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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. Brow