Mideast leaders reach accord
■ Barak might pull back troops; Arafat
drops demands for international probe
by Barry Schweid
Associated Press
SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt — Israel and the
Palestinians agreed Tuesday to end the street vio
lence that has tom their region apart for more than
two weeks and to get back on the path toward a
permanent solution to their conflict.
Both sides agreed to a cease-fire, but violence
continued in the immediate aftermath.
Both sides also agreed to explore a resumption
in the negotiations for a permanent peace agree
ment between Israel and the Palestinians.
“After 48 hours, if we see there is calm in the
field, we will pull back our heavy equipment to the
point where they were before the outbreak of the
crisis, and we will lift the closure that has kept Pales
tinians out of his country,” Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Barak said at a news conference after returning
home.
“Let me emphasize that the real test of all the
understandings and agreements is implementation,”
the prime minister added.
For his part, Jibril Rajoub, the Palestinian se
curity chief in the Wfest Bank, said, “The ball is now
in tho Tcrooli rnnrt Tt’c ihot; ti/hn rrodtoH thic r*ri_
sis, they are the ones who used acts of killing and
terrorism against our people. What is needed now
is for them to take all the necessary measures to
stop this violence.”
As he returned to Gaza, Arafat said the all
important question is whether the deal with be car
ried out, and added: “We expect that the imple
mentation will be exactly as we agreed upon.”
President Clinton did not use the term “cease
fire” in announcing the accord at the end of a
two-day emergency summit meeting at this seaside
resort. Instead, he said both sides agreed on “im
mediate concrete measures” to end the violence.
“I believe we have made real progress today,”
Clinton said. “Repairing the damage will take time.”
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Tues
day’s agreement was supposed to result in a
cease-fire. “A cease-fire should be happening with
in hours, immediately,” she told CNN.
Additionally, the two sides were to meet with
American mediators within two weeks to explore
the possibility of resuming talks, Albright said.
Musing on the future in an interview with The
Associated Press, Albright said it was not clear
whether the two sides would do everything they
could to implement the agreement and end the fight
ing. She paused briefly and then added firmly: “They
will have to do it.”
With that, she arranged to fly to Riyadh to con
fer with leaders in Saudi Arabia.
Barak cast the agreement in a more cautious
framework.
He said the Americans would examine over the
next two weeks whether a resumption of peace
talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians is fea
sible.
Attack on USS Cole
linked to two men
by Brian Murphy
Associated Press
ADEN, Yemen—Yemeni investigators have
found bomb-making equipment in a house
near the port of Aden and believe two men
who spent several days there are linked to the
bombing of the USS Cole, security officials
said Tuesday.
Also Tuesday, the bodies of seven of the
17 victims were removed from the ship, leav
ing five still concealed in the wreckage.
The security officials identified the men
believed linked to the blast, who have disap
peared, only as non-Yemeni Arabs. Other
Yemeni officials said they were Saudi.
The disclosure comes a day after Yemen
reversed its earlier position and called the blast
“a premeditated criminal act,” which gave a
crucial boost to the investigation. The coun
try’s security forces interrogated dozens of
port workers and others Monday, including
the head of the company that services U.S.
warships.
Several people remained in a highly guard
ed camp on Aden’s outskirts, but it was un
clear whether they were considered firm sus
pects in the explosion that tore a 40-by-40-foot
hole in the destroyer.
The security officials said bomb-making
materials were found when the house was
searched Monday. They did not elaborate on
uie uuueiioi*.
The men were believed to have entered
Yemen four days before Thursday’s bombing,
the officials said They did not say which coun
try the men had traveled from.
U.S. officials believe the attackers brought
a small explosives-laden boat near the Cole
and detonated it in a suicide attack. Two
men were seen standing up in'the small boat
before the explosion, officials said
Debris collected from the blast scene has
arrived in Washington for FBI analysis, fed
eral law enforcement officials said
There has been no credible claim of re
sponsibility for the deadliest terrorist attack
on the U.S. military since the 1996 bombing
of an Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia that
killed 19.
Navy divers had been working in the tan
gled wreckage for days to extricate two bod
ies that had been pinpointed but were un
reachable. They also were trying to find 10
others who were missing.
