Banner Graphic, Volume 22, Number 118, Greencastle, Putnam County, 21 January 1992 — Page 2

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THE BANNERGRAPHIC January 21,1992

U.S. rebukes Japan for hedging on trade deal

WASHINGTON (AP) A top Bush administration official cautioned Japanese auto makers to expect “a very negative reaction” if they back off their goals for sharply increasing imports of U.S. auto parts and cars. And House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., said that unless the Japanese face penalties for failing to meet the goals, “you’ll never have the pressure you need to change the behavior.” THE WARNINGS came after Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa said in Tokyo on Monday that the figures announced during President Bush’s visit to import nearly 20,000 more American cars and buy an additional $lO billion worth of auto parts were “a target rather than a firm promise.” Toyota Chairman Eiji Toyoda said his company “will study and consider the possibility of selling GM cars. It is too much to say we will actually sell them.” J. Michael Farren, undersecretary of commerce for international trade, said of those statements: “It may be a sign of backing off from the stated goals that they have unilaterally set for themselves.” ‘‘IT IS NOT unusual for Japanese government officials to make what looks like a fairly basic commitment and then qualify it

Japan soothes U.S. over comments

TOKYO (AP) stab at damage control, Japan sought today to soothe U.S. anger over a senior politician’s comment that lazy U.S. workers are to blame for the countries’ trade gap. Japanese leaders also quickly is-

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heavily at a later date. This doesn’t shock me,” Farren said. Still, he added, Japanese automakers should know there will be “a very negative reaction here in the United States if they don’t expeditiously move to meet and exceed the goals.” The firestorm erupted as Japanese Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe arrived here for meetings today with top U.S. officials, including Vice President Dan Quayle, Secretary of State James A. Baker 111 and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. ON WEDNESDAY, Watanabe is scheduled to attend a White House signing ceremony of an agreement for the Japanese government to buy U.S.-made supercomputers. Bush took the heads of the Big Three U.S. automakers and other executives with him on his trade mission to Japan two weeks ago. Leading Democrats have charged Bush wasn’t tough enough with the Japanese over their s4l billion trade surplus. “Mr. Toyoda’s comments show that Japan has no intention of opening its home markets to U.S. cars,” said Sen. Donald Riegle, D-Mich. “Japan’s trade cheating in cars and other goods is steadily destroying the U.S. industrial base.” RIEGLE SAID Bush’s decision to take his Commerce Secretary

sued reassurances that Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa had not reneged on pledges made during his Tokyo summit with President Bush to increase imports of U.S. cars and auto parts. “WE HAVE DETERMINED that we will sincerely accomplish each item which we have promised to do,” Koichi Kato, the chief government spokesman, referring to targets to import 20,000 more U.S. cars annually and roughly double U.S. auto part imports to $lO billion. U.S. officials bristled after Miyazawa said Monday that the figures were “a target rather than a firm promise.” The controversial comments couldn’t have come at a worse time for strained U.S.-Japan relations, as American election year rhetoric heats up following President Bush’s contentious visit. THE JAPANESE government appeared particularly concerned over reported comments by Yoshio Sakurauchi, speaker of the House of Representatives, that American workers are lazy and many can’t read. Newspapers quoted him as saying: “If America doesn’t watch out, it is going to be judged as

Robert Mosbacher rather than U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills demonstrated “the emptiness” of his trip to Japan. Gephardt called the Japanese leaders’ remarks Monday “another indication that when you use traditional methods we have used to solve the problems, it doesn’t work well.” Gephardt is cosponsoring legislation to force Japan to eliminate its trade surplus by 20 percent a year over five years. If those goals were not met, quotas or other barriers would be imposed to limit Japanese cars exports to the United States. FARREN SAID the 20,000 figure was never included in the formal Japanese government statement at U.S. request “We told them we did not want a number in there on autos,” Farren said. “Frankly any number they might come out with would probably be low and not necessarily realistic.” But the goal of raising auto part imports from $9 billion to sl9 billion by 1994 “was in the document the government put out,” said Farren, who attended the Tokyo summit. THE sl9 BILLION represented “individual commitments that the Japanese auto companies made in their voluntary plans,” he said. “This was not a govcmment-to-

finished by the world.” Sakurauchi, whose position as House speaker is esteemed but carries little influence, issued a statement today acknowledging his comments “were liable to cause misunderstanding.” IN THE STATEMENT, read to foreign journalists at a Foreign Ministry news conference, he denied reports that he had described the United States as “Japan’s subcontractor” or had said 30 percent of the U.S. workforce was illiterate. Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe, traveling in the United States, issued a prepared statement saying he did not share Sakurauchi’s reported views. “I understand labor productivity of American workers in general is quite high, as is the literacy rate,” the statement said. MOST JAPANESE television news, which largely ignored Sakurauchi’s comments initially, today gave prominent play to American newscasts showing U.S. autoworkers’ angry reactions. “It is very regretful that (the remarks) were taken as if to disparage or slight American workers,” the 79-year-old Sakurauchi said in his written statement. Nonetheless, Sakurauchi’s remarks do reflect resentment among some Japanese who wonder why they are being blamed for Americans’ economic woes. “I GUESS IT’S about time for us Japanese to be proud of ourselves. It’s good he said what he had to say,” said 67-year-old vegetable seller Nobuyoshi Yamazaki. “I think that America should also make harder efforts instead of finding ways to sell politically. To me, their cars just aren’t designed for driving narrow streets here or to satisfy our taste,” said Hisayoshi Ohara, a 21-year-old student who is

