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Key Article: Deal Reached on Nuclear Arsenals
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Today in History
Associated Press
May 20, 2000 Filed at 8:00 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-History.html
In 1956, the United States exploded the first airborne hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.
In 1968, the nuclear-powered U.S. submarine Scorpion, with 99 men aboard, was last heard from. (The remains of the sub were later found on the ocean floor 400 miles southwest of the Azores.)
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-------- activists
BASIC have put up an unofficial version of the final text of the NPT on their website at www.basicint.org.
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Message from Kobe - For peace and solidarity
May, 2000, Shushi Kajimoto, General Secretary,
HYOGO COUNCIL AGAINST A & H BOMBS (HYOGO GENSUIKYO)
http://prop1.org/2000/000510jp.gensuikyo.htm
... As you may already know, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan and the U.S. Consul General to Osaka have repeatedly stated that they want Kobe to allow U.S. warships to enter its port. And just a couple of days after our meeting, the U.S. Navy chief, who was visiting Japan, raised this very question during talks with Japan's Defense Agency Director General. The Japanese Constitution gives a high degree of local autonomy to local governments, and any local government, without exception, is authorized to decide about local matters and control of its civil ports. How dare the U.S. interfere in Kobe's affairs and invade its local autonomy!
Recently revealed are US-Japan secret agreements on the entry into Japan of nuclear weapons. These agreements state that the port calls, or "transit", of the US warships carrying nuclear weapons are not defined as "entry" of nuclear weapons. The Japanese Government has deceived us for almost 40 years. Since the signing of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, we have been told that the three non-nuclear principles are Japan's national policy. That is, not to possess, not to produce and not to allow entry of nuclear weapons into Japan. It is obvious that the nuclear-free "Kobe Formula", which does not allow any warships to enter the port without producing non-nuclear certification. is now the only way to stop the entry of nuclear weapons into Japan.
In Japan, the general election is expected to be held soon. We will show our disapproval to the present Government which has not taken seriously nuclear weapons abolition and has ignored the entry of nuclear weapons into Japan against the wishes of the majority of the Japanese people. We will also work for nuclear-free Japan, and fight against the direct attempt to break the nuclear-free "Kobe Formula" by the U.S.
I will be attending the NGO Millennium Forum for UN General Secretary to hear NGOs' opinions in May, as one of the representatives of Japan Gensuikyo (Japan Council Against A & H Bombs), and I'd like to tell the people of the U.S, and the Governments of the world about our struggle and activities to keep Kobe nuclear-free.
Friends, I am hoping to see you at the World Conference against A & H Bombs in August this year. Our struggle and solidarity for a nuclear-free world shall be developed and strengthened further.
Again, thank you very much for your strong support and solidarity for the nuclear-free "Kobe Formula".
For peace and solidarity,
Shushi Kajimoto, General Secretary
HYOGO COUNCIL AGAINST A & H BOMBS (HYOGO GENSUIKYO)
Chamoto bldg. 6-7-6 Motomachi-dori, Chuo-ku Kobe 550-0022 Japan
Tel +81-78-341-2818 Fax +81-78-371-2427 Email KBNOBU@msn com
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Regional Action Camps Target Nuke Waste Shipments August-October, 2000
From: "Viviane Lerner" vlerner@interpac.net
U.S. activists are gearing up to resist proposed shipments of spent nuclear fuel to Yucca Mountain, Nevada by organizing regional action camps focused on nuclear power plants. The campaign was initiated by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS).
The Nuclear Free Northeast camp will be held from August 18-22, 2000, in Dummerston, Vermont, followed by an action at the Vermont Yankee corporate headquarters.
The Nuclear Free Great Lakes camp will be from August 13-20.
Shundahai Network is organizing a Nuclear Free Yucca Mountain action and day of information on October 8-9 at the Peace Camp at the Nevada Test Site.
Get the full story at
http://www.groundworkmag.org/misc/misc-flashes.html
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International Symposium on Decommissioning and Radioactive Waste "Recycling" June 12-16 in Knoxville TN -- Registration is Free to the 1st 800 Registrants
The US DOE Environmental Management and International Atomic Energy Agency are holding an International Symposium on Decommissioning and radioactive waste "recycling" is one of the components, as is "reindustrialization."
Registration is free to the 1st 800 registrants. June 12-16, 2000 in Knoxville TN
website: www.ids2000.org
(I have pasted the promotional page from the website below:)
In June of 2000, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), will provide an international forum for information exchange: The International Decommissioning Symposium 2000 (IDS 2000). The Symposium will address issues related to the formidable task of deactivating and decommissioning U.S. and International nuclear facilities, and to the recycling and reindustrialization efforts associated with those processes.
The 4th Symposium of its kind, IDS 2000 promises to deliver the most current and comprehensive information on international environmental restoration efforts. Program plans include interactive workshops and sessions, live outdoor technology demonstrations, and exhibit hall with more than 70 vendors, technical tours of the US DOE's Oak Ridge Reservation and keynote addresses and presentations from the leaders in the environmental industry.
IDS 2000 will take place June 12-16, 2000 in Knoxville, Tennessee at the Knoxville Convention Center and the neighboring World's Fair Park.
Technical Program Exhibit Information Technology Demonstration Coordinators/Contacts Sponsorship Knoxville Information Check the following sources for further information: http://www.em.doe.gov/dd - http://www.hcet.fiu.edu or contact Conference Coordinator Elaine Elder at: elaine@eng.fiu.edu Phone: (305) 348-3752
In 1982, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) conducted the first, in a series of four, Deactivation and Decommissioning Symposiums. This June 12 - 16, the final event in this series will take place in Knoxville, Tennessee, at the Knoxville Convention Center and neighboring World's Fair Park.
The U.S. DOE, in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), will provide an international forum for information exchange. Called the International Decommissioning Symposium or IDS 2000, the symposium will deliver a world-class conference that will address issues related to the formidable task of decommissioning U.S. and international nuclear facilities, treating and disposing radioactive, chemical, and low-level and transuranic waste, and decontaminating metal and concrete. The objectives of this conference are to Publicize the progress of environmental programs in individual countries Provide a forum for technology developer and problem holder interaction Facilitate environmental and technology discussions between the commercial and financial communities Accommodate information and education exchange among governments, industries, universities, and scientists. The partnerships of these sectors will provide an immediate opportunity for information exchange that will facilitate progress on international environmental initiatives, including the global decommissioning program. This approach can result in business opportunities for decommissioning and reindustrialization decision makers, giving service providers and technology developers viable market opportunities.
International attendance by leaders in these fields will allow for comparison of efforts, improvement of techniques, and cost-effective processes to help solve global cleanup problems.
Results regarding improved or innovative techniques and processes related to decommissioning and reindustrialization projects will be issued at the symposium. Published proceedings will be distributed to attendees and will serve as a resource reference guide with the most current information on D&D techniques and technologies.
The 4th Symposium of its kind, IDS 2000 promises to deliver the most current and comprehensive information on international environmental restoration efforts. Program plans include interactive workshops and sessions, live outdoor technology demonstrations, an exhibit hall with approximately 100 vendors, technical tours of the U.S. DOE's Oak Ridge Reservation and local industry facilities, and keynote addresses and presentations from leaders in the environmental industry. IDS 2000 will portray a "mission accomplished" scenario to the D&D industry: DOE will, for the last time at IDS 2000, bring together the experts to create a "final report" and pave the way for future efforts.
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More Subcritical Nuclear Tests Planned
by Sally Light from Tri-Valley CAREs' May 2000 newsletter, Citizen's Watch
The Department of Energy (DOE) has detonated 11 underground subcritical nuclear tests at its Nevada Test Site (NTS) since the first such test in mid-1997. Tri-Valley CAREs, along with its colleague organizations, opposes these tests.
A subcritical test is not a full-scale nuclear test. Fissile materials such as plutonium are involved, but the nuclear chain reaction is halted before it becomes self-sustaining. Each subcritical test consists of high explosives being blown up along with plutonium, while sophisticated monitoring equipment records the detonation in great detail. The data gathered from the test are later fed into DOE's computers to update nuclear weapons computer codes.
While DOE claims that these tests are performed in the cause of maintaining the stockpile's "safety" and "reliability," Tri-Valley CAREs and others counter that the tests, which are part of DOE's Stockpile Stewardship program, are done to further the research and development of nuclear weapons.
Livermore Lab has prepared 7 of the 11 tests carried out so far (the other 4 were prepared by the Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico). Livermore is currently completing a series of 16 subcritical tests code-named the Oboe series. Oboe 1 was detonated at NTS last year. Three Oboe tests have been performed so far in this fiscal year, and reportedly up to 5 more such tests are planned by the end of September, with the balance of the Oboe tests to be done in fiscal year 2001.
Located on beautiful desert land belonging to the Western Shoshone Nation, NTS is an island of pockmarked, radioactively-contaminated desolation caused by decades of U.S. nuclear weapons testing. The subcritical tests further degrade the environment. It was confirmed recently that plutonium from past explosions has been moving with the area's underground aquifer towards the NTS fence line.
Subcritical testing also has serious, negative international repercussions. Other nations see them as proof that the U.S. has no intention of complying with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), even though the U.S. has signed it and has an obligation under the Treaty's Article VI to take steps to discontinue its nuclear weapons activities and to achieve nuclear disarmament.
Subcritical tests also undermine the trust among nations needed to accomplish the sensitive international ratification now underway of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which bans all nuclear weapons tests. The subcritical tests by DOE have been cited by some countries as an impediment to ratification of the CTBT.
U.S. tests have been answered by Russian subcritical tests. Russia has been conducting subcritical tests over the last two years. We and others have been warning the U.S. that such tests at NTS risk starting another nuclear arms race, or, at the very least, keep the competitive fires burning in the style of the Cold War. We see the responsive Russian subcritical tests as proof of that risk.
In the Bay Area, every time a subcritical test is performed, we local groups respond with an action at noon on the day of the test. The actions are in San Francisco at the international headquarters of the Bechtel Group, the corporation that holds a multi-billion dollar contract with DOE to operate NTS. These protests are part of an international response to the U.S. tests - actions also take place in Nevada, Japan, Australia and Europe.
Call us for more information -- or to be placed on the notification list for actions.
Marylia Kelley Executive Director, Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment) 2582 Old First Street Livermore, CA 94550 Phone: 1-925-443-7148 Fax: 1-925-443-0177 Web site: http://www.igc.org/tvc
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Environmental Leader Quits Sierra Board By
New York Times
May 20, 2000
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/sierra-resign.html
SAN FRANCISCO, May 19 -- David Brower, one of the most respected leaders of the environmental movement, has resigned from the board of the Sierra Club, saying the organization is fiddling while the world goes up in flames.
"The world is burning and all I hear from them is the music of violins," Mr. Brower said in an article today in The San Francisco Chronicle. "The planet is being trashed, but the board has no real sense of urgency. We need to try to save the earth at least as fast as it's being destroyed."
Founded in 1892, the Sierra Club has some 600,000 members and is one of the nation's most influential environmental groups.
Mr. Brower, 87, joined the group in 1933 and served as its first executive director in the 1950's and 1960's. He was removed from the leadership in 1969 after other board members grew uncomfortable with his combative views and fiscal management.
He subsequently founded Friends of the Earth and the League of Conservation Voters, both of which have grown to become powerful environmental groups in their own right.
Mr. Brower, who returned to the Sierra Club board in 1983, said today that he was quitting to protest club support for government proposals concerning the California Sierra, the protection of which was the club's original mandate.
He also criticized the Sierra Club leadership for not taking a stronger position against increased immigration into the United States, which in 1998 was the subject of a divisive internal debate over club policy.
"Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of the problem," Mr. Brower told The Chronicle. "It has to be addressed."
Mr. Brower said the board's practice of meeting in closed session indicated how far it had strayed from its populist roots.
"All these retreats that are going on are doing nothing to save the world, and that's what they should be doing, trying to save the world," he said.
The executive director of the Sierra Club, Carl Pope, expressed regret that Mr. Brower had decided to leave the board one year before his term expires in 2001. But he said that a group as large as the Sierra Club was unlikely to satisfy all of its members all of the time.
"None of us agree with everything the board does, including me," Mr. Pope said.
-------- canada
Here's To A World In Denial: The US Is A Rogue State
by Rick Salutin, April 7, 2000 Toronto Globe & Mail
http://www.commondreams.org/views/040700-103.htm
The debate on whether Canada should join the new U.S. National Missile Defence weapons system is off to a dumb-ass start. Canadian General George H. MacDonald of NORAD echoed the American justification about protection against "rogue nations" with missiles. Canadian Alliance MP Art Hanger echoed him, saying "the proposed NMD system . . . would protect North America from attacks by rogue states." The rogue states he names are North Korea, Iran and Iraq. I think he missed one: the United States. I don't say this to be provocative or controversial. I hate that provocative-controversial stuff. I hate rant journalism. Just listen to the evidence.
Last year, the United States used NATO rather than the United Nations to back its war against Yugoslavia, though the UN Charter says only the UN can take international military action. The United States also refuses to pay its huge debt to the UN. It failed to ratify the new International Criminal Court alongside states such as Libya, Iraq, China and Israel. Same thing with the anti-land-mines convention. It didn't ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It did sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but never implemented its provisions. The NMD itself is a kind of rogue action since, as even the United States admits, recent disarmament treaties will have to be suspended or cancelled if it goes ahead. It's also failed to ratify a host of other conventions, such as the Law of the Sea and women's rights. Along with Somalia, it hasn't signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child because it doesn't like the provision keeping kids out of the military. Sometimes, pundits say, Oh this is just the United States following its isolationist traditions. But it isn't. Isolationists don't send planes out to bomb all over the world.
As in 1986, when the United States bombed Libya over an unproved claim that Libyans had been responsible for a bomb set in a Berlin nightclub that killed a U.S. soldier. Or last year's bombing of a Sudanese factory over an unproved claim that it made explosives used against U.S. embassies. You can exempt the bombing of Iraq in the Persian Gulf war if you want, since it had a UN cover; but not subsequent attacks, for which the United States says it no longer needs UN resolutions. The United States has backed coups in Iran, Guatemala, Chile and Brazil, among others. It was behind assassinations or attempts against leaders of China, the Dominican Republic, the Congo and Fidel Castro -- "five or six" of which the head of the CIA acknowledged, though far more are known. All this can be documented, mostly from government sources. It defied World Court rulings on its war against Nicaragua and has invaded the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama and Haiti. The United States has also used chemical weapons such as Agent Orange in Vietnam and radioactive shell casings in the gulf war. For that matter, it tested nuclear weapon fallout on its own military and civilians, without telling them, in the 1950s. It is the only country to ever use nuclear weapons in war.
Not only does it act like a rogue state; it has the psyche to back it up. I'm thinking of the hysteria over the Cuban child, Elian Rodriguez. The United States assumes that, as a nation, it has the right to decide whether this boy will return to his father in Cuba, and Americans are debating it -- en masse! It dominates their presidential politics and their news. Anything else barely exists in the public sphere. It's demented. (I grant this paragraph verges on rant. It's the best I can manage.)
The United States is one of a few countries left, the only one in the developed world, that practises the death penalty. In 1998, it ranked third in executions, behind China and Congo but ahead of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Or think of guns. I saw a thoughtful, anti-violence New York teen saying on TV that there's nothing wrong with "dad shooting cans in the back yard," though there is a danger his kids will mimic it. Still, she said, "violence and handguns will always be with us." Handguns are part of human nature?
It's touching to see Canadians such as former disarmament ambassador Doug Roche or Project Ploughshares head Ernie Regehr argue in The Globe and Mail or National Post against joining the NMD with sober reasons about undermining treaties or the futile science of anti-missile umbrellas or how the real danger lies in toting a nuclear bomb into the United States in a knapsack. It's as if you have a psycho in your neighbourhood who bullies everybody because he's paranoid and grandiose, then he starts placing cannons around his house and you earnestly argue about whether to help him or try to dissuade him, when all along you're simply terrified of the guy. What we have here is a world in denial.
Now imagine if you were one of the designated rogue states such as North Korea or Iraq and this meshuggeneh mother of all rogue states started calling you that name. You'd be shitting your pants.
-------- china
China Watchers Fighting a Turf War of Their Own
New York Times
May 20, 2000
By KURT M. CAMPBELL
http://www.nytimes.com/library/arts/052000sinologists.html
If business and political leaders have focused on China in recent months, so too have the intellectuals and others who make up the American "strategic class" -- that collection of academics, commentators and policymakers whose ideas help define the national interest. Yet unlike traditional Sinologists, who have made a broad study of China's complex history, intricate culture and social relations, this new crop of experts are preoccupied with a much narrower question: Will China be the next enemy?
Within the circumscribed world of strategists, this sharpened approach is stirring bitter debate over how to study and interpret China, while in the larger political arena it is having an impact on pressing policy debates in Washington, including next week's congressional vote on China's trade status.
This week President Clinton said in a speech: "One of the biggest questions marks of the 21st century is the path China will take. Will China emerge as a partner or an adversary?"
Certainly, American Sinologists are enjoying more attention as Washington debates China's economic future and military intentions. But with this popularity has come an erosion of their traditional monopoly on China. "This is the hottest and most high-profile China has been since Tiananmen," said Bates Gill, a China scholar at the Brookings Institution, referring to the 1989 student uprisings in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. "Business has never been better, in a sense, but with the increasing attention has come greater political polarization. China watching now can be a dangerous game, with political minefields everywhere you step."
Indeed, the newer crop of experts, who are much more likely to have a background in strategic studies or international relations than China itself, are generally much more suspicious, watchful for signs of China's capacity for menace. They argue that the traditional China hands practice a kind of intellectual protectionism. The strategists believe they bring a fresh perspective and some intellectual rigor into a world previously dominated by "panda huggers" who had a romanticized view of China and played down America's national security interests.
"The Sinologists have been hit with two great shocks in the last 20 years," said Philip D. Zelikow, the director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, a cold war historian who concentrated on Europe when he worked at the National Security Council. "The first was the re-evaluation of Mao and the brutality of Chinese Communism that culminated at Tiananmen. The early giants of the field, like John Fairbanks, were almost uniformly blind to the harsh realities of Communist rule."
The second shock, he continued, is the current struggle with the strategists and the traditional foreign policy elite "to wrest control of the formulation and execution of America's China policy away from the Sinologists. The China specialists are losing their monopoly to shape and interpret U.S.-China policy because their narrow range of expertise is increasingly inadequate to the task. The Sinologists have practiced 100 variations on the theme of 'you don't understand China.' In some cases they are right, but in most cases it doesn't matter. Broad-ranging policy expertise is more critical in policy formulation toward China."
Others in Washington agree. A number of congressional staff members, Republican politicians, conservative journalists, former intelligence officers and a handful of academics have created a loose coalition called the "Blue Team" to prepare the nation for what they see as the coming conflagration with China. (The term comes from a Chinese military exercise in which the assigned opposition force -- presumably Taiwan supported by the United States -- wears blue hats while the People's Liberation Army are in red.
Certainly, some traditional Sinologists share this threatening view. Arthur Waldron, a professor of Chinese history and international relations at the University of Pennsylvania, for example, argues: "There is a potent mix of xenophobic nationalism, historical persecution and renewed authoritarianism that has been stoked and manipulated by China's Communist elite. They are building more missiles and seeking to externalize their internal problems . . .
But the motivations for war derive from a very different set of origins than the motivations for economic modernization. We underestimate, at out peril, China's capacity to do us harm."
Still, many other longtime China scholars counter that the new band of strategists, largely ignorant of China's complex culture and history, exaggerate Beijing's geopolitical ambitions and as yet fledgling military capabilities.
"Character assassination has been so rampant and policy critiques so politicized that the normal rules of evidence . . .
have been among the first casualties," said Robert S. Ross, professor of political science and Chinese studies at Boston College.
"Particularly egregious have been many of the claims of those neo-cold warriors . . . to follow a policy of containing the China threat."
To many China scholars, the strategists are suffering a cold war hangover. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the foreign policy establishment has at times turned its attention to post-Soviet nuclear cleanup, international terrorism, humanitarian aid and the global economy. China, the Sinologists argue, is simply the latest antidote to what one senior White House official described as "enemy envy." Even the strategists concede that they now have a sense of renewed purpose after a prolonged period of melancholy and nostalgia. "Strategists tend to get excited by the rise and fall of great powers, and they see China as the new antihero," said Jeff Legro, professor of government at the University of Virginia. "And yes, there is more spring in the step since China's arrival on the international power scene."
Certainly, China studies have grown hotter as interest in Russia has cooled. Stephen Rosen, the director of the Olin Institute at Harvard University, said: "China's rise and other strategic developments in Asia are very much on the horizon in the study of international relations. There is a growing trend among our graduate students and fellows to consider the big questions associated with China, namely its strategic culture and geopolitical mindset. This is part of an important redirection of intellectual effort away from Europe and toward Asia."
David Shambaugh, director of the China policy program at George Washington University, said that there were no solid measures of student interest, but added, "My class on China's military power is now oversubscribed, as are similar classes taught by my colleagues at other universities around the country."
Meanwhile, several major foundations, including the Smith Richardson, Bradley, Scaife and Olin Foundations, have made sizable grants to primarily conservative academics, policy think tanks and universities in recent years to explore the strategic ramifications of China's ascent. And over the last year, foreign policy journals like The National Interest, International Security and Survival have featured extended debates on China's growing political and military power.
For much of this century, interpretations of China have been buffeted by politics.
A generation of China specialists at the State Department in the 1950's were unfairly vilified during Senator Joseph R. McCarthy's public hearings into the question of "Who Lost China?" Those political concerns are in some ways evident today.
As Mitchell B. Reiss, the dean of international affairs at William and Mary College, said: "China has become a kind of national Rorschach test for the United States onto which we project our hopes and fears. China is seen by some as the world's largest market for American goods, by others as a repressive regime that violates human rights, by a dwindling minority as a strategic partner, and by many strategists as a growing threat to U.S. national security interests."
-------- imf / world bank
Surprising Criticism at World Bank Site
New York Times
May 19, 2000
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/05/biztech/articles/20worldbank.html
WASHINGTON -- The World Bank makes poverty worse, helps corrupt governments and serves the global economy rather than the people.
These criticisms are not lifted from leaflets at the latest anti-globalization rally in Washington; they are posted on the World Bank's own web site as part of an electronic conference it says is aimed at stimulating debate on development issues.
But critics say the online conference, the latest of two dozen the bank has hosted in 18 months, is just window dressing for an institution that shows no signs of changing its ways.
"The bank is attempting to give a semblance of listening to its critics, but it is very difficult to distinguish between true efforts at reform and pure cosmetics," said Adam Lerrick, who was senior adviser to the chair of the Meltzer Commission.
"It is a one-way conversation," said Charles Calomiris, a member of the commission, which recommended radical reforms of the bank and International Monetary Fund to Congress in March. "What is needed is a two-way conversation. I don't see the attitude there as really open to fundamental criticism."
The World Bank was created along with the IMF in 1944 to help Europe rebuild after the Second World War. It later shifted its focus to economic development and now loans money to fund projects in developing countries.
Criticism of the bank, the IMF and the World Trade Organization boiled over in recent months, with thousands of protesters disrupting December WTO talks in Seattle and April's IMF and World Bank spring meeting in Washington.
Two weeks into its month-long electronic conference, the bank has posted more than 100 messages, a selection of those it has received. Some of the criticism is stinging.
Eunice Kazembe, Malawi's Ambassador to Taiwan, refers to "the dehumanization and indignity that supposedly well-meaning initiatives of the World Bank, IMF, WTO and such institutions can promote."
Fulbright scholar Vanessa von Struensee writes that structural adjustment policies imposed by the World Bank and IMF destroy small farms and businesses, while anthropologist Linda Oldham ridicules a World Bank economist who told her Upper Egypt had too few people to support industry -- but did not know what its population was.
"I hope the fact that we are not hesitating to post views very critical to the bank shows we are trying to get a serious discussion going," said Kerry McNamara, who runs the online conference for the World Bank Institute.
