PRESIDENT Clinton has intervened to try and end a spate of arson attacks on southern black churches, saying they "hearkens back to a dark era in our nation's history". He noted that two people among a number of suspects arrested so far are known members of the Ku Klux Klan.
There have been at least 30 such attacks in the past 18 months, mainly in southern states. Following the latest burning of a black community church in North Carolina, the President ordered the investigation to be stepped up.
He has promised to support a Bill making it easier for the federal authorities to have jurisdiction in church desecrations. A recent report by the ecumenical National Council of Churches criticised some investigators for focusing their inquiries on pastors and their congregations and even asking some ministers to take lie detection tests.
Last month, the council testified to a congressional committee that 57 black and inter racial churches had been burned or vandalised since 1990.
In his weekly radio address, President Clinton said there was still "no evidence of a national conspiracy". But "it is clear that racial hostility is the driving force behind a number of these incidents. This must stop."
He compared the attacks on the churches to those in the 1950s and 1960s in response to the civil rights movement. "We must never allow that to happen again. Every family have a right to expect that when they walk into a church or synagogue or mosque each week, they will find a house of worship, not the charred remnants of a hateful act done by cowards in the night," the President said.
He has ordered the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to visit southern churches and advise them on how to protect their property. He has also asked a joint task force from the Justice and Treasury departments to advise him of any new actions the government can take.
A group of 38 black ministers from the burned churches yesterday met the Attorney General, Ms Janet Reno, to discuss the situation. One of the ministers, the Rev Terence Mackey of the Mount Zion church in Greeleyville, South Carolina, said at the weekend that law enforcement agencies did not take the burning campaign seriously at first but "they are taking it more seriously now".
. Five Alaskan blazes yesterday forced a massive mobilisation of fire fighters.
The worst of the fires, in the Big Lake region of central Alaska, had destroyed over 14,932 hectares (37,330 acres), and caused damage worth an estimated $9.9 million (£6 million), according to the State Department of Natural Resources. The fire has forced some 1,800 people to evacuate their homes.