June 29, 1991

Picture a pair of wildly mismatched partners in a three-legged race at a picnic, and you will understand the awkward chemistry that now exists at the White House between John H. Sununu, the chief of staff, and C. Boyden Gray, the President's counsel. Never the closest of colleagues to start with, the tough-guy politician and the patrician lawyer are bound together in one of the most uncomfortable arrangements ever to afflict a pair of White House officials. On any given day, in the West Wing hall or in their offices, the Mutt-and-Jeff odd couple can be found conferring, the lean 6-foot-7-inch counsel bending like a parenthesis over the pudgy 5-foot-9-inch chief of staff.

The rebellious republics of Slovenia and Croatia agreed early today to suspend their declarations of independence after Yugoslav officials pledged to send federal troops back to their barracks and allow a Croatian to assume the country's rotating presidency, republic officials and a European mediator said. The decision followed a day of intensified fighting in Slovenia, where Yugoslav warplanes bombed and strafed military and civilian targets, including airports and television towers.

President Bush declined today to commit himself to choosing a black or another minority member to replace Justice Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court, and the President said he had a short but still-open list of potential successors from which he would make his selection "in a very few days." Senate Democrats, facing the loss of the last dependably liberal voice on the Court, said they would closely study any nominee for signs of ideological extremism.

In a victory for gun-control advocates, the Senate approved a compromise measure today that would create a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases and impose penalites on states that do not implement background checks to screen out felons. The provision for a waiting period was approved after a week of floor debate and back-room jockeying in which the original proposal for a seven-day waiting period was reduced to five days to pick up support for the bill. The action today clears the way for a vote on a complete anti-crime package after Congress returns from a Fourth of July recess.

At least 400 million of the 1.6 billion prescriptions that American doctors write each year are for treatments that lack the Food and Drug Administration's approval as safe and effective, physicians and Government scientists say. Doctors say that research and experience justify their confidence in the benefits of these treatments. But scientists warn that many drugs certified for some uses can have dangerous, unanticipated side effects in other uses, especially over long periods.