of course the best way would be if something could be worked out with Russia and so forth for the meeting of the President and Slovenia in Lubjana with President Putin is very essential. And hopefully in agreement will result from that meeting.

RAY SUAREZ: Jacqueline Grapin, less resistance are we seeing upon European leaders now?

JACQUELINE GRAPIN: Well, everybody seems to be happy with this meeting. It reminds me very much of a family reunion when it takes place when there is a problem. The first step is to get the family together. The second step is to get the family to recognize there is a problem, which is what was done today. And I think the President is satisfied that the allies have an open mind to his proposal. But the proposals were not precise and he did not ask the allies to really support any specific program. Now the next step is to agree how to handle the problem -- what to do and how to do it. This is going to be much more difficult because as he just said there is this question of the compatibility with the ABM Treaty and with the arms control which has existed unsuccessfully for 30 years. There is a question as Chancellor Schroeder suggested that why replace something that is existing by something that does not exist? Is this system going to work? Is it a new marginal line? You know, the French are very carefully because they used to have before the second world war sort of a line to protect them supposedly to protect them from the Germans. It didn't work. So is it something that is going to be very expensive and that is in the going to work? What is going to be the cost of it? Is it an appropriate investment to make? Obviously, all the allies agree that there is a problem but they don't necessarily agree on the magnitude of the problem and on the priorities that should be given to the expenses in our defense system. In particular, they think that there are other threats, new threats like suitcase bombs or biological threats, chemical threats, and others, which should be addressed, and that this very expensive system which is just supposed to protect for a few missiles that might come from some rogue state might not be the most useful system within the alliance. In addition to that, they are preoccupied by the effects that is going to have to, on the alliance on the fact in particular that this is going to keep the U.S. in control of technology and keep the Europeans in a situation where they will be highly dependent upon the U.S..

RAY SUAREZ: Alexander Pikayev, perhaps anticipating Chancellor Schroeder's questions, the President said it's time to start thinking in a different way in the post Cold War era that a new set of relationships is needed. Is that argument finding much response in Russia?

ALEXANDER PIKAYEV: Yeah, I think so. It's real inappropriate situation that after the ten years after the end of the Cold War, we still are in quite ambiguous situation and we don't know whether we are friends or still opponents. And I think that the Kremlin should be very sympathetic to what President Bush said today about his willingness to create new strategic framework with Russia. And it's very important I think. However still there is a lot of questions and I hope some of them could be solved in Lubjana. The question is -- one of the questions is well, we have nuclear deterrence, which is a real relic of the Cold War, not because we have the AB M Treaty. We have the A B M Treaty still because we have nuclear deterrence ten years after the end of the Cold War. And the real question is how President Bush would be able to demonstrate Russian President Putin, how we could go away from the new predators and whether the U.S./Russia relations would enter such a stage, such a level when new predators would obsolete. And if nuclear deterrence is obsolete, of course, the ABM Treaty would not be an important question.

RAY SUAREZ: Secretary Rumsfeld is trying to answer those fears by saying that a system could be designed that puts an anti-missile system in place that doesn't neutralize Russia's deterrence. Is that something that they're going to buy in Moscow?

ALEXANDER PIKAYEV: No, I think that the question is much more broad. The real question is well, if we are going to abandon nuclear deterrence, we need to go over nuclear disarmament. President Bush said that he is willing to go down, very important, but he didn't specify how deep he wants to go whether he wants to go down unilaterally.

RAY SUAREZ: You mean reduce the number of warheads--

ALEXANDER PIKAYEV: -- reduce the number of strategic nuclear warheads, whether what would happen with transparency, what with happen with irreversibility of nuclear reductions, whether President Bush is going to dismantle systems which he is going to reduce or just download them, to remove extra warheads from so-called unused missiles, put them somewhere nearby, and if needed they could be returned back very quickly.

RAY SUAREZ: Well, Richard Perle, you've heard the objections that are being voiced from Europe around the table. Having to do with disagreements on what the nature of the threat is -- the possibility of proliferation brought up by President Chirac, how does the administration answer some of these critiques?

