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WEATHER
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Vol. 88 No. 150 USPS 045360 10 pages
College Station, Texas
Tuesday, June 6,1989
hinese soldiers continue terrorizing capital
Jr,
“
9
BEIJING (AP) — Soldiers terror
ized the tense and chaotic Chinese
Japital on Monday with random
Rhooting of unarmed civilians and
■he army reinforced its positions in
The city’s center. Reports spread of a
f split in the army and a battle be
tween military factions.
Late Monday, thousands of troops
^nd tanks occupying Tiananmen
Square lined up along the northern
I See related story/Page 3
erimeter facing the former impe-
ial palace. Gunfire could be heard
rom behind the palace.
Other tanks took up new positions
n key intersections off the huge
quare that was the focus of pro-de-
locracy demonstrations crushed by
Hilary force in an operation that
laimed hundreds of lives.
It appeared that the new deploy-
ents were defensive. Chinese and
iplomatic sources said a split in the
'eople’s Liberation Army over the
Vlay 20 declaration of martial law in
Beijing was deepened by the mas
sacre that began late Saturday.
Artillery shelling was heard in a
far northwest suburb of the city dur
ing the day. Asked about talk of sol
diers fighting soldiers, one Western
diplomat said, “It’s more than (talk).
There is solid evidence.” He spoke
on condition he not be identified
and refused to elaborate.
Huge crowds demonstrated in
Shanghai, Nanjing and other major
Chinese cities to protest the slaugh
ter in Beijing. According to some re
ports, soldiers shot dead as many as
several thousand people in a cam
paign to suppress the popular upris
ing for freedom.
At least three more people died
and four more were injured Monday
as troops armed with machine guns
and automatic rifles kept up spo
radic, indiscriminate firing.
Residents in Beijing spent the day
preparing for food shortages in the
increasingly chaotic city, with lines
forming for milk, oil, soy sauce and
other staples. Army patrols, shoot
ing and a lack of public transporta
tion added to the tense atmosphere.
Blockades of buses and burning
vehicles made major streets impassa
ble, and many Beijing residents
stayed home from work out of fear
of the roaming bands of trigger-
happy soldiers.
“What are we going to do, go to
work and get shot?” asked an office
clerk.
The Hong Kong government sent
a special flight Monday to evacuate
residents of the British colony. The
United States and several other
countries began moving their na
tionals from Beijing university cam
puses, possible targets in the military
Bush outlines plan to protest bloodshed in Beijing
George Bush
Battalion file photo
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush suspended
U.S. arms sales to China on Monday to protest the mili
tary’s bloody weekend crackdown, declaring Chinese
leaders must learn “it’s not going to be business as
usual.”
Bush accused the Beijing government of “brutally
suppressing popular and peaceful demonstrations.”
But he also said he would not withdraw the U.S. am
bassador, take any other steps toward severing diplo
matic ties or take abrupt actions, including economic
sanctions, that could “hurt the Chinese people.”
On two other international subjects, Bush spoke ap
provingly of a strong showing by Solidarity-backed can
didates in Polish elections and said that if the Iranian
government wants to improve relations after the week
end death of the Ayatollah Khomeini it should use its
influence to free American hostages from Lebanon.
He said the events in China the past few days, in
which hundreds of Chinese demonstrators were killed
and many more wounded as the army moved to clear
Tiananmen Square, were being followed in horror by
people around the world.
Bush, at a hastily called morning news conference,
said the United States would:
•Immediately suspend military sales to China by the
U.S. government as well as commercial exports of
weapons.
•Halt visits between U.S. and Chinese military lead
ers.
•Give “sympathetic review” to visa extensions for
any of the 40,000 Chinese students studying in the
United States who were afraid of returning home.
•Offer humanitarian and medical aid through the
Red Cross to those injured in the assault.
Bush held out the possibility of further steps if the
situation worsens. However, he said, “I don’t want to
see a total break in this relationship and I will not en
courage a total break in this relationship.”
He also said keeping an ambassador in Beijing pro
vided a “good listening post.”
Bush’s steps won praise from Democratic and Re
publican leaders on Capitol Hill. “I think there was a
general consensus for the president’s position,” House
Majority Leader Thomas S. Foley, D-Wash., said after a
See Reaction/Page 8
sweep against pro-democracy activ
ists.
“Many of the (Chinese) students
have left the dormitories to go home
or to find shelter in Beijing because
they fear an imminent attack by the
army,” said a Beijing University stu
dent standing at the campus gate.
Much of the shooting Monday was
in the city center near Tiananmen
Square. Chinese witnesses said at
least three people were shot to death
near the square, including a man
machine-gunned from his chin to his
stomach. The wounded included a
girl shot in the chest when troops
charged up a narrow residential
street.
