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Around the Nation
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Around the Nation
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Officials in the White House, Interior Department and other agencies were putting together a package that envisions spending between $900 million and $1.5 billion a year in open-spaces initiatives, according to administration officials.
Some details of the environmental package, which will be part of President Clinton's fiscal 2000 budget proposal, have yet to be worked out, the officials said. Internal debate continued on exactly how much money to request, they said.
Vice President Al Gore is to unveil the first installment - a series of actions aimed at reducing urban sprawl and improving "quality of life" - in a speech today.
Gore's proposal would provide at least $100 million a year, mostly in the form of grants to states, for building community parks and green areas and protecting environmentally sensitive areas from urban development.
In addition to grants funneled through states, Gore's so-called "livable communities initiative" is expected to include a package of tax incentives for preserving farmland, suburban green spaces and parkland as well as incentives to reduce traffic congestion and counter uncontrolled development.
But officials said Gore's anti-sprawl initiative is part of a much broader administration proposal aimed at pumping more money into programs that shelter farmland, forests and rangeland from development and aid in restoration or protection of coastal areas.
Such efforts could benefit Gore in his bid for the presidency in 2000. In signs of public support for such programs, last November's elections saw 200 state and local ballot measures aiming to preserve watersheds, parks, farmland and other open spaces.
The administration proposal would rely on money from more than $6.5 billion collected annually from offshore oil drilling, primarily in the Gulf of Mexico.
Originally, as much as $3 billion a year had been proposed but drew opposition from the White House Office of Management and Budget, which considered it too extravagant, several sources said.
These sources, who spoke on the condition of not being further identified, said the proposal now is likely to be closer to $1 billion and probably no more than $1.5 billion, including $900 million for buying land either directly or through states.
This year Congress provided about $320 million for public land purchases for conservation. Environmentalists have long argued that more money should be spent to set aside environmentally sensitive lands including rangeland, forests, seashores and parks.
"This would be the first time that we would be saying that we're going to make this kind of an investment in the future of this country and its open spaces," said Rindy O'Brien of the Wilderness Society.
There is a need for "a very major increase in federal funding for land acquisition," said Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. "There's a tremendous backlog in land purchases."
The administration's initiative comes as both Republicans and Democrats in Congress are signaling readiness to expand programs to shelter land from development.
In the final weeks of the last Congress, legislation was introduced in both the Senate and the House that would spend as much as $5 billion on such programs. Environmentalists opposed the bills, arguing they focused too much on returning money to states with offshore drilling.
The center, a state-of-the-art facility donated by Discovery Communications Inc., will focus on Washington the man, the city and the monument. The opening is set for mid-February on the grounds near 15th Street and Constitution Avenue, where a temporary steel structure with a blue canopy will be erected.
An announcement on the center is planned for today.
The monument is expected to be open to the public for most of the renovation, which will begin in earnest in March and be completed by May 2000. The center will be an additional attraction to tourists, more than 2,000 of whom visit the obelisk on any given day, not counting the many others who traverse the 41 acres on which the monument sits.
The private sector's role in the renovation of the landmark was already significant before this latest contribution - more than two-thirds of the estimated $9.4 million project is coming from corporate sponsors and others.
The project is small in monetary terms, and the cachet of being associated with such a prominent landmark has been used effectively by the Park Service.
Carrie Passmore, a vice president for Discovery, said the company was approached early in 1998 by the Park Service and asked if it had interest in an interpretive center. The company, which already had donated $300,000 to the restoration, jumped at the idea. Discovery is now a major player in the project, second only to Target Stores, which has donated $2.5 million and helped raised several million more.
The average retail price for all grades, including taxes, was $1.03 per gallon on Friday. That was down about a half-cent over the past three weeks, according to the Lundberg Survey of 10,000 stations nationwide.
The price fell below the all-time low of nearly $1.04 reached last month, thanks to an oil glut compounded by lowered demand from economies hit by financial crises.
Driving demand also is at its lowest during this winter period, said analyst Trilby Lundberg. "This puts the brakes on prices," she said.
The price cuts were slower than in recent months, however.
Crude oil prices, while still near rock-bottom, increased somewhat and that pushed up wholesale gas costs in some areas, mainly in the Midwest. Other dealers did not feel they could pass the increases on to customers during this low-demand season, Lundberg said.
Prices at self-serve stations were 96.95 cents per gallon for regular; $1.078 for mid-grade and $1.163 for premium.
