-------- activists
Adviser: Take Warheads Off Alert
April 15, 2000
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-UN-START-II.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The United States and Russia should downgrade the ``hair-trigger'' alert of thousands of nuclear weapons scheduled to be eliminated under the START II treaty, a former Clinton security adviser says.
Frank von Hippel, who served as an assistant director of national security for the Clinton administration in 1993-94, said that despite the end of the Cold War, the two nations keep thousands of nuclear weapons on high alert in the event of nuclear war.
He said President Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin could now agree to make ballistic missiles safer from accidental launch.
``That would be the smartest thing we can do all around as a first step,'' he said.
In an interview Friday, hours after Russia's parliament approved the long-delayed treaty, Von Hippel recalled that before START I was ratified in 1991, President Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had agreed to stand down all the weapons that were going to be eliminated under the treaty in 2001.
``Having negotiated it, and having figured out that they could do it in 10 years, they said, well why not now reduce the risk,'' he said.
START II would halve U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals to 3,000-3,500 warheads each by the end of 2007. A new treaty, START III, which is being discussed, envisages cuts to 1,500-2,500 warheads.
Calling on Clinton and Putin to follow in the footsteps of Bush and Gorbachev, Von Hippel said it was harder to take the warheads off alert in 1991 than it would be today because at that time there was no way to verify that both sides were complying -- but now there are inspections.
Von Hippel, who is investigating nuclear policy alternatives, and retired U.S. Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, deputy director of the Center for Defense Information, stressed that U.S. warheads being taken out of action under START II will not be destroyed.
Von Hippel explained that the way START II is written, Russia has to eliminate its multiple warheads but the United States is allowed to deactivate its sea-based missiles without destroying them.
The U.S. Defense Department recently announced that the warheads that are taken out of missiles under START II are going to be refurbished, Carroll said.
``That means make them more reliable, more destructive, more stable and put them back into the inactive arsenal so that in case we get into trouble we can yank out as many as 6,000 weapons to go to war,'' he said.
Von Hippel said taking thousands of warheads off alert would have a positive impact on the U.N. conference to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which starts April 24.
At the last review in 1995, when the treaty was extended indefinitely, five nuclear powers -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- pledged to work for nuclear disarmament. The treaty, signed in 1970, also commits non-nuclear countries to refrain from developing their own nuclear arsenals.
-------- china
China warns U.S.
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2000/04/15/stories/03150004.htm
BEIJING, APRIL 14. China today warned that it may be forced to review its nuclear policy or take counter measures if the United States took unilateral steps that undermined Beijing's legitimate security interests.
``China will not sit back and watch its legitimate security interests undermined without taking counter measures,'' China's non-proliferation official, Mr. Sha Zukang, told the State-run China Daily newspaper.
Mr. Sha, Director-General of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Department of Arms Control and Disarmament, said recent U.S. actions may force China to review its policies on a wide range of arms control and non-proliferation issues. The U.S. action, he said, is its development of the National Missile Defence (NMD) system and its proliferation of an advanced Theatre Missile Defence (TMD) system in North-East Asia and Taiwan.
China thinks the TMD is aimed to contain China and also to provide a missile shield to Taiwan, which Beijing views as a rebel province that must be reunified with the mainland at an early date.
Mr. Sha criticised the U.S. for advancing its overwhelming first- strike capability while quickly developing a NMD system capable of neutralising any possible counter-strike from a smaller nuclear-capable state.
- PTI
----
China Backs Palestinian Statehood
April 15, 2000
By SAMAR ASSAD, Associated Press Writer
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/ap/000415/14/int-palestinians-china
BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) - Drawing a standing ovation from the Palestinian parliament, Chinese President Jiang Zemin on Saturday promised his unflagging support for Palestinian statehood - but carefully avoided offending Israel in the process.
On a one-day visit to the Palestinian areas sandwiched between five days in the Jewish state, Jiang tried to juggle the demands of an old friend, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and a new one, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
In their speeches to the parliament, both Jiang and Arafat invoked the long relationship between China and the Palestine Liberation Organization. The Asian superpower was the first to establish ties with the PLO and has given it generous military and financial assistance.
"China has a special place in our hearts," Arafat said Saturday. He noted that he and the late PLO military chief, Khalil Wazir, were the first Arabs to meet with Mao Tse-tung, the leader of the Chinese revolution.
However, China has also developed ties with Israel - first in secret, through arms deals going back to the early 1980s, then openly beginning in 1992. During Jiang's trip to Israel this week, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak took the risk of offending his nation's strongest ally, the United States, by siding with China over an Israeli-Chinese arms deal.
President Clinton had asked Barak to cancel the sale of $250 million spy plane to China. The sale is viewed in Washington as a threat to the military balance in Asia, but Barak said he would not go back on the contract.
In his speech to the Palestinian parliament, which convened for a special session in a Bethlehem luxury hotel, Jiang invoked the old friendship between Arafat and China's communist leaders.
"We would like to reassert that our support for the just cause of the Palestinian people is a permanent policy of China," Jiang said. He added that the Palestinians had made considerable progress toward "the great objective of establishing an independent state."
When he was greeted by a standing ovation, he said "shukran, shukran," using the Arabic word for "thank you."
Jiang's remarks were supportive of the Palestinians, but he also avoided offending his Israeli hosts. He refrained from taking sides on the contentious issues that divide the sides, such as Jerusalem and settlement building.
Arafat sharply criticized Israel. The Palestinian leader said Israel has procrastinated in talks on the terms of Palestinian statehood and has systematically violated agreements while expanding Jewish settlements on lands claimed by the Palestinians.
Arafat made a veiled reference to Clinton's meeting with Barak earlier this week in which the Israeli leader agreed to stepped-up U.S. mediation.
"We demanded that the United States play a role in pushing the peace process forward, and we thank President Clinton and the U.S. administration for that role," Arafat said.
In the past, Israel had tried to minimize outside involvement. However, deadlines are looming: A peace treaty framework must be concluded next month and a full accord in September.
In a news conference earlier Saturday, Jiang said both sides should be "flexible and realistic."
He said a peace treaty should be based on U.N. resolutions stipulating an Israeli withdrawal from war-won land. He pledged Chinese support for the Palestinians "in all international forums and in the United Nations." China is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.
The Palestinians asked China to get involved in the peace talks by appointing a special envoy to monitor them, but Jiang's response was not known.
Also Saturday, Jiang and Arafat signed an economic cooperation agreement, and China pledged $3.2 million for the construction of a 100-bed hospital in the West Bank town of Qalqiliya.
After the news conference, Jiang privately toured Bethlehem's Basilica of the Nativity, built over the grotto where tradition says Jesus was born. In a gesture to Arafat, the Chinese leader was to spend the night in Palestinian-controlled Bethlehem.
Jiang arrived in the Mideast on Wednesday for a six-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian areas. He spent his first three days in Israel holding talks with Barak and touring the country.
On Sunday, he was to visit the Old City of Jerusalem.
-------- imf
Protesters' Headquarters Raided
By Alice Ann Love Associated Press Writer
Saturday, April 15, 2000; 9:50 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000415/aponline095002_000.htm
WASHINGTON -- Police raided and closed down the headquarters of world finance protesters today after fire officials declared the old warehouse building unsafe.
The demonstrators, who used the warehouse for training and making demonstration materials, said the officers ordered the "convergence center" evacuated.
"We're simply concerned about their safety, and we want to make sure there are no fire hazards," District of Columbia Police Chief Charles Ramsey said.
Ramsey said police will be "as gentle or forceful as we need to be with the demonstrators. ... But at the same time, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have a constitutional right to meet."
"We probably saved their lives," Ramsey said, when asked why fire officials ordered protesters to vacate the building set up as demonstration headquarters.
Ramsey, who has gone onto the streets in recent days to mingle with protesters, was shown on television videotape talking with a demonstrator who asked if police would use tear gas against unruly crowds.
"We could light this town up if we had to, but we don't intend to do that," Ramsey said.
Patrick Reinsborough of San Francisco, who was in the warehouse, said two police officers and two fire officials came to center unannounced and began inspecting the facility.
Several of the protesters demanded a search warrant, but the fire officials said they didn't need one for a fire inspection.
"The police said they found things that were a fire hazard," Reinsborough said. "As soon as they claimed they found a fire hazard, a large number of police were in the area. They demanded the space be evacuated."
Late Friday, police raided a house where they found a large supply of tools and equipment that protesters apparently planned to use to thwart police efforts to break up human blockades. It was the second time this week that officers seized equipment.
Police arrested three people and confiscated hollow plastic tubes called "sleeping dragons," along with chains, chicken wire and gas masks.
"We're very pleased that we're taking these instruments of crime off the street, and this will make the weekend much safer," said executive assistant chief Terry Gainer.
Shortly before police moved into the headquarters this morning, about 20 demonstrators from 10 countries appeared at the home of World Bank President James Wolfensohn and handed him a letter protesting the institution's lending policies.
Wolfensohn, on his way to work, listened quietly as Dr. Vineeta Gupta, an Indian physician, read part of the letter. The demonstrators sang quietly in the street, drawing a squad of motorcycle officers, and held signs saying, "Wake up Wolfensohn" and "Wake Up World Bank."
There were no arrests.
"Good morning. Well, thank you very much. You got up very early," Wolfensohn said he told the group before he got into his chauffeur-driven car.
The letter demanded an international boycott of the bonds that are the main funding source for the World Bank. "We call on governments of all member nations of the World Bank to cease further funding ... until all destructive World Bank lending has ended and the World Bank has canceled all debts owed to it by Third World countries," the letter said.
Thousands of demonstrators have vowed to disrupt Sunday and Monday's spring meetings of the World Bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund. Washington police are ready and waiting, but demonstrators say they may yet pull a surprise with creative tactics that will succeed in disrupting the sessions.
"I've been completely amazed by the creativity by my colleagues," said Njoki Njehu, an organizer with the coalition sponsoring the protests, the Mobilization for Global Justice. "The message is getting out and that is already a victory."
Protesters raised a stink outside the World Bank on Friday by dumping cow manure on Pennsylvania Avenue.
A truck festooned with signs saying "World Bank: Meat Stinks," deposited the manure on the avenue known as "America's Main Street," upwind of the White House. Two protesters were arrested.
The city's Department of Public Works carted away the pile in a city vehicle escorted by a police van with siren blaring and lights flashing.
Later in the day, police completely, though respectfully, surrounded a small knot of demonstrators gathered in front of the Mexican Embassy, across the street from World Bank and IMF buildings.
The mostly young and almost silent crowd, protesting treatment of indigenous Mexicans, was led by an older man looking the part of a grizzled veteran activist, with a red bandanna tied around his head and beating a drum.
Although the rest of the neighborhood remained quiet, several businesses prepared to board up windows as workers left for the weekend, including a Citibank branch in a corner suite with floor-to-ceiling glass.
The protesters plan to disrupt Sunday and Monday's spring meetings at the World Bank and the IMF, but most have pledged not to be violent. Still, some downtown offices closed Friday in anticipation of trouble.
Police also closed more and more roadways in advance of mass gatherings. Streets swarmed with officers wearing dark uniforms.
Others in riot helmets and visors were scattered across the White House lawn. They spent much of their day watching tourists who unknowingly scheduled trips to Washington at a time of potentially massive protests.
The World Bank and IMF were given temporary diplomatic status, allowing the Secret Service to assist the 3,500-member Metropolitan Police Department, which has placed officers on 12-hour shifts. The U.S. Park Police also had a full complement of officers protecting federal parkland, including the Ellipse behind the White House, where a major demonstration is planned Sunday.
An array of organizations hold the World Bank and IMF responsible for destroying rain forests, allowing factory sweatshops and holding down social spending by poor nations saddled with large foreign debts.
"We like to liken the IMF to ... a medieval doctor who only has one cure, which is to put a leech on the country and drain it," said John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington think tank.
The driver and passenger in the manure truck were from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which is protesting World Bank agricultural policies. One was charged with crossing a police line, the other with illegal dumping.
