-------- britain
BNFL sale plan is undermined
David Gow, Monday May 29, 2000
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/nuclear/article/0,2763,319677,00.html
The government's on-off plans for a partial privatisation of British Nuclear Fuels suffered a potentially fatal blow yesterday when it emerged that the long-term liabilities at the state-owned atomic energy company are far higher than hitherto suspected - on a scale likely to deter would-be investors.
The full extent of the extra liabilities, said in one report to be up to £9bn, is due to be disclosed in BNFL's annual accounts later this summer but Whitehall insiders admitted yesterday the £27bn assumed so far was an underestimate.
The new liabilities relate to the costs of cleaning up BNFL's Sellafield site in Cumbria which is the centre of its controversial business for reprocessing nuclear waste, including spent fuel rods.
The extra costs were discovered by a management team sent in by ministers to re-examine BNFL's liabilities after it took over Magnox Electric, the nuclear generator which owns eight of Britain's oldest reactors.
The merger took place in January 1998. Both government sources and the company insisted last night that this report was incomplete and had yet to go to BNFL's auditors or its main board.
Ministers, far from being embarrassed by the findings, see them as a vindication of their policy of encouraging transparency and bringing in more commercially minded managers at BNFL.
The new estimates have come to light just two days after the Commons trade and industry select committee slammed successive governments for failing to get to grips with the company's finances and effectively giving it a free rein to embellish its accounts.
Twelve of Europe's largest power utilities - including United Utilities, Northern Electric and National Grid - will announce plans this week for an online procurement exchange through which they will do business worth 22bn (£13.7bn) a year.
----
Environment body starts consultation on BNFL waste
Planet Ark
UK: May 29, 2000
Story by Dominique Magada
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=6876
LONDON - The Environment Agency in UK said on Friday it had started public consultation on applications by BNFL to discharge radioactive waste from eight Magnox power stations.
"The Agency is now undertaking a wide-ranging national consultation exercise to hear views on the applications, which contain information on the advantages and disadvantages of continued operation and on proposed discharges of radioactive waste," it said in a statement.
It said after intense scrutiny of BNFL's applications, it had drawn up a series of draft authorisations that look to continue the overall trend towards discharges from these sites.
But "while the Agency has developed a draft authorisation for each site it has not made a decision on BNFL's applications and will not do so until it has carefully considered all the responses to the consultation," said Archie Robertson, the agency's Director of Operations.
The agency added however that it was bringing down discharge limits, reducing headroom for fluctuations in emissions and demanding robust management systems.
It said it would also decide whether the continued operation of decommissioning each power station was justified and whether the benefits outweighed the disadvantages.
"Now we are keen to hear from people nationally - and especially people living in the vicinity of these sites - on their views on BNFL's applications and what should be included in any authorisations the Agency may issue," said Robertson.
The Magnox stations for which BNFL has made applications are: Berkeley in Gloucestershire, Dungeness A in Kent, Hinkley Point A in Somerset, Oldbury in South Gloucestershire, Sizewell A in Suffolk, Trawsfynydd in Gwynedd and Wylfa in Anglesey.
BNFL announced on May 23 that it was not bringing back in service its 470 megawatt Hinkley Point A station from its current maintenance shutdown.
In the same statement, it listed the dates by which all of its eight Magnox power stations will be decommissioned with the last closing by 2021.
The Environment Agency said after the BNFL announcement that the closure of Hinkley Point A would reduce radioactive discharge levels in the UK.
Magnox currently operates five power stations that supply up to about six percent of the electricity in England and Wales.
BNFL needs new authorisations before it can operate or decommission the Magnox sites to discharge radioactive waste, incinerate low level radioactive combustible waste and transfer sold and organic liquid radioactive wastes to other sites.
The Environment Agency, which regulates the disposal of all forms of radioactive waste from nuclear sites under the Radioactive Substances Act 1993, can grant or refuse applications for authorisation.
The consultation period will close on August 31, 2000 after which the agency will make its proposed decisions in a single document for all the sites.
