Lots of free info available at PubMed,
the National Library of Medicine's search service: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/

----------- good news

From: Pat Ortmeyer port@bigsky.net
Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 20:51:06 -0700

Power Co. Pulls Out of Fuel Program

By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Plutonium-Fuel.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Virginia Power Co. has decided to pull out of a government program to burn plutonium-derived fuel in two of its nuclear power reactors, the utility said Friday.

The decision raises questions about whether the government will be able to dispose of as much as two tons of plutonium a year by burning it as a mixed oxide fuel in civilian power reactors as planned.

``We regret the decision by Virginia power to leave the consortium,'' the Energy Department said in a statement. But the department said another utility, Duke Power, ``remains committed to this important nonproliferation initiative.''

A department source, who declined to be named, said there are various options available including finding a new utility to replace Virginia Power or increasing the number of Duke Power reactors in the program.

``The department continues to rely on the irradiation of MOX fuel to eliminate surplus U.S. weapons plutonium,'' said the DOE statement. The plan calls for disposing of 33 metric tons of plutonium as MOX fuel by 2020.

The government a year ago awarded a $130 million contract to a consortium comprised of the French nuclear fuel manufacturer, Cogema, Virginia Power and Duke Power, for the burning of the MOX fuel in the six reactors, beginning in 2007.

Duke Power will use two reactors at its McGuire plant south of Charlotte, N.C., and two reactors at its Catawba plant near Rock Hill, S.C. Virginia Power had planned to use its two North Anna reactors near Mineral Va.

Jim Novelle, a spokesman for the utility, said the decision to no longer participate in the government program was made as ``purely a business decision'' in light of the corporations recent restructuring.

In January, Virginia Power's parent company, Dominion Resources, merged with Consolidated Natural Gas of Pittsburgh. ``Our strategic focus as a company was to grow our generation assets in the Midwest and Northeast sections of the United States. And this (MOX) project does not fit into our business plan,'' said Novelle.

Nuclear nonproliferation watchdog groups, that oppose the burning of plutonium-based fuel in civilian reactors, said Virginia Power's decision may jeopardize the Energy Department's plans to dispose of all the plutonium it plans. That, in turn, could cause problems with an agreement with Russia on plutonium disposal, they said.

``I would think this would make it difficult to safely implement the plan,'' said Tom Clements of the Nuclear Control Institute, a nonproliferation advocacy group that had criticized the use of plutonium-based fuel in civilian reactors.

A $1.3 billion processing plant and other facilities, to be run by Cogema, for converting plutonium to MOX fuel has yet to be built, but is planned for the Savannah River weapons complex in South Carolina.

The plutonium to be converted to MOX is among the plutonium left over from the weapons program. About nine tons of less pure plutonium, not suitable for conversion, is to be encased in glass logs and buried.

The Nuclear Control Institute has maintained the use of MOX fuel in civilian reactors increases the safety risk and improperly links the military and civilian nuclear programs.

----------- activists

Reserve major denounces 'DU mess'

By Patrick O'Neill
April 7, 2000 Towson, Md.
National Catholic Reporter,
http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/040700/040700e.htm

Doug Rokke is the U.S. Army's premier expert on the dangers of depleted uranium. Unfortunately, Rokke, 50, didn't learn enough about the dangers of DU to prevent his own exposure to the radioactive substance that he believes has caused illness and death to scores of his military colleagues, and to perhaps thousands of others in countries where the United States has used DU munitions.

Rokke, who lives in Alabama and teaches at Jacksonville State University, is a major in the Army Reserves. He was exposed to radiation from depleted uranium "while cleaning up the DU mess" in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm. He may have also been exposed twice more while conducting research for the Army in 1994 and 1995.

"Mine was all inhalation or absorption," said Rokke, who came to Maryland last week hoping to testify as an expert witness at the trial of four Catholic pacifists charged with damaging two A-10 Warthog aircraft, the type of plane used to fire DU shells during the Gulf War and more recently in Yugoslavia. "Inhalation has caused confirmed reactive airway disease."

Since his exposure, Rokke said he has lost most of his fine motor skills, his vision is damaged and he has only 60 percent lung function. "I live with continuous pain," he said.

After years of unsuccessfully challenging the Pentagon to tell the truth about DU and implement safeguards to prevent further exposures, Rokke went public with his story. Recently, he was interviewed on "60 Minutes," and by media outlets throughout the world.

"The United States deliberately used depleted uranium munitions in Iraq, Kuwait, Okinawa, Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia, Puerto Rico and within the United States," Rokke said. "Thousands of individuals have been exposed, and today many are sick or dead. DU is a health hazard if it is inhaled, ingested or gets in wounds."

Department of Energy documents released Jan. 29 confirm the hazards of uranium exposures, Rokke said. "Respiratory and skin protection must be worn by everyone within 80 feet of any DU-contaminated equipment to prevent exposures. DU contamination will make food and water unusable. Today irrefutable evidence suggests that adverse health and environmental effects occur unless all contamination is removed."

Rokke, who was not permitted to testify, said he was warned by many to not attend the trial. In a statement released after the trial, Rokke said: "Everyone should consider if they want thousands and thousands of radioactive heavy metal poison bullets in their own backyard. If not, then it should not be left anywhere in the world where children may be exposed."

Rokke called for medical care for all individuals who may have been exposed to depleted uranium; the removal and disposal of all depleted uranium penetrator fragments, contaminated equipment and oxide contamination; and a ban on the use of depleted uranium munitions.


----

Four activists face prison time

By PATRICK O'NEILL
National Catholic Reporter,
April 7, 2000 Towson, Md.
http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/040700/040700d.htm

Not much has changed about Philip Berrigan since 1968 when his anti-Vietnam War protests landed him on the cover of Time magazine with his brother, Jesuit Fr. Daniel Berrigan. At age 76, Berrigan welcomed in year 2000 from a Baltimore County jail cell.

By his own account, Berrigan has spent more than nine years in jail and prison for acts of civil disobedience. On March 23, Circuit Judge James T. Smith Jr. made sure Berrigan will spend at least another New Year's Day - perhaps two - in a Maryland prison. He sentenced the former Josephite priest and three other Catholic pacifists for using hammers and blood to damage two Air National Guard A-10 Warthog warplanes last December to protest the United States' use of depleted uranium in recent wars against Iraq and Yugoslavia.

Smith, who was once named "Man for All Seasons" by the St. Thomas More Society of Maryland, a Catholic lawyers group, sentenced Berrigan to 30 months in prison for malicious destruction of property and conspiracy. Smith far exceeded the 6-to-12 month guidelines the prosecutor, assistant state's attorney Mickey Norman, requested for Berrigan.

In addition, Elizabeth Walz, 33, a Catholic Worker from Philadelphia, was sentenced to 18 months, exceeding the guidelines' 0-to-1 month sentence. Susan Crane, 56, of Baltimore, and Jesuit Fr. Stephen Kelly, 50, of New York were sentenced to 27 months each, exceeding the guidelines' 2-to-9 months.

Smith also ordered the defendants to share in paying $88,622.11 in restitution for the damage. The large damage total justified stiff sentences, Smith said. The judge imposed a cash bail of $90,000 each, "to be paid by the defendants only," in the event the four seek appeals.

Calling themselves "Plowshares vs. Depleted Uranium," the four admitted to using bolt cutters to gain access to Warfield Air National Guard Base in Middle River, Md., during the predawn hours of Dec. 19, 1999. Citing Isaiah 2:4 ("They shall beat their swords into plowshares"), the activists hammered and poured blood on two A-10s, which use Gatling guns to fire various types of depleted uranium shells.

"This criminal plane fired 95 percent of the depleted uranium deployed by the U.S. during the Gulf War ... poisoning humans and the elements in Kuwait and Iraq," the four wrote in a statement.

During his opening argument, prosecutor Norman said the four had taken hammers to property not belonging to them, something you couldn't do "unless of course there is a legally justifiable reason. The defendants might believe there is a moral justification, but this is a court of law. There wasn't a legal justification."

Smith agreed to Norman's pretrial motion prohibiting "the defense from introducing evidence and/or propounding argument concerning depleted uranium." The motion, upheld for most of the trial, prevented the defendants from using a defense based on international law or necessity. The motion also kept the defense from calling various expert witnesses to bolster their case.

On the third day of the four-day trial, the defense called depleted uranium expert Doug Rokke as a witness (see related story). Rokke, a Jacksonville State University professor and Army Reserves major, himself stricken from exposure to depleted uranium, was only permitted to give his name and academic credentials. Immediately following Rokke's limited testimony, the defendants stood and turned their backs on the bench as Crane, one of the defendants, read a statement.

"We cannot put on a defense about the dangers of depleted uranium and our rights and duties under international law," Crane said. Smith ordered her to cease and desist, but Crane persisted. "We have been denied our right to testify about these topics," she said. "We have been denied our expert witnesses. Therefore, we can't go forward. We will not participate in what amounts to a legal gag order."

Earlier in the day Crane had refused to answer the prosecutor's questions about who drove the van that let the four activists off outside the base gates the morning of the action.

During the disruption a woman in the gallery stood and yelled out, "I drove the van." Seconds later, others joined in shouting, "I drove the van." Soon, more than 100 spectators were openly proclaiming conspiratorial ties to the four as Smith called for order. When Crane was finished, Kelly, a former missionary in Sudan and Central America, began reading aloud the day's scripture passage from Jeremiah.

Smith ordered sheriff's deputies to clear the courtroom of everyone except reporters. After a recess, only Berrigan returned to the courtroom to tell the judge the four intended no disrespect for Smith or Norman, but they would no longer participate in an unjust trial.

"The courts of this country are identified with the Pentagon and the government," Berrigan said outside the presence of the jury. "There's no way that nonviolent resistance can get a serious hearing in this country."

On the final day of the trial none of the defendants was in the courtroom when Norman made his closing arguments. The jury deliberated more than four hours before reaching verdicts.

Crane had been charged with assault because a guard said he felt threatened by her hammer, but the jury could not reach a verdict on the charge and it was dropped. Crane's defense against the assault charge was probably bolstered by the character testimony of Detroit Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton, who said Crane "had a deep commitment to nonviolence. Her integrity to me is beyond question." When Norman asked the bishop if destroying property was evidence that Crane was violent, Gumbleton replied: "I don't see damaging property as a violation of peacefulness."

After sentencing, Berrigan's wife, Elizabeth McAlister told supporters: "They were prepared for the worst and they got it."

National Catholic Reporter, April 7, 2000

-------

Inside NCR
We must not turn away or stop speaking out

National Catholic Reporter,
April 7, 2000
http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/040700/040700b.htm

It's a matter of opinion whether the world needs more words about Kosovo, the Balkans, ethnic-cleansing Serbs or Albanian refugees. This same dilemma rises to meet us in many directions. The experts say there are 30- or 40-odd wars in progress just now but even the experts can't agree. Anyway, it's easier not to bother noticing. Such conflicts are all a nuisance: so complicated. For starters, it's hard to lay blame for old hatreds that go back a thousand years. Eventually we run out of clarity and patience and resort to the even-handed but unfair prayer: a plague on all their houses.

Yet NCR sent Special Report Writer Patricia Lefevere off to the Balkans to write more words (story). Conscience says we can't hide from the wars until peace comes. Lefevere's account sifts again amid the rubble for winners and losers and causes and casualties, for hints of hope. This is an excellent account of the misery, but light on hope.

And that may be the challenge for now: not to solve what centuries have failed to solve, but at the very least not to turn away. People of conscience must bear witness. Suffering is one thing, but abandonment greatly multiplies the suffering. We owe it to our common humanity not to abandon those suffering this year's misery. Injustice, violence and pain will have won when good people stop noticing and stop speaking out.

The testimony will be more worthwhile if the reader feels the same obligation to read.

At the Plowshares trial (story), Judge James T. Smith Jr. refused to allow expert testimony. One such expert was Sr. Rosalie Bertell, who wrote as follows to the judge:

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 U.S. military activity, regardless of the judgment 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, 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. ... In your better moments you must find that shooting radioactive waste at one's enemy is outrageous behavior. 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. ... 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 Plowshares defendants. Silencing the messengers and prophets has long been the pattern of behavior of false leaders. Do not continue on this wrong path.

Another barred witness, Francis A. Boyle, professor of international law, wrote: "Smith gave Phil Berrigan 30 months. May the mark of Cain be upon Smith's head for the rest of eternity should Phil die in jail!"

My e-mail address is farrellncr@aol.com
National Catholic Reporter, April 7, 2000

----------- australia

Jabiluka mining in the balance

Date: 07/04/00
By JANINE ISRAEL,
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0004/07/text/national11.html

Any hopes of Jabiluka uranium mine ever operating may be buried when its owners meet in Canada next month to discuss the mine's future.

A veto by traditional owners means proceeding with the project may cost an estimated $155 million, money that market analysts say North Ltd is unwilling to spend. The analysts say that Jabiluka, which is yet to begin operating, is a liability for North.

The North board will consider a report by the mine's operator, Energy Resources of Australia, that proposes building a new processing mill at Jabiluka.

Without the mill, the mine's future is doubtful because company plans to build a 22-kilometre road to truck Jabiluka ore to the mill at the nearby Ranger mine were blocked in October by traditional owners, who imposed a five-year moratorium on negotiations.

North said this had forced the company to look at the potential to mill the ore at Jabiluka instead.

An ERA analyst for a prominent brokerage house said: "The market is very sceptical, and does not give any value for Jabiluka."

ERA's share price has dropped from a high of $6.50 in October 1996 to $2.01 yesterday.

A resources analyst, Mr John Colnan, said if anyone was willing to pay a reasonable price for ERA North would sell it.

The low uranium price would not justify North spending millions building a processing mill at Jabiluka, he said, and he thought the firm would continue to push the Ranger mill option. North confirmed it was still looking at that.

But analysts said North no longer viewed uranium as a core asset. It is focusing on iron ore production and copper and zinc projects, and market speculation is that it will soon sell its uranium and forestry divisions. But North said the company would continue developing forestry and uranium "as long as they continue to meet their investment criteria, as they do at the moment".

A campaigner for the Australian Conservation Foundation, Mr Dave Sweeney, said Jabiluka's future was also clouded by the adverse impact of recent nuclear accidents in Asia.

Building a mill at Jabiluka would generate "a mountain of scientific uncertainty, a bucketload of political and legal challenges" and more protests.

The Opposition spokesman for the environment, Senator Nick Bolkus, said if Labor won the next election it would "try any legal avenue possible to stop the mine from proceeding".

This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying or mirroring is prohibited.

----------- canada

U.S. judge rejects motion to block shipment of Russian plutonium to Canada

Canadian Broadcasting,
April 7, 2000
http://cbc.ca/cp/world/000407/w040794.html
http://detnews.com/2000/metro/0004/08/04080028.htm

KALAMAZOO, Mich. (AP) - A U.S. federal judge rejected an anti-nuclear coalition's motion to block a second U.S.-funded shipment of Russian plutonium to Canada on Friday, saying he lacks the jurisdiction to act.

A group of Canadian and U.S. activists argued the Parallex Project violates an arms-control agreement signed by the U.S government but Chief Judge Richard Enslen said the issue is irrelevant.

"The judicial courts have nothing to do with this," Enslen said, after pointing out treaties are between governments, not private citizens and governments.

"We're disappointed but I'm not sure what we'll do next," said Terry Lodge, a lawyer for the coalition.

The U.S. government said it was pleased with the decision and the project will go forward.

This was the anti-nuclear coalition's second attempt to block a shipment associated with the joint U.S.-Russian, $20-million experiment to determine whether commercial nuclear reactors in Canada can use material from decommissioned Russian nuclear weapons as fuel.

For the project to go forward, both the United States and Russia have to send plutonium to Canada. The United States sent its plutonium - about 115 grams in all - to Canada via Michigan and several other states in January after winning a court fight with the same group.

The U.S. government said the project is key to reducing the spread of nuclear weapons. But the anti-nuclear activists believe it will do the opposite, while creating potential for nuclear accidents during transport.

In December, the activists asked Enslen to block the shipment on the grounds the U.S. Department of Energy violated the law by doing an insufficient environmental study of the project.

The judge said although the plaintiffs' contentions that the government violated the law appeared to have merit, the Energy Department's assertions that an injunction would hurt nuclear-disarmament talks were more important.

On Friday, the group went back to court to try and block the transport of the Russian plutonium - about 680 grams total - which is expected to be shipped early this summer. Several Canadian groups also joined the complaint, in addition to the original plaintiffs: six individuals and Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination.

In addition to arguing the project violates arms-control agreements signed by the U.S. government, the group's lawyers reiterated an argument made in the December hearings - the contention Parallex should be blocked until more environmental study has been done.

Although the Russian plutonium shipment is not expected to cross U.S. territory, the plaintiffs argued it still falls under U.S. law, since the Energy Department is picking up the entire tab.

Enslen said Friday he remains convinced the department likely violated the law by conducting a limited environmental study but that violation would not be enough to stop the project, given its importance to national security.

The anti-nuclear activists aren't sure what they'll do next. The case could still go to trial but that likely would not happen before the shipments were completed.

A lawsuit in Canada is also possible. Some native tribes in Ontario said the Canadian government did not consult with them sufficiently before approving the shipments.

There were demonstrations against the U.S. shipment last year.

"There is more unity on this issue in Canada," says Grand Chief Larry Sault of the Association of Iroquois and Allied Indians.

"We will fight this.

----------- imf

Washington, D.C. braces for IMF protests

By DERRILL HOLLY,
April 7, 2000
Associated Press,
Anchorage Daily News
http://www.nando.net/24hour/adn/business/story/0,1968,500190265-500256415-501312610-0,00.html

WASHINGTON - Hoping to avoid the conflict that enveloped Seattle last November, police in the nation's capital said Friday they are ready to deal with any disruptions protesters may cause at the annual spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Beginning Sunday, all District of Columbia police officers will work 12-hour shifts. Official events associated with the financial organizations begin Wednesday, with the major business sessions scheduled the following Sunday and Monday.

"They ain't burning our city like they did Seattle," said Chief Charles Ramsey of the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department.

Since January, members of the district's 3,520 police force have trained to prevent a repeat of the violence and property damage that wracked Seattle during World Trade Organization meetings four months ago.

By Monday, an estimated 1,500 officers will have completed an intensive one-day training course in crowd- and riot-control techniques. Ramsey was part of the first group of 60 officers to take the course at a police facility in Lorton, Va. He described it as one of the most comprehensive learning sessions of his 30-year law enforcement career.

"They didn't know what to expect in Seattle," said Ramsey, adding that his department is prepared to face an estimated 30,000 protesters without stripping the city's seven police districts of protection.

Law enforcement agencies have identified 73 Internet World Wide Web sites that are promoting demonstrations associated with the Washington meetings. Many organizers have stressed nonviolence, but acts of civil disobedience are expected to include efforts to block meeting sites and routes from hotels that will be used by the delegates.

Many of the meetings are taking place in an area home to law and professional services offices, banks and financial institutions in the Farragut Square area just west of the White House.

"The closer (the demonstrators) are to the IMF and World Bank buildings, the more likely their business will be disrupted," Ramsey said.

The State Department has granted temporary diplomatic status to both the IMF and World Bank. That means any attempt to disrupt activities or destroy property at those locations would draw a response from the U.S. Secret Service.

"Anything that occurs on district streets will be our responsibility," said Sgt. Joe Gentile, a police spokesman. More than $1 million has been spent on new helmets, shin guards and glove guards to protect officers assigned to crowd-control duties. Some officers also will be equipped with shotguns capable of firing rubber bullets, police said.

District officials have identified several locations where protestors might be temporarily detained, said Peter LaPorte, director of the district's Office of Emergency Management. He would give no details.

Police departments in northern Virginia and suburban Maryland also will be available to help, and federal law enforcement agencies are increasing security around parks and museums on the National Mall and at the Capitol.

The largest demonstrations are planned next Sunday and Monday across from the White House at Lafayette Park and on the Ellipse just south of the White House. The U.S. Park Police have brought in additional personnel from San Francisco and New York for assignment at those locations.

"We've been training our horse-mounted patrol, along with our SWAT team and our regular uniform patrol," said Sgt. Robert MacLean, a park police spokesman.

---

Washington DC on demo alert for the big-money meeting

by Lauren Chambliss,
Business Day,
07 April 2000
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/news/business_story.html?in_review_id=271442

Washington DC is preparing for bold but controlled demonstrations at the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank next week but neither officials nor protesters are expecting a WTO 2 - a repeat of the street battles that tore apart central Seattle during the global trade organisation's meeting last autumn.

Finance officials and central bankers who descend on Washington at this time of year typically arrive and depart almost unnoticed. They discuss arcane financial topics such as architectural financial system reform for four or five days and take breaks now and again to enjoy Washington's glorious spring and budding daffodils.

This time, however, officials will have to steer their limos around thousands of demonstrators who are planning two days of activities on 16 and 17 April within shouting distance of the World Bank and IMF. Law enforcement chiefs are confident the protests will not get out of hand, as they did in Seattle. For one thing, police in Washington are more prepared. Authorities purchased $1 million (£625,000) of gas masks, and some units are receiving special riot-control training just in case.

Tear gas, looting and riotous behaviour disrupted the 30 November WTO meeting, tarnishing the image of a city previously known for sedate coffee bars and steady rain. Washington officials are used to handling large crowds. On Mother's Day in May, for example, more than a million mums are expected to flock to Capitol Hill in support of gun-control issues. Not nearly as many protesters are thought to be coming to demonstrate against the IMF but the largely peaceful gathering in Seattle was marred by the lawlessness of a few.

Emboldened by the success at raising their issues in Seattle, labour unions, green activists and human rights groups plan to try to block Pennsylvania Avenue, home of the White House and near the IMF and World Bank.

