c. 1996 Religion News Service

Aid groups join call for U.N. peacekeepers in Liberia

(RNS)-A group of 13 religious and secular relief agencies have appealed to the U.S. government to take the lead in creating a United Nations peacekeeping force for war-torn Liberia.”The prolonged crisis in Liberia has forced nearly a third of the country’s population to flee their homes and seek refuge abroad,”said the groups, organized by InterAction, a Washington-based umbrella agency of more 150 U.S. relief, development and humanitarian groups.”Years of negotiations have failed to resolve the conflict among Liberia’s warlords,”the groups added.”The pleas of the Liberian people for peace continue to be ignored by those leading the various armed factions.” Civil war broke out in Liberia in 1989 and has killed an estimated 150,000 people since then. Last year, the factions agreed to a truce and the formation of an interim government including representatives of the major warring groups.

Renewed fighting broke out on April 6, between troops loyal to Charles Taylor, who leads the Liberian government, and a faction headed by Roosevelt Johnson. Supporters of Johnson took up arms after he was fired from the government and ordered arrested on murder charges.

In the May 20 statement, the groups said the U.S. government should recommend to other members of the U.N. Security Council”the formation of a United Nations peacekeeping force which would be sent to Liberia as soon as possible.” It said the goal of the peacekeepers would be to restore security so that humanitarian assistance can be resumed, to demobilize the troops of the feuding warlords and to put in place a political process”which will lead to the free and fair election of a government of national unity.” A small contingent of peacekeeping troops from West African nations is in Liberia but have been unable to stop the fighting between rival warlords.

The State Department had no comment on the proposal.

Many of the groups who signed the statement had been involved in relief and development projects in Liberia but were forced to withdraw when the new fighting broke out in April, triggering a surge of looting in Monrovia, its capital.

The call for U.N. peacekeepers came as relief agencies reported conditions becoming even more desperate in Liberia.”If the fighting continues for another few weeks, people will be forced to eat roots and leaves,”according to Bill Massaquoi, a Liberian staff member of World Relief, the evangelical aid agency based in Wheaton, Ill. Massaquoi was quoted in a statement released by World Relief.

World Relief is one of the 13 aid groups that signed the appeal statement.

Others signing the call were the Adventist Development and Relief Agency International; Africare; American Refugee Committee; CARE; Church World Service; Episcopal Migration Ministries; Friends of Liberia; International Rescue Committee; Refugees International; Southeast Asia Resource Action Center; Trickle Up Program; and the United Methodist Committee on Relief.

Bipartisan House members urge Clinton to oppose euthanasia ruling

(RNS)-A bipartisan group of 40 House members, led by Rep. Charles Canady, R-Fla., asked the Clinton administration Friday (May 24) to voice its opposition to assisted suicide.

In a letter to U.S. Solicitor General Drew Days, the House members urged the administration to file a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court asking the justices to reverse a federal court’s ruling striking down New York state’s ban on assisted suicide.”Legalizing physician-assisted suicide or any other practice designed to kill innocent human beings would result in abandoning to death the sick, the elderly and those most vulnerable in our society,”Canady said in a statement announcing the letter.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment on the letter.

On April 2, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit struck down New York’s law barring assisted suicide on the grounds the law violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause.”Those in the final stages of terminal illness who are on life-support systems are allowed to hasten their deaths by directing the removal of such systems; but those who are similarly situated, except for the previous attachment of life-sustaining equipment are not allowed to hasten death by self-administering prescribed drugs,”the Second Circuit ruling said.

Canady said the House members were concerned that the courts,”with no national debate … are attempting to implement a broad public policy that would profoundly affect the way Americans deal with life and death, and drastically alter the role of physicians in our society.”

Elliott Abrams to head Ethics and Public Policy Center

(RNS)-Elliott Abrams, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration, has been elected the new president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank based in Washington. Abrams will assume the post in July, the Center announced Friday (May 24).