One convoy of 50 to 100 military
trucks rumbled through the diplo
matic quarter firing indiscriminately,
a U.S. Embassy official said. More
than 40 soldiers later swaggered
down the main street.
“1
Communists admit
Solidarity landslide
in Polish elections
'4
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Solida
rity won Poland’s freest elections in
four decades by a landslide, the rul
ing communists conceded Monday,
urging the opposition not to abuse
lits triumph by stirring anarchy in the
country.
The astounding admission of de
feat, two days before the official re
sults were to be released, came amid
signs that a special slate of promi
nent government officials was over
whelmingly rejected by voters.
Despite the Solidarity landslide in
Sunday’s parliamentary elections,
the communists still are expected to
retain control of the legislature be
cause election rules guarantee it a
majority of seats.
The party acknowledged the Soli-
fdarity triumph in a statement at the
\ start o f the evening newscast by
| party spokesman Jan Bisztyga, who
| was shown sitting next to Solidarity
[national spokesman Janusz Onysz-
j kiewicz.
“The results are genuinely unfa
vorable for the (party) coalition,”
Bisztyga said. “Solidarity got a de
cided majority.”
“We will not back away from the
;! road of democracy and reforms,” he
promised, but he called on the oppo-
: sition to also show “co-responsibility
| for the country.
“If feelings of triumph and ad-
I venturism cause anarchy in Poland,
democracy and social peace will be
j seriously threatened. Authorities,
: the coalition and the opposition can-
; notallow such a situation,” he said.
Onyszkiewicz cautioned that some
I returns were still coming in. “But de
spite that, it is a victory,” he de
clared.
“It’s too early for congratulations
and we don’t have complete infor
mation yet,” Solidarity leader Lech
Walesa had said earlier in the day in
Gdansk.
In its first dispatch on results, the
official PAP news agency on Monday
night confirmed overwhelming Soli
darity victories in at least 11 cities.
It cautioned that the results were
unofficial and might vary in other
places.
Only a few Solidarity candidates
to the new 100-seat Senate appeared
unsure of first-round victory, Onysz
kiewicz said at an afternoon news
conference, indicating firm opposi
tion control of the East bloc’s first
freely chosen legislative chamber.
Under the historic accords be
tween the Solidarity-led opposition
and the communist government, all
100 seats in the Senate were up for
grabs in Sunday’s balloting.
The opposition also was allowed
to run for 161 seats, or 35 percent,
in the 460-seat Sejm, the lower
chamber.
The rest of the seats were re
served for the ruling communists
and their allies.
Thirty-five of those reserved seats
are for prominent government and
party officials who face no challeng-
But those uncontested party can
didates must win 50 percent of the
vote to be seated, and there were
widespread reports that voters were
overwhelming rejecting those candi
dates.
m
mmm. .Si
'■m&m wit
111 >|f
Move it, ladies
Stephanie Stark, left, a sophomore from Col
lege Station, and Judy Page help Page’s
Photo by I'heian M. Ebanhack
daughter Sherri Benedict move into Neeley
Hall Sunday. Sherri is an incoming freshman.
Gorbachev: Careless workers responsible for blast
MOSCOW (AP) — Careless workers con-
jtinued pumping gas into a ruptured pipeline
: until it filled a valley and exploded into a fire
storm that destroyed two passenger trains,
President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said Monday.
Tass quoted a Civil Defense spokesman as
saying the number of confirmed dead in the
explosion and fire Sunday was 190, but the
toll appeared certain to rise. The official news
agency said 137 bodies were found at the
scene in the Ural Mountains and 53 died in
hospitals.
The civil defense spokesman told Tass 706
victims had been admitted to hospitals but
272 of the 1,168 people on the two Trans-Si
berian Railroad trains still were missing.
Izvestia, the government newspaper, said a
mile-long “flame front” consumed the trains,
destroying hundreds of yards of track and
telegraph lines.
Gennady K. Dmitrin, editor of Evening
Chelyabinsk, a newspaper published in one of
the largest cities in the Urals, said by tele
hone his paper had a list of 500-800 dead
ut it was based on preliminary information.
Dmitrin said children under age 8 do not
gf have to buy train tickets, which meant the
R number of passengers on the two trains could
p be greater than reported.
Some of the dead were children bound for
B summer resorts, Gorbachev told the Soviet
^^11 Congress after visiting the site 750 miles
if southeast of Moscow.
Battalion file photo
Mikhail Gorbachev
“How could it be that again there is incom
petence, irresponsibility, mismanagement,
disgrace?” he asked “Comrades and I, and all
the residents there, said there will be no pro
gress if we have such laxness.”