-------- china
Chinese Leader Telephones Thanks for Trade Bill Vote
White House Officials Describe Call to Clinton as 'Unusual'
Washington Post
Monday, May 29, 2000; Page A02
By Marc Kaufman and John F. Harris Washington Post Staff Writers
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/29/071l-052900-idx.html
Chinese President Jiang Zemin telephoned President Clinton yesterday to express his thanks for the House vote last week in favor of granting China permanent normal trade relations.
The call, which White House officials termed "unusual," lasted for 40 minutes and included discussions about nuclear nonproliferation and human rights.
"Jiang called the president to thank him for his leadership on the PNTR vote," said White House spokesman Mike Hammer. "Jiang called [the vote] an important development that marks an improvement in bilateral relations with China."
White House officials said they had expected a formal exchange of letters with Jiang about the trade vote, and so were surprised by the call.
"I don't recall Jiang ever initiating a call," said a senior White House official involved in China policy. The official said the call shows Jiang is interested in having the China-U.S. "relationship move forward in a new way."
Chinese-American relations were badly strained after the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was inadvertently destroyed by American bombs during the Kosovo fighting.
The House voted 237 to 197 on Wednesday to normalize trade relations with China, a step eagerly sought by China, by American businesses and by advocates of free trade such as Clinton. The measure still faces some opposition in the Senate, particularly from Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), but officials expect it to pass.
By approving the legislation, the House agreed to end its 21-year practice of granting normal trading privileges to China on an annual basis. It voted instead to permanently guarantee Chinese goods the same low-tariff access to U.S. markets as is given to products from all but a few countries, such as Afghanistan, North Korea and Cuba.
In return, China agreed to lower tariffs on U.S. products and to take other market-opening steps in areas ranging from agriculture and automobiles to telecommunications under a trade accord it reached with the United States last year as part of its accession to the World Trade Organization. Having reached a similar trade pact with the European Union last week, China is on schedule to enter the WTO later this year.
White House officials said that Clinton and Jiang also discussed nuclear nonproliferation and regional stability on the Korean peninsula during their phone conversation, as well as relations with Taiwan. While both sides reiterated known positions, the senior officials said that Jiang made "no threats" regarding Taiwan, a departure from some of the more truculent rhetoric out of Beijing in recent months.
In addition, officials said that Clinton brought up the issue of missile defense in the context of his June 4-5 summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Leaders in both China and Russia have voiced strong opposition to American efforts to build a national missile defense system, and some analysts have concluded that development of a U.S. anti-missile system would force both nations to upgrade their nuclear arsenals.
U.S. defense officials have said a missile defense is needed because of the growing threat of attack from "rogue nations" such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea. The Chinese have significant influence in North Korea and are seen as central to any efforts to keep leaders there from building nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles.
-------- environment
Dioxin debate growing hotter
by Craig Welch,
May 29, 2000
Seattle Times staff reporter
http://archives.seattletimes.com/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?slug=diox29m&date=20000529&query=dioxin
A dose too small to see with the naked eye can kill a guinea pig, but a hamster may survive a hit 5,000 times stronger.
When it was spread on a Missouri horse farm to control dust in 1971, hundreds of birds, 11 cats, four dogs and 43 appaloosa horses died. Yet scientists still argue about whether it ever directly caused a human death.
The toxic compounds known collectively as dioxin are so unusual - and have been plagued for so long by politics and scientific confusion - that regulators have debated for years just how dangerous they really are.
This summer the debate is expected to reach a fever pitch.
The National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences last month tried to release a report that for the first time listed dioxin as a carcinogen, but it was blocked by a court injunction after being sued by an industry group.
And after 30 years of study, the Environmental Protection Agency is prepared this summer to label dioxin a carcinogen that's 10 times more likely than previously thought to cause cancer, according to a draft report.
The Washington state Department of Ecology also plans this summer to release a draft strategy to better control and contain the discharge of long-lasting pollutants, including dioxin, but legislators won't let the department act on the plan until they see it when they return to session next winter.
Dioxin, a byproduct of incineration and industrial activities involving chlorine, such as some paper bleaching, is the single-most-studied synthetic compound in the world.