"I think there is a sincere desire on the part of some, including (World Bank President) James Wolfensohn, to open up," said Errol Mendes, law professor and director of the Human Rights Center at Canada's University of Ottawa.
Mendes said the World Bank had learned many lessons from past mistakes, largely as a result of efforts begun in the 1980s to consult with nongovernmental organizations on the environmental and social impact of lending projects.
"They learned maybe at the expense of the most vulnerable parts of society in those countries, but they have learned," said Mendes, who has followed and contributed to the electronic conference.
McNamara said he has seen a growing desire for openness in the four years he has worked at the Bank. "It isn't always easy to open up. Large institutions change slowly," he said.
At least two conference participants asked in postings for a response from the bank. One of them was Herman Daly, a university of Maryland professor and former World Bank senior economist, who wrote: "I hope the bank will entrust the task of responding to the discussion to the office of the chief economist, not to the public relations department."
But it is not clear the bank will be reacting at all. Its spokesman Phillip Hay said the bank had not learned anything from the online discussion that it had not heard before.
"Many of those opinions on the web site are ones we heard on a megaphone very loud and clear," he said. "But it allows people to register their views and exchange information."
So just where does the information go?
"Obviously the bank can't and won't say it will take the recommendations of this discussion and adopt them," McNamara said. But he said more than 125 staff members had signed up to participate in the discussion and he distributes weekly summaries to bank management.
"These ideas will get in front of the management," he said.
The University of Ottawa's Mendes believes soliciting opinions and not heeding them could prove counter-productive. "The one warning I would give to the World Bank is: Do not just harvest opinions. Harvesting opinions can produce an even bigger backlash."
That backlash may reach a head in the Czech capital Prague in September when the IMF and World Bank hold their next annual meeting. Activist Kevin Danaher, whose Global Exchange group was instrumental in getting protesters to Seattle and Washington, said he is betting on a turnout of at least tens of thousands in Prague.
The World Bank's online conference is located at www.worldbank.org/devforum/.
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Lending to Iran, During a Show Trial
New York Times
May 20, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/l20ira.html
To the Editor:
The approval by the World Bank of $232 million in loans to Iran (news article, May 19) while the show trial of 13 innocent Jews is under way sends a terrible signal to Iran that it will suffer no real international punishment should it continue this travesty of justice.
This loan therefore threatens not only the accused but also the entire Jewish population in Iran, as it gives the appearance that Iran may act with impunity toward a vulnerable minority.
Despite warnings from world leaders that Iran would suffer retribution for this trial, business concerns seem to have prevailed over principled platitudes, as usual. If guilty verdicts are rendered in the trial, the world may finally respond with the proper degree of outrage -- but by then it may be too late.
As during World War II, the Jewish people will receive the world's sympathy, but only after the damage has been done.
PHIL BAUM Executive Director, American Jewish Congress New York, May 19, 2000
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China Glows in Triumph Over WTO Pact With EU
Yahoo News
Saturday May 20 8:09 AM ET
By Bill Savadove
BEIJING (Reuters) - China glowed in triumph on Saturday over the signing of an agreement with the European Union on its accession to the World Trade Organization.
``Last major hurdle to nation's bid to join trade club overcome,'' trumpeted the official China Daily newspaper.
``Win-win,'' crowed the Beijing Youth Daily in a banner headline with a picture of Chinese President Jiang Zemin shaking hands with EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy after the agreement was signed.
Other major papers splashed photos on their front pages of the signing ceremony between Foreign Trade Minister Shi Guangsheng and Lamy.
Some work still remains.
The U.S. Congress must approve permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) for China, to help pave the way for WTO entry.
The U.S. House of Representatives has been bitterly divided over next week's vote, but support grew rapidly on Thursday after lawmakers reached an agreement to monitor China's human rights record. Passage in the U.S. Senate is virtually guaranteed.
China must also reach bilateral WTO agreements with five nations -- Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico and Switzerland.
But the EU said on Friday the WTO working party could resume drafting China's protocol of accession in June, allowing the WTO general council to consider China's entry this summer.
Few Details Published
The EU is China's third biggest trading partner, with bilateral trade of around $56 billion last year.
Chinese newspapers gave few details of the agreement, which will slash tariffs on over 150 leading European exports and open key sectors of China's potentially vast market of nearly 1.3 billion people -- almost a sixth of the world's population -- to foreign companies.
The EU had hoped for greater concessions in the areas of insurance and telecommunications than provided in an agreement between the United States and China, but Beijing stood firm.
EU negotiators did wrest a pledge from China to further open its distribution market to foreign department stores.
China reached a bilateral agreement on WTO with the United States in November last year, but any new commitments to the EU will apply to all WTO members.
Stress On The Positive
Amid the euphoria, Chinese media made little mention of the difficulties the troubled state sector will face from the wave of foreign competition the WTO entry will set off.
Instead, they stressed the positives.
``Entering the WTO will deepen reform and opening up, spur state enterprise reform and broaden domestic consumption and re-employment,'' the Procuratorial Daily said. Lamy said on Friday that WTO entry would help Beijing speed up economic reforms, but Chinese leaders fear factory closures and massive layoffs could endanger social stability.
Although state media heaped accolades on Lamy and Shi, no reference was made of the key role played by Chinese premier Zhu Rongji. EU negotiators said Zhu's intervention sealed the deal after he met Lamy on Friday.
Journalists covering the event and EU spokesman Anthony Gooch merited a full page of photos and stories in the popular tabloid Beijing Youth Daily.
-------- iraq
Nuclear meeting deadlocked on Iraq controversy
By Evelyn Leopold
Saturday May 20, 9:11 AM
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/000520/1/a7kex.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Iraq has threatened to block the entire Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty conference late on Friday despite breakthrough agreements by five nuclear powers for an "unequivocal undertaking" to eliminate atomic weapons.
The meeting works by consensus, which means any one country can block agreement. It is to set goals for the 187 signatories to the 30-year-old NPT, the cornerstone of arms reduction treaties.
At issue was language in a side document on the Middle East reviewing Iraq's difficulties with inspections from the International Atomic Energy Agency, responsible for scrapping any nuclear weapons material.
The United States, diplomats said, insisted this was a condition for naming Israel in the document, the only Middle East country that has not signed the treaty. The conference would appoint an envoy to discuss the issue with Israel.
But Iraq said rejected any reference to its difficulties with the U.N. Security Council, which has placed it under sanctions until it gets a clean bill of health on its weapons of mass destruction. Instead it wanted language limited to the IAEA's January inspections of its nuclear reactors.
"The Americans proposed language which is irrelevant to the work of the conference and the NPT, a language which talks about Security Council resolutions and a judgment about Iraq's compliance," Iraq's ambassador Saeed Hasan said.
But the United States and Britain pointed to a 1991 decision by the IAEA that integrates the Security Council process with NPT issues.
Earlier, delegates to the conference believed they had negotiated a landmark document which used stronger language than ever before in committing the five nuclear powers to reducing their arsenals but setting no timetable.
"It is a first that the nuclear weapons states have committed to the total elimination of their arsenals," Felicity Hill, a disarmament expert with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, told a news conference.
Rebecca Johnson of the Acronym Institute, an arms control research group, praised the text for benchmarks that delegates can review over the next five years.
Those include a call to reduce tactical as well as strategic nuclear arms, to reveal how many bombs the nuclear states had and to cut the number of warheads on alert.
Moscow and Washington are thought to have more than 30,000 strategic, tactical or stockpiled nuclear weapons between them. All five have thousands of warheads on hair- trigger alert.
The conference also calls or Washington and Moscow to implement fully the START II treaty that would cut long-range nuclear warheads from 6,000 to 3,500 on each side.
Countries without nuclear weapons have harshly criticised the United States and Russia for moving far too slowly in cutting their arsenals over the past five years.
In response, the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China issued a statement on May 8 promising an "unequivocal commitment to the ultimate goals of a complete elimination of nuclear weapons."
But an influential group of moderate states, which two years ago organised a "New Agenda Coalition," dismissed that. Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden said the total elimination of nuclear weapons was an obligation under the treaty and not an "ultimate goal."
The five nuclear powers then finally agreed to "an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all parties are committed" under the NPT.
Darach MacFhionnbhairr, Ireland's chief negotiator, said the coalition's agenda "has become the agenda of this conference." He expected the final document to give a "new life and dimension to the treaty" it had not enjoyed in 30 years.
MacFhionnbhairr also believed that delegates, at a minimum, had been able to address issues that had hitherto been the preserve of NATO and nuclear weapons states.
Not mentioned in the text is the national missile defence programme the United States intends to deploy against incoming missiles from so-called "rogue states." Nearly every country in the world believes the U.S. cure is worse than the threat and could spur Russia and China to replenish its arsenals.
But U.N. undersecretary-general for disarmament, Jayantha Dhanapala, said that the U.S. programme was "the invisible ghost" of the conference, with Russia wanting to insert the code words "strategic stability" into nearly every section.
----
U.S.-Iraq Dispute Threatens Treaty
By EDITH M. LEDERER,
Associated Press
May 20 7:19 AM ET
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - A dispute between the United States and Iraq threatened to block agreement on a new nuclear arms agenda at a conference to review the global treaty controlling the spread of nuclear weapons.
The conference president, Algerian U.N. Ambassador Abdallah Baali, stopped the clock just before midnight Friday to try to settle the dispute over Iraq's alleged efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
Shortly after 5 a.m., and still without an agreement, Baali sent delegates from the 187 states that have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty home to get some sleep. He said a new attempt to reach agreement would begin later in the day.
``The entire conference is being held hostage with regard to the situation in Iraq,'' said Rebecca Johnson, editor of ``Disarmament Diplomacy,'' a monthly arms control journal.
Delegates had reached preliminary agreement on a review of global disarmament since the last conference five years ago and ``practical steps'' to move toward total disarmament.
But final agreement was threatened because all 187 nations must agree - and the United States and Iraq were still at odds on language on Iraq's nuclear compliance.
``We were quite close to an agreement but unfortunately we have not been able to find formulation that was satisfactory,'' Baali told delegates early today.
He said he was still searching for a solution and asked regional groups to make an assessment.
``I think it's very difficult at this late hour to work out a compromise because it seems both sides are very entrenched,'' said U.N. Undersecretary-General for Disarmament Affairs Jayantha Dhanapala. ``If they are ready to show flexibility, they can save the conference.''
In a breakthrough Thursday, the five nuclear powers agreed to ``an unequivocal undertaking'' to totally eliminate their nuclear arsenals, a decision praised by several non-nuclear countries as an important step toward nuclear disarmament.
Even though the agreement gave no timetable, and delegates said it would take many years to achieve a nuclear-free world, it marked the first public statement by the nuclear powers of their obligation to total disarmament.
The nuclear haves and have-nots also agreed on other important steps: a moratorium on nuclear weapon test explosions pending the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, further reductions of tactical nuclear weapons, increased transparency by the nuclear powers on reporting information about their nuclear arsenals, reducing ``the operational status'' of nuclear weapons and diminishing their role in national security policies to minimize the possibility of their use.
``It's the biggest step forward in relation to a commitment - the unequivocal undertaking to nuclear disarmament,'' said Brazil's U.N. ambassador in Geneva, Celso Amorim. ``We have concrete steps. And all this is lost. It would be a pity.''
Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Saeed Hasan said Baghdad would accept an account of the International Atomic Energy Agency's January inspection of its nuclear reactors under the nonproliferation treaty - but was vehemently opposed to any mention of Security Council resolutions that placed Iraq under sanctions until its weapons of mass destruction are eliminated.
``The Americans want to include that this inspection does not substitute for the obligations of Iraq under Security Council resolutions,'' Hasan said. ``We rejected that proposal.''
The treaty, which went into force in 1970, represented a bargain between the nuclear haves and have nots. In return for a pledge from non-nuclear states not to acquire nuclear weapons, the treaty committed nuclear-weapon states to pursue nuclear disarmament.
--------
Major Nuclear Meeting Stalled on U.S.-Iraqi Dispute
Saturday May 20 6:05 AM ET
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A dispute between the United States and Iraq threatened Saturday to derail a key accord on nuclear arms control among the world's five main atomic powers and the more than 180 nations without the bomb.
The one-month meeting to review the 30-year-old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the cornerstone of arms control treaties, was to have ended Friday.
But conference president Abdallah Baali, Algeria's U.N ambassador, ``stopped the clock'' to give Iraq and the United States more time to negotiate.
Shortly after 5 a.m. EDT, Baali sent delegates home for six hours to get some sleep before making a new attempt to reach an agreement.
With decisions made by consensus, any one of the 187 signatories to the treaty can cast a veto.
``The entire conference is being held hostage with regard to the situation in Iraq,'' said Rebecca Johnson of the London-based Acronym Institute, an arms control group.
Under the treaty, the five nuclear weapons powers -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- are obligated to move toward disarmament while all other signatories vow to give up atomic warheads for good.
Iraq's ambassador, Saeed Hasan, said Baghdad would accept an account of an inspection of its nuclear reactors by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in January.
But he rejected references the United States wanted that mentioned Iraq's dispute with the U.N. Security Council, which has placed Baghdad under sanctions until it gets a clean bill of health on its weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear arms-related materials.
``The Americans proposed language which is irrelevant to the work of the conference and the NPT, language which talks about Security Council resolutions and a judgement about Iraq's compliance,'' Hasan said.
If its proposals on Iraq are rejected, U.S. envoys indicated they would no longer allow the document to single out Israel, the only Middle East nation that has not signed the treaty. The conference was to appoint an envoy to discuss the issue with Israel, which has undeclared nuclear arms.
Jayantha Dhanapala, the U.N. undersecretary-general for disarmament affairs, held out scant hope for a compromise.
``I think it is very difficult to work out a compromise because it seems both sides are very entrenched. If they are ready to show flexibility, they can save the conference.''
Celso Amorim, Brazil's ambassador in Geneva, was also dejected about the possibility a month's work would be lost.
``This is very difficult and I think it would be a terrible pity if we lose what we got because we had a very important agreement,'' he said.
Earlier, delegates to the conference believed they had negotiated a landmark document which used stronger language than ever before in committing the five nuclear powers to reduce their arsenals, although it set no timetable.
The document also includes a call to reduce tactical as well as strategic nuclear arms. It urged more transparency in revealing how many bombs nuclear states had and a cut in the number of warheads on hair-trigger alert.
It calls for the United States and Russia to implement fully the START II treaty that would cut long-range nuclear warheads from 6,000 to 3,500 on each side. Washington and Moscow are thought to have more than 30,000 strategic, tactical or stockpiled nuclear weapons between them.
Countries without nuclear weapons have harshly criticized the United States and Russia for moving far too slowly in cutting their arsenals over the past five years.
In response, the five main nuclear powers issued a statement on May 8 promising an ``unequivocal commitment to the ultimate goals of a complete elimination of nuclear weapons.''
But an influential group of moderate states, which two years ago organized a ``New Agenda Coalition,'' dismissed that. Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden said the total elimination of nuclear weapons was an obligation under the treaty and not an ``ultimate goal.''
The five nuclear powers then finally agreed to ``an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all parties are committed'' under the treaty.
----
U.S. And Iraq Reach Deal in Nuclear Conference
Saturday May 20 3:21 PM ET
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States and Iraq reached agreement on their dispute over Baghdad's nuclear weapons program, thereby allowing a key nuclear arms control conference to end successfully.
``This means that assuming that members will approve, the last piece of our puzzle is complete,'' Canadian ambassador Chris Wesdahl, who mediated between the two countries, told the 187 delegates to the conference.
The one-month meeting to review the 30-year-old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the cornerstone of arms control treaties, was to have concluded on Friday with a strong commitment declaration by the nuclear powers to move toward disarmament.
But conference president Abdallah Baali, Algeria's U.N ambassador, ``stopped the clock'' for 14 hours to give Iraq and the United States more time to negotiate over language relating to Iraq's alleged efforts to develop nuclear arms.
-------- israel
A Year After Victory, Barak Fights on Many Fronts
New York Times
May 20, 2000
By DEBORAH SONTAG
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/052000israel-barak.html
JERUSALEM, May 19 -- A week that began in violence ended violently here, with bloody clashes in the West Bank and Gaza and intensified fighting in southern Lebanon.
On the one-year anniversary of his election by a sweeping majority, Prime Minister Ehud Barak was trying to put out fires on many fronts at once.
Because of trouble in the north, the south and within his political coalition, he was weighing a cancellation of his scheduled departure this weekend to the United States to confer with President Clinton and meet with Jewish American leaders.
Despite the violence, back-channel peace talks continued in Sweden.
Israeli, Palestinian and American officials have characterized them as a serious and constructive dialogue on the process itself and on the final status issues.
News accounts here say that Israel is offering as much as 90 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians, although it is difficult to assess what is really happening by the bargaining moves that are leaked.
Near a heavily fortified Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip, an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian policeman were wounded as Palestinian protests for the release of 1,650 prisoners degenerated into confrontations. Israeli military officials say they are investigating the source of fire that wounded the soldier, but that there was no gunbattle between troops like the one that took place on Monday near Ramallah in the West Bank.
"The prime minister views the events severely and has ordered the Israeli Defense Forces to act accordingly to restore calm," Mr. Barak's office said in a statement tonight.
The protests today, which began as the Friday prayer services ended, were organized before Monday's demonstrations erupted into severe rioting that ended with three Palestinians dead. Palestinian authorities said they were trying to keep tensions low, although in Ramallah their effort did not appear to be of sustained high intensity. Many officers stepped to the side as a march, organized by the militant Islamic group Hamas, headed toward confrontation with the Israeli forces.
In Qalqilya, in contrast, Palestinian police officers held back demonstrators with nightsticks. At least 20 Palestinians were injured by rubber-coated bullets. Another "day of rage" was scheduled for Saturday.
It was unclear whether the violence would delay the transfer of Abu Dis and two other villages near Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority. Mr. Barak's advisers said he would turn over the towns within days, provided that Palestinian officials calmed the streets and cooperated with their investigation of how things got out of hand on Monday.
In the north, Israeli warplanes attacked suspected guerrilla positions in southern Lebanon today. This followed fighting Thursday, the heaviest in two weeks, in which 14 people were wounded, including 4 Lebanese civilians and a United Nations peacekeeper.
-------- npt
Major Nuclear Meeting Stalls on U.S.-Iraqi Dispute
Yahoo News
Saturday May 20 8:09 AM ET
By Evelyn Leopold
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000520/wl/un_nuclear_treaty_5.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A dispute between the United States and Iraq threatened on Saturday to derail a key accord on nuclear arms control among the world's five main atomic powers and the more than 180 nations without the bomb.
The one-month meeting to review the 30-year-old Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), the cornerstone of arms control treaties, was to have ended on Friday.
But conference president Abdallah Baali, Algeria's U.N ambassador, ``stopped the clock'' to give Iraq and the United States more time to negotiate.
Shortly after 5 a.m. EDT (0900 GMT), Baali sent delegates home for six hours to get some sleep before making a new attempt to reach an agreement.
With decisions made by consensus, any one of the 187 signatories to the treaty can cast a veto.
``The entire conference is being held hostage with regard to the situation in Iraq,'' said Rebecca Johnson of the London-based Acronym Institute, an arms control group.
Under the treaty, the five nuclear weapons powers -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- are obligated to move toward disarmament while all other signatories vow to give up atomic warheads for good.
Iraq's ambassador, Saeed Hasan, said Baghdad would accept an account of an inspection of its nuclear reactors by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in January.
But he rejected references the United States wanted that mentioned Iraq's dispute with the U.N. Security Council, which has placed Baghdad under sanctions until it gets a clean bill of health on its weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear arms-related materials.
``The Americans proposed language which is irrelevant to the work of the conference and the NPT, language which talks about Security Council resolutions and a judgement about Iraq's compliance,'' Hasan said.
If its proposals on Iraq are rejected, U.S. envoys indicated they would no longer allow the document to single out Israel, the only Middle East nation that has not signed the treaty. The conference was to appoint an envoy to discuss the issue with Israel, which has undeclared nuclear arms.
Jayantha Dhanapala, the U.N. undersecretary-general for disarmament affairs, held out scant hope for a compromise.
``I think it is very difficult to work out a compromise because it seems both sides are very entrenched. If they are ready to show flexibility, they can save the conference.''
Celso Amorim, Brazil's ambassador in Geneva, was also dejected about the possibility a month's work would be lost.
``This is very difficult and I think it would be a terrible pity if we lose what we got because we had a very important agreement,'' he said.
Earlier, delegates to the conference believed they had negotiated a landmark document which used stronger language than ever before in committing the five nuclear powers to reduce their arsenals, although it set no timetable.
The document also includes a call to reduce tactical as well as strategic nuclear arms. It urged more transparency in revealing how many bombs nuclear states had and a cut in the number of warheads on hair-trigger alert.
It calls for the United States and Russia to implement fully the START II treaty that would cut long-range nuclear warheads from 6,000 to 3,500 on each side. Washington and Moscow are thought to have more than 30,000 strategic, tactical or stockpiled nuclear weapons between them.
Countries without nuclear weapons have harshly criticized the United States and Russia for moving far too slowly in cutting their arsenals over the past five years.
In response, the five main nuclear powers issued a statement on May 8 promising an ``unequivocal commitment to the ultimate goals of a complete elimination of nuclear weapons.''
But an influential group of moderate states, which two years ago organized a ``New Agenda Coalition,'' dismissed that. Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden said the total elimination of nuclear weapons was an obligation under the treaty and not an ``ultimate goal.''
The five nuclear powers then finally agreed to ``an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all parties are committed'' under the treaty.
---
Deal Reached on Nuclear Arsenals
Yahoo News
Saturday May 20 7:19 PM ET
By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000520/wl/un_nuclear_treaty_12.html
http://www.msnbc.com/news/409653.asp?cp1=1#BODY?cp1=1
http://www.foxnews.com/world/052000/un_nonukes.sml
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/nukes000520.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The five nuclear powers on the Security Council agreed Saturday to eliminate their nuclear arsenals, as part of a new disarmament agenda agreed to by 187 countries.
The agreement by the signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was reached after all-night deliberations and intense pressure on Iraq and the United States to settle a dispute over Baghdad's compliance with U.N. sanctions.
The conference to review the global treaty - aimed at controlling and ultimately eliminating nuclear weapons - required a consensus, and the U.S.-Iraq dispute threatened to sabotage approval of a final document.
Signaling the importance Washington placed on the issue of Iraq's compliance with nuclear agreements, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Einhorn, who is in charge of nonproliferation, flew to New York to take part in the final talks.
Hours after his arrival, Canadian Ambassador Chris Westdal, who had worked through the night, announced an agreement to applauding delegates, saying ``the last piece in our puzzle is complete.''
Delegates to the conference said the new nuclear agenda was significant because it represented the first time in 15 years that the 187 nuclear and non-nuclear states were able to reach a consensus.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan said it ``marks a significant step forward in humanity's pursuit of a more peaceful world - a world free of nuclear dangers, a world with strengthened global norms for nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.''
On Thursday, the five nuclear powers - the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China - agreed to ``an unequivocal undertaking'' to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.
Even though the agreement gave no timetable, and delegates said it would take many years to achieve a nuclear-free world, it marked the first public statement by the major nuclear powers of their obligation to disarm.
``What has always been implicit has now become explicit,'' said Mexico's disarmament ambassador in Geneva, Antonio de Icaza.
The NPT, which came into force in 1970, has only four holdouts - India and Pakistan which conducted rival nuclear tests in 1998, Israel which is believed to have nuclear weapons, and Cuba.
Delegates repeatedly stressed the importance of getting those nations to sign - a step many concede is crucial to the cause of disarmament.
The final document reaffirmed ``the importance of Israel's accession to the NPT'' and urged India and Pakistan, despite their nuclear tests, to become parties to the treaty ``as non-nuclear weapon states.''
