Quote of the day:

"We're here, we're wet, cancel the debt," protesters chanted as they arrived at 20th Street and Pennsylvania, just west of the World Bank and IMF buildings. Several hundred D.C police officers, camouflage-clad National Guardsmen and uniformed Secret Service personnel moved in to reinforce the barricades as the crowd pressed against them....

http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-04/18/085l-041800-idx.html

--------

Nerve poison leaves telltale evidence

By environment correspondent
Alex Kirby
Tuesday, 18 April, 2000, 09:01 GMT 10:01 UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_708000/708379.stm

A US team has found changes in the blood of a child with organophosphate (OP) poisoning, which could make it easier for other patients to prove exposure to similar poisons.

The changes, a series of antibodies, provide physical evidence of the neurological damage caused by the poison.

This is thought to be the first physical evidence discovered of the neurological damage many believe is caused by OP exposure and related conditions, like Gulf War Syndrome.

The researchers say the antibodies' discovery "may provide a useful marker for diagnosis of chemically-induced neurological disorders, and may help in the development of appropriate treatment".

The research team, whose work is reported in the journal Environmental Epidemiology and Toxicology, was led by Professor Mohamed Abou-Donia, of Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina.

Not imaginary

Professor Abou-Donia told BBC News Online: "This is a potentially very significant discovery.

"Until now, doctors have told people suffering from similar conditions that their symptoms were all in their heads.

"We've shown that a bio-marker exists, and it could help a range of patients to persuade their doctors of the reality of what they're suffering."

The patient he and his team examined was a five-year-old boy who had been exposed to tar and to an OP insecticide, chlorpyrifos, when he was a year old.

The tar had been shallowly buried in earth where the boy played, and the insecticide had been used several times inside his home.

By the time he was 14 months old, two months after his exposure, his family thought he was unsteady on his feet, and his speech, which had been normal, was deteriorating.

He was also irritable. At 17 months he was unable to walk without falling. By 26 months, however, there was some improvement in his speech, and his irritability had lessened.

His neurological problems were judged to be consistent with OP ester-induced delayed neurotoxicity (OPIDN).

Blood samples

Five years after his exposure, when he was seven years old, the boy's intellect was defined as lower than his family's, and he was placed in a special school because of "a mild degree of mental retardation".

The researchers tested his blood for the presence of antibodies against three proteins characteristic of neurodegenerative disorders.

They used blood samples from the boy's 6- and 9-year-old brothers, his 32-year-old father and 34-year-old mother as controls.

Antibodies against two of the proteins were found in the boy's blood, and in that of several of the controls. No antibodies against the third were found in any of the samples.

The researchers say: "In healthy individuals, the presence of autoantibodies against [these] proteins is age-dependent: they increase with age. In the present study, more of the antibodies were detected in the mother's serum than in any of the other controls."

But it was the boy himself who showed by far the highest levels.

Elizabeth Sigmund, of the OP Information Network, told BBC News Online: "This is a wonderful breakthrough.

"We have 800 people on our database, mainly sheep farmers who have been exposed to OPs while dipping their animals.

"This news is vitally important for them, and for veterans from the Gulf.

"They're chronically ill, and for years they've been struggling to prove the cause of their condition to their doctors.

"Now it looks as though they'll be able to do that."

-------- activists

CITIZENS GO TO COURT TO BLOCK PLAN TO FLUSH PLUTONIUM TO PUBLIC PIPELINES

For Immediate Release:
Monday, April 17th, 2000

Contacts:

Lee Hill, Attorney, 303-449-9244 Jed Gilman, PACE 5-477, 303-690-5504 Charlotte Hartman, NSA, 518-329-2120 Leslie Hanks, BREACH, 303-364-2138 Adrienne Anderson, former Metro Wastewater Board member, 303-321-9178

Denver, Colorado. On Friday, April 14, 2000, outraged citizens went to court seeking a preliminary injunction to block a controversial plan by Denver, Aurora and the Metro Wastewater Reclamation District to pump plutonium-contaminated hazardous wastewater from the Denver-owned Lowry Landfill into public sewer lines this week.

Under the plan, a portion of the contaminated water would be diverted to irrigate local parks and recreation areas, or released to the South Platte River. The remainder would settle out in sludge at the sewage plant along South Platte River and then be trucked to Colorado farm fields as fertilizer or bagged and sold to the public for home garden use.

The urgent action was prompted by a letter Metro Wastewater sent recently to concerned citizens that the plan to dispose of Lowry Landfill's contaminated waste water would be implemented as early as this week, in spite of public opposition since the secret deal was first discovered and made known in 1996 by a whistleblower on the Metro Wastewater Board.

A Motion for Preliminary Injunction was filed late Friday in Denver District Court by PACE Local 5-477, a union representing workers at the Metro sewage plant; two long-time farming and ranching families in the small, rural town of Deer Trail in eastern Colorado, whose properties neighbor Metro's domestic and industrial sewage sludge spreading operations there; the National Sludge Alliance, whose affiliates have actively opposed the EPA's increasingly controversial policy of using domestic and industrial sewage sludge as farm fertilizer; the Student Environmental Action Coalition, a national organization of student groups at college campuses nationwide whose chapter at the University of Colorado at Boulder has petitioned against the plan; BREACH (Bombing Range Action for Community Health), residents living on and near the Lowry Bombing Range and Lowry Landfill in Arapahoe County; and a Denver resident and Metro Wastewater retiree angry that her former co-workers' health is at risk, with the potential for irreparable contamination of the city's public wastewater infrastructure, where any clean-up costs would be shifted to Denver metro area taxpayers connected to the system.

"Our workers at Metro Wastewater are not trained to handle nuclear wastes, are not even covered by OSHA, and now plutonium is going to be piped to the sewers?" said Jed Gilman, President of PACE Local 5-477, which represents Metro Wastewater's laboratory workers. Leslie Hanks of BREACH and a former Arapahoe County Planning Commissioner added, "Despite unanimous citizen opposition, Metro Wastewater issued a permit to Denver as the owner of a dangerous Superfund Site to release the deadliest poisons on the face of the planet into our public sewers, onto our farmland, and into our food supply. We've tried everything to stop this crazy plan, and nothing has stopped them!"

Joining outraged Colorado citizens, Charlotte Hartman, Coordinator of the National Sludge Alliance, said, "This precedent-setting permit in Denver will open the floodgates around the country for the cheap disposal of radionuclides that will transfer the liability from the polluters to the public and displays a callous disregard for public health and safety."

At issue is the clean-up of the massively-contaminated Lowry Landfill Superfund Site, where the public plan agreed upon in 1994 had been to treat the extensive groundwater on-site. The plan was secretly altered in 1996, when a confidential deal was struck between the Lowry Landfill's top polluters and liable parties to instead pump the contaminated wastewater to the public sewer systems as a cheaper option, using a controversial provision of the federal Clean Water Act that in 1993 reclassified sewage sludge once designated hazardous waste as "beneficial biosolids" deemed safe to be spread as "fertilizer" on farmlands producing crops for human consumption. Farmers and rural citizens all throughout the nation are protesting this policy, and a recent EPA Inspector General report concluded that "EPA cannot assure the public that current practices are protective of public health and the environment."

The Motion for Preliminary Injunction seeks to bar defendants Metro Wastewater, Denver and Aurora from releasing contaminated groundwater from Lowry Landfill under a permit which was issued by one of the largest dumpers at Lowry Landfill, Metro Wastewater, to the owner of the Lowry Landfill, the City and County of Denver. The permit allows the sewer disposal of manmade radioactive wastes such as plutonium, americium-241 (a breakdown product of Plutonium-241) depleted uranium, tritium, Strontium-90. Under Colorado's Radiation Regulations, radioactive elements which are not readily soluble in water are prohibited from release to public sewer systems.

Concerned citizens, union workers, students and farmers involved in this effort to protect Colorado communities, worksites, productive farm land and the nation's food supply from this dangerous radioactive and toxic contamination threat will host a news conference with their attorney, Lee Hill, at the Metro Wastewater Reclamation District's sewage plant on the South Platte River, at the confluence of the South Platte River and Metro Wastewater's discharges.

"The Lowry Landfill permit will permit catastrophe," said Lee Hill, attorney for the Plaintiffs. "The Plaintiffs hope this action will clean up Denver's dirty deal, and put the Lowry Landfill clean-up on the right track for the public's health and safety."

NEWS CONFERENCE WHEN: Wednesday, April 19th, 2000
TIME: 10:00 a.m.
PLACE: Metro Wastewater Sewage Plant 6450 York Street Denver, Colorado

-------- britain

Problems Spur Brit Nuke Co. Changes

The Associated Press
Tuesday, April 18, 2000; 5:30 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000418/aponline173001_000.htm

LONDON -- A state-run nuclear company on Tuesday replaced eight directors and hired a new safety chief following a critical government report and a series of problems at a reprocessing plant.

"This has been a wakeup call," said Norman Askew, the new chief executive of the state-run company, British Nuclear Fuels Ltd.

Askew was appointed in February after a report by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate complained of a "lack of safety culture" at the Sellafield reprocessing plant.

However, uncertainty remained over whether the northwest England plant can regain the confidence of foreign customers and resolve a current dispute with Japan, which bought a consignment of fuel with falsified records.

In February, the plant was shut down after news that workers falsified records about the quality of the consignment of uranium and plutonium mixed oxide fuel delivered to Japan's Kansai Electric Power Company.

Switzerland and Germany have halted fuel shipments to Sellafield since the revelation about the falsified consignment - which Japan wants to send back.

Five employees were fired, and all staff are undergoing retraining.

In a report called Going Forward Safely, British Nuclear Fuels announced the shake-up of managers and management style, and the appointment of 70 extra staff to improve safety.

Askew, who said it would take up to two years to implement all the recommended changes, did not rule out taking back the consignment from Japan.

----

Blair Steps Into Russia, U.S. Missile Row

LONDON, Apr 18, 2000
Reuters
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=152231

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Monday he was ready to mediate in a U.S.-Russian row over Washington's missile defense plan, while Russia made clear it was ready for at least some concessions.

Blair, speaking after talks with visiting President-elect Vladimir Putin, said he understood both the U.S. commitment to create a national missile shield and Russia's concerns that such plans could ruin a cornerstone arms control pact.

"As I said to President Putin during the course of our talks, our role in this is very much to try and build understanding of respective points of view, both of Russia and the United States," Blair told a joint news conference.

Ahead of Putin's visit to London, undertaken before the new Russian leader's inauguration set for May 7, diplomatic sources in both capitals said he might try to ask Blair for mediation.

"I believe that our role is to try and bring people together so that we can resolve this," Blair said. "This is best done in a quiet and patient and diplomatic way."

U.S. plans to set up a missile defense system to safeguard itself against potential attacks by rogue states violates the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.

Washington wants the ABM treaty to be amended. Russia has so far ruled out any changes to the pact, urging the United States to drop its plan of the new missile shield.

MOSCOW WARNS OF THREAT TO START-2

Russia has said it would quit the 1993 START-2 arms reduction pact it ratified on Friday after a seven-year delay and reconsider its obligations under similar treaties if the United States violated the ABM.

"The START-2 ratification bill clearly and unequivocally says that ratification is tightly linked with ruling out the creation of national anti-missile systems," Putin said.

"If it is introduced Russia will consider itself free from this pact and other obligations."

But five minutes later Putin made clear there was an escape route to avoid confrontation with the United States over ABM.

"Our legislation strictly links these two things (ABM and START-2), but I want to draw your attention to the fact that at the time, at the proposal of the American side, we have drawn a line between strategic and non-strategic defense," he said.

"In this very context we are ready to conduct a dialogue."

Some experts said the idea of using smaller non-strategic defense systems to avert a threat from rogue states without ruining the ABM had been discussed at an unofficial level for quite a while.

But they said it was the first time a national leader had gone public with the scheme.

"Strategic in this context could mean: 'we are a strategic nuclear power, and you are too, but if you are talking about a system that would keep out rogue missiles we could live with it'," said a well-informed foreign policy expert in London.

Russian officials have said that Moscow is keen to solve the controversy over the ABM with U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration. The issue will be high on agenda when Putin and Clinton meet in July.

----

Blair Noncommittal on Missile Shield
Hosting Russia's Putin, British Leader Avoids Advocating U.S. Position

By T. R. Reid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 18, 2000; Page A20
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-04/18/083l-041800-idx.html

LONDON, April 17-Over decades of their "special relationship" with the United States, British prime ministers generally have marched in step with Washington on major defense initiatives. But today, Prime Minister Tony Blair signaled he may not be willing to stand up and salute the U.S. proposal for a national missile defense system.

As he hosted his new friend Vladimir Putin, the acting Russian president and president-elect who was on a whirlwind visit to London, Blair took a studiously noncommittal stance on the missile issue and indicated he plans to act not as a U.S. advocate, but rather as a middleman between Washington and Moscow.

"I believe that our role is to try to bring people together so that we can resolve this," Blair said at a news conference, with Putin at his side. "As I told President Putin during the course of our talks, our role in this is very much to try to build understanding of respective points of view, both of Russia and the United States."

The Russians vehemently oppose the U.S. idea of a national missile shield--sometimes called "Son of Star Wars"--arguing that it would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which they see as the cornerstone of nuclear stability and arms control. Britain and other West European governments also have expressed concern about modifying the treaty, citing the possibility of destabilizing effects.

For London to adopt the role of honest broker between the United States and Russia would mark a new stage of Blair's effort to redefine Britain's role on the world stage. He has said recently that his country should serve as a "pivot" nation that can deal equally with East and West, Europe and America.

Driving home the Russian position, Putin told reporters before returning to Moscow that his government ties the ABM Treaty--which prohibits national missile defense networks--to further reductions in U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. The State Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, ratified the START II nuclear arms agreement last Friday, opening the way for START III talks on still further reductions that opened today in Geneva.

"Our legislation strictly links these two things [the ABM Treaty and START II], but I want to draw your attention to the fact that at the time, at the proposal of the American side, we have drawn a line between strategic and nonstrategic defense," he said, without defining what he meant by strategic. "In this very context we are ready to conduct a dialogue."

Putin also used the bully pulpit of the trip to offer an impassioned defense of his country's war in the separatist region of Chechnya and even excoriated other nations for not joining in on Moscow's side.

With Blair looking uncomfortable beside him, Putin declared that "the actions of Russia are a struggle against extremism, which is a threat to the Caucasus, the Middle East and the whole world. . . . It is a struggle against elements of global terrorism. Russia here is alone in its fighting, and that is wrong."

Putin continued in the same agitated vein at great length, until Blair finally got a word in at the joint news conference. "You will have all heard the passion with which President Putin has defended the Russian role in Chechnya," Blair observed.

Blair has been criticized by some politicians and pundits here for inviting the acting Russian president to visit London while the controversial war in Chechnya continues. But the British leader said the strong feeling in Moscow against the Chechen separatists was a key reason for his meeting with Putin.

"Some say that because of our concerns about Chechnya we should keep some distance from Moscow," Blair said. "While I share those concerns, I believe that the best way to . . . get results is by engaging with Russia and not isolating Russia."

Blair has gone out of his way to "engage" Putin, and the two young leaders--Putin is 47, and Blair is three weeks short of his 47th birthday--apparently developed a working relationship even before the Russian was elected last month. By contrast, Putin is not scheduled to meet with President Clinton until he visits Moscow for a summit June 4-5.

Blair traveled to St. Petersburg in March to see Putin; today's reciprocal trip to London was Putin's first Western visit since he was elected.

-------- china

China Steps Up Arms Sales Position

April 18, 2000
By CHARLES HUTZLER,
Associated Press Writer
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/ap/000418/14/int-taiwan-us-defense

BEIJING (AP) - China called on the United States to end all arms sales to the rival Taiwanese government Tuesday, a day after Washington went part way in meeting China's demands by deciding not to sell Taiwan advanced Aegis destroyers.

Word that President Clinton will forgo the Aegis sale disappointed Taiwanese leaders, but it brought hope for a cooling of tensions with China. In Washington, it sparked worries of a fight with Congress over support for the island.

In Beijing, which has been trying to isolate Taiwan to pressure it into unifying with the mainland after 51 years of separation, Clinton's move was seen as insufficient. While denying Taiwan the Aegis-equipped warships, U.S. officials said they would sell the island long-range radar to detect missile launches as well as provide training and technical help.

"The Chinese government urges the U.S. government ... to stop all arms sales to Taiwan, including the long-range warning radar and Aegis, so as not to obstruct the improvement of China-U.S. relations," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi told reporters at a briefing Tuesday.

Sun reminded Washington to abide by an 18-year-old agreement on limiting arms sales to Taiwan. He said Beijing had "taken note" of reports on Washington's decision on Aegis.

Washington's decision to withhold Aegis marked the first of two successes for Chinese diplomatic pressure this week. Rallying developing nations, Beijing also prevailed Tuesday in blocking the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva from discussing a U.S. motion to censure China for human rights abuses.

As part of its pressure campaign against Taiwan, Beijing in recent months have stepped up threats to attack the island if it moved toward outright independence. Chinese officials also have accused Washington of emboldening separatist sentiment through arms sales - an argument Sun repeated.

The destroyers had come in for particular criticism. At one point a senior Chinese official indirectly hinted that China might attack the warships if they were sold to Taiwan.

The Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are equipped with the Aegis system, which includes an advanced radar, the SPY-1, able to search for, track and engage more than 100 targets simultaneously. The ships also come with Tomahawk cruise missiles like those used against Iraq and Yugoslavia. China fears the system would undercut the tactical edge drawn from its rapidly growing arsenal of missiles.

In reviewing Taiwan's annual arms shopping list, the Pentagon recommended that the administration put off Taiwan's request to buy four of the billion-dollar apiece destroyers, as well as submarines and anti-submarine aircraft, to avoid angering China.

In Taiwan, Washington's reluctance to sell the warships was seen as a possible lift to strained relations between China and the island.

"I think this is a win-win situation" for Taiwan and China, said Andrew Yang, a Taipei-based senior military analyst at the Council of Advanced Policy Studies, a think tank with close ties to Taiwan's Defense Ministry. He said Beijing would have been furious about the deal.

Selling Aegis this year would have been particularly provocative. Beijing is already nervous about Taiwan's newly elected president, Chen Shui-bian, whose party has previously backed formal independence. Chen, who will be sworn in May 20, is under pressure to improve relations with China.

But Washington's decision also added to the debate over what Taiwan needs to fend off Beijing. While China is believed to be years away from having sufficient force to invade the island, foreign military analysts have criticized Taiwan's military for not making good use of the advanced weaponry already purchased.

Vocal Taiwan backers in Congress, where support for the island runs deep, criticized the Clinton administration for compromising Taiwan's defense. A spokesman for Sen. Jesse Helms, the conservative North Carolina Republican who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, suggested Tuesday that the administration may have violated a U.S. law requiring Washington help Taiwan maintain an adequate defense.

The Senate's Republican leader, Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, is expected to call for a vote on an arms package for Taiwan. The Senate is also due to take up a measure, the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act, that would strengthen ties between the U.S. and Taiwanese militaries.

The Clinton administration has threatened a veto, and China has warned that approval of the act would harm relations.

----

China Reacts to Taiwan Arms Buy

APRIL 18, 10:56 EST
By CHARLES HUTZLER
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS73U7FF80

BEIJING (AP) - In a low-key response, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said the government had ``taken note'' of reports that Washington would not sell Aegis warships to Taiwan.

Sun also urged the United States to stop all arms sales to Taiwan, including long-range warning radar, ``so as not to obstruct the improvement of China-U.S. relations.''

Washington's decision not to sell Taiwan high-tech destroyers this year could help ease tensions between the island and China and spur urgent improvements in the Taiwanese military, analysts said today.

Beijing has long protested sales of any kind of weaponry to Taiwan, which it considers to be a renegade province that should reunify with the mainland. The two sides split amid civil war 51 years ago.

The United States is one of the few nations that risks China's ire and sells Taiwan defensive weapons.

Washington is considering what arms it will sell Taipei this year, and senior officials told The Associated Press on Monday that four $1 billion Aegis destroyers won't be part of the package.

Taiwan's military declined to comment specifically on the U.S. weapons sale until there was an official announcement.

Washington's reluctance to sell the warships this year could help improve relations between China and Taiwan because Beijing would have been furious about the deal, said Andrew Yang, a Taipei-based senior military analyst at the Council of Advanced Policy Studies, a think tank with close ties with Taiwan's Defense Ministry.

``I think this is a win-win situation'' for Taiwan and China, Yang said.

The analyst said that many did not expect America to sell ships this year as a new president, Chen Shui-bian, takes office in Taiwan. Chen, who will be sworn in May 20, is under great pressure to improve relations with China.

The Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are equipped with the Aegis system, which includes an advanced radar, the SPY-1, able to search for, track and engage more than 100 targets simultaneously. The warships also feature Tomahawk cruise missiles of the kind the U.S. Navy have used against Iraq and Yugoslavia.

A senior U.S. official, insisting on anonymity, said that America would sell long-range radar, known as PAVE PAWS, to Taiwan. Washington also approved Taiwanese training and help in integrating the $18 billion worth of weapons already sold to Taiwan, the official said.

Damon Bristow, a researcher with Britain's Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies, said selling the Aegis ships to Taiwan would be a mistake because the military would not be able to find enough trained sailors to crew the destroyers.

``There's no point in buying a Porsche if you've only been driving for six months,'' Bristow said.

Washington's decision to approve more training for the Taiwanese and to sell the sophisticated radar was in line with what Bristow suggested would be a wise course for now. Taiwan should stop focusing on big-ticket items and try to do more basic things, such as building up bunkers and improving communication between the army, navy and air force, he said.

Bristow, who has spent the past six months in Taiwan researching the military, said the Taiwanese have had difficulties integrating the expensive weaponry they've already purchased and need more training about how best to use the arms.

Taiwanese military spokesman Kung Fan-ding today declined to discuss the requests for weapons. But Kung said Taiwan urgently needs a better anti-missile system.

``The military has always done its best to acquire any weapons that would help build up its anti-missile defenses,'' Kung said.

----

On the Net:
Government Informartion Office of Taiwan at http://www.gio.gov.tw/

-------- colombia

No peace with Colombia's paramilitary strategy

PAUL WOLF Apex, N.C.
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-2000419192644.htm#4

Drug czar Barry R. McCaffrey's shameless April 14th op-ed column, "Aid Colombia" ignored the potentially disastrous effects all that military aid could have on the fierce political violence raging in that country.

The Clinton administration's $1.6 billion emergency military aid proposal falls far short of the real plan Colombia needs to avoid a bloody and pointless civil war. Colombia must look for ways to end the escalating political violence, which has only been worsened by a terror campaign directed at rebellious civilian populations.

Colombia's counterinsurgency strategy includes the use of murder, disappearances, massacres and the deliberate, massive displacement of guerrilla-supporting populations, through the use of illegal "paramilitary" units.

Encouraged and often under the command of the Colombian military, according to the report of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Office of Colombia, paramilitary groups assassinate and massacre "subversives" - those thought to be sympathetic to the guerrillas, in a war neither Colombia nor the United States wants to discuss in any detail. Numerous Colombian military officers have become notorious war criminals by anyone's standards, yet enjoy total impunity for crimes they have committed against the same people they are supposed to be protecting.

Colombia's parallel strategy of forcibly displacing rural populations also violates international humanitarian law and causes tragic, irreparable damage to Colombian society. Of the more than 1 million internally displaced Colombians, two-thirds are minors. Only one in eight has access to education. One in three has access to health care. These poor children suffer from the neglect of the Colombian state and the ignorance of Washington policy-makers. Many are recruited into the ranks of the guerrilla or paramilitary militias, renewing the cycle of violence.

The Colombian peace process must move beyond publicity stunts to address these and other profound problems facing Colombia today. The Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, should use the proposed cease-fire to further the Common Agenda agreed in May 1999, and the United States should support the peace process.

Democracy and negotiation are key to relieving the pressure. Colombia must find a way to manage strikes, demonstrations and even terrorist attacks without resorting to acts of terror itself. Until Colombia abandons its paramilitary strategy, there is no hope for peace.

-------- croatia

War Crimes Tribunal Finds Remains

April 18, 2000
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Croatia-War-Crimes.html

GOSPIC, Croatia (AP) -- Investigators for the U.N. war crimes tribunal unearthed human remains at a suspected mass grave site while searching for bodies of ethnic Serbs allegedly killed during the 1991 Serbo-Croat war, a tribunal official said Tuesday.

During the investigation, ``we discovered ... human remains'' at a location in the village of Obradovic Varos, the official, Steve Chambers, told Croatian state television.

Chambers could not say how many people might have been buried at the site near Gospic or provide any further information. He added that the exhumation was continuing.

Between 60 and 120 people -- mostly Serbs, but also some Croats -- disappeared in late 1991 and were presumed killed and buried near Gospic, 60 miles southwest of the capital, Zagreb.

The digging is ``focused on discovering a suspected mass grave and on exhumation of bodies that may be found'' in the village of Obradovic Varos, which is near Gospic, Croatia's government said in a statement.

Croatia's minority Serbs took up arms in 1991 to oppose Croatia's independence from the former Yugoslavia.

Backed by Slobodan Milosevic's government in Belgrade, Serb rebels slaughtered thousands of Croats. Human rights groups believe that Croats killed Serb civilians in Gospic in revenge for the deaths of their ethnic kin.

The investigation comes three years after a former military intelligence official, Milan Levar, and two colleagues told the tribunal and Croatia's media about what happened in Gospic. Most of the victims were local Serbs, but also Croats who disapproved of the killings, they said.

Levar and his associates blamed the wartime military commanders in Gospic, Gen. Mirko Norac and Col. Tihomir Oreskovic, for orchestrating the murderous campaign. They also claimed that former top government officials, including the late president, Franjo Tudjman, and late defense minister, Gojko Susak, knew about the killings.

Norac and Oreskovic, as well as former government officials, have denied any wrongdoing.

Tudjman's government had banned tribunal investigations in Gospic. After his death and the ouster of his party from power, Croatia gave U.N. investigators permission to investigate the slayings.

A Croatian investigative judge and a district attorney are participating in the investigation. Reporters are not allowed to approach the digging site.

-------- depleted uranium

HEALTH PROBLEMS OF KFOR MEMBERS DUE TO DEPLETED URANIUM

April 17, 2000
Tanjug
From: "Steve Wagner" stevewagner@swords-to-plowshares.org

BELGRADE, A group of British KFOR soldiers will sue the British Ministry of Defense for the health problems caused by the exposure to Depleted Uranium which was used in antitank rockets during the last year's NATO bombardment of Kosovo and Metohija, says The Sunday Times, BBC reports.

Twelve British soldiers will bring the charges, out of which 11 are still in Kosovo and Metohija, says The Sunday Times. The paper says that Belgium has already subjected its 14,000 soldiers deployed in Kosovo and Metohija to tests and that there were some cases of health problems caused by the exposure to Depleted Uranium in the locations which were not considered as particularly risky.

However, the local population is facing the greatest danger, The Sunday Times conveys the assessment of an American expert.

-------- germany

German nuclear deal elusive but seen imminent

GERMANY: April 18, 2000
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=6407

BERLIN - The German government said on Monday it was still confident of an agreement on phasing out nuclear power despite a denial from the energy industry that a deal had been reached to spread the withdrawal over 30 years.

A government source said there was optimism that scheduled talks with nuclear industry officials on May 2 would pave the way for a final deal before the summer, the deadline the government has imposed for a compromise.

"There is every reason to be optimistic that the working level talks can be wound up on May 2," the source said, adding that Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder would meet industry chiefs to sign a conclusive deal after that.

A leading German energy official earlier quashed reports of a deal with the government to close down Germany's 19 nuclear power plants within 30 years of their start-up.

"The outcome of negotiations remains open. What is clear is that phasing out plants after 30 years or after the equivalent in volume production is inconceivable for us," Ulrich Hartmann, head of utility Veba AG, said in a statement.

BALL IN GREENS' COURT

Germany's ZDF television reported over the weekend that a deal had been reached on phasing out the plants within 30 years but that a plant at Muelheim-Karlich, which was removed from the power grid after 13 months in operation, was a sticking point.

The government source said there was resistance to an industry demand to spread the theoretical remaining timespan of Muelheim-Karlich's life across the rest of the industry, effectively delaying the withdrawal a further one and a half years.

"The ball's in the Greens' court at the moment," the source said of the junior coalition partner's insistence that the withdrawal be spread over no longer than 30 years, already too slow for many in the ecologist party.

The energy industry has threatened legal claims for any financial damage caused by the withdrawal, a major election commitment of Schroeder's "red-green" coalition.

Government lawyers believe, however, that by spreading the move over 30 years of a plant's working life, they can avoid claims for compensation.

Schroeder has said that if no deal is reached with industry by the parliamentary break in July, the government will proceed with legislation anyway.

Aside from Veba, the three other leading nuclear energy suppliers are Viag, RWE and EnBW.

Story by Clifford Coonan

REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

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Taxpayer watchdog says some protest groups get grants

April 18, 2000
By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/default-2000418223546.htm

At least a dozen groups participating in the protests against global capitalism over the last few days receive federal grant money, according to a study by a taxpayers watchdog group.

The Alexandria, Va.-based, nonpartisan National Taxpayers Union Foundation calculated that at least $15 million in federal grants goes to the groups, which include such divergent causes as the Rural Coalition and Friends of the Earth.

"Many Americans may be indifferent to this weekend's protest against economic globalization, but they now have more than 15 million reasons to care - and each one represents some taxpayer's hard-earned dollar," said Thomas E. McClusky, senior policy analyst for the taxpayers union and the study's author.

But some of the groups named in the study say they had nothing to do with the protests against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

"This is a complete lie," said Marty Algaze, manager of communications for Gay Men's Health Crisis, a New York-based group that accounted for $5 million of the taxpayer union's federal grant calculation. "We have nothing to do with this demonstration [and] we don't get anywhere near $5 million from the federal government for our programs."

A spokeswoman for the Environmental Alliance for Senior Involvement, also listed as part of the demonstrations in the study, said her group was not involved in the protests, adding that the $418,578 grant figure the taxpayers union used was from a previous fiscal year.

Four of the dozen organizations Mr. McClusky cited - Earth Action Coalition, the AFL-CIO, the Rural Coalition and Friends of the Earth - were listed as sponsors or endorsers of the protests on the "official" protest Web site, www.a16.org.

Mr. McClusky said he contacted the rest of the organizations and was told they were all going to be part of the demonstrations. The study is available at the group's Web site at www.ntu.org.

Some of the groups Mr. McClusky named in the study defended their involvement in the protests and their federal grants, saying the two are entirely unrelated.

"We were not a sponsor of this thing. It's not like we put any money in it or invested any staff time," said Lorette Picciano, executive director of the Rural Coalition, which Mr. McClusky said received almost $375,000 in federal grants.

Ms. Picciano said two staff members did take part in the demonstrations this weekend, but said their involvement is not related to the organization's federal grants. That money, she said, is used on programs to save small farms, for example.

Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth, said taxpayers also should question U.S. grants to the IMF and World Bank.

Despite denials from some of the groups, Mr. McClusky said his figures could be just a scratch on the surface, since it is tough to pin down some of the groups that sent protesters and to identify how much federal contract funds they receive, if any.

The group also estimates yesterday's protests, which shut down federal offices bounded by 12th and 23rd streets and Constitution Avenue and K Street, cost the federal government $20 million in holiday pay. Workers in that region were given the day off with pay. Other federal workers in the city were allowed to use a vacation day.

The District is seeking $5 million from the federal government to cover costs associated with the protesters. Congress has already approved some money for Seattle, to cover the costs of policing and cleaning up after the demonstrations there in December. More than 580 persons were arrested and more than $10 million in damage was reported when rioting erupted during protests against the World Trade Organization.

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Protest Q & A

Monday, April 17, 2000; Page A06
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-04/17/085l-041700-idx.html

Here are some questions--and answers--about what to expect today when anti-global capitalism demonstrators continue holding a series of civil disobedience and other protests in Washington:

Q. What are the protesters planning and where?

A. Demonstrators said they plan to disrupt the spring meetings of the World Bank today. Yesterday, they blockaded streets and surged police lines near the meeting of the International Monetary Fund. In another incident, officers fired pepper spray.....

Q. What are police advising average citizens to do if they accidentally get caught up in the street demonstrations and police reactions to them?

A. Police advise that you postpone your visit to the area around the IMF and World bank buildings if you do not intend to demonstrate and have no important business there during the main protest times.

Q. I agree with the goals of the protesters and want to participate or help in some way. Whom should I contact?

A. You can look on the protesters' Web site, www.a16.org, which details all scheduled events and tells how to donate supplies or offer housing to out-of-town demonstrators. A recorded message lists upcoming events at this hot line: 202-544-9360.

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Protests End With Voluntary Arrests
Police, Demonstrators Say They Met Goals

By David Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 18, 2000; Page A01
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-04/18/157l-041800-idx.html

After three months of furious preparations by police and protesters for what many in Washington had feared might be a Seattle-style, tear gas-drenched battle over global capitalism, demonstrations wound down in relative peace yesterday with a negotiated climax involving voluntary arrests.

Police officials and protest organizers both declared victory. The demonstrators succeeded in bringing a good chunk of the city to a standstill for two days and disrupting a workday as police largely stood back and let them march and chant. A few thousand participated yesterday, far fewer than occupied the deserted city streets Sunday.

By the end of the days of protest against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, police had arrested nearly 1,300 protesters, had raided their headquarters and confiscated some supplies and had resorted to pepper spray and baton blows in several confrontations.

Police took credit for maintaining order and protecting the right to protest, while demonstrators celebrated raising awareness about a rainbow of issues connected directly or indirectly to the World Bank and the IMF.

A moment that seemed to sum up a chaotic, quixotic and sometimes scary week came early yesterday afternoon, during a driving rain at a barricade separating police and National Guard troops from thousands of taunting demonstrators. Over a steel, bicycle-rack-like barricade at Pennsylvania Avenue and 20th Street NW, the final stand-down was hammered out by D.C. Executive Assistant Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer and a woman dressed as a tree.

"I'm so proud of the men and women of my department and all the law enforcement in this region," said Chief Charles H. Ramsey, "that if I had to do it over again and write a script, I would have written it the same way. I make no apologies for anything that anybody did during this time." Mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) also praised the police performance.

Ramsey said the demonstrators were skilled at what they do. "You have to experience it to fully appreciate just how well organized they are, how many different ways they can come at you," he said.

At a news conference late in the afternoon, protest organizers gave themselves high marks and condemned the police for overreacting to generally nonviolent civil disobedience. "I don't know how low the scale goes, but I think the police are kind of below the scale here," said Patrick Reinsborough, an activist with the Rainforest Action Network.

The organizers graded their own effort "A-plus" for bringing the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and their policies to the attention of the general public. They said it did not matter that they failed in their specific goal of shutting down the organizations' spring meetings.

The organizers said they had continued the momentum of a movement that first revealed itself during last year's World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. The next round in the struggle, organizers have said, will take place at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.

The police spent $5 million in overtime, plus $1 million in new riot protection gear, and began preparing shortly after the disruptions in Seattle. Preparations for the Mobilization for Global Justice, as the D.C. campaign was called, began about the same time. The protesters' budget was about $120,000, plus donations of food, supplies, offices and personnel.

The protesters' message is that the loan polices of the bank and the fund have a range of unintended consequences that may harm the environment, displace native people and lead to cuts in health and education spending in poor nations. Defined by many left-leaning passions, the protesters are united by a shared mistrust of the influence of corporate America.

Washington could not help but pay attention, sometimes with reluctance or irritation. Police cleared 60 blocks of traffic yesterday, after closing 90 blocks during larger demonstrations Sunday.

Asked if he thought the disruption of the city was worth it, Ramsey said, "We didn't lose the city, so as far as I'm concerned, it was worth it."

For many demonstrators, the day began at 4 a.m., when they were supposed to assemble at Dupont Circle for unspecified maneuvers. Police apparently had learned of the rendezvous, because about 10 marked and unmarked cars had the circle staked out. Dispirited, the demonstrators dispersed.

Later in the morning, the seemingly aimless wanderings of protest groups led to meeting up with their peers, and there were scattered confrontations with police.

In one, near K and 18th streets NW, Rob Fish, 21, of Stanhope, N.J., said he was taking pictures of police activity. He said an undercover officer hit him with a billy club, knocking him down. "I got thrown to the ground and hit over the head," Fish said.

Fish was left with a stream of blood running down his face, staining his jeans and green shirt. Several friends tended to his wound.

In another incident, Ramsey and Gainer were momentarily in a tight spot.

They heard a call that officers needed assistance at 18th and I streets NW, and "we went down the street," Ramsey said. "When we turned the corner, there had to be about 200 protesters . . . coming at us, and we attempted to back out, but there was another car coming in behind us--one of ours, fortunately--and so we couldn't. And as we got out of the car, they literally just came right on us, and we had to struggle in order to regain control."

Two students from James Madison University said that police used pepper spray on them while they demonstrated at 20th and I streets NW about 7 a.m. Matt Strugar, 21, said a group was trying to block some delegates and were chanting "nonviolence, nonviolence" when a van full of police pulled up. The officers sprayed him and his friend, Strugar reported.

One man hit by pepper spray, Jonah Zern, of the Student Alliance to Reform Corporations, said: "I was walking in a non-threatening way up to the barricade as a delegate of the planet and a delegate of the ecosystem. I was attacked by the system of power. It makes me aware of how important is the change we are trying to make. I just hope I can get my vision back soon and join people back in the streets."

Ramsey said an officer had mistakenly released a canister of tear gas instead of a smoke grenade after protesters surrounded a police car escorting a bus carrying bank delegates.

Meanwhile, demonstrators began to mass on the Ellipse. The question lingering in the drizzle: What do we do now?

About 700 people divided themselves and formed two huge circles on the grass--one for those who would risk arrest, and one for those who preferred to parade. While Loren Finkelstein, 25, an environmentalist from the District, facilitated a quick meeting in the soggy field, Karen Miller, 29, a labor activist from Detroit, proposed that the arrest group find an intersection in which to confront police and get arrested. There was a brief squabble before consensus was reached.

"I have a problem with getting arrested just to get arrested," said Rae Kramer, 53, of Syracuse.

"Blocking traffic and getting arrested can make a point," someone responded.

With that decided, the groups merged, the arrest-hungry in front, followed by puppets, followed by non-arrest supporters. More joined as they marched to Pennsylvania Avenue and 20th Street NW for the last major act of the campaign. The police barricade there was symbolically important to the demonstrators, who wanted to go on record as crossing it to give their message to the bank two blocks away.

They filled the intersection and the surrounding blocks. Those willing to risk arrest massed up front, as police backed by National Guard troops waited on the other side of the barricade.

Demonstrators tried to climb over the barricade, and police reacted by poking them sharply with batons. Long squirts of pepper spray forced the demonstrators back, coughing and crying and rubbing their eyes.

That was when Gainer and the Tree Lady--Mary Bull, from San Francisco--started talking.

Bull, dressed in a foam get-up with a brown trunk and green boughs, represented a small group that represented the larger group in front. During the negotiations, she had to keep going back to check with her group, while Gainer could make instant decisions--the difference between a consensus organization and a hierarchical one.

The protesters were angry that many officers were not displaying their badges. Gainer said he'd have them put on their badges if demonstrators would stand back two feet.

Bull and Gainer called back and forth across the barricade for about an hour, haggling over the details of an arranged arrest. Bull wanted six gates open. Ultimately, Gainer allowed three barricade sections to be removed, and 11 young protesters linked arms.

Like a wedding coordinator orchestrating the bridal party's march down the aisle, Gainer waved the demonstrators through.

Moments later, a member of a to-be-arrested group handed a disposable camera to Gainer and asked him to take a picture.

Mary Bull was one of the last.

"Okay, folks, that's it," Gainer said.

After those arrested were taken away, many in school buses, about 3 p.m., the crowd moved east on I Street toward McPherson Square. It swelled to more than 1,000.

St. Regis guests took photos. A bike courier whose business was ruined for the day grumbled: "What do these kids have to be angry about? When my family marched for civil rights, we had something to march for."

Police accommodated the demonstrators, stopping traffic wherever they decided to go, all the way to a park at 14th and K streets NW.

A group of about 200 broke off to head up 14th Street, escorted by three police cars. They drummed and shouted, eventually behind a squad car with flashing lights that kept a steady pace for them.

They passed more stores and waved at crowds.

The waves were fewer as working-class commutes were thwarted.

At one apartment building, residents opened the window and yelled "Get out of our neighborhood!" and "Get your [bottoms] back home!"

The march quieted; the drumbeats slowed.

Hours later, arrested protesters were led, one by one, before Judge Ronna Beck in D.C. Superior Court to choose their fate. Protest organizers had suggested that those arrested consider withholding their names to force the court to negotiate a settlement for everyone.

Some refused to give a name other than John Doe. Many wanted to be released and pay a $50 bond. Danner Bradshaw, 20, of Mobile, Ala., said he chose to pay the bond because it would be too inconvenient to come back for a court trial.

One young man asked the judge whether he could phone his parents before filing paperwork for release. He needed to ask them his Social Security number.

