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Digest 107, originally sent Mon Jun 7 04:39:40 1999 :
There are 6 messages in this issue.
Topics in today's digest:
1. NucNews-0 Brief 6/03/99
2. NucNews-2 6/06/99 - UN/Yugo Reactor; New Zealand/US Defense Ties?; Jabiluka; Kashmir; N.Korea; Greens; Israel Atomic High School
3. NucNews-5 6/06/99 - EU/NATO (2); Rebuilding Yugo; KLA arms/illicit funds; Clinton's strategic appointments
4. NucNews-4 6/06/99 - DC NATO Protests (3); WIPP shipment 6/15; Yucca Mt; Ward Valley
5. NucNews-1 6/06/99 - DU (New Scientist); Iraq buying nuc?; Greenpeace Holland Waste; Chernobyl cleanup; Book, Nazi Bomb
6. NucNews-3 6/06/99 - China-Embassy, History Espionage; Tiananmen (+++) ; US-Honeywell; Lockheed etc; NY Mohawk; Energy
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Message: 1 Date: Sun, 06 Jun 1999 17:33:53 -0400
Subject: NucNews-0 Brief 6/03/99
[Please address replies to articles to the original publisher (with a copy to prop1@prop1.org and NucNews@onelist.com (Archives)). Your help in refuting false information appreciated!]
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NucNews-1 6/06/99 - DU (New Scientist); Iraq buying nuc?; Greenpeace Holland Waste; Chernobyl cleanup; Book, Nazi Bomb NucNews-2 6/06/99 - UN/Yugo Reactor; New Zealand/US Defense Ties?; Jabiluka; Kashmir; N.Korea; Greens; Israel Atomic High School NucNews-3 6/06/99 - China-Embassy, History Espionage; Tiananmen (+++) ; US-Honeywell; Lockheed etc; NY Mohawk; Energy NucNews-4 6/06/99 - DC NATO Protests (3); WIPP shipment 6/15; Yucca Mt; Ward Valley NucNews-5 6/06/99 - EU/NATO (2); Rebuilding Yugo; KLA arms/illicit funds; Clinton's strategic appointments
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1. Too hot to handle Rob Edwards, New Scientist, 5 June 1999 http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19990605/newsstory6.html IN 1991 Doug Rokke went to the Middle East as a US army health physicist to clean up uranium left by the Gulf War. He helped decontaminate 23 armoured vehicles hit by shells in "friendly fire" incidents. Today he has difficulty breathing. His lungs are scarred and he has skin problems and kidney damage. Rokke, a major in the US Army Reserve's Medical Service Corps, has no doubt what made him ill--contact with radioactive metal.Three years after he worked in the Gulf, the US Department of Energy tested his urine. They found that the level of uranium in his sample was over 4000 times higher than the US safety limit of 0.1 micrograms per litre.... The ultimate irony is that DU could poison the very land that NATO is trying to protect, says Rokke. "The aim of this war is to enable the Kosovars to return home. But unless the uranium is cleaned up, those that survive the Serb atrocities and the NATO aerial attacks will have to return to a contaminated environment where they may become ill." -- Subject: Laka Depleted Uranium brochure online 06 Jun 1999 09:13:04, from Peter Diehl <p.diehl@sik.de> The brochure prepared by LAKA Foundation for the Depleted Uranium workshop at The Hague Appeal for Peace conference in May 1999 is available online at the WISE Uranium Project website now: http://antenna.nl/wise/uranium/dhap99.html
2. Report: With West busy in Serbia, Iraq buying nuclear arms material By Douglas Davis, June 3, 1999 Jewish Telegraphic Agency http://www.jta.org/jun99/03-iraq.htm LONDON, June 3 (JTA) -- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is exploiting NATO's preoccupation with the Balkans by accelerating the search for components used in nonconventional weapons, according to the London-based newsletter Foreign Report....
3. GP Steps up Pressure On Radioactive Polluters; Returns Radioactive Waste to Dutch Nuclear Plant June 3, 1999 EcoNet http://www.econet.apc.org/igc/en/hl/9906035911/hl1.html AMSTERDAM - Greenpeace today will attempt to return liquid radioactive waste to the Borssele nuclear power plant near Vlissingen, in the Netherlands, after collecting it during a week-long diving operation from the end of the discharge pipe at the COGEMA nuclear reprocessing plant at La Hague, on the north-west coast of France.
4. Back to Chernobyl Lila Guterman, New Scientist, April 10, 1999 http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19990410/newsstory4.html CROPS MAY ONE DAY be grown again in the contaminated soil surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear plant, if the ideas of Spanish, Ukrainian and American researchers pay off. The teams say that, over many years, simply mulching crops could drastically reduce radioactive contamination.
5. Book Review: Duty, obedience, and intellectual dishonesty By VALENTINE VASILEFF, June 3, 1999 Jerusalem Post http://www.jpost.com/com/Archive/03.Jun.1999/Books/Article-1.html HEISENBERG AND THE NAZI ATOMIC BOMB PROJECT: A Study in German Culture by Paul Lawrence Rose. University of California
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6. U.N. Checks Yugoslav Reactor By Edith M. Lederer Associated Press, June 4, 1999; 6:08 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990604/V000305-060499-idx.html UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The U.N. nuclear agency has made its first inspection of a Yugoslav nuclear reactor since NATO began bombing the country 2 1/2 months ago, a U.N. spokesman said Friday....
[Is this true???]
7. New Zealand Seeks U.S. Defense Ties By Ray Lilley Associated Press Writer Friday, June 4, 1999; 3:45 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990604/V000193-060499-idx.html WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- New Zealand is launching a new attempt to restore defense ties with the United States, 13 years after the U.S. government suspended those links over anti-nuclear laws....
8. Shareholders question Jabiluka involvement Thursday 3 June, 1999 (Australian Broadcasting) http://www.abc.net.au:80/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-3jun1999-66.htm The Wilderness Society has praised the actions of shareholders in a resource giant to formally question the involvement of the company in the Jabiluka uranium mine....
9. ANALYSIS-Kashmir seen as world's top flashpoint Result of www.dogpile.com (Infoseek) search LONDON, June 4 1999 (Reuters) - The confrontation line between India and Pakistan over Kashmir has become the world's most volatile border, surpassing even the tense standoff between the two Koreas, defence analysts say.... [Here's another example of "collateral damage" of war.] --- India pounds guerrillas in Kashmir USA Today June 4, 1999 (World) http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwsthu03.htm --- Blast injures 30 in India's capital USA Today June 4, 1999 (World) http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm
10. Paving the way for N. Korean diplomacy Former Defense Secretary William Perry said the United States may expand relations with the country. By Michael Zielenziger KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE, May 30, 1999 http://www.phillynews.com:80/inquirer/99/May/30/international/NKOR30.htm
11. The Warring 'o the Greens By Nora Boustany, Washington Post, June 4, 1999; Page A27 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/04/028l-060499-idx.html
12. Subject: ATOMIC HIGH SCHOOL From: Rayna Moss <legalese@netvision.net.il> Date: Monday, May 31, 1999 5:06 PM A high school operates within the Dimona nuclear reactor in Israel, training young people to be future nuclear technicians and engineers. This astonishing and exclusive news appeared on May 30 in Rosh Echad (One Mind) - a weekly youth magazine belonging to Yediot Aharonot publishing company (article by Itamar Seida)....
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13. China, U.S. hold talks on embassy attack USA Today June 4, 1999 (World) http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm
14. Latest rhetoric about Chinese espionage distorts history Guest column by Allan Winkler, Cincinnati Post, June 3, 1999 http://www.cincypost.com/opinion/guest060399.html
15. HK Group: China Holds More Dissidents For Tiananmen Inside China Today, June 4, 1999 http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=72113 -- Lest We Forget Document Says 2,600 Killed, 7,200 Injured At Tiananmen Massacre Inside China Today, June 4, 1999 http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=72117 ...
16. Allied Signal and Honeywell Said to Be in Talks By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH, June 5, 1999 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/allied-honeywell.html Allied Signal Inc., the diversified manufacturer, and Honeywell Inc., the maker of electronic controls, are in merger discussions, people close to the companies said Friday. A combination of the two, which could be announced as early as Monday, would create a company with revenue of more than $24 billion.
17. Lockheed To Cut Up To 2,000 Jobs Updated 1:23 AM ET June 4, 1999 http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990604/01/business-aerospace-lockhe edmartin MARIETTA, Ga. (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems, a unit of defense giant Lockheed Martin Corp., will cut up to 2,000 jobs, or 21 percent of the work force, at a plant that produces C-130J cargo planes and F-22 fighter jets for the U.S. armed forces, the company said Thursday. --- Newport News Won't Hike Avondale Bid Jun 3 1999 Associated Press http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990603/V000221-060399-idx.html
18. Niagara Mohawk Nuclear Power Selects Xybernaut(R) Wearable PC; Wearable PC Saves Time and Money in Inspections FAIRFAX, Va., June 3 1999 /PRNewswire/ --
19. Clinton orders energy cuts USA Today June 3, 1999 http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsthu06.htm
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19. Americans Protest NATO's War Saturday, June 5, 1999; 5:06 p.m. EDT - Associated Press http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990605/V000821-060599-idx.html (also in USA Today: "Anti-war protesters march on Pentagon") WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark urged NATO's abolition and an end to what he called American warmongering as several thousand protesters demonstrated Saturday against the war in Yugoslavia.
20. 26 Arrested In Protest at White House Religious, Peace Groups Urge End to Bombing By Caryle Murphy, Washington Post, June 4, 1999; Page A29 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/04/204l-060499-idx.html --- Anti-war protesters arrested By Joyce Howard Price and Larry Witham, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, June 4, 1999 http://www.washtimes.com/nation/nation1.html Photo (front page) http://www.washtimes.com/news/images/news1.gif
21. WIPP shipments to start June 15 First of up to 2,000 loads of nuclear waste finally leaving Flats so cleanup can proceed By Berny Morson, June 4, 1999 Denver Rocky Mountain News http://insidedenver.com:80/news/0604wipp7.shtml Shipments of nuclear waste L from Rocky Flats to a burial site in the New Mexico desert will begin June 15, state and federal officials said Thursday....
22. Questions multiply over Nevada nuclear-waste site Discoveries raise fresh concerns about safety at Yucca Mountain, but program stays on track. Robert C. Cowen Special to The Christian Science Monitor, JUNE 3, 1999 http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1999/06/03/fp2s2-csm.shtml New research has raised more questions about whether Yucca Mountain - the controversial site slated to accept much of America's nuclear waste - is safe....
23. From: Bradley Angel <bradley@greenaction.org> Date: Friday, June 04, 1999 11:35 AM Subject: Breaking News on Ward Valley Nuclear Dump Fight! The fight to stop the radioactive waste dump proposed for Ward Valley is a step closer to victory. California Governor Gray Davis has just announced that the State will not appeal the U.S. District Court decision which set back the proposed dump, and this is very good news. The Governor also announced the formation of a panel to look at alternatives, but the panel is to be headed by a representative of a pro-dump nuclear waste generator. Despite press reports announcing the dump proposal is over, it is not!
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24. NATO chief named EU security head USA Today June 5, 1999 (World) http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm COLOGNE, Germany - European Union leaders on Friday selected NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana as the EU's first head of foreign and security policy, a new position designed to give the union more clout on the international scene....
[I wonder if they're factoring in the cost of depleted uranium cleanup? And who will bear THAT cost?]
25. NEW ARMY European Union Vows to Become Military Power June 4, 1999 New York Times, By CRAIG R. WHITNEY http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/060499eu-military.html -- The Overview: Milosevic Yields on NATO's Key Terms; 50,000 Allied Troops to Police Kosovo http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/060499kosovo.html -- MEMO FROM THE CONTINENT - Europeans Impressed by Their Own Unity http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/060499kosovo-europe.html
26. REBUILDING - A Relief Plan for Yugoslav Neighbors By RICHARD W. STEVENSON, June 5, 1999 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/060599kosovo-reconstruct.html WASHINGTON -- Officials from the United States, the European Union and international aid agencies stepped up their planning Friday for the formidable job of repairing the physical and economic damage wrought throughout the Balkans by the conflict in Kosovo....
27. KLA buys arms with illicit funds By Jerry Seper, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, June 4, 1999 http://www.washtimes.com/news/news2.html The Kosovo Liberation Army is buying sophisticated weapons with cash from an "independence tax" levied against expatriates and from profits of illicit drugs and prostitution....
28. ALSO... [Could it be Clinton hopes the Republicans will jump on the Luxembourg candidate instead of following through on the Kosovo crisis when they return? Typical Clinton maneuver....]
Hearings for Holbrooke Are Set By PHILIP SHENON, New York Times June 5, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/holbrooke-confirm.html Senator Jesse Helms announced hearings on the nomination of Richard Holbrooke as U.N. delegate, but warned that U.S. Balkans policy will be a big issue.... -- Clinton Appoints Gay Man as Ambassador as Congress Is Away By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE, New York Times June 5, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/washpol/clinton-hormel-appoint.html Over Republican objections, President Clinton Friday appointed James Hormel as Ambassador to Luxembourg, employing a rarely used executive privilege to make him the nation's first openly gay envoy.
