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Arms-reduction failures and the Trident factor
by Glen Milner Special to The Seattle Times
Posted at 12:00 a.m. Pacific; Tuesday, May 9, 2000 Guest columnist
A decade after the end of the Cold War, more than 30,000 nuclear weapons remain deployed around the world. India and Pakistan have declared their nuclear capacity, and the risk of nuclear weapons being used by accident or design is on the rise. Ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the promise of nuclear arms reduction has stalled.
Most observers during the past decade believed the value of arms reduction was self-evident until the failure of the U.S. Senate to pass the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in October 1999. The treaty would have prevented the testing of nuclear weapons around the world, worked to stop the spread of nuclear proliferation, and provided for monitoring facilities and on-site inspections. The U.S Senate decision shocked the world and showed the need to remake the case for international agreements to stem the spread of nuclear weapons.
The defeat of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty also showed a fundamental flaw in our democratic system - the failure to keep issues vital to our nation in the public consciousness. The blame rests with all of us.
In March 2000, the Department of Energy disclosed plans to renovate more than 6,000 aging nuclear warheads in the next 15 years, almost double the number the United States is allowed to deploy under the START II arms-reduction treaty.
The recent ratification of START II and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by the Russian parliament lacks significance without real commitment to nuclear arms reduction in the United States. The U.S. should immediately move to implement START III.
The U.S. Senate has persuaded the Clinton administration to renew development of a national missile-defense program, violating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972. Russia has threatened to withdraw from all nuclear weapons treaties if the United States does not honor the ABM agreement.
The U.S. refusal to give unequivocal assurance it will never use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear nations that have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty serves as an incentive for nations to develop nuclear weapons.
The United States has developed an attitude in international affairs that, as the world's strongest military and economic power, it can have its way. We are moving away from treaty commitments and the rule of law to that of nuclear chaos.
No single weapon system better shows our nation's dependence on nuclear weapons than the Trident submarine system. As nuclear weapons are the foundation of our nation's military power, the Trident system is the foundation of our nuclear arsenal.
There are 18 Trident submarines presently in service. The missiles they carry have a range of over 4,500 miles and are so accurate they are considered first-strike weapons, capable of a preemptive strike against opposing missiles before they can be launched in a full-scale war.
In 1990, Naval Submarine Base Bangor had planned to upgrade its older Trident I (C-4) missiles with the Trident II (D-5). It was postponed, however, at the end of the Cold War until this year. The U.S.S. Alaska arrived at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard on April 28 for a two-year overhaul to the D-5 missile. The cost of backfitting four Trident submarines to the D-5 missile is over $6 billion.
With the ratification of the START II treaty, the total number of warheads allowed on submarine-launched ballistic missiles will be cut in half, making the D-5 backfit at Bangor unnecessary. U.S. strategic forces should instead cut back to 9 Trident submarines.
In further defiance to commitments to disarm, the U.S. is in the process of redesigning nuclear warheads for the Trident missiles to give them a near-ground-burst capability. Warheads could be exploded within several meters of the ground for a higher kill ratio of opposing missile-launch sites. New warhead designs are slated to begin entering the stockpile in late fiscal year 2004.
Fundamental questions about our nation's nuclear program need to be addressed.
Who in our nation is outlining policy regarding new weapons and compliance to arms-reduction treaties?
Is it a good idea to threaten Russia with even more hard-target weapons at a time when Russian conventional forces are weakened, putting a greater dependence on nuclear forces for defense?
Will the United States comply with its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty commitment to successfully negotiate nuclear disarmament?
The Non-Proliferation Treaty 2000 Review Conference is meeting at the United Nations in New York now through May 19 to evaluate whether objectives for disarmament are being followed.
The United States should show leadership by canceling the Trident D-5 missile backfit and renewing its commitments made at the end of the Cold War - to work for nuclear disarmament and a safer world.
Glen Milner lives in Seattle and is a member of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Poulsbo. The organization's Web address is http://www.gzcenter.org .
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Environmental Activists from Taiwan and Pongso-noTao Visiting San Gabriel Valley on Way to Nuclear Test Site in Nevada
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 9 May 2000 From: Lynn Miles - lynnmiles@earthlink.net
NATIVE PEOPLES' PAN-PACIFIC DIPLOMACY
SAN GABRIEL - Representatives of the Tao and Bunun tribes in Taiwan and neighboring Pongso-no-Tao (Orchid Island) have arrived in Tongva (the Shoshone name for the San Gabriel-Los Angeles watershed) on their way to and from an annual spring gathering held at the front gates of the Nevada Test Site. The NTS is the Department of Energy's choice as nuclear testing ground for the devices being developed for the wars of this millenium by the Livermore, Sandia and Los Alamos labs.
Hu Yu-chen, who goes by her native Bunun name of Niwa, is currently studying at Long Island University. Flying Fish is a native of Pongso-noTao (Orchid Island), home to Taiwan's only nuclear waste dump. Both of them sing and dance. Niwa is an accomplished weaver, while Flying Fish is a nationally shown artist.
While in San Gabriel, they will be visiting the San Gabriel Mission, the Mission Viejo and with local Tongva leaders as well as the Taiwanese American community. On May 11 they will visit the San Gabriel Mission, the Mission Viejo (old mission), then proceed to the nearby San Gabriel River for a ceremony calling for renewed concern for the preciousness of our water.
They then leave for the Nevada Test Site, in the Newe (Shoshone) heartland, where activities demanding an end to nuclear testing and waste dumping on Newe land will be carried out at the main gate to the Test Site. Since last year this annual spring event has been coducted on Mother's Day, to remind the participants and everyone else that the Earth is indeed our Mother, and if we go on mistreating her this way we all will perish. For more information on the events in Nevada, see www.shundahai.org/momspring00/.
Upon return, they will report and put on several cultural performances, at the Good Taste Restaurant in San Gabriel on May 16, and at the Taiwanese American Heritage Week day of events at the Evangelical Formosan Church of L.A. in El Monte on May 20.
This activity is sponsored by: Taiwan Environment Action Network, TaiMei PeaceAction, North American Taiwanese Professors Association, Shundahai Network, and International Environment Protection Association.
Contact: Lynn Miles (626) 287-9737 or Dr. Frank Cheng (626) 281-9223. Or see http://rising.formosa.com/trinity/Shundahai.html, with links to:
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New edition of Disarmament Diplomacy
From: "Sean Howard" showard@web.net
Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 08:48:04 -0300
Disarmament Diplomacy No. 45 is now available on our website, featuring a report on the first nine days of the NPT Review Conference by Rebecca Johnson and Jenni Rissanen, an update from Jenni on BWC deliberations, and a compilation of statements, documents and comment on the Duma's START II and CTBT ratifications and the Ivanov-Albright discussions in Washington. Also featured are Senator Helms' statement refusing on 'principle' to consider any US-Russia arms control agreements submitted by President Clinton, extracts from the UN Secretary-General's Millennium Report, US nuclear stockpile developments (including warhead renovation plans and subcritical tests), the establishment of a new US Energy Department non-proliferation task force, the latest UN Security Council wrangling and heartsearching over Iraq, and new appeals from Russia for help in meeting its CWC obligations.
The issue also features two guest contributions, from Motoko Mekata of the Tokyo Foundation, who shines a spotlight on Japan's disarmament and non-proliferation posture, and Harald Muller, Director of the Frankfurt Peace Research Institute, who considers the prospects, and likely composition, of OSCE norms and principles on small arms and light weapons.
The issue was co-edited by Michael Szabo and Sean Howard. Michael is currently on parental leave, and all at the Acronym Institute send their best wishes and congratulations to him and Stephanie on the birth of their daughter.
Peace and best wishes to all,
Sean Howard, Co-Editor, Disarmament Diplomacy, The Acronym Institute, http://www.acronym.org.uk
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"New Survey Shows Americans Back Deeper Nuclear Cuts, Oppose Deployment of National Missile Defense"
From: Daryl Kimball dkimball@clw.org
COALITION TO REDUCE NUCLEAR DANGERS ISSUE BRIEF
VOL. 4, NO. 5 , May 9, 2000
ON THE EVE of the first summit between Presidents Clinton and Putin, new national public opinion surveys indicate that the Clinton Administration would have the strong backing of the public for deeper nuclear arms reductions and a decision not to deploy the proposed, "limited" national missile defense. Following Russia's ratification of the second Strategic Nuclear Arms Reduction Treaty (START II), the United States and Russia have intensified discussions on START III and talks on possible modifications to the ABM Treaty to allow deployment of a costly and controversial national ballistic missile defense system, which Russia has said it opposes.
The most recent opinion survey shows that nearly seven out of every ten Americans believe that "reduction" or "elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide should be the goal of U.S. nuclear policy." A plurality (40%) feel that the elimination of all nuclear weapons should be our primary goal, while another 28% believe that the country's aim should be reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world to lower levels. Only 15% believe that we "should maintain the current number of nuclear weapons" and only 15% believe we "should design new and better nuclear weapons" for the United States. The results are similar to previous national opinion surveys conducted in 1997 and 1999.
Support for the elimination and reduction of nuclear weapons cuts across gender lines, with 67% of men in favor of elimination (38%) or reduction (29%) and 68% of women in favor of elimination (41%) or reduction (27%). These goals are also supported by Americans from every region of the country.
The April 2000 survey was conducted by The Mellman Group for the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers, the Council for a Livable World Education Fund, and the Fourth Freedom Forum. The survey of 1000 adults was conducted between April 7 and April 9, 2000. The statistical margin of error for the sample as a whole is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. The margin of error for subgroups is larger.
Americans Prefer a Smaller Number of Nuclear Weapons When given a choice between the two proposals under consideration to limit the number of nuclear arms in the U.S. and Russian arsenals, Americans choose the proposal with the lower limit by almost 4 to 1. In the same April 2000 Mellman Group survey, respondents were asked to choose between a limit of 2500 nuclear warheads for each country and a limit of 1500 warheads for each country. Forty-three percent (43%) chose the 1500 warhead limit, while only 11% chose the 2500 warhead limit. Forty-six percent (46%) were unsure which number would be better, demonstrating that there is a need for further public debate and an opportunity for Presidential leadership.
Political Barriers to Progress on Reducing Nuclear Dangers With Russian approval of START II, the burden of leadership is on President Clinton and the U.S. Senate to deliver on START and avoid an historic blunder on missile defenses. If they fail, they risk another CTBT- like political meltdown and a severe international nuclear security crisis.
Early signs are not good. Some Senators are taking the extreme position of opposing verifiable arms reductions with Russia if it means limiting U.S. missile defense options. Consequently, implementation of START II and a future START III pact are highly uncertain. Compounding the problem, the Republican-led Congress has unwisely enacted legislation that bars reductions in the U.S. nuclear arsenal below START I levels (approximately 6000 strategic warheads) and changes in the alert posture of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, until and unless START II is implemented. This policy makes no sense given that Russia's deployed strategic nuclear arsenal is already below 6,000 - and is shrinking - as a consequence of economic hardship. This restriction should be repealed so as to allow President Clinton or his successor the flexibility to match anticipated Russian nuclear reductions.
Presidents Clinton and Putin have an historic opportunity to conclude a START III deal to secure deeper verifiable and irreversible reductions of each nation's long- and short-range nuclear bombs. This agreement could, if properly structured, help bypass the START logjam in Washington and bring U.S. and Russian arsenals closer in line with present day political and military realities.
The two sides differ on the overall target for strategic nuclear reductions. Russia has said it is prepared to verifiably reduce to 1,000-1,500 long-range weapons, but sadly, the Clinton-Gore Administration insists on a limit of 2,500 warheads. To break this impasse, the United States and Russia should agree to a START III treaty that leads to verifiable nuclear force reductions of 1,500 warheads or fewer. Even further reductions, down to a ceiling of 1,000 strategic warheads, would still leave the U.S. and Russia with arsenals well in excess of what is needed to deter attack.
Americans Do Not Favor a Decision to Deploy NMD Both Clinton Administration and Russian officials have repeatedly stated that the ABM Treaty remains the "cornerstone of strategic stability." But the Clinton Administration is proposing changes to the ABM Treaty that would allow for a "limited" national missile defense. Russian officials have made clear that maintaining the ABM Treaty is essential to the START process, and have adamantly opposed changing it. President Clinton is scheduled to decide whether to deploy the system - and possibly violate the ABM Treaty by the end of this year.
In another April 2000 survey question by The Mellman Group, a majority of Americans support waiting to decide on deployment of national missile defenses until after the 19 tests are completed. After hearing arguments both for and against deploying a national missile defense system this year (see below), 59% favor waiting until testing is complete while only 20% favor deciding this year. Only one-in-five are undecided (21%). Large majorities of both men (59%-21%) and women (58%-20%) favor waiting until testing is complete before a deployment decision is made.
A growing number of defense experts and U.S. allies are recommending that President Clinton should not decide to deploy a national missile defense. They cite the fact that the proposed 3- phase system is technologically unproven and will not work against simple countermeasures. The cost is estimated to be $50-$60 billion and rising. Deployment will only lead Russia and China to strengthen their strategic nuclear forces, increasing, not decreasing the missile threat.
* TEXT OF ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE DEPLOYMENT: "(Some/other) people say it is vital that we have a national missile defense system for the United States as soon as possible. China might be able to launch a long-range nuclear missile with multiple warheads within a decade. They also argue that rogue nations like North Korea and Iran may be able to develop missiles that reach the United States within a few years. They say with more and more countries gaining access to nuclear weapons, the Clinton Administration should decide now to deploy a national missile defense system to protect the United States."
"(Some/other) people say that it does not make sense to deploy a national missile defense system before we know it will work. Since the program to build missile defense began, we have spent $120 billion on this project and the Pentagon still cannot get it to work. Only a few of the 19 planned tests have been completed, with mixed results. The Pentagon estimates that it will cost another 48 billion dollars or more to develop and maintain this system, and even then, no one can be sure it will work. Some people believe The Clinton Administration should not make a decision to spend money to deploy a national missile defense system until the Pentagon has successfully completed the testing program and we know such a system will work."
* Another national public opinion survey conducted by ABCNews.com conducted April 26-30, 2000 shows that a narrow majority of Americans finds the downside of a $60 billion missile defense system more persuasive than the potential benefits. Fifty-three percent (53%) say they side with opponents of developing a land- and space-based missile defense system because it won't work, would cost too much and would create a new arms race, while only 44% percent support developing because it would be worth its cost in order to protect the United States from a limited nuclear attack. Republicans support a missile defense system by 60-37 percent, while Democrats oppose it by 56-41 percent. On this issue independents side with Democrats, opposing the system by 59-38 percent.
-- 30 --
The Coalition is a non-partisan alliance of 17 of the nation's leading arms control and non-proliferation organizations working for a practical, step-by-step program to reduce the dangers of weapons of mass destruction. The views and analysis expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of every member of the Coalition.
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Novel Insults Islam, Student Protesters Charge
New York Times
May 9, 2000
By SUSAN SACHS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/books/050900egypt-novel.html
CAIRO, Egypt -- Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas Monday to break up a demonstration by students protesting a 17-year-old novel they said insulted Islam.
At the height of the protest Monday morning at Al Azhar University, the most prestigious Islamic educational institution in the Middle East, about 2,000 students hurled rocks and insults at police and chanted "God is great" and "Back to Islam." After several hours of intermittent clashes, the security forces were able to drive the few hundred remaining protesters into a dormitory and disperse the rest late in the afternoon.
It was the first open violence between government forces and Muslim fundamentalists in several years. A sometimes bloody Islamic insurgency against the secular Egyptian government in the early 1990s has largely been subdued, and a huge government crackdown has put thousands of suspected militants into prison.
Security officials said they had arrested some student protesters, although the Ministry of Interior refused to say how many. At the scene, students and a hospital security guard said at least eight people had been injured by police fire and dozens were being treated after being overcome by the tear gas, although there was no independent confirmation of this.
The book that provoked the demonstration, "Banquet of Seaweed," was written by Haider Haider, a Syrian, and first published in Cyprus in 1983. The novel then came out in Lebanon in 1992 and in Syria in 1993. Last November, Egypt's Ministry of Culture reprinted it in connection with a project to promote major works of modern Arabic literature.
The book drew little public notice until last week, when a Cairo newspaper long associated with the Islamic fundamentalist movement, El-Shaab, published what it said were excerpts from Haider's novel that insulted the prophet Mohammed and Islam.
Several Al Azhar students interviewed at the demonstrations said they had not read the book -- Egyptian officials have said they recalled all copies once the controversy over the Haider book erupted last week -- and knew about it only from the El-Shaab articles.
In a telephone interview from his home in Latakia, Syria, Haider, 64, denounced the campaign against his novel as "ignorant" and said that lines from the book were taken out of context by "Islamic hardliners."
"They are launching an attack against enlightenment," he said. "They are fighting to take us back to the age of darkness and ignorance."
Opposition journalists and politicians have called for the resignation of the Egyptian minister of culture, Farouk Hosni, over the past few months over a number of issues, including his proposal to build a new museum for Egyptian antiquities in Cairo.
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Gunmen Fire on Protesters in Sierra Leone
New York Times
May 9, 2000
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/050900sierra-leone.html
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone, May 8 -- Thousands of protesters, including rival militias, marched today on the compound of Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader, some throwing rocks, and his partisans responded by firing into the crowd.
Some of the protesters were shot execution-style as they lay on the ground, according to witnesses. Dozens of United Nations peacekeepers assigned to the house watched helplessly, shouting, "Cease fire!"
At least four people died.
Outside Freetown, rebels fired at a United Nations helicopter that had flown with Mr. Sankoh's permission to the town of Makeni to get two wounded United Nations soldiers. After taking off, the pilot was forced to land and abandon the helicopter, said Lt. Col. Jaswinder Sandhu, a United Nations spokesman. The United Nations has already been humiliated by the taking as hostages of more than 500 of its personnel, soldiers and civilians around the country in the last week.
The violence inside the capital underlined how badly the steps toward peace have been wiped out since the arrival of the United Nations force late last year.
The day began as thousands gathered at a park to a march against Mr. Sankoh, whom many hold responsible for blocking the peace process and some consider a war criminal.
Thousands of people marched across the Freetown peninsula, joined by some former soldiers and Kamajors, who are traditional hunters, toward Mr. Sankoh's house in western Freetown. Mr. Sankoh lives in a two-story home inside a compound guarded by United Nations peacekeepers and his own men.
Around noon, the peacekeepers appeared overwhelmed by the crowd, which pushed toward the compound and began hurling rocks and bricks at the house. The peacekeepers, pinned against a fence, are believed to have fired in the air. It was not clear what happened next. But witnesses said that Mr. Sankoh's own men began shooting at the crowd and that, in turn, former government soldiers who were among the protesters began firing at Mr. Sankoh's men.
Mr. Sankoh, who at the time remained inside his house and was not injured, told The Associated Press after the clash: "They're provoking us. Democracy is not about assaulting people's homes."
The whereabouts of Mr. Sankoh was not clear by tonight. "As I speak to you, the exact whereabouts of Corp. Foday Sankoh has not yet been determined," President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah said on national radio, using the rank that Mr. Sankoh held in the Sierra Leonean army before he was cashiered years ago.
It was not clear tonight exactly how many people had been killed or wounded outside Mr. Sankoh's home.
By midafternoon, at Connaught Hospital and at an adjoining morgue, officials had recorded four deaths and 40 wounded, mostly from bullet wounds. In the operating room, Dr. Sabine Roquefort, of Doctors Without Borders, was the only surgeon working.
Hundreds of Sierra Leoneans filed through the morgue, searching for friends and relatives who had yet to be found.
"Sankoh was well protected, but the crowd was unprotected," said Mohammed Kallon, a member of Parliament who had helped organize the march.
The violence appeared to increase some Sierra Leoneans' anger at the United Nations force, which has suffered a series of setbacks. Sierra Leoneans pelted some United Nations trucks with rocks today after the incident outside Mr. Sankoh's home.
"The U.N. forces have not responded as well as we had expected," said Herbert Chuku, 30, who took part in the march. "That's why we are expecting countries like America, France and Great Britain to put an effort."
------------ alternative energy
Belgium to put windmills at sea in green energy bid
BELGIUM: May 9, 2000
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=6595
BRUSSELS - Belgium may soon build its own wind energy park in the sea, if the cabinet approves plans later this month, an energy ministry spokesman said on Monday.
Built off Belgium's short coastline, the windmill park or parks would be a source of renewable energy harnessing the power of winds racing across the North Sea between it and Britain.
"We could soon have the biggest wind energy park in the North Sea," minister Olivier Deleuze is quoted as saying to local new agency Belga.
Deleuze's spokesman Olivier Arendt told Reuters that if a draft decree, setting out conditions for bids to build and operate windmill parks was agreed, construction may start by the year end.
A number of companies, including Belgian power firm Electrabel , already had advanced plans for wind parks in the North Sea, Arendt said, adding it was possible more than one company may be granted such concessions.
Arendt declined to say how much energy the windmill parks were expected to produce, but said they would play a major part in achieving the government's aim of getting 3.5 percent of the country's electricity consumption from renewable sources.
Offshore wind farms are an established concept in Denmark, which is a world leader in renewable energy, but Belgium currently produces practically no electricity from renewables such as wind and solar.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
-------- asia
Potential for 'Sudden' Violence in East Asia -Jane's
Reuters
May 9, 2000 Filed at 5:26 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-as.html
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - East Asian defense budgets are on the rise after lean years and the potential exists for ``sudden and violent military activity,'' Jane's Fighting Ships said on Tuesday.
``In every part of East Asia there is the potential for sudden and violent military activity, whether in Korea, Taiwan or Indonesia,'' Jane's said in a foreword to its new edition released to the media.
``China looms over the whole area, Theater Missile Defense is a divisive issue embracing Japan and possibly Taiwan, and any successes in ethnic separatism in Indonesia could encourage similar movements in the Philippines or Thailand,'' it said.
The United States plans a Theater Missile Defense umbrella for northeast Asia which China fears will give shelter to arch-rival Taiwan.
Jane's said the navies of Southeast Asia were all ``on the move'' and that China had the capacity to move 11,000 troops by sea.
``Those who still question China's naval capability should take a hard look at the four different submarine building programs, at the massive inventory of surface-to-surface and air-to-surface missiles of all types...at the growing amphibious lift capability,'' it said.
It noted Indonesia intended to expand its navy by 20,000 sailors and 10,000 marines within five years, while Singapore's first submarine had just been transported to its home base in April and a second would follow in 2001.
Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid warned in late April that Singaporean submarines would have to face his country's navy if they strayed out of agreed lanes.
Jane's said Taiwan and Korea were spending more on new ships and technology equipment, while Japan had changed its defense posture to allow pre-emptive action against enemy missile bases after two North Korean spy ships penetrated its waters last year.
Jane's said India's defense budget saw its largest single annual increase after last year's border war with Pakistan in the Kargil region of Kashmir.
Jane's said India's navy could have dominated the waters of southern Asia from the Straits of Malacca to the Gulf of Aden if not for heavy U.S. naval presence in the area.
It noted that the Indian navy was converting a Russian aircraft carrier for its use, refitting its submarines in Russian shipyards and was also committed to buying Russian MiG aircraft.
-------- australia
Arrests, Parliamentary Questions Over Australian Uranium Mines
May 9, 2000 (ENS)
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/may2000/2000L-05-09-03.html
CANBERRA, Australia, Police arrested 31 people during a protest at the Beverley uranium mine in South Australia today. Twenty-nine people were arrested for breaching the peace while one was arrested for breach of bail and another for unlawful threats.
About 50 people entered the Heathgate Resources mining lease without permission and refused to leave. Some threw rocks at police damaging some police cars.
View from the north-east corner of the Beverley field leach trial site. The stored uranium is on the right, the solution pipes in the foreground, the process plant in the middle, and the retention pond for liquid wastes to the left. (Photo courtesy Sustainable Energy and Anti-Uranium Service (SEA))
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/pics11/beverley.jpg
On Sunday, people from a group called International Activists Against Uranium Mining filled in the new gas line trench to the mine, stopped drill rigs and maintained a roadblock for 24 hours. Nine activists were detained by police when they were attempting to lock down the drill rigs. They were held in an abandoned toilet block for six hours while police attempted to use them as hostages, stating that they would only free the prisoners if the roadblock was removed. The roadblock was maintained.
Two hundred people from around the world have set up camp at the gates of Beverley Uranium Mine in the Flinders Ranges on the land of the indigenous Adnyamathanha people. The mine is owned by Heathgate Resources, a subsidiary of General Atomics of San Diego, California. Heathgate was formed in 1990 by General Atomics to purchase the Beverley uranium deposit, and any other nuclear ventures General Atomics might develop in Australia.
The Beverley Mine site is currently in the construction phase. Full scale uranium production is scheduled for July.
Beverley project manager Chuck Foldenauer maintains the mine's practices are safe. "Examination of the facts will confirm that Beverley will be a world-class mine and will have minimal impact on the environment," Foldenauer, said last March and has said repeatedly since.
Environmentalists and local indigenous people are worried about the cultural and environmental implications of in-situ leach mining practices. They have been protesting at the Beverley mine site since 1997.
According to the environmental pressure group Flinders Ranges Environment Action, the region's ground water is at risk of immediate contamination in this area of consistent seismic activity. The Beverley aquifer lies only 50 to 100 metres above the Great Artesian Basin, Australia's most precious underground water supply.
Another Australian uranium mining company has been called to account by the Senate for a leak that went unreported for 23 days. The leak occurred at the Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory last month.
Energy Resources of Australia has been directed to inform the government why it took 23 days to notify authorities about the tailings dam leak, the Senate was told today.
Ranger mine site (Photo courtesy Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation)
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/pics11/rangermine.jpg
Resources Minister Nick Minchin said a preliminary report showed no environmental damage had been caused by the leak on April 5. Minchin said his department was advised on April 28 of a leak from a pipe carrying return water from a tailings dam to the mill at the uranium mine in the Northern Territory.
Bob Cleary, CEO of Energy Resources of Australia, said the time period during which the leakage occurred before formal reporting to appropriate authorities "is recognised by the company as unacceptable."
"The source of the leak has been identified and rectified and there is no evidence of any damage to the local environment," Cleary said. Manganese at the levels recorded in the wetlands are "within the safe limit for the release of water into the environment," he said.
The constructed wetland filters have been designed to treat mine site run-off water and to prevent contamination of the local creek system, said Cleary.