Gen. Mikhail Moiseyev, military chief of
staff, told Tass the explosion at 1:14 a.m.
Sunday had the strength of 10,000 tons of
TNT.
He said the blast “was so powerful that it
felled all trees within four kilometers” and
hurled two locomotives and 38 passenger cars
off the rails. He said most of the cars were in
cinerated.
“Military units are searching the adjacent
forest and mountains in the hope that some
of the passengers may have escaped the tor
nado of fire,” Tass said.
Sixteen severely burned children were
taken to Yuryuzan, where “doctors are strug
gling to save their lives,” it said.
Gorbachev, whose remarks were broadcast
live on national television, said the liquefied
gas pipeline half a mile from the rail line
burst and, instead of investigating the pres
sure drop, technicians activated pumps to in
crease the pressure.
When gas vapor reached the electrified
line, a spark touched of an explosion of
“frightening might,” Gorbachev said.
He said the two trains, traveling in opposite
directions, had made unscheduled stops near
each other in a remote region between the
city of Ufa and the town of Asha.
Gorbachev said investigators would exam
ine why the pumps were turned on despite
the leak and why the trains stopped on the
line between Novosibirsk, the largest city in
Siberia, and Adler, a Black Sea resort.
“We will have to learn hard lessons from
what happened,” he said.
Mayor Mikhail A. Zaitsev of Ufa said 400
of the injured were taken to his city 60 miles
west of the site. “Helicopters are constantly
arriving with more injured,” he said by tele
phone.
A special flight brought 65 of those most
badly burned to Moscow for treatment. The
victims, skin blackened and peeling in places,
were put into waiting ambulances at Vnukovo
Airport.
Soviet cities began blood drives, sent doc
tors to the Urals and dispatched relief sup
plies, Tass said. Gorbachev told Congress all
major burn treatment centers in the country
had been mobilized.
Flags over the Kremlin and at other gov
ernment buildings throughout the country
flew at half-staff or were trimmed with black
ribbon to mark an official day of mourning.
The 2,250-member Congress stood tor a min
ute of silence, heard Gorbachev’s report and
adjourned early.
Eight mourners
crushed during
Khomeini’s wake
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Two mil
lion mourners crowded into a Teh
ran square Monday to glimpse the
white-shrouded body of Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, and at least
eight were killed and hundreds hurt
during the huge show of mass grief.
State television showed scores of
people being carried from the dusty
Mousalam Square. The crowd
swayed around the glass-covered
bier in which the revolutionary pa
triarch lay, his trademark black tur
ban on his chest.
Iranians fiowed into the north
Tehran square under a blazing sun,
drawn by the tightly shrouded body
in its air-conditioned cubicle on a
platform hastily assembled from
shipping containers.
Mourners beat their chests and
heads with fists in a traditional Shiite
Moslem expression of grief, chant
ing, “Oh Khomeini, why have you
left us?” Some scratched their faces
until they bled, and threw ashes over
their clothes.
“Imam Khomeini was our great
leader. . . . Nothing can ever replace
him,” said Mohammad Mahdi, an
aircraft technician.
Iranians called Khomeini their
imam, or spiritual leader.
The official Islamic Republic
News Agency said the dead were
crushed in a stampede to the bier
and many people collapsed in the
heat, which reached a temperature
of 104.
Khomeini died Saturday of a
heart attack suffered 11 days after
surgery for internal bleeding. His
death created Iran’s most serious po
litical crisis since he was swept to
power in the 1979 Islamic revolu
tion.
Ahmad, Khomeini’s son, read a
section of his father’s political testa
ment over the radio. It called for na
tional unity and warned of “enemy
conspiracies and world-devouring
America.”
In Washington, President Bush
said: “There’s a way for the
relationship with the United States
to improve and that’s for the release
of the American hostages” held in
Lebanon by pro-Iranian kidnappers.
In its first official reaction, Iraq
called for a lasting peace with Iran.
The official newspaper Al-Thawra
daily newspaper said in an editorial
that Iraq wants “a comprehensive
and just peace beased on good-
neighborly relations and non-inter
ference in each other’s affairs.”
A U.N.-mediated cease-fire sus
pended the 8-year-old war Aug. 20,
but peace negotiations are dead
locked.
The extract of Khomeini’s politi
cal testament read by his son said
nothing of who would succeed him
as leader of the revolution.
President AH Khamenei, 49, was
appointed caretaker leader Sunday,
winning 60 of the 74 votes cast the
Assembly of Experts chosen by Kho
meini in 1979 to handle the succes
sion.
Khamenei, a moderate with close
ties to the merchant class, has been
president since 1981 but is barred by
the constitution from a third four-
year term.
A presidential election and a ref
erendum on constitutional reforms,
are scheduled for Aug. 18.