The Prince f^eorge
Citizen
Included nside
TV
times
Georgian fighting erupts 8
Wilson’s budget dilemma 9
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22,1991
70 CENTS
(Plus GST)
Low tonight: >8 High tomorrow: 5
Football tops fan poll
14
TELEPHONE: 562-2441
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SADDAM ISSUED EIGHT-DAY DEADLINE
INDEX
Ann Landers .... 20
Bridge..................29
Business........22,23
Careers.................18
City, B.C..............2,3
Classified .... 25-31
Comic...................33
Commentary...............5
Crossword...............26
Entertainment . 32,33
Family........17,20,21
Horoscope...............28
International ... .7,8
Movies..................32
National...............6,9
Sports..........13-16
Television..............27
Bush
WASHINGTON (Reuter) — The United States has given Iraq a week from noon EST (9 a.m. PST) Saturday to pull completely out of Kuwait or face a ground campaign by the U.S.-led coalition.
White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater also said today that Iraqi •forces must be out of Kuwait City within 48 hours after the Saturday deadline.
Fitzwater, giving more details of the coalition's requirements for a ground war to be averted in the Persian Gulf, said Iraq must begin
Feline
moxie
keeps Bud
in business
by MARILYN STORIE Citizen Staff For all the Budget Surplus customers who have inquired, Bud the cat is alive and well and living in John Woodley’s kitchen.
Woodley and Brenda Scarff, co-owners of Budget Surplus and Building Supplies, one of four stores gutted in a Feb. 13 fire on Nicholson Street, say they are surprised at the number of people inquiring about the store mascot.
“I had one woman stop me on the street and ask how Bud was doing,” said Scarff. “People ask ‘How is Bud?’ first and then they ask ‘Did you have any insurance?’ ”
Bud miraculously escaped death when the electric forklift parked at the back of the store started in reverse and carved out an escape hatch through the back wall. “From what the firemen could tell, it seems the ignition wires fused, causing the machine to start up,” said Woodley.
The owners assumed Bud was outside for the night as he often is, but became worried when they discovered the last employee to leave the store that evening had seen him in the building.
‘‘And it looked like a Scud had hit it,” said Woodley.
Bud was discovered at 6:30
a.m., hiding in the shed in back of the store.
‘‘It’s kind of ironic,” said Woodley. ‘‘That’s where we found him originally, when he was a kitten, 2vi years ago.”
Being an industrial kitty, Bud (short for Budget) has experienced some problems adjusting to house cat life, a leap of faith for any cat unfamiliar with the sound of a refrigerator door opening.
“When I brought him home he was afraid of anything like the sound of a stereo, but he’s never thought anything of the sound of drills or saws,” said Woodley.
Leading a more exciting life than most, Bud has probably used up more than one of his nine lives. He has weathered two burglaries at the store, major surgery for FUS (Feline Urological Syndrome), a painful condition in
Bud the cat made a miraculous escape from a fiery death, says John Woodley, a co-owner of Budget Surplus, one of four stores that burned to the ground In a Feb. 13 fire.
which crystals form within a cat’s urine; and what could be called minor surgery, depending on your perspective (he is referred to as “he” only as a courtesy).
“If only Bud could talk, he could tell us all kinds of things,” said Scarff.
And has he changed his eating habits?
“No, he’s still a pig,” said Woodley. “And he knows what a
refrigerator door opening means now.”
In business for 4 Vi years, the partners did have insurance and are planning on reopening.
“We’re thinking about relocating, but it appears the buildings will be rebuilt so we may just wait until then,” said Woodley. While their ledgers were burned, the two were lucky enough to retrieve their records of inventory
and most of their payroll books from the wreckage.
So, while still shedding a bit from nerves after his latest harrowing experience, Bud should soon be back in business, perched on his original paint can by a new back door.
“I saved the can we use as a doorstop for him because he always sits on it,” said Woodley.
gives
its withdrawal from occupied Kuwait by noon EST Saturday.
He rejected a Soviet peace plan that included a provision to lift UN economic sanctions against Baghdad if Iraqi forces pull out of Kuwait. He said lifting sanctions would allow Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to use oil revenues to rebuild his army.
. Fitzwater told reporters the coalition effort would give Saddam ‘‘a chance to save his country,” but conceded that what President George Bush called Iraq’s “scorched-earth policy” in Kuwait
Natives might drop dioxin charges
by BEV CHRISTENSEN Citizen Staff The Fort George Indian Band may be forced to drop its representative action charging three area pulp mills with discharging dioxins and other dangerous toxins into the Fraser River and the atmosphere.
Band chief Peter Quaw says that unless the band receives help from the public and federal Indian Affairs Minister Tom Siddon, it will be unable to pay for its court action.
The band has spent $64,000 on the action already and has budgeted for an additional $1 million for the first stage of the action against Noranda and Canfor. Tbe total cost of the action could be more than $2 million.
The representative action filed by the band last February is similar to what is known in the United States as a class action lawsuit, which is
filed on behalf of a group of people instead of an individual.
“The court case involves dioxin, one of the most toxic chemicals known to man and our people have been affected. We have tested five band members for dioxins and the results were positive,” Quaw said in a prepared statement.
“Prince George has three pulp mills within a vicinity of six miles and, as sure as the water flows and the grass grows, the people of Prince George have been affected like we have been,” Quaw said.
The Nechako Environmental Coalition Initially supported the band’s claim.
But Quaw said Thursday the coalition is now concentrating its attention on hearings into the environmental impact on the Nechako River of the Kemano Completion Project. A hearing on
that case is scheduled for next week in Vancouver.