'We don't expect this demonstration to be as large as the one in Seattle,' says Friends of the Earth director Carol Welch. 'But we are continuing to step up the pressure on the global institutions. The movement started with Nafta and coalesced at the WTO in Seattle into a global force. The mobilisation next week is testament to the fact that we won't go away until the institutions take our call seriously.'

The groups joining the demonstrations have different goals. The three main issues are the environment, poverty and labour rights.

The labour groups want to block China's access to the global trading and financial organisations and prod the IMF and World Bank into considering labour conditions when sanctioning emerging-market economic programmes. America's largest trade union, the AFL-CIO is joining the protest.

The green groups oppose IMF and World Bank lending for projects that contribute to environmental destruction. The World Bank has made some effort to address environmental concerns but not nearly enough, says Welch.

The human rights groups want the IMF to move faster to relieve the debt of the poorest nations and to funnel funds into poverty-relief programmes.

---

Protesters gear up for world bank forum

By Martin Crutsinger
Associated Press
http://www.bergen.com/biz/replay07200004075.htm

WASHINGTON -- The signs are popping up all over town: "More World, Less Bank -- Shut down the IMF and the World Bank."

The protest groups on the streets as the World Trade Organization meetings collapsed in a cloud of tear gas in Seattle are taking aim at an even bigger target: the April 16-17 meetings of the world's largest multinational lending agencies.

Organized under the umbrella name Mobilization for Global Justice, the protest groups, ranging from the AFL-CIO to Friends of the Earth and the Forum of Indian Leftists, are planning 10 days of teach-ins and street protests starting Saturday.

All the activity will be aimed at a massive rally on the Ellipse, the park across the street from the White House, on April 16. That's when finance ministers from around the world will be in town for the start of the spring meetings of the 182-nation International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

"We think this will be the biggest thing to happen to the IMF in its history. It will serve like Seattle did for the WTO to put the IMF on the map for people to notice. The IMF is doing some very bad things," said Scott Nova, director of Citizens Global Trade Watch, an anti-WTO group that helped organize the Seattle demonstrations.

Parading under an anti-globalization banner, the protesters believe that the operating rules of the WTO, IMF and World Bank are rigged in favor of wealthy multinational corporations at the expense of poor people, labor unions and the environment.

-----

Web sites predict violent protests of finance meetings in D.C.

By John Drake
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 7, 2000
http://208.246.212.80/metro/default-2000472247.htm

Postings on Web sites indicate that protests against international financial groups meeting here next week will turn violent, even as protest organizers and police call for peaceful demonstrations.

Protest events begin this weekend and will culminate April 16 and 17, when as many as 10,000 activists will use "large-scale, nonviolent direct action" to shut down meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The activists' so-called "Days of Action" kick off Saturday with a march from a warehouse in the 1300 block of Florida Street NW to Malcolm X Park, where a free concert will be held from noon to 5 p.m.

Sunday afternoon, two groups on the National Mall will call for the cancellation of debt for poor countries and form a human chain around the U.S. Capitol but will not disrupt traffic, organizers said.

The scheduled events are billed as peaceful, and organizers have sworn off violence. But their goal to stop the World Bank and IMF meetings sets the stage for clashes with police.

"It's no secret we want to shut this down with civil disobedience," said Soren Ambrose, policy analyst with the 50 Years Is Enough network, a coalition of groups critical of IMF/World Bank policies for Third World nations.

Activists will use civil disobedience tactics like human barricades and sit-ins to prevent delegates from reaching the meetings, much like the protests last year in Seattle during meetings of the World Trade Organization. Those protests erupted into violence; more than 580 people were arrested and more than $10 million worth of property was destroyed.

Mobilization for Global Justice, a collection of protest groups, has a posting on its Web site (www.a16.org) that reads: "All this talk about non-violence in the face of the corporate violence threatening the people of the planet Earth is a wast (sic) of time."

"We MUST bring down the castles of capitalism by any and all means," reads the posting, which is signed by "JUDAH."

Another posting by "tobespierre" said property destruction is "inevitable," given the thousands of people who will protest.

Groups opposing the World Bank and IMF represent a variety of causes: the environment, labor, human rights, peace, anti-global capitalism and debt reduction for poor nations. Even patriot groups worried about losing national sovereignty and homosexual activists have joined the chorus of World Bank/IMF critics.

Protest targets in Washington include the World Bank and IMF buildings, the White House, Capitol Hill, the State Department and the Treasury Department.

The State Department has declared the World Bank and IMF buildings "temporary diplomatic missions," which places them under the protection of the Secret Service as well as the Metropolitan Police Department.

Police expect to close off the area immediately around the World Bank and the IMF buildings on April 16 and 17.

During the protests, motorists should expect to find streets closed in the area around 19th and H streets NW. Police already have decided to close 18th, 19th and 20th streets between G and H streets NW.

Police met with activists this week to discuss the protests and negotiate a route for the march on April 16.

"We're hoping, based on the talks we're having . . . for a peaceful demonstration," said Sgt. Joe Gentile, Metropolitan Police spokesman. "Our actions will be based on the actions of the protesters."

A law enforcement source familiar with the planned demonstrations said the main problem is that loosely knit groups are not predictable.

"It's hard to tell about these guys. It's a bunch of middle-class kids who are looking for something to protest," the source said.

"There are concerns about everything," the source said. "There are a lot of unanswered questions. We are prepared for the worst, but hope for the best." "These are people who say they have First Amendment rights and are willing to do anything to exercise those rights, even if it means violence," the source said.

Another law enforcement source said the demonstrators include many well-organized fringe groups who have their own reconnaissance and communications teams to oversee disruptions while eluding police.

"In Seattle, they had radios and cellular phones to keep tabs on the police," the source said.

City police are more concerned about the protests than they were about potential violence during last April's 50th anniversary summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, when much of the city was shut down, the source said.

Police officials have said they won't be overwhelmed like Seattle police, who imposed a curfew and broke up protests with clubs, rubber bullets and tear gas. Hundreds of Seattle police, 200 National Guard troops and 600 state troopers were needed to restore order after rioting broke out.

D.C. police accelerated their crowd-control training so that 1,500 officers will be ready with $1 million worth of new equipment, such as helmets and chest pads.

Officers will work 12-hour shifts starting next week and "the entire department will be activated," though patrols in other areas of the city will continue, Sgt. Gentile said.

Local and federal officials won't say exactly how many officers will be involved in the operations. A task force of local and federal law enforcement agencies has met for at least two months to discuss backup plans, such as mass arrests.

"We will be on alert," said Metro spokeswoman Cheryl Johnson, noting that three of the subway system's five lines run within blocks of the World Bank at 19th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

• Jim Keary contributed to this report.

------

Response to Washington Times front-page "news" article: http://www.washtimes.com/metro/default-2000472247.htm

To the Washington Times:

You need to correct gross errors of fact and of omission in your April 7 front-page Washington Times article, alert the two reporters and their editor, and check to see that future reports, editorials, etc., do not repeat the errors.

Please print my letter to the editor below. If it is does not meet word-count guidelines, one or two portions in square brackets could be ommitted.

To the editor:

The up to 50,000 WTO human rights, religious, labor, and environmental activists in Seattle did not destroy more than $10 million in property as erroneously reported on your front page article of April 7. The highest estimate by Seattle merchants is $2.5 million. Labeling those demonstrators as violent is unsubstatiated by the facts. Of 610 MISDEMEANOR arrests, 200 had no charges filed, 350 were dismissed,and there have been absolutely no convictions.

[Only about 20 arrests were felony charges, and property damage (broken windows and graffitti) is attributed to a handful, at most a couple of dozen people. The police, however, did widespread injury to persons, and use of tear gas on nonviolent (not "rioting") protestors PRECEDED breaking windows.]

The article reprints, out of context, the radical views--from an OPINION page--of a couple of people who are not part of the Mobilization for Globil Justice. It then associates these opinions with the goals of thousands of concerned citizens coming to D.C. The major tenent of upcoming demonstrations--massive debt cancellation--is currently on the agenda of such "radicals" as President Clinton and Prime Minister Blair. Last month, a congressionally appointed advisory panel recommended major changes for both the IMF and World Bank. This past week, a Senate appropriations subcommittee, releasing a critical GAO report, presented new serious complaints against the World Bank.

[Even the World Bank website addresses it's own serious concerns about widespread environmental damage and the tragic effects of relocation of hundreds of thousands of people due to WB projects. Both the IMF and World Bank have had to respond defensively to criticism from all sides with numerous reform proposals.]

[There are serious economic issues to discuss here and serious people, including numerous scholars, are discussing the issues (but the mainstream press won't focus on them).]

Masking a hostile and ill-informed opinion piece as a front-page "news" article is irresponsible journalism at best.

Adrienne Betancourt Nicosia Washington, D.C.

References:

Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, December 7, 1999, "WTO: city officials, residents demand accountability," quote: "Downtown stores suffered as much as $2.5 million in property damage and lost some $17 million in sales, said Lucinda Payne of the Downtown Seattle Association."

Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, March 31, 2000, "Seattle dropped as conference site," quote: "As many as 50,000 activists converged on Seattle, with some smashing windows and causing some $2.5 million in property damage."

Associated Press, April 6, 2000, "D.C. Seeks To Avoid Seattle Repeat," quote: "The street protests are coming at a particularly rough time for the IMF and the World Bank. Last month, a congressionally appointed advisory panel recommended major changes for both institutions. The administration, which is pushing a more modest set of reforms, heard new complaints Thursday from a Senate ppropriations subcommittee, which released a critical General Accounting Office report saying the World Bank needs to make greater efforts to curb corruption in the countries it serves."

-----

US 'school' trains IMF protesters to raise ruckus

http://www.envirolink.org/environews/reuters/articles/Environment/04_06_2000.reulb-story-bclifeprotestfund.html

WASHINGTON, April 7 2000 (Reuters) - Late last month a camp on the banks of the Peace River in Arcadia, Florida, was full of college students on spring break. But rather than lounging on the beach, they were learning to hang from scaffolding, rappel from buildings, form human blockades and yes, manipulate the media.

The lessons, aimed at preparing them for protests at the April 16 and 17 World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington, were conducted by trainers from a 5-year-old school that tutors activists in what its founder calls ``high-profile, confrontational, risky'' techniques of nonviolent civil disobedience.

The school is aptly named The Ruckus Society and since 1995 it has trained 2,000 people to raise hell in the name of social justice, human rights and a sustainable environment.

``Our early years we struggled for funding because there weren't too many groups that wanted to work with us because our speciality was breaking the law,'' said Ruckus founder Mike Roselle, who once scaled Mt. Rushmore and put a gas mask on George Washington's stone face to protest acid rain.

Now, in a sure sign of success, Roselle can claim, as he did in a recent St. Petersburg (Florida) Times interview, ``I've put more people behind bars than most district attorneys.''

Ruckus is the brainchild of Roselle, 45, a former national direct action coordinator for Greenpeace and founder of Earth First! and Rainforest Action Network environmental groups. He said he realised in the summer of 1995, when plans were being made for protests against the Clinton administration's move to open portions of old-growth forests to logging, that only Earth First! was trained in direct action.

``They were seen as too militant by some small groups of citizens who didn't want to stand in the road with a bunch of people in camouflage and masks,'' he said. So he and some environmental compatriots opened a training camp.

NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION

``It was such a successful experience we decided we needed an organisation to support it,'' he recalled, and Ruckus was born. Since then, the Berkeley, California-based group, with three full-time staff, 125 volunteers in the United States, Canada and Britain and a half-million-dollar budget, has held 18 weeklong training camps at locations in the United States and Canada, teaching nonviolent ``direct action'' techniques.

Its funding is 40 percent from foundations, 40 percent from ``individuals of means,'' and 20 percent from other nonprofit organisations, said Ruckus project director Han Shan.

Elaine Broadhead, a veteran environmental and human rights campaigner and heiress to a Chicago mail-order fortune, has hosted two training camps at her 150-acre (60 hectare) Middleburg, Virginia, estate and remains a Ruckus enthusiast.

``Oh, my favourite group!'' she exclaimed at the mere mention of their name. ``They're not just loonies out painting signs, they're extremely dedicated. They take risks too, it's not just a lot of words,'' she said.

Despite what its name implies, the Ruckus training programme is practical and highly organised. Participants are schooled in ``How to Hang Yourself from an Urban Structure'' and the knot tying and harness making that will keep them aloft.

They are told how to scout a protest site and what might come in handy on a mission, such as a piece of carpet to throw over barbed wire, doggie treats in case of a canine guard, a foam pad to make long waits more comfortable and a lawyer's phone number written in indelible ink on their forearms.

They are taught about using video cameras to document their action and ``working miracles'' with the media -- an A-to-Z guide on making sure their story is covered as they want it to be.

``There comes a time in almost any campaign when these kinds of actions are absolutely necessary to make progress,'' Roselle said. ``We add it to their toolbox.''

'GOOD ACTIVIST IS A LIVING ACTIVIST'

But with warnings in the Ruckus handbook such as ``A good activist is a living activist'' and ``wherever the location, regardless of the subject, we condemn and do not train activists in any technique that will destroy property or harm any being,'' it becomes clear they are not just pursuing mayhem; they see their work as part of a long protest tradition.

``Essentially, when it began, there was a strong feeling that every movement for social change from the American Revolution to Gandhi's quest for India's independence from Britain to the (U.S.) civil rights movement had employed the tactic of civil disobedience and nonviolence,'' Shan said.

``We realised there was no organisation teaching people about the giants on whose shoulders we stand,'' he said. When protest devolves into violence, as it did in Seattle at World Trade Organisation talks in December, violence, which he does not expect to be repeated in Washington, becomes the story.

``If it bleeds it leads,'' he said of Seattle news coverage. By contrast, the Ruckus method is to provide a nonviolent image that ``rises above the fray'' and captures press attention while getting the message across, he said.

Last June, Shan was involved in a vintage Ruckus action when he and John Hocevar of Students for a Free Tibet climbed the 13-story World Bank Building in Washington, D.C., and unfurled a 25-foot (7.6 meter) banner that read, ``World Bank Approves China's Genocide in Tibet.''

``We talk a lot about the importance of images. Every great movement for social change has these incredible images, from Gandhi at his spinning wheel to the student standing up to a tank in Tiananmen Square -- one thing you can really wrap your heart around,'' Shan said.

RUCKUS BRINGS LESSONS TO D.C.

But do these actions have any impact on the policymakers they hope to influence? ``Demonstrations have a maximum affect if there is a widespread view that they reflect prevailing public sentiment,'' said Georgetown University law professor Dan Tarullo, a former Clinton White House official.

Despite a massive protest in Seattle, he said, ``my own view is the WTO ministerial fell of its own weight and that the demonstrations were not necessary to scuttle an agreement.''

Ruckus was part of the WTO protest, training activists in a pre-talks camp called ``Globalize This!'' The event was a sort of coming-out for the group that had worked behind the scenes training environmentalists for small direct actions. Absorbing other issues seemed natural, Shan said.

``Environmental justice issues are tied to race and class, and a clean environment is our first human right, and human rights are tied to corporate accountability. I can stand at the intersection of all these movements,'' he said. ``The strange part is that we are not a campaigning organisation. We don't lead campaigns. We flex our political muscle by working with groups that we think are doing important work.''

In Washington, Ruckus trainers have been working with a coalition of environmentalists, labour unions, students, women's groups, religious organisations and anarchists who accuse the World Bank and IMF of prescribing harsh economic regimens for struggling countries that make their situation even worse.

The groups were to begin their actions Saturday in the hopes of eventually disrupting the spring financial meetings the way they shut down trade talks in Seattle.

``Seattle was a defining moment, it happened days away from a new millennium. We decided we couldn't keep walking down a path that could ultimately lead to our destruction, of increasing disparity between rich and poor, between the global South and global North,'' Shan said.

``People ask me, 'Is there indeed a movement afoot or is it just a rumour?' I think there is a movement afoot. We're going to see how it defines itself.''

----------- bosnia

Top Karadzic Aide Pleads Innocent at War Crimes Tribunal

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/07cnd-warcrimes.html
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

HE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Momcilo Krajisnik, the most senior Bosnian war crimes suspect in custody, pleaded innocent today to charges of genocide and other mass atrocities in his first public appearance before the U.N. tribunal.

Krajisnik, right-hand man to former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, is indicted on charges he "planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted" the wholesale slaughter of thousands of non-Serb civilians during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

A hush fell over the courtroom at the U.N. tribunal as the silver-haired Bosnian Serb entered, flanked by a pair of guards.

Krajisnik stood as Judge Richard May of Britain read the charges of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, including counts of extermination, murder, willful killing, and inhumane acts.

"No, no," Krajisnik said with added emphasis when May pronounced the genocide counts. "Not guilty."

The judge rejected a request by Krajisnik "to say a few words in my defense." May noted that the initial appearance is a formal proceeding only to allow the defendant to respond to the charges.

If convicted on any count, Krajisnik, 55, faces life in prison.

Prosecutors consider Krajisnik and Karadzic masterminds of the "ethnic cleansing" campaigns that sent Muslims and Croats fleeing en masse from wide swaths of northern and eastern Bosnia that now form part of the Bosnian Serb Republic.

Indeed, if Karadzic -- also wanted by the tribunal -- is ever caught, his indictment would read much like Krajisnik's.

The indictment catalogues a list of executions, forced exodus, torture and beatings allegedly committed at the behest of the two leaders, who headed the extreme nationalist Serb Democratic Party, or SDS, which seized control of local administrations in the early stages of the war to implement the ethnic purges.

"As an active member of the Bosnian Serb leadership during the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina," the indictment says, Krajisnik "exercised both formal and/or de facto power and control over the Bosnian Serb forces and all SDS and government authorities who participated in the crimes."

Krajisnik was the 19th war crimes suspect arrested by NATO and one of the first in the sector of Bosnia patrolled by French troops, who have been criticized for dragging their feet on tribunal arrest warrants.

The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal was established seven years ago by the U.N. Security Council to prosecute those responsible for atrocities in the Balkans following the disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991. It has handed down sentences of up to 45 years to 14 Serb, Muslim and Croat defendants.

Krajisnik is the most senior figure among the nearly 40 suspects in the tribunal's custody, which include three Bosnian Serb generals blamed for some of the worst atrocities in the war. Still at large are the wartime Bosnian Serb military chief, Ratko Mladic, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and dozens of other predominantly Serb suspects.

------------

Top Bosnian Serb Pleads Not Guilty to War Crimes

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-yugosla.html
By Reuters

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Momcilo Krajisnik, right-hand man to former Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, pleaded not guilty on Friday to multiple war crimes charges including genocide.

Krajisnik, the biggest catch yet by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, listened impassively to the nine counts against him. He coolly responded ``not guilty'' to each, shaking his head slightly as he spoke.

The speaker of the Bosnian Serb parliament during the 1992-95 war is charged with genocide, complicity in genocide, crimes against humanity, violations of laws or customs of war and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

The indictment against Krajisnik, which repeatedly mentions Karadzic, is a litany of executions, expulsions and attacks that targeted Bosnia's Slav Muslim and Croat communities.

Judge Richard May silenced attempts by the silver-haired and stocky Serb to make a statement in his own defense. The initial appearance is simply an opportunity for the accused to hear the charges and enter a plea.

``I should like to request the trial chamber to allow me a couple of minutes at this hearing to say a few words in my defense,'' said the gray suit-clad Krajisnik, 55, who waived his right to hear the complete indictment read out.

Speaking after the hearing, defense counsel Igor Pantelic attacked the proceedings as politically driven.

``It's unfounded, it's vague, it's fabricated, it's politically motivated. It's not by accident that the indictment was served several days before the local elections in Bosnia,'' Pantelic told reporters. Elections will be held on Saturday.

The Serb nationalist and businessman was just ``a consultant'' to the Bosnian Serb leadership and so was not responsible for military actions, Pantelic argued. ``By his capacity he cannot be responsible in the chain of command,'' he said.

Krajisnik was seized by NATO troops on Monday at his parents' home near Sarajevo. Karadzic, indicted on similar charges near the end of the war, remains at large.

NOW TRIBUNAL WANTS KARADZIC

The chief prosecutor of the tribunal, Carla Del Ponte, was in court. She called earlier this week for the apprehension of Karadzic so he can stand trial jointly with Krajisnik.

Krajisnik was grabbed in Pale, near Sarajevo, by soldiers of the NATO-led Stabilization Force that has guarded the peace in Bosnia since 1996. SFOR has now detained 19 war crimes suspects.

Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic -- two of the world's most wanted men -- have so far evaded capture despite twice being indicted for war crimes by the tribunal.

``It is a turning point for the tribunal that Mr. Krajisnik is here,'' court spokesman Jim Landale told reporters.

``We hope sincerely that Mr. Krajisnik will not stand trial alone, and that in the dock next to him will be Mr. Radovan Karadzic,'' he added.

Landale said it was extremely difficult to predict when the trial would begin or how long it would last. The judge set July 26 for the next stage, the status conference, when judge and lawyers will discuss preparations for the trial.

Twenty-eight people publicly indicted as war criminals remain at large. Most of them are Bosnian Serbs.

Karadzic is believed to be lying low in an area of eastern Bosnia controlled by Serb ultra-nationalists.

Mladic is thought to be living primarily in Serbia. He was recently seen attending an international soccer match in Belgrade, a U.S. newspaper reported.

----------- china

Urges Western Powers to Stop Iraq Bombing

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-china-i.html China
By Reuters

BEIJING (Reuters) - China urged the United States and Britain to halt military action against Iraq and cancel the ''no-fly'' zones, the official Xinhua news agency said on Friday.

``China is really concerned over the recent developments in Iraq and feels deeply uneasy for the civilian casualties caused by the bombing,'' Xinhua quoted Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi as saying.

