A prep course for the month-long World Cup soccer tournament, a worldwide pheno

gle , D-Mich. , urged Greenspan to pause for a time . `` It would be foolhardy f

or us to needlessly bring this economic expansion to a premature shutdown , '' R

iegle said . Other committee members complained that the Fed has raised rates to

 curb inflation at a time when there is virtually no evidence of rising prices .

 The Fed 's moves to raise short-term rates have had a cascading effect on other

 market interest rates and the rest of the economy by making it more expensive f

or businesses and consumers to borrow either to invest or make purchases . And t

he lawmakers noted that the American economy is now more sensitive than ever to 

changes in Fed interest rate policy because so many mortgages and other consumer

 loans carry adjustable rates , which can be changed relatively quickly . ( Opti

onal add end ) Senator Paul Sarbanes , D-Md. , who is also vice chairman of the 

Joint Economic Committee , also complained that Greenspan was tightening monetar

y policy at a time when the Clinton administration and Congress have already mov

ed to tighten fiscal policy with last year 's deficit-reduction agreement . He a

rgued that since Greenspan had repeatedly urged Congress to cut the deficit , th

e Fed should now reward them by keeping interest rates low . So if both fiscal a

nd monetary policies are restrained , Sarbanes asked , `` the question then is w

here is the impetus to come from in order to get some economic growth and some j

ob restoration ? '' But Greenspan disagreed that Fed policies would sacrifice th

e health of the overall economy to please Wall Street investors . `` I don't ack

nowledge there are differences between the goals of Wall Street and the goals of

 Main Street , '' Greenspan said . `` The evidence is increasingly that low infl

ation means higher economic activity ( and ) greater growth . ''

 LONDON Senior British health officials sought Friday to play down the widely ci

rculated press reports that a deadly bacteria is threatening the population . ``

 The public should be reassured there is no killer bug sweeping the country , ''

 said Dr. Diana Walford , director of the Public Health Laboratory Service , att

acking the barrage of publicity . She said there have been 15 cases of the disea

se , called necrotising fasciitis , since Jan. 1 a rate of occurrence that she s

aid is not out of the ordinary . News that the disease was breaking out in parts

 of Gloucestershire in western England surfaced last weekend , and the British t

abloid press painted horrifying visions of a virus that can devour human flesh i

n a matter of hours . `` Curse of the Killer Bacteria , '' bannered The Sun , Br

itain 's largest-selling daily , and `` Flesh Bug Ate My Brother in 18 Hours . '

' `` I Watched Killer Bug Eat My Body , '' read another tabloid 's headlines . E

ven more sedate papers like The Times of London reported : `` Bacteria That Eat 

the Flesh '' and `` Flesh-Eater on the Move . '' Walford said press reports give

 the impression that the 15 cases 11 of which resulted in death all occurred in 

a sudden epidemic , instead of over the last five months . She stressed that nec

rotising fasciitis , a virulent form of the streptococcus bacteria , `` remains 

a rare disease . '' The British scare has generated worldwide concern , with gov

ernments from Austria to New Zealand checking incidents of the infection . In No

rway , the disease has killed 25 people so far this year , the country 's Nation

al Institute of Public Health . U.S. officials estimated that up to 450 American

s may have died each year from 1989 to 1991 from the infection , according to th

e World Health Organization . British Health Secretary Virginia Bottomley appeal

ed for calm , insisting that everything possible is being done to fight the bug 

. `` There is no evidence that the numbers we are seeing are untoward , '' Botto

mley said . `` It is important not to get it out of proportion . This is a situa

tion where everything that can be done has been done . '' ( Optional add end ) G

overnment officials did acknowledge that the disease could be horrifying to thos

e who contract it . The infection attacks the fleshy parts of the body , eating 

it away like gangrene . In the worst cases , death can occur within hours . `` I

 feel enormously for anyone who has a member of the family involved , '' Bottoml

ey said , `` but I don't want every family in the country to be panicked . '' Th

e tabloid press sent reporters to find victims and their relatives , and recount

ed their stories in lurid tales that brought invoked images of an outer-space in

vasion . As the Financial Times suggested : `` Mutant flesh-eating superbugs , c

apable of killing a healthy adult within hours , are rampaging their way through

 Britain . Or , to put it another way , the media is indulging in one of its per

iodic frenzies of terrifying the public with a medical horror story . ''