RICHARD PERLE: I think what the President is attempting to do is extraordinarily difficult. He is trying to help our European allies think through nearly half a century of the doctrine that dominated the strategic relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. And it's very difficult after all these years, even when there is a good idea to drive out a bad idea. The bad idea was that we could defend ourselves and provide security for ourselves by threatening to destroy tens of millions of people in the Soviet Union. And the Soviets could defend themselves by threatening to destroy tens of millions of Americans. The ABM Treaty exists in that context, mutual destruction. But the Cold War is over. And there is no reason to believe that Russians are going to attack the United States or that we would attack Russia. And I'm very pleased that our Russian colleague clearly has an open mind on this question. He too wants to get beyond the Cold War, which was a poisonous relationship. The Europeans I'm sorry to say are still mired in the Cold War -- fearful and apprehensive that if we move beyond the Cold War we are moving into uncharted territory. So you heard both our European friends refer to a structure that served us in the past but it can't serve us in the future. And it certainly isn't an appropriate structure for a period in which Russians and Americans look forward to a new and cooperative relationship.

RAY SUAREZ: But are Americans who are trying to solve this puzzle just inevitably in a different position from the Europeans because the Danes and the Poles and the Czechs are unlikely to feel a threat from Iran or North Korea the same way the current administration feels America will?

RICHARD PERLE: Of course we are in a different situation. We worry about Saddam Hussein. We worry about Saddam Hussein with a missile a lot more than the French worry about Saddam Hussein because their approach to Saddam is a much friendlier approach Saddam. They are less likely to be threatened by him than we are. I must say I found President Chirac's argument -- for the President of the country that prides itself on its logic - for Cartesian France -- to argue that it will encourage proliferation to have a defense against proliferators seems to me to have it exactly backwards. What the President was saying was that if we were totally vulnerable, then there would be less proliferation. But if you want to encourage a Saddam Hussein to acquire a nuclear weapon with a ballistic missile, tell him that he doesn't have any defense to overcome. Tell him that all he needs is one. We are saying that with a defense we can discourage proliferation because they won't be able to surmount the defense. So I think President Chirac has it exactly wrong.

RAY SUAREZ: Jacqueline Grapin.

JACQUELINE GRAPIN: Well, I would say that it is certainly true that the Cold War is over and nobody denies that. It's certainly true that there is a problem with proliferation and nobody denies that and President Chirac does not. But to say that the Europeans are backward and don't understand the situation because suddenly the U.S. turns over and changes policy, it seems to me is a little arbitrary, that is perhaps what has a destabilizing effect in this discussion -- you know. I think that what the President -- when President Chirac proposed which is to have a conference an actually he is going to advise that tomorrow in the meeting in Sweden in the summit with the Europeans jointly with the -- Chancellor Schroeder, he is going to propose a conference, an international conference to renew the efforts to deal with the international proliferation - nuclear and missile proliferation. The Europeans have a tendency to think that diplomacy is the first tool that should be used and that this trying the arms control system that we have had for 13 years and that has worked because there are states like Ukraine, Byelorussia, South Africa, Brazil who -- those states wanted to have nuclear weapons and renounce them -- because of the commitment of the number of nations also the comprehensive test ban treaty which by the way has not been ratified by the U.S. It supposed also to deal with the, with proliferation. So the real problem is proliferation and the Europeans know that. I don't see any reason why the Europeans will be less threatened by any rogue state than the U.S. But the difference is that Europeans think they should address that with diplomacy and that in addition to that having a highly technological system to deal with that is not the answer to the problem because you can always have suitcase bomb, you can always have a biological threat that efficient and that turns around the systems. So why spend so much money and why engage in this when you know that is not the answer to the new threats that we are facing.

RAY SUAREZ: Let me hear from the other members.