Cuba announces execution; criticizes U.S.

MEXICO CITY (AP) nouncing the execution of an exile convicted of leading an armed three-man infiltration team, Cuba decried Washington’s unwillingness to prevent exiles from organizing such missions. Eduardo Diaz Betancourt, 38, of Miami, was shot by a firing squad in Havana on Monday for endangering the security of the state, the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina said in a brief report. THE AGENCY did not say where the reported execution occurred. Indeed, the dispatch focused more on arguing that the United States is not easing its aggression toward Cuba in what are trying times for the island’s residents. Diaz Betancourt was captured with two other Miami residents Dec. 29 after landing on a Cuban beach. The government said they were carrying guns and explosives and planned to attack theaters, stores and other civilian targets.

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MICHIO WATANABE Walking Into a firestorm?

government trade agreement,” Farren said. “The numbers were a consequence of Japanese company decisions, not an edict of the government of Japan.” Recognizing that Japan’s market essentially has been closed to foreign auto parts makers, its government acted to “in essence embrace those goals as being in Japan’s national interest,” he said. Farren called Japanese auto makers’ control over almost the entire auto parts network in their country “a situation we would never tolerate in this country.” Meanwhile, talks with the Japanese over auto parts and other issues are continuing. “We did not expect to come away with a solution to the closed Japanese auto market in one visit,” Farren said.

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KIICHI MIYAZAWA Was not reneging on deal studying car design. Sakurauchi said today that his comments were intended to reflect concern among the general public over the “one-sided argument” that U.S. autos and auto parts fail to sell in Japan because of import barriers. SAKURAUCHI’S words were just the latest, but not the worst, in a string of statements by Japanese politicians, including Watanabe, who have criticized American society and later been forced to apologize for their lack of tact. In 1986, then-Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone said Americans have lower intelligence than Japanese. Two years later, Watanabe caused an outrage when he said black Americans do not care about fleeing from their debts. In 1990, then-Justice Minister Seiroku Kajiyama compared foreign prostitutes in Tokyo to blacks moving into white neighborhoods in the United States.

The sentence was carried out a day after Cuba’s ruling body, the Council of State, refused to commute Diaz Betancourt’s sentence. THE 31-MEMBER Council of State, led by President Fidel Castro, ruled that Diaz Betancourt, who illegally left his island home just nine months ago, was primarily responsible for the infiltration. The other two men Daniel Santovenia Fernandez, 36, and Pedro de la Caridad Alvarez Pedroso, 26 had initially been sentenced to death. But the council spared Santovenia Fernandez and Alvarez Pedroso’s sentence was commuted Wednesday by an appeals court. Both face 30-year prison terms. CUBA SAID THAT since bodi had spent most of their lives in Miami’s exile community they were simply victims of its virulently anti-Castro environment. Diaz Betancourt, by contrast, had enjoyed all the fruits of Cuba’s revolution only to betray it, Cuban

Group wants Peru to join the United States

LIMA, Peru (AP) Frustrated by their country’s hard times, some Peruvians want to exchange poverty and political chaos for apple pie and better wages. The Constitutional Integrationist Movement wants the United States to annex Peru and give it the status of an associated free state, like Puerto Rico. “WE WILL HAVE the privilege to taste different brands of soft drinks, paying no more than a dollar for each two-liter bottle,” said Fernando Quispe, the group’s leader.

