I Texas ASM gg V #
The Battalion
83 No. 99 USPS 075360 12 pages
College Station, Texas
Monday, February 17, 1986
nalysts
ly U.S.
conomy
oking up
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — While falling
(prices are diminishing revenues
Tthe state of Texas, many econo-
jts believe that these falling oil
les will bolster the U.S. economy.
The country should enjoy signifi-
tly better growth this year than in
3, many analysts believe,
the new optimism represents a
rp turnaround from expectations
:more than a month ago. At that
b, many analysts felt the economy
jild muddle through the new year
ph as it did last year, with sluggish
vth and a stagnant unemploy-
!ht level.
owever, plunging world oil
es have altered that view. In the
month, oil prices on the spot
ket have fallen by one-third,
ipping from $25 per barrel to
jnd SI7 per barrel,
luch a precipitous decline could
[)ell trouble for countries such as
lexico, which depend on oil reve-
lues to finance their heavy debt, but
Ts likely to be good news for most
toiericans.
Jhe beneficial impact of falling oil
ptes will be felt in two ways, econo-
|ts believe.
S. output will rise because con-
ers and businesses will have
e to spend on other items, since
r oil bills will be less, and infla-
in this country will be lower.
(Vharton Econometrics, a private
casting firm which in December
forecasting that the economy
(opld grow 3 percent this year, is
low predicting growth of 3.7 per-
It.
that is sharply higher than the
teak 2.5 percent growth turned in
[uring 1985 and is not far from the
teagan administration’s optimistic
■diction that the economy will
See Economists, page 12
7 - s
-f -My
« Mm
. 5 -i
Aquino ask Filipinos
to resist Marcos’ win
Associated Press
MANILA, Philippines — Corazon
Aquino called Sunday for non-vio
lent protests against newly re-elected
President Ferdinand E. Marcos, who
declared, “I am the president. They
are not going to drive me out.”
Marcos, president for 20 years,
also announced Sunday the resigna
tion of his most powerful military
commander, Gen. Fabian C. Ver.
A day after the National Assembly
declared Marcos winner of an elec
tion marked by charges of fraud and
terrorism, more than half a million
Filipinos joined his opponent in a
downtown park rally — a much big
ger rally than any that had gathered
in the campaign leading to the Feb. 7
presidential election.
Aquino called for strikes and
school shutdowns on the day after
Marcos’ Feb. 26 inauguration for a
new six-year term, and urged a boy
cott of banks and newspapers owned
by Marcos’ “cronies.”
Aquino, who had vowed to lead
daily demonstrations if she was
cheated at the polls, also called on
the military and police to disobey or
ders that were “unjust.”
“Although unarmed, I feel like
the young boy David prepared to
face the giant Goliath,” she said. “If
Goliath refuses to yield, we shall es
calate our non-violent struggle.”
In a news conference at the presi
dential palace, Marcos again rejected
charges he won through fraud and
said he would not step down.
Marcos also announced that Ver,
the armed forces chief, had re
signed, and he had accepted the res
ignation. But he said Ver would re
main available as a consultant.
Constabulary Chief Lt. Gen. Fidel
V. Ramos was appointed interim
chief of staff, Marcos said.
Ver, 66, was charged in the Au
gust 1983 assassination of Aquino’s
husband, opposition leader Benigno
Aquino. But a court later acquitted
him, 24 other military men and one
civilian also accused in the murder.
Ver’s resignation was announced
a day before Marcos, Aquino, and
other Filipino leaders were to meet
with Philip Habib, a special envoy
sent by President Reagan to observe
the aftermath of the divisive elec-
“I am convinced that if there was
any fraud, it may have been com
mitted by the lower levels and was
not authorized by the upper lead
ership,” Marcos said.
Asked to comment on Reagan’s
statement that his victory over
Aquino was marked by fraud, Mar
cos said Reagan “has been wrongly
informed, and I intend to see to it
that the correct information reaches
him.”
Soviet sailor missing in ship wreck
Photo by TOM OWNBEY
Smooth Landing
Mark Gardner, president of the Parachuting Club at Texas A&M,
drops in on the Ormond R. Simpson Drill Field as part of a mem
bership drive and just for the fun of it.
Associated Press
WELLINGTON, New Zealand —
A Soviet cruise ship carrying more
than 700 passengers and crew struck
rocks and sank in stormy seas Sun
day, but only one person, a Soviet
sailor, is missing and presumed
drowned, officials reported.
