Banner Graphic, Volume 18, Number 186, Greencastle, Putnam County, 14 April 1988 — Page 3

Panama says Marines were in two-hour fight with trees

PANAMA CITY, Panama (AP) •I— Panama’s military rejected a ■Report that U.S. soldiers engaged up lo 50 intruders in a two-hour .firefight at a fuel depot. .» Maj. Edgardo Lopez Grimaldo of the Panamanian Defense Forces told reporters Wednesday night the U.S. Marine sentries had “confused the swaying of tropical palm trees with non-existent enemies.” HE ALSO ACCUSED the Marines of moving 100 yards into territory during the incident and called it the “24th Gringo military invasion of Panamanian soil.” • The U.S. Southern Command said about 100 Marines were involved in the firefight with between 40 and 50 “unauthorized personnel” first spotted at dusk Tuesday at the 800-acre Arraijan Tank Farm, an , underground fuel depot located

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Secretary of State George Shultz (right) and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard A. Shevardnadze were signed the Geneva peace pact with Afghan government officials that will

Finance ministers take small step toward gold standard

• WASHINGTON (AP) Gold, the magical metal, is easing its way back on the world monetary stage after a 15-year absence. * The latest move is admittedly a "small one, far short of returning to the gold standard which ruled world currency values for almost three decades following World War 11. » BUT THE TOP FINANCE leaders of the seven major industrial nations did endorse a plan Wednesday to use the price of certain commodities to help them coordinate economic policies. ' Treasury Secretary James A. Baker 111, who is pushing the idea, has singled out gold as one of the commodities which should be included as a barometer in guiding policy decisions by the world’s largest economic powers. The so-called Group of Seven, including the United States, Japan, West Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Italy, also agreed at their Wednesday meeting to continue efforts aimed at preventing the dollar from declining any further. • The United States and its six allies decided in September 1985 to push the dollar lower to correct America’s huge trade deficit, but the countries have been trying since February 1987 to halt the currency’s decline. ' THE EFFORT DID NOT meet With much success last year, and the steadily deteriorating dollar was cited as one of the reasons the world’s financial markets were thrown into turmoil last October. But since Dec. 22, the major industrial countries have crafted a hew strategy to stabilize the dollar and that agreement has held few the past four months, backed up by periodic intervention in currency markets, the process of buying the dollar to prop up its value. In early trading in Tokyo, the dollar dipped marginally as analysts said the Group of Seven statement contained nothing which had not been expected. Baker first unveiled his commodity price indicator at the last meeting of the seven countries’ finance leaders in September. Some nations expressed skepticism then, •wondering whether the idea was a effort to re-introduce a gold standard. * BUT BAKER PICKED UP jenough converts to get the proposal

near Howard Air Force Base outside Panama City. There apparently were no injuries on either side, said U.S. spokesman Col. Ron Sconyers. He added that Marines who swept the area after daylight found no evidence of injuries and no equipment the intruders may have left behind. On Monday, a Marine sentry was shot to death during an attempted break-in at the depot by six to eight people dressed in camouflage, U.S. military officials said. He was apparently shot accidentally by another Marine. SCONYERS SAID THERE was no evidence in either incident that the intruders were Panamanian military personnel, but said that on Tuesday they all were “reported wearing dark uniforms.” The two reported shooting in-

bring an end to the civil war in Afghanistan. Soviet troops, who have been fighting in Afghanistan for nine years, are expected to be withdrawn by next May. (AP photo).

