-------- activists
RECA Bill pass
From: Lori Goodman kiyaani@frontier.net Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 10:29:52 -0600
We just learned the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Amendment of 1999 (S-1515) passed the full Judiciary Committee in the House. It passed without any changes. Will get more details later.
On behalf of the Western States RECA Reform Coalition and the Navajo RECA Reform Working Group, I thank all those out there that wrote, called & sent faxes to make this happen.
----
MEDIA ADVISORY
TRANSMUTATION OF RADIOACTIVE WASTES IS "NUCLEAR ALCHEMY GAMBLE"
Expensive Technology Would Increase Environmental, Health,
Safety and Weapons Proliferation Risks, According To New Report
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
Hisham Zerriffi: 301-270-5500 Bob Schaeffer: 941-395-6773
WHAT: News conference to release a new study, The Nuclear Alchemy Gamble:
An Assessment of Transmutation as a Nuclear Waste Management Strategy.
The report analyzes expensive proposals now under consideration by Congress and the US Department of Energy, as well as in other countries such as France and Japan, to transform highly radioactive wastes into less dangerous materials. The authors warn that these schemes will not solve the problem and will increase the environmental, health, safety, cost and weapons proliferation risks.
WHERE: Zenger Room, National Press Club 13th Floor, 529 14th Street, NW, Washington, DC
WHEN: Wednesday, May 24, 2000 -- 10 am
WHO: Dr. Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), who has written numerous articles, reports, and books on nuclear issues.
Hisham Zerriffi, Senior Scientist at IEER and principal author of the study.
Annie Makhijani, Project Scientist at IEER and co-author of the study.
WHY: One of the biggest problems facing the nuclear industry is what to do with the highly radioactive wastes generated by reactors. The difficulties associated with repository siting, notably the extremely long periods of isolation required, have caused some to advocate the transmutation of long-lived radionuclides into short-lived ones as a potential waste management solution.
According to the new IEER report, however, transmutation would further complicate the problems of nuclear waste management. Not only would the technologies be extremely expensive to implement, they would address a small portion of the problem while actually increasing the mass and volume of materials requiring disposal. In addition, they would heighten risks to workers, the public, and the environment. Transmutation would also pose significant proliferation risks since the separation of weapons-usable materials, such as plutonium, is a technical necessity. The report recommends a halt to all government-sponsored transmutation research, as well as steps which would change current nuclear waste management practices to better protect the environment and public health and reduce proliferation risks.
Advance copies of the Executive Summary are available upon request
---
From: "SOA Watch" <soawatch@knight-hub.com>
Subject: Day of Resistance and Action! May 24
Date: Tue, 23 May 2000 12:01:31 -0400
We are calling on affinity-groups from all over the country to organize and act on Wednesday, May 24, the NATIONAL DAY OF RESISTANCE TO CLOSE THE SOA!
WEDNESDAY MAY 24th
"Nothing but organized nonviolence can check the organized violence" of the United States Government! -Gandhi
On Thursday, May 18, the U.S. Congress dismissed the Moakley Amendment, accepted the Pentagon proposal to close the SOA and open an SOA Clone the very next day. The House opted to change the SOA's name rather than close its doors. The name is basically all that is changed. The Pentagon's deceptive proposal is not a move towards responsible policy for Latin America. It is merely an attempt to silence those working for human rights and justice. It is an attempt to silence the bloody truth about the School of Assassins, but THE TRUTH CANNOT BE SILENCED!
Support in the House was strong and the amendment lost by only ten votes! All week long people fighting to close the SOA lobbied on Capitol Hill, but human rights activists weren't the only ones lobbying. Secretary of the Army Caldera, Col. Weidner and Colin Powell were there lobbying to keep the SOA open at any cost. This shows we are the threat of a good example, we are winning and now is the time to rise up!
Register your outrage at the congressional vote to accept the Pentagon's SOA Clone. Let the White House, the Pentagon and Congress know that we are not falling for the Pentagon deception and we REJECT THE SOA CLONE!
Come to Washington to participate in civil disobedience and demonstrations at the White House, Pentagon and other locales, hook into organizing in your own community or organize yourself! Bring your spirit of hope and resistance, bring your outrage, bring your passion, bring your creativity and bring your puppets and banners and help send the message that the SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS MUST BE CLOSED!
DAY OF ACTION MAY 24th
7 am ~ South Entrance~ Pentagon
12 noon! Bring Signs, Banners, music, voice and spirit to the White House, option for CD. Come to the meeting or call for more information.
Planning Meeting/Non-Violence Training TUES 6 PM Church of the Brethren 4th and N.C. Ave, SE, Washington, D.C.
Please contact us and let us know if you will organize an event in your community. Events will be held in the following locations:
SOA WATCH, Washington, D.C. 202.234.2440 soawatch@knight-hub.com
Chicago, IL Kathleen Desautels or Dorothy Pagosa 312.641.5151 dpagosa@claret.org
Boston, MA ~ Ann Eno ~978.692.5483
St. Louis, MO Christie Hauck 314.721.2977 ifcla@aol.com
Syracuse, NY Ed Kinane 315.478.4571 edkinane@a-znet.com
Philadelphia, PA Linda Panetta 215.473.2162 or 215.477.5892 soawne@aol.com
San Antonio, TX ~ Shoko, Timon, Hauke, Andy ~ 210.271.3630
Norfolk, VA Patrice Schwermer 757.583.0291 or 757.858.8176
Takoma, WA Bruce Triggs 253.572.6582 guadalope@juno.com
---
Greenpeace Condemns Russia's Putin On Environment
Russia Today
Wed, May 24 at Prague 08:41 am, N.Y. 02:41 am
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=161812
MOSCOW, May 23, 2000 -- (Reuters) Environmental pressure group Greenpeace on Monday condemned a decision by Russia's new president, Vladimir Putin, to disband the country's only federal environmental agency in order to save money.
Last week Putin switched the responsibilities of the State Committee for Environmental Protection to the Natural Resources Ministry, which Greenpeace said had a record of backing "illegal and environmentally hazardous projects".
"Russia is now absolutely defenseless against the armada of industrialists and businessmen who impudently rob the country of its natural resources," the executive director of Greenpeace Russia, Sergei Tsyplenkov, said in a statement.
"The population of the country is deprived of its basic right, secured by the constitution, the right to a healthy environment," he said.
The statement said the Natural Resources Ministry was primarily concerned with the exploitation of natural resources, notably oil and gas extraction, gold mining and logging, irrespective of the wider environmental consequences.
Putin, who resoundingly won Russia's March 26 presidential election and was inaugurated on May 7, has vowed to cut the number of ministries and agencies to help save money and cut out bureaucratic waste.
But Greenpeace said in its statement that axing the environmental committee was counterproductive because Russia lost billions of dollars every year through violation of laws on poaching, logging and other activities.
"These light-minded decisions will bring the country to the verge of ecological catastrophe...Russia has so many ecological problems that they can damage the delicate balance of the world's environment," the statement said.
---
USA Today
05/24/99
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Hawaii Lihue - Anti-biotechnology activists trampled corn and chopped down taro, pineapple and papaya plants at two sites on Kauai. Plants worth thousands of dollars were destroyed, but not all were genetically engineered, officials said.
---
USA Today
04/24/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Arkansas Fayetteville - Thirteen people were arrested for trespassing while supporting a woman sitting in an oak tree to protest a proposed shopping center. The protesters entered the CMN Business Park II Monday evening to show support for Mary Lightheart, 53, who has been in the tree since May 8. More than two dozen people have been arrested at the site.
-------- britain
Analysis
Nuclear fuel plant closures mark end of era
As the pioneering stations which generated the world's first nuclear electricity are wound down, Guardian environment correspondent Paul Brown asks what the future holds for BNFL
Wednesday May 24, 2000
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/nuclear/article/0,2763,255407,00.html
The closure programme for eight of Britain's oldest nuclear stations and the companion reprocessing works at Sellafield in Cumbria, which deals with their spent fuel, heralds the end of an era for the industry.
Those earmarked for shutdown were the pioneering stations which made the plutonium for Britain's nuclear bomb and generated the first nuclear electricity in the world. The first closed yesterday and the last will cease in 15 years.
This effectively converts British Nuclear Fuels from an electricity producer to a clean-up company. Any new fuel produced by BNFL will mainly be for the newer British and overseas nuclear stations, which are owned by other companies.
These companies currently send their spent fuel back for reprocessing in the modern THORP reprocessing works at Sellafield. But now THORP is also under threat.
Under new management after scathing safety reports and scandals over falsified fuel quality documents, the state-owned BNFL is desperately trying to regain lost business and restore public confidence.
The Japanese have refused to sign new contracts and want to send fuel with falsified documents back. The Germans and Swiss have suspended shipments of fuel for THORP. There is a growing international demand for all reprocessing of spent fuel to be shut down and there is a massive surplus of its products, plutonium and uranium.
The closure timetable for the older works is a bid to deflect attempts by Ireland and Denmark to stop all reprocessing, at an international meeting in June. The OSPAR Convention which controls pollution in the Irish and North Seas has the power to shut all the reprocessing works at Sellafield.
The UK has promised to put an end to radioactive discharges into the Irish Sea by 2020 but Ireland and Denmark have submitted resolutions to OSPAR demanding an immediate end to reprocessing which causes most of the radioactive pollution on their shores.
However, the new management's greatest threat is home grown. British Energy, the privatised nuclear company which runs the newer nuclear stations, is itself in deep financial trouble. One of its greatest expenses is reprocessing, and it is demanding that its fuel should be in less expensive dry storage, thus threatening the future of THORP.
The £2.3 billion THORP plant was opened just six years ago. Green groups claimed at the time it was a white elephant which would never make a profit. It looks as if their predictions could be proved right.
----
UPDATE - BNFL scraps first of its Magnox nuke power plants
UK: May 24, 2000
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=6809
LONDON - British Nuclear Fuels Ltd said on Tuesday it had shut the first of its ageing Magnox nuclear power stations but drew fire from environmentalists for keeping the others open for up to 21 years.
BNFL said in a statement its 470-megawatt Hinkley Point A station would not be reopened after a recent closure for repairs.
"For business reasons, Hinkley Point A will not be brought into service from its current shutdown," BNFL said. The statement listed the dates by which all of the group's eight Magnox power stations, which at the moment provide around eight percent of Britain's electricity, will be decommissioned, with the last of the series closing by 2021.
Environmental group Friends of the Earth condemned BNFL's plans to keep running Magnox plants, the spent fuel from which is reprocessed at BNFL's controversial Sellafield facility, for as long as another two decades.
"The Magnox plants are a key driver for reprocessing. It is irresponsible to let the stockpile of nuclear wastes continue to grow", the group said in a statement.
RADIOACTIVE DISCHARGES TO FALL
Britain's Environment Agency, which is responsible for
authorising and regulating radioactive discharges from the country's nuclear facilities, said the closure of Magnox plant would result in lower radioactive discharges.
"The end of Magnox reprocessing will bring a major reduction in radioactive discharges from Sellafield and from the UK as a whole," the agency's chairman John Harman said in a statement.
"The move will help the UK significantly in meeting its commitment to reducing radioactive discharges under the OSPAR Convention," he added.
The 15-nation Oslo-Paris commission is a grouping of countries aimed at protecting the marine environment in the north-east Atlantic.
Harman said it was important to replace the eight percent of British electricity the Magnox plants generate without adding to greenhouse gas emissions.
The pro-nuclear lobby has long played up the fact that nuclear power does not produce greenhouse gases.
The opposition Conservative Party said the government needs to develop a coherent energy policy.
"How does it plan to meet its Kyoto commitment given that eight percent of our electricity now needs to be replaced?," the party's trade spokeswoman Angela Browning said in a statement.
Most of BNFL's Magnox stations began operations in the 1950s and 1960s at the very start of the nuclear era. All the plants were hived off from British Energy prior to its 1996 privatisation and taken under BNFL's wing in 1998.
"Everyone knows that these stations have a finite life and there has been speculation as to our intention regarding their operating lives," BNFL's chief executive Norman Askew said in the statement.
Askew said he was presenting the detailed timetable for closure in order to avoid uncertainty.
"The reactors will not be run beyond the dates announced. However, both market conditions and technical issues could result in early closure," he said.
The closure timetable is as follows.
Calder Hall to close 2006-2008
Chapelcross to close 2008-2010
Bradwell to close 2002
Hinkley Point A to close 2000
Dungeness A to close 2006
Sizewell A to close 2006
Oldbury to close 2013
Wylfa to close 2016/2021
BNFL said Oldbury and Wylfa will only run to these dates depending on the development and use of Magrox fuel - a fuel where uranium is used in ceramic oxide rather than in metal form. A decision on the use of Magrox will be taken around 2003.
-------- canada
Chinese missiles in the new world order
Washington Times
May 24, 2000
Kenneth Timmerman
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/commentary-200052414349.htm
Last August, when it tested a new long-range intercontinental ballistic missile, the DF-31, Communist China revealed just how successful free trade with American defense and high-tech firms has been - not in expanding U.S. exports or in creating U.S. jobs, but in advancing China's own strategic interests.
This is why Beijing and its allies are lobbying Congress so furiously to remove the last restrictions on the transfer of high technology to Communist China by granting Permanent Normal Trading Relations this week. The future of China's strategic rocket programs hangs in the balance.
According to a Chinese scientist who lives in the United States after defecting from China in the late 1990s, the Chinese acquired most of the specialized military equipment and technology they needed for the DF-31 in the United States, with help and approval from the Clinton administration.
His view was borne out by the State Department, which last month accused Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda, Md., of 30 violations of the Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in Arms Regulations in conjunction with the sale of rocket technology to the People's Republic of China (PRC).
In a series of interviews, the defector described in great detail how technology and cash from Lockheed, Martin Marietta, and Motorola helped his bosses develop a new generation of solid-fuel strategic missiles that led to the DF-31. I verified his information with these companies, and with Pentagon analysts who specialize in Chinese strategic military programs.
"Our factory was in trouble before I started working there," the Chinese scientist said "Then we got a major contract from the U.S., and things took off."
The scientist worked at the Hexi Machinery and Chemical Co. in Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, a once-independent state annexed by Communist China in 1949. In China, the plant is known as the 41st Research Institute, a branch of the Fourth Academy of the state-owned China Aerospace Corp. According to the Pentagon analysts, the Fourth Academy has built all of China's strategic rockets as well as its Long March space launch vehicles.
On April 28, 1993, Motorola signed a contract with China's Great Wall Industries Corp. (CGWIC), to launch 12 of its Iridium global communication satellites. As part of the contract the Chinese agreed to develop a "smart dispenser" allowing them to launch several satellites from a single rocket. Earlier Chinese attempts to develop such a dispenser had failed.
But according to the defector, help from U.S. engineers changed all that. "Our U.S. partners gave us the specifications and technical assistance to produce the dispenser," he said, adding that engineers from Hexi traveled to Lockheed and Motorola facilities in the United States to exchange data and tweak their design. Motorola confirmed the contacts, and said the company's interest was to ensure that their satellites were lofted reliably into precise orbits, not to improve China's military capabilities.
Nevertheless, the exchanges caught the eye of U.S. intelligence analysts. A Dec. 10, 1996, Top Secret report from the National Air Intelligence Center, obtained by Bill Gertz, a reporter for The Washington Times, called the Chinese satellite dispenser a "technology bridge" that with few modifications would allow the Chinese to launch multiple nuclear warheads from their missiles. Despite this, the Clinton administration allowed Motorola and Lockheed to pursue their cooperation with the Chinese.
The Chinese first demonstrated the dispenser in September 1997, successfully lofting two test satellites into orbit. Just two months later commercial launches began.
In a separate contract, Martin Marietta, which has since merged with Lockheed, helped Hexi develop a solid fuel kick motor used to propel satellites into high Earth orbit. "Before we received this help from the United States, China had never succeeded in developing propellants powerful enough to be used for strategic-range solid-fuel rockets," the defector said. "This gave us a new capability."
A Lockheed spokesman insisted that the company cleared all Chinese technology exchanges with U.S. government monitors. But the State Department now says that Lockheed violated its export licenses repeatedly on 30 separate occasions.
Now that the Fourth Academy has resolved design snags with the DF-31, thanks to U.S. help, they are turning full time to perfecting a follow-up system, the DF-41, which is expected to have a range of 12,000 kilometers. According to the bipartisan Cox Commission report, released by Congress last year, U.S. intelligence analysts expect that the DF-41 will carry multiple nuclear warheads that are based on U.S. designs stolen from our nuclear weapons labs.
At every step of the way, the Clinton administration had the authority to block these technology exchanges but failed to do so. If Congress votes to grant China Permanent Normal Trading Relations status, no future administration will be able to block such sales to Communist China without risking an international trade war and sanctions against the U.S. economy from the World Trade Organization. America's security hangs in the balance.
Kenneth R. Timmerman has been investigating U.S. high technology sales to China for the past six years for the American Spectator and Reader's Digest.
-------- china
ACTION ALERT: On Eve of China Vote, Nightline Airs Only One Side
May 24, 2000
From: FAIR-L FAIR-L@FAIR.ORG
Read the transcript of this Nightline broadcast at: http://www.abcnews.go.com/onair/nightline/transcripts/nl000523_trans.html
On the night before Congress was to vote on Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) for China -- the most important trade vote of the year - ABC's Nightline devoted its broadcast to a discussion of that issue. That discussion, unfortunately, was one-sidedly partisan: All three of Nightline's guests were Republican proponents of PNTR.
Nightline's guests were former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Senator Alan Simpson and Nixon-era ambassador to China Winston Lord. All argued strongly in favor of establishing permanent trade relations with China. In a remark that reflected the unanimity on display, Lord quipped, "You need some hard-headed strategic-engagers like Lord, Gingrich and Simpson to get this just about right."
No guest presented an anti-PNTR view. This is the first show that Nightline has aired this year on either China or trade, so there has been no recent opportunity for the opposing case to be presented.
Given the wide diversity of views held by critics of PNTR -- ranging from conservative anti-Communists to labor organizers to human rights activists -- it's especially unfortunate that Nightline chose to air such a one-dimensional treatment of a vital issue. (Some progressive critics of the China bill are featured on the Institute for Public Accuracy's website at http://www.accuracy.org/press_releases/PR051900.htm .)
ACTION: Please write to Nightline and ask them to explain why they chose to air only one point of view on the eve of such a hotly contested vote. Call on the program to make at least some effort at balance when covering such issues in the future.
CONTACT: Tom Bettag, Executive Producer ABC-Nightline 1717 DeSales St NW Washington, DC 20036 (202) 222-7000 mailto:Niteline@abc.com
----
http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/5/25/1.text.1
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Vice President
For Immediate Release
May 24, 2000
STATEMENT BY THE VICE PRESIDENT ON CHINA PNTR
I commend the House of Representatives for voting today to extend Permanent Normal Trade Relations status to China. I have supported PNTR for China because I believe it will mean good jobs for American workers and enhanced American prosperity. Integrating China into the global trading system and accelerating development of the rule of law in China will advance our national security.
Many in my own party disagreed with us on this issue. They argued passionately that this agreement was not in our best interest.
I do not for a moment question their commitment to the best interests of our country or their values. I reached a different conclusion about how to translate the values that we share into action.
We must continue our efforts to assure that workers will succeed in a global economy. We must respond quickly and effectively to unfair trade practices when they threaten U.S. workers and communities. And we must vigorously monitor China's progress on human rights, non-proliferation, and protection of the environment.
I want to thank members who focused the legislative debate, including Speaker Hastert, Congressmen Archer and Rangel of the Ways and Means Committee, and Congressmen Levin and Bereuter who sponsored a provision establishing a human rights commission and strengthening our ability to protect against import surges.
----
http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/5/25/3.text.1
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
May 24, 2000
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON PASSAGE OF PERMANENT NORMAL TRADE RELATIONS WITH CHINA BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
The Rose Garden
6:03 P.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon. Today, the House of Representatives has taken an historic step toward continued prosperity in America, reform in China, and peace in the world. If the Senate votes, as the House has just done, to extend permanent normal trade relations with China, it will open new doors of trade for America and new hope for change in China.
Seven years ago, when I became President, I charted a new course for a new economy -- a course of fiscal discipline, investment in our people and open trade. I have always believed that by opening markets abroad, we open opportunities at home. We've worked hard to advance that goal of more open and more fair trade since 1993 -- all the way up to the landmark legislation I signed just a few days ago to expand trade with Africa and the Caribbean Basin.
Just this week, Speaker Hastert and I reached an agreement that many members of the House in both parties have already supported, to bring the same kinds of investment opportunity and jobs to America's new markets -- to people and places here in this country who have not yet participated in our prosperity, in rural areas, inner cities, on our Native American reservations.
With more than a billion people, China is the largest new market in the world. Our administration has negotiated an agreement which will open China's markets to American products made on American soil -- everything from corn to chemicals to computers. Today, the House has affirmed that agreement.
We will be exporting, however, more than our products. By this agreement, we will also export more of one of our most cherished values, economic freedom. Bringing China into the WTO and normalizing trade will strengthen those who fight for the environment, for labor standards, for human rights, for the rule of law. For China, this agreement will clearly increase the benefits of cooperation, and the costs of confrontation.
America, of course, will continue to defend our interests, but at this stage in China's development, we will have more positive influence with an outstretched hand than with a clenched fist. The House today has affirmed that belief.
Now, I have spoken personally to many, many members of Congress. I have heard their concerns and those of their constituents. I know this, for many, was a difficult vote. Decisions like this one test our deepest beliefs. They challenge our hopes, and they call forth our fears. Though China may be changing, we all know it remains a one-party state, that it still denies people the rights of free speech and religious expression. We know that trade alone will not bring freedom to China or peace to the world. That's why permanent normal trade relations must also signal our commitment to permanent change.
America will keep pressing to protect our security and to advance our values. The vote today is a big boost to both efforts. For the more China liberalizes its economy, the more it will liberate the potential of its people -- to work without restraint; to live without fear.
In January, I pledged an all-out effort to take this important step. I want to thank everyone who has joined in it. I want to express special gratitude to Speaker Hastert for his leadership, to Congressman Archer and Congressman Rangel of the Ways and Means Committee. I also want to acknowledge Congressman Levin and Congressman Bereuter, who authored a provision on human rights that improves this bill and strengthens our ability to stand up for our values.
I thank all the others who spoke out for this action, including all our former Presidents, all the former Secretaries of State, Defense, trade ministers, other Cabinet members, all the military leaders. I thank those who worked for human rights and the rule of law who spoke out for this legislation.
And, of course, I want to thank all those who worked in this administration: Secretary Daley, for spearheading our campaign; Charlene Barshefsky and Gene Sperling, for their negotiation of the agreement; Steve Ricchetti, here in the White House, and Sandy Berger and all the others who worked so hard for this agreement here. I appreciate what everyone has done.
Today, the House has taken an important step for the kind of future I think we all want for our children, for an America that will be more prosperous and more secure; for a China that is more open to our products and more respectful of the rule of law at home and abroad. The House has spoken, and now the eyes of the world turn toward the United States Senate. I am confident it, too, will act swiftly to advance these interests.
I will be speaking with many senators in the days ahead to ensure that we continue to move ahead to get this done as promptly as possible. This is one of the most important votes the Senate will face in this session. I hope we can build on our momentum on this issue and on other pressing priorities, as well. I still believe the Congress can act to add voluntary prescription drug coverage to Medicare; to invest more in our children's education; to pass the legislation to invest in these American markets here at home; to pass the common sense gun safety legislation; to raise the minimum wage.
Again, I thank the House and I look forward to working with the Congress in the days ahead.
This is a good day for America. And 10 years from now we will look back on this day and be glad we did this. We will see that we have given ourselves a chance to build the kind of future we want. This is a good economic agreement because we get all the economic benefits of lower tariffs and lowered access to the Chinese market. We get new protections against dumping of products in our own markets. What we have granted is full members in the World Trade Organization, which brings China into a rule-based international system.
But I have said many times, and I'd just like to say once more, to me, the most important benefit of all is that we have given ourselves and the Chinese a chance -- not a guarantee, but a chance -- to build a future in the Asia Pacific region for the next 50 years very different from the last 50. We fought three wars in that part of the world. A lot of Americans died for freedom; a lot of sacrifice should not go unredeemed. We owe it to them, to their children, and to our children and grandchildren to give the world a chance to build a better and a different future. We have taken a big step toward giving them that chance today.
Thank you very much.
END 6:10 P.M. EDT
-------- depleted uranium
Depleted-uranium ammo stored at U.S. depot in Okinawa
Kyodo News Service
May 24 2000
From: "Dan Fahey" mtpdu@dclink.com
NAHA, Japan, May 24 2000 (Kyodo) - A commander at the U.S. Kadena Air Base in Okinawa Prefecture said Wednesday that depleted-uranium ammunition, which is generally believed to be a health hazard, is being stored in a facility adjacent to the base.
Brig. Gen. James Smith, commander of the U.S. Air Force's 18th Wing, told reporters that 30-millimeter depleted-uranium shells for antitank machine guns are being kept at one of 580 facilities at the Kadena Ammunition Storage.
Smith said the radioactive bullets do not pose a health risk to humans and that the U.S. military is not planning to remove them from the facility.
The shells are the same as those deployed by U.S. forces stationed in South Korea, and are kept at the Kadena facility in case of emergencies on the Korean Peninsula and in other areas, he added.
Between 1995 and 1996, the U.S. Marine Corps mistakenly fired about 1,500 depleted-uranium shells at uninhabited Tori Island -- 100 kilometers west of Okinawa's main island -- for target practice.
The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo later notified the Foreign Ministry that all of the Marines' depleted-uranium ammunition was removed from its bases in Japan.
The Science and Technology Agency concluded in a report on the island that the environmental impact of the depleted-uranium bullets ''could be ignored.''
Shells were tipped with depleted uranium in the Gulf War and air strikes on Kosovo so projectiles could better penetrate enemy armor. They are believed to have caused disease in U.S. soldiers and birth defects in Iraq.
----
British Royal Society investigation of DU effects
From: Nuclear Free Local Authorities <nfznsc@gn.apc.org>
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 11:14:43 +0100
The Royal Society responded in the terms attached to our query about steps they were taking to establish whether servicemen and women in the Gulf and subsequent wars were suffering from DU poisoning.
The RS say they are interested to receive any information relevant to the terms of their investigation including any evidence of DU poisoning of servicemen and women. The email from the RS confirming this is copied below.
If any DU-list readers want to take up this invitation then the clerk to the RS DU committee to whom you should write before 1 July 2000 is:
bob.ward@royalsoc.ac.uk
The Royal Society website address is below. On their site is a press statement about their investigation and this includes terms of reference. _______
Dear Stewart,
I am very happy for you to extend our invitation via the e-mail discussion list. I would be grateful if you could point out, however, that written contributions should be submitted to me by 1 July 2000 so that the working group has an opportunity to consider them fully.
To save you the trouble of scanning my letter, I have attached the text in a rich text format file.
Best wishes,
Bob
Bob Ward Manager, Science Advice Section The Royal Society 6 Carlton House Terrace London SW1Y 5AG United Kingdom tel +44 (0) 20 7451 2586 fax +44 (0) 20 7451 2692 e-mail bob.ward@royalsoc.ac.uk http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk Registered Charity No 207043 The Royal Society - promoting excellence in science
-------- europe
European Parliament resolution on the Non-Proliferation Treaty
Non-Proliferation Treaty B5-0439, 0445, 0453, 0464 and 0472/2000
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 09:15:54 +0200 From: "Ernst Guelcher" eguelcher@europarl.eu.int via akmalten@cornnet.nl
The European Parliament,
- having regard to its previous resolutions on nuclear non-proliferation, especially the resolution adopted on 13 March 1997 on the Non-Proliferation Treaty ,
- having regard to the sixth nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference taking place in New York until 19 May 2000,
- having regard to the Common Position of the Council of the European Union adopted on 13 April 2000,
A. whereas the NPT Conference in 1995 resulted in agreements on strengthening the review process of the Treaty, principles and objectives for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament and an indefinite extension of the Treaty,
B. whereas this is the first Review Conference since the new review process for the Treaty was adopted at the time of its indefinite extension in 1995 and whereas it will thus be a vital first test of the strengthened new regime since 1995,
C. whereas a constructive session with concrete outcomes will help ensure a strong future for the NPT and the non-proliferation regime as a whole,
D. recalling the active role played by the EU during the NPT Review and Extension Conference in 1995 and in the Preparatory Committees in 1997, 1998 and 1999,
E. noting the very recent resolutions supporting the NPT Review Conference in the Australian and Canadian Parliaments, and the motion in the German Bundestag,
F. welcoming the ratification by France and the UK of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the first nuclear states to ratify the CTBT; recognising the important contribution this will make to improving chances for a successful NPT Review Conference and welcoming the unilateral moves towards nuclear disarmament these two states have taken in the years since the 1995 Review and Extension Conference,
G. taking into account the efforts of the New Agenda Coalition, on which Parliament passed a near unanimous resolution on 19 November 1998 , and of which Ireland and Sweden are founding members, to contribute substantively to the debate on the question of nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and other matters related to the Treaty's objectives,
H. believing that the report of the Canberra Commission and the statement by the former generals and admirals of 4 December 1996 on the obligation to pursue nuclear disarmament in good faith are important contributions to the implementation of Article 6 of the NPT,
I. believing moves towards nuclear disarmament by the nuclear weapon states to be an essential component of non-proliferation measures taken under the Treaty and in other fora, according to their obligations under Article 6 of the NPT,
1. Believes that the NPT remains the cornerstone both for the nuclear non-proliferation regime globally and for the pursuit of nuclear disarmament;
2. Welcomes and shares the objectives of the Common Position adopted by the Council of the European Union on 13 April relating to the 2000 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons;
3. Calls on the Council to promote policies and mechanisms for the NPT that look forward to future action, not just backwards to progress already achieved, and which should include a set of new benchmarks for progress until the next Review Conference in 2005;
4. Calls on all states party to the NPT to actively pursue their efforts and obligations to promote the universality of the Treaty which may include, but is not limited to, an open formal dialogue between NPT states and the states still outside the Treaty;
5. Calls on the United States and Russia to redouble their efforts to ensure early implementation of START II and urges both to maintain at all costs the integrity of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), which is a cornerstone of strategic stability and a precondition for progress on non-proliferation and disarmament;
6. Urges those states that have not already done so, to take the necessary steps to accede to the NPT;
7. Calls on all Member States of the European Union to ratify the CTBT urgently, and to adopt a joint action under Article 13(3) of the EU Treaty to promote signature and ratification by other states, to include all necessary assistance to these states to enable them to comply with the provisions of the Treaty;
8. Regrets deeply that the US Government conducted its third subcritical nuclear test on Thursday, 6 April at 3.30 p.m. and urges all states to stop subcritical nuclear testing and other means of nuclear testing by simulation;
9. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the UN Under-Secretary General for Disarmament Affairs and the President of the 2000 NPT Review Conference.
-------- imf / world bank
Overselling the China Deal
Washington Post
Wednesday, May 24, 2000; Page A37
By Robert J. Samuelson
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/24/023l-052400-idx.html
Ever since the end of the Cold War, the United States has searched for an organizing principle for its foreign policy. We seem to have found one in trade. It promotes (we believe) political as well as economic progress. It pries open closed societies, lifts the poor into the middle class, creates pressure for democracy and--by binding countries together commercially--reduces the odds of war. The Clinton administration, an ardent advocate of this theory, has applied it most energetically to China.
This is the essential context of the impending congressional vote (expected this week in the House of Representatives) on China's trade status. It is, in some ways, a no-brainer. Clinton's request that China receive "permanent normal trade relations" should be approved. The trouble is not the policy but the way it's been sold. It has been merchandised so aggressively and loaded with such extravagant expectations--of how trade can democratize China and pacify our relations--that it seems doomed to disappoint.
Under "normal trade relations," China would enjoy the same low tariffs as other U.S. trading partners. It already does, but now Congress has to reapprove the tariffs every year. Clinton would dispense with this annual ritual as part of China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO), which sets global trade rules.
To gain WTO admission, China made many trade concessions. It will cut tariffs on U.S. industrial goods from about 25 percent in 1997 to 9 percent by 2005; most import quotas (on, say, fiber-optic cable) would end; tariffs on frozen beef would drop from 45 percent to 12 percent by 2004; restrictions on foreign investment would be relaxed. In return, all the United States does is to make its low tariffs permanent. This is a routine benefit that WTO members extend to each other.
The main argument for refusing it to China is that annual congressional review of tariffs creates "leverage" to promote better human-rights policies. Unfortunately, the actual leverage is slight or nonexistent. Even after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, Congress renewed the low tariffs. Trade cannot easily be turned on and off according to political fashion.
We must deal with China on many issues: Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula, nuclear nonproliferation, the environment, as well as trade and human rights. For Congress to reject Clinton's request would signal unmistakable hostility. There would be a harsh anti-American reaction in China. Our relations would deteriorate for no obvious gain. "China is not an enemy, at least not yet, but America can make her one," former secretary of state James A. Baker III recently wrote.
The harder question is whether trade can make China a friend. The Clinton vision is that China will become a richer, consumer-driven society. WTO membership--requiring China to follow regulations and procedures--will promote the rule of law. The advance of middle-class pleasures and the decentralization of production will gradually weaken communist control and lead to more democratic government. American and Chinese values and interests will slowly converge.
This pleasing vision is plausible ("A vote for China's freedom," says the latest Economist magazine). But it may also be a fantasy. "As they have so often in the past, Americans are overestimating the ease of changing China," writes Los Angeles Times veteran China correspondent James Mann in the American Prospect magazine. Clinton's vision rests on optimistic assumptions: that consumerism dilutes nationalism; and that China's internal problems don't neutralize the benefits of trade.
The most obvious problem is China's economy. It grew 7.1 percent in 1999, but this was the seventh consecutive year of progressively slower growth, reports economist Nicholas Lardy of the Brookings Institution. Moreover, the growth figure is bloated, because it includes "unsaleable inventories . . . of low-quality goods for which there is little or no demand," says Lardy. Many inefficient and unprofitable state-owned companies will have to be streamlined or closed. In 1997 they employed 40 million workers, about 65 percent of the jobs in the industrial sector, according to economist Harry Broadman of the World Bank. Unemployment and labor unrest are rising.
Joining the WTO should, on paper, lead to more imports, which would worsen unemployment and the losses of state-owned companies. This leads some observers to suspect that China will selectively evade its WTO obligations. The AFL-CIO--an opponent of the trade deal--fears an alliance between China and multinational companies: The companies invest in China as an export platform; in turn, growth of China's export industries, while minimizing unemployment there, will increase it here. Starting in 1994 China's trade surpluses have risen sharply. From 1993 to 1999, foreign exchange reserves have ballooned from $21 billion to $155 billion.
