News In Brief
The US
With a draft accord finally on the table, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators began a second week of Mideast peace talks after averting a threatened late-night Israeli walkout. Details of the proposal were not released. "I hope the parties will seize this opportunity and not retreat," President Clinton said as he left the White House for yet another day of trying to bring negotiations between the wary parties to a positive conclusion.
The 105th Congress wrapped up its two-year session, and lawmakers went home to campaign for the Nov. 3 elections. But the House Judiciary Committee will keep working on the Clinton impeachment inquiry with a self-imposed goal of finishing by the end of the year. And the full House could be called back in late November of December to take up articles of impeachment or related matters. Meanwhile, Clinton signed the $500 billion election-year spending bill.
White House lawyers were rebuffed in an effort to restrict the impeachment inquiry to Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky and charges of lying and obstructing justice arising from it. In the first meeting between administration lawyers and Judiciary Committee attorneys since the House approved the probe, Republicans made it clear they were not ready to limit the scope of charges that might be brought against the president based on evidence already referred - or yet to be referred - by independent counsel Kenneth Starr.
Clinton vetoed a bill to pay about $1 billion in US arrears to the UN, saying it was improperly tied to antiabortion provisions. However, the president approved paying just enough - $50 million - to allow the US to maintain its right to vote in the General Assembly. Congress had agreed to pay most of the $1.6 billion owed to the UN, but funding was linked to a provision barring any aid to international family-planning groups that press countries to liberalize their abortion laws.
The Senate confirmed a score of Clinton's foreign-policy nominees, including John Shattuck as the envoy to Prague and Michael Sullivan to Ireland - but allowed the nomination of James Hormel as ambassador to Luxembourg to die without a vote. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California urged the president to appoint Hormel as the first openly gay US ambassador while the Congress is out of session. She said there was no question that the San Francisco civic leader would have been confirmed if Republican leaders had permitted a vote on the nomination.
The Senate also confirmed a score of judicial appointees, including more than a dozen judges who will serve on district courts. Judiciary chairman Orrin Hatch (R) of Utah said the judicial vacancy rate had been reduced to 5.9 percent, the lowest in the 1990s.
An ecology group took responsibility for a series of fires on Colorado's Vail Mountain in what may be the costliest eco-terrorist act in US history. The Earth Liberation Front, linked to other arson incidents in the Northwest, said it had torched the Vail Associates' buildings and chairlifts to protest the company's plans for expansion at the nation's busiest ski resort. In an e-mail message to several news groups, the Earth Liberation Front said expansion would "ruin the last, best lynx habitat in the state." Damage was estimated at $12 million.
