Lesson Twenty

Section One: News in Brief

Tapescript
1. The Pentagon today called on the highly publicized withdrawal of
Soviet troops from Afghanistan a sham. Moscow announced earlier
this month that it would completethe withdrawal of 6,000 men from
Afghanistan by the end of October.,NPR's Allen Burlow has the sto-
ry. "The head of the DefenseIntellig@nceAgency, Lieutenant Gener-
al Leonard Perutz said the Pentagon has developed clear and con-
vincing evidence that the Soviet troop withdrawals are'a deception.
Perutz said the Soviets deliberately inserted additional tank And rifle
regiments into Afghanistan for no reason other than to withdraw
them. 'What the Soviets have done is to remove some unneeded
units and to substitute others, so that the number of military useful
troops in Afghanistan is basically unchanged.' Perutz said half of
the Soviet units withdrawn were for air defense. Since the Afghani
Mujahidin rebels have no air force, Perutz said, the Soviet with-
drawals have no military significance. Perutz said the withdrawals
were designed to enhance General Secretary Gorbachev's image at
home and abroad. He said about 116,000 Soviet troops remain in
Afghanistan. I'm Allen Burlow in Wahington.'

2. South African's black miners have observed a one-day str ike to
mourn the death of one hundred and seventy-seven of their
co-workers killed in a fire at the Kinross gold mine last month.
Workers in other industries also participated in the symbolic action.
Nigel Rench reports from Johannesburg. 'More than a quarter of a
million black miners were on strike to protest their colleagues'
deaths, about half the country's total of 600,000 gold and coal min-

ers, costing the mining industry an estimated $ 4,000,000. he
stay-away was total at the Kinross gold mine where last month's
disaster occurred. Black miners stayed inside their barrack-like hos-
tels. Reporters were barred from the mine. In central Johannesburg,
a protest meeting was held by the Black National Union of
Mineworkers which called the strike action. A union, spokesman said
miners had gathered not to mourn, but to commit themselves to lib-
eration from apartheid and economic exploitation. White church
leader, Bayers Nordea, told the crowd, 'The accident at Kinross
need never have occurred, and the one hundredand'seventy@seven
men need not have died.' For National Public,Radio, this is Nigel
Rench in Johannesbiqrg."

3. The King f Saudi Arabia has removed Sheik Ahmed Zaki
Yamani as Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister. Yamani had held the job for
twenty-four years. Although it's been rumored for a few years that
Yamani was out of favor with the King, his firing shocked the oil
market., Yamani's replacement, Hicham Niza, is Saudi Arabia's
Planning Minister. NPR's Barbara Mantell has details. "Oil traders
here in New York on the mercantile exchange said they had no idea
that Yamani was about to be fired, but they took it as a sign that
world oilpri@eswould start to rise. Yamani had been leading OPEC
in a price war over the past ten months. Saudi Arabia, the largest
producer in the cartel, had raised its production and created an oil
glut. That lowered the -price of oil by 50% . Analysts say Saudi
Arabia's King Fahd's supposedly had enough of the price war and of
Yamani. King Fahd has said that he would like to see the price of oil
rise to about $ 18 a barrel. And at noon today, New York time,
when Saudi Arabia's new Oil Minister called for a
OPEC meeting, traders at the mercantile exchange frai
oil prices. They were betting that King Fahd
were going to try to set a new policy of higher motion. I'm