None of this matters much while the U.S. economic boom continues. But should it falter, the immense U.S. trade deficit with China ($69 billion in 1999) could easily become an inflammatory issue. Hardly anyone thinks that the WTO agreement will quickly reduce the deficit, because U.S. exports ($13 billion in 1999) are so small. They could grow rapidly and still fall far short of imports. The larger tension involves expanding trade with a country whose values and interests differ so much from ours. Potential conflicts abound. The kind of social transformation that Americans imagine will take (at best) decades. The Chinese can drink Coke and use the Internet without becoming American or even liking Americans.
In the Cold War, our trading and security alliances overlapped. We generally traded with democracies and military partners. This is no longer true. Coexisting with China is a great imperative of the 21st century. But American foreign policy must enjoy public understanding. In building support today for a sound policy, the White House has made it seem better than it is--and may be inviting a backlash tomorrow.
-------- india / pakistan
U.S. Warns India, Pakistan on Nukes
Associated Press
May 24, 2000 Filed at 3:57 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-US-Pakistan.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States on Wednesday cautioned India and Pakistan further nuclear testing could escalate tensions in Southeast Asia.
State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said press reports in Pakistan that the government was preparing another nuclear test were not considered ``highly credible.''
But, Reeker said, ``we did take the occasion to remind the government of Pakistan of the serious consequences of another test for our bilateral relations.''
The U.S. spokesman said Pakistan and India, which set off nuclear weapons tests in 1988, had told the United States repeatedly they had not plans to test.
But, Reeker said, ``we remain very concerned about proliferation issues in South Asia and elsewhere. Any other nuclear tests in South Asia could lead to further serious escalation tensions in the region and would threaten to undermine global nonproliferation norms.''
---
World Scene Pakistan said planning another nuclear test
Washington Times
May 24, 2000
http://208.246.212.80/world/ed-column-2000524215429.htm
U.S. officials said yesterday there were signs that Pakistan was making some preparations toward conducting a nuclear test, but it had not reached the final stages and did not appear imminent.
"There have been indications of some preparations being made for [nuclear] tests in Pakistan. There is no indication these would be the final steps," a U.S. official said on the condition of anonymity.
---
Pickering to Pakistan
Washington Times
May 24, 2000
Embassy Row James Morrison News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
http://208.246.212.80/world/embassy-2000524215957.htm
Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering will travel to Pakistan this week as a prelude to a visit to Washington next month by Pakistan Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar.
Mr. Pickering, who leaves tomorrow for three days of talks, will meet with Mr. Sattar and possibly military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a Foreign Ministry spokesman told reporters yesterday in the Pakistan capital, Islamabad.
"The agenda will cover the entire spectrum of Pakistan-U.S. relations, as well as regional and global issues of mutual interest," Iftikhar Murshed said at a press conference.
Mr. Pickering and Mr. Sattar will discuss Indian-Pakistani relations, including the dispute between the two countries over Kashmir, and "global problems such as narcotics, terrorism and [nuclear] non-proliferation matters," Mr. Murshed said.
Mr. Pickering will be the highest-level U.S. official to visit Pakistan since President Clinton traveled there in March.
Mr. Sattar is expected to meet with Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott on his visit to Washington in mid-June.
---
U.S. Warns Pakistan: No New A-Test Think Tank Cites Satellite Photos
Washington Post
Wednesday, May 24, 2000; Page A21
By Thomas E. Ricks and Vernon Loeb Washington Post Staff Writers
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/24/100l-052400-idx.html
The U.S. government, alarmed by intelligence reports of possible preparations for a nuclear test in Pakistan, warned Islamabad last week against carrying out any additional tests.
"We have raised this issue with the Pakistani government and have received assurances that they have no plans to test again," an administration official said yesterday.
May 28 marks the second anniversary of Pakistan's detonation of five nuclear devices in the Chagai Hills in southwestern Pakistan.
Two days later, Pakistan tested another warhead. The tests were conducted in response to two rounds of nuclear tests by India earlier that month.
Administration officials were tight-lipped about what specifically set off alarms among intelligence analysts.
But David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington think tank that investigates secret nuclear facilities around the world, said his organization had begun analyzing a high-resolution commercial satellite image shot in March of what is believed to be the site of Pakistan's second nuclear test in 1998. He said his analysts have detected a new road that winds past what appears to be a crater from the 1998 test to small structures that don't appear to have been there two years ago.
"It's pretty clear to me that the intelligence community is not going to be caught again," Albright said. "But photo interpretation can tell you only so much even when you're the best in the world."
John Pike, a defense expert at the Federation of American Scientists, expressed less concern. "I think this is 'rumint'--that is, rumor intelligence," he said. In fact, he said, "There doesn't appear to be an awful lot going on."
On the other hand, Pike said, the round of tests two years ago surprised a lot of people too.
The Central Intelligence Agency appears determined not to have that happen again, and so may have issued its warning on relatively thin evidence, officials hinted. "Our intelligence folks, having been surprised once, are naturally going to raise alarms," one of the administration officials said.
Patrick G. Eddington, a former CIA imagery analyst, said India and Pakistan are able to calculate when U.S. spy satellites will be passing over their test sites. Thus, the ability of analysts at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency to detect activity at Pakistan's test sites, he said, "comes down to how much effort [Pakistani scientists] are willing to put forth to camouflage what they're doing. . . ."
Undersecretary of State Thomas R. Pickering will visit Pakistan later this week to discuss security issues and is expected to meet with Indian officials.
----
PRESS STATEMENT ISSUED BY
BANGALORE PLATFORM AGAINST NUCLEAR WEAPONISATION
- 24th of May 11 AM, Press Club.
India exploded five nuclear test bombs between May 11th and May 13th of 1998. These explosions sent shock waves throughout the world. India's traditional position in the comity of nations as a peace- campaigner and a champion of nuclear disarmament was shattered in one blow.
The officials justified the explosions as imperatives due to security reasons and the government of the day initiated a massive propaganda campaign to sell this act of violence to the Indian public and the world governments. While the tests horrified peace-loving people throughout the world, an initial euphoria of jingoistic jubilation swept India. However, as the actual facts started to emerge, a more sober view crystallised.
Groups in virtually every corner of India started to protest against this nuclear weaponisation programme pointing out the immorality and enormous social and economic cost of this adventurism. It is conservatively estimated that a full scale nuclear weaponisation programme will cost at least Rs.50,000 crores over the next decade, which averages out to Rs.5,000 crores per year. By contrast, three of the most affected states in the recent drought, the worst in our country this century, received barely a tenth of this figure for relief from the Central Government.
These groups further pointed out that the very existence of nuclear bombs in an atmosphere of mutual distrust and political instability as it prevails now in this subcontinent, poses a real and imminent danger to all life and environment in this part of the world. The falsity of the 'security imperative' argument became clear as the so-called nuclear deterrent failed to prevent the border infiltration and the ensuing Kargil conflagration. A realisation also came into place that the weaponisation programme has taken place behind a cloak of secrecy enshrined in the 1962 Atomic Energy Act. Under this Act the activities of the nuclear establishment in India is not liable to any scrutiny by the Parliament let alone the Indian public.
The citizens of Bangalore were some of the first in the country to come out in open protest after the 1998 tests. Scientists, artists, lawyers, trade unionists, students, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and women's groups got together in Bangalore and observed Hiroshima Day as a day of peace and protest. This happened in spite of many provocations and threats posed by many reactionary groups who glorified nuclear weapons as symbols of national chauvinism and aggressive manhood.
The protest movement in India has now snowballed and acquired a new dimension. Different groups have come together from all corners to form a loose national coalition. The coalition is organising a national convention against nuclear weaponisation to take place in November this year in New Delhi. In Bangalore more than twenty organisations, and many individuals have built the Bangalore Platform against Nuclear Weaponisation. The Platform sees as its objective the task of building a mass movement that can force the politicians to roll back the nuclear weaponisation programme. We are convinced that this can be done, as has in fact happened in South Africa, Brazil and Ukraine. We launch this movement formally on the 10th of June 2000 with a campaign to collect 5000 signatures protesting against the weaponisation. We hope to follow this up with popular publications, lectures, exhibitions, cultural performances and discussions in schools, colleges, factories and rural areas.
Our campaign will consist of dissemination of information related to India's nuclear weaponisation programme as well as to build up, as a part of the national movement, demands for the following.
No assembly, induction and deployment of nuclear weapons.
No acquisition and development of delivery vehicles: aircraft, missile and submarine.
Advanced research into nuclear weapons to be halted immediately; moratoriums on explosive testing, subcritical tests, production of weapons --usable fissile materials and tritium.
Public accountability of veracity and efficacy of freeze.
Complete transparency and independent monitoring of the performance of Department of Atomic Energy and its full public accountability.
Proper compensation and reparation to all victims of radiation exposure incurred during tests and other processes related to the production of nuclear bombs.
Bangalore Platform against Nuclear Weaponisation AIBEA (Canara Bank), Alternate Lawyers Forum, BEL Employee's Union, Centre for Education and Documentation, Citizens Against Nuclear Energy, Documentation and Dissemination Centre for Disarmament Information, Federation of Voluntary Organisations for Rural Development -Karnataka, Gandhi Peace Centre, General Insurance Employees Union, Indian Scientists Against Nuclear Weapons, International Energy Initiative, Karnataka State Peace and Solidarity Organisation, Manasa, New Entity for Social Action, People's Union for Civil Liberties- Karnataka, Pipal Tree, Samvada, Science for Society, Anglo-Indian Guild, Visthar
CONTACT: CED admin@ilban.ernet.in Ph: 5543397 or ISANW pativish@hotmail.com Ph: 5554246/8483002 (extn. 442)
-------- iraq
U.N.'s Iraq Agency Considers Staff Appointments
New York Times
May 24, 2000
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/00/05/24/late/24iraq.html
UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N. chief inspector for Iraq has revealed some of his tentative choices for key staff during two days of meetings with a new board of commissioners hearing his plans to account for Baghdad's dangerous arms.
Hans Blix, executive director of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), presented a draft of his first progress report to the 17-member advisory board that ends its closed-door sessions Wednesday.
Because of uncertainty whether U.N. weapons inspectors will be allowed back into Iraq, Blix earlier this year proposed a "two-step approach" to recruitment. He will first fill core staff posts and only later proceed to full-scale recruitment.
Demitrius Perricos of Greece, is expected to be named the head of planning and operations, a key post that would oversee inspections, commissioners said. The United States supported this choice, they added.
Perricos, a former colleague of Blix at the International Atomic Energy Agency, conducted negotiations on North Korea's nuclear facilities. Blix, a former Swedish foreign minister, headed the IAEA for 16 years, until 1998.
Rachel Davis of Britain is expected to be named head of the information division that includes data processing and analyzing goods Iraq may import to make sure they are not used for military purposes.
She held a similar post with the U.N. Special Commission, UNMOVIC's predecessor.
Belgian Alice Hecht, another former UNSCOM official, is tipped as head of administrative services, which includes budgets, personnel and recruitment.
Blix has made clear difficult decisions would be made by him alone. But he is also under pressure from the five permanent Security Council members, the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China, to name their respective citizens to key positions.
Blix has already abolished the post of a deputy, which traditionally went to a high-ranking American. Instead the United States is expected to be suggest candidates for UNMOVIC's Technical Support and Training Division.
No appointment has been made yet for the key analysis and assessment division that would be in charge of evaluating overt and covert information on Iraq's biological, chemical and ballistic missile programs, the heart of the agency's work.
But diplomats said it was likely to go to a French citizen.
Russia's Nikita Zhukov is expected to be in charge of external relations. He worked for UNSCOM in mid-1998, an appointment following Iraqi complaints the agency had too many Americans and Britons in leading positions.
A Chinese official, not yet identified, would be named to a position called "activity evaluation."
The College of Commissioners, a mixture of outside experts and government officials, is designed to meet at least four times a year to provide "professional advice and guidance."
At the moment, however, there is little for UNMOVIC to do in the field. Iraq has not let U.N. inspectors into the country since they withdrew shortly before U.S.-British bombing raids in December 1998. The bombing was carried out to force Iraq to cooperate with the arms experts.
However, the agency is organizing itself on the assumption Iraq will accept a new inspection system. This is something that Baghdad has so far said it will refuse to do, even though cooperation is the key to any easing of sanctions in force since Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
---
U.N.'s Iraq Agency Considers Staff Appointments
New York Times
May 24, 2000
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/24iraq2.html
UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N. chief inspector for Iraq has revealed some of his tentative choices for key staff during two days of meetings with a new board of commissioners hearing his plans to account for Baghdad's dangerous arms.
Hans Blix, executive director of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), presented a draft of his first progress report to the 17-member advisory board that ends its closed-door sessions Wednesday.
Because of uncertainty whether U.N. weapons inspectors will be allowed back into Iraq, Blix earlier this year proposed a "two-step approach" to recruitment. He will first fill core staff posts and only later proceed to full-scale recruitment.
Demitrius Perricos of Greece, is expected to be named the head of planning and operations, a key post that would oversee inspections, commissioners said. The United States supported this choice, they added.
Perricos, a former colleague of Blix at the International Atomic Energy Agency, conducted negotiations on North Korea's nuclear facilities. Blix, a former Swedish foreign minister, headed the IAEA for 16 years, until 1998.
Rachel Davis of Britain is expected to be named head of the information division that includes data processing and analyzing goods Iraq may import to make sure they are not used for military purposes.
She held a similar post with the U.N. Special Commission, UNMOVIC's predecessor.
Belgian Alice Hecht, another former UNSCOM official, is tipped as head of administrative services, which includes budgets, personnel and recruitment.
Blix has made clear difficult decisions would be made by him alone. But he is also under pressure from the five permanent Security Council members, the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China, to name their respective citizens to key positions.
Blix has already abolished the post of a deputy, which traditionally went to a high-ranking American. Instead the United States is expected to be suggest candidates for UNMOVIC's Technical Support and Training Division.
No appointment has been made yet for the key analysis and assessment division that would be in charge of evaluating overt and covert information on Iraq's biological, chemical and ballistic missile programs, the heart of the agency's work.
But diplomats said it was likely to go to a French citizen.
Russia's Nikita Zhukov is expected to be in charge of external relations. He worked for UNSCOM in mid-1998, an appointment following Iraqi complaints the agency had too many Americans and Britons in leading positions.
A Chinese official, not yet identified, would be named to a position called "activity evaluation."
The College of Commissioners, a mixture of outside experts and government officials, is designed to meet at least four times a year to provide "professional advice and guidance."
At the moment, however, there is little for UNMOVIC to do in the field. Iraq has not let U.N. inspectors into the country since they withdrew shortly before U.S.-British bombing raids in December 1998. The bombing was carried out to force Iraq to cooperate with the arms experts.
However, the agency is organizing itself on the assumption Iraq will accept a new inspection system. This is something that Baghdad has so far said it will refuse to do, even though cooperation is the key to any easing of sanctions in force since Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
-------- israel
Army To Test Laser Weapon
Associated Press
May 24, 2000 Filed at 1:54 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Laser-Weapon-Israel.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Army is preparing a crucial test this week of a new laser weapon being developed specifically to shield Israel from short-range rocket attacks across its border with Lebanon.
The test will be the first attempt to use the Tactical High Energy Laser to shoot down an armed Katyusha rocket in flight.
An Army announcement said the test would be at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., ``before the end of May.'' An Army official speaking on condition of anonymity said it may be as soon as today.
The importance of the laser weapon to Israeli security is underscored by the chaos that erupted this week along the country's border with south Lebanon when Israel's allied militia in the area collapsed. The militia for years had occupied a security zone there meant to protect Israel from Katyusha rocket attacks.
A string of rocket attacks in early 1996 prompted President Clinton to approve a crash program by the Army and the Israeli Ministry of Defense to develop the Tactical High Energy Laser. Army officials plan to turn the $250 million weapon over to Israel this fall if a series of scheduled tests prove that it is effective.
Kenneth Bacon, spokesman for Defense Secretary William Cohen, said Tuesday it was up to Israel to disclose how and when it plans to deploy the new laser weapon.
``Israel sought the weapon precisely to deal with this type of threat,'' he said, referring to Katyusha rockets.
Bacon was asked whether the Clinton administration was prepared to contribute to an enlarged U.N. peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon, as a means of stabilizing the situation after Israel completes with pullout.
``We certainly are prepared to provide assistance if we get specific requests,'' he said. ``I don't believe we have at this stage. We have not talked about committing manpower to that force. A number of other countries have. But we are willing to provide assistance if we find we can help and if there's a need for us to do so.''
On Monday at White Sands, officials tested the laser's system for tracking a Katyusha rocket armed with a dummy warhead. The next step, possibly this week, will be to fire the laser for the first time at a Katyusha rocket in flight with a real warhead. Later, it will attempt to shoot down multiple rockets.
The laser weapon is being built under contract by Cleveland-based TRW Space and Laser Programs Division. The costs have been shared by the Israeli and U.S. governments.
Although this would be the first laser weapon built for defense against rockets, the Defense Department has no immediate plans to use it with U.S. forces, in part because the system is not easily transportable. The Pentagon is working on a variety of other laser weapon technologies that could be used to shoot down ballistic missiles in flight, although deployment of such weapons is at least a decade away.
-------- japan
Gensuikyo comments on NPT Review Conf
May 24, 2000
From: Japan Press Service - jpspress@twics.com
TOKYO MAY 24 JPS -- The Japan Council against A and H Bombs (Japan Gensuikyo) on May 23 published a comment on the outcome of the Review Conference on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) which closed on May 20 at United Nations headquarters in New York.
Gensuikyo evaluated the adoption of a document at the NPT Review Conference in which the nuclear powers pledged to the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.
Gensuikyo analyzed this is a reflection of international opinion in favor of the swift abolition of nuclear warheads and the rejection of the United States clinging to the "ultimate" elimination of nuclear weapons.
Pointing out that the document failed to set a deadline to eliminate nuclear arsenals, Gensuikyo complained about lack of concrete descriptions in the document.
Increased international criticism is needed to lay siege to the nuclear possessing countries, Gensuikyo said.
It demanded that the Japanese government take initiatives as the A-bombed nation to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons. (end item)
----
Gensuikyo comments on NPT Review Conf
JPS 05-078
TOKYO MAY 24 JPS -- The Japan Council against A and H Bombs (Japan Gensuikyo) on May 23 published a comment on the outcome of the Review Conference on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) which closed on May 20 at United Nations headquarters in New York.
Gensuikyo evaluated the adoption of a document at the NPT Review Conference in which the nuclear powers pledged to the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.
Gensuikyo analyzed this is a reflection of international opinion in favor of the swift abolition of nuclear warheads and the rejection of the United States clinging to the "ultimate" elimination of nuclear weapons.
Pointing out that the document failed to set a deadline to eliminate nuclear arsenals, Gensuikyo complained about lack of concrete descriptions in the document.
Increased international criticism is needed to lay siege to the nuclear possessing countries, Gensuikyo said.
It demanded that the Japanese government take initiatives as the A-bombed nation to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons. (end item)
JPS 05-079 320,000 signatures collected demanding referendum on Aichi Expo plan
TOKYO MAY 24 JPS -- In Aichi Pref., 322,500 people, or 5.92 percent of the electorate put their signatures on the call for a referendum on the plan to hold the 2005 World Expo, Japan in Aichi Pref. The signatures were submitted to each local government office in the prefecture on May 23.
The group which organized the collection said in a public statement, "So many residents of Aichi are critical of or at least questioning the Expo plan. The governor and local assemblies must take the voices of the people seriously and do what is necessary to carry out referendum ."
Objected by public opinion, the prefectural government has abandoned the project to construct housing units at the site of the 2005 World Expo in the Kaisho Forest of Seto City in Aichi Prefecture and agreed to hold consultation with local environmentalists.
The government hasn't given up the plan to hold it in the precious Kaisho Forest and the tremendous financial burden has not been made clear.(
-------- korea
N. Korea-U.S. Talks Resume in Rome
Associated Press
May 24, 2000 Filed at 12:12 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Italy-US-NKorea.html
ROME (AP) -- The United States and North Korea resumed talks Wednesday on a wide range of issues intended to improve relations, including an agreement to defuse a nuclear crisis.
The meeting in Rome is a follow-up to talks that adjourned March 15 in New York. The U.S. delegation was being led by Charles Kartman, a State Department official. Kim Gye Gwan, a deputy foreign minister, headed the North Korean side. The talks could last several days.
Italy, which established diplomatic relations with North Korea earlier this year, has been encouraging the communist country to end its self-imposed isolation and ease tensions in Asia. Italy offered the use of a villa in the hills of northern Rome for this week's discussions.
No specific agenda was released for the talks, but a State Department spokesman in Washington said they would discuss issues of common concern, including a 1994 agreement to defuse a nuclear crisis.
Washington signed the 1994 pact with Pyongyang under which the North agreed to freeze its nuclear weapons development program. In return, a consortium of U.S., Japanese and South Korean partners agreed to build two reactors not to be used for military purposes. But delays have plagued the project.
The first round of U.S.-North Korea talks was held in Berlin in January.
As the talks resumed in Rome, a U.S. State Department team arrived in North Korea to inspect a huge tunnel under construction. The 1998 discovery of the tunnel's construction had raised suspicions that North Korea was preparing a nuclear facility, despite the pact.
North Korea allowed one earlier inspection of the tunnel in exchange for a large shipment of food aid. The East Asian nation has been plagued for years by weather problems and crop shortages.
Another unresolved issue is how to formally end the 1950-53 war between the two Koreas, which never formally signed a peace treaty.
---
U.S., North Korea nuclear talks to resume in Rome
ITALY: May 24, 2000
Story by Steve Pagani
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=6812
ROME - The United States and North Korea resume talks on Wednesday on implementing an accord on freezing North Korea's nuclear programme which the West once believed was a smokescreen for a secret atomic missile project.
The U.S. delegation was expected to be led by ambassador Charles Kartman and the North Korean by Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan.
The two sides were due to begin a first round of encounters at Villa Madama, an Italian Foreign Ministry reception building in the Italian capital, at around 09:15 a.m. (0715 GMT).
Italy this year became the first of the Group of Seven industrialised nations (G7) to forge diplomatic relations with North Korea and Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini was the most senior Western official to visit the reclusive Stalinist state when he flew to North Korea in March.
The meetings were to be held behind closed doors and details of the agenda and state of negotiations were likely to be scant.
The United States has said one issue to be broached is the plan for a visit to Washington by a senior North Korean.
Pyongyang has not given any name but said he would be the most senior official to visit the United States since the Korean war in early 1950s.
At their last round of talks in New York in March, Washington said "substantive" progress had been made on getting the 1994 deal on freezing North Korea's nuclear programme, known as the "agreed framework", back on track.
"We have long said that if the agreed framework can be put clearly back on track and were to be fully implemented, that we are prepared to improve political and economic relations," State Department spokesman James Rubin said.
The 1994 agreement drew a pledge from the North Koreans to halt its nuclear power plant building, which the West suspected was a front for the manufacture of atomic arms.
In return, a U.S.-led consortium, known as the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO), would stump up the cash to build two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea. A $4.6 billion deal with South Korea's Electric Power Corp (KEPCO) to construct the plants was signed last December.
YEARS OF NEGOTIATIONS
Years of negotiations, also held in Geneva and Berlin, have been hit by delays and hitches.
North Korea in February accused the United States of delaying construction of the new reactors and demanded compensation for the shortage of electricity brought about by the shutting down of its old reactors six years ago.
KEPCO officials say the plants would not be completed until 2007, four years after the date of 2003 was originally set.
Suspicions over North Korea's nuclear industry first came to light in 1993 when the United Nations nuclear body, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said it was unable to account for an amount of plutonium missing from North Korea's five-megawatt nuclear reactor in Yongbyon.
Officials believed spent nuclear rods were transferred from the Yongbyon reactor and the radioactive fuel reprocessed to help produce a nuclear device.
The IAEA's function is to ensure nuclear materials around the world are being used solely for civilian needs.
The 1994 accord led to the closure of the reactors, which could be misused, and the promise to build light-water reactors, which could not.
-------- npt
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 09:15:54 +0200 From: "Ernst Guelcher" eguelcher@europarl.eu.int Subject: Acronym Institute (The Last of this Series) 20 May 2000(report #18)
--- 1. Non-Proliferation Treaty B5-0439, 0445, 0453, 0464 and 0472/2000
European Parliament resolution on the Non-Proliferation Treaty
The European Parliament,
- having regard to its previous resolutions on nuclear non-proliferation, especially the resolution adopted on 13 March 1997 on the Non-Proliferation Treaty ,
- having regard to the sixth nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference taking place in New York until 19 May 2000,
- having regard to the Common Position of the Council of the European Union adopted on 13 April 2000,
A. whereas the NPT Conference in 1995 resulted in agreements on strengthening the review process of the Treaty, principles and objectives for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament and an indefinite extension of the Treaty,
B. whereas this is the first Review Conference since the new review process for the Treaty was adopted at the time of its indefinite extension in 1995 and whereas it will thus be a vital first test of the strengthened new regime since 1995,
C. whereas a constructive session with concrete outcomes will help ensure a strong future for the NPT and the non-proliferation regime as a whole,
D. recalling the active role played by the EU during the NPT Review and Extension Conference in 1995 and in the Preparatory Committees in 1997, 1998 and 1999,
E. noting the very recent resolutions supporting the NPT Review Conference in the Australian and Canadian Parliaments, and the motion in the German Bundestag,
F. welcoming the ratification by France and the UK of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the first nuclear states to ratify the CTBT; recognising the important contribution this will make to improving chances for a successful NPT Review Conference and welcoming the unilateral moves towards nuclear disarmament these two states have taken in the years since the 1995 Review and Extension Conference,
G. taking into account the efforts of the New Agenda Coalition, on which Parliament passed a near unanimous resolution on 19 November 1998 , and of which Ireland and Sweden are founding members, to contribute substantively to the debate on the question of nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and other matters related to the Treaty's objectives,
H. believing that the report of the Canberra Commission and the statement by the former generals and admirals of 4 December 1996 on the obligation to pursue nuclear disarmament in good faith are important contributions to the implementation of Article 6 of the NPT,
I. believing moves towards nuclear disarmament by the nuclear weapon states to be an essential component of non-proliferation measures taken under the Treaty and in other fora, according to their obligations under Article 6 of the NPT,
1. Believes that the NPT remains the cornerstone both for the nuclear non-proliferation regime globally and for the pursuit of nuclear disarmament;
2. Welcomes and shares the objectives of the Common Position adopted by the Council of the European Union on 13 April relating to the 2000 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons;
3. Calls on the Council to promote policies and mechanisms for the NPT that look forward to future action, not just backwards to progress already achieved, and which should include a set of new benchmarks for progress until the next Review Conference in 2005;
4. Calls on all states party to the NPT to actively pursue their efforts and obligations to promote the universality of the Treaty which may include, but is not limited to, an open formal dialogue between NPT states and the states still outside the Treaty;
5. Calls on the United States and Russia to redouble their efforts to ensure early implementation of START II and urges both to maintain at all costs the integrity of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), which is a cornerstone of strategic stability and a precondition for progress on non-proliferation and disarmament;
6. Urges those states that have not already done so, to take the necessary steps to accede to the NPT;
7. Calls on all Member States of the European Union to ratify the CTBT urgently, and to adopt a joint action under Article 13(3) of the EU Treaty to promote signature and ratification by other states, to include all necessary assistance to these states to enable them to comply with the provisions of the Treaty;
8. Regrets deeply that the US Government conducted its third subcritical nuclear test on Thursday, 6 April at 3.30 p.m. and urges all states to stop subcritical nuclear testing and other means of nuclear testing by simulation;
9. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the UN Under-Secretary General for Disarmament Affairs and the President of the 2000 NPT Review Conference.
Ak Malten akmalten@cornnet.nl 05/24/00 01:05
----
Fighting for end to nuclear weapons
Irish Times
Tuesday, May 23, 2000
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2000/0523/opt3.htm
An Irish initiative, the New Agenda Coalition, played a crucial role in securing an unequivocal commitment from the nuclear weapons states to total nuclear disarmament at the weekend. Tony D'Costa was at the review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in New York
RITE AND REASON: There are over 30,000 nuclear weapons in our world today, with the capacity to destroy the whole planet in 45 minutes, and many times over. One such weapon possesses 1,000 times more devastating power than what was dropped on Hiroshima, while 5,000 nuclear weapons are kept on hair-trigger alert.
On many occasions our world has came within minutes of an accidental nuclear war. One such instance was in 1995 when a scientific rocket launched from Norway was detected by Russia as an incoming nuclear device and it was within a few minutes of responding when a false alarm was raised.
It is more than 50 years since nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan. Today, a decade after the end of the Cold War, any justification for nuclear deterrence has no place in the world. But it is unfortunate that the Cold War mentality dominates military thinking in the nuclear weapons states.
These states have not demonstrated any genuine willingness to live up to their commitment to the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Some explicitly state those weapons are the cornerstone of their security.
This justification will lead us, not to a nuclear-free world but rather to a nuclear weapons free-for-all. There are already over 40 nuclear-capable countries and the weapons states have no moral credibility to stop those weapons being developed by others.
What we have learnt from history is that if one country develops a new weapon, others will try to have it too, sooner or later. The only defence against nuclear weapons is their total elimination.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is the major international treaty which has prevented the spread of nuclear weapons. Ireland is proud of its achievement in this regard. It was Frank Aiken, then minister for external affairs, whose pioneering role through a decade brought this treaty into being in 1968. It came into force in 1970.
Primarily, this treaty is an agreement between the five nuclear weapons states - the US, Russia, France, Britain, China - and the 182 non-nuclear states. It prevents the non-nuclear states from developing nuclear weapons; they can use nuclear technology only for peaceful purposes.
In essence, this commitment is based on a reciprocal commitment by the nuclear weapons states to total nuclear disarmament. The non-nuclear weapons states have kept their side of the bargain but not the weapons states.
The five nuclear states have continued to perfect and produce more sophisticated weapons since the signing of the treaty. Although bilateral agreements between the US and Russia have reduced weapons numbers in both countries, this is more a strategic readjustment and not a process towards their total elimination.
The US has technologically advanced to test and develop nuclear weapons within the confines of a laboratory. This violates the actual spirit of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), to which it is a signatory.
The CTBT emerged from a 40year struggle to stop countries testing nuclear weapons, which is essential for their production. This technological bypass is against the whole spirit of nuclear disarmament.
The 1995 NPT review extended the treaty indefinitely and put in place procedures to evaluate steps taken by weapons states and to propose measures to achieve nuclear disarmament. But at the preparatory meetings for the review of the NPT, no progress was made on any substantive issue. The only decisions taken were for the date and venue of the review.
From this stagnation emerged the New Agenda Coalition in 1998, led by Ireland and six other nations - Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden. They focused on an unequivocal and demonstrable commitment, with interim measures, by the weapons states to the total elimination of nuclear weapons.
The 1998 and 1999 New Agenda resolutions at the UN General Assembly revitalised the international debate on disarmanment.
It was doubtful, however, whether the NPT review processs would produce any great results. An unequivocal commitment by the nuclear weapons states to total nuclear disarmament was a major success, but an accelerated process towards its achievement remains to be achieved. The attitude of civil society will be a crucial factor in this.
One of the important issues which had not featured in the NPT review was the US national defence which will detect and destroy incoming missiles. Russia is unhappy about renegotiating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which prevents the US making progress in this matter.
This is a major regression in global disarmament. It is worse than the Cold War logic of mutual assured destruction, when every nuclear weapons state was vulnerable to nuclear attack and thus would not use them. The national missile defence will make the US invincible and others vulnerable. This, inevitably, will led to an arms race and set the agenda of nuclear disarmament back by decades.
Tony D'Costa is general secretary of Pax Christi Ireland.
---
Nuclear Dangers
Irish Times
Tuesday, May 23, 2000
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/opinion/2000/0523/edi2.htm
Nuclear weapons are so taken for granted in world affairs that it is important to be reminded how dangerous and potentially destabilising they are as guarantors of international order. The weekend statement by the five nuclear-armed permanent members of the Security Council that they support the "unequivocal" elimination of these weapons is a welcome recognition of that fact, despite the absence of a timetable. It came in response to intensive lobbying by a group of states, including Ireland, which have kept the issue in the foreground of international politics.
Ireland has been centrally involved in the issue since 1958, when Frank Aiken launched an initiative for a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; it was agreed in 1961 and has subsequently been signed by 181 states. Those who thought it would be easier to make progress towards the objective after the end of the Cold War were mistaken. The United States, Russia, China, France and Britain have remained permanent members of the Security Council largely by virtue of their nuclear arms; they have since been joined as nuclear states by India and Pakistan as well as Israel.
In 1998 Ireland, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, New Zealand, South Africa, Slovenia and Sweden launched another initiative to make progress towards nuclear disarmament. It was based on a declaration, "A Nuclear-Weapons-Free-World: the need for a new agenda" and was aimed at lobbying through the UN General Assembly, culminating in the review conference this year to examine the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which was indefinitely extended in 1995. This stronger statement of support for nuclear disarmament represents the fruits of that diplomatic endeavour.
It has been worth the effort. The Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty remains the cornerstone of arms reduction accords. Its active renewal reminds world opinion that non-proliferation without nuclear disarmament is incapable of delivering stability. That position has been amply confirmed by recent developments in Europe, Asia and the United States. The conference provided an opportunity for participating states to voice their concerns about current destabilising policies, as well as to lobby for stronger commitments to nuclear disarmament. Foremost among such policies are plans by the United States to install an expensive National Missile Defence (NMD) to detect and destroy incoming missiles aimed at its territory by rogue states. If it worked that would make the US invincible and all other states vulnerable; even if it was not proven to work it would upset existing balances and tempt other states into a dangerous arms race. Already the Russians are threatening not to proceed with their commitment to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles if NMD goes ahead; they are getting surprising support from European states such as Britain, France and Germany in their efforts to head it off.
All these issues are inter-connected. Diplomatic lobbying and negotiation is an important means of reaching out to international opinion by cutting through the complexities and seeing nuclear weapons for what they are: outmoded systems making for a more dangerous and not a safer world.
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No more nukes? UNITED NATIONS - The five nuclear powers on the Security Council agreed Saturday to get rid of their nuclear arsenals, as part of a new agenda agreed to by 187 countries.
Back to PencilNews!
THE AGREEMENT by the nations that signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was reached after all-night talks and intense pressure on Iraq and the United States to settle a fight over Baghdad's compliance with U.N. sanctions.