Gundjehmi executive officer, Jacqui Katona with Mirrar elder Yvonne Margarula won a Goldman Environmental Prize in 1999. (Photo courtesy Goldman Prize)
Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation, representing the Mirrar people of Kakadu, has condemned the Commonwealth Government's monitoring program at Energy Resources of Australia's Ranger uranium mine. The Mirrar are the traditional owners of the Ranger and Jabiluka mineral lease areas, both surrounded by the World Heritage listed Kakadu National Park.
Gundjehmi's executive officer, Jacqui Katona, said the Commonwealth's monitoring program at Ranger is totally inadequate.
"This leak and subsequent cover-up gives the lie to Australian Government's claim that Ranger is the most monitored mine in the world. It also reveals the total inadequacy and partiality of the Commonwealth's Office of the Supervising Scientist, tasked with monitoring the mine," she said.
"The Supervising Scientist is simply not doing its job if such a serious accident can occur and be kept under wraps for a month. The Mirrar find it offensive that they were informed of this leak of manganese via a statement to the Stock Exchange," Katona said.
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Australia national park unhurt by mine leak - govt
AUSTRALIA:
May 9, 2000
Story by James Regan
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=6591
BRISBANE - Local authorities in Australia are satisfied no environmental damage was caused to World Heritage parkland from a leak of contaminated water from a uranium mine, Northern Territory Minister for Resource Development Daryl Manzie said on Tuesday.
Northern Territory and Federal investigators last week launched a probe into how water laced with hazardous manganese could have leaked for months undetected from the Ranger uranium mine, which is surrounded by World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park.
Investigators are also asking why the mine's owner, Energy Resources of Australia Ltd , waited nearly a month before disclosing the leak.
"We're satisfied at this stage that there is absolutely no threat to the environment and that the water was contained in a bunded area designed for these sorts of things," Manzie said.
Manzie said the level of manganese found in water confined in a 25-acre (10-hectare) environmental buffer zone, designed to capture any hazardous discharges from the mine, was below international safety standards.
A separate investigation by Federal Minister for Industry, Science and Resources, Nick Minchin was awaiting a report by the Commonwealth's Office of Supervising Scientists before drawing any conclusions.
"On a preliminary basis, it appears the investigation by the Supervising Scientists will concur with the investigation by the Northern Territory, " a spokesman for Minchin said.
He said the Federal government was also awaiting an initial response from ERA into the incident.
ERA has said it knew of the leak as early as late March or early April, but did not notify government authorities until April 28.
ERA's chief executive, Bob Cleary, called the delay "unacceptable" in a May 2 statement to the Australian Stock Exchange but has offered no explanation.
An ERA spokesman later told Reuters the company incorrectly believed the leak was too minor to warrant its immediate disclosure.
Monsoon rains have made it difficult to determine how long the manganese - used to separate uranium from ore - was allowed to seep into the ground, although Greenpeace has said it could have started as long ago as December.
The environmental group has asked investigators to look further afield from the buffer zone for contamination. ERA is majority-owned by international mining group North Ltd
-------- china
Chinese Military Power Revealed Through Satellite Imagery
US Newswire
9 May 17:22
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0509-131.html
Chinese Military Power Revealed Through Satellite Imagery To: National Desk Contact: Charles Ferguson of the Federation of American Scientists 202-675-1007
News Advisory:
When: Friday, May 12, 2000, 9 AM
Where: National Press Club, Zenger Room, Washington, DC
The Center for Defense Information (CDI) and the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) will reveal new high-resolution satellite images of Chinese airfields facing Taiwan. These images from the Space Imaging IKONOS satellite provide insight into the potential of Chinese air power operations against Taiwan. The public release of these images comes just eight days before the inauguration of Chen Shui-bian as President of Taiwan, with Congressional action on trade relations with China days later. CDI analysts will present a series of military options that might be considered by the People's Republic of China, from a show of force escalating to an invasion by land and sea and will discuss the consequences of these operations for U.S. policies.
The following FAS and CDI representatives will be available for questions during and after the presentation:
-- Mr. John Pike, Director of the Space Policy Project, FAS
-- Mr. Tim Brown, Security Analyst, Public Eye Project, FAS
-- Dr. Charles Ferguson, Director of the Nuclear Policy Project, FAS
-- Dr. Bruce Blair, President, CDI
-- RADM USN (Ret.) Eugene Carroll, Vice President, CDI
-- Dr. Nicholas Berry, Senior Analyst, Asia Forum, CDI
A detailed analysis of Chinese military facilities is available on the Website of the Federation of American Scientists at http://www.fas.org/eye/china.htm. The new high resolution satellite imagery will be online Friday morning. News media wishing to reproduce copyrighted imagery for publication or broadcast should contact Mark Brender at SpaceImaging at 703-558-0309 or Amy Opperman at 303-254-2078 to make the necessary licensing arrangements.
For CDI's analysis of Asian security issues, visit its website at http://www.cdi.org and click on Nicholas Berry's "Asia Forum."
The Federation of American Scientists is a privately-funded policy organization whose Board of Sponsors includes over 50 American Nobel Laureates. FAS was founded in 1945 by members of the Manhattan Project who produced the first atomic bomb. The FAS Public Eye project is acquiring imagery of nuclear and missile facilities around the world. In January, it released imagery of a North Korean missile test facility. In March, it presented imagery of Pakistan's nuclear and missile facilities, and imagery of Area 51 was released in April.
Founded in 1972 as an independent monitor of the military, the Center for Defense Information is a private, non-governmental, research organization. Its directors and staff believe that strong social, political, and military components and a healthy environment contribute equally to the nation's security. CDI seeks realistic and cost effective military spending without excess expenditures for weapons and policies that increase the danger of war.
-0- /U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770/ 05/09 17:23
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http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/5/9/9.text.1
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release May 9, 2000
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT CLINTON, PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER, PRESIDENT GERALD FORD, VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE, SECRETARY OF STATE MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, DR. HENRY KISSINGER, MR. JAMES BAKER
The East Room
10:55 A.M. EDT
SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: Mr. President, President Ford, President Carter, Mr. Vice President, and many notables, current and former, too many to mention; distinguished guests. And I would especially like to thank Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky, whose brilliant negotiating skills have brought us to this point. (Applause.)
I am delighted to welcome everyone here. We are blessed by the presence of respected national leaders from both parties and administrations, spanning the past three decades and more. This reflects the importance of the upcoming congressional vote on China trade to our economy, our foreign policy and the security of our nation.
The leaders we will hear from today don't agree on many issues. We view the world and America's interests from different perspectives. But on this issue we are united. And the purpose of our gathering this morning is to explain in a clear and dramatic fashion the reasons why.
Our first speaker is the last Secretary of State ever to deceive the press about anything. (Laughter and applause.) His secret visit to a closed and isolated China created the opening for a new era of diplomatic relations and extensive people-to-people contact. I am pleased to yield the floor to one of my most justly celebrated predecessors, and a man who has always kept America's interests foremost in mind -- Dr. Henry Kissinger. (Applause.)
DR. KISSINGER: Madeleine, ladies and gentlemen, I was just getting into my combat mood when Madeleine began her remarks. But we are here -- many of us colleagues, together, some had relationships that could only charitably be -- could not even charitably be described as colleagues -- (laughter) -- but we are united on one proposition -- six American Presidents, of both parties, have concluded that cooperative relations with China serve the national interest of the United States.
And the vote that is before the Congress is one of the crucial steps in that process, which represents the most consistent, bipartisan foreign policy that the United States has conducted.
The agreement is, of course, in our economic interest, since it grants China what has been approved by the Congress every year for 20 years. But we are here together not for economic reasons. We are here because cooperative relations with China are in the American national interest. Every President, for 30 years, has come to that conclusion. And a rejection of this agreement would be a vote for an adversarial relationship with the most populous nation of China, with the longest uninterrupted history of self-government. If the national interest requires it, we will, of course, engage in such a relationship, and on the same bipartisan basis as we are here today.
But at this moment, we would be alone, not supported by any other nation. For purposes which, at this moment, do not warrant such a -- this is what has brought us all together here. Longer ago than I like to admit, President Ford was told that the position he had to take in an election year was not at the best moment, and he said, the national interest of the United States is not tied to a political cycle. That was true then and it remains true today. And this is why I want to thank the President for giving me this opportunity to express my strong support for what is essential for peace and progress in Asia.
It's now my privilege to introduce Secretary Jim Baker, who conducted the foreign policy of the United States during the period of the collapse of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe and who saw us through this period with great skill. (Applause.)
MR. BAKER: Thank you very much. President Clinton, President Ford, President Carter, Vice President Gore, Secretary Albright; Henry, thank you; other distinguished guests. Ladies and gentlemen, like many of you, I am here today because there are some issues that transcend partisan politics, issues that are as vital to this country as they are tough politically.
Normalizing trade relations with China is one of those issues. Engaging China, as Secretary Kissinger has just said, has been the policy of every American administration, Republican or Democratic, since Richard Nixon's. And as a former Secretary of Treasury and of State, I believe that normalized trade with China is good for America on both economic grounds and security grounds. It will help move China in the direction of a more open society, and in time, more responsive government. As such, normalized trade relations with China will advance both our national interests, as well as our national ideals, in our relations with the world's most populous country.
And so normalization is a worthy and, I would indeed say, vital goal of American foreign policy. Admittedly, there are some powerful political forces arrayed against it. But they really must not be allowed to hold hostage America's efforts to lead the way in liberalizing global trade and investment. After all, protectionists are protectionists, whether they contribute to your political party or whether they don't. And isolationists are isolationists, however strong their convictions or salutary their concerns.
Make no mistake, my friends, there are serious differences between the United States and China -- in important areas like human rights and Taiwan and proliferation. We will always need to be vigilant and firm, and we will often need to be tough as well. But we should never forget that the best way to find an enemy is to look for one. And so I say we should avoid at all costs the false choice of either embracing China totally today, or trying to isolate her. In fact, by failing to pass normal trading relations for China, Congress would more likely, in my view, isolate the United States.
Engagement, and only engagement, is the answer. And that's because China is in the midst of a great transformation -- economic, social, and political -- of truly historical proportions. How that transformation will end, in dictatorship or in democracy, as an enemy or as an ally, no one now knows. But I think one thing is certain. By defeating normal trade relations with China we make much less likely China's ultimate emergence as a full-fledged member of the community of democratic and peaceful nations.
Today, that community stretches from Tokyo to Toronto and from Boston to Berlin. Creating that community was one of our great national achievements of the last century. It is an achievement for which the world is grateful, and of which all Americans should be proud. I submit to you that our task in this century will be to extend that community, and by so doing, deepen prosperity and security both for the United States and for the world. Normalizing trade relations with China is a first, but very critical, step in that direction.
Thank you very much. (Applause.)
And now it is my distinct honor, ladies and gentlemen, to introduce to you the very distinguished 38th President of the United States, the Honorable Gerald Ford.
Mr. President. (Applause.)
PRESIDENT FORD: Thank you very, very much, Jim. President Clinton, President Carter, distinguished guests. Because of a lengthy career in federal government, I'm going to ask your indulgence for just a minute so I can review a couple of historical things that took place related to this particular subject.
On February 9, 1949, 50-plus years ago, as a member of the House of Representatives, I voted for reciprocal trade legislation that had been recommended at that time by then President Harry Truman. Basically, the bill renewed President Truman's expiring authority to negotiate trade agreements in the second round of GATT negotiations. It passed in the House, 319 to 69. A majority of the Democrats in the House voted for it. A majority of the Republicans in the House voted for it. Congressman John F. Kennedy voted for it. Congressman Richard Nixon voted for it. Congressman Carl Albert voted for it, and so did myself.
It's interesting, in retrospect, that all three of those freshmen or second-termers who voted for that legislation later became President and promoted the same kind of legislation as the occupant of the White House. And of course, Carl Albert did it as Speaker of the House of Representatives.
The Truman administration, in the post-World War II environment, was attempting to undo the tragedy of the high-tariff, protectionist trade policies of the 1930s. The Smoot-Hawley, isolationist, high-tariff legislation of that era had accelerated and deepened the horrible economic depression of the 1930s. Ten American Presidents, Democrat and Republican; every Congress since the end of World War II, in a bipartisan action, have recognized that the expansion of global trade was essential for prosperity and growth in America, and on a worldwide basis.
Historically, in the past half-century, trade legislation has been a bipartisan policy, where the Executive and Legislative Branches, Democrat and Republican worked side-by-side. I'm highly pleased that such political teamwork is now working on this issue in this very critical time.
In this current crisis involving PNTR, comparable cooperation is absolutely mandatory. And I am highly honored to join Presidents Clinton, Carter and other distinguished individuals urging very strongly affirmative action in the Congress on PNTR.
The facts are a negative vote in the House and/or the Senate would be catastrophic, disastrous to American agriculture; electronics, telecommunications, autos and countless other products and services. A negative vote in the Congress would greatly assist our foreign competitors from Europe or Asia by giving them privileged access to China markets and at the same time, exclude America's farm and factory production from the vast Chinese market.
Equally important, the vote on PNTR definitely affects America's strategic and security interests on a global basis, but especially in the Pacific Basin. As it has been noted earlier this afternoon, China right now is in the midst of restructuring thousands of state-owned enterprises in an effort to transform its centrally-planned economy into a market-oriented regime.
We want China's economic reform to succeed. Our own interests are best served by a steadily growing China that contributes stability, politically, economically, in Asia. Congressional action on PNTR would be most beneficial at this very critical point.
I'm not unmindful that China's political regime remains repressive, and that we have serious concerns with respect to China's treatment of its dissidents, its transfer of missile equipment and technology, and its efforts to intimidate Taiwan. But a vote against PNTR will not solve those problems. Indeed, prominent Chinese dissidents like Wang Dan, and the newly elected President of Taiwan, believe that a negative vote on PNTR will make their issues much more difficult to solve.
In conclusion, our future national security and foreign policy interests are enhanced by increased interaction with the world's largest nation, in population and in territory, that holds one of the five permanent votes in the United Nations Security Council. May I say most emphatically, I am convinced that a vote for PNTR significantly advances America's economic, strategic and security interests. I urge the Congress to be affirmative. (Applause.)
And now it's my very high honor to introduce the 39th President, President Jimmy Carter, a very dear and good friend. President Carter. (Applause.)
PRESIDENT CARTER: President Clinton, President Ford, Secretary Baker, Secretary Kissinger. I think everyone listening to this ceremony realizes the tremendous historical significance of the Shanghai communique that was issued in 1972.
This communique opened up the possibilities for us to deal with one of the most powerful and influential nations in the world, China. At that time, it was declared that there was one China -- but it was seven years later before we decided which one.
When I became President, one of the greatest challenges that I had to face was whether we should normalize diplomatic relations with China, which was a very sensitive political issue, because it involved a change in our relationship with Taiwan. As I am today, I was concerned about human rights, and I was concerned about the well-being of the working people of this country. And I want to limit my own comments to those two issues, labor and human rights.
One of the choices I had to make was whom to send to China to begin the secret negotiations with Deng Xiaoping; he was the unquestioned ruler of the nation. And I chose a man who was the senior statesman of the American labor movement, Leonard Woodcock -- respected by, I guess, every working man and woman who was a member of a union or not in this country, and he was also respected by all those who had dealt with him from the management side. And he was my personal representative in Beijing.
Leonard Woodcock, working directly with me from the White House, negotiated successfully the terms for normalization of diplomatic relations. And on the first day of January, 1979, when we formed those relationships. That year, Leonard Woodcock, still highly conversant with, and whose heart was attuned, to the labor movement of America, negotiated the first trade agreement, Most Favored Nations agreement, with China, in 1979. And now for 20 years, each year the Congress has confirmed his decision, and mine.
Recently, Leonard Woodcock, still with the interests of our nation and the labor movement at heart, said -- and I would like to quote his exact words -- "this proposal for permanent, normal trade relations with China will be enormously beneficial, both to the United States and to Chinese workers." And he said that the loss of trade with China would cost American workers 400,000 jobs.
At the Carter Center now we stay in close touch with human rights heroes around the world. And almost every single Chinese dissident -- President Ford mentioned one -- who has spoken on this subject has publicly advocated approval of permanent trade relations with China as one of the key factors in continuing the improvement of human rights respect in China.
It's hard now for us to remember that in 1978, when we were negotiating, human rights in China were quite different from what they are now. There was no such thing as free enterprise in China. There was no such thing as religious freedom. There was a total prohibition against the use or distribution of Bibles in China.
What the Chinese have done has not been adequate in human rights or religious freedom measured by American standards. In 1982, Deng Xiaoping had the constitution revised to guarantee freedom of religion. As a Baptist, I resent the fact that religious congregations of all kinds have to register with the government. I prefer that they not have to, but that's a fact. There is now no impediment to the distribution of Bibles.
At that time, there was no right of a Chinese human being to move from one village to another without official approval, written approval by the government. Now travel is open. At that time, as I said, there was no free enterprise system. Now China is probably making as much progress on free enterprise as any country in the world -- from the village level all the way up to the top level of government.
There was no such thing as a vote in China by an individual. Most people don't know that in 1982 the Constitution of China was also amended to permit villagers to choose their own leaders. And in 1987, an organic law was passed in China authorizing and confirming the right of villagers to have their own election process.
In 1996, the Chinese government came to the Carter Center and asked us to monitor their conduct of village elections -- there are 900,000 villages in China. In every village, voter registration is automatic at the age of 18. Any candidate can run for office, whether you're a member of the Communist Party or not. And now, about half the village officials elected are not members of the Communist Party. There is a secret ballot in every village election. And the terms of office are three years, and you can run for re-election.
You might be interested in knowing that as we've monitored those elections, we see the candidates making a campaign speech limited to three minutes, while the villagers all listen. At the end of a three-year term, if they run for re-election, they replay -- (laughter) -- the speech they made three years earlier. And if the potholes are not filled, and the pear trees have died, or the elementary schoolteachers are not successful, or the garbage doesn't get picked up, they are not re-elected.
This does not apply to the township level, the county level, the province level, or the national elections level. But it does apply to all 900,000 villages. And the Carter Center is deeply involved in that, because, although we don't have any guarantee that it will extend to a higher level -- although Zhu Rongji has announced that it might very well do so -- if the village election process is unsuccessful, democratization will not improve. If the village elections are successful, which so far they are, then there's a chance at least for more democracy in China.
Deng Xiaoping and I discussed all the controversial issues. There were dozens of them on the table. One, obviously, was Taiwan, which is still very difficult. We agreed then, and every President since then has agreed, that there is one nation, and that Taiwan is part of China. We also announced, in 1979 -- in 1978, in December, that our supposition was that any differences between the central government on the mainland and Taiwan would be resolved peacefully, and that's the still the policy of the United States.
Well, China still has not measured up to the human rights and democracy standards and labor standards of America. But there's no doubt in my mind that a negative vote on this issue in the Congress will be a serious setback and impediment for the further democratization, freedom and human rights in China. That should be the major consideration for the Congress and the nation. And I hope the members of Congress will vote accordingly, particularly those who are interested in human rights, as I am; and those who are interested in the well-being of American workers as I am. (Applause.)
SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: Our next speaker has been thinking deeply for decades about the strategic challenges and choices our nation would face in the new century. He understands well both the traditional forces at work in international affairs and the new patterns that result from the changing political and technological landscape.
As Vice President, he has contributed much to the principles, strength and pragmatism of our national security policies; to the success of our diplomacy with partners in key regions; and to the Clinton administration's commitment to building a global economy that is not only growing, but fair.
And so I am very pleased and highly honored to introduce a great national leader, the Vice President of the United States, Al Gore. (Applause.)
VICE PRESIDENT GORE: Thank you very much, Secretary Albright. It is a great honor to be on this platform with this distinguished group, and in this room with such a distinguished group. And I want to thank you, Madam Secretary for your kind introduction. And I want to especially thank President Ford and President Carter for their eloquent statements in support of America making the right decision on this critical issue.
I would also like to thank President Bush, who is not here today, but who has been unequivocal on this issue. In addition to -- and I'd like to thank Secretary Kissinger and Secretary Baker for their support. And I would just like to briefly make note of the fact that we have a great many other former Secretaries of State who are here, Secretaries of the Treasury, National Security Advisors.
I wonder if I could ask the former Secretaries of State to stand, please, so that we could acknowledge your presence here. I know that Warren Christopher is here, and Alexander Haig. (Applause.) I don't think Larry -- former National Security Advisors, could I ask the former National Security Advisors to stand? I know Tony Blake is here; Brent Scowcroft; Zbig Brzezinski. (Applause.) And former Secretaries of the Treasury? I know that -- I'm not sure -- yes, thank you. Thank you both for being here. (Applause.) And former trade negotiators? I think I saw a couple of -- Mickey, thank you. (Applause.)
And I know we have at least one former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Crowe. I don't know if there are other military leaders who are here. Other military leaders? Yes, please, stand up. (Applause.) Former members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And members of Congress, and I see at least one governor, Governor Jesse Ventura is here, ambassadors and others.
You know, you look at this group of leaders. This is kind of an extraordinary gathering. There are a few times in the life of our nation when a truly difficult choice comes along, and the incumbent President appeals to the leaders of Congress -- and there are many former leaders of Congress here as well -- and goes through all the arguments on the merits. And then the stakes are obviously so high that he has to go beyond that, and call upon the collected wisdom of the elder statesmen, and the individuals who have served in both political parties and independents who have looked at this from a variety of different standpoints and who have all come to the same conclusion. And I just think that a gathering like this ought to have such tremendous weight in the way people analyze issues.
Having voted so many times as a member of the House and Senate myself, I know that it's always a mix of substance and politics and how the people back home are looking at the issues. But when the issue is one that affects the country so greatly, it has to matter a lot that so many men and women with so much accumulated wisdom and experience over such a long period of time are coming together to offer their collective advice today.
And, President Ford, I was listening to your comment about the 1949 vote and recalling that another young congressman in 1949 was my father, Congressman Albert Gore, who voted as you did on that measure. Building upon the work of his hometown mentor, Cordell Hull, who was a former Secretary of State who won the Nobel Peace Prize at the end of World War II for negotiating and bringing into being the predecessor of the WTO, the GATT. And one of his common sayings in this little town of Carthage, of 3,000 people -- not often quoted these days -- was this, he said, "When goods do not cross borders, armies do." This is an economic issue. It is also a national security issue.
We see the approaching inauguration of the newly-elected leader on Taiwan. We see both Taipei and Beijing maneuvering to try to handle this transition artfully and well. What the United States Congress does on this issue will have an enormous impact on the prospects for peace and prosperity in the Far East.
It is also, as others have said, a labor issue, and a human rights issue. May I add that I believe it is also an environmental issue. I have the honor of co-chairing with Premier Zhu Rongji, the U.S.-China Commission on Sustainable Development. There is absolutely no question that the increased openness of China to the rest of the world strengthens the voices, not only of the human rights advocates that President Carter meets with on a regular basis, but also strengthens the advocates of environmental protection.
Indeed, there are swirling controversies there right now on how to better protect the environment that would not have taken place just a few years ago. And there will be other vigorous debates in the future, if we do the right thing and approve this measure. In my view, the economic merits of permanent normal trade relations with China are beyond dispute. It means good jobs for American workers, and 1.2 billion consumers for American products and services.
There are those who disagree with us on this issue. I respect their views, and I understand their impatience with the pace of change in China. I share it, as do most people in this room. We have to continue to press China on issues like human rights and workers' rights, environmental protection, religious freedom, and treatment of Tibet.
But I believe very deeply that by bringing China into the global economy, by making China live by the same global trading rules that other nations follow, we will strengthen the forces of reform across the board in China. We will create a powerful new pressure on China to establish the rule of law, which is the foundation not just of a free and open economy, but also of the kind of political reforms that we're working to promote.
Expanding trade with China also advances our vital security interests by giving China a far greater stake in global peace and prosperity. China's leaders understand well that their nation cannot continue to grow unless it strengthens its economic ties with the world. Bringing China into the world trading system makes it far more likely that China's leaders will find it in their interest to play a meaningful role in global stability.
For all of these reasons, I strongly support permanent normal trade relations with China. It is right for American jobs. It is right for the cause of reform in China. And I believe it will move us closer to the strong and stable world community that we all seek to create.
Now, it is a deep honor and personal privilege to present someone who has, of course, taken enormous strides toward the freer and more vibrant world that we all seek. Ladies and gentlemen, a great economic steward for America, the President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton. (Applause.)
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thank you very much. President Ford, President Carter, Mr. Vice President, Secretary Albright, Secretary Baker, Secretary Kissinger; all the distinguished people that the Vice President acknowledged. Many of you did not stand. We have so many distinguished leaders of Congress here, I would be remiss if I didn't thank our former Speaker, Tom Foley, and our former Minority Leader, Bob Michel, because they helped me pass NAFTA and the WTO and I'm grateful to both of you. Thank you. (Applause.) We have former House Foreign Relations Chairman Lee Hamilton; former Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Chuck Percy.
There's one person in this room I have to introduce. I wish all of you could have been sitting where we were today, and I was scanning this room, realizing that through the lives of the people in this room, the last 50 years of America has unfolded, and we're a better country because of what you have all done, and it's a better world. And it is just profoundly humbling for me to look across this sea of faces who are here. I was so glad the Vice President said what he did about it. But there's one person here I want to recognize because I'm quite sure he is the senior statesman here, and through his life, most of the 20th century unfolded -- former Ambassador and Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. Thank you, sir, for being here. (Applause.) Thank you.
You have already heard what needs to be said about this, so I'm going to try to abbreviate my remarks and focus on what is at issue here. If you look at the terms of this agreement on purely economic grounds, there's no question that Ambassador Barshefsky and Mr. Sperling did a great job. And if the Congress declines to approve this, I will not block China going into the WTO. So what will happen? The Europeans and the Japanese will get the benefits they negotiated under the rules.
If you look at who's against this in America, it is truly ironic to look at who's against this in China. Nobody's really talked about that. Not everybody's for this in China. Who's against it in China? The people that run the state-owned industries, and don't want to give up their control; the more conservative elements of the military, who would like to have greater tensions between ourselves and them, and between themselves and the people of Taiwan.
It is truly ironic, when you look at who's against this in China, to see that some of the most progressive people in the United States are basically doing what they want them to do in opposing this agreement. And for me, it is very painful. And I was very proud of the history that President Ford gave us, of the last 50 years, and very proud of what President Carter said about how we feel about labor rights and human rights, and the labor movement here in this country.
But the people who are running China are not foolish people. They are highly intelligent. They know the decision they have made. They understand that they are unleashing forces of change which cannot be totally controlled in the system, which, as President Carter says, has dominated in China over the last 21 years since we normalized relations.