----
Washington Police Shut Anti-IMF Protest Center
Saturday April 15 4:05 PM ET
By Mark Egan
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000415/ts/imf_protests_13.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Police said on Saturday they tightened security, made more arrests and seized literature on how to make Molotov cocktails -- crude gasoline bombs which could be used in a riot -- as they braced for mass protests at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings.
Three protesters who planned to take part in a mass rally outside the International Monetary Fund and World Bank on Sunday were arrested late on Friday during the search of an apartment in Washington which turned up devices to block streets and instructions on how to make Molotov cocktails.
Another man was arrested for running almost naked, dressed only in a grass skirt, through a busy street in Georgetown -- the city's prestigious shopping and residential district -- at a fringe protest against sweat shop labor outside The Gap.
That brought to 21 the number of arrests during the week of protests. With more than 10,000 expected at a protest rally scheduled for Sunday, police are concerned that the situation may deteriorate into the type of riots which disrupted world trade talks in Seattle last year.
Early Saturday morning authorities closed the warehouse being used as an organizing headquarters by the anti-IMF coalition -- the Mobilization for Global Justice -- for fire violations -- including finding a Molotov cocktail.
``A fire marshal went to that location and discovered numerous fire violations and called the Police Department to help them evacuate the building,'' a police spokesman said.
But Adam Eidinger, spokesman for the protesters, said there were no fire-code violations at the site and that the police were simply attempting to thwart the activists' efforts.
``They have been looking for any excuse to shut us down,'' Eidinger said. ``Under the guise of fire violations they have violated our constitutional rights.''
After months of preparation, thousands of activists have converged on the U.S. capital for the weekend's events. They believe that the IMF and World Bank foist ill-suited economic policies on poor nations, forcing them deeper into misery. They also believe IMF and World Bank policies serve the interests of rich countries at the expense of the poorest people in the world -- something the lending agencies deny.
Eidinger said a Molotov cocktail, which was confiscated at the warehouse, was merely a plastic bottle with a rag in it, claiming, ``It must have been planted.''
``There is no planned violence at our rally,'' he said, noting that the group will continue preparations elsewhere.
Police Chief Worried
Despite repeated assertions from protesters that there will be no violence at Sunday's rally, Police Chief Charles Ramsey said he has grown more worried about potential trouble.
``They have been saying all the time that it will be peaceful. I just hope they honor that,'' Ramsey told reporters.
Ramsey said police seized 116 sleeping dragons -- devices used to block traffic intersections -- gas masks, chicken wire, duct tape, rope and literature for Molotov cocktails in Friday's raid. Earlier in the week, police arrested seven others for possession of similar materials.
Police also expanded a security perimeter around the IMF and World Bank, which stand just blocks from major tourist attractions such as the White House. Sunday's rally is expected to begin at an area just behind the White House. However, President Clinton will be in California over the weekend.
Numerous businesses in the area have closed up for the weekend while others have boarded up their windows and police have advised residents and tourists to avoid the area.
As it rained lightly on Saturday morning, hundreds of police surrounded the IMF and World Bank buildings while a string of television crews set up residence across the street, bringing worldwide media attention to what is normally a quiet gathering of the world's financial elite.
In Georgetown, about 150 protesters gathered outside the Gap, accusing it of using sweatshops. Activists carried a banner reading, ``We'd Rather Wear Nothing than Wear Gap,'' as Benjamin Frederick from Miami ran across the street dressed only in a grass skirt.
``I say no to sweatshop labor clothes,'' the muscular and tanned Frederick shouted as police arrested him.
The day started badly for World Bank President James Wolfensohn as 20 protesters woke him at daybreak to present a letter demanding the lending agency change its policies.
The protests have been greeted with bemusement from staff at the IMF and World Bank. IMF Deputy Managing Director Managing Director Eduardo Aninat, described the demonstrators as ``an unholy bundle without any coherence.''
French Finance Minister Laurent Fabius, in town for the meetings, said, ``The paradox is that the IMF and World Bank are institutions that fight against poverty.''
----
Police Make Arrests, Shut Anti-IMF Protest Center
Saturday April 15 11:38 AM ET
By Mark Egan
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000415/ts/imf_protests_10.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Police said on Saturday they had tightened security further, made more arrests and seized literature on how to make Molotov cocktails -- crude bombs which could be used in a riot -- as they braced for mass protests at the IMF and World Bank meetings.
Three protesters who planned to take part in a mass rally outside the International Monetary Fund and World Bank on Sunday were arrested, bringing to 20 the number of arrests since protests began on Monday. Police said the activists were arrested late Friday during the search of an apartment in northwest Washington which turned up devices to block streets and instructions on how to make Molotov cocktails.
With more than 10,000 expected at a protest rally scheduled for Sunday, police are concerned that the situation may deteriorate into the type of riots which disrupted world trade talks in Seattle last year.
Early Saturday morning authorities closed the warehouse being used as an organizing headquarters by the anti-IMF coalition -- the Mobilization for Global Justice -- for fire violations including finding a Molotov cocktail.
``A fire marshal went to that location and discovered numerous fire violations and called the Police Department to help them evacuate the building,'' a police spokesman said.
``It was a very dangerous situation ... the electrical systems, stairwells blocked, doors chained, propane gas. It really was a hazard to a lot of young people there,'' the spokesman told reporters.
But Adam Eidinger, spokesman for the protesters, said there were no fire-code violations at the site and that the police were simply attempting to thwart the activists' efforts.
``They have been looking for any excuse to shut us down,'' Eidinger said. ``They had no warrant to search the building. Under the guise of fire violations they have violated our constitutional rights.''
After months of preparation, thousands of activists have converged on the U.S. capital for the weekend's events. They believe that the IMF and World Bank foist ill-suited economic policies on poor nations, forcing them deeper into misery. They also believe IMF and World Bank policies serve the interests of rich countries at the expense of the poorest people in the world -- something the lending agencies deny.
Eidinger said a Molotov cocktail, which was confiscated at the warehouse, was merely a plastic bottle with a rag in it, adding, ``It must have been planted.''
``There is no planned violence at our rally,'' he said, noting that the group will continue preparations at its new headquarters in downtown Washington.
Police Chief Worried
Despite repeated calls from protesters that there will be no violence at Sunday's rally, Police Chief Charles Ramsey said he has grown more worried about potential trouble.
``They have been saying all the time that it will be peaceful, I just hope they honor that. We don't want trouble here. We hope the demonstrators don't resort to that type of activity,'' Ramsey told reporters.
Ramsey said police had seized 116 sleeping dragons -- devices used to block traffic intersections -- gas masks, chicken wire, duct tape, rope and literature for Molotov cocktails in Friday's raid. Earlier in the week police arrested seven others for possession of similar materials.
Police also expanded a security perimeter around the IMF and World Bank, which stand just blocks from major tourist attractions such as the White House. Sunday's rally is expected to begin at an area just behind the White House but President Clinton will be in California over the weekend.
As it rained lightly on Saturday morning, hundreds of police surrounded the IMF and World Bank buildings while a string of television crews set up residence across the street, bringing worldwide media attention to what is normally a quiet gathering of the world's financial elite.
Earlier, activists from developing nations woke up World Bank President James Wolfensohn at daybreak with a message: change your lending policies or face a boycott of the bank's bonds. Twenty activists gathered outside Wolfensohn's residence in Washington's Embassy Row neighborhood with banners saying: ''Wake up, World Bank.''
They handed him a letter criticizing the bank's lending programs for increasing indebtedness and poverty in developing countries, promoting sweatshops and destroying the environment.
----
Wolfensohn Gets Wake-Up Call From Protesters
Saturday April 15 10:24 AM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000415/ts/imf_protests_9.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Activists from developing nations woke up World Bank president James Wolfensohn at daybreak on Saturday with a message: change your lending policies or face a boycott of the bank's bonds.
Twenty activists gathered outside Wolfensohn's residence in Washington's Embassy Row neighborhood with banners saying: ''Wake up, World Bank.''
They handed him a letter criticizing the bank's lending programs for increasing indebtedness and poverty in developing countries, promoting sweatshops and destroying the environment.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditions tied to the loans have widened the gap between rich and poor and worsened unemployment, the letter signed by 450 people in 35 countries said.
It was handed to Wolfensohn by Vineeta Gupta, a doctor from the Punjab in India and an organizer of a campaign launched on Monday to persuade investors to boycott the bank's bonds.
``The World Bank is subjugating our economic and social independence,'' Gupta said. ``It is time that we shut the Bank down, and this boycott is a great start.''
So far the city of Berkeley, California, church and labor organizations, and five investment firms including Trillium Assets Management of Boston have joined the boycott.
The demonstration was part of a week-long campaign of protests by environmental, labor and human rights groups trying to disrupt the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank that opens on Sunday.
It included activists from South Africa, Zimbabwe, South Korea, the Philippines, Bolivia and Ecuador.
``All that's left to privatize in Bolivia is the air and water,'' said Oscar Olivera, who led a movement against water rate hikes by a private company in Cochabamba, Bolivia, that sparked recent social unrest in the Andean nation.
Protesters hope for a repeat of the successful demonstration against unfettered free trade at a World Trade Organization conclave in Seattle last December.
----
Protesters Swarm Through D.C.
Saturday April 15 7:01 PM ET
By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000415/bs/world_finance_protests_21.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - Anti-globalization protesters swarmed through the heart of the capital late Saturday and came face to face with lines of helmeted police in a tense show of will sparked by animosity toward international lending institutions.
In one of the largest closures in downtown Washington, police made some 50 blocks off limits, barring everyone from getting past metal barriers. Police clustered at every barricaded intersection.
Late in the day, with the standoff intensifying, riot-ready police appeared to pen in hundreds of protesters in a blocked off area, and led more than 200 away in handcuffs, placing them on waiting school buses.
``Let us go,'' demonstrators chanted, when it seemed police were preventing them from leaving. The protesters also sang hymns from the civil rights movement.
``We have a right to be here and we also have a right to protest and we also have a right to walk away,'' said protester Larry Holmes. Police said the crowd was demonstrating without a permit.
``Some wanted to be arrested, some will be arrested,'' said police Lt. W. J. Farr.
Protesters, pouring in by the busload all day for demonstrations meant to peak Sunday and Monday, took over an abandoned row house in a poor part of the city as neighbors shouted at riot-ready police to do something - and stripped down to their underwear in an anti-sweatshop demonstration in trendy Georgetown.
But the mass of them congregated as close as they could get to the World Bank and its sister lending institution, the International Monetary Fund, upset that police had shut down their protest headquarters early in the day, declaring it to be unsafe.
Protesters still holding their breakfast plates streamed out of their headquarters, an old warehouse where they were making signs, banners and puppets, and drifted 10 blocks away to another staging center.
There, they practiced hymns, street theater and passive resistance.
``This will not deter us,''' said Molly McCarthy, 21, of Seattle, a protest organizer.
``We lost our food, and our cooking supplies, and we've got thousands of people to feed,'' said another organizer, Antonia Jahasz, 29, of Washington. ``With one of the highest homicide rates in the country, D.C.'s finest are guarding our dangerous puppets.''
But as they moved through the first headquarters, authorities also found a plastic container with a rag stuffed inside to serve as a wick, said Terry Gainer, executive assistant police chief.
He said it ``looks like a Molotov cocktail.'' Police also found soda bottles with the tops or bottoms cut off, Gainer said.
Protest leaders said police had merely come across art supplies.
``They found a plastic bottle that had rags in it that were being used to get paint off of people's hands,'' said Adam Eidinger, 26, of Washington.
Several hours after the raid, Police Chief Charles Ramsey said police did not intend ``to violate anyone's First Amendment rights'' and allowed some protesters to retrieve the puppets.
``I don't expect hell to break out'' during the protests,'' he said. ``I expect a lot of people who want to express their opinions.''
In a light rain, with police sirens sounding almost constantly downtown, tourists who normally stroll to the gates of the White House to snap pictures were held behind barriers across the street.