Showing 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 agreements limiting nuclear weapons, 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 said the new nuclear agenda was important because it represented the first time in 15 years that the 187 nuclear and non-nuclear countries were able to reach an agreement.
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."
Thursday, the five nuclear powers - the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China - agreed to "an unequivocal undertaking" to do away with 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.
The non-proliferation treaty, which came into force in 1970, has only four nations that haven't signed - India and Pakistan, which had 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 believe is key to the cause of disarmament.
-------- pakistan
Pakistan denies nuclear preparations
Test dispute continues as U.S. envoy prepares for talks
NBC NEWS AND WIRE REPORTS
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 24 - Pakistan on Wednesday denied reports it was preparing a nuclear test on the anniversary of May 1998 explosions that earned it world condemnation and international sanctions.
'Pakistan has declared a unilateral moratorium on testing and the report has no foundation whatsoever.' - IFTIKHAR MURSHED Pakistani Foreign Office Spokesman "THE REPORT is utterly baseless," Foreign Office spokesman Iftikhar Murshed told Reuters. "Pakistan has declared a unilateral moratorium on testing and the report has no foundation whatsoever," Murshed said. Senior U.S. officials from several agencies involved in tracking nuclear proliferation told NBC News on Monday that Pakistan may be preparing for a new round of nuclear weapons tests. Their comments were based on activities detected at the country's nuclear test site in the remote Chagai Hills near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. A U.S. official in Washington said on condition of anonymity that there were some indications Pakistan was preparing for nuclear tests but that a detonation did not appear imminent.
The reports of a possible nuclear test by Pakistan were published days before the country marks the second anniversary of its May 28 nuclear tests, which were conducted in retaliation for similar trials by India. The tit-for-tat tests earned India and Pakistan international anger and economic sanctions, many of which are still in force. The two countries have been locked in a chilly standoff since a near war last year over the infiltration of India's Kargil heights and the October 12 coup, which brought army chief Gen. Pervez Musharraf to power.
POLICY OF RESTRAINT India refuses to talk to Musharraf, whom it blames for the Kargil standoff, until Islamabad stops backing groups India calls terrorists and Pakistan calls freedom fighters battling Indian rule of disputed Kashmir.
Pakistan says its nuclear deterrent is an indispensable part of its defense doctrine but only to deter aggression. Pakistan's Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar said in a statement on Tuesday that Islamabad - which declared the unilateral moratorium on further tests in 1998 - would maintain its policy of "responsibility and restraint." U.S. officials said Washington was closely watching the activity in Pakistan and another test by Pakistan or India could be a huge setback. "We are watching very closely and if appropriate we will make it clear to them that this would be a mistake," a U.S. defense official said. The reports come a day before U.S. Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering is to visit Pakistan for talks on nuclear non-proliferation, terrorism, security and Pakistan's relations with India. The talks will be held on May 26 and 27.
WHY NEW ROUND OF TESTS? Experts in the U.S. were split on the question of why Pakistan might be planning a new round of tests.
-------- puerto rico
PUERTO RICAN VETERANS WILL RETURN THEIR MEDALS TO PRESIDENT CLINTON IN PROTEST FOR BOMBINGS IN VIEQUES
From: "Dan Fahey" mtpdu@dclink.com
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 20:30:00 -0400
Contact: Luis R. Mendez, Veterans for Peace, Puerto Rico Chapter
Tel. 787-767-2936 (office) Tel. 787-798-8086 (home)
May 24, 2000- Puerto Rican war veterans have decided to return to President Clinton the medals and condecorations they once received for defending the United States, in protest for Clinton's decision to authorize bombing to resume in Vieques and in support of the demands that the U.S. Navy permanently stop bombing Vieques.
Among the condecorations that will be returned are several Purple Heart medals bestowed upon soldiers who were wounded in battle. The veterans who will send their medals back to the President fought in World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, the Persian Gulf, Somalia and Kosovo.
Luis Méndez, spokesperson of the Puerto Rico Chapter of the organization Veterans for Peace, announced today during a press conference in San Juan, that a ceremony will be held on Memorial Day where Puerto Rican veterans will have the opportunity to voluntarily turn in their National Defense Service medals in support of the struggle of the people of Vieques and in response to the federal government assault on the civil disobedience camps at the Navy bombing range in Vieques. The ceremony will be held on Monday, May 29, 2000 (Memorial Day) at 10:00AM at the Veteran's Monument in front of the Capitol Building in San Juan.
Veterans for Peace is a national organization structured around a national office in Washington, DC and comprised of members across the U.S. and Puerto Rico organized in chapters or as at-large members. Veterans for Peace is an official Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) represented at the United Nations.
Méndez urged all Puerto Rican veterans to join in this ceremony which "symbolizes our position that the safety and health of the people of Vieques are not negotiable, and that the concept of national security is now being used to mean the defense of the economic interests of the military and industrial complex of the U.S."
Veteran Rubén Lind added that "at this time there is no enemy that's threatening the security of the United States. As veterans, we know first-hand the pain and destruction of war. We don't want any more war games in Vieques. Viequenses have a right to life and to health."
For more information on the ceremony on Monday May 29, and on future events of Veterans for Peace with regard to Vieques, please contact Luis R. Méndez at 787-767-2936 or at 787-798-8086.
For the text of the statement of Veterans for Peace's Vieques Libre Campaign, please access: www.veteransforpeace.org/vieques.htm
-------- russia
Doctors Urge Russia, U.S. to cut Nuclear Arms
Russia Today
Wed, May 24 at Prague 08:38 am, N.Y. 02:38 am
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=161801
MOSCOW, May 23, 2000 -- (Reuters) An international group of doctors who oppose nuclear weapons said on Monday it was worried by U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense shield and by Russia's stance on nuclear weapons in its new military doctrine.
At a forum in Moscow International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War lambasted U.S. President Bill Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin before their June 4-5 summit.
"Today we are witnessing the fact that both sides are taking a step backwards," Sergei Kolesnikov, co-chairman of the Russian committee of the international group, told a news conference.
He criticized U.S. plans to build an anti-missile defense shield and amend the Cold War Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty (ABM), which has worried Russia and China. He also criticized the more confrontational style of Russia's military doctrine.
Changes to the doctrine have been criticized in the West for lowering the threshold at which Russia would use nuclear weapons and for stressing confrontation with the West rather than cooperation.
Francis Lee, the head of the U.S. branch of the group, said the U.S. shield plan was "unworkable and indefensible" and urged both leaders to agree on arms cuts in a planned START-3 treaty.
The START-2 treaty foresees both sides reducing the number of warheads from 6,000 to 3,500 each by 2007. The United States has aimed at a cut back to 2,000-2,500 warheads each under START-3 although Putin has said Russia could go to 1,500 each.
However, talks on a new treaty have been undermined by Russia's concerns over the U.S. plans to amend the ABM pact.
Gunnars Westberg, the head of the Swedish branch of the doctors' group, said Russia's new military doctrine was "dangerous, useless and illegal".
"They (the Russian military) talk as if nuclear weapons were just another kind of weapon. Nuclear weapons are not a weapon, they are a means of genocide," he said
-----
TOMORROW MINATOM WILL PRESENT NEW NUCLEAR DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM TO THE GOVERNMENT. KEYSTONE OF THE PROGRAM: 23 UNSAFE, EXPENSIVE AND UNNECESSARY NUCLEAR REACTORS FOR US$ 32 BILLION
For immediate release
ECODEFENSE!, Anti-nuclear campaign of the Socio-Ecological Union
Moscow May 24, 2000
For more information and copies of documents call: 2784642, 7766546 in Moscow - Vladimir Slivyak, e-mail: ecodefense@glasnet.ru http://www.ecoline.ru/antinuclear
According to confidential documents obtained by ECODEFENSE! and the Anti-nuclear campaign of the Socio-Ecological Union, the Russian Ministry of Atomic Power (Minatom) will present to the government its new 50-year program of nuclear development on May 25, 2000. Environmental groups also obtained the text of a speech by the Minister for Atomic Power Evgeny Adamov. According to the documents, Minister Adamov will ask the government tomorrow to allow the import of nuclear waste to Russia. Presently, the Russian Law on Nature Protection bans the import of nuclear waste. Moreover, Adamov will ask the government to accept Minatom's strategy of nuclear development of Russia for 2000-2050. In this strategy, Minatom proposes to decrease the consumption of natural gas and increase nuclear power generation to replace natural gas. In the same speech, Minister Adamov will state that Russia will run out of natural uranium in 60 years [if the government agrees to Minatom's new strategy].
The national strategy for nuclear development includes 23 new reactors to appear before 2020. Investment needed for implementing this strategy is US$ 32 billion. According to Adamov's speech, the expenses will be covered by increasing prices for electricity and by importing nuclear waste from all over the world to Russia.
"The new nuclear developments projected by Minatom include 23 new dangerous, expensive and unnecessary reactors," said Vladimir Slivyak, antinuclear campaigner for ECODEFENSE! and Socio-Ecological Union. "At the same time, energy-efficiency technologies just don't exist on an industrial scale in Russia. Development of renewable sources of energy would provide Russia with a great amount of electricity as well. But the lobbyists for efficiency and renewables aren't as good as those for one of the richest corporations in the world - Minatom."
The amount of spent nuclear fuel accumulated in Russia is about 14,000 tons. The new strategy allocates only about US$ 3,6 billion in 30 years for nuclear waste management - the lowest amount ever.
"While Minatom is arguing that the nuclear waste problem doesn't exist, Russian nuclear plants are contributing to this problem every day," said Vladimir Slivyak. "According to Minatom's strategy, the nuclear waste problem will not be solved in the next 50 years, just as it was not solved during the past 50 years of nuclear development."
-----
Bush warns Clinton on arms deal with Russia
Washington Times
May 24, 2000
By Dave Boyer THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-2000524234850.htm
Texas Gov. George W. Bush urged President Clinton yesterday not to strike a lame-duck arms-control deal with Russia even as the likely Republican presidential nominee pledged to cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal unilaterally.
Mr. Bush also said he would build a national missile defense system as soon as possible and extend the shield to "our friends and allies," including NATO countries and Israel.
"The administration is driving toward a hasty decision on a political timetable," said Mr. Bush in Washington, flanked by defense and foreign-policy luminaries. "No decision would be better than a flawed agreement that ties the hands of the next president and prevents America from defending itself."
President Clinton, eager to sign an arms-reduction pact to burnish his legacy, will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin June 2 to 4 in Moscow. Russian leaders have suggested reducing strategic nuclear warheads to 1,500 each, even lower than the level proposed in the START III pact.
The Russians' latest offer has alarmed top U.S. military officers, who told Congress yesterday they were uncomfortable with such deep cuts in America's nuclear arsenals. START II, which Russia ratified last month, calls for warheads to be reduced to between 3,000 to 3,500 each by 2007.
"If we wanted to depart from [proposed START III levels] . . . then we need to pause and do the necessary analysis" to assure U.S. security and deterrence would still be just as strong or stronger, Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Forces Committee.
The United States has 7,200 strategic nuclear warheads ready for immediate use, and Russia has 6,000.
Military and civilian leaders also are debating whether to link cuts in nuclear weapons to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which the administration needs to change to deploy a limited national missile defense. Russia opposes U.S. deployment of a missile shield; a member of the Russian parliament even warned Congress this month that it could lead to a "new kind of Cold War."
Mr. Bush said yesterday his administration would reassess U.S. security needs based on the nuclear threat from terrorists and rogue states, not on a "Cold War mentality" of two adversarial superpowers.
He said it should be possible to reduce the number of America's nuclear weapons "significantly further" than START II levels, although he would not suggest a number. Mr. Bush said he would implore Russia to follow America's lead but would reduce the U.S. arsenal even if Russia refuses.
"Hopefully they will," Mr. Bush said. "But if they don't, the level of nuclear readiness is going to meet our needs. I will never put our security at risk."
A spokesman for Vice President Al Gore called Mr. Bush's proposals "irresponsible."
"Mr. Bush's agenda . . . shows that he lacks the depth of experience to keep America safe and secure," said Douglas Hattaway.
"George W. Bush advocates a radical rewriting of the ABM Treaty, or more likely its abolition. He also proposes to throw aside work done to develop a feasible missile defense in favor of an approach that would require us to start all over again from scratch."
But Mr. Bush surrounded himself yesterday with a group of experts in defense and foreign affairs who support his proposal: retired Gen. Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz; former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft; and Mr. Bush's top foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, who served on the National Security Council under Mr. Bush's father, President Bush.
"We need to take a fresh look at the world," Gen. Powell said. "We can go down further [in nuclear weapons], I believe, with the proper political guidance given to our military leaders and with the kind of assessment that Governor Bush has called for . . . and he would assign to his secretary of defense."
Gen. Powell wouldn't say if he was interested in that Cabinet post, limiting his comments on politics to, "I look forward to the governor's election as president of the United States."
Mr. Kissinger, who negotiated the ABM Treaty, said he "strongly supports" Mr. Bush's proposal for a missile shield that ABM prohibits.
"Deliberate vulnerability, when the technology is available to avoid it, cannot be a strategic objective, cannot be a political objective, and cannot be a moral objective of any American president," said Mr. Kissinger.
Mr. Bush said he would extend a missile defense system to allies "whom I will consult as we develop our plans."
"I mean people in Europe, for example, but I also mean Israel," Mr. Bush said. "As to sharing information and technologies with the Russians, it depends on how Russia behaves."
He said the United States should own the technology, but he would "be willing to use it, if need be," to protect Taiwan as well.
The Pentagon has estimated the cost of missile defense at about $30 billion over 35 years, although serious doubts remain about the technology to make it work. Miss Rice acknowledged yesterday that nobody knows how much it would cost.
Mr. Bush said he would use some of the projected federal surplus over the next 10 years to deploy the anti-missile umbrella.
"We have a $4 trillion surplus," he said. "I intend to reserve over $2 trillion of that for Social Security [and] $1.3 trillion for tax cuts; the remainder would be available to meet priorities. The cost of an anti-ballistic-missile system is worth the cost to protect ourselves, to protect our allies."
This article is based in part on wire service reports.
---
Talbott to Visit Russia May 24-25, Prepare Summit
Russia Today
Wed, May 24 at Prague 08:37 am, N.Y. 02:37 am
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=161809
http://www.reuters.com
MOSCOW, May 23, 2000 -- (Reuters) U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott is to visit Russia on May 24-25 ahead of talks next month between President Bill Clinton and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, diplomatic sources said on Monday.
Talbott, due to arrive Wednesday morning and leave on Thursday, was expected to hold talks on nuclear arms reduction, which is also likely to be a key theme of the first Putin-Clinton summit on June 4-5.
U.S. National Security Adviser Samuel Berger was in Moscow last week and also touched on the issue.
A White House official said last week Talbott would discuss arms with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov. The official mentioned several days of talks rather than just one.
Russia has been outraged by U.S. plans to change a key Cold War accord, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, to allow it to build a limited national anti-missile defense shield.
The disagreement over ABM has complicated talks on cuts in nuclear arsenals under the START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) process but a compromise in the row might form part of a new agreement, START-3.
The START-2 treaty foresees both sides slashing the number of warheads from 6,000 to no more than 3,500 each by 2007.
The U.S. wants warheads cut back to about 2,000-2,500 each under START-3 while Russia, strapped for cash, has signaled it is ready to go as low as 1,500. Analysts say Washington might compromise on the warhead numbers if Moscow compromises on ABM.
---
Russia: U.S. Official In Moscow Preparing For Summit
Radio Free Europe
Moscow, 24 May 2000
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2000/05/F.RU.000524121142.html
(RFE/RL) - Deputy U.S. Secretary of State Strobe Talbott is in Moscow today for talks in preparation for next month's summit between U.S. President Bill Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Talbott met Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgii Mamedov to discuss nuclear arms reduction and U.S. plans to build a new national anti-missile defense system.
The U.S. wants to build a limited national anti-missile defense shield to protect against a perceived threat posed by countries such as Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Russia is strictly opposed to the scheme which would breach the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty.
Disagreement over the ABM has complicated talks on a new START-III strategic arms reduction treaty. After years of stalling, last month Russia's parliament ratified the START-II treaty.
---
U.S., Russia Discuss Nuclear Pact
Associated Press
May 24, 2000 Filed at 2:31 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Russia-US-Nuclear.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- U.S. efforts to change the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a key issue in next month's summit, are aimed at strengthening the pact, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott said Wednesday.
Talbott was in Moscow to help prepare for President Clinton's June 3-5 trip to meet with President Vladimir Putin.
Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Mamedov met with Talbott for about two hours as part of a gathering of defense and foreign affairs experts from the two nations, the news agency Interfax said.
Russia opposes U.S. proposals to modify the 1972 ABM treaty to allow construction of a limited missile-defense system. Washington says it needs such a system to protect against possible nuclear attacks by so-called ``rogue'' countries such as North Korea.
The Kremlin argues that even a limited missile defense would undermine the treaty's basic philosophy of discouraging a nuclear power from launching a first strike by allowing it no capacity to protect itself against retaliation.
``Our intention is to keep the ABM treaty very much part of the foundation of the international arms control,'' Talbott told reporters. ``We don't want to see the ABM treaty violated, we don't want to see it weakened, we want to see it strengthened.''
``We think this can be done cooperatively with the Russians,'' Talbott said.
``We have got some disagreements, and they are tough disagreements, but we also have a serious atmosphere in the dialogue,'' he said. ``I think we have been making a little bit of progress every time we talked.''
Talbott said a compromise on ABM was possible, suggesting that Russia could be persuaded to accept changes by linking them to further cuts in nuclear weapons. Russia, burdened by the cost of maintaining its nuclear arsenal, is eager for such cuts.
After years of delay, the Russian parliament recently approved the START II Treaty, which would roughly halve U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals to some 3,500 warheads each.
Putin says he wants further cuts under a proposed START III, now under negotiation, but has warned that Moscow would tear up all arms control agreements if the United States violates the ABM pact.
Analysts say Moscow may bargain for deeper cuts under START III and other concessions in exchange for its agreement to ABM changes. But the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff on Tuesday expressed reservations about Russia's proposal to reduce each side's arsenal to 1,500 warheads, saying it prefers to stick to the 2,000-2,500 warheads already envisaged.
Talbott said that progress on the ABM and further nuclear cuts could be linked. ``If we can continue to make progress on the defense side, I think that will open the way up for further progress on START III,'' he said.
---
US Rocket, Russia Engine Takes Off
Associated Press
May 24, 2000 Filed at 7:46 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Revolutionary-Rocket.html
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- An American rocket that was built as an intercontinental ballistic missile blasted off Wednesday, rising on an engine made by the old Cold War enemy.
It was the fifth launch attempt in 1 1/2 weeks for Lockheed Martin Corp.'s new Atlas III, the first U.S. rocket to be powered by a Russian engine. The rocket carried a European communication satellite.
The evening launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station was valued at nearly $300 million, counting the satellite.
The Atlas III should have flown last year but was grounded following a competitor's botched launch. The failed part was common to both.
Since the first Atlas soared in 1957 -- it malfunctioned and had to be destroyed -- more than 550 of the rockets have been launched. Probably the most memorable flight was in 1962 when astronaut John Glenn was the payload.
The Atlas III is the strongest version yet.
It relies on a single, powerful engine provided by NPO Energomash near Moscow, builder of the engines that launched Sputnik, the first satellite, and Yuri Gagarin, the first spaceman. The company also made engines for Russia's intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Unlike NASA's often-strained relationship with the Russian Space Agency in building a space station, this collaboration has been a pleasure, said John Karas, a Lockheed Martin vice president. He attributes that to the fact that the dealings have been between businesses, not governments.
The next Atlas III could fly as early as December.
---
Putin Prioritizes
Washington Post
Wednesday, May 24, 2000; Page A37
By Jim Hoagland
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/24/019l-052400-idx.html
After a long period of mixed signals, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made it clear to the Clinton administration in recent weeks that arms control comes low on his priority list now. The White House has all but abandoned hope for a significant arms control deal with Putin at next month's summit in Moscow.
In a letter on the summit covering a half-dozen pages that his foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, carried to President Clinton in late April, the Russian leader barely mentioned the nuclear arms reductions and missile defense issues that the White House saw as the potential strategic centerpiece of the Moscow meeting, according to U.S. and diplomatic sources.
Instead Putin spent five pages delivering his version of "It's the economy, stupid." He outlined plans to make Russia more self-reliant and to end its financial chaos. Subsequent contacts between senior officials of the two governments have sustained this Russian focus on the economy.
A more detailed picture of the still mysterious Putin emerges from descriptions by participants of the preparatory diplomatic contacts for the June 4-5 summit. Putin is as cool and cautious in dealing with Washington as Boris Yeltsin was effusive and bold. The former KGB agent compartmentalizes where Yeltsin linked.
Yeltsin traded Russia's strategic cooperation for Clinton's support for Yeltsin's position inside Russia. But Putin shows no interest in being that palsy with the American president. And he does not seem prepared to restore arms control to its once central role in U.S.-Russian relations.
This may be the central revelation of the Moscow summit: Putin seems to mean it when he says he wants Russia to be more self-reliant. He is not eager to increase Russian indebtedness to the West, or to grant Washington influence over his relations with his military or his domestic policy options. That is part of the reason why arms control is not at the top of his agenda for this summit.
The key question in the preparatory contacts has been whether an agreement could be announced at the summit on principles to govern U.S.-Russian negotiations over amending the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which restricts the ability of both nations to deploy national missile defenses.
In January both Putin and Ivanov indicated to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that they were open to talking about the ABM treaty as well as working toward a START III accord requiring significant new reductions in offensive nuclear warheads.
But in recent contacts, including his April visit to Washington, Ivanov ducked Albright's invitations to move ahead on arms control, according to U.S. officials. He focused instead on explaining how the United States could deal with perceived threats from North Korea by other means.
A visit to Moscow last week by Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, convinced the White House that Putin was not simply playing hard-to-get as a pre-summit negotiating ploy, and U.S. officials began briefing reporters on the administration's lowered expectations for the meeting.
"This will not be an arms control summit," a senior official said late last week. "We hope these talks will move things forward for subsequent meetings, but right now we do not expect the summit to produce a breakthrough."
Putin's generals have reportedly told him he should not trade ABM modifications for a START III treaty. Russia has more to fear from the removal of restraints on U.S. missile defense than it does from the steadily growing numerical superiority in nuclear warheads Washington will achieve by 2008 without a new strategic arms accord, they maintain.
Washington expected Putin to be tempted by the prospect of locking in a modest missile defense system in the twilight of Clinton's presidency rather than risking a Republican victory in November and a possible tearing up of the ABM treaty thereafter. But any temptation for Putin to give diplomatic gifts to a lame-duck administration would have evaporated after Sen. Jesse Helms announced several weeks ago that he would block any arms control deal struck by Clinton.
The summit is nonetheless likely to produce some substantial agreements for Putin and Clinton to herald. Headway has been made on a nonproliferation agreement to keep plutonium out of the hands of nations that might use it for bombs and on other plutonium disposition issues. Expanded cooperation on space launches also qualifies as "low-hanging fruit" that could be plucked in Moscow, according to one official.
Putin has set about consolidating power and restoring Russia, and he is intent on doing both his way. This meeting for Putin is not so much a summit as a steppingstone, for a long journey.
----
Environmentalists say Putin allows nature theft
RUSSIA: May 24, 2000
Story by Elizabeth Piper
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=6819
MOSCOW - Environmentalists condemned President Vladimir Putin's bid to disband Russia's only federal environmental agency on Tuesday, saying he had given the green light to those who want to pillage the country.
The head of the State Committee for Environmental Protection said the transfer of his group's responsibilities to the Natural Resources Ministry was "absurd" and dangerous for Russia's fragile and polluted environment.
"It is a signal for thieves. The law says, 'Hey guys! there is no one watching over nature so come and take what you want'," Viktor Danilov-Danilyan told a news conference.
"Authorising the Natural Resources Ministry to deal with ecological problems is like asking an alcoholic what the price of vodka should be," he said.
Putin signed a decree to disband the agency last week in order to save money.
The executive director of Greenpeace Russia, Sergei Tsyplenkov, also pledged to protest against the move.
"The leader of this country has said time and time again that laws should be adhered to, but now it is difficult to adhere to the law," Tsyplenkov said.
"They've made a mistake for this country."
Greenpeace Russia issued a statement on Monday that said the Natural Resources Ministry has a record of backing "illegal and environmentally hazardous projects".
Environmentalists said the Natural Resources Ministry had helped pollute Russia by allowing companies to freely exploit its rich resources, notably by oil and gas extraction, gold mining and logging.
"This law is a step backwards for the country," Danilov-Danilyan said. "In every other civilised country, there is a department which concentrates on protecting the environment. The president's decree has violated this principle."
He said the committee would continue its work until papers abolishing it were completed, which could take six months. He said it was unclear how the committee and its staff would be integrated into the ministry.
---
New U.S.-Russian rocket lifts off
CNN From staff and wire reports
May 24, 2000 Web posted at: 11:12 p.m. EDT (0312 GMT)
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/05/24/rocket.launch.02/index.html
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (CNN) -- A U.S. rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Wednesday, rising on the power of a Russian-made engine.
The successful launch came after a string of delays last week.
The Atlas III rocket -- one of a long line of Atlas-named craft, including one that carried John Glenn into orbit -- was sent up to deliver a European communications satellite. Originally designed as an intercontinental ballistic missile, the Atlas launched Wednesday was the first U.S. rocket that featured a Russian engine.
"Better to work together than (launch) nuclear missiles," said Boris Katorgin, general director of engine maker NPO Energomash.
The cost of the evening launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station was valued at nearly $300 million, counting the satellite.
Last-minute problems prevented Lockheed Martin Corp.'s new rocket from lifting off three times in as many days last week.
Causes for the delays included broken radar, high winds and a rash of technical glitches, including a stuck valve, balky fuel-tank sensors and suspect temperature readings for liquid oxygen.
The three delays pushed back the launch of the space shuttle Atlantis by one day to last Friday. A fourth attempt to launch the Atlas III on Saturday was scrubbed during the last minutes of the launch window.
The next Atlas III could fly as early as December.
-------- spying
Reno calls Taiwan an intelligence threat
Washington Times
May 24, 2000
By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-2000524233846.htm
The Clinton administration, in a departure from longtime U.S. policy, has placed Taiwan on the FBI's secret list of hostile intelligence threats, equating Taipei with aggressive spying by Beijing and Moscow.
China, Russia and Taiwan are among 13 nations designated as priorities for FBI intelligence and counterespionage activities, according to a classified memorandum from Attorney General Janet Reno.
"I hereby designate the following countries as country threats under the [National Security List] for 1999/2000," Miss Reno wrote.
Based on FBI, Justice and State Department reports, Miss Reno then listed, in order of priority, Russia, China, North Korea, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Serbian-controlled Bosnia, Vietnam, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Taiwan.
In addition to nations, the so-called national security threat list includes eight issues that guide FBI intelligence work: terrorism, espionage, proliferation, economic espionage, infrastructure targeting, government targeting, perception management and legal intelligence gathering.
Disclosure of the threat list comes as the House is preparing to vote on legislation that would loosen trade restrictions on China.
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the inclusion of Taiwan on the list appears based on the administration's pro-Beijing policies that seek to equate Taiwan in the same threat category as China.
Asked about the inclusion of Taiwan on the list, Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: "What threat?"
"It's very strange to me that Taiwan would be on this list, especially since other countries that spy on us are not," Mr. Kyl said. He added he plans to seek an explanation from intelligence officials.
If Taiwan is on the threat list, then Israel, India, Pakistan and France also should be added since those nations conduct spying operations against the United States, said a former senior U.S. intelligence official.
"This is just for political purposes. The Taiwanese are not in the same league as the other threats and they are the one country on the list that is not a mortal enemy of the United States."
Justice Department sources said the memorandum was written by Frances Fragos Townsend, counsel for intelligence policy and a political appointee who is close to Miss Reno. Miss Townsend was criticized in a recent internal Justice Department report for turning down an FBI request for a wiretap of Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Wen Ho Lee.
Mr. Lee is the chief suspect in an FBI investigation of Chinese nuclear spying. He was indicted in December for mishandling nuclear secrets.
The former official said the danger from "politicizing" the threat list is that "it has the practical effect of distorting the focus of the FBI and other intelligence community agencies" charged with protecting national security.
"It distorts the reality of the threat and confuses people," he said.
Said a second former high-ranking intelligence official, "Why isn't Israel on the list?"
Taiwan's intelligence service in the past has engaged in intelligence gathering aimed at classified information, and also has sought weapons technology. However, the Taiwanese have not been involved in recent cases, this former official said.
"I'm really surprised," he said of Taiwan's inclusion on the list.
A current U.S. government official involved in China issues said putting Taiwan on the threat list reflects the administration's pro-Beijing and anti-Taiwan stance. "The administration clearly sees Taiwan as the problem, as a provocateur and troublemaker," he said.
Seven of the threat nations are states subject to U.S. sanctions as state sponsors of international terrorism: Cuba, North Korea, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Sudan.
The FBI National Security Division stated in a separate document that the threat issues apply to the activities of all foreign nations, "with special attention given to those nations determined to be a strategic national security threat." The strategic national security threats are those on the threat list.
FBI officials privately have expressed frustration at limits imposed by the White House and State Department that prohibit any public identification of the hostile nations and threat issues.
Justice Department and FBI spokesmen had no comment.
A copy of the document was obtained by The Washington Times from investigative reporter Scott Wheeler of American Investigator, a television news show. Mr. Wheeler turned up the document following production of a documentary film on China called "Trading With the Enemy."
The threat list strategy replaced the FBI's "criteria" country list and gives investigators more flexibility in conducting national security probes. It is the first time the classified list of nations and issues has been made public.
In addition to terrorism, spying and weapons proliferation, a relatively new issue in the issue list is the threat to the "national infrastructure" from electronic information warfare attacks.
"The national information infrastructure is the electronic backbone for the storage, processing and communication of information for nearly every sector of U.S. society," the memorandum states.
The FBI is charged with thwarting foreign intelligence activities aimed at denying or disrupting computer, cable, satellite or telecommunications services, as well as unauthorized monitoring.
The memo was sent by Miss Reno to FBI Director Louis J. Freeh and sets FBI intelligence priorities for 1999 and 2000. It is dated March 8, 1999, and states that it was to be reviewed in March 2000 and approved by December.
Another former intelligence official said the FBI has never uncovered an espionage case involving Taiwan. "There is some collecting [by Taiwanese agents], but it is nothing on the level of the Chinese," he said. He added "there is no doubt that the Israelis are conducting more operations than the Taiwanese."
Taipei's military was linked to the murder of a dissident in the 1980s, said this former official.
Editor's Note: Janet Reno's memo on hostile intelligence threats will be posted on American Investigator's web site (www.ai-tv.net) on Wednesday, May 24.
http://www.ai-tv.net
-------- ukraine
EU welcomes Chernobyl closure date from Ukraine
EU: May 24, 2000
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=6813
BRUSSELS - The European Union on Tuesday welcomed an announcement by Ukraine that it will soon set an date for closing the Chernobyl nuclear plant.
The 15-nation bloc said in a joint statement after talks with Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko that it hoped to be told the date by Ukraine in the next few weeks.
Kiev has said it will close the plant by the end of this year but has not set an exact date.
The EU said it would continue providing technical assistance to help Ukraine reform and develop its energy sector "provided continuing convincing progress is made in implementing energy sector reform".
It said it would announce unspecified additional aid at a conference in July for a fund to complete a new shelter over the Chernobyl reactor which was the scene of the world's worst civil nuclear disaster in 1986.
-------- us military
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
Office of the Secretary
Meeting to Review the Mitre Report
AGENCY: Special Oversight Board for Department of Defense Investigations of Gulf War Chemical and Biological Incidents, Department of Defense.
ACTION: Notice.
SUMMARY: The Board will conduct a two-day closed meeting to review the Mitre Report, a classified report dealing with how and when the intelligence community determined the type, number and location of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction during operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. OSAGWI will also present a short classified briefing on the revised Khamisiyah plume.
DATES: May 22-23, 2000.
ADDRESSES: 1401 Wilson Boulevard, suite 401, Arlington, VA 22209 (Day 1); Old Executive Office Building, 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW., Washington, DC 20504 (Day 2).
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Contact Mr. David Edman, Special Oversight Board, 1401 Wilson Blvd, Suite 401, Arlington, VA 22209, phone (703) 696-9468, fax (703) 696-4062, or via Email at Gulfsyn@osd.pentagon.mil. Copies of the draft meeting agenda can be obtained by contacting Ms. Sandra Simpson at (703) 696-9464 or at the above fax number of above email.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Classified information will be discussed and reviewed throughout the two-day meeting. Therefore, the meeting is not open to the public. No government personnel other than the two briefing teams will be permitted to attend the meeting.
Dated: May 1, 2000. L.M. Bynum, Alternate OSD Federal Register Liaison Officer, DoD. [FR Doc. 00-12065 Filed 5-12-00; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 5001-10-M
Federal Register: May 15, 2000 (Volume 65, Number 94) Notices
Page 30966
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr15my00-41]
----
Research on Gulf War-Associated Neurologic Illness
By the Division of Epidemiology, UT Southwestern Medical Center,
Robert W. Haley, M.D., Director, Division of Epidemiology,
May 2, 2000
http://www.swmed.edu/home_pages/epidemi/gws/
Dr. Robert Haley and colleagues at UT Southwestern have been conducting epidemiologic, clinical and laboratory research on the "Gulf War syndrome" and related neurologic illnesses in Gulf War veterans since March 1994. The work has been supported by a continuing grant from the Perot Foundation and by a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense. The objectives of the research are to define new or unique clinical syndromes among Gulf War veterans, determine their causes, identify areas of damage or dysfunction in the brain and nervous system responsible for the symptoms, develop a cost-effective battery of clinical tests that can diagnose the illness, search for underlying genetic traits that might predispose to the illness, and perform clinical trials of promising treatments.
The initial studies identified three primary syndromes in a Naval reserve construction battalion (seabees) that appear to be unique, demonstrated that the syndromes are associated with subtle dysfunction of the brainstem and lower parts of the brain, and found epidemiologic associations between the syndromes and risk factors of exposure to combinations of chemicals in the Gulf War.
Genetic studies have identified a genetic trait (PON1 enzymes) that may explain why some soldiers sustained brain damage from exposure to neurotoxic chemicals while others working alongside them remained well. Most recently, research using magnetic resonance spectroscopy has demonstrated a loss of functioning brain cells in deep brain structures of ill Gulf War veterans. Additional commentaries by Dr. Haley have challenged the government's stress theory of Gulf War syndrome and findings of no difference in mortality, hospitalization and birth defects between Gulf War-deployed and nondeployed military populations. Additional research and publications are in process.
