----------- india

Third unit of Rajasthan atomic plant goes critical

India Times Sunday 26 December 1999 Posted at 0130 hrs IST
http://www.timesofindia.com/today/26indi9.htm

MUMBAI: The third unit of the Rajasthan Atomic Power Project (RAPP) at Rawabhata went critical a minute before midnight on Friday thus crossing a significant milestone in India's nuclear power programme.

RAPP-3 is the second nuclear power unit to become operational within three months. In September, the second unit of the Kaiga Atomic Power Project in Karnataka had become critical.

Sources in the Nuclear Power Corporation (NPC) said this fully indigenous 220 MW heavy water reactor has been built to meet the latest safety standards and has state-of-the-art technology, including a fully computerised control system.

Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission R. Chidambaram said: ``Rawabhata has a special place in our nuclear programme. It has a number of firsts to its credit. It is our first pressurised heavy water reactor and represents our first successful en-masse coolant channels replacement and now it is the first state-of-the-art pressurised heavy water reactor.

A press release issued by the Nuclear Power Corporation here said the RAPP has two units each of 220 MW pressurised heavy water reactors. RAPP-1 and RAPP-2 are already under operation and have so far supplied 27,114 million units of electricity to the northern grid.

The second unit was recently refurbished after en masse coolant channel replacement and safety upgradation. The fourth unit is expected to beoperational next year. The total cost of RAPP-3 and RAPP-4 is about Rs 2,511 crore, the press release stated. It said four more units of pressurised heavy water reactors, each of 500 MW, are planned to be constructed at Rawabhata.

``With the criticality of RAPP-3, the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station has achieved the distinction of being the largest nuclear park in the country,'' the press release said. The nuclear power programme in India envisages installing a total capacity of 20,000 MW by the year 2020.

------- pakistan

Jamaat slams army on CTBT

India Times Sunday 26 December 1999 Posted at 0130 hrs IST
http://www.timesofindia.com/today/26worl7.htm

ISLAMABAD: The fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) has accused Pakistan's military regime of ``abject surrender and unpardonable compromise on national security'' for reportedly agreeing to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) without the country being recognised as a nuclear-weapon state.

``The indications are that Pakistan is prepared to sign the CTBT even before India signs this treaty and before any concrete and just solution to the Kashmir problem is worked out,'' said JI deputy leader Khurshid Ahmad in a statement, NNI news agency reported.

``If the people of Pakistan and its religious and political leadership do not promptly challenge this volte face, Pakistan nuclear capability would be in jeopardy and its sovereignty at stake,'' he warned. ``The present leadership's submission to US pressure will not only be a compromise on matters of national sovereignty, but will also drive a wedge between the army leadership and the people,'' he said.

CTBT is not an independent treaty, he said and added, ``It is part of a four-dimensional nuclear doctrine whose cornerstone is NPT (Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty)'' which was discriminatory. ``Pakistan, like India and Israel, is a nuclear weapon state and without an acknowledgment of this fact, entering into CTBT would not only be self-contradictory but in fact a recipe for ultimate de-nuclearisation,'' he said.

He said there were several indications during the last few weeks pointing towards an impending compromise on Pakistan's nuclear policy. ``President Clinton's expected visit to South Asia is the Trojan Horse. Now the foreign minister's briefing to National Security Council and the cabinet has brought the cat out of the bag. It has become quite clear that all promises of `national consensus' and `never surrendering to outside pressure' have crumbled to dust,'' he said.

The army regime was preparing to do what the Nawaz Sharif government had agreed to do under US pressure, he said, and added the US was on the verge of accepting India's right to ``minimum nuclear deterrence.'' This amounted to virtual acceptance of India as nuclear power, he said, and questioned the conditions under which Pakistan was negotiating signing of the CTBT. ``All talk of national consensus is turning into meaningless prattle,'' he added. (IANS)

----------- puerto rico

Puerto Rico Protests To Escalate

Yahoo News07:39 PM ET 12/26/99
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2562852684-50b

SAN JUAN (AP) _ Protesters will set up a camp outside the U.S. Navy base on the outlying Puerto Rican island of Vieques to allow more people to demonstrate against the base's bombing training, organizers said Sunday.