Sun said China had consistently advocated that Iraq's sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence should be fully respected.

The Iraqi news agency said 14 people were killed and 19 injured by Western air strikes in southern Iraq on Thursday.

The U.S. military's Central Command confirmed that U.S. attack jets and British Royal Air Force Tornadoes struck anti-aircraft artillery targets in southern Iraq on Thursday in response to ``repeated anti-aircraft fire'' against warplanes patrolling the no-fly zone in the region earlier in the day.

U.S. and British planes patrolling northern and southern Iraq frequently clash with Iraqi air defenses.

No-fly zones were declared in the two regions after the 1991 Gulf War by the Western powers, who said they were needed to protect dissidents from Iraqi air power.

-----------

China Warns New Taiwan Leaders on Independence

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-china-t.html
By Reuters

BEIJING (Reuters) - China moved from its moderate stance toward Taiwan's newly elected government Friday with a cabinet statement vilifying the island's vice president-elect as an ''extremist'' and ``scum.''

Xinhua news agency quoted the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, China's cabinet, as saying Annette Lu had ''become a scum of the nation'' for reported remarks to Hong Kong media that Beijing said played down Japan's colonial occupation of the island.

Beijing often expresses resentment at any statements highlighting Taiwan's distinct society, derived in part from the influence of Japanese colonial rule.

Breaking with a wait-and-see stance since the election of independence-leaning Chen Shui-bian that had won China praise for its moderation, it called President-elect Chen's running mate an ``extremist and typical Taiwan independence element.''

``Anyone who advocates national separatism is doomed to failure,'' said the statement, which was endorsed by the Communist Party's Taiwan Office.

In a separate report signaling impatience since Taiwan voters, defying Chinese military threats, selected the candidate of the formally pro-independence Taiwanese party, the military newspaper Liberation Army Daily issued a warning to Chen.

``The new leader of Taiwan is urged to think carefully, face the reality and do something practical for breaking the deadlock on cross-Straits relations,'' the army daily said.

It reiterated Beijing's demands that Chen embrace the ``one China'' policy, which considers Taiwan and the mainland as parts of a united China, as a precondition for cross-Straits ties.

``The one-China principal is not a ``topic'' but a premise for the cross-Straits talks and negotiations,'' said the newspaper, dismissing Chen's terms for contacts between the democratic island and the communist mainland.

Chen and Lu were swept to power on March 18 in an election that ended 55 years of Nationalist Party rule.

Chen has offered to hold talks with Chinese leaders, and said he is willing to discuss the ``one China'' policy. But so far he has refused to embrace Beijing's formula.

He has soft-pedaled the independence issue recently to avoid sparking a war with Beijing, which has vowed to attack the island if it moves to secede or postpones reunification talks indefinitely.

Lu, a Harvard-educated lawyer, has said the island's new government will continue to push for United Nations recognition, despite opposition from China.

Chinese Vice-premier Qian Qichen called on Chen Thursday to ''take substantial steps'' toward reunification, and to explain himself on the ``one China'' policy.

China has threatened to invade if Taiwan declares independence or delays reconciliation talks under the ``one China'' policy.

-----------

H. Kong Leader Backs China Trade

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Clinton-Hong-Kong.html
By The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hong Kong's chief executive told President Clinton on Friday that he strongly supports normal trade relations with China because it would give ``a further boost'' to Hong Kong's recovering economy.

Tung Chee-Hwa, in his second visit since the Chinese takeover in 1997, said in a speech that Hong Kong is in danger of losing its leading economic position to other booming Chinese cities.

Clinton spent about 20 minutes with Tung, who said afterward that he stressed to the president that congressional passage of permanent normal trade relations with China, and subsequent entree to the World Trade Organization, would only benefit Hong Kong.

``I made the point it is important for Hong Kong because we are in the beginning stages of economic recovery,'' Tung said. ``China's accession to WTO would give Hong Kong's economy a further boost, so that is very important to us.''

White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said Clinton explained why he is pushing so strongly for normal trade relations. ``He made the point that this was very good for Hong Kong, Taiwan and the region, as well as China and the United States,'' Lockhart said.

Tung also said he told Clinton the ``one country, two systems'' policy under which Hong Kong is governed is working well. Lockhart said the two leaders also discussed Hong Kong's economic recovery and upcoming talks on liberalizing trade in aviation.

Tung, who lived and worked in the United States for almost a decade, also met with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger. He visited Capitol Hill for meetings with congressional leaders on Thursday.

In a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Tung said that despite the special status of Hong Kong, rapid economic growth on the Chinese mainland has narrowed the gap with other important Chinese cities.

``Their knowledge and capabilities in many areas have advanced rapidly as a result of extensive international exposure in recent years,'' he said. ``Their diligence and frugal lifestyle also give them a competitive edge.''

``Unless we in Hong Kong consciously improve, our lead will disappear,'' he said.

Tung said he admires the ``enormous spirit and enterprise of the American people'' and wants to see the same in Hong Kong.

``We are equally, if not more, committed today than at any time to the rule of law and the principles of a free market and an open economy,'' he said, comparing Hong Kong favorably with New York and London as ``cities with a great depth of talent in culture, technology and education.''

-----

http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/4/10/8.text.1 Errors-To: Mail-Server@pub.pub.whitehouse.gov Delivered-By-The-Graces-Of: White House Electronic Publications Precedence: Bulk X-UIDL: 412b8879f328428457ed99d02449fe76

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release
April 9, 2000

PRESIDENTIAL MESSAGE IN CELEBRATION OF JUBILEE 2000

April 7, 2000

Warm greetings to everyone gathered in our nation's capital to celebrate Jubilee 2000. You can take pride in being a part of this extraordinary grassroots effort to reduce the debt of the world's most impoverished countries. Your work is helping to raise awareness and put this issue at the forefront of the national agenda.

In too many countries around the world today, excessive debt and unwise economic policies divert crucial resources from health, education, environment, and other social investments. Every year, two-thirds of the world's heavily-indebted poor countries (HIPC) spend more on debt service than on health or education. At the same time, basic human needs go unmet. In these countries, one in ten children dies before his or her first birthday, one in three children is malnourished, and the average adult has had only three years of schooling. This is wrong.

Last year, we worked with other creditor nations to reach agreement on a plan to triple the debt relief available for the world's poorest nations. The Cologne Debt Initiative promises to reduce more than 70 percent of the total debt of these countries, enabling them to commit additional resources to the health and education of their people. Thanks to your efforts and the efforts of a bipartisan group in Congress, we have made significant progress in lifting the burden of debt from half a billion people around the world. This year we must build on that progress. For debt relief to move forward, Congress must take action on my request to cover the remaining cost of the U.S. share of debt relief.

I applaud each of you for your commitment to Jubilee 2000. Let us say today that no nation on this Earth should be forced to choose between feeding and educating children or paying interest on excessive debt. Let us say that no children -- no matter where they are born -- should be deprived of the opportunity to reach their full potential.

Best wishes for a memorable event and continued success in your efforts.

WILLIAM J. CLINTON # # #

------ india / pakistan

The price for nuclear capabilities?

By Aarti Dhar,
April 6, 2000
http://www.indiaserver.com:80/thehindu/2000/04/06/stories/0206000r.htm

NEW DELHI, APRIL, 5. All the uranium for the 10 Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWRs) in the country comes from a single plant at Jaduguda in Bihar, a sprawling complex fed by three underground uranium mines and the by-product from three nearby copper mines. This complex is the foundation on which the Indian nuclear fuel chain rests. But nearly 30,000 people of 15 villages within 5 km of Jaduguda are paying for India's nuclear capabilities.

Besides dumping radioactive waste from the mines and the plant, Jaduguda is becoming the dump yard of radioactive and toxic waste from other parts of the country as well. Highly dangerous radioactive waste from the Nuclear Fuel Complex, Hyderabad, is dumped in the tailing dams of Jaduguda.

According to the Jharkhandis Organisation Against Radiation (JOAR), an NGO working in the area, the tribals here have noticed that small animals, including mice, monkeys and rabbits, have disappeared over the years. Kendu fruits have mutated into seedless varieties, and cows are born without tails. Fish are being discovered with unknown skin diseases.

At a press conference here today, Mr. Ghanshyam Biruli, JOAR president, said it was impossible to gauge how much radioactive material was circulating in the environment and how much taken into the food chain. The Uranium Corporation of India Limited insisted that there was no radiation here and refused to commission independent studies on the overall impact on the environment, he said.

Jaduguda had been operational for over 30 years, and little attempt has been made to isolate the local people or the workforce from the mine effluents. Several villages virtually sit on the tailing dams - where the waste from the plant goes - and crops are grown in the run-off areas. Also, miners work underground and in the mill without any protective clothing apart from their gloves.

Survey's findings

A survey conducted by the JOAR along with another organisation, BIRSA, found a high degree of chronis skin disease, cancers, TB, bone and brain damage, kidney problems, nervous system disorders, congenital deformities, nausea and blood disorders. The incidence of miscarriage and stillbirths had shown an abnormal increase.

However, the most visible and heartbreaking impact has been the genetic damage which is spoiling the coming generations.

Having lost all hope of getting response from the UCIL authorities, the JOAR activists have sought the intervention of the Prime Minister in saving the people of Jaduguda.

The organisation submitted a charter of demands at the Prime Minister's Office, demanding among other things, setting up a multi-disciplinary team to look into the impact of the mining operations on the environmental, health, safety and economy of the region. The study should commence within three months and the report made public within a year, it demanded.

Also, the import of radioactive waste and radio- medical waste here should banned and the Department of Atomic Energy should find dump yards which are at a safe distance from waterbeeds and human habitation. Besides, transportation of all radioactive material should be done according to internationally specified norms and no land around Jaduguda should be acquired for construction of tailing dams.

Another demand made to the Prime Minister was that all the villages around the tailing dams should be shifted to safer places and a full-fledged medical centre set up at the site to treat low level radiation related diseases.

A documentary film ``Buddha Weeps in Jaduguda'' on radioactive pollution from uranium mines was shown at the press conference. The film has won the Earth Vision Grand Prize at the 8th Tokyo Global Environment Film Festival and the third prize at the South Asian Film Festival held in Kathmandu in January this year.

----

U.S. Congressman Warns China Threatening India with Nuclear Missiles from Tibet

BBC Monitoring
April 7, 2000
http://www.insidechina.com/localpress/bbcmonitor.php3?id=149419

China is installing medium-range missiles in Tibet, apart from giving nuclear aid to Pakistan and arming Myanmar [Burma], to encircle India, a prominent U.S. congressman has said.

India's chief worry is the steady increase in Chinese military power on the Tibetan Plateau, which confronts India with the specter of simultaneously facing serious strategic threats on its western, northern and eastern frontiers, House International Relations Committee Chairman Benjamin Gilman said.

Of all China's military emplacements on the Tibetan Plateau, the most alarming to India is an extensive series of missile bases and nuclear installations, he said opening a hearing on Tibet on Thursday [6th April].

At least 25 medium range ballistic missiles are based in Tibet, as well as a sizable number of shorter-range tactical missiles, all carrying nuclear warheads, thus placing India's heartland and many major cities in the range of Chinese missiles, Gilman said.

China's dangerous expansion in Tibet and meddling in South Asia, he said, has brought the region to the brink of a nuclear catastrophe.

We have seen no indication by (U.S.) administration policy makers that they understand the significance of China's occupation of Tibet and how a resolution of that problem could defuse the serious tensions in the region, he added.

Julia Taft, special coordinator in the State Department for Tibetan issues, urged China to have a dialogue with the Dalai Lama.

This is what the U.S. wants China to do in every meeting but the Chinese response has been that the time is not right, she said, adding, it is very frustrating.

Taft said she had written six times to China's ambassador to the U.S. seeking an opportunity to meet him to discuss Tibetan issues but had not been granted an appointment so far.

The U.S., she assured the committee, was working hard with other nations to get China's human rights record, including its record in Tibet, as part of the agenda of the Geneva meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission.

The Dalai Lama, she said, was concerned over the marginalization of ethnic Tibetans inside Tibet under Chinese rule.

The Dalai Lama's special envoy in Washington, Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari, said the spiritual leader's approach was that Tibet should enjoy genuine autonomy within the framework of the People's Republic of China.

Gilman termed it ridiculous that Chinese communist atheists were appointing Tibetan religious leaders, as they are attempting to do.

Source: PTI news agency, New Delhi

------ iraq

France Condemns Air Raids in Iraq

By Clar Ni Chonghaile
Associated Press Writer
Friday, April 7, 2000; 6:46 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000407/aponline184615_000.htm

PARIS -- France on Friday strongly condemned recent U.S.-British air raids in Iraq, calling them "pointless and deadly."

U.S. and British warplanes struck targets in southern Iraq on Thursday, and the Iraqi military said they hit residential areas, killing 14 civilians and injuring 19.

"The bombings, pointless and deadly, which have caused, according to our information, around 20 civilian victims over the past few days in southern Iraq, are disquieting," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anne Gazeau-Secret said at a news conference.

"We reaffirm our incomprehension, our profound unease in relation to the pursuit and intensification of the air strikes against Iraq, in which the people are the principal victims," Gazeau-Secret said.

Asked if she condemned the bombings, Gazeau-Secret said: "We greatly deplore them."

France - along with Britain and the United States - helped establish no-fly zones in the north and south of Iraq in 1991, at the end of the Persian Gulf War. However, since 1998, France has not actively taken part in patrolling the zones.

Iraq does not recognize the zones, which the allies say are meant to provide aerial protection from government forces for Shiite Muslims in the south and Kurds in the north. It began challenging the patrols in December 1998, and NATO forces often have responded by firing on Iraqi anti-aircraft and radar installations.

The U.S. military confirmed that planes carried out strikes, but said they were against military targets in response to attacks by Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery. A spokesman said there was no immediate indication of Iraqi casualties.

In Washington, State Department Spokesman James Rubin said Thursday that France ought to direct its remarks to Iraq.

"If there's no point to these raids by us, the French government would be well-advised to inform the Iraqi government ... to stop threatening American pilots, then there won't be any need for the raids," he told reporters.

Rubin said the no-fly zone was designed to prevent Iraq from using its air space "to maul its own citizens."

"And as a result of the no-fly zone, they haven't been able to do that. In order to keep that no-fly zone in place, we have to have protection for our pilots," he said.

The number of deaths reported in the strikes was the highest since Aug. 17, when Iraq said 19 civilians were killed and 11 were injured during attacks in northern and southern Iraq.

France's sharp criticism comes after the United States came under fire at the United Nations Security Council for its policy toward Baghdad, with accusations it is undermining U.N. relief efforts by blocking over $1 billion in goods bound for Iraq.

Iraq's friends on the council - Russia, France and China - held out the toughest criticism during an open meeting of the council on Mar. 24.

Russia on Friday also protested the most recent U.S.-British airstrikes on Iraq.

---

UN Weapons Inspector Outlines Plan

APRIL 07, 02:52 EST
By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=MIDEAST&STORYID=APIS73MOB7G0
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-UN-Iraq.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000407/aponline025240_000.htm

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The new chief U.N. weapons inspector for Iraq has outlined an organization plan for his new agency that stresses arms experts will work only for the United Nations and not for any country's government.

That distinction was a clear sign Hans Blix doesn't want his organization to be hit by the same allegations of spying on behalf of the United States that crippled its predecessor, the U.N. Special Commission.

Inspectors at the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission will be picked from a broad spectrum of U.N. member countries and be paid out of the U.N. budget - not volunteered by, or under orders from, member governments, Blix wrote in his first report since becoming executive chairman of UNMOVIC on March 1.

``They shall neither seek nor receive instructions from any government and ... member states shall not seek to influence them in the discharge of their responsibilities,'' the report said.

Notably, Blix's report indicated he has decided against having a deputy - a position that traditionally went to the United States in UNMOVIC's predecessor organization.

Blix further stressed that intelligence gathered by inspectors must remain with the agency and be used only for its key disarmament work.

Blix's agency was created in December to replace UNSCOM, which had been working with the International Atomic Energy Agency since 1991 to oversee the destruction of Iraq's biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and missile programs.

Weapons inspectors from both agencies left Iraq in December 1998 ahead of U.S. and British airstrikes, launched to punish Iraq for failing to cooperate with the inspectors.

Top Iraqi officials have said Baghdad would not accept new U.N. weapons inspectors, but others have hinted at compromise.

Blix acknowledged that Baghdad had so far rejected new U.N. calls for inspections. He said the organization need only hire a core staff now, with the remainder to be added later.

In outlining the agency's mission, Blix said UNMOVIC must make inspections including ``no-notice'' searches that often led to drawn-out confrontations between UNSCOM inspectors and Iraqi officials.

Blix added that the new agency also must be able to take aerial photographs. The United States traditionally provided UNSCOM with U2 planes to conduct aerial surveillance.

-----------

U.N. Gets a New Proposal for Iraq Arms Inspections

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/040700iraq-un.html
By BARBARA CROSSETTE

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UNITED NATIONS, April 6 -- The blueprint for a new, tightly structured arms inspection agency for Iraq was sent to the Security Council today, moving the chief inspector, Hans Blix, closer to the moment of truth with President Saddam Hussein.

Once the plan has been approved by the council, possibly next week, the next step will be a visit to Iraq to re-establish an inspection center in Baghdad. The new team will begin drawing up a list of questions Iraq must answer before sanctions that have been in place for nearly a decade can be suspended and finally lifted.

So far Iraq has sent the United Nations mixed, though largely negative, signals about its intentions toward the new panel, called the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.

The plan circulated today takes account of the uncertainty, saying that "it may be neither practical nor prudent to move to immediate full recruitment." A two-step hiring timetable was suggested, with only a core of staff members to be appointed initially.

In his blueprint for the commission, Dr. Blix, a former Swedish foreign minister and director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, appears to have assuaged some of the concerns of arms control experts. Many had expected the panel, known by its acronym, Unmovic, to be substantially weaker than its predecessor, the United Nations Special Commission, known as Unscom.

Dr. Blix left the door open to former inspectors who want to reapply -- although except in certain circumstances they will have to work for the United Nations, not their national governments as in the past.

"Previous work will have given them valuable experience and knowledge that could usefully be passed on to new Unmovic staff who come on board," Dr. Blix wrote in his plan. "A combination of renewal and continuity would minimize the loss of momentum and knowledge which has inevitably occurred through the long absence of inspection and monitoring."

There have been no arms inspections in Iraq since December 1998, when inspectors were withdrawn just ahead of American and British bombing.

Since then the Iraqis have permitted only a routine visit from the International Atomic Energy Agency for monitoring equipment under the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, an issue not related to the inspections imposed on Iraq in 1991 after the Persian Gulf war.

Until Iraq meets the requirements to destroy all prohibited nuclear, biological and chemical arms as well as long-range missiles, sanctions imposed after its invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 will not be lifted.

In his organizational plan, Dr. Blix made clear that he would deal directly with the Security Council, and would also preside over the international "college of commissioners" to be set up to advise him. There had been fears among disarmament experts that governments would use the college to exert pressure on the inspection system, and they may still try. But the blueprint does not give them much latitude.

Nor does it give the United Nations Secretariat a prominent role.

The commission, Dr. Blix emphasized, retains all of Unscom's powers to designate inspection sites, conduct interviews, take samples and photographs, and use aerial surveillance.

Dr. Blix proposed four operational divisions that at least on paper appear well insulated from political pressures -- planning and operations, analysis and assessment, information (archiving) and technical support and training.

Planning and operations will oversee the monitoring center in Baghdad, which will be responsible for operating both a long-term monitoring program and organizing short-term inspection visits. In the past, some visiting inspectors were viewed as unsupervised loose cannons, increasing tensions with Iraq.

All inspectors and monitors will now get "cultural" training, according to the plan, which says, "The cultural programs will stress the importance of understanding national sensitivities and the proper handling of adversarial situations."

-----------

France Condemns Air Raids in Iraq

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-France-Iraq-Bombings.html
By The Associated Press

PARIS (AP) -- France on Friday strongly condemned recent U.S.-British air raids in Iraq, calling them ``pointless and deadly.''

U.S. and British warplanes struck targets in southern Iraq on Thursday, and the Iraqi military said they hit residential areas, killing 14 civilians and injuring 19.

``The bombings, pointless and deadly, which have caused, according to our information, around 20 civilian victims over the past few days in southern Iraq, are disquieting,'' Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Anne Gazeau-Secret said at a news conference.

``We reaffirm our incomprehension, our profound unease in relation to the pursuit and intensification of the air strikes against Iraq, in which the people are the principal victims,'' Gazeau-Secret said.

Asked if she condemned the bombings, Gazeau-Secret said: ``We greatly deplore them.''

France -- along with Britain and the United States -- helped establish no-fly zones in the north and south of Iraq in 1991, at the end of the Persian Gulf War. However, since 1998, France has not actively taken part in patrolling the zones.

Iraq does not recognize the zones, which the allies say are meant to provide aerial protection from government forces for Shiite Muslims in the south and Kurds in the north. It began challenging the patrols in December 1998, and NATO forces often have responded by firing on Iraqi anti-aircraft and radar installations.

The U.S. military confirmed that planes carried out strikes, but said they were against military targets in response to attacks by Iraqi anti-aircraft artillery. A spokesman said there was no immediate indication of Iraqi casualties.

In Washington, State Department Spokesman James Rubin said Thursday that France ought to direct its remarks to Iraq.

``If there's no point to these raids by us, the French government would be well-advised to inform the Iraqi government ... to stop threatening American pilots, then there won't be any need for the raids,'' he told reporters.

Rubin said the no-fly zone was designed to prevent Iraq from using its air space ``to maul its own citizens.''

``And as a result of the no-fly zone, they haven't been able to do that. In order to keep that no-fly zone in place, we have to have protection for our pilots,'' he said.

