NC_A_1_A1_LA_1_04-26-04_mo_2_CMYK
2004:04:25:21:28:31
On The Internet: WWW.LATIMES.COM
COLUMN ONE
Spirit
Reset
in Stone
8 Experts from around
the world are restoring
Cambodia’s ancient city
of Angkor. But a surge
in population puts the
area’s temples at risk.
By Richard C. Paddock
Times Staff Writer
ANGKOR, Cambodia — At
the magical temple of Ta Prohm,
200-year-old trees grow from the
ruins, their roots embracing the
ancient stone walls like giant
snakes. Archeologists from India
are trying to preserve the trees —
and the temple’s romantic spirit
— for as long as possible.
Down the road, at the mag-
nificent, sprawling temple of
Angkor Wat, a Japanese-led
crew grafts newly quarried sand-
stone onto broken 12th century
blocks in a state-of-the-art effort
to save the building known as
the northern library.
Nearby, 300,000 stone blocks
of the dismantled Bapuon tem-
ple are spread across 25 acres of
grassy fields. The building plans
were destroyed by war, but a
French-led archeological team is
reconstructing the ancient pyra-
mid, stone by stone.
As the horrors of Cambodia’s
“killing fields” fade into history, a
renaissance is taking place in an-
cient Angkor. Led by the United
Nations, an international coali-
tion of preservationists is work-
ing to restore and protect one of
the great cities of the past.
“This is a model of coopera-
tion — more than 10 countries
and international organizations
coming together in a spirit of
solidarity for the work of pre-
serving cultural heritage,” Cam-
bodian Senior Minister Sok An
said.
The restoration of Angkor
serves as a powerful symbol of
unity in a country still struggling
to come to terms with the Khmer
Rouge genocide that killed more
than 1 million people and the
decades of civil war that fol-
lowed.
Angkor Wat, the world’s larg-
est religious monument and
Angkor’s best-known temple,
appears on the Cambodian flag,
the national currency and bot-
tles of the country’s top-selling
Angkor beer. When a Phnom
Penh newspaper falsely reported
last year that a popular Thai ac-
[See Angkor, Page A4]
L.A. Mayor
Unbowed
as Political
Storms Brew
By Noam N. Levey
Times Staff Writer
Traveling to South Los An-
geles to talk about schools the
other day, Mayor James K. Hahn
was in no mood to discuss his re-
election.
“I have no comment about
anyone running for office or
thinking about running for of-
fice,” the Los Angeles mayor
snapped at a television reporter
who asked about one of his chal-
lengers. “I’m doing my job.”
The outburst made the after-
noon news and set off a round of
snickering among local politicos
on the lookout for signs that the
mayor was breaking under the
pressure of criminal investiga-
tions and a growing field plotting
for his job.
But that one slip was all the
Hahn-watchers would get.
Despite months of headlines
linking his administration to al-
legations of corruption, the
mayor who built a reputation for
integrity in a quarter century of
public life has given barely a hint
that he is troubled.
Hahn’s response has baffled
some allies, who have urged him
to fight back more forcefully.
And it has fed detractors, who
have called Hahn’s passivity a
lack of leadership.
But those who know Hahn
well say his stoicism reflects a
man who is surprisingly secure in
himself — and whose decades in
[See Hahn, Page A10]
S E A O F S U P P O RT : A crowd estimated at 500,000 to 800,000 fills the National Mall in Washington
for an abortion rights rally. The demonstrators came from across the United States and 57 countries.
Troops, Tension
Surround Najaf
Americans await orders
to enter the heart of an
Iraqi insurgency led by a
militant cleric. In the
holy city, his militia
tightens its grip.
By Edmund Sanders
Times Staff Writer
NAJAF, Iraq — As U.S.
troops await orders to enter this
Islamic holy city, militant Shiite
cleric Muqtada Sadr and his mi-
litia are strengthening their con-
trol here, stockpiling weapons,
seizing key religious sites and ar-
resting or detaining those who
challenge him.