Dozens of protesters have camped out on the Navy's bombing range since April, when two bombs dropped off target killed a civilian guard on the training ground.

The incident has drawn Puerto Ricans together as never before in a concerted campaign to end the bombing. But the protests have been limited, as the seaside bombing range can only be reached by boat.

Currently, there are a few tents set up by political parties, religious groups and civic groups to prevent more bombing.

The new camp, however, will be accessible by road, organizers said. It will be located in front of the base, but not on Navy property, organizers said.

``This new camp will give more Puerto Ricans than ever the opportunity to join, for those who have not decided on how to participate in the civil disobedience on land occupied by the Navy,'' said Jose F. Paratilici, a spokesman for the camp's organizers, the Coordination for Justice and Peace of Vieques.

On Saturday night, another protest group staged a concert in front of the base, where singers Roy Brown and Zoraida Santiago performed.

A folklore ballet, a band and a puppet show was scheduled to take place Sunday night in front of the base, spokeswoman Nilda Ramos said.

The Navy has trained for decades using live ammunition on the two-thirds of Vieques it owns, with the island's 9,400 residents living on the other third.

President Clinton proposed a compromise this month that would have the Navy resume bombings next year, but only with dummy ammunition, and withdraw entirely from Vieques within five years. Puerto Rican leaders rejected the proposal and were continuing talks with officials in Washington.

----------- russia

The End of the U.S.S.R.

Sunday, December 26, 1999; Page F03 By Michael Dobbs Washington Post Foreign Service
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-12/26/053l-122699-idx.html

Excerpts from "the first rough draft of history" as reported in
The Washington Post on this date in the 20th century.

In the West, Mikhail Gorbachev is hailed as a giant who liberated Russia from totalitarianism. At home, however, he is still perceived as the man who destroyed a way of life and plunged his country into economic chaos and ruin. History will ultimately be the judge of the last Soviet leader's accomplishments and failures. Two excerpts from The Post of Dec. 26, 1991:

MOSCOW, Dec. 25 -- Mikhail Gorbachev resigned today as president of the Soviet Union, transferring control of the country's huge nuclear arsenal to Russian President Boris Yeltsin as the red Soviet flag atop the Kremlin was lowered for the last time.

Immediately after announcing his resignation in a live television broadcast, the last leader of the world's first communist state signed a decree formally relinquishing command of the 3.7 million-member Soviet armed forces. Within a half-hour, the white, red and blue Russian flag was flying above Gorbachev's former Kremlin office, symbolizing the end of the Soviet Union and the collapse of Soviet communism 74 years after the Bolshevik Revolution.

In his farewell address, Gorbachev proudly defended his achievements as Soviet leader, including the dismantling of the totalitarian system and the inauguration of a new era in East-West relations. But he also struck a note of warning about the dangers that lie ahead for the 15 independent countries that have been carved out of the former Soviet Union, making clear that he had been deeply opposed to the "dismembering" of the unitary state.

By David Remnick
Washington Post Foreign Service

You may my glories and my state depose,
But not my griefs; still am I king of those.

-- Shakespeare's King Richard II, Act IV

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, whose battle to reform socialism has ended with the collapse of Leninist ideology and the Soviet Union, left the Kremlin tonight an exhausted and bitter man.

In his final days, Gorbachev told aides that he felt "balanced" and "at peace" with his choices, his place in history. But as he sat in the eerie quiet of his office last weekend receiving visitors and watching news reports on television, he learned that the presidents of the former Soviet republics, who had met to form the new Commonwealth of Independent States, had discussed not only an end to the Soviet Union but, with unconcealed relish, the details of his pension. Down the hall, members of President Boris Yeltsin's Russian government were already taking measurements and inventory for their imminent move into the Kremlin.

"For me, they have poisoned the air," Gorbachev confided to one reporter. "They have humiliated me."

Gorbachev has tried hard to conceal his emotions, to cover them over with pride and the language of political euphemism. Yet his sense of rejection and betrayal from all sides seems no less profound for him than it was for Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who was ousted in 1964, or for Winston Churchill when he was summarily voted out of 10 Downing St., after leading Britain to victory in World War II. Four months ago, Gorbachev's closest aides in the Communist Party, the military and the KGB arrested him and made clear an implicit threat of murder. Once back in Moscow, Yeltsin and other republics' leaders leached him of all authority, making him look hollow and weak.

