------------
Nuclear Stalemate
Saturday, November 6, 1999; Page A24
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/06/011l-110699-idx.html
In his Nov. 1 op-ed article, "A Way Out of Nuclear Stalemate," Stansfield Turner argues that "President Clinton unilaterally could remove the nuclear warheads from, say, 1,000 missiles." But the president would face significant obstacles to unilateral "de-alerting." His hands are essentially tied on this issue by an amendment to the 2000 National Defense Authorization Act. The amendment denies funding for Department of Defense efforts to retire or dismantle deployed strategic weapons.
De-alerting nuclear weapons makes sense. In the present strategic climate, maintaining weapons on "hair-trigger alert" brings no deterrence benefits while increasing the risk of accidental nuclear war. De-alerting measures can be best applied by the executive, as President Bush did in 1991 when he ordered the withdrawal of tactical weapons from Europe and the de-alerting of U.S. bombers.
The Soviets quickly reciprocated, and as Adm.Turner noted, "the world has been a safer place." Congress has deprived President Clinton of an opportunity to exercise similarly meaningful and visible global leadership.
PHILIPP C. BLEEK
Washington
-----------
Energy Dept. Halts Plant Operations
Filed at 5:57 a.m. EST, November 6, 1999 Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Oak-Ridge-DOE.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19991106/aponline055729_000.htm
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (AP) -- Safety and security concerns have prompted the Energy Department to temporarily halt operations at a uranium enrichment plant here.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced the stand down Friday, after workers failed to follow guidelines in handling nuclear materials and equipment during a practice run.
An unrelated review completed this week also found security lapses at the plant, Richardson said.
``These lapses are inexcusable and I've ordered immediate corrections,'' Richardson said in a statement.
Because no nuclear materials were being handled during the drill, DOE officials said there was no danger to employees or the public.
Officials said Lockheed Martin Energy Systems, which operates the Y-12 plant, has removed three managers from their positions. The company has brought in a new manager to head enriched uranium operations there.
``It is a serious issue in the fact that we are trying to understand how we can get fully restarted, but it's not a serious setback,'' said Dianne Knippel, spokeswoman for Lockheed Martin at Y-12.
The plant manufactures nuclear weapons components and dismantles nuclear weapons from the nation's arsenal.
Officials said a security review found that workers had failed to properly keep track of inventories of nuclear materials and equipment and that there were lapses in security clearance procedures.
``These lapses are inexcusable and I've ordered immediate corrections,'' Richardson said.
He has demanded information on plans to address the security concerns by Nov. 12.
As part of the safety stand down, officials will conduct a plant-wide safety program next week.
-------
Possible U.S.Missile Shield Alarms Europe
Allies Fear Arms Race, Diminished Security Ties
By William Drozdiak Washington Post Foreign Service, November 6, 1999; Page A01
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/06/176l-110699-idx.html
BERLIN, Nov. 5-The American campaign to develop a protective shield against ballistic nuclear missiles is provoking serious alarm among the European allies, who fear that it could weaken the political and military links between the United States and Europe and trigger a dangerous arms race with Russia and China.
Faced with growing support in the Republican-controlled Congress and the Clinton administration for a revival of plans to build a national missile defense, European governments have stepped up their warnings that such a system could destroy the concept of shared risk that for decades has been the foundation of NATO security doctrine.
The sharpening debate over missile defenses follows the almost universal condemnation of the Senate's rejection of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty. It has fortified a perception among foreign governments that the United States is exploiting its global military and economic clout to lock in strategic superiority that would make it immune to future challenges from the rest of the world.
The symbolism behind U.S. intentions to change the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty so that it may build a missile shield has not been lost on foreign leaders, who have seized on the issue to warn the United States about the dangers of retreating into a fortress mentality.
"There is no doubt that this would lead to split security standards within the NATO alliance," said German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer during a trip to Washington this week. "I see lots of problems developing in this respect, which we must discuss calmly and reasonably with our American friends."
Fischer said Germany's commitment to be nonnuclear "was always based on our trust that the United States would protect our interests, that the United States, as the leading nuclear power, would guarantee some sort of order." A drive by the United States to build its own missile defense, he said, would erode that confidence by effectively putting European cities at greater risk of nuclear missile attack than those in America.
Even British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is probably Clinton's closest ally among world leaders, is said to harbor serious reservations about U.S. plans for ballistic missile defense. Britain's support would be critical because of the need for the United States to upgrade its tracking stations there in order to to shoot down missiles before they strike North America.
On other international issues as well, Europeans are dismayed by what they see as a U.S. penchant for unilateralism. At a conference in Bonn this week to discuss the global warming crisis, where the United States and Europe differed over how to meet limits on greenhouse gas emissions, U.S. delegation chief Frank Loy said a persistent theme concerned the refusal by the United States to play by the same rules as other nations.
"You could feel a lot of the resentment among the other delegations," Loy said. "There was no direct connection between the nuclear test ban vote and the global warming issue, but there was plenty of anger about what others see as the arrogance of a superpower that cannot or will not be held to account for its behavior."
In a sharp attack on American foreign policies, French President Jacques Chirac on Thursday lamented "isolationist tendencies" in Congress that prompted the "perplexing decision" to vote down the nuclear test ban treaty. He and other foreign leaders have repeatedly deplored the U.S. refusal to pay nearly $2 billion in past dues to the United Nations and to assume greater environmental responsibility, as the world's biggest polluter, for the global warming crisis.
There is some sympathy abroad for the fact that the Clinton administration shared the views of allied governments on those issues but found its wishes thwarted by a Republican-led Congress. On the matter of ballistic missile defense, however, the European allies are profoundly troubled by the support it has found among Democrats as well as Republicans.
Walter Slocombe, the undersecretary of defense, said today that President Clinton would decide "next summer at the earliest" whether to order the deployment of a limited national missile defense. By then, Clinton hopes to persuade Moscow to modify the ABM treaty, but the Russians have firmly rejected that request and insist any unilateral abrogation by the United States will provoke a new arms race.
Slocombe said that while the administration would prefer to preserve the ABM treaty, it will not let Russian objections stand in the way of a missile defense system, if the United States determines it is in its national security interest to build one. "If they persist absolutely in that position, then the United States . . . will have to face a very difficult question, which is whether to withdraw from the treaty," Slocombe said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Besides the risk of further antagonizing the Russians, European governments are worried about the United States and China heading for a new confrontation over ballistic missile defenses in Asia. During a recent state visit to France, Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Chirac discussed their worries about a sea-based American missile defense system that would protect Taiwan and Japan.
The United States has sought to reassure its allies that a missile defense system will not be deployed unless it can meet four criteria: the technology must be proven to work effectively; the costs must be reasonable; the threat must be significant; and the system must demonstrably improve security. But so far, the European allies have not been impressed with those arguments and remain fearful that the United States may not be thinking through the consequences for the rest of the world.
