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Gulf veterans snub government

November 7, 1999 Published at 08:26 GMT
http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid%5F508000/508154.stm
http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/295000/images/_299540_gulf300.jpg

Gulf war veterans feel betrayed by the government

A Gulf War veterans' association has broken off links with the government after accusing officials of "leaving old soldiers to die".

The National Gulf Veterans and Families Association represents hundreds of soldiers suffering from so-called Gulf War Syndrome.

They decided to sever links with Ministry of Defence medical experts and officials amid claims that tests to establish the extent of radiation poisoning in veterans were worthless.

The organisation's chairman, Shaun Rusling, wrote to the Armed Forces minister John Spellar to inform of their frustration and their belief that "enough was enough."

Spokesman Tony Flint told the BBC they had taken the decision they could no longer trust the MoD and the Medical Assessment Programme. Mr Flint said this was because gulf veterans and their GPs were being misled as far as treatment was concerned.

Allegation 'justified'

Asked about the veterans' claim that officials were leaving old soldiers to die he insisted the allegation was justified.

"By feeding GPs the wrong information on how to treat, or what is wrong with Gulf veterans, the GP can not treat the gulf veteran properly, so ultimately, he is going to die," he said.

Mr Flint said in future they would get their information from experts who were sympathetic to them both in the UK and in Canada, the USA and New Zealand.

The veterans say they have been betrayed by the government.

"Their idea of the truth and the truth are two different things," said Mr Flint, who claimed there was evidence that medical records sent to GPs had been tampered with.

Urged to reconsider

An MoD spokesman urged the veterans to reconsider their decision.

"We have received the letter and will be responding to it shortly," the spokesman said.

"We do not consider that what they are proposing is in their best interest. We have maintained an open dialogue with the veterans and have an ongoing programme of investigation into why some members of the Gulf war are now ill."

But Mr Flint said the only way forward for veterans was to find out the truth for themselves.

He said although veterans had had a number of meetings with Government officials, the talks had been largely unproductive.

"It's a case of them saying `hello boys, how are you today?' and then leaving it at that."

Mr Flint said he believed two veterans were now dying every week from illnesses associated with the Gulf war.

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Fresh calls for Gulf War Syndrome inquiry
Four medical inquiries are taking place into Gulf War Syndrome

November 6, 1999 Published at 12:40 GMT
http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid%5F507000/507414.stm

The British Legion is renewing calls for a public inquiry into so-called Gulf War Syndrome, despite ongoing government medical studies into the issue.

The Legion wants an inquiry to establish why some 3,000 servicemen became ill after the war in 1991 with Iraq, and why so little was done to help them.

But the Ministry of Defence said it was keen to concentrate on four medical investigations into the problems and did not want to be distracted by having to prepare evidence for an inquiry.

Ian Townsend, of the Legion, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme an inquiry was needed to gain the confidence of future servicemen and women.

"The immediate concern is for those who are ill, nearly 3,000, and some 30 have died already," he said.

"We are very concerned that the programmes to look at the cause of the illnesses that stem from their service in the Gulf War have not been pursued vigorously."

He said that in the early stages, politicians and officials had not been willing to accept there was a problem, and progress was still too slow.

"Certainly there were denials that there was a problem, there were denials about the use of organophosphates and certainly then, when there was some acceptance that people were falling ill, the tracing of medical records and the details of those records were just non-existent."

'Inquiry won't help'

But Armed Forces Minister John Spellar said a public inquiry was not the priority.

"Four scientific inquiries are working, and also liaising with the Americans on their work to actually get to the bottom of these illnesses," said Mr Spellar.

"What we have got to do is focus on what the actual causes of the illness are. Going back to what breakdown there was in the initial stages might be of interest, but I'm not sure that it really helps the Gulf veterans."

He suggested an inquiry at some point in the future might be more appropriate.

In a separate move an organisation representing hundreds of veterans suffering from so-called Gulf War Syndrome announced it had cut its ties with the MoD after accusing officials of "leaving old soldiers to die".

The National Gulf Veterans and Families Association said the decision followed claims that it was not worth testing for the extent of radiation poisoning in veterans.

Meanwhile a Labour MP campaigning against United Nations sanctions has arrived in Iraq at the end of a two-month road trek on a London bus.

George Galloway was greeted at the border with Jordan by a large gathering of Iraqi deputies and trade union leaders.


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Protestors arrested at Beverley uranium mine

Australian Broadcasting November 7, 1999
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-7nov1999-41.htm

Six anti-uranium protestors have been arrested at the Beverley Uranium mine site, in South Australia's northern outback.

The protestors were arrested after they allegedly tried to stop construction at the mine.

Port Pirie Police chief inspector, Brian Fahey alleges a number of charges were laid after truck drivers attempting to enter the mine site were put in danger by the protest action.

Police numbers at the mine have been increased after a week of protest at the site.

Inspector Fahey says 12 officers are currently stationed at several different locations.

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Physician Advises On Radiation

By Jackie Jadrnak Journal Staff Writer, Sunday, November 7, 1999
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/2news11-07-99.htm

An Albuquerque physician was one of five international experts invited to Japan late last month to advise on treatment of three men seriously injured by radiation in a nuclear accident there.

Fred Mettler, professor and chairman of the radiology department at the University of New Mexico, said the experts were stymied in offering a solid prognosis for the most serious injuries. Two of the men already have lived longer than anyone else previously exposed to such high levels of radiation, he said.

"It's unique. They (Japanese physicians) have been able to keep them (the victims) alive longer than anybody would have expected at this point," Mettler said in a telephone interview. "The patients are of a type and situation that haven't been seen before."

Radiation exposures comparable to the Japanese accident may have occurred about a dozen other times worldwide, including a couple of times in the early years of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Mettler said.

With less sophisticated treatments and monitoring techniques available years ago, people died with lesser exposures than these men, he said.

Mettler joined two experts from France, one from Russia and another from Germany in making the recent trip to Tokyo. He said he flew out on a Tuesday and was on a plane back to the United States by Friday afternoon. "It was 36 hours in the air and 36 hours on the ground," he said.

Mettler said he is the United States representative to the United Nations for radiation effects and a member of the International Commission on Radiation Protection. He said he spent about a year in Russia in 1990 as head of an international team studying the health effects of the Chernobyl radiation leak.

"I do a lot of this," he said, adding that he went to Peru three to four months ago because of an accident related to an industrial radiography source and was in Costa Rica a year ago in connection with a major radiation therapy accident.

Mettler praised the quick reaction and state-of-the-art therapies used by the Japanese treatment teams.

The accident at the uranium-processing plant in Yokaimura occurred at 10:30 a.m. Sept. 30, and the three men most affected were in the country's national medical institute by 3:25 that afternoon, he said.

"They're using very sophisticated technology," he said. An entire intensive care unit was cleared out for the most seriously injured man because he must be in sterile surroundings, and a team of 40 people is working on him, Mettler said.

The accident occurred when three workers poured almost eight times the proper amount of uranium into a settling tank at the uranium enrichment plant. The mistake set off a nuclear chain reaction that gave a flash of intense neutron radiation.

The most seriously injured man was holding the funnel for the uranium as it was being poured into the tank, getting hit by about 1,700 rads, a measure of absorbed radiation, Mettler said. The second most serious injuries occurred to the man pouring the uranium; he absorbed about 800 to 900 rads, Mettler said.

The third, standing about 15 feet away, received about 100 to 200 rads, he said. In comparison, about 70 other people who may have been affected by the accident got doses from 1 to 10 rads, he said.

Natural background radiation generally exposes people to about three-tenths of a rad in a year's time, he said. The men at the plant got their exposures in just an instant.

Radiation damages and kills cells, generally by causing mutations in the genetic material. Certain rapidly dividing cells are particularly susceptible.

Cells in the bone marrow are killed off by radiation, leading to a shortage of red and white blood cells. That shortage makes people anemic and ravages their immune systems. Blood transfusions and bone marrow transplants often are used to combat these effects.

Cells in the lining of the intestines also are very sensitive, and their destruction contributes to vomiting and diarrhea, Mettler said. That in turn causes fluid and electrolyte imbalances.

Other tissue damage in the men caused blisters and nerve damage, along with unimaginable pain, in parts of the body exposed directly to the radiation, he said.

The man with the least exposure in the accident experienced problems with his bone marrow, but it recovered and resumed producing the needed blood cells, Mettler said. That man was about to be released from the hospital late last month, he said. However, he probably will develop cataracts in later years and is at higher risk for leukemia and other cancers because of the genetic damage, Mettler said.

The two more seriously injured men received stem cell transplants, an alternative to bone marrow transplants that has been developed in the last two or three years, Mettler said. Stem cells are the precursor cells that are transformed into all the other needed blood cells.

The international team's report called the most seriously injured man's prognosis "very guarded," he said. The second man's condition also was too uncertain to predict survival, Mettler said. "He's still seriously ill. It could go either way," he said.

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CNN November 2, 1999 Web posted at: 8:07 PM EST (0107 GMT)

Senate panel approves extra compensation for radiation victims http://cnn.com/US/9911/02/radiation.victims.ap/index.html

WASHINGTON -- More people harmed by radiation from aboveground nuclear tests or uranium mining could get compensation from the federal government under a measure approved Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The measure would make changes sought by critics of a law that provides government payments to Westerners who became ill because of their involvement with Cold War nuclear weapons programs.

"We should not add a bureaucratic nightmare to the burden of disease and ill health that these citizens are carrying," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the sponsor of the measure now sent to the full Senate for consideration.

Many nuclear tests were conducted in Nevada. Much of the uranium used in the nuclear weapons was mined in the Four Corners region of Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico.

The bill would expand the list of cancers and other diseases that make the workers eligible for $100,000 government payments. It also would include people who worked in open-pit uranium mines, uranium mills and in transporting uranium from 1941 to 1971. Underground uranium miners already are getting compensation for their ailments.

Since the first payments began in 1992, the Justice Department has approved 3,135 claims worth nearly $232 billion, said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, who cosponsored the bill. He said the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the proposed changes to the compensation program would cost $1 billion during the next 21 years.

Specific changes in the bill include:

Adding leukemia and cancers of the lung, thyroid, brain, kidney, esophagus and stomach to the list of cancers that make miners eligible for compensation. Kidney disease and two lung ailments also would be added to the list. For downwinders -- people who lived in areas of Nevada, Utah and Arizona most affected by nuclear fallout from tests -- the added cancers include leukemia and those of the brain, bladder, colon, ovaries and salivary glands.

Extending eligibility to uranium workers from South Dakota, North Dakota, Idaho, Oregon and Texas. The current law covers Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and Washington state.

Eliminating provisions that give less money to downwinders or miners who smoked.

Cutting the amount of time an eligible miner had to work in uranium mines from an average of just under 20 years to less than four years.