And the people -- the people who had never elected Gorbachev in the first place -- have shown a minimum of gratitude for their new-found civil freedoms as they wait in line to enter dark and empty stores. A life of poverty, it seems, leaves no room for sympathy with the griefs of czars.

This series is in a book that can be purchased online at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/2000/collectors.htm or by

calling 1-888-819-8879

---

Mike Sigov: Russian electors said yes to 'party of war'

Toledo Blade December 26, 1999
http://www.toledoblade.com/editorial/sigov/9l26sigo.htm

Russia's parliamentary elections were deemed legitimate last week. International mass media are trumpeting "the survival and gains of democracy" there.

But at what expense was that accomplished and for how long will it last?

The answer to that is - at too huge a price and not for long. Cleverly manipulated by the Kremlin, the Russian people voted for war. The Kremlin will surely keep fueling this sentiment until the presidential elections next year to assure the victory of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, now an unchallenged front-runner.

The media have largely responded to the fact that Communists lost about half of their seats in the Duma. However, Communists remain the single largest faction in the Duma.

Moreover, they lost those seats mainly because of the split in their ranks.

Those who split joined the Kremlin-supported Unity, which rides the popular chauvinistic wave. A party that nobody heard about even a month ago, it was created by the Kremlin as a party of supporters of the war in Chechnya.

Mr. Putin saw it as a handy substitute for a platform. It offered a welcome distraction from the corruption of the authorities and their inability to turn things around in post-crisis Russia.

The Unity came second. It would have been first, had the Communists chosen to criticize Mr. Putin's methods of indiscriminate bombing of Chechen communities.

However the Kremlin - or its "party of war" - can expect to control the majority in the Duma.

That's because the Fatherland - All Russia bloc that finished third will more likely choose an alliance with the Kremlin than with the Communists.

Headed by former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, it represents vast financial interests, including energy monopolies and construction companies and is unlikely to ally itself with the Communists.

Given the public support of the Chechnya war and himself as its mastermind, Mr. Putin has his hands free now to keep pounding the capital city of Grozny until there's nothing for the Chechens to defend. But once the insurgents are isolated in Chechnya's southern mountainous region, there will be no easy way for the Russian troops to deal with them.

That could be dangerous for other countries in the oil-rich region - such as Georgia and Azerbaijan. The Kremlin could use them as scapegoats to make sure they still have military victories to appease the public.

Furthermore, the rising prices of oil make the Kremlin miss the oil-rich Caspian Sea region that once belonged to the Soviet Union. Oil and gas remain Russia's main export item as nuclear technology and weapons are becoming its other important ingredients. Cash-stripped Russia is relying more on these two sources to sponsor its 1.2-million-member military.

Should push come to shove, Russia's energy monopolies, which are interested in expanding and undercutting foreign competition, will most surely join the military in its support of expanding the war.

Therefore, while Mr. Putin is likely to succeed Mr. Yeltsin next summer, he also will be in a position to stifle Russia's democratic institutions.

The pressure to do so will arise once the public support of the war inevitably starts waning as the Russian casualties and the economic burden start to grow.

The scariest part of it all is that the Russian military is so broke that it cannot afford to fight a prolonged war with conventional weapons.

Russia's recently published draft military doctrine expands the notion of nuclear deterrence to allow the use of nuclear weapons in regional and local wars.

Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev, commander of Russia's strategic nuclear forces, recently published an article in Russia's Independent Military Review newspaper, in which he tried to sell the Russian public on Russia's new nuclear deterrence doctrine.

General Yakovlev attempted to justify it with the increasing proliferation of nuclear weapons that is widely blamed in Russia on the United States' intent to scrap the 1972 U.S.-Russia accord to limit the anti-ballistic missile defense systems.

With the way things are now, there's no question that the Kremlin will introduce the new military strategy and the new Duma will ratify it

It's up to the diplomats of the United States to realistically assess the situation and make sure Mr. Putin doesn't use the new doctrine in the Caucuses or elsewhere.

