American reporter Nicholas Daniloff is in Frankfurt, West Germany, on his way home from Moscow after being detained for a month on espionage charges. President Reagan in Kansas City on a campaign swing announced Daniloff's release, denying that any trade had been agreed to in order to win his freedom. Asked by reporters if he blinked in staring down Soviet leader Gorbachev over the Daniloff affair, the President said they blinked. The agreement to release Daniloff came after a three-hour meeting last night in New York between Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. No details of the agreement have been released, and it is not known if Daniloff's freedom is the first step in a trade involving accused Soviet spy Gennadi Zakharov. When he arrived in Frankfurt, Daniloff thanked President Reagan, Secretary of State Shultz, and other US officials for "dotting all the i's and crossing the t's" that permitted him to be in Frankfurt tonight.
The House of Representatives is expected to vote soon to override President Reagan's veto of a bill imposing economic sanctions against South Africa. NPR's Cokie Roberts reports that the President has promised to expand economic sanctions on his own in hopes of getting Congress to sustain his veto. "Both houses of Congress passed the economic sanctions against South Africa by wide enough margins to override a presidential veto. And it's expected the House will easily garner the two-thirds vote necessary for override. So it's in the Senate the President is concentrating his efforts. Today President Reagan sent a long letter to majority leader Robert Dole, restating his opposition to 'punitive sanctions that harm the victims of apartheid.' The letter went on to outline an executive order the President plans to sign which would impose some but not all of the sanctions passed by Congress. For example, there'd be a ban on some new investments in South Africa, but not all and a ban on some imports from South Africa, but not as many as called for by Congress. The President hopes the executive order will win over the fourteen additional senators he needs to sustain his veto. The Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said today that Congress would simply come back next year with tougher sanctions if the veto is sustained. I'm Cokie Roberts at the Capitol."
American reporter Nicholas Daniloff was freed today in Moscow. He flew into Frankfurt, West Germany this afternoon and spoke with reporters gathered at the airport.
"It's wonderful to be back in the West. I think it's obvious to everybody what has happened over this last month. I was arrested without an arrest warrant. A case was fabricated against me with a narrow political purpose of giving the Soviet Union some political leverage over the case of Gennadi Zakharov in New York. The KGB did not punish me; the KGB punished itself. I cannot tell you anything about any other arrangements. All I know is that I am free in the West, very grateful, delighted to see you." Nicholas Daniloff.
When Daniloff left the Soviet Union today he had been detained there for thirty-one days, facing a possible trial on espionage charges. Daniloff left Moscow only hours after Secretary of State Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Shevardnadze met last night in New York in the latest of four negotiating sessions concerning the fate of the American journalist. But so far no details have emerged about the arrangements that brought Daniloff his freedom. NPR's Mike Shuster has more from New York.
Reporters in Moscow who had been staking out the American Embassy there first got wind this morning that Daniloff might be released, after he left the Embassy in a car and flashed the "V for Victory" sign. Apparently Daniloff was simply informed that he could leave, and his passport was returned to him. He was then taken to the airport along with his wife, and soon thereafter boarded a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, West Germany. The official American announcement of his release came from President Reagan mid-day today as he was campaigning in Kansas City, Missouri.
"I have something of a news announcement I would like to make, that in case you haven't heard it already, that at twelve o'clock, twelve o'clock Central time, a Lufthansa Airliner, left Moscow bound for Frankfurt West Germany, and on board are Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Daniloff."
So far though neither the White House nor the State Department has said anything about the specific agreements that ended the negotiations on Daniloff. And lacking any fuller explanation from the government, many questions remain. First, what will happen to the Russian scientist Gennadi Zakharov whose arrest last month in New York for spying led to Daniloff's detention? No date has been set for Zakharov's trial in Brooklyn, and a representative of the Justice Department in Brooklyn said today the US attorney there was waiting for instructions on the handling of Zakharov's case. There have been suggestions that Zakharov might be returned to the Soviet Union at a later date in exchange for one or more jailed Soviet dissidents. There is also the question of the American decision to expel twenty-five Soviet personnel from their United Nations Mission here. Several have already left New York and the deadline for the expulsion of the rest is Wednesday. The Soviets have threatened to retaliate if the order is not rescinded. There is no word whether the agreement that freed Daniloff includes anything on the twenty-five Soviets, which naturally leads to the final question: Has Daniloff's release today brought the United States and the Soviet Union any closer to a summit meeting? Secretaqry Shultz has said that a summit could not take place without Daniloff gaining his freedom. That has now been removed as an impediment to a summit, but the Soviets have called the Zakharov case and the matter of the twenty-five Soviet diplomats obstacles to a summit as well. Until the details are made public of the agreement Shultz and Shevardnadze worked out, it will not be known what the prospects for a summit truly are. This is Mike Shuster in New York.
