Banner Graphic, Volume 22, Number 224, Greencastle, Putnam County, 23 May 1992 — Page 2

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THE BANNERGRAPHIC Mav 23.1992

Wilder-Robb bruhaha is heating up WASHINGTON (AP) Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder charged today that Sen. Charles S. Robb, D-Va., and his aides had engaged in a campaign “to smear and discredit me.” He rejected an apology by a Robb staffer. Wilder said he “could not accept” a letter of apology sent to him Thursday by Robb’s state coordinator, Christine Bridge. The governor said he went to the nation’s capital “to set the record straight.” THE GOVERNOR’S comments were the latest twist in a long and occasionally bitter rivalry with Robb. Three of Robb’s former close aides have pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the secret taping of Wilder talking on the telephone. Federal prosecutors have sent Robb a letter advising him he is a target of their investigation into the eavesdropping. Wilder, parrying reporters’ questions during a news conference at the National Press Club, repeatedly suggested he had been a victim of a coordinated campaign of negative publicity because he is black. BUT WHEN ASKED if he was asserting racism was behind exchanges between the Robb and Wilder camps centering on the Robb campaign’s involvement in telephone eavesdropping, Wilder said, “I’m not saying it You all are asking it in your questions.” Robb said in a statement that he had tried to dissuade Wilder from holding the news conference. “I expressed concern that it would

Nomination won’t cause

Clinton to resign as gov.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) Bill Clinton says he won’t resign as governor if he’s the Democratic presidential nominee despite a poll showing that a majority of Arkansas voters think he should step down. “I don’t think I should do that,” he said Friday as he returned home for the state’s Tuesday primary. A POLL RELEASED this week by Mason-Dixon Research of Columbia, Md., showed that 75 percent of Arkansans responding said Clinton should resign if nominated. Clinton entered the presidential race after he said Arkansas voters released him from a 1990 promise not to run for higher office during his four-year term, which ends in

Banner Graphic (USPS 142-020) Consolidation ot The Daily Bannar Established 1850 Ths Herald The Daily Graphic Estabtishedia£3 Telephone 653-5151 Published daily except Sunday and Holidays by Banner Graphic, Inc. at 100 North Jackson St., Greencastle, 1N.46135. Second-class postage paid at Greencastle, IN. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to the Banner Graphic, P. O. Box 509, Greencastle IN 4613 i. Subscription Rates Per Week, by carrier $1.40 Per Week, by motor route $1.45 Mail Subscription Rates R.R. IN Rest of Rest of Putnam Co. Indiana U.S.A. 3 Months $21.00 $23.00 $25.00 6 Months $40.00 $45.00 $50.00 1 Year $78.00 $86.00 $95.00. Mail subscriptions payable in advance ... not accepted in town and where motor route service ' is available. Member of the Associated Press t The Associated Press is entitled exclusively to ' _ the use for republication of all the local news | printed in this newspaper. * Steve Hendershot General Manager/ , ‘ Marketing Director • Eric Bernsee ..._ ..... Editor ' Wilbur C. Kendall Production Manager J Gib Farmer Business Manager ■ June Leer Circulation Manager

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SEN. CHARLES ROBB Flexing Senate power?

only hurt both of us, and our party,” he said. Robb said he hoped things could be patched up, “now that the governor has fully aired his views.” He also said that he stood “foursquare” behind previous commitments to stop “feuding between certain members of our st&ffs ** WILDER TOLD reporters, “I’ve known for quite some time that there’s been a deliberate effort on the part of these people to smear and discredit me ... a sitting governor ... and my administration.” He said Robb tried to discredit him as an attempt to “deflect attention” from Robb’s own struggles with rumors that he had attended parties in Virginia Beach., Va., at which illegal drugs were used. The governor said he had written Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, alleging that Robb, as head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, used the organization’s staff as part of a campaign to discredit Wilder.

1995. He sought the release in July 1991 trips around the state in which he met largely with supporters. “I didn’t make the last decision based on a poll. I based it on conversations,” Clinton said of his decision to break the 1990 pledge. CLINTON SAID he never promised Arkansans that he would resign if nominated, but said he would re-evaluate his decision “every step along the way.” In California, Democratic rival Jerry Brown continued his attack on Washington politics as usual. “If they have the money for their pay raises, for their bouncing checks, for their S&L bailout and their foreign aid, they’ve got the money for schools, for child care, for protecting the environment, and a whole new energy policy, ” Brown told about 500 students who had waited about an hour in the rain to hear him speak in La Jolla. BROWN HAS been concentrating his efforts in California, which holds its primary June 2. The former California governor says he’ll stay in the race despite Clinton’s overwhelming lead. “We’ve got to put some spine in this party,” he said Friday. “That’s why I stayed in this election.” Clinton also spoke Friday about