The new Duma is still to elect its speaker, who could be either a Communist or a centrist, depending on whether the two centrist parties form an alliance.

Mike Sigov, a Russian-born journalist, is a staff writer for The Blade.

---

U.S.-Russian relations unlikely to thaw soon

Denver Rocky Mountain News December 26, 1999
Holger Jensen - hjens@aol.com
http://insidedenver.com/jensen/1226holgr.shtml
http://www2.nando.net/noframes/story/0,2107,500146565-500176558-500699063-0,00.html

Now that Russia's parliamentary elections are over, can we expect a thaw in what many are calling the New Cold War?

The short answer is no.

Russia still has a presidential election coming in June, and America-bashing is much in vogue by candidates who believe their path to victory lies in a nationalistic foreign policy stance.

Our own presidential election next year has raised the level of Russia-bashing in Congress, and analysts don't expect the rhetoric to cool until 2001, after the new Russian and U.S. leaders are both in place.

Rhetoric aside, there are serious frictions between Moscow and Washington that may get worse before they get better. And while Russia's new State Duma is expected to be more supportive of President Boris Yeltsin and his chosen heir, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, that does not mean it will be friendlier to the West.

About all we can expect in the near future is ratification of START II, the 1993 nuclear arms reduction pact that was approved by the Senate but consistently rejected by the old Duma, dominated by Communists and nationalists.

Again, this would not signal friendship for the West but support for the Russian military, which backs START II because it would free up cash for other uses. Putin, wildly popular for resuming the war in Chechnya, has increased defense spending by 57 percent next year to fulfill his pledge of rebuilding Russia's military might.

Three sore points:

CHECHNYA -- Russia accuses us of a double standard in bombing Yugoslavia, a sovereign nation, while condemning its war on "bandits and terrorists" in a Muslim republic on Russian soil.

Last month, President Clinton virtually accused Russia of violating the Geneva Convention with indiscriminate air and artillery attacks on Chechen civilians. And Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, on a visit to Moscow last week, accused Russia of breaking "international norms." Russia regards this as unacceptable interference into its internal affairs.

To quote Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov, the Russian army's foreign policy chief: "NATO is trying to forget that not long ago thousands of planes attacked a sovereign state, civilian trains, civilian buses, houses, hospitals. They've forgotten about that."

Russia and China have joined forces to condemn "the growing trend of using pretexts such as human rights and humanitarian intervention to destroy the sovereignty of independent states."

MISSILES -- Russia strongly objects to U.S. plans to build an anti-missile defense shield and has said it will not tolerate any amendments to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. The cash-strapped Russian military rarely test-fires expensive missiles, but it has been doing so with increasing frequency to remind Washington that it is a nuclear power.

Putin, who witnessed the launch of a new strategic missile earlier this month, said Russia "will use all diplomatic and military-political levers in its disposal" to confront the West. "The diplomatic levers are clear," he said, "and as for military ones, the Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile is one of them."

AID AND LOANS -- Congress cut the administration's request for aid to Russia by 30 percent this year. Although Clinton vetoed that bill, lawmakers remain reluctant to give aid to Russia because of what the chairman of the House International Relations Committee called "the fantastic and growing corruption in that country."

In hearings held by his committee, Rep. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., charged that $100 billion to $500 billion had been siphoned out of the Russian budget. "A sincere and thorough accounting," he said, "might find that the highest officials in the current Russian government, including those in the Kremlin and the Russian security and police agencies, are culpable in this massive thievery."

Rep. Tom Lantos, a senior Democrat from California, pointed out that the Russians aren't stealing American aid but the proceeds of sales of their own resources, such as oil and timber. "It's important to keep our perspective," he said.

But Clinton remains under strong pressure to cut aid to Russia. And Moscow's resentment heightened last week when the State Department blocked a $500 million loan to Russia's troubled oil industry.

Holger Jensen is international editor. E-mail: hjens@aol.com. His column also appears on the Internet at www.RockyMountainNews.com/jensen/.

----------- tasmania

Nuke ship snub rekindles fears

The Sunday Tasmanian 26dec99 By SIMON BEVILACQUA
http://www.news.com.au/news_content/state_content/4200741.htm

PLUTONIUM- URANIUM cargo from a shipment which passed Tasmania in September was rejected by its Japanese customer last week.

