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News Summary:

*  Colorado Minor Parties Agree to Cooperate on Common Issues;
*  Germans Take Liberal Stance Towards Fischer's Past;
*  Green to Oversee Mad Cow Disease Task Force and Ag Dept.;
*  Two German Ministers Resign Over Mad Cow Debacle;
*  Nader Campaign Lives On at Penn State.



Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
                           The New York Times

                             View Related Topics

               January 15, 2001, Monday, Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section A; Page 11; Column 1; National Desk

LENGTH: 639 words

HEADLINE: Minor Parties in Colorado Agree to Cooperate

BYLINE:  By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

DATELINE: DENVER, Jan. 14

BODY:
Frustrated by their low profile around the state, Colorado's four minor
political
parties have agreed to combine their efforts and pool some of their
limited
resources to raise their visibility and get more of their candidates
elected.

During a meeting at the Denver Press Club on Saturday, representatives
from the
Green, Libertarian, Natural Law and Reform Parties, about two dozen
people in all,
approved plans for a coalition of party leaders that would focus on
mutually
beneficial activities like trying to gain access to debates, sharing
mailing lists and
publishing a newsletter.

Although third parties in other states have informally discussed helping
one
another, party leaders here say they know of no other state where four
of the
country's larger minor parties have come together to address mutual
problems.

"We're not competing against one another," Ronald N. Forthofer, a Green
Party
candidate who won 4 percent of the vote in Colorado's Second
Congressional
District last November, told the group. "The real enemies are
Republicans and
Democrats. They're the ones who have gotten us into the mess we're in
now. That's
why we have to collaborate to build third parties."

The participants conceded that working together had limitations, given
the policy
disagreements among them. No one suggested that the efforts would lead
to a
merger.

But national leaders applauded the collaboration.

"This is a good thing if it's limited to access, procedural and fairness
issues,"
Ralph Nader, the Greens' presidential candidate, said in an interview
from
Washington. "We each need each other's help here; we should do it on a
larger
scale."

Harry Browne, the Libertarian presidential candidate, who received less
than 0.5
percent of the vote, agreed, saying, "We could never merge
ideologically, but from
the national to the local level, we could cooperate on procedural
issues."

Kingsley Brooks, chairman of the Natural Law Party, took a longer view,
suggesting
that party leaders in some states might favor a merger in specific state
and
municipal elections as a way to improve their chances of winning.

"Everybody realizes that the one thing that unites us as third parties
is the real
stranglehold the duopoly of Republicans and Democrats has on the
system," Mr.
Brooks said. "The only way we can all make progress is to come
together."

At the presidential level, these are not robust times for third parties.
In the recent
election, George W. Bush and Al Gore combined for 96.27 percent of the
103
million votes cast, according to the Committee for the Study of the
American
Electorate. The most successful third-party candidate, Mr. Nader, drew
2.72
percent, a far cry from the 19 percent Ross Perot won as the Reform
Party
candidate in 1992. No other candidate in 2000 won as much as 0.5
percent.

Minor party candidates have fared much better in the state and local
races, even
winning some low-level elections in large places and high-level
elections in small
places. And those successes could spread, the party officials here said,
if they
could loosen the two major parties' political and financial grip on the
state and
national political system.

The meeting on Saturday, arranged by Victor A. Good, a member of the
Reform
Party and an also-ran in Colorado's Third Congressional District
election in
November, featured a free-flowing discussion of how to combat the power
of the
Republicans, the Democrats and the media outlets that virtually ignore
third parties.


The party leaders agreed to meet every two months or so and, at the next
session,
to discuss candidate training, fund-raising and publishing the
newsletter.

The meeting ended with what some participants viewed as the first
symbolic act of
their combined efforts: They passed around a hat to collect $100 to pay
for the
room.




Copyright 2001 The Financial Times Limited
                          Financial Times (London)

                  January 13, 2001, Saturday London Edition 1

SECTION: COMMENT & ANALYSIS; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 749 words

HEADLINE: COMMENT & ANALYSIS: The time to forgive and forget: Germany is
taking
a liberal stance on Joschka Fischer's radical activities of the 1970s,
says Ralph Atkins:

BYLINE: By RALPH ATKINS

BODY:
Aforeign minister in a large, industrialised nation admits he not only
demonstrated against the
Vietnam war but was also a militant who once attacked a policeman. In a
few days, he will
appear as a witness in a terrorism trial. But his government's leader is
unmoved, arguing that
the minister "never made a secret of his past". Most voters want him to
remain in office.

Where is this liberal haven? Not the US, where Linda Chavez withdrew
this week as George
W. Bush's nominee for labour secretary after helping an illegal
immigrant. It is modern,
law-abiding Germany, where crossing the road on a red signal earns an
admonishment.