After being released, the protesters faced another problem: They would have to go to the police training academy in the Blue Plains area of Southwest Washington to get their belongings.

"Let's not walk out here alone, okay?" one young man said as protesters looked onto the dark streets.

"Oh, dude," Bradshaw said, "why do they have to make our lives so hard?"

The following staff writers contributed to coverage of the protests surrounding the IMF and World Bank meetings: Justin Blum, Patricia Davis, Petula Dvorak, Darryl Fears, Patrice Gaines, Steven Ginsberg, Cindy Loose, Phuong Ly, Sylvia Moreno, Arthur Santana, Alan Sipress, Neely Tucker, Steve Vogel, Emily Wax, Martin Weil and Linda Wheeler.

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D.C. Police Defend Protest Tactics

APRIL 18, 19:34 EST
By DERRILL HOLLY
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=BUSINESS&STORYID=APIS73UF24G0

WASHINGTON (AP) - District of Columbia officials are heartened that bands of protesters were prevented from sabotaging world finance meetings but a debate about police tactics erupted in the wake of nasty street confrontations that led to more than 1,300 arrests.

``Nobody wanted to see another Seattle,'' said Chief Charles H. Ramsey of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, particularly the nation's capital - tourist haven, host to diplomats, presidents, kings and queens, the nation's showcase.

The department's commanders had a nightmare scenario in mind - protesters like those in Seattle last fall, rampaging and destroying property, police reacting and perhaps overreacting with tear gas - when they drafted a plan to prevent criminal activity without muzzling social activism.

``They really probe to see where your weak points are,'' said Ramsey. He said demonstrators were organized and often communicated with two-way radios and cellular telephones. During three difficult days, Saturday through Monday, they won his grudging admiration.

Prior to the protests targeting World Bank and International Monetary Fund meetings, more than 1,500 police went through crowd control training. The city bought body armor to protect its officers from the rocks, bottles and sticks that injured Seattle police when demonstrators disrupted a World Trade Organization meeting.

Ramsey kept a high profile throughout, wading into crowds of protesters to engage them in debate and even, on occasion, to laugh with them. At one point, the chief's deputy, Terry Gainer, gave a bouquet of flowers to a cluster of protesters. The demonstrations ended with a negotiated mass arrest that injured no one.

At times, 90 city blocks were closed off and steel barriers set up to block alleys within the security zone. Cameras on roofs enabled police to watch protesters and move officers to places where they could respond to protesters quickly.

Despite their intelligence information and technology, critics contend police did not always differentiate between peaceful protesters and those considered capable of violence and they accuse Ramsey of trying to discredit their movement by distorting their image.

``He's said things about the protesters that were inaccurate,'' including allegations that members of Mobilization for Global Justice manufactured Molotov cocktails and homemade pepper spray, said Adam Eidinger, a protest organizer.

Lingering resentment by demonstrators in the aftermath of the protest marches surfaced Tuesday in a clash at the District of Columbia Superior Court, where a small number of protesters went to complain about how U.S. marshals treated their fellow demonstrators when they were arrested.

One young man rushed the courthouse door. He was tackled and pepper-sprayed and several others were also pepper-sprayed. When order was restored, the protesters held a news conference.

Coalition members have threatened to file lawsuits and civil rights complaints accusing the police of brutality and alleging that that their constitutional rights were violated.

Laura Ennis, who came from Massachusetts to participate in the protests, was part of Monday's peaceful mass arrest. She said the gentle treatment ended there: She saw federal marshals kick demonstrators and was threatened by them herself when she asked to make a phone call.

``I felt physically endangered the entire time,'' Ennis said.

Other protesters said they were kept handcuffed or chained overnight and were given no food, water or blankets, although many were soaked from drenching rains Monday. Some suffered severe chills and had to be hospitalized.

``They refused to eat what we gave them,'' Ramsey said. ``This isn't the Hilton. You don't call room service and say, 'I'm a vegetarian. I want fish. I want tofu.' You get what we got ... You get bologna and bread.''

Spokesmen for the U.S. Marshals Service did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Robert W. Klotz, a security consultant who used to command the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department's Special Operations Division, said police in Seattle had to retake ground lost to protesters. But here, he said, police never let protesters gain a foothold near the World Bank, IMF or important federal buildings.

``It's called seizing the high ground,'' Klotz said.

Ramsey also had active support from other federal and state agencies.

The U.S. Postal Service unbolted 86 mailboxes from 60 locations within what became the police security zone. The boxes are often removed during major Washington events to make them unavailable to protesters looking for a place to hide bombs. Hundreds of newspaper vending machines were also removed from downtown streets.

The estimated cost for the equipment, overtime, and support services could top $5 million, officials said - a figure equivalent to an appropriation Congress provided for Seattle to pay for security for last fall's WTO meetings.

Police drew praise from business leaders, even though disruptions left many offices nearly inaccessible from Friday through Monday and cost nearby restaurants and shops a day's business.

``We're very grateful that there wasn't any loss of property or personal injury,'' said David Rutstein, chairman of the Greater Washington Board of Trade, representing the region's largest private employers.

``People's confidence in this government has increased markedly,'' Rutstein said.

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EDITOR'S NOTE - Associated Press writer Alice Ann Love contributed to this story.

On the Net: Mobilization for Global Justice Web site: http://www.a16.org

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World Bank chief offers olive branch

April 18, 2000
By Patrice Hill
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/business/default-2000418223843.htm

The World Bank president was conciliatory toward protesters yesterday, saying their criticisms have been heard and the lending agency is committed to fighting poverty, AIDS and poor living conditions in poor countries.

"I was affected by the demonstrations because I think we're doing already the things they're complaining about," said World Bank President James Wolfensohn after a morning meeting of the bank's development committee that thousands of protesters sought without success to block.

"Why would you have so many people trying to stop a meeting the entire goal of which is to deal with AIDS, poverty and development?" he said. "We were a bit nonplused, to be honest."

Mr. Wolfensohn said the protests reflect "uncertainty about globalization, a feeling of exclusion" on the part of some Americans. "You have to listen to that and see how you can do better."

The bank president throughout the week of demonstrations has sought to make peace with the protesters, inviting them to meet with him. His offers have been spurned by protest leaders, including the 50 Years is Enough and Mobilization for Global Justice coalitions that organized the protests. Those groups dismiss the bank's efforts as inadequate.

Still, his conciliatory remarks contrast markedly with the defiant statements by world finance ministers attending an International Monetary Fund meeting Sunday. Those ministers largely rejected and ignored the demands of the protesters.

The difference in tone partly reflects the different missions of the international lending agencies. The World Bank is focused more on helping poor countries grow and develop, while the IMF is primarily a crisis-management agency that is called in when countries are experiencing financial distress.

Despite the branch offered by Mr. Wolfensohn yesterday, protesters said they were disheartened at failing to shut down the two-day meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund or, short of that, prod the delegates to make concrete progress at the meetings.

"The IMF and World Bank spring 2000 meetings closed today having failed to move significantly forward on debt cancellation for the world's poorest countries," the Jubilee 2000 Coalition, a sponsor of the protests, said in a statement, calling the debt situation "an emerging scandal."

Despite repeated pledges by the IMF and the bank to speed up $27 billion in debt relief to 41 nations, the coalition said that progress remains painfully slow, with only five nations so far having actually received any relief under the program, which was established in 1996.

But the World Bank and IMF are adamant that they first must ensure that any money freed up by forgiving debts is used on health care, education and poverty reduction - and that takes time.

Mr. Wolfensohn said other nonprofit organizations that have criticized the glacial pace of debt relief have come to see the wisdom of this. About 20 of those groups, including the Overseas Private Development Council and National Peace Corps coalition, sent a letter to Mr. Wolfensohn yesterday, saying they largely support the bank's efforts.

Many advocates for the poor agree that conditions on the debt relief are needed to ensure that the money is not diverted by corrupt governments to finance military buildups and civil wars, such as those that have been plaguing some of the most impoverished African countries.

The "poverty reduction strategies" that the bank and IMF require countries to put in place before they receive relief under the program actually have been a good exercise in democracy, Mr. Wolfensohn said, since many Third World governments do not ordinarily consult with citizens groups as they are required to do in preparing such plans.

Still, he tried to appease the protesters, saying the bank is more focused than ever on the same causes that stoked the demonstrations.

The bank and IMF hope to approve debt relief for another 15 countries by the end of the year, he said. And he told delegates at the morning meeting that the World Bank will approve funding for any "sensible" program to address the AIDS crisis in Africa and other poor countries.

Even in the "middle-income" countries where the bank lends, such as Mexico and Brazil, the World Bank has been focusing its efforts and money on the neediest areas, such as Brazil's impoverished northeast, he said.

And the bank is taking on the entrenched political interests in developed countries like the United States and the European Union, by advocating the elimination of tariffs on imports of agricultural goods from the poorest countries, he said.

Tarrin Nimmanahaeminda, the finance minister of Thailand and chairman of the bank's development committee, said the committee's call for duty-free trade on farm goods yesterday was a triumph for Third World countries.

He too sought to assure protesters that their voices had been heard.

"Many ministers are sensitive to what's been going on here in Washington. The big question is whether globalization has brought even prosperity," he said.

Sherman Katz of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said the protesters failed not only to shut down the meetings, but to make a case for radical reform of the institutions.

"The protesters have not suggested any alternative to replace the $30 billion in development aid provided annually by the bank to developing countries," he said.

"The record, unrebutted by the protesters, is that the focus of the bank aid has moved substantially in the direction of education, health [including HIV-AIDS vaccination] and community action programs. Bank lending for power, oil and gas projects has declined dramatically," he said.

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A Debate Enriched By Talk of Poverty

By John Burgess
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 18, 2000; Page A01
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-04/18/156l-041800-idx.html

Through two days of meetings that ended here yesterday, officials at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund said many times that it was business as usual--the noisy rallies beyond the police lines outside did not affect the talks. But without the people on the street, it's unlikely that the word "poverty" would have cropped up quite so often.

Ministers talked about the Poverty Reduction Strategy, the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (a type of IMF loan), and the Poverty Reduction and Growth Papers (economic plans by poor countries hoping to lift themselves up). In statements addressed to one another, they made calls to combat, alleviate or abolish poverty.

Blocked by riot police, the demonstrators failed in their effort to shut down the meetings. But they and many other people who fault the two institutions--legislators, church leaders, economists--have at least succeeded in recent years in changing important terms of the debate. The World Bank and IMF now go to great lengths to stress their devotion to attacking global poverty.

"Both are trying to deal directly with the most cogent and legitimate concern of the critics, including the critics in the street--that they are not addressing themselves to the alleviation of poverty," said C. Fred Bergsten, an economist who served on a congressional commission studying the two institutions.

By grabbing media attention, the protesters managed to put before a broader public a debate that had been proceeding for years among an international elite of academics, policymakers and labor leaders. The people in the streets this week are only the latest and loudest critics who question whether globalization, the rapid integration of national economies, is enriching a few nations by impoverishing others.

Critics of the IMF and World Bank also include defenders of global capitalism. "The overall benefits of aid have been disappointing, particularly in the poorest countries," U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said in a statement to the 24-nation Development Committee, the World Bank's main governing body. Too often "there remains a gap between the banks' policies and development aspirations and actual results on the ground."

Through much of its history, the World Bank has functioned essentially as the finance division of a global construction company, paying for roads, dams and power plants. The goal was a better life for the locals, noted Bergsten, even if the term "poverty reduction" wasn't always used. But some students of the bank say its people often seemed to judge success based on how much cement was poured and how many kilowatts generated.

The IMF, meanwhile, has operated as an international auditing firm. If economists in Washington felt that a country's finances were getting out of kilter, they stepped in with a program of spending cutbacks that they thought would, in their terms, "restore stability." What they most wanted to see was ledger numbers coming into balance in the aggregate, not a reduction, say, in malnutrition.

But in the face of pressure in recent years, both the IMF and World Bank have been working hard to convince people that times have changed. Last September, the IMF modified a lending program for poor countries and renamed it the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility.

At the bank, President James D. Wolfensohn, who took over in 1995, has long emphasized the anti-poverty mission. "He sensed there was a huge constituency for poverty alleviation," said James Orr, executive director of the Bretton Woods Committee, a Washington group that includes many former government policymakers. "It sounded a whole lot better than growth and development, which sounded vaguely like cutting down forests and building roads."

But the institutions' defenders say there are real changes as well. Perhaps the most visible is the Highly Indebted Poor Country initiative, in which the bank, the IMF and other international lenders are pledging to forgive $28 billion in debt owed by more than 30 desperately poor countries, most of them in Africa.

Orr notes that the World Bank is moving away from big-ticket construction and toward community development at a smaller, local level. That has won praise from politically moderate critics.

Many of the bank's opponents, however, see no real difference today from a decade ago. "Rhetoric has changed," said Doug Hellinger of the Development Gap, an activist group that faults many of the bank's policies. But if "you go down another inch below the surface, hardly anything has changed at all."

The institutions can never hope to assuage their more radical critics, due to fundamental differences in economic theory.

The critics see globalization as a basic cause of poverty, saying that its purpose is to open up countries to exploitation by foreign companies. The two lenders, however, see the trend as a basically positive force that with some redirection can better benefit people in poor countries.

Thus they feel that helping poor countries open up their economies and sell their goods abroad is a crucial anti-poverty weapon.

The Development Committee said in a communique after a meeting yesterday that "developed countries have much to do to improve market access for developing countries' exports," such as farm goods and textiles.

This lack of access was a theme for poorer countries' representatives at the meetings this week. "We are sorry that the industrial countries place these barriers for development countries," said Germain Suarez, president of Peru's central bank.

The poor countries look in frustration at the United States, where Congress has delayed for months a bill to give textiles from Africa and the Caribbean better access to U.S. markets. A deal reached last week in Congress, however, is supposed to enable passage of the measure.

The bank committee also promised major new initiatives against AIDS. Not only is it a health crisis, the communique said, it is a poverty issue. That's because AIDS raises health-care costs and reduces the working population.

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Money & Protests
The World Bank and IMF Say They Just Want To Help the Poor. So What's the Fuss?

Monday, April 17, 2000; Page C13
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-04/17/098l-041700-idx.html

This week hundreds of people from around the globe are in town to talk about the world's economies. And thousands of people are in town to stop them from doing that.

Representatives from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) were met by protesters yesterday. These opponents have said they want to disrupt the meetings by marching and blocking traffic.

So, what's the story?

What are the World Bank and IMF?

Both groups are huge, international banks, but with countries as customers instead of people. The United States and other wealthy countries started the organizations near the end of World War II, to help rebuild a damaged world economy and aid the neediest people in poor countries. Every country that is a member (there are 181 in the World Bank and 182 in the IMF) pays in some money to belong.

The World Bank uses the money to give loans and grants to countries. Loans have to be paid back. Grants are like presents: They don't have to be paid back, but they do have to be spent on a specific project.

The money is given to only poor nations. The United States, for example, could not borrow money from the World Bank. But countries in Central America, South America, Africa and Asia often borrow money or request grants to try to improve the lives of their citizens. They might use it to build a road or a school, or to teach new ways to farm, or to build a powerplant to bring electricity to a rural area.

The International Monetary Fund works on the economic relationships between countries.

Countries have central government banks. The amount of money in those banks is one way to tell if a country's economy is healthy. What's really important to the IMF is how many American dollars, Japanese yen and other strong currencies these banks have. That's because these stable types of money are used by countries to trade with each other.

But sometimes countries, just like people, lose money because of bad decisions or spend more money than they have. Catastrophes such as famine and war also can cripple a country's economy. Other nations won't sell them anything, because they can't be sure they will get paid.

When that happens, a country's government might ask the IMF for advice on how to fix these problems. And it might ask to borrow money to get it through its hard times.

Why do some people not like the World Bank and IMF?

While countries from all over the world are members of the World Bank and IMF, wealthy nations such as the United States have more of a say in most of the decisions. Opponents say that's not fair.

They also say that in the past, some money was loaned to poor countries while they were run by dictators, and should never have been loaned at all. These countries are now too poor to pay back the loans, and the money is needed for things such as schools and hospitals for their citizens.

Protesters also don't like the way the World Bank and IMF tell other countries what they should do with the money they're given or loaned. For example, the IMF might lend money to a needy country only if that country shuts down some factories that aren't operating very well. That's bad news if you work at the factory and are worried that you won't be able to find a job anywhere else.

Also, people concerned about the environment fear that projects sponsored by the World Bank could harm nature. If World Bank money is used to build a road or a powerplant, that might mean cutting down trees or endangering some animals.

How do the World Bank and IMF respond?

They say they have told some countries that they don't have to pay back their loans, but they can't afford to do that for everyone.

Do the two sides agree on anything?

They agree there are more than a billion people on Earth who barely have enough money to survive. They just disagree on the best ways to help them.

----

Inside the IMF Panel Votes To Step Up Debt Relief

By John Burgess
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 17, 2000; Page A07
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-04/17/108l-041700-idx.html

As protesters chanted a block away, top financial officials from member countries of the International Monetary Fund met for nearly six hours yesterday and moved ahead with programs to provide debt relief to poor countries, strengthen safeguards against financial panics and overhaul loan programs.

Conferring in a third-floor room at the barricaded IMF headquarters on 19th Street NW, representatives from a 24-nation governing committee put the stamp of approval on steps the IMF contends will address many of the concerns of poverty that its critics raise.

"The way forward . . . is not to advocate turning our back on the global economy," committee chairman Gordon Brown said after the meeting. The right way is to improve cooperation and efficiency of the world economy, said Brown, who also is Britain's top financial official. The protests got only minor mention in the meetings, the officials said.

IMF critics see the institution as underwriting an unjust global economic order. The critics include aid agencies that welcome some of the steps the IMF is making and groups that contend the only solution is to close down the fund.

Njoki Njehu of the activist group 50 Years Is Enough Network, which targets the IMF and the World Bank, dismissed the measures. "We never doubted that they would come up with the same-old, same-old," she said. "They're talking to the governments; the people's voices are not being heard."

The IMF committee urged member countries and government-funded banks to speed up a program to forgive up to $28 billion in debt owed by desperately poor nations. Donor countries have been slow to come up with money to finance the program. Many demonstrators want total forgiveness of the debts.

The committee also said rich countries should help out by lowering trade barriers. "It would be more coherent when you're giving debt relief to also allow expanded access" for poor countries' products to markets of the industrial world, said Stanley Fischer, the IMF's interim chief.

As part of an internal restructuring the IMF is phasing out four types of loans, a move that was endorsed by the committee. Congressional critics have said that the IMF is too big and too complicated, with too many types of loans.

The committee also lauded steps to tighten the auditing of central banks that borrow from the IMF. The fund has been embarrassed by revelations of questionable transactions by two big borrowers, the central banks of Russia and Ukraine.

The committee, formally known as the International Monetary and Financial Committee, also promised to continue opening up IMF operations to outside scrutiny, primarily through publication of formerly confidential documents. Sixty nations now voluntarily allow the publication of IMF analyses of their economies.

The IMF would work to improve oversight of world economic trends, the panel said. The surveillance is intended to allow action against financial panics before they occur by quickly identifying currency flows and other trends that signal trouble.

----

Finance Ministers Hasten Debt Relief

APRIL 18, 03:07 EST
By HARRY DUNPHY
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=BUSINESS&STORYID=APIS73U0J5G0

WASHINGTON (AP) - Echoing a major cause of demonstrators who failed to shut them down, finance ministers from around the world acted at their spring meeting to hasten debt relief for poor countries.

And while the thousands of protesters failed to stop the work of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, they drew public attention to their complaints that the two institutions have failed to alleviate global poverty and should be abolished.

For their part, IMF, the World Bank and Washington police officials took satisfaction in the avoidance of violent confrontations and destruction of property such as occurred in Seattle last fall at the World Trade Organization meeting.

The IMF and the World Bank hold their next sessions this autumn in the Czech capital Prague, where officials already are making plans to deal with thousands of European demonstrators. Hundreds protested on Prague's central Wenceslav Square at the weekend, many of whom were arrested by Czech police.

At a closing news conference Monday at the World Bank, the institution's president, James Wolfensohn, said he had difficulty reconciling the varied themes of the street protesters with the work of the IMF and the bank. He said many of the protesters had limited knowledge about what the two institutions do.

``We're a bit nonplused, to be honest with you,'' Wolfensohn said. ``But I think it's a reflection of uncertainty about globalization, about a lack of belief in institutions generally, about a feeling of exclusion. And you have to listen to that, and see if we can do better.''

He said criticism of the IMF and World Bank ``certainly isn't going to make us close the door,'' although he acknowledged the two institutions would have to do a better job explaining themselves.