British Nuclear Fuels, which supplied the mixed plutonium-uranium oxide, or MOX, nuclear cargo, has admitted docu ments were falsified.

BNFL shut down the British plant where the irregularities occurred and suspended three workers.

Falsified quality-control documents have been uncovered relating to the September shipment to Japan and other MOX fuel orders.

Japanese power utility Kansai Electric said it had abandoned plans to use MOX fuel from BNFL in its nuclear reactors.

The shipment was one of about 80 planned from Europe to Japan in the next 10 years but which are now in jeopardy.

Greenpeace spokeswoman Jean McSorley said there were concerns the rejected shipment may return via the same route past Tasmania.

"Japan now has fuel containing 45kgs of weapons-useable plutonium which it cannot use," she said.

"This raises serious concerns about what Japan will do with this fuel".

Three Tasmanian councils - Derwent Valley, Huon Valley and Hobart - wrote to the Tasmanian and federal governments requesting more information about the shipment.

Letters in reply from both state and federal governments assured the shipment was safe.

Premier Jim Bacon told the Huon Valley Council the Tasmanian Government acknowledged council concerns but it was a matter for the Commonwealth.

Mr Bacon said he was advised "shipments conform fully to stringent international standards for safety and physical protection developed by the International Atomic Energy Agency".

The Australian Government says MOX fuel cannot be processed into nuclear weapons - in direct contradiction with US officials.

"MOX fuel remains a material in the most sensitive category because plutonium suitable for weapons could be separated from it relatively easily," the US Energy Department said in 1997.

MOX is rated by the IAEA as a "category one, direct use" material.

In October the Australian Senate slammed secrecy shrouding the nuclear shipment and demanded more information.

Japanese and British authorities refused to disclose the specific route, details of emergency plans or compensation packages.

The two ships, the Pacific Teal and the Pacific Pintail, which carried the MOX cargo, arrived in Japan the week after a major radiation leak at a nuclear reactor in Tokaimura made international headlines.

New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vanuatu, Mauritius and several Latin American countries expressed serious concern at the shipment nearing their communities.

The Japanese minister for international trade, Takashi Fukaya, slammed the fiasco as "deplorable".

Mr Fukaya said the Japanese government would not allow BNFL to export to Japan until it could "restore its trustworthiness".

The British and Japanese governments are negotiating to heal the rift and British energy minister Helen Liddell met Japanese ambassador to London, Saduyuki Hayashi, last week.

----------- us nuc other

Time Magazine Honors Einstein

By The Associated Press New York Times December 26, 1999 Filed at 1:51 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Time-Person-of-the-Century.html

NEW YORK (AP) -- Describing him as a locksmith of mysteries, from the atom to the universe, Time magazine named Albert Einstein its Person of the Century on Sunday.

``When we look back in 100 years, we'll remember the fight for freedom and the fight for civil rights, but above all, we're going to realize how science and technology changed our world,'' said Time's managing editor, Walter Isaacson.

Einstein, born in Germany in 1879, developed the theory of relativity, which rejects the concept of absolute motion and explains why motion, speed and mass appear different depending on the observer's frame of reference.

The theory laid the groundwork for spectacular technological developments and observations in many fields, including gravitation and the study of the cosmos, and nuclear fission, which is the basis for the atom bomb.

Einstein won the 1921 Nobel Prize in physics. In 1933, he immigrated to the United States to take a post at Princeton University. A year later, the property he left behind in Germany was confiscated by the Nazi government because he was Jewish.

``In a century that will be remembered foremost for its science and technology -- in particular for our ability to understand and then harness the forces of the atom and universe -- one person clearly stands out as both the greatest mind and paramount icon of our age: The kindly, absent-minded professor whose wild halo of hair, piercing eyes, engaging humanity and extraordinary brilliance made his face a symbol and his name a synonym for genius, Albert Einstein,'' the magazine said.

Einstein was partly responsible for President Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision to pursue making an atom bomb. He wrote a letter to the president in 1939 warning that Germany could be repeating American experiments with uranium and suggesting that those experiments could produce a powerful bomb.

He later said: ``If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.''