Crash survivor describes jet plowing through trees

MONT SAINTE-ODILE, France (AP) One of at least nine survivors of a French jetliner’s crash into a wooded ridge described a terrifying 10 to 15 seconds of plowing through trees, then a four-hour wait in 20-degree cold. Eighty-seven people were feared dead in the Monday evening crash. THE TWIN-ENGINE Airbus A 320 jet, carrying 96 people on a Lyon-to-Strasbourg flight, crashed in snow and fog shortly before 7:30 p.m. while on approach. Survivors carried down the snow-covered mountainside on stretchers included a 13-month-old girl who was unscathed and a 9-year-old boy. Rescuers recovered a black box, which contains information about the flight’s final moments, shortly after daybreak. Police would not say if it was the flight data recorder or cockpit voice recorder. MORE THAN 1,000 rescuers searched the area today, though officials held out little hope any other survivors would be found. Rescuers said most or all of the survivors were seated in the plane’s rear. “We were ready to land, we had on our seatbelts, and then I realized we had hit something,” a survivor, Pierre Cota, told the French radio network France Info. He said passengers on the Air Inter flight had no warning. “WE FELL INTO the forest and were brought to a stop by the trees,” said Cota, 45. “There was a lot of noise, and flames. I grabbed the boy next to me, and went out through a hole in the plane into the snow.” “The roof and ceiling were gone. We kept warm by the fires that were going, and tried to keep people who were injured warm too,” he said. Cota said pieces of the plane continued to explode for about an hour. “We heard some moaning, people calling for help, but we couldn’t locate them,” he said. Around midnight, when he went looking for some blankets, two villagers with flashlights appeared, and Cota said he left the site with them. ANOTHER SURVIVOR, Nicolas Skourias, 26, said he managed to pull a few others out of the plane with him. “It happened very fast,” he said. “We were hiuing things for about 10 or 15 seconds. We went several hundred meters, careening left and right, forwards and backwards.” Skourias described a wait of more than 4 hours for rescuers. Two of those who survived were critically injured. The injured were taken to a

media said. All three men had trained with Alpha 66, an anti-Castro group that practices mock invasions each weekend in the Everglades, but were not members. CUBA BRUSHED aside an international campaign to stop the executions. The United States, Spain and numerous Latin leaders and cultural figures had issued calls for clemency. Even the 30-year prison sentences are harsh compared to those meted out to exiles captured in the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Santovenia Fernandez’ father served two years in a Cuban jail for his involvement in the debacle. Castro has tried to use the trial to boost his image as a victim of outside aggression, which he also blames for the nation’s growing problems. CUBA’S FORMER Soviet bloc patrons have cut shipments of subsidized food and fuel, forcing the government to ration gasoline and

“Our sons will immediately learn English for free, and they will have the opportunity to marry beautiful young American girls.” THE INTEGRATIONISTS’ ranks have grown from 10 when it formed in Lima in January 1991 to more than 300 across Peru today. Response in official circles has been, well, muted. Quispe, 52, said the group has written to President Bush, President Alberto Fujimori of Peru even Pope John Paul n, but none have responded.

“We fell Into the forest and were brought to a stop by the trees. There was a lot of noise, and flames. I grabbed the boy next to me, and went out through a hole in the plane into the snow. The roof and ceiling were gone. We kept warm by the fires that were going, and tried to keep people who were injured warm too.” —Pierre Cota Survivor makeshift medical center before being transferred to hospitals in Strasbourg and Obemai. THE PLANE went down near Mont Sainte-Odile, a 2,500-feet peak in the Vosges mountains 30 miles southwest of Strasbourg near the German border. Premier Edith Cresson cut short a trip to Italy and headed to the site. Air Inter said it did not know what caused the crash. The plane, put into service in December 1988, had no record of mechanical trouble in 6,312 hours of flying time. It had been checked earlier Monday, the airline said. The pilot, Christian Hecquet, 42, had flown for more than 9,000 hours, Air Inter President JeanCyril Spinetta said. It was not known if Hecquet was among the survivors. FLIGHT IT-5148, which left Lyon at 6:30 p.m., was carrying 90 passengers and a crew of six, Air Inter said. The Airbus A 320, produced by the European aviation consortium Airbus Industrie, is a twin-turbofan plane, designed for short- or medium-range flights. Its carries from 130 to 179 passengers. The Syndicate of Navigation Personnel, a national union, issued a statement questioning the efficiency of the guidance system aboard the A32os. IT WAS THE third A 320 to crash since the aircraft began service in April 1988. Three passengers were killed when one crashed into a forest in June 1988 while executing a low pass during an air show at Habsheim, France. In February 1990, a 3-month-old A 320 crashed while preparing for landing in Bangalore, India, killing 92 people. Airbus blamed pilot error in both accidents, but some aviation officials suggested a computer malfunction. The A 320 is the only commercial aircraft that uses computers capable of operating all flight controls.

electricity, drastically cut bus and airline service and reduce television broadcasts. Meat, milk and eggs have become luxuries. Cuban money is virtually worthless and farmers are demanding consumer goods such as pants in exchange for produce. HUMAN RIGHTS organizers in Cuba have been jailed in a recent crackdown on dissent. According to Prensa Latina reports, Diaz Betancourt had carried with him a list of names of leaders of such organizations as contacts for his sabotage operations. The U.S. State Department has denied Castro’s charges the three men acted on behalf of the American government Diaz Betancourt “was the victim of a pattern of political crimes Fidel Castro uses to stay in power,” said Ricardo Bofill, president of the Cuban Committee For Human Rights, in a statement from Miami.