The number of deaths reported in the strikes was the highest since Aug. 17, when Iraq said 19 civilians were killed and 11 were injured during attacks in northern and southern Iraq.

France's sharp criticism comes after the United States came under fire at the United Nations Security Council for its policy toward Baghdad, with accusations it is undermining U.N. relief efforts by blocking over $1 billion in goods bound for Iraq.

Iraq's friends on the council -- Russia, France and China -- held out the toughest criticism during an open meeting of the council on Mar. 24.

Russia on Friday also protested the most recent U.S.-British airstrikes on Iraq.

----------- israel

Israeli-Palestinian Talks Resume

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-US-Mideast.html
By The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- American mediators are not pushing U.S. proposals for a settlement in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, even though the two sides remain far apart on very tough issues, the State Department said Friday.

As a week of new negotiations reopened at Washington's Bolling Air Force Base, with American mediators joining in, department spokesman James P. Rubin said ``there's an enormous amount of work to be done'' to reach agreement.

But he said, ``We're not at the stage where we think it's appropriate for us to impose or pressure either party to accept an American plan.''

The goal is settlement by Sept. 13 of Palestinian demands for a state with part of Jerusalem as its capital and problems over water and refugees.

Israeli Embassy spokesman Mark Regev said, ``No single round of talks can be expected to solve all the complex core issues between the Israelis and Palestinians.'' The new round should be seen as ``another link in a process toward reaching a framework agreement'' by next month, he said.

The two sides also were taking up another Israeli withdrawal on the West Bank. Due in June under a 1995 agreement, the size and specific stretches of territory to be turned over to the Palestinian Authority have not be decided.

So far, Israel has relinquished 40 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza to the Palestinians.

The new round of talks were held against a backdrop of an Egyptian warning that Israel must agree to a Palestinian state in order to have real peace.

Despite a 1979 peace treaty, Egyptian Ambassador Nabil Fahmy said Thursday that Israelis ``do not understand the frustration Arabs feel that there is still occupation.''

Fahmy dismissed as ``quite silly'' arguments over whether Egypt's peace with Israel was warm or cold.

``It's not a complete peace,'' the Egyptian diplomat said. ``It's part of a larger package.''

But Rubin on Friday said the United States ``would like to see more'' in the way of peaceful ties between Israel and Egypt.

Rubin also reiterated a long-standing U.S. appeal to Arab countries to consider establishing relations with Israel.

A White House statement issued Tuesday after President Clinton met with President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen said normal relations would follow an overall Mideast settlement.

Rubin, however, said this did not change the Clinton administration's view that Arab countries should pursue ties to Israel right away.

Another State Department official said the United States was working to strengthen ties between Israel and the Arab states with which it already has relations and to build ties with those that it does not.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the point of the White House statement was to make clear there would be no excuse, after an overall settlement, for any Arab countries, including Iraq, not to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel.

-----------

Israel Is Slowly Shedding Harsh Treatment of Arabs

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/040700israel-rights.html
By DEBORAH SONTAG

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JERUSALEM, April 6 -- Justice Minister Yossi Beilin calls it a "quiet revolution."

Through the years, Israel has been consistently criticized by many human and civil rights organizations for invoking national security to explain practices that were considered exclusionary, discriminatory and coercive toward Israeli Arabs and Palestinians.

But since the right-wing government was replaced last summer by a broad coalition including several leftists and human rights advocates, crucial policy changes have been made that, together with a spate of High Court decisions, point toward a sea change.

The torture of Palestinian suspects has been banned. The practice of stripping Palestinians of their residency rights in East Jerusalem has all but ended. In a landmark ruling, the equal right of Arabs to land allocated by the state has been affirmed. And for the first time in Israel's history, land long considered part of a Jewish town was taken away and returned to the Arab village from which it was expropriated decades ago.

The number of Palestinian administrative detainees, those imprisoned without charges, has plummeted to 9 from 66 last April and hundreds in previous years. On Wednesday, Israel released one of 16 remaining Lebanese who are being held, in contravention of international law, as "bargaining chips" for captured Israelis.

In some ways, it is almost a stealth liberalization process, an incremental phenomenon rather than a declared program. Committed to peace, Israel is dropping several policies that it justified by its near perpetual state of armed conflict with its neighbors. As it undergoes normalization, many say, Israel is slowly letting down its guard, losing its fear and relinquishing a sense of itself as a special nation living under such special circumstances that it cannot be judged by the norms applied to others.

"During war, democracy can be more restricted," said Natan Sharansky, the interior minister and a former Soviet dissident and human rights champion. "But we are not at war. We are engaged in a peace process, and we are trying to live a more normal life. That means dealing with questions we have avoided answering for years. That means removing inequality in our society."

The process of normalization is incremental, and it involves the shedding of deep-seated anxieties and ingrained habits. Israeli-Arab lawmakers have responded to some decisions with something approaching wonderment.

Muhammad Barakeh, a legislator who often refers to Israel as an apartheid state, suggested recently that perhaps Israel "was moving toward being a democratic state for all its citizens."

But he and other Israeli-Arab lawmakers, critics of Israel's settlement policies and Palestinian leaders are quick to add that Israel still has a long way to go. They point to continued abuses by border police officers, to the continued expropriation of Arab land, to habitual discrimination in education, employment and housing.

But Mr. Beilin, who like Mr. Sharansky is a leading catalyst of the change, said the process was an evolution. He is working to eliminate the underlying legal justification for Israel's self-definition as a special-case society.

The Justice Ministry is preparing the groundwork to end by this summer a 52-year-old legal state of emergency, which has given the Israeli cabinet the power to supersede the legislative process.

Mr. Beilin said he thinks that it has taken Israelis many years to internalize the peace process. "And then it began to happen," he said. "And we said to ourselves, 'We are approaching peace, and we still have a legal system that acts as if it were in a state of war. And it justifies things that are no longer, if they ever were, justifiable.' "

Some Israeli Arab leaders say mainstream Israelis see as groundbreaking some events that appear to them to be token or trivial -- like the recent employment of four Arab flight attendants by El Al, or the crowning last year of the first Arab woman as Miss Israel. Enough rage is still bubbling in their communities to have fueled a strident Land Day protest last week, after which an elderly woman died and her fellow villagers instantly asserted -- despite the hospital's denial -- that her death was caused by exposure to the Israeli troops' tear gas.

But other changes, even unofficial ones, are undeniably fundamental, changes that reflect a relaxation of Israel's eternally security-conscious attitudes toward territory and the use of force.

The demolition of illegal Arab homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, for instance, has declined sharply since Prime Minister Ehud Barak took office in July, according to statistics kept by the Btselem human rights organization. In East Jerusalem, all the demolitions since November were done by the municipality, which is run by a right-wing mayor, and none by the national government, which also has the authority.

This is not an official policy change, which could provoke intense political debate, but a quiet change in practice -- like a recent freeze in the authorization of new settlement construction and in the paving of "bypass roads" that connect settlements to Israel, circumventing Palestinian towns. Settler leaders say none of the 60 or 70 construction permits requested recently were authorized, although construction authorized by Benjamin Netanyahu when he was prime minister has not been frozen, infuriating the Palestinians.

The relaxation began under Yitzhak Rabin, the assassinated prime minister, and went into abeyance during the anti-liberal tenure of Mr. Netanyahu, experts say. It began picking up steam again when the election of Mr. Barak, who reinvigorated the peace effort, emboldened the High Court and even politicians who served in the Netanyahu government.

In September, the High Court stunned Israel by handing down a decision to outlaw brutal methods used by Israeli security agents during the interrogation of Palestinian suspects. Since then, Amnesty International experts say, while there are reports of isolated cases and some evidence that the use of solitary confinement has increased, the systematic use of torture has indeed ground to a halt.

Significantly, in the ensuing political debate, when right-wing lawmakers proposed circumventing the court with legislation permitting the use of torture, several centrist legislators publicly revealed a new sensitivity to Israel's image. Ophir Pines-Paz, who heads the One Israel faction, brought to the Parliament floor a briefcase filled with letters from around the world urging Israel not to "go backward."

While the High Court is supposedly above the political fray, its rulings, and the timing of their release, appear to be affected by the political climate, many say.

Legal experts think that the court had sidestepped an overarching ruling on the torture issue for years. Chief Justice Aharon Barak had written in 1997 that it was a "grave mistake" to view human rights issues in times of war and emergency as similar to those in times of peace. That was the prevailing attitude of the court for decades.

Several experts said the torture decision revealed a fundamental evolution of Israel from "a defense state to a much more open and internally dynamic society," as Yaron Ezrahi, a political scientist, said. "The Israeli society," he continued, "is in a process of demobilization, reflecting its sense of security, militarily and economically. The fact that it is willing to give up its practice of using these torture methods indicates that security is no longer invoked as the be all and the end all."

Not everyone is thrilled, of course. Several right-wing lawmakers think that such thinking is just denial, and that recent court decisions and new policies will be self-defeating for Israel. "Israel is still fighting for its very existence as a state and for the very existence of its people against the possibility of a new Jewish holocaust," said Yuval Steinitz, a lawmaker from the opposition Likud Party. "If anyone here thinks different, he deludes himself.

Some lawmakers oppose Mr. Beilin's move to end the state of emergency for that reason -- because the state of emergency, they say, is a chronic one.

But Mr. Beilin, supported by many others here, disagrees, arguing that "we shouldn't be screaming 'fire' every day." In the case of a genuine emergency, the government always retains the power to declare one, he said.

A panoply of laws, from those regulating the permitted uses of baking powder to those permitting administrative detention, are technically emergency provisions. Striking workers are ordered back to work, as happened with lifeguards last year, under a legal mechanism designed for quick governmental response during actual war. When tens of thousands of Russian immigrants poured into Israel, the government used the emergency regulations to circumvent planning boards and building procedures and slap up inexpensive and often shoddily constructed housing developments.

"If you're talking about being a real democracy, this is a basic flaw in the structure," said Anat Scolnicov, a civil rights lawyer. "The executive branch has the constant power to overtake and overturn the legislative.

"You're running a country on the premise that, technically, anything goes."

Other recent decisions, or new practices, show that security is not the sacred cow it once was here. In the last few years, the identity of the security chiefs, always top secret, has become public, and the recent process of nominating a new General Security Services director was even publicly debated. The Justice Ministry is seeking to create open government oversight of security agency's activities.

Several army decisions, formerly sacrosanct, have been overturned by the courts and the government in the last few months.

Facing unrelenting pressure from environmentalists, Mr. Barak, who is also the defense minister, recently overrode an army plan to build a base in the Shaked Forest. It was the first time that a popular revolt interfered with the army's construction plans. And the High Court recently ordered the army to return some Palestinian cave dwellers to their homes; they had been evicted from what was termed a firing range, even though it was not in use.

After the High Court decision on torture, the ground shifted again when, despite right-wing protests, Israeli-Arab lawmakers were appointed to security-sensitive government positions. Then Mr. Sharansky halted the Israeli practice of stripping Palestinians in East Jerusalem of their residency if they had moved the center of their life elsewhere for seven years or more.

Statistics show that the phenomenon, which human rights group had called a "silent deportation" and Palestinians considered "ethnic cleansing," has essentially ended. Fifty-five Palestinians lost their residency rights last June, the month before Mr. Barak took office, and only three in December, the last month for which statistics are available. Additionally, Mr. Sharansky recently decided to make his policy retroactive and return residency rights to some of the thousands who lost them.

Mr. Sharansky has surprised many here, because he is a hard-liner on the peace effort. But he explains his positions as consistent. He does not trust peacemaking with undemocratic partners who do not respect human rights, he said, and he is determined to raise Israel's standards of democracy as well.

In a more radical decision, Mr. Sharansky returned to Kfar Kassem, an Arab village, some land that had been confiscated "for security reasons" in the 1950's. This involved taking the land, which is zoned for an industrial park, away from the Jewish town of Rosh Ha'ayin.

The decision, in addition to being the first of its kind, reverberated here because of the history of the village. Israeli border guards massacred 49 Arab villagers in Kfar Kassem in 1956, and this year, for the first time, in another sign of the changes, the massacre is included in the Israeli history curriculum.

"Some people here see it as an anti-Zionist move," Mr. Sharansky said. "I think we can no longer justify those lands being confiscated for security reasons. It's a rather safe area. And this village deserves an industrial park, the jobs and the tax benefits, as much as Rosh Ha'ayin. If you want to have a stable, normal, democratic Zionist society, you have to give minimal rights, at the least."

Similarly, in a watershed legal decision, the High Court ruled that a Jewish community on state land may not exclude Arab residents. Speaking to the heart of Israel's complicated definition as a Jewish, democratic state, the court said the country's identity as a refuge for Jews cannot be used as a basis for discriminating against any of its citizens. It cited the American Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision, saying separate but equal is a policy that inherently hurts the minority.

Dan Yakir, legal adviser to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, said that in an informal hearing two years ago, Justice Barak fretted about the "unforeseen ramifications" of a such a decision. The justice urged the parties to settle the matter among themselves, to find a way to allow the plaintiffs, an Arab family, to moved into the Jewish community of Katzir.

At the same time, Mr. Yakir said, the judge added, "Imagine if Brown v. the Board of Ed had been solved by mediation."

The mediation failed, and with one of the justices presiding in the case slated to retire this spring, the court was forced to rule.

"I think that the change of government eased the way for such a decision, because it was clear that at least the government would not attack the court," Mr. Yakir said. "Also, that the change in government reflected a growing tolerance in society."

Another change in government, back to the right, could once again slow the process. Or, in the volatile Middle East, anything that once again raises the anxiety level in Israel -- a spate of fatal terrorism or a border war -- could retard it, too. But most here, both those opposed and supportive, think that there is a kind of inexorable evolution taking place, a willful, if in some cases tentative, hike toward normalization.

----------- japan

Nuclear reactor leak shuts Japanese plant down

Fri, 7 Apr 2000
Australian Broadcasting
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-7apr2000-89.htm

Workers in Japan have shut down a nuclear reactor in the west of the country after radioactive water leaked from a coolant pipe.

According to a spokesman for the Kansai Electric Power Company, which owns the plant, the accident had no impact on the environment.

The spokesman says some two litres of coolant water, which contained radioactivity, had been leaking per hour.

He added that the total amount of leakage was still unknown.

In September last year, one plant worker was killed and two others injured in Japan's worst nuclear accident at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, east of Tokyo.

-----

Japan reactor begins shutdown after coolant leak

April 7 2000
Reuters
http://www.envirolink.org/environews/reuters/articles/Environment/04_07_2000.reulb-story-bcenvironmentjapan.html

TOKYO, - Japan's second-biggest utility, Kansai Electric Power Co Inc, said on Friday it had started to manually shut down a 500,000 kilowatt nuclear reactor after discovering a small leak of primary cooling water.

There was no leak of radiation into the environment from the incident at the No. 2 Mihama power plant in Fukui Prefecture, some 350 km (220 miles) northwest of Tokyo on the Sea of Japan coast, a Kansai Electric spokesman said.

He said the volume and the cause of the coolant leak were not yet known.

The leak was discovered at around 10 a.m. (0100 GMT) Friday, and the company started steps to manually shut down the plant at around noon, he said.

Kansai Electric shares were down 4.22 percent or 70 yen at 1,590 yen in late afternoon in Tokyo.

Global statistics show that in 1996 Japan reported a far smaller number of incidents of unplanned shutdowns than many countries using nuclear power, including France and the United States.

While Japan reported an average 0.2 such incidents per reactor, France reported 2.7 and the United States 2.4.

Nuclear power accounts for about one-third of Japan's electricity demand. In France it provides some 80 percent and in the United States about 50 percent.

However, a series of accidents at nuclear-related facilities in recent years has heightened public distrust of the industry.

The nation's worst nuclear accident, from which one worker later died, was at a uranium processing plant last September.

Growing public criticism combined with depressed demand prompted the government to begin a one-year review from this month on nuclear policy, which will include lowering a target to build another 16-20 nuclear reactors by 2010 to add to the current 51 commercial nuclear reactors in Japan.

---

Japan Nuke Plant Being Shut Down

World Headlines
Friday April 7 10:19 AM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000407/wl/japan_nuclear_1.html

TOKYO (AP) - A nuclear power plant in western Japan was being shut down after a small amount of water leaked from the reactor's cooling system Friday.

No radiation leaked into the outside environment, and no workers were injured.

The cause of the leak was still under investigation, said Kazuhiro Takahashi, spokesman for Kansai Electric, which operates the No. 2 reactor at the Mihama plant, 220 miles northwest of Tokyo. It takes about seven hours for the plant to shut down completely, he said.

--

AP Photos April 6, 2000 http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/ap/20000407/wl/japan__nuclear.html http://us.yimg.com/p/ap/20000407/capt.japan__nuclear.jpg

An elderly woman tries to dig shells in front of the Mihama nuclear power plant (in the background) in Fukui prefecture, 220 miles northwest of Tokyo in this Jan. 12, 1997 file photo. The nuclear power plant was being shut down after a small amount of water leaked from the reactor's cooling system Friday, April 7, 2000. No radiation leaked into the outside environment, and no workers were injured. (AP Photo/Katsumi Kasahara)

---

Japan Nuke Plant Being Shut Down

APRIL 07, 10:19 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS73MUT2G0 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Japan-Nuclear.html

TOKYO (AP) - A nuclear power plant in western Japan was being shut down after a small amount of water leaked from the reactor's cooling system Friday.

No radiation leaked into the outside environment, and no workers were injured.

The cause of the leak was still under investigation, said Kazuhiro Takahashi, spokesman for Kansai Electric, which operates the No. 2 reactor at the Mihama plant, 220 miles northwest of Tokyo. It takes about seven hours for the plant to shut down completely, he said.

-----------

Japan, N. Korea Talks End

APRIL 07, 10:32 EST
By JOJI SAKURAI Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS73MV36G0

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) - Talks between North Korea and Japan on establishing diplomatic relations ended today as a dispute lingered over whether Japan should compensate Korea for its colonial domination.

After the talks, the first between the two nations on the topic in eight years, North Korea claimed that Japan had agreed to apologize and pay compensation. Japan immediately disputed the claim.

The North's chief negotiator said the two sides agreed during a meeting that the question of compensation and apology are settled and that they can now talk about other issues.

``Once the past is settled in a satisfactory way, there should be no problems,'' Jong Thae-hwa said at a press conference, though he provided no details.

``I have no comment on what Jong said because I wasn't there,'' said Kojiro Takano, the head of Japan's negotiating team. ``But I can say that there was no such agreement.''

The discrepancy between the two sides was not immediately clear. The two sides did, however, agree to meet again in Tokyo next month.

During the meetings the two sides have repeated demands for progress on controversial issues that have long divided them before there is any chance of creating formal ties for the first time.

The North demanded compensation for abuses that Japan committed as colonial ruler of the Korean Peninsula decades ago, and Japan said that it must receive information about 10 missing Japanese citizens who were allegedly abducted by North Korean spies in Japan more than 20 years ago.

But the negotiators were pleased that both countries had at least listened to demands they have long rejected, even if they weren't happy to hear them.

In Tokyo, Japan's Foreign Ministry spokesman said the North had shown a ``strong will'' for normalizing relations and that ``nobody could have expected these to be easy negotiations.''

``This is just the first session of the resumed negotiations,'' said the ministry's spokesman, Chikahito Harada.

In its report about the talks, North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said they were held ``in a good atmosphere.''

Earlier today, the negotiators said they are committed to establish diplomatic links as soon as possible.

But the anger that North Korea still feels about Japan's behavior as its colonial master in 1910-1945 was evident.

Addressing a group of Japanese reporters, Jong indicated the North will continue to hit Japan hard on the compensation issue.

``You must understand that your fathers and grandfathers subjected to us to sub-human treatment,'' Jong said.

The official North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun carried a full page of stories about the talks, with headlines such as: ``Japan Must Apologize and Compensate for the Past'' and ``Japan's Barbaric Pillaging of Cultural Treasures,'' referring to art works that Japan's colonial army allegedly had stolen.

Many people in North Korea and South Korea deeply resent Japan more than half a century after its harsh colonial rule ended on the Korean Peninsula. Older Koreans recall how the Japanese forced women into prostitution and men into labor camps, and banned teaching of the Korean language in schools.

In addition to another round of talks in Tokyo in late May, the two sides said they plan to hold a third session in Beijing or another country in the near future.

In reviving its negotiations with the North, Japan hopes to help draw the Stalinist state out of its isolation and boost stability in Asia. Pyongyang, which has recently reached out to other countries to establish diplomatic relations, needs help from richer industrialized countries to feed its impoverished people and to modernize its decaying infrastructure.

Tokyo has promised to consider resuming food aid to the North, which is suffering from a widespread famine. But Japan is still concerned about a ballistic missile that the North launched over Japan in 1998, raising security concerns across the Asia-Pacific.

Japan also demands cooperation from the North about the Japanese citizens who were allegedly kidnapped by the North in the 1970s to help Pyongyang train Japanese-speaking spies.

After the talks ended today, Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono said that the resolution of the alleged abductions is a prerequisite for the normalization of diplomatic relations.

``Japan cannot allow the abduction matter and other issues of concern to us to be sidestepped,'' he said in Tokyo.

-----------

Japan, N Korea Talks End, Gaps Remain

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-j.html
By Reuters

PYONGYANG (Reuters) - Historic talks aimed at normalizing relations between Stalinist North Korea and Japan ended without agreement Friday, with Pyongyang demanding that Tokyo first offer compensation for its decades-long colonization.

A joint statement issued Friday morning gave no reason why an agreement had not been reached, but the talks had been dogged from the start by numerous difficulties, including North Korea's demands for an apology from Japan for its actions during the period it colonized the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945.

