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Show iB ity TheSiait Lake Tribune OPINION September 9, 1999 Thursday Al13 Clinton’s Policy of Throwing Money at Problems Has Hindered Russia WASHINGTON Ontop ofthe seem- GEORGIE ANNE GEYER ingly endless Russian banking scandal volving alleged money-laundering and tensecriticism hereof the Clinton ad" policy with ar one question ar in particul must beasked: * “What could y tl have been done differen these past sian litical andcivic leaders arevisit: ing here underthe umbrellasponsorship f the Libraryof Congress, supportedby special supplemental funds from Conxzress and involving groups from theRo: tary Clubto individual churches When one of the top hard-line Russian military officers heard about the pro yam, he was privately quoted as saying, ising the best old communist language They |the U.S.] want to form ‘agents of influence.” Andhe was right, not in the oll Soviet sense that ties with other taken assumptions.” Charles mortgage Critics of Congress might also do well to study what Congress has done here. Bipartisan members of Congress have ely, Fortunat there are some apt and wleyant answers, with oneofthembeing wted out across the United States right have heard of the program. from early \ugust until Sept. 30, nearly 2,000 Rus. everything possible to create canbuild policy onfact and not on mis seven years? now Although most Americans may not some very strange ideas float round Russia todayal he United States. Nobody who spends time in the U.S. could believe them. “If the real Russian elites come. they UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE countries shouldbecultivated in orderto spyand recruit, but that Russians should beable to seefirsthand a real democratic, free-enterprise society, and thentake it orleaveit Indeed, whenI had dinner with a small group of Russians in mid-August, men from the inner bureaucracyof the Rus sian Duma orcongress, they were en: sponsoredthis program, seento ing and spent much of summerscarrying it through with mous success. At thehead ofthat pack is Rep. fund ious enorCurt Weldon, R-Pa., who has long been doing yeoman’s work in forging a policy on Russia different from (indeed, antitheti. cal to) that of this administration Russian specialist Weldon is all too right when he says that ourpoliciesfor the seven Clintonyears haveuncritically a middle understand how societies change. They change either through chaos and revolu tion, through being defeated in war and nancing program, along with Rep having a new system imposed upon them or through real changes initiated and Taylor, R-N.C., to create a private systembased on Western ideals gradually absorbed from below. They al most never change from above, especial! in a system like Russia's, where no will at the top to really reform the andpractices. And here is where the real surprise comes in: Weldon has even gotten the Duma to agree to an eight-point program to y out suchprojects as monitoring society The Clintonpolicies haye simply fro Russia. exchanging business leaders and students, and focusing Western resources on middle-class housing. The Clinton administration has op: posed this policy change at every level. still arrogantly believing that it can transform Russia through the uncritical support of one man and by throwing at cause those policies have been every cent of Western money going into ingly obvious band of Russian looters) himwhat is ineffect blood money to stop Russianthreats of collapsing when we should have been: 1) devising progr tha p the average HermanPirchner Jr., president of the American Foreign Policy Council, one of the main sponsoring groups. “There are Russian, 2) en; level and at the same time beingpainfully honest with its members, and 3) doing brary of Congress/ Weldon programs and ian of Congress JamesBillington, This is the key TheClinton policy-makers just don’t His ideas have been wonderfully creative and are already bearing fruit. He has, for instance. started a housing fi ic thused about (and aboveall, rationally discussing) what they had found here. “This was the strategic idea of I supported Boris Yeltsin (and his increas: follow investment.” class and invest in the various regions zen the situation in Russia as it is. Be autocratic and collectivist society that needs time to move toward democracy and free enterprise, they have actually stopped the growth that could have evolved with otherapproaches. These intellectual and civie exchang, es, likethe ones sponsored by the Library The main difference between the Li of Congress, and the Weldon en ments with the Russian Duma members, have a great advantage: They work. Howincredibly arrogant to think we the administration’s increasingly bank. ruptpolicy, as I seeit, is that, as Weldon told me, and stubbornly are based upon totally flawedand unrealistic expectations of an “Reforms must precede, not should accomplish more than that Claims Upon Which Clemency R sted Have Been Fundamentally Misleading WASHINGTON OnTuesday, 12 of an nationalists con MICHAEL KELLY rges arising from their in Ivement in a murderous bombing npaign explicitly renounced the use of nee and accepted President ( Jinton’s conditional offer of clemency s laid aside, however,alittle attention hould be paidto the claims upon which The 16 who were offered clemency all leaders andprincipal members rces of National Liberation as FALN) and a plinter group called Los Macheteros From 1974 to 1983, FALN conducted a ov campaign that includedat least 130 »ombings, killing six people and injuring wens. Advocates of clemency have simed that all or most of the16 prison. shad In support of this claim, Kennedy's of fice directed me to The President's Inter: gret for any, of the lethal bombings com mitted by FALN. All of the other state- madeby theprisoners to Congress in1997 more vague expressions suggesting a softening of views. Indeed, in all of the statements pr f r campaignas service in “a seekingto end colonialism, a much inst humanity.” and asserts statement signedbythe 12 who haveac: cepted commutation does renounce the ans available.” The statement use ofviolence but expresses no contri- led that they were renouncing violence, and they have a number of state ments that were madein different settingsto thateffect,” Kennedy told me. vvancing this claim, Ina columnonthis bombings) exercised this right with “respect for humanlife.” and took “all possible measures to ensure that inno: cent people [were] not harmed.” Howev er, the wretched thing self-righteously continues, “that is not to deny that in all liberation processes, there are always in- nocent victimson bothsides.” Inthe individual statements, it is true, Juan Segarra-Palmer and Alberto Rod riguez do explicitly renouncetheir past out of 3,000 requests.) prisoners everadmitted to complicity in anyofthe fatal bombings, or expressed 8 ight underinternational lawto or in renouncing future acts of terror.” False, said James Kennedy, a spokesman for the White Housecounsel. All of those offered clemency had ex. pressed regret and renouncedviolence, insisted Kennedy, “Each of them has in- has pardoned108 people whohad already servedtheir terms. But he has commuted sentences as he is doing here only three times before, in very minor cases, vided by the White House, noneofthe 16 subject last week, I wrote that “none of LN (in the commissionof 130 reject the commutationoffer. (Kennedy also noted that | had erred in writing that President Clinton, prior to this commutation order, used his par doning powersonlytwice. In fact, Clinton more limited, much the prisoners ever showed the slightest interest in expressing regret for the mur ders and maimings committed by FALN of two FALN members still in prison to But neither manexpresses explicit and specific re. ments are The joint statement rationalizes THE WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP the future use of violence. agency Group on Puerto Rico, which anda selectionofindividual statements. prior to this week’s statement expressed regret for these actions and id renounced violence. The White House has been forceful in willingness to employviolenceandreject faxed me a package of documents. The documents included a joint statement With this, it appears that a more-or-less Ine deal is at hand. Before this episode this clemencyhas rested, for they have fundamentallymisleading. of violence and their intention to disavow their past actions and pursue peaceful paths.” Thesecond principal claim is the sug gestion, as White Housedeputy chief of staff Maria Echaveste put it, that none of the 16 had been“found to have anything directly to do with an incident that caused death.” This is in a technical but profoundly misleading sense true, in that none of the tion or responsibility for past actions whatsoever, And these selected statements distrib: 16 were foundguiltyof perpetrating one uted by the White House did not fully and honestly represent the views of the 16. Not included, for instance, was a 1998 statement by one of the FALN leaders, Oscar Lopez-Rivera, of the lethal bombings. But these people ders and core members of N, ALN, as a group, perpetrated those in which Lope: bombings. 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