 WASHINGTON The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency ( IAEA ) urge

ntly warned the United Nations Friday that North Korea has recently accelerated 

its withdrawal of fuel rods from a nuclear reactor , raising new concerns about 

North Korean intentions . During a series of negotiations with top IAEA official

s this week , North Korea not only spurned the agency 's demand that it halt the

 fuel rod withdrawal , but also said it could not accept demands for special sto

rage of some key fuel rods , Hans Blix said in his letter to U.N. Secretary Gene

ral Boutros-Boutros Ghali . U.S. and IAEA officials have said that the fuel rods

 must be preserved for future radioactive measurements aimed at determining how 

much plutonium North Korea extracted in recent years from spent nuclear fuel . P

lutonium is a key element in nuclear arms , and U.S. officials suspect North Kor

ea of trying to develop an arsenal of such weapons . The North Koreans told the 

IAEA that special storage of the withdrawn rods would not meet `` their politica

l constraints , '' Blix said . Blix 's letter , obtained by The Washington Post 

, warned that North Korea has withdrawn almost half of the reactor 's estimated 

8,000 fuel rods and is continuing to withdraw them `` at a very fast pace . . . 

not in line with the information previously conveyed to the agency . '' The agen

cy had initially predicted the fuel withdrawal , which began two weeks ago , wou

ld not be completed for another six weeks . Blix wrote that his agency 's abilit

y to inspect the rods would be `` lost within days '' if the North Koreans proce

ed as they have been . Unless North Korea changes its position immediately , he 

added , `` the agency will not be in a position to verify the amount '' of pluto

nium the country has accumulated or verify that North Korea is not developing a 

nuclear arsenal . He asked that the matter be brought immediately to the attenti

on of the U.N. . Security Council . Robert Gallucci , the senior U.S. envoy for 

Korean matters , warned Friday in an interview that if North Korea proceeded , W

ashington would cancel plans for new high-level talks desired by North Korea to 

chart a solution to the nuclear dispute and foster improved relations . Gallucci

 also said the continuing withdrawal of the fuel rods would `` force us to go ba

ck to the Security Council where sanctions would be one of the options . '' Othe

r U.S. officials said they hoped China would intervene by sending a tough messag

e to North Korea . In a sign of Washington 's growing pessimism , however , U.S.

 officials Friday began reviewing two draft statements condemning the North Kore

an action with other members of the U.N. . Security Council . The IAEA and U.S. 

warnings came after North Korean officials , at talks this week with mid-level U

.S. diplomats in New York , rejected a U.S. proposal to begin the high-level tal

ks promptly . The North Koreans complained that they could not accept Washington

 's condition that the talks could be held only if the key fuel rods were preser

ved . North Korea 's actions bolstered suspicions among some U.S. officials that

 the country is determined to hide how much plutonium it obtained by reprocessin

g spent fuel rods withdrawn from the reactor in 1989 . Moreover , the officials 

said , if North Korea responds to sanctions by barring further inspections , it 

would then be able extract enough additional plutonium from spent fuel rods to m

anufacture four or five nuclear devices . North Korean officials said their deci

sion to reject the inspections was justified by the country 's `` unique status 

'' under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty , a global accord aimed at halting

 the spread of nuclear arms . North Korea claims it achieved this special status

 in 1993 by threatening to withdraw from the treaty and then suspending that thr

eat under U.S. pressure . The IAEA has repeatedly said North Korea has no specia

l status and must comply with all the inspection pledges it made in January 1992

 . Among those pledges was a commitment to international verification of how muc

h plutonium the country had extracted from spent fuel rods since the reactor sta

rted operating in 1986 . Two of the four IAEA negotiators in Pyongyang plan to d

epart for the agency 's headquarters in Vienna today , with the other two stayin

g behind at the site of the reactor in Yongbyon , north of the capital , to obse

rve the withdrawal of fuel rods , Blix said . In this case , the agency would de

clare formally that it could no longer maintain adequate safeguards against nucl

ear weapons development there . Secretary of State Warren Christopher told an As

ia Society meeting in New York Friday that `` confrontation is emphatically not 

our preferred path . '' But he said that if `` North Korea rejects the negotiati

ons we 've offered , '' Washington would be well-positioned to `` mobilize the i

nternational community to take sterner measures . '' Christopher added that sanc

tions would `` condemn '' North Korea to continued isolation and economic depriv

ation , while preserving its status as a political pariah .