It's most famous as the nasty byproduct of the defoliant Agent Orange, the contaminant that led to the controversial government evacuation of 800 families from Times Beach, Mo., and one of the poisons found in New York state's Love Canal.
It collects in fatty tissues, which means everyone carries some amount of it in their system - more, perhaps, if the person eats lots of fat. It can be passed along through breast milk.
While no one disputes dioxin is bad stuff, how bad - and how much time, effort and expense should go into limiting it in the environment - is in dispute. Responses to dioxin contamination have often been criticized as overreactions, in part because it's difficult to gauge the level of exposure that may lead to health problems in humans.
Much of the science surrounding it is based on animal research, which reveals mixed results, and researchers needed decades to adequately study the aftermath of the 12 million gallons of Agent Orange dumped on Vietnam and a 1976 accident in Seveso, Italy.
Dioxin has so much "biological variability," said Mike Watson, a toxics specialist with the EPA in Seattle, that scientists are forced to measure risks solely on mathematical models.
"It's like owning the best television set in the world, with the best knob, but you keep turning the dial and the picture doesn't get any clearer," he said.
Plus, "unlike smoking or sunlight or other industrial chemicals, dioxin tends to increase the likelihood of all types of cancers," said John Bucher, deputy director of the Environmental Toxicology Program at the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences. "It's fickle that way."
In addition, some dioxin research over the years has been poorly designed. In the mid-1970s, researchers performed two studies on nine women who lived near forests sprayed with dioxin-contaminated herbicides and who had experienced 13 miscarriages. One of those studies helped prompt the EPA to stop allowing use of the herbicides. University of Oregon scientists later panned the study, complaining that researchers had used incorrect data and bad controls.
And it's always been a political hot potato. When internationally recognized expert and University of Wisonsin-Madison researcher James Allen was found to have used federal grant money meant for studying dioxin to pay for ski trips, Dow Chemical tried to have him dismissed as a key witness for the EPA. In 1990, when the EPA's top dioxin researcher went to a conference sponsored by the paper and chlorine industry, she announced that the dioxin found in most humans was harmless. Two years later, she reversed herself.
Today, dioxin in the environment is believed to be falling, with the pulp and paper industry claiming it has reduced releases by 94 percent since 1988. But Bucher contends a growing body of research suggests that although those levels are shrinking, it takes less than previously thought to cause health problems in humans.
On the other side, Jim Tozzi, an activist representing industry groups, is suing Bucher's agency, saying it hasn't sufficient evidence to link dioxin to health problems.
Ellen Silbergeld, a University of Maryland epidemiologist who has worked with the Environmental Defense Fund and helped raise the alarm about dioxin in the 1980s, dismisses the move as more political sabotage.
"I think the public should be mad as hell about the process and the way it's been abused," she said. "We've done nothing but waste time."
The last time the EPA tried to label dioxin a carcinogen, in 1991, the decision was reviewed for four years by a panel of government and industry scientists. They eventually told the agency to restudy the matter, leading to the report expected this summer.
Craig Welch's phone message number is 206-464-2093.
=======
Comments by magnu96196@aol.com:
Dioxin is also known as agent orange in the Vietnam war and was used to kill plants and trees.
Dioxin affects cells and its big problem is this cell damage sets off the immune response and concentrations of chlorides rise in the lymph nodes and it affects the immune viability---------like fluorides and metals.
-------- europe
The president is under increasing pressure -- much of it from GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush -- to cut an arms control deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Clinton looks for long shot: nuclear arms breakthrough
Pioneer Planet
Published: Monday, May 29, 2000
STEVEN THOMMA WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/5/news/docs/029446.htm
WASHINGTON, With time running out on his presidency, President Clinton heads to Europe today looking for a nuclear arms control agreement but facing hostility from America's European allies, from Russia and from the Republican Party.
Although his aides are publicly trying to lower expectations of a breakthrough, Clinton is seeking a compromise with Russia that would slash the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, amend a key 1972 arms treaty and open the way for the United States to develop a limited defense against ballistic missile attacks from so-called rogue nations such as North Korea and Iraq.