On Tuesday, seven bodies from both above
and below the water line, including the two
that were visible, were recovered, Rear Adm.
Mark Fitzgerald said. The other five bodies
already had been sent home for burial.
A memorial service is scheduled for
Wednesday at Norfolk Naval Station, the Cole’s
home port in Viiginia.
Meanwhile, four U.S. sailors seriously in
jured in the explosion flew home Tuesday from
Germany. Two critically injured shipmates re
mained at the military’s Landstuhl Regional
Medical Center in western Germany.
The three men and a woman arrived on
an army bus and were carried on stretchers
onto a C-141 transport plane bound for a Nor
folk, Va., naval base. One gave a thumbs-up.
Thirty-three other injured sailors returned
to the United States over the weekend, and
13 had been released from a Viiginia hospi
tal by Monday.
Seaman Apprentice Andrew Nemeth said
he had just picked up his meal from the mess
nan wnen me oiasi nu.
“I bounced off the ceiling and landed on
the deck,” Nemeth, 19, recounted Monday
after returning to the United States. “I felt fu
el spraying. I thought at first, me being an en
gineer, that a fuel line had been busted.”
He called the Cole’s attackers cowards
and said he feels “a little bit of hate.”
“You feel like you were snuck up on,”
Nemeth said.
Thursday’s explosion was so powerful that
it buckled the deck and turned the attack boat
into “confetti-sized” bits, an official said.
Many Yemenis do not believe the attack
was the result of a homegrown plot, and Tues
day’s disclosures put the spotlight on neigh
boring Saudi Arabia.
Decades of border disputes have marred
relations between Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
The two countries signed an agreement in June
to settle the disputes. Yemen has long con
tested Saudi Arabia’s claim to three Red Sea
islands and parts of the.Empty Quarter, a vast
desert region with potentially lucrative oil de
posits.
In the bombing of the Cole, immediate
suspicion fell on Osama bin Laden, who is ac
cused in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.
Gore, Bush debate for last time
by Walter Mears
Associated Press
ST.LOUIS — Vice President A1 Gore attacked
George W. Bush as an ally of the rich and powerful
Tuesday night, but the Texas governor rebutted in
fast-paced debate that his rival was a “big spender”
in the mold of Democratic liberals who once
sought the White House and lost.
“If this were a spending contest I’d come in sec
ond,” Bush said proudly as he and Gore argued do
mestic and foreign policy issues for 90 minutes in a
town hall-style format. It was their third encounter
in two weeks, and their last before Election Day on
Nov. 7.
From the opening moments, Gore bore in on Bush
as a defender of the privileged, saying the Texas gov
ernor was allied with insurance companies rather than
patients, for example, and that his tax cut was tilted
heavily toward the wealthy.
“If you want someone who will support... the
big drug companies, this is your man,” the vice pres
ident said, standing a few feet away from his cam
paign rival on a red-carpeted debate stage.
“If you want someone who will fight for you...
then I want to fight for you,” Gore added.
The two men are separated by only a point or two
in many polls, with Bush given the edge, and the
debate at the field house at Washington University
represented the last, best chance for one man or the
other to gain the support of a large critical bloc of un
utxiueu vuicia.
The debate began with a moment of reflection in
memory of Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan, killed along
with his son and a campaign aide Monday night when
his small plane went down in bad weather. Bush
and Gore both bowed their heads and closed their
eyes when moderator Jim Lehrer asked for a brief
period of silence.
With the somber moment over, Gore seemed ea
ger to carry the fight to his Republican rival in a de
bate that permitted members of the audience to ask
questions.
When the first question was asked about legis
lation pending in Congress to strengthen the hand
of patients dealing with their HMOs, Gore said, “I
support it and the governor does not.”
Moments later, Bush rebutted: “Actually, Mr.
Vice president, it’s not true. I do support a national
patients bill of rights.”
He added that as governor of Texas, he had worked
with Republicans and Democrats to win passage of
a law that grants women greater access to gynecol
ogical care; gives patients greater choice over their
doctor; and permits lawsuits against insurance com
panies after an external review.
“It requires a different leadership style to do it
though,” Bush said. “You see, you have to put par
tisanship aside and that’s what I did in my state.”