At one key intersection, Rainer conferred with fellow officers as dozens of police stood by and an armored truck sat in the middle of the street.
In a poor and mostly black section of northwest Washington, more than 100 protesters gathered by an abandoned row house and a half dozen went on the roof, holding signs saying, ``Stop the evictions,'' and ``Housing for all.''
Police with nightsticks and armored gloves blocked off the area while neighbors loudly demanded that they move in and get the protesters out.
``They have no business being in our neighborhood like this,'' said Leuns Moore, 37.
Moore accused police of treating the protesters, mostly white and young, with more deference than they would show to blacks. ``If this were one block away, they would be busting heads,'' he said.
A protest outside a Gap clothing store in Georgetown turned into an impromptu striptease when police took a man wearing a grass skirt with nothing underneath into custody and made him put on underwear.
That prompted a dozen or so other men and women in the crowd of 200 to strip down to their skivvies.
Prior to Saturday, police had arrested a number of people for such things as possessing materials to set up blockades and had confiscated an undisclosed amount of ammunition in one raid.
The major demonstrations were planned Sunday and Monday, when financial ministers and central bank heads have their main meetings scheduled. Protesters accuse the banks of destroying the environment through dams and other such projects, allowing sweatshops and imposing harsh debt-repayment programs that prevent poor countries from spending on social programs.
``International corporations are making the countries that have the poorest people even poorer,'' said David Rovics, 33, of Boston.
Friday night, police raided a house where they found an undisclosed amount of small-caliber ammunition and firebomb instructions, Gainer said. The raid also produced a large supply of pipes and chicken wire used to make human blockades.
After the warehouse was emptied Saturday, a line of officers in blue fatigues stood guard to prevent protesters from re-entering. Demonstrators shouted: ``More world, less bank.''
Police said the building was a fire hazard, with a jury-rigged electrical system, chained doors and a propane stove that was not up to code. ``We're simply concerned about their safety,'' Ramsey said. Protesters said that was a pretext to throw them off stride.
``I think it's really just an escalation of tactics designed to keep us from being able to express ourselves,'' said Han Shan of Baltimore, from a group called Mobilization for Social Justice.
Most protesters were in their 20s or younger, many sporting dyed hair and earrings. But graying veterans of the 1960s anti-war movement also were sprinkled through the crowds.
-
EDITOR'S NOTE - Associated Press writers Will Lester and Derrill Holly contributed to this report.
----
Police Make Mass Arrests in D.C.
Saturday April 15 8:11 PM ET
By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000415/bs/world_finance_protests_23.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - Anti-globalization protesters swarmed through the heart of the capital late Saturday and came face to face with lines of helmeted police in a tense show of will sparked by animosity toward international lending institutions.
Several hundred were arrested for parading without a permit and led peacefully away to at least seven yellow school buses as supporters shouted for police to let them go.
Police pulled the fake red nose off one protester dressed as a clown as he filed into the bus.
Riot-ready police made some 50 blocks off-limits around the World Bank headquarters, barring everyone from getting past metal barriers. Police clustered at every barricaded intersection.
``By the time we're finished I expect to have 500 arrests,'' said Police Chief Charles Ramsey. He said they would be charged with ``parading without a permit and refusal to disperse, among other things.''
Ramsey said it would take several hours just to get the protesters, loaded, transported and processed at three locations in the city and that how long they remain in custody would depend, in part, on how cooperative they are.
``We have a right to be here and we also have a right to protest and we also have a right to walk away,'' said protester Larry Holmes, complaining that police had penned demonstrators in a barricaded area to arrest them.
Protesters, pouring in by the busload all day for demonstrations meant to peak Sunday and Monday, took over an abandoned row house in a poor part of the city as neighbors shouted at police to do something - and stripped down to their underwear in an anti-sweatshop demonstration in trendy Georgetown.
But the mass of them congregated as close as they could get to the World Bank and its sister lending institution, the International Monetary Fund, upset that police had shut down their protest headquarters early in the day, declaring it to be unsafe.
Protesters still holding their breakfast plates streamed out of their headquarters, an old warehouse where they were making signs, banners and puppets, and drifted 10 blocks away to another staging center.
There, they practiced hymns, street theater and passive resistance.
``This will not deter us,''' said Molly McCarthy, 21, of Seattle, a protest organizer.
``We lost our food, and our cooking supplies, and we've got thousands of people to feed,'' said another organizer, Antonia Jahasz, 29, of Washington. ``With one of the highest homicide rates in the country, D.C.'s finest are guarding our dangerous puppets.''
But as they moved through the first headquarters, authorities also found a plastic container with a rag stuffed inside to serve as a wick, said Terry Gainer, executive assistant police chief.
He said it ``looks like a Molotov cocktail.'' Police also found soda bottles with the tops or bottoms cut off, Gainer said.
Protest leaders said police had merely come across art supplies.
``They found a plastic bottle that had rags in it that were being used to get paint off of people's hands,'' said Adam Eidinger, 26, of Washington.
Several hours after the raid - and well before the mass arrests at nightfall - Ramsey said police did not intend ``to violate anyone's First Amendment rights'' and allowed some protesters to retrieve the puppets.
``I don't expect hell to break out'' during the protests,'' he said. ``I expect a lot of people who want to express their opinions.''
In a light rain, with police sirens sounding almost constantly downtown, tourists who normally stroll to the gates of the White House to snap pictures were held behind barriers across the street.
At one key intersection, Gainer conferred with fellow officers as dozens of police stood by and an armored truck sat in the middle of the street.
In a poor section of northwest Washington, more than 100 protesters gathered by an abandoned row house and a few went on the roof and chained themselves there, holding signs saying, ``Stop the evictions,'' and ``Housing for all.''
Police with nightsticks and armored gloves blocked off the area while neighbors loudly demanded that they move in and get the protesters out. ``They have no business being in our neighborhood like this,'' said Leuns Moore, 37.
Four hours after the protesters took over the house, police went on the roof, cut the protesters' chains and arrested nine for unlawful entry.
A protest outside a Gap clothing store in Georgetown turned into an impromptu striptease when police took a man wearing a grass skirt with nothing underneath into custody and made him put on underwear.
That prompted a dozen or so other men and women in the crowd of 200 to strip down to their skivvies.
Prior to Saturday, police had arrested a number of people for such things as possessing materials to set up blockades and had confiscated an undisclosed amount of ammunition in one raid.
Protesters accuse the World Bank and IMF of destroying the environment with dams and similar projects, allowing sweatshops and imposing harsh debt-repayment programs.
``International corporations are making the countries that have the poorest people even poorer,'' said David Rovics, 33, of Boston.
Friday night, police raided a house where they found an undisclosed amount of small-caliber ammunition and firebomb instructions, Gainer said. The raid also produced a large supply of pipes and chicken wire used to make human blockades.
Demonstrators shouted: ``More world, less bank,'' after police shut their first headquarters.
Officials said the building was a fire hazard, with a propane stove that was not up to code. ``We're simply concerned about their safety,'' Ramsey said. Protesters said that was a pretext to throw them off stride.
``I think it's really just an escalation of tactics designed to keep us from being able to express ourselves,'' said Han Shan of Baltimore, from a group called Mobilization for Social Justice.
-EDITOR'S NOTE - Associated Press writers Will Lester and Derrill Holly contributed to this report.
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Washington Police Round Up 600 Anti-IMF Protesters
Saturday April 15 10:11 PM ET
By Mark Egan
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000415/ts/imf_protests.html
Photo
http://us.yimg.com/p/nm/20000415/mdf68198.jpg http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/nm/20000415/ts/mdf68198.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Police arrested some 600 protesters in the U.S. capital on Saturday in a clear show of force ahead of mass rallies planned against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, but protest leaders said they were undeterred.
Decked out in riot gear and backed by armored cars and buses, police corralled hundreds who had been demonstrating without a permit in a drizzling rain about half a dozen blocks from the White House.
After about a 90-minute standoff with more than 100 police during which protesters pleaded to be allowed to leave the area, officers started the mass arrests.
They took demonstrators away one by one, their hands cuffed behind their backs with plastic restraints, and put them on yellow school buses.
Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post photographer Carol Guzy and an unidentified tourist who had been in the crowd were among those taken away by police, reporters on the scene said.
Chief of police Charles Ramsey told a news conference the 600 were charged with conducting a parade without permit.
``They were peaceful at first and we simply monitored them but at one point they became disorderly and were told that they would have to cease the parade. They were given warnings and refused to do so and we made the decision to arrest,'' he said.
Ramsey expected most of those arrested to be released on Sunday morning after being charged and fined.
Protest Leaders Defiant
The coalition organizing the anti-IMF protests planned for Sunday and Monday, the Mobilization for Global Justice, said it was undeterred.
``Despite police attempts throughout the day to intimidate nonviolent protesters, hundreds of new activists were trained today in church basements around the city,'' the coalition's Ilyse Hogue said in a statement late on Saturday.
``No matter how many of us are arrested today, we are resolved to carry our message to the streets tomorrow.''
Demonstrators were hoping to disrupt the proceedings of the semi-annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank in mass protest rallies of more than 10,000 on Sunday and Monday. Police do not want the situation to deteriorate into the type of riots that disrupted world trade talks in Seattle in December.
Thousands Of Activists Descend On Washington
After months of preparation, thousands of activists have converged on Washington for the weekend's events. They believe that the IMF and World Bank foist ill-suited economic policies on poor nations, forcing them deeper into misery.
They also believe IMF and World Bank policies serve the interests of rich countries at the expense of the poorest people in the world -- something the lending agencies deny.
But protesters have other causes as well. Saturday's demonstrators were criticizing U.S. prison policies, complaining the country spends too much incarcerating people and not enough on health and education.
Three women dressed in long red dresses and carrying red flags stood in the group reading out loud excerpts from Karl Marx's ``The Communist Manifesto''.
Police poked fun at protesters who had said they hoped to avoid arrest before Sunday's big demonstrations.
``You look like you're going to cry. I don't want you crying on the sidewalk, man,'' said one officer.
One activist asked for officer's motivation.
One officer replied ``Ching-ching'' like a cash register, joking about the overtime hours police will be working during the meeting.
Police Tighten Security, Arrest Man In Grass Skirt
Police earlier on Saturday said they had tightened security, made other arrests and seized literature on how to make Molotov cocktails -- crude gasoline bombs.
Three protesters who planned to take part in rallies were arrested late on Friday during the search of an apartment in Washington which turned up devices to block streets and instructions on how to make Molotov cocktails.
Another man was arrested for running almost naked, dressed only in a grass skirt, through a busy street in Georgetown -- the city's prestigious shopping and residential district -- at a fringe protest against sweatshop labor outside The Gap.
Early Saturday morning fire marshals closed the warehouse being used as an organizing headquarters by the anti-IMF coalition -- the Mobilization for Global Justice -- for alleged fire violations after finding a Molotov cocktail.
Adam Eidinger, spokesman for the protesters, said there were no fire-code violations at the site and that the police were simply attempting to thwart the activists' efforts.
``They have been looking for any excuse to shut us down,'' Eidinger said. ``Under the guise of fire violations they have violated our constitutional rights.''
Numerous businesses in the area have closed up for the weekend while others have boarded up their windows and police have advised residents and tourists to avoid the area.
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World Bank Policies Protested
By Alice Ann Love Associated Press Writer
Saturday, April 15, 2000; 9:30 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000415/aponline093012_000.htm
WASHINGTON -- About 20 demonstrators from 10 countries appeared at the home of World Bank President James Wolfensohn today and handed him a letter protesting the institution's lending policies.
Wolfensohn, on his way to work, listened quietly as Dr. Vineeta Gupta, an Indian physician, read part of the letter. The demonstrators sang quietly in the street, drawing a squad of motorcycle officers, and held signs saying, "Wake up Wolfensohn" and "Wake Up World Bank."
There were no arrests.
