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Digest 116, originally sent Wed Jun 23 04:34:15 1999
There are 8 messages in this issue.
Topics in today's digest:
1. NucNews-0 Brief 6/22/99
2. NucNews-3 6/22/99 - Greenpeace (2); Japan (3); Kashmir; US Bombs Iraq; Gulf War Syndrome; Israel Bombs Lebanon (2); Human Rights/UN
3. NucNews-4 6/22/99 - Y2K (2); Mound Cleanup Envy; Hanford Scientists; Rocky Flats shipments; Wind Power; Radiation Leaks Livermore Labs
4. NucNews-7 6/22/99 - G-8 Summit Highlights; KLA Demilitarization Agreement
5. NucNews-2 6/22/99 - Ukraine (2); Russia/US (3+); UK-BNFL / Westinghouse; Bikini; EU - Secrecy
6. NucNews-5 6/22/99 - Lab Security - Livermore (TVC); Senate; Energy Whistleblower Trulock; Panel Backs DOE; Rudman Debate; Polygraphs for 5,000 at DOE; U.Cal/Livermore
7. NucNews-6 6/22/99 - Kosovo - Media; War Criminals; Pilots/Planes Fly Home; Kosovars New Army?
8. NucNews-1 6/22/99 - Vanunu-Israel; Treaties: ABM, CTBT, Start1&2
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Message: 1 Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 18:06:58 -0400
Subject: NucNews-0 Brief 6/22/99
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NucNews-1 6/22/99 - Vanunu-Israel; Treaties: ABM, CTBT, Start1&2 NucNews-2 6/22/99 - Ukraine (2); Russia/US (3+); UK-BNFL / Westinghouse; Bikini; EU - Secrecy NucNews-3 6/22/99 - Greenpeace (2); Japan (3); Kashmir; US Bombs Iraq; Gulf War Syndrome; Israel Bombs Lebanon (2); Human Rights/UN NucNews-4 6/22/99 - Y2K (2); Mound Cleanup Envy; Hanford Scientists; Rocky Flats shipments; Wind Power; Radiation Leaks Livermore Labs NucNews-5 6/22/99 - Lab Security - Livermore (TVC); Senate; Energy Whistleblower Trulock; Panel Backs DOE; Rudman Debate; Polygraphs for 5,000 at DOE; U.Cal/Livermore NucNews-6 6/22/99 - Kosovo - Media; War Criminals; Pilots/Planes Fly Home; Kosovars New Army? NucNews-7 6/22/99 - G-8 Summit Highlights; KLA Demilitarization Agreement
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1. Israel Partially Lifts Gag Order Monday, June 21, 1999; 9:13 a.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990621/V000173-062199-idx.html JERUSALEM (AP) -- The Supreme Court decided today to partially lift a gag order on the case of Mordechai Vanunu, a former nuclear technician serving 18 years for disclosing Israel's nuclear secrets....
2. Battle brewing on missile defense By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washtimes.com/news/news3.html The Clinton administration is heading for a confrontation with Congress over legislation that would make it U.S. policy to deploy a nationwide defense against missile attack....
3. Helms Faces Off With White House on Missed ABM Treaty Deadline By Thomas W. Lippman, Washington Post, June 21, 1999; Page A05 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/21/115l-062199-idx.html There are limits, it seems, to the detente Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright forged two years ago with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), and the administration crossed one of them June 1....
4. This Treaty Must Be Ratified (CTBT) By Paul H. Nitze and Sidney D. Drell, Monday, June 21, 1999; Page A19 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/21/070l-062199-idx.html Paul H. Nitze is a former arms control negotiator and was an ambassador-at-large in the Reagan administration. Sidney D. Drell is an adviser to the federal government on national security issues.
5. U.S.-Russian Arms Treaties By The Associated Press Sunday, June 20, 1999; 2:43 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990620/V000749-062099-idx.html President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed Sunday to renew arms control efforts. A look at the treaties in question: Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty ... Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty II: START II ... Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty I: Under START I....
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6. Nuclear reactor shuts down by mistake in Ukraine June 21, 1999 Web posted at: 9:13 AM EDT (1313 GMT) http://cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9906/21/ukraine.nuclear.ap/index.html KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- A reactor at Ukraine's Zaporizhia power plant, Europe's largest, was successfully restarted Monday after it unexpectedly shut down over the weekend, nuclear authorities said. -- American engineers demonstrate robot at Chernobyl nuclear power plant UKRAINE: May 27, 1999 http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm?newsid=115 Photo by MIKHAIL CHERNICHKIN REUTERS NEWS PICTURE SERVICE http://www.planetark.org/envpics/schernrobot.jpg
7. Clinton, Yeltsin Plan New Talks On Nuclear Arms U.S. Negotiations Aim to Amend Treaty To Allow Missile Defense Development By David Hoffman Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, June 22, 1999; Page A10 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/22/047l-062299-idx.html MOSCOW, June 21--After a long impasse, President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin have agreed to make a fresh attempt to resolve contentious treaties on strategic nuclear weapons and anti-ballistic missile defenses.... -- Russia eases resistance to missile defense By Bill Sammon, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, June 21, 1999 http://www.washtimes.com/internatl/internatl2.html -- Moscow, Washington Reassert Need To Reduce Weapons Updated 12:31 AM ET June 21, 1999 http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990621/00/international-arms-russia -- Yeltsin Mulls Revising Missile Pact By Terence Hunt AP White House Correspondent Sunday, June 20, 1999; 2:33 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990620/V000737-062099-idx.html -- Affable but Ailing Yeltsin Gives JFK Files to Clinton By William Drozdiak, Washington Post, June 21, 1999; Page A15 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/21/116l-062199-idx.html
8. Company in the Spotlight: British put a smile on Circle W BNFL is hiring, not firing, as it takes control of Westinghouse's nuclear energy business Sunday, June 20, 1999, By Steve Massey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer http://www.post-gazette.com/businessnews/19990620spot5.asp
9. Where did the word bikini come from? THE RED PENCIL By Redgate / wrytor@aol.com Monday, June 21, 1999; Page C11 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/21/058l-062199-idx.html ... Starting in 1946, Bikini was used by the U.S. as a site for testing nuclear weapons, including a hydrogen bomb. When the revealing swimsuit design first hit the beaches, the French thought of it as "l'explosion.' So they called the popular swimsuit a bikini, after the place where you don't want to "catch some rays.'
10. EU proposal to get rid of secrecy Updated 7:55 AM ET June 21, 1999 http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/u/990621/07/international-secrets BRUSSELS, June 21 (UPI) With the backing of Germany and the Scandinavian nation members, Britain is asking the rest of the European Union to make known what goes on in EU secret committees. The British newspaper, the Guardian, reports such committees, which "run most European Union affairs, will have to publish details of their proceedings on the internet" if the reform sought by Britain is passed.
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11. Greenpeace protester flies over Cologne during G8 summit GERMANY: June 19, 1999 http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm?newsid=1002 Photo by WOLFGANG RATTAY REUTERS NEWS PICTURE SERVICE http://www.planetark.org/envpics/sgphanglider.jpg -- Greenpeace activist fixes a huge anti-nuclear banner SLOVAKIA: May 27, 1999 http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm?newsid=114 Photo by PETR JOSEK REUTERS NEWS PICTURE SERVICE http://www.planetark.org/envpics/sgpemb.jpg
12. US-Japan Ties on Next Summit Venue By The Associated Press, June 21, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Summit-On-to-Okinawa.html COLOGNE, Germany (AP) -- When the leaders of the industrialized world gather in southern Japan for next year's summit, they will be surrounded by more than just an exotic ambiance. All around them will be American military bases -- reminders of one of the most sensitive issues in U.S.-Japan relations. And next year's Okinawan hosts are already preparing to use the gathering to showcase their complaints about life among the Marines.... -- Japan Sorry for Live Fire Error Monday, June 21, 1999; 10:54 a.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990621/V000207-062199-idx.html TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's self-defense forces apologized Monday for mistakenly firing live ammunition over a town and then failing to report the incident for four months, a news report said.... -- Japanese Develop Tiny Robot Monday, June 21, 1999; 9:06 a.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990621/V000169-062199-idx.html TOKYO (AP) -- Japanese electronics companies have developed a micro-machine the size of an ant that can crawl around thin pipes, inspect and even fix problems at power plants.... The robots, which can crawl into the tiniest gaps around bundles of pipes, are expected to speed up inspection and repairs at electric and nuclear power plants because they can be sent in while the plants keep running....
13. Trouble in Kashmir Tuesday, June 22, 1999; Page A16 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/22/016l-062299-idx.html -- India Takes Kashmir Height, Gets G8 Support Updated 11:41 AM ET June 20, 1999 By Narayanan Madhavan http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990620/11/international-kashmir-rec apture -- India, Pakistan Claim G8 Backing On Kashmir Updated 6:00 AM ET June 21, 1999 By John Chalmers http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990621/06/international-kashmir-lea dall
14. U.S. Says Planes Bomb Iraqi Radar Updated 9:47 AM ET June 21, 1999 http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990621/09/international-iraq-bombs BONN (Reuters) - U.S. Air Force airplanes bombed Iraqi radar facilities north of Mosul Monday after being fired at by anti-aircraft artillery, the U.S. Air Force's European Command based in Germany said....
15. Gulf War Syndrome Studied By Troy Goodman Associated Press Writer Sunday, June 20, 1999; 12:04 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990620/V000686-062099-idx.html DALLAS (AP) -- Soldiers born with low levels of an enzyme that helps the body fight off chemical toxins are more likely to report symptoms of Gulf War syndrome than soldiers born with normal levels, a new study has found....
[Another liar in the Knesset?]
16. Israeli Warplanes Raid South Lebanon Updated 12:33 AM ET June 21, 1999 http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990621/00/international-israel-lebanon JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli warplanes attacked suspected Hizbollah guerrilla positions in south Lebanon Sunday shortly after residents of northern Israel were ordered into shelters as a precaution against rocket attacks, the Israeli army said.... -- Israelis leave border shelters Updated 3:57 AM ET June 21, 1999 http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/u/990621/03/international-lebanon TEL AVIV, Israel, June 21 (UPI) The Israeli army has allowed an estimated 150,000 Israelis living near the Lebanese border to leave the shelters where they had spent the night anticipating guerrilla shelling....
17. U.N. Committee, Under Pressure, Limits Rights Groups By PAUL LEWIS, June 22, 1999 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/062299un-human-rights.html UNITED NATIONS -- Led by a small group of developing nations, a U.N. committee has inflicted major setbacks in recent days on human rights groups that seek to expose and combat political oppression.... -- Related Articles Documenting the Worst of Abuses (May 6, 1999) http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/050699rights-rapporteurs.html -- Good Friends Join Enemies to Criticize U.S. on Rights (March 28, 1999) http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/032899un-human-rights.html
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18. US Believes World Is Ready for Y2K By The Associated Press, June 22, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-MIL-Y2K-Readiness.html NEW YORK (AP) -- Venezuela is consulting with psychiatrists on how to explain to the public what might happen with the Year 2000 computer bug. The Philippines wants to bring the bug to the dinner table -- as a conversation topic. And countries in sub-Saharan Africa are worried about finding enough experts to get rid of the bug.... -- U.S.: World better prepared for Y2K USA Today (World) June 22, 1999 http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm ... 'My sense is there has been a sea change in the preparedness of the world in the last six months since we pulled everyone together for the first time in December,'' John Koskinen, head of President Clinton's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, told reporters....
19. Others want deal offered Mound workers Sunday, June 20, 1999, By JOHN NOLAN ASSOCIATED PRESS http://www.cleveland.com/news/pdnews/metro/oa20mox.ssf CINCINNATI - Employees at radioactive cleanup sites of the U.S. Department of Energy should be offered the same lifetime occupational disease insurance as workers at a suburban Dayton site, advocates said....
20. Scientists get earful on Hanford Study that dismissed cancer link attacked Karen Dorn Steele - The Spokesman-Review, June 20, 1999 http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=062099&ID=s597118&cat= Spokane _ At times, it was nearly a nuclear meltdown. A National Academy of Sciences panel in Spokane on a fact-finding mission heard angry words from the public Saturday about a government study of Hanford radiation releases....
21. Flats shipments under way In push for 2006 deadline, 10-15 truckloads of waste per week will head for N.M. By Berny Morson, Denver Rocky Mountain News, June 20, 1999 http://insidedenver.com/news/0620wipp1.shtml They look like three-humped camels -- flatbed trucks with three enormous, cylindrical containers perched on their low-slung frames. The trucks will become a familiar site on Interstate 25 as nuclear waste moves from Rocky Flats to a burial site in New Mexico.... All the material leaving the plant during the next seven years was shipped in from other Department of Energy plants during the Cold War.... The Energy department will say only that trucks traveled 90 million miles since 1975.
[Meanwhile, on our nation's highways, privacy dwindles....]
22. Police get green light to drug search cars 6/22/99- USA Today http://usatoday.com/news/court/nsco1077.htm WASHINGTON (AP) - ... Monday, the Supreme Court ruled in an unsigned opinion that the police did not need a warrant. The Constitution's Fourth Amendment generally requires police to get a warrant before conducting a search, but the court established an exception in 1925 for automobile searches....
23. Energy Sec. Vows Wind Power Support By The Associated Press, June 22, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Wind-Power.html SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) -- The nation's wind power advocates are back from nearly two decades of exile. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson on Monday committed the government to increasing the amount of electricity produced by wind by 50 times over the next 21 years.....
24. RADIATION Nuclear Leaks of Another Kind Newsweek issue dated June 28, 1999 http://www.newsweek.com/nw-srv/tnw/today/ps/ps02su_1.htm Nuclear secrets aren't the only kind of unauthorized leaks from U.S. weapons labs. According to a General Accounting Office draft report obtained by NEWSWEEK, over the past three years, the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore labs were assessed fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars for safety violations, including exposing their employees to radiation....
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25. Newly Discovered Accidents Give Lie to Lab Safety Claims by Marylia Kelley from Tri-Valley CAREs' June 1999 newsletter, Citizen's Watch http://www.igc.org/tvc/ Just as our California state regulators hand Livermore Lab the go-ahead to construct a major, new nuclear waste treatment and storage facility, Tri-Valley CAREs has discovered two previously unpublicized accidents.... We believe these incidents further demonstrate the presence of ongoing problems at the Lab and underscore our call for an Environmental Impact Report.... -- Lab to Build Nuclear Waste Complex Without Environmental Review by Marylia Kelley from Tri-Valley CAREs' June 1999 newsletter, Citizen's Watch Despite Livermore Lab's long history of toxic and radioactive spills, leaks, accidents and releases, the state of California has just given the Lab a green light to build a huge, new nuclear waste treatment complex in Livermore....
26. Senate To Focus On U.S. Nuclear Lab Security Updated 3:27 PM ET June 21, 1999, By Tabassum Zakaria http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990621/15/news-nuclear-spying WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four Senate committees with a combined membership of more than half the Senate will hold a joint hearing Tuesday to focus on security at nuclear labs, where allegations of Chinese spying have surfaced.... -- Two-Day Security Review Closes U.S. Nuclear Labs Updated 5:48 PM ET June 21, 1999 http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990621/17/news-nuclear-security -- Energy Whistleblower Defends His Office By Walter Pincus, Washington Post, June 22, 1999; Page A11 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/22/045l-062299-idx.html Notra Trulock, the Energy Department whistleblower whose intelligence analyses triggered allegations of Chinese espionage at America's nuclear weapons labs, attacked a presidential panel yesterday for recommending elimination of the intelligence office where he works.... -- Panel Backs Energy Dept. Oversight By Jim Abrams Associated Press Writer Monday, June 21, 1999; 3:38 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990621/V000365-062199-idx.html -- Nuclear Weapons Program Debated By Jim Abrams Associated Press Writer Monday, June 21, 1999; 1:21 a.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990621/V000032-062199-idx.html -- Security remains lax at nuclear labs, says ex-senator By Joyce Howard Price THE WASHINGTON TIMES, June 21, 1999 http://www.washtimes.com/investiga/investiga1.html Two key components of an order President Clinton issued 16 months ago to tighten security at nuclear weapons labs have still not been implemented by the Department of Energy, the chairman of a presidential advisory panel ... former Sen. Warren Rudman, New Hampshire Republican, told NBC's "Meet the Press." Mr. Rudman, who headed a committee impaneled by Mr. Clinton to probe security lapses at nuclear facilities, said DOE officials debated the president's directive to plug leaks for 90 days before deciding it was a "good idea.".... -- Polygraphs Start for 5,000 at Energy Opposition Mounts to Widespread Lie Detection to Catch Spies at Weapons Labs By Vernon Loeb, Washington Post, June 21, 1999; Page A02 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/21/016l-062199-idx.html -- Univ. of Calif. Seeks Review Of Lab Security Reuters Monday, June 21, 1999 Washington Post; Page A02 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/21/007l-062199-idx.html http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990621/00/news-nuclear-california
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27. A New War Drew New Methods for Covering It By FELICITY BARRINGER, June 21, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/kosovo-war-media.html As 16,100 NATO troops rolled into Kosovo last week, 2,700 journalists signed up to follow them. Most of those journalists had been forced to watch the 78 days of bombing through the lenses of official video cameras and wanted to see things for themselves.
28. Will war criminals be prosecuted? By Kirk Spitzer, 6/21/99- http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/kosovo/kirk058.htm ... President Clinton said Thursday that he expects Yugoslav President Milosevic to avoid trial as long as he stays in Serbia. He said it is not NATO's mission to seize the indicted leader. For more on war crimes in Kosovo and the Balkans, see these Web sites: International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia http://www.un.org/icty/index.html Indictments of Slobodan Milosevic and other Yugoslav leaders http://www.state.gov/www/regions/eur/990527_kosovo_indictment.html British Ministry of Defense map of suspected mass grave sites http://www.mod.uk/news/kosovo/map_graves.jpg -- EVIDENCE War-Crimes Experts Comb First Site on List By IAN FISHER, June 21, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/062199kosovo-tribunal.html
29. Pilots fly home By United Press International, 4:40 AM ET June 22, 1999 http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/u/990622/04/international-kosovo Many of the U.S. pilots whose relentless bombing opened the door for the Kosovo peacekeeping force have been given the order to fly home while the ground troops continue the dangerous job of clearing unexploded mines and bombs from the province.... -- Warplanes Returning to U.S., Europe By The Associated Press, June 22, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-US-Kosovo-List.html Warplanes returning to bases in the United States and Europe in the next two weeks...