Bush and Gore also disagreed on another aspect
of health care, the vice president saying the nation
should “move step by step toward universal health
coverage, but I do not think that the government
should do all of it.”
Bush responded moments later, “I am absolute
ly opposed to a national care plan. I don’t want the
federal government making decisions for consumers
or providers.”
And he reminded the audience in the hall and
watching on television of President Clinton’s failed
national health insurance proposal in 1994.
The two men clashed at length over economics
in a fast-paced debate, prodded by questions from an
audience of uncommitted voters from the St. Louis
area.
Bush said Gore is proposing the “largest increase
in federal spending in years, and there’s just not go
ing to be enough money" to pay for it.
Gore said Bush was wrong, adding his rival’s $1.3
billion tax plan would lavish relief on the wealthy
while shortchanging critical domestic programs.
“If you want somebody who believes that we
were better off eight years ago than we are now and
that we ought to go back to the kinds of policies
that we had back then, emphasizing tax cuts mainly
for the wealthy, here is your man,” the vice presi
A—♦ r~!A
“If you want somebody who fight for you and
will fight for middle class tax cuts, then I am your
man. I want to be,” Gore added.
But Bush insisted he wasn’t wrong, and said Gore’s
spending proposals were huge.
“He proposed more than Walter Mondale and
Michael Dukakis combined,” Bush said of two De
mocratic presidential candidates who lost their bids
for the White House in 1984 and 1988.
“This is a big spender and he ought to be proud
of it,” Bush said of Gore.
The decision to permit questions from the audi
ence created a more freewheeling series of exchanges
between Gore and Bush than in thejr earlier two
debates, and they interrupted one another at will.
Gore seemed slightly more eager to depart from
agreed-upon debate rules, so much so that at one
point, Lehrer cautioned him good-naturedly that he
was violating the agreed-upon format.
Moments later, out of time for a comment he was
making, Gore asked if he would “say one more thing.”
“No sir,” said Lehrer, and steered the proceed
ings in another direction.
ELECTION 2000
Bush maintains slight edge over Gore in most polls
by Will Lester
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — George W. Bush
has crept slightly ahead of A1 Gore in
some polls, apparently because voters
consider him more trustworthy than the
vice president.
An NBC-Whll Street Journal poll re
leased Monday had Bush ahead 48 per
cent to 42 percent among likely vot
ers, with a 4-point error margin.
An ABC-Washington Post poll had
Bush at 48 percent and Gore at 44 per
cent, with a 3-point error margin.
The Texas governor has been faring
well in other recent polls.
A CNN-Time poll released over the
weekend also showed Bush up slightly,
48 percent to 43 percent, and a \bter.com
Battleground poll had Bush up 43 per
cent to 39 percent with a 3-point error
margin. Several other surveys have shown
the two candidates within the error mar
. gins.
Bush has gained ground in the race
for 270 electoral votes. Heading into the
first debate, Gore narrowly led Bush, ac
cording to analysis of state polls and in
terviews with consultants in both par
ties.
Now, Bush holds a slight lead after
states that once leaned toward Gore, such
as Pennsylvania and Tennessee, became
tossups after the first debate on Oct. 3.
Democrat Gore continues to hold
the advantage on top issues like the econ
omy, Social Security, foreign policy and
education.
He also holds a big advantage in hav
ing the knowledge and experience to
handle the presidency.
Republican Bush scores highest on
trust. Almost half in the NBC-WSJ poll,
45 percent, said he was more honest and
straightforward than Gore, 29 percent.
In the ABC-Washington Post poll, 53
percent said Bush was honest, while 49
percent said Gore was. Both lost ground
on honesty in that poll, however.
Bush also had the advantage on set
ting the proper moral tone for the coun
try, 39 percent to 29 percent, and be
ing trustworthy enough to make the right
decisions, 43 percent to 32 percent.
Bush also scored better on leader
ship qualities, 41 percent to 35 percent,
and being more likable, 44 percent to 30
percent, in the NBC-WSJ poll of 736
likely voters taken Oct. 13-15. In the
ABC-Washington Post poll of 1,103 like
ly voters, Bush was seen as having a more
appealing personality, being more trust
worthy and more likely to provide a fresh
start.