 BEIJING In the end , China 's success in overcoming human rights opposition to 

win renewal of trade privileges from the United States boiled down to one simple

 truth : The Chinese regime demonstrated a much better understanding of the Amer

ican political system than the Clinton administration did of the Chinese system 

. The key to Beijing 's strategy was to divert attention from human rights issue

s by using the blinding lights of China 's booming economy and huge potential ma

rket . By doing this , Chinese officials said , they successfully broadened the 

terms of the debate inside the United States . As a result , the Clinton adminis

tration found itself fighting back on many fronts , often against some of its ow

n most powerful citizens . Time and again during the past year , the Chinese eff

ectively called on U.S. big business to do most of the heavy lifting in carrying

 their case to the American public and President Clinton himself . Major league 

companies such as Boeing , AT&T , General Electric and United Technologies were 

more than happy to go to bat for the Chinese with their powerful public relation

s machines . `` My feeling is that a few huge companies had more at stake than i

n the past , '' said Anne Stevenson-Yang , Beijing director of the U.S. China Bu

siness Council . American executives , for example , lobbied hard for a last-min

ute meeting between Clinton and China Vice Premier Zou Jiahua in early May that 

was one of the turning points in the dialogue . When confronted with allegations

 of human rights abuses , the Chinese leadership coolly responded by changing th

e subject , citing the thousands of U.S. jobs that depend on Chinese orders for 

commercial aircraft and telecommunications equipment . This approach was used in

 November when Chinese President Jiang Zemin held his first summit with Clinton 

during a Seattle visit . Jiang ostentatiously made a point of visiting the famil

y of a Boeing worker . His Chinese staff noted for all who would listen that Chi

na buys one out of every seven Boeing aircraft made . This effort continued righ

t up until Clinton 's Thursday news conference announcing renewal of China 's mo

st-favored-nation trading status the same rights that the United States grants a

ll but a few pariah states . The same day , the Wall Street Journal reported tha

t China is `` within weeks '' of finalizing an agreement to buy 50 new aircraft 

from Boeing , an order worth $ 5 billion . On another front often very embarrass

ing to the Clinton administration , the Beijing regime romanced American allies 

with attractive business opportunities to accentuate the U.S. isolation on the h

uman rights question . For example , at the same time Clinton was in Seattle pre

senting Jiang with a list of human rights concerns , German Chancellor Helmut Ko

hl traveled to Beijing with German business leaders to sign $ 3.5 billion worth 

of contracts . This spring , French Prime Minister Edouard Balladur arrived in B

eijing with a similar entourage . The Chinese government made the point abundant

ly clear : Only the United States put human rights conditions on trade . If the 

Clinton administration kept insisting , China could take its business elsewhere 

. Finally , during the year leading up to the Clinton decision , China hosted an

d feted hundreds of American political and business leaders . During all of 1992

 , for example , only 11 members of Congress eight representatives and three sen

ators came to China . But between June 1993 and June 1994 , Beijing was swarmed 

by 47 U.S. representatives and 14 senators . ( Begin optional trim ) The incomin

g planeloads of American politicians was partly due to the efforts of U.S. . Amb

assador J. Stapleton Roy , who encouraged Congress members to visit China and wi

tness its development firsthand . But the Chinese were quick to welcome the visi

tors , spending thousands of dollars to feed them and show them the sights . As 

a result , they may have won a few extra votes for their cause . Many Congress m

embers indicated that the bleak land of torture and abuse described in news repo

rts appeared instead to be a land in the throes of rapid , healthy development .

 ( End optional trim ) China was finally able to win the unyoking of human right

s questions and trade relations , while making only a handful of mostly token co

ncessions to the American side . This was the prize they wanted most but had bee

n unable to win from a hostile Democratic Congress during the Bush administratio

n , despite Bush 's personal support for separating trade and human rights issue

s . In explaining why the Chinese had not fully responded to American demands on

 human rights Clinton explained that China was under great strain from tensions 

between its far-flung provinces and the central government . This is a common ar

gument espoused by senior Communist Party leaders when they explain the need for

 measures to insure `` stability . '' Borrowing another common Chinese argument 

, Clinton noted that Asian societies like China have a more authoritarian tradit

ion . He cited as an example the recent case of American teen-ager Michael Fay ,

 sentenced to several strokes of a rattan cane for a vandalism charge in Singapo

re . Even when the Chinese did make concessions to the Americans , such as the r

elease earlier this month of prominent dissidents Wang Juntao and Chen Ziming , 

they timed them impeccably so as to win maximum possible credit from the Clinton

 administration , which in the later stages of the game was desperate for any su

ch sign from the Chinese . ( Begin optional trim ) While business delegations fr

om the United States were welcomed into Beijing like heads of state , U.S. Secre

tary of State Warren Christopher , who came to China in March ostensibly to tie 

up the package on human rights , was given one of the frostiest receptions an Am

erican diplomat ever received in the Chinese capital . The State Department 's s

pecial human rights envoy , assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck , who cam