"This issue could end up driving a stake through the heart of the alliance," said a senior European diplomat at NATO headquarters in Brussels. "First there is the danger that it will cause the Russians and the Chinese to ratchet up the arms race by finding ways to beat missile defenses. But there is also the fear that if the system works, American and European security interests will no longer be bound by exposure to the same threats."
During the days of the Soviet Union, the alliance's strategic doctrine held that the United States would be willing to share the same exposure to nuclear attacks by placing its own cities at risk in the defense of the European allies. But if the United States develops a missile shield on its own, it would no longer be subject to the same constraints. In the view of the allies, such a dramatic change in the U.S. strategic environment would soon lead Washington to abandon its commitments under NATO's nuclear doctrine.
The allies also fear that, once endowed with a missile shield, the United States would be tempted to protect its superior posture by launching preemptive nuclear strikes against any perceived challenge, from "rogue states" such as North Korea or Iran, or from terrorist groups, for example--with or without the consent of the allies.
"We already went through this debate during the 1980s with Ronald Reagan and the idea of a 'Star Wars' anti-missile system," said a senior NATO official. "We learned how dangerous and divisive it can be when you tamper with the ABM treaty, and that is one thing that has not changed since the end of the Cold War."
---
U.S. Pushes Missile Defense Despite Allies' Opposition
By ELIZABETH BECKER, November 6, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/110699missile-us.html
WASHINGTON -- The administration said Friday that it could go ahead with a national missile defense system, even if it meant withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty over Russian objections.
"We will not permit any other country to have a veto on actions that may be needed for the defense of our nation," Walter Slocombe, undersecretary of defense for policy, said Friday in a speech at the Center for Strategic International Studies.
The first deployment -- 200 missile interceptors and a radar station in Alaska -- would break the ABM treaty, which strictly limits the number, type and placement of defensive missiles in Russia and the United States. That would require renegotiating the treaty, which Moscow has been resisting.
Friday, Russia won support for keeping the treaty intact from many of Washington's allies and friends in a largely symbolic vote at the United Nations. A Russia-sponsored resolution opposing any new missile defense system that "attempts to undermine or circumvent the ABM Treaty" won a lopsided committee vote of 54-7, with all of the members of the European Union either voting with Russia or abstaining.
Next summer Clinton will decide whether to begin deploying a $10 billion missile system. This revamped "star wars" network, which is designed to knock down incoming enemy missiles, is not large enough to be aimed at Russia or any other major nuclear power. Instead, it is meant to protect all 50 states from small missile attacks from countries like North Korea.
In his speech Friday, Slocombe said that in the next 15 years, North Korea, Iran and possibly Iraq were "likely to be able to field intercontinental-range missiles that could deliver chemical, biological or nuclear weapons against the territory of the United States."
Slocombe said the administration believed that Moscow would eventually agree to modify the treaty, clearing the way for the United States to deploy the missiles.
But in the past month, since the U.S. military successfully tested a crucial element of the missile network, Moscow has repeatedly demanded that the treaty be preserved, even taking its campaign to the United Nations.
While insisting that the administration remains committed to the treaty, Slocombe argued that Russia shares some responsibility for recognizing that rapid technological changes and new political realities require changes in the treaty.
Several European countries have raised questions privately and publicly about the wisdom of threatening to withdraw from the treaty, which has been the basis for nearly every nonproliferation agreement.
Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of Germany said in Washington on Thursday that he believed the administration's willingness to consider abandoning the ABM treaty was based on political calculations in the upcoming presidential elections. Otherwise, he said, it could mean a change in the U.S. policy of promoting disarmament.
"Everyone should think very carefully about the results of scrapping the treaty," he said. "Is it better to have Russia in the framework and under the control of international treaties or not? Yes or no?"
The ABM treaty bars the United States and Russia from building nationwide systems, allowing each only one site for limited defenses. Until recently the United States had its small, limited system in North Dakota, but tore it down in anticipation of deploying a new nationwide system in Alaska.
Russia has retained its anti-ballistic missile system of radars and missiles built around Moscow during the Soviet era. On Wednesday, Russia announced that it had tested a short-range interceptor missile for that system, an act several Pentagon officials interpreted as a warning against further American testing of its new system.
The Pentagon has scheduled two more tests of the system for the spring, before the president makes his decision in June. Though those are to be followed by 16 more tests, weapons experts doubt that the first three tests will provide enough information to make a sound judgment.
"By next summer we will have no technical basis on which to make a very serious decision about whether this system is ready to go," said Tom Collina, director of arms control at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
He argued that such a decision should not be made in the heat of the political campaign for president.
"The stakes are too high," he said. "If we pull out of the ABM, the administration is inviting the collapse of other treaties. Both sides still refer to ABM as the cornerstone for stability and arms control."
---------
Toughen Up the Rules of the Sky
By RALPH NADER and PAUL HUDSON November 6, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/oped/06nade.html
WASHINGTON -- The events were depressingly familiar. After the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990, the National Transportation Safety Board rushed into action, marshaling people and equipment and spending millions of dollars to recover as much of the airplane as possible in order to find out the cause of the crash.
The federal government is expert at recovering wreckage, but not so good at preventing wrecks. We don't know what caused this week's crash. But the Federal Aviation Administration could take action right now to prevent future crashes. It could toughen safety rules that airlines must follow and require the adoption of safety devices and techniques used elsewhere.
For example, in 1997, after its investigation of the Trans World Airlines Flight 800 crash off Long Island, the transportation safety board insisted in its report that the F.A.A. take action to reduce the danger of explosions in center fuel tanks, which are in the body of the plane rather than in the wings. One remedy would be to have airlines adopt technology from military aircraft that use foam and other materials inside tanks to keep oxygen from getting near the fuel. The next year, an F.A.A. advisory panel found that center fuel tanks in most American airliners were dangerously hot 30 percent of their operating time because they were placed next to heat sources like outflows from air conditioners.
Yet rather than ordering changes right away based on these reports, the F.A.A. responded last week with weak measures, proposing better tank maintenance and study of new tank design.
Poorly placed fuel tanks are not the only fire hazard the agency has failed to address adequately. It should require that smoke detectors and heat-activated systems to release foam or other fire suppressants be placed in all areas that are inaccessible to an airplane's crew. The fire that caused the 1995 Valujet air disaster in Florida spread from the cargo hold. The one in the Swissair jet that crashed off Newfoundland in 1998 is thought to have begun in the ceiling of the passenger cabin.
The agency should also require all American airplanes to carry up-to-date black boxes, which have their own internal power sources and gather far more data than older models and record cockpit voices for much longer periods. Boxes like this, used by many European airlines, send the data to ground stations that can provide flight crews with early warning and analysis of flight abnormalities. The aviation industry and some pilot unions oppose these upgraded boxes because the data could be used to discipline pilots or in lawsuits. But they are needed to help us learn from crashes.