His humanitarian bent showed ``science is not always good and it's not always bad. It's only as good as we make it,'' Isaacson said in an interview.

Einstein died in 1955.

Time's runners-up for Person of the Century were President Roosevelt, who the magazine said represented the triumph of democracy and freedom over fascism and communism; and Mahatma Gandhi, who it picked to symbolize the ability of individuals to resist authority to secure civil rights and personal liberties.

The magazine's Person of the Century issue was due on newsstands Monday.

----------- us nuc weapons facilities

Accused scientist could be jailed for year without bail

The Times of India Sunday 26 December 1999 Posted at 0130 hrs IST
http://www.timesofindia.com/today/26worl18.htm

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico: Scientist Wen Ho Lee could be held without bail for more than a year until his trial begins on charges he stole nuclear secrets from the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

US District Judge James Parker on Monday is to consider a December 13 decision by US Magistrate Don Svet, who ruled releasing Lee on bail would pose a "clear and present danger to the national security of the United States."

Parker is scheduled to hear an appeal by Lee's attorney. Prosecutors say a year's wait in jail before trial is not unlikely, and the complexities of studying a mountain of classified evidence could delay the trial an additional 10 to 12 months.

Lee was fired in March and indicted December 10. He was charged with transferring nuclear secrets to his desktop computer and portable data tapes and could face life in prison if convicted. The indictment doesn't accuse him of passing classified information to a foreign government. Lee has said he is innocent.

Kelly and First Assistant US Attorney Robert Gorence, in court documents filed Thursday, argued that the 60-year-old Taiwan-born computer expert is a risk to flee the US with stolen secrets if released on bail.

"Lee stole America's nuclear secrets sufficient to build a functional thermonuclear weapon," they wrote. "Lee absconded with that information on computer tapes, seven of which are still missing. Those missing tapes, in the hands of an unauthorized possessor, pose a mortal danger to every American."

Though Lee's attorneys contend the tapes were destroyed, prosecutors said there is no evidence to prove it. Other Los Alamos scientists and Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor, have said Lee's actions are comparable to what other researchers and government officials do -- transfer classified material from one work station to another, not always mindful of security.

"We know of no one (else) who was ever charged with committing a crime for that," lab computer specialist Betty Gunther told The Albuquerque Tribune.

In the Tribune article Thursday, Los Alamos astrophysicist Stirling Colgate described the prosecution of Lee as "a real American tragedy." Dershowitz likened the magnitude of each of 59 counts against Lee to "jaywalking." (Associated Press)

-----------

A leading alternative to nuclear tests falters

New York Times to be published Sunday, December 26, 1999 James Glanz
http://www2.startribune.com/stOnLine/cgi-bin/article?thisStory=81205893

Since late August, an effort to build the world's largest laser has suffered a series of embarrassments that have tarnished the project's reputation and undermined its role as leading justification for a ban on nuclear tests.

Now, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson says the entire project and its management may have to be restructured, amid soaring cost overruns. And at least one senator has raised questions about whether tiny nuclear explosions to be triggered by the lasers would violate the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

In the National Ignition Facility, or NIF, as the project is known, powerful lasers would be used to create conditions similar to those in nuclear weapons, allowing scientists to study the reliability of the nation's nuclear stockpile without tests. The lasers, under construction at the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, would crush and heat pellets of nuclear fuel with 192 converging beams, generating a rapid release of fusion energy.

That release would create conditions similar to those created by nuclear weapons, allowing scientists to study their properties. Government scientists say that the laser project is a crucial component of the nation's effort to ensure the safety and reliability of its nuclear stockpile without actually testing the weapons in nuclear explosions.

Beyond its applications to weapons, moreover, physicists hope that NIF will help them understand the behavior of materials under extreme conditions and explore the possibility that nuclear fusion could be used for the peaceful generation of power.

But NIF, originally estimated to cost $1.2 billion, has been plagued by scheduling delays, technical problems and cost overruns that could go as high as a third of that figure. Its former director, E. Michael Campbell, took a leave of absence in August after questions arose about his academic credentials and announced this month that he was resigning from the laboratory. And even though $800 million has been spent and construction has been under way since 1997, unhappiness in Congress with the overruns means the project faces the threat of cancellation.

