-------- activists

-- du plowshares

Plowshares moved - 3 of 4
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 15:04:17 +0000
From: Elizabeth McAlister disarmnow@erols.com

New addresses and numbers for 3 of the 4 plowshares:

We heard today from all 4 of the plowshares vs depleted uranium. Liz called from Towson early to say that Susan was moved out at about 6:00 a.m. Then Susan called from Jessup to announce arrival and address.

This afternoon Phil called from downtown Baltimore to say that he and Steve were in the Diagnostic Center. For the time being (and this will definitely change for Phil and Steve) here are their new addresses and numbers:

Susan Crane #916-999
Maryland Correctional Institution for Women
PO Box 535 Jessup MD 20794

(mail is sent to that address; if you happen to want to enclose a money order that need to be addressed to PO Box 306; the rest of the address remains the same)

Philip Berrigan #292-139 and Rev. Steve Kelly S.J. #292-140
MRDCC (Diagnostic Center)
550 E. Madison St
Baltimore MD 21202

Sr. Rosalie Bertel shared with us the letter she wrote to Judge Smith. I append it here; you may want to write in similar or different fashion; I don't put much store by his willingness to change his mind but there is value in letting him know that people know about what he did and are outraged. As the spirit moves you...

To us, Rosalie wrote: "This letter may be too "soft", but perhaps it will touch this vindictive judge. I will send you a hard copy with our letterhead stationery." Rosalie

27 March 2000

Judge James T. Smith, Jr. Circuit Court for Baltimore County 400 Bosley Ave. Towson MD 21204, USA

Dear Judge Smith,

Re: Ploughshares vs Depleted Uranium

You must be somewhat disturbed over the trial of Philip Berrigan, Susan Crane, Stephen Kelly, SJ, and Elizabeth Walz. Your sentencing was so excessively vindictive that I would guess that the action of these men and women deeply challenged your "faith" and belief that Catholic doctrine supported US military activity, regardless of the judgement of the Church?s more prophetic members.

By eliminating expert witnesses in this case, you eliminated my testimony. I am a Grey Nun of the Sacred Heart (Motherhouse in Yardley Pennsylvania), and also President of the North American Association of Contemplative Sisters. I am also an Epidemiologist with 30 years experience with communities exposed to uranium mining and milling, and related polluting activities. I have been working for the last three years with the veterans of the Gulf War who are seriously ill. It was in recognition of my expertise in the health effects of radiation, especially from uranium compounds, that I was asked by the defendants to testify to the rationality of their actions.

In your better moments, you must find that shooting radioactive waste at one?s enemy is outrageous behaviour. How much more outrageous is it to undermine the health of one?s own military personnel, and the women and children of the land which you have polluted. There is no war theory which condones indiscriminate poison. By the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations, depleted uranium can be handled only by licensed and trained personnel, and all releases to the environment must be cleaned up. It is legally recognized as a poison.

I hope that even though you expressed your moral distress and confusion in an inappropriate way in the court, you will on sober reflection realize that your silencing of the defendants did not make the depleted uranium problem go away. As a Catholic Judge, you should be prepared to hear unwanted truth, and respect the righteous actions of those who clearly see and denounce a wrong. I will pray that you find a way quickly to redress the wrong which you have done and reduce the sentences of the Ploughshares defendants. Silencing the messengers and prophets has long been the pattern of behaviour of false leaders. Do not continue on this wrong path.

Sincerely, Dr. Rosalie Bertell, GNSH President

---- du - other

You might want to go check out Hafemeister's website at
http://www.apci.net/~haferod
Articles by Rod Hafemeister

Rod Hafemeister is a reporter at the Belleville (Ill.) News Democrat, a Knight Ridder newspaper located near Scott Air Force Base and across the river from St. Louis Mo.

About Rod Prior to joining the News-Democrat in 1992, Rod spent about a decade writing on military affairs for a variety of magazines. He served on active duty in the U.S. Army from 1974 to 1982, including a tour with 2nd Ranger Battalion, Fort Lewis, Wash., from November 1977 through March 1982. As a member of the Individual Ready Reserve, he was called to active duty in January 1991 in support of Operation Desert Storm and spent six months as a platoon sergeant with a motorized infantry company at Fort Lewis.

--

Gulf War Illness Articles
http://www.apci.net/~haferod/gwi.html

Gulf War Illness Stories

7/23/1995 Gulf War Veteran Details His Illness Reichert can even tell you the flight in March 1991 that made him sick. "It was the first or second of March," he recalled. "We flew into Kuwait City, which had just been liberated."

9/3/1996 Chemical weapons found before blast A special chemical weapons detection team saw evidence of suspected chemical weapons at an Iraqi ammunition depot before it was blown up by U.S. troops but didn't tell them, local Gulf War veterans say.

9/3/1996 sidebar Investigator: Veterans knew of chemical signs Veterans of a former metro-east Army Reserve unit either saw evidence of chemical weapons at a controversial Iraqi ammunition depot or saw them at a separate site the Pentagon hasn't acknowledged yet, a former congressional investigator said.

10/1/1996 Reservists Questioned About Weapons Military commanders suspected almost immediately that chemical weapons had been released by blowing up a huge Iraqi complex and sent a team to gather evidence, according to local Gulf War veterans.

10/2/1996 Local Gulf War Veterans' Accounts Are Investigated At a Pentagon press conference Tuesday, Assistant Secretary of Defense Ken Bacon said that, based on wind patterns and the number of weapons in the pit, a large number of troops may have been under the chemical cloud released March 10, 1991.

12/10/1996 Gulf War vets call for criminal inquiry of Pentagon Veterans are calling for criminal investigations into the Pentagon's handling of Persian Gulf War documents. The call comes after the Pentagon admitted last week that it has 20 confirmed detections of chemical agents, despite three years of denying the reports existed.

12/25/1996 Weapon linked to Iraq -Biological warfare used, report says Iraq may have used a biological weapon in the early stages of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, according to an investigator who was abruptly fired last year from the White House panel looking into Gulf War Syndrome.

1/14/97 Veteran Saw Gulf Weapons --U.S. May Believe Claim Of Chemicals An area Gulf War veteran says he saw Iraqi chemical weapons stored at an airfield about 70 miles from where U.S. troops blew up chemical agents at war's end.

1/19/1997 Focus Ghost from the Gulf : Six years after the Gulf War, are veterans being stalked by an invisible killer? Jasmine Palmore Battle never volunteered to go to war, and she never volunteered to get sick. Six years ago, she watched the Gulf War from the front row as a dental hygienist for the civilian oil company Aramco Services Co. Today, she is fighting a brain tumor, lung failure, gynecological disease, rashes and other problems she thinks were caused by Iraqi Scud missiles and smoke from oil fires.

1/20/1997 Analyst presses gulf case -- Ex-CIA employee sues for documents A former Central Intelligence Agency analyst is suing the CIA and the Department of Defense to obtain thousands of documents he says will prove U.S. troops were exposed to Iraqi chemical and biological weapons during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

8/10/1997 Ex-Members Of Scott Unit Notified About Chemical Exposure The Pentagon is notifying the former members of a disbanded metro-east Army Reserve unit that they might have been exposed to chemical weapons when an Iraqi ammunition depot was destroyed in March 1991.

9/21/1997 The Wrong Stuff? Study: Gulf Uniforms Were Permeable A secret Pentagon study three years before the Gulf War found that the uniform issued to protect American troops from chemical weapons would not stop chemical agents Iraq had used in its war with Iran. Part one of a two part series which won an Illinois Press Association Award

9/22/1997 The Wrong Stuff? U.S. Equipment Failed To Detect Chemical Agents In Gulf On the third day of the Persian Gulf War, a message flashed through military command centers across Saudi Arabia: A Czech unit had detected chemical weapons. Part two of a two part series which won an Illinois Press Association Award

10/19/1997 Service Took His Strength William White once harbored visions of playing in the National Football League. Now, White has visions of his own death. They come to him when he sleeps. He dreams that he's drowning in a pool of water, or that someone is holding something over his nose so he can't breath.

10/19/1997 sidebar Aid for Veterans Delayed Gulf War veterans often criticize the Department of Veterans Affairs as being overly bureaucratic, more concerned about rigidly following sometimes incomprehensible rules than helping sick veterans.

10/26/1997 Paperwork is key, Gulf War vets say Persian Gulf War veterans say the mystery of missing paperwork shows why the investigation of Gulf War illnesses should be taken away from the Department of Defense.

11/10/1997 Researcher: U.S. risks lives of some gulf vets The federal government is treating Persian Gulf War veterans wounded by radioactive shrapnel as guinea pigs, the Army's former top researcher on depleted uranium told a gathering of Gulf War veterans this weekend.

11/10/1997 sidebar Gulf Vets Get Apology From Lawmaker Persian Gulf War veterans this weekend got something they have waited six years for - an apology from a government official for the way their mysterious illnesses have been handled.

1/10/1998 Veterans Were Exposed To Uranium- Toxic Ammo Levels Found In Gulf War The Pentagon quietly admitted this week that thousands of veterans may have been exposed to dangerous levels of depleted uranium ammunition fired by Allied weapons during the Persian Gulf War.

1/18/1998 Weapons 'Nuked' U.S. Troops In Gulf-- Majority Of Troops Possibly Exposed Seven years ago, U.S. troops nervously waiting for the order to take on Saddam Hussein's army frequently joked that the allies should just "nuke 'em" and get it over with. They didn't have a clue that thousands - as many as three-quarters of the troops there - soon would get nuked by their own weapons.

1/26/1998 Many CIA documents touch on war The Central Intelligence Agency has 1.5 million documents and "a number of studies" that could shed light on Gulf War illnesses, according to a CIA report released Friday. As many as 100,000 of the documents could be directly relevant to the question of Gulf War illnesses.

2/22/1998 Pentagon Says U.S. Troops Vulnerable-- Biological, Chemical Dust Can Penetrate Suits As tensions mount in the Persian Gulf, a top military expert said American troops are vulnerable to chemical and biological weapons, or so-called "dusty agents."

3/1/1998 Troops Unaware They Detonated Chemical Weapons, Records Show U.S. troops who unknowingly blew up hundreds of Iraqi rockets filled with deadly nerve agents after the Persian Gulf War should have been alerted to the danger, recently declassified documents show.

3/2/1998 Deplete Uranium is a Threat Veterans Say

Veterans say a gathering in Washington today will expose the Pentagon's efforts to downplay the effects of deadly radioactive bullets on hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans.

8/5/1998 Report: Gulf reservists went to different site Local reservists did not fly into Khamisiyah, the site of an accidental release of chemical weapons at the end of the Persian Gulf War, a new Pentagon report states.

9/19/1998 Dismissive comments challenged by doctor The doctor heading a study of veterans hit with depleted uranium ammunition disagreed on Friday with statements by the Pentagon's chief Gulf War investigator that the exposures were not medically significant.

9/21/1998 Scientist may have found way to diagnose Gulf illness A California researcher has found what he believes is a biological marker common to the wide variety of illnesses affecting some Gulf War veterans.

9/21/1998 Investigative reporter Hersh tells group military avoided Gulf War illness issue Pentagon leaders did not engage in a massive cover-up of Gulf War illnesses, but were too consumed by self interest to admit veterans were sick, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh said Sunday.

--

http://www.apci.net/~haferod/anthrax.html

Anthrax Vaccine Stories

12/28/1997 Vaccines Will Not Suffice-Fight Vs. Anthrax Needs Other Ammo The Pentagon's plan to give everyone in the military an ounce of prevention against anthrax will not eliminate the need to have pounds of cure on hand if an enemy unleashes the deadly disease as a biological weapon.

12/28/1997 sidebar Scott officer: Anthrax program complicated The process of vaccinating millions of service members against anthrax is complicated but necessary, the top medical officer at Scott Air Force Base said.

2/6/1998 British Avoiding Vaccines For Troops In Gulf British military leaders are not giving biological warfare vaccinations and anti-nerve agent pills to troops heading to the Persian Gulf because of concerns they could start a second round of Gulf War illnesses, London papers reported this week.

3/4/1998 U.S. troops to receive anthrax shots this week U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf will start getting vaccinations later this week to protect them from the thousands of gallons of anthrax weapons Iraq is thought to have, Pentagon officials announced Tuesday

5/25/1998 Anthrax Vaccines Expired The U.S. Navy injected sailors in the Persian Gulf with a 5-year-old batch of anthrax vaccine, two months after federal regulators said the vaccine had been given a new expiration date improperly.

5/25/1998 sidebar Scientists describe anthrax vaccine as an outdated 'disgusting mix' Researchers have described the anthrax vaccine the Pentagon intends to give millions of troops as "1950s technology unimpeded by medical progress."

5/29/1998 Letter from Lieutenant General Ron Blanck U.S. Army Surgeon General response to May 25, 1998 story (see above)

Or see the letter posted at http://www.defenselink.mil/other_info/blanck.html

6/30/1998 Veterans group files lawsuit - Anthrax vaccine's use is questioned A veterans group Monday filed a lawsuit demanding the government prove its anthrax vaccination program is safe and effective while the latest group of sailors heading for the Persian Gulf reportedly are refusing to take the shots.

Spokesman Cynthia Vaughn also corrected a May 29, 1998 letter (see above) from Lt. Gen. Ronald Blanck, the Army surgeon general, published in the News-Democrat on June 4. Blanck claimed that the FDA had "inspected and approved every lot of anthrax vaccine," including the one used in the gulf.

8/8/1998 AWOL soldier wants vaccine hearing -Says he was forced to take anthrax drug A 20-year-old soldier is requesting an official inquiry into his claim that a top sergeant threatened to strap him down and forcibly vaccinate him if he refused anthrax shots.

8/17/1998 Army forces anthrax vaccinations As the Pentagon expands its anthrax vaccination program this week, Army officials are saying they have the right to forcibly restrain and vaccinate soldiers who refuse the shots.

9/16/1998 New anthrax shots criticized Sailors in the Persian Gulf say the Navy is no longer using a batch of anthrax vaccine that was improperly relabeled after it expired, but the new batch is one that also was criticized by federal inspectors for quality control problems.

3/15/1999 Resistance to vaccination is growing Faced with a small but growing rebellion against mandatory anthrax vaccination, the Pentagon has unleashed an extensive public relations campaign to convince troops the vaccine is safe and effective.

5/8/1999 Colonel suspends shots One of Air Mobility Command's wing commanders has suspended anthrax vaccinations at his base, the biggest wrinkle yet to the Pentagon's mandatory vaccination program.

5/14/1999 Anthrax vaccinations set to continue at air force base The commander of Dover Air Force Base ordered the resumption of anthrax vaccinations Tuesday. A week ago the commander halted the controversial program at the Delaware base because medical personnel could not adequately answer airmen's questions.

2/7/2000 Resistance growing to anthrax vaccinations A growing resistance to the Pentagon's mandatory anthrax vaccinations is shoving Air Mobility Command into the national spotlight, as one of its pilots is choosing to face a court martial rather than take the shots.

2/7/2000 sidebar Pentagon, foes locked in complex battle In its war of words with opponents of the anthrax vaccine, the Pentagon has frequently found itself firing dud ammunition and even shooting itself in the foot.

3/27/2000 Defense contradicts itself in question over anthrax vaccine Although the Pentagon has long maintained that its controversial anthrax vaccine is licensed for use against aerosol exposure from biological weapons, military leaders now are asking to amend the license for such use.

3/27/2000 sidebar Pentagon now admits reactions much higher As many as one-third of all military personnel who receive the anthrax vaccine may have systemic reactions such as aches, rashes, chills, fevers or nausea, Pentagon officials now admit. That includes Lt. Gen. Ronald Blanck, the Army's surgeon general who oversees the program.

---- sign-on

PLEASE SIGN ON NOW & SPREAD THIS TO OTHER LISTS, ORGANIZATIONS & INDIVIDUALS.

REPLY TO: yablokov@voxnet.ru NOT to me!!!!!!
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 04:57:46 -0500 (EST)

Statement of non-governmental environmental organizations on the plan to export-import spent nuclear fuel

At the present time, countries that have developed nuclear energy have run into the problem of storage and burial of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. Not wanting to use its territory for the repository of these dangerous materials, the governments and nuclear-energy companies of these countries are trying to transport them to other countries that are experiencing economic difficulties, in particular, to Russia. Earlier attempts by industrial countries to establish international repositories for spent nuclear fuel in Australia, South Africa and Namibia were not successful. Proposals by private companies to construct such a repository on one of the islands in the Pacific Ocean that belongs to the US caused a sharp negative reaction by the White House.

Russian legislation forbids the import of foreign radioactive materials for storage and burial on Russian territory. The Ministry of the Russian Federation on atomic energy (Minatom), which is counting on receiving the material into its custody and developing its potential, is lobbying to change this law and is making preparations for organizations of commercial storage and for the reprocessing of foreign radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel in its facilities. The Russian authorities, which are facing a continual budget deficit, are ready to change the law.

The administration of the US, worried on the one hand about the security of fissile materials and the possible leaking of nuclear specialists from Russia, and on the other hand, not wanting to store spent nuclear fuel on its own territory from countries that use in their reactors nuclear fuel that was produced in the US, may consider granting permission of the commercial storage of foreign radioactive materials in Russia.

The United States, in exchange for giving permission to Russia to import spent nuclear fuel from Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Switzerland, Germany, and other countries, requires that Russia stop reprocessing spent nuclear fuel and further accumulation of plutonium. But the accepted conception in Russia of a closed fuel cycle envisages such reprocessing. Minatom promises (under the conditions of constructing many new nuclear power plants) to curtail the production of plutonium for only 200 years. Having at its disposal large stock of Russian spent nuclear fuel, Minatom is ready to agree with the US requirement to give up reprocessing of foreign spent nuclear fuel today in order to be able to use it in the future in its facilities, which are constructed with "radioactive" money.

Minatom maintains that the resources they receive from storing radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel will go first to remediate land that has been polluted by radionuclides during the Cold War. However, it is clear that a primary part of the resources that are received in the waste business go into building new nuclear power plants, factories for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, and other environmentally and politically dangerous projects.

The waste business, in which Minatom intends to earn money, will result in the deterioration of the environmental situation in Russia and create significant additional risks for the population during the transport of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste and the management of dangerous wastes.

It is disturbing to us that negotiations on the management of radioactive and nuclear materials, which affects the interests of the whole world, go on in secret from the public. We hold that this leads to the weakening of international and national environmental legislation and undermines the foundations of civil society.

We hold that countries, in which long-term radionuclides were obtained in reactors, should take full responsibility for their safe storage during the time it is necessary for full decay of all long-term radionuclides.

We hold that the Russian and US governments and other nuclear countries should first take care of the safe storage of the large quantities of already manufactured plutonium.

We categorically come out against the import and export of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. We are against earning "dirty" money in the morally unacceptable "waste business," which carries numerous misfortunes for current and future generations, we are against double standards.

We hold that reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, which inevitably leads to the management of a large quantity of radioactive waste and to extraction of new quantities of plutonium, should be stopped in all countries.

We are in favor of every future generation living in a less dangerous world.

Signed,

L. Popova - Center for nuclear ecology and energy policy, Moscow; e-mail: seulidia@glasnet.ru;
A. Yablokov - Center for Russian environmental policy, Moscow, fax +7(095)952 80 19; e-mail: yablokov@glasnet.ru;
E. Kriusanov - Russian NGO's Program on nuclear and radioactive safety, Moscow, e-mail: atomsafe@glasnet.ru; atomsafe@online.ru;

--- greenham common

From: Janet Bloomfield [mailto:jbloomfield@gn.apc.org]
Sent: Monday, March 27, 2000 2:40 AM
Subject: Greenham Fence to come down on April 8th, 2000

Dear Wonderful Sisters, I found out about this whilst visiting friends in Newbury this weekend. Here is evidence that change takes place after persistent campaigning. A nuclear site is being transformed back into common land. Please forward to all who might be interested.

From the West Berkshire Council:

"On Saturday 8 April 2000 the perimeter fence at Greenham Common (base for US nuclear Cruise Missiles and site of many women's protests in the 1980's) begins to come down. The base will once again be open to the public for all the enjoy. This is a significant moment as it symbolises the return of this vast area of open space filled with wildlife to the local community. It is the beginning of the restoration process which will see; the re-establishment of heathland where there were once concrete runways, the increased use of the Commons by local people and the grazing of the Commons by livestock. At 11.00 am on Saturday April 8th there will be a ceremonial entrance onto the airbase at Blue Gate opposite School Green. People are invited to gather on School Green, where they will be entertained by the the Watership Brass Band, and then participate in removing the fence and reclaiming the airbase A sculpture, a life size replica of a Cruise Missile, will be designed and built by the Youth Group and will be displayed on the day. This work will be made from materials that were once part of the base."

It would be wonderful to have a good turnout of people who campaigned to get rid of Cruise....

See you there? And if you can't be...be there in spirit. Love and peace, Janet

Janet Bloomfield 25 Farmadine Saffron Walden Essex CB11 3HR England Tel/Fax: +44 (0)1799 516189 e-mail: janet@atomicmirror.org

-----

From: Charles F Hilfenhaus <chilfenhaus@juno.com>

Thu, 27 Mar 2000
THE WASHINGTON POST

The Energy Department plans to renovate more than 6000 aging nuclear warheads during the next 15 years, almost double the number the United States is allowed to deploy under the START II arms reduction treaty according to senior U.S. officials.

The plan to keep an "inactive reserve" of 2,500 to 3,000 more warheads than permitted to be deployed under START II is the product of a little-publicized Clinton administration nuclear policy called "lead and hedge." It was described to Congress in 1996 by Harold Smith, Jr., then assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs.

He said that while the administration "leads"by pushing for force reductions in arms-control negotiations, the United States has to "retain the ability to hedge by returning to START I levels."

Smith said the policy was approved by President Clinton in September 1994 as part of a Nuclear Posture Review, an annual document setting guidelines for america's nuclear forces.

ATOMIC VETERANS RESPOND

The timing of these past decisions and the start of subcritical testing at the Nevada Test Site proves, if anyone needed proof, that these tests never had any purpose not related to nuclear weapons. Much of the renovation work could take place in Nevada at the DAF (Device Assembly Facility) complex on the Nevada Test Site built during the 1990's but never used.

From a purely military standpoint the existence of an "inactive reserve" of nuclear weapons combined with the U.S. dependance on cruise missiles, which have always been designed to be used as either conventional or nuclear delivery systems, leaves the U.S. with the option to double its nuclear force overnight.

Senate rejection of the CTBT, threats to abrogate the ABM Treaty, congressional prohibitions on cutting US forces below START I levels until the Duma ratifies START II, even though the Russians are unilaterally moving toward a 1,500 warhead arsenal that they propose for START III, all question the United States commitment to observe any arms control treaty unless there is some military advantage to do so.

The military industrial complex DOES run the United States

Charlie Hilfenhaus Alliance of Atomic Veterans Director, Atomic Workers Division chilfenhaus@juno.com

-------- alternative energy

Navajos Move Toward Solar Power

Yahoo News
Morning Coffee Edition for Monday, March 27, 2000
By MICHELLE RUSHLO
Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2565219777-969

DILKON, Ariz. (AP) _ On the breezy grass plains where generations of Joanne Jackson's family have been born and raised, a wood bungalow with faded tan paint is alive with electricity.

The three-room house was built years ago in this western part of the Navajo Nation using her husband's veterans benefits. And though it had white plastic outlet plates on the walls and lights in the ceiling, they were merely decorative _ until September.

It was then that Mrs. Jackson, 62, and her husband, Raymond, 82, became the first inhabitants of the Navajo Nation to get power through a solar generator program whose founders hope to eventually deliver power throughout American Indian reservations.

Of the 37,000 occupied structures on the Navajo Reservation, only 9 percent have electricity and 14 percent have utility gas, according to 1990 Census Bureau statistics. Most other Navajos cook and heat with wood, coal or fuel oil.

Large spreads of open land frequently separate the homes on the reservation, which at 4.8 million acres covers an area slightly smaller than New Jersey.

The rambling expanses make hooking into the power grid eye-poppingly expensive. Stringing power lines costs roughly $30,000 per mile, according to Arizona Public Service _ an impossible sum for most families in this region where the unemployment rate hovers around 50 percent.

By comparison, a one-kilowatt solar generator, which can provide for basic needs, costs roughly $10,000.

The solar systems are ideal for Indian reservations because they are less expensive than power lines and don't tear up the landscape, said Gregory Kiss, president of Native American Photovoltaics, the non-profit corporation that helped install the Jacksons' system.

NAPV, launched last June with a $220,000 federal grant, started a lease-to-own program in the southwestern portion of the reservation, offering families one-kilowatt systems. The solar generators provide enough power to fuel a refrigerator, lights, television, water pump and computer for an average family of four.

It costs the Jacksons nothing to own the generator _ it was installed so they can show others how it works _ but normally a one-kilowatt system would cost $50 per month through the program. A family would agree to a three-year lease and, if they choose to buy it at that time, the money paid toward the lease would be applied to the purchase price.

The program, still in its infancy, should have 20 systems installed in the next six months, said Kiss, a New York architect who specializes in integrating solar systems into buildings.

Other government programs and individual homeowners have installed thousands of solar generators on the reservation over the years, Kiss said, but many generators do not function today because they were never maintained.

The maintenance required for the systems is minor. The solar-charged batteries, which are similar to golf cart batteries, need water and occasional service, Kiss said. But without that maintenance, the systems die. In some cases, the Navajo have not been taught how to maintain the systems.

To combat that and provide some badly needed jobs on the reservation, NAPV will train unemployed Navajo to service and maintain the systems periodically. Kiss is hoping to eventually create a self-sustaining industry.

``We're trying to make the program behave like a distributed service,'' he said.

So far, the Jacksons, who received their generator as a demonstration system, are thrilled.

Mrs. Jackson has a refrigerator for the first time, sparing her trip after trip in an old pickup truck 10 miles down the dusty rutted road from her home to the market. She keeps a few tomatoes and soda cans in the small refrigerator, smiling proudly as she shows it off to visitors.

``I like the whole system,'' Mrs. Jackson, who speaks primarily Navajo, said through a translator. ``I have been really wanting a refrigerator.''

Anna M. Frazier, whose duties in this Navajo community of 2,000 are similar to that of mayor, said many of the roughly 1,200 Dilkon residents have no power. They use lanterns for light, wood stoves and propane for heat and cooking.

``That's just how we've always lived,'' Frazier said. ``To have electricity, we had to adjust our lifestyle.''

Yet, she and others say electricity does provide convenience and safety for Navajo families.

At minimum, it means Navajo children can do their homework at night and maybe one day access a computer, Frazier said.

For Mrs. Jackson, it means her husband can safely descend the rough wood steps at the front of the house by porch light at night.

It's a minor convenience in an urban area but an enormous help here_ where the nearest street light is 30 miles away.

``The porch light is on,'' Mrs. Jackson said. ``That's one thing I like.'' ___

The one-kilowatt solar generators use a series of batteries that are similar to golf cart batteries.

The 20 batteries sit in metal cases and are connected to thin silvery sheets that create a shade area roughly large enough to cover a mid-sized car.

The units can fuel a radio, television, small refrigerator, water pump, telephone, computer and lights, even on the cloudiest days. On bright, sunny days, they can generate twice as much energy as needed to supply all of the appliances.

---

Non-polluting cars to get the fast lanes

Washington Times
March 27, 2000
By Thomas D. Elias SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-200032722374.htm

LOS ANGELES - Imagine cruising along alone in the car-pool lane of your local interstate, driving right past the usual traffic jam, passing state highway patrolmen stuck in heavy traffic and not getting a $280 ticket for it.

This will soon be reality in California, but only for drivers in zero-emission cars powered by electricity or natural gas or some hybrid combination.

Starting this summer, a new state law will allow solitary drivers in non-polluting alternative-fuel cars and light trucks to use the car-pool lanes. It's a new use for the world's largest network of high-occupancy vehicle lanes, which are now used only to about one-eighth of capacity. State officials see the extra freeway space as a way to induce motorists to buy "green" cars.

The idea of rewarding buyers of clean cars came from Republican state legislators, some of whom have long seen the car-pool lanes as a waste that slows traffic in other lanes.

And what a reward it will be. A 23-mile rush-hour commute from suburban Pomona to downtown Los Angeles on Interstate 10, the San Bernardino Freeway, now takes single drivers an average of 48 minutes, according to the California Department of Transportation. Use of high-occupancy lanes that run nearly that full distance generally cuts the time almost in half.

The benefits are even greater on Interstate 405, the constantly clogged San Diego Freeway that sports fast-moving HOV lanes through most of Los Angeles and Orange counties, while the rest of the roadway usually resembles a vast parking lot between 7 and 10 a.m. and again between 3:30 and 7 p.m.

"I think it will be great to get a little perk like that," said Bernard Kirkman, who travels daily from Huntington Beach in Orange County to an aerospace engineering job in El Segundo, just south of the Los Angeles International Airport. "I bought a General Motors EV1 for the fun of it last year, and now I'm going to get to use the diamond lane."

The EV1 is one of five non-polluting electric cars now for sale in California, where many public garages feature special parking spaces where they can be recharged. By the 2003 model year, several more battery-powered models will be offered, along with some natural gas and natural gas/ electric hybrids.

That's because 10 percent of all new-car fleets offered for sale in California must be zero-emission vehicles by that year under rules adopted in 1994 by the state's Air Resources Board. That is America's strongest clean-car mandate and opening the car-pool lanes to them is also the strongest buying incentive offered anywhere.

Like the EV1, most new models are expected to cost more than $20,000. Some will be gasoline/ electric hybrids, able to switch back and forth between power sources. Anything using any gasoline will not be eligible for special treatment in carpool lanes.

Sales of the EV1, the first electric car to reach the market, have been slow so far, with fewer than 800 sold in a two-year period, largely due to price, according to market research surveys.

"The reason to give special access to alternative vehicles is you want to have some social benefit for people who are making some sacrifice," said Robert Bienenfeld, manager of alternative-fuel vehicle sales and marketing for American Honda, headquartered in suburban Torrance.

Adds Republican state Assemblyman Tom McClintock, long a critic of HOV lanes, "The more we can open the underused diamond lanes, the better. But this is a stunning admission that the car-pool lane is not promoting car-pooling to any major degree, so they must find new justifications for this enormous loss of highway capacity."

Not many cars will be able to use the new privilege right away. "We expect less than 10,000 of these vehicles in the next year, so there will not be a huge overload on the car-pool lanes," said Jerry Martin, spokesman for the Air Resources Board.

But there may be confusion at first among police officers, some of whom may not immediately recognize all zero-emission cars and pull drivers over.

Meanwhile, those driving electric cars are chomping at the bit. "This car's a rocket," said actor Ed Begley Jr., long a fan of electric cars and one of the first EV1 buyers. "Unless you've got a souped-up Lamborghini, this car will blow right by you.

"I love the idea of using the diamond lanes. And I like the idea of opening them up to other people using EVs. When you have a huge problem with air quality, you need to do everything you can to get people to help solve it."

-------- britain

Broadcast can be seen online today----beginning 4 pm EST.

Atomic Alert
Monday 27 March 2000
Reporter Gerry Northam
Producer Fiona Campbell
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/panorama/newsid_416000/416234.stm

Two companies with serious concerns over their safety records are about to take over the running of Britain's top-secret nuclear weapons site. Gerry Northam investigates why British Nuclear Fuels - who've been found guilty of "systematic management failure", and Lockheed Martin - officially criticised over safety at several American sites, are part of the new consortium at Aldermaston.

--

Atomic Alert

Monday March 27 2000
Reporter Gerry Northam
Producer Fiona Campbell
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/panorama/newsid_416000/416234.stm

Panorama reveals that two of the three companies in the new consortium due to take over control of the Atomic Weapons Establishment have seriously blemished long-term safety records. The programme includes the first interview with a nuclear whistleblower at a top-secret plant in Idaho, who was sacked after raising the alarm over poor safety standards. A month after he was sacked, a worker was killed in an avoidable accident.

This week the government has to confirm its decision whether on not to allow the new consortium to take over the running of Britain's Aldermaston nuclear weapons site from April 1st - the only place in Britain where nuclear bombs are manufactured.

