The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, April 12, 2000, Page 5, Image 5
Nation & World
Land mines kill three
children in Bosnia town
by Alexander S.
Dragicevic
The Associated Press
Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina —
Helpless to save her, NATO peacekeep
ers and townspeople watched from the
edge of a minefield as a dying 11-year
old girl waved and pleaded for hours to
be rescued
Ema Alic and two other children, the
latest casualties of the Bosnian war that
ended five years ago, died Monday af
ter venturing into the minefield on the
outskirts of the capital.
“For two hours, the girl was show
ing signs of life, waved with her little
hand and called for help. Then she
I went quiet,” said eyewitness NenadKre
stalica, 67, who was still visibly upset
Tuesday.
His wife, Stana, said she was garden
ing when she heard the explosion.
“We all started running. We heard a
child’s voice screaming for help,” she
said “Wfe called the police and they came,
but nobody could approach the children.”
Police identified the other dead chil
dren as Goran Biscevic, 12, and Haris
Balicevac, 12.
As the rescue team carried the bod
ies of the children from the minefield
Ema’s father broke into tears, turned
around and told his wife: “It’s our child”
other witnesses recalled. The woman
fainted
The presence of the minefield was
well-known, and signs warned of danger,
residents said Still, the field was not taped
off, apparently because of lack of mon
ey.
Dozens of people are killed and in
jured every month in explosions of some
of the millions of land mines strewn across
Bosnia. Minefields render large areas
along the former front line unusable.
Residents gathered around the mine
field after the explosion Monday, fol
lowed by Italian members of the NATO
led peacekeeping force, but they could
only watch the tragedy a few hundred
yards away.
Although the experts worked quick
ly once on the scene, more than 2 1/2
hours elapsed between the time a dem
ining team was notified and the time it
reached the victims. By then, all three
children were dead.
“It didn’t take us more than half an
hour to demine a small path to get to the
children,” said Zoran Gagula, one of the
deminers. “We skipped standard proce
dures, risked our lives, and still, by the
time we got to the children, they were
dead.”
Standard demining procedures are
slow, with experts sometimes taking as
much as an hour per square yard to min
imize risk, prodding each inch of terrain
for explosive devices.
NATO experts arrived after a team
from Norwegian People’s Aid and there
fore let that squad do the demining,
said a NATO spokesman, Maj. Paul Hub
bard.
“They really did it as quickly as they
could,” Hubbard said.
Andja Elek, 60, said she saw the chil
dren walking earlier and warned them
not to play there because of the mines,
“but they obviously didn’t listen to me.”
“The girl was able to lift her head a
few times and call for help,” she said.
Demining Bosnia could take decades.
Money for the projects is in short sup
ply, as the war fades in people’s memo
ries.
Survivor
describes
mass killing
by Anthony Deutsch
The Associated Press
The Hague, Netherlands — A sur
vivor of the Srebrenica massacre told a
U.N. tribunal on Tuesday how he lay un
der a bleeding corpse for hours as Bosn
ian Serb soldiers machine-gunned truck
loads of Muslim prisoners.
“It went on late into the night,”
the Muslim, 48, identified as witness
L, told the three judges. “A man cov
ered part of my face and his blood was
dripping onto me.... Then another truck
came and there were shots again.”
He testified in the trial of Serb
Gen. Radislav Krstic, accused of leading
the weeklong rampage in July 1995 in
the U.N.-declared “safe haven,” which
left 7,500 Muslim men and boys dead or
missing.
The witness told the U.N. war crimes
tribunal for the former Yugoslavia that
he was among a group of up to 2,000
refugees who were rounded up as the
Muslim enclave of Srebrenica in Bosnia
was overrun by Serb forces.
The man said he was blindfolded with
a rag and given a sip of water by Serb
troops before being sent off to be slaugh
tered with truckloads of other prisoners.
Krstic has been charged with geno
cide, war crimes, crimes against humanity
and grave breaches of the Geneva Con
ventions on war. He will face life in prison
if convicted of any of the charges to which
he has pleaded innocent.
Wilkins, House leaders file flag bill
by Leigh Strope
The Associated Press
Speaker David Wilkins and nine oth
er House Republicans entered the Con
federate flag fight Tuesday with their own
proposal to remove the banner from South
“ Carolina’s Statehouse dome.
Republican House leaders previous
ly had stayed on the sidelines, saying they
would do nothing about the flag until the
National Association for the Advance
ment of Colored People dropped its boy
cott. Meanwhile, the Senate, after months
of working behind the scenes to find a
compromise, will debate a flag bill
Wednesday for the first time.
It was the GOP-led House in 1997
that shot down Republican Gov. David
Beasley’s attempt to get the flag moved.
Beasley later said the flag contributed to
his loss a year later to Democrat Jim
Hodges. In 1994, the House adjourned
without considering a Senate-approved
i> plan to remove the flag.