Requiring the Justice Department to take American Indian law and custom into account when processing applications. Navajo officials have complained that widows of dead miners have been denied compensation because they were married in traditional Indian ceremonies and do not have marriage certificates.

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Reports track health problems among Hanford nuclear site workers

CNN November 3, 1999 Web posted at: 11:44 AM EST (1644 GMT)
http://cnn.com/HEALTH/9911/03/hanford.health.ap/index.html

RICHLAND, Washington (AP) -- Hundreds of former Hanford nuclear reservation workers are reporting a number of work related ailments, mostly diseased lungs and hearing loss, researchers said.

In one of two national medical screening projects, 98 percent of 900 construction workers surveyed believed they had been exposed to hazards at Hanford, and 86 percent believed their health had been affected.

"These perceptions of workers about concerns for their health (are) largely borne out in results we're getting from (subsequent) medical examinations," said Knut Ringen, project director for The Center to Protect Workers Rights.

A summary of early findings from Ringen's project -- the Hanford Building Trades Medical Screening Program -- and the University of Washington Former Hanford Worker Medical Program were presented at a news conference here Tuesday.

The screenings are the first independent, science-based evaluations of health risks to former production and construction workers who worked at Hanford anytime in its 56-year history.

Hanford was established as part of the secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb during World War II. Today, the mission at the 560-square-mile site in southeast Washington state is cleaning up the radioactive and hazardous waste created during 40 years of plutonium production for the nation's nuclear arsenal.

The screening programs, paid for by the Energy Department, were ordered by Congress and started three years ago to determine whether workers experienced significant health risks as a result of their jobs at DOE sites.

Roger Briggs, Hanford health studies coordinator for the DOE in Richland, said the findings will help the agency find better ways to protect current worker health and safety.

The projects also found:

-- Nearly half of former Hanford production workers had initial chest X-rays showing abnormalities. Eighteen percent had diminished lung function, when the comparable average for the same age range would be about five percent.

-- Seventy percent of workers had hearing loss, compared with about 50 percent for a comparable industrial population. Eighty-five percent of those surveyed reported hearing impairment, compared with 22 percent in the general population.

-- More than five percent of those tested were positive for beryllium sensitization. Beryllium is a metal that was used at Hanford and can cause lung disease. Between one-third and one-half of those workers can expect to develop lung disease within five years, researchers said.

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Government halts uranium processing at Tennessee plant

CNN November 6, 1999 Web posted at: 1:37 AM EST (0637 GMT)http://cnn.com/US/9911/06/oakridge.doe.ap/index.html

OAK RIDGE, Tennessee (AP) -- The Energy Department said Friday it has temporarily halted uranium enrichment operations at its Oak Ridge plant 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, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said in a statement.

The safety problems posed no danger to employees or the public because nuclear materials were not used during the practice run. The plant manufactures nuclear weapons components and dismantles nuclear weapons from the nation's arsenal.

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.

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 November 12. As part of the safety stand-down, officials will conduct a plant-wide safety program Monday and Tuesday.

"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 the plant.

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Energy department halts uranium enrichment operations at Oak Ridge plant

From Time to Time: Nando's in-depth look at the 20th century
Nando Media November 6, 1999 8:14 a.m. EST
http://www2.nando.net/noframes/story/0,2107,500054016-500088730-500314161-0,00.html

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (November 6, 1999 8:14 a.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - Prompted by safety and security concerns, the Energy Department has temporarily halted 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.

Richardson has demanded information on plans to address the security concerns by Friday.

As part of the safety stand down, officials will conduct a plant-wide safety program next week.

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Under a cloud

New Scientist November 6, 1999
http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19991106/newsstory5.html

When it comes to arms control, logic can't compete with party politics and paranoia

THE LATEST ATTEMPT to halt the spread of nuclear weapons, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, lies dead on the floor of the US Senate. The CTBT, created back in 1996 to stop nuclear weapons proliferating throughout the world, still needed to be signed by another 18 countries--including the US--before it came into force. The US rejection effectively kills the agreement.

Republicans who dominate the Senate claimed the CTBT was dangerous: not only was it impossible to detect rogue states' clandestine tests, it threatened the reliability and safety of America's nuclear arsenal. Dismayed Democrats and international observers dismissed the Senate's move as reckless party politics. Thirty-two American Nobel prizewinning scientists attacked the logic of the decision, claiming that technology no longer required the US to explode weapons in order to test the reliability of its nuclear arsenal.

The first nuclear weapon, the "Little Boy" that obliterated Hiroshima, was merely a modified anti-aircraft gun that smashed two chunks of the heavy metal uranium into each other. When the lumps of metal reached a critical mass, the atoms began splitting at an ever-increasing rate: a fission chain reaction. But more sophisticated and powerful bombs require nuclear fusion, the process whereby the nuclei of lighter atoms, such as hydrogen, stick together. It's much harder to achieve than fission, because there's no chain reaction to do all the work.

Nevertheless, the US managed it in 1952, when it detonated the first hydrogen bomb. This redirected the radiation from an atomic bomb "primary" onto a flask full of deuterium (heavy hydrogen) to achieve fusion. At about 10 megatons, this was some 750 times more powerful than Little Boy.

This hydrogen bomb and its ever more sophisticated descendants have required extensive testing as part of their development. Thus, the CTBT would theoretically have prevented nations like India and Pakistan from developing more powerful and more reliable weapons, and prevented rogue states from starting modern nuclear programmes. However, opponents of the CTBT say that if you want to test a weapon for safety (shooting a bullet into it and ensuring that it doesn't blow up) or reliability (letting it sit in a hangar for 30 years and making sure it will still explode on command), nuclear tests are obviously a boon.

But the 32 Nobel laureates noted that there were viable alternatives. Among them is the US Department of Energy's Stockpile Stewardship Program, dedicated to keeping nuclear weapons safe and reliable without the use of nuclear tests. It has two major tools. The first is hydrodynamic testing, in which engineers check the plutonium part of the warhead. In the second, confinement fusion testing, engineers check the hydrogen component of the weapon.

The Stockpile Stewardship Program can't test a bomb from the explosion of its first stage to the ignition of its second stage. But it can verify that a bomb with a well- understood design is working because all its individual components are in good order.

"We understand the weapons very well," says engineer Frank Von Hippel, of Princeton University's Program on Nuclear Policy Alternatives. This is why he says that non-nuclear testing is sufficient to ensure that a weapon will perform as advertised. "I think that the Stockpile Stewardship Program is even more than we need for reliability." Jon Wolfsthal, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC, agrees. "The hawkish view is that our weapons will not remain reliable and safe, but they misunderstand that stockpile stewardship is actually working today."

International observers are also unconvinced by the argument for testing. Philip Towle, director of the Centre of International Studies at Cambridge University, says: "They've had a very long time to test the reliability of trigger systems, and there are some states like Israel that are at much greater risk from nuclear attack who have not needed to carry on testing."

Another objection by the opponents of the CTBT is the plan's supposed inability to identify violators. "Well, this is kind of a distortion of the evidence," says Jeffrey Park, a geophysicist at Yale University. "We do monitor, currently, known test sites at fairly low magnitudes--2.5 or 2 on the Richter scale--and a 1-kiloton nuclear blast is roughly equivalent to a magnitude 4 earthquake. We've got a good capability now." The CTBT would have provided for an improved network of seismic sensors to plug holes in existing coverage. "The idea is not to give a potential tester any wiggle room," says Park.

It is possible that by hollowing out a large cavity, a state trying to evade the treaty might be able to set off a small nuclear blast--less than one kiloton--without being detected. But anyone testing a hydrogen bomb or a boosted weapon would need a yield much greater than that to collect the required data. "We thought you'd be able to detect tests down to about 1 kiloton," says Von Hippel. "Below that, there isn't much interesting you can do."

So if the stockpile is safe and geophysicists can detect significant tests, why was the CTBT kicked out by the Senate? Most believe the explanation is largely political, not scientific. The President is a Democrat and the Senate majority is Republican. "Half of the Republicans, really, are very sceptical of arms control," says Von Hippel. "All of them hate Clinton." US commentators note that, during the debate on CTBT ratification, Jesse Helms, the far-right chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, thought it relevant to include references to the Monica Lewinsky affair.

But what effect will the death of the CTBT have on international security? According to Towle: "The Senate vote certainly makes it easier for the Indians to resume testing if they want. But whether it would tip the balance with a state that is considering the nuclear arena, such as Iran, is less likely."

The coup last month in Pakistan--India's bitter regional enemy and itself an emerging nuclear power--has fuelled concern over the CTBT's demise. The new regime in Islamabad, already under international pressure for introducing martial rule, is unlikely to start rattling nuclear sabres--at the moment. Others are more philosophical. L. K. Sharma, London correspondent of The Times of India and an authority on Indian defence and foreign policy, says: "Developing nations do not need encouragement by the US to develop nuclear weapons. If they have the means and desire they'll do it anyway." But according to Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan's ambassador to the US from 1994 to 1997: "It's conceivable that before the year was out India and Pakistan would have been signed up."

India has declared a moratorium on nuclear tests. But some Western observers believe that India cannot credibly deliver even small nuclear weapons at the moment. And Pakistan is behind India. It's distinctly possible that both states (with India taking the lead) may seek to refine their weapons. If Lodhi's hunch is right, the Senate's action represents a lost opportunity.

But looking beyond domestic politics and the paranoia over warhead reliability, some observers detect more calculated thinking on the floor of the US Senate. There are commercial interests in weapons investment. And John Simpson, director of the Mountbatten Centre for International Studies in Southampton, notes that the ascendant "unilateralist movement" in US politics is talking up the issue of missile defence systems again. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty looks vulnerable. He suspects some right-wingers are looking forward ten years to a time when the US may be in the position to test new devices powered by nuclear explosion.

Indeed, senator John Warner, who chairs the Armed Services Committee, says: "Many of the nuclear systems that we developed to deter the Soviet Union are simply not suited to the subtle, and perhaps more difficult, task of deterring rogue states from nuclear, chemical or biological weapons . . . Such weapons do not exist today in the US arsenal."

Helms's success in having the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (effectively a watchdog to stop the Pentagon jeopardising international arms control agreements) abolished last year fuels such speculation.

If we're about to witness a new push on the part of the world's only superpower to subvert science for dubious political ends, it won't be the first time. In the meantime, according to observers like William Walker of St Andrew's University: "It looks like arms control is falling apart."

Charles Seife and Michael Day

From New Scientist, 6 November 1999

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[Alert, plowshares folks...]

Anchors Aweigh!

Sunday In The Loop, By Al Kamen, November 7, 1999; Page W03
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/07/098l-110799-idx.html

Winter is fast upon us and a chill is in the air. And Loop Fans working on the Hill know that means one sure thing: It's time to plan for some freebie getaways to warmer climes.