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JAMES BAKER 111 Reversing Bretton Woods?

endorsed, although other finance ministers stressed that many details of the plan, including just what commodities to include, still remain to be woiked out. Baker has insisted that his approach is not an effort to return to the gold-based monetary system that existed between the end of World War II and 1973. For most of

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cidents drove to a new low already tense and bitter relations between the United States and the government controlled by Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, chief of the 15,000-strong Defense Forces. Noriega, the power behind the civilian government, is under federal indictment in the United States on drug trafficking charges. For months, he has resisted efforts by the internal opposition and Washington to oust him. The United States has frozen Panamanian deposits in U.S. banks and the country’s banks have been closed since early March. Lopez Grimaldo said Tuesday night’s incident was “the next to the last step for armed intervention against the Panamanian people.” There was no immediate response from American military spokesmen.

that time, the price of gold was fixed at $35 an ounce and the currencies of other governments were set at fixed rates based on the dollar. President Nixon broke the link with gold in 1973 as the so-called Bretton Woods system crumbled under the weight of rising inflation and large trade imbalances. In another victory for Baker, the joint statement Wednesday singled out the newly industrialized countries in Asia for criticism for their continued high trade surpluses. It urged those nations to do more to lower their own barriers to other countries’ exports and to allow their currencies to rise in value in relation to the dollar.

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Afghan peace pact signed; Soviet troops out in a year

GENEVA (AP) The Soviet Union will sign an agreement to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, but Moslem guerrillas have vowed to ignore the accord and to fight on until they topple the Mos-cow-backed Kabul regime. Officials from the Soviet Union, the United States, the Marxist Afghan government and Pakistan were to sign the agreement today in Geneva. THE UNITED NATIONS estimates 1.5 million Afghans have been killed in the war, which began after an April 1978 Communist coup. More than 10,000 Soviets have died since they became involved 1 years later, Western sources estimate. The agreement, under which the Soviet pullout would begin in a month, was worked out over six years in U.N.-sponsored indirect talks between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which claimed to represent the U.S.-supplied rebels. The guerrillas, however, have rejected the agreement and vow to continue fighting. No Afghan resistance fighters

Nicaraguan talks bog down

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) A Sandinista negotiator charged that Contra rebels are not serious about ending the 7-year-old civil war, and a meeting set for Friday to work out a definitive cease-fire appeared to be in jeopardy. “We have serious doubts they want to enter into a definitive cease-fire,” Deputy Foreign Minister Victor Hugo Tinoco told reporters Wednesday night. “THERE IS A PROBLEM of confidence,” he said, adding that the Nicaraguan government did not want to see the talks unravel. “If they (Contras) don’t come on the 15th (Friday), we’ll have to see the alternatives.” Contra leaders have demanded

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were to be present at today’s signing ceremony. U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar was to preside. Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the Soviet foreign minister, and U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz were to sign for the superpowers. SHULTZ WAS TO ARRIVE about an hour before the ceremony, and was scheduled to meet with Shevardnadze afterward. The fourth summit of President Reagan and Mikhail S. Gorbachev begins May 29 in Moscow. Gorbachev told American business leaders in Moscow on Wednesday that the Afghan accord may have international implications on a par with the superpower treaty signed in December to ban mediumrange nuclear missiles. “We believe that the situation has changed for the better, that a window of hope has opened a little,” he said in remarks carried by the state-run Tass news agency. “The possibilities of finding solutions to complicated issues engendered in the years of the Cold War have become more apparent.”

that military talks on a provisional truce be held today in Sapoa, a southern Nicaraguan town where the cease-fire pact was signed March 23. The talks are to work out details of how to get Contra forces into several zones inside Nicaragua

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April 14,1988 THE BANNERGRAPHIC

THE AFGHAN AGREEMENT provides for withdrawal of all Soviet troops, pledges by Pakistan and Afghanistan of non-inter-ference in each other’s affairs, and the safe return of about 5 million refugees from Pakistan and Iran. Moscow and Washington will guarantee Afghanistan’s future nonalignment and the United Nations will supervise the settlement, including the return of refugees. Soviet troops are to leave within nine months starting May 15, with half the estimated 115,000 gone by Aug. 15. There is no provision in the agreement for an end to the war and it says nothing about the composition of future Afghan governments. Another point left out of the accord is military aid. An informal understanding has been reported between the Soviet Union and United States. Diplomatic sources say each superpower will phase .out such aid, while reserving the right to resume it if the other side does.

as a prelude to ending the war. The Contras are threatening to boycott Friday’s high-level meeting in Managua, where a final solution to the war would be discussed, unless the military details of the provisional truce are worked out

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