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Message: 2 Date: Sun, 06 Jun 1999 17:15:59 -0400
Subject: NucNews-2 6/06/99 - UN/Yugo Reactor; New Zealand/US Defense Ties?; Jabiluka; Kashmir; N.Korea; Greens; Israel Atomic High School
6. U.N. Checks Yugoslav Reactor
By Edith M. Lederer Associated Press, June 4, 1999; 6:08 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990604/V000305-060499-idx.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The U.N. nuclear agency has made its first inspection of a Yugoslav nuclear reactor since NATO began bombing the country 2 1/2 months ago, a U.N. spokesman said Friday.
The airstrikes disrupted inspections by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, and there were fears that the reactor or nuclear material might be bombed.
The agency had also missed monthly visits to the Vinca nuclear facility, about 12 miles from Belgrade's city center, in February and March -- making this week's inspection the first in a critical five-month period.
``The agency is not anticipating that anything unusual will come out of the inspection,'' said U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard.
There was no immediate report from the three inspectors, who were expected to return to Vienna Saturday morning, Eckhard said.
Under normal circumstances, the IAEA carries out monthly inspections of the reactor and substantial nuclear material stored at the site.
The 6.5-megawatt Russian-made research reactor, which was completed in 1959, is in poor condition and has been out of operation for at least a year. It needs repairs by Russian experts, but work has been delayed, apparently by a lack of money.
IAEA spokesman David Kyd said last month that regular inspections are needed because Yugoslavia has 132 pounds of highly enriched uranium stored at the site, enough for two nuclear bombs.
Some bomb-quality uranium is still in the reactor and 5,000 fuel rods are contained in 30 drums that are kept in a cooling pond, he said.
The Yugoslav government invited nuclear inspectors to return to Vinca in April. The IAEA accepted in May but the inspectors got to the site just this week because logistics had to be worked out, Eckhard said.
Vinca was conceived as a multimillion-dollar project to produce nuclear material for a particle accelerator.
The late Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito had ambitions to build a nuclear bomb. But in the 1960s a major radiation leak occurred, killing at least two scientists and injuring several others.
A huge nuclear waste depot is located next to Vinca, and even before NATO started bombing Yugoslavia, several environmentalists had warned of a possible radiation disaster that could threaten Belgrade.
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7. New Zealand Seeks U.S. Defense Ties
By Ray Lilley Associated Press Writer Friday, June 4, 1999; 3:45 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990604/V000193-060499-idx.html
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- New Zealand is launching a new attempt to restore defense ties with the United States, 13 years after the U.S. government suspended those links over anti-nuclear laws.
Defense Minister Max Bradford will work to end the ban on joint military exercises between the two allies during a visit to Washington this weekend.
Military and political links between the countries were suspended in 1986, after New Zealand banned nuclear weapons from its territory and nuclear-armed and -powered ships from its ports.
In response, New Zealand forces were shut out of all U.S. defense exercises and military procurement contacts.
Many of the sanctions imposed at the time have since been lifted. New Zealand frigates, aircraft and army units have regularly worked with U.S. forces in operations such as the Persian Gulf War.
But no joint training is possible, New Zealand can't buy major U.S. military equipment -- though it has access to some technology upgrades -- and strict limits remain on New Zealand's access to U.S. strategic and military intelligence information.
Bradford will meet with senior U.S. defense officials including Defense Secretary William Cohen, who is reported to be the last senior U.S. official opposed to lifting the ban.
``We want the Americans at the highest level to understand New Zealand's willingness to play its role in peacekeeping, as we do,'' Bradford said Friday.
The anti-nuclear law, passed by the former Labor government, remains in force supported by nearly 80 percent of the population, according to polls.
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8. Shareholders question Jabiluka involvement
Thursday 3 June, 1999 (Australian Broadcasting) http://www.abc.net.au:80/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-3jun1999-66.htm
The Wilderness Society has praised the actions of shareholders in a resource giant to formally question the involvement of the company in the Jabiluka uranium mine.
One-hundred-and-twenty shareholders in North Limited have requisitioned an extraordinary general meeting, where directors will be asked to justify the development by its subsidiary, ERA.
The Wilderness Society's Alec Marr believes the action will have important ramifications for big businesses in general.
"The power is in the Act," he said.
"I believe this will send shockwaves through corporate Australia because for the first time in decades they are going to be forced to take ethics, environmental damage and social justice into account when they take those decisions in the board room."
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9. ANALYSIS-Kashmir seen as world's top flashpoint
08:24 a.m. Jun 04, 1999 Eastern, By Brian Williams Result of www.dogpile.com (Infoseek) search
LONDON, June 4 (Reuters) - The confrontation line between India and Pakistan over Kashmir has become the world's most volatile border, surpassing even the tense standoff between the two Koreas, defence analysts say.
The prolonged clashes have led to growing unease that the longer the latest flare-up in the decades-old row goes on then the more likely it is that the high-altitude fighting could ignite a wider conflict between the two rivals.
This concern has led to new strategic assessments of which side would win a war now that both have a nuclear weapons capability and in view of the fact their one-time backers, China and the Soviet Union, no longer wield the influence they once did over them.
Defence analysts believe that a pitched battle between the two, despite India's seemingly overwhelming superiority in numbers and weapons, would actually be ``finely balanced'' and would most likely to end in a standoff that would require international intervention to separate them.
``Pakistan does not have the military power to attack India but Pakistan could defend itself effectively against an Indian strike,'' said Paul Beaver, defence analyst at Jane's Defence Weekly.
Damien Bristow, defence analyst at the Royal Institute for Defence Studies in London, agreed that India's advantage of having the larger military was offset by the long borders which its armed forces have to defend.
``Nobody would win. While India is a lot bigger in numbers, their forces are spread more widely. They have a entire Chinese border to patrol where half of their forces are based,'' Bristow said. ``It is all finely balanced.''
According to the latest figures from the authoritative International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), India has a total full time force of nearly 1.2 million made up of an army of 980,000, a navy of 55,000 and an air force of 140,000.
Pakistan's full time force is 587,000, comprising an army of 520,000, a navy of 22,000 and an air force of 45,000.
``It's certainly not in Pakistan's interest to escalate. To be honest they'd get flattened by the Indian army if they actually fought it simply on the numbers game,'' said IISS analyst Andrew Brookes.
Beaver felt that no matter how bad any fighting became, neither nation would turn to its nuclear weapons capability.
``It won't go nuclear because, although they are nuclear powers, they are not weaponised powers. Just because you've done a few tests dosn't mean you can go and start blowing things up,'' Beaver said.
``But it certainly does put a lot of pressure on both sides now to keep the situation stable.''
All analysts agreed that the ill-defined Kashmir border now had the unsavoury reputation of the world's most unstable border because of the recent upsurge in fighting -- mainly artillery duels - in its Himalayan ridges.
``The demilitarised zone between the two Koreas has the most potential for danger to the world but, because it is a clearly defined border where well-trained and equipped troops face each other, the likelihood of a mistake causing a world conflict is less,'' Bristow said.
``But the Kashmir area has become more of a flashpoint because it is a volatile and unstable area. No one really knows where the borders begin and end,'' he said.
``No one knows exactly how far they can go into each other's territory before someone flips the nuclear button now that it is available,'' Bristow added.
The analysts said the situation had become more fraught compared with past Kashsmir fighting because Russia, a major weapons supplier to India, and China, an ally of Pakistan, no longer had the influence they once did with their proxies.
Bristow said the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 had left Moscow with little leverage while China's eyes were firmly fixed on improving relations with the United States.
He said the failure of Russia and China to restrain India and Pakistan over their recent nuclear and missile testing clearly showed their influence had waned.
While analysts saw scant hope for any effective measures by the only international restraining force in the Kashmir region -- a pitifully small 45-strong United Nations observer team -- they felt it did have it uses.
``If you pulled them out there would be instant bloodshed,'' Beaver said. ``At least there is someone there watching and that is better than nothing.''
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[Here's another example of "collateral damage" of war.]
India pounds guerrillas in Kashmir USA Today June 4, 1999 (World) http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwsthu03.htm
KARGIL, India - In the ninth day of its campaign, India continued Thursday to blast guerrilla bunkers in the disputed Kashmir region, sending in air force jets to support ground troops trying to evict alleged intruders from Pakistan. The Indian military reported 31 militants and six Indian soldiers killed in ground fighting in the latest fight intensifying hostility between India and Pakistan. But in a show of ''good will,'' Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ordered the immediate release of a captured Indian pilot, shot down over Kashmir a week ago. The pilot has been handed over to the International Red Cross.
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Blast injures 30 in India's capital USA Today June 4, 1999 (World) http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm
NEW DELHI, India - A bomb concealed in a bag exploded outside a police station Thursday in India's capital. Police said at least 30 people were injured. The explosion occurred in Chandni Chowk area in New Delhi's old quarters at a time when many people were shopping. The injured included three policemen, but most of the others were pedestrians who had gathered around the unclaimed bag. The bag containing the bomb was found abandoned by a shop-owner, who took it to the police station. The bomb exploded outside while police were waiting for explosive experts to come and defuse it, Press Trust of India news agency said. The blast also destroyed four parked cars and one police motorcycle. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blast.
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10. Paving the way for N. Korean diplomacy Former Defense Secretary William Perry said the United States may expand relations with the country.
By Michael Zielenziger KNIGHT RIDDER NEWS SERVICE, May 30, 1999 http://www.phillynews.com:80/inquirer/99/May/30/international/NKOR30.htm
TOKYO -- First a group of U.S. inspectors searching for an underground nuclear weapons factory in secretive North Korea uncovered only a vast, empty tunnel.
Then the highest-ranking U.S. envoy ever dispatched to North Korea rode in a Pyongyang subway, visited a cooperative farm and inspected a local hospital -- but never got the chance to meet the country's reclusive strongman, Supreme Leader Kim Jong Il.
No one ever said that dealing successfully with North Korea -- a hard-to-penetrate, Stalinist-style military compound essentially ruled by one man -- would be easy.
But after leaving that isolated Communist enclave, former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry insisted yesterday that his three-day visit to North Korea helped establish "meaningful relationships with a wide range" of senior officials, and would help him recommend a new policy initiative to President Clinton.
In a brief statement to reporters in Seoul, South Korea, Perry acknowledged he was considering the "possibility of a major expansion in our relations and cooperation" with Pyongyang, as long as U.S. concerns about missile development and nuclear programs were addressed.
Perry did not express any pessimism at his inability to meet Kim -- without whose support no deal with North Korea can be cemented.
"I did not meet with leader Kim Jong Il," Perry said, after meeting with counterparts from Japan and South Korea to discuss his rare visit to the hermit state, which is still technically at war with South Korea and the United States. "Quite frankly, we had not expected to meet him, although we had indicated to our hosts that such a meeting would be useful."
However, he said that a letter from Clinton intended for Kim Jong Il was delivered to Kim Yong Nam, chairman of the North Korean legislature, and said his group was treated with "warm hospitality."
Perry said the North Koreans emphasized their intention to maintain a 1994 agreement that precludes them from building nuclear power plants capable of producing plutonium, the fissile material of nuclear bombs, in exchange for Western assistance in building safer, light-water reactors. Under the agreement, the United States, South Korea and Japan are supposed to supply some fuel oil to the North Koreans in order to generate electricity while they build the new reactors.
The United States and other nations are also providing massive amounts of food aid to North Korea, where bad weather and a collapse of the nation's economy has left millions wandering the countryside in search of food.
Perry said he had spent the last six months considering how to structure an approach to North Korea that would "expand" the distant and sometimes hostile relationship between the two countries.
"For that reason," Perry said, "it is not surprising that I do not have for you at this time anything that I might characterize as a definitive North Korean response to this idea. I traveled as a presidential envoy, not as a negotiator, and it will take some time for the North Koreans to further reflect upon the views I expressed, and for us to reflect on our visit."
After reading his statement, Perry declined to answer questions from reporters.
Perry is believed to be considering a plan that would eventually offer diplomatic recognition to the isolated North if the Communist government agrees to abide by international rules limiting sales of ballistic missiles, ends its threat to build nuclear weapons, and agrees to open itself up to the outside world. An interim measure might involve lifting America's 46-year-old trade embargo against the Pyongyang government, in exchange for significant concessions.
North Korea seized the attention of U.S. security analysts last fall when it lobbed a ballistic missile over Japan, then was thought to be constructing a massive underground facility for the production of nuclear weapons material.
After long negotiations, including, at one point, a North Korean demand that the State Department pony up $300 million for the privilege, the Americans finally won permission to inspect the underground facility at Kumchangri, about 25 miles west of Yongbyon, site of another North Korean nuclear complex.
That team "found an unfinished site, the underground portions of which was an extensive, empty tunnel complex," State Department spokesman James Rubin said earlier this week. Nevertheless he credited the North Koreans for giving inspectors "unhampered access" to the complex.
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11. The Warring 'o the Greens
By Nora Boustany, Washington Post, June 4, 1999; Page A27 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/04/028l-060499-idx.html
Rezzo Schlauch describes himself as a "Greener of the First Hour." He was a founding member of the Greens, an environmentalist movement that became a German political party in 1980. But things have changed for the Greens. They are now part of Germany's governing coalition, not a marginal movement. Schlauch, their spokesman in the lower house of parliament, said it is a shift in style rather than in goals.
