-------- Good News
Movement Towards START II Ratification
Agence France Presse reported on February 11, 2000 that the Duma is closer to START II ratification. Assistant Defense Secretary Ted Warner told reporters, "There is a fairly good chance it could be ratified over the next two or three months."
New Poll Probes Russian Attitudes Towards Nukes
Russians, like most Americans, think that nuclear weapons are dangerous and unnecessary according to a new poll conducted by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute in California in conjunction with Moscow's Center for Policy Studies (PIR).
76% believe the world would be less stable if more countries had nuclear weapons
55% support ratification of START II
38% thought Russia should not have first strike capability
18%, or one-fifth, believe that Russia should not have nuclear weapons at all.
The poll is featured in the January/February 2000 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, but is not posted on their website. Email Frida berrigaf@newschool.edu for a copy of the article. The full survey is not yet available in English.
More Good News!!!
Actions You Can Take in March and April
Momentum is building for the upcoming NPT 2000 Review Conference, April 24 - May 19 at the United Nations in New York. Abolition 2000 plans to have a large and visible presence there, to hold the world accountable to one demand: completion of negotiations on a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons by the year 2000.
Put a human face on nuclear suffering: Honor the Hibakusha, downwinders and indigenous people directly injured by the Nuclear Age. In cooperation with Earth Day organizers in New York, a demonstration during the NPT is being planned which will focus on those who have suffered most from the toxic legacy of the nuclear age. The goal is to turn out 1,000 people to hold hands around, or near, the United Nations, wearing the names of victims of the nuclear madness.
The demonstrators, joined by as many actually affected people we are able to bring to New York, will wear the names and city, country, date of exposure, death, or accident where available -- photos are also welcome.
HELP gather names of 1,000 Hibakusha, down winders and affected indigenous people from all over the world. Please send the names of nuclear victims and the nature of their injury by email to aslater@gracelinks.org; or by snail mail or fax to:
Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE) 15 East 26th Street, Room 915 New York, NY 10010; tel: (212) 726-9161; fax: (212) 726-9160
IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER: March 1 - 8, 2000 are GLOBAL ABOLITION DAYS, an international week of actions, education and lobbying for disarmament, leading up to the NPT Review.
March 1 is Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Day (the anniversary of the US Bikini test)
March 5 is the 30th anniversary of entry-into-force of the NPT
March 8 is International Womens Day.
To find out what's happening in your area check out http//www.abolition2000.org
Frida Berrigan Research Associate Arms Trade Resource Center 65 Fifth Avenue, Suite 413 New York, New York 10003 212-229-5808 ext. 112 fax: 212-229-2279 email:berrigaf@newschool.edu
--------
Bono pushes forgiveness of debt
Yahoo News
Afternoon Edition for Wednesday, February 23, 2000
http://f1.mail.yahoo.com/ym/us/ShowLetter?MsgId=6391_3317613_93462_867_39516_0&YY=17154&inc=25&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&box=Inbox
ROME (AP) - Rock singer Bono pressed his campaign for the cancellation of the world's poorest nations' debts with Italian Premier Massimo D'Alema on Wednesday. The U2 lead singer urged D'Alema to push forward with legislation proposed by his government that would cancel around about a third of the debt developing countries owe to Italy, about $1.5 billion. In September, Bono met with Pope John Paul II, another advocate of cutting the debt burden of developing countries.
---
Elephant Dung Made Into Electricity
Yahoo News
10:42 AM ET 02/23/00
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2564526308-68c
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) _ Thai researchers say they have succeeded in generating electricity from natural gas derived from elephant dung.
A spokeswoman from the Ministry of Science's Bureau of Energy Development and Promotion said Wednesday that a project begun in August last year has been developing ways of using elephant excrement as a low-cost and environmental friendly source of energy.
The researchers found that when the excrement is fermented, it can produce natural gas suitable for use as cooking gas or feedstock for am electric generator.
An elephant produces 88 to 110 pounds of excrement a day _ enough to produce cooking gas for a family of two or three, according to the ministry.
But the cost is not cheap.
The minimum price of construction of a fermentation pit, pipeline and storage tank is around $800 and a generator that could use the gas costs around $2,667.
The ministry plans to release a report in the next two or three months promoting use of the project's method nationwide, especially in the North and the Northeast where most of the country's domesticated elephants are found and the problem of how to dispose of the elephants' waste is most acute.
---
US Exim supplies $500mln to cleaner Indian power
Planet Ark
INDIA: February 23, 2000
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=5757
NEW DELHI - The U.S. Export Import Bank (Exim) signed an agreement with India's Power Finance Corp (PFC) on Tuesday to provide upto $500 million for funding power projects using cleaner technologies from the United States.
"The parties contemplate that up to $500 million in Exim Bank support may be provided for transactions involving U.S. exports of energy-related technologies, goods and services," said the memorandum of understanding between the two.
The state-run PFC will identify power projects appropriate for Exim Bank's financing, focusing on clean and efficient power technologies, goods and services, the bank said in a statement.
The bank said it will work with U.S. suppliers to speed up the processing of applications for funding the export of these technologies.
The memorandum of understanding or the letter of intent also provides for sharing of information between the two funding agencies on the power sector.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
---
150 Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
Yahoo News
11:44 AM ET 02/23/00
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2564527302-121
OSLO, Norway (AP) _ The Nobel Peace Prize committee picked a new leader and began trimming a record 150-name nomination list at its first meeting of the year on Wednesday.
President Clinton, a small Albanian town and American peace envoy George Mitchell, as well as groups like the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, were among the candidates.
Geir Lundestad, the committee's nonvoting secretary, said 36 groups and 114 individuals were nominated, but the lists are always cut to 20 or 39 at the first meeting of the year. He said the winner will most likely be announced on Oct. 13.
The secretive five-member committee never releases or confirms the names of nominees, although those making nominations often announce them.
The number rose to 150 from the 144 announced on Feb. 11 because more valid nominations postmarked by the Feb. 1 deadline arrived and the committee added their own nominations.
``There is nothing dramatic about committee members proposing candidates. They add people to the list, but that does not mean they feel bound to support them,'' Lundestad told The Associated Press.
Committee members are appointed by, but do not answer to Norway's parliament.
Clinton was nominated by two Norwegian legislators for helping secure world peace. Mitchell, a U.S. senator, was nominated for trying to broker peace in Northern Ireland.
Other nominees include Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin for their Balkan peace efforts; the Salvation Army; and the Albanian town of Kukes for sheltering thousands of refugees during the Kosovo crisis.
The Nobel Prizes are always presented on the Dec. 10 anniversary of the death of their creator, Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist. The peace prize is awarded in Oslo and the other Nobel prizes in Stockholm, Sweden.
The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders won last year's prize.
------ depleted uranium
A Message about Depleted Uranium
Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 08:01:11 -0800
From: "Dan Fahey" mtpdu@dclink.com
When I read that two veterans in Canada think they will die "a slow and painful death" from depleted uranium, I recognized the need for more openness on the depleted uranium issue from the VA and DoD. Bernard Rostker and other Pentagon spokespersons keep saying (in misleadingly worded statements) that depleted uranium is not causing any health problems in any veterans. AFRRI research and what little information the DU Program has released indicates otherwise.
Veterans are looking for answers, but because they have a well-founded distrust of the Pentagon and the VA, they will increasingly turn to people like Dr. Durakovic, who makes claims (such as his statements about DU and the death of Canadian veteran Terry Riordan) without producing any evidence. Though Dr. Durakovic resembles Bernie Rostker in that respect, he is actually worse because he is scaring veterans into thinking they may die, and that can have many unforseen and tragic consequences.
It is time for openness. It is time for the VA to share with veterans what it knows about depleted uranium and veterans health. It is time for the Pentagon to stop misrepresenting VA and AFRRI research findings, and to answer questions about its past inaction on DU. It is time for Pentagon "hired guns" to stop making misinformed statements about depleted uranium and DU exposures. It is time for the people who oversee the VA and the Pentagon, namely Congress and PSOB, to ensure that research findings are accurately presented to veterans and their doctors in a timely manner. A new process of openness could start with answers to the following questions:
1. We all know the friendly fire veteran who had a tumor removed from his humerus a year and a half ago. How many other friendly fire veterans have developed tumors or cancer? 2. Why didn't the Pentagon accurately report the number of friendly fire veterans to the VA in 1992? Who is responsible and have they been held accountable? 3. How many non-friendly fire vets have been tested for a DU exposure using mass spectrometry, and what are the results? 4. When will the VA expand its DU research program to include testing of a cohort of non-friendly fire veterans to determine initial dose amounts? 5. Have health effects - even subtle health effects - attributable to DU been found in non-friendly fire vets? Are they similar to the effects seen in friendly fire vets? 6. When will research on the effects of inhaled DU begin? 7. When will the additional research recommended by AFRRI begin? 8. Why did the Pentagon fail to do the inhalation research mandated by Congress in 1993?
It is time for answers. Veterans should not have to wait until findings are published in "peer-reviewed literature" to get information that may help themselves and their caregivers. Veterans share information with each other. They know some non-friendly fire vets have recently tested positive for DU. They know DU was found in veterans' semen, and they are afraid for their families. They know pre-war Army reports predicted DU exposures and long term health effects including cancers. They have justifiable fears that are not being addressed because the Pentagon's obsession with DU weapons seems to be keeping everyone from speaking frankly and openly about any link between DU and veterans' health problems. The contradictory information coming out about depleted uranium confuses veterans and makes them vulnerable to predators, such as Dr. Durakovic and Joyce Riley, who take advantage of their fears and falsely claim to be acting in the interests of veterans.
The Pentagon has spun enough lies about depleted uranium for Pinochio to poke out Saddam Hussein's eye from Washington, DC. Unfortunately, the VA and numerous Federal investigations and oversight committees have repeatedly relied upon and repeated Pentagon prevarications. It is time for a change, and it would serve everyone's interests if this change came willingly from within.
Dan Fahey mtpdu@dclink.com
----------- britain
STAR WARS PROTEST AT U.S. SPY BASE IN ENGLAND
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FEBRUARY 23, 2000
CONTACT: Yorkshire CND cndyorks@gn.apc.org
On March 4, from 12-4 pm, two British Global Network affiliates will hold a protest at the U.S. Spy Base called Menwith Hill in Yorkshire.
Led by Yorkshire Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases (CAAB), the event will highlight the fact that Menwith Hill is the world's largest spy base and will play a key role in the revival of Star Wars. The base already taps into all telecommunications including telephone calls, faxes and e-mail from UK, Europe, Middle East, North Africa and the former Soviet Union.
According to Lindis Percy from CAAB, "Menwith Hill is to become the European Ground Relay Station for the Space Based Infra Red System (SBIRS) which will be an integral part of the new American Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system - the son of Star Wars and the start of a new arms race in space. The U.S. intends to dominate space for its own interests. We intend to work to Keep Space for Peace."
The European Parliament is now holding hearings to determine the extent of "industrial espionage" now underway at Menwith Hill. The U.S. and UK have been charged with spying on European firms from the base in order to gain competitive advantage on the international bidding process for contracts.
At the present moment a huge construction project is underway at Menwith Hill. Two new SBIRS radar facilities (radomes) are being built by the U.S.
The Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space is now organizing an international campaign to stop the weaponization of space. Over 100 groups worldwide are affiliates of the organization. Check the GN' s website at: http://www.globenet.free-online.co.uk
See the website of Yorkshire CND at: http://www.gn.apc.org/cndyorks/
----------- china
Pentagon Issues Warning to China
U.S. Officials Criticize Beijing's Broadening of Reasons to Use Force Against Taiwan
By Steven Mufson and Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 23, 2000; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/23/177l-022300-idx.html
A top Pentagon official yesterday warned China that it would face "incalculable consequences" if it followed through on threats to use force against Taiwan.
The stern warning came in response to a Chinese government "white paper" that broadened the reasons Beijing would consider sufficient for using force against the self-governing island.
Walter B. Slocombe, an undersecretary of defense who returned this week from high-level talks in Beijing on strategic issues, said the Chinese policy statement, "if it says what it appears to say, is a new and troubling formula."
Several members of Congress also reacted angrily to China's threat. "The white paper comments are unacceptable," said Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. "There is no other way to put it. And I think many of us are surprised by the bluntness and inappropriateness of this particular challenge."
U.S. officials were particularly taken aback by the policy statement because China issued it Monday, only six or seven hours after Slocombe, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and other top U.S. officials had left Beijing. During wide-ranging talks, the Americans had urged China to show restraint in the weeks leading up to Taiwan's presidential elections in March. China gave the officials no hint that it was about to revise its Taiwan policy.
"It is important for China not to do anything that will add to tension in the Taiwan Strait, and to allow [Taiwan's] elections to go forward and a new government to form its own policy," Slocombe said in an interview yesterday.
In the past, China has said that it might use force if Taiwan formally declared independence or was occupied by a foreign power. In the white paper, Beijing added that it would also consider force to be justified if Taiwan's authorities refused indefinitely "the peaceful settlement of cross-straits reunification through negotiations."
Though Chinese officials have privately told U.S. officials of their impatience about reunifying democratic Taiwan with the communist mainland, U.S. officials have argued that public threats only make a peaceful agreement less likely. The new policy document, one administration official said yesterday, shows that "China runs the risk of misjudging both the politics of Taiwan and the politics of the United States."
House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), who sponsored recent legislation to boost military coordination between the United States and Taiwan, said the white paper "will, in my view, only serve to further convince Congress that Taiwan needs America's full and unreserved support."
But congressional leaders said it would not affect an impending vote to grant China permanent "normal trade relations" status as part of China's joining the World Trade Organization.
"People see this [the trade agreement] as much more in America's interest than China's interest" and believe expanded trade is the best way to encourage reforms in China, said Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.).
"I don't think [China's threat] directly affects [the China trade vote], but it's not helpful," added Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.).
"It's very alarming, and the alarm is universally felt in our [Republican] caucus," Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said of the white paper. "Many of us would like to see trade relations go forward, but we are also sympathetic toward the democratic government in Taiwan and don't want to see them bullied into reunification."
Smith raised the possibility that the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act, already passed by the House, could be added to the trade bill on the floor of the Senate, greatly complicating passage.
The security legislation would bolster U.S. military exchanges with Taiwan and force the administration to inform Congress about details of Taiwan's requests for arms sales, which would result in greater pressure for such sales. The Clinton administration is strongly opposed to the measure.
Nevertheless, Slocombe said yesterday that future U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, frequently deplored by Beijing, would depend on Taiwan's defensive needs, as set out in agreements with China two decades ago. "We're committed by law to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself," Slocombe said. "That relates to what kind of threat Taiwan is facing. The ability of China's military is an important factor in what we decide to sell."
Separately, in testimony before the Asia-Pacific subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, Assistant Secretary of State for Asian Affairs Stanley Roth said he believes "there are requirements on Taiwan's side that need to be addressed, and there will be recommendations, and you will see additional sales."
Staff writer Juliet Eilperin contributed to this report.
---
China's Threats
Washington Post
Wednesday, February 23, 2000; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/23/001l-022300-idx.html
ON THE ISSUE of China's claim to Taiwan, the Clinton administration, like its predecessors, has pursued a policy of "strategic ambiguity." The United States will provide the increasingly democratic island just enough political and military support to deter China from taking the island by force; but it will not provide so much that Taiwan's leaders feel emboldened to declare independence, which could provoke China to start a war that would almost certainly involve American forces.
This policy grows less tenable as Taiwan gets more and more democratic and China remains a dictatorship. Most Taiwanese understandably don't want to be swallowed by a repressive state, and unlike in the past--when Taiwan was governed by dictators of its own--their views on independence shape national policy. Now China has further weakened the rationale for the U.S. policy of ambiguity. Until now, the United States could fairly argue that Taiwan wasn't suffering much from Chinese threats--and that as long as it refrained from declaring independence, it knew it would be safe. But China has just issued a "white paper" threatening to attack Taiwan not only if it declares independence but also if, in China's judgment, the island's leaders drag their feet in reunification negotiations; and China alone reserves the right to decide how long is too long. This new Chinese rhetoric is preferable to its 1996 firing of nuclear-capable missiles into the sea near Taiwan, prompting the defensive dispatch of two U.S. aircraft carriers. But that's the best you can say for it.
China's new threat, like its 1996 military "exercise," was intended partly to influence a Taiwanese presidential election. It also may have been meant to shore up President Jiang Zemin's flagging status among hard-liners and to underscore China's opposition to the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act, a proposal to increase U.S.-Taiwan military cooperation that has passed the U.S. House.
But the Chinese declaration also provides a window on that country's priorities. It was issued only hours after a high-level U.S. delegation in Beijing finished pleading for restraint on the subject of Taiwan. It could complicate administration efforts to win congressional support for China's entry into the World Trade Organization, as its bullying posture calls into doubt its willingness to live by international rules. None of this deters the regime from making threats.
The administration has in the past bent pretty far to China's wishes. The House was prompted to write the Taiwan bill in part because of President Clinton's public accession, in China, to Beijing's three key demands regarding Taiwan's status. The U.S. response to China's latest challenge should be shaped, at a minimum, by the need not to say or do anything that China could present to the next administration as U.S. acquiescence in its new policy. Strategic ambiguity does, at times, have its uses; this is a moment for strategic clarity.
---
China Tells Taiwan:
Talk the Talk Beijing Portrays Ultimatum as a Prod to Discuss Reunification
Washington Post
Wednesday, February 23, 2000; Page A01
By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/23/233l-022300-idx.html
BEIJING, Feb. 22-While Asian stock markets fell and Taiwan reacted bluntly to China's ultimatum to negotiate on reunification or face attack, Beijing's announcement was portrayed here today not as a harbinger of war but as a notice to Taiwan's next president that China wants serious talks to take place soon.
"We want Taiwan to start negotiations. It's that simple," said a senior Chinese government official. "This document was issued to get their attention."
Despite its saber-rattling tone, China's statement Monday contains the seeds of compromise, according to Asian and Western analysts. The 11,000-word document drops some significant demands and substantially modifies China's negotiating position, possibly increasing chances for talks.
As a result, Beijing's tough words neatly continue a pattern of behavior that for years has combined threats with opportunities in its quest to accomplish what it sees as its most solemn task--the reunification of China after 150 years of foreign meddling.
The official Chinese document, or white paper, "is going in all sorts of directions at once," remarked a Western diplomat. "For each threat that concerns us, there is a counterproposal that gives us hope."
Much of the response today focused on the belligerent parts of the document. Taiwan said if Beijing truly wants to lessen tensions, it will recognize the existence of Taiwan's government. China's Nationalist Party moved its government from the mainland to Taiwan in 1949 after the Communists won a civil war .
Across Asia, stock markets tumbled as investors voiced fears of renewed tensions between the two sides. Taipei's stock exchange dropped 1.8 percent, Hong Kong skidded 2 percent and Shanghai and Shenzhen also dipped.
Beijing's timing appeared to be designed to influence voters in Taiwan's presidential elections on March 18. With its warning, Beijing seemed to be attempting to scare the Taiwanese away from voting for Chen Shui-bian, the opposition party's candidate who has voiced support for Taiwanese independence.
Beijing is also putting the other candidates--Vice President Lien Chan, the governing Nationalist Party's candidate and Beijing's likely favorite, and independent James Soong--on notice that it wants negotiations to begin and it wants them to be substantive.
The move is a gamble, but one Beijing apparently feels compelled to make. Beijing tried to influence the last presidential election in 1996, lobbing missiles off Taiwan's two main ports in an effort to dissuade voters from reelecting outspoken President Lee Teng-hui. Lee won in a landslide.
But in Monday's white paper, Beijing also dropped its demand that Taiwan publicly repudiate Lee's assertion last year that Taiwan and China should establish "special state-to-state relations." After years of insisting that Taiwan is merely a local Chinese government, Beijing suddenly said it will no longer raise that point and promised equal footing in any negotiations. Beijing also shelved a demand that talks must focus first on political reunification before dealing with other topics.
The senior Chinese official pointed out that in the section of the white paper that threatens war, the official Chinese version of the text says that Beijing could opt to use force only if Taiwan "indefinitely refuses to resolve the reunification issue by peaceful negotiations."
"Notice that there is no timetable in the document, so you shouldn't worry that we are about to invade," he said. "We simply are tired of the Taiwanese avoiding the issues."
"We view Taiwan as ours," he added. "We think we have the right to affect events in that region."
Macau returned from Portuguese to Chinese control last year, and Britain handed over Hong Kong in 1997.
The white paper, the Chinese official added, also was aimed at the United States, which China accuses of meddling because of its continued support for Taiwan's military. The United States is considering selling missile defense systems to Taiwan, and Congress is debating a bill that would tighten the ties between the Pentagon and Taiwan's military. China has warned that relations with the United States would be gravely affected if either event were to occur.
The white paper significantly broadened the terms under which China has said it would invade Taiwan. In the past, Beijing has said it would attack only if the island declares independence or comes under foreign occupation. Monday's statement, however, threatened to resort to force if Taiwan merely drags its feet on negotiations to unite the two sides.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao underscored the document's assertion today with a statement saying that reunification is an urgent matter that "cannot be dragged on indefinitely."
In its response, the Taiwanese foreign ministry said in a short statement that "it is a known fact that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have been under separate rule since 1949."
During a separate news conference in Taipei, Taiwanese official Lin Chong-pin said that if Beijing wants tensions to ease, it should acknowledge that China is split and each side is controlled by a separate government.
"Communist China's continual denial of the existence of the Republic of China is going to create more trouble for the two sides and make the relations more tense," said Lin, vice chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council, which handles Taiwan's relations with Beijing.
But in Taiwan's defiance--just as in Beijing's belligerence on Monday--there appeared seeds of hope for renewed talks, Western diplomats said.
On Taiwan's side, for example, Lin suggested that Beijing and Taipei should return to the flexible 1992 consensus in which they acknowledge the existence of "one China" but are free to have different views of what that China is. Lin's statement appeared to signal that Taiwan was returning to a vague acceptance of the "one China" theory--which Taiwanese officials rejected last year.
Lin did not mention Lee's statement on "special state-to-state relations" nor did he reiterate Lee's position that rejected the idea of "one China."
Beijing's thrust and Taiwan's parry are just a small part of a deeply complex relationship. Western diplomats said the two governments have extensive spy networks in each others' capitals and use various intermediaries--including businessmen and scholars--to communicate.
Despite these ties, many Taiwanese, Chinese and Westerners say the two sides do not understand each other very well.
---
China Awakens Pro-Taiwan Lobby
02:00 AM ET 02/23/00
By TOM RAUM
Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2564518760-f5f
WASHINGTON (AP) _ China's threatened use of force against Taiwan is having the effect of poking a stick into a lightly slumbering beast, Capitol Hill's substantial pro-Taiwan lobby.
That could spell trouble this spring for the Clinton administration's hopes of winning congressional action on legislation to expand trade ties with Beijing.
More immediately, it could build previously lacking Senate support for a House-passed measure to increase U.S. military ties with Taiwan.
``Red China has escalated its threat of armed aggression against democratic Taiwan,'' declared Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is one of the few members of Congress who still refers to the People's Republic of China by the ``Red China'' Cold-War-era designation.
Helms had planned a hearing for today on the subject of defense aid to Taiwan, but at the last minute the administration declined to send a witness.
Although China opposes the Taiwan military aid bill and wants Congress to approve the China trade bill, its new threats on Taiwan could both undermine the market-opening accord and nurture support for the military legislation.
``I don't think China was thinking very clearly,'' said Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
From the administration's point of view, China's new apparent belligerence couldn't have come at a worse time.
The administration is asking Congress to act quickly on granting China permanent trade benefits as a follow-up to the trade agreement it negotiated with Beijing last fall. That pact calls on both China and the United States to remove barriers to each other'strade.
Congressional approval _ ending annual votes on of China's trade status _ would ease the way for China's long-sought entry into the World Trade Organization.
Support for the package was fragile to begin with.
Organized labor has made its defeat its No. 1 legislative goal this year.
Labor's position puts great pressure on Democrats in a year in which they've been hoping to recapture the House and retain control of the White House, and even Vice President Al Gore has seemed ambivalent on the measure.
China on Monday warned that it could use force if Taiwan delays indefinitely reunification talks with Beijing. Until then, support for the bill to increase U.S. military ties with Taiwan appeared to be subsiding, despite its approval earlier this month in the House by a 341-70 margin.
The Senate, generally more cautious on foreign affairs than the House, had been expected to sit on the legislation, allowing it to die what the administration hoped would be an unnoticed death.
Now, however, passions have become inflamed anew.
``I was deeply distressed,'' Sen. Tim Hutchinson, R-Ark., said in a Senate speech urging passage of the military cooperation bill. ``It's almost as if they (China's leaders) have a visceral antipathy to freedom.''
Even ardent supporters of the China trade bill had suggested that provocative acts or words by China could play into the hands of those who want to see a vote put off until after the November elections.
At the White House, presidential spokesman Joe Lockhart recalled that the United States sent two aircraft carriers and other warships to the region to calm a crisis four years ago. ``We reject any use of force or any threat of force in this situation,'' Lockhart said. He said he hoped Congress would not negatively link China's new threats with the trade legislation.
Meanwhile, Stanley O. Roth, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, ran into bipartisan criticism Tuesday during an appearance before a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee. Senators suggested the administration was not repudiating the Chinese with enough force.
``We need to articulate more clearly where we are,'' said Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., chairman of the East Asian and Pacific subcommittee. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said China's statement ``is unacceptable'' and that the administration had the responsibility to make sure that China ``not misinterpret where we are _ in one way or the other.''
China's tough words accomplished something that clearly was not intended by Beijing. It gave U.S. labor leaders unexpected new ammunition to use in their campaign to torpedo the China trade deal. ___
EDITOR'S NOTE _ Tom Raum covers national and international affairs for The Associated Press.
---
U.S. Rejects China's Taiwan Views
New York Times
February 23, 2000
By ERIC SCHMITT
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/022300china-taiwan-us.html
Related Article
Taiwan, Brushing Off Threats, Tells Chinese to Be Practical
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/022300china-taiwan.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 -- The Clinton administration and Congress today sharply criticized a threat by China to forcibly reunify Taiwan with the mainland if Beijing determines that negotiations between the two are dragging on too long.
Senior lawmakers said the Chinese statement issued on Monday could increase chances that Congress would approve legislation expanding ties between the United States military and Taiwan, despite Mr. Clinton's threatened veto of the bill.
The House overwhelmingly passed the measure, called the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act, earlier this month, but the Senate has up to now viewed the measure more skeptically.
China's report could also imperil the administration's effort in Congress, especially in the House, to win permanent trading status for China.
"There are people who want to kill this trade deal with China, and China is playing right into their hands," said Senator Gordon H. Smith, an Oregon Republican who supports normal trading relations with China.
The White House today urged China and Taiwan to resolve their differences over unification without resorting to force, and issued a veiled warning to Beijing to temper its bellicose rhetoric.
Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, said he had summoned top Pentagon experts to testify about China in a closed session on Wednesday.
Mr. Warner said it was "a slap in face" for China to issue its provocative 11,000-word report just after a high-level American delegation, led by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, had left China.
But some other leading Republicans cautioned against reading too much into the report.
"It's bad judgment to put out that statement at this time," said Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the majority leader.
Indeed, several other administration officials contrasted the statements with China's even more menacing actions in 1996, when it fired missiles off Taiwanese waters in the run-up to the first direct presidential elections.
The United States responded by sending two aircraft carrier battle groups near the Taiwan Straits to show support for Taipei.
"One should be careful not to exaggerate the significance of this," a State Department spokesman, James P. Rubin, told reporters. "We've had much worse periods on this question in the past. This is a new formulation.
We find the formulation troubling."
---
USA worried about China's Taiwan stand
USA Today
02/22/00- Updated 10:42 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncstue07.htm
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2564517200-4a5
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Clinton administration expressed concern Tuesday over a warning by China that it could use force if Taiwan delays indefinitely reunification talks with Beijing.
U.S. diplomats relayed the administration's concerns to Chinese authorities in Beijing and Washington just a day after China issued the threat in an 11,000-word position paper.
At the White House, presidential spokesman Joe Lockhart recalled that the United States sent two aircraft carriers and other warships to the region to calm a crisis four years ago.
''We reject any use of force or any threat of force in this situation,'' Lockhart said.
''We believe that peaceful dialogue and bilateral engagement between the sides is the way to move forward,'' he said. ''We have repeated, I think, in both actions and words that we view any threat to Taiwan with grave concern.''
Meanwhile, Stanley O. Roth, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Chinese position paper appeared to be contrary to ''the policy that is the bedrock of our relations'' with China and Taiwan.
Members of Congress, where support for Taiwan runs strong, suggested the administration was not repudiating the Chinese with enough force.
''We need to articulate more clearly where we are,'' said Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., chairman of the East Asian and Pacific subcommittee.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said China's statement ''is unacceptable'' and that the administration had the responsibility to make sure that China ''not misinterpret where we are - in one way or the other.''
At the State Department, spokesman James P. Rubin said it would be a mistake to exaggerate the significance of the Chinese statement.
''We've had much worse periods on this question in the past,'' he said. He added that the administration is not considering any change in its opposition to legislation before Congress to strengthen U.S.-Taiwanese military relations.
Rubin said military ties with Taiwan, authorized under the Taiwan Relations Act, has enabled the United States to be ''second-to-none'' in its support of the anti-communist bastion. He said that arrangement has served U.S. interests extremely well.
''Nobody should doubt our willingness to act in our own national interest,'' Rubin said.
In 1996, China fired nuclear-capable missiles near Taiwan's two largest ports, prompting the United States to send two aircraft carriers and other warships to the region.
China's muscle-flexing at the time was related to impending presidential elections. The new threat from Beijing appeared aimed at influencing presidential elections on Taiwan set for next month. Analysts said China seems intent on discouraging support for the candidate most identified with the pro-independence sector on Taiwan.
Lockhart recalled that in 1996, ''we responded appropriately to what was viewed as a threat. And that should give you some indication of how we view this situation.''
At the Pentagon, spokesman Kenneth Bacon said there has been no change in U.S. military operations in the Pacific in response to the threat. ''It is only rhetoric at this point,'' Bacon said.
Bacon said ''it would be extremely difficult for China to carry out an invasion'' of Taiwan, given the Chinese military's limited capacity to execute a large amphibious operation.
Lin Chong-pin, Taiwan's vice chairman of a council that handles Taiwan's China policy, would not directly address the new threat but said tensions would not ease as long as Beijing refuses to acknowledge that China is split and each side is controlled by a separate government.
''Until we unify, both sides of course will have different views about what 'one China' means,'' Lin said.
The latest flare-up comes amid President Clinton's drive to win congressional approval of permanent trading benefits for China, part of a deal to admit Beijing into the World Trade Organization, which sets the rules for global trade.
Opponents are likely to seize on the new Chinese stand in hopes of blocking the trade package. Lockhart insisted that it should not affect the vote.
''The agreement is very much in our country's interest and our national interest,'' he said. ''This is a one-sided agreement benefiting American business, American workers, American families. We should move forward on that basis.''
-------- egypt
Egypt, U.S. Sign Two Energy Deals
Associated Press
February 23, 2000 Filed at 11:40 a.m. EST
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Egypt-US-Energy.html
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Egypt and the United States on Wednesday signed two agreements that will allow Egypt to receive American energy know-how and technology.
The two countries will expand cooperation in the fields of solar energy and fuel cells, said U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson who signed the agreements with his Egyptian counterpart Ali el-Saiedi.
Richardson arrived here late Tuesday on the second leg of a Middle East tour that will take him later to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Earlier he visited, Israel where he signed agreements that will give Israeli scientists access to some types of U.S. nuclear technology.
The Egyptian agreements will allow Egyptian engineers to receive training in the United States in areas such as photovoltaic and power systems.
Richardson said that the United States will study a proposal from Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for an agreement on scientific and seismological exchanges similar to a U.S.-Israeli accord.
Richardson also urged Egypt to conclude a gas deal with Israel that has been hampered by differences on prices and other terms.
El-Saiedi said that during his visit Richardson will discuss what the United States can offer to help Egypt privatize its energy industries.
----------- europe
On the Offense Over European Defenses
By Nora Boustany
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, February 23, 2000; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/23/160l-022300-idx.html
Armed with American buzzwords and arguments for "win-win" situations, French Defense Minister Alain Richard sought yesterday to sell and rationalize Europe's plans for its own security apparatus. He said the Kosovo crisis left some on the continent feeling that if "we could not rely on our allies, we had to do something by ourselves."
Speaking at a lunch seminar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Richard addressed concerns about whether European action would require U.N. approval, consultation and the creation of new areas of competition in defense. He likened the defense capacity on both sides of the Atlantic to sumo wrestlers in a ring, but added, "they are always on the same side." He said that Europe would try to strengthen the authority of the United Nations. "Even if Europe succeeded in achieving better security performance in our environment, we will need U.N. legitimacy for our actions," he said.
By 2003, "we should be able to deploy in 60 days a corps-size ground force of up to 15 brigades [a total of 50,000 to 60,000 men] and sustain it over a year." The force would allow for military operations in situations where the United States is not willing to use force on its own, he said. "The objective is for the [European] Union to have an autonomous capability to take decisions, and, where NATO as a whole is not engaged, to launch and then conduct EU-led military operations in response to an international crisis," he read from a document adopted at the European Union's Helsinki parley last year. He said NATO was not adequately prepared for some matters during the war in Kosovo. "In particular, the importance of the communication dimension was underestimated by many of us," he said, speaking about lessons learned from Kosovo. Kosovo is an ongoing operation of which only the first round has been won, he noted. "We have yet to win the second round. We have yet to win the peace," he added. The challenges of the post-Cold War era leave no room for complacency, he warned.
Russian Press Stymied
In a series of talks around Washington last week, a prominent Russian human rights activist and legislator said the Chechen war, which boosted acting President Vladimir Putin in opinion polls, has stymied Russia's progress toward press freedom. Sergei Kovalyev alleged that Russian officials were concealing facts about Andrei Babitsky, a journalist who disappeared last month.
Work for Refugees
Where does one begin in chronicling the achievements of Baroness Emma Nicholson, a member of the European Parliament and previously a prominent member of Britain's Conservative Party who defected to the Liberal Democrats in 1995? She has started an orphanage for Gypsy boys in Romania and has devoted considerable energy to the organization AMAR Appeal, which provides medical, humanitarian and educational aid to Iraqi Marsh Arabs, Iraqi refugees in Iran and others in Rwanda and southern Lebanon.
Nicholson was in Washington last weekend to participate in events at the Kennedy Center celebrating Africa and to launch the Caine Prize for African writing. The prize, given in memory of her husband, Michael Caine, who died last year, focuses on the short story, the contemporary expression of the African storytelling tradition. Caine, one of the founders of the Booker Prize, chaired the group that gives the award for 25 years before establishing a prize to help revive the Russian novel.
Nicholson met with Iraqi specialists at the State Department to seek support for her pet project--building up the infrastructure and medical skills among refugees in southern Iran. She first traveled to Iraq in April 1991, after President Saddam Hussein's troops suppressed a Shiite uprising there and began expelling marsh dwellers from their habitat. "I voted for the war, naturally. But voting to send fellow men and women to kill fellow men and women is a very hard thing to do," she said in an interview at the Watergate hotel.
She has raised funds and support wherever she could: UNESCO, the World Health Organization, the British and Irish governments, the European Union, the Kuwaiti government and members of the Saudi royal family. "Just because someone happens to be in a refugee camp does not mean they have no professional value. We assume there is no expertise available and we come in with huge teams, and when we go we don't leave much behind," she said of outside assistance. "Most refugees don't go home. They are unoccupied and their skills and experience go to waste. . . . I decided to find the best local doctors among the refugee population in south Iran," where her organization now has 150 medical staff, seven medical centers, two labs and a polyclinic.
"I wanted our staff to be part of the global world, not to feel that because they are refugees they are cut off from the rest of the world," she said.
She plans to build a center for auxiliary medical training in southern Lebanon and to start assisting Afghan refugees. "They don't have the tools to alter their situation," she said, "and what they say about it is devalued in terms of its importance to the world. I want to bring solutions."
-------- france
Compaq Builds Europe's Mightiest Computer for Paris
Reuters
February 23, 2000 Filed at 1:29 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-compaq-paris.html
LONDON (Reuters) - Compaq Computer Corp (CPQ.N) said on Wednesday it would build Europe's biggest supercomputer for the French Atomic Energy Commission, the CEA, to help it keep the country's nuclear stockpile safe without testing.