The agency is also allowing dangerous practices on the ground. For instance, at many airports intersecting runways are now used simultaneously. And at busy airports, an airplane can be cleared to land or take off on a runway before the plane already on the runway has left it. This has led to at least two near-misses at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and a steady increase in incidents of planes moving inadvertently onto runway space assigned to other aircraft.
Cargo and mail are still being loaded onto passenger jets without being screened for explosives or radioactivity, although two presidential commissions on aviation security have recommended that the practice no longer be allowed.
In some areas it regulates, the aviation agency is not even living up to the safety requirements in its rule books. For example, it is allowing safety systems in some new airliner designs to be evaluated by analysis based on past tests, mathematical models and computer simulations, rather than requiring actual testing. The agency waived full-scale emergency evacuation tests for the Boeing 777-300, for example, and certified the plane in 1998 to carry 550 occupants even though actual tests had been used only for a smaller model model (the Boeing 777-200) that carried 419 people.
Every year, the agency also grants the airline industry an astounding 300 waivers or exemptions from federal safety rules. For example, while a rule requires that the aisle between seats leading to emergency window exits be 20 inches wide, the F.A.A. has made exceptions to allow spaces as small as 14 inches and is considering a further relaxation to 10 inches. Today there are more than 3,000 waivers of various kinds.
It is true that commercial air travel continues to be among the safest forms of travel. But if standards are not kept high, the industry's record could quickly deteriorate. To assure that they are, the United States should establish an independent federal aviation safety and security agency, leaving the F.A.A. to operate air traffic control. Congress should also form an air passenger association, financed in part by a two-cent refundable fee on each ticket and controlled by passengers, to counter the powerful airline industry lobby. And Congress should hold regular, vigorous aviation safety oversight hearings.
Neglecting air safety is like stretching a rubber band. At a certain point, the rubber band snaps.
Ralph Nader is co-author of "Collision Course: The Truth about Airline Safety." Paul Hudson directs the Aviation Consumer Action Project.
-----------
House Approves Aid Bill but Some Call It Inadequate
By ERIC SCHMITT, November 6, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/99/11/06/news/world/aid-congress.html
WASHINGTON -- The House overwhelmingly approved a compromise foreign aid bill on Friday, but some allied governments and international aid workers expressed disappointment at the debt relief for poor countries.
By a vote of 316 to 100, lawmakers agreed to an aid package negotiated by the White House and Congress on Thursday that added $799 million more than Republicans wanted to spend on matters like peacekeeping in Kosovo, nuclear security in Russia and cancellation of poor nations' debts, mostly in Africa.
The $13.5 billion measure will advance next week to the Senate, where approval is expected.
President Clinton said the bill "meets our commitments" in key policy areas. But some European diplomats here and international aid workers were more skeptical.
In debt relief, the Group of Seven industrial nations agreed in Cologne, Germany, in June to cut the debt burden of the poorest countries to ease poverty. To help pay the American share, President Clinton requested $370 million this year to help the 41 countries identified by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as "heavily indebted."
But Republicans, who included $33 million in their spending bill, agreed to only $123 million in the compromise. They said that to spend more would raid the Social Security surplus, which both parties vow to protect.
"The real danger today is not American hegemony, but American disengagement," said one diplomat from a European country involved in the debt fund set up at Cologne.
Aid workers said the United States could well afford to cancel loans to let poor countries focus their resources on needed services like education and health care. "We don't think a farmer in Mali should be selling some of his crop to go into the U.S. Treasury when they need to get children into school," said Seth Amgott, a spokesman for Oxfam, a worldwide anti-poverty agency.
The initial foreign aid bill passed by the Republican-controlled Congress last month contained $12.7 billion and was vetoed by President Clinton as inadequate. The administration asked for $14.4 billion but compromised on $13.5 billion.
The compromise restored some administration priorities, including an additional $170 million in economic support funds and $150 million for development aid.
The two sides agreed earlier to spend $1.8 billion during three years to underwrite the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords. Of that amount, which provides the full amount President Clinton requested, $1.2 billion is for military support to Israel, $400 million in economic aid for the West Bank and Gaza and $200 million for Jordan.
Republicans also restored $104 million for nuclear security programs and other aid to republics of the former Soviet Union, but the $839 million total fell far short of the administration's request for $1.32 billion.
The United States has worked hard to prevent nuclear material in Russia from falling into the hands of terrorists. Even some proponents of safeguards have grown frustrated as the Russian authorities have restricted access to some sensitive nuclear sites.
But Kenneth Luongo, the head of the Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council, a private group, said, "Given the problems in Russia, the thought that devoting less money is going to give them incentive to be more cooperative, or solve the problem faster, is inaccurate."
-----------
Gore Blasts Bush
Quiz Answer Vice President Questions GOP Leader's Foreign Expertise
By Terry M. Neal Washington Post Staff Writer, November 6, 1999; Page A09
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/06/081l-110699-idx.html
Vice President Gore weighed in yesterday on Texas Gov. George W. Bush's foreign policy pop quiz, saying his lack of basic knowledge on foreign policy issues was more troubling than his inability to name the leaders of three foreign countries.
Gore took the Republican front-runner to task for suggesting that the Pakistani general who took control of the government in a coup last month, overthrowing a democratically elected leader, was going to bring "stability to the country and I think that's good news for the subcontinent."
"I find it troubling that a candidate for president in our country--the world's oldest democracy--would characterize this military takeover as 'good news,' " Gore said in a statement issued by his campaign. "Further, I find it even more disturbing that he made these comments about a nation that just last year tested nuclear weapons--shortly after voicing his opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty."
Gore campaign officials reveled in Bush's misstep this week. They noted that Bush has been less than forgiving of Gore's flubs. Gore has been a punch line in Bush's stump speech. "This administration no more invented prosperity than they invented the Internet," Bush says, in reference to Gore's much-publicized boast about his role in creating the Internet. In an interview Wednesday on Boston's WHDH-TV, Bush was asked if he could name the leaders of Pakistan, Taiwan, Chechnya and India, all of whom have been in the news lately. Bush was only able to name Taiwan's.
Bush aides yesterday contended his comment on Pakistan was generally consistent with the position of the administration, which condemned the coup by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, but had been dissatisfied with Pakistan's previous leader, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
"Governor Bush agrees with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and State Department spokesman James Rubin, who welcomed General Musharraf's pledge to work for a return to democracy," Bush campaign spokeswoman Karen Hughes said in a statement. "Neither Governor Bush nor the United States government condones coups but both Governor Bush and the Clinton administration, with the apparent exception of Vice President Gore, welcome the easing of tensions in the region."