Still, it was a painful experience for him to be heckled and kicked as he walked into the May 13 party congress at Bielefeld through a police cordon holding back protesters. Did it remind him of times past when he was on the other side? "I defended these persons pro bono for 15 years," he said, but one has "to stand up for national convictions." Other party members had misgivings about having to meet under police protection -- they who had defied security forces in the past. Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer was pelted with bags of rancid butter and branded a warmonger. On the bright side, since everyone is a politician now, coverage of the party congress by the Phoenix television channel, Germany's C-SPAN equivalent, got its highest ratings ever. Schlauch began his activism in the late '60s as a university student and went on to become a criminal lawyer. He worked on hashish-smuggling cases -- one of which involved a German who drove from the Lebanese growing center of Baalbek with the illicit goods tucked in the walls of a trailer. So guess who has tried at least one joint? "I do not make the silly distinction between inhaling and not inhaling -- no offense to President Bill Clinton and no apologies to anyone else," he joked over dinner Wednesday at Restaurant Nora.
What Schlauch really laments is the change in the pattern of contact between him, other Green politicos and their constituents outside the capital. "Our party depends on personal interaction. What is really difficult for people like us is that you can't go into the countryside and discuss things because we have to be back in Bonn securing votes" in the legislature.
On human rights and the pacifist vs. warmonger controversy, Schlauch argues that even in their heyday, the Greens were split, for example, over providing arms to a liberationist guerrilla movement in El Salvador. In 1995, the party discussion over whether to become involved in the Bosnia conflict was a debate carried out for the rest of German society. "It is part of the political culture of the Greens to fight in public. So it looks like other parties are more united and not as dramatic, and I feel good about it," Schlauch said. "I prefer this to having rules come from the top or having a cemetery stillness. Whatever anybody says, it is still a very lively party."
The Sound of One Hand Clapping
"You need two hands to clap; one cannot do it alone," observed Pakistani Ambassador Riaz Khokhar yesterday amid awkward efforts to defuse tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Pakistani officials were trying late into the night to release a captured Indian pilot, Flight Lt. K. Nachiketa, to the Indian high commissioner in Islamabad as a goodwill gesture to finalize plans for a visit by Pakistani Foreign Minister Sartaj
Aziz to New Delhi. The pilot, whose plane was downed May 27 after India began airstrikes against pro-Pakistani guerrillas entrenched on the Indian side of the Kashmiri Line of Control, was handed to officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
In a separate interview, India's ambassador to Washington, Naresh Chandra, explained the "humanitarian" aspect of the low-intensity conflict in northern Kashmir. The guerrillas, he said, are fighting for control of a road used in summer to truck supplies of sugar, spices, medicine and cloth to local inhabitants who are trapped in "snow-bound, cruel heights" for the rest of the year -- a road that is only open for five months. "It is not a picnic," said Chandra. "It was a military objective to occupy these heights, cleverly selected."
Kashmir has been the cause of two wars between India and Pakistan, two nuclear-capable neighbors. Although India had the upper hand in 1949, one of the reasons why Prime Minister Jawahral Nehru decided to halt his army at the present Line of Control was because that is where Kashmiri culture and ethos stop, scholars have surmised, according to Chandra. "On our side, the way of life is more Sufi and liberal, and on the other side there is more of a tribal culture."
Indian authorities say the guerrillas involved in the current fighting infiltrated from the Pakistani-controlled part of Kashmir to the Indian side. But Pakistan's Khokhar insisted the guerrillas are not Pakistanis, but "Kashmiris -- brothers gone to help another brother." For now, some are commanding the heights menacing supplies to Kashmiri areas, and some holed up below are trying to fight their way up to their old positions.
This week, India offered the guerrillas safe passage out of the region, but a guerrilla leader replied that "it is India that needs safe passage, and we will not allow it." Applause, anyone?
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12. Subject: ATOMIC HIGH SCHOOL
From: Rayna Moss <legalese@netvision.net.il> Date: Monday, May 31, 1999 5:06 PM
A high school operates within the Dimona nuclear reactor in Israel, training young people to be future nuclear technicians and engineers. This astonishing and exclusive news appeared on May 30 in Rosh Echad (One Mind) - a weekly youth magazine belonging to Yediot Aharonot publishing company (article by Itamar Seida).
According to the article, about 100 boys attend the high school, most of them sons of employees at the reactor. They study three days a week and work three days at the reactor, for salaries ranging from $70-170 per month. Among the courses taught: car mechanics, metalwork and "dozens of secret courses". All students must undergo security checks and academic tests before being accepted. According to the administration, only boys have applied to date (there is no mention of how long the school has been operating). Students who were interviewed reported that the academic level is demanding, there is strict discipline, they keep the same hours as reactor employees and roll call is taken 4-5 times a day. Among the perks for students: trips to Eilat, staying at luxury hotels and meals at the finest restaurants, for the nominal fee of $10. There are some subjects that they are prohibited from discussing with their parents, and some places in the reactor where they are not allowed to be.
Alex Yosef, the school principal, stated that 30% of the school graduates become employees at the nuclear reactor, after they complete compulsory military service. According to Yosef, the school is famous in southern Israel and students come from many towns in the Dimona area.
The students who were interviewed dismissed all claims that there was any danger entailed in their presence in the reactor: "If there were any danger, there wouldn't be a school here" and "The reactor has been here for a long time and lots of fathers bring their children here." ______________________
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Message: 3 Date: Sun, 06 Jun 1999 17:28:36 -0400
Subject: NucNews-5 6/06/99 - EU/NATO (2); Rebuilding Yugo; KLA arms/illicit funds; Clinton's strategic appointments
24. NATO chief named EU security head
USA Today June 5, 1999 (World) http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm
COLOGNE, Germany - European Union leaders on Friday selected NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana as the EU's first head of foreign and security policy, a new position designed to give the union more clout on the international scene. The move came a day after EU leaders approved a blueprint for achieving a stronger defense and security role by the end of 2000 to lessen their long-standing reliance on American power. Solana, a 56-year-old Spanish former foreign minister, was named by the 15 EU leaders after a late-night debate at the Union's regular midyear summit. Since taking over as NATO secretary general in 1995, Solana has impressed European leaders with his ability to maintain allied resolve and cohesion during the air campaign against Yugoslavia.
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[I wonder if they're factoring in the cost of depleted uranium cleanup? And who will bear THAT cost?]
25. NEW ARMY European Union Vows to Become Military Power
June 4, 1999 New York Times, By CRAIG R. WHITNEY http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/060499eu-military.html
COLOGNE, Germany -- The leaders of 15 European countries decided Thursday to make the European Union a military power for the first time in its 42-year history, with command headquarters, staffs and forces of its own for peacekeeping and peacemaking missions in future crises like those in Kosovo or Bosnia.
Long an economic giant, the European Union Thursday has a common currency, the euro, in 11 countries. But when it comes to foreign and defense policy, Europe does not even have a telephone number, as Henry A. Kissinger sarcastically observed 25 years ago when he was Secretary of State.
All that will change by the end of next year, the 15 leaders vowed Thursday.
By late 2000, according to the plan announced at the European Union summit meeting here, a single foreign and security policy czar will speak for Europe and carry out the military will of European leaders.
The move will enable many of the members of NATO, as well as several European nations that are not in the alliance, to mount their own campaigns without America's might.
The European leaders declared:
"The union must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them, and a readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises without prejudice to actions by NATO."
They echoed language first used by President Jacques Chirac of France and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain six months ago after two crises in the Balkans showed how far Europe still had to go to be taken seriously as a military power, even on its own continent. Neither in Bosnia nor in Kosovo were European countries, whose total armed forces exceed those of the United States in size, able to project military power convincingly enough to halt the violence.
Thursday, all 15 leaders agreed to absorb the functions of the 10-nation Western European Union, a long-dormant European defense alliance founded a year before NATO in 1948. They said the Western European Union's 60,000-troop force, Eurocorps, would be put at the disposal of the new, more assertive Europe that is taking shape under the European Union. "In that event," they said, "the W.E.U. as an organization would have completed its purpose."
With Germany's 1990 unification acting as a spur to its neighbors to closer unity, the Treaty of European Union, negotiated at the end of 1991, committed the Europeans to a common currency and a common foreign and security policy and defense policy, building on the common market they created in 1957.
They reaffirmed those aspirations in another treaty signed in 1997, and succeeded in launching the euro at the start of this year.
But the common foreign and security policy sputtered along through successive crises in the Balkans in which the Europeans showed little unity or common purpose until the Americans sent in armed forces to help them in Bosnia in 1995.
Now Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany, Chirac, Blair and the others are determined that Europe should be taken more seriously on the world stage. Part of what is driving them, their advisers say, is concern that the United States, with only 100,000 troops in Europe now compared with three times that many at the end of the cold war, will not indefinitely be willing to pull the fat out of the fire for Europeans who have long since been rich enough to provide for their own defenses.
American diplomats have welcomed Europe's newfound willingness to do more for itself. But they remain skeptical about whether they will actually be willing to spend the billions of dollars it would take to build the stronger European defense pillar that American defense secretaries for decades have been saying they wanted.
Thursday's declaration by European Union leaders makes clear that they still have a lot of work ahead of them to create the kind of military decision making and planning ability that NATO has had for many years.
Chirac suggested that the Western European Union's general staff and military committee, both based in a small headquarters in the center of Brussels some distance from NATO's, should be transferred to the European Union and presided over by its new foreign and security policy coordinator.
That could be Javier Solana of Spain, now Secretary General of NATO, whose candidacy for the job was on the leaders' agenda here Thursday night.
If Solana is selected, one senior American official said, "We would be very happy."
Günter Verheugen, a German Government official who has also been suggested for that job, said of the plan to strengthen European defense, "It is not a replacement for the Atlantic partnership, but a significant and necessary complement to it."
The leaders themselves also noted, "The alliance remains the foundation of the collective defense of its member states."
All 10 members of the W.E.U.
Britain, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany, and Greece -- already belong to both NATO and the European Union. Denmark does, too, but has only observer status in the smaller European defense organization, as do four other European Union members, Austria, Ireland, Finland and Sweden, which are neutral or nonaligned and do not belong to NATO.
These countries would be able to join future European Union peacekeeping or military operations, but only if they wanted to, the leaders agreed today, saying they would also welcome participation by other European countries.
NATO leaders agreed at their summit meeting in Washington in April on detailed arrangements to lend military headquarters organizations, multinational staffs, and tanks, helicopters and other equipment to the Europeans if they decided to undertake operations the United States prefers to avoid.
But these arrangements exist only on paper so far. In reality, when the NATO allies decided to use air power to try to force Yugoslavia to accept a settlement in Kosovo, only the United States had the hundreds of airplanes to throw into the battle and intelligence satellites and weaponry to mount a campaign with minimal risk to pilots.
Related Articles
The Overview: Milosevic Yields on NATO's Key Terms; 50,000 Allied Troops to Police Kosovo http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/060499kosovo.html
MEMO FROM THE CONTINENT - Europeans Impressed by Their Own Unity http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/060499kosovo-europe.html
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26. REBUILDING - A Relief Plan for Yugoslav Neighbors
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON, June 5, 1999 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/060599kosovo-reconstruct.html
WASHINGTON -- Officials from the United States, the European Union and international aid agencies stepped up their planning Friday for the formidable job of repairing the physical and economic damage wrought throughout the Balkans by the conflict in Kosovo.
In the first official public assessment of the costs, Romano Prodi, the incoming president of the European Commission, said Friday that the European Union alone might have to budget as much as $6 billion a year for the next five years to deal with the problems.
But other officials said that any cost estimates at this point were little more than educated guesses. There has yet to be any comprehensive study of the costs of rebuilding homes, power and water systems, roads, schools and businesses in Kosovo. There are only sketchy estimates of what it will take to accomplish the first major goal: moving nearly 1 million refugees back into the province, and housing and feeding them through next winter.
President Clinton has said that the United States expects Europe to finance most of the costs of putting the Balkans together again. Administration officials said they did not yet know precisely what contributions the United States would make, or how much money the administration might have to request from Congress for rebuilding and relief assistance. A bill passed by Congress last month included $1.1 billion for relief.
"We've obviously done a lot of thinking about this already," said Harriet Babbitt, the deputy administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which plans to send a team into Kosovo as soon as allied military forces begin moving in. "But you can't do a lot of very specific planning until you know the environment in which you're going to be working. There are rooms full of frantic people putting together scenarios and budgets."
One indication of the scale of the problem came in a study released Friday by the International Monetary Fund. The study concluded that the economic damage to the six countries neighboring Yugoslavia from disruptions to trade, plus the costs of helping the refugees, would exceed $1.25 billion this year, and could be as high as $2.25 billion, without even considering the costs of making Kosovo habitable again.
In the longer term, the rebuilding job seems likely to be far bigger than the $5 billion, five-year international effort to rebuild Bosnia after the end of the conflict there, officials said. And both the United States and Europe are studying plans to go beyond physical rebuilding in Kosovo to bolster the economies of countries throughout the region and bring them economically and politically closer to the European Union.
"If we do not give a message of long-term stability linked to the European Union institutions, there will never be peace in the Balkans," Prodi said in an interview with CNN on Friday.
For now, though, both the United States and Europe have all but ruled out providing any aid to help repair the tremendous damage done to Yugoslavia by months of NATO bombing. In an apparent attempt to foster popular discontent with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, officials in both Washington and Europe said they would not provide help to rebuild Yugoslavia as long as Milosevic remained in power.
"There is no question of dealing with Milosevic," Tony Blair, the British prime minister, told Reuters Television. "There is no place for Serbia in the true family of nations while Milosevic remains, and they cannot be part, in my judgment, of a Balkan reconstruction program whilst Milosevic remains in office."