Gore ran into trouble on the trust
question after the first debate, when some
of his comments turned out to be exag
gerated.
He apologized for the statements
during the second debate last Wednes
day and promised to be more careful.
Bush has been accused by Democ
Democrat Gore continues to hold the advantage on top
issues like the economy, Social Security, foreign policy
and education. He also has a big advantage in having the
knowledge and experience to handle the presidency.
Republican Bush scores highest on trust.
rats of exaggerating, but Gore’s history
of exaggeration caused the claims about
him to resonate more loudly.
Gore and Bush were about even on
trust in the weeks after the Democratic
convention.
When asked whether restoring moral
and family values or maintaining eco
nomic growth was a higher priority, more
voters said moral values, 43 percent to
31 percent, in the NBC-WSJ poll.
That’s a reversal from about a month
ngo, when Americans favored econom
ic growth, 44 percent to 36 percent.
When asked which candidate would
be better at handling the crisis in the Mid
dle East, Bush and Gore were about even
in the NBC-WSJ poll.
In the ABC-Washington Post poll,
Gore held the advantage, 44 percent to
39 percent.
In a Christian Science Monitor
poll of 800 likely voters, 48 percent of
voters said they would have more con
fidence in Bush to provide leadership if
war broke out in the Middle East and the
United States became involved, com
pared to 42 percent for Gore.
News Briefs
■ Nader speech
interrupted by
‘fart bomb’
Rutgers University (TMS) —
Authorities sent about 800 people in
side Rutgers University's Busch Cam
pus Center to the exits Sunday when
reports of a mysterious package sur
faced. Five hundred of those people
were attending a rally for presidential
candidate Ralph Nader and other New
Jersey Green Party candidates, and the
announcement cut short a question
and-answer session between Nader and
students. According to a university
news release, authorities, among them
the state police bomb squad and a local
fire department, later determined that
the two-inch by two-inch package was
nothing more than a noisemaker — a
"fart bomb," according to the print on
three identical packages, which had
not ruptured. Far from a bomb, the de
vices emitted only a few small popping
noises, soft enough that Nader did not
even hear them as he spoke with stu
dents. Campus police, along with the
New Jersey State Police, are investi
gating the matter.
■ NATO begins
bombing exercise
off disputed range
ABOARD THE USS NASSAU (AP)
— Guns boomed off the coast of a dis
puted Navy training ground in Puerto
Rico and tens of thousands of troops
prepared for a massive amphibious
landing as NATO began its biggest ex
ercise there in four years. The monu
mental show of force Monday by 50
vessels, 31,000 U.S. soldiers and an
undisclosed number of other Western
troops comes despite fierce protests
over the past year against military ex
ercises on the island, Vieques. The
forces are simulating a NATO-led U.N.
peacekeeping mission, Navy
spokesman John Kirby said. On Tues
day, thousands of troops were to “in
vade” a beach on the island’s eastern
end, the Navy said. The simulation
concludes Oct. 28.
■ Hairy Potter
author to assist
Comic Relief
LONDON (AP) — Fictional boy
wizard Hariy Potter is being enlisted
to raise money for charity. Author J.K.
Rowling, Harry Potter’s creator, is
writing two spinoff reference books
from the popular series to benefit
Comic Relief. Proceeds from the sale
of the books will help the organization
fight poverty and social injustice. The
short books, “Fantastic Beasts and
Where to Find Them” and “Quidditch
Through the Ages,” will be released
worldwide during a Comic Relief fund
drive March 16.
■ Families march
in Washington
WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) — The
Million Family March included
thousands of families who gath
ered on the National Mall, answer
ing the call of Nation of Islam
leader Louis Farrakhan to celebrate
racial and religious unity and the
central role of the family in Ameri
can life. Farrakhan addressed the
crowd with a two-hour speech that
touched on a variety of subjects,
including the Middle East strife,
the presidential race, poverty and
sexism. Often seen as controversial
for his anti-white and anti-Semitic
proclamations, a softened Far
rakhan promoted diversity. After
his speech Monday, Farrakhan,
along with rabbis and ministers of
other faiths, presided over a mass
“sacred marriage blessing” of al
ready married couples reminiscent
of the mass weddings conducted
by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon,
whose Unification Church was a
major sponsor of the march.