Recent revelations about the youthful antics of Joschka Fischer,
Germany's foreign minister,
have shown how parts of the country, at least, are still influenced by
the radical leftwing and
anti- imperialistic student movement that exploded around the world
three decades ago - but
with particular force in Germany. It is not always comfortable for a
country still reconciling its
Nazi past: at the extreme, the urban movement encompassed the murderous
Red Army
Faction, whose victims included Alfred Herr-hausen, head of Deutsche
Bank.

That history will hover in the air when Mr Fischer takes to the witness
stand in a Frankfurt
court on Tuesday to give evidence in the trial of Hans-Joachim Klein,
accused of helping
Carlos the Jackal, the jailed guerrilla, to kidnap oil ministers of the
Organisation of Petroleum
Exporting Countries in Vienna in 1975.

The trial has provided the excuse for Germany's media to revisit the
1970s Frankfurt milieu of
the now 52-year-old Mr Fischer, the Green party's most successful
leader. Photographs
showed him aiming a blow at a policeman during a 1973 demonstration. In
Der Spiegel
magazine, the foreign minister admitted playing "an important, perhaps
central, role" in the
radical scene. But he denied being involved in extreme forms of violence
or throwing Molotov
cocktails.

It has all been fodder for the press. But why is the sense of outrage
limited? One reason is the
passage of time. Gerhard Schroder, the Social Democratic chancellor,
argues that Mr Fischer
has apologised and shown "how he has developed out of the (Frankfurt)
scene". More
crucially, his ministerial work has proved "that the criticism heard
here and there is unjustified".

An Emnid Institute poll showed 72 per cent of Germans thought Mr Fischer
should remain,
despite some opposition calls for him to step down. "These things
happened so long ago that
they play little role," says Melanie Schneider, Emnid researcher.

The passing years, however, are not the only reason. Mr Fischer has won
official support
largely because Germany's establishment comprises politicians reared in
the same 1970s
atmosphere as the foreign minister. Mr Schroder headed the radical Young
Socialists in the late
1970s and, as he told Stern magazine this week, was "involved in the
planning of the
revolution, albeit a social democratic revolu tion". Hans Eichel,
finance minister, was also a
Young Socialist leader. Otto Schily, interior minister, defended Faction
terrorists in court.

Karsten Voigt, Young Socialist leader before Mr Schroder, argues that,
despite its ugly side,
many Germans see the protest movement as having served an important
role, "by making
German society more democratic". It was a time of dictatorships in Spain
and Greece, and the
Vietnam war. There was anger at the silence over the Nazi period and
fear of an authoritarian
state. "Many of my age were worried German democracy was not stable. Now
I'm convinced
that it is," says Mr Voigt, who today heads German-US relations at the
Berlin foreign office.

Hans-Christian Strobele, the Green MP who as lawyer defended many
demonstrators, says
the 1970s were vital for Germany's development. "Without this strong
movement Germany
would be an encrusted, conservative state with, perhaps, a lot more
rightwing extremism.
Perhaps in the US that process was not so necessary."

Today Mr Fischer wears three-piece suits and in 1999 he supported Nato's
bombing
campaign in Kosovo. The transformation seems to have gone down well:
Michael Schwelien,
his bio-grapher, argues that sympathy for so-called 68ers in senior
official positions extends
even to those Germans in their 70s and 80s - those who would have been
the target of the
protesters' vehemence. "They are happy that the 'bad kids' have come
back, that they've cut
their hair and now wear decent clothes."




Copyright 2001 The Financial Times Limited
                          Financial Times (London)

                  January 11, 2001, Thursday London Edition 1

SECTION: WORLD NEWS - EUROPE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 581 words

HEADLINE: WORLD NEWS - EUROPE: Schroder sets up new ministry to protect
consumers 'MAD COW' DISEASE POWERFUL TEAM WILL OVERSEE GERMAN
AGRICULTURAL REFORMS IN THE WAKE OF BSE CRISIS:

BYLINE: By RALPH ATKINS and TOBIAS BUCK

DATELINE: BERLIN

BODY:
Gerhard Schroder, the German chancellor, yesterday created a powerful
consumer protection
ministry, headed by a Green minister, to oversee fundamental
agricultural reform following the
crisis over BSE, or mad cow disease.

The appointment of Renate Kunast, Green party co-chairman, to the new
super ministry
presaged an attempt by Berlin to reorientate the country's agriculture
sector towards ecological
farming. But it could herald a conflict with Germany's vocal farm lobby,
and possibly clashes
with European partners.

"The German farming association has to accept that its influence is
going to be shaved away -
but that's necessary to implement change," Mr Schroder said. The BSE
crisis demanded the
reversal of practices dating back decades and "a new politics that
stands for consumer
protection, improved food safety and natural, environmental-friendly
farming".

Brussels officials said Ms Kunast's appointment, which followed the
unprecedented resignation
of two cabinet ministers on Tuesday, would help push European policy in
the same direction.

