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Today In History
The Associated Press Thursday, Sept. 23, 1999; 8:01 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19990923/aponline200102_000.htm
Today is Friday, Sept. 24, the 267th day of 1999. There are 98 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History:
On Sept. 24, 1789, Congress passed the First Judiciary Act, which provided for an attorney general and a Supreme Court.
On this date:
... In 1929, Lt. James H. Doolittle guided a Consolidated NY-2 Biplane over Mitchel Field in New York in the first all-instrument flight....
In 1960, the USS Enterprise, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, was launched at Newport News, Va.
In 1963, the U.S. Senate ratified a treaty with Britain and the Soviet Union limiting nuclear testing....
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Ukraine sees no New Year repeat of Chernobyl blast
Reuters Sep 24, 1999
By Christina Ling
http://www.dogpile.com - search Infoseek
KIEV, Sep 24 (Reuters) - Ukrainian officials said on Friday the former Soviet republic's nuclear power network had passed tests for the millennium bug and ruled out any New Year Day recurrence of a disaster akin to the 1986 Chernobyl explosion.
``You can write it in block capitals -- in Ukraine there will be no second Chernobyl,'' First Deputy Energy Minister Serhiy Yermilov told a news conference. ``We have checked every last computer and we will keep checking up to the New Year itself.''
Ministry officials, clearly smarting from Ukraine's special mention in British and U.S. reports of potential millennium bug trouble spots around the world, said every contingency had been examined at nuclear and conventional power stations.
``We have a plan even for if an F-15 jet falls on the roof of a nuclear reactor, which is a lot more scary than any computer problem or virus,'' Yermilov said.
Both the British Foreign Office and U.S. State Department suggested electricity, transport, defence and other systems were vulnerable to possible problems. The British report cautioned against travel to Ukraine over the New Year.
Computer experts fear that older computers, which were programmed using just two numbers to designate the year, will read 00 as 1900 instead of 2000 and possibly cause data-sensitive systems to crash or shut down.
Ukrainian officials said tests had produced no unexpected reactions when the figures 00 were entered into computers at the country's 14 nuclear power reactors -- while the reactors themselves were switched off.
``Not a single computer in the management systems or safety systems of a single nuclear power reactor is linked to astronomical time,'' said Mykola Vlasenko, head of engineering support at national atomic energy authority EnergoAtom.
``That is the most important thing of all that I will say about the safety of the reactors in the period of transfer between 1999 and 2000. And therefore there can be no unexpected halt in the reactors' operation.''
Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency had already double-checked two nuclear stations and another mission would check the remaining plants in October. A U.S. team had also checked the stations, he said.
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded in 1986, sending clouds of radioactive dust over Russia, Ukraine and other parts of Europe.
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Y2k Web Resources Government Sites
ABC News, downloaded September 24, 1999
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/tech/y2k/y2k_resources.html
European Commission Year 2000 Page
The best central source of European Y2K information, the EC page includes regular countrywide reports plus updates on scheduled EC Y2K workshops.
http://www.ispo.cec.be/y2keuro/year2000.htm
U.S. Federal Government's Y2K Page
An extensive list of all sectors affected by the Y2K bug, including food, business, energy and health care. Includes the text of the Year 2000 Information Readiness and Disclosure Act and information on becoming Y2K-compliant.
http://www.y2k.gov/java/y2kinformation.html
Federal Government's State Page
Part of the federal government's Y2K site, this page shows a map of the United States. Click on your state to find out what it's doing to combat Y2K.
http://www.y2k.gov/java/abouty2k6.html
From the White House
The White House Y2K site includes the October 1998 statement from President Clinton about Y2K preparedness, and the administration's Y2K plan.
http://www.y2k.gov/new/finalst.htm
President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion
The President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion toll-free number offers pre-recorded information on the most commonly asked questions. Information specialists supported by researchers are available to provide additional information. The recorded information is available 24 hours a day; specialists staff the line from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST, Monday - Friday. 1-888-USA-4-Y2K.
Business/Finance Sites
Dr. Yardeni's Y2K Page
Run by the chief economist for Deutsche Bank Securities, this site features a rich stew of Y2K reporting and information plus a Corporate Disclosure Database that includes official filings and reports from S&P 500 companies. Yardeni's gloomy findings may surprise you.
http://www.yardeni.com/cyber.html
The Y2K Investor
This site is basically an ad for The Year 2000 Computer Crisis: An Investor's Survival Guide, by market analyst and Y2K alarmist Tony Keyes. However, it has some disturbing information, including quotes from members of congress, and some useful investment advice and links to other sites.
http://www.y2kinvestor.com/intro.html
World Bank Year 2000 Initiative
Created by the World Bank's "infoDev" office, this site features information on Y2K designed for developing countries. It also includes the World Bank's own readiness disclosure statement, plus a host of Y2K resources in English, French, Spanish and other languages.
http://www.worldbank.org/y2k/index.htm
MiningCo.com
This site has everything a small-business owner needs to know about Y2K. This site includes chats every Sunday and Thursday, a bulletin board to post questions, and small-business and international news. A section of links connects you to Y2K pages of major corporations, public and private agencies, the federal government and even Y2K humor sites.
http://sbinformation.miningco.com/library/weekly/aa021998.htm
Small Business Administration
The U.S. government's Small Business Administration created this site for small-business owner. It features everything entrepreneurs need to know to prepare their systems for Y2K. The site includes a Y2K self-assessment and an outline of steps to take. You can also call them at 800-U-ASK-SBA.
http://www.sba.gov/y2k/
Press
2K Times
A newspaper dedicated to millennium issues, including articles, links and papers written about the rollover.
http://www.2k-times.com/y2k.htm
BBC Online
A great site for an introduction to overall Y2K issues.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/cdb/bug/index.shtml
ZDY2K.com
The comprehensive Ziff-Davis Y2K features daily news updates and a list of corporations and agencies that are already Y2K-compliant. It ranks among the best one-stop Web sites for general Y2K coverage.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdy2k/
Financial Times
The London-based daily's Y2K coverage focuses, as you might expect, on the financial sector. This site tracks industries and markets, and how they are handling Y2K issues.
http://www.ft.com/y2k/
The Economist: Y2K Survey
This multipart report by the authoritative London-based newsweekly is as illuminating, and provocative, a piece of journalism on the subject as you'll find.
http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/19-9-98/index_survey.html
The New York Times
The Times' site includes some of the best U.S. coverage of the Y2K problem. This page includes an archive of news about Y2K, along with plenty of general information.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/reference/millennium-index.html
Clearinghouses
Year 2000 Information Center The Year 2000 Information Center, billed as "a forum for disseminating information about the year 2000 problem, and for the discussion of possible solutions," offers comprehensive information including links to Y2K-fix vendors, an e-mail update service and even a Y2K humor contest.
http://www.year2000.com/
Y2K.com
Founded by technology lawyers, this site originally dealt with the legal and technical aspects of the Year 2000 bug. It now includes a wealth of information, from news to Y2K merchandise.
http://www.y2k.com
Vendors/Applications
Vendor 2000
Produced by Electronic Data Systems in conjunction with John Koskinen, chairman of President Clinton's Y2K commission, Vendor 2000 is "the world's largest database of compliance information detailing thousands of hardware and software components and their progress towards compliance." It's designed for companies from small businesses to large corporations.
http://www.eds.com/general/cio_services/offerings/cio_services_offerings_vendor2000.shtml
NSTL's Y2K Site
NSTL is an independent information technology testing organization that provides testing services to developers, corporations and governments worldwide. From this site you can download a free version of NSTL's YMARK2000 testing software.
http://www.nstl.com/html/nstl_y2k.html
Computer Experts (UK) Ltd.
Downloadable from this site, the Millennium Bug Toolkit demo performs eight out of the 10 essential checks on your PC.
http://www.computerexperts.co.uk/demo/index.htm
EUY2k.com
This Web site is intended to educate electricity consumers, both commercial and residential, about the Y2K issues relating to the electric utility industry. This site includes information from utility companies around the world about what they are doing to prepare for the year 2000.
http://www.euy2k.com/newsroom.htm
Millennium Bug Home Check
Includes a list of domestic appliances that may be affected by the Y2K bug, a list of manufacturers and their year 2000 status and retailers' statements on their year 2000 policies. Click here to ensure your own house is running on Jan. 1, 2000.
http://domestic.bug2000.co.uk/index4.shtml
Y2K Links
A large collection of links to sites dealing with the professional issues surrounding Y2K. Y2K Links is also the hub of the Year 2000 Millennium Resource Site Ring, a group of Web sites dedicated to the year 2000 problem. Y2K Links also includes a database called Millie: ask any Y2K question and Millie will attempt to find the answer.
http://www.y2klinks.com
2000 Am I Safe?
Offers personalized information about companies and their Y2K status. Also featured are tips about industries such as banking, health care, telecommunications and electricity.
http://www.2000amisafe.com/
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Arms-Control Stall
Washington Post Friday, September 24, 1999; Page A30
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/24/006l-092499-idx.html
For Charles Krauthammer to suggest that signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is intended to lead through the "power of example" is silly [op-ed, Sept. 10]. The reason why India will not sign this treaty or the nonproliferation treaty is, in fact, because it is following our example -- i.e., India sees no reason to forgo nuclear weapons when those who have the most nuclear weapons will not divest themselves of them, despite promising to do so when they signed the nonproliferation treaty.
That was the deal -- nonnuclear powers would agree to refrain from developing them if the nuclear powers would work toward eliminating their own weapons. We and Russia still have thousands, and although Russia's are fast decaying, we have been stalled in arms negotiations for years.
It is not "moral example" that counts but rather genuine, multilateral negotiation toward disarmament. Instead, we are "shocked, shocked" when others follow our immoral example.
MARJORIE RAMPHAL
Sandy Spring, Md.
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London Times September 24 1999 BUSINESS NEWS,
http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/99/09/24/timbizbiz01005.html?999
Peco in nuclear merger PECO ENERGY, British Energy's American partner, has agreed to a merger that will create the biggest operator of nuclear plants in the US. Peco and British Energy are in the process of buying the nuclear power station on Three Mile Island through a joint venture called AmerGen, which is in the process of buying three other nuclear reactor sites in the US. Peco yesterday announced it has agreed to merge with Unicom, another US electricity provider, in a deal that should create a company worth about $15 billion (£9 billion). A Peco spokesman said the deal would not change the relationship with British Energy.
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Environmental Law & Policy Center Statement on Unicom PECO Merger
Company Press Release September 23
SOURCE: Environmental Law & Policy Center
Statement by Howard Learner, executive director, ELPC:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/990923/il_environ_1.html
CHICAGO,Today's announcement of the merger between ComEd and PECO Energy is the biggest example of nuclear fusion in history. The two largest nuclear utilities in the country are combining forces to compete in the new deregulated electricity market. While the new $31.8 billion company may reward shareholders, what value does this produce for the Illinois public? The public wants lower rates, more reliable service, and cleaner power. Illinois and federal officials should be asking some fair questions, and the Illinois Legislature, ICC, NRC and FERC should demand some straight answers.
First, does this merger lead to better reliability? ComEd's management needs to focus on improving basic electricity service and dealing with the utility's outage. Let's make sure the urge to merge does not leave customers in the dark.
-- Second, will the public be stuck with the tab for decommissioning? ComEd is woefully short on funding for the future decommissioning of its plants. Will ComEd and PECO provide the financial commitment to safely operate and then close their nuclear plants, or will the public be left holding the bag for costly and unsafe radioactive waste? The NRC needs to take a hard look at these plants, both present and future, to make sure they can be operated then shut down safely without sticking the public with a million-dollar bill.
-- Third, how will ComEd and PECO reduce pollution by using cleaner power resources and energy efficiency? Illinois has a burgeoning clean energy industry that can create new, local jobs and protect the environment at the same time. Motorola, Spire, Maytag, and NEG Micon, are all Illinois businesses that will benefit from increased use of renewable energy and energy efficiency. These are the new clean energy jobs of the future. With the right strategic vision, this new company could create a win-win opportunity for our environment and our economy.
-- Finally, right now consumers in Pennsylvania can choose their own electricity supplier, while Illinois residents must wait until May, 2002. Why should Illinois customers get second-class service? Illinois residential consumers should get the benefits of competition now, just like Pennsylvania customers.
The Environmental Law and Policy Center looks forward to working with Illinois public officials, regulatory agencies, ComEd and PECO to address these merger issues as they develop. ELPC is a Chicago-based non-profit environmental advocacy organization specializing in energy, transportation, environmental markets, and natural areas preservation.
SOURCE: Environmental Law & Policy Center
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Peco and Unicom Announce Merger
New York Times September 24, 1999
By AGIS SALPUKAS
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/utilities-merger.html
Photo Nuclear Power Plants
http://graphics.nytimes.com/99/09/24/news/financial/utilities-merger.1.jpg
The Peco Energy Company, Philadelphia's electric utility, and the Unicom Corporation, the owner of the electric company that serves Chicago, announced Thursday that they planned a $16 billion merger that would create the nation's largest collection of nuclear plants.
The combined company intends to sell electricity in major markets around the country as states open up their utilities to competition, betting that its nuclear plants will produce energy more cheaply than competing sources of power.
"These companies are going to be a nuclear powerhouse," said Robert Rubin, a utility analyst with Bear, Stearns & Company who has followed the trend closely. He said that if the plants were managed well, the combined company would have "a substantial edge in terms of being able to market power and make money."
A company with access to huge amounts of nuclear power could squeeze out a profit while undercutting the prices of other marketers, Rubin said. That could eventually push down rates for customers.
The merger, which is subject to approvals by an array of regulatory agencies, would bring together Unicom's four nuclear plants, with a capacity of 13,470 megawatts, and two nuclear plants operated by Peco, with 4,070 megawatts of capacity. The two companies have more than five million customers in Pennsylvania and Illinois.
In addition, Peco has formed a joint venture with British Energy P.L.C. called Amergen, which has bought four nuclear plants and is negotiating to buy a fifth. Amergen already owns plants with total capacity of 3,625 megawatts. The new Peco-Unicom combination, which has not yet been named, would assume Peco's role in Amergen, executives said.
Altogether, the nuclear plants associated with the combined company would represent about 17 percent of the nation's nuclear capacity.
Corbin A. McNeill Jr., the chairman and chief executive of Peco, announced the merger at a news conference in Philadelphia along with John W. Rowe, the chairman and chief executive of Unicom.
McNeill, a former nuclear submarine commander, said that Amergen was interested in acquiring more nuclear plants. "We intend to be the premier nuclear operator in the nation," he said.
Under the merger terms, Peco stockholders will receive one share in the new holding company for each share of Peco stock, or $45 in cash.
Unicom shareholders would get 0.95 share in the new holding company for each share of Unicom stock, or $42.75 in cash.
The cash price is a premium of about 11 percent to average stock prices of Peco and Unicom over a 10-day period through Wednesday.
Shares of Peco closed yesterday at $36.4375, down $1.6875, and Unicom closed at $36.25, down 81.25 cents, in trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
The transaction is not expected to add debt, Rubin said, and therefore will save in interest expense.
The executives said that about 5 percent of the combined work force of 22,500 would be phased out.
Rowe and McNeill intend to share responsibility in the new holding company, which will be based in Chicago, until the end of 2003, when Rowe will become chairman and the sole chief executive.
Both executives took pains to reassure customers in Philadelphia and Chicago that the utilities would also maintain staff members in both cities and support local institutions to which they have been important contributors.
