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World News Yugoslavia rejects deployment of foreign troops By Jovana Gee The Associated Press BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — President Slobodan Milosevic de fied a renewed threat of NATO at tacks Tuesday, rejecting deploy ment of foreign troops in Kosovo to police a peace deal. In a statement issued after a meeting with U.S. envoy Christo pher Hill, Milosevic said “our neg ative stand about the presence of foreign troops is not only the atti tude of the leadership, but also of all citizens of our country.” Deployment of an international force to grant a peace agreement in Kosovo is a key issue at the ongo ing peace conference in Ram bouillet, France. The Serb delegation at the talks has repeatedly rejected the idea of foreign deployment and has re mained the only obstacle at the conference. Hill was dispatched to Belgrade after U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright telephoned Milosevic to warn him to accept the peace deal, including the troops de ployment or face NATO strikes. Milosevic said two key issues for the Serbs in the Kosovo talks are the respect of Serbia’s and Yu goslavia’s borders. Western sources at the talks said Hill traveled to Belgrade with the toughest possible warning to Milosevic — that if no agreement is reached by the noon Saturday deadline, he would suffer NATO bombardment. Albright visited the talks over the weekend and was sharply crit ical of the Serb side, blaming the lack of progress main ly on them. International mediators, led by the United States, have brought Serbs and ethnic Albanians to the negotiating table in France to end a conflict that has cost an estimat ed 2,000 lives and driven hun dreds of thousands from their homes in Kosovo, located in southern Serbia, the dominant of two republics in Yugoslavia. Sources close to the talks, speak ing on condition of anonymity, say there is little actual negotiating go ing on. Delegates, rather, are only making minor changes to a largely take-it-or-leave-it American deal. Serbian President Milan Miluti novic, the leader of the Serbian del egation at the talks, said Monday that everything in the proposed peace agreement was negotiable ex cept the question of foreign troops. The Serbs were counting on Russia to back up their position, but on Tuesday, Russian officials did not block the plan to send NATO-led troops as expected. A NATO source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Russians have told the 16-nation military alliance they are willing to go along with a NATO deploy ment as part of a three-year inter im peace deal in Kosovo, where 90 percent of the 2 million inhabi tants are ethnic Albanian. Milosevic’s statement makes it unclear if any peace deal is likely in France. U.S. negotiators also want Serbia to withdraw most of its troops from Kosovo and set up elections to clear the way for some autonomy for ethnic Albanians. Meanwhile, NATO military planning for deployment is virtu ally complete. Advance troops could be in place in Kosovo in a matter of hours with 6,000 to 8,000 more troops quickly following, officials said. The first forces to arrive will probably be 2,200 U.S. Marines currently in the Mediterranean. Plans for the deployment of the main 28,000-man force are expect ed to be finished by the end of the week. Any American peacekeepers sent to Kosovo would remain until a system of self-rule is "up and running” and stability is restored, the Clinton administration said Tuesday. However, other admin istration officials said the aim is to get the job done within three years. In Kosovo, Andy Holmes of the Organization for Security and Co operation in Europe said there was “tit-for-tat firing” and “small ongoing bursts” of fighting in the area during the past few days. The Serbian Media Center said rebel snipers shot and wounded a Serb policeman Tuesday near the village of Lapusnik, 15 miles west of Kosovo’s capital, Pristina. Rebels also claimed Yugoslav army troops fired at them near La pastica, 20 miles north of Pristina. Government produces video to rebut Microsoft claims By Ted Bridis The Associated Press WASHINGTON — Turning from video critic to producer, the government played its own courtroom demonstration Tuesday in an attempt to show that Microsoft Corp. made it complicated for customers of the world's largest Internet provider to use a ri val’s software. Even U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson appeared perplexed about part of the process to download and separately in stall the rival software using America On line, confessing to "a conceptual problem. ” Microsoft’s video, shown to the judge last week, skipped over parts of the process “to save time.” The company said it took a total of 10 minutes. But the government said Tuesday the pro cedure could take more than an hour, de pending on the speed of the Internet con nection, and isn’t