COMING SOON! Watch for our circular in Tuesday’s Banner Graphic J C Penney CRAWFORDSVILLE, INDIANA ONLY

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GOV. L. DOUGLAS WILDER Charges smear campaign

But he stopped short of asking that Mitchell oust Robb from the important party post He said that would be up to the majority leader to decide. WILDER SAID he called the news conference to discuss a memorandum by Ms. Bridge outlining a plan of negative publicity against him. “The whole sordid affair of illegal distribution of an illegally made tape recording, misappropriated federal campaign funds, the use of Democratic Senate Campaign Committee staff to discredit a sitting Democratic governor, and the spreading of scurrilous lies has not been seen since Watergate,” the Democratic governor said. IN A MEMO, Ms. Bridge had outlined possible uses of a secretly recorded telephone conversation in 1988 in which Wilder chuckled with a supporter over Robb’s political problems.

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GOV. BILL CLINTON Will do two jobs an Arkansas law that bans sex between homosexuals. He said it took 15 years for him to speak publicly against the law because nobody asked his opinion until this week. Arkansas’ Legislature passed the sodomy law in 1977, while Clinton was attorney general. A bill to repeal the law died in committee in 1991. Clinton said Friday he quietly supported the 1991 bill, but realized early that it would not pass. He publicly supported repealing the law this week after national gay activists pressured him for a statement.

Nakhichevan is newest war front in the old Soviet Union

ARMASH, Armenia (AP) Under cover of an aging armored personnel carrier, an old ambulance retrieves a fighter wounded in the hills overlooking the territory of Nakhichevan, the new front in a bloody war between Azerbaijani and Armenians. “This is the southern front,” said Martin Antonian, commander of a newly formed Armenian selfdefense unit, as he inspected Araik Khanikian’s bleeding hand on Friday. UNTIL NOW, the ArmeniaAzerbaijan struggle was confined to Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly ethnic Armenian region inside Azerbaijan now completely under Christian Armenian control. Four years of fighting left 1,500 dead. The conflict spread this week to Nakhichevan, an Azerbaijani enclave in southern Armenia bordering Iran and Turkey. At least 16 lives were lost in the fighting this week. Armenia fears Turkey will intervene. Heavily Muslim Turkey and Azerbaijan share a religion, language and a deep animosity toward Armenia. ARMENIAN self-defense forces, composed mainly of volunteers from nearby villages, hold a string of dugout bunkers along the barren hills that form Armenia’s border with Nakhichevan. The bunkers are in sight of a string of Azerbaijani military posts on the opposite hill. The two sides fire at each other constantly, sending puffs of smoke into the clear blue sky. Spent shells litter the

Perot spent $1.26 million on his campaign, so far

WASHINGTON (AP) Billionaire Ross Perot last month contributed nearly $850,000 to promote his expected independent bid for the White House, campaign reports show. That brings to $1.26 million the amount he has spent since the Perot petition drive began in mid-March. THE PEROT Petition Committee spent about $1.03 million in April on its efforts to get the Texas businessman on the November ballot in all 50 states, according to a report filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission. The committee reported finishing the month with $621,000 in unpaid bills, most for equipment from a Texas office management company, and $7,000, in loans mostly owed to

U.S. announces action against Serbs

LONDON (AP) shift, the Bush administration is imposing new sanctions on Serbia in a drive to end the bloodshed in the Balkans. Urging the Europeans to follow the U.S. lead, Secretary of State James A. Baker HI announced the pressure moves after dinner Friday night with British Prime Minister John Major. “THE CIVILIZED world really should begin to contemplate what they might be able to do,” Baker said. The secretary was flying today to Lisbon, where a conference on aid to the former Soviet Union is likely to be overshadowed by the ethnic strife in what used to be Yugoslavia and the expected signing of a protocol to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