30. THE OVERVIEW NATO to Consider Letting Kosovars Set Up New Army as Rebels Agree to Disarm June 22, 1999, By STEVEN LEE MYERS, New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/062299kosovo-kla-disband.html PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- The agreement reached early Monday to disband the Kosovo Liberation Army included, at the insistence of its commanders, a pledge by the NATO allies to consider letting the rebels form a provisional army for Kosovo modeled on the National Guard in the United States....
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31. G-8 Summit Communique Highlights By The Associated Press Sunday, June 20, 1999; 10:48 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990620/V000989-062099-idx.html Highlights of the final communique released from the G-8 summit....
[Write "NucNews - please send G-8 Summit Communique Text, June 21, 1999" in subject line if you'd like to receive the complete text.]
32. KLA signs demilitarization agreement Updated 6:06 AM ET June 21, 1999 http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/u/990621/06/international-kla PRISTINA, Kosovo, June 21 (UPI) A plan for the demilitarization of the Kosovo Liberation Army within the next 90 days has been signed in Pristina.... -- Text of the Demilitarization Agreement By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, June 21, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/afp-kla-nato-text.html Following is the full text of the accord on the demilitarisation of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA, known in Kosovo by its initials UCK) signed by KLA chief Hashim Thaqi and KFOR commander Lieutenant-General Mike Jackson in Pristina.... _____________________________
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Message: 2 Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 18:10:45 -0400
Subject: NucNews-3 6/22/99 - Greenpeace (2); Japan (3); Kashmir; US Bombs Iraq; Gulf War Syndrome; Israel Bombs Lebanon (2); Human Rights/UN
11. Greenpeace protester flies over Cologne during G8 summit
GERMANY: June 19, 1999 http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm?newsid=1002 Photo by WOLFGANG RATTAY REUTERS NEWS PICTURE SERVICE http://www.planetark.org/envpics/sgphanglider.jpg
A protester of Greenpeace flies with an ultra-light aircraft over the city of Cologne next to the location where the leaders of the Group of Eight most powerful nations meet for their annual G-8 summit June 19.
The banner reads, "No New Chernobyl".
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Greenpeace activist fixes a huge anti-nuclear banner
SLOVAKIA: May 27, 1999 http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm?newsid=114 Photo by PETR JOSEK REUTERS NEWS PICTURE SERVICE http://www.planetark.org/envpics/sgpemb.jpg
A Greenpeace activist fixes a huge banner at the German Embassy building in Bratislava, May 27.
Greenpeace activists protested here against the Jaslovske Bohunice nuclear power station, which they say is one of the most dangerous Soviet designed power plant in the world.
German companies are helping Slovakia to update the equipment at the nuclear station.
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12. US-Japan Ties on Next Summit Venue
By The Associated Press, June 21, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Summit-On-to-Okinawa.html
COLOGNE, Germany (AP) -- When the leaders of the industrialized world
gather in southern Japan for next year's summit, they will be surrounded by more than just an exotic ambiance.
All around them will be American military bases -- reminders of one of the most sensitive issues in U.S.-Japan relations. And next year's Okinawan hosts are already preparing to use the gathering to showcase their complaints about life among the Marines.
Rarely has the choice of venue for the annual G-8 summit carried so much political significance as Japan's decision to hold the July 2000 meeting in its southernmost prefecture.
``There is a great worldwide interest in the summit,'' said Okinawa Gov. Keiichi Inamine, who was in Cologne with several dozen organizers of the meeting. ``It is a very important fact that it will be held in Okinawa.''
Under a mutual security pact, more than 50,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Japan. About two-thirds are concentrated on bases on the tiny island of Okinawa. Bases, in fact, cover nearly 20 percent its total land.
Washington and Tokyo say the presence -- which includes the largest Marine contingent outside the United States and one of the largest Air Force bases -- is essential to stability in Asia.
But Okinawans have for decades claimed that this concentration of U.S. troops is an unfair burden -- and have frequently clashed with both Washington and their own leaders in Tokyo.
Partly because of the sensitivities, no U.S. president has visited Okinawa since it was returned to Japanese control in 1972. The United States had administered Okinawa since seizing it in the final land battle of World War II.
Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi -- a strong supporter of the U.S.-Japan military alliance -- is believed to have pushed for Okinawa as a show of support for Inamine, a conservative businessman who recently assumed office after defeating a famously outspoken opponent of the U.S. presence.
Inamine has stressed the importance of developing Okinawa's economic infrastructure, and says he believes bringing the summit to his island will draw funds for important telecommunications and other development projects.
Improving Okinawa's economy is an urgent issue. Okinawa is Japan's poorest region, with far lower wages and higher unemployment than the rest of the country.
But Inamine has also repeatedly called for a phased withdrawal of the troops, and strong anti-military emotions among the Okinawans could make for some embarrassing moments during President Clinton's stay.
``It's hard to say how it will come out,'' said Ryoshu Henzan, who was part of Inamine's delegation. ``But we hope the ultimate result will be the gradual removal of the troops.''
Okinawan representatives distributed welcome pamphlets at the summit here noting the importance of the U.S. bases to regional security -- Japan is surrounded by several flash points, including North Korea and several disputed chains of islands.
But the pamphlets also delicately noted that Okinawans want the troops out.
``This concentration of bases has various influences on the daily lives of the prefecture's residents,'' they said. ``Consequently, Okinawans are seeking the planned and phased reduction and realignment of the bases.''
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Japan Sorry for Live Fire Error
Monday, June 21, 1999; 10:54 a.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990621/V000207-062199-idx.html
TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's self-defense forces apologized Monday for mistakenly firing live ammunition over a town and then failing to report the incident for four months, a news report said.
A destroyer anchored at the port of Maizuru in Kyoto prefecture, 230 miles southwest of Tokyo, fired the rounds Feb. 18 during a routine equipment test, officials disclosed Friday.
The shells traveled over a residential area and are believed to have landed in a mountainous area. No damage or injuries were reported.
The shells rocketed over the town of Takahama, Kyodo News agency said in reporting Monday's apology by the Maritime Self-Defense Force to the local Fukui prefecture government. Fukui and Kyoto share a border.
Local officials complained about the delay in reporting the incident.
``The place where the machine-gun rounds landed is near where a nuclear power plant is located, and we want you to be more open about information to dispel residents' anxieties,'' Kyodo quoted Hyakuo Makino, a Fukui government official, as saying.
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Japanese Develop Tiny Robot
Monday, June 21, 1999; 9:06 a.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990621/V000169-062199-idx.html
TOKYO (AP) -- Japanese electronics companies have developed a micro-machine the size of an ant that can crawl around thin pipes, inspect and even fix problems at power plants, officials said Monday.
The box-shaped robot is only 5 millimeters (0.2 inch) long, 9 millimeters (0.36 inch) wide and 6.5 millimeters (0.26 inch) high.
It has a pair of round connectors on both sides that can be linked up with other robots for more extensive assignments.
With a weight of only 0.42 grams (0.0147 ounces), the robot can lift objects twice as heavy as itself and can move at a speed of 2 millimeters (0.1 inch) per second, said Koji Hirose, spokesman for the Ministry of International Trade and Industry.
Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd. and Matsushita Research Institute Tokyo, Inc. developed the machine under the government's 25 billion yen ($206 million) ``micro machine'' project that began in 1989, Hirose said.
The robots are one of three types of machines designed for use in different environments, he said.
The robots, which can crawl into the tiniest gaps around bundles of pipes, are expected to speed up inspection and repairs at electric and nuclear power plants because they can be sent in while the plants keep running.
Scientists are working to add new functions to them so the robots can climb up and down a pipe while connected to other machines. They also plan to develop robots with motors and problem-detecting sensors.
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13. Trouble in Kashmir
Tuesday, June 22, 1999; Page A16 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/22/016l-062299-idx.html
Pamela Constable's June 6 news story, "Pakistani Guerrillas Vow Revenge on India," is a singularly one-sided reporting of the news.
The reporter goes to a Pakistani village and writes about the plight of villagers whose lives are shattered by "Indian artillery shelling." Yet nowhere does she do a similar investigation into the lives of the villagers on the Indian side of the Kashmir.
I see no reporting of the shelling conducted by Pakistani troops who, under the cover of fire, are trying to keep the supply lines to the terrorists open and also trying to push through several hundred more terrorists in the Kashmir valley. Ms. Constable makes no mention of Kargil, which has become a virtual ghost town thanks to the Pakistani shelling. Nowhere is there a report on how people who have lived there for centuries have been uprooted overnight to flee for safer regions.
One good thing that Ms. Constable does is to expose the workings of various terrorist outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba, which trains youths into militancy in camps inside Pakistan. Here's hoping that the U.S. government takes notice of this reporting too and does something more than putting such outfits on its "list of terrorist organizations." This is the same outfit that has links to Osama bin Laden, whose camps the United States bombed in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The mantra of this administration seems to be reactive rather than proactive.
KETAN DHOLAKIA
Rockville
In her June 13 news story, "Indian Declares 'Onus Is on Pakistan'; Foreign Ministers End New Delhi Meeting Without Agreement on Conflict in Kashmir," Pamela Constable stated that six bodies of tortured Indian soldiers were returned and "buried." Ms. Constable, who seems to have filed her report from India, still does not seem to know that Indians do not "bury" but "cremate" their dead.
SUDHIR DESHMUKH
Voorhees, N.J.
The May 27 news story on escalating violence and the danger of nuclear war in Kashmir, "Kashmir Border Dispute Flares Again," neglects the following salient facts:
(1) The U.N. Security Council maintains that Kashmir does not belong to any member country of the United Nations and that Kashmir is a disputed territory.
(2) Security Council resolutions since 1948, which India now defies, were fashioned and accepted by both India and Pakistan. They prescribe a self-determination plebiscite in Kashmir under U.N. auspices to settle the now 52-year-old conflict.
(3) The Oct. 26, 1947, "Instrument of Accession" to India purportedly signed by Kashmir's Hindu maharaja has been proven bogus by British scholar Alistair Lamb.
(4) India's foremost political party, the Hindu fundamentalist BJP, features a nuclear mushroom cloud as the chilling emblem of its foreign policy.
(5) Kashmir has no military solution. It has to be resolved through peaceful negotiations among all parties -- the governments of India and Pakistan and the legitimate leadership of the people of Kashmir, who are the central and primary party to the dispute.
GHULAM NABI FAI Executive Director Kashmiri American Council Washington
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India Takes Kashmir Height, Gets G8 Support Updated 11:41 AM ET June 20, 1999 By Narayanan Madhavan http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990620/11/international-kashmir-rec apture
India, Pakistan Claim G8 Backing On Kashmir Updated 6:00 AM ET June 21, 1999 By John Chalmers http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990621/06/international-kashmir-lea dall
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14. U.S. Says Planes Bomb Iraqi Radar
Updated 9:47 AM ET June 21, 1999 http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990621/09/international-iraq-bombs
BONN (Reuters) - U.S. Air Force airplanes bombed Iraqi radar facilities north of Mosul Monday after being fired at by anti-aircraft artillery, the U.S. Air Force's European Command based in Germany said.
The attacks took place between 11:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. Iraqi time, the Command said in a news release issued on its Internet Web site. It said all its aircraft, charged with monitoring a no-fly zone in Iraq, left the area safely.
It added the extent of damage caused by United States F-15 and F-16 jets to the facilities near the Iraqi city, which lies in the northern no-fly zone, was still being assessed.
The bombings are the latest in a string of incidents involving American and British jets and Iraqi air defenses after Baghdad vowed in December it would no longer recognize no-fly zones enforced by the West since the 1991 Gulf War.
Operation Northern Watch, the codename giving to the monitoring of the northern no-fly zone, is a joint U.S., British and Turkish operation.
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15. Gulf War Syndrome Studied
By Troy Goodman Associated Press Writer Sunday, June 20, 1999; 12:04 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990620/V000686-062099-idx.html
DALLAS (AP) -- Soldiers born with low levels of an enzyme that helps the body fight off chemical toxins are more likely to report symptoms of Gulf War syndrome than soldiers born with normal levels, a new study has found.
The authors say the small-scale study of 46 Gulf War veterans is the first to suggest a genetic marker to explain why some soldiers got sick from possible exposure to toxic nerve agents, possibly in combination with pesticides.
Thousands of veterans returned from the 1990-91 ground war in the Middle East complaining of chronic, unexplained health woes. The veterans said they are experiencing confusion, memory loss and balance problems. Others said they have pain in their neck, shoulders and hips, the researchers said.
``Now we know that there's a genetic reason why some of these guys got sick and others didn't,'' said Dr. Robert Haley, the chief of epidemiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and the study's author.
His findings, which appeared in the June 16 issue of Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology, are based on a larger 1997 study of a Naval Mobile Construction Battalion, or Seabees.
Haley, with assistance from Dr. Bert La Du and Scott Billecke from the University of Michigan Medical School, investigated how the Seabees' genes produced an enzyme in their bodies that naturally protect them from toxins. Those born with low levels of the protective enzyme -- called type Q paraoxonase, or PON-Q -- were the ones who reportedly got sick. Twenty-one of the 26 sick Seabees in the study had below average or extremely low PON-Q levels in their blood. Haley said the enzyme levels are constant throughout a person's life and likely wouldn't be lowered because of illness.
``The PON gene is a good candidate'' for signaling neurological damage resulting from chemical or nerve gas exposure, said Dr. Simon Wessely, a Gulf War researcher at King's College at the University of London, who was not involved with the study. ``But any findings like this must be regarded as preliminary.''
Haley agreed, calling his findings a ``highly refined hypothesis.''
``We spent $3 million on these 46 guys and so we've been able to measure the things that are likely to be the cause of their illness,'' Haley said. ``Now it's time to move on.''
The Department of Defense and the Perot Foundation provided funding for the study.
Haley and Wessely both noted that larger studies are under way to examine the link between PON levels and war-related illness.
More than 697,000 Americans served in the Gulf War that succeeded in driving Iraqi forces out of Kuwait.
Sick veterans suggest they were exposed to chemical pollutants from burning oil fields, insecticides or inoculations to protect them from germ warfare. They also say they were possibly exposed to Iraqi chemical or biological weapons, infectious diseases and depleted uranium used in artillery shells.
The Pentagon asserts there's no conclusive evidence to support those claims but says it has not ruled out chemical or environmental explanations and continues to investigate.
In January, a large study of British troops found that soldiers who served in the Gulf War do have a rate of general ill health -- at least two times as high as troops who went to Bosnia and soldiers who stayed home.
But that study by Wessely and others cautioned that there was no single ``syndrome'' among the ill soldiers.
Haley's previous research on a small number of patients concluded that some Gulf War veterans suffer from distinct symptom clusters caused by chemical poisoning and that some may have suffered neurological damage from nerve gas or pesticides.
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[Another liar in the Knesset?]
16. Israeli Warplanes Raid South Lebanon
Updated 12:33 AM ET June 21, 1999 http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990621/00/international-israel-lebanon
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli warplanes attacked suspected Hizbollah guerrilla positions in south Lebanon Sunday shortly after residents of northern Israel were ordered into shelters as a precaution against rocket attacks, the Israeli army said.
"Air force fighter planes this evening attacked terrorist targets in the Zebqine and Yater areas in the western sector north of the security zone. All our planes returned safely to base," an Israeli army statement said.
A Lebanese security source told Reuters two Israeli planes fired four rockets at a valley near the village of Yater just north of the western sector of Israel's south Lebanon occupation zone shortly after 7:30 p.m. (1630 GMT).
A short time later, planes fired another two rockets at an area south of Kulayleh village, 10 km (six miles) south of the port city of Tyre, he added. One person was injured in each village, the source said.
An Israeli security source, meanwhile, said "artillery" fired from south Lebanon had slammed into Israel's western Galilee region just after 8:30 p.m. (1730 GMT). There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.
In Beirut, the Iranian-backed Hizbollah claimed responsibility for the artillery attack, saying it had hit border positions as a warning to Israel not to attack civilians.
The latest Israeli air raids on Lebanon raised to 95 the number of such attacks since the beginning of this year.
Earlier Sunday, the Israeli army ordered residents of Israel's northern areas into bomb shelters after reports that two Lebanese women and a five year-old girl were wounded inside their home when it was hit by a missile fired from the area.
"Residents of the north were ordered into shelters in light of tensions on the front," an army spokeswoman said.
A security source in Lebanon said Lamia Kamas, 37, was in serious condition and Zeinab Kamas, 30 and her daughter Mariam were wounded after a rocket hit their house and set it on fire in the village of Kabrikha just north of the security zone.
An Israeli army statement said: "An army force on operational activity in the central district of the south Lebanon security zone noticed a number of terrorists in an abandoned building on the outskirts of Kabrikha village and opened fire. The abandoned home alone was hit and nothing else."
Hizbollah (Party of God) guerrillas fighting to oust Israel from south Lebanon have in the past fired barrages of rockets at northern Israeli towns in the wake of civilian casualties in Lebanon.
An internationally monitored agreement reached after an Israeli bombardment of Lebanon in 1996 bans the warring parties from attacks on or from civilian areas.
Israel has held parts of south Lebanon since 1978 and in 1985 it set up a 15-km (nine-mile) deep so-called security zone to prevent potential cross-border attacks.
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Israelis leave border shelters
Updated 3:57 AM ET June 21, 1999 http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/u/990621/03/international-lebanon
TEL AVIV, Israel, June 21 (UPI) The Israeli army has allowed an estimated 150,000 Israelis living near the Lebanese border to leave the shelters where they had spent the night anticipating guerrilla shelling.
The move followed what a military source summed up as "a very quiet night."
The army called the heads of the local councils in the area today and informed them they could return to their normal activities. The mayors relayed the information to the public over loudspeakers and local TV.
The army had ordered the residents of northern Israel into their shelters late Sunday, shortly after two women and a girl were injured in an attack in the village of Kabrikha, 25 kilometers (16 miles) east of Tyre.
Fighting continued in southern Lebanon where military sources said guerrillas backed by artillery tried to capture a South Lebanese Army position near Barashit in the central sector of the security zone. The SLA defenders repelled the attack with the help of Israeli artillery.
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17. U.N. Committee, Under Pressure, Limits Rights Groups
By PAUL LEWIS, June 22, 1999 New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/062299un-human-rights.html
UNITED NATIONS -- Led by a small group of developing nations, a U.N. committee has inflicted major setbacks in recent days on human rights groups that seek to expose and combat political oppression.
The reverses occur as support for enforcement of norms of human rights appears to be growing, after a decision last year to set up an International Criminal Court and with the creation of tribunals to judge those responsible for genocide in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
Now a group of organizations led by Human Rights Watch of New York plans a campaign modeled on efforts to extradite Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the former Chilean dictator, from Britain to face possible criminal charges in Spain. The plan of the organizations is aimed at bringing more exiled dictators and other leaders accused of human rights abuses to justice in their own countries or in those that extend asylum.