One year ago this month, a powerful earthquake in Mexico City killed more than nine thousand people. Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs because of the massive damage. Among those hardest hit by the quake were women garment workers, who worked in sweatshops concentrated in the heart of Mexico City. One year after the earthquake, Lucie Conger reports that some of the forty thousand seamstresses who lost their jobs are changing their attitudes about work.
On the fifth floor of a small office building in the heart of downtown, some thirty garment workers are back at work. Just as before the earthquake they're working on an assembly line. Each woman is specialized in one operation, like sewing cuffs or putting buttonholes on a fancy cocktail dress. But there the similarities with their past work end. The women here on Uruguay Street are running their own cooperative with machines they got from their former employer in a settlement when he closed his factory which was damaged by the earthquake. About fifteen groups of women have former cooperatives, setting up shop with equipment they received instead of an indemnification when factory owners shut down their former places of work. Running their own business has meant big changes for these women. All thirty-five women in this cooperative agree that they prefer working without a boss looking over their shoulder. For Juana Arias, who used to cut patterns for dresses, not having a boss has given her the chance to develop new skills.
"Well, sometimes it's my job to solve some problems. I decide when to buy things. For example, when we run out of thread and needles, that's my job to decide on things that are needed."
At the same time, since they set up the cooperative five months ago, the women have had the chance to realize that the old system of working for the patron or boss man had its good points. At the cooperative, the women only get paid when they complete a factory order. Last Friday came and went without a pay-check. Their income is low now, because they're assembling dresses instead of earning more by producing ready-made dresses of their own design. There are other concerns as well. While the seamstresses are grateful for the loans and technical assistance that they're getting from a Catholic church foundation, they worry about repaying the loans and keeping up with operation expenses like rent and phone bills. And leaving behind the tradition of having a boss is a difficult transition for Mexican women who are accustomed from childhood to responding to male authority figures. Paula Socer, a leader at another seamstresses' cooperative.
"They don't like us to tell them what to do. Since we are all owners, they think that we each can do what we want."
Other garment workers are still working under the patron. But after the earthquake, many of the women began to question their position at work when they saw some factory owners moving more quickly to salvage machinery and cash boxes than to rescue trapped workers. Dramatic events like these moved some four thousand seamstresses to join the September 19th Garment Worker's Union. The women blocked traffic and marched to the presidential palace before getting official recognition as an independent union not forced to affiliate with the ruling party. Through the union, the seamstresses are demanding that factory owners respect the law by giving overtime pay for extra work, allowing workers to take vacation, and providing standard benefits. So far, nine factory owners have signed agreements with the union to guarantee workers' rights. But the union continues to face hurdles. Maria Hernandez worked in an illegal, clandestine sweatshop before the earthquake and is now press chief for the union.
"The bosses and the soldout unions are always pressuring the women who work here, threatening them, saying that they're going to close down the business, but that if they continue to organize, one day something is going to happen to their family. And then they start firing people. They offer them money to turn in the ones who are organizing, to tell them who the leaders are."
Manuela Purras is a seamstress who was fired in May for organizing the thirty-five women at the factory where she had worked for thirteen years. Today she's operating a small business on the edge of the empty paved lot where the union has its offices in temporary quarters provided by the municipal government. Here, alongside a busy thoroughfare, Manuela spends her days cooking tacos and selling them to passers-by to make a living until she can go back to work. The union is fighting to get Manuela and her co-workers reinstated in their jobs. Manuela Purras:
"We've joined the union mostly because we want to see improvements in our working conditions. I think that it will help us. Well, economically it is helping us, and legally too, because at least until now it's not one of those soldout unions."
The garment workers still have an uphill battle to fight, to secure a decent living for themselves and their children. In the year since the earthquake, they've made important strides in assuring that they get a fair shake. University students, lawyers and feminists have joined the seamstresses in their fight to set new terms at the work place. The creation of new organizations, like cooperatives and unions, and the forging of new alliances between educated elites and popular groups may be the most lasting legacy wrought from the devastation left by the earthquake. For National Public Radio, this is Lucie Conger in Mexico City. |