``The Alpha supercomputer will be over seven times more potent than Europe's existing supercomputers and capable of handling a mammoth five trillion operations per second,'' the company said in a statement.
One second of the computer's calculations will be the equivalent of 30,000 mathematicians working day and night for five years on handheld calculators, or of all the world's six billion humans doing their sums for 15 minutes each, it said.
``The Compaq Alpha supercomputer will use its...capacity to sustain the reliability and safety of the French nuclear stockpile without new nuclear tests,'' the Munich-based European division of Compaq said in a statement released in London.
After a series of controversial nuclear tests in the south Pacific, France has joined fellow nuclear power Britain in ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The U.S. Senate has rejected signing the accord.
--------imf/wto/world bank
Trade Accord May Be Endangered
Yahoo News
11:22 AM ET 02/23/00
By TOM RAUM Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2564526955-fb2
WASHINGTON (AP) _ China's new threats to Taiwan and Vice President Al Gore's apparent ambivalence could combine to kill a market-opening trade agreement sought by President Clinton, bipartisan Senate leaders warned the administration today.
``You're going to lose this,'' Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, told U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky.
Moynihan complained after Barshefsky declined to rule out the possibility that the administration might support amendments seeking additional labor and environmental protections _ amendments that could help shore up Gore's standing with organized labor in his presidential campaign.
Despite prodding from committee members, Barshefsky also declined to say exactly when the administration would send the trade deal to Congress _ other than to reiterate that the administration hopes for passage as early as possible this year and would produce the bill ``at the appropriate time.''
Moynihan and Sen. William Roth, R-Del., the committee chairman, suggested any such modifications could end up scrapping the measure to give China permanent trade benefits to ease its entry into the World Trade Organization.
Roth called this week's stepping up of pressure on Taiwan by China's communist leaders ``reckless.'' The threats clearly will intrude in congressional consideration of the trade bill, Roth suggested.
Roth suggested the debate might be postponed ``if the broader relationship between our countries is in question.''
Separately, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., suggested that China's menacing comments, contained in a new 11,000-word policy statement, could end up backfiring on Beijing.
``What China did this week was very counterproductive,'' Daschle told reporters. ``They need to take great care in their public pronouncements if they truly want to become part of the world community.''
As the Barshefsky pressed the administration's case in support of the China trade bill before the Finance Committee, both Roth and Moynihan expressed alarm over reports that Gore showed less than complete support for the trade deal in meetings last week with AFL-CIO leaders.
Although Gore later wrote a letter to a leading business organization reaffirming his support for action this year on the accord the administration negotiated with China, some business leaders suggested that Gore had hinted he could negotiate a better agreement as president with stronger worker and environmental protections.
``This raises serious questions about the administration's commitment about getting this done,'' Roth told Barshefsky.
Moynihan also said he was troubled, although he noted that ``the vice president is campaigning and things are said in campaigns.''
He asked Barshefsky to assure Congress that administration officials ``want a bill now and that they will fight for it.''
But Barshefsky did not answer the question directly, noting, ``In terms of amendments, obviously as always the administration would work with the Congress. The purpose of the administration is passage.''
The wording of the trade accord negotiated with China last November cannot be changed, she said. But she held open the possibility that the administration might support unspecified side agreements. Among the possibilities being discussed in Congress is a mechanism to allow continued review of China's conduct on human rights and labor practices.
``The vice president has made it very clear that he fully supports the agreement as negotiated,'' Barshefsky said.
``That certainly isn't the signal that was given to labor leaders,'' Roth replied.
``If efforts are made to amend along the lines of what the vice president was talking about, no matter how desirable, it's going to sabotage the process,'' Roth said.
--------iran
CIA: Iran expands missile program
Report shows weapon operational and able to reach Israel
MSNBC
02/23/00
http://www.msnbc.com/news/373532.asp?cp1=1
By Robert Windrem
NBC NEWS PRODUCER
One of Iran's two new home-made surface-to-surface missiles, the Shahab, displayed for the first time in September 1999 during a parade in Tehran to mark the 19th anniversary of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.
Feb. 23 - A new CIA report on superweapons proliferation says Iran has an operational missile that for the first time gives Tehran the capability of striking Israel. In addition, the CIA says Iran and Syria are cooperating on the development of even more capable missile systems.
THE MISSILE, the Shahab-3, is a medium-range ballistic missile with a range of 800 miles. Fired from a mobile launcher on Iran's western periphery, the Shahab-3 could strike Israel.
The CIA's Non-Proliferation Center, in its semi-annual report on the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction, does not identify Israel as a target, but U.S. officials say that the implication of the report is that Israel could be a target of high-explosive warheads.
While Iran has an extensive chemical weapons arsenal, started during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, the report says Iran has limited capability in deploying them, noting that it has developed only bombs and artillery shells for its chemical capability.
READY FOR LAUNCH
"Iran ... probably has achieved 'emergency operational capability' [for the Shahab-3] i.e., Tehran could deploy a limited number of the Shahab-3 prototype missiles in an operational mode during a perceived crisis situation," said the report, required by the U.S. Congress.
In addition, the agency noted that Iran's plans do not end with the Shahab-3. "Iran's Defense Minister last year publicly acknowledged the development of the Shahab-4, originally calling it a more capable ballistic missile than the Shahab-3, but later categorizing it as solely a space launch vehicle with no military applications. Iran's defense minister also has publicly mentioned plans for a 'Shahab-5.'" The CIA did not provide ranges for the two more advanced Shahabs.
But the CIA did note that Iran is getting help from some of what one official described as "the usual suspects" - China and Russia - as well as Syria.
"Damascus continued work on establishing a solid-propellant rocket motor development and production capability with help from outside countries such as Iran," said the report.
Opinions: Michael Moran on Iran's new revolution
LAUNCH WITHIN HOURS
A solid-propellant rocket would provide the two countries with a new capability to set up and launch missiles within a few hours if not less. Liquid fueled missiles must be loaded in what can be a time-consuming and dangerous operation, particularly for a larger missile.
Iran, which took up the largest section of the report, was also listed as attempting to obtain and/or develop nuclear, biological and chemical capabilities.
The New York Times reported last month that the CIA had determined that it could not guarantee that Iran did not have nuclear weapons, noting its attempts to acquire nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union.
The unclassified report did not touch on that issue, but did discuss continuing Russian help for the Iranian civilian nuclear program, which could be transferred to the military program.
"Iran sought nuclear-related equipment, material, and technical expertise from a variety of sources, especially in Russia, during the first half of 1999," said the report. "Work continues on the construction of a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power reactor in Bushehr, Iran. In addition, Russian entities continued to interact with Iranian research centers on various activities.
"These projects will help Iran augment its nuclear technology infrastructure, which in turn would be useful in supporting nuclear weapons research and development."
DISGUISED WEAPONS PROGRAM
Similarly, Russia helped the Iranian biotech program, which the CIA fears could be used to disguise a germ-warfare program.
"Tehran continued to seek considerable dual-use biotechnical equipment from entities in Russia and Western Europe, ostensibly for civilian uses. Iran began a biological warfare (BW) program during the Iran-Iraq war, and it may have some limited capability for BW deployment. Outside assistance is both important and difficult to prevent, given the dual-use nature of the materials, the equipment being sought, and the many legitimate end uses for these items."
Robert Windrem is an investigative producer for NBC News.
---
Top Iran Candidate Lays Out Agenda
04:25 AM ET 02/23/00
By AFSHIN VALINEJAD
Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2564520903-d64
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) _ Iran's top parliamentary vote-getter has said his party's priorities when it reaches Parliament will be tackling the economy, increasing press freedoms and working with the government to speed up reforms.
Mohammadreza Khatami _ President Mohammad Khatami's younger brother and the head of the largest and most influential reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front _ so far has garnered the largest percentage of votes in any of the races in Friday's legislative elections.
He laid out his party's agenda at a news conference after it became clear that the reformist coalition would win the elections, ousting hard-liners from the legislature after a 21-year domination.
Our priority will be to ``solve the problems that the people are now facing, like inflation, unemployment and the high cost of living,'' Khatami said. Iran, a nation of 62 million, half of whom are under the age of 25, suffers from more than 20 percent unemployment and high inflation.
In Tehran, more than 55 percent of the votes announced so far were for Khatami. Reformists have 141 seats nationwide, more than 70 percent of the 195 seats that have already been decided.
Conservatives have won 44 seats and independents 10. Another 65 seats are to be decided in run-offs for the 290-member house. Only the results for 30 seats in Tehran are outstanding, and reformers are leading the vote count in nearly all of them, state television said.
President Khatami, who came to power in a landslide victory in 1997, promised social and political freedoms to Iranians tired of decades of strict Islamic rule.
But the previous hard-line dominated Majlis, or parliament, had attempted to thwart his attempts, impeaching his interior minister and summoning other officials to criticize how they were doing their jobs. A favorite target was Culture Minister Ataollah Mohajerani, responsible for granting newspaper licenses.
Even though beaten in the elections, the hard-liners still wield power through key institutions such as the Guardians Council, which must approve all legislation.
Reformists say they are confident that hard-liners will not want to use those powers to block legislation and risk angering a majority of Iranians.
A free press _ the result of Khatami's reforms _ and live broadcasts of parliamentary proceedings could also keep the hard-liners from resorting to heavy-handed methods.
The hard-liners seem resigned to the fact that they must change their ways. Most conservatives, stunned by the extent of their defeat, would not talk to reporters, but a leading ideologue was quoted as saying that the conservative camp must change its policies.
``We will not change our principles and positions, but it is natural that we should reconsider our policies and methods,'' Mohammadreza Bahonar, a conservative lawmaker in the outgoing Parliament, was reported as saying by the independent Iran Vij daily.
Front-runner Khatami and other reformists have called for detente between Iran and the United States, a move vigorously opposed by hard-liners, who view Washington as Iran's archenemy.
However, Khatami made it clear that the new parliament would not rush to endorse talks with the United States without concrete steps from Washington.
``We are waiting for practical steps from the United States, more than nice words,'' Khatami said.
He criticized Washington for maintaining U.S. sanctions against Iran.
``The United States supported the totalitarian regime of the shah,'' he told reporters. ``And now that Iran has become one of the most free nations, it continues its policy of sanctions and continues its baseless claims against Iran.''
U.S. relations with Iran broke off during the 1979 revolution that ousted the U.S.-backed shah and brought the clergy to power. Demonstrators seized the U.S. Embassy and held 52 Americans captive until January 1981.
A U.S. law allows for sanctions on any company that invests more than $20 million in Iran's oil industry. Washington accuses Tehran of trying to procure nuclear weapons and of opposing the Middle East peace process.
---
U.S. Sees Hope for Dialogue With Iran
Washington Post
Wednesday, February 23, 2000; Page A17
By John Lancaster Washington Post Staff Writer
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/23/168l-022300-idx.html
Buoyed by the victory of reformers in Iranian elections, the Clinton administration is looking for ways to open a dialogue aimed at ending two decades of estrangement between Washington and Tehran, officials said yesterday.
The strong showing by reformers, who captured at least two-thirds of the 290-seat parliament in Friday's elections, has been welcomed in Washington as a potential shift in power from hard-line clerics toward Iran's president, Mohammed Khatemi.
Administration officials said the election results appear to offer the best hope yet for engaging Tehran, which the United States has long accused of supporting terrorism, undermining Mideast peace talks and pursuing the acquisition of nuclear weapons. At least, officials said, the United States is likely to respond with goodwill gestures, perhaps including a presidential address to the Iranian people next month.
As a result of the vote, "the hard-liners may be less willing to confront [Khatemi] on issues, because he now has a truly overwhelming popular mandate," a senior administration official said. "We have every reason to believe that people around Khatemi see the improvement of relations with the outside world as a fundamental tenet of their program."
Will Iranian moderates be "prepared to take big risks to improve relations with the United States? I don't know," the U.S. official added. "But clearly the underlying logic of the program has been ratified in a powerful way."
Although officials declined to discuss what steps they might take, one key test of American policy may come within weeks as the World Bank considers a resumption of lending to Iran, which it ended under U.S. pressure in 1993. Washington still opposes such loans, but it is uncertain how vigorously the administration will lobby against them.
Administration officials cautioned that the reformers' margin of victory will not be clear for weeks and that, in any event, they do not expect immediate changes in Iran's relations with the West. Hard-liners loyal to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, still control Iran's powerful security services; twice a month, according to a senior U.S. official, a Boeing 747 operated by the Iranian military lands in Damascus with arms for Hezbollah, whose Shiite Muslim fighters have inflicted heavy casualties on Israeli forces in south Lebanon.
Even the reformers have explained their victory in terms of domestic concerns, such as restrictions on dress and personal freedom, rather than opposition to Iran's Islamic revolution.
"The . . . important question is whether the reformers can translate this into control over the instruments of state security," said a senior administration official who closely monitors Iran. "The other question is whether the reformers will make a priority [of better relations with the outside world]. . . . My suspicion is that in the short term the focus will be on the issues that got them elected."
Still, said another senior U.S. official, "nobody could have looked at the pictures of the crowds without getting a sense that something very important was going on. We have a long-standing position that all it takes is a signal, and we're ready for a dialogue."
Since Khatemi's election in 1997, the administration has made several overtures to Tehran, so far with few results. It has encouraged Iranian scholars and athletes to travel to the United States, opened a loophole in sanctions to permit the export of food and medicine to Iran and, last fall, permitted Boeing Co. to send parts to repair a safety defect in 747 passenger jets operated by Iran Air.
Also last year, President Clinton sent a letter to Khatemi offering better relations in exchange for cooperation in investigating the 1996 bombing of a U.S. military complex in Saudi Arabia.
Khatemi has yet to answer Clinton's letter. But after Friday's elections, a senior official said, "I think it's fair to say that people will try to be a lot more creative now in terms of what we can do, rather than waiting for the mail to be returned."
---
U.S. Sees Chance for Talks With Iran
Yahoo News
10:42 AM ET 02/23/00
By TERENCE HUNT
AP White House Correspondent
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2564526310-bf5
WASHINGTON (AP) _ Declaring that ``there may be some change in the offing,'' the White House reached out today to reformers in Iran who scored a stunning electoral victory by capturing at least two-thirds of the seats in the parliament.
The vote was a major setback to hard-liners opposed to President Mohammad Khatami's reform program and could offer the possibility of engagement between Washington and Tehran.
``We have said for some time that we want to engage in a constructive and authorized dialogue to address all the issues that concern us,'' White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said.
He said the outstanding issues include any Iranian programs to produce weapons of mass destruction, support of terrorism and opposition to the Middle East peace process.
``I think these elections at this stage indicate that there may be some change in the offing,'' Lockhart said, ``but I think we need to let that process finish ... and more importantly see what comes of it as far as the (Iranian) government's ... willingness to address these issues.''
Of the 195 parliamentary seats decided so far, reformists have won 141, more than 70 percent. Final results are to be announced Thursday.
The United States severed relations with Iran after radical followers of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and took 52 Americans hostage. The United States still maintains economic sanctions against Iran and accuses it of being a sponsor of terrorism.
Lockhart brushed aside suggestions that it was up to the United States to take the first step to renew ties.
``I don't think this is a matter of who takes what step,'' he said. ``If they are willing to engage in this dialogue, I think that would be a positive step. We'll have to see.''
---
Iranians Study Election Results
Associated Press
February 23, 2000 Filed at 9:07 a.m. EST
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Iran-Elections.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iranian conservatives blamed themselves and ``a wave of lies'' in the press for their stunning defeat at the hands of reformists in Iran's legislative elections.
``The poor showing of the right-wing candidates was due to a coordinated campaign by reformist newspapers and foreign radio stations. A wave of lies is responsible for this situation,'' departing hard-line parliament member Kamal Daneshyar was quoted as saying in today's edition of the Aftab-e-Emruz daily.
Conservatives also conceded that their policies had failed after it became clear that the reformist coalition would win the elections, ousting them from the legislature after a 21-year domination.
``Conservatives have to regroup and reorganize themselves, identify their weak points and re-enter politics with a new plan. People want greater freedom in social and personal issues. The policies enforced so far have failed,'' Daneshyar was quoted as saying.
Of the 195 parliamentary seats decided so far, reformists have won 141, more than 70 percent.
Conservatives have won 44 seats and independents 10. Another 65 seats are to be decided in run-offs for the 290-member parliament, or Majlis. Only the results for 30 seats in Tehran are outstanding, and reformers are leading the vote count in nearly all of them, state television said.
Final results will be announced Thursday, state television reported.
More than 2.3 million votes out of an estimated 3.2 million votes cast in the capital have been counted, the television said today.
At the first session of the departing parliament to be held since Friday's legislative elections, conservatives seemed stunned and bitter.
Mohammadreza Faker, a cleric who failed to regain his seat, turned on reporters waiting to speak with lawmakers after Tuesday's session.
``I'm very upset with you people,'' he was quoted as telling the Sobh-e-Emrouz newspaper. ``You destroyed everything.''
Mohammadreza Khatami, head of the largest reformist group and the younger brother of President Mohammad Khatami, told reporters Tuesday that his faction's top goals when it reached parliament will be improving the economy, increasing press freedoms and working with the government to speed up reforms.
The president, who came to power in a landslide victory in 1997, had promised social and political freedoms to Iranians tired of decades of strict Islamic rule.
But the previous hard-line-dominated Majlis tried to thwart his efforts, impeaching his interior minister and summoning other officials to complain about how they were doing their jobs.
Iran, a nation of 62 million people -- half of whom are under the age of 25 -- suffers from more than 20 percent unemployment and high inflation.
Mohammadreza Khatami, who was expected to win a seat from Tehran, said Iran needs concrete action from the United States to lower the wall of mistrust between the two nations. He made it clear the new parliament would not rush into talks with the United States without such action. He also criticized Washington for maintaining U.S. sanctions against Iran.
U.S. relations with Iran broke off during the 1979 revolution, which ousted the U.S.-backed shah and brought the clergy to power. Demonstrators seized the U.S. Embassy and held 52 Americans captive until January 1981.
A U.S. law allows for sanctions on any company that invests more than $20 million in Iran's oil industry. Washington accuses Tehran of trying to procure nuclear weapons and of opposing the Middle East peace process. Iran opposes Arab-Israeli peace, but denies pursuing nuclear weapons.
Khatami and other reformists have called for detente between Iran and the United States, a move vigorously opposed by hard-liners, who view Washington as Iran's archenemy.
Even though beaten in the elections, the hard-liners still wield power through key institutions such as the Guardians Council, which must approve all legislation.
Reformists say they are confident that hard-liners will not want to use those powers to block legislation and risk angering a majority of Iranians.
--------iraw
Outgoing U.N. Official Leaves Iraq
Associated Press
February 23, 2000 Filed at 10:10 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Iraq-UN.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The departing head of U.N. humanitarian operations in Iraq left the country Wednesday, headed for New York to discuss concerns over U.N. sanctions that led him to resign.
Hans von Sponeck quit as the chief U.N. coordinator in Iraq earlier this month, saying sanctions were not working and the Iraqi people were suffering.
Von Sponeck left early Wednesday for the 10-hour drive from Baghdad to Amman, the capital of neighboring Jordan. Amman is the nearest point from which von Sponeck could board a plane. Air travel to and from Iraq is banned under U.N. trade sanctions.
Before boarding a plane in Amman, en route to New York via Vienna, Austria, he told reporters at the airport he would report on the situation in Iraq to the U.N. Security Council.
``We have to think how to lift sanctions which are punishing the wrong target,'' he said, adding that many of his colleagues who are witnessing the situation in Baghdad share his perception.
U.N. sanctions have crippled the Iraqi economy, leaving ordinary Iraqis struggling to feed and clothe themselves. Von Sponeck wanted the Security Council to separate Iraq's humanitarian needs from its disarmament.
On Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in Australia that he will meet Von Sponeck in New York later this week.
``We will review the situation to see what steps can be taken to improve the situation,'' Annan told journalists in the Australian capital Tuesday.
Annan said so-called ``smart sanctions'' may be the solution ``rather than making the population suffer.'' The sanctions target leaders and can do such things as freeze bank accounts.
The Security Council also is planning to review the sanctions, which were imposed on Iraq for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. They can only be lifted when Iraq proves to the council it has rid itself of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons as well as its long-range missiles.
---
Senate Takes Up Iran Sanctions Bill
Associated Press
February 23, 2000 Filed at 2:22 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Congress-Iran.html
http://www.foxnews.com/world/022300/iran_congress.sml
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate is taking up legislation that would strengthen the hand of the president in punishing Russia and others that aid Iran's weapons programs. Senators said they hoped the bill would help Iranian reformists who triumphed in recent elections.
The Clinton administration opposes the bill, which it says complicates nonproliferation efforts, but Democrats said enough changes had been made to avoid a presidential veto.
The White House threatened a veto last September when the House passed a similar bill by 419-0. A Senate vote is scheduled for Thursday.
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said he hoped the legislation would help the reformers against those bent on harming the United States.
He said that despite the reformists' election advances, the situation is still ``quite scary. Iran's leaders now and in the future would be in the possession of nuclear-tipped ICBMS capable of reaching Washington or Los Angeles or New York.''
The legislation would require the president to submit reports to Congress every six months identifying those providing Iran with material promoting Iran's missile and weapons systems.
The president would have the option of cutting off arms sales or economic aid to those nations helping Iran's weapons programs. He could also waive sanctions for national security reasons.
The bill also states that the United States could only make payments to the Russian Space Agency for its role in building the International Space Station when the president determines that Russia is actively opposing proliferation to Iran.
The bill ``is not anti-Russian,'' said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del. ``But we are manifestly anti-proliferation. We will not tolerate vicious and venal persons plunging the world into a new Cold War.''
The bill ``sends a message to our friends in Russia about the intensity of our concern about their part in helping Iran develop weapons of mass destruction,'' said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn.
The president in 1998 vetoed legislation that, unlike the current bill, would have required the imposition of sanctions against those helping Iran build missiles.
Heading off a possible veto override, Vice President Al Gore shortly thereafter announced sanctions on seven Russian entities suspected of transferring weapons technology to Iran. In 1999 three more Russian groups were added to the list.
But legislators said the administrative action, while needed, did not go far enough. Lott said that Russia, as well as China and North Korea, have not sufficiently opposed the clandestine transfer of materials to Iran. The administration strategy ``has failed to slow the flow of this dangerous technology,'' he said.
Lott and others pointed to CIA warnings earlier this year that Iran may be closer than previous believed to amassing a nuclear arsenal and that Russia, already a top supplier of weapons to Iran, had agreed to sell Iran more nuclear reactors for power generation.
------
EDITOR'S NOTE: The bill number is H.R. 1883.
---
White House discounts closer ties with Iran
Washington Times
February 23, 2000
By David Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/world/news6-02232000.htm
The Clinton administration said yesterday it was too soon to take concrete steps to improve relations with Iran, disappointing reformers who had hoped for a dramatic gesture in the wake of their stunning parliamentary gains last week.
With all indications that hard-liners will lose control of Iran's parliament, the triumphant reformists presented a legislative agenda yesterday with a priority on expanding press freedoms and lifting a ban on foreign television broadcasts.
But it remained to be seen whether hard-liners will find a way to block those initiatives. The conservative Guardians Council can veto all legislation passed by parliament, and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the main backer of the conservative camp, has final say in all matters.
"We would still like to see a change in specific policies of concern," State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said yesterday, noting that it will be months before a new Iranian parliament is even seated.
Those policies "relate to Iran's attitude toward the Middle East peace process, the seeking of weapons of mass destruction and the support of terrorism," Mr. Rubin said.
Reformers in Tehran, allies of President Mohammed Khatami, clearly had been hoping for more.
The United States "is still imposing economic sanctions on us and not making any conciliatory gestures," said Mohammed-Reza Khatami, the president's younger brother and the leader of the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the largest of the pro-reform parties.
"We're waiting for practical steps from the United States, more than nice words," said Mr. Khatami, tipped by many to be speaker in the new Majlis, as the Iranian parliament is known. He said there was a "better tone" in recent relations with Washington "but no practical steps to pull down the wall of mistrust."
Preliminary results yesterday give the Participation Front 109 seats in the new 290-seat parliament from the first round of voting, with at least 28 more pro-reform allies elected outright.
President Khatami's allies also expect to carry another 28 seats when Tehran's votes are finally counted, and say they will capture a majority of the 65 seats up for grabs in the second and final round of voting next month.
Conservative supporters of Iran's Islamic clerical leaders, who dominated the outgoing Majlis, won an estimated 44 seats, with independents winning 10 seats so far.
Conservatives, many tied to Ayatollah Khamenei, conceded defeat but retain control of many institutional levers of power within Iran. They warned against interpreting the Majlis voting as a referendum on better relations with the United States, in deep freeze since the 1979 overthrow of the U.S.-backed shah of Iran.
"The majority of those elected to the next parliament are committed to the Islamic republic," said Majlis member Morteza Nabavi, an outspoken opponent of Mr. Khatami's reform program. "They are not the reformers America thinks they are."
U.S. officials privately said that some kind of public statement or interview by President Clinton focusing on better relations with Iran, an idea first reported by USA Today, may still be arranged, although nothing has been officially announced.
Suzanne Maloney, an expert on Iranian politics at the Brookings Institution, said the strong showing by Mohammed-Reza Khatami and other prominent reformers will have a "positive impact" on U.S.-Iranian relations, but she noted that there were limits to what the new Majlis could do.
"What this does is take a subject that has been fairly taboo and enabled a much more wide-ranging debate within the Iranian political scene on relations with the United States," she said.
The reformers say one of their first acts in the new Majlis will be to abolish a ban on television satellite dishes, imposed by conservatives to limit access to Western programming.
But the Brookings analyst said even a reformist-dominated Majlis probably will be unable to take the first step that Mr. Rubin appeared to be seeking to improve bilateral relations with the United States.
A concrete gesture by the Clinton administration, she suggested, could provide the "political cover" reformers need within Iran to push for a thaw in relations.
But while Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has offered a "road map" to better relations, numerous thorny issues still divide the two countries, including U.S. trade sanctions on Iran, billions of dollars in Iranian assets frozen in the United States, the U.S. designation of Iran as a state supporter of terrorism, and Iran's hostility to U.S. efforts to broker a peace between Israel, the Palestinians and the Syrians.
The Iranian election was largely fought over domestic issues, including expanded civil liberties and the country's lagging economy, leaving many foreign-policy issues on the back burner.
"I am not going to speculate on what we might do, especially in light of the fact that there are some weeks before the run-off elections and some weeks after that before the new power arrangements would be developed," Mr. Rubin said.
--------korea
North Korea Slams Japan Rocket Program
Reuters
February 23, 2000 Filed at 1:18 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-j.html
TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea on Wednesday slammed Japan's rocket program, describing it as proof Tokyo was increasing its military might and threatening to take counter-measures against any military buildup.
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), monitored in Tokyo, said Japan's efforts to develop rockets despite recent high-profile failures in its space program can only be tied to a desire to become a military superpower.
``What remains to be done by Japan is to develop and possess missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. To this end, Japan is hellbent on the development of space weapons,'' KCNA said.
``This...clearly proves that it was a very just act pertaining to the sovereignty of the DPRK (North Korea) for it to have increased national defense capabilities and made full preparations to repel possible aggression,'' KCNA added.
It also lashed out at Japan's cooperative research with the United States into developing a Theater Missile Defense (TMD) system, adding: ``We will sharply watch Japan's reckless moves to become a military giant and take all necessary counter-measures.''
Japan's space program, struggling with high costs and a series of embarrassing mishaps, was hit by another setback on February 10 when a rocket failed to put a research satellite into orbit.
Industry analysts have attributed the program's problems at least partly to the fact that domestic defense research was limited for many years by the country's war-renouncing constitution.
North Korea, by contrast, has an active missile development program. Washington worries that a long-range North Korean ballistic missile could hit U.S. territory, while China and Japan fear the Stalinist state could encourage a regional arms race.
In 1998, North Korea test fired a three-stage missile which flew over Japan.
North Korea frequently makes threats prior to entering into talks with other nations, especially the United States. It has agreed to send its first high-level delegation to Washington in March.
---
N.Korea Says Hit With Power Shortage, Blames U.S.
Reuters
February 22, 2000 Filed at 9:27 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-n.html
TOKYO (Reuters) - North Korea said on Wednesday it was suffering its worst ever power shortage and blamed it on the United States for delaying the construction of promised nuclear reactors.
Vice-Premier Jo Chang-dok demanded damages from the United States for delaying work on two light-water nuclear reactors promised to North Korea in a 1994 framework agreement, according to a Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) report monitored by Radiopress in Tokyo.
``We are suffering our worst ever power shortage, and its impact has been felt in every sector of the economy,'' Jo said.
In the landmark 1994 agreement, the U.S.-led Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) promised to build the two reactors and provide fuel oil until they were completed, if the secretive Stalinist state agreed to put its nuclear weapons research program on hold.
But the United States, South Korea and Japan -- all KEDO members -- have disagreed at times over how to shoulder the enormous costs and the reactors are unlikely to be completed until 2007.
Late on Tuesday, KCNA said: ``This winter has been a severe test for the Korean people. It witnessed the most serious shortage of electricity in the history of the DPRK (North Korea.)''
``Despite all those difficulties, the Korean people have firmly defended socialism, their life and soul, and further hardened their faith and will to win its victory,'' it added.
North Korea observers say the power shortage may actually be due to drought and delays in coal deliveries, along with frozen rivers that make hydro-electric power generators unusable.
Aid workers say improved harvests and donations have eased chronic food shortages in North Korea, but report that living conditions are still severe due to continued shortages of medicine, fertilizers and fuel.
---
N. Korea Power Shortage Blamed on US
Associated Press
February 23, 2000 Filed at 10:11 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-NKorea-Power-Shortage.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- North Korea blamed the United States on Wednesday for its worst power shortage, which has disrupted railway service and heating as well as industrial production.
The Korean Central News Agency, the North's official foreign news outlet, said the shortage was caused by U.S. insistence that North Korea halt its nuclear power program.
Fearful that North Korea was developing nuclear weapons, Washington signed a 1994 pact with Pyongyang under which the communist government agreed to freeze its nuclear program.
In return, a consortium of U.S., Japanese and South Korean partners agreed to build two 1,000-megawatt reactors that cannot be used for military purposes and provide 500,000 tons of fuel oil until the first reactor is built. However, delays have plagued the project.
``Never before in the history of Korea has there been such power shortage as today,'' said the Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA. ``This is adversely affecting the overall economic life.''
``Regular railway transport, heating and lighting as well as agriculture are seriously affected by the shortage,'' it said. ``The Korean people hold the United States wholly responsible for all these difficulties.''
KCNA said if the North had built the reactors as scheduled, its power problem would not be so serious.
Under the 1994 accord, the United States promised to build the first light-water reactor by 2003. Now officials say privately that a delay of several years is inevitable.
North Korea said the freeze and delays on the North's nuclear program has cost the country tens of billions of dollars in lost production.
Part of the delay was caused when North Korea fired a multistage rocket over Japan and into the Pacific in 1998. For more than a year, Japan angrily refused to endorse its share of the funding.
Planning and negotiations among the consortium partners also delayed the project.
--------pakistan
Pakistan not safe for Clinton visit
Washington Times
February 23, 2000
By Ben Barber
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/world/news5-02232000.htm
The Secret Service fears President Clinton's life would be in danger if he visits Pakistan next month because the nation's security service has been heavily infiltrated by anti-American militants, a senior U.S. official said yesterday.
The concern comes as the White House mulls whether Mr. Clinton should stop in Pakistan during a trip to India and Bangladesh.
U.S. officials also fear that information on procedures used to protect traveling presidents could be used by terrorists with a "global reach" to threaten the lives of future American leaders.
"The host government provides 95 percent of the protection for a president on a visit," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Only the last 5 percent is provided by our Secret Service people.
"It's where their security people interact with ours that they can learn about our methods, techniques and secrets," said the official.
"This would endanger the life of President Clinton in Pakistan and on other trips. It also threatens future U.S. presidents. These terrorists are transnationals and operate around the world."
Secret Service officials declined to comment.
The U.S. official detailed other security concerns, including the threat that Islamic extremists from Afghanistan, who move easily across the border with Pakistan, could attack any airport used by Mr. Clinton.
"They have experience with long-range shelling," said the official.
The official said that Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence agency, known as the ISI, has been working for years with anti-American groups such as Harakat-ul Mujahideen, which is on the State Department list of terrorist groups.
The group is suspected of hijacking an India Airlines jet last December. One of its leaders was freed from an Indian prison in exchange for the release of the passengers and crew.
Pakistan's ISI also has dealt for years with reputed terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, believed responsible for the 1996 bombing of U.S. army barracks in Saudi Arabia and the bombing two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.
Since the rule of military dictator Mohammed Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s, ISI increasingly has been infiltrated by Islamic zealots, say analysts and officials in Pakistan and Washington.
National security adviser Samuel R. Berger, terrorism adviser Dick Clark and other top officials are to meet today at the White House to consider whether Mr. Clinton should include Pakistan on his itinerary.
President Nixon's 1969 visit to Pakistan was the most recent one by an American president.
Mr. Clinton hopes a visit might help end the 50-year battle between India and Pakistan over Kashmir that threatens to evolve into a nuclear conflict. Both countries tested atom bombs in 1998.
Reasons given by those who oppose the visit go beyond security.
Pakistan is ruled by military chief Gen. Pervez Musharraf who overthrew a corrupt but elected civilian government last October.
Pakistan also is accused of sheltering terrorist groups and allowing militants to cross into India-held portions of Kashmir where they are fighting a guerrilla war, often targeting Hindu civilians and Muslims who disagree with their views.
Mr. Clinton will arrive in India March 19. The next day he will fly to Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, for the first visit by a U.S. president to that nation of 130 million people.
The president hopes to highlight economic progress in South Asia, a region once derided as unable to feed itself.
Mr. Clinton is to visit some rural development projects of powerful nongovernmental organizations such as the Grameen Bank and Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, which have used novel techniques to inspire poor peasants to become entrepreneurs.
Mr. Clinton returns to New Delhi later on March 20 and to begin a formal state visit.
The visit to India comes as America's Indian immigrants have formed a powerful economic and political group.
Indian-Americans have the highest median income of all immigrant groups in the United States and they are becoming active politically.
Mr. Clinton recently said that one reason for a visit to South Asia was that many Americans now hail from that region.
The president also hopes to focus attention on the growing economic importance of India as it ends decades of stagnating quasi-socialism with market-based reforms.
The U.S. official said Mr. Clinton may drop some sanctions before his visit that were imposed on India for its acquisition of nuclear weapons.
After decades of dependence on Soviet arms, India now wants to buy U.S. weapons, mainly laser-guided bombs, radar-controlled gun batteries, submarine periscopes and other equipment, the official said.
---
Senators Urge Clinton Pakistan Visit
Yahoo News
10:37 AM ET 02/23/00
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2564526199-1de
WASHINGTON (AP) _ Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and eight other Democratic senators are asking President Clinton to consider visiting Pakistan next month if it would help ease U.S. foreign policy concerns.
In a letter delivered to the White House Tuesday night, they said ``if there can be progress, we would urge you, equally strongly, to include both India and Pakistan on your itinerary.''
Clinton has announced plans to go to India and to Bangladesh, but has delayed a decision on Pakistan, where military rulers took control last October and raised concerns about democracy's future in the South Asia country.
The senators said the trip, first by a president to the region since 1978, offers a chance to make progress on controlling dangerous weapons and on the territorial dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.
The letter was circulated by Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., and signed also by Daschle and Sens. Robert G. Toricelli, D-N.J.; Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y.; Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn.; Byron L. Dorgan, D-N.D.; Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill.; Harry Reid, D-Nev.; and Daniel K. Akaka, D-Hawaii.
The senators said U.S. policy had always been aimed at achieving a balance between India and Pakistan. ``We have often been frustrated in our policies towards both nations but still have never hesitated to engage them at all levels of our government,'' they said.
---
Pakistan Calls for Talks With India
Yahoo News
11:20 PM ET 02/22/00
By KATHY GANNON
Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2564516471-eaa
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) _ Complaining of ``increasingly strident'' statements from India, Pakistan's new foreign secretary urged Indian leaders Tuesday to accept his country's offer of talks.
``In recent months, Indian policy-makers and leaders have become increasingly strident in their pronouncements against Pakistan,'' said Inam-ul Haq, who took over the No. 2 job at Pakistan's foreign ministry last week.