Rowe, who was brought into Unicom in March of 1998 because of his experience as a troubleshooter, said his company would continue to focus on repairing the transmission system of its subsidiary, Commonwealth Edison. "It's going to be hard work but we don't flinch from that," he said.
In August, a series of blackouts shut down the Chicago Board of Trade and the Field Museum for short periods and Chicago's Loop lost power one afternoon.
Martin Cohen, the executive director of the Citizens Utility Board, the official watchdog group for consumers in Chicago, said that Unicom had had problems operating its nuclear plants in the past, but it brought in Oliver D. Kingsley Jr., an expert, as executive vice president in charge of nuclear operations. He said that there had been a sharp turnaround in the nuclear operation.
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Russia bombs Chechen capital
BBC News September 24, 1999
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_456000/456379.stm
Three years ago the Russian army retreated from Grozny
Russian warplanes have raided the Chechen capital, Grozny, for the second successive day.
The attack came as the breakaway republic was put on war footing by its President, Aslan Maskhadov.
According to the French news agency, four planes flew over Grozny targetting a former military base now used as a police station and Chechen television installations south-east of the capital.
Russia began air strikes on Chechnya on Thursday, the first such attack since its troops were forced out of the republic three years ago.
Russian officials said the raids were intended to prevent Chechen-based guerrillas to spread subversion through the North Caucasus, especially in neighbouring Dagestan.
Chechen commanders have been told by their government to prepare for a fresh Russian invasion. A spokesman for Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov said the republic was preparing a defence plan in case the strikes continue.
Said-Selim Abdulmuslimov said Chechen military units would soon be receiving sealed orders containing details of missions to be carried out if Russia launched further attacks.
On Thursday, Russian planes and missiles bombarded targets in Grozny, destroying a radar station, aircraft and setting an oil refinery in the northeast of the city ablaze.
The Russian RIA news agency reported "suffocating black smoke" over the city and a "roaring wall of fire up to 100 metres high" in the Staropromyslovskiy district.
Police said five people were killed in the bombing.
Mobilisation of troops
Over the weekend, Moscow said it had deployed some 30,000 Russian troops in an operation to seal the border of Chechnya.
Interior forces are reported to be taking up positions in the strategic heights of Chechnya's neighbouring republic Ingushetia. A commander in the region said the move was defensive to prevent Chechen armed gangs from moving into Ingushetia.
The moves coincide with reports of mobilisation of hundreds of Chechen militants on the border.
Increasing numbers of refugees are also reported to be seeking to cross into Ingushetia, fearful of renewed military activity.
'No repeat of civil war'
But Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin says there are no plans for a large-scale military operation in Chechnya. He insisted on Thursday that Russia would not be dragged into a conflict similar to the 1994-96 secessionist war that left some 80,000 people dead.
The Russians have been fighting Chechen-led guerrillas in Dagestan who are trying to establish an independent Islamic state.
In the past two months, the Chechens have reported repeated incursions on or near the border with the republic of Dagestan.
Russian security forces have been maintaining a high profile on the streets of Moscow following recent bomb attacks on residential buildings.
Moscow blames the rebels for the blasts, an accusation denied by the Chechen authorities.
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Russian PM Urges Joint CIS Fight Against Terrorism
Reuters September 24, 1999
By Sujata Rao
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990924/05/international-russia-security
ASTANA, Kazakhstan (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Friday he would urge other former Soviet republics to join a fight against international terrorism threatening the region.
He was on a brief official visit to neighboring Kazakhstan, where he was due to meet prime ministers from four other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a loose grouping of 12 former Soviet nations.
"As you know we have the collective security treaty," he said, referring to a loose security pact among most of the former Soviet republics which is under threat as countries look to pursue independent security strategies.
"Now is the right time to give meaning to this agreement."
He spoke hours before Russian jets launched a new wave of attacks on Grozny, the capital of the breakaway Russian region of Chechnya, hitting a southern suburb.
Russian jets Thursday bombed Grozny's airport and destroyed its only working plane.
Russia says Chechnya harbors Muslim rebels who have launched attacks on the neighboring region of Dagestan and who are blamed for a wave of bomb attacks elsewhere in Russia.
Putin has drawn parallels between events at home and recent extremist attacks in the Central Asian region.
Hundreds of radical Islamic rebels have Kyrgyzstan's southwestern tip under siege after crossing from Tajikistan over a month ago and Russia has begun to send military equipment to the impoverished state to support its defenses.
A series of bomb blasts in Uzbekistan in February killed 16 and narrowly missed President Islam Karimov, who later blamed the attacks on Islamic opponents seeking to overthrow him.
"Most of the band of terrorists who have entered Kyrgyzstan are of foreign origin," Putin told reporters.
"I spoke recently with Uzbek President Karimov, and that country is very worried about the security situation in the region," he added.
Putin said the rebel uprising in Dagestan and ongoing tensions with Chechnya did not constitute civil war.
"I am absolutely sure there is no civil war in Russia, but there is a war which has been declared on Russia by international terrorists who have their eye on our country's rich mineral resources," he said.
"The unprovoked attack on Russian territory recently along with the latest barbarous acts in Buinaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk are proof of this," he added, referring to three cities hit by bombs which killed 300 people this month.
Thursday he said the air raids on Grozny did not mean Russia was preparing for a large-scale military operation in the province and saw no repeat of the 1994-96 Chechen war.
"Ahead of us are the presidential and parliamentary elections, and I believe that whoever comes to power will have no alternative but to destroy terrorism," Putin said.
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State Department Expert Upbeat at Inquiry Into Russian Money Laundering
New York Times September 24, 1999
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/092499russia-congress.html
WASHINGTON -- With President Clinton's top Russia expert testifying Thursday before his toughest critic in the Senate about accusations of Russian corruption and possible American complicity, the advance billing promised a dramatic confrontation.
But in the end, the exchange fizzled. The expert, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, largely sidestepped the queries of the critic, Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, and Helms hurried Talbott away from the witness table in less than an hour after just one round of questions, to make room for a panel of specialists.
In his remarks to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Talbott gave an unusually upbeat assessment of the widening investigation into accusations of Russian laundering of billions of dollars through American banks and whether top administration officials turned a blind eye to corruption at the highest levels of the Russian government.
"Corruption is an important issue that we are taking very seriously," Talbott said. "But we must keep in mind that it is part of a much larger process under way in a vast and complex country."
He politely ducked Helms' questions about American intelligence reports on Russian corruption and allegations against specific officials, and he suggested that the scandal was an unpleasant price to pay as a "result of an incomplete transition to democracy and market reform."
Glaring down from his seat, Helms clearly did not wholly accept Talbott's account. In his opening comments, the senator said the committee did not challenge the wisdom of "supporting or engaging Russia." But he expressed concern that the administration's policies might "have abetted corruption in Russia."
The only sharp exchange occurred when Helms twice asked Talbott whether aid from the International Monetary Fund, including American payments, had been siphoned off, possibly to offshore accounts. Talbott said there was no evidence fund money had been misappropriated.
"It's all right to say, 'I don't know,' but don't give me a convoluted answer," Helms responded.
The hearing was the last of three in the House and Senate that focused largely on how at least $4.2 billion, and perhaps as much as $10 billion, in Russian money flowed through the Bank of New York and how it was used. Bank executives have admitted lapses in procedures, and the administration and Congress rushed to tighten money-laundering laws and regulations.
Thursday, Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Attorney General Janet Reno announced the first package of proposed legislation and regulatory changes to combat the illicit flow of money through American financial institutions.
"Money laundering may look like a polite form of white-collar crime," Summers said. "But it is the companion of brutality, deceit and corruption."
The proposals would require check-cashing and money-transfer companies, brokerage houses and casinos to alert federal authorities of suspicious transactions in the same way banks already report such activity. In addition, the proposal would expand the number of crimes that would be subject to money-laundering prosecutions, among them fraud, arms trafficking and official corruption. Currently, cases can be brought only in limited circumstances.
The proposals were required under legislation that Congress approved last year, before the Russian banking inquiry became public.
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Russian Planes Bomb Chechnya Airport and Refinery
September 24, 1999
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
MOSCOW -- Russian warplanes bombed the Grozny airport in Chechnya on Thursday and set an oil refinery ablaze on the outskirts of the city, as the Kremlin took its military campaign against Islamic rebels deep into Chechen territory.
The Russian bombing raids near Chechnya's capital represented a major stepping-up of the fighting and signaled a change of strategy.
Until now, the Russian military has concentrated on bombing targets near the Chechen-Dagestan border. Now the Russian military appears ready to strike throughout Chechnya by air and perhaps even to stage raids on the ground.
Among the targets reported to have been hit were an arms depot and a radar installation.
The radar was an important target, according to Russian officials, because it tracked the flights of Russian warplanes. Its destruction will give the Russian Air Force more leeway to operate over Chechnya, they said.
Russian television showed the burning wreckage of an old biplane at the airport, one of the Chechen government's two planes, and blown-out windows in nearby buildings.
A pool of blood lay on the ground where an aircraft technician was killed in the raid, the first air attack on Grozny since the end of the Chechen war in 1996.
"The bandits will be pursued wherever they are," Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin said Thursday. "If that is at an airport, then at the airport."
Chechen officials, however, said the propeller plane was used for crop dusting and described the technician, an ethnic Armenian, as an innocent bystander.
Despite the stepped-up attacks, military experts generally discount the likelihood of an all-out Russian invasion of Chechnya. The Russian military is still smarting from its stinging defeat in the Chechen war, and the Government appears fearful of being drawn into a quagmire.
"We are planning no large-scale military operation in Chechnya," Putin said today.
The most recent fighting in the region began in August when thousands of Islamic militants stormed into the Russian republic of Dagestan and proclaimed their intention to turn it into an Islamic republic. They were under the command of Shamil Basayev, a Chechen warlord, and Khattab, a militant born in the Middle East.
The Russian military drove the militants out of Dagestan and has been fighting to keep them out. Initially, Putin vowed to crush the rebellion in two weeks. Instead, the conflict has turned into long-term test of wills.
For all their fervor, the rebels are opposed by most of the people in Dagestan and do not have the support of the government of the Chechen republic.
But while the Russians have the superior weaponry, they are not well trained, well led or highly motivated. At least 230 Russian soldiers have been killed and 875 wounded in the fighting.
Air strikes have played an increasingly important role in Russia's military strategy as Moscow has sought to hold down its losses. Some Russian commentators have even drawn a connection between NATO's air campaign in Kosovo and Russia's reliance on air power in Chechnya.
The Russian air attacks are far less intense and less precise than NATO's raids. Chechen officials have repeatedly complained that Russian planes have pounded innocent villages.
The Kremlin's decision to move up to 15,000 troops to the area near the Chechen border indicates that the military may be trying not only to seal the borders but also to prepare for the possibility of a series of raids into Chechnya after air strikes have softened the rebel positions.
The military is believed to have pushed for the air attacks, preferring to attack the rebels in their Chechen sanctuaries rather than tangle with them in the mountains of Dagestan.
The attacks carry a risk: They may turn more of the Chechen population against Moscow.
Thursday's strike against the airport took place around noon.
By destroying the biplane, the attack on the airport left the Chechen government with a single aircraft -- a damaged TU-134, the official plane of Chechnya's President, Aslan Maskhadov.
A second air strike was carried out later in the day.
The news agency Interfax said the strike had been directed at an oil refinery and had led to a major fire, but no television footage of that raid was broadcast. The Grozny area is ill-equipped to fight a major fire because much of its equipment was destroyed in the war.
Unlike the unpopular Chechen war, the current air strikes have the support of much of the Russian public, which believes that the recent wave of terrorist bombings that left more than 300 people dead has been the work of Chechen militants, although the rebels deny it.
But few Russians believe that the Government can insure there will be no more terrorist bombings. For the most part, the bombers have struck at night, toppling apartment buildings in Moscow and other Russian cities while their residents slept.
A new scare occurred on Thursday in Ryazan, a city southeast of Moscow, when some suspicious sacks were found in an apartment house. Initial reports said they contained an explosive and a timing device, but by evening investigators cautioned that details needed to be confirmed.
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N.Korea Says It's Freezing Missile Launches
Reuters September 24, 1999
By Teruaki Ueno
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990924/06/international-korea-missile
TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea said Friday it would freeze test-launches of long-range missiles while it was in talks with the United States.
The Korean Central News Agency, monitored in Tokyo, quoted a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying that "in order to create a favorable atmosphere" for the high-level talks between Pyongyang and Washington, North Korea would not launch missiles while those talks were in progress.
A high-level dialogue between Stalinist North Korea and Washington was opened in early September during talks in Berlin.
North Korea test-fired a three-stage missile last year, part of which flew over Japan, and intelligence reports have suggested it was preparing to launch soon another longer-range missile with the capacity to reach the U.S. states of Alaska and Hawaii.
U.S. officials had said Stalinist North Korea made a similar pledge not to test long-range missiles during the talks in Berlin, but Friday's announcement was the first public statement from Pyongyang formally pledging to suspend missile launches.
Washington last Friday said it was easing its long-standing ban on trade and investment with North Korea.
U.S. presidential envoy to North Korea William Perry said in Tokyo earlier Friday that he expected Pyongyang to make a definite announcement in coming weeks concerning the suspension of its missile program, but it was unclear if the KCNA statement was what he had in mind.
"North Korea has yet to make a public statement to take the action we are looking for here. But we expect and believe that it will happen. That is the small step I have been referring to," Parry told reporters, hours before Pyongyang issued the statement.
Perry also said North Korea's suspension of missile launches would be a "small step" and urged Pyongyang to take further action to defuse tension in the region so it could enjoy economic benefits.
U.S. officials have said the easing of economic sanctions was a first step toward more normal relations with the reclusive Stalinist state, a top U.S. security concern for more than four decades since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armed truce rather than a peace agreement.
Other strict sanctions based on the U.S. designation of North Korea as a terrorist state and on its exports of missile technology will remain in place, officials said.
These prohibit U.S. sales to North Korea of weapons or goods that also could be used in weapons manufacturing, support for international loans, and financial transactions between U.S. individuals and the North Korean government.
Famine-hit North Korea Tuesday urged Washington to lift those remaining sanctions as well as withdraw its forces from South Korea and sign a peace treaty in order to improve ties.
Japan has repeatedly said it wants to see a firmer commitment by North Korea not to launch missiles before it would ease its own economic sanctions, which it imposed after Pyongyang test-fired a missile that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific Ocean last August.
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ABB Wins Nuclear Fuel, Service and Retrofit Contracts
Valued At More Than US$ 100 Million
Sep 21, 1999
http://www.dogpile.com - search Infoseek
http://www.abb.com/GLOBAL/ABBZH/abbzh251.nsf/frmWebMainFrame?ReadForm&db=/GLOBAL/ABBZH/abbzh250.nsf&v=C&e=us&c=EEA5A05459F0F8DA412567F3003490DA
ZURICH, Switzerland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 21, 1999--ABB, the globalized technology and engineering company, has been awarded nuclear service, retrofit and fuel contracts with a total value of more than US$ 100 million from utilities in the U.S. and Germany.
The U.S. orders, with a combined value of more than US$ 85 million, were placed by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to service and retrofit three of their nuclear power plants. One of the contracts covers the supply of steam generator inspection, repair and engineering services for three units at TVA's Sequoyah 1 and 2 and Watts Bar plants through 2003. The Sequoyah and Watts Bar plants are located in Soddy-Daisy and Spring City, Tennessee, respectively, and began operation in the early and mid-1980s.
