January 1, 1996

In the back room of the restaurant 1892, a few dozen Iowa Republicans have gathered over identical entrees to listen to Steve Forbes. The invitation to the noontime event had suggested a $10 donation, presumably to cover the cost of the broiled chicken sandwich served with potato chips and iced tea. But the campaign staff has not pressed for a contribution, and almost no one in the audience, it seems, has paid. Who says there's no free lunch?

The first American tanks rolled into Bosnia early this afternoon on a floating ribbon of a bridge across the swift-moving Sava River, marking the end of a problem-plagued engineering project and the real start to the American role in the mission here. The pontoon bridge, stretching more than 650 yards from Croatia to this small town in northeastern Bosnia, is the narrow, swaying passageway that will carry most of the 20,000 troops in the American contingent into the country. That parade began today in a display of military might as about 150 tanks, artillery pieces, Humvees and trucks carrying boxes of food and latrines rumbled south across melting snow into the American sector.

Just over a year ago, after much soul-searching, Robert W. Crispin turned down a plum job as one of the top three executives of a prestigious company on the West Coast. He decided instead to stay in Hartford, within easy visiting distance of his ailing 90-year-old father-in-law in northwest Pennsylvania. "We tried to figure out ways to deal with this," Mr. Crispin said. "We talked about opportunities to travel back to the East. But traveling transcontinental every couple of weeks is not easy, and I was very concerned about how my wife would agonize, and how much she would have to be away from me and my 14-year-old daughter."

A last-ditch effort to bring 260,000 furloughed Federal employees back to work just after New Year's Day failed today when Republicans and Democrats in the Senate rejected back-and-forth proposals from each other. Senator Bob Dole, the Republican majority leader, and Senator Tom Daschle, leader of the Democratic minority, could not agree on a temporary plan passed by the House on Saturday that would have allowed Federal employees to work without pay until a budget agreement was reached. They said they would resume negotiations when the Senate reconvened on Tuesday.

Killed Trying to Save Lives