``We have responded with a policy of restraint and maturity and have expressed our willingness to resume dialogue with India,'' he said. ``We live in a difficult environment. The quest for security and peace has always been at the core of our foreign policy.''
All topics are open for discussion, said Haq, but the big issue is the disputed Kashmir region. Both India and Pakistan lay claim to Kashmir, a former princely state divided between the two neighbors.
Five civilians were killed in the region Monday night, when Pakistani troops fired more than 500 rounds of mortar shells across the border in Kashmir, the Indian army said.
Pakistan accused India of firing the first shots and killing three Pakistani civilians in the encounter. ``Our troops retaliated, hitting selected military targets,'' Pakistan army spokesman Col. Salaut Raza said.
Cross-border shelling is common in the volatile region.
Kashmir _ the flashpoint of two previous wars between Pakistan and India _ rose to international prominence in 1998 when the two South Asian nations exploded nuclear devices.
Both countries claim to have nuclear arms, although neither has spelled out the type or number of weapons.
The Kashmir dispute will have to be settled if peace in the region is to be guaranteed, Haq said.
Officials at the Indian foreign ministry could not immediately be reached for comment.
Pakistan wants a vote held on both sides of the disputed border to let Kashmiris decide whether a reunified Kashmir would become part of India or Pakistan. Such a vote is guaranteed in a 1948 U.N. resolution. India rejects a vote.
Pakistan also has sought international mediation, and President Clinton, who is to visit India next month, has offered to try to bridge the divide. However, India has flatly rejected any outside mediation. Clinton said both countries have to agree to his intervention before he will do it.
A decision has not yet been made on whether Clinton will stop in Pakistan on his trip to the region. The visit was put in question last October after the army threw out the elected government of Nawaz Sharif and took control.
So far, Gen. Pervez Musharraf has refused to set a timetable for a return to democracy, saying he wants to clean up a deeply corrupt system and revive a weak and ailing economy before holding elections.
--------romania
Workers Questioned in Cyanide Spill
Yahoo News
04:32 PM ET 02/22/00
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2564508649-01b
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) _ Romanian prosecutors began questioning workers at a gold mine Tuesday about the circumstances of a devastating cyanide spill last month.
``No criminal investigation is going on yet,'' said Dan Bocurtean, chief prosecutor of the Maramures region, the Mediafax news agency reported. It was still unclear if he would take legal action against the joint Australian-Romanian company running the gold mine.
On Jan. 30, tons of cyanide-laced water spilled from a containment reservoir operated by the Aurul gold mine near Baia Mare, entering a nearby creek and spreading into the Tisza and Danube rivers. The cyanide killed huge quantities of fish and other wildlife.
On Monday, cyanide levels in seven wells near the mine were from 4.5 to 700 times higher than the Romanian standards of 0.01 milligram per liter, said Andrei Muresan, head of the health authority in Baia Mare, 265 miles northwest of Bucharest.
Following a recent thaw in the Baia Mare area, more cyanide has apparently seeped into the wells of the nearby village of Bozanta Mare, Romanian officials said.
Meanwhile, local authorities in counties along the Danube River shut down water pumps supplying water from the Danube as the cyanide wave approached them.
Bocurtean was quoted by Mediafax as saying the workers supervising the reservoir's dam had apparently made no mistake.
``We still have to find out whether there is someone to be found guilty,'' Bocurtean said.
--------russia
Russia to Use Nuclear Arms If Existence Threatened
Reuters
February 23, 2000 Filed at 3:51 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-russia-.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A senior Russian security official said Thursday that the country's new military doctrine made it clear Moscow would not launch nuclear weapons first but would use them if its existence was threatened.
The full military doctrine, approved by the influential advisory body the Security Council at the start of this month, has not yet been published in full.
Earlier versions, reported in the media, raised fears of a more aggressive tone toward the West.
But Security Council chairman Sergei Ivanov told ORT public television that the doctrine, a more detailed document than an overarching national security concept, approved in January, was ''fairly peace-loving.''
``Russia has never said and does not say now that it will use nuclear weapons first but at the same time Russia does not say that it will not use nuclear weapons if it suffers a full scale aggression that leads to a clear threat of the destruction of Russia and its existence,'' Ivanov said.
``On the other hand, all of Russia's military doctrine, the state of its army and its weapons show that Russia is not an aggressor and does not intend to be one,'' he said.
Acting President Vladimir Putin has to approve the military doctrine, expected to happen next month, after which it is expected to be published.
---
Russia To Continue Producing Plutonium In Siberia
Russia Today
Feb 23, 2000
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=137108
MOSCOW, (Agence France Presse) Production of plutonium in a Siberian reactor cannot be stopped despite an accord to halt all manufacture of the radioactive substance by this year, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.
The Krasnoyarsk reactor will have to keep on manufacturing the element until 2004 due to the United States' failure to pay up the agreed money for the plant's reconversion, the plant's chief Vassily Jidkov told the agency.
Russia signed a deal with the United States in September 1997, pledging to end production of plutonium for nuclear warheads in the three reactors in exchange for U.S. financial aid to convert the factories for other uses.
The agreement was signed in September 1997 by US Vice-President Al Gore and then Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.
Washington has insisted for its part that it will honor the deal, and that talks are underway to determine the money to be spent. ((c) 2000 Agence France Presse)
---
Russia's North: Politics and Nuclear Junk Are Hot
New York Times
February 23, 2000
By PATRICK E. TYLER
Related Article
Chechen Refugee Camps: From Crude to Abysmal
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/022300russia-chechnya.html
Issue in Depth
Russia's Turmoil
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/russia-index.html
Map
Russia From Merriam-Webster.
http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?13@@.f056025
GADZHIYEVO, Russia -- The citizens of this closed military city, which hides one of Russia's nuclear submarine bases above the Arctic Circle, are staging an extraordinary civic revolt. In a referendum on whether the fleet can put a nuclear waste dump just outside the city limits, they are taking on the navy they have long served.
On March 26, Election Day, the people here -- their number an official secret -- will engage in a battle that they feel far more intensely about than the lopsided presidential contest that Acting President Vladimir V. Putin is expected to win.
Sentiment is running high against the dump. Elsewhere in post-Soviet Russia, unpaid shipyard workers have blocked roads and even threatened to take ships hostage to draw attention to grievances. But this seems to be the first time that an entire town has challenged the authority of the Russian military.
Perhaps most surprising, the revolt is being led by former high-ranking submarine officers who openly distrust the navy's ability to look out for their interests and protect the environment.
After a decade of political and economic mudslides, Russians who have built some basics of democracy but whose freedoms seem ever tenuous, threatened by corruption, lawlessness and economic decay, are acting as if this election is a referendum on what is important in their lives. The issues vary -- the war in Chechnya, the future of economic reform, even whether there is too much sex on television or, here in Gadzhiyevo, whether the navy can store radioactive waste near a town without consulting its residents.
"We just know from our experience what can happen," said Vladimir Musatyan, 53, who has served on ballistic-missile and attack submarines over two decades. Speaking in an interview on a deserted stretch of road north of Murmansk, he said, "I can tell you that when we are loading rockets into our submarines, somebody always drops one."
A longtime colleague, Yevgeny Burakov, 58, could only agree. "We are on a base where there are significantly more frightening weapons than this radioactive waste," Mr. Burakov said. "But those weapons are for the defense of the country, and this waste site has nothing to do with protecting the country. And that is why it should be placed as far away as possible from any populated area."
Across Russia, from the rocky fjords here on the edge of the Barents Sea to smokestack urban centers and snowy plains in the farm belt, political parties are trying to mobilize voters for the presidential contest, a task made more difficult by the still vivid memory of the tough mudslinging campaign for parliamentary elections in December.
It is too early to tell how much success the parties will have in mobilizing their foot soldiers. But it is also hard to find a Russian who does not have an opinion about what the election represents.
In the little town of Bolshaya Glushitsa near the Volga River, Anna Chechenkova, 67, is voting for Gennadi A. Zyuganov, the Communist Party candidate for president, because there are too many "cheats" in government, too much sex and too many commercials on television.
Many neighbors in the snow-covered village are leaning toward Mr. Putin, because he is young and energetic. But some -- especially those with draft-age sons -- are nervous about his war policy in Chechnya, even those who support his fight against terrorism.
Others have a sense of dread about Mr. Putin's assertion that Russia needs a "dictatorship of law." They worry that the "law" part might be overtaken by the "dictatorship" part after his election.
That is certainly a concern of Boris Fursov, 58, a retired military officer and an engineer who spent a career building the infrastructure for the Soviet military in far-off places like Somalia. He lives in Samara, an industrial center on the Volga, and he says he is voting for the Yabloko Party candidate, Grigory A. Yavlinsky, because he best embodies the democratic principles of the late Andrei D. Sakharov.
In interviews in the Northwest and in the Volga River industrial region around Samara, voters and party workers expressed strong views that Mr. Putin's lock on the election might not be as strong as his advisers think or as the polls reflect. Many seemed to be searching for the best means to influence Mr. Putin's policies by orchestrating a strong turnout for opposition candidates and the ideologies that they represent.
For this reason, the popular and strongly reformist governor of the Samara region, Konstantin A. Titov, is running as a maverick candidate for president, hoping that a strong showing by a pro-democracy market-oriented regional leader will force Mr. Putin to ally himself with the more progressive voices that promote a capitalist, democratic model.
"I want to consolidate the true democratic forces in society," Governor Titov said in an interview, adding that if Mr. Putin announces progressive policies, the governor might yet line up behind the acting president. "If Putin conducts a policy of reform," Mr. Titov asked, "why shouldn't I support him? I am not simply looking for a confrontation."
Mr. Titov, too, sees the election as a referendum, one that can be used to shape Mr. Putin, who continues to withhold from voters any detailed description of the course that he would chart for Russia after being elected.
But among others the sense of inevitability is overpowering, emphasized by Mr. Putin's maneuvering to improve ties with the West -- officially repairing relations with NATO and reaching agreement with some foreign creditors -- and to proceed in Chechnya, even if that means virtually obliterating Grozny and riding roughshod on human rights.
Vladimir Shaganov, editor of The Evening Murmansk, a daily newspaper for the largest city above the Arctic Circle, compared Mr. Putin to "a cannonball that was fired on Dec. 31," the day when Boris N. Yeltsin resigned.
"This cannonball is going to land in the president's seat on March 26," Mr. Shaganov said. "Everyone understands this, despite some politicians who have wind blowing in their heads."
And the Kremlin is using all of its muscle to reinforce Mr. Putin's "positives." Mr. Shaganov says he was offered a handsome political payoff from the Putin organization if he agreed to publish a series of articles that would help create a favorable image of Mr. Putin in the Northwest. The offer was hastily withdrawn when the Putin people realized that they already had regional press loyalty to a great extent and did not need to buy any more.
Instead, the Putin headquarters invited the Murmansk paper to send a columnist to Moscow for an "exclusive interview" with Mr. Putin, along with other regional newspaper columnists.
So many Russians have lost faith in the central government's ability to solve problems that nearly two million voters marked "none of the above" on their ballots in the December elections. In fact, "none of the above" dramatically outpolled 20 of the 26 parties on the ballot.
Campaign organizers are at a loss over how best to approach a testy and mercurial electorate. In Murmansk, the Yabloko leader, Igor Lebedev, says people in the Northwest are tired of politics and do not even read national papers anymore, either because of the cost or because they are fed up with Moscow.
Governor Titov said he thought that people were tired of the same old opposition candidates. "Zyuganov and Yavlinsky have been around a long time," he said. "Newer faces should appear, or people will get sick of going to the polls."
In Bolshaya Glushitsa, party workers like Liliya Murza, 32, who built an eight-member team to campaign door to door last fall for the reform-oriented Union of Right Forces party, said they had no time to do it again for the presidential campaign.
Energizing voters who struggle to make ends meet can be daunting. And yet there are exceptions, highly motivated people like Konstantin Mokshin, 77, a feisty beekeeper who sells honey in the local market. He shocked the town with his bold financial intervention into the fall campaign. Wildly enthusiastic about the local Communist candidate for Parliament, he marched down to the village bank and withdrew most of his life savings, about $425, and donated it to the candidate to help him fight the "cheaters" and "crooks."
The bank teller thought Mr. Mokshin had gone crazy -- and said so -- and then talked him into withdrawing only two-thirds of his money.
Mr. Mokshin stands on one good leg, like a soldier for the local Communist Party committee.
A veteran of the ferocious Battle of Stalingrad in World War II, he was disabled by the bullet that took his left leg shortly after. He and Ms. Chechenkova, who share a house, were not happy with the Yeltsin era. This was not just because of all the sex on television, a particular peeve shared by many used to the public puritanism of Soviet times, but really because they have not seen a leader they admire since the days of Roosevelt and Stalin.
"At the local school, they used to hang pictures of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War," Mr. Mokshin said, gesturing with still powerful hands over a dinner table laid with homemade butter, fresh-baked bread and honey from the hives stored under the house for winter. "My picture was among those at the school," he added. "Now they have pulled them all down. They don't respect the heroes anymore."
Ms. Chechenkova, alluding to the blatant corruption of the Yeltsin administration, said: "I heard in other countries when people do something wrong in office, they resign and go away. But here they stay in office and just keep stealing."
Mr. Mokshin's life savings are now less than $200, which he and Ms. Chechenkova would like to hold on to. But he seems capable of impulsively throwing his money behind the Communists once more. "I am going to vote for Zyuganov," he declared, "because he is trying to protect ordinary people."
Mr. Putin, he added scornfully, is just "the lowest card from Yeltsin's deck."
In Gadzhiyevo, the Navy has been cutting old nuclear attack submarines in half and towing the sealed reactor compartments to an old fishing village on Sayda Bay, just west of here, since 1990. It appears to be uncontested that the compartments are more prone to radiation leakage with each passing year. Fleet commanders have been planning to build the foundations of a permanent storage site up on the hillside above the present anchorage, and that has set off the local revolt.
The navy has not disclosed how large the permanent site would be or how many of the 100 nuclear submarines mothballed in the fleet might end up there in storage waiting, perhaps for decades, for decommissioning and final disposal of the highly radioactive spent fuel in their reactors.
"You are an American -- would you allow a radioactive burial site in your town?" Mr. Burakov asked a foreign visitor.
He and Mr. Musatyan, the ex-submarine officers who have mobilized the city against the navy, are the only two Communist Party members on the nine-member City Council, a majority of whom support having the referendum on the waste dump.
In the glory days of the fleet, the two men were no ordinary officers aboard the nuclear submarines that sailed -- and still sail -- from here. They were Zampolit officers, or political commissars. They were in charge of maintaining strict Communist Party discipline among the crews, whose task it might be to fire nuclear warheads against American cities or other targets.
In the event of nuclear war, the Zampolit officers were said to share with the captain the responsibility to authorize the launchings of the nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles from the steel tubes welded into the belly of the Soviet "boomers."
In taking on the navy, the city elders have taken some risks, as was evident when an officer of the Federal Security Service unsuccessfully sought to prevent a meeting outside the city gates between City Council members and a foreign reporter to discuss the referendum.
The security officer declared the area closed to foreigners, not only the city, but also the road that leads to it from Murmansk, the provincial capital. As a result, the former submarine officers and several supporters drove five miles outside the city and stopped along an empty stretch of highway, where they explained their opposition to the navy's plans in a roadside interview.
"This is the first time I have heard of people from the naval community actually challenging the fleet," said Thomas Nilsen, a senior researcher with the Bellona Foundation in Norway, an environmental group that is working with Russia to solve problems with nuclear waste. "The whole history of the last decade has been that the people living in these closed cities just take orders from the navy. I think this is extremely positive."
It is far from clear whether the navy will pay attention to the March 26 referendum. But the civilian challenge has already forced provincial leaders in Murmansk to organize the first environmental studies on the proposed storage site.
As Communists, they see no paradox in the democratic tactics they have employed to rally the voters here. Indeed, their remarks convey a sense of dragging Communism back to its activist roots, before power ossified the ideology and many of those who professed to act in its name.
"Do you think that Communists don't care about people?" Mr. Musatyan asked.
"We are Communists," Mr. Burakov added. "In fact, I am the secretary of the local Communist Party committee. But we are not doing this because we are Communists. We are doing it because it is the best thing for the future of our town."
---
Russian FM To Visit U.S. In April
Russia Today
Feb 23, 2000
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=137097
MOSCOW, -- (Agence France Presse) Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov will visit the United States in April, Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Ivanov said in an interview published Tuesday in the Novye Izvestia daily.
The top security advisor, who was himself in Washington last week, said Ivanov's visit would come once the Russian presidential elections were finished.
In the interview Ivanov said he was "optimistic" the strategic arms reduction treaty (START II) would be approved by Russia's parliament, the Duma.
The ratification of START II and texts related to the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty are to be discussed in the Duma on March 21, the head of the parliament's foreign affairs commission, Dmitri Rogozine, said Tuesday.
The debate will be behind closed doors, he said, adding that progress on START II would depend on Washington's position on the ABM treaty.
START II, which stipulates reductions in nuclear warheads to 3,000 for Russia and 3,500 for the United States, was signed in 1993 by then president Boris Yeltsin and US President Bill Clinton.
It was ratified by the US Senate in 1996, but Russian lawmakers opposed to the treaty have so far prevented ratification by the Duma.
The US is seeking to revise the 1972 ABM treaty in light of its plans to develop a national missile defense system, a move opposed by Moscow.
Under the ABM Treaty, each side is allowed to deploy an anti-missile defense system around just one part of its territory, but a nationwide missile defense system is not allowed. ((c) 2000 Agence France Presse)
--------taiwan
Taiwan, Brushing Off Threats, Tells Chinese to Be Practical
New York Times
February 23, 2000
By ERIK ECKHOLM
Related Article
U.S. Rejects China's Taiwan Views
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/022300china-taiwan-us.html
TAIPEI, Feb. 22 -- Unbowed by China's latest threat of force, Taiwan called on the mainland today to set aside fruitless debates over sovereignty and resume talks over economic ties and other practical matters to improve relations. "We call ourselves a sovereign country and if they don't like it, they'll have to live with it," said Su Chi, chairman of the cabinet-level Mainland Affairs Council, in an interview. "They call us a province and we don't like it, but we live with it."
"The Taiwan problem is not solvable by force or the threat of force," he said.
Mr. Su spoke in response to a policy paper issued by China on Monday that repeated longstanding warnings of military action should Taiwan formally declare independence but added for the first time that Beijing might resort to force if the island endlessly puts off talks on political unification. Beijing has considered Taiwan a breakaway province since Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces, defeated by Mao Zedong's Communists, fled to the island in 1949.
China's stern report came less than one month before Taiwan's presidential elections and appears intended to impress on the candidates and voters that China's patience is running thin. It did not set down a timetable or ultimatum, but railed against what it termed the separatist scheming of Taiwan's president, Lee Teng-hui, who is not running for re-election, and condemned American arms sales to the island.
Among the public here, reactions to China's latest warning ranged from anger to indifference. But the prospect of new tensions caused the Taiwan stock market to slump, dipping more than 4 percent at one point before intervention by a special stabilizing fund held the day's loss to 1.8 percent.
China's report, and Taiwan's ripostes today, repeated familiar arguments in which seemingly minor rhetorical differences reflect crucial divisions over basic principles.
For the Taiwanese, who are proud of their advanced economy and democracy, embedded in China's offer of "one country, two systems" is an utterly unacceptable assumption: that Beijing heads the true national government and that Taiwan -- even if granted remarkable autonomy -- is merely one of its provinces.
"We cannot negotiate on the basis that theirs is a sovereign country while ours is a province," Mr. Su said. "We're not electing a governor here," he said, referring to the March 18 elections.
"We're electing a president, and they have to face it."
He repeated previous invitations to resume talks on trade and communications links, on a treaty to prevent use of force and on other practical issues, noting that a large majority in Taiwan is not ready to take the political leap that China demands.
"If the People's Republic of China thinks the time is right to reunify China, to bring Taiwan into its fold, they are miscalculating," he said. "The Taiwanese people don't want to declare independence, but they don't want unification now either."
Mindful of China's threats of war, all three leading candidates in the presidential election here have already declared their desire to resume talks with the mainland and foster closer economic ties. China angrily halted a tentative dialogue last summer after President Lee said Taiwan would meet only on a "state to state" basis -- a formulation that China considers tantamount to declaring independence.
---
Taiwan's Election, China's Future
New York Times
February 23, 2000
By TIMOTHY GARTON ASH
http://www.nytimes.com/00/02/23/oped/23ash.html
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The light from thousands of red and yellow paper lanterns caught the eyes of porcelain dragons at the Lungshan Temple as people crowded a few days ago to burn "golden money," at 30 cents a bundle, in a tall ornamental furnace. Some asked for blessings in the new year from Kuanyin, the goddess of mercy; others bowed to the red-faced statue of a long-ago Chinese general, known as the god Kuan Kung.
Prayers at the temple were for peace and safety, but in Beijing, today's red-faced generals are talking of war. As Taiwan begins a campaign to elect a new president, China's state council has issued an official white paper threatening the use of force if Taiwan is not prepared to enter negotiations about "reunification." And the Taiwan candidate causing the greatest worry in Beijing is an opposition leader, Chen Shui-bian.
At an election rally I attended in a town just outside Taipei, Mr. Chen began his speech with themes that would be entirely familiar to any Western voter: welfare, education, housing, transport. He hardly mentioned relations with mainland China. But much of his support comes from forces Beijing is not used to dealing with -- upstart opponents of the Kuomintang party that has ruled Taiwan since being forced into exile there by the Communists in 1948.
These people, hungry for democracy and a chance to share in their own government, may be political enemies of Beijing's enemies, but they are not likely to be Beijing's friends. At the rally, I saw Mr. Chen's vice-presidential candidate appealing with unabashed populism to Taiwanese resentment of "the mainlanders" -- a reference to the Kuomintang, but hardly a comfort to the new mainlanders now looking east.
The last time the people of Taiwan went to the polls to elect a president, in 1996, the Chinese fired missiles over the straits that separate Taiwan from the mainland, and the United States sent warships in response. For a moment, it felt like a new Cuban missile crisis in the Far East.
This time around, a high-level United States delegation has been in Beijing, mainly to restore relations after NATO's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, but also to try to ensure that nothing like the saber-rattling of 1996 happens again. Yet now something very similar does seem to be happening, as the big brother across the strait shamelessly tries to intimidate Taiwan.
In an interview with the Washington Post published before the Chinese white paper was issued, the presidential candidate of Taiwan's Kuomintang, Lien Chan, warned of the danger of "foreign invasion" if he was not elected. The implication was that a vote in his favor would keep Red China happy -- an odd promise at first glance. The Kuomintang, after all, is the Communists' old enemy from the chinese civil war. This was the party that claimed, while ruling Taiwan in a brutal dictatorship, to be the one true China and kept up the pretense, with American protection, for decades.
Yet all the while Taiwan was developing its own, separate identity, at least superficially on a thoroughly American model. And it is that evolution, rather than the old stalemate with the nationalists, that makes the Communists really angry. What made China furiously denounce Taiwan's president, Lee Teng-hui, last summer was his statement that relations between Taiwan and China are "special state-to-state relations," implying that Taiwan was a separate state.
Now Mr. Lien, Mr. Lee's chosen successor, is playing down the state-to-state formula. "We won't rock the boat," he told me in his Washington English. And while Beijing's favorite candidate in Taiwan's election is James Soong, who left the Kuomintang in order to stand as an independent, clearly it would prefer Mr. Lien to Chen Shui-bian.
It is Mr. Chen who has the greatest potential to advance the consolidation of democracy in Taiwan. As democratic institutions have grown since the end of martial law in 1987, Mr. Chen's Democratic Progressive Party, too, has grown.
It is one of those parties you encounter in countries that have emerged from long dictatorships -- one in which every second member seems to have been a political prisoner under the old, repressive regime. At a reception, I met a legislator who had served 11 years in prison. A former party chairman who did 25 years is called "Taiwan's Mandela." Chen Shui-bian, who was a defense lawyer for opposition activists, served eight months on a trumped-up charge.
Most of these opposition leaders are deeply committed to democracy. But many are also Taiwanese nationalists, anxious to realize the aspirations of the native Taiwanese majority so long frustrated by the mainlanders who elbowed them aside in 1948. In their hearts, they would probably like full independence for Taiwan, as a separate, internationally recognized, fully sovereign state. Both commitments -- to full-blooded democracy and to a separate Taiwan -- make them especially hateful to Beijing.
In his proclaimed China policy, Mr. Chen is almost as conciliatory and pragmatic as his rivals. His supporters argue to me that China will actually find it easier to deal with the "hard-liner" Chen -- just as they found Richard Nixon easier to work with than the Democrats. Only a man with Mr. Chen's Taiwanese nationalist credentials, they say, can make the necessary concessions to China without fear of being accused of treachery. Perhaps, but Beijing doesn't seem to see it that way.
The Chinese threat could lead wavering Taiwan voters to play safe and vote once again for the Kuomintang, or for the China-friendly Mr. Soong. But such obvious bullying could also inflame Taiwanese sentiments against the mainland and the mainlanders, winning support for Mr. Chen.
When the shouting's over, everyone knows that, realistically, Taiwan's future for a long time to come will be neither unification with the mainland nor full acknowledgment of itself as an independent nation, but rather to continue with what Mr. Chen calls a "third way." Yet certainly a change of party at the top would help to dismantle the remaining undemocratic vestiges of the Kuomintang's one-party state.
Even if this meant choppier relations with Beijing in the short term, it would be good for the world, too, in the long term. With all its faults, Taiwan is already something remarkable: the first democracy in 5,000 years of Chinese history. If it goes well, it will be a small positive example to the larger nation that constitutes one fifth of humankind.
Timothy Garton Ash, a fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford, is the author, most recently, of "History of the Present: Essays, Sketches and Dispatches from Europe in the 1990's."
---
Presidential Candidates in Taiwan Stake Out Their Turf in Interviews
New York Times
February 23, 2000
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/00/02/23/late/23cnd-taiwan.html
TAIPEI, Feb. 23 -- The eminent industrialist made his prediction with confidence: A victory by the opposition party's candidate in presidential elections next month would cause a disastrous crash in the Taiwan stock market, no question about it, because investors fearing hostilities with China would yank out their money.
The speaker, in an interview today, was Kao Ching-yuen -- chairman of Taiwan's National Federation of Industries, chief executive of the giant President Group conglomerate and, not coincidentally, a leader of the Nationalist Party that has ruled Taiwan for half a century and now faces possible defeat.
Mr. Kao's warning of economic catastrophe, if extreme, was one of many dire predictions by political opponents who say the election of Chen Shui-bian on March 18 would cause dangerous tensions, and perhaps war, with China.
Mr. Chen's Democratic Progressive Party has, from its founding in the 1980's, called for Taiwan's formal independence -- which China calls a cause for war.
But the Party has recently moderated that stance, hoping to ease fears in Beijing and Washington and broaden its electoral appeal.
Speculation about China's view of Mr. Chen intensified after China warned in a report this week that any step toward formal independence, or even an indefinite delay in negotiations toward reunification, could lead to a military attack. The report did not directly discuss Mr. Chen or his party.
The warnings about China's possible reactions and the questions about the sincerity of his conversion are a source of endless exasperation for Mr. Chen. In truth, he argued in an interview today, perhaps only his party can -- in the manner of the fervently anti-Communist Nixon's historic opening to China -- reach a lasting accord with the mainland.
"I'm a peacemaker, not a troublemaker," he insisted, his voice croaking from incessant campaigning. His basic position, and his rationale for backing away from his original, harder line, is that since Taiwan is already an independent state in practice, there is no need to codify its status.
In practice, that leaves his policy little different from that of the governing Party of President Lee Teng-hui, although the Nationalists still pay lip service to a distant goal of unifying in some way with the mainland.
Though dogged by fears that his victory would provoke a crisis, Mr. Chen has a good chance of winning in the race against Lien Chan of the Nationalist Party and James Soong, a longtime Nationalist who is running independently and hence dividing the party's traditional large vote.
In his doomsday prediction today, Mr. Kao, the Nationalist and industry chief, was remarkably specific: right after Mr. Chen's election, he said, the stock market would plummet to one-third of its current level.
"Many people will wire part of their money out of Taiwan just to play it safe," said Mr. Kao, charging that Mr. Chen, 49, and his colleagues are too young and inexperienced to guide Taiwan safely.
And who can be sure, he and other critics ask, that once in office they won't let their true pro-independence colors show?
Told of the dire economic prediction, Mr. Chen smiled and recalled that opponents had made similar efforts to "terrorize people," as he put it, in 1994, when he made his successful run for Mayor of Taipei.
"The day after I won, the stock market actually rose by hundreds of points," he said. Mr. Chen then, as he has hundreds of times in recent months in speeches and interviews and meetings with foreign diplomats, rattled off the new policies he and his party have adopted to prevent unnecessary trouble with China.
If elected, he said, he would not try to write Taiwan's sovereign status as a "state" into the Constitution.
He would not, as the party once promised, call a referendum on Taiwan's future or to change its official name from the Republic of China to Republic of Taiwan; only if Taiwan is attacked, he said, would he ask the public to consider such basic changes.
And as a first step toward smoother relations with the mainland, Mr. Chen said, he would -- subject to national security concerns -- ease the current Government's restrictions on direct shipping, transportation and communications across the straits, and on large-scale investment projects in the mainland.
Removing obstacles to cross-straits commerce, which is already huge despite them, has been a prime goal of Beijing, which seeks by any means to enmesh Taiwan more deeply in its fold.
For the same reason, and to hold back a bargaining chip for future negotiations, Taiwan's Government has maintained the restrictions.
But now, in part because of the rising impatience of Taiwan's own businessmen and the Democratic Progressive Party's unexpected willingness to make concessions, all the candidates here have pledged to nurture deeper economic ties to China.
Mr. Kao, the industrialist, made it clear today that he has never been happy about his own party's restrictive policy.
"We just want to pursue trade and investment," he said of Taiwan's businessmen. "We hope politics won't have any impact."
This evening, the powerful industry association led by Mr. Kao announced that he would travel to Beijing soon after the March elections to discuss improving economic ties.
He is certain to be feted by senior Chinese leaders.
Mr. Chen and his party, even with their economic olive branch, may be a hard sell in Beijing.
The Chinese may prefer almost anyone to President Lee, who has riled them by bluntly asserting that Taiwan is sovereign and equal and that the two sides should talk on a "state-to-state" basis.
But Mr. Chen is unlikely to pretend, as the Nationalists have, that he is negotiating toward a long-term goal of "one China."
"We do not oppose talking about it," he said today, "but 'one China' should not be a pre-condition." In any future negotiations with China, he said, the two sides must meet "on an equal status," and without any preconditions about the outcome.
Some artful finessing of concepts may be needed for China to agree to talk on those terms. But, realistically or not, Mr. Chen said he sees a chance to overcome deeply rooted enmities.
"The recent cross-straits tensions," he said, "originate in the historical hatred between the Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party."
"They can only be ended by a Party without that burden," he said.
"Just as Nixon could open up to China," he said, "we feel that the Democratic Progressive Party could play a similar role, opening up a new chapter in relations with mainland China."
---
New Tension Over Taiwan
New York Times
February 23, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/00/02/23/editorial/23wed2.html
A dangerous pattern is emerging in the troubled relations across the Taiwan Strait. During Taiwan's last presidential campaign, in 1996, China test-fired missiles over waters close to the island's major cities to protest what it saw as a drift toward independence. Now, with a new campaign under way, Beijing is again trying to intimidate Taiwanese voters and push the island's next leaders into early reunification talks on the mainland's terms.
China was wrong this week to threaten to use force against Taiwan if the island's leaders take too long to agree to reunite with the mainland. By coupling that threat with an attempt to deflect the blame to Washington for increasing military tensions over Taiwan, Beijing may have damaged its chances of winning Congressional backing for China's entry into the World Trade Organization.
Unlike some of the past crises stirred up by the provocative actions of Taiwan's departing president, Lee Teng-hui, the blame for this flare-up lies squarely with Beijing. Taiwan's three leading presidential candidates have tried to mute the independence issue, and all three favor early talks with the mainland. Most of the world, and most Taiwanese, acknowledge the principle that Taiwan and the mainland are part of a single China that should ultimately be reunited.
But there are vital differences on how and when reunification should take place. The United States, which recognizes the Communist government in Beijing as the sole government of China, rightly insists that reunification be achieved by peaceful means. Beijing, however, has consistently asserted its right to settle the question by force. When China underscored that threat with missile tests in 1996, it created an anti-mainland backlash among Taiwanese voters and damaged Beijing's relations with the United States. The mainland could again hurt its own interests if it fails to show greater restraint.
Taiwan's presidential race is a tight three-way affair between the candidate of the ruling Nationalist Party, Lien Chan; a dissident nationalist, James Soong; and the candidate of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party, Chen Shui-bian. Although Mr. Chen's party has traditionally called for an independent Taiwan, he has deliberately stepped back from that position, promising that if elected, he would not seek formal independence. This caution reflects the general sense on Taiwan that President Lee needlessly provoked the mainland with his politicized 1995 visit to the United States and his 1999 declaration that Taiwan would henceforth negotiate with China only if Beijing acknowledged it as an equal state.
Over five decades, a relatively stable arrangement has evolved that allows Taiwan and the mainland to maintain separate political and economic systems as part of a larger, single China. That understanding has served both sides well and preserved peace. This is no time for Beijing to threaten to overturn it.
-------- israel
Israel Gets U.S. Nuke Technology
Associated Press
By SARI BASHI
February 23, 2000
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel and the United States signed agreements today that will give Israeli scientists access to some types of U.S. nuclear technology.
The access had previously been denied because Israel refuses to sign the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, putting it on a U.S. list of sensitive'' countries. The treaty would have mandated international inspection of Israel's desert reactor in Dimona, where it is believed to keep a sophisticated nuclear arsenal.
It is a signal that Israel is a friendly country,'' visiting U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson told a news conference. It is not treated in a similar fashion as others on our list of sensitive countries.''
The agreements will increase cooperation between Israeli and U.S. scientists in 25 nuclear and non-nuclear areas, from particle theory to applications aimed at preventing proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, assistant Energy Secretary Rose Gottemoeller said.
She said there was no risk of Israeli scientists obtaining access to U.S. nuclear weapons technology. The projects Israel would get access to will be strictly nonsensitive,'' she said.
The agreements will give Israeli scientists an exemption from the extensive background checks and reviews that scientists from other sensitive'' countries like Russia or India must undergo before working in U.S. Energy Department labs.
Richardson said the cooperation, outlined in a joint letter with Israeli Atomic Commission Director Gideon Frank, would help the United States use Israeli technology to monitor nuclear programs by other countries.
Gottemoeller said Israel's experience working with immigrant scientists from the former Soviet Union would help the United States work with the Russian nuclear establishment.
Other fields of cooperation include seismology, solar energy, volcanology and energy research.
The two countries also signed an agreement to expand energy cooperation, particularly in the field of solar energy and electric and hybrid vehicles. The United States pledged +ACQ-1 million in funding for a pilot project using Israeli solar technology to supply energy to Egypt.
Israel maintains a policy of ambiguity about its nuclear weapons program, saying only that it will not be the first to introduce them in the Middle East.
AP-NY-02-22-00 0913ES
----------- japan
Y-12 engineer talks about Tokyo accident
by Larisa Brass
Oak Ridger staff
Wednesday, February 23, 2000
There's nothing new or unusual about the circumstances that triggered a nuclear accident at a nuclear fuel plant in Tokai, Japan, last September, killing one man and exposing several more to severe doses of radiation.
"People made mistakes," said Richard Taylor, a nuclear criticality engineer at the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant. "That's a common feature in all the accidents that have occurred."
What is different about the incident, he said, was Japan's lack of preparation for and response to it.
Taylor spoke about the accident Tuesday evening to members of the Oak Ridge/Knoxville Section of the American Nuclear Society. The meeting was held at the Garden Plaza Hotel.
Although Taylor himself did not visit Japan following the accident, he has been there before, he said, and has followed the story closely.
"There are a limited number of people who do that sort of work," said Taylor. "And we tend to be a small, close-knit group of workers."
At the meeting Taylor offered some historical perspective on the incident.
History records 59 nuclear criticality accidents, he said. Criticality is caused by a nuclear chain reaction that takes place outside its intended source, such as a bomb or a nuclear reactor.
Five of those accidents have taken place in Oak Ridge, according to Taylor, all between 1954 and 1968. The accident in Japan stands out as a first for the country and one of the rare accidents to occur in the past 20 years.