In March, Human Rights Watch presented the U.N. Human Rights Commission with a list of exiled former leaders who it contends should be tried on charges of murder, torture and other abuses.
The list includes Idi Amin of Uganda, now in Saudi Arabia; the former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Miriam, who has taken refuge in Zimbabwe; Jean-Claude Duvalier of Haiti, who fled to France; the former dictator of Chad, Hissein Habre, currently in Senegal; Emmanuel Constant, former chief of a right-wing paramilitary group in Haiti, who lives in New York City; Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay, now in Brazil; and Raul Cedras, former army chief of Haiti, currently living in Panama.
Under its new international justice project, Human Rights Watch plans to help victims of the former dictators whom it has named, as well as helping rights organizations in the countries they ruled or those giving them shelter, to persuade the authorities to bring them to trial.
"After the British House of Lords ruled in favor of Pinochet's extradition, we started getting calls for victims of other dictatorships all over the world asking us how they could do what Spain has done," said Reed Brody, advocacy director of Human Rights Watch.
Their action follows a series of setbacks for human rights groups from the U.N. Committee for Nongovernmental Organizations in a two-week session of the committee that ended on Friday. The committee accredits private groups, allowing them to appear before certain U.N. bodies.
The de-accreditation of Christian Solidarity International was one setback. On Thursday, the 19-nation committee voted to ban that group, which is based in Zurich, Switzerland.
The group, which says it has rescued 9,000 Sudanese from slavery since 1995, infuriated the Sudanese government by inviting the leader of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement, John Garang, to address the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva, Switzerland, this year.
"The world is moving away from what we have just seen going on at the United Nations," Brody said, referring to the setbacks. "Where human rights abuses are concerned, parts of the United Nations appear to be living in the past. There will be a backlash against the committee."
In another action, the panel, after lobbying by China, agreed overwhelmingly to refuse accreditation to Human Rights in China, a group in New York that monitors abuses in China. Only the United States, France and Ireland voted in favor.
But the committee did accredit the Cuban Association for the United Nations, which President Fidel Castro's government backs. It followed up that decision by delaying action on an accreditation request by a Mexican group, Centro de Derechos Humanos Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez.
"Human Rights NGO's are anathema to many members of this committee," the U.N. representative of Human Rights Watch, Joanna Weschler, said. "They always have the hardest time gaining accreditation."
The committee also agreed to open an inquiry into the role and status of all nongovernmental organizations at the United Nations and particularly into whether too many were being accredited. That was decided after the chairman of the Human Rights Commission, Anne Andersen, who is the Irish representative to the United Nations in Geneva, infuriated groups here by writing to the committee members saying some U.N. delegates believed that too many of the nongovernmental organizations attend its meetings.
Related Articles Documenting the Worst of Abuses (May 6, 1999) http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/050699rights-rapporteurs.html
Good Friends Join Enemies to Criticize U.S. on Rights (March 28, 1999) http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/032899un-human-rights.html
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- Third message - _________________________
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Message: 3 Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 18:10:32 -0400
Subject: NucNews-4 6/22/99 - Y2K (2); Mound Cleanup Envy; Hanford Scientists; Rocky Flats shipments; Wind Power; Radiation Leaks Livermore Labs
18. US Believes World Is Ready for Y2K
By The Associated Press, June 22, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-MIL-Y2K-Readiness.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- Venezuela is consulting with psychiatrists on how to explain to the public what might happen with the Year 2000 computer bug. The Philippines wants to bring the bug to the dinner table -- as a conversation topic. And countries in sub-Saharan Africa are worried about finding enough experts to get rid of the bug.
John Koskinen, head of President Clinton's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, says he's delighted the world is finally focusing on Y2K problems and cooperating in trying to solve them.
Six months after the first global conference on the millennium bug, experts from over 170 countries meet today at the United Nations to assess progress in dealing with Year 2000 problems and preparations for coping with possible computer glitches.
``My sense is there has been a sea change in the preparedness of the world in the last six months,'' Koskinen told reporters Monday. ``Nobody is saying this isn't a problem. So what we now have, I think, is a race to the finish line.''
The Year 2000 problem -- also called Y2K and the millennium bug -- occurs because some computer programs, especially older ones, may fail when the date changes to 2000. Because they were written to recognize only the last two digits of a year, such programs could read the digits ``00'' as 1900 instead of 2000.
``Clearly, I think developing countries are going to have more problems than developed countries, but when the dust settles ... it wouldn't surprise me to find that we have more failures in developed countries because we have far more systems,'' Kostikon said.
U.S. companies and the government are probably spending $80 billion to $100 billion to cope with the millennium bug, he said.
At Monday's press conference, Y2K coordinators from Europe, Asia, the Americas and Australia provided a glimpse of some of the problems and challenges they face.
Mario Tagarinski said the 29 countries in East and Central Europe and Central Asia need independent assessments of their Y2K problems -- and help to fix them. One country, Yugoslavia, hasn't even been heard from on the millennium bug issue, he said.
Asked whether media reports that there would be a variety of failures and meltdowns in the region were fair, Tagarinski replied to laughter: ``Yeah, maybe.'' At the other end of the spectrum, Venezuela has invested $200 million to ensure oil is delivered on time and the country's Y2K oil expert, Ivan Crespo, said all critical components in the oil industry will be fixed by August.
But Venezuela's national coordinator, Hugo Castellanos, the government doesn't know how to communicate with the people about the Y2K problem.
``We don't know how to explain to the large population now what is going to happen, because we don't know what's going to happen,'' he said. ``We are talking to psychologists, psychiatrists in order to know how to reach the people.''
Amable Aguiluz of The Philippines, the East Asia and Pacific regional coordinator, said the media was crucial in raising awareness of the millennium bug.
``Our ultimate objective is to bring Y2K to the dinner table of every Filipino,'' he said.
But Aguiluz said he was concerned that some groups might take advantage of the computer problem. Some religious groups have already told members they would be willing to take care of their money to avoid Y2K problems, Aguiluz said.
Baba Mustafa Marong, the sub-Saharan Africa coordinator, said his region not only needs more computer experts but is concerned about small and medium enterprises, ``where you don't know the extent of their exposure to the Y2K bug.''
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U.S.: World better prepared for Y2K
USA Today (World) June 22, 1999 http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm
NEW YORK - The United States believes the world is better prepared than it was six months ago to cope with the Year 2000 computer bug. On Tuesday, experts from more than 170 countries will meet Tuesday at the United Nations, just six months after the first conference on the millennium bug, to assess progress in dealing with Y2K problems. ''My sense is there has been a sea change in the preparedness of the world in the last six months since we pulled everyone together for the first time in December,'' John Koskinen, head of President Clinton's Council on Year 2000 Conversion, told reporters Monday.
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19. Others want deal offered Mound workers
Sunday, June 20, 1999, By JOHN NOLAN ASSOCIATED PRESS http://www.cleveland.com/news/pdnews/metro/oa20mox.ssf
CINCINNATI - Employees at radioactive cleanup sites of the U.S. Department of Energy should be offered the same lifetime occupational disease insurance as workers at a suburban Dayton site, advocates said.
The Energy Department said recently that it would pay for the insurance coverage as part of a settlement to protect workers at the Mound plant. They sued in 1995, saying they were unwittingly exposed to radiation hazards for years.
The Miamisburg plant produced triggers and detonators for nuclear weapons.
Similar insurance coverage could be used to protect employees at the Energy Department's other Cold War weapons production sites, including the former Fernald uranium processing plant near Cincinnati, advocates said last week.
"If their health and their welfare have been compromised, it's morally the right thing to do," said Lisa Crawford, president of Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health. "It clearly sets a precedent."
Fernald union officials will ask the Energy Department to provide the lifetime occupational health coverage for workers if a Dayton federal judge approves the settlement with the Mound employees, said Gene Branham, a Fernald union official.
But the government has no plans now to extend the offer to past or present workers at its other sites, an Energy Department spokeswoman said.
For now, the department is directing management at radioactive cleanup sites nationwide - including Oak Ridge, Rocky Flats, Hanford and Savannah River - to include safety concerns in day-to-day planning and operations, spokeswoman Anne Elliott said.
Under the settlement announced for workers at the Mound plant, the Energy Department would pay for lifetime health insurance to cover a stipulated list of cancers associated with radiation exposure.
Those cancers include brain, nervous system, bladder, bone, lung, pancreatic, digestive and oral cancers.
Mound's workers alleged they were exposed for years to workplace radiation hazards without being informed.
The proposed settlement awaits approval by U.S. District Judge Walter Rice of Dayton.
In 1994, the Energy Department settled a similar lawsuit by former workers at Fernald by agreeing to pay for lifetime medical monitoring services.
But that guarantee did not include paying for the health insurance coverage for workers who said they were made sick by years of being exposed to radioactive materials.
In the Mound settlement, workers who get diseases associated with asbestos and beryllium and who apply for Ohio workers' compensation coverage will not have to prove that the diseases are work-related.
The Energy Department's former contractor at Fernald, National Lead of Ohio Inc., hired lawyers at federal expense to fight requests for workers' compensation coverage, said Branham, vice president of the Fernald Atomic Trades and Labor Council.
"It was not only an insult, but a disgrace," Branham said.
National Lead of Ohio Inc. officials said they operated at the government's direction.
Herbert Kelly, a former Fernald worker who died of lung cancer at 65 in June 1994, battled National Lead for years before he received approval for workers' compensation coverage for himself and his wife - shortly before his death.
Corrilla Kelly, his wife of 43 years who received widow's benefits, said she is pleased that Mound workers will be spared going through similar coverage disputes.
"I'm glad they got that. I think it's a shame that these guys down here didn't get it also," Kelly said.
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20. Scientists get earful on Hanford Study that dismissed cancer link attacked
Karen Dorn Steele - The Spokesman-Review, June 20, 1999 http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=062099&ID=s597118&cat=
Spokane _ At times, it was nearly a nuclear meltdown.
A National Academy of Sciences panel in Spokane on a fact-finding mission heard angry words from the public Saturday about a government study of Hanford radiation releases.
For eight hours, a parade of scientists, state health officials and Hanford activists skewered the $18 million Hanford Thyroid Disease Study, conducted for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center of Seattle.
Some 50 people stayed at Cavanaugh's Ridpath Hotel all day to testify before the academy's 12-member subcommittee.
Hanford downwinders assailed the study, which reported no link between Hanford's Iodine 131 releases and increased thyroid cancer in 3,441 people born near Hanford from 1940 to 1946.
The Seattle scientists who conducted the study exaggerated the results when it was released in draft form on Jan. 28, before it had undergone scientific peer review, they said.
``The Hanford doses are general estimates at best, and the study is inconclusive. Significant thyroid disease was found, but that message was buried,'' said attorney Trisha Pritikin of Berkeley, Calif.
Pritikin, raised in Richland, Wash., in the 1950s in the shadow of Hanford's reactors, has thyroid disease. Her father, a Hanford nuclear engineer, died of the disease, as did her infant brother.
Release of the study's draft results was a ``debacle,'' said Tim Connor of the Northwest Environmental Education Foundation.
More than a decade ago, Hanford activists pushed for the CDC study and convinced Spokane Rep. Tom Foley to support it, Connor said.
``My warning to community leaders now is to be careful what they ask for,'' because epidemiological studies are usually inconclusive, Connor said.
``You can then expect the polluter will use the study to exult in vindication and you, in turn, will be portrayed as an alarmist,'' Connor said.
There were words of praise as well for the Fred Hutchinson scientists who conducted the study.
They made an unprecedented effort to locate and examine thousands of people as they searched for connections between Cold War-era Iodine 131 releases and thyroid disease, one critic said.
``It's a fine, detailed epidemiological study. No other study has screened people so intensively,'' said Owen Hoffman, a scientist from Oak Ridge, Tenn.
He's recently worked on a state study of radiation releases from the government's weapons production facilities at Oak Ridge.
But the Hanford study has serious problems, Hoffman said.
The Hanford doses calculated by Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratories may underestimate by up to 60 times Hanford's post-1950 Iodine 131 doses, he said.
Bill Farris of Battelle, who worked on the Hanford doses, said some dose recalculations have already been done in response to Hoffman's critique.
Hoffman caught a mathematical error that underestimated by 2.5 times the Iodine 131 releases to the environment from 1951 to 1957, Farris said.
But Battelle has not yet addressed Hoffman's questions about whether Iodine 131 releases from several plutonium reprocessing plants at Hanford in the 1950s were properly calculated, he said.
The thyroid study's statistical power -- its ability to detect a relationship between the Hanford releases and thyroid disease downwind -- is exaggerated compared to similar studies, Hoffman said.
Even if the '50s doses are recalculated, the study still may not be statistically powerful enough to detect a Hanford radiation effect in the group of downwinders studied, Hoffman said.
``The chances are high the study will remain inconclusive. They would have needed to study twice as many people -- nearly 7,000 -- in order to detect an effect,'' Hoffman said.
Keith Baverstock of the World Health Organization, who spoke to the panel by telephone from Finland, said it's extraordinarily difficult to detect extra thyroid cancers through studies like Hanford's.
``I'm not surprised the increase isn't easily seen (at Hanford). I don't think the fact that it's not seen means it's not there,'' Baverstock said.
Scott Davis, principal investigator for the Fred Hutchinson study, stayed all day but said he didn't want to respond yet to Hoffman and the other critics.
A Battelle scientist defended his company's work on the Hanford doses, and took a jab at Hoffman as well.
Darrell Fisher, a Battelle radiation biologist, said any reworking of the doses won't change the results of the thyroid study.
``The Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction Project represents strong science,'' Fisher said.``Owen Hoffman is a consultant for Hanford litigants and a consultant to CDC.''
But some downwinders said they don't trust Battelle because of its work as a nuclear contractor.
The scientific debate over the study's credibility isn't simply an academic exercise, said Dr. Jim Ruttenber, a University of Colorado Medical School professor.
Over 10,000 people have asked Washington state health officials to calculate their individual Hanford exposures and are waiting for them, Ruttenber said.
That Individual Dose Assessment project is on hold until the controversy over the Hanford thyroid study is resolved.
If the study's inconclusive, ``do we just tell everybody there's no effect here? That's rough when we know there's a risk for Iodine 131,'' Ruttenber said.
People should be given specific information about how their Hanford dose relates to risk, he said.``I feel uncomfortable walking away from this study without doing that,'' Ruttenber said.
The NAS panel will produce a report on the Hanford study by September, said panel chair Dr. Roy Shore of New York University.
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21. Flats shipments under way In push for 2006 deadline, 10-15 truckloads of waste per week will head for N.M.
By Berny Morson, Denver Rocky Mountain News, June 20, 1999 http://insidedenver.com/news/0620wipp1.shtml
They look like three-humped camels -- flatbed trucks with three enormous, cylindrical containers perched on their low-slung frames.
The trucks will become a familiar site on Interstate 25 as nuclear waste moves from Rocky Flats to a burial site in New Mexico during the next seven years.
The first shipment left Tuesday for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad. Another is expected to go this week.
Within two years, truckloads will be moving out of Rocky Flats at a rate of between 10 and 15 a week -- more than two a day -- as the Department of Energy pushes to meet the goal of cleaning up the defunct nuclear weapons plant by 2006, said Joe Legare, the plant's assistant manager.
Nearly 26,000 additional nuclear waste shipments will travel through Colorado on their way to New Mexico from Department of Energy facilities in Washington state and Idaho.
The safety of the shipments has been questioned by environmentalists in Colorado and New Mexico. They fear an accident would spread radioactive waste across the landscape, possibly in a populated area, such as Denver or Colorado Springs.
"I certainly hope it doesn't happen, but I think we're taking an enormous risk," said LeRoy Moore of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center in Boulder. Moore was among protesters as the first shipment left Rocky Flats Tuesday.
Even a routine traffic accident could close the state's major north-south route for hours as police and fire officials handle the wreck with utmost caution, Moore said.
Given the number of shipments that are planned, an accident is "highly likely," Moore said.
Denver City Councilwoman Debbie Ortega also is concerned about the gridlock that would ensue if a WIPP truck were involved in an accident. I-25 is in her district.
Ortega recalled a 1984 incident in which a truck carrying unarmed U.S. Navy torpedos overturned in the Mousetrap -- the intersection of I-25 and I-70 -- during rush hour. Roads were closed for hours.
She said she is less concerned than Moore about radiation leaks from the specially designed carriers.
State and federal officials say an accident is unlikely, and if one occurs, they're ready.
More than 6,000 police and fire officials in departments along the route have been trained to respond.
"We've been preparing for the opening of WIPP for years," Dave McBride of the Colorado State Patrol's hazardous materials unit said Tuesday as officers ran a safety inspection on the WIPP truck as it prepared to leave Rocky Flats.
The patrol will inspect every shipment that leaves Rocky Flats, McBride said. Shipments passing through the state are inspected at the border.
In addition to a standard mechanical inspection, officers go over each hump with a radiation detector to find leaks.
WIPP officials say leaks are unlikely. The containers were tested by dropping them 30 feet onto a concrete pad. They also have been dropped onto a steel spike and subjected to fires of up to 1,450 degrees Fahrenheit for a half-hour.
The radioactive waste is packed into barrels, which also are specially designed. Each hump carries 14 barrels.
McBride, the State Patrol officer, said roads wouldn't be closed any longer in the event of a WIPP truck accident than if some other hazardous material were involved in a wreck.
And accidents are more likely with other materials, including gasoline trucks that routinely make deliveries to service stations, he said.
"They (the WIPP containers) are a lot stronger shipping package than we would typically see with 9,000 gallons of unleaded gasoline," McBride said.
The WIPP drivers have more training than drivers of other hazardous materials trucks, McBride added.
The WIPP drivers must have spotless driving records -- and keep them. A single ticket, even while driving their private cars, disqualifies them as WIPP drivers.
The stuff inside the humps mostly will be contaminated tools, clothing or building rubble. The really dangerous material -- such as pure, weapons-grade plutonium -- will go to a facility in South Carolina, where it will be stored in vaults.
All the material leaving the plant during the next seven years was shipped in from other Department of Energy plants during the Cold War. And those shipments occurred without a release of radiation, Rocky Flats spokesman Pat Etchart said.
The number of shipments of plutonium to Rocky Flats from manufacturing facilities in Washington state and South Carolina is classified. The Energy department will say only that trucks traveled 90 million miles since 1975.