The nuclear haves and have-nots also agreed on other important steps: a moratorium on nuclear weapons tests pending activation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, further reductions of tactical nuclear weapons, increased transparency by the nuclear powers on reporting information about their nuclear arsenals and making weapons safer by taking them off ``hair-trigger'' alert.
They also agreed to permanently and irreversibly remove plutonium and uranium from nuclear warheads, and to negotiate within the next five years a treaty banning the production of weapons-grade nuclear material.
The U.S.-Iraq dispute centered on Iraq's compliance with U.N. Security Council resolutions, which placed Iraq under sanctions until its facilities for producing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons had been shut down. The United States maintains that Iraq has not adequately accounted for its weapons programs.
Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Saeed Hasan initially said Baghdad would accept an account of the International Atomic Energy Agency's January inspection of its nuclear reactors under the NPT treaty - but was vehemently opposed to U.S. demands for a statement that the IAEA inspection was no substitute for its Security Council obligations.
Under the compromise language, the conference noted an April 24 statement by the IAEA director-general that since Iraq has suspended weapons inspections since December 1998 ``the agency has not been in a position to provide any assurance of Iraq's compliance with its obligations under U.N. Security Council Resolution 687.''
At the final plenary session of the conference, Hasan entered a reservation on the compromise, reiterating that there was ``no reason'' to include Iraq or the Security Council resolution in the document and accusing the United States of trying to divert the conference from the real danger in the Middle East - ``by that we mean the nuclear weapons of Israel.''
---
Highlights of Nuclear Agenda
Yahoo News
Saturday May 20 7:13 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000520/wl/un_nuclear_treaty_glance.html
http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=052100&ID=s805227&cat=
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Here are some highlights of the final document adopted by the 187 parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty at the end of a four-week conference on Saturday:
-An ``unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament.''
-Increased transparency by the nuclear powers on reporting information about their nuclear arsenals.
-Reducing ``the operational status'' of nuclear weapons.
-Diminishing the role of nuclear weapons in national security policies to minimize the possibility of their use.
-Permanently and irreversibly removing plutonium and uranium from nuclear warheads.
-Negotiating within the next five years a treaty banning production of these fissile materials for weapons.
-A moratorium on nuclear weapon test explosions pending the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
-Deplores India and Pakistan nuclear tests and urges both countries, despite the tests, to become parties to the treaty ``as non-nuclear weapon states.''
-Reaffirms ``the importance of Israel's accession to the NPT'' and calls for its nuclear facilities to be placed under comprehensive International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.
-Reaffirms the right of NPT parties to peaceful nuclear technology and strengthens prohibitions against nuclear cooperation with nonparties
---
Canada helps mediate UN nuclear arms deal
CBC News
WebPosted Sat May 20 20:44:55 2000 ET
http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/NWview.cgi?/news/2000/05/20/unnuclear000520
UNITED NATIONS - After all-night negotiations, Canada helped broker a ground-breaking nuclear arms agreement Saturday between the United States and Iraq.
The deal clears the way for a possible deal between the world's five nuclear powers - United States, Russia, Britain, France and China - to one day get rid of their arsenals.
Delegates from 187 countries burst into applause at the UN conference when Canadian Ambassador Chris Westdal announced that Washington and Baghdad had reached a compromise.
The snag was over how Iraq complied with UN Security Council demands that it give up the ability to make nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.
The U.S. claims Iraq has not accounted for all of its weapons manufacturing systems. Both countries have now agreed to a statement that underlines Washington's concern over the reliability of existing monitoring.
The International Atomic Energy Agency has not been able to confirm that Iraq is complying with UN Resolutions since weapons inspections were suspended in December, 1998.
Saturday's deal represents the first time in 15 years that all 187 countries which signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty have reached a consensus.
It's also the first time the major nuclear powers have publicly declared their intention to disarm completely at some point.
There is no specific timetable for getting rid of the world's nuclear weapons. But delegates did agree on a moratorium on nuclear testing, as well as a plan to reduce the number of nuclear weapons now in arsenals.
---
Big powers agree to eliminate nuclear weapons after Canada brokers compromise
CBC News
05/20/00
http://cbc.ca/cp/world/000520/w052065.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - A Canadian-brokered agreement between the United States and Iraq cleared the way Saturday for a ground-breaking agreement by the five established nuclear powers to one day eliminate their nuclear arsenals.
After all-night deliberations, and intense pressure on Baghdad and Washington not to sabotage a key nuclear conference, delegates of the 187 countries that have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty burst into applause as Canadian Ambassador Chris Westdal announced the agreement.
"This means that, assuming the members of this body approve, the last piece in our puzzle is complete," said Westdal, who had worked through the night to negotiate the U.S.-Iraqi compromise.
On Thursday, the five first nuclear powers - the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China - agreed to "an unequivocal undertaking" to totally eliminate their nuclear arsenals, a decision praised by several non-nuclear countries as an important step toward nuclear disarmament.
Following Westdal's remarks, the conference president, Algerian UN Ambassador Abdallah Baali, announced agreement on several other outstanding issues.
Many delegates, who spent the past four weeks reviewing the global treaty to control the spread of nuclear weapons, were determined not to leave without consensus on the final document.
Baali, responded to pleas from many countries by asking Westdal late Saturday morning to press ahead with efforts to reach an agreement.
The conference had been scheduled to end at midnight Friday night.
Delegates to the conference said the new nuclear agenda was important because it represented the first time in 15 years that the 187 nuclear and non-nuclear states were able to reach a consensus.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said it "marks a significant step forward in humanity's pursuit of a more peaceful world - a world free of nuclear dangers, a world with strengthened global norms for nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament."
"What has always been implicit has now become explicit," added Mexico's Antonio de Icaza. "Friday's events signify an important landmark on which to build a nuclear weapon-free world."
The most serious dispute centred on Iraq's compliance with UN Security Council resolutions which placed Iraq under sanctions until its capability to produce nuclear, chemical and biological weapons has been destroyed. The United States contends Iraq has not adequately accounted for its weapons programs.
Iraq's UN ambassador, Saeed Hasan, initially said Baghdad would accept an account of the International Atomic Energy Agency's January inspection of its nuclear reactors under the NPT treaty - but was vehemently opposed to U.S. demands for a statement that the IAEA inspection was no substitute for its Security Council obligations.
Under the compromise language, the conference takes note of an April 24 statement by the IAEA director-general that since Iraq has suspended weapons inspections since December 1998 "the agency has not been in a position to provide any assurance of Iraq's compliance with its obligations under UN Security Council Resolution 687."
Even though the new agreement gives no timetable for eliminating nuclear weapons, and delegates said it would take many years to achieve a nuclear-free world, it marked the first public statement by the major nuclear powers of their obligation to total disarmament.
The delegates agreed on other important steps: a moratorium on nuclear weapon testing pending the activation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, further reductions of tactical nuclear weapons, increased transparency by the nuclear powers on reporting information about their nuclear arsenals and provisions for taking weapons off "hair-trigger" status.
They also agreed to permanently and irreversibly remove plutonium and uranium from nuclear warheads, and to negotiate within the next five years a treaty banning the production of weapons-grade nuclear material.
The nonproliferation treaty, which went into force in 1970, represented a bargain between the nuclear haves and have-nots. In return for a pledge from non-nuclear states not to acquire nuclear weapons, the treaty committed nuclear-weapon states to pursue nuclear disarmament.
Delegates stressed the importance of getting the four holdouts to sign the treaty - India and Pakistan which conducted rival nuclear tests in 1998, Israel which is believed to have nuclear weapons, and Cuba.
However, the new agreement was unlikely to satisfy India, which has insisted on a timetable for nuclear disarmament as a precondition for its approval of the treaty.
- - -
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Here are some highlights of the final document adopted Saturday by the 187 parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty at the end of a four-week conference:
-An "unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament."
-Increased transparency by the nuclear powers on reporting information about their nuclear arsenals.
-Reducing "the operational status" of nuclear weapons.
-Diminishing the role of nuclear weapons in national security policies to minimize the possibility of their use.
-Permanently and irreversibly removing plutonium and uranium from nuclear warheads.
-Negotiating within the next five years a treaty banning production of these fissile materials for weapons.
-A moratorium on nuclear weapon test explosions pending the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
-Deplores nuclear wapons tests by India and Pakistan and urges both countries to become parties to the treaty "as non-nuclear weapon states."
-Reaffirms "the importance of Israel's accession to the NPT" and calls for its nuclear facilities to be placed under comprehensive International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.
-Reaffirms the right of NPT parties to peaceful nuclear technology and strengthens prohibitions against nuclear co-operation with non-parties.
---
US and Iraq break nuclear deadlock
BBC
Saturday, 20 May, 2000, 21:41 GMT 22:41 UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_756000/756742.stm
Delegates had feared a month's work was in jeopardy The United States and Iraq have reached a compromise in a dispute that was holding up a key agreement on the future of nuclear arms control.
Chris Wesdahl, the chief Canadian negotiator at the United Nations conference on nuclear non-proliferation, told the 187 delegates: "This means that assuming that members will approve, the last piece of our puzzle is complete."
The month-long conference in New York singled out Israel for the first time for not being a signatory to the 30-year-old Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The UN conference president, Algerian UN Ambassador Abdallah Baali is now expected to discuss the issue with Israel.
The centrepiece of the conference was a strong political commitment by the five main nuclear powers for "unequivocal" nuclear disarmament.
But the US, Russia, Britain, France and China did not consent to any timetables to achieve this.
Compromise
Mr Baali stopped the clock on Friday to give Iraq and the US more time to settle their dispute.
Disagreement had centred on the US insistence that the conference encourage Iraq to comply with the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Mr Wesdahl did not say how the deadlock between the two countries had been broken, although the Iraqis had argued that they were already in full compliance with IAEA safeguards.
The compromise statement says the IAEA "has not been in a position to provide any assurance" of Iraq's compliance with a UN resolution on its nuclear arms programmes.
Before the compromise was reached, chief Mexican delegate Antonio de Icaza voiced the frustration of many delegates when he said the conference must not be allowed to fail over a single paragraph which was "mainly of interest to two countries only".
He said the review had made "unprecedented accomplishments on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament" since it began on 24 April, and "losing all is just not acceptable".
Renouncing warheads
Under the 1970 treaty, the five nuclear powers are obligated to move toward disarmament while all other signatories vow to give up atomic warheads for good.
Countries without nuclear weapons had harshly criticised the United States and Russia for moving far too slowly in cutting their arsenals.
The main nuclear powers issued a statement on 8 May promising an "unequivocal commitment to the ultimate goals of a complete elimination of nuclear weapons".
But an influential group of moderate states, which two years ago organised the New Agenda Coalition, dismissed that.
Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden said the total elimination of nuclear weapons was an obligation under the treaty and not an "ultimate goal".
---
Nuke Powers Give 'Unequivocal' Pledge to Disarm
Yahoo News
Saturday May 20 8:41 PM ET
By Evelyn Leopold
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Setting an arms agenda for the next five years, key nuclear powers gave a new ``unequivocal'' commitment on Saturday to more than 185 countries to scrap their atomic arsenals.
But they avoided any timetable on when they would do this at a key review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the cornerstone of arms reduction accords.
Approval of a final document among the five countries with nuclear arms and the 182 nations without them came hours after the meeting was nearly derailed by a dispute between the United States and Iraq over Baghdad nuclear arms programs.
But Washington and Baghdad settled compromise language.
While the U.S.-Iraqi controversy occupied delegates for 24 hours, most believed it was not central to the conference, which agreed on a consensus disarmament document for the first time in 15 years.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the agreement ``marks a significant step forward in humanity's pursuit of a more peaceful world, a world free of nuclear dangers.''
The five recognized nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China -- approved stronger language than usual to reduce their arsenals during a review of the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
Under the 30-year-old treaty, the five powers are obligated to move toward disarmament while all other signatories vow to give up atomic warheads for good.
The conference agreed to further reductions of tactical nuclear weapons, increased transparency by the nuclear powers on reporting information about their nuclear arsenals and reducing the number of warheads on hair-trigger alert.
Its document called for diminishing the role of nuclear weapons in national security policies in an effort to minimize their possible use.
And it committed the United States and Russia to implement fully the START II treaty that would cut long-range nuclear warheads from 6,000 to 3,500 on each side.
Washington and Moscow, between them, are thought to have more than 35,000 strategic, tactical or stockpiled warheads.
Countries without nuclear weapons had harshly criticized the United States and Russia for moving far too slowly in cutting their arsenals over the past five years.
In response, the five main nuclear powers issued a statement on May 8 promising an ``unequivocal commitment to the ultimate goals of a complete elimination of nuclear weapons.''
But an influential group of moderate states, which two years ago organized a ``New Agenda Coalition,'' dismissed that. Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden said the total elimination of nuclear weapons was an obligation under the treaty and not an ``ultimate goal.''
The five then agreed to ``an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals, leading to nuclear disarmament to which all parties are committed'' under the treaty.
``Today's events signify an important landmark on which to build a nuclear weapons-free world,'' Mexico's envoy, Antonio de Icaza, told the meeting on behalf of the coalition.
But China was critical of the document, with its envoy, Hu Xiaodi, citing the expansion of NATO, the absence of any commitments to use nuclear weapons first or a reference to the planned U.S. national missile defense program, designed to fend off attacks from so-called ``rogue states.''
``The final document has failed to fully reflect the current international situation. Nor does it call for removal of fundamental obstacles to nuclear disarmament,'' Hu said.
The document also, for the first time, singled out Israel, believed to have nuclear weapons, for not signing the treaty and for not placing its nuclear materials under ``comprehensive'' international safeguards.
It deplored underground nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in 1998. Both countries, along with Israel and Cuba, have not signed the NPT.
Nevertheless, the meeting was touch-and-go until the last minute with the session extended a day after the conference had been scheduled to close.
At issue was a dispute about whether Iraq had accounted for all its nuclear weapons-related materials under a Security Council resolution requiring Baghdad rid itself of weapons of mass destruction. The council has put Baghdad under sanctions until it scraps its dangerous arms.
Iraq argued this should not be included in the treaty conference since Baghdad had allowed an inspection of its nuclear reactors by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in January.
Compromise language, milder than the original, now says the IAEA ``has not been in a position to provide any assurance'' of Iraq's compliance with a Security Council resolutions on its nuclear arms programs.
In an effort to end the deadlock, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Einhorn came to New York for a short time to take part in the final negotiations.
---
Nuclear Powers Give Firmer Disarmament Pledge
Reuters
May 19, 2000 Filed at 6:39 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-nu.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Criticized for paying lip service to nuclear disarmament, the five main nuclear powers have pledged ``an unequivocal undertaking'' to eliminate atomic weapons but avoided setting any timetables to do so.
Agreement on key provisions were reached hours before a month-long conference on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was to end work late on Friday.
But delegates said the final accord was stalled because of a dispute between the United States and Iraq. Baghdad objects to language saying nuclear inspectors have been unable to ensure that Iraq has no forbidden nuclear arms materials.
The meeting sets goals for the 187 signatories to the 30-year-old NPT, the cornerstone of arms reduction treaties. The session is the first since the nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China -- convinced the rest of the world in 1995 to extend the treaty indefinitely in exchange for commitments toward disarmament.
With the main nuclear powers, in effect, having veto rights over a final text, timetables for disarmament measures had little chance of approval.
``But it is a first that the nuclear weapons states have committed to the total elimination of their arsenals,'' Felicity Hill, a disarmament expert with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, told a news conference.
Rebecca Johnson of the Acronym Institute, an arms control research group, praised the text for benchmarks that delegates can review over the next five years.
Those include a call to reduce tactical as well as strategic nuclear arms, to reveal how many bombs the nuclear states had and to cut the number of warheads on alert.
Moscow and Washington are thought to have more than 30,000 strategic, tactical or stockpiled nuclear weapons between them. All five have thousands of warheads on hair-trigger alert.
The conference also calls or Washington and Moscow to implement fully the START II treaty that would cut long-range nuclear warheads from 6,000 to 3,500 on each side.
Nonnuclear states have harshly criticized the United States and Russia for moving far too slowly in cutting their arsenals over the past five years.
In response, the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China issued a statement on May 8 promising an ``unequivocal commitment to the ultimate goals of a complete elimination of nuclear weapons.''
NUCLEAR WEAPONS STATES PRODDED INTO STRONGER STATEMENT
But an influential group of moderate states, which two years ago organized a ``New Agenda Coalition,'' dismissed that. Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden said the total elimination of nuclear weapons was an obligation under the treaty and not an ``ultimate goal.''
Consequently, the five agreed to ``an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all states parties are committed'' under the NPT.
Darach MacFhionnbhairr, Ireland's chief negotiator, said the coalition's agenda ``has become the agenda of this conference.'' He expected the final document to give a ``new life and dimension to the treaty'' it had not enjoyed in 30 years.
MacFhionnbhairr also believed that delegates, at a minimum, had been able to address issues that had hitherto been the preserve of NATO and nuclear weapons states.
Among the main nuclear weapon countries, only China has renounced a first-use strategy, which it wanted inserted into the text. But it gave that up and agreed to a provision calling for greater transparency of who had what weapons.
Not mentioned in the text is the national missile defense program the United States intends to deploy against incoming missiles from so-called ``rogue states.'' Nearly every country in the world believes the U.S. cure is worse than the threat and could spur Russia and China to replenish its arsenals.
But U.N. undersecretary-general for disarmament, Jayantha Dhanapala, said that the U.S. program was ``the invisible ghost'' of the conference, with Russia wanting to insert the code words ``strategic stability'' into nearly every section.
Israel, which along with India, Pakistan and Cuba, has not signed the treaty, was singled out for the first time in a section on the Middle East.
The conference agreed to appoint a special representative to ``conduct discussions'' with Israel, which has an undeclared nuclear capability, about joining the treaty.
Israel now is the only Middle East nation whose nuclear facilities are not inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
-------- terrorism
U.S. Conducts Mock Biological, Chemical Attacks
Yahoo News
Saturday May 20 2:31 PM ET
By Patrick Connole
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000520/ts/security_attacks_1.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A series of mock terrorist attacks began on Saturday in the United States, testing the ability of top local, state and federal officials to respond to a catastrophic sequence of biological and chemical releases.
In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a spoof explosion of a Chevrolet van loaded with unknown chemical agents kicked off the drill a few hours after daybreak near the town's port, fictionally killing and maiming around 50 people.
A biological ``attack'' is also underway outside of Denver, Colorado, and a third series of exercises were being run in and around the nation's capital, the Justice Department said.
Called ``Topoff'' -- short for Top Officials -- the largest ever such dress rehearsal is being conducted by the Department of Justice and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Thousands will participate in the 10-day exercise, including Attorney General Janet Reno, other Cabinet members, mayors, local and state police, hospital personnel and volunteer actors playing the role of injured and dead civilians, according to the Justice Department.
``The goal of the exercise is to assess the nation's crisis and consequence management capacity under extraordinarily stressful conditions,'' said Gina Talamona, a Justice Department spokeswoman.
At a cost of $3.5 million, Topoff is the largest drill of its kind ever conducted in the United States, and while the various officials knew the exercise was to take place, they did not know before the exercise the size and scope of what they were going to have to deal with, and still may not.
``No one was surprised, that's not the critical part. People knew this was a drill they were responding to, but not to what they were responding to,'' said Jim Van Dongen from the New Hampshire Office of Emergency Management.
No Plans For Public Panic
``Topoff'' is being carefully orchestrated so as not to alarm the general public. Police in responding areas are not using sirens and though physical activity is taking place on the ground, it is not being done in a way to excite the uninformed.
``The intent is to make sure this does not turn into the War of the Worlds,'' said a source with the Clinton administration, referring to the radio play produced by Orson Welles in the 1930s which scared many Americans into thinking Martians were attacking the planet.
In the Portsmouth attack, local officials said shortly after 8:20 a.m. EDT, at the start of a make believe charity foot race, a fake car bombing sent a foul smelling concoction of garlic mixed with Gatorade over the picturesque Portsmouth Port Authority facility.
``A Portsmouth police officer was the first on the scene, then fire trucks,'' said Van Dongen.
Following procedure, local authorities called in toxic hazard teams, then informed the statehouse of what was happening. Federal involvement followed, after the governor's office requested a presidential disaster declaration, freeing the FBI and FEMA to respond to the incident.
FBI Special Agent Barry Mawn told reporters the exercise was ``going pretty well,'' as federal agents and police scurried around the dead and wounded in Portsmouth this morning.
The spoof terror incident in Colorado actually began two days ago under a scenario in which a ``terrorist'' released ''anthrax spores'' in Denver. Later on Saturday ``victims'' were to show up at Denver hospitals complaining of symptoms.
Congress Mandated Terror Drills
``Topoff'' stems from a provision inserted in a 1998 spending bill by Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire calling for ``practice operations'' for a terror attack.
Critics of the exercise say it overstates the real threats facing America and that such a broad range of attacks would be unlikely to happen all at the same time.
In congressional testimony in March, CIA Director George Tenet said major threats to U.S. security came from groups such as Saudi exile Osama bin Laden's, which were trying to acquire biological and chemical weapons capabilities.
Tenet said over the next few years U.S. cities faced ballistic missile threats from a wide variety of sources: North Korea, probably Iran and possibly Iraq.
-------- us military
Draft Registration Lags
New York Times
May 20, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/l20dra.html
To the Editor:
Your May 18 news article about declining draft registration among young men highlights certain legal, ethical and political problems.
In the context of sexual equality and demands for the military to be more open to women, the terms of the current draft law must be revisited.
There is no reason to exempt women from the draft. Legal penalties against 18-year-old men who do not register could be challenged on the basis of sexual discrimination. Providing sexual privilege to women makes moot all the arguments for sexual equality.
PAUL STONEHART Madison, Conn., May 18, 2000
To the Editor:
It is no great wonder that fewer 18-year-olds are complying with draft registration (news article, May 18). American military activities in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf and Bosnia have shown a disregard for innocent American lives, jading the public and hastening the demise of patriotism.
Moreover, the scenes of war fought on video screens with a press of a button have given the public unrealistic ideas about the sacrifices necessary to defend American interests. The resounding sentiment seems to be, "Why bother?"
KRISTINA RAMOS Brooklyn, May 18, 2000
---
Army Training School to Rise Again, Recast but Unmoved
New York Times
May 20, 2000
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/052000army-school-edu.html
WASHINGTON, May 19 -- Dogged by years of controversy over its mission and its graduates, the Army's School of the Americas is on the verge of getting a new charter, a new curriculum and a new name. It appears likely, however, to face the same old protests.
The Army's plans to reorganize the school, which has trained generations of soldiers from Central America and South America, cleared a major hurdle this week when the House narrowly rejected an amendment that would have closed it down.
If the Senate goes along, as expected, the school that critics have linked to human rights violations by former students will officially "close" and "reopen" later this year as the Defense Institute for Hemispheric Security Cooperation.
The Army proposed the changes last month, prompted by rising opposition to the school from religious groups and, more importantly, from some members of Congress, who nearly succeeded in cutting off the school's financing last year.
Opened in Panama in 1946 and moved to its current location at Fort Benning, Ga., in 1984, the school has been the primary training ground for more than 60,000 Latin American military and police.
Some were later implicated in the region's most notorious abuses, like the murder of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador in 1989.
The secretary of the Army, Louis Caldera, said in an interview that critics have unfairly tarnished the school's reputation because of the actions of very few. Nonetheless, he said, the changes would give the school a focus that was more academic and less strictly military.
"I thought it would be a mistake to close the school down," Mr. Caldera said, "because that would be turning our backs on the countries of Latin America."
Because Congress chartered the school, the Army had to seek approval for its changes.
In addition to having a new name, the school would have an advisory board to review its curriculum and report to Congress. Authority over the school would be transferred from the Army to the Department of Defense, and students would be required to have at least eight hours of instruction in human rights in each course.
Mr. Caldera said the Army would try to increase the number of civilian students, and emphasize training political and military leaders in the proper role of the military under the region's emerging democratic governments.
The school would remain at Fort Benning and still offer courses involving purely military tactics and strategies, prompting opponents to denounce the changes as cosmetic.