DIETER DETTKE: Yes. Let me add there is nothing wrong with an improvement of our defensive system but it would be wrong to believe that a ballistic missile defense system would solve all our defense and security problems. It does not. What we are really talking about is a new mix of offense and of defense, defensive systems. And the new mix of course should not totally disregard arms control agreements that we had that proved to be effective and working and created stability. And even if it has to be amended - the AMB Treaty I'm speaking about now, that is all right. It should be done. Why not? But the best way to do it is certainly not to do this unilaterally andto work out a system that we all can live with -- because of the potential consequences of a unilateral abrogation. There are possibilities of course to increase offensive systems and then overcome a potential ballistic missile defense system. I don't know of a totally fool proof or totally secure and safe defense system, ballistic missile defense system.

RAY SUAREZ: Let me hear again from Alexander Pikayev, will President Bush meet a President Putin who is read toe deal on some of these questions?

ALEXANDER PIKAYEV: The Kremlin also hints that it's ready to deal. However the Russian approach is quite different. The Russia thinks that first abrogating the ABM Treaty and then thinking about nuclear deterrence is probably the wrong approach because if we abrogate the ABM Treaty first, nuclear deterrence might be even worse -- and this mutual assured destruction, which would remain -- would remain and would remain non-regulated -- unregulated by any arms control agreement so that we might go back to the situation we had in 1960s, which was recently demonstrated in this excellent "Thirteen Days" movie, and I think it would be dangerous. I think the -- many people in Russia think that we need to really to go away from nuclear deterrence from starting from other end. We need to remove political ambiguities, which --because of which nuclear deterrence is still in place. And if political climate would change first, it would be much easier to deal with such problems like the modification -- or change the ABM Treaty -- if, you know, there is no arms control in relations between the United States and Europe,

RAY SUAREZ: Let me go quickly for a last word to Richard Perle.

RICHARD PERLE: Clearly we have got to move beyond the Cold War. What I'm hearing is a lot of the vocabulary of the Cold War. I would ask, Jacqueline, you going to defend us, is France going to defend the United States if Saddam Hussein acquires a missile? Of course you're not.

JACQUELINE GRAPIN: And we return the question: Are you going to defend us?

RICHARD PERLE: What - from Saddam Hussein?

RAY SUAREZ: I think NATO is a mutual -

RICHARD PERLE: You've chosen - (voices crossing) -- against Saddam -

RAY SUAREZ: We'll have to continue the negotiations afterwards. Thank you very much all.

FOCUS - ROUGH SEAS

JIM LEHRER: Jeffrey Kaye of KCET- Los Angeles reports the fishing story.

JEFFREY KAYE: Each morning on the docks of Eureka, California, the ocean's bounty is on display, as fishing boats unload their catch -- a catch which, since the gold rush days has provided dollars and jobs for this community on the state's rugged North Coast. Fishing has also meant an often hardscrabble way of life for the men and women who crew the vessels. A monument in the harbor to local fishermen lost at sea is a testament to the dangers of commercial fishing. But increasingly there are other perils-- environmental and economic. Eureka fishermen are catching only a third as much fish as they did 20 years ago. On the waterfront, anxiety seems to be as much in the air as the smell of sea salt. Curt Meng captains a 75-foot trawler.

SPOKESMAN: How's that?

CURT MENG: Money is really tight. We're not driving new cars and stuff. Bank accounts are really low, having a hard time paying taxes, but I don't know another fishermen that can say anything different about the industry and the way his income is right now.

JEFFREY KAYE: Eureka's troubles are not unique. From New England to Alaska, American fishermen have witnessed a fishing boom go bust as they face dwindling fish stocks, increased competition and tightening government regulations. The crisis in America's multibillion-dollar fishing industry is often summed up as too many boats chasing too few fish.

ELLIOT NORSE: Fishery management in our country is a disaster. Fisheries depend on fish and we can't keep killing more than the sea can provide.

JEFFREY KAYE: Elliott Norse is President of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute, an environmental group.

ELLIOT NORSE: The number of boats should reflect the number of fish. But the number of boats is higher as the number of fish are fewer than ever before. That doesn't make sense. That makes sure that fishermen are always skirting the edge of economic disaster. That is not the way they want to live, and that is not the way marine life can live.