Although its economy was relatively poor and rural, Kosovo has clearly suffered tremendous physical damage that is certain to be costly and time-consuming to repair. The only international group to have gotten a good look at the province since the conflict began -- a U.N. team that spent less than three days there last week -- reported that 80 percent of the homes in some areas had been destroyed.
The delegation found "a depressing panorama of empty villages, burned houses, looted shops, wandering livestock and unattended farms," Sergio Vieira de Mello, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told the Security Council on Wednesday.
There are many political, economic and logistical problems to be overcome before any large-scale rebuilding effort can get under way. While neighboring countries like Albania and Macedonia are already receiving assistance from the World Bank and the IMF, Kosovo is technically ineligible for aid from the international financial institutions because it is not a country, and remains part of a nation, Yugoslavia, that was kicked out of the World Bank and the monetary fund seven years ago.
It is also unclear how much rebuilding work will be done by allied military forces. The experience in Bosnia indicates that physical rebuilding goes much more quickly than the complex task of creating a new economy. Christiaan Poortman, Balkans coordinator at the World Bank, said that more than 90 percent of the planned road network in Bosnia is complete, more than 90 percent of a new phone system is up and running, elementary school enrollment is higher than before the conflict there, nearly three-quarters of the electrical-generation system has been restored -- but the country's economic output is still less than half of what it was in 1990.
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27. KLA buys arms with illicit funds
By Jerry Seper, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, June 4, 1999 http://www.washtimes.com/news/news2.html
The Kosovo Liberation Army is buying sophisticated weapons with cash from an "independence tax" levied against expatriates and from profits of illicit drugs and prostitution.
According to a secret intelligence report by NATO's Office of Security, the weapons have been smuggled to the KLA from arms dealers in Albania, Italy, Switzerland, Cyprus, Turkey, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro. Some have been hidden in shipments of medical supplies, food and clothing bound for Kosovo's refugees. The Clinton administration has said it wants the KLA disarmed once the NATO bombing campaign ends.
The 24-page NATO report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times, said the weapons include SA-7 and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, RPG-7 anti-armor rocket launchers, AK-47 and HK G3 assault rifles, SSG-69 sniper rifles, 9mm submachine guns, 82mm and 120mm mortars, shotguns, handguns, grenade launchers, ammunition, explosives, detonators and anti-personnel mines.
The KLA, formally known as the Ushtria Clirimtare e Kosoves, or UCK, also has purchased laser aiming devises, infrared night vision gear and communications equipment, including satellite telephones, according to the report.
"The acquisition of arms from abroad is funded mainly by the Kosovar Albanian communities in Western Europe, using the proceeds of a 3 percent 'independence tax' on expatriate income, drug trafficking and prostitution," the report said.
"Some funds from the drug trade, in which the Albanians traditionally acted as couriers and more lately as suppliers, reportedly are being used to purchase weapons for the Kosovo insurgents," the report said. "The profitability of the drug trade and the Kosovo Albanians' extensive involvement in it suggests this activity is a significant source of income for the insurgency and other Albanian causes."
It is not clear how the purchase of huge amounts of weapons by the KLA over the past several months will affect efforts by the Clinton administration and NATO to call for the rebels to disarm once the bombing ends. The KLA guerrillas, who fight under the black double-headed Albanian eagle, want no less than to separate from Serbia and join their brethren in Albania and Macedonia -- a push for independence that is opposed not only by Yugoslavia but also by the United States and its NATO allies.
The Rambouillet peace plan calls for the "demilitarization of the KLA" and touts a need to secure the "sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia."
The NATO report said the KLA has bank accounts in at least 19 countries, a dozen of which are part of the organization's Homeland Is Calling fund. The independence tax, according to the report, was established to fund Kosovo's schools and hospitals, but now also is routed to purchase arms.
Several other expatriate organizations, the report said, also are collecting money, much of which is deposited in banks in several European countries.
Intelligence documents obtained by The Times have described the KLA as a terrorist organization that has financed much of its war effort with money sent to the rebels by ethnic Albanians throughout Western Europe and the United States, and through profits from the sale of drugs, mainly heroin.
The documents said drug agents in five countries, including the United States, believe the KLA has aligned itself with an organized crime network centered in Albania that smuggles heroin to buyers in Western Europe and the United States. They tie members of the Albanian Mafia to a smuggling cartel based in Kosovo's provincial capital, Pristina.
The cartel is manned by ethnic Albanians who are members of the Kosovo National Front, whose armed wing is the KLA. It is believed to be one of the most powerful heroin-smuggling organizations in the world, with much of its profits being diverted to the KLA to buy weapons.
The clandestine movement of drugs over land and sea routes from Turkey through Bulgaria, Greece and Yugoslavia to Western Europe and elsewhere is so frequent and massive that intelligence officials have dubbed the circuit the "Balkan Route."
Jane's Intelligence Review estimated in March that drug sales could have netted the KLA profits in the "high tens of millions of dollars." The British-based journal noted at the time that the KLA had rearmed itself for a spring offensive with the aid of drug money, along with donations from Albanians in Western Europe and the United States.
The 24-page NATO report described the KLA's supply system and the financial base that supports it as a "loosely organized international and Balkans network" that developed as a result of the unexpected and rapid escalation of armed conflict in Kosovo.
It said the KLA is supported financially by a number of organizations composed of Albanian expatriates as well as Albanian crime syndicates. Most KLA funding originates in Europe, although some comes from expatriates and sympathetic groups in North America and the Middle East.
During the early stages of the insurgency, the report said, the KLA was supplied by arms stolen from the Albanian military during that country's spring 1997 unrest. However, the KLA's rapid growth and the need to counter the Serb's superior firepower necessitated the development of additional sources of more sophisticated arms and funding.
The report said the KLA has sought to purchase weapons and equipment in Switzerland, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Israel, South Africa, Romania, Bulgaria, China, Turkey, Ukraine and Cyprus. It said KLA commanders have funds at their disposal and are known to pay directly for weapons and ammunition for their local units' needs.
The KLA, according to the report, uses a variety of routes for bringing weapons into Kosovo, with most shipments entering through Albania.
KLA commanders have begun to diversify their supply routes, relying less on Albania and more on other routes, the report said, noting that arms traffickers have begun to exploit humanitarian-aid shipments by including arms and ammunition among otherwise legitimate-aid cargo into Kosovo.
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Diplomatic, Military Offensives Forced Belgrade's Hand By William Drozdiak and Anne Swardson http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/04/146l-060499-idx.html
BRUSSELS, June 3-A turning point in one of history's most impressive air campaigns came on the ground. For the past two weeks, NATO military officials said, a resurgent army of ethnic Albanian guerrillas in Kosovo managed to flush out Serb-led Yugoslav troops dispersed around Mount Pastric near the Albanian border. That created the kind of "target-rich environment" that NATO pilots had been searching for during more than 31,000 sorties over Yugoslavia in the past 10 weeks....
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THE NATO ALLIANCE Conflict Halts Momentum for Broader Agenda
By Barton Gellman and William Drozdiak Sunday, June 6, 1999; Page A21 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/06/241l-060699-idx.html
In the first disorienting years after the Cold War, NATO began to see its future in the slogan "Out of area or out of business." It could hardly keep on organizing itself around defense of a line through Europe that no longer existed. If the alliance did not broaden its horizons, it risked irrelevance.
Successive U.S. administrations pressed this view, and the Clinton White House placed great stock in NATO's expansion--both in membership, embracing former Warsaw Pact members Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, and in its "strategic concept." The alliance could and should act to protect its interests beyond its central European neighborhood.
Only a few months ago, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was entertaining notions of an agenda that would include crusading against global terrorism, drug trafficking and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The war in Yugoslavia has brought the alliance back to its founding idea of ensuring security for the European continent, albeit in a region that was not part of NATO's mandate for its first half-century.
All the talk of broadening NATO's scope--toward broader threats, areas of operation or membership--fed fears among non-members of the alliance as "globo-cop." First among them was Russia, which former State Department official Arnold Kantor said sees Kosovo as confirmation "of their worst fears about the United States and NATO, with its new strategic concept that [it] can go anywhere and do anything . . . and the Russians aren't part of it."
Russian officials have begun arguing that NATO is sending the wrong message to smaller powers--that they must develop weapons of mass destruction to avoid another Kosovo. Clinton administration officials gave short shrift to that point, saying every country weighs many factors in deciding whether to become a nuclear rogue and that Kosovo is unlikely to be a large one.
"It would be ironic," one senior official said, "for any Russian official to suggest that what we did in Kosovo would create incentives for proliferation that weren't created by what they did in Chechnya," the Russian region where Moscow's troops fought a bloody and ultimately futile war against separatist rebels.
Early signs, in any event, are that NATO's first war has spooked the alliance as much as its potential foes.
"The war was fought because it was necessary, not because it was something designed or planned for," said one senior Italian policymaker, interviewed by telephone from Washington. "Obviously, nobody in his right mind would look with relish at the prospect of repeating this experience."
Momentum is certainly halted, for now, for extending NATO's reach to far-flung interests in Persian Gulf oil, the halt of nuclear weapons and missiles across Asia and the Middle East, or in fighting terrorist crimes on a transnational scale.
"NATO is like the guy who falls in the rapids and gets swept over the falls and survives," Johns Hopkins University Professor Michael E. Mandelbaum said. "He may lie to his friends and say he enjoyed it . . . but he sure as hell isn't going to try it again."
The allies are further preoccupied with the disparity of capabilities among them. German Gen. Klaus Naumann, the recently retired director of NATO's military committee, said the growing technology gap between the United States and its European allies could lead to their inability to fight or even communicate on the same battlefield. The United States, the richest of 19 NATO members but hardly richer than the others combined, has provided more than 80 percent of the 1,100 warplanes in the Kosovo air armada. Washington also has supplied nearly all the aerial intelligence and selected virtually every target to be struck.
So difficult were the politics of the war, and so costly the prospect of dispatching 50,000 peacekeeping troops into Kosovo, that the European consensus in NATO now is that this out-of-area gambit may be the last. Many strategists within the alliance expect the Balkans to become an absorbing ordeal that will tie up troops and resources for years.
"NATO is shifting from the plains of Germany to the hills and mountains of the Balkans," said one experienced diplomat. "We now have troops in Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia; Croatia is on the logistical route. We will have troops in Kosovo and I would guess in Montenegro. They are going to be there a long time. Like the troops who have been in Korea for half a century. No one would have thought they would be there that long."
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28. ALSO... [Could it be Clinton hopes the Republicans will jump on the Luxembourg candidate instead of following through on the Kosovo crisis when they return? Typical Clinton maneuver....]
Hearings for Holbrooke Are Set
By PHILIP SHENON, New York Times June 5, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/holbrooke-confirm.html
Senator Jesse Helms announced hearings on the nomination of Richard Holbrooke as U.N. delegate, but warned that U.S. Balkans policy will be a big issue....
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Clinton Appoints Gay Man as Ambassador as Congress Is Away
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE, New York Times June 5, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/washpol/clinton-hormel-appoint.html
Over Republican objections, President Clinton Friday appointed James Hormel as Ambassador to Luxembourg, employing a rarely used executive privilege to make him the nation's first openly gay envoy.
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- Fifth of five messages - _____________________
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Message: 4 Date: Sun, 06 Jun 1999 17:26:12 -0400
Subject: NucNews-4 6/06/99 - DC NATO Protests (3); WIPP shipment 6/15; Yucca Mt; Ward Valley
[Yesterday's action]
19. Americans Protest NATO's War
Saturday, June 5, 1999; 5:06 p.m. EDT - Associated Press http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990605/V000821-060599-idx.html (also in USA Today: "Anti-war protesters march on Pentagon")
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark urged NATO's abolition and an end to what he called American warmongering as several thousand protesters demonstrated Saturday against the war in Yugoslavia.
''We've got to stop the fanning of flames of war by the U.S.,'' said Clark, a longtime peace activist. ''We've got to abolish NATO.''
The U.S.-European alliance fosters war and is ''a threat to life on Earth,'' Clark said in an address to about 3,000 protesters outside the Pentagon. The sign on the dais below him read: ''Stop U.S./NATO Bombing. Hands Off Yugoslavia.''
Protesters who marched from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to the Pentagon carried signs branding President Clinton a war criminal.
Many marchers wore T-shirts or signs printed with a bulls-eye - the same symbol Serbs in Belgrade have sported in black humor during more than 10 weeks of NATO bombing.
Protesters said they felt bound to turn out for Saturday's march even though peace may be at hand. The American role in the bombing is still wrong, no matter the war's outcome, several speakers said.
NATO forces are an ''army of occupation,'' in Yugoslavia, said Sara Flounders, a coordinator of the event.
Susana Sotillo of Bloomfield, N.J., carried a sign saying, ''Clinton, send your Chelsea to fight your dirty war.''
Groups including the International Action Center, a New York-based organization, and Peace Action, based in Washington, led the protest rally.
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[Thursday's action]
20. 26 Arrested In Protest at White House Religious, Peace Groups Urge End to Bombing
By Caryle Murphy, Washington Post, June 4, 1999; Page A29 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/04/204l-060499-idx.html
Twenty-six people were arrested yesterday after blocking an entrance to the White House to protest NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia.
The demonstration, held by the newly formed National Coalition for Peace in Yugoslavia, was the first instance of planned civil disobedience against the war since the bombing campaign began, according to coalition spokesman Adam Eidinger.
Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit and at least eight other clergy members were among those arrested. They knelt in front of the White House driveway and sang "We Shall Overcome" after their request to meet with President Clinton was denied.