When the Army's proposal came before the House on Thursday as part of the defense authorization bill, four members sponsored an amendment to shut the school and create a committee to review military training for Latin Americans.
"Even with a new coat of paint, the School of the Americas has trained far too many killers of innocent people to remain a part of our foreign policy," said one of the sponsors, Representative John J. Moakley, Democrat of Massachusetts.
But the amendment lost on a roll-call vote of 214 to 204 after lobbying by Army, Pentagon and Clinton administration officials. A day before the vote, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright sent members a joint letter saying the Army's proposal would "allow us to move past what had become a contentious annual debate on the school's legacy and focus on the question of how best to engage militarily our friends and allies in the hemisphere."
The Army's proposal won approval when the House overwhelmingly approved the larger authorization bill late Thursday.
The Rev. Roy L. Bourgeois, a priest who has organized protests against the school for a decade from his apartment at Fort Benning's main gate, said the changes would not diminish the movement against the school. The protests have grown from a handful of opponents to a crowd in November that was estimated at more than 8,000.
"After thinking this thing out, we realized what they're really talking about is a name change," he said in a telephone interview today. "For us, this is the same old school doing what it's always been doing."
-------- us nuc facilities
Radiation Is Your Friend?
Research by Preston Peet ptpeet@cs.com
http://www.disinfo.com/disinfo?p=folder&title=Radiation+Is+Your+Friend%3F
The US government has conducted atomic and nuclear experiments on a large proportion of the military and civilian population within the United States, and elsewhere, and is responsible for many accidents as well. These are facts that cannot be disputed. The US government has even begun paying claims to victims of some official US nuclear policy.
There are three different classifications of those who are qualified for recompense: 'Test Site Participants'; 'Downwinders'; and 'Uranium Miners'. 'Test Site Participants' are the Atomic Soldiers: men who were placed as close to ground zero as their commanders in the US 'Department of Department' (and the scientists in the 'Atomic Energy Commission'), could get them to test the radiation, and psychological effects of having an atomic bomb dropped upon them, or who helped in the clean-up of nuclear waste and later came down with a 'compensable' disease. 'Downwinders' are people who were physically present downwind of the Nevada Atomic Test site between the years 1951 to 1962, and then came down with a 'compensable' disease. 'Uranium Miners' are the miners underground who then developed lung cancer, or respiratory disease. The limit of monetary award for 'on-site' participants has been set at US$75 000. It is estimated that approximately 250 000 US servicemen participated in either the Nevada, or the Pacific Island atomic tests, and at least 100 000 civilians were affected by fall-out from the Nevada tests.
It hasn't just been the atomic bomb tests. 'Downwinders' living in areas surrounding other nuclear facilities, or nuclear waste facilities have tried to take the US 'Department of Energy' to court to force the release of records detailing waste disposal methods, and to hold the DOE accountable for the damage it has done to both people and the land. There are 1767 sites around the US that are either radiation contaminated, or potentially contaminated. There are no easy clean-up procedures yet to get rid of nuclear waste. All we can do is hide it inside containers, or launch it out into space.
Prisoners, soldiers, and mentally ill patients have been subjected to injections of radioactive material without their consent or knowledge. In the 1990s, US Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary agreed to pay US$4.8 million to families of some of the victims of the experiments.
A Special Grand Jury in Colorado, in 1992, found that the DOE had not performed its oversight duties at the Rocky Flats Plant, and that the plant and the contractors running the plant were "engaged in an on-going criminal enterprise," and had violated Federal environmental laws.
"When the FBI and the Environmental Protection Agency raided the plant on June 6th 1989, they found compelling evidence that hazardous wastes, and radioactive mixed wastes had been illegally stored, treated, and disposed of," report Downwinders.org staff. It has been over forty years that "Federal, Colorado, and local regulators and elected officials have been unable to make DOE and the corporate operators of the plant to obey the law." Rocky Flats plant had discharged radioactive wastes into the Platte River, and into the drinking water of Broomfield and Westminster, Colorado.
There are more than one hundred nuclear facilities in the US, which supply only about 20 percent of the energy needs. Each nuclear plant produces waste that needs to be disposed of safely and permenantly, but which for the most part is kept on site in unsafe, temporary facilities.
Radioactive waste can't be turned off. It will continue to produce radiation for millennia to come. It is not going to go away. It is, however, going into the rivers, the fish, the animals and plants, and into us, forever altering the genes that make us who we are.
-------- kentucky
Bush blamed the pace of the cleanup at the Paducah plant on the Democratic administration and Vice President Al Gore.
By Bill Bartleman,
The Paducah Sun
Saturday, May 20, 2000 Paducah, Kentucky
bbartleman@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2000/nn10639.htm
George W. Bush says his presidential administration would meet the federal government's commitment and timetable for cleaning up contamination at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
He also said that plant workers who are ill or injured because of exposure at the plant should be properly compensated by the federal government.
Bush made the comments Friday in an interview during a bus tour through western Kentucky. He also defended his plan to use surplus funds to cut taxes, defended his idea for saving Social Security, and said he supports Alan Greenspan's leadership as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Further, he supports laws to reduce the number of frivolous lawsuits being filed against businesses, and thinks the Tennessee Valley Authority should develop business strategy to be competitive in selling electricity.
Bush blamed the pace of the cleanup at the U.S. Department of Energy's gaseous diffusion plant on the Democratic administration and Vice President Al Gore, his opponent the Nov. 7 election.
Clinton's energy secretary, Bill Richardson, a strong Gore ally, has signed an agreement with the Kentucky Natural Resources Cabinet that cleanup at the plant will be completed in 10 years. However, state environmental officials monitoring the work say DOE already is behind schedule because the administration isn't providing enough funding to complete the work. It will cost about $1 billion.
"I am running against a man who touts his environmental record and attacks me for my environmental views," Bush said. "But he fails to look at his own record of the federal government's lack of willingness to clean up its own mess."
Bush said his administration would follow an aggressive cleanup schedule to meet the commitments made to workers and Kentucky. He also said environmental problems aren't confined to Paducah. "It is a problem at just about every DOE facility in the country," he said.
"I don't know all of the particulars of the problems in Paducah, but I do know that if contamination at the federal plant caused a worker to be sick, then the federal government as the employer should reimburse and compensate the worker," Bush said.
Tax cuts
Bush rebuked critics, some in his own party, who say his plan to cut taxes by more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years would cause runaway inflation.
"If I thought that was true, I would not propose it," he said. "It is a five-year phase-in relief plan to get rid of the marriage penalty, get rid of the death tax, allow those who don't itemize deductions to deduct charitable contributions and to help those on low income who right now pay a higher percentage of their wage in taxes than those who earn high incomes."
Bush said the debate over what to do with the projected federal surplus is a major issue in the presidential race. Gore wants to use most of the surplus to pay off the federal debt and fund new programs.
Bush acknowledges that his plan isn't popular with some groups and has drawn criticism. Still, Bush said he won't change his plan.
"I think it is important that I be consistent in my tax-cut message and not back off of it, even though the polls might say it isn't popular right now. I am for it because it is the right thing to do. I am not going to base my views by putting my finger in the air and see which way the political winds are blowing."
He said if he is consistent and wins, he will have an easier time convincing Congress to pass the tax cuts, even if Congress is controlled by Democrats. "I can say to Congress that the people heard my message, and this is what they want."
In addition to using the surplus to cut taxes, Bush said his plan includes debt reduction, money for a few new programs and to help keep the Social Security system solvent.
Social Security
Bush defended his plan to allow younger workers to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in a private investment fund similar to 401(k) retirement accounts. He said it is the only way to save Social Security and ensure young workers that they'll have benefits when they retire.
"That also is the right thing to do because it will give individuals an asset base they can call their own, not only for their retirement but they can pass it from one generation to the next," he said.
"In handling Social Security, Al Gore believes all wisdom exists in Washington, and that people should trust the government. I want to trust the individuals to make the right decision about their retirement."
He said the average retired worker earns about 2 percent from his investment in the Social Security system, much less than investments in private funds. Under the most conservative investment strategies, he said private investments have an annual income of 6 percent. However, others have earnings of more than 20 percent.
"We won't allow workers to do day trading, or invest in fly-by-night operations where people are picking their pocket. They will only be allowed to invest in well-secured, well-thought-out investments."
He said Democrats are using scare tactics to convince people that they will lose their benefits if they support the private investment plan. "No senior citizens will lose a single penny if this goes through," he said.
Federal Reserve
Bush said he plans to meet next week with the chairman of the federal reserve to discuss economic policy.
If he had to make a choice, he said, he would nominate Greenspan for another six-year term as chairman, a position Greenspan has held for almost 20 years under three presidents.
He would not express his opinion on Tuesday's decision by Greenspan and the board to increase interest rates by one-half percent.
"The Federal Reserve is an independent organization, but the man's (Greenspan's) track record has been good up until now," Bush said. "I won't second guess his short-term strategy."
TVA
Bush doesn't think the government-owned TVA needs to be privatized to be competitive in a deregulated energy market. TVA is run by a board whose members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
"It is not an issue of whether the government runs it, but an issue of being competitive in the marketplace," Bush said. "The industry has been deregulated, which will give people choices of where they buy their power and how best to meet their needs."
Litigation
Bush said laws are needed to stop frivolous and harassing lawsuits against businesses. Although he said such suits are without merit, they are costly to defend and cause high liability insurance rates that add to the financial problems of small businesses.
"I am concerned about the litigious society that we have become," Bush said. "I am for a fair civil justice system .... people should have access to the courts. But I don't want the courts to be clogged with frivolous and junk lawsuits, like the asbestos suits that are being filed all over the country."
-------- new mexico
Radioactive smoke reports lack facts, official says
By Lawrence Spohn
Tribune reporter, May 20, 2000
http://www.abqtrib.com/fire/052000_radnums.shtml
A state Environment Department spokesman has acknowledged that a federal-state report that suggested the Cerro Grande Fire smoke contained only "naturally occurring radioactive materials" was based on "a working hypothesis," not the necessary scientific facts.
"The whole thing has been bad," said Nathan Wade, the department's chief spokesman. "But I really don't believe any cover-up is going on."
The latest government report issued Friday reinforced one issued a day earlier regarding gross radiation counts.
No information on specific kinds of radioactive materials was released.
Wade said Friday that the state has withdrawn from the federal-state agreement to collaboratively issue air monitoring public information on the Cerro Grande Fire.
"From now on, we are going to do it ourselves without trying to reach consensus with the Department of Energy, the lab and the Environmental Protection Agency," he said.
Wade suggested the various agencies have stretched the scientific method because they truly believe their claim that the "radiological health risks from the Cerro Grande Fire do not appear to be any different because it burned on Los Alamos (Lab) property."
The development is significant because of continuing concerns and claims about radioactive and chemical hazards in the smoke from the fire, which for several days burned across research sites of the nation's top nuclear weapons research facility, Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Some critics have suggested that the government should have evacuated all major populations downwind of the fire and that firefighters and others exposed to heavy doses of the smoke should have been issued radiation badges (to assess their exposures) and air respirators to limit their intact of radioactive materials.
But one critic, a Vermont Health Physicist Stewart Farber, who found fault with the scientific basis for the government claims, said there remains no reason to believe that any radiation in the smoke, natural or unnatural, necessarily presents a major public health threat.
While criticizing the agencies' scientific methods and public relations tactics, he said, he believes the natural hydro-carbon based chemicals in the smoke likely present far greater risks to human health in particular to those already suffering respiratory ailments.
Wade, who said his department now is struggling to issue independent monitoring data to the public, suggested only that overzealous agencies were trying to reassure the public without actually having the hard data in hand to support their theory.
But Dan Kerlinsky, an Albuquerque physician who had accused the agencies of manipulating public information to suit their needs, said: "Truth is the first casualty."
He believes the smoke was a major public health hazard and that it is likely to induce some increase in certain cancers among those exposed.
Kerlinsky, who leads the New Mexico Physicians for Social Responsibility and who serves on the Los Alamos environmental advisory board, said it is virtually inconceivable to him that the fire could burn across lab property -- where some 160 contamination sites exist -- without releasing some man-made radioactive materials.
Kerlinsky said that the joint statement, issued by a collective body of some of the world's most powerful labs, lacked simple scientific credibility.
In addition to Farber's own radiation studies on wood ash, which he reported at a DOE-sponsored scientific conference in Albuquerque in 1993, Farber said there is some research elsewhere in the DOE complex that challenges the hypothesis that fire smoke did not or could not have unnatural radiation in it.
The joint government announcement by the state, along with the Department of Energy, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Environmental Protection Agency, was issued on their behalf by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, whose spokesman said he has no scientific expertise and could not answer specific questions.
The release acknowledged that gross alpha, beta and gamma radiation counts had increased during the fire. But they attributed these spikes -- 10 times higher for alpha radiation -- to "naturally occurring radioactive materials due to the combustion of vegetation during a fire."
Wade said that neither the state nor the federal government presented scientific data to justify their public claims.
In fact, he said, the press release "was written even before the data was in," and that the agencies still are conducting the spectral analysis -- of individual radionuclides from their monitors to identify those associated with natural or unnatural radioactivity -- needed to support the claim.
He said that the public statement lacked the specific radionuclide measurements that would prove whether increases in the three gross radioactive types of radiation were the result of the fire burning vegetation that contained natural or unnatural radioactive materials.
Natural sources would include high uranium and radium content in New Mexico soils that can be absorbed by trees, brush and grass. Unnatural sources would be from nuclear bomb development or testing, potentially including Kerlinsky's charge of biomass accumulation over 50 years at lab contamination sites.
He described Thursday's consensus writing of the press release as "wholly unrewarding" because "it really didn't say anything" that people wanted to know.
"People wanted answers," he said, "and the only answers we were able to give them were these gross numbers."
He said that when the state agreed to the collaboration they believed they would quickly have specific monitoring results addressing those concerns, but it turned out the EPA's mobile lab in Espaņola could not handle them.
He said the state now is having them analyzed elsewhere and hopes to have specific results within the next couple of days that should clarify the issue.
----
Work to start on capturing contaminated runoff
KRISTEN DAVENPORT
The New Mexican
5/20/2000
http://www.sfnewmexican.com/localnews/index.las
Workers will start digging ponds in canyons on Los Alamos National Laboratory property this weekend to capture and contain any hazardous waste and radioactive contamination that might wash off lab grounds and into the Rio Grande in the aftermath of the Cerro Grande fire.
Offering a tentative $85 million from the federal government for containment and cleanup, Sen. Jeff Bingaman toured the laboratory Friday - first by helicopter, then by bus - with a group of lab scientists, federal emergency officials and reporters to see the fire damage firsthand.
But lab officials say they're not waiting for the federal government to promise the money; they're getting started today on cleanup.
Five thousand to 8,000 acres of the lab's 43-square-mile property were burned in the Cerro Grande fire - some of those acres dangerously close to sensitive top-secret areas of the nuclear-weapons lab. The aerial tour showed entire hillsides and canyons scorched, acres of ponderosa skeletons, and grass fires that came within feet of buildings before being put out.
During the lab's 50 years of bomb-building, testing and the dumping of nuclear waste have dispersed huge quantities of depleted uranium and other radionuclides into surrounding soil and vegetation.
Watchdog groups say the lab has 1,500 nuclear and hazardous-waste dumping sites - many of them in canyons, and some in areas the fire swept over.
Scientists and activists alike are worried that because the mountain above the laboratory has been burned bald, even a moderate rainfall could cause flooding and major erosion that could sweep contaminated soil and other matter into the Rio Grande - eventually depositing into Cochiti Lake.
"The worst-case scenario is if a flood took all the contamination in the area and carried it all into the river," said Lee McAtee, the lab's deputy division director for environmental safety and health. However, he said, even that amount wouldn't pose a serious public-health risk.
Nonetheless, McAtee said, "There will be extreme runoff from those canyons." However, the flooding might not be a problem if the contamination is diluted by clean silt and ash from above. Or, the erosion from above the canyons could cover the contaminated areas, actually improving the situation.
"What is likely to happen? We don't know," McAtee said. "No scientific literature that I'm aware of looks at these... scenarios."
The two areas of the laboratory that burned the most seem to be technical areas 16, 18 and 36. TA-18 is one of the lab's most secret areas, a nuclear facility; the tour Friday showed that the fire burned within feet of the buildings.
The fire also came within about a half-mile of TA-54, the site where hazardous waste sits in drums under tents atop a mesa - waiting to be moved to underground caverns at Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. A sign on the gate at TA-54, just feet from the hundreds of drums, warns, "No smoking."
Burn trails show it also came within a few feet of the high concertina-wire fence that surrounds TA-55, the lab's plutonium facility.
"The tongue of fire came across the center of the lab," said Bob Day, division director for high explosives. However, officials say it did not burn over the major waste sites for depleted uranium.
The areas most damaged by the fire are largely areas of high-explosives testing and research, which can contaminate the soil and water. Day said some of those explosives areas might not be open again for months. Bingaman's tour bus took onlookers right past obvious evidence that the fire burned straight over the tops of earth-mound and concrete bunkers containing 10,000 pounds of high explosives.
The worry over erosion has gradually replaced the initial concern over whether the smoke plume that erupted over the laboratory last week contained hazardous particles - radiation or other chemicals such as asbestos or PCBs.
New Mexico Environment Department officials on Friday said all initial results of air monitoring at 20 sites across the lab and Northern New Mexico show only slightly higher levels of radiation, which they attribute to natural increases caused by the fire itself.
Also, 12 monitors were sniffing the air for nonradioactive chemicals that could have been released when the lab's waste areas burned.
Pat Hammack, head of an Environmental Protection Agency team called in by the federal government, said the chemical tests take much longer to analyze. Results from the chemical tests won't be available perhaps for weeks; however, preliminary results show no elevated levels of nasty stuff in the air, officials told Bingaman on Friday.
"We're not showing anything other than the forest burning down," Hammack said.
Air-monitoring samples go through three phases. In the first, initial conclusions are drawn. In the second, an analysis of the data gives a good idea of what was in the air. Those two analyses have been completed on the radiation monitoring, Hammack said. All have shown no areas for public-health concern, he said.
The EPA will not send its own samples for the third stage of testing, which analyzes the air filters and pinpoints what kind of radionuclides the air contained and differentiates between them. In other words, the isotopic analysis could say whether there are even trace amounts of plutonium or depleted uranium in the air rather than just naturally occurring radiation.
Only LANL air samples will be sent for the isotopic analysis. Some results are due back early next week.
But no one is willing to wait long to start fixing the burned lab property's potential erosion problem. Day said ponds will be dug in canyons to try to catch any runoff, and other remediation will be done - hopefully before the summer monsoons, which generally start in early July.
Lab officials will also do reseeding and set out mats to protect the soil from flooding - "we have acres of that material," Day said.
With public concerns about potentially contaminated runoff from the lab after the fire, U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici said officials are considering whether to establish a "permanent institution to evaluate what the nature of the problem is, if any, and to make recommendations."
Such an entity, he said, would "monitor and publicly discuss the problems that might be forthcoming because of all the desolation of this land and what areas might need special protection because of what Los Alamos has done in the past."
"I'm very aware that this could be a serious problem," Domenici said of the erosion worries.
Domenici and Bingaman have both said they want to give the lab $85 million for its cleanup efforts. The Senate agreed this week to give the money; it will now go to a House vote.
But the Department of Energy, which runs the lab, estimates it will cost $120 million to $150 million to pay for the fire - from cleanup to lost work hours as the lab's 12,000 employees stretch into the third week off from work.
Next week, the lab is expected to release a map that shows areas of the laboratory that burned overlapped with areas that the lab thinks are contaminated to determine how many hazardous sites burned.
--
To the List, To: downwinders@egroups.com:
From: greg wingard gwingard@earthlink.net
One heck of a mother's day present. If it was one of the new nerve gasses, a drop the size of a match head is not tiny, and in fact would be more than a fatal dose. It never ceases to amaze me what people will be complacent about.
----
Can This Guy Take the Heat? It Sure Looks That Way
New York Times
May 20, 2000
By JAMES STERNGOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/00/05/20/news/national/public-lives.html
LOS ALAMOS , N.M. -- There was a time -- say, two weeks ago -- when John C. Browne regarded the expression "trial by fire" as an apt metaphor for what he had endured as the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the government's leading nuclear weapons research center. From the day he stepped into the job a turbulent two and a half years ago, he had faced an extraordinary series of crises, from steep budget cuts, layoffs and an epidemic of safety problems to plummeting morale because of accusations that China had stolen weapons secrets from the laboratory.
But he never imagined that the trial by fire would be a literal one that would nearly engulf the laboratory and leave him with a sobering sense of vulnerability to forces so completely beyond his control.
Dr. Browne is just emerging from operating at the center of the worst wildfire in New Mexico's history and an unprecedented two-week shutdown of the laboratory. The 11,000 or so employees of the laboratory were kept away, the 18,000 residents of the town of Los Alamos and nearby White Rock were evacuated, and at one point the fierce fires raged to within yards of where tons of nuclear waste are stored in steel barrels under tentlike plastic structures. Many of more than 400 homes destroyed by the flames belonged to his employees.
"If you have a policy dispute or something, you can reason with someone and work things out, but you don't reason with nature, certainly not over the past two weeks," the 57-year-old Dr. Browne said, sitting in the laboratory's bustling emergency operations center in jeans and a windbreaker. "It's hard to know how you prepare for something like this."
In a way, Dr. Browne, a strikingly gentle-mannered, self-effacing research physicist, was as well prepared for the wildfire as anyone could have been, because of the problems he had already weathered. Well before the fire vividly demonstrated how volatile the laboratory's rustic setting in the high desert could be, he was being forced to contend with profound changes at this cold-war holdover.
Dr. Browne, a native of Pottstown, Pa., became director in November 1997, not long after deep budget cuts had caused the laboratory to lose about 900 members of its staff to buyouts and some 200 others to layoffs.
He spent his first nine months in the job dealing with lawsuits filed by many of those who had lost their jobs, work that was a far cry from the pure science and research that had made him so happy in his two decades at Los Alamos, that had made the place seem like an elite university rather than a center devoted to creating weapons of mass destruction.
Then came the accidents: a guard was shot during a training exercise; a worker was nearly killed after running a jackhammer into an underground power line; some chemicals exploded.
And then Congress sharply reduced the money that the laboratory could spend on pure research, which many scientists, particularly younger recruits, regard almost as a reward for good work.
Perhaps worst of all, Dr.
Browne said, was the dismissal and then arrest last year of Wen Ho Lee, a top scientist who was suspected of spying for China and was then indicted on charges of compromising American nuclear secrets by downloading a huge arsenal of data. Dr.
Lee's indictment was followed by a ban on foreign scientists' visits to the laboratory, another enjoyable research perk.
"That was probably worse than anything else as to morale," Dr.
Browne said. "That created a sense that the people at the lab could not be trusted. People here felt they were being punished. I would say we're still rebuilding after that."
L IKE some of those other issues, the wildfire here at first seemed controllable, then suddenly transformed itself into a threat that had people reeling. The fire was started by the National Park Service on May 4 in what was intended to be a controlled burn to thin dense pine forests nearby. But strong winds sent it leaping across canyons, and by May 7 it was closing in on the laboratory.
Dr. Browne first got a call in the afternoon saying there was an approaching fire. By early evening, the winds had sent the blaze roaring to the lip of a canyon at the edge of the laboratory.
"That's when I said, 'It's going to do what it's going to do,' " he recalled, adding that heroic work by firefighters had turned the flames back.
Eventually, though, the fire did sweep through several thousand acres of the laboratory's 43 square miles, destroying a handful of historic buildings from the 1940's where parts of the first atomic bomb were assembled.
Dr. Browne now speaks with a sense of profound relief that finally the threat of fire is gone and the focus is on relief work and finding housing for people who lost their homes. He looks forward to being able to return to jogging, mountain biking, playing tennis and tending to his family. He and his second wife have a 13-year-old daughter, a ski racer. He has two grown children from his previous marriage.