In an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America, President Clinton took it easy on Bush, saying he would "soon enough learn their names. . . . The most important thing is, do you have a clear idea of what the world ought to look like and what America's policy ought to be in these areas, so that's what I would say."
Gore's rival in the Democratic race, Bill Bradley, echoed the president's sentiments, telling reporters in Boston: "I thought that it was--shall I say--a pop quiz that not everybody could answer. . . . I've been spending the night studying foreign leaders, as well as any other questions that might come about life. . . . You can't be prepared for all these things, and I think what the real question is where do you want to take the country."
-----------
U.S. Willing to 'Engage' Pakistan Rulers
By John Lancaster Washington Post Staff Writer, November 6, 1999; Page A08
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/06/076l-110699-idx.html
Walking a fine line between condemnation and appeasement, the Clinton administration pressed Pakistan yesterday to establish "milestones" for the restoration of democracy while also expressing willingness to "engage" the country's new military government on issues of mutual concern.
Administration officials told a Pakistani envoy yesterday that the United States is eager to see a timetable for the restoration of the democracy, including a schedule for provincial and national elections, administration officials said. At the same time, the officials emphasized their readiness to work with the government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the army chief of staff who last month led the bloodless coup that toppled the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.
Senior officials told the envoy, former foreign minister Yaqub Khan, that they are eager to secure Pakistan's cooperation on issues relating to its nuclear weapons program as well as Pakistani assistance in dealing with Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia, which is providing refuge to Islamic militant Osama bin Laden.
"We don't accept the coup, but as a practical matter we're going to work to pursue our interests," a senior official said in describing the thrust of the discussions. Khan met yesterday with White House officials and Thomas Pickering, the undersecretary of state.
The administration's mixed message reflects its struggle to balance democratic ideals with national security interests, a task that has been made somewhat easier by Sharif's deep unpopularity among Pakistanis. "It's hard for us to be holier than the pope," the senior official said.
Still, the military takeover poses something of a dilemma for a country that sees itself as a guardian of democratic values. During her recent tour of Africa, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright was peppered with questions from African journalists who wanted to know whether Washington's tepid response to the coup signaled American acceptance of military rulers on the African continent.
As a consequence, Albright has written a cable to American ambassadors worldwide offering guidance on how to explain the nuances of the U.S. position, according to a senior official who has read the document. "While some have interpreted what we've said as implicit approval," the official described the classified cable as saying, "there can be no legitimacy to the military suspension of a democratically elected assembly."
The cable goes on to note that the administration's decision to suspend aid to Pakistan, which is required by law in the event of a military takeover, should be read as a "clear and unambiguous" signal of U.S. disapproval.
At the same time, the cable continues, "We believe we have to continue to engage" on issues such as Islamic extremism, drug trafficking and nuclear nonproliferation.
"We cannot . . . do business as usual," State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said. "We do think it's important to work on issues of concern to our national security."
-----------
India's Bias
Saturday, November 6, 1999; Page A24 Washington Post Letters
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/06/017l-110699-idx.html
Carin Fischer muddies the historical waters when she writes in her Oct. 23 letter that: "Since the end of colonial rule, India has endeavored . . . to avoid alignment with any superpower."
Jawaharlal Nehru, the architect of independent India's foreign policy, consistently followed a pro-Soviet bias, despite preaching about "neutralism." When the Korean War erupted in 1950, his suggested "settlement" was replacing Nationalist China with Communist China on the U.N. Security Council and then negotiating with Moscow and Beijing to end the conflict.
Similarly, in 1956, Nehru was quick to denounce the British-French-Israeli assault on Egypt, but was so mild and exculpatory in his comments about the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian uprising that he was criticized even by friends.
Further, efforts by the United States and its allies to cope with the Soviet-initiated Berlin crises were not helped by Nehru's comment that they were present in the city only by Soviet "permission."
Finally, although Nehru was always highly critical of American nuclear testing, in 1960, when the Soviets ended an unofficial testing moratorium with the detonation of the most powerful atomic blast in history, he had almost nothing critical to say.
DAVID F. RUDGERS
Arlington
-----------
U.S. Pressed to Surrender Secret Files of Haitian Militia
By Colum Lynch Special to The Washington Post, November 6, 1999; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/06/108l-110699-idx.html
UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 5-When the United States intervened in Haiti in September 1994, ending a military dictatorship, American GIs seized 60,000 documents from the headquarters of the Haitian army and the regime's notorious paramilitary organization, FRAPH.
Five years later, most of those papers remain warehoused in the basement of the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, prompting charges from human rights activists and U.N. officials that Washington is delaying justice for former Haitian leaders.
To step up pressure on Washington, Adama Dieng, the U.N. Secretary General's human rights envoy to Haiti, asked the 188-member United Nations General Assembly today to pass a resolution urging the U.S. government to turn over the files to the current Haitian government.
The U.N. may not decide for weeks whether to vote on the resolution, and in any event it would not be binding on the United States. But it would spotlight the murky connections between the former Haitian dictatorship and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Dieng and other human rights advocates believe that the documents contain evidence about Haitian death squads in the early 1990s. He also alleges that Washington may be reluctant to hand over the documents because they would reveal that some of the worst human rights abusers were on the CIA payroll.
"I think the U.S. administration is trying to cover up some of its wrongdoing in that period," Dieng said, noting that FRAPH's former leader, Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, now a resident of Queens, N.Y., has repeatedly claimed to have worked for the CIA.
U.S. officials deny any cover-up. A State Department official said Thursday that the United States has offered to return all of the files to Haiti, as long as it can delete the names of a small number of American citizens that appear in the documents. Haiti, however, has demanded that it be given all the documents in their entirety. The two countries are negotiating.
"The documents don't have much in them, travel receipts, laundry tickets. We would love to get rid of them," said one U.S. official, adding that "somewhere in those 60,000 documents there might be something that could help [prosecute human rights abusers], and we would gladly give them to the Haitians."
Reed Brody, advocacy director for Human Rights Watch in New York, said the documents reportedly contain photographs of torture victims, videotapes of torture sessions and membership applications for FRAPH.
"These thugs terrorized Haiti for three years," Brody said. "The United States has taken away a potential gold mine of evidence that could help bring some of these people to justice."
Robert O. Varenik, an attorney at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, said that both the U.S. and Haitian governments share responsibility for preventing FRAPH's victims from having their day in court. Varenik believes that Haiti has been reluctant to prosecute former officials of the military regime and has halfheartedly pursued the documents.
Varenik added that a CIA memo linking Constant to the murder of a former Haitian justice minister emerged in a court case brought against FRAPH in New York. "We believe those documents contain information on human rights crimes committed by people who may still pose a threat to Haitian society," he said. "Until that information comes to light, the victims have no remedy and those people will remain at large."