The World Bank's policy-making Development Committee pledged Monday to increase the number of poor countries qualifying for debt relief from the current five to 20 by the end of the year.

The committee also said it would step up the fight against the global AIDS epidemic, which has already infected 50 million people. Wolfensohn said he is prepared, with the support of the bank's 181 member nations, to provide unlimited amounts of money to combat AIDS.

``I've said to our African clients that if you have programs, we will fund them,'' Wolfensohn said. ``No sensible program will be stopped for lack of money.''

Reviewing the committee's decisions, Wolfensohn also said in the future the IMF will work on methods to protect countries from financial crises, while the World Bank will concentrate on helping developing nations devise poverty reduction strategies.

One of the ministers who was blocked by protesters for 3 1/2 hours Saturday from attending the meetings took a philosophical view of his plight.

``Peaceful demonstrations are part of the functioning of any modern democracy. ... I view this with complete calm, despite the difficulties it caused me,'' said Brazilian Finance Minister Pedro Malan. He said he participated in student demonstrations in the United States in the 1960s.

----

World Finance Protest Large in Scope

APRIL 18, 02:06 EST
By WALTER R. MEARS
AP Special Correspondent
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=BUSINESS&STORYID=APIS73TVMLO0

WASHINGTON (AP) - When the shared cause was to stop a war or demand an end to racial segregation, Washington demonstrators of the past marched in step and in far greater numbers than those who tried to disrupt the world finance conferences. They shut down part of the government and part of the Capital, but not the meetings they tried to stop.

They claimed success anyhow, saying they had focused attention on the lending practices of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and on the globalization they contend is damaging Third World economies.

While they couldn't block the finance meetings, they did force a partial, one-day shutdown of federal agencies in a police-declared protest zone for blocks around the White House. The protests snarled traffic, shut city streets and shuttered businesses and restaurants on Monday.

There were sporadic clashes between police and protesters, bursts of pepper spray and one of tear gas. But generally, it was only a matter of noise and streets, barricaded by police lines near the World Bank, blocked by protesters across those lines.

The numbers were relatively small, hundreds of demonstrators massed at the standoff line four blocks from the White House, a few thousand in the streets and parks nearby. About 400 demonstrators had themselves arrested politely to underline their grievances late Monday. Police obliged them.

``We have shined the light on these institutions as never before in this country,'' said Robert Weissman of Essential Action, calling the protests a total success.

The demonstrators blame the global lenders for problems from environmental damage to sweatshop labor. But they came for causes ranging far beyond those complaints: for animal rights, against nuclear weapons, for District of Columbia statehood, against sending Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba, for more AIDS research. At the blockaded intersection on Monday, what they wanted seemed to depend on who was chanting loudest.

``What do we want?'' a young woman called. ``Justice,'' the crowd replied.

A few minutes later, the street crowd was singing the anthem of the civil rights movement, ``We Shall Overcome.''

Then a debt forgiveness chant.

The mix of messages, and the globalization complaints only economists could fully explain, contrasted with single-minded objectives of massive Washington marches over the past 30 years.

These demonstrations drew only a fraction of the numbers that were drawn to those prior protests.

Police said there were about 10,000 demonstrators on Sunday; protest organizers claimed many more. But even they conceded that the numbers melted amid downpours on Monday, to about 3,000.

The era of massive Washington marches began on Aug. 28, 1963, when 200,000 to 250,000 people, black and white, paraded peacefully from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial for the cause of civil rights.

``I have a dream,'' the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. told them of his vision of racial equality, and gave voice to a movement. At the time, that turnout was a record.

It was orderly. The only four arrests were of violent opponents of the civil rights cause.

Anti-war demonstrations began later in the 1960s; at least 55,000 protesters besieged the Pentagon in 1967, a police estimate disputed by organizers, who said there were 150,000.

More than 250,000 people marched against the war in Vietnam on Nov. 15, 1969. That was the crowd estimate at the time. It later was increased, based on photo counts stirred by the complaints of organizers, to 600,000.

The Vietnam protesters paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue, past a White House barricaded by 57 city buses parked bumper to bumper. Inside, President Nixon let it be known that he was watching a college football game.

There were violent confrontations and bursts of tear gas near the South Vietnamese Embassy and outside the Justice Department. But the march itself was peaceful.

Those marches were marker events, the one, of the growing momentum of the civil rights movement - President John F. Kennedy met with its leaders at the White House that day in 1963 - the other, of the gnawing opposition that divided Americans until the Vietnam War finally ended with U.S. withdrawal in 1975.

They have been outdrawn since. There have been mass marches for and against abortion rights, for gasoline rights, for organized labor. After the Park Service estimated that Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March in 1995 drew 400,000 people, he accused the agency of racism.

After that, the Park Service stopped issuing estimates, to stay out of numbers disputes.

The biggest of Washington crowds weren't here to protest. They have turned out for presidential inaugurations, parades and celebrations. More than 1 million people came to the bicentennial fireworks on the Fourth of July in 1976.

----

World Trade Officials Pledging to Step Up Effort Against AIDS

By JOSEPH KAHN and JOHN KIFNER
April 18, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/041800imf-protest.html

WASHINGTON, April 17 -- The world's top financial officials, trying to show sensitivity to poverty as protesters braved a chilling rain and an impenetrable police force outside, pledged to pay more attention to globalization's victims and to commit "unlimited money" to fight AIDS in poor countries.

The finance ministers and central bank governors who oversee the World Bank said the bank should intensify its fight against AIDS because the disease is as much a problem of poverty as public health. More than 50 million people are infected with the virus that causes the disease, and it is spreading fastest in Africa, India, China and the Caribbean, all major World Bank clients. The bank has been active for more than a decade in fighting the disease.

The new commitment on AIDS came as finance officials sought to show that they were at least as focused on helping people and nations that have not benefited much from globalization as they are on speeding the international march of capitalism. They promised to accelerate debt relief for the developing world and to press rich nations to agree to import farm and clothing products from the poorest ones duty free.

But some of their promises are unlikely to be fulfilled soon. Wealthy nations have been slow to commit the money necessary for debt relief, and the World Bank has insisted on an intensive review of how third-world countries will use money made available when debt is forgiven.

The United States also watered down language on duty-free market access in a final communiqué today for fear that any broad commitment to open markets here would prompt a backlash from Congress and undermine support for the Clinton administration's push to grant China permanent normal trade status.

Protests against the World Bank and the I.M.F. wound down in a driving rain today as a small band of demonstrators scuffled with the police early in the morning, and others, their numbers greatly diminished from the more than 10,000 during the weekend, marched through the streets.

After several tense standoffs with lines of helmeted policemen, a strange street party developed as the police agreed to doff their gas masks and peacefully arrest protesters who stepped through a symbolic breach in their barricades in small groups.

Makeshift drums throbbed, puppeteers danced, and beach balls were tossed around as 500 people walked arm in arm in groups of a dozen or so to be taken to buses as the crowd chanted, "We're here! We're wet! Cancel the debt!" The protesters accuse the World Bank and the I.M.F. of spreading the gospel of free-market capitalism to benefit corporations while ignoring the environmental impact of their policies and worsening poverty in many countries.

Mayor Anthony A. Williams said at a morning news conference, "Our police officers and law enforcement officers played it right."

But while disrupting Washington on a Sunday is a small matter -- the downtown is virtually deserted then anyway -- the protesters did manage to close down normal business in the capital today. The city and federal government told many workers to stay home. And the police closed so many streets to traffic that they in effect shut down another major economic power: the lobbying firms along K Street.

Though protesters never managed to disrupt the meetings at the bank and the fund as they had hoped, the turnout of activists put officials on the defensive.

"It was impossible not to be affected," said James D. Wolfensohn, the president of the World Bank, who complained that the bank was being accused of causing poverty when all of its employees were devoted to alleviating it.

"I come to work every day with 10,000 colleagues who think that they are doing what we are being criticized for," Mr. Wolfensohn said. "I am a bit nonplussed, really."

Mr. Wolfensohn said the decision to step up the fight against AIDS was a example of the bank's commitment to fight poverty in all its manifestations -- and of what he called the protesters' ignorance of World Bank initiatives. The bank is well known for financing large-scale dams, roads and power plants in third-world nations, projects that critics say often do not do much to help the poor. Mr. Wolfensohn said the bank these days was much more focused on small-scale poverty-relief initiatives and efforts to combat diseases.

After reviewing the bank's policies today, the so-called Development Committee, controlled by the bank's member nations, made AIDS lending the bank's top priority. The bank has made loans to AIDS-related projects for a dozen years, but it has recently become more active in programs in Africa, India, Eastern Europe and several other areas.

The bank does not administer health programs itself. But Mr. Wolfensohn said it was prepared to help countries impacted by AIDS to develop prevention and treatment programs.

"We will make sure that no sensible program is stopped for lack of money," he said. "We will either provide it ourselves or we will help them raise it."

The finance minister of India, Yashwant Sinha, strongly supported the World Bank's efforts on AIDS. He suggested that they showed that the bank was more in touch with the interests of developing countries than protesters were. "Really nobody knows what they are protesting against," he said."They were here to prevent us from doing our work."

After Sunday's large, peaceful protests -- with some protesters garbed as sea turtles, others wearing shark fin hats, as in loan shark, and huge puppets like the "structural adjustment mechanism," a Rube Goldberg contraption with jaws that ate rain forests -- leaders of "affinity groups" gathered late Sunday night to reassess their tactics.

"We decided we needed to radically change our style today," said Terra Lawson, a 21-year old Yale senior.

They were to break into two groups, with the smaller band of about 400 going out early to try and cause trouble for the delegates being escorted by the police to the meeting. But in a series of scuffles, the police quickly stopped them with pepper spray, clubs and tear gas, arresting, they said, about 90 people.

A little before 8 a.m., a bus filled with delegates making their way to the World Bank crossed paths with about 100 demonstrators. Several protesters, black-clad anarchists among them, tried to sit in front of the bus. A squad of riot-equipped police officers jumped out of a van behind the delegate's bus, doused the protesters with pepper spray, dragged them away from the buses, and sped off with the delegates.

Chief Charles H. Ramsey was clutching a small red rose by the barricades this afternoon as a tense confrontation was defused. That face-off developed after the main body of 1,000 protesters managed to march at around 10:30 a.m., reaching a wide intersection near the George Washington University campus and the World Bank. Sirens wailed as the police in patrol cars, motorcycles and vans with black windows raced through the streets after the protesters.

"We're nonviolent -- how about you!" the demonstrators chanted.

Solid lines of police officers, cradling their nightsticks, blocked the streets leading toward the banker's meeting, bulging in their black riot gear. A loudspeaker among the demonstrators blared the Darth Vader theme from "Star Wars."

An anarchist climbed onto a traffic light and waved a black flag. At one point the police shot pepper spray at the protesters. The police blocked surrounding intersections several times, then pulled back. At one point, they pounced on a group of about 30 protesters, threw them to the ground, then let them go when they decided they were the wrong ones.

After several hours some of the protesters, including a young woman wearing what looked like a tree on her head, began negotiations by the barricades with Chief Ramsey and other ranking officers. Finally, an agreement was reached and relayed to the crowd. The protesters agreed to move back 10 feet, to sit down and be arrested in small groups. The police would take off their gas masks and make a gap in their barricades for the protesters to walk through before they were arrested.

"It was really tense when the police were pepper-spraying us," said Stephanie Finnernan, 15, holding a sunflower as she danced. "Then when we heard they were opening the gates, we were amazed. Then the arrests and cheers. Now people are dancing in the streets."

----

A Rebellion Without a Cause

By Marc Fisher
Tuesday , April 18, 2000 ; B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=wpni/print&articleid=A33400-2000Apr17

The ragtag remains of Spring Break Gone Urban wandered aimlessly through downtown Washington yesterday, chanting "Whose streets? Our streets!" while in full retreat.

The humorless bands of adolescents somehow didn't see the irony.

"This is not enough people!" shouted a young woman carrying a snare drum as her crew of 60 or so demonstrators milled about at Connecticut and I NW. "This is not power to the people if we can't take a street!"

No, this was not power to the people. This was overindulged children searching for ways to upset their elders.

The protesters conducted an impromptu vote. "Should we walk in the streets or on the sidewalks?" After heated debate and a show of hands, people did what they wanted to anyway. A generation of kids whose parents did not know the meaning of "No" finds thrills in such moments of rebellion.

The woman with the drum calls herself Skunk Rising. She wore a bandanna over the lower half of her face because "People are targeted and picked out if they know who you are." They? "The oppressors." Ah, them.

Why are you here, I asked the Skunk from Ithaca, N.Y., one of the many beautiful college towns that sent us their promising youth this weekend. "Because not many people in the world are happy, and corrupt governments are never going to let people stop being oppressed." And what do you do in Ithaca? "I read books by revolutionary women." Nice work if you can get it.

These kids needn't worry about getting work. Their parents took care of that. Skunk says her parents "listen to me, but they say, 'I like my VCR and my Saab, and I like medicine and fried chicken.' " Such terrible people. Imagine, liking medicine and food!

I wanted to keep talking to the protesters, but it began to rain, and demonstrating is a spring sport, best played in sunshine. The downpour drove the kids into Starbucks at 14th and New York, where they joked that if they were true to their ideology, they would pour that Colombian Grande right down the sewer of capitalism. But it was raining, you know?

Inside Starbucks, the music was Dinah Washington, singing of true pain and deprivation, something these kids have never known and, bless them, never will.

On the street outside, FedEx delivered--on time. On the Metro, commuters read the social column and Cal Ripken stories and even novels about real heroes. While the kids banged their drums--and exactly what kind of justice was it that the kids promoted as all-white bands of protesters pushed against all-black rows of police?--the rest of us stepped past the protesters, smiling as we do when we see teenagers trying to look tough as they loiter outside the 7-Eleven.

The adults went to work to raise children who, we pray and trust, will grow up to have the common sense to work for a better life for themselves, their families, their communities. None of which involves conspiracy theories or the arrogance of these rich kids.

These last few days could have been far worse if it weren't for terrific police work; the officers I spoke to, even after a guarantee of anonymity, quickly credited Chief Charles Ramsey for giving them the training to handle these problem children.

The city was rife with heroes this week. One of them, Anton Budanko, runs a barbershop on H Street. He knows about fighting for what you believe in. He knew it even as a child. In 1954, Budanko, then 14, left his native Yugoslavia and its repressive communism--on foot. For two weeks, he tramped over mountains, finally making it to Austria, where he waited five years for the okay to move to America.

Budanko's business was off because of the protests. "Every generation wants something to fight," he told me. "The kids against Vietnam War were right; that was a good fight. These kids, they don't know what they want. Let them demonstrate, and don't lock them up--that only makes them stronger. But if the police give them a good kick in the pants, that's okay in my book."

E-mail: marcfisher@washpost.com

-------- india / pakistan

India's UN bid 'supported'
Clinton's recent visit appears to have helped India's bid

Tuesday, 18 April, 2000,
By South Asia correspondent Jannat Jalil
http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south%5Fasia/newsid%5F718000/718445.stm

India says it is winning growing support from the main Western powers for its bid to gain a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

In the past 10 days, the United States, France and Britain have all expressed a willingness to seriously consider India's claim for a seat.

This is despite the fact that India has so far resisted pressure from the US to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty aimed at ending nuclear tests.

The positive remarks by three of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council are in marked contrast to international opinion two years ago.

Then, Canada - which also wants a permanent seat - said India had virtually destroyed its chances by carrying out controversial tests of nuclear weapons.

But earlier this month the US ambassador in Delhi said America was prepared to seriously consider India's bid.

His comments were made shortly after President Clinton visited India, to try to improve relations with the former Soviet ally.

He's been followed by the British Foreign Minister, Robin Cook, who at the end of his trip to foster trade ties said Britain also recognised that India was a serious contender for a permanent seat.

At the same time, the French president told his Indian counterpart, who is visiting France, that his country continues to support India's bid.

Part of the reason for this growing support for India's long-standing claim is the widespread perception of India as an emerging global power with a population of one billion and a dominant position in the lucrative software industry.

It may also be a bargaining chip in the battle to get India to sign a global treaty banning nuclear tests.

But Pakistan will continue to strongly oppose such a move, which is a serious consideration as the regional rivals both possess nuclear weapons and fought a border war last year.

-------- israel

Israel and the China question

Lenny Ben-David
April 18, 2000
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-20004181881.htm

The famous old tale goes like this: An aide to the Israeli prime minister came running in to tell his boss of a terrible drought that would wipe out the nation's wheat production. When the prime minister learned that the drought was in Israel, he sighed in relief. "Why didn't you tell me. I was afraid that the crop failure was in the United States."

Perhaps more than any other U.S. ally in the world, Israel frets over America's interest. It shows in Israel's voting pattern in support of U.S. positions in the United Nations, surpassing other American allies. It is apparent in the close and extensive intelligence and security cooperation between Israel and the United States. Israel's willingness to help U.S. interests even challenged Israel's own national interest during the Gulf War when the United States asked Israel to absorb volleys of Iraqi Scud missiles without responding.

The Israeli government and people are thankful for the assistance the United States provides so that Israel can meet the many security challenges it faces. American diplomats have worked tirelessly to promote a lasting peace with our Arab neighbors, to help Israel take its place at the United Nations as an equal member state, and to open and expand relations between Israel and nations in the Muslim, Arab and developing world.

Sometimes the two countries disagree. During the debate over the sale of AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia almost 20 years ago, Israel expressed concern that the planes could be used to control air attacks against Israel and Israeli aircraft. American spokesmen repeatedly asserted that the aircraft constituted no danger and could only play a defensive role. In a more recent disagreement, Israel expressed concerns that the sale of advanced U.S. fighters and missilery to Israel's Arab neighbors erodes Israel qualitative edge. The U.S. administration assures us that it doesn't. So we agreed to disagree.

These disagreements do not damage the fabric of the U.S.-Israel relationship; if anything, they drive the two parties to deepen consultations and cooperation. Earlier this week Prime Minister Barak and President Clinton directed their senior staffs to meet and explore finding a solution to the disagreement over the sale of a Phalcon AWACS aircraft to China.

In recent days, questions have been raised about the sale, which was first conducted about four years ago with full American knowledge. In response, Israel stresses the following points:

• Israel and the United States are close allies, and as such, Israel will not endanger American national interests. A strong United States is the cornerstone of Israel's own national interest.

• A strong indigenous Israeli arms industry is vital to Israel's national interest. The United States also benefits from the advanced research and development carried out in Israel's industries. Recent examples of symbiotic research and development efforts include the Arrow anti-ballistic missile, conformal fuel tanks for advanced aircraft, reactive armor on American tanks and personnel carriers - to name but a few. Israeli industries may be seen by some as competitors to American industries, but more often than not, the industries in the two countries also cooperate on joint projects.

• The Phalcon sale to China does not involve American technology or the transfer of American-made equipment.

• Israel faced stiff competition from another U.S. ally, Great Britain, which sought to sell its AWACS aircraft to China.

• Cancellation of the contract would shake to the foundations the credibility of Israeli industries.

• Delivery of the one Phalcon aircraft will not take place for more than a year. Much can happen in that period in U.S.-China relations.

For several decades, Israel and China maintained no relations whatsoever. Chinese weapons and training were provided to some of Israel's most hostile neighbors. If that trend had continued, modern Chinese weapons in the hands of Israel's Arab foes would have represented a serious strategic threat to Israel. With American diplomatic assistance, China and Israel established relations in 1991, and the relationship has grown since.

China's President Jiang Zemin is visiting Israel this week. Commercial hi-tech industries, particularly in the field of communication, are on the president's itinerary in Israel. Another field of civilian cooperation between the two countries is in agriculture. The Chinese-Israeli International Center for Agriculture near Beijing trains hundreds of students in more than a dozen courses in advanced Israeli agricultural methods and technologies.

Israel's ties with China do not and will not come at the expense of American national interests. Israel will not permit that to happen.

Lenny Ben-David is deputy chief of mission at the embassy of Israel in Washington.

-------- kosovo

NATO Commander Wants 'Safe' Kosovo

April 18, 2000
By MEMLI KRASNIQI,
Associated Press Writer
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/ap/000418/14/int-kosovo

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - The new commander of Kosovo's international peacekeepers said Tuesday his top priority would be creating a "safe environment" in a province defined by ethnic hatred and violence.

Nine months after NATO entered Kosovo to try to end fighting between Serbs and ethnic Albanians, violence still claims lives every day.

Lt. Gen. Juan Ortuno of Spain on Tuesday took command of the peacekeeping operation, known as KFOR. His group - Eurocorps - is the first non-NATO unit to lead KFOR. Eurocorps is the new European military bloc, whose members, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain and Luxembourg are also part of NATO.