But Dr. Browne concedes that even after the damage from the fire is repaired, the laboratory will never be the same. In a conversation just steps from a burned-out canyon, he recalled his early days working on nuclear weapons, saying that even as the Vietnam War raged, he had enjoyed the immense pleasures of a collegial, cerebral environment where physicists could unlock the secrets of the atom, like translators gently coaxing meaning from obscure texts.
"That environment is so important," he said, "the freedom to do that kind of science, it would be a shame to lose it."
But Dr. Browne admitted that this old model was threatened by cuts in the pure-research budget and by a new mission for Los Alamos: to produce an actual component used in bombs, rather than just designs. The laboratory is already gearing up, he said, to produce "pits," devices that act as a kind of nuclear trigger. He described the task as hugely important but essentially an engineering function, a significant shift from the laboratory's longtime emphasis on pure science.
Such is the challenge that Dr. Browne seems destined to face repeatedly as director of the laboratory: Is it a place committed to the notion of destroying or creating?
Dr.
Browne was offered his initial job in a nuclear laboratory, at Lawrence Livermore in California, after receiving his doctorate from Duke University. But first the legendary physicist Edward Teller put the issue to him.
"I think we will give you a job, but first I have to ask you a question," Dr.
Browne recalled being told by Dr. Teller. "If while you were doing your scientific research I called and said I absolutely need you to tell me the answer to this question relating to weapons, would you work on such a problem?"
"I remember," Dr. Browne said, "that I started giving him sort of a circuitous answer, and he interrupted me and said, 'No, this is a simple question, yes or no.' "
"I said yes," Dr. Browne recalled.
But his manner suggested that he would not mind having it both ways.
---
Fire Renews Safety Concern Over Los Alamos Lab Waste
New York Times
May 20, 2000
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/052000nm-alamos.html
SANTA FE, N.M., May 19 _ The fires that consumed nearly 50,000 acres of northern New Mexico, including parts of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, have raised new concerns over the buildup of nuclear and hazardous waste stored at the laboratory.
State and federal officials have insisted that the fires, which were 70 percent under control by late today, did not get close enough to threaten thousands of containers filled with used gloves, rags, booties and other combustible items contaminated by low-level radioactive waste, like plutonium. By some estimates, the nearest flames remained half a mile away.
But scientists and environmental advocates said today that dry conditions in forests adjacent to the storage site made the forests ripe for another fire, and a potentially more dangerous situation because of the increasing quantity of stored waste.
Typically, the laboratory generates 150 cubic meters of waste a year, which is stored above ground under a fabric dome in 55-gallon steel drums and smaller wooden boxes. About 4,808 cubic meters, the equivalent of 14,000 drums, is currently in storage.
"The problem is just sitting there, just waiting for another incident to happen," said a Los Alamos scientist familiar with the storage site. "And there are a lot of people at the lab who share that concern."
Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a nuclear watchdog organization, said: "It's a dangerous situation. If they could get that stuff out of there, everyone would be better served."
Officials from the energy department and the laboratory have disputed the contention that anything at the storage site, a mesa surrounded by canyons known as Technical Area 54, is vulnerable to fire.
They cited an environmental study of the laboratory conducted four years ago in which officials created a theoretical worst-case fire and found that the waste would survive unaffected.
But even if conditions grew so grave that the drums overheated and exploded, sending toxic plumes skyward, the study concluded that no one living within a 50-mile radius would suffer ill effects.
Those views are not shared by many scientists, who contend that the department's worst-case test was not worst case, at all. While the department model assumed a breach of 62 drums, Edwin Lyman, scientific director of the Nuclear Control Institute, a nonprofit research organization in Washington, said an intense fire would more likely breach "closer to hundreds" of drums, causing a much greater potential for illness than the study provides.
"The department," Dr. Lyman said, "has refused to look at the real worst-case scenario."
Efforts are under way to remove the waste at Los Alamos to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside Carlsbad, N.M., which opened last year after a decade of delays. For now, the rate of removal is but a trickle.
With cleanup at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant outside Denver, which is scheduled to close by 2006, and three other facilities producing nuclear waste for disposal, the competition for removal has grown intense.
For Los Alamos, the pace has been further delayed by lawsuits challenging environmental impact of the disposal and a dispute between the state government, which requires that the contents of every container be itemized, and the Energy Department, which does not agree that detailed inventories are necessary.
Energy department officials said today that Los Alamos shipped 714 drums of waste last year, with 252 scheduled to go this year, 1,176 next year, 2,940 in 2002 and increasing numbers in the following years.
While that leaves the majority of the drums on site for the foreseeable future, officials from the laboratory and the energy department insisted that the containers were well protected, largely as a result of following recommendations of the environmental impact study. To add layers of protection, dry timber was removed from the perimeter of the laboratory, the tree line was moved back and dirt pathways were built as a buffer against fires from the canyons below.
Still, critics are not convinced that enough safeguards are in place, especially with the unpredictable updrafts from the canyons, which the current fires demonstrated, and the ever present possibility of sparks during an intense fire.
Representative Tom Udall, a Democrat whose district includes the laboratory, said today that a recent tour of the laboratory convinced him that the fire "was too close for comfort," and that rebuilding efforts -- some older buildings were destroyed -- should emphasize greater protections against fires or other disasters.
Mr. Udall also said that the waste removal from Los Alamos is part of a larger national problem for which Congress has traditionally authorized only limited spending.
"On a national scale," he said, "this is not regarded as a high risk. But we need to get to the job of cleaning up all over the country."
The Los Alamos scientist familiar with the storage site added one further regret. He said he and his colleagues were eager to return to work next week, when the laboratory reopens. But they were anxious, as well, he said.
"The lab is tucked away in what was some of the beautiful scenery you've ever seen," he said. "Since the fire, it looks terrible, and you can't just go out there with a bucket of paint and fix it. That was slow growth forest that burned. It will take a long time come back to what it was."
---
Los Alamos Had Good Evacuation Plan
Associated Press
May 19, 2000 Filed at 5:05 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Fire-Evacuation.html
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) -- Preparing for disaster has been a way of life for most people in the town where the atom bomb was born.
That preparation paid off May 10 when the wildfire that devastated Los Alamos advanced on the town of 11,000.
The residents' evacuation -- expected to take 11 hours -- was completed in just five. The only casualties were a few bent fenders.
Brenda Law, who was 3 months old in 1949 when her parents moved to Los Alamos, remembers the civil defense sirens of the Cold War years.
``We all were taught that when the sirens went off, we had a certain amount of time to get home,'' said Law, who works at a Los Alamos hardware store. ``I think the people who have retired have that ingrained, and I think a lot of the training kicked in.''
Los Alamos was chosen for its remote location and fortress-like layout in the 1940s as the headquarters of the Manhattan Project, the secret wartime effort to build the bomb. A half-century later, the Los Alamos National Laboratory carries on the tradition of top-secret nuclear weapons research.
During the Cold War, civil defense drills were held in case of nuclear attack. More recently, Los Alamos County and lab employees acted out various scenarios, including a wildfire approaching the town and a terrorist hostage situation.
On May 10, gusty winds carried embers from the burning trees into the canyon just outside of town, and fire officials knew it wouldn't be long before flames reached the town.
Fire Chief Doug MacDonald gave the order to evacuate. Some 11,000 Los Alamos residents streamed out of the town, which is on mesas in the foothills of the Jemez Mountains. There are three main roads out of the area, and only two were open at the time.
``We were very pleased we were able to get people out in half the time we expected,'' Los Alamos County Administrator Joe King said.
An automated phone system with a recorded evacuation message was used to alert residents. The system allows an evacuation to be conducted in phases, with the neighborhoods closest to the fire going first.
``It helps to do it on a staged basis, it helps the flow'' of traffic, King said.
King, who has worked in county and city government in Richland, Wash., and Oak Ridge, Tenn., two other Manhattan Project towns, said Los Alamos is different.
``This by far has had the closest working relationship with the community,'' he said. ``It's different than the other sites where the community is left outside the fence wondering what is going on.''
---
Justice Dept. Report Faults FBI in China Spy Case
Yahoo News
Saturday May 20 12:33 AM ET
By James Vicini
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A classified internal U.S. Justice Department report has harshly criticized the FBI for the way it handled the investigation of Wen Ho Lee, the former U.S. government physicist suspected of spying for China, government officials said on Friday.
The report said the year-long review concluded that the FBI moved too slowly in the investigation, failed to provide sufficient resources and supervision, and prematurely focused on Lee as the prime suspect for the alleged theft of U.S. nuclear secrets.
One official familiar with nearly 800-page report said it mainly was critical of the FBI, although it contained lesser criticisms of other government agencies, including the Justice and Energy departments. The official described the FBI's actions in the case as ``negligent.''
Lee, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Taiwan, goes on trial in November on 59 federal counts of making illegal copies from computer files on nuclear weapons development programs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where he formerly worked.
Lee, who has pleaded not guilty, has been jailed since his arrest in December amid a wider controversy over allegations China had obtained U.S. nuclear weapons secrets. Lee was not charged with espionage, and China has denied the allegations.
Reno Calls Report Comprehensive
Attorney General Janet Reno said at her weekly Justice Department news conference that she has been briefed on the report, but has not completed reading it. ``It is detailed; it is comprehensive; it is thoughtful.''
She added, ``the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been very forthcoming and cooperated, and I think we're all interested in using the contents of this report to shape the future efforts in this regard.''
The Republican heads of two Senate committees with oversight responsibility of the matter asked Reno on Friday for a copy of the report.
``Several Senate committees have been conducting oversight on the various aspects of the case and are entitled to copies of the report to address these important concerns,'' Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (news - web sites) and Energy Committee Chairman Frank Murkowski said in a joint letter.
Reno last year named federal prosecutor Randy Bellows to head an internal review into whether the Justice Department or the FBI made mistakes in the Lee case beginning in 1982, when his name first surfaced in a separate espionage case at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
The officials said the report concluded that the FBI could have moved in on Lee and other suspects sooner if its agents had shared information with its own counterespionage experts.
The report said the Justice Department should have approved the warrant for electronic surveillance requested several times by the FBI. But the FBI failed to provide all the information it had to the department, the officials said.
The report concluded that investigators did not need a court order to search Lee's computer because he had signed a privacy waiver granting permission for a search. Had Lee's computer been searched in 1997 without a warrant, Lee's computer downloads could have been discovered years earlier.
Fbi Conducts Broader Investigation
The FBI in September began a broader investigation of the allegations of Chinese espionage at U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories after officials decided the initial probe had been too narrowly focused.
With its initial focus on Lee, the FBI failed to consider other possible suspects, according to the report.
FBI spokesman John Collingwood said the FBI was ``carefully reviewing'' the report, which it received two days ago. ``The problems identified with the early parts of this case have or are being remedied and substantial changes have already been made,'' he said.
The report reached many of the same conclusions as a series of earlier investigations by congressional committees. Reno said she would like to share the report with Congress.
---
China Spy Case Said Poorly Handled
Associated Press
May 19, 2000 Filed at 12:06 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-China-Espionage.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An internal Justice Department review concludes the FBI failed to provide enough resources and supervision to the Wen Ho Lee spy case and focused so narrowly on the Los Alamos scientist that it may have missed other national security breaches, officials said Thursday.
The highly classified report written by prosecutor Randy Bellows was presented to Attorney General Janet Reno in the last week and echoes prior congressional findings about the government's investigation into possible espionage at its nuclear labs.
The FBI and Justice Department have battled for months in public over whether the department's decision to decline an electronic surveillance warrant for the Lee case hampered agents' work.
After months of suggestions that Lee would be indicted for China espionage, the scientist was charged last December with lesser offenses of removing nuclear secrets from the Los Alamos lab with no suggestion he gave them to China.
Lee, who had worked at Los Alamos' top-secret nuclear weapons programs since the 1970s, has steadfastly claimed his innocence, insisting he never provided any secrets to China or anyone else. Fired in March, 1999 and arrested last December, he remains in jail in Santa Fe awaiting trial.
The Bellows report, according to officials who have seen it, concludes that the department should have approved the warrant requested several times by the FBI.
But it adds that the FBI did not provide all the information it possessed that might help the department make the decision, the officials told The Associated Press, speaking only on condition of anonymity.
FBI spokesman John Collingwood declined comment late Thursday.
The officials added that the report concludes FBI agents spent so much time fighting for the surveillance warrant that they missed the opportunity to more quickly search Lee's work computer, where they belatedly found evidence he downloaded prized nuclear secrets from secure computers.
Bellows concludes the FBI did not need the warrant to conduct the computer search because Lee had no reasonable expectation of privacy on a government computer, the officials said.
The lengthy focus on Lee also kept the bureau from considering other people as possible China espionage suspects and other possible leaks of national security secrets, the report added.
The AP first reported last December that documents showed the FBI began to doubt more than a year ago that Lee had given China one of America's most prized nuclear secrets as originally feared, but did not begin to refocus its investigation to other possible suspects until late last year.
The Bellows report, the officials said, blames the FBI for not providing enough leadership and resources to the espionage investigation in its early stages.
-------- ohio
Beryllium report disappoints DeWine
May 20, 2000
BY KAREN MacPHERSON
BLADE WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://www.toledoblade.com/editorial/beryllium/0e20bery.htm
WASHINGTON - A new government report on the health hazards faced by nuclear workers exposed to beryllium drew an immediate critical response from Sen. Mike DeWine (R., O.), who contends that it offers little new information.
The 18-page General Accounting Office report, released late yesterday, provides a chronology on the federal government use of beryllium, as well the evolving government response to health risks posed by it.
But GAO officials offer no assessment of the government's response or recommendations for further government or congressional action.
Mr. DeWine, one of the lawmakers who requested the report from the federal watchdog agency, said through a spokesman that he is "disappointed with the vagueness of the report.''
"The Toledo Blade has already provided us [in its investigative series on beryllium's health hazards] with the information that the report presents,'' said Charles Boesel, Mr. DeWine's spokesman.
"It does not provide us with a guide for workers who have been injured. It is a complex issue that spans many years, and we simply need more information.''
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo), another lawmaker who requested the GAO report, said "all they did was rehash the history of the use of beryllium and the government's nonresponse."
"We need a compensation program for workers,'' she said.
Miss Kaptur noted that efforts to include a compensation program for workers sickened by exposure to beryllium have been stymied in the U.S. House this year. Instead, House members approved a "sense of Congress" resolution calling for further study of the issue.
The resolution carries no legal weight and does not offer financial help to workers.
Sarah Ogdahl of Ohio Citizen Action, an environmental group pressing for reforms on the beryllium issue, was more blunt in her assessment of the GAO report.
"This has not been an investigation. It is a wash,'' Ms. Ogdahl added.
Beryllium is a hard, lightweight, gray metallic element that is used by the federal government in nuclear weapons, missiles, and jet fighters. People exposed to beryllium dust often develop a lung illness called chronic beryllium disease, which is often fatal and has no cure.
Researchers estimate 1,200 Americans have contracted beryllium disease, and hundreds have died, making it the No. 1 illness directly caused by America's Cold War buildup.
A 22-month investigation by the Blade showed that, for more than 40 years, the U.S. government and the beryllium industry have knowingly allowed thousands of workers, including those at the local beryllium plant outside Elmore, to be exposed to unsafe levels of beryllium dust.
After the Blade's series was published last year, the U.S. Department of Energy issued a rule that established new worker safety controls. The agency also proposed legislation to create a compensation plan for Energy Department workers affected by chronic beryllium disease.
Mr. DeWine and Sen. George Voinovich (R., O.) have proposed a slightly different plan to provide federal compensation to Energy Department contract workers afflicted with occupational illnesses resulting from their unknown exposure to hazardous or radioactive materials.
Congress has yet to act on either proposal.
-------- us nuc weapons
Nuclear states pledge total elimination of nuclear weapons -- eventually
May 20, 2000
http://cnn.com/2000/WORLD/europe/05/20/nuclear.treaty/index.html
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- The world's five main nuclear powers Saturday pledged "an unequivocal undertaking" to eventually eliminate atomic weapons.
The key provision was part of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty revision signed by 187 countries and issued at the conclusion of a monthlong conference at U.N. headquarters.
Negotiations were held up for hours Friday when Iraq insisted that it not be accused of noncompliance with the treaty during the past five years. The United States had wanted the Iraq reference in the final document.
The five-year conference to review the global treaty on nuclear weapons operates on the principle of consensus -- and the U.S.-Iraq dispute threatened to sabotage approval of a final document. But eventually compromise language was worked out.
The nuclear powers -- United States, Russia, France, Britain and China -- have never before undertaken to eliminate nuclear weapons.
But the agreement gave no timetable for the elimination of atomic weapons, and delegates said it would take many years to achieve a nuclear-free world.
Additionally, the United States, Russia, France and Britain did not agree to any provision that would prohibit the first use of nuclear weapons. Only China agreed to abandon the first-use option.
Reaction mixed
Reaction to the pledge was mixed among disarmament activists. In a statement, the British American Security Information Council noted that "the paper is full of 'shoulds,' 'urges' and 'oughts.' Still, even baby-steps toward a more secure planet are something to be smiled at."
Jean McSorley of Greenpeace International said the document represented "another face-off between countries who want the weapons states to abide by legally binding commitments and those who want to maintain their nuclear arsenals."
Other provisions in the text include a call to reduce tactical as well as strategic arms, and an accounting of how many weapons the nuclear states have.
The document also calls on Washington and Moscow to implement as soon as possible the START II treaty that would reduce long-range nuclear warheads from 6,000 to 3,500 on each side.
The conference of the 187 signatories to the 30-year-old NPT was the first since the nuclear powers convinced the international community in 1995 to extend the treaty indefinitely in exchange for commitments toward disarmament.
Non-nuclear states have criticized the United States and Russia for moving too slowly in cutting their arsenals during the past five years.
In the final document, Israel -- which along with India, Pakistan and Cuba, has not signed the NPT -- was called on to sign it and open up its nuclear sites to international inspection.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Highlights of Nuclear Agenda
Saturday May 20
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000520/wl/un_nuclear_treaty_glance_1.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Here are some highlights of the final document adopted by the 187 parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty at the end of a four-week conference on Saturday:
-An ``unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament.''
-Increased transparency by the nuclear powers on reporting information about their nuclear arsenals.
-Reducing ``the operational status'' of nuclear weapons.
-Diminishing the role of nuclear weapons in national security policies to minimize the possibility of their use.
-Permanently and irreversibly removing plutonium and uranium from nuclear warheads.
-Negotiating within the next five years a treaty banning production of these fissile materials for weapons.
-A moratorium on nuclear weapon test explosions pending the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
-Deplores India and Pakistan nuclear tests and urges both countries, despite the tests, to become parties to the treaty ``as non-nuclear weapon states.''
-Reaffirms ``the importance of Israel's accession to the NPT'' and calls for its nuclear facilities to be placed under comprehensive International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.
-Reaffirms the right of NPT parties to peaceful nuclear technology and strengthens prohibitions against nuclear cooperation with nonparties.
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Deal Reached on Nuclear Arsenals
May 20, 2000
By EDITH M. LEDERER,
Associated Press Writer
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/000520/21/int-un-nuclear-treaty
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The five nuclear powers on the Security Council agreed Saturday to eliminate their nuclear arsenals, as part of a new disarmament agenda approved by 187 countries.
The agreement by the signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was reached after all-night deliberations and intense pressure on Iraq and the United States to settle a dispute over Baghdad's compliance with U.N. sanctions.
"Today is a great day for the cause of nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament," said Algerian U.N. Ambassador Abdallah Baali, the conference president, as he banged the final gavel to loud applause.
Although the agreement gives no timetable, and delegates said it would take many years to achieve a nuclear-free world, it marked the first time the major nuclear powers had publicly affirmed their obligation to disarm.
The five-year review conference for the global treaty - aimed at controlling and ultimately eliminating nuclear weapons - required a consensus, and the U.S.-Iraq dispute threatened to sabotage approval of a final document.
Signaling the importance Washington placed on the issue of Iraq's compliance with nuclear agreements, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Einhorn, who is in charge of nonproliferation, flew to New York to take part in the final talks.
Hours after his arrival, Canadian Ambassador Chris Westdal, who had worked through the night, announced an agreement to applauding delegates, saying "the last piece in our puzzle is complete."
Delegates to the conference said the new agreement was significant because it marked the first time in 15 years that the signatories to the nonproliferation treaty have reached consensus on moving forward with nuclear disarmament.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan said it "marks a significant step forward in humanity's pursuit of a more peaceful world - a world free of nuclear dangers, a world with strengthened global norms for nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament."
On Thursday, the five nuclear powers - the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China - agreed to "an unequivocal undertaking" to eliminate their nuclear arsenals.
The NPT, which came into force in 1970, has only four holdouts: India and Pakistan, which conducted rival nuclear tests in 1998, Israel, which is believed to have nuclear weapons, and Cuba.
Delegates repeatedly stressed the importance of getting those nations to sign - a step many concede is crucial to the cause of disarmament.
The final document reaffirmed "the importance of Israel's accession to the NPT" and urged India and Pakistan, despite their nuclear tests, to become parties to the treaty "as non-nuclear weapon states."
But China's U.N. Ambassador in Geneva, Hu Xiaodi, was critical, saying the document did not "fully reflect the current international situation, nor does it call for the removal of fundamental obstacles to nuclear disarmament."
Hu cited a host of issues that weren't addressed in the final document - the expansion of NATO, the absence of any reference to no first use of nuclear weapons or U.S. plans for a limited missile defense system.
Nonetheless, the delegates did take other important steps leading up to a total ban on nuclear weapons, including a moratorium on testing pending activation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, further reductions of tactical nuclear weapons, increased transparency on reporting information about nuclear arsenals and taking weapons off "hair-trigger" alert.
They also agreed to permanently and irreversibly remove plutonium and uranium from nuclear warheads, and to negotiate within the next five years a treaty banning the production of weapons-grade nuclear material.
The U.S.-Iraq dispute centered on Iraq's compliance with U.N. sanctions requiring that Iraq's facilities for producing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons be shut down. The United States maintains that Iraq has not adequately accounted for its weapons programs.
Iraq's U.N. Ambassador Saeed Hasan initially said Baghdad would accept the International Atomic Energy Agency's January inspection of its nuclear reactors under the NPT treaty - but was vehemently opposed to U.S. demands for a statement that the IAEA inspection would not substitute for its Security Council obligations.
Under the compromise language, the conference noted an April 24 statement by the IAEA director-general that since Iraq has suspended weapons inspections since December 1998 "the agency has not been in a position to provide any assurance of Iraq's compliance" with the U.N. sanctions.
At the final plenary session of the conference, Hasan entered a reservation on the compromise, reiterating that there was "no reason" to include Iraq or the Security Council resolution in the document.
But without naming Iraq, U.S. Ambassador Robert Gray said it was important that the conference expressed "profound concern about cases of noncompliance."
Barak Delays D.C Trip Amid Violence
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Nuke Powers Give 'Unequivocal' Pledge to Disarm
Saturday, May 20, 2000
By Evelyn Leopold
http://news.lycos.com/headlines/TopNews/article.asp?docid=RTNEWS-ARMS-NUCLEAR&date=20000520
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Setting an arms agenda for the next five years, key nuclear powers gave a new "unequivocal" commitment on Saturday to more than 185 countries to scrap their atomic arsenals.
But they avoided any timetable on when they would do this at a key review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the cornerstone of arms reduction accords.
Approval of a final document among the five countries with nuclear arms and the 182 nations without them came hours after the meeting was nearly derailed by a dispute between the United States and Iraq over Baghdad nuclear arms programs.
But Washington and Baghdad settled compromise language.
While the U.S.-Iraqi controversy occupied delegates for 24 hours, most believed it was not central to the conference, which agreed on a consensus disarmament document for the first time in 15 years.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the agreement "marks a significant step forward in humanity's pursuit of a more peaceful world, a world free of nuclear dangers."
The five recognized nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China -- approved stronger language than usual to reduce their arsenals during a review of the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
Under the 30-year-old treaty, the five powers are obligated to move toward disarmament while all other signatories vow to give up atomic warheads for good.