-----------
For the Tank, a New Tread of Thought
Army Redesign Proposal Meets Resistance in Armored Ranks
By Bradley Graham Washington Post Staff Writer, November 6, 1999; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/06/121l-110699-idx.html
For half a century, the U.S. Army has built heavier and heavier tanks, figuring that the best way to protect soldiers on a battlefield was to pack more armor and firepower around them.
Now, it's not so sure.
Behind plans announced last month to develop more agile combat vehicles and medium-weight brigades is a decision by the top brass to rethink the question: What's a tank for anyway?
Seemingly straightforward, the question is actually subversive. It could undermine the Army's traditional emphasis on armor, challenge the notion that wars are won in massive land battles with overwhelming firepower, and dissolve the mystique of the cavalry. It also could upset the Army's best-laid budget plans.
The new thinking envisions breaking tanks into their component parts--cannons, sensors, targeting systems and radios--and distributing these elements around the battlefield on wheels or treads, then linking them with a web of electronic signals.
This "distributive approach," as Army planners call it, promises greater speed and flexibility. But it also faces skepticism in the Army's armored ranks, because it represents a radical departure from the traditional notion of a tank as a bulwark of steel that can stand alone on the battlefield.
"The armored community is not comfortable with a light vehicle whose survival depends on moving faster and knowing more about where the enemy is," said Thomas McNaugher, associate director of the Rand Corp.'s Army research center.
There are other hurdles, too, not least of which is the new approach's reliance on futuristic technologies that have yet to be fully developed. Money, as always, remains a problem.
To finance the transformation without additional funds from the White House or Congress, the Army may have to cut back other big-ticket projects--notably, an $11.5 billion effort to build a self-propelled howitzer called the Crusader and a $48 billion program to buy nearly 1,300 Comanche helicopters. Both projects were conceived during the Cold War, when the Army worried about a massive Soviet attack across the plains of Europe.
Nonetheless, the distributive concept has been endorsed in recent weeks by two authoritative groups: the Defense Science Board and a study team commissioned by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon's special projects laboratory. It also has the backing of the Army's top two officers--Gen. Eric Shinseki, the chief of staff, and Gen. John Keane, the vice chief--who assumed their jobs last summer.
By capitalizing on advances in electric motors, robotics, electromagnetic guns, lasers, radar-evading "stealth" materials and other technologies, the Army leaders see an opportunity to engineer lighter vehicles and revamp tactics.
"This is the most fundamental change in the Army that I've seen," said Lt. Gen. Paul Kern, the service's senior acquisitions officer.
Looking to build a constituency for lighter vehicles, Shinseki has reached outside the Army to the Marines, who have voiced concerns about their aging artillery, mortars and attack vehicles. The new Marine commandant, Gen. Jim Jones, has expressed interest in working with the Army on replacements.
Driving the search for a new combat vehicle is what some top officers regard as the reduced relevance of the tank. The top-of-the-line M1A2 Abrams has become too heavy, fuel guzzling and hard to maintain for the new operations engaging the Army.
While tanks clearly had a dominant role when the Army was bracing for battle against Soviet troops, U.S. ground forces are being called on nowadays to deploy quickly to remote places to fight, or keep the peace, without support bases.
"Clearly, the mission has changed," said David Whelan, a senior DARPA official. "It's no longer sitting in Germany figuring out how to hold off a Soviet attack through the Fulda Gap."
Since the early 1950s, the weight of the Army's main battle tank has grown from 50 tons to nearly 70, with ever-larger cannons, bigger turrets and thicker armor. So heavy is today's M1A2 that the largest military transport plane can lift only one at a time.
It also consumes immense amounts of gas, now measured in gallons per mile (anywhere from two to six) rather than in miles per gallon. And because no new tank engines have been built since 1992, existing ones require frequent maintenance--currently, a complete refurbishing every 350 to 550 hours.
Army officials started talking to DARPA two years ago about a new combat vehicle. But the effort gained urgency only after NATO's war against Yugoslavia highlighted the U.S. Army's lack of brigades that were light enough to move quickly, yet heavy enough to strike hard.
The need for rapidly deployable units was further reinforced during the East Timor crisis in September. "East Timor is an example of a situation that, had we had light, agile forces, we probably would have used them," Whelan said.
Under the new plan, the deadline for fielding a light ground combat system has been accelerated from 2025 to 2012. This will require decisions about development and procurement by 2003, Army officials said. As an interim measure, the Army is looking to buy some light armored vehicles already on the market--possibly the Marine LAV, Austrian Pandor or German Wiesel--and use them to create two medium-weight brigades at Fort Lewis, Wash.
Much of the work on the distributive concept is being managed jointly by DARPA and the Army, which has assigned a tank officer, Lt. Col. Marion Van Fosson, as point man. Van Fosson has a doctorate in physics, a fact he prefers not to advertise, worried it will complicate his job persuading fellow tankers.
"It's better if I come across as an armored officer," he said. "I'm trying to emphasize that I don't have all the right ideas. I'm soliciting ideas from everybody."
His own enthusiasm for the new approach was evident as he spoke confidently of a futuristic battlefield of manned combat vehicles teaming with unmanned ones and computer-wielding soldiers able to detect every movement of the enemy.
"We're going to have to change the mind-set," Van Fosson said. "Guys who would stand out there and slug it out toe-to-toe with the enemy in the past will have to learn that their lighter vehicles may not be invincible, but will likely be stealthier and more nimble."
Plans call for several prototypes to be built and tested in the next few years, Van Fosson said. Army officials hope to keep the new vehicle's weight under 20 tons, light enough to be airlifted by C-130 military transports and possibly roll on wheels instead of hard-to-maintain tracks.
The Army has tried to develop a light armored vehicle with anti-tank capabilities before, but without much success. The M551 Sheridan, introduced in the 1960s, had an electronic gun that proved unreliable. The Bradley Fighting Vehicle, which emerged in 1981, was supposed to weigh 15 tons but ended up at 25. And the Armored Gun System, which was ready to enter production several years ago, was killed in a budget crunch.
"If you go back and look at the future of fighting vehicles for the last 30 years, we've been talking about this kind of stuff for a long time," said Col. Dan Kaufman, a professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. "But what we've tended to do is take the most demanding scenario and design the vehicles against it, which has ratcheted up their weight."
--------
Caribbean Showdown
Saturday, November 6, 1999; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/06/009l-110699-idx.html
TENSIONS MOUNT between the U.S. Navy, which desires to continue practice bombing on Vieques, and virtually the whole population of Puerto Rico, Vieques's mother island. Navy gunfire on the island accidentally took a civilian life last spring, transforming a long-smoldering resentment of Navy autonomy into full-fledged outrage over Puerto Rico's still-colonial dependency.