The accident, said Taylor, shocked a nation that was unprepared for it.
"Reading the official report," he said, "I think the Japanese were amazed that this accident occurred."
Over 40 government agencies were involved in the response to the crisis, he said, essentially tripping over one other in the absence of an official plan for the emergency.
The agency charged with regulating the nuclear industry did not conduct regular inspections before the accident, said Taylor, and the process used by the workers at the time of the accident had not been approved by government regulators.
And the industry itself has historically shown little initiative to train its "worker bees" in health and safety practices, he said. "They're not told things, other than 'Do this,'" said Taylor. And the plant did not have a nuclear criticality alarm system.
The accident was caused by a shortcut that workers took to enrich uranium for use in an experimental nuclear reactor. The employees had enriched six batches of fuel before the accident happened, he said. As they poured the seventh and last batch, criticality occurred.
Taylor said from anecdotal evidence he has heard, "Apparently the workers had not been told of some of the potential hazards" in their method.
In other ways, however, the Japanese response to the accident has been more extreme than the reaction in the West would be, said Taylor.
The president of the company has resigned and apologized to the nation. If he had not done so, Taylor said, he would have suffered complete social disgrace. Not even your grocer, he said, would speak to you. And, he said, the plant will likely never operate again.
---
WEAKENED CONCRETE USED IN MIHAMA-3,
... and possibly in other reactors too
Sat, 19 Feb 2000 13:08:26 +0900,
MagpieNews #000219a
From: hosokawk@cc.saga-u.ac.jp (Hosokawk)
http://www.asahi.com/english/asahi/0218/asahi021801.html
In a stunning Page One scoop article on the Asahi Shimbun (the major quality newspaper in Japanese) yesterday, it was reported that weakened concrete had been deliberately used in the construction of Kansai Electric Power Co's Mih ama unit 3 reactor (PWR, 826MW) in Mihama Town, Fukui Prefecture, north of K yoto.
Concrete for the reactor containment building was watered down in order to m ake construction work easier, quicker and cheeper. The Asahi researchers con vincingly point out that the site engineers were aware of the practice.
------
Nuclear leak worse than first feared
More than 400 were exposed to radiation in Japan
Jonathan Watts in Tokyo
Wednesday February 2, 2000
The Guardian
http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/international/story/0%2C3604%2C131299%2C00.html
Japan's worst nuclear accident exposed nearly five times as many people to radiation as was originally thought, the government said yesterday.
The sharp upward revision of the impact of the uncontrolled chain reaction on September 30 is a fresh blow to public confidence in a nuclear industry that has suffered a series of accidents and cover-ups over the past few years.
Japan's science and technology agency revealed that 439 people were exposed to neutron rays during the 20 hours in which the nuclear fission took place at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, 80 miles northeast of Tokyo.
In its initial report, the agency said only 69 people were affected. The accident occurred when plant workers used buckets to mix nearly eight times the correct amount of condensed uranium.
According to the agency's revised figures, the resulting fission exposed 119 residents, plant workers and emergency service staff to more than one millisievert of radiation, which is the annual permissible level.
It is the first time that an accident in Japan has affected more than 100 people to such an extent.
One worker who battled to halt the chain reaction suffered as much as 38 millisieverts and ambulance crews who arrived without being told they were visiting a nuclear accident site were exposed to high levels of radiation.
The agency played down the health implications of its findings, saying that the risks of cancer only increased significantly with a dose of more than 50 millisieverts. It said the revised figures were higher because the later assessment included local residents.
"This makes the number look bigger than the original figures we reported," an agency official told reporters.
Anti-nuclear groups, however, said the data under played the seriousness of the accident.
"We still don't think this is an accurate figure. It doesn't include any people passing through the area at the time or those who were working in nearby fields," said Kazue Suzuki of Greenpeace Japan.
The average incidence of leukaemia is 0.66% in Japan. According to the International Commission of Radiological Protection, the risk increases by 0.05 points for every 10 millisieverts of exposure.
The new figures are likely to add to public concern about the safety of the nuclear industry. Since the chain reaction, several local governments have halted or cancelled nuclear energy projects.
In the atmosphere of increased safety consciousness, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd has lost contracts as a punishment for supplying reprocessed fuel with falsified safety data.
Health officials have offered to monitor 120 people affected by radiation.
-------- russia
Russia to Use Nuclear Arms If Existence Threatened
Wednesday February 23 3:51 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000223/wl/russia_nuclear_1.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A senior Russian security official said Thursday that the country's new military doctrine made it clear Moscow would not launch nuclear weapons first but would use them if its existence was threatened.
The full military doctrine, approved by the influential advisory body the Security Council at the start of this month, has not yet been published in full.
Earlier versions, reported in the media, raised fears of a more aggressive tone toward the West.
But Security Council chairman Sergei Ivanov told ORT public television that the doctrine, a more detailed document than an overarching national security concept, approved in January, was ''fairly peace-loving.''
``Russia has never said and does not say now that it will use nuclear weapons first but at the same time Russia does not say that it will not use nuclear weapons if it suffers a full scale aggression that leads to a clear threat of the destruction of Russia and its existence,'' Ivanov said.
``On the other hand, all of Russia's military doctrine, the state of its army and its weapons show that Russia is not an aggressor and does not intend to be one,'' he said.
Acting President Vladimir Putin has to approve the military doctrine, expected to happen next month, after which it is expected to be published.
---
RUSSIA TO CONTINUE PRODUCING PLUTONIUM IN SIBERIA
Agence France Presse
From: Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>
MOSCOW, Feb 23, 2000 -- Production of plutonium in a Siberian reactor cannot be stopped despite an accord to halt all manufacture of the radioactive substance by this year, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.
The Krasnoyarsk reactor will have to keep on manufacturing the element until 2004 due to the United States' failure to pay up the agreed money for the plant's reconversion, the plant's chief Vassily Jidkov told the agency.
Russia signed a deal with the United States in September 1997, pledging to end production of plutonium for nuclear warheads in the three reactors in exchange for U.S. financial aid to convert the factories for other uses.
The agreement was signed in September 1997 by US Vice-President Al Gore and then Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.
Washington has insisted for its part that it will honor the deal, and that talks are underway to determine the money to be spent.
-----
Date: 25-FEB-2000 10:27:11
From: wheezin2@aol.com
Old, but worth repeating. Russia's still having a yard sale on nukes. I'm trying to get a copy of this magazine, it has a cutaway drawing of one of our weapons, showing the Be components. Glenn
Source: U.S. News & World Report, Oct 23, 1995 v119 n16 p56(9). Title: The Russian connection. (illegal sale of beryllium and other nuclear materials by organized crime syndicates) (includes related article on crime in Yekaterinburg, Russia)(Cover Story) Author: Tim Zimmermann and Alan Cooperman Abstract: Lithuanian investigators investigated alleged smuggling actions and uncovered 4.4 tons of beryllium that was to be sold to an unknown buyer. The case involved the Russian mafia, which took possession of the radioactive product, but was prevented from selling it after it was uncovered. Subjects: Organized crime - Russia Organized crime investigation - Russia Beryllium - Investigations Radioactive wastes - Investigations SIC code: 3339 Magazine Collection: 81F1351 Business Collection: 89Z1739 Electronic Collection: A17600177 RN: A17600177
Full Text COPYRIGHT 1995 U.S. News and World Report Inc.
The end was breathtaking. For four decades, the world lived under the threat of nuclear holocaust. Then the Berlin Wall fell. The Soviet Union came next. Suddenly, superpower missiles were no longer targeted at cities. The prospect of Armageddon dimmed.
Nuclear nightmares do not die, however; they change. From the chilling cold war doctrine of mutually assured destruction comes a new nuclear paradox. Instead of a hostile Soviet superpower, with nuclear weapons under tight totalitarian control, the world now confronts a new, more benign Russia. Yet the new Russia is, in some ways, more dangerous than the old. It is a place where chaos is a constant, where old safeguards are eroding or already have fallen away, where nuclear know-how and materials are suddenly for sale.
If there is an abiding irony in Russia today, it is this: that the new order impoverishes the old nuclear gatekeepers while offering quick riches to those who can pass them by. It is capitalism, Wild East style. The desperate physicist, the scheming janitor, the corrupt security guard--these are worrisome enough. But the real nightmare scenario involves Russia's ruthless organized-crime syndicates and corrupt government officials working in league to create new markets for nuclear materials, a bazaar with some of the world's most dangerous weapons on offer, a place where savvy buyers will know to come calling. "Any organized, sophisticated criminal group that has the networks of international distribution, which can get access to these materials and connect them with the right buyer," says FBI Director Louis Freeh, "is a grave and immediate threat."
The danger is here. As a result of Freeh's initiative, the FBI has been working with Russian police in an undercover operation targeting Russian organized-crime groups trying to sell nuclear materials. The challenge is big, the stakes could not be higher--as this story makes clear.
THE STUFF IN THE BASEMENT
When it came in, the tip was not altogether surprising. The time was May 1993, the place Vilnius, the sleepy capital of Lithuania. For months, there had been whispered hints that a strange shipment, a consignment of great value, was moving around the picturesque Baltic nation. The hints had been followed by violence. A mob war had swept like brush fire through the streets of Klaipeda, Lithuania's busiest port, its gateway to the world. At the time, Joseph Rimkevicius (pronounced Rim-KEV-i-chuss), the chief of the organized-crime section of the Lithuanian police, couldn't figure it out. After conversations with several informants, however, the burly detective understood things more clearly: A Lithuanian crime group had tried to extort a cut of some big-money smuggling action. But they had erred badly. They had tried to muscle a tougher crime syndicate, one unprepared to roll over and make payoffs. After the shootings and bombings were over in Klaipeda, 10 men were dead.
Rimkevicius was wary. Something other than the usual cigarette-and-vodka scam was afoot. The anonymous tip might explain what that something was. The caller suggested that detectives might want to take a look in the basement storage rooms of the capital's largest bank, the Lithuanian Joint-Stock Innovation Bank. A man of action, Rimkevicius was eager to do just that.
Within days, using a bomb threat as a pretext, a team of Rimkevicius's detectives descended on the bank. Backed by heavily armed Lithuanian special-forces troops, the detectives began rooting through the building's hushed vaults. Rimkevicius left no corner unexplored. In the deepest recesses of the bank's basement, the squad hit pay dirt: 27 wooden crates, each stenciled with peculiar Russian markings.
Eagerly, the detectives pried open the crates. Inside, they discovered thousands of oddly shaped parts, machined from an unfamiliar gunmetal-gray substance. Shipping papers said the weird-looking ingots were beryllium, and that there were 4.4 tons of the stuff stashed in the Vilnius bank and one other bank located in Kaunas, another Lithuanian city.
In Vilnius, then abroad, alarm bells rang. Strong and light, beryllium is a valuable commodity. On the open market, sold legally, it goes for more than $600 a kilo. It is used in missile-guidance systems, high-performance aircraft and precision optical components. It is nuclear scientists and weapons designers who really prize the stuff. Beryllium is a great neutron reflector. That makes it a critical material for building a more efficient nuclear warhead or a smaller nuclear reactor (box, Page 61).
What the beryllium in the bank vault was to be used for and who put it there were questions for which Rimkevicius had no answers. But one of his investigators, Romas Rinkevicius, soon knew the police were in for a wild ride. Forensic scientists had been called in to examine the beryllium as it sat in the vault. Suddenly their Geiger counters began chattering like crickets. The stuff, it seemed, was radioactive. Not so radioactive that Rinkevicius feared for his safety--"I'm bald already," he joked--but radioactive nevertheless.
The beryllium seizure was significant. For the past three years, as evidence of nuclear-related smuggling out of the former Soviet Union has mounted, authorities in Russia and the United States have argued that it is largely an amateurs' game, played by plant workers and other small fry haphazardly pocketing materials in hopes of making some easy cash. Maj. Gen. Andrei Terekhov, the head of the Russian Interior Ministry directorate responsible for guarding nuclear facilities, reaffirmed that view at a Moscow news conference earlier this month. "It is impossible," General Terekhov said, "to speak of the existence of mafiya groups specializing in the theft of radioactive materials."
The impossible has happened. A five-month investigation by U.S. News and CBS's "60 Minutes" provides irrefutable proof that Russian organized crime was behind the mysterious shipment of beryllium seized by police in Lithuania. It is the first hard evidence that Russian crime syndicates have attempted to smuggle nuclear-related materials from the former Soviet Union. The trail of the smuggled beryllium wound from Moscow to Yekaterinburg in Russia's Sverdlovsk region, through Vilnius and ultimately to Switzerland, where a mystery buyer was prepared to pay $24 million for the shipment--about 10 times the legitimate market rate. Relying on interviews in six countries and shipping documents and business contracts in Russia and Lithuania, the investigation found that:
The export of the beryllium was handled by a trading firm that police officials have linked to a powerful Russian mafiya. Payment for the deal was guaranteed by a Moscow-based karate club through its director general, a Sverdlovsk native who has never been convicted of a crime but whom Russian police interviewed in connection with the beryllium shipment and consider to be a racketeer. In 1994, after the beryllium shipment, the man was promoted to deputy governor of the Sverdlovsk region and appointed its chief representative to the Russian Federation.
The beryllium shipment originated at a restricted nuclear research facility, the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering in the city of Obninsk, located some 60 miles from Moscow. The purchase order for the beryllium, which came from another nuclear research institute in the Sverdlovsk region, was bogus. In addition to beryllium, the Obninsk facility was home to hundreds of kilograms of poorly guarded plutonium and highly enriched uranium--the essential fuel for nuclear weapons.
The beryllium was mixed with small amounts of highly enriched uranium. Nine kilograms of radioactive cesium--a substance lethal in even small amounts--were also released by Obninsk to the Russian trading syndicate handling the beryllium transaction. The cesium has since disappeared.
Just before the beryllium was seized in Vilnius, the Russian trading syndicate located an Austrian firm prepared to buy the shipment for $2.7 million. That firm in turn had lined up a buyer in Zurich, who was willing to pay an inflated price of $24 million for the beryllium. An Interpol investigation could not learn the identity of the prospective buyer. But the managing director of the Austrian firm indicated to U.S. News and "60 Minutes" that the Zurich buyer represented Korean interests. At the time, North Korea had a thriving covert program to develop both nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
Contrary to public statements of concern about the problem of proliferation, the government of Boris Yeltsin rejected entreaties from Lithuania's government to take control of the beryllium after it had been seized and frustrated efforts by Washington to find out more about the case. Instead, Moscow argued that the shipment was legal and should be returned to the Sverdlovsk trading firm involved in the transaction. Because Moscow declined to assume responsibility for the beryllium, more than two years after its seizure, the ingots remain in limbo, stuck in the same Vilnius bank vault where they were discovered.
The Lithuanian Institute of Physics is housed in a dilapidated building in the gentle hills outside Vilnius. Like research labs throughout the former Soviet Union, it is staffed by well-trained scientists who now have little work and almost no money. When a truck began delivering crates of beryllium to the institute in the late spring of 1993, Deputy Director Vidmantas Remeikas and Senior Scientist Regimantas Kalinauskas wasted little time plucking the radioactive pieces from the assorted boxes. The total amount of radioactive beryllium came to approximately 141 kilograms. Some of the beryllium pieces were so radioactive that the two scientists first thought they had a really hot load on their hands. "What if all the boxes have such a sample," they remember saying to each other. Subsequent analysis, however, brought the estimate of uranium contamination down to between 100 and 200 grams.
"Thingamabobs." The origin of the beryllium eventually became clear. While nosing through the institute's labs one day, a visiting Russian physicist, Yevgeny Makarov, came across some of the beryllium pieces. He recognized them immediately: They were parts from an experimental reactor he had built while working at Obninsk in 1955. To Makarov, now a professor of physics in Moscow, the fact that some of the beryllium was radioactive was not surprising. As reactor fuel rods were pushed and pulled through holes in the beryllium, he recalls, they would break off or leave deposits of radioactive uranium-235. What was a surprise was coming across the beryllium almost 40 years later in a Lithuanian research lab. "How," Makarov wondered, "did my thingamabobs get here?"
The answer lies in Russia's Sverdlovsk region. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Sverdlovsk has been at the forefront of the many Russian regions struggling to loosen Moscow's grip on their affairs. With its enormous wealth of mineral resources, extensive military-industrial complex and old-boy connections to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, the region has become a hotbed of corrupt capitalism (Page 65). "It is," says Louise Shelley, an expert on Russian organized crime at American University in Washington, D.C., "the gangster capital of Russia."
One of the most popular ways to make money in Sverdlovsk is in commodities. The scheme is simple. Pay for your goods in rubles, then ship them out of the country--legally or illegally--and sell them for dollars. Thanks to the artificially low ruble prices in Russia, profits can be huge.
In the chaotic days following the Soviet Union's collapse, Igor Vladimirovich Rudenko was well placed to take advantage of such opportunities. Deputy commercial director of the Sverdlovsk trading firm ALT Ltd., Rudenko was also chief of the Materials and Technical Supply Department of the local nuclear research institute operated by Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy, known as Minatom. As chief of that department, Rudenko had access to lists detailing all surplus materials available at nuclear facilities throughout the Minatom system.
There is no evidence Rudenko is involved in organized crime, but in early 1992 he and his ALT colleagues decided that they could make some serious money by purchasing surplus beryllium. Rudenko knew from his lists that Minatom's Institute of Physics and Power Engineering in Obninsk had a surplus of 4,000 kilograms of the metal. Before Rudenko could proceed, however, there were a few hitches. First, they needed financial assistance. The beryllium would cost upward of 30 million rubles; ALT had nowhere near that much cash on hand. Money wasn't the only problem, though. As ALT Director Alexander Palvinsky explained to police, the company needed not just any old money but Moscow money. In early 1992, he claimed, movement of money to the Russian capital from outlying regions was being blocked; cash from Moscow would open doors.
Enter Yuri Ivanovich Alexeyev. A prototype of the new Russian capitalist, Alexeyev operates in the gray zone that exists in Russia between the underworld and the official world. Alexeyev states categorically that, as far as his role in the beryllium deal was concerned, "no one has broken the law." He denies any knowledge of where the beryllium ended up and insists that, "within the country, we are allowed to trade any materials that are not on a special control list." He was interrogated by police but not prosecuted.
Alexeyev's is an intriguing tale. He grew up in the Sverdlovsk region and, until last month, was its deputy governor and chief representative to the Russian Federation. According to a Sverdlovsk acquaintance, who spoke nervously about him, Alexeyev got his start in Sverdlovsk running a series of video parlors in the late 1980s. Alexeyev, according to this person, employed karate students he had trained to guard his parlors. Russian police sources say Alexeyev also began a career of "basic racketeering" at the time. According to a Russian police colonel, one of Alexeyev's groups did a lot of business with a man named Oleg Korataev, a professional boxer who was murdered in Brooklyn, N.Y., last year. U.S. law enforcement authorities described the hit as an assassination orchestrated by a Russian mafiya; there is no evidence Alexeyev had any involvement.
In Russia, there are two levels of racketeering. The first is inhabited by street thugs--known as "tattoos," for their extensive prison body art. The tattoos are basically low-level muscle who extort payoffs for protection. Alexeyev was above that, according to Russian police sources, operating at a far more profitable level known as "the roof." This level is peopled by traditional crime bosses, along with some of Russia's new entrepreneurs and the bureaucrats of the old regime possessed of connections, strong stomachs and a driving ambition to make the most of new opportunities to get rich quick. Businesses that deal with these groups are brought under the roof. If they cannot afford to develop their own security forces, protection is provided. More important, they may get connections and access to lucrative contracts--all for a hefty cut, of course, typically about 30 percent and sometimes up to 70 percent of profits.
Links to power. With his many connections, Alexeyev soon emerged as one of the more powerful entrepreneurs in Sverdlovsk. "He is organized crime," says a former police officer there. "But you cannot make money in Russia without breaking the law. So I would not call him simply a criminal. He is a businessman who is forced to break the law and who earns money from his connections to power." Others are more cautious, but not solely because Alexeyev has stayed out of jail. "Of course, I cannot call him a criminal," says a senior Russian police official assigned to organized-crime investigations. "The response would hit me between the eyes."
In the early 1990s, Alexeyev made the move to Moscow and established a number of sports clubs and commodity trading firms. In the new Russia, many sports clubs are considered by police and organized-crime experts to be training venues for security thugs and racketeers. Even Russian mafiosi have started to joke openly about the new phenomenon of "organized sport"; in Russian, the phrase rhymes with "organized crime." "The Soviet Union had a huge number of athletes and athletic organizations," says Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist at the Russian Academy of Sciences. "Society does not need these people after they leave sports. But mafiya organizations do need them."
Alexeyev's flagship sports organization, the Karate-Do Federation of the European-Asian Region, was certainly a full-service outfit. In addition to promoting karate, Article 2 of Karate-Do's registration document lists among its main goals the rather opaque objective of "satisfying the needs of citizens in trade and services." Article 3 is more explicit. It lists the "main activities of the society" as producing and selling consumer goods, construction, tourism, public catering, running video game halls and casinos and consulting on legal issues and questions of foreign economic activity ... "and other activities permitted by law."
Alexeyev also was the man to see in Moscow regarding exports from Sverdlovsk. By early 1992, he had added a semiofficial capacity to his array of private ventures in the capital--lobbying the Russian federal government for export licenses and quotas for the Sverdlovsk region. That put Alexeyev at the center of the export action. "Practically everything is decided in Moscow. The quotas, the licenses, they are all handed out in Moscow," explains the Russian police official. "Behind all these licenses are connections between the government and criminal structures. That's natural, of course."
In 1992, when Rudenko of ALT Ltd. arrived in Moscow to meet with his colleague from Sverdlovsk and propose a transaction involving 4.4 tons of beryllium, Alexeyev was happy to talk. Rudenko told police that in a meeting held at Alexeyev's Moscow residence, in the President Hotel, the rising young star of Sverdlovsk promised to front money for the beryllium, drawing on Karate-Do's Moscow bank.
Writing a letter. Having lined up the financing, Rudenko decided that an order for surplus beryllium on his institute's letterhead was needed to turn the trick with his colleagues at Obninsk. Laying his hands on letterhead was not a problem. The institute he worked for in Sverdlovsk was actually just a branch of Minatom's Research and Design Institute of Energy Technologies, located in Moscow. A year or so earlier, a printing house had mistakenly omitted the designation "Sverdlovsk Branch" on an order of institute stationery. Instead of throwing the whole batch out, it was used as scrap paper throughout the institute.
Rudenko grabbed a few sheets, then ran up a formal requisition. It was dated April 7, 1992. The order asked for 4,000 kilograms of surplus beryllium. For good measure, Rudenko threw in an additional request, for 9 kilograms of cesium. Estimates are difficult to come by, but German police believe cesium commands a price of $100,000 or more per kilogram on the black market. Rudenko addressed the order to the chief engineer of the Obninsk facility, then signed it in the name of his institute's deputy director, Vladimir Ilyin, who happened to be out sick. Ilyin later told police he had no knowledge of the transaction.
The financing was interesting. According to the purchase order, a copy of which was obtained by U.S. News, "payment for and receipt of the metals shall be performed by the General Directorate of the Union of Karate-Do Organizations." At the bottom of the order, underneath the initials Rudenko placed in his deputy director's name, were the signature and seal of Yuri Alexeyev. Alexeyev admitted to police in 1993 that he signed the order, but he said he had no idea why it mentioned beryllium and knew nothing about what had become of the shipment. Less than a month after the shipment, ALT Ltd. changed its name to AMI. Alexeyev told police he was not familiar with the company. "The name AMI does not ring a bell," Alexeyev said, "and I cannot say whether any contractual obligations existed with the company."
In his interview with U.S. News and "60 Minutes," Alexeyev told a slightly different story. He admitted knowing AMI but said he only "guaranteed" payment for the beryllium and cesium as a simple gesture of gratitude to AMI, because it had sponsored a big championship for his Karate-Do federation. "We have created the federation," Alexeyev explained, "to prevent people from turning to the criminal world."
Powerfully built, just 36 years old, Alexeyev appears uncowed by his brush with police. Before Russian investigators got around to asking him questions, Karate-Do was liquidated, and all records related to the beryllium deal were destroyed. Now Alexeyev has taken to handing out a glossy brochure of all the high-tech weapons the Sverdlovsk region is trying to sell. "We don't have an air conditioner in it," he says regretfully of the best tank on offer, quickly stressing its modern fire-control system.
That nuclear-related materials are being offered for sale in the former Soviet Union should not be a surprise; the surprise is that it has taken organized crime so long to get into the act. Although Vladimir Ilyin, Rudenko's boss at the Sverdlovsk institute, denied to police any knowledge of the Obninsk beryllium deal, he admitted that his institute had also sold some beryllium in 1992, in order to meet the payroll. Like the Obnisnk sale, the material went to a private trading company, called EVA Ltd. Unlike the Obninsk sale, that beryllium disappeared. Obninsk was in no better position to refuse an offer for beryllium when it arrived in April 1992. "The finances," Obninsk chief accountant G.I. Kozlov told Russian investigators, "were very bad at the time."
A decision to sell the beryllium was made easier by Russia's confusing regulations. Was beryllium a restricted material or not? Even Viktor Mikhailov, the director of Minatom, reflects a lack of knowledge on the subject. "Beryllium is used widely in many industries except for the military," Mikhailov incorrectly told U.S. News and "60 Minutes." He added, also incorrectly, that beryllium is not on the list of dual-use items that Russia agreed to start restricting in 1993 as a member of the international Nuclear Suppliers Group. "It came from a nuclear facility, from a nuclear end use .... It should have been the national government's responsibility, whatever they say," says a State Department expert on proliferation issues who was involved with the case.
Under the "roof." Bureaucratic bungling is one thing; bogus purchase orders are another. Alexeyev says that he and his sports club, Karate-Do, were never directly involved in the beryllium transaction and that a beryllium shipment, institute to institute, was OK. Rudenko's Institute of Energy Technologies in Sverdlovsk never took possession of the beryllium that ended up in Lithuania, however. Contrary to Alexeyev's denials, invoices clearly indicate that the recipient of the beryllium was none other than Karate-Do. "Let's put it this way," says the senior police official, regarding Karate-Do. "It has some criminal inclinations. But I simply can't say anything more." Ultimately, the beryllium was shipped east to Sverdlovsk, where AMI, the successor company to Rudenko's ALT, took control.
Getting the beryllium out of Obninsk was one thing; getting it out of the country and making a profit on it was another. For that operation, AMI turned to yet another trading firm--the Urals Association for Business Development (UADS is its Russian acronym). It, too, was deeply connected with the Sverdlovsk region's organized-crime syndicates, Russian police say.
UADS was a natural choice for the export and sale of beryllium. Before the Soviet Union collapsed, the UADS director, Mikhail Dolmatov, worked in the metallurgical institute of the Urals branch of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He knew metals and where they might be sold abroad. Like Alexeyev, Dolmatov had pull in the new Sverdlovsk political universe, in part through his connections to Valery Trushnikov. At the time of the beryllium transaction, Trushnikov was "head of government," which made him the No. 2 politician in the region.
Perhaps inevitably, given Dolmatov's connections and interest in the metals trade, UADS operated under an organized crime "roof," police officials say. According to the senior Russian investigator responsible for organized crime, in the early days of the new Russia, trading copper and precious metals was a profitable way for crime groups to invest their illegal profits. UADS, says this official after checking his computer database, had the backing of one of the Sverdlovsk region's most violent and powerful crime groups, known as the "Central Group," for its location in the heart of the city of Yekaterinburg.
Dolmatov and UADS quickly made a name for themselves in the metals export business. In April 1992, as the beryllium deal was coming to fruition, KGB officers seized 12 tons of zirconium, another precious metal with nuclear applications, at a Sverdlovsk airport and accused UADS of smuggling. The zirconium was bound for Lithuania and a trading firm called VEKA. Despite that hitch, Dolmatov turned to VEKA again in June 1992--this time with a contract to sell the 4.4 tons of beryllium from Obninsk for $2.7 million.
The deal was sweet. According to an agreement UADS reached with the government of Sverdlovsk, 20 percent of the profits would be used to purchase wool from Austria for a wool production complex in Sverdlovsk; the remaining 80 percent allegedly would be used to purchase consumer goods to be re-imported and sold in the region. The Sverdlovsk regional government, which was making a lot of money from export deals like this one, promptly issued an export license for the beryllium.
The UADS export application came up short, at least in two respects. "It was always necessary," says Rustam Safaraliev, executive secretary of the Commission on Export Control in Moscow, "to declare why and for what purpose the material would be used." The UADS application made no mention of what the 4.4 tons of beryllium would be used for outside Russia. There was a bigger problem. The beryllium from Obninsk was contaminated with highly enriched uranium. Under Russian law, it was and is illegal to export such contaminated materials without permission. No such permission had been sought or granted.
If VEKA, the Lithuanian firm, had had a buyer lined up and ready to go, the beryllium might never have been seized. VEKA had purchased the beryllium on spec, however, hoping to find an end user or another middleman willing to pay a good markup. After importing the shipment into Lithuania, VEKA advertised the beryllium to businesses and would-be buyers across Europe. Months later, AMI--the Russian firm for whom Yuri Alexeyev had "guaranteed" the financing of the beryllium purchase--grew frustrated with VEKA. After some dispute with the Lithuanian firm, AMI secured the return of the beryllium. AMI had lined up a buyer of its own.
Going for broke. That buyer was H-Kontor, headquartered in Klagenfurt, Austria. According to contract documents, H-Kontor was willing to pay $2.7 million for the beryllium. It was a lot of money. But if the deal went through, the company stood to make even more in profit. According to Interpol officials, H-Kontor and a partner firm called ATRACO--thought by police to be based in the northern Italian city of Brescia--had identified a buyer in Zurich who was willing to pay $24 million for the beryllium.
After months of frustration, AMI was about to hit the jackpot. AMI officials quickly arranged a charter to fly the beryllium from Vilnius to Switzerland. Before delivery and payment, however, the mystery buyer wanted a sample of the beryllium to verify its purity. The delay was deadly. Just before the sample could be sent, the beryllium was seized by police. The Zurich buyer vanished.
Subsequent investigation by Interpol failed to identify who the buyer was or what he or she intended to use the beryllium for. ATRACO, the Italian partner, appeared to be a front company; police in Italy could not locate it. They questioned executives from a similar-sounding operation in Brescia but got nowhere. By the time the Lithuanian police asked their Italian counterparts to go back for more interviews, the company had disappeared.
Who was the beryllium intended for? Janus Kozmus, the managing director of H-Kontor, was questioned twice by police and said nothing about the buyer. Questioned by U.S. News and "60 Minutes," Kozmus said the end user was to be a Korean company. Whatever the truth, investigators are resigned to living with their suspicions. "I think [the beryllium] would have gone to a third country for special purposes," says the chief of Interpol in Lithuania, Aurilijus Racevicius. "[But] the end user of this metal was never established, and I don't think we will ever establish it."
Washington weighs in. The Clinton administration learned of the beryllium seizure through its embassy in Vilnius in May 1993, and immediately tried to put a stop to its travels. In a letter dated Aug. 17, 1993, to Lithuanian Prime Minister Adolfas Slezevicius, U.S. Ambassador Darryl Johnson laid out the administration's concerns. "Some pieces [of the beryllium] contain HEU (highly enriched uranium), which has been enriched to a level sufficient for use in nuclear weapons. ... In any event, the uncontrolled shipment of beryllium remains of proliferation concern due to its presence on the list of nuclear-related dual-use materials." Washington's preferred solution was for the Lithuanian government simply to confiscate the entire shipment.
That was easier said than done. Lithuania had no laws controlling beryllium. And from the moment the shipment was seized, Moscow and AMI began pressuring Vilnius to release all the beryllium that was uncontaminated. Trushnikov, the head of government in Sverdlovsk, weighed in, alluding to profits to be made. "We would like to ask for your assistance," Trushnikov wrote the Lithuanian government, "to return the beryllium in order to sell it to a foreign partner."
That was exactly the outcome Washington wanted to prevent. The U.S. Embassy in Moscow had approached the Russian government to find out more about the shipment. It got nowhere. When Lithuanian Prime Minister Slezevicius started to waver, Ambassador Johnson pulled out all the stops. "If this stuff ends up in Iraq or Libya," he told Slezevicius, "you are going to look awful, and Lithuania is going to have a lot to answer for."
Desperate for a solution, in March 1994, Prime Minister Slezevicius wrote Russian Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin asking that Moscow take control of the beryllium. He got no reply. Despite the requests of both Vilnius and Washington--and the obligation to control beryllium that it assumed under 1992 amendments to the international Nuclear Suppliers Group Guidelines that went into effect in 1993, before the beryllium was seized--Moscow stood firm and continued to insist that the shipment be returned to its Sverdlovsk owners.
Ultimately, Washington prevailed. In May 1994, the Lithuanian government returned the uncontaminated beryllium to the bank and made sure it was not allowed to leave the country. It remains in the bank today, and probably will for some time to come.
Controlling additional leakage from Russia's nuclear facilities will be more difficult. Since 1993, Moscow has taken steps to tighten its control on dual-use and fissile materials. Major security upgrades have taken place at Obninsk and two other installations, with U.S. assistance. Work continues elsewhere. But almost 100 priority sites remain vulnerable to theft. Most problematic is the fact that thousands of workers throughout Russia's nuclear facilities continue to live hand to mouth, despite aid from abroad. Russia's nuclear infrastructure continues to be characterized by a degree of confusion and disorganization. And Russia's aggressive criminal mafiyas continue to look for profit-making opportunities wherever they can be found. "The conditions that made possible this [beryllium] export, if anything, are more acute now," says William Potter, director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif.
Alexeyev and the Sverdlovsk regional government, in fact, are frustrated by Washington's reluctance to allow them to profit legally on the international market. "We want to trade nuclear materials," Yuri Alexeyev says. "Our nuclear materials are 1.5 times less expensive than yours. We are able to cover the world's demand for nuclear fuel twice."
It is this mentality--capitalism with a vengeance--that in the end may defeat efforts to secure Russia's nuclear assets. "This is the time of making fortunes, gang wars," Alexeyev says of Russia today. "You have had the same in your time." There is a difference, however. In the United States, the illicit commodity was liquor. In the new Russia, among other things, it happens to be the stuff of nuclear nightmares.
ABOUT THIS REPORT: A COOPERATIVE EFFORT
In May 1995, U.S. News reporter Tim Zimmermann began hearing stories about a mysterious shipment of nuclear-related material that had been seized by Lithuanian police. At approximately the same time, producers for CBS News were following some of the same leads. Independently, each news organization went after the story. By summer, U.S. News and CBS's "60 Minutes" had decided to work together on it. Reporter Zimmermann and U.S. News Moscow Bureau Chief Alan Cooperman linked up with a "60 Minutes" team led by correspondent Steve Kroft. The team was composed of producers Michael Gavshon and Gary Scurka with associate producers Claudia Weinstein, Carolyn McEwen and Kathy Wolff. Additionally, Channel One, the educational TV programmer, provided important contributions to the reporting. The joint effort involved interviews and research in six countries over five months.
[Map is not available.] A SMUGGLER'S TRAIL
Path of beryllium shipment
1. Yekaterinburg: Early 1992. The beryllium deal originated in the Sverdlovsk region among trading firms with ties to organized crime. 2. Obninsk: March-April 1992. Relying on the phony purchase order, the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering agrees to sell the beryllium. The beryllium is moved by truck to Moscow. 3. Moscow: March-April 1992. Payment and receipt of the material is handled by Yuri Alexeyev, a suspected racketeer from Yekaterinburg, through his karate club. The beryllium is transported to Yekaterinburg. 4. Yekaterinburg: June 1992. The beryllium is flown to Lithuania. 5. Vilnius: May 1993. Responding to an anonymous tip, Lithuanian police seize the beryllium shipment from a local bank. 6. Klagenfurt and Brescia: Late 1993-early 1994. Investigators learn that the beryllium was to be bought, then sold again, by an Austrian-Italian consortium. 7. Zurich: Late 1993-early 1994. Interpol determines that a mysterious buyer was prepared to pay $24 million, about 10 times the market price for the beryllium shipment. 8. Vilnius: May 1994. Unable to prosecute, the Lithuanian government returns the shipment to the bank but prevents it from leaving the country.
BOMBS AND BERYLLIUM
"Beryllium has no realistic substitutes in its strategic nuclear applications," says a U.S. Department of Commerce analysis. It is one of 16 nuclear-related materials that are supposed to be tightly controlled by the 31-member Nuclear Suppliers Group, which includes both the United States and Russia.