Two years ago there were only 2 million Internet users in China. Last year, there were 9 million. This year there will be over 20 million. At some point, there will be a critical mass reached, and when that happens there will be a sea change.
When Martin Lee was here the other day talking to people about this, he said, you know, I've led the democracy movement in Hong Kong for decades. I've never met Zhu Rongji. I can't even go to China, they won't let me go. But I'll tell you this, if you vote against this, the United States will have no influence on the human rights policies of the Chinese government.
So why are we having this debate? Because people are anxiety-ridden about the forces of globalization, or they're frustrated over the human rights record of China, or they don't like all the procedures of the WTO. There are lots of things. Every one of you gets up every morning, there's something you don't like. That doesn't mean you should be against this agreement. But that's what has -- this agreement has become like fly paper for the accumulated frustrations people have about things in the world that they don't like very much; or that are spinning beyond their control; or that they feel will have an uncertain result. And that's the world we're living in.
But I will say this -- you know, people ask me all the time, now that I've completed about over 90 percent of my term, well, what have you learned about this, that or the other thing? What have you learned about foreign policy? I've learned it's a lot more like real life than I thought it was when I showed up here. I read all Dr. Kissinger's books, and I was immensely enlightened by them. But what he said today is right -- normally, unless you have to fight with somebody, you do better with an outstretched hand than with a clenched fist. You want to have a strong defense, you want to be ready for the worst, but you've got to try to plan for the best and give people a chance to do the right thing.
President Carter was talking about those 900,000 village elections. I went to some of those villages and I met with some of those elected leaders. I think it would be a pretty good idea if they ran all of our campaign speeches back when we ran for reelection. (Laughter.) Of course, I can say that since I'm not running any more. (Laughter.)
But I just have to say, this is an enormously impressive meeting. But the vote is going to take place at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. And it's by far the most important national security vote that will be cast this year. It's an American vote -- it unites Henry Kissinger and Andy Young and Jesse Ventura -- and not at a wrestling match. (Laughter.)
I thank you for being here, sir. You didn't have to come today, and I really appreciate it. (Applause.)
But I will say this: we have got to tell people. You know, it doesn't matter what the local political pressure is, and it doesn't matter what your anxiety is. The truth is, if we vote for this, 10 years from now we will wonder why it was a hard fight. And if the Congress votes against it, they will be kicking themselves in the rear 10 years from now, because America will be paying the price. And I believe the price will start to be paid not 10 years from now, not even 10 months from now, but immediately. That's why the President-elect of Taiwan wants us so badly to approve permanent normal trading relations. That's why most of the human rights activists do.
And yes, it's an economic issue, and you all know I'm interested in economics. And it's about as much of an economic lay-down as I've ever seen, because what we're giving is China membership in the WTO, in return for greater access to their markets, the right to sell things there without having to manufacture things there, the right to sell things there without having a transfer of technology.
It will help us, because then we'll at least have some demonstration of our good-faith commitment to the long-term decision they have made to try to be a more open society abiding by international rules of law. Then we'll at least have a way to continue this dialogue and intensify it -- on religious rights, on political rights, on labor rights, on all human rights issues, on the environment, on missile and other technology proliferation. All these defense issues which have brought the former Chiefs of Staff and the former Defense Secretaries here, and the former National Security Advisors here today.
So what I would like to ask all of you to do when you leave here is to pick somebody you know in the Congress and call them and tell them what we're all saying to one another today. Of course we want the voice of this meeting to echo across the country, and to embrace the Congress.
I wish it weren't a fight, but it is. And I'd just like to say one thing in closing. If you look at the whole sweep of American history, at critical periods we've always been willing to redefine our responsibilities as a nation -- first in ways that brought us together as a people, in the 19th century and then all the way through the Great Depression and, later, through the civil rights revolution and the women's rights movement and the environmental movement. And, second, in ways that recognized our unique responsibilities first to our neighbors and then to those across the globe as we became more and more blessed.
One of the things I was thinking about in terms of our relationship with China, is of President Nixon and President Carter and President Ford, and even President Bush, for whose support we're very grateful for. They all faced a different world than we face here today. And, frankly, they faced different challenges at home when they were making these tough decisions abroad.
We haven't been in this kind of economic and social shape in America since the early 1960s. If we can't do this now, when in the wide world will be ever be able to do it? Why -- what could we possibly be afraid of, based on the capacity of this country to grow its economy and improve its social condition. If we can't meet this kind of a challenge now, we are abandoning the legacy of the last 50 years, when previous presidents and previous congresses have done things harder to do than this in economic and social turbulence far greater than we face today.
In fact, I almost think that these good times are some sort of a disability here because they encourage people to lose their focus, to lose their concentration, to sort of drift off and assume that there are no consequences to decisions that are not responsible. There are always consequences.
And this country has never had a better chance to shape the world of the future for our children. We all know it's the right decision. And virtually, 100 percent of the people at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue know it's the right decision. We cannot allow our prosperity to lull us into self-indulgence.
We have to use our prosperity to build the 21st century world that many of you fought in World War II for, Senator Mansfield fought in World War I for, that you served in the government for, that you gave your lives to public service for, that you sustained our standard for freedom throughout the Cold War for, that you supported all these other trade opening measures for.
And if we can't do it, with the lowest unemployment in 30 years, and 21 million new jobs, and the longest expansion in history, we'll never be able to explain it to our children and our grandchildren. And this place will not be nearly as happy a place to be for the next several years. But if we do it, one more time we will say, we kept faith in our time, with America's eternal march.
Thank you and God bless you. (Applause.)
---
China Warns Japan About Military
Associated Press
May 9, 2000 Filed at 1:54 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-China-Japan.html
BEIJING (AP) -- On the eve of a visit by its foreign minister, China cautioned Japan on Tuesday against conducting military exercises overseas, saying the drills might harm the region's peace and stability.
The warning came amid renewed accusations by Chinese officials and media that Japan is plotting to resurrect its military might dismantled after defeat in World War II. At the center of the criticisms is Japan's participation in a multinational submarine rescue exercise to be held later this year near Singapore.
Countries participating in such exercises ``should not do anything that may be detrimental to stability and peace in this part of the world,'' Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said Tuesday.
Zhang's boss, Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan, leaves Wednesday for a four-day visit that will include meetings with new Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and other leading politicians, economic groups and non-governmental organizations.
Although Zhang was muted in her remarks, the wholly state-controlled media has been more shrill. While Japan has participated in joint rescue operations in the past, this year's exercises will be the first to involve military vessels.
``The ghost of militarism is stirring on the Japanese archipelago,'' the newspaper of China's politically influential military said in a front-page commentary published Monday under the title ``A Dangerous Signal.''
Tokyo could deploy dozens of nuclear weapons and ``join the ranks of nuclear powers,'' within just a six-month period, the Liberation Army Daily said.
China has long viewed any move by Japan to strengthen its defenses and cooperation with U.S. troops as an attempt to revive the war machine that invaded China and colonized much of Asia in the years before and during World War II.
Lingering resentment is fed by the actions of ultranationalist Japanese right-wing groups and comments by Japanese politicians downplaying wartime atrocities committed by Tokyo's Imperial Army.
China also suspects Japan and the United States of seeking to extend their sphere of defense over Taiwan, which Beijing claims as a breakaway province to be reunified by force if necessary. Both Japan and the United States -- which has 47,000 troops based in Japan and a legal obligation to ensure Taiwan can defend itself -- have avoided clarifying whether their defense pact commits them to act if Taiwan comes under attack.
``Japan's aggressive military buildup may have a huge impact on peace and development in the Asian-Pacific region and in the world,'' China's Outlook magazine said in a recent report. It charged Japan and the United States with attempting to bring Taiwan into their military alliance.
Another article in the army newspaper Monday pointed to Japan's plans to acquire modern military vessels and aircraft as evidence that Tokyo will defy its postwar constitution, which limits the country's military to a defensive role and outlaws nuclear weapons.
``Japan's military power already far, far exceeds the scope of its so-called defense requirements,'' the article said.
---
Belgrade was bombed, a man looks at the ruins on May 7.
Springtime for China, Russia Old allies rekindle friendship after Kosovo
MSNBC
05/08/00
By Michael Moran MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.com/news/404800.asp?cp1=1
NEW YORK, May 8 - At the height of NATO's air war against Yugoslavia exactly one year ago, an American B-2 bomber unleashed a precision-guided bomb on what turned out to be the embassy of the second most important country on earth, China. A year is too short a time to assess what NATO and the U.S. have won or lost by going to war in the Balkans. But this seems certain: NATO's willingness to take up arms, punctuated by the destruction of the Chinese embassy, has driven Beijing and Moscow into a friendly embrace.
WHETHER OR NOT the embassy attack was a deliberate act is not my interest here. Regardless of why it happened, it was a tremendous blunder, which cannot be wished away. The bombing underscored China's belief that in the post-Cold War world, the United States is far more willing now to use its military to solve problems when diplomacy fails. That may please some hard-nosed Americans. But this readiness has also done something far more damaging for long-term American interests: it put meat on the bones of the old Russian-Chinese friendship.
NATO's decision, led by the Americans, to attack Yugoslavia lit a fire under the Chinese. Already stunned by the enormous gap in military power revealed by the U.S.-led attack on Iraq nine years earlier, China now watched as that same military prowess was unleashed on a sovereign state without so much as a nod in the general direction of the United Nations.
The move alarmed Beijing on a number of fronts. Agitation for a free Tibet and independent Taiwan (two hot button issues for China) emanate primarily from the U.S., so Beijing feels vulnerable.
A LITTLE SHOPPING
The roots of the Sino-Russian rapprochement certainly predate the April 1999 start of the Kosovo war. But since that war, the relationship has been "substantialized," in the words of Xinbo Wu, a security expert at China's Fudan University who is currently on a temporary stint at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Russian Sukhoi-30MK jets perform acrobatics at the MAKS-99 International Airshow near Moscow last August.
The improving ties between these former socialist brethren date back to the mid-1990s, when China and Russia signed an agreement ending the border dispute that led to a short war in 1967. Over the past year, however, both countries have recognized that alone they cannot hope to counter growing American dominance of the world's economy, information systems and political agenda. And so, a Sino-Russian spring is in bloom.
Since the Kosovo war started last year, several events mark a significant deepening of the China-Russia relationship:
Russia sold China two highly sophisticated Sovremennyy guided missile destroyers to China's PLA Navy with an option for two more.
Russia has sold China four Kilo-class diesel submarines, and the sale of two nuclear-powered Akula class boats is also being discussed, according to China expert David Shambaugh of George Washington University.
Russia last August sold China 60 Sukhoi Su-30 fighters, one of Russia's top aircraft, plus the license to produce 200 more locally. This comes on top of large deliveries of transport aircraft, ground attack aircraft and engines for China's domestically produced J-10 fighter.
The two countries signed an agreement along with Central Asian states to jointly fight terrorism in that region and to bolster an earlier treaty pulling back their armies from the border.
GENERATION GAP
Despite these improvements, the obstacles for China's military, the People's Liberation Army, are still tremendous. American military experts agree that China is a generation, at least, behind the U.S. in all aspects of military operations, and in some areas - nuclear weaponry and submarine technology, for instance, as much as 30 years behind. Few military experts expect China to close that gap in the next several decades. On the contrary, most military analysts - including many in China itself - see the U.S. lead in high technology widening for at least the next few decades.
This reality causes many experts to write off recent Chinese threats to take Taiwan. Paul Godwin, a China expert with the National War College, notes that Chinese forces would have to contend with at least one American carrier task force, U.S. nuclear attack submarines, U.S. air power based in Korea and Japan, not to mention Taiwan's potent military.
"China has neither the technology nor the training to conduct these kinds of operations," Godwin says. "I don't believe they really believe what they're saying" about Taiwan.
Nor is the recent infusion of modern Russian weapons changing things drastically. Training, spare parts, huge funding problems: all of these factors make reforming the huge Chinese military a questionable process.
Ken Allen, an expert on the Chinese air force who spent years as a military attaché in both Beijing and Taiwan, cites a recent, telling statement from the commander of Chinese naval aviation, Vice Admiral Ma Bingzhi:
"(China) has deployed new types of aircraft, but they have had new problems, including high failure rates, poor reliability and low hit probability."
Similar complaints, culled from China's military journals, can be seen regarding the lack of technical skills among Chinese personnel, the lack of spare parts or training and the poor coordination between China's air, naval and ground services.
BUILDING A FOUNDATION
Given these challenges, China has set its sights high: jumping several generations in military capabilities - something akin to teaching Napoleon's army to drive tanks. The consensus that exists among the vast majority of U.S. military and intelligence analysts is that China can't do it, at least not very soon.
The U.S. has nothing to fear about the arms sales. Even though Russia has sold China over $8 billion worth of weaponry since the early 1990s, the move is often seen as a long overdue upgrading of the vintage Chinese arms from somewhere in the vicinity of 1965 to about 1980. And, face it, what's $8 billion when compared to the $152 billion a year (average) U.S. defense budget?
Nonetheless, China also has harvested a wealth of technological information from its nifty espionage effort in the U.S., which netted them plans for improving their nuclear warheads, increasing their yields as well as a secret nuclear submarine propulsion system. And, this year, Israel sold China its first AWACS airborne command aircraft, promising a quantum leap in the ability of Chinese forces to coordinate complicated operations.
China's generals have no illusions: they have a long way to go to modernize their forces. They know improved ties with Russia can help plug some of the huge holes in China's current capabilities, but won't nearly bring them on par with NATO or U.S. standards. But by adding sophisticated Russian-built equipment to their mix - and earning licenses to build these weapons locally - China's generals know they eventually will force their military to start addressing its technological inferiority. Remember, China's goal is not to equal America in 2010 - they know better. The goal is more like 2030. Long-term thinking like that is simply not a part of the American way of life. But for China, even 40 years is short-term thinking.
Michael Moran is Senior Producer, International News at MSNBC.com
mailto:Michael.Moran@msnbc.com
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Beijing stalls on nuclear promises
Washington Times
May 9, 2000
By Bill Gertz
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-200059231758.htm
Two years after President Clinton allowed sales of civilian nuclear technology to China, Beijing is blocking implementation of a 1985 cooperation agreement by refusing to provide assurances it won't sell U.S. know-how to other nations.
U.S. national security officials said several Energy Department export licenses have been held up because the Chinese government will not make promises about re-exports, a requirement sought by the Clinton administration and American businesses.
Mr. Clinton called the implementation of the agreement a "win-win-win" accord that will help national security, the environment and business.
However, China's failure to follow through is raising new questions about its policy on selling technology related to weapons of mass destruction to rogue states; specifically, Beijing's cooperation with Pakistan's nuclear program.
The export-control issue also is expected to be a topic of debate in Congress over granting China permanent normal trade status.
Until recently, the administration had been demanding blanket assurances from China on nuclear cooperation as a result of the agreement reached in October 1997 between Mr. Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin during the Washington summit meeting.
The Chinese agreed to scale back nuclear cooperation with Iran in exchange for Mr. Clinton certifying that China was not selling nuclear-weapons technology to rogue states.
The Chinese were identified in a CIA report made public earlier this year as a major supplier of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missiles around the world. The report said China's promise in 1996 to limit nuclear cooperation with Iran "appears to be holding," but another pledge to halt exchanges with Pakistan is not.
"We cannot preclude ongoing contacts," the CIA report said of China-Pakistan nuclear ties.
Critics of China's weapons-proliferation activities said the lack of assurances is troubling.
Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control said China should not be reluctant to promise not to share U.S. technology.
"An importer who refuses to give assurances against re-export is too risky a buyer to deal with," Mr. Milhollin said in an interview. "If the United States exports reactors with no assurances of re-export, it might as well be sending them to Iran."
Zhang Yuanyuan, press spokesman for the Chinese Embassy, said the Chinese government is opposing U.S. demands because they were not included in the original 1985 nuclear cooperation accord.
The certification that China is not proliferating nuclear arms was required under the 1985 agreement. Mr. Clinton made the certification in early 1998.
"The request we got was that maybe China could make a blanket statement saying it was not going to use American technology for military purposes, or [that it was] not going to transfer the American technology to any third parties," Mr. Zhang said.
China opposes the U.S. request because it has "developed indigenous technology" for nuclear reactors, he said. "If we develop nuclear-power facilities and want to export to third countries, it will be hard to determine if the technology is indigenously developed or from the U.S.," Mr. Zhang said. "That's the reason we don't want to give the assurances."
According to an April 4 memorandum from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which reviews the Energy Department export-license applications known as Part 810s, 16 requests from U.S. companies to sell civilian nuclear-power reactor technology to China have been stalled since 1998 over the issue.
Some of the companies awaiting permission to sell nuclear technology and services include General Electric, ABB Combustion Engineering, Raytheon, Bechtel Power, Fisher-Rosemont, Data Systems and Solutions and Onsite Engineering and Management.
"To date, China has not provided any assurances for any of the Part 810 cases," Janice Dunn Lee, director of NRC's office of international programs, stated in the NRC memorandum. "China would prefer to provide any assurances on a case-by-case basis, but the U.S., with strong industry support, is requiring generic assurances. The matter is still under review by China."
However, on March 2, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson violated the Clinton administration policy seeking blanket Chinese assurances by approving a license for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to work with China's Tsinghua University on a new type of nuclear reactor.
The Energy Department did not notify either the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or the State Department of the policy change, which it claimed was due to the academic or noncommercial nature of the cooperation.
"Secretary Richardson's tactic of approving the MIT request subject to the receipt of case-specific assurances from China may raise congressional and media questions," Miss Lee stated, noting that the policy change was not "significant." She said the commission contacted Energy officials "to discuss the breach of interagency procedures and possible consequences of such actions."
A White House national security official said the main benefit of the nuclear-cooperation agreement was China's promise to limit nuclear cooperation with Iran. The commercial aspects of the agreement have been limited, he said.
As for China's purchase of U.S. civilian reactors and related goods, Beijing has not made any orders and is reviewing its energy-development plans, the official said.
As for the required assurances, "we're not going to sell nuclear-power technology until we get the assurances," the official said, "That's one of the essential parts of the agreement. If they want to buy U.S. stuff, they have to agree to that provision."
A Senate defense specialist said the Chinese failure to provide the assurances is the result of bad policy by the administration.
"This just underscores why the administration should never have certified as acceptable China's record as an arms proliferator in order to go forward with the deal," the aide said. "The president should have gotten these re-export assurances first, and the fact that China is unwilling to give them demonstrates its continuing interest in weapons proliferation."
The aide said that as Mr. Clinton has done in the past regarding policies toward China "he will allow the Chinese to have what they want without the assurances."
-------- india / pakistan
"India & nuclear disarmament"
By Arjun Makhijani The Hindu, May 9, 2000 (http://www.the-hindu.com)
THERE HAS been notable silence on the issue of nuclear apartheid from the Indian nuclear establishment after the May 11, 1998, nuclear tests. Not that nuclear apartheid has disappeared, of course. Of 187 parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), 182 do not have nuclear weapons; five do. Having broken down the door to the nuclear club, India has been seeking legitimacy from its charter members, most notably the United States. India knows that this cannot be achieved by accession to the NPT as a nuclear weapons state, because most countries would not stand for it. Rather, India's hope seems to be that it will be recognised as a weapon state in other ways, such as being a party to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) that will engage in new weapons design through American-style stockpile stewardship, and by acquiring nuclear technology from members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, who have heretofore restricted exports to India.
Before going farther down this road, India should ask itself, as it did before the Pokhran tests, why the U.S. Government should be accorded special status as the provider of legitimacy. After all, the U.S. is in the process of violating its commitments to the 182 non-nuclear weapon states. It has not accepted the legitimacy of the World Court's opinion, which held that nuclear weapons are illegal and that Article VI of the NPT requires all nuclear weapon states party to the Treaty to actually achieve nuclear disarmament in all its aspects. The U.S. Senate rejected the CTBT breaking another commitment to the NPT parties in the name of maintaining U.S. superiority. Even the defence of the CTBT by the Clinton administration was made on the basis that it would lock in U.S. advantages (which the $ 60 billion, 13-year U.S. stockpile stewardship programme would do). It seems prepared, if necessary, to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to achieve what it believes would be unilateral security advantages. It led the 1998 and 1999 bombings of Iraq and Yugoslavia (respectively) without obtaining the necessary authorisation from the United Nations Security Council. This dismal catalog of illegitimacy can, unfortunately, be quite easily extended.
The positions of the vast majority of countries being expressed at the NPT Review Conference going on now in New York, are not in accord with U.S. policy. Indeed, on ballistic missile defences, the U.S. is practically isolated. Even its NATO partners have grave reservations about the direction of the U.S. on this issue. Moreover, U.S. claims that it is attending to its NPT disarmament obligations by reducing weapons systems ring hollow in the halls of the U.N. Most are aware that the U.S. is designing new weapons and that its real policy is to maintain nuclear weapons as a principal feature of its military arrangements for the future. India would be far better off seeking legitimacy in a different direction. The ratification by the Russian Duma of the CTBT even in the face of its rejection by the U.S. Senate was a bold and refreshing departure from the politics of reaction to the U.S. Coming on the heels of Russian ratification of the START II nuclear arms reduction treaty, and just before the NPT Review Conference, Russia put the U.S. on the defensive, newly unsure how to pursue its agenda. In contrast, Russia has been applauded at that conference for its ratification actions. The strength of the Russian position derives from the fact that it acted in a way that was at once in its own interest, for instance, it can hardly afford to spend vast sums on testing readiness, and simultaneously in the interests of disarmament. Russia's asking the U.S. to stick to the ABM Treaty gained additional credibility because it proposed a way to address missile proliferation threats by intensifying missile non- proliferation policies, rather than by unilateral installation of national missile defenses that could also serve as part of a first-strike nuclear arsenal.
Russia has taken some bold actions, but they are in the context of promulgating a doctrine that increases the role of nuclear weapons. It is still partly locked in a dangerous battle of nuclear wills with the U.S. India can further its own security and that of the whole world by being even more bold on the CTBT, but without condoning Russia's nuclear doctrine.
The CTBT could be a sound instrument for disarmament, since it bans all nuclear explosions. Its disarmament goal is being vitiated not by its provisions, but by non-treaty factors. One of the principal problems is the flagship enterprise of the U.S. stockpile stewardship programme a huge laser-driven device, called the National Ignition Facility (NIF), designed to create laboratory thermonuclear explosions. These explosions, which are intended to reach ten or more pounds of TNT equivalent, would be illegal under the CTBT, according to the analysis done by my institute. Planning for them is also prohibited under Article I of the CTBT. Interestingly, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has so far failed to respond to a letter from the U.S. Senator from iowa, Mr. Harkin, for the basis on which laboratory thermonuclear explosions are considered legal, even though the DOE states that smaller fission explosions (four pounds TNT equivalent) are banned.
France is similarly violating the CTBT, since it is building a device of the same type and size as NIF near Bordeaux. Britain is cooperating with the U.S. in the NIF program and such collaboration is also prohibited by Article I. The French and British actions are all the more egregious, since both countries have ratified the CTBT.
Further, the U.S. is developing new low-yield nuclear weapons, and may develop pure fusion weapons, the latter by using NIF as a scientific proving ground (though not for detailed weapon design). Pure fusion weapons would have essentially no radioactive fallout. It may be undertaking these activities with one eye on the World Court opinion, which found that nuclear weapons are illegal, in part because they cause indiscriminate damage. This path of seeking to legitimise nuclear weapons increases the chances of nuclear war.
In 1996, the Government of India frequently voiced the objection, quite legitimately, that the nuclear weapons powers, notably the U.S., were converting the CTBT into an instrument of non- proliferation to the exclusion of the long-cherished goal of disarmament. India now has the chance to help make the CTBT into a disarmament treaty, especially since Russian ratification has left the U.S. more vulnerable to international pressure.
India should sign the CTBT, with the announcement that it intends, as a signatory, to ensure that it will be an instrument of disarmament and that its letter and spirit will be completely respected. India should announce that it will seek an end to design of new weapons by all nuclear weapon states, as well as clarification of Article I to ensure that laboratory thermonuclear explosions are explicitly banned. India could invite Pakistan to sign the CTBT and to join it in this effort. It could also enlist the support the vast majority of other signatories, possibly including Russia and China, to make the CTBT a true disarmament treaty.
India should note that most Governments as well as non- governmental organisations at the NPT Review Conference have given pride of place to Russian treaty ratifications as well as to the disarmament proposals of the New Agenda Coalition (Egypt, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, Sweden, Brazil). Rather than seeking legitimacy in the nuclear arena from the one nuclear weapon state that is increasingly isolated and seen as an obstacle to nuclear disarmament, India should act independently in accord with its best traditions. It should sign the CTBT and work hard to convert it into an instrument of disarmament. That would be a historically fitting task for the Government of a country whose Prime Minister was the first world leader to call for such a treaty.
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Nuclear Power: A Cold War Propaganda Tool
Editorial by Arjun Makhijani and Michele Boyd
http://www.ieer.org/sdafiles/vol_8/8-3/npower.html
Based on the book "The Nuclear Power Deception" by Arjun Makhijani and Scott Saleska1
It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter..."
- Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, 1954
"Heat will be so plentiful that it will even be used to melt snow as it falls....[T]he central atomic power plant will provide all the heat, light, and power required by the community and these utilities will be so cheap that their cost can hardly be reckoned."
-Robert M. Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, site of the first nuclear chain reaction, 1946
The idea that nuclear power would be extremely cheap and inexhaustible received a great deal of attention in the immediate aftermath of World War II. As if in purposeful contrast to the new wartime horrors that could be wrought by the atomic bomb, a future in nuclear energy was depicted in glowing terms to evoke a vision of peace, prosperity, and plenty.
Lewis Strauss, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1953, had "faith in the atomic future" and believed that the progress of nuclear power would be guided by " Divine Providence." The US Congress also caught the fever. Its vision was embodied in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the major legislation to define the terms for commercialization of atomic energy in ways that were compatible with the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The Act declares that:
the development, use and control of atomic energy shall be directed so as to promote world peace, improve the general welfare, increase the standard of living, and strengthen free competition in private enterprise.
Applications of nuclear energy to promote the "general welfare" were to be "subject at all times to the paramount objective of making the maximum contribution to the common defense and security."
The US wanted to present a benign image of the atom to the world, even as it built a huge arsenal of ever more powerful weapons. Inaccurate and misleading statements and technological bravado about nuclear power soon became part of the Cold War hysteria that prevailed in the US. By the early 1980s it was clear not only on Main Street but also on Wall Street that far from being "too cheap to meter" nuclear energy was too costly to afford. But other dubious claims have gained currency, such as that the industry can build "inherently safe" reactors or that nuclear power can be used as a practical solution to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.2
Atoms for Peace
After the first Soviet nuclear test in 1949, the United States decided to press ahead with the development of the hydrogen bomb. It began the design, manufacture, and testing of nuclear weapons and opened the Nevada Test Site. The Soviets followed a similar course. The US tested a thermonuclear device on October 31, 1952, and the Soviets did so on August 12, 1953.