1. A list of the papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
2. Findings showing that there is a Gulf War syndrome, it is due to organic neurologic dysfunction, and it is associated with exposure to combinations of chemicals in the Gulf War.
3. Dr. Haley's refutation of the stress theory of Gulf War illness.
4. Dr. Haley's refutation of government research showing no increase in mortality, hospitalization, or birth defects in Gulf War veterans compared with the nondeployed military population
5. Findings on the genetic predisposition to Gulf War Syndrome.
6. Findings linking dizziness in Gulf War Veterans to subtle brain injury.
7. Findings on brain cell loss by magnetic resonance spectroscopy.
-------- us nuc facilities
DOE again assailed on retaliation
Congressional panel is told that the policy to protect whistleblowers has never really been followed
By Andrea Widener,
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
May 24, 2000
http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/stories_news/congress_20000524.htm
The Department of Energy still does not protect whistleblowers at its laboratories and production plants or enforce its often stated "zero tolerance" policy, several members of Congress and whistleblower advocates said Tuesday.
Especially damaging is an unclear policy that allows the DOE to spend money defending the companies and nonprofit groups that run its research and weapons labs against lawsuits, they said at a hearing by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on the topic.
"I am hopeful that by being here today, someone is finally taking these matters seriously," said Randall Walli, a whistleblower and former pipefitter at the Hanford (Wash.) Nuclear Reservation.
DOE representatives said the debate was not that simple. The department is still trying to find a middle ground between protecting truly wronged employees and allowing contractors to protect themselves against wrongful allegations.
"There is a balancing act here," Mary Anne Sullivan, DOE general counsel, told the committee. "Not everyone who identifies themselves as a whistleblower has a legitimate concern."
Whistleblower protections were first put in place in the mid-1990s by then-Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary. Those protections make it illegal to retaliate against someone who brings forward concerns about safety problems, fraud or other wrongdoing.
But those policies haven't been good enough to change the atmosphere at the laboratories, said Tom Carpenter, West Coast director for the Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower advocacy group that has worked on many cases against DOE.
"After years of a zero tolerance policy, can the department point to a single time when it has actually been enforced?" Carpenter asked in the hearing. "The reality is that there is fear. ... We advise clients not to go to the DOE with whistleblower complaints. They have a terrible record."
Sullivan said in an interview Tuesday afternoon that the DOE has changed how it addresses employee concerns throughout the complex. Last year, 862 employees went to the DOE's own Office of Employee Concerns, and about 75 percent of the problems were quickly resolved.
"I think that I see an indication that we have a program in place, that is really doing a good job," Sullivan said.
Several committee members seemed especially interested in the case of David Lappa, a former nuclear engineer at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory who claims he was retaliated against after he disagreed with the findings of a 1997 internal lab safety report.
Lappa took his concerns to the federal Department of Labor, and its investigator agreed that the lab had retaliated against him. The lab and its operator, the University of California, settled the case and did not appeal the findings. That meant that the Labor Department's finding became final judgment.
Lappa said the retaliation continued, and last year he sued UC seeking enforcement of the Labor Department's ruling. The DOE is paying to defend UC in the case, which is scheduled to go to trial this fall; whether that will stand up after a ruling is reached remains to be seen.
"It is cases like this that have led many employees to refer to the DOE's policy as 'Zero tolerance for whistleblowers,'" Carpenter said.
Part of the problem is the inconsistent policy about when the DOE will pay to defend its contractors -- the people that run its labs and production plants. DOE routinely pays to defend contractors in everyday lawsuits, and Sullivan said the DOE is the only agency that has a policy not to pay in the case of retaliation against whistleblowers. DOE officials are reworking the policy to more clearly define when they won't pay.
Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., asked several times whether Congress should legislate criminal penalties for people who retaliate against whistleblowers.
"The department always seems to forget to follow through on these reforms," said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Michigan, who oversaw the hearing. "It is the deep belief of this committee that we are not going to let this go."
Andrea Widener covers science and the national laboratories. Reach her at 925-847-2158 or awidener@cctimes.com.
----
U.S. Still Pays Contractor Bills for Whistle-Blower Lawsuits
New York Times
May 24, 2000
By MATTHEW L. WALD
http://www.nytimes.com/00/05/24/news/washpol/us-energy-suits.html
WASHINGTON, May 23 -- Five years ago, the Energy Department, trying to protect workers who raised safety concerns at its nuclear weapons plants, said it would stop covering the legal bills of its contractors when they were caught retaliating against such whistle-blowers.
But witnesses and lawmakers said at a Congressional hearing today that the department was still paying those bills, sometimes without knowing it.
Even though the department announced a policy of "zero tolerance for reprisals" against whistle-blowing employees years ago, department officials acknowledged today that they had not written a final rule on when to withhold taxpayer dollars from financing contractors' legal defenses against such claims.
Employees of contractors, from pipefitters to senior engineers, who have called attention to on-site safety concerns, have spent tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees over the years, often while enduring hostile conditions at work, or unemployment, their advocates say.
In a hearing by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Representative Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat and a former labor lawyer, said the agency should praise "the enormous courage and unmeasurable contributions of whistle-blowers." Instead, Ms. DeGette said, "They can just bleed these poor individuals dry."
The subcommittee chairman, Representative Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina, said the department appeared to be "providing virtually no support for the whistle-blowers, while providing generous taxpayer support to the contractors fighting these meritorious claims."
The Commerce Committee chairman, Representative Thomas J. Bliley Jr., Republican of Virginia, released two agency documents on legal costs incurred by Kaiser-Hill, a contractor at Rocky Flats, a defunct plutonium plant near Denver.
The contractor was defending itself against accusations that it retaliated against a security supervisor who complained about the safety of bomb fuel stored there. The employee brought his case before the Labor Department, which ruled in his favor, and Kaiser-Hill did not appeal.
Among Energy Department repayments to Kaiser-Hill was $220,000 in legal fees incurred fighting the whistle-blower, Mr. Bliley said.
The agency said last week it had not approved any expenses and was still reviewing them. But today it said Kaiser-Hill included the costs "in general subcontractor billings that were not conspicuous to D.O.E."
The company has returned the money but is still seeking reimbursement, the department said.
The department does nearly all of its work through contractors, many on a "cost-plus" basis, in which it reimburses all costs and then adds a profit. It includes legal defense costs and, usually, the cost of any settlements imposed on the contractors.
Department officials said today that they could decline to make such reimbursements, but they could not cite a case where they had done so. Mary Anne Sullivan, the department's general counsel, said the agency had proposed to do so in some pending cases.
One witness, Tom Carpenter, of the Government Accountability Project, which brings cases on behalf of whistle-blowers, said the system encouraged contractors to drag out cases and then settle on the eve of trial. A policy of full reimbursement was "an incentive for the contractors to litigate the case," Mr. Carpenter said. "If they had to pay, they'd have a much more realistic view" of the cases against them.
Whistle-blowers complaining of retaliation take their cases to the Labor Department, Mr. Carpenter said, because its procedures allow for discovery, access to documents and company officials, whereas Energy Department procedures do not.
----
Energy Criticized on Whistleblowers
MAY 24, 08:32 EDT
By MATT KELLEY,
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Nuclear site workers who call attention to safety problems face retaliation by contractors, who are in turn aided by the Energy Department in fighting employee complaints, whistleblowers and House lawmakers say.
Department officials say they have a ``zero tolerance'' policy on retaliation against whistleblowers, but have to help contractors prevent a flood of bogus complaints of retaliation.
``Zero tolerance makes a great sound bite, but if you're not going to do anything about it as far as enforcement, the sound bite rings a little hollow,'' said Rep. Ed Bryant, R-Tenn.
Two whistleblowers told the House Commerce Committee's panel on oversight and investigations Tuesday that their employers retaliated against them after they raised pollution and safety concerns. In one of the cases, the Energy Department paid $500,000 in legal and settlement costs for a company that fired a crew of pipefitters who raised safety concerns at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state.
``That means that the people here in this room today are paying tax dollars to fight us,'' said Randall Walli, one of the pipefitters. ``DOE should be out guiding these companies and not paying for their mistakes.''
While not discussing the Hanford case specifically, the Energy Department's top lawyer defended the agency's policy of helping some contractors fight whistleblower allegations.
``Zero tolerance does not mean that every whistleblower claim must be accepted as valid without an opportunity for response or appeal by the department's contractors,'' Mary Anne Sullivan said.
The subcommittee hearing was the latest opportunity for lawmakers to castigate the department's nuclear weapons programs. Congressional critics have said the department was lax in its investigation of alleged nuclear spying by China, mismanaged efforts to clean up nuclear pollution and ignored safety and environmental concerns at its plants.
It is illegal for a government agency or contractor to retaliate against workers who complain about unsafe conditions or other wrongdoing, but the worker must pay the costs of making a claim administratively or in court.
Joe Gutierrez, a whistleblower at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said he has spent about $50,000 of his own money to press his case. Gutierrez said he got an unfavorable job evaluation after he challenged lab officials' claim that the New Mexico lab did not violate the federal Clean Air Act.
The University of California runs Los Alamos and two other nuclear labs, while Fluor Hanford Inc. is responsible for cleaning up Hanford. The Labor Department ruled the contractors improperly retaliated against Gutierrez and Walli, but in both cases the legal fight over the allegations continues.
``They (contractors) can just bleed these poor individuals dry,'' said Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo. ``As far as we can see, DOE takes no steps to protect these whistleblowers.''
DOE routinely pays contractors' legal costs for whistleblower cases and other job-related actions, such as racial discrimination claims, Sullivan said.
On the Net: http://www.house.gov/commerce/
----
GAO report on fire protection impediments
From: "Scott D Portzline" happen@pipeline.com
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 10:17:13 -0400
Fire Protection: Barriers to Effective Implementation of NRC's Safety Oversight Process. RCED-00-39. 17 pp. plus 4 appendices (14 pp.)
April 19, 2000.
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/rc00039.pdf
"NRC's review identified a number of weaknesses in the utilities' risk assessments. For example, NRC found that practically none of the 24 assessments considered the possible failure of passive fire barriers (walls) or properly modeled active fire barriers (doors) or considered the effects that penetration seals might have on containing or spreading a fire. However, NRC concluded that these weaknesses were not significant because utilities had assumed a small fire in their risk assessments and such a fire would not adversely affect a plant's barriers or seals. While this assumption is consistent with an NRC study showing that the probability of a large fire that would adversely affect a nuclear power plant is low, NRC and the nuclear utility industry continue to debate the size and the type of fire to assume in these risk assessments. The results of a fire risk assessment depends on whether a utility assumes a large fire that most likely would not occur, but would adversely affect a plant's safety systems, or a small fire that would more likely occur but would be less likely to adversely affect those systems.
NRC also found that although the routing of cables is one of the most important elements of a fire risk assessment, almost none of the risk assessments indicated that the utilities had verified their information on cable routing. In addition, NRC found that the assessments had not considered the actions and the effectiveness of the utilities' fire fighting staff (except in analyzing a control room fire). Because of this omission, the utilities had not taken into account the effects of smoke on the fire fighting staff or the potential damage to equipment that could result from their actions.
NRC staff asked the utilities to provide additional information on the weaknesses identified and other issues in the risk assessments. On the basis of their preliminary review of these assessments and the additional information provided, NRC staff said that the fire risk assessments for some of the remaining 65 plants were similar to the assessments for the 38 plants it had already reviewed. NRC expects to issue a final report on its evaluation of the fire risk assessments for all 103 plants in October 2001. NRC staff also noted that more than half of the utilities improved their fire protection efforts as a result of the assessments; the other utilities had already taken actions to improve their fire protection programs or had sufficient fire protection designed into the plants."
-------- california
TVC advisory: Sandia says cut NIF
Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 22:18:55 -0700 (PDT)
Sender: marylia@earthlink.net (Unverified)
Dear peace and environmental advocates: This is an extremely significant development, one demonstrating erosion of support from within the Dept. of Energy complex for the National Ignition Facility, and I trust you will find this media advisory of interest and use. Peace, MK
For Immediate Release: Wednesday eve, May 24, 2000
Contact: Marylia Kelley, Tri-Valley CAREs (925) 443-7148
SANDIA NATIONAL LAB CALLS FOR MAJOR CUTS AT LIVERMORE LAB'S PROBLEM-RIDDLED MEGA-LASER; CALIFORNIA GROUP PREDICTS $10 BILLION PRICE TAG FOR NIF AND SAYS CANCEL IT OUTRIGHT
In an unprecedented move, Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico today officially broke ranks with its "sister" lab in California and issued a public statement calling for cuts in both size and budget for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) mega-laser, currently under construction at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
"The apparent delay and significant increase in cost for the NIF is sufficient that it will disrupt the investment needed at the other laboratories, and perhaps by the production plants, by several years," said Tom Hunter, Sandia's vice-president for nuclear weapons programs.
Today's statement puts Sandia Lab at odds with the policy of its parent agency, the Department of Energy (DOE), which announced earlier this month it would seek an additional $95 million for NIF in fiscal year 2001. This increase would come on top of the $350 million already requested for the mega-laser in the coming fiscal year. (NIF budget summary faxed upon request)
Following a report last year by Tri-Valley CAREs, a Livermore-based organization that monitors nuclear weapons activities, DOE announced that NIF was more than $350 million over budget and one and one-half years behind schedule. With NIF the object of continuing investigations both inside and outside of the Department, on May 3rd DOE was forced to revise its numbers upward, admitting that NIF's construction costs would essentially double -- from $1.2 billion to over $2 billion. Further, the NIF construction schedule would slip five years, according to DOE, from 2003 to 2008.
"This causes us to question what is a reasonable additional investment in the NIF," said Tom Hunter in explaining Sandia Lab's position today.
The Sandia statement calls for "a reduced project," though it stops short of making a specific recommendation on how many of NIF's proposed 192 laser beams should be abandoned.
"Scientists at Sandia and other DOE laboratories have been discussing a one-quarter NIF option for some time now," said Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs. "It is the opinion of a number of scientists that NIF construction should be limited to 48 laser beams."
"Many scientists at the DOE labs are worried that NIF will rob money from other, more valuable programs," Kelley added. "For example, an astrophysics program was recently canceled at Livermore Lab and staff scientists there expressed a belief that their funding had been diverted to NIF."
Tri-Valley CAREs' recommendation goes one step further than Sandia's.
"We advocate cancellation of the entire NIF project," explained Kelley. "NIF's technical problems will cause its price tag to continue to spiral upward. Moreover, NIF is simply not a necessary facility in order to ensure the 'safety' or the 'reliability' of existing nuclear weapons -- a fact that many prominent weapons physicists have already pointed out," she continued. "Add to this that NIF poses very real proliferation and environmental risks, and you have in a nutshell the reasons we want to see it stopped."
In the wake of jolting revelations about NIF's severe technical difficulties, mismanagement and continuing budget overruns, the General Accounting Office began an investigation late last year. During a recent Congressional briefing, the GAO told members of the Science Committee that DOE still underestimates NIF's costs by around $1.5 billion, according to a New Mexico newspaper account.
Add the GAO's tally of the extra $1.5 billion to the current construction estimate of $2.1 billion, and that brings the price tag for NIF to $3.6 billion, all before construction is completed in 2008 and the switch is thrown to start NIF's proposed 192 beams.
Tri-Valley CAREs has conducted its own independent analysis of NIF costs, and the group projects the mega-laser will consume at least $3.7 billion by 2008. "In round numbers, this is very similar to the GAO estimate," said Kelley. "However, when the out-year program and operating costs over NIF's 'life-cycle' are factored in, that figure will balloon to $10 billion," she predicted.
FYI -- a "same day" news story can be found at www.abqtrib.com, and copies of the statement issued by Sandia National Laboratory can be obtained from their Albuquerque press office.
-------- idaho
DOE Plans Nuke Safety Tests
Albuquerque Journal
Wednesday, May 24, 2000
The Associated Press
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/1argonne05-25-00.htm
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho - The U.S. Department of Energy could begin performing experiments at Argonne National Laboratory-West aimed at keeping the country's nuclear weapons stockpile safe.
A public hearing is scheduled tonight on a proposal to transfer that work, along with two tons of plutonium and uranium, to a new site. The material now is being stored at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The experiments involve using the nuclear material to produce chain reactions that generate a small amount of power. The idea is to study how to best prevent accidents and unexpected reactions without producing significant radioactive emissions.
DOE is considering transferring the work to the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory because machines and equipment used at Los Alamos are in buildings between 30 and 50 years old.
About 80 people work on those projects now.
The agency's first choice is to move the experiments to newer facilities at Los Alamos. But the department also may move the work to Sandia National Laboratory, the Nevada Test Site or Argonne National Laboratory-West in Idaho.
Argonne has performed criticality experiments in the past, but the tests are usually aimed at improving nuclear reactor safety.
-------- new mexico
Here are excerpts from editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:
New York Times
May 24, 2000 Filed at 1:33 p.m. EDT
Editorial Roundup
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Editorial-Rdp.html
May 22
The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, on forecasting disaster:
The warnings were there. A National Weather Service report said that conditions were prime for a fire to rage out of control: the temperature was going up and so were the winds. And it was dry, even by New Mexico standards.
If that wasn't cause enough to call off plans for a controlled burn at the Bandelier National Monument, the National Park Service could have heeded its own advice. ...
In the wake of this manmade disaster, the federal government has put a 30-day ban on controlled burns in the West, and that's certainly prudent during this dry spring.
Investigators are also looking into the decision-making process on this fire. According to news reports, park Superintendent Roy Weaver said that he never saw the National Weather Service forecast that was faxed to Bandelier shortly before the fire was set. Mr. Weaver is on administrative leave pending an investigation.
Such an important warning should not have gone unnoticed. Surely park officials would want -- even demand -- the most current weather information available before embarking on a solution that clearly has risks attached to it. The controlled burn plan acknowledges that risk, saying that escaping flames are ``somewhat likely.''
But the plan also talked about another kind of risk: ``political problems'' for future controlled burns if this one were to threaten the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of nuclear weapons and the main employer for the town. The report mentions the possibility of ``adverse publicity.'' ...
But the fallout from this fire might still be explosive for the Park Service and the practice of controlled burns. And rightly so. It's troubling to see federal officials fretting about bad press when they should have been worried about the danger fire poses to people's lives and property.
-------- ohio
USA Today
05/24/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm
Ohio North Perry - A state appeals court ordered a trial for a former Perry Nuclear Power Plant worker who claims he was fired for reporting safety violations such as worker exposure to radiation. The case was dismissed in 1998 when a judge said no imminent risk to the public was involved. Plant officials say he was fired for poor job performance.
-------- south carolina
Oconee Nuke Plant's License Renewed
Associated Press
May 23, 2000 Filed at 10:27 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/f/AP-NRC-License-Renewal.html
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission agreed Tuesday to renew the license of the Duke Energy Corp.-owned Oconee Nuclear Station near Seneca for 20 years.
The plant's original 40-year licenses expire in 2013 and 2014, so the decision means the plant should be able to operate for at least 30 more years.
``We're extremely pleased with the decision,'' said Duke Power spokesman Tom Shiel. ``The station has been operating safely for 27 years.''
This is only the second license renewal approved by the commission. But the agency is expected to review dozens of applications over the next few years as licenses run out on the nation's 103 nuclear power plants.
The commission said it granted the renewal after the agency's technical staff gave its approval earlier this month.
Scientists and engineers inspected the facility twice last year. They found no safety concerns and said Duke Energy was doing a good job of repairing and maintaining the plant that opened in 1973.
Duke Power's three nuclear power plants provide half the electricity to the company's 2 million customers, the company said. Along with the Oconee Nuclear Station, the utility operates plants near Clover and Huntersville, N.C.
-------- tennessee
Are DOE's Oak Ridge facilities at risk?
Knoxsville News-Sentinel
May 24, 2000
By Frank Munger News-Sentinel staff writer
http://www.knoxnews.com/editorsview/munger/fm05242000.shtml
Could a forest fire, the kind which enveloped Los Alamos National Laboratory this month, threaten the government's Oak Ridge facilities? "Anything's possible, if it gets real dry," said Dennis Bradburn, chief forester for the U.S. Department of Energy's 35,000-acre Oak Ridge reservation.
But, Bradburn is quick to add, the environment in East Tennessee is much different than that in New Mexico, and the threat of an out-of-control fire is significantly less.
"We don't have that forest type, and we have a little better rain distribution and better road network and fire control," Bradburn said, "and we generally don't have those kinds of winds -- 40 and 50 miles per hour."
That doesn't mean Bradburn isn't concerned. He is.
The forester is particularly anxious because of the thousands of dead or dying pine trees on the Oak Ridge reservation, the result of a pine beetle infestation that altered the local landscape and provided plenty of fuel for a big bad blaze.
Bradburn and his crews have tried to salvage wood where possible, but much of the dead forest is past the salvage stage and is just waiting to fall down.
He's not particularly thrilled at the Department of Energy's recent order that banned controlled burns for a month at all DOE sites while the Los Alamos situation is studied.
Bradburn said controlled burns are one of the few ways crews can deal with the overabundance of dead trees on the Oak Ridge scene, and he's afraid delays may exacerbate the problem.
"If you don't do it, it's going to get worse and worse," he said.
At Los Alamos, there were concerns that fires might threaten the integrity of facilities housing nuclear materials. That same concern would be raised, of course, if wildfires approached DOE's Oak Ridge facilities.
There's an operating nuclear reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Y-12 Plant is the nation's principal storehouse for bomb-grade uranium.
A Y-12 spokesman said the plant's nuclear inventory is "adequately protected."
It's worth noting, however, that one of the reasons for Y-12's new underground storage bunker for uranium -- a $120 million project scheduled for construction next year -- is to improve protection from natural terrors, including fire.
*GREEN & GRINNING: There was a big turnout for last week's ceremonies in which TVA and Oak Ridge National Laboratory agreed to work together on technologies related to alternative energy sources.
ORNL also committed to buy a certain amount of "green power" from TVA as part of a program that generates electricity from wind, solar and other non-traditional sources.
It seemed like everyone was in good humor.
"I finally have something that may quiet my mother-in-law," quipped Ed Cumesty, one of DOE's top managers in Oak Ridge. Cumesty suggested his wife's mom had never been real impressed with his job and sometimes asked what he did that would make her life better.
Also on hand were some of the vehicles in ORNL's E-85 fleet, which uses an alcohol-based fuel that is 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline.
Interestingly, the lab's ethanol fuel is blended by A.E. Staley Co. in Loudon County. Staley's main role is to produce syrup from the corn, but the plant was willing to do a little fuel production, too.
Dan Reicher, DOE's assistant secretary for energy efficiency, was in town for a review of activities at ORNL and attended the event at the American Museum of Science & Energy.
Reicher is a big proponent of alternative fuels, and he espoused a happy-hour perspective on turning grain into alcohol fuels.
His motto: "Drink the best; burn the rest."
*RECYCLING: In the world of government contracting, new contractors typically like to trash the past, start anew and remove most remnants of their predecessor.
However, in the case of UT-Battelle, which replaced Lockheed Martin as manager of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, there was reason to be careful: money.
Facing an immediate budget shortfall after taking over the ORNL contract April 1, UT-Battelle did a patch job on some things to save money.
For instance, instead of immediately acquiring new stationery that featured the company's spiffy green logo, UT-Battelle saved a few thousand dollars by printing address labels for envelopes that covered Lockheed Martin's I.D.
Well, OK, it's not perfect. Lockheed Martin's name still shows through the labels, but the cover-up job was good enough -- at least until the old stuff runs out.
----
Energy Department criticized for paying to fight whistleblowers
Oak Ridger
Wednesday, May 24, 2000 Oak Ridger
By MATT KELLEY The Associated Press
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/052400/stt_0524000031.html
WASHINGTON -- Nuclear site workers who call attention to safety problems face retaliation by contractors, who are in turn aided by the Energy Department in fighting employee complaints, whistleblowers and House lawmakers say.
Department officials say they have a "zero tolerance" policy on retaliation against whistleblowers, but have to help contractors prevent a flood of bogus complaints of retaliation.
"Zero tolerance makes a great sound bite, but if you're not going to do anything about it as far as enforcement, the sound bite rings a little hollow," said Rep. Ed Bryant, R-Tenn.
Two whistleblowers told the House Commerce Committee's panel on oversight and investigations Tuesday that their employers retaliated against them after they raised pollution and safety concerns. In one of the cases, the Energy Department paid $500,000 in legal and settlement costs for a company that fired a crew of pipefitters who raised safety concerns at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state.
"That means that the people here in this room today are paying tax dollars to fight us," said Randall Walli, one of the pipefitters. "DOE should be out guiding these companies and not paying for their mistakes."
While not discussing the Hanford case specifically, the Energy Department's top lawyer defended the agency's policy of helping some contractors fight whistleblower allegations.
"Zero tolerance does not mean that every whistleblower claim must be accepted as valid without an opportunity for response or appeal by the department's contractors," Mary Anne Sullivan said.
The subcommittee hearing was the latest opportunity for lawmakers to castigate the department's nuclear weapons programs. Congressional critics have said the department was lax in its investigation of alleged nuclear spying by China, mismanaged efforts to clean up nuclear pollution and ignored safety and environmental concerns at its plants.
It is illegal for a government agency or contractor to retaliate against workers who complain about unsafe conditions or other wrongdoing, but the worker must pay the costs of making a claim administratively or in court.
Joe Gutierrez, a whistleblower at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said he has spent about $50,000 of his own money to press his case. Gutierrez said he got an unfavorable job evaluation after he challenged lab officials' claim that the New Mexico lab did not violate the federal Clean Air Act.
The University of California runs Los Alamos and two other nuclear labs, while Fluor Hanford Inc. is responsible for cleaning up Hanford. The Labor Department ruled the contractors improperly retaliated against Gutierrez and Walli, but in both cases the legal fight over the allegations continues.
"They (contractors) can just bleed these poor individuals dry," said Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo. "As far as we can see, DOE takes no steps to protect these whistleblowers."
DOE routinely pays contractors' legal costs for whistleblower cases and other job-related actions, such as racial discrimination claims, Sullivan said.
-------- utah
Fake Engineer Approved Waste Dumps
Envirocare In the News
JULY 14, 1998 06:06 EDT
By MATTHEW BROWN Associated Press Writer
http://che-or.8m.com/Envirocare.html
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - By chance, one state employee showing another how to use an Internet database of licensed professionals decided to use Alan A. Bargerstock as an example.
But Bargerstock, who as an engineer at Envirocare of Utah Inc. approved construction plans at a low-level nuclear waste dump, didn't show up in the database.
There was a good reason: he is not a licensed engineer, though he has certified more than 100 nuclear waste disposal plans during the past year and a half.
----
Envirocare Agrees to Pay $80,000 Fine
BY BRENT ISRAELSEN
Friday, May 29, 1998
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
http://www.eq.state.ut.us/webclips/RAD/5_29_98z.htm
Envirocare of Utah has agreed to pay an $80,000 fine to settle a state enforcement action that accused the company of storing too much weapons-grade material at its radioactive-waste-disposal facility.
The Utah Division of Radiation Control cited Envirocare in May 1997 for possessing 494 grams of uranium-235, which in sufficient quantity can cause a nuclear reaction, or fission.
Federal and state rules for fissionable materials, known in the business as ``special nuclear materials (SNM),'' prohibit the storage of more than 350 grams of U-235.
Though never fearing a nuclear disaster from Envirocare's violation, the state alleged that Envirocare acted with ``careless disregard'' for the law and proposed a $100,000 fine.
In a settlement reached May 13, the state reduced the fine to $80,000, holding the remaining $20,000 in abeyance for a year if the company does not violate the weapons-grade rule in the meantime. The state says in the settlement that Envirocare's violation was not intentional and did not create a threat to health, safety, the environment or national security.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees Envirocare's licensing, also has determined that Envirocare violated the law, saying the company stored about 2,000 grams of U-235. To date, the agency has taken no enforcement action. NRC is still considering a 1992 request by Envirocare to be exempt from the SNM rule.
Envirocare argues that any weapons-grade materials stored at Envirocare would be so dispersed in other waste that they could not come together to fission.
The day after the settlement of the SNM violation, the state issued Envirocare a new, unrelated notice of violation, citing the company for seven relatively minor violations, whose fines total just over $15,000.
This latest notice, which was the result of a state inspection the first week of May, cites the company for improperly handling, storing and managing some radioactive wastes and waste water.
Despite these violations, the state, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Agency and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have determined during the past year that Envirocare generally is operating safely and within its licenses and permits.
The recent scrutiny follows allegations that Envirocare owner Khosrow Semnani made secret payments to Larry D. Anderson, former director of the Utah Division of Radiation Control. The payments, which totaled about $600,000, are the subject of an FBI investigation, which has been ongoing for more than a year.
-------- us nuc power
NUKE COMEBACK
By Jeffrey St. Clair,
April 18, 2000
http://www.ecobadguys.org/nuke.html
The latest bad news about global warming: the threat of climate change is being used to help resurrect the moribund nuclear power industry and people close to Al Gore are leading the charge. "Only one technology-advanced nuclear reactors-offers a realistic promise of contributing substantially to the world's burgeoning need for large base-load power production without exacerbating the hazards of environmental contamination and catastrophic climate change," said US Ambassador John B. Ritch.
Ritch made these bracing comments during his keynote address at the International Conference on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management held on March 16 in Cordova, Spain. Since 1994, Ritch, a close friend of Al Gore and assistant secretary of state Strobe Talbott, has served as the US representative to the United Nations Organizations in Vienna, including the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization and the International Atomic Energy Commission, which sponsored the Cordova conference.
Repeatedly invoking the specter of global warming, Ritch told his fellow ministers that global climate change is "a security threat as grave, over time, as the danger of nuclear war." Dismissing the potential of renewable energy sources, Ritch claimed to the admiring crowd that only nuclear energy was capable of providing enough power to meet the world's burgeoning energy needs without contributing to global warming. "Nuclear power is a technology whose time has come," Ritch said, repeating a refrain that has been heard off-and-on since Dwight Eisenhower's "atoms for peace" program of the 1950s.
Ritch dismissed concerns that a new generation of nuclear plants might spark increased proliferation of nuclear weapons by saying, rather weakly, that such an action would turn the nation "into an international pariah"-a distinction already held by the nations he pointed to as the most likely to continue questing for a nuclear arsenal-Iraq and North Korea. Ritch, who served in the Korean DMZ while in the Army, assured his audience that fears of a new nuclear arms race were misplaced. "The world is turning decisively away from nuclear weapons-and erecting strong barriers against recidivism." A few days later both Russia and China were reported to have recently upgraded their nuclear weapons capabilities, largely in response to US plans to breach the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and go forward with a new Star Wars-style missile defense system.
The recent tests by Pakistan and India also shouldn't deter the world from building more nuclear plants. "The potential for nuclear weapons proliferation is a threat so narrow in scope that it must not cloud our consideration of an energy source of broad and arguably urgent importance to mankind," Ritch said.
Much of the opposition to nuclear power, Ritch suggested, is based on the rhetoric of eco-paranoids who believe that "a nuclear power plant itself constitutes a kind of bomb." Ritch, who traded in his career as a congressional stuffer to become a DC landlord and the CEO of a nutritional supplement/vitamin company called California Fitness, ridiculed such thinking and said that new nuclear power plants are "exemplars of safe design."
Ritch must have overlooked the recent spat of bad news about Russian reactors, where seven have been shut down because of malfunctions in the last month alone. The plants in the United States aren't doing much better, as evidenced by the breakdown of a cooling system at the Brookhaven reactor in early April. But even the worst nuclear accident shouldn't turn people off to the virtues of nuclear power, because, Ritch warned, "the Chernoybyl disaster pales against the threat of global warming."
The ambassador admitted that the biggest drawback to nuclear power are the mounting piles of radioactive waste, now topping 50,000 tons worldwide. But even this apparently intractable problem, Ritch argued, s mainly one of distorted public perception. "Nuclear energy is stigmatized for lacking an answer to the disposal question," Ritch lamented. "And the stigma in turn fortifies widespread resistance to answering that question with an operation disposal facility." Ritch followed up this amazing tautology with a plea for the delegates to develop "several repositories" worldwide so that the nuclear industry can demonstrate how safe the waste dumps really are.
Perhaps Ritch was forgetting that President Clinton had only days earlier renewed his pledge to veto the so-called Mobile Chernobyl Bill, a measure moving through the Congress to designate Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the repository for most of the radioactive waste from the nation's commercial nuclear reactors-one of the few firm stands Clinton has taken on an environmental issue.
But perhaps the stand against the Yucca Mountain plan isn't as steadfast as it appears. Ritch spoke enthusiastically of the DOE's Yucca Mountain "deep geological storage plan," saying that engineers had developed a range of options from the "seal it and close it" option to a scenario that would allow it to be "kept open, with appropriate maintenance, for up to 300 years." The one scenario not mentioned by Ritch is the one favored by most environmentalists: making the utilities keep the waste on site.
Ritch forged ahead in an operatic crescendo, forecasting a time when "the dynamics of the global energy debate will be changed entirely. No longer will it be possible for debaters who oppose nuclear energy-and politicians who are afraid of the subject-to utter the blithe arguments that disposal is technically or politically infeasible."
In his zeal to promote the green virtues of nuclear power, Ritch couldn't resist taking a few final potshots at environmentalists, referring to them as "snipers" and "guerilla warriors."
Ritch's approach is somewhat clumsier than the normal smooth talking sermons we've come to expect from the Clinton/Gore team. But the ambassador is by no means a loose cannon. Both Clinton and Gore have deep ties to the nuclear industry that have never been relinquished (and rarely talked about in the press). Students of Clinton's career will recall that he alienated many voters and populist/segregationist former governor Orval Faubus when he agreed to a deal that would have Arkansas ratepayers foot the bill for cost overruns at a Louisiana nuclear power plant. .
The company that owns that plan is today known as Entergy and it has continued to pad the Clinton accounts with hunks of money. And Entergy, taking full advantage of the deregulated electricity market, is now on a nuke plant buying spree, picking plants in North Carolina, Mississippi, and New York. The company is eyeing plants in Connecticut and New Hampshire, as well.
''Growing our nuclear business is a key piece of our ongoing strategy,'' said Randy Hutchinson, senior vice president at Entergy Nuclear. ''It's a key piece of our growth strategy, particularly over the next three to five years. It's where the company sees most of its growth and earnings coming from.'' Hutchinson said Entergy plans to develop "regional nuclear generating companies." We're very heavily into the northeast because that's where it happens,'' he said. ''Then we'll look to the Midwest or the West Coast.''
