May 23, 1993

It is sung to the tune of "Over the Rainbow": Big Duck roosting in Flanders

After months of discord and vacillation, the United States, Russia and key European allies agreed today on a joint strategy devised to contain the fighting in Bosnia and Herzegovina and to guard enclaves of Muslim civilians besieged by Serbian nationalists there. The plan, announced by Secretary of State Warren Christopher and the Foreign Ministers of France, Britain, Russia and Spain after a brief meeting here, calls for the United States to use air power if necessary to protect United Nations peacekeepers guarding six Bosnian towns that have been designated "safe havens" by the United Nations Security Council. Issue Goes to Security Council But the size and duties of the peacekeeping mission will have to be decided by the Security Council, and Mr. Christopher did not specify what American aircraft would be authorized to do. That means that no use of American military force is imminent.

As a small band of cloistered nuns prepares to move their Monastery of the Visitation to a new site in rural southwestern Massachusetts, the irreverent world of real estate development has revealed itself to them. The nuns, the Sisters of the Visitation of the Holy Mary, are now under contract with a local developer to sell their century-old block-long granite convent in the western section of Delaware's largest city.

2 Health Plans on Table President Clinton appears to be seeking a middle ground on two health-care proposals, so that he does not have to choose between his wife and his economic advisers. Page 20. Division Among Gay Voices After months of urging Congress and the Clinton Administration to lift the ban on homosexuals in the military, gay men and lesbians are disagreeing over tactics. Page 18.

The word out of Chicago this week was that the Bulls were preparing for John Starks by having Trent Tucker impersonate the Knicks' fiery guard. Tucker's practice assignment was to be taunted by Michael Jordan and the Bulls into losing his head so he might do something foolish, like using it for a weapon. When he was presented with this news bulletin, Pat Riley's reaction was to smirk and get on to more pressing matters, like the Bulls' trap presses. But the Knick coach, in a classic demonstration of elephantine memory, returned to the subject a few minutes later as he was about to take his leave.