JEFFREY KAYE: A record 107 species of fish in U.S. coastal waters are now considered threatened because of over fishing. They include such seafood staples as red snapper, flounder and swordfish. Paul Pellegrini's family has been fishing Northern California waters for three generations. Fishing has brought his family both success and tragedy. The names of his brother and his wife's brother are both chiseled into Eureka's monument to fishermen lost at sea. The men were killed in a single freak shipboard accident. Pellegrini's way of life is a continuing struggle.

PAUL PELLEGRINI: There's always been competition. Fishermen are competitive by nature, you know.

JEFFREY KAYE: Right. And now?

PAUL PELLEGRINI: They still are, but it's more intense because they're fighting for that fish that you're catching. So you know, they want to catch every last one, as much as you need to catch it to survive, too. So it's a fight for the fish.

JEFFREY KAYE: That fight increasingly keeps Pellegrini out on the open ocean looking for fish...

RONNIE PELLEGRINI: When are you going to be back? That's the important question.

JEFFREY KAYE: ...Instead of at home with his wife Ronnie and their two daughters.

RONNIE PELLEGRINI: You just get used to him being home, "hi, hon. How you doing?" You know, hugs and kisses and then he has to go again. So, you know, it gets kind of bad. The kids cry, I cry. It's tough.

JEFFREY KAYE: Hard times also affect the businesses that rely on fishing. The Eureka Fisheries Plant is one of the largest seafood processors on the West Coast. In the last 15 years, the plant has cut two-thirds of its workforce, according to company President Peter Hall.

PETER HALL: We would be operating five or six days a week filleting and processing fish. And now we're operating two to three days a week, and we have half or a third of the personnel that we would have had. So there's been a huge change.

JEFFREY KAYE: What's gone wrong with America's fishing industry can be traced back to government policies created more than a quarter of a century ago -- policies intended to turn the U.S. into a fishing superpower may have worked all too well. In 1976, the U.S. Government shut out foreign competition off the coast by extending American territorial waters from 12 to 200 miles. The move essentially put up "do not enter signs" for foreign vessels and gave U.S. ships exclusive fishing rights.

BILL HOGARTH: We really did a good job in the government, I think, of getting that industry up to one of the leaders.

JEFFREY KAYE: Bill Hogarth, acting director of the Department of Commerce's Fisheries Department, remembers when the fishing boom began.

BILL HOGARTH: We had programs that encouraged fishing, we had programs that encouraged increased technology, we had programs that encouraged export. It was a united government effort to make America one of the leading fishing nations. And like I said, we did it.

JEFFREY KAYE: To promote the fishing industry, the government spent millions of dollars on tax credits and low interest loans that encouraged boat construction and equipment purchases.

PAUL PELLEGRINI: The money was real easy to get. Guys just built bigger and better boats with more sophisticated equipment and the basically the government threw the money at them.

JEFFREY KAYE: In Eureka, as in other seaports, Uncle Sam's generosity spawned a fishing gold rush. Eureka's docks were teeming with investors and government officials, says the executive director of the Fishermen's Marketing Association, Peter Leipzig.

PETER LIEPZIG: Not only were the doctors and lawyers coming in and investing and purchasing boats and they would look for crew to run these boats for them, but we had people from the National Marine Fishery Service making trips up this way trying to convince existing fishermen to take out loans to buy a new boat. That was their job: Fisheries development. And they went out of their way to find these people.

GIB HUNTER: 100 feet wide...

JEFFREY KAYE: Eureka's commercial fishing fleet doubled as fishermen like Gib Hunter took advantage of government assistance. Hunter, who started as a whaler in 1948, is the patriarch of Eureka's wealthiest fishing family. Federal assistance helped him buy a boat and retrofit his eight-vessel fleet with the latest technology.

GIB HUNTER: I bought new electronics, new navigational equipment and better equipment on the boats. Sure, some of my boats were old.