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23. Energy Sec. Vows Wind Power Support
By The Associated Press, June 22, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Wind-Power.html
SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) -- The nation's wind power advocates are back from nearly two decades of exile.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson on Monday committed the government to increasing the amount of electricity produced by wind by 50 times over the next 21 years.
``This is one of those meetings that years from now, 2010, I will say I was there when we launched a major initiative that changed the energy future of our country,'' Richardson said at a meeting of wind power engineers from across the country.
To accomplish the goal of having 5 percent of the nation's electrical power come from wind by 2020, Richardson promised continued economic support for wind energy research and development and support for a variety of tax incentives and other programs.
Richardson's message was welcome news to wind advocates.
``We've been wandering in the wilderness since the Carter administration,'' said Tom Gray, the deputy executive director of American Wind Energy Association, which sponsored the four-day conference attended by about 600 wind engineers from around the globe.
``We've had consistent support, but in the past it's been a much more generic support,'' Gray said. ``To have him come in and say 'Yeah, I'm committed to wind' -- that's a whole different level of endorsement.''
Currently, about one-tenth of one percent of the nation's electric needs are provided by the wind.
``We want tomorrow's generators to produce power at half the cost of today's machines,'' Richardson said. ``That is no small challenge, but this Administration is committed to making that goal a reality.''
In addition to the Wind Powering America initiative, Richardson on Monday announced $1.2 million in grants to wind turbine testing projects in 10 states. The money will be used to provide support for the design and installation of new small wind turbines for field testing.
Richardson formally unveiled the new initiative at the wind association's annual meeting in South Burlington. Vermont has traditionally been a leader in alternative energy sources and, until the 1970s, had been home to the largest wind turbine ever built -- the ``Putnam'' machine that ran from 1941 to 1945 in Rutland, Richardson said.
The department will invest money in research and development of wind power, encourage codes that are conducive to wind energy and encourage vocational schools to provide training in the necessary technology, Richardson said.
Gray said that in the early to mid 1980s, the United States had about 90 percent of the world's wind generating capacity. But when the tax incentives dried up during the Reagan years, interest waned. Now the figure is about 20 percent.
Yet in 1980 wind energy cost about 40 cents per kilowatt hour. Now it's about a nickel.
``When you compare today's technology with that of the early '80s, it's clear how far we've come,'' Richardson said.
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24. RADIATION Nuclear Leaks of Another Kind
Newsweek issue dated June 28, 1999 http://www.newsweek.com/nw-srv/tnw/today/ps/ps02su_1.htm
Nuclear secrets aren't the only kind of unauthorized leaks from U.S. weapons labs. According to a General Accounting Office draft report obtained by NEWSWEEK, over the past three years, the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore labs were assessed fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars for safety violations, including exposing their employees to radiation. The report says investigators criticize Los Alamos for "inadequate monitoring of radiological contamination," while Lawrence Livermore is cited for "radiation exposure of personnel exceeding limits" and "repeated violations of safety procedures designed to prevent uncontrolled nuclear reactions." But the contractor that now runs the labs won't have to pay the fines. The reason: under the law, nonprofit organizations operating nuclear-weapons facilities don't have to pay safety fines and both labs are run by the University of California, a nonprofit. Energy Department officials say safety at the labs has improved.
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Message: 4 Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 18:09:36 -0400
Subject: NucNews-7 6/22/99 - G-8 Summit Highlights; KLA Demilitarization Agreement
31. G-8 Summit Communique Highlights
By The Associated Press Sunday, June 20, 1999; 10:48 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990620/V000989-062099-idx.html
Highlights of the final communique released from the G-8 summit:
--A commitment to ``work to sustain and increase the benefits of globalization and ensure that its positive effects are widely shared.''
--A call for swift debt rescheduling for Russia once an International Monetary Fund agreement on Russian reforms is in place.
--Support for a new round of trade negotiations aimed at bringing more developing nations into a liberalized trading regime, and support for the World Trade Organization. ``We encourage those states not yet members of the WTO to join it, by accepting its principles.''
--An assertion that spending on social programs should not be reduced in times of financial crisis.
--A plan to step up work with developing countries to help them meet labor standards, including the Convention on the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor.
--A decision ``to give a fresh boost to debt relief to developing countries'' by endorsing the Cologne Debt Initiative; and a call to gradually increase official development assistance.
--A call for more rapid progress of negotiations on the U.N. Convention on the Financing of Terrorism.
--Recognition that climate change is an extremely serious threat to sustainable development. ``We underline the importance of taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through rational and efficient use of energy and through other cost-effective means.''
--A request for experts to study the effects of biotechnology on food safety and report by the next summit.
--A commitment to strengthen cooperation in nuclear safety and weapons non-proliferation.''We are deeply concerned about recent missile flight tests and developments in missile proliferation, such as actions by North Korea.''
--A call for India and Pakistan, a year after nuclear tests, to join non-proliferation and disarmament efforts.
--An assertion that the ``risks and causes of violent conflicts must be more effectively monitored and the information shared to forestall them.''
--Agreement to ``support the efforts of regional organizations and arrangements to expand their jurisdictional and operational ability, in accordance with international law, to help control and resolve conflict in their area.''
[Write "NucNews - please send G-8 Summit Communique Text, June 21, 1999" in subject line if you'd like to receive the complete text.]
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32. KLA signs demilitarization agreement
Updated 6:06 AM ET June 21, 1999 http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/u/990621/06/international-kla
PRISTINA, Kosovo, June 21 (UPI) A plan for the demilitarization of the Kosovo Liberation Army within the next 90 days has been signed in Pristina.
The KLA's political leader, Tashim Thaqi, and Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson, the commander of the NATO-led Kosovo peacekeeping force (KFOR), signed what Jackson called "an undertaking" by the KLA in which they would turn in their heavy weapons and otherwise fade away.
"Today marks a turning point in KFOR's mission," Jackson said at a news conference in Pristina today. "We are here to establish a climate of peace and security for all people of Kosovo."
The demilitarization of the KLA had been a key point in the peace agreement between Yugoslavia and NATO, but the group's increasingly high profile had become a concern both to the west and to Kosovo's ethnic Serbs.
President Clinton went so far as to call Pristina after the agreement was signed and congratulate KLA leader Hasim Thaci.
"The president noted it was important that this agreement happened on the same day Serb forces left the province," said White House spokesman Mike Hammer. "He said it was an important step and pledged we would work closely with the people of Kosovo to achieve true self government."
Jackson said that the KLA will end activities as a military force and its members will stop carrying arms and wearing uniforms in many parts of Kosovo, the radio reported.
All weapons except non-automatic small arms, side arms and hunting rifles must be handed over for storage at agreed upon sites within 30 days. Full demilitarization should be completed within 90 days.
"In practice," Jackson said, "the return of the UKC (KLA) soldiers to civilian life will proceed rapidly."
Jackson said it appeared the entire KLA was on board with the agreement and he expected the entire organization, from local commander down to rank-and-file troops, to follow the plan.
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Text of the Demilitarization Agreement
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, June 21, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/afp-kla-nato-text.html
Following is the full text of the accord on the demilitarisation of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA, known in Kosovo by its initials UCK) signed by KLA chief Hashim Thaqi and KFOR commander Lieutenant-General Mike Jackson in Pristina:
UNDERTAKING OF DEMILITARISATION AND TRANSFORMATION BY THE UCK
1. This Undertaking provides for a ceasefire by the UCK, their disengagement from the zones of conflict, subsequent demilitarisation and reintegration into civil society, in accordance with the terms of UNSCR 1244 and taking account of the obligations agreed to at Rambouillet and the public commitments made by the Kosovar Albanian Rambouillet delegation.
2. The UCK undertake to renounce the use of force, to comply with the directions of the Commander of the international security force in Kosovo (COMKFOR), and where applicable the head of the interim civil administration for Kosovo, and to resolve peacefully any questions relating to the implementation of this undertaking.
3. The UCK agree that the International Security Presence (KFOR) and the international civil presence will continue to deploy and operate without hindrance within Kosovo and that KFOR has the authority to take all necessary action to establish and maintain a secure environment for all citizens of Kosovo and otherwise carry out its mission.
4. The UCK agrees to comply with all of the obligations of this Undertaking and to ensure that with immediate effect all UCK forces in Kosovo and in neighbouring countries will observe the provisions of this Undertaking, will refrain from all hostile or provocative acts, hostile intent and freeze military movement in either direction across international borders or the boundary between Kosovo and other parts of the FRY, or any other actions inconsistent with the spirit of UNSCR 1244. The UCK in Kosovo agree to commit themselves publicly to demilitarise in accordance with paragraphs 22 and 23, refrain from activities which jeopardise the safety of international governmental and non-governmental personnel including KFOR, and to facilitate the deployment and operation of KFOR.
5. For purposes of this Undertaking, the following expressions shall have the meanings as described below:
a) The UCK includes all personnel and organisations within Kosovo, currently under UCK control, with a military or paramilitary capability and any other groups or individuals so designated by Commander KFOR (COMKFOR).
b) "FRY Forces" includes all of the FRY and Republic of Serbia personnel and organisations with a military capability. This includes regular army and naval forces, armed civilian groups, associated paramilitary groups, air forces, national guards, border police, army reserves, military police, intelligence services, Ministry of Internal Affairs, local, special, riot and anti-terrorist police, and any other groups or individuals so designated by Commander KFOR (COMKFOR).
c) The Ground Safety Zone (GSZ) is defined as a 5-kilometre zone that extends beyond the Kosovo province border into the rest of FRY territory. It includes the terrain within that 5-kilometre zone.
d) Prohibited weapons are any weapon 12.7mm or larger, any anti-tank or anti-aircraft weapons, grenades, mines or explosives, automatic and long barrelled weapons.
6. The purposes of this Undertaking are as follows:
a) To establish a durable cessation of hostilities.
b) To provide for the support and authorisation of the KFOR and in particular to authorise the KFOR to take such actions as are required, including the use of necessary force in accordance with KFORs rules of engagement, to ensure compliance with this Undertaking and protection of the KFOR, and to contribute to a secure environment for the international civil implementation presence, and other international organisations, agencies, and non-governmental organisations and the civil populace.
7. The actions of the UCK shall be in accordance with this Undertaking. "The KFOR" commander in consultation, where appropriate, with the interim civil administrator will be the final authority regarding the interpretation of this Undertaking and the security aspects of the peace settlement it supports. His determinations will be binding on all parties and persons.
Cessation of Hostilities
8. With immediate effect on signature the UCK agrees to comply with this Undertaking and with the directions of COMKFOR. Any forces which fail to comply with this Undertaking or with the directions of COMKFOR will be liable to military action as deemed appropriate by COMKFOR.
9. With immediate effect on signature of this Undertaking all hostile acts by the UCK will cease. The UCK Chief of General Staff undertakes to issue clear and precise instructions to all units and personnel under his command, to ensure contact with the FRY forces is avoided and to comply fully with the arrangements for bringing this Undertaking into effect. He will make announcements immediately following final signature of this Undertaking, which will be broadcast regularly through all appropriate channels to assist in ensuring that instructions to maintain this Undertaking reach all the forces under his command and are understood by the public in general.
10. The UCK undertakes and agrees in particular:
a) To cease the firing of all weapons and use of explosive devices.
b) Not to place any mines, barriers or checkpoints, nor maintain any observation posts or protective obstacles.
c) The destruction of buildings, facilities or structures is not permitted. It shall not engage in any military, security, or training related activities, including ground, or air defence operations, in or over Kosovo or GSZ, without the prior express approval of COMKFOR.
d) Not to attack, detain or intimidate any civilians in Kosovo, nor shall they attack, confiscate or violate the property of civilians in Kosovo.
11. The UCK agrees not to conduct any reprisals, counter-attacks, or any unilateral actions in response to violations of the UNSCR 1244 and other extant agreements relating to Kosovo.
This in no way denies the right of self-defence.
12. The UCK agrees not to interfere with those FRY personnel that return to Kosovo to conduct specific tasks as authorised and directed by COMKFOR.
13. Except as approved by COMKFOR, the UCK agrees that its personnel in Kosovo will not carry weapons of any type:
a) Within 2 kilometres of VJ and MUP assembly areas;
b) Within 2 kilometres of the main roads and the towns upon them listed at Appendix A;
c) Within 2 kilometres of external borders of Kosovo;
d) In any other areas designated by COMKFOR.
14. Within 4 days of signature of this Undertaking:
a) The UCK will close all fighting positions, entrenchments, and checkpoints on roads, and mark their minefields and booby traps.
b) The UCK Chief of General Staff shall report in writing completion of the above requirement to COMKFOR and continue to provide weekly detailed written status reports until demilitarisation, as detailed in the following paragraphs, is complete.
Cross-Border Activity
15. With immediate effect the UCK will cease the movement of armed bodies into neighbouring countries. All movement of armed bodies into Kosovo will be subject to the prior approval of COMKFOR.
Monitoring the Cessation of Hostilities
16. The authority for dealing with breaches of this Undertaking rests with COMKFOR. He will monitor and maintain and if necessary enforce the cessation of hostilities.
17. The UCK agrees to co-operate fully with KFOR and the interim civil administration for Kosovo. The Chief of the General Staff of the UCK will ensure that prompt and appropriate action is taken to deal with any breaches of this Undertaking by his forces as directed by COMKFOR.
18. Elements of KFOR will be assigned to maintain contact with the UCK and will be deployed to its command structure and bases.
19. KFOR will establish appropriate control at designated crossing points into Albania and the FYROM.
Joint Implementation Commission (JIC)
20. A JIC will be established in Pristina within 4 days of the signature of this Undertaking. The JIC will be chaired by COMKFOR, and will comprise the senior commanders of KFOR and the UCK, and a representative from the interim civil administration for Kosovo.
21. The JIC will meet as often as required by COMKFOR throughout the implementation of this Undertaking. It may be called without prior notice and representation by the UCK is expected at a level appropriate with the rank of the KFOR chairman. Its functions will include:
a) Ensuring compliance with agreed arrangements for the security and activities of all forces;
b) The investigation of actual or threatened breaches of this Undertaking;
c) Such other tasks as may be assigned to it by COMKFOR in the interests of maintaining the cessation of hostilities.
Demilitarisation and Transformation
22. The UCK will follow the procedures established by COMKFOR for the phased demilitarisation, transformation and monitoring of UCK forces in Kosovo and for the further regulation of their activities. They will not train or organise parades without the authority of COMKFOR.
23. The UCK agrees to the following timetable which will commence from the signature of this Undertaking:
a) Within 7 days, the UCK shall establish secure weapons storage sites, which shall be registered with and verified by the KFOR;
b) Within 7 days the UCK will clear their minefields and booby traps, vacate their fighting positions and transfer to assembly areas as agreed with COMKFOR at the JIC. Thereafter only personnel authorised by COMKFOR and senior Officers of the UCK with their close protection personnel not exceeding 3, carrying side arms only, will be allowed outside these assembly areas.
c) After 7 days automatic small arms weapons not stored in the registered weapons storage sites can only be held inside the authorised assembly areas.
d) After 29 days, the retention of any non automatic long barrelled weapons shall be subject to authorisation by COMKFOR.
e) Within 30 days, subject to arrangements by COMKFOR if necessary, all UCK personnel who are not of local origin, whether or not they are legally within Kosovo, including individual advisors, freedom fighters, trainers, volunteers, and personnel from neighbouring and other States, shall be withdrawn from Kosovo.
f) Arrangements for control of weapons are as follows:
(1) Within 30 days the UCK shall store in the registered weapons storage sites all prohibited weapons with the exception of automatic small arms. 30 per cent of their total holdings of automatic small arms weapons will also be stored in these sites at this stage. Ammunition for the remaining weapons should be withdrawn and stored at an approved site authorised by COMKFOR separate from the assembly areas at the same time.
(2) At 30 days it shall be illegal for UCK personnel to possess prohibited weapons, with the exception of automatic small arms within assembly areas, and unauthorised long barrelled weapons.
Such weapons shall be subject to confiscation by the KFOR.
(3) Within 60 days a further 30 per cent of automatic small arms, giving a total of 60 per cent of the UCK holdings, will be stored in the registered weapons storage sites.
(4) Within 90 days all automatic small arms weapons will be stored in the registered weapons storage sites. Thereafter their possession by UCK personnel will be prohibited and such weapons will be subject to confiscation by KFOR.
g) From 30 days until 90 days the weapons storage sites will be under joint control of the UCK and KFOR under procedures approved by COMKFOR at the JIC. After 90 days KFOR will assume full control of these sites.
h) Within 90 days all UCK forces will have completed the processes for their demilitarisation and are to cease wearing either military uniforms or insignia of the UCK.
i) Within 90 days the Chief of General Staff UCK shall confirm compliance with the above restrictions in writing to COMKFOR.
24. The provisions of this Undertaking enter into force with immediate effect of its signature by the Kosovar Albanian representative(s).
25. The UCK intends to comply with the terms of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244, and in this context that the international community should take due and full account of the contribution of the UCK during the Kosovo crisis and accordingly give due consideration to:
a) Recognition that, while the UCK and its structures are in the process of transformation, it is committed to propose individual current members to participate in the administration and police forces of Kosovo, enjoying special consideration in view of the expertise they have developed. b) The formation of an Army in Kosovo on the lines of the US National Guard in due course as part of a political process designed to determine Kosovos future status, taking into account the Rambouillet Accord.
26. This Undertaking is provided in English and Albanian and if there is any doubt as to the meaning of the text the English version has precedence.
OFFERED BY HASHIM THAQI, COMMANDER IN CHIEF UCK RECEIVED BY LT GEN MIKE JACKSON, COMMANDER KFOR 21 June 1999
Appendix A
ROADS 1) Pec - Lapusnik - Pristina
2) Border - Djakovica - Klina
3) Border - Prizren - Suva Reka - Pristina
4) Djakovica - Orahovac - Lapusnik - Pristina
5) Pec-Djakovica - Prizren - Urosevac - Border
6) Border - Urosevac - Pristina - Podujevo - Border
7) Pristina - Kosovska Mitrovica - Border
8) Kosovka Mitrovica - (Rakos) - Pec
9) Pec - Border with Montenegro (through Rozaj)
10) Pristina - Lisica - Border with Serbia
11) Pristina - Gnjilane - Urosevac
12) Gnjilane - Veliki Trnovac - Border with Serbia;
13) Prizren - Doganovic
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Message: 5 Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 18:10:58 -0400
Subject: NucNews-2 6/22/99 - Ukraine (2); Russia/US (3+); UK-BNFL / Westinghouse; Bikini; EU - Secrecy
6. Nuclear reactor shuts down by mistake in Ukraine
June 21, 1999 Web posted at: 9:13 AM EDT (1313 GMT) http://cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9906/21/ukraine.nuclear.ap/index.html
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- A reactor at Ukraine's Zaporizhia power plant, Europe's largest, was successfully restarted Monday after it unexpectedly shut down over the weekend, nuclear authorities said.