Thomas Murray, an AEC commissioner, saw clear "propaganda" benefits in diverting attention from bombs to civilian power, since both the US and the Soviet Union were rushing headlong into the era of the thermonuclear weapons. Such propaganda would show the United States as the promoter of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy in contrast to the horror of the Soviet thermonuclear program. In addition to the propaganda advantage gained by casting the Soviets as the militaristic side (despite the parallel development of Soviet nuclear power plants), another aspect of US urgency to embark on commercial civilian nuclear energy generation on a significant scale was the fear that, if the US delayed, the Soviets would be the first to achieve it. As it turned out, both the Soviets (1954) and the British (1956) succeeded in producing commercial nuclear electricity before the United States (1957).
A speech by President Eisenhower to the United Nations in December 1953 was prepared against this backdrop of US and Soviet nuclear arms development and testing. Initial drafts of the speech focused on the terribly destructive nature of atomic and thermonuclear weapons. In the revised speech, one part contained graphic descriptions of the power and terror of nuclear weapons; another part spoke in glowing terms about the promise of the peaceful atom.
Eisenhower focused a large part of his UN speech on promoting civilian nuclear power development, which became known as the "Atoms for Peace" program. In his speech, Eisenhower said:
The US would seek more than the mere reduction or elimination of atomic materials for military purposes.
A special purpose would be to provide abundant electrical energy in the power-starved areas of the world. Thus the contributing powers would be dedicating some of their strength to serve the needs rather than the fears of mankind.
In the Atoms for Peace program, countries would contribute fissionable materials to a new international atomic energy agency to be created under the auspices of the United Nations. This agency would prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons and, at the same time, assist in the development of nuclear power. Eisenhower also outlined the functions of the new agency in allocating fissionable material and in providing experts around the world.
Eisenhower's statement that nuclear power could "rapidly be transformed" from a developmental technology into a "universal, efficient and economic usage" was not based on sound analysis. Rather, it converted the early messianic statements about nuclear power into a calculated tool in the Cold War. On nuclear energy, there was no difference of opinion across the Cold War ideological divide. True believers in the Soviet Union were at least as enthusiastic about nuclear energy, which joined the famous dictum of Lenin, that soviets plus electricity equaled communism with Stalin's penchant for massive industrial projects.
A decade-and-a-half later, the US Atoms for Peace policy was given more formal and fervent expression in Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which guaranteed its signatories an "inalienable right" to the benefits of nuclear technology, including nuclear energy (full text of Article IV). In just over two decades, nuclear energy was elevated to a status akin to the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," which inspired not only the founders of the United States, but people all over the world ever since.
To many leaders of countries emerging from colonialism hoping for quick alleviation of economic misery, nuclear energy seemed to be a material counterpart of the flags and national anthems that became the symbols of newly acquired freedom. Nuclear energy was "modern" and, like steel plants and national airlines companies, it was assumed that such modernization would propel the "backward" former colonies full steam ahead and put them on a par with the industrialized nations. Even India, where Gandhi had vigorously advocated a course of development different from that pursued in the West, did not undertake an independent evaluation of western claims, despite the fact that it had the scientific and technical capacity in the late 1940s to do so.3
Atomic Skeptics
Unfortunately for the true believers, the idea of energy "too cheap to meter" that was required for transforming the gossamer stuff of extravagant dreams into hard economic reality was a combination of self-delusion and propaganda without technical foundation. Indeed, all technical evaluations, from those undertaken in the secrecy of the Manhattan Project to studies by government, industry, and academics during the late 1940s and early 1950s, came to the same conclusions. Nuclear energy would be difficult to master and it would not be competitive with coal-generated electricity for quite some time, though it might be competitive with coal, especially if coal prices rose. None came to the conclusion that it would be cheap, much less "too cheap to meter."
According to C.G. Suits, Vice-President and Director of Research of General Electric, in a December 1950 speech,
At present, atomic power presents an exceptionally costly and inconvenient means of obtaining energy which can be extracted more economically from conventional fuels....The economics of atomic power are not attractive at present, not are they likely to be for a long time in the future. This is expensive power, nor cheap power as the public as been led to believe.
As another example, in 1948, the AEC presented a report to Congress in which it cited "unwarranted optimism as to the character of the technical difficulties [facing nuclear power] and the time required to surmount these difficulties." This committee, which included Enrico Fermi, Glenn Seaborg, and J.R. Oppenheimer, was not even uniformly optimistic about fuel costs, even though low fuel costs were the minimum necessary requirement for nuclear power to be competitive with fossil fuel-generated electricity.
During the 1940s and 1950s, the United States was undergoing a considerable transformation in its energy situation. Prior to and during World War II, the US was virtually self-sufficient in petroleum. But the enormous growth in the number of automobiles in the decade, as well as the explosive growth of other uses of petroleum, resulted in the United States becoming a consistent net importer by the end of the 1940s. By 1960, the US was importing almost one-fifth of its petroleum consumption.
One of the official reviews of the resource situation in the early 1950s was conducted by a commission appointed by President Truman, called The President's Materials Policy Commission. It came to be known as the Paley Commission, after its chairman.
In the energy sector, the prime area of concern that the Paley Commission addressed was petroleum. The 1952 report predicted oil shortages by the 1970s. Furthermore, the Paley Commission made a strong negative assessment of nuclear energy and called for "aggressive research in the whole field of solar energy - an effort in which the United States could make an immense contribution to the welfare of the world." The Commission also encouraged work on wind energy and biomass. However, despite the Commission's conclusions, a significant renewable energy effort was not made until the oil crisis was upon the US in the 1970s.
Given the assessment that nuclear energy could meet only a modest fraction of energy requirements at best, it seems illogical that nuclear energy was pursued vigorously rather than solar and other renewable energy sources. Evidently, it was assumed that renewable energy sources would not provide the same propaganda capital in the Cold War as nuclear energy. Interestingly, a lack of government money for renewables was accompanied by a lack of corporate research effort and an absence of interest on the part of large numbers of scientists and engineers.
A Persistent Illusion
The history of nuclear power has not sustained the hopes of its proponents. Almost half a century after a nuclear reactor first lighted an electric bulb,4 orders for nuclear reactors in the industrialized countries are near zero. Sales to the developing world, repair jobs on existing reactors, and decommissioning fill much of the order book of the nuclear power manufacturers and other nuclear vendors. In the United States, no new reactor has been ordered since 1978, and every reactor ordered between 1974 and 1978 has been canceled. Even in France, the bastion of nuclear power where reactors generate about fourth-fifths of the country's electricity, it is now acknowledged that natural gas fired combined cycle plants are more economical than nuclear reactors.
In 1986, Chernobyl showed the terrible, widespread, long-lasting, and, to a large extent, irremediable consequences of a severe nuclear reactor accident. Every commercial nuclear reactor design carries with it vulnerabilities of such catastrophic accidents, though the probabilities and specific accident mechanisms may differ from one design to the next and from one country to another.
Despite the dismal performance of nuclear energy relative to the hopes of its progenitors, most of the world's governments seem unwilling to give it up. That reluctance is a complex phenomenon, beyond the scope of this editorial. It seems partly the result of a feeling on the part of many non-nuclear developing countries that the main possessors of this technology in the West are unfairly depriving them of access to a technology guaranteed to them by Article IV of the NPT as part of the bargain for forgoing nuclear weapons. The idea that nuclear power is emblematic of modern "high" technology also continues to have a powerful hold.
Yet, the problems with implementation of Article IV of the NPT are beside the point, for nuclear energy is generally uneconomical and undesirable from a number of different points of view. Even its status as "high" or "advanced" technology is much overrated. For instance, the design and building of photovoltaic cells and the construction of reliable, computer controlled distributed electricity grids that draw their energy from a variety of sources and power plants is, in many ways, a more complex and advanced technological enterprise than the design and construction of nuclear reactors.
After the demise of the idea of nuclear energy as "too cheap to meter" by an exigent reality, the nuclear industry has been putting forward environmental and non-proliferation rationales as part of its promotion of nuclear power. Its spokespersons state that nuclear power could be a principal factor in reducing emissions of pollutants, notably carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming. However, this claim ignores the environmental impacts of uranium mining and radioactive waste, which are inherent parts of the technology (see Science for the Critical Masses). Moreover, IEER's analysis has shown that high-efficiency natural gas power plants can reduce greenhouse gas emissions more per unit of investment than nuclear energy.5 Further, the problems associated with fossil fuels and nuclear energy are incommensurable. Should one trade off the potential for catastrophic accidents like Chernobyl with climate change? (See Dear Arjun)
In the early years of the Cold War, many nuclear energy proponents proposed that military plutonium production be used to subsidize commercial nuclear power plants. After the end of the Cold War, there are proposals to use surplus military plutonium as fuel in reactors to subsidize existing power plants. The industry is claiming that it can help turn "swords into Plowshares" because surplus plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons would be used to make fuel for commercial nuclear power reactors. However, such a program would create the financial and physical infrastructure for making plutonium a "commercial" commodity, with attendant proliferation, environmental, and cost concerns.6
To address safety concerns, the nuclear industry has been promoting a second generation of commercial nuclear power reactors (see main article), some of which have been labeled "inherently safe" by their proponents. The safety question is a central one, since public skepticism of industry claims grew markedly after the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents. However, regardless of the validity of claims about immunity to meltdown accidents, this terminology of "inherently safe" has more rhetorical merit than technical content. Although it may be possible to design reactors that are safer relative to existing reactors, the technology cannot be considered to have safety as an inherent characteristic. All reactors that have been proposed have some potential for severe accidents.
There are far better and safer energy options available now.7 It is time to leave nuclear energy behind as a failed dream of the last century. We can and must replace the false propaganda of "atoms for peace" with an "energy for peace" program that can make the well-being of the present generation compatible with the protection of the security and environment of future generations.
ARTICLE IV OF THE NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY 1. Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with articles I and II of this Treaty.
2. All the Parties to the Treaty undertake to facilitate, and have the right to participate in, the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Parties to the Treaty in a position to do so shall also cooperate in contributing alone or together with other States or international organizations to the further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty, with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world.
Source: Congressional Research Service, Nuclear Proliferation Factbook (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office), September 1980.
Science for Democratic Action vol. 8 no. 3 Main Menu Science for Democratic Action Main Menu IEER Home Page
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Comments to Outreach Coordinator: ieer@ieer.org Takoma Park, Maryland, USA May 2000
Endnotes 1. The Nuclear Power Deception: US Nuclear Mythology from Electricity "Too Cheap to Meter" to "Inherently Safe" Reactors (Apex Press 1999). All references can be found in this book, unless otherwise mentioned.
2. For a comparison of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions using nuclear power to replace coal-fired power plants versus using modern combined cycle natural gas fired power plants, see Science for Democratic Action, vol. 6 no. 3, March 1998.
3. George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, pp. 15-21.
4. In 1951, the Experimental Breeder Reactor I produced the first nuclear electricity that was used to power a light bulb. Both the reactor and the bulb are in a museum in Idaho.
5. See Science for Democratic Action, vol. 6 no. 3, March 1998.
6. See Science for Democratic Action, vol. 5 no. 4, February 1997.
7. See for example IEER's report, Wind vs. Plutonium: An Examination of Wind Energy Potential and a Comparison of Offshore Wind Energy to Plutonium Use in Japan (1999), Chapter 9 of The Nuclear Power Deception, and Thomas Johansson et al., Renewable Energy: Sources for Fuels and Electricity. Washington, DC: Island Press, 1993.
------- japan
Report says Japanese nuke accident unlikely in U.S.
USA: May 9, 2000
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=6601
WASHINGTON - Safeguards are in place at U.S. nuclear processing sites to prevent the kind of accident that killed two Japanese workers last September, the Nuclear Energy Institute said in a report on Monday.
Engineering and procedural safeguards for blending uranium fuel are used at all ten nuclear fuel facilities operating in the United States, the report said.
Employees at the Tokaimura, Japan fuel facility triggered a nuclear chain reaction by pouring too much highly enriched uranium into a mixer. Two workers later died from radiation exposure and hundreds of other employees and nearby residents were exposed to elevated levels of radiation.
That kind of accident is unlikely to occur in U.S. facilities, the new report found.
"Safety in operating fuel facilities in the industry's overriding focus," said John Brons, an executive with the Nuclear Energy Institute trade group. "Workers at these facilities understand that they have the authority to stop plant processes for safety reasons."
Brons led the review, along with independent consultant Robert Bernero, a former federal nuclear regulator, and James Clark, vice president of JAI Corp. The team recommended some training improvements for workers at U.S. fuel facilities.
The United States has five facilities that make low-enriched fuel for commercial nuclear plants. They are ABB Combustion Engineering in Hematite, Mo; General Electric in Wilmington, N.C.; Westinghouse Electric in Columbia, S.C.; Framatome Cogema Fuels in Lynchburg, Va; and Siemens Power Corp in Richland, Wash.
The review also examined two high-enriched uranium fuel facilities owned by BWX TEchnologies at Lynchburg, Va, and Nuclear Fuel Services in Erwin, Tenn.
Also included were two gaseous diffusion plants owned by U.S. Enrichment Corp in Paducah, Ky and Piketon, Ohio; and Honeywell Corp's uranium conversion plant in Metropolis, Ill. Nuclear industry experts have blamed the Japanese accident on poor training of workers at the plant. Both employees who died had not previously handled uranium enriched to 18.8 percent presence of the fissionable U-235 isotope.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
-------- korea
Korea destroys chemical arms at secret plant - paper
SOUTH KOREA: May 9, 2000
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=6596
SEOUL - The Korean army has been destroying chemical weapons since last year in accordance with an international agreement to prohibit chemical weapons, the influential local daily Chosun Ilbo reported on Tuesday.
The newspaper, quoting military sources, said the military built secret treatment plants in Youngdong, 214 km (133 miles) south of Seoul last October to dispose of all its chemical weapons by 2006.
The Chosun report said that the government had stockpiled various chemical weapons, estimated at several hundred tonnes, which can cause nerve paralysis, suffocation, and skin problems.
The Ministry of Defence, responding to the story, said in a statement on Tuesday: "The government has been abiding by the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) since it joined the convention in April 1997."
The convention requires its 172 member states to abolish chemical weapons by 2006.
Meanwhile, environmentalists have expressed concern about the possibility of chemical contamination around the area, the Chosun Ilbo said.
Park Wan-jin, the governor of Youngdong Country, said he was unaware of the secret facilities and would demand the army take appropriate actions to prevent possible air pollution.
However, government officials said they had surveyed the area and found no problem, the newspaper said.
South Korea remains technically at war with North Korea because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armed truce that has yet to be replaced by a permanent peace accord.
Defence analysts say North Korea has its own stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
----
North Korea comes in from the cold
Sydney Morning Herald
Date: 09/05/2000
By DAVID LAGUE, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0005/09/text/pageone5.html
Australia is resuming diplomatic ties with North Korea as the secretive regime there attempts to end its Cold War isolation.
The two countries said yesterday they would exchange non-resident ambassadors after 25 years of interrupted ties, a move understood to have been strongly supported by the United States, Japan, China and South Korea.
This announcement comes as North Korea gives clear signals that it wishes to lose its pariah status in international affairs, a switch that some observers believe is aimed at securing more international aid to boost its stagnant economy and feed a starving population.
Pyongyang is also in talks to normalise its ties with the US and Japan and has agreed to a summit next month between North Korean President Kim Jong-il and his South Korean counterpart, Kim Dae-jung.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Downer, said yesterday there was some evidence that the Pyongyang regime was seeking to open up to the world and moderate its behaviour.
"I think the wind is blowing more or less in the right direction but it's not a howling gale," he said. "We look for a lot more progress."
Australia's Ambassador to Beijing, Mr David Irvine, will be accredited in Pyongyang while North Korea's Ambassador to Jakarta will represent his country in Canberra.
Australia and North Korea established diplomatic ties in 1974 but the relationship was abruptly severed in 1975 when Pyongyang withdrew its diplomats from Canberra and expelled Australia's embassy staff.
The freeze ended last year when Australia accepted an overture from Pyongyang to begin talks on restoring diplomatic links.
North Korea poses a major threat to regional security with its million-strong army poised for war along its border with prosperous, democratic South Korea.
It is also suspected to possess a limited number of nuclear weapons, has test-fired a long-range missile over Japan and has supplied missile technology to a number of rogue States.
The communist regime is also responsible for human rights abuses and remains in the grip of famine, brought on in part by its failed economic system.
Mr Downer yesterday acknowledged North Korea's shortcomings but said Pyongyang had taken "positive steps" to engage the international community and this was welcome.
"In my view, in the main, it makes much more sense to engage rather than ignore or turn your back on them," he said.
"The North Koreans are in a difficult economic situation and they do need links with the international community."
Mr Downer said Pyongyang's agreement to hold a presidential summit with South Korea was a "very important development" and North Korea had made some progress in improving its ties with the US.
It had also agreed to a moratorium on missile testing. Mr Downer urged Pyongyang to pledge no further tests.
The Prime Minister, Mr Howard, will visit South Korea later this month for talks with President Kim.
---
Why we're engaging N Korea
Sydney Morning Herald
Date: 09/05/2000
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0005/09/text/features6.html
THE resumption of diplomatic representation between Australia and North Korea ends 25 years of interrupted relations. Our two countries established diplomatic relations in July 1974 and set up embassies in capitals. However, North Korea withdrew its embassy from Canberra on October 30, 1975, and the following week expelled the staff of our embassy in Pyongyang.
Since then the world and our region have changed dramatically: the Cold War has ended, the Asian region has experienced remarkable economic, social and technological change, and old enmities have given way to new relationships. Above all, there has been an inexorable trend towards engagement and co-operation in our region.
Recently North Korea has been making increased approaches to the outside world, including Australia. North Korea's Foreign Minister, Paek Nam-sun, and I exchanged letters after he first wrote to me in April last year. We met later that year at the United Nations General Assembly, the first ministerial-level meeting since 1975. We have also held two rounds of bilateral senior officials' talks, first in Bangkok last June, and then in North Korea's capital, Pyongyang, in February.
We used these opportunities to stress to North Korea our concerns: that it engage with key regional players, especially South Korea, that it make positive moves on nuclear arms control and missile issues, and that it consider joining the ASEAN Regional Forum.
We have seen North Korea take some positive steps in these areas. We welcomed the recent announcement that the leaders of North Korea and South Korea will hold a summit in June.
North Korea recently agreed to resume negotiations with Japan on normalising bilateral relations. It also accepted an invitation for a high-level visit to the United States, part of a process that works towards normalising relations with the US in return for North Korean guarantees on nuclear and missiles issues.
The process was put in train by former-US Defence Secretary William Perry's review of policy towards North Korea last year. North Korea has honoured the temporary moratorium on long-range missile tests it agreed to under the process and we have urged them to make this moratorium permanent. Finally, North Korea has shown renewed interest in joining the ASEAN Regional Forum, the key meeting on security in our region.
Australia has a vital interest in a stable Korean Peninsula. South Korea is our fifth-largest trading partner and fourth-largest export market. We hope also to see a time when our trade relations with North Korea can develop.
Australia also has a key interest in non-proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction regionally and globally. Engaging North Korea diplomatically allows us to put to the North Korean Government our view on this vital concern.
We have also been making a tangible contribution to Korean Peninsula security. Australia has been a contributor to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation, the international consortium set up to supply lightwater reactors to North Korea in return for Pyongyang freezing its nuclear program. We are also serious about helping to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in North Korea and have contributed $19.5 million through international organisations.
Resuming direct diplomatic contact provides Australia and North Korea with a channel for direct communication. It is a channel which we will use to encourage North Korea to engage further with the international community. Our hope is that this process will build trust and confidence and reduce tensions to the benefit of all countries in our region.
Alexander Downer is Minister for Foreign Affairs.
-------- kosovo
Kosovo casualty: environment
Rhoda Margesson
TUESDAY, MAY 9, 2000
OPINION - Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/05/09/fp11s1-csm.shtml
PRISTINA, KOSOVO It is a cruel fact that while thousands of people's lives in Kosovo have been affected by conflict, the sorry state of its environment - largely ignored over the years by Slobodan Milosevic - has been exacerbated by the recent war.
Kosovo's problems include air pollution, created by outdated power plants that lack filters; poor water quality and an inadequate water supply, caused by corroded, leaking water pipes; and few - if there are any working - waste treatment facilities.
Indeed, on a recent trip to this capital city, my third since last July, it was startling how much the air quality in the city had changed in just seven months. The smog was immediately evident, even arriving at night by shuttle bus from Macedonia.
The air was clogged by coal dust and the stench of fumes from burning garbage and car pollution.
It is not hard to fathom why. In the last year, Pristina's population has more than doubled from 200,000 to 450,000 because of the growing presence of United Nations personnel, NATO peacekeepers, international relief agencies, as well as internally displaced persons.
This population explosion, in turn, has had a severe impact on an already crumbling infrastructure. Garbage lies everywhere; the streets are choking with too many cars; the increased demand for electricity and water has placed new burdens on the country's antiquated systems.
The war has also created new problems such as lack of sanitation and trash removal, exposure to land mines, and potential soil contamination around military targets and from the use of depleted uranium ammunition by NATO during bombing.
The UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), the body established to administer the province of Kosovo on an interim basis, recently formed a Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) under its civil administration. Along with several non-governmental organizations and experts, it has begun to respond. An environmental-awareness campaign, which will be run by the DEP, began last month on Earth Day. It will run through World Environment Day, June 5.
This may seem like progress in a region with no history of environmental protection or civic-institution building - not to mention being consumed by war just last year - but Kosovo's environmental problems are far too severe; the DEP's effort too modest.
Environmental issues are beginning to get some attention through two other UN areas of development - institution building under the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and reconstruction under the European Union. But more needs to be done by the international community - namely, the United States and its NATO partners, the United Nations and other international organizations and non-governmental relief agencies.
In the short term, even to capitalize on the DEP's environmental-awareness campaign, the UN needs to address Kosovo's waste- management problem by creating a system for regular trash pick-up and a place to put refuse. To take on the more intractable problems, the international community needs to devise adequate budgets to support facilities, equipment, and personnel.
Above all, the international community needs to demonstrate its leadership by backing a well-funded, coordinating authority on environmental issues which will develop an institutional and legal basis for environmental management.
This will necessitate a new mindset in the international community, which considers environmental concerns less important during humanitarian crises and initial reconstruction efforts.
The time has come to integrate the environmental effects of conflict with humanitarian concerns in a more direct and concerted way in the overall emergency effort in Kosovo and other war-torn areas.
From the destruction caused by military campaigns to the impact of the humanitarian crises, the consequences of conflict on the environment are plainly evident and bear directly not only on the environment itself, but in stark and sobering ways on people faced with reconstruction.
The environment is central to rebuilding Kosovo in terms of security and safety issues, public- health problems, and the restoration of its civil administration. It should be a priority.
In a larger sense, the situation in Kosovo demonstrates a point central to the environmental movement. As the gap between haves and have nots continues to grow, two realities emerge. On the one hand, communities living in peace and prosperity are in a position to assist with problems beyond their borders, and have an obligation to do so. On the other hand, communities like Kosovo - devastated by war and poverty - face pressing environmental concerns that they must incorporate into their local reconstruction efforts.
Rhoda Margesson is a PhD candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. She is writing her dissertation on the impact of conflict on the environment and third-party intervention in the Balkans.
----
Postwar Review Found Far Fewer Serb Weapons Hit in Kosovo
Associated Press
Tuesday, May 9, 2000
Shortly after NATO's air war in Kosovo last year, an Air Force damage assessment team sent into the Serbian province found the destroyed remnants of only 14 Serb army tanks, 18 armored personnel carriers and 20 artillery and mortar pieces, officials said yesterday. That is far fewer than NATO originally believed were destroyed in 78 days of airstrikes, although the Air Force team later used satellite photographs and other sources to raise estimates of destroyed Serb heavy weapons, Air Force Brig. Gen. John D.W. Corley told a Pentagon news conference.
Corley is director of studies and analysis at the Air Force's European headquarters in Germany. He headed the postwar assessments of airstrikes inside Kosovo.
Army Gen. Wesley Clark, who oversaw the NATO air war as Supreme Allied Commander Europe, reported last fall that the Air Force concluded it struck 93 Serb tanks and 153 armored personnel carriers.
Those figures include the 14 tanks and 18 armored personnel carriers found in the field with "catastrophic damage," plus strikes deemed to have been successful based on indirect evidence such as imagery from satellites, U-2 spy planes and unmanned reconnaissance aircraft.
Added information came from interviews with pilots and airborne forward air controllers who did the target spotting for allied strike aircraft during the war.
Corley said the Air Force counted 26 tank carcasses in Kosovo, although other officials later said this included 12 self-propelled artillery pieces.
The Air Force included the 12 in the tank category because the howitzers looked like tanks from the air and are used in combat much as tanks are.
Almost immediately after the war ended last June with Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia's president, capitulating to NATO's terms, critics began claiming that airstrikes against mobile targets in Kosovo such as tanks--as opposed to strategic targets elsewhere in Yugoslavia, such as buildings in Belgrade--were less effective than NATO claimed.
Last July 1 at a Pentagon news conference, Clark announced he had ordered a "bomb damage survey" of Kosovo, but in the meantime he believed 110 Serb tanks and 210 armored personnel carriers had been hit.
Corley, speaking to reporters by telephone from Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., denied that NATO exaggerated its claims.
"In no way have we ever overstated [or] understated" the effectiveness of the air campaign, he said.
Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said the argument about how many tanks and other heavy weapons were struck is beside the point.
"We obviously hit enough tanks and other targets to win," he said.
-------- pacific
Islanders Awarded Millions For Atomic-Age Hardships
Tuesday, May 9, 2000
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.sltrib.com:80/05092000/nation_w/47712.htm
HONOLULU -- Addressing a devastating legacy of the Atomic Age, a claims tribunal has awarded $341 million to Marshall Islanders who were moved from their remote, pristine atoll in the Pacific so the United States could detonate 43 nuclear bombs there.
The Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal said the 145 people taken from Enewetak Atoll in December 1947 and their descendants should be compensated for the lasting damage to their once-lush homeland and for their 33-year exile to barren, resource-poor Ujelang Atoll.
