Mining: Our Own Business
The USA
Today lead is President Clinton's statement Wednesday demanding changes
in the national tobacco deal, a story that the other papers handled yesterday
on the basis of White House background leaks about what he would say. At the
Washington Post , New York Times ,
and Los
Angeles Times , the lead is the U.S. decision to not join a proposed
international land-mine ban. (And this is the second lead at USAT .)
The U.S. decision to withdraw from negotiations being conducted by 89
countries in Oslo, Norway, was defended by Clinton on the grounds that the ban
could put U.S. troops at risk in time of war. The WP says the decision
was "greeted with jubilation and relief by humanitarian groups and countries
that support the ban" because they feared the United States would dilute the
treaty at the last minute. The treaty arrived at without U.S. participation
prohibits all anti-personnel land mines. Signatories will have four years to
destroy their inventories and 10 years to clear areas that have been mined. It
will probably become international law within two years.
The WP says the ban will be "the first arms control treaty to limit a
conventional weapon." But the Post is mistaken, and give credit to the
NYT for providing the correct historical background: In 1863, exploding
bullets were banned, in 1899, so were dum-dum bullets. Poison gas was outlawed
in 1925, and in 1995 it was ixnay on blinding lasers.
Of all the papers covering the ban today, only USAT mentions the
momentum derived from the death of Princess Diana, who embraced the cause
shortly before her death.
The overall mining coverage is fairly steeped in the arcana of international
treaties and weapons systems, giving it a rather remote flavor. One wonders if
the papers would have been this low-key if it were--Qaddafi, say--standing
almost alone against the world in clinging to a maiming technology.
The other story that gets most everybody's attention is the testimony
yesterday before the Thompson committee of ex-NSC aide Sheila Heslin. Heslin
told the senators of pressure applied to her by the likes of Thomas "Mack"
McLarty and other senior officials to make her help a once and future Clinton
presidential campaign donor, Roger Tamraz, in connection with his pet oil
project. The LAT reports that Heslin's voice was "full of anger" as she
described being called a "Girl Scout" when she resisted what she saw as
inappropriate attempts to help Tamraz. The NYT reports that, during the
testimony, McLarty issued a statement declaring that he did nothing improper in
the matter, but the paper also says that Heslin was "received as one of the
most compelling witnesses yet."
The Wall Street Journal brings word today of an Internet
defamation lawsuit. The printing technology company Presstek Inc. is suing
three people it identified as short-sellers of its stock, who, Presstek says,
posted defamatory and inaccurate statements about the company in various online
chat groups in an attempt to drive down the stock price.
Thomas Friedman's NYT column is an entertaining speed tour of how the
Internet has come to the various countries of the Middle East. One of the
stories he includes is how Israel's Yediot newspaper recently went to
Moscow and bought Russian spy satellite photographs of new Scud missile bases
in Syria, and then hired a private U.S. expert on satellite photos to analyze
the pictures. As a result, Yediot published the package as a scoop,
without ever quoting a government official. Friedman's gloss on the episode:
"Good news: In today's global market you can buy anything. Bad news: Syria is
still preparing for another war."