The Navy's latest gambit is to prepare to send in a carrier battle group for the live-fire training the Navy insists is essential to prepare the group for an early Persian Gulf/Mediterranean patrol. Will the commander in chief feel up to conducting this training in the face of the massive Puerto Rican protests now being planned if the Navy resumes training fire? Would he face down the criticism he could expect to draw at home if he restricted the training? To head off a crisis, Washington badly needs to absorb recent turns in the Vieques debate.
A sworn statement by retired Vice Adm. John J. Shanahan--a consultant to the government of Puerto Rico--all but collapsed the Navy's insistence that Vieques offers a critical and unique place for practicing amphibious landings. The Marine Corps doesn't do opposed amphibious landings anymore, hasn't since Inchon in Korea, the admiral said. He wasn't merely challenging the rationale for pounding Vieques. He was undermining the core mission the modern Marine Corps still is substantially built for.
Add a telling point made by Puerto Rico's governor, Pedro Rossello. On Vieques there is an inner range, on the island, where weapons explode, and an outer range, at sea, where weapons sink in the sea. Let training continue on the outer range, the governor argues, but halt live-fire training on the inner range--on the island, on part of which 9,000 American citizens live. Thus could the Navy retain useful training grounds and give Vieques residents security on their home island.
Of course Vieques is a symptom of the larger long-neglected political crisis arising from Puerto Ricans' lack of the full rights that other Americans enjoy. Perhaps one key to the larger question lies in Vieques.
-----------
Wildlife Refuge to Be Expanded for Protection of Pacific Salmon
From Los Angeles Times Wire Services November 6, 1999
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/19991106/t000101024.html
WASHINGTON--President Clinton announced a major expansion Friday of a national wildlife refuge along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest in order to provide protection for Pacific salmon.
The White House said management responsibility of 57,000 acres that was part of the top-secret project to build the atomic bomb will be transferred from the Energy Department to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect wild salmon and preserve the river's ecology.
The move, sought by environmentalists for more than a decade, ensures that the land near the Columbia River in Washington state will not be turned into farmland.
Clinton said that adding the land to the Saddle Mountain National Wildlife Refuge will protect prime salmon habitat and support the Pacific Salmon Treaty with Canada.
"My budget proposes increases for salmon restoration, but Congress has provided only a fraction of the resources necessary to do the job," he said in a statement taped for radio.
The acreage was part of the Hanford nuclear reservation that began in 1943 for the Manhattan Project to build the bomb during World War II.
Hanford made plutonium for the nation's nuclear arsenal until the 1980s and is now being cleaned up as the most contaminated nuclear site in the nation.
But the land to be transferred was part of a security buffer, so much of it has been untouched for decades and is considered to be in good condition.
Environmentalists view the area as one of the last large chunks of high-quality, shrub-steppe habitat in the nation. The land is home to more than 200 species of birds and more than 40 rare plants and animals.
-----------
Leavitt, Residents Of Blanding Discuss Uranium Tailings
Saturday, November 6, 1999, BY LISA CHURCH SPECIAL TO THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
http://www.sltrib.com/1999/nov/11061999/utah/44687.htm
BLANDING -- Gov. Mike Leavitt took on residents concerned about the White Mesa uranium processing plant during a town hall meeting on Friday.
Residents like Yolanda Badbach, who lives downwind of the plant, had concerns about how the uranium tailings near the Colorado River were affecting residents and life in the river. Contaminants from the tailings are seeping into the river and threatening three endangered fish species.
Badbach told Leavitt the plant needed to close because "our elders are dying" and the young are getting sick.
"The mill needs to do it [process uranium] safely," Leavitt responded. "They say they are doing it safely. I believe the state should check to make sure they are doing it safely."
Plant owners added that the company wants the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to continue enforcing their regulations to enforce safety.
Leavitt told residents if company officials are following the law, he doesn't see anything that would threaten closure of the plant.
The governor has argued that the tailings pile should be moved. But plans are to cap the tailings instead.
On Friday, the state and NRC named PricewaterhouseCooper to manage the capping of the 10.5 million tons of uranium tailings and to oversee cleanup of the pile.
The NRC approved a plan to drain 500 million gallons of water from the pile to stop leakage then put an earthen cap on the pile to prevent radon from escaping and new water from see ping in.
--------
India admits plan to test missile
Australian Broadcasting News, November 6, 1999
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-6nov1999-108.htm
India says it will test a long-range ballistic missile soon, the first admission from the Government that such a missile exists.
A junior Defence Minister, Bachchi Singh Rawat, told reporters the missile will have a range of 5,000 kilometres.
India first tested a medium-range ballistic missile in March, 1993, and earlier this year launched a longer-range missile, with a range of 2,300 kilometres.
Announcing the plan, but giving no more details, Mr Rawat said the Government would unveil a multi-billion dollar military modernisation plan in Parliament before the Budget session, beginning next March.
India has come under strong international pressure, especially from China and the United States, to halt its missile program in the wake of its nuclear tests in May last year.
The tests triggered a tit-for-tat response from Pakistan.
-----------
Chinese Nuclear Buildup Predicted
Beijing Is Expected to Counter U.S. Anti-Missile Defense Plan
Paris, Saturday, November 6, 1999 By Joseph Fitchett International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/SAT/FPAGE/nuke.2.html
PARIS - Western specialists are increasingly convinced that the strongest moves to counter the new U.S. emphasis on anti-missile defenses will come not from Russia, as widely forecast, but from China.
The consensus is that Beijing will respond to moves in Congress to shift U.S. policy on deterrence by equipping China for the first time with a potent, potentially destabilizing nuclear force.
''The dirty little secret is that until now China has never had a serious nuclear force, but Chinese leaders seem to be deciding that they are going to need something that is more credible,'' a National Security Council official confided recently in Washington.
A move by China to deploy a new generation of nuclear missiles - with instant launch capability and intercontinental range - would alarm Japan, pose an acute challenge to India, and, at least theoretically, threaten U.S. and European territory.
Such an arms spiral in Asia was described in similar terms by many officials and experts who took part in a two-day meeting this week in Paris on the outlook for global security.
Sponsored by the French Institute for International Relations, the country's leading think tank, the meeting was attended by specialists from Asia, Europe, Russia and the United States - although not from China, whose officials failed to turn up as planned.
''Congressional moves to break out of multilateral nuclear arms control are making the world more unsafe without making the United States any safer,'' a French official said.
More cautiously, Winston Lord, a former U.S. ambassador to China whose views on Asia are highly regarded, said that China may have intended to modernize its nuclear weapons and now was citing U.S. actions as a pretext to justify its long-planned move.
But he concurred in the view that Beijing seemed to be intent on acquiring a more robust nuclear arsenal. The Chinese military has been gaining the technologies it would need for a new nuclear force that would have missiles with multiple warheads to slip past any foreseeable missile shield devised by the United States.