The second U.S. order is to replace four steam generators at the Sequoyah 1 plant. It includes project management, design and manufacturing of the replacement steam generators. The generators will be fabricated under license by Korea Heavy Industry and Construction Co. Ltd. (HANJUNG). Delivery is scheduled for October, 2002.
In Germany, ABB has entered into a long-term agreement with Bayernwerk AG, Isar-Amperwerke AG, and Bayernwerk Kernenergie GmbH to deliver three uranium fuel reloads to the Isar 1 nuclear power plant, located about 60 kilometers (37 miles) northeast of Munich. The deliveries are scheduled to take place between 2001 and 2007 and have a value of about US$ 20 million.
ABB's nuclear activities include new nuclear power plants, systems, components, field services, retrofits, fuel, fuel services, waste management and decommissioning. Along with the service- and financing-based distributed power business, and the renewable energy activities, ABB's nuclear energy business was not included in the recently-formed power generation joint venture ABB ALSTOM POWER.
ABB (http://www.abb.com) serves customers in power transmission and distribution; automation; oil, gas, and petrochemicals; industrial products and contracting; and in financial services. Power generation customers are served by the joint venture ABB ALSTOM POWER. The ABB Group employs about 175,000 people in more than 100 countries. (End)
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NUKE-FREE
CALL FOR NEW LOOK AT NUKE DISARMAMENT CAPE TOWN
Sept 23
http://www.bibim.com/anc/nw19990924/22.html
A fundamental shift in approach was needed to push the world's nuclear disarmament agenda forward, a coalition of foreign ministers from seven countries, including South Africa, said in a statement on Thursday.
Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Zuma and her counterparts from Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand and Sweden met in New York on Wednesday to take stock of progress in their initiative for a nuclear weapons-free world.
The ministers said a "degree of complacency" had crept into the international push for progress on nuclear disarmament.
The group, the New Agenda Coalition, said it would continue to urge what it called "the five nuclear weapon states" to make an unequivocal undertaking, at the highest political level, to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.
"This unequivocal undertaking should be manifested by an accelerated process of negotiations," the statement said.
The ministers also voiced concern at events in south Asia, and called on "the three states that are nuclear weapons capable", an apparent reference to China, India and Pakistan, to renounce their nuclear weapons option.
The coalition's draft resolution would be forwarded to the United Nations for consideration, the statement said.
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FOCUS-Schroeder to study new nuclear pullout plan
Reuters Sep 24, 1999
http://www.dogpile.com - search Infoseek
BERLIN, Sept 24 (Reuters) - Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will evaluate a new proposal to break a deadlock with Germany's top utilities over an election commitment to scrap nuclear power, his spokesman said on Friday.
Uwe-Karsten Heye told journalists Schroeder wanted urgently to meet leaders of his ecologist Greens coalition partners who put forward the proposal, which allows the sector more breathing space to manage the withdrawal than previous plans.
But the power companies involved are not convinced.
In a letter written on Monday and obtained by Reuters on Friday, chairmen of four main nuclear energy generators said they still preferred an earlier proposal by Economics Minister Werner Mueller, himself a former executive in the industry.
The new proposal by Environment Minister Juergen Trittin and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer -- two of the three Greens in Schroeder's cabinet -- would set out a universal upper limit for the amount of nuclear power that the firms may generate.
Within that limit -- measured either in megawatts or generating hours -- the firms can then decide among themselves which of the country's 19 reactors are closed when.
The advantage to the industry is that unlike previous plans calling for each reactor to be closed down 25 years after it came into service, it could choose to keep newer plants running longer by sacrificing their older plants, some of which are in any case uneconomical.
The chairmen of the main nuclear power providers -- RWE, Viag, Veba and Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg -- wrote to Fischer and Trittin on Monday saying they welcomed the ``positive atmosphere'' of talks with the two ministers on September 17 but underlining that differences remained.
``As before we consider...the proposals from minister Mueller as a suitable basis for consensus negotiations,'' they wrote.
In June, Mueller proposed allowing reactors to run for 35 years, which would have seen the last reactor closed only in 2023.
The election commitment -- made mainly at the behest of the Greens -- has been a millstone around Schroeder's neck, causing rows with industry and international partners who would lose lucrative reprocessing contracts from the withdrawal.
Schroeder has said he could not countenance any proposal which would leave his government open to compensation claims, either from the German firms or from waste reprocessors in Britain and France.
---
Greens offer new deal on German nuclear shut-down
Reuters Sep 23, 1999
http://www.dogpile.com - search Infoseek
BERLIN, Sept 23 (Reuters) - Germany's ecologist Greens, junior partners in Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government, have offered industry a new deal in an effort to agree on a timetable for the closure of the country's 19 nuclear plants.
Juergen Trittin -- the environment minister and one of three Greens in the cabinet -- has tempered his demands for a speedy exit from nuclear power to allow firms greater flexibility, said a spokesman at the environment ministry. He declined to discuss details.
``By agreeing a life-span for all nuclear power stations, firms will have more room to manoeuvre about when to shut down plants without this resulting in a greater total number of operating years or raising the amount of waste produced,'' said Trittin's spokesman Michael Schroeren.
Sources at Germany's nuclear providers, which together provide one-third of the country's electricity needs, said the deal suggested giving industry a total number of years they could run for and an electricity allowance within which they could then decide their own timetables.
For example, if one plant only ran economically for a further three years, its remaining operating years could be passed on to another plant or company. And since power stations come in different sizes, any remaining electricity production allowance could also be passed on.
The proposal, sketched out by Trittin and fellow Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer in a meeting with industry heads last Friday, also allows nuclear waste to be kept in special containers on site.
This would relieve the pressure on some power stations which face imminent closure unless they can get rid of their waste, but would not undo a government decision to block the transportation of waste for recycling elsewhere.
Officials from the nuclear industry -- which includes Veba, RWE, Viag and Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg -- said they were pleased that new plans were being suggested, but did not say whether this was likely to lead to a deal.
Previously, Economics Minister Werner Mueller, a former senior executive in the nuclear industry, came up with a plan to limit the operating life of nuclear plants to 35 years. This would mean the first unit would go off-line in 2003 and the last in 2024.
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Big powers worried by South Asian arms race
Reuters Sep 23, 1999
http://www.dogpile.com - search Infoseek
UNITED NATIONS, Sept 23 (Reuters) -The world's five main nuclear powers expressed concern on Thursday at an atomic arms race between India and Pakistan and implored both countries to show restraint and resume a broken dialogue.
Foreign ministers of the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain made the call in a joint statement a day after Indian and Pakistani speakers crossed swords over nuclear weapons and Kashmir in a bitter exchange in the U.N. General Assembly.
``The ministers expressed their concern about the nuclear and missile arms race in South Asia, and called upon India and Pakistan to exercise restraint and refrain from taking any action that might further escalate the tensions in the region,'' the Big Five statement said.
They urged both countries to resume bilateral dialogue and resolve their differences through peaceful means, and called on them to sign and ratify without delay the nuclear test ban treaty and the non-proliferation treaty.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz accused New Delhi on Wednesday of planning to deploy a huge arsenal of land, air and sea-based nuclear weapons against Pakistan.
He called for a conference of the world's nuclear powers with India and Pakistan to promote strategic restraint and stability in South Asia.
Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh deflected the proposal on Thursday, saying India favoured a global conference of nuclear powers on preventing the accidental use of nuclear weapons and leading to their total prohibition.
``I don't believe that such a conference should be limited to South Asia,'' Singh told a news conference.
``I don't believe strategic restraint should be limited to South Asia. The reality is altogether different. India has stood for and has demonstrated restraint, so I think my own suggestion was the better one.''
India has said its nuclear tests in May 1998, which prompted Pakistan to carry out its own nuclear explosions later that month, were not aimed against Islamabad but were partly a response to a perceived nuclear threat from China.
Singh denied that India and Pakistan were in an arms race and said Pakistani's criticisms of India's policies, especially in Kashmir, sprang from ``compulsive hostility.''
The next government of India, scheduled to be elected in September-October elections, would decide whether or not to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, he said.
Pakistan has said it will not sign the treaty ``in an atmosphere of coercion'' while it is still subject to U.S.-led sanctions over its nuclear tests.
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First Indian Nuke Reactor Activated
Associated Press September 24, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-India-Nuclear-Power.html
BOMBAY, India (AP) -- Engineers cheered as India's first nuclear reactor built fully with domestic components was activated Friday in preparation for starting commercial operations by mid-October, officials said.
About 3,000 workers spent months preparing for activation of the 220-megawatt reactor in Kaiga in the southern state of Karnataka. The reactor is located on the banks of the Kali river and surrounded by dense forests, more than 430 miles southeast of Bombay.
Work on the reactor started in 1988, while India was under international sanctions imposed on it after conducting nuclear tests in 1974. Sanctions were extended in May last year after New Delhi conducted a second round of nuclear tests.
The sanctions dried up supplies of everything from software packages to safety valves.
India's 10 nuclear power plants generate 1,840 megawatts of electricity. While three were built with American and Canadian technical collaboration in the 1960s, the others were built on the Canadian model with foreign components obtained despite the ban.
Three other nuclear reactors are under construction. A 220-megawatt reactor in the western state of Rajasthan is likely to be activated next month, followed by two more in the year 2000.
Nuclear scientists and engineers are pitching for nuclear power as the answer for the energy-starved country.
India produces 93,000 megawatts of power each year. Nuclear power makes up just 2.5 percent, with thermal power and hydroelectricity accounting for 70 percent and 24.5 percent respectively.
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Aeronautic misfires
Giant Titan missile, rocket-plane experience setbacks
Deseret News September 22, 1999
By Joe Bauman staff writer
http://www.deseretnews.com/dn/view/1,1249,115010496,00.html?
Graphic: http://www.deseretnews.com/photos/c22utah.jpg
In this summer's celebrations of the 30th anniversary of the moon landing, reminiscences reminded us of the adventure's precariousness. But we need to remember that even now, space exploration remains risky. With luck, we'll never again hear chilling words like, "Houston, we have a problem." But we will, and do, see explosions, misfires and delays. Two recent setbacks involve the X-33 prototype rocket-plane - parts of which are built in Clearfield, and which is supposed to land in this state during unmanned flights next year - as well as the giant Titan IV-b missile, whose lower stage is manufactured in Magna.
X-33 This is the half-scale demonstration model for a truly revolutionary space vehicle, the VentureStar. It will be 67 feet long, 68 feet wide, compared with the VentureStar's 127-by-128 feet. Fueled with liquid hydrogen and oxygen, the wedge-shaped vehicle will launch vertically like a rocket, roar into space, deliver satellites to orbit or astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station, then fly down to a landing strip on Earth. Crews can refuel and relaunch in a few days. Because it won't use boosters or stages, leaving no canisters to fall as it goes, the space plane doesn't need to be launched over water. Best of all, the VentureStar is designed to slash the cost of space research.
Today, every pound of equipment or astronauts lifted to orbit costs $10,000. VentureStar will reduce that to $1,000, if the planners are right. Theoretically, the amount of science that can be carried out in space will be multiplied by 10 for the same cost. To do all that, VentureStar must be a new generation of space vehicle, light years beyond anything built before. As was the case with our reach for the moon, VentureStar is requiring the invention of new technologies, all of which are to be tested with X-33.
To achieve this, NASA joined with aerospace giant Lockheed Martin in a partnership to develop the space plane. Alliant Techsystems' plant in Clearfield built the twin giant hydrogen fuel tanks, which are the largest part of the X-33, forming them of spun graphite composite material. Other innovations are the "linear aerospike" engine, whose business end looks more like a rectangular rack than a nozzle, and a new type of metallic heat shield.
During at least 15 test flights next year, X-33 will take off from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., and land at Michael Army Air Field, Dugway Proving Ground, in Utah's western desert. Other flights may take it to Montana. The suborbital demonstrator should slice through the atmosphere so swiftly that it will fly the 450 miles from Edwards to Dugway in 14 seconds.
Test flights were scheduled to begin last March. But now they won't start until July 2000 at the earliest. It's over budget, too.
A General Accounting Office report issued on Aug. 11 levels strong criticism at the project. NASA and Lockheed Martin managers still think the plane will meet technical requirements, "such as demonstrating the feasibility of building large liquid hydrogen fuel tanks made of graphite composite material," says the report. "However, the program will not meet some original cost, schedule and performance objectives." Technical problems occurred during development and fabrication of the fuel tanks, rocket engines and thermal protection systems, the three key advanced technologies the program seeks to demonstrate, says the GAO.
"Resolving these technical problems caused Lockheed Martin's estimated contribution to grow $75 million above the original estimate of $211 million, to $386.6 million." However, part of the increase will be footed by the taxpayers, not the industry partner. Also, NASA workers' salaries were not tallied in the space agency's X-33 budget, which made it look less expensive than it is.
According to the GAO, a more accurate estimate is that the federal government pays $1.23 billion while industry coughs up $125.4 million. Earlier this year, workers in Sunnydale, Calif., were bonding and assembling the two composite liquid hydrogen tanks, after they had been flown in from Clearfield. "While the tank designed for the right side of the X-33 has completed its eighth and final autoclave cure cycle, the left-hand tank experienced damage to one of its four walls - or 'lobe skins' - after completing a fifth cure cycle," says a VentureStar announcement released in January.
Assembly technicians noticed the massive engine had developed bubbles and cracks on the inner surface during bonding. A team from Lockheed Martin and Alliant determined that the lobe skin would have to be replaced. Alliant began to manufacture the replacement covering, while crews removed the damaged material. "That was almost a year ago," NASA spokesman Jim Cast said recently. "They've corrected the problems. . . . So far there's been no real technical hurdle that we can't overcome."
NASA managers remain confident of X-33, he said. "They're extremely optimistic about the potential" of cheaper flights into space. Another NASA official - John Taylor, a program manager temporarily working out of the Ogden office of Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah - is equally excited about the space plane. Taylor points out that besides the manufacturing and test landings, Utah has another interest, as a potential "spaceport" once VentureStar takes off. Alliant Techsystems' Dave Nicponski, Magna, put the setbacks into context. X-33 is one of a string of X aircraft whose development the federal government has sponsored, dating back to the X -1 that broke the sound barrier in 1947. "It's X-33," he emphasized, "X being 'experimental.' "
Titan IV The worst launch failures in a decade have haunted the mighty Titan IV, the heavyweight of America's military rocket fleet. Built by Lockheed Martin, this is a gigantic rocket with three lower stages 113 feet long (mounted together like bananas in a bunch) and an upper stage that varies from 17 to 29 feet long. For most of the rockets in the latest generation, the Titan IV-b, the lower stage is built by Alliant. The improvement is called the Solid Rocket Motor Upgrade.
On Aug. 12, 1998, a Titan IV-a, the older version not using Alliant's SRMU, exploded during takeoff, destroying a spy satellite. Published estimates of the satellite's cost ranged from $700 million to $2 billion. "There was a failure . . . as it launched from Cape Canaveral, about 40 seconds into the mission," said Evan McCollum, communications manager for Lockheed Martin Astronautics.
Said Rick Oborn, spokesman for the National Reconnaissance Office, whose satellite it was, "Whenever we lose one of these valuable assets, it creates a void in our capabilities that poses a serious national concern and seriously affects our ability to accomplish our reconnaissance mission."
On April 9, a Titan IV-b launched from Cape Canaveral failed to deliver a $682 million Air Force missile into the right orbit. This example of the IV-b used an inertial upper stage built by Boeing. "The Titan worked fine on that mission, including the solid rocket motors built there in Utah by Alliant Techsystems," he said. "The upper stage, however, had a problem, and it placed its satellite . . . in an orbit such as the satellite was not usable."