While British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL) has been severely criticised over lax safety procedures, Panorama reveals that US firm Lockheed Martin has an even worse safety record. The UK government originally announced last December that it had awarded the contract to manage Aldermaston from April 1st this year to the consortium including BNFL and Lockheed Martin.

The programme has visited three sites in the US where the American defence giant has suffered six major accidents in recent years, been heavily criticised by several government reports and where its operating licences have not been renewed. The company has also been accused of widespread environmental pollution.

The Idaho Plant

In Idaho, Lockheed Martin's management of a nuclear reactor development plant was criticised by the government following a fatal accident in 1998.

Jim Osborne, a safety worker at the plant, had been sacked by the company as retaliation for his disclosure of , what the DOE called "a dangerous lack of safety inspections".

Speaking out for the first time to Panorama, Osborne tells the programme: "I went from doing 45-50 inspections per month to a maximum of two [which] has a significant reduction in safety. I told them that we were going to kill or injure somebody severely and I was told by my manager at that time that it was none of my concern that if we did kill somebody or injure somebody that management would handle it." Mr Osborne has been reinstated after the DOE report vindicated him. Following the US government's official verdict that the accident was "avoidable" and revealed an organisational safety problem the Department of Energy refused to extend Lockheed Martin's contract.

I told them that we were going to kill or injure somebody severely and I was told by my manager at that time that it was none of my concern that if we did kill somebody or injure somebody that management would handle it

A government memo obtained by Panorama says that the company's managers "have not established an underlying culture of rigor, discipline and sustaining leadership. " It added "a serious question remains whether Lockheed Martin has the necessary commitment to act in the Government's interests at all times."

Y12 Plant in Oak Ridge

Lockheed Martin runs the US cousin of Aldermaston. The Y12 plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee is responsible for the manufacture and refurbishment of the thermonuclear components of nuclear weapons.

In 1994, a safety audit uncovered 1284 separate violations of criticality safety - the risk of setting off a critical incident leading to a nuclear chain reaction. The government's safety board inspection showed "the apparent breakdown of administrative controls" Following the report, the whole plant was shut down, and Lockheed Martin have still not been given permission to restart the most dangerous operations using uranium. Ralph Hutchison, the Presbyterian minister who has led protests against the site, tells Panorama that these 1284 "non-compliances" meant "that it wasn't just one mistake, it meant that they had an utter and complete breakdown of their criticality systems."

Explosion at Y12 injures 10

Last December, a week after the UK government awarded the Lockheed Martin/BNFL consortium the management contract for Aldermaston, there was an explosion in the Y12 uranium plant, which injured ten workers.

The US Government report on that explosion called safety management "significantly deficient," and said that had the company learnt proper lessons from previous accidents, the explosion need not have happened.

Dr David Michaels, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy tells Panorama that "on site, in that building, were materials unused by workers or management , were materials that said 'don't do exactly what you're doing'. He added "the safety management system that we demand of our contractors, wasn't followed. We don't think it [the explosion] was a problem of the individual workers at all. It was simply a management problem."

We don't think it [the explosion] was a problem of the individual workers at all. It was simply a management problem."

Paducah, Kentucky

Lockheed Martin ran the uranium enrichment plant at Paducah, Kentucky between 1984 and 1998. Although they inherited a heavily polluted site, environmental contamination worsened during their management, according to Panorama.

Environmental Consultant, John Tillson, tells the programme, "they allowed it [the pollution] to spread and get worse, and once it gets worse it's economically impossible to clean up."

As long ago as 1990, a Department of Energy report found that "environmental monitoring programs were not being effectively implemented."

The Lamb family well has been locked by the Government

Ronald Lamb, a local car mechanic, drew his water from his family well. After his family began to feel unwell from drinking the water, the government sealed up the well and piped in water from a supply ten miles away.

Warren Smith, a local farmer has a creek flowing through his land which has been fenced off as a public hazard polluted by toxic waste and radioactivity. Below his land is an underground lake of radio-active water spreading at around a foot a day.

Along with other residents, Smith is now suing Lockheed Martin, which has told the BBC that it "finds the allegations without merit" and intends "to contest them vigorously in court"

---

From: wheezin2@aol.com

The following attachment is the transcript of the BBC's "Atomic Alert" program shown recently. It shows the international implications of the Lockheed Martin / BNFL marriage, and includes some Oak Ridge and Paducah connections. It's in Microsoft Word, if you have problems opening, or want it broken down into parts (to avoid and attachment), let me know. Glenn

BBC: TRANSCRIPT PANORAMA "ATOMIC ALERT" 27/3/00
TRANSCRIPT PANORAMA "ATOMIC ALERT" 27/3/00

GERRY NORTHAM Britain's nuclear bomb factory is to have new bosses, but their safety records are disturbing.

LAURENCE WILLIAMS We told the company that they must improve before it got to a situation where we were likely to be in a danger of having a nuclear incident.

NORTHAM Plants run by the American partner have had a succession of serious accidents.

JIM OSBORNE I reaffirmed the fact that we were going to kill or injure somebody severely.

NORTHAM Can these companies now be trusted to manage the British nuclear stockpile? For almost 50 years the peaceful Berkshire village of Aldermaston has housed Britain's bomb. Recent prosecutions over safety here and risk to the environment have raised national concern. This is the top secret factory which built the atom bomb, and now maintains Britain's armoury of trident warheads any one of which any day could blow Berkshire, and far beyond, sky-high.

DAVID RENDEL MP LIBERAL DEMOCRAT, NEWBURY The Aldermaston plant is the UK's major nuclear weapons site. It's enormously significant in the constituency, not just because a number of people are employed there. But of course if anything were to happen on the site, then that could devastate a large part of the area that my constituency is in.

NORTHAM On Friday the private company which has managed Aldermaston for the government since 1993 will reach the end of its contract. It failed to win the new one. New managers have been picked to take over on Saturday. They'll inherit most of the 4,500 Aldermaston staff and with them the perils of running an inherently dangerous site. Surface water from the atomic plant is contaminated by mysterious sources of radioactivity. No-one has been able to trace them. An alert government inspector caught the current management pouring this radioactive water illegally into the open stream which runs through the local village.

IAN JACKSON NUCLEAR SITES INSPECTOR, ENVIRONMENT AGENCY Over a period those discharges began to dramatically increase, so by June of 1998 over 70% of Aldermaston's total liquid discharge of tritium was via the Aldermaston stream.

NORTHAM Did the management know that this was happening?

JACKSON Yes, they certainly knew that this was happening. The discharges were indeed managed by the company.

NORTHAM Last December, in an unprecedented environmental prosecution, Aldermaston's management pleaded guilty to polluting the stream and making false statements about it. The company was fined heavily.

Dr JOHN CROFTS DIRECTOR, HUNTING BRAE We were guilty. There was a technical breach. We should have asked for an authorisation. Because we thought that everybody understood what was going on, we thought the data was in the public domain, we omitted to ask for an authorisation.

NORTHAM Aldermaston's Management Company was also fined in 1998 for a criminal breach of nuclear safety in which two workers accidentally inhaled plutonium, the most lethal element on earth.

CROFTS We made a mistake because we have a thing called an exclusion zone. There's a piece of work and within a given distance all people should wear protective equipment and the exclusion zone was defined badly, it was as simple as that. And yes, two people were then contaminated and that's a matter for regret.

NORTHAM To Hunting BRAE, these two landmark prosecutions were mere blips in a seven year record of openness and public accountability, so losing the contract rankles.

CROFTS I thought we'd done a damned good job in the 7 years. We delivered the programme, we decommissioned the free fall bomb, we'd improved waste management, we built schemes such as this.

NORTHAM Are you feeling sort about it?

CROFTS Personally, a little bit, yes.

NORTHAM A little bit.

CROFTS Yes.

GERRY NORTHAM Late last year the government announced that this contract had been won by a consortium including British Nuclear Fuels and the American defence giant Lockheed Martin. Panorama has researched the records of these companies in managing other nuclear plants and found them both distinctly troubling. While the failures of British Nuclear Fuels have been widely publicised, we found that if anything the history of its American partner, Lockheed Martin, gives even greater cause for concern. Lockheed Martin took over the uranium enrichment plant at Paducah, Kentucky in 1984 and ran it until 1998. When the company arrived Paducah was already one of America's most notorious nuclear dumping grounds. After 14 years of Lockheed Martin management, it still is. It has 50,000 barrels of contaminated waste, and 65,000 tons of polluted scrap metal, including the infamous drum mountain, leaching radioactivity and toxic chemicals into the landscape.

JOHN TILLSON It's made of approximately a quarter million crushed barrels so you have a little bit of uranium, a little bit of plutonium and neptunium, technetium and some other radioactive elements.

NORTHAM In 14 years of Lockheed Martin company's management of this plant, did the environmental contamination get worse or improve?

JOHN TILLSON ENVIRONMENTAL CONSULTANT Oh it got worse. What they did was they took kind of a weird approach in that they did not go to the people who had accidentally caused the contamination or caused the contamination when the rules were not as stringent. In essence they allowed it to spread and just get worse, and once it gets worse it's economically impossible to clean some of this stuff up.

NORTHAM Lockheed Martin's management at Paducah was criticised the American Government as early as 1990. A Department of Energy report found that "environmental monitoring programmes were not being effectively implemented". Panorama wanted to ask Lockheed Martin about its environmental record, one of the key areas of concern over new management at Aldermaston. The company refused to be interviewed. For those living around the Paducah plant within earshot of its warning sirens, fear of the environment has become a way of life. Ronald Lamb, a car mechanic, lives and works nearby. Ronald grew up on the 120 acres his father re- established after the war. The family drew its drinking water from a well sunk close to Big Bayou Creek running out of the nuclear site and carrying radioactive waste. Ten years ago members of the Lamb family suffered debilitating gastric illnesses which seemed to defy medicine.

RONALD LAMB They checked us for bacteria, amoebas, parasites, everything commonly known to man. They treated us for things that.. you know, just gave us the treatments and it didn't work. Our life changed considerably. I mean we gave up a farming operation because we didn't feel like we could continue to do it. We just didn't feel good.

NORTHAM Eventually the family's well was sealed by the US Government along with other wells nearby. Sampling had confirmed that some contained radioactive and chemical pollution. No direct link was proved with any illnesses but at great expense tap water was piped to all local homes from the supply to the city ten miles away. Lockheed Martin, according to residents, tried to minimise any corporate responsibility.

Did you, at the time, approach the management at the plant and ask what was going on?

LAMB Yes, my dad went over there to ask them, he just point blank asked the question and they said they didn't have anything over there to cause our problems.

NORTHAM When residents around that plant complain not only that their land water have been contaminated but that they were not told the truth in recent years, are they right?

Dr DAVID MICHAELS U.S. ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR ENERGY It's certainly true that residents and workers were for many years not told that the Uranium that was used at that plant was contaminated with plutonium, neptunium, technetium and other materials, so it's certainly reasonable to think the residents weren't formally told, and they certainly would have no reason to know that that was what was out there.

NORTHAM So Ronald Lamb, with dozens of his neighbours, is now suing Lockheed Martin, alleging that the company not only polluted their land and water, but also acted to conceal the risk this created.

LAMB Basically, you know, our property's been damaged. I think it's been damaged to the point that we couldn't sell it. It's been damaged to the point that I'm afraid to live on it in one respect. I mean we don't raise a garden anymore. It took a lot of enjoyment away from our.. I mean my family. Things are different.

NORTHAM The lead Plaintiff in the residents' legal action is Warren Smith who farms next to the plant on the land where he was born just over 70 years ago. His family has made a living on the smallholding since 1856. Warren's farm, too, is blighted by the nuclear plant. He has another of its outflows, Little Bayou Creek, running through his land. The Government has fenced the creek off as a public hazard contaminated by toxic chemicals and radioactivity, but the fence doesn't stop the creek from flooding and polluting Warren's farm land.

How high does the water in the creek rise?

WARREN SMITH Oh it gets from hill to hill here. It goes.. well on both sides of the creek, it goes 50 yards on each side of the creek, give or take.

NORTHAM So if the creek is contaminated, what does that do to the land?

SMITH That's my question. That's my question. I can't grow strawberries no more, so...

NORTHAM Did you used to grow all these things?

SMITH Oh yes, yes, I had some of the finest strawberries, water melons.. water melons weighed 25- 30lb.

NORTHAM And now?

SMITH No.

NORTHAM It's not only the stream. Warren's farm is also on the edge of a hidden underground lake of billions of gallons of radioactive water slowly spreading out from the plant beneath local properties.

Your farm is where?

SMITH My farm is right in here. The area of contamination there...

NORTHAM Is it moving?

SMITH Well they say it's moving ?? at a foot a day.

NORTHAM It's moving at a foot a day.

SMITH That's what they say.

NORTHAM In a brief written statement the corporation told Panorama: "Lockheed Martin has not found any information that would suggest its companies misled workers or residents as to the state of workers safety or environment protection." It's early morning in the cold north western state of Idaho and Jim Osborne sets off for work as an inspector at a nuclear reactor development site. Last year Jim was at the centre of a case which Lockheed Martin contested vigorously and lost. After a number of near accidents in 1998 Jim warned that the company's cutbacks in plant inspections were beginning to threaten his fellow workers.

JIM OSBORNE PRINCIPAL INSPECTOR, IDAHO NATIONAL ENGINEERING AND ENVIRONMENTAL LABORATORY Equipment that we used to inspect, they were having people inspect it that weren't certified.

NORTHAM And what effect did that change of policy have on the number of quality inspections that were carried out?

OSBORNE To my background, which is an electrical type inspector, I went from doing 45 to 50 inspections per month to maximum of 2.

NORTHAM And if there's a reduction in quality assurance inspections, what implication does that have for the safety of workers at the plant?

OSBORNE It has a significant reduction of safety.

NORTHAM The reactor plant where Jim Osborne works is hidden 50 miles out west into the desert and heavily guarded. He has a long history there and tried raising his concern within the company, up the supervision and management chain of Lockheed Martin.

OSBORNE I told them that.. I reaffirmed the fact that we were going to kill or injure somebody severely, and I was told by my manager at that time, with my directors present, that it was none of my concern. That if we did kill somebody or injure somebody, that management would handle it. I just could not believe that I was given that answer.

NORTHAM Frustrated by Lockheed Martin's reaction, Jim Osborne threatened to take his warnings outside the company to the US government. His concern proved costly. Within weeks Jim Osborne was placed under investigation by the company on suspicion of fiddling his time sheets. Three months after he first raised his voice he was sacked. A government investigation of his case has found that the time sheets were a pretext. In reality, Jim Osborne was fired by Lockheed Martin in retaliation for his disclosure of a dangerous lack of safety inspections. Soon after Jim Osborne's dismissal, on 28th July 1998 his fears were realised. At ten past six in the evening, a team of electricians was carrying out maintenance in the test reactor area.

ROBERT ALVAREZ SENIOR ADVISOR, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, 1993-99 A fire suppression system was accidentally set off which released a huge amount of carbon dioxide in an area where I think there were some 13 workers. The workers were instantly inundated with this gas. Workers were severely injured, largely from oxygen depravation. One person perished. This was one of the more severe accidents to occur for many, many years. I think it was pure luck that other workers did not die. And not only that, it was very clear in the aftermath of this accident that this accident could have been prevented.

NORTHAM How closely did the facts of that accident bear out the warnings that you had given several months earlier?

OSBORNE It was the exact thing I was warning them about. It was a system that normally we would have been involved in and we were cut out of it.

NORTHAM You were checking the quality.

OSBORNE Yes.

ALVAREZ When you have a death and you have people who are almost killed and severely injured because of an accident that could have been prevented, again where there were precursor accidents, and nobody did anything to fix these problems, he's correct.

NORTHAM Jim Osborne is right.

ALVAREZ Yes.

NORTHAM Kerry Austin, the electrician who suffocated, was 47. If Lockheed Martin had managed safety properly, the accident need never have happened.

How did you react when you read the news?

OSBORNE I called the local DoE representative here that I'd been working with and I told him.. I said, see Rick? It happened.

NORTHAM And he said?

OSBORNE He said "Jim I never doubted you for a minute".

ALVAREZ I'm not sure, you know, how high the standard needs to be for gross negligence in a courtroom but at least my own personal opinion that certainly comes damned close to it.

NORTHAM Uncertainty over the safety of workers here has damaged the American Government's confidence in Lockheed Martin. The official verdict on the fatal accident is that it was avoidable and revealed an organisational problem over safety. The company had cut costs without adequate evaluation of the risks for workers.

How serious a management problem did that accident reveal in your view?

Dr DAVID MICHAELS U.S. ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR ENERGY That was a very serious management problem. It's a problem that we face throughout the complex, that we expect that all our contractors follow our safety management system, which requires planning the job and looking at the hazards before it begins, involving the workers from the very beginning, considering what the risks are and planning and following through those plans accordingly, and this was an example where that wasn't done and it was a tragic example.

NORTHAM A government memo released to Panorama says "The company's managers have not established an underlying culture of rigour, discipline and sustaining leadership." At another point it says: "A serious question remains whether Lockheed Martin has the necessary commitment to act in the government's interest at all times." Late last year Jim Osborne was legally reinstated in his job. Lockheed Martin, meanwhile, has left Idaho. It's contract was not extended. We wanted to ask the company about the case of Jim Osborne and how it would deal with workers at Aldermaston who voiced concern over safety. Lockheed Martin refused to be interviewed but told Panorama the company does not condone or tolerate any form of retaliation. Lockheed Martin has also run into trouble at the showpiece nuclear weapons facility it runs in East Tennessee. This is the United States cousin of Aldermaston. A secret plant hidden in the mountains at Oak Ridge, and still known by it's code name, Y-12.

[Newsreel] Oak Ridge, Tennessee, site of one of the huge secret factories producing atomic bombs.

NORTHAM It was part of the Manhattan Project in the 1940s. Here they produced the explosive for the first atomic bomb.

ALVAREZ The Y-12 plant is responsible for the manufacture and refurbishment of the thermal nuclear component of the nuclear weapon. About 189 metric tons of highly enriched uranium is stored there.

NORTHAM On Sunday evenings, just outside the plant perimeter, a small group of peace protesters gathers for a vigil. In the early 90s they questioned the safety hazards of the plant, particularly the risk of a critical incident setting off a nuclear chain reaction. They were questions Lockheed Martin seemed eager to answer.

RALPH HUTCHISON Throughout that conversation they assured us over and over again criticality safety is the one thing that we do right, which was slightly unnerving because we hoped they were doing many things right. But if you're only going to do one thing right, that is the one most important thing it seemed to us. It also was the one thing we had to take their word for because they couldn't show us how they handled the highly enriched uranium.

NORTHAM But in 1994 a government inspector discovered a breach of nuclear safety which supervisors and managers didn't bother to correct. When the whole site was checked, the result was unnerving.

HUTCHISON We learnt that their audit had uncovered 1,284 separate violations of criticality safety procedures. They called them 'non-compliances'.

NORTHAM And what did that enormous number mean?

HUTCHISON Well it meant to me that it wasn't just one little mistake. It meant that they had an utter and complete breakdown of their criticality safety systems there.

NORTHAM But that's the most important form of safety.

HUTCHISON It was the one thing they did right.

NORTHAM That's what they'd said.

HUTCHISON Right.

NORTHAM There was anxiety over these results in the Federal Safety Board. It said the inspection showed "..the apparent breakdown of administrative control.."

JOSEPH CARSON SAFETY ENGINEER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY What it indicated about the management of the plant is 'see no evil, hear no evil'. They did not want to hear about the problems. It was basically just a paper programme. If someone identified problems, we'll write something down that we'll fix it some day, but then just put that in a file. No action needs to be taken.

NORTHAM Did that mean the plant was not safe?

CARSON It means that the plant was not in compliance with the safety procedures which means it was not adequately safe.

NORTHAM The whole plant was shut down. Even now parts are still closed because of safety concerns. Lockheed Martin declared itself ready last November to restart the most dangerous operations with uranium. Government inspectors found new violations, blamed the management and again stood operations down. One month later, the British Government awarded Lockheed Martin a share in the management of Aldermaston.

[Newsreel] This is 6 Eyewitness News at 5:00 Several workers are injured, dozens evacuated after a chemical accident at the Department of Energy's Y-12 Plant.

NORTHAM The following week, there was an explosion in a Uranium building at the Y-12 plant which shook still further the confidence of the American government.

MICHAELS I was in Y-12 the day of the explosion. The explosion occurred at 9.30 in the morning.

NORTHAM Emergency crews were called out to take the injured off for treatment.

[Newsreel] ..waiting ambulances there for some of the other patients. Scruggs received second and third degree chemical burns over 25% of his body.

MICHAELS Ten workers were injured, three were hospitalised, one was hospitalised for an extended period of time and has still not fully recovered several months later.

NORTHAM And this was a building with uranium in it.

MICHAELS Yes, and in fact the explosion includes some depleted uranium and there was some small but.. you know, we don't.. small radioactive material that ?? used and we take that very seriously.

NORTHAM The accident happened while workers were cleaning up a hazardous spill. They first sprayed it with oil and then, using a metal rod, inadvertently set off an explosive chemical reaction. Once again the accident revealed a gap in Lockheed Martin's safety management.

MICHAELS On site in that building, unused by workers or management, were materials that said don't do exactly what you're doing.

NORTHAM Why then did they not either read them or take notice of them.

MICHAELS Because we believe it was because the safety management system that we demand of our contractors wasn't being followed in this case.

NORTHAM So it's a management problem. Not simply a problem of the individual workers?

MICHAELS Yes, we don't think it was a problem with the individual workers at all. It was simply a management problem .

NORTHAM The American Government has issued a devastating report on the explosion here which says that the implementation of safety management is significantly deficient and blames senior Lockheed Martin managers for lack of involvement in safety. The company, it says, did not learn proper lessons from past accidents, and if it had done, this explosion need never have happened. Six serious accidents here and in Idaho show a similar pattern of failure in safety management, and until Lockheed Martin puts its house in order, the American Government concludes, accidents are likely to continue. Again Lockheed Martin refused to give an interview. The company says it has restructured management at the plant and that safety and security continue to be of the utmost importance. Last December Lockheed Martin's tenure at Oak Ridge was shortened. The government had previously announced an extension of the company's contract to run the plant until June next year. Now, that's been cut by 8 months.

The American Government have said to us that safety standards at Lockheed Martin plant had not met the American Government's requirements. Why would they meet yours at Aldermaston?

BARONESS SYMONS MINISTER FOR DEFENCE PROCUREMENT I too have spoken to the American Government about Lockheed Martin. They have had some criticisms about the way in which Lockheed Martin has operated at some of their installations, but they've also said very firmly, that they don't regard Lockheed Martin as being in a position not to be able to bid for American contracts, and indeed they've expressed admiration for the way that Lockheed Martin has conducted itself at some of their installations?

NORTHAM Have you read the report which says that "looking at six serious accidents at Oak Ridge and at Idaho, the same systemic deficiencies appear in management as the cause of those accidents and that accidents are likely to continue because Lockheed Martin persistently don't put things right. Have you read that report?

SYMONS No, I have not read individual reports.

NORTHAM Why have you not read that report?

SYMONS Because ministers do not read all the detail. What we have to rely is the people...

NORTHAM But this is a report on a company which is coming to Aldermaston....

SYMONS If I may say so....

NORTHAM It makes this fundamental criticism.

SYMONS .. I wouldn't necessarily be able to understand all the bits of reports and the import. I have to rely, as I suggest most of us do, on people who have real expertise, in this country....

NORTHAM Let me see if you can understand these words. They don't seem very difficult to me. They look at six accidents, serious accidents involving three fatalities. "Similar deficiencies led to these accidents. Those include lack of management involvement and supervision, and accidents are likely to continue because Lockheed Martin will not be able to implement safety management fully and effectively." That's perfectly plain Minister, why are they suitable for Aldermaston?

SYMONS I have told you that the United States believe that Lockheed Martin are suitable and you have to go on the assessment of the experts of the records, not only the American experts, but the experts in this country. When I say I wouldn't necessarily understand, I have sufficient humility to know that I'm certainly not a nuclear scientist.

NORTHAM But you don't need to be.

SYMONS But there are those.. there are those who are and who understand the implications of these reports in full.

NORTHAM The Government's difficulty doesn't end with Lockheed Martin. Another company in the winning contract at Aldermaston is also in deep trouble - British Nuclear Fuels. Over the past year doubt has grown, too, over its management of safety at Sellafield.

LAURENCE WILLIAMS CHIEF NUCLEAR INSPECTOR Nuclear Installations Inspectorate I started to notice a number of incidents coming across my desk. I did call in the.. my head of division that looks after BNFL and say is this a trend, are we seeing something developing here. So they went away and had a look at it, came back and a couple of months later and said "Yes, we think there is a trend increasing." You know, the inspectors are not happy with some of the things that are going on.

NORTHAM Nuclear inspectors already had Sellafield under investigation when the government awarded the contract for Aldermaston. BNFL also came under suspicion over data on pellets of reprocessed mixed oxide nuclear fuel known as MOX, for which the major customer, Japan, demanded a third set of quality checks.

JOHN KANE GMB CONVENOR, SELLAFIELD What had actually gone on, on some occasions, a mixture of both pressure of work and, to be fair, in some cases people wanting a bit of extra time to themselves. They'd actually bypassed that process, they hadn't measured the 200 pellets. They'd called up on computer, the previous batch, and they'd just used that data for that batch.

NORTHAM This too was known by the British authorities before BNFL was awarded part of the management of Aldermaston. The fuel pellets, meanwhile, were still being shipped to Japan to fire nuclear electricity. When it emerged that some quality data were fake, Japanese protesters were outraged.

[Protesters' chant BNFL - never again. BNFL - never again.]

NORTHAM And so was the extremely important nuclear customer.

SHIGERU KUWABARA KANSAI ELECTRIC POWER COMPANY, JAPAN [Translated] The fact of the matter is, we have lost our trust in the quality of BNFL fuel, so I think the most important thing is that BNFL can once again guarantee the quality of the fuel that they are supplying.

NORTHAM John Taylor, BNFL chief executive, was forced to make a hurried, humiliating visit to Japan.

JOHN TAYLOR Personally, and on behalf of BNFL and all it's employees, I wish to offer my very sincere apologies.

NORTHAM What the inspector says is so troubling about that, is not just the operatives did this, but that the management system allowed them to do it. How was it possible that they could do that and the management not stop them?

JEREMY RYECROFT THORP GROUP COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR, BNFL Well we've asked ourselves obviously the very same question. There are deficiencies in the management system but it did happen, and what we're now setting about is looking at ways of tightening up management.

NORTHAM So when the inspector says of that incident, "management present was clearly insufficient in terms of both time and having a questioning attitude", that was right was it?

RYECROFT Yes, yes indeed.

NORTHAM You're pleading guilty there.

RYECROFT We accept that, yes.

NORTHAM Then more faked data were discovered for BNFL's supplies of reprocessed fuel pellets to a nuclear plant in Germany.

GILA ALTMANN GERMAN ENVIRONMENT MINISTER At the end of January, then we were informed that there were falsifications of documents concerning German deliveries as well, and when we came to know about there was irregularities we were very upset because the most important thing to managers is that the quality checks and the safety checks that they are okay.

NORTHAM The German reactor was shut down and all reprocessed fuel shipments from BNFL have been suspended by the German Government. British nuclear inspectors meantime reported to the government that failures in safety management are widespread at Sellafield.

STEPHEN BYERS SECRETARY OF STATE FOR TRADE & INDUSTRY [Speaking publicly 15th February 2000] I think the events do show a fundamental flaw in the management at BNFL, and that has to change.

LAURENCE WILLIAMS CHIEF NUCLEAR INSPECTOR NUCLEAR INSTALLATIONS INSPECTORATE Clearly what we have seen at Sellafield is that managers who have day to day control of the safety related operations did not have the resources or sufficient time to do the job properly.

NORTHAM That's terrifying.

WILLIAMS It is saying that we have detected a deterioration in standards which we are not prepared to accept and we have told the company that they must improve before it got to a situation where we were likely to be in a danger of having an nuclear incident.

NORTHAM Late last week Swedish and Swiss Governments also suspended reprocessed fuel shipments from Sellafield, and the American Government declared 'business as usual' is over with BNFL, threatening more than £60 billion's worth of current and potential business in the US.

JOHN KANE GMB CONVENOR, SELLAFIELD We're not sure yet whether the damage is irreparable, but I do believe as a company we are being put on the brink of extinction. That's my personal belief.

NORTHAM The company on the brink of extinction?

KANE With this, yes, I honestly believe that.

JEREMY RYCROFT THORP GROUP COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR, BNFL What we are saying is that re-building the company and rebuilding the confidence of customers, so we develop our business, is very challenging. That's the thing that's going to be difficult, and what we want to do is to rebuild our relationship with customers so we win more orders and have a viable company.

NORTHAM Even after the international public shame of British Nuclear Fuels with major contracts around the world, and now the entire future of reprocessing under threat, the Government's inspectors are advising that the contract to manage Aldermaston should go ahead as planned in five days time. Which must raise the question how BNFL, which has done so baldly on it's home ground in Sellafield, would perform if it were allowed into Aldermston.

RYECROFT We will work to Aldermaston's site management of safety system and our people are perfectly competent to work within that system, and we're ensuring that the people put forward to work at Aldermaston are certainly not tainted by involvement in any of the issues or any of the difficulties that have taken place at Sellafield.

BARONESS SYMONS MINISTER FOR DEFENCE PROCUREMENT The people involved in our contract at Aldermaston have not been involved in any wrongdoing, they have no taint of wrongdoing.

NORTHAM But the whole management was criticised by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate.

SYMONS Well I'm afraid you again have to come back....

NORTHAM That's the fundamental flaw that Stephen Byers has spoken of and you're bringing them to Aldermaston.

SYMONS But the same Nuclear Installations Inspectorate have told us categorically that those managers who are coming to Aldermaston, if indeed we go ahead with the contract, are not tainted, and that they, the very people who made the criticism, are confident about them coming to Aldermaston.

NORTHAM As the government minister responsible for this, you are telling people who live near Aldermaston, if the new contract goes ahead, Aldermaston will be safe.

SYMONS I am telling you that we will not let the contract go ahead unless we believe Aldermaston is safe.

NORTHAM This week the government has to decide if the new Aldermaston contract should go ahead. If it does, the management of Britain's atomic weapons establish will include two major nuclear companies with records of failure over the most vital issue - safety. The government insists that they would pose no danger at Aldermaston. We can only hope they're right.

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Nuclear Plant in Britain Admits Sabotage

New York Times
March 27, 2000
By ALAN COWELL
http://www.nytimes.com/00/03/27/news/world/britain-nuke.html

LONDON, March 26 -- With an international outcry building for the closing of one of Britain's most troubled nuclear fuel processing plants, its operators acknowledged today that a saboteur had severed cables controlling robotic operations in a radioactive area of the installation.

The admission added to a growing catalog of safety-related problems at the sprawling Sellafield plant on the Irish Sea in remote northwestern England. The problems began to emerge late last year when inspection documents accompanying a shipment of nuclear fuel pellets bound for Japanese reactors were found to have been falsified.

Since then, the United States has said it would send safety investigators to the plant, operated by British Nuclear Fuels, a government-owned company that has been granted multibillion-dollar contracts by the American government to help with nuclear waste disposal. The United States energy secretary, Bill Richardson, said recently that "business as usual is over" with British Nuclear Fuels.

German, Swedish and Swiss authorities have also suspended contracts with Sellafield following the Japanese debacle. Last month, German authorities said they, too, had been sent nuclear fuel with falsified documentation.

Switzerland suspended contracts over the weekend, halting shipments of spent fuel rods to be reprocessed at Sellafield. Sweden also said it would stop sending spent fuel for reprocessing.

Concerned about nuclear contamination of the Irish Sea, the Irish and Danish governments have said they would discuss joint action tomorrow to press for closing the plant.

Labor unions there have taken the highly unusual step of urging the 10,000 workers to identify the suspected saboteur in their ranks.