Reactor No. 3 was stopped by its automatic safety system Sunday, a day after it was restarted following brief repairs.
The reactor was again restarted Monday and plant operators were gradually increasing the reactor's output, the state nuclear company Energoatom said.
Officials gave no reason for Sunday's shutdown, but said the incident caused no radiation leaks.
Ukraine has five nuclear power plants which provide more than 40 percent of its electricity needs. The country's Chernobyl power plant was the site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986.
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American engineers demonstrate robot at Chernobyl nuclear power plant
UKRAINE: May 27, 1999 http://www.planetark.org/envpicstory.cfm?newsid=115 Photo by MIKHAIL CHERNICHKIN REUTERS NEWS PICTURE SERVICE http://www.planetark.org/envpics/schernrobot.jpg
A crew of American engineers demonstrate a remotely controlled mobile robot in front of concrete sarcophagus covering the Chernobyl Nuclear power plant's exploded fourth reactor, May 27.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy T.J. Glauthier started his visit to Ukraine on Thursday by presenting a high-tech robot at the site of the world's worst civil nuclear disaster.
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7. Clinton, Yeltsin Plan New Talks On Nuclear Arms U.S. Negotiations Aim to Amend Treaty To Allow Missile Defense Development
By David Hoffman Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, June 22, 1999; Page A10 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/22/047l-062299-idx.html
MOSCOW, June 21--After a long impasse, President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin have agreed to make a fresh attempt to resolve contentious treaties on strategic nuclear weapons and anti-ballistic missile defenses.
In a joint statement reached at their weekend summit in Cologne, Germany, both presidents indicated a new willingness to take small negotiating steps they had eschewed.
Yeltsin said Russia is prepared to listen to American proposals for amending the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, although he told Clinton that Russia remains strongly opposed to any changes, the Interfax news agency reported. Clinton said the United States is ready to proceed with discussions about a START III arms reduction treaty even though its forerunner, START II, remains unratified by the Russian parliament.
The START II treaty was on the verge of ratification by the lower house of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, when NATO unleashed airstrikes against Yugoslavia in March, creating a wave of anti-American sentiment that dashed hopes for approval. Russia's sympathy with the Serbs, and anger that NATO acted without U.N. Security Council authorization, also led the Kremlin to suspend arms control talks with the United States.
The White House now expects Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott to lead a U.S. delegation in two-track negotiations in late summer. One track will be the U.S. desire to modify the ABM treaty to allow for the possible construction of a national missile defense system. In an initial meeting in February, the U.S. side stressed that the missile defense system would be aimed at shooting down a small number of missiles launched by a rogue state and would not be robust enough to counter all of Moscow's missiles.
The other negotiating track would resume dialogue in preparation for a START III treaty. Clinton and Yeltsin set tentative limits on warheads for the prospective treaty at a March 1997 meeting in Helsinki. Those ceilings would reduce the number of warheads on each side to between 2,000 and 2,500, from the 3,000 to 3,500 allowed by START II.
Previously, the Clinton administration had insisted that it would not begin formal negotiations on the next strategic arms treaty until START II was ratified. The joint statement pledges that "discussions" will begin later this summer on START III, while both sides promised to "do everything in their power" to win ratification of START II.
The START II treaty was signed in January 1993 by Yeltsin and President Bush, and was approved by the Senate in 1996. It has languished in the Duma, which is dominated by Communists and nationalists.
Yeltsin has repeatedly promised to win ratification of the treaty but has not followed through. The Duma is scheduled this week to break for the summer and is not planning to take up the treaty before departing. In the autumn, the chamber will be preoccupied with reelection campaigns, making the outlook for START II cloudy, at best -- although the speaker of the Duma, Gennady Seleznev, has said the pact will be on the agenda.
Despite the delays in ratification, Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal is already shrinking below START II levels as older weapons become obsolete and the Kremlin lacks money to build new ones. Most Russian experts now say Moscow cannot afford to maintain the START II levels and may not even be able to reach the proposed START III ceilings due to the retirement of submarines, missiles and airplanes that carry nuclear weapons.
Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.
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Russia eases resistance to missile defense
By Bill Sammon, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, June 21, 1999 http://www.washtimes.com/internatl/internatl2.html
COLOGNE, Germany - Russia agreed yesterday to consider giving its blessing to an American missile-defense system in exchange for U.S. agreement to prepare for deeper cuts in its nuclear arsenal.
The breakthrough in the long-stalled arms talks signaled a thaw in U.S.-Russia relations, which plunged to a post-Cold War low during the Kosovo conflict. The repair process began at a meeting yesterday between President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin that capped the Group of Eight economic summit.
"We discussed the importance of continuing our efforts to reduce the nuclear threat and the threat of proliferation of nuclear technology," Mr. Clinton said in his first one-on-one interview with a Russian TV reporter. "We agreed to work together on that."
Specifically, the Russians agreed to consider dropping their long-standing objection to the development of a missile-defense system that could intercept and destroy incoming missiles. Until yesterday, the Russians had argued that development of such a shield by either side would remove the fear of launching a first strike because the resulting retaliatory missiles could be rendered harmless.
Russia's change of heart signals a recognition of complex new dangers in the post-Cold War era. Such rogue states as North Korea are widely believed to be capable soon of launching longer-range nuclear missiles and Moscow is beginning to realize that shields against such strikes could help both Russia and the United States.
Therefore, it is willing to consider amending the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which has been the cornerstone of nuclear-arms control between Russia and the United States since 1972, to include the deployment of a missile-defense system.
"For the first time, Russia has agreed to discuss changes in the ABM Treaty that may be necessitated by a national missile-defense system -- were we to decide to deploy one," said National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger, who called the deal "significant."
In return, the United States signaled a willingness to begin work on the next round of missile-reduction treaties, START III. Previously, the White House had refused to begin on START III until the Russian State Duma ratified the last treaty, START II.
It is a welcome development to the Russians because, unlike the United States, they are already well below the 3,500-missile limit imposed by START II. Moscow would prefer to move directly to START III's limit of 2,500 missiles for each side, because that would bring Russia closer to parity with the United States.
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov called the arms agreement "a very important declaration."
Mr. Clinton, while willing to begin the spadework on START III, reserved the right to withhold final implementation of the new treaty until the Duma ratifies START II. Leaders of both countries signed the treaty in 1993, although the U.S. Senate held off on ratifying the pact until the Duma agreed to do the same.
"President Yeltsin said that he hoped that START II would be ratified by the Duma, and that we would begin soon parallel discussions on START III to take our nuclear arsenals down even more," Mr. Clinton said.
The deal defuses a potential showdown over the issue. In March, the GOP-led Congress called for deployment of a limited missile-defense system. And Mr. Clinton recently dropped his philosophical objection to the concept, first promoted by President Reagan.
The about-face led Mr. Clinton to pledge $6.6 billion for development of a missile-defense system next year, even as he reserved the right to wait until then to make the final decision on whether to build it.
A joint statement issued by the two countries said discussions on START III and the ABM Treaty will begin later this summer. "The two governments will do everything in their power to facilitate the successful completion of the START II ratification processes in both countries," it said.
The statement capped an unexpectedly fruitful, hourlong meeting between Mr. Clinton and Mr. Yeltsin, who had been described by his spokesman as being in a fighting mood over Kosovo. Although Mr. Yeltsin pounded the air with his fists to punctuate his message, he seemed in a jovial mood.
"Even though our relations were quite strained during this period of the conflict, I think that we're actually in a position to have a stronger relationship with Russia in the future than we had before," Mr. Clinton told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an interview shortly after the meeting. "We actually had quite a good meeting. We got a lot done."
Later, in an interview with Russian TV, Mr. Clinton described the Russian president, whose health has faltered in recent months, as "strong, clear, alert, vigorous." Mr. Clinton added: "I would say he did very, very well."
Mr. Ivanov told reporters in Cologne that Mr. Yeltsin "was very satisfied with the meeting."
"I think both presidents were," he said.
Mr. Berger added: "The two countries are back in business."
As a gesture of his willingness to move beyond the hard feelings over Kosovo, Mr. Yelstin gave his American counterpart a thick file of declassified Russian documents about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Lee Harvey Oswald, Kennedy's accused killer, had lived in the former Soviet Union and married a Russian woman.
Mr. Berger called the gesture "very interesting," but said the documents were in Russian, and he did not know their precise content. He pledged to make them publicly available after translation.
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Moscow, Washington Reassert Need To Reduce Weapons
Updated 12:31 AM ET June 21, 1999 http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990621/00/international-arms-russia
COLOGNE, Germany (Reuters) - The United States and Russia reaffirmed Sunday their willingness to conduct new negotiations on reducing the level of each side's nuclear warheads and other arms control measures.
A joint U.S.-Russian statement issued after President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin met said: "The two governments will strive to accomplish the important task for achieving results in these negotiations as early as possible."
The two governments would hold discussions on possible changes in the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and a START III nuclear reduction treaty this summer, the statement said.
The United States would like to change the ABM treaty to allow for development of a missile defense system that would be banned the way the treaty reads now. Russia would like to start START III talks without putting START II in effect because it cannot afford the buildup that the treaty would require.
The agreement was evidence of a thaw in East-West relations, which were chilled by NATO's 11-week-long bombardment of Yugoslavia.
"The two governments express their confidence that implementation of this joint statement will be a new significant step to enhance strategic stability and the security of both nations," the statement said.
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Yeltsin Mulls Revising Missile Pact By Terence Hunt AP White House Correspondent Sunday, June 20, 1999; 2:33 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990620/V000737-062099-idx.html
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Affable but Ailing Yeltsin Gives JFK Files to Clinton By William Drozdiak, Washington Post, June 21, 1999; Page A15 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/21/116l-062199-idx.html
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8. Company in the Spotlight: British put a smile on Circle W BNFL is hiring, not firing, as it takes control of Westinghouse's nuclear energy business
Sunday, June 20, 1999, By Steve Massey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer http://www.post-gazette.com/businessnews/19990620spot5.asp
An unusual thing has happened since the former Westinghouse Electric nuclear energy operations were sold in March -- morale at the Monroeville energy center is on the upswing. Hiring is up, too.
That's not how it normally goes in this era of merger mania. The more typical scenario has two companies linking up, then seeking "efficiencies" -- the '90s euphemism for cutting costs and jobs.
But it appears the marriage of the last vestige of nuclear Westinghouse to its British suitor, British Nuclear Fuels PLC, was made, if not in heaven, at least in an environment of mutual respect, admiration and commitment. It's been a while since many Westinghouse veterans could truly say they've felt that way.
It's helped that British Nuclear -- it goes by BNFL -- has done little to rock the nuclear-powered boat.
There have been no layoffs -- plans actually call for the hiring of 50 engineers and technical support staff this year -- or significant changes in employee benefits. Charles Pryor, the Westinghouse subsidiary's CEO, has retained his title and role. And only a few chaps, led by Ian Duncan, the chief financial officer for the new BNFL subsidiary, were shipped over from the U.K. to keep an eye on things.
The acquired enterprise was even allowed to keep its name, Westinghouse Electric Co., though that has as much to with the global clout of the Westinghouse name as it does with a desire to maintain good relations with workers who've toiled for Circle W most of their careers.
"Westinghouse's reputation in the industry is very strong," said Duncan, who has made a home in Wexford and -- note to local tourism promoters -- enjoys Western Pennsylvania's weather. Unlike dreary and wet Leeds in northern England, where he lived, "you can plan for a barbecue here."
Of course, it's pretty easy for the Brits to put a happy face on the merger.
For one thing, BNFL is still a government-owned enterprise, which means it doesn't face the pressures of the City, Great Britain's version of Wall Street. Sure, it makes money, but in today's markets-obsessed society, it's not how much profit you make, it's how high your stock price goes.
For another, Westinghouse filled a big hole in BNFL's portfolio. British Nuclear's expertise is in the reprocessing of nuclear fuel, which recovers uranium from spent fuel to make more nuclear fuel, and in nuclear cleanup and nuclear plant decommissioning. It does produce fuel for older nuclear plants in the United Kingdom, but it's not a fuel type in much demand elsewhere.
Westinghouse's expertise is in the design and servicing of nuclear power plants -- four of every 10 nuclear plants operating around the world are based on Westinghouse specs. Westinghouse has made substantial headway in China and Eastern European markets where BNFL has been weak, and it's a leading supplier of nuclear fuel.
Put it all together, and a BNFL-Westinghouse partnership provides the full nuclear package, from design, fuel and servicing to recycling, decommissioning and cleanup. "By purchasing Westinghouse, it opened up whole new markets," said BNFL spokesman Peter Osborne.
The partnership already is paying dividends. Westinghouse so far this year has announced contracts for nuclear plant upgrades totaling nearly $200 million, and it just signed a new contract to provide fuel to a nuclear plant in Ukraine, the first Western supplier to that country's Russian-built nuclear industry.
If U.S. relations with China don't totally sour -- and if China's economy holds up -- it's believed Westinghouse could land the first batch of new nuclear plant orders there. The Chinese are particularly interested in a new Westinghouse prototype that's supposed to be cheaper to build and operate than conventional nuclear plants and, Westinghouse maintains, safer to operate too.
But even if new orders don't come along, BNFL isn't concerned.
"We don't see this as a business in distress," said Duncan. With more than 400 nuclear plants operating worldwide, BNFL projects the market for upkeep, fuel and other nuclear services to hit $35 billion in a few years, and the market for nuclear waste management and decommissioning to reach $250 billion.
"We didn't predicate our acquisition of Westinghouse on the building of new nuclear plants," said Duncan, who helped piece together the complicated three-way $1.1 billion transaction with U.S. partner Morrison Knudsen, the Idaho-based construction and engineering giant. The final deal had BNFL getting all the commercial nuclear business, MK getting all the defense-related nuclear business, and MK-BNFL splitting the nuclear cleanup business 60/40.
Duncan said BNFL couldn't be happier with the way it all worked out, including his move to Wexford. Let's just hope he's still singing that tune once he experiences a real Pittsburgh winter.
British Nuclear Fuels PLC
BUSINESS: Designs, services and provides fuel to nuclear power plants worldwide; also provides nuclear cleanup and plant decommissioning services.
HEADQUARTERS: Warrington, Cheshire, United Kingdom
HISTORY: Formerly part of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, BNFL was split off in 1971 as a separate, government-owned but independently financed organization committed to making, enriching and reprocessing fuel for nuclear power plants and facilities in the United Kingdom. Later branched out into nuclear cleanup and plant decommissioning businesses, with operations in the United States, Japan, Germany, South Korea, Belgium and France in addition to its home market. Purchased the former Westinghouse Electric commercial nuclear operations in March from parent CBS Corp.
Employees: 20,000 worldwide, including 4,000 through its newMonroeville-based Westinghouse Electric Co. subsidiary.
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9. Where did the word bikini come from? THE RED PENCIL
By Redgate / wrytor@aol.com Monday, June 21, 1999; Page C11 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/21/058l-062199-idx.html
When you hear the word bikini, what do you think of first? Most people think of sunny beaches with women wearing skimpy tow-piece swimsuits. A few people, however, think of an atoll in the Pacific Ocean called Bikini. Was the swimsuit designed there? No. Starting in 1946, Bikini was used by the U.S. as a site for testing nuclear weapons, including a hydrogen bomb. When the revealing swimsuit design first hit the beaches, the French thought of it as "l'explosion.' So they called the popular swimsuit a bikini, after the place where you don't want to "catch some rays.'
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10. EU proposal to get rid of secrecy
Updated 7:55 AM ET June 21, 1999 http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/u/990621/07/international-secrets
BRUSSELS, June 21 (UPI) With the backing of Germany and the Scandinavian nation members, Britain is asking the rest of the European Union to make known what goes on in EU secret committees.
The British newspaper, the Guardian, reports such committees, which "run most European Union affairs, will have to publish details of their proceedings on the internet" if the reform sought by Britain is passed.
Presenting the plan is the German EU presidency in the form of a plan to establish a right of public and parliamentary access to documents, agendas and decisions of the committees.
These committees are made up of national experts and officials, whose job it is to "assist" the European Commission.
Critics of the secret nature of the committees claim they are the "darkest heart of bureaucratic power," within the EU.
Britain is especially resentful of such secrecy, noting that when British beef was banned during the so-called "mad cow" crisis, Britain had no access or knowledge of how the decision was made.
The British government claims the "secrecy" also prolonged the period of time before the ban began to lift.
The proposal would establish only three types of EU committees: advisory, management and regulatory.
And, directly after each meeting, the committees would have to publish on the internet lists of their members, their working agenda, voting records and attendance lists, and any decisions taken.
The reform effort offered today is opposed by France and Spain, and in some instances Belgium.
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Message: 6 Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 18:10:11 -0400
Subject: NucNews-5 6/22/99 - Lab Security - Livermore (TVC); Senate; Energy Whistleblower Trulock; Panel Backs DOE; Rudman Debate; Polygraphs for 5,000 at DOE; U.Cal/Livermore
25. Newly Discovered Accidents Give Lie to Lab Safety Claims
by Marylia Kelley from Tri-Valley CAREs' June 1999 newsletter, Citizen's Watch http://www.igc.org/tvc/
Just as our California state regulators hand Livermore Lab the go-ahead to construct a major, new nuclear waste treatment and storage facility, Tri-Valley CAREs has discovered two previously unpublicized accidents, both involving violations of regulations governing the handling of hazardous wastes. These accidents belie the state's claim that everything is safe at the Lab, and that, therefore, giving the Lab a final permit without doing an environmental report is all right. (See related story -- Lab to Build Nuclear Waste Complex -- also in this month's newsletter.)
We believe these incidents further demonstrate the presence of ongoing problems at the Lab and underscore our call for an Environmental Impact Report.
The first accident came to our attention when we received the May 6, 1999 issue of Operating Experience Weekly Summary, (published by the Dept. of Energy's Office of Nuclear and Facility Safety). The section titled "Final Report - Chemist Receives Chemical Burns When Container Overpressures and Ruptures," outlines the incident. To quote directly from the report:
"On April 1, 1998, at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a chemist received chemical burns to his head when a plastic bottle ruptured and sprayed its contents on him and throughout the hazardous waste radiological laboratory he was working in. The injured chemist was one of two chemists assigned to work on the samples. The previous day, they began mineral acid digestion of six oil samples. While these samples were in the initial stages of digestion, the chemists realized that they had already been analyzed.