"Good morning. Well, thank you very much. You got up very early," Wolfensohn said he told the group before he got into his chauffeur-driven car.
The letter demanded an international boycott of the bonds that are the main funding source for the World Bank. "We call on governments of all member nations of the World Bank to cease further funding ... until all destructive World Bank lending has ended and the World Bank has canceled all debts owed to it by Third World countries," the letter said.
Late Friday, police raided a house where they found a large supply of tools and equipment that protesters apparently planned to use to thwart police efforts to break up human blockades. It was the second time this week that officers seized equipment.
Police arrested three people and confiscated hollow plastic tubes called "sleeping dragons," along with chains, chicken wire and gas masks.
"We're very pleased that we're taking these instruments of crime off the street, and this will make the weekend much safer," said executive assistant chief Terry Gainer.
Thousands of demonstrators have vowed to disrupt Sunday and Monday's spring meetings of the World Bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund. Washington police are ready and waiting, but demonstrators say they may yet pull a surprise with creative tactics that will succeed in disrupting the sessions.
"I've been completely amazed by the creativity by my colleagues," said Njoki Njehu, an organizer with the coalition sponsoring the protests, the Mobilization for Global Justice. "The message is getting out and that is already a victory."
Protesters raised a stink outside the World Bank on Friday by dumping cow manure on Pennsylvania Avenue.
A truck festooned with signs saying "World Bank: Meat Stinks," deposited the manure on the avenue known as "America's Main Street," upwind of the White House. Two protesters were arrested.
The city's Department of Public Works carted away the pile in a city vehicle escorted by a police van with siren blaring and lights flashing.
Later in the day, police completely, though respectfully, surrounded a small knot of demonstrators gathered in front of the Mexican Embassy, across the street from World Bank and IMF buildings.
The mostly young and almost silent crowd, protesting treatment of indigenous Mexicans, was led by an older man looking the part of a grizzled veteran activist, with a red bandanna tied around his head and beating a drum.
Although the rest of the neighborhood remained quiet, several businesses prepared to board up windows as workers left for the weekend, including a Citibank branch in a corner suite with floor-to-ceiling glass.
The protesters plan to disrupt Sunday and Monday's spring meetings at the World Bank and the IMF, but most have pledged not to be violent. Still, some downtown offices closed Friday in anticipation of trouble.
Police also closed more and more roadways in advance of mass gatherings. Streets swarmed with officers wearing dark uniforms.
Others in riot helmets and visors were scattered across the White House lawn. They spent much of their day watching tourists who unknowingly scheduled trips to Washington at a time of potentially massive protests.
The World Bank and IMF were given temporary diplomatic status, allowing the Secret Service to assist the 3,500-member Metropolitan Police Department, which has placed officers on 12-hour shifts. The U.S. Park Police also had a full complement of officers protecting federal parkland, including the Ellipse behind the White House, where a major demonstration is planned Sunday.
An array of organizations hold the World Bank and IMF responsible for destroying rain forests, allowing factory sweatshops and holding down social spending by poor nations saddled with large foreign debts.
"We like to liken the IMF to ... a medieval doctor who only has one cure, which is to put a leech on the country and drain it," said John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington think tank.
The driver and passenger in the manure truck were from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which is protesting World Bank agricultural policies. One was charged with crossing a police line, the other with illegal dumping.
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The Camera-Ready Revolutionary Meet the Face of the New Protesters
By Ann Gerhart Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 15, 2000; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-04/15/064l-041500-idx.html
On this morning, one of the spokesfaces of the revolution is late and groggy and in need of his double espresso. He asks no questions about whether the coffee beans were organically grown and on what kind of plantation. He smiles sheepishly at some fellow strategists for the massive demonstrations to spank the bank--his comrades seem amused to see him leading yet another reporter to a sit-down--and slips into a table at Keren, an Adams-Morgan restaurant haven for Ethiopian and Eritrean emigres. They do a nice spicy breakfast bean mash for cheap.
Please do not call Han Shan a hunka hunk of burning radical love. That would be trivializing him. And don't call him a protest leader. Shan is quite sophisticated about the media, and he wants to make it clear that he is "just one tiny facet in one larger movement, and there are so many people doing incredible work." He's no more important than the folks making puppets or ladling out food in the camps.
But this revolution is going to be televised, and Shan's the go-to guy for that. With the earrings taken out and the sacred-knot tattoo obscured by his good blue shirt (which cleverly matches his eyes, by the way), the program director for the Berkeley-based Ruckus Society is cleaned up and ready to go live with Dan Rather. Which he does--ably, articulately, with star power. Which attracts the attention of someone in another medium, whose story will grab the eye of every desperate TV producer, who will beg for his cell phone number. That's the principle of pack journalism, and Shan is hip to that. "A little blood in the water and all come circling," he says, chuckling.
Shan, 27, has been a meagerly salaried activist for the past three years, with a talent for scaling buildings to hang provocative banners. Last June, by shinnying up the steel cables of the World Bank's arresting glass face, he and another Tibetan rights sympathizer wrangled a meeting between protesters and bank President James Wolfensohn. This year, Shan's back, along with as many as 10,000 demonstrators who aim to shut down this weekend's meetings of the bank and the International Monetary Fund. In between, he worked the battle in Seattle, where he acted as a liaison between authorities and activists.
Affable and polite, blessed with what his sister calls "great looks," he's the nonstandard issue of a middle-class family in North Baltimore. An honored art student, he studied painting at the Art Institute of Chicago and planned to be a philosophy teacher. His passion for saving the planet and its people grew slowly. "For some people, there was a moment that went boom! and they nodded, and they had a path," Shan says over his bowl of beans, "but for me it was a much more gradual, organized process. It started with a questioning."
His father, Ray Buchanan, has worked selling men's clothes for most of his life. His mother, Susan, is a nurse at Johns Hopkins. "Watching them struggle for material things that were always just a little bit out of reach certainly made me question the rampant materialism around me," he says. "I never saw great riches as a path to happiness."
"And I remember being so appalled in history class the way we spent weeks and weeks talking about what war the United States won, and we spent 20 minutes one day talking about Gandhi and Martin Luther King. I felt like I had heroes from another planet."
His mother loves him but claims she's not quite sure where he came from, before mentioning almost as an afterthought that she's a third-generation Pennsylvania Quaker who once worked at a mission hospital in Africa.
"I remember in his mid-teens, there were four or five of them who started this quasi-punk band, and he was the vocalist. I called him the screamer. I could not call that music. Evidently, some of it was political, but I couldn't understand the words," says Susan Buchanan. "Same with the art. It started out as pretty paintings, and then it gravitated to an abstract form. Again, I don't understand. I'm a Grandma Moses type." She laughs now at how he dropped on her that he had become a vegetarian, hours before she slid the stuffed Christmas turkey into the oven, and admits she paled the first time he got arrested. But she and her husband support what he does anyway. "What is the sense of not supporting him if the child would be unhappy?" she says. "We have learned a lot from him," says Ray Buchanan. "He taught us things we never knew."
His sister, Lindsay, 24, lives outside Philadelphia, where she works for Sara Lee Corp., demonstrating products like Kiwi shoe polish at trade shows. She worries that she might be undoing all her brother's hard work. "Our family's measure of success was pretty much the classic American dream, where you grow up and get a job and make money and get married and have kids, and he challenged all of that for us," she says.
And really, that is all her brother is trying to do for everybody. He neither sounds nor acts like a lunatic, and every movement needs a couple persuasive front men to interpret the actions of the fringe. The most overt symbolism in which he indulges is the name: Han Shan is a new one, bestowed upon him by a Buddhist teacher when he adopted that religion five years ago. The original Han Shan, who partly inspired Charles Frazier's "Cold Mountain" and Jack Kerouac's "Dharma Bums," was an 8th- or 9th-century "hermit Zen lunatic guy," explains the 20th-century Shan. "He ran around in the mountains of China and wrote these prosaic but profound poems on rocks and trees. The monks from the local monastery believed him to be the reincarnation of the Buddha of compassion."
Our century's Han Shan won't say what the old name was. "I don't tell anyone. Because it's not important. I took it on when I was leaving a life behind and literally starting over." His parents honor their Something Buchanan boy's request, and they won't tell, either.
"It wasn't really a problem," says Ray Buchanan, when his son rejected the name he gave him. "We are a very open-minded family, and I don't think anything really surprised us."
Shan knows this business about the name sounds a little precious, just a wee bit pretentious. "I'm sort of hippie-phobic--oh, God, I shouldn't have said that--I am gonna get lambasted by the people in the movement. I guess I mean that I don't want us to be perceived as . . ."
Nut cases?
"Sorta," he says.
Life can be simple when the principles pare down the choices. On the road much of the year, he has no home, "just a bag of stuff," and some boxes of books and art supplies in storage. In his bag of stuff are the tools of this revolution--the laptop and the two satellite phones--and the things he wears--the activist's uniform of cotton T-shirts, the scuffed, cruelty-free Doc Martens and the union-made, double-stitched black cotton pants. They have lots of pockets, including narrow ones on the leg for the cell phones. "All activists are going to get femur cancer," says Shan.
"I had a kitty cat once, but my life was just a little bit unstable," he says. This would seem to rule out any committed relationship with a higher animal form, and Shan decides to answer any questions about girlfriends with the following: "I am able to get six hours of sleep a night, but there ain't a lot else." About his own personal effectiveness as a recruiting tool for hundreds of wide-eyed young women who might catch him on the small screen, he cannot manage a comment at all, except to blush slightly and say, "I have no idea what to say."
And then he scrambles nimbly back onto message and gives a nearly pitch-perfect earnest declaration: "We're just a bunch of people who are trying to make a better world. There are all these kids who will tell you, with no cynicism at all, we are just trying to save the world. And we want to communicate the humanity of that."
And then he is out the door, loping up Florida Avenue, past the "Latin Mechanica on Duty" sign and the man sitting on a curb with a boy not in school, both of whom suddenly jump up and go tearing down the alley, and sure enough, here comes the cruiser creeping down the street, and Shan all the while talks about fossil fuel extraction and renewables and global equalization, until he reaches the convergence center, where the activists are chanting "Ain't No Power Like the Power of the People," and he hugs every comrade in greeting, and the tough-looking kids from the adjacent Cesar Chavez Charter High School for Public Policy look on with just a touch of cool curiosity.
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Stopping the World
April 15, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/editorial/15sat2.html
In Washington this weekend, a disparate gathering of protesters will be rallying against what they view as the malign forces of economic globalization. The dissidents' message is sometimes confused and misplaced, especially in wanting to dismantle essential institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization. But the protesters, who call themselves the Mobilization for Global Justice, also represent a popular response -- misguided but heartfelt -- to a worldwide economic transformation that is not fully comprehended even by the experts. To be sure, some interest groups are trying to manipulate public concern for their own advantage. But it would be dangerous to ignore a growing popular unease over these trends and the need for broader educational efforts.
Despite the dramatic stock market decline yesterday, the fact remains that the United States has on balance benefited from the unbridled flow of capital, goods, people and information that is called globalization. The dislocations felt by American workers have been far outweighed by the benefits of cheap imports, low inflation and expanding opportunities for American businesses overseas. Abroad, the poor countries benefiting from expanded markets outnumber those hurt by them.
Nevertheless, the new world order has created hardship in declining or newly uncompetitive industries. Some nations see globalization as a code word for American domination. Many fear that the World Bank, I.M.F. and W.T.O. are pursuing the interests of an American-led elite, to the detriment of the poor and the environment. Critics on both the left and right have begun to question whether the world would be better off without these institutions.
Certainly the institutions that manage the world economy must be more sensitive and transparent. But their real challenge is to help everyone understand that there is no realistic -- or beneficial -- way to reverse or even slow the forces that are driving the world economy. Just as American businesses have begun to discover that in the world of an Internet-driven economy the old rules have to be scrapped or adjusted, so countries around the world will have to learn to adjust to the new market forces if they want to harness them to their advantage. Underdeveloped countries have to learn that capital is voluntary, and does not flow to countries that do not obey its rules.