Like his father, Albert Gore Sr., who oversaw the development of the nation's nuclear power industry, Al Gore himself has always been a faithful ally of the nuclear industry, even defending hair- raising schemes such as the Clinch River breeder reactor. One of Gore's top advisers on climate change is Harvard professor, John Holdren.
Holdren has been a vocal proponent of increased funding for nuclear energy as a means of combating global warming. In a 1997 interview, Holdren said: "I think we should be investing far more effort than we are investing now to trying to determine whether we can make nuclear energy a viable, expandable energy option again. Because we might need it. If we were prudent, we would be investing serious R & D resources in trying to address the problems that have made nuclear energy such a difficult case. We are not doing it now. The US government research on nuclear energy technology has all but vanished in the Federal R & D budget."
But not for long. In 1998 Gore tapped Holdren to be an adviser for the Department of Energy's budget on global warming initiatives. He went right work and socked away in the FY 2000 budget is $230 million in subsidies for the nuclear power industry, much of it justified on the grounds that nukes will help forestall climate change.
All this is being lapped up by DC-based the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the nuclear industry's $20 million trade association and lobby shop, which has just launched its "Respecting the Earth with Clean Energy Campaign". A recent NEI congressional briefing paper, as if reading from a page scripted by Ritch and Holdren, trumpets: "The amazing thing about nuclear power plants is the efficiency with which they generate vast quantities of electricity-20 percent of the U.S. power supply-while emitting no harmful gases to pollute the air. In this way, nuclear energy helps to preserve the Earth's climate, reduce ozone formation, and prevent acid rain."
About the author:
http://www.ecobadguys.org/authors.htm
Jeffrey St. Clair is co-editor of the political newsletter CounterPunch. He is also a contributing editor for In These Times. His articles on environmental politics have appeared in The Nation, the Village Voice, the Washington Post, High Country News, Harpers and the Progressive. He is the co-author of Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press, published in 1998 by Verso. He lives in Oregon City, Oregon.
-------- us nuc weapons
Rocket remakes Cold War history
By Marcia Dunn
ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 24, 2000
http://www.msnbc.com/news/411993.asp
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., May 24 - An American rocket originally designed as an intercontinental ballistic missile blasted off Wednesday, rising on an engine made by the old Cold War enemy.
The Atlas 3 unites the heritage of Sputnik and John Glenn.
It was the fifth launch attempt in 10 days for Lockheed Martin Corp.'s new Atlas 3, the first U.S. rocket to be powered by a Russian engine. The rocket carried a European communication satellite. "Better to work together than (launch) nuclear missiles," said Boris Katorgin, general director of engine maker NPO Energomash. The evening launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station was valued at nearly $300 million, counting the satellite. The Atlas 3 should have flown last year but was grounded following a competitor's botched launch. The failed part was common to both. Since the first Atlas soared in 1957 - it malfunctioned and had to be destroyed - more than 550 of the rockets have been launched. Probably the most memorable flight was in 1962 when astronaut John Glenn was the payload. The Atlas 3 is the strongest version yet. It relies on a single, powerful engine provided by NPO Energomash near Moscow, builder of the engines that launched Sputnik, the first satellite, and Yuri Gagarin, the first spaceman. The company also made engines for Russia's intercontinental ballistic missiles. Unlike NASA's often-strained relationship with the Russian Space Agency in building a space station, this collaboration has been a pleasure, said John Karas, a Lockheed Martin vice president. He attributes that to the fact that the dealings have been between businesses, not governments. The next Atlas 3 could fly as early as December.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/619199.jpg
An Atlas 3 rocket lifts off on its inaugural launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Wednesday.
Cameras mounted on the Atlas 3 give you a rocket's-eye view of the trip to orbit.
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Joint Chiefs opposing Russian arms proposal
Bergen Record
Wednesday, May 24, 2000
By JONATHAN S. LANDAY and STEVEN THOMMA
Knight Ridder Newspapers
http://www.bergen.com/morenews/krbomb200005243.htm
WASHINGTON -- The nation's top military leaders, testifying on Capitol Hill Tuesday before next month's U.S.-Russia summit in Moscow, expressed opposition to a Russian proposal to cut the two countries' nuclear arsenals to 1,500 warheads each.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff said they could not support reductions below a previously agreed limit of 2,000 to 2,500 warheads each without analyzing the impact on national security.
"We would not feel comfortable short of a comprehensive review of the strategy," the joint chiefs' chairman, Gen. Henry Shelton, told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a rare public hearing on U.S. nuclear policy. His comments were endorsed by all four service chiefs and Adm. Richard Mies, the head of the U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees the "triad" of bombers, missiles, and submarines the United States maintains to wage nuclear war.
The chiefs' position could constrain President Clinton's flexibility in negotiating during his June 4-5 summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. A third strategic arms reduction accord, or START III, will be a centerpiece of the talks.
Cuts in nuclear warheads are being fiercely debated within the government as Clinton finalizes a negotiating position.
Arms control could become a presidential election issue, especially if Clinton tries to reach a deal that locks the United States into radical warhead reductions in exchange for Moscow's acceptance of a U.S. missile defense system far smaller than the one advocated by Republicans.
"START III should not be an excuse to limit our ability to develop an antiballistic missile system," Republican presidential contender George W. Bush said Tuesday.
Bush took aim at Clinton's defense policies in outlining his own. Bush called for deploying a large-scale national missile defense system and said the United States could cut its nuclear arsenal unilaterally if necessary to reassure the Russians that a missile defense system was not aimed at them.
His stand is at odds with that of some Republican conservatives. They oppose cutting the U.S. arsenal and want to end an eight-year suspension of nuclear tests.
Under the 1993 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START II, only recently ratified by Moscow, the United States and Russia are to slash their deployed nuclear warheads to between 3,000 and 3,500 apiece by 2007.
Clinton hopes to trade further cuts under a START III treaty for Putin's agreement to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow the United States to build a limited defense against ballistic missile attacks.
No longer able to afford the massive costs of a large and aging nuclear force, the Kremlin now wants to discuss a 1,500-warhead limit.
Officially, the White House remains committed to a 1997 accord reached by Clinton and former Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin to seek a START III pact restricting both sides to 2,000 to 2,500 deployed warheads apiece. But officials in the National Security Council staff, the State Department, and the Pentagon are debating a compromise proposal for cutting the arsenals to between 1,500 and 2,000 warheads.
In moving closer to the new Russian position, Clinton might have a better chance of inducing Putin to drop his opposition to the U.S. missile defense plan.
But a defense official, speaking on condition he not be named, said the joint chiefs oppose any reductions below 2,000. He said even implementing the 2,000 to 2,500 range "is not doable without problems."
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Bush Says U.S. Should Reduce Nuclear Arms
New York Times
May 24, 2000 Pg. 1
By Alison Mitchell
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/052400wh-gop-bush.html
WASHINGTON, May 23 -- Declaring that the nation's security no longer required "a nuclear balance of terror," Gov. George W. Bush called today for new -- and possibly unilateral -- reductions in American nuclear weapons coupled with a robust antimissile defense system.
Though he shied from specifics, Mr. Bush said he wanted to reduce the size of the United States' nuclear arsenal to the "lowest possible number consistent with our national security" and below the levels called for under the Start II accord with Russia.
"We should not keep weapons that our military planners do not need," he said, flanked by foreign policy experts from four Republican administrations. "These unneeded weapons are the expensive relics of deadconflicts."
Asked at a news conference whether that meant he would reduce the nation's nuclear arsenal unilaterally, Mr. Bush said, "Yes." But then he quickly added, "I would work closely with the Russians to convince them to do the same." And he said, "I would never do anything to put our nation at risk."
[Excerpts]
Mr. Bush, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, accompanied his call for nuclear weapons reductions with a full-throated endorsement of a far more expansive missile defense system than that being explored by the Clinton administration. He said he wanted to examine all options for a global system including "whether or not a space-based system can work."
"America must build effective missile defenses," Mr. Bush said, "based on the best available options at the earliest possible date. Our missile defense must be designed to protect all 50 states and our friends and allies and deployed forces overseas from missile attacks by rogue nations or accidental launches."
Mr. Bush's lack of experience in foreign policy is one of his biggest political vulnerabilities, and he has been making a concerted drive in recent days to speak out on national security issues.
Mr. Bush's appearance today was unlike any event that preceded it in this campaign. In contrast to previous policy speeches, his audience consisted only of several dozen Washington reporters gathered in the National Press Club. His speech was relatively short, and much of his time was devoted to answering questions.
To give himself added authority, Mr. Bush spoke while flanked by five prominent experts in national security: Henry A. Kissinger, George P. Shultz, Brent Scowcroft, Colin L. Powell and Donald H. Rumsfeld, several of whom voiced support of Mr. Bush's ideas. The result was some strange political symbolism as Mr. Bush called for new thinking for a new post-cold-war era, surrounded by some of the architects of the nation's cold-war arms control treaties.
Although President Clinton has signaled his willingness to negotiate further weapons cuts with Russia, Mr. Bush accused the administration of being "locked in a cold-war mentality" on arms control. That was virtually the same charge Vice President Al Gore used against Mr. Bush just a few weeks ago. At that time Mr. Gore, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said Mr. Bush was "stuck in a cold-war mind-set" and cited his advocacy of a global missile defense system.
Today, Mr. Gore's aides sharply criticized Mr. Bush, saying his approach to nuclear security was unrealistic, that it would not be accepted by the Russians and that it would would undermine years of arms control agreements.
Mr. Gore's advisers pointed to Mr. Bush's opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and said the governor advocates the radical rewriting, if not outright abolition, of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
"Bush's agenda is irresponsible and shows that he lacks the depth of experience to keep America safe and secure," said Douglas Hattaway, a spokesman for Mr. Gore.
Mr. Bush has said he would pull out of the pact if the Russians did not agree to adjust it after "a reasonable amount of time."
Mr. Gore, like Mr. Clinton, favors negotiating with the Russians to change the antiballistic missile treaty and make way for the more limited missile defense system.
With his speech, Mr. Bush aligned himself with a group of foreign policy thinkers who have started to ask whether traditional arms control agreements are suited to the post-cold-war era.
Yet Mr. Bush sidestepped a host of questions today by saying that as president he would order his defense secretary to conduct an assessment of the nuclear force structure and only then decide how many nuclear weapons the nation needed.
The governor also said he would ask for an assessment of what the nation could do to lower the alert status of its forces. "Preparation for quick launch -- within minutes after warning of an attack -- was the rule during the era of superpower rivalry," he said. "But today for two nations at peace, keeping so many weapons on high alert may create unacceptable risks of accidental or unauthorized launch."
The 1993 Start II accord, which was recently ratified by the Russian parliament, called for Russia and the United States to slash their arsenals from 6,000 long-range weapons to between 3,000 and 3,500..
President Clinton and former President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia also set a framework in 1997 for a new round of Start III negotiations to reduce arsenals to 2,000 to 2,500 weapons. Moscow wants to go further and has called for both sides to cut to 1,500 long-range weapons.
Pressed on whether he supported the Start III framework, Mr. Bush said he would decide what level of warheads was sufficient only after consultations with his defense secretary and the military establishment.
His chief foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said later that it was "conceivable, I suppose, but unlikely" that a military review could end up recommending weapons levels higher than some of the numbers being contemplated in the Start III negotiations.
If Mr. Bush contemplates reducing the nuclear arsenal to less than 2,000 to 2,500 weapons, he could well face resistance from the military establishment.
On Capitol Hill today, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said they opposed reducing the United States nuclear arsenal below those levels, though their words were not aimed at Mr. Bush. They appeared at a hearing called by Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, as a pre-emptive strike against any efforts by the administration to use lower nuclear arms cuts with Russia to win agreement on limited missile defense system.
Mr. Bush portrayed his drive for an expansive missile defense system as one that would protect not just the United States but its allies against accidental missile launchings, terrorist strikes or rogue nations. He said that he would share the technology with Europe and Israel and that he might consider sharing it with Russia, depending on "how Russia behaves."
"Russia, our allies in the world need to understand our intentions," he said. "America's development of missile defenses is a search for security, not a search for advantage."
The Russians have made clear that they adamantly oppose renegotiating theABM treaty to allow the American deployment of a missile defense system.
Mr. Bush insisted that he could afford a robust antimissile defense system along with his call for a $1.3 trillion tax cut, and for billions of new dollars in spending on social programs and additional tax incentives. The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that it would cost $60 billion to build a land-based system that would include 250 missile interceptors at two sites.
Mr. Bush is interested in a far more wide-ranging missile defense system than Mr. Clinton is examining. Ms. Rice said in an interview that he wants to look at "all options" including defense from land, from sea or from space.
Leon Fuerth, the national security adviser to Mr. Gore, argued today that the more limited system being examined by the Clinton administration could be in place by 2005 in time to face a possible threat from North Korea. He said Mr. Bush's effort to "tear up all the technology and start all over again" would set back development and leave the United States vulnerable to rogue states.
Mr. Bush did not mention his father in his speech today, but he clearly had him in mind as a model when he spoke of the possibility of arms reductions carried out without "years and years of detailed arms control negotiations."
He used 1991 as an example of the kinds of steps he was advocating. That was the year when President George Bush unilaterally took all American strategic bombers off alert status. He also removed American short-range nuclear weapons from Europe and Asia.
Russia promptly followed suit. The Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, pulled Moscow's own short-range missiles back to Russia and pledged to cut back the Soviet nuclear arsenal.
In talking with reporters, Governor Bush said that he had consulted with Mr. Kissinger, Mr. Shultz and the others with him on the policy he was advocating. And he said that all had agreed to advise him in the future. But most attention focused on Mr. Powell, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the gulf war, and who many Republicans would like to see as a vice-presidential candidate. Mr. Powell has said he is not interested in the job. "The answer's well known," he said today. "I won't take any time away from the governor to belabor you with" being nominated as vice president.
Asked whether he had discussed with Mr. Powell the possibility of a Cabinet post like secretary of state, Mr. Bush shot back to reporters, "I'm not going to tell you what I talk to him about."
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U.S.: Candidate Bush Outlines Defense Policy Vision
*Radio Free Europe
By Lisa McAdams
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2000/05/F.RU.000524145627.html
U.S. Republican Presidential candidate George W. Bush Tuesday outlined his vision of 21st century American defense policy in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington. RFE/RL Senior Correspondent Lisa McAdams reports:
http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2000/05/F.RU.000524145627.html
Washington, 24 May 2000 (RFE/RL) -- U.S. Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush outlined on Tuesday how he would seek to ensure "certainty in an uncertain world," if he were elected president.
He prefaced his remarks in Washington by saying that America needs a new approach to nuclear security that matches the new era. Bush then spoke specifically to the direction he would take as president on a proposed national missile defense. Bush said the decision should be based first and foremost on present-day reality -- not Cold War history:
"Our nation must recognize new threats, not fixate on old ones. On the issue of nuclear weapons, the United States has an opportunity to lead to a safer world, both to defend against nuclear threats, and reduce nuclear tensions. It is possible to build a missile defense and diffuse confrontation with Russia. America should do both."
In addition, Bush said he thought the U.S. should remove as many weapons as possible from "high-alert" status, which he called another vestige of Cold War confrontation. He said two nations at peace keeping so many weapons on high alert could create unacceptable risks of accident or unauthorized launch.
Bush said America's future missile defense must be designed to protect all 50 states, as well as foreign allies, with whom he said America would consult.
Russia is but one nation that has been very forthright in its objection to a proposed U.S. national missile defense, which it sees as a threat to its security and in opposition to existing U.S./Russian arms control agreements. Bush acknowledged Russia's concerns and said he would seek to bring them on board by stressing that America is, above all, about peace:
"America's development of missile defenses is a search for security, not a search for advantage."
In order to reduce Russia's concerns, Bush said the U.S. should signal Russia that it is willing to reduce its cold war nuclear arsenals significantly further. At the same time, he said he would not approve levels so low as to risk American security or that of its allies. He also ruled out further cuts, if Russia did not follow suit and did not "conduct itself as a member of the family of nations."
Bush's comments on a national missile defense come a little more than a week before U.S. President Bill Clinton travels to Moscow for summit-level talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin expected to focus -- among other things -- on arms control. Bush urged Clinton not to make any deals that would inhibit the ability of the next president to examine all options available:
"As I said, no treaty, no agreement, would be better than a flawed agreement. I'm concerned that this administration is not fully devoted to the development of an anti-ballistic missile system that will work." Later, at the White House, Presidential Spokesman Joe Lockhart dismissed Bush's remarks as "contradictory" and lacking in specific details:
"He gave a sort of contradictory argument today on his belief that we can reduce nuclear weapons and that somehow the current administration is stuck in a Cold War mentality, while making a broad argument for an expansive national missile defense along the lines that we saw discussed in the 1980's, which I think very much reflected a Cold War mentality. So, I think while the speeches in their generalities may make some point that he is trying to make politically, at some point in time, he has got to put some details on this."
One detail sorely missing, Lockhart said, is how Bush proposes to pay for such a global missile defense.
Lockhart also defended current Clinton administration policy on national missile defense as "sound" in its approach and he said American officials would continue to engage the Russians on arms control issues.
Meanwhile, the ranking Republican member on the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees, Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), commended Bush's missile defense approach as "comprehensive, far-sighted, and statesmanlike."
Bush was also joined in support today by several former senior U.S. officials including former U.S. Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger and former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Colin Powell. All appeared on stage with Bush.
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-------- us nuc waste
http://www.pub.whitehouse.gov/uri-res/I2R?urn:pdi://oma.eop.gov.us/2000/5/24/16.text.1
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
May 24, 2000
PRESIDENT CLINTON NAMES THREE MEMBERS TO THE NUCLEAR WASTE TECHNICAL REVIEW BOARD
The President today announced his intent to appoint Norman L. Christensen, Jr., Paul P. Craig, and Richard Parizek to serve as Members of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB).
Dr. Norman L. Christensen Jr., of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, is currently a professor of ecology and Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. Dr. Christensen has been teaching at Duke University since 1973. He has over 27 years of teaching experience and more than 80 scientific articles and books to his credit. Dr. Christensen is an ecologist whose research specializes in the effects of natural and human-caused disturbance on ecosystem structure and process. Dr. Christensen has served in a number of advisory roles to the U.S. government, including work with the Forest Service, the National Park Service, the National Science Foundation, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Dr. Christensen received an A.B. and a M.S. from Fresno State College and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Dr. Paul P. Craig, of Martinez, California, is Professor of Engineering Emeritus at the University of California at Davis and is a member of the University's Graduate Group in Ecology. He has more than 21years of teaching experience and more than 100 publications to his credit. From 1971 to 1975, Dr. Craig served as the Deputy and Acting Director of the Office of Energy Research and Development Policy, which provided policy analysis in support of the Science Advisor to the President and the Office of Management and Budget. Dr. Craig received his B.A. from Haverford College and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology.
Dr. Richard R. Parizek, of State College, Pennsylvania, is currently a professor of geology and geoenvironmental engineering at the Pennsylvania State University; president of Richard R. Parizek and Associates,consulting hydrogeologists and environmental geologists; and a registered Professional Geologist. He has more than 37 years of teaching experience and numerous journal publications to his credit. Over the past twenty years, he has been a member of various National Academy of Sciences panels and committees dealing with many environmental and radioactive waste issues. Dr. Parizek received his B.A. from the University of Connecticut, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois.
The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) was established in 1987 under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act as an independent unit within the Executive Branch. In accordance with the Act, the NWTRB evaluates the technical and scientific validity of activities undertaken by the Secretary of Energy relative to the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act. This also includes site characterization and the packaging and transportation of high-level radioactive waste or spent materials.
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"Bush's Missile Defenses Could Limit Warhead Cuts, Experts Warn"
THE REACTION
The New York Times,
May 24, 2000
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
WASHINGTON, May 23 -- It lacked details and raised, but failed to answer, tantalizing questions. But Gov. George W. Bush's call today for "a new approach" to the nation's nuclear arsenal represented what could be, in the view of experts, a significant shift in arms control and post-cold-war relations with Russia.
In his remarks at the National Press Club, Mr. Bush embraced concepts that arms controllers have long advocated, including deeper reductions in warheads and steps to ease the highest levels of alert at which those weapons can be launched on a moment's notice.
He even left open the possibility of dramatic, unilateral steps, evoking his father's decision in 1991 to remove American bombers from alert and withdraw short-range nuclear weapons from Europe and Asia, a move quickly matched by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
But in calling for missile defenses not only for the United States but also for its allies, Mr. Bush challenged the longtime orthodoxy of arms control: that prohibiting defenses allowed limits in offenses.
That assumption, embodied in the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, stipulated that the ability of either side to destroy the other -- mutually assured destruction -- created a safer world by making the temptation to use nuclear weapons simply too risky to consider.
"Our mutual security need no longer depend on a nuclear balance of terror," Mr. Bush declared, surrounded by members of Republican administrations who once defended some of the very assumptions that he challenged today.
Many of the proposals outlined by Mr. Bush, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, were greeted with striking praise from arms-control experts. In particular, they welcomed his pledge to ask the Pentagon to review its targeting strategies and rethink the number of warheads, which Mr. Bush called "expensive relics of dead conflicts."
But they warned about the risks in other parts of Mr. Bush's vision. Mr. Bush's seemingly open-ended view of missile defenses, they said, could undercut the benefits of his proposals to reduce the number of weapons and take "as many weapons as possible" off "hair-trigger status."
"It's very encouraging from the prospect of unilateral reductions," said George R. Perkovich, director of the W. Alton Jones Foundation, a private organization in Charlottesville, Va. "But I don't think that kind of gesture is going to change any of the problems with our relationship with Russia. Even if we're willing to get to lower levels, the Russians aren't, because of the kind of national missile defense he's proposing."
Bruce G. Blair, president of the Center for Defense Information here and a strong advocate for reducing the alert status of American and Russian forces, welcomed Mr. Bush's remarks. But he said they contained inherent contradictions.
Mr. Blair said that if the United States proceeded with a significant missile defense system, Russia would feel compelled to keep its forces on alert to preserve their ability to launch an overwhelming counterattack. A heightened Russian posture, he added, would convince the Pentagon that the steps Mr. Bush said he would pursue -- even unilaterally -- would not be possible.
"They're working at cross-purposes," Mr. Blair said.
Neither Mr. Bush nor his aides would discuss his proposals in detail, leaving many questions about how -- and whether -- he could bring about a new era of arms control in a Bush presidency. He did not rule out creating a missile defense based at sea or in space, which would prove even more unsettling to the Russians than the limited system the Clinton administration is considering and would certainly require abrogation of the A.B.M. treaty.
And while he said he favored reducing arsenals below the 3,000 to 3,500 warheads negotiated under the second strategic arms reduction treaty, or Start II, he did not say whether he would go as low as the proposed Start III levels of 2,000 or 2,500.
Mr. Bush emphasized that he would never make any reductions that the Pentagon did not endorse, but it has long been the Pentagon that has resisted deeper reductions in warheads.
Today, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, along with Adm. Richard W. Mies, the commander of the strategic force, appeared before the Senate's Armed Services Committee and testified that they would oppose any further reductions in warheads beyond Start III, something that Russia has proposed.
"There is a cushion in larger numbers," Admiral Mies said. "And there is a tyranny in smaller numbers that reduces stability in certain situations."
Michael Krepon, president of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a research group here, said it was possible to move past the "cold-war logic" of mutually assured destruction and allow for a defensive system. The key, he said, was to manage a "cooperative transition" with the Russians that would reassure them that they would not lose their strategic leverage when the United States builds a defensive shield.
"What George W. did not tell us was the kind of defenses and the architecture he is envisioning," Mr. Krepon said. "Those particulars will clarify whether or not this cooperative transition is likely to succeed."
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Bush wants missile defense, fewer nuclear warheads
Columbus Dispatch, Wednesday, May 24, 2000
By Roger K. Lowe Dispatch Washington Bureau Chief http://www.dispatch.com/news/newsfea00/may00/290285.html
WASHINGTON -- Texas Gov. George W. Bush yesterday called for development of a missile-defense system that would protect the United States and its allies in Europe and Israel from nuclear- missile strikes by terrorists or rogue nations.
Bush also pledged that if elected president, he would seek to reduce America's arsenal of nuclear weapons to "the lowest possible number consistent with our national security.''
The missile-defense system and reductions in nuclear warheads would be part of a review of U.S. military strategy on nuclear weapons that Bush would order as president. He charged that the Clinton administration's policies on nuclear weapons are left over from the Cold War.
"It is time to leave the Cold War behind us and build a new defense for the new century,'' Bush said during a news conference in Washington.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee was accompanied by top GOP foreign-policy and defense experts including retired Gen. Colin Powell, former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Bush spent part of yesterday in Washington concentrating on defense, foreign policy and trade issues before going to Columbus for an event at Hamilton Alternative Elementary School and a fund-raising dinner.
Bush said he wants sufficient nuclear weapons to serve as a deterrent against attack by major powers as well as a defense system that would protect against attacks by terrorists or enemy nations or accidental missile launches.
Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under former President Bush, said the changing situation in the world allows the United States to make deeper reductions in its warheads while maintaining a nuclear force. But Powell also endorsed the need for a missile-defense system.
Bush said the technology for such a system have advanced to the point that the idea should be pursued more aggressively. He said it was too early to assess its cost. Aides said later that he has no preference on what type of system should be built.
Bush also called on President Clinton to avoid any pact with Russia that would interfere with development of missile defense, saying Clinton should not tie the hands of the next president.
"No agreement would be better than a flawed agreement,'' Bush said.
He said U.S. warheads can be reduced below levels in the START II agreement with Russia, which calls for each side to reduce warheads to 3,000-3,500 warheads from 6,000.
He pledged, however, not to cut too far.
"I would never do anything to put our nation at risk,'' Bush said.
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Bush vows to trim nuclear arsenal Advocates system for missile defense
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
WEDNESDAY May 24, 2000
Ron Fournier - Associated Press
Wednesday, May 24, 2000
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/wednesday/news_93b2f6835175f0970051.html
http://www.seattlep-i.com/national/camp246.shtml
http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?200005/24+bush052400_news.html+20000524
http://www.herald.com/content/wed/news/national/digdocs/044552.htm
Washington --- Two weeks before a U.S.-Russia arms summit, presidential candidate George W. Bush said Tuesday he would slash America's nuclear arsenal to its "lowest possible number consistent with our national security," regardless of whether Moscow went along.
The reductions would be part of a broad national security review that must include a missile-defense system, the Republican Texas governor added. He was flanked by Colin Powell and other former Cold Warriors as he sought to bolster his foreign policy credentials.
Bush offered no details about the size of the possible nuclear cuts or the cost of a missile-defense system. He said he was trying "to demonstrate to Russia that we are no longer enemies."
He met last month with Russia's foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, and said afterward that they had agreed to disagree on the subject of missile defense.
"Russia, our allies and the world need to understand our intentions. America's development of missile defenses is a search for security, not a search for advantage," he said Tuesday at a news conference before beginning a Midwest campaign swing.
Moscow has consistently objected to any U.S. missile-defense system since President Ronald Reagan pushed for a space-based initiative. Bush has said he is willing to scrap the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to make room for the development of technology that could protect the United States from missile strikes by a growing number of nuclear threats.
The Russians have said they will put all arms control treaties on hold if the United States either violates or withdraws from the 1972 pact, which prohibits national missile defenses.
Al Gore's Democratic presidential campaign said the vice president supported "a more reasonable approach" to national security. Spokesman Doug Hattaway said Gore supports amending, not ending, the ABM treaty to allow for a more limited anti-missile system, and said Bush appears on the verge of backing a "full-blown Star Wars system" that would be costly and impractical.
Powell, a potential vice presidential candidate or secretary of defense under Bush, commended his fellow Republican for taking "a fresh look at the world." The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff --- still a popular political figure --- did not mention his disagreement with the governor over the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; Bush opposed the pact and Powell supported it.
Apart from Powell, Bush was joined by Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, secretaries of state in the Nixon and Reagan administrations; Brent Scowcroft, who was President Bush's national security adviser; and Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense under President Ford.
Bush's campaign hoped the lineup would help give the Texan a more statesmanlike image, given polls that suggest many voters question his readiness.
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PSR Alarmed by Bush Statements on National Defense
US Newswire
24 May 13:05
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0524-121.html
Physicians Group Alarmed by 'Dangerous and Vague Statements' by Gov. Bushon National Missile Defense To: National Desk Contact: Tarek Rizk, 202-898-0150 ext 215 or Anne Gallivan, 202-898-0150 ext 222 both of Physicians for Social Responsibility
WASHINGTON, May 24 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A physicians group dedicated to the abolition of nuclear weapons had cause for alarm today after Governor George W. Bush delivered dangerous and contradictory language on missile defense and other key national security issues. While on one hand he denounced the Clinton Administration's multi-billion dollar national missile defense program as "flawed," Governor Bush on the other then proposed a much larger system, which would cover in its shadow all of our allies, presumably Europe and parts of Asia.
"Bush's larger national missile defense is just a bigger, more expensive umbrella full of holes," said PSR Associate Director for Nuclear/Security Programs Anne Gallivan. "And without any hard data or real numbers to back it up, Governor Bush's talk about deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal is just that: talk."
Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) viewed Bush's speech, in which he delivered a vaguely-worded pledge to cut US nuclear arsenals in addition to the pledge to increase the size of a National Missile Defense, as an attempt to reach out to disarmament proponents while still trying to keep his favor with his more hawkish supporters.
"The one positive thing that candidate Bush proposed -- which has not yet been proposed by Vice President Gore -- is to take our nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert and challenge the Russians to follow," Gallivan continued. "His father's unilateral disarmament was an important move in 1991, and led the Russians to further disarmament."
Although Bush referred to our nuclear weapons as "expensive relics of dead conflicts," he still proposed a national missile defense which is much larger than the one the Clinton Administration is currently weighing. The smaller plan is opposed by Russia and would require a revision in the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty signed by Russia and the US in 1972. Bush's larger plan would also require abrogation or serious revision of the ABM.
"Bush's language shows how naive our country's leaders remain on issues of national security," explained PSR Nuclear/Security Program Associate Kimberly Roberts. "Building a national missile defense would not "reduce nuclear tensions," as Governor Bush said, but would trigger a new arms race involving Russia and potentially other nuclear powers like China."
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THE HOUSE REPUBLICANS
Bush Charms His Party in a Capitol Visit
New York Times
May 24, 2000
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/052400wh-gop.html
WASHINGTON, May 23 -- Gov. George W. Bush set aside his customary reserve toward House Republicans in a trip to Capitol Hill today and was rewarded with an outpouring of admiration.
The event was more a pep rally than a formal address as Mr. Bush spoke for about 20 minutes to House Republicans at the Capitol Hill Club, underscoring many of his campaign themes. He touched on his plan for a partial privatization of Social Security and mentioned that he would work to overhaul Medicare, repeal the inheritance tax and share part of the budget surplus with taxpayers.
Mr. Bush, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, made a point of highlighting themes he believes unite the party and avoided mentioning his past differences with House Republicans over issues like tax credits, lawmakers at the meeting said. And he offered to campaign for House members.
He also spoke briefly about his support for establishing normal trade relations with China. At one point, he asked members who opposed the measure, scheduled for a vote on Wednesday, to reconsider. Afterward, he buttonholed a few members who were still undecided and tried to persuade them to vote for the measure.
If House Republicans still felt slighted by Mr. Bush's wary reserve toward them, they did not show it.
"If you had been in there, you would never think there had been a problem," said Representative Charlie Norwood of Georgia. "How can we all agree with him 100 percent of the time? We don't even agree with our wives 100 percent of the time. But on the big picture, we all agree."
Representative Christopher Shays of Connecticut said he was impressed with Mr. Bush's sense of conviction, especially on Social Security.
"He's going to the mat on the Social Security issue because he believes in it," Mr. Shays said. "This is coming from the heart. The conventional wisdom is you don't talk about Social Security. He wants to confront that issue."
"There's a real difference between him and Al Gore, and he relishes that," Mr. Shays added.
Members said they left the meeting feeling charged-up about the November elections and about Mr. Bush's prospects, a stark contrast to Bob Dole's meeting with House Republicans four years ago.
Representative Benjamin A. Gilman of upstate New York called the gathering "ebullient," adding that there was not a single negative vibration.
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Excerpts From Bush's Remarks on National Security and Arms Policy
New York Times
May 24, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/052400wh-bush-text.html
Following are excerpts from a transcript of Gov. George W. Bush's remarks yesterday in Washington on national security, and the question-and-answer session that followed and included a brief remark by Gen. Colin L. Powell, as recorded by The New York Times:
Opening Remarks
Today, I am here with some of our nation's leading statesmen and defense experts. And there is broad agreement that our nation needs a new approach to nuclear security that matches a new era.
When it comes to nuclear weapons, the world has changed faster than U.S. policy. The emerging security threats to the United States, its friends and allies and even to Russia now come from rogue states, terrorist groups and other adversaries seeking weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. Threats also come from insecure nuclear stockpiles and the proliferation of dangerous technologies.
Russia itself is no longer our enemy. The cold-war logic that led to creation of massive stockpiles on both sides is now outdated. Our mutual security need no longer depend on a nuclear balance of terror. While deterrence remains the first line of defense against nuclear attack, the standoff of the cold war was born of a different time. That was a time when our arsenal also served to check the conventional superiority of the Warsaw Pact. Then the Soviet Union's power reached deep into the heart of Europe to Berlin and Warsaw, Budapest and Prague. Today these are the capitals of NATO countries.
Yet almost a decade after the end of the cold war, our nuclear policy still resides in that already distant past.
The Clinton-Gore administration has had over seven years to bring the U.S. force posture into the post-cold-war world. Instead, they remained locked in a cold-war mentality. It is time to leave the cold war behind and defend against the new threats of the 21st century.
America must build effective missile defenses based on the best available options at the earliest possible date. Our missile defense must be designed to protect all 50 states and our friends and allies and deployed forces overseas from missile attacks by rogue nations or accidental launches.
The Clinton administration at first denied the need for a national missile defense system. Then it delayed. Now the approach it proposes is flawed, a system initially based on a single site, when experts say that more is needed. A missile defense system should not only defend our country; it should defend our allies, with whom I will consult as we develop our plans. And any change in the A.B.M. Treaty must allow the technologies and experiments required to deploy adequate missile defenses.
The administration is driving toward a hasty decision on a political timetable. No decision would be better than a flawed agreement that ties the hands of the next president and prevents America from defending itself.
Yet there are positive, practical ways to demonstrate to Russia that we are no longer enemies. Russia, our allies in the world need to understand our intentions. America's development of missile defenses is a search for security, not a search for advantage.