The chancellor's clear endorsement of environmental farming and
appointment of Ms Kunast to
an enhanced ministry significantly boosted the small Green party in his
cabinet after two years
in office in which its role has often been marginalised.

His decisions, announced after a late night emergency meeting of leaders
of his Social
Democratic-Green coalition, appeared to have restored stability to the
government. But Mr
Schroder remains bruised by the weaknesses shown in the run-up to
Tuesday's resignations of
the Green politician Andrea Fischer as health minister, and Karl-Heinz
Funke, as agriculture
minister.

Government officials argued Mr Schroder had been dissatisfied for some
time with the bungled
response of both ministers following the discovery of Germany's first
case of BSE on
November 24. German consumers' near-hysteria has led to the collapse of
the country's beef
market.

Ms Kunast's new ministry will combine previous responsibilities of the
agricultural ministry with
consumer protection departments switched from the health and economics
ministries. The new
minister, who unlike Mr Funke has no experience of the agricultural
sector, dubbed her new
department the "consumer safety ministry".

In her first remarks, Ms Kunast set as her goals restoring consumer
confidence, securing the
farming industry's future and the switch to natural agricultural
production. Her ministry is
expected to argue that public subsidies should be directed solely at
ecologically friendly
production - not methods that might endanger consumers.

However, her influence may be limited by the division of
responsibilities between Germany's
federal government and the 16 Lander or state administrations, as well
as resistance from the
farm lobby. Gerd Sonnleitner, president of the German farmers
association, said: "Future
agricultural policy can't be shaped by ideology but by the situation in
farmyards and markets."

As successor to Ms Fischer at the health ministry, Mr Schroder named
Ulla Schmidt, a deputy
chairman of his Social Democratic party's parliamentary wing.

To compensate Werner Muller, the economics minister, for the loss of
some of his
department's responsibilities, the chancellor said the ministry would
take an enhanced role in
supporting Germany's Mittelstand - the mainly family-owned businesses
which were largely
responsible for building the country's post-war wealth.




Copyright 2001 / Los Angeles Times
                             Los Angeles Times

                             View Related Topics

                January 10, 2001, Wednesday, Home Edition

SECTION: Part A; Part 1; Page 4; Foreign Desk

LENGTH: 959 words

HEADLINE: 2 GERMAN MINISTERS ARE FORCED TO RESIGN OVER 'MAD
COW' CRISIS;
HEALTH: THE DEPARTURES ARE UNLIKELY TO EASE THE PUBLIC'S
NEAR-HYSTERIA ABOUT THE OUTBREAK. NO CASES IN THE NATION HAVE
BEEN LINKED TO ILLNESS IN HUMANS.

BYLINE: CAROL J. WILLIAMS, TIMES STAFF WRITER


DATELINE: BERLIN

BODY:
Germany's "mad cow" crisis felled its first victims Tuesday, as Health
Minister
Andrea Fischer and Agriculture Minister Karl-Heinz Funke were forced to
resign for
failing to halt the spread of the disease to this country after at least
80 people had
died of it across Europe.

None of the recent cases discovered here has yet been linked to illness
in humans,
but the shocking revelations that Germany is tainted after years of
official
assurances to the contrary have shaken public faith in government and in
the purity
of some of the nation's favorite foods.

The departures of Fischer, a member of the environmentalist Greens
party, and
Funke, from Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats, are likely
to do
little to ease the near-hysteria among the public about the outbreak of
bovine
spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. In fact, the resignations only
spotlighted the
crisis of confidence afflicting a government that had until recently
been basking in
popular support for bringing down double-digit unemployment rates and
reforming
ossified tax and pension systems.

But those pocketbook issues pale by comparison with the reverence
Germans
reserve for their hearty cuisine, and although pork is more prevalent in
the hundreds
of sausage types beloved by consumers, there has long been a place at
the table
for beef roasts and stews as well. However, even the most popular
sausages have
suffered sales tailspins since Fischer and others warned that some
brands might
contain beef filler culled from the backbones of slaughtered cattle--the
means by
which BSE is thought to jump the food chain from cows to humans.

At a news conference called after working hours to announce that she had

resigned, Fischer made clear that she had been sacrificed in an attempt
to calm
the political storm that has been disrupting the country since the first
BSE-infected
cow was discovered in Germany six weeks ago.

"It certainly seems bizarre to me and my party that a Greens politician
is the first
made accountable for the catastrophe of industrialized agriculture,"
Fischer said in
a voice choked with bitterness and threatening tears.

The Greens have long advocated organic and traditional farming practices
in
contrast to factory-like efforts--widely seen as cruel to livestock and
unsanitary--to
salvage bone meal and other animal scraps for mixing with fodder.