Once again, our old friend U.S. Navy Cmdr. Brian Nutt has come through with some of those fine Navy excursions, each one "a unique, professional education opportunity," as he puts it in this year's "Dear Chief of Staff" letter to congressional offices.

In Washington code, that means you don't have to take vacation days to go on the trips. Nutt, deputy director of the Navy's congressional liaison office, is offering two trips this month -- one, unfortunately, is already underway -- and two in December.

The first trip, running now, includes an "overnight embark onboard USS Abraham Lincoln [a nuclear aircraft carrier] and an orientation tour of various . . . facilities in the San Diego area," including the Navy SEAL Training Facility.

Two other trips are far too brief, though certainly worth doing if you're pressed for time. One is a November 19 overnight cruise on an Ohio-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine out of King's Bay, Ga. The second, another overnighter, on December 7, is out of Norfolk on the nuclear aircraft carrier USS George Washington.

But the fourth one gets the Loop Four-Star Recommendation for several reasons. First, it's in Hawaii. Second, it's a five-day jaunt -- starting Monday, December 6, and returning Saturday, December 11. As guests of the Navy, you'll have an "overnight embark onboard [a] Los Angeles-class nuclear submarine" plus a tour of Pearl Harbor and then various briefings and presentations.

"Hopefully you can fit one of these trips into your busy schedule," Nutt writes. That shouldn't be a problem what with Congress's recess schedule. "If not, please extend this invitation to your legislative director or military legislative assistant," he suggests.

But hurry. "Space is limited, so please respond as soon as possible," Nutt writes.

Aye, aye.

Tips and comments for Al Kamen's column are welcomed at: In the Loop, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071, or by e-mail at Loop@washpost.com. Please include home and work phone numbers.

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Lott warns Clinton not to defy Senate vote on treaty

By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES
November 8 - 14, 1999 -- Edition "America's Newspaper"
http://www.washtimes-weekly.com/stories/top.html

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott on Nov. 2 rejected the Clinton administration's continued observance of the defeated nuclear test-ban treaty and said the failure to ratify the pact releases the United States from any international legal obligations under the treaty.

The Senate leader also warned the White House that continued adherence to the treaty provisions will severely upset relations between the president and the Senate on international affairs.

"I am deeply disturbed by the administration's most recent interpretation of the status of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty," Mr. Lott said in response to a report in the Nov. 2 editions of The Washington Times.

Mr. Lott, in the statement, challenged the Clinton administration's refusal to accept the treaty-approval role of the Senate, which voted down a resolution of ratification for the treaty by a wide margin on Oct. 13.

"If the administration persists in maintaining that the United States is bound as a matter of international law to a treaty that has been rejected by the Senate, then there will be profound implications for the relationship between the president and the Senate on foreign policy matters," Mr. Lott said.

A White House spokesman had no immediate comment.

Mr. Lott made the comments after The Times disclosed in its Nov. 2 editions that Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright wrote to foreign governments last month informing them the United States is still bound to follow the treaty under international law, despite the Senate's rejection.

Based on recent comments by President Clinton after the vote and the Oct. 18 letter from Mrs. Albright to foreign ministers, "it is now apparent that the administration does not understand or recognize the Senate's essential role in treaty-making under the Constitution," Mr. Lott said in a statement released to The Times.

"If the Senate does not consent to ratification of a treaty -- and in this case we didn't -- it has no status for the United States in international law," Mr. Lott said. "In fact, the Senate vote serves to release the United States from any possible obligations as a signatory of the negotiated text of the treaty."

The treaty has been signed by 154 nations and would ban all nuclear tests and establish an international nuclear testing monitoring systems. Critics have said the ban cannot be verified and could hamstring the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal in the future.

Mr. Clinton can continue the ban on U.S. nuclear-weapons tests and can follow the provisions of the anti-testing treaty, Mr. Lott said. "His decisions, however, must be based on his constitutional authorities and not on any purported obligations under international law," he said.

"Those foreign ministers who received Secretary Albright's letter should be under no illusion on this point," Mr. Lott said.

Mrs. Albright stated in a letter to several foreign ministers, including those of China and Russia, that the United States will "continue to act in accordance with its obligations as a signatory under international law."

She also said the administration plans to take the unprecedented step of seeking a second Senate ratification vote "when conditions are better suited for ratification."

Sen. Jesse Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also rejected the administration's continued adherence to the test-ban treaty during a committee hearing on Nov. 2.

Mr. Helms, North Carolina Republican, said the Senate's 51-48 vote against approving the treaty was an unambiguous rejection of of the pact. Mr. Helms raised the issue during a nomination hearing for Avis Bohlen, who is seeking to be confirmed as an assistant secretary of state for arms control.

"Article 18 of the Vienna Convention . . . makes clear that the obligation of a signatory state terminates when the state 'shall have made its intention clear not to become a party to the treaty,' " Mr. Helms said.

"Since the Senate is a co-equal [in treaty-making] and the Senate has overwhelmingly vetoed the CTBT, the intention to never become a party has been made crystal clear," Mr. Helms said.

Mr. Helms then asked how Mrs. Albright can continue to believe the United States is legally bound by the treaty. Miss Bohlen did not answer the question directly.

State Department spokesman James P. Rubin told The Times earlier this week that because the administration plans to resubmit the test-ban treaty again that the United States is still legally bound to abide by its terms.

Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican and a leader in the Senate debate on the treaty, said in an interview that Mrs. Albright's letter was "illustrative of the arrogance that got them in trouble in the first place" with the treaty.

Mr. Kyle noted that after the president signed the National Missile Defense Act, making it U.S. policy to deploy a national missile defense, the administration also tried to claim it was not required to build the defense.

"The fact is that in both cases of the missile defense law and the nuclear testing agreement, the United States is no longer legally bound either to the [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty or the [Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty]," Mr. Kyl said in an interview.

Like Mr. Helms, Mr. Kyl said that the Senate's rejection of the treaty releases the United States of any of the test-ban treaty's international obligations.

The administration can continue to abide by the treaty and "as a practical matter there is very little the Congress can do," he said.

As for White House plans to resubmit the treaty, Mr. Kyl said it will not happen.

"Certainly not any time in the near term or during the remainder of this administration," he said.

Mr. Kyl said Mrs. Albright's letter to foreign governments appeared to be an effort at diplomatic damage control.

"They're terribly embarrassed," he said. "I'm sure the letter is to cover the embarrassment and it doesn't change anything."

---

U.S. Presses Russia To Modify ABM Treaty

By Charles Aldinger Excite News Updated 3:14 PM ET November 5, 1999
http://news.excite.com/news/r/991105/15/politics-arms-russia

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States Friday urged Moscow not to hold nuclear arms control hostage in the fight over U.S. missile defense, warning that Russia could also soon require such a defense against attack from rogue states.

Undersecretary of Defense Walter Slocombe said U.S. calls for modifying the 1972 anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty in order to possibly deploy a limited national missile defense in 2005 was reasonable and did not threaten Russia's vast nuclear arsenal.

Moscow has thus far refused to modify the joint ABM treaty and warned that if Washington abandons the pact it could threaten Russian cooperation in other areas including nuclear arms reduction agreements.

"It is not at all clear to me -- and I don't think it would be clear to the Russians if they think about it seriously -- that Russia would gain anything from the destruction of the arms control framework," Slocombe said.

"The (U.S.) goal of both preserving the treaty and having the option to deploy a limited defense is a wholly reasonable one," he added in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a private Washington think tank.

Slocombe spoke as the war of words heated up between Washington and Moscow over whether to modify the ABM treaty, which now prohibits either country from having a national missile defense.

Under the treaty, Russia has had an aging ABM defense to protect only Moscow for decades.

But neither country has a national missile defense such as the one that the United States wants to deploy against attack from rogue states such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq as early as 2005 if President Clinton makes a decision to do so next year.

Slocombe conceded that Russia might not currently be worried about an attack from North Korea, but said that did not apply in the Middle East where a rogue state might one day launch an attack against what was once the heart of the Soviet Union.

"I think it's pretty clear that they see the potential of various countries in the Middle East that might fire long-range missiles as a threat," he said in response to questions after his speech.

"God, in his infinite wisdom, put that part of the world a lot closer to Russia than to the United States."

The defense official said the United States had offered to share satellite missile warning systems with the Russians and to help Moscow modernize its missile warning radars in talks between senior U.S. and Russian officials since August.

"It is our policy, our desire and our expectation that our limited national missile defense program can proceed to deployment without destroying the ABM treaty, and we have begun discussions with the Russian government to that end," Slocombe said.

"Nevertheless, we will not permit any other country to have a veto on actions that may be needed for the defense of our nation."

He added:

"There is no substantive reason why we should find ourselves in a position of having to choose between the capability to defend our people against rogue state ballistic missile attack on the one hand and jeopardizing our common interest in strategic stability, a sound relationship between Russia and the United States and further reduction in strategic defensive arms on the other hand."

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Blinded By What We Saw At the Wall
Ten Years Later, It's Obvious That Nothing at All Was Obvious

By Robert G. Kaiser, Washington Post Sunday, November 7, 1999; Page B01
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/07/132l-110799-idx.html

When young Germans danced through the final breach in the Berlin Wall 10 years ago Tuesday, American thinkers great and small tried to make sense of the Wall's fall. Many tried to forecast what would happen next. The predicting proved perilous.

Looking back at them now, those prognostications share a certain quaintness. They were nearly all rooted in the Cold War realities that had created the American frame of reference for nearly half a century. But the prognosticators could not grasp the fact that this frame of reference was as doomed as the Wall itself.

Many of the forecasters realized that a different world was coming, but none successfully escaped the constraints of the old reality to imagine a new one. A computer-assisted search of the archives--extensive but not exhaustive--discovered no analyst or statesman, no commentator or professor who understood then that the hole in the Wall would be quickly followed by the utter collapse of European communism and the Soviet Union, soon producing a weak and bumbling Russia half the size of the U.S.S.R., with a fraction of its importance.

Nor did any seer predict a united Germany of the kind we have today, mired in economic and political crises and unable to exert much influence outside its own borders. Much more common were predictions of a resurgent--and threatening--Germany. Many prophets foresaw the end of the Warsaw Pact, but usually in conjunction with the end of NATO, too; none predicted then a revived NATO with new members who had recently been Warsaw Pact members.

Reading what smart people said and wrote a decade ago is a stiff reminder that prognostication can be a fool's errand. This is not to say, though, that running the errand has no value; the prognosticator's art can be provocative, entertaining and even illuminating. Sometimes the effort is so bold as to evoke awe. Consider the predictions of William Safire, the New York Times columnist and proprietor of an oft-used crystal ball:

"The rest of the dominoes will fall," Safire wrote four days after the Wall did, in a column outlining "the realities that will flow" from the unexpected breach in the Cold War's most potent symbol. "Bulgarians and Czechoslovaks are next, and even the police state of Rumania awaits an uprising. . . ."