America should rethink the requirements for nuclear deterrence in a new security environment. The premises of cold-war nuclear targeting should no longer dictate the size of our arsenal. As president, I will ask the secretary of defense to conduct an assessment of our nuclear force posture and determine how best to meet our security needs. While the exact number of weapons can come only from such an assessment, I will pursue the lowest possible number consistent with our national security.
It should be possible to reduce the number of American nuclear weapons significantly further than what has been already agreed to under Start II without compromising our security in any way. We should not keep weapons that our military planners do not need. These unneeded weapons are the expensive relics of dead conflicts, and they do nothing to make us more secure.
In addition, the United States should remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert, hair-trigger status.
Another unnecessary vestige of cold-war confrontation, preparation for quick launch within minutes after warning of an attack was the rule during the era of superpower rivalry. But today for two nations at peace, keeping so many weapons on high alert may create unacceptable risks of accidental or unauthorized launch.
So as president I will ask for an assessment of what we can safely do to lower the alert status of our forces. These changes to our forces should not require years and years of detailed arms control negotiations. There is a precedent that proves the power of leadership. In 1991, the United States invited the Soviet Union to join it in removing tactical nuclear weapons from the arsenal. Huge reductions were achieved in a matter of months, making the world much safer more quickly.
Similarly, in the area of strategic nuclear weapons, we should invite the Russian government to accept the new vision that I have outlined and act on it.
But the United States should be prepared to lead by example because it is in our best interests and the best interests of the world. This would be an act of principled leadership, a chance to seize the moment and begin a new era of nuclear security, a new era of cooperation on proliferation and nuclear safety.
The cold-war era is history. Our nation must recognize new threats, not fixate on old ones. On the issue of nuclear weapons, the United States has an opportunity to lead to a safer world, both to defend against nuclear threats and reduce nuclear tensions. It is possible to build a missile defense and defuse confrontation with Russia. America should do both. . . .
Questions and Answers
Q. I'm just trying to clarify. When you say that we should be prepared to lead by example, are you saying that you'd be prepared to reduce America's nuclear arsenal whether or not the Russians follow suit?
MR. BUSH. Yes, and I would hope ----. Yes, I am, and I would work closely with the Russians to convince them to do the same.
Q. If they don't do the same, are [unintelligible] arsenal unintelligible] this nation?
A. Oh, I would never do anything to put our nation at risk.
I will work with the secretary of the defense to come up with a level of weaponry consistent with the notion that to deter -- to keep a notion to keep the peace to deterrence, but at the same time make a clear signal to the Russians that we are willing to reduce our arsenals to assure them, and to assure the world, that we're a peaceful nation, we have peace in mind.
Q. There are many Start III negotiations under way to bring down the level. Do you think the levels being talked about are insufficient? Could you explain what [unintelligible]?
A. The definition of sufficient reductions is going to be determined after I consult closely with the secretary of defense and the defense establishment in my administration, the people in my administration.
Secondly, Start III should not be an excuse to limit our ability to develop an antiballistic missile system.
Q. Governor, are you saying that we ought to share the national defense system with our allies in NATO and perhaps even with our allies in Russia as well? When you say "protect our allies," who do you mean?
A. I mean people in Europe, for example. But I also mean Israel. I, yes, I think we ought to consult closely with our allies.
As to sharing information and technologies with the Russians, it depends upon how Russia behaves, depends upon how Russia conducts itself as a member of the family of nations.
Q. Governor, would you share that technology with Taiwan?
A. I think we ought to own the technology, but I'd be willing to use it, if need be, to uphold the Taiwan relations law.
Q. Governor, President Clinton will be in Moscow in a week. What are you authorizing him or what would you like to see him do at the negotiations? You're saying that you'd like to see the number of warheads brought down. Would you like to ----.
A. What I'm really suggesting is that he not hamstring the ability of the next president to fully develop an antiballistic missile system to protect ourselves and our allies. As I said, no treaty, no agreement, would be better than a flawed agreement. I'm concerned that this administration is not fully devoted to the development of a antiballistic missile system that will work.
Q. Governor Bush, this is the second time that you've talked in kind of detail about a national missile defense system. In The New York Times you talked about the cost and how you would pay for it in context with your tax cuts, saving Social Security [unintelligible].
A. We have a $4 trillion surplus. I intend to reserve over $2 trillion of that for Social Security; about $1.3 trillion for tax cuts. The remainder will be available to meet priorities. Secondly, the cost of an antiballistic missile system is worth the cost to protect ourselves, to protect our allies. The ability to determine the final cost will be the ability to determine, you know, what the new research in technologies look like, and the current treaty prevents us from fully exploring all options when it comes to the effective deployment of an antiballistic missile system.
Q. Governor, at the [unintelligible] United Nations conference in New York last Saturday the United States and four other nuclear powers agreed to [unintelligible] nuclear arsenal [unintelligible]. Do you support that agreement? Are you still opposed to ratification by the United States [unintelligible] on the comprehensive [unintelligible] and how soon would you work for the nuclear disarmament [unintelligible]?
A. I will never reduce the levels of the nuclear stockpile of the United States to a position where it would jeopardize our safety and security. And, no, I don't support the comprehensive test ban treaty.
Q. You're willing to review the U.N. defense policy. Are you willing to review the U.S. policy regarding Cuba?
A. I'll review the policy toward Cuba when Fidel Castro has free elections, frees prisoners and has freedom of the press.
Q. Governor, [unintelligible] question this week on China. Are you satisfied that the administration has done everything it can to get P.N.T.R. passed? Do you believe it's going to pass? And did you yourself lobby for it?
A. Well, I said a pretty strong statement in Seattle the other day, and a congressman walked up to me last night and said, "You know something? I want you to know that because of your strong statement, I'm voting for the bill."
I'm going to go to the Hill today. I'm going to encourage members to vote for it. I think the president's given it his best shot. And I was happy to see the vice president finally emerge and make a statement.
Q. There's going to be four debates this coming fall ----
A. How do you know?
Q. Commission on ----
A. Oh, O.K., I see. According to Mr. Gore, he wants 60 debates.
Q. Well, the commission says that you have to have 15 percent in the polls to get in on the debates. But the consensus seems to be that if it was you and Vice President Gore, you're going to put the country to sleep ----
A. Really, well, I appreciate that objective analysis.
Q. Would you agree to have Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan on the debate?
A. And all the rest of the candidates, too?
Q. No, just those two.
A. Why not all the rest?
Q. Because they have 5 percent; the rest have minimal.
A. Well, maybe they'll be surging in the polls by then. We'll worry about the debates on the debates at the appropriate time. . . .
Q. The Russians seem to regard the A.B.M. as the cornerstone of security. You are saying that you will get out of A.B.M. My question, are you willing to talk to the Russians before you make your final decision?
A. Of course.
Q. You will?
A. Absolutely. As I told your foreign minister that I look forward to working with Mr. Putin and explaining my point of view and my attitude about the post-cold-war era.
I'm going to look him right in the eye and say, You're no longer the enemy. And we're not your enemy. Surely we can work together to bring certainty into an uncertain world.
I look forward to that, and I think it's going to be very important for the next president to clearly state the intentions of the United States, that we're a peaceful nation and that we look forward to working together with Russia to keep the peace, that the world has changed dramatically.
Q. So talking about military might, how do you define the national greatness of the United States? Do you think that the national greatness of any country should be defined by military means?
A. National greatness of the United States is how we love each other, how one neighbor will help another neighbor, whether or not we can educate our children.
The one thing I won't do as president is to allow our military preparedness to slip below levels necessary to keep the peace. I won't let the morale in the United States military deteriorate like it has under this current administration. I understand it's important to have a well-focused, well-paid military to keep the peace. And I'm going to assure Mr. Putin that that's exactly what my intentions are and that we should work together.
I'll also assure our allies and friends in Europe of the intentions. It's important for us to strengthen our alliances, which I'm going to do. . . .
Q. Are you talking about unilateral reductions in American deployed weapons? And if the Russians didn't reciprocate, would you keep to those reductions? And are you also talking about reducing stockpiles?
A. I'm talking about reduce -- both. I'm talking about making sure the level of stockpiles and deployed weaponry is such that we can keep the peace and have a strong deterrence.
I recognize we're in a different world, and I'm going to send that signal to the secretary of defense to analyze the world the way it is today, not the way it used to be when the -- it used to be when the Soviet Union had a powerful presence and what now are NATO countries. It's a changed world. And our attitude ought to change. And ----
Q. If the Russians don't reciprocate ----
A. Well, hopefully they will. I'll look forward to working with the Russians. But if they don't, the level of nuclear readiness is going to meet our needs. It's going to meet the needs of the United States of America. I will never put our security at risk. . . .
Q. You mentioned that you would review American policy toward Cuba once Fidel Castro held free elections and a free press and other standards of democracy. In this week we're in the process of reviewing and possibly changing policy toward China. And I think it's a constant source of confusion in some countries about what is the difference between China's Communist government by those standards that we judge Cuba in terms of a free press, free elections, oppression of minorities, oppression recently in China of a spiritual movement with no political intention. What's the difference?
A. The difference is, as far as I'm concerned, that we're trading with an entrepreneurial class in China. That by trade with China that we're encouraging a group of entrepreneurs and small-business owners to be able to get a taste of freedom, that we're giving them an opportunity to grow.
That's not the case in Cuba. In Cuba we're trading, in essence, with a government-controlled entity. And my worry is that capital flowing into Cuba will help prop up the Fidel Castro regime.
My belief is by trading with an entrepreneurial class in China it will enhance the spread of freedoms in China. And there's a big difference.
Q. So the standards that you mentioned before was about free elections and freedom of the press, none of which exists in China.
A. Yeah, but it's also a standard, which I failed to mention, that there's the standard who we're trading with. Who we're doing business with. When we trade with China, we're trading more and more with people that are in the private sector, entrepreneurs, and free enterprise is taking hold in China. And I think that's going to be a measure to the extent freedom takes hold in China as well. And I think there's a big difference.
Q. Governor, either here today or in a meeting on Thursday [unintelligible] would you ask General Powell to be your vice president or running mate? And/or take another position, especially [unintelligible] as secretary of state?
A. I'm not going to tell you. Well, I'm not going to tell him what I'm going to talk to him -- I'm not going to tell you what I talk to him about. I hope he's for me, let me just put it to you that way. . . .
Q. Can General Powell answer that question on his attitude on both vice president and some other candidate position such as that [unintelligible]?
A. You don't have to if you don't want to.
GENERAL POWELL. I think I've answered that on many occasions. The answer's well known. I won't take any time away from the governor to belabor you with ----
MR. BUSH. And don't you ever accuse him of being smarmy again.
Q. Governor, this program to defend the country against missiles has been problematic from the beginning from a technological point of view both during the Reagan administration and your father's administration, now during the Clinton administration. What technology do you see out there that makes you hopeful that once you implement your program you can actually defend this country against an incoming ----.
A. What I see out there is a couple of things. One, the world has changed a lot since the 80's. Science is evolving. Laser technology is evolving. There's a lot of inventiveness in our society that hasn't been unleashed on this particular subject.
And, secondly, I see a treaty that makes it hard for us to fully explore the options available, the options available to keep the peace. And there needs to be an administration with a firm commitment to exploring all options and all opportunities. Be able to understand, you know, whether or not a space-based system can work, like some hope it can. And under this administration we have -- I don't think there's been the full commitment to determining what the opportunities and options are for the country. And I think it's important to take a full look at whether or not we can keep the peace. I'm going to remind people in this country ----
And the interesting fact is a lot of people think we can defend ourselves against an accidental launch. I think if you were to ask Americans, they will tell you that we've got the capability of defending ourselves. But it's not the case. And I believe the post-cold-war era dictates a different way of thinking.
Q. Governor, a follow-up from another question, are you [unintelligible] money question related to the program?
A. I'm against soft money.
Q. Are you prepared if necessary [unintelligible] to fulfill this broadening vision that now extends to defense policy?
A. I don't have to, I'm not going to have to do that. There is enough money in the budget to do so. And there are savings to be had. And there are savings to be had in the budget as well. And I believe there is ample money to do both.
Q. Governor, are the people arrayed onstage behind you this morning involved in the formulation of this [unintelligible]?
A. Of course.
Q. And have they all agreed to advise you on foreign policy and defense matters?
A. Yes, they have. And I'm honored to have their support. I'm honored to have their opinions. I've told my supporters I was interested in thinking differently. As we go into the 21st century I want a different point of view when it comes to how to keep the peace. And it's the right thing to do for America, and it's the right thing to do for the world.
Thank you all for your time.
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Bush Backs Wider Missile Defenses
Republican Hopeful Leaves Many Key Details Undefined
Washington Post
Wednesday, May 24, 2000;
By Terry M. Neal Washington Post Staff Writer
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/24/187l-052400-idx.html
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/2/news/docs/022639.htm
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/05/24/MN29574.DTL
Texas Gov. George W. Bush called yesterday for a much larger missile defense program than the "flawed" system proposed by the Clinton administration, saying that as president he would build defenses to protect not only the United States but also its allies and interests overseas.
At the same time, Bush--surrounded by some of the GOP's most prominent defense and security experts, including retired Gen. Colin L. Powell--said he would unilaterally reduce the country's nuclear arsenal to "the lowest possible number consistent with our national security."
By advocating an ambitious antimissile system with global reach, the Republican candidate was reclaiming a GOP issue that harkens to President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative or "Star Wars" proposal and that party strategists believe has broad appeal, despite questions about its cost and feasibility.
Bush's speech deftly touched on many sensitive issues connected to missile defense without committing himself on key points. Though congressional Republicans have pressed the Clinton administration for a decision this year, Bush said a decision should be delayed. For Europeans who worry that a U.S. missile defense would divide U.S. and European interests, he offered a common protective shield. For Russia, he held out the possibility of deep cuts in warheads, which Moscow wants for economic reasons.
At the same time, Bush remained vague on how deep those cuts could be, averting confrontation with U.S. military chiefs who have insisted that the United States needs to maintain 2,000 to 2,500 strategic warheads, not the 1,500 that Russia favors. While criticizing the Clinton administration, which has been negotiating intensively for Russia's acquiescence to a missile defense plan, Bush still spoke of the need to "defuse confrontation with Russia."
Speaking at the National Press Club, Bush said: "America must build effective missile defenses, based on the best available options at the earliest possible date. Our missile defense must be designed to protect all 50 states--and our friends and allies and deployed forces overseas--from missile attacks by rogue nations or accidental launches."
Bush declined to put a price tag on his antimissile system but said it would not subvert his plans to cut taxes by $1.3 trillion over 10 years, save Social Security and promote new spending on education and domestic programs.
The White House and Vice President Gore's campaign denounced Bush's speech as a rhetorical kitchen sink of vague concepts that glossed over obvious problems, such as the cost of such a system and scientific limitations that could make it impossible.
"No, I don't think people will take this very seriously until he actually starts putting some details out," White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said. "I think people will see this as someone who's trying to make political points."
The Clinton administration has proposed a system that would begin with 100 interceptor missiles based in Alaska and could expand to as many as 250 interceptors at two sites, at a cost of up to $60 billion. The White House has tried unsuccessfully to convince the Russians that the small-scale system would be aimed at fending off attacks by such countries as North Korea and Iran, but would not affect Moscow's nuclear deterrent. So far, Russia has shown no inclination to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow the system to be built.
President Clinton's advisers are divided on whether even a small-scale system is workable. Clinton has said he will decide by the fall, after one more flight test, whether to proceed with construction.
Bush accused the Clinton administration of hastily pursuing an inadequate system "on a political timetable," adding that, "No decision would be better than a flawed agreement that ties the hands of the next president and prevents America from defending itself."
Bush did not repeat his vow to develop a missile shield unilaterally, even over Russian objections--a stand he took in South Carolina last fall. But he strongly implied that he would not back down, saying there "are positive, practical ways to demonstrate to Russia that we are no longer enemies. Russia, our allies and the world need to understand our intentions."
Clinton has not ruled out proceeding with missile defense if Russian leaders refuse to amend the ABM treaty. Nonetheless, a White House official criticized Bush for campaigning, in part, on a threat to abrogate that treaty. "Bush's attitude toward this is flippant, much too casual," the official said. "And the assumption that of course it will work, because we are a peaceful nation and we will tell them so, is truly naive."
Bush was flanked today by former secretary of state George P. Shultz; former secretary of state Henry Kissinger; former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld; former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft; and Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Also with Bush was his chief foreign affairs adviser, Condoleezza Rice, who served as an adviser to his father.
Each endorsed Bush's proposals. Powell commended Bush for taking "a fresh look at the world." Kissinger, the prime architect of the ABM Treaty in the Nixon administration, said: "I strongly support Governor Bush's proposal."
Bush said it should be possible to go below the START II treaty level of 3,000 to 3,500 warheads on each side. But he said he could not propose a specific number until he is in office and his secretary of defense has assessed America's arsenal.
That vagueness led Gore campaign advisers to maintain that Bush had essentially endorsed the White House's approach: Talks have already begun on a START III accord.
But Bush argued that he did not need to engage in lengthy negotiations. When asked by a reporter if he was saying he would unilaterally reduce the number of warheads, he replied: "Yes, I am. And I would hope--I would work closely with the Russians to convince them to do the same."
Staff writer Steven Mufson contributed to this report
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Bush would cut nuclear arsenal
Joint Chiefs tell Congress to go easy on arms reduction
Spokane Spokesman Review, May 24, 2000 Chicago Tribune
http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=052400&ID=s806281&cat=
WASHINGTON -- Texas Gov. George W. Bush on Tuesday proposed slashing the U.S. nuclear arsenal even if Russia doesn't agree to identical cuts. The proposal came as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking days before President Clinton travels to Moscow for arms talks, told lawmakers they will go only so far in shrinking the nuclear force.
Flanked by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and retired Gen. Colin Powell, Bush said that as president he would unilaterally reduce the number of nuclear warheads and develop a broad-based system to protect the U.S. and its allies from missile attack. Clinton is considering a far more limited system.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee warned the administration against making any agreement that might hamstring future presidents, particularly in building a missile defense.
"Our nation needs a new approach to nuclear security that matches a new era," Bush said. "It is time to leave the Cold War behind and defend against the new threats of the 21st century."
Both the Clinton administration and Vice President Al Gore's presidential campaign were quick to criticize the governor.
"Like a lot of statements Gov. Bush makes," said White House spokesman Joe Lockhart, "he makes very broad statements. Then, when you ask him a detailed question, he says he doesn't know the answer and he'll consult with his advisers."
Gore spokesman Douglas Hattaway said Bush was advocating a "radical rewriting" of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which bans national missile defenses, "or more likely, its abolition. ... Bush's agenda is irresponsible and shows that he lacks the depth of experience to keep America safe and secure."
On Capitol Hill, the Joint Chiefs of Staff appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee in a hearing called by the panel's Republican leaders with a clear political purpose in mind. The chiefs said they could not support deeper cuts in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, beyond levels Clinton proposed three years ago, without intensive study into the strategic implications of such cuts.
Republicans on the armed services panel were responding to reports that Clinton plans to unveil dramatic and unilateral new cuts during the Moscow summit.
"We have considered additional reductions in our nuclear arsenal," said Army Gen. Henry Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But he said "from a military perspective, several challenges must be addressed with any new proposals for a lower warhead ceiling."
Those include the possibility that deep cuts in strategic nuclear weapons would force the United States to eliminate submarines and bombers it could use in conventional combat. Shelton also warned that deep cuts would leave Russia with a significant advantage in shorter-range tactical nuclear weapons.
The senior officers made clear that while they have begun to consider the implications of cutting deeper into the U.S. nuclear arsenal, they have not conducted the kind of comprehensive study on which a president could base a negotiating proposal.
Bush proposed a comprehensive Pentagon study in his speech before an audience at the National Press Club in downtown Washington.
On two key fronts, though, Bush was at odds with Senate leaders of his own party. Bush was proposing deep, unilateral cuts, something several Republican senators spoke out against Tuesday. And by proposing to cut arms without reaching a formal treaty with Russia, Bush was, in essence, cutting the Senate out of the arms reduction process.
Bush declined to detail his armsreduction but said his plan would reach "the lowest possible number consistent with our national security" even without a Russian promise to make commensurate reductions.
"We should not keep weapons that our military planners do not need," Bush said. The proposal to cut arms unilaterally may be less bold than it seems. Russia desperately wants to cut nuclear arms because it cannot afford to maintain its huge conventional force and a major strategic arsenal.
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Bush warns Clinton about arms deal
Toledo Blade, May 24, 2000
BY ANN McFEATTERS BLADE NATIONAL BUREAU
mailto:amcfeat@theblade.com
http://www.toledoblade.com/editorial/news/0e24clin.htm
WASHINGTON - Flanked by big guns from the last four GOP administrations' foreign policy teams, Texas Gov. George W. Bush warned President Clinton yesterday not to make any agreements with Russia next week that might hamper development of an anti-missile defense system.
Governor Bush vowed that if he is elected president, he will cut the U.S. nuclear weapon arsenal below the current agreed-upon level of 3,200, regardless of whether the Russians make similar reductions. He said that in the post-Cold War era, he wants to reassess what the minimum number of nuclear weapons is for American security and talk to the Russians face-to-face to insist, "We are not your enemy.''
"The Cold War logic that led to the creation of massive stockpiles on both sides is now outdated,'' Governor Bush said. "Our mutual security need no longer depend on a nuclear balance of terror.''
Mr. Clinton leaves next week for a European trip that will include two days in Moscow in his first serious one-on-one talks with newly elected Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia is adamant that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which is interpreted as forbidding an anti-missile system by either country, be enforced. Mr. Clinton has called for spending $13 billion on developing an anti-missile system, but Republicans worry he might reach an agreement on the ABM treaty while in Moscow that they would not like.
It is rare for a presidential candidate actively to attempt to intervene in foreign policy, especially on the eve of a presidential trip abroad. At the White House, spokesman Joe Lockhart said, "I think people will see this as someone who is trying to make political points, and I'm not sure it will be taken very seriously.''
Governor Bush argues that the Clinton administration is not fully committed to a missile-defense system. Although Governor Bush promises to share U.S. technology with Russia, so far the technology does not exist to implement such a system to guard against accidental launches or terrorist-fired missiles. Whether it is feasible is extremely controversial. Proponents are adamant that a breakthrough is just around the corner; a study done by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Union of Concerned Scientists argues it will never work.
Gordon Clark, executive director of Peace Action, said, "Considering the United States has spent $122 billion over the last 30 years on a Star Wars program with zero results, new money thrown at this proven boondoggle defies all common sense. In the real world there are greater priorities. The United States could meet critical needs in health care and education by cutting off this spending spree.''
But Governor Bush said he has faith in the ingenuity of American scientists and laser technology to accomplish the challenge.
"The Clinton administration at first denied the need for a national missile-defense system. Then it delayed. Now the approach it proposes is flawed - a system initially based on a single site, when experts say that more is needed,'' Governor Bush said.
In calling for a reassessment of removing strategic nuclear weapons from the U.S. stockpile and taking them off alert, Governor Bush said, weapons that are no longer needed are "the expensive relics of dead conflicts. And they do nothing to make us more secure.''
Governor Bush read a prepared speech standing in front of 16 carefully arranged U.S. flags at the National Press Club. He was accompanied by former GOP national defense policy stars that included former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz; retired Gen. Colin Powell; former national security aides Brent Scowcroft and Condoleeza Rice, and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Mr. Kissinger, Mr. Powell, and Mr. Shultz each made brief remarks that they agree with Governor Bush on the need for a missile-defense system and a new look at national defense.
"When the anti-ballistic missile agreement was signed,'' Mr. Kissinger said, "we lived in a two-power world.''
Mr. Shultz said one of his most vivid memories is of President Reagan, who proposed a kind of "Star Wars'' defense shield, telling former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev that both sides need an insurance policy against terrorist attacks and rogue states. "The problem that Ronald Reagan saw is a reality,'' Mr. Shultz said.
General Powell said the United States has had success in the arms-control process and that now it is "time to take a fresh look at the political system.''
Potential enemies, he said, "need to be told'' the United States will do what it takes to protect her people and her allies and even former adversaries. It would be a mistake, he said, "to trap ourselves into any agreements'' that would prevent such technology from being developed.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said over the weekend that Mr. Clinton and Mr. Putin want to talk arms control, although she conceded that Republicans in Congress can prevent any new agreement from being implemented. "But I don't think we can take a pause in negotiations just because he wants to take a pause,'' she said, referring to Sen. Jesse Helms (R., N.C.), who as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has vowed to kill any arms deal that the Clinton administration makes with Russia.
Douglas Hattaway, a spokesman for Vice President Gore, said, "Bush's agenda is irresponsible and shows that he lacks the depth of experience to keep America safe and secure. Al Gore proposes a more responsible approach to protecting America that is realistic, feasible, and likely to ensure real security.''
Mr. Hattaway added, "He [Gore] favors working with the Russians to bring changes to the ABM treaty that would accommodate a responsible and practical defense against a ballistic missile attack from a rogue state or an unauthorized launch, and he supports the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty as a means of slowing down the proliferation of nuclear arms.''
Mr. Bush opposes the test-ban treaty, which failed to pass the Senate in October despite Mr. Clinton's and Mr. Gore's backing.
Groups supporting and opposing Mr. Bush's call for paring nuclear warheads and developing a form of anti-missile protection rushed forward. A new group called the Coalition to Protect Americans Now, which wants a strategic missile-defense system deployed, said it is "extremely pleased'' Governor Bush took that position because Mr. Clinton "has sabotaged every effort to deploy an effective defense, and it appears Al Gore will follow in his footsteps.''
On the other hand, a group called Peace Voter Fund this week began a $100,000 ad campaign "to educate'' voters about what it called the "dangers of building'' an anti-missile system.
Governor Bush denied that an anti-missile defense could start a new arms war. "The Cold War era is history. Our nation must recognize new threats, not fixate on old ones. On the issue of nuclear weapons, the United States has an opportunity to lead to a safer world - both to defend against nuclear threats and reduce nuclear tensions. It is possible to build a missile defense and defuse confrontation with Russia. America should do both.''
Estimates by the Congressional Budget Office are that the minimal price tag for developing an anti-missile system is $60 billion. Governor Bush said getting the money would not be a problem. The United States will have a $4 trillion budget surplus over the next 10 years, he said.
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Bush warns Clinton on arms deal with Russia
Washington Times, May 24, 2000
By Dave Boyer THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2000524234850.htm
Texas Gov. George W. Bush urged President Clinton yesterday not to strike a lame-duck arms-control deal with Russia even as the likely Republican presidential nominee pledged to cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal unilaterally.
Mr. Bush also said he would build a national missile defense system as soon as possible and extend the shield to "our friends and allies," including NATO countries and Israel.
"The administration is driving toward a hasty decision on a political timetable," said Mr. Bush in Washington, flanked by defense and foreign-policy luminaries. "No decision would be better than a flawed agreement that ties the hands of the next president and prevents America from defending itself."
President Clinton, eager to sign an arms-reduction pact to burnish his legacy, will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin June 2 to 4 in Moscow. Russian leaders have suggested reducing strategic nuclear warheads to 1,500 each, even lower than the level proposed in the START III pact.
The Russians' latest offer has alarmed top U.S. military officers, who told Congress yesterday they were uncomfortable with such deep cuts in America's nuclear arsenals. START II, which Russia ratified last month, calls for warheads to be reduced to between 3,000 to 3,500 each by 2007.
"If we wanted to depart from [proposed START III levels] . . . then we need to pause and do the necessary analysis" to assure U.S. security and deterrence would still be just as strong or stronger, Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Forces Committee.
The United States has 7,200 strategic nuclear warheads ready for immediate use, and Russia has 6,000.
Military and civilian leaders also are debating whether to link cuts in nuclear weapons to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which the administration needs to change to deploy a limited national missile defense. Russia opposes U.S. deployment of a missile shield; a member of the Russian parliament even warned Congress this month that it could lead to a "new kind of Cold War."
Mr. Bush said yesterday his administration would reassess U.S. security needs based on the nuclear threat from terrorists and rogue states, not on a "Cold War mentality" of two adversarial superpowers.
He said it should be possible to reduce the number of America's nuclear weapons "significantly further" than START II levels, although he would not suggest a number. Mr. Bush said he would implore Russia to follow America's lead but would reduce the U.S. arsenal even if Russia refuses.
"Hopefully they will," Mr. Bush said. "But if they don't, the level of nuclear readiness is going to meet our needs. I will never put our security at risk."
A spokesman for Vice President Al Gore called Mr. Bush's proposals "irresponsible."
"Mr. Bush's agenda . . . shows that he lacks the depth of experience to keep America safe and secure," said Douglas Hattaway.
"George W. Bush advocates a radical rewriting of the ABM Treaty, or more likely its abolition. He also proposes to throw aside work done to develop a feasible missile defense in favor of an approach that would require us to start all over again from scratch."
But Mr. Bush surrounded himself yesterday with a group of experts in defense and foreign affairs who support his proposal: retired Gen. Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz; former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft; and Mr. Bush's top foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, who served on the National Security Council under Mr. Bush's father, President Bush.
"We need to take a fresh look at the world," Gen. Powell said. "We can go down further [in nuclear weapons], I believe, with the proper political guidance given to our military leaders and with the kind of assessment that Governor Bush has called for . . . and he would assign to his secretary of defense."
Gen. Powell wouldn't say if he was interested in that Cabinet post, limiting his comments on politics to, "I look forward to the governor's election as president of the United States."
Mr. Kissinger, who negotiated the ABM Treaty, said he "strongly supports" Mr. Bush's proposal for a missile shield that ABM prohibits.
"Deliberate vulnerability, when the technology is available to avoid it, cannot be a strategic objective, cannot be a political objective, and cannot be a moral objective of any American president," said Mr. Kissinger.
Mr. Bush said he would extend a missile defense system to allies "whom I will consult as we develop our plans."
"I mean people in Europe, for example, but I also mean Israel," Mr. Bush said. "As to sharing information and technologies with the Russians, it depends on how Russia behaves."
He said the United States should own the technology, but he would "be willing to use it, if need be," to protect Taiwan as well.
The Pentagon has estimated the cost of missile defense at about $30 billion over 35 years, although serious doubts remain about the technology to make it work. Miss Rice acknowledged yesterday that nobody knows how much it would cost.
Mr. Bush said he would use some of the projected federal surplus over the next 10 years to deploy the anti-missile umbrella.
"We have a $4 trillion surplus," he said. "I intend to reserve over $2 trillion of that for Social Security [and] $1.3 trillion for tax cuts; the remainder would be available to meet priorities. The cost of an anti-ballistic-missile system is worth the cost to protect ourselves, to protect our allies."
This article is based in part on wire service reports.
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Bush pledges nuclear reduction
USA Today 05/24/00
By Judy Keen, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/e98/e1863.htm
WASHINGTON - Texas Gov. George W. Bush proposed reducing the United States' strategic nuclear arsenal to the lowest level possible while also deploying a broad anti-missile shield.
Bush said Tuesday that he would cut the U.S. arsenal even if Russia doesn't agree to do the same. "We should not keep weapons that our military planners do not need," he said at a news conference. "These unneeded weapons are expensive relics of dead conflicts."
If elected president, Bush said, he will "pursue the lowest possible number" of nuclear weapons "consistent with our national security."
Bush's proposal drew an immediate rebuke from Vice President Gore's campaign. "It's irresponsible and shows that he lacks the depth of experience to keep America safe and secure," said Doug Hattaway, a Gore spokesman.
To blunt that kind of criticism, Bush shared the stage with foreign-policy and defense veterans of previous Republican administrations: retired general Colin Powell, former secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"We need to show the world we are a peaceful nation, but I would never do anything to put our nation at risk," Bush said. "Today, for two nations at peace, keeping so many weapons at high alert may create unacceptable risks of accidental or unauthorized launch."
Bush said he would develop an anti-missile shield capable of thwarting a full-scale missile attack and would share it with allies in Europe and Israel. He said he would depend on scientists to determine whether a space-based, sea-based or other system is best.
The Clinton administration is expected to decide this summer whether to proceed with a $60 billion program to develop a missile defense system that would protect the United States from limited attacks by rogue nations. The system would use interceptor missiles based in Alaska.
The United States has 7,200 strategic nuclear warheads ready for use. Russia has 6,000. Under the START II treaty, the United States and Russia would reduce warheads to 3,000-3,500. START III targets negotiated in 1997 would cut each nation's warheads to 2,000-2,500.
On Tuesday, members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Senate Armed Forces Committee that they are reluctant to reduce strategic nuclear weapons below the START III limits. However, Russia wants even deeper cuts because of its budget problems. vPowell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said Bush's plan makes sense. "It's time to take a fresh look at the entire political situation that requires the continuing existence of strategic offensive weapons," Powell said. "It would be irresponsible of us not to try to put in place an insurance policy with our missile defense systems."
Polls show that Powell is many Americans' favorite choice for a Bush running mate, but he has said that he's not interested in the job. He has not, however, ruled out a Cabinet position such as secretary of State in a Bush administration.
Bush said he would pay for a missile defense system with part of the federal budget surplus. He accused President Clinton and Gore of "denying and delaying" a system that they are now pushing so Gore appears strong on defense. Russia opposes renegotiating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, which prohibits national missile defenses, and it has threatened to put all weapons-control treaties on hold if the United States violates or withdraws from the treaty.
White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said Bush's proposals amount to a "contradictory argument that we can reduce nuclear weapons and that somehow the current administration is stuck in the Cold War mentality, while making a broad argument for an expensive national missile defense" that reflects "a Cold War mentality." Clinton travels to Russia in two weeks to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Michael McFaul, an expert on Russia at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Bush's proposal for nuclear-weapons reductions isn't very different from the Clinton administration's approach. "We should go as low as we can, and nobody disagrees with that," McFaul said. "The only debate might be" over Bush's pledge to make the cuts whether Russia agrees to do the same or not.
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Ads Target Clinton Nuclear Policy
Washington Post
Wednesday, May 24, 2000; Page A05
By John Mintz Washington Post Staff Writer
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/24/074l-052400-idx.html
Conservatives who want the United States to build a national missile defense system are financing a barrage of 30-second television advertisements suggesting that President Clinton and Vice President Gore have left Americans naked against a nuclear attack.
An organization called the Coalition to Protect Americans Now is broadcasting the ads solely in the Washington, D.C., area, to reach opinion leaders in advance of Clinton's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin next month. But the group plans to air a new round of ads throughout the country during the summer and fall.
"Where will you be when the missiles are launched?" says the ad. "Dangerous nations like North Korea and Iran will soon have nuclear missiles that can hit our cities. But America has no defense against missile attacks--Clinton and Gore have left us unprotected. Nearing the election, they admit maybe we do need a missile defense--but only a limited system--and only with Russia's permission. Where will you be?"