``While recognizing the need to improve and develop DPRK (North Korean)-Japan relations, the two sides solemnly discussed various issues on the realization on normalizing relations between the two countries, including how to liquidate the past,'' the statement said.

But the former foes agreed to meet again for further talks in Japan, probably at the end of May.

``The biggest obstacle is the lack of mutual trust. To build mutual confidence, it is important that Japan apologize and compensate for the past,'' said North Korea's first vice foreign minister, Kang Sok-ju, who met top Japanese negotiator Kojiro Takano after the talks.

``To build a house of normalized relations, we need a foundation, and the liquidation of the past is the foundation,'' Kang added.

Diplomatic sources have said Kang could be the highest-ranking North Korean official to visit Washington later this year.

The two top negotiators in the talks issued conflicting comments on the compensation issue, with North Korea's Jong Thae-wha saying the two sides had reached an agreement and Japan's Takano saying they hadn't.

``We reached an agreement that the Japanese side has a will to apologize and compensate for its criminal acts against the people of Korea during its occupation of the Korean peninsula,'' Jong told a press conference.

Takano replied bluntly: ``There was no such agreement.

TOKYO LOOKS TO NEXT MEETING

Japan's top government spokesman Mikio Aoki told a news conference in Tokyo that the talks had ended with both sides expressing their positions, but he added: ``We have high hopes for the second round.''

Since the talks began Wednesday, both North Korea and Japan have acknowledged that progress will be difficult but expressed determination to improve their thorny relationship.

North Korea has repeatedly demanded an apology and compensation for the colonial period, while Japan has its own agenda, including the alleged abduction of Japanese nationals by North Korean agents.

Japan tried to sidestep the compensation issue and remained uncommitted about making payments.

Issues such as 10 missing Japanese whom Tokyo believes were kidnapped by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s must be cleared before progress could be expected toward establishing diplomatic ties, the Japanese officials said.

North Korea, which denies having abducted anyone, has agreed to launch a nationwide investigation into the fate of what it calls ``missing'' Japanese nationals.

Japanese Foreign Ministry deputy spokesman Chikahito Harada said the talks had ended as expected. ``I don't think anyone thought these would be easy,'' he said.

Japan began normalization talks with North Korea in early 1991. But the talks collapsed the following year when Pyongyang's negotiators stormed out after Tokyo accused North Korean agents of kidnapping a Japanese woman.

-----------

N.Korea, Japan Disagree on Talks

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-NKorea-Japan.html
By The Associated Press

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) -- Japan and North Korea emerged from landmark talks on establishing diplomatic ties Friday with sharply divergent views of what they agreed upon, with Tokyo dismissing claims it would compensate colonial abuses.

In a surprise move, the reclusive North's chief negotiator Jong Thae Hwa said Japan agreed to atone for its 35-year subjugation of the Korean Peninsula -- just hours after the two sides issued a joint closing statement that only said they would discuss the issue.

``The two sides agreed that Japan will apologize for historical issues and provide compensation,'' Jong said. The main issue is ``whether Japan keeps its promise,'' he said.

Kojiro Takano, Japan's top negotiator, looked surprised at a subsequent news conference when reporters questioned him about Jong's remarks. He said no such agreement had been reached.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman in Tokyo, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Jong's statement was ``puzzling.'' It was unclear what effect the comments would have on the future of the negotiations.

The two sides agreed Friday to hold a second round of talks in late May in Tokyo. This week's negotiations to establish diplomatic ties were the first in eight years.

The North has repeatedly frustrated negotiating partners with unexpected reversals of position that have earned it a reputation for brinkmanship.

Negotiators were upbeat right after the talks closed, saying the two sides had reached a deeper understanding of each others' positions. Although Japanese officials reported no breakthroughs, they expressed optimism because the countries had at least listened to demands that have long divided them.

The joint statement said that the two sides agreed on ``the need to continue talks on normalizing ties.'' In addition to another round of talks in Tokyo, there is a third session planned in Beijing or elsewhere in the near future.

But it was clear Friday that North Korea was in no mood to let up on the issue of Japan's 1910-1945 colonial rule, as Jong berated a group of Japanese reporters about the past.

``You must understand that your fathers and grandfathers subjected us to sub-human treatment,'' he said.

Singling out a journalist from a conservative Japanese newspaper, Jong told him: ``You should study history more.''

The official North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun carried a full page of stories about the talks, with headlines such as: ``Japan Must Apologize and Compensate For The Past,'' and ``Japan's Barbaric Pillaging of Cultural Treasures,'' referring to art works that Japan's colonial army allegedly had stolen.

Many people in North and South Korea deeply resent Japan more than half a century after its harsh colonial rule ended on the peninsula. Older Koreans recall how the Japanese forced women into prostitution and men into labor camps, and banned teaching of the Korean language in schools.

Despite the acrimony over historical issues, Yang Hyong Sop, the vice president of the Supreme People's Assembly, thanked Japan for agreeing last month to extend food aid to the North.

North Korean officials also expressed hope that new Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who was elected by Parliament this week after his predecessor Keizo Obuchi suffered a stroke, would continue working toward improving bilateral ties.

In reviving its negotiations with the North, Japan hopes to help draw the Stalinist state out of its isolation and boost stability in Asia.

Pyongyang, which has recently reached out to other countries to establish diplomatic relations, needs help from richer industrialized countries to feed its impoverished people and modernize its decaying infrastructure. But Japan is still concerned about a ballistic missile the North launched over Japan in 1998.

Japan is also demanding cooperation from the North about Japanese citizens who were allegedly kidnapped by the North in the 1970s to help Pyongyang train spies.

----------- kashmir

Thousands Clash With Police in Kashmir

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-kashmir.html
By Reuters

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - More than 2,000 people clashed with police in the Indian state of Kashmir on Friday during a protest against the shooting of eight people earlier this week during another demonstration.

Witnesses said police fired scores of tear gas shells to disperse the slogan-shouting crowd that began protesting near Jamia Masjid (grand mosque) in Srinagar, the state's summer capital, after Friday prayers.

``Down with state terrorism, we want freedom,'' the protesters shouted, before they began throwing stones, police and witnesses said.

``There are no reports of any casualties so far,'' a police spokesman said.

Seven people were killed on Monday when Indian police opened fire on demonstrators in Bragpora village in Anantnag district, 55 kilometers (34 miles) south of Srinagar. One person died later from injuries.

The Anantnag demonstrators were demanding the bodies of five Muslim youths who they said were the innocent victims of a ''fake encounter'' with security forces following the massacre of 35 Sikhs in a remote Himalayan village on March 20.

Villagers say five Muslim youths were taken from their homes by plainclothes security forces on the night of March 23-24 and ``killed in a fake gunbattle to please the Sikhs.''

Security officials said the five were armed separatist militants who had been involved in the massacre of the Sikhs.

On Thursday, police in Kashmir started exhuming the bodies of the five youths in response to the bloody protests.

Residents in south Kashmir said two of the five bodies had been identified as among those taken from their homes, but a police spokesman in Srinagar said the bodies had not yet been identified.

Thousands of people prayed for the dead youths in Jamia Masjid during Friday prayers led by Umar Fraooq, Kashmir's chief priest and acting chairman of Kashmir's main separatist alliance, the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference.

Shops and businesses remained closed in parts of the Kashmir valley for a fourth day on Friday in response to a protest strike called by traders and separatists.

Nearly a dozen militant groups are fighting New Delhi's rule in Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, where police and hospitals say more than 25,000 people have been killed and thousands wounded in a decade-old separatist violence.

----------- kosovo

Albanian Renegades Vow Revenge

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Kosovo-Rebels.html
By The Associated Press

GREME, Yugoslavia (AP) -- At a funeral for a fallen comrade, self-styled leaders of an ethnic Albanian rebel group vowed Friday to step up attacks in southern Serbia despite pressure from the United States and others to stop.

The emergence of a new Albanian rebel group in Serbia has raised fears in Washington and other Western capitals that the fighting could spill over into Kosovo and nearby Macedonia, perhaps involving Yugoslav forces pursuing rebels across poorly defined boundaries.

Several thousand people gathered for the funeral in Kosovo to bury Ismet Aliu, 19, in a local ``martyr's cemetery'' reserved for Kosovo Liberation Army fighters killed during fighting last year with Yugoslav Serb forces in the province.

Aliu's family said the young Kosovo resident was shot by a Serb sniper while on patrol inside Serbia with the rebels, known by their Albanian initials as the UCPMB. His death suggests that rebels fighting in Serbia have expanded their recruiting to ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

His body was brought back Tuesday by his comrades to a U.S. Army observation post overlooking Serbia's Presevo Valley, where the ``Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac'' has taken up arms against Yugoslav forces.

The fighters took Aliu to the post in hopes of getting him medical treatment. He was taken to the U.S. Army hospital at camp Bondsteel, where he was pronounced dead.

``He will be a source of inspiration, not only for our soldiers but also for all the future soldiers,'' a man introduced as a member of the UCPMB general staff told several thousand mourners at the cemetery, about 25 miles west of the border.

``We will not end our fight for the freedom of the Albanian lands,'' the speaker, who refused to give his name for security reasons, said. ``We will take our revenge many times.''

The Presevo Valley -- which borders the sector of Kosovo patrolled by U.S. peacekeepers -- has a large Albanian population but is not part of Kosovo and is ruled by Belgrade.

Therefore, it is not under the control of the United Nations and NATO under the U.N. resolution which established the peacekeeping mission here after the 78-day NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces.

Last month, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright dispatched her spokesman, James P. Rubin, to Kosovo to demand that ethnic Albanian leaders cut off ties to the rebels -- or risk U.S. support for the province itself.

A week later, however, State Department spokesman James Foley said the United States was greatly disappointed that Albanian militia groups had failed to live up to a commitment to end an insurgency in southern Serbia.

As speakers addressed the crowd at the funeral, Aliu's coffin was flanked by about four young, unarmed men in civilian clothes but identified by villagers as members of the UCPMB.

``It's a human right of everybody to live free in his own house, in his own land,'' said Hajdin Abazi, a former KLA official. ``But when this right gets threatened, then the rightful resistance and the fight for freedom is born naturally.''

Ali Aliu said his cousin Ismet left his home in Kosovo about 20 miles west of the Presevo valley three weeks ago, without telling his family that he was joining the rebels operating on the other side of the border.

``It was his own personal decision,'' the cousin said. ``We didn't know anything. We realized this a week after he went there. We haven't seen him since he left.''

-----------

Serb Wounded in Shoot-Out With NATO

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Kosovo-Serbs.html
By The Associated Press

GRACANICA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- Kosovo's moderate Serbs might reconsider participating in the province's interim U.N.-led government after the shooting of a Serb during a clash with NATO-led peacekeepers, a spokesman said today.

``Violence against the Serbs,'' is bound to increase opposition to such participation, said the spokesman, Aleksandar Vidojevic, a day after the clash between the peacekeepers and Serbs wielding axes and pitchforks.

``For the moment, we are staying with our decision'' to take part in the government, Vidojevic said. ``But we will meet to reconsider the whole situation and see what our next steps will be.''

Vidojevic also said he understood violent Serb reaction when Kosovo's dwindling Serb minority remains at threat from the ethnic Albanian majority.

``They have their fears, and they are easy to manipulate,'' he said. ``They are afraid that we will support the independence of Kosovo.''

Independence remains the goal of the Kosovo's Albanians more than a year after the start of the crackdown by President Slobodan Milosevic's troops that led to NATO intervention and forced a withdrawal of his forces.

Radical Serbs fear that any cooperation with the ethnic Albanians -- including participation in the interim government -- only serves to further that goal of independence for the province, which formally remains part of Serbia, Yugoslavia's largest republic.

About 100 radical Serbs rallied again Friday outside the Gracanica monastery, the site of Thursday's clash. The rally dispersed without incident after Serb representatives met with peacekeepers, local Serbs said.

A Serb man was shot in the leg Thursday when Swedish peacekeepers fired on protesters armed with farm tools who were trying to attack the Gracanica monastery.

The 16th-century monastery in the all-Serb village of Gracanica, about five miles southeast of Pristina, has become the unofficial base of the moderate Serbian National Council, led by Bishop Artemije.

Many of Kosovo's few remaining Serbs see the council as pro-Western for agreeing Sunday to participate in the U.N.-led power-sharing body that includes ethnic Albanian and international representatives.

``(Artemije) betrayed the Serbs,'' Dragana Ristic, 18, said today.

NATO spokesman Lt. Commander Philip Anido said Thursday's shooting occurred after a group of angry Serbs gathered to protest the decision for a second day. Some of the Serbs lunged at the peacekeepers guarding the monastery. The soldiers arrested one of the men and the crowd retreated.

Several minutes later, Anido said, the angry crowd regrouped, this time armed with pitchforks and axes. They again went after the soldiers, who fired into the melee to break it up.

Since the NATO-led peacekeeping force entered the province last June, following the alliance's 78-day bombing campaign that forced out Serb and Yugoslav security forces, thousands of Serbs have fled the province fearing attacks from revenge-minded ethnic Albanians.

The moderate Serbs are expected to attend the first meeting of the interim government as observers next week when the top U.N. official for Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, will be present.

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

Russia May Develop Stealth Jet - Magazine

By Reuters
April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-stealth.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia is pursuing the design and possible development of a ``stealth'' bomber that would be larger than the radar-avoiding U.S. F-117 fighter and smaller than America's B-2 strategic bomber, according to Aviation Week & Space Technology Magazine.

In an article to be published on Monday, the magazine said work was under way at Sukhoi aircraft in Russia and suggested it might signal willingness by cash-strapped Moscow to develop expensive new arms.

``The future of the Russian stealth bomber program will be a significant indicator of the course that new President Vladimir Putin intends to follow on air force modernization and issues about the country's ability to wage modern warfare beyond its borders,'' Aviation Week said.

It called the program significant because Russia was pursuing not only the new SS-27 Topol ballistic missile but design and possibly prototype work on a new bomber to give Moscow more parity with Washington in nuclear and tactical manned strike aircraft capability.

The aircraft, designated the T-60S and sometimes called the S-60, most likely uses a variable geometry wing but with substantial stealth design characteristics embodied in the overall aircraft shape, the magazine reported.

The Russians also have examined flying-wing stealth bomber concepts for an aircraft that would be smaller than the B-2, it said.

The United States has used its two radar-avoiding stealth jets, built with odd shapes and materials that absorb rather than reflect radar signals, with great effectiveness.

The Air Force smashed targets in Baghdad with the single-seat F-117 during the 1991 Gulf War and bombed Serbia with both the B-2 and F-117 during last spring's NATO air campaign.

Sukhoi's work on the S-37 forward-swept wing fighter research aircraft, which since late 1997 has made about 100 flights, is giving the company major new experience in the development of computer system and fly-by-wire software necessary to control inherently unstable stealth-type aircraft designs, Aviation Week reported.

Sukhoi's new general director, Mikhail Pogosyan, told the magazine in Moscow recently that for many years he headed the S-37 development team.

He declined to comment on any work under way on T-60S-type aircraft. But as recently as a month ago, a senior Russian Air Force general made statements that a new bomber is ``a high priority and ... research is under way.''

That followed statements in 1995 by the then-commander of the Russian air force, Col. Gen. Peter Deinekin, that all versions of the aged Tupolev Tu-22 ``Blinder'' bomber and the Sukhoi Su-24 Fencer would be replaced with a new ``multi-role strategic bomber.''

U.S. officials, responding to questions from Reuters, did not discount the magazine report. They would not go further because of intelligence constraints.

``I have no reason to doubt the veracity of Russian officials,'' said one of the U.S. officials, who asked not to be identified.

----

Foe's Strength Forces Putin Into a Humbling Reversal

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/040700russia-putin.html
By PATRICK E. TYLER

T. PETERSBURG, Russia, April 6 -- As President-elect Vladimir V. Putin flew north beyond the Arctic Circle this week to ride a nuclear-powered submarine and burnish his image as commander in chief, the event that was making political waves was the scuttling of his hand-picked candidate for governor of his home region here.

In a humbling concession to the political strength and popularity of the incumbent governor, Vladimir Yakovlev, Mr. Putin recalled Valentina Matviyenko, his first deputy prime minister, from her vacation on Tuesday and, according to Ms. Matviyenko, asked her to pull out of the race she had entered with the Kremlin's blessing less than a month ago.

The decision, while viewed as politically pragmatic here and in Moscow, was nonetheless seen as a galling retreat for Mr. Putin, who has long reviled Mr. Yakovlev as a "Judas" for his split with Anatoly A. Sobchak, who died on Feb. 20.

Mr. Sobchak, as mayor of St. Petersburg in the early 1990's, was among the first generation of charismatic pro-democracy reformers after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He recruited both Mr. Putin and Mr. Yakovlev as deputy mayors only to be ousted by Mr. Yakovlev's insurgency in the 1996 election. Mr. Yakovlev's victory put Mr. Putin out of a job and, as Mr. Putin recently revealed in a series of interviews, "I came to the conclusion that working with Yakovlev was impossible."

On Wednesday, Ms. Matviyenko announced she would bow to Mr. Putin's request. She closed her campaign headquarters here at No. 1 Revolution Street, saying, "I am quitting the list of candidates, but not the city." She will return to Moscow, she said, to help Mr. Putin form a new government for his swearing in as president on May 7.

Mr. Putin, in remarks from Murmansk as he prepared to dive to 1,300 feet in a Delta-class ballistic missile submarine and then observe a series of missile firings, offered a somewhat different account by saying that it was Ms. Matviyenko's decision to withdraw from the race. He said that when he asked her to return to Moscow, "I didn't mean that she should stop her election campaign. After all, I conducted my campaign while carrying on working."

But Mr. Putin added: "We were coming to a critical moment in forming the government, and she is one of the most successful social ministers. I needed her to join our work."

Repeating her own account, Ms. Matviyenko told campaign workers, "I was sure about my victory until Vladimir Putin convinced me to change my decision."

Political analysts here and in Moscow said the decision to end the Kremlin-backed campaign against Mr. Yakovlev reflects Mr. Putin's recognition not only that his deputy was likely to lose in the May 14 balloting in the St. Petersburg region, but also that the Kremlin could not afford an antagonistic battle with a regional boss like Mr. Yakovlev at a time when Moscow is preparing to undertake a much anticipated economic reform program after last month's presidential elections.

"This decision shows that Mr. Putin's priority is to put together a strong team on the federal level and this is much more important to him than fighting a war with Yakovlev," said Grigory A. Tomchin, a liberal member of Parliament from St. Petersburg. "And from the beginning, it was also clear that Matviyenko was not the best candidate to defeat Yakovlev."

Sergei A. Fetishev, a political journalist who covers city hall here, added, "Mr. Putin had to face the reality of local power, and therefore it is definitely something of a blow to his image."

The worst outcome would have been for Mr. Putin to back a loser, as he did in December when he supported an insurgent candidate against the powerful mayor of Moscow, Yuri M. Luzhkov, said Sergei Markov, the director of the Institute of Political Studies.

"To lose in another important region would not look good for his image," Mr. Markov said, "and that is why he decided to join a winner," however personally distasteful that might have been. "It's a signal that he puts political interests higher than personal relations."

Some analysts also saw the hand of Russia's most prominent oligarch, Boris Berezovsky, shoring up Mr. Yakovlev's candidacy in an effort to sway the Kremlin to do the same. "We need to ensure the continuity of power, especially in the regions," Mr. Berezovsky was quoted as saying today in The Moscow Times. He added, "Yakovlev has made many mistakes, but the alternative candidate was just not strong enough to control the problems plaguing the city."

Among the serious problems here are the organized crime syndicates that frequently stage contract killings in broad daylight along the canals and tree-lined esplanades of the city. In the most recent incident, on Wednesday, Gennadi Ivanov, 35, the general director of a textile conglomerate that employs 4,000 people, was fatally shot by a man who walked up to his car when it stopped at a crosswalk near his home.

In the most notorious assassination here, Galina Starovoitova, a liberal member of Parliament, was shot in her stairwell in November 1998. The killing remains unsolved, as hundreds of others do.

Ever since Mr. Putin was vaulted into the prime minister's post and then the presidency, Mr. Yakovlev's position has been seen as vulnerable to challenge by a strong Kremlin-backed candidate. Ms. Matviyenko's entry into the race at first appeared as a settling of accounts until opinion polls revealed that she was not making headway against Mr. Yakovlev's popularity.

"Yakovlev may be an alcoholic or even a crook, but he has done a lot for the city," said Sergei Kilmenko, 33, a former army captain who was on the streets today looking for a job. "Matviyenko is seen as a wooden, Communist youth type of person, and the mafia structure here would have squashed her in no time."

Like Peter the Great, who founded this city on the banks of the Neva River, Mr. Yakovlev is also known as a builder who keeps the roads repaired, pays the pensioners on time and finds restoration money to keep the city's Baroque palaces and monuments from crumbling into the canals. In his plodding and unflashy manner, Mr. Yakovlev has forged a broad-based political machine that for now seems as unassailable as the Peter and Paul fortress that secured this swampy territory as Russia's capital for two centuries.

With one serious rival out of the way, Mr. Yakovlev today plunged confidently into another day of campaigning among workers at a pasta factory in the suburbs, visiting workers' dormitories and avoiding questions about his own mysterious trips to Moscow last week and again this week before Ms. Matviyenko's announcement.

As St. Petersburg prepares to hold the world hockey championships on April 29, Mr. Yakovlev is taking most of the credit for having secured the event. The governor is also giving away tens of thousands of free tickets to residents who help clean up the city this month, an offer that some critics see as a blatant form of vote buying just weeks before the elections.

"He worked under Sobchak, and he understands the rules of the game," Mr. Klimenko said.

-------

Putin gets a feel of submarine

By Vladimir Radyuhin,
April 7, 2000
The Hindu
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2000/04/07/stories/0307000k.htm

MOSCOW, APRIL 6. Russia's President-elect, Mr. Vladimir Putin, became the country's first leader to have sailed aboard a submarine. Earlier, he made history by flying a supersonic fighter plane.