"This was clearly an inside job," said Jack Dromey, a spokesman for the labor unions represented at the plant, which lies near Britain's Lake district. Referring to the impact of the sabotage some time last month on pressures for the plant's closing, he said, ''This is the last chance for Sellafield."

Even though unions were asking workers to inform on colleagues, he said, "no one is more at risk from a Sellafield saboteur than the work force." The police and government inspectors are investigating the incident.

British Nuclear Fuels said the sabotage affected a robotic arm handling nuclear waste used in maintenance proceedures that controlled six separate operations. There has been no explanation of why it was done, and the company said it did not affect safety.

The Sellafield plant, dating to the 1950's, has always drawn strong criticism from environmentalists and advocacy groups concerned about issues ranging from radioactive contamination of the Irish Sea to health risks for people living nearby.

But the newest series of complaints have raised new concerns about the plant's future in a region where, in addition to its own staff and contract work force, another 10,000 people, such as storekeepers, depend on its existence for their jobs.

Britain's Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, a supervisory authority, said recently that, in addition to issuing false documentation, the Sellafield plant had also included shipments of dubious quality to Japan. Japanese authorities are pressing for Britain to take the shipments back.

The chief executive of the company, John Taylor, was forced to resign, but only a handful of workers linked to the falsification of documents have been dismissed.

In a letter to the work force following the sabotage incident, the labor unions represented at the plant called the situation there "drastic."

"No one should underestimate the potential impact that this incident has upon all our futures at Sellafield," the letter said.

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British Nuclear Plant Investigates Possible Sabotage

Reuters
March 26, 2000 Filed at 10:21 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-britain.html

LONDON (Reuters) - A controversial British nuclear reprocessing plant said Sunday it had launched an investigation into an apparent sabotage attack.

The Sellafield plant in Cumbria in northern England is already the subject of an international campaign to force its closure led by Ireland and Denmark, which will meet in Dublin on Monday to discuss their concerns about safety failures.

British Nuclear Fuels, which runs Sellafield, called in the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) internal security force after several remote maintenance tools were found to have been disabled.

``There is an investigation ongoing into an incident that happened about a month ago,'' a spokeswoman for BNFL told Reuters. ``It was one isolated incident and safety was not affected at all.''

The damage under investigation occurred at Sellafield's vitrification plant, which employs some 300 people full time, where liquid high-level waste is turned solid by being mixed with glass.

Six machines which allow maintenance tools to be operated remotely were discovered to have had their wire cables cut.

``It is likely that it was someone who is employed at the plant,'' she said.

Six unions at Sellafield have sent a joint letter to the site's 10,000 workers urging them to provide information about the saboteur.

BNFL is under international pressure to close Sellafield over safety and environmental worries.

Saturday, Swiss authorities suspended shipments of spent fuel to Britain following similar bans by Germany, Japan and Sweden, all of which have been angered by reports of safety problems at the plant.

Joe Jacob, a minister at Ireland's Department of Public Enterprise, will meet Danish Energy Minister Svend Auken in Dublin Monday to discuss their concerns about the plant.

``Successive Irish governments have taken a robust attitude to Sellafield but the time has come to up the ante,'' Jacob told Ireland's Sunday Tribune newspaper.

``After the recent damning reports by their own safety inspectors, I believe the time is now right for a concerted effort to shut the plant,'' he added. Sellafield lies just over the Irish Sea in north-west England.

Britain's nuclear safety watchdog detailed ``systematic management failure'' at the site in a February report and said a lax safety culture allowed some staff to falsify data on certain consignments sent overseas.

Jacob and Auken will discuss joint Irish and Scandinavian action on Sellafield and strategies ahead of a meeting of the Oslo-Paris Commission (OSPAR) planned for June in Copenhagen.

OSPAR is a 15-nation grouping which seeks to protect the marine environment of the northeast Atlantic. Britain is among its members.

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British Nuclear Plant Investigated

Yahoo News
Morning Coffee Edition for Monday, March 27, 2000
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2565220473-350

LONDON (AP) _ Police were investigating a possible act of sabotage at the Sellafield nuclear power plant in northwest England, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. said Sunday.

The probe was launched last month after cables were cut on a robotic arm that handles nuclear waste. The cables allow the machine to be operated from a remote location, BNFL said.

The revelation is just the latest safety concern involving BNFL. Germany and Switzerland suspended dealings with Sellafield earlier this month after Britain's Nuclear Installations Inspectorate discovered workers deliberately falsified records relating to the quality of fuel bound for Japan.

Union representatives have written a joint letter to Sellafield's 10,000-strong workforce asking them to cooperate fully with the latest investigation, even if their information would implicate a co-worker.

BNFL refused to comment on allegations that there was a saboteur among the staff, although a spokeswomen said the company took the matter ``very seriously'' and were prepared to prosecute if necessary.

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Fresh blow to nuclear plant Plan to end reprocessing of waste fuel at Sellafield

Patrick Wintour and Martin Wainwright
Monday March 27, 2000
The Guardian

The government is expected to abandon nuclear reprocessing altogether at the strife-torn Sellafield plant in a green paper on nuclear waste to be published in the next two months.

A senior minister said the crisis of credibility in British Nuclear Fuels management, exacerbated by a worldwide loss of markets and weekend reports of internal sabotage at the plant, had left the government with no option but to accept that the Cumbrian plant had no future in reprocessing.

It is understood that the former managing director at BNFL, John Taylor, had already told ministers he accepted that Sellafield's future lay in waste storage, not nuclear reprocessing.

The green paper is also likely to propose a more independent body of nuclear experts to examine the scientific options for storing existing nuclear waste, either in sealed bunkers underground or on the surface. It will propose, additionally, an elaborate public consultation exercise designed to win support for the hugely sensititive task of locating sites for waste storage.

After a planning inquiry ruled out Sellafield as a long-term option, government insiders said that some of the most likely store sites were in East Anglia.

A switch from a reprocessing system - which separates spent nuclear fuel into plutonium, uranium, and nuclear waste - would mean the closure of Sellafield's Thorp site, which was opened in 1993 at a cost of more than £1.8bn. A separate MOX (mixed oxide) reprocessing plant has been built for £300m. It has yet to open and would not do so if reprocessing were abandoned.

Sellafield employs about 6,000 workers, although 1,500 are involved in reprocessing. Before stopping reprocessing, contracts with major clients would have to be renegotiated.

In a severe blow to BNFL last week British Energy, which accounts for a third of Sellafield's reprocessing industry, confirmed that it wanted to shift from reprocessing to waste storage because it was cheaper. Japan, which accounts for another third of BNFL's contracts, has already banned all shipments from the plant after the discovery that key safety data on its fuel rods had been falsified.

The environment minister, Michael Meacher, has long been privately pressing for an end to reprocessing, but has met resistance from the Foreign Office, the Department of Trade and Industry, and Downing Street. The Foreign Office has defended reprocessing since its abandonment might damage Anglo-Japanese relations, but those relations have now been soured by the false documents.

A House of Lords select committee last year called on the government to accept that Britain's rapidly exanding plutonium stocks should not be regarded as a resource, but as waste. It pointed out that the collapse of the fast-breeder reactor industry in Japan, Britain and France had left little commercial purpose for the use of plutonium.

The committee proposed that the government maintain a minimum strategic stock of civil plutonium and declared the rest to be a waste. A senior minister said events at Sellafield and the commercial world were propelling them to accept this recommendation. He said: "BNFL's prospects are not good at all at the moment. They deserve everything they get. It would be ridiculous to let it go entirely. There is an immense amount of capital and expertise tied up there. It may survive as a lower-level nuclear waste-management operation."

The minister added that there was now no prospect of a majority stake in BNFL being sold before the election.

The change in government mood came as the hunt was stepped up yesterday for a saboteur among the workforce at Sellafield. The normally deeply loyal union leadership at the plant mounted an unprecedented appeal to 10,000 staff to inform on a disaffected colleague who had cut robot cables in a radioactive processing unit.

A joint union letter to all Sellafield staff describes the situation as "drastic", following the halt on all major foreign contracts after staff were discovered to have compiled fraudulent quality control data on batches of reprocessed radioactive waste.

The Irish energy minister, Joe Jacobs, is meeting his Danish counterpart, Sven Auken, in Dublin today to formulate legal moves to ban waste discharges from Sellafield, to be put to Scandinavian countries at an international energy conference in Copenhagen in June. MPs from the Irish capital, where concern has grown about tidal pollution bringing traces of radioactive waste across from Cumbria, also want a start on plans for a safe, permanent closure of the plant.

Depression bordering on despair was described as the growing mood at Sellafield, which is by far the biggest employer in west Cumbria, and which would leave economic and social devastation if it were to abruptly close. Union leaders criticised "ostrich-like" attitudes among their own members and accused a "shell-shocked management" of failing to stress how desperate the situation had become.

"Our workforce has to realise that this is the most critical time in our history, but for many people it doesn't seem to have sunk in," said John Kane, plant convenor of the General and Municipal Union. "They are thinking that the problem will either go away, or that we don't have a problem." The unions' letter asking staff to identify the saboteur is designed to revitalise the search by UK atomic energy authority police for the culprit who disabled six robot arms last month and closed a major reprocessing unit for three days. Fingerprints are being taken from up to 300 workers on the vitrification line, where the robots are used to seal liquid high-level waste in molten glass, before cooling and burial in concrete for storage.

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Profit Beats Prudence on China

By William R. Hawkins
Monday, March 27, 2000; Page A27
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-03/27/014l-032700-idx.html

The American business community, as part of its campaign to grant China "permanent normal trade relations" with the United States, has come up with a booklet called "Corporate Responsibility in China." It is published by the Business Roundtable, an association of CEOs of leading U.S. corporations.

The report is meant to show that economic ties have a positive effect in China. "When U.S. companies set up operations in China, they bring with them U.S. ethical and managerial practices," reads the study, and "through these practices, U.S. companies set a positive example of corporate citizenship."

The booklet looks much like those put out 20 years ago to show how business was helping South Africa move away from apartheid so that economic sanctions would be lifted. That argument was not persuasive then and is less so now.

China presents a more dangerous problem than South Africa. While both involve moral affronts to our values, South Africa did not pose a strategic threat to U.S. national security interests. China does, and it is in this context that the Business Roundtable's report actually strengthens the argument against commercial ties with the Beijing regime.

The report is filled with examples of how business is helping build China's industrial base. For example, "Rockwell has established industrial automation training laboratories in 10 of China's better universities" and "was the first foreign company to install an in-house automation technology training lab in a Chinese state-owned enterprise."

Honeywell Aerospace proclaims its "unprecedented" agreement with Aviation Industries of China (AVIC). This Chinese conglomerate is under the direct control of the state council. It owns 111 enterprises, 36 research institutes and six universities. It is the core of Beijing's aerospace complex and is responsible for developing and manufacturing both military and civil aircraft, missiles, engines and other equipment. It also has extensive research capabilities in aerodynamics, materials and manufacturing technology.

Honeywell claims it provides extensive training for AVIC's "best engineers," including bringing them to U.S. plants to learn about our technology. The results: "In the past there were serious problems with the quality of Chinese military aircraft. Chinese aircraft manufacturers' quality control tended to be uneven," says a report on the AVIC by the Federation of American Scientists. But "in the wake of joint ventures with the United States and Europe in the area of civilian aircraft . . . Chinese combat aircraft are now reported to have a much smoother surface than before, suggesting a flow of personnel and expertise from civilian to military production lines."

In addition to Honeywell, AVIC has enjoyed the help of Boeing. Boeing is listed in the BRT report as having "instructed over 9,600 Chinese aviation professionals. Over 5,600 of those receiving instruction are pilots, maintenance and flight operations people." Boeing also provides Chinese aircraft factories with productivity and industrial engineering help.

When the business community looks at China, it knows that it is not a "big emerging market" for U.S. exports. The growing trade deficit with China ($68.7 billion last year) is the result of Beijing's strategy of internal development, which discourages imports. Instead, what corporations want is to share in China's growth. As the Chamber of Commerce has put it: "Notwithstanding the current large U.S.-China trade imbalance, China's vast infrastructure needs will mean tremendous business opportunities for American companies in the power generation, telecommunications, petroleum and other industries."

That these are also strategic industries that contribute to Beijing's drive to shift the balance of power in Asia in its favor is not a concern of the Chamber or the Roundtable. It should, however, be the primary concern of Congress.

It is clear that economic resources provided to Beijing will be used to support policies hostile to long-term U.S. security interests. The cost of meeting these challenges swamps the private commercial gains to business in scale and meaning. Congress should be looking at ways to curtail the transfer of technology and production skills to China's military-industrial complex, not new ways to expedite these dangerous flows.

The writer is visiting fellow in national security studies at the U.S. Business and Industry Council.

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One-China Fallacy

New York Times
March 27, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/l27tai.html

Related Articles
Political Earthquake in Taiwan (March 20, 2000)
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/early/03200020mon1.html

To the Editor:

According to a March 20 editorial, "preserving the one-China formula remains the surest basis for maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait." Nothing could be further from the truth.

Two separate political entities have existed since 1949.

Each has exercised the rights of sovereignty, like holding elections (bogus in one case) and collecting taxes.

The "one China" concept was false from the instant Henry A. Kissinger seized upon it as a convenient ruse.

The cost of this Faustian bargain is becoming apparent. China threatens to use force to annex Taiwan, asserting that the United States, having accepted the one-China principle, has no right to interfere in its internal affairs.

A vacillating Clinton administration declares its continued adherence to a patent falsehood.

This dangerous myth is the real threat to stability.

JUNE TEUFEL DREYER Coral Gables, Fla., March 20, 2000

The writer is a professor of political science at the University of Miami.

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Europe May Halt Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing

March 27, 200
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/mar2000/2000L-03-27-04.html

BRUSSELS, Belgium, 0 (ENS) - The Sellafield nuclear data falsification scandal has eroded confidence in the British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. reprocessing facility throughout Europe. Fallout could include a suspension of reprocessing in Western Europe.

The Danish government made a bid Friday to end nuclear reprocessing in Europe because of concerns over radioative contamination of the marine environment. Denmark called on contracting parties to the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR) to agree to "suspend the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, with immediate effect."

Nations that are parties to the OSPAR include: Belgium, Denmark, the Commission of the European Communities, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Danish Environment Minister Svend Auken (Photo courtesy Office of the Minister)

The proposal was forwarded by Danish Environment Minister Svend Auken to the OSPAR Secretariat for consideration at June's ministerial meeting. It reminds OSPAR parties of their 1998 agreement to make progressive and substantial reductions in marine radioactive pollution, with the ultimate aim of achieving close to zero concentrations of artificial radioactive substances.

The move marks another ratcheting up of political opposition to nuclear reprocessing following serious criticisms of safety management at the UK's Sellafield plant made in February.

The UK Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, part of the national health and safety agency, reported in February that workers were able to falsify records on the size of mixed uranium and plutonium oxide (MOX) fuel pellets for delivery to Japan in September of 1999 because of a "systematic management failure."

British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. Sellafield facility (Photo courtesy BNFL)

Falsified MOX data from Sellafield was also linked to Swiss and German MOX shipments. Sellafield manufactures nuclear fuel rods, reprocesses spent nuclear fuel from nine countries and treats and stores radioactive wastes.

Any suspension of reprocessing agreed to at the OSPAR meeting would equally affect the other main European reprocessing plant, COGEMA, the French state-owned facility at La Hague in France.

OSPAR officials predicted "tough political discussions" on reprocessing at the June meeting, but admitted that the chances of a ban were slim. For Ospar decisions to be binding, they must be agreed unanimously by all members of the organisation. A three-quarters majority is possible, but the resolution is not then binding on members voting against, as France and the UK certainly will.

The Danish proposal notes that a 1994 agreement in the OSPAR framework to assess alternative options for spent nuclear fuel management had led to a report by the Nuclear Energy Agency of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development "demonstrating that implementing the non-reprocessing option [dry storage] for spent fuel would eliminate the discharges and emissions of radioactive substances that currently arise from reprocessing it."

Switzerland, Sweden Dump Sellafield Reprocessing

Switzerland's nuclear safety inspectorate (HSK) has suspended further transports of spent nuclear fuel to the UK's Sellafield plant for reprocessing. "Until the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate gives us the assurances we need, we cannot give the green light for fuel transports to Sellafield," Tony Treier of HSK said Friday.

The Swiss parliament is currently debating a new nuclear energy law, which would phase out reprocessing as a management option for spent fuel from the country's nuclear power stations while allowing existing contracts to run their course. HSK says that its decision does not contradict this, since its ban is temporary.

HSK says it was concerned not only by February's official report on Sellafield, but also by "new elements" that have since emerged, including indications that reprocessing equipment at the plant had been deliberately rendered faulty.

Sweden, which also held a contract with Sellafield operator BNFL for reprocessing spent fuel, has already imposed a ban.

Swedish Environment Minister Kjell Larsson (Photo courtesy Office of the Minister)

Sweden has cancelled a shipment of 4.8 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel from a research reactor to Britain's Sellafield reprocessing plant, the government announced February 29. Environment Minister Kjell Larsson said the delivery had become "very difficult, if not impossible" to justify in the light of the current safety scandal, which has aggravated long standing Nordic fury over radioactive discharges into the North Sea.

The issue is particularly sensitive in Sweden, where successive governments have struggled to find the least traumatic way of implementing a 1980 referendum decision to close down all 12 of the nation's nuclear power plants by 2010.

BNFL has been given two months by the UK Nuclear Installations Inspectorate to put in place safety recommendations. The firm claims that it is currently implementing NII recommendations and would "welcome the opportunity to meet HSK on an early timescale to provide them with the reassurance they require."

{Published in cooperation with ENDS Environment Daily, Europe's choice for environmental news. Environmental Data Services Ltd, London. Email: envdaily@ends.co.uk}

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EU assembly set to launch "spy" system inquiry

March 27, 2000
By Yves Clarisse
From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" globalnet@mindspring.com

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The Green Party's European deputies said Monday they had garnered enough support to begin an inquiry into allegations that the United States uses an electronic surveillance system for industrial espionage.

"We have the signatures of more than 160 parliamentarians," Isabelle Zerrouk, spokeswoman the European Parliament's Green Group, told Reuters.

Under the assembly's rules, 160 of the 626 parliament members must endorse the demand for a committee.

The creation of a committee of inquiry is a rare event in the EU. The last such inquiry probed so-called "mad cow" disease and succeeded in extracting proposals from the 15-nation bloc for tighter food safety arrangements.

The new committee will probe the Echelon electronic surveillance system developed during the Cold War by the United States in conjunction with Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The system is able to intercept millions of telephone, fax and e-mail messages.

The parliamentarians demanded the probe last month after a British journalist Duncan Campbell presented the assembly with a report saying that Echelon was used by the U.S. for military and industrial espionage.

The report charged, among other things, that the United States used Echelon to beat the European consortium Airbus to an aircraft deal with Saudi Arabia in 1994.

Charges that Britain had helped Washington drew angry reactions from other EU countries, notably France.

The United States has denied spying for American firms. Britain has also denied misusing the system.

A former CIA director, James Woolsey, said earlier this month in reaction to the spying allegations that most European technology was not worth stealing.

The European Parliament is to issue a statement on the Echelon system Thursday. The European Commission, the EU's executive body, has stressed that there is no formal proof of the alleged espionage.

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US Bases in this country are being used to protect America, not Britain
They're not defending our realm

Comment & Analysis
by Richard Norton-Taylor,
the Guardian
18th November 1999
http://www.gn.apc.org/cndyorks/yspace/articles/writ2.htm

It was, on the face of it, an innocent confirmation of a cosy, almost personal, relationship. 'HMG" it said, referring to her majesty's government, and the United States "are pleased to announce that the European Relay Ground Station for the new Space Based Infra-Red System will be established at RAF Menwith Hill ... HMG welcomes the opportunity to strengthen US/UK cooperation in this field".

It went on to explain that the space-based system, which like most things military is known by its acronym, SBIRS, was the world-wide satellite-based network providing early warning of ballistic-missile launches. It added that construction at Menwith Hill, which is near Harrogate in north Yorkshire, would include up to four new radomes (golfball-shaped satellite ground stations) and that local planning would be sought in the normal way.

That was in 1997 when the post-cold war emphasis seemed to be on arms control and on monitoring breaches of agreements designed to make the world a safer place. Two years later that little-noticed announcement has taken on an entirely new significance. Menwith Hill, like the nearby Fylingdales early-warning station and, sooner or later, the deep space surveillance centre at Feltwell on the Norfolk-Suffolk border, will play a key role in America's planned anti-missile shield.

Washington says the missile defence system is designed to protect the US from the potential new threat of missiles fired by sucg "rogue" states as North Korea, Iran and Iraq. It will not protect western Europe. US bases in Britain will be used not for the defence of Britain, or even of continental Europe. They are being expanded to satisfy a growing lobby in the US, fuelled by hi-tech corporations, for a kind of son-of-star-wars system which both reflects and promotes American isolationism.

Far from cementing the transatlantic alliance, the project is in danger of causing deep cracks in it. Though Washington insists it is not aimed at Russian missiles (not, at least in its initial stage) its plan for what it calls "theatre missile defence" contravenes the anti-ballistic missile treaty signed between the US and the Soviet Union which Moscow says is the cornerstone of strategic balance.

George W. Bush, frontrunner for the Republican party presidential nomination, said this week the ABM treaty should be scrapped if Moscow refused to amend it. "I can't tell you how important I think it is for America to develop not only theatre-based but strategic-based anti-ballistic missile systems," he said. He added: "The world has changed since the treaty was signed in the 70s. This is now a world of uncertainty... As I say in my ads, there are madmen and dictators and missiles."

Britain's European allies have already made it clear, as Joschka Fisher, the German foreign minister has put it, that the proposed US missile shield would lead to "split security standards within the Nato alliance". The British government is equally alarmed, but appears to take the view that given its special. relationship with the US, quiet diplomacy wou1d be the most effective strategy.

Though Menwith Hill is described as an RAF station, in reality it is a US National Security Agency base used to eavesdrop on military diplomatic, commercial, and civil communications for more than 40 years. It is believed to be capable of carrying out two million intercepts an hour.

The attitude adopted by the government whenever questions have been been asked in parliament about its role has been a mixture of insouciance, obfuscation and denial of responsibility. Two years ago, Norman Baker, the indefatigable Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, asked how many RAF servicemen worked at RAF Menwith Hill, and what were their functions and powers. John Reid, then armed forces minister, replied: "There is a small number of RAF personnel at RAF Menwith Hill. I am withholding the further information requested ..." This summer, Baker asked the government to disclose the terms of any agreements covering America's use of Menwith Hill. Doug Henderson, Reid's successor, referred to a 1951 Nato "status of forces" pact "and other arrangements appropriate to the relationship which exists between the governments of the United Kingdom and United States for the purposes of our common defence". He added: "These arrangements are confidential".

While he was at it, Baker also asked Jack Straw to list all agreements with the US about the interception of communications. "There are arrangements", the home secretary replied "appropriate to the relationship which exists between the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States for the purpose of our common defence. It is the long-standing practice of this government and previous administrations not to comment on the detail of such confidential arrangements."

Baker persisted. What international treaties, he asked John Spellar, Henderson's successor, covered the use by the Americans of Menwith Hill? Spellar replied: "The United Kingdom is not party to the anti-ballistic missile treaty. Questions on its interpretation should be addressed to the USA and Russia. Article IV of the Outer Space Treaty requires that the moon and other celestial bodies should be used exclusively for peaceful purposes ... It imposes no limitations on other military activities in outer space."

Another person who has tried to get information about the Menwith Hill base is Lindis Percy, a tireless campaigner who has fought, and sometimes won, her battles against byelaws surrounding US bases in Britain, and has spent time in prison refusing to abide by court injunctions preventing her from entering them. She is now suing named US and RAF officers over the use of the Menwith Hill base, citing the ABM treaty and the 1967 outer space treaty. She may not get very far in her private action. But the issues thrown up by the new and, it seems, irreversible, US proposal for an anti-missile shield in which Britain willy-nilly participates, though not for its benefit, deserves rather more than dismissive responses from government.

The project is in danger of causing deep cracks in the alliance

Ministers refer to the US and Britain's "common defence". Yet the British government (albeit sotte voce) is making it plain that, in its view, the US missile shield plan directly threatens that notion. By definition, a project which gives unique protection to the US questions the whole concept of common defence.

Britain's response will also be eagerly watched by its own continental allies, at a time when the government is placing itself at the forefront of moves towards what the EU calls a European security and defence identity. More and more questions, too, are already being asked across the channel about Britain's role in the US-dominated world-wide eaves-dropping network, codenamed Echelon, in which Menwith Hill plays a leading part.

---

US builds 'son of star wars' at RAF base

21st November 1999
by Richard Norton-Taylor,
The Independent on Sunday
http://www.gn.apc.org/cndyorks/yspace/articles/writ3.htm

An RAF base in Yorkshire is being used secretly by America's National Security Agency for the installation of a space-based anti-missile system.

Although on British soil, RAF Menwith Hill, near Harrogate, is totally under American control. No British minister has ever visited it. It is being developed as the ground station for the most advanced defence system in the world.

SBIRS (space-based infra-red system) is the successor to a proposed American ground-based shield that has already been opposed by all of Washington's European allies - including Britain - because of fears it could erode Europe's security and unleash a new arms race.

The scheme has been dubbed "son of star wars" after the defence project first proposed by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Under the plan the US would set up a series of "brilliant eyes", low earth orbit satellites already being developed by American defence company Rockwell, armed with tactical high-energy lasers to destroy "rogue" ballistic missiles.

They would be warned within seconds of the launch of a missile anywhere in the world by tracking stations such as Menwith Hill, but the system, according to the American government, would be used only to protect the US from "rogue states". Critics claim both SBIRS and its gound-based forerunner are in breach of the US-Russian anti-ballistic missile treaty signed in 1972.

It was thought that the British government had opted for discreet diplomatic lobbying to dissuade President Bill Clinton from ratifying the $100bn (£63m) project, but a series of Commons written answers has revealed that Britain has already given the US permission to install the ground based systems for SBIRS at RAF Menwith Hill. The news will shock Britain's French and German allies who are trying to stop the US setting up another ABM site in Alaska which would also receive early warnings of launches from Menwith Hill.

TheABM treaty restricts Russia and the US to one ABM site apiece. Russia has 100 anti-ballistic missiles deployed around Moscow; US missiles are concentrated at a large silo in North Dakota.

America's European allies believe the project, which is due to be agreed by President Clinton next summer, will "lead to a split in security standards", according to Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister.

Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean, Foreign Office minister, said the Government had granted the US permission to develop SBIRS at Menwith Hill in March 1997 after a series of consultations.

Since then the Ministry of Defence has used its government immunity to grant planning permission for up to four new radomes (golf-ball-shaped satellite ground stations).

Baroness Dean maintained that the British government retained legal possession and control over Menwith Hill, but analysts such as Simon Davies of Privacy International believe that control is nominal.

Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, recently proved that the Americans were effectively "squatting" at the base. The US government's lease on Menwith Hill expired in May 1997 and has not been renewed.

Mr Baker, who has doggedly tried to unlock the secrets of Menwith Hill, said: "I believe what is happening is contrary to international agreements and against the national interest of this country. The Government should come clean about Menwith Hill and should be putting British interests first. Every time you lift a Menwith Hill stone something nasty crawls out."

Menwith Hill is better known for housing the Echelon eaves-dropping system which enables the National Security Agency to listen in on two million telephone, e-mail and fax operation conversations an hour. Many European countries suspect that the base is used for industrial espionage, an allegation denied by NSA.

Opened in the late 1950s on land purchased by the Crown, it was taken over directly by the NSA in 1966 and became its Field Station F83. It is now the NSA's largest listening post in the world. Sprawling across 560 acres, it has a 24-hour operation centre and on-site town.

There are now 25 radomes, not including the three under construction, and the size of the staff has grown from 400 in 1980 to 1,770, of which 1,400 are American - a staff as large as MI5.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "The Government is fully aware of what is going on at Menwith Hill and is an equal partner in the development of the equipment,"

See also Comment from the Independent on Sunday.

--

You thought the nuclear arms race was over? Think again

Comment, The Independent
Sunday 21st November 1999
http://www.gn.apc.org/cndyorks/yspace/articles/writ4.htm

American plans to establish a 'Son of Star Wars' anti-missile system threaten to undermine the global balance of deterrence and weapons control. By Elizabeth Young and Wayland Kennet.

It sounds like something from a previous era. But if you thought talks on nuclear missiles were a relic from the Cold War, think again. Last week officials from the US State Department returned from Moscow after failing to get their counterparts there to agree to rewrite the 1972 Anri-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. It was not a happy end to the encounter.

The Americans were hoping to persuade the Russians to change the terms of the treaty to allow the US to deploy a nationwide ant-missile defence system - allegedly to protect them against attacks from so-called "rogue states" such as Iraq, North Korea or even Iran. This follows a much-disputed CIA warning that the US could face an intercontinental ballistic missile attack involving nuclear, chemical or biological warheads within the next 15 years. The proposal is essentially a return to President Raegan's Star Wars project.

The Russians refused point blank. One of their military leaders last week threatened "retaliatory steps" if the US goes ahead with plans to build a "Son of Star Wars" anti-ballistic missile system. General Anatoly Kvashnin, the chief of the Russian General Staff, insists that "rogue states" are not the real targets. "The selection of the deployment areas makes the objective of the national system clear," he said. "It is to intercept ballistic missiles launched from Russia and China."

The Russians have said no. So have the Chinese. So have the French. But what of the British? Usually Tony Blair has been eager to support Mr Clinton in his military activities: sometimes, as with the bombing of an aspirin factory near Khartoum, too eager, as he himself must surely realise. But this time the stakes are much higher - as high as they could possibly be.

It is important that Mr. Blair should understand why so many nations are firmly opposed to the US proposal. For it could re-open the sluice gates that at present hold back not only the old-style arms race but also new ones. There has been a revolution in military affairs since the treaty was signed. Ever more sophisticated techniques for hacking into and disrupting hi-tech computer systems could lead to a devastating new style of "information warfare".

Anti-ballistic missiles may at first glance appear to be purely defensive: a shield, as Ronald Reagan thought of his Star Wars project, to protect you from attack. But in fact their role in nuclear deterrence strategy is not simply, or principally, defensive: they also provide their owner with protection against an enemy's second-strike retaliation to his own first-strike attack. Thus they undermine the mutual fear of retaliation which is the essence of "stable deterrence".

Margaret Thatcher understood this. She also knew that a substantial Russian system would neutralise the British independent nuclear deterrent - which is why she visited President Reagan in December1984 and secured from him a commitment not to endanger the ABM Treaty or indeed deterrence itself with Star Wars. He agreed to confine Star Wars to "research" and accepted that anything beyond that should be "a matter of negotiation". These commitments bound him only and have long since lapsed. The research has already swallowed $l00bn.

At present (and possibly Mr Blair does not appreciate this) Britain is preparing to take part at least as landlords in the American National Missile Defense System. At what is misleadingly called "RAF" Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, the US is already installing the ground parts of the new space-based infra-red system that would form the listening post for the "Son of Star Wars" which President Clinton and the US Congress are intent on setting up.

At Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, the US is already installing the ground parts of the new space-based infra-red system.

Although this base is on our soil British officials have no role in it. "Operational control rests with the United States," as the Ministry of Defence puts it. No British government minister has been there. The necessary planning approval for the present expansion was given under Ministry of Defence auspices in March 1997 by the Major government. And Menwith Hill is governed by only one of 500 or so bilateral UK/US defence agreements, many of them dating from the Cold War, which have never been reviewed.

The uses made of the information gathered by US electronic systems at Menwith Hill and elsewhere in the UK and British Overseas Territories may well not be compatible with the Prime Minister's hopes (elaborated at St Malo a year ago and reiterated in the past few days) of promoting a real European security identity. Much of the material gathered will be of commercial than military use.

But there is more to it than that. The ABM Treaty saved by Thatcher -remains the essential cornerstone of the Russian/American StrategicArms Reduction Treaties, Start I and Start II, and - as the Russians have pointed out - of the treaty banning all intermediate-range missiles in Europe. For it is only when both sides can count on their "retaliation" getting through that they feel able, in tandem, to reduce their nuclear forces.