Chief Police Inspector Owen
Dowse, in a mid-morning announce
ment Monday on Radio New Zea
land, said one crewman was missing
but all of the others aboard the
20,000-ton Mikhail Lermontov had
been rescued.
The passengers, many of them el
derly Australians and New Zea
landers, were taken from lifeboats
aboard rescue craft and brought to
Wellington, 35 miles across Cook
Strait from Port Gore where the
liner sank.
Ten people were hospitalized with
minor injuries, Dowse said.
Search coordinator Barry James
said the Mikhail Lermontov had
about 400 passengers and some 300
Soviet crew members.
But the chairman of the Marlbo
rough Harbor Board, Bruno Del-
iessi, said the ship carried a total of
841 passengers and crew.
Survivors said in Wellington that
passengers and crew began fleeing
the 20,000-ton liner in lifeboats
about 1V2 hours after it began taking
on water and hours before it sank
just before 11 p.m. Sunday.
Efforts to rescue the people from
the lifeboats were hampered by
darkness, driving rain and 15 mph
winds.
A New Zealand air force recon
naissance plane and helicopter and
police and navy patrol boats re
sumed the search for survivors Mon
day.
The 580-foot Mikhail Lermontov,
registered in Leningrad, spends the
winter cruising between Australia
and the South Pacific islands, with
stops in New Zealand.
It left Picton on New Zealand’s
South Island Sunday morning and
was heading north in the scenic
Marlborough Sounds area when it
struck rocks, knocking a hole in the
hull and disabling the engines,
according to the New Zealand
Search and Rescue Service.
The liner, with a 12-degree list,
drifted into harbor at Port Gore.
The captain tried to beach it there,
but rescue officials said the ship
drifted back off shore and sank in
about 100 feet of water.
Prince's 2nd visit to Texas will be busy
Associated Press
DALLAS — From the world’s big-
tcake to the big cheeses in Texas
itics and entertainment, Britain’s
nee Charles has a packed menu
king his second visit to the Lone
State.
iis Royal Highness is scheduled
irrive here today for a five-day
that will include high-tech tours,
exas-sized cake-cutting ceremony
1 lavish banquets designed to kick
I the celebration of the state’s
)th birthday.
tate and local leaders have been
king feverishly for the last four
nths to map out the visit that was
Britain’s Charles starting Texas tour
prompted by Dallas billionaire and
computer magnate H. Ross Perot.
Prince Charles had planned to
come to Dallas to give Perot the
Winston Churchill award — only the
third presented in honor of those
who epitomize Churchill’s spirit —
but the state’s Sesquicentennial cele
bration piqued his interest.
Sam Garner, head of the Texas
Sesquicentennial Commission, said,
“The more he asked about the Ses
quicentennial, the more interested
he got. So he decided to see a lot
more of the state.”
The prince’s crowded itinerary
begins in Dallas, where he will pre
sent the Churchill award Tuesday
night, and includes stopovers in
Houston and Austin before he jets to
Palm Springs, Calif., from San Anto
nio Friday.
British Consulate spokeswoman
Linda Kelly says Prince Charles,
traveling without Princess Diana,
will be greeted at the Dallas-Fort
Worth International Airport Mon
day night by Gov. Mark White and a
bevy of local dignitaries.
The next day, he will tour the
Electra Communications Corp. and
Electronic Data Systems, a company
Perot founded.
He’ll also see Dallas’ Infomart, a
high-tech information center whose
design echoes the famous Crystal
Palace in London.
From there, it’s on to Houston
Wednesday for a tour of Shell Oil
Co.’s Deer Park refinery and the San
Jacinto Monument, which commem
orates Texas’ independence from
Mexico.
Kelly says he’ll also visit Mount-
batten House, a retirement home fi
nanced by the Daughters of the Brit
ish Empire and named after the
prince’s late great uncle, before din
ing that night with Houston Mayor
Kathy Whitmire.
The big Sesquicentennial bash,
See Prince, page 12
Generator shutdown
darkens part of A&M
By BRIAN PEARSON
Senior Staff Writer
Several buildings at Texas
A&M blacked out Sunday night
when power failed due to an au
tomatic shutdown in one of two
generators then operating at the
Physical Plant, Harold Ploch,
Physical Plant operator, said Sun
day.
Ploch said a momentary loss of
oil pressure occurred as workers
were changing a generator oil
cooler, causing the machine to
shut down.