Mr. Putin, elected President last month, spent last night aboard a submerged nuclear-powered submarine off Russia's northern naval base of Severomorsk, where he arrived on Wednesday to attend naval exercises.

News agencies said it was the biggest war games in years and involved the entire Northern Fleet, including seven submarines, 10 surface ships and more than a dozen helicopters.

In Moscow, the weekly Cabinet meeting on Thursday was cancelled because Mr. Putin returned late from the exercises. The demonstration of military might took place at a time when the European Council was debating whether to expel Russia for alleged human rights abuses in Chechnya.

Mr. Putin, known for his taste for frilling experiences, went out to sea aboard the nuclear submarine Karelia of the Dolphine class, which carries 18 long-range missiles with multiple nuclear warheads. He spent the night aboard the submarine and watched the launching of a ballistic missile. He was also initiated by the crew by downing a glass of seawater, the Interfax news agency reported. Mr. Putin used the occasion to vow to build up Russia's military might.

------

Putin fulfills military fantasies

Reuters News Service
Deseret News,
Friday, April 07, 2000,
http://deseretnews.com/dn/print/1,1442,155015897,00.html?

MOSCOW - Is it a plane? Is it a submarine? No, it's just Russia's president-elect fulfilling a childhood dream.

Vladimir Putin spent one night this week on the Delta-class nuclear submarine Karelia plying 1,300 feet beneath choppy Arctic waves and then watched missile-firing exercises on Thursday from a Northern Fleet naval cruiser.

Last month, not long before his election win, he flew to rebel Chechnya aboard a two-man Sukhoi-27 fighter jet.

Putin was separated from the "suitcase" controlling Russia's nuclear arsenal when aboard the fighter, and it was not clear whether it could have worked from a submerged submarine. But the president-elect seems unperturbed.

"As commander-in-chief I want to see everything myself, touch it and feel what it's like," Putin told Russian reporters when asked to explain his military-minded stunts.

He also confided he had long dreamt of a submarine ride. In a book published last month, Putin said he toyed with the idea of being a pilot as a child but went for the KGB instead.

Putin did not officially campaign for the presidency he inherited as caretaker when Boris Yeltsin resigned on December 31. But his image-building activities helped to do the trick far more than his vague policy pronouncements.

His first trip as acting president, just hours after Yeltsin quit, was to hand out hunting knives to soldiers in Chechnya, where he launched a vote-winning war to quell separatist rebels.

The 47-year-old former KGB spy had already demonstrated his unarmed combat skills on the judo mat and he later took a proletarian ride on a commuter train as well as driving a modest Russian-made car off the assembly line.

"Putin's everywhere," enthused RIA news agency. "First as prime minister and then as acting president as well, Vladimir Putin has mastered practically all modes of transport, and above all, military vehicles."

Now comfortably elected, Putin, with his trademark bashful smile, seemingly has less need for such imagery.

But with the ceremonial hurdle of a May 7 inauguration still to clear, it is a tactic that usefully keeps him in the public eye and in favour with the military until he can act with the full weight of the presidency.

Putin has proved highly popular with the armed forces. Indeed, there was a tussle over which submarine would take him overnight. He opted for the Karelia, which test-fired two nuclear-capable missiles to celebrate his election win.

The president-elect has yet to provide detailed plans for Russia, not least the economy. So public relations will remain important for a man virtually unknown nine months ago.

He has spoken of market reforms in a strong state but his policy programme has not yet been finalized. It is also not clear who will be in the new government he must appoint.

In the meantime, it is anybody's guess what the next stunt will be. But there do appear to be some limits.

Asked recently at the Star City cosmonaut training school outside Moscow whether he would not like to go into space, he replied: "I know full well how expensive it is to put each gram of cargo into orbit. I think my weight is not worth the money."

------

DANIEL SCHORR: Guessing Russia's next move

Nando Media
Christian Science Monitor Service
http://www2.nando.net/noframes/story/0,2107,500190029-500256015-501309620-0,00.html
April 7, 2000
http://www.nandotimes.com

The two weeks since the election of Vladimir Putin as president of Russia has been a time for Washington think tanks. The Heritage Foundation, Nixon Center, and Carnegie Endowment have all trotted out their best scholars to speculate on whether Putin will be more authoritarian than Boris Yeltsin, rein in the rip-off artists called "oligarchs," crack down on the press, get more assertive with the United States.

But the scholars have to do a lot of guessing because Putin has kept his cards so close to his chest. Indeed, some think he has no grand design beyond establishing order. With so little hard information, anybody can play pundit. And on the strength of having been a Moscow correspondent once, let me get into the game.

We Moscow correspondents used to ask first what the regime was trying to signal by its actions. For example, how many tanks and missiles Nikita Khrushchev paraded through Red Square on May Day as an indicator of whether he wanted to look peaceable or bellicose. So I found the most significant event of the immediate post-election period the announcement, within hours after the polls closed, that the Russian navy had launched a ballistic missile from a nuclear-powered submarine, which hit its target 4,000 miles away, and a second one which was successfully detected by Russia's anti-missile early-warning system.

The announcement said the navy crew dedicated the launch to Putin, "who has called for restoring the military's dignity and strengthening its capabilities." Next came the announcement that Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, though approaching retirement age, had been asked to stay on. That makes him the first member of Putin's new Cabinet to be selected.

What does all this military emphasis mean? The military, whose war in Chechnya helped Putin get elected, appears to be flexing its muscle. Putin, a KGB alumnus, has said he wants to bring more KGB people into government. Back in Stalin days, the military establishment traditionally competed for power with the KGB. And the military is making itself felt now.

The military seems also to be signaling that it will have to be consulted on any change in the Antiballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) that would permit the United States to develop a national anti-missile system. It will want assurances of no larger ABM system.

The Defense Ministry has already written a new military doctrine that would permit the use of nuclear weapons in case of a conventional attack.

Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov seized his first opportunity to announce that changes will be made in Russian foreign policy in accordance with the "new concept" discussed in the Russian Security Council. That "new concept" presumably includes the general-staff decision that Russia, too poor to match America in conventional forces, will have to use at least tactical nuclear weapons to fend off an attack.

That sounds like the Eisenhower-Dulles doctrine of "massive retaliation" in case of conventional attack on American forces. What was called then "a bigger bang for a buck" could be called today "a bigger rumble for a ruble."

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Blast Rocks Chechen Refugee Center; Deaths Reported

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-russia-.html
By Reuters

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A blast at a center for refugees in Chechnya killed between two and five people and injured several others Friday, Interfax news agency quoted the Russian government's office in the region as saying.

The agency quoted officials as saying the blast had been in the building of a farm institute in the village of Sernovodsk in northeastern Chechnya, where around 2,000 refugees live.

It said the officials had not yet identified the cause of the blast, which was being investigated.

Some 200,000 refugees have fled the fighting during Russia's six-month offensive against rebels in the region, many living in makeshift refugee camps in neighboring Ingushetia or other buildings commandeered to shelter them.

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US Ships Hold Tanker in Persian Gulf

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Russia-Gulf-Tanker.html
By The Associated Press

MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) -- Russian officials demanded Friday that the U.S. Navy release a Russian tanker being held in the Persian Gulf while its oil is tested, ostensibly to see if it came from Iraq in violation of U.N. sanctions.

The Royal Dutch-Shell Group said the oil the tanker was carrying is theirs and came from Iran. The Russian Foreign Ministry accused the U.S. Navy of stopping the ship simply because it was Russian.

U.S. Navy spokesman Cmdr. Jeff Gradeck confirmed that U.S. warships enforcing sanctions against Iraq stopped the Akademik Pustovoit, a Russian-flagged tanker owned by Novorossiisk Shipping company, on Wednesday in international waters. Gradeck declined to speculate on whether the ship was officially suspected of carrying Iraqi oil.

``We are waiting for oil sample analysis ... which could take several days,'' he said.

But hours later, the Amsterdam-based Royal Dutch-Shell Group said the oil on board the Akademik was Shell's and was headed from Iran to the Myrina, a Shell-operated ship off Dubai. From there it was to be taken to Singapore, the company said.

Kate Hill, a company spokeswoman in London, said the Iranian oil was being loaded onto the Myrina when the U.N. inspectors came aboard the Akademik for an embargo check -- a regular process, she said. The Myrina was allowed to proceed, but it was not allowed to load the remainder of the oil because the inspectors wanted to sample it, Hill said.

There was no immediate reaction from the U.S. Navy to the company's statement.

The Russian Foreign Ministry demanded the Akademik be released and called for an independent investigation. Russian consular officials in the United Arab Emirates were on their way to the tanker, the Russian Interfax news agency quoted ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko as saying.

Nikolai Matyushenko, head of shipping at Russia's Transportation Ministry, told Interfax it was the third time the Akademik Pustovoit had been stopped and checked, and that each time no violations were found.

``In this case the biased attitude of the Americans to Russian-flagged ships is obviously being looked at,'' he said.

Iraq has been barred from selling its oil on the open market since U.N. sanctions were imposed after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which led to the Persian Gulf War. The U.S. Navy said it had found Iraqi oil on board another Russian tanker after a search at sea in February. Russian authorities have denied the ship owners violated any sanctions and an investigation is ongoing.

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Russian Tanker Thought to Hold Iraq Oil Stopped

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-oi.html
By Reuters

MANAMA (Reuters) - A Russian tanker was intercepted in the Gulf on Thursday on suspicion of smuggling Iraqi oil in defiance of U.N. sanctions, a U.S. admiral said on Friday.

The Akademik Pustovoyt was boarded in the southern Gulf by a team of Americans who took oil samples for analysis to see if the fuel was from Iraq, said Vice Admiral Charles Moore.

He coordinates an international force patrolling the area and commands the U.S. Navy's Manama, Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet.

``We had reason to believe that the ship was involved in smuggling illegal Iraqi gasoil,'' Moore said. ``So we have boarded, we have taken oil samples, and we have the ship at anchorage pending the outcome of the oil samples,'' he said.

The force from 18 countries that patrols the Gulf to catch smugglers of Iraqi oil had boarded the ship four times in the past couple of months, but it had not been detained previously ''for a variety of reasons,'' Moore said.

``We will wait and see how the oil samples come out and then we will make a decision on what we recommend,'' he said.

The analysis was expected to be completed by Sunday evening, Moore said. He would not give details of evidence collected.

``It had been in Iranian-controlled waters -- that's where it has routinely operated, and when it ventured out into international waters yesterday we went ahead and boarded it,'' Moore said.

Russia said on Friday that it wanted the tanker released quickly. ``We insist on the quick release of the crew and vessel,'' a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on television.

``Of course, if it turns out that the seizure of the ship was unjustified, then the Foreign Ministry will make the necessary claims against the multi-national force in relation to compensation for any losses,'' he said.

U.N. sanctions were imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Iraqi crude oil is sold in exchange for necessities under a closely supervised U.N. ``oil-for-food'' program.

Moore has previously said that ships smuggling Iraqi oil travel through Iranian-controlled waters in the Gulf with the knowledge of Iran water patrols.

Higher oil prices have sharply increased smuggling and Iraq could make up to $1 billion this year on gasoil smuggled by water and land.

Moore had addressed the U.N. Security Council last month on smuggling and advocated diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to stop letting offenders use its territorial waters.

On April 1, Iranian patrols intercepted a ship carrying 500 tons of smuggled Iraqi fuel. That ship was registered in Honduras and identified as the al-Masrou.

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Russia Will Stay Course in Chechnya

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Russia-Chechnya.html
By The Associated Press

GOISKOYE, Russia (AP) -- Wearing white gowns and respirators, workers labored around the clock in the heavy stench of rotting flesh to bury hundreds of victims of fighting in Chechnya, a campaign Russia vowed Friday to continue -- despite growing international criticism.

The bodies being buried came from the village of Komsomolskoye, at the foothills of Chechnya's southern mountains. Russian forces took the village after weeks of intense fighting last month.

Komsomolskoye was left in ruins, its streets strewn with bodies. The corpses were moved to this nearby village for burial.

Some 50 workers from the Chechen Emergency Situations Department were placing corpses into freshly dug graves in the Goiskoye cemetery. Some 430 bodies had been brought to the cemetery and 300 more remain in the minefields around the village, said Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the chief Kremlin spokesman for Chechnya.

``We are doing our job first of all out of mercy,'' said the chief of the burial team, Khusein Khadzhiyev. ``We are not paid for this. But I think that everybody, be it a rebel or a peaceful person, deserves to be buried.''

Yastrzhembsky maintained all the bodies were those of rebels. But Abdula Itslayev, a Goiskoye volunteer, said about 50 civilians have been buried so far.

About 100 corpses of rebels had been beheaded or had their ears cut off, Itslayev said. Some bodies had bullet holes in the heads -- an indication that they may have been intentionally killed after they were injured or tried to surrender.

The fighting in Komsomolskoye was part of Russia's effort to trap rebels in the republic's southern mountains and finish them off. The rebels, although outnumbered and outgunned, have resisted fiercely. Although most rebels have been driven into the mountains in seven months of fighting, some remain in the Russian-occupied flatlands and periodically launch attacks.

On Friday, at least two people were killed when a bomb exploded at a refugee camp in the village of Sernovodsk, just inside Chechnya's western border with the region of Ingushetia, the Interfax news agency reported. The area has been occupied by Russian forces for months.

Authorities did not speculate on the motive.

Meanwhile, the government said that the decision by the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly decision to suspend Russia's voting rights because of its handling of the Chechen war will not change Russian strategy.

The assembly on Thursday lifted Russia's voting rights and proposed the suspension of its membership if it does not meet several demands on Chechnya, including immediately beginning talks with the rebels.

Yastrzhembsky said that Russia will carry its military offensive ``to the end.''

``At stake is Russia's territorial integrity,'' he said. ``For us it is one of the basic values, and we are not about to enter a discussion on these basic values.''

He also said that Russia will not allow any more visits to the rebel republic by Council of Europe representatives, who have sought to investigate allegations of human rights abuses and excessive violence in Chechnya.

``The door has been shut,'' Yastrzhembsky said.

He also said rebels have threatened to execute all Russian servicemen they capture until Moscow turns over Col. Yuri Budanov, accused of raping and murdering a teen-age Chechen girl.

Russia sent ground troops into Chechnya in September, following weeks of airstrikes, after rebels invaded neighboring Dagestan. The rebels are also blamed in apartment blasts in Russia that killed about 300 people.

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U.S. Alleges Kyrgystan Detention

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Albright-Kyrgystan.html
By The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The State Department on Friday welcomed the release of an opposition political leader in Kyrgyzstan after U.S. complaints, but said another prominent opponent of the government remained in detention.

Albright is planning to visit the Central Asian country and two others, Kazakstan and Uzbekistan, later in the month.

On Wednesday, the State Department condemned as ``incomprehensible'' the detention in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, of Daniyar Usenov, a leader of the People's Party.

Spokesman James P. Rubin said at the time that the person who brought assault charges against Usenov had withdrawn them but the government still was going ahead with the prosecution.

Usenov then was released, and on Friday Rubin said ``we welcome this release, and obviously Secretary Albright will have an opportunity to discuss these issues in full during the course of her visit.''

The department had also called on Wednesday for the release of another prominent opposition leader, Feliks Kulov of the Ar Namys party.

Rubin said Friday he was still being held and called on the government to free him pending resolution of the case.



----------- serbia

NATO Strikes Worsened Yugoslav Human Rights-Report

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-rights-.html
By Reuters

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Human rights standards in Yugoslavia deteriorated during last year's NATO air strikes and have continued to decline, a Serbian watchdog group said Friday.

``Our impression is that the situation is bad and worsening. Regulations that have been adopted are obviously contradictory to international law,'' Vojin Dimitrijevic, director of the Belgrade Center for Human Rights, told a news conference.

Vladan Joksimovic, the Center's legal expert, added that contradictory federal and republican regulations and lack of an independent judiciary had prevented any rule of law in Yugoslavia before as well as after the air war.

Yugoslavia declared a state of war on March 24, 1999 when NATO launched an 11-week bombing campaign to stop Belgrade's repression of majority ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

Special measures were adopted by the Serbian nationalist authorities giving broader powers to the army and police and curbing individual rights, Dimitrijevic said, citing the Center's new report, ``Human Rights in Yugoslavia 1999.''

Some of the most serious abuses had occurred in Kosovo, where attempts to rule the province by police alone had aggravated violations of ethnic Albanians' human rights.

The report said more than a million Kosovo Albanians were either expelled or displaced last year. Yugoslav authorities denied responsibility and blamed the exodus on NATO's bombing.

Dimitrijevic said that when the air strikes began, repression spread to Serbia itself, with changes in legislation allowing discrimination against opponents of the government.

``Serbia's constitution gives its president (during a state of war) the right to abolish almost all civic rights,'' said Joksimovic. In such times, police could confine for up to 60 days those seen as a security risk, conduct searches without a warrant and silence independent media.

The post-bombing period saw a reversal in Kosovo, with its remaining non-Albanian population -- mainly Serbs -- fleeing reprisals from Albanians repopulating the Yugoslav province.

Dimitrijevic said the international community bore part of the responsibility for the flight of some 200,000 Serbs, gypsies and other non-Albanians from Kosovo since mid-1999, when NATO peacekeepers and U.N. administrators took charge.

``When Kosovo was ... (made) an international protectorate, it became clear that the most prominent opponents (among the Albanians) to the Serb regime in the province actually wanted an ethnically cleansed Kosovo,'' Dimitrijevic said.

The report also dealt with violations of media freedom in Serbia, varying from police shutdowns of opposition and private radio and television stations to heavy fines imposed on independent newspapers under the strict information law.

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Srebrenica Survivor Testifies

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-War-Crimes-Bosnia.html
By The Associated Press

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- A 62-year-old Muslim told a U.N. genocide trial Friday how he survived a mass execution by Serb soldiers, pretending to be dead for hours while column after column of refugees were gunned down around him.

In the gripping testimony at the trial of a Bosnian Serb general, the witness detailed his escape across a field strewn with bloody bodies after the Serbs' seizure of Srebrenica -- an event that focused world attention on the brutality of the Bosnian war.

Up to 1,500 refugees may have been killed in the massacre at Branjevo farm that day in July 1995, said the survivor, whose identity was concealed in his testimony before the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

``They mowed them down and they fell to the ground,'' said the witness. ``You could hear the bullets hitting the bodies ... the air was filled with dust.'' Refugees who survived and tried to flee were hunted down and killed, he said.

In July 1995, Serb forces broke through U.N. defense posts around Srebrenica and slaughtered at least 7,500 Muslim men and boys, prosecutors say. The remaining refugees escaped or were deported to Muslim-held territory.

The overrunning of the enclave, which the United Nations had declared a ``save haven,'' galvanized international action to put an end to the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

Gen. Radislav Krstic is accused of heading the Bosnian Serb army's Drina Corps, which carried out the slaughter. He has been charged with genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.

Krstic, who has pleaded innocent, could spend the rest of his life in jail if convicted.

The witness testified as the trial completed its fourth week. Earlier testimony has come from other massacre survivors, forensic experts and U.N. peacekeepers.

The witness said that after Serb troops swept over Srebrenica, he was taken on July 12 to the town of Pilica, where he was held with about 250 men and boys in a small room. There, detainees as old as 80 were starved, beaten, killed and intimidated by a few Serb soldiers.

``They threw bread crumbs at the people,'' he said. ``One man drank his own urine.''

After two or three nights, the men were bound and driven by bus to a military agricultural center known as Branjevo farm, where a Serb soldier led an execution squad.

``We were ordered to turn our backs and lined up,'' the witness said. ``Then he ordered us to lie down and, at that moment, a burst of fire came.''

Grazed by a bullet, the witness lay quietly among the dead, while the soldiers finished off others who were still breathing. One cried out, ``I'm still alive, kill me,'' before being dispatched with a single bullet to the head, the witness said.

The witness said he remained motionless for hours while six busloads of refugees arrived and were systematically killed, until he was able to stumble across the field and escape into the woods.

``I estimate between 1,000 and 1,500 were dead when the shooting stopped,'' he said. ``One man tried to flee, because he preferred a bullet in the back.''

Earlier Friday, the most senior Bosnian war crimes suspect in custody, Momcilo Krajisnik, pleaded innocent to genocide and other atrocities in his first public appearance since his arrest by NATO troops on Monday.

Krajisnik, 55, is close associate of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who is also wanted by the tribunal for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Prosecutors consider Krajisnik and Karadzic the masterminds of the ``ethnic cleansing'' campaigns that killed thousands of civilians and drove non-Serbs from wide swaths of northern and eastern Bosnia that now form part of the Bosnian Serb Republic.

The tribunal was established seven years ago by the U.N. Security Council to prosecute those responsible for atrocities in the Balkans following the disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991. It has handed down prison sentences of up to 45 years to 14 Serb, Muslim and Croat defendants.

Nearly 40 suspects are in custody. Still at large are the wartime Bosnian Serb military chief, Ratko Mladic, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and dozens of other predominantly Serb suspects.

----------- spying

Making And Breaking Codes at U.S. Spy Agency NSA

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-spying-codebreak.html Filed at 11:25 a.m. ET
By Reuters

FORT MEADE, Md. (Reuters) - Some of the U.S. government's best weapons against terrorism wear eyeglasses held together with tape and sometimes forget to wear their shoes.

They could be known as the Nerd Warriors of the National Security Agency, mathematical puzzle-solvers who break codes on secret communications intercepted by U.S. intelligence.

``I know that mathematicians have saved lives,'' said Mark, a mathematician at NSA since 1982 who spoke on condition of first-name identification only. ``I know that we've decrypted assassination lists, I know that we've helped commanders in the field know where the next battle's going to be.''