But more than instability would follow the loss of the ABM Treaty. Facing an opponent's anti-ballistic missile system, you have two choices: you can build a similar system of your own - a new, hugely expensive, arms race - or you can simply build more missiles (or develop other weapons) to overcome or to bypass the system. This leads to more instability. The Chinese and the Russians have both said this would be their response to any American missile defence system.

Then there is the recently reconfirmed 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Article 6 of which binds the five states, which in those days had nuclear weapons, to nuclear disarmament. But this treaty, too, is a fragile affair, at risk from the nuclear weapons built by India, Pakistan and Israel and reportedly being developed in Iraq, North Korea, Iran and most recently Japan.

Behind the "Son of Star Wars" proposals lies a habit of "worst-case analysis" which combines America's most deadly paranoias with the commercial interests of a vast, ethics-less industry. If the United States, after spending trillions of dollars on nuclear weapons, and currently spending nearly $300bn a year on defence, is still afraid of the world outside, what hope of safety and security can it ever have? Can it wonder why the rest of the world fails to see the attractions of its weapon-bedecked leadership?

Except for the British government. We, the UK, seem somehow to have bound ourselves to the paranoid view of the world. After our Strategic Defence Review, out forces are configured to act alongside American forces. We support and participate in the American bombing of Iraq, in the American desire to deprive the Serbs of fuel, in the American refusal to re-open the Danube. Even our legislation against anti-personnel landmines has a careful loophole to allow British troops to do everything alongside American troops but actually lay the mines - our troops may still hand mines to theirs to lay.

It is time that Mr Blair began the process of developing a foreign policy of our own. The alternative is to allow the complete militarisation of all international realtions and to connive in opening the sluices again to an arms race without end.

-------- india

Peacemaking Frustrating Clinton

Associated Press
March 27, 2000 Filed at 5:30 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Clinton-Brick-Wall.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- After hitting brick wall after brick wall on his overseas tour, President Clinton's hopes for promoting peace in South Asia and the Middle East are on hold, at best, and time is running out for him.

Presidential aides have insisted Clinton's goal in meetings with Indian and Pakistani officials and with Syrian President Hafez Assad was to make peace, not to promote his legacy during the last of his eight years in the White House.

But the two basically go together.

Even before Clinton set out for South Asia, his chances of persuading India and Pakistan to back down from their nuclear programs was considered virtually nil. He didn't, and to Clinton's chagrin, Pakistan's military leaders refused even to promise restoration of democracy.

In India, despite lavishing praise on the world's largest democracy, spending more time there than any of his predecessors and respectfully seeing the sights, Clinton heard from government leaders that nonproliferation of technology was not a realistic option for dealing with Pakistan.

Nor was there progress on Kashmir. That could be ominous.

India and Pakistan have fought two wars over the three-fifths of the Himalayan state that is under Indian control. The dispute is probably even more explosive now that they both have nuclear capability.

On the plus side, Clinton strengthened U.S. relations with India, which have not always been warm. Considering India's growing importance, especially in technology, that was a plus.

His meeting in Geneva with Assad had no such silver lining.

Three hours of face-to-face negotiations, the first lengthy exchange between the two leaders in six years, failed Sunday to restart the talks between Israel and Syria that broke down in Shepherdstown, W.Va., in mid-January.

``The differences are significant and important, and obviously more work needs to be done to bridge them,'' White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said.

For Clinton to come away empty-handed indicates either miscalculation by the White House or that the dispute between Israel and Syria is intractable.

Neither is good news for a would-be peacemaker.

Judith Kipper, director of the Middle East Forum for the Council on Foreign Relations, said the standoff between Clinton and Assad in Geneva was a disappointment but not a disaster.

``What is clear is that the Syrians are prepared to go a long way on what Israel requires, providing they get all of the territory they lost in the 1967 Mideast war,'' Kipper said in an interview. ``Without that, there is no peace with Israel.''

Her advice to Clinton was ``to work on Prime Minister Barak to get the Israelis to come to terms with the land issue -- for both the Syrians and the Palestinians. There is no peace without it.''

Clinton's failure to achieve a breakthrough makes an early accord with Syria unlikely. And in Jerusalem, Israeli officials warned that a unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon could spark a conflict with Syria -- and put Clinton on a hot spot.

Syria was looking for a helping hand from the American.

Clearly disappointed, Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa said in comments published Monday in Damascus that Clinton offered nothing new in his talks with Assad.

``We were surprised that the U.S. president was not carrying anything new from the Israeli side but was asking from Syria what might help Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in his difficult position, which we think is of his own making,'' al-Sharaa told Lebanon's As-Safir newspaper.

The U.S. peace effort, meanwhile, lumbers along on a parallel track between Israel and the Palestinians.

Their negotiators will wind up eight days of talks Tuesday at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., without agreement.

``Our assessment of the talks is that they have been serious, intensive and, indeed, productive,'' State Department spokesman James Foley said Monday.

The negotiators will return in a few weeks, he said.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who will meet Tuesday with Clinton, said before the Geneva meeting that Israel and Syria were close to an agreement.

His foreign minister, Amr Moussa, said the Egyptian president, indeed, was ``very hopeful.''

With a smile, the veteran diplomat quickly added: ``Delete the `very.'''

EDITOR'S NOTE -- Barry Schweid has covered diplomacy for The Associated Press since 1973.

---

Article distorts Clinton's visit to India

Washington Times
March 26, 2000
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-letters-200032518268.htm

Your news story chronicling President Clinton's first day of meetings with his Indian hosts, "Indian president rebukes Clinton" (March 22), was a disappointing portrayal of the day's very positive realities.

The Times article neglected to mention the signing of a comprehensive document laying out even closer relations between the United States and India in the years to come. Furthermore, your failure to mention the creation of a Science and Technology Forum gives readers the false impression that official discussions have focused narrowly on Kashmir and nuclear nonproliferation.

Unfortunately, you have no firm understanding of the complex, multidimensional relationship shared by India and the United States, and most other advanced democracies.

Even more hurtful to the day's apparently meaningful exchange is the implication that Mr. Clinton was "ridiculed to his face" by his Indian hosts at the state dinner in his honor.

Mr. Clinton's previous remark that the violence-prone Kashmir region is "perhaps the most dangerous place in the world" only plays to the warmongering generals in neighboring Pakistan, who through their words and actions have done their utmost to make Kashmir the central and sole issue of this trip. Indian President Kocheril Raman Narayanan's rejoinder was well placed and well intended in asserting India's role in finding a peaceful solution to the Kashmiri violence.

By injecting rancor and dissension where there is none, you do a tremendous disservice to the Indian and U.S. officials who are sincerely trying to work through tough issues toward common ground.

MERVYN DYMALLY Washington Mervyn Dymally is a retired congressman.

---

Understanding Kashmir

New York Times
March 27, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/l27kas.html

Related Articles
Pride and Blood in Kashmir (March 22, 2000)
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/early/03220022mish.html

To the Editor:

Contrary to what Pankaj Mishra implies (Op-Ed, March 22), the Indian government remains the best instrument for upholding human rights in the state of Kashmir. The terrorists in Kashmir should be stopped, not appeased. Indian security forces are repressing armed violence, not discontent.

Indian secularism views all of India, including Kashmir, as the common homeland of all the Indian people. Many Kashmiri Muslims are dissatisfied with the actions of Indian security forces, but that does not derogate the rights of secular Muslims and non-Muslims in Kashmir to receive the protection of the Indian Constitution.

Indian security forces have committed excesses in Kashmir, but the Indian government has made persistent efforts to maintain their discipline while conducting an extraordinarily difficult anti-terrorist operation.

SANJOY BANERJEE Union City, Calif., March 22, 2000

-------- iraq

Study Will Assess ALS Among Gulf War Veterans
VA Releases information on new study

Press Release,
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
http://www.ngwrc.org/news/content/MonMar272036572000.asp

WASHINGTON, March 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Federal agencies, led by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense (DoD), are launching a nationwide study to determine the rate of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, among military veterans who were on active duty during the Gulf War.

The one-year study will determine if amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) occurs at a higher-than-expected rate among Gulf War veterans, some of whom have raised concerns about a possible association between ALS and service in the conflict.

Initially, clinicians at VA and DoD identified 28 patients with possible ALS among the 697,000 who were deployed to the Gulf region during the year after the August 1990 Desert Shield mobilization. A preliminary review of those cases and a review of a national mortality study indicated no substantial increase in the rate of ALS among Gulf War veterans and no excess deaths from ALS. The ALS Association (ALSA) estimates the prevalence of ALS in the United States at between six and eight cases per 100,000 persons.

A panel of experts from VA, DoD, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the ALSA and university representatives recommended that VA develop a national epidemiologic study of ALS among Gulf War veterans. The study, which will be directed by the Epidemiologic Research and Information Center at the Durham (N.C.) VA Medical Center, is a collaboration involving VA, DoD, HHS and the CDC. ALSA will advise the study leaders.

``We need to identify as completely as possible the number of cases of ALS among Gulf War veterans in order to determine if there is any relationship between ALS and service in the war,'' said VA Chief Research and Development Officer John R. Feussner, M.D.

``We really do not know what we will find with this research effort,'' Dr. Feussner said. ``If we do find an elevated risk for development of ALS, the finding will have broad implications for veterans, VA, and the DoD alike. This major national study among a relatively young group of veterans could also provide new knowledge about the epidemiology of this rare disease and shed light on possible causes of ALS.''

Researchers wish to hear from veterans who have been diagnosed with a motor neuron disease (including ALS) and who were on active duty between August 2, 1990, and July 31, 1991, regardless of whether they actually served in the Gulf theater. The survey group includes active-duty military personnel and reserve or National Guard personnel who were on active duty during that period. Veterans or family and friends of veterans who are deceased or otherwise unable to contact VA may call toll free 1-877-DIAL-ALS (1-877-342-5257) to participate in the survey.

Eligible veterans will be asked to take part in an in-home interview, during which a research nurse will ask questions about experiences on active duty to identify possible factors in the development of their illness. Genetic factors also will be examined. Although the study will not test new treatments, participants will receive a medical examination by a doctor with expertise in diagnosing and treating ALS and other motor neuron disorders.

ALS is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that destroys the brain and spinal cord nerve cells that control muscle movement. As the brain and spinal cord motor nerve cells die, muscles weaken and shrink, and rapid, severe paralysis occurs. Neither a cause nor a cure for ALS is known at this time.

``The ALS Association is grateful that the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Defense, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are collaborating on this epidemiologic study of the occurrence of ALS among Gulf War veterans,'' said Mike Havlicek, president of ALSA. ``This research project will assure a comprehensive effort to identify all Gulf War veterans with ALS, or with other motor neuron diseases. We hope that this major national research effort will provide answers to the questions this study poses, as well as discover new knowledge about ALS in the general population.''

Additional information about ALS is available from ALSA's Information and Referral Service toll-free at 800-782-4747 or via ALSA's web site at http://www.alsa.org. Veterans with questions about general VA services for Gulf War veterans may contact the VA's Gulf War Helpline at 800-749-8387.

----

U.N.'s Iraq Liaison Bids Farewell

Associated Press
March 26, 2000 Filed at 5:26 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Iraq-UN.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The outgoing head of the U.N. humanitarian program in Iraq on Sunday said his criticism of sanctions against the country was not an attempt to whitewash the regime of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

Hans Von Sponeck, who has frequently spoken out against international sanctions on Iraq, said that on Sunday he and Saddam had ``a very philosophical discussion about the tragedy of his people.''

``The comprehensive sanctions as practiced against Iraq have failed,'' Von Sponeck said.

The official Iraqi News Agency said Saddam told Von Sponeck ``your stand expresses a lot about the situation.''

But Von Sponeck stressed that while he and the Iraqi government had come to the same conclusion about the U.N. sanctions, it was ``for different reasons.''

Iraq has tried to capitalize on his resignation, with state media describing him as an honest and courageous man who refused to bend to the United States, the main advocate of maintaining sanctions.

``I'm not a useful idiot. I'm not a person who's just following the Iraqi government line,'' Von Sponeck said.

His very public denunciation of international sanctions ``does not mean I don't see that there are internal reasons'' for the situation in Iraq, Von Sponeck said.

Von Sponeck said Saddam had welcomed him back to Iraq anytime. ``The president said I don't need a visa anymore,'' Von Sponeck told The Associated Press.

Von Sponeck is due to leave Iraq on Wednesday because he is stepping down as chief coordinator of U.N. aid programs in Iraq. The German announced his resignation last month in protest at the devastating effects of the U.N. sanctions imposed since Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990.

Von Sponeck has also criticized the oil-for-food program, which he said does not meet the most basic needs of Iraq's 22 million people. He was responsible for administering the $10.5 billion program, which allows Iraq to sell oil and use the revenues for humanitarian goods to ease civilian suffering that has resulted from the sanctions.

Increasingly, aid workers, politicians and others have questioned whether the cost of the sanctions -- deprivation for millions of ordinary Iraqis -- is worth the goal of forcing the Iraqi government to surrender its weapons of mass destruction.

The sweeping trade, travel and cultural sanctions must remain in place until Iraq persuades U.N. weapons inspectors it has destroyed its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the ability to produce and deliver them. But there have been no U.N. inspectors in Iraq for more than a year, and attempts to restart checks have stalled.

Days after Von Sponeck announced his resignation, the head of the U.N. World Food Program in Iraq also quit in protest against the sanctions.

---

Iraqis Vote For New Parliament

Associated Press
March 27, 2000 Filed at 4:41 p.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Iraq-Elections.html

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Voting was brisk and orderly Monday as Iraqis choose a new parliament expected to be energized by the presence of President Saddam Hussein's eldest son and heir apparent.

Odai Hussein -- a powerful figure who was making his formal political debut -- was among 512 candidates running for 220 seats in the National Assembly. He was widely expected to win a seat, which will help him begin to build a formal power base.

The 36-year-old Odai voted shortly before polls closed at 8 p.m., roaring up in a convoy of luxury cars and entering the polling station in an upscale neighborhood, surrounded by guards wearing business suits and toting automatic weapons.

Wearing a traditional black robe trimmed in gold and a flowing white headdress, Odai walked with difficulty as a result of injuries suffered in a 1996 assassination attempt.

He said he would do ``whatever brings good to the great Iraqi people,'' after pulling his ballot from a pocket and dropping it into the box. He said he would work to bring Iraq the multiparty system his father promised a decade ago, but did not elaborate.

While critics dismiss Iraq's democracy as a sham, Iraqis used the vote to express genuine fears and hopes.

Khuder Murad Atti, whose 11-year-old son has leukemia, said he hopes a new parliament will help lift an international trade embargo against Iraq imposed to punish Saddam for invading Kuwait in 1990.

``By putting honest people into the National Assembly ... we can lift the embargo as soon as possible,'' said Atti.

The National Assembly is elected after a strictly controlled campaign and seen as a rubber stamp for Saddam, doing little more than making recommendations to the Revolutionary Command Council he heads.

It has little influence over the sanctions, which can be lifted only if Iraq convinces the U.N. Security Council that it has surrendered its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs, a condition Iraq insists it has fulfilled.

The United States accuses Iraq of hiding weapons and has worked to ensure that sanctions remain in place, despite increasing criticism from around the world that they have crippled the Iraqi economy and done little to hurt Saddam.

Iraq is permitted to buy food and medicine under a U.N. program created in 1996 that allows Iraq to export oil through U.N.-controlled sales, provided the proceeds be used for humanitarian supplies.

Even so, with their economy weakened by sanctions and war, the Iraqi middle class has been stripped of its buying power.

Atti retired from a civil service job to try to make more money as a free-lance dealer in used goods. But he was selling most of his own household furniture a day before the vote. He needed to raise cash for his 11-year-old son's treatment for leukemia, which he said cost about $100 every 20 days. Atti, who has seven other children, said he earns less than $10 a month.

Turnout was reported high during 12 hours of voting at 1,574 stations across the country. Failing to vote could be seen as an expression of opposition to a government that tolerates little dissent and has portrayed the balloting as a signal to the West of its determination in the face of international isolation.

Counting began immediately after polls closed. Final results were expected Tuesday, and the parliament was expected to convene in April.

In addition to the lawmakers elected Monday, Saddam will appoint 30 representatives for Kurdish areas in the north where voting was not held. The Iraqi leader effectively lost control over Kurdish areas a decade ago in an uprising following the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

-------- israel

SNEH DENIES REPORT ISRAEL WILL SEED GOLAN WITH NEUTRON MINES

The Jerusalem Post,
Monday, March 27 2000 15:11 20 Adar II 5760 -
By Arieh O'Sullivan and Douglas Davis
http://www.jpost.com:80/Editions/2000/03/27/News/News.4604.html

JERUSALEM (March 27) - Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh yesterday flatly denied a report in The Sunday Times of London that Israel plans to lay nuclear mines on the Golan Heights to prevent a Syrian attack after it withdraws.

"The Sunday Times is ignoring the fact that Purim has passed and it's not yet April Fool's Day," Sneh said, indicating that the paper may have fallen for a hoax.

The paper said the neutron mines were were specially developed in Israel and the plan to lay them was named "David's Sling."

"'David's Sling' is a pretty name for plans and operations, but this report is truly stupid. The person who wrote it not only doesn't know, but is also doesn't understand anything," Sneh told Israel Radio.

Quoting military sources in Israel, the Times noted that the plan has helped to placate Israeli hawks, who have been reluctant to support a return of the Golan without solid security guarantees.

According to the plan, any Syrian invasion of Israel would trigger an explosion of the neutron weapons, which would emit an intense burst of shock waves and radiation, penetrating tanks and killing the soldiers inside.

Neutron bombs differ from "conventional" nuclear weapons, because they emit a greater amount of radiation and cause little damage to buildings and other infrastructure.

The paper also reported that neutron artillery shells have been tested and that laser-guided rockets with neutron warheads are ready for use.

The military sources said that although the Israeli government will not acknowledge it, portable, low-yield neutron bombs have been perfected over the past two decades at a factory in the west of the country.

Israeli sources traced the genesis of "David's Sling" to the 1980s, when a site near Kibbutz Ein Zivan, just a few kilometers from the Syrian border, was chosen as suitable for planting a "nuclear land mine."

The paper said a special army unit, code named "Maitar" (string), was put on alert should the need arise to transfer a bomb to the region. More recently, according to the paper, the plans have been upgraded to include neutron bombs.

The paper reported that Israeli scientists have perfected a tactical neutron bomb that weighs less than 100 kg. and can be carried by two soldiers. It is said to have a yield of 250 tons and could kill anyone within a radius of several hundred meters, while leaving military vehicles largely intact.

The paper also reported that tritium, which is needed to manufacture the neutron bombs, is provided by the Dimona nuclear reactor "in defiance of American attempts to persuade Israel to join the so-called fissile material cut-off treaty, which would ban the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons."

--------japan

Japan Criticizes Accident Response

Associated Press
March 27, 2000 Filed at 9:20 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Japan-Nuclear-Accident.html
http://www2.nando.net/noframes/story/0,2107,500185649-500247685-501245899-0,00.html
http://www.nando.net/24hour/adn/global/story/0,1970,500185649-500247685-501245899-0,00.html

TOKYO (AP) -- The government released a report Monday criticizing its reaction to the nation's worst-ever nuclear accident last year.

The report said the government failed to quickly gather and disseminate information to local governments, ministries and agencies, and was slow in issuing directions.

More than 400 people were exposed to radiation Sept. 30, 1999, at a uranium processing plant about 70 miles northeast of Tokyo. One worker died, the first victim of a nuclear accident in Japan.

The accident occurred when workers at the plant ignored regulations and combined nitric acid with seven times the approved amount of enriched uranium, setting off an uncontrolled atomic reaction.

The government task force recommended that the Cabinet strengthen worker education programs, provide more training for doctors and nurses to treat radiation-related illnesses, and set up a group to research crisis management systems.

The government has been criticized in the past for responding slowly to disasters, including the 1995 Kobe earthquake, which killed 6,000 people and destroyed 250,000 homes.

--------korea

North Korea Demands Japan Atone

Associated Press
March 27, 2000 Filed at 9:45 a.m. EST
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Japan-NKorea.html

TOKYO (AP) -- Japan must atone for its colonization of the Korean Peninsula if it wants improved relations with North Korea, the communist country's state-run media said Monday.

Japan is scheduled for talks with Pyongyang next week on setting up formal ties. Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono is in Seoul this week to consult with South Korean officials on the talks.

Commentary in the North Korea government-controlled Rodong Sinmun newspaper, however, said Tokyo must recognize the ``immeasurable spiritual, moral, human material and cultural losses'' it brought on the Korean people.

``If Japan's atonement for past crimes is resolved, other issues will be settled smoothly,'' the commentary said, according to a dispatch of the official Korean Central News Agency seen in Tokyo.

Korea was a Japanese colony from 1910 until Japan's defeat in World War II. The state-run media in Pyongyang often attacks Tokyo for its brutal rule over the peninsula.

Rodong Sinmun also suggested that bringing up the alleged kidnapping of Japanese citizens by North Korean agents or the firing of a North Korean rocket over Japan could sour the talks.

Tokyo has demanded Pyongyang investigate suspicions that several Japanese who disappeared from the coast facing the Sea of Japan were abducted by Pyongyang as language instructors for spies. Pyongyang denies the allegations, but has agreed to investigate.

In 1998, North Korea shocked its neighbors and Washington by test-firing a multistage rocket that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific. The United States, Japan and South Korea hope improved ties with North Korea would help the isolated country abandon its nuclear and missile development programs.

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Editorial: North Korea emerges Will isolation give way to normalcy or aggression?

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Monday, March 27, 2000
http://www.post-gazette.com/forum/20000327edkorea3.asp

After half a century of going it mostly alone as a belligerent, cultish dictatorship, North Korea appears interested in joining the family of nations.

In a flurry of international outreach over a month's time, the land north of the 38th parallel on the Korean peninsula has put out diplomatic feelers to Italy, Japan, Australia, Canada, Britain and the Philippines. North Korean officials also were in New York getting ready for talks, set for April in Washington, of the kind that haven't taken place since the Korean War ended in 1953.

But which North Korea will emerge? Will it be a kinder, gentler nation, chastened by a crippling famine and economic collapse since 1995? Or will we see a mask disguising an emerging nuclear and missile power that has expanded its military while starving the masses?

Still hungry, but having lost its economic benefactor with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, North Korea has much to gain by engaging with other nations. While encouraging such contact as a way of reducing tension with South Korea, the United States has been careful to warn the government of Kim Jong Il that economic sanctions might be pressed if it resumes missile tests of the type last carried out in 1998.

Most students of the region are taking a skeptical view of the motives behind North Korea's latest moves, but all agree that the north feels it has recovered economically and is strong enough politically to reach out.

What North Korea wants badly is to have the United States remove its name from the list of countries that support international terrorism. But that action should be strategically withheld until a clearer picture emerges of whether the regime intends to play a constructive role in Asia and the world.

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On South Asia Trip, Clinton Makes Clear Cold War Is Over
India Favored Over Old Ally Pakistan

By Pamela Constable Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 27, 2000; Page A19
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-03/27/098l-032700-idx.html

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 26-President Clinton's stern warning to Pakistan during his visit here Saturday has left its military government facing a sober new reality: The Cold War strategic alliance with the United States is over, and Pakistan must move to restore democracy and control terrorism in Kashmir or fend for itself in its mounting confrontation with India.

But the choice facing Pakistan's leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is one he may not be willing or able to make, according to analysts here. If he cracks down on insurgent groups fighting in Indian Kashmir, he risks igniting the wrath of powerful Islamic forces inside Pakistan, including segments of the army. If he does not, he risks forfeiting Western economic support and driving his struggling nation deeper into poverty.

"Pakistan must do some very hard thinking now. It cannot sustain its policy on Kashmir and build a viable economy at the same time," said Talaat Massood, a former Pakistani army chief. "We cannot afford to be marginalized, but there are those in Pakistan who want to continue the Cold War for their own interests. I fear the message from Washington is so harsh that it may strengthen those forces."

Before arriving in Pakistan on Saturday, Clinton paid a cordial four-day visit to India and called for a comprehensive economic and strategic relationship with New Delhi. His trip signaled a clear preference for democratic India over military-ruled Pakistan as a future U.S. partner in South Asia and marked the end of the uneasy, arm's-length approach that dominated U.S.-India relations for decades, largely as a result of India's tilt toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

In addition, comments by Clinton and his aides suggested that Washington was moving closer to accepting India's position on Kashmir, the divided Himalayan border region that both India and Pakistan claim. Indian security forces, which control their country's portion of Kashmir, have been under constant attack by Pakistan-based Islamic insurgents who want to "liberate" the predominantly Muslim population there from rule by India, which is majority Hindu.

In interviews and speeches during the week, Clinton said he believed that "elements" of the Pakistani government were involved with the Kashmiri insurgents, that it was "wrong" to attack across the Line of Control separating Indian and Pakistani Kashmir, and that it would be very difficult for the two rivals to resume dialogue as long as violence continues in Kashmir.

Indian officials were delighted by the shift in U.S. policy, which they saw as a long overdue acknowledgment of their country's economic ties and political commonality with the United States. The visit promised to open new doors for U.S.-India partnerships and technology sharing, even though U.S. sanctions imposed after India's nuclear tests in 1998 still restrict such transfers.

Even more important, New Delhi viewed Clinton's critical comments about Pakistan's role in Kashmir, along with his repeated assertions that he would not mediate the dispute, as a vindication of its tough stance on Kashmir and proof that, at long last, Washington was finally casting off its Cold War blinders toward Pakistan's pernicious role in the region.

"The whole purpose of his visit was to tell the Pakistani people that the U.S. supports democracy," said K. Subrahmanyam, an Indian defense and national security expert. "At the end, the lingering image in people's minds will be one of Clinton dancing with village women in [India] and slipping into Pakistan with three decoy planes. Those images will tell the whole world what the nature of states in South Asia is."

In stark contrast to his embrace of India, Clinton's brief stop in Islamabad was hurried, somber and marked by unusually heavy security. There were no joint statements or even photographs of Clinton with Musharraf, and the president's televised speech to the nation made a polite but pointed demand: Pakistan must change or face total isolation by Washington.

Thus, his stopover here completed the shift in the American approach toward the region: an end to the longstanding, Cold War era policy in which military rule in Islamabad was tolerated because Pakistani collaboration was needed to confront Soviet military designs on neighboring Afghanistan and bolster America's security interests in the area.

Although Clinton's stop in Pakistan was controversial within his administration, the combined impact of his visit to both countries left an indelible impression in the region that Washington has chosen democracy over dictatorship in South Asia, and that its willingness to bargain on a range of thorny issues, from trade to nuclear nonproliferation, is no longer hostage to the strategic calculus of the past.

In Pakistan, "Clinton almost behaved as if he were in enemy territory. His visit marks the closure of the U.S.-Pakistani strategic alliance," said Rifaat Hussain, chairman of the department of defense and strategic studies at Quaid-I-Azam University. "Pakistan always assumed it could count on the U.S. to bail it out in a confrontation with India. Now the message from Washington is clear: If you are aggressive, we will side with India. If you don't become part of our values, you are on your own."

Some military analysts suggest that Clinton's rebuff could drive Pakistan to seek closer strategic relations with three traditional and controversial allies in the region: China, a nuclear superpower and longtime rival of India; Iran, a revolutionary Islamic state led by Shiite Muslim clerics; and Afghanistan, an international pariah headed by a fundamentalist Muslim militia.

No one predicts the chill with Washington will prompt Pakistan's military to provoke a serious confrontation with India, let alone a nuclear war between the two countries, both of which tested nuclear weapons in 1998. But some analysts said it could remove any remaining constraints on Islamabad's control over the insurgents in Kashmir, whose violent attacks have escalated in the past several months.

"Clinton has chosen India, and we must take a deep look at the new ground realities. It is time for Pakistan to readjust its geopolitical priorities and rediscover its traditional friends in the region," said Aslam Mirza Beg, a former Pakistani army chief. "We don't need to enter into an arms race with India, but we cannot let Kashmir go. Let Kashmir become a bleeding wound for India. The costs will be heavy on both sides, but heavier for India."

But U.S. officials, whose principal concerns in South Asia are to reduce the threat of terrorism and nuclear war, are betting that a chastised Pakistan will be less likely than before to launch any new aggression against India, and hoping that a triumphant New Delhi may be more willing to reopen negotiations on Kashmir now that it no longer need fear an American interventionist tilt toward Islamabad.

Some Pakistani analysts also say they hope Musharraf--who has said repeatedly he is willing to resume negotiations with India and wants to gradually restore democratic rule at home--will swallow his pride and realize that his best hope to salvage his country of 140 million people from financial ruin and political isolation lies in rescuing its longtime friendship with Washington.

U.S. aid to Pakistan is limited, and economic sanctions have been in place since 1998 because of the nuclear tests. But the ailing country, burdened with $140 million in foreign debt, is heavily dependent on loans and credits from financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Those are likely to be cut off if the United States decides to isolate Islamabad.

Some Pakistani observers say the internal threat from Islamic groups has been exaggerated, and that despite their emotional support for the Kashmiri cause, most Pakistanis are more concerned about their financial problems than the abstract notion of Islamic jihad, or holy war, espoused by the insurgent groups in Kashmir.

"Musharraf has to choose between jihad and modernization, because they cannot coexist," said Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani writer and analyst. "The fundamentalists are ready to pounce on him, but the people are much more worried about surviving than about Kashmir. They still trust Musharraf and they still fear and respect the army. If he does the right thing, they will respect it even more."

While acknowledging Musharraf's dilemma, Rashid said the general has little alternative if he wants to keep what support he has from Washington and prevent his reformist agenda from collapsing. After Musharraf seized power from a democratically elected government in a coup d'etat in October, U.S. officials gave him the benefit of the doubt because of his popularity inside Pakistan. Now they have warned him that their patience is running out.

"Clinton's message was that this is Musharraf's last chance," Rashid said. "He faces a stark choice, with limited time to deliver, but he will not get another reprieve."

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Clinton Scolds Pakistani Leader

Yahoo News
Morning Coffee Edition for Monday, March 27, 2000
By TERENCE HUNT AP White House Correspondent
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2565209227-667

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) _ Amid extraordinary security of decoy limousines and a last-minute plane switch, President Clinton admonished Pakistan's military ruler Saturday for a ``tragic squandering of effort, energy and wealth'' on nuclear weapons and confrontations with India. But Clinton's appeal for restraint seemed to go unheeded.

``Take the right steps now to prevent escalation, avoid miscalculation and reduce the risk of war,'' the president urged. He prodded Gen. Pervez Musharraf to restore democracy, crack down on terrorism and renew talks with India to ease their angry standoff over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir.

Clinton was the first U.S. president to visit Pakistan since 1969 and he brought a sobering warning of diplomatic isolation and worsening problems unless Islamabad changes course. It was a hard message for a nation that stood loyally with the United States through a half century of Cold War crises.

The president spelled out his concerns in a meeting at the presidential palace with Musharraf, who took power in a bloodless coup last October. Then, Clinton made an address on state-run television, asking citizens to consider whether a nuclear rivalry and border tensions with India will make Pakistan safer or improve living conditions.

``The answer to all these questions is no,'' he declared.

Clinton's visit concluded a six-day trip to South Asia, a region he has called perhaps the most dangerous in the world. Beginning his journey home, Clinton stopped in Oman for refueling and then flew to Geneva, Switzerland, to meet Syrian President Hafez Assad in hopes of renewing peace talks with Israel.

His plane pulled up beside Assad's plane shortly before 4:30 a.m., local time and the president headed straight for a hotel for a little rest before meeting with the Syrian leader there.

He met for a little over hour at the airport in Oman with Foreign Minister Youssef bin Alawi, who told reporters later that Clinton told him he was ``optimistic'' that Assad ``shares his feelings in finding solutions to resuming the Syrian-Israeli negotiations.'' bin Alawi told reporters.

At his own news conference, Musharraf said he told Clinton he would meet ``anywhere, at anytime and at any level'' with India to begin resolving their disputes. He said ``there was no deadlock at all'' between him and Clinton _ they even discussed golf.