"One of the chemists added the samples to a transient waste collection bottle for disposal. This bottle was an empty hydrogen peroxide bottle that was being used to collect spent acids at the work station... The next morning, one of the chemists entered the laboratory, noticed that the bottle was bulging, and heard it hissing. Before he could react, the bottle ruptured.
"Some of the contents of the bottle splashed on the chemist... The chemist washed the acid mixture off his face in the men's restroom. He did not use the safety shower in the room he was working in because the room was filled with acid vapors... Medical personnel noted that some acid mixture was still in his hair, so they shampooed and showered him, treating the chemical burns, and released him..."
The chemical burns resulted in what the report termed "12 restricted work days" for the injured employee. Lab investigators determined that the direct cause of the accident was the inappropriate storage of the acid mixture, and that gas generation caused the container to pressurize and rupture. Further, the DOE report cited deficiencies in worker training, and stated the root cause of the accident was the failure of the Lab to follow proper procedures for waste disposal.
The second accident was caused when the Lab mislableled hazardous wastes, an all too frequent occurrence. According to an internal Livermore Lab memo dated March 15, 1999, two containers in storage at the Lab's Hazardous Waste Material Area last June were both issued an identical container number, W131763.
One container was filled with a federally-listed hazardous waste and the other with a different, not federally-listed, waste. According to the memo, the two containers were accidentally combined via a bulking process into a roll-off bin. The federally-listed hazardous waste (now mixed with other waste) was then mistakenly sent to a disposal facility where it was placed into a landfill without treatment.
The pre-bulking concentrations of lead and chromium in the federally-listed waste exceeded both hazardous waste limits and land disposal restriction (LDR) treatment standards, according to the memo. However, when the container number duplication was detected eight month later, the Lab recalculated the concentrations based on the total weight of solid waste in the roll-off bin and found them in aggregate to be below LDR treatment standards.
On March 5, 1999, Livermore Lab held a management meeting to review this event. To quote the memo, "Upon review, the consensus of upper management and legal counsel regarding the inadvertent and inappropriate consolidation was that no further notifications are required or warranted." Thus, the Lab management intentionally failed to notify regulatory agencies or the public of the mixing incident, or of their improper disposal of hazardous waste.
These kinds of accidents at Livermore Lab, and management's resulting attempts to cover them up, are not isolated incidents. Instead, they are sadly familiar. Workers are hurt, the environment is polluted, and the community is continually at risk.
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Lab to Build Nuclear Waste Complex Without Environmental Review
by Marylia Kelley from Tri-Valley CAREs' June 1999 newsletter, Citizen's Watch http://www.igc.org/tvc/
Despite Livermore Lab's long history of toxic and radioactive spills, leaks, accidents and releases, the state of California has just given the Lab a green light to build a huge, new nuclear waste treatment complex in Livermore.
Further, the state regulatory agency, called the Dept. of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), rebuffed Tri-Valley CAREs' request that it undertake a stringent, independent environmental review of the Livermore Lab's hazardous waste practices before making its decision. Our goal was two-fold: to ensure that the affected community had ample opportunity to be heard in the decision, and, equally important, to improve conditions at the Lab in order to protect workers, the public and the environment from additional contamination.
Instead, DTSC approved a permit for Livermore Lab to construct and operate a new hazardous and radioactive waste treatment complex, and to do it without undergoing an Environmental Impact Report (EIR), the appropriate review procedure for this type of state-level decision.
Specifically, on May 27, 1999, DTSC issued a final "Hazardous Waste Facility Permit," also referred to as a Part B permit, in essence giving its blessing to the nuclear waste facility, after conducting only a preliminary "Initial Study" on Livermore Lab's permit application. According to DTSC records, the Initial Study relied on an old 1992 Lab report - which had been done by the Dept. of Energy, the Lab's parent agency. On that flimsy, and hardly independent, basis, DTSC issued a "negative declaration," certifying that a new nuclear waste facility at the Lab could not possibly have a negative impact. The permit is a "federal equivalent," meaning DTSC, as the state agency, has the final authority....
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26. Senate To Focus On U.S. Nuclear Lab Security
Updated 3:27 PM ET June 21, 1999, By Tabassum Zakaria http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990621/15/news-nuclear-spying
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Four Senate committees with a combined membership of more than half the Senate will hold a joint hearing Tuesday to focus on security at nuclear labs, where allegations of Chinese spying have surfaced.
The hearing, at 9:30 a.m. will be chaired jointly by the chairmen of the four Senate committees -- Governmental Affairs, Intelligence, Energy, and Armed Services, an aide said. But Senate Energy Committee Chairman Frank Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, will hold the gavel.
The senators will question two witnesses. The first is former Sen. Warren Rudman, who chaired a presidential advisory board that recommended control of the nuclear labs be partly or fully wrested from the Energy Department.
Also appearing will be Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who said he has taken many steps to increase security at the labs and would oppose pulling what are considered the "crown jewels" fully out of Energy Department jurisdiction.
To complicate the situation Tuesday, the House Commerce Committee also scheduled a morning hearing with the same two witnesses. The House panel was trying to sort out how to deal with the conflict.
"I think the message tomorrow is everyone's going to get a chance to express their views," said Ed Curran, director of counterintelligence at the Energy Department.
Allegations that China stole U.S. nuclear secrets over 20 years through espionage at the labs surfaced publicly this year and sent Congress into a fury.
The Energy Department in April started a new program of giving lie detector tests to employees who work in the most secret nuclear weapons areas.
About 5,000 employees would be given "a focused" polygraph under the program, representing nearly five percent of the 110,000 Energy Department employees, Curran said.
The polygraph would not deal with "lifestyle issues" but only one area -- espionage, Curran said. Current and new employees to the most secure areas would be asked a few questions related to spying as a screening device, he said.
The polygraph would not be administered more frequently than every 5 years, and the Energy Department could deny access to employees to secure work areas if they refused to take the lie detector test, Curran said.
Starting next month, the Energy Department will have the ability to conduct up to 2,500 polygraph tests per year because of additional equipment and personnel to work it, he said.
"Q clearance is not a right of an individual to have," Curran said, referring to the security clearance that allows employees to work in secure nuclear research areas. "We can't force somebody to take it (polygraph), but if they decline, they won't get into that program," Curran said.
The Energy Department's nuclear research labs started a two-day "stand down" Monday in which all employees ceased working on their projects to focus on security issues.
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Energy Whistleblower Defends His Office
By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, June 22, 1999; Page A11 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/22/045l-062299-idx.html
Notra Trulock, the Energy Department whistleblower whose intelligence analyses triggered allegations of Chinese espionage at America's nuclear weapons labs, attacked a presidential panel yesterday for recommending elimination of the intelligence office where he works.
"Imagine my surprise to learn that you have adopted what has become the standard administration, departmental, and laboratory response to our four-year effort to bring this scandal to light: shoot the messenger," Trulock wrote in a letter delivered to the panel's chairman, former senator Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.).
In a report last week, Rudman's panel -- composed of members of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board -- recommended that a new, semi-autonomous agency be established inside the Department of Energy to run the nuclear weapons program. The panel also called for the abolition of DOE's Office of Intelligence, which Trulock once headed and where he is now deputy director. In its place, the director of the new agency would have a special assistant for intelligence liaison, and roughly 40 analysts would be transferred to the CIA.
Rudman is scheduled to appear today, along with Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, before a joint meeting of four Senate committees to discuss the report. Rudman could not be located last night for comment on Trulock's letter.
Trulock wrote that had the Rudman panel's recommendation been in effect four years ago, "there is no question but that evidence of Chinese espionage would remain undetected to this date." In an interview yesterday, Trulock said the letter represents "my personal views" and "was not vetted or approved by the Department of Energy."
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Panel Backs Energy Dept. Oversight
By Jim Abrams Associated Press Writer Monday, June 21, 1999; 3:38 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990621/V000365-062199-idx.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The head of a presidential panel on nuclear weapons security, backed by congressional Republicans, says security problems within the Department of Energy can't be fixed without creating a new semi-independent agency to oversee nuclear arms programs.
But Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, said he is successfully confronting the security lapses revealed in investigations of suspected Chinese spying at weapons laboratories, and that no new agency is needed.
``We are ready to have a beefed-up security entity within the Department of Energy that is stronger,'' Richardson said on ``Fox News Sunday.'' ``What I don't want is a new agency that is autonomous that does not report to me.''
But former Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H., who chaired a panel of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board that issued a highly critical report of the DOE's counterintelligence efforts last week, said the department has failed to carry out two key security measures that President Clinton ordered 16 months ago.
It has yet to fully implement polygraph tests for scientists at the labs and tighter security checks for foreign visitors, Rudman said on NBC's ``Meet the Press.'' ``The attitude of people within that department, in that bureaucracy, is astounding,'' he added.
The Washington Post reported today that the federal government has begun administering polygraphs on the first of 5,000 nuclear weapons scientists and other sensitive employees at DOE.
It could take four years to complete an initial round of examinations on the federal workers and private contractors working with highly classified nuclear secrets, said Edward J. Curran, head of Energy's counterintelligence office.
So far, only that office's staff has been given the tests, he said. Richardson told the Post some employees and civil liberties groups are likely to protest the polygraphs and ``I fully expect lawsuits.''
The president of the University of California, Richard C. Atkinson, has ordered a review of security at the three nuclear laboratories managed by the university to make sure national security is not being compromised.
The FBI has investigated allegations that a former employee of Los Alamos National Laboratory near Santa Fe, N.M., was a spy for China. The university also manages Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Atkinson has asked his Council on National Laboratories to examine whether newly tightened measures are being implemented and whether additional measures are needed. He also wants to compare the university's security to the protocol used by Lockheed Martin, which manages the Sandia National Laboratories.
Rudman, meanwhile, is expected to receive a good reception Tuesday when he testifies to Congress on his panel's recommendation that the weapons program become semi-autonomous, reporting only to the energy secretary.
``I agree with the Rudman report,'' said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. ``We've said all along that the labs are not safe today. They're not safe tomorrow.''
Richardson, he said, is trying to ``seal the leaks at the labs. He's trying to bring accountability to the labs. But I believe it's going to take statutory change to do it. I don't believe ultimately he can do it just by himself.''
Shelby said Republican Sens. Frank Murkowski of Alaska, Jon Kyl of Arizona and Pete Domenici of New Mexico would try to attach language on such a separation of powers to an intelligence spending bill coming before the Senate soon.
Richardson said there were still problems to resolve but ``we have had dramatic improvements.'' He said he ordered a two-day stand-down at all the nuclear labs to test security measures, and that he plans to dismiss some people responsible for security lapses in about three weeks.
Richardson last week also named retired Air Force Gen. Eugene Habiger, the former commander of all U.S. strategic nuclear forces, to head security operations at DOE.
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Nuclear Weapons Program Debated
By Jim Abrams Associated Press Writer Monday, June 21, 1999; 1:21 a.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990621/V000032-062199-idx.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The head of a presidential panel on nuclear weapons security, backed by congressional Republicans, says security problems within the Department of Energy can't be fixed without creating a new semi-independent agency to oversee nuclear arms programs.
But Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, said he is successfully confronting the security lapses revealed in investigations of suspected Chinese spying at weapons laboratories, and that no new agency is needed.
``We are ready to have a beefed-up security entity within the Department of Energy that is stronger,'' Richardson said on ``Fox News Sunday.'' ``What I don't want is a new agency that is autonomous that does not report to me.''
But former Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H., who chaired a panel of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board that issued a highly critical report of the DOE's counterintelligence efforts last week, said the department has failed to carry out two key security measures that President Clinton ordered 16 months ago.
It has yet to fully implement polygraph tests for scientists at the labs and tighter security checks for foreign visitors, Rudman said on NBC's ``Meet the Press.'' ``The attitude of people within that department, in that bureaucracy, is astounding,'' he added.
The Washington Post reported today that the federal government has begun administering polygraphs on the first of 5,000 nuclear weapons scientists and other sensitive employees at DOE.
It could take four years to complete an initial round of examinations on the federal workers and private contractors working with highly classified nuclear secrets, said Edward J. Curran, head of Energy's counterintelligence office.
So far, only that office's staff has been given the tests, he said. Richardson told the Post some employees and civil liberties groups are likely to protest the polygraphs and ``I fully expect lawsuits.''
Rudman, meanwhile, is expected to receive a good reception Tuesday when he testifies to Congress on his panel's recommendation that the weapons program become semi-autonomous, reporting only to the energy secretary.
``I agree with the Rudman report,'' said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. ``We've said all along that the labs are not safe today. They're not safe tomorrow.''
Richardson, he said, is trying to ``seal the leaks at the labs. He's trying to bring accountability to the labs. But I believe it's going to take statutory change to do it. I don't believe ultimately he can do it just by himself.''
Shelby said Republican Sens. Frank Murkowski of Alaska, Jon Kyl of Arizona and Pete Domenici of New Mexico would try to attach language on such a separation of powers to an intelligence spending bill coming before the Senate soon.
Richardson said there were still problems to resolve but ``we have had dramatic improvements.'' He said he ordered a two-day stand-down at all the nuclear labs to test security measures, and that he plans to dismiss some people responsible for security lapses in about three weeks.
Richardson last week also named retired Air Force Gen. Eugene Habiger, the former commander of all U.S. strategic nuclear forces, to head security operations at DOE.
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Polygraphs Start for 5,000 at Energy Opposition Mounts to Widespread Lie Detection to Catch Spies at Weapons Labs
By Vernon Loeb, Washington Post, June 21, 1999; Page A02 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/21/016l-062199-idx.html
The federal government has begun polygraphing an estimated 5,000 nuclear weapons scientists and other sensitive employees at the Department of Energy, extending wholesale use of "lie detector" tests for the first time outside the CIA and National Security Agency.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson ordered the testing in response to allegations that Chinese spies stole nuclear secrets from national laboratories run by the Department of Energy. But strong opposition is emerging as the DOE prepares to publish regulations this week spelling out how the polygraphs will be administered to thousands of contract workers and employees as a condition of employment in sensitive weapons programs.
"I expect continued concern and opposition from some of the laboratories and lab employees and civil liberties groups, and I fully expect lawsuits," Richardson said in an interview Friday.
The University of California, which runs the Los Alamos and Lawrence E. Livermore national laboratories under contract with the DOE, is the direct employer of many of the nation's nuclear weapons scientists. It said in a letter to Richardson last fall that it would object to using polygraph testing "broadly as a managerial tool" rather than "in a limited and more focused manner to investigate serious espionage situations."
Citizens for Los Alamos National Laboratory Employee Rights, a nonprofit group representing more than 60 Los Alamos employees, also considers polygraphs to be a "violation of employee rights" and plans to voice its objections at a joint hearing of the New Mexico and California legislatures next month, said Chris Mechels, the organization's vice president. John W. Shaner, a nuclear weapons physicist at Los Alamos's experimental explosives division, said last week that debate over polygraphs rages at the fabled home of the atom bomb north of Albuquerque.
"There's a huge number of people here who will say, 'Great, if that will solve the problem, let's get on with it,' " Shaner said. "But in discussions here there have been expressions of concern that bright young students coming out of school will look around and say, 'I can go and work at a university and not have to put up with this invasion of privacy--why should I go to Los Alamos?' "
Both Shaner and Houston T. Hawkins, Los Alamos's director of nonproliferation and international security, also said they were concerned about the scientific reliability of polygraphs.
Convicted spies like Aldrich Ames have fooled polygraphs, and numerous studies have shown the devices' tendency to register frequent "false positives," in which a quickened pulse rate is assumed to indicate that a subject is being deceptive even when that person is telling the truth.
Noting that studies also have found that the incidence of false positives increases with IQ, Hawkins said he worries that hundreds of careers could be ruined in a hunt for spies who may not exist. "Is that acceptable?" he asked.
Richardson approved the polygraphing as one of his first acts as energy secretary last fall, despite objections from some of his undersecretaries. At that time, however, it was not yet clear that the tests would be given across the board to large numbers of scientists, administrators and security officials.
Richardson said that he, too, is concerned that the tests could hurt the Energy Department's ability to recruit first-rate scientists. But, he said, he decided it was important to join the CIA and NSA as the only federal agencies with widespread polygraph programs to send a message that protecting nuclear secrets is a top priority.
Edward J. Curran, a veteran FBI counterintelligence official who heads the DOE's newly created Office of Counterintelligence, said the first DOE employees to be polygraphed under the new program--and the only ones examined so far--are 57 of the 60 members of his own staff. Curran said it could take experts at the DOE's polygraph unit in Albuquerque four years to complete an initial round of examinations for the thousands of federal employees and private contractors working with highly classified nuclear secrets or safeguarding nuclear materials. Once the initial round of testing is completed, those workers will be subject to retests every five years, like employees at the CIA and NSA.
A draft copy of the regulations to be published in the Federal Register this week states that polygraphs will be used only to "address the narrow questions of whether the individual has engaged or is engaging in espionage, sabotage, terrorism, unauthorized disclosures of classified information, and unauthorized foreign contacts," not so-called "lifestyle" questions about prior drug use and extramarital affairs. The regulations also state that the polygraphs will be voluntary "because DOE cannot force an individual to take such an examination."
But those who refuse, Curran said, will be transferred out of sensitive nuclear programs that require access to highly classified information.
"To work in these sensitive programs, we set the standards," Curran said. "The employees don't set the standards."
Jeffrey H. Smith, an attorney and former CIA general counsel who has studied the use of polygraphs as a counterintelligence tool, said the DOE's program "raises very serious questions."
"They're going to have to have very careful procedures in place to protect the rights of the employees," Smith said. "And they're going to have to be careful that they don't over-rely on the polygraph. If the only indication of wrongdoing is 'deception' on the polygraph, they have to very quickly deal with that, so they don't harm the employee. This is a real challenge for them--to do it in a way that's fair to employees and protects the national security."
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Univ. of Calif. Seeks Review Of Lab Security
Reuters Monday, June 21, 1999 Washington Post; Page A02 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/21/007l-062199-idx.html http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990621/00/news-nuclear-california
LOS ANGELES, June 20--University of California President Richard Atkinson has ordered a review of newly tightened security measures at nuclear weapons labs managed by the university.
The order comes amid mounting pressure from the federal government over allegations of Chinese espionage at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is managed by the university under a contract with the Department of Energy.
In a directive announced Friday, Atkinson called on a panel of experts to review the new security rules "to make sure the university is doing everything possible to maintain the vital security interests of the United States," the Los Angeles Times reported.
The House of Representatives and President Clinton's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board have suggested fining the university--or other lab managers--for future security violations, the Times said.
The General Accounting Office also is advocating that the DOE end the university's 50-year-old hold on running the labs when its contract expires in 2002.