JEFFREY KAYE: And what did the equipment do for you?

GIB HUNTER: Well, it made them much more efficient.

JEFFREY KAYE: You could catch more fish?

GIB HUNTER: Catch more fish, yeah.

JEFFREY KAYE: Science and subsidies allowed fishermen to replace guesswork with technology.

SPOKESMAN: And then you see the bottom coming up, and you can adjust the net with the throttle.

JEFFREY KAYE: On today's fishing vessels, computer skills are as essential as basic seamanship.

JEFFREY KAYE: So this would basically show the net and the fish, and the relationship between the net and the fish?

SPOKESMAN: Yeah. Oh yeah.

JEFFREY KAYE: And so you can put the net where you need it to go?

SPOKESMAN: Right.

JEFFREY KAYE: While technological advances made the U.S. fishing industry efficient and productive, they also helped devastate American fisheries, according to critics.

ELLIOTT NORSE: As fishing boats have become bigger, faster, better at finding and catching fish, the fish have not gotten any smarter, have not gotten any better at reproducing their numbers. And so the war between people and fish has continued to tilt in favor of people.

JEFFREY KAYE: Many American fishermen blame climate changes and over fishing by foreign fleets for reducing the fish populations. But U.S. Government officials now acknowledge that past policies that encouraged over fishing were shortsighted.

BILL HOGARTH: Everybody thought the ocean was big. You couldn't over fish the ocean. It is a massive amount of water, you could go anywhere, and you can catch fish. I think as we learn more about the movement of fish, the habitat requirements, we find out that that's definitely not true. And so we are learning more, and at the same time, we realize we made mistakes, if you want to call it, in management.

JEFFREY KAYE: To make up for those mistakes, the government has imposed tougher regulations in recent years.

BILL HUNTER: They are far too strict. The regulations are bogus. It seems we are a running battle with the federal biologists. They just want to keep cutting us down. They want to win every small battle. They don't want to give at all.

JEFFREY KAYE: With livelihoods threatened, the fishing industry must resolve a serious dilemma. It's made huge investments in fleets of boats and sophisticated equipment, but now faces serious limitations on where to fish and how much to catch. So the industry has a solution, which, like solutions of the past, again involve the government.

PETER LEIPZIG: I think it completes the circle. We got into it, the federal government assisted people under good-meaning policies to get us here. Under some new good-meaning policies, I think we should be helping people get out of it.

JEFFREY KAYE: Leipzig, like other industry leaders, now wants the government to lure fishermen off the water. They propose a national, multimillion-dollar program to buy back fishermen's boats. Leipzig says most of the 150 trawlers in his association could be mothballed, if the price were right.

PETER LEIPZIG: The people who remain in the fishing industry will be able to be economically viable harvesting units once again, and contribute to their communities and the management process.

JEFFREY KAYE: The government is exploring the feasibility of buyback programs. Where they've been tried in the past, however, there have been problems. Federal investigators found that some fishermen used their boat sale profits to buy other vessels. But a buyback program has little appeal for many fishermen like Paul Pellegrini.

PAUL PELLEGRINI: I put a lot of elbow grease into my boats, and I care about them as much as I do a person, you know. And I would hate to see someone go destroy this boat, just because I'm not allowed to go fishing with it anymore.

JEFFREY KAYE: As for environmentalists, they want expanded restrictions-- namely the establishment of marine- protected areas, underwater national parks where fishing would be prohibited. Off the coasts of California and Florida, government-funded scientists are studying the feasibility of the proposals. As America charts a public policy course to protect its fish and its fishing industry, the sailing is likely to be anything but smooth.

FOCUS - READING THE POLLS

JIM LEHRER: Now, the Iranian elections and to Gwen Ifill.

