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U.S.-Vietnam trade pact reported just months away HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - Vietnam and the United States are close to signing their first trade agreement, U.S. Ambassador Pete Peterson was quoted as saying today. Peterson also said President Clinton may visit Vietnam before his term expires next year. ``He has told me that he has always wanted to visit Vietnam,'' Peterson was quoted as saying in the official English daily Vietnam News. ``I know that he would want to do so before the end of his term.'' Talks on the trade agreement have gone on for more than three years, ...

  Sunday, July 4, 1999   'Clinton's remarks a slip of the tongue'   By Aluf Benn, Yossi Verter, Nitzan Horowitz and Amira Hass, Ha'aretz Correspondents Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak has requested that U.S. President Bill Clinton "clarify and correct" his recent statement in which he spoke about "the right of the Palestinians to live wherever they want." Barak said the statement, which could be interpreted as U.S. support for the right of return (the enabling of Palestinian refugees to resettle in pre-1948 homes within the Green Line) was unacceptable to him, and defined it as "a slip of ...

The Ignorant Armies In my personal military history library, one of my favorite books is E.M. Halliday's The Ignorant Armies, subtitled Once there was a war above the Arctic Circle between the Soviet Union and the United States. This work chronicles the Allied expedition to Archangel in 1918, including combat operations between the US Army and the Bolsheviks, the latter having not yet begun calling themselves communists. This sordid affair began with the Bolshevik signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, on November 7, 1917. This act panicked the Allies on the Western Front, who correctly feared that the freed German ...

Vietnam-Era Questions Haunt Bush .c The Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) - Questions about whether George W. Bush received preferential treatment to gain entry into the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War are being resurrected as his presidential campaign picks up steam. Bush's service in the Guard, where he became a fighter pilot, is well known and has been covered in Texas newspaper and magazine stories going back to at least 1988. A 1988 story examined whether Bush and other sons of prominent Texas families received preferential treatment in gaining entry to National Guard units. It noted that ...

June 28, 1999 - SOVEREIGNTY OUT OF STYLE Here along our border with Mexico, we learn every few days of more illegal immigrants dying in the desert after crossing at some remote point. Despite our television campaign throughout Central America warning of the size and ferocity of the desert, they come. Despite the efforts of the Border Patrol to find and rescue them, they die. These immigrants are committing crimes just by crossing the border. Even so, we try to rescue them. But, trying to elude officials, they enter in desolate, sparsely patrolled, uninhabitable desert, unprepared to walk more ...

Knife sale records to curb crime By David Bamber, Home Affairs Correspondent ANYONE buying a knife will have to place their details on a national register under plans being drawn up by ministers to reduce crime. The purchaser of any type of bladed instrument - from a penknife to a sword or from a fish knife to a machete - will be asked by shopkeepers for details of their name, address and proof of identification. Although the register would be voluntary, anyone who refused to give the information would be told they could not buy the knife. Jack Straw, the ...

How Hillary Should Run A Former Clinton Adviser's Campaigning do's -- and don'ts -- for the First Lady. By George Stephanopoulos- By now it's pretty clear to everyone that you're going to run for Senate. Your main goal has to be turning the curiosity people have about you into solid support by Election Day. I have a few thoughts on how you might do that. OK, so you haven't always taken my advice in the past. That never stopped me before, and it won't now. First, winning is going to take a ton of cash. Just getting to the finish ...

Christians go to war over US Army's witches James Langton in New York CHRISTIAN groups have called for a boycott on serving in the armed forces following a decision to recognise witchcraft as an organised religion which can be openly practised on American military bases. The Pentagon ruling, which allows members of the armed forces who are witches to hold pagan rituals inside bases, has angered conservative politicians and religious organisations, including the Christian Coalition and the American Family Association. They are among 13 groups who say that Christians should not serve in the American armed forces until the ...

A Road Map to reclaim our Constitution. Some thoughts worthy of discussion And consideration during these trying times. Presented by Citizen and Resident of the Sovereign State of Massachusetts Citizen Robert VannRox These are indeed times of trial and tribulation. Acts of the most despicable and heinous craft have become commonplace. Indeed, these actions which offend even the most callous of our lot are considered mere privileges of our highest office. We who pay our taxes, with money earned through labor most uncomfortable, voluntarily to a Federal Government which advocates the elimination of our few remaining liberties, find our situation ...

The Fourth of July Sunday, July 4, 1999; Page B06 WHEN ABRAHAM Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg of "our fathers" bringing forth a new nation, he could be confident that his audience would understand and respond to that term, with its implication of common origins and outlooks. Could a president speak so easily in the same way today? In 1863 the crowd that gathered to hear the president was basically homogeneous in race, religion and so on -- not far removed from the Founders of four score and seven years before, and in some instances no doubt able to claim literal ...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Questions about whether George W. Bush received preferential treatment to gain entry into the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War are being resurrected as his presidential campaign picks up steam. Bush's service in the Guard, where he became a fighter pilot, is well known and has been covered in Texas newspaper and magazine stories going back to at least 1988. A 1988 story examined whether Bush and other sons of prominent Texas families received preferential treatment in gaining entry to National Guard units. It noted that the son of Lloyd Bentsen, a former senator, ...