NSA code breakers, working to head off potential threats to the United States, decrypt messages that may turn out to be as serious as a bomb plot or as innocuous as sports scores. Their goals are similar to the CIA's shadow warriors whose covert operations overseas seek to glean intelligence to protect U.S. national security. But their methods are different.

NSA collects a vast amount of communications from around the world with spy satellites, antennas and other interception techniques. The agency was established in 1952 but U.S. code-breaking activities date from the First World War.

The math whiz who decodes a message at the agency's complex about 25 miles outside Washington often does not understand its contents because it is in another language. The unraveled message, which might be from a telephone call, an e-mail or a facsimile, is sent to a linguist for translation.

Cracking the code can take just an instant -- or years. The message itself might have no value, but once the code is broken all other communications from that source can be read.

``We have people working on a message for three years ... the message is not of interest to anyone (but) you break that one message and you figure out how that machine works, you're in,'' Mark said. ``You can imagine there were targets that are worth spending three years on a message.''

He said his job has been a real eye-opener about ``bad guys'' who exist in the world. ``When I decrypt a message that has an assassination list of people in NATO troops on the ground, I know there are people who have interests against us.''

BREAKING PRIORITIES

The president has a directive that establishes priorities, such as ``country XYZ this week is the big target,'' Mark said. ''The bulk of our work is just trying to figure out what device they have and, if we do figure that out, how does it work?''

It is a 24-hour operation and mathematicians have been known to be so absorbed in solving a problem they forget to put on their shoes or where they parked the car.

``We work in terrible rooms, it's just loaded with computers, filled with half-filled coffee cups, it's your exact stereotypical image -- they don't tuck their shirt tails in, they bang into the walls, they have tape on the bridge of their glasses,'' Mark said. College students in an NSA summer program generated complaints by going barefoot in the cafeteria.

Some analysts see an uncertain future for code breakers if technological advances produce nearly unbreakable encryption at a relatively cheap cost and as more communications move using fiber optics that satellites cannot pick up.

``I think it does mean that the code-breaking business in that way, with big computers and mathematicians, probably is going the way of the buggy whip,'' Gregory Treverton, a former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, said.

``We'll still break some codes, but we'll probably break those by stealing the code books,'' Treverton, now president of The Pacific Council on International Policy, said.

Jeffrey Richelson, an author on intelligence issues, said NSA is not becoming obsolete but needs to figure out how to stay on top of the game. ``I think we haven't gotten to the point certainly where we're really deaf and there's minimal value in the operation; it's just that there are things that won't be as easy as in the past and the question is whether they can come up with solutions to those problems.''

FLIP SIDE

But the technological advances that cause problems for the code breakers help NSA's code makers. Mathematicians who work in that area devise ways to keep official U.S. communications such as military troop movements from foreign eyes and ears.

Margaret, an NSA code maker for 15 years, says the agency is reaching out to the private sector, which has encryption products that fit some of the government's security needs.

``If you think about my world 15 years ago and the amount of traffic I had to protect versus my world now with the Internet and every Navy guy or Air Force guy e-mailing every other Navy or Air Force guy, I have a much bigger problem,'' Margaret said. ''So we really do need some of these commercial products to take up the slack because we cannot cover all these bases.''

A lot of unclassified traffic flowing over the Internet between military personnel should probably be encrypted, and commercial products are ideal for that purpose, she said. ``This person says one little tiny insignificant fact and someone else says one little tiny insignificant fact and someone could possibly put together a picture from that.''

But something like nuclear command and control or the president's communications with commanders in the field would always be protected by designs developed in-house at NSA.

The agency is recruiting mathematicians but must compete with private firms that can pay more than its $126,000 top salary. For code breakers and code makers it is the application of mathematics to detecting real world threats that keeps them there. And the puzzle-solving keeps them charged up.

``I can't tell you how many systems were broken in the shower,'' Mark said. ``We get into a problem, you cannot shake it loose, it gnaws at you inside. How many times I'd be sitting at the dinner table and I'd scream 'Oh my God,' and nobody knows what I'm talking about.''

And who knows? Maybe the nerd label is wearing off. The movie ``Enemy of the State'' showed NSA in an unrealistic, mostly unflattering light, but it sparked interest in the agency, Mark said. ``We're cool now, they're not making movies about CIA.''

----------- us military

Gulf War veterans' vertigo linked to brain damage, chemical exposure

04/07/2000
By Ed Timms
The Dallas Morning News
http://dallasnews.com/national/61122_GULF07.html http://www1.mosby.com/scripts/om.dll/serve?action=searchDB&searchDBfor=home&id=HN

A new study concludes that bouts of dizziness experienced by some Persian Gulf War veterans are caused by brain damage.

Researchers say the veterans have brain stem damage similar to that of victims of a 1995 Tokyo subway nerve gas attack. The dizzy spells also may explain why a 1996 study found that Gulf War veterans died in traffic accidents at a higher rate than other veterans.

Scientists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas say their research provides further evidence that the Gulf War veterans were harmed by exposure to chemical and nerve agents.

An article detailing the scientists' research into veterans suffering from dizziness appears in the most recent issue of the medical journal Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery.

The article noted that "symptoms like those found in the Gulf War veterans we studied are typical of persons exposed to pesticides or industrial workers repeatedly exposed to organophosphates."

Since the war ended in 1991, veterans have complained about a variety of mysterious symptoms, including dizziness, memory loss, fatigue, rashes and joint pain.

"We've got an accumulating amount of evidence that this is due to a combination of exposures," said Dr. Peter Roland, professor of otolaryngology at UT Southwestern and lead author of the journal article.

"Key to that is recognizing that nerve gas and the antidote for nerve gas - and chemical insecticides - share certain common features. If you get a little bit of each . . . you can get damage that each one by itself wouldn't produce."

Earlier research at UT Southwestern found that combinations of chemicals and pyridostigmine bromide (PB) tablets, which service members took to combat the effects of nerve gas, may be responsible for the veterans' medical problems.

Researchers also have found evidence that veterans born with low levels of an enzyme that destroys chemical toxins were more likely to have brain damage from exposure to low levels of nerve agents and pesticides, explaining why some who served in the Gulf became ill and others did not.

The dizziness study is described by researchers as an important step in developing tests to identify brain damage in Gulf War veterans.

Dr. Robert Haley, a co-author of the Otolaryngology article and the lead researcher in the long-running examination of ailing Gulf War vets, said the link between dizziness and brain damage may also explain the findings of a 1996 Department of Veterans Affairs study. That research found, "Among veterans of the Persian Gulf War, there was a significantly higher mortality rate than among veterans deployed elsewhere, but most of the increase was due to accidents rather than disease."

Dr. Haley said he believes dizziness caused by brain damage may be common among Gulf War veterans "and . . . it's not a surprise that a bunch of them are having car accidents."

Veterans in the study were subjected to tests that measure brain activity and eye movements. The tests, Dr. Roland said, "show evidence of dysfunction in the deepest structures of the brain, where balance is controlled."

Dr. Haley said the test results for Gulf War veterans are similar to test results from victims of a 1995 sarin nerve gas attack in a Tokyo subway, in which about 5,500 Japanese were exposed.

"In another words, the Tokyo sarin victims have developed what appears to be similar to Gulf War Syndrome," he said. Some veterans complain that government doctors did not believe their dizziness was a physical ailment.

"They have basically been told over the years this was either due to stress or psychological," Dr. Roland said. "This study suggests that's not so. It's due to injury to their balance system."

Jerry Jones, 57, of Leicester, N.C., said he began having dizzy spells after he returned from the Persian Gulf. The senior chief petty officer, also a Vietnam veteran, served with the Navy's 24th Naval Mobile Construction Battalion during the Gulf War.

Sometimes he became nauseated, he said. At its worst, "I could get out of a chair and take three or four steps and black out," Mr. Jones said.

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New Navy attack submarine named after us
The USS Hawaii is due in 2006

Friday, April 7, 2000
By Gregg K. Kakesako Star-Bulletin
http://starbulletin.com/2000/04/07/news/story10.html

One of the Navy's newest nuclear attack submarines - to be completed six years from now - will be named after Hawaii.

The announcement will be made by Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig at a news conference at the Bowfin Submarine Memorial Museum tomorrow. Gov. Ben Cayetano and other politicians have been invited to attend.

The USS Hawaii will be the third Virginia-class submarine the Navy hopes to build. The first two will the USS Virginia and the USS Texas.

In 1998, the Navy awarded a $4.2 billion contract for four Virginia-class submarines. Electric Boat will deliver the USS Virginia in 2004 and the USS Hawaii in 2006; Newport News Shipbuilding will construct the USS Texas by 2005 and a fourth vessel by 2007.

Lt. Cmdr. Dave Werner, U.S. Pacific Fleet Submarine Force spokesman, yesterday said he doesn't know if the USS Hawaii with its projected crew of 134 officers and sailors will homeported at Pearl Harbor.

The 377-foot attack submarine will be the latest addition to the Navy fleet which includes:

The 560-foot Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine which carries 24 Trident missiles.

The 353-foot Seawolf-class submarine. Three will be built.

The 360-foot Los Angeles-class submarine.

The Navy also operates two converted 425-foot Benjamin Franklin submarines - the USS Kamehameha and the USS Polk - for covert special operations involving Navy SEALs.

The USS Hawaii will be the state's fourth namesake. Two nuclear submarines - the USS Honolulu and the USS Kamehameha - are home-ported at Pearl Harbor.

The Navy recently launched the 609-foot dock-landing ship USS Pearl Harbor, which is berthed in San Diego.

The announcement comes at a time when the Navy, which celebrates its 100th anniversary Tuesday, faces increased demands: The number of Los Angeles nuclear attack subs, like the Honolulu, have declined nearly 40 percent - from 91 in 1990, to 56 today.

By 2015, said Gen. Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the nation needs 68 attack submarines to meet military requirements, including 18 with the latest Virginia class capabilities.

At Bangor Submarine Base in Washington - the West Coast home port for eight Trident ballistic missile submarines - four are scheduled to be overhauled to carry the nation's more-powerful Trident II (D5) missile as part of a five-year conversion program.

Eventually, the Navy hopes to evenly divide its 18-sub Trident fleet between the Atlantic and Pacific fleets.

---

From: Ikaika Hussey - ihussey@hawaii.edu
Subject: Letter to the Editor re: new submarine

This letter is in opposition to the proposed naming of a Virginia-class submarine "USS Hawaii," as reported Friday. As a Kanaka Maoli and as a person with much aloha for this `aina [land], I cannot help but protest a decision that in my mind goes against all that Hawai`i is.

This is a place for us to care for. Our name should not be emblazoned on the hull of a war machine.

Hawai`i is a sacred name, given to these islands by the first people who prophesized their existence more than two millennia ago. The name has tremendous spiritual and emotional weight for those whose genealogies stretch over centuries to this place, and to the multicultural nation that developed here in the 19th century.

The proposed name "USS Hawaii" is an attempt to Americanize this Hawai`i of ours, to solidify the tenuous illegal relationship between Hawai`i and the US and also to obscure and destroy our unique Local and Kanaka Maoli cultures. This is being done at a time when we citizens who love this land are seeking internal reconciliation for the events of the last hundred-plus years, so as to build a peaceful future for all our peoples. The proposed naming is a mockery of our important community- and peace-building process.

The Honolulu Advertiser reports Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig as saying, "Hawaii is remarkable for its level of commitment to its military forces and for its strategic location" (Friday April 7 2000). We need to ask ourselves: is Hawai`i only that - a 'strategic location'?

No.

Hawai`i is much more. This is all our home. We have lived here in prosperity for two thousand years, we have buried our ancestors here, and we will continue to raise our grandchildren here to practice "aloha `aina" - a deep and profound love for the land. The name "Hawai`i" belongs to the `aina of Hawai`i itself, and to the people who care for it. The US Navy has no right, nor does any other party, to unilaterally take this name.

Let's all practice our aloha `aina today and forever, and stand for our vision of Hawai`i as a place where we live and which we love.

Aloha `Aina Mau A Mau, Ikaika M L Hussey Mokapu 382-8770

------

Seattle port to store PCB-laden military waste

USA: April 7, 2000
Reuters
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=6297

SEATTLE - The Port of Seattle will reluctantly store hazardous U.S. military waste for up to 30 days, giving a Defence Department contractor time to dispose of the unwanted cargo, local officials said yesterday.

Longshoremen were ordered to unload 14 containers of electrical equipment shipped from U.S. military bases in Japan and laced with cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from the freighter Wan He. On Wednesday, Canada refused to accept the cargo.

As the scheduled 1 p.m. unloading approached, Washington Gov. Gary Locke was urging federal officials to keep the 110 tons of equipment on the Wan He until the state could verify Pentagon claims that the material was safe.

"The governor does not favour unloading this boat," Locke's press secretary Dana Middleton told Reuters. "We don't want it assumed that when hazardous cargo is destined for another country and that country doesn't take it that we will."

An Ontario disposal company had originally agreed to accept the 14 containers but Canadian authorities refused to allow the Port of Vancouver to handle the shipment, after complaints from environmentalists.

An arbitrator ruled the longshoremen's union must unload the ship, despite its concerns about health risks both to the dock workers and the surrounding community.

"We're not happy for a number of reasons," said Scott Reid, president of Local 19 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. "But basically by our contract we've agreed to unload those containers."

Environmentalists planned to protest at the port where the Wan He, a Panamanian registered ship operated by the giant China Ocean Shipping Co., docked late Wednesday.

The United States prohibits imports of foreign-produced PCBs, even from its own military facilities overseas, but the Environmental Protection Agency has granted a special permit to store the containers in Seattle for up to 30 days.

"We are concerned. Our hands are really tied on this one. This is U.S. government waste and no one else's," said Bill Dunbar, a spokesman for the local EPA office. "We'll allow it because it's in transit to another location, even though that location at this point is not known."

EPA inspectors will oversee the unloading and the agency has demanded data samples to back up claims by the Pentagon and its contractor, Trans-Cycle Industries, that the PCB content is extremely low.

"My understanding is that this is safe and not something that will be disposed of in (the Seattle) area," Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Steve Campbell told Reuters. "It's in sealed containers and I'm not aware that they present any kind of hazard to the people handling them or to the surrounding area."

Campbell said the waste would not stay in Seattle for more than the 30 days allowed by the EPA. He could not say where the shipment might ultimately wind up.

If the safety claims prove true, the state would likely drop its objections, since equipment with similar PCB concentrations, refrigerators for example, are routinely collected in Washington and shipped for disposal in Oregon and Idaho.

Port officials released a statement reluctantly agreeing to store the cargo at a special foreign trade zone.

"This cargo was never intended to be offloaded at the Port of Seattle. This is the Department of Defence's issue and we are as anxious as anyone else to have it resolved as quickly as possibly," the port stated.

A Coast Guard official on Wednesday said the shipping agent handling the cargo had found at least five countries willing to take the cargo.

PCBs first gained national attention in the 1970s when the city of Times Beach, Missouri, was evacuated by the federal government after it found high concentrations of PCBs and other hazardous chemicals.

Story by Chris Stetkiewicz

-----------

Gulf Vet Study Finds Brain Damage

April 7, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Gulf-War-Dizziness.html
By The Associated Press

DALLAS (AP) -- A small-scale study of Gulf War veterans who complained of dizziness shows some of them appear to have brain damage similar to that found in victims of the 1995 Tokyo subway nerve-gas attack.

The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center study of 43 people said the veterans' reactions on audiological tests were consistent with patients who have disfunction deep in the inner ear and brain stem.

Dr. Peter Roland, who led the study, called the findings ``subjective evidence'' of brain stem damage that could point to a link between the Gulf War veterans' attacks of dizziness and exposure to toxic nerve agents.

Though this study did not produce actual photographic or chemical evidence of brain damage, researchers at UT Southwestern announced last year they had taken brain scans of the same Gulf War veterans that show brain damage possibly caused by toxic chemical exposure.

Subjects in the most recent study underwent a battery of tests -- designed to measure deep-seated brain responses -- that analyzed their eye movements and body sway to determine how often and why they felt dizzy.

``These tests have shown evidence of dysfunction in the deepest structure of the brain where the body controls balance,'' said one of the study's authors, Dr. Robert Haley, chief of epidemiology at UT Southwestern.

Haley said the brain damage was the same type of problem seen in victims of the 1995 sarin gas attack on a Tokyo subway. Some Japanese studies have shown subtle brain damage in some of those victims.

The subjects of the Texas study were 23 members of a Naval Mobile Construction Battalion, known as Seabees, who complained of dizziness and other symptoms, and 20 other military veterans who were not ill. Researchers were not told which subjects had reported feeling sick.

Among the veterans who said they felt sick, 16 reported they often felt dizzy and overcome by vertigo. All but one of the 16 had abnormal test results indicating symptoms of brain stem damage were present, Haley said.

A Pentagon statement issued Thursday in response to the study called the findings important but inconclusive. The Pentagon acknowledged that research had proven some Tokyo sarin attack victims suffered subtle brain damage, but said human and animal studies have yet to link Gulf War service with this level of neurological damage.

This latest study appeared in the March issue of the journal Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.

Along with fatigue, memory loss and joint pain, loss of balance is among the unexplained symptoms of some Gulf War veterans.

Earlier research sponsored by the Pentagon has suggested the symptoms, including dizziness, were caused by psychological factors such as stress and anxiety.

``Our tests showed this dizziness is not caused by psychological factors, but more likely by physiological problems,'' Roland said. ``In other words, these people are not faking it and they aren't stressed out.''

Dr. Lloyd Minor of Johns Hopkins University, who was not involved in the study, said it was important in identifying that something was wrong with the inner ear and deep brain systems that control balance in the veterans.

But he said more research is needed to draw a direct link between possible chemical exposure and the subtle brain damage found in the research.

``Now we need to know why do they perform differently on these (balance) tests?'' Minor said. ``Do they perform differently because of some other factor, like impaired concentration, or was it really exposure?''

------

On the Net:
Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery journal site: http://www.mosby.com/oto
Department of Veterans Affairs: http://www.va.gov
The National Gulf War Resources Council: http://www.ngwrc.org.

-----------

Gulf War brain damge linked to nerve gas

http://usatoday.com/news/nlead.htm http://usatoday.com/news/ndsfri05.htm
04/07/00- Updated 04:21 PM ET

DALLAS (AP) - A small-scale study of Gulf War veterans who complained of dizziness shows some of them appear to have brain damage similar to that found in victims of the 1995 Tokyo subway nerve-gas attack.

The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center study of 43 people said the veterans' reactions on audiological tests were consistent with patients who have disfunction deep in the inner ear and brain stem.

Dr. Peter Roland, who led the study, called the findings ''subjective evidence'' of brain stem damage that could point to a link between the Gulf War veterans' attacks of dizziness and exposure to toxic nerve agents.

Though this study did not produce actual photographic or chemical evidence of brain damage, researchers at UT Southwestern announced last year they had taken brain scans of the same Gulf War veterans that show brain damage possibly caused by toxic chemical exposure.

Subjects in the most recent study underwent a battery of tests - designed to measure deep-seated brain responses - that analyzed their eye movements and body sway to determine how often and why they felt dizzy.

''These tests have shown evidence of dysfunction in the deepest structure of the brain where the body controls balance,'' said one of the study's authors, Dr. Robert Haley, chief of epidemiology at UT Southwestern.

Haley said the brain damage was the same type of problem seen in victims of the 1995 sarin gas attack on a Tokyo subway. Some Japanese studies have shown subtle brain damage in some of those victims.

The subjects of the Texas study were 23 members of a Naval Mobile Construction Battalion, known as Seabees, who complained of dizziness and other symptoms, and 20 other military veterans who were not ill. Researchers were not told which subjects had reported feeling sick.

Among the veterans who said they felt sick, 16 reported they often felt dizzy and overcome by vertigo. All but one of the 16 had abnormal test results indicating symptoms of brain stem damage were present, Haley said.

A Pentagon statement issued Thursday in response to the study called the findings important but inconclusive. The Pentagon acknowledged that research had proven some Tokyo sarin attack victims suffered subtle brain damage, but said human and animal studies have yet to link Gulf War service with this level of neurological damage.

This latest study appeared in the March issue of the journal Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.

Along with fatigue, memory loss and joint pain, loss of balance is among the unexplained symptoms of some Gulf War veterans.

Earlier research sponsored by the Pentagon has suggested the symptoms, including dizziness, were caused by psychological factors such as stress and anxiety.

''Our tests showed this dizziness is not caused by psychological factors, but more likely by physiological problems,'' Roland said. ''In other words, these people are not faking it and they aren't stressed out.''

Dr. Lloyd Minor of Johns Hopkins University, who was not involved in the study, said it was important in identifying that something was wrong with the inner ear and deep brain systems that control balance in the veterans.

But he said more research is needed to draw a direct link between possible chemical exposure and the subtle brain damage found in the research.

''Now we need to know why do they perform differently on these (balance) tests?'' Minor said. ''Do they perform differently because of some other factor, like impaired concentration, or was it really exposure?''

----------- us nuc facilities
----------- kentucky

Paducah plant loses key congressional funding fight

The Associated Press
Friday, April 7, 2000

PADUCAH, Ky. -- Union officials blame political maneuvering for the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant missing out on nearly $16 million that would have helped ease more than 400 job cuts and hastened a health study of workers.

The U.S. Senate took no action Tuesday on $12.7 billion in supplemental federal funding for the current fiscal year. That money included $11.3 million for the Paducah plant pledged by Energy Secretary Bill Richardson in January.

Most of that money -- $8 million -- was for environmental cleanup work to help offset job losses and the other $3.3 million was to speed up health screening of many former workers, who may have been exposed to radiation years ago.

The union said that without sufficient funding, the screening could take up to 14 years.