A highly efficient neutron reflector, beryllium is used in modern bomb designs to significantly increase the weapon's explosive power and reduce the amount of fissile material the bomb designer needs.
In the late 1980s, the CIA concluded that India was trying to develop a sophisticated hydrogen bomb. One of the key tipoffs: India was buying beryllium.
Powering the MX W87 warhead
In this U.S. hydrogen bomb design, the explosive power of a fission trigger is boosted to several kilotons by the use of a beryllium reflector and deuterium-tritium gas. This "primary" in turn triggers a "secondary" fusion device. The total explosive power is 300 kilotons--equal to 300,000 tons of TNT.
RELATED ARTICLE: NO PITY IN GANG CITY
In the main cemetery of Yekaterinburg, a Russian industrial city 900 miles east of Moscow, is a row of graves that locals sarcastically call "Heroes' Alley." The monumental tombs, some costing tens of thousands of dollars, honor mafiosi who have been killed in shootouts over the past four years. One of the tombs has a marble table and benches where friends of the dearly departed don gather every so often to drink to his memory. As they pound down shots of vodka, they face a life-size engraving--on polished black marble--of their muscle-bound master, still dangling the keys to his Mercedes from his big left fist.
Yekaterinburg is one of the most violent cities in Russia. Police say shootouts and contract killings have become a bit less frequent this year--averaging about once a month instead of once a week--because the city's first generation of post-Soviet crime bosses has already been wiped out, mainly in turf battles with one another.
Most businesses in Yekaterinburg pay protection money. "Any attempt by a businessman to get out from under the mafiya," says Vyacheslav Zhitenyov, a retired police officer and author of a bestselling book on the Yekaterinburg mob, "results in shooting. The contract killings are almost never solved, even though every little boy knows the names of the crime bosses in the city."
Crossroads. How did Yekaterinburg, President Boris Yeltsin's home region, become Russia's version of Chicago in the 1920s? One factor is its vast mineral wealth. Another is that, like Chicago, it is a geographical crossroads. A third is bad luck. The city of 1.3 million people has a thriving criminal underworld. Two ruthless mobs jostled for control in the early 1990s: the Uralmash Mafiya, named for a huge metallurgical plant in one district of the city, and the Central Group, whose name reflected its control over the downtown. According to a high-ranking police investigator, both mobs have been decimated by warfare, and the survivors are trying to legitimize their fortunes as quickly as possible through metal trading, banking and real estate. They are turning into a more sophisticated and perhaps less violent network of semilegitimate businessmen who are increasingly hard to distinguish from other "new Russians."
As locals place flowers at graves of relatives and friends, they pass the mob mausoleums. Most hope the mafiyas will die out or move on. But they are skeptical. "Honest people like me--we're not in fashion anymore," said Viktor Ponomaryov, 75, as he walked by the busts of a casino manager and three bodyguards gunned down together on Oct. 26, 1992. "I served, I fought in the war. They didn't serve. They only stole."
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Thai firm faces radioactive waste charge - Minister
Planet Ark
THAILAND: February 23, 2000
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=5770&newsdate=23-Feb-2000
BANGKOK - Thai authorities said on Tuesday they would file charges against a local firm for improper disposal of radioactive waste and equipment that has now put nine people in hospital with radiation poisoning.
"All radioactive equipment is supposed to be kept in safe housing, not in the open air," said Science, Technology and Environment Minister Arthit Ourairat.
"On Tuesday evening, we will file complaints to the police to press charges against the company," he told reporters ahead of a weekly cabinet meeting.
He identified the company as Kamol Sukosol Electric Co, a Thai distributor of imported radiotherapy machines. A spokesman for the company said it would consult its lawyers on the matter.
On Monday, officials from the government's Office of Atomic Energy for Peace (OAEP), removed three radiotherapy machines from undeveloped land owned by Kamol Sukosol in an eastern Bangkok suburb and moved them it into OAEP safe storage.
Officials initially had said three canisters believed to contain radioactive waste had been found.
The machines were found after five workers at a junkyard were admitted to hospital last weekend suffering from exposure to cobalt 60 radiation after handling parts from one machine.
Four other people were admitted to hospital with radiation exposure on Monday, spokesman Amphon Jindawatthana said. They were in less serious condition than the other five because they did not come into direct contact with parts with radiation.
"Five other patients, who are workers at the junkyard, are in serious but stable condition as they directly contacted the cobalt 60 radiation while disassembling machine parts," he said.
DE-COMMISSIONED RADIOTHERAPY MACHINES
Cobalt 60 is an isotope artificially produced to be used as a source of gamma rays or high energy radiation. It is used in cancer treatment machines, in food irradiation and in glass colouring, OAEP officials said.
Chaweng Suwannarat, Kamol Sukosol's manager for medical equipment, told Reuters on Tuesday: "We'll let our lawyers handle those allegations by the government."
He said one of the machines was de-commissioned from the National Cancer Institute and another from a hospital in a northeastern province of Kon Kaen.
The third, bought from the Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd (OECL) by a private clinic in Bangkok in 1974, was kept at the company's site because the clinic did not have a proper storage place, Chaweng added.
The Canadian embassy in Bangkok said OECL was "concerned" about the incident, but held no responsibility for it.
"We are concerned about the people who are exposed to radiation in Thailand," an embassy spokesman told Reuters, adding that all the details were not yet available.
Story by Nopporn Wong-Anan
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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Russian FM To Visit U.S. In April
Russia Today
Feb 23, 2000
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=137097
MOSCOW, -- (Agence France Presse) Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov will visit the United States in April, Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Ivanov said in an interview published Tuesday in the Novye Izvestia daily.
The top security advisor, who was himself in Washington last week, said Ivanov's visit would come once the Russian presidential elections were finished.
In the interview Ivanov said he was "optimistic" the strategic arms reduction treaty (START II) would be approved by Russia's parliament, the Duma.
The ratification of START II and texts related to the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty are to be discussed in the Duma on March 21, the head of the parliament's foreign affairs commission, Dmitri Rogozine, said Tuesday.
The debate will be behind closed doors, he said, adding that progress on START II would depend on Washington's position on the ABM treaty.
START II, which stipulates reductions in nuclear warheads to 3,000 for Russia and 3,500 for the United States, was signed in 1993 by then president Boris Yeltsin and US President Bill Clinton.
It was ratified by the US Senate in 1996, but Russian lawmakers opposed to the treaty have so far prevented ratification by the Duma.
The US is seeking to revise the 1972 ABM treaty in light of its plans to develop a national missile defense system, a move opposed by Moscow.
Under the ABM Treaty, each side is allowed to deploy an anti-missile defense system around just one part of its territory, but a nationwide missile defense system is not allowed. ((c) 2000 Agence France Presse)
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Ex-UN Nuclear Agency Director Dies
Associated Press
February 23, 2000 Filed at 2:16 p.m. EST
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Obit-Eklund.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Sigvard Eklund, who headed the United Nations nuclear agency for two decades, has died. He was 89.
Eklund, who served as the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog from 1961 to 1981, died on Jan. 30 in Vienna, the United Nations confirmed Wednesday. No cause of death was given.
Under Eklund's tenure the IAEA achieved the eminence in international nuclear affairs which it now enjoys. As the second man to fill the post, he established and developed the agency's main scientific and technical programs, including supporting research and analytical laboratories.
In honor of his achievement, Eklund was named lifetime Director General Emeritus of the IAEA after his retirement.
Eklund was born in Kiruna, Sweden, in 1911. He earned his doctorate in 1946 and went on to work as a scientist for several years at the Nobel Institute of Physics, the Swedish Research Institute for National Defense. From 1946 to 1956 he was an assistant professor of nuclear physics at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
In 1957 he served as Secretary General for the Second International United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy.
He is survived by a son and two daughters.
-------- us nuc weapons
IN THE MILITARY
Navy to use floating drydock in ballistic missile sea trial
Honolulu Star-Bulletin
Wednesday, February 23, 2000
By Gregg K. Kakesako Star-Bulletin
http://starbulletin.com/2000/02/23/news/story12.html
A converted floating drydock will undergo a crucial sea trial off Barbers Point today as part of the Navy's theater ballistic missile defense testing program.
The Navy maintains that the defense system will be able to provide protection to ports, airfields and other shore facilities from the sea without having to rely on a host nation.
Stan Rollins, marine systems engineer with the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands, said today's daylong sea trial is part of the military's program to develop capabilities to launch test drones at sea.
The drydock would house tracking equipment or fire drones that can be shot down by missiles from warships.
Using a $4 million appropriation obtained by Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye in 1995, the Pacific Missile Range took a section of an old floating drydock, cleared off its deck and installed a helicopter pad and launch pad for at least four test drones, Rollins said.
The 256-foot drydock looks like a large barge, Rollins added, with "a big flat deck" holding several 20-foot containers and a shack on its 80-foot wide deck.
Today's sea trial was to involve modifications made after earlier tests, and launching and recovering helicopters eight miles off Barbers Point, Rollins said.
Plans for later this year call for the installation of a five mega-watt antenna that will be used to gather data as target drones and missiles engage each other, Rollins said.
Fifty-six Navy warships are now equipped with AEGIS missile systems, which will be incorporated into its theater ballistic missile defense system.
During Desert Storm in 1991, AEGIS missile-equipped Navy cruisers were able to detect and track Saddam Hussein's Scud missiles from their positions miles away in the Arabian Gulf. AEGIS radar systems can detect and target hundreds of targets at ranges of hundreds of miles.
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MOVING UP
U.S. Pacific Fleet Submarine Force (Pearl Harbor) -- Cmdr. Russ Janike relieved Cmdr. Joseph Skinner as commander of the Los Angeles class nuclear attack submarine USS Louisville.
Pearl Harbor: Cmdr. Carl Cramb assumed command of the guided missile frigate USS Reuben James from Cmdr. Steven Richter.
---
Missile motors - where did they end up?
A.F. audit of Utah sites leads to a global reinventory
Deseret News
Wednesday, February 23, 2000
By Lee Davidson
Deseret News Washington correspondent
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,150016161,00.html?
WASHINGTON - Call it the case of the missing missile motors in Utah - one that could create international repercussions.
It started when the Air Force Audit Agency tested the accuracy of a computerized, worldwide inventory of spare motors for intercontinental ballistic missiles - the type that carry nuclear warheads. The inventory is maintained by Hill Air Force Base.
Auditors tried to physically count just the 760 motors that were supposedly stored at various sites in Utah. However, they found that 47 motors listed on records didn't exist. After investigation, officials ruled they never had.
Another three motors weren't where records said they should be. Contractors had transferred them among themselves without telling the officials who maintain the inventory.
And "several" more motors - the number wasn't specified - had been listed as operational and mission-ready but in fact had been fired in tests years before and destroyed.
In short, the inventory had an error rate of at least 7 percent for just those motors supposedly stored in Utah, according to documents obtained by the Deseret News through a Freedom of Information Act request.
That forced a physical reinventory of all 2,026 ICBM motors listed worldwide. It also raises questions about whether poor records could have allowed theft or whether they truly can ensure compliance with treaties limiting missiles.
"Accurate Air Force records are essential to verify compliance with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty," the report from Air Force inspectors noted, while chiding Hill's inventory records as "not always valid, complete and accurate."
And Chris Hellman, senior analyst for the private Center for Defense Information, told the Deseret News, "Theft is a threat. If you don't know where things are, how can you tell if they're missing?"
Hellman added, "Actually, a 7 percent error rate is pretty good and well above average for the military, where tens of millions of dollars worth of materials are unaccounted for.
"However, when it comes to strategic arms control, that 7 percent is a disturbing number," he said. "The military has said it can't account very well for many things but said it does a good job with strategic arms. This shows that maybe it doesn't." But, Hellman cautioned, "Let's not go crazy about this. These are just motors" - and by themselves are not technology that is extraordinarily sensitive or secret.
The inspectors' report - dated last April - said auditors went to Utah sites where motors were supposed to be stored, including the Utah Test and Training Range (which was supposed to have 349 motors), Hill Air Force Base (with 312), Cordant Technologies at Brigham City (50) and Tooele Army Depot (49).
The inspectors discovered that duplicate serial numbers had been issued to 38 missiles when unstable propellant in the motors was replaced - but inventories tracked them as if they were two separate motors.
Auditors said nine other serial numbers "were never valid and did not identify actual motors." Auditors said that happened because the computer program would not allow operators to delete invalid serial numbers that had been entered.
Auditors also said "destroyed missile motors were not always identified as destroyed" in the inventory because managers were not always notified of test motor firings.
In fact, it said, operators "often relied on news articles to update (the inventory) because guidance did not exist that required the reporting of a missile motor's status." The report listed only one specific example of a motor that had been fired and destroyed in June 1995 but was still listed on inventories years later.
The report also noted that three motors "were moved from one contractor to another without updating the location" in the inventory because Air Force rules "did not require the contractors to report the disposition or status of the motors." The report said that because of the problems found, the Air Force conducted a worldwide inventory of motors to update and improve the computerized inventory.
Also, the ICBM System Program Office supplied a letter saying that the 38 missile motors with dual numbers in the inventory were destroyed. Also, the Air Force reported that the nine invalid serial numbers in the system were finally deleted.
Documents show the Air Force also accepted recommendations from auditors to create rules requiring contractors and others to notify inventory managers of any change of status or location for the motors.
---
A Nuclear Crisis
Washington Post
Wednesday, February 23, 2000; Page A21
By Jimmy Carter
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-02/23/008l-022300-idx.html
Every five years, the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT) comes up for reassessment by the countries that have signed it. This is the treaty that provides for international restraints (and inspections) on nuclear programs. It covers not only the nuclear nations but 180 other countries as well, including Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Libya. An end to the NPT could terminate many of these inspections and open a Pandora's box of nuclear proliferation in states that already present serious terrorist threats to others.
Now it is time for the 30-year-old NPT to be reviewed (in April, by an international assembly at the United Nations), and, sad to say, the current state of affairs with regard to nuclear proliferation is not good. In fact, I think it can be said that the world is facing a nuclear crisis. Unfortunately, U.S. policy has had a good deal to do with creating it.
At the last reassessment session, in 1995, a large group of non-nuclear nations with the financial resources and technology to develop weapons--including Egypt, Brazil and Argentina--agreed to extend the NPT, but with the proviso that the five nuclear powers take certain specific steps to defuse the nuclear issue: adoption of a comprehensive test ban treaty by 1996; conclusion of negotiations on a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, and "determined pursuit" of efforts to reduce nuclear arsenals, with the ultimate goal of eliminating them.
It is almost universally conceded that none of these commitments has been honored. India and Pakistan have used this failure to justify their joining Israel as nations with recognized nuclear capability that are refusing to comply with NPT restraints. And there has been a disturbing pattern of other provocative developments:
* For the first time I can remember, no series of summit meetings is underway or in preparation to seek further cuts in nuclear arsenals. The START II treaty concluded seven years ago by presidents George Bush and Boris Yeltsin has not been seriously considered for ratification by the Russian parliament.
* Instead of moving away from reliance on nuclear arsenals since the end of the Cold War, both the United States and NATO have sent disturbing signals to other nations by declaring that these weapons are still the cornerstone of Western security policy, and both have re-emphasized that they will not comply with a "no first use" policy. Russia has reacted to this U.S. and NATO policy by rejecting its previous "no first use" commitment; strapped for funds and unable to maintain its conventional forces of submarines, tanks, artillery, and troops, it is now much more likely to rely on its nuclear arsenal.
* The United States, NATO and others still maintain arsenals of tactical nuclear weapons, including up to 200 nuclear weapons in Western Europe.
* Despite the efforts of Gens. Lee Butler and Andrew Goodpaster, Adm. Stansfield Turner and other military experts, American and Russian nuclear missiles are still maintained in a "hair-trigger alert" status, susceptible to being launched in a spur-of-the-moment crisis or even by accident.
* After years of intense negotiation, recent rejection by the U.S. Senate of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was a serious blow to global nuclear control efforts and to confidence in American leadership.
* There is a notable lack of enforcement of the excessively weak international agreements against transfer of fissile materials.
* The prospective adoption by the United States of a limited "Star Wars" missile defense system has already led Russia, China and other nations to declare that this would abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which has prevailed since 1972. This could destroy the fabric of existing international agreements among the major powers.
* There is no public effort or comment in the United States or Europe calling for Israel to comply with the NPT or submit to any other restraints. At the same time, we fail to acknowledge what a powerful incentive this is to Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt to join the nuclear community.
* The U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) has been recently abolished, removing an often weak but at least identifiable entity to explore arms issues.
I believe that the general public would be extremely concerned if these facts were widely known, but so far such issues have not been on the agenda in presidential debates.
A number of responsible non-nuclear nations, including Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden have expressed their disillusionment with the lack of progress toward disarmament. The non-proliferation system may not survive unless the major powers give convincing evidence of compliance with previous commitments.
In April, it is imperative that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty be reconfirmed and subsequently honored by leaders who are inspired to act wisely and courageously by an informed public. This treaty has been a key deterrent to the proliferation of weapons, and its unraveling would exert powerful pressures even on peace-loving nations to develop a nuclear capability.
All nuclear states must renew efforts to achieve worldwide reduction and ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons. In the meantime, it requires no further negotiations for leaders of nuclear nations to honor existing nuclear security agreements, including the test ban and anti-ballistic missile treaties, and to remove nuclear weapons from their present hair-trigger alert status.
Just as American policy is to blame for many of the problems, so can our influence help resolve the nuclear dilemma that faces the world.
Former President Carter is chairman of the Carter Center in Atlanta.
---
CLINTON'S MILITARY BUDGET:
PLENTY OF MONEY FOR DEFENSE CORPS
"We are putting more money into procurement and that will help the defense industries," said Secretary of Defense William Cohen in support of the President's proposed $12 billion increase in the military budget to a whopping $305.4 billion. Clinton has upped procurement 11% to long awaited $60 billion mark (the Joint Chiefs of Staff set reaching $60 billion for procurement as an important goal in 1996).
Clinton's budget includes requests for four more C-130 transport planes, two for the Marines and two for the Air Force. The U.S. military already has more than 250 C-130s, so many that Senator and Presidential hopeful John McCain remarked to Congress that "we could use them to house the homeless." The appropriation "will keep Lockheed Martin's Georgia factory from shutting its production line" explained Cohen. These alms for "the not-so-very-poor" defense industry underscores a central problem with defense spending. In spite of the uproar over the "readiness crisis," the identification of more "low-tech" security threats from terrorists and a consensus among experts across the political spectrum that military spending can be shaved (at the very minimum) by 15% to reflect the end of the Cold War, the military budget remains bloated with pork, waste, and junk.
"This budget accelerates our return to Cold War spending levels," said Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, USN (Ret.), CDI's Deputy Director. "The U.S. already spends substantially more for military forces than any other nation, with no significant threats to our national security. This is a time when we should be seriously addressing urgent National needs, not adding billions to the Pentagon's budget."
The Giant Sucking Sound
New weapons systems are a perfect example. In Clinton's 2001 military budget, these massive and unnecessary programs will continue to suck up resources: $8 billion worth for the development and procurement of new weapons systems. The troubled and controversial F-22 would enjoy a renaissance under Clinton's budget with money set aside for more research and the purchase of 10 of the fabled planes. The Joint Strike Fighter, F-18 A/E Super Hornet, and the Nimintz Class Aircraft Carrier, are all "good to go," except that we don't need them.
Unsatisfied with the money for the Super Hornet, built primarily in St. Louis, Boeing has pulled out all the stops, to launch a huge campaign to get F-15s back in the budget. Troops of Machinist unioners descended on Washington for more than 40 meetings to lobby for F-15 funding, including a two and a half-hour chat with Saudi officials. Senator "Kit" Bond (R-MO) wrote a strongly worded and vaguely threatening letter to South Korean, Israeli and Saudi leaders telling them to buy now, or lose out. Boeing's push to get the F-15 back in the budget is a clever manipulation of its worker, consumers, and Congress.
Last year, when a last minute budget shift gave Boeing $275 million to build five more un-needed F-15s for domestic use, the money was taken from spare parts and maintenance funds, blowing the "readiness" rabble out of the water. This year, the readiness budget is up just 5%, a $4.4 billion increase.
Despite continued assurances that the nuclear arms race is a historic relic, new money is being pumped into nuclear programs, with another $145 million to keep open the possibility of buying more B-2 bombers, even though the Pentagon has already purchased 21 of them at $2 billion each and $496 million for 12 new Trident 2 (D-5) missiles. In addition,
money for "Stockpile Stewardship Management" continues to pile up, defying logic and the CTBT-- the weapons labs are celebrating a $300 million increase for "stewardship" activities.
And already lawmakers on both side of the floor are clamoring that it is not enough. "The document is a fantasy. It is dead on arrival," says Rep. Kasich (R-OH) "There will be more money in the military, no question."
Will it ever be enough? For more information on the military budget check out Council for a Livable World at www.clw.org/milbud.html and Center for Defense Information at www.cdi.org/issues/usmi/
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Missiles and gnashing teeth
Helle Bering Washington Times February 23, 2000
http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/bering-20000223.htm
As though it wasn't enough that National Missile Defense (NMD) has plenty of opponents in this country, including the White House itself, which has only moved on the issue with the greatest reluctance, the reaction overseas has been underwhelming. The Russians and Chinese hate the idea, and our NATO allies in Europe watch with concern that is becoming more outspoken.
Count on the French to say it like it is. As French Defense Minister Alain Richard told a gathering at the Center for Strategic and International studies, yesterday, "We fear that NMD could fuel a new arms race and more generally could serve as a convenient cover by those states that do not want to be strictly bound by non-proliferation norms." The rest of Europe's center-left governments are equally unhappy with the prospect of an American NMD. There are several reasons for this. For one thing, Europe is now governed by the very same people who not so long ago were on the ramparts in the anti-nuclear movement, railing against American intermediate range missiles in the early 1980s. They don't like nuclear weapons.
Personal issues aside, there is a lot more going on here, adding to the atmosphere of mistrust that has been creeping into the relationships between the United states and Europe in the 1990s. It could make for some difficult moments for the next American president.
Even with the Cold War behind us, we are hearing echoes of the debate of the early 1950s, when President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles faced a host of not dissimilar decisions relating to Europe, ranging from NATO expansion to containment of the Soviet Union, to investment in NATO's conventional forces by Europeans, to the role of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Nor were relations easy then. The British government of Anthony Eden remained resentful of the U.S. government following the 1956 Suez crisis, fearing that when Dulles talked about "rollback" he was thinking more of their empire than that of the Soviets. It was a shaky moment in the alliance. One would hope that this one, too, can be overcome.
The Europeans see NMD as part of a package of problems that includes the defeated Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which was voted down by the U.S. Senate last fall, and which will now also include the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty. The White House believes the ABM needs to be modified in order to allow for a limited missile defense system, to be based in Alaska according to current plans. (Russian President Vladimir Putin has indicated that he may accept such modifications, a sure sign that the limited missile defense preferred by the White House is seen as no threat by the Russians.) Many Republicans, however, want to scrap the ABM entirely, given that one of its two signatories in 1974 - the Soviet Union - went out of existence almost 10 years ago. They fear that the United States, protected by missile defense and not banned from improving its nuclear arsenal, will be more inclined to go it alone.
Mr. Clinton has set a deadline of June for a decision - the wrong time if ever there was one. As important a decision as this ought to be postponed until there is a new man in the White House, preferably one with a genuine commitment to real missile defense. Republican candidate George W. Bush has declared his support for NMD, whether or not the Russians give us their permission.
As for the Europeans, they stand a better chance of formulating a coordinated opposition to NMD, through the Common Foreign and Defense Policy undertaken by the European Union. That still doesn't give them veto right, of course, though they would very much like it. "Even if you wanted to, you would not be able to take this decision in a vacuum," Mr. Richard said. In other words, Europe expects consultations on the subject.
Still, if the United States makes a unilateral decision to go ahead, there really isn't much anyone can do about it. What the next U.S. president should explain - slowly and carefully - is that the United States needs missile defense in order to protect itself against unpredictable enemy nations of a nuclear-tipped variety, North Korea, for instance, or Iran, or our old friend Saddam Hussein, who remains unhampered by nuclear inspections. And how about China and Russia themselves? Their arsenals, which they are upgrading, presumably are not just ornamental. That is, of course, if the next president believes in NMD, which both Republican candidates George W. Bush and John McCain do - and Vice President Al Gore does not.
But what the president should also explain is that we are willing to share. The Europeans ought to be concerned about safety no less than the Americans, being within striking distance of medium-range missile attack from the Middle East. As NATO allies, they should benefit from American research and development. Unfortunately, wanting to protect Europe's defense industries, they do not want to buy American technology. (Lockheed-Martin produces the most promising sea-based missile defense system, on which a U.S. national missile defense could be based).
How to invest is, of course, Europe's problem - not ours. If the United States decides to act in its own national security interest, more than likely, they will come to an accommodation with that fact.
Helle Bering is editorial page editor of The Washington Times. Her column appears on Wednesdays.
---
Delay Missile Decision
Salt Lake Tribune
02/23/00
http://www.sltrib.com/2000/feb/02232000/opinion/28626.htm
So far, the people developing an anti-ballistic missile interceptor for the Pentagon are the gang that couldn't shoot straight. One test has failed outright, and another may have succeeded by accident. It doesn't make sense, then, for the project managers to rush to a decision this summer about whether to recommend deployment of the system to President Clinton.
The Pentagon's director of operational testing came to just that conclusion last week: He wrote that the national missile defense system is under enormous pressure to meet an artificial deadline this summer, and the science of the project is suffering as a result.
The president should relax the deadline enough so that project developers can make a more studied recommendation. There's no point in rushing to judgment. In fact, given the political and foreign-policy conditions surrounding the project, Clinton should leave the decision about deployment for the next president.
The goal of the project is to build a system to protect the United States from a limited attack of nuclear warheads launched by ballistic missiles. Concern about the possibility of such attacks has grown as China has built missiles capable of reaching the United States, North Korea is near that stage, and Iran has conducted tests toward that end.
During the Cold War, only the Soviet Union posed this threat. A defensive system that could knock down thousands of warheads launched simultaneously from Russia is not feasible because such an attack would overwhelm any defenses.
But, as other states develop smaller missile arsenals, the United States has explored the possibility of building a system that could knock down a limited attack. Such a system poses tricky diplomatic and technical challenges, however.
In 1972, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), which forbids either side from building a national system of missile interceptors. The theory was, and remains, that such systems would only pour gasoline on the arms race, because both sides would build even more ballistic missiles to overwhelm enemy interceptors.
Today, an anti-ballistic missile system cannot be deployed without violating the ABM Treaty. So far, the Russians oppose any amendments. Clinton is ill-suited to negotiate those amendments because he has so little foreign-policy credibility with the Congress. The Russians could not be sure that the Senate would ratify changes negotiated by Clinton. Besides, Russia will conduct presidential elections in March and the United States will do so in November. The two sides should hold ABM talks after both new administrations are in place.
In the meantime, the United States continues tests to develop a system that can intercept incoming warheads traveling at thousands of miles per hour. That is a tremendous technical challenge, and the work should not be rushed to meet an artificial deadline.
-------- us nuc facilities
----------- colorado
Canon City, Colo., Rejects Nuclear Waste
The Pueblo Chieftain
Pueblo, Colorado,
2000-02-23
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
http://www.chieftain.com
Feb. 23--CANON CITY, Colo.--City Council voted unanimously late Monday to urge the federal Environmental Protection Agency not to allow disposal of Shattuck radioactive waste at the Cotter Uranium Mill.
The mill is just south of town in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.
The EPA and the City of Denver want to get rid of radioactive waste now being stored on a 6-acre site in Denver. The waste was created by the processing of radium and other chemicals by S.W. Shattuck Chemical Co. and others since the 1920s.
Whether the waste will be placed in a special landfill or whether it will be recycled has not been decided.
The Cotter mill and the International Uranium Corp. mill in Utah are the only two firms considering recycling the Shattuck waste.
Canon City Administrator Steve Rabe said the city's general government committee recommended the resolution objecting to the disposal of Shattuck waste at Cotter.
The resolution reflects "the sense of the city and the sense of the community and is intended to express in the strongest terms possible what the community seems to feel about this particular issue," said John Havens, city attorney.
Seven local citizens urged the council to pass the resolution, including Fremont Economic Development Executive Director Myron Smith, who said, "If we get something like this (Shattuck waste) in the county, it will be real hard to try to attract more people to this area."
Toni Nunn told council she will present the EPA with a petition that has about 1,000 signatures from local people who oppose moving the waste to Canon City.
Council made its decision despite a reminder from Cotter mill lab manager Phil Krauth that "Cotter is not the only source of radioactivity in this valley. There were natural sources of radioactivity here long before Cotter ever came here."
The council also heard reassurances from Cotter Corp. manager Paul Blanchette, who said the Shattuck material contains "something less than 20 percent of the radioactivity of the ore we are getting now."
Blanchette said Cotter is doing what it can to alleviate past problems, which led to the mill property and a portion of Lincoln Park being listed as an EPA Superfund cleanup site. He said the problems stem as far back as the 1950s, when Cotter used unlined ponds to store tailings.
Blanchette said that the Cotter mill now uses "state of the art" impoundments.
A report issued earlier this month by Phil Stoffey, hydrogeologist for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, indicates that "there is no evidence of leakage from the primary impoundment at the Cotter uranium mill site."
Stoffey based his conclusion by comparing data from 1985 and 1998, which was gathered from one of eight monitoring wells at the site. The well, which is 60-feet deep, is located downstream from the primary impoundment. And although it "is contaminated from (past) mill operations," there is "no evidence of leakage from the primary impoundment," Stoffey said in the report.
Stoffey said he looks for magnesium, which would be an early warning sign of impending seepage of "slower contaminants of concern." The ground water that Stoffey looked at showed no increase in magnesium; in fact the percent of magnesium was actually lower than in 1985.
----------- nevada
Ailing workers from Test Site get chance to face DOE
February 23, 2000 at 11:48:19 PST
By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com>
LAS VEGAS SUN
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2000/feb/23/509890330.html
When Fred Love flew security missions in a helicopter at the Nevada Test Site in 1985 and 1986, he was prepared to guard with his life the secrets of the nuclear weapons experiments detonated there.
They ended up costing him his career.
At 47, ready to leave his DOE contract position, Love planned to begin flying commercial helicopters. Then he started having trouble with his right eye and lost his unrestricted pilot's license.
In March 1997 doctors removed the eye along with a tumor, a rare form of cancer that is associated with radiation exposure.
"At the same time I lost my eye, I lost my flying career," Love, now 60, said. Love plans to tell his story about his time at the Test Site at a DOE hearing scheduled for Friday in North Las Vegas.
When Love discovered that the Test Site was not included as part of the Clinton administration's effort to compensate DOE workers, he contacted Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Las Vegas.
The proposed legislation currently would compensate ill workers at the DOE's Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Paducah, Ky., facilities.
"To me, it is a simple matter," Love said. "The United States government cannot discriminate between states. It would be akin to such a statement as, 'If you live in Mississippi, you do not qualify for Social Security.' "
For David Michaels, the DOE's assistant secretary for environment, safety and health, a series of hearings across the country has revealed deep-rooted secrecy cloaking what happened to nuclear weapons workers.
Workers were not told and were not aware of potential exposures to radiation and toxic chemicals at places such as the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where the federal government exploded nuclear weapons above and below ground from 1951 until 1992, Michaels said.
An epidemiologist who has taken a leave of absence as community health professor at the City University of New York to serve with the DOE, Michaels is trained to spot patterns and trends from illnesses affecting people.
Although medical doctors warned top government administrators in nuclear weaponry that their employees were at risk from exposures in their workplace in the late 1940s, the government masked that knowledge behind the blanket of national security. Michaels said he is trying to cut through the secrecy and listen to workers' stories.
"People tell of working in secrecy, really being kept in the dark about their working conditions," Michaels told the Sun in a telephone interview Tuesday.
Last year President Clinton and Energy Secretary Bill Richardson decided to break the government's silence. They are trying to lead the DOE away from decades of denying harmful conditions to workers. In meetings nationwide that have drawn more than 2,000 current and former DOE workers, Michaels and his staff have heard 400 stories of exposures. One thousand other people have called a confidential hotline.
Those working to build and test nuclear weapons had nowhere to turn, no recourse until Richardson decided to listen to the stories of former workers such as Fred Love. Now the DOE is inviting current and former workers to tell administrators what they know.
The hearings have helped close the gap between the workers and the administration, Michaels said.
"We need the information," Michaels said. Without it, workers can get nothing from the president's proposed legislation.
The Clinton bill is the first step in the administration's efforts to help sick workers, Michaels said.
Congress is expected this year to consider the administration's proposal to give DOE workers suffering from beryllium-related disease access to the same benefits available to federal employees.
Beryllium, used as a reflector in the triggers of nuclear weapons to enhance the blast, could be in the lungs of Test Site workers who spent time in the underground tunnels, DOE spokeswoman Nancy Harkess said.
So while the Test Site is not included in the proposed legislation, strong testimony at Friday's hearing could help them receive compensation, if Congress approves.
Michaels and two of his staff members are coming to North Las Vegas because of more evidence of Test Site illnesses related to exposures to dust and beryllium.
Medical screenings show that the lungs of workers at the Test Site and other facilities contain spots from dust, an illness called silicosis, Michaels said.
Before Richardson tapped him for his role as assistant secretary, Michaels contributed to a 1992 report, "Dead Reckoning: A Critical Review of the Department of Energy's Epidemiologic Research."
Published by the national nuclear watchdog group Physicians for Social Responsibility, the report ended the DOE's failure to track diseases. In the early 1990s the National Institutes of Health took over studying nuclear workers.
Medical screenings have been done in Southern Nevada by the Building Trades Council with physicians trained in public and occupational health from San Francisco and Boston. There the traces of beryllium and dust exposure emerged.
Michaels said he has been struck by the consistency of DOE workers' stories. They tell about working conditions where the pressure to protect the United States from the Soviet Union's nuclear threat drove the work.
But he wants to hear more.
"I'm asking workers to come, just attend, even if they do not want to speak out," he said.
If they do not speak at the public hearing, Michaels said, the DOE will accept written comments or calls to a confidential toll-free number.
"Many workers come up to us at the hearings and ask to be heard individually," Michaels said. The DOE promises to listen to each and every one, he said.
---
Safe nuclear-waste storage is myth
By Joseph C. Strolin,
February 07, 2000
Deseret News
http://www.desnews.com/dn/view/0%2C1249%2C150011562%2C00.html
The opinion piece by Gary Sandquist that appeared in the Deseret News on Jan. 30 ("Don't let myths perpetuate inaction on nuclear waste storage") demands some de-mythifying of its assertions.
Myth No. 1: There is no crisis that requires immediate - or even near-term - removal of spent nuclear fuel from the safe and secure locations where it is presently stored. Contrary to Sandquist's assertion, nuclear power plants are not in danger of being forced to shut down due to a glut of spent fuel.
The commercial nuclear power industry has for years been attempting to create a storage crisis in order to further its political agenda of accelerating the movement of spent nuclear fuel to what many believe is a flawed and unsafe disposal site being proposed in Nevada. Utahns, by the way, will bear the brunt of thousands of shipments of these highly radioactive materials en route to the Nevada site over more than three decades.
Myth No. 2: Past performance is not, as Mr. Sandquist asserts, indicative of the lack of risks associated with the shipment of spent nuclear fuel to a repository or central storage facility. The claim that "millions of packages of such materials" are shipped each year in the United States is dangerously misleading. Shipping minute quantities of radioactive materials, such as medical isotopes and the like, is in no way comparable to the risks associated with highly radioactive and extremely dangerous spent nuclear fuel.
The fact is that, in the first year of a repository shipping campaign alone, there will be more shipments of spent fuel than in all of the preceding 40 years of reactor operations combined. What's more, shipment distances - and hence risks of accidents - will be far greater (an average of 2,300 miles for shipments to a Nevada repository vs. less than 300 miles for past spent fuel shipments).
In addition, the shipping casks proposed for use will carry more spent fuel per container and will be less heavily shielded, mass produced and, arguably, more prone to release radiation in the event of an accident than older, heavier and essentially hand-built shipping containers. Spent fuel shipments of the type, volume and duration needed to move radioactive materials from reactor sites around the country to the proposed Nevada storage site will also be vulnerable and potentially appealing targets for sabotage and terrorism, something neither the federal Department of Energy nor the commercial nuclear power industry wants to acknowledge.