A good start, but then trouble: "Economic crisis will be transferred to Turkey as West Germany absorbs its eastern German unskilled workers and sends back the legions of Turkish workers. . . . Germany, already the world's largest exporter, will dominate the economies of Central Europe and invest heavily in the Soviet Union . . . The phase-out of U.S. troops stationed in Germany will begin soon. . . . Germany, tired of apologetics, will stare down its own Greens and become a nuclear power with Star Wars rocketry making it an Uberpower before the turn of the millennium. . . . Other Europeans will work together to 'stop the Germans,' less out of historic fears of militarism than from the competition of militant industriousness."

Well, not quite. Turkish workers were not expelled from Germany, Germany has not become a nuclear power, nor does it (yet) dominate the economies of Eastern Europe. Some U.S. troops left Germany, but nearly 70,000 remain. Rather than trying to stop Germany, the other Europeans sought comfort from the strength of Germany's deutsche mark by creating a common currency, the euro. The Germans' "militant industriousness" has produced an economy lately less successful than France's. Of Safire's six forthcoming "realities," roughly 1.5 proved to be real.

The problem with trying to see the future is the present. What we know usually overpowers our ability to see what might be coming. What is is; it has the advantage of tangible existence. This makes the present hard to shake, no matter how smart you are.

Such inertia explains the most common miscalculations in the prognoses of a decade ago. One was that Soviet communism and the Soviet Union would survive the dramas of the fall of 1989 (and of course they did--but only for two years). Another was to presume that even without a wall, two Germanys would have to exist--the Russians would demand it, or the French, or the Germans themselves. In both cases, it was just too difficult to imagine that what was would no longer be.

Yet some did rise above the present to see part of what was to come. Martin Malia, a University of California professor, published a self-consciously anonymous article (signed "Z") in the scholarly journal Daedalus that was excerpted on the New York Times op-ed page in January 1990. He wrote: "1989 will enter history as the beginning of communism's terminal crisis." Malia understood that there was no hope that the Soviet system could be successfully reformed: "There is no third way between Leninism and the market, between Bolshevism and constitutional government." Reform would inevitably lead to "the liquidation" of the party-dominated system. This was a shrewd insight.

But Malia did not think the liquidation would come quickly. "The revolutionary events of 1989 should not breed the illusion that the exit from communism these events presage will itself be rapid. . . ." It would be "a long time coming." Malia, a fervent and eloquent anti-communist, was unable to see that the object of his fervor was so weak already.

Rapidity of change also flummoxed George F. Kennan, whom history will record as a true prophet for his 1946 prediction that the Soviet system could fall over time. Kennan, former ambassador to Moscow and author of the classic "Russia and the West Under Lenin and Stalin," testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the beginning of 1990.

The security of Europe, Kennan observed, was tied up in the complex realities inside the two Germanys, where NATO and the Warsaw Pact confronted one another with large military forces. The delicate arrangements in the Germanys, including nominal four-power control of Berlin, would be threatened by any consideration of German unification, Kennan said. He recommended that the major powers agree to a "binding moratorium of at least three years' duration" that would freeze European realities in place--no changes in NATO or the Warsaw Pact, no "alterations" of borders and states. In the meantime, statesmen could prepare, "in a careful and deliberate manner. . . a new European security structure."

This advice from a scholarly retired diplomat had a certain tidy logic, but it showed scant respect for the energies already loose in Central Europe. Even Kennan, whose original mind often took him to unexpected conclusions, could not escape the spell of accepted wisdom. He thought the situation was delicate, but the forces ripping down the Iron Curtain were anything but delicate.

Rapid German reunification was just too much for many to imagine. A smug Newsweek article in late November 1989 ridiculed President George Bush for saying that the United States would welcome early reunification: "His blithe announcement . . . was premature and unhelpful. He may well come to regret having made it."

Many German experts could not imagine East Germany choosing self-destruction. One was Ronald D. Asmus of the Rand Corp., who wrote in the Los Angeles Times days after the Wall fell: "Having rejected the Soviet model, East Germans do not simply want to blindly embrace the West German model." Asmus opposed unification: "It is in everyone's interest that East Germans be given the hope and the necessary incentives that will persuade them to remain and to rebuild their society."

Why would two Germanys be "in everyone's interest"? Well, this was more consistent with the way things had been for 45 years, and therefore more orderly, less threatening. But events quickly demonstrated that no conceivable incentives would persuade East Germans to maintain a separate identity and state.

Henry Kissinger, born in Germany, saw this at once. Three weeks after the Wall crumbled, the former U.S. secretary of state wrote in Newsweek: "German unification in some form has become inevitable, whatever the misgivings of Germany's neighbors and World War II victims." The driving force, Kissinger saw, would be German public opinion.

He was less clairvoyant, however, about the Soviet Union. From 1985 onward, when Mikhail Gorbachev had become the Soviet leader, Kissinger was skeptical about Gorbachev's intentions; he held to that skepticism even after Gorbachev gave up any pretense of control over Eastern Europe. In his Newsweek article, Kissinger entertained the possibility that the Russians might still try to use their nuclear superiority over Germany and Japan to coerce both into helping rebuild the Soviet economy.

The idea that even after the amazing changes of 1989, the Soviet Union remained determined to dominate world politics was also hard for Kissinger's old boss, Richard M. Nixon, to shake off. "The Soviet military is leaner but stronger today than when Gorbachev came to power five years ago," Nixon wrote in the Washington Times in January 1990. He enumerated countries from Afghanistan to Nicaragua where, he said, the Soviets continued to meddle against American interests. He accused Gorbachev of "disarming the West psychologically," and said the Western powers should not provide economic aid to the Soviet Union "unless Soviet foreign policy becomes less aggressive."

But Nixon also saw the possibility that Gorbachev might "lead his people away from aggression abroad." Other cold warriors rejected that notion. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) said that Gorbachev's was "in fact more aggressive . . . than previous regimes," whose goal was "to turn the world into a socialist system dominated by the Soviet Union."

Predictions are doomed if they are based on a misunderstanding of underlying conditions. Some of the prognoses made a decade ago that look most foolish today started from flawed premises.

For example, Jerry Hough of Duke University, a Kremlinologist who prides himself on holding strong and unconventional opinions, argued in congressional testimony at the end of 1989 that Gorbachev and the Soviet Union were in a stronger position than most Americans realized. Quoting CIA estimates (which we now understand were wildly off the mark), Hough said the Soviet gross national product was $2.8 trillion, "bigger than that of Japan and the two Germanys combined," and predicted that Soviet multinational corporations would soon be exporting cheap manufactured goods all over the world. "Gorbachev is doing very well," Hough wrote in January 1990, "and 1990-91 will be years in which we will have to come to grips with that reality."

Walter Russell Mead of the World Policy Institute made another sort of economic miscalculation. In an article for Harper's magazine published early in 1990, Mead wrote that "the post-Cold War era is beginning," and the United States was headed for the sidelines. "It is Japan and Germany who stand to map the post-Cold War world economy; in this new world, the United States may well be the Argentina of the twenty-first century." Mead (and many others) misread Japan's and Germany's economic success in the '80s as permanent. Ten years later, the American economy is the envy of both those countries.

Another prognosis that got considerable attention in 1990 was written by John J. Mearsheimer, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago. In a closely argued and utterly confident analysis that ran as a cover story in the Atlantic Monthly, Mearsheimer said that NATO and the Warsaw Pact both would dissolve, that "Western European states will do what they did for centuries before the onset of the Cold War--look upon one another with abiding suspicion."

Projecting the likelihood of violent conflict in Europe, Mead urged the United States to help non-nuclear European powers acquire nuclear weapons, because nuclear deterrence would be the best hope for maintaining peace. The possibility of a growing European Union with a common currency and a willingness to wage a war against a defiant neighbor such as Serbia found no place in Mearsheimer's forecast.

Ten years is a short time, as the passage of the last decade reminds us. There's no magic in a 10th anniversary. We're only at a way station on the road to . . . whatever comes next.

It does seem safe, however, to predict that 10 or 20 years from now, Americans will look back at this end-of-millennium moment and note how many of our 1999 instincts still resembled Cold War reflexes. We talk a lot about post-Cold War realities, but we're still carrying a lot of Cold War baggage. The Senate debate on the nuclear test ban treaty was a reminder of that. So is the defense budget, which still includes exotic weapons systems imagined in the '80s as a hedge against aggressive Soviet procurement programs that collapsed years ago. A striking example is the Navy's proposed fleet of $2 billion New Attack Submarines that remains in the budget despite the absence of an enemy force worthy of it.

The events initiated in Berlin a decade ago have not yet fully played out. The Russian drama is certainly far from complete. And there are four communist regimes still in business: China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba. Why should they survive when all the others collapsed? Will Martin Malia, so prescient in some respects 10 years ago, be proved right in his prediction that communism everywhere was dying--"not just in Russia but from the Baltic to the China sea, and from Berlin to Beijing"?

Prognostications, anyone?

Robert Kaiser is an associate editor of The Post.

Washington Post researcher Mary Lou White contributed to this article.

Said, and Sometimes Done

Plenty of pundits made lots of predictions after the Berlin Wall fell. Can you match the quotes with their authors? Answers on Page 5.

1. "We should stop referring to what's going on in the Soviet Bloc as 'reform'--as in, for example, 'Gorbachev's reforms.' It's revolution. By revolution, I mean the overthrow of the existing political, economic and social order. The fact that the revolution has so far been peaceful does not make it any less genuine. This is more than a semantic distinction. The labels we use to describe things often determine how we view and understand them."

2. "Will the Soviet Union survive this century? Until last week only hopelessly anti-Soviet critics raised such a question, basing their views more on hope than analysis. But the Mikhail S. Gorbachev announced his intention to end the political monopoly that the Communist Party has enjoyed in the Soviet Union since 1917. It was the political equivalent of an army abolishing its officer corps, for the unifying force within the Soviet Union, its central nervous system, has been the Communist Party, which has controlled every aspect of Soviet life through party structures operating behind the scenes."

3. "The political world familiar for over a generation is disintegrating before our eyes. The new realities are:

* NATO will have to be fundamentally altered to take into account the transformation of Germany and the perceived erosion of the Soviet threat.

* The Warsaw Pact will not survive in its present form very far into the next decade.

* Integration of the European Community will have to be accelerated to take account of new opportunities in Eastern Europe, most recently in Czechoslovakia.

* These trends will require a new look at East-West relations."