Barbara Mantell in New York. @

Section Two: News in Detail

Tapescript I i
Sheik A Yamani, is generally, regarded as the
mastermind @ b oil strategy of the 1.970s. The man who
introduced the word "petrodollars' into our vocabulary, and who
helped bring about one of the most dramatic shifts of international
economic and, political power in this century. NPR's Elizabeth
Coulton has. ) -1" i .4 tt-) - @ 4 t
Yamani the post of Saudi Minister of Petrol-
eum and Mij s in 1962, and it was then he began lead-
ing the carri st control of Arab oil resources from
foreign-owned companies. He was only thirty-two years old when
he took over his country's oil ministry. But he was then among the
few Saudis to have had higher western education, including, in his
case, legal training at Harvard, Although Yamani was only a corn-
moner in the Kingdom, some members of had begun
to recognize the contribution such a @C, he to the
Saudi government. Then crown prince Faisal, later the King, cham-
pioned young Yamani and gave him a clear mandate to do whatever
;necessary to keep his country's oil benefits home in Saudi Arabia. A
natural diplomat, Yamani quickly became the unproclaimed leader
of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries as well
as the global cartel, OPEC. In November and December of 1973,
Sheik Yamani toured western capitals to explain OPEC's radical pol-
icies, including why oil prices were going to go up by 70%.
His announcement shocked the world and his name became an
international household word. In London, one journalist wrote at
the time that Sheik Yamani of Saudi Arabia was the most formida-
ble eastern emissary to arrive in Europe since the Tartars swept into
Russia or the Muslim hordes reached the walls of Vienna in the
Middle Ages. In 1975, Yamani was the target when terrorists seized

OPEC headquarters in Vienna and took the ministers hostage for
several days. Ever since then, Yamani surrounded himself with
tough British bodyguards, and he kept his movements secret. When-
ever he was seen abroad, he appeared as a superstar with his
e. A_
At hom@, Tn theroy@akingdom, however ,his position was
somewhat different. He remained a commoner and, consequently,
always an outsider, useful to the monarchy only as a technocrat who
could manage Saudi wealth for the true owners, the royal family.
Sometimes, at OPEC meetings, he would have to fly back home to
consult with the King before proceeding with negotiations. At such
,times, ministers from revolutionary member states, like Iran, would
criticize Yamani for being only a lackey with no power to make ecl-
sions on his own. At the same time, many observers believe that
Yamani's ouster yesterday was caused- by King Fahd's irritation with
Yamani's power base outside the kingdom. OPEC specialist, Yousef
Ibrahim of the Wall Street Journal, says Yamani got caught between
demands.
I Yamani is also said to be an extremely sensitive ahd religious
man. He has been concerned that peoples of the world should try to
understand each other. For example, in a conversation once with this
reporter, Sheik Yamani said he believed all world leaders, like him-
self, should have at least an introductory course in social anthropol-
ogy in order to be tolerant of other cultures. The cosmopolitan Sheik
Yamani will be remembered as not only a wizard of oil economics,
but perhaps more as a leading diplomat who brought the Arab world
intoth@oragain, and changed the course of late twentieth century
history. lizabeth Coulton in Washington.

Section Three: Special Report

Tapescript
This week in the United States, the Senate voted to reject the $
200,000,000 in additional aid to the Philippines. That money was
approved by the House after President Corazon Aquino delivered an
emotional address to a joint session of Congress during her visit a
few weeks ago. In that speech, Aquino thanked those law-makers
who, she said, had balanced US strategic interests against human
concerns and turned US policy against Ferdinand Marcos.
However, the conflict between strategic US defense interests and
the everyday human needs of Filipinos remains at the heart of
US-Philippine relations. It was a major issue in the Senate debate
over increased economic aid when concerns were raised about the
Philippines' commitment to retaining two major US military bases.
Nowhere is this conflict more tangible but in Philippine base towns
themselves. NPR's Allen Burlow has a report:
The frightening roar and fearful symmetry of an F-4 Phantom