Myth No. 3: The Nevada respiratory site at Yucca Mountain is not a safe location for disposing of these highly dangerous and long-lived materials, and it is not a done deal. The site is prone to earthquakes and impacted by at least 34 known faults; it is highly fractured, providing pathways for radiation to escape both into the groundwater and to the air. There is evidence of hydrothermal activity in faults and fractures within the repository host rock itself.
Nevertheless, the commercial nuclear power industry is prepared to misleadingly promote the Yucca Mountain site at the expense of the health and safety of generations of Nevadans and Californians in order to further its own political and economic agenda. The industry's goal is to pressure Congress to bail out commercial nuclear utilities by unnecessarily moving spent fuel to Nevada. People in Utah or other states would not stand for such abuse of federal power, and Nevadans are not going to permit it either.
The best way to restore credibility and build public support for nuclear power is to assure that unnecessary risks not be visited upon states and communities through the location of unsafe storage or disposal facilities and the transport of thousands of tons of highly dangerous spent fuel through hundreds of cities and communities nationwide.
Joseph C. Strolin is administrator of the planning division of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, Office of the Governor.
-------- new mexico
Scientist Lee Plans Legal Strategy
Associated Press
February 23, 2000 Filed at 11:24 a.m. EST
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Scientist-Secrets.html
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- Former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Wen Ho Lee expects to show during his trial that the nuclear weapons secrets he allegedly mishandled were available to the public.
A legal filing Tuesday provided a glimpse of Lee's trial strategy as the latest installment in an argument over whether Lee should be required to reveal to prosecutors all of the classified information he plans to use in his defense.
``Lee expects to establish at trial ... that the computer codes and other information in the computer files and on the tapes, far from being carefully protected 'crown jewels,' as the government contends, were readily available in open literature, much of it published with the knowledge and approval of the national laboratories and the federal government,'' said the document filed in federal court.
Officials at the U.S. Attorney's office had not reviewed the documents and would not comment, spokeswoman Patricia Chavez said Wednesday.
Lee, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Taiwan, is charged with 59 counts involving security breaches -- but not espionage. His trial is set for Nov. 6. He could get life in prison if convicted.
Lee is accused of downloading classified information onto unsecured computers and computer tapes, seven of which prosecutors contend may still exist. Lee has said the tapes were destroyed.
------- new york
Con Ed Notification of Nuclear Leak Is Questioned
New York Times
February 23, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/00/02/23/news/national/regional/ny-nuke-coned.html
Related Articles
Nuclear Tries Going Commercial (Feb. 22, 2000)
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/early/022200ny-nuke.html
Robots to Study Plant Leak (Feb. 19, 2000)
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/early/021900ny-nuke.html
WHITE PLAINS, Feb. 22 -- A Con Edison executive conceded today that the trust Westchester County residents had in the utility was violated when some local officials were not immediately notified about last week's radioactive leak at the Indian Point 2 nuclear plant.
The executive, Steven Quinn, a Con Ed vice president, also acknowledged there had recently been a small leak of about one to four gallons of radioactive water per day -- too small to notify the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Mr. Quinn was questioned during a meeting in Westchester County, where lawmakers and Con Edison officials reviewed the county's emergency response plan in the wake of the accident.
William Ryan, a county legislator who chairs the Westchester Public Safety Committee, said the aftermath of the radioactive steam leak last week demonstrated the system's flaws.
"We agree wholeheartedly with basically everything Westchester County said," Mr. Quinn said. "The trust that we had with these local officials appears to have been violated by our inability to communicate with them rapidly."
Con Edison said it called the four county executives in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and Rockland. In Westchester, the utility also notified the state police, the Peekskill city police and the county's Emergency Management Office.
Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano was paged at 7:55 p.m., about 25 minutes after a small amount of radioactive steam was discovered leaking. Deputy County Executive Jay Hashmall said the emergency operations center was staffed by 9:15 p.m. However, Mr. Hashmall said local legislators and officials in the village of Buchanan and the town of Cortlandt were not called. He said that from now on, the county would notify local officials instead of leaving it to the utility.
Mr. Hashmall said the radiation did not spread beyond the plant site and there was no danger to the public. William Murphy, director of the Office of Emergency Management, said sirens were not sounded because the emergency was not serious enough "to modify public behavior."
-----
Steam rises from the Con Edison Indian Point 2 nuclear power plant in Buchanan, N.Y.
Associated Press Photo 2/16/2000
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/ap/20000216/us/nuclear_release.html
Steam rises from the Con Edison Indian Point 2 nuclear power plant in Buchanan, N.Y., late Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2000. A leak in a steam generator earlier in the evening at the power plant resulted in a brief release of radioactive steam but it was below dangerous levels, power company officials said. A company spokesman said the plant was shut down, but there had been ``a momentary release of radioactive material to the environment, below any level that poses a threat to the safety of plant personnel or the public.'' (AP Photo/Ron Frehm)
------ ohio
Group calls for tougher controls
ENQUIRER LOCAL NEWS COVERAGE
Wednesday, February 23, 2000
Report: Ozone increases illnesses here
http://enquirer.com/editions/2000/02/23/loc_report_ozone.html
BY BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
New estimates of Tristate hospital admissions and emergency room visits released Tuesday suggest the human cost of smog.
The survey, "Ohio Valley - Ozone Alley," blames the ozone in smog for 305 extra hospital admissions to treat aggravated respiratory problems in Hamilton, Clermont, Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties during 1997, the latest year for which full data were available to researchers.
Every year, thousands of anxious Ohio and Kentucky residents fear that breath-taking pollution could drive them into physicians' offices, emergency rooms and hospital beds. That care costs millions, and their misery is at the heart of the new survey commissioned by the Ohio Environmental Council, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group.
The survey attributed 914 emergency room visits - in addition to patients admitted to hospitals - to ozone-aggravated respiratory problems as well as tens of thousands of asthma attacks and complaints of self-medicated and minor breathing difficulties.
The survey also called for stricter emissions controls on coal-fired power plants, the primary culprit in the ozone problem.
This ignores the fact that ever-cleaner Tristate air finally meets federal smog limits, Cinergy spokesman Steve Brash responded. "The environmental community has a helluva time saying anything has improved," he said.
Mr. Brash also faulted the study for what he said was a simplistic focus on ozone when other factors can aggravate respiratory problems.
Moreover, he said, the survey's numbers also rely on a longer ozone season than is experienced here and what appears to be a lower standard than even the Environmental Protection Agency advocates.
Ground-level ozone - the sickening ingredient in smog -
is created when nitrogen oxide (NOx) and volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) cook on sunny, warm days.
Most NOx in the Ohio Valley comes from coal-fired power plants and vehicle exhausts. VOCs come from vehicle exhausts, evaporating gasoline at the pump, industrial fumes and myriad other sources.
Children and the elderly are most vulnerable to smog-related health problems, but anyone working or playing outside is at risk.
Based on laboratory experiments with mice and clinical experience, "it is a problem," according to Dr. William Hardie, a pulmonologist at Childrens Hospital Medical Center.
"During the summer months, I see kids who can't play outside because the air pollution levels put their ability to breathe at risk," he said. "It's frustrating to them. They want to ride their bikes, they want to play soccer."
Still, he doesn't see a "rush for the emergency room" because cautious parents keep the most-susceptible children inside during smog alerts. "Then Mom's not happy, the kid's not happy."
Moreover, he was cautious about the weight given to ozone as an aggravating factor because so many other variables can trouble children with asthma.
Missing from the survey was any dollar value for smog-exacerbated health problems, including medical care and lost productivity by victims or stay-at-home caretakers who miss work.
Kurt Waltzer, primary author and editor of the survey, said such dollar estimates were beyond the means and goals of "Ohio Valley - Ozone Alley."
If anything, health impact estimates calculated by the council's Washington-area consultant, Abt Associates, understate the Tristate problem.
Abt excludes Butler and Warren counties because the study covers only counties along the Ohio River, even though Butler and Warren are part of the smog control region that includes Hamilton, Clermont, Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties.
"Ohio Valley - Ozone Alley"has at least two purposes and one conclusion:
• First, it agrees with partisans who blame some of New England's smog problem on NOx emissions from coal-fired power stations in the Ohio Valley.
• Second, it argues that even if Ohio Valley residents won't reduce NOx for New Englanders' sake, fewer pollutants would improve health at home.
• In conclusion, the report says the most effective way to reduce smog is to tighten NOx controls on all power stations, especially older facilities operating under looser limits than newer facilities.
Citing Environmental Protection Agency figures, the report says that targeting power plants would be the cheapest way ($1,700 a ton) to achieve NOx reductions and that would cost the average residential electricity customer $12 a year.
Cinergy's Mr. Brash pooh-poohed that figure as outdated and discredited, saying it was "way off base." Real expenses would be "much higher" and would cost Cinergy up to $700 million for equipment plus annual operating expenses of $100 million to $150 million. He did not have per-household estimates.
As expensive as utility-based NOx reductions would be, Tuesday's survey says alternatives are costlier: vehicle inspection and maintenance programs such as E-check, $2,600 a ton; cleaner-burning reformulated gas, $3,600 a ton.
Meanwhile, Mr. Brash noted, federal courts have tied up EPA's latest NOx standard and Cinergy is pursuing its voluntary NOx reduction plan, meant to cut two-thirds of the pollutant from its power stations, irrespective of age and applicable limits.
----
Portsmouth Uranium Enrichment Plant Achieves Safety Milestone
Excite News
Updated 10:25 AM ET February 23, 2000
http://news.excite.com/news/bw/000223/oh-usec
PIKETON, Ohio (BUSINESS WIRE) - Employees at the United States Enrichment Corporation's Portsmouth uranium enrichment plant set a new safety record on February 7, 2000, by working a total of 1,507,959 hours or 133 days without experiencing a Lost Work Day Case - Days Away from Work recordable injury. This is an all-time record for the plant since it began following U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recordkeeping guidelines in 1989. A lost-time injury is an injury that results in actual time away from the work site.
"Our continued successes in preventing this type of injury are a direct result of every employee's commitment to safety," said General Manager Morris Brown. "I congratulate my fellow employees at Portsmouth for their exceptional performance in attaining this goal as well as for their continued efforts to improve the safety and health performance of our plant.
"This achievement comes after USEC formed a Safety Core Group last August, consisting of site management, union and headquarters representatives, to encourage a safety culture that would result in zero accidents and injuries in the workplace," said Brown. "The Group provides leadership, resources and incentives to protect USEC's most important asset, its employees and their families."
The safety milestone was achieved during a time of increased production levels at the plant. On Monday, February 14, 2000, the plant reached its highest production efficiency level since 1995.
The United States Enrichment Corporation is a subsidiary of USEC Inc., the world's leading supplier of enriched uranium fuel for commercial nuclear power plants. A global energy company, USEC has its headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, and operates production plants in Kentucky and Ohio.
Contact: USEC, Inc. Angie Duduit, Piketon, 740/897-2457 Elizabeth Stuckle, Bethesda, 301/564-3399
----------- pennsylvania
Love It or Live With It: Nuclear Power 20 Years After Three Mile Island
Environmental News Services
March 23, 1999
http://ens.lycos.com/corpus/ens/mar99/1999l%2D03%2D23%2D03.html
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS) - Twenty years after the March 28, 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, most Americans believe a similar accident could happen again in the United States. This is among the key findings of a new public opinion survey released today by the Sustainable Energy Coalition, a group of 30 national business, environmental, and consumer organizations that promote energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies.
Maine Yankee near Wiscasset, Maine (Photos courtesy Nuclear Regulatory Commission)
There are 103 operating nuclear reactors in the United States supplying about 20 percent of the electricity used across the country.
The Sustainable Energy Coalition survey found that six out of ten registered voters oppose the building of any new nuclear plants in the United States. If given a choice of generator from which they could buy their electricity, only six percent would choose nuclear power.
The survey of 1,022 registered voters was conducted March 5 to 14 by International Communications Research of Media, Pennsylvania. It has a margin of error of +/-3.0 percent.
Two-thirds (67%) of respondents stated that they believe that it was highly (21%) or somewhat (46%) likely that a nuclear accident like that which occurred at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant could happen in the United States again. This view is held by male and female voters across all political party lines and age groups.
It is therefore not surprising that three-fifths (60%) of all registered voters oppose the building of more nuclear power plants in the United States, with women (69%) and younger voters (65%) particularly opposed.
The respondents overall were evenly split on the question of whether existing reactors should be phased out by the year 2020. A nuclear phase-out is embraced by a majority of Democratic voters (51% vs. 35%). The responses reveal a clear gender gap, with women favoring a phase-out by a margin of 48% to 35%. Younger voters support a phase-out of nuclear reactors by an even larger margin of 50% to 40%.
But the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the industry's Washington based policy organization, says that 20 years after Three Mile Island, the nuclear energy industry in the United States has reached new levels of safety and reliability.
Ft. Calhoun, Unit 1, 19 Miles North of Omaha, Nebraska
Data released last week from the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO), formed after Three Mile Island to promote excellence in plant operations, shows that the nuclear industry is achieving ambitious and quantifiable goals for plant and worker safety and performance.
"The data prove it - nuclear plants are safer and more reliable than ever," said Joe Colvin, president and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute. "The industry has come a long way in the two decades since Three Mile Island sparked sweeping changes in the way we operate our plants. The lessons we learned and our continued investments in our people and training are paying off many times over."
The data cited by NEI indicate that for the fourth straight year, U.S. nuclear plants achieved record high levels of safety system performance. In 1998, 98 percent of three key plant safety systems-two main cooling systems, and back-up power supplies used to respond to unusual situations - met their availability goals.
For the second year, unplanned automatic plant shutdowns stood at a median value of zero per plant in 1998. Nearly two-thirds of all operating nuclear power plants had no automatic scrams last year.
U.S. nuclear plants in 1998 reached their highest worker safety level since INPO began collecting these data: only 0.29 accidents per 200,000 work-hours.
San Onofre Unit #2 on the Camp Pendleton Marine Base in San Clemente, California.
Unit Capability Factor is a performance indicator that indicates the percentage of maximum electricity a plant can supply to the power supply system, limited only by factors within the control of plant managers. The industry's 1998 median capability factor of 87 percent is the highest since INPO began collecting data and meets the year 2000 goal for the first time.
Nuclear power plants produced a minimal volume of tools, rags, protective clothing and other materials containing low levels of radioactivity in 1998 and again exceeded the industry's year 2000 goals for minimizing this waste, according to the INPO data.
Pressurized-water reactors produced a median volume of only 21 cubic meters of waste per plant - less than half of the 45-cubic-meter goal for the year 2000.
Waste from boiling-water reactors in 1998 stood at a median volume of 79 cubic meters - well ahead of the year 2000 goal of 125 cubic meters.
But a new study by the Union of Concerned Scientists finds that immediate steps must be taken to prevent another reactor accident, one potentially more serious than Three Mile Island. The group says the nuclear power industry and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) continue to ignore warning signs at nuclear plants.
"Apparently the industry and the NRC have forgotten about Three Mile Island," said David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer for UCS and author of the study, 'Three Mile Island's Puzzling Legacy.' "We can't rely on luck alone to prevent another accident."
The study shows that the nuclear industry, with the NRC's blessing, is calculating falsely high safety levels at nuclear power plants by ignoring past problems. Tolerance of unacceptable performance by nuclear power plants exists today as it did with Three Mile Island.
For example, five nuclear plants have been shut down for over a year to fix safety problems - problems that were tolerated for years until outside pressure or malfunctions forced the NRC to take action.
"Some of the plants operating today generate as many warning signals as electricity," said Lochbaum. "The NRC must heed these signs and protect the public."
The Union of Concerned Scientists says the NRC should "develop risk studies based on all information, not just a convenient sub-set of data."
The agency should respond quickly to warning signs, instead of waiting for problems to avalanche into disaster, and communicate openly, without technical jargon, with the public on nuclear safety matters, the scientists say.
-------- tennessee
First waste shipment goes out
by Larisa Brass
Oak Ridger staff
Wednesday, February 23, 2000
Over half of more than 26 million pounds of waste sludge from the Oak Ridge K-25 site has now been moved to permanent storage.
Last week Department of Energy contractor British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. shipped out the last barrels of sludge being temporarily stored in two large process buildings at K-25.
The sludge contained "small amounts" of uranium and heavy metals like nickel, said DOE spokesman David Page. The work made up part of BNFL's larger job to clean out three enormous uranium enrichment buildings at the plant.
BNFL began shipping out the barrels of waste to a storage plant in Utah last February. Since then, the company has sent 17,316 drums containing 22 million pounds of sludge to the Envirocare Mixed Waste Disposal Facility. The project cost $12.7 million, said Page.
The waste came from two wastewater ponds at K-25, which were dredged in the late 1980s. More than half of the liquid waste was mixed with cement and stored in 45,000 drums on an outdoor pad.
By 1990, however, the drums were beginning to corrode, and a 1991 state order forced DOE to repackage the waste and move it into indoor storage. The agency did so beginning in 1993 when shipments to Envirocare also began.
More than 34 million pounds of sludge were shipped before BNFL landed the contract to clean out buildings K-31, K-29 and K-33 in 1997. BNFL's contract held an option to finish shipping the waste.
About 10.5 million pounds of raw sludge remain at K-25 for treatment and disposal. DOE's primary cleanup contractor Bechtel Jacobs is carrying out that project, which is expected to wrap up in 2002.
BNFL workers involved in the project don't have to worry about losing their jobs, however, said company spokesman Norman Hammitt. They will be transferred to another cleanup project in Portsmouth, Ohio, shipping contaminated soils.
-----
Radioactive recycling is still a hot issue
February 23, 2000
By Frank Munger News-Sentinel staff writer
http://www.knoxnews.com/editorsview/munger/fm02232000.shtml
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson's decision to halt, at least temporarily, the recycling of radioactive nickel at federal facilities in Oak Ridge has drawn praise from environmental groups, the metals industry and an international union. Not everyone, however, applauded the move.
The Citizens Advisory Panel of the Local Oversight Committee, which represents local governments on environmental matters at the Department of Energy complex, recently sent a letter to Richardson asking that the review of the situation be accelerated.
The group also implored DOE -- with the cooperation of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- to set standards for the release of recycled materials that have "volumetric contamination" -- slight amounts of radioactivity mixed throughout.
The panel's Feb. 9 letter, authored by chairman Norman Mulvenon, doesn't say Richardson's decision to idle the Oak Ridge recycling program was wrong. But it does suggest the move was unnecessary and perhaps ill-advised.
Mulvenon said the citizens group received a briefing last fall from a radiation protection specialist with the Tennessee Division of Radiological Health on how the state approved the license for the recycling of nickel at Manufacturing Sciences Corp. -- a subsidiary of BNFL, which heads the DOE-sanctioned cleanup program in Oak Ridge.
"We feel their action was technically sound and that recycle is justified, especially since virtually all of the technetium-99 (the primary contaminant of concern) is removed by the electro-refining process," Mulvenon wrote, suggesting there was nothing uniquely hazardous about the Oak Ridge program.
He said other metal scrap with radioactivity on the surface is released in the United States, with NRC approval, thus raising the possibility that it could be recycled and pose a situation similar to what was proposed in Oak Ridge. He said other countries are doing recycling already, adding: "Consumer goods from these countries enter the U.S. and ultimately are incorporated into the metal recycling system."
Mulvenon reminded the secretary that recycling of metals stripped from the old buildings at K-25 was to play an important role in financing the cleanup project earlier approved by DOE.
"Delays in the process inevitably will slow the cleanup and impact the already-damaged economy of the Oak Ridge region," he wrote.
Meanwhile, PACE (the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical & Energy Workers International Union), a key player in the move to stop the Oak Ridge recycling program, urged Richardson to take stronger actions.
PACE, in a Feb. 2 letter to the energy secretary, said there should be a full-scale inquiry into DOE's cleanup contract with BNFL. The union objected to the possibility that BNFL might use the ban on nickel recycling to seek money from DOE.
The union and other parties, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, filed a lawsuit a couple of years ago that tried, unsuccessfully, to stop the Oak Ridge cleanup project -- citing safety concerns and other issues.
Since then, the union said its investigation has uncovered a number of improper acts by DOE and its contractors. Before renegotiating BNFL's contract, DOE should consider alternatives, such as putting the Oak Ridge contract up for new competition, the union told Richardson.
*GETTING A JUMP: UT-Battelle, of course, takes over management of Oak Ridge National Laboratory in about a month, replacing Lockheed Martin on April 1. (Ever wonder why so many federal contracts begin on April Fool's Day?) Battelle appears to be anxious for the inevitable to take place, so anxious that Battelle's web site already reports the company is managing the Oak Ridge lab. Guess they just couldn't wait.
*THIS IS IT: Suffice it to say many of the folks who transferred to Science Applications International Corp. from Lockheed Martin last year as part of the outsourcing of the information technology business are not happy. There have been -- according to employee reports -- unexpected layoffs, reduced benefits, retirement funds that got gutted in the transfer and various unfulfilled promises. Out of this ugliness and den of hard feelings, there are multiple reports of a lawsuit in the offing.
---
Large amount of K-25 sludge goes to Utah landfill
Progress seen in cleanup process
February 23, 2000,
By Frank Munger,
News-Sentinel Oak Ridge bureau
http://www.knoxnews.com/business/5745.shtml
OAK RIDGE -- Federal contractors have shipped more than 17,000 drums of solidified pond sludge to a Utah landfill during the past year, thus concluding one part of an environmental saga that began in 1984. The sludges, which contained radioactive elements and hazardous chemicals, were dredged from two waste ponds at the K-25 site during the early stages of the government's cleanup program in Oak Ridge. Although billed initially as a model project, it quickly turned into a fiasco.
Efforts to solidify the sludges with concrete in the mid-1980s failed, and follow-up fixes and storage plans proved extremely expensive -- with cost estimates exceeding $100 million.
Despite the many problems, officials were putting a happy face on the recent progress.
BNFL Inc., a Department of Energy contractor, earlier this month completed the shipment of 17,316 drums containing solidified pond wastes to the Envirocare disposal facility at Clive, Utah. Since 1991, those wastes had been stored in buildings once part of the uranium-enrichment operation at K-25, and BNFL agreed to dispose of the wastes as part of its contract to clean up those facilities.
Rod Nelson, DOE's environmental manager in Oak Ridge, called it an "important milestone" in the cleanup of the East Tennessee Technology Park, formerly known the K-25 site.
However, 10.5 million pounds of unsolidified pond sludge remains in storage at the federal plant. Officials said they now expect those wastes to be disposed of by 2002, about four years ahead of a schedule approved by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.
Earl Leming, the state's environmental-oversight chief in Oak Ridge, said the progress is noteworthy. If federal funding continues, the project appears to be on the right track, he said.
-------- us nuc other
Galileo Survives Radiation From Jupiter's Moon
New York Times
February 23, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/022300sci-nasa-galileo.html
Related Articles
The Solar System: Jupiter
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/jupiter-index.html
The New York Times on the Web: Science
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/national/index-science.html
Interactive 3D Image
Galileo Space Probe (Requires Hypercosm Player)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/galileo-hypercosm.html
Time Line
The Iron Horse of Space Probes
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/020100sci-nasa-jupiter.1.GIF.html
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's aging Galileo spacecraft today swept closer than ever before past Jupiter's volcanic moon Io, surviving the intense radiation without the computer shutdowns that marred previous encounters.
The 2 1/2-ton, $1.4 billion orbiter flew within 124 miles of Io's surface at 6:32 a.m. PST, taking images and measurements of what is believed to be the most volcanically active world in the solar system.
"It looks like it went pretty well," said Jim Erickson, Galileo's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We don't see any issues, and everything seems to have been done fine. This is one of the lucky ones."
Controllers had received much of the telemetry data within two hours of the flyby, and there were no indications that the radiation in the area of Jupiter's nearest moon affected the probe. It takes 42 minutes for a signal from Galileo to reach Earth.
"No 'safings"', he said today, meaning that the computers didn't close down into safe mode. "No nothing. It did the job right."
Scientists are hoping to see how the moon has changed since two previous Io encounters in October and November, said Duane Bindschadler, Galileo's manager for science planning and operations at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"We are looking at some areas we haven't seen at this high a resolution before," he said earlier. "The other thing we're doing is targeting the particularly active volcanoes, and hoping to see active lavas on the surface."
Using a myriad of instruments, scientists aimed to measure the temperature and potentially the composition of the lava on the fiery moon, he said. The readings and images will be returned over the next several weeks.
Galileo is now on its second extended mission since completing its primary goals in 1997. Fuel for maneuvering is running low, navigation equipment is failing and the probe has encountered twice as much radiation as it was designed to withstand.
Mission officials, acknowledging that their plucky probe will not last forever, are incrementally increasing the danger of its encounters in an effort to squeeze it for as much scientific information return as possible.
"The possibility that there is going to be a failure is always there," Erickson said earlier. "We're way past warranty and we're incrementally pushing our luck, but that's a good thing to do."
Galileo, which was launched in 1989, flew within 380 miles of Io in October, revealing more than 100 volcanoes, some of which spewed 2,700-degree lava and vented gases miles into space.
Just 19 hours before the encounter, however, a computer memory error shut down the probe's instruments. Engineers rushed to JPL and managed to restart the computer just before the flyby.
A month later, Galileo flew within 186 miles of the surface. Its camera captured lava spurting more than a mile high. Engineers again were able to restart its computer after the radiation caused another shutdown of its science instruments.
--------us nuc sites
NASA-White Sands Not Surprised Shuttle Didn't Land There
Albuquerque Journal
February 23, 2000
The Associated Press
http://www.abqjournal.com:80/news/1white02-23-00.htm
WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, N.M. -- NASA's Jim Gavura remembers the only space shuttle landing at this southern New Mexico test range as a "gypsum nightmare."
So he wasn't surprised NASA wanted the shuttle Endeavor to land either in Florida or California after its 11-day mission instead of at White Sands. Endeavor landed Tuesday evening at Cape Canaveral, Fla., after NASA waited for gusty winds to die down.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials said Tuesday that if bad weather kept Endeavor and its crew of six in orbit until Wednesday, it would consider landing the shuttle at White Sands -- but only if conditions remained poor at the two main touchdown sites.
A shuttle has landed at Northrup Strip at the southern New Mexico missile range only once, during the program's third flight.
"We're still plucking gypsum out of that vehicle to this day," said Bill Beeker, a retired NASA engineer who was at White Sands for the March 1982 landing of the shuttle Columbia.
"They'd have to be pretty desperate to come back here," said Gavura, who directs White Sands' Tracking and Data Relay Station north of Organ. The station keeps NASA ground controllers in constant touch with the shuttle through satellites around the globe.
The missile range's unpaved Northrup runway sits on the fine-grained gypsum of an evaporated mineral lake bed miles from the glistening gypsum sands that give the missile range and a nearby national monument their names.
Beeker, now a volunteer at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, said White Sands is still a contingency landing site, but that NASA "would much rather go to California than back to White Sands and, really, they prefer to come right back here if they possibly can."
NASA has not landed a shuttle at California's Edwards Air Force Base since 1996.
Beeker, a mechanical engineer who was part of Columbia's advance preparation team at White Sands in 1982, said that landing was planned to test the site.
"We enjoyed it out there except for the dust storms and then, of course, that gypsum," he said. Gavura said crews had a horrible time cleaning the gypsum out of Columbia.
"After 1982, White Sands is a last resort," he said.
And, he added, "Actually, our weather here is not very good anyway. Pretty windy."
--------alternative energy
The World Needs Energy from Space
Space.com
posted: 03:01 pm EST 23 February 2000
By Peter E. Glaser
http://www.space.com/opinion/glaser_000223.html
Humanity faces a new energy crisis. A growing population and rising per-capita energy consumption require a move away from the polluting, finite energy supplies now in use. Moreover, renewable energy sources such as conventional solar and wind power can only meet a portion of projected needs.
Space holds the key to an inexhaustible, non-polluting energy supply. That key is space solar power (SSP) -- using space-based systems to collect the sun's energy and turn it into usable power for Earth.
SSP would employ satellites in Earth orbit or systems on the moon's surface equipped with solar cells that convert the sun's energy into electricity. The electricity is fed to transmitting antennas and beamed to receiving antennas on Earth, located on land or offshore.
This is not some futuristic dream. The key SSP technologies -- solar cells and wireless power transmission (WPT) -- are based on the work of 19th century innovators such as Henri Becquerel and Nikola Tesla.
The conversion of solar energy in space to usable power on Earth is the most plausible global alternative to nuclear power plants.
During the past three decades, SSP has been studied extensively by space agencies, universities and industry groups worldwide. International meetings have been held on the subject since 1970. There now exists a large and growing literature on the technical, economic and societal issues associated with SSP.
NASA and the Energy Department conducted a joint-evaluation program of solar power satellites in the 1970s, but interest among policymakers declined after that decade's energy crisis faded away. Recently, U.S. political interest in SSP has begun to revive -- sparked in part by the specter of global warming -- though other nations, including Japan and Russia, have conducted serious SSP research throughout.
But much greater attention and effort are needed. SSP should become a top priority of the U.S. space program, and more broadly of government and industry in the U.S. and around the world.
Consider the energy situation now confronting the world. Industrialization and urbanization will mean sharply increased energy use. Reliance on fossil fuels could produce unprecedented environmental damage. Moreover, such finite sources may soon be past their peak availability, if they aren't already.
The solution to this problem is to utilize terrestrial renewable energy resources to the maximum extent possible, while at the same time developing SSP as a global, 24-hour-a-day energy supply.
The conversion of solar energy in space to usable power on Earth is the most plausible global alternative to nuclear power plants, with their attendant safety, decommissioning and plutonium proliferation issues.
SSP can also be an integral part of global development. It can help boost economic growth and improve living standards. It is the only means toward increased energy supplies compatible with the environment.
Space solar power is a challenging, long-term opportunity to tap space's unlimited resources rather than relying only on Earth's limited ones. It will help sustain human life on Earth and, at a future time, in space.
Peter E. Glaser introduced the concept of space solar power in a November 22, 1968 article in Science magazine, "Power from the Sun: Its Future," and has since written widely on the subject. He is co-editor, with F.P. Davidson, and K.I. Csigi, of Solar Power Satellites (Wiley-Praxis). Glaser was vice president of advanced technology at Arthur D. Little, Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts, from 1955 to 1994.
--------genetic engineering
Office Admits Genetic Patent Error
Yahoo News
04:53 PM ET 02/22/00
By COLLEEN BARRY
Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2564508968-22f
BERLIN (AP) _ The European Patent Office on Tuesday admitted it made a mistake in granting a patent that critics claim would allow genetic manipulation of human organs and cells.
Facing protests from European governments and environmentalists, the Munich-based Patent Office said in a statement that the patent for research at Scotland's University of Edinburgh was flawed.
The patent mistakenly omitted one term, ``non-human,'' which would make clear the approval does not apply to humans.
``We made a mistake,'' said Rainer Osterwalder, a spokesman for office established in 1977 to centralize the patent grant system, which currently includes 19 member countries. ``This should not have been granted in the present form.''
The environmental group Greenpeace, which discovered the mistake and led protests outside the Patent Office Tuesday, said the omission could be misinterpreted and used to support genetic cloning.
The Patent Office denied, however, that the patent could be extended to human cloning.
The patent refers to ``a method of preparing a transgenic animal,'' but the Patent Office said the term ``non-human'' should have been included because ``animal'' can also refer to humans. The patent technically violates EU guidelines that take effect July 31 banning ``processes that would change the genetic identity of human organisms.''
Osterwalder said the office was investigating how the mistake got through, but he said inattention and a high volume of applications were likely to blame.
The patent, granted in December on a 1994 application, was sought for human cell research leading to possible replacement of diseased human tissue, such as that found in people suffering from Parkinson's disease, a spokeswoman at Edinburgh University said.
``The patent does not relate in any sense to the cloning of human beings,'' the spokeswoman said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
German and Italian politicians led protests Tuesday, pledging to file a challenge, the only remedy available. The Patent Office said it could not unilaterally undo the error.
German Health Minister Andrea Fischer said she would recommend Wednesday that the German Cabinet issue a challenge to correct the ``serious'' error. Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin said the decision ``cannot be reconciled with law and ethics.''
Italy's EU policy minister, Patrizia Toia, said the Italian government may likewise take legal action to intervene against what she called a ``disastrous decision.''
--------toxics
USA Today
02/23/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Montana Missoula - The Environmental Protection Agency is looking at proposals to remove the Milltown Dam near Missoula and haul away the reservoir's toxic sediments, restoring the free flow of the Clark Fork River . Milltown Reservoir now holds an estimated 6.6 million cubic yards of contaminated sediments, including hundreds of tons of arsenic and heavy metals.
---
Clinton May Act on Gas Additive
Yahoo News
07:38 PM ET 02/22/00
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2564511431-5a1
WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Clinton administration is exploring whether to regulate the gasoline additive MTBE under a law that controls toxic chemicals, a first step toward a possible ban, government sources and a lawmaker said Tuesday.
The Environmental Protection Agency has submitted for White House review a general outline for possible regulation of the additive and could issue a notice for a proposed rule on MTBE within weeks, the sources said.
EPA Administrator Carol Browner acknowledged as early as last summer misgivings about MTBE, the oxygenate used in about a third of the country's gasoline. Her agency had detected signs that it is contaminating lakes and groundwater.
``We are currently in discussions within the administration about the best approaches that we might take to address these concerns,'' said David Cohen, a spokesman for the agency. He declined to elaborate.
Government sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the administration is exploring a broad range of actions to deal with MTBE in part because Congress has not acted. A number of MTBE bills have been introduced, but their prospects remain uncertain.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who introduced legislation for a national ban on use of MTBE in gasoline, said the EPA and White House are considering regulating the additive under the Toxic Substance Control Act.
The law regulates use of chemicals. The EPA previously has said it has no authority to regulate MTBE, and Congress should act to limit its use in light of evidence the additive is contaminating groundwater.
In a letter to Browner, Boxer urged the EPA ``to move swiftly'' to phase out the additive, once touted as the key to cleaner gasoline and reduced air pollution, particularly from toxic tailpipe emissions.
She made a similar plea in a separate letter to Jack Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget at the White House. ``This is crucial for California,'' Boxer added in a handwritten postscript on her letter to Lew.
The MTBE additive is used in all or part of 16 states and accounts for a third of the gasoline sold in the country, including much of that sold in the Northeast. Refiners turned to the additive after the 1990 Clean Air Act required gasoline in areas with serious air pollution to contain at least 2 percent oxygen by weight.
MTBE, a leading oxygenate and octane booster, reduces emissions of toxic chemicals and smog-causing chemicals from automobile tailpipes, the EPA said.
But because MTBE moves quickly through soil and groundwater when gasoline leaks from underground tanks or is spilled, the additive has been found to contaminate aquifers and lakes that are the source of drinking water.
``MTBE has now been detected in groundwater and drinking water in over 41 states,'' maintained Boxer. ``EPA action to completely phase out MTBE is long overdue.''
Last summer, an EPA advisory panel said that while current levels of MTBE in water pose no health risk, its use should be dramatically curtailed because of potential widespread water pollution problems. MTBE has been found to be a carcinogen and poses health as well as environmental risks, other critics of the additive have said.
Representatives of companies that manufacture MTBE argue the water-quality fears have been exaggerated, and the additive is crucial to reducing air pollution.
-------- spying
Report Critical of Ex-CIA Director
Yahoo News
02:28 AM ET 02/23/00
By TOM RAUM
Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2564519175-06f
WASHINGTON (AP) _ Despite public and private apologies from former CIA Director John Deutch, a Senate inquiry into his admitted misuse of classified material on home computers will proceed, says the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
``There is no excuse for this kind of behavior,'' Sen. Richard Shelby said after Deutch appeared before his panel.
Deutch, in his first public comments on his computer behavior, told reporters after Tuesday's closed-door session he erred in doing classified work on unsecured computers in his home _ computers that were also connected to the Internet.
``At no time did I intend to violate security rules,'' Deutch said. ``The director of Central Intelligence is not above the rules.''
Shelby, R-Ala., said his panel eventually will recall Deutch. It also wants to hear from present senior CIA officials, including Director George Tenet, on why it took so long to strip Deutch of his security clearances or to notify the Justice Department and Congress that an investigation was under way.
``All this happened on his watch,'' Shelby said. ``This I do not believe was Mr. Tenet's finest hour.''
Deutch left the CIA in December 1996. Tenet had his predecessor's security clearances removed last August. Deutch, a former deputy defense secretary, also held onto a Pentagon security clearance but gave it up this month after it was disclosed.