GWEN IFILL: 22 years after Islamic militants took over Iran and imposed theocratic rule, the people have reelected a reformist president. Mohammad Khatami's victory was no surprise, but the margin was. The moderate cleric won 77% of the vote on Friday, surpassing the 70% total he captured four years ago. Turnout was 67%, down from 90% in 1997. And there were still separate lines for men and women voters. But the Khatami presidency has brought much change for women, easing rules on dress, makeup and appearing in public with men. Young people have also rallied for Khatami. 15-year-olds can vote, and two- thirds of the country's citizens are under 25. These voters have no memory of 1979, the year of the Islamic revolution that displaced the U.S.-supported shah, and the year militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage. Washington severed ties with Iran after that, and imposed economic sanctions, most of which remain today. The revolution also consolidated power in the hands of unelected Muslim clerics led today by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His title is supreme leader and he's considered God's representative on earth. Khamenei and the clerics, who make up the Council of Guardians, control the police and the military. They can overrule both the president and the parliament and have jailed prominent activists and shut down 40 newspapers. Nevertheless, the president ran on his reform agenda in this year's campaign, a campaign limited by law to 20 days. Khatami envisioned what he called a religious democracy, where Islam and individual rights can coexist. He also called for Iranians to have greater rights to criticize leaders, for judges to be more accountable to the people and for more foreign investment. Khatami's ideas enjoy sufficient support among the masses, that his nine challengers, all conservatives, also agreed on the need for some of those reforms. At a final campaign rally, nearly a thousand actors and artists showed up in support of Khatami.

WOMAN: I want to vote for him.

REPORTER: Why do you like him?

WOMAN: For his thinking, for what he is doing for my society. Freedom.

GWEN IFILL: But Khatami's Iran faces obstacles abroad. The State Department still considers Iran an active state sponsor of terrorism, largely because of its support of the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah. And U.S. officials have said Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missile capabilities. President Khatami will form a new government in about two months.

GWEN IFILL: For more on the elections we hear from three Iran watchers: Shaul Bakhash was a journalist in Iran and is now a history professor at George Mason University. Gary Sick served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan, and was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. He is currently a senior research scholar at Columbia University. And Geneive Abdo was a reporter for the Guardian newspaper of London, living in Iran from 1998 until February of this year.

Professor Bakhash, what did this election tell us about democracy in Iran.

SHAUL BAKHASH: Well, it certainly tells us there is still considerable support and desire for reform and for an opening up of the political process. Even though fewer people participated in this election than in 1997, the degree of participation is still high by international and regional standards. It also tells us that the President remains popular despite a degree of disappointment in his inability to prevent the crackdown that has taken place over the last 14, 15 months on the press and on other political activists.

GWEN IFILL: Gary Sick, do you see the same change?

GARY SICK: Well, I think you really have to ask seriously why a country, which has been quite disappointed in the way Khatami's presidency has worked in the sense of his people being thrown in jail, the press being closed down, lots of defeats along the way to the point where Khatami himself really was reluctant to run again -- you have to ask why would the people of Iran bother to go to the polls in such large numbers -- he won more votes this time around for his second term than he did in the first one with a higher percentage of votes. I think the answer really goes to the sort of history of Iranian popular support for democratic reforms. People forget that this goes back to the constitutional revolution of 1906. It goes through the Mosadec period and it goes through the Iranian Revolution. There is a history of opposition and at this point I think the opposition is taking the position of voting rather than taking to the barricades. I think that probably is very healthy. The question is will they, how long will they be patient with this approach?

GWEN IFILL: Geneive Abdo, how successful, what kind of President was Khatami these last four years, was what he promised to be?

GENEIVE ABDO: He was very surprised himself by the lack of power that he had within the presidency. When he was first elected, many people assumed that reform would come to Iran within the four years of his first term -- reform in a western sense meaning profound reform, constitutional -- institutional reform within the system -- but Khatami himself was very surprised at his lack of power. For this reason I think that this election should be looked at in its total perspective, which is that it is a small element in the whole political process in Iran. In the West we tend to view elections as landmarks and as great turning points in a country's contemporary history but in Iran, in fact, the electoral process is only a very small component in the actual policy making that goes on there, because of course the President's powers are very few compared to these of the supreme leader, who as you mentioned in your report, can even veto legislation passed by parliament.