Fighter plane racing down the runway of Subic Bay Naval Statio
are quickly lost in wonder as the 23-ton Phantom arches graceful
into the blue morning sky and disappears among the clouds, of t
South China Sea. The exact nature of today's mission is unknow
Perhaps it is a routine exercise, or training hours for a young pilot o
one of the more than 200 daily flights from Subic Bay. It is imposs
ble to say what thoughts occupy this pilot's mind, whether they pe
tain to the endless briefings on the strategic importance of Subic Ba
to the threat of communism, to the issues of nuclear war, or to t
theoretical battles of superpower strategists who have him racin
through the heavens away from the city of Olongapo.
Olongapo, located about 50 miles northwest of Manila, is th
city just outside the Subic Bay Naval Station. Olongapo is where th
Filipinos live and where the Americans come to play. In a wa
Olongapo is a microcosm of the tensions in US-Philippine relation
Before the Subic Bay installation was built, Olongapo was little mor
than a fishing village. Today, the local economy benefits from tens 6
millions of dollars spent there annually. At the same time, the ex
traordinary and pervasive influence of Subic Bay on the econom
and culture of Olongapo and the Philippines as a whole has led man
Filipinos to question whether the base should be allowed to stay.
@ On any given day, there are 10,000 Americans at Subic Bay
They deal with the big issues like nuclear war and communism. Bu
Philippine President Corazon Aquino must deal with more mundan
matters, like the economic crisis her country faces in places lik
Olongapo and places like Pergasa.
Pergasa is the barrel where the city of Olongapo dumps its gar-
bage. It is also home for the city's most destitute. While Pergasa is
separated from the Subic Bay Naval Station by only a few yards, a
moat of raw sewage, and a fence of barbed wire, the concerns of its
residents could not be more distant.
Verhilio Fransi has lived here almost 10 years. He, his wife, and

8 children, occupy a one-room scrapwood shack. They live off the
dump, collecting bottles and plastic cartons.
'In one day, we get almost forty-five, fifty pesos, in one day.'
"And who does the work, you or all your children?'
"All of us.'
"All of you together. You make forty-five pesos.'
"In one day.'
'And do you also find food here or not?'
'We got.;. we found food, but it's canned foods.'
'Can you eat that food?'
'Sometimes, but when it tastes no good, we throw it.'
Fransi says some days his children go hungry. The earnings he
mentioned for his family of ten come to about $ 2 a day. In the local
dialect, Pergasa means hope. Lastvear, Verhilio Fransi found a solid
gold bracelet in the dump. He sold it for about $ 10.
In Pergasa, you breathe the unmistakable acrid smoke of
smouldering garbage coughed up by fires that never go out. In
Pergasa, there are thick clouds of flies, millions of flies humming
their monotonous song of decay as they swarm about the mountains
of garbage rising ten, fifteen, thirty feet into the air.
Catolino Trancy, his wife and nine children live off the dump.
Near the entrance to their mud-floor shack, there is a pan'with eight
pigs and an oil drum filled above its rim with blood-stained bones. I
asked Mr Trancy why he collected these.
'There is a ... that skulls and bones.'
'And how much money do you get for skulls and bones?
'About seventy-five centavos a kilo.
There is a dumpster in front of Trancy's house that says 'Do-
nated to Olongapo city by the US navy'@ Another sign bears one of
the slogans of a former mayor. It reads, 'It's forbidden to be lazy in
this city.'
Some two hundred families live here in Pergasa. Chickens and

dogs and rats can be seen running about. A little girl walks through
the flattened cans and the bottle caps, dragging a plastic bag on a str-
ing or a sort of kite. She falls into the broken glass and ashes and
doesn't cry.
In the Pergasa, the houses are of wood, tin and cardboard boxes
that say things like 'This side up' or "Fragile'. There's a house with
a faded green 'Merry Christmas' sign, another that says "God bless
you". There is irony here for journalists, but there is no electricity or
basic services.
The US navy is in Olongapo because it is one of the @t naturally
protected harbors in the world. It is there because the Pentagon
thinks Subic Bay is essential to protecting US security interests in
Asia, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean. But whether the US will be
allowed to remain in Olongapo will eventually be decided by
Filipinos. In a national referendum promised by President Aquino,
they will be asking what kind of friend the US had been, if the bases
serve Philippines' security interests as well as very real human needs
of their country, if the income from the base offsets the damage done
to the structure of Philippine society and to Philippine sovereignty.
As this debate heats up, the United States faces a difficult task in
convincing people that its concerns extend beyond global issues of
security down to the very real everyday problems faced by ordinary
Filipinos. I'm Allen Burlow reporting.