On April 30, another IV-b, this one using a Centaur upper stage built by Lockheed Martin, failed. Cost of the launch, including satellite, was $682 million. "That upper stage also had a problem and placed its satellite payload in a useless orbit," said McCollum.
None of the space flops implicated the Alliant motors. The failures cost Lockheed Martin many millions of dollars in bonuses it would have earned had the launches succeeded. After the Titan IV failures, "our top corporate management appointed an independent assessment team, essentially a highly regarded blue-ribbon panel" to look into the operation of the company's space and strategic missiles sector, McCollum said.
At the end of August, "they reported back to our top corporate management." The company decided to make the recommended corrections, "many of which we have already implemented." McCollum noted that Lockheed Martin launched a Titan IV-b from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on May 22. Carrying a classified payload, this mission "was a complete success."
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Tomahawk launch successful at China Lake
Daily Independent, Redigecrest California Wed, Sep 22, 1999
http://www.ridgecrestca.com/news/N22Tolasu18224.html
POINT MUGU - A U.S. Navy Tomahawk cruise missile was launched Tuesday at 9:10 a.m. from the USS Elliott, a destroyer off the southern California coast Point Mugu Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division sea range. The missile flew a land attack mission to the NAWCWD land range at China Lake.
Seconds after the launch, the Tomahawk missile transitioned to cruise flight. It flew a fully-guided test flight to China Lake, approximately 500 miles from the launch point, where it released munitions over several targets, according to Navy officials.
The missile then climbed in altitude, rolled and dove into its termination site.
"As in all Tomahawk flights tests, air safety was carefully planned in coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration. For safety purposes, the Tomahawk could have been guided by commands from safety chase aircraft," said Cathy Partusch, public affairs officer for the Cruise Missile and Joint Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, a branch of the Program Executive Office based in the Pentagon.
Dubbed as the "weapon of choice," the Tomahawk cruise missile has proven time and again to be an effective and reliable weapon system, according to Navy sources.
Future years will see an upgraded model code named the "Tactical Tomahawk." This upgraded system will include an image of the target area for battle damage indication, in-flight retargeting and real-time mission planning onboard the launch platform. The upgraded system is scheduled to cost half as much as the current Tomahawk.
Tuesday marked the 377th Tomahawk flight test.
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Hunting Industrial Hazards Carried Off by Flood Waters
New York Times September 24, 1999
By RONALD SMOTHERS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/regional/092499nj-floyd.html
MIDDLESEX BOROUGH, N.J. -- Cleanup crews trawling for hazardous materials set adrift in the overflowing Raritan River during Tropical Storm Floyd have come up with a mixed catch. It includes more than 1,000 items, ranging from an easily identifiable 1,000-pound propane tank to unlabeled drums of industrial chemicals to bottles of household solvents and pesticides.
Efforts to clean up and identify the materials intensified on Thursday as residents of the Raritan River basin served by the Elizabethtown Water Company were required for the sixth straight day to boil their water as a safeguard against diseases borne by pollution and waste. Similar restrictions also continued for most United Water company customers in Hudson and Bergen Counties, but the limits were lifted for Jersey City, Hoboken and Lyndhurst.
Crews from the Federal Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Coast Guard, along with county and state environmental workers, fanned out today along the creeks and brooks in the Raritan River basin to search for more hazardous materials, using magnetometers to detect metal containers and side-scanning sonar to search the water.
While crews earlier in the week had to use boats in streets and flood-swollen estuaries, many trudged today through shallower waters in boots in their search along Ambrose Creek, Bound Brook Creek and the Delaware and Raritan Canal.
Rich Kozub, program coordinator for the Middlesex County Hazardous Materials Unit, said the searches were conducted as the county prepared to resume drawing water from these estuaries. He said the priority now was to prevent serious contamination to the area's water supply.
"This is not stuff that was buried somewhere and is now just washing up," Kozub said of the containers that have been collected, like the 1,000-pound propane tank, which was found caught in tree limbs.
"This is material that was used by a variety of facilities, from chemical plants to gas stations to construction companies, and most of it we are getting back to the people it belongs to."
Most of the containers with potentially hazardous substances that have been fished from the rivers have been placed on an open-air concrete floor of a demolished warehouse on the grounds of the Union Carbide manufacturing plant just south of here.
There, crews have assembled rows of drums labeled with numbers and letters denoting what are believed to be their contents.
Neil Norrell, the site manager for the E.P.A., said recovered hazardous materials include solvents like toluene and xylene, as well as propane, pesticides, paints and ethylene glycol, a chemical used in antifreeze.
"The largest single problem was some 3,000 gallons of loose oil that we found in a ditch near Ambrose Brook," he said.
"We don't know where it came from but we vacuumed it up."
Rich Cahill, a spokesman for the E.P.A., said that substances and drums that could not be traced to a source would be taken by government-contracted disposal services.
As the cleanup continued, utility companies moved to restore water service.
The Elizabethtown Water Company said that its main plant, in Bridgewater, was pumping up to 40 million gallons today for its 213,000 customers in 54 municipalities, up from 20 million gallons a day earlier. The water company's normal daily output is 160 million gallons a day.
United Water company also was faring better on Thursday, with restrictions lifted for about 250,000 customers in Jersey City, Hoboken and Lyndhurst. But for another 750,000 in northern Hudson County and Bergen Counties, silt and sand were still fouling the water pumped and treated at United Water's Haworth reservoir. For those people, a company spokesman said, boiling of water for three minutes was still recommended.
Investigators surveyed pharmacies in Bound Brook, Middlesex, South Bound Brook, Green Brook, Watchung and Warren to determine if there had been an increased demand for medicines for diarrhea and other gastrointestinal disorders, which could be signs of contaminated drinking water.
Kevin Sumner, a health coordinator for the Middlebrook Regional Health Commission, which serves those towns, said so far, no significant increase had been logged.
Mayor Ronald Dobies of Middlesex Borough said that his town had plenty of free bottled water available for its 13,500 residents, who had been hit by Floyd's floods but were luckier than their neighbors across the Raritan in Bound Brook.
"We took about 120 people out of flooded areas in boats, but they have all been back home for a few days now," said Mayor Dobies, noting that flooding hit about a half-dozen pockets of homes in the town.
Looking ahead, Mayor Dobies assumed emergency powers to allow him to waive permit fees for most major rebuilding work and to suspend local ordinances like the ban on trailer homes on residential lots while uninhabitable homes are being repaired.
He also hopes to start a fund to give grants of as much as $5,000 to people to supplement disaster loans.
"We are seeking state enabling legislation that will allow us to use tax levy funds this way," he said.
"It won't go very far by itself, but it's something."
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American Investigator: Defense Expert Charges White House Gave China Secrets, Claimed Espionage Retired Army General Blames 'Openness' for Security Breaches
Company Press Release September 23,
SOURCE: American Investigator
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/990923/dc_china_1.html
WASHINGTON, The Clinton Administration permitted the People's Republic of China (PRC) to obtain U.S. nuclear secrets through lax national security policies and then leaked to the press that espionage had occurred at the labs on its watch, defense experts tell the monthly television newsmagazine American Investigator in its report set to air Friday evening.
American Investigator reporter Scott Wheeler interviews retired Army General John Singlaub who says, ``I think that this administration has demonstrated such a friendly helpful attitude towards the People's Republic of China and its leaders, they have not had to run any clever espionage operations against our intelligence service.''
Gen. Singlaub recalls a conversation with the late Admiral Boorda, then President Clinton's Chief of Naval Operations, in which he asked, ``Is there someone in the Navy who thinks that modernizing and improving the capabilities of the Chinese communist navy is in the best interest of our forces?'' The admiral responded ``Well General, I used to feel that way too, but this is what the boss wants now, so this is what we're doing.''
Nicholas Eftimiades, a Sinologist and author of the book Chinese Intelligence Operations, explains that he ``debriefed individuals specifically slated to come to the United States doing work as scholars in the hard sciences ... who were specifically recruited by Chinese intelligence to steal technology -- individuals trained to communicate clandestinely with the PRC government and come to the United States, paid and trained to lay in wait, if you will, five to ten years before operationally being activated to illegally acquire US technology.''
American Investigator has been the first to report other similar stories, such as the dual use technology transfers to the PRC, PRC stock swindles in the United States, Beijing's ``special channel'' to Washington, and the State Department leaks to Chinese arms smugglers warning of U.S. Customs agents' sting operations.
American Investigator airs on 42 stations in about 10 million homes. It airs the last Friday of every month on The America One Television Network at 10:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
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Diablo Canyon, Ca. nuke to restart later Thursday
Reuters September 23
http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/990923/x1.html
LOS ANGELES, The 1,100 megawatt (MW) unit 1 Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is expected to restart on Thursday evening and reach full power over the weekend, a spokesman for Pacific Gas & Electric Co. said Thursday.
The unit automatically tripped Wednesday morning after it was struck by lightning.
The spokesman said the unit will begin delivering power to the grid sometime on Friday morning.
Pacific Gas & Electric Co., a unit of PG&E Corp. (NYSE:PCG - news), owns and operates the Diablo Canyon plant.
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Axworthy spells out his 'salami diplomacy'
National Post (Canada)September 24, 1999
Steven Edwards
http://www.nationalpost.com/news.asp?f=990924/86461&s2=world
UNITED NATIONS - Lloyd Axworthy, Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister, yesterday called on members of the United Nations to live up to the "noble words" of the UN charter.
In a speech reflecting Canada's frustration that the United Nations is far from being the supra-national protector of world peace, Mr. Axworthy said national self-interest was paralyzing the organization.
Without mentioning names, the minister spoke harshly against those members of the powerful UN Security Council who he said had failed to uphold the spirit of the charter's preamble.
He also attempted to persuade several other countries to adopt his "human security" agenda, which aims at placing the protection of people above national interests.
Mr. Axworthy's demand that countries stop citing the sanctity of national sovereignty as an excuse for non-intervention while killing its own citizens was aimed at China and Russia, who would have vetoed a resolution sanctioning NATO's intervention in Kosovo had it come up for a vote.
And the minister's call for a more effective nuclear test-ban treaty targeted India and Pakistan, which, in the last year, have tested nuclear weapons, creating fear throughout the world that they are on the verge of a nuclear war.
"Too many forget it is ... the world's peoples we are here to serve, not just their specific national interests," Mr. Axworthy told the UN General Assembly. "Too many protect their prerogatives, engage in exclusive power politics or refuse to pay their bills, thereby paralyzing the institution and rendering it incapable of meeting the challenges to our collective well-being.
"Nor are we well served by those opposed, on the basis of outmoded reasons of state sovereignty, to an agenda for security of people. The sovereignty of states ... is neither absolute nor a shield behind which the most egregious violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms can be protected," he said.
Calling his approach "salami diplomacy," Mr. Axworthy told reporters after yesterday's address that "human security" is the best way for the United Nations to move forward. "You cut a slice at a time," he said. "We will continue working on it."
Canada has been trying to conduct much of that agenda through its seat on the 15-member Security Council.
In an attempt to have the United Nations move ahead on human security issues, Mr. Axworthy called on the General Assembly, which comprises all 188 UN members, to follow his lead.
"In efforts to protect civilians in armed conflict, the assembly has the means to enable the UN to act more quickly, the moral authority to establish universal standards that hold us all accountable and the legitimacy to direct efforts into new areas of global endeavour."
But later, in the halls, Mr. Axworthy denied he was trying to get the assembly to act against the Security Council.
"It is not a zero-sum game," he said. "Not one versus the other. We see that there is a real need for Security Council action. We see a need for General Assembly action. We also see a need for action by non-governmental organizations."
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Nations urge talks for India, Pakistan
By Reuters, 09/24/99
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/267/nation/Nations_urge_talks_for_India_Pakistan+.shtml
UNITED NATIONS - The world's five main nuclear powers expressed concern yesterday at a nuclear weapons race between India and Pakistan, and implored both countries to show restraint and resume a broken dialogue.
Foreign ministers of the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain made the call in a joint statement a day after Indian and Pakistani speakers crossed swords over nuclear weapons and Kashmir in a bitter exchange in the UN General Assembly.
''The ministers expressed their concern about the nuclear and missile arms race in South Asia, and called upon India and Pakistan to exercise restraint and refrain from taking any action that might further escalate the tensions in the region,'' the Big Five statement said.
They urged both countries to resume dialogue and resolve differences through peaceful means, and called on them to sign and ratify without delay the nuclear test ban treaty and the nonproliferation treaty.
The Pakistani foreign minister, Sartaj Aziz, accused New Delhi on Wednesday of planning to deploy an arsenal of land, air and sea-based nuclear weapons against Pakistan.
He called for a conference of the world's nuclear powers with India and Pakistan to promote strategic restraint and stability in South Asia.
Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh deflected the proposal yesterday, saying India favored a conference of nuclear powers on preventing accidental use of nuclear weapons and leading to their prohibition.
''I don't believe strategic restraint should be limited to South Asia. The reality is altogether different. India has stood for and has demonstrated restraint, so I think my own suggestion was the better one,'' Singh said at a news conference.
India has said its nuclear tests in May 1998, which prompted Pakistan to carry out its own nuclear explosions later that month, were not aimed against Islamabad but were partly a response to a perceived nuclear threat from China.
Singh denied that India and Pakistan were in an arms race and said Pakistan's criticisms of India's policies, especially in Kashmir, arose from ''compulsive hostility.''
The next government of India, scheduled to be elected in September-October elections, would decide whether or not to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, he said.
Pakistan has said it would not sign the treaty ''in an atmosphere of coercion'' while it is subject to US-led sanctions over its tests.
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China Rejects U.S. Explanation
Associated Press Thursday, Sept. 23, 1999
By Barry Schweid AP Diplomatic
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19990923/aponline102825_000.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19990923/aponline154154_000.htm
http://www.chicago.tribune.com/version1/article/0,1575,SAV-9909240129,00.html
NEW YORK -- Even as the Clinton administration sought to improve relations, China on Thursday condemned a widening U.S. inquiry into allegations of nuclear espionage and insisted anew that NATO intentionally bombed the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia.
Turning a joint news conference with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright into a public lecture, Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said he hoped the United States would take "effective measures" on the bombing.
Albright seemed at a loss to counter Tang's rejection of the U.S. explanation that the embassy bombing was a mistake. "I must say it's difficult when one is giving the true explanation for a situation when the other side does not accept it," she said.
Tang also assailed the president of Taiwan, Lee Teng-hui, as a troublemaker for trying to promote a special state-to-state relationship with China.
"We hope the United States will face the dangerous nature of his separatist remarks squarely and do nothing to puff him up," Tang said. "For instance, no arms should be sold to Taiwan."
The Chinese official's jabs at the news conference with Albright contrasted with announcement in Washington of a renewed effort to bring China into the World Trade Organization and Albright's own emphasis on U.S.-Chinese cooperation on East Timor, North Korea and in Asia generally.
The United States last month gave China $4.5 million in compensation intended for the families of the three people killed and 27 injured in the bombing, which occurred May 7 during NATO's conflict with Yugoslavia that forced Serb troops and special police out of Kosovo.
"I can only repeat the true story that it was a mistake and make very clear how sorry we are about it," Albright said. State Department lawyers will be sent to Beijing to discuss compensation for the damage and also for damage caused by demonstrations against the U.S. Embassy in the Chinese capital, she said.
