The Prince George Citizen WEDNESDAY, MAY 30,1990 50 CENTS Ann Landers.... Bridge......-........ _________26 Business________ __12, 13 City, B.C. .2, 3, 8, 9, 13 Classified__________.23-28 Comics............... ____34 Commentary.___ »JS Crossword......... -.......-25 Editorial............ ...........4 Entertainment.. ________34 Family____________ _____29 Horoscope i : I 5 £ International.... ---.......11 Movies............... ...........34 National............ ...........10 $ p orts................i ____15-18 Television......... _______21 A punishing game 5 How council voted 9 Shuttle liftoff delay 11 Blazers lead series 15 PRINCE GEORGE 1990 BCfGAMES JULY 12 - 15 TELEPHONE: 562-2441 CIRCULATION- 562-3301 OTTAWA VISIT MOSTLY LOW KEY Protesters hound Gorbachev by JULIET O’NEILL Southam News OTTAWA — Two of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s thorniest domestic problems, Boris Yeltsin and the breakaway Baltics, followed him to Canada Tuesday. Gorbachev was dogged by pro-independence Baltic protestors, carrying flags, and hounded by questions about whether he can live with Yeltsin, his arch political rival, as president of the Russian republic. The Soviet leader suggested he can tolerate the newly elected Yeltsin if the man he condemned just days ago for fuelling the breakup of the Soviet Union can be trusted to co-operate with Moscow and work for national unity. Gorbachev appeared to take the Baltic protestors in stride, chatting calmly with some demonstrators, including an Estonian draft dodger, about the freedom that Lithuania, Lativa and Estonia have declared. “He looked right into my eyes,” said the Estonian, Imre Sooaar, 21. “He spoke slowly and said this is not a good place to talk about this, on the street, you have to sit down and discuss it. I said why don’t you sit down and discuss it with the Baltic leaders. His attitude is you can’t settle it in one day.” Gorbachev handled the half-dozen demonstrators with apparent ease as they quietly shadowed him during a one-hour walkabout at a downtown shopping mall where he shook hands and talked to civil servants, tourists and shoppers. But they got on the nerves of one security man who tore an Estonian flag from a protestor’s hands and smashed it to the ground as the Soviet leader was leaving the scene. Although haunted by home troubles, the first day of Gorbachev’s overnight visit was generally low key, wilh only a few small doses of quiet Ottawa-styled Gorbymania. Schoolchildren assembled to greet him at the airport but the streets were nearly empty when he visited a lookout point near Parliament Hill. The biggest event was lunch at 24 Sussex, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s official residence, where Gorbachev held court for reporters on Yeltsin, suggesting he can live with his rival if he sticks with “clarifications” he has made on key issues in the past few days. Gorbachev suggested that if Yeltsin is committed to socialism, to Soviet unity and to consolidating factions within the Russian parliament, then they might get along. "However, if he is playing a political game then we may be in for difficult times,” Gorbachev warned. Yeltsin, a thorn in Gorbachev’s side for several years, was elected president of the Russian republic while Gorbachev was en route to Canada for what has been dubbed his jet lag recovery stop before heading to Washington today for a summit with U.S. President George Bush. Gorbachev’s tone was in contrast to his condemnation of Yeltsin just a few days ago as a man set on “the breakup of the Soviet Union.” Yeltsin, a former Politburo member who turned himself into a popular politician for the underdog, won the presidency by a slim four-vote margin in the third round of balloting by the Russian parliament. Gorbachev made a virtually identical statement to another group of reporters just before arriving at Mulroney’s, saying time would tell if Yeltsin’s changed tone on those issues “is not just a political game on his part.” He repeated it a third time while weaving his way through a crowd on the mall that gathered as word went out that Gorbachev would appear in the evening after shops and offices were closed. Some people were thrilled to get a closcup glimpse of Gorbachev, waiting hours for the chance to shake hands or to say they were there. Gorbachev was last in Canada in 1983 when he was a senior agriculture official. Civil servant Melissa Anderson, 29, was shaking with excitement after catching Gorbachev’s attention as he wound his way down the crowd that was separated into two by metal crowd control barricades. “I was completely impressed,” she said. Vancouver Island tourist Alf Sleigh, a psychiatrist, waited hours by a park to see the Soviet leader, saying he was fascinated by the politician and the security measures “just like a James Bond movie.” “Gorbachev is in trouble at home but he’s a great man and, maybe if people wait, it will work out,” Sleigh said. “It’s a bit of history.” CATCH THE WAVE TO FITNESS Vanway elementary student Sarah Jamespulle, 10, learns some water polo tricks from aquatic leader Debbie Schlick in Fitweek’s Catch the Wave to Fitness certificate program at the Four Seasons leisure pool Tuesday. Canada Fitweek, which began Friday, ends Sunday. Citizen photo by Liu Murdoch Plan made to discredit holdouts LITTLE IMPACT EXPECTED HERE Effects of coal price limited by PAUL STRICKLAND Citizen Staff The reduction in the price at which Quintette Coal Limited may sell coal to the Japanese steel industry should have little impact on Prince George if the mine continues operating, says Dale McMann, manager of the Prince George Region Development Corporation. An arbitration panel ruled this week that Quintette must reduce the price of metallurgical coal sold to Japanese steel interests to $94.90 per tonne from $102.90 at present. Under the arbitration ruling, the price will drop during the third business quarter of this year by approximately $10.50 per tonne to as low as $84.40 per tonne, and by about another $1 per tonne in each of the next two quarters. The panel’s ruling also requires the company to pay to the Japanese steel industry $46 million, an HERMAN 58307 00100 amount representing the difference between $94.90 per