The conference agreed to further reductions of tactical nuclear weapons, increased transparency by the nuclear powers on reporting information about their nuclear arsenals and reducing the number of warheads on hair-trigger alert.
Its document called for diminishing the role of nuclear weapons in national security policies in an effort to minimize their possible use.
And it committed the United States and Russia to implement fully the START II treaty that would cut long-range nuclear warheads from 6,000 to 3,500 on each side.
Washington and Moscow, between them, are thought to have more than 35,000 strategic, tactical or stockpiled warheads.
Countries without nuclear weapons had harshly criticized the United States and Russia for moving far too slowly in cutting their arsenals over the past five years.
In response, the five main nuclear powers issued a statement on May 8 promising an "unequivocal commitment to the ultimate goals of a complete elimination of nuclear weapons."
But an influential group of moderate states, which two years ago organized a "New Agenda Coalition," dismissed that. Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden said the total elimination of nuclear weapons was an obligation under the treaty and not an "ultimate goal."
The five then agreed to "an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals, leading to nuclear disarmament to which all parties are committed" under the treaty.
"Today's events signify an important landmark on which to build a nuclear weapons-free world," Mexico's envoy, Antonio de Icaza, told the meeting on behalf of the coalition.
But China was critical of the document, with its envoy, Hu Xiaodi, citing the expansion of NATO, the absence of any commitments to use nuclear weapons first or a reference to the planned U.S. national missile defense program, designed to fend off attacks from so-called "rogue states."
"The final document has failed to fully reflect the current international situation. Nor does it call for removal of fundamental obstacles to nuclear disarmament," Hu said.
The document also, for the first time, singled out Israel, believed to have nuclear weapons, for not signing the treaty and for not placing its nuclear materials under "comprehensive" international safeguards.
It deplored underground nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in 1998. Both countries, along with Israel and Cuba, have not signed the NPT.
Nevertheless, the meeting was touch-and-go until the last minute with the session extended a day after the conference had been scheduled to close.
At issue was a dispute about whether Iraq had accounted for all its nuclear weapons-related materials under a Security Council resolution requiring Baghdad rid itself of weapons of mass destruction. The council has put Baghdad under sanctions until it scraps its dangerous arms.
Iraq argued this should not be included in the treaty conference since Baghdad had allowed an inspection of its nuclear reactors by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in January.
Compromise language, milder than the original, now says the IAEA "has not been in a position to provide any assurance" of Iraq's compliance with a Security Council resolutions on its nuclear arms programs.
In an effort to end the deadlock, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Einhorn came to New York for a short time to take part in the final negotiations.
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Missile 'shield' may trigger global chaos
Sydney Morning Herald
Date: 20/05/2000
By BOB DROGIN and TYLER MARSHALL in Washington
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0005/20/text/world15.html
The United States intelligence community is writing a report warning the Clinton Administration that construction of a national missile defence system could trigger a wave of destabilising events around the world and possibly endanger relations with European allies, a US intelligence official said.
The new National Intelligence Estimate will sketch an unsettling series of political and military ripple effects from the proposed US deployment that would include a sharp build-up of strategic and medium-range nuclear-armed missiles by China, India and Pakistan and the further spread of missile technology in the Middle East.
A supplement to the highly classified report also will note that the threat of attack from North Korea has eased since last northern autumn, when Pyong- yang effectively froze its ballistic missile testing program in response to US overtures.
Outside critics long have argued that the proposed national missile defence system could backfire and actually diminish national security and global stability.
But the CIA-led analysis and updated threat assessment is the first official evaluation of how the system could generate dangerous new threats.
The Government has pledged to decide this autumn whether to proceed with an initial base of 100 "interceptor" missiles in Alaska, backed by ground-based phased radar stations and satellite-based infrared sensors, in a system designed to shield the continental US from a limited missile attack.
Proponents of the system argue that North Korea, Iran or Iraq may threaten US territory with intercontinental ballistic missiles some day. Critics argue that the threat is exaggerated, that the anti-missile technology is unproven and that deployment would undermine crucial arms control and nonproliferation regimes.
CIA analysts believe that Russia would accept US arguments that no system could protect against the number of missiles that Moscow could launch and that its deterrent thus would be preserved. But China has only 20 CSS-4 intercontinental ballistic missiles in vulnerable silos and the analysts say that, after a US deployment, Beijing would conclude that it had lost its deterrent force - and act accordingly.
"We can tell the Russians that [the missile defence] won't affect the viability of their deterrent force," the intelligence official said. "I don't know how we can say that to the Chinese with a straight face."
If the US system is built, the CIA believes, China would install multiple independent nuclear warheads on its missiles for the first time in an effort to overwhelm any missile shield. Beijing has possessed the technology for more than a decade but has not used it so far.
The intelligence official said that Russia and China both would increase proliferation, including "selling countermeasures for sure" to such nations as North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
Moreover, the official said, India is deemed likely to increase its nuclear-armed missile force if it detects a sharp build-up by China, its neighbour and longtime rival. That, in turn, is likely to spur Pakistan, India's arch-rival, to increase its own nuclear strike force, the official said.
Arms control specialists have expressed strong concern that the missile defence system as designed would be incapable of overcoming relatively cheap and easy to deploy countermeasures, such as clusters of decoys.
And a prominent scientist has accused developers of tampering with test results to hide evidence of the system's failings.
Dr Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology called on the White House to appoint a board of independent scientists to review the test data before President Bill Clinton decides whether to order deployment of the anti-missile system.
"This highly organised and systematic pattern of actions has the appearance of an elaborate scientific and technical blunder, which urgently needs to be investigated by a team of scientists who are recognised for their scientific accomplishments and independence from the Pentagon," Dr Postol wrote in a letter to the White House Chief of Staff, Mr John Podesta.
The Pentagon said such an inquiry would be "premature", and that its Ballistic Missile Defence Organisation was preparing a "line by line analysis" of Dr Postol's charges.
The Los Angeles Times, Agence France-Presse
---
Boston Globe
05/20/00
A BOSTON GLOBE EDITORIAL Missile glitch
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/141/editorials/Missile_glitch+.shtml
With President Clinton's self-imposed deadline for a decision on deployment of a national missile defense system fast approaching, there were fresh indications this week of a radical disjunction between the political calendar, which dictates a decision this summer or early fall, and a timetable determined by scientific and technological realities.
A glitch in the tests that are to precede Clinton's decision was announced this week by the Pentagon. The final test flight of a missile interceptor had to be postponed because of a wiring problem with a transmitter used to monitor the test.
This glitch could complicate Clinton's decision if it postpones the planned test beyond mid-July. Because of test site commitments, such a delay might push the decision past election day.
A far more serious question about the fundamental workability of the system was raised in a letter to the White House from Theodore Postol, professor of science, technology and national security policy at MIT. Postol said his analysis of published data from the first integrated flight test of the antimissile system ''shows that the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV) will be defeated by the simplest of balloon decoys.''
That conclusion, if verified by other scientists, should deflect Clinton from hurrying into a decision that would cost about $60 billion, might compromise the nation's security, and would almost certainly start the unraveling of international nuclear nonproliferation and arms limitation agreements.
Postol not only warned of a flaw in the system that cannot be corrected but also said he has documentation that shows that the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization ''attempted to hide this fact by tampering with both the data and analysis'' from the test flight he analyzed.
Clinton should appoint a commission of eminent scientists without ties to the Pentagon to evaluate the test flights and Postol's tampering charges. History will not judge the president kindly if he ignores such a warning and plunges ahead with an unworkable antimissile system for political reasons.
This story ran on page A10 of the Boston Globe on 5/20/2000.
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U.S. Scales Back Hopes For Summit
Arms Deal No Breakthrough Expected in Moscow Talks
International Herald Tribune
Paris, Saturday, May 20, 2000
By Roberto Suro Washington Post Service
http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/SAT/IN/russia.2.html
WASHINGTON - The Clinton administration has scaled back its hopes for new arms-control agreements with the Russians, conceding that they expect little progress at a Moscow summit meeting in June, according to senior officials.
Inability to reach an accord at the June 4-5 talks would give President Bill Clinton little time before leaving office in January to resolve major disagreements with the Russians over the size of nuclear arsenals and also U.S. consideration of plans to build a high-tech missile defense system.
Attempting to reduce expectations, a senior State Department official offered reporters what he termed a ''disclaimer,'' insisting that the Moscow talks would not be an ''arms-control-only'' meeting.
''In fact, we think it would be quite a mistake to proceed as though everything has to be resolved in one fell swoop in the course of several days in early June,'' he added.
Neither Mr. Clinton nor President Vladimir Putin is ''in a position to put grand compromises on the table at the summit, and so both sides will be happy to come away with some kind of process for further talks in the future,'' a Defense Department official said.
Such talks could occur at three international meetings that Mr. Clinton and Mr. Putin are expected to attend before Mr. Clinton leaves office, as well as in regular discussions among top officials, the State Department official said.
But administration officials, who had hoped the Russians would negotiate in earnest with Mr. Clinton rather than wait to deal with an undetermined successor, do not express any confidence that there will be a breakthrough this year.
One reason for the reduced goal is a realization that Mr. Clinton has little to offer Mr. Putin in return for the concessions that Washington is seeking on missile defense.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff let it be known this month that they were uncomfortable with a Russian proposal for sharp reductions in both countries' nuclear arsenals - to a maximum of 1,500 warheads on each side - and the White House dropped consideration of that offer, at least for now, officials said.
Administration officials had hoped to persuade the Russians this summer to drop their insistence that the proposed U.S. National Missile Defense, as the system is officially known, would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and undermine the entire structure of arms-control accords.
Instead, Mr. Clinton is likely to face a November deadline for deciding whether to begin construction of the system in the face of steadfast Russian opposition.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced Thursday that it is again postponing a critical flight test for the missile defense system as a result of problems with the ''kill vehicle'' that is designed to destroy enemy warheads in space.
The Pentagon spokesman, Kenneth Bacon, said the test, originally scheduled for April, then put off until June, probably will take place in early July. But Mr. Bacon said that the Pentagon believed the problems had been resolved and that the delay ''should not have any impact whatsoever'' on the timing of Mr. Clinton's decision.
In the first major test of the kill vehicle, the interceptor drifted off course in October before finding the target, and in a second test, in January, a vital sensor failed, causing the interceptor to miss a dummy warhead high over the Pacific.
After getting the results of the upcoming test this summer, Mr. Clinton could decide to postpone deployment of the system until the technology is further refined.
Samuel Berger, Mr. Clinton's national security adviser, was in Moscow on Thursday to discuss an agenda going beyond arms control and touching on ''a whole range of matters'' from investment opportunities for Americans in Russia to peacekeeping missions in the Balkans, an official said.
''Whatever people hoped for a while ago,'' an official said, ''the reality now is that no one wants Putin's first summit with an American president to end badly.''
Since January, the administration has formally sought Moscow's assent to modify the ABM Treaty to allow the proposed missile defense plan, and discussions went into high gear after Mr. Putin was elected to the Russian presidency in March.
When Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov spent two days here at the end of April to prepare for the June summit meeting, however, there was little movement toward compromise. At the end of his visit, Mr. Ivanov said ''considerable differences'' remained.
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Pentagon Classifies a Letter Critical of Antimissile Plan
New York Times
May 20, 2000
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/052000sci-pentagon-missile.html
The Pentagon has classified as secret an antimissile critic's letter to the White House, and the censored expert is crying foul.
The critic, Theodore A. Postol, professor of science and national security studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, first wrote the White House on May 11 to report what he described as a major flaw in the Pentagon's antimissile plan and efforts to cover it up.
Yesterday, Dr. Postol wrote the White House again, this time to say that the Pentagon had classified his letter secret and to condemn what he said was probably a bid to curb the high-stakes dispute. The antimissile system under consideration is estimated to cost as much as $60 billion.
In his latest letter, Dr. Postol said the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, which ordered the imposition of secrecy, "is most likely attempting to illegally use the security and classification system to hide waste, fraud, and abuse."
If secrets were inadvertantly released in his earlier letter, he added, it was because his analysis was based on Pentagon documents that the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization had improperly declassified.
In his letter, which he made available to The New York Times, Dr. Postol asked John D. Podesta, the White House chief of staff, to alert his colleagues of the "claimed status" of the May 11 letter and to "refer this matter to the Department of Defense inspector general for immediate investigation."
Yesterday, the White House referred requests for comment to the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.
Lt. Col. Richard Lehner of the Air Force, a spokesman for the organization, said that no one was accusing Dr. Postol of releasing secrets but that the antimissile office was taking steps to classify the letter and its appended reports.
Colonel Lehner said that one of the reports Dr. Postol had sent to the White House apparently contained three or four charts of secret data that declassification officers had failed to delete.
"If even one word is classified, then the whole thing is classified until the secret part is removed," the colonel said, describing the usual federal policy concerning secret documents.
Still, the Pentagon's move to classify is unlikely to have much practical effect because the letter has circulated widely throughout the administration, Congress and the world, with hundreds, if not thousands, of electronic copies speeding across the Internet.
It even appears on the Web site of the Institute of Physics and Technology in Moscow.
Dr. Postol's May 11 letter was three pages long and had four reports attached to it that were meant to back up his technical claims.
His criticism of the proposed antimissile system centers on the most technically difficult part of the system's goal -- enabling a speeding interceptor to distinguish incoming weapons from clouds of decoys.
Dr. Postol contended that a pivotal flight test in June 1997 showed that the objective was impossible to achieve, and that the Pentagon then conspired to hide this surprising discovery.
His accusations are based partly on antimissile criticism by Nira Schwartz, a former senior engineer at the TRW Corporation, a top military contractor.
In a lawsuit against the company, Dr. Schwartz said that TRW had faked results of antimissile tests and evaluations of computer programs for the interceptor's sensor and fired her when she protested. The company has denied her accusations.
Through her litigation with TRW as well as an inquiry by the Pentagon's Defense Criminal Investigative Service, Dr. Schwartz obtained many antimissile reports and data, some of which she shared with Dr. Postol.
Such documents and data from them presumably lie at the heart of any Pentagon concerns about leaked secrets.
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Missiles and Snowballs
New York Times
May 20, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/00/05/20/letters/l20mis.html
To the Editor:
Proponents of the antimissile project ("A Shield of Their Own, letter, May 13) are wrong to consider an antimissile shield a defensive measure. Every schoolchild knows that when your opponent in a snowball fight starts collecting garbage can lids, the obvious response is to pile up more snowballs and figure out a sneakier way to deliver them.
Similarly, adversaries in a nuclear age are apt to increase their own arsenals in response to the other side's development of a missile defense, or in a worst-case scenario, smuggle a bomb in on a ship or even in a suitcase.
In any case, do we want to spend another $60 billion that could much better be used in other ways, on a device that has never been shown to work? And why would North Korea or any other so-called rogue state be willing to invite certain annihilation by firing one or two missiles at the United States?
RACHELLE MARSHALL Stanford, Calif., May 13, 2000
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Washington Post
Saturday, May 20, 2000; Page B07
OBITUARIES
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/20/072l-052000-idx.html
Robert Johnson Omohundro Research Nuclear Physicist
Robert Johnson Omohundro, 78, a retired research nuclear physicist of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington whose findings centered on the development of radiation detection systems, died of cardiac arrest May 14 at George Washington University Hospital.
Mr. Omohundro, who as a young physicist out of Howard University worked on the development of the atomic bomb during World War II, spent 36 years at the Naval Research Laboratory, from 1948 to 1984.
He helped design devices to measure and detect radiation emissions from nuclear warheads, including a satellite-based vacuum ultraviolet radiation detection system and a rocket-borne mass spectrometer for upper atmosphere research.
His other projects included machines used at airports to detect fissionable material and portable neutron detectors for officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency in their efforts to prevent the proliferation of plutonium.
He authored or co-authored more than 40 scientific articles in his field of study and received two patents for his designs.
Mr. Omohundro, a Washington resident, was born in Norfolk. He attended Virginia Union University and graduated from Howard University with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a master's degree in physics.
He volunteered at the Randall Shelter for the Homeless and served as a treasurer and vestry board member of St. Augustine's Episcopal Church, both in Washington. He also belonged to a number of professional associations, including the American Physical Society and the Research Society of America.
He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha social fraternity.
His marriage to Marjorie Barrett Omohundro ended in divorce.
Survivors include his wife, Jeanne Omohundro of Washington; three children from his first marriage, Barbara Omohundro of Washington, Lesli Omohundro-Bronczkowski of Wenzendorf, Germany, and Dr. Phillip Omohundro of Washington; a sister; and six grandchildren.
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The Target Is Russia:
The Clinton Administration Has Put Us On The Path To A New Arms Race
by Theodore A. Postol
March 2, 2000
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
http://www.commondreams.org/views/030200-106.htm
The Clinton administration is relentlessly moving toward an ill-informed decision this summer to deploy an untested and fundamentally unworkable national missile defense (NMD) system. The administration claims this technically flawed defense is needed to negate an unproven long-range missile threat posed by "rogue" states.
The cost of this defense will not simply be measured in dollars. It may include an end to further nuclear arms reductions with Russia, an increased Chinese effort to expand its nuclear forces in response to the defense, negative reactions from U.S. allies in Europe and East Asia--who know that their security will also suffer from this ill-thought out American initiative--and an eventual collapse of global arms control and nonproliferation efforts.
The Clinton administration, already confronted by strongly negative and adverse public reactions from Russia and China, insists that this defense system would not upset global efforts to reduce the dangers from existing nuclear arsenals and potential nuclear proliferants.
Instead, the administration sticks to its false claim that the proposed system will be sharply limited, and that it will not compromise Russia's retaliatory deterrent forces.
Although Iran and Iraq have been named as targets of this defense, North Korea is the alleged serious and immediate threat. But if the proposed national missile defense system is to be aimed principally at North Korean missiles, why is the United States deploying a radar that is ideally suited for gathering intelligence for such a system on the northern tip of Norway, less than 40 miles from the Russian border?
The mysterious Vardo radar, with inflatable dome (top of page) and after the dome was blown off by a November storm. [Norwegian Defense Forces photo]
Strawmen
On September 8 and 9 in Moscow, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott presented Russia with a proposal to modify the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow the United States to deploy a light but rapidly expandable national missile defense system.
Talbott told the Russians that if they did not accept the U.S. proposal, the United States would simply withdraw from the treaty and proceed on its own.
Not surprisingly, the Russians viewed Talbott's statements as a threat and an ultimatum rather than as a proposal for serious and honest discussion about matters of fundamental importance to both nations.
Talbott's heavy-handed approach to the Russians was another notch in a perfectly consistent record of Clinton administration actions that add up to a coherent pattern of hostility and deception toward Russia. This record has created throughout the Russian political system a deep distrust of and anger toward the United States.
In its seven-plus years, the Clinton administration has piled blunder upon blunder in dealing with Russia. The administration's initiative to expand NATO eastward has created a constant threat that the United States and Russia will stumble into an unwanted crisis that could easily escalate to nuclear alerts.
The administration's continued emphasis on maintaining a hair-trigger nuclear strike force serves no constructive purpose and endangers the United States, Russia, and the rest of the world by threatening Russia's increasingly vulnerable nuclear forces.
And now the Russians have been presented with an insulting pretense that the United States is vulnerable to long-range missile attacks from the likes of North Korea, Iran, or Iraq.
The latter two countries have no substantive long-range missile programs. Although North Korea does have a program, it is based on primitive, scaled-up Scud technology.
The Russian Scud is based on the work of German engineers captured by the Russians at the end of World War II. The Scuds themselves consist of modest improvements over the German V-2 missile, first flown by Nazi Germany in the early 1940s.
Despite the vast resources available in Nazi Germany, and the dedicated and well-supported national effort in the Soviet Union that followed, the first ICBM was not achieved until 1957. The United States now tells the Russians that it has an urgent need for a national missile defense to protect itself from an imminent ICBM attack from a state that has a gross domestic product smaller than Delaware's.
Against a backdrop of years of misrepresentations by the Clinton administration, the North Korean, Iranian, and Iraqi "threat" is seen as a strawman by the Russians and Chinese.
The Russians and the Chinese also understand that the administration's "limited" defense is in fact a system that is indistinguishable from one aimed at them. They correctly understand the full technical implications of the administration's proposed battle-management upgrades of early warning radars at Fylingdales Moor, Britain; Thule, Greenland; Grand Forks, North Dakota; and Clear, Alaska. These upgrades are exactly those that would be needed for a national missile defense system aimed at Russia and China.
And now comes the most recent addition to the array of misrepresentations to the Russians--installation of a state-of-the-art, NMD-capable radar in Vardo, virtually on the Russian border.
The administration claims that the radar's purpose is tracking space debris in earth orbit. It is obvious to any technically informed person that this claim is simply another misrepresentation.
A poke in the eye
The certain principal use of this X-band radar, along with a second one planned for Eareckson Air Station on Shemya Island, some 1,500 miles south west of Anchorage, will be to collect detailed intelligence data on Russia's long-range ballistic missiles.
This data will cover the entire trajectory of the missiles, including their powered flight, "bus" maneuvers, deployment of warheads and countermeasures, and reentry into the Pacific near the Kamchatka peninsula.
The data collected by these radars will be of primal value to a U.S. national missile defense system. The information will be fed into the NMD data base, which will increase the discrimination capabilities of the proposed system against Russia's ballistic missiles.
It is not clear that the Vardo radar, code-named HAVE STARE, is a formal violation of the Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. But it is clear that the radar could be added to an NMD sensor system in a way that would unmistakably violate the intent if not the letter of the treaty.
It is also clear, both to Washington and Moscow, that the basic infrastructure of the proposed limited national missile defense system could be rapidly scaled up to become an overtly anti-Russian system.
The Vardo radar may be "treaty compliant." But it is also one more threatening and insulting poke in the eye of the Russian bear.
Fingerprinting
The HAVE STARE radar was developed in the early 1990s by Raytheon, under the direction of the Electronic Systems Center, the air force's lead organization for the development and acquisition of command-and-control systems. According to the Defense Department, HAVE STARE is "a high-resolution X-band tracking and imaging radar with a 27-meter mechanical dish antenna." It became operational at Vandenberg Air Force Base on California's coast in 1995, where it was used in early developmental tests of the national missile defense program.
In late 1998, HAVE STARE was quietly dismantled and sent to Norway, where it is being jointly reassembled by the United States and Norway under the Norwegian project name "Globus II." It is located at a Norwegian military intelligence facility and its mission, according to the U.S. and Norwegian governments, is to track and catalog space junk in high earth orbit.
Space junk is no trivial matter. There are many thousands of manmade objects orbiting earth, ranging in size from paint flecks and nuts and bolts to booster rockets. But the new location of the HAVE STARE radar, publicly revealed in April 1998 by Inge Sellevag, a Norwegian newspaper reporter, is nearly the last place on earth one would choose for a radar with the purpose of tracking space debris. Because many objects of concern are in orbits that can never be seen from a far north location, a space tracking installation is in fact best placed much closer to the equator.
But the location of the radar is ideal for collecting very precise data on Russian missile tests. The Vardo machine is--at least for now--the most advanced tracking and imaging radar in the world.
The HAVE STARE radar potentially has a resolution of roughly 10 to 15 centimeters, which means it could provide detailed radar images of Russian warheads and decoys. In contrast, U.S. early warning radars have a resolution of--at best--5 to 10 meters.
When a pulse from the Vardo X-band radar illuminates a target, reflections are generated mostly by the numerous edges, surfaces, and other geometric details of the target. These distinct reflections are, in effect, a radar-fingerprint of the object.
Because the radar-fingerprint of an object varies with the frequency of the radar, it is especially important that the Vardo radar operate in the X-band, the same frequency range of the NMD X-band radars.
In addition, the radar signal will not simply be a complex mix of the many individual reflections. The signal will fluctuate in time as the targets of interest rotate and precess, providing yet additional fingerprint data that could be exploited by the NMD X-band radars.