May violate treaty

In the latest blow, a letter to Richardson in late October, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, questioned whether such experiments themselves might violate the "zero yield" provision in Article I of the treaty, which would prohibit any nuclear test of any size. Successful experiments on NIF would release the energy equivalent of about 15 pounds of TNT in an extremely small fraction of a second within a contained vessel.

"It is troubling that we are planning to ignite thermonuclear explosions at NIF that may violate the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty's ban on nuclear explosions," Harkin said in a statement on the letter, citing the administration's pledge not to test while continuing to seek ratification of the treaty, which he also supports.

Asked about the letter, officials at the State Department and the Energy Department said that laser fusion experiments of lower power had always been granted special exemptions during negotiations for test ban treaties, including the latest one.

"I think it's a fair question that deserves an answer," John Holum, senior adviser to the secretary of state for arms control and international security, said of the issue Harkin had raised. Holum, who helped negotiate the test ban treaty, added that during negotiations with other parties to the treaty, "we specifically carved out that activity as something we expected to continue under a zero yield treaty."

But the brevity of the Senate's debate on the beleaguered treaty precluded a full discussion of such points, Holum said. The Senate refused to ratify the treaty in October but the Clinton administration still supports the treaty. While the treaty has little chance of passage next year, it is likely to be a campaign issue.

More serious consequences for the program could emerge from Richardson's recent finding that cost overruns may have been deliberately hidden from him and from upper management at Lawrence Livermore.

According to Campbell, whose formal title was associate director for laser programs, the cost overruns involve the assembly of the multitude of delicate, high-tech parts, a task that turned out to be more challenging than expected.

In an interview, Richardson said that preliminary investigations had shown "there may have been an effort of concealment."

He said Campbell bore significant responsibility for NIF's troubles. Campbell took a leave of absence in late August after it was disclosed that he did not have a Ph.D., as he had led people to believe. He now has announced he will leave the laboratory after the completion of NIF reviews of the project expected to be finished soon.

For his part, Campbell said in an interview that the overruns, whose magnitude was still being estimated, had originally been discovered in a review of the project that had been initiated at his direction. Campbell said there was no delay in reporting the problems and no effort to conceal them.

"I was the guy in charge," he said, "so I accept whatever responsibility the secretary chooses to assign to me. I hope he gets on with the project and encourages the good people who have worked and are still working so hard to make it succeed."

----------- y2k

Feds Say U.S. Systems Ready for Y2K

New York Times December 26, 1999 Filed at 2:15 p.m. EST By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Y2K-Ready.html
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2562855414-585

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Eat, drink and be merry on New Year's Eve, because the advent of the year 2000 should cause few, if any, problems, a bevy of federal officials said Sunday.

Hospitals, power plants, air traffic control systems and prisons are all Y2K ready, they said. The top aviation official will be in the air as the new year begins, and military personnel will be monitoring missiles with the Russians.

Indeed, officials said Americans should make no more preparations for New Year's this year than they would do for any long winter weekend.

``Our goal has been to avoid overreaction,'' President Clinton's top Y2K adviser, John Koskinen, said on ABC's ``This Week.'' ``We would like people to be prepared for a long midwinter weekend but we think that's all that's necessary.''

The Y2K problem arises out of the fear that older computers programmed to read just the last two digits of a year will read ``00'' as ``1900'' rather than ``2000.'' Billions of dollars have been spent to correct the problem.

An Associated Press poll taken earlier this month found only 5 percent of respondents expecting major Y2K problems, down from 11 percent in July. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Even if some of the Y2K scenarios of computer failures do come true, officials said they were prepared to handle any emergencies.

``Hospitals are in the business of preparing for the unexpected,'' American Hospital Association chairman Fred Brown said on ABC. ``I don't think there really will be an inconvenience. The American public can feel very confident if they have go to hospitals.''

Koskinen said prisons and power plants had been tested and found to be Y2K compliant.

``The power plants we think have done their Y2K work,'' Koskinen said. ``We do not expect there is any risk.''

Most emergency 911 call centers also are prepared. A December survey from the National Emergency Number Association found 98.5 percent saying their equipment was Y2K ready, and others may have been fixed since then.