The two then met for 90 minutes and Tang did not repeat his accusation privately to Albright, a senior U.S. official said. Indeed, Tang and Albright agreed there was a need to build up momentum toward stronger ties, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The trade talks will be held in Washington on Monday and Tuesday, with U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky and Chinese Trade Minister Shi Guangsheng heading the delegations.
House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, welcomed the news, although he and Senate Majority leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said this week there was little or no chance that Congress would vote this year for China's admission to the 134-nation WTO.
"When these negotiations are completed, I look forward to working hard, on behalf of the Chinese people, to ensure congressional approval of WTO accession," Armey said Thursday in a statement.
Tang took the offensive in an opening statement at the news conference, even before reporters asked him about the spy inquiry and the embassy bombing.
While there are opportunities in the U.S.-Chinese relationship, he said, "there are obstructions that should not exist."
Then, in response to a question, he rejected as "extremely irresponsible and false" any allegations the Chinese may have obtained secret information about the design of the most advanced U.S. nuclear warhead, the W-88.
Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh have expanded an inquiry that was centered on mishandling of classified material at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Tang also lit into the United States over its explanation that the embassy bombing was a mistake.
"We cannot accept the explanation," he said.
Tang welcomed moves by the United States to compensate the families of the victims, but he insisted "the United States is obligated to offer a more satisfactory explanation."
Faulty maps and other errors were said by the United States to be the reason for the attack.
On another touchy front, Tang criticized Taiwan's President Lee for saying relations with China should be considered on a "state-to-state or at least special state-to-state" basis.
China considers democratically ruled Taiwan a renegade province that must be reunited with the mainland.
Albright reiterated that U.S. policy is to recognize only one China, and she said China and Taiwan should be concentrating now on helping the people of Taiwan to recover from the earthquake that struck Monday.
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Russian Jets Slam Targets In Chechnya
Washington Post Friday, September 24, 1999
By David Hoffman
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/24/133l-092499-idx.html
MOSCOW, Sept. 23-Russian warplanes pounded central Chechnya today with bombs and missiles, targeting aviation and oil supplies in a marked escalation of hostilities against the secessionist region.
Only a few days after Russia insisted that the military was confining its attacks to rebel encampments on Chechnya's mountainous eastern border with Dagestan, Russian Su-24 and Su-25 jets fired missiles at the main airport north of Grozny, the Chechen capital, and dozens of other locations, according to reports from the area. One person was reportedly killed at the airport.
After more bombings tonight, a huge oil distribution center outside of Grozny was reported ablaze, and the city was shrouded in thick smoke.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin vowed to attack the Chechen rebels "wherever they are" but insisted anew that Russia is not preparing a large-scale ground invasion.
In Grozny, Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov convened an emergency closed meeting of members of the government and parliament, and also called up former Chechen military commanders to give them instructions in case of a Russian invasion, the Interfax news agency reported.
Russia has stationed thousands of troops along the Chechen border in an attempt to seal off the region. Russian officials have vowed to stop further incursions into Dagestan like the two made in recent weeks by Islamic fighters under the command of Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev.
The fighting in Dagestan was followed by four terrorist bombings in Moscow and other Russian cities between Sept. 4 and 16 that claimed the lives of nearly 300 civilians. Russia has vowed to punish those Putin today called the "bandits" and "terrorists" responsible for the bombings and has intensified aerial attacks on Chechnya. Interfax quoted Russian generals today as saying they are considering for the first time in the Chechen conflict using Russia's Tu-22 medium- and long-range bombers, which can carry an extensive payload.
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Plan to Send U.N. Arms Inspectors Back to Iraq Fails
Washington Post Friday, September 24, 1999
By Colum Lynch
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/24/057l-092499-idx.html
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 23-U.S. and British diplomats conceded today that they had failed in a week-long, high-level effort to gain support in the U.N. Security Council for a proposal to send international weapons inspectors back into Iraq.
The impasse spells the indefinite continuation of economic sanctions on Baghdad, along with a low-intensity U.S. bombing campaign and an Iraqi ban on international inspectors.
Senior diplomats said the talks would resume, though it remains unclear when or where. It was evident that the council's five permanent members--the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia--had made little progress toward a common policy on Iraq.
China, France and Russia want to lift the economic embargo that was placed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990. The United States and Britain remain adamant that sanctions must continue until weapons inspectors determine that Iraq has eliminated its long-range missiles and chemical, nuclear and biological weapons.
In an attempt to restart the inspections, Britain and the Netherlands circulated a resolution to create a new arms control agency to replace the United Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM. U.S. officials said Russia and China refused to support that proposal without assurances that economic sanctions would be lifted. Nonetheless, members of the council have begun discussing candidates for the top job in a new disarmament agency. Among the contenders are Emilio Cardenas, Argentina's former ambassador to the United Nations, and Pasi Patokallio, a Finnish arms control expert.
Diplomats said Britain tried to break the impasse by agreeing on a new chairman before the structure of the new disarmament body had been determined. The Clinton administration refused to go along.
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Nations Urged To Fight Terrorism
Associated Press Thursday, Sept. 23, 1999
By Scott Neuman
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19990923/aponline212533_000.htm
UNITED NATIONS -- Responding to a spate of bombings in Russia and increasing terrorism around the world, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council called Thursday for greater global cooperation to stem the violent attacks.
The veto-wielding council members - the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China - also urged nations not to give in to the demands of kidnappers.
"We consider it vital to strengthen, under the auspices of the United Nations, international cooperation to fight terrorism in all its forms," the foreign ministers said in a statement released Thursday after a luncheon with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
The five ministers strongly rejected attempts by any nation to go outside the legal framework in fighting terrorism.
International cooperation "must be firmly based on the principles of the U.N. Charter and norms of international law, including respect for human rights," the statement said.
The ministers said nations "need to oppose concessions to terrorist demands and to deny hostage-takers any benefit from their acts."
They also agreed that those providing safe-haven to terrorists should be held accountable for their violent actions.
Of the five permanent members of the Council, the United States and Russia have both experienced recent acts of terrorism.
A series of bomb blasts blamed on Islamic separatists have killed over 300 people in Russia in recent weeks.
Last year's bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya killed 259 people. The United States has demanded that the alleged mastermind of the attack, Osama bin Laden, be handed over by Afghanistan, where he is currently believed to be sheltered.
The Security Council ministers also expressed the hope that a draft convention on the suppression of nuclear terrorism could be completed before the end of the year.
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Austria 'Disappointed' By Slovak Nuclear Plant Decision
Sep 24, 1999
http://www.centraleurope.com/news.php3?id=94374
NEW YORK, Eduard Kukan has informed Austrian Foreign Ministry State Secretary Benita Ferrer-Waldner about the Slovak government's decision to shut down the nuclear power plant at Jaslovske Bohunice, CTK reported on September 22, citing the Austrian APA agency
Kukan, who is attending the U.N. General Assembly in New York, told Ferrer-Waldner that the first reactor will be closed in 2006 and the second in 2008.
The Austrian diplomat said Vienna takes note of the decision "with disappointment." "This is not what we expected," she commented.
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When Betrayal Mattered
New York Times Editorials September 24, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/editorial/24fri2.html
The British, who love a spy scandal, have not had a good one for years. Now they do. In the last two weeks, eight Britons, of whom six are still alive, have been described in the press or on the BBC as agents for the Soviet Union during the cold war. The source of most of these revelations is a new book co-written by a former archivist for the K.G.B., Vasily Mitrokhin, who defected to England in 1992, carrying six trunkloads of sensitive documents.
An entire generation of Americans is growing up with only dim memories of the cold war, which must appear, even to those now in college, as a distant clashing of ideologies and rattling of weapons that evaporated during the Bush Administration. The latest revelations are a reminder of the deep passions that attached to that struggle.
They are also a reminder that postwar Britain seemed to produce an unusual number of turncoats -- or, in the spyspeak popularized by John le Carré, moles.
Britain's rigid class system, which provoked a particularly virulent leftism among upper-class intellectuals in the 1930's, may have been partly to blame. Whatever the reason, the K.G.B. found plenty of ideological soulmates -- not only prominent, well-educated spies like Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, who rose to high station in British intelligence and had access to useful information, but clerks and obscure professors who knew very little. In those days, no scrap of information seemed too trivial.
Clearly the most captivating of the latest batch of spies is an 87-year-old great-grandmother named Melita Norwood, a secretary in the British nuclear-weapons research program during the 1940's who copied documents that she said "appeared interesting" and sent them to Moscow. Mrs. Norwood may have been as harmless then as she appears now, but in nearly all respects but one -- her lowly station -- she resembles far more notorious spies like Philby, Burgess and Maclean.
Like them, she was radicalized in college -- Southampton, in her case, not Cambridge. Like them, she believed that Britain badly mistreated its poor, that Moscow's social model was infinitely better and that the Soviet Union was Hitler's only reliable opponent. Like them, she fervently believed that Moscow should have the atomic bomb as a counterweight to the West. And like nearly all of them, she is unrepentant. "In the same circumstances, " she told reporters, "I know I would do the same thing again."
There is no evidence that anything Mrs. Norwood did seriously compromised her country or hastened Moscow's development of the bomb.
British authorities decided years ago not to prosecute her. Indeed, given the cold war's outcome, her efforts, in hindsight, seem empty, even a bit quaint. But at the time they were matters of great moment, as they were to Philby and the others. They were in fact matters of treason.
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Subs' design would cramp women's privacy
Everett,Wash. Daily Herald September 20, 1999
http://www.heraldnet.com/Stories/99/9/20/11316490.htm
Until she spent five days recently aboard a ballistic missile submarine, Mary Wamsley believed that opening the submarine force to women would be a breeze.
"I would have given you a knee-jerk reaction that the problems can't be too bad," said Wamsley, who chairs the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services. "Now that I have been on a sub and (been briefed by) the Navy, I think these issues need more study. I don't have the same 'Yep, women can go on subs' attitude."
Though she sees now the complexity of the challenge, she also believes that, in time, women will serve aboard submarines.
Wamsley, whose full-time job is assistant police chief in Commerce City, Colo., isn't the least bit intimidated by the thought of women in nontraditional roles. The trouble with submarines, she said, is living space, not the capabilities of women or even whether mixed-gender crews can operate effectively during long, isolated deployments.
Indeed Wamsley, who once commanded a police Special Weapons and Tactics team, said she expects the Navy in time to design submarines to include females. If, as the service now argues, it would cost too much to modify existing submarines, or to build female berthing in new Virginia-class attack boats, with two already under construction, cost shouldn't be a factor for the next generation of submarine, she said.
"I am completely confident women can be on that submarine," Wamsley said.
DACOWITS is an influential 34-member panel of prominent civilians who advise the secretary of defense on issues involving military women. Committee members agree to serve three-year terms on a part-time basis. Twice a year, the group holds a national conference to shape positions and recommendations for the secretary.
In preparation for the conference in San Diego in late October, a nine-member executive council received various briefings Sept. 13 at the Pentagon. Topics ranged from worrisome first-term attrition rates among white female enlistees, to the chorus of complaints from both service women and men who say they can't get timely, hassle-free care for their families using TRICARE, the military's managed care program.
Last spring, DACOWITS asked the Navy to explain why it still bars women from the submarine force. Navy Secretary Richard Danzig further stirred interest in the issue by directing that the submarine force begin fresh and candid discussions of whether women should be integrated into subs "some time in the future."
Capt. Bob Holland, personnel program manager for the submarine community, told DACOWITS that high-level discussions have occurred in recent months and the Navy found no reason to change its policy.
The performance of women on ships and aircraft, Holland said, leaves no doubt they can be skilled submariners. He noted that the Navy's nuclear propulsion program, open to women since 1994, has 104 female officers and 593 female enlistees serving or eligible to serve in nuclear jobs aboard aircraft carriers. The Silent Service could tap into the same deep pool of female talent.
But as the Navy also had concluded four years ago, Holland said, "extreme conditions on submarines -- submerged 24 hours a day for months at time, in a crowded environment that affords no privacy -- are a major factor that should drive submarine personnel assignment policy."
To provide separate berthing and sanitation facilities for women, assuming they would comprise 10 percent of the crew, added equipment, roughly the same size and weight of a Ford Explorer sport utility vehicle, would have to be installed on every submarine, Holland said. That's not possible to do, and meet space and weight requirements, without removing other equipment, which in turn would mean lowering operational capabilities.
Cost is another concern. Modifying an aircraft carrier to accommodate 400 females costs $5,000 per bunk versus $200,000 to $400,000 per bunk on a submarine, Holland said. To retrofit all 18 ballistic missile submarines and 50 or so attack subs would cost $423 million, excluding any redesign costs that might be needed to preserve capabilities.
Berthing space already is so tight on attack submarines, Holland said, that some enlisted crewmen routinely "hot rack" while deployed, share two bunks among three sailors. Work schedules are set so one of the three is always on watch. Space becomes even more of a problem when special warfare units and their gear are put aboard.
Wamsley, however, said she was surprised by the amount of room aboard the USS Alabama, a nuclear missile boat out of Bangor. "I think I could find a place to park that car Capt. Holland was talking about," she said.
But Holland and his boss, Vice Adm. Edmund Giambastiani, commander of Submarine Force Atlantic, discouraged the idea of assigning women only to one class of submarines. Strategic subs have more room and deploy for only 70 days at a stretch, vs. up to six months for attack boats. Assigning women only to "boomers," however, would create a "two-tier" community as the Navy had in the late 1970s. Missile boat crews enjoyed a higher quality of life, causing morale problems among attack crews. But their officers had less challenging operational experience and therefore were less competitive for promotion. The Navy today wants officers to experience both types of platforms.
Wamsley agreed that the extreme isolation of submarine life is a profound factor deserving of more study. After almost a week under the sea, unable to communicate with her husband, Wamsley said, "there's a human element there I had not factored in."
Still, the big question DACOWITS might ask the Navy in October could be: At what point do you say you will design a sub to take an integrated crew?
"That question," said Wamsley, "needs to be addressed."
Comments and suggestions are welcomed. Write to Military Update, P.O. Box 1230, Centreville, VA 20122-8230, or send e-mail to: milupdate@aol.com
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Tracking the wind
Augusta Chronicle Sep. 23
By Brandon Haddock Staff Writer
http://augustachronicle.com/stories/092499/tec_066-6485.000.shtml
At any given moment, Rob Addis knows which way the wind blows. His knowledge might prove invaluable if anything noxious escapes a Savannah River Site smokestack.
Mr. Addis, the manager of atmospheric technologies at SRS, is the head of a 16-person team that monitors weather near the federal nuclear-weapons site.
The crew must know how an accidental toxic release from the federal nuclear-weapons site would behave in the atmosphere -- and whether any release would endanger local residents.
``A lot of what we're about, at least in supporting the site, is emergency response,'' he said. ``The important thing that we're interested in is if we have a release, where is it going to go, when is it going to get there, and how concentrated is it going to be?''
To perform the work, the team -- which includes meteorologists and nuclear, chemical and mechanical engineers -- hunkers in the site's Weather Center, a few small rooms within the site's research-and-development lab.
The center's computers gather information continuously from the National Weather Service and from the site's own electronic weather and wind gauges.
Data such as wind direction and speed, temperature and humidity are fed into the Weather Center computers. The network also houses a database of hundreds of chemicals, their health effects and their behaviors in the atmosphere.
By entering the information into sophisticated computer simulations, SRS meteorologists can determine, within seconds, where a chemical cloud will travel, when it will arrive, and whether it will be strong enough to affect the health of area residents.