``I think we got on pretty well together. I was also pretty diplomatic for a change,'' Musharraf said.

Security around Clinton was the tightest of any presidential trip in memory.

Streets were eerily empty except for thousands of rifle-toting soldiers and police. The president flew to Pakistan in an unmarked white Gulfstream jet after a carefully staged ruse at his departure from Bombay, India.

It had appeared Clinton was going to board an Air Force C-17 cargo jet but at the last second, he detoured around the plane and got on the Gulfstream, which was hidden behind the huge C-17.

Three hours later, a USA-marked decoy Gulfstream landed at Chaklala Airfield in Islamabad and pulled up at the arrival stand. But Clinton was not on board. About five minutes later the white plane carrying Clinton touched down. Six armored black limousines with American flags and seals and Washington license plates raced up to shield Clinton's arrival.

With helicopters hovering at the front and rear of his motorcade, Clinton was driven to the presidential palace where he held inconclusive talks with Musharraf. Despite the apparent lack of progress, the two leaders ended up with a clearer view of each other's positions, said White House press secretary Joe Lockhart.

Lockhart said he was unaware of any specific security threat in Pakistan but said it is in a dangerous neighborhood. Neighboring Afghanistan has given refuge to Osama bin Laden, blamed by the United States for the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998.

Trying to prevent Musharraf from claiming a public relations triumph from the meeting, the White House refused to allow any media coverage and instead released an official photo of the two leaders seated 12 feet across from each other.

In his televised address, Clinton acknowledged that Pakistan's democratic governments had failed to meet hopes that they would repair the economy and stem corruption.

``Successful democratic government takes time, patience and hard work,'' he said. ``The answer to flawed democracy is not to end democracy, but to improve it.''

Clinton's tone was one of disappointment with the path Pakistan has taken and optimism that it can get back on the right track.

``If you do not,'' the president warned, ``there is a danger that Pakistan may grow even more isolated, draining even more resources away from the needs of the people, moving even closer to a conflict that no one can win.''

He presented a clear list of conditions to remedy the relationship.

He called on Musharraf to produce a plan for the return of civilian democratic rule and to intensify efforts against terrorists.

Matching a plea he made to India, Clinton urged Pakistan to sign a nuclear test ban treaty to slow the arms race they started with nuclear tests in 1998. ``The whole world will rally around you if you do,'' the president said.

Calling for a reduction in tensions with India, Clinton said Pakistan must ``create conditions that will allow dialogue to succeed'' in resolving the Kashmir dispute, which nearly sparked a third war last summer.

While acknowledging Pakistan's concern about human rights in Kashmir, Clinton said that ``a stark truth must be faced. There is no military solution to Kashmir.''

And he dashed any hopes in Pakistan that the United States would step in to mediate a Kashmir settlement. India argues outside help would reward Pakistani violence.

During a five-day visit to India, Clinton made the same appeal for nuclear restraint and a dialogue on Kashmir. But the government in New Delhi showed little interest, although both sides said Clinton's visit had been a big step toward improving relations that soured over two decades of U.S. neglect. ___

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Kashmiri Groups Assail Clinton

Yahoo News
Morning Coffee Edition for Monday, March 27, 2000
By AMIR ZIA Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2565215829-657

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) _ Pakistan-based Muslim militants fighting India in disputed Kashmir sharply criticized President Clinton Sunday as an enemy of Islam.

During a two-hour meeting with Pakistan's military ruler on Saturday, Clinton pressed Gen. Pervez Musharraf to ease tensions with India and restrain Islamic militants from moving across a cease-fire that divides Kashmir between the two countries.

``Now America is openly siding with India, which shows that all anti-Islam forces are uniting against us,'' said Fazalur Rehman Khalil, the chief of Harakat-ul Mujahdeen, a group Washington wants shut down for its alleged involvement in terrorism.

Clinton, on the final leg Saturday of his weeklong South Asian tour, also pressed Pakistan's military ruler to make more of an effort to curb terrorism, which would include shutting down groups like Khalil's, and to move forward on nuclear nonproliferation.

Clinton has refused to mediate the Kashmir dispute, unless both India and Pakistan agree. India has flatly rejected international mediation.

Khalil said Clinton's refusal to broker talks to end the 52-year-old dispute was a disappointment.

``He has refused to become a mediator and instead has asked Pakistan to crush the people who are fighting a just cause,'' Khalil said in an interview with The Associated Press.

For more than 10 years militant Muslims have waged a secessionist insurgency in Indian-controlled Kashmir, demanding either outright independence or union with Islamic Pakistan. The portion of Kashmir that India controls is the only Muslim-majority region in predominantly Hindu country.

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Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2000 14:56 -0500 From: The White House Publications-Admin@pub.pub.whitehouse.gov

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary (Islamabad, Pakistan)

For Immediate Release
March 25, 2000

BACKGROUND PRESS BRIEFING BY A SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL ON THE PRESIDENT'S MEETINGS IN PAKISTAN

Islamabad, Pakistan 2:55 P.M. (L)

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Let me go through each of the meetings in a little bit more detail then. First of all, the meeting with President Tarar lasted, as Joe said, about 15 minutes. The President indicated his great happiness. President Tarar expressed his great happiness at having President Clinton here and how much the Pakistani people were eager to have him here.

President Clinton underscored his own interest in coming here. He noted the long history of friendly cooperation between the United States and Pakistan that actually goes back to the birth of Pakistan in the 1940s; our cooperation together during the Cold War; our work together in Afghanistan in dealing with Soviet invasion; our work over the years in fighting terrorism and the cooperation we've had on several occasions in that.

The meeting then broke and the President went over to the meeting with the Chief Executive. This meeting had about five or six on each side. On the American side it was the President, Sandy Berger, Secretary Albright, John Podesta, Ambassador Milam, an NSC notetaker. And on the Pakistani side, the Foreign Minister, the Foreign Secretary and some of the Chief Executive's chief aides were there.

As we've already indicated, this was a very good conversation, very serious, very frank, I think a very thorough conversation and covered all of the issues which are on both sides' agenda.

The President began by explaining why he was here -- that he came here because the United States does have a long history of friendship with Pakistan, of working with the Pakistani people; but secondly, because he's also worried about the direction Pakistan is moving in, and that there are trends here which disturb the United States and disturb the President in particular, and that he wanted to have the chance to come here and be honest and speak as an old friend of this country and listen to what they had to say.

The discussion began with a discussion about democracy. The President reiterated our support for an orderly restoration of democratic civilian rule. He urged the Chief Executive to develop a timetable and a road map for getting back to national-level civilian rule. He noted that just two days ago the Chief Executive had laid out plans for local and district elections, and that, while these are a step, what is needed is a game plan that will restore democracy at the top.

The President noted that democracies are growing in number throughout the developing world, and that Pakistan finds itself in an unusual position of working against the trends in the developing world today by having gone away from a democratic system.

There was an extended discussion on nonproliferation issues. The President laid out, as he did in New Delhi, our views that nuclear testing had not made Pakistan safer, did not enhance its deterrent capability, had not made the Pakistani people safer, and that, in fact, embarking upon a nuclear arms race was an expensive way to squander the country's wealth.

He urged early signature of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, cutoff in fissile material production, no export of technologies to other countries, firm export controls, and also restraint in the development and deployment of new systems.

Let me say in this regard that General Musharraf gave the President a very firm assurance that Pakistan would not be the source of the export of any dangerous technologies or weapons of mass destruction.

The discussion also covered terrorism. The President made clear, as he had in New Delhi, our very strong opposition to terrorism throughout the region, and in particular, encouraged General Musharraf to use the influence that Pakistan has with the Taliban to see that Usama bin Laden is brought to justice as soon as possible.

Regarding the Taliban in general, the President also raised our human rights concerns vis-a-vis the Taliban, particularly its treatment of women and minorities, and pressed the General, again, to do what he could with Pakistan's influence to assist in that area.

There was, not surprisingly, an extensive discussion of Pakistani relations with India and the Kashmir issue. As he did in New Delhi, the President made clear our view that there is no role for United States mediation in this issue, and that the road forward requires restraint, respect for the line of control, efforts to ensure an end to the violence, and a return to dialogue as soon as possible. The President underscored again the same message that he had in New Delhi, that there is no military solution to the Kashmir issue.

The President also discussed the trial of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and expressed continued interest in fair and transparent process, and underscored our view that the Prime Minister should not be executed.

The President raised a particular issue of terrorism, which is the issue of a missing American, Don Hutchins, who was kidnapped in Kashmir in 1995, and which his widow, Jane Shelley, has asked the government of Pakistan for any assistance it can provide in providing information that would lead to a determination of his fate. General Musharraf indicated that he would do what he could in this area.

In the larger meeting, there was a discussion of Pakistan's economic policies. General Musharraf briefed the President on the efforts he is trying to do to revive the Pakistani economy and to lift Pakistani people out of poverty. The President expressed support for economic reforms aimed at privatization, and he noted that the team that the Pakistani Prime Minister has put together to deal with economic issues is a very strong team.

General Musharraf then talked about his efforts to deweaponize Pakistani society and to outlaw the display of weapons. And he also spoke about his efforts to increase women's rights in Pakistan and to bring more women into positions of power in government and elsewhere.

As we indicated earlier, I think it was a serious discussion. It was frank. There was a great deal of engagement and give-and-take between the two leaders. There were no particular surprises. But I think the principal objective that we had developed for coming here, which was keeping open our lines of communication to the nation of Pakistan and to the leadership of Pakistan, we're well on the way to having accomplished.

Q Did the Chief Executive have any response to the appeal of democracy -- to the request that a timetable --

Q What was the question?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: He asked what was General Musharraf's response on the question of democracy. General Musharraf reiterated positions which we have heard previously, which is that in his judgment Pakistan's democracy before October was a deeply flawed one, and that he needed to set the stage for restoration of democracy by working from the ground up. He did not offer a timeline or an extended road map for the restoration of democracy.

Q Did he offer anything on terrorism, specifically to shut down any of the militant groups here like -- Mujahadeen? Anything specific on terrorism?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: He did indicate that he would make an effort to work with the Taliban leadership to bring Usama bin Laden to justice, or to find a resolution of the Usama bin Laden issue. You may be aware that he has earlier indicated a willingness to go to Kanduhar to meet with Mullah Omar. And he indicated he will continue his efforts to press in that area. But he did not make any commitments with regard to HUM.

Q What was the General's response to the President's position on Kashmir --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think that General Musharraf and the Pakistani government can speak better for themselves on their position. You know what their position is, and I --

Q What did he say?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: He didn't break any new ground in his position on that issue.

Q Did he secure any commitments from the General to reduce the level of violence along the line of control, or to reduce the infiltration -- India and Kashmir?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: The President certainly raised the issue of Pakistan using its influence to help build confidence on both sides of the line of control. But we heard no new assurances from the General.

Q On the democracy issue, did the General raise at all the idea that if the U.S. and the world don't deal with the likes of him, they might well be dealing with a radical fundamentalist regime here?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, he did not make that point. He did not make that argument.

Q -- did this point come up in the discussion?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Not in exactly those terms, but the President was clear his concern about violence in Kashmir, and using every effort in order to diminish it and bring about an end to it.

Q Is there any pressure on the President to mitigate against the impression that his visit here is an endorsement of the military dictatorship? And, is that going to be -- is there pressure on his message this afternoon to the people? And was there any sort of quid pro quo about his visit and allowing him to air this broadcast?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I wouldn't describe it as a quid pro quo. We made clear from the beginning of our discussions with them that the President would like to have that opportunity to speak to the Pakistani people. And I don't believe the Pakistani authorities have quarreled with that request.

On your other question, let me be very clear -- this is not an endorsement of a military government. This is not a state visit. I think we have made clear that business as usual between the United States and Pakistan is not possible until there is a restoration of normal civilian democratic rule. And I think if you look at the way this trip has been structured, I think we've made it very clear that this was a businesslike, straightforward meeting in order to maintain a communications channel.

Q -- the President asked Musharraf for respect of the line of control, what was Musharraf's response? And how did he reply --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: He did not use those words. Again, I think the Pakistanis are going to have every opportunity to describe their position, and I don't think it's my place to do it for them. I would only say that the President made very clear, as he had in New Delhi, our view, the so-called four Rs: restraint, respect for the line of control, reduction -- renunciation of violence, and a renewal of the dialogue. We did not get assurances from Pakistan of a change of their policy vis-a-vis infiltration or other things.

Q I mean, if they aren't going -- four Rs, what did the President say when he --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think the President was very eloquent in talking about the future, and asking -- in fact, he did this also in New Delhi -- asking the leadership, but particularly here, to look 10, 20 years out: Where do they want their countries to be? What do they want to have spent their nations' wealth on over the next 10 or 20 years -- weapons of mass destruction, a conflict in Kashmir? Those are alternatives which are designed, wittingly or unwittingly, to squander the tremendous potential and opportunity that the people of South Asia have for a better future.

And he appealed, both here and in New Delhi -- and you heard him in the speech to the Lok Sabha -- to look to a different kind of a future, a future in which the economic potential of both these countries and this entire subcontinent is realized.

Q -- both here and in New Delhi, how would you characterize the nuclear arms competition between the two countries? Is it fair or accurate to characterize this as a "race"? Or is it something less than that? How does the U.S. see that now?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, I think we made very clear our deep concern about the development of nuclear weapons systems and missile systems in South Asia. And we have made very clear that we think that that process needs to be fire-breaked now, that there needs to be agreement on no more testing, no more production on fissile material, restraint on the development and deployment of new weapons, and that the best way to ensure that there doesn't become a full-scale nuclear arms race is by taking those firebreaks now.

Q Did he have assurances of that, did he have assurance of those firebreaks?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No. I was very clear we do not have assurances, and that is something that is a work in progress and we will still have to work on.

Q What was General Musharraf's reaction -- (inaudible) --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Starting from the back and going forward, our understanding is that that limitation on public activities is limited only for the duration of our visit, as a security measure. And we certainly hope that that will be the case.

Regarding the massacre of the Sikhs, you know our position. The General did not specifically comment on it. And the one in the middle -- the General repeated a position which I think he stated publicly, that he is not a vindictive or vengeful man, but that this issue is up to the courts in order to decide.

Q -- (inaudible.)

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think that's a question better left to them to answer.

Q You made a point of singling out Musharraf's reaction to one of the agenda items on export control -- he reacted very positively. Can you tell us, on any of the other items was there a point when he bristled or reacted negatively to anything that Mr. Clinton --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, I don't think this was -- there were not obviously body movements showing bristling or reactions -- this was a civil, serious, and I think extremely frank and honest conversation.

Q So he agreed with everything the President said?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, I didn't say he agreed with it. I think they had a civil and frank conversation. There were many areas where they disagreed. I think I made that clear. But nobody stormed out in protest.

Q Beyond maintaining a line of communication, is there any reason now to be more optimistic than yesterday about the situation in this country with this leader?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think we've made -- certainly made every effort to make our position clear at the highest level in this country. And shortly the President will have an opportunity to make it clear to the people of Pakistan.

Q -- is this a direct quote where you said the President warned him that embarking on a nuclear arms race was an expensive way to squander the country's wealth? Were those the President's words or a paraphrase?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Those were paraphrased.

Q And on the economic talk that followed, was there something specifically that Musharraf was asking -- debt relief or some specific item on the table they were looking for?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, it was primarily a briefing by the Chief Executive of his policies.

Q Was there anything on how the United States might be helpful in that regard?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: As you know, under the sanctions imposed first on proliferation issues and then in reaction to the events of October, there's very little room for U.S. economic or other kinds of assistance for Pakistan.

Q -- did you get any clarity on any of these issues as a result of the discussions?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Regarding economic issues?

Q Well, I'm talking across the gamut.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think I've laid out the areas where I thought we heard some response. But I think most areas, this was honest, straight-forward. We didn't expect to come here and in an hour persuade the leadership here of the wisdom of all of our positions. But I think we made of where we are on this.

Q Are you leaving the region with any hope of a Musharraf-Vajpayee meeting?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We have no expectation or no reason to believe that's around --

Q Beyond the President's reiteration of the four Rs, did he have any response to General Musharraf's very different perspective on Kashmir --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think our policy and our views on Kashmir don't change when we travel from New Delhi to Islamabad. I think we have a position which is clear and which the President said in New Delhi, he was going to say the same thing when he came here, and that's what he did.

Q (Inaudible.)

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think there was -- I'll go back to what Joe said -- it was a very straightforward, serious, honest discussion in which we made very clear our positions. And we kept open an important line of communication to the leadership of a very important country in this part of the world.

Q Will there be future meetings?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We have no plans for future meetings, but I that doesn't mean I rule out the possibility of future meetings.

Q Do you expect any movement at all by Musharraf on CTBT? And did he at all raise the fact that the United States did not ratify it?

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Actually, the President raised the last point, as he has -- on every occasion that I've heard him raise CTBT in the last several months, and as he said in New Delhi, we hope the democratic system and the United States will produce ratification of the CTBT.

Q (Inaudible.)

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I wouldn't characterize the comment.

Q Back home the President is a supporter of the death penalty. Can you explain why the White House believes that it would be inappropriate for Musharraf to take --

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think our position here is based upon a reading of the unfortunate history of this country, and the execution of a Prime Minister in the past was not a step forward towards producing a long-term democratic path in this country.

THE PRESS: Thank you.

--------russia

Putin elected president of Russia

Washington Times
March 27, 2000
By Jamie Dettmer and David R. Sands
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000327223431.htm

MOSCOW - Vladimir Putin turned back an unexpectedly strong challenge from Communist rival Gennady Zyuganov yesterday to win a four-year term as president of Russia.

The low-key 47-year-old former KGB intelligence officer rocketed to power in the Kremlin just six months after being picked from obscurity by former President Boris Yeltsin last fall.

But his popularity, based on his decisive handling of the war in Chechnya, has peaked in recent weeks, and preliminary returns suggest Mr. Putin barely achieved the absolute majority needed to avoid a runoff against Mr. Zyuganov next month.

With 92 percent of the vote from yesterday's election counted by early today, Mr. Putin had almost 52 percent of the vote, enough to ensure victory and avoid a second round against the next highest vote winner.

Mr. Zyuganov was second with 29.6 percent, better than the 25 percent many polls had predicted. Yabloko Party candidate Grigory Yavlinsky, the main hope of free-market reformers in the race, finished a distant third with around 7 percent of the vote.

A definite surprise in the early returns was Aman Tuleyev, governor of the coal-mining region of Kemerovo and a former Communist. Picked to finish far down the list, Mr. Tuleyev led the better known Mr. Yavlinsky early in the evening before fading.

Mr. Putin's narrow mandate leaves him with a host of problems to deal with, from a weak economy to corruption and crime to the lingering military standoff in Chechnya.

The danger in the breakaway republic was underscored just hours after the polls closed yesterday when Russian officials announced a car bomb had been detonated in the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan, although it was not clear whether Chechen rebels were responsible.

In his remarks last night, Mr. Putin said that the surprising showing by the Communists underscored voter dissatisfaction. Russians have seen a sharp economic decline in recent years.

Having avoided specifics in the brief presidential campaign, Mr. Putin now must produce details on his plans to revive the Russian economy.

Voting was orderly and incident-free at a dozen polling stations around Moscow yesterday, on a mostly sunny day. Election officials reported few problems as voters pondered the blue sheet listing the 11 official candidates for president.

In Minskoe, a distant suburb of Moscow, an elderly woman who identified herself as Martina said she had voted for Yabloko candidate Grigory Yavlinsky, even though she expected Mr. Putin to win.

Guiding her bundled-up grandson out of the small administrative building that has served as the precinct's polling place since the time of Stalin, Martina said, "My big worry is the economy here. What can Mr. Putin do about this?"

She gestured to the half-completed Russian tract mansions, incongruously sited amid the rundown suburb, that had not been worked on since the ruble collapse of 1998.

But Mikhail Aksyenov, a 22-year-old construction worker, said he backed Mr. Putin even though he had growing doubts about the Chechnya war.

"Compared to the rest of them, he's the only one who can make a decision," he said.

Despite fears of voter apathy, election officials said turnout was generally brisk. At one Moscow voting station, 43 percent of the local residents had already voted by 11 a.m.

Even before the polls closed in Moscow, the Central Election Commission announced that more than 50 percent of eligible voters had cast ballots, removing a major Kremlin fear that the election could be nullified due to low turnout.

Election officials said last night that turnout actually topped 65 percent. Voting was even held, with mixed results, in the war-torn republic of Chechnya, where Russian forces continue to battle determined Chechen resistance forces and many people have been driven from their homes.

In the election campaign, the Kremlin ensured blanket coverage for Mr. Putin in the state-controlled media - the two state-owned television channels that dominate the airwaves in Russia provided respectful coverage of Mr. Putin and launched harsh attacks on his rivals, notably on Mr. Yavlinsky.

The country's 89 regional governors were pressed to back Mr. Putin and with just one or two exceptions offered their allegiance.

Few of Russia's main politicians or businessmen resisted Kremlin overtures to join the Putin bandwagon.

Liberal and reform critics of Mr. Putin, who are anxious about his KGB background, complained throughout the campaign that the poll smacked of a Soviet-era election with its sense of a foregone conclusion.

That view was echoed by some voters who went to the polling stations to back Mr. Yavlinsky.

"Putin is dangerous. He seems too harsh," said Muscovite Anna Polevaya, a 27-year-old architect.

"I don't know Putin, and I am even afraid of him. He scares me," said Svetlana Fralova, 37, in the central Siberian city of Novosibirsk. But the majority of Russians were ready to embrace Mr. Putin because of his promise to restore strong central government and to revive Russia's fortunes.

"I'm tired of all this disorder," said Vladimir Prishchev, a pensioner casting his ballot for Mr. Putin in Russia's Pacific port city of Vladivostok.

Yesterday's poll was called when Mr. Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned on Dec. 31, thrusting then-Prime Minister Putin into the acting presidency.

Russia was due for presidential elections in June but the timetable was moved up - to the anger of Mr. Putin's political opponents, who complained that the Kremlin was forcing on them virtually a snap election.

Casting his ballot in Moscow, Mr. Yeltsin said he was sure reforms would continue. "Everyone is waiting for change. There will be some changes but the main thing is that the reform course must be maintained and it will be. I am sure of this," he said.

---

KGB Past No Problem For Putin
Secret Police Credential Appeals to Russian Voters

By Susan B. Glasser and Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, March 27, 2000; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-03/27/107l-032700-idx.html

MOSCOW, March 26-The young couple huddled close against the cold this afternoon and gazed up at the towering statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the secret Soviet police agency that would become the feared KGB.

The pair said they had just cast presidential ballots for Vladimir Putin. The reason was simple: Putin used to be an agent for the KGB and later headed its domestic successor. "Absolutely it prepared him to be president," said Sergei, 24. Lena, 19, agreed: "It gave him a certain kind of discipline. He takes on his responsibilities. You can depend on him."

Sergei, dressed in a pressed white shirt with black coat and black tie, pulled out his wallet to explain his thinking: a badge identifying him as a member of the same Federal Security Service that produced Putin. He asked that his last name not be used, but maintained that most Russians were proud of Putin's professional history as a spy. "They like it," Sergei said as he took a drag on a cigarette. "They see them as strong. They see it as severe, harsh."

As more than 70 million voters headed to the polls today in only the third democratic presidential election in the nation's history, many Russians made clear they were supporting Putin in part because of his KGB service, not in spite of it. The same quality that has made him a figure of suspicion and worry in the West appealed to voters here looking for the firm-handed leader they lacked in Boris Yeltsin's final, illness-ridden years in office.

Around Moscow today--at a polling station in the western part of the city, amid the amusement rides of Gorky Park and on the grounds at the House of Artists where statues of fallen Communist icons are on display--interviews with dozens of voters demonstrated that many Russians view the KGB and its stalwarts through a strikingly different lens than their Western contemporaries.

They were not looking for another Dzerzhinsky, whose stern likeness greeted visitors outside the KGB's Lubyanka headquarters for more than 30 years before the statue was toppled after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But in supporting Putin, they saw a KGB man as a safe choice for a country that has experienced nine years of turbulence and uncertainty.

"He knows what order is," said Tatiana Gosudreva, who works at a state-run pension fund and voted for Putin. "There's nothing bad about his work" for the KGB, said Nina Shpilyevaya, a retired schoolteacher who also said she voted for Putin. "It's experience."

Sergei Mochalov, a businessman taking time out from a walk through Gorky Park with his 6-month-old baby, agreed. "It's helped him because he's used to working in complex conditions," he said. "We think that in the West the CIA is scary."

Russians are more accustomed to spy masters as their leaders--three of Yeltsin's prime ministers had headed the secret services--but Putin's years in espionage define him to many voters more vividly because, otherwise, he is largely a blank slate. While refusing to spell out a detailed platform for his presidency, Putin has made it clear that his will be a government focused on order.

Still, many Putin supporters expressed confidence that, despite his tough talk, he would not return Russia to a dictatorship. "It's hard to turn the country backward," said Gosudreva. Her husband Sergei, munching on popcorn, nodded his head in agreement--despite having voted for the lone woman on today's 11-candidate ballot in what he acknowledged was a futile gesture of protest.

A strong majority of those interviewed today were supporting Putin. In the western Moscow neighborhood bordered by the forest where Stalin's favorite dacha still stands, 13 out of 20 voters interviewed this afternoon said they had voted for Yeltsin's heir apparent, three were supporting liberal reformer Grigory Yavlinsky and just one, a native of Kazakhstan critical of Putin's war in Chechnya, voted for Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov. Virtually all of the voters here backed Yeltsin over Zyuganov four years ago, in the previous presidential election.

This time, many turned to Putin for what they said was the lack of any serious alternative. Several younger voters said they supported him despite strong concerns about his conduct of the military campaign against Chechen separatists and reservations about his nebulous agenda.

"We really don't know much about him," complained Irina Solomatina, 24, after emerging from the polling place in Matveyevskoye, where she said she voted for Putin. "It may all be deceptive."

But Solomatina's qualms centered mostly on Putin's future, not his past. Like others, she mentioned his relative youth--Putin is 47, while Yeltsin is 69--and said his KGB experience "may even be good."

Vladimir Surovstev, 44, who works in construction, said he voted for Yavlinsky out of fear of what Putin might do. "We are afraid that everything is going to end up like it used to be," he said. "Just like in the past four years, corruption is going to flower." But Putin's KGB history was not a disqualifier; he said he wanted to vote for Yevgeny Primakov, another former spy-master-turned-prime-minister, who chose not to run.

There are a few dissenters, however. Putin's KGB background is "kind of scary," said Rada Protsenko, the wife of a businessman and a Yavlinsky supporter. Asked to explain why many other Russians viewed Putin's intelligence background as an asset, she said, "They want a firm hand; we are afraid of this."

"We want democracy, not a firm hand," she said, as her 5-year-old daughter, dressed in a bright red snowsuit, skidded down the ice outside the polling place. "Who is Mr. Putin? Where did he come from?"

---

Putin Wins Russia's Presidency, Narrowly Avoiding a Runoff

New York Times
March 27, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/27cnd-russia.html

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Forum
Join a Discussion on Putin and the Direction of Russia
http://forums.nytimes.com/webin/WebX?13@@.f056025

MOSCOW -- Vladimir Putin, taking the helm of a weak, unwieldy Russia as its second democratically elected president, admitted to voters Monday that he has no swift solutions to the poverty and corruption that bedevil his nation.

Putin ordered the government to pay off wage debts to state workers, and said a first order of business after his convincing victory in Sunday's election would be selecting a prime minister.

Putin has promised to protect democratic freedoms, but has yet to indicate how he would carry the sprawling nation into the post-Boris Yeltsin era. Putin, 47, was named acting president when Yeltsin resigned Dec. 31.

"New people are likely to appear" when Putin names his government, Dmitry Kozak, the government chief of staff, said Monday.

After he is inaugurated in early May, Putin will appoint a prime minister, who will then form a government, the Interfax news agency cited Kozak as saying. As acting president, Putin retained the position of prime minister, which he has held since Yeltsin appointed him in August.

Many Russians hope Putin will distance himself from Yeltsin, whose unpredictability and poor health -- along with allegations of corruption within his inner circle -- contributed to his political demise.

Putin's levelheaded, firm-handed approach impressed voters. Russians like his pledges to restore the country's military might, fight corruption, and battle poverty and social injustice.

They also admire his uncompromising stance against rebels in Chechnya -- although ending the war gracefully could prove a major challenge.

In a statement Monday, President Clinton congratulated Putin for his victory but used the opportunity to express U.S. dismay over the situation in Chechnya.

Putin spoke by telephone Monday with Chinese President Jiang Zemin of China, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other leaders offering their congratulations.

At a news conference as election returns were coming in, Putin acknowledged the enormity of the overall task facing him and said he could promise no quick fixes.

"The level of expectations is very high. People are tired and struggling and they're hoping for things to get better, but miracles don't happen," he said.

Later, Putin met with government ministers and ordered wage debts to state workers to be paid in full by April 1, according to Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko. Under Yeltsin, the cash-starved government often let pensions and wages go unpaid for months.

With 95.5 percent of the vote counted, Putin led with 52.6 percent. Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, who put up a stronger-than-expected election fight, was second with 29.3 percent. Liberal Grigory Yavlinsky was third with 5.8 percent; eight other candidates lagged far behind.

Putin said his government would have to take into account the millions who voted against him. He said he would consider bringing opposition groups into the government if they shared his views.

"Our policy must be more balanced, take into account the existing realities and aim at increasing living standards," he said.

Though the vote was only Russia's second democratic presidential election, international election observers deemed the balloting free and fair.

Zyuganov, however, accused the government of falsifying the results, saying the Communist vote was more than 40 percent.

"They have set up a zone of blanket fraud to cheat citizens," he said.

Putin's campaign chief, Dmitry Medvedev, dismissed Zyuganov's claims.

Medvedev also denied that the so-called oligarchs, Russian moguls who financed Yeltsin's 1996 re-election campaign, played a role in Putin's victory.

"The oligarchs will be distanced from power," Medvedev told reporters.

---

NEWS ANALYSIS
Washington Bites Its Nails as Russian Votes Are Tallied

New York Times
March 27, 2000
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/032700russia-elect-assess.html

Related Articles
The Overview: Putin Narrowly Wins Russian Election in the First Round
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http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/032700russia-voters.html

Issue in Depth
Russia's Presidential Election
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/russia-election-index.html

MOSCOW, Monday, March 27 -- When Acting President Vladimir V. Putin met behind closed doors last month with Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, he made an unusual appeal that Russia be considered a member of the Western club.

Mr. Putin said he liked to eat Chinese food, knew how to use chopsticks and regularly practiced judo.

"But that's exotic stuff," Mr. Putin said, according to aides who attended the session. "That's not our mentality. Our mentality is European."

The Clinton administration has a lot riding on a Putin victory and has been heartened by his remarks about the need to integrate Russia with the West.

Administration officials are not only anxious to get American-Russian relations back on track after a year and a half of drift since the collapse of the ruble in August 1998. In an election year, they also want to silence Republicans who have charged that Russia fell off the path of economic reform on President Clinton's watch.

And they would like to seal the Clinton presidency with a major arms control accord, one that would slash long-range nuclear arms and enable the United States to field a new network of antimissile defenses.

But Mr. Putin's autocratic instincts have cast a shadow over Washington's hopes. Setbacks on human rights or fresh reports of Russian atrocities in Chechnya would be major obstacle to closer relations, especially in an American election year.

"Clinton would like a strong leader he can work with but not one that is unleashed," said Toby T. Gati, who was a senior State Department official during the Clinton administration. "The hope is that Putin will turn out to be a reformer. The president and his advisers want to show Yeltsin left a legacy of reform that Putin can build on. They want to rebut the critics who say their Russia policy was a mistake."

With a complex agenda of overlapping and competing interests, there is no simple answer to what a Putin presidency could mean for Washington.

The prospect for closer ties is more favorable in the economic sphere, where Mr. Putin's goals overlap with Western interests, than in the area of security and human rights issues, where the two sides often collide.