Since the end of the cold war, there have been at least four major currency crises that threatened to destabilize regional economies: in Europe in 1992-93, Mexico in 1994-95, East Asia in 1997 and Russia and Brazil in 1998. Each had the potential for spiraling out of control. The critics descending on Washington argue that the I.M.F. and the World Bank sometimes made these crises worse, while their defenders assert that without the difficulties inflicted, the crises would have grown worse. One thing is certain. There will be more crises to come in the years ahead. The institutions that handle them need to be reformed, not weakened.
The anti-globalization protesters invoke the tactics and styles of the 1960's. But a closer analogy may be early struggles over the burgeoning of capitalism in the 19th century. It was then that disputes between owners and workers and about public costs and private gain led to an age of ideological conflict.
Today's struggle has the added element of changing definitions of national sovereignty. Indeed, poor countries are not the only worriers. Europeans are also increasingly wary of American demands to open their economies to American products. As boundaries become more economically irrelevant, one question is whether people will seek refuge in their national identities or in the familiar if transitory comforts of placards, chants and street theater in places like Washington.
Yet today's global economic drama is deeply familiar to students of American history -- how to reconcile the demands of economic growth and opportunity with the need to preserve fairness, stability and the health and welfare of each country's citizens. It is today a challenge without borders. Meeting it calls for more sophisticated international institutions, not a retreat into nostalgia and economic nationalism.
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Falling Stocks Jolt Finance Officials
The Associated Press
Saturday, April 15, 2000; 8:43 a.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000415/aponline084327_000.htm
WASHINGTON -- If the prospect of thousands of protesters disrupting their meetings wasn't enough, the world's top finance ministers will now have to contemplate what a record plunge on Wall Street will do to global confidence.
Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan were playing host today to their counterparts from the world's richest industrial countries.
The state of the global economy, which was to be a key agenda topic, will certainly include a review of Friday's record plunge in U.S. stock prices, with the Dow Jones industrial average falling 617.78 points, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index dropping a record 355.49 points.
The Group of Seven nations - the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada - were meeting in advance of the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank on Sunday and Monday.
Anti-globalization activists have vowed to disrupt the meetings of the IMF and World Bank by forming human chains and clogging streets to prevent delegates from attending the discussions, repeating their success in disrupting the meetings last December of the World Trade Organization in Seattle.
Local and federal law enforcement authorities have vowed to prevent a recurrence of the Seattle disturbances, which included window-smashing and other random acts of violence by a small group of anarchists.
The G-7 meeting site at the Blair House and the White House across the street both were being guarded by extra-heavy security forces.
Before the G-7 discussions got under way at midday, Summers was scheduled to meet separately with the finance ministers from France, Britain, Germany and Japan.
The Clinton administration is pushing a package of reform proposals for both the IMF and the World Bank, but other countries have voiced objections to some of the ideas.
It was likely that the weekend meetings would end with a vague pledge to continue pushing reform efforts at the two institutions, which were heavily criticized for their handling of the 1997-98 global financial crisis, while leaving the details to further discussions.
Following Friday's tumble, which ended a bad week on Wall Street, Summers insisted that the economic fundamentals in the United States remained strong.
"The United States economy has been a source of strength for itself and a source of strength for the global economy," he said in a CNN interview minutes after the markets closed. "The right priority for us is (to focus) on those fundamentals that are important for sustained economic expansion."
Summers refused to respond directly when asked if the administration had the same worries as the IMF, which in its latest economic forecast this week listed a sharp drop in U.S. stock prices as one of the threats facing the global economy.
The IMF produced an optimistic forecast this week that the world economy would grow 4.2 percent this year, the fastest pace in more than a decade.
But it warned that one of the dangers to this forecast was a sharp plunge in the value of U.S. stocks, which could cause consumers to cut back on spending, which accounts for two-thirds of total economic activity.
Greenspan, who has been warning since 1996 about the dangers of investors' "irrational exuberance" said in a speech Friday financial markets were still vulnerable to a sudden loss in confidence.
"It is the general human experience that when confronted with uncertainty, whether in financial markets or in any other aspect of life, disengagement is the normal protective reaction," Greenspan said.
Canadian Finance Minister Paul Martin said Friday that Canada would put forward its own proposal at the weekend meetings to institute a halt in repayment of loans by countries to their foreign creditors, including commercial banks, in times of economic difficulty as a way to instill more caution on the part of private investors.
He also said it was important for global institutions like the IMF to address legitimate criticism.
"We must demonstrate that we understand that countries are made up of people and not economic indicators," he said in a Washington speech. "We need to address the skepticism as to what meetings such as this weekend's are all about."
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Globalization Unifies Its Many-Striped Foes
April 15, 2000
By JOSEPH KAHN
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/041500imf-protest.html
WASHINGTON, April 14 -- Protesters for global justice call their headquarters a convergence center, and the abandoned downtown warehouse does seem to attract all kinds.
Propped up against a mound of backpacks and surrounded by the remnants of a donated macrobiotic lunch was James Osborne, 23, a self-described transient from St. Louis. Mr. Osborne said he took a Greyhound bus to Washington because someone told him about destructive pipeline projects and bad trade policies. "I believe there should be no leadership and no organization," he said, though he rejected the label of anarchist.
Not far away, David H. Richardson, 57, an economist at the Department of Labor, checked the schedule for civil disobedience actions intended to shut down the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
Mr. Richardson, a shop steward of the American Federation of Government Employees, said he worked hard to persuade the national union to endorse the officially sanctioned portion of the demonstrations scheduled for Sunday, which it did.
"Labor is at the point that it needs support from outside the movement," Mr. Richardson said, looking a little like a school headmaster. "Globalization brings a lot of different people together."
If they accomplish nothing else, the protests this week against the financial institutions and in favor of debt relief for the third world seem likely to confirm Mr. Richardson's observation.
Globalization and the backlash against it bring disparate people together. The call to temper the capitalism around the globe comes from parties as diverse as the Catholic Church and a cell of anarchists, and many people and organizations in between.
The question is whether members of this unlikely coalition of protesters and interest groups will, like so many grains of sand blown together, scatter once they make a collective point or achieve individual goals.
Or, as some leaders hope, whether it is the foundation of a new social movement that will apply sustained pressure on national governments and international institutions to rewrite the rules of globalization and limit the power of corporations.
Though some environmental groups began pressuring international financial institutions to become more ecologically sensitive two decades ago, and groups wary of globalism became a popular force in Europe long before they attracted attention in the United States, the movement is still in its infancy.
The Big Bang for American organizers came only a few months ago, during the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization, when they took credit not only for befuddling police but also for contributing to the collapse of world trade talks.
The Washington protests, which began last Sunday with a quiet rally for debt forgiveness and will culminate this Sunday with an effort to prevent world finance ministers from attending the spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, are the second big test for the movement. While it is having some social and political impact, its main achievement is probably logistical, uniting groups with different agendas around a common cause and attracting new recruits, especially college students and unionized workers.
"I met some steelworkers and we bonded right away," said Margareta Lelea, 20, a sophomore at the University of California-Davis who is majoring in agricultural development. Ms. Lelea, who wore a stick-on green star on her face for "ecological awareness," came early to Washington to attend nonviolence training seminars at the convergence center. It is the first major protest she has attended, though she sympathized with those who opposed NATO's bombing of Kosovo last year.
"I never thought of union people as interested in the same issues, but they are," she said. "There's all kinds of interconnections being made. Without interconnections there's no progress."
The joke among lieutenants who pulled together the protest is that there are as many 501-C-3's in their ranks as there are people, a reference to the Internal Revenue Service form that independent, nonprofit groups must file each year. The movement against the international financial organizations is in some ways less a mobilization of the masses than a convention of citizens groups that have individual agendas, fund-raising campaigns, and, in many cases, leaders with large egos.
"The way we got people together is that we let everyone represent their group. They don't have to join our group," said Kevin Danaher, a founder of Global Exchange, a social issues campaigner and one of the groups instrumental in igniting the protests in Seattle and Washington. "It's a lot easier for people to compromise when they don't really have to subordinate their egos."
Mr. Danaher, 49, tall and bald with a white goatee, traces his roots as a protester to the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980's. More recently, he has led campaigns against Nike, persuading the company to improve conditions for foreign factory workers, and against Starbucks, successfully urging the chain to sell coffee produced under the TransFair "fair trade" label, which claims profits are shared with farmers.
He is has traveled the country, speaking at scores of campuses as a kind of Paul Revere of globalization's woes.
But he described himself as just an adviser to the protests against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
The movement, Mr. Danaher said, has thrived in part because it rejects the straitjacket of a typical political or social movement, with leaders and head offices and official strategies. That allows groups to flow in and out.
The unofficial lieutenants of the Mobilization for Global Justice, as the Washington protests were named, have used the Internet to bridge environmental, religious, labor and student groups that would otherwise not be in regular contact, some 500 of them in total.
They created a computer mailing list of people willing to press a campaign against globalization's main agents. They use "vibe monitors" to make sure everyone stays civil at strategy sessions.
The phenomenon of citizens groups autonomously coordinating strategy sounds arcane, but it has proved its effectiveness. A Rand Corporation study for the Pentagon detailed how Mexico's Zapatista rebel movement in 1994 used publicity tactics -- a "social netwar," the study dubbed it -- to generate support abroad for its campaign against the North American Free Trade Agreement. The study said swarms of independent citizens groups can prove far more effective than hierarchical movements when combating established institutions because they can't easily be "decapitated."
Mr. Danaher admires the Zapatista model. "We also have a mosquito-bite strategy," he said.
That may be the movement's strength, but it is also a weakness.
Some of the main backers worry that the movement's successes to date have been purely tactical -- headline-grabbing civil disobedience and a flair for organization. They fear that the coalition could blow apart as quickly as it came together.
Already, the strains are showing.
Though religious groups are one of the main forces behind debt relief, they have refrained from any direct involvement in the demonstrations this Sunday. Instead, they scheduled their own rally last Sunday.
Oxfam and Greenpeace, two of the best-known names in social and environmental activism, have severed formal ties to one of the major coalitions of protesters, though members of both groups are still participating in the protests.
The split came about partly over goals. Oxfam officials, for example, say they have made progress trying to reform the World Bank, and getting governments to agree to debt relief. Global Exchange, in contrast, wants the bank and fund abolished.
"Too much of this has been about tactics, getting all these groups together and keeping things moving," said John Sellers, of the Ruckus Society, based in Berkeley, Calif.
The observation is especially poignant coming from Mr. Sellers, who runs training camps around the country to teach varied protesters the mechanics of civil disobedience.
Over a beer at a Washington bookshop-café one recent evening, Mr. Sellers seemed unsure whether the movement can sustain momentum.
"I guess if we're going to have a center of gravity we have to figure out really what we want and where we go from here," he said.
----
Developing Nations Wary of Proposals
April 15, 2000
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/f/AP-World-Finance-Poor-Countries.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Developing countries expressed their concern Saturday at proposals to reform the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, particularly any changes that would make it more difficult for them to obtain loans or have to pay them back faster.
They also rejected conclusions of a U.S. congressional committee that the IMF should limit itself to short term lending and the World Bank should halt loans to middle income countries become a development agency.
``We find some of these proposals unacceptable and have serious concerns about them,'' said German Suarez, chairman of the Group of 24 developing countries. ``But we support efforts to reform'' the IMF and World Bank and ``strengthen cooperation between them.''
He referred to the so-called Meltzer Report, written by a commission led by Carnegie Mellon University Professor Alan Meltzer. It recommended that the IMF should stop lending to the world's poorest nations, many of which are African, and leave development financing to the World Bank.
Suarez spoke at a news conference after a daylong meeting at the IMF of the G24, which comprises Asian, African and Latin American nations and represents developing countries in negotiations on international monetary matters.
Habib Abu Sakr, the G24 vice chairman and a senior Lebanese finance ministry, official, said the G24 ``finds no contradiction between our position'' defending the interests of poor nations and ``the people who are demonstrating.''