tonne and the $102.90 it had been charging since April 1, 1987. “It’s a question of, does this continue to make Quintette viable?” McMann said Tuesday. "As long as the mine continues operating, I don’t see any major impact on Prince George.” Miners and other personnel from Tumbler Ridge do some consumer shopping in Prince George, although not a large amount, he said. The mine’s bigger contribution to the Prince George economy is the number of rail cars it sends through the city by Canadian National and B.C. Rail. The volume of rail traffic created by the mine requires additional railway personnel for switching, maintenance and other functions. “From that standpoint, too, as long as the mine continues operating, it shouldn’t have too serious an impact on us,” McMann said. The ruling may actually help Tumbler Ridge In the long term,. said Paul Fisher, owner of Paul E. Fisher Construction Corporation in the community. “At least we know what’s happening,” he said today. “Before we didn’t know if it was going to be shutting down or not. “In the near future it won’t help, but in the long run it will,” he said. The mine can look forward to a certain stability in prices and production, Fisher commented. “All Quintette has to do is get organized and live within the money they’ve got coming in,” he said. Teck Corporation, which owns See COAL, page 2 by JOAN BRYDEN Southam News OTTAWA — The chief of staff for Ontario Premier David Peterson has confirmed the existence of a detailed strategy to use the media to discredit the holdout premiers at an expected first ministers’ conference on the Meech Lake constitutional impasse. But Dan Gagnier insisted it was drafted by two “junior bureaucrats” and was dismissed out of hand by him on Monday. It was never shown to Peterson, he added. The strategy to manipulate the media — especially CBC television, which Ontario believes is pro-Mcech Lake — has three main goals: ■ To fuel a sense of crisis; ■ To undermine the credibility of Newfoundland’s Clyde Wells, Manitoba’s Gary Filmon and Frank McKenna of New Brunswick, who are all opposed to the constitutional accord; ■ To ensure that Quebec is not isolated or blamed for refusing to compromise. Southam News was shown a copy of the paper Tuesday. Peterson disavowed all knowledge of the paper when confronted by reporters Wednesday morning. “There is no plan to discredit anybody. I just don’t believe it exists,” a clearly-shaken Peterson said. A provincial official, who refused to be identified, said Tuesday Ontario has been consulting closely with the federal government. He said “it’s fair to assume” Ottawa would be in agreement with the province’s strategy for a first ministers’ conference, which Prime Minister Brian Mulroney is expected to call later this week. According to the strategy paper, Ontario’s objective is to pressure Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Manitoba to give up their objections to the accord and ratify it by the June 23 deadline. If possible, McKenna is to be persuaded to accept the accord, further isolating Wells and Filmon. The strategy calls for Peterson to prevent at all costs the isolation of Quebec by “ensuring the blame for failure falls squarely on the dissident provinces and not Quebec.” Peterson should agree to any proposal that leads to a consensus, as long as it’s acceptable to Quebec. Strategists want to keep Peterson on “the high road to nation-building and off substance issues” while Attorney General Ian Scott and Ontario’s constitutional experts work on the media in a bid to “undermine the credibility” of the holdout premiers. Manipulation of reporters is thought to be relatively easy, the paper notes, because “the national media, especially the CBC, will have a bias towards making a deal to save the country.” As well, CBC-TV and its allnews counterpart, Ncwsworld, will be desperate for news during the closed sessions of the conference. The strategy paper also recommends that Ontario: ■ Urge the media to keep constant pressure on the holdout premiers by questioning them “on the consequences of failure and their responsibility for it.” ■ Keep media attention on “the intractability of the dissidents and off Quebec.” ■ Portray Filmon as “politically erratic,” “inconsistent” and “unpredictable.” Ontario officials will also emphasize that he initially withdrew his support for the accord over minority language rights but is now holding out over Senate reform. ■ Insist that Wells’s concerns are “out of proportion,” that he’s fuelling misunderstanding of the accord, misreading the “gravity of the crisis,” and suffering from an “overweening lack of trust.” We examine Kemano Alcan’s Kemano Completion Project could have major implications for the Nechako River and beyond. Citizen reporter Bev Christensen visited the community of Kemano recently at Alcan’s invitation and returned with a wealth of information about the massive hydroelectric project. Christensen examines the issues surrounding the $800-million project on Page 5 of The Citizen on Thursday and Friday. Natives calling for Vant censure by BEV CHRISTENSEN Citizen Staff Native leaders are calling on Premier Vander Zalm and the Primate of the Anglican Church to censure MLA Neil Vant for what they feel are racist comments he made about Indians on Monday in the B.C. legislature. A motion approved unanimously Tuesday during the meeting of the First Nations Congress in Prince George condemns the Cariboo MLA for what they claim are “racist, colonist notions” he expressed when he called on the provincial government during question period to “use the full force of the law if necessary” to protect the jobs and personal security of nonnatives in the Chilcotin area who feel threatened by the “potential for violence” presented by native blockades of logging roads in the area. Natives claim their protests have always been non-violent. The resolution says Vant, an Anglican minister, should be be defrocked by the church for his offensive remarks at a time mainstream churches are seeking forgiveness from Indians for past offences against B.C.’s natives. They also want him expelled from the Socred caucus for painting natives as violent. See VANT, page 2 Low tonight: 9 High Thursday: 18 058307001008