Rather than relying on one computer simulation, the scientists use dozens, then meld them into the most plausible scenario, Mr. Addis said.
``We don't believe in having one shoe fits all,'' he said. ``The problem in meteorology is you're limited by your computer capacity. You have to capture a lot of atmospheric physics for your computer models.
``We don't just plug numbers in and bring numbers out and believe them.''
Besides tracking any SRS releases, the computers also monitor releases from local chemical and industrial plants.
The U.S. Forest Service also uses the systems to determine the path of smoke emitted from ``controlled burns'' -- man-made forest fires used to clear undergrowth that could fuel more serious natural fires.
Unlike the National Weather Service, the SRS center doesn't issue warnings, said Chuck Hunter, a site meteorologist. But the site does provide help to local emergency agencies if requested, he said.
SRS forecasts are more specific about local conditions than the general forecasts released by the Weather Service, Mr. Hunter said.
``We can give more detail to National Weather Service watches and warnings than they could get otherwise,'' he said.
The center's staffers also help reduce the spread of nuclear weapons.
By retracing the trail of radioactive releases found in the atmosphere, the scientists can discover the source of the releases, Mr. Addis said. Those sources might be manufacturing sites for nuclear weapons.
``In the area of nonproliferation, it's a security issue,'' he said. ``If someone is manufacturing nuclear weapons, we may be called upon to determine where they are.''
Reach Brandon Haddock at (706) 823-3409.
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Hanford nuclear fuel cleanup project to accelerate
Associated Press 09/24/99
By JOHN K. WILEY
http://flash.oregonlive.com/cgi-bin/or_nview.pl?/home1/wire/AP/Stream-Parsed/OREGON_NEWS/o1019_PM_WA--HanfordKBasins
RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) -- Hanford nuclear reservation officials have announced a plan to accelerate testing of equipment that will retrieve spent nuclear fuel from leaky basins just 400 yards from the Columbia River.
Successful testing of the equipment in the K West basin could potentially save millions of dollars and cut eight to 10 months from the project to remove 2,100 metric tons of irradiated fuel from the defunct reactor cooling basins, officials said Thursday..
The spent fuel canisters in the K West and K East basins represent about 80 percent of the nation's inventory of irradiated nuclear fuel left over from Cold War weapons production.
The $1.7 billion cleanup project has been plagued by delays and cost overruns. The U.S. Department of Energy this year placed it on a "watch" list of projects in danger of falling too far behind schedule.
The plan announced Thursday would speed up testing of a system for retrieving the fuel canisters from under 16 feet of water, removing their corroding contents and placing them in transportation casks, as well as treating the basins' water.
Originally, equipment testing was to begin in November 2000. That month is also the deadline for workers to begin removing fuel from the concrete pools built in the early 1950s.
Under the new plan, testing will begin next spring, working out "bugs" before the fuel retrieval process begins the following November, said Keith Klein, Department of Energy manager for Hanford.
"I'm not content to be on a schedule that just barely makes it, if everything goes according to plan," Klein said.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency supports the initiative, announced during a tour of the K West basin and two new plants that will package, dry and store the corroded fuel, said Douglas R. Sherwood, the agency's Hanford project manager.
Klein said the initiative could result in the spent nuclear fuels project being removed from the watch list and completed ahead of schedule.
The project to retrieve, clean and dry the spent nuclear fuel and store it in a building eight miles from the river is scheduled to be completed by December 2003.
Officials of Fluor Daniel Hanford Inc., the 560-square-mile nuclear reservation's prime contractor, and the Energy Department showed off nearly $800 million worth of new equipment and facilities built for the first-of-its-kind project.
After fuel is removed from the K Basins and placed in canisters, it will be shipped in stainless steel casks to a nearby $67 million building for cold vacuum drying. From there, the canisters will be trucked to a new $157 million Canister Storage Building in the center of the reservation.
The heavily shielded nuclear facility will store high-strength containers in 220 underground tubes. Plans call for the containers to eventually be shipped to a permanent high-level nuclear repository being built at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
The canister storage facility is about 90 percent complete.
Leftover sludges and contaminated debris will be removed, treated and disposed of after the fuel is removed from the K Basins.
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Whistle-blower gets $1.1M in suit against UA
Showed rules on radiation were broken
Arizona Daily Star 24 September 1999
By Inger Sandal
http://www.azstarnet.com/public/dnews/114-7452.html
A jury yesterday awarded $1.1 million to a former UA health physicist who maintained he was wrongly terminated, defamed and subjected to severe emotional distress after exposing violations of radiation regulations.
Peter Capin sued the the University of Arizona and the state Board of Regents but missed the jury verdict because he had to work. He now holds a $20,000-a-year job answering computer software questions for a private company.
``I'm just glad its over,'' Capin's wife, Charlotte, said outside the courtroom. ``It's been very, very hard - the whole experience. We made it through,'' she said, tears coming to her eyes.
The Capins' attorney, Silas H. Shultz, hailed the ``very large verdict'' and said it was more than an undisclosed settlement the Joint Legislative Budget Committee had refused to fund.
``I think the jury did a wonderful job, and my clients are very pleased with the results. Their feeling is they have been vindicated,'' he said.
Assistant Attorney General Charles Pyle credited the jury for working hard but said he was disappointed. ``We had hoped to convince them the damages should have been lower,'' he said.
``It's not a surprising outcome to me,'' said UA President Peter Likins, who assumed the presidency after Capin left the university.
``We would always prefer a lower accommodation than a higher one,'' said Likins, in Tempe yesterday for a Board of Regents meeting.
Joel Sideman, attorney for the Board of Regents, said an appeal is unlikely, given that the defense admitted liability. But he added that a final decision will be made by the Attorney General's Office in consultation with state risk management, the UA and the regents.
Pyle started the trial last month by admitting Capin had been subjected to an intolerable work environment and forced to resign. He told jurors they should award Capin money but asked the amount be fair and reasonable.
Several jurors shook hands with attorneys on both sides of the case after leaving the courtroom yesterday.
``We had a good bunch of jurors who were very impartial,'' said one juror who declined to identify himself. Jurors, who deliberated about a day, had differences of opinion but agreed Capin suffered, he said. Other jurors declined interview requests.
Judge Nanette Warner of Pima County Superior Court thanked jurors for 18 days of hard work before dismissing them. ``You've been an extraordinary group of people,'' she said. ``I can see the wear on your faces from this.''
The jury found the UA wrongly terminated Capin and inflicted severe emotional distress. Jurors also found Capin proved his claim of defamation, finding that two co-workers had said Capin was out of control and could ``go postal.''
Shultz maintained during the trial that Capin's supervisors in the UA's Radiation Control Office ignored him when he pointed out violations of state and federal regulations regarding the use of radioactive materials.
Capin's primary concern was University Medical Center's failure to require doctors exposed to radiation through X-rays or lab work to wear badges that monitored exposure levels.
Frustrated by their inaction, Capin went to the Arizona Radiation Regulatory Agency and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1995.
Because of his whistle-blowing, Shultz said, Capin's co-workers turned on him, falsely accusing him of placing a hex on colleagues, stalking a nurse and making threats.
Forced to resign in 1996 after 5 1/2 years of employment, Capin appealed the actions against him. A dispute resolution committee found his claims were true and said he should be reinstated.
Capin declined to be rehired, maintaining that because of his experiences he now suffers panic attacks and post traumatic stress disorder.
``It is frustrating,'' Regent Judy Gignac said in Tempe. ``The man was right (that) he should have been paid attention to at the time.''
She said she wished the university had taken care of the matter before it got to court.
Arizona Daily Star reporter Pila Martínez contributed to this story.
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Possible plutonium exposure at Fernald probed
DOE documents hint substance was sent to plant
Gannett News Service September 24, 1999
BY PAUL BARTON
http://enquirer.com/editions/1999/09/24/loc_possible_plutonium.html
WASHINGTON - The Energy Department plans to investigate whether Cold War-era workers at the federal uranium processing center at Fernald were unknowingly exposed to highly radioactive plutonium, officials said Thursday.
The investigation into the Fernald Feed Materials Production Center, which operated from 1951 to 1989, is a spinoff of the recently initiated examination of workers at Paducah, Ky., being exposed to plutonium without their knowledge.
The department is calling the investigation the "mass flow project" - a detailed study of how plutonium and other radioactive materials traveled throughout the government's nuclear weapons production system, which stretched from Idaho to the South to the Northeast.
The department has set a target of June 2000 to complete the study.
Gene Branham, vice president of the Fernald Atomic Trades and Labor Council, the union representing Fernald workers, said it has long been known that there were at least trace amounts of plutonium at the site.
But he said he would not be surprised if the investigation shows higher exposures than previously known.
"It is a never-ending chase to get to the bottom of this, to find out the truth," he said. "Is there more we don't know about? There is a good possibility there is."
Plutonium, which is much more radioactive than uranium, was a core ingredient of many Cold War weap ons. It is produced in nuclear reactors.
David Michaels, assistant secretary of Energy, said in documents presented to Congress this week that "preliminary analysis" indicates some plutonium-laden materials went through Fernald.
"It (Fernald) is part of the investigation," DOE spokeswoman Natalie Wymer said Thursday.
The Energy Department has been rocked by revelations of workers at Paducah being exposed to high doses of plutonium without their knowledge - doses believed to have caused cancers and other severe problems.
"Preliminary analysis also indicates that recycled materials may have also been transferred to the Fernald Feed Materials Production Center and the Y-12 Plant at Oak Ridge (Tenn.)," Mr. Michaels said.
The department has already learned that uranium-bearing ash, with plutonium mixed in, was regularly sent from Paducah to Fernald.
During the Cold War, the department estimates, it produced more than 100,000 metric tons of materials containing at least trace quantities of plutonium and other products of nuclear reactions.
"We are concerned not only with the flow of this material, but also its characteristics such as the level of residual plutonium and fission products," Mr. Michaels said. "Today our understanding of where that material went is limited."
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson ordered the study of how plutonium-containing materials flowed throughout the weapons complex.
Other plants involved in the flow of materials included Weldon Springs, Mo.; Ashtabula, Ohio; Portsmouth, Ohio; Oak Ridge; Barnwell, S.C.; the Idaho Laboratory in eastern Idaho, and the West Valley Demonstration Project near Buffalo, N.Y.
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Albright Urges Nuclear Test Ban
Associated Press Thursday, Sept. 23, 1999
By Barry Schweid AP Diplomatic Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19990923/aponline153945_000.htm
NEW YORK -- On the eve of the third anniversary of President Clinton's signing of a treaty to ban all nuclear weapons tests, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appealed Thursday to the Senate to join the 45 nations that have approved the pact.
Speaking at the Association of the City Bar of New York, Albright said the ban helps curb the spread of nuclear weapons by putting explosive tests "out of bounds for good."
The United States can maintain a safe and reliable nuclear weapons defense without tests, Albright said, and is capable of detecting tests conducted by other countries.
"Americans and people around the world do not want to live in a world in which nuclear testing is business as usual," Albright said. "They do not want to make it easy or acceptable for nuclear weapons to spread further."
Three years ago on Friday, Clinton became the first world leader to sign the treaty. It banned underground weapons tests, the only kind permitted after the late President John F. Kennedy signed a treaty in 1963 to outlaw nuclear testing in the atmosphere or under water.
Ratification requires the approval of tow-thirds of the Senate.
A leader in the drive, former Sen. James Exon, D-Neb., pledged to do all he could to secure the required votes. But, in an interview, he said Clinton had to do more "and give this some additional visibility from the bully pulpit."
Clinton approved the treaty after some debate within the administration over whether there should be an exemption for very limited testing to keep the U.S. nuclear arsenal up to date.
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Paducah Worries About Radiation
Associated Press Thursday, Sept. 23, 1999
By James Prichard
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19990923/aponline152910_000.htm
PADUCAH, Ky. -- The way the employees tell it, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant sometimes operated as if Homer Simpson were running the place. Except that what happened there wasn't funny.
Workers used to wipe "green salt" off the plant lunch tables, fully aware it was a radioactive byproduct of the plant's main task - enriching uranium for use as fuel in nuclear reactors.
They would bury truckloads of uranium shavings that ignited and burned upon being exposed to the air. They would dump thousands of barrels filled with radioactive contaminants into ponds and bury them in the ground. All the while, they were told they were working with materials that were "safe enough to eat."
Now the employees and many other people in Paducah fear they are dying because of what happened at the 47-year-old plant, McCracken County's biggest source of jobs.
Chris Naas, a heavy-equipment operator who has worked at the plant for 25 years, told Senate investigators this week that he was taken off a job in 1974 after being told he was "hot" - meaning, he assumed, that he had been exposed to too much radiation.
Naas said his father turned up "hot" on several occasions during the 20 years he worked at the plant.
"Today, he has a form of terminal cancer - lymphoma. We will never know what was the cause," Naas said. "My question is: Will I turn up the same, and what recourse will I have?"
In June, three plant employees filed a federal lawsuit alleging that workers unwittingly were exposed to plutonium and other highly toxic substances from 1953 to 1976. The lawsuit is sealed.
The Energy Department, which owns the plant and is overseeing a $1 billion cleanup, later acknowledged that 103,000 tons of recycled uranium containing a total of 12 ounces of plutonium were handled in Paducah during the period.
Plutonium is much more potent than uranium - it can cause cancer if ingested in quantities as small as one-millionth of an ounce. The Energy Department is investigating why workers were exposed to plutonium and whether contractors who operated the plant covered it up.
"We were told that the uranium substances we were working with were safe and posed no threat to our health, or to the health of our families," Garland "Bud" Jenkins, who worked there for 30 years, told a House committee Wednesday in Washington. "We were even told the materials were safe enough to eat."
The plant site, with its combined enrichment and cleanup operations, is the county's largest employer with 2,000 workers.
But plant workers are not the only people in this rural area in western Kentucky who are questioning whether their health has been compromised.
Ronald Lamb's family has lived and worked for years down the road from the Gaseous Diffusion Plant. His father, William, who opened the family's auto repair shop in 1961, died five years ago after being diagnosed with prostate and bone cancer. Lamb said the well at the family's house was found to have a trace of plutonium in 1990.
Lamb, 47, sued the contractor that operated the plant at the time, but a federal judge dismissed the case, saying there was no evidence the well was contaminated. The Energy Department told Lamb that the positive test for plutonium in the well water was erroneous, he said.
But Lamb isn't convinced. He said he suspects contaminated well water is responsible for a long series of illnesses he has endured for 10 years, including nerve damage, an ulcer and intestinal problems. But he can't prove that, either.
"It's just my own belief," he said.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson apologized for the government's secrecy about the plutonium during a recent town hall meeting in Paducah, and has proposed $20 million in compensation for plant workers with certain radiation-related cancers.
Some in Paducah are skeptical the secretary's plan will ever adequately reimburse them, both for the contamination and the cover-up.
"If he does it, OK. It's been a long time coming," said Nita Bean Rose, whose father, Charles Arvil Bean, retired from the plant with anemia and heart trouble in February 1977.
That April, he was found to have acute leukemia. He died the following year, at 65.
Wilma Kelley runs a T-shirt and sports clothing shop a half-mile up the road from the school. Her husband worked at the plant for 31 years before retiring in 1988.
Ms. Kelley said she remains optimistic the government will do the right thing.
"If bad stuff is here, then they will clean it up," she said. "That's all we can hope."