4. "Western Europe is on the threshold of nuclear disarmament and NATO military spending is in a freefall. Nevertheless, the U.S. is engaged in a series of arms control negotiations that, among other things, may well make it more vulnerable to a Soviet first-strike than it is today. What makes these trends especially alarming is the fact that the perception of a diminished Soviet threat that has precipitated them is, in important respects, simply wrong."

5."Communism is finished, and its empire dissolving."

Who and When

A. HENRY KISSINGER, Newsweek, Dec. 4, 1989

B. CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, The Washington Post, Nov. 17, 1989

C. ROBERT SAMUELSON, The Washington Post, Nov. 15, 1989

D. FRANK J. GAFFNEY JR., director of the Center for Security Policy, the New York Times, Nov. 17, 1989

E. CHARLES WILLIAM MAYNES, editor of Foreign Policy magazine, Feb. 18, 1990

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Name That General!

New York Times November 7, 1999 LIBERTIES / By MAUREEN DOWD
http://www.nytimes.com/library/opinion/dowd/110799dowd.html

WASHINGTON -- There's a wonderful old Calvin Trillin essay about how he and his wife, Alice, would give each other global hot spots for Christmas.

If Calvin unwrapped a map of Iran, with the message "Leave It to Me," he was free not to keep up with news on Iran, or figure how to pronounce the names of Iranian dictators and generals. Alice would read everything and inform her husband only if Iran was about to start a Worldwide Nuclear Conflagration.

A global hot spot, the writer observed, was like "some dreadful old uncle who is always alarming the family with emergencies that are invariably described as beyond solution."

I want the same deal with the president. If I'm not up to the daily strain of distinguishing between Gen. Muzaffar Usmani and Gen. Khwaja Ziauddin, the guy elected to be better be.

Once again, W. has given an interview on foreign affairs that seems willfully clueless. Although the coup in Pakistan had been front-page news for weeks, he drew a blank on the name of its leader, outrageously declaring: "The new Pakistani general, he's just been elected -- not elected, this guy took over office. It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country and I think that's good news for the subcontinent."

As W. painfully reached to retrieve the name of the Pakistani leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, you could almost hear the music swelling from the Regis Philbin quiz show, "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." But unlike the stumped contestants on that show, Mr. Bush was not allowed to call a friend for help. ("Yo, Condi!")

"I can't name the general," he stammered on, before going generic with a final try: "General."

Mr. Bush has tried to blame "gotcha" journalism rather than his failure to do his homework. But the Boston TV reporter did not ask trick questions about obscure spots like Burkina Faso, or try to trip up W. on the difference between Iran and Irian. ("Yo, Condi!")

If W. had been reading the newspaper closely the last few weeks, he could have aced his quiz. India and Pakistan were central to the recent debate on the nuclear test ban treaty, and India's prime minister -- whose name also escaped Mr. Bush -- has been in office a year and a half. Mr. Bush was also unable to name the leader of Chechnya, long one of the diciest pieces of the crumbling Soviet empire. He correctly provided part of the name of the president of Taiwan, "Lee," but it sounded suspiciously like a lucky guess.

The encounter was reminiscent of that famous Roger Mudd interview with an utterly inarticulate Teddy Kennedy. Men who are running largely because of their last name sometimes trip over their entitlement.

The Texas governor had the cornered look of a man who has been winging it too long, and hiding behind his advisers' skirts too long.

He let himself be rolled on an interview he should have seen coming. The question has been hanging out there for months about whether Bush the Younger knows enough about the world to deal with all the loons, coups and wars that spring up like twisters across the post-cold-war plains.

His intensive foreign affairs coaching (which must have included Global Hot Spots 101) supposedly began last winter, yet the gaffes keep coming. So it was natural to try to ascertain whether he was studying or slacking. Has his huge advantage in money and family made him so cocky he doesn't care about the gaps in his knowledge?

His interview smirk -- that anti-intellectual bravado -- was jarring. Has he grown so accustomed to getting things easily -- Yale, the National Guard, lucrative business deals -- that he expects family connections to carry him through here?

President Bush had a passion for foreign policy. "You couldn't get him to go to an education briefing with Lamar Alexander, but he'd spend three days with some two-bit dictator from Sri Lanka," recalled an official in the Bush White House.

But when the president was accused of knowing heaps more about Berlin, Germany, than Berlin, New Hampshire, his press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater, began carrying around an index card with the price of eggs and milk and gas.

W. can try an index card with names of mutinous generals, or scrawl them on his shirt cuff. But he should remember that by the time his father got his index cards, it was already too late.

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Russia 'Overstating' Case On ABM Treaty, Says Cohen

Russia Today Nov 5, 1999
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=107289

WASHINGTON, Nov 5, 1999 -- (Reuters) U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen on Thursday accused the Russians of "overstating their case" by test-firing an anti-ballistic missile in apparent opposition to U.S. plans to develop a national missile defense.

Cohen told reporters he was puzzled by Russia's announcement that it had test-fired one of its aging short-range anti-missile rockets this week for the first time in six years.

A Russian general linked Tuesday's test to a major arms control fight between Moscow and Washington, Interfax news agency reported. In that dispute, Russia says it will not allow re-negotiation of the 1972 anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty so that the United States can built an ABM system.

"Assuming that they tested it, it only confirmed that they have an ABM system and we do not. So I'm not sure of the point they are trying to make," Cohen told reporters in response to questions at the Pentagon.

"For Russia to say that this is a signal of discontent with the United States seeking to provide a missile defense system for our people, it seems to me that they are overstating their case," said Cohen.

Russia has a decades-old ABM system designed to protect Moscow under the 1972 treaty, but says that a U.S. plan to build a national missile defense would violate the treaty.

Cohen said Washington had repeatedly made clear that if President Bill Clinton decided next year to begin building a defense system to shoot down attacking missiles that it would not neutralize Russia's massive nuclear force.

"We do not pretend, nor aspire, to have a system that could try to defeat several thousands of (Russian) missiles were they ever launched at the United States," Cohen told reporters at a press conference with Spanish Defense Minister Eduardo Serra.

"We have tried to convey to them as directly and candidly as possible (that) we believe there is an emerging threat from states such as North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya or any other country that might acquire such (ballistic missile) capability in the future that places our citizens at risk."

Interfax quoted Russia's Strategic Missile Forces as saying they launched the missile from a base in Kazakhstan on Tuesday.

POSSIBLE RUSSIAN RESPONSES

The forces' commander, Vladimir Yakovlev, said the launch could be seen in the context of possible Russian responses if the United States withdrew from the ABM treaty.

The launch came amid mounting invective over ABM, which Moscow calls the bedrock of the entire arms control process but which Washington wants changed to allow deployment of a new anti-missile defense system likely to be based in Alaska.

On Tuesday, Russian President Boris Yeltsin sent President Clinton a warning of "extremely dangerous consequences" if the United States proceeded with its anti-missile plans.

That followed statements last month by a Russian general that Moscow might deploy more nuclear missiles if Washington broke the ABM treaty, remarks that prompted Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to say she was "troubled."

The Cold War-era ABM treaty banned nationwide defense systems designed to shoot down enemy missiles, under the logic that such shields would only have tempted the United States and the Soviet Union to build bigger arsenals of nuclear warheads.

Russia says any weakening of ABM would undermine the entire arms control system, including subsequent historic pacts, such as the START Strategic Arms Reduction deals that have already led to thousands of warheads being scrapped.

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Russia fires warning shot in argument over missiles

DAVID HOFFMAN WASHINGTON POST Thursday, November 4, 1999
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/4/news/docs/016464.htm

MOSCOW -- Russia announced Wednesday that it had tested a short-range interceptor missile for the Moscow anti-ballistic missile system in what appeared to be a symbolic warning to the United States not to go ahead with a missile defense system now under consideration.

Col. Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev, commander of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces, told Interfax news agency that the Tuesday launch in Kazakhstan was the first of its kind since 1993.

Russia has been warning in recent weeks that if the United States goes ahead with a missile defense system, Russia will take countermeasures, and Wednesday's announcement seemed to be a bit of muscle flexing.

Russian officials recently publicized a list of actions they might take if the U.S. moves toward the abrogation of the anti-ballistic missile treaty. Several subsequent nuclear treaties are based on the ABM pact, signed in 1972.

Moscow is worried about an arms race. Speaking of the ``inviolability'' of the ABM treaty, Maj. Gen. Vladimir Dvorkin said: ``If that stone is removed, the whole system of treaties will collapse.''

The test missile was not identified, but is among those installed in the Moscow anti-ballistic missile system of radars and missiles built to protect the Soviet capital in the Cold War era.

Yakovlev said the tests confirmed the combat readiness of the missile and that the Strategic Rocket Forces would extend its service life to 12.5 years, which suggests that the test involved missiles that have been deployed for some time.

The test-firing capped a string of recent warnings to the United States that Russia will oppose any major changes in the ABM treaty.

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Russian Forces Resist Peace Talks
Generals Campaign Against Early End to Chechen Conflict

By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service, November 7, 1999; Page A35
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-11/07/184l-110799-idx.html

MOSCOW, Nov. 6-Russian military commanders have launched a concerted campaign against negotiations to end the war in Chechnya, or any other action they believe might tie their hands in reclaiming the breakaway region.

Hardly a day goes by without a commander warning leaders in Moscow not to end the war before all of Chechnya is pacified. Today, Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev and armed forces chief of staff Anatoly Kvashnin issued an unusual denial of reports of a government-military conflict. They signed a statement calling the stories "lies" meant to "cause a split in the state and military leadership."

The declaration followed newspaper reports that Kvashnin threatened to resign over government plans to open talks with Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov. Military rejection of talks puts the armed forces in opposition to calls by Washington and the West for a negotiated settlement. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said he wants talks, but says there is no authority in Chechnya with the power to satisfy Russia's demands. At a minimum, Moscow wants the Chechens to hand over "terrorists" Russia accuses of launching attacks on Russian territory.

Despite shows of civilian-military unity by Sergeyev and Kvashnin, army fears that the offensive might be halted are acute. On Friday, just a day after Sergeyev gave public assurances that nobody was going to stop the offensive, Gen. Vladimir Shamanov, the western front commander, warned that if politicians aborted the campaign, officers would resign en masse.

On one level, the Russian armed forces are simply looking for redemption, Russian observers say. Russian troops withdrew in disgrace from Chechnya in 1996, following a two-year war in which tens of thousands of civilians were killed.

Kvashnin, the North Caucasus commander during the previous war, Gen. Nikolai Kantsaev, the current North Caucasus chief, Shamanov and other commanders, who are veterans of the debacle, blame skittish politicians for not letting them do their job.

"It was a great humiliation for the military, which was supposed to be the invincible sword of the Cold War, to be beaten by gangs they described as 'bandits,' " said Sergei Rogov, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of the USA and Canada. "They want to wash away that stain."