Thomas Mead, the coalition's executive director, said it has no ties to the Republican Party or Texas Gov. George W. Bush's presidential campaign.
This first ad was funded by Helen Krieble, a Colorado horse trainer and daughter of the late Robert Krieble, a billionaire industrialist and financier of conservative groups that advocated causes including missile defenses.
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Today in Congress
Washington Post, Wednesday, May 24, 2000; Page A10
Reuters
SENATE Meets at 10 a.m.
Committees:
Armed Services--9:30 a.m. Hearing on nomination of Air Force Gen. John Gordon to be administrator of Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration. 222 Russell Office Bldg.
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Governor Bush Proposes New Leadership On National Security
Bush Seeks Deployment of Missile Defense and Reduction of Missiles
May 24, 2000, Bush News
http://www.georgewbush.com
http://www.georgewbush.com/news/2000/may/pr052300_natsec.asp
WASHINGTON, DC - Saying America needs a "new approach to nuclear security that matches a new era," Texas Governor George W. Bush today called for a national security policy focused on creating a missile defense system to protect all 50 states and U.S. friends and allies, combined with reductions in the number of nuclear missiles consistent with America's national security.
Governor Bush spoke after meeting with a group of national security experts including George Shultz, former Secretary of State; Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State and architect of the U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense; Colin Powell, retired general and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor.
"Today I am here with some of our nation's leading statesmen and defense experts," Governor Bush said. "And there is broad agreement that our nation needs a new approach to nuclear security that matches a new era. It is time to leave the Cold War behind, and defend against the new threats of the 21st century."
To meet the challenges of the new post-Cold War era, Governor Bush called for America's national security to be based on two goals:
Creation of an effective missile defense to protect all 50 states, U.S. forces abroad and American friends and allies from limited missile attacks by rogue nations or accidental launches.
Prompt review of American military requirements, leading to reductions in the number of American nuclear weapons, consistent with America's post - Cold War national security needs.
Governor Bush explained: "America must build effective missile defenses, based on the best available options, at the earliest possible date. Our missile defense must be designed to protect all 50 states - and our friends and allies and deployed forces overseas - from missile attacks by rogue nations, or accidental launches."
Governor Bush continued: "America should rethink the requirements for nuclear deterrence in a new security environment. As President, I will ask the Secretary of Defense to conduct an assessment of our nuclear force posture and determine how best to meet our security needs. While the exact number of weapons can come only from such an assessment, I will pursue the lowest possible number consistent with our national security. It should be possible to reduce the number of American nuclear weapons significantly further than what has already been agreed to under START II, without compromising our security in any way. We should not keep weapons that our military planners do not need. These unneeded weapons are the relics of dead conflicts. And they do nothing to make us more secure."
Governor Bush also called for the United States to "remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert, hair-trigger status-another dangerous vestige of Cold War confrontation. As President, I will ask for an assessment of what we can do to lower the alert status of our forces."
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NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE ACT OF 1999
[Extracted from "Thomas" http://thomas.loc.gov/]
ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/thomas/cp106/sr004.txt
69 010 Calendar No. 16 106 th Congress Report
SENATE 1st Session 106 4
February 12, 1999.--Ordered to be printed
Mr. Warner , from the Committee on Armed Services, submitted the following REPORT
together with
MINORITY VIEWS
[To accompany S. 257]
The Committee on Armed Services, to which was referred the bill (S. 257) having considered the same, reports favorably thereon and recommends that the bill do pass.
PURPOSE OF THE BILL
S. 257 would establish that it is the policy of the United States to deploy as soon as is technologically possible an effective National Missile Defense (NMD) system capable of defending the territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack (whether accidental, unauthorized, or deliberate).
S. 257 does not mandate specific architectural elements of the NMD system, specific deployment dates, or changes to any arms control agreements. It allows the Defense Department complete flexibility in designing the NMD system. S. 257, by itself, would have no budgetary impact.
SCOPE OF THE COMMITTEE REVIEW
The Committee is reporting S. 257 to the Senate for the following reasons:
Value of National Missile Defense
A commitment to the deployment of an NMD system will have two crucial impacts on the security of the United States. First, it will signal to nations that aspire to possess ballistic missiles with which to coerce or attack the United States that pursuit of such capabilities is a waste of both time and resources. In this sense, commitment to an NMD system would have a deterrent effect on proliferation. Second, if some aspiring states are not deterred, a commitment to deploy an NMD system will ensure that American citizens and their property are protected from limited ballistic missile attack.
Need for a National Missile Defense
Current administration policy on NMD--embodied in the so-called ``3+3'' ``Deployment Readiness'' program--was originally based on the premise that the United States did not face a sufficient ballistic missile threat to justify commitment to the deployment of an NMD system, and that the United States would be able to clearly discern the emergence of such a threat in sufficient time to deploy a defense. The Committee has repeatedly expressed concern regarding this policy, and has advocated making an immediate commitment to the earliest possible deployment of an NMD system, within the limits of technology and affordability. In this regard, the Committee strongly supported S. 1873 during the 105th Congress, legislation that contained the same policy as set forth in S. 257.
The Committee's concern regarding the ``3+3'' policy is based in part on the fact that a threat of ballistic missile attack on the United States already exists. Although unlikely, the threat of unauthorized or accidental launches from Russia or China is real, and may be heightened as the armed forces of former Soviet Union undergo their transition to a post-Cold War posture.
But there is also an imminent threat that stems from the growing, widely acknowledged proliferation problem. The President has in recent years declared the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems to be a national emergency. The seriousness of this problem has been articulated on numerous occasions by other senior administration officials and by Congress.
Evidence of this growing threat abounds. The range of ballistic missiles possessed by proliferant states has been steadily increasing, sometimes in sudden leaps. North Korea, for example, first purchased 300 kilometer (short-range) Scud B missiles in the 1980s, then developed the 500 kilometer Scud C, is now deploying the 1000 kilometer No-Dong, and is developing a new class of ballistic missiles known as the Taepo-Dong One and Two. On October 31, 1998, North Korea tested the Taepo-Dong One missile on a flight trajectory that passed over Japan and demonstrated the capability to deliver a small payload to an intercontinental range.
Although the Intelligence Community had observed and reported on preparations for this test, it was completely surprised by the sophistication of the Taepo-Dong One missile, especially its use of a solid fuel motor as a third stage. North Korea is also developing a longer-range version known as the Taepo-Dong Two, which will clearly be an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of attacking much of the United States and which could be operational in a few short years.
Iran has also made dramatic and sudden progress in its Shahab 3 and Shahab 4 medium range ballistic missiles, and Pakistan recently tested a missile with a range of 1500 kilometers.
The proliferation of technology, expertise and hardware with which to build a long-range ballistic missile is accelerating rapidly, spurred by advances in information technology and growing demand for space launch vehicles. This conclusion was strongly reinforced by the Commission to assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, chaired by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. As the Commission reported: ``The threat to the U.S. posed by these emerging capabilities is broader, more mature and evolving more rapidly than has been reported in estimates and reports by the Intelligence Community.''
Continuing technological surprise
According to the Rumsfeld Commission report: ``The warning times the U.S. can expect of new, threatening ballistic missile deployments are being reduced. Under some plausible scenarios the U.S. might well have little or no warning before operational deployment.''
The Intelligence Community has been repeatedly surprised by advances in ballistic missile technology achieved by less developed countries, calling into question its ability to anticipate precisely when the United States will be threatened by long-range ballistic missiles. In 1997, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) testified that Iran could have a medium-range missile by 2007. One year later the DCI told the Senate, ``since I testified, Iran's success in getting technology and materials from Russian companies, combined with recent indigenous Iranian advances, means that it could have a medium-range missile much sooner than I assessed last year.'' A Department of State official testified in September, 1997 that Iran could develop this missile in ``maybe one to one-and-a-half years, and it may be shorter than that,'' meaning as much as nine years sooner than had been predicted only a year earlier by the DCI.
Variables like the amount of outside assistance provided to rogue nations--factors which can significantly speed the acquisition of ballistic missiles--cannot be predicted reliably. On April 6, 1998, for example, Pakistan launched a ballistic missile capable of reaching a range of 1500 kilometers. In November 1998, the Defense Department published ``Proliferation: Threat and Response,'' its analysis of the world's weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems. That publication contained no mention of any effort by Pakistan to develop such a capability, crediting Pakistan with, at best, a 300 km. short-range ballistic missile. Yet less than six months later, Pakistan successfully launched a missile with five times the range of its previous most capable weapon. Pakistan claims its achievements were indigenous, the government of India charges China with providing assistance, and United States government officials suggest North Korea may have provided the technology for the Ghauri missile. Whatever the source of technological aid, one thing is clear: the United States was once again surprised by the ballistic missile achievements of another state.
There are numerous other examples of our intelligence community's uneven record in anticipating ballistic missile developments in other countries. This does not suggest incompetence or a lack of diligence on the part of the Intelligence Community, which is staffed by competent and dedicated people. It underscores, however, that evidence of technological developments is often difficult to obtain, and that even when such evidence is available, it is oftentimes difficult to discern just what it means until after the fact. Indeed, the DCI told the Senate in 1997 that ``gaps and uncertainties preclude a good projection of exactly when `rest of the world' countries will deploy ICBMs.''
Given this track record, the Committee believes the security of American lives and property cannot be based on a hope that the United States will see the next major advance in ballistic missiles long before it is available to coerce or harm our nation.
Recent developments reinforce the need to move beyond ``3+3''
As specified above, North Korea's flight test of the Taepo-Dong One missile demonstrates the ability of rogue states to develop ballistic missiles capable of threatening the United States. Such a system could be operational years before the United States could field an NMD system. As the Rumsfeld Commission made clear in its report, such threats could materialize with little if any warning and there are several rogue countries pursuing such capabilities.
To its credit, the Administration has now acknowledged the existence of this threat and has taken significant steps to address it. In particular, the Committee commends Secretary of Defense William Cohen for his decision to increase funding for NMD by $6.6 billion over the Future Years Defense Program. These developments, however, fundamentally change the rationale supporting the ``3+3'' policy. This policy has been based on a perceived need to gather more information on the ballistic missile threat, NMD program affordability, and technology maturity, before making a deployment decision. The Administration has now indicated that the threat is all but here. It has also budgeted the funds needed to implement a deployment decision, implicitly confirming that the program is affordable. The Administration's only remaining decision criterion for which additional information is needed relates to technology development. Since S. 257 makes clear that a deployment would only proceed once the technology is ready, the Committee sees no apparent reason to further delay a deployment decision.
The Administration has acknowledged that it must amend or withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty of 1972 prior to deployment of an NMD system. Some have asserted that a deployment decision should be delayed while negotiations are undertaken to achieve such Treaty changes. The Committee does not find this argument persuasive. Although the Committee believes that the United States must engage Russia with caution and respect, it does not believe that postponing an NMD deployment decision will facilitate such talks. Indeed, the Committee believes that once a firm commitment to NMD deployment has been announced only then will Russia seriously engage in negotiations to modify the ABM Treaty. The United States must make it clear that its decision to deploy an NMD system is based on threats not envisioned at the time the ABM Treaty was negotiated, and that such a decision in no way threatens Russian security. The United States, however, must make it equally clear that it will proceed with deployment of an NMD system, whether or not Russia agrees to modify the ABM Treaty. The only way to clearly send such a signal is by a clear change in United States policy. The Committee believes that S. 257 is the best vehicle for accomplishing this change.
Summary
The Committee believes the need for deployment of NMD is clear. The threat exists and continues to grow. The United States has been frequently surprised at the pace and character of its progress. The ability of the United States to clearly discern those threats well in advance of their arrival is limited. Confidence in our ability to respond rapidly to these threats must be tempered by realistic assessments of the technical challenges and the ability of the technical community to deal with them. S. 257, which clearly indicates a commitment to deploy NMD, will ensure the United States is prepared to meet that threat.
COMMITTEE ACTION
In accordance with the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946, as amended by the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970, there is set forth below the committee vote to report the National Missile Defense Act of 1997 (S. 1873).
In favor: Senators Warner, Thurmond, McCain, Smith, Inhofe, Santorum, Snowe, Roberts, Allard, Hutchinson, Sessions, and Lieberman.
Opposed: Senators Levin, Kennedy, Bingaman, Byrd, Robb, Cleland, and Reed. Voting present: Senator Landrieu.
Vote: 12 7, with 1 voting ``present''.
CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE COST ESTIMATE
On February 2, 1999, the Congressional Budget Office issued a cost estimate for S. 257. According to this estimate ``the bill, by itself, would have no budgetary impact.'' The cover letter and complete cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office are shown below.
U.S. Congress,
Congressional Budget Office,
Washington, DC, February 2, 1999.
Hon. Thad Cochran, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Senator: At the request of your staff, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has prepared the enclosed cost estimate for S. 257, the National Missile Defense Act of 1999.
If you wish further details on this estimate, we will be pleased to provide them. The CBO staff contact is Raymond Hall. Sincerely,
James L. Blum,
Acting Director.
Enclosure.
S. 257--National Missile Defense Act of 1999
S. 257 would state that it is U.S. policy to deploy as soon as technologically possible an effective national missile defense system capable of defending the territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack (whether accidental, unauthorized, or deliberate).
CBO estimates that the bill, by itself, would have no budgetary impact. Because it would not affect direct spending or receipts, pay-as-you-go procedures would not apply. Any budgetary impact would stem from separate implementing legislation or from annual authorization and appropriation bills. How the costs of implementing the policy enunciated in S. 257 would compare with costs likely to be incurred under current law would depend on the systems and time frame required by subsequent legislation.
Secton 4 of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act excludes from the application of that act any legislative provisions that are necessary for national security. That exclusion might apply to the provisions of this bill. In any case, the bill contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates.
The CBO staff contact for this estimate is Raymond Hall. This estimate was approved by Robert A. Sunshine, Deputy Assistant Director for Budget Analysis.
REGULATORY IMPACT
Paragraph 11(b) of rule XXVI of the Standing Rules of the Senate requires that a report on the regulatory impact of a bill be included in the report on the bill. The committee finds that there is no regulatory impact in the cost of S. 257.
CHANGES IN EXISTING LAW
S. 257 does not include any changes in existing law.
MINORITY VIEWS
We share the Administration's commitment to providing the American people with effective protection against the emerging long-range missile threat from rogue states. That is why we support the Defense Department's NMD Deployment Readiness Program to develop a limited NMD system to protect the United States against such a developing threat.
We cannot, however, support S. 257, the ``National Missile Defense Act of 1999,'' as it has been reported to the Senate by the Armed Services Committee. We agree with the President's senior national security advisors that this legislation would needlessly make a National Missile Defense (NMD) deployment decision now, before the Defense Department wants to, needs to, or is prepared to make such a decision.
This legislation would not advance by one day the development of an NMD system suitable for deployment, but could result in an increased threat to the United States from the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
S. 257 states:
It is the policy of the United States to deploy as soon as is technologically possible an effective National Missile Defense system capable of defending the territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack (whether accidental, unauthorized, or deliberate).
This language makes a commitment now to deploy a National Missile Defense (NMD) system without taking into account crucial factors identified by Defense Secretary Cohen when he testified to the Armed Services Committee on February 3, 1999. Secretary Cohen testified that the Administration will make a decision in June 2000 on whether to deploy a limited NMD system after taking into account: the threat we face from ballistic missiles; the operational effectiveness of the NMD system; the affordability of the system; and the impact of deployment on nuclear arms reductions and arms control treaties. S. 257 ignores these factors and reduces the issue to one of what is ``technologically possible''.
Enactment of S. 257 would undermine the current effort of the Administration to reach a negotiated agreement on any changes to the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty that may be necessary to accommodate deployment of a limited NMD system. We cannot and will not give Russia or any other nation a veto over our NMD requirements or programs. But making a decision to deploy an NMD system before we attempt to negotiate changes to the ABM Treaty--and before DOD says the nation can responsibly make such a decision--could reduce Russia's willingness to work with us on reducing nuclear weapons under the START process, lead Russia to retain thousands of nuclear warheads it would otherwise eliminate, and dramatically increase the threat of nuclear proliferation.
Administration opposition
In a letter dated February 3, 1999 (the full text of which is included below), Mr. Samuel Berger, the President's National Security Advisor, indicated that ``if S. 257 were presented to the President in its current form, his senior national security advisors would recommend that the bill be vetoed.''
Mr. Berger explained the basis for their position in his letter:
The Administration strongly opposes S. 257 because it suggests that our decision on deploying this system should be based solely on a determination that the system is ``technologically possible.'' This unacceptably narrow definition would ignore other critical factors that the Administration believes must be addressed when it considers the deployment question in 2000, including those that must be evaluated by the President as Commander-in-Chief.
We intend to base the deployment decision on an assessment of the technology (based on an initial series of rigorous flight-tests) and the proposed system's operational effectiveness. In addition, the President and his senior advisors will need to confirm whether the rogue state ballistic missile threat to the United States has developed as quickly as we now expect, as well as the cost to deploy.
Berger went on to say:
A decision regarding NMD deployment must also be addressed within the context of the ABM Treaty and our objectives for achieving future reductions in strategic offensive arms through START II and III. The ABM Treaty remains a cornerstone of strategic stability, and Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin agree that it is of fundamental significance to achieving the elimination of thousands of strategic nuclear arms under these treaties.
It is important to understand that S. 257 will not accelerate the development of a limited NMD system suitable for deployment by one day. Senior Defense Department officials have stated repeatedly that DOD is already proceeding with the development of the NMD system as fast as is technically possible. Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre testified to the Armed Services Committee on October 2, 1998 that the NMD program ``is as close as we can get in the Department of Defense to a Manhattan Project. We are pushing this very fast''. General Joseph Ralston, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified at the same hearing that ``I know of no other program in the Department of Defense that has had as many constraints removed in terms of oversight and reviews just so that we can develop and deploy it as quickly as possible.'' As DOD has made clear on numerous occasions, adding more money will not accelerate the program.
On January 20, Defense Secretary Cohen announced four decisions on the NMD program, while emphasizing that ``No deployment decision has been made at this time. That will be made in June of 2000.'' The four items are as follows:
(1) For the first time, the Administration is budgeting the funds ($6.6 billion) in the Future Years Defense Program for possible deployment of a limited NMD system. This funding will permit deployment if the decision is made to deploy. Without this funding, no deployment would be possible. This would bring the total NMD funding for 1999 2005 to $10.5 billion.
(2) Secretary Cohen affirmed that the Administration expects that the threat of ballistic missiles from rogue nations will continue to grow and will pose a threat to the U.S. territory in the near future.
(3) Secretary Cohen announced that the Administration will seek possible changes to the ABM Treaty with Russia in the event that deployment would require modification. He also noted that if we cannot agree on changes to the Treaty, the United States could exercise its right to withdraw from the Treaty if necessary.
(4) The earliest anticipated deployment date for the NMD system was delayed from FY 2003 to FY 2005 because of continuing concerns about the technology of the system and because certain critical tests will not occur until FY 2003.
Secretary Cohen's announcement clearly demonstrates the Administration's commitment to continue moving forward with a limited NMD program. The additional funding would permit deployment if a decision is made to deploy. The threat is clearly developing more quickly than was believed even one year ago. At the same time, the Administration policy--unlike S. 257--provides the flexibility to consider the full range of relevant factors and to pursue planned negotiations on possible ABM Treaty modifications before making a deployment decision.
Technology and operational effectiveness
Even with Secretary Cohen's announcement that the earliest anticipated deployment date is now 2005, the NMD program remains high risk. Numerous technical challenges remain, and the integration of all the component parts into a system that can demonstrate its capability is years away. The first integrated system test using a production interceptor and kill vehicle is not scheduled to take place until 2003. Prior to that time tests will rely on surrogate components for some of the most critical pieces of hardware.
S. 257 would make the deployment commitment now, prior to any demonstration of the capability of the system, and prior to any ability to evaluate whether it is operationally effective and able to meet its system requirements. As the Defense Department and Joint Chiefs of Staff have pointed out, if we were to commit to deploying an NMD system ``as soon as technologically possible'', we might be committing ourselves to building a system that is not as effective as we would need or desire to counter the evolving threat.
In 1997, General John Shalikashvili, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified to the Committee that the earliest possible system would not provide optimum capability: ``The NMD Deployment Readiness Program optimizes the potential for an effective National Missile Defense system. If the decision is made to deploy an NMD system in the near term, then the system fielded would provide a very limited capability. If deploying a system in the near term can be avoided, DOD can continue to enhance the technology base and the commensurate capability of the NMD program system.''
By committing to deploy now, before the system has been fully tested and before its operational capability has been demonstrated, S. 257 would run the risk of committing to a system that is either inadequate or, worse yet, ineffective.
The normal DOD acquisition process for major weapon systems requires a rigorous review of numerous technical, performance and cost considerations at each major decision point in the development or acquisition process. DOD Regulation 5000.2 R establishes the mandatory procedures for major defense acquisition programs: ``Threat projections, system performance, unit production cost estimates, life cycle costs, cost performance tradeoffs, acquisition strategy, affordability constraints, and risk management shall be major considerations at each milestone decision point.'' S. 257 would mandate a deployment decision while ignoring all of these critical acquisition requirements.
Deputy Defense Secretary Hamre and Vice Chairman of the JCS General Ralston have testified that the Defense Department has already put the NMD program on a very fast track. General Shelton has testified that the program has been compressed from a normal 16-year process by more than half. This speed led an independent review team, chaired by former Air Force Chief of Staff General Welch, to criticize a ``rush to failure'', citing the need for more testing and more time to evaluate and incorporate test results. Secretary Cohen's announcement that the deployment date is expected no sooner than 2005 is designed to reduce the risk of failure. In mandating deployment ``as soon as technologically possible'', S. 257 could undermine the Department's efforts to ensure that the NMD system is operationally effective and cost-effective.
ABM Treaty Issues
The United States and Russia agree that the ABM Treaty is indispensable for further reductions in nuclear weapons. At the Helsinki Summit on March 21, 1997, Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin issued a joint statement on the ABM Treaty, which began as follows:
President Clinton and President Yeltsin, expressing their commitment to strengthening strategic stability and international security, emphasizing the importance of further reductions in strategic offensive arms, and recognizing the fundamental significance of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty for these objectives as well as the necessity for effective theater missile defense (TMD) systems, consider it their common task to preserve the ABM Treaty, prevent circumvention of it, and enhance its viability.
Defense Secretary Cohen has made it clear that both pursuing a limited NMD program and maintaining the ABM Treaty, are in our national interest and can be accomplished. During his press conference on January 20, 1999, Secretary Cohen stated his view on the ABM Treaty:
I believe it's in our interest to maintain that. I think we need to modify it to allow for an NMD program that I've outlined, but the ABM Treaty, I think, is important to maintain the limitations on offensive missiles. To the extent that there is no ABM Treaty, then certainly Russia or other countries would feel free to develop as many offensive weapons as they wanted, which would set in motion a comparable dynamic to offset that with more missiles here.
Mr. Berger's letter of February 3, 1999, amplifies the Administration's views about the importance of maintaining the ABM Treaty and nuclear arms reductions as a factor in the NMD deployment decision:
S. 257 suggests that neither the ABM Treaty nor our objectives for START II and START III are factors in an NMD deployment decision. This would clearly be interpreted by Russia as evidence that we are not interested in working towards a cooperative solution, one that is in both our nations' security interests. I cannot think of a worse way to begin a negotiation on the ABM Treaty, nor one that would put at greater risk the hard-won bipartisan gains of START. Our goal would be to achieve success in negotiations on the ABM Treaty while also securing the strategic arms reductions available through START. That means we need to recognize and address the interrelationship between these two tracks.
The Armed Services Committee has previously recognized the importance of a cooperative approach on missile defense and the ABM Treaty. Last year the Committee included a provision in the Strom Thurmond National Defense Authorization Act for FY 1999 that encouraged the U.S. to work in a cooperative manner with Russia on issues of missile defense. The Conference Report Statement of Managers on this bill stated:
The conferees believe that a cooperative approach to ballistic missile defense could lead to a mutually agreeable evolution of the ABM Treaty, i.e., either modification or replacement by a newer understanding or agreement, that would clear the way for the United States and Russia to deploy national missile defenses each believes necessary for its security. If implemented in a cooperative manner, the conferees do not believe that such steps would undermine the original intent of the ABM Treaty, which was to maintain strategic stability and permit significant nuclear arms reductions.
S. 257 is inconsistent with this understanding of the importance of a cooperative approach towards the ABM Treaty to maintaining strategic stability and permitting large reductions in nuclear weapons. If enacted, S. 257 would make it much more difficult for the Administration to maintain the continuing benefits of the ABM Treaty and the cooperative approach to nuclear arms reductions under the START process.
By making the deployment decision now, S. 257 would preclude the Administration from negotiating possible changes to the ABM Treaty before making an NMD deployment decision in June of 2000. This is one of the key reasons that the President's senior national security advisors are strongly opposed to S. 257 and would recommend a veto of it.
CONCLUSION
S. 257 would needlessly make a premature NMD deployment decision and jeopardize our ongoing effort to work cooperatively with Russia on possible changes to the ABM Treaty, an effort the President and his senior national security advisors believe is critically important. S. 257 would not accelerate the NMD system by a single day, but could increase the proliferation risk from thousands of nuclear weapons that would otherwise be eliminated through the START process. In other words, S. 257 would provide no tangible benefit to the NMD program, but it could reduce our security.
We are all concerned with the need to protect Americans from the threat of ballistic missiles from rogue nations, as we are with the need to protect Americans from other threats. The Defense Department is already proceeding as fast as possible with the development of a limited National Missile Defense system. The Administration is working in a cooperative manner to negotiate possible changes to the ABM Treaty that could preserve the benefits of that treaty, including the verified reduction of thousands of Russian nuclear weapons. Secretary Cohen's plan is the right one and we should stick with it.
Carl Levin.
Ted Kennedy.
Jeff Bingaman.
Robert C. Byrd.
Chuck Robb.
Max Cleland.
Jack Reed.
The White House,
Washington, February 3, 1999.
Hon. Carl Levin, Ranking Minority Member, Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Levin: I understand the Senate Armed Services Committee will consider tomorrow S. 257--The National Missile Defense Act of 1999.
I want to underscore that the Administration shares with Congress a commitment to ensuring the American people are provided effective protection against the emerging long-range missile threat from rogue states. That is why we have since 1996 diligently pursued a deployment readiness program to develop a limited National Missile Defense (NMD) system designed to protect against such threats. We have now budgeted $10.5 billion between FY 1999 2005 for this program, including the funds that would be necessary during this period to deploy a limited NMD system.
Secretary Cohen has recently made clear that the Administration will address the deployment decision in June 2000. The Administration strongly opposes S. 257 because it suggests that our decision on deploying this system should be based solely on a determination that the system is ``technologically possible.'' This unacceptably narrow definition would ignore other critical factors that the Administration believes must be addressed when it considers the deployment question in 2000, including those that must be evaluated by the President as Commander-in-Chief.
We intend to base the deployment decision on an assessment of the technology (based on an initial series of rigorous flight-tests) and the proposed system's operational effectiveness. In addition, the President and his senior advisors will need to confirm whether the rogue state ballistic missile threat to the United States has developed as quickly as we now expect, as well as the cost to deploy.
A decision regarding NMD deployment must also be addressed within the context of the ABM Treaty and our objectives for achieving future reductions in strategic offensive arms through START II and III. The ABM Treaty remains a cornerstone of strategic stability, and Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin agree that it is of fundamental significance to achieving the elimination of thousands of strategic nuclear arms under these treaties.
The Administration has made clear to Russia that deployment of a limited NMD that required amendments to the ABM Treaty would not be
incompatible with the underlying purpose of the ABM Treaty, i.e., to maintain strategic stability and enable further reductions in strategic nuclear arms. The ABM Treaty has been amended before, and we see no reason why we should not be able to modify it again to permit deployment of an NMD effective against rogue nation missile threats.
We could not and would not give Russia or any other nation a veto over our NMD requirements. It is important to recognize that our sovereign rights are fully protected by the supreme national interests clause that is an integral part of this Treaty. But neither should we issue ultimatums. We are prepared to negotiate any necessary amendments in good faith.
S. 257 suggests that neither the ABM Treaty nor our objectives for START II and START III are factors in an NMD deployment decision. this would clearly be interpreted by Russia as evidence that we are not interested in working towards a cooperative solution, one that is in both our nations' security interests. I cannot think of a worse way to begin a negotiation on the ABM Treaty, nor one that would put at greater risk the hard-won bipartisan gains of START. Our goal would be to achieve success in negotiations on the ABM Treaty while also securing the strategic arms reductions available through START. That means we need to recognize and address the interrelationship between these two tracks.
The Administration hopes the Senate will work to modify S. 257 to reflect the priority that we believe must be attached to the ABM and START objectives I have outlined above. But if S. 257 were presented to the President in its current form, his senior national security advisors would recommend that the bill be vetoed.
Sincerely,
Samuel R. Berger,
Assistant to the President
for National Security Affairs.
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S.257 (Major Legislation)
Sponsor: Sen Cochran, Thad (introduced 1/20/1999) Related Bills: H.R.4, S.269 Latest Major Action: 5/18/1999 Senate incorporated this measure in H.R. 4 as an amendment.
Title: A bill entitled, "The Cochran-Inouye National Missle Defense Act of 1999".
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d106:s.257:
There are 3 versions of Bill Number S.257 for the 106th Congress
1 . National Missile Defense Act of 1999 (Introduced in the Senate)[S.257.IS]
2 . National Missile Defense Act of 1999 (Reported in the Senate)[S.257.RS]
3 . National Missile Defense Act of 1999 (Engrossed in Senate)[S.257.ES]
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:s.257:
Quick Route to U.S. Congress:
http://www.senate.gov/senators/index.cfm (Senators' Websites)
http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.html (Representatives' Websites)
http://thomas.loc.gov/ (Pending Legislation - Search)
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30 Years After
The legacy of America's largest nuclear test
By Jeffrey St. Clair,
August 8, 1999
In These times
http://www.inthesetimes.com/stclair2317.html
Amchitka Island sits at the midway point on the great arc of Alaska's Aleutian Islands, less than 900 miles across the Bering Sea from the coast of Russia. Amchitka, a spongy landscape of maritime tundra, is one of the most southerly of the Aleutians. The island's relatively temperate climate has made it one of the Arctic's most valuable bird sanctuaries, a critical staging ground for more than 100 migratory species, as well as home to walruses, sea otters and sea lions. Off the coast of Amchitka is a thriving fishery of salmon, pollock, haddock and halibut.
All of these values were recognized early on. In 1913, Amchitka was designated as a national wildlife refuge by President William Howard Taft. But these ecological wonders were swept aside in the early '60s when the Pentagon and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) went on the lookout for a new place to blow up H-bombs. Thirty years ago, Amchitka was the site of three large underground nuclear tests, including the most powerful nuclear explosion ever detonated by the United States.
The aftershocks of those blasts are still being felt. Despite claims by the AEC and the Pentagon that the test sites would safely contain the radiation released by the blasts for thousands of years, independent research by Greenpeace and newly released documents from the Department of Energy (DOE) show that the Amchitka tests began to leak almost immediately. Highly radioactive elements and gasses, such as tritium, americium-241 and plutonium, poured out of the collapsed test shafts, leached into the groundwater and worked their way into ponds, creeks and the Bering Sea. At the same time, thousands of Amchitka laborers and Aleuts living on nearby islands were put in harm's way. Dozens have died of radiation-linked cancers. The response of the federal government to these disturbing findings has been almost as troublesome as the circumstances surrounding the tests themselves: a consistent pattern of indifference, denial and cover-up continues even today.
There were several factors behind the selection of Amchitka as a test site. One most certainly was the proximity to the Soviet Union. These explosions were meant to send a message. Indeed, the tests were designed to calibrate the performance of the Spartan anti-ballistic missile, built to take out the Soviet nuclear arsenal. Publicly, however, the rationale offered by the AEC and the Defense Department was simply that Amchitka was a remote, and therefore safe, testing ground. "The site was selectedand I underscore the pointbecause of the virtually zero likelihood of any damage," claimed James Schlesinger, then chairman of the AEC.
What Schlesinger and his cohorts overlooked was the remarkable culture of the Aleuts. Amchitka may have been remote from the continental United States, but for nearly 10,000 years it had been the home of the Aleuts. Indeed, anthropologists believe the islands around Amchitka may be the oldest continuously inhabited area in North America. The aleuts left Amchitka in the 1880s after Russian fur traders had wiped out the sea otter population, but they continued to inhabit nearby islands and relied on the waters near Amchitka for subsistence. The Aleuts raised forceful objections to the tests, pointing to the risk of radiation leaks, earthquakes and tsunamis that might overwhelm their coastal villages. These concerns were never addressed by the federal government. In fact, the Aleuts were never consulted about the possible dangers at all.
In 1965, the Long Shot test exploded an 80 kiloton bomb. The $10 million test, the first one supervised by the Pentagon and not the AEC, was really a trial run for bigger things to come. But small as it was, there were immediate problems. Despite claims by the Pentagon that the test site would not leak, radioactive tritium and krypton-85 began to seep into freshwater lakes almost instantly. But evidence of radioactivity, collected by Defense Department scientists only three months after the test, was kept secret for five years. The bomb site continues to spill toxins into the environment. In 1993, EPA researchers detected high levels of tritium in groundwater samples taken near the test site.
The contamination from Long Shot didn't deter the Pentagon bomb-testers. In 1969, the AEC drilled a hole 4,000 feet deep into the rock of Amchitka and set off the Milrow nuclear test. The one megaton blast was 10 times as powerful as Long Shot. The AEC called it a "calibration test" designed to see if Amchitka could withstand a much larger test. The evidence should have convinced them of their dangerous folly. The blast triggered a string of small earthquakes and several massive landslides; knocked water from ponds, rivers and lakes more than 50 feet into the air; and, according to government accounts, "turned the surrounding sea to froth."
A year later, the AEC and the Pentagon announced their plans for the Cannikin nuclear test. At five megatons, Cannikin was to be the biggest underground nuclear explosion ever conducted by the United States. The blast would be 385 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Cannikin became a rallying point for native groups, anti-war and anti-nuke activists, and the nascent environmental movement. Indeed, it was opposition to Cannikin by Canadian and American greens, who tried to disrupt the test by taking boats near the island, that sparked the birth of Greenpeace.
