But last night the snow stopped casting doubt on earlier predictions that it might break the 28ins record for this century set in 1922

But last night the snow stopped, casting doubt on earlier predictions that it might break the 28ins record for this century, set in 1922.None the less, central Washington was covered with a foot and half (45cm) of snow by yesterday afternoon.The initial impact was felt mostly by people who entertained notions of travel – even to the local supermarket. As if to underline the colossal presumption of trying to balance the national account in seven years, supposing as it does an ability to anticipate what will happen to the world economy between now and 2002, President Bill Clinton and Republican leaders were forced to call off planned budget talks yesterday because of bad weather.
What was more, Democrat and Republican leaders having agreed on Saturday to reopen the government after three weeks of virtual paralysis, the heaviest snowfall in Washington in years looked likely to prevent the vast majority of government employees from going back to work today.The National Weather Service said the snowstorm, which struck Washington on Saturday evening and carried on all day yesterday, was of “historic proportions”. And on taxes the President means to offer relief to families earning under $75,000 a year, but deny cuts to the wealthier Americans the Republicans seek to reward.. Washington – The politicians who run the world’s most powerful country learnt the humbling lesson yesterday that hard as they strive to shape the course of humanity they cannot restrain the whims of Mother Nature, writes John Carlin. He intends to cut far less on welfare, notably on health care for the elderly (Medicare), than the Republicans wish.

So successfully is he doing this that the New York Times said in a front-page article on Saturday that the Republicans “seemed for the first time to be in retreat, much in the manner of Napoleon’s ill-fated assault on Moscow”.What the President managed to do, while caving in on the demand that he come up with a seven-year balanced budget document, was to submit a plan whose numbers appear, on present projections, to work but which aims to reach its destination by a route substantially different from the one the Republicans would like to take.Overall, Mr Clinton would spend $400bn (about pounds 260bn) more than the Republicans over the next seven years. “The bad news is that it’s the same old tax- and-spend philosophy that’s been going on for 30 years.”The Republicans’ frustration arises from the realisation that they will find it very difficult to bring about their much-trumpeted “revolution”, and destroy the “welfare state”, in the face of stiff presidential opposition.The other part of the revolutionary equation entails restoring power to the individual, which translated means cutting taxes.Mr Clinton’s budget-balancing proposal on Saturday showed that he remains resolved to withstand the Republican siege. We need to find unity and common ground.”The Republicans took a somewhat different view. According to a Republican source who was privy to negotiations at the White House on Saturday, Newt Gingrich, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, told the President: “If this is where you are, we’re so far apart we’d better start thinking about how we can call this off.”Tom Delay, one of Mr Gingrich’s more zealous congressional cohorts, accused the President yesterday on NBC Television’s Meet the Press of not negotiating in good faith.”The good news is that the President has come up with a balanced budget proposal,” Mr Delay said. “That’s what they want: for I-For to deploy along the front line,” said Senad Efica, a radio journalist: to divide the city once and for all.t Banja Luka – the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic attacked the Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and called for the recovery of Serb- held districts around Sarajevo by political means, Reuter reports.. JOHN CARLIN

Washington
President Bill Clinton has given the Republicans the minimum they sought in budget negotiations and in exchange secured from Congress the funds necessary to end the longest government shutdown in United States history.But the fundamental differences between the two sides on budget priorities remain as wide as ever.In a tactical concession, Mr Clinton submitted a proposal late on Saturday night for balancing the budget within seven years.