Without such a deal, Clinton faces the prospect of leaving office as the first president in a generation who did not negotiate a major arms control agreement. But aides to new Russian President Vladimir Putin have signaled their opposition to amending the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, GOP congressional leaders have said they will veto any arms agreement Clinton negotiates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff have questioned how deeply America's nuclear arsenal should be cut.
Much more than an arms control agreement is at stake, however. Clinton will travel to four countries -- Portugal, Germany, Russia and Ukraine -- and he will face growing doubts about U.S. foreign policy. In his first summit with Putin, he will meet an energetic and somewhat enigmatic leader who wants both continued economic support from the West and a stronger, more independent Russia.
While stressing Moscow's interest in good relations with the West, Putin has ignored Western criticism of Russia's war in Chechnya and moved to improve relations with states such as Yugoslavia, Iraq and Syria.
Republicans fear that in Clinton's eagerness to negotiate a sweeping arms deal, he will trade away any chance for the United States to develop an effective missile defense and turn a blind eye to Russian domestic and foreign policies that challenge American interests.
Putin would prefer to discuss U.S. investment and international assistance to help Russia climb out of an economic hole.
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, speaking in London on Friday, said Putin's commitment to change remains unproven.
``President Clinton will make clear at the summit: If its new leaders back their promises with performance, we will enthusiastically support Russia's efforts to integrate itself into the world economy and encourage investments on Russian soil,'' Albright said in a speech at the London School of Economics.
Clinton, however, is under increasing pressure -- much of it from GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush -- to cut an arms control deal with Putin. The Texas governor has proposed offering the Russians even deeper cuts in nuclear weapons in exchange for greater freedom to field a far more ambitious missile-defense system that would protect not only the United States, but also American allies and overseas military bases.
``The administration's whole position is purely political,'' said Spurgeon Keeny, an arms control negotiator under presidents from Kennedy to Carter and now president of the Arms Control Association, a group that supports deeper cuts in nuclear arsenals but opposes amending the ABM treaty. ``They must be trying to take an issue away from the Republicans in the upcoming presidential campaign.''
``The pressure is coming from the Republicans,'' said Marshall Goldman, the associate director of Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian Studies.
The White House itself is not above using the upcoming presidential election as a bargaining chip with the Kremlin. National Security Adviser Samuel Berger all but warned Putin he could get a more favorable deal from Clinton than he might get with the next president.
``They have to decide whether they want to reach an agreement now that will assure them that a limited (missile defense) system will take place,'' Berger said, ``or whether they want the possibility that a future president might go forward . . . perhaps even a more Star Wars-oriented (missile defense) system that would be more threatening to the Russians in the absence of an ABM treaty. That's a calculation they have to make.''
Missile defense is also likely to be discussed in Lisbon, where Clinton will attend his 14th U.S.-European Union summit. U.S. allies in Europe oppose the missile defense system because they fear it would upset the delicate nuclear balance in the region.
U.S. officials said they hope the Lisbon meeting resolves a long-standing dispute between America and Europe over how to protect the privacy of commercial data. They also are expected to discuss cooperation on infectious diseases, reconstruction of Kosovo, European apprehensions about biotechnology, and various trade disputes over bananas and beef hormones.
But missile defense is clearly the central topic of the president's trip.
The treaty the Clinton administration is asking Russia to amend prohibits either country from building more than a very limited system to shoot down incoming missiles. The treaty cemented the policy of ``mutual assured destruction,'' under which each country remained vulnerable to missile attack -- and thus assured that neither would dare strike first.
But 28 years later, the threat to the United States is considerably different, said Henry Kissinger, who as Richard Nixon's national security adviser helped negotiate the ABM Treaty and now supports proposals to amend it or end it to allow a missile defense.
``Today the threats have moved into many different areas,'' Kissinger said.
The United States now faces the possibility of missile attack not just from Russia or China, but also from rogue nations such as North Korea, Iran or Iraq that could develop missiles capable of hitting American cities in the next 15 years, according to a recently declassified analysis by the National Intelligence Council.
The most dramatic concession to win Russian agreement on a missile defense system would be to agree to reduce each country's nuclear arsenals more than the Pentagon wants.