There, they nearly starved, were overrun by rats and were plagued by disease.
When islanders returned to Enewetak in 1980, they found that some of their land had been vaporized by atomic blasts and most of the land was contaminated by radiation.
"The claimants have suffered damage beyond that which money can compensate," the three-member tribunal ruled last month. "The destruction and disruption of their community and the attendant lifestyle and values cannot be compensated with an award of dollars. While that which was lost may be priceless, it does not mean it was without value."
The tribunal said the federal government should pay the islanders $199 million for loss of use of Enewetak, $108 million to clean up and restore it and $34 million for hardship.
However, the federally funded tribunal has less than $46 million after paying previous claims, so islanders will appeal to Congress next week. One of their allies is Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii.
If Congress doesn't pay the award, Enewetak's 1,500 residents will sue in the U.S. Court of Claims in Washington, said Davor Pevec, their Honolulu-based attorney.
"We in the United States got clear benefits from the testing program," Pevec said. "The Marshall Islanders? They got burdened with this residual contamination, with the destruction of their land, with their forced relocation."
Enewetak atoll consists of about 40 islands in the northwestern corner of the Marshall Islands, about 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii.
----
Marshall Islanders Awarded $341M
By MICHAEL TIGHE,
Associated Press Writer -
Tuesday May 9 2:20 AM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000509/us/atomic_aftermath_1.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Atomic-Aftermath.html
HONOLULU (AP) - In 1947, some 145 people were relocated from their homes on a Marshall Island atoll so that the U.S. military could blow it to pieces.
When they returned to Enewetak Atoll in 1980, they found that some of their land had been vaporized by 43 nuclear blasts, while the rest was pockmarked by explosions or contaminated by radiation.
Twenty years later, a claims tribunal has awarded $341 million to compensate the survivors and descendants for the lasting damage to them and their once-lush homeland.
But collecting it may be the hardest part.
The Marshall Islands Nuclear Claims Tribunal was created through a 1983 agreement in which the United States accepted responsibility for losses, damages and health problems stemming from its 1946-1958 nuclear testing program in the Marshalls, about 2,500 miles southwest of Hawaii.
The United States earmarked $150 million for compensation and for the tribunal to pay claims as it saw fit. After previous personal injury payments, only about $4.5 million is left.
The tribunal last month said the federal government should pay islanders $199 million for loss of use of Enewetak, $108 million to clean up and restore it and $34 million for their 33-year exile and hardship.
``The claimants have suffered damage beyond that which money can compensate,'' the three-member tribunal ruled last month. ``While that which was lost may be priceless, it does not mean it was without value.''
Enewetak residents said they plan to appeal to Congress next week for more funding, said Davor Pevec, their Honolulu-based attorney.
If Congress doesn't pay the award, Enewetak's 1,500 residents said they will sue in the U.S. Court of Claims in Washington.
``We in the United States got clear benefits from the testing program,'' Pevec said. ``The Marshall Islanders? They got burdened with this residual contamination, with the destruction of their land, with their forced relocation.''
Enewetak Atoll consists of about 40 islands in the northwestern corner of the Marshall Islands. From 1946 to 1958, the United States conducted 67 atmospheric nuclear tests in the Marshalls. Two-thirds of those tests, including the first hydrogen bomb blast in 1952, were in Enewetak.
In 1947, the people of Enewetak were taken 125 miles southwest to Ujelang Atoll - a parched cluster of coral rubble one-fourth the size of Enewetak - and told they would be there no more than five years.
The group ``suffered grave privations, including periods of near starvation,'' the U.S. Department of Interior wrote in 1976. They also received little education and poor health care.
Resettlement occurred in 1980 after a three-year cleanup. Some islands were gone, others were pocked with blast craters a mile wide and 200 feet deep.
Clearcutting and soil removal lowered islands by several feet. Once-productive fields were now a runway, while a 350-foot wide concrete dome was built to cover radioactive material.
Both the tribunal and islanders acknowledge the atoll cannot be restored to what it was 50 years ago. It should, however, be upgraded for ``full and unrestricted use,'' Pevec said.
``The United States itself made that promise and that promise is an obligation.''
On the Net:
The tribunal: http://www.tribunal-mh.org
Marshall Islands site: http://www.rmiembassyus.org
-------- puerto rico
Navy Resumes Training Flights in Vieques With Dummy Bombs
Washington Post
Tuesday, May 9, 2000; Page A12
By James Anderson Associated Press
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/09/071l-050900-idx.html
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, May 8-U.S. Navy warplanes resumed training on the Atlantic Fleet bombing range in Vieques today using dummy bombs, a Navy spokesman said.
The training--involving aircraft based at the nearby naval station of Roosevelt Roads--came just four days after armed federal agents removed 216 protesters from the range in a predawn raid on Thursday. Six more were removed and temporarily detained over the weekend and two others today, said Navy spokesman Robert Nelson.
"In accordance with the presidential directives concerning training at Vieques and with the knowledge of the government of Puerto Rico in accordance with the 1983 Memorandum of Understanding, the Navy resumed training today at the live impact area. This training consisted of several Roosevelt Roads-based aircraft using air-to-ground inert (non-explosive) ordnance," Nelson said in a prepared statement.
The 1983 memorandum calls for the Puerto Rican government to be notified of any training at the range.
Nelson said the Navy had not identified any other protesters on the range.
The protesters stood in the way of implementing a Jan. 31 agreement between President Clinton and Puerto Rican Gov. Pedro Rossello to permit the Navy to resume limited training on Vieques with "dummy" bombs. In exchange, Vieques's 9,300 residents would get $40 million in economic aid from the federal government and would vote--probably next year--whether the Navy should leave Vieques by 2003.
If they vote to allow the training to continue with live ordnance, the island's residents would get another $50 million in aid. Most analysts say islanders would say "no" to the Navy, which has acknowledged it failed to implement a 1983 accord to promote Vieques's economic development.
Protesters occupied the range after two 500-pound bombs dropped by a Marine Corps F-14 missed their target and killed civilian security guard David Sanes Rodriguez on April 19, 1999. The Navy suspended its exercises after Sanes's death. Protesters set up 14 camps amid beaches and scrubby hills littered with unexploded bombs and craters.
The Navy argued that without Vieques, which has been used to prepare for every U.S. military conflict since World War II, lives could be lost in an era of precision bombing. Vieques is the only place where the Atlantic Fleet can hold simultaneous air, land and sea operations with live munitions, the Navy said.
-------- spying
More Iranian Jews confess to spying
USA Today
05/09/00- Updated 09:15 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm
SHIRAZ, Iran - Two more of the 13 Iranian Jews accused of spying for Israel confessed to the charges Monday, their lawyer said. Defendant Nasser Levihaim told the court he was one of the leaders of the espionage network and asked for clemency. Levihaim, 50, who worked for the national power company, was motivated by ideological reasons and ''love for the promised land.'' Ramin Farzam, a 27-year-old store clerk, appeared before the court for the first time today to say he was paid by the Jewish state to spy but was caught before he could relay any information. The confessions raise to five the number of defendants who have reportedly admitted to espionage.
-------- us military
Pentagon has extra test for missile defense
United Press International - May 09, 2000 By PAMELA HESS
From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" globalnet@mindspring.com
WASHINGTON, May 9 (UPI) - The Pentagon has not one but two more chances to score another hit with its nascent National Missile Defense program before President Clinton decides whether to deploy it, although November remains the looming deadline, the general in charge of the system said.
"We have another opportunity already scheduled to make it up," if the next test fails, said Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, charged with building the system. Kadish met with defense reporters this morning in Washington.
The Defense Department has said it needs two successful intercepts of a dummy warhead in outer space to be confident enough in the system to say it will be ready for deployment in 2005. It scored a direct hit in October 1999, but missed in its second attempt in January.
The Pentagon will conduct a third flight test in late June or early July and has scheduled another for October. Depending on when that test goes off - at the beginning or the end of the month -- it could influence the president's decision to deploy the $30 billion program.
It will begin with 20 interceptor missiles in 2005 and grow to 100 within a few years, and could ultimately reach 250 missiles. Even at that size the National Missile Defense system will only be able to shoot down a small contingent of enemy missiles - a maximum of about 50.
According to a classified State Department document delivered to Russia explaining the limits of the system, four interceptors will be launched for each missile fired at the United States. The document was recently published on the Internet by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.
The Pentagon delayed its third flight test of the "kill vehicle" from early May until late June in order to make sure the faulty plumbing connection that caused the kill vehicle to miss its target does not malfunction again.
The next test is critical as it will incorporate the in-flight communication system. If something goes wrong with that modem, it could spell a long delay until the next test, Kadish said.
"We might have to tear apart the vehicle to fix it," he said.
Kadish acknowledged that time pressure constricts the test program. Under normal circumstances, the Pentagon would commit to a new program after putting it through rigorous operational testing.
The schedule is driven by the need to build a powerful new radar on a remote Alaskan island. If it is begun next April, it will be completed by 2004, just in time for the system to be tested and turned on in 2005. That is the year the CIA estimates a "rogue" nation might have a nuclear missile with sufficient range to reach the United States.
Contracts must be signed in November, give or take a few weeks, in order to begin construction in April on Shemya, the Aleutian island chosen to host the new X-band radar. All materials and support must be brought in by barge to a perilous port, Kadish said, noting that on either side of the only dock on the island are two shipwrecks.
If contracts are not signed in time, it will delay the radar for a year, Kadish said.
That worries Kadish, who personally believes there will be a threat posed by new nuclear powers in 2005 that may not be deterred by the United States' overwhelming nuclear arsenal the way the Soviet Union was for 50 years.
"I read the intelligence reporters every day myself. From a rogue standpoint I believe the threat is real," he said. "We should be worried these countries are pursuing (nuclear weapons) with their meager resources. If it wasn't so valuable to them why are they doing it?"
----
Redesign of Troubled Plane Unlikely, Marines Say
New York Times
May 9, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/washpol/osprey-rdp.html
WASHINGTON, May 8 -- Marine Corps investigators looking into the fatal crash last month of a V-22 Osprey do not believe that they will find a need to redesign the aircraft, a hybrid of airplane and helicopter, officials said today.
The investigators are close to ruling out mechanical failure as the cause of the accident, which killed 19 marines, and have found no indication of recklessness by the pilot, Maj. John A. Brow, 39, of California.
Marine Corps officials said that while the investigation was not yet complete, the helicopter most likely lost aerodynamic lift in a phenomenon known as "settling with power."
The tilt-rotor Osprey takes off and lands like a helicopter but flies like an airplane.
Settling with power, also known as vortex ring state, occurs when a helicopter settles into the wash produced by its own rotor system. In a rapid, nearly vertical descent, the upward flow of air at the inner portion of the rotor blades can exceed the downward flow produced by blade rotation. At this point the aircraft can sink uncontrollably.
In the case of the Osprey, the rotors may have been using such a large proportion of engine power that the aircraft had insufficient power left to slow the rate at which it was sinking in its rotor wash.
The Marines planned to disclose their latest findings publicly on Tuesday and possibly to announce plans to use two of the remaining V-22 Osprey aircraft to simulate some circumstances of the April 8 incident.
Investigators have accumulated evidence from a combination of sources, including interviews with members of the crew of an Osprey that landed at the same airport just moments before the crash.
---
Brush With Turbulence Caused Osprey to Crash, Marines Say
New York Times
May 9, 2000
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/09cnd-osprey.html
WASHINGTON, May 9 -- The crash of a V-22 Osprey on a training mission in Arizona on April 8 appears to have been caused by the pilot bringing the aircraft down so fast that its helicopter rotors encountered the turbulence they create beneath themselves, and one of the rotors lost lift as a result, the Marine Corps said today.
But despite the possibility that the pilot's actions caused the crash, Lt. Gen. Fred McCorkle said it was too soon to declare that the crash was caused by pilot error. The general said that investigators "have found no mechanical or software failures," and that the tilt-wing aircraft, which takes off and lands like a helicopter but cruises like a fixed-wing airplane, would resume flight soon, probably on Wednesday.
"We're rock-solid on that now," said General McCorkle. The Pentagon, which gave information on the crash unusually promptly, is eager to resume flights to prepare for full-scale production of the craft this fall.
The crash, at a small airport in Marana near Tucson, killed all 19 marines aboard. The crash was the third for the Osprey, but the first two were traced to mechanical problems. This one, the Marines say, was not related to the hybrid nature of the Osprey, and could have happened in any helicopter.
On this flight, a training mission for evacuations, a pair of Ospreys were to land at Marana. Investigators are still looking into whether turbulence from the first could have interfered with the second. For the time being, the Marines have ordered that Ospreys stay at least 200 feet from each other horizontally, and that one not descend within 50 feet in front of another.
But investigators believe that the pilot was flying the craft "outside the flight envelope," said General McCorkle, which limits descents to 800 feet per minute when the forward speed is less than 40 knots. Lift is reduced as forward speed declines.
-------- us nuc facilities
Neighbors of nuclear plants want US to provide medical tests
By Katherine Rizzo,
Associated Press,
5/9/2000
http://www.boston.com:80/dailyglobe2/130/nation/Neighbors_of_nuclear_plants_want_US_to_provide_medical_tests+.shtml
WASHINGTON - Armed with homemade maps showing which way the winds blow and where cancer victims live, neighbors of nuclear weapons plants were at Capitol Hill yesterday to lobby for lifetime medical testing.
''We need a comprehensive program to monitor our health and train local doctors to treat us properly,'' said Doris Smith, who lives on a farm near the Pantex Nuclear Plant outside Amarillo, Texas. ''We did not choose to be part of this tragedy.''
The Department of Energy, which oversees the nation's network of 20 nuclear weapons research labs, processing plants and assembly facilities, has wrestled for years with the legacy of Cold War-era practices that sometimes placed bomb production and secrecy over safety.
In the past 10 years, the government has declassified documents showing releases of uranium, tritium, and other radioactive materials from the plants.
Also documented: worker exposure to plutonium and unsafe storage practices that led to dangerous chemicals leaching into drinking water supplies.
The department recently asked Congress for permission to give a minimum of $100,000 to weapons plant workers who developed radiation-related cancers. Plant neighbors hope the move bodes well for their efforts.
Bob Schaeffer of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability said he has arranged similar lobbying trips, but found a better reception this year following the department's overture to plant workers.
The department's top health official, Assistant Secretary David Michaels, said the agency wants to do right by people who have been harmed, but does not yet have the scientific basis to identify accurately exposed populations near all the weapons plants.
The Department of Health and Human Services is conducting epidemiological studies of weapons-plant neighbors, but it is impossible to say yet how many people were made ill, Michaels said.
Nuclear plant neighbors want the government to provide biennial medical exams, training for local doctors, a computerized archive of people exposed on the job and outside the plants' perimeters, and a plain-language description of the risks they face from contamination.
This story ran on page A15 of the Boston Globe on 5/9/2000
----
Stone & Webster To File Chapter 11
Associated Press
May 9, 2000 Filed at 11:35 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/f/AP-Stone--Webster.html
BOSTON (AP) -- Facing a crippling cash flow crisis, Stone & Webster has agreed to sell its assets and contracts to Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. and plans to seek protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the federal bankruptcy laws.
The 111-year-old construction company signed a letter of intent with Pasadena, Calif.-based Jacobs to sell ``substantially all'' of its assets for $150 million in cash and stock. Jacobs has agreed to assume certain liabilities and advance up to $50 million in working capital funds to Stone & Webster, the companies said late Monday.
Stone & Webster also said it would file a Chapter 11 petition following a formal sale agreement this month. The company says that move will make it impossible to determine what, if anything, shareholders will receive following the sale.
The acquisition gives Jacobs entry into the growing power market and strengthens their industrial client base, Jacobs president and chief executive Noel Rossman said in a statement.
Stone & Webster employs 5,000, including about 1,700 in New England. The company said it expects to continue operating as usual during the sale. Jacobs said it hasn't determined what shifts it might make in its work force.
Stone & Webster was founded in 1889 by two Massachusetts Institute of Technology grads, and was known for building nuclear power plants around the region, as well the ski jumps used at the Calgary Olympics.
Its recent crisis was touched off by construction delays at a gas-fired power plant in Tiverton, R.I., that forced it to take a $27.5 million charge and begin talks to sell its assets.
Stone & Webster's stock plummeted to near the $3 mark -- compared to $23 a year ago and double that two years ago -- after it announced last week it was seeking a buyer.
---
Neighbors of nuclear plants want US to provide medical tests
Boston Globe
5/9/2000
By Katherine Rizzo, Associated Press
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/130/nation/Neighbors_of_nuclear_plants_want_US_to_provide_medical_tests+.shtml
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/news/oregonian/00/05/nw_31nuke09.frame
WASHINGTON - Armed with homemade maps showing which way the winds blow and where cancer victims live, neighbors of nuclear weapons plants were at Capitol Hill yesterday to lobby for lifetime medical testing.
''We need a comprehensive program to monitor our health and train local doctors to treat us properly,'' said Doris Smith, who lives on a farm near the Pantex Nuclear Plant outside Amarillo, Texas. ''We did not choose to be part of this tragedy.''
The Department of Energy, which oversees the nation's network of 20 nuclear weapons research labs, processing plants and assembly facilities, has wrestled for years with the legacy of Cold War-era practices that sometimes placed bomb production and secrecy over safety.
In the past 10 years, the government has declassified documents showing releases of uranium, tritium, and other radioactive materials from the plants.
Also documented: worker exposure to plutonium and unsafe storage practices that led to dangerous chemicals leaching into drinking water supplies.
The department recently asked Congress for permission to give a minimum of $100,000 to weapons plant workers who developed radiation-related cancers. Plant neighbors hope the move bodes well for their efforts.
Bob Schaeffer of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability said he has arranged similar lobbying trips, but found a better reception this year following the department's overture to plant workers.
The department's top health official, Assistant Secretary David Michaels, said the agency wants to do right by people who have been harmed, but does not yet have the scientific basis to identify accurately exposed populations near all the weapons plants.
The Department of Health and Human Services is conducting epidemiological studies of weapons-plant neighbors, but it is impossible to say yet how many people were made ill, Michaels said.
Nuclear plant neighbors want the government to provide biennial medical exams, training for local doctors, a computerized archive of people exposed on the job and outside the plants' perimeters, and a plain-language description of the risks they face from contamination.
-------- colorado
Burn plan probed
Federal investigators request information from activists about Rocky Flats burn
By BRIAN HANSEN,
Tuesday, May 09, 2000,
Colorado Daily
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2000/nn10625.htm
An independent federal investigator has asked local activists for help in scrutinizing the controversial controlled burning program that was launched - and then promptly suspended - at the mothballed Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant last month, the Colorado Daily has learned.
Ray Madden, a Washington, D.C.-based investigator with the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Inspector General, three weeks ago began asking local Rocky Flats critics about the 50-acre "test burn" that was conducted in the plant's buffer zone on April 6, according to the Daily's sources.
The information gathered by Madden - which was shared with other federal investigators in Washington late last month - has been used to formulate a set of prescribed burning recommendations that will soon be forwarded to Rocky Flats officials, the Daily's sources said.
"He (Madden) said that they had some recommendations and directions that they were sending to Rocky Flats, and that they were referring specific action items to (acting Rocky Flats site manager) Paul Golon," said Paula Elofson-Gardine, a Lakewood resident who was contacted by federal investigators shortly after the April 6 test burn.
Elofson-Gardine said she doesn't yet know what the OIG's recommendations will entail.
"I asked them if I could get a copy, but they said I'd have to (file a Freedom of Information Act) or get it from Paul Golan, Elofson-Gardine said.
Golon could not be reached for comment by press time Monday. But his spokeswoman, Karen Lutz, said that Rocky Flats officials have heard nary a word about the prescribed burning program from the Office of Inspector General.
"Certainly, we'll get a draft copy at some point," Lutz said. "But we haven't received anything yet."
Lutz said that Rocky Flats officials are still planning to continue with the prescribed burning program as soon as conditions permit - possibly this fall or next spring.
DOE officials had hoped to burn about 500 acres in the Rocky Flats buffer zone this spring, but the program was suspended on April 11 when officials announced that the area had become too green to burn.
DOE officials contend that the prescribed burning program is the best management strategy for controlling noxious weeds and otherwise maintaining the ecological value of the 6,000 acre Rocky Flats buffer zone. The prescribed burning program will also reduce the buildup of brush fuels in the buffer zone, thus reducing the risk that a catastrophic wildfire would race uncontrolled towards the plant's highly contaminated industrial area, officials add.
Elofson-Gardine doesn't buy that explanation.
"I don't think it has a damn thing to do with weeds," she said. "This is a real handy way to do an 'out of site, out of mind,' quick and dirty remediation."
Elofson-Gardine said that her fears about the plan have not been assuaged by the release of the isotopic air monitoring results from the April 6 test burn, which indicate that the dosages of plutonium, americium and uranium that were sampled in the smoke plume were "indistinguishable from zero."
"That's completely incongruous with the 45 years of releases to the immediate fallout zone, Elofson-Gardine said. "It fails the common-sense test."
Elofson-Gardine complained to OIG investigators that the smoke plume from the April 6 test burn could not be properly characterized, because it rose straight up into the air and "leapfrogged" the monitoring equipment. If the DOE really wanted to conduct an accurate isotopic analysis, it would have collected about an acre's worth of buffer zone samples and burned them in a laboratory under "controlled conditions," the Lakewood activist added.
Elofson-Gardine also asked OIG investigators to review the method by which the DOE characterized the buffer zone areas slated to be burned, suggesting that not nearly enough samples have been taken to ensure that the site is not contaminated with radioactive hot spots.
The Lakewood activist also called for the intervention of the Environmental Protection Agency's Hazardous Waste Ombudsman into the case, saying that local officials "don't appear to be up to the job" of overseeing Rocky Flats.
"Apparently, the DOE, EPA, and the Colorado Department of Health and Environment are so desensitized from too many lunches together (that) they have an inability to recognize the problems and cannot penetrate the culture of corruption and careless disregard at (Rocky Flats)," Elofson-Gardine wrote to Madden.
Rocky Flats officials will hold a public meeting on Wednesday to discuss the isotopic air monitoring results from the April 6 test burn. The meeting will begin at 6 p.m. in the community room of Red Rocks Community College, located at 5420 Miller Street in Arvada.
To view documents pertaining to the DOE's prescribed burning program at Rocky Flats, log on to www.rfets.gov.
-------- kentucky
USEC can pay more on cuts: DOE
By Bill Bartleman bbartleman@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650 May 9, 2000
http://www.paducahsun.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?/200005/09+00tx_news.html+20000509+news
The U.S. Department of Energy says there is sufficient money in the United States Enrichment Corp.'s pension fund to offer early retirement incentives to absorb many of the 621 job cuts planned at its uranium enrichment plants in Paducah and Portsmouth, Ohio. DOE says that since USEC took control of the retirement fund last year, the fund has earned at least $36 million more than the amount needed to meet current and projected liabilities. The early retirement would cost about $7 million, DOE says.
However, Charles Yulish, USEC vice president of communications, says DOE is wrong about the pension fund revenue. He said a May 3 actuarial report on the pension fund says that if benefits are increased through early retirement offers, additional money would have to be placed into the fund, money that USEC doesn't have.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and congressmen from Ohio and Kentucky want USEC to use the early retirement incentive to reduce the impact of a plan to lay off 350 workers at Portsmouth and 271 at Paducah.
U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell suggested in a recent letter to Richardson that funds be made available to offer up to six years of service credit to senior workers, the same as has been offered at DOE plants. DOE estimates that up to 150 workers would take advantage of the early retirement, reducing the number of newer workers who would be left without jobs.
Richardson agreed the incentive is needed, but said it is up to USEC to offer it through its pension fund, which he contends has more than enough to absorb the early retirement costs.
Terry Freese, a top DOE official in Washington, said there was $440 million in the retirement fund when it was transferred to USEC a year ago. He said there was an assumption the fund would earn $6 million this year, enough to meet projected liabilities. Freese said that USEC officials told him the earnings were $36 million more than projected.
Yulish, the USEC spokesman, said the earnings figure could be misleading.
"The money in the fund is invested ... and as the stock market goes up and down, the value of the fund changes," Yulish said. "If we were to offer benefits based on the market value, and the market declined, we wouldn't have the money to pay the benefits."
The day-to-day value of the fund is on paper, and not "money in the bank," said Yulish, adding that an actuarial study is the only way to determine the true value.
Yulish would not provide the Sun with a copy of a letter that accompanied the actuarial study. However, he read a reporter one sentence that stated: "The plan received no surplus pension assets over and above the pension benefit liabilities as so determined. Any pension benefit enhancement increases the pension fund liability."
DOE's Freese said actuarial studies are based on conservative assumptions, and not the actual performance of the fund. He hasn't seen the USEC study, but assumed it was based on conservative estimates of 5 percent revenue, and not the reality of the 20 percent earned this year.
Freese agreed that the value changes with the rise and fall of the stock market. However, he said it is highly unlikely that the value would fall below the level needed to fund an early retirement plan.
A congressional investigative committee has weighed in on the debate and, based on DOE comments, asked the USEC board of directors to intervene and approve the early retirement plan over the objectives of USEC Chief Executive Officer Nick Timbers.
U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the House Commerce Committee's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, sent a letter to USEC Board Chairman James R. Mellor. U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield, who represents western Kentucky, and U.S. Rep. Ted Strickland, who represents southern Ohio, are members of the subcommittee and endorsed the letter.
If USEC and DOE continue to disagree on the value of the pension fund, the committee has offered to intervene and help to resolve the dispute.
However, the issue must be resolved quickly to affect the recent layoffs announced by USEC. Workers have until May 24 to decide if they want to accept a severance package that includes a cash payout of up to $17,500 plus heath insurance benefits, retraining funds and relocation funds.
USEC said the layoffs will begin taking effect on July 14.
----
FACTS EMERGING Evidence points to safety compromises
May 9, 2000
Paducah Sun
http://www.paducahsun.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?/200005/09+00tu_editorial.html+20000509+editorial
The president of the plant guard workers' union at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant offered a disturbing assessment of the recent discovery of nuclear bomb casings in a scrap yard on the plant grounds. "It's just another piece of proof that points to the fact they (federal officials) don't know what they've got out here," said John Driskill. "They don't know the nature and extent of the materials they have at this plant."
A series of revelations over the past nine months essentially confirms Driskill's opinion. Officials with the Department of Energy have denied or downplayed a variety of alleged contamination threats at the plant, only to backtrack later when evidence surfaced indicating the threats were both real and significant.