For the past year he had contended that such a plan was not feasible but now, eager to end a partial government shutdown that had lasted since 16 December, he has relented.After Mr Clinton had set his budget-balancing document on the table, Congress, both houses of which are dominated by the Republicans, submitted the legislation required to reopen government and the President signed it.”This plan will show that you can balance the budget in seven years and protect Medicare, Medicaid, education and the environment, and provide tax relief to working families,” Mr Clinton said “This is a time of great national promise. “But I’m not saying ‘no’ to more incidents, fighting, maybe sniping,” he added.And he admits that the deployment along the Bulevar of five Spanish armoured personnel carriers, and the temporary suspension of civilian crossings from one bank to the other, is a victory for “extremists” Some in east Mostar believe that was the aim all along. “The real problem is they have to give up ‘Herzeg-Bosna’ [the self-styled Croat statelet in western Bosnia] on 21 January,” he said. “The discussion about the unification of the police in Mostar stopped on 30 December.”The young man who was killed on New Year’s Eve, named only as Alen, was 17 and therefore of military age. He crossed into west Mostar illegally with three friends – apparently to visit his girlfriend – and refused to stop for a police foot patrol They fired, and he was killed. Several hundred attended his funeral in east Mostar, too.Mr Koschnik believes the presence of Nato troops from the peace implementation force (I-For) will stave off a second descent into war. “The feeling may be otherwise.” His task is to fulfill the requirements of the Dayton agreement that pertain to Mostar: the creation of a new city statute, freedom of movement across the city for all by 21 January.But he knows that while senior Bosnian Croat officials signed the Dayton deal, they also seek to rewrite it.

“Why else do they all involve policemen?” asked one foreign observer.”My hope is that it is isolated incidents,” said Hans Koschnik, the German appointed by the EU to oversee the reunification of Mostar He paused. “He was shot down by cowards,” said the priest as an elderly man wept beside him, cradled in the arms of a younger man.Many – and not only those Muslims living on the east bank who fought a vicious 10-month-war for Mostar – fear the shootings are more than a string of unrelated incidents. “Many don’t want to talk about it – it’s a very fiery situation.”Yesterday, some 500 Croats huddled through driving rain for the funeral of Zeljko Ljucic, a policeman shot dead on the Bulevar on Saturday, this time by fire from the east. Four days later, two Bosnian policemen driving to work along the Bulevar, a wide, ravaged street that marks the front line, were hit by a hail of bullets fired from the west side.”A lot of people are scared – I also feel something of a war atmosphere,” said Faruk Kejtaz, a journalist at Radio Mostar, on the shattered government- held east bank of the swollen Neretva River. Language like this and, more important, the string of shootings along the city’s front line in the past week have pricked the uneasy peace reigning in Mostar since March 1994 and raised tensions to the most dangerous levels since the European Union began to administer the city 18 months ago.Two people have been killed and two more seriously wounded since New Year’s Eve, when tensions in the divided city of Mostar surged dangerously with the fatal shooting by Bosnian Croat police of a Muslim youth who ran into a road-block on the western – Croat – side of town. “There will be a war if necessary.”Another war, Mr Misic, commander of Bosnian Croat militia in Mostar, should have said. France and the US never commented on the affair, while Colonel Gaddafi has been as equivocal as ever..

EMMA DALY

Mostar
Mostar’s “top man” – or so he was introduced by the chat-show host before his television interview on Friday night – was unyielding, dressed all in black and uttering dark threats “This will be Croatia,” Mladen Misic boasted. For some of Mr Cossiga’s most faithful supporters, that has been enough to discredit the missile theory and suggest, as they have for several years, that the DC-9 was blown up by a terrorist bomb.The parliamentary commission dealing with Italy’s many high-profile disasters is unlikely to kiss off the evidence quite so quickly and is expected to summon Mr Cossiga for questioning. But it is unclear who General Cogliandro’s sources were, why he compiled his report and why it took so long to surface.So reticent did the general prove in interrogation before the discovery of his papers that he has been investigated for alleged obstruction of justice. He describes disinformation spread about the MiG once it was found three weeks later and pressure applied on doctors who examined the pilot’s body.He also names the prime minister of the time, Francesco Cossiga, as being responsible for concealing the truth for so long. Mr Cossiga, who was later president, has never given a full account of the affair, claiming only that he was “shafted” somewhere along the line.An investigating magistrate, Rosario Priore, says he is taking the dossier seriously, as it seems to have been prepared for formal distribution, perhaps as a memo to the head of Italy’s secret-service agency.