Both countries are committed to cutting their arsenals to at most 3,500 warheads under the Start II treaty. Looking ahead to a Start III treaty, the United States proposed cutting back to between 2,000 and 2,500 warheads. But the cash-starved Russians can barely afford to maintain their nuclear stockpile and want to reduce to 1,500 warheads.
``If we agree to reduce the number, they might let us have the ABM treaty,'' said Harvard University's Goldman. ``But if he does that, that will just create anger among the military and the hard-liners who say we've got to keep our missile strength.''
---
Clinton leaves on Europe diplomacy swing
Excite News
Updated 9:06 PM ET May 29, 2000
By Randall Mikkelsen
http://news.excite.com/news/r/000529/21/clinton-europe2
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Clinton left on a week-long European trip Monday night that is expected to be dominated by a stalemate with Russia over a U.S. missile defense system and simmering trade disputes with the European Union.
The president will arrive at his first stop, in Lisbon, Portugal, Tuesday morning.
During seven days in Europe, Clinton will also visit Germany for a conference on "Third Way" governance, take part in his first summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, and visit Ukraine to encourage reform.
In observances on Memorial Day Monday to honor America's war dead, Clinton focused on the symbolism of his trip in recognizing democratic changes across Europe since the end of the Cold War.
His visit to Berlin, Clinton said, would be the first by an American president to the city since it officially became the capital of a reunified Germany. He hailed Russia's transition to Putin's presidency as the first democratic transfer in 1,000 years, and said he would be the first American president to address a democratically elected Russian parliament.
"As we support those changes we will continue to push for greater and deeper ones," Clinton said.
The trip will also have a valedictory air for Clinton, who leaves office in January. Although another trip to Europe is possible, perhaps to Ireland to mark his successful peace efforts there with the reinstatement of a power-sharing government in Belfast, there are currently no plans for him to return as president.
In Lisbon, Clinton is to meet Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres and participate in a summit with European Union leadership, headed by Guterres and European Commission President Romano Prodi.
TRADE TENSIONS HEATING UP
The Wednesday summit comes as U.S.-EU trade tensions are heating up over a U.S. export program of tax breaks covering hundreds of billions of dollars worth of U.S exports, which was ruled by the World Trade Organization to be an illegal subsidy.
The European Union Monday rejected U.S. proposals for bringing the Foreign Sales Corporation program into line with the trade body's rules.
But Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat responded by saying Washington would press ahead with its proposed revisions. Eizenstat threatened to escalate the trade battle by challenging similar EU programs.
White House chief economic adviser Gene Sperling said last week the program would be discussed at the summit.
The United States also hopes to establish a scientific panel aimed at narrowing divisions over biotechnology, Sperling told reporters.
In Germany, Clinton is to visit Aachen, home of medieval King Charlemagne, to receive the Charlemagne prize for contributions to world peace and European unity. He is to discuss the future of Europe in a foreign policy speech to be delivered in Aachen Friday.
The president will meet in Berlin Friday and Saturday with other centrist leaders for another in a series of conferences on "Third Way" governance. The conferences aims to develop and publicize polices straddling the line between free- market capitalism and welfare-state liberalism.
Among the 15 or so leaders from four continents Clinton is expected to encounter are Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who canceled a meeting with Clinton earlier this month to deal with violence on the West Bank and Gaza and Israel's military pullout from South Lebanon.
In Russia, the United States aims to finish an accord for each country to destroy 34 metric tonnes (33 tons) of weapons grade plutonium, enough to make tens of thousands of nuclear arms.
But officials have played down expectations for any resolution of the stalemate over missile defenses during the two summit sessions Clinton is to hold with Putin Sunday.
Clinton is seeking to amend a 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty to allow for deployment of a missile defense system developed by the United States, but Russia is adamantly opposed to the system and to amending the treaty.
"I do not expect any agreements to be reached on these issues," U.S. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger said on CNN's Late Edition Sunday. "I think it's a good opportunity for us to explain our view of the threat, and President Putin to talk about his concerns and see whether we can understand each other better."
Clinton will also make a stop in Kiev Monday. He is expected to urge Ukraine's leaders to make additional progress on economic reforms, including cooperation with International Monetary Fund prescriptions on economic management.