That leaves plant employees and people who live near the facility to wonder what's next.
Recall that just a few months ago, DOE declared there was no evidence beryllium, a highly toxic metal, was used at the Paducah plant. Then the agency issued a memo to employees stating that beryllium could have been used in building or dismantling nuclear weapons in Paducah.
A DOE spokesman admitted the agency was trying to "reconstruct history" to determine the extent of beryllium use.
The memo was distributed a few weeks before the Sun reported that beryllium had been found in more than 100 groundwater samples taken at or near the plant site. Some of these samples contained concentrations of beryllium almost 25 times higher than the standard for safe drinking water.
The latest revelation concerns aluminum bomb casings. A DOE investigative team found portions of 17 bomb casings stacked in a scrap yard on the north side of the uranium enrichment plant.
Although the casings apparently do not pose a health hazard, the fact they were not properly disposed of in a classified landfill provides more evidence that, during the Cold War, safety was not a high priority for DOE and plant contractors.
A logical assumption is that the shield of national security also shielded the federal government and former plant contractors from accountability for their handling of safety and environmental issues.
The Paducah plant's official mission was to enrich uranium. It now seems clear its secret, unofficial role involved the disposal and recycling of nuclear weapons parts. And it's indisputable that the Paducah facility was used as an unregulated dump for radioactive materials produced at weapons facilities.
Secrecy was a necessity when the United States was staring down the Soviet Union's nuclear barrel. Unfortunately, secrecy allowed the Paducah plant's operators and overseers to set their own standards of safety and health.
The picture that is slowly emerging now that the Cold War is over and the plant's operations are in private hands indicates that the blanket of national security concealed casual attitudes about safety. The extent to which worker safety and public health may have been compromised still isn't clear â€" the secrecy mandate left gaping holes in the records â€" but a growing impression is that those in charge of the plant and the nuclear weapons program during that era put national security well above all other concerns, including the health of workers.
Describing working conditions at the plant 30 years ago, Harold Hargan, a former employee, told the Sun: "Ignorance and apathy were rampant."
It needs noting that Hargan is a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against former plant operators. But the credibility of his description of the plant's working environment has been enhanced by evidence of such sloppy practices as stacking nuclear bomb casings in a scrap yard.
If the government permitted this kind of activity in Paducah, it's worth wondering what else it allowed â€" or ignored.
The federal government must get to the bottom of the Cold War secrecy and finally give a full accounting of what happened in Paducah. With a few possible exceptions, national security is no longer a valid excuse for hiding the truth.
Someone must be held accountable if workers and residents were unknowingly exposed to serious health risks.
-------- new mexico
Blaze threatens Los Alamos lab
10,000 workers at nuclear research center sent home after controlled burn jumps lines
Spokesman Review
05/09/00
New York Times
http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=050900&ID=s800622&cat=
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/05/09/MN56519.DTL
An effort by the National Park Service to set a controlled fire in a densely wooded area of New Mexico has blown out of control, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people and threatening the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where some of the country's most sensitive nuclear weapons research is conducted.
The park service began on Thursday to burn thick stands of Ponderosa pines and conifers that had accumulated in the Bandolier National Monument after years of suppressing natural fires, the park service said. But the efforts quickly went awry when fierce winds, gusting up to 45 mph, suddenly blew the blaze beyond the fire breaks that had been prepared and blackened hundreds of acres throughout the weekend.
Kevin Roark, a spokesman for the nuclear laboratory, said that the fire had burned right up to the western edge of the lab, which covers 42 square miles. He said that the lab had been closed, with only about 500 emergency personnel on duty and the other 10,000 or so employees sent home.
Roark said that the fire was threatening some bunkers where high explosives are stored. The bunkers are made of hardened concrete and earth, and survived a previous fire in 1977, so the lab was fairly confident there would be no problems this time. He added that nuclear materials, such as the plutonium used in bombs, were stored in separate facilities that were not near the area where the fire has been spreading.
Steve Coburn, the fire marshal at the Los Alamos County Fire Department, said that roughly 2,000 acres had already been burned and that about 500 households south of the city, near Los Alamos Canyon, had been evacuated. Many more people had voluntarily left the area.
Officials with the forest service said that, at best, the fire might be contained in a few days if the winds die down.
---
Fire Burns Out of Control in New Mexico
New York Times
May 9, 2000
By JAMES STERNGOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/00/05/09/news/washpol/fire-losalamo.html
LOS ANGELES, May 8 -- An effort by the National Park Service to set a controlled fire in a densely wooded area of New Mexico has blown out of control, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people and threatening the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where some of the country's most sensitive nuclear weapons research is conducted.
The Los Alamos fire started Thursday, when the park service began burning thick stands of ponderosa pines and conifers that had accumulated in the Bandelier National Monument after years of suppressing natural fires. But the efforts, for which officials had extensively planned, quickly went awry when fierce winds, gusting up to 45 miles an hour, suddenly blew the blaze beyond the fire breaks that had been prepared and blackened hundreds of acres throughout the weekend.
Kevin Roark, a spokesman for the nuclear laboratory, said the fire had reached the western edge of the laboratory site, which covers 42 square miles. He said the laboratory had been closed, with about 500 emergency personnel on duty and the other 10,000 or so employees sent home.
Mr. Roark said the fire was threatening bunkers where high explosives were stored. The bunkers, made of hardened concrete and earth, survived a fire in 1977, so the laboratory was fairly confident there would be no problems this time. He added that nuclear materials, like the plutonium used in bombs, were stored in separate sites that are not near the fire.
Steve Coburn, the fire marshal with the Los Alamos County Fire Department, said that roughly 2,000 acres had burned and that about 500 households south of the city, near Los Alamos Canyon, had been evacuated. Many more people had voluntarily left the area. He said the city looked like a ghost town, with the air thick with heavy, dark smoke and ash swirling in the stiff winds.
Forest service officials said the fire might be contained in a few days, at best, if the winds died down.
"The conditions were in the acceptable limits when they began the burn, but the winds this time of year are very unpredictable," Mr. Coburn said. He said there had been no injuries and no homes destroyed, but the fire was within several hundred yards of a residential area.
Another fire, near the southern resort town of Ruidoso, burned 5.400 acres and forced the evacuation of more than 200 homes today, The Associated Press reported. That fire, mostly on the Lincoln National Forest, started Sunday and has destroyed a mobile home and two homes under construction. Two firefighters suffered minor injuries.
---
Fire Keeps Los Alamos Lab Closed
High Winds Expected to Hamper Firefighting Efforts
ABC News
05/09/00
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/alamos000509.html
By Zelie Pollon
WHITEROCK, N.M., May 9 - Firefighters used bulldozers to clear swaths of forest today in a major push to seal off a forest fire that kept a major U.S. nuclear weapons laboratory closed and threatened a nearby town.
Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the world's first atomic bomb was created in 1945, was closed for a second day as the Cerro Grande fire raged just across a highway from one side of the sprawling facility. The fire, which has raged for five days after being sparked inadvertently by the U.S. Forest Service, also posed a danger to the bordering town of Los Alamos.
More than 600 firefighters burned brush ahead of the blaze and cleared swaths of forest with bulldozers to deprive the fire of new fuel in an effort to ring the wildfire with a burn-free zone before weather conditions worsen, as they are forecast to do Wednesday.
"We're calling today the big push," said Fire Information Officer Jim Paxon.
"Tomorrow (Wednesday) we're expecting bigger winds, higher temperatures and lower humidity so the time to get this fire is now," Paxon added.
Only a skeleton staff of 500 people out of a work force of close to 12,000 remained at the Los Alamos laboratory, which covers 43 square miles in the sparsely settled Juarez Mountains of northern New Mexico.
Explosives Safe and Sound
Officials said the laboratory's high explosives and plutonium were safely sealed in fireproof steel and concrete bunkers.
The plutonium facility is "miles away" from the wildfire and the area around it has been cleared of trees and other combustible material, laboratory director John Browne said.
Firefighters were holding the blaze at a standstill along Highway 501, which borders the laboratory's western edge.
Some of the U.S. government's most-secret nuclear weapons research has been conducted at Los Alamos. But its role of developing nuclear weapons changed in the 1990s when the United States stopped nuclear testing, and now the facility's main charge is to ensure that the nuclear weapon stockpile stays in working order.
Browne said this was the first time the laboratory had been closed for a forest fire. There has been no decision yet on when the laboratory can reopen.
With 3,365 acres already consumed, Paxon said he expected several more thousand acres would be gone by the end of the day due to preventive burning.
"We have to seal this fire off and keep it from crossing Los Alamos canyon. Otherwise, it'll burn right into the city site," he said.
The town of Los Alamos, which borders the lab, has evacuated 500 homes on the west side of town and closed schools due to heavy smoke.
Fires Deliberately Set
The fire began last Thursday when fires deliberately set to clear scrub bush in Bandelier National Monument, the site of ancient Pueblo Indian cliff dwellings, burned out of control as winds picked up to 40 mph.
U.S. Forest Service officials have defended their decision to burn underbrush, saying it was carefully planned and a necessary tool for forest management.
Gov. Gary Johnson Monday declared a state of emergency for Los Alamos and counties in southern New Mexico where another wildfire has scorched 5,400 acres and destroyed three homes.
No serious injuries have been reported in either fire.
---
Hundreds flee New Mexico wildfires
USA Today
05/09/00- Updated 08:52 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/digest/nd1.htm#phil
RUIDOSO, N.M. - Hundreds of people were forced to flee as one of two large wildfires burning in New Mexico swept within a few feet of their homes and spread across more than 5,000 acres. ''It burned right up to their back yard and backdoor steps,'' firefighter Tyner Cervantes said Monday in this south-central New Mexico resort town. ''It burned down some wooden fences and a flatbed trailer, but we didn't lose a single house.'' A second blaze 200 miles to the northwest has forced the evacuation of at least 500 homes and virtually shut down the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Lab officials have said explosives and nuclear material were in fire-safe structures. The lab, as well as Los Alamos County schools and offices, were closed for a second straight day Tuesday. No major injuries have been reported.
-------- ohio
PIKETON WORKERS WARY OF GOVERNMENT'S OFFER
Date: Tuesday, May 9, 2000
Section: NEWS Page: 05A
Byline: Jonathan Riskind
Source: Dispatch Washington Bureau
Column: Analysis
http://libpub.dispatch.com/cgi-bin/slwebcli.pl?DBLIST=cd00&D
WASHINGTON -- A new day is at hand for workers at southern Ohio's uranium-enrichment plant who were sickened by exposures to radiation and chemicals, U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson says.
Instead of denials -- and lengthy fights against claims filed in courts or state workers' compensation systems -- Richardson says the Clinton administration wants to provide federal payments to many workers and help others win state benefits.
At the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, and similar facilities, hundreds of workers might have been exposed to deadly plutonium-laced uranium, asbestos, fluorine or other harmful products while making weapons-grade materials to support the nation's nuclear-defense program.
Richardson's promise, however, elicits skepticism from Dan Minter, president of Local 5689 of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International. The union represents many of the 2,000 workers at the Piketon plant, south of Columbus in Pike County.
Minter not only considers the compensation proposal inadequate for correcting past wrongs but also thinks current workers are being mistreated because neither USEC nor the government is prepared to help 350 Piketon employees who face layoffs in July.
Last week, the Energy Department was unable to persuade USEC, the privatized federal corporation that now runs Piketon, to fund an early-retirement plan for those workers and hundreds of others at a sister facility in Paducah, Ky.
Richardson expressed outrage about USEC's refusal to fund the plan, one Energy Department source said. Although the preference was for USEC to step forward, union members and some lawmakers think the Energy Department could have funded the retirement plan.
Some think the future of the plant has been bleak since the government privatized USEC in 1998. In addition to the looming layoffs, Piketon workers aren't sure how long the plant will remain open.
USEC is in serious financial trouble, and the government is scrambling to make sure the corporation can carry out a key arms-control deal to buy Russian uranium culled from nuclear warheads. The government also doesn't want to lose its only domestic uranium-enrichment operation.
It's easy to see why many Piketon workers remain leery about the Energy Department's commitment to right more serious wrongs.
Further, prospects are iffy that either the Clinton administration's compensation proposal unveiled last month or congressional bills now being drafted will become law this year.
Despite its price tag of $500 million during the first five years, the Clinton administration's plan doesn't do nearly enough to satisfy members of Congress such as Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, and Sen. George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio.
They are among a bipartisan, multistate coalition that wants to double the $100,000 federal payments for radiation exposure and extend federal payments to workers sickened by chemicals and other toxins.
The administration's proposal would force people who think they were made ill by chemicals to seek state workers' compensation payments.
Strickland, Voinovich and others say the state system seems ill- equipped to handle such occupational-illness cases, many of which stem from decades-old exposures that often are difficult to document.
Jim Samuel, spokesman for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, said the bureau is willing to pay such claims.
Still, the bureau acknowledges that of the 1,268 claims paid to Piketon workers over 46 years, about 72 were for illness rather than workplace injuries. Samuel said 83 of the 133 claims of occupational disease have been paid for all of Ohio's nuclear sites combined.
"We want to help these folks,'' he said, "but until we get claims in front of us, we can't do anything about it.''
A panel of independent doctors was assembled to screen former workers at the now-closed Fernald nuclear site near Cincinnati and recommend to the state the claims with merit. But it has run into roadblocks, according to a letter from the administrator of the Trustee for the Fernald II Workers' Settlement Fund. The letter came in response to an inquiry by the Energy Department as it put together the administration's compensation proposal.
"Due to the fact that the (state bureau) was not a party to the actual settlement agreement, no special arrangements have been established,'' said fund administrator Gary F. Benjamin. He added that a second opinion often is requested, which stalls the process and deters attorneys from taking the cases.
Last week, a senior Energy Department official defended the administration, saying that for the first time, "the Department of Energy is saying 'We are going to do everything we can . . . to make sure workers who are sick get compensation.' ''
But the letter was just one more reason that many Piketon workers remain unconvinced that the Clinton administration will follow up on its rhetoric.
----
Analysis Piketon workers wary of government's offer
Tuesday, May 9, 2000
Jonathan Riskind Dispatch Washington Bureau
http://www.dispatch.com/news/newsfe
WASHINGTON -- A new day is at hand for workers at southern Ohio's uranium-enrichment plant who were sickened by exposures to radiation and chemicals, U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson says.
Instead of denials -- and lengthy fights against claims filed in courts or state workers' compensation systems -- Richardson says the Clinton administration wants to provide federal payments to many workers and help others win state benefits.
At the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, and similar facilities, hundreds of workers might have been exposed to deadly plutonium-laced uranium, asbestos, fluorine or other harmful products while making weapons-grade materials to support the nation's nuclear-defense program.
Richardson's promise, however, elicits skepticism from Dan Minter, president of Local 5689 of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International. The union represents many of the 2,000 workers at the Piketon plant, south of Columbus in Pike County.
Minter not only considers the compensation proposal inadequate for correcting past wrongs but also thinks current workers are being mistreated because neither USEC nor the government is prepared to help 350 Piketon employees who face layoffs in July.
Last week, the Energy Department was unable to persuade USEC, the privatized federal corporation that now runs Piketon, to fund an early-retirement plan for those workers and hundreds of others at a sister facility in Paducah, Ky.
Richardson expressed outrage about USEC's refusal to fund the plan, one Energy Department source said. Although the preference was for USEC to step forward, union members and some lawmakers think the Energy Department could have funded the retirement plan.
Some think the future of the plant has been bleak since the government privatized USEC in 1998. In addition to the looming layoffs, Piketon workers aren't sure how long the plant will remain open.
USEC is in serious financial trouble, and the government is scrambling to make sure the corporation can carry out a key arms-control deal to buy Russian uranium culled from nuclear warheads. The government also doesn't want to lose its only domestic uranium-enrichment operation.
It's easy to see why many Piketon workers remain leery about the Energy Department's commitment to right more serious wrongs.
Further, prospects are iffy that either the Clinton administration's compensation proposal unveiled last month or congressional bills now being drafted will become law this year.
Despite its price tag of $500 million during the first five years, the Clinton administration's plan doesn't do nearly enough to satisfy members of Congress such as Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, and Sen. George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio.
They are among a bipartisan, multistate coalition that wants to double the $100,000 federal payments for radiation exposure and extend federal payments to workers sickened by chemicals and other toxins.
The administration's proposal would force people who think they were made ill by chemicals to seek state workers' compensation payments.
Strickland, Voinovich and others say the state system seems ill- equipped to handle such occupational-illness cases, many of which stem from decades-old exposures that often are difficult to document.
Jim Samuel, spokesman for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, said the bureau is willing to pay such claims.
Still, the bureau acknowledges that of the 1,268 claims paid to Piketon workers over 46 years, about 72 were for illness rather than workplace injuries. Samuel said 83 of the 133 claims of occupational disease have been paid for all of Ohio's nuclear sites combined.
"We want to help these folks,'' he said, "but until we get claims in front of us, we can't do anything about it.''
A panel of independent doctors was assembled to screen former workers at the now-closed Fernald nuclear site near Cincinnati and recommend to the state the claims with merit. But it has run into roadblocks, according to a letter from the administrator of the Trustee for the Fernald II Workers' Settlement Fund. The letter came in response to an inquiry by the Energy Department as it put together the administration's compensation proposal.
"Due to the fact that the (state bureau) was not a party to the actual settlement agreement, no special arrangements have been established,'' said fund administrator Gary F. Benjamin. He added that a second opinion often is requested, which stalls the process and deters attorneys from taking the cases.
Last week, a senior Energy Department official defended the administration, saying that for the first time, "the Department of Energy is saying 'We are going to do everything we can . . . to make sure workers who are sick get compensation.' ''
But the letter was just one more reason that many Piketon workers remain unconvinced that the Clinton administration will follow up on its rhetoric.
----
Analysis Piketon workers wary of government's offer
Columbus Dispatch
Tuesday, May 9, 2000
Jonathan Riskind Dispatch Washington Bureau
http://www.dispatch.com/news/newsfea00/may00/271736.html
WASHINGTON -- A new day is at hand for workers at southern Ohio's uranium-enrichment plant who were sickened by exposures to radiation and chemicals, U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson says.
Instead of denials -- and lengthy fights against claims filed in courts or state workers' compensation systems -- Richardson says the Clinton administration wants to provide federal payments to many workers and help others win state benefits.
At the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, and similar facilities, hundreds of workers might have been exposed to deadly plutonium-laced uranium, asbestos, fluorine or other harmful products while making weapons-grade materials to support the nation's nuclear-defense program.
Richardson's promise, however, elicits skepticism from Dan Minter, president of Local 5689 of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International. The union represents many of the 2,000 workers at the Piketon plant, south of Columbus in Pike County.
Minter not only considers the compensation proposal inadequate for correcting past wrongs but also thinks current workers are being mistreated because neither USEC nor the government is prepared to help 350 Piketon employees who face layoffs in July.
Last week, the Energy Department was unable to persuade USEC, the privatized federal corporation that now runs Piketon, to fund an early-retirement plan for those workers and hundreds of others at a sister facility in Paducah, Ky.
Richardson expressed outrage about USEC's refusal to fund the plan, one Energy Department source said. Although the preference was for USEC to step forward, union members and some lawmakers think the Energy Department could have funded the retirement plan.
Some think the future of the plant has been bleak since the government privatized USEC in 1998. In addition to the looming layoffs, Piketon workers aren't sure how long the plant will remain open.
USEC is in serious financial trouble, and the government is scrambling to make sure the corporation can carry out a key arms-control deal to buy Russian uranium culled from nuclear warheads. The government also doesn't want to lose its only domestic uranium-enrichment operation.
It's easy to see why many Piketon workers remain leery about the Energy Department's commitment to right more serious wrongs.
Further, prospects are iffy that either the Clinton administration's compensation proposal unveiled last month or congressional bills now being drafted will become law this year.
Despite its price tag of $500 million during the first five years, the Clinton administration's plan doesn't do nearly enough to satisfy members of Congress such as Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, and Sen. George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio.
They are among a bipartisan, multistate coalition that wants to double the $100,000 federal payments for radiation exposure and extend federal payments to workers sickened by chemicals and other toxins.
The administration's proposal would force people who think they were made ill by chemicals to seek state workers' compensation payments.
Strickland, Voinovich and others say the state system seems ill- equipped to handle such occupational-illness cases, many of which stem from decades-old exposures that often are difficult to document.
Jim Samuel, spokesman for the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, said the bureau is willing to pay such claims.
Still, the bureau acknowledges that of the 1,268 claims paid to Piketon workers over 46 years, about 72 were for illness rather than workplace injuries. Samuel said 83 of the 133 claims of occupational disease have been paid for all of Ohio's nuclear sites combined.
"We want to help these folks,'' he said, "but until we get claims in front of us, we can't do anything about it.''
A panel of independent doctors was assembled to screen former workers at the now-closed Fernald nuclear site near Cincinnati and recommend to the state the claims with merit. But it has run into roadblocks, according to a letter from the administrator of the Trustee for the Fernald II Workers' Settlement Fund. The letter came in response to an inquiry by the Energy Department as it put together the administration's compensation proposal.
"Due to the fact that the (state bureau) was not a party to the actual settlement agreement, no special arrangements have been established,'' said fund administrator Gary F. Benjamin. He added that a second opinion often is requested, which stalls the process and deters attorneys from taking the cases.
Last week, a senior Energy Department official defended the administration, saying that for the first time, "the Department of Energy is saying 'We are going to do everything we can . . . to make sure workers who are sick get compensation.' ''
But the letter was just one more reason that many Piketon workers remain unconvinced that the Clinton administration will follow up on its rhetoric.
-------- washington
Energy Dept. Canceling BNFL Deal
Associated Press
May 8, 2000 Filed at 11:56 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-BNFL-Hanford-Waste.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Stung by soaring costs, the Energy Department will end its contract with a British company for cleaning up the radioactive waste now kept in underground tanks at the Hanford weapons complex in Washington state, officials announced Monday.
The contract with BNFL Inc., a subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels Inc., had been in doubt since the company on April 24 said it couldn't do the job for less than $15.2 billion. Two years ago, when BNFL was hired the company estimated the cost at $6.9 billion.
The skyrocketing costs leading to Monday's termination of the contract represents a major blow to the Energy Department's efforts to ``privatize'' complex nuclear waste cleanup projects. Under this approach, companies would be hired to complete the project, assume all risk and not be paid until after the work is completed.
``We are not giving up on the concept of privatization in general,'' said Deputy Energy Secretary T.J. Glauthier. But he added this approach would be limited to projects with fewer uncertainties than the Hanford cleanup.
One lawmaker said the department should have been prepared just in case BNFL didn't work out. ``Today's announcement is alarming as DOE still does not appear to have any credible back up plan in place,'' said Rep. Tom Bliley, R-Va., chair of the House Commerce Committee. ``I urge the DOE to stop dragging its feet and wasting taxpayer dollars on one of our country's top cleanup challenges.''
At Hanford, BNFL had agreed to design, build and operate a high-technology plant that would turn 54 million gallons of highly radioactive nuclear waste, now in 177 underground storage tanks, into glass logs that in the future could be buried safely at a government disposal site.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson called BNFL's latest cost estimate ``outrageously expensive and inadequate in many ways.'' Richardson previously had expressed concern about ``a disturbing trend of unacceptable and unexplained budget escalations'' involving BFNL's Hanford project.
Glauthier said that BNFL would continue some design work for several months, but then the rest of the work -- from design to construction -- would be turned over to other companies to be selected by competitive bids. He said a decision on the new contract would be made by the end of the year.
He said the payment to BNFL would probably be in the range of $200 million to $300 million for the two-years of design work but that he could not be more specific. It was not clear whether the government would have to pay a penalty for ending the contract although Glauthier said there was a provision for termination.
In a statement, BNFL expressed disappointment with DOE's action but said it was ``pleased that the technology we have privately invested in and matured will be the solution to the tank wastes.'
Glauthier told reporters that the department stands by its goal of having the plant completed by 2007 and the waste treatment completed by 2018 although some short-term deadlines -- such as when construction may begin -- may have to be put back.
``We are committed to cleaning up the Hanford site as rapidly as possible,'' Richardson said in a statement. ``We should be able to meet our long-term schedules for operating a waste treatment plant.''
BNFL was supposed to have completed 30 percent of the plant's design work by now but less than that is completed, Glauthier said. He said while the technical design of the plant so far appeared to be sound, the department had serious concerns about the ``management and business approach'' taken by BNFL.
BNFL is involved in other waste cleanup projects at Energy Department facilities in Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina and Tennessee. Last week, Richardson sent an independent review team to BNFL's Sellafield facility in Manchester, England, to examine the company's procedures and operations as they apply to its work in the United States.
That report has not yet completed, officials said.
But DOE officials were clearly angry over the sudden price escalation involving the Hanford project.
Glauthier said BNFL will be allowed to submit a bid for the new contract but he made it clear the company's chances may be slim. ``Why should we believe in their bid when we've just had this experience? We've been pretty unhappy with their performance. ... We're very disappointed to have to take this action and to have to change directions now,'' he said.
---
Energy Department Cancels Nuclear Waste Cleanup Contract
New York Times
May 9, 2000
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/00/05/09/news/financial/nuke-cleanup.html
WASHINGTON, May 8 -- The Energy Department said today that it had failed in its attempt to save money on nuclear waste cleanup by privatizing the task of solidifying highly radioactive liquid wastes at the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington State.
The department said that it was canceling its contract with BNFL Inc., which was supposed to finance and build a waste-processing factory and run it for almost 20 years, receiving most of its pay only when it produced a product.
By dismissing the contractor, the department risks missing court-sanctioned deadlines that it had agreed on with Washington State and the federal Environmental Protection Agency for the cleanup of the Hanford plant.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said in a statement that "BNFL's proposal was outrageously expensive and inadequate in many ways."
The department said the company, whose budget estimates for the job had more than doubled in less than two years, will be kept on to do some design work; it will be paid $200 million to $300 million for the design work and for its glass-melting technology. But the job of finishing the design, building the plant and running it will be opened up for bidding.
The plant is supposed to produce liquid wastes encased in a radiation-absorbing glass and wrapped in stainless steel for long-term storage. The Energy Department chose BNFL, an American subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels P.L.C., because the British parent had done similar work in England.
When the initial contract was signed in August 1998, BNFL said it could do the job for $6.9 billion. More recently, it said the cost would be $15.2 billion.
The Washington Attorney General, Christine O. Gregoire, who negotiated cleanup deadlines, said in an interview that delays had been predictable because of "bad business decisions" by the Energy Department.