Federal Aviation Administrator Jane Garvey said she planned to be en route to San Francisco, to show her confidence that the aviation system is prepared for Y2K. She expects no problems on domestic flights, and if there are computer glitches, air controllers can respond and space out takeoffs and departures.

``Air traffic will be safe,'' she said. ``If it wasn't safe, we wouldn't allow the planes to fly. All systems are Y2K compliant. We've tested them from end to end. We're ready.''

Garvey said that some airlines may cancel international flights to countries that are not prepared for Y2K, but most overseas destinations favored by Americans will not be among them.

Still, experts caution that while the United States has made extensive preparations for Y2K, some other nations are not as well prepared.

Some countries are going to wait until there are any problems before trying to correct glitches, Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre said. The U.S. Energy Department has reported that major systems at Russian nuclear plants should not be affected by Y2K computer bugs, but local residents could lose heat and electricity if some computers fail.

The extent of Y2K preparedness oversees is unclear. Some countries have failed to provide detailed information to the World Bank-funded International Y2K Cooperation Center.

Others will be traveling abroad. Some Russians, for example, will be spending New Year's Eve in Colorado Springs, watching U.S. satellite early warning system against a missile attack.

Hamre said he expected that the satellites will show nothing. The computers that guide the missiles and the satellites are Y2K compliant.

``We think they will be showing nothing because we intend to launch nothing,'' Hamre said. ``If there are problems, it's not going to lead to a launch condition.''

Meanwhile, the New York City police force is prepared for the thongs of well-wishers expected to jam Times Square to celebrate New Year's.

``There is no reason to believe there will be any problem,'' city police commissioner Howard Safir said. ``We've been preparing for this for three years. We've been preparing for every contingency.''

As for Safir himself, ``I'm going to be standing right under the ball when it drops.'

----------- terrorism

Agent: Suspect Headed to Las Vegas

Yahoo News 04:30 PM ET 12/26/99 By ERIN VAN BRONKHORST Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2562849799-91e

SEATTLE (AP) _ A man sought by authorities in connection with explosives smuggled over the Canadian border planned to travel to Las Vegas, an airline ticket agent has told law officers.

In Las Vegas, Metropolitan Police spokesman Steve Meriwether said Sunday the case is being handled by the FBI, and an FBI spokesman said he could not comment. Calls to the FBI's headquarters in Washington were not immediately answered.

A ticket agent for Horizon Airlines told law enforcement officers Saturday that she recognized a televised picture of Abdelmajed Dahoumane, a source close to the investigation told The Associated Press.

Early on the morning of Dec. 17, she told authorities, Dahoumane appeared at the ticket counter at Bellingham International Airport, near the Canadian border and about 90 miles north of Seattle. She remembered him because he was argumentative, the source told the AP.

The man had a French passport and used Canadian currency for a ticket from Bellingham to Seattle, with a connecting flight to Las Vegas, the agent said, according to the source who was speaking on condition of anonymity. The agent was certain of the person's identity, but noted that his hair color had changed, the source said.

That was three days after the arrest of Ahmed Ressam as he was arriving from Canada by ferry at Port Angeles, Wash. Ressam was arrested with a trunkful of nitroglycerin and other explosives, authorities said. He was charged with illegal weapons possession and immigration violations and remains in federal custody south of Seattle.

Dahoumane, 32, is suspected of being his accomplice and has been sought by Canadian and U.S. authorities since Ressam's arrest on Dec. 14, said Cpl. Leo Monbourquette of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Montreal. News reports have identified Dahoumane as the man who stayed with Ressam in a Vancouver, British Columbia, motel in the weeks before Ressam's arrest.

Dahoumane's picture was widely broadcast after Canadian police issued an arrest warrant Thursday accusing him of illegally possessing explosives with the intent to cause damage or injury.

A spokeswoman for Seattle-based Horizon Airlines said the FBI did talk with Horizon people.

``They did interview three of our agents,'' in Bellingham, said Cheryl Temple, a spokeswoman for the commuter airline. Temple said she did not know the substance of the interviews and could not provide further details.

The alert status at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas has not changed, said spokesman Scott Russell.

``We haven't been notified of any potential problem. No one has asked us to do anything different,'' Russell said.