Ploch said plant workers had to
shut off electricity from 9 p.m. to
about 9:15 p.m. to 15 buildings to
prevent an overload of power
from the tie line coming from the
utilities plant in Bryan. When a
campus generator shuts down,
power from the tie line automat
ically increases to compensate,
Ploch said.
He said that two campus
feeder lines, which bring electric
ity to the 15 buildings, had to be
turned off to prevent the over
load on the Bryan tie line.
Buildings affected by the
blackout included the Sterling C.
Evans Library, the Academic
Building and the Reed McDonald
Building.
SCONA speaker: U.S. neglecting Mideast conflict
By JEANNE ISENBERG
Staff Writer
Americans need to challenge the re-
itly adopted attitude of “benign neglect”
en toward helping the Middle East at-
1 peace, Dr. William B. Quandt said Sat-
lay in his closing speech of the 31st an
ti Student Conference on National
airs.
Peace in the Middle East is never going
)e made by committee, by consensus or
the faint-hearted,” he said. “It’s a
rthy goal, and there are many people in
region who will fight hard for it, but
yneed some help.”
Quandt, a senior fellow in the Foreign
icy Studies program at the Brookings
titution in Washington, said the Middle
t has always been of interest to the
ited States.
t’s a very heavily armed part of the
itld, he said, and the only part of the
rd World with nuclear weapons.
Iso, more than one-third of the United
States’ foreign aid goes to the Middle East,
he said, mostly to Egypt and Israel.
The reason the Middle East stays upper
most in the minds of U.S. presidents,
Quandt said, is that this is the only part of
the Third World where the United States
could come into direct confrontation with
the Soviet Union because of commitments
to conflicting sides.
“In 1967, 1970, 1972 and 1982, the
United States and the Soviet Union reacted
to Middle Eastern crises with their own mil
itary forces,” Quandt said. “In the end,
they didn’t send forces or come into con
flict. But in a nuclear era, anytime a super
power begins to think about deploying its
own military forces to an area, we have to
be concerned about the consequences.”
The United States has other reasons to
stay involved in the Middle East, Quandt
said, especially with the special relationship
it has developed with Israel because of the
commitment of the U.S. Jewish community
and recently the commitment of the Chris
tian fundamentalists.
Also see:
Israeli, Arab call for peace, page 5
Interdependent world changes, page 5
The United States is seen by the Middle
East as a strong element in Israel’s
strength, he said, and the actions of Israel
are usually identified with the United
States.
But the United States also has a big in
terest in the Arab world, he said.
“At any given moment,” Quandt said,
“we have been eager to pursue some
relationship with groups of Arab countries
— either for strategic reasons, for oil rea
sons or for political reasons. And there’s al
ways been an undercurrent of tension be
tween these two interests.”
Promoting a peaceful resolution to the
Arab-Israeli conflict logically would be to
the best interest of the United States,
Quandt said, but since 1979, nothing of
lasting importance has been achieved
through U.S. mediation.
“What we have to look back on is a pe
riod of peacemaking that produced one big
success — the Egyptian-Israeli peace trea
ty,” Quandt said, “and nothing since.
“That achievement is in some jeopardy
now because of our lack of follow-through
and the failure to broaden the peace pro
cess.”
Instead of accelerating U.S. support,
though, foreign aid may decrease as a re
sult of the Gramm-Rudman law, which
forces Congress to cut a certain amount
from the federal budget every year, he
said.
Though U.S. mediation is something
that should be continued, he said, there is a
possibility for the Middle East to achieve
peace on its own.
Quandt said the head of the Israeli gov
ernment at least acknowledges the Palestin
ian problem and doesn’t exclude the possi
bility of territorial compromise.
On the Arab side, he said, there is talk of
a prospective negotiation between Israel
and the right partners, whereas in Camp
David, Egypt was placed in the wrong role
as spokesman for the Palestinians.
Although there are positive indicators
toward peace, Quandt said, weak political
leadership and political insecurity in Mid
dle East regimes has prevented a set
tlement.
“These parties cannot, in my view, make
peace on their own,” he said. “They need
help. They need more than just a postman
carrying messages between them.
“What they cannot do is mobilize the po
litical will to go to their own people and say,
‘We’re going to have to compromise on
some very difficult points.’ To do that, they
need to be able to say ‘We’ll get something
for it. We’ll get peace, or security or sup
port from the international community.’
Those justifications need to be put in place
by some third party.
“The United States could play a more ef
fective role. But it has chosen not to.”