GO, FEINGOLD, GO! I think Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., has a capital idea. He says he will cite relevant financial donations made to individual senators when they argue for this or the other piece of legislation. Sen. Feingold, along with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., were out on a limb during this legislative season, backing a campaign finance reform law that sought to eliminate soft-money escape routes used by business and labor to beat the formal rules against maximum political donations. Their bill failed, and did so for pretty good reasons. There isn't any way you can keep interested bodies from ...

NATO Troops Who Killed 2 Misread Gunfire as Attack Shots Fired During Noisy Celebration in Pristina By Karl Vick Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, July 4, 1999; Page A17 PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, July 3—British troops guarding a building filled with Serb officials killed two ethnic Albanians early today during a night of celebration here in the Kosovo capital. Witnesses said one of the dead men had been standing on the roof of a white car shortly after midnight, firing a Kalashnikov automatic rifle into the air. Three British paratroops opened fire on the car because "they feared their lives were in ...

FOR DISCUSSION AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. The Independent Counsel law lapsed last night at midnight. And Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr said the law should not be re-authorized. Obviously, Starr believes that, because his own investigation was a waste of tens of millions of dollars, the Independent Counsel law should be trashed. The truth is that the Independent Counsel law is a good law. When corruption has been rooted out in places like France and Italy, it has usually been the result of an independent magistrate—their version of our Independent Counsel. We also know that when Independent Counsels like Donald Schmalz ...

Clinton orders 'cyber-sabotage' to oust Serb leader By Philip Sherwell in Podgorica, Sasa Nikolic in Belgrade and Julius Strauss in Pristina PRESIDENT CLINTON has ordered American government computer hackers to break into Slobodan Milosevic's foreign bank accounts and drain his hidden fortune as part of a clandestine CIA plan to overthrow the Yugoslav president, The Telegraph has learned. The controversial operation, which is opposed by some senior political and intelligence figures in Washington, is part of a covert six-point package authorised by Mr Clinton last week. Although more than 5,000 people gathered in Novi Sad on Friday evening for ...

Talks Between North, South Korea Collapse Pyongyang Said to Be Planning Ballistic Missile Test, Adding to Regional Tensions By John Pomfret Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, July 4, 1999; Page A15 BEIJING, July 3—A last-minute attempt to restart stalled talks between North and South Korea collapsed in recriminations today as each government's negotiators assailed the other's as intransigent and then headed home. Meanwhile, in another sign of the increasing tension on the strategic peninsula, a former U.N. diplomat said in Beijing that North Korean officials had informed him of plans to test a ballistic missile. Yasushi Akashi, a former U.N. ...

State Department Defends Reassignment of U.N. Whistleblower Associated Press Sunday, July 4, 1999; Page A09 The State Department says it reassigned an employee from its United Nations mission because of unsatisfactory job performance, denying it retaliated against her for calling attention to alleged U.N. waste and mismanagement. The department's position in the case of Linda Shenwick, a former budget and administrative officer at the U.S. mission to the United Nations, was outlined in a letter to Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a copy of which was obtained by the Associated Press Friday. Grassley has defended Shenwick, contending the State Department ...

Secret Service May Require Secrecy Pledge Reuters Sunday, July 4, 1999; Page A08 The Secret Service is preparing to require new agents to sign a pledge that they will not discuss what they see and hear while protecting a president, Director Brian Stafford said yesterday. After at least one former agent discussed ex-intern Monica S. Lewinsky with reporters and a retired member of President John F. Kennedy's protective detail revealed Kennedy's sexual trysts to author Seymour Hersh, the Secret Service is reviewing a pledge of confidentiality as a condition of employment. "In over 100 years, we never felt that there ...

THE TALK SHOWS Sunday, July 4, 1999; Page A04 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (WTTG), 9 a.m.: Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), former senator Alfonse M. D'Amato (R-N.Y.), Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes and David Horowitz of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. FACE THE NATION (CBS, WUSA), 10:30 a.m.: Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.). MEET THE PRESS (NBC, WRC), 10:30 a.m.: House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Reps. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Rick A. Lazio (R-N.Y.), and Health and Human Services ...

Putting Their Hopes in Bush-Weary Voters By David Von Drehle Sunday, July 4, 1999; Page A04 "It appears that Bush fatigue is setting in." So soon? Believe it, says Mark Penn, campaign pollster for Vice President Gore. A memo from Penn to Gore campaign chairman Tony Coelho was circulating on Capitol Hill last week. Penn's analysis of various polls reaches the sunny conclusion that Gore has seized the momentum against Texas Gov. George W. Bush and -- although 15 points behind -- is in a good position. "Despite the saturation coverage that Bush received for his announcement" that he is ...