On economics, Mr. Putin has signaled that he wants to establish the foundations of a modern capitalist state, not because he has a romantic infatuation with the free market, but because he understands that Russia must attract foreign investment and overhaul its rust belt industries to become a world power.

"A country where weakness and poverty reign cannot be strong," Mr. Putin wrote in an open letter to the Russian people.

To that end, Mr. Putin and his top aides have talked about overhauling the tax code, protecting the rights of shareholders, phasing out subsidies to money-losing enterprises and tackling politically dicey issues such as establishing the right to own land.

American officials have been impressed by Mr. Putin's talk of economic change, including his insistence that he wants Russia to be integrated into the world economy. They say he appears interested in achieving concrete results and understands that a boom in oil prices that has helped the Russian economy is not a substitute for reform.

Much will depend, of course, on Mr. Putin's willingness to challenge the tycoons who dominate much of the Russian economy so that he can level the playing field for business and investors.

Clinton administration officials are already discussing steps the West might take to demonstrate its support if Mr. Putin does undertake serious reform.

They include expanding assistance by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, rescheduling Russian debt and having the United States Export-Import Bank step up its efforts to encourage investment in Russia.

"I hope the 'Who lost Russia?' debate is behind us," Thomas R. Pickering, an under secretary of state and a former American ambassador to Moscow, recently told a business group in Washington.

But economics is just one part of the agenda. Arms control and foreign policy are also important. And while Mr. Clinton has said Mr. Putin is someone "we can do business with," Mr. Putin's nationalism, his background as a K.G.B. officer and his domestic constituency may make him less cooperative than Washington would like.

Administration officials are pleased that during his February meeting with Secretary Albright, Mr. Putin dispensed with diatribes against Washington's plans for a limited antimissile defense.

Instead, Mr. Putin said his goal was to preserve the principles of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. Administration officials hope that this vague formulation reflected a new, if cautious, sense of pragmatism -- one that might open the door to a grand bargain on offensive and defensive systems in which the treaty would be modified to accommodate the American antimissile program. Even if the Russians are willing to negotiate over the matter, though, the discussions may prove difficult.

The Russian military is strongly opposed to the antimissile program. And though Mr. Putin recently restored ties with NATO, the political climate in Russia is not conducive to wrenching compromises with the West.

The percentage of Russians who believe that Washington's hidden goal is to take advantage of their country's weakness is at a new high, the Clinton administration's own survey of Russian opinion indicates. The recent survey reports that 81 percent of Russians believe that the United States wants to reduce Russia to a second-rate power, up from 59 percent in 1995.

The mistrust stems from NATO's decision to expand eastward, the Western alliance's war with Serbia and the generally harsh indictment of Russia by Western politicians and the Western news media.

"Maybe the West thinks it knows what Putin will do on the ABM treaty, but it is wishful thinking," Georgi A. Arbatov, the veteran specialist on American-Russian relations, said about the arms control treaty. "We really don't know what Putin has in mind. The attitude in Russia is against building of antimissile defenses."

There is also Chechnya. The brutal war has been temporarily pushed out of the news by the Russian election, but it is still raging.

The West has denounced the indiscriminate attacks against civilians there but has been careful not to link the issue with the question of assistance from the monetary fund or other policy objectives.

But even with the best of intentions, a strategic alliance between the United States and Russia remains a remote possibility. The 47-year-old Mr. Putin is not only likely to re-energize relations with the West. He is likely to intensify diplomacy on other fronts, including former Soviet republics as well as Iran and China.

Clinton administration officials are also well aware of Mr. Putin's talent for telling his audience what it wants to hear. And some take his talk of Russia's fondness for the West's mentality and values with a large grain of salt. Just imagine, they say, what Mr. Putin will say about the United States when he meets with the Chinese.

---

Little big man who now rules Russia

London Evening Standard
03/27/00
by Nicholas Bethell
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/news/story.html?in_review_id=267982&in_review_text_id=214441

Usually, when Russia holds elections, people pour in to observe, but this time it was hardly worth the trip. Vladimir Putin won the presidency on the first round, leaving foreigners wondering what is his secret, how such a little man can rise from nothing to the presidency, what sort of country Russia must be where this can happen.

He only just won. The crucial 50 per cent mark was passed only around midnight. For several hours it looked as if we were in for a second round. There was no enthusiasm and the communists with their 30 per cent did better than expected. They may be "a party of protest", as Mr Putin claims. But one cannot help wondering whether one day a Communist Party of Russia will re-emerge. The Putin party still has no manifesto other than victory in the Chechnya war. But this appears to have been enough.

The Russians have since 1989 been defeated again and again, losing more territory until Mr Putin appeared and, using Russia's imperial methods, showed himself ready to draw a line in Chechnya across the sand of their humiliation. Most Russians do not want to bring the Soviet system back, but they are nostalgic for the Soviet Union, which was strong. They liked their country being on a par with America. Then, they feel, they were suddenly and unfairly attacked by the countries they liberated from Germany. Their allies, Poland and Hungary, turned against them and their rule was overthrown in 15 other communist nations, leaving substantial Russian minorities to face the jungle of the market economy and foreign policy outside the Motherland's protection.

At home Russians face an upsurge in crime, a corrupt police force and a wayward judicial system. The law does not protect the right. It is distorted by corruption. Indeed it hardly exists. It is hard to do business amid such chaos and there are several hundred thousand innocent people in Russia's prisons. Any Russian family with sons fears the onset of military age and conscription into an army where trained soldiers treat recruits almost as brutally as Chechen prisoners. Every year several hundred are killed by their own sergeants and corporals. Others hang themselves. The numbers of deserters runs into tens of thousands. If a payment is made in the right quarter, the young man does not serve. Time-bomb nuclear reactors generate much of the electricity. Ancient nuclear submarines leak plutonium and anyone who complains is likely to have the new KGB knocking on his door. The worm has turned. Many of the old Soviet rulers ought to be in jail, but they think they have a grievance, so liberalism is out and the security forces are back on their pedestal.

And yet, there is freedom of a sort, and the beginnings of prosperity. This is what the election was about. Political parties come and go, but the Press is ready to challenge the government without fear of the gulag. The fat state salaries are gone. Communist Party members are no longer showered with privileges. We read about the new multi-millionaires, with their bodyguards and yachts, who rule Russia, but more important is the new middle class thrown up by the free-market economy. They run small businesses, kiosks on the street with electricity borrowed from an open window. These are the entrepreneurs who make enough money for a family holiday or a second-hand car. They are the real reason why Mr Putin topped 50 per cent and why the communists find it hard to get past 30 per cent.

-------- russia

Russia tests two ageing sea-based missiles

March 27, 2000
http://news.excite.com/news/r/000327/08/arms-russia-launch

MOSCOW, March 27 (Reuters) - Russia's navy said it launched two old submarine-based ballistic missiles on Monday as part of a programme to extend the life of outdated weaponry, adding the crew dedicated the "fireworks" to new President Vladimir Putin. The RSM-54 missiles, called Skiff in NATO's classification, were launched in the Barents Sea at 10 a.m. (0600 GMT) and at 1 a.m. (0900 GMT) from the Karelia 667 BDRM nuclear submarine, or Delta IV under U.S. Defence Department classification.

Their warheads hit the Kura testing ground in Kamchatka in Russia's Far East half an hour later.

"The missiles were launched as previously scheduled with the purpose of extending the shelf life of this type of rocket," the spokesman said, adding that the crew dedicated the launch to Putin's victory in a presidential election on Sunday.

"The launch became a kind of fireworks in honour of the election of Vladimir Putin as president and the armed forces' commander-in-chief," he said.

RSN-54 missiles were commissioned in 1986. They can carry four or 10 separate warheads but modifications with 10 warheads have never been deployed.

Russia has encountered severe difficulties financing replacements for its ageing missile fleet and has opted not to decommission many of its existing rockets.

It has conducted a series of test launches of such missiles over the last months and has said they have proved to be in good enough condition to remain in service for several more years.

Putin has emphasised the importance of Russia's vast nuclear arsenal as the cornerstone of its defence system and a powerful deterrent against any large-scale attack.

-------- us nuc facilities

Sickened Nuke Workers To Get Money

Yahoo News
March 27, 2000
By KATHERINE RIZZO
Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2565193024-2a0

WASHINGTON (AP) _ A top Energy Department official says Clinton administration agencies have resolved their disagreement over expanding an offer of financial aid to sickened workers at nuclear weapons plants.

The administration already has proposed a $17 million compensation offer for some workers who have been fighting serious illnesses because of on-the-job exposure to dangerous levels of radiation.

But other exposed workers have not yet been offered compensation.

During a congressional hearing Thursday, Deputy Energy Secretary T.J. Glauthier confirmed that the idea of expanding the compensation program had drawn dissent from the Office of Management and Budget and the Justice and Defense departments. But as of this week, he said, ``Those agencies have dropped their opposition.''

The government does not yet know how many of its weapons plant workers were sickened over the last 40 years by materials they handled without proper protection.

The Energy Department has proposed spending $17 million to compensate:

_Workers at any nuclear weapons facility who contracted deadly beryllium disease because of contact with that dangerous material.

_Workers at the Paducah (Ky.) Gaseous Diffusion Plant who were exposed to plutonium and other radioactive materials.

_Some Oak Ridge, Tenn., workers who contracted radiation-related diseases.

The offer did not include Paducah's sister plant in Piketon, Ohio, prompting an outcry from workers there who suffer from cancer and other illnesses that can be caused by radiation exposure.

After questioning Glauthier before the House Commerce Committee's energy and power subcommittee, Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio, whose district includes Piketon, said he was still unhappy.

Glauthier ``still would not say definitively, unambiguously, that this compensation package would be extended to the Piketon workers,'' Strickland said.

Glauthier said the Energy Department moved quickly upon confirming that Paducah workers were exposed to dangerous levels of plutonium but were never warned or given any special protection.

The department is still examining the extent to which some plutonium-laced uranium was handled at the Piketon plant, and the repercussions to workers' health.

So much evidence of Paducah exposure was available, Glauthier said, ``We felt we could propose compensation at the Paducah site. The question was, should we delay and do both later.''

On the Net: Written testimony from Energy Department: http://www.house.gov/commerce/

---- california

Brockovich's Work Is Just Beginning
Movie Only Start of PG&E's Woes

By Christine Hanley
The Associated Press
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/business/DailyNews/brockovich000327.html

KETTLEMAN HILLS, Calif., March 27 - In the No. 1 hit Erin Brockovich, many moviegoers are seeing how a brash young legal secretary forced Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to pay a record $333 million settlement for poisoning the water in a small California desert town.

But the movie's story of environmental villainy is only the beginning of the legal and public relations nightmare Brockovich has created for the utility company.

A bigger, broader lawsuit is headed to trial in November against San Francisco-based PG&E and one of its main suppliers.

About 1,500 employees, their families, other residents and farmers who lived or worked near three PG&E gas-compressor plants contend their water supplies also were contaminated with harmful levels of cancer-causing chromium 6 from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Being Portrayed by Roberts Helps

The tough-talking, streetwise Brockovich is trying to find every last person who may have been exposed. Being portrayed on screen by Julia Roberts hasn't hurt. In the movie's first week, 40 to 50 potential plaintiffs called.

"We won't feel resolved - morally, ethically, or legally - until we have found everyone we were supposed to," said Brockovich, 39. "And I will keep working until we do."

PG&E has said little about the accuracy of the movie or its effect on the litigation.

"Our general response with respect to the movie is just that we recognize it's a dramatization. It's an entertainment vehicle," spokesman Greg Pruett said. He added that PG&E officials "don't really have any thoughts" about how the film might affect the company's image or influence jurors.

"I will say this: I do believe that when the case is brought to trial, we will mount a very spirited and vigorous defense," he said. "And we are confident we will be successful in that defense."

'Erin Did Most of the Work'

Brockovich, who was hired by lawyer Ed Masry even though she had no college degree or technical experience, was looking at files for a real estate case in 1992 when she found medical reports about low T-cell counts and other blood problems among residents of the town of Hinkley.

Curious, she drove her beat-up car out to the Mojave Desert town - about 130 miles northeast of Los Angeles, near the Arizona state line - and began a quest that lasted four years.

"Erin did most of the work," Masry, played by Albert Finney in the movie, said of the research that uncovered the Hinkley pollution scandal that brought compensation for 652 Hinkley residents in 1996.

Brockovich earned $2 million for herself. But she wasn't done snooping around.

Suspecting similar problems at other PG&E plants, Brockovich and Masry drove out to Kettleman Hills in California's Central Valley, where employees and their families once lived onsite in a complex they called Camp PG&E.

From Nosebleeds to Fatal Diseases

Masry looked at the cooling towers and the buildings abandoned in the mid-1980s and saw no sign of contamination. He told Brockovich to drop it.

But she noticed a white powder on the needles of the tamarisk trees, an abnormality she remembered from Hinkley. And soon, she was at it again, mining records and tracking down anyone who lived or worked at Kettleman. Among the boxloads of documents she copied was a 1964 letter from the U.S. Interior Department notifying PG&E about unhealthy levels of chromium 6 in Kettleman's water well.

The Kettleman plaintiffs accuse PG&E of contaminating the water they used for drinking, bathing, swimming and watering crops. They say the water gave them everything from nosebleeds to fatal diseases.

The case also includes about 150 people from Hinkley who missed out on the first lawsuit and about 20 from a plant in nearby Topock who also claim they were sickened by chromium. Also being sued is Betz Laboratories Inc. of Pennsylvania, which supplied the chromium, one of the chemicals used to cool natural gas.

Unlike the lawsuit depicted in the movie, PG&E has not offered binding arbitration, which would bring a swift outcome. Lawyers for the plaintiffs say PG&E is trying to prolong the proceedings so that there will be fewer survivors.

PG&E declined to respond to that allegation or any other related to the lawsuit.

'Making Us Victims Again'

Gary Praglin, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, said at least 50 people have died since the case was filed about five years ago. Their include cancer, kidney and liver diseases, serious respiratory problems and colon diseases like Crohn's.

Ruth Ann Vaughn, who spent the first 10 of her 47 years at Camp PG&E, recalls the innocent days she spent floating boats carved from Ivory soap in the cooling ponds, or being sprayed by the mist from the cooling towers as she rode on the handlebars of her brother's bike to buy bubblegum from a company snack machine.

She blames chromium exposure for her Crohn's disease and the loss of her sister and mother, who died of multiple organ failure in the early 1990s. And she wants PG&E to pay.

"They need to take care of the people they've harmed," Vaughn said, her voice cracking. "They've killed innocent children, moms, dads and families, for profit. And then instead of doing the right thing, they continue to cover it up and they're making us victims again."

---- idaho

Settlement blocks INEEL incinerator
Rest of waste facility could go ahead

By Rocky Barker
The Idaho Statesman
http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/0327incinerator.htm

A radioactive waste incinerator proposed for eastern Idaho has been put on hold, opponents said Sunday.

Federal Department of Energy officials and environmentalists have reached an agreement settling a lawsuit that would allow construction of a $1.2 billion plant to treat radioactive and hazardous waste to go forward. But the incinerator would be pulled from the design, said Steve Hopkins, Snake River Alliance program associate.

A blue-ribbon science panel will be commissioned to look at technological alternatives to the incinerator, according to a copy of the settlement agreement obtained by The Idaho Statesman. The federal government will seek changes in regulations that require incineration of a small portion of waste stored in barrels at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, the document says.

A crushing plant and other treatment equipment at the plant will be allowed, the settlement agreement states.

"At least for now, we've stopped the prospect of an incinerator," Hopkins said.

A 1995 court-enforced deal between Idaho and Energy Department officials for cleanup and removal of waste from the INEEL required the federal agency to build the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project. Morrison-Knudsen Corp. and its partner, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., had won the contract to design, build and operate the facility.

The plant would process an estimated 65,000 cubic meters of long-lived, low-level waste now stored at the INEEL.

Once reduced, the waste is slated for shipment to an underground dump in New Mexico for permanent disposal.

Earlier this month, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson promised a decision on the facility by April 1. Energy and Department of Justice officials initiated settlement talks March 22, Hopkins said.

The alliance and four other environmental groups sued in September 1999, alleging the government had not properly followed environmental laws in pushing the incinerator.

Contact Rocky at 377-6484 or rbarker@boise.gannett.com

---

Environmental Groups Claim Win over Plutonium Incinerator

March 27, 2000
Contact: Chuck Broscious, 208-835-6152
Environmental Defense Institute

Gerry Spence, attorney for the environmental organizations announced last night that the Department of Energy (DOE) agreed to settle the suit challenging the Plutonium Incinerator slated for Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL). The groups include Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free, Environmental Defense Institute, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, Sierra Club, and Snake River Alliance.

This settlement agreement represents a significant win for us in terms of eliminating yet another unnecessary source of radiation pollution of our air. Similar incinerators were shut down by citizen suits in California, New Mexico, and Colorado. DOE thought Idahoans and Wyoming residents do not care about the dangers of radiation. This major victory shows how hard the people will fight for our environment and our children's future. The main terms in the settlement agreement include:

DOE agrees to postpone any further permit activities for the incinerator portion of the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Project at INEEL.

DOE will ask EPA and Idaho to issue partial permits which allow the non-incinerator part of the project to go forward. This involves the waste characterization and "super compactor" part of the project, which will identify waste types and then use compaction to reduce volume of the wastes for shipment to WIPP in New Mexico. Eliminating the incinerator portion of the project vastly reduces the environmental threat of the AMWTP.

DOE agrees to be "committed to pursue the goal of environmentally sound alternatives to incineration" on a nationwide basis. It will pursue that goal, in part, by appointing a "blue ribbon" panel of independent scientists to study non incineration alternatives.

At a minimum, DOE will not further pursue the INEEL incinerator until after the blue ribbon panel releases its conclusions.

Plaintiffs will dismiss the federal court case in Wyoming without prejudice to refiling if DOE decides later to pursue the incinerator.

DOE agrees to pay perhaps as much as $150k in attorney and expert fees which Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free has incurred.

All plaintiffs may pursue the petition to DOE to "debar" British Nuclear Fuels as a federal contractor. BNFL is the contractor DOE chose to build and operate the plutonium incinerator.

---- kentucky

Workers describe conditions at Paducah plant

Associated Press March 27, 2000
http://www.sunsix.com/pw/PaducahSun/news/2000/March/mar27c.html

PADUCAH, Ky. - A former employee of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant met with a midlevel Atomic Energy Commission official 30 years ago to discuss conditions at the facility, which is now the target of a $10 billion federal lawsuit, The Paducah Sun reported.

Harold Hargan, 68, worked as a chemical operator at the facility from 1953 until 1992. In 1970, Hargan decided to meet with Carl Humphrey, then a middle manager with the AEC, and describe conditions at the plant, the newspaper reported in a copyright story published on Sunday.

He painted a harrowing picture, describing in detail incidents of drums leaking radioactive materials into ditches which eventually emptied into the Ohio River and the careless handling of a toxic degreasing chemical. He also said alcohol was abused by hourly workers and managers and added that he saw his foreman drinking whiskey with an operator inside a building called C-400, where uranium-enriching equipment was cleaned and where precious metals were extracted from nuclear weapons parts.

''Ignorance and apathy were rampant,'' said Hargan. ''Some people just didn't give a damn. When you mix alcohol with that, you've got a hell of a problem.''

Hargan said he once noticed a blue haze coming from a 55-gallon drum that was supposed to contain uranium oxide. He said he removed the lid and found that the haze was coming from dry ice to keep beer cold. The alcohol was hidden in a dusty, dirty building where equipment was used to pulverize material that contained toxins and radiation, Hargan said.

Besides drinking on the job, some workers were smuggling dismantled guns into the plant and using a substance called ''black magic'' in C-400 to clean and coat the firearms, Hargan said. Another practice was using gold, extracted from nuclear weapons circuitry in C-400, to plate the triggers of guns, he said.

Humphrey secretly sent investigators to the plant after meeting with Hargan and they ''validated some of Harold's allegations,'' Humphrey said. ''I was never knowledgeable about what happened, but when they visited out there, I know there were some management realignments.''

Hargan said that a few supervisors and managers suddenly were no longer at the plant after the visit by the AEC investigators.

In 1986, Hargan went to an attorney and gave a sworn statement about the allegations he made to the AEC official 16 years earlier. Last year, Hargan and Cairo, Ill., attorney Jim Flummer retrieved the statement as an avalanche of publicity mounted about past unsafe practices at the plant.

Flummer said he was shocked at the allegations and spent considerable time investigating them.

''Based on my interviews with Mr. Hargan and interviews with many other former employees, I'm of the opinion that Mr. Hargan is extremely credible,'' Flummer said.

Another worker, Don Copeland, corroborates some of Hargan's allegations. Copeland, a 33-year employee, managed one of the huge enrichment buildings during the latter part of his career. He said alcohol was abused at annual supervisors' parties, usually held at the Paducah Country Club.

''It went on so long until supervisors would get so drunk they wanted to fight. One finally pulled a knife on another one at one of the parties,'' Copeland said. ''They finally had to stop it because it got too rowdy. It was all paid for by the federal government.''

Copeland also said that forklift drivers often punctured drums filled with radioactive materials and workers were asked to clean up the mess with ordinary brooms, dustpans and waste cans.

Both Hargan and Copeland are named as plaintiffs in a lawsuit alleging that past plant contractors poisoned workers and the public by putting profit ahead of safety.

The contractors, Union Carbide and Lockheed Martin corporations, deny the claims made in U.S. District Court in Paducah last year. Union Carbide ran the plant from its construction in 1952 until 1984. Lockheed Martin, formerly Martin Marietta, operated the facility from 1984 until last year.

---- tennessee

Testimony of J. E. Phelps to the Sen. Thompson gas diffusion hearing of 3-22-2000
March 27, 2000

To: Senator Fred Thompson Senate Governmental Affairs Committee 340 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510

Dear Honorable Senators:

Let me begin with thanking Senators Thompson and Voinovich for raising the worker health problems to open senate committee process and receiving written testimony in order to accurately address the extent of the problems and seek more effective remedies.

I submit my testimony as a former senior staff development engineer of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) working in the areas of radiation detection and measurements and site remediation, and with knowledge of problems at the K-25 site and DOE sites in general.

During the mid 1980s at ORNL, layoffs at the K-25 plant brought workers from K-25 to my engineering section at ORNL and from this process many of us learned of the dangerous operation of K-25. We heard of a great many uranium hexafluoride (UF-6) releases that concerned us due to the toxicity of the hydrogen fluoride (HF) generated in such releases. Also, during this period of the 1980s members of my work section were asked to investigate SR-90 detected in the waters near K-25, which is a very mobile fission product that indicates nuclear problems. I and my section have expertise in nuclear spectroscopy and process equipment and the concern was that a nuclear slow cooker criticality was generating toxic air and water releases, so this investigation came to this section. These investigations into these problems was shared knowledge in my ORNL engineering work section.

A perceived problem seen at ORNL was many persons were being noticed with thyroid conditions and it was first suspected that releases of I-131 might be generated by a slow cooking nuclear criticality in drains, sumps, ponds, or other areas of K-25 with unmonitored highly enriched uranium (HEU) deposits, as well as several fissile slow cooking problems at ORNL. It was later found that the K-25 SR-90 presence was coming from upstream of K-25 and coming from inside the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant and was then suspected of coming from the Chestnut Ridge burial ground where HEU and water migration could set up such a problem and allow SR-90 to get into this creek. Y-12 guards had seen flames shooting from the Y-12 Chestnut Ridge burial ground and trees died nearby, which suggested a nuclear criticality in this area. A fission problem would make hydrogen that easily ignite rising from the burial ground. This problem has been suppressed to the public.

We, at ORNL, also noticed high emissions of UF-6 from all kinds of release points from the explosive testing of 12 ton cylinders in gas fires, to process leaks in hundreds of areas running at positive pressures, the operation of a uranium fluoride burning incinerators, to the leaks of storage cylinders valves and perforations produced concerns of the high emissions of HF gases and oxyfluoride (OF2) gases into both the workers areas and the regional air. It was well known that fluorine is a halogen element and thus in the body is mistaken for iodine and from this harm can come to the thyroid gland, and even endocrine processes, from the releases of HF into air. Damage to the thyroid is also connected to immune diseases, heart disease, and metabolism of every cell in the body. Thyroid disease is now recognized by the state to be high in this region.

I raised this K-25 HF toxic release concern with my ORNL section in the mid 1980s and members of my ORNL engineering section were sent into the communities near the K-25 plant to get samples of vegetation, milk, and well water to test for the concentrations of K-25 toxic releases--primarily fluorides. They also tried to suggest to folks to get off well water and onto public water to mediate the potential for health harm. The ORNL staff collecting these samples in the community were under the management of Hugh Brashears and they were engineers like Martin Bauer and Barbara Hoffheins. Dozens of community persons recall these ORNL folks wearing white lab coats coming to their homes and farms in this area, but when they asked ORNL for the data, ORNL claims no knowledge. This information is being suppressed in the public.

The ORNL management well knew of the health concerns from the K-25 UF-6 releases in the mid 1980s and suppressed this information. I believe this played a strong role in the decisions to close the plant after the cold war ended to lessen the harm to the area.

This is not the only thing this engineering group at ORNL investigated and suppressed. These same ORNL engineers and managers were well aware that a reactor called the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) at ORNL had a severe problem with generation of HF and fluorine from the radiolysis effect with U-233 based UF-4. The corrosive nature of these effects produced leaks in the fuel storage piping valves that released fluorine, HF, oxyfluorides, and UF-6 into the building air space. This was further made a problem because the basement exhaust fans were not well maintained and had broken belts, as evidenced to me by ORNL maintenance workers like Mr. A. E. Massengill. The leaks at the MSRE were allowed to persist so long that a pile of uranium dust accumulated near a valve and caused a nuclear criticality explosion and a reportable event, which was also suppressed. One of the workers at MSRE, named Richard Mathis, ended up with detectable levels of U-233 in his body due to exposures. ORNL technician V. C. Miller cleaned up the criticality mess and the building was painted to entrap the U-233, with toxicity effects like plutonium. Many of the workers at this MSRE building are sick from ills much like those seen at the K-25 site and these exposures were due to persistent low level fluoride emissions into the building air resulting in cumulative fluoride toxicity.

This same ORNL section also covered up nuclear criticality problems in the ORNL gunnite tanks over concerns that these dangerous reactions and emissions might result in the closing of the central laboratory area of ORNL. These issues were carefully suppressed as well and a sluicing device used to physically get to the slow cooking areas of the high level fissile containing wastes in these tanks. As these nuclear reacting slow cooking zones were being disturbed, the fast gas, xenon and krypton isotope, off gassing was so extreme that it came out the top of the tanks and flooded a wide area around the tanks with fallout of SR-90 and CS-137, which is well documented and shown in area surveys of this area. I was contaminated in this release and one of my section technicians overdosed with internal contamination. These same gases also blanketed the area from stack gas release for the many years that this was allowed to occur as the tank stirring failed to control the problem.

The ORNL Division that I worked in also designed much of the K-25 Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) incinerator and my input was also included in the designs of the incinerator. K-25 and Oak Ridge had a huge problem from the need to store the huge volume of fissile liquid uranium fluorides around the site and one way to address this was to run them into the incinerator. For this reason, the TSCA incinerator has the highest emissions of uranium and with this also the burn products of fluorine. The fluorides cause the dominate toxicity issues, similar to that of burning chlorine compounds in municipal waste incinerators making dioxin. The incinerator was designed with controlled burn temperature and also a triple stage filtering system to try and keep down the fluorine emissions. TSCA incinerator was also designed to burn things together with multiple feeds that would form less toxic compounds of fluorides and metals due to catalytic like effects. Even with this the toxic emissions of the TSCA incinerator were rated to kill the pine trees downwind of it after a few years of operation. Before the 1982 TSCA legislation, older incinerators at K-25 and Y-12 burned toxic materials with no restrictions, filters, or temp controls.

The emissions of fluorides are well known to affect pine trees and there are many aluminum plant operations that not only killed pine trees, but affected the health of farms and cattle and even honey bees for miles downwind. This same section at ORNL also came up with a pine beetle plausible denial story to hide the fluorides toxicity killing the downwind pine trees of K-25 and TSCA, and this was patterned right after these same techniques used by the aluminum industry to deny environmental damages. ORNL prefabricated this lie to cover up the extensive damage to the reservation trees from the decades of HF releases and even further problems from the TSCA incinerator emissions and cutting open the process stages in dismantlement.

Near Oak Ridge is also the ALCOA aluminum works and it is known to have caused damages to the nearby farms, and its releases also involve HF. The combined effects of all the sources of HF affect the region.

As it came to be known that the K-25 plant would be closed and go thru D&D there were also concerns about opening so much of the process that had trapped UF-6 in the system and square miles of UF-6 surface contamination, that could put tons of HF into the regions air. In closing the plant, the stages were purged with dry nitrogen gas, but there is still much UF-6 trapped in valves, square mile area surfaces of metals, flanges, and diffusion barrier tubes The K-25 building is at the center of a lot of the health effects of the workers at the K-25 plant and this appears to stem from the removing of enriched uranium deposits and failing to weld up the holes, which let in moist air, and let HF evaporate into the building air. The building high volume air systems were turned off to allow this effect to happen, just like a similar effect seen at the MSRE problems at ORNL.

Workers that spend much time in the K-25 building come down with lung problems and lung infections. As the exposures accumulate they seem to have increasing bone and joint problems, foggy thinking, low energy, and debilitating fatigue--characteristic of being exposed to poison HF gas at low levels for years. They also get other ills like asthma and arthritis that is well known to occur in related HF exposures for aluminum pot line workers exposed to low level HF day after day. HF is both a bone seeker and thyroid seeking chemical oxidant that damages cells and its cumulative in the bone over time. HF causes health problems like exposures to SR-90 and I-131 because of this effect and resembles a radiologic exposure with oxidation effect.

The problems of HF exposure also occur at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant because HF is used in that process to make UF-4 or "green salt." There are also emissions from those process stacks that can affect the nearby community of color named Scarboro. The ORNL engineers also well knew these effects in the 1980s from simple observations of the MSRE and K-25 emissions problems. ORNL engineers and managers even put in some things to confuse the issues there. They intentionally planned to blank out a large part of the aerial survey of Y-12's 40 million pounds of uranium chips buried in the dirt to attract attention to that, so that the plants HF emissions would be off the prime RADAR screen of the Scarboro community public interests. While the Scarboro Community has been found to have detectable levels of enriched uranium in its soils, there is an even greater level of fluorides, which will biologically concentrate (bioconcentrate) in garden plants, much like I-131 effects. The children of Scarboro are believed to have elevated rates of asthma and other ills. A recent report from the Joint Center also found bone breaks in the community to be high and other ills that fit the effects of HF and fluorides exposures. The releases of HF and the correlation to the health effects are also being suppressed here, and the management at these plants fully knows this problem exists.

The most disturbing part of all this, is that, it was fully known at ORNL in the mid 1980s and was totally suppressed and still is suppressed. Many of these cover ups were totally illegal, harmed workers as well as communities, and ORNL managers and DOE-ORO managers have acted to suppress this information. Such actions are totally criminal in nature and this speaks for the need for criminal prosecution in this entire matter. These types of coordinated cover ups speak to the need to use the RICO laws. The plants manager acted irresponsibly and they harmed workers, community children, and thousands of acres of environment with full using deliberate sets of planned lies to the public, which is criminal and does need prosecution and those harmed deserve to see justice done.

A number of the K-25 fire protection workers are also ill and this is really simple to connect the reason why. Today, firemen use supplied air respirators to go into burning homes because of the presence of Teflon fry pans and Freon cooling systems that the fires turn into poison gases. They also use this to protect from burn PVC and other chlorine bearing compounds used in modern housing that tend to form dioxins. These same toxic effect occur with fires at the K-25 plant processes and can involved uranium fluoride compounds, PCB's, and even Freon breakdown products into poison gases. We also see these same effects come into effect in airplane crashed which often use Teflon insulated wiring, PVC plastic interiors, and even DU counterweights and these too are well known to cause long lasting toxic impacts and illnesses for both the firefighters and communities. Both Teflon and Freon were inventions for use with UF-6 in the Manhattan Project. Neither Freon or Teflon are inert in fires. Freon is not inert in the atmosphere as it breaks down with UV-b irradiation into toxic fluorides and chlorides that provide a new form of global chemical fallout that affect the health of the world to an extend due to it not being inert observed too late.