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bunkers’ dirt floors. Antonian said he joined up after two Azerbaijani rockets landed in his yard in Armash, breaking the windows of his house and ruining his property. ‘Before THIS I was a simple worker. Now I’m defending my homeland,” Antonian said. His men are under the command of Col. Mikhail Arutunyan, an Armenian defense official sent to Armash to coordinate defense of the area, about three miles from the border with Nakhichevan. The fighting has raged around the edge of Nakhichevan, an autonomous region of 300,000 people, mainly Azerbaijanis, that has a 90-mile border with Iran and a 7-mile frontier with Turkey. ALONG THE road, children played with toy rifles. Most Armenians living near the border have been evacuated. Their vineyards stretch for miles, untended. A few red and blue shacks, a crackly radio and a few old telephones comprise Arutunyan’s headquarters. But he has good detailed maps of the territory, left over from the former Soviet army. Arutunyan strongly denies that Armenia crossed into Nakhichevan and attacked the village of Sardarak, as Azerbaijan claims. “WE HAVEN’T stepped one foot into Nakhichevan,” he said. “The Azerbaijanis are firing on us. We had no choice but to create our forces to respond.” A U.N. observer force planned to investigate the claims of both countries. Armenians say Azerbaijan star-

supporters. Perot also reported securing $127,000 in lines of credit from a Texas bank. The campaign has not borrowed against those credit lines. PEROT HAS promised to spend whatever it takes of his own money independent presidential candidacy if volunteers gets his name on the ballot in all of 50 states or close to it. So far, the committee has gotten him on six states’ ballots. He’s expected to formally announce his candidacy next month. Perot will have no limits on what he can spend during the fall election, unlike the two major-party nominees who have agreed to spend no more than the $55 million

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JAMES A. BAKER 111 Details the sanctions Baker said the more than 80 nations meeting in the Portuguese capital would consider establishing a long-term “mechanism” to coordinate aid to the former Soviet republics. THE START treaty signing would bind the four that are nuclear-armed Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus to the accord concluded with the Soviet Union last July. The pact calls for overall reductions of about 38 percent in long-range nuclear missiles, bombers and submarines that were in the Soviet arsenal and about 30 percent in U.S. strategic forces. Until now, the administration had deferred to the 12-nation European Community to try to influence events in the disintegration of Yugoslavia. But fighting, especially in Bosnia-Herzegovina, has been unrelenting. As a last resort, Baker said the Europear fright \ roperly consider sending Uooj to the Balkans to try to impose order. But a senior U.S. official said the use of American forces was out of the question. BAKER EMPHASIZED the Sarajevo airport must be allowed to reopen and food and medical supplies permitted to get through to

ted the fighting to open a second front and draw Turkey into the war. Azerbaijan says Armenia attacked Nakhichevan in an attempted land grab. PARKED NEAR Arutunyan’s post are four old armored personnel carriers, a couple of jeeps and two ambulances. Those constitute his military vehicles. Automatic rifles and hand-held grenade launchers are his weapons. Volunteer nurse Sveta Oganzhenian is busy nearby. She said she did not fear helping in the war zone “When things are tense, we have to be here to stand by our people.” Armenia says it did not start the fighting and does not want it. Arutunyan said there was no point in fighting over another territory one occupied almost entirely by ethnic Azerbaijanis after winning control of Nagorno-Karabakh. “WE UNDERSTAND that would lead to something else,” Arutunyan said, meaning war. “We just want the people in the (Armenian) villages to be able to work peacefully. There’s been enough fighting.” Some troops in the hills saw it differently. “Nakhichevan is our land. Just as we took back NagornoKarabakh, we will take back this land, too,” said Arak Arutunyan, a young fighter. He said Azerbaijan forced his grandparents from Nakhichevan and he would fight until they can go home. “There will peace when we have our land back, and only then.”

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ROSS PEROT Funding it himself they will receive in public financing.

tens of thousands of besieged civilians. “We believe what is happening in Bosnia-Herzegovina is unconscionable,” Baker said outside 10 Downing St., Major’s official residence. Baker said Britain supported the United States and that in Lisbon he would appeal to “others in the civilized world who, like us, are unwilling to sit and watch what is really a humanitarian nightmare.” HE SAID THE United States would not recognize the Federation of Serbia and Montenegro as the successor of Yugoslavia “until all forces are withdrawn from neighboring states and minority rights are respected.” Withholding U.S. recognition deprives the new two-republic federation of some of the status it seeks on the world stage. It also could have the concrete impact of denying the federation international bank credits. In other sanctions: • U.S. Ambassador Warren Zimmerman will not return to Belgrade. • The U.S. Embassy staff in Belgrade will be reduced and all defense attaches sent home except for one air attache who might be needed in the event of an airlift. • U.S. “contacts” with the Yugoslav military will be suspended. • Yugoslav consulates in San Francisco and New York will be closed. The consulate in Chicago will remain open. In response to a reporter’s question about the possibility of military action, Baker said the administration first would exhaust all possible diplomatic solutions. Earlier Friday, France and Germany announced they intended to form a 35,000-member joint army corps independent of NATO to strengthen European security, a move that has been long in the making.