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Strickland vows Piketon workers will share compensation
Columbus Dispatch Thursday, September 23, 1999
By Jonathan Riskind
http://www.dispatch.com/pan/localarchive/pikersnws.html
WASHINGTON -- Breathing clouds of plutonium-laced dust. Covered with asbestos particles. Exposed to smoke plumes of airborne uranium and a plethora of other toxic materials. And tracking it all home at the end of the day.
During the Cold War, that was life at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Kentucky, uranium worker Jim Key told a congressional committee yesterday.
Today, Key wonders if he will inevitably be stricken with cancer. Numerous other workers wonder if the cancers they already have are a result of years of working in such hazardous conditions.
The House Commerce Committee's oversight subcommittee spent the day probing current and former conditions at the Kentucky uranium-enrichment plant, prompted by recent reports that -- unbeknown to workers -- deadly plutonium-laced uranium flowed through there during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
Members of Congress reacted strongly to allegations that former plant contractors subjected workers to dangerous conditions, and that the U.S. Department of Energy exercised feeble oversight.
Although the Paducah plant was the focus yesterday, Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, was calling for a hearing into similar problems at its sister facility, the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio. Strickland vowed yesterday to amend a U.S. Department of Energy proposal to compensate former Paducah workers suffering from cancer to include Piketon as well.
Strickland has contended that some Defense Department officials and others in the Clinton administration are opposed to even covering Paducah workers, fearing it will set a precedent and open a Pandora's box for any number of nuclear facilities.
He pointed to a memo he obtained yesterday to back that assertion: "The proposal establishes a precedent for compensation of occupational radiation injury claims'' without requiring a definite link between cancers and on-the-job radiation exposure, stated Thomas M. Beckett, deputy director for naval reactors within the Defense Department.
Strickland said it was probably impossible at this point, given incomplete, missing and possibly inaccurate information, to make a definite link. The presumption should be that workers are entitled to such compensation, he said.
Strickland was told during the hearing that a full-fledged Energy Department probe of what occurred at Piketon during the Cold War won't begin until November and officials won't visit the southern Ohio plant until early January.
Also, a health survey will be done of some 6,000 former workers at Paducah, Piketon and another former plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
Strickland said yesterday that the negligence demonstrated at the plants in the past warrants a criminal investigation.
Some Kentucky workers have sued the former contractors at Paducah, saying they didn't exercise proper precautions and misled the government about what was going on at the plant.
The Department of Energy is investigating its past oversight. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has apologized to former workers and pledged to compensate people suffering radiation-caused cancers.
Workers at the Piketon plant likely were exposed to similar, if not identical, materials, said Dan Minter, president of the union representing the workers.
In addition to a toxic brew of chemicals and radioactive materials that for years went into weapons-grade uranium, Piketon, like Paducah, also received shipments of plutonium-laced uranium.
The highly radioactive material was contained in spent nuclear-reactor fuel the federal government sent to Paducah and Piketon for recycling into another batch of fuel.
The conversion plant that recycled the reactor fuel at Piketon was closed in 1977 when officials grew concerned about dangerous radioactive emissions, but workers for years may have been exposed to plutonium- laced dust. It was unclear how much plutonium may have gone through the plant's uranium-enrichment process after conversion.
Even a millionth of an ounce of plutonium can cause cancer.
Since 1993, the uranium-enrichment plants have been run by a privatized federal corporation, USEC, and produce only low- grade enriched uranium for nuclear fuel.
James H. Miller, USEC executive vice president, testified yesterday that his company has taken significant steps to upgrade safety, identify contaminated areas and reduce potential worker exposures to radiation.
John J. Hummer, director of corporate environment, safety and health for Lockheed Martin, the contractor that ran Paducah and Piketon beginning in the mid-1980s, said his company always fully informed the government about the state of worker safety, radiation contamination left from past years and carried out all safety obligations.
No one from Union Carbide, the contractor for the Paducah plant until 1984, testified.
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Senate Democrats Balk at Waco Probe
Associated Press Friday, Sept. 24, 1999
By Laurie Kellman
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19990924/aponline020245_000.htm
WASHINGTON -- Senate Democrats are refusing to participate in a Republican-led task force that will investigate how President Clinton's Justice Department handled inquiries into the Waco standoff, campaign finance abuses and nuclear espionage.
A key Democratic lawmaker scoffed at the Republican's offer to make the probe bipartisan, saying the task force had been set up over Democratic objections and had been announced to reporters first.
"This is a Republican task force. No Democrats have been involved," said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. "I don't intend to be part of a Republican-organized, partisan investigation."
At an earlier news conference, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said the task force would be chaired by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and would focus on "what in the world is happening at the Justice Department, why is there no justice at the Justice Department?"
Lott said the five-member task force would include two Democrats and two more Republicans in addition to Specter. But only one other Republican member, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, was present at Thursday's announcement. No Democrats attended.
Republicans had squabbled among themselves for weeks over the size and scope of the probe. But even as they debated, Specter was moving forward. He said his aides had traveled to Texas to preserve evidence collected from the FBI's 1993 siege against members of the Branch Davidian cult. The 51-day siege ended when the cult's compound near Waco erupted in flames. Davidian leader David Koresh and some 80 followers died during the inferno, some from fire, others from gunshot wounds.
Specter said his aides found only one of two canisters that federal agents only recently admitted firing. "Nobody knows" what happened to the other one, Specter said.
He also confirmed he had talked with Charles LaBella about leading the panel's investigation. LaBella is a former Justice Department prosecutor who publicly disagreed with Attorney General Janet Reno's decision to not have an outside, independent counsel investigate fund-raising abuses by the Clinton-Gore campaign in the 1996 election.
"There are a great, great many questions which are left unanswered," Specter, said.
"Things just aren't right," agreed Grassley. Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina will round out the Republican side of the panel, Specter said.
Specter said that at the request of former Sen. John Danforth he will hold off for 30 days before talking to witnesses of the government's siege. Reno named Danforth to head an independent investigation of the government's use of force against the Davidians.
In a letter to the Judiciary Committee last week, Danforth complained that Specter's investigators already had interviewed witnesses. "In the interest of avoiding even the appearance of a turf battle," Specter told reporters Thursday, he agreed to hold off on interviews.
The probes were sparked by revelations last month that the FBI used the potentially incendiary tear gas on the final day of the siege. The bureau had denied the use of such devices for years and failed to turn over to Congress videotapes that may have pointed to such use.
Government officials maintain that Branch Davidians, and not federal agents, set the fatal fire on April 19, 1993.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, had wanted a narrowly focused probe; Specter and Lott advocated a broader look at the Justice Department. Hatch did not attend Thursday's news conference on the issue, and later told reporters he grudgingly signed off on Specter's plan.
"I would have preferred it be done another way," Hatch said. "It's out of my hands now."
Specter was ready to start putting a staff in place. LaBella, he said, "would hit the ground with a sprint." But he added that he will not extend a formal offer to LaBella until after he has spoken with Democrats over the next few days.
Concerned that LaBella's stewardship of an investigation that would focus largely on his former boss' performance, Specter said he has received informal approval for the hiring from officials on the Senate Ethics Committee.
LaBella would have intimate knowledge of the campaign finance investigation, but Specter said the task force probe would stretch to a third topic, the Justice Department's handling of alleged nuclear espionage by China.
The FBI has expanded its China spying probe following criticism that for more than three years it focused too narrowly on the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab in New Mexico.
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US Sudan Missile Strike Challenged
Washington Post September 24, 1999
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19990924/aponline041250_000.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - A high-priced team of lawyers, investigators and scientists has collected soil samples and other evidence in an effort to get the Clinton administration to reimburse a Mideast businessman $30 million for the U.S. missile strike against his pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. The administration already has quietly freed $25 million in assets belonging to the plant owner, although it maintains the bombing was justified. The strike on Aug. 20, 1998, was based on a single soil sample that indicated chemical weapons activity at the plant and on a suspected link to accused terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.
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DIGEST
Washington Post Friday, September 24, 1999
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/24/158l-092499-idx.html
Peco Energy, Philadelphia's electric utility, and Unicom Corp., owner of Chicago's Commonwealth Edison, agreed to a merger that will create the fifth-largest utility company and the biggest operator of nuclear plants in the United States. The transaction, which is being structured as a purchase of Unicom, is valued at $7.8 billion, excluding debt. Unicom chief executive John Rowe and Peco chief executive Corbin McNeill will be co-chief executives of the new company, which will be based in Chicago.
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Bush Outlines Defense Plan In Address at the Citadel
GOP Front-Runner Pushes Pay Hikes, High-Tech Weapons
Washington Post Friday, September 24, 1999
By Terry M. Neal
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-09/24/028l-092499-idx.html
CHARLESTON, S.C., Sept. 23-Texas Gov. George W. Bush (R) outlined the broad themes of his national defense policy today, vowing to accelerate the development of high-tech weaponry, increase military pay, develop an antimissile defense system and end the "back-to-back" troop deployments around the globe.
The speech at the Citadel, a public military college, was Bush's first foray into the areas of defense and foreign policy--areas where Democratic and Republican critics alike have questioned his credentials.
While Bush only mentioned "the administration" once in his 30-minute speech, he implicitly took dead aim at the White House. He said the Clinton administration had sapped military morale and stretched defense resources with a foreign policy that has placed America in too many regional conflicts without clearly defining national interests.
"If elected, I will set three goals: I will renew the bond of trust between the American president and the American military," Bush said, before a crowd of several hundred cheering, uniformed, students and military officers. "I will defend the American people against missiles and terror. And I will begin creating the military of the next century."
Bush chose to give the speech in South Carolina because it has a large military presence and an early position on next year's primary and caucus calendar.
While Bush has experience in education and social issues as governor of the nation's second-most populous state, he has virtually none in defense or foreign policy, as his opponents have stressed. Bush has relied this year on advice from former advisers to his father, former president George Bush and former president Ronald Reagan. Among them: Condoleezza Rice, Brent Scowcroft, Colin L. Powell, Richard B. Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, George Shultz, Richard L. Armitage and Richard Perle.
The speech was designed to portray Bush as a tough, Reaganesque military hawk who would use the U.S. military's dominance to promote peace around the world. He emphasized more than once that he would not use the military as a permanent peacekeeping force and that countries such as China, Iraq, North Korea should be warned about threatening the United States: "Our first line of defense is a simple message. Every group or nation must know, if they sponsor such attacks, our response will be devastating."
The campaign of Vice President Gore responded before Bush had even delivered his speech. Gore spokesman Chris Lehane, playing off of two well-publicized Bush gaffes, said: "I think Governor Bush's alleged foreign policy and defense expertise begins with Slovenia and ends with Slovakia."
On a more serious note, Lehane alleged that Bush's economic and defense policies would break the bank. Bush proposed committing an extra $20 billion over five years for research and development of new weapons systems. He also said he would earmark 20 percent of the defense procurement budget for "acquisitions programs that propel America generations ahead in military technology." And he said he would push for a $1 billion per year increase in military salaries over the 4.8 percent increase recently approved by Congress.
But Rice, a Stanford University provost who is on leave and serving as Bush's top foreign policy adviser, said during a conference call that the current budget surplus would more than cover the cost of Bush's proposal, plus the proposed GOP tax cuts, with enough money left over to shore up Social Security.
Bush saved some of his harshest criticism of the White House for U.S. troop deployments around the world. "This administration wants things both ways: To command great forces without supporting them," he said. "To launch today's new causes, with little thought of tomorrow's consequences."
One of Bush's ideas that could prove especially controversial--but popular among conservatives--is to unilaterally withdraw from the 1972 antiballistic missile treaty if Russia refuses to amend it to allow the United States to deploy a national missile defense system.
Staff researcher Ben White in Washington contributed to this report.
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Bush Emphasizes Defense, Weaponry
Associated Press Thursday, Sept. 23, 1999
By Robert Burns AP Military Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19990923/aponline165042_000.htm
WASHINGTON -- Promising a "new architecture of American defense," Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush said Thursday that he would spend $20 billion more on futuristic weapons research, build a national defense against ballistic missiles as quickly as possible and cut back on overseas peacekeeping by American troops.
Speaking at The Citadel military academy in Charleston, S.C., Bush accused the Clinton administration of breaking faith with service men and women by deploying them too frequently and paying them too little. He said the administration has failed to use America's technological prowess to create a more lethal and mobile military.
"The last seven years have been wasted in inertia and idle talk," said Bush, who served in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.
Bush, who holds a large lead in the polls, said the Clinton administration had weakened the nation's defenses by embarking on "vague, endless and aimless" missions abroad.
As president, Bush said, he would order a top-to-bottom review of the military - its structure, strategy and spending priorities - and give his secretary of defense a mandate: "Challenge the status quo and envision a new architecture of American defense for decades to come."
The Texas governor spoke to an overflow audience of about 600, including about 400 cadets in gray uniforms. Several cadets pumped their fists in the air as he was introduced.
"With that kind of reception, you've got amnesty," Bush told the cadets. "I don't care what the general says."
Bush's address - part of a series of speeches designed to spell out his presidential agenda - is an answer to critics who say Bush is not ready to be president and that his views on public policy are undeveloped.
A spokesman for Vice President Al Gore, who is seeking the Democratic nomination, made light of Bush's foreign policy credentials and his history of confusing names of countries. "The governor's foreign policy expertise begins with Slovenia and ends with Slovakia, and even these have proven to be too much of a challenge," Chris Lehane said.
Many of Bush's prescriptions for a healthier military are similar to those pursued by President Clinton, including pay raises for troops and innovations to make U.S. forces more adaptable and easier to deploy on short notice. Their differences are mainly a matter of degree. Bush, for example, would spend $5 billion more on pay raises over the coming five years, and he would commit more quickly to deploying a national defense against missile attack.
"At the earliest possible date" his administration would deploy anti-missile systems to protect not only U.S. troops abroad and allies but also to shield the U.S. homeland from "attack and blackmail." He did not spell out how extensive the national system would be, but aides said it would be more complete than Clinton envisions.
The Clinton administration plans to decide as early as June 2000 whether to deploy a limited national defense system.
Bush said he would have the United States withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia if Moscow refused to accept amendments allowing the testing and deployment of a national missile defense. The Clinton administration is pressing Moscow to accept such changes and has said withdrawal from the treaty remains an option.
A key distinction emphasized by Condoleeza Rice, the candidate's top foreign policy adviser, is Bush's intent to move the military out of its Cold War-era structure by emphasizing innovation and next-generation technologies.
Bush said, for example, that he would earmark at least 20 percent of the Pentagon's weapons procurement budget for programs that propel America "generations ahead" in military technology. He mentioned such possibilities as a "stealthy ship" packed with long-range missiles and unmanned aircraft capable of long-range missile strikes.
Bush said he would commit an extra $20 billion to defense research and development between 2001 and 2006. That would be in addition to the approximately $173 billion the Clinton administration has proposed over a similar period.
Responding to Bush's speech, David Leavy, chief spokesman for the White House's National Security Council, said it was wrong to say the administration had overused the military.
"The president has made one of his key national security priorities making sure that our armed forces are the best trained, best led and best equipped fighting force in the world," Leavy said, adding that the administration has proposed the first sustained increase in overall defense spending since the late 1980s.
Bush said one of his first priorities would be to "renew the bond of trust" between the president and the military. Clinton, he said, has undermined morale by using today's smaller military too freely for open-ended missions like the peacekeeping effort in Bosnia that began in 1995 and continues with no end in sight.
"Something has to give, and it's giving," he said.
Bush said his administration would review U.S. troop commitments abroad - except those of long standing like South Korea and Japan - with an eye toward an "orderly and timely withdrawal" from Bosnia and Kosovo.