The halogen elements are becoming an increasing problem in national health partly because of their extensive use in the last 50 years in home items like Teflon fry pans, and Freon cooling systems, but also because they are increasing used in the pesticides. When sprayed on fruits and produce they do kill bugs and blight, but after years of use these toxic products increase in soil concentration and have uptake and bioconcentration into the plants, which in turn puts more of these cumulative toxins in the human food chain. It is made worst with the inclusion of toxic metal wastes in fertilizers as well. These same toxic halogen exposure situations happen for the gas diffusion workers and they do have health impact.

Another issue that is often omitted with the operations of gaseous diffusion plants is that of the use of huge amounts of electric power and CO-located coal burning plants at or near these sites contribute to the air toxic exposures. These coal burning plants often produce high levels of NOx and SOx compounds that are acid products that harm lungs, and they also emit levels of toxic metals and fluorides that further contribute cumulative immune system health effects. In many areas these coal fired plants alone are acknowledged to cause health problems with lungs, fatigue, and other illnesses. Adding in these emissions near the gas diffusion plants causes even greater indication of the health harm to be expected from multiple sources. The effects of coal emissions in other states are already admitted as being health risks, but they appear to be not included in the gas diffusion issues. Their emissions cause cumulative toxic health effects. The connections of burning fluorides is well known to the fire fighting community and well known downwind of fissile fuel plants and these same simple connections to health damages are equally well known in connection to gaseous diffusion plant releases of HF or burning of fluoride compounds, and not clearing stating these connections to sick workers and communities is pure deception and deceit on the part of DOE and the Government.

In the early 1980s, some of the research into beryllium disease pointed to facts that the beryllium concentrations were highest in the lung's lymph nodes and in the 1980s also came the immune mechanism reasons that produced this effect from the actions of T-cells and macrophages. This same effect happens with any oxidative metal, like beryllium, nickel, chromium, or uranium, or chemical oxidative effect, like that from fluorine, chlorine, bromine, or ozone. When these effects involve internal contamination with these toxic materials they do bioconcentrate in the lymph nodes and this causes the maximum toxic stress to this part of the immune protection cells. The most sensitive DNA in these cells is the mtDNA, or mitochondrial DNA that supplies the energy conversion used to power cells. These toxic damage effects lie at the very root of the issues of internalized toxic contamination slowing the immune protective response and allowing viral, fungal, and bacterial problems to affect the body. Slowing these process also produces greater risk of uncontrolled cancer cells and the transmissions of viruses like HIV or Legionaries bacteria. It is interesting to note that most of the African countries most devastated with HIV are the ones with endemic high level fluoride concentration in the natural water supplies. These simple observations and well known mechanisms as they related to toxic exposures at the gaseous diffusions plants also directly connect to many of the rising health plagues in the greater US and the world. The DOE cover ups of these gaseous diffusions plant health issues and their simple mechanisms for disease and cancer risk increase are at the root of a lot of things that involved liabilities and profits for industry and medicine. What we need is a total end to all the national security deceit, all the facts on the table, and the public given right to decide which way to go here; after they are fully informed. Giving the workers and the affected communities the run around is not the way to have gone. Neither is allowing the NEC to make these decisions in a slow piece meal fashion for each affected group, this is a far larger issue that needs a larger and more inclusive long term solution.

All the information above is nothing new, as I knew all this in the mid 1980s and so did the engineers that I worked with at ORNL and the managers of these plants in Oak Ridge. In late 1987, I tried to the ethical and moral thing and report these issues and address these problems, which would have fully prevented the crisis situations with many of the workers and communities we have today. Instead, I am now a graying whistleblower, after 13 years, of trying to get the issues into the public, asking DOJ to investigate, asking congress persons to help, and finding; there was no help, only control, only Government denial. I am one of many whistleblower at the Oak Ridge site now, as DOE has failed to address them. Our Government is not working and this is a large part of the problem with the gas diffusion illness. The problem does not stop there as this same system of denials holds millions of sick persons in limbo, examples being NTS and Hanford downwinders, dozens of DOE plant workers, families, and even communities, not to mention related issues with GWV's.

An aside note on the Gulf Veterans. Modern warfare, case in point Iraq, needs to be carefully considered for its environmental and health impacts. Today use of new materials makes war much more serious in terms of long term human health. The use of HF in both improving oil well production and in the process of oil refining both released huge amounts of burning extremely toxic cumulative HF compounds into the regions air. These effects even showed up on the NASA "ozone hole" tracking satellite, where the ozone hole effects are largely from Freon, a fluorochlorocarbon compound. Local problems also exist from the use of DU munitions as they aerosol and contaminate soils. Infrastructure destruction also targets buildings with chlorine based materials that form dioxins and have air conditioning systems that make poison gas from the burning Freon. These are entirely new processes as compare to W.W.II era toxic effects. We can begin to see the long term effects of dioxin from the Vietnam era Vets and the use of Agent Orange as a forest defoliant. The Atomic Vets also have long term internal contamination from the nuclear fallout. The involvement of toxic releases that bioconcentrate in the body and cause DNA cell damage is quite clear. The warning signs of this now predominate the health of the world. These mistakes don't need to continue in war, in industry, food production, or national security. It is way past time to stop. If DOE were not so intent on hiding its serious problems those in the Gulf War and those additiaonal sick at gas diffusion plants did not have to happen, they were preventable. Sad, but true. It is a tremendous cost these national security cover ups, they now threaten the very citizens they were suppose to protect.

Senators and Government persons, it is time for a real change in the way of doing business in the national security uranium and nuclear weapons business. It is time for real ethics, total facts on the table, inclusion of all sick and affected in a democratic open process, and time for deeper congressional hearings and returning the government to the citizens. It is time to end the piece meal approach to limit and contain these health problems that are common to so many industrial situations today. We the people need a fully effective solution that includes everyone and the US needs to care for its citizens and provide directions toward a nationalized health care solution that depends on common sense and not that of lawyer litigation practices that fall short of what is needed.

I and others would like to see more of these congressional hearings that include all the health affected workers and communities from the Manhattan Project's mistakes, hearings that seriously inquire into the constitutionality of these cover ups and information denials at the hands of national security, and hearings that notice the commonality off all these health issues, and hearings that seek long term, effective solutions for the betterment of the nation and its' people.

What "We the people" expect of you in congress is honesty and Government accountability, and with that all the broad based simple truths, followed with common sense total solutions. We're not getting that from DOE, and not from this single hearing, and this needs to change.

Sincerely, James E. Phelps

----- wyoming

Citizen group to remain active

Mar 27, 2000
http://www.foxsports.com/wires/pages/64/spt112764.sml

JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) - Fresh off its victory over a radioactive waste incinerator in eastern Idaho, a group formed by western Wyoming residents will try to influence similar battles elsewhere.

Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free spearheaded the fight against the federal government's plans to build a $1.2 billion incinerator at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

Last weekend, the Energy Department agreed to put the incinerator on hold to settle the legal challenge mounted over allegations that the technology would endanger lives and threaten Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.

"The magnitude of this victory cannot be overstated,'' said Tom Patricelli, executive director of Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free. "Not only have we stopped the INEEL incinerator in its tracks, we've struck a blow against nuclear waste incineration nationwide.''

Patricelli said Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free is now a "force to be reckoned with on the national scene.''

The incinerator was contemplated under Idaho's 1995 nuclear waste deal with the federal government to process an estimated 65,000 cubic meters of radioactive waste so it can be shipped out of Idaho to the federal government's underground dump in New Mexico by 2018. The government has said it will look for alternative technology to process the waste so it can meet the deadline.

Patricelli said the organization received more than $150,000 in donations to fight the incinerator and would begin raising money for other efforts.

"We will use this awesome victory as a foundation as we continue to pursue our larger mission of finding safe, long-term methods of nuclear waste treatment and disposal,'' said Berte Hirshfield, president of Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free.



------- us nuc weapons

Refurbished-warhead stockpile criticized
Weapons undercut disarmament aim, critics contend

San Jose Mercury News
Monday, March 27, 2000
BY WALTER PINCUS
Washington Post
http://www7.mercurycenter.com/premium/nation/docs/warhead27.htm

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department plans to renovate more than 6,000 aging nuclear warheads over the next 15 years, almost double the number that the United States is allowed to deploy under the START 2 arms-reduction treaty, according to senior U.S. officials.

The added warheads will make up what Energy Department officials refer to as the ``inactive reserve,'' about 2,500 to 3,000 refurbished warheads that would give the United States the ability to match another country's sudden production of additional warheads.

This plan, the legacy of a 6-year-old presidential decision, is coming under sharp criticism from arms-control proponents. They contend that it is unnecessary and possibly counterproductive to maintain an arsenal of 6,000 warheads at a time when President Clinton and other U.S. officials are attempting to persuade India, Pakistan, North Korea, China and Russia to halt or restrain their nuclear-weapons programs.

``While the president is talking about the dangers of nuclear weapons, technicians at the national laboratories are working to refurbish a stockpile the size of which is unaffected by any agreement or treaty,'' said Janne Nolan, director of international programs for the Century Foundation and a former official in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

Robert S. Norris, a nuclear arms specialist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, has dubbed the plan ``Cold War lite.''

On the other hand, a Defense Department official with responsibility for strategic weapons contends that until Russia ratifies START 2, the United States must hedge its bets against a possible reversal of that agreement. After the treaty enters into force and ``we gain confidence'' that the Russians are abiding by it, the official said, ``then we, too, can eliminate additional warheads.''

The United States spends about $4.6 billion a year to maintain its nuclear arsenal. The Energy Department does not separately break out the cost of the 3,000 to 3,500 deployed warheads from the cost of the 2,500 to 3,000 that will be held in reserve. But to address what the acting head of the Energy Department's defense programs called ``shortfalls in production readiness,'' the department is requesting $55 million in the supplemental appropriations bill before Congress.

The funds are ``essential,'' Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Gioconda told a House Armed Services subcommittee last week, to support ``important workloads'' at three plants involved in the refurbishing program: Pantex in Texas, Y-12 in Tennessee and the so-called Kansas City plant in Missouri.

The first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START 1), signed in 1991, permits Washington and Moscow to maintain 6,000 strategic warheads on bombers, submarines and land-based missiles. The 1993 START 2 agreement would reduce that limit to between 3,000 and 3,500 deployed warheads. Neither treaty restricts the number of warheads kept in reserve.

Although the Senate ratified START 2 in 1996, the Russian Duma has delayed voting on it, so the treaty has yet to go into effect. Both sides have cut their arsenals to the START 1 level, but Congress has prohibited the U.S. military from going below 6,000 deployed warheads until Moscow ratifies START 2.

The plan to keep an ``inactive reserve'' of 2,500 to 3,000 more warheads than permitted to be deployed under START 2 is the product of a little-publicized Clinton administration nuclear policy called ``lead and hedge.'' It was described to Congress in 1996 by Harold P. Smith Jr., then assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical and biological defense programs.

He said that while the administration ``leads'' by pushing for force reductions in arms-control negotiations, the United States has to ``retain the ability to hedge by returning to START 1 levels.''

Smith said the policy was approved by Clinton in September 1994 as part of a Nuclear Posture Review, an annual document setting guidelines for America's nuclear forces.

Newly reconstructed B-61 bombs for strategic bombers already have gone into the U.S. stockpile, while the first refurbished W-87 warheads are now being delivered to the Air Force for rearming America's 50 Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Peacekeeper carries 10 W-87s, each of which has 20 times the explosive power of the U.S. bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945, at the end of World War II.

The program also will see refurbished W-87s put on the 500 deployed Minuteman III ICBMs over the next five years. Additional W-87s will be placed in the ``inactive'' stockpile, available to replace those on the deployed missiles or to be put on any newly constructed rockets.

Meanwhile, plans are going forward to start similar refurbishment for the W-76 warheads carried by the Trident I sub-launched intercontinental missile; the W-80 warhead for sea- and ground-launched cruise missiles; and the W-88, the newest and most miniaturized U.S. warhead, carried by the Trident II sub-launched ICBM.

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Delay Decision on Nuclear Missile Shield Defense:
The next administration can ensure that this vital program does what it needs to.

Los Angeles Times
Monday, March 27, 2000
By ELLEN O. TAUSCHER
http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20000327/t000028765.html

A state-of-the-art, successful national missile defense program, which could insulate America from nuclear, chemical or biological attack, is too important to rush a decision on its deployment. Instead of deciding its fate this June, as the president is scheduled to do, the decision should be deferred to the next administration.

The post-Cold War version of our national missile defense shield is a limited, scaled-down approach with a different mission from its "Star Wars" predecessor. When fully deployed, the current shield's 200 interceptors will be positioned only to protect the United States, not our allies or our troops abroad. Also, the shield only could handle a limited attack of fewer than 50 ballistic missiles at a time--relatively useless if we were to face an all-out attack from Russia, China or some future nuclear powerhouse.

The new missile shield was designed to guard us against our newest and perhaps greatest military threat: rogue nations and international terrorists with little to lose. If these enemies were to launch a nuclear, chemical or biological attack against the United States, it would be to make a statement by killing millions of Americans. With a massive U.S. counterattack a certainty, these opponents would not be deterred unless our shield was so effective that their initial attack would be an act of futility. Unlike the 1980s, when just the threat of a workable Star Wars helped us win the Cold War, today's shield must have a reputation of 100% effectiveness.

Unfortunately, during these early stages of development, the shield has failed two of its first three tests. If the shield fails, we will never get a second chance to defend our people. But we do have a first chance, and that is to deny these terrorists and rogue nations--including Iraq, Iran and North Korea--the ability to develop and deploy nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. So we must continue our investment in nonproliferation programs such as cooperative threat reduction and the nuclear cities initiative to shut down the availability of nuclear, chemical and biological materials in the international black market.

The risk we take in deploying the shield now is that Russia would misread this defensive measure as a signal that the United States is weakening its commitment to nonproliferation. Under this view, the shield would be seen as a tactical edge that would make the United States more likely to launch a first strike, knowing that it could defend against a measured response. The Senate's refusal to pass the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the anti-American tones permeating Russian Duma elections this year make such an interpretation likely in the short term.

Our success in gaining Russia's acceptance of the shield is critical for two reasons. First, before we could deploy the shield, we would have to renounce the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which prohibits such a defense system, or secure Russia's agreement to amend the treaty. Second and more important, we cannot afford for Russia to abandon negotiations to reduce both their and our nuclear stockpiles through the START treaties or our joint efforts to lock down Russia's nuclear weapons and material. If that happens, an uncontrollable arms race could result, characterized by small, unstable players that would gain in stature by leveraging their newly acquired nuclear capability.

The shield can be a significant new arrow in the quiver of a comprehensive national defense strategy. It could be our best insurance plan against a ballistic threat that a congressionally mandated report in 1998 called "broader, more mature and [rapidly] evolving." An ineffective and poorly handled missile defense shield, however, would defeat its own purpose, be a terrible waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars and halt the continued research and development needed to cure it.

If we are to successfully navigate the changing threats of the post-Cold War world, we must provide the American people with a defense against nuclear, chemical or biological attacks. The shield already is showing promise, and it is an initiative worth pursuing with vigor. But before spending $12.7 billion to deploy it, we must be assured that it is technologically and diplomatically sound. That is a judgment call that the next administration will be in a better position to make. - - -

Ellen O. Tauscher (D-pleasanton) Is the Ranking Democrat on a Special House Panel to Oversee the Establishment of the National Nuclear Security Administration

Search the archives of the Los Angeles Times for similar stories. You will not be charged to look for stories, only to retrieve one.

http://www.latimes.com/archives

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Nukes then . . .

Washington Times
March 27, 2000
Inside the Beltway John McCaslin
http://www.washtimes.com/national/inbeltway.htm

Harold Rood, one of the first scholars of the California-based Claremont Institute, once wrote that "the central strategic objective of the United States is, as it has always been, the prevention of direct [nuclear] attack upon the United States."

The United States abandoned that strategy in the late 1960s, adopting a scenario most of us remember as "mutually assured destruction."

Enter President Reagan with a new strategy: "Strategic Defense Initiative." The Gipper believed no president should have, as his only option, the destruction of another country and the assured destruction of the United States. But nobody was listening.

Now, 17 years later, Claremont President Larry P. Arnn says America still doesn't have a national missile defense: "The United States cannot stop a single enemy missile despite the fact that nuclear missiles are no longer the possession of Russia and China alone but are, or are soon to be, in the hands of North Korea, Iran and Iraq."

So the institute has an Internet project (www.missilethreat.com) to inform its countrymen of this. Visitors get to see everything from animated movies of a ballistic missile launch to which parts of the United States are most vulnerable to attack.

Nukes now . . .

Speaking of President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, its 17th anniversary isn't going unnoticed by Sen. Fred Thompson, Tennessee Republican.

"While President Reagan and his . . . initiative were mocked by critics, he remained steadfast in his vision and his belief that the American people could achieve anything they committed themselves to doing," says Mr. Thompson.

Americans today, he adds, should concern themselves with missile attacks "from newer and more likely threats, some of which we may not be able to deter -accidental launches, terrorist groups and rogue states."

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Time to forget the superpower thing?

Washington Times
March 27, 2000
Philip Gold
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/commentary-2000327121553.htm

Ideas have consequences. Especially ideas that can get you killed. Take, for example, the cluster of notions expressed by the phrase, World's Only Superpower. Everybody says it. Everybody says it because everybody says it. Perhaps, in some ways it's still true. But today, the military Superpower idea is obsolete, misleading, and potentially fatal.

Three big reasons why.

First, with each passing year, the United States disposes of less and less usable power. Forget the nuclear stuff. Does anybody really believe we would use nukes under any circumstances, including a strike on the United States with a few weapons of mass destruction (WMD)?

As for the conventional force: underfunded, overused, demoralized, abused, wearing out. It approaches the verge of implosion. Some systems are so old we cannot get spare parts, the companies that built them either no longer bother or simply don't exist. New weapons take up to 20 years to deliver. Critical munitions, modernization, readiness estimates of the annual defense budget shortfall range from $10 billion to $100 billion, with the reality probably closer to the high end. A serious, sustained air-ground campaign, let alone one (or two) major theater wars could yield a catastrophe unparalleled in American history.

But there probably could not be such campaigns or wars. The CNN Effect and the Dover Test all but preclude them. The former entails more than the fact that wrong information (or disinformation) can circle the globe many times, land in the global data base, and remain there forever. It's also the audiovisual component of the belief that the American people will not accept sustained combat when they can see it, and the inevitable result of combat, televised or not: body bags.

The Dover Test, a relatively new Pentagon buzzword, refers to the Air Force base in Delaware that receives the bodies of Americans slain overseas. All military operations must now pass the Dover Test. Not just, is it worth bleeding for, but even if it is, will the American people and/or their leaders accept it?

Bottom line. Less and less usable force, perhaps a force that cannot be used at all.

The world has taken note. The second problem involves what's known in the trade as symmetrical threats and niche capabilities. The gravamen here is that no one else can assemble the kind of high-tech, global-reach military we can. So they will concentrate instead on WMD and negating our forces in specialized ways: attacking computers or satellites, for example, or denying naval access by mining and deploying shore-based missiles. The irony here is that our very technological superiority increases the peril. Were other nations and forces better able to compete, they might not be driven to WMD or probing for ways to collapse our system of systems.

Put differently, we are the asymmetrical threat. And much of the world is hard at work on the problem. And should one real or potential adversary develop workable solutions, others can be expected to follow . . . or buy it off-the-shelf.

And third, the United States remains dreadfully open to attack. The centuries of total invulnerability, the decades of total vulnerability, are both gone. We no longer risk (or threaten) instant annihilation. But we can still be hit awfully hard, and are subject to intimidation and blackmail thereby. Yes, there is the Dover Test. But there is also the New York Test, the Los Angeles Test, the Seattle Test.

Still, it's not entirely gloomy. In some ways, the military's primed for resurgence. Mr. Clinton will be going home soon enough. Mr. Bush has assembled a fine national security team. There exists something resembling a bipartisan consensus for sustained if relatively modest spending increases. Promising initiatives and programs are under way in all the services and at the joint and combined levels.

Perhaps most important, a new generation of officers is moving forward, and there are points of light among them. Yes, untold thousands of good men and women have punched out in disgust. But other good men and women, like their post-Vietnam seniors, have stayed on to redeem and rebuild.

But the chance will be wasted unless defense planners drop, or at least redefine, one of the most cherished aspects of the Sole Superpower conceit. In military parlance, it is called full spectrum dominance the belief and goal that the United States should and can be able to accomplish, quickly and easily, everything from peacekeeping and counterterrorism to combat in Third World urban megasprawls to simultaneous full-scale war in Korea or the Persian Gulf, with the forces and on the budgets available. At a conference several years ago, former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger summed it well. Full spectrum dominance when you get there, call me.

But you cannot get there from here. Rather, the next administration must recognize and insist upon the new primacy of homeland defense. The Defense Department must adopt an everything is on the table approach to military roles and missions. It must recognize that full spectrum dominance, to the degree it can be achieved, requires new forms of task organization and specialization. Then it must use the next few critical years to institutionalize the transformation.

As for the Superpower conceit, perhaps the Defense Department should gin up a stadium-style banner that reads, World Champions, 1991, 1993, hang it prominently at the Pentagon, honor the achievement, and then get back to work

Philip Gold is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle.

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Missile System Risks

New York Times
March 27, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/00/03/27/letters/l27mis.html

To the Editor:

I'm an actuary who deals with probabilities in my work.

Your March 22 editorial "False Missile Deadline" concludes that the development of the missile defense system must not go forward until there is a virtual 100 percent assurance the system works.

We all know that, aside from death and taxes, almost nothing is 100 percent certain.

But more to the point is that the potential of this defense system far exceeds the potential risk of wasted billions.

Let's assume that if we build this system now, it has a low chance of success.

On the other hand, if it can intercept one or a few missiles from striking a major population center, many lives would be saved.

So the risk versus reward, oversimplified, boils down to wasted billions versus the incalculable value of lives saved.

For this reason I believe that the risk of going forward now is well worth taking.

SEYMOUR RUBINSTEIN Monroe Township, N.J., March 22, 2000

-------- nuc medicine

Researcher: Vitamin C may worsen cancer

USA Today
03/27/00- Updated 05:01 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/nlead.htm

TAMPA, Fla. - Cancer patients who take large doses of vitamin C in the hope of a cure might actually make their disease worse by inadvertently protecting their tumors from radiation and chemotherapy, new research suggests. Doctors caution they cannot prove the vitamin is harmful during cancer treatment. But they say there are strong biological reasons to think megadoses could be bad. The concern is based on the discovery that cancer cells actually contain large amounts of vitamin C, which appears to protect them from oxygen damage. Many cancer treatments, especially radiation therapy, work by triggering oxygen damage to the genes of cancer cells.

-------- us nuc waste

Smart, Cheap Energy Boost

Monday, March 27, 2000; Page A26
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-03/27/010l-032700-idx.html

Charles Krauthammer's half-baked advocacy of nuclear power tried to masquerade as levelheaded energy policy analysis [op-ed, March 17].

An increase in nuclear generating capacity would not significantly reduce oil use in the United States. Oil-fired power plants accounted for only 3.4 percent of net electricity generation in 1998, according to the Department of Energy, and account for only 9.1 percent of generating capacity. These (often very old) plants are primarily used during brief intervals to meet summer demand spikes.

The decline of nuclear power is not the result of a "China Syndrome panic" of irrational American consumers, but a reaction to poor economic performance, legitimate safety concerns and the still-intractable problem of high-level nuclear waste. Our focus should be on the many inexpensive energy-efficient options now available, not on new, costly and dangerous schemes to increase energy supply.

CHRISTOPHER SHERRY
Washington

--------

USA Today
03/27/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Missouri Columbia - State officials are less than pleased that a truckload of nuclear waste will travel through the state this summer along Interstate 70 toward an Idaho storage facility . The wastes, containing weapon-grade plutonium and uranium, are being shipped to the United States from foreign research reactors. Gov. Carnahan stressed that accident rates along I-70 justified the DOE taking a safer route through Iowa .

-------- spying

Colombia's Intelligence Reorganization (1991)

[From Colombia's Killer Networks, Human Rights Watch, November 1996. Order 200-05/91 is online at http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/2000591.htm]

III. THE INTELLIGENCE REORGANIZATION
The New Structure

While the administration of President Cesar Gaviria (1990-1994) was seeking political reform in Colombia, the United States was making a priority of the drug war throughout the hemisphere. The Andean strategy, devised by the administration of President George Bush (1988-1992), was meant to fortify antidrug efforts in South America. It concentrated U.S. efforts on "source countries," where coca leaves are grown and processed into cocaine. By 1990, the U.S. Southern Command, responsible for all U.S. military activities in Latin America and the Caribbean, had declared c ounter-drug efforts its "number one priority." 65

The United States increased aid to the Colombian military as a way of incorporating it into the counter-drug effort. In a telephone interview with Human Rights Watch, Col. (ret.) James S. Roach, Jr., then the U.S. Military Attache and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) country liaison in Bogota, said, "There was a very big debate going on [about how to best allocate] money for counternarcotics operations in Colombia. The U.S. was looking for a way to try to help. But if you're not going to be combatants [yourselves], you have to find something to do." 66

One area where U.S. officials decided they could help was in intelligence. In 1990, the United States formed a team that included representatives of the U.S. Embassy's Military Group, U.S. Southern Command, the DIA, and the CIA according to Colonel Roach. 67 The fourteen-member team was led by a U.S. navy captain, and made recommendations to the Colombian Defense Ministry for the reorganization of their military intelligence networks. A March 17, 1996, Defense Department letter to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT) confirms the Defense Department's role, which is explained as an attempt to make Colombia's military intelligence networks "more efficient and effective." 68

Nevertheless, these recommendations were given despite the fact that some of the U.S. officials who collaborated with the team knew of the Colombian military's record of human rights abuses and its ongoing relations with paramilitaries - a relationship Human Rights Watch has been documenting in its reports for years. "The intent was not to be associated with paramilitaries," Colonel Roach said. "But we knew from Colombian news reports and [even] from Colombian military reports that they were still working with paramilitaries." 69

In an interview with Human Rights Watch, former Defense Minister Rafael Pardo said that in addition to recommendations received from the United States, the Defense Ministry solicited opinions from British and Israeli military intelligence. Pardo, who took office three months after the reorganization began, noted that Colombia favored the U.S. plan since it had the most points of convergence with what the Colombian military wanted. 70

The result was Order 200-05/91, issued by the Colombian Defense Ministry in May 1991 (see Appendix A). Human Rights Watch is making Order 200-05/91 public for the first time. Contrary to the stated objectives of the Andean strategy, however, Order 200-05/91 has little if anything to do with combating drugs. Indeed, throughout its sixteen pages and corresponding appendices, the order, marked "reserved," makes no mention of drugs. Instead, the Colombian military, "based on the recommendations made by a commission of advisors from the U.S. Armed Forces," presented a plan to better combat what they call escalating terrorism by armed subversion." 71

As we demonstrate in the next section, devoted to the naval intelligence network set up in Barrancabermeia, Order 200-05/91 laid the groundwork for continuing an illegal, covert partnership between the military and paramilitaries and demonstrates that this partnership was promoted by the military high command in violation of Decree 1194, which prohibits such contact. Although the term "paramilitaries" is not used in the order, the document lays out a system similar to the one present under the name of MAS and its military patrons in the Middle Magdalena.

Pardo told Human Rights Watch that this structure was not intended to incorporate illegal groups or to carry out illegal activities. Regardless of his caveat, however, the order provided a blueprint for just that: a secret network that relied on paramilitaries not only for intelligence, but to carry out murder.

Order 200-05/9 1, which Pardo acknowledged as authentic, instructs the army, navy, and air force to establish intelligence networks that will take orders from and provide intelligence to the military high command. 72 As laid out in Order 200-05/91, the job of supervising the reorganization went to the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colombia's second-highest military post (the highest is the commander in chief of the Armed Forces). Once the new networks were established, they were to be coordinated by the "D-2" Department, the military intelligence division at central command in Santafe de Bogota. All payments for services were to be made by the high command to the various branches of service.

Order 200-05/91, authorized the army to set up thirty networks divided evenly between urban and rural areas. The navy was to establish four networks in and around the country's major sea and river ports. The order provided for the air force to set up seven networks. Each network was expected not only to supply the high command with intelligence and act on its orders, but also coordinate closely with other military units in their regions. The order provided for each network to be supplied with a staff and administered by "an active-duty officer with great knowledge of the region and its problems, who can easily interact with people of the zone in order to maintain his front." In turn, this officer was to be assisted by "an officer or non-commissioned officer, retired or in active service, who has resources including a false identity and history, a vehicle, and a pre-established system of communications. He should have easy access to the target area.... He may also be a trustworthy civilian with training and influence." We do not know how many of the authorized networks were in fact established.

Under this employee were "control agents," "civilians or retired noncommissioned officers with sufficient experience and status." In turn, Order 200-05/91 provided for each network to hire from twenty-five to fifty "intelligence agents," who "must be, if possible, retired non-commissioned officers, trained to handle informants and process information." The informants, the order stressed, should be required to "maintain the highest degree of reserve before the people with whom they live." Order 200-05/91 instructs division and brigade commanders to select candidates "whether civilians or retired military personnel, for integration into the network's cadre," but fails to make any mention of Decree 1194 or exclude paramilitaries from the ranks of the new intelligence networks. Order 200-05/91 does include, however, an urgent warning: the entire chain of command as well as the networks themselves must remain secret:

The study, selection, instruction, training, location and organization of these networks, urban as well as rural, will be covert and under the responsibility of the Division or Brigade Commanders, or their equivalents in other forces, and the Network Commanders.

All written material was to be removed once the process is completed. Open contacts and interaction with military installations "must be avoided." There "must be no written contracts with informants or civilian members of the network; everything must be agreed to orally." And the handling of the networks themselves "will be covert and compartmentalized, allowing for the necessary flexibility to cover targets of interest."

The Barrancabermeja Network

One of the networks that resulted from the reorganization was based in Barrancabermeja and run by the navy. The site of Colombia's largest oil refinery and a port on the Magdalena River, Barrancabermeja holds strategic importance for both the Colombian military and ELN. Naval intelligence, coordinating with MAS, had been implicated in killings before 1991, including the murder of trade unionist Manuel Gustavo Chacon, gunned down by a navy enlisted man on January 15, 1988. 73 But Order 200-05/91 gave new life to what had been since 1989 an illegal partnership. In partnership with MAS, the navy intelligence network set up in Barrancabermeja adopted as its goal not only the elimination of anyone perceived as supporting the guerrillas, but also members of the political opposition, journalists, trade unionists, and human rights workers, particularly if they investigated or criticized their terror tactics.