The CIA inspector general's report says Tenet ``should have involved himself more forcefully to ensure a proper resolution of the matter.''
In a statement, CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said Tenet considers Deutch's mishandling of classified information ``inexcusable.'' The inspector general's report ``paints a picture of individuals struggling with the challenge of conducting a sensitive security investigation of the agency's former director.''
``Director Tenet has made it clear that the agency will not hide behind excuses for why the original investigation fell short of expectations,'' Harlow said. ``We could have and should have done better.''
Most of the findings of the inspector general's report had been disclosed earlier by those familiar with the August 1999 document. The panel released a 77-page version from which classified material had been removed.
Among other things, the report said that several ``high-risk'' Internet sites that had been visited by someone in the Deutch household had left electronic imprints, or ``cookies,'' on Deutch's computer hard drives.
Other officials familiar with the investigation said pornographic sites were among those visited, and the visits appeared to have occurred while Deutch was not at home.
One reason Deutch was especially vulnerable, the report said, was that his Internet screen name was accompanied by an online profile giving his true name, that he lived in Bethesda, Md., and that his occupation was ``scientist.''
Deutch, a chemistry professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, asserted that no national security secrets were compromised by his lax computer conduct. However, the CIA was conducting a full damage assessment on the matter.
``I very much regret my errors,'' Deutch said. ``I've worked for this country for over 40 years in a number of positions, and I am proud of my accomplishments. I hope that my mistakes will be weighed against the service and the contributions that I have made.''
The inspector general's report said Deutch violated agency rules in using at least five unsecured computers to process ``a large volume of highly classified information,'' including information on covert intelligence operations, top secret communications, classified details about intelligence budgets and drafts of top-secret memos to President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.
These included desktop computers that Deutch had at his homes at Bethesda and Belmont, Mass., and his offices in the CIA headquarters and in the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House, plus a laptop.
The internal investigation ``has established that Deutch was aware of prohibitions relating to the use of unclassified computers for processing classified information,'' the report said.
It disclosed that Deutch had been reprimanded for mishandling classified information earlier, even before he became CIA director in 1995.
Details were not in the report. But those familiar with it said it dealt with an investigation of Deutch during the early 1980s for a security clearance to serve on a government panel.
---
Former C.I.A. Director Left Secrets Open to Theft, Agency Investigator Says
New York Times
February 23, 2000
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/washpol/intel-deutch.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 -- Investigators scouring home computers used by John M. Deutch, the former director of central intelligence, found 42 secret documents and fragments of 32 others and could not rule out the possibility that some of the information may have been stolen by hackers, according to a report by the agency's inspector general released today.
Mr. Deutch's mishandling of the information, much of it in the form of letters and memorandums to President Clinton, left highly classified programs and secret code words vulnerable to theft, either through telephone modems or a burglary of his homes in Maryland or Massachusetts, the report found.
"Whether any of the information was stolen or compromised remains unknown," the report concluded.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the report, an unclassified version of a longer report given to Congress last year, as it questioned Mr. Deutch about his mishandling of classified information.
At the end of today's hearing, Mr. Deutch appeared briefly before reporters and for the first time responded publicly to the flurry of controversy over his security lapses and the agency's slow response to them. He read from a written statement and then refused to answer questions.
"The director of central intelligence is not above the rules, and indeed the director of central intelligence should be an example of respect for security," said Mr. Deutch, who was the subject of a criminal investigation over the security lapses that ended with a decision by the Justice Department not to prosecute him.
"I very much regret my errors."
The committee's questioning of Mr. Deutch went on behind closed doors, but the inspector general's report offered a highly critical version of events that led to the discovery of the security lapses and the agency's investigation into them.
The committee's chairman, Senator Richard C. Shelby, said the committee would very likely call Mr. Deutch to testify again on behavior he characterized as "inexplicable." The senator, an Alabama Republican, said the committee would also call senior officials from the agency to find out why an investigation was not handled more promptly.
"We're deeply, deeply troubled," Mr. Shelby said.
Much of the information included in the report has already been publicized in news accounts. The report offered new detail, however, on Mr. Deutch's actions and the agency's response after it learned in December 1996 that Mr. Deutch had kept significant amounts of classified information on government computers he used at home.
Even Mr. Deutch's explanations for wanting to continue using the computers after stepping down as director -- that he had personal financial records on them -- constituted a violation of rules prohibiting personal use of government property.
According to the report, Mr. Deutch had been briefed on the risks of keeping secrets on computers not specially encrypted and protected against espionage, but brushed the warnings aside.
"Despite this knowledge, Deutch processed a large volume of highly classified information on these unclassified computers, taking no steps to restrict access to the information and thereby placing national security information at risk," the report said.
The report said he used five government computers in all, four of them with modems that were not protected. Mr. Deutch heightened the security risk by using the same computers for surfing the Internet, banking online and for sending e-mail messages. He even used e-mail addresses with private services that could have signaled his identity.
His "online identity" at the C.I.A. was "johnd@odci.gov," the report said.
Investigators determined that several of the Web sites Mr. Deutch visited left markers on his computers -- known as "cookies" -- that allow companies to track computer usage.
The inspector general's report did not specify what classified information was found, but the investigation found that the computers' hard drives showed that Mr. Deutch routinely drafted memorandums using or referring to the classified documents, which among other things described official trips that the director took.
There was also a spread sheet evidently showing the budget of a classified program from 1995 through 2001.
The report also revealed that agency records showed that Mr. Deutch "had problems before becoming director with regard to the handling of classified information." The report did not detail those problems, but Mr. Deutch previously served as under secretary and deputy secretary of defense before moving to the C.I.A.
The report accused two senior agency officials -- the former executive director, Nora Slatkin, and the former general counsel, Michael O'Neill -- of acting in a way that "had the effect of delaying a prompt and thorough investigation of this matter."
The report also rebuked Mr. Deutch's successor as director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, saying he "should have involved himself more forcefully to ensure a proper resolution of the matter."
The report suggested that the delays avoided the possibility of an investigation under the independent counsel statute, which expired last year. The report noted a similar case from 1996 involving a senior C.I.A. official who routinely wrote classified documents on his home computer and a laptop and was later suspended, demoted and given a two-year letter of reprimand.
---
Senator finds Deutch lapse, CIA foot-dragging 'troubling'
Washington Times
February 23, 2000
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/national/nation4-02232000.htm
Foreign intelligence services could have broken into the homes of former CIA Director John Deutch and copied the 17,000 pages of highly classified intelligence documents stored improperly on his home computers, according to a CIA report made public yesterday.
The report by the CIA inspector general also said that "high-risk Internet sites" had placed "cookies" on the hard drive of Mr. Deutch's home computer - software that lets remote computers obtain personal information from systems connected to the Internet.
However, CIA security investigators stated in a memorandum partially reproduced in the report that it would have been easier for spies to break into Mr. Deutch's homes and copy the data than to access it by remote computer.
Mr. Deutch had refused 24-hour CIA security guards at his homes because of "privacy concerns" and let a resident alien domestic servant with no security clearance enter the Bethesda, Md., residence when the Deutches were not home.
CIA investigators "determined the likelihood of compromise was actually greater via a hostile entry operation into one of Mr. Deutch's two homes [in Bethesda and Boston] to 'image' the contents of the affected hard drives," the memorandum said.
"Due to the paucity of physical security, it is stipulated that such an entry operation would not have posed a particularly difficult challenge, had a sophisticated operation been launched by opposition forces," the memo said.
A complete copy of the data on the hard drives could have been made in a short time, the memo said.
The report stated that there was no clear evidence the secrets were compromised, and that determining the loss might take months.
The inspector general report concluded that Mr. Deutch knew he was risking U.S. national security by placing highly sensitive information on the unclassified computers but did nothing to prevent it.
The report described the information as relating to "covert action, Top Secret communications intelligence and the National Reconnaissance Program budget."
The material also included memos to the president and top national security officials as well as "non-CIA compartmented" information - a reference to extremely sensitive Pentagon programs.
U.S. officials told The Washington Times last week that besides CIA secrets, investigators found highly classified information on Mr. Deutch's home computers relating to Pentagon special access programs, known as "black programs," because of their secrecy.
Mr. Deutch, meanwhile, appeared before a closed session of the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday to answer questions about how some 17,000 classified intelligence and defense documents were improperly stored on several computers used after he left the agency in December 1996.
Mr. Deutch told reporters after a two-hour appearance before the Senate committee yesterday that "I very much regret my error."
"At no time did I intend to violate security rules," Mr. Deutch said. "The director of Central Intelligence is not above the rules."
However, the inspector general report indicates that the former CIA chief deliberately deleted classified files on the computers after he was caught by security officials improperly storing the data on his computers on Dec. 17, 1995.
Some of the deleted files that were retrieved by investigators were dated Dec. 20, 1995 - three days after the material was first discovered by a security official.
The report outlined a scheme by Mr. Deutch to keep the CIA-supplied computers by entering a contract with the agency that prohibited him from using them for personal use - even though he said the reason he wanted to keep them was because the contained personal financial records.
Senior aides to Mr. Deutch at CIA, namely CIA Executive Director Nora Slatkin and Michael O'Neill, the agency's general counsel, also took steps described in the inspector general report as "anomalies" that appeared aimed at protecting Mr. Deutch.
CIA Director George Tenet also waited 18 months before notifying Congress of Mr. Deutch's improperly storing highly sensitive intelligence and defense documents improperly, the report said.
The report said the delay prevented the appointment of an independent counsel investigation because "the allegations of illegal behavior regarding . . . Deutch were received more than one year after Deutch left office."
Mr. Tenet must notify the oversight committees of any significant intelligence activities.
Sen. Richard C. Shelby, Alabama Republican and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview yesterday that the lapse was "troubling."
"I don't believe this was George Tenet and his staff's finest hour," Mr. Shelby said. "All of the delay, the lack of notification to the committees, the FBI, and so forth is troubling and inexplicable."
Asked if Mr. Tenet should resign, Mr. Shelby said, "We're doing our investigation right now."
---
Germans Accused of Spying for Russia
Associated Press
February 23, 2000 Filed at 10:12 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Germany-Russia-Spying.html
KARLSRUHE, Germany (AP) -- Federal prosecutors charged a German businessman and an engineer Wednesday with spying for allegedly giving information on arms technology to Russian intelligence.
Authorities said the men -- identified only as Michael K., 40, and Peter S., 52 -- delivered information to the Russians between 1997 and July 1999. According to the indictment filed in Karlsruhe, they did the spying because of their own financial troubles and were paid $68,000.
DaimlerChrysler Aerospace has confirmed that Peter S. worked at its guided missile systems subsidiary.
Michael K. allegedly traveled nearly every month to Moscow, delivering the information from Peter S. on arms systems and planned tank and aircraft defenses. He was arrested July 28 at the Hanover airport and has been held in investigative custody since then.
Peter S. told authorities he hadn't known who was getting the information, and was released from custody Dec. 1 pending trial.
---
Cuba: Diplomat Is Not a Spy
Yahoo News
10:24 PM ET 02/22/00
By ANITA SNOW
Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2564515323-229
HAVANA (AP) _ Cuba reiterated its denial of U.S. charges that one of its diplomats in Washington engaged in espionage, saying Tuesday that all of the official's dealings with a U.S. immigration officer suspected of spying for the communist country were public and legal.
``To recruit people to undertake espionage is not conceivable nor has ever been undertaken by officials in our Interests Section in Washington,'' the Cuban government said in a lengthy statement carried by state news media.
The statement admitted that Mariano Faget, a Cuban-born supervisor with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, had contact with officials at the Cuban Interests Section in Washington.
But they discussed migration accords between the two countries and illegal entries into the United States by Cubans, not sensitive intelligence matters, the government said.
Faget was arrested in Miami last week on charges of passing classified information to Cuba's communist government.
The Miami Herald on Tuesday identified the diplomat targeted for expulsion as Jose Imperatori. Neither Washington nor Havana has named the Cuban official ordered to leave the United States by the end of this week, but the government statement did name Imperatori as someone Faget had talked to in the past.
Havana has accused Washington of inventing the spy charges to block the return of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez to his father in Cuba and has said it will not willingly withdraw the official.
U.S. officials have said the two cases are unrelated and that Faget has not been involved in decisions involving Elian. The U.S. State Department said Tuesday the official will lose his diplomatic privileges if Cuba continues to insist that he remain in the United States.
Elian has been at the center of a U.S.-Cuban custody dispute since he was found Thanksgiving Day lashed to an inner tube off the Florida coast. His mother and 10 others died when their boat capsized during an attempt to flee Cuba.
His father and the Cuban government have demanded the boy's return. Elian's Miami relatives have gone to court to block an INS ruling that ordered him returned to Cuba.
The Miami Herald, citing three U.S. officials it did not name, said Imperatori met with Elian's grandmothers, Raquel Rodriguez and Mariela Quintana, after they arrived at a Miami airport for an aborted attempt to meet with their grandson on Jan. 23.
The newspaper said Imperatori, based in Washington, ordered the grandmothers' jet fueled after a tense standoff at Kendall-Tamiami Executive Airport and accompanied them on the return flight to Washington.
The grandmothers met with Elian on Jan. 26. It is unknown whether Imperatori was with them during their second visit.
The Cuban government statement also viewed as ``extremely strange'' the sudden illness of U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler, who was to rule Tuesday on attempts by Elian's Miami relatives to block his return to Cuba.
U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore was assigned Tuesday to replace Hoeveler, who was hospitalized over the weekend for an apparent stroke.
Hundreds of Cuban athletes and coaches, headed by Olympic medalists Javier Sotomayor and Alberto Juantorena, gathered Tuesday for the latest in an almost daily string of rallies pressing for the boy's return to his homeland.
Also Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida filed a brief urging the court to appoint an attorney to determine whether a ``reasonable, coherent asylum claim can be made on Elian's behalf,'' said executive director Howard Simon.
``If not, then Elian should be returned to the custody of his father,'' said Simon.
---
U.S.: Cuban Diplomat May Face Arrest
Yahoo News
05:33 PM ET 02/22/00
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2564509619-5e5
WASHINGTON (AP) _ The State Department said Tuesday that a Cuban diplomat who has been ordered out of the country will lose his diplomatic privileges if Cuba continues to insist that he remain here.
``It would be highly unusual for a state to refuse to remove a diplomat under these circumstances, '' spokesman James P. Rubin said. ``Under the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations, Cuba must either recall the diplomat in question or terminate his functions.''
Rubin added that if the diplomat does not leave, he will lose his immunity from prosecution and would become subject to U.S. law.
``If there were grounds for his arrest, he would be arrested,'' Rubin said.
On Saturday, the State Department ordered the diplomat, Jose Imperatori, to leave the country within seven days because of alleged links with a U.S. immigration official arrested last week in Miami on charges of spying for Cuba.
The Cuban government denied that Imperatori had acted improperly and said its diplomatic mission in Washington had not engaged in intelligence activities since it opened in 1977.
After the Cuban statement, the State Department informed Cuban officials that Imperatori was being declared a persona non grata and had until Saturday to depart U.S. territory.
----------- us spies
Here are a few WS on Echelon.
I think you will find them a wee bit more informative then "60" minutes.
http://www.gchq.gov.uk/textonly/about/technology.html
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html
http://www.europarl.eu.int/dg4/stoa/en/publi/default.htm
---
Lawmakers Raise Questions About International Spy Network
By NIALL McKAY
May 27, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/05/cyber/articles/27network.html
An international surveillance network established by the National Security Agency and British intelligence services has come under scrutiny in recent weeks, as lawmakers in the United States question whether the network, known as Echelon, could be used to monitor American citizens.
Last week, the House Committee on Intelligence requested that the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency provide a detailed report to Congress explaining what legal standards they use to monitor the conversations, transmissions and activities of American citizens.
The request is part of an amendment to the annual intelligence budget bill, the Intelligence Reauthorization Act. It was proposed by Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican and was supported by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Porter Goss, a Florida Republican. The amendment was passed by the House on May 13 and will now go before the Senate.
Barr, a former CIA analyst, is part of a growing contingent in the United States, Europe and Australia alarmed by the existence of Echelon, a computer system that monitors millions of e-mail, fax, telex and phone messages sent over satellite-based communications systems as well as terrestrial-based data communications. The system was established under what is known as the "UKUSA Agreement" after World War II and includes the security agencies of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Although Echelon was originally set up as an international spy network, lawmakers are concerned that it could be used to eavesdrop on American citizens.
"I am concerned there are not sufficient legal mechanisms in place to protect our private information from unauthorized government eavesdropping through such mechanisms as Project Echelon," Barr said in an interview on Tuesday.
The finished report will outline the legal bases and other criteria used by United States intelligence agencies when assessing potential wiretap targets. It will be submitted to the House and made available to the public.
"If the agencies feel unable to provide a full account to the public, then a second classified report will be provided to the House Committee on Intelligence," Barr said. "This is to stop the agencies hiding behind a cloak of secrecy."
Judith Emmel, chief of public affairs for the NSA, declined to comment about the UKUSA Agreement but said the agency was committed to responding to all information requests covered by Barr's amendment. "The NSA's Office of General Counsel works hard to ensure that all Agency activities are conducted in accordance with the highest constitutional, legal and ethical standards," she said.
Until last Sunday, no government or intelligence agency from the member states had openly admitted to the existence of the UKUSA Agreement or Echelon. However, on a television program broadcast on Sunday in Australia, the director of Australia's Defence Signals Directorate acknowledged the existence of the agreement. The official, Martin Brady, declined to be interviewed for the "Sunday Program," but provided a statement for its special on Echelon. "DSD does cooperate with counterpart signals intelligence organizations overseas under the UKUSA relationship," the statement said.
Meanwhile, European Parliament officials have also expressed concern about the use of Echelon to gather economic intelligence for participating nations. Last October, the spying system came to the attention of the Parliament during a debate on Europe's intelligence relationship with the United States. At that time, the Parliament decided it needed more information about Echelon and asked its Science and Technology Options Assessment Panel to commission a report.
The report, entitled "Development of Surveillance Technology and Risk of Abuse of Economic Information", was published on May 10 and provides a detailed account of Echelon and other intelligence monitoring systems.
According to the report, Echelon is just one of the many code names for the monitoring system, which consists of satellite interception stations in participating countries. The stations collectively monitor millions of voice and data messages each day. These messages are then scanned and checked against certain key criteria held in a computer system called the "Dictionary." In the case of voice communications, the criteria could include a suspected criminal's telephone number; with respect to data communications, the messages might be scanned for certain keywords, like "bomb" or "drugs." The report also alleges that Echelon is capable of monitoring terrestrial Internet traffic through interception nodes placed on deep-sea communications cables.
While few dispute the necessity of a system like Echelon to apprehend foreign spies, drug traffickers and terrorists, many are concerned that the system could be abused to collect economic and political information.
"The recent revelations about China's spying activities in the U.S. demonstrates that there is a clear need for electronic monitoring capabilities," said Patrick Poole, a lecturer in government and economics at Bannock Burn College in Franklin, Tenn., who compiled a report on Echelon for the Free Congress Foundation. "But those capabilities can be abused for political or economic purposes so we need to ensure that there is some sort of legislative control over these systems."
On the "Sunday Program" special on Echelon, Mike Frost, a former employee of Canada's Communications Security Establishment, said that Britain's intelligence agency requested that the CSE monitor the communications of British government officials in the late 1980s. Under British law, the intelligence agency is prohibited from monitoring its own government. Frost also said that since the cold war is over, the "the focus now is towards economic intelligence."
Still, Echelon has been shrouded in such secrecy that its very existence has been difficult to prove. Barr's amendment aims to change that.
"If this report reveals that information about American citizens is being collected without legal authorization, the intelligence community will have some serious explaining to do," Barr said.
--------
Ex-Snoop Confirms Echelon Network Global Network Monitors Phones And Email
Former Agent Tells '60 Minutes' How It Works Network Sifts 'Good Guys' And Bad
http://cbsnews.cbs.com/now/story/0%2C1597%2C164651-412%2C00.shtml
(CBS) Everywhere in the world, every day, people's phone calls, emails and faxes are monitored by Echelon, a secret government surveillance network. No, it's not fiction straight out of George Orwell's 1984. It's reality, says former spy Mike Frost in an interview with Steve Kroft to be broadcast on 60 Minutes on Sunday, Feb. 27.
"It's not the world of fiction. That's the way it works. I've been there," Frost tells Kroft. "I was trained by you guys," says the former Canadian intelligence agent, referring to the United States' National Security Agency.
The NSA runs Echelon with Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand as a series of listening posts around the world that eavesdrop on terrorists, drug lords and hostile foreign governments.
But to find out what the bad guys are up to, all electronic communications, including those of the good guys, must be captured and analyzed for key words by super computers.
That is a fact that makes Frost uncomfortable, even though he believes the world needs intelligence gathering capabilities like Echelon. "My concern is no accountability and nothing, no safety net in place for the innocent people who fall through the cracks," he tells Kroft.
As an example of those innocent people, Frost cites a woman whose name and telephone number went into the Echelon database as a possible terrorist because she told a friend on the phone that her son had "bombed" in a school play. "The computer spit that conversation out. The analystwas not too sure what the conversation was referring to, so, erring on the side of caution, he listed that lady," Frost recalls.
Democracies usually have laws against spying on citizens. But Frost says Echelon members could ask another member to spy for them in an end run around those laws.
For example, Frost tells Kroft that his Canadian intelligence boss spied on British government officials for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. "(Thatcher) had two ministers that she said, quote, 'they weren't on side,' unquote...So my boss...went to McDonald House in London and did intercept traffic from these two ministers," claims Frost. |"The British Parliament now have total deniability. They didn't do anythingWe did it for them."
American politicians may also have been eavesdropped on, says Margaret Newsham, a woman who worked at Menwith Hill in England, the NSA's largest spy station. She says she was shocked to hear the voice of U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond (R.-S.C.) on a surveillance headset about 20 years ago. "To my knowledge, all (the intercepted voices)...would be...Russian, Chinese... foreign," she tells Kroft.
The exposing of such possible abuses of Echelon will surely add to the growing firestorm in Europe over the system.
On Feb. 23, the European Parliament issued a report accusing the U.S. of using Echelon for commercial spying on two separate occasions, to help American companies win lucrative contracts over European competitors. The U.S. State Department denies such spying took place and will not even acknowledge the existence of the top secret Echelon project.
Rep. Porter Goss (R.-Fla), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which has oversight of the NSA, does acknowledge that the U.S. has the capability to pick up any phone call, and that even his own conversations could have been monitored.
But Goss says there are methods to prevent the abuse of that information. "I cannot stop the dust in the ether...but what I can make sure, is that...the capability is not abused," he tells Kroft.
More About Echelon
The ACLU has an extensive site about Echelon. http://www.aclu.org/echelonwatch/index.html - Echelonwatch.
The New York Times covered the hubbub at the European Parliament Feb. 24 2000. http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/02/biztech/articles/24spy.html
---
The new space invaders Spies in the sky
Saturday, February 19, 2000
Peter Goodspeed
National Post
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html
For decades they were guardians -- mysterious warriors who straddled the globe searching for secrets that would prevent a nuclear holocaust. But now, the new technology of the post-Cold War world has suddenly transformed the West's leading spymasters into sinister shadows manipulating a massive surveillance system that can capture and study every telephone call, fax and e-mail message sent anywhere in the world.
These high-tech espionage agents from Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand -- backed up by a web of ships, planes and radar and communication interception sites that ring the earth -- have established the greatest spy network in history. Its name is Echelon.
Originally devoted solely to monitoring the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its East Bloc allies, today Echelon searches for hints of terrorist plots, drug-dealer's plans and political and diplomatic intelligence. But critics claim the system is also being used for crass commercial theft and a brutal invasion of privacy on a staggering scale.
On Tuesday, the European Union's parliament will open a major international debate on the spy practices of the world's five leading English-speaking nations, claiming that this electronic espionage ring, led by the United States and Britain, is methodically going where it has no right to go. The EU's civil liberties committee is expected to accuse Britain of aiding the United States in conducting economic and commercial espionage on a grand scale at the expense of its European partners. A special 112-page expose of the spy network prepared for the EU last spring declares that the rapid proliferation of surveillance technologies presents "a serious threat to the civil liberties in Europe" with "awesome implications."
"There is wide-ranging evidence indicating that major governments are routinely utilizing communications intelligence to provide commercial advantage to companies and trade," declared Duncan Campbell, the report's author, a Scottish physicist and researcher who has devoted 20 years to studying electronic espionage.
Moreover, research about to be released by the EU's Scientific and Technical Options Assessment office is expected to document how deeply Echelon has penetrated Europe. It will outline ways to combat the espionage assault.
At the same time:
- Jean-Pierre Millet, a Parisian lawyer, has launched a class-action lawsuit against the governments of the United States and Britain, claiming the Echelon spy network has robbed European industries of some of their most cherished trade secrets and undercut their bargaining positions in trade deals.
- Parliamentarians in Italy, Germany and Denmark are demanding public investigations of the spy network.
- Privacy advocates in the U.S. have launched a court case demanding access to government documents on Echelon under the Freedom of Information Act.
- Several leading politicians are calling for the first Congressional hearings to review U.S. intelligence-gathering practices since the Watergate era.
- On the Internet, privacy advocates, computer hackers and journalists are engaged in near-hysterical searches for signs of Echelon's presence. Several new Internet Web sites have sprung up devoted solely to documenting information on Echelon and pressing for public investigations into the surveillance system.
"Echelon is a black box, and we really don't know what is inside it," says Barry Steinhardt, of the American Civil Liberties Union. "We don't know who is being targeted, what they are being targeted for or what is being done with the information."
The Echelon system is simple in design. All members of the English-speaking alliance are part of the UKUSA intelligence alliance that has maintained ties since the Second World War. These states have positioned electronic-intercept stations and deep-space satellites to capture all satellite, microwave, cellular and fibre-optic communications traffic. The captured signals are then processed through a series of supercomputers, known as dictionaries, that are programmed to search each communication for targeted addresses, words, phrases or even individual voices.
Individual states in the UKUSA alliance are assigned responsibilities for monitoring different parts of the globe. Canada's main task used to be monitoring northern portions of the former Soviet Union and conducting sweeps of all communications traffic that could be picked up from our embassies around the world. In the post-Cold War era, a greater emphasis has been placed on monitoring satellite and radio and cellphone traffic originating from Central and South America, primarily in an effort to track drugs and thugs in the region.
The United States, with its vast array of spy satellites and listening posts, monitors most of Latin America, Asia, Asiatic Russia and northern China. Britain listens in on Europe and Russia west of the Urals as well as Africa. Australia hunts for communications originating in Indochina, Indonesia and southern China. New Zealand sweeps the western Pacific.
"Most people just don't understand how pervasive government surveillance is," warns John Pike, a leading military analyst with the Washington-based American Federation of Scientists. "If you place an international phone call, the odds that the [U.S.] National Security Agency are looking is very good. If it goes by oceanic fibre-optic cable, they are listening to it. If it goes by satellite, they are listening to it. If it is a radio broadcast or a cellphone conversation, in principle, they could listen to it. Frankly, they can get what they want."
Experts stress that Echelon is simply a method of sorting captured signals and is just one of the many new arrows in the intelligence community's quiver, along with increasingly sophisticated bugging and interception techniques, satellite tracking, through-clothing scanning, automatic fingerprinting and recognition systems that can recognize genes, odours or retina patterns.
The Americans dominate the UKUSA alliance, providing most of the computer expertise and frequently much of the personnel for global interception bases. The U.S. National Security Agency, headquartered in Fort Meade, Md., just outside Washington, has a global staff of 38,000 and a budget estimated at more than $3.6-billion (all dollar figures US unless otherwise specified). That's more than the FBI and the CIA combined.
By comparison, Canada's communications-intelligence operations are conducted by the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), a branch of the National Defence Department. It has a staff of 890 people and an annual budget of $110-million (Cdn). The CSE's headquarters, nicknamed "The Farm," is the Sir Leonard Tilley Building on Heron Road in Ottawa, and its main communications intercept site is located on an old armed-forces radio base in Leitrim, just south of Ottawa.
Though shrouded in secrecy to the extent that American officials used to joke NSA stood for "No Such Agency" or "Never Say Anything," few foreign-affairs analysts are surprised by the sweep or appetite of electronic spies and they caution against taking Europe's angry protestations of dismay at face value.
"The EU hearings are a bit of a joke," says Wayne Madsen, a former NSA employee and senior fellow at the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Centre (EPIC). "It's going to be a bit like that scene in the movie Casablanca, where Inspector Renault declares: 'I'm shocked to find gambling in this establishment.' "
"The fact is the German Greens and the French Socialists and Gaullists can pull their hair out and say, 'This is terrible,' but their countries are involved in this stuff. The French have an extensive signals intelligence network of their own. I think what is going to happen is there will be a lot of wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth, but then business is going to go on as usual."
But the real issue is whether UKUSA's spies are using electronic espionage to get commercial information.
"Since the demise of Communism in Eastern Europe, the intelligence agencies have searched for a new justification for their surveillance capability in order to protect their prominence and their bloated budgets," says Patrick Poole, deputy director of the Centre of Technology at Washington's Free Congress Federation. "Their solution was to redefine the notion of national security to include economic, commercial and corporate concerns.
"By redefining the term 'national security' to include spying on foreign competitors of prominent U.S. corporations, the signals-intelligence game has gotten ugly."
Lately there has been a frenzy of concern over possible American economic espionage in Europe.
- Yesterday, a French intelligence report accused U.S. secret agents of working with computer giant Microsoft to develop software allowing Washington to spy on computer users around the world. It claims that the National Security Agency helped install secret programs on Microsoft software, currently in use of 90% of computers.
- In 1990 the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel claimed NSA intercepted messages about a pending $200-million telecommunications deal between Indonesia and the Japanese satellite manufacturer NEC Corp. George Bush, then the U.S. president, is said to have intervened on the basis of the intelligence intercept and to have convinced the Indonesians to split the contract between NEC and U.S.-owned AT&T.
- Last spring's EU report on electronic spying says that U.S. intelligence agencies intercepted phone calls between Brazilian officials and the French firm Thomson-CSF in 1994 and used the information to swing a $1.3-billion radar contract to the U.S. corporation Raytheon.
Mike Frost, a former CSE employee and author of Spyworld, which is about his career in Canada's secret service, claims that as far back as 1981 Canada was using its U.S.-produced spy technology to eavesdrop on the American ambassador to Ottawa. In one instance, Canadian spies managed to overhear the ambassador discussing a pending trade deal with China on a mobile telephone and used that information to undercut the Americans in landing a $2.5-billion Chinese grain sale.
On another occasion, in 1983, Mr. Frost says British intelligence officials invited their Canadian counterparts to come to London to eavesdrop on two British cabinet ministers whose political loyalty was doubted by Margaret Thatcher, then the British prime minister. Since it would have been illegal for British officials to do the surveillance themselves, they had the Canadians do the job using eavesdropping equipment in the Canadian embassy. After three weeks of snooping, the Canadians quietly turned over all their findings to the British, Mr. Frost says.
"It should hardly be surprising that Echelon ends up being used by elected and bureaucratic officials to their political advantage or by the intelligence agencies themselves for the purpose of sustaining their privileged powers and bloated budgets," says Mr. Poole. "The availability of such invasive technology practically begs for abuse."
Ottawa bureaucrat Claude Hisson, the commissioner for the Communications Security Establishment, is charged with investigating any complaints into CSE operations. In his most recent annual report, he admits that, on occasion, our spies intercept private conversations. But he insists there is nothing to worry about. "The sophistication of CSE's technology has led to speculation about the organization's capability to intercept the communications of Canadians," Mr. Hisson says.
"However, I have observed that CSE's activities are driven not by the capabilities of the technology it deploys but by its mandate to fulfill the foreign intelligence requirements established by the Government of Canada. ... In keeping with the policy of the government, CSE goes to considerable effort to avoid collecting Canadian communications."
Still, critics of Echelon warn the potential for abuse never goes away.
"This whole thing is so bizarrely powerful that the opportunity or temptation for abuse is fairly substantial," says Mr. Pike of the American Federation of Scientists. "How many people in your organization always obey the rules?
"The notion that NSA or any other of these spy networks is the only large organization in human history in which everyone always obeys the rules just flies in the face of common sense," he says.
---
Inside America's Secret Court: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
by Patrick S. Poole
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/fiscshort.html
Introduction
In a highly restricted room inside the Department of Justice Building in Washington D.C. resides a federal court that meets in complete secrecy. Even though the rulings this secret court issues may result in criminal charges, convictions and prison sentences for US citizens, their writs and rulings are permanently sealed from review by those accused of crimes and from any substantive civilian review. This is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), which considers surveillance and physical search orders from the Department of Justice and US intelligence agencies. During the 20-year tenure of the FISC the court has received over 10,000 applications for covert surveillance and physical searches. To date, not a single application has been denied.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)<1> was passed in 1978, during the days of increased terrorist activity against American citizens around the world. The Cold War and American involvement in the Middle East raised fears both about increased spying on US government, military and business facilities and personnel and about terrorists planning attacks in the US and against Americans overseas. In this atmosphere, federal law enforcement and intelligence administrators requested Congress to increase surveillance powers to combat these growing trends. The FISA statute was also a regulative response to the allegations of domestic spying by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies during the 1960s and 70s.
However, with the FISA legislation passed, the process was cloaked in absolute secrecy. While few Americans are even aware of the court's existence, the FISC routinely hears applications for surveillance and physical searches from federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The FISA court issues more surveillance and physical search orders than the entire federal judiciary combined.
Many constitutional scholars and civil liberty advocates note that the overly broad powers of the FISA statute and court authority are in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and general warrants. With such a powerful weapon against citizens' Constitutional liberties, many opponents of the court argue that Congress should conduct extensive oversight of the court. But congressional oversight of the FISA court is virtually non-existent.
The only information required by FISA to be provided to congressional oversight committees is the number of surveillance orders approved each calendar year and brief semi-annual reports. The entire 1997 report on the FISC's activity totaled two paragraphs. But what those brief annual reports do chronicle is the exponential rate of growth of surveillance orders issued by the FISC.
Recent criminal cases proceeding from evidence gathered by FISA surveillance orders have raised many questions regarding the constitutionality of FISA searches and surveillance and the assumption of enormous powers by federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Defense attorneys for those charged for crimes with evidence gathered under a FISA order maintain that the FISA court stands as a "court of last resort" for zealous prosecutors unable to obtain a criminal indictment from other federal courts. Some of the orders approved by the FISC have proven to be government "fishing expeditions" aimed at circumventing citizen's Fourth Amendment protections against unwarranted searches.
Origins of the Court
With the collapse of the Nixon Administration following the Watergate scandal, the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (otherwise known as the Church Committee) discovered that the federal government had been engaged in widespread domestic surveillance for several decades. In response, several members of Congress set about to devise a plan to limit the surveillance power of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. In the wake of the subsequent public outrage and out of fear warrantless surveillance would be outlawed altogether, President Ford supported the FISA bill to limit the "inherent authority" of the President to conduct warrantless surveillance in the interest of national security.
Prior to that time, most presidents claimed to have implicit constitutional authority to approve warrantless surveillance for national security purposes under the executive branch's Constitutional power to conduct foreign policy. But that power had been used by government agencies to justify domestic spying against law-abiding anti-war demonstrators and many of the leaders of the civil rights movement of the late 1960s despite First and Fourth Amendment protections prohibiting such activity.
The FISA bill was a product of closed-door negotiations lasting several months between legislators and the Justice Department. Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), who had attempted to regulate the power of warrantless surveillance in four different sessions, sponsored the FISA legislation. The FISC concept was a compromise between legislators who wanted the FBI and National Security Agency (NSA), the only two agencies affected by the FISA statute, to follow the standard procedure for obtaining a court order required in criminal investigations and legislators. The federal agencies believed that they should be completely unfettered in conducting their foreign intelligence surveillance work inside US borders. Hence, the FISC was born.<2>
FISA was approved by Congress and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on October 25, 1978. Executive Order 12139,<3> signed by President Carter several months later, officially chartered the FISC. The legislation established an authorization procedure for the FISC to issue surveillance orders without probable cause. It also set up a "minimization" procedure for communications by US citizens inadvertently intercepted by the agencies. With the passage of FISA, the NSA was bound for the first time to a process of judicial review before initiating domestic surveillance operations.