GWEN IFILL: If the President's powers, Shaul Bakhash, are so limited and if he, in fact, didn't do all the things that were promised in these last four years, why such a dig turnout, why such enthusiasm?

SHAUL BAKHASH: Well, first of all the President wasn't powerless in the first three years of his presidency. And there was a remarkable expansion of press freedom -- the revival of political activity; the freeing up of social controls on women and the young. I think the President had a very good three years and one should not forget that. And perhaps it's partly the memory of that that brought people to the polls again. In addition, I think the vote and the presence at the polls was a no to the conservatives. So one of the reasons people went to the polls is to show their discontent with both the repression and the activities of the conservative faction.

GWEN IFILL: What about the conservative faction, Gary Sick, there are nine conservatives none of them with great political support. Are they weakened by this? Are they strengthened by this? Does this send a message that all political terms --

GARY SICK: They are weakened by it but not ended by it. I think the one great triumph of Khatami's first four years is that he has totally transformed the political vocabulary of Iran. Even the conservatives who ran against him adopted the cover of being reformist, of being interested in liberty, of pushing this idea. They couldn't ignore that it was so powerful. And that -- it seems to me -- is in fact the great accomplishment of Khatami's first term beings -- not that liberty has been established -- not that freedom is really there, but that now it is viewed as the object of political developments. It is viewed as the necessity for even the conservatives who are running to adopt this, and the second great area is one of foreign policy where Khatami came in, most people thought, with a domestic agenda. He has made tremendous inroads into creating a new image for Iran that is absolutely vital to Iran's interest. And there he has the support of the conservatives. I think it's a really mixed bag, and that in fact his accomplishments shouldn't be overlooked simply because in fact he doesn't control a lot of the power levers.

GWEN IFILL: Geneive Abdo, one of the things the President seemed to recognize upon reelection is that there is only so much he can do in so much time. He said principles should be coupled with patience, moderation and prudence. Can you imagine what kind of patience you can expect from all the youthful voters who flocked to the polls -- is that a problem?

GENEIVE ABDO: It's an enormous problem. And, in fact, because he has received a mandate for a second time, the expectation among the young people and among young voters is even higher today than it was four years ago. And this to some extent makes the situation far more volatile today than it was before because there are high expectations and there is also now a very active radical faction both within the reform movement itself and on college campuses, and these students have declared publicly that their patience has run out and if you analyze some of the quotes given and the comment made by young voters, they said their support for Khatami was conditional. It was conditional on profound change occurring this time and some even went as far to say if we don't see any change, we're going to take action into our own hand and go to the streets.

GWEN IFILL: What about expectations not only within Iran, Shaul Bakhash, but also outside, expectations from the rest of the world?

SHAUL BAKHASH: I think there was also expectation abroad once, one saw the performance of the reformist movement in the first three years, that this process would go on and would achieve some very solid institutional changes as Geneive Abdo just said. What well it hasn't happened and the right wing crackdown was very severe. At the same time as Gary Sick said there has been some striking improvement in Iran's relations with the international community -- except in Iran U.S. relations, which really haven't gone very far at all.

GWEN IFILL: Let's talk about that improvement in relations, Gary Sick, how improved are Iran's relations with the international community and with the United States in particular?

GARY SICK: With the international community pretty much in general Iran's position has improved greatly -- great direct contacts with European countries, restored relations with England, the Far East, pretty much across the board. They've become a really major player at the United Nations, which Iran started out ignoring at the beginning of the revolutionary period. With the United States, we have had two huge disappointments and missed opportunities in my view. The first was in 1993 at the beginning of the Clinton Administration when we basically felt that we didn't need any assistance from Iran in the region and at a time when Iran was really interested in having a relationship with the United States we rejected it with a policy we called the dual containment policy, which was then backed up later by a whole set of sanctions which remain in place and which are a huge hindrance. Then in 1998 when we began to realize that maybe something was happening in Iran and we said okay let's begin to change our policy, and we softened our rhetoric toward Iran, at this point Iran got involved in this repressive crackdown and was so tied up in their only internal affairs they were in no position to respond. There has been missed opportunity by the United States by a missed opportunities by Iran. It's difficult at this point to predict when those two sides might in fact find each other again.