-------- germany
German nuke pull-out deal imminent - sources
Planet Ark
GERMANY: May 29, 2000
Story by Clifford Coonan
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=6885
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-energy-nucle.html
BERLIN - After months of horse-trading, the German government and energy companies have come up with a framework document on Germany's controversial plan to abandon nuclear power, coalition sources said on Sunday.
However, the key issue of the timeframe for closing Germany's nuclear plants has not yet been resolved.
The government wants a 30-year phase-out, while industry demands that the country's 19 nuclear plants only be decommissioned after at least 35 years of full-volume operation.
A government spokeswoman strongly denied reports in the conservative Welt am Sonntag newspaper that a deal had been struck on Friday at a meeting between Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and the major utilities without consulting Greens Environment Minister Juergen Trittin.
"There is still no agreement on the timeframe. There was no such meeting on Friday and Trittin has taken part in any meetings that have taken place," a government spokeswoman said.
Abandoning nuclear power has prompted a number of spats between Schroeder's Social Democrats and their ecologist Greens coalition partners.
Trittin has softened his initial demands for a nigh-on immediate withdrawal after threats of damages claims from industry if they pulled out too quickly. But differences of approach within the coalition remain.
DEAL SEEMS IMMINENT
There have been signs for some time that talks between the government and the leaders of the four major plant operators negotiating the pull-out - RWE AG, Veba AG, Viag AG and EnBW - were close to a deal.
The four utilities together produce around one third of Germany's power needs.
Schroeder has said he expects a deal before the summer recess in July but has warned that if the two sides do not come up with consensus by then, the government will introduce legislation shutting the plants.
Welt am Sonntag reported that the Chanceller had met senior power company executives on Friday and had agreed to accept the 35-year phase out, bypassing Trittin.
A government spokeswoman said the timeframe would be discussed at a high level meeting between the government - with Trittin included - and the power firms. When and where this meeting would take place had yet to be decided.
The Greens parliamentary leader Rezzo Schlauch said at the fringes of a party meeting that there would be preparatory meetings at a working group level in the meantime.
The energy industry has threatened huge legal claims for for any financial damages caused by being forced to abandon nuclear power, prompting the government to seek to manage the move in consensus with the firms involved.
Negotiations were also hampered by further rows over a ban on the transport of nuclear waste.
The government said in January a two-year ban on transporting nuclear waste, introduced by the last government afer it emerged that nuclear fuel containers had been leaking radiation for years, would be lifted in August this year.
---
Germans to Honor Clinton But Warn on Missiles
Yahoo News
Monday May 29 11:09 AM ET
By Alastair Macdonald
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000529/pl/clinton_germany_1.html
BERLIN (Reuters) - President Clinton will be honored by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder this week for his commitment to Europe, but Schroeder will leave his guest in no doubt about the depth of European concern over U.S. plans for an anti-missile system.
``The Chancellor will certainly make this as clear to the president as other Europeans have done,'' one government source said Monday, while stressing that German-American ties, as the broader Transatlantic alliance, were fundamentally sound.
In what is likely to be his last visit to Germany as President, Clinton will be presented with the prestigious Charlemagne Prize by Schroeder Friday.
One mark of the healthy state of relations, the source said, was that Clinton would become the first U.S. president and only the third American -- after former secretaries of state George Marshall and Henry Kissinger -- receive the Charlemagne Prize for services to European unity and peace from the often war-damaged western border city of Aachen.
Clinton's commitment over his two terms in office, which end next January, to an active U.S. role in post-Cold War Europe, including its military involvement in the Balkans, had ensured a close relationship with Germany, the officials said.
``The fundamental basis is sound,'' one said.
But in bilateral talks Thursday in Berlin, Schroeder would spell out concerns among European states that plans for a National Missile Defense (NMD) could upset existing arms pacts.
Russia has already warned it could treat a system for shooting down missiles -- which supporters see as a defense against growing numbers of smaller nuclear powers -- as a breach of the 1972 U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty.
``We have a clear interest -- a European interest -- in the body of disarmament treaties not being upset, and we see this as a global interest,'' one official said.