"The officers feel they were burned in the first war by conflicting orders and political incompetence. Now they are letting everyone know what they want to do and telling them not to interfere," said Dmitri Trenin, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace here.

The military's outspoken attitude on Chechnya prompted some commentators to wonder exactly who is in charge--President Boris Yeltsin, the ailing commander-in-chief; Putin, whose aspirations to succeed Yeltsin in next year's presidential elections appear to rest on the outcome in Chechnya; or the military brass. The newspaper Izvestia questioned whether the military's drive for a free hand might end up with interference in civilian affairs.

Izvestia noted that the Russian military usurped normally civilian functions of border control in Ingushetia, the Russian region that is the main destination for Chechen refugees. Ingush President Ruslan Aushev complained of unspecified military operations taking place without his authorization.

In Chechnya today, Russia continued its bombardment with artillery and rockets. For the first time, officials said that the army used surface-to-surface Tochka ballistic missiles against Grozny, the capital. Four landed in southwestern suburbs where "2,000 militants and their military hardware" were concentrated, according to a report from the official Russian Tass news agency.

Reports described bombings in central Grozny and the southwest outskirts. Residential buildings were hit, according to the Associated Press.

Chechens say tactical missiles were used to hit a market in central Grozny last month, killing scores of civilians.

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Russian missile test seen as symbolic warning BY DAVID HOFFMAN Washington Post

San Jose Mercury News Thursday, November 4, 1999
http://www7.mercurycenter.com/premium/world/docs/abm04.htm

MOSCOW -- Russia announced Wednesday that it had tested a short-range interceptor missile for the Moscow anti-ballistic missile system in what appeared to be a symbolic warning to the United States not to go ahead with a national missile-defense system now under consideration.

Col. Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev, commander of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces, told Interfax news agency that the Tuesday launch at the Sary-Shagan testing ground in Kazakhstan was the first of its kind since 1993.

Russia has been warning in recent weeks that if the United States goes ahead with a national missile-defense system, then Russia will take countermeasures, and Wednesday's announcement seemed to be a bit of muscle flexing.

The United States wants to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in order to build a missile-defense system to fend off missiles from small ``rogue'' states. It is seeking Russia's support to make this deployment comply with the treaty, but Russia has bitterly opposed any changes to the ABM agreement.

The Clinton administration has said it will make a decision in June on whether to build such a system, which initially would be based in Alaska and North Dakota.

Russian officials recently have publicized a list of actions they might take in response to a U.S. decision to deploy a missile-defense system. Some of the measures, if actually undertaken, would reverse commitments made in arms-control treaties in recent years, such as outlawing multiple-warhead missiles. But it is not known whether cash-strapped Russia can afford to carry out its threats.

Russia has threatened to prolong the life of multiple-warhead missiles outlawed by START 2, and change the new single-warhead Topol-M missile to a multiple-warhead delivery vehicle. The START 2 treaty signed in 1993 has never been ratified by the Russian parliament.

Tuesday's test missile was not identified, but is among those installed in the Moscow anti-ballistic missile system of radar stations and missiles built around the capital in the Soviet era. The 1972 ABM treaty allowed two such systems and a subsequent protocol limited it to one.

The Moscow anti-ballistic missile system, known as A-135, includes the full complement of 100 interceptor missiles permitted by the treaty. The system has a dual defense against ballistic missiles, according to Air Force Magazine.

If the radar antennas spot incoming missiles, Russia could launch up to 36 longer-range SH-11 Gorgon missiles. Should any missiles penetrate this layer, the system also has 64 short-range SH-08 Gazelle missiles, which are quick-reaction, high-acceleration interceptors.

Yakovlev said the tests confirmed the combat readiness of the missile tested Tuesday and that the Strategic Rocket Forces would extend its service life to 12 1/2 years, which suggests that the test involved missiles that have been deployed for some time.

Originally, the interceptors around Moscow were armed with low-yield nuclear warheads. The missiles were not intended to hit the incoming missiles but rather to explode near them. However, news reports in the past year have said Russia removed the nuclear warheads from the interceptors around the capital.

The test-firing capped a string of recent warnings to the United States that Russia would oppose any major changes in the ABM treaty, which presidents Clinton and Yeltsin earlier agreed to discuss. The Russians have been heating up a rhetorical campaign against major changes to the document in anticipation of a U.S. decision on whether to proceed with a missile-defense system.

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France Presses for a Power Independent of the U.S.

By CRAIG R. WHITNEY New York Times November 7, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/110799france-defense.html

PARIS -- In a Europe that is increasingly concerned about unilateralism and resurgent isolationism in the United States, France seized the moment last week to urge the European allies to develop a more independent defense and foreign policy.

President Jacques Chirac, speaking Thursday at an international conference, warned that a world with only one superpower is not as secure and safe as a multipolar world in which Europe is one of the strongest poles.

He believes this, Chirac said, "because the present situation is causing difficulties in numerous countries, including the most powerful among them, the United States, where Congress too often gives in to the temptations of unilateralism and isolationism."

Another reason, he added, was that "the forerunners of what could someday become a new bipolar tension are already arising" between the United States and China.

French officials close to Chirac said that one of the main causes for concern in both China and France was the possible deployment by the United States of a limited missile defense shield to protect against attack by "rogue states" like Iraq or North Korea. Such a shield in the eastern Pacific region might also make China think it had to build more missiles to keep its own nuclear forces from being marginalized.

France, Germany and Britain all have strong reservations about amending the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Moscow to permit more anti-missile defenses, and Russia has said that changing the treaty could destabilize the global strategic balance.

That is also the view of the European allies. "President Chirac has told President Clinton that it could open a Pandora's box that is in none of the allies' interest," one French official said.

In the view of French leaders since Charles de Gaulle in the early 1960s, the best insurance against both U.S. isolationism and the capriciousness of heavy dependence on the United States has always been an independent French or European strategic power.

Now Chirac and other French officials are capitalizing on the Senate's rejection last month of a global treaty banning nuclear tests to urge Europeans not to defer to U.S. leadership but to go ahead and build something that Americans have long been calling for: stronger European defenses.

The world needs "responsible involvement" by the United States in international affairs, Chirac said in his remarks, which were warmly received by many other Europeans present.

"He spoke for me and for all Europeans on that," said Karl Kaiser, a German foreign-policy expert who was an adviser to Gerhard Schroeder, the German chancellor.

Chirac singled out the United States for only one moment of praise: "I salute their impressive economic and technological dynamism," he said at a gathering organized by the French International Relations Institute. "I deplore the present American diffidence in several major areas as a result of decisions by Congress. I wish the United States would once more take on all its responsibilities on the international scene, and as soon as possible. But the world is a fragile place. It won't wait."

The Socialist ministers of defense and foreign affairs also took a strongly Gaullist line last week. "For my part, I believe that since 1992 the word 'superpower' is no longer sufficient to describe the United States," Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine told the same audience on Wednesday. "That's why I use the term 'hyperpower,' which American media think is aggressive.

"Supposing Europeans really do want to become a power," Vedrine added, "the willingness of the United States to accept with anybody, and particularly with Europe, partnership that is anything but momentary or limited, and to move from unilateralism to multilateralism, remains to be demonstrated. We would like to believe it. This question underlies the whole question of the European common foreign and defense policy.

"We cannot accept either a politically unipolar world, nor a culturally uniform world, nor the unilateralism of a single hyperpower," he added. "And that is why we are fighting for a multipolar, diversified and multilateral world."

Defense Minister Alain Richard, speaking of lessons the Europeans learned from Kosovo, where only the United States was quickly able to mass the sophisticated precision-guided weapons needed for the NATO bombing campaign, urged Europeans to cooperate and build forces for similar missions.

He and some other Europeans complain that the United States has been warning Europe against trying to build multilateral defenses that would duplicate the alliance's.

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Government agency blamed for Japanese nuclear leak

ABC News Online Fri, 5 Nov 1999 21:32 AEDT
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-5nov1999-82.htm

An investigating committee in Japan has blamed a Government agency for last month's major nuclear accident.

The accident at a nuclear fuel processing plant exposed more than 80 people to high levels of radiation.

In an interim report submitted to Prime Minister Keizo Obuchian, the investigating committee criticised Japan's Science and Technology Agency for failing to uncover illegal procedures at the Tokaimura plant.

The agency had blamed the operating company JCO for the accident.

It argued JCO was using unsafe procedures that were beyond its imagination.

The Tokaimura accident was caused when workers loaded too much uranium into a solution tank, setting off an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction.

Two workers remain in a critical condition.

---

Japan's Godzilla Stomps Back For New Millennium By Linda Sieg

Deseret News Reuters Updated 3:49 AM ET November 5, 1999
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/1,1249,125014229,00.html?

TOKYO (Reuters) - Fans of Japan's favorite movie monster Godzilla who mourned his demise and were put off by his slithery lizard-like U.S. reincarnation can take heart.

A resurrected version of the nuclear-spawned villain who first trampled his way through Tokyo 45 years ago will ring in the new millennium in a saga complete with a battle in Tokaimura -- the site of Japan's worst-ever nuclear accident.

Sony TriStar's 1998 version of Godzilla, a taller and leaner computer-generated monster that zipped past New York City's skyscrapers at speeds the original could never match, disappointed many diehard fans.

"The U.S. version was a bit hard to digest as the real Godzilla," Toho Co's Takao Okawara, who directed the new "Godzilla 2000: Millennium" as well as the 1995 Toho film that recorded his ostensible extinction, told Reuters in an interview.

"It was too synthetic. The essence of Godzilla's real character is indestructibility," Okawara added. "So since we are starting a new series, we decided to show the proper Godzilla."

OLD HAND AT RESURRECTION

Godzilla, whose return to the screens premiers Saturday at the Tokyo International Film Festival, is an old hand in the resurrection business.

In the original black-and-white 1954 film, "Godzilla, King of the Monsters" was awakened from his prehistoric slumber by U.S. atomic testing on Bikini atoll and went on a rampage of death and destruction that threatened to destroy Tokyo.

The movie, made only nine years after the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ended with the clear message that unless nuclear weapons were abolished, Godzilla would return.

They weren't and he did, at the rate of once a year from 1962 to 1975.

That's when declining popularity put him in deep sleep until his revival in the 1984 "Godzilla," which also packaged an anti-nuclear message with its monster mania.

Then in 1995, Toho made "Godzilla vs Destroyer," in which the monster became a walking nuclear bomb who had to be killed without destroying the earth.

SYMBOLISM IN EYE OF BEHOLDER

Even as that "final" film was being made, Toho admitted Godzilla might well return in response to popular demand.

Back for his 23rd appearance, Godzilla this time clashes with a mysterious giant spaceship that has been reactivated after crashing to earth 60 million years ago.

