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Crowds mark Iran hostage anniversary

But the demonstration was a far cry from rallies held in previous years, when hundreds of thousands gathered to celebrate the takeover of the mission in Tehran.

The low turnout reflects a diminishing enthusiasm for the militant fervor that drove the students to storm the embassy on Nov. 4, 1979, and hold 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. It is also another clear sign of the struggle for control of Iran's future between hard-line clerics and reformist President Mohammad Khatami.

On Wednesday, about 500 Khatami supporters held their own rally, where they demanded a new foreign policy, chanting: "In policy and diplomacy, we will deal with the United States with rationality."

Countering the reformers, hard-liners yesterday yelled: "We will always consider America as our enemy. We condemn those who talk in favor of dialogue with America."

Speakers, as well as a statement read at the end of the rally, criticized the government's recent moves toward better relations with the United States.

The demonstrators burned hundreds of Uncle Sam effigies amid chants of "Death to America! Death to Israel!" Members of the hard-line group of paramilitary volunteers, the Basij, scaled the scaffolding of a four-story building opposite the embassy to burn American and Israeli flags.

"America is not looking for relations with Iran. Instead, it wants Iran to surrender and become dependent on it," Mohsen Rezaei, a former commander of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, told the crowd.

The competing rallies are further evidence of the rift between hard-liners, who champion the fiery spirit of the 1979 Islamic revolution, and moderates who back Khatami's policy of a "dialogue between civilizations."

The takeover of the embassy caused the United States to sever relations with Iran.

In January 1998, Khatami appealed for "a crack in the wall of mistrust" and proposed exchanges of scholars, athletes and artists. Several U.S. academics and sports teams have since visited Iran.

The embassy building is now used as a school for paramilitary revolutionary guards.

Indian ofcials burn bodies, aid begins

Among the dead were migrant laborers who had fled crippling poverty in their villages to seek jobs in the port city of Paradwip. The huge shantytown where they lived, located dangerously close to the sea, was wiped out by giant waves. erated by the cyclone.

Ajit Kumar Das saw the waves rise, fall back, then rise again like growing mountains. He and 20 other men from the shantytown tried desperately to save relatives and friends.

"We crouched and ran because we would be hurled away if we stood up," Das said. "Then we caught each person one by one, pulled them and then carried them on our shoulders. We saved so many, but many others slipped away into the waters."

Since migrant workers made up most of the shantytown's residents, the real death toll in Paradwip may never be known because there are few records and unclaimed bodies were quickly cremated. The official death toll from the Oct. 29 storm has only reached 924, according to the Orissa government, but rescue workers expect the number to reach several thousand. Some have estimated 10,000.

The government said Paradwip's port reopened yesterday for commercial operations, providing a safe and desperately needed avenue for emergency supplies. So far, more than 12,000 tons of food have reached the area, mostly by air and sea, but much more is needed for the 20 million people affected by the storm.

Widespread rumors of yet another cyclone-along with the scarcity of food-drove thousands of survivors to flee Paradwip toward the state capital, Bhubaneswar, 60 miles inland. Officials tried to assure residents that there was not another storm over the horizon.

"The cyclone has completely fizzled away and there is no new depression or cyclone building anywhere near Orissa," said R.N. Goldar of the meteorological department in Calcutta.

But on the roads out of Paradwip, bare-chested men wearing cotton wraparounds and women in saris walked briskly holding suitcases, steel boxes, stoves and other belongings.

Most residents of the affected area were poor people, living in mud-and-thatch huts along the coast, with very few possessions; perhaps a cow, a goat, a folding cot and, maybe, a small plot of land.

Despite government warnings broadcast over radio and television, many people refused to evacuate before the storm, confident that the cyclone would veer away or that it was similar to other cyclones that hit the region every year.

Yesterday, a 3-year-old boy and his younger brother, orphaned in India's worst cyclone in decades, played a macabre game: counting bodies.

"Look, there's one more!" shouted Trailokya, pointing to a dark, bloated body in the distance. He squatted with 2-year-old Prafulla on a narrow road surrounded by flooded fields.

Within minutes, Prafulla spotted another body sprawled across the field, hardly visible among swooping scavenger seagulls.

There was a dispute over the third. Chatting in their native Oriya language, Trailokya said a slumped mass of flesh in the distance was a man. Prafulla said it was a cow.

The boys did not know their parents were dead. A female relative stood in a foot of muddy water nearby, groping to gather the family's belongings. Several items were strewn on the road, soaked in salty water: a jute bag, a raincoat, playing cards, a folding bed, a pullover.

Six days after the cyclone the boys had eaten a couple of biscuits, distributed by the part-time village administrator from what remained of his shop. They also had a little rice, delivered by a naval ship.

The first distribution of food was expected in Paradwip today.

11-05-99