Although scientists are still researching the connections between
BSE-infected
meat and the human form of the malady, "new variant" Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease,
suspicions have focused on the animal products added to feed grain that
are
mechanically culled from the backbones of slaughtered cattle.

Funke, whose resignation was announced by Schroeder's office after
Fischer
made her own departure public, had defended the supplementing of feed
with
ground-up organs and bone meal from cattle--a common practice among feed

producers in Germany even after researchers began linking the animal
additives to
BSE risks. European Union health and consumer affairs officials had also
criticized
the 54-year-old Funke, a farmer himself, for failing to heed warnings
that Germany
was likely to be affected by the BSE outbreak along with Britain and
France.

Since the first two of Germany's nine BSE cases were reported Nov. 24,
the
government has implemented mandatory testing of all beef cattle older
than 30
months at the time of slaughter. Infected animals exposed by what until
last month
was random sampling have been destroyed, as have other cows of the same
herds, but testing remains limited to beef cattle even though animal
parts have also
been added for years to feed for poultry and other livestock.

At an emergency session of Parliament's health and agriculture
committees Friday,
Fischer had urged the leadership to extend mandatory BSE testing to
cattle as
young as 24 months, after the discovery of Germany's seventh infected
cow--a
28-month-old in the biggest farming state, Bavaria. Funke used the
session to urge
lawmakers to push for an EU-wide ban on feed that includes animal parts,
for
tougher food safety inspections and for more government money for
research and
experiments in organic farming.

Germans and many other Europeans have responded to the crisis by
forsaking
beef in dramatic fashion. Even in neighboring Poland, where there has
yet to be a
single BSE case reported, beef sales are down as much as 50% in most
stores. In
Italy, restaurateurs have been seeking to assure patrons that their meat
entrees are
BSE-free on the strength of the fact that no Italian cattle have yet
been found with
the disease. Throughout Europe, food industries dependent on beef sales,
like the
McDonald's hamburger chain, have been touting 100% pork alternatives
like the
new "McFarmer" sandwich.

Most of the 80 deaths tied to BSE have occurred in Britain, where the
mad cow
scare began in earnest about four years ago. But human infections of the
fatal
disease that destroys the brain have more recently been discovered in
France,
where dozens of cases of BSE were found in livestock last year and
triggered
public outcries and a crisis in the meat industry. Five cases of
infected livestock
have also been discovered in Spain recently, and Danish authorities
reported their
third tainted cow just a few hours before the political fallout hit
Germany.

There was no immediate word on who would replace either Fischer or
Funke,
although the environment minister for North Rhine-Westphalia, Baerbel
Hoehn, and
Deputy Agriculture Minister Martin Wille were most often mentioned by
political
commentators as likely choices.




Copyright 2001 Daily Collegian via U-Wire
                              University Wire

                             January 9, 2001

LENGTH: 360 words

HEADLINE: Nader campaign lives on in chalk etchings at Penn State U.

BYLINE: By Daryl Lang, Daily Collegian

SOURCE: Pennsylvania State U.

DATELINE: University Park, Pa.

BODY:
Ralph Nader may have vanished from the political scene, but his name
won't vanish from the
surface of Old Main.

Look closely. Two months after Election Day, the name of the Green
Party's presidential
candidate remains etched on the columns of Pennsylvania State
University's administration
building in big block letters: "N-A-D-E-R-!".

Efforts to erase it have exacerbated the problem.

"The cleaning solution that we used actually cleaned the columns so that
you can still see the
words," said Phillip Melnick, assistant director of operations for the
Office of Physical Plant.

The writing was tied into an effort by the Campus Greens to get students
to vote. Just before
Election Day, supporters wrote Nader's name on sidewalks and surfaces
around campus in
green chalk.

"I bought the chalk," confessed Will Donovan III (senior-letters, arts
and sciences), founder of
the Penn State Campus Greens.

Donovan said about five other students did the actual chalking, and that
writing on Old Main
was a spontaneous decision.

"That wasn't a plan; that just happened," he said.

Curiously, the thing that has made the cleaning such a pain is something
that Green Party
members despise: air pollution.

The Old Main pillars are made of a natural stone material that has
gotten stained over time,
Melnick said.

"Anytime they're out in the environment, they're going to absorb
pollution and dirt," he said.

Twice, OPP crews have tried to clean the letters off the front of the
building, Melnick said. The
pillars took on a bleached look after workers scrubbed them with a
cleaning solution.

OPP reported the damage to Penn State Police Services. Melnick said he
is waiting for
warmer weather before deciding what to do next.

The answer may be a thorough bath for all the columns.

"We're not sure how far we're going to have to go with it," Melnick
said. "We may have to go
the whole height of the column."

Donovan said he was glad that the word Nader had lasted so long, and
seemed pleased that
the pollution might be scrubbed from the pillars.

"We're Greens, we tend to like to have things cleaned up," he said.



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