The arrests followed an anti-war rally in Lafayette Square organized by the coalition, a group of 27 religious and peace organizations opposed to the war.
Standing before signs that read, "Peace in Yugoslavia Now," speakers from such groups as Pax Christi, DC Stop the War, American Friends Service Committee and Fellowship of Reconciliation denounced the NATO bombing.
"Violence is never the answer to violence," Gumbleton told the demonstrators.
Although Russian and Western envoys have presented Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic with a plan to end the Kosovo conflict, "the feeling is that as long as the bombing continues, [the protests are] going to have to continue," Eidinger said. "I just heard President Clinton say . . . the bombing will continue, so nothing is stopped. The war's not over."
The arrested protesters were released after being charged with violating the terms of their Lafayette Square demonstration permit, according to a U.S. Park Police spokesman.
Some of those attending the rally walked there from the closed Yugoslav Embassy on California Street NW, where they left a letter for Milosevic demanding an end to Serbian attacks on Kosovo Albanians.
The letter, which also was sent to Yugoslavia's mission to the United Nations, demanded "an immediate halt to further brutalities against Albanian Kosovars that you alone can order."
The coalition is holding another demonstration at noon tomorrow that will start at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and include a march to the Pentagon, Eidinger said. He said buses are bringing protesters from 28 states.
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Anti-war protesters arrested
By Joyce Howard Price and Larry Witham, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, June 4, 1999 http://www.washtimes.com/nation/nation1.html Photo (front page) http://www.washtimes.com/news/images/news1.gif
Protesters at the White House raised a hue and cry against the air war on Yugoslavia Thursday even as organizers of Friday's planned anti-war march promised to do the same at the Pentagon.
However, furious march planners say police won't let them follow their chosen route from Memorial Bridge to the Pentagon. If approval isn't granted, they say they'll protest that and even engage in civil disobedience.
Police arrested 23 activists for blocking traffic at a White House driveway Thursday. Among the apprehended was Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Detroit, a Catholic priest, a United Methodist minister, three nuns and a group of Quakers.
The arrests followed a one-hour peace rally at Lafayette Park led by Catholics, Methodists, Mennonites, Quakers and members of other religious groups involved in peace movements.
Bishop Gumbleton said the bombings by North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces "violated the moral code of every religious tradition."
In an interview the bishop said the nation's clergy have not previously risen to fight against the assault on Yugoslavia because they have not comprehended the toll it was taking on innocent civilians.
"There is a lack of religious reaction because the government has so effectively used its propaganda machine. It has made us feel, 'Something has to be done,' " he said.
Speakers at the rally of about 150 people argued that bombing Yugoslavia to force its military retreat from Kosovo has merely increased the suffering in that region.
"War just doesn't work," said the Rev. John Dear, a Jesuit who heads the Fellowship of Reconciliation. "Bombing doesn't solve anything. Violence only sows the seeds of more violence."
The protest was organized by Peace Action, which organized massive marches in the 1980s to protest the Reagan administration's military buildup. It in turn is part of the ad hoc National Coalition for Peace in Yugoslavia, which is planning tomorrow's march to the Pentagon.
Leaders of the march, who are affiliated with the New York-based International Action Center, want a 1-and-a-half-mile section of Route 27, or Washington Boulevard, closed to traffic tomorrow for a period of about an hour to allow between 5,000 and 10,000 protesters to walk on the roadway.
But Cpl. Justin McNaull, spokesman for the Arlington County (Va.) Police Department, said, "Route 27 is a high-speed road that gets a lot of traffic. It's not a little road; it has four to six lanes," he said.
And he said police do not plan to shut it down to traffic on Friday because IAC failed to file an application with the Virginia Department of Transportation to close the road to traffic. "That's required, and they were told on May 26 they had to do that," the corporal said.
But Brian Becker, co-director of the IAC, countered that when his organization tried to file an application with VDOT, it was told it first had to file a request with the Arlington County Police Department. And the county police department turned down the request to close the road, he said. Cpl. McNaull said it all boiled down to a "lack of action [by the march organizers] to get the road shut down."
Instead, Cpl. McNaull said, anti-war demonstrators have the option of using what he described as a "bike trail" from the bridge to the Pentagon. "We believe that's good, viable alternative route," he said.
But IAC officials don't see it that way. "They've given us a route that's absurd . . . if this was a rally in support of the war, there wouldn't be any kind of problem," said Imani Henry, a march organizer.
Mr. Becker agreed. "The route they've given us is unsafe," he said, noting that it would require crossing a stretch of the busy George Washington Memorial Parkway.
"It's also politically motivated, and it's unacceptable," he said Thursday.
Mr. Becker points out that the bike trail is "narrow" and, at some points, allows only a single-file procession. For 10,000 people to traverse that path will take "hours," he said.
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21. WIPP shipments to start June 15 First of up to 2,000 loads of nuclear waste finally leaving Flats so cleanup can proceed
By Berny Morson, June 4, 1999 Denver Rocky Mountain News http://insidedenver.com:80/news/0604wipp7.shtml
Shipments of nuclear waste L from Rocky Flats to a burial site in the New Mexico desert will begin June 15, state and federal officials said Thursday.
The first of up to 2,000 shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Project near Carlsbad will be a milestone in the drive to clean up the defunct nuclear weapons plant in Jefferson County by 2006.
The exact time the truck will roll is still under discussion, a Rocky Flats spokesman said.
But New Mexico officials have been told to expect the truck to cross the state line in the early hours of June 16. That would mean a departure time of between 8 p.m. and midnight.
Gov. Bill Owens hailed the announcement.
Owens is among elected officials, including Colorado's congressional delegation, who have pressed the Department of Energy to begin moving waste from Rocky Flats so cleanup can proceed.
About 12,000 drums of waste are stacked at the plant awaiting shipment. Some barrels are being kept in tents because indoor storage has run out.
The 26 barrels slated for the first shipment contain contaminated molds used to shape nuclear bomb parts from pure plutonium. Similar items were moved to the burial site last month from storage in Idaho.
At WIPP, the waste will be entombed in a salt bed a half-mile below the surface.
WIPP, under discussion since the early 1970s, was blocked by lawsuits brought by environmentalists and the state of New Mexico. A federal judge in March approved the shipments.
Chris Wentz, coordinator of the New Mexico Radioactive Waste Task Force, said Thursday the state will conduct a safety inspection of the truck. The state no longer contests the shipments, he said.
"I think that's pretty much a dead issue," he said of legal challenges.
Members of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center in Boulder will demonstrate against the shipments, said LeRor Moore, a member of the group.
Moore said Peace Center members believe a waste truck could release radioactive material in an accident.
"The unfortunate side of it is, maybe we have to have a catastrophe of some sort to bring the truth home to folks," Moore said. "I hope that doesn't happen."
Moore said he's not sure L whether demonstrators will try to block the trucks, as suggested earlier by a leader of the Peace Center.
The Department of Energy has said containers have survived unharmed in laboratory tests.
But Denver City Councilwoman Debbie Ortega worries that an accident involving a WIPP truck could shut down travel for hours while a Rocky Flats team confirms that the containers have not been breached. The trucks will travel through the city on Interstate 25.
Emergency crews in cities and counties along the route are being notified, but will not be on special alert, said Tammy Ottmer, WIPP coordinator in the radiation department of the state Department of Public Health and Environment.
"This is what we've been training and exercising for for a long time," Ottmer said.
The State Patrol will inspect the truck for leaks before it leaves Rocky Flats, said patrol Capt. Allan Turner. The inspection will also cover hoses, brakes and other mechanical parts.
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22. Questions multiply over Nevada nuclear-waste site Discoveries raise fresh concerns about safety at Yucca Mountain, but program stays on track.
Robert C. Cowen Special to The Christian Science Monitor, JUNE 3, 1999 http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/1999/06/03/fp2s2-csm.shtml
New research has raised more questions about whether Yucca Mountain - the controversial site slated to accept much of America's nuclear waste - is safe.
For decades, environmentalists, scientists, and government officials have been at odds over how dangerous it would be to store radioactive material in the Nevada mountain. These worries have already delayed the opening of the site - it was scheduled to begin accepting waste last year. And while these new findings shouldn't kill the program, scientists say, they could delay America's most ambitious waste-disposal project even further.
The new concerns center on three separate discoveries, discussed at a Boston meeting of the American Geophysical Union this week.
ONGOING DEBATE: New research has raised concerns about the safety of storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada (above). AP/FILE
Radioactive material can move through ground water in ways that Yucca site planners have not taken into account.
Warmth generated by radioactive waste could heat the rock in the repository to the boiling point of water. The heating could affect the rock in a number of ways, and scientists have said they may never be able to fully understand the process.
A Russian researcher has raised new uncertainty about the possibility of ground water rising from below to saturate the chamber. The chamber must remain dry to prevent waste containers from corroding.
Some of the new information has come from a study of 828 underground nuclear-weapons tests conducted at the nearby Nevada Test Site between 1956 and 1992. Scientists had known that plutonium, for example, could adhere to rock and, to a small extent, dissolve into water. But in a report published in the journal Nature in January, a team from the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories noted that microscopic particles called colloids can also carry away plutonium. Clay particles can pick up radioactive matter. Plutonium in the form of plutonium oxide also forms colloidal particles. And the research team found such plutonium in ground water leaving holes at the test site.
Annie Kersting, a team member, noted that the level of contamination is very low. But she says all modes by which radioactivity might migrate should be understood before opening the waste repository. So far, the team has not learned "as much as we need to learn" about this new method, Dr. Kersting said in Boston.
The same is true for understanding what radioactive heat may do to the waste-chamber rock. Paul Witherspoon, a Lawrence Livermore senior scientist, said the effect on the rock is a complex interaction of water, chemical processes, and stresses and movements within the rock. It's so intricate that scientists may have to give up on trying to fully understand the problem and try to establish whether or not enough is known to certify the site as safe, he says. Already, the uncertainty has sparked planning to separate the waste containers more widely than originally planned to reduce the heating.
If the site is used, the waste containers are made of material that will strongly resist corrosion so long as it is kept dry. Researchers have looked to the past to see if the site will remain dry for 10,000 years.
A team of US Geological Survey scientists said the chamber has been dry for millions of years. But Yuri Dublyansky, a Russian scientist, counters that his data "do not support" the USGS conclusions. He says his analysis of deposits of minerals indicates that ground water rose up into the waste repository region in the past.
The Department of Energy and State of Nevada have started a study to verify his data.
Trying to put the present situation in perspective, Allison Macfarlane from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government said dealing with these technical issues now is complicated, but it "will help us better understand what is going on at Yucca Mountain." She added, "I don't think there's a need to rush."
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23. From: Bradley Angel <bradley@greenaction.org> Date: Friday, June 04, 1999 11:35 AM Subject: Breaking News on Ward Valley Nuclear Dump Fight!
The fight to stop the radioactive waste dump proposed for Ward Valley is a step closer to victory. California Governor Gray Davis has just announced that the State will not appeal the U.S. District Court decision which set back the proposed dump, and this is very good news. The Governor also announced the formation of a panel to look at alternatives, but the panel is to be headed by a representative of a pro-dump nuclear waste generator.
Despite press reports announcing the dump proposal is over, it is not!
The Governor still refuses to withdraw the State's application to the U.S. Department of Interior requesting a transfer of the federal land at Ward Valley for the dump.
The Governor is thus continuing to violate environmental justice and keep alive a dump proposal that threatens to contaminate sacred Indian land and the Colorado River, water source for 22 million people. THE GOVERNOR CONTINUES TO FAIL TO RESPOND TO CALLS FROM THE INDIAN NATIONS AND THE ENTIRE ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNITY CALLING FOR AN END TO THE DUMP PROPOSAL.
PLEASE SEE THE GOVERNOR'S PRESS RELEASE, AND THE PRESS RELEASE OF THE COLORADO RIVER NATIVE NATIONS ALLIANCE AND THE WARD VALLEY COALITION ON THE GREENACTION WEB SITE, AND CALL THE GOVERNOR TODAY TO DEMAND: SAVE WARD VALLEY NOW, ONCE AND FOR ALL!! GOV DAVIS PH: 916/445-2841 FAX: 916/445-2841 http://www.greenaction.org
- Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice
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[I don't want to be burned for heresy, but some of these nuclear scientists lived a very long time. I wonder if there's any research done on that?]
Thoma M.v.H. Snyder, 83, known for nuclear research
BY LISA M. KRIEGER, June 1, 1999, San Jose Mercury News http://www7.mercurycenter.com/premium/local/docs/snyder01.htm
Dr. Thoma Mees van't Hoff Snyder, a physicist who participated in the nuclear detonation at Los Alamos but also served on the advisory board of the Atoms for Peace Conference, died May 23 at his Santa Cruz home after a brief illness. He was 83.
The grandson of the first Nobel Prize in chemistry winner, Jacobus Henricus van't Hoff, and the son of Johns Hopkins University physiologist Dr. Charles Snyder, he spent his boyhood in rural Baltimore studying pond life, designing a radio and aspiring to be a scientist when he grew up.
He skipped his bachelor's and master's degrees and was awarded a doctorate in physics at age 22, going on to become a professor of physics at Princeton. Of German heritage, he never spoke the language but understood it sufficiently to study scientific texts.
``He used to say the only reason he didn't get his degree sooner was that he discovered girls,'' said his wife, Alexandra.
At age 25, as the United States prepared to enter World War II, he devoted himself to the study of fission, the process by which an atom divides and releases huge amounts of energy -- the basis of the atomic bomb.