In the last two weeks, Sadr’s
followers — many rushing here
from Baghdad, Fallouja and
other areas of Iraq — have forti-
fied their positions in the city
and the neighboring town of Ku-
fa, including at Najaf’s gold-
domed shrine of Imam Ali, one of
the most revered mosques in the
world.
Sadr’s forces have evicted
more than 100 rival Shiite clerics
and shrine employees, replacing
them with their own armed mili-
IN S ID E
Rocket Cuttino Mobley, right, fouls Karl Malone, whose 30 points in
Houston help put the Lakers one win away from taking the series.
Laker Win Tightens
NBA Playoff Race
L.A. beats Houston 92-88 in
overtime to take the lead in the
Western Conference series,
three games to one. B6
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tiamen, who roam the rooftops
and courtyards of the shrine
with rifles and rocket-propelled-
grenade launchers hung over
their shoulders.
The cleric’s followers also
were stockpiling weapons in
mosques, schools, graveyards
and private houses around the
city, according to U.S. intelli-
gence reports and local resi-
dents.
The open challenge to the
U.S.-led administration in a city
seen as sacred to Shiite Muslims,
who make up 60% of Iraq’s popu-
lation, has put coalition author-
ities in a quandary. Two weeks
ago, U.S. military officials
amassed 2,500 troops on the out-
skirts of Najaf and declared their
intention to restore order to the
city and kill or capture Sadr.
Last week, they softened their
stance, saying they wanted to al-
low more time to reach a peace-
ful settlement in Najaf.
But on Sunday, L. Paul Brem-
er III, the civil administrator of
Iraq, called Sadr’s growing
weapons cache “an explosive
situation.” Brig. Gen. Mark Her-
tling, deputy commander of the
U.S. Army’s 1st Armored Divi-
sion, said soldiers probably
[See Najaf, Page A5]
Gina Ferazzi Los Angeles Times
Perks of the Party
Giveaways are a crowd-pleaser
at Fiesta Broadway, celebrating
the Cinco de Mayo holiday. B5
L.A. Weather
Sunny after morning fog. L.A.
Downtown: 87/58. A2
California News .......................B1
Astrology.......D8 Obituaries...A11
Q C OPYRIGHT 2 0 0 4
Abortion Rights
Marchers Decry
Global Setbacks
Protesters hold one of
the biggest rallies seen in
Washington as they seek
to renew a movement hit
by years of reversals in
the U.S. and abroad.
By Richard B. Schmitt
and Faye Fiore
Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON — Hundreds
of thousands of abortion rights
supporters rallied Sunday on the
National Mall, railing against
what they described as a dozen
years of government backsliding
on the issue of reproductive free-
dom for women in the United
States and around the world.
The huge throng, many clad
in hot pink or purple and yellow
T-shirts, marched along the
city’s broad avenues, passing its
historic monuments, before
cramming the Mall for a four-
hour rally that featured politi-
cians, Hollywood celebrities,
leaders of the sponsoring organi-
zations and icons of the feminist
movement.
The rally, called the March for
Women’s Lives, was to serve as
an election-year challenge to the
policies of the Bush administra-
tion. But it also had another aim
— to reset the debate about
Associated Press abortion rights and health issues
for women after a decade in
which abortion foes have gained
Iraq’s Political Price Mounts
As lawmakers comfort
families and bury
call and comfort the victim’s par-
ents.
For Sen. Susan Collins (R-
Maine), the home-state price of
constituents, they report
war became clear when her office
growing voter unease. got a call from the weeping wife
of a reservist whose deployment
By Janet Hook in Iraq had repeatedly been ex-
Times Staff Writer tended.