e to China to prepare for the Christopher visit , was accused by authorities of 

breaking Chinese law because he met with prominent dissident Wei Jingsheng durin

g the visit . Adding insult to injury in the Shattuck episode , the Chinese auth

orities subsequently jailed Wei for allegedly telling Shattuck that China 's mos

t-favored-nation status should not be renewed unless improvements in the rights 

arena were made . Wei was still in jail when Clinton renewed the trading status 

Thursday . ( End optional trim ) When cornered on some tough points such as the 

thousands of political prisoners in Chinese jails and labor reform camps Beijing

 turned the tables on the Americans . In response to U.S. objections to the expo

rt of goods made in Chinese prisons , for example , China commissioned a series 

of reports in respectable international publications documenting examples of Ame

rican prison exports to other countries . Under a barrage of human rights allega

tions from the West , China responded that its first obligation to human rights 

was feeding and housing its people , something the United States so far had been

 unable to do with its enormous homeless population . Finally , the Chinese adop

ted a strategy of aiming their diplomatic efforts directly at Clinton , while sh

unting aside his most prominent emissaries . ( Optional add end ) Although Ameri

can policy on the human rights/trade question was vilified in the Chinese press 

, Clinton himself was never personally attacked . Moreover , when the Chinese au

thorities in May released dissident Wang , they made it clear that it was becaus

e Clinton had personally requested the release on medical grounds . Wang suffers

 from hepatitis . Confident that it had already won the diplomatic match-up over

 human rights through its other efforts , particularly by marshaling American pr

ivate business interests to its cause , China viewed the releases of dissidents 

Wang and Chen as a way of `` giving face '' to the young American president , st

ill a neophyte in international affairs . During his campaign for the presidency

 , Clinton repeatedly attacked Bush for `` coddling dictators '' in China . On T

hursday , however , Clinton succeeded where Bush had failed , removing human rig

hts conditions from trade matters between the two countries .

 WASHINGTON The nation 's largest bar examination review course signed a consent

 decree with the Justice Department Friday , agreeing to provide sign language i

nterpreters , transcription services and other costly auxiliary aids to students

 with disabilities . The agreement , which settled a civil complaint the departm

ent brought against the owners of the Bar/Bri bar review course , could have bro

ad implications for disabled students preparing to take bar exams and certified 

public accountant exams . They often have to pay 10 times more for interpreters 

or special materials than the cost of the review course tuition . `` This is a m

ajor step forward . All the others will be on notice that they have to provide t

he same services to the disabled , '' said Arlene Mayerson , an attorney for the

 Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund , based in Berkeley , Calif. . Dev

al L. Patrick , assistant attorney general for civil rights , said that as a res

ult of the agreement , `` The gateways to the legal and accounting professions h

ave now been opened wider for persons with disabilities . '' He said the agreeme

nt `` should serve as a model to all the other review courses this nation has to

 offer . '' In its complaint , the Justice Department accused Harcourt Brace Leg

al and Professional Publications Inc. , owner of Bar/Bri , of violating the Amer

icans With Disabilities Act ( ADA ) by failing to provide sign language interpre

ters to two deaf California students , and failing to provide Braille copies of 

course materials to a blind student from New York . The suit also alleged that B

ar/Bri regularly denied requests for interpreters and Braille materials , instea

d offering transcripts of course lectures to hearing-impaired students and recor

dings of written materials to blind students . Under the consent decree , the Ch

icago-based Bar/Bri , which each year prepares about 20,000 law school graduates

 for bar examinations in 25 jurisdictions , agreed to provide a wide range of sp

ecial services to the disabled within 60 days . They include interpreters , comp

uter-aided transcription services , special listening devices for the hearing-im

paired , note-takers , Braille materials , large-print materials , audio tapes a

nd other aids . Bar/Bri also agreed to pay $ 25,000 in civil penalties and $ 28,

000 in compensatory damages to cover the costs of special services for a blind s

tudent in New York and a deaf student in California who filed complaints against

 the company . Earlier this month , Becker CPA Review Inc. , which prepares stud

ents for the certified public accountants ' exam , signed a similar consent decr

ee that would make its courses accessible to students with disabilities . Patric

k said that Harcourt cooperated fully to settle the complaint , entering into ne

gotiations promptly after being notified of its alleged violations and implement

ing many of the new procedures months before the final settlement . Bar/Bri pres

ident Richard Conviser said that supplying a sign language interpreter for the i

ntensive review course costs about $ 11,000 , compared to the $ 600 to $ 1,000 f

or tuition . `` But we are pleased to enter into this consent decree . We believ

e it 's the right thing to do , and we believe it can be a model for other cours

es throughout the country , '' he said . Conviser estimated that less than 1 per

cent of Bar/Bri students are disabled . However , Mayerson said the costs will b

e minimal to `` multimillion-dollar companies like Bar/Bri who have been avoidin