Also lost was $4.5 million for enhanced severance for some of the 425 workers who stand to lose jobs due to cutbacks. About 850 workers could lose their jobs at the Paducah plant and at a similar plant in Piketon, Ohio.

"Hopefully, we'll live to fight another day, but we're running out of time," said David Fuller, president of the plant atomic workers' union.

USEC had planned to identify voluntary job cuts this month, assuming there would be funding for enhanced severance, he said.

The union has been very vocal about funding because it represents about half the Paducah plant work force, which is expected to drop from about 1,700 to 1,275 by the end of the year.

----------- new mexico

Straight Facts on Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) Reform
Haystack, New Mexico

Friday, April 07, 2000
Melton Martinez Navajo
RECA Reform Working Group (505) 287-3848
PRESS RELEASE

As concerned Navajo citizens and activists working for the rights of our former uranium workers, their families, and others exposed to radiation, we feel it is necessary to lay out the facts, as clearly as possible. There has been too much confusion and too many false promises.

The U.S. government has two different bills for reforming the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Amendment of 1999. One is the Senate bill, S.1515, which passed the Senate on November 19, 1999 by unanimous consent. The other is the bill in the House of Representatives, HR-1516, which both Utah Senator Orrin Hatch and Congressman Joe Skeen of New Mexico (who introduced HR 1516) have called a "dead issue."

For some reason, Navajo Nation Vice President Taylor McKenzie and his Shiprock supporters have recently written letters to the Council Delegates asking them to support HR-1516. We are very troubled by this. Why would he ask the Council to throw its support behind a "dead issue"? We are afraid that our Vice President has been persuaded to support HR 1516 by people who would personally benefit from killing S.1515 - that is, by the Washington, DC lobbyists from the law firm Cummins and Brown, who want to keep making money from the Navajo Nation.

We need to be clear about this. HR 1516 would have been a good bill, without a doubt. After all, we were the organization that originally formulated the ten points of RECA reform which HR-1516 outlines. We were the group that originally pushed to have the post 1971 uranium workers included in RECA reform. We were the people who helped persuade the Navajo Nation government to hire the Cummins and Brown to push for these ten points of reform. The Navajo Nation has spent roughly half a million dollars on these lobbyists, to get the best RECA reform possible for Navajo radiation victims. They were supposed to obtain evidence, have hearings, mobilize, educate, etc., to get the best bill for the Navajo Nation's uranium victims. For two years, Cummins and Brown promised us they would organize field hearings for the Post-'71 miners. Half a million dollars and two years later, nothing happened. We admit, we made a mistake - we trusted Cummins and Brown to represent the interests of Navajo uranium victims, and they let us and the Navajo people down. This is why they are currently under audit by the Navajo Budget and Finance Committee.

Then, just a month ago, to try to keep their Navajo contract alive, the Navajo liaison approached US Senators and congressional representatives. This was the first contact. Congressional Aides asked: "who are you? Where have you been for over a year when documents were needed to make their case?" "Right now is too late to be adding anything to any bill and it just won't happen."

Ben Shelly, the lone Navajo Nation Council Delegate, attended the only major Post-'71 workers' meeting is puzzled by Vice President McKenzie's recent interest. "Similarly, our Vice President has certainly not expressed any concern about the Post-'71 miners until very recently. On August 30, 1999, the governor of Acoma, Lloyd Tortalita, Western States RECA Reform Coalition, and the Navajo RECA Reform Coalition, organized a meeting for Post 1971 miners. One hundred people showed up from all over Four Corners region - Hispanic, Pueblo, Anglo and Navajo. Staff members from the offices of Senator Jeff Bingaman and Congressman Tom Udall were there. But our Vice President had a social engagement and couldn't be bothered to attend." Stated Mr. Shelly.

But after all that, Cummins and Brown want more money from the Navajo Nation, and Vice President McKenzie seems to want to give it to them. Several months ago, E. Cooper Brown (one of the lobbyists) made a big show of resigning from all involvement in the Navajo RECA reform effort, and promised Navajo Nation President Kelsey Begaye that he would "not oppose" any Navajo efforts to get relief under S. 1515. At the same time, he was privately approaching Navajo Uranium Radiation Victims Committee (URVC) officials about HR 1516. Now he is using local Navajo liaisons (the URVC) to try to get a NEW CONTRACT with the Navajo Nation government.

Let's face the facts. HR 1516 was once a superior bill, but the fact is, it's dead. The lobbyists let it die. S.1515 has a chance. It is not a perfect bill. We have worked hard to get improvements on S.1515. There are unresolved issues that we had hoped would be included, and we are every bit committed to continue working on these. But we feel it is important to support a bill that gives our people SOMETHING now.

As Navajo people, we are taught to respect, honor and take care of our elders. Since the majority of Dineh people who would be helped by the passage of Hatch's bill are now elder ex-uranium workers, we are inclined to believe that supporting passage of S.1515 would ensure their medical needs are taken care of, giving them and their family's peace of mind. We cannot call ourselves Dineh if we don't take care of our elders first; only then, can we claim that we are truly Dineh working to achieve justice for our people.

So, we ask the Council: put your support behind S.1515, a bill that has a chance. Our U.S. Senators and Congressional representatives have said that HR-1516 is dead. If the Vice President or anyone else promoting HR-1516 can provide us with documents, evidence and a plan as to why we should support that bill, we are ready to carry that torch. But for now, please be careful to avoid acting on false hopes, leaving our elders, our former uranium workers, empty-handed once again.

Note: As the communication Director for the Navajo RECA Reform Working Group, this is being sent from my e-mail address. thanks, Lori

----------- tennessee

Y-12 protest Sunday

by Larisa Brass
Oak Ridger staff
April 7, 2000
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/040700/new_0407000066.html

A rally at the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant will be held Sunday and planners are expecting over 200 people to attend.

The demonstration, led by the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, will begin at 1 p.m. Sunday at A.K. Bissell Park behind the Civic Center. Protesters will then march to the Y-12 Plant. A group of people plan to be arrested during the protest.

OREPA has called the rally, according to organizer Paloma Galindo, to send a message to officials who will attend a United Nations conference later this month on nuclear nonproliferation.

"This is a really important time to make it clear ... where we stand on nuclear weapons," said Galindo.

The OREPA protest will call for a halt to weapons work at Y-12.

----------- utah

Another reason to move tailings

Deseret News editorial
April 07, 2000
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,155015972,00.html?

Preliminary results of a new study underscore what needs to be done with the Atlas mill tailings pile in Moab: It must be moved away from the Colorado River before it causes any more harm.

The study by the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service indicates that ammonia levels in the water around the mill tailings are several hundred times higher than standards set by the Utah Division of Water Quality.

One test showed 1,500 milligrams of ammonia per one liter of water. The state has determined that anything above 1.3 milligrams of ammonia is lethal to fish. Not surprisingly, every fish that swims into that part of the Colorado River dies.

A bill by Utah Rep. Chris Cannon, which is supported by Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and local environmentalists, would move the 10.5 million tons of uranium tailings to a site well away from the Colorado River. While this removal would cost up to $300 million, it is necessary to protect the health of 20 million people downstream who consume water from the river.

Unfortunately, the federal agency that has jurisdiction, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has supported a proposal by the Atlas Corp., which is responsible for the tailings, to leave them where they are. The tailings would be "capped" with sand and rock. While the cost - around $20 million - is considerably less than that of moving the tailings, it wouldn't ensure safety. In the end, who could put a price on the human lives that could be affected?

An environmental watchdog group, Oak Ridge Laboratory, predicts that even with capping, radioactive wastes and toxic material would seep into the Colorado River at the rate of 9,468 gallons of contaminated water a day.

The federal government should not gamble on a cap. Cannon's legislation transfers authority over the site from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to the Department of Energy, which seems to have a more sensible approach. To move the tailings away from the river and into a remote site would eliminate the risk of contamination.

The Atlas Corp. waste repository spans 150 acres near the entrance to Arches National Park and just upstream from Canyonlands. It lies on a major fault that makes the potential for the release of radioactive isotopes into the river a risk in the event of an earthquake or flood.

Most other tailings repositories, left over from uranium processing for Cold War nuclear projects, already have been moved from their original sites to remote locations. It makes sense to do the same with the Atlas site.

The cleanup, if approved and funded by Congress, would take about six or seven years, long enough for ammonia levels to continue causing a lot of problems.

----------- virginia

VIRGINIA POWER QUITS PLUTONIUM "MOX" FUEL PROGRAM
Decision is a victory for nuclear non-proliferation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Steven Dolley
Friday, April 7, 2000 202-822-8444; nci@nci.org
After hours: Thomas Clements, 301-270-0192

Virginia Power, a Richmond-based electric utility, has cancelled plans to irradiate plutonium-uranium mixed oxide ("MOX") fuel in its North Anna 1 & 2 nuclear power plants. A U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) spokesman confirmed Friday that Virginia Power has withdrawn from the Duke-Cogema-Stone&Webster (DCS) business consortium that was awarded a $130 million contract last year to manufacture and irradiate MOX fuel using plutonium from dismantled nuclear warheads.

"Virginia Power's decision is a victory for nuclear non-proliferation," said Thomas Clements, Executive Director of the Nuclear Control Institute, a Washington, DC-based nuclear non-proliferation research and advocacy center. "We object to the use of weapons plutonium as fuel in civilian reactors because it poses a significant threat to public safety, security and the environment, and runs counter to 25 years of U.S. nuclear non-proliferation policy."

According to Clements, "The proposed use of MOX fuel would have presented Virginia Power with hidden costs and financial risks, and subjected the company to an unpredictable MOX fuel use schedule given that the pace of plutonium disposition in the United States is tied to the disposition schedule in Russia. Duke Power, which is facing an April 20 shareholder vote on its plans to use MOX fuel, should also withdraw from the MOX program." Clements added that NCI and other public-interest groups "would prefer to see weapons plutonium immobilized with glassified, highly radioactive waste for direct disposal."

According to Dr. Edwin Lyman, NCI Scientific Director, "The sudden withdrawal of Virginia Power from the MOX program could jeopardize the US-Russian plutonium disposition agreement now under negotiation. In order to dispose of two tonnes of US military plutonium each year, as the agreement dictates, Duke Power will now have to load more MOX fuel into its nuclear plants than has ever been attempted elsewhere, creating additional safety concerns. The entire MOX-focused strategy of the plutonium disposition program must now be reevaluated."

Plutonium MOX fuel has never been used commercially in the United States and is now generating concerns and controversy. Recent revelations that British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL) cut costs by falsifying quality-control data for MOX fuel produced for Japanese and European utility customers has resulted in those customers canceling orders for MOX fuel. Quality-control problems with MOX fuel produced by Virginia Power's former consortium partner, Cogema, have recently been uncovered in Germany.

Even under perfect manufacturing conditions, MOX fuel poses a grave safety threat. Dr. Lyman conducted a MOX fuel safety study which concluded that, in the event of a severe accident resulting in a large radioactive release, an average of 25% more people would die of cancer if the reactor were using a partial core of plutonium-MOX fuel, as opposed to a full core of conventional uranium fuel.

For more information on the risks of MOX, visit NCI's website at http://www.nci.org/nci-wpu.htm

----------- washington

Hanford study finds high risk in low radiation
Exposed workers died of cancer

Tuesday, April 11, 2000
By TOM PAULSON "mailto:tompaulson@seattle-pi.com"
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Hanford Nuclear Reservation workers exposed to what is considered safe levels of radiation still died from cancer at higher rates, a North Carolina scientist has determined.

The findings by Dr. Steve Wing, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, suggest the federal standard for radiation exposure may be inadequate.

Wing found increased deaths from multiple myeloma, a relatively rare blood disease, among workers at Hanford and three other nuclear facilities. "In our study, none of the multiple myeloma cases had a dose record that exceeded the federal standard," Wing said.

His findings were reported in this month's Annals of Epidemiology.

The current occupational standard for radiation exposure per year is five rem (a unit measuring full-body exposure), set by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The average person is exposed to natural "background" radiation ranging from one-tenth to one-third of a rem per year.

Larry Elliott, chief of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health division responsible for monitoring nuclear plant workers, said the agency has dozens of studies underway to determine if the exposure standards need revision.

"One study is not going to be definitive," Elliott said. However, he said Wing's findings are supported by similar results from other research projects.

Wing and his colleagues looked at nearly 500 people who work or had worked at four different U.S. Department of Energy nuclear plants: Hanford near Richland, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and Savannah River in South Carolina.

In January, after decades of secrecy and denials about health hazards at nuclear plants, the Department of Energy publicly acknowledged that many of its workers were made ill by exposure to radiation.

The general results of many studies like Wing's were made known to workers, but the details were not published. The agency has since supported further research and promised to compensate the workers.

Wing looked at the radiation exposure histories of 98 workers who died from multiple myeloma and compared them with 391 age-matched other workers selected randomly from 115,143 people hired before 1979. Wing's team found that people who had higher exposures to radiation -- even if within accepted standards --

were at higher risk for the cancer. Older workers with five rems or more were 3.5 times more likely to die from multiple myeloma than other workers.

Male workers died at twice the rate of female workers; those hired before 1948 also died at twice the rate of workers hired after 1948; and blacks, though few in number in this work force, were five times as likely to develop the cancer, the study showed.

NIOSH sponsored Wing's study because of previous research done at Hanford suggesting a link between multiple myeloma and higher doses of occupational radiation exposure.

Both Elliott and Wing said the primary problem with radiation exposure standards is they are largely based on studies of survivors of the atomic bombs in Japan.

"That's a whole different type of exposure than we're talking about in the workplace setting," Elliott said. "Not much is known about occupational exposure to radiation and its relationship to cancer."

Wing said his study adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests chronic exposure to even low levels of radiation may pose a cancer risk. But not everyone agrees, he said.

"Some people even think a little radiation is good for you," Wing said.

The bottom line, he said, is we don't know much about low-level, chronic radiation exposure in the workplace because there's so little data on it.

"There are exposures to ionizing radiation in lots of industries but there are very few situations where people actually . . . monitor their exposure," Wing said.

The newfound willingness of the Department of Energy to participate in research into this potential hazard, Wing said, likely will benefit many people beyond nuclear plant workers.

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

Star Warriors Eye Space-Based Laser Experiment

By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
07 April 2000
http://www.space.com/space/technology/laser_tech_000407.html

COLORADO SPRINGS -- The Air Force is looking at developing a space experiment that may one day lead to a "Star Wars"-like constellation of space-based lasers orbiting Earth.

The idea would be to intercept enemy ballistic missiles and kill hostile satellites from space -- much as President Reagan envisioned in the 1980s with his Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars.

Called the Space-Based Laser Integrated Flight Experiment, the hardware is being eyed to fly into orbit in 2012 and carry out tests for about three years.

"We're looking at a limited threat ... a few ballistic missiles targeted at the United States." -- Maj. Arnie Streland, U.S. Air Force

The Air Force has teamed up with a trio of aerospace giants -- Boeing, Lockheed Martin and TRW -- to design, develop and conduct the space experiment.

The test will involve a megawatt-class chemical laser in space, making use of a large, multi-segmented mirror that unfurls and locks into place. It would create a 13-foot (4-meter) diameter reflecting surface.

Beam control equipment then would pinpoint test targets and the system then would blast objects with a powerful burst of laser light.

The entire spacecraft would tip the scales at between 45,000 and 50,000 pounds (20,455 and 22,700 kilograms).

The now-under-development heavy-lift Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle would boost the fight experiment to space.

The U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles, California will manage the program.

"The idea of a space-based laser has been around since 1977. Since then, a lot of technology has matured. We believe we're at the point where we can now tackle the big challenge of integrating that technology together and flying it in space," said Air Force Major Arnie Streland, head of Space-Based Laser Acquisition, Planning and Management in Los Angeles.

The Reagan administration's Cold War-era Strategic Defense Initiative was pursued to create a high-tech shield to thwart a massive wave of incoming ballistic missiles launched from the Soviet Union.

Today, it's a different world.

"We're looking at a limited threat...a few ballistic missiles targeted at the United States," Streland told SPACE.com at the 16th National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, sponsored by the Space Foundation. (Editor's note: SPACE.com is the official web sponsor of the event.)

"Also, the technology has matured a lot and there have been key breakthroughs," he said.

Those breakthroughs include optics that don't need to be kept supercold, which greatly decreases the weight and complexity of a laser battle station.

Less weight also means use of cheaper launchers to boost a less-costly laser system into orbit, he said.

Streland said the proof-of-concept of the experiment is destroying a dummy missile via a laser beam as the rocket arcs through space, high above the Earth.

During the three-year shake out of hardware other testing may be tried, such as demonstrating space surveillance concepts or perhaps learning how to spot chemical warfare aerosols in Earth's atmosphere.

A fully deployed operational network of laser battle stations, if given a technological and political go-ahead, could involve a constellation of anywhere between 20 to 30 spacecraft to ensure global coverage, Streland said.

"But that's a long way in the future to come up with a definite number right now," he said.

The cost of such a system has not been estimated.

"We are not building an operational system, nor a prototype to an operational system. This is an experiment so we can prove the technology...to provide the technical foundation if a decision is made to deploy an operational system," Streland said.

If a go-ahead were given, the first launch of an operational system might take place in 2020, followed by several years of launches to orbit a full constellation of spacecraft around Earth.

T.I. Weintraub, a technical staff member of Lockheed Martin Management & Data Systems, said the nation is technologically ready to move forward on space-based laser defense.

"We can probably have a system flying within five years. Much of the technology was demonstrated back in the Reagan years, every bit of it. My own view is that the policy side is a bigger problem than the technical side," he said.

To confirm that, one only had to walk outside the halls of the Space Foundation meeting at The Broadmoor hotel in Colorado Springs.

Banner-waving protesters from the local contingent of Citizens for Peace in Space handed out leaflets, denouncing any plans of antiballistic missile defense systems stationed in space.

Weintraub said the Antiballistic Missile (ABM) treaty specifically prohibits any weapons platforms in space.

However, the actual threat of missile attack on the United States from a rogue nation is probably greater today than it was in the Cold War era.

Furthermore, the public appears to be under a false sense of security, wrongly believing that antimissile defense systems are already in place, he said.

Missile proliferation, plutonium theft and the increasing number of nuclear-capable nations adds up to a greater threat than in years past, Weintraub said.

The prospect of a internationally created space-based laser system is also possible, much like the cooperation between nations that is leading to construction of the International Space Station, Weintraub said.

"Everybody would throw money at the problem," Weintraub said, "to build a global umbrella."

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Action against Lockheed applauded
Republicans like it, but free-traders worry about effects

By Vernon Loeb
WASHINGTON POST, MSNBC
April 7, 2000
http://www.msnbc.com/news/391916.asp?cp1=1

WASHINGTON, April 7 - The State Department's decision to accuse Lockheed Martin Corp. of 30 export violations for transferring satellite technology to China won rave reviews yesterday from conservative defense analysts and leading Republicans on Capitol Hill.

BUT SATELLITE industry executives and congressional free-traders expressed concern that the latest case of a U.S. satellite maker sharing sensitive data with China would harden positions and make it more difficult to reach agreement on reforming U.S. export controls.

The split foreshadows a coming floor fight in the Senate over reauthorizing the Export Administration Act, which governs the Commerce Department's licensing of exports that can be used for civilian and military purposes. Six years after the old law expired, both sides agree that the status quo is a mess.

Larry M. Wortzel, a defense official in the Reagan administration, said the State Department's decision to accuse Lockheed Martin of violating the Arms Export Control Act - a separate law governing the State Department's licensing of military exports - was "a superb action."

There is no question, Wortzel asserted, that China has improved its ballistic missile technology through its dealings with Lockheed and two other satellite makers, Hughes Electronics Corp. and Loral Space & Communications, which have been under investigation for allegedly sharing sensitive data. In a letter to Lockheed Martin this week, the State Department alleged that the Bethesda-based company violated export regulations in 1994 by sharing a scientific evaluation of a Chinese-made satellite motor with a Hong Kong-based client, Asia Satellite Telecommunications Co., without informing the Department of Defense, which ultimately blacked out all but five of the report's 50 pages.

Lockheed officials denied any violation and said they had obtained a Commerce Department license before assessing the Chinese motor.

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), who chaired a House select committee that investigated Chinese espionage and technology transfers last year, credited the U.S. Customs Service with uncovering Lockheed's alleged violation. He also faulted Lockheed scientists for discussing technological issues with Chinese scientists without Defense Department monitors present.

But satellite industry executives were quick to note that the alleged violations occurred six years and three companies ago; the scientists in question worked for General Electric's satellite division, which was acquired by Martin Marietta Corp. Martin Marietta then merged with Lockheed Corp.

"I'm hoping that Congress doesn't have any knee-jerk reaction to this," said Clayton Mowry, executive director of the Satellite Industry Association. "It happened six years ago, and we've come a long way from where we were then in terms of controls."

In 1994, the Clinton administration transferred control of commercial satellite exports from the State Department to the export-friendly Commerce Department after strenuous industry lobbying. Last year, Congress shifted control back to the State Department, citing national security concerns.

Joel Johnson, a vice president at the Aerospace Industries Association, said further politicization of commercial satellite exports would only make it harder for the U.S. satellite industry to remain globally competitive, given a 40 percent drop in exports since regulatory control went back to the State Department a year ago.

Johnson said he hoped any political fallout from the Lockheed case would not hold up the State Department's expected issuing of fast-track regulations for arms exports to NATO allies. Congress, alarmed by licensing delays at the State Department, mandated that change last fall.

Another short-term issue that could be affected by the Lockheed case, Johnson said, is a forthcoming administration decision on whether to transfer 16 additional categories of "space-qualified" components - mainly computer chips and electronics with potential aerospace uses - from the Commerce Department to the State Department for export licensing.