Full service prices were $1.425 for regular, $1.517 for mid-grade and $1.587 for premium.
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Around the World
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Reflecting fears that the talks' failure could prompt an all-out government offensive, NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana appealed in Brussels, Belgium, for the soldiers' release and called on both sides to show restraint.
A spokesperson for the Kosovo monitors expressed cautious optimism the mediation would succeed in heading off a military showdown.
Still, there was no sign last night of a resolution of the weekend-long talks.
Yugoslav Army forces pulled back their armor a half-mile yesterday, a monitors' spokesperson said, in an apparent signal of cooperation with negotiations.
The rebel Kosovo Liberation Army issued a statement last night saying it would release the captives only when international mediators work out an agreement which includes "our soldiers and civilians." The rebels also said they will respect the cease-fire except when they have to protect civilians and themselves.
"We've had signs that the situation could be calming down," said Heinz Nitsch, spokesperson for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the group overseeing a peace agreement in Serbia's southern province.
He said OSCE verifiers had been holding negotiations since Saturday night "at the highest level."
Meanwhile, parents of the soldiers captured after Yugoslav officials said they took a wrong turn Friday into rebel territory began arriving, hopeful of a release. Rebels said the soldiers were in an armored vehicle that was firing on civilians.
A second day of retaliatory attacks on a rebel-held area to the east had been feared, but there was no evidence of fighting in that region.
Yugoslav army and Serbian police forces that threatened attack if the soldiers were not released remained arrayed outside the village of Stari Trg, five miles northeast of Kosovska Mitrovica and 30 miles from the provincial capital Pristina.
The OSCE said the captive soldiers were being treated well in a building on a mountainside near the village, where most surrounding homes stood burned or damaged.
While holding fire in the north, Serb forces also did not continue a nearby retaliatory crackdown from the previous day, when they shelled several villages in the Podujevo area 12 miles east of Stari Trg, sending residents fleeing.
An ethnic Albanian teen-ager from Perane was killed in the shelling, according to spokesperson Fernando del Mundo of the U.N. refugee agency.
Podujevo and outlying villages controlled by the KLA were the scene last month of the worst outbreak of fighting since an October truce - four days of clashes in which at least 15 people were killed.
International officials fear an escalation of violence could destroy the cease-fire that halted more than seven months of fighting in Kosovo, an ethnic Albanian-majority province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic.
Most Kosovo residents favor independence from Serbia. Under the October agreement, ethnic Albanians and Serbs were to have begun negotiations on the future of the province. But no direct talks have been held.
U.S.-led diplomacy to try to bring about a political settlement on Kosovo's future has so far failed. American envoy Christopher Hill was back in Pristina on Sunday. He met with Serb, ethnic Albanian and international officials.
The OSCE's Kosovo Verification Mission over the weekend blamed the latest standoff on "irresponsible actions" and "provocations" by the KLA and praised Yugoslav authorities for a "very restrained" response so far.
But Solana, while appealing to the rebels to release the soldiers, singled out the buildup of Serb forces as unwarranted. He appealed to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw.
Moscow, a staunch Yugoslav ally, also called on the KLA to immediately free its hostages, and appealed to the Yugoslav army and Serbian authorities to exercise restraint.
Also Sunday, the Kosovo Information Center said a young ethnic Albanian was killed and another was wounded when they came under fire near the southern town ofsevac the previous day.
More than 1,000 people have been killed in clashes in the secessionist province over the past year.
Foreign Minister Mohammed Said Sahaf said at a news conference in Baghdad that hundreds of strikes against Iraq during December's four-day U.S.-British air campaign were launched from Saudi and Kuwaiti airspace, making the two Arab states fully responsible for the "aggression."
With the Islamic holy month of Ramadan coming to an end next week, raising fears in the region of renewed U.S.-British airstrikes, Baghdad is striving for an Arab League summit that would come out with a strong statement of sympathy for Iraq.
But the two states that suffered most from Iraqi actions in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, have been Baghdad's most implacable foes within the Arab world and have worked to prevent its rehabilitation by other Arab states.
With its latest round of propaganda attacks, Iraq appears to be trying hard to pressure the two governments to back away from Washington, or, failing that, at least to blunt their influence among other Arab states.
There are signs, however, that the harsh rhetoric is having the opposite effect, hardening the resolve in the Persian Gulf against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime. The regime has been strongly criticized in official newspapers, and a commentary Sunday by the official Saudi news agency openly called for Hussein's overthrow.
01-11-99
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