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CRANS MONTANA, Switzerland, Jun 28, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) Russia's former mediator for Kosovo, Viktor Chernomyrdin, on Saturday criticized the US decision to offer a reward for bringing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to trial. "I don't agree with that," Chernomyrdin said, "because for the moment Mr Milosevic is the legally elected president of Yugoslavia. Our position is this: the people of Yugoslavia will solve this question." Chernomyrdin, a former Russian prime minister, was commenting on Thursday's announcement that the United States was offering five million dollars for any information leading to the arrest of Milosevic. He spoke during ...

PRISTINA, Jun 28, 1999 -- (Reuters) Russia flew more personnel to Kosovo on Sunday to prepare the way for its planned peacekeeping contingent of 3,600 troops amid reports of fresh lawlessness in the conflict-ravaged southern Serbian province. The UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency, meanwhile, prepared to organize the start of a full-scale return of refugees to the province from Monday. More than 330,000 refugees have gone home in the two weeks since the NATO air war ended, ignoring UNHCR pleas to wait for bombs and mines to be cleared. On Sunday, the third Russian flight of the weekend ...

  Uncle Sam Has All Your Numbers By Robert O'Harrow Jr. Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, June 27, 1999; Page A1 As part of a new and aggressive effort to track down parents who owe child support, the federal government has created a vast computerized data-monitoring system that includes all individuals with new jobs and the names, addresses, Social Security numbers and wages of nearly every working adult in the United States. Government agencies have long gathered personal information for specific reasons, such as collecting taxes. But never before have federal officials had the legal authority and technological ability ...

BONN, June 27 (Itar-Tass) - NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley Clark does not exclude the Alliance's operations similar to the one in Yugoslavia in future. The success of NATO in Kosovo is a decisive precedent for the next century, Clark said in an interview with the German Welt am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday. The warfare against Yugoslavia showed the central role of the North Atlantic Alliance in the provision of peace and human rights in Europe, he said. When NATO enters the new century, the might it has shown in Kosovo will help it in future ventures, the General ...

http://www.foxnews.com/news/wires2/0628/n_ap_0628_49.sml 3.58 a.m. ET (758 GMT) June 28, 1999 By John Leicester, Associated Press BEIJING (AP) — After eight months under wraps, a refurbished Tiananmen Square reopened to the public today with new tank-proof paving, rules against chewing gum and a Catch-22 that temporarily banished one of the giant plaza's greatest charms: its kite flyers. The square, China's symbolic political heart and home to massive pro-democracy protests in 1989, had been closed since October for a facelift ahead of this year's 50th anniversary of the founding of Communist China on Oct. 1. Thousands of people gathered at dawn today to watch ...

“Hey, what ’chew lookin’ at? ’Chew lookin’ at me?” By Lucianne Goldberg The entire White House staff has turned into Joe Pesci. Last week the talk show circuit was clotted with former staffers saying variations of “I never said that.” “He put words in my mouth,” “That was off the record.” And right behind them in the next segment comes stolid, unsmiling Bob Woodward, whose general affect makes Al Gore seem effervescent, blinking like an iguana in the moonlight and calling them liars. Hillary must have broken every nail hitting the speed dial after reading what people had to say ...

It will be said by many, as the Kosovan war recedes into history, that it was the first to be ostensibly fought in pursuit of human rights. The Second World War was certainly not fought to save the Jews. Indeed, their plight was played down by the Allies. Neither during nor after that war were human rights high on any political agenda. Yet we have in recent weeks been led to believe that ever since the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing in Europe had become intolerable. Not so. Few remember that the defeated Germans were given a bitter taste of their own ...

It’s an ugly peace, to say the least, when the victors keep chortling over each mass grave they uncover. “See, we were right to pulverize Serbia!” they crow — not noticing that the mass graves are material evidence of NATO’s own ineptness and, it must be said, savagery. For 78 days of war, that proud alliance refused to let the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo deter it for one moment from the urgent business of bombing Serbia back into the era of candlelight and campfires. It would have been too risky for our airplanes to take on the Serbs in Kosovo, ...

I participated in a conference over the weekend, which included Adm. Thomas Moorer, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Maj. Gen. Jack Singlaub, constitutional champion, John de la Brown, former member of Parliament, and a group of other distinguished experts. During one of the breaks, an audience member approached me with one of those questions to which there is no simple answer. It has been a re-occurring topic on my radio talk show: "Why doesn't the main stream media report important significant news?" I have asked that question myself ... often. However, depending the day of the ...

An article in the June 24 New York Times reported on the trial in Turkey of captured Kurdish guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan. The Times provided background on the war between Kurdish separatist guerrillas and Turkish security forces: "The war that Ocalan has waged has cost more than 30,000 lives and made him the object of intense hatred. It has also made him a heroic figure to many Kurds who live in Turkey's southeast." Contrast this description with the way The New York Times presents the background of another, very similar, separatist war (3/27/99): "The Serbian campaign against the ethnic Albanians ...

