Oil Embargo

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon announced yesterday that 33,102 reservists will be called to active duty to take part in the Yugoslav bombing campaign and immediately summoned more than 2,000 -- all of them Air Force Guard and Reserve -- to bolster NATO's campaign as it enters its second month.The initial increment of 2,106 pilots and crew members, along with 47 KC-135 Stratotanker refueling planes, comes from eight states and will be heading to European bases as soon as today, Pentagon officials said.

Supreme Court approval of the Bush-Clinton policy of forcing NTC Haitian refugees back to their native land without a hearing places a high moral obligation on this country. The U.S. has to make sure a United Nations oil embargo taking effect today will force Haiti's repressive military regime to its knees. The time for real pressure is now.For the first time, Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras, head of the illegal junta, has agreed to negotiate directly with Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's first popularly elected president, who was overthrown in September 1991 and sent into exile.

HAVANA -- The new U.S. economic sanctions aimed at bludgeoning President Fidel Castro will end up battering ordinary Cubans much more than the country's Communist leader, diplomats and Havana residents say.In an effort to deprive the Castro government of dollars at a time when the Cuban economy is in ruin, the Clinton administration last week banned Cuban-Americans from sending money to relatives here or bringing cash to them during visits to Havana.The...

The definitive verdict on American policy toward Iraq depends on what happens next -- or what doesn't happen next. If Saddam Hussein keeps his elite troops above the 32nd parallel and does not again threaten Kuwait, President Clinton comes out a winner in facing down the Baghdad dictator through swift redeployment of U.S. forces to the Persian Gulf. If the U.N. Security Council does not lift the oil embargo strangling the Iraqi economy until all U.S. demands are met, including some add-ons, this too can be interpreted as a triumph in the use of U.S. military might.

WASHINGTON - Top executives at American Airlines, United Airlines and 16 other carriers called on Congress to hold hearings on "soaring" fuel prices and said the government should consider releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to boost supply. "We are convinced that the only thing that will stop the wild increase in prices is fear by the speculators that the U.S. government is ready to step in," the chief executives wrote in a letter to Senate and House committees. The airlines estimate that they'll pay $6 billion more than last year for fuel at today's prices, even though the cost of production hasn't changed "measurably," they said in the letter.

Has OPEC infiltrated Congress? That sure would explain the latest energy bill. Make that the "anti-energy" bill. Both the Senate-approved version and the forthcoming House one are bad enough for what they contain. But they're worse for what they lack: even one drop of additional domestic oil. America remains the world's only oil-producing nation that has placed a significant amount of its reserves off limits. Yet the lawmakers behind these misguided "energy" bills seem more than happy to keep it that way. A recent Interior Department study estimates that 21 billion barrels of oil lie untapped beneath federally controlled lands, mostly in the West and Alaska.

NEW YORK -- U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said yesterday that "important progress" has been made toward persuading Libya to turn over two suspects wanted in the 1988 bombing of a Pan American flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, that killed 270 people.Annan's office issued the cautiously optimistic statement after Saudi Arabia and South Africa said in separate announcements that what South Africa called a "common understanding" had been reached by their envoys with Libyan leader Col. Muammar el Kadafi.

WASHINGTON -- In the tax legislation he submitted early this month, Rep. Bill Archer, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, proposed raising more than $4 billion in the next decade by trimming and eventually abolishing the federal tax subsidy for ethanol.Archer, a Texas Republican, even managed to win his committee's approval of the measure. But then it ran into snags.House Speaker Newt Gingrich spread the word that he would use his authority to have the changes in the tax treatment ofethanol deleted or at least significantly modified before the tax bill went before the full House of Representatives.

UNITED NATIONS -- Hardening its position toward Saddam Hussein's government, the Clinton administration wants to impose new requirements for lifting the United Nations ban on Iraqi oil exports.The United States is urging other members of the U.N. Security Council to insist that Baghdad recognize Kuwait as an independent country and stop persecuting dissident Kurds and Shiite Muslims.These conditions would be in addition to the Security Council's demands, made at the end of the Persian Gulf war, that Iraq disarm and let the United Nations monitor its military industries.

Gordon Jump, 71, the avuncular television actor best remembered as "the Big Guy" boss Arthur Carlson in the series WKRP in Cincinnati and as "Ol' Lonely," the hapless repairman with nothing to do on Maytag commercials, died Monday at his home in Orange County, Calif. He had pulmonary fibrosis, which causes scarring of the air sacs in the lungs, leading to heart or respiratory failure. Mr. Jump, who was the Maytag man in television and print ads, on billboards and at about 40 store openings and trade shows annually for 14 years, relinquished the role to character actor Hardy Rawls in July.