Ortuno's predecessor, German Gen. Klaus Reinhardt, urged Kosovo's rival ethnic communities to end the rivalries that plunged the province into ethnic warfare and led to the arrival of the peacekeeping force after 78 days of NATO bombing.

Ortuno, 60, said his main priority was, "the provision of a secure environment in Kosovo and to allow the continued return of refugees."

The return of refugees, ethnic Albanian and Serbs alike, is a delicate issue. Western countries have begun to send back refugees and hundreds have returned in recent months.

U.N. officials are concerned that Kosovo's shaky infrastructure will be unable to cope with an influx of people without jobs and sometimes without homes.

The presence of Serbs in the U.N. interim council, the de facto government, is seen as a test for the international community's ability to bring both sides together in a multiethnic society. Moderate Serb leaders say they will withdraw from the council if Serb refugees do not begin to return within three months.

Ortuno stressed the importance of cooperation between the KFOR and the United Nations.

U.S. and NATO commanders are worried about a newly formed rebel group of ethnic Albanians who operate just outside Kosovo's eastern administrative boundary in Serbia, but are believed to move freely between Kosovo and Serbia proper.

The group calls itself the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, named after three predominantly ethnic Albanian towns just outside Kosovo. It is comprised of fighters who say they are trying to protect villagers in the region from attacks by Serb forces.

On Tuesday, Reinhardt urged both sides to stop the violence.

"The proper tools for a peaceful coexistence are not the use of weapons; they are not the use of macho violence; and they are not the harassment of your political opponents," he said. "Practicing confrontation, vengeance and ethnic hatred opens the province to extremists, to chaos and to disaster."

Alluding to recent violence against Kosovo's dwindling Serb minority on the part of ethnic Albanians seeking revenge for the mass crackdown ended last year by NATO air strikes, Reinhardt said that the peacekeeping force and the United Nations "came to Kosovo to prevent a great injustice."

"We did not come here to see that same injustice inflicted on a different group of people," he added.

In the same vein, NATO's supreme commander in Europe, Gen. Wesley Clark, called on all of Kosovo's people to "halt a cycle of violence" and work together to create peace.

"It may be too early to expect ideal harmony, but it is certainly too late to accept any continuing violence," he said.

-----------

100 Kosovo Albanians Go On Trial

April 18, 2000
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Yugoslavia-Kosovo-Trial.html

NIS, Yugoslavia (AP) -- In one of the largest mass trials ever in Serbia, 145 ethnic Albanians faced terrorism charges today for allegedly fighting Serb forces in Kosovo last year.

The accused, all men, appeared in a courtroom in Nis, where the trial was moved to because no courtroom was large enough to hold them in the nearby town of Leskovac, the original venue.

The ethnic Albanian defendants are charged with ``terrorist'' actions against Serbian security troops stationed at the time in Kosovo, including the killing of three Serb policemen and the wounding of at least seven.

If found guilty, they could be sentenced to up to 15 years in jail. Verdicts and sentencing were expected later this week.

All the accused were arrested in the Kosovo town of Djakovica, about 30 miles southwest of Pristina, during NATO air strikes a year ago.

When NATO took control of Kosovo in June, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's withdrawing forces transferred more than 2,000 ethnic Albanians charged with terrorism from Kosovo to prisons elsewhere in Serbia.

The defense, represented by 26 lawyers, demanded that two of the ethnic Albanians be released from custody because one is experiencing psychiatric problems and the other had suffered a heart attack and was paralyzed.

The trial in Nis, about 125 miles south of Belgrade, drew criticism from human rights groups, who assert the accused were arrested at random.

``These Albanians are innocent civilians who were not involved in armed actions and were kidnapped on the streets of Djakovica,'' said Natasa Kandic, the head of the Belgrade Fund for Humanitarian Law, at the trial. ``This is a political trial.''

She said that all the accused lived in three neighboring streets in Djakovica, and that they were arrested at random during a police sweep of the area.

Scores have since been released but others, mostly prominent figures, have been sentenced to up to 15 years in prison. The U.N. mission in Kosovo estimates that about 1,500 Kosovo Albanians remain in Serbian jails.

Strict security measures inside and around the Nis court during the opening proceedings Tuesday included dozens of armed policemen deployed in front of the building.

-------- Puerto Rico

RFK Jr. Welcomed in Vieques

April 18, 2000
By RICARDO ZUNIGA,
Associated Press Writer
http://webcrawler-news.excite.com/news/ap/000418/14/int-puerto-rico-us-bombing

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico (AP) - Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went scuba diving Tuesday with protesters off the coast of bomb-ravaged Vieques Island and said he would sue the U.S. Navy for endangering sea and bird life during military exercises.

Kennedy inspected sunken munitions buried in coral reefs, hefted an artillery shell and surveyed a sunken barge off Vieques, where a small group of protesters has occupied the training range for almost a year.

"We've got to get the Navy out of here," he said after diving around the barge, which was used as a target for warships.

Kennedy, a senior counsel for the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council, said Monday the group would sue the Navy to stop further exercises and said that similar activities could not be carried out on the U.S. mainland because "there would be a revolution."

Later Tuesday, Kennedy visited protesters' camps in the bombing area and at the training grounds main gate.

"This visit helps us a lot in our fight to get out the message to the American public with more force," said Carlos Ventura, one of the protest leaders.

The U.S. Navy owns two-thirds of Vieques, a 20-mile by 5-mile island, and calls it the Atlantic Fleet's most important training ground. About 10,000 people live on the island, sandwiched between the bombing area and munitions depots.

Opposition to the Navy's presence boiled over in April 1999, when a U.S. Marine Corps jet dropped two bombs off target, killing a civilian security guard and injuring four other people.

The accident prompted a report by the Puerto Rican government that documented other accidents and alleged the exercises have scarred the island, home to manatees, sea turtles, and endangered peregrine falcons.

In November, the Puerto Rican government complained to the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force that errant bombs had blown apart coral reefs off Vieques.

A May 1999 survey showed craters in the reefs, as well as parachutes, shells and other debris, said Daniel Pagan, secretary of Puerto Rico's Department of Natural and Environmental Resources.

Pagan said the damage was more severe than during a survey in 1978, when scientists determined that at least 80 percent of a reef on the island's north coast had been pulverized by the Navy's bombing.

On Monday, Kennedy alleged the Navy has violated the Resource Conservation Recovery Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

After months of negotiations with Rossello, President Clinton pledged to order the military out by May 2003, if Vieques residents vote for the expulsion in a referendum. Clinton said he would allow practice with non-explosive munitions to continue until the referendum is held, but protesters on the range have refused to budge.

Last month, the Navy moved a battle group exercise scheduled for Vieques to the Florida Panhandle, but officers complained that safety and noise restrictions diluted the effectiveness of the training.

Another aircraft carrier battle group is scheduled to train on Vieques in May. That has raised speculation that federal authorities are planning an imminent sweep of the area to arrest the protesters, a move that activists have warned would spark widespread demonstrations.

Most of the protesters are supporters of independence for this Spanish-speaking territory. Although support for independence is meager among the 4 million residents of Puerto Rico, backing for the cause of Vieques appears to be very strong.

Kennedy's visit comes as protesters are planning a series of special vigils, choir performances and a church service to commemorate the April 19, 1999 death of the security guard, David Sanes Rodriguez.

----

NRC Weekly Information Report For the Week Ending March 31, 2000

Region II
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 15:34:03 +0200
From: Peter Diehl p.diehl@sik.de

U.S. Navy Master Material License, Vieques, Puerto Rico Navy Firing Range

The Division of Waste Management, NMSS assisted Region II in reviewing the Navy's plan to recover depleted uranium (DU) penetrators on the Vieques, Puerto Rico firing range. The Navy's survey work plan is sufficient to locate and retrieve the penetrators; however is not considered to be a complete decommissioning plan, which would be required for unrestricted release. The NRC's review was provided to the Navy on March 21, 2000. Region II provided a copy of the plan and the NRC's review to the Secretary of Health in Puerto Rico on March 23, 2000.

-------- russia

US, Russia End Missile Talks Round

By Alexander G. Higgins
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, April 18, 2000; 6:44 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000418/aponline184415_000.htm
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS73UEACO0

GENEVA -- U.S. and Russian arms negotiators ended the first round of their new attempt to reduce ballistic missiles Tuesday without any hint of progress.

U.S. officials declined to characterize the talks between U.S. disarmament specialist John Holum and Russian arms control official Yuri Kapralov, which lasted for a day and a half as scheduled. Russian officials, who spent the day at the U.S. Mission to U.N. offices in Geneva, could not be contacted Tuesday evening.

The kickoff of START III talks came just days after Russia's parliament approved the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty II, which had been languishing in the legislature since 1993.

START II would halve U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals to 3,000-3,500 warheads each. For START III, the two sides have proposed further steep cuts in missiles, with the Russians wanting to go below 2,000 warheads in each arsenal.

On Monday, White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said "arms control will be an important issue" at a June 4-5 summit between President Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

And START III was not the only arms control measure getting attention.

In Moscow on Tuesday, Russian lawmakers said parliament will consider ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on Friday and is expected to adopt the pact. Building on the momentum, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov will be in the United States beginning Sunday for a series of meetings on arms control.

The U.S. Senate ratified START II in 1996. But last year it rejected the nuclear test ban treaty.

Putin discussed arms control with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London on Monday. He stressed that Russian fulfillment of START II is contingent on U.S. adherence to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The United States wants Russia to permit modifications to the ABM treaty so it can build a defense against "rogue" states such as North Korea. Russia fears that the U.S. plan would undermine the deterrent value of its own missiles.

Jozef Goldblat, a widely published disarmament expert based in Geneva, said Russian ratification was well-timed to shift attention to the United States at the five-year review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty starting Monday in New York.

"The ball is in the American court" after years of Russian inactivity, Goldblat said. He said other delegations can be expected to hone in on U.S. efforts to renegotiate the ABM treaty.

In ratifying START II, the Russian Duma attached amendments: It demanded that the United States adhere to the ABM treaty and restrict deployment of weapons in the new NATO countries of eastern Europe. Failure to do so, it said, would invalidate START II.

Nonetheless, the Russian ratification means "there's now an opening" in arms talks involving other nations that have been stymied since the 1996 approval of the test ban, said Patricia Lewis, director of the Geneva-based U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research.

Proposals for further global treaties include bans on the production of materials to make nuclear bombs and the militarization of outer space.

----

Clinton To Meet the Anti-Yeltsin

By David McHugh
Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, April 18, 2000; 2:16 p.m. EDT
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000418/aponline141657_000.htm

MOSCOW -- After a backslapping seven years dealing with Boris Yeltsin, President Clinton will face a tougher summit partner in Vladimir Putin - but one who's likely to be more pragmatic and more predictable.

The new Russian president, who is to meet Clinton in a June 4-5 summit in Moscow, is an often stern-faced leader who keeps his emotions in check - at least in public - and relaxes by practicing judo. He is unlikely to engage in the kind of boisterous camaraderie that Yeltsin lavished on Clinton, calling him "Bill" and stressing their personal relationship.

Analysts say U.S.-Russian dealings, at least from the Russian side, are likely to be more businesslike and formal now. Still, though he may regard the United States with suspicion as he tries to rebuild Russia's stature as a great power, Putin wants good relations with the West, they add.

"His vision of Russia is a Russia that stands its ground," said Margot Light, a Russia scholar at the London School of Economics. "He is more of a hard-liner, but he's a man who realizes he has to deal with the West."

Both qualities were on display during Putin's visit to London over the weekend, when he addressed a major business forum. It was a sign of his need to attract foreign investment, but he also showed his immovable side, stonily rejecting Western accusations that Russia has used excessive force in Chechnya.

Clinton's visit to Moscow was announced at a time when many analysts say U.S.-Russian relations are at their lowest ebb since the Soviet collapse.

The two sides have sparred over the U.S.-led bombing of Yugoslavia and Iraq, Russia's ties to countries such as Iraq and Iran and U.S. accusations of Russian corruption. And while Yeltsin stressed relations with the United States, Putin appears ready to focus more on Europe.

Some say a tougher but more predictable negotiating partner could be a relief. Yeltsin, enfeebled by age and illness, often startled Western officials with his erratic behavior.

German officials once watched in consternation as Yeltsin grabbed a baton and wildly began conducting a military band. Irish officials once waited in vain for Yeltsin to get off an airplane in Shannon, Ireland. He later said he was sick.

Yeltsin's bonhomie "had something unstatesmanlike about it," said Light, the Russia expert. "People didn't always know how to respond to it."

It's a safe bet that Putin will be more staid. It took visible effort for him to call British Prime Minister Tony Blair by his first name during a televised phone call. During the recent presidential campaign, he often looked like he'd rather have been somewhere else instead of mixing with ordinary people.

The central topic of the summit will likely be arms control, with Clinton seeking to overcome vociferous Russian objections to a proposed U.S. missile defense system. The United States wants Russia to permit modifications to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty so it can build a defense against "rogue" states such as North Korea.

Russia fears that the U.S. plan would undermine the deterrent value of its own missiles. Putin has said that if the United States backs out of the ABM treaty, he will tear up the START II arms agreement ratified April 14 by the Russian parliament - and all other arms control agreements with Washington as well.

Analysts say Clinton may find there is room for negotiation. One tack could be offering Russia even deeper cuts in U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals under a START III treaty in return for ABM changes.

Clinton has less than a year left in office to achieve a legacy on arms control. To get a deal, he may have to offer Putin a chance to save face with some significant concession, analysts say.

Putin needs "some sort of step forward from Clinton" to overcome doubts in the Russian military, said Lilia Shevtsova, an analyst at the Moscow Carnegie Center.

Putin may push for U.S. support in getting European governments to let Russia stretch out repayment of some of its huge debt to the West. Russia also hopes the International Monetary Fund, where the United States has considerable influence, will unfreeze part of a stalled $4.5 billion in loans.

----

Clinton, Putin to Meet
GOP Senators Worry Summit Will Affect Missile Defense

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 18, 2000; Page A08
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-04/18/089l-041800-idx.html

President Clinton said yesterday he will go to Moscow for a June 4-5 summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but Republican senators warned that they "oppose in the strongest terms" the administration's efforts to strike a deal with Russia that could limit U.S. options for national missile defense.

Clinton's visit to Moscow will come at a crucial point in negotiations over altering the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow the United States to build a limited system of radars and interceptor missiles designed to shoot down a small number of incoming warheads. The administration plans to make a decision about deployment of the system by late summer.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), and 24 other conservative senators who had been briefed by the administration on the negotiations, yesterday sent a letter to Clinton saying they oppose his effort to "purchase Russian consent" by agreeing to restrict the size and type of missile shield that the United States can build. This approach, they said, "would have little hope of gaining Senate consent to ratification."

With the announcement of the summit and the blunt letter from the Senate, the chances of a domestic political showdown over international arms treaties appear to be increasing, with the possibility of a repeat of last year's resounding defeat of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in the Senate.

The senators said they were concerned that the administration might agree to limit national missile defense to a single-site, 100-interceptor system based in Alaska, which they said might not effectively protect the entire United States. Lott and his colleagues also objected to the idea of negotiating a series of ABM Treaty changes in phases, which they said would create "a permanent cycle of confrontation with Russia."

The senators said the administration's approach could limit America's future ability to deploy other missile defense technologies, including space-based sensors, additional ground-based radars, interceptor missiles based on ships, and lasers or other interception devices based on aircraft.

The administration said the letter would not derail the effort to reach agreement with Moscow. Administration sources say the talks are likely to link changes in the ABM Treaty, which the American side wants, with new limits on strategic nuclear warheads under a START III accord, which the Russian side is seeking. The Russian parliament just ratified the 1993 START II accord last week; two protocols to that accord must still be ratified by the Senate and face a tough fight there. Arms control experts predict that the administration will try to strike a grand bargain encompassing all those elements.

"We are working hard to develop the capability to defend the entire United States from this emerging missile threat, and we believe we can accomplish this while preserving the ABM Treaty," said National Security Council spokesman P.J. Crowley. "The fact that there are a number of senators who may disagree with this approach is not surprising to us."

The Moscow summit will be Clinton's first visit there since September 1998, a trip that was shadowed by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, a domestic budget showdown and an international financial crisis brought on by Russia's currency devaluation the previous month.

At one time, Clinton had vowed to hold annual summits with Russian leaders, but a combination of the Russian parliament's long delay in ratifying START II and former Russian President Boris Yeltsin's poor health were blamed by White House officials for the failure to meet that goal.

Instead, Clinton met Yeltsin--and more recently Putin--on the side during summits of the Group of Eight, the world's seven leading industrialized nations plus Russia.

"The president and President Putin spoke some time ago and agreed that it was important to keep up regular meetings," White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said yesterday. "Arms control will be an important issue, and I expect they'll also discuss Chechnya" in addition to Russia's economic and political reforms and the promotion of democracy, he said.

The June summit will come at the end of a previously scheduled European trip. Clinton will travel to Lisbon to meet European Union leaders May 30-June 1. He will then go to Germany, visiting Aachen and Berlin June 1-3. In Aachen, he will accept the Charlemagne Prize, given to international figures who have contributed to European unity.

After seeing Putin in Moscow, Clinton will travel to Kiev to meet with Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma on June 6, the White House said.

----

U.S., Russia Begin START III Talks

APRIL 18, 09:03 EST
By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS73U5QF80
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-04/18/074l-041800-idx.html

GENEVA (AP) - U.S. and Russian arms negotiators held more meetings today as the two countries sought to lay the groundwork for further strategic arms cuts, officials said.

U.S. officials refused to comment on a first round of talks Monday on START III, which would cut nuclear arsenals even further. But the efforts were clearly receiving top-level attention from Russian and U.S. leaders.

``Arms control will be an important issue,'' said White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart in announcing Monday that President Clinton will be meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on June 4-5.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov will be in the United States on Sunday for a series of meetings on arms-control issues. The upper house of the Russian parliament is expected to finish ratification of START II on Wednesday.

Putin, who pushed for ratification, said Monday in London that Russian fulfillment of the treaty was contingent on U.S. adherence to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Jozef Goldblat, a widely published disarmament expert based in Geneva, said Russian ratification was well-timed to shift attention to the United States at the five-year review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty starting Monday in New York.

``The ball is in the American court'' after years of Russian inactivity, Goldblat told The Associated Press. Other delegations can be expected to hone in on U.S. efforts to renegotiate the ABM treaty and deploy a missile-defense system.

Some Senate Republicans advocate scrapping ABM altogether.

START II, concluded in 1993, would halve U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals to 3,000-3,500 warheads each.

The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty four years ago, but still must approve a 1997 amendment to the accords giving Russia more time to comply.

In ratifying the treaty and the amendment, the Duma attached conditions that could cause problems in the Senate, said Patricia Lewis, director of the Geneva-based U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research.

She noted the Russian demand that the United States adhere to the ABM treaty and the restrictions on the deployment of weapons in the new NATO countries of eastern Europe.

Nonetheless, Lewis said, Russian ratification means ``there's now an opening'' in arms talks involving other nations that have been stymied since the 1996 approval of the nuclear test ban treaty.

Proposals for further global treaties include bans on the production of materials to make nuclear bombs and the militarization of outer space.

Conducting the two days of talks in Geneva were Yuri Kapralov, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's arms control department, and John Holum, the Clinton administration's key disarmament specialist.

---

On the Net:
Center for Nonproliferation Studies of Monterey, Calif.: http://cns.miis.edu/

Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers, Washington, D.C.: http://www.clw.org/coalition/

PIR - Center for Policy Studies in Russia: http://www.pircenter.org/english/index.htm

----

Russia Mulls Nuclear Test Ban Pact

APRIL 18, 09:50 EST
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=EUROPE&STORYID=APIS73U6GB00

MOSCOW (AP) - The Russian parliament will consider ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and is expected to adopt the pact, lawmakers said Tuesday.

Debate on the treaty is expected Friday, a week after the lower house of parliament, the State Duma, ended years of deadlock by ratifying the START II treaty to scrap thousands of U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads.

Dmitry Rogozin, chief of the chamber's international affairs committee, predicted the treaty will receive overwhelming support, with even Communist lawmakers expected to vote for it, the Interfax news agency reported.

The test ban treaty has been signed by 154 countries, including Russia, but only about 30 have ratified it.

Last year, the U.S. Senate voted to reject the treaty, saying it would undermine strategic stability. Russia strongly criticized the move.

Meanwhile, the speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament, Yegor Stroyev, said Tuesday that the upper chamber is likely to give swift approval to the START II treaty. The upper house is expected to vote on it Wednesday, seven years after it was signed by both countries' presidents.

Duma ratification of START II opened the way for two-day talks on strategic arms cuts with top U.S. and Russian negotiators that opened Monday in Geneva.

