-------- 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."
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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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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.
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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 campai