In an interview with Human Rights Watch, former intelligence agent Saulo Segura Palacios described the network and how it functioned in and around Barrancabermeja. A former non-commissioned navy officer, Segura said he was recruited by Navy Capt. Juan Carlos Alvarez Gutierrez in October 1991. Alvarez had been appointed to command Naval Intelligence Network No. 07 by Lt. Col. Rodrigo Quinones Cardenas, chief of Naval Intelligence. Segura owned a retail clothing store, and said his main job was to provide cover for the network by renting office space, buying furniture, and cashing checks. 74

Alvarez appointed an active-duty non-commissioned naval officer, Carlos David Lopez, to run the network's daily affairs. For his part, Lopez directed three control agents including Ancizar Castano Buitrago and ex-naval serviceman Miguel Duran. They managed at least seven intelligence agents, including Milton Martinez Plata, and oversaw dozens of informants and hit men, who were ordered to follow and attack targets throughout the zone. In a letter sent to the attorney general's office, Lopez confessed his participation and corroborated Segura's story. 75

According to Segura, Alvarez and Quinones would identify the targets, which included the membership and leaders of the Oil Workers' Union (Union Sindical Obrero, USO), the San Silvestre Transportation Workers' Union, the Regional Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (Comite Regional para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos, CREDHOS) and the UP. 76 These were the same groups included in a death threat circulated in the name of the "Ariel Otero" Command, a paramilitary group, in January of 1992, vowing to retaliate for every guerrilla action by murdering someone. 77

Segura said network operatives and hit men also coordinated activities with the army's Nueva Granada Battalion, based in Barrancabermeja. 78 According to another witness, reserve officer Felipe Gomez, Nueva Granada Battalion commander Colonel Hurtado and Major Lee (first names unknown) identified additional targets. 79 According to the four witnesses who eventually confessed to authorities, Quinones was the officer who evaluated intelligence and made the decision on how to r espond. 80 One witness, former hit man Carlos Vergara Amaya, told prosecutors:



Col. (sic) Rodrigo Quinones was told everything about the operations, I mean the investigations. And according to what was being investigated, he would speak with Capt. Juan Carlos Alvarez, alias "The Engineer," giving the green light if the operation was o.k. or not, in other words to kill people or not. After that, Capt. Juan Carlos Alvarez would communicate directly with [network administrator] Carlos David Lopez and [control agent] Miguel Duran, who told us what to do. If it was by phone, they used the following codes: "There are some broken motors. I need you to repair them. They are in such and such a place." And they would give the address. "Take good mechanics and good tools." Mechanics meant sicarios [hitmen], good tools meant good weapons, and the motors meant the victims. 81

Following the model set out in Order 200-05/9 1, there were few written orders or contracts; most operations were arranged verbally. Although informants knew they were working for the navy, Segura told prosecutors, "they could have no formal or legal tie to the Defense Ministry." 82

However, one network employee, Felipe Gomez, who chose to collaborate with civilian authorities in exchange for a lowered sentence, told the attorney general's office that he had signed a contract with the Defense Ministry and Armed Forces. A reserve officer and former soldier, Gomez said one of his tasks was to help equip, direct, and encourage paramilitaries in the region. Gomez told authorities he was responsible for organizing paramilitaries in the towns of San Rafael de Chucuri, Las Montoyas, Campo Capote, Bocas del Carare, Puerto Gaitan, and La Ganadera. Gomez says he received weapons and equipment from the navy, including bolt-action rifles, M16 rifles, Galil rifles, revolvers, pistols, submachine guns, fragmentation grenades, military instruction texts, and high-frequency two-way radios to communicate with the navy and army. Gomez said another network employee, hit man Alexander Trujillo, boasted of a private arsenal authorized by the navy, including revolvers, pistols, grenades, rifles, machine guns, bullet-proof jackets, and abundant munitions. 83

Most of these weapons are expressly banned for civilian use and are classified as "for the exclusive use of the armed forces" (uso privativo de las FFMM). Weapons considered defensive, like .38 caliber pistols, must be properly licensed by the Defense Ministry. Nevertheless, both banned and restricted weapons are commonly used by paramilitaries. By law, the security forces are obligated to seize these weapons when found in the hands of civilians, check for proper licensing, and detain civilians for investigation and prosecution if the weapons are illegal. However, in the case of Naval Intelligence Network 07, the law was clearly flaunted. 84

With Gomez, paramilitaries went to area settlements to demand collaboration, informing residents that they were a legal group supported by the government. Gomez says Captain Alvarez gave special orders to him to convince local ranchers to stop paying the guerrilla "war tax," and instead pay each paramilitary a monthly salary, a proposal he says was accepted. Other payments came directly from the Nueva Granada Battalion, where paramilitaries had a right to supplies, including toiletries. 85

Gomez apparently paid a high price for his participation. He told authorities that his wife had been shot four times in one non-fatal incident by unknown assailants. Two of her brothers were killed, and Gomez requested protection from the attorney general in exchange for his confession." Despite repeated inquiries, Human Rights Watch has not been able to determine the fate of Gomez, Lopez, or Vergara, witnesses who testified about the Navy Intelligence network in Barrancabermeja.

Throughout 1991 and 1992, paramilitaries also patrolled the nearby Chucuri region with soldiers from the Luciano D'Elhuyar Battalion, detaining and killing suspects and threatening those they accused of harboring sympathies for guerrillas. Farmers who resisted joining the patrols risked being labelled guerrilla supporters. Families paid paramilitaries a "war tax," funds that often went back to the army in weapons purchases. 87

Among the network's first victims in 1992 was Blanca Cecilia Valero, a member of CREDHOS and the secretary of attorney Jorge Gomez Lizarazo (no relation to Felipe), a CREDHOS founding member. On January 28, Jorge Gomez wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times entitled "Colombian Blood, U.S. Guns." In the article, widely circulated in Colombia, Gomez wrote, "The violence will continue until military and police complicity is fully understood and addressed." 88 The next day, Valero was gunned down outside the CREDHOS office. 89 Across the street, two policemen observed the murder and made no effort to follow the assailants, carrying automatic weapons and travelling on a motorcycle. 90 Gomez has since been forced to flee Colombia.

Over the next five months, dozens more were murdered in the region, including the vice-president and treasurer of the San Silvestre Transportation Workers' Union, USO members, and local peasants." In his confession, Lopez linked twenty-six murders and four massacres, with twenty more victims, to the network during that period. 92

The rash of murders attracted the attention of Ismael Jaimes, the editor and owner of La Opinion, a local newspaper. For his work, Jaimes became a target. Carlos David Lopez later told authorities that Jaimes was targeted because "he published newspaper columns always accusing the security forces and state intelligence." On May 6, Lopez told prosecutors, a navy hit man murdered Jaimes as he dropped off one of his children at school, a daily routine. 93

Not only those reporting on the military-paramilitary partnership were targeted. Civilian authorities who attempted to investigate or arrest alleged paramilitaries were also threatened. On March 29, a combined team of DAS, police, and judicial authorities travelled by helicopter to nearby El Carmen de Chucuri to arrest twenty-five alleged paramilitaries. Far from assisting the official commission, army officers urged local residents to impede the arrests. Only one suspect was eventually placed in custody. 94

In Barrancabermeja, the killing continued. On June 28, Lopez said, CREDHOS member Julio Cesar Berrio was killed by navy gunmen as he left an ice cream parlor. A month later, navy operatives gunned down another CREDHOS member as she sat in the La Shanon Restaurant with the president of the San Silvestre Transportation Workers' Union and a member of the National Association of Peasant Small-holders (Asociación Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos, ANUC). All were killed. 95

According to Segura, the network's operatives also engaged the services of a gang of hit men led by Jose Alirio Ulloa. He told prosecutors that Ulloa did jobs for both the navy and army. Other hit men included Gerardo Alvarez, Diego Lopez, and the four Catano brothers, Luis, Rafael, Eliecer, and Hugo. 96 Their names appeared on the navy payroll as informants. Lopez told authorities:

This group was paid, from the beginning, in the following way. The payment for information was overvalued. In other words, if there was good intelligence, for example the location of a subversive group in the Barrancabermeja area, the receipt was for 700,000 pesos. But really, the informant was only paid 100,000. The other 600,000 was used to pay the group of hit men. 97

According to Segura, "They would pay a group of hit men to do their thing, and then claim that these people were intelligence agents in order to justify the payments." 98

Even as the navy intelligence network was targeting supposed enemies, army intelligence units in league with MAS were threatening residents of a shelter set up for families forced to flee violence in rural areas. This lethal nexus was revealed on May 16, 1992, after Elvia Maria Cordoba, who had pretended to be a displaced person, confessed to the organizers of the Peasant Albergue (shelter) that MAS had given her the job of collecting intelligence on shelter residents. Several months earlier, MAS members had forced their way into the shelter and threatened the families living there at gun point. According to Cordoba, MAS had coordinated the action with the Fourteenth Brigade, which gave them a truck to travel from Puerto Berrio, where the brigade is located, to the shelter. Two days after leaving the shelter, Cordoba's body was found in a garbage dump on the city outskirts. As a result of her information, the shelter was temporarily closed for the safety of the workers and guests. 99

Human Rights Watch has also collected evidence indicating that the military in other areas operated in much the same way as in Barrancabermeja. "Lucas," a control agent we interviewed in the department of Putumayo in 1992, told us that he had been hired by the army to collect information, guard strategic installations, and do illicit jobs on command. A former professional soldier, "Lucas" considered himself a specialist in intelligence and carried an army issued .38 revolver. Local residents added that "Lucas" also worked with the local branch of the MAS, called the Masetos. 100 One of the "illicit jobs" Lucas said he had been given by the local army commander was to kill Adalberto Narvaez, a local doctor and candidate for mayor:

Major Jairo Solano said this to me and to another guy, Juan [a control agent]. He asked if we knew a Mr. Adalberto, a doctor. Major Solano said, "This guy hands out medicine to the guerrillas. He treats them. He's helping them. He must be killed." 101

In Putumayo, communication between police, the army, and the Masetos was constant and fluid. The alliance was so public, local residents told us, that even police referred to the Masetos as "the law" and characterized MAS members as "employed by MAS headquarters in Puerto Boyaca." As in Barrancabermeja, where navy hit men also took part in robberies, the military's clandestine network ensured that not only could paramilitaries carry illegal weapons without fear of arrest, but also threaten, bully, terrorize, and even kill civilians for their own purposes. 102

Far from actively pursuing and arresting known navy hit men, the Barrancabermeja police also appear to have had a key role in covering up their crimes and ensuring that operatives remained free to carry out orders. One incident from Barrancabermeja dramatically illustrates how the security forces cooperated. On May 13, 1992, hit men Jose Ulloa and Diego Catano killed two men, apparently on orders from the Nueva Granada Battalion. A warrant was issued for their arrests, and the two suspects along with two other navy hit men were later arrested at a roadblock set up by the army's Fourteenth Brigade. Brig. Gen. Marino Gutierrez Isaza, the Fourteenth Brigade commander, later included Jose Ulloa's statement in a report:

[H]e said he had to kill two people, following the orders of a unit of the Nueva Granada Battalion for whom he worked, and he showed an officer a card identifying him as an employee of S-2 [intelligence section] of this Tactical Unit. He also said that if he knew the troops were going to detain him, they would have opened fire, preferring to have gone down fighting. 103

On June 1, the four men were turned over to police and intelligence authorities. But instead of being charged for the May 13 murders, all four vanished. 104 They may have been executed to prevent them from saying more. 105

Far from diminishing violence, the military intelligence network appears to have dramatically increased it. By the end of 1992, Barrancabermeja's murder rate had jumped by 49 percent over the figure recorded for 1990, the year before the reorganization. 106

Beginning in 1993, former members of the naval intelligence network, including Segura, began to testify against their superiors. According to Segura, he did so because his superiors wanted to kill him. Increased scrutiny apparently convinced Quinones to remove some of his agents and transfer the network commander, Captain Alvarez, to Cartagena. He also transferred Segura to Bahia Solano, in the department of Choco, where another naval intelligence network was operating. There, Segura told authorities he refused to follow Quinones's orders to kill six men who worked in a local fishing cooperative. 107

"I told him that as a result of my investigations, I had managed to establish that the men I had been ordered to kill weren't guerrillas or even collaborators, drug traffickers, or arms traffickers. To the contrary, they were very beloved in the area because they are among the few who give people work." For this, Segura apparently went from executioner to target. 108

A few months later, Segura was shot twice but survived. Conversations between hit men that were surreptitiously recorded, then leaked to the press strongly suggest that Quinones ordered Segura "separated from the business," a code for killed. 109 Carlos Vergara, a member of Ulloa's gang of hit men, testified to authorities that others had been promised 45,000,000 pesos apiece, the equivalent of $40,000, to kill the four who had agreed to testify. 110

Both Segura and Lopez fled to Panama in February 1994. 111 There, Segura said they were approached by Colombian authorities and told to retract their accusations, with the promise that they would only be held in prison two months, then acquitted and released. 112 Both retracted their statements and were returned to Colombia. 113 However, at the time Human Rights Watch interviewed Segura, he had been in prison for sixteen months and fully confirmed his original statements.

Based largely on the testimony of Segura and Lopez, along with Vergara and Gomez (who never contradicted their original statements), an investigation by the Special Investigations office of the Procuraduria has tied the network to fifty-seven murders in and around Barrancabermeja. 114 The case was then forwarded to the Procuraduria Delegate for Human Rights, who treated the case as a single crime and concluded that officers conspired "to form or collaborate with armed groups, as defined and prohibited by Decree 1194." 115

From prison, Segura told government investigators and Human Rights Watch that he thought he would be killed. On December 24, 1995, inside the Modelo's maximum-security wing, Segura was fatally shot. His murder remains unsolved.

Despite the strong case against Lt. Col. Quinones and seven other implicated soldiers, a military tribunal ruled on December 15, 1994, that they should remain free pending trial. In his decision, Military Superior Tribunal Judge Alfonso Ospina Bonilla used the covert and compartmentalized system set up in Order 200-05/91 not to implicate Quinones, but to absolve him of responsibility. In an astonishing defiance of the evidence before him, Ospina wrote that since neither Segura, Vergara, nor any of the network agents had reported direct contact with Quinones, "there is no reason to impute [their] illicit activities to him." 116 Quinones was later acquitted by a military tribunal and remains on active duty. 117

Reports of military-paramilitary collaboration in the region continue. Near Sabana de Torres, an hour from Barrancabermeja, local residents gave municipal authorities garbage collected from a camp occupied by the Peasant Self-Defense Group of Colombia (Autodefensas Campesinas de Colombia, ACC) in March 1995. Among the leavings were wrappings from army ration packets. 118 Once villages or individuals have apparently been identified as sympathetic to guerrillas, the military and paramilitaries work together to spread terror and force people to leave or face death. In Sabana de Torres, for example, local residents reported that soldiers told them that paramilitaries follow in their wake and would kill anyone who helped the guerrillas. Paramilitaries in the region go by the names "The Chainsaws," "Black Shadow," and the ACC, which has adopted uniforms with red armbands bearing the initials ACC. One witness interviewed by Human Rights Watch recounted how the soldiers' threat came true: "The ACC came about fifteen days later, asking about the guerrillas. That's when I left, because to stay meant being killed for sure." 119

Footnotes:

65 Chuck Call, Clear and Present Danger: The U.S. Military and the War on Drugs in the Andes (Washington, D.C.: Washington Office on Latin America, WOLA, October 1991), p. 1.

66 Human Rights Watch telephone interview, March 16, 1996.

67 Ibid.

68 Letter from Acting Assistant Secretary, of Defense Frederick Smith to Senator Patrick J. Leahy. March 17. 1996. (See Appendix D).

69 Human Rights Watch telephone interview. March 16. 1996.

70 Human Rights Watch interview. Washington, D.C., February 8, 1996.

71 All translations in this section by Human Rights Watch.

72 Human Rights Watch interview, Washington, D.C., February 8, 1996.

73 Former navy serviceman Pablo Francisco Perez Cabrera received a sixteen-year sentence for the murder. However, no other officers were investigated for the crime. Other witnesses who apparently wanted to testify subsequently vanished. "USO pide garantias para testigos contra la Armada," El Espectador, January 6. 1994.

74 Human Rights Watch interview, Modelo Prison, Santafe de Bogota, September 18, 1995

75 Letter from Carlos David Lopez to the Attorney General, December 7, 1993.

76 Letter from Saulo Segura Palacios to the Attorney General, December 7, 1993.

77 CREDHOS, "Informe Violencia en el Magdalena Medio, 1991-1992."

78 Letter from Saulo Segura to the Attorney General, December 7, 1993.

79 Letter from Felipe Gomez to the Attorney General, November 29, 1994. According to local human rights groups, Maj. Walter Javier Hurtado, apparently the same one and assigned to the Nueva Granada Battalion, had established a reputation as particularly aggressive. In 1993, when a government official and member of CREDHOS tried to locate a detainee at the base, Major Hurtado attacked the CREDHOS representative physically, accusing him of "working for the bandits [guerriIlas]." Far from reprimanding his officer, base commander Lt. Col. Luis Garcia Chavez also insulted the human rights workers, calling them "the defenders of the guerrillas." CREDHOS S.O.S., July 1993.

80 Colonel Quinones has denied these charges. Letter from Lt. Col. Rodrigo Quinones Cardenas Maj. Jairo Osorio Morales, and Maj. Rafael Colon Torres to Orlando Vasquez Velasquez, Procurador, October 28, 1994.

81 Testimony of Carlos Alberto Vergara Amaya to the attorney general 's office, February 11, 1994.

82 Letter from Saulo Segura Palacios to the Attorney General, December 7, 1993.

83 Letter from Felipe Gomez to the attorney general's office, November 29, 1994.

84 After the ban on arming paramilitaries in 1989, Decree 2535, implemented on December 17, 1993, added further detail to Colombia's already strict weapons restrictions by naming specific arms restricted solely for military use, including pistols above .38 caliber, semiautomatic rifles above .22 caliber, all automatic weapons, weapons that have been modified after fabrication to increase their power, and accessories like silencers and infrared scopes. Andres Soto, Paulina Zuleta. and Paula Pena, Las armas de fuego ligeras en Colombia: alcances, diversidad y control (Santafé de Bogotá: Centro de Estudios Internacionales, Jan.-March, 1994), pp. 18-20.

85 Letter from Felipe Gomez to the attorney general's office, November 29, 1994: and his testimony to the Attorney General, February 8, 1995.

86 Ibid.

87 For a summary of military - paramilitary collaboration in the region, see Justice and Peace. El Proyecto Paramilitar en la Region de Chucuri (Santafe de Bogota: Justice and Peace, August 1992).

88 Jorge Gomez Lizarazo.

Colombian Blood, U.S. Guns," New York Times, January 28. 1992.

89 The previous year, CREDHOS members Alvaro Bustos Castro and Humberto Herndndez were murdered in circumstances that suggest the involvement of the security forces. CREDHOS, "Informe Violencia en el Magdalena Medio, 1991-1992."

90 "Los derechos humanos en el Magdalena Medio de Colombia," Reporte de Derechos Humanos, Instituto Latinoamericano de Servicios Legales Alternativos, Vol. 1, No. 3, April 1992.

91 Ibid.

92 Letter from Carlos David Lopez to the attorney general, December 7, 1993.

93 Ibid.

94 Human Rights Watch interview with "Enrique," a member of the team, Santafe de Bogota, June 13, 1992.

95 Letter from Carlos David Lopez to the attorney general, December 7, 1993.

96 According to Segura, Gerardo Alvarez and the Catano brothers were among the perpetrators of the La Rochela massacre in January 1989. Segura told Human Rights Watch that the Catano brothers had previously been paramilitaries, and had boasted of training with foreign instructors. Human Rights Watch interview, Modelo Prison, Santafe de Bogota, September 18, 1995.

97 Letter from Carlos David Lopez to the attorney general, December 7, 1993.

98 Human Rights Watch interview, Modelo Prison, Santafe de Bogota, September 18, 1995.

99 Human Rights Watch interview, Barrancabermeja, June 6, 1992.

100 Human Rights Watch interviews, Orito, Putumayo, June 1992.

101 Ibid. The murder was never carried out, and Narvaez won the election only to discover the plot after his inauguration. "Lucas" was later killed in circumstances that remain unclear.

102 Human Rights Watch interviews in Putumayo, June 1992.

103 This quote is based on notes Human Rights Watch took on a copy of the report shown to us by General Gutierrez titled Report No. 3728BR14-B2-263, "Asunto: Informe desaparicion personas," addressed to the commander of the Second Division and dated June 2, 1992.

104 Ibid.

105 According to Lopez, Ulloa's wife brought a civil suit against the state charging that her husband was killed by the army. Letter from Carlos David Lopez to the attorney general, December 7, 1993.

106 CREDHOS, "Informe Violencia en el Magdalena Medio, 1991-1992,"

107 Letter from Saulo Segura Palacios to the attorney general, December 7, 1993.

108 Translation by Human Rights Watch. Ibid.

109 Translation by Human Rights Watch. "Los casetes de la red," La Prensa, January 5. 1994.

110 Testimony of Carlos Alberto Vergara Amaya to the attorney general's office, February 11, 1994.

111 "Salen del país ex militares de la Armada." El Tiempo, February 15, 1994.

112 Human Rights Watch interview, Modelo Prison, Santafe de Bogota, September 18, 1995.

113 Declarations by Saulo Segura, July 1, 1994, and Carlos David Lopez, July, 4, 1994, before Consul Jaime Santos Rodriguez, Panama.

114 "Inteligencia de la Armada habría permitido asesinatos," El Tiempo, August 4, 1994.

115 Human Rights Watch interview, July 11, 1996.

116 Decision of Alfonso Ospina Bonilla, Tribunal Superior Militar, December 15, 1994.

117 Human Rights Watch interview, attorney general's office, Santafe de Bogota, July 9, 1996.

118 Human Rights Watch interviews, Sabana de Torres, April 9, 1995.

119 Ibid.

--------chemicals

Progress in UN Chemical Ban Treaty

Yahoo News
Morning Coffee Edition for Monday, March 27, 2000
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2565205007-cf8

BONN, Germany (AP) _ Representatives working on a U.N. treaty to eliminate some of the world's deadliest chemicals ended a one-week conference Saturday with no resolution on who would pay for cleaning up developing countries.

The conference, which brought together negotiators from 121 countries, made ``considerable progress,'' but no breakthrough on the financing question, said chairman John Buccini.

The fifth and final round of negotiations is planned for early December in South Africa, with plans to sign a treaty in Stockholm, Sweden, in May 2001. Buccini said he was optimistic the timetable could be met.

The aim is a global ban on a ``dirty dozen'' list of highly toxic chemicals known as persistent organic pollutants, or POPs, which have been linked to cancer, birth defects and other genetic abnormalities.

The substances, which include pesticides like DDT, dioxin and PCBs, are deemed the most harmful because they break down slowly and accumulate at higher levels in the food chain. Some are already banned in industrialized countries.

But for many developing nations, chemicals like DDT provide a cheap and effective way to wipe out mosquitos and prevent the more immediate danger of malaria. That means weaning them from the ``dirty dozen'' requires richer nations to help pay for effective replacements.

China, India and other countries want a separate fund to be established, while industrialized countries say letting existing aid agencies handle the task would avoid creating a new bureaucracy. The U.S. team stressed that additional money would have to be provided in any case, but environmental groups like Greenpeace and WWF International accused industrialized countries of not being willing to make a real commitment.

``The future treaty risks unraveling if governments don't start exercising political will,'' said Craig Boljkovac of WWF-Canada in a statement. ``Making financial commitments voluntary and unpredictable instead of mandatory will only serve to perpetuate POPs problems rather than achieve solutions.''

The German representative, Ulrich Schlottmann, said agreement was reached on another contentious point: formulating criteria under which new chemicals could be brought under the treaty's restrictions.

--------terrorism

Bin Laden Reportedly Ailing

Yahoo News
Morning Coffee Edition for Monday, March 27, 2000
By KATHY GANNON
Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2565194323-62f

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) _ Osama bin Laden seemed weak and gaunt at a meeting about President Clinton's visit to Pakistan, a witness said, and a Western intelligence official said the alleged terrorist leader is suffering from kidney and liver disease.

Bin Laden has kidney failure and ``his liver is going,'' the official said, speaking on condition that neither he nor his nation be identified. He said bin Laden's followers were trying to find a kidney dialysis machine for their ailing leader.

Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia, however, insist bin Laden is fine.

``His health is good. There is no problem with his kidney or liver,'' said Ahmad Ullah, a Taliban spokesman in southern Kandahar, the headquarters of the religious militia.

Despite his illness, it has been business as usual for bin Laden, the Western intelligence official said Thursday. ``He is still operating an enormous terrorist network around the world,'' he said.

Bin Laden, a Saudi exile accused by the United States of organizing the deadly 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, was seen March 17 with 100 followers in a remote mountain valley in Afghanistan's eastern Laghman province, said an Afghan who attended the meeting.

``He is very much weak. His face is very thin,'' said the man, who has close contacts with Afghanistan's ruling militia and accompanied a Taliban security officer to the meeting.

Clinton's visit to Pakistan today was the focus of the remote mountain meeting, the Afghan said. Bin Laden and his followers, mostly Arab nationals, discussed the likelihood that Clinton would press Pakistan's military leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf to persuade the Taliban to surrender bin Laden.

Bin Laden, believed to be in his late 30s, coughed frequently and seemed to become easily exhausted, even while seated, said the man, who did not want his name used because of the potential danger. Bin Laden took milk, rather than the traditional tea, for refreshment, he said.

``The sheik speaks for five or 10 minutes,'' he said, ``and then he drinks some milk and gets up and walks around.''

The Afghan also spoke to a doctor who accompanied bin Laden to the valley and was told bin Laden's ailment is related to his circulation and his blood ``is not being cleaned in the right way.''

``I asked him, 'Why is the sheik very weak, very unhappy looking?' and he told me, 'He is very sick.'''

The Afghan doctor also told the man the problem was with bin Laden's ``jigger,'' the Pashtu word for liver.

The United States is offering a $5 million reward for bin Laden's capture. In November the United Nations imposed sanctions on the Taliban to press for him to be handed over for trial.

The Taliban have refused, saying Afghan tradition forbids handing over guests to enemies.

With bin Laden in Afghanistan and radical Islamic groups based in Pakistan, security for Clinton's five-hour visit today was extraordinary. The Pakistani capital was virtually sealed off Friday, with armed soldiers standing guard at Islamabad's main intersections and on rooftops of major public buildings.

The only countries that recognize the Taliban's authority are Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; Pakistan is considered the religious militia's greatest ally.

Bin Laden told meeting attendees that the Taliban leadership would collapse if it bowed to U.S. demands.

``Don't worry,'' the Afghan quoted Bin Laden as telling his followers. ``There are many in the Taliban that would defend against turning me over to anyone, and any Taliban leader who would try would regret it.''

--------biotechnology

Protest at Mass. Biotech Conference

Yahoo News
Morning Coffee Edition for Monday, March 27, 2000
By STEVE LEBLANC Associated Press Writer
http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2565225401-053
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/f/AP-Biotech-Conference.html

BOSTON (AP) _ Opponents of biotechnology _ some dressed in colorful costumes and chanting ``Our genes are not for sale'' _ staged a peaceful demonstration Sunday on the first day of the industry's biggest conference in this country.

More than 1,000 protesters gathered at historic Copley Square, then marched under police escort to the site of the BIO 2000 conference at the Hynes Convention Center.

Police had prepared for weeks in advance of the protest and conference, fearing a repeat of riots that ripped through Seattle last December during a World Trade Organization rally.

No arrests were reported.

``We're trying to send a message to the biotechnology industry ... that their agenda in the U.S. is not good for the people. It's driven by profits,'' said Shawn Kay, 28, of Worcester, who dressed as an 8-foot, genetically engineered ``killer tomato.''

Some 8,000 scientists, researchers and chief executive officers were expected for the five-day conference that began Sunday.

Demonstrators who took part in the ``Biodevastation'' protest challenged biotech industry leaders to a debate, arguing that genetically engineered foods and medicines have not been proven to be safe and should be removed from supermarket shelves.

``The American public has been systematically deceived by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and the biotech industry,'' said Steven Druker, executive director of the Alliance for Biointegrity.

Industry officials disagree, saying genetically engineered foods, from tomatoes to soybeans, have been studied and approved by federal regulators.

``There are studies on biotech foods that date back to 1973,'' said Gene Grabowski, a spokesman for the Grocery Manufacturers of America. ``Biotech foods are the only foods that have been studied to any extent for safety.''

Protesters ignore the industry's successes, said Carl B. Feldbaum, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, sponsor of the conference. He rejected the call for a debate.

In 1999 alone, Feldbaum said, the FDA approved 22 new biotech drugs to battle ovarian cancer, influenza, arthritis and other ailments.

The attention given the protesters has had a benefit for the industry, according to Feldbaum.

``All this publicity and excitement about biotechnology has seemed to raise attendance,'' he said. ``Seven thousand would have been a record and it looks like we're going to break 8,000.''

Conference attendees took the protests in stride.

C.S. Prakash, a plant biotechnology researcher and professor at Tuskegee University in Alabama, said biotech opponents have a vested interest in latching onto new controversies.

``They need to promote new evils, new fears because that's what brings in their money. They peddle fear. Today it's biotechnology. Three years ago it was global warming. Five years before that it was nuclear power,'' said Prakash. ___

On the Net: Biotechnology Industry Organization: http://www.bio.org/welcome.html

---

1,500 March in Boston to Protest Biotech Food

New York Times
March 27, 2000
By CAREY GOLDBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/boston-biotech.html

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BOSTON, March 26 -- In what organizers called the largest American demonstration against genetically engineered food, more than 1,500 protesters marched through downtown Boston today and ended up outside a major biotechnology industry convention, where they pointed their fingers at the suited scientists watching from the windows and shouted, "Shame on you!"

City officials and police officers, concerned about a possible repeat of the fracas at the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle last fall, had prepared assiduously for the demonstration. But all passed peacefully in an atmosphere something like an Earth Day festival.

In fact, the demonstration was not wild but wildly creative. Street theater abounded; several protesters ran around dressed as white-coated fanatical scientists wielding giant syringes and several others fluttered about as butterflies to symbolize the monarchs that a study has shown were harmed by genetically altered corn. A man in a Frankenstein costume pushed a shopping cart bearing genetically engineered "Frankenflakes," and another wore a papier-mâché killer tomato on his head.

The protest was timed to coincide with Bio2000, a record-setter for the other side: its organizers call it the largest biotechnology conference in the United States, gathering about 7,000 participants for five days, beginning today, to share the latest news on promising drugs and techniques. Its speakers include the actor Christopher Reeve and Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

In a pre-emptive salvo against the protesters, about 2,000 scientists from around the world, including two Nobel laureates, signed a "Declaration in Support of Agricultural Biotechnology," said AgBioWorld.com, an advocacy group that released the declaration on Thursday. It quoted the declaration's organizer, Dr. C. S. Prakash of Tuskegee University, as saying that "biotech crops allow farmers to grow more food on less land with less synthetic pesticides and herbicides."

One of the few conference participants to venture outside the convention center to watch the march, Bob Renger, the dean of sciences of Ventura College in California, said he thought it was good that "people are expressing their views and they're doing it in a peaceful way."

"I think more people will hear them as a consequence," Mr. Renger said. But, he said: "I happen to disagree with what they're saying. I'm an archaeologist and I know we've been changing the environment for 10,000 years. The only difference is that we've speeded up the process that we're changing things."

He could support the idea of labeling genetically engineered food, he said, but if people took "an extreme view," it might stop the benefits coming from improved crops and pharmaceutical products. "I'm concerned over unreasonable reaction," he said. "It's not the technology here, it's what people do with it."

No genetically altered food has been shown to have harmed people, but opponents say that not enough research has been done to prove that it is safe. Protesters argued today that the agricultural biotechnology industry, fueled by greed, was placing human health -- possibly the health of the biosphere -- at risk.

"These are the people who gave us thalidomide babies," Sarah Seeds, a protester who also trains others to protest nonviolently, said of the participants in the Bio2000 convention. "Now they want to give us genetically modified food." Thalidomide, a drug prescribed for morning sickness, caused deformities in infants in the 1960's.

In Europe, the public sentiment against genetically engineered food reached a ground swell so great that the cultivation and sale of such food there has all but stopped.

But Americans have remained much more receptive to genetically engineered crops, which have been altered by techniques that take some genetic material from another plant or animal and insert it to produce useful traits like greater resistance to insects. Nearly two thirds of the products on American supermarket shelves are estimated to contain genetically altered crops.

Today's protest, however, may indicate some swelling in the opposition. Last December in Oakland, Calif., only a few hundred people protested a public meeting about bio-engineered food held by the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the crops. Today, the crowd nearly filled Boston's Copley Square before the march, and the slogans and arguments seemed to get through to onlookers like Sathya Rajavelu, a technology manager for a financial services company who had wandered down to the protest.

On the one hand, Mr. Rajavelu said, he thought the conference participants probably saw the protest as nothing but entertainment.

On the other hand, he said, "This is a cause that a lot of people could easily relate to, so they will most likely get on the bandwagon."

And, he said, "I'm sure there would be at least one person up there" -- he gestured at the convention center -- "who will step back and say, 'Have we been totally carried away with what we do?' "