The movie has three major battle scenes, including one in Tokaimura, the site of a September 30 accident at a uranium fuel processing plant that left two workers in critical condition and exposed at least 69 people to radiation.

But Godzilla's message -- if you're looking for one -- goes beyond the mere focus on nuclear dangers, Okawara said.

"Godzilla is a symbol of the fact that humanity is threatened by what humanity itself creates," Okawara said.

"It's not just nuclear (dangers) but other things, such as the destruction of the environment and war which are brought forth by humans and then take revenge on humans."

Why the long-lasting popularity of the cold-blooded but somehow heart-warming creature, once again played by an actor sweating inside a latex suit?

Okawara says it's because he means many things to many people.

"Some people see him as the 'heaven-sent' child of nuclear (weapons), some as a...mere monster and some as a symbol of the threat to humans from what humans create," he said.

"You can't just sum him up in one simple sentence."

Related Stories

Japan's Godzilla Stomps Back For New Millennium (Nov 7 12:17 am ET)
http://news.excite.com/news/r/991107/00/entertainment-japan-godzilla
http://news.excite.com/news/r/991105/03/entertainment-japan-godzilla

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India admits plan to test missile

ABC News Online Sat, 6 Nov 1999 22:09 AEDT
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.

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U.S. missile-shield plans blamed in new arms race

Associated Press, Deseret News Thursday, November 04, 1999
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/1,1249,125013855,00.html?

BEIJING - China Thursday said U.S. efforts to set up an anti-missile defense shield provoked Russia into testing a new missile and restarting the arms race.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said she had no details and thus could not confirm Tuesday's test-firing of an anti-missile missile, reported by the Interfax news agency.

But she said the reported test grew out of Washington's plans to amend the 27-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and build a national missile defense system, known as NMD.

"It must be pointed out that this is a direct consequence of the U.S. attempt to revise the ABM and develop NMD," Zhang said at a regular media briefing. It will "undermine the strategic balance and stability and spark a new round of an arms race."

China has repeatedly opposed U.S. plans to build missile shields either at home or for East Asian allies, fearing that an arms race could derail Beijing's economic modernization.

Washington wants to revise the ABM, a cornerstone of Cold War arms control, so it may build a defense system to protect against missiles from small, rogue states - not against countries like Russia with large nuclear arsenals. But Russia has strongly opposed any changes to the 1972 treaty.

Interfax, in its Wednesday report of the missile test, quoted the commander of Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces, Col. Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev, as saying the missile test should be seen as one of several possible "response measures" if the United States withdraws from the ABM treaty.

It was the first successful launch of the missile since 1993, and it showed that the missile was combat-ready, Yakovlev said. He added that the new missile is superior than earlier models.

The United States wants to amend the 1972 treaty in order to build a missile-defense system to fend off missiles from small, rogue states. It is seeking Russia's support to make this deployment comply with the treaty, but Russia has bitterly opposed any changes to the ABM agreement.

Yakovlev warned that a U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty could spark both countries' renunciation of the START-I and START-II nuclear arms reduction treaties.

"It is not known yet who will suffer worse if any of the parties withdraws from the 1972 ABM treaty," Interfax quoted him as saying.

He said that a second batch of intercontinental Topol-M ballistic missiles would be deployed by Dec. 17. The Topol-Ms are to replace six other kinds of strategic rockets before 2010, he said, according to Interfax.

The Russian government has said that the Topol-M will form the backbone of its nuclear forces for years to come. The small, rugged missile can be fired from a mobile launch pad, which means it would be hard to detect and therefore more likely to survive a first strike in a nuclear confrontation.

Russia already has 10 Topol-M missiles in service. Those were deployed last December.

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Israel's Missile Killer Declared Operational

Space Com Nov 01 1999 15:59:05 ET By Bradley Burston http://www.space.com/news/israel_missile_991101_wg.html

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The U.S.-funded Arrow missile was declared operational by its Israeli manufacturer on Monday after a successful test in which it struck a target missile over the Mediterranean.

Israeli officials said the system would not be deployed until next year, but was already capable of intercepting and destroying an incoming ballistic missile.

"The system is complete, and is therefore operationally ready,'' said Ori Orr, board chairman of state-owned Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), main contractor of the Arrow.

Evening television newscasts in Israel led with footage of the Arrow blasting off from the deck of an Israeli naval vessel, streaking toward and striking a target missile within seconds.

Orr said that after tests spanning nine years, "today's was the first test of the entire system, truly in a real exercise, with radar that acquired the target, a system that calculated intercept data, and a missile that went out and hit the target.''

It was the seventh test firing of an Arrow since the U.S.-Israeli project was launched in 1988 as part of the Reagan Administration's now-defunct Star Wars program.

Designed to intercept missiles at altitudes between 10 and 40 kilometers (six and 25 miles), the Arrow project was kicked into high gear by the failure of U.S.-supplied Patriot missiles to combat Iraqi Scuds that slammed into Israel during the 1991 Gulf War.

The project's price tag is expected to exceed $2 billion by 2010, with direct U.S. funding accounting for some $700 million.

"The Americans are aware of the results of the test and are themselves certainly happy over the great success,'' Orr said.

Foreign governments, notably Israel's regional strategic ally Turkey, have shown interest in purchasing the Arrow.

But Orr turned aside questions over possible sales.

Not for sale yet

"At the moment no one is dealing with selling the Arrow. At the moment we must produce the quantities that we need for our own defense,'' he said in an interview with Israel's army radio.

Officials expect the first of three projected Arrow batteries to be deployed next year in the Tel Aviv area, Israel's main population center and the primary target of the 39 Iraqi Scuds missiles that struck the nation in 1991.

As a next step, Israel is expected to ask its patron ally Washington for aid in funding an allied project, a sophisticated drone designed to fly into and destroy enemy missile sites.

Israel rejects criticism that an operational Arrow will fuel an accelerated Middle East missile race, arguing that Syria, Iraq, and Iran, all formally at war with the Jewish state, will arm themselves at full speed regardless.

Israeli intelligence assessments have said Syria has an arsenal of hundreds of missiles easily capable of reaching the Jewish state, and that Iran is building nuclear warheads to fit on missiles with enough range to reach Israel.

David Ivry, Israel's new ambassador to Washington, a driving force behind the Arrow as a former air force chief and senior defense ministry figure, was asked after the Monday test if the Middle East missile race might soon render the Arrow obsolete.

"The race will continue,'' Ivry told Israel Channel Two Television.

"It's always better to be the one who is one step ahead, and at this point we are in a situation that is not bad.''

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Plutonium to burn The Gazette

Montrea Gazette Monday 1 November 1999
http://www.montrealgazette.com/editorial/pages/991101/3078520.html

Ontario is showing a disappointing lack of leadership on a global environmental issue of extreme importance. The province is dragging its feet in co-operating with Ottawa's generous proposal to try to dispose of a frightening Cold War legacy - vast amounts of deadly plutonium once used in Russia's nuclear warheads.

The Ontario nuclear authority that Ottawa may eventually call upon to burn the radioactive material is not anxious to do so. Ontario Power Generation has told the federal government it has other priorities.

In an internal memo written last March, the authority's chief nuclear engineer describes Ottawa's plan as a "distraction," a "nuisance" and "a political football."

What precisely is this plan that the memo so dismissively calls a "distraction?" It merely happens to be a scheme with the potential to save millions of lives.

Crisis-racked Russia lacks the ability to dispose of this radioactive headache. If even a few kilos of plutonium were to waft into the environment or fall into the hands of terrorists or a rogue state, the consequences could be catastrophic.

We in Canada can turn our backs to this problem. Or we can offer, for a fee, to help get rid of it. That's what the Chretien government is doing in a spirit of civic citizenship, global-style.

In the Not in My Back Yard department, Ontario's nuclear authority has plenty of company. Mayors of several Ontario cities, including Cornwall, don't want plutonium shipments passing through their towns. Nor do leaders of the Kahnawake and

Akwesasne reserves, who have threatened to resist passage of plutonium-toting ships through the Seaway.

These are understandable concerns. But if Canada goes ahead with the plan, it is reasonable to insist on a very high level of security shielding the plutonium shipments - far superior to that which Russia provides. Considering the alternative, whatever risk Canadians face is very acceptable.

The fact is that few if any countries are better placed than Canada for reducing this nuclear menace. The new stress on safety at Ontario's reactors makes them logical places for burning the stuff.

At a time when environmental disasters can be global, defusing such a problem is a matter of self-interest.

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Query Over Khoza's Nuke Stakes

The Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg S. Africa) November 5, 1999 By Mungo Soggot
http://www.africanews.org/south/southafrica/stories/19991105_feat21.html

Johannesburg - Two ministers are investigating the conflict of interest arising from the chair of Eskom's material stake in a company contracted to South Africa's nuclear programme.

The Mail & Guardian reported last week that Eskom's chair, Reuel Khoza, is also the founding chair of an investment holding company that has a 29% stake in a group Eskom is paying to develop a nuclear power project. Khoza sits on Eskom's nuclear oversight committee. He has been non- executive chair of Eskom since 1997, and spends most of his time running Co- ordinated Network Investments (CNI). The research company in which CNI has a 29% stake is called Integrated Systems Technology (IST).

This week, Minister of Public Enterprises Jeff Radebe and the Minister of Minerals and Energy Phumzile Mlambo- Ngcuka asked Khoza to brief them on his interest in IST. Mlambo-Ngcuka said Khoza had written to her this week explaining the situation, and that she would now consult with Radebe on what action to take. Radebe's office said it had also sought from Khoza a further briefing on the nuclear project - a "pebble-bed reactor".

The project attracted controversy even before it emerged that Khoza had an interest in IST, one of the main beneficiaries of the R90-million Eskom has spent researching and developing the reactor. Critics of the project complained that the expenditure of so much money before Eskom secures the government's approval for the new plant is likely to allow Eskom to steamroller the government into authorising the venture.

Khoza denied last week he was involved in a conflict of interest, saying he had no control of the day-to-day running of Eskom. He said he felt he could make impartial decisions while sitting on the nuclear oversight committee.

Khoza added that he had disclosed all his outside interests to Eskom and the government, and that it was up to them to decide whether he should recuse himself from anything to do with Eskom's nuclear programme or step down.

Professor Mark Ward at the Wits Business School said the onus was on Khosa to know when to recuse himself from decisions or step down. "But the government also has the responsibility to take more decisive action when disclosures are insufficient."

Distributed via Africa News Online (www.africanews.org).