Abrams, currently a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, succeeds George Weigel, who resigned to devote time to writing a biography of Pope John Paul II. Weigel, who headed the center for seven years, will remain as a senior fellow at think tank.

Adm. Elmo Zumwalt (retired), chairman of the Center’s board, said its members were aware of the controversial role Abrams, as a State Department official, played in the heated public dispute over U.S. efforts to overthrow the government of Nicaragua.

Abrams admitted lying to Congress during the Iran-Contra affair, the name given to the 1986 scandal in which it was revealed that funds from the U.S. sale of arms to Iran had been illegally diverted to the contras, the U.S.-backed rebels seeking to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.”Mr. Abrams has publicly acknowledged that, in trying to balance his duties to the secretary of state and the president with his duties to Congress, he made an error in judgment,”Zumwalt said.”The ethical challenges faced by public officials and the ethical issues at the heart of many public policy debates are not abstraction to him,”Zumwalt added.”He wrestled with them each day.” In 1988, Abrams was awarded the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award for his work as”a catalyst of U.S. efforts in support of human rights and democratic change.”

Hungary adopts law giving gays legal, financial rights

(RNS)-Hungary’s parliament, by a 207-73 vote, has adopted legislation giving homosexuals in long-term relationships equal legal and financial rights as heterosexual.”We welcome the fact parliament passed this law,”Geza Juhasz of the gay organization Szivarvany (Rainbow) told Reuters Wednesday (May 22). But he said he did not think the vote showed that Hungarian members of parliament were more enlightened than others because the law was passed in response to a recent court decision liberalizing policies towards homosexuals.

But Juhasz said the new law could pave the way for same-sex marriages”in a few years’ time.”But he said such unions would not be called marriages.

According to Reuters, Hungarian legislation on homosexuality has been relatively liberal, even during the communist era. While some communist nations punished consenting adult homosexuals, Hungarian law did so only when one partner was under 18, the legal age of consent for homosexuals.

Interfaith center planned for Sarajevo University

(RNS)-After being the target of four brutal years of ethnic and religious fighting, the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo has been chosen as the site for a new academic effort aimed at creating interfaith tolerance.

Funds are being raised abroad for a new Department of Inter-Religious Dialogue at the University of Sarajevo, according to Paul Mojzes of Christians Associated for Relations with Eastern Europe.

According to Mojzes, Roman Catholic, Muslim, Jewish and Orthodox academics will serve on the faculty. He told Ecumenical News International, the World Council of Churches news agency in Geneva, that Jewish, Presbyterian, Episcopalian and Lutheran congregations in the United States have pledged financial support for the venture.”This is a terrain full of pitfalls, and we must realize how much we do not yet understand about the complex nuances of Bosnian culture,”Mojzes said. Mojzes said the four-year war in Bosnia, which pitted Orthodox Serbs, Bosnian Muslims and Croatian Roman Catholics, against one one another,”was a religious war, fought by non-religious people, in which all denominations greatly contributed to tension and misunderstanding.”

Quote of the day: Monsignor Dennis M. Schnurr, general secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops

(RNS)-Monsignor Dennis M. Schnurr, general secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, spoke to the National Catholic Committee on Scouting in Louisville, Ky. In his speech, Schnurr reflected on the coming of the millennium:”As millennium fever develops, believers-young and old-need to undertake serious efforts to keep this landmark event from turning into a debacle marked by shallow celebrations and bizarre religious claims. … In Washington, D.C., a restaurant called `Millennium’ has opened. A month ago a multipage insert in The Washington Post advertised a business conference to prepare corporate managers for the 21st century. Commercials are beginning to appear promoting shoes, jeans, and other products for the `21st Century man and woman.’ Mazda has developed and is marketing a car called the `Millenia.'”Amidst all this, we need to ask: `What significance will this crossing into the next millennium have for us? What message do we wish to share with youth about society and church in the new millennium? What can we do to keep people focused on the fact that we are celebrating the 2,000th anniversary of Christianity?'”

MJP END