The young Dr. Snyder developed a way to measure neutron activity in radioactive uranium and uranium oxide spheres, work that became the basis for the design of the first nuclear reactor. He also recognized that the Nazis had access to Norway's industrial sources of radioactive deuterium and alerted the U.S. military, which subsequently destroyed them.
Dr. Snyder was recruited at age 27 by Edward Teller and E.M. McMillan to join the Los Alamos project under J. Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi, becoming one of the youngest members of the team. The team worked on improving weapon design by measuring the rate at which uranium nuclei were split by subatomic particles called neutrons. He also developed a system for measuring the explosion rate of the first nuclear detonation, the Trinity test.
``Those were terribly exciting times in science,'' Alexandra Snyder said. ``The U.S. had control of the world's supply of plutonium. They could get anything they wanted in 24 hours. There was such urgency. . . . In private industry, you had to beg for pencils.''
``The Trinity test brought such anxiety and joy,'' she said. ``They didn't know if it would work or blow them all up. They had no idea. . . . He never felt what they did was wrong, given the historical context.''
After the war, Dr. Snyder joined the General Electric Research Lab in Schenectady, N.Y., where he helped design the power sources for nuclear breeder reactors and submarine reactors. Later he joined Vallecitos Atomic Laboratory near Livermore and led the early development of thermonuclear fuel.
``He firmly believed that nuclear power was the way of the future -- that it could be safe but that it was expensive to make it safe,'' his wife said.
After the war, he occasionally came to the legal rescue of his two children, both ardent anti-nuclear-weapons activists who spent time in jail. ``He adored them and their friends,'' Alexandra Snyder said. ``He loved the energy of the anti-weapons protests. He believed that `then was then' and (he) did not support what was going on now'' in weapons development....
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______________________
- Fourth of five messages - _____________________
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Message: 5 Date: Sun, 06 Jun 1999 17:32:54 -0400
Subject: NucNews-1 6/06/99 - DU (New Scientist); Iraq buying nuc?; Greenpeace Holland Waste; Chernobyl cleanup; Book, Nazi Bomb
1. Too hot to handle
Rob Edwards, New Scientist, 5 June 1999 http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19990605/newsstory6.html
IN 1991 Doug Rokke went to the Middle East as a US army health physicist to clean up uranium left by the Gulf War. He helped decontaminate 23 armoured vehicles hit by shells in "friendly fire" incidents.
Today he has difficulty breathing. His lungs are scarred and he has skin problems and kidney damage. Rokke, a major in the US Army Reserve's Medical Service Corps, has no doubt what made him ill--contact with radioactive metal.Three years after he worked in the Gulf, the US Department of Energy tested his urine. They found that the level of uranium in his sample was over 4000 times higher than the US safety limit of 0.1 micrograms per litre.
Now aged 50 and an environmental scientist at Jacksonville State University in Alabama, Rokke is campaigning to stop the US firing uranium weapons in the Balkans. "It is a war crime to use uranium munitions when men, women and children are exposed to them without any medical screening or care," he says. "It is totally, totally wrong."
Depleted uranium, or DU, is a radioactive heavy metal. It is the waste left over when the isotope uranium-235 is extracted from naturally-occurring uranium to fuel nuclear power stations and build nuclear bombs. DU typically consists of 99.7 per cent uranium-238.
As a by-product of the nuclear industry, DU is cheap and plentiful. And DU shells are a very effective weapon against tanks and armoured cars. They can pierce several inches of armour-plated steel thanks to DU's extremely high density. They're better at penetrating armour than traditional anti-tank weapons made of tungsten.
DU was used for the first time in battle during the 1991 Gulf conflict with Iraq. The US Department of Defense says that US planes and tanks fired 860 000 rounds of ammunition containing 290 tonnes of DU. British tanks fired 100 rounds containing less than 1 tonne of DU, according to the Ministry of Defence.
Gulf veterans such as Rokke believe exposure to this DU is one of the causes of Gulf War Syndrome, the unexplained illness or group of illnesses that has afflicted thousands of soldiers since the war. Iraqi scientists also claim that DU was responsible for a rise in the numbers of cancers and birth defects in southern Iraq. But both the US and British governments dispute this. They say there is no evidence that DU has damaged the health of military personnel.
But the row is erupting again with the US admission it is using DU weapons in the two-month-old war against Serbia. In a press briefing in Washington DC on 3 May, Major General Charles Wald, vice-director for strategic plans and policy for the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed that A10 Warthog aircraft had fired DU munitions against Serbian forces. The US Joint Chiefs' spokesman, James Brooks, told New Scientist that AV-8 Harriers and Abrams battle tanks in the Balkans also carried DU munitions. The British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, has said that no DU is "in use" by British forces. But there are more than 20 British Challenger tanks, which fired DU ammunition in the Gulf conflict, stationed in Macedonia ready for action if ground troops move into Kosovo--a move supported by Britain as the limitations of an air offensive become apparent.
NATO says that DU has been used against Serbian forces since the second week of May. "It has not been used extensively," says a NATO spokesman. "It has never been proved that the use of DU endangers the health of people. It is no more dangerous than mercury."
Neither NATO nor the US will say how just much DU has been fired in the Balkans. But there are 40 A10s and 6 Harriers in action, capable of unleashing a lot of uranium. A10s, for example, are armed with a 30-millimetre Gatling gun that can fire 3900 shells a minute, one in five of which contains 300 grams of DU. This means that each A10 could release 234 kilograms of DU a minute. If US and British tanks take part in a ground offensive, observers say more DU is likely to be fired.
As well as its ability to pierce armour plating, DU has the unfortunate tendency to ignite on impact, creating clouds of uranium oxide dust--facilitating its spread in the environment and increasing the danger posed by the alpha radiation it emits. Mike Thorne, a uranium expert from AEA Technology at Harwell in Oxfordshire, formerly part of the UK Atomic Energy Authority, points out that as an alpha-emitter, it poses a similar risk to plutonium if it gets inside the body. As such, even the tiniest amounts could cause cell damage that marginally increases the risk of cancer. DU also emits dangerous beta radiation. Its main component, uranium-238, has a half-life of 4.46 billion years. Thorne argues that it could in theory contribute to Gulf War Syndrome: "In view of its poorly defined biochemical effects, DU could be a contributory factor," he says.
Chemically, DU poses a great threat to the kidneys, where high concentrations can lead to organ failure. But according to Thorne, even small amounts could have subtle but ill-understood effects. That is why a major study by the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1989 recommended reducing the safety limit for uranium in kidneys from 3 micrograms per gram to 0.3 micrograms per gram.
There is evidence that civilian authorities take the threat from DU very seriously. In the aftermath of the Gulf conflict, the UK Atomic Energy Authority came up with some frightening estimates for the potential effects of the DU contamination left by the conflict. It calculated that if 23 tonnes of DU were inhaled--8 per cent of the amount actually fired in the Gulf--this could cause "500 000 potential deaths". This was "a theoretical figure", it stressed, that indicated "a significant problem".
Potential deaths
The AEA's calculation was made in a confidential memo to the privatised munitions company, Royal Ordnance, dated 30 April 1991. The memo offered to send a team to Kuwait to clear up the DU--an offer that was never taken up. The high number of potential deaths was dismissed last year as "very far from realistic" by a British defence minister, Lord Gilbert. "Since the rounds were fired in the desert, many kilometres from the nearest village, it is highly unlikely that the local population would have been exposed to any significant amount of respirable oxide," he said. The Balkans war, however, is not being fought in a desert but in areas where people have, or did have, houses.
As a result of earlier pressure from Gulf veterans, the British government commissioned two reports. In April this year, Lord Gilbert quoted the 1993 investigation by the Defence Radiological Protection Service, which concluded "that there was no indication that any British troops had been subjected to harmful over-exposure to DU during the Gulf conflict".
But the other report, published by the Ministry of Defence in March, did acknowledge that troops could have inhaled DU dust in the Gulf and that this "could theoretically lead to damage to lung tissue and subsequently to a raised probability of lung cancer some years later".
The ultimate irony is that DU could poison the very land that NATO is trying to protect, says Rokke. "The aim of this war is to enable the Kosovars to return home. But unless the uranium is cleaned up, those that survive the Serb atrocities and the NATO aerial attacks will have to return to a contaminated environment where they may become ill."
--
Subject: Laka Depleted Uranium brochure online
Date: Sun, 06 Jun 1999 09:13:04 From: Peter Diehl <p.diehl@sik.de>
The brochure prepared by LAKA Foundation for the Depleted Uranium workshop at The Hague Appeal for Peace conference in May 1999 is available online at the WISE Uranium Project website now: http://antenna.nl/wise/uranium/dhap99.html
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2. Report: With West busy in Serbia, Iraq buying nuclear arms material
By Douglas Davis, June 3, 1999 Jewish Telegraphic Agency http://www.jta.org/jun99/03-iraq.htm
LONDON, June 3 (JTA) -- Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is exploiting NATO's preoccupation with the Balkans by accelerating the search for components used in nonconventional weapons, according to the London-based newsletter Foreign Report.
Quoting Middle East sources, the newsletter said Saddam's representatives abroad have been ordered to purchase equipment for developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missile delivery systems.
They have also been instructed to ``collaborate with Palestinian extremists ready to 'punish' the West," the weekly newsletter said in its Thursday edition.
According to one source's account, Iraqi scientists could resume their chemical and biological warfare programs within the next nine months and are just 18 months away from resuming their nuclear weapons program, which was halted in 1991.
The nuclear weapons team is said to have been aided by ``freelance" Russian nuclear scientists, while the Iraqis have been attempting to buy missile parts in Eastern Europe.
With the Iraqis believing that both the CIA and Britain's Secret Intelligence Service have been told to concentrate their efforts on Serbia, ``Iraqi embassies in key capitals are said to have been ordered to get to work buying as much as they can while the going is good,'' said the newsletter.
It also noted reports of contacts between Iraqi officials and representatives of Osama Bin Laden, the renegade Saudi millionaire who is thought to have masterminded and bankrolled last August's bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
In another development, the newsletter notes that Saddam is building a resort village for his family and friends some 75 miles from Baghdad. It is said to be reminiscent of the high-security groupings of luxury dachas used by Russian Politburo members during the Soviet era.
The resort is reportedly being built on the shores of Lake Tartar, and Saddam's closest aides have been invited to build villas or small mansions within the compound.
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3. GP Steps up Pressure On Radioactive Polluters; Returns Radioactive Waste to Dutch Nuclear Plant
June 3, 1999 EcoNet http://www.econet.apc.org/igc/en/hl/9906035911/hl1.html
AMSTERDAM - Greenpeace today will attempt to return liquid radioactive waste to the Borssele nuclear power plant near Vlissingen, in the Netherlands, after collecting it during a week-long diving operation from the end of the discharge pipe at the COGEMA nuclear reprocessing plant at La Hague, on the north-west coast of France.
The French government-owned COGEMA factory at La Hague extracts plutonium during the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power stations such as Borssele and others across Europe; in France, Belgium, Germany, Japan and Switzerland. The processing plants at La Hague and Sellafield in the United Kingdom are the largest sources of radioactive contamination of the environment in western Europe. Each year the La Hague plant discharges 230 million litres of radioactive waste into the ocean, where it is spread northwards by ocean currents, along the French, Belgian, German, Danish and Norwegian coasts.
During the past week Greenpeace has collected 9,000 litres of liquid radioactive waste from La Hague. It is being carried in two large steel tanks aboard the Greenpeace vessel "Strakur" which will seek to moor in the Dutch harbour of Vlissingen harbour this morning before unloading one of the steel tanks and delivering it on a specially adapted lorry to the Borssele nuclear power plant. Greenpeace activists are awaiting permission from the Vlissingen Harbour Authority to moor the "Strakur" and to bring the radioactive waste ashore. This will require a decision by the Dutch Environment Minister, Jan Pronk, which is expected later today.
The owner of the Borssele nuclear plant, EPZ, has written to Greenpeace saying it will not take responsibility for the radioactive waste aboard the "Strakur". However Greenpeace spokesperson Simon Boxer said the environmental organisation does not accept this position and is demanding the company cancel its reprocessing contracts with COGEMA.
Greenpeace also today announced it will be seeking to return several thousand litres of the radioactive effluent to Switzerland where a number of nuclear power plants have reprocessing contracts with the La Hague and Sellafield plants. The waste, contained in a steel tank, will be loaded onto a specially adapted lorry at Vlissingen for the transport to Switzerland.
On Monday Greenpeace unloaded 1,000 litres of the same radioactive waste at the French port of Dielette, before being stopped by French authorities which said it was too dangerous to transport. After a 20 hour standoff, the authorities removed the Greenpeace activists from the around the lorry and seized the radioactive waste tank, before taking it to the nearby La Hague plant where it was expected to be redischarged into the sea.
"Concerted action must be taken now by La Hague's customers around the world to prevent further radioactive contamination of our seas and the increased the risk of health damage to millions of people in Europe," said Boxer. "They must cancel their contracts now."
"Today's return to sender action is the one of a series to those governments responsible for this massiveenvironmental pollution, including the clients of COGEMA," said Boxer.
For more information Greenpeace on the Internet at http:\\greenpeace.org
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4. Back to Chernobyl
Lila Guterman, New Scientist, April 10, 1999 http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19990410/newsstory4.html
CROPS MAY ONE DAY be grown again in the contaminated soil surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear plant, if the ideas of Spanish, Ukrainian and American researchers pay off. The teams say that, over many years, simply mulching crops could drastically reduce radioactive contamination.