In short, the Vardo radar can provide critical information for a national missile defense system aimed specifically at Russia.
Further, the Vardo radar and the planned radar for Shemya Island at the western end of the Aleutians could, operating together, collect precision radar signature data on virtually every phase of Russian tests of missiles and decoys, within minutes of launch from the Plesetsk test range, about 150 miles south of the White Sea, to splashdown 4,000 miles away, near Kamchatka.
Of particular importance, HAVE STARE will be able to obtain precision signature data at X-band frequencies and in mid-course--the critical point at which warheads and decoys separate from the "bus." Previous U.S. radars at Vardo and Shemya have lacked the ability to perform such measurements at X-band frequencies.
Even though both the United States and the Soviet Union (and now Russia) have long been capable of defeating missile defense systems by deploying decoys and other devices along with warheads, this well-focused intelligence-gathering activity understandably appears to the Russians as a determined and planned step towards a U.S. National missile defense capability aimed at Russia. The existence of this radar at this location further adds to Russian perceptions that the Clinton administration is again being deceptive about its true intentions.
What is "real time"?
U.S. officials have said little about the export of the HAVE STARE radar to Norway, leaving Norwegian officials to explain its uses. Sellevag, a reporter with Bergens Tidende in Bergen, Norway, stirred the pot in the spring of 1998 with stories revealing that HAVE STARE was moving to Norway and that it had a potential national missile defense capability.
In response, Dag Jostein Fjarvoll, Norway's secretary of defense, assured parliament that the Globus II radar (HAVE STARE) was "under full Norwegian control." At best, that was misleading. Norwegian personnel may man the system but the radar will be directly linked, according to a viewgraph prepared by the air force's Electronics Systems Center, to "Cheyenne Mountain and NMD." (The nerve center of the proposed national missile defense system will be buried deeply within Colorado's Cheyenne Mountain.)
This information clearly indicates that Fjarvoll's assertions that the radar could not "contribute to any eventual American defense" were false. Indeed, they seemed deliberately crafted to mislead the Norwegian parliament.
The minister added that "only Norwegian personnel have access to data in so-called real time." His use of "real time" was repeated, perhaps for emphasis. "In other words, there was no connection between Globus II and the U.S. Air Force in real time. . . . The radar can therefore not contribute to any eventual American missile defense."
To those not familiar with how acquisition and tracking systems work--and members of the Norwegian parliament surely fit that category--the no-real-time argument might seem compelling. From a commonsense point of view, if a sensor system does not supply data in real time, it is useless for missile defense.
In fact, none of the existing U.S. early warning and tracking systems, or those projected for the national missile defense system, operate in "real time"--as the defense minister seems to define it.
They are not real-time systems because they collect vast amounts of data that are not sent directly to the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. All of these systems--in place and projected--extract critical information from the mass of data after short processing delays. Once the data are extracted, only then is it sent to operational command centers.
Each Defense Support Program satellite, for instance, collects about 170 million bits of information per second. These data are then sorted by a vastly powerful signal processing system on the satellite. By the time the data sorting is completed, only one million bits per second are actually transmitted to the ground.
Once on the ground, the data are further processed. That processing takes place in 10-second batches, creating a vastly simplified but supremely accurate surveillance "picture" of the earth below. In turn, that information is updated and further processed every 10 seconds.
In cases where there is very clear data indicating a missile launch, it takes 20 to 40 seconds before the system can "initiate" tracking of the launch. The operators of the system would not see this information for 30 to 90 seconds, depending on specific circumstances.
Hence, the Defense Support Program satellites in high earth orbit, currently the heart of the U.S. early warning array, do not comprise a "real time" system according to the definition implied by the statements of Norway's defense minister.
Why Norway?
What is the purpose of the HAVE STARE radar at Vardo, which the Norwegians call Globus II? Its purpose is clear to the Russian civilian and military analysts I have talked to. It is an intelligence-gathering system optimized to collect data on Russian ballistic missiles that can be directly used by a U.S. National missile defense system aimed at Russia.
The technical information on HAVE STARE released by the U.S. Air Force and the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization indicates that it is a very capable tracking and imaging radar. Testimony given in Congress and statements made elsewhere further confirm this. On June 18, 1996, for instance, Rear Adm. Richard D. West, then acting director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, testified before the House National Security Committee about the NMD program.
In his testimony, he described plans to upgrade existing early warning radars "for inclusion in the NMD architecture." He added, "If needed, other existing forward-based radars (such as Cobra Dane or HAVE STARE) could also be used to support the NMD system."
More recently, Sellevag has tracked references to HAVE STARE's potential usefulness to the NMD program. A mid-1990s air force environmental impact statement provided by the U.S. Air Force Atmospheric Interceptor Technology Program, noted:
"Two existing U.S. Air Force radar systems have high potential for NMD application. The upgraded Precision Acquisition Vehicle Energy-Phased Array Warning System (PAVE PAWS) radar located at Beale Air Force Base (AFB), California is a wide-looking potential target detection element of a future NMD system. The HAVE STARE tracking radar located at Vandenberg AFB, California represents a candidate design to perform the narrow-looking, target tracking radar role in a future NMD system.
"To fully understand the utility of these radar systems in an NMD role, the [air force] plans to integrate and test these systems using realistic threat scenarios. California is the only location where these radars are close enough to be tested together. The PAVE PAWS radar initially detects an incoming target and hands over specific target tracking to the HAVE STARE."
The tests were carried out. Two Minuteman III launches were picked up by the Defense Support Program's early warning satellites; in turn, that data cued PAVE PAWS and HAVE STARE, which tracked the missiles.
Sellevag documents that HAVE STARE was later involved in two test flights in the NMD program. In June 1997, a Minuteman II lifted off from Vandenberg with dummy warheads and balloon decoys--targets for sensor payloads aboard Boeing's Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle, launched from Kwajalein. A similar test of Raytheon's entry into the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle sweep stakes took place in January 1998. (Both tests were of the sensors; no intercept of the target was attempted.)
Occasional air force and Ballistic Missile Defense Organization briefing viewgraphs and slides allude, directly or indirectly, to HAVE STARE in future NMD architecture. One December 1999 slide produced by the Strategic and Nuclear Deterrence Command-and-Control Program Office shows HAVE STARE clustered with a host of "Global Awareness" sensors, all of which are linked to Cheyenne Mountain & NMD.
Could HAVE STARE act as an early warning and tracking radar if a national missile defense system is deployed? Yes--but only as a backup to other sensors closer to home or parked in safe orbits.
The U.S. Air Force would have to assume that in the event of an intentional missile attack by Russia, Vardo would be immediately destroyed. (According to Sellevag, the idea that the Vardo radar might put northern Norway at the top of Russia's nuclear target list has unsettled at least a few members of the Norwegian parliament.)
But the real value of the Vardo radar and of the not-yet-built Shemya radar is that they can do critical advance work for the national missile defense system. They can collect radar signatures--"fingerprints"--from a host of Russian missiles, warheads, decoys, and other devices as they are tested in east-west flight high above the Russian hinterland.
These fingerprints constitute vital information for any system designed to counter the Russian missile "threat," which must function perfectly within minutes of the need to do so. A system that cannot quickly separate warheads from everything else is fatally flawed.
If the purpose of a national missile defense system is to protect the United States from North Korean missiles, why is the world's most advanced tracking and imaging radar about to go online at the northern tip of Norway instead of northern Japan?
Why Norway? is an especially intriguing question in the context of the threats made last September by Strobe Talbott to the Russians, when he said that the United States was considering unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty
Meanwhile, the administration may soon make a decision to deploy a national missile defense that could well end whatever momentum is left in the U.S.-Russian strategic arms reduction process.
The truth is that domestic politics in the United States has led to false claims about the promise of missile defense technology--as well as fantastic claims about "emerging threats."
Both the Republicans and the Democrats have been involved in a charade trying to make each look less concerned about national defense while they together drive the United States toward a disaster of historic proportions.
If the administration decides this summer to deploy the national missile defense system, it should at least be honest about it. The Pentagon still defines the principal missile threat as Russia, not North Korea. That is why HAVE STARE is in northern Norway instead of northern Japan.
A new arms race?
In his visit to Russia last September, Talbott assured the Russians that the proposed system would only be capable of handling "tens of missiles." Apparently Talbott thought that would reassure the Russians and not alarm the Chinese.
But the Chinese have, according to the CIA, only 20 missiles capable of reaching the United States. The Chinese have long said that the proposed "limited" system has an anti-Chinese face. And the Russians clearly believe that a system that could be rapidly expanded and upgraded looks like an anti-Russian system.
Talbott's words got an immediate response from Russia and China. When I was in Moscow in October, only a few weeks after Talbott's visit, I was told by several government officials about a meeting in Beijing, from which they had just returned.
The meeting was sponsored by the foreign ministries of Russia and China. However, most of the participants were from the Russian and Chinese ministries of defense. The purpose of the meeting was to begin Russian and Chinese political and technical cooperation to deal with the threat of a U.S. National missile defense system.
George N. Lewis, John Pike, and I published an article in the August 1999 issue of Scientific American, which attempted to show that the proposed U.S. National missile defense system could be defeated by the simplest of countermeasures. I personally know missile experts in Russia and China, and they agree.
A U.S. decision to deploy will nevertheless result in a strong negative, coordinated, and unequivocal reaction from Russia and China. This is because there will be constant concerns that the United States may eventually expand and modify the defense with nuclear-armed interceptors instead of the pitiful hit-to-kill interceptors now planned for the system.
A modified and expanded nuclear system could also be readily defeated, but the Russians and Chinese would have to dedicate more resources to the task. Most important: They might want to expand their offensive capability, following the Nuclear Age dictum that a good offense beats any defense.
The Russians and Chinese also will not want to agree to a cutoff in the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons. After all, they may need these materials to expand their nuclear arsenals in response to upgrades in U.S. missile defenses.
They will want to reserve the option of nuclear testing, so that new nuclear weapons designs--hardened to the effects of U.S. nuclear interceptors--can be tested.
And they will certainly not be interested in engaging in further arms reductions. Instead, they may need to expand their forces in response to changes in the U.S. National missile defense system.
While this game is going on between the United States, Russia, and China, the non-weapon state signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will be watching their security erode along with that of the three great competing powers. Some states may choose to withdraw from the treaty while others may choose to stay.
However, some of the states that withdraw may create pressures on neighboring states to also withdraw, especially if there are traditional tensions between these states.
Thus, a decade after the end of the Cold War, the Clinton administration has put us on the path to a new arms race and a breakdown of the entire international regime of treaties that has been built over the past 30 years.
It is bad enough if the administration simply does not understand what it is doing.
It is even worse if it does.
Theodore A. Postol is a professor of science, technology, and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has worked as a scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and on missile-related issues at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, and the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. He has done extensive work on the Patriot anti-missile system's performance during the 1991 Gulf War.
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START III: Opportunities and Consequences for Nuclear Disarmament
by Eugene Miasnikov, Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies at MIPT
http://www.armscontrol.ru/default.htm
Presentation at the panel "Achieving a Nuclear Weapons Convention. Legal, Political, and Technical Strategies for Nuclear Disarmament", May 9, 2000, United Nations, New York, NY
Welcome to visit the Center's START Web site (events, publications and discussions on START II Treaty related issues) - this information section is updated weekly.
http://www.armscontrol.ru/start/publications/em0509.htm
http://www.armscontrol.ru/start/default.htm
After seven years of harsh debates, the START II Treaty has been finally ratified recently by the Russian parliament. This event brought some optimism among those who seek for further nuclear reductions, since START II ratification by Russia had been a condition for beginning START III negotiations between the United States and Russia.
Therefore, it is not surprising, that the following questions occur:
Is there a possibility of START III conclusion?
If such a possibility exists, what are the conditions?
What kind of START III can be reached and when?
If concluded, what impact might a new U.S. - Russian arms control agreement have on further nuclear cuts?
In order to answer to these questions one should understand current U.S. and Russian attitudes toward nuclear disarmament. There seem to be two groups of long term factors influencing decisions of policy makers in both countries.
The first group of such factors stimulates further U.S.-Russian dialog on nuclear arms cuts. The United States seems to be interested in ensuring the safety and security of the Russian nuclear arsenal to prevent nuclear non-proliferation and a possibility of inadvertent or accidental nuclear war. At the same time, Russia is very anxious to retain the last symbol of its superpower status - nuclear parity with the United States, which is currently possible only by further steps of nuclear reductions.
However, there is also a second group of factors, which creates obstacles to further bilateral nuclear cuts. There are increasingly strong voices in the United States appealing to obtain overwhelming superiority over any "rogue state" and build an invisible "Fortress America". Russia, on the other hand, has to respond to unfortunate developments (such as NATO expansion, war in Yugoslavia and NMD deployment in the U.S.), and therefore concerns over the survivability of its remaining smaller nuclear arsenal are growing. Unfortunately, the second group of factors is becoming more influential, and eventually may destroy the bilateral nuclear disarmament process.
There are also short term factors shaping the window of opportunities for START III negotiations. These factors, however, may play a decisive role in concluding a START III agreement.
On the eve of the forthcoming presidential elections, Clinton's administration proposed a "grand bargain": Russia would agree to amend ABM Treaty, and the United States would negotiate START III Treaty, and possibly, make some concessions to Russia in exchange. However, there are several obstacles. Russia currently objects to any ABM Treaty modifications, and seems to be ready to go as far as destroying the whole arms control regime. The U.S. Congress made very clear that it will not support the current administration's "grand bargain", nor the entry of START II into force. Finally, President Clinton plans to make a decision on NMD deployment by this fall.
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2000/mj00/treaty_doc.html
In foreseeable future, it seems impossible to separate negotiations on START III and ABM Treaties. Clinton's administration seems committed itself to withdrawing from the ABM Treaty, if Russia refuses to make modifications. If the ABM Treaty regime collapses, Russia will most certainly withdraw from START II and refuse to negotiate (or implement) START III.
Certainly, it is very difficult to predict how this deadlock will be resolved, but at least two scenarios look quite plausible:
President Clinton decides to deploy NMD, Russia continues to object. The ABM Treaty will cease to exist. Russia will refuse to implement START II.
However, both sides will likely agree to limit the damage to arms control and retain START I regime. START III negotiations will be definitely postponed for at least several years.
Russia and the United States concludes a "grand bargain" by the end of 2000. Implementation of START III will be still in question because of strong criticism in both countries. Ratification by both the U.S. Congress and the Russian Federal Assembly will depend on the essence of the concluded agreement and most certainly, the outcome of the second phase of talks on ABM Treaty modification (sometimes after March, 2001). There is a chance, that the NMD factor will be weakened by 2005 (e.g., due to U.S.-Russian joint cooperation on TMD or a U.S. decision to curtail NMD deployment because of increasing costs), but by that time other obstacles may emerge (e.g., high precision conventional weapons).
Thus, START III may be reached even by the end of this year, but its implementation is still in question.
In order to estimate what kind of START III can be achieved, one should look at the U.S. and Russian forces projections by 2010.
Russian land based forces will consist of single warhead "Topol-M" (SS-27) ICBMs deployed in silos and on mobile launchers. Existing mobile land based missiles will likely retire, since they have relatively short service lives (about 10 years). Therefore, the quantity of deployed "Topol-M" ICBMs will depend on their production rate. Currently, about 10-20 new ICBMs are deployed yearly, but eventually the production rate may grow. Land based forces may also include about 90 SS-18 ICBMs if START II does not enter into force.
The sea based leg will represent a mix of "Delta IV," and possibly "Borey," "Typhoon" and "Delta III" class SSBNs. Lowest estimates (six deployed strategic submarines) look more plausible, because all "Typhoons" will likely be decommissioned, and the first "Borey" will not enter in service before 2007-2008.
Table 1 clearly shows that Russia is unable to sustain a strategic force at START II levels and thus is interested in deeper nuclear reductions.
In contrast, U.S. strategic platforms can be retained in service until at least 2020 at a modest cost. Modernization of Minuteman III ICBMs and Trident SSBNs is underway. If START II does not enter into force, the United States may in addition to retain 50 MX ICBMs, and keep 3 warheads on Minutman III ICBMs and 8 warheads on Trident II SLBMs.
Thus, there is a little incentive for the United States to be interested in START III reductions. START III is unlikely impose any constraints on Russian strategic forces, but may force the United States to carry out "premature" nuclear cuts.
If START III negotiations take place, it is not difficult to predict the areas of disagreement and likely attitudes of both sides (see Table 3).
Table 3 U.S. and Russian attitudes at START III talks
Russia The United States Inevitable issues
Number of deployed warheads 1000...1500 2000...2500
Implementation methods toward reduction of strategic platforms Elimination Conversion to conventional roles
Counting rules:
Warheads on SLBMs Ban on Permission to downloading download
MIRVed land based ICBMs Permission to Ban on MIRVed land deploy up to 3 based ICBMs warheads
Bombers START II Conversion to accounting rules conventional roles
ALCMs START II Should be accounting rules excluded from counting
New issues
SLCMs Limits on SLCMs Should not be included
TNWs Should not be Limits on TNW included
Transparency of Not clear yet Not clear yet nuclear arsenals
The outcome of the START III talks will be a compromise between the outlined positions. However, this compromise will strongly be influenced by ABM Treaty modification decisions.
The main issue of negotiations will be a limit on deployed warheads. The U.S. seems unlikely to agree with the Russian proposal to cut the strategic forces to 1000-1500 deployed warheads. The agreement at lower levels can only be reached, if Russia agrees with "formal" U.S. reductions (downloading or conversion of strategic platforms to conventional roles).
Russia will most certainly propose a ban on downloading SLBMs below 4 warheads, which would require elimination of launchers to reduce the number of warheads deployed on "Tridents". However, the Russian attempt to reduce the U.S. "breakout potential" will be weakened if Russia asks for permission to deploy up to three warheads on mobile ICBMs.
Possibly, the U.S. side will propose to consider its strategic bombers (at least, the remaining B-52H bombers) as having been converted to conventional roles and exclude them from counting. If so, the ALCM issue may become a hot topic at the negotiations.
Depending on time frames of the negotiations, new issues (see Table 3) may emerge at the talks. These areas were identified in Helsinki summit in 1997. However, the sides do not seem to be ready to solve the problem of limiting sea launched cruise missiles and tactical nuclear weapons in time for the START III Treaty to be concluded by January 2001.
There is some hope for a breakthrough in the area of transparency of nuclear arsenals, because both sides seem to be interested in progress in this area. Russia wants to reduce the U.S. "breakout potential", and eliminating non-deployed warheads might be a temporary solution. The United States, on the other hand, is interested in increased transparency of the Russian nuclear arsenal. However, chances for a success in this area are very small. The Russian side might prefer to agree with U.S. "formal" reductions in order to keep its nuclear arsenal closed from the eyes of U.S. inspectors.
Realistically, there is a strong possibility that START III will be even more unbalanced compared to START II. The "breakout potential" problem is unlikely to be solved. However, it may be softened, if non-deployed nuclear warheads are to be eliminated. Nevertheless, such a decision will take just a temporary effect, unless production of new warheads is covered by transparent measures.
An unbalanced START III may have a strong negative impact on further nuclear disarmament. Deeper reductions may become impossible for a long period of time. START III implementation will be a hostage both of U.S. NMD deployment plans, and the Russian Federal Assembly.
An example of a desirable agreement was described in a report "Nuclear Arms Reduction: The Process and Problems", published by our Center in 1997. We proposed the following START III limits:
http://www.armscontrol.ru/reductions/main.htm
1,500 deployed warheads
200 SLBMs, irreversible changes of converted launchers (e.g. - filling with concrete).
200 silo based ICBMs
Verified deployment of new RV platforms on SS-19, Trident II, Minuteman III missiles and elimination of the old ones
Prohibition of reconverting bombers back to strategic missions.
Elimination of nuclear weapons control equipment on converted bombers including the equipment inside the pilot's cabin. Intrusive verification of converted bombers to ensure that these platforms are technically unable to carry nuclear weapons. Limits on deployment of conventional strategic bombers
Verified elimination of nuclear SLCMs, limits on conventional SLCM deployment
Verified elimination of non-deployed nuclear warheads
One should mention that other important issues may emerge at the START III talks as well.
Russia will likely propose limiting covert antisubmarine warfare near naval bases. This measure would be very desirable because it allows to improve confidence between the Navies, prevent dangerous consequences of possible submarine collisions and limit destabilizing SLCM deployments.
Another possible Russian proposal is to take into consideration the counter force potential of precision guided conventional munitions (PGM).
The issue was never raised before at SALT or START talks, but the situation has changed since than. If an efficient conventional preemptive strike is theoretically possible against deployed nuclear forces of another side, this option becomes very attractive, because the environmental consequences are much lower compared to the nuclear strike. The situation may become very destabilizing. It is important to bear in mind that if one side ever perceives its strategic forces as being vulnerable, further nuclear cuts become impossible.
As our technical analysis shows, some existing types of conventional PGMs (e.g. the GBU-37 bomb) are already capable of effectively disabling silo based ICBMs. In the near future, the United States will deploy new classes of hard target penetrators (on CALCMs, Tactical Tomahawks, etc). PGM accuracy is constantly improving - CEP of 1-2 m is enough to effectively disable ICBM silos. Mobile land based ICBMs are vulnerable, if detected and U.S. capability to monitor mobile ICBMs will likely continue to grow.
As discussed above, the United States will try to retain most of its existing strategic platforms. Even with conventional payloads these platforms are able to carry strategic roles. Tactical aviation may also play strategic role, as NATO expands further, and Baltic states, Georgia and Azerbaijan become its members.
On the other hand, the capabilities of Russian conventional forces (air defense, antisubmarine warfare) will likely degrade in future. Thus, Russia will be increasingly concerned about counter force potential of U.S. precision guided munitions. Unfortunately, current U.S. and NATO policies contribute to raising Russia's suspicions about their real intentions.
According to our estimates, PGMs will not have a strong impact on the balance at START III levels. Nevertheless, taking this factor into consideration seems very important. One possible way to reducing Russian concerns on conventional weapons could be a ban on conventional ICBMs and limits on the deployment of strategic platforms converted to conventional roles.
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Will 'limited' nuclear defense system cost more than its worth?
Earth Times
05/04/00
By TOM WICKER
http://www.earthtimes.org/may/opinionwilllimitednucleardefensemay4_00.htm
Is the threat of an attack by a "rouge nation" (Iran and North Korea are the usual suspects) so serious that a "limited" missile defense must be built to protect US cities? The Clinton Administration wants to do it. So do important Republicans, who demand that the President leave the decision to his successor. For a lot of good reasons, nevertheless, the nation should say "no":
To deploy such a defense over repeated Russian objections, and those of some of the European allies, risks the dissolution of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty--the centerpiece of three decades of nuclear peace--because the US would be forced to withdraw from it.
That, in turn could have unpredictable but probably damaging consequences on the international campaign for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, which the US supposedly leads.
Even if such a defense against a terrorist missile were built, a "rouge nation" still could smuggle a nuclear bomb in a suitcase, or by other clandestine means, into New York harbor or any other US port.
The huge, costly US missile arsenal already in existence has no real purpose save deterring nuclear attack (by a "rogue nation" or anyone); why should say, Saddam Hussein launch a rogue missile at an American city when he knows that only a small portion of the US arsenal then could obliterate his country?
Though proponents glibly insist that the $4 billion estimated annual expenditure for a limited missile defense would be "only" one percent of the yearly federal budget, the 15-year $60 billion total could be infinitely better spent on education, health, housing, environmental threats and/or other real needs.
Experience with Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" pipe dream, as well as tests so far of the much less extensive "limited" missile defense, have demonstrated above all the immense technological difficulties, still unsolved, and the astronomical costs of such a system.
Those who say technical and expense objections also were raised by persons who opposed trying to put a man on the moon are arguing only by analogy and anecdote -and it would be more nearly relevant to cite those who warned from the start against the untold waste of funds on the failed Star Wars project.