The original concept, she pointed out, was for two private companies to compete, but the department had narrowed the field to just BNFL, which allowed that company to "commit highway robbery," she said.
In a statement, BNFL said that "while disappointed that the Department of Energy has decided to recompete the entirety of the contract, we are pleased that they have determined that the design and technical solution is sound and will be the basis for proceeding with the cleanup."
T. J. Glauthier, the deputy secretary of energy, acknowledged in a telephone interview with reporters that the department had a history of delays and cost overruns and was still looking for a way to give contractors an incentive to do their work on time and on budget. He said the department might try privatizing another task, but one with fewer uncertainties.
"We're pretty unhappy with the performance this contractor has had," he said. "We're taking an unusual step, terminating this contract."
In fact, the department's experience in the glass-making technology, called vitrification, has been poor. A plant built under a traditional contract at the Savannah River nuclear reservation, near Aiken, S.C., opened late, and engineers still have not determined how to stop the wastes from producing benzene, a gas that can burn or explode at the proper concentration. The waste at Hanford, in south central Washington State, is stored in underground tanks, some of which are leaking.
-------- us nuc waste
Tainted NRC Process on Radioactive Waste Recycling Continues
For more information on this and other consumer issues, please visit Public Citizen's website at http://www.citizen.org . May 9, 2000
Adoption of International Standards Used as Justification for Radioactive Recycling
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In ordering a study of the international recommended regulations for recycling radioactive waste, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is further biasing its own standard-setting process towards the widespread recycling of contaminated materials into household products, Public Citizen charged today at an NRC meeting concerning the standard-setting rulemaking process.
The ultimate result likely will be a recommendation from the NRC to permit an international market for extensive recycling of radioactive waste into such products as braces for teeth, baby strollers and frying pans -- virtually everything made out of carbon steel, stainless steel, nickel, copper or aluminum, said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. Currently, contaminated waste is recycled on a case by case basis.
The NRC is in the process of setting a standard for the amount of radiation consumers can be exposed to from household products made from radioactive waste. The commission recently directed its staff to ask the National Academy of Science (NAS) Board on Energy and Environmental Systems to conduct a nine-month study on the recycling of radioactive materials.
A key component of that study is an analysis of the way other countries are proposing to recycle the waste. The international recommendations will likely favor recycling the waste because the International Atomic Energy Agency -- whose mission is to promote the use of nuclear technology and which is a big booster of recycling radioactive waste into household products -- is heavily involved in setting recycling standards in other countries.
"Looking to the International Atomic Energy Agency for recommendations on how to handle radioactive waste is like asking the fox for tips on guarding the henhouse," Hauter said. "The NRC is trying to use this study to mask the fact that its own process is skewed."
The NRC is promoting radioactive recycling through its support of international standards. Different standards "could adversely affect international trade," the staff wrote in a document released recently. Even the language the NRC uses in requesting the NAS study shows the Commission's bias; it requested "alternatives for the control of slightly radioactive materials" (emphasis added).
Decades of research shows that exposure to radiation is a threat to human health. Any exposure to radiation, no matter how small, results in some health risk. Diluting radiation through recycling cannot reduce the risk to society as a whole, because the total number of people exposed to radiation will increase as more products contain radioactive materials.
"Despite widespread public opposition, the nuclear industry is pushing the government to permit more recycling of contaminated waste from nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons facilities because it is far less expensive to sell the waste than to isolate it from humans and the environment. Government agencies charged with protecting people from exposure to radioactive waste instead appear to be helping the nuclear industry to find a way to release the material into products that are distributed nationwide," Hauter said.
The NRC staff paper did not deal adequately with several of the problems that have tainted this rulemaking:
* The NRC paid millions of dollars to a contractor with a conflict of interest to prepare the technical analysis for the commission on radioactive recycling;
* The commission prejudged the outcome of the rulemaking by discussing in documents that it was planning to set a standard that would allow the release of contaminated materials. The Commission has not demonstrated that it would even consider an outcome that does not result in the release of radioactive materials;
* The NRC has not addressed why it has failed to consider in its technical documents that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is the primary source of metallic radioactive waste, the type of waste to be recycled into household products. The DOE's generates a lot more metallic radioactive waste than power plants, and this military waste is potentially far more dangerous than similar waste from power plants because it contains different radioactive elements. The commission has not considered the implications of the release of volumes of such dangerous materials into the environment.
"The entire rulemaking process has been sullied," Hauter said. "It is shoddy and biased. The integrity of the rulemaking requires affirmative demonstration that alternatives -- including no release of radioactive waste -- are seriously and fairly considered. The NRC simply isn't doing that."
-------- us nuc weapons
[On Tuesday, May 9, 2000, Representative Ed Markey gave a marvelous impression of Edward Teller at the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability's Awards Reception. Mr. Markey had been honored for his resolution on de-alerting nuclear weapons. He reproduced a speech by Edward Teller demanding a laser installation on the moon "to shoot down enemy missiles" from some 238,857* miles away.
-- (* Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1953.) --
Mr. Markey thought the idea ludicrous. He noticed that a lot of industrialists and politicans thought it was a great idea. $ $ $ clicking in their heads?
Mr. Markey then described his visit to the N.I.F. (National Ignition Facility), under construction at Lawrence Livermore Labs. He said that, after millions of dollars spent, they were still only able to beam a laser "across the room." Now, this moon idea is beginning to make headlines. Here's a dismaying article about Edward Teller recently sent my way. et]
--
Infamy and Honor at the Atomic Café
Father of the hydrogen bomb, "Star Wars" missile defense and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Edward Teller has no regrets about his contentious career.
Scientific American, October 1999 Profile
http://www.sciam.com:80/1999/1099issue/1099profile.html
As I'm leaving for John F. Kennedy airport, I tell a colleague that I will be away to interview Edward Teller. "Is he still alive?" she asks in amazement. A day later I sit across the room from a 91-year-old man slumped in his desk chair, his five-foot-high carved wooden walking stick leaning against a desk that has a Ronald Reagan-awarded National Medal of Science hanging above it.
With eyes clouded by ulceration, he stares straight ahead. What may have been the world's bushiest eyebrows have thinned. A cowboy boot covers the prosthesis that replaced the foot he lost in a streetcar accident in 1928. His secretary informs me that his memory of recent events has faded in the wake of a stroke. I wonder if he even sees me or whether I will be able to proceed with the interview.
Almost immediately after I sit down, a heavy, slow voice addresses me in a strong, well-enunciated cadence. "I have been controversial in some respects," he announces in an accent that is part European university professor, part cold war inquisitor and part Bela Lugosi. "I want to know what you know about the controversy and what you think about it." I reach for my tape recorder, but he gestures for me to stop. My flustered, inarticulate answer to his first question only evokes another one: "What do you think about Robert Oppenheimer?" he demands, referring to the head scientist of the Manhattan Project whose government security clearance was revoked after Teller testified against him. "There were clearly differences between Oppenheimer and myself. What do you know about this controversy, and what do you think about it?"
Maybe it is payback time for the three articles that Scientific American ran in 1950 that voiced strong opposition to the development of the hydrogen bomb, the weapon for which Teller was an unbending advocate when many other atomic scientists were against it. Teller then demands to see what I write before it is published. I refuse. "You realize that I'm now tempted to cancel the interview, and the best I can do is give you an interview with extreme caution, to make sure that nothing is misunderstood."
This nonagenarian whose capacities I had doubted a few minutes earlier has now set me off balance. I've just experienced firsthand the bluster and resolve that prevailed over presidents, generals and members of Congress. Now that he holds the advantage in our encounter, Teller appears ready to submit to questioning.
What follows in the next few hours is like watching an old movie. Many of the lines in the script are familiar, but the effect of their recitation has only grown through repetition. What would have happened, I ask, if we hadn't developed the hydrogen bomb? "You would now interview me in Russian, but more probably you wouldn't interview me at all. And I wouldn't be alive. I would have died in a concentration camp." Commenting on the ban on nuclear weapons tests: "The spirit of no more testing is the spirit of ignorance; I'm happy to violate it. I don't think we're violating it enough."
Teller's persona--the scientist-cum-hawkish politico--is rooted in the upheavals that rocked Europe during the first half of the century, particularly the Communist takeover of Hungary in 1919. "My father was a lawyer; his office was occupied and shut down and occupied by the Reds. But what followed was an anti-Semitic Fascist regime, and I was at least as opposed to the Fascists as I was to the Communists."
To understand Teller, one must remember that he holds a place at the head table of the atomic café: he was present for many of the major events of 20th-century nuclear physics.
He played a bit part in the Manhattan Project's atomic bomb work and became a relentless proponent for and scientific contributor to another weapon that would release unthinkable amounts of energy when atoms fuse together. In 1952 Teller went on to help orchestrate the founding of a second weapons design laboratory, Lawrence Livermore, a competitor to Los Alamos. Livermore succeeded in reducing the size of atomic warheads so that they could fit into nuclear submarines.
Teller conceived a multitude of uses for nuclear explosions, from mining to changing the weather. He campaigned endlessly for nuclear power. He lobbied governor Nelson Rockefeller in the 1960s to undertake programs for the construction of bomb shelters. He was a leading force in convincing presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush to take on missile defense programs using highly speculative technologies, such as the x-ray laser. More recently Teller has called for nuclear and other explosions to deflect killer asteroids and comets.
What interests me in approaching Teller is trying to understand what he thinks of his own legacy. I ask him what he wishes to be remembered for. "I will tell you in very great detail," he interjects. "I don't care." I wonder whether the father of the hydrogen bomb and the champion of "Star Wars" missile defense has any regrets. "Is there anything that you feel perhaps should not have been done?" I ask. A void of 15 seconds follows. "On the whole, I don't," he replies. I inquire whether he still thinks Project Chariot, the never-realized plan to create a new harbor in Alaska by setting off up to six hydrogen bombs, was a good idea. "Look," he retorts with pedantic emphasis. "With a good harbor, northern Alaska could have been integrated into the American economy more effectively, like Hawaii was."
Teller is also unrelenting about his contribution to devising the hydrogen bomb. Most accounts credit physicist Stanislaw Ulam with a key insight that made a thermonuclear explosion possible--an idea that came only after Teller had pursued an approach to what was called the "classical Super" that led nowhere. Ulam proposed that the mechanical shock of an atomic bomb could compress hydrogen fuel and unleash a fusion reaction. Teller refined Ulam's concept by proposing that radiation from the initial atomic blast rather than the mechanical force of the explosion be used to achieve the necessary compression.
So I ask him who can claim paternity for the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, one whose ignition is often referred to as the Ulam-Teller design. As always, Teller does not mince words. "I contributed; Ulam did not," he says. "I'm sorry I had to answer it in this abrupt way. Ulam was rightly dissatisfied with an old approach. He came to me with a part of an idea which I already had worked out and had difficulty getting people to listen to. He was willing to sign a paper. When it then came to defending that paper and really putting work into it, he refused. He said, 'I don't believe in it.' " But, I reply, most histories report that Ulam suggested compression as a means to initiate a fusion reaction. "I know, and that is a lie," Teller shoots back.
Despite this damn-the-world attitude, Teller acknowledges the emotional turmoil he experienced from his outcast status in the scientific community after testifying against Oppenheimer. In 1954 the Atomic Energy Commission was investigating whether Communist sympathies had prompted Oppenheimer to stymie work on the hydrogen bomb. Teller's action contributed to Oppenheimer's losing his security clearance and his position as an adviser to the commission. "It hurts badly," comes the terse reply when he is asked how he feels today about his isolation.
Nor is Teller fond of the inevitable associations in the public mind with a certain fictional crackpot scientist. "My name is not Strangelove. I don't know about Strangelove," he flares. "I'm not interested in Strangelove. What else can I say?" A few moments later, as I pursue the question, he warns: "Look. Say it [Strangelove] three times more, and I throw you out of this office."
Still, Teller retains an acute awareness of how others see him. After he suffered a stroke three years ago, a nurse quizzed him to probe his lucidity. "Are you the famous Edward Teller?" she queried. "No," he snapped. "I'm the infamous Edward Teller."
After my time with him, I walk the streets of Palo Alto and marvel at how this man's passions have affected anyone who has lived during the past half century. A long-buried memory emerges of my father and grandfather, seated at the dining room table, discussing the materials needed to construct a bomb shelter in our basement that would stop the deadly gamma rays from a nuclear blast hitting New York City, the two men swept into the hysterical maelstrom that Teller helped to fuel. I wonder if Nobelist physicist Isidor I. Rabi wasn't right when he suggested that "it would have been a better world without Teller."
As I walk down University Avenue, amid the twentysomethings in cappuccino bars gazing at laptops and perhaps contemplating e-start-up businesses, I realize that the Manichaean world of good versus evil that still kindles Teller's intensity has faded. His outpost in a modern building at the Hoover Institution, adjacent to the conservative think tank's phallic stucco tower, sits at the epicenter of the Stanford campus that has served as an incubator of the postnuclear world of the electronics and biotechnology industries. The Soviets could never compete with America's electronic weaponry--and even less with the northern Californian economic vibrancy that produced Macintosh computers and Pentium processors. Fidel Castro still muses longingly about turning Cuba into a biotechnology powerhouse. In the end, microchips and recombinant DNA--two foundations of the millennial economy--helped to spur the end of the cold war in a way the fantasy of a Star Wars x-ray laser never could.
But Teller is never finished. Even now, at his age, he refuses to put to rest his grandiose visions of technological salvation. He and colleagues have submitted a paper to Nature that suggests dispersing sulfur dioxide or other submicron particles in the stratosphere to block sunlight and thus halt global warming--a cheaper option, he claims, than cutting back on carbon dioxide emissions. The man who imitated the sun by harnessing its fusion fires has never yielded his hubristic belief that knowledge of the physical sciences combined with indomitable willpower can fundamentally alter elemental forces of nature and so save the world.
--Gary Stix in Palo Alto, Calif.
----
G. Bush warms to Cold War
Miami Herald
Published Tuesday, May 9, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Cecil Johnson
http://www.herald.com/content/tue/opinion/digdocs/026519.htm
You don't have to dislike George W. Bush to question his fitness for the office he now is seeking.
Even some sincere governor admirers must have winced recently when Bush waxed what he thought was Reaganesque with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. Of course, the Russian knew about Ronald Reagan, and he also knew that George W. Bush is no Ronald Reagan.
The First Texan told the Russian that, come hell or a tsunami, he will deploy a ballistic missile defense system if he is elected president. Damn the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; full speed forward with the shield to deflect incoming rockets.
Bush had declared previously his inclination toward scrapping the ABM treaty to put a missile defense system in place. But the prevailing assumption was that he was talking about a limited system to protect against a few missiles hurled by a rogue state like North Korea or Iraq.
But he sounded a more strident note after his meeting with Ivanov, placing himself squarely in the Trent Lott-Jesse Helms camp on that issue.
Said Bush about part of the conversation with Ivanov:
``I explained to him my position as to why we need to develop a system to protect ourselves and our allies against a rogue missile launch, against any missile launch.''
One can read what one wishes into that remark. But it's rubles to doughnuts that Ivanov interpreted it to mean that a Bush presidency could be hazardous to Russia's confidence in its national security.
Such is the danger of an insecure politician and inexperienced statesman attempting to project an image of strength and purposefulness. Even if the Russians think Bush is the lightweight that he is, they have to take him seriously. After all, if the American people don't do their homework on Bush before the November election, he could get elected president.
And if the Republicans manage to keep control of Congress in November, deployment of a missile defense system, regardless of cost, is almost a certainty. The estimated cost of the proposed mini-Star Wars to protect against rogue states already has escalated to $60 billion from $26 billion.
Of course, if Lott and Helms get their way, a bigger system probably would emerge. Such a system could have the ultimate objective of protecting the nation against Russia's approximately 3,500 nuclear warheads. BUSH IS NO REAGAN
Such a system is unfeasible and too costly. Reagan, however, did convince the leaders of the Soviet Union that it could be done and scared them into signing the 1987 treaty banning intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
But it has been established that George W. Bush is no Ronald Reagan.
Such a push by a Bush administration would prompt the Russians to abrogate the START II nuclear arms reduction treaty and abandon all consideration of the deeper cuts in warheads under a proposed START III. And the United States and Russia could find themselves frozen into another Cold War, with the madness referred to as mutually assured destruction as the only deterrent.
The Russians, of course, don't want that. They want to downsize to the 1,500 warheads limit proposed for START III because maintaining their current nuclear missiles arsenal is too heavy a drain on their economy.
Therefore, there is a strong possibility that, despite their protestations to the contrary, Russia will reach an agreement with the Clinton administration to modify the ABM treaty to allow the United States to deploy a limited nuclear shield.
Lott and Helms, however, say that any agreement limiting the extent of the defensive system that the United States can deploy will be dead on arrival in the Senate. But that could be an empty threat because once hawks in the Senate take the public pulse, they will find that Americans don't want a return to the Cold War.
---
Many fear missile defense may backfire
Experts say national system could leave U.S. more vulnerable
Detroit News
05/09/00
By Tyler Marshall / Los Angeles Times
http://detnews.com/2000/nation/0005/09/a09-51926.htm
WASHINGTON -- A growing number of arms control and national security specialists is concerned that the unilateral deployment of a national missile defense system would carry political and security costs so great that it would leave the United States more vulnerable to external attack.
Unless accompanied by a concerted global diplomatic offensive and the successful renegotiation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, these experts fear, deployment would seriously damage relations with Moscow and Beijing and strain ties with America's European allies.
Some arms control specialists contend that recently disclosed details of the Clinton administration's efforts to renegotiate the ABM Treaty indicate that, even if Washington reaches agreement with Moscow, America's security still could be sharply diminished.
Those details, published by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, reveal that the United States has encouraged Russia to keep its entire strategic nuclear force of about 3,000 missiles on hair-trigger alert as a way to reduce Moscow's anxiety about a U.S. missile defense system. The U.S. system, however, would be designed to counter no more than a small fraction of Russia's arsenal.
"Deployment will make the country less secure, not more secure," said Joseph Cirincioni, an arms control specialist with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
"The (political and security) costs of deploying a missile defense system unilaterally are extremely heavy and have to be paid for up front, while the possible military benefits require the better part of a decade to appear."
For politicians of both parties -- eager to demonstrate their determination to defend America against new threats -- it hardly seems to matter that scientists and arms control specialists remain deeply divided on the fundamental question of whether an land-based or sea-based system might actually work.
Concerns that a national missile defense system actually could reduce the nation's overall security are based largely on possible countermeasures that might be taken by other major powers.
At risk with Russia, those who express these concerns say, is the prospect of thousands of missiles on high alert and continuation of large and successful joint U.S.-Russia programs to contain nuclear proliferation.
"It's not something to mess with," said Michael O'Hanlin, a security specialist at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
O'Hanlin said he supports the idea of missile defense but is concerned about the potential political side effects.
Analysts see deployment triggering an equally unsettling set of problems with China, which is arguably more affected by a limited missile defense than Russia because it has so few long-range missiles of its own.
They say that Beijing probably would feel compelled to quickly expand its arsenal of about 20 long-range missiles and possibly upgrade them with multiple warheads.
They point to the likelihood that Moscow and Beijing would develop relatively cheap countermeasures, such as decoys, that they could then sell to the very countries America is most worried about, such as Iraq or North Korea.
"It's a great threat-creation project," said Daniel Plesch, director of the British-American Security Information Council.
Europeans worry that an America protected by a missile defense system would effectively be the first step in the gradual uncoupling of their half-century trans-Atlantic alliance with the United States.
"If the decision (on development) is taken without agreement with Russia and without help from European leaders, it will be very badly taken," Javier Solana, the European Union's de facto foreign minister, said last week.
---
Albright Says Clinton Will Approach Putin With Open Mind on Missile Defenses
Fox News
May 9, 2000
By BARRY SCHWEID Associated Press
http://www.foxnews.com/world/050900/russia_usarms.sml
President Clinton will go to Moscow in June with an open mind on missile defenses and determined not to set off another nuclear arms race, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says.
Clinton is responsible for protecting the United States from new missile threats and will weigh a missile defense along with "whatever other means there are to protect the territory of this country," Albright said Monday.
"The president has not made the decision to deploy" and he will not be pressured by "artificial deadlines," Albright told publishers at the annual meeting of The Associated Press.
In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to declare his opposition to even the limited missile defense Clinton is considering. Albright said arms control would be on the agenda, along with Russia's economic program and its campaign against secessionists in Chechnya.
"They know each other," Albright said, recalling Clinton and Putin had met twice before. "They don't need to get acquainted. They are going to be working on a comprehensive agenda."
Ranging over foreign policy issues, and security lapses at the State Department, Albright described herself and all employees as "humiliated" that three laptop computers, one of them used for classified material, had vanished and that a listening device was discovered implanted in a conference room.
"I think many of you will probably understand the difficulties of control in this technological era," she said. "But we are really putting the clamps down."
On Bosnia, Albright confessed error by the administration in saying initially that U.S. peacekeeping troops would be able to go home in a year's time.
"We are now looking for a variety of benchmarks in the establishment of this civil society there in order to be able to make the decision to leave," she said.
However, Albright offered no new date for the departure of the U.S. troops.
In weighing a missile defense program, one that would use 100 launchers and new radar to defend against what Albright said is a threat from North Korea and Iran, Clinton faces criticism on all sides.
Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has vowed to block any new arms control agreement, saying that Clinton, with eight months left in office, should not be hemming in his successor.
George W. Bush, the likely Republican presidential candidate, and some other conservative Republicans favor a heftier and more costly missile defense system.
Rather than try to persuade Putin to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which prohibits national defenses against missiles, many would simply junk the accord.
On the other hand, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the European Unions' chief foreign policy official, Javier Solana, and several allied governments question the wisdom of even a limited missile defense. "This is a national decision with very strong international impact, not only for Germany but also for Europe," German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said Monday in Washington on meeting with Albright.
She told the publishers here at a luncheon that Clinton would weigh potential threats as well as the merits of the technology and costs in deciding later in the year whether to go ahead with an anti-missile program.
And, she said, Clinton will consider a fourth criterion: "What it actually does to arms control — how it affects various arms control regimes."
---
Titan 4 Rocket Launches Missile-Warning Satellite
Fox News
05/09/00
http://www.foxnews.com/science/050900/rocket.sml
The United States' most powerful unmanned rocket carried a $250-million missile-warning satellite into orbit on Monday.
The Air Force launched the critically needed defense warning satellite after three consecutive failures
The $432-million, 20-story U.S. Air Force Titan 4B rocket, built by Lockheed Martin (LMT.N), lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 12:01 p.m. EDT (1601 GMT).
Liftoff was delayed for 2-1/2 hours as launch crews struggled to close a door on the side of the rocket. Communications trouble with a tracking station added to the delay.
Air Force launch managers declared the mission a success about seven hours later when the satellite reached its perch 19,320 miles (30,912 km) above the equator.
"Everything has worked and the satellite is in the right orbit," Air Force spokesman Col. Tony Cherney said.
It was welcome news for the Air Force's Titan 4 rocket program. Three of its last four missions have ended in failure, including a spectacular midair explosion above Cape Canaveral in August 1998.
"It's a great boost for us here at the Cape to successfully place an operational satellite on orbit," Air Force Launch Director, Lt. Col. Tony Goins said in a statement.
The Defense Support Program missile-warning satellite launched on Monday will be able to detect and pinpoint missile launches and nuclear detonations. The craft was built by TRW Inc.
A botched Titan launch last April stranded a similar satellite in the wrong orbit.
---
Titan Rocket and Satellite Launched by Air Force
New York Times
May 9, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/050900sci-nasa-titan.html
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The Air Force today launched a critically needed defense warning satellite after three consecutive failures of the troubled Titan rocket
"It's got to be the most beautiful sight I've seen in 16 years in this business," said Maj. Todd Ganger, deputy chief for missile warnings at the United States Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo.
The Air Force and the contractors Lockheed Martin and Boeing were harshly criticized by Congress after $3 billion in rocket losses, including a Milstar military communications satellite, a spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office and a previous Defense Support Program satellite.
If all continues to go well, the $250 million Defense Support Program satellite the rocket is carrying will enter orbit and begin functioning in about 30 days. The satellite is lined with more than 6,000 small infrared sensors used to provide beyond-the-horizon detection of missile launches and nuclear detonations.
The 2 1/2-ton satellite is the 20th in the system series, with three more scheduled annually until a new system is introduced in 2004.
The 19th D.S.P. satellite was stranded in a useless orbit after a Titan launching on April 9, 1999. Other Titan failures occurred on April 30, 1999, and on Aug. 12, 1998.
The first D.S.P. satellite was launched in November 1970, and the last was successfully deployed in February 1997.
---
New missile plan is both good news and bad news
Register Editorial Alabama Live
May 09, 2000
http://www.al.com/news/mobile/May2000/2-a355596a.html
There is much to commend, but also much about which to complain, in a new proposal the Clinton administration has made to Russia concerning the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
The Clinton plan would allow deployment of a defense system against limited missile attacks, of the kind rogue nations such as Iraq or North Korea might launch, but not one big enough to defend against the huge multi-missile launches of which Russia is capable. It would thus, in the proposal's own words, "be incapable of threatening Russia's strategic defenses."
The ABM Treaty of 1972 outlaws deployment and most testing of any defensive system to destroy incoming missiles. It was the linchpin of the old arms control doctrine known as MAD (for Mutually Assured Destruction) that held sway in both countries for the final two decades of the Cold War.
Space & technology news
Defensive systems were seen as dangerous because the side without one might fear that the other side, feeling invulnerable because of its own defensive shield, could launch a devastating first strike. Conversely, if distrust were high enough, then the side without the technology might itself be moved to launch a nuclear strike before the technologically advanced side had fully deployed its system, reasoning that its last chance to "win" a war would end when the opponent's missile shield was operational.
When President Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative in the early 1980s, he suggested that the United States share its purely defensive technology with the Soviet Union so that both sides could feel safe, thus replacing the MAD doctrine with one of Mutually Assured Survival. President Reagan's suggestion made perfect sense, which is perhaps why it was rejected by the perfectly insensible leaders of the old Soviet commu- ănist state.
For years, Democratic leaders in this country have parroted the old MAD line that a missile defense would be destabilizing. Even when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the Democrats insisted that the ABM Treaty should be maintained.
Their position is illogical. The Soviet Union no longer exists. If one of the parties to a treaty no longer exists, how can the treaty itself survive? After all, when Fidel Castro took over Cuba from Fulgencio Battista in 1959, none of Battista's treaty agreements were seen as binding on Cuba or the other signatories. So why should the ABM treaty still bind the United States?
