November 11, 1991

The Khmer Rouge, the Communist guerrilla group that once brutally ruled Cambodia and has now joined the new coalition government under a peace accord, is hiding troops and a huge cache of weapons in preparation for the possible resumption of the Cambodian civil war, diplomats and relief workers say. The move, they say, violates disarmament provisions of the United Nations peace treaty that the Khmer Rouge signed in Paris only last month along with Cambodia's Vietnamese-backed Communist Government and two non-Communist guerrilla groups. The treaty, which is seen as the best hope for ending the long civil war in this shattered nation, requires partial demobilization by all sides under the supervision of the United Nations. Peacekeeping Force Due Diplomats said that in drafting the treaty, they took into account the possibility that the Khmer Rouge or other factions would try to hide troops and weapons. With the first soldiers of a large United Nations peacekeeping force arriving in Cambodia today, the diplomats expressed hope that adequate safeguards would soon be in place to prevent any new use of force.

A study by two economists has concluded that "the earnings soldiers sacrifice are greater than first appears," continuing a debate over the impact of military service on income. Joshua D. Angrist of Harvard University and Alan B. Krueger of Princeton University have been comparing the economic fortunes of veterans and nonveterans in a series of recently published papers.

With reassuring advertisements starring Snoopy, Gene Kelly and New Yorkers themselves, insurance companies are urging employers and employees in the metropolitan area to join cost-conscious health plans. And after years of resistance, they are finding many takers. The health plans are built around networks of doctors and hospitals that have agreed to charge lower-than-normal fees and to allow reviews of their methods.

After nearly a half-century of effort and many billions of dollars, scientists for the first time have produced a significant amount of power from controlled nuclear fusion. The achievement is a major step in harnessing for constructive human use the kind of thermonuclear fire that lights the sun and produces the awesome blast of the hydrogen bomb. The advance was made Saturday by researchers at the Joint European Torus, or Jet, an experimental fusion reactor in Oxfordshire, England. The achievement puts a European team from 14 countries ahead of Russian, Japanese and American rivals.

Trade negotiations in the Netherlands on Friday and Saturday failed to produce a breakthrough in the deadlocked global trade talks, but American and European officials insisted today that progress had been made. The sides said in a communique at the end of the discussions that they were in virtual agreement on an accord to protect copyrights, patents, computer chip designs, trade secrets and trademarks. But no compromise was struck on Europe's lavish subsidies to farmers, which have become the biggest sticking point in the five-year, 108-nation negotiations intended to lower trade barriers.