But Wilkins, R-Greenville, said the
issue must be resolved this year and “it’s
got to be done within these walls.” Time
constraints, not pressure from business
leaders, prompted him to act, he said.
The South Carolina Chamber of Com
merce has launched a full-scale lobbying
effort with a coalition of big companies
to push for the flag’s removal.
But not all flag supporters have been
convinced. “I think there’s a great les
son to be learned and a great message to
be sent sometimes by saying no,” said
Rep. John Graham Altman, R-Charleston.
“No can be a whole paragraph.”
Wilkins said he also realized the
NAACP would not lift its boycott.
“If it’s going to get resolved, it’s go
ing to get resolved in spite of the NAACP
and in spite of the boycott,” he said.
Wilkins said he wanted to get a House
flag bill into play as a precaution in case
the Senate fails to approve one. Legisla
tive rules require all bills to be assigned
to committees by April 15. A bill must
be approved by at least one chamber by
May 1 or a two-thirds vote is needed
for consideration.
The bill is modeled after the 1994
Heritage Act that got Senate approval,
and would place the flag at the Confed
erate soldiers monument in front of the
Statehouse. The NA ACP and some black
lawmakers have said they cannot support
the flag flying at such a visible location.
The bill also would remove the Con
federate flags hanging in the House and
Senate chambers, and would protect all
monuments, memorials and buildings
erected or named in honor of the Con
federacy or civil rights movement.
Signing on to support the bill were
Wilkins, Speaker Pro Tern Terry Haskins
of Greenville, Majority Leader Rick Quinn
of Columbia, Judiciary Chairman Jim
Harrison of Columbia, Wrys and Means
Chairman Bobby Harrell of Charleston,
Reps. Doug Smith of Spartanburg, Rita
Allison of Lyman, Bill Sandifer of Seneca,
Dan Tripp of Mauldin and Bud Webb of
Clemson.
Summit with North Korea a big step
forward/ South Korean president says
by Paul Shin
The Associated Press
Seoul, South Korea — South Ko
rea’s president said today that a summit
with North Korea represents a “big step
forward” in peace efforts, although he
warned his people not to expect too much
from the meeting.
Kim Dae-jupg said South Korea would
broach substantive issues at the leaders
summit in the North Korean capital of
Pyongyang on June 12-14. Vice minis
ters from the two Koreas will hold
preparatory meetings in Beijing prior to
the summit, Kwon Byong-hyon, South
Korea’s ambassador to China, said today.
He did not say when the meetings
would take place or disclose further de
tails.
Kim said the summit would be un
likely to resolve any of the major issues
dividing the sides.
“The national issues, which have been
divisive for a half century, cannot be re
solved overnight,” Kim told a Cabinet
meeting.
The June summit, announced joint
ly Monday by the two sides, would be
the first between the two Koreas since
the division of their peninsula into the
communist North and the capitalist South
in 1945. They share the world’s most
heavily armed border.
The summit, Kim said, is “one big
step forward in our national history and
in the move toward peace.”
Kim said economic assistance and co
operation, reunions of millions of sepa
rated family members and tension-eas
ing measures will top the agenda in his
talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong
II.
The North’s agreement on the sum
mit is the most important evidence yet
that the reclusive country may be shift
ing its long-standing policy of shunning
dialogue with the Seoul government,
which it officially regards as a U.S. “pup
pet.”
Economic benefits are the lure. With
its economy in tatters, North Korea has
relied on outside aid since 1995 to feed
its 22 million people. By the North’s own
admission, 220,000 people have died of
~ hunger-related diseases in recent years.
South Korean officials have already
indicated the summit could spur their
countiy to invest billion of dollais in build
ing roads, ports, railroads, power plants
and other infrastructure in North Korea.
Other possible South Korean assis
tance includes shipments of fuel coal and
fertilizer, they said.
Seoul officials worry the summit could
be scrapped if North Korea persists in its
long-running demand for the withdraw
al of the 37,000 U.S. troops from South
Korea.
Another contentious issue is North
Korea’s insistence that the armistice that
' ended the 1950-53 Korean War be re
placed by a peace treaty to be signed be
tween it and the United States, without
the participation of South Korea.
“They are something we cannot ac
cept,” National Security Adviser Hwang
Won-tak said of those possible de
mands.
Culture and Tourism Minister Park
Jie-won, who acted as South Korean emis
saiy in secret talks with North Korea, said
that those issues were not discussed in
advance.
“They were more interested in
economic aid and assistance,” he said.
A key adviser to Washington said
today that peaceful coexistence seems
like a good objective for the Koreas to
pursue but that unification along the lines
of East and West Germany was unlike
ly
“A very reasonable goal is a recon
ciliation on the Korean peninsula—the
countries living together peacefully,” said
William J. Perry, the former U.S. defense
secretary who has served as Clinton’s
North Korea policy coordinator.
“Their political systems are dra
matically different. Their economic sys
tems are dramatically different,” Perry
said while on a visit to Hong Kong. “I
just have a hard time imagining it.”
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