Nation & world briefing
U.S. backs off demand
for U.N. war resolution j
Diego Ibarguen
and Warren P. Strobel
Knight Ridder Newspapers (KRT)
WASHINGTON — In an effort to
win U.N. Security Council support, the
United States is backing down from its
demands that a new U.N. resolution
must authorize military force against
Iraq if Baghdad does not abide by new
weapons inspections rules.
The new U.S. approach could de
lay, possibly significantly, the Penta
gon’s timetable for war, both because
of the time it would take for inspec
tors to do their work, and for the
diplomatic process should the in
spection effort fail.
The U.S. retreat suggests that the
Bush administration is anxious to
preserve a multilateral approach to
Iraq, as Secretary of State Colin Pow
ell lias advocated, rather than risk g< >
ing it alone, the course favored by
Vice President Cheney and Defense
Secretary Donald II. Rumsfeld.
Under compromise language put
forward by the United States, Iraq
would face unspecified serious con
sequences if it failed to comply with
stiff requirements for the new U.N.
inspections regime.
But, in a major change of approach
demanded by France, Iraqi noncom
pliance would not automatically give
the United States a green light to
launch an invasion and oust Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein, several
Western diplomats said.
Instead, the U.N. Security Council
would hold additional meetings and
perhaps pass a new resolution au
thorizing the use of force.
It remains unclear whether Bush
could or would launch military action
while U.N. diplomats are debating.
One U.S. official said the proposal
would not limit the United States
from acting on its own, noting that
the wording of the resolution would
make it “quite clear that the Council
h#thdo nothing more.”
But a European diplomat in New
York called it unlikely. “I don’t see them
going (to war) by themselves in the
middle of these two steps. That d< Hasn't
make sense,” said the diplomat, who
spoke on condition of anonymi ty.
France’s initial reaction to the U.S.
concession was positive suggesting
agreement on the new approach to
Iraq could come soon.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov
welcomed the new proposal and said
Powell told him it would be formally
submitted soon. “We believe that there
are favorable conditions now to pre
serve the unity of the global communi
ty and ensure the return of internation
al inspectors and their efficient work in
Iraq,” Ivanov said in Moscow.
Ambassadors from the five perma
nent members of the U.N. Security
Council — the United States, China,
Russia, Britain and France—were to
meet Friday in New York to hammer
out a final deal, before sharing the
document with the council’s 10 non
permanent members.
“Everything should go quickly
now,” the European diplomat said.
U.S. officials portrayed the out
come as a victory for their demand
that Iraq submit to unfettered in
to eliminate its nuclear,
weapons or
mi
Information Services.
Scientists find new
incur
David Perlman
San Francisco Chronicle Kill4
Charles Townes, the University of
Califomia-Berkeley Nobel Prize physi
cist, was flying at 41,000 feet aboard a
NASA plane 20 years ago, on the hunt
for evidence that a monstrously pow
erful black hole was lurking in the
heart of the Milky Way galaxy.
With him on those flights was his
German postdoctoral student, Rein
hard Genzel, and a team of other sci
entists trying to discover whether the
invisible object was gulping entire stars
and cosmic gases under the tug of its
own irresistible gravity.
If that “supermassive” black hole
did exist, Townes and Genzel knew, it
would provide an extraordinary op
portunity to study the dynamics of
gravitational forces and the behavior
of matter under those immense pres
sures, and could also help clarify many
aspects of Albert Einstein’s theory of
general relativity.
Thursday, Genzel, together with
more than 20 other astronomers
and physicists, are reporting they
have finally found the strongest evi
dence yet that indeed a dense black
hole, more than 3 million times as
massive as our sun, does exist at the
center of the Milky Way.
After tracking the paths of several
stars in the vicinity of the presumed
black hole for the past 10 years, Gen
zel’s team discovered last spring that
at least one bright star is clearly
hurtling in an orbit that could ulti
mately end in the star’s violent death
within the black hole.
“It was one of those ‘wow’ experi
ences you rarely have as a scientist,
but which makes being a researcher so
rewarding,” said Genzel, now a profes
sor at the Max Planck Institute for Ex
traterrestrial Physics in Germany, but
who spends a quarter of each year as a
physics professor at Berkeley. His
group’s discovery is being reported in
- Lecture 5eries -
^)\xty Years of Asian Studies at the
(Jniversittj of Oregon: 19+2—2002
“~phe (Jnited States in Kprea, 19+^~2002:
An jnejuiry into f"i (story and Memory”
Bruce Cumings, Norman and Edna Freehling Professor of History,
University of Chicago
Friday, October 18, 2002, 4:00 p.m. (Reception to follow)
Willamette Hall, Room 110
This lecture series is cosponsored by the Asian Studies Program and
the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies. Generous funding has been
provided by Admiral David E. Jeremiah and Mrs. Connie Jeremiah.
For more information, call (541) 346-1521 or visit our website at www.uoregon.edu/~caps.
o
UNIVERSITY OF OREGON
Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.
The star appears to be speeding
around the black hole at more
than 3,000 miles a second at a dis
tance roughly equal to the diame
ter of Earth’s solar system, he said.
It will take about 15.2 years to
complete its current orbit.
The mystery object at the very
center of the Milky Way, surrounded
by bursts of radio noise, is known as
SgA because it appears to lie in the
southern hemisphere constellation
Sagittarius (“The Archer”).
Although such black holes have
long been suspected in the centers of
many other far-off galaxies, the exis
tence of a “supermassive” black hole
in our own Milky Way has been high
ly controversial. But this new evi
dence from Genzel’s group “makes it
very difficult for anyone to say it’s not
a black hole, and the doubters will
now have to give up their doubts,”
Townes said.
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