----

Putin's non-STARTer

Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/commentary-2000418171336.htm

Vladimir Putin's opening foreign policy gambit, after his victory at the polls last month, says a lot about what sort of leader of Russia he will be. President Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and others have been quick to portray the newly elected president's success in securing ratification of the START II Treaty - after seven years of studied inaction by the Duma - as evidence that Mr. Putin is a man with whom we can safely do business.

On closer inspection, however, this action is evidence less of a heartening sea change in Russia than the sort of maneuver - jujitsu - that one would expect from a man who prides himself not only on his black belt in martial arts, but on his career in the front lines of Soviet intelligence in Cold War operations against the West. We should take little comfort from signs that the most dangerous master of the Kremlin since the last KGB man to rule there, Yuri Andropov, is now able to bend the Duma to his will as he shrewdly works to undermine our advantages and turn Russia's liabilities into strengths.

Take, for example, Mr. Putin's machinations on the START II Treaty. In its original form, this accord - while defective in important respects - could be said to have had some redeeming features from the U.S. point of view. In particular, it was supposed to result in the early elimination of all of the former Soviet Union's vast arsenal of SS-18s, heavy ballistic missiles capable of preemptively attacking the United States with large numbers of independently targetable warheads. This was the treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate in January 1996.

Unfortunately, the Clinton-Gore administration agreed in September 1997 to defer the dismantling of these and other threatening Russian missiles until as late as 2007. And that was the arrangement the Duma approved last Friday. Lest the impact of this change be lost on anyone, Mr. Putin subsequently indicated that none of Russia s long-range missiles will be retired until they reach the end of their useful service life. Some deal.

What is more, Mr. Putin has asserted that Russia will not implement the START II Treaty at all unless and until the United States ratifies what the Duma has just done. That would mean accepting several other troubling provisions, notably steps aimed at breathing new life into the strategically obsolete, legally defunct 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

For example, the Russians have attached to their resolution of ratification two other ill-advised agreements also signed by the Clinton-Gore administration in September 1997. One would effect an extraordinary makeover of the ABM Treaty, from the bilateral accord signed with the Soviet Union - a country that ceased to exist nine years ago - into a multilateral accord between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus on the one hand and the United States on the other. An insight into the Clinton-Gore administration's actual attitude toward defending the United States against missile attack may be found in its motivation for seeking this change: Creating multiple foreign vetoes would make it even more difficult for the ABM Treaty to be modified so as to permit U.S. missile defenses to be deployed.

The second agreement addresses the question of demarkation: Where is the technological line to be drawn between so-called theater missile defenses that were not supposed to be covered by the ABM Treaty and strategic defenses that were? In practice, this accord would have the effect of imposing new limitations on a whole class of promising anti-missile systems. It has already contributed to actions that have dumbed down the Navy's sea-based theaterwide missile defense program, rendering it less capable of providing near-term protection for U.S. forces and allies overseas than it could - and than it needs to do.

In addition, at Mr. Putin's direction, the Duma has served notice that if the United States withdraws from the ABM treaty, Russia will abrogate not only the START I and II treaties but from other arms-control accords as well. This audacious move takes advantage of the Clinton-Gore administration's refusal to acknowledge the fact that the ABM treaty is no longer in effect as a matter of international law. It also would, as a practical matter, eliminate a right the United States was explicitly afforded by the ABM Treaty, namely that of withdrawing from the accord on six-month notice if U.S. supreme interests are jeopardized.

As the New York Times reported on Saturday: "Washington has a choice, [Mr. Putin] said. The United States will have to renounce its plans to develop a national ABM system in order to preserve START II and the agreement limiting conventional forces in Europe. If it does not and discards the ABM treaty, Mr. Putin said, the United States will become in the eyes of the world the party that is guilty for destroying the foundations of strategic stability.

It remains to be seen what Mr. Putin's jujitsu will mean for the Clinton-Gore administration's highest foreign policy priority: negotiation of a grand compromise on strategic arms. This would package a follow-on START III agreement (involving far more radical, unverifiable and ill-advised reductions in U.S. offensive nuclear arms) together with Russian permission for an exceedingly limited American anti-missile deployment in Alaska, provided Washington foreswears any interest in more comprehensive layered defenses.

Before President Clinton makes matters worse - either in negotiations leading up to or during the summit he plans to hold with Mr. Putin sometime next month - he should heed a lesson offered by the bruising fight that led to rejection of his 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty: Under the Constitution, the Senate is a coequal partner with the executive branch in the making of international treaties. It would be a serious mistake to enroll, without serious debate let alone prior agreement from the Senate, in a new agreement effecting dubious reductions in U.S. nuclear forces and precluding the sort of layered missile defenses that even the director of the Clinton Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, says are likely to be necessary.

Alas, a president more interested in securing an arms-control legacy irrespective of the cost is likely to prove an easy mark for a cunning, ruthless operative like Vladimir Putin. The Senate must therefore promptly step into the breach, performing the vital check-and-balance role envisioned for it by the Founding Fathers. It should insist upon Mr. Clinton finally submitting for the Senate's advice and consent the September 1997 agreements the Duma has now approved. By rejecting these accords on the grounds that they will make it harder for the United States to achieve the missile defense required by it and its forces and allies overseas, the Senate can make clear the unacceptability of the grand compromise that Mr. Clinton now seeks - a deal that might just be sufficiently inimical to U.S. national security interests to be acceptable to Mr. Putin.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is the president of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for The Washington Times.

--------

Russian Duma Seeks to Upstage U.S. on Arms

April 18, 2000
By Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-ru.html

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's parliament decided on Tuesday it would vote on ratifying the global nuclear test ban treaty on Friday and looked set to approve the deal just a week after backing another major arms control agreement.

Assuming the State Duma or lower house ratifies the test ban treaty as expected, Russia will then be able to upstage the United States at an important U.N. review conference next week on halting the spread of nuclear weapons.

``If this treaty is ratified now, Russia will have a clear advantage at the international conference,'' Dmitry Rogozin, head of the Duma's international affairs committee, told reporters.

Given Russia's limited finances, arms control is a crucial area for President-elect Vladimir Putin and he has already started to force the pace even before his May 7 inauguration. Arms control serves the dual purpose of freeing up funds for new weapons and presenting a more accommodating face to the West.

That will be important as he tries to attract foreign investment. With two major arms accords under his belt, Putin would also be well placed for his first summit with President Clinton in Moscow in June.

Rogozin said the Duma's agenda-setting council had decided to vote on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) on Friday.

Clinton failed last October to persuade the Senate to ratify the CTBT, which outlaws nuclear tests. It is not an arms-cutting treaty but if the Duma ratifies it, Russia will be a step ahead.

``The spotlight will be on us,'' a U.S. diplomat said last week. RIA news agency quoted Putin's representative in the Duma as saying the chamber was likely to approve the treaty.

Last Friday, the Duma comfortably ratified the U.S.-Russian START-2 nuclear arms reduction treaty, smoothing the way for Putin before he started his first visit abroad on Sunday.

The Federation Council upper house is scheduled to vote on START-2 on Wednesday and is likely to follow the Duma's suit.

Under START-2, the two sides agree to slash the number of warheads from 6,000 to no more than 3,500 each by 2007.

DISARMAMENT DEBATE REACTIVATED

The two powers are now discussing a new round of talks on a follow-on START-3 treaty that would cut arsenals still further.

The Clinton administration wants to cut back to 2,000-2,500 warheads each. Putin has said Russia, faced with scarce funds and aging weapons, was ready to go even lower, to 1,500 each.

In addition, Putin said last Friday the arms control ball was now firmly in Washington's court. The Duma underscored this point by approving motions authorizing Putin to abandon START-2 if the United States goes ahead with a missile defense plan.

Washington wants to modify the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty to allow it to deploy its missile defense system. Moscow has so far ruled any changes to that treaty but Putin hinted at a possible compromise during a visit to London on Monday.

It remains to be seen what form that compromise will take, although it looks as though it may hinge on what is defined as a legitimate defense system against missile strikes from so-called rogue stages such as Iraq or North Korea.

Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told CNN ahead of a visit to the United States that what he dubbed the ``Putin Plan'' would involve START-3 talks and looking into cooperating on non-strategic anti-missile systems as well as other measures.

If the Duma ratifies the test ban treaty, Putin and Ivanov will be able to clamber further on to the moral high ground in negotiations on cutting a deal on ABM.

Yet in a sign those talks will not be easy, the Russian Foreign Ministry complained again on Tuesday Norway was setting up a missile-watching station as a proxy for the United States.

Oslo says the Arctic station is to track space debris but Moscow does not believe this. It says the station violates ABM.

As they did last week, Ivanov and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev will be on hand in the Duma this week to brief deputies ahead of the vote on the test ban treaty.

Sergeyev will also explain to deputies about Russia's problems fulfilling the terms of a major chemical weapons destruction pact because of underfunding in the military.

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

Russia's Putin Wins Nod in UK

April 17, 2000
By Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-britain.html

LONDON (Reuters) - Russia's President-elect Vladimir Putin won a valuable nod of acceptance as a reformer and a promise of support from British Prime Minister Tony Blair on his first visit to the West Monday.

``I believe that Vladimir Putin is the leader who is ready to embrace a new relationship with the European Union and the United States, who wants a strong and modern Russia and the strong relationship with the West,'' Blair said.

``He talks our own language of reform,'' he told a joint news conference after talks at which Putin briefed the British leader on his reform plans and apparently asked him to mediate a compromise in Moscow's political row with the United States.

The 47-year-old former spy's guess that London would be the best place in Europe to dispel the fears about him seems to have proved right.

At the start of his visit, Putin met leading British businessmen promising them stability and a good investment climate under his administration.

He also made clear that he was planning to fight widespread corruption, tax evasion and capital flight by rooting out the causes rather than punishing businessmen who make use of black holes in the legislation.

``It will be quite impressive if he does half of what he says,'' one of the businessmen told after the meeting.

CHECHNYA WAS NOT THE KEY ISSUE

Putin's presentation in Europe was strongly helped by London's reluctance to stoke the issue of Chechnya. It is painful for Putin who believes the West misunderstands the cause of his campaign in the restive southern province.

Blair said he had raised his concerns on Chechnya with Putin but stressed he did not want to isolate Moscow on the issue.

Despite protests by human rights groups, Queen Elizabeth met Putin at Windsor Castle. No details of the 25-minute meeting were released.

``Some say that because of our concerns about Chechnya we should keep some distance from Moscow,'' Blair said.

``I have to tell you that while I share those concerns I believe that the best way to register those concerns and to get results is by engaging with Russia and not isolating Russia.''

Blair said he welcomed Putin's commitment in his statement last week that all reports of human rights violations in Chechnya would be investigated.

BRIDGE TO THE STATES

Political analysts have said that apart from a more pragmatic approach to Russia's campaign in Chechnya, Britain was picked as the venue for Putin's first Western visit because of its close ties with the United States.

Russia feels threatened by U.S. plans to set up a national nuclear missile shield against rogue states in violation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty which Russia sees as a corner stone of all consequent disarmament pacts.

Washington has demonstrated its commitment to go ahead with the new defense system even if it implies dropping out from the ABM.

Moscow has so far rejected any proposals to amend the ABM pact to match U.S. plans and has threatened to reconsider its obligations under other arms treaties, including the START-2 ratified by Russia Friday, if they went ahead.

Blair said the issue was raised in talks with Putin and made clear London could act as mediator.

``As I said to President Putin during the course of our talks, our role in this is very much to try and build understanding of respective points of view, both of Russia and the United States,'' he said.

As his contribution to possible future bargaining, Putin signaled for the first time Russia was ready for some kind of compromise.

``Our legislation strictly links these two things (ABM and START-2), but I want to draw your attention to the fact that at the time, at the proposal of the American side, we have drawn a line between strategic and non-strategic defense,'' he said.

``In this very context we are ready to conduct a dialogue,'' Putin said before leaving London for the former Soviet state of Ukraine.

-------- spying

CIA Sends Agents to Schools--to Teach
Business, Library Majors Sign Up as Classes Spread

By Valerie Strauss and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 18, 2000; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-04/18/070l-041800-idx.html

A smartly dressed man named Joe whose parents don't know what he does for a living riveted a University of Maryland class last week with tales about U.S. government secrets. Joe, the guest lecturer in a course called "Legal Issues in Managing Information," works for the CIA. So does the course's instructor, whose full name can be published.

At George Washington University, another CIA employee teaches a course on competitive intelligence in business. And the same thing is happening at Georgetown University.

Intelligence is flourishing as a new academic discipline at hundreds of colleges across the country. Only a small fraction of the instructors are CIA employees, but many others have worked in government intelligence or diplomacy of some kind and have fashioned courses based on that service.

Their skills mesh perfectly with the business world's increased emphasis on information management and how distinguishing good information from bad information affects the bottom line. Indeed, the typical student in an intelligence course is not a wannabe spy but an aspiring business executive, systems analyst or librarian.

Ann Prentice, dean of U-Md.'s College of Library and Information Systems, said the school sought out Lee Strickland, the CIA official teaching the graduate course on legal issues, for the practical experience he could bring to information management.

"It's our core business," she said. "We thought Lee could bring another perspective that would be valuable."

The new academic field also is growing because of a dramatic increase in source material. Since the end of the Cold War, millions of pages of secret documents, as well as archival material from the former Soviet Union, have been declassified. There also has been an explosion in books about intelligence work; more than 1,000 are listed in Books in Print, compared with 215 in 1994. Three textbooks on the subject are being published, and intelligence Web sites proliferate on the Internet.

The trend could not have occurred without a change in campus politics, college officials say. In the 1960s, rumors of CIA recruitment at a school were enough to trigger student demonstrations, and the notion of a CIA agent teaching was almost unthinkable. Today's students on the whole are much more politically conservative.

Strickland is part of the CIA's Officers in Residence program, in which employees take two-year leaves to teach. The teachers are selected by the agency, then approved by the university.

Nine universities currently participate. And more than 30, including Harvard and Princeton universities, have done so since the program began in 1985. Lloyd D. Salvetti, the CIA official in charge of teacher placements, says more schools want to participate than he has agents to send. A few universities have turned down the arrangement, he said, declining to name them.

Prentice said no one, student or faculty member, has complained to her about having a CIA agent on the College Park campus.

Students in Strickland's course say they benefit from his service in the CIA's office of general counsel. Michelle McDaniels, 31, who is studying to be a librarian, said he has taught her about classifying information and many other issues she will face in her field. "I have learned something that has real-world applicability in every class," said McDaniels, who calls Strickland's course "the most useful" she has taken.

Floyd L. Paseman, who ran the CIA's East Asian operations and is now on a two-year teaching stint at Marquette University in Milwaukee, draws similar plaudits from students. In fact, Marquette students selected him as the best instructor in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Pamela Noe, the CIA officer in residence at GWU, teaches "U.S. Intelligence--Past, Present and Future," as well as "Introduction to Competitive Intelligence," in which students design strategies for companies or organizations of their choice.

Some of the instructors have had CIA critics as guest lecturers. Paseman brought before Marquette's honor society a former KGB general, who said he believed the CIA had lost its will to take big covert actions such as assassinations. Strickland debated in class with Steven Aftergood of the American Federation of Sciences Intelligence Research Program, which has sued the CIA over its secrecy policies.

Aftergood said he supports CIA agents teaching. "I think it is a welcome development that contributes to the demystification of intelligence," he said. "It brings at least a handful of intelligence officers out of their classified enclave into the relative freedom of academia. . . . Exploring intelligence in the academic environment could eventually lead to qualitative changes in intelligence."

The Harvard of the intelligence field is the Joint Military Intelligence College, in the highly secure headquarters of the Defense Intelligence Agency at Bolling Air Force Base in Southeast Washington.

It is the only college in the country that grants fully accredited bachelor's and master's degrees in intelligence and the only one that teaches intelligence using the highest levels of classified information. All students must get top-secret clearance.

While the Joint Military Intelligence College has granted master's degrees in strategic intelligence since 1983, it began awarding bachelor's degrees only in 1998. The Department of Education had concluded that a need existed for a government institution that could offer courses with classified curricula.

Salvetti welcomes the nationwide increase in intelligence courses and thinks it will help the public understand how the spy world operates. "At the end of the day, we [the CIA] have suffered for the fact that we are at the hands of those who would popularize this profession, mythologize it, Hollywood-ize it," he said.

CIA officers in schools are there to teach--not recruit, he said. Instructors often are asked by students about CIA careers, and they are referred to recruiters.

And the recruiters, of course, don't turn them away.

-------- taiwan

Pentagon Won't Back Taiwan Deal Radar Favored Over Sale of 4 Destroyers

By Steven Mufson and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, April 17, 2000; Page A01
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-04/17/136l-041700-idx.html

The Pentagon will recommend against the diplomatically explosive sale of four Aegis destroyers to Taiwan, but is in favor of selling the island a long-range radar that can peer deep into China to detect missile launches, Pentagon sources close to the deliberations said yesterday.

Taiwan's desire to buy the ships--at a cost of about $1 billion each--has posed an excruciating dilemma for the Clinton administration, which will infuriate mainland China if it approves the sale and antagonize key Republicans in Congress if it does not.

The Pentagon has decided to recommend that the United States put off Taiwan's request to buy several major new weapons. These include submarines and P-3 Orion anti-submarine aircraft, as well as the four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with the Aegis battle management system, an array of radars and computers capable of simultaneously tracking more than 100 targets on land, in the air and at sea.

Instead, the Pentagon will recommend a comprehensive study of Taiwan's naval defense needs, which could lead to future sales of some or all of these weapons, according to an official involved in the discussions.

Both the National Security Council and the State Department are believed to favor the sale of a small package of arms to Taiwan in order to avoid angering Beijing or encouraging Taiwan's independence movement. But finding a compromise that will satisfy everyone--Taiwan, Beijing and Congress--appears all but impossible.

If adopted at a White House meeting today, the Pentagon recommendations could anger both the Communist government in Beijing, which regards Taiwan as rightfully part of China, and Congress, whose members support Taiwan's blossoming democratic system and are seeking to keep U.S. shipyards busy.

Under the Pentagon's recommendation, the long-range radar, known as PAVE PAWS, would be sold only after Taiwan shows how it would be integrated into its air defense system. Then the United States would deliver it within one to two years, an administration official said. The system is designed to detect and monitor ballistic missiles and can be linked to missile defense systems.

Taiwan is concerned about its ability to defend against Chinese missiles based in Fujian province, just across the 100-mile strait that separates mainland China from the self-governing island. China has deployed 200 missiles in Fujian and is adding about 50 a year, according to Adm. Dennis Blair, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Command.

The Chinese government, which strongly opposes the U.S. deployment of a national missile defense system or theater missile defenses for Taiwan, might be upset by the sale of the radar. But an administration official involved in the discussions said, "That's what you get when you aim a bunch of missiles at somebody."

The Pentagon has also decided to back the sale of advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles (AMRAAM) to Taiwan, on the condition that they be stored in the United States. While this would be the first sale of such weapons to any Asian country, storing them on U.S. soil would help to avoid an arms race in Asia, a Pentagon official said.

Taiwanese forces would be trained in the United States on how to use the missiles. A Pentagon official said the missiles would be moved to Taiwan if China acquired a similar, Russian-made missile called the AAX-12.

In addition, the Pentagon wants to sell Taiwan an upgraded version of the Maverick air-to-ground missile. Because of the Maverick's offensive potential, a Pentagon official said this proposal was highly controversial within the administration. Taiwan now has an older version that requires a fighter pilot to guide the missile to its target using a video camera. In the new version, an infrared sensor would enable a pilot to "fire and forget" the missile.

Under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, passed when Washington reestablished diplomatic relations with Beijing and downgraded them with Taipei, the United States committed itself to providing Taiwan with enough weapons to enable Taiwan to defend itself. While successive American presidents have supported Beijing's stance that there is only "one China," they have warned the mainland that they expect reunification to come about peacefully. China, however, has refused to renounce the possibility of using force.

Taiwan's annual request to buy arms from the United States has taken on added significance this year. With U.S.-Chinese relations poisoned by the accidental American bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo war, China is looking with even greater than normal suspicion at U.S. support for Taiwan. Some experts also suggest that China wants to make Taiwan feel some insecurity so that Taiwan will enter talks on reunification with the mainland.

For Taiwan, the arms package is also an important test of U.S. intentions. The island just held its second democratic presidential election, and the victory of a longtime opposition candidate, Chen Shui-bian, means the island will undergo its first democratic transfer of power with his May 20 inauguration. Chen has long been an advocate of Taiwanese independence, although he recently modified his public stance, saying he would not pursue a formal declaration of independence and would be willing to talk with Beijing.