Around the Chernobyl plant, an area about one and a half times the size of Luxembourg has been declared off-limits for habitation or cultivation. In much of the exclusion zone, radioactivity is still measurable. It now poses little danger so long as it remains in the ground, but food grown in the area is unfit to eat.
Caesium-137, which has a half-life of 30 years, is the most important radio-nuclide left from Chernobyl's catastrophic explosion in 1986. Researchers have been looking for ways to prevent it getting into crops planted in contaminated soil. Using lots of potassium fertiliser is one proven method, as plants take up the potassium ion from soil in preference to caesium, preventing further caesium uptake.
Now, Teresa Sauras Yera, a biologist at the University of Barcelona, has found that mulching, the method used by farmers and gardeners to conserve moisture and prevent weeds growing, does the job more cheaply and easily. With colleagues in Spain and at the Institute of Agricultural Radiology in Kiev, Sauras Yera added mulch to soil in the exclusion zone after planting oat seeds over three successive years. One year, they covered the soil with black polyethylene sheets. In the other two years, they used straw. Each year, they saw a reduction of 30 to 40 per cent in the levels of radio-caesium in the oats (Environmental Science & Technology, vol 33, p 882).
The researchers believe the mulch protects the plants' leaves and roots from radioactive particles carried by rain and wind. Since mulching is cheap, it could be used to limit radioactive contamination, she says. However, radioactivity levels near Chernobyl are still far too high to make the oats safe for consumption.
But mulching still leaves the radioactive elements in the soil--so attempts are being made to remove it. Slavik Dushenkov of the US biotech firm Phytotech says the fast-growing cannabis plant, the source of hemp fibre, could be an answer. Phytotech and the Ukrainian Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Glukhov have been growing hemp around Chernobyl. After processing the plants, they obtained clean hemp fibre and plant remains rich in caesium. The contaminated remains were burnt in a sealed incinerator that caught all the radioactive ash.
But so far, this method looks as if it could remove only about 1 per cent of the caesium, as much of it is tightly bound to soil particles. "Maybe any one of the three processes will not be economic, but all put together may provide significant benefits," Dushenkov says.
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5. Book Review: Duty, obedience, and intellectual dishonesty
By VALENTINE VASILEFF, June 3, 1999 Jerusalem Post http://www.jpost.com/com/Archive/03.Jun.1999/Books/Article-1.html
HEISENBERG AND THE NAZI ATOMIC BOMB PROJECT: A Study in German Culture by Paul Lawrence Rose. University of California
Press. 352 pp. Price not stated. (May 28) - At the end of World War Two the German scientists who had worked on the Nazi atomic bomb project faced a special predicament. Like every German worth his or her salt, they had, of course, to deal with the humiliation of defeat. But they were not ordinary people, not by a very long shot. They considered themselves (and indeed some were) the high priests of German science. For them the term "German" said it all, and the gloom of capitulation and devastation was compounded by the insult of professional failure. After all, they did not succeed in producing an explosive nuclear device, while their colleagues on the Manhattan Project did.
There was also another, more subtle, question to deal with - the moral dimension of having worked for Hitler. With the Evil Influence gone, the international reputation of German science suddenly became all-important. It was not a simple equation to solve, but these were great scientists..
Some of their best efforts, long classified or simply forgotten, are revealed by Paul Lawrence Rose in Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project. The author singles out Werner Heisenberg (1901-76) and not only because he was the chief physicist of the so-called Uranium Project. "Heisenberg's invention and development of matrix mechanics in 1925... opened the way to quantum mechanics [which] has dominated physical thinking in the last three-quarters of the century. This breakthrough, along with his formulation of the Uncertainty Principle in 1927, has assured Heisenberg a permanent place among the great physicists - an achievement recognized by the award of the Nobel Prize in 1933."
It may seem obvious to connect his misconception regarding the critical mass of Uranium (U)235 needed for a bomb with the ultimate failure of the project. The uncertainty surrounding the practical design of an atomic device was widespread at the time. It centered mostly on the amount of U-235 required. Enrico Fermi guessed that it would be "probably less than 500 kilograms." In 1939 Leo Szilard wrote that "it appears very likely that a fast neutron bomb will be too heavy to be carried by an aeroplane." Heizenberg's figure was several tons.
Then, in February 1940, the German emigre scientist Otto Frisch, "wrapped in an overcoat in his freezing room in Birmingham," had an inspiration: "I had become aware of [Rudolf] Peierles's calculation and I asked him for the formula, and just sort of playfully I put in an estimated cross section for U-235....The result was a critical mass in the order of a pound or so."
Rose remarks: "The breakthrough achieved by the two scientists stemmed from their ability to ask the right questions," and he reminds us that George Thomson, the official historian of the British project, wrote: "The questions may seem obvious today, but they were not at the time. In America they were not asked for many months, until after the British work was available. The German physicists, including the brilliant Heisenberg, apparently did not ask them at all."
At the end of the war Heisenberg and some of the more prominent scientists on the Nazi atomic-bomb project were interned by the British in Farm Hall, a cottage near Cambridge. It was there that the news of Hiroshima reached them - the Allied scientists had succeeded where they had failed. Considering "the sheer arrogance with which the Germans looked down on scientists elsewhere," it must have been quite a shock. But there was no time to mull over it because a cover-up had to be worked out. At the beginning Heisenberg and his colleagues had no technical information about Hiroshima and the memorandum they drew up is understandably vague. Tentatively indicating knowledge of the principles of constructing an atomic bomb, they alluded to a reactor.
This is a typical but important half-truth because it serves several purposes. By implying that the main thrust of the German project was a nuclear reactor, the scientists could claim an involvement in mainly civilian research, pretend a consciously negative attitude to the Nazi war effort (in later versions even hinting at sabotage), and, as a second line of defense, condemn the use of nuclear weapons and lay the blame for their development on their Allied counterparts. It was sophisticated, and could have worked, but there was a hitch: the British had wired the cottage and recorded all their deliberations. Still the transcripts long remained classified, the international reputation of Heisenberg and his group was a powerful factor, and in those days there was no information highway. Many of the half-truths gradually mutated into "facts" and metastasized into the historiography of the subject.
The bigger question is why men like Werner Heisenberg should have agreed to work, or even live, in the kind of environment created by Hitler. Nationalism (of the German type), greed and fear combined with loftier reasons such as "a quasi-religious worship of science" to form the uniquely German context for analyzing the behavior of these and other prominent intellectuals during the Third Reich.
Here Rose emphasizes the concept of the inner and outer truths developed by Martin Luther, according to which political and social liberty and resistance to tyranny (the outer truth) are separated from the inner freedom of spiritual salvation. Luther's translation of the Bible, his invocation of the German nation as a unique people, his ferocious attacks on the Jews, "gave shape to an emerging modern German mentality and sensibility." The change he made in a key Pauline text is quite revealing - instead of: "Let every soul be subject to higher powers, for there is no power but from God" (Paul, Rom. 13:1, as it appears in the English and French versions), his version reads: "Let everyone be subject to the authority that has power...for all authority is ordained by God."
Of course not everybody succumbed to this "culture of obedience." Some left while others had the inner strength to challenge it. A prevailing attitude among those who elected to remain in Germany was "my country right or wrong." But in the case of Heisenberg and his friends, it was not just a question of being fellow-travelers. It was their choice to direct and actively participate in a project with potentially devastating consequences.
Rose has gone to great lengths in describing perhaps one of science's most beneficial dead ends. The technical details may appear at times to be offered too often. Still, it all serves to present the intellectual dishonesty of those involved, which is the main achievement of the book. It is further enhanced by an extensive bibliography and detailed footnotes which make it a valuable source on the subject.
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Message: 6 Date: Sun, 06 Jun 1999 17:18:44 -0400
Subject: NucNews-3 6/06/99 - China-Embassy, History Espionage; Tiananmen (+++) ; US-Honeywell; Lockheed etc; NY Mohawk; Energy
13. China, U.S. hold talks on embassy attack
USA Today June 4, 1999 (World) http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm
BEIJING - China and the United States have begun talks on an investigation into NATO's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia, China's Foreign Ministry said Thursday. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao also reiterated the investigation must be thorough and that those responsible for the bombing should be punished. China was incensed by the May 7 missile attack on its Belgrade embassy that killed three reporters. The government suspended ties with Washington on human rights, arms control and other issues and granted approval for massive, sometimes violent, anti-American and anti-NATO demonstrations in cities nationwide. NATO said the missile attack was an accident. The Clinton administration has told China it is ready to send an envoy to Beijing to brief Chinese officials on an investigation. But China has refused.
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14. Latest rhetoric about Chinese espionage distorts history
Guest column by Allan Winkler, Cincinnati Post, June 3, 1999 http://www.cincypost.com/opinion/guest060399.html
The House report about Chinese spying issued last week documents a series of episodes occurring over the past 20 years. The Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China, chaired by California Republican Christopher Cox, makes it clear that important nuclear secrets were secured not just during the tenure of Bill Clinton but in the presidencies of his predecessors as well.
It's not a pretty picture. We value our technological superiority, and worry with good reason about other powers developing ever more powerful nuclear bombs. We inevitably assume the worst.
As a result, the rhetoric has escalated in the past week over these disclosures. Republicans are calling for the ouster of Attorney General Janet Reno, or National Security advisor Sandy Berger, or both. And we have, at the same time, been treated to historical comparisons that are both unreasonable and wrong.
The Cox report led several members of Congress, including Cincinnati's own Steve Chabot, to draw a parallel to the famous case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were charged and convicted in the early 1950s of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Chabot recently declared that the Rosenbergs' perfidy allowed the Russians ''to advance their atomic weapons program by five years.''
That allegation is as distorted as the assumption that the Chinese are ready to unveil a thermonuclear arsenal, complete with neutron bombs, that will be the equivalent of ours.
The Rosenbergs were arrested for spying that took place at Los Alamos, where the atomic bomb was developed during World War II. David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg's brother, was a machinist on the Manhattan Project, and he passed on drawings of the lens that imploded uranium into the critical mass that created an atomic explosion.
In the highly charged days of the early Cold War, when Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin had just started to wreak havoc, the radical Rosenbergs never had a chance. They were tried and convicted of spying and sentenced to death.
At the sentencing hearing, Judge Irving Kaufman summarized the prevailing assumptions of the day. ''I consider your crime worse than murder,'' he said. ''I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason.''
Both Rosenbergs died in the electric chair in June 1953.
Unfortunately, there were a number of things seriously wrong with his assumptions and allegations.
Liberals claimed that the Rosenbergs were framed. They were only partly correct. Julius was a spy. But we now know, through the release (thanks to the Freedom of Information Act) of highly classified FBI files, and due as well to the opening of Soviet documents at the end of the Cold War, that Ethel was not involved. The Eisenhower administration proceeded with her execution, knowing full well that she was innocent, hoping to get her to persuade Julius to confess.
Even more important is the question of how much damage was done. The best atomic scientists of the day predicted that, once it was demonstrated that an atomic bomb was possible, the Russians would develop their own weapon within three or four years. Politicians, extravagantly persuaded of American technological superiority, contended that it would take 15 years, but they were mistaken. The first Russian bomb was tested in 1949, just as the scientists had predicted, and would have come at the same time even if Julius Rosenberg had never been involved.
There are other important differences between the contemporary Chinese case and the Rosenberg case. As other nations - India and Pakistan, for example - develop their own atomic weapons, it is foolish to assume that the Chinese have done so solely on the basis of the help of spies.
And, as Lisabeth Gronlund, senior staff scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a national security fellow at MIT, recently noted, ''We need some perspective on this: China has less than two dozen warheads that can reach the United States, while the U.S. has thousands that can reach China.''
The Chinese spying is certainly not a good thing. We need to be more vigilant, in nuclear labs and other areas as well.
But this is hardly an episode that calls for the partisan blood-letting that Republicans demand, especially when the history that is used to justify the demand is wrong.
(Allan M. Winkler is a history professor at Miami University and the author of ''Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety about the Atom.'')
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15. HK Group: China Holds More Dissidents For Tiananmen
Inside China Today, June 4, 1999 http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=72113
HONG KONG, Jun 4, 1999 -- (Reuters) Chinese police have detained seven more dissidents, a Hong Kong human rights group said on Friday, the 10th anniversary of China's crackdown on a democracy movement in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
The seven, detained on Thursday and Friday, brought the number of detentions of dissidents planning to commemorate the anniversary to at least 130 in the past month, the Information Center of Human Rights & Democratic Movement in China said.
It said 42 of the dissidents were still in police custody.
A Christian was taken away in Beijing on Friday morning when he was preparing to go to church to pray for victims killed in the crackdown, the center said in a statement.
A dissident in the northern province of Shanxi, three in the northeastern province of Liaoning and two in Jilin in the same region were taken away on Thursday night, it said.
Twenty-seven student leaders in the Tiananmen protests, including Wang Dan, Wu'er Kaixi and Shen Tong, issued a statement to condemn the atrocities committed by Beijing in the bloodbath, the center said.
They also demanded Chinese authorities to reverse its verdict on the movement and release those arrested.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people were killed when Chinese troops and tanks shot their way into the square on the night of June 3-4, 1989, to crush the movement.
China's communist government labeled the student-led demonstrations a "counter-revolutionary riot" whipped up by hostile foreign forces in the United States and elsewhere.