"We will not be permanent peacekeepers, dividing warring parties," he said. "That is not our strength or our calling."
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Candidates' Stance on the Military
The Associated Press Thursday, Sept. 23, 1999
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19990923/aponline173510_000.htm
Positions of the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates on the military:
Democrats:
Bill Bradley: Says Clinton administration is increasing military spending too much. As senator voted against Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) deployment and B-2 stealth bombers, and for sanctions instead of military force against Iraq.
Vice President Al Gore: Has helped negotiate arms reduction and nuclear stability arrangements with former Soviet states. As senator, voted in support of SDI and B-2s, and for cuts in smaller weapons programs. Backed military force in Persian Gulf War.
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Republicans:
Gary Bauer: Increase military spending, expand NATO, develop national missile defense system, defeat "isolationist voices" in U.S.
Pat Buchanan: "Retrench and rearm," limit foreign intervention, return many troops from abroad, build national missile defense system.
Gov. George Bush: Increase weapons research and development spending by $20 billion over five years, spend extra $1 billion a year to raise military salaries beyond pending pay increase, build missile defense systems for deployment inside and outside U.S.
Elizabeth Dole: Increase military spending, develop national missile defense system.
Steve Forbes: Build national missile defense system. Says military spending is too low.
Sen. Orrin Hatch: Voted against round of base closings and in favor of giving Congress stronger say on future of bases. Voted against cutting money for F-18 fighter planes.
Alan Keyes: Criticized U.S. intervention in Kosovo as precedent for "new internationalism," but supported strikes against alleged terrorist targets in Sudan and Afghanistan. Sen. John McCain: Close more bases to save $4 billion, build national missile defense system, discard 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia that stands in way of missile system, spend more on personnel, reject foreign or shared command of U.S. military operations.
Dan Quayle: Spend more on the military, build national missile defense system, discard ABM treaty.
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Bush Vows Money and Support for Military
New York Times September 24, 1999
By FRANK BRUNI
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/092499wh-gop-bush.html
CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Describing the world as a dangerous place with unpredictable threats to American security, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas outlined a plan on Thursday for additional spending to increase military salaries and fashion a new generation of more technologically sophisticated weapons.
In what Bush and his advisers billed as his first major policy speech on the military, Bush also said that if he were elected president, he would conduct a thorough review of all of the country's military commitments abroad, an implicit statement that he might scuttle some of them.
And Bush, the leading contender for the Republican nomination, said it was important enough for the United States to deploy anti-ballistic missiles that he would back out of a 1972 treaty with the Russians if they did not agree to amend its provisions so that the United States could pursue this course.
"Even in this time of hope and confidence, we can see the signs of uncertainty," Bush told hundreds of cadets in an auditorium at the Citadel, a military college here. "We see the contagious spread of missile technology and weapons of mass destruction. We know that in this era of American pre-eminence, it is also an era of car bombers, plutonium merchants, cyber-terrorists and drug cartels and unbalanced dictators -- all the unconventional and invisible threats of new technologies and old hatreds."
"These challenges can be overcome, but they cannot be ignored," Bush continued. Later, he added: "If I'm elected, I will set three goals. I will renew the bond of trust between the American president and the American military. I will defend the American people against missiles and terror. And I will begin creating the military of the next century."
Bush's speech was rife with criticisms, both explicit and implicit, of the Clinton administration, which he said had eroded the spirit of American military troops through insufficient pay and insufficiently planned interventions in foreign conflicts. "Sending our military on vague, aimless and endless deployments is the swift solvent of morale," Bush said.
He further questioned the country's sustained ability to protect itself in a volatile world in which not just the United States and Russia, but smaller nations like North Korea, Iran and Iraq had achieved or were developing long-range missiles.
To that end, he said that he would add $20 billion over five years for the scientific research and development of better weapons systems, and that he would demand that 20 percent of the military procurement budget be devoted to new technologies, not existing ones.
There were shades of former President Ronald Reagan's thinking and oratory in the way Bush summoned the specter of foreign evils -- "a world of terror and missiles and madmen," he said -- and emphasized American technological prowess as the amulet against them.
There was no acknowledgment, however, that some of the cuts in military spending were initiated by his own father, President George Bush, during his term in office.
Bush invoked President Bush only in adulatory terms. He called the Persian Gulf war "a stunning victory," and when he talked about the heroism of the men who fought in World War II, he said, "I have seen all of this personally and closely and clearly." He was referring again to his father, who was a fighter pilot.
Bush's rivals for the Republican presidential nomination and many Democrats have criticized him as unprepared -- after just five years as governor of Texas, his first elective office -- to deal with foreign affairs.
The Democratic National Committee even keeps a list of gaffes that Bush has made when talking about international relations, like referring to Greeks as Grecians.
His speech on Thursday, prepared in consultation with at least eight foreign policy and military advisers, all of whom were listed in supplementary materials distributed by his campaign, was a clear attempt to portray himself as extensively briefed and thoroughly prepared.
But Democrats immediately raised questions about Bush's proposals, beginning with where he planned to find the $20 billion for research and an additional $5 billion over five years to pay for the cost of salary increases.
Bush's proposed pay raise is in addition to the one approved by Congress earlier this year.
"One has to reconcile this with his support for the Republican tax cut," said Marc Ginsberg, a former ambassador to Morocco and a foreign policy adviser for the campaign of Vice President Al Gore, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. "Where's the money going to come from?"
Ginsberg and other Democrats also wondered how Bush would be able to redirect money from the production of current weapons to research into future ones without jeopardizing the country's defense in the meantime.
Condoleezza Rice, the former provost of Stanford University and the chief foreign policy adviser to the Bush campaign, said Bush believed projected federal surpluses would be large enough to accommodate tax cuts, the preservation of Social Security and increased military spending.
In his remarks, Bush did not say which foreign commitments he would not have entered into. He simply said the United States "would not be permanent peacekeepers, dividing warring parties."
He did not say which military weapons were already becoming too outmoded to warrant continued production. He simply said he wanted "to build America's defenses on the troubled frontiers of technology and terror."
"Our military is still organized more for cold war threats than for the challenges of the new century -- for industrial-age operations, rather than information-age battles," Bush said. "The last seven years have been wasted in inertia and idle talk."
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Bush's defense priorities are similar in many ways to Clinton's
Associated Press, 09/24/99
By Robert Burns
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/267/wash/Bush_s_defense_priorities_are_:.shtml
WASHINGTON (AP) George W. Bush's defense policy priorities are similar in many ways to those of the current administration. The Republican presidential candidate wants the military transformed into a more agile, mobile force, and he sees a growing threat to the American homeland from terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.
Where Bush differs with President Clinton's approach is mainly on the pace of military change and the extent of U.S. troop deployments on open-ended peacekeeping missions like Bosnia and Kosovo. The Texas governor said in a policy speech Thursday that if elected to the White House he would order an immediate review of overseas commitments, though not to NATO or in Asia.
''We will not be permanent peacekeepers, dividing warring parties,'' he said in an address to the Citadel military academy in Charleston, S.C. ''This is not our strength or our calling.''
Many of Bush's prescriptions for a healthier military are similar to those pursued by Clinton, including pay raises for troops and innovations to make U.S. forces more adaptable and easier to deploy on short notice. Bush would spend $5 billion more on pay raises over the next five years than the administration currently proposes, and he would commit an extra $20 billion over five years on research and development of next-generation weaponry.
Steven Kosiak, an analyst at the private Center for Strategic and Budget Assessments, said Bush's proposals were ''positive,'' but raised questions about how he would pay the bill while also pushing large tax cuts.
In his speech, Bush did not say how much he would add to defense spending overall, but Condoleeza Rice, his top foreign policy adviser, told reporters that he would propose ''significant increases'' to the $270 billion now spent on defense.
Rice said Bush would not attempt to change the current policy on gays in the military, which allows homosexuals to serve as long as they don't acknowledge their sexual preference. He also supports the current policy on roles for women in the military, she said.
Richard Cheney, who served as defense secretary in Bush's father's administration, said the Texas governor's defense policy ''is on the right track.'' He said the special emphasis on military research and development was particularly important for maintaining the American military's global dominance well into the 21st century.
Bush, who holds a large lead in the polls over all Republican and Democratic contenders, said the Clinton administration had weakened the nation's defenses by embarking on ''vague, endless and aimless'' missions abroad.
As president, Bush said, he would order a top-to-bottom review of the military its structure, strategy and spending priorities and give his secretary of defense a mandate: ''Challenge the status quo and envision a new architecture of American defense for decades to come.''
''At the earliest possible date'' Bush said his administration would deploy anti-missile systems to protect not only U.S. troops abroad and allies but also to shield the U.S. homeland from ''attack and blackmail.'' He did not spell out how extensive the national system would be, but aides said it would be more complete than Clinton envisions.
The Clinton administration plans to decide as early as June 2000 whether to deploy a limited national defense system.
Bush said he would have the United States withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia if Moscow refused to accept amendments allowing the testing and deployment of a national missile defense. The Clinton administration is pressing Moscow to accept such changes and has said withdrawal from the treaty remains an option.
Bush said he would earmark at least 20 percent of the Pentagon's weapons procurement budget for programs that propel America ''generations ahead'' in military technology. He mentioned such possibilities as a ''stealthy ship'' packed with long-range missiles and unmanned aircraft capable of long-range missile strikes.
Bush said he would commit an extra $20 billion to defense research and development between 2001 and 2006. That would be in addition to the approximately $173 billion the Clinton administration has proposed over a similar period.
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Clinton Softens on Defense Spending
Associated Press Thursday, Sept. 23, 1999
By Kevin Galvin
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19990923/aponline174238_000.htm
WASHINGTON -- The White House signaled a willingness Thursday to approve a massive military spending bill despite reservations about a provision that would create a new nuclear weapons agency and reorganize the Energy Department.
Administration officials said no decision had been made. But there was a softening of resistance to the reorganization after President Clinton heard from key GOP senators and met with Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who vigorously opposed the bill.
"The president met with Secretary Richardson yesterday, and they discussed some of the remaining concerns on the DOE reorganization," said White House press secretary Joe Lockhart. "I think Secretary Richardson recognizes the very important military aspects of that bill, from the readiness money to the pay raise, which is very important."
Lockhart said there had been no formal decision, but "we're going to continue to work through this."
In response to months of allegations about Chinese espionage at the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories, Congress overwhelmingly agreed Wednesday to create a new nuclear weapons agency in the most dramatic reorganization of Energy in 22 years.
The reorganization was included in a $288.9 billion defense bill that included a military pay raise and a 4.4 percent across-the-board increase in Pentagon spending, including more money for military housing and hardware.
Both the Senate and the House approved the measure by veto-proof margins.
The administration, led by Richardson, had threatened a veto because of concerns about the nuclear weapons agency, but lawmakers assumed that a veto would be politically difficult, given the defense bill's overwhelming bipartisan support.
Even Democrats who voiced concern about the new weapons agency said the defense measure was too important to have it sidetracked on the reorganization issue.
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., presented their case for the nuclear agency in a meeting with Clinton on Monday evening.
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Merging ComEd Has System Problems
Associated Press Thursday, Sept. 23, 1999
By Eric Fidler
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19990923/aponline184259_000.htm
CHICAGO -- Plans by Commonwealth Edison's parent company to merge with a Pennsylvania utility left some of ComEd's critics skeptical that management could both navigate a merger and rebuild its teetering electric utility.
"There is enormous public concern about Commonwealth Edison's ability to deliver reliable and effective service in the Chicago metro area," Howard Learner, executive director of the Chicago-based Environmental Law and Policy Center, said Thursday. "Clearly this merger will distract management's attention from that task."
The proposed merger of Unicom Corp., which owns ComEd, with Philadelphia-based PECO Energy Co. would create a company with 5 million customers in two states, a huge fleet of nuclear reactors and a raft of reliability problems in northern Illinois.
"Edison has a big task ahead of it right now to fix all the problems with its distribution system, and anything that might divert the attention and focus of management away from that is cause for concern," said Pat Clark, associate director of the Citizens Utility Board.
Unicom's chief executive, John Rowe, has vowed to attack ComEd's problems with transmission and distribution "root and branch." He said Thursday that a merger would not distract ComEd from that effort.
"I will not let that happen," he said.
About 100,000 customers in Chicago lost electricity during a July heat wave. Twice during the summer power went out in the Loop; another blackout imperiled the Field Museum of Natural History's collection of rare plant and tissue samples.
These and other scattered blackouts across the city and suburbs had many of the utility's 3.4 million customers in northern Illinois seething, and politicians clamoring for the company to start over from ground zero.
ComEd has removed two key executives - its vice president of transmission and distribution, and the vice president of engineering, construction and maintenance. It also brought in transmission and distribution experts from other utilities and hired a contractor to help check all the cables and transformers in Chicago.
ComEd earlier promised to pump $3 billion into upgrading the system by 2004 - $1 billion of that in the city of Chicago. That promise came as an admission that it had let its transmission infrastructure go at the expense of bringing its problem-plagued nuclear plants up to speed.
Learner said he believed the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission would "take a hard look" at the merger. ComEd is the nation's largest nuclear utility and PECO has been buying and refurbishing nuclear plants through AmerGen Energy Co., which is purchasing Illinois Power's Clinton nuclear plant, the only non-ComEd commercial nuclear plant in Illinois.
Jan Strasma, spokesman for the NRC in Lisle, Ill., said the commission is required to look at the financial and technical qualifications of the new company, but "since it's really a restructuring of two old companies, much of that will not be significantly different."
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Kyrgyz Army Rocket Islamic Uzbek Invaders
Reuters September 23, 1999
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/990923/08/international-kyrgyzstan-gunmen
BISHKEK (Reuters) - Kyrgyz forces pounded radical Islamic rebels in southern Kyrgyzstan with salvoes of rockets from multiple launchers, presidential press secretary Kanybek Imanaliyev said Thursday.
"Yesterday there was an attack from Grad installations," he said, referring to Soviet-made mobile rocket launchers.
"The gunmen have sustained losses," he told Reuters, adding that the number of casualties was not yet known.
The rocket salvoes late Wednesday were aimed at positions held by the gunmen around the southern villages of Sai and Syrt, Imanaliyev said.
Russian military equipment had begun to arrive to strengthen the Kyrgyz forces after extended delays, he added.
Kyrgyzstan, a poor and mountainous central Asian state of five million inhabitants which borders China to the east, and Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to the north, west and south, is struggling to stop hundreds of rebels who crossed into its territory a month ago from Tajikistan.
The gunmen, operating in rugged country with mountains that soar over 5,600 meters (18,000 feet) have taken hostages including four Japanese geologists.
They are linked to Uzbekistan's hardline Muslim opposition movement and are believed to be seeking to cross into Uzbekistan via Kyrgyzstan's southwestern tip to launch a holy war.
Wednesday's rocket attack was the first significant assault that Kyrgyzstan's small and poorly equipped army has attempted since sporadic fighting with the gunmen around the frontiers of the Uzbek enclave of Sokh began Friday.
A band of up to 200 fighters are trying to break into Sokh, a small piece of Uzbekistan entirely surrounded by Kyrgyz territory, the result of Soviet mapmakers' attempts to divide Central Asia along ethnic lines.
About a dozen Kyrgyz troops have died in fighting around Sokh in the last five days. Rebel losses are unknown.
Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have all pledged to help Kyrgyzstan fight the rebels.
Attempts to wipe them out are complicated by the rough, mountainous terrain in Batken and Chon-Alai regions and the presence of the hostages at their main base in the Khodzho-Achkan gorge.