Aides to Chen and leading Republicans in Congress say it is a crucial time for the United States to support Taiwanese democracy. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), in whose home state the Aegis destroyers are built, has told President Clinton that he expects a "robust package" of arms sales to Taiwan and has warned that failure to provide one could endanger passage of a trade bill granting China permanent normal trading relations. The administration is pushing for the bill as part of a deal to admit China to the World Trade Organization.

But Beijing remains extremely anxious about Chen's election and wants him to endorse the principle that there is only "one China." In meetings with Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, two weeks ago and with Commerce Secretary William Daley a week ago, top Chinese leaders bluntly warned the United States of grave consequences if Taiwan continues its drift toward independence. A meeting in Beijing between Daley, the administration's point man in pushing for congressional approval of the China trade bill, and Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji was dominated by discussion of Taiwan, an administration official said.

Berger is expected to play a key role in making the final decision on the arms sale this week, administration officials said. If, out of concern for Taiwan's security or reactions in Congress, the administration adds to the Pentagon's list, the most likely additional weapons to be sold would probably be the P-3 anti-submarine planes, which Defense Department officials say are relatively easy to integrate into Taiwan's forces.

----

Taiwan Arms Deal Excludes Warships
Criticism Greets Clinton Decision on High-Tech Package

By Thomas E. Ricks and Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 18, 2000; Page A01
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-04/18/153l-041800-idx.html

President Clinton decided yesterday to sell a package of high-tech weapons to Taiwan, but followed a Pentagon recommendation to put off the politically volatile sale of four Aegis destroyers, officials said.

It is unclear whether that compromise will mollify Taiwan, but it is unlikely to satisfy either congressional Republicans, who wanted a bigger arms deal, or the government of mainland China, which would have preferred a much smaller one.

The package approved by the Clinton administration includes sophisticated air-to-air and anti-ship missiles as well as a "Pave Paws" long-range radar system able to peer thousands of miles into mainland China. But Congress is likely to focus on the deferral of the sale of four Aegis warships, which cost about $1.1 billion each and boast powerful radars able to track more than 100 incoming missiles and aircraft at a time.

"I am extremely disappointed to learn that the Pentagon has apparently succumbed to pressure from the State Department and the White House to sacrifice Taiwan's security in order to appease the dictators in Beijing," said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). "If the Pentagon will not stand up for Taiwan, then it is clear Congress will have to take action."

Undersecretary of Defense Walter B. Slocombe, who has been the Pentagon's point man on the nettlesome arms request from Taiwan, defended the decision.

"The package on the whole is quite robust, with first-class air-to-air missiles and anti-ship missiles," said Slocombe, who has tried to figure out how to sell enough equipment to help Taiwan militarily without selling so much that Beijing would be provoked into a reaction. "We have nothing to apologize for in this package."

China regards Taiwan as its rightful territory and invariably opposes U.S. arms sales to the self-governing island, which take place at this time each year. But China's Communist leadership is particularly sensitive now because of the victory of Chen Shui-bian, a longtime advocate of Taiwanese independence, in the island's recent presidential election.

"We are opposed to an arms sale because that would boost the morale of Taiwan authorities in refusing peaceful reunification with China," said Zhang Yuanyuan, spokesman for the Chinese Embassy. "Especially at this time of great sensitivity, we're concerned that this might be viewed as a wrong signal. So we appeal for great caution and prudence on the part of the American government."

Taiwan, which will receive formal notification of the administration's decision today, had no official response yesterday. Its military has been worried by a Chinese naval and missile buildup across the 100-mile-wide strait that separates the island from the mainland.

U.S. officials plan to tell Taiwanese officials today that the package is designed to address their greatest military vulnerability-- air defense. The Pave Paws system could be linked in the future to a theater missile defense system, an array of anti-missile interceptors capable of shielding a region the size of Taiwan.

The package approved by the White House also includes an upgraded model of the Maverick air-to-ground missile, which can be used to attack ships, and the advanced medium-range air-to-air missile, or AMRAAM, designed for use against aircraft. But in an unusual move, the AMRAAM missiles sold to Taiwan will be kept in the United States and not shipped overseas unless China acquires a similar missile from Russia.

The part of the arms sale most likely to anger China is the Pave Paws radar, which is designed to monitor ballistic missiles. As used by the United States, the Pave Paws has a range of about 3,000 miles, but the version sold to Taiwan may not be as powerful, a Pentagon official said.

"If I were the Chinese, I'd have to assume that the Taiwan radar was connected to the American missile defense network," said John Pike, director of space policy at the Federation of American Scientists, referring to the proposed U.S. construction of a $20 billion national missile defense system over the next five years. But a Pentagon official rejected that notion, saying the United States does not have the kind of political or military links to Taiwan that would permit such cooperation in erecting missile defenses.

Despite yesterday's decision, it is possible that Congress may yet prod the administration into selling Taiwan the Aegis destroyers--or into some compensatory measure, such as giving the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet more Aegis-equipped warships that could be dispatched to Taiwan in a crisis. The Aegis ships are built primarily at shipyards in Mississippi, home of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R), and Maine, home of Defense Secretary William S. Cohen.

Some Democrats as well as Republicans in Congress favor the sale of the destroyers. Sen. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.) said that the administration decision reflected "a balanced approach" but that he was "disappointed" the Aegis wasn't being sold. "The most likely threat is a missile attack across the Taiwan Straits, and Aegis is the only thing that would be helpful," he said.

-------- un

U.N. Council to Review Its Policy on Sanctions

April 18, 2000
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/041800un-sanctions.html

UNITED NATIONS -- The Security Council, faced with growing criticism of embargoes that fail to deter dictators but often hurt civilians, decided unanimously Monday to take a hard look at how sanctions are applied and how they can be improved.

In a long debate, no council member or representative of other nations expressed unqualified approval of the way sanctions are now used. The council president, Robert Fowler of Canada, announced that a working group, drawing on outside experts, would begin a six-month policy review.

The move reflects a wider sanctions re-examination taking place around the world, including studies by committees in the British and Canadian Parliaments and expert studies for Germany and Switzerland.

There are many calls for "smart" sanctions that would be more precisely directed against leaders and their entourages.

Monday morning, speaking to a conference of United Nations officials, diplomats and scholars, Secretary-General Kofi Annan said there was a "general lack of understanding and skepticism in the general public about the rationale and usefulness of sanctions." Even among nations not affected by sanctions, he said, "there appears a growing distrust of this instrument, and its ability to bring about change at a fair cost."

The United Nations is having a hard time responding to critics of sanctions against Iraq, where, according to a new estimate from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 80 percent of the civilian population has been negatively affected.

The Clinton administration has been largely absent from this worldwide debate, diplomats say. It has instead continued to use sanctions or the threat of sanctions widely, sometimes pressing the Security Council to back up Washington's measures, to the increasing discomfort of other nations.

Some diplomats say that barring a particularly terrible outrage by a leader somewhere, it will be very difficult to win a vote for sanctions -- especially for a comprehensive economic embargo like that imposed on Iraq a decade ago -- in the foreseeable future.

"The Security Council has imposed sanctions 12 times since 1990 and only twice before then," Jean-David Levitte, the French ambassador here, said during Monday's council debate," adding that the increase justified a reassessment of sanctions policy.

"The Sanctions Decade" is the title of a new book by two American scholars, David Cortright of the Fourth Freedom Forum and George Lopez of Notre Dame. The book (International Peace Academy/Lynne Reinner Publishers) studies 12 cases and summarizes suggestions for improving sanctions that have been made by experts around the world.

Monday, the French and Russians added a call for limited durations for sanctions, forcing complete reviews rather than rollovers at periodic intervals.

James B. Cunningham, the deputy American representative, said, though, that sanctions once imposed should be kept in place until the leader against whom they are directed changes behavior.

Security Council sanctions, carrying the possibility of military enforcement, are in effect in Afghanistan, Angola, Iraq, Liberia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan and Yugoslavia, the last for President Slobodan Milosevic's actions in Kosovo. Sanctions against Libya were suspended after two suspects were turned over to a Scottish court for trial in the 1988 bombing of Pan American flight 101.

-------- us military

President Must Address Veteran's Side of Nuclear Nightmare

U.S. Newswire
18 Apr 16:47
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0418-127.html

To: National Desk, Military Reporter
Contact: Steve Thomas, 202-263-2982 or Joe March, 317-630-1253 both of The American Legion

WASHINGTON, April 18 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following statement by Al Lance, national commander of the American Legion, was released today by the American Legion:

President Clinton says he wants to "right the wrongs of the past" committed against factory workers who built America's nuclear arsenal. To each civilian bomb maker suffering from cancers related to radioactive exposure, the administration offers either a lump sum payment of $100,000 or a medical treatment and job retraining package.

If medical records are lost, the sick worker gets compensated. If there is uncertainty about the origin of the cancer, the sick worker gets the benefit of the doubt.

The government should have taken this approach years ago, with respect to "atomic veterans" deliberately exposed to ionizing radiation in nuclear tests conducted in the 1940s, '50s and '60s. "Atomic veterans" wore badges that recorded their exposures so that the government could determine the impact of radiation on the human body. They fought two wars: one for freedom; the other for treatment and compensation from the U.S. government, which for years denied a relationship between these veterans' cancers and their radiation exposure. As long as the government denied the illnesses were service-connected, the government did not have to provide health care and benefits to the sick veterans, thus prolonging agony and hastening death.

The American Legion fought alongside these veterans and successfully represented a major claimant. Orville E. Kelly in 1979 was awarded disability compensation by the VA for his radiation-linked cancer, a landmark case that set the stage for the awarding of benefits to thousands of "atomic veterans."

The American Legion also fought hard to persuade the government to provide health care and compensation for "atomic veterans" suffering from numerous cancers, including: thyroid, breast, lung, bone, liver, skin, esophageal, stomach, colon, ovarian, rectal, prostate, pancreatic, kidney, urinary bladder, salivary gland, multiple myeloma, posterior subcapsular cataracts, non-malignant thyroid nodular disease, parathyroid adenoma, tumors of the brain and central nervous system, and lymphomas other than Hodgkin's disease.

However, many sick veterans do not get the benefit of the doubt that their conditions are service-connected and therefore rely on American Legion service officers to help them travel an arduous road to compensation. Some sick veterans are awarded health care and benefits. Some are not. Many veterans whose claims slipped through the government's cavernous cracks are now frail, elderly, and overwhelmed as much by betrayal as illness. Further, there are conditions that Congress has yet to make compensable for health care and benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs, including chronic lymphatic (lymphocytic) leukemia.

A White House panel poured over scientific studies of accelerated cancer rates among civilian nuclear bomb makers. The case for compensating civilian nuclear workers was compelling; no less compelling than the recent cancer figures on patriots who in their young adulthood followed orders and paid the price.

An Institute of Medicine study released in October found a 50 percent higher leukemia-death rate among land-based military personnel in the Nevada desert who participated in atomic experiments, compared to land-based troops who did not. Death rates for prostate and nasal cancers were upwards of 20 percent higher for atomic-test participants, according to the IOM study.

Science, once again, proved what The American Legion contended for two generations, unfortunately through decades of government denials: Ionizing radiation contributed to cancer in certain veterans.

The American Legion, the nation's largest veterans organization, is a long-standing advocate of compensation and health care for "atomic veterans." As its national commander, I would stand proudly with any administration that would announce a new position: That ailing veterans henceforth exposed to radiation -- in any form -- will receive the benefit of the doubt that their illnesses are service-connected. They will be provided hassle-free medical care and just compensation in the Department of Veterans Affairs medical and benefits systems.

No denial. No compensatory shell games. Just the same treatment the administration today extends to civilian victims of a nuclear nightmare. That is what the men and women of The American Legion want, and that is what our nation's veterans have earned.

Al Lance is national commander of the 2.8-million member American Legion, the nation's largest veterans organization.

----

Drug Czar Up in Arms Over Gulf War Inquiry

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 18, 2000; Page C01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-04/18/040l-041800-idx.html

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the White House drug czar, has mounted an unusual preemptive strike against investigative reporter Seymour Hersh over a potentially explosive story for the New Yorker that has not yet been published.

McCaffrey has written the editor of the magazine and other news organizations to complain that the veteran author has been conducting "defamatory" interviews filled with "false allegations" and is doing so out of "personal malice."

The result has been a flurry of detailed letters, charts and "for the record" memorandums among McCaffrey, his former military colleagues, Hersh and New Yorker Editor David Remnick about who is being unfair to whom.

In a letter to the drug office, Hersh dismissed a McCaffrey assistant's suggestion that his interviews "seem 'purposely designed to falsely impugn' General McCaffrey's reputation," saying that conclusion appeared based on one disputed interview.

"Your allegations are wrong. . . . I am simply going about my business, as I have for the past 35 or so years, asking questions, listening to answers and trying to verify and assess what I've been told," Hersh wrote.

Part of what Hersh is examining, according to McCaffrey and memos and letters from eight current and former military officers, are allegations that the 24th Infantry Division, under McCaffrey's leadership, committed war crimes during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. If such charges are printed, they will undoubtedly draw global attention, especially since Hersh won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

In an interview, McCaffrey flatly denied such allegations, especially the most sensational one: that soldiers under his command had shot Iraqi prisoners of war. McCaffrey said his wife has been in tears over the inquiry.

"This just isn't going to pan out. . . . I can't imagine it's remotely possible he can find a person who can substantiate a claim of any wrongdoing that wouldn't disintegrate with five minutes of questioning," McCaffrey said. But he has refused to grant Hersh an interview, insisting instead on written questions.

David Remnick, the New Yorker's editor, said: "I have complete confidence in Sy Hersh. Remember, we haven't published a thing yet."

While he takes McCaffrey's complaints seriously, Remnick said, "I have absolute confidence in Sy and confidence in how we do things here in terms of fact-checking and legal read and all the things that places like the New Yorker and The Washington Post expect of themselves." He said Hersh has "a long track record" and that "I'm very proud to be associated with him."

Hersh said Sunday that he could not discuss an ongoing project. "How can I talk about something I haven't written yet?" he asked.

This is a clash of two strong-willed individuals. Hersh, 63, a former New York Times reporter, is known for his tenacity in exposing scandals. In one New Yorker piece, he interviewed more than 100 past and current government officials in questioning whether the United States had bombed the wrong building in a 1998 strike against Sudan, as many critics have come to believe.

But Hersh also drew widespread criticism over his 1997 book "The Dark Side of Camelot." Hersh was initially suckered by a former paralegal peddling a bogus batch of John F. Kennedy papers--including the tale of a supposed payoff to Marilyn Monroe--but cut the material because of doubts about its authenticity.

McCaffrey, 57, who was wounded three times in Vietnam, has been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross twice, the Silver Star twice and the Purple Heart three times. He commanded 26,000 troops during the Persian Gulf War and, in a final battle, joined the attack in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle because, he said, "I like to fight." McCaffrey was the nation's youngest four-star general when he retired in 1996 to accept President Clinton's appointment to head the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Under the circumstances, it is impossible to evaluate the quality of Hersh's evidence, some of which is already being fact-checked by the New Yorker, or even to be certain of the focus of his inquiry.

In making the correspondence available to The Washington Post, McCaffrey is adopting the increasingly popular tactic of a news subject trying to make the journalist the issue before he delivers his findings. Last fall, for example, Metabolife launched a $2 million campaign against ABC's "20/20" over a pending story on the company's diet pills--a story that executives later had to admit was not terribly unfair.

Elements of Hersh's investigation, from McCaffrey's early career to the drug office's efforts in Colombia, can be pieced together from written comments by some of the military men he has interviewed, who provided copies to McCaffrey, who in turn has furnished the material to some news outlets.

Retired Col. Ken Koetz, for instance, wrote that Hersh had said of McCaffrey: "I really want to bury this guy." Hersh, in his letter to the drug office, denied having made such a comment.

Retired Col. Justin Hughes said Hersh told him that when McCaffrey was 11 years old at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., he stole another boy's bicycle and that McCaffrey's father, a colonel, had intervened with military police to get his son off the hook. McCaffrey called the story "preposterous," saying he never lived at Fort Leavenworth.

In his memo, Hughes said Hersh told him that he was examining allegations ranging from McCaffrey's Gulf War units "misreporting" their positions to headquarters to the "murder of thousands of retreating enemy soldiers."

Another memo was written by retired Lt. Gen. James Scott, now director of Harvard University's national security program. Scott said Hersh spoke of information that Iraqi prisoners of war were shot at Tallil air base by members of the 24th Division, and that the Army had covered it up. Hersh also contended that McCaffrey "had destroyed the careers of many officers" and was "universally disliked," Scott told Remnick in a letter.

Scott also said Hersh told him that yet another officer, Lt. Gen. John Van Alstyne, had implicated McCaffrey in military wrongdoing. But Van Alstyne wrote Remnick that "this is very disturbing, since I have never spoken with Mr. Hersh on any subject."

In similar fashion, Lt. Col. Troy Kunz wrote that Hersh maintained that Brig. Gen. Richard Quirk III was aware of the alleged shooting of Iraqi prisoners, but Quirk said in his own memo that he had never heard of such atrocities.

Summarizing his defense in a memo dated Friday, McCaffrey wrote that a 197th Infantry task force, backed by air attacks, had invaded Tallil air base, but that no Iraqi prisoners were executed.

Maj. Scott Hays, an Army spokesman, said the service's criminal investigative division examined the allegations of atrocities at Tallil and found them to be "unsubstantiated." He said Hersh has requested copies of the documents involved.

McCaffrey also wrote that he and a 24th Division brigade had engaged the Iraqis in a post-cease-fire battle at Rumaylah oil field, destroying 187 armored vehicles and about 500 other vehicles. But he said the American troops, rather than mistreating the thousands of captured Iraqis, gave away their own food, water and blankets.

As part of his campaign to neutralize Hersh, McCaffrey contacted the Gulf War commander, retired Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, who wrote back expressing his "100 percent support." McCaffrey also drew support from a Marine Corps general who fired off a letter to Remnick.

Some Hersh critics have gone so far as to suggest that the reporter is not properly identifying himself. Two of the current and former military officers wrote that Hersh had described himself as working for the New York Times--an unlikely claim, since it would be easy to check that Hersh hasn't been on the newspaper's payroll since 1979. Times Editor Joseph Lelyveld wrote the drug office that he believes Hersh's assurance that he presented himself only as a former Times reporter.

As the correspondence has escalated, McCaffrey's hostile fire against Hersh has grown quite personal. "Hersh is hoping for a knockout blow, to rediscover My Lai in his dying years," McCaffrey said in the interview.

But should McCaffrey be sending news organizations--using White House stationery and at taxpayer expense--not just letters in his own defense but also articles criticizing Hersh over the Kennedy book? "When someone is attacked," asked Bob Weiner, McCaffrey's spokesman, "don't they have the right to defend themselves?"

----

Technology Check

By Bill Joy
Tuesday, April 18, 2000; Page A29
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-04/18/015l-041800-idx.html

In the midst of amazing and rapidly accelerating technological progress, with all the benefits it confers, it's time to stop and ask where this explosion of science is taking us. For most of a career devoted to solving problems with technology, I gave too little thought to the ultimate consequences of the power that we are beginning to unleash.

In fact, most of the warnings we have heard have been either in science fiction or have come from Luddites who bring to the debate little more than an anti-technology rant. But this is no excuse for ignoring these questions. Increasingly, I have deep misgivings about the path we are on.

As terrible as the nuclear, biological and chemical weapons threats--the weapons of mass destruction--were in the 20th century, the underlying technologies behind them were largely of military use and held closely by a small number of nation states. We have been lucky enough to have avoided large incidents involving weapons of mass destruction for more than 50 years.

Today we face another, graver, challenge to our survival. Our most powerful 21st-century technologies--genetic engineering, nanotechnology and robotics (GNR for short)--carry a hidden risk of huge dimensions. They possess two characteristics that make them different from previous technologies: They are self-replicating, and they are "knowledge-enabled"--that is, they are capable of being used by the many individuals and small groups that will know how to operate them, some of whom may be out to cause catastrophic damage. Unless we take strong action, we are liable to find ourselves living with a whole new category of massively destructive technologies, all capable of being put into action by widely available commercial devices.

The nearest-term danger is the release of a deadly pathogen: a bio-engineered "white plague" that could be highly infectious, have a long incubation period and be targeted on specific groups.

Nanotechnology poses the threat of a "gray goo," perhaps no more interesting than crabgrass, engineered from materials foreign to the environment, which would outcompete the existing biosphere. In both cases, recall of these menaces would be impossible; a global disaster could occur in weeks.

The robotic threat is farther out, but as Hans Moravec has suggested, "biological species rarely survive encounters with superior competitors." If we use technology to create robotic intelligences that are superior to ours they might come to view us as expendable.