GWEN IFILL: Has this aggressive crackdown that Gary Sick refers to in the last year or so of Khatami's first term, has that rated Iran undeserving of new U.S. relations of a healing of that breech?

GENEIVE ABDO: Not necessarily because I think that probably what is lost in the U.S./Iran discussion is a very important fact that the United States probably should not take a position of supporting either the reformers or the conservatives. If you eliminate from the discussion partiality on the United States' part, then it allows U.S. policy to be formed no matter who is in power. So the conservative crackdown is part of the national process of development -- political development that is happening in Iran. And if the United States can divorce who is in power from the decision on sanctions, it would probably be more helpful and in fact the conservatives have always supported improved relations with the United States because many of the conservatives can gain economically from the lifting of sanctions. So they've always been in favor even though their rhetoric of course indicates the contrary.

GWEN IFILL: So the formula then would be supporting the democracy but not necessarily the democratic leaders or his opposition?

SHAUL BAKHASH: Well, but I think there are some serious obstacles to relations between the two countries. There is the fact that American economic sanctions against Iran and I think the Iranians have more or less estimated the condition that the sanctions be lifted first before they will enter into talks. And sanctions are not going to be lifted; they are going to be renewed. Secondly, there is the Iranian support for the hard line anti-peace process element in the Palestinian/Israeli peace process, and that is a major obstacle. It's true I think that at one level the conservatives also want better relations with the U.S., but the leader has again and again said, relations with the U.S. are not in Iran's interest and I think until he changes his position and posture nothing at all is going to happen.

GWEN IFILL: Okay. Guests, thank you all very much.

FINALLY - POETRY OF CONFLICT

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, poetry with a news peg, implementation of a new Palestinian-Israeli cease-fire agreement did begin today in the Middle East. Here is NewsHour contributor and former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky.

ROBERT PINSKY: Here are two poems from the Middle East, one by an Arab and one by an Israeli. The poems are not different in feeling from what other sources give us, but they fulfill poetry's ability to crystallize feeling in a way more memorable, more nuanced, more haunting than some other kinds of language. First, a poem by the Palestinian Mahmoud Darwish, as translated from the Arabic by Tania Nasir. "I am from there. I come from there and remember. I was born, like everyone is born. I have a mother and a house with many windows. I have brothers, friends and a prison. I have a wave that seagulls snatched away. I have a view of my own and an extra blade of grass. I have a moon past the peak of words. I have the God-sent food of birds and an olive tree beyond the ken of time. I have traversed the land before swords turned bodies into banquets. I come from there. I return the sky to its mother when for its mother the sky cries, and I weep for a returning cloud to know me. I have learned the words of bloodstained courts in order to break the rules. I have learned and dismantled all the words to construct a single one: Home." And here's a passage from "Jerusalem 1967," a poem by the late Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, as translated by Hannah Bloch and Stephen Mitchell. From "Jerusalem 1967." "Always beside ruined houses and iron girders twisted like the arms of the slain, you find someone who is sweeping the paved path, or tending the little garden, sensitive paths, square flower beds. Large desires for a horrible death are well cared for, as in the monastery ofthe white brothers next to the lions' gate. But farther on, in the courtyard, the earth gapes, columns and arches supporting the vain land and negotiating with one another: Crusaders and guardian angels; a sultan and Rabbi Yehuda the pious. Arched vaults with a column, ransom for prisoners and strange conditions in rolled-up contracts and sealing-stones. Curved hooks holding air. Capitals and broken pieces of columns scattered like chessmen in a game that was interrupted in anger, and Herod, who already, 2000 years ago, wailed like mortar shells. He knew."

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday. President Bush met with NATO leaders in Brussels. He said he made progress in overcoming doubts about his missile defense plan. We'll see you online, and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.