Ernest Ebi, deputy governor of Nigeria's central bank, said the G24 had to be sensitive to protesters' dissatisfaction with the functioning of the IMF and World Bank but do a better job educating them on their roles.
Protest groups gathering in Washington this weekend hope to shut down the spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank. They blame the two institutions for a variety of global woes, from the perpetuation of poverty to the destruction of the environment.
In their communique, the G24 expressed ``serious concern for the reform'' of the IMF and World Bank in ways that would deprive'' poor nations access to their resources.
They said obtaining foreign aid for development of their economies often is dependent on the IMF and the World Bank serving as a catalyst that unlocks such financing.
The G24 said it has ``strong reservations about any significant shortening'' of the period to repay IMF loans. particularly when a country has balance of payment problems that cannot easily be corrected.
The ministers also said they were concerned about the limited representation of poor countries in new forums set up to discuss international monetary and financial affairs such the Financial Stability Forum, involving central banks, and the U.S-backed G20, which groups major industrialized nations and significant emerging market countries.
----
Wealthy Nations Agree On Changes in I.M.F.
April 15, 2000
By JOSEPH KAHN
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/041600imf-bank.html
WASHINGTON, April 15 -- The Group of 7 wealthy nations agreed today on proposals for change at the International Monetary Fund that would discourage nations from borrowing too often from the fund and encourage them to pay back their loans quickly.
The proposals -- put forward by the United States and given the stamp of approval at a meeting today of finance ministers from France, Britain, Canada, Germany, Japan, Italy and the United States -- go part way to address the concerns of some critics of the fund, including members of Congress.
Lawmakers, academics and some private interest groups have urged the fund to phase out long-term lending in favor of short-term emergency loans, which was the fund's original mandate when it was founded just after World War II. Protesters have gathered in Washington this weekend to demonstrate against the fund and the World Bank, its sister institution. Some protesters have urged that the fund focus exclusively on crisis-management, not long-term advisory and lending programs.
Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers put forward a plan for streamlining the fund late last year, and has been lobbying European nations and Japan to back his proposals. Together, Europe, Japan and the United States control a majority of the votes on the fund's board, so their endorsement makes it likely that the fund will institute changes to its lending programs.
The G-7 nations agreed that the fund should explore the use of graduated interest rates on its major loan programs. Borrowing nations would be charged variable interest rates that fluctuate depending on how often they turn to the I.M.F. for help, how much they borrow, and how long it takes to pay back the loans. Those nations that borrow the least money the least often and for the shortest terms would get the lowest rates.
The fund already uses graduated interest rates on some lending programs. But many poor and middle-income nations borrow from the fund for long durations at concessional interest rates -- and return repeatedly for more help when the money runs out -- as part of what the fund refers to as structural adjustment lending. They often do so without seeing interest rates rise based on the quantity, duration or frequency of their borrowing.
"We agreed to put priority on the creation of a streamlined, incentive-based structure for I.M.F. lending," Mr. Summers said after the meeting of G-7 finance ministers tonight.
Though the move by the ministers might reduce some long-term borrowing by I.M.F. client nations, it seems unlikely to satisfy many of the critics of the fund's long-term loan programs. Some critics have called on the fund to completely eliminate such lending, arguing that it is ineffective and that the I.M.F. uses long-term loans to interfere in the domestic policies of borrowing nations.
Finance ministers, who often discuss currency values at their conclaves, also focused this time on the stock market plunge in the United States and the potential impact on the world economy. All major Wall Street market indices declined sharply on Friday, ending a week of bloodletting that seemed to confirm European finger-waving about the American stock market bubble.
Though the rout, if it continues, would almost certainly reduce economic growth abroad as well as in the United States, there is a silver lining. If the decline reduces consumer demand in this country, that might help even out growth between the United States and its major trading partners. Lopsided growth has been a preoccuption of finance ministers because it shows up in the giant United States trade deficit, which many fear has become unsustainably large.
Mr. Summers said that there was agreement at the meeting that economic fundamentals remain strong in all the G-7 countries, despite the volatility in equity markets. But he also emphasized that mismatched growth rates between the United States and its peers remain a pressing concern.
"If you compare the discussion today with the discussion of only six months ago, there was much more general agreement on the importance of policies to allow rebalancing of global growth," Mr. Summers said. He added that the adjustment should take place by raising growth in Europe in Japan rather than by lowering growth in the United States.
-------- india / pakistan
British Foreign Secretary in India
APRIL 15, 17:37 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS73SE2B00
NEW DELHI, India (AP) - British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook arrived in the Indian capital Saturday to discuss Indo-British economic and defense ties, which suffered a setback after India exploded nuclear devices nearly two years ago.
The main issue on the agenda will be trade between the two countries, currently at $6.3 billion. Britain is the biggest cumulative investor in India, with $4.75 billion, British embassy officials said in New Delhi.
Beginning Monday, Cook is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and opposition leader Sonia Gandhi. He also will chair a round-table on how to improve Indo-British relations in commerce, science, technology, energy, infrastructure and other areas.
He will depart Tuesday for Thailand.
Cook's visit may signal the resumption of an Indo-British defense group later this year in New Delhi, the Press Trust of India news agency quoted an Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying. The group focuses on armament purchases, military cooperation and strategic dialogue.
That meeting may be followed by visits to Britain by India's army and navy chiefs, which were called off after India's nuclear tests, the news agency said.
----
ADN demands suspension of work at Chashma reactor
Tuesday 4th April, 2000
ISLAMABAD (NNI): Advocacy and Development Network (ADN) has called upon the government to suspend work at the Chashma nuclear reactor near Mianwali and to set up a new independent nuclear regulatory agency.
A press release of the ADN, a group of eight NGOs working in the areas of environment, development, social and consumer protection, also called for an independent safety analysis and environmental impact assessment of the project.
"A number of possible safety problems with the Chinese designed and built Chashma nuclear power plant have been exposed, including the reactor's location on the Indus River, the risk of earthquakes, and components which may not be reliable," said the release.
It said that Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission has not operated nuclear power plant with Chashma design before. "China which supplied the reactor, has failed to manage problems at its own reactor and received international help which not be readily available to Pakistan because of its nuclear weapons programme."
"A serious incident at Chashma could have grave consequences for Pakistan. In addition to possibly thousands of deaths from cancer, there would be radioactive contamination of land, groundwater and the Indus River, the effects of which could last for decades," added the release.
ADN demanded a full, independent safety review of Chashma before it is allowed to operate. "The findings of such a review should be made public. It will be much harder to make any necessary safety-related changes once the reactor starts working."
It further urged that Chashma reactor must not be allowed to operate till there has been a proper public environment impact assessment. "The assessment must evaluate the health, environmental and economic impact of the most severe possible accident, and emergency plans to deal with such an accident.
It must also examine Chashma's impact on Indus river and the Chashma Barrage reservoir- this reservoir is a "Wetland of International Importance under the 1971 Ramsar International Convention on Wetlands, which Pakistan has committed to protect, the network demanded.
Expressing concern about the independence of current Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Board, headed by Chairman PAEC and made up mostly of PAEC employees AND has demanded a new independent Nuclear Regulatory Agency to ensure effective protection of the public and the environment from the risks associated with nuclear materials and facilities.
"There must be public consultations to draft and discuss any proposed legislation for a Nuclear Regulatory Agency," the press release said.
http://www.nni-news.com/
-------- iraq
Iraq Rejects U.N. Monitoring Plan
April 15, 2000
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Iraq-UN.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000415/aponline043236_000.htm
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq does not accept a new U.N. Security Council plan to resume weapons inspections in the country, Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said today.
Aziz said neither he nor any other member in the Iraqi leadership has ever indicated that Iraq will allow the resumption of weapons inspections as outlined in a resolution the council issued in December last year.
``I would like to reconfirm what we have said before, that U.S. and British efforts to impose a new unfair resolution will never succeed,'' Aziz said.
The Security Council approved a plan Thursday drawn up by chief weapons inspector Hans Blix for the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission.
``We are not concerned with'' that, Aziz said, adding it is not ``a matter of concern for us.''
The council's approval of Blix's plan sent a strong signal to Iraq that Security Council members are determined to restart weapons inspections in Iraq, stalled for more than a year.
The sanctions were imposed for Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait and will be lifted only when the government proves to U.N. weapons inspectors that it has scrapped its weapons of mass destruction and means to produce and deliver them.
But U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq in December 1998 ahead of U.S. and British airstrikes, launched to punish Iraq for failing to cooperate with the inspectors.
Iraq insists that it has complied with all U.N. resolution including the elimination of illegal weapons.
Blix's plan for his new agency stresses that arms experts will work for the United Nations rather than any government. The distinction was his way of emphasizing that he did not want the agency tainted by the same allegations that stung its predecessor, the U.N. Special Commission, or UNSCOM, that its weapons inspectors spied on Iraq on behalf of the United States.
Blix, who is the executive chairman of the new agency, known by its acronym UNMOVIC, made it clear that inspectors will come from all around the world and will be paid for out of the U.N. budget -- not volunteered by, or under the orders of, individual governments.
Blix also stressed that intelligence gathered by inspectors must remain with the agency and be used only for its key disarmament work.
UNMOVIC, created in December, replaces 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.
-------- japan
Majority Want To Revamp Japan Laws
April 15, 2000
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/ap/000415/11/int-japan-constitution
TOKYO (AP) - A record 60 percent of Japanese support the long-taboo idea of revising the nation's U.S.-written constitution, according to a newspaper poll released Saturday.
The daily Yomiuri's survey of 1,935 citizens nationwide broke the record of 53 percent set last year.
For the first time since the annual survey began in 1981, more than half of the respondents from each of six age groups - 20s to 70s - favored revising the 1947 document written by the U.S. occupation force after World War II.
Twenty-seven percent of those surveyed opposed revising the constitution, the first time that figure has fallen below 30 percent.
The newspaper conducted the poll on March 18 and 19. It did not give a margin of error.
In February, lawmakers began discussing whether to rewrite the constitution after years of public debate focusing on the so-called "peace clause" - Article 9 - which declares that Japan will never maintain "land, sea and air forces as well as other war potential."
Its military is known as the Self-Defense Force.
Until recently, even questioning the need for that clause was attacked as a dangerous revival of the Japanese militarism of the early part of the 20th century, aggression which ended with America's nuclear bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the humiliation of defeat to the Western allies.
And talk of change still rankles with Asian countries invaded and colonized by Japan.
But with Japan's expansionist past an increasingly remote memory, many are calling for changes that would allow Japan to take over greater responsibility for its own defense from the United States, and play a more active role internationally.
-------- korea
N.Koreans Skip Anti-West Propaganda
April 15, 2000
By SANG-HUN CHOE, Associated Press Writer
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/ap/000415/11/int-nkorea-celebration
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea's drab capital city came to life Saturday with thousands celebrating their biggest national holiday. But this year's festivities lacked a usual prop: a diatribe against the United States and South Korea.
The isolated communist state usually marks "Sun's Day" - the birthday of late President Kim Il Sung - with vows to pick up arms to fight what it calls U.S. imperialist aggressors and their South Korean stooges.
Saturday's celebration came five days after North Korea agreed to hold a summit with South Korea in June in a historic deal that could bring the impoverished North badly needed economic aid.
"Pyongyang is transported with boundless joy on Sun's Day," said the North's official foreign news outlet, KCNA, monitored in Seoul.
Squares and streets were decorated with colorful posters and flowers, it said. Despite the electricity shortages that cause frequent power outages in the capital, communist authorities festooned Pyongyang's streets with 19 miles of decorative light bulbs.
Squares, theaters and gymnasiums were packed with people holding rallies and watching art performances, KCNA said.
Long lines of people paid homage to the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where Kim Il Sung lies in state. Kim founded and ruled North Korea for four decades until he died at age 82 in 1994. He still is revered as a demigod in the North.