Morally, too, missile defense is a winner. After all, what could be more moral than a system that can save human lives but not kill a single person?
That's why the Clinton proposal is both encouraging and discouraging. It is encouraging because it indicates that a Democratic administration finally has accepted the underlying morality, and desirability, of missile defenses. And on a practical level, what it has proposed should be acceptable to Russia, because by defending only against rogue nations, the limited missile defense system should pose no threat to Russian interests.
What's discouraging is that by putting forth this proposal as an amendment to the ABM Treaty, the administration reinforces the farcical position that the ABM Treaty is still binding on the United States. There's a danger in giving Russia an effective veto over a system that can save American lives.
In short, these negotiations ought to be watched closely. They hold much promise, but also pitfalls aplenty.
---
Ballistic missile peril lurks, experts claim
Birmingham News
05/08/2000
KENT FAULK News staff writer
http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/May2000/8-e384325b.html
HUNTSVILLE - While some groups have questioned the need for a national missile defense system, a number of defense and national security officials say the threat of a ballistic missile attack is real and growing.
Robert D. Walpole, national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs at the Central Intelligence Agency, laid out the threat for a group of reporters gathered in Huntsville last week.
The United States most likely will face long-range missile threats involving nuclear, chemical or biological weapons from Russia, China, North Korea, probably Iran and possibly Iraq between now and 2015, Walpole said, citing a report he authored last fall.
Huntsville team works on missile shield Space & technology news
Smaller countries such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq, however, probably view long range missiles as diplomatic tools, Walpole said. "These missiles are more valuable as threat weapons ... It would be a last act of a desperate" regime to use them, he said.
Walpole said the United States probably faces a more immediate and simpler threat. Other countries or terrorists could enter the country and set off a chemical or biological weapon or fire a cruise missile - which is not as technologically challenging to make - from a ship off shore, he said.
Lt. Gen. John Costello, commander of the Army's Space and Missile Defense Command, said discussions are under way to begin development of a national cruise missile defense system.
The biggest stumbling block to a missile defense system may be persuading Russia and U.S. allies that the United States' real motive in building such a system isn't to make itself invisible.
The United States wants Russia to modify the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which bars either country from developing nationwide missile defense systems.
President Clinton plans to attend a summit in Moscow next month to try to renegotiate the treaty. Some Russian officials have threatened to walk away from future arms-reduction talks if the United States builds the system.
Both of Alabama's senators say the nation must push ahead to build the system, even if Russia won't modify the treaty.
"The security of the nation should not depend solely upon our ability to negotiate treaties or to conduct reconnaissance," said U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R Ala., chairman of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelli gence.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said that while he supports the president's efforts to work through Russian objections, the treaty was made with the defunct Soviet Union. "We can't allow a treaty with a dead nation to stop us from protecting ourselves against rogue nations who can threaten us with missile attacks," he said.
Meanwhile Chinese officials also are concerned the system is being built to ward off an attack from their country.
The 100 interceptors planned for the initial national missile defense system could protect the United States against about 20 to 25 missiles. China has an estimated 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles in its arsenal.
Keith Englander, Deputy for System Integration at the National Missile Defense Joint Program Office in Washington, said that because North Korea is a neighbor of China, the system could have some "residual" effect in protecting against any missiles fired by China.
Despite the controversy, the military and its contractors are pushing ahead as if the system is going to be built.
"We're trying to stay out of the political debate and do the job," Costello said.
---
THE IDEAS INDUSTRY
Global In-Crowd Headlines Economic Forum
Washington Post
Tuesday, May 9, 2000; Page A29
By Richard Morin and Claudia Deane
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/09/055l-050900-idx.html
STIMSON CENTER, TOO: Ditto at the Henry L. Stimson Center, where founding president Michael Krepon has announced he is stepping down. "After 10 years as president and chief executive officer, program director, fundraiser, editor, and occasional bottle washer, the time has come for me to pass the baton," Krepon wrote in the center's spring newsletter. "I have an enormous sense of pride in Stimson's creation and development, but that should not be confused with a sense of ownership." He plans to stay with the center, researching nuclear issues and South Asia policy.
---
Albright: Clinton Open About Putin
By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer
Tuesday May 9 1:44 AM ET
NEW YORK (AP) - President Clinton will go to Moscow in June with an open mind on missile defenses and determined not to set off another nuclear arms race, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says.
Clinton is responsible for protecting the United States from new missile threats and will weigh a missile defense along with ``whatever other means there are to protect the territory of this country,'' Albright said Monday.
``The president has not made the decision to deploy'' and he will not be pressured by ``artificial deadlines,'' Albright told publishers at the annual meeting of The Associated Press.
In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to declare his opposition to even the limited missile defense Clinton is considering. Albright said arms control would be on the agenda, along with Russia's economic program and its campaign against secessionists in Chechnya.
``They know each other,'' Albright said, recalling Clinton and Putin had met twice before. ``They don't need to get acquainted. They are going to be working on a comprehensive agenda.''
Ranging over foreign policy issues, and security lapses at the State Department, Albright described herself and all employees as ``humiliated'' that three laptop computers, one of them used for classified material, had vanished and that a listening device was discovered implanted in a conference room.
``I think many of you will probably understand the difficulties of control in this technological era,'' she said. ``But we are really putting the clamps down.''
On Bosnia, Albright confessed error by the administration in saying initially that U.S. peacekeeping troops would be able to go home in a year's time.
``We are now looking for a variety of benchmarks in the establishment of this civil society there in order to be able to make the decision to leave,'' she said.
However, Albright offered no new date for the departure of the U.S. troops.
In weighing a missile defense program, one that would use 100 launchers and new radar to defend against what Albright said is a threat from North Korea and Iran, Clinton faces criticism on all sides.
Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has vowed to block any new arms control agreement, saying that Clinton, with eight months left in office, should not be hemming in his successor.
George W. Bush, the likely Republican presidential candidate, and some other conservative Republicans favor a heftier and more costly missile defense system.
Rather than try to persuade Putin to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which prohibits national defenses against missiles, many would simply junk the accord.
On the other hand, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the European Unions' chief foreign policy official, Javier Solana, and several allied governments question the wisdom of even a limited missile defense.
``This is a national decision with very strong international impact, not only for Germany but also for Europe,'' German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said Monday in Washington on meeting with Albright.
She told the publishers here at a luncheon that Clinton would weigh potential threats as well as the merits of the technology and costs in deciding later in the year whether to go ahead with an anti-missile program.
And, she said, Clinton will consider a fourth criterion: ``What it actually does to arms control - how it affects various arms control regimes.''
-------- us politics
Bush, McCain to Meet Today
Endorsement Could Result From First Talks Between Primary Rivals
Washington Post
Tuesday, May 9, 2000; Page A06
By Dan Balz Washington Post Staff Writer
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/09/060l-050900-idx.html
PITTSBURGH, May 8-Two months after their bruising fight for the Republican presidential nomination abruptly ended, George W. Bush and John McCain finally will meet face to face here Tuesday morning with the door suddenly open to an immediate endorsement of the Texas governor by the Arizona senator.
McCain advisers had insisted that it was unlikely the meeting would result in an endorsement of Bush, but began to soften their tone tonight. One McCain aide said no final decision had been made, while another aide said there was a growing chance that a Tuesday endorsement would happen.
"To me, it's not a huge deal either way," McCain said tonight of the prospects for an immediate endorsement. "Everybody knows I will support him. Everybody knows I want to beat Al Gore. . . . But my first priority is the reform agenda." McCain said he believes the meeting has been blown far out of proportion and said, "I would not like to do this again."
There was, however, no sign of softening in McCain's long-stated opposition to being considered for the vice presidential nomination.
Asked whether there was anything Bush could say to change his mind regarding the number two spot, McCain said, "Nothing that I can imagine." The meeting is seen as a critical encounter for the two Republicans as they attempt to get past their contentious primary fight and rekindle a personal relationship that turned sour last winter.
Although McCain has been clear that he intends to support Bush, he has been slow to muster real enthusiasm for the assignment. For that reason, party strategists say each man has much to gain from the meeting--and something to lose if it goes badly. "It can be lose-lose if they're not careful," said one GOP strategist.
Bush needs McCain's spirited help in the general election against Vice President Gore, particularly to undermine Gore on the issue of campaign finance reform. But Bush cannot appear overly eager in seeking McCain's endorsement, as 1988 Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis was in pursuing a reluctant Jesse L. Jackson that year.
McCain, who could be a presidential candidate again in 2004 if Bush loses, must reach out to the Republican rank-and-file, his weakest constituency in the primaries, by demonstrating his loyalty to the nominee. But he must avoid losing his own supporters by appearing to have abandoned the principles on which he ran for president.
"McCain can't look like he sold out or got bought off," another GOP strategist said. "Bush can't look like he's weak or can get pushed around."
Advisers to both men say the communications leading up to Tuesday's meeting have been positive, and McCain said he comes to the meeting with no demands.
Speaking to reporters at a book signing in a Pittsburgh-area mall tonight, McCain said, "I am not seeking negotiations nor making any demands." The senator said he and Bush would talk about a variety of issues. "I am sure we will be able to reach some understandings and already we agree on more issues of reform than we disagree."
Earlier today, Bush told reporters that he is "confident we'll have a conversation that will cover a lot of subjects, none more important than reform, reform of our Social Security system."
He played down any expectation that McCain would endorse him, saying, "I think that whether we have an endorsement tomorrow or not is really not what's important. What's important is to sit down and visit. He has said over and over that he's going to support me as the nominee of the Republican Party, and I take him at his word."
Bush and McCain will meet alone, with no aides present. "It's time for the intermediaries and advisers to move out of the way and the two men to sit down face to face and have their discussion about issues that really matter," said John Weaver, a top McCain adviser who has been speaking regularly with Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh.
"The ultimate goal is to win the White House," Allbaugh said. "This meeting is another step in that direction. They both share a basic conservative philosophy and a strong commitment to electing a Republican president this year. So big picture, this is going to be an encouraging meeting."
Hard feelings about the primaries still exist within both campaigns, however, and the tenuous relationship between Bush and McCain was evident 10 days ago when the Arizona senator, angry over a report that the Bush camp viewed the meeting with minimal enthusiasm, briefly threatened to scrub it.
Both candidates hope to keep the focus on the future, not the past, and are unlikely to spend time replaying the primaries, particularly their bitter contest in South Carolina, which Bush won. Some of Bush's tactics during that battle still rankle McCain.
Bush in particular hopes the meeting will focus attention on areas where they agree, beginning with their mutual dislike of Gore. But the two rivals remain at odds over campaign finance reform, a central theme of McCain's presidential campaign, and over Bush's tax cut, which McCain believes will not leave enough money in the budget to reform Social Security.
Some Republicans say it may be more important for Bush and McCain to admit their disagreement on some issues, in part to preserve McCain's reputation for straight talk. "McCain's highest and best use is to wear out Al Gore as a hypocrite and phony," one Republican friend of Bush's said. "Why would George Bush do anything to reduce the credibility of McCain when McCain is the nuclear weapon against Gore?"
McCain comes to the meeting under criticism that he is having trouble getting over his candidacy for president. Advisers say he is conscious of that criticism but also reluctant to abandon the cadre of voters who supported him or the causes that motivated them. "He doesn't carry those votes in his hip pocket that he can hand over," Weaver said. "He needs to be able to tell them there is room for genuine reform in a Bush agenda, and the Bush campaign has to make some effort to embrace some elements of that reform agenda to attract those voters."
But one GOP strategist said McCain dares not overplay his hand by appearing to be unwilling to genuinely embrace Bush. "There are some strains between John and core parts of our party," the strategist said. "John wants to be careful not to exacerbate those strains." Said another strategist: "This has dragged on long enough. It's no longer in McCain's best interest to let it drag on."
Democratic pollster Peter Hart said McCain's constituency is "a perfect profile of the swing voters in this election." But on the basis of a recent poll he and Republican Robert Teeter conducted for NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, Hart said a McCain endorsement of Bush will not by itself deliver those voters to the GOP nominee.
"These people are not simply going to look and say who did John McCain anoint," he said. "They're going to look and see what these individuals stand for and what they're going to do. For now both men have a ton of work to do to secure their vote."
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THE AD CAMPAIGN
Portraying Bush as a Pawn of the N.R.A.
New York Times
May 9, 2000
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/050900wh-bush-ad.1v.ram.html
Video
Handgun Control Inc. Advertisement (Credit: ABCNEWS.com)
http://play.rbn.com/?url=abcnews/abcnews/g2demand/politicalpoints/000504gunads.rm
Handgun Control Inc., the gun control advocacy group, has begun running this 30-second advertisement in seven cities, including Austin, Tex.; Columbus, Ohio; Lansing, Mich.; Sacramento and Washington. The group says it is spending several thousand dollars to buy air time, but Republican officials assert that the amount is closer to $100,000.
PRODUCER MacWilliams, Cosgrove, Smith, Robinson of Washington.
ON THE SCREEN A still photo of Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, closing in tightly on his left eye. Cut to a shot in which a man is shown tucking a large silver pistol under his belt buckle. Scenes of a rustic church and children riding on a carousel dramatically break apart, like a smashed mirror, to reveal a grainy video clip of Kayne Robinson, first vice president of the National Rifle Association, talking emphatically to an audience of N.R.A. members. Concludes with a shot of the White House.
THE SCRIPT Male announcer: "George Bush says if you want to know what he'll do as president, take a look at his record." Female announcer: "As governor of Texas, Bush signed the law that allows carrying concealed handguns for the first time in 125 years." Male announcer: "And he signed the law that allows carrying those concealed handguns in churches, nursing homes, even amusement parks." Female announcer: "No wonder the N.R.A. says": (voice of Mr. Robinson) "If we win, we'll have a president" (here Mr. Robinson's words are spliced to bring two sentence fragments together) "where we work out of their office." Female announcer: "Tell Governor Bush: The White House is our house." Male announcer: "And it shouldn't belong to the N.R.A."
ACCURACY It is true that Mr. Bush has often sided with the National Rifle Association in legislative battles in his more than five years as governor. Over the objections of gun control advocates, he signed legislation allowing people to carry concealed handguns, allowing handguns to be taken into churches and prohibiting local governments from suing gun manufacturers. The N.R.A.'s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, also recently helped raise at least $250,000 at a major Republican Party fund-raiser honoring Mr. Bush. But Mr. Bush has at times tried to distance himself from the organization, by supporting mandatory trigger locks for new handguns and criticizing Mr. LaPierre for asserting that President Clinton had tolerated a certain level of gun violence for political reasons.
SCORECARD By trying to depict Mr. Bush as a pawn of the N.R.A., the advertisement seeks to make him seem like an extremist on gun control issues, because the N.R.A. is widely perceived as intransigently opposed to any restrictions on gun ownership. Also, it suggests that the governor is not his own man, that he is beholden to powerful right-wing interest groups. The advertisement is not being shown widely enough to affect many voters directly, but Handgun Control is clearly hoping that journalists in Washington and Texas will use it to write critical stories about Mr. Bush. The group is also running the spot in several cities with hotly contested Congressional races in which gun control may become an important issue, including Lansing and Columbus.
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THE ARIZONA SENATOR Bush and McCain to Talk and Audience Is Eager
New York Times
May 9, 2000
By PETER MARKS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/050900wh-bush-mccain.html
PITTSBURGH, May 8 -- Will they embrace as friends or briskly shake hands as embittered adversaries? Will the cameras record smiles of warmth, or ice? Will the loser deliver a qualified pledge of support for the winner, offer more lavish words of praise or perhaps utter the e-word?
If politics is often about appearances, the eagerly anticipated meeting here on Tuesday between Gov. George W. Bush of Texas and Senator John McCain of Arizona is being scrutinized by political observers and reporters as closely as Egyptologists might pore over the hieroglyphics.
In their first meeting since Mr. Bush trounced Mr. McCain in the primaries on March 7, the governor and senator are getting together at Mr. Bush's invitation for private fence-mending, public picture-taking and the expectation in the Bush camp that Mr. McCain would eventually make some kind of endorsement.
That announcement could come after the meeting, aides to Mr. McCain said today.
"It may or may not happen," John Weaver, McCain's political director, said.
"No decision formally has been made; that's the point of the meeting."
So obsessed is the political world with how the two men get along and so starved is the national press corps for substantive campaign news that the event has taken on the proportions of a miniature summit or, a "monster unity meeting," as Sam Donaldson labeled it on the Sunday morning talk show of which he is a co-host.
By a Bush campaign estimate, 120 journalists had inquired about attending the news conference. Analysts have talked like color commentators about watching Mr. McCain's body language.
"It's a test of leadership for Bush," said Tom Hannon, who oversees coverage of politics for CNN. "In that sense, it's a purely political story; it has much to do with Bush's facility for handling it and how he handles the whole nomination process."
It is also, of course, a reflection of Mr. McCain's durable stardom, of how his moods, inclinations and peeves still carry remarkable weight. (Just last month, NBC News and a bevy of heavy-duty political writers were off with him to Vietnam.)
"Politics is about ideas and strategy and tactics, but it is also about personality," said Mark Halperin, the political director of ABC News. "It's extraordinary for a vanquished primary candidate to have this much perceived influence."
When Mr. McCain showed up at Waldenbooks in a shopping mall in suburban Pittsburgh today, the reporters and camera crews were so thick that it felt as if he were back in Nashua or Concord in the days before the New Hampshire primary.
Mr. McCain's performance at the signing of copies of his autobiography showed how much he still enjoyed the attention. At a news conference, the senator dropped hints that he might yet endorse Mr. Bush on Tuesday: when asked if that was a possibility, Mr. McCain said, "Sure."
"Endorse" is the word Mr. Bush dearly wants Mr. McCain to utter when they emerge from their morning meeting at the William Penn Hotel here.
And as if to keep Mr. Bush in suspense, Mr. McCain was quoted in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette this morning as ruling out an endorsement for the time being. He told the paper that he wanted a clearer understanding of the governor's claim to be "a reformer with results."
"That's his slogan," Mr. McCain said. "I'd like to know what those are and how I can be helpful in achieving a reform agenda."
Supporters of Mr. McCain said the senator would almost certainly endorse Mr. Bush, if not today, sometime soon.
Representative Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and confidant of Mr. McCain, said the two staffs should be able to meet after Tuesday's meeting and "hone a common reform agenda" on issues the candidates agree on like the patient's bill of rights and tort reform.
As for Mr. McCain's signature issue, campaign finance reform, "that may be the one where we agree to disagree," Mr. Graham added.
But first, hurt feelings must be purged. In fact, in discussing the mending of the wounded egos on both sides -- Mr. McCain is still smarting over the governor's attack ads and Mr. Bush is said to remain miffed at the senator's resistance to come in from the cold -- Mr. Graham sounded more like a radio psychiatrist.
"Tuesday is vitally important for the human interaction," Mr. Graham said. "Some time alone, away from spin doctors and political operatives, some time to sit down and look at each other and say the things that human beings can say will do more than anything else to heal."
Mr. Bush seemed to acknowledge the need for catharsis. Speaking to reporters at La Guardia Airport in New York before attending the funeral of Cardinal John J. O'Connor, the governor said that he was "looking forward" to talking to Mr. McCain.
"I think that whether we have an endorsement tomorrow or not is really not what's important," he said. "What's important is to sit down and visit. He has said over and over that he will support me as the nominee of the Republican Party. I take him for his word."
Reporters also said they will be looking for subtle signals of how the two men, who early in the primary campaign went out of their way to praise each other and profess their strong friendship, comport themselves after their meeting.
"Probably the most important thing will be body language and tone," said Mr. Halperin said. "All eyes and camera lenses will be on the question of, does McCain act as if George Bush is his leader, or does he act like the independent maverick, unhappy with the way things have turned out?"
It is far from customary for a vanquished contender for president to withhold formal support for this long. This year, for instance, former Senator Bill Bradley endorsed Vice President Al Gore within 48 hours of losing every state on March 7.
The Democrats said they are getting a kick out of the hoops that Mr. Bush appeared to be going through to win over Mr. McCain.
"It's part of the Bob Jones University Redemption Tour," said Joe Andrew, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, referring to Mr. Bush's efforts to distance himself from the Christian conservatives he wooed during the primaries. Mr. Andrew will hold a news conference here on Tuesday with senior citizens from across Pennsylvania, to point up discrepancies in Mr. Bush's and Mr. McCain's proposals regarding Social Security.
Of course, the question of whether an endorsement by a member of one's own party is meaningful to anyone but the candidate and the people paid to write and talk about it remains an open one. To Senator Arlen Specter, a Republican whose home state is host to the meeting, the issue may be settled a lot more easily than a lot of people think: "It's for Governor Bush to say, "I'd like to have your support.' "
After all, Mr. Specter said, he hasn't made an endorsement, either. "When McCain and Bush were in it together, I thought it was the better part of valor to stay out of it," he explained. Since then, he added, "Nobody's asked me."
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Bush, McCain to huddle on future of GOP ticket
Washington Times
May 9, 2000
By Dave Boyer THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-2000592304.htm
Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Arizona Sen. John McCain will meet at a Pittsburgh hotel amid lingering tension this morning in their first face-to-face encounter since Mr. Bush won the bitter Republican presidential primary.
Mr. Bush arrived in Pittsburgh last night saying he still intends to ask Mr. McCain if he's interested in the vice presidency. But Mr. McCain is just as insistent that he doesn't want to be Mr. Bush's running mate.
Mr. McCain has said he will give Mr. Bush a "strong endorsement." Yet he also suggested that he wants to use today's talk to hold Mr. Bush accountable for his campaign claim to be a more effective reformer than Mr. McCain.
"He's said he's a reformer with results," Mr. McCain told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "That's his slogan. I'd like to know what those are and how I can be helpful in achieving a reform agenda."
Mr. McCain said today's private meeting, set for 8 a.m., will help determine how enthusiastically he supports the Bush campaign. He said he intends to discuss Social Security and Medicare availability for baby boomers, better conditions for the military, education, health care and campaign-finance reform.
For Mr. Bush, the meeting presents different challenges. Some Republicans are eager to keep Mr. McCain involved in the campaign, given his popularity in the primaries among some Democrats and independents.
Mr. Bush "has talked about reaching out and bringing people together, and that includes vanquished foes," said Republican pollster Whit Ayres. "It's 'Politics 101.' Unified parties are more formidable in the general election than divided parties."
But others in the GOP, mindful of Mr. McCain's attack on Christian conservatives on the eve of Virginia's primary and his equivocal statements on abortion, are urging Mr. Bush to distance himself from the senator. Christian Coalition leader Pat Robertson said Sunday that Mr. Bush should choose a running mate who is a "balanced leader," a swipe at Mr. McCain's temper.
Mr. Bush said yesterday of the meeting with Mr. McCain: "I look forward to talking to John about education and campaign-funding reform," he added. "I don't anticipate any changes on his part or my part, but there's a lot of area for us on which to agree and I look forward to having that discussion."
As the two camps prepared for the meeting, Democrats posted a reminder on the Democratic National Committee's Web site of one particularly nasty episode in the Republican campaign.
Prior to the pivotal South Carolina primary in February, Mr. Bush appeared at a campaign stop where supporters criticized Mr. McCain for betraying Vietnam veterans. Mr. McCain, an ex-Navy pilot, spent 5 and 1/2 years in a Hanoi prison during the war.
The DNC reminded people that the day after Mr. Bush defeated him in South Carolina, Mr. McCain called the event "one of the more disgraceful chapters in this campaign."
"Governor Bush did not repudiate that," Mr. McCain said at the time. "That's shameful."
Another rift developed between the two men in Michigan, where the McCain campaign reminded voters that Mr. Bush had spoken in February at Bob Jones University, an institution that has been accused of an anti-Catholic bias. Mr. Bush complained angrily that Mr. McCain was smearing him as a religious bigot.
Mr. McCain said those moments are behind them.
"There is no point in me looking back in rancor or anger or bitterness in the campaign," Mr. McCain told the Post-Gazette. "It's over. There are more things that we agree on than we disagree on, and I believe he would be a good president of the United States."
The senator has suggested retired Gen. Colin Powell as Mr. Bush's running mate and has not ruled out serving in Mr. Bush's Cabinet, possibly as secretary of defense.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
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Despite Differences, McCain Endorses Bush
New York Times
May 9, 2000
By FRANK BRUNI with DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/09cnd-bush-mccain.html
PITTSBURGH, May 9 -- With cool formality and a public handshake, Senator John McCain today endorsed his former rival, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, for the Republican presidential nomination and said he looked forward to campaigning for him.
"I endorse Governor Bush," Mr. McCain said several times, though it took him a few minutes to use the verb "endorse."
Before saying definitively that he endorsed Mr. Bush, Mr. McCain said he anticipated "enthusiastically campaigning" for him. But to no one's surprise, the Arizona senator said he was not interested in being Mr. Bush's vice-presidential running mate.
With Mr. McCain's pronouncement that he did indeed "endorse" his erstwhile bitter adversary, Mr. Bush said, "By the way, I enthusiastically accept."
Two months after the end of their primary battle, the two politicians smiled at each other more with their teeth than their eyes. And after formally endorsing the presumptive Republican nominee, Mr. McCain turned aside chances to inject more warmth into the situation.
At one point, Mr. McCain was asked whether his endorsement should be likened to "taking his medicine."
"I think your 'take the medicine now' is probably a good description," Mr. McCain replied.
And did he harbor any lingering resentment toward Mr. Bush from the sometimes nasty back-and-forth of the campaign season? "In politics, you should look forward," Mr. McCain answered.
And endorsement notwithstanding, Mr. McCain said he would continue to work for issues he believed in -- most notably campaign-finance reform. Long disdainful of what he sees as the corrupting influence of big money in politics, Mr. McCain had cast his campaign against Governor Bush as a grassroots drive against a well-heeled, free-spending candidate. Mr. Bush entered the presidential battle with a huge treasury.
Mr. Bush did his best to be conciliatory at today's news conference in a downtown hotel. "I told him point blank he made me a better candidate," Mr. Bush said. "He put me through my paces, and as a result of the campaign, I stand better prepared to become the president."
There were rumors that Mr. McCain was furious when word got out in advance that he was planning to endorse Mr. Bush. Before the two appeared together today, they spoke in private for some 90 minutes.
Mr. McCain suggested several possible running mates for Mr. Bush: Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania, Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee, Gov. Tommy G. Thompson of Wisconsin, among others.
The lukewarm air of today's endorsement may not mean much in the long run. The history of politics is full of episodes in which people who didn't like each other very much still campaigned for them in the name of party loyalty, or even basic principles.
"I believe it is very important that we restore integrity to the White House," Mr. McCain said today.
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