A lawsuit was filed in federal court, charging that the test violated the Limited Test Ban Treaty and the newly enacted National Environmental Policy Act. In a 4 to 3 decision, the Supreme Court refused to halt the test. What the Court didn't know, however, was that six federal agencies, including the departments of State and Interior, and the fledgling EPA, had lodged serious objections to the Cannikin test, ranging from environmental and health concerns to legal and diplomatic problems. Nixon issued an executive order to keep the comments from being released. These documents, known as the Cannikin Papers, came to symbolize the continuing pattern of secrecy and cover-up that typified the nation's nuclear testing program. Even so, five hours after the ruling was handed down on Nov. 6, 1971, the AEC and the Pentagon pulled the switch, detonating the Cannikin bomb.
In an effort to calm growing public opposition, AEC chief Schlesinger dismissed environmental protesters and the Aleuts as doomsayers, taking his family with him to watch the test. "It's fun for the kids and my wife is delighted to get away from the house for awhile," he quipped.
With the Schlesingers looking on, the Cannikin bomb, a 300-foot-long device implanted in a mile-deep hole under Cannikin lake, exploded with the force of an earthquake registering 7.0 on the Richter Scale. The shock of the blast scooped a mile-wide, 60-foot-deep subsidence crater in the ground over the test site and triggered massive rockfalls.
The immediate ecological damage from the blast was staggering. Nearly 1,000 sea otters, a species once hunted to near extinction, were killedtheir skulls crushed by the shockwaves of the explosion. Other marine mammals died when their eyes were blown out of their sockets or when their lungs ruptured. Thousands of birds also perished, their spines snapped and their legs pushed through their bodies. (Neither the Pentagon nor the Fish and Wildlife Service has ever studied the long-term ecological consequences of the Amchitka explosions.) Most worrisome was that a large volume of water from White Alice Creek vanished after the blast. The disappearance of the creek was more than a sign of Cannikin's horrific power. It was also an indication that the project had gone terribly wrong; the blast ruptured the crust of the earth, sucking the creek into a brand new aquifer, a radioactive one.
In the months following the explosion, blood and urine samples were taken from Aleuts living in the village of Adak on a nearby island. The samples were shown to have abnormally high levels of tritium and cesium-137, both known carcinogens. Despite these alarming findings, the feds never went back to Adak to conduct follow-up medical studies. The Aleuts, who continue their seafaring lifestyle, are particularly vulnerable to radiation-contaminated fish and marine mammals, and radiation that might spread through the Bering Sea, plants and iceflows.
But the Aleuts weren't the only ones exposed to Cannikin's radioactive wrath. More than 1,500 workers who helped build the test sites, operate the bomb tests and clean up afterward were also put at risk. The AEC never conducted medical studies on any of these laborers. When the Alaska District Council of Laborers of the AFL-CIO, began looking into the matter in the early '90s, the DOE claimed that none of the workers had been exposed to radiation. They later were forced to admit that exposure records and dosimeter badges had been lost.
In June 1996, two Greenpeace researchers, Pam Miller and Norm Buske, returned to Amchitka. Buske, a physicist, collected water and plant samples from various sites on the island. Despite claims by the DOE that the radiation would be contained, the samples taken by Buske revealed the presence of plutonium and americium-241 in freshwater plants at the edge of the Bering Sea. In other words, Cannikin continues to leak. Both of these radioactive elements are extremely toxic and have half-lives of hundreds of years.
In part because of the report issued by Miller and Buske, a new sense of urgency was lent to the claims of laborers who said they had become sick after working at the Amchitka nuclear site. In 1998, the union commissioned a study by Rosalie Bertell, a former consultant to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (which replaced the AEC). Bertell found that hundreds of Amchitka workers were exposed to ionizing radiation at five times the level then recognized as hazardous. However, the research is complicated by the fact that many of the records from the Amchitka blast remain classified and others were simply tossed away. "The loss of worker exposure records, or the failure to keep such records, was inexcusable," Bertell says.
One of the driving forces behind the effort to seek justice for the Amchitka workers and the Aleuts is Beverley Aleck. Her husband Nick helped drill the mile-deep pit for the Cannikin test; four years later, he died of myelogenous leukemia, a type of cancer associated with radiation exposure. Aleck, an Aleut, has waged a multi-year battle with the DOE to open the records and to begin a health monitoring program for the Amchitka workers. In April of this year, the Clinton administration finally agreed to begin the first health survey of the Amchitka workers. The study was supposed to begin this summer, but it is languishing without funding.
Will the victims of the Amchitka blasts ever get justice? Don't count on it. For starters, the Aleuts and Amchitka workers are specifically excluded by the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act from receiving medical assistance, death benefits or financial compensation. There is move to amend this legal loophole, but even that wouldn't mean the workers and Aleuts would be treated fairly. The DOE has tried repeatedly to stiff arm other cases by either dismissing the link between radiation exposure and cancer or, when that fails, invoking a "sovereignty" doctrine, which claims the agency is immune from civil lawsuits.
Dr. Paul Seligman, deputy assistant secretary of the DOE's Office of Health Studies, writes it off as the price of the Cold War. "These were hazardous operations," Seligman says. "The hazards were well understood, but the priorities at the time were weapons production and the defense of the nation."
At a time when the mainstream press and Republican politicians are howling over lax security at nuclear weapons sites and Chinese espionage, a more dangerous betrayal of trust is the withholding of test data from the American public. China may use the Los Alamos secrets to upgrade its tiny nuclear arsenal, but the Amchitka explosions already have imperiled a thriving marine ecosystem and caused dozens of lethal cancers.
The continuing cover-up and manipulation of information by the DOE not only denies justice to the victims of Amchitka, but indicates that those living near other DOE sites may be at great risk. "DOE management of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex is of the old school in which bad news is hidden," says Pamela Miller, now executive director of Alaska Community Action on Toxics. "This conflicts with sound risk management and makes the entire system inherently risky. The overwhelming threat is of an unanticipated catastrophe."
Jeffrey St. Clair is a contributing editor of In These Times.
-------- us politics
Gore doesn't want to 'disarm America'
USA Today
05/24/00- Updated 02:26 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/e98/e1879.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Vice President Al Gore responded Wednesday with a chuckle to the National Rifle Association's recent declaration of war on his candidacy and insisted: ''I have no intention of proposing or supporting policies or allowing policies that disarm America.''
The Democratic presidential candidate, speaking on National Public Radio's ''Diane Rehm Show,'' was reacting to a vivid image from last weekend's NRA convention. Association president Charlton Heston had lifted a musket above his head and challenged Gore, saying the weapon would have to be pried ''from my cold dead hands.''
Reminded by Rehm of that scene, Gore replied with a laugh that ''I would not do what he accuses me of planning.''
Heston and others at the convention in Charlotte, N.C., accused the Clinton-Gore administration of plotting to confiscate guns from law-abiding citizens and then ban the weapons, beginning with licensing and registration.
''I have no intention of proposing or supporting policies or allowing policies that disarm America or take guns away from law-abiding gun owners,'' Gore said Wednesday.
''What I have proposed that has upset (Heston) so much is a set of common-sense restrictions on the availability of handguns to people who shouldn't have them.''
Gore has proposed mandatory child-safety trigger locks, a ban on cheap ''Saturday night special'' guns, a one-per-month limit on individual handgun purchases, and gun-safety testing and photo-licensing for all purchasers of new handguns.
Bush, the Texas governor whom Heston has endorsed in the presidential campaign, said earlier this month that he would have his state provide free trigger locks to anyone requesting one. But he opposes mandatory trigger locks.
Gore racked up a pro-gun voting record in his days as a congressman from Tennessee - so much so that Bush, his Republican rival, recently suggested Gore was once a card-carrying NRA member, something the Gore camp dismissed. Bush aides eventually acknowledged they could not back up the governor's contention.
As a senator, Gore in 1985 voted against a 14-day waiting period for handgun purchases and in 1990 voted against an amendment that would have prohibited the sale of large-capacity ammunition magazines and banned a dozen types of assault-style weapons.
Gore has spoken of those votes, which stand in contrast to his more staunchly gun-control agenda of today, as part and parcel of representing rural districts of Tennessee hunters and sportsmen.
Also on Wednesday, Gore kept up his drumbeat against Bush's plan to allow workers to invest some of their Social Security payroll taxes in the stock market.
Although Bush has not specified how much he would allow to be diverted to private investment, Gore said that taking even 2 percentage points away from the 12.4% of an individual's income that now goes to the Social Security Trust Fund would amount to a 16-percent cut in resources to the fund.
''That means that the people who are currently receiving Social Security checks will be relying on a trust fund that is suddenly missing 16% of its regular income,'' Gore said. ''How do you make that up?''
He brushed aside his own deficit in recent polls. But, for a man who asserted, ''I don't pay much attention to them,'' he betrayed a solid familiarity with the numbers.
''Polls are notoriously misleading. The fact that there is a 4-to-5 point spread, when you look at them together, doesn't really amount to much,'' Gore said.
''Six months ago it was a 20-point spread, so if you look at it over that time frame, you could say, 'Oh, well, Gore's really made progress.'''
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Gore questions Bush's foreign knowledge
USA Today
05/24/00- Updated 12:09 AM ET
By Susan Page, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/e98/e1867.htm
WASHINGTON - Vice President Gore is trying a time-tested incumbent's strategy against Texas Gov. George W. Bush in the race for the presidency: He's questioning whether the two-term governor has the knowledge and experience on foreign policy and defense that the White House demands.
The only trouble is that the last time the strategy was tested, it didn't work.
In 1992, the governor's father, incumbent President Bush, took a similar tack against then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. During the campaign, the elder Bush even filmed a campaign commercial at an International House of Pancakes, a reference to a pointed joke that IHOP was where Clinton had scored most of his foreign-policy experience.
The last laugh went to Clinton, however, as he won the election despite Bush's greater expertise on foreign affairs.
"Our efforts in '92 to get traction on this issue were a resounding dud with the voters," recalls Richard Bond, then the Republican National Committee chairman. But this year could be different, he says. "Clinton never had a faux pas, a notable mistake, a prominent boo-boo. If he had, we undoubtedly would have gotten traction."
Bush has made some early, minor missteps on foreign policy, and the Gore campaign has done its best to capitalize on them.
"It's increasingly becoming clear that George W. Bush's knowledge of foreign policy begins with Slovenia and ends with Slovakia. As you recall, he got confused which leader he met with," Gore campaign spokesman Chris Lehane says. "Over the past year, we've seen the governor make comments that were reckless, risky and at times just flat out wrong. In November, he suggested that he would act to make sure the Israelis were not pushed into the Red Sea, showing a lack of geographic knowledge around the globe." (Israel has resisted efforts by its neighbors to push it into the Mediterranean Sea, along its western coast. The Red Sea separates Saudi Arabia from Africa.)
Bush moved on Tuesday to inoculate himself from the charge of neophyte on the world stage. He unveiled a dramatic proposal on nuclear weapons and surrounded himself with the GOP's most respected foreign-policy figures, from former Joint Chiefs chairman Colin Powell to former s ecretary of State Henry Kissinger.
"The more that Bush talks about foreign policy, the more he surrounds himself with experienced heavyweights, then the less Gore can make any political hay," says Richard Haass, director of foreign policy studies at Brookings Institution in Washington and a former adviser to President Bush.
What voters demand from a potential president is not encyclopedic knowledge, he says. After all, many Americans wouldn't be able to pick out Slovakia or Slovenia on a map. "People are looking much more for a general perception of competence than his ability to win Who Wants To Be A Millionaire," Haass says. "It's less the specifics of this or that issue and more that they feel comfortable with him."
But Gore is doing his best to make voters a little uncomfortable with Bush. The Gore campaign issued a written statement Tuesday that criticized Bush's support for a national missile defense system and his willingness to discard the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty. "Bush's agenda is irresponsible and shows that he lacks the depth of experience of keep America safe and secure," it said.
In a foreign policy address three weeks ago, Gore charged that Bush was "stuck in a Cold War mind-set" that sees Russia and China as enemies and ignores regional conflicts as outside U.S. strategic interests.
"One has to assume that these gaps in Gov. Bush's foreign policy views and experience will be filled by the ideologies and inveterate antipathies of his party - the right-wing, partisan isolationism of the Republican congressional leadership," Gore said. Bush sloughed off the criticism in an interview with USA TODAY last week. "There's isolationist elements, protectionist elements in my own party that I'm willing to stand up to," he said.
Still, Gore rarely misses an opportunity to spotlight his greater experience on foreign policy issues. In a speech to a pro-Israel lobbying group Tuesday, he began one sentence: "When I was last at the United Nations in January to speak to the Security Council..."
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Gore rips Bush administration Israel policy
Washington Times
May 24, 2000
By Andrew Cain THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-200052422483.htm
Vice President Al Gore charged yesterday that advisers to former President George Bush tried to "bully Israel" by offering loan guarantees as an inducement in peace efforts.
"In 1991, I vividly remember standing up against a group of administration foreign-policy advisers who promoted the insulting concept of linkage - which tried to use loan guarantees as a stick to bully Israel," Mr. Gore said.
The Clinton administration charted "a new course," Mr. Gore told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee at the Washington Hilton Hotel.
"Unlike our immediate predecessors, we chose to get intimately involved, but we also established a firm new rule, and we have followed this rule faithfully: that we must not and would not in any way try to pressure Israel to agree to measures that they themselves did not see were in their own best interests."
On Monday, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, criticized the Clinton administration for trying to set negotiation timetables and for interfering in Israel's elections to support Ehud Barak, Israel's current prime minister.
"In recent times, Washington has tried to make Israel conform to its own plans and timetables, but that is not the path to peace," Mr. Bush said.
The Texas governor said, "America should not interfere in Israel's democratic process and America will not interfere in Israel's elections when I'm the president."
Mr. Bush also said that he would move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Mr. Gore yesterday reiterated America's "enduring support for a strong and unshakable partnership between the United States and Israel."
Mr. Gore also warned Syrian President Hafez Assad that the world community will hold Syria responsible for violence as Israel pulls out of southern Lebanon.
"Syria may choose not to pursue peace. It is Syria's choice. But make no mistake, Syria has no right to pursue a course of conflict that denies peace to others," Mr. Gore said.
"If peace does not come to this area, President Assad will bear a heavy responsibility before the entire world."
Mr. Gore said "a strong, peaceful and prosperous state of Israel" is "one of the cornerstones of America's national security."
He reiterated his call for a preemptive foreign policy of "forward engagement" and said the Middle East peace process will prove a key test of his policy.
"One of the great tests of this approach is in the Middle East, where we still wrestle with the classic questions of war and peace," Mr. Gore said.
"We see in the Middle East the emergence of new threats that must be addressed swiftly and definitively, but we also see the possibility of peace opening extraordinary new horizons."
He said that is why, two years ago, the United States and Israel established a new strategic partnership "ushering in an unprecedented level of military cooperation."
Mr. Gore said Iraq's Saddam Hussein remains an obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
"We have made it clear that it is our policy to see Saddam Hussein gone."
Mr. Gore said the United States must help integrate Israel into the global economy and foster greater trade in the region.
He said America also should "work with the Palestinians to establish transparent democratic institutions to fight corruption and to build a society built on the rule of law."
"When they pursue that path, we should be prepared to help them," he said.
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Bush Environmental Record
New York Times
May 24, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/052400wh-gop-bush-ad.1v.ram.html
Since early December, the Sierra Club has been running television commercials that attack Gov. George W. Bush's environmental record in Texas. In this new 30-second spot, which is going on the air this week in St. Louis, Milwaukee, Detroit and Lansing, Mich., the organization is expanding its effort to portray the Republican as indifferent to the environment.
PRODUCER Haddow Communications.
ON THE SCREEN Shots of two Texas residents, Ed Parten of Kingwood and Tamara Maschino of Seabrook, alternate with scenes of sewage spilling into waterways, smoke billowing from factories and a little girl being treated by a machine to assist her breathing.
SCRIPT Mr. Parten: All of our lakes have water quality problems.
Narrator: Texas leads the nation in the number of factories violating clean water standards.
Ms. Maschino: We've got too many children on breathing machines, too many people with asthma.
Narrator: Texas has the most industrial air pollution in the nation.
Ms. Maschino: We're in a crisis situation.
Mr. Parten: We've contacted George Bush's office and he has the attitude that he's not interested.
Narrator: Call George Bush. Tell him to oppose legislation in Congress that weakens penalties for clean air and water violators. For our families, for our future.
ACCURACY Governors in large states seeking higher office have to expect to run on their records, and the environment is an issue on which Democrats believe Mr. Bush is highly vulnerable; Vice President Al Gore regularly decries Mr. Bush's stewardship of a state that ranks in several categories as one of the nation's most polluted. Texas's vast and influential oil and chemical industries have yielded the state riches but also some pollution problems. Houston is among the nation's smoggiest cities, and the release of toxins into waterways is a growing problem. But just as the Sierra Club quotes from federal reports that describe Texas's environmental flaws, Mr. Bush can cite some advancements, such as an initiative to reduce emissions from older plants and the expansion of a program begun by his predecessor, Ann W. Richards, a Democrat, to reward companies that cut by half their toxic waste.
SCORECARD The environmental advocacy group is spending $250,000 to run this commercial in four Midwestern and border states: Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan and, next week, Ohio, all of which are considered potentially decisive in the fall campaign. The Sierra Club started its advertising blitz two months before the New Hampshire primary and has emerged as one of the most active and visible special-interest groups of the campaign on television. It is planning to spend $8 million to raise public awareness of environmental issues. Mr. Bush's efforts to counter the club's assertions have been fairly low key, limited to events like a news conference in April in which he unveiled a plan to hasten the cleanup of abandoned industrial sites. PETER MARKS
---
THE VICE PRESIDENT
Gore Defends Policies on Israel With Attack on Rival's Father
New York Times
May 24, 2000
By JAMES DAO
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/052400wh-veep.html
WASHINGTON, May 23 -- Responding to Gov. George W. Bush's criticism of the Clinton administration's policies on Israel, Vice President Al Gore today accused Mr. Bush's father of trying to pressure Israel to adopt positions it strongly opposed during his presidency.
In a speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group, Mr. Gore criticized the former president, George Bush, for seeking to withhold American loan guarantees to Israel in 1991 unless it agreed to stop building new settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
He called that policy an "insulting concept" intended "to bully" Israel.
Mr. Gore also told the crowd of 2,000 people that in 1988, as a senator from Tennessee, he had opposed a Reagan administration plan to get Israel to take part against its wishes in a peace conference involving the Soviet Union and Arab nations.
"I stood against the efforts of the two previous administrations to pressure Israel to take stands against its own view of what was in Israel's best interest," Mr. Gore said to warm applause. "When a friend's survival is potentially at stake, you don't pressure that friend to take steps that it believes are clearly contrary to what is in that friend's best interests."
Mr. Gore made his remarks a day after Governor Bush, the likely Republican nominee for president, used a speech before the same organization to accuse the Clinton administration of trying "to make Israel conform to its own plans and timetables." The governor also asserted that the administration had taken sides in the most recent Israeli election by supporting Ehud Barak in his victorious campaign over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In his comments today, Mr. Gore did not mention Governor Bush. But he made repeated references to Presidents Reagan and Bush, at one point asserting that both men took a hands-off approaches to Middle East policy.
"When we took office almost eight year ago, President Clinton and I decided that the United States needed to chart a new course with regard to the Middle East peace process," Mr. Gore said. "Unlike our immediate predecessors, we chose to get intimately involved."
And he reminded the crowd of President Bush's failure to oust President Saddam Hussein of Iraq in the Persian Gulf war of 1991. "You know as well as I know that as long as Saddam Hussein stays in power, there can be no comprehensive peace for the people of Israel or the people of the Middle East," Mr. Gore said.
After the speech, Mr. Gore flew to the annual convention of the Service Employees International Union in Pittsburgh, where he continued his attack on Mr. Bush's proposal to allow taxpayers to invest a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes.
Mr. Bush contends that private investment accounts would allow taxpayers to take advantage of booming markets and help stabilize the system, which is projected to become insolvent in 2037. But Mr. Gore argues that privatization, as he calls it, would bankrupt the system.
Today, Mr. Gore told the 1.4-million-member union, which has endorsed him, that Mr. Bush's plan presented a "special risk" for service workers because the government might be forced to increase the retirement age to finance it. Mr. Bush denies that.
"I don't care what the actuarial tables say about people living longer, when somebody who is working in hard physical-labor jobs get to the present retirement age, they shouldn't be told they have to keep working until they are 70 years old," Mr. Gore said. "The Bush privatization plan doesn't just open the door to raising the retirement age, it practically rolls out a red carpet for the idea."
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GOVERNOR BUSH PROPOSES NEW LEADERSHIP ON NATIONAL SECURITY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:Scott McClellan or Mindy Tucker
May 24, 2000 512/637-7777
From: "Boddy, Lee" LBoddy@georgewbush.com
WASHINGTON, DC-Saying America needs a "new approach to nuclear security that matches a new era," Texas Governor George W. Bush today called for a national security policy focused on creating a missile defense system to protect all 50 states and U.S. friends and allies, combined with reductions in the number of nuclear missiles consistent with America's national security.
Governor Bush spoke after meeting with a group of national security experts including George Shultz, former Secretary of State; Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State and architect of the U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense; Colin Powell, retired general and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor.
"Today I am here with some of our nation's leading statesmen and defense experts," Governor Bush said. "And there is broad agreement that our nation needs a new approach to nuclear security that matches a new era. It is time to leave the Cold War behind, and defend against the new threats of the 21st century."
To meet the challenges of the new post-Cold War era, Governor Bush called for America's national security to be based on two goals:
* Creation of an effective missile defense to protect all 50 states, U.S. forces abroad and American friends and allies from limited missile attacks by rogue nations or accidental launches.
* Prompt review of American military requirements, leading to reductions in the number of American nuclear weapons, consistent with America's post - Cold War national security needs.
Governor Bush explained: "America must build effective missile defenses, based on the best available options, at the earliest possible date. Our missile defense must be designed to protect all 50 states - and our friends and allies and deployed forces overseas - from missile attacks by rogue nations, or accidental launches."
Governor Bush continued: "America should rethink the requirements for nuclear deterrence in a new security environment. As President, I will ask the Secretary of Defense to conduct an assessment of our nuclear force posture and determine how best to meet our security needs. While the exact number of weapons can come only from such an assessment, I will pursue the lowest possible number consistent with our national security. It should be possible to reduce the number of American nuclear weapons significantly further than what has already been agreed to under START II, without compromising our security in any way. We should not keep weapons that our military planners do not need. These unneeded weapons are the relics of dead conflicts. And they do nothing to make us more secure."
Governor Bush also called for the United States to "remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert, hair-trigger status-another dangerous vestige of Cold War confrontation. As President, I will ask for an assessment of what we can do to lower the alert status of our forces."
A text of Governor Bush's full remarks can be obtained on the Bush for President website at http://www.georgewbush.com/, or by contacting the Bush press office at (512) 637-7777.
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Gore Says He Won't 'Disarm America'
MAY 24, 2000
By SANDRA SOBIERAJ
Associated Press Writer
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/center_package.html?FRONTID=ELECTION&PACKAGEID=ELNprezDEM
WASHINGTON (AP) - Vice President Al Gore responded Wednesday with a chuckle to the National Rifle Association's recent declaration of war on his candidacy and insisted: ``I have no intention of proposing or supporting policies or allowing policies that disarm America.''
The Democratic presidential candidate, speaking on National Public Radio's ``Diane Rehm Show,'' was reacting to a vivid image from last weekend's NRA convention. Association president Charlton Heston had lifted a musket above his head and challenged Gore, saying the weapon would have to be pried ``from my cold dead hands.''
Reminded by Rehm of that scene, Gore replied with a laugh that ``I would not do what he accuses me of planning.''
Heston and others at the convention in Charlotte, N.C., accused the Clinton-Gore administration of plotting to confiscate guns from law-abiding citizens and then ban the weapons, beginning with licensing and registration.
``I have no intention of proposing or supporting policies or allowing policies that disarm America or take guns away from law-abiding gun owners,'' Gore said Wednesday.
``What I have proposed that has upset (Heston) so much is a set of common-sense restrictions on the availability of handguns to people who shouldn't have them.''
Gore has proposed mandatory child-safety trigger locks, a ban on cheap ``Saturday night special'' guns, a one-per-month limit on individual handgun purchases, and gun-safety testing and photo-licensing for all purchasers of new handguns.
Bush, the Texas governor whom Heston has endorsed in the presidential campaign, said earlier this month that he would have his state provide free trigger locks to anyone requesting one. But he opposes mandatory trigger locks.
Gore racked up a pro-gun voting record in his days as a congressman from Tennessee - so much so that Bush, his Republican rival, recently suggested Gore was once a card-carrying NRA member, something the Gore camp dismissed. Bush aides eventually acknowledged they could not back up the governor's contention.
As a senator, Gore in 1985 voted against a 14-day waiting period for handgun purchases and in 1990 voted against an amendment that would have prohibited the sale of large-capacity ammunition magazines and banned a dozen types of assault-style weapons.
Gore has spoken of those votes, which stand in contrast to his more staunchly gun-control agenda of today, as part and parcel of representing rural districts of Tennessee hunters and sportsmen.
Also on Wednesday, Gore kept up his drumbeat against Bush's plan to allow workers to invest some of their Social Security payroll taxes in the stock market.
Although Bush has not specified how much he would allow to be diverted to private investment, Gore said that taking even 2 percentage points away from the 12.4 percent of an individual's income that now goes to the Social Security Trust Fund would amount to a 16-percent cut in resources to the fund.
``That means that the people who are currently receiving Social Security checks will be relying on a trust fund that is suddenly missing 16 percent of its regular income,'' Gore said. ``How do you make that up?''
He brushed aside his own deficit in recent polls. But, for a man who asserted, ``I don't pay much attention to them,'' he betrayed a solid familiarity with the numbers.
``Polls are notoriously misleading. The fact that there is a 4-to-5 point spread, when you look at them together, doesn't really amount to much,'' Gore said.
``Six months ago it was a 20-point spread, so if you look at it over that time frame, you could say, 'Oh, well, Gore's really made progress.'''
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MCI Center's Menu: Ribs and a Record Democratic Fundraiser
Wednesday, May 24, 2000; Page A06
By Mike Allen Washington Post Staff Writer
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/24/080l-052400-idx.html
A big order of "world famous dry-seasoned pork loin back ribs" costs $13.50 at Charlie Vergos's Rendezvous Restaurant in Memphis (slaw included). At the MCI Center tonight, the same dish runs a tad more--from $1,000 to $500,000....
The Biggest Money
Those who raised or gave $500,000 for tonight's Democratic National Committee fundraiser:
S. Daniel Abraham
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
American Federation of Teachers
Communications Workers of America
Ron and Beth Dozoretz
Albert and Claire Dwoskin
Janice Griffin
International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
International Union of Painters and Allied Trades
Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.)
Chris Korge
Mercer and Associates
John Merrigan
National Education Association
Gary Pajcic
Cary Patterson
Service Employees International Union
Sheet Metal Workers International Association
Alan Solomont
David and Sylvia Steiner
Sen. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.)
Jody Trapasso
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union
Mark and Susan Weiner
The Washington Group
SOURCE: Democratic National Committee
-------- chemical & biological weapons
Today in Congress
Washington Post
Wednesday, May 24, 2000; Page A10
Reuters
HOUSE Meets at 10 a.m.
Committees:
Government Reform--10 a.m. National security, veterans affairs & international relations subc. Defense Department's chemical & biological weapons programs. 2247 RHOB.
-------- bgh
Europe Says It Will Continue Ban on Beef Produced With Growth Hormones
New York Times
May 24, 2000
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS NYT Update, 3:15 p.m.
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/24cnd-beef.html
FRANKFURT, May 24 -- Rejecting demands by the United States and the World Trade Organization, the European Union said today they plan to continue banning beef produced with growth hormones.
The battle re-ignites an ideologically-charged battle between cattle ranchers in the United States, most of whom use hormones to speed up beef production, and European consumers who generally distrust the the use of hormones.
Nearly three years ago, the World Trade Organization ruled that European prohibition was illegal because it was not based on scientific evidence that hormones endanger human health.
Today, European officials in Brussels released a new review of scientific studies which concluded that one popular hormone causes cancer and that others are "likely" to pose increased health risks as well.
Armed with the new opinion, European trade and health officials proposed a new ban on hormone-treated beef that they said would satisfy the global trade authority.
"We believe this proposal will bring us into line with the WTO's findings, and definitively resolve this dispute," said Anthony Gooch, a spokesman for the European Commission's trade ministry.
American officials said they were not impressed with the Europeans' argument.
"We were of the view from the beginning that they didn't have the science to back them up, and we don't see any new science now," said one official in Brussels today.
The United States is currently imposing punitive tariffs of $117 million a year, an amount that the World Trade Organization says is equal to the lost American beef exports, on European products ranging from Danish ham to Italian tomatoes.
In a bid to ratchet up the pressure, President Clinton recently signed legislation that requires American trade officials to rotate the penalties to different industries every six months.
But there is little likelihood that the two sides will reach an accord any time soon, in part because many Europeans have a deep mistrust of anything that smacks of genetically-modified food.
Just last week, farmers from Scandinavia to Britain and Italy found themselves in the middle of a political uproar after a company admitted that it had accidentally mixed a small percentage of genetically-modified rapeseed from Canada into seed shipments sold across Europe.
Genetically modified crops are common in the United States and Canada and only about .4 percent of the seeds mixed into the shipments that arrived in Europe appear to have been genetically-modified. Nevertheless, the slip infuriated officials in several countries and Swedish farm regulators went so far as to order farmers to destroy the tainted crops.
The battle over beef hormones could easily become a major test case in future trade disputes based on real or perceived health risks.
Under international trade agreements, countries are only allowed to impose trade restrictions based on health concerns if those concerns are backed up by scientific evidence.
American trade officials, echoing the views of American cattle farmers, have argued that there is no evidence that beef produced with hormones poses special health problems.
Among other things, they argue that growth hormones are naturally present in beef and other foods and that two pounds of hormone-treated beef has about the same amount of growth hormone as that in an ordinary egg.
European officials, prodded by persistent anxiety among consumers, have argued that there are many reasons to be worried.
After protracted hearings at the World Trade Organization, the trade organization ruled that European officials had not made their case and deemed the ban illegal in 1997.
Today's report, from a scientific committee organized by the European Union, said there is evidence that high doses of the hormone 17 Beta Oestriadol has carcinogenic effects and that five other hormones may have effects on the development of sexual organs.
Under the legislation proposed today, the European Union would impose a permanent ban on beta oestriadol and "provisional" bans on the other five, pending the outcome of future studies.
Scientists acknowledged that the evidence of health risks is based on exposure to very high doses of hormones. But they also warned that there is "no compelling evidence suggesting that these effects do not also occur at low doses."
It said continuous exposure to low doses of hormones is likely to add to long-term health risks, but said this risk "as yet, cannot be quantified."
-------- germ warfare
Russia Opens Doors to Lab That Created Deadly Germs
New York Times
May 24, 2000
By JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/052400russia-science.html
OBOLENSK, Russia, May 23 -- The once top-secret research complex where the Soviet Union perfected dozens of strains of deadly bacteria threw open its doors this week to scientists from around the world.
The director of the State Research Center for Applied Microbiology, which is a two-hour drive from Moscow, invited 200 scientists from 10 countries, Western officials and even an American reporter to what was once a crown jewel of the Soviet germ warfare empire, so hidden that it was not listed on Soviet maps.
In the Soviet era, 3,000 scientists and technicians worked for more than 20 years to develop weapons from anthrax, glanders, plague, tularemia and other lethal or debilitating diseases.
Now the center is inviting scrutiny to demonstrate its determination to conduct just peaceful work such as preventing bioterrorism and curing disease. Scientists at the three-day conference here discussed the new research and were given an extensive tour of several of the 90 buildings.
The meeting is to close on Wednesday with a conference for the Russian and Western press, another first for Obolensk, and the announcement of $1.6 million in additional American assistance to help the institute chart a peaceful course.
American officials said the United States initiative included $935,000 from the Pentagon to upgrade security at this sprawling complex to prevent the theft or diversion to hostile states of the hundreds of strains of deadly germs that are stored here.
At the opening session, the director of the center, Gen. Nikolai N. Urakov, pledged to open the "curtain of secrecy" that enshrouded the 25-year-old complex and to dispel the "lack of trust" in its conversion from military to peaceful research.
General Urakov said he wanted to expand cooperation with the United States, European nations and other countries that have forsworn germ weapons.
He said although the institute had shrunk by half, to 1,125 employees, and the lab had not overcome the economic crisis caused by the Soviet Union's collapse a decade ago, the staff was stabilizing, and some scientists had even returned after working abroad or in business.
Western officials said international aid to Obolensk provided the means to employ more than half the scientists here.
The United States assistance and other foreign aid, which is administered through an international group that audits grants to insure that they are spent on designated research, has given more than $3.4 million to Obolensk.
Only Vector, the country's other leading former germ warfare center, has received more assistance from the international group, the International Science and Technology Center. Vector once specialized in turning viruses into weapons.
Today, conference participants were given a tour of the complex and its infamous Building No. 1, an austere nine-story glass and metal structure where the most top secret weapons research was once conducted.
Roaming through the labs and chatting informally with their Russian counterparts in areas that were once off limits to anyone not wearing special suits, the scientists discussed the research into peaceful goals, including tuberculosis, anthrax vaccines and molecular genetics.
Floyd P. Horn, director of the United States Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service, called the quality of the presentations superb.
Scientific cooperation between Russian and American scientists would "clearly benefit both parties," he said.
Dr. Horn's agency is providing $325,000 this year for research into pig diseases, along with computer equipment that will give this remote center access to the American National Agricultural Library.
A Defense Department official said the meetings, the tour and the growing American and international access "dispels the suspicion that Obolensk is still conducting offensive germ research."
Several conservative legislators and intelligence experts contend that Moscow is continuing to pursue such research. But a recent report by the General Accounting Office found no evidence of such research here or at Vector.
In interviews this week, Russian scientists said that they were determined to relegate the past work in such areas to history.
"We still are not permitted to discuss the past," a scientist said. "But we know our future lies in fighting the terrorism and diseases that threaten all mankind."
Several scientists said privately they were delighted by their growing contacts with Western counterparts and the end of the isolation that they had once endured as germ warriors.
Life remains difficult in Obolensk, where many top scientists, paid less than $100 a month, are required to have second jobs to make ends meet.
But many scientists said they were encouraged to remain in science not only by the prestige that such employment still brings in this society, but also by new exchanges with American colleagues.
Last month, two senior Obolensk scientists delivered two rare anthrax strains to centers in Atlanta and Fort Detrick, Md., as part of an exchange program negotiated this year.
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