The FISC
The court consists of seven federal judges chosen from the federal district courts by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; each serves a non-renewable seven-year term. Membership of the court is staggered so that a new member is brought in each year. Members are chosen from different federal districts, however, at least one member must come from a district court in the Washington D.C. area. Judge Royce Lamberth, who is a member of the US District Court for Washington DC, currently serves as the FISC Chief Judge.
A separate FISC Appeals Court composed of three members hears the case for applications denied by the lower level of the court. To date, the appeals court has never heard a case. The last resort that the FISA statute provides for any surveillance application rejected by the FISC Appeals Court is an appeal directly to the Supreme Court.
The FISC court conducts all of its hearings in a secret windowless courtroom, sealed from the public by cipher-locked doors on the top floor of the Department of Justice. It considers surveillance and physical search applications that have been reviewed and forwarded by the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, which is the Department of Justice's section that deals with foreign intelligence matters.<4>
All applications forwarded to the FISC must be reviewed and approved by the Attorney General. If the FISC judge considering the application believes that the request meets the standards of the FISA statute, electronic surveillance can be approved for up to ninety days for US citizens or a year for foreign nationals. The court also hears requests for extensions, which are routinely granted.
The initial authorization of the court included only the power to approve wiretapping and surveillance. After Janet Reno approved a warrantless physical search of CIA spy Aldrich Ames' Arlington, Virginia home in October 1993, the Department of Justice made a request to Congress that the authority of FISC be expanded to include physical searches. Congress obliged by including authorization for an expansion of FISC powers in the Intelligence Authorization Act of 1995.
President Clinton implemented the new powers through Executive Order 12949.<5> Apart from giving the FISC physical search powers, the executive order also authorized the Attorney General "to approve physical searches, without a court order, to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods up to one year, if the Attorney General makes the certifications required by [FISA]."<6>
This expansion also included the power for evidence gathered in FISA surveillance and searches to be used in criminal proceedings. However, all information regarding the order and any evidence obtained under the order are permanently sealed and classified "top secret." The effect of this provision has been that US citizens are being charged with crimes in federal court and not allowed to review the evidence against them, nor are their attorneys permitted to see the warrants that authorized the search.
The FISA statute requires the Attorney General to submit a report each year to the Administrative Office of the US Courts, the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate detailing the number of applications from the FBI and NSA requesting surveillance/and or physical searches, the number of orders approved and the number of applications modified or denied by the FISC.<7> Table I displays the number of orders approved by the FISC for each year since FISA was signed into law. To date, the government enjoys a perfect record in regards to application approvals, for no request has ever been rejected by the court.
Table I. FISA Surveillance and Physical Search Orders 1979-1997<8>
1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 199 319 431 473 549 635 587 573 512 534 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 546 595 593 484 509 576 697 839 749
As the above table shows, the sparing use of the court's authority in the last few years of the Carter Administration is contrasted with the increase of FISC orders during the Reagan Administration. It may be reasonable to assume that this trend was a direct result of terrorist activity targeting American citizens abroad during this period of time. A slight decline in the number of court orders occurs in 1987, mirroring a decrease in terrorist activity after the US bombing of Tripoli, Libya in 1986. A general stabilization occurs in the remainder of the Reagan Administration and throughout the Bush Administration, which included the Persian Gulf War period.
However, a sharp increase in FISC orders has occurred since the ascendance of the Clinton Administration, with no apparent return to 1980s levels. This frightening increase in the use of the FISC by the present administration is compounded by the fact that in recent years the FISC has approved more applications than the whole of the entire federal judiciary. In 1996, the FISC approved 839 applications, while all federal judges combined approved only 538 requests. During 1997, federal judges approved 569 surveillance and search requests to investigate criminal activity, while the FISC approved 749 applications for investigations without any criminal predicate.<9>
Constitutional Concerns
The intent behind the passage of the FISA legislation was to impose limits and a review process upon warrantless surveillance and searches conducted for "national security" purposes in light of the numerous abuses by federal agencies against US citizens. But the politicization and present use of the FISA process has resulted in the erosion of numerous Constitutional rights and basic legal procedures that have their roots in free societies dating back to the Magna Carta.
Circumventing the Bill of Rights
The most troubling aspect of FISA surveillance and searches is that they circumvent explicit Constitutional guarantees expressed in the First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution. The First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech and to peaceable assembly. However, under the FISA statute, a US citizen may be subject to a FISC surveillance order for political statements and views that are determined to be unpopular - yet legal - by unelected government officials in violation of the First Amendment.
In addition, physical searches without reasonable cause are specifically prohibited by the Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
But the expansion of the FISC by the Congress and the Clinton Administration through the Intelligence Appropriation Act of 1995 and Executive Order 12949 permits black bag fishing expeditions - without cause. FISC physical search orders authorized by these legislative and executive actions allow government agents to scour a suspect's home, papers and effects indiscriminately and without reasonable cause.
It is hard to imagine that our Constitution's framers, carrying with them the fresh reminders of intrusive searches conducted by British military and governmental personnel for British "national security" interests, would have approved the activities allowed by FISA when they ratified the Bill of Rights with its explicit prohibitions of unreasonable, indiscriminate searches.
The Fifth Amendment right not to be compelled to act as a witness against oneself is significantly harmed when those under surveillance have full expectation of privacy in their conversations and personal communications but subsequently have their conversations recorded and analyzed by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. FISC orders may be (and typically are) enacted without cause, and yet these wrongfully acquired surveillances may be used in criminal trials.
This is one dimension to the "Catch-22" problem discussed earlier. If surveillance is conducted with cause and criminal prosecution result, the government should be required to meet the same Title III surveillance requirements imposed upon all other law enforcement efforts conducted on the federal, state and local level in order to present that evidence in a criminal trial.
A final direct Constitutional concern is that a citizen's Sixth Amendment rights to confront accusers, to review evidence against him, and to legal counsel are frequently violated. In all of the criminal trials involving FISC orders, evidence is sealed from review from both the accused and their legal counsel. This is heightened further by the requirement to keep this evidence from the view of juries. In the case of Richard Johnson, the judge instructed the jury that evidence against Johnson existed, and yet would not be presented for "national security" reasons, requiring the jury to rely on the "testimony" of the judge. This prevented Johnson's attorneys from challenging evidence that was not available to them but was testified to by the judge himself.
Evolution from Counterintelligence to Criminal Investigations
The stated intent and purpose of the FISC was to add oversight to intelligence agency and law enforcement spying against US citizens and to subject that spying to minimization procedures. It was designed to conduct counterintelligence, not to gather evidence for use in criminal trials. Any shift from using evidence for intelligence purposes to criminal indictments raises serious concerns, particularly when the evidence is being used against an American citizen.
As a Washington Post article recently pointed out, "The reason the FISA standard is constitutional is that the government is supposed to use FISA surveillance not for criminal investigations but for counterintelligence probes pursued under the president's authority to conduct foreign policy."<10> And yet the use of FISA evidence against US citizens in criminal trials is growing rapidly. To date, over 90 criminal cases have resulted from evidence gathered under a FISC order.<11>
The attractiveness for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to use the FISC to gather evidence for criminal trials is readily apparent: No reasonable cause or Title III requirements are needed to file an application for surveillance; evidence obtained cannot be reviewed or challenged by the defense; and if no evidence can be obtained, the secrecy of the FISA process prohibits the one subject to surveillance from ever knowing about - let alone challenging - the appropriateness of the court's order.
And yet entire criminal investigations are being conducted under FISC orders. With the enormous power that the FISA process grants to the government to circumvent explicit constitutional protections in a criminal trial, the use of evidence gathered under a FISC order should be heavily regulated by Congress and the courts or the establishment of a requirement that evidence gathered for criminal trials under an FISC orders must be forced to meet the Title III minimization standards.
No Adversarial Advocate
With the constitutional right to a jury and adequate legal counsel effectively neutered by the secrecy requirements of the FISC, the adversarial aspect on behalf of the accused is all but eliminated.
The initial court proceedings prior to the approval of an order by the FISC also lack any adversarial element. When the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review presents an application before the FISC, the FISC justices should rigorously review the application in light of citizen's unambiguous Constitutional guarantees. Instead, the court is little more than a rubberstamp for federal agencies.
Even if the court intended to review these applications with a careful eye on the Constitution, the secrecy element allows the FBI and the NSA to control what information is presented to the court for their consideration. With the government holding not only the proverbial cards but also owning the casino, the introduction of an adversarial citizen's advocate into the FISC proceedings is a needed measure to ensure that the executive agencies and the court itself are always reminded that their power is extra-constitutional and inherently prone to abuse.
No Congressional Oversight
Congressional oversight of the FISC to date has been lax to say the least. Last year the FISC presiding judge, DC District Court Justice Royce Lamberth, delivered a speech to the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security - the first time that a sitting FISC judge has spoken publicly on the workings of the FISC.<12> When addressing questions following his speech, he was asked what oversight Congress gave the court, he responded, "Apparently, in the past there has been none. We provide an annual report on some numbers and so on that the Administrative Office of the US Courts provides to Congress." There appears to be little oversight from congressional intelligence committees as well:
I was asked by the chief counsel of the Senate Intelligence to come up in December (1996) and meet with the staff in preparation for possible oversight hearings, and I did volunteer to appear, and I was told at the time this was the first time a judge had ever appeared, apparently since right about the [time of the] creation of the court. I think the first chief judge might have gone up for an oversight hearing a year or so into the court, and I think that no other judge on the court has ever gone up until I'm going in - I think it was either November or December.<13>
Pressed further about his thoughts on congressional oversight, he later said that "How we decide cases...there's a separation of powers problem about judges appearing before Congress and being questioned before Congress, so there are some limits."<14>
For the presiding judge of America's most secret court, who is empowered to circumvent explicit Constitutional protections under the cloak of complete secrecy, to infer that the special nature of this court does not merit some greater degree of oversight by elected officials should be disconcerting to every American citizen.
Defining "National Security"
One of the major defenses for the FISC is the ambiguous use of the term "national security." Some have argued that the protection that the FISC provides from terrorists and foreign spies is in the best interest of national security. But would most Americans agree that the use of a top secret court to gain economic information and data for political party contributors - a current policy of the Clinton Administration and the present practice of the FISC [ed: detailed in a Free Congress Foundation Special Report on the FISC]- be categorically in the best interests of national security? Historic precedent would indicate that it would not.
But further, should citizens be required to exchange their constitutional freedoms and protections in deference to an expansion of government power for the interests of "national security?"<15> As Benjamin Franklin once said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Some of America's most eminent jurists have also warned against pitting alleged "national security interests" against the Constitution. As the late Supreme Court Justice William Brennan said in the Brown v. Glines decision, "The concept of military necessity is seductively broad, and has a dangerous plasticity. Because they invariably have the visage of overriding importance, there is always a temptation to invoke security 'necessities' to justify an encroachment upon civil liberties. For that reason, the military-security argument must be approached with a healthy skepticism: its very gravity counsels that courts be cautious when military necessity is invoked by the Government to justify a trespass on First Amendment rights."<16>
The Rubberstamp Court
Those actively involved with the court deny the accusation that the FISC has turned into a rubberstamp court. Judge Lamberth, the current chief judge of the FISC, in his comments to the American Bar Association last year said, "... I bristle at the suggestion in some quarters that we're rubber stamps for the government because no applications have been formally denied in recent years. Some have been revised. Some have been withdrawn and resubmitted with additional information, and the process is, in fact, working."<17>
The agencies that rely on the FISC are also protective of their perfect record before the FISC. As the current head of the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review recently wrote, "Given these rigorous standards and multiple layers of scrutiny, it's not right to conclude that the government's track record in getting FISA applications approved means that the FISA court is a rubber stamp."<18>
And yet the fact remains that FISC has been nothing but a rubberstamp court. Despite the claims of these FISC insiders that the court is independent and objective, the only application that the FISC has rejected in their entire history was done at the request of the FBI and the NSA - the applicants - to demonstrate in 1981 that the FISC had no power to issue physical searches.<19> Congress and President Clinton eventually granted that power in 1995 after the Aldrich Ames fiasco, however.
In the 10,000+ applications that the FISC has considered, it has enthusiastically approved the methodology and argumentation of the government in every single case. Even their colleagues on the federal bench muster up the courage once or twice a year to deny a government application for Title III wiretap applications. But the FISC has never seen fit to once in twenty years to oppose the virtual torrent of applications requesting surveillance and black-bag jobs against US citizens without any probable cause. This makes the protestations of Judge Lamberth and the FBI ring hollow, indeed.
Conclusion
An inherent vulnerability of free and democratic societies is that they are subject to a greater degree of terrorism and espionage activity because of the freedoms and liberties enjoyed by the citizenry. The bridle on government power allows for the criminal and counterintelligence elements to maneuver around the hue of constitutional protections. But the hallmark of free societies is that deference is given to the citizens, not the government.
The statist political philosophy that justifies the existence of an organization like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has been tested and tried on the crucible of history. It was the threat of such a process that led the constitutional Framers to enact the Bill of Rights to prevent the government from using such a judicial vehicle against the public. The numerous protections articulated in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were expressly designed to prevent the gross judicial abuses of the British government Star Chamber under King George the Third - abuses and powers eerily similar to those currently granted by Congress and the Presidency to the FISC.
No free society has ever been able to survive the rapid expansion of government power seen in our current political atmosphere. Nor has a government that has whet its appetite on unbridled power been able to satiate its hunger for more - more power, more taxes, more subservient citizens. This pattern of secret power - once its effectiveness has been proven - quickly finds replication, as can be seen in the 1995 establishment of another secret court by Congress and the Clinton administration - the Alien Terrorist Removal Court.
Free societies hang in a precarious balance. Very little is actually needed to tip the societal scales in favor of anarchy or tyranny. The present political course of our country seems to indicate that our future will be the latter. The operation of the FISC is merely a symptom of the larger statist infection that has reached pandemic levels in our political system. Twenty years of experience with the FISC has demonstrated that what began as a restraint upon unlimited search and surveillance powers has fallen prey to the same philosophy and practice that has continued the erosion of our liberties. The FISC has become a political weapon against the citizenry, and for the safety and protection of our country its reign must be overthrown.
Endnotes
1) 50 USC Sec. 1801, et. seq.
2) James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America's Most Secret Agency, Penguin Books, 1983, pp. 462-465.
3) 44 FR 30311; May 25, 1979.
4) Jim McGee and Brian Duffy, "Someone to Watch Over Us," Washington Post Magazine, June 23, 1996, p. W09.
5) Executive Order 12949, 60 FR 8169, Feb. 13, 1995.
6) Ibid., Section 1.
7) 50 USC Sec. 1807.
8) Based on the Annual Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Reports to Congress, 1979-1997.
9) Table 7, "Summary Report on Authorized Intercepts Granted Pursuant to 18 U.S.C. 2519 for Calendar Years 1987 - 1997," 1997 Wiretap Report, Administrative Office of the US Courts and the 1996 and 1997 Annual Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Report to Congress.
10) Benjamin Wittes, "The Catch-22 Law," Washington Post, April 21, 1998, page A21.
11) Fran Fragos Townsend, "Limits on Counterespionage," Washington Post, May 27, 1998, p. A17. Ms. Fragos Townsend is currently the Director of the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review that reviews and forwards all surveillance applications to the FISC.
12) The speech and the question/answer session were reprinted in their entirety: Intelligence on the FISA Court, Legal Times, April 14, 1997, pp. 18-20.
13) Ibid., p. 20.
14) Ibid.
15) Timothy Maier, "Snooping on Allies Embarrasses U.S.," Insight Magazine, October 20, 1997.
16) 444 U.S. 348 (1980).
17) Intelligence on the FISA Court, p. 18.
18) Limits on Counterespionage, p. A17.
19) Americo R. Cinquegrana, The Walls (and Wires) Have Ears: The Background and First Ten Years of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, 137 U. Pa. L. Rev. 793, 823.
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CIA Says Russia, China Build Cyber Attack Abilities
February 23 2:45 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000223/ts/tech_cia_1.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Central Intelligence Agency said on Wednesday it was picking up growing signs that countries such as Russia and China were developing tools to attack commercial computer networks at the heart of U.S. might.
``We are detecting with increasing frequency the appearance of doctrines and dedicated offensive cyber warfare programs in other countries,'' John Serabian, the CIA's ``information operations issue manager,'' told Congress.
He cited public statements by a Chinese general and a senior Russian official -- neither named in his testimony -- to illustrate what he called the importance of ``information warfare'' in coming decades.
No other country was identified by name as developing such cyber weapons. But the CIA official said, ``The battle space of the information age would surely include attacks against our domestic infrastructure.''
``Many of the countries whose cyber warfare programs we follow are the same ones that realize that, in a conventional military confrontation with the United States, they will not prevail,'' Serabian said in testimony prepared for the Joint Economic Committee.
The United States itself plans to incorporate offensive computer operations into its war-fighting arsenal after policy and legal issues are sorted out, the second-ranking U.S. military officer, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, told reporters last month.
To illustrate U.S. dependence on systems and their vulnerabilities, Serabian cited the electronic blitzes that disrupted major commercial Web sites for four days starting Feb. 8.
``Whatever their motivation, the attackers have taken the threat out of the realm of the abstract and made it real,'' he said.
Serabian said ``terrorists'' acting independently of any state sponsor also could do ``considerable harm'' with cyber tools, easily downloaded from the Internet, that largely erased their digital footprints while wreaking havoc online.
``Opportunities abound to disrupt military effectiveness and public safety while maintaining the elements of surprise and anonymity,'' he added.
Daniel Kuehl, a professor of military strategy at the Information Resources Management College of the Pentagon's National Defense University, told the panel that cyber attacks against the United States or its allies by foreign foes were inevitable.
``Eventually, a nation state will determine that the potential gains of a strategic cyber attack on U.S. economic systems -- or those of our allies and/or neighbors -- outweigh the potential risks of such actions,'' he said.
``The time to prepare defenses against such an event is now,'' he added, citing a growing body of Russian and Chinese writings on using cyberspace to cause chaos in the economy.
Fred Cohen, an information protection expert at the Energy Department's Sandia National Laboratories, testified that a well-managed U.S. intelligence network ``should be able to detect technical efforts (by a foreign foe) that could have large-scale consequences on U.S. financial systems.''
Robert Bennett, the Utah Republican who chaired a special Senate panel on the Year 2000 technology problem, said a ``new landscape'' was emerging for Congress and the nation because of the perceived mounting cyber threat.
``Attacks on American defense and industrial facilities in cyberspace are as real and dangerous as any conventional threat to economic prosperity and national security,'' said Bennett, who chaired the Joint Economic Committee hearing.
-------- activism
Following is the text of the proclamation of support for Global Peace Walk 2000 signed today by Flagstaff, Arizona, Mayor Bavasi which will be signed by city clerk and picked up tomorrow, Thursday Feb 24.
From: Laura Matthews <lmatthew@CI.FLAGSTAFF.AZ.US>
To: gear2000@lightspeed.net <gear2000@lightspeed.net>
Subject: Proclamation
Date: Wednesday, February 23, 2000 4:44 PM
WHEREAS, Global Peace Walk 2000 seeks to unite the world with a universal human resolve for "Global Peace Now!"; and
WHEREAS, the history of our world is awash with incidents of peoples and nations using violence as a method to resolve disputes; and
WHEREAS, alternative methods for settling world differences should be explored to resolve differences peaceably without resorting to violence; and
WHEREAS, senseless loss of life, liberty and property can be diminished through a clear vision of (firm resolve for) global peace; and
WHEREAS, Global Peace Walk 2000 is comprised of people from many different races and creeds from all over the world gathering together to spread The Message of Peace, to develop consciousness, and promote knowledge; and
WHEREAS, Global Peace Walk 2000 is being conducted for the 55th Anniversary of the United Nations (UN) to help inaugurate the UN Year and Decade of creating a Culture of Peace for the 21st Century, and to mark the midpoint of the UN International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples 1995-2004; and
WHEREAS, the Flagstaff community affirms the conviction that "Global Peace Now!" is an idea whose time has come;
NOW, THEREFORE, I, CHRISTOPHER J. BAVASI, MAYOR OF THE CITY OF FLAGSTAFF, do hereby proclaim Friday, February 25, 2000 as -
* GLOBAL PEACE WALK 2000 DAY
*in Flagstaff.
DATED this 25th day of February, 2000.
MAYOR
ATTEST:
CITY CLERK ==============================end proclamation text
David Crockett Williams
gear2000@lightspeed.net
20411 Steeple Court,
Tehachapi, CA 93561 661-822-3309
Global Peace Walk 2000
http://www.globalpeacenow.org
http://www.angelfire.com/on/GEAR2000/gpw.html
Updates 415-267-1877 -- Voicemail 415-863-2084
http://www.angelfire.com/on/GEAR2000/schedule.html SCHEDULE & contacts
--
United Nations 55th Anniversary - Future Generations Prayer We are concerned about our future and our human life.
Washington, DC, Schedule
Global Peace Walk 2000
Develop Spiritual United Nations and a Culture of Peace for the 21st Century
Bring Your Banners & Your Message
Friday, October 6, 2000, Noon, Malcolm X Park
Saturday, October 7, 2000 - 11AM Malcolm X Park, Walk to White House
12Noon, Lafayette Park Rally Nuclear Abolition and Demilitarization of Space
Sunday, October 8, 2000
11AM depart Lafayette Park, for Noon Jefferson Stone Peace Monument Ceremony At Center N/S & E/W lines through White House & Capitol
Monday, October 9th, Columbus Day Holiday Washington Monument Symbol of Peace Dedication Ceremony
Uniting Survival Issue Messages in "Global Peace Now!" Spiritual Walk for a Global Peace Zone 2000
San Francisco Jan 15th,
St. Louis August 6th,
Washington DC October 9th,
New York City - U.N. October 24, 2000
Voicemail 415-863-2084 -- PO Box 170245, San Francisco, CA 94117-0245 - GPZone2000@aol.com
Recorded walk location/route update info and voicemail 415-267-1877 - http://www.globalpeacenow.org
LOCAL CONTACT: Peace Through Reason, Peace Park Anti-Nuclear Vigil - 202-682-4282 - prop1@prop1.org - http://prop1.org/currevnt.htm
---
Column on Arms Race in Outer Space
(The column that follows has been syndicated by the Progressive Media Project through the Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service and been running in newspapers around the United States. Karl Grossman is an advisor to the Nuclear-Free Future Award.)
By Karl Grossman
For Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
http://www.nuclear-free.com/english/outergross.htm
On Nov. 1 the United Nations considered a resolution entitled "Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space." The resolution, which 138 nations voted for, said that space "shall be used for peaceful purposes." The United States was not one of these nations, however. It cast a lonely abstention. This was a shameful vote, and it puts the United States on a path toward weaponizing space.
Actually, the United States is on that path already. Just look at the material coming out of the Pentagon's U.S. Space Command based in Colorado Springs, Colo. The cover of the "Vision For 2020" report of the Space Command, for example, depicts a laser weapon shooting a beam from space zapping a target below. The report opens: "U.S. Space Command--dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment. Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict."
"Vision For 2020" compares the U.S. effort to "control space" with the effort centuries ago when "nations built navies to protect and enhance their commercial interests" by ruling the oceans.
General Joseph Ashy, former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Space Command, has said: "It's politically sensitive, but it's going to happen. Some people don't want to hear this, and it sure isn't in vogue, but--absolutely--we're going to fight in space. We're going to fight from space and we're going to fight into space....We will engage terrestial targets someday-ships, airplanes, land targets-from space....That's why the U.S. has development programs in directed energy and hit-to-kill mechanisms"
And far more than rhetoric is involved. Last year, the U.S. signed a multi-million dollar contract for a "Space-Based Laser Readiness Demonstrator." A promotional poster shows the laser firing its ray from space, a U.S. flag somehow waving in space above it.
The main justification that Washington gives for the rapidly expanding U.S. military push into space is that it's about missile defense.
But the U.S. military documents stress not defense but "control" and "domination" of space and from it the Earth below. They talk of space as the "ultimate high ground." "Belligerently offensive" is how Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power In Space, describes current U.S. space military doctrine.
We have only a narrow window to prevent an arms race in space. The key is an international pact to ban all weapons in space--the original intent of the basic international law on space, the Outer Space Treaty. Once the United States moves to turn space into "the ultimate high ground" and to weaponize the heavens, other nations will follow.
At the UN's Conference on Disarmament in March, China moved to strengthen the Outer Space Treaty, to "negotiate and conclude an international legal instrument banning...any weapons, weapons systems and their components in outer space, with a view to preventing the weaponization of outer space." China received wide support from other nations.
Approved in 1967 and now signed by 91 nations, including the United States, the Outer Space Treaty ended up banning nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. It's high time we return to its original intent. The people of the United States need to oppose this reckless U.S. policy of weaponizing space. The heavens should not be a war zone.
*Karl Grossman is professor of journalism at the State University of New York/College at Old Westbury and member of the Commission on Disarmament Education, Conflict Resolution and Peace of the International Association of University Presidents and the United Nations.
-----------
Truckers Protest High Fuel Prices
New York Times
February 23, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/washpol/truckers-protest.html
Video
Independent Truckers Protest
Audio
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/washpol/truckers-protest.1v.ram.html
Reaction From Truckers
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/washpol/truckers-protest.1a.ram.html
WASHINGTON -- Organizers of a trucking protest say a demonstration today in the nation's capital against soaring diesel fuel prices is part of a fight to save their livelihoods.
"Hopefully, Congress is going to come out and not ignore us," Bill Dickens Jr., an owner-operator from Baltimore, said Monday.
Organizers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania said 300 to 500 trucks might participate.
A convoy of 60 rigs could stretch a mile, but police and protest organizers said attempts would be made to avoid traffic disruptions.
Police in the District of Columbia have arranged parking for most of the rigs as some of the truckers visit the Capitol. But many lawmakers will not be in town. Although the Senate was returning from its Presidents Day recess today, the House is out until Feb. 29.
The truckers are frustrated by soaring fuel prices in recent weeks that have added to long-standing disenchantment among truckers over what they view as low freight rates and the condition of cargo equipment provided by freight companies.
State police in New Jersey and Maryland have agreed to escort convoys through their states. The main group of protesting drivers headed out from New Jersey at dawn.
Diesel prices in the central Atlantic and New England regions have risen 43 percent and 55 percent respectively in the past six weeks, according to the American Trucking Association, the freight hauler trade group. The high prices have forced many independent owner-operators to park their rigs.
The trade group has taken no position on the demonstration.
"It used to cost an owner-operator $220 to go a distance, now it costs $500," said Jackquie Medaglia, whose husband is a second-generation owner-operator.
Despite trucker assurances that they have no interest in disrupting Washington traffic, some motorists feared the worst.
"We could be in a situation where we're at complete gridlock," said Mantill Williams, a spokesman for Mid-Atlantic Region of the American Automobile Association.
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Truckers' convoy rolls onto Hill to lament fuel costs
Washington Times
February 23, 2000
By Ellen Sorokin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/metro1-022300.htm
Hundreds of truckers rolled into downtown Washington yesterday with horns blaring and gears grinding to urge lawmakers to take steps to lower skyrocketing fuel costs.
The 5-mile-long convoy of about 250 trucks, which traffic officials say caused "minimal" traffic delays along their way from New Jersey, slowly drove onto Constitution Avenue NW at 11:40 a.m. under a 24-member police escort. The truckers sounded their horns as they approached the U.S. Capitol and waved to crowds of people who lined the streets and overpasses along the way.
The independent truckers came from as far as Texas and Michigan to tell President Clinton and Congress that high fuel and maintenance costs are driving them out of business.
"We're not on welfare, but we live from day to day," said trucker Synina Dortch, holding her 7-month-old son as she stood with her husband, Quint, outside the Capitol yesterday afternoon.
"It's not easy when you can barely pay your bills and put food on the table," said the 23-year-old woman, adding that she and her husband drove from Texas to take part in the protest. "We're having to get by on advances on our loans just to survive."
"I support them all the way," said Spencer Howard of the District as the convoy of flatbeds, big rigs and tri-axles roared past. "They work so hard and earn so little. They deserve a break."
It took the truckers nearly 45 minutes to park their rigs near the Mall, where U.S. Park and D.C. police had reserved some room for them earlier in the day. The truckers were given permission to park along Madison Avenue between Third and 14th streets NW and along Maryland Avenue from Third Street to Independence Avenue SW, police said.
"There are always traffic problems in the District," D.C. police Sgt. Joe Gentile said. "But there were no major complications because of the convoy."
The protest ended by 2 p.m., when the truckers left the District over the 14th Street Bridge toward Virginia. Police said it took about 30 minutes for the convoy to leave the city.
Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Colorado Republican and former truck driver, greeted the men, women and children as they climbed the Capitol steps to deliver their message of frustration. Some carried signs that read "Will Work for Fuel," while others chanted "Enough is enough."
"I really feel sorry for them," Mr. Campbell said as he stood at the foot of the Capitol, shaking hands with the truckers and their families. "Some of them can't make a living. They're lucky if they make $25 a day. When you stop these trucks from rolling, the country will become paralyzed."
As they filled the lower west terrace of the Capitol, the truckers urged President Clinton to withdraw oil from government reserves to counter fuel costs that have soared 65 percent in the past six months.
They also asked lawmakers for a tax break, to create a federal rebate program that would give 15 cents off a gallon for truckers and to put a moratorium on the 24-cent federal fuel tax.
"It's difficult because you give up a lot with your family, and you begin to wonder if it's really worth the hardship," said John Anthony, a Perryville, Md., trucker who has two children. "You work harder to pay for fuel and take less money home to put food on the table."
Truckers are now paying more than $2 a gallon in some areas, almost double what they paid for fuel last year. Most trucks hold up to 300 gallons of fuel.
"At one time, I was proud of being a trucker," said Lloyd Moore, 55, of Beltsville, Md. Mr. Moore said that, after paying fuel and maintenance costs, he made only about $50 for a recent delivery to Lancaster, Pa.
Truckers also asked for an investigation into the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which cut crude oil production by 7.5 percent, or more than 2 million barrels a day, to boost oil prices that had fallen to 12-year lows.
Diesel prices have increased because of low stocks leading into January, followed by a bout of severe cold weather that increased customer demand and hindered the flow of products to the Northeast, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
On the way to Washington, the convoy caused few traffic delays throughout the area as it traveled at about 40 mph from southern New Jersey to the District via Interstate 95, police officials said. The truckers got help from 24 Maryland state troopers, D.C. and U.S. Capitol Police officers who escorted them down the interstate.
"If there were any disruptions, they were short-lived," said Peter Piringer, a spokesman for the Maryland State Police. "The convoy went fairly smoothly."
Some Washington-area motorists, however, were angered after two yellow State Highway Administration pickup trucks blocked eastbound traffic on the Capital Beltway at Exit 25 about 45 minutes before the convoy roared by and kept drivers from getting off there.
"I was trying to go to work," said David Foust, a U-Haul employee who lives in Takoma Park, Md. "But I'm not really mad. I hope it will bring the [gas] prices down."
"I'm very upset,"said Donna Lightly of Brooklyn, N.Y. "I have my son in the back. I'm trying to get to Florida."
The two yellow highway trucks took off about 11 a.m., after stopping traffic for about 30 minutes, even though the truck convoy had not yet come through.
Staff writer Barbara J. Saffir contributed to this report.
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Truckers protest soaring fuel prices in D.C.
USA Today
02/22/00- Updated 07:27 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncstue02.htm
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2564511991-0e5
WASHINGTON (AP) - Independent truckers drove their big rigs Tuesday through city streets to Capitol Hill to protest diesel fuel prices and demand tax breaks to offset greatly increased operating costs. c ''We're dying,'' said Douglas Sorantino, a rally organizer and New Jersey truck driver. ''We need help now. If they don't do it tomorrow, we won't be around 60 or 90 days from now.''
More than 200 truckers joined a convoy that began in New Jersey and traveled through Delaware and Maryland before snaking its way through the nation's capital to a rally on the Capitol steps.
Police escorted the truckers, horns blaring, along the protest route and finally through city streets near the Capitol cordoned off to allow parking for the huge rigs. The truckers walked to the Capitol, some carrying signs that read ''Enough is Enough'' and ''Will Work for Fuel.''
Truckers are angry that gasoline prices have been rising steadily since last March, when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cut crude oil production by 7.5%, or more than 2 million barrels a day, to boost prices that had fallen to 12-year lows.
Increases in diesel fuel prices are costing truckers as much as $100 a day, some haulers contended. They said the cost eventually will throw them out of business and wreak havoc on an economy that depends on trucks to transport 90% of goods, including food, clothing, cars and appliances.
Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo., who attended the rally, told truckers, ''When your industry comes to a standstill, this nation does, too.''
Rep. Jim Saxton, R-N.J., sent President Clinton a letter Tuesday saying rising prices of fuel and home heating oil should be considered ''a national emergency.''
The spiraling costs are perhaps most apparent in the Northeast - Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut - where diesel costs average $1.86 a gallon, the American Automobile Association said.
In New York and the District of Columbia prices have climbed as high as $2.04 and $1.92 a gallon respectively, AAA said. Meanwhile, motorists are paying about $1.37 a gallon for unleaded fuel.
Last year, the nationwide average for diesel was $1.07 a gallon.
With some large trucks averaging just 5.5 miles per gallon and fuel tanks that hold as much as 150 gallons, truckers say their costs are astronomical.
''They're gouging us with the prices,'' said Harry Greco, a driver from Skippack, Pa. ''It's out of control. Something has to be done.''
Protesters want Congress and President Clinton to repeal or suspend a 24 cents federal excise tax paid at the pump on diesel and investigate OPEC.
''Truckers need immediate financial relief to help offset the escalating burden of diesel fuel,'' said Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., who said he would introduce legislation proposing a six-month suspension. ''These higher costs will be soon be felt by consumers if we don't take immediate action.''
White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said Tuesday that repealing the tax is not a ''viable option'' since most of the money goes towards building highways that truckers use.
''We have been doing things to make sure that more product gets (to the Northeast),'' Lockhart said. ''We have some evidence now that prices are coming down, and we'll continue to watch the situation.''
Truckers also are asking the White House to release oil from a government reserve of almost 600 million barrels. Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan cautioned against tapping the reserve, which he said should be used only to counter a crisis such as a total shutdown of Middle East oil supplies.
In addition to diesel fuel and gasoline, the crunch also is being felt by home heating oil consumers, whose costs have doubled in some parts of the country.
Analysts believe OPEC will come under increasing pressure - especially from industrialized nations such as the United States - to raise production at its meeting in late March. Some caution, however, that such a move won't bring a precipitous drop in prices.
''It will cool them off, and it will shave the peak in summer,'' said Roger Diwan, managing director for global oil markets at The Petroleum Finance Co. in Washington. But he cautioned: ''I don't think they are going to cool off dramatically.''
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Quebec Police and Protesters Clash
Yahoo News
11:55 PM ET 02/22/00
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2564517026-b0b
QUEBEC CITY, Quebec (AP) _ Police in riot gear fired tear gas and dodged Molotov cocktails and billiard balls Tuesday evening, during a clash with about 2,000 protesters outside a meeting of young people and civic leaders.
One police officer suffered a broken elbow after being struck by a billiard ball. Police said protesters also threw rocks and snowballs.
The crowd eventually dispersed and there were no reports of arrests.
The meeting _ bringing together politicians, business leaders and youth groups to advise the government on youth policy _ was called off for the day.
Police said the violence began as the protesters, who included activists, students and communist party members, gathered as the meeting was about to open in the city's Grand Theater.
Authorities said protesters tried to force their way in to the building, prompting the clash with police.
Some of the protesters said they were there hold a counter-meeting.
Charles Ste-Marie, one of the demonstration's organizers, said later that his group had not planned to have a violent protest.
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Singer Looks To Stop Bovine Cruelty
Yahoo News
04:15 PM ET 02/22/00
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2564508408-aac
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) _ Rock singer Chrissie Hynde is on a crusade _ to stop cruelty to cows in Asia.
She was the headliner at a small rally organized by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to protest the use of cow hides imported from India to feed the demand for leather.
Monday's demonstration was held outside a Gap store, chosen because of the company's ``everybody in leather'' ad campaign.
``Obviously it's not just the Gap,'' said Hynde, 48, who performed in Vancouver on Saturday with her band, the Pretenders. ``But until they stop using leather from India and China, we should stop buying it.''
Gap spokeswoman Kellie Leonard said Monday in San Francisco that the chain doesn't manufacture leather goods but only purchases them from overseas factories. ``We expect apparel factories to follow applicable laws and industry-best practices,'' she said.