Word: convoys
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Wednesday, 12:15 p.m., Kosovo. An armored van carrying Holbrooke stops along a one-lane dirt road just south of the hamlet of Istinic. Rusted farm implements obstruct traffic, one of many barricades K.L.A. insurgents have set up. U.S. security agents scan the surrounding forest, fearing that the halted convoy may become a target for stray gunfire. Holbrooke orders the vehicles to head back to the town of Decane, which Serb forces burned last month. Coming through the town earlier, the convoy passed deserted buildings, but in the town's center, two dozen people sat at an open-air cafe...
...calls flew between Treasury and Tokyo's Finance Ministry. In close consultation with Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Rubin pushed Finance Minister Hikaru Matsunaga to deregulate his economy and jump-start it with permanent tax cuts. Especially important to Rubin was a Japanese pledge to abandon its so-called convoy system, whereby strong banks must support weaker ones no matter what their financial condition. Convoying has left the banking system as a whole with some $600 billion in bad debt. The question was what the Clinton Administration was prepared to do in exchange for fast Japanese action...
...then somberly replied that intervention by itself would accomplish little. What really mattered was concrete Japanese actions. He headed back to Treasury. At 9 p.m., a Rubin aide called the White House. After more talks, Japanese Finance Minister Matsunaga had outlined specific actions, including a promise to end the convoy system. Rubin okayed...
...quite. The unwieldy convoy hardly constitutes a rapid response team, and Iraqi officials had been notified of the inspection ahead of time. UNSCOM is keeping its expectations low for these early ?baseline? visits. Whether they will turn up anything in future trips remains to be seen. More important to Iraq is how many trips it will take before Baghdad is granted a clean bill of health. One crumb of comfort for the Iraqis: Richard Butler, the belligerent UNSCOM chief, is being rotated out as the inspections begin...
...photographed violence and war close up from El Salvador to Chechnya, but one of my nearest brushes with death came in South Africa during Nelson Mandela's 1994 presidential campaign. A large convoy of militant, ultra-right-wing Afrikaners had invaded the tribal homeland of Bophuthatswana to prop up the last vestiges of minority rule. Two colleagues and I were approaching a convoy of Afrikaners shooting at civilians when our car was fired on. We drove away--only to run into a fire fight between the Afrikaners and the Bophuthatswana army. We took cover behind our car. About 30 yards...