These GNR technologies are also, of course, capable of providing unheard of benefits for the world. They will be able to greatly improve our lives and lifespans, eliminate material poverty and end the need for most manual labor.

We want the benefits of these technologies, but at the same time we have an ethical responsibility for the future of our species. We must therefore find alternatives to unacceptable empowerment, alternatives to democratizing extreme evil.

Like those who have grappled with the problems of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, we who are involved in advancing the new technologies must devote our best efforts to heading off disaster. I offer here a list of first steps suggested by our history with weapons of mass destruction:

(1) Have scientists and technologists (and corporate leaders as well) take a vow, along the lines of the Hippocratic Oath, to avoid work on potential and actual weapons of mass destruction. Hans Bethe, a Nobel laureate, has called for such a step.

(2) Create an international body to publicly examine the dangers and ethical issues of new technology. Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel laureate who has worked on biological and chemical weapons containment, points out that this kind of work was previously partially done, in the United States, by the Office of Technology Assessment, which unfortunately was abolished in the 1990s.

(3) Use stricter notions of liability, forcing companies to take responsibility for consequences through a private-sector mechanism--insurance. A company might use the published opinion of a new, perhaps international and nongovernmental Office of Technological Assessment to argue for lower insurance rates.

(4) Internationalize control of knowledge and technologies that have great potential but are judged too dangerous to be made commercially available. This was proposed for military uses of atomic energy in the Acheson-Lilienthal report at the dawn of the atomic age as a way of avoiding the nuclear arms race.

(5) Relinquish pursuit of that knowledge and development of those technologies so dangerous that we judge it better that they never be available. I too believe in the pursuit of knowledge and development of technologies; yet, we already have seen cases, such as biological weapons, where relinquishment is the obvious wise choice.

We must begin a collective international effort to come up with effective and practical safeguards. The GNR technologies are being pursued commercially, driven forward by intense competition and the accelerating power of computers. It is clear that, left unchecked, they can enable genocide or result in the extinction of the species. Fortunately, we seem to have some time to properly consider and act on the ethical issues, but that time is limited. I believe it would be immoral to do nothing and just take whatever comes. We can do better.

The writer is cofounder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems. This is adapted from an article he wrote for Wired.com.

-------- us nuc facilities
-------- colorado

Sludge backlash worries farmer
Activist has already sought to preclude any Lowry waste mixed in

By Deborah Frazier
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer
http://insidedenver.com/news/0418lowry.shtml

Elbert County wheat farmer John Metli doesn't believe that treated and tested sludge for use on rural cropland as fertilizer will contain radioactivity from the Lowry Landfill Superfund site.

But Metli is worried that the county's wheat will be spurned as "Superfund wheat" if environmental activists stir up fears.

"It's probably clean. And they could correct it if any problem appears," said Metli, an Elbert County commissioner. "But there's a stigma attached to Superfund."

That's why Metli was furious that nuclear activist Adrienne Anderson on Friday sought an injunction to stop Lowry's treated wastewater from going into the sludge mix.

"I've heard their scare tactics, tactics that have hurt the farmers," Metli said, referring to the ALAR scare that cost apple growers millions before it was proved that apples sprayed with ALAR weren't toxic.

Anderson, who wasn't available for comment Monday, has alleged that the Lowry wastewater is contaminated by plutonium from the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant.

Gwen Hooten, head of the Lowry Landfill remediation project for the Environmental Protection Agency, said Lowry's treated wastewater has been tested more than 22,000 times for radioactivity and passed.

Under a program set to start later this month, Lowry's treated and tested wastewater would be released into the Metro Wastewater Reclamation District's sewer lines, treated and tested again, and the sludge shipped to Elbert County for use on farm fields as fertilizer.

"It is safe," said Steve Frank of the Metro district.

Lee Hill, the attorney representing Anderson and other groups, isn't impressed by the safeguards.

"You don't get second chances with lethal material," said Hill.

And Hill's view is exactly what worries Metli.

Sludge from Metro, and wastewater from treatment plants as far away as New York and Boston, have been used by eastern Colorado farmers - including Metli's neighbors - for decades.

Pre-treated sludge from other Denver Superfund sites has also flowed into the Metro treatment plant and out to farm fields.

That doesn't calm Metli.

"This may be clean water, but it's hard enough to make a living in farming," said Metli. "The big loser in all this will be the family farmer."

April 18, 2000

-------- kentucky

Environmental group sues over Paducah nuke plant

By The Associated Press
http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?200004/18+006X_news.html+20000418

An environmental group has filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy in an attempt to stall the construction of a controversial incinerator for the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

The Vortec incinerator is designed to burn massive amounts of soil tainted by low levels of hazardous waste.

The device ``threatens to dump airborne radioactive and hazardous waste over Western Kentucky and Southern Illinois,'' said the lawsuit filed Monday by the Regional Association of Concerned Environmentalists.

Vortec officials insist the project is safe and benefits the environment. But in the lawsuit, environmentalists allege that government regulators have not fully assessed the project's impact on the area.

``We're simply requiring DOE to comply with their own federal regulations regarding Vortec,'' said Tod Megibow, a Paducah lawyer who filed the suit.

The lawsuit also alleges that the Energy Department did not consider public input on the project or consider alternative methods of waste disposal.

From the beginning, the Energy Department has ``attempted to avoid the public and scientific scrutiny, which the project requires,'' the suit alleged.

New regulations will allow DOE to ship the materials to a distant landfill more economically, agency officials said last week. DOE said they still want to test undefined aspects of Vortec, but not on a broad scale. They also said they were scaling back the project but a local project manager said it will still be built to its original size and configuration.

Plaintiffs claim that the incinerator could be handling materials with ``highly toxic'' combinations of heavy metals, uranium and plutonium. Cooking them to ultra-high temperatures could create new compounds and release them into the environment, the suit alleges.

``Clearly (Vortec's) proximity to park lands, wetlands and prime farmlands is significant,'' the lawsuit said.

The project has already had its share of delays. It has been in the works for five years and has already cost about $30 million. Part of the delay resulted from an earlier court challenge on essentially the same grounds. That challenge was resolved when the Energy Department agreed to a limited assessment of Vortec's environmental impacts before more money was spent on ordering its equipment.

Last month, Energy Department officials said the project would not have a significant impact on the environment, which appeared to clear the way for the project's resumption. But then, an internal DOE report surfaced that recommended that Vortec be abandoned because of its uncertain future.

-------- us nuc weapons

Congress, Clinton Differ on Arms

APRIL 18, 10:06 EST
By BARRY SCHWEID
AP Diplomatic Correspondent
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_story.html?FRONTID=ASIA&STORYID=APIS73U6NJO0

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton's decision to shelve Taiwan's request to buy four billion-dollar U.S. destroyers is likely to touch off a fight with Congress, where support for the island is strong.

The Senate Republican leader, Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, is expected to call for a vote on an arms package for Taiwan, and the White House already is warning that could lead to a Clinton veto if Lott gets enough votes to pass it.

At issue is how much the United States is willing to do to protect Taiwan from mainland China and thereby antagonize the Communist leaders in Beijing.

Another powerful Republican senator, Jesse Helms of North Carolina, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Monday the Pentagon, which had advised Clinton against the sale, decided ``to sacrifice Taiwan's security in order to appease the dictators in Beijing.''

Clinton on Monday decided against the sale of four Aegis destroyers to Taiwan, but approved a smaller package including long-range radar designed to detect missile launches, two senior U.S. officials said.

Clinton, who was in California on a tour of impoverished areas, acted on the recommendation of top advisers who met earlier in the day at the White House and also of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who was traveling in Uzbekistan, the officials said.

The Pentagon recommended that the administration put off Taiwan's request to buy new weapons, including the destroyers, submarines and anti-submarine aircraft, in order to avoid angering China, which views Taiwan as a rebellious province.

Beijing bitterly resents the U.S. military relationship with Taiwan. Diplomatically, the United States deals with Taiwan carefully, avoiding any suggestion it is promoting independence for the island.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said the government had ``taken note'' of reports of the Aegis decision. Sun repeated Beijing's position that the United States should ``stop all arms sales to Taiwan, including the long-range warning radar and Aegis, so as not to obstruct the improvement of China-U.S. relations.''

In Taipei, Taiwan's military spokesman, Kung Fan-ding, said Taiwan wants ``to acquire any weapons that would help build up its anti-missile defense.'' He declined to comment specifically on the U.S. weapons sale until there was an official announcement.

Besides the long-range radar, known as ``Pave Paws,'' the weapons package approved by the president will include new missiles, training and help in integrating $18 billion worth of weapons already sold to Taiwan, one of the officials told The Associated Press, insisting on anonymity.

He called it a robust package and said Clinton had deferred sale of the destroyers and other items, not permanently canceled the deals.

Helms reacted angrily.

``There is, quite simply, no military justification to deny Taiwan these crucial defensive items. These denials are driven by knee-jerk appeasement on the part of the White House and State Department,'' he said in a statement.

A showdown between the White House and Congress could develop over legislation backed by Taiwan supporters to strengthen U.S.-Taiwanese military ties.

``The politicized handling of Taiwan's defense request - and the utter failure of this administration to consult with Congress - is a clear demonstration why the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act is so urgently needed,'' Helms continued.

Administration officials have said they would recommend a presidential veto if Congress tries to force the sale of arms to Taiwan.

Lott took steps last week to push the bill to a floor vote by the end of the month.

On Monday, he issued a terse statement saying ``until more details are known and a final announcement is made by the administration I will have no further comment.''

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., immediately imposed a ``hold'' on the measure that under Senate tradition could, in effect, block Lott's efforts - at least for awhile.

Baucus is a leader in a drive to grant China permanent trade benefits - an administration effort that also could be hurt by Clinton's arms sale decision.

An aggressive Taiwanese lobbying effort sought to persuade the administration to sell the Aegis warships, with price tags of $1 billion apiece, to Taiwan.

For years, analysts have said Taiwan's military, with its highly motivated troops and advanced U.S.-made weapons, could repel or at least bloody any People's Liberation Army force if China made good repeated threats to attack the island.

Lately, however, some military analysts have began doubting the Taiwanese war readiness.

----

Defending us is a bargain

April 18, 2000
James T. Hackett
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/commentary-2000418172038.htm

Recent press stories on the National Missile Defense (NMD) program all mention the "price tag" of $30 billion as though it were an outrageous expense. This emphasis on "high cost" often is used to criticize the NMD and other defense programs.

The Pentagon says it actually will cost $12.7 billion to build the planned national missile defense over the six years from 1999 to 2005. That includes flight-testing, development and procurement of 100 missile interceptors, construction of interceptor silos in Alaska, a battle management center, a new X-band radar, and the upgrade of five existing early warning radars.

A Pentagon spokesman said the total cost of designing, developing, producing, and operating the whole system from the inception of the program in 1991 to 2026 would be $30.2 billion. That covers 35 years, 10 of which (1991 through 2000) already have been paid for in past budgets. To satisfy its critics, the Pentagon is including all costs. But when you buy a house, do you include as part of the purchase price all the expenses of living in it and maintaining it for 30 years? Of course not.

Despite such overly inclusive accounting, the critics say $30 billion is too much. But is it? It averages less than $1 billion per year, out of an annual defense budget of nearly $300 billion and a total federal budget of $1.83 trillion. Considering that intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) are the only direct threat to the United States against which there is no defense, and a growing number of countries, including some unfriendly and aggressive ones, are developing such missiles, an average of less than $1 billion a year to defend against them is not unreasonable.

The 2001 budget now before Congress contains $4.7 billion to develop missile defenses. But that includes money for several programs to develop and test improved theater missile defenses to protect U.S. forces overseas from the short-and medium-range missiles that currently threaten them. It also includes funds for research and development in futuristic technologies, such as airborne lasers and space-based lasers.

The part of that $4.7 billion actually applied to defending the country against ICBMs is only $1.9 billion, or less than 1 percent of the annual defense budget. But that still is more than the 35-year average of less than $1 billion a year for the NMD, because the program now is entering its most expensive phase, with flight tests under way and the buying of initial hardware to begin soon. Once the interceptors have been produced and the site built, the annual cost for operation and maintenance by the National Guard will be much less.

Critics of defense programs complain about spending in the billions because it sounds like so much. But when Microsoft stock tumbled recently, Bill Gates' personal holdings reportedly dropped $8 billion in one day. From that perspective, government spending of $1 billion to $2 billion a year to defend the country is not much. And the stakes are high. In a nuclear Pearl Harbor, a single weapon could kill millions.

Another criticism is that missile interceptors are not perfect and could miss, allowing a warhead through the shield. But the concern no longer is thousands of Soviet missiles. The threat now is one or a few missiles from such states as North Korea, or an accidental or unauthorized launch from Russia or China. And the plan is to fire at least two interceptors at each incoming warhead. The NMD will have enough range to fire two, look to see if there is an intercept, and if not, to fire two more. There will be a high probability of success.

Yet another criticism, recently repeated by the professional arms controllers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Union of Concerned Scientists, is that the NMD can be overcome by a variety of countermeasures. The academic arms controllers, who love to dream up hypothetical countermeasures, have been using this old argument for years, despite the Pentagon's insistence it is dealing with the issue, which is highly classified.

But the real value of a missile defense is deterrence. A defense will deter missile threats as well as a missile attack. It will diminish the value of nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles that deliver them. What dictator will spend billions to acquire such weapons when there are effective defenses against them? Long-range ballistic missiles are spreading today because there are no defenses.

Considering the destruction a single nuclear missile could cause, and the damage to U.S. global interests from the existence of weapons against which we have no defense, a national missile defense that costs less than 1 percent of the defense budget per year is a real bargain.

James T. Hackett is a contributing writer to the Washington Times based in San Diego.

-------- vietnam

War's Toxic Legacy Lingers in Vietnam
Cancers, Birth Defects Attributed to U.S. Use of Agent Orange

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 18, 2000; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-04/18/159l-041800-idx.html

HUE, Vietnam-Lugging sacks of rice along a narrow jungle path one sunny afternoon in 1968, Le Hiep suddenly found himself enveloped in thick mist descending from the sky over central Vietnam. The shower felt sticky and smelled fruity. But the South Vietnamese soldier did not think much about it then--or the three other times he was doused during the war--until the birth of his fourth son, Le Viet Hung.

Hung was born with paralysis on his right side and a head disproportionately large for his small frame. Confined to a wheelchair and suffering severe brain damage, the 13-year-old has been excluded from school and is virtually shut in at home.

For Hiep, there is no doubt about the cause of his son's suffering. "It was the Agent Orange the Americans sprayed during the war," he said. "That's what did this."

Vietnamese government officials and scientists are equally convinced. Despite the U.S. government's position that more research is needed, specialists here believe that 1 million Vietnamese--combatants on both sides of the conflict, as well as civilians and some children of those affected--were poisoned by Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant widely used by U.S. forces during the Vietnam War.

Vietnamese officials have long maintained that the chemical was responsible for a rash of cancers, immune-deficiency diseases, drug-resistant malaria and birth defects in the 1970s and 1980s. Now, a quarter-century after the fighting ended, Western and Vietnamese scientists cite growing evidence that this nation continues to be affected by the 20 million gallons of herbicide that were dumped atop the once lush jungles to deprive North Vietnamese and Viet Cong guerrillas of hiding places.

Soil, water and human tissue samples taken recently in several parts of the country that were sprayed more than 30 years ago reveal high concentrations of dioxin, a highly carcinogenic component of Agent Orange that is considered one of the world's most toxic substances.

In one heavily defoliated valley in Vietnam's central highlands, for instance, Canadian researchers have found high levels of dioxin in children who were born long after the spraying ceased in 1971. The lingering contamination is so severe in some areas that, if they were in the United States, they would be declared Superfund sites, requiring an immediate cleanup effort, said Chris Hatfield, who led the Canadian study. But Vietnam has no money to detoxify the land or resettle families, and thousands of people in those areas grow crops in the soil and fish the streams.

"The effects of the Agent Orange are still very noticeable," Hatfield said.

Vietnamese doctors say dioxin contamination is responsible for an unusually large number of birth defects, particularly malformed limbs and mental retardation.

"It has now become clear that Agent Orange will affect us for many generations," said Le Cao Dai, a Hanoi physician who has studied the effects of the defoliant and serves as executive director of the Agent Orange Victims Fund of the Vietnam Red Cross.

He said recent government studies found that children living near the extensively sprayed former U.S. military base at Bien Hoa have dioxin levels 50 times higher than children living in Hanoi.

The devastation caused by Agent Orange has become one of the darkest and most painful legacies of the war. It also has emerged as one of the most controversial issues in an otherwise friendly relationship between Vietnam and the United States.

"There is no way we can forget about the war," said Pham Tan, 44, who went to work after the war as a construction worker in areas that were sprayed, where he drank the local water and ate vegetables grown on denuded jungle that had been turned into farmland.

When he returned home to Hue, his wife was eager to start a family. Nine months later, they had a son, who was born with severe mental retardation and no legs--just two feet with seven toes each connected to his hips. For all his son Pham Thai's 18 years, Tan and his wife have struggled to care for him..

"He is very stupid," Tan said, pointing to Thai as he sat on a wooden plank, playing with trading cards featuring Chinese movie stars. "He will be like this his whole life. All he knows how to do is to play with his cards and eat."

From 1961 to 1971, U.S. forces sprayed 20 million gallons of herbicide over 10 percent of the land area of what was then South Vietnam. The defoliants, 60 percent of which was Agent Orange--named after orange bands around the 55-gallon drums in which the liquid was stored--reduced dense jungles and mangrove forests to barren wasteland. Even today, the impact is evident: Thick grasses, but no large trees, cover large swaths of the country.

Agent Orange was never intended to harm people, and it was not until 1969 that scientists discovered that one of its components caused birth defects in laboratory animals. In December 1970, President Richard Nixon put a stop to the spraying.

In the 1970s and '80s, many of the 2.6 million U.S. military personnel who served in Vietnam reported illnesses and birth defects that veterans' organizations and some researchers believed were related to Agent Orange exposure. A group of 20,000 veterans sued Dow Chemical Co. and Monsanto Co., which manufactured the defoliant, and eventually won a $180 million judgment. The Veterans Administration also agreed to compensate Vietnam veterans suffering from various ailments, including prostate and respiratory cancers and Hodgkin's disease, and the birth defect spina bifida in their children.

But the U.S. government has refused to acknowledge that Agent Orange is responsible for the rash of birth defects and other ailments among Vietnamese. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, during a visit last month, said the U.S. government would be willing to conduct joint research with Vietnam, an offer political analysts say is the most significant step yet toward resolving the issue.

"You can't make the linkages until you do the science," said Douglas Peterson, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam. "This is the perfect laboratory, and hopefully we will arrive at some scientific conclusion once and for all on what Agent Orange does to people."

Some veterans groups and environmental activists contend there is ample evidence of the effects of Agent Orange on people here but that the Pentagon is dragging its feet out of fear of a flood of litigation. "The U.S. needs to get more engaged on this issue," said Chuck Searcy, the Hanoi-based program director for the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. "We are 25 years overdue."

For its part, the Vietnamese government has been of two minds on research. Although many scientists and doctors here lament the lack of money to conduct sophisticated soil and tissue analyses, some government officials worry that highlighting the lingering dioxin contamination could harm tourism and agricultural exports.

But consensus appears to be growing here that any aid resulting from additional research would outweigh the costs. While the U.S. government gives as much as $5,000 a month in supplemental benefits to American veterans who have severe Agent Orange-related ailments, Vietnam can offer only token assistance to its veterans--between $3.40 and $7 a month, depending on the seriousness of the illness or disability.

"We do not have the money to do more," said Dai, the Red Cross victims' fund official. "That's why we need the help of the Americans."

Dai argues that existing research, particularly the Canadian study, demonstrates a clear enough link between Agent Orange and a bevy of illnesses and birth defects. In a six-year study of the Aluoi Valley in central Quang Tri province, the Canadian team found high levels of dioxin in the soil, in animal and fish tissue and in the blood of people born after the war.

"Human health data . . . indicate that visible physical birth defect rates are an order of magnitude higher in the communes [that were studied] than in similar communes in northern, unsprayed Vietnam," a preliminary report stated. "The data are suggestive of a direct relationship between level of Agent Orange dioxin contamination in the environment and the effects on human health."

Instead of spending millions more dollars on joint research, many here believe the Vietnamese and U.S. governments should use that money to help the victims, whose ailments will not be any different if the cause is conclusively determined to be Agent Orange dioxin contamination.

"Why do we need to be sure about what caused this?" asked Troung Hoa, Pham Thai's mother. "How will it help us? We will still have nothing to help take care of our son."