``We are not denying anyone's right to defend themselves and do not dispute that there is a threat. But this needs to be worked out within the alliance so that all the partners can live with it without creating differential security zones or jeopardizing the delicate architecture of disarmament.''
Child Custody Also On Agenda
German officials said it was appropriate that Clinton, who meets European Union officials for an EU-U.S. summit in Lisbon from Tuesday to Thursday, would fly on from Berlin Saturday to Moscow with the European position fresh in his mind.
Among other subjects for discussion, German negotiators expect to face questions from the U.S. side over the attitude of German courts to child custody cases involving the breakdown of marriages between Germans and Americans.
U.S. campaigners, drawing attention to some high-profile cases, accuse German courts of illegally favoring German parents in such cases, in defiance of international treaties.
Economic and political reconstruction efforts in the Balkans would also be on the agenda, the sources said, as would trade in genetically modified foodstuffs and U.S. complaints about an EU regulation on reducing aircraft noise which Washington says discriminates against U.S. manufacturers.
-------- greenland
Greenland Cabinet Party Against U.S. Missile Shield
Yahoo News
Monday May 29 6:19 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000529/wl/arms_greenland_1.html
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Greenland's Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) party, junior partner in the Arctic island nation's home-rule government, has adopted a resolution against U.S. plans for a national missile defense (NMD), Greenland's KNR radio reported Monday.
A U.S. radar and air base at Thule in northwestern Greenland, a semi-autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark, would play a key role if Washington deployed the shield against missile attacks from so-called rogue states.
Located at the geographical midpoint of a chain of radar stations stretching from Alaska to Britain, Thule is one of five overseas sites slated for equipment upgrades to enable detection of incoming missiles fired against the North American continent, U.S. officials say.
``Greenland is a member of the global society and the Arctic community...The party (IA) cannot accept the United States' plans for a so called National Missile Defense,'' KNR radio said on its Internet Web site, citing the resolution adopted at the left-wing party's annual congress over the weekend.
``Greenland and the entire Polar region should be declared a weapon-free zone with status under the United Nations,'' the IA said.
Greenland's extensive home-rule arrangement does not include foreign, security and defense affairs, policy areas which remain the sole responsibility of NATO member Denmark.
The U.S. presence at Thule is governed by a 1951 agreement between Washington and Copenhagen. Although sensitive to Greenlandic concerns, the Danish government has been hesitant to directly criticize the NMD initiative.
Denmark has said it opposes any breach of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missiles (ABM) treaty signed by the United States and the Soviet Union. The ABM accord prohibits systems such as NMD.
Washington is engaged in diplomatic talks with Moscow, hoping to reach agreement on a revision of the ABM treaty and pave the way for deploying the missile shield, which U.S. officials say is not designed to repel a Russian attack.
Greenland's biggest government party, the Social Democratic Siumut which has ruled in coalition with the IA since elections in February last year, has said it will not permit NMD-related activities at Thule which infringe the ABM treaty.
-------- imf / world bank
Subject: (en) Wolfensohn, who has only six days ago been shamed in Israel, criminalises US activists against IMF/WB
From: "X min Y/KH" <kh@xminy.nl>
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 08:34:46 -0400
A - INFOSNEWS SERVICE http://www.ainfos.ca/
WorldBank president James Wolfensohn has just been making incredible comments here (The Hague, Netherlands) severely criminalising anti-imf/wb activists and especially the Ruckus Society.
He said sunday 28 (and it's on the frontpage of the Volkskrant, which claims to be the quality daily newspaper in Holland) that "He fears a lot of violence wil happen in Prague" because "A militant group from the US is preparing to violently disturb de meeting of IMF and Worldbank"...
Wolfensohn is quoted saying: "I'm very afraid for Prague (...) There is a militant group in the US called Ruckus. This group is already training for Prague. They teach how to make molotov-cocktails and how to use other violent tacticts to protest. A female US biljonair is behind the organisation."
The article then goes on about how militants tried to disturb Seattle and Washington, and how Wolfensohn is trying to listen to the critics: "we learn to listen to the frustrations and we react by being as open and transparent possible". Then of course the usual stuff about "most protesters not knowing anything about the work we do", etc.