The band presented a request for assistance with the cost of the legal action against area pulp mills to Indian Affairs Minister Tom Siddon when he was in Prince George last week.
At the time, Siddon said he would consider the request and send a written reply to the band.
However, the band’s application for assistance does not fall within the guideliiies under which it is being requested, Mike Sakamoto, a spokesman for Siddon’s office, said Thursday.
But a letter is being sent to the band encouraging it to submit a proposal to the ministry’s regional office in Vancouver for assistance from another environment fund, Sakamoto said.
withdrawal ultimatum
did not leave much room for optimism.
‘‘We’ve said we’re holding off on the ground war pending this opportunity. We will wait and see what happens and make decisions accordingly.”
Fitzwater said coalition forces would not attack retreating Iraqi forces and “we will exercise restraint so long as withdrawal proceeds.”
Meanwhile, the coalition’s fierce five-week air war against Iraqi targets thundered on, and artillery batteries in Saudi Arabia blasted
away at frontline Iraqi fortifications. U.S. forces kept up armed forays into Iraq and Kuwait, the final steps lo a ground offensive.
A U.S. military spokesman in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, said today Iraqi troops in Kuwait have set ablaze one quarter of Kuwait’s oil fields in the last 24 hours.
Marine Brig.-Gen. Richard Neal told reporters: ‘‘More than 140 wells have been destroyed in the past 24 hours — they arc all burning. This is about 25 per cent of its facilities ... Kuwaiti oil fields arc covered by thick black smoke. The
other facilities arc being systematically destroyed — it looks like the commencement of a scorched earth policy.”
Bush said the coalition “must hear publicly” from Saddam accepting the terms.
The Bush ultimatum came as Soviet and Iraqi negotiators worked to modify the Kremlin peace plan that Bush and other allies had termed unacceptable when it was announced early this moming.
Before Bush spoke, a Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman said
in Moscow that there had been progress in new Soviet-Iraqi talks aimed at making the proposal more acceptable to all sides.
The spokesman, Vitaly Churkin, declined to give details of the talks today, but said: “We have reason to believe that our efforts have not been in vain.”
Despite the talk of peace, tremors were set off earlier today when Baghdad radio reported that “the enemy has started the ground battle.” The Pentagon and the U.S. military command in Saudi Arabia quickly denied it.
GST pushes inflation rate to 8-year high
by ERIC BEAUCHESNE Southam News OTTAWA — The GST hit consumers much harder than expected, helping to drive up prices last month by 2.6 per cent and leaving the annual inflation rate at an eight-year high of 6.8 per cent, Statistics Canada said today.
The annual inflation rate — the year-over-year change in consumer prices — is up sharply from 5.0 per cent in December and at its highest level since March 1983.
And the jump in prices for goods and services in January was the largest monthly increase since the 1950s at least, said agency analyst Art Ridgeway. Records before that time are not comparable.
“Most of this increase was associated with changes in taxes, notably the introduction of the goods and services tax and the elimination of the federal sales tax,” the agency said. “As well, Quebec lowered its provincial sales tax rate but expanded the tax base to include many items not previously taxed.”
“This is disastrous,” said Doug Peters, chief economist with the Toronto Dominion Bank. “That was way higher than expected.” “This government has finally done what we all thought was economically impossible,” he said. ‘'We’ve got a recession, high inflation and high unemployment all at the same time.”
“Wow!” added Patti Croft, economist with investment firm Bums Fry Ltd. “We had expected it to be moderate because we believed the stories that retailers were absorbing the tax.”
Of the 2.6 per cent jump in prices last month, 1.4 per cent was due directly to the replacement of the old federal sales tax with the seven-per-cent GST, the agency estimated.
Finance Minister Michael Wilson, however, said he’s still sticking with his forecast that the GST would cause a one-time increase of 1.25 per cent in the consumer price index, which is composed of a basket of hundreds of goods and services.
The increase in inflation was “significant,” he conceded but argued it wasn’t really out of line with what he expected and that it won’t have any impact on his budget or interest rates.
But many analysts said that with the recession, businesses would be forced to swallow part of the tax hike and the impact should be even less than Wilson predicted.
And economists, surveyed by Statistics Canada had predicted that, even with the GST, the annual inflation rate last month would rise to only 5.6 per cent, well below the 6.8 per cent recorded.
In fact, not one of the 20 or so economists surveyed expected the rate to go as high as it did.
Another 0.2 per cent of the January price jump was due to other tax changes, including the expansion of the Quebec retail sales tax to items not previously taxed to bring it in line with the federal GST.
“Gasoline taxes, drivers’ licences and vehicle registration fees were increased in several provinces,” Statistics Canada said.
The other one per cent increase, roughly the same as in January 1989, was due to non-tax price increases, the agency estimated.
The non-tax increases were for fresh fruits, up 10.3 per cent, and fresh vegetables, up 23.4 per cent, due to crop damage in the U.S. Other non-tax price hikes were for soft drinks, alcohol and tobacco products.
Basic groceries are not taxed but the GST was largely responsible for price increases of 7.2 per cent for restaurant meals, 6.1 per cent for clothing, 9.2 per cent for reading, 6.4 per cent for personal care products.
“In the case of clothing, the changes in the tax regime had a large impact as clothing contained very little federal sales tax and had been largely exempt from Quebec provincial sales tax,” the agency said.
Auto prices as expected fell by 2.7 per cent, reflecting the elimination of the old tax and weak sales.
HERMAN
’I made it out of soap."
058307002005