obvious for most comput er users. “It’s not nearly as easy as their video por trayed it to be,” Justice Department lawyer David Boies said outside court. It was third Microsoft video challenged by government lawyers. Boies also introduced an e-mail from Mi crosoft executives to Chairman Bill Gates in March 1990 describing a meeting with In tuit Inc., maker of the world’s most popular personal finance software. In the e-mail, an executive told Gates he proposed to Intuit: “We’d rather not com pete with you. Instead of growing the mar ket, we’d just both spend a lot of money fighting each other.” The executive concluded to Gates: “If they were listening carefully, this could have been interpreted as a chance to avoid competition with us.” Boies asked Microsoft's witness, execu tive Brad Chase, about the e-mail, but Chase said he knew nothing about it. The judge or dered Boies to ‘‘move on,” and the matter was dropped. Outsid^ court, Microsoft bristled at the use of an e-mail nearly a decade old. As part of its antitrust case, the govern ment contends Microsoft Corp. imposed il legal restrictions on America Online Inc. as part of a 1996 deal for AOL to distribute Mi crosoft’s Internet software to its millions of subscribers. Chase helped negotiate the deal. The restrictions prevent AOL from ac tively promoting rival Internet browser soft ware from Netscape Communications Corp. and prohibit AOL from distributing Netscape’s browser to more than 15 percent of its customers. AOL, which is buying Netscape for $4.3 billion, has more than 16 million sub scribers, far more than any other service. Its agreement to distribute Microsoft’s browser lasts until January 2001. Microsoft denies government claims that it wields its enormous influence to coerce other companies into accepting restrictive agreements. Chase acknowledged that AOL’s agree ment includes “limitations on their ability to promote Netscape” but asserted that more than one in five AOL subscribers actu ally used Netscape’s browser. Microsoft’s next witness, a senior execu tive for Compaq Computer Corp., is trying to undermine the government’s portrayal of computer makers as victims of an overzeal ous Microsoft. Japan moves to lower interest rates to restore economy By Martin Fackler The Associated Press TOKYO — Fearing that higher borrowing costs could choke off business activity, Japan moved again Tuesday to lower interest rates in the latest effort to repair damage to the world’s second largest economy. Finance Minister Kiichi Miyaza wa announced that the govern ment would cut back its sales of 10 year bonds by about 22 percent, making up some of the difference with sales of bonds with shorter maturities. The government also said that an agency that manages public pension funds would re sume buying government bonds. “These steps should have a posi tive impact on long-term interest rates,” Miyazawa said. The twin announcements were aimed at reversing a sharp decline in Japanese government bond prices that had forced benchmark interest rates higher, threatening to further cramp economic growth. The moves came on the same day as the Economic Planning Agency reported the economy re mains distressed and followed a cut Friday in a key short-term in terest rate by the Bank of Japan, the country’s central bank. Financial markets cheered the government’s efforts to rein in in terest rates. The main Japanese stock index rose 1.3 percent and the price of the 10-year govern ment bond soared, pushing its yield down to 1.99 percent from 2.14 percent late Monday. U.S. markets also rallied. Yields on 30-year U.S. government bonds, a barometer for long-term borrowing costs for consumers and business, tumbled to 5.39 percent Tuesday afternoon from 5.42 per cent on Friday, and stocks and the dollar followed bonds higher. U.S. markets were closed Monday for the Presidents Day holiday. The United States has been urg ing Japan to shore up its economy as a way to help pull weaker Asian nations out of their own economic slump. Without Japanese banks lending in Asia or Japanese con sumers buying Asian goods, many fear that the region may take even longer to recover. In the latest sign that Japan’s economic troubles run deep, the * government’s main economic fore casting unit, the Economic Plan ning Agency, issued a report Tues day saying the outlook for Japan remains bleak despite scattered signs of improvement. In its February report on the economy, the agency pointed to the lack of improvement in consumer spending, which continues to shrink as workers become increas ingly frugal due to falling wages and record-high unemployment. Weak domestic demand has put the Japanese economy in an “extreme ly severe” state, the agency said. Burton • Santa Cruz Morrow • Rossignol Airwalk • Switch Salomon • K2 osr YOUR SNOWBOARDING HEADQUARTERS 13th & Lawrence • Eugene • 683-1300 This paper can be Recycled! 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