The university also manages the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory east of San Francisco and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which does some unclassified research. Although the government sets security policy at the labs, university officials help enforce the rules.
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Message: 7 Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 18:08:42 -0400
Subject: NucNews-6 6/22/99 - Kosovo - Media; War Criminals; Pilots/Planes Fly Home; Kosovars New Army?
27. A New War Drew New Methods for Covering It
By FELICITY BARRINGER, June 21, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/kosovo-war-media.html
As 16,100 NATO troops rolled into Kosovo last week, 2,700 journalists signed up to follow them. Most of those journalists had been forced to watch the 78 days of bombing through the lenses of official video cameras and wanted to see things for themselves.
"Almost anywhere you point the camera you find a story," said Bill Wheatley, NBC's vice president for news.
The wave of images of Serbian tanks departing and ethnic Albanians returning is the latest to show the paroxysm of Kosovo. From the terror of airborne high technology bombing to the terror of the Serb military campaign, the conflict has produced war coverage that has been in some basic ways different from any battlefield coverage that has come before, according to editors, correspondents and media critics.
There was more censorship -- and more information. Military censors ratcheted up controls during the bombing, but satellite communications allowed reporters from Brussels, Belgium, to Kukes, Albania, to triangulate information more easily than in earlier conflicts.
There were more journalists covering all sides of the conflict. Yugoslav authorities repeatedly expelled Western journalists, but enough Western reporters returned and were tolerated to provide on-the-scene coverage of the bomb damage and the ethnic strife -- though often these journalists were operating under tight Serb restrictions.
With the rise of the Internet and cable television news, there were more outlets for instantaneous reporting and analysis. Cable news channels offered high-decibel debate, though some argue that the formats permitted little nuance or textured argument.
On the Internet, a profusion of Web sites provided perspectives on the conflict from any angle one could want: Serb, Albanian, Republican, Democratic, from the depth of the BBC to the passionate nationalism of the Belgrade-based newspaper Politika.
For David Halberstam, the author and former Vietnam correspondent for The New York Times, the sum total of all these trends amounted to sharper, speedier coverage. "Despite all the restrictions, and just god-awful limitations and dangers, there were enough different people in enough different places to give you the dimensions you needed," he said.
"If the spin doctors working in Washington were saying how well it was going, there were enough people in the NATO command who would talk quietly" about the reasons for pessimism, Halberstam added.
The multinational cast of the war helped. Squabbles among the 19 member nations of NATO produced self-serving leaks, as did differences in Washington about the need for ground troops or the bombing's effect.
Coverage strategies evolved in the early days after NATO began bombing March 24, largely shaped by the Pentagon decisions to stringently limit information.
Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said that "because the Serbs had a significant air defense, we were going to give as little information as possible" about what planes were flying, about the frequency and location of bombings, even about what ordnance they were using.
"So much has been public about this, there is so much on TV, that it was like an extension of his own intelligence services," Bacon added, referring to the Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.
Even to disclose the number of bombing sorties or their targets after the fact -- when the Serbs already knew what had been done -- would provide the enemy with too much information, he contended: "You could extrapolate from what we were doing one night what we would do the next."
Blinders were also imposed by the Serbs, who swept journalists from their territory in the first days of the war -- but did not throw out a German reporter and a Canadian-born correspondent for The Los Angeles Times when they made their way back into Kosovo shortly after their expulsion.
Journalists coping with the restrictions imposed by the combatants used other sources more fully, according to editors, correspondents and media critics. As ethnic Albanian Kosovars poured across the border into refugee camps, they were not only the subjects of one story -- the mass exodus -- but also sources for what was happening inside Kosovo.
And the new technologies kept the information moving at what Wheatley of NBC called "an unheard-of speed among the interested parties, the groups, the combatants."
"It doesn't mean we were always able to authenticate something that NATO was saying or Serbia was saying," he said, "but it made it somewhat easier."
The key catalyst for putting together information, according to editors and media critics, was the satellite phone and, more broadly, satellite communications.
Broadcast radio was the device that broke new communications ground in World War II; the evening television news show was the medium that most directly brought home the violence of the Vietnam War; and CNN's 24-hour cable TV news coverage first caught hold with the Gulf War. This time around, the satellite uplink was the information medium of the moment.
"Instantaneous communication has changed things," said Andrew Rosenthal, foreign editor of The New York Times. "The ability of a reporter on the Macedonian border to call a reporter on the Albanian border or to call a reporter in Brussels or Washington instantly made a huge difference. Newspapers were able to put together groups of reporters to do joint efforts in a way that was previously impossible."
The same satellite technology, said Ted Koppel, host of ABC's "Nightline," can cut two ways when it comes to television. The technology, he noted, allows a profusion of images to be transmitted at great speed. When those images reflect something like the fate of Kosovar refugees, or the Serb troop pullout from Kosovo, the medium's emotional power is at its peak -- for better and for worse, in Koppel's view.
"Television in particular is a medium that allows people at home to become violence voyeurs," he said, speaking from Pristina by, yes, satellite telephone. "The more they see, the more it takes to gain their interest the next day. And it's all happening so fast, and such an enormous volume is being churned out, that people become very jaded by what they see very quickly.
"The great danger is that there will be a reaction from American television viewers that 'we've seen it all, and last week it looked better.' "
Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, said that television coverage, by doing what it does best, buttressed the humanitarian justification for the hostilities.
"Early on, the human suffering of the refugees provided a natural story line that fit very well with NATO's rationale for the war," Lichter said. "To sell a war in a democracy when you're not attacked, you have to demonize the leader or show that there are humanitarian reasons for going in. George Bush demonized Saddam Hussein. We did something of the same with Milosevic."
When the refugee crisis came, he said, "the need of TV to have human beings and an ongoing story and the need of the administration to have a rationale for the bombing melded very well."
His words have an echo in those of Bacon at the Pentagon, who said that "the refugee crisis, along with the atrocity stories, was an indication of why we were fighting."
But, Lichter said, he and his staff noticed in the conflict's first few weeks that electronic news organizations and print journalists weighted their coverage very differently, with the much more critical coverage found in print. The initial television news coverage "was so highly positive," he said.
Not all television coverage was. Many cable and some broadcast shows -- particularly the weekend wrap-up and analysis programs from Washington -- are driven by debate, and amplified the criticisms of President Clinton's decision to rule out ground troops. Then, when Milosevic did not quickly accede to NATO demands, criticism also grew that NATO had badly miscalculated.
Night after night, strategy and tactics were debated by journalists, congressmen and former generals in a forum whose lifeblood is "the journalism of assertion" -- a term coined by the media critics Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in "Warp Speed" (The Century Foundation, 1999), their book on the pitfalls of instantaneous journalism and the argument culture of cable television.
Some media observers found this coverage tendentious -- journalists reflecting unrealistic expectations about an early end to the war and reinforcing dubious assumptions about the limitations of bombing.
"One fundamental issue arose early in the coverage and was never challenged to the end of the war," said Marvin Kalb, the director of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, "and that was that this war could not end through the application only of air power, that somehow or another you're going to have to send troops in."
In addition, Kalb said, there was an early expectation that if the bombing did not quickly sap Milosevic's resolve, then it had failed.
"This is a conviction perhaps sired by the quick end of the Gulf War and perhaps by the American psyche that can't hold its attention on anything for more than a week," he said.
But Rosenthal, the Times' foreign editor, said that "the fact remains that the analysis of the war's having gotten off to a slow and clumsy start was accurate."
He added, "The press reflects what is going on. If the administration is sitting on its hands and not explaining itself, we have to go to other analysts. And dissenters are always more willing to talk."
Some reporters, however, were able to see things firsthand. Some did it with the Pentagon's sufferance, like Steve Komarow of USA Today, who flew with a B-52 crew in the first days of the war, but was not allowed to use the names and hometowns of the pilots in his dispatches.
Others, like Steven Erlanger of The New York Times, worked from Belgradereporting on bomb damage and Serbian morale while working in and around a web of Serb censorship. Still others, like Paul Watson of The Los Angeles Times, got inside Kosovo and covered bombing damage and ethnic violence close up. And Jack Kelly of USA Today reported from a dangerous vantage point alongside a Kosovo Liberation Army unit.
Some critics, however, see serious remaining flaws in war coverage, even in the age of a thousand sources and a thousand news outlets. "All wars are imperfectly covered," said John MacArthur Jr., the publisher of Harper's Magazine, who wrote "Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War" (Hill & Wang, 1992). "All wars are a mess. You can only hope to get shards of information."
And while he believes that the reporting of the Kosovo conflict has been "vastly better than the Gulf War," he said he believes reporters still take too much official information and pass it on as fact.
"I didn't see the word 'claim' or 'claimed' used nearly enough," he said. "It's a useful discipline not to let the Pentagon or NATO get away with loose talk."
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28. Will war criminals be prosecuted?
By Kirk Spitzer, 6/21/99- http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/kosovo/kirk058.htm
... President Clinton said Thursday that he expects Yugoslav President Milosevic to avoid trial as long as he stays in Serbia. He said it is not NATO's mission to seize the indicted leader. For more on war crimes in Kosovo and the Balkans, see these Web sites:
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia http://www.un.org/icty/index.html
Indictments of Slobodan Milosevic and other Yugoslav leaders http://www.state.gov/www/regions/eur/990527_kosovo_indictment.html
British Ministry of Defense map of suspected mass grave sites http://www.mod.uk/news/kosovo/map_graves.jpg
Q. The allies stated they destroyed a majority of the tanks and armored personnel carriers in Kosovo. However, I have seen via news footage many of these leaving Kosovo and have not seen any footage of destroyed Yugoslav hardware. Were the allies overstating their gains in Kosovo? -- Warren Powell, Pensacola, Fla.
Warren,
The allies never stated they had destroyed a majority of Serb armor in Kosovo. But they did imply they got a lot. We'll probably never know how much the Serbs actually lost.
Keep in mind that it's easy to get photos of surviving tanks and armored vehicles: You just stand by the roads to Serbia and film the convoys going by. Even 10 or 12 tanks in a row looks impressive.
It's much harder to film destroyed tanks and armor. The Serbs hid them in the hills and mountains and NATO planes knocked them off one or two at a time. Photographers won't venture into those areas until the land mines and unexploded munitions are cleared. By then, it's old news.
It's a good guess the military exaggerated their success in Kosovo somewhat. They often do. During the Gulf War, military spokesmen said Patriot missiles 'successfully engaged' all of the Scud missiles fired by Iraq. After the war, an independent analysis calculated that the Patriots hadn't knocked down a single Scud; the Pentagon acknowledged that 'successfully engaged' simply meant that the Patriots fired properly and exploded in the vicinity of the Scud warheads. Oh, thanks.
As for Kosovo, here's what British Air Marshal Sir John Day said at a briefing in London today:
"With regard to Serb tanks, we always said that this was not a numbers-counting exercise, the overall effect of the campaign was to bring Milosevic to his senses which the campaign achieved. We were not, however, surprised that there were still quite a number of Serb tanks and heavy vehicles in Kosovo."
George Robertson, Britain's secretary of defense, said this:
"Despite all that heavy armor (that survived the NATO bombing), it seems to have (been) so well-hidden that it certainly wasn't being used. And the intensity of the air operations meant that a lot of the equipment they had was simply useless. It beggars belief what it would have been able to do had it not been for the aerial bombardment taking place because these tanks would certainly have been used for reducing even more of the villages to rubble than have been found up to now."...
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EVIDENCE War-Crimes Experts Comb First Site on List By IAN FISHER, June 21, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/062199kosovo-tribunal.html
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29. Pilots fly home
By United Press International, 4:40 AM ET June 22, 1999 http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/u/990622/04/international-kosovo
Many of the U.S. pilots whose relentless bombing opened the door for the Kosovo peacekeeping force have been given the order to fly home while the ground troops continue the dangerous job of clearing unexploded mines and bombs from the province.
Many of the nearly 400 U.S. aircraft in the NATO fleet will be sent back to their home bases in the United States and Europe in two waves now that NATO has officially declared the Kosovo air campaign to be over.
As the Air Force packs up, about 4,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines will continue patrolling on the ground with the multi-national peacekeeping force (KFOR), maintaining order, investigating possible war crimes and trying to clear away scores of mines and booby-traps left behind by the departing Yugoslavs, and unexploded bombs dropped by NATO aircraft.
One such explosive went off Monday at a school in Negrovce, west of Pristina, killing two British Army Gurkhas on an explosives disposal mission. There were unconfirmed media reports the explosion was caused by a NATO cluster bomb.
"The tragic incident underlines the dangers KFOR troops are under while they attempt to make Kosovo a safe and secure environment," British Defense Minister George Robertson said in a written stateenmt.
The KFOR troops have so far had little interference in their activities from the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has agreed to disarm in the coming weeks.
The New York Times said today that the KLA may have been influenced by a NATO pledge to consider allowing the guerrilla group to reform in the future as a fighting force similar to the U.S. National Guard. The Times said NATO's pledge means the KLA can pursue its political agenda as an organized group even if it disarms.
The returning U.S. warplanes include F-117 "stealth" fighters and Vietnam-era B-52 bombers as well as A-10 tankbuster aircraft and workhorse F-15 and F-16 fighters.
Defense Secretary William Cohen said Monday the first wave would include 124 aircraft and will leave the Balkans within two weeks. They will be quickly followed by another 234 planes and helicopters.
Many of the planes flew out of the NATO base at Aviano, Italy, which is scheduled to host President Clinton today.
Clinton plans to stop at Aviano to salute the efforts of the air crews and the support personnel on the ground.
It will be the last stop on Clinton's visit to the region. Earlier stops today included Slovenia and Skopje, Macedonia, where the president and first lady were to visit a refugee camp.
White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said Clinton wants to personally thank the countries in the region for standing firm "in the face of some very difficult circumstances."
"The president wants to go and talk to the people who are most affected by this, and talk about their experiences in leaving Kosovo and their plans for returning," said White House spokesman Joe Lockhart.
The United Nations took further steps forward in its program to rebuild Kosovo. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced the appointment of two of the four deputies who will serve under his special representative in Kosovo.
Dominique Vian (Vee-AH), the prefect of French Guyana, will head the interim civil administration of Kosovo, and Dennis McNamara, director of International Cooperation for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, will oversee the return of refugees and humanitarian assistance.
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Warplanes Returning to U.S., Europe
By The Associated Press, June 22, 1999 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-US-Kosovo-List.html
Warplanes returning to bases in the United States and Europe in the next two weeks:
--12 F-117s to Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.
--2 EC-130s to Davis-Monthan AFB, Ariz.
--4 EA-6Bs to Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, Wash.
--3 EA-6Bs to Cherry Point Marine Air Station, N.C.
--12 F-16s to Shaw AFB, S.C.
--1P-3 to Brunswick NAS, Maine.
--11 B-52s to Barksdale AFB, La.
--6 B-1s to Ellsworth AFB, S.D.
--27 KC-135 tankers to various bases.
--26 F-15s to the U.S. air base at Lakenheath, England.
--20 F-16s to the U.S. air base at Spangdahlem, Germany.
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30. THE OVERVIEW NATO to Consider Letting Kosovars Set Up New Army as Rebels Agree to Disarm
June 22, 1999, By STEVEN LEE MYERS, New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/062299kosovo-kla-disband.html
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- The agreement reached early Monday to disband the Kosovo Liberation Army included, at the insistence of its commanders, a pledge by the NATO allies to consider letting the rebels form a provisional army for Kosovo modeled on the National Guard in the United States.
The agreement, signed in the dead of night after a frenetic weekend of military and political wrangling from a mountainous rebel redoubt in central Kosovo to the capitals of Europe, gave no timetable for creating an army and no details of its size or mission.
But the inclusion of the pledge ensures that even after laying down its arms, the Kosovo Liberation Army can pursue its ambition to remain an organized political and military force in the Yugoslav province.
For their part, the rebels agreed to a phased demilitarization, an immediate cease-fire and a cessation of hostilities.
While NATO stopped far short of endorsing the idea, promising only to give it "due consideration" as the future of Kosovo is debated in the months ahead, the rebel group's leaders spoke Monday as though an army for a free Kosovo was, in their minds, a foregone conclusion.
"We will form an army according to NATO's standards, while at the same time staying loyal to our national and historical traditions," Gen. Agim Ceku, the Kosovo Liberation Army's commander in the war against Yugoslav forces, said in an interview after the announcement.
What to do with the rebel group -- said to include 10,000 hardened fighters and some 30,000 irregulars who joined after being driven from their homes by President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown this spring -- has proved to be one of NATO's foremost challenges as its peacekeepers have moved to exert control over Kosovo.
The consideration of an army -- let alone the creation of one -- is sure to infuriate Yugoslavia, which accused NATO of aiding the rebels' cause throughout 78 days of bombing. But even some NATO members, particularly Germany, opposed including the pledge in the final document. The objections, from NATO's political arm, delayed its approval and signing until the early hours Monday morning, even though rebel commanders and NATO military officials had reached agreement late Saturday night, toasting it with Bushmill's Irish whisky at Ceku's wartime home in the mountains of central Kosovo.
Germany relented only after Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met the German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, over dinner on Sunday night at the conference of the major industrial powers in Cologne and explained that the rebel leaders would not agree to disarm unless the agreement included the provision.
The State Department's spokesman, James Rubin, who appeared at a news conference here Monday with the rebels' political leader, Hashim Thaci, said the paragraph outlining the idea of an armed force was "an expression of the aspirations of the Kosovo Liberation Army" and, for now, nothing more.
"This is a decision for the future, as part of the process that determines the final status of Kosovo," said Rubin, who took part in the final flurry of negotiations with rebel leaders on Saturday at their wartime headquarters near the village of Lapusnik.
Before the war with Yugoslavia, the United States and other NATO nations strongly opposed independence for Kosovo, but the abortive peace accord negotiated in Rambouillet, France, on the eve of the bombing called for an international consideration of the province's future within three years. Milosevic rejected that deal, and now with NATO in control of the province, calls for a resolution of Kosovo's status could well come sooner.
Thaci signed the agreement on behalf of all the Kosovo Liberation army's commanders just after midnight, only hours after the last Yugoslav soldiers and special police officers left Kosovo on Sunday, formally handing over control of the province to NATO's growing peacekeeping force.
The NATO commander here, Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson, said the agreement was a turning point in the peacekeeping operation, known as KFOR, enhancing the sense of security across Kosovo by ensuring that the rebels' return "to civilian life will begin rapidly."
"Very soon, therefore, KFOR, will be the only military security presence here," Jackson said at a news conference in Pristina. "And that is how it should be."