And, anyway, the "rogue nation" threat (not perceived by some US allies) rests on intelligence findings (not of any leader's intent but of some unspecified nation's relatively distant "capability"); Americans surprised by nuclear weapons developments in India and Pakistan, to say nothing of the other Cold War intelligence failures, should have learned to be wary of spooky misjudgments.
In short, must the US invest $60 billion, or probably more, in funds badly needed elsewhere (while the Republican presidential candidate is advocating an enormous tax cut) in technology that has never worked and may never work, this risking renewed nuclear proliferation, in order to guard against a threat not proven to exist and which, if it does, could be carried out by a the smuggled suitcase trick or by other means?
That question is particularly apt because the US already has, indisputably in its nuclear force the means to blow any attacking nation, rogue or otherwise, off the map.
Would the US actually do that, it may be asked? And even if it did, what good would such a response do those Americans already dead from a North Korean or an Iranian missile?
These are plausible questions--but no more and perhaps less so than the obvious first question: Why should any national leader, even if personally irrational, take the chance that for temporary small gain, he and his people might permanently lose everything?
As for whether Bill Clinton or Al Gore or George W. Bush should make the presidential decision, the Republicans may be right, probably for the wrong reasons, to advocate delay. Both Bush and Gore say they are in favor of deploying the "limited" defense, and it's hard to see how a decision by Clinton could bind either of them, either way, in the future. And for such a huge project, a few months delay in decision could hardly matter.
What might be gained, however, by leaving the matter to the next President, would be more time for the development or failure of the complex technology of missile defense, for consultation with properly concerned allies, for sober study (outside the pressures of a presidential campaign) of a question that is fundamentally political, and for the American public to consider (not merely acquiesce in) a matter that so concerns its deepest interests.
Maybe that's what some proponents are afraid of--that time and deliberation will work for a more rational decision, and against a deployment not only more costly but more destructive than it's worth.
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U.S. News: Will Helms threat on arms control cause backlash?
Surprise missile attack may be fatal Helms threatens to block arms-control treaties
US News & World Report
(5/8/00)
By Richard J. Newman
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/000508/missile.htm
It was the senatorial equivalent of a rogue missile attack. When Republican Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina declared that the Foreign Relations Committee he chairs would refuse to consider any arms-control treaties this year, it caught the Clinton administration, top Russian officials, and even some fellow GOP-ers embarrassingly exposed.
Helms's vow, delivered last week on the Senate floor, could hamstring U.S.-Russian efforts to continue pruning nuclear arms stockpiles. It may delay the development of a missile shield to defend the United States from foreign attack. And it could deny President Clinton an arms-control victory he would dearly like to claim when he meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in June. "So Mr. Clinton is in search of a legacy?" Helms taunted. "La-di-da . . . Not on my watch."
Helms's offensive, however, could cause some fratricide. "Republicans will rue the day that this happened," warns Tom Donnelly of the Project for the New American Century, a conservative think tank. The political calculus goes something like this: Many Democrats, including Vice President Al Gore, have come to support a limited version of national missile defense, one able to shoot down perhaps 30 or 40 incoming missiles from Third World powers such as Iran or North Korea. Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush favors a heftier system that could defend against several hundred. Helms and other conservatives would be even more aggressive.
By blocking any of the treaty agreements required to push ahead with a missile shield, Helms would let Gore stall on the issue without seeming soft on defense. "Helms is going to take the hit for preventing the thing," says Donnelly. "He has relieved [Gore] of the obligation." A go-slow approach would be bolstered by a new Congressional Budget Office report pegging the cost of a national missile defense system at $60 billion through 2015, twice the Pentagon's estimate.
But that's mere collateral damage compared with Helms's main goal: derailing arms-control deals that he believes would weaken U.S. defenses. Since Russia's parliament finally ratified the START II agreement last month-formalizing reductions in each country's nuclear arsenals to between 3,000 and 3,500 warheads-both sides have been pressing for a START III deal that could push those numbers as low as 1,500. The prospects for an agreement are good: With funds in Moscow scarce, the Russian stockpile is likely to dwindle anyway. And even the Pentagon favors further nuclear arms cuts, since it would free billions of dollars for more urgently sought weapons.
Ballistic ballet.
The controversy arises out of a diplomatic pas de deux. In exchange for START III, Clinton administration officials have been trying to secure changes to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty needed to allow the United States to break ground on a limited missile defense system in Alaska next spring-assuming President Clinton decides that an upcoming Pentagon test proves the technology works.
Helms and other conservatives fear that marginal changes to the ABM Treaty could commit the United States to an inadequate missile defense. They would like to see the treaty scrapped, which would pave the way for a bolder missile shield with missile "interceptors" based in both Alaska and North Dakota-and possibly on Navy ships. But such a move would anger Russia and jeopardize other arms-control deals. In a "battle of the slide shows" in Washington last week, Russian officials argued how even a limited system could be expanded to neuter their own nuclear arsenal, according to one U.S. negotiator.
Caught in the middle is Bush, who may now have to side with Helms or risk aligning himself with Clinton and Gore. "Bush is rapidly painting himself into a missile-defense corner," says Jon Wolfsthal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Will he look like he's beholden to the Republican right?"
Such mixed signals from Washington may sour Putin on any changes in the ABM treaty. But "we are going to keep pressing for a deal," says Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. If the Russians agree, Clinton could still decide this fall to build a missile defense system, Helms notwithstanding. Then the burden would be on the next president to force the treaty changes past Helms. That in itself would be a legacy.
With Kevin Whitelaw
---
H.R.1119 National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999
(Enrolled Bill as Sent to President)
SEC. 1501. LIMITATION ON RETIREMENT OR DISMANTLEMENT OF STRATEGIC NUCLEAR DELIVERY SYSTEMS.
http://www.clw.org/coalition/xcutfy99.htm
(a) FUNDING LIMITATION- Funds available to the Department of Defense may not be obligated or expended during the strategic delivery systems retirement limitation period for retiring or dismantling, or for preparing to retire or dismantle, any of the following strategic nuclear delivery systems below the specified levels:
(1) 71 B-52H bomber aircraft.
(2) 18 Trident ballistic missile submarines.
(3) 500 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles.
(4) 50 Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missiles.
(b) WAIVER AUTHORITY- If the START II Treaty enters into force during the strategic delivery systems retirement limitation period, the Secretary of Defense may waive the application of the limitation under subsection (a) to the extent that the Secretary determines necessary in order to implement the treaty.
(c) FUNDING LIMITATION ON EARLY DEACTIVATION-
(1) If the limitation under subsection (a) ceases to apply by reason of a waiver under subsection (b), funds available to the Department of Defense may nevertheless not be obligated or expended to implement any agreement or understanding to undertake substantial early deactivation of a strategic nuclear delivery system specified in subsection (a) until 30 days after the date on which the President submits to Congress a report concerning such actions.
(2) For purposes of this subsection and subsection (d), a substantial early deactivation is an action during fiscal year during the strategic delivery systems retirement limitation period to deactivate a substantial number of strategic nuclear delivery systems specified in subsection (a) by--
(A) removing nuclear warheads from those systems; or
(B) taking other steps to remove those systems from combat status.
(3) A report under this subsection shall include the following:
(A) The text of any understanding or agreement between the United States and the Russian Federation concerning substantial early deactivation of strategic nuclear delivery systems under the START II Treaty.
(B) The plan of the Department of Defense for implementing the agreement.
(C) An assessment of the Secretary of Defense of the adequacy of the provisions contained in the agreement for monitoring and verifying compliance of Russia with the terms of the agreement and, based upon that assessment, the determination of the President specifically as to whether the procedures for monitoring and verification of compliance by Russia with the terms of the agreement are adequate or inadequate.
(D) A determination by the President as to whether the deactivations to occur under the agreement will be carried out in a symmetrical, reciprocal, or equivalent manner and whether the agreement will require early deactivations of strategic forces by the United States to be carried out substantially more rapidly than deactivations of strategic forces by Russia.
(E) An assessment by the President of the effect of the proposed early deactivation on the stability of the strategic balance and relative strategic nuclear capabilities of the United States and the Russian Federation at various stages during deactivation and upon completion, including a determination by the President specifically as to whether the proposed early deactivations will adversely affect strategic stability.
(d) FURTHER LIMITATION ON STRATEGIC FORCE REDUCTIONS-
(1) Amounts available to the Department of Defense to implement an agreement that results in a substantial early deactivation of strategic forces may not be obligated for that purpose if in the report under subsection (c)(3) the President determines any of the following:
(A) That procedures for monitoring and verification of compliance by Russia with the terms of the agreement are inadequate.
(B) That the agreement will require early deactivations of strategic forces by the United States to be carried out substantially more rapidly than deactivations of strategic forces by Russia.
(C) That the proposed early deactivations will adversely affect strategic stability.
(2) The limitation in paragraph (1), if effective by reason of a determination by the President described in paragraph (1)(B), shall cease to apply 30 days after the date on which the President notifies Congress that the early deactivations under the agreement are in the national interest of the United States.
(e) CONTINGENCY PLAN FOR SUSTAINMENT OF SYSTEMS-
(1) Not later then February 15, 1998, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to Congress a plan for the sustainment beyond October 1, 1999, of United States strategic nuclear delivery systems and alternative Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty force structures in the event that a strategic arms reduction agreement subsequent to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty does not enter into force before 2004.
(2) The plan shall include a discussion of the following matters:
(A) The actions that are necessary to sustain the United States strategic nuclear delivery systems, distinguishing between the actions that are planned for and funded in the future-years defense program and the actions that are not planned for and funded in the future-years defense program.
(B) The funding necessary to implement the plan, indicating the extent to which the necessary funding is provided for in the future-years defense program and the extent to which the necessary funding is not provided for in the future-years defense program.
(f) START TREATIES DEFINED- In this section:
(1) The term `Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty' means the Treaty Between the United States of America and the United Soviet Socialist Republics on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (START), signed at Moscow on July 31, 1991, including related annexes on agreed statements and definitions, protocols, and memorandum of understanding.
(2) The term `START II Treaty' means the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, signed at Moscow on January 3, 1993, including the following protocols and memorandum of understanding, all such documents being integral parts of and collectively referred to as the `START II Treaty' (contained in Treaty Document 103-1):
(A) The Protocol on Procedures Governing Elimination of Heavy ICBMs and on Procedures Governing Conversion of Silo Launchers of Heavy ICBMs Relating to the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (also known as the `Elimination and Conversion Protocol').
(B) The Protocol on Exhibitions and Inspections of Heavy Bombers Relating to the Treaty Between the United States and the Russian Federation on Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (also known as the `Exhibitions and Inspections Protocol').
(C) The Memorandum of Understanding on Warhead Attribution and Heavy Bomber Data Relating to the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (also known as the `Memorandum on Attribution').
(g) STRATEGIC DELIVERY SYSTEMS RETIREMENT LIMITATION PERIOD- For purposes of this section, the term 'strategic delivery systems retirement limitation period' means the period of fiscal years 1998 and 1999.
-------- us politics
THE NETWORKS
CNN Set to Dominate Convention Coverage
New York Times
May 20, 2000
By PETER MARKS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/052000cnn-repubs.html
Anyone up for 264 hours of convention coverage a day?
The number may sound highly improbable, given that a political convention only lasts for four days. (Or 96 hours, if no one sleeps.) But 264 hours is the amount of daily exposure that one television network, CNN, has told Republican officials that it will supply for their presidential nominating convention in Philadelphia starting in late July.
CNN's estimate -- made viable by the cable network's growing array of 24-hour news outlets, ranging from CNN International to CNN En Espaņol to CNNfn, all of which will simultaneously carry convention programming -- was disclosed to the Republican National Convention as part of CNN's pitch for space in the hall of the First Union Center in Philadelphia.
Representatives of other television networks, both cable and over-the-air, snicker at the grandiosity of CNN's saturation claims. "Over here, there are still only 24 hours in the day," said a publicity agent for a competing outlet. But CNN officials, who are aggressively seeking the title of "network of record" for the 2000 campaign, say there are few events in a democratic society of greater importance.
"How could it be overkill when we're talking about the fate of this country and who we're electing?" asked Gail Evans, a CNN executive vice president. "People love the drama of politics, and this is the moment when the campaign becomes real."
The breadth of the network's plan is a reflection of the rapidly changing nature of convention coverage. As the traditional over-the-air networks scale back their coverage, with some promising only an hour of prime-time convention news each night, cable networks and Web sites are stepping into the void with wall-to-wall plans. As a result, the physical presence of the news operations at the convention is changing, too.
Tim Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for the Republican convention, to be held July 31-Aug. 3, said that political Internet sites, a marginal presence at the 1996 convention in San Diego, will be represented in vastly greater numbers this year: 55 booths have been set aside for Web sites in a building adjacent to the First Union Center.
And the allotment of skybooths reflects a changing pecking order: CNN and NBC (in combination with its cable sibling, MSNBC) will each be allocated five skybooths, Mr. Fitzpatrick said; CBS and Fox get four each and ABC two, though that network will also create a virtual skybooth inside the hall and have its anchor, Peter Jennings, positioned at various places in the center.
"It's a whole new ballgame this year," said Steve Scully, political editor of C-Span, which will offer gavel-to-gavel convention coverage and even broadcast from the parties' platform hearings this summer. "It's the clear pattern of cable taking over what was once the domain of ABC, NBC and CBS."
Officials at the old-line networks say the evolution of the conventions into veritable four-day-long commercials, with little major breaking news to offer besides the selection of a vice-presidential candidate, justifies the reduced coverage in commercial prime time.
"And even if the number of hours are fewer, our reporting and analysis are every bit as strong as they've ever been," said Marc Burstein, executive producer of special events for ABC News.
"And in fact, more people will watch ABC in the somewhat limited hours ABC is providing than will see convention news elsewhere."
Because viewership remains so much higher on the commercial networks, it is not clear whether the blanket coverage on the cable networks will make up the difference in the size of the viewing audience.
"I don't know if there's any way to add up the audiences of cable and C-Span and us, and whether that measures up to what the commercial presence once was," said Lester M. Crystal, executive producer of "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," which is producing PBS's gavel-to-gavel convention coverage.
But Mr. Crystal added that there had been no talk at PBS about reducing the network's commitment. "We think there is an important story to evaluate here, how these parties try and represent what the country wants, what the country needs," he said.
Nearly 16,000 journalists are expected to cover the Republican convention, Mr. Fitzpatrick said. (The Democrats meet Aug. 14-17 in Los Angeles.)
CNN alone will have about 500 staff members in Philadelphia, said Jane Maxwell, CNN's senior vice president for special events. The network's personnel will feed programming to CNN's various networks, which now total 14. These include an airport network, a service to 800 affiliated stations around the world and video streaming to a dozen Web sites.
"Given the conglomeration of services under the CNN umbrella, there is the opportunity to do convention programming that many hours a day," Ms. Maxwell said, referring to the proposed 264 hours.
It is a long way from the network's presence at its first convention, the 1980 Democratic gathering in New York City, where it had a single booth high in the hall above those of the other networks. "It wasn't even glassed in," Ms. Maxwell said. "So every time the band struck up, the anchors couldn't talk."
---
Clinton: Campaigns Should Be Civil
Associated Press
May 19, 2000 Filed at 6:06 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Clinton.html
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- President Clinton appealed Friday to Democrats and Republicans to avoid ``a mean election'' this fall, saying the philosophical differences between the parties on taxes, foreign policy, health care and crime are vast, but honest.
In a luncheon fund-raiser for Democratic congressional candidates, Clinton cited a list of issues where he believed the Democrats had the right position over the past seven years. Then he listed several issues that may play out on the campaign trail this year -- and why he thinks the GOP's positions on them are wrong.
On crime: ``Their policy is, I have to drag them kicking and screaming to get any more for police.''
On Medicare: ``They say our program is too costly. We say theirs doesn't really do the job.''
On a nuclear test ban treaty: ``They believe it's an anachronistic document.''
On tax cuts and economic growth: ``There's a huge difference here. It cannot be papered over. Do we think this economic policy is on automatic and you couldn't mess it up if you tried? I can tell you, I don't believe that.''
Then, he said, there are ``massive differences'' on environmental policy and health care, ``huge differences'' on hate crimes and a minimum wage increase.
``It's not a personal attack,'' Clinton said. ``I'm saying we have honest differences. The divides between us, I think, are clear and I believe we're right.''
There was one area where Clinton saw agreement: a tax credit for long-term care. ``There is a chance that we'll reach a bipartisan agreement,'' he said. ``If so, I'll be thankful for it. It's a good thing to do.''
Clinton said he believes Vice President Al Gore will defeat Republican Texas Gov. George W. Bush in the race for the White House, and Democrats will regain control of Congress for the first time since 1994.
``We have a chance to change control of the House of Representatives with a shift of just five seats,'' he said. ``We have a chance, believe it or not, to be evened up or even to be one ahead in the United States Senate.''
Whatever the outcome, Clinton said, the elections should be won fairly, with civility.
``What I hope will happen is that we will not have a mean election. We don't have to say they are bad people,'' Clinton said. ``We should assume we have two honorable people running for president, honorable people running for Congress. We intend to do what we say, they intend to do what they say. And you need to say, 'Where are the differences and what are the consequences?'''
Bush campaign spokesman Ari Fleischer responded by criticizing Clinton and Gore for not doing enough to ensure the future of Social Security.
``Instead of using the last days of his presidency to act as Al Gore's campaign manager, the president would better serve our nation if he worked in a bipartisan manner with the Congress to save Social Security from bankruptcy,'' Fleischer said.
After the fund-raiser, Clinton visited the Mayer Sulzberger Middle School to announce $185 million in grants to fund after-school and summer school programs at 900 schools nationwide.
The president repeated his calls for Congress to take up his education reform package, which seeks funds for school repair and construction, hiring more teachers and stricter accountability for failing schools.
He stressed the importance of programs such as GEAR UP -- Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs -- to help more young people attend college. Through GEAR UP, passed by Congress in 1998, middle schools in poor neighborhoods set up partnerships with colleges, community groups and businesses to encourage children to begin preparing for college at an earlier age.
Clinton was introduced by Toya Doe, 12, a Sulzberger seventh-grader and GEAR UP participant who wants to become a teacher.
The GEAR UP event was wedged onto Clinton's schedule between the luncheon, which brought in $600,000 for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and a reception that raised $225,000 for Rep. Joe Hoeffel, D-Pa.
Later Friday, Clinton flew to Chicago for a dinner to raise $500,000 for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
-------- genetic engineering
Anxiety on Genetically Altered Seed Spreads in Europe
New York Times
May 20, 2000
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/052000sci-europe-gm.html
PARIS, May 19 -- Not since "Jack and the Beanstalk" has a handful of seeds produced such a loud fe, fi, fo and fumbling.
Nervousness spread across Europe today with the news that a tiny amount of one variety of one seed company's rapeseed inadvertently contained a trait common in American crops but feared in Europe because it is produced by genetic modification.
Sweden is widely believed to have 1,200 acres planted with the seeds, of which less than 1 percent contain the genetic trait.
But the national Board of Agriculture proposed destroying all those crops.
The board conceded that the plants posed no risks, but said government permission should have been sought before the seeds were planted.
The company that imported the seeds, Advanta of the Netherlands, said it did not know until mid-April that some seeds that it imported from Canada in 1998 had been accidentally cross-pollinated by plants with the genetic trait.
In France, which has 1,500 acres with the crop, the environment minister disagreed with the agriculture minister and demanded that the French crop be destroyed. The Consumer Affairs Ministry ordered an inquiry on how the seeds entered the country.
In Britain, with 12,000 acres of crop, the government said it had no plans to destroy plants.
But it was becoming apparent that the 600 farmers estimated to have bought the seeds were in no rush to volunteer to have their fields burned.
The national farmers' union said that none of its members had come forward and that it was considering its legal position.
Private and government scientists said the fears were greatly exaggerated. Rapeseed is used for canola, an oil used in margarine and baked goods. Processed oil does not contain DNA and is indistinguishable from oil from nonmodified plants, the scientists said. The pressed seeds are used as animal feed. Digestion breaks down DNA, and the trait in the plant -- herbicide resistance -- could hardly be transferred to animals.
Rapeseed is related to wild radish and wild turnip. But the chances of the herbicide resistance entering one of those plants, surviving for generations in the wild and converting the lowly turnip into an unkillable superweed poised to devastate British agriculture are extremely remote, scientists said.
---
Templeton Winner Envisions World Without Hunger, Injustice
Washington Post
Saturday, May 20, 2000; Page B09
By Bill Broadway Washington Post Staff Writer
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/20/073l-052000-idx.html
Freeman J. Dyson, this year's winner of the prestigious Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, spoke humbly yet stridently before an admiring crowd of 700 Tuesday night at Washington National Cathedral.
"I'm neither a saint nor a good theologian," said Dyson, 76, adding that he was amazed to find himself in the company of such previous winners as Mother Teresa, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Rev. Billy Graham and Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern hospice care movement.
The physicist and ethicist then boldly outlined his vision for a world without hunger, violence or social injustice.
He predicted that "green" technology--the development of plants, crops and livestock and solar energy--will surpass the "gray" technology of computers, automobiles and other machinery. Advances in biotechnology, he said, could provide the means to feed the world's hungry, alleviate human misery through medicine and redistribute wealth to Third World nations, many in sunshine-rich tropical areas.
But such advances, he cautioned, also create outlets for evil.
"The ultimate danger of green technology comes from its power to change the nature of human beings by the application of genetic engineering to human embryos," he warned, sounding like an Old Testament prophet. "If we allow a free market in human genes, wealthy parents will be able to buy what they consider superior genes for their babies."
Such commercial trafficking in genetic material "could cause a splitting of humanity into hereditary castes," he said. "Within a few generations, the children of rich and poor could become separate species. Humanity would then have regressed all the way back to a society of masters and slaves."
This week's event marked the first time in the prize's 29-year history that a recipient has been honored in Washington. As in previous years, the public ceremony followed the March announcement of the winner at the United Nations and the official presentation of the prize at London's Buckingham Palace, by Prince Philip.
Dyson was introduced by James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress, and Sir John Templeton, the global financier who created the award.
Billington emphasized the importance of religion in American society since the country's founding and denounced "elite opinion-makers" who treat religion as "a presumptively retrogressive force." He praised Dyson for his joint work in science and religion, for sounding a "note of hope for an open and progressive future."
Templeton called Dyson "a divinely talented explorer" who exemplifies the discipline, diversity and freedom of inquiry symbolized by the award--this year worth $948,000.
The cathedral choirs of girls, boys and men provided an additional tribute, performing three pieces composed by Dyson's father, Sir George Dyson, a noted composer and educator who became director of the Royal College of Music in London.
Freeman Dyson, a native of England, is professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. In addition to his work in nuclear medicine and space travel, he has written 11 books on such topics as the origins of the universe, the history of weaponry and how the Internet can decentralize the world's economy away from cities.
The physicist frequently has urged scientists to use ethics, not profit and trendy research on "toys for the rich," to set their agendas for the human good. This week, he challenged the scientific and religious communities to join hands.
"Neither technology alone nor religion alone is powerful enough to bring social justice to human societies," he said, "but technology and religion working together might do the job."
Dyson, a Presbyterian, summarized his personal view of God and the universe, one involving belief in infinite diversity and mystery. "I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God," he said. "God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension."
But he seemed unimpressed with such an exercise. "Good works are more important than theology," he said.
"I am content to be one of the multitude of Christians who do not care much about the doctrine of the Trinity or the historical truths of the Gospels. As a religious person and a scientist, I am accustomed to living with uncertainty."
-------- chemical weapons
World Briefings
New York Times
May 20, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/world-briefs.html
RUSSIA: EXTENSION ON CHEMICAL WEAPONS
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has given Russia until April 2002 to begin destroying its 40,000-ton arsenal of chemical weapons. The first 1 percent was to have been destroyed last month. Now, 20 percent is to be destroyed by April 2002. Russia holds the world's largest stockpile, followed by the United States, which has destroyed 17 percent of its 32,000 tons. (Reuters)
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