Wang had collected 106,200 signatures from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the United States from people calling for a reassessment of the Tiananmen protests.
On Friday, dissident Cheng Fan handed in a petition to Chinese authorities to demand a reversal of the verdict and the release of dissidents. Other activists had started 24-hour hunger strikes in the central Chinese city of Xian and the southwestern province of Sichuan, the information center said. ((c) 1999 Reuters)
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Lest We Forget Document Says 2,600 Killed, 7,200 Injured At Tiananmen Massacre Inside China Today, June 4, 1999 http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=72117
Memories of Tiananmen Fade, Stunted by Public Silence New York Times, June 4, 1999: http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/060499china-tiananmen.html
The Persistent Tiananmen Mystery: How Many Died in 1989? http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/060499tiananmen -mysteries.html
In Beijing, Reminders of '89 Protest Are Few http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/060499china-beijing.html
Exiled Leaders of Tiananmen Gather to Mull Errors and Accomplishments http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/060499china-us-exiles.html
Troops Attack and Crush Beijing Protest; Thousands Fight Back, Scores Are Killed (June 4, 1989) http://www.nytimes.com/specials/hongkong/archive/89tiananmen.html
From the Archives: Tiananmen Square http://www.nytimes.com/specials/hongkong/archive/history-tiananmen.html
Tiananmen's 10th anniversary is Friday USA Today June 4, 1999 (World) http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm
China shushes massacre anniversary USA Today June 4, 1999 (World) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nwsthu10.htm
Clinton seeks support for China trade status USA Today June 4, 1999 (World) http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsthu14.htm
For six, lives changed after Tiananmen USA Today June 4, 1999 (World) http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nwsthu11.htm
Key figures at Tiananmen Square USA Today June 4, 1999 (World) http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwsthu06.htm
FOCUS-China arrests Tiananmen leaflet thrower 6:13 AM ET June 4, 1999 Reuters http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990604/06/china-tiananmen-leaflets
Chinese soldiers with fixed bayonets... June 3, 1999 Reuters, 7:40 p.m. http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/photo/img/r/china/tiananmen/19990604/pek02 d?r=/photo/r/990604/05/news-china-tiananmen
INTERVIEW-China ex-official champions democracy ( 2:51am) June 4, 1999 Reuters http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990604/02/china-tiananmen-bao
Kin Mourn Victims On Tiananmen Anniversary (12:24am) June 4, 1999 Reuters http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990604/00/news-china-tiananmen
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16. Allied Signal and Honeywell Said to Be in Talks
By CLAUDIA H. DEUTSCH, June 5, 1999 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/allied-honeywell.html
Allied Signal Inc., the diversified manufacturer, and Honeywell Inc., the maker of electronic controls, are in merger discussions, people close to the companies said Friday. A combination of the two, which could be announced as early as Monday, would create a company with revenue of more than $24 billion.
Neither company would confirm reports Friday that they were in talks. Calls to Allied were not returned. Pearse O'Loughlin, a spokesman for Honeywell, said simply, "We don't comment on any kind of rumors."
Still, Wall Street clearly believes a deal is in the works. Shares of Honeywell soared $9.125 Friday, to $105, its 52-week high. In contrast, shares of Allied, which is based in Morristown, N.J., dropped $2, to $58.375.
If the two companies merged, it would answer two questions that Allied-watchers have been asking ever since the failure of its $10 billion hostile run at AMP Inc., the electronic connector company that instead merged with Tyco International last year: What will Allied do to reach the $20 billion sales target that management has often cited as its goal? And who will succeed Allied chief executive Lawrence Bossidy? The most likely scenario would be that Honeywell chief executive Michael Bonsignore would assume the merged company's top spot.
That game plan has some veteran watchers of both companies scratching their heads. Bossidy, a former vice chairman of General Electric Co., remains a friend of GE chairman John Welch and sits on many of the same national business think tanks and panels that Welch is invited to. Bonsignore, although generally well thought of in Minneapolis, where Honeywell is based, and among people who know the company well, nonetheless has never attained Bossidy's national stature.
Nor does Honeywell have Allied's robust earnings growth, others note. "For years Allied was talking about buying Honeywell, but always decided against it because the company just didn't seem good enough," said a former Allied executive. "And since Larry is leaving, no one can say he's buying it to fix it up."
But Honeywell has its fans, too. The company, which had floundered earlier this decade, has had improved sales and earnings for several years now, and its stock price has risen sharply in the last two years.
"Mike has done a wonderful job of taking a company with great franchises and improving them," said Howard Rubel, a vice president of Goldman, Sachs & Co. "His target has been to raise margins and he's succeeded."
Another analyst put it more bluntly: "Running a big merged company will be a feather in Bonsignore's cap, but the truth is, Allied needs Honeywell a lot more than Honeywell needs Allied."
Actually, the two companies do have lots of areas where they can help each other out. Both, for example, are major players in avionics: Allied is one of the biggest suppliers of anticollision and other safety instruments, while Honeywell is a leader in cockpit displays. Together, they would be the dominant seller of airplane controls. That could raise uncomfortable antitrust implications, and some analysts suggested that the merged company might be forced to divest some profitable avionics lines. But few expect antitrust problems to derail the deal. "After all, Allied was never competing against Honeywell in flight systems," Rubel said.
The companies have less obvious, but equally powerful, synergies in selling to the chemical industry: Allied is a major supplier of chemicals and plastics used by chemical companies; Honeywell is a major supplier of process controls to those same companies.
And, both Bonsignore and Bossidy have been steering their companies away from heavy dependence on manufacturing, toward more revenue from higher margin services. Allied, for example, now reaps nearly 50 percent of its aerospace revenue from maintaining spare parts inventories for customers, and overhauling their fleets. Honeywell, meanwhile, now gets more than a third of its revenue from such services as designing energy systems for factories and schools, or helping oil refiners use controls to improve profitability.
Honeywell has also been on a bit of a buying spree itself of late. In the last year it bought Elm Ltd., a Scottish maker of control systems used in supermarkets; Data Instruments Inc., of Acton, Mass., a maker of sensors used in factories, and the LG Group's half of a joint venture in South Korea that makes control products for buildings and homes.
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17. Lockheed To Cut Up To 2,000 Jobs
Updated 1:23 AM ET June 4, 1999 http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990604/01/business-aerospace-lockhe edmartin
MARIETTA, Ga. (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems, a unit of defense giant Lockheed Martin Corp., will cut up to 2,000 jobs, or 21 percent of the work force, at a plant that produces C-130J cargo planes and F-22 fighter jets for the U.S. armed forces, the company said Thursday.
Plant officials said they anticipate about 40 percent of the lost jobs will come through attrition, retirements or transfers and the rest through layoffs over the coming year.
Lockheed Aeronautical said it must reduce expenses to make some products more affordable and to meet a commitment made to the U.S. Air Force to develop the F-22.
"I'm in the process of visiting with all the work force here today in anticipation of a reduction in work force over the next year or as we realign the company and make sure we are competitive," Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems President Tom Burbage said at a news conference.
The Marietta, Ga.-based operation currently employs about 9,550 people, and staff reductions will hit all levels including management, the company said.
Orders for the C-130J have been slower than expected, with a production slowdown anticipated over the next three to six years. The cost of the F-22 has been intensely criticized by both the U.S. Air Force and Congress, which has been wrestling with the added expense of the Kosovo conflict.
Burbage said the company felt it needed to reorganize to address cost concerns.
"We're looking for a very long and productive production run on that airplane," Burbage said of the C-130J. "We also make the F-22, which is the Air Force's No. 1 replacement for the F-15.
"We have a number of new opportunities for us but we believe that we need to streamline our operation and make our organization more effective," he said.
The plant was exploring ways to reduce costs. Lockheed Martin had already trimmed 280 jobs in January and had warned since then that much deeper layoffs could occur if orders for the C-130J did not improve.
Burbage said in an earlier statement that the Air Force plans to buy up to 168 of its aircraft systems including the C-130J and the F-22.
The U.S. Marine Corps plans to buy 50 tankers, he said, adding that demand from the international market is also strong.
Congressman Bob Barr, whose district includes the Lockheed Martin plant, Cobb County's No. 1 employer, was clearly upset about the layoffs, blaming President Clinton and White House budget-makers for cuts in military spending.
"The C-130J is a workhorse," Barr told WSB Radio. "It's really a shame the politics this administration plays."
Barr, a Republican, said the president, a Democrat, was intent on cutting the U.S. defense budget, but had then repeatedly come to Congress asking it to authorize emergency spending.
He said White House budget-makers needed to incorporate long-range military needs, including replacing aging U.S. Air Force and Marine planes, into their budget projections. "They know they need them," Barr said. "They tell us that off the record. They're just playing politics."
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Newport News Won't Hike Avondale Bid Jun 3 1999 Associated Press http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990603/V000221-060399-idx.html
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18. Niagara Mohawk Nuclear Power Selects Xybernaut(R) Wearable PC; Wearable PC Saves Time and Money in Inspections
FAIRFAX, Va., June 3 1999 /PRNewswire/ -- http://senghor.dogpile.com/texis/search?q=nuclear+OR+plutonium+OR+uranium+OR +radioactiv%3F%3F%3F&fs=nws&to=thirty
Xybernaut Corporation (Nasdaq: XYBR), the leader in wearable computing, today announced that the Xybernaut Mobile Assistant(R)(MA IV(TM)) wearable PC has been chosen by Niagara Mohawk, a subsidiary of Niagara Mohawk Holdings Inc. (NYSE: NMK), for a pilot program in the Nuclear Power Utility Group to improve the responsiveness and productivity of inspections.
"It is my belief that the time savings expected to result from the MA IV will create considerable productivity gains and cost savings when compared to the manual methods currently performed," said James Poindexter, Unit 2 Operations, Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station, Niagara Mohawk. "This application for the MA IV is just the 'tip of the iceberg.' I project a multitude of additional applications for the MA IV, and my goal is to establish this wearable system as a productivity tool for the other departments at Nine Mile Point."
"The adoption of Xybernaut's wearable computer system by Niagara Mohawk will provide a model for other utility companies, which are monitoring the Niagara Mohawk pilot program," said Edward G. Newman, President and CEO of Xybernaut Corporation. "The MA IV is an ideal platform for inspectors to instantly capture and analyze data, then communicate the findings of this analysis while keeping their hands on test probes, measurement tools and the like. Using the MA IV will allow a critical problem to be identified on the spot and repair crews to be instantly notified. We are thrilled to be a part of this progressive approach to nuclear plant inspection, safety and security."
Xybernaut Corporation is working to have the MA IV certified for use with all nuclear power utilities and to provide the industry with wearable computer systems and engineering support services worldwide. Xybernaut's Professional Services Group is supporting the Mohawk evaluation by providing software for the man/machine evaluation.
The MA IV(TM) is now available and being shipped to end users worldwide. It is a full-function Pentium 233 Mhz belt-worn computer, with up to 128 MB of SDRAM, a 4.3 GB hard drive, two PC card slots, a color VGA head-mounted display suspended in front of either eye with microphone and earphone or an optional wrist-mounted VGA flat panel touch screen color display, a miniature keyboard, a battery pack, and integrated voice-recognition software. With U.S. base pricing below $5,000, wearable PCs are now attractive to those organizations seeking to take advantage of the increased productivity of wearable PCs compared with other computing platforms, and for many applications where computers have never been used before.
About Niagara Mohawk:
Niagara Mohawk, a subsidiary of Niagara Mohawk Holdings Inc. (NYSE: NMK), is a regulated energy delivery company with the largest service territory in New York State. The company serves more than 1.5 million electricity customers and more than 540,000 natural gas customers across 24,000 square miles.
About Xybernaut Corporation:
Xybernaut Corporation is the leader in providing hardware, software and service solutions to the wearable computing industry. The Company's patented wearable computer allows users hands-free access to information in the computer's internal storage, in local area networks and on the Internet on an as-needed, where-needed basis. Xybernaut's software is designed to provide users with the right information needed for the task at hand using consistent navigation techniques and screen presentations. Xybernaut's current customers include leading Fortune 500 companies and government organizations for many mobile knowledge delivery system applications, including installation, maintenance and repair, diagnosis, inspection, inventory control, manufacturing and data collection. Key industries using Xybernaut products include manufacturing, distribution, transportation, government, and insurance. Headquartered in Fairfax, Virginia, Xybernaut has offices and subsidiaries in Europe (Germany) and Asia (Japan).
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (the "Act"). In particular, when used in the preceding discussion, the words "plan," "confident that," "believe," "expect," or "intend to," and similar conditional expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Act and are subject to the safe harbor created by the Act. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties and actual results could differ materially from those expressed in any of the forward- looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, market conditions, the availability of components and production of the Mobile Assistant, general acceptance of the Company's products and technologies, competitive factors, the ability to successfully complete additional financings and other risks described in the Company's SEC reports and filings.
Visit Xybernaut's Web Site at http://www.xybernaut.com SOURCE Xybernaut Corporation
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19. Clinton orders energy cuts
USA Today June 3, 1999 http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsthu06.htm
WASHINGTON - President Clinton told federal agencies Thursday to do a better job of conserving energy, citing global warming so alarming that it is melting sea ices and killing off entire species in Costa Rica's forests. The federal government uses more energy than anyone else in the nation, expending $8 billion worth each year - roughly half of which goes into lights, heat and air conditioning for its buildings. Clinton issued an executive order that directs federal agencies to cut their energy consumption by 35 percent, compared with 1985 levels, between now and 2010....