Under the agreement, the rebels must immediately respect a cease-fire and renounce the use of force. They must also stop setting up checkpoints, laying mines or conducting any other "military, security or training-related activities," though the agreement did not deny them the right to self-defense, a sign of the on-going volatility in Kosovo.
Within seven days, the rebels and NATO will agree on storage sites for their weapons, except for pistols and non-automatic rifles. They must also clear any minefields or booby traps, vacate any fortifications used during the war and assemble in locations agreed to by NATO's commanders. Within 30 days, they will no longer be permitted to carry prohibited weapons, including all automatic rifles like AK-47s, any weapon 12.7 millimeter or larger, and all missiles, mines, grenades or other explosives. Once those weapons are stored, they will be under joint control of the rebels and NATO for 60 days, after which NATO will assume complete control. NATO's military commanders had initially proposed that the group's fighters stop wearing their uniforms or other insignia within 30 days, but in another concession to the group's leaders, they agreed to give them 90 days before they must officially disband as a uniformed force.
"General Ceku said we had to ease them out of their role," a senior diplomat involved in the talks said. "We couldn't just throw them out in the cold."
That will ensure that the visible presence of the group, which spread to virtually every city and village in Kosovo as the Serbian forces withdrew over the last 11 days, remains through the summer. Thousands of Serbian civilians have fled Kosovo, citing the presence of the fighters, whom they fear as terrorists bent on violent domination.
At his news conference, Jackson again pledged that NATO would be even-handed in enforcing the peace, protecting all of the province's civilians, Albanians, Serbs and Gypsies. "I hope all -- and I stress all -- who left in fear will return," he said.
Jackson also apologized for the widespread looting and burning of Serbian homes on Sunday -- in several instances under the watch of NATO troops -- as the last Yugoslav army and police units withdrew. Referring in particular to the village of Grace, where several homes were destroyed by Albanians, he said, "On that occasion we fell short of what I would have wanted."
He also took pains to emphasize that the document signed Monday was a "unilateral undertaking" on the part of the rebels to abide by the conditions laid out in the U.N. Security Council resolution governing NATO's peacekeeping mission.
Underscoring the sensitivity of appearing to endorse the creation of a provisional army, he insisted that this was not a formal pact with NATO, like the one with Yugoslav generals that laid out the deadlines for withdrawing their troops.
That part of the agreement proved to be the final obstacle in talks that began on the military level in Albania on Tuesday and continued straight through Saturday, when Thaci become involved as the rebels' "commander in chief." The paragraph dealing with an army was repeatedly inserted and taken out, until NATO's negotiators realized that the rebels would not agree without it.
"We had to show them respect," the senior diplomat said. "These are fighters who have been through a lot."
With the concessions, the rebel leaders clearly were pleased with the agreement, even though, for now, it means handing over their weapons to NATO. "The KLA has been fighting to achieve what we have achieved today," Thaci said.
He added that the KLA would be transformed "in both the political and military aspect." As for the military, he said the group would seek only to "become a defensive army." The agreement also called for the rebels to be given "special consideration" for posts with a new civilian police force in Kosovo "in view of the expertise they have developed."
Once the deal was signed, President Clinton and Albright called Thaci to express support for the rebels' willingness to abide by NATO's demands and begin a transition to civilian life.
"They understood that it was a very difficult decision for the KLA after for so long pursing their objectives through military means," Rubin said, "that it was a difficult act of political courage to transform this organization."
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Message: 8 Date: Tue, 22 Jun 1999 18:07:15 -0400
Subject: NucNews-1 6/22/99 - Vanunu-Israel; Treaties: ABM, CTBT, Start1&2
1. Israel Partially Lifts Gag Order
Monday, June 21, 1999; 9:13 a.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990621/V000173-062199-idx.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- The Supreme Court decided today to partially lift a gag order on the case of Mordechai Vanunu, a former nuclear technician serving 18 years for disclosing Israel's nuclear secrets.
The court will release the material Tuesday after the state prosecutor and security officials decide what can be published, said court spokesman Moshe Gorali.
Vanunu was tried in secrecy by the Jerusalem District Court in the late 1980s and was convicted of treason for giving detailed information about Israel's nuclear program, including photographs, to The Sunday Times of London in 1986.
Based on the information, foreign experts estimated that Israel at the time had the world's sixth largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.
Vanunu has said he was lured from London to Rome, and taken by Israeli agents back to Israel.
In a closed-door hearing today, the Supreme Court rejected his request to be freed and returned to Italy.
However, Prosecutor Dvora Chen said after the hearing that the state agreed that much of the censorship shrouding the case could be lifted.
Avigdor Feldman, Vanunu's lawyer, said his client's mental health has improved since he was released from solitary confinement last year.
Vanunu, 44, is being held at a prison in the coastal city of Ashkelon.
Earlier this year, 36 members of Congress -- all Democrats -- asked President Clinton to intervene on Vanunu's behalf.
A St. Paul, Minn., couple, peace activists Nicholas and Mary Eoloff, have legally adopted Vanunu under a state law that allows adults to adopt adults.
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2. Battle brewing on missile defense
By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES http://www.washtimes.com/news/news3.html
The Clinton administration is heading for a confrontation with Congress over legislation that would make it U.S. policy to deploy a nationwide defense against missile attack.
President Clinton is expected to sign the legislation as early as next week. Congressional backers say the measure will require missile defense deployment, but administration officials contend they are not required to do so.
Mr. Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed in Cologne, Germany, on Sunday to continue talks this fall on possible changes to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The pact prohibits deploying missile defenses that protect either side's entire national territory.
White House National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger told reporters in Cologne that a U.S. national missile-defense deployment decision will not be made before June 2000.
Mr. Berger also said the administration softened its position on first requiring Russia's parliament to ratify the START II nuclear arms treaty before moving ahead with a START III pact. Negotiators will report to Mr. Clinton and Mr. Yeltsin by July 30 on a new arms pact.
As for Mr. Clinton and Mr. Yeltsin's ABM talks: "What they have agreed to is to consider possible changes in the strategic situation that have a bearing on the ABM Treaty," Mr. Berger told reporters.
Mr. Berger said that verbal formulation means, "in English," that U.S. and Russian officials will talk about a new strategic arms reduction treaty, or START III, and "modifications to the ABM treaty that may be occasioned by a national missile defense system, if we were to deploy one."
He said it was the first time Russia had agreed to discuss such ABM Treaty changes. In the past, Moscow has opposed any effort to modify the treaty. The president, too, has insisted the ABM pact remain the centerpiece of U.S.-Russia relations.
Robert Bell, a senior National Security Council aide, said the Cologne ABM discussion was "very significant" because the Russians for the first time recognized their obligation under the ABM Treaty to consider amendments. During the Yugoslav bombing, senior Moscow officials said they were adamantly opposed to any ABM changes, he said.
Mr. Bell said the United States has not yet drawn up specific ABM amendments to propose to the Russians when senior officials meet later this summer for the first round of talks.
"We're working hard on that," he said.
Treaty changes under consideration will go beyond modifying the central Article 1, which states that neither the United States nor Russia will deploy a defense of the national territory, Mr. Bell said.
Sen. Thad Cochran, a key sponsor of a bill that passed both the House and Senate that would require a missile defense system to be deployed as soon as possible, took issue with Mr. Berger's position.
"I wish the administration would be up front and candid with the Russians about the need to change the ABM treaty," said the Mississippi Republican. "Either change it, or we should withdraw from it."
Once the president signs the missile defense bill, perhaps as early as next week, "it will be the law of the land and a new policy will be in effect that says we have to deploy a national missile defense," Mr. Cochran said in an interview.
"That means, in my mind they should be discussing with the Russians immediately, and they are going to have to make some changes in the ABM treaty, or we're going to have to withdraw from it," he said.
Any delays or postponement of those formal negotiations "will seriously put in jeopardy our relationship with Russia," the senator said. "We shouldn't try to pretend this bill doesn't state clearly that deployment is required. It clearly does."
Instead of discussing possible changes, "we should be making the ABM treaty accommodate that decision," Mr. Cochran said.
Senior White House officials have said the missile defense bill does not require deployment because it lacks language about funding, and because of several minor amendments added by Democrats.
Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican and the key House sponsor of the missile defense bill, said Mr. Berger should not be interpreting the will of Congress as stated in the legislation.
"Until he runs for Congress, he's not the guy who interprets our legislation," Mr. Weldon said. "The interpretation is that it means deployment now. Our position is that it's the policy of this government to deploy a national missile defense now, when the president signs that bill."
As for Mr. Berger's view that the administration will not be bound to the deployment legislation, "he is wrong and we're not going to stand for it," Mr. Weldon said.
A Senate defense aide said Mr. Berger's suggestion that ABM Treaty changes may not be needed "is a demonstration of the administration's continued lack of seriousness" on national missile defense.
"There is no question that national missile-defense deployment requires changes to the ABM Treaty, beginning with Article 1," the aide said. That provision states that neither side will deploy a defense of their national territory or make preparations for one.
Also, the missile defense bill passed both the House and Senate by large majorities, stating that it will be U.S. policy to deploy a national defense "as soon as the technology to do so is ready," the aide said.
"The question of whether to deploy NMD is resolved, not withstanding Mr. Berger's statement," he said.
The Russian lower house leader, Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov, said in Moscow yesterday the prospects for ratification of the START II treaty are doubtful, despite Mr. Yeltsin's statement to Mr. Clinton that he is committed to passage.
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3. Helms Faces Off With White House on Missed ABM Treaty Deadline
By Thomas W. Lippman, Washington Post, June 21, 1999; Page A05 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/21/115l-062199-idx.html
There are limits, it seems, to the detente Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright forged two years ago with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), and the administration crossed one of them June 1.
That was Helms's deadline for the Clinton administration to submit for Senate ratification modifications negotiated with Russia to the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty. Helms believes the amendments would fail to receive the two-thirds vote required for ratification, an outcome that in his view would scuttle the entire ABM treaty, which he and other congressional conservatives have long sought to abandon.
The administration is required by law to submit the amendments, but for political and strategic reasons is not prepared to do so now. So it ignored the deadline. Helms is trying to force the issue.
His staff has drafted legislative language to make future treaty ratifications -- not just on arms control but on any issue of Helms's choosing -- conditional upon submission of the ABM amendments. The language, which Helms as committee chairman has the power to attach to any future ratification measure, would prohibit the White House from putting any new treaty into effect until the ABM amendments go to the Senate.
Helms could simply prevent new treaties from coming up for ratification votes, but doing that would enable the administration to depict him as an irresponsible obstructionist, congressional staff aides and administration officials said. By moving treaties through but attaching the limiting language on implementation, he shifts the burden to the White House.
Helms had served notice on the administration that he would not move toward ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty -- the showpiece of President Clinton's arms control policy -- until the ABM amendments have been considered.
"It's amazing how much power a chairman can wield," said Joseph Cirincione, chairman of the Nonproliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The outcome of a vote would be very time-sensitive. It depends on what's happening internationally. If Helms were to force it today, I think the treaty would lose" because of Russia's unauthorized troop deployment in Kosovo, new threats from North Korea and the Chinese nuclear espionage scandal.
The Cold War may have ended, but the intense debates about nuclear arms control that it spawned have not. As China's military power grows and countries such as North Korea and Iran develop missiles that can strike far beyond their borders, the Clinton administration has sought to address these threats by amending and extending agreements that originated in the Soviet era, while defense hawks in Congress want to expand U.S. defenses against threats that they believe cannot be warded off by words on paper.
The proposed amendments to the ABM treaty form the arena where much of this struggle is taking place.
The treaty essentially bars the construction of defense systems that could intercept or shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles. The theory was that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union would begin a nuclear attack if it was unable to defend itself against the retaliatory barrage of nuclear missiles that would surely ensue. The treaty prohibits mobile and sea-based defense systems and limits each side to one fixed site with no more than 100 interceptors.
Since the pact was signed, two developments that no one foresaw at the time have created the need to amend the treaty. One was the breakup of the Soviet Union. One set of pending amendments would make the treaty multilateral by bringing in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, former Soviet republics that gave up nuclear weapons when they became independent.
The other development was the proliferation of shorter-range "theater" missiles, such as Iraq's SCUDS, which do not threaten the U.S. mainland but could reach U.S. or allied troops in the field in the Middle East or South Korea. The second set of ABM amendments would define the difference between strategic or intercontinental missiles, against which defenses are prohibited, and theater missiles, which are not covered.
Helms has argued that the ABM treaty expired when the Soviet Union did. The treaty partner having ceased to exist, the pact has no more force than a treaty with the Ottoman Empire, in his view. Administration officials say Russia is a valid successor party to the Soviet Union and the dozens of treaties it signed.
Helms denounced "the Clinton administration's stubborn adherence to the antiquated and defunct ABM treaty" as the biggest obstacle to development of a national missile defense system.
Several other Republican senators, such as Jon Kyl (Ariz.) and Thad Cochran (Miss.), share Helms's disdain for the treaty while not necessarily endorsing his tactics. They have argued that the pact unnecessarily limits U.S. options in developing both theater and national missile defense systems, which they see as increasingly needed to defend against the new threats.
Helms has not surfaced his treaty-limiting language publicly, and the administration has not indicated how it would respond. Under language putting a separate arms control treaty into effect, the administration is required to submit the ABM amendments for Senate action, but a senior official said it will not do so until the Russian parliament ratifies the START II nuclear arms reduction treaty.
The parliament has persistently balked at doing that, but a senior administration official expressed hope that the impasse could be nearing an end. "Every indication we have is that with Kosovo behind us, the Russians are prepared to work the problem," he said. "We'd like to send [the amendments] up in connection with positive movement by the Russians on strategic reduction."
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4. This Treaty Must Be Ratified
By Paul H. Nitze and Sidney D. Drell, Monday, June 21, 1999; Page A19 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/21/070l-062199-idx.html
For more than five decades, we have served in a variety of foreign policy, national security and intelligence positions for both Republican and Democratic administrations. A common thread in our experience is that our national interest is best served when America leads. When America hesitates, opportunities to improve our security are lost, and our strategic position suffers. This year, America has an opportunity to lead a global effort to strengthen nuclear nonproliferation by ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
This fall, a review conference will meet to discuss ways to bring the CTBT into effect even if it has not been approved by all 44 nuclear-capable nations (i.e., those states with nuclear reactors for research or power). The United States was the first nation to sign the CTBT in September 1996; 151 nations have now followed that lead. The U.S. Senate, however, has refused to consider ratification of the treaty, and only those nations that have ratified it will have a seat at this fall's conference. Approval of the CTBT by the Senate is essential in order for the United States to be in the strongest possible position to press for the early enforcement of this vital agreement. Failure to act will undercut our diplomatic efforts to combat the threat from the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
The president rightly has referred to the CTBT as the "longest-sought, hardest-fought prize in the history of arms control." President Eisenhower was the first American leader to pursue a ban on nuclear testing as a means to curb the nuclear arms race. Today, such a ban would constrain advanced and not-so-advanced nuclear weapons states from developing more sophisticated and dangerous nuclear weapons capabilities.
This is particularly important in South Asia. Last year, both India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests, threatening a dangerous escalation of their nuclear arms competition. Both countries now have expressed a commitment to adhere to the CTBT this year. U.S. ratification would remove any excuse for inaction on the part of these nations and would strengthen their resolve.
The CTBT also fulfills a commitment made by the nuclear powers in gaining the agreement of 185 nations to extend indefinitely the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1995. The NPT remains the cornerstone of the worldwide effort to limit the spread of nuclear weapons and reduce nuclear danger.
We strongly embrace President Reagan's vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. The administration needs to engage Russia on deep reductions in nuclear forces, despite the disruption in our bilateral relations resulting from the crisis in the Balkans. In the meantime, the United States will be able to maintain the safety and reliability of its own stockpile through the Department of Energy's science-based stockpile stewardship program. Our confidence in this program underpins our judgment that there is no technical reason why the CTBT is not the right thing to do.
President Reagan's maxim -- trust but verify -- is still true today. With the CTBT, the United States will gain new tools to assess compliance with a ban on nuclear testing -- including the right to request a short-notice, on-site inspection if we had evidence that a test might have occurred. Combined with the treaty's extensive international monitoring regime and our own intelligence resources, the CTBT is effectively verifiable.
The Senate has an obligation to review expeditiously major treaties and agreements entered into by the Executive so that the world can be sure of America's course. When President Reagan signed the INF Treaty in December 1987, which eliminated an entire class of missiles, hearings in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee began within weeks, and the Senate voted to approve the a treaty within six months. In comparison, the CTBT was signed by President Clinton more than 2 1/2 years ago but still awaits its first hearing.
In May 1961, President Eisenhower said that not achieving a nuclear test ban "would have to be classed as the greatest disappointment of any administration -- of any decade -- of any time and of any party." Similarly, failure to ratify the CTBT would have to be regarded as the greatest disappointment of any Senate, of any time, of any party. We urge the Senate to ratify the CTBT now.
Paul H. Nitze is a former arms control negotiator and was an ambassador-at-large in the Reagan administration. Sidney D. Drell is an adviser to the federal government on national security issues.
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5. U.S.-Russian Arms Treaties
By The Associated Press Sunday, June 20, 1999; 2:43 p.m. EDT http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990620/V000749-062099-idx.html
President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin agreed Sunday to renew arms control efforts. A look at the treaties in question:
* Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty: The ABM treaty, signed in 1972 by the United States and the now-extinct Soviet Union, prohibits deployment of a nationwide defense against strategic ballistic missile attack. The two presidents on Sunday agreed to possibly reopen the ABM treaty. Congress is pressing Clinton to deploy a limited anti-missile defense system, which could require changing the treaty, something Moscow has fiercely opposed. Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has said the ABM treaty belongs in the ``dust bin of history'' because the Soviet Union no longer exists. ABM modifications agreed to earlier by Clinton and Yeltsin concern how the treaty affects other former Soviet republics as well as Russia, but the Clinton administration doesn't want to submit them to the Senate until the Russian parliament ratifies START II.
* Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty II: START II, which would limit Russia and the United States to each possess 3,500 nuclear warheads, was signed by President Bush in January 1993 and ratified by the Senate three years later. But the Russian parliament has still not acted on it. Yeltsin promised Sunday to put pressure on the Duma, the lower house of parliament, to pass START II, and both he and Clinton agreed to a new round of nuclear weapons talks called START III. START III could bring warhead levels down to 2,000 for each country.
* Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty I: Under START I, signed in 1991, the United States and Russia each had more than 10,000 strategic nuclear warheads at the beginning of the decade. The START I treaty is bringing the figure down to 6,000 each. The former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakstan have disposed of the warheads they inherited.
Source: U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Associated Press reports.