UPDATE:
 Five bodies from Navy helicopter crash in rugged California mountains
     CRESTLINE, Calif. -- March 7, 1998 8:01 p.m. EST -- A Navy crew
 retrieved the bodies Saturday of five people who died in the crash
 of a helicopter Friday in the snow-packed San Bernardino Mountains.
     The SH-60B Seahawk was on a training mission from North Island
 Naval Air Station in San Diego to Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas
 when it vanished from radar screens Friday afternoon, said Navy Lt.
 j.g. Charlie Brown. All aboard were killed.
     The Navy identified them as:
 Lt. Kelly E. Mackey, 30, of San Jose, Calif.;
 Lt. John Lee, 28, of Oceanside, N.Y.;
 Lt. j.g. Kent E. Koontz, 29, of Nashville, Tenn.;
 Lt. Donald M. Hillegas, 25, of Raleigh, N.C., and
 Daniel R. Garber, a 24-year-old aviation anti-submarine warfare
 operator third class from Perry, Iowa.
 The Navy ground team battled blustery wind, thick woods and steep,
 icy terrain Saturday to bring the bodies down to the nearest road.
     Civilian authorities said the pilot had reported icy rotor
 blades shortly before he went down in fog.
     "We talked to him at 1,500 feet above ground and the aircraft
 was in control and not disabled," controller Michael Harne told The
 Press-Enterprise in Riverside. "He said, 'We are taking on ice' and
 he was going to descend. There was no panic."
     Searchers combed canyons and mountaintops for five hours before
 finding the wreck on 5,000-foot Monument Peak southwest of Lake
 Silverwood, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles.
     A U.S. Customs helicopter using night vision gear spotted the
 helicopter, said Cindy Beavers, spokeswoman for the San Bernardino
 County sheriff.
     The chopper was assigned to Helicopter Anti-submarine Squadron
 Light-47. Besides submarine hunting, the Seahawks are used for
 reconnaissance and search duties.
 -------------------------------------------------------------------
               Pakistan says going to court over F-16s
      ISLAMABAD, 8 March 1998 16:38 GMT - Pakistan said on Saturday it
 would go to court in the United States to seek a refund of $658 mil-
 lion it paid for 28 F-16 fighter planes that Washington has refused
 to supply because of legal hurdles.
    "Yes, we have taken a decision," Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan
 told Reuters in an interview. Pakistan had "things in the pipeline"
 as alternatives for its air force, he said.
     Khan said the United States had been only assuring Islamabad that
 it was looking into the issue "but there is no serious effort on
 their part either to give us the planes or return the funds."
   Delivery of the planes would come up against the so-called Pressler
 Amendment law under which U.S. arms supplies to Pakistan were stopped
 in 1990 over a nuclear weapons row, and Islamabad did not expect
 President Bill Clinton to campaign for a Congressional appropriation
 for a reimbursment, Khan said.
     As Washington had been unable to sell the planes to a third party
 so payments could be made to Pakistan, "we are left with the last
 option which is of going to court in America," he said.
     Khan said Pakistan would approach a court before the "statute of
 limitation" period for such action expires in February next year.
    "We have now studied the case, we have a very good case," he said.
 "And if we go to the court, there is no requirement for appropriation
 by Congress. The funds usually are there and this will take us a
 maximum one year to 18 months for a resolution (of the matter)."
    But Islamabad could also talk to Washington and "an out-of-court
 settlement" could be reached for the reimbursement of the money
 paid by Pakistan, he said.
    Asked if Pakistan would buy alternative planes for its air force,
 whose chief recently voiced worries over what he saw as a widening
 difference in air superiority with arch-foe India, Khan said: "We
 will get them."
    He declined to specify the source but said: "We have things in
 the pipeline, and are hopeful they will come to fruition."
    In the past few years Islamabad has tried to buy French Mirage-
 2000-5s or Russian Su-27 fighter-bombers.
     But, according to Pakistani officials, it could not be done
 because of the high cost of the Mirages and Russia's unwillingness
 to sell the planes to Pakistan because of Moscow's traditional close
 ties with New Delhi.
     Khan said after a visit to Russia last July that some Soviet-era
 misunderstandings with Moscow had been cleared up.
     On Saturday, he said the Mirage-2000 was a good plane but "it is
 not as good as the F-16 built to Pakistani requirements."
    The 28 F-16 planes were to be the first of a total of 71 Pakistan
 ordered in the late 1980s but the United States halted aid to Paki-
 stan in October 1990 over suspicions it was building nuclear weapons,
 blocking $1.4 billion of military equipment Islamabad had paid for.
    After the agreement of a U.S. Congressional panel, Clinton signed
 legislation in January 1996 which authorised him to release $368 mil-
 lion worth of equipment but not the 28 F-16s.
     The 1985 Pressler Amendment bans military aid to Pakistan unless
 the U.S. president can certify to Congress that Islamabad has no
 nuclear weapons and is not trying to develop them.
     Pakistan calls the law discriminatory. It says it has acquired
 technology to make nuclear weapons but has decided not to do so.
     Pakistan says its nuclear programme is peaceful but it will not
 sign the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or the
 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty unless old enemy India, which exploded
 a nuclear device in 1974, does the same.
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