Indeed, for all the politicians
WASHINGTON — For Rep. who have been stalwart support-
Steven C. LaTourette, the con- ers of President Bush’s Iraq pol-
flict in Iraq hit close to home the icy, the conflict is no longer just
day four American contract an abstraction — their constitu-
workers were killed, mutilated ents increasingly bear the bur-
and dragged through the streets den of personal sacrifice for the
of Fallouja. One of the four was mission.
from LaTourette’s district in the Casualties are mounting,
Cleveland suburbs, so it fell to sending more loved ones home in
the Republican congressman to coffins. Tours of duty have been
Fragmented Europe Invites Terrorists
By Sebastian Rotella
Times Staff Writer
Justice systems clash, polic-
ing styles diverge, and open bor-
ders allow terrorists far more
MADRID — Despite round-
the-clock teamwork by Euro-
mobility than their pursuers. For
years, the Al Qaeda terrorist net-
pean anti-terrorism agencies in work has taken full advantage of
the wake of last month’s train
bombings here, persistent barri-
these factors — and Europe’s
democratic, tolerant environ-
ers to cooperation and coordina- ment — using the continent as a
tion make Europe vulnerable to base for recruitment, logistics
attack, senior European and and plotting attacks elsewhere.
U.S. police officials, prosecutors The Madrid attacks, which
and other experts say. killed 191 people, showed how Al
OBITUARY | ESTEE LAUDER
Cosmetics Queen
Put New Face on
Beauty Industry
By Bettijane Levine
Times Staff Writer
Estee Lauder, founder of the international
beauty empire that bears her name and queen
of America’s prestige cosmetics industry who
pioneered the now ubiquitous “gift with pur-
chase,” has died. Her family said she was 97.
The doyenne of makeup died Saturday at
her home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan
of cardiopulmonary arrest, said her son, Leon-
ard A. Lauder.
A self-propelled dynamo, Lauder raised cos-
She began her company in the kitchen.
metics merchandising to an art form through
incessant work, a passion for quality and crea- geniuses of business of the 20th century.
tive sales techniques. From the start of her ca-
reer, as a teenager in the 1920s, she ignored
Lauder, who was very protective of her birth
date and other personal information, began life
conventional wisdom and forged new paths, as Josephine Esther Mentzer — one of six chil-
unabashedly marketing cosmetics as “jars of dren of Jewish immigrants from Hungary who
hope.” By 1998, she was the only woman listed lived above the family’s hardware store in the
among Time magazine’s 20 most influential
$1.00 Designated Areas Higher
steady momentum in Washing-
ton and in legislatures around
the country.
“Know your power and use
it,” House Minority Leader
Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco)
encouraged the crowd. “It is your
choice, not the politicians’.”
The demonstrators — from
across the United States and 57
countries — crossed lines of age,
race, gender, religion and sexual
orientation. The concerns they
voiced extended beyond the is-
sue of abortion to healthcare ac-
cess, AIDS prevention, birth
control and civil rights.
“It’s unbelievable we even
have to come here and do this,”
said Gabrielle Davis, 42, a law
professor at the University of To-
ledo, who drove all day Saturday
from Ohio with five other
women, encountering cars full of
people heading to the same des-
tination. “I felt like the goal was
accomplished, like the civil
rights movement. But it wasn’t.”
The turnout was among the
largest seen in a city with a fa-
bled history for such gatherings.
Authorities no longer offer offi-
cial crowd estimates, but various
police sources informally esti-
mated the throng at 500,000 to
800,000 in the mile-long stretch
of green space between the Capi-
tol and the Washington Monu-
ment.
The last time marchers ral-
lied for a similar cause, in 1992,
police officials put the crowd size
[See Rally, Page A8]
prolonged, keeping thousands of
troops away from their families
longer than expected. And the
price tag is growing rapidly, forc-
ing Congress to consider addi-
tional war funding at a time
when popular domestic pro-
grams are being squeezed.
The personal and financial
costs are likely to mount through
the summer months, during the
run-up to the Nov. 2 presidential
and congressional elections, be-
cause the administration is un-
der pressure to increase its in-
vestment in Iraq. Members of
both parties are calling for more
troops, more money, more vigi-
lance.
[See Constituents, Page A6]
Qaeda used that infrastructure
to carry out its first successful
strike in a Western Europe that
was caught off guard, investiga-
tors say.
“There’s a lack of trust among
security services and among
countries,” said Baltasar Gar-
zon, Spain’s best-known anti-
terrorism magistrate. “There’s a
lack of solidarity. Self-interest
dominates. What we need is a
[See Terrorism, Page A6]
Associated Press
ESTEE LAUDER
[See Lauder, Page A9]