May 26, 1993

The White House today reinstated five of the seven travel aides who were dismissed last week for incompetence, and blamed President Clinton's chief of staff, Thomas F. McLarty 3d, for the handling of the travel office affair. Mr. Clinton and Vice President Al Gore said they had nothing to do with the messy dismissals, rehirings and enlistment of the F.B.I. to buttress the White House's case, and they referred all questions to Mr. McLarty.

Serbian leaders told a Russian mediator today that they were not prepared to accept international monitors on their border with Bosnia and Herzegovina to verify their assertions that they were not supplying Bosnian Serb forces with weapons or other military supplies. President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, who a month ago said international observers would be welcome to confirm that his Government was enforcing an embargo on military aid to Bosnian Serbs, told Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, that there was now "no need" for them.

With a critical House vote on President Clinton's budget imminent and perilously uncertain, the White House and conservative Democrats in Congress abruptly halted their sniping over the proposal's merits today and began talking up a deal. By late today, it remained just talk. But for the first time, both sides seemed to agree that the proposal would be changed. The House wants to make at least a cursory effort to keep health-care spending from running up the deficit, and the Senate hopes to tone down at least part of a heavily debated energy tax.

In an angry letter on behalf of a majority of the Supreme Court, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist accused the Library of Congress today of bad judgment in releasing the papers of Justice Thurgood Marshall so soon after his death, and he warned that Justices might no longer donate their papers to the Library. "I speak for a majority of the active Justices of the Court," the Chief Justice wrote in an extraordinary and stinging letter to James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, "when I say that we are both surprised and disappointed by the library's decision to give unrestricted public access to Justice Thurgood Marshall's papers."

John Cardinal O'Connor, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York, ordered all priests active in the archdiocese's parishes -- more than 1,000 priests -- to attend meetings this week to discuss questions surrounding sexual abuse of minors by priests. Such meetings have been rare under the Cardinal, church officials said. The Cardinal spoke of establishing a "firm policy" and taking "painful steps," said priests who attended one of the meetings. And Cardinal O'Connor said he wanted to hear the priests' reactions before issuing a statement, but no draft of one was distributed or summarized during the meetings.