A report last week in Beijing's state-controlled media said that China had decided to step up efforts to protect its nuclear forces so that it could retaliate against a preemptive strike - giving Chinese leaders the ''second-strike capability'' that is the hallmark of a major nuclear power.
The official Digest Weekly said that China would begin a $10 billion program to improve its nuclear deterrent.
China has also been seeking to develop the technology for using solid, instead of liquid fuel for its missiles. Since liquid fuel is stored apart from the missiles and solid fuel is not, the weapons could be permanently ready for launching without waiting to be fueled.
The capability of instantaneous launch would increase the credibility of Beijing's nuclear deterrent by giving it ''survivability'' - the technical term for being able to retaliate before a country's weapons are wiped out by incoming missiles.
But that change in China's nuclear posture would almost certainly affect political calculations in India, which would probably consider a similar modernization for its protection.
The real effect of that change would be an increase in tensions between India and Pakistan, its nuclear rival. If these neighbors built solid-fueled missiles that could be launched without warning time, they would increase the risk of an accidental nuclear war as each worried about a surprise attack.
Outlining these dire prospects, Andrei Kokoshin, a former Russian deputy defense minister, said, ''The situation in which China has a handful of barely useable missiles could change into a force of 60 to 80 weapons with multiple warheads.''
Mr. Kokoshin accused the United States of increasing the risk of this development in China by seeking to change the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and leaving the impression that Washington wants to change the rules of nuclear deterrence.
Rejecting these worries as misplaced, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a strategic planner who worked alongside Henry Kissinger when he was secretary of state in the 1970s, said that Britain and France should join the United States in seeking to build missile-interception programs.
Europeans, he said, also needed protection against the risk of being hit by even a few nuclear-tipped missiles that could be launched by a rogue state or terrorist group - or even released by accident if Russia's systems of command and control deteriorated too badly.
The threat posed potentially by North Korea and Iraq, he said, explained why Washington was seeking to build short-range anti-missile defenses to cover U.S. forces abroad plus Japan and a small long-range system to protect U.S. territory.
France and Britain initially opposed the original plan in the 1970s for the superpowers to build anti-missile defenses that would neutralize the Europeans' own new nuclear forces. Their pressure contributed to the 1972 treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union that consecrated defenses, but small ones. Washington now wants to change the treaty to permit more protection for both countries, but Moscow has resisted any changes.
''We can't allow a first modification that would open the way to a lot of changes that left the United States with the dominance of defenses combined with its arsenal of strike forces,'' another Russian official said.
The Russians' concern - of facing a new high-technology arms race over missile defenses - has been publicly echoed by Britain and France, partly because they fear a trend in which Congress seeks unilateral steps modifying the U.S. posture on nuclear stability, thereby undermining multilateral efforts to prevent fresh nuclear dangers.
In practice, experts said, Britain and France could tolerate a U.S.-Russian modification of the bilateral treaty because the Europeans no longer believe that Moscow can build a proficient missile defense of its own.
To encourage the Russians to accept, Washington has offered to share missile-detection data and provided reassurances that any defense system would not be powerful enough to prevent a strike by Russia's big missile force.
The chances of negotiating along similar lines with Beijing seem remote, U.S. State Department officials said, because Congress has become so suspicious of China's nuclear intentions.
China's alleged nuclear espionage at U.S. facilities, for example, was said to involve telephone satellites, a technology that can be easily converted to military purposes.
In discovering how to separate civilian satellites from launch rockets, Chinese engineers also have learned how to build missile warheads capable of breaking into multiple re-entry vehicles to overwhelm a force of defensive interceptors.
The most acute concern in Beijing involves Taiwan. A U.S.-Japanese regional missile-defense system - ostensibly to blunt any attack from North Korea - could also deal a blow to China's stature if it neutralized any Chinese missile threats.
Planners in Beijing doubt that a defensive system would really work, a Chinese strategist told Western officials in Paris this week. But if a U.S.-Japanese system covered Taiwan, he said, ''We would go all out to build a force that clearly was strong enough to get through.''
-----------
U.S. Pushes Anti-Missile System Decision could cause rift with Russians over '72 ABM Treaty
Elizabeth Becker, New York Times, November 6, 1999 San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/11/06/MN17061.DTL
Feedback: mailto:chronfeedback@sfgate.com
The Clinton administration said yesterday that it might go ahead with a national missile defense system, even if it means withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty despite Russian objections.
``We will not permit any other country to have a veto on actions that may be needed for the defense of our nation,'' Walter Slocombe, undersecretary of defense for policy, said in a speech at the Center for Strategic International Studies.
The first deployment -- 200 missile interceptors and a radar station in Alaska -- would break the ABM treaty, which strictly limits the number, type and placement of defensive missiles in Russia and the United States. That would require renegotiating the treaty, which Moscow has been resisting.
At the United Nations yesterday, Russia won support from many of Washington's allies and friends for keeping the treaty intact. A Russian- sponsored resolution opposing any new missile defense system that ``attempts to undermine or circumvent the ABM Treaty'' won a lopsided committee vote of 54 to 7, with all of the members of the European Union either voting with Russia or abstaining.
Next summer, Clinton will decide whether to begin using a $10 billion missile system. This revamped ``star wars'' network, which is designed to knock down incoming enemy missiles, is not large enough to be aimed at Russia or any other major nuclear power. Instead, it is meant to protect all 50 states from small missile attacks from countries such as North Korea.
In the past month, since the U.S. military successfully tested a crucial element of the missile network, Moscow repeatedly has demanded that the treaty be preserved, even taking its campaign to the United Nations.
The ABM treaty bars the United States and Russia from building nationwide systems, allowing each only one site for limited defenses. Until recently the United States had its small, limited system in North Dakota, but the U.S. tore it down in anticipation of deploying a new nationwide system in Alaska.
Russia has retained its anti-ballistic missile system of radars and missiles built around Moscow during the Soviet era. On Wednesday, Russia announced that it had tested a short-range interceptor missile for that system, an act several Pentagon officials interpreted as a warning against further American testing of its new system.
The Pentagon has scheduled two more tests of the system for the spring, before the president makes his decision in June.
-----------
Japan Sees Quake Risk at Nuclear Sites Experts question criteria used in placement of reactors. But regulators, firms point to safety measures.
By VALERIE REITMAN, Los Angeles Times, November 6, 1999
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/science/19991106/t000101011.html
TOKYO--Japan's recent accident at a uranium processing plant, which exposed safety flaws in the country's aggressive nuclear energy program, has renewed concerns that an earthquake could trigger another crisis if it were to strike close to reactors or nuclear-related facilities.
Japanese activists and some seismologists point out that some of this earthquake-prone archipelago's 51 nuclear reactors are built in areas where quakes are likely. They also contend that four dozen nuclear-related treatment and processing facilities could also be prone to radiation leaks in the event the "big one" strikes.