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RUSSIAN NUCLEAR Y2K DRILL GOES SMOOTHLY

WorldScan Weekly Notebook: November 5, 1999 Enviro News Service

MOSCOW, Russia, November 5, 1999 (ENS) - Russian Minister of Atomic Energy Yevgeniiy Adamov invited a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) technical team to observe a Y2K nuclear power plant emergency drill on November 1. The DOE team reported that the Russian workers at the plant generally performed well.

The drill involved operators at the Kursk nuclear power plant several hundred miles south of Moscow, the Rosenergoatom nuclear facility crisis center in Moscow, and a transmission/grid system dispatch center in Moscow. The drill lasted about two hours and involved 75 people.

The drill simulated the failure of the "SKALA" data information computers and plant shutdown at the Kursk nuclear power plant units 1, 2, 3 and 4; the disconnection of the Kursk power plant from 750 kV transmission lines; the startup of the Kursk emergency diesel generators; and the reconnection of Kursk to the grid by dispatches from an alternate transmission line.

The purpose of Monday's drill was to train personnel in emergency response procedures needed in case of Y2K related problems. U.S. participants observed the drill and provided information and lessons learned based on U.S. experience with similar drills. Issues that should be addressed in future drills are the need for improved flow of information between the technical support staff and the crisis team, and busy telephones.

The Energy Department sent technical experts who are part of a comprehensive effort to improve safety at 65 operating Soviet-designed nuclear power reactors at 21 nuclear power plants in nine countries.

Russia has 29 operating nuclear power reactors. The DOE safety program reduces the likelihood of a nuclear accident through training, technology and equipment transfer, in-depth safety assessments, and a heightened focus on regulatory practices.

The Department of Energy is working closely with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the International Science and Technology Center in Moscow to assist the Russian government's effort to minimize Y2K issues associated with Soviet-designed reactors in Russia.

More Russian nuclear power plant Y2K readiness drills are expected later this year.

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ISRAELI BREAKTHROUGH PROMISES INDUSTRIAL SCALE SOLAR POWER

WorldScan Weekly Notebook: November 5, 1999
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/nov99/1999L-11-05ws.html

REHOVOT, Israel, November 5, 1999 (ENS) - A new design for a solar power system has the potential to use solar energy and natural gas in combined cycle power plants. The Weizmann Institute of Science is constructing the world's first power plant that uses solar energy to directly power the gas turbines used to generate electricity.

Conventional gas-fired plants being built today should plan to add on solar panels in the future, which will extend the useful life of the plants and power transmission lines for decades beyond the exhaustion of the gas resources, the Institute said in a new report.

Conventional plants transport the gas long distances to urban areas; the pipelines and plants become useless when the gas reservoirs are depleted. The Weizmann strategy will extend the life of power plants and avoid the expense of de-commissioning plants and pipelines, to "provide truly sustainable power supply to densely populated areas," the Institute said.

Demonstration solar furnace project in Daggett, California is the forerunner of the new power plant (Photo courtesy National Renewable Energy Lab)

If a gas field is located in areas of low population and high solar intensity, there is a substantial advantage in constructing power plants close to the gas field. A gas-fired plant could be built now at competitive prices and require only minor modifications to the combustion system in future.

With $5.3 million in funding from a U.S./Israeli agreement, the pilot plant will use special optics and an innovative air receiver to reflect, concentrate and convert sunlight to high temperature in order to directly power gas and steam turbines in a combined cycle and to generate electricity.

Highly reflective mirrors, or heliostats, track the sun and reflect sunlight to a central tower which uses optical concentrators to concentrate the light 10,000 times more than natural sunlight. Solar receivers heat compressed air that drives the turbogenerator to generate electricity.

The system locates the production facilities on the ground, rather than at the top of the tower, to make construction of the tower simpler and cheaper. The concentrator design concentrates the sunlight to heat the air to the required temperature, while hundreds of ceramic pins maximize the collection of solar power.

The project has been underway since 1996 with a consortium that includes Boeing, Ormat and Rotem. The concept will allow solar power to generate up to tens of megawatts of power, although the prototype will generate only 300 kW.

McDonnell Douglas developed the 10 MW Solar One plant in the Mojave Desert in the 1980s. Ormat has manufactured and installed 350 MW of renewable energy systems using geothermal and solar. Rotem is involved in optical design and high temperature materials. The Weizmann Institute and its commercial subsidiary, Yeda, will handle technology transfer to industry.

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Sloan becomes a voice for conservation

By Missy Stoddard, November 7, 1999, Fayetteville (NC) Observer-Times
http://www.fayettevillenc.com/foto/news/content/1999/tx99nov/n07slon5.htm

GARLAND -- In 1972, Carolina Power & Light announced plans to build a nuclear power plant on the South River, which runs through Sampson and Bladen counties.

Catherine Sloan owned several hundred acres of land along the river, and she was not about to accept the company's plan without a fight.

"CP&L is such a powerhouse ... and they tried to galvanize the neighborhood," Sloan says.

She organized the South River Association, which sued CP&L.

The group hired Greensboro lawyer McNeill Smith. The Conservation Council of North Carolina joined the fight. The South River Association won the suit and the plant was never built.

The struggle was the start of Sloan's alliance with the Conservation Council, to which she was elected president for the 1999-2000 year.

"We maintain a consistent voice in Raleigh for environmental protection," Sloan says.

Sloan is passionate about conservation, the environment and other causes. She is a tall, slender woman of 74 with short silver hair who lives her life in constant motion.

She lives with her sheltie, Echo, in a 10-room home built by her great-grandfather 150 years ago in Garland, a small town in southern Sampson County.

Besides serving on the Conservation Council, Sloan is a past president of the Garland Rotary Club, a member of the Sampson Community College Foundation board of directors, a trustee at the South River Presbyterian Church and a member of the board of directors of Habitat for Humanity.

'A catalyst for good' |

Ann Glover is the resource development officer and executive director of the Sampson Community College Foundation board. She has known Sloan for about 10 years.

She calls Sloan one of the most remarkable people she has known.

"She is a bridge builder and a catalyst for good," Glover says.

Glover says Sloan is responsible for many endowments at the college, but one that sticks with her is in memory of Sloan's aunt, Anabel Sloan.

"Catherine took the bull by the horns and started the endowment with the Garland Rotary Club ... and she gives the club total credit for it," Glover says.

These days, part of Sloan's environmental activism is focused on the hog industry. She is an outspoken critic of the industry, not a popular stance in her native Sampson County. Sampson and neighboring Duplin are the two largest pork-producing counties in the nation.

"Hogs have made a lot of money for a lot of farmers, but at what cost?" Sloan asks. "I believe you can absolutely be pro-environment and pro-agriculture."

Powerful corporations |

She says she pities contract farmers because they are at the mercy of the large conglomerates such as Murphy's, Smithfield and Prestage.

"The contract farmer doesn't have enough power," she says. "The corporations could gut these people -- and probably will."

Sloan says the state allowed, even fostered, the building of hog farms. She says farmers should receive state and federal assistance to get them into other things.

The state's moratorium on new hog farms should be made permanent, Sloan says, and penalties should be made tougher for hog farmers who violate pollution regulations.

Sloan graduated from Peace College in 1946 and from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill two years later. She holds a master's degree in education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

She spent 30 years working for WFMY-TV in Greensboro as the station's research director. She wrote the first live television program in the state. The show was a tour of Greensboro.

Sloan married in 1952 and was divorced five years later. She has no children.

In 1972, the same year CP&L announced its plan for a nuclear plant, she bought the home her great-grandfather built.

"I'd always been interested in the river, and I love this area and this house," she says.

The house, which is listed in the National Registry of Historic Places, has three porches and extensive grounds. It is on Dickson Sloan Lane, named for its builder, and still has most of its original furnishings as well as the original heart-pine flooring.

Last year, Sloan granted the state a conservation easement on 41 acres of land on the South River. The easement will protect the land from development.

Mary Carter has known Sloan since both were growing up in Garland. "She gives without wanting recognition for her contributions," Carter says.

Sloan begins her day about 6 a.m. Her telephone rings constantly, and she receives an average of about 30 e-mails each day.

On a recent Friday afternoon she was pleased to receive a call informing her that a lawsuit brought by the American Canoe Association against Murphy Farms will be heard on Dec. 1 in a federal court in Virginia.

Speaking out on issues |

The suit accuses Murphy Farms of polluting three streams that run through Sampson County -- the South River, the Black River and Six Runs Creek. All three have been designated Outstanding Resource Waters and as a result are subject to the highest protection from the state.

Sloan says she plans to keep speaking out on issues she believes in.

"It's never an either-or situation," she says. "There are too many voices that need to be heard."

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B&W Parks plant cleanup nears completion

By Patrick Shuster Staff writer, November 7, 1999
http://www.valleynewsdispatch.com/vn41107.html

PARKS: The cleanup of the former Babcock & Wilcox plutonium processing plant along River Road is nearing completion - relatively speaking.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has announced that BWX Technologies has approval to begin the removal of Building A, the largest of three buildings at the site.

Joe Cepicka, spokesman for BWXT, said cleaning and removal of interior walls and supports will begin in the next week or so, with final removal of the structure itself expected in the spring.

The 56,000-square-foot building, built in several sections, had been used in fuel production and later to decontaminate and repair parts and equipment used in nuclear power plants.

"We want to get started with the interior right away," Cepicka said. "With the unpredictable nature of the weather, we want to get as much done as we can before winter."

Cepicka said efforts to move quickly will not sacrifice safety and that all precautions used in demolition of the other structures will be used for Building A.

Building C, a 9,000-square-foot building used for Naval fuel production, was cleaned and removed in October 1998. Building B, a 23,000-square-foot building was cleaned and removed earlier this summer.

The NRC stated in its most recent letter to BWXT that materials being removed from Building A which are determined to be contaminated will have to be packaged and shipped as low level radiation waste to proper dump sites.

Once the building is removed, BWXT will have to wait for NRC approval to begin removing any remaining substructure and soil around the building.

"We expect to have to remove soil around Building A, as well as an area where Building B was," Cepicka said. "That will be done next summer."

Cepicka said that once the building and soil is removed, the monitoring process of the property will begin.

"If any additional ground is determined to be contaminated, it will be removed, of course," he said. "Other than that, we will begin the mandated two-year monitoring."

The NRC states that soil and groundwater samples be taken on a set basis during the time period to determine if any additional contamination exists. Once completed, the land could be released for unrestricted use.

The company also is working to develop a plan for the removal of a radioactive dumpsite, known as the Shallow Land Disposal Area, adjacent to the Parks facility.

In all, 10 trenches used between 1961 and 1971 were filled with a variety of radioactive materials, including uranium and U-235, an enriched uranium isotope. Various other debris were also dumped in the trenches.

The NRC has told company officials that a cleanup plan for the SLDA must be submitted by December 2000. The project is separate from the current cleanup plan at the Parks site.

Patrick Shuster can be reached at pshuster@tribweb.com