His son, Kim Jong Il, took power in communism's first hereditary succession.
The junior Kim, flanked by senior party and military officials, visited his father's memorial Friday.
He faces the tough task of pulling his country out of a deep economic crisis. The country has been relying on outside aid to feed its people since 1995.
North Korea's propaganda machines on Saturday did not mention the planned summit.
The lack of anti-Western propaganda was all the more salient because the United States and its South Korean allies launched a six-day joint military exercise Saturday to test their ability to receive and deploy reinforcement forces from U.S. bases outside the peninsula.
Military drills typically draw harsh rhetoric from the North, which consider them war preparations.
This time, though, the reaction came from the South.
"Yankee go home!" 1,000 South Korean students and other activists chanted Saturday at a park in central Seoul.
They accused Washington of staging the military exercise to heighten tension on the divided peninsula and sabotage the planned summit. Carrying anti-American pickets, the protesters marched three city blocks. Traffic was backed up but no serious clashes were reported.
Students also demanded that Washington investigate and apologize for alleged massacres of civilians by American troops during the 1950-53 Korean War.
U.S. troops led U.N. forces that fought the war on South Korea's side against North Korea and its Chinese and Soviet supporters.
The conflict ended with a peace treaty, and Washington maintains 37,000 troops in the South under a mutual defense treaty.
-------- kosovo / yugoslavia
Yugoslav Gen. Downplays NATO Damage
April 15, 2000
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/ap/000415/10/int-yugoslavia-nato
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - The Yugoslav Army's top commander claimed in an interview published Saturday that his forces suffered scant losses in last year's air war with NATO.
Col. Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic told the state-run Tanjug news agency that he lost 13 tanks and 10 other armored vehicles out of a total of about 600-800 combat vehicles deployed at the time in the southern province of Kosovo.
"Our losses were minimal," Pavkovic was quoted as saying. He said the combat vehicles "account for less than one percent out of the total" number in possession of the Yugoslav Army. Pavkovic did not elaborate on other losses.
NATO launched a 78-day air war against Yugoslavia last year to stop President Slobodan Milosevic's oppression of ethnic Albanians. The alliance estimated it hit 389 artillery and mortar pieces, 153 armored personnel carriers, 93 tanks and 339 military vehicles.
Pavkovic also said that NATO realized it couldn't "inflict serious losses from the air, so they started massive attacks on 1,100 infrastructure targets" in Yugoslavia, destroying power grids, factories, roads and bridges.
----
Kosovo Being Overrun by Rats
April 15, 2000
By ALISON MUTLER, Associated Press Writer
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/ap/000415/14/int-kosovo-rats
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Kosovo's leaders joined hundreds of people in a trash pickup Saturday that highlighted growing health concerns about the province's burgeoning rat population.
No one is really quite sure how many rats have invaded the city, but rodents have become more visible in recent weeks, crawling along major streets and foraging through piles of refuse.
Bernard Kouchner, the United Nations' top administrator in Kosovo, warned that the problem would only get worse if people do not start disposing of trash properly. Rats feeding off the rotting waste strewn around the provincial capital, Pristina, have become a threat to the population's health.
"It is not the plague yet," Kouchner said. "But there is a growing rat population. I can't tell you how many there are."
The garbage in the capital and the countryside has been accumulating in the 10 months since NATO took control of the province after a war aimed at stopping Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's repression of ethnic Albanian militants. U.N. authorities recognize the problem, but say they lack the money needed to clear the garbage away.
Now that the weather is getting warmer here, health officials say they are starting to see the impact of the trash - and the rats - on Kosovo's people.
At Pristina's hospital, doctors say they see 10 people a day who have gotten sick from diseases transmitted from the rats and rodent droppings.
"Before, we didn't have this problem," said Dr. Nadire Maqedonci at the hospital's infectious disease department. "Now all the doctors are discussing this."
The wards are full of cases related to the rodents. One victim, a 33-year-old woman who had given birth four days ago, was receiving treatment for an infection.
"I have many rats in my house, but only recently," said Elezaj Xherahire, who had been separated from her newborn because her disease is infectious.
Saturday's NATO-led cleanup was billed as a way to educate people to be more careful about how they get rid of their waste. People in Kosovo tend to simply throw trash in the street, in empty lots, in rivers - anywhere there is an untended empty space.
"We just want to set an example," said Gen. Klaus Reinhardt, the German commander of the NATO troops in Kosovo.
Reinhardt led a contingent of peacekeepers in combing across grassland at Pristina's university, picking up cigarette butts, orange peels, broken glass and plastic spoons.
Students also joined the effort.
"New York has rubbish too, but not like Pristina," said Gent Uka, 14, who lived in New York for a short time while living as a refugee from Milosevic's forces. "We want our city to be clean."
-------- russia
Putin: willing to 'deactivate nuclear missiles
April 15, 2000
ITN
http://www.itn.co.uk/World/world20000415/041505w.htm
President-elect Vladimir Putin has said Russia would remove nuclear missiles from active service only once it was satisfied Washington was meeting its arms control treaty obligations.
"We will observe very carefully how our partners are fulfilling their obligations," the Interfax news agency quoted Putin as telling reporters a day after the Russian parliament ratified the long-delayed START-2 disarmament pact.
"Not a single missile will be removed from active service before the end of its normal lifetime if we see that our partners are not fulfilling their obligations at the same level."
The passage of the treaty was a diplomatic triumph for Putin, who leaves on Sunday for Britain on his first foreign trip since taking over from Boris Yeltsin on New Year's Eve.
Putin also said that if the United States failed to observe the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, Russia reserved the right to take measures on operating what he called certain parts of its nuclear arsenal.
He repeated that the treaty met Russia's security needs as Russia would be taking out of service weapons that were in any case near the end of their operating lives.
Earlier story:
Russia's State Duma has voted to ratify the START-II nuclear arms reduction treaty. The State Duma, the lower chamber of parliament, voted 288 to 131 to approve the treaty after President Vladimir Putin urged lawmakers to pass the measure.
-----
Putin Clarifies Start II Plans
April 15, 2000
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/ap/000415/17/int-russia-start-ii
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia will not immediately scrap any nuclear ballistic missiles following the ratification of the START II treaty, President Vladimir Putin said Saturday.
The treaty gives the United States and Russia until 2007 to halve their nuclear arsenals to 3,000-3,5000 warheads each. In the interim, Russia will only decommission those missiles whose service life has already expired, Putin said.
The State Duma, parliament's lower house, ratified START II on Friday. Putin said even if the treaty had not been ratified, Russia's heavy ballistic missiles would have to be decommissioned by 2007.
"The service life of these missiles expired and has been extended," he said. Defense Ministry specialists advised that a further extension would be "inexpedient, dangerous and unreasonable," Putin said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.
He said "not a single missile, not a single charge will be removed from duty until the expiration of the final guaranteed time of their use."
The comments appeared to be aimed at the millions of Russians who support the Communist Party. The Communists vehemently opposed the treaty, saying it was a serious threat to Russia's national security and would give the United States a major military advantage.
----
A Russian Affirmation of Arms Control
April 15, 2000
http://www10.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/editorial/15sat3.html
The belated ratification of the landmark 1993 nuclear arms reduction treaty by Russia's lower house of Parliament yesterday marks a decisive step in reversing the cold-war weapons spiral. The treaty, approved by the United States Senate in 1996 and now expected to be endorsed by Russia's upper house, will slice the number of nuclear warheads on both sides nearly in half from current levels. Its ratification should spur Washington and Moscow to intensify their efforts to negotiate substantial further cuts in the months ahead.
The Senate ought to approve the new weapons destruction timetables and missile defense clarifications, negotiated three years ago, so that the treaty's provisions can be put into effect. Moscow's ratification vote came with one important condition. Parliament and Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, warned that if America withdraws from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, Moscow's adherence to other arms control treaties would lapse.
That need never happen. American and Russian negotiators are trying to work out amendments that would allow both countries to build limited missile defense systems against unpredictable smaller states, like North Korea, Iraq and Iran. Time remains for further discussions, since America has not yet perfected the technology needed to build such a missile defense.
Finding agreement on missile defenses might come easier in the context of accelerated negotiations toward further nuclear weapons reductions. Mr. Putin is eager to reach agreement on additional cuts, bringing each side's arsenal down to levels as low as 1,500 warheads. Such cuts would save Russia the cost of replacing multiple-warhead missiles with single-warhead models and leave more money for conventional forces and social needs at home.
America's target for a new treaty is somewhat higher. But the history of post-cold-war reductions is that they can develop a momentum of their own. With Mr. Putin now firmly in command and working with a new, moderate legislature, progress may once again be possible. The Clinton administration should make a concerted effort to find out.
----
U.S., Russian arms negotiators to meet in Geneva next week
Saturday, April 15, 2000
http://www.canoe.com/TopStories/arms_apr15.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- American and Russian negotiators are to meet next week in Geneva to consider more cuts in long-range nuclear arms now that the Duma has approved the START II treaty.
That treaty, dating from 1993, trims 5,000 warheads from U.S. and Russian arsenals. A follow-up pact could lop off another 1,000 to 1,500.
At the same time, the Clinton administration wants to convince Russia that both countries need anti-missile defenses.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Friday that if the United States violates a 1972 ban on nationwide defenses Russia would scrap START II and other treaties curbing nuclear and conventional weapons.
President Clinton is expected to announce by the end of the year a decision whether to go ahead with development of a defensive missile system of 100 launchers and new radar. A critical test of the system is due in late June.
To legalize the U.S. project, Clinton would like Russia to agree to a revision of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. That's the treaty to which Putin said Friday deployment of a defensive missile system would violate.
Last year, then-President Boris Yeltsin agreed with Clinton to consider missile-defense issues together with reductions in nuclear weapons. But Yeltsin and now Putin have continued to oppose gutting the 1972 treaty.
On Capitol Hill, Marc Thiessen, spokesman for Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., said that Putin is "sadly mistaken" if he thinks the United States will not go ahead with a defense against missiles.
Helms is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which has the power to block weapons reductions under START II even after the Duma's vote to ratify the treaty.
A series of U.S. laws kept the Clinton administration from scrapping long-range warheads before the treaty takes effect. While the Duma has now ratified the accord, an addition to the treaty giving Russia until the end of 2007 to get down to the level of 3,000 to 3,500 warheads must be approved by the Senate before the U.S. arsenal can be trimmed.
Senate advocates of a much larger U.S. missile defense system also will have a chance to try to get their way when the Senate acts on a protocol that brought three former Soviet republics that once deployed missiles, Ukraine, Kazakstan and Belarus, into the 1972 accord.
"This presents a real dilemma for the administration," said Spurgeon Keeny, president of the private Arms Control Association. "If they want START II to enter into force, they will have to move on this," he said in an interview. "But if they do, the best that can happen is nothing; the worst is defeat."
And yet, Keeny called Russian ratification a "very welcome and important step in moving ahead with the reduction of nuclear weapons. It allows formal negotiations to begin immediately on a START III treaty."
The two sides have decided to aim for 2,000 to 2,500 warheads in a START III treaty, with Russia showing interest in getting down toward 1,500.
Michael Krepon, president of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a private research group, said he did not consider Russian ratification "a big deal."
"This is a treaty that has been overtaken by events," Krepon said in an interview. "Now what the administration needs to do is to negotiate a deal with Putin on deeper cuts and on limited missile defenses."
Jack Mendelsohn, a former U.S. negotiator now executive director of the Lawyers Alliance for World Security, said the ball is now in the U.S. court, but it is unlikely the administration and the Senate could cooperate enough to approve the add-on agreements that key conservative senators have threatened to kill.
"If the administration can't deliver on START II, how can they come through on START III and limited changes to the ABM treaty?" he said in an interview.
----
Putin Wins Vote on START II
Russian Lawmakers Give Approval to Arms Treaty
By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 15, 2000; Page A01
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-04/15/163l-041500-idx.html
MOSCOW, April 14-After seven years of delays, Russia's parliament ratified the START II nuclear arms reduction treaty today, handing acting President Vladimir Putin a major political victory and opening the way for talks with the United States on further cuts in both nations' still-considerable arsenals.