"I think the situation right now is very scary," says Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a seismologist at Kobe University. "It's like a kamikaze terrorist wrapped in bombs just waiting to explode."
Ishibashi argues that the government's prime criteria for judging whether nuclear power plants are safe are "absolutely wrong" from a seismological standpoint. Among the factors used to decide where to locate plants are past earthquake data and proximity to known fault lines and to the ocean, which is used to cool reactors.
Ishibashi predicts that the area of a nuclear plant in Shizuoka prefecture in central Japan--while not considered part of an active seismic region--will be the site of the next big quake. A fifth reactor is under construction at the plant.
Earthquakes often occur in areas where faults have not been found, which was the case in the 1995 temblor in Kobe.
"It is wrong to give too much weight to active fault research for measuring earthquake possibilities at nuclear power plant sites," Ishibashi says. "Active faults reflect only a part of the whole earthquake state, just like a tail of an animal."
Japanese and international regulators, as well as the Japanese companies building the reactors, note that earthquake data are taken into consideration in the placement of reactors, which they say can withstand earthquakes as great as magnitude 8.5.
If an earthquake hits a plant, safety devices will function even if other facilities are damaged, and the reactor will automatically stop, cool down and then prevent leakage, says Yuji Kurotani, senior examiner in Japan's Nuclear Power Safety Examination Division.
An earthquake larger than 8.5 could spell trouble, however.
"Then it will be the same as Chernobyl," says Kurotani, referring to the world's worst nuclear accident, the reactor meltdown in Ukraine in 1986. "But that kind of case will never happen."
Unlike in Japan, a country lacking in natural resources that is aggressively beefing up its nuclear power program to supplant reliance on imported fuels, the issue of vulnerability to earthquakes hasn't come up much in the U.S. in recent years. No nuclear reactors have been built since the late 1970s, after cost overruns and the Three Mile Island nuclear accident all but ended nuclear-energy expansion.
The International Atomic Energy Agency says none of the world's 434 nuclear power plants have experienced major problems that were due to earthquakes, a statistic that illustrates the "strength of construction which is rightly part of their basic design," says spokesman David Kyd.
He says nuclear power plants are built with "tremendously strengthened foundations and structural features to ensure that they can withstand the biggest conceivable earthquake."
"This is why nuclear power plants in both Japan and California, for example, and more recently in Taiwan, have ridden out fairly major earthquakes without damage," Kyd says.
But Ishibashi contends that, even if new faults are found--as in the case of Shimane nuclear plant in western Japan--the government doesn't disclose details or revise plans.
A group of about 300 local activists has been suing to block the construction of a planned third reactor at the plant.
"There were supposed to be no faults, which is why the plant was approved in the first place under the government's safety guidelines," says Yasue Ashihara, who is spearheading the opposition group.
"Since now we know that the active fault exists around the reactors, the facts indicate that they no longer meet the safety guidelines," Ashihara says.
Hisako Ueno of The Times' Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.
-----------
Pentagon brass outline 'smart rock' missile defense plan
By DON HUNTER Daily News reporter November 6, 1999
http://www.adn.com/stories/T99110613.html
A missile defense system proposed for Alaska would pair an exotic new radar at the tip of the Aleutians with interceptors housed in underground silos somewhere in the Interior, Pentagon officials told a few dozen people at a public hearing here this week.
Only a handful of people spoke Thursday at the hearing - the last of four in the state on a draft environmental impact statement - and most were against the idea. Opponents largely argued that the military has a history of deceiving its neighbors in rural Alaska and leaving behind abandoned bases littered with pollutants.
"I'm very skeptical that the proposed missile defense system, if deployed in Alaska, would be any different," said Pamela Miller of Alaska Community Action on Toxics.
Two state senators, however, said an Alaska-based defense system makes sense practically and environmentally. Sen. Loren Leman, R-Anchorage, said Fort Greely probably is the best of three potential Alaska sites for the proposed national missile defense system.
Underground water tables are deep in that area, near Delta Junction, making it more secure from "the potential, however unlikely" spill of fuels or chemical propellants, Leman said.
"And this summer's wildfire has conveniently killed every tree for miles," he added.
Whether the missile defense system will be built in Alaska or North Dakota - or at all - has yet to be decided. Three Interior sites are under consideration. Clear Air Station near Anderson and the Yukon training area on Fort Wainwright north of Fairbanks are the other two.
Air Force Col. Larry Bramlitt said locating the system in Alaska likely would require laying two fiber-optic cables - a primary and backup - from Whittier or Seward down the length of the Aleutian chain to Eareckson Air Station on Shemya Island, and also overland to the Interior. The cables would connect an "X-band radar" on Shemya to "ground-based interceptors" housed in underground silos in the Interior.
The plan calls for about 100 interceptors in all, hardly enough to defend against the threat posed by thousands of Soviet warheads during the Cold War era, but enough to knock down the handful of intercontinental ballistic missiles that a rogue nation like North Korea might be able to launch, Bramlitt said.
Instead of a warhead, the interceptors would carry sophisticated targeting instruments in an "exoatmospheric kill vehicle" allowing it to track and collide with an incoming missile at an altitude of about 80 miles. Bramlitt said the "EKV" would carry no explosives, but should shatter the incoming missile into small bits that in theory should burn up while re-entering the atmosphere.
"It's a smart rock," he said.
Bramlitt said a decision by President Clinton on whether to go ahead with the missile defense system, and where to locate it, is expected next summer. U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, backs locating the interceptors at Fort Greely. But putting the system in Alaska might violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, and Russia objects to changing the treaty.
Putting it anywhere else would leave Alaska and Hawaii vulnerable to attack, said Leman and state Sen. Robin Taylor, R-Wrangell. Taylor said he authored a resolution three years ago in which the Alaska Legislature asked the federal government to defend the state against nuclear attack.
"Geographically, on this globe there is no better place to put it," Taylor said, adding that if funding becomes an issue - the project is estimated at $10.5 billion - Fort Richardson in Anchorage might be a low-cost alternative to an Interior location.
That notion got support from an unlikely quarter. Anchorage activist Michael O'Callaghan said he thinks the new system would violate the ABM treaty. But if the government is bound and determined to build it, putting the interceptors at the old Nike missile site at the top of Arctic Valley Road would provide "the biggest bang for the buck," O'Callaghan said.
Bramlitt and David Hasley, with the Army's Space and Missile Defense Command, said the preliminary environmental impact statement on the project indicates it could be built and operated without significantly affecting the environment.
Written comments on the project and the impact statement will be accepted until Nov. 15. Comments should be mailed to SMDC-EN-V, Julia Hudson, U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command. P.O. Box 1500, Huntsville, Ala. 35807-3801.
A final public hearing on the environmental impact statement will be held in Virginia next week.
* Reporter Don Hunter can be reached at dhunter@adn.com