As Lebanon yesterday began rebuilding after Thursday night's Israeli air raids on power stations, bridges and other targets around Beirut and the south, Israel's outgoing Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, rejoiced that "Lebanon and Syria got the message". He reiterated that Israel would respond "in the harshest manner" if its civilians were harmed again in the future. The series of Israeli raids, the heaviest in more than three years, came in response to a flurry of Katyusha rocket attacks, by Hizbullah forces in south Lebanon, on northern Israel. Nine Lebanese were killed in the Israeli attacks; two Israelis died in ...

Just call them Mr. and Mrs. Senator. There's a new report President Clinton may be eyeing a Senate race of his own as he comes to the Big Apple Monday to raise campaign cash for Senate wannabes like wife Hillary. Old pals are talking up the idea Clinton may run for the U.S. Senate from Arkansas in 2002 — and one person who raised it with Clinton said his reaction was "noncommittal but interested," the New Yorker magazine says. That raises the prospect of the Clintons trying to make history as the first-ever Mr. and Mrs. Senator — from ...

The Navy is taking the first tentative steps that could eventually lead to sex integration of the sea service's last all-male citadel: nuclear-powered submarines. This summer, for the first time, the Navy is allowing female ROTC students to spend two nights aboard a ballistic-missile submarine with its 155-man crew. Previously, the female students were restricted to day trips. If that sign of coming integration isn't enough, Navy Secretary Richard Danzig this month seemed to chide the secretive and close-knit submarine community for operating "a white-male preserve." Comparing the submarine service to the mythical -- Continued from Front Page -- Greek ...

China is making final preparations to test fire a new mobile intercontinental ballistic missile that the CIA believes will incorporate stolen U.S. missile and warhead secrets, The Washington Times has learned. Preparations for the launch of the road-mobile DF-31 -- which could take place as early as next week -- were spotted by U.S. spy satellites at Wuzhai in central China and reported in classified U.S. intelligence reports earlier this month, said U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the reports. "They are getting ready for a launch," one official said. The official said one U.S. intelligence agency assessed the DF-31 ...

"Outraged at U.S. nuclear weapons labs' lax security, Congress is moving swiftly to change how the Energy Department handles nukes. But not without Energy Secretary Bill Richardson throwing himself on the tracks," Paul Bedard writes in U.S. News & World Report. "Richardson, several congressional sources say, has threatened Republican Reps. Floyd Spence of South Carolina and Mac Thornberry of Texas with retaliation if they pursued their reform proposals. Revenge was among the words the energy chief used, says a witness to one conversation. "The threats aren't idle. Spence's congressional district is home to the Savannah River nuclear site. Thornberry's ...

For information and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Who is Telling us the Truth about the Serbs? Thomas Jefferson, in his later years, spent much of his time, energy and resources building the University of Virginia because he believed that the nation he helped form could not preserve its freedom unless its citizens, its voters, were informed and educated. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." To provide for the continuing education of voters, the founding fathers included freedom of the press in ...

It was the fax Pentagon official Jonathan Fox had been dreading. "To Jon Fox. Call me ASAP," his superior scrawled in fat letters at the top. On the same page was a block of text that ended with: "The proposed agreement is not inimical (harmful) to the comon defense or the security of the United States." Earlier that day-Oct. 24, 1997-Fox had been ordered to insert the conclusion in place of his own in a memo reviewing an administration plan to share critical nuclear technology with China. The White House needed a rush OK in advance of Chinese President Jian ...

To judge by the movies released so far this summer, ethnic characters are hot. But critics of those characters are hotter. They say that if an Arab, a black or a Scotsman shows up on the screen, he's probably in a stereotypical form. A Hollywood aversion to "politically correct" thinking has made rude caricatures acceptable -- and every minority a target. No character has inspired more irritation than Jar Jar Binks, the bumbling, eye-rolling alien from Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Though Lucasfilm has denied it, many see the excitable amphibian, with his fleshy dreadlocks and his huge ...

FOREWORD: Free Republic has devoted itself to the mission of rooting out corruption in government, including the accumulation of power by the government in excess of legal authority. In participating on Free Republic over the past year it has become increasingly clear that many FReepers, no doubt well-intentioned, lack the critical faculties and rational basis for recognizing corruption and discerning between truth and falsehood. We cannot fight corruption if we have no basis for recognizing it, or for explaining why it is wrong. We cannot discern between truth and lies in media, education, etc., if we do not understand epistemology ...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Two-hundred-and-twenty-three years ago today, Thomas Jefferson put the finishing touches on a document that the Congress had commissioned for ``possible use.'' In addition to Mr. Jefferson, a committee of four others - John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston - had been asked to put quill to parchment and craft a pronouncement. It was the outgrowth of a debate that had been suspended without resolution 18 days earlier. The object of discourse was a motion introduced by Richard Henry Lee ``that these United Colonies are, and of ...