The treaty ratified today commits each side to cutting its nuclear cache to between 3,000 and 3,500 warheads each, down from the 6,000 agreed to under START I.
Reflecting concern about the Clinton administration's desire to build a national missile defense system and modify the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow it, Putin threatened to renege on START II if President Clinton goes ahead with that plan. "We will have the chance, and we will withdraw not only from the START II Treaty but also the whole system of treaties on limitation and control of strategic and conventional weapons," he said.
The Duma attached a non-binding amendment to the treaty that gives Russia the right to revoke START II if the United States violates the ABM Treaty, which limits construction of missile defenses.
The lopsided vote--288 in favor and 131, mostly Communist lawmakers, against--spotlighted Putin's parliamentary clout. Last December's legislative elections gave him a potential working non-Communist majority in the State Duma, Russia's lower house. The balloting was the first test of his ability to win legislative victories that eluded his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, in the Communist-dominated chamber.
Still, the day's atmosphere was not triumphant, but rather tinged with a sense of decline of a former superpower. Russia had to come to grips with the reality that its nuclear arsenal is decaying with or without an arms reduction treaty.
In televised remarks, Putin defended his backing for START II against charges he was stripping Russia's defensive bulwark. He said Moscow still possesses enough weapons to destroy an enemy anywhere "several times over.
"We don't need an arms race," he continued. "Non-ratification . . . would lead to absurd expenses." Putin attended the Duma session, with the briefcase containing the country's nuclear attack codes in tow.
Only Putin's speech was broadcast to the Russian public. The rest of the debate took place behind closed doors, with Russian pop tunes piped into the hallways of parliament to keep reporters from eavesdropping.
Backers of START II argued that ratification would help forestall changes in the ABM Treaty. The Russians want forthcoming, post-START II arms reduction talks to divert Washington from modifying the ABM pact; the only way to get the new talks going was to end the long saga of START II, analysts said. The U.S. Senate ratified START II in 1996.
At the same time, Putin expressed doubt that the United States actually desires further bilateral cuts, so long as Russia's arsenal shrinks on its own. "I actually don't know if the United States is all that interested in doing this, given the changing and in many ways already changed situation in the world," he told Duma legislators.
The legislature also called on Russia to cancel START II if the United States plants nuclear weapons on the territory of new NATO members. So far, these include the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, all former Soviet satellites.
Legislators effectively accepted the reality that Russia's nuclear arsenal is inevitably declining because the missiles, airplanes and submarines that launch the warheads--built in the Soviet era--are increasingly obsolescent and Russia cannot afford to replace them. Russia will press for still deeper cuts in forthcoming talks on a START III agreement, reasoning that as its own arsenal declines, it makes sense to try to lock in similar reductions in the American stockpile. Russia is struggling to finance the modernization of one strategic missile, but cannot afford an all-out strategic arms race against the United States, and Moscow also faces continuing pressure to shift more money into conventional weapons.
"Many lawmakers were convinced we should not spend money from our meager budget on arms eaten away by rust," said deputy Duma speaker Lyubov Sliska.
In preliminary exchanges over START III, the United States suggested ceilings as high as 2,500 warheads while Russia pressed for limits of 1,500. The new talks begin next week in Geneva.
Russia also will want to "correct" what it considers flaws in START II, according to Alexander Pikayev, an arms expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Russians would like to overturn a ban on multiple-warhead missile systems, since it is more economical for Moscow to mount, for example, three warheads atop a single missile than to build three separate missiles. It also wants to delete permission for the United States to store excess warheads rather than destroy them.
Pikayev and other commentators speculated that Russia might be willing to give up the anti-ballistic missile ban in exchange for deeper American weapons cuts and a reworking of parts of START II. "We should take advantage of the situation where Americans, at last, want something from us," advised Pavel Podvig, an analyst at the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies.
In some Russian eyes, passage of START II will help soften suspicions that Putin is a hostile throwback to Soviet times. He heads to London next week for his first state visit to the West. Putin "is sending a clear message that he is in control of the situation, that his supporters are in control of the Duma and that [his] cabinet will not embrace anti-Americanism, anti-Westernism or isolationism," said a commentator for the Interfax news agency.
Yeltsin, who signed the treaty in 1993, was blocked on ratification by a Communist-dominated lower house. Declining U.S.-Russian relations also got in the way; votes on START II were canceled by the U.S. bombing of Iraq and, last year, of Yugoslavia. Today, Putin depended on a majority consisting of his own Unity party and liberal lawmakers to ratify the treaty. Final ratification by the Federation Council, Russia's upper chamber, is considered a forgone conclusion.
Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov played on Russian feelings of decline. He called today's vote "another defeat for Russia."
Weaned off Warheads
START I required the United States and the Soviet Union to cut their nuclear arsenals almost in half, and by the final phase of START II, the arsenals would be reduced by almost half again. Neither country has yet reached the START I levels.
NUCLEAR WARHEADS
Before START I
United States: 10,563
Russia (U.S.S.R.): 10,271
As of Jan. 1
United States: 7,763
Russia (U.S.S.R.): 6,998
START I Limits
United States: 6,000 each
Russia (U.S.S.R.): 6,000 each
START II Limits
Phase 1
United States: 3,800-4,250 each
Russia (U.S.S.R.): 3,800-4,250 each
START II Limits
Phase 2
United States: 3,000-3,500 each
Russia (U.S.S.R.): 3,000-3,500 each
Chronology of START accords
July 31, 1991: Presidents Bush and Yeltsin sign START I, limiting each side to 6,000 strategic nuclear warheads.
Sept. 27, 1991: President Bush orders "de-alerting" of thousands of warheads.
Jan. 3, 1993: Bush and Yeltsin sign START II, calling for phased reduction to between 3,000 and 3,500 warheads on each side, as well as gradual elimination of intercontinental missiles carrying multiple, independently targeted reentry vehicles, or MIRVs.
Dec. 5, 1994: START I enters into force.
Jan. 26, 1996: Senate ratifies START II.
March 21, 1997: Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin sign protocols extending deadline for START II reductions from Jan. 1, 2003, to Dec. 31, 2007.
SOURCE: State Department
Reporting by Walter Pincus
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Nuclear pact picks up steam in Russia
Margaret Coker -
Cox Washington Bureau
Saturday, April 15, 2000
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/saturday/news_838fc0ce93f260fd00cf.html
Moscow -- With last-minute urging from President-elect Vladimir Putin, Russia's lower house of parliament ended years of deadlock Friday and ratified the START II treaty to scrap thousands of nuclear warheads.
But Putin warned that Russia will abandon all arms control pacts if the United States goes forward with plans to implement a space-based "Star Wars" anti-missile system.
After a 2 1/2-hour closed-door debate, attended by Putin and a phalanx of military brass carrying the "suitcase" with the country's nuclear launch codes, the State Duma voted 288-131 to approve the treaty.
"Putting off the ratification of START II on which the future of our strategic nuclear forces depends would be undesirable and harmful," Putin said. "We don't need an arms race. We faced one before, and if we allow it again it will be worse than last time."
For years, Communists and hard-liners in the Duma had blocked approval of the pact. It now goes to the Federation Council, the upper chamber of parliament, which is expected to approve it, as well.
The vote is a victory for Putin, who has tried to shrug off criticism for Russia's brutal war in Chechnya and to bolster his image as a West-looking politician with plenty of political muscle.
For the Clinton administration, however, the news is a mixed bag. While it gives President Clinton his first foreign policy victory in the area of arms control, it complicates a decision he faces this summer over whether to forge ahead with the controversial multibillion-dollar Star Wars national defense system.
The Duma expressed its opposition to such a system by passing a separate resolution stating that Russia would pull out of all nuclear and conventional arms control agreements if the U.S. does not adhere to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
The ABM treaty forbids the space-based missile defense system that Washington wants to build. U.S. officials believe it is the best defense against nuclear attacks from rogue nations, a scenario seen as more likely in the post-Cold War era.
The White House hopes to soften Russia's opposition to the new anti-missile system when officials meet in Washington at the end of the month. But Putin offered little hope.
"I want to stress in this case, we will have the chance and we will withdraw not only from the START II treaty, but from the whole system of treaties on limitation and control of strategic and conventional weapons," Putin told the Duma shortly before the vote.
START II, negotiated between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and President George Bush in 1993, would cut nuclear stockpiles from 6,000 warheads on each side to no more than 3,500 by 2007.
The U.S. Senate ratified the agreement in 1996, but Yeltsin couldn't get the treaty approved.
After new Duma elections in December, the balance of power swung toward moderates. Putin was able to lead his party and other political blocs to approve the treaty, which is backed by Russia's military leaders.
Russian officials had said that approving START II would strengthen Russia's position in the ABM debate.
Foreign Minister Ivan Ivanov said Friday he would propose alternatives to changing the ABM treaty in the United States, according to the Interfax news agency. He did not elaborate.
Meanwhile, U.S. and Russian diplomats said in Geneva they would hold talks there next week to assess the prospects for launching talks on START III.
The outline of START III was agreed to three years ago. But the hard work is to agree on how deep the further cuts should be. Washington wants to cut arsenals to 2,000-2,500 warheads each, while Russian officials say they are ready to go to 1,500 each.
ON THE WEB: For more information about this topic: www.armscontrol.org
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Clinton Lauds Putin on Start II
April 15, 2000
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Clinton-Putin.html
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (AP) -- President Clinton on Saturday congratulated new Russian President Vladimir Putin on the Russian Duma's approval of the Start II treaty to reduce long-range nuclear arms. The White House said the two leaders will meet soon for their first summit.
Clinton, on a trip to California to permanently set aside 34 groves of giant sequoia trees as a national monument, spoke to Putin by telephone from Air Force One before leaving Bakersfield. The call, at about noon, lasted 10 minutes, aides said.
``The president noted Mr. Putin's personal involvement on this and said, 'This is an important step forward toward the reduction of nuclear arms,''' said White House spokesman Jake Siewert.
The treaty, dating from 1993, would cut 5,000 warheads from U.S. and Russian arsenals. A follow-up pact could trip the total by an additional 1,000 to 1,500.
Siewert said Clinton told Putin he hoped to have further discussions soon on ``their shared agenda'' on economic reform, further nuclear arms reduction, and other security matters.
Siewert said Clinton knows difficult issues are involved but he hopes he can, ``find a way forward.'' Clinton also mentioned several ``problem areas'' that he expects to discuss with Putin including Chechnya, Siewert said.
Clinton is expected to go to Moscow in June to meet with Putin, according to administration officials, although the dates and site have not been announced officially.
Clinton and Putin agreed to meet sometime before world leaders gather in Okinawa, Japan, July 21-23 for the annual meeting of industrialized powers, Siewert said. He said the two leaders also would talk in Okinawa.
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Russia's Putin Insists on U.S. Arms Compliance
April 15, 2000
By Ron Popeski
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/r/000415/07/news-arms-russia
MOSCOW (Reuters) - President-elect Vladimir Putin said on Saturday Russia would only remove nuclear missiles from active service once it was satisfied Washington was meeting its arms control treaty obligations, Interfax news agency reported.
Putin, who is about to set off on his first foreign trip with a newly ratified arms pact under his belt, said: "We will observe very carefully how our partners are fulfilling their obligations.
"Not a single missile will be removed from active service before the end of its normal lifetime if we see that our partners are not fulfilling their obligations at the same level," Putin told reporters a day after the Russian parliament ratified the long-delayed START-2 disarmament pact.
The passage of the treaty was a diplomatic triumph for Putin, who leaves on Sunday for Britain on his first foreign trip since taking over from Boris Yeltsin on New Year's Eve.
He will also make stops in two important former Soviet republics, Belarus on the way to London and Ukraine on the way back.
Putin was quoted by Interfax as saying the visit to Britain was in response to Prime Minister Tony