Apart from dangerous lies about organisations, this kind of bullshit is already doing the PR for the police in Prague to cover the violence they will use against us next september.
The article is also on the net-version of the Volkskrant: http://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws/economie/350021299.html?history= /i25000006
We'll send a letter to the editor to protest and explain that the the only really violent group so far has been the cops in Seattle in Washington.
But there might be other possibilities to confront the guy himself with his lies...?
(kees/ Solidarity fund XminY (www.xminy.nl)
The A-Infos News Service News about and of interest to anarchists
WWW: http://www.ainfos.ca
INFO: http://www.ainfos.ca/org
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan Rejects British Minister's Nuclear Charge
Reuters
May 29, 2000 Filed at 3:36 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-pakista.html
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan Monday rejected as irresponsible a charge made by a British minister in a newspaper article that it was rapidly becoming a threat to world peace.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman said Islamabad had taken ''serious note'' of British Foreign Office minister Peter Hain's comments in an article carried by the Sunday Mirror, which also reported that a Pakistani contact offered to sell to its undercover reporters materials that could be used to make a nuclear bomb.
He said Pakistan planned to raise the matter with the British government after receiving an authentic text of Hain's article and would consider demanding an international probe into how Soviet nuclear materials, which the newspaper said were offered for sale, had reached neighboring Afghanistan.
``We would be surprised if such an irresponsible statement, which is belied by the contents of the Sunday Mirror article itself, has been made by a senior official of the British government,'' the spokesman said about Hain's article.
The Sunday Mirror article said undercover reporters posing as arms dealers discovered that for 20,000 pounds ($29,730) they could buy canisters containing uranium and plutonium captured by Afghans from the Russians.
``There is a link between Pakistan's exports of nuclear capability and terrorism,'' Hain said in his article. ``The country is rapidly becoming a threat to world peace.''
The Pakistani spokesman said Islamabad remained ``committed not to export nuclear and other sensitive materials and technologies to any other country or entity. Our record on this count is impeccable.''
Sunday, Pakistan marked the second anniversary of its tit-for-tat nuclear tests carried out after similar detonations by arch-rival India.
``If this (Mirror) story has any truth, it raises serious questions whether the Soviet army had introduced and stored nuclear materials inside Afghanistan during its decade-long military intervention (there) and why these stocks were not removed at the time of withdrawal of Soviet forces,'' the Pakistani spokesman said.
``This is a matter of utmost gravity,'' he said. ``Pakistan will consider formally raising the matter with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and the United Nations for international investigation into how the Soviet nuclear materials reached Afghanistan.
``As a successor state, the Russian Federation has an obligation to inform the international community about the factual position in this regard,'' he said.
``The export of nuclear capacity from Pakistan is a deadly threat to the region and the world,'' Hain said in his article. ''Pakistan must stop this trade which the Sunday Mirror has exposed.
``It's no good for their government to say they have no control over third parties or private companies. If they were determined to put a stop to this they could.
Hain said he would investigate the matter and ``take action to alert the international community, the United Nations and other bodies as to what is going on in Pakistan.''
In a statement released later by the Foreign Office in London, Hain said: ``We are not aware of evidence to confirm these claims but naturally we take all reports of nuclear proliferation seriously.
``The UK has made a positive contribution to implementing the nuclear non-proliferation agenda.''
---
Indian president visits China
Washington Times
May 29, 2000
World Scene
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-2000529215728.htm
BEIJING - India's president arrived in China's capital yesterday, opening a weeklong visit to bolster relations between the often uneasy Asian neighbors.
President Kocheril Raman Narayanan was greeted at the airport by Foreign Ministry officials and groups of expatriate Indian children waving Indian flags.
Mr. Narayanan's formal agenda begins today with an honor guard review in Tiananmen Square and talks with Chinese President Jiang Zemin. He will also meet Prime Minister Zhu Rongji and National People's Congress Chairman Li Peng during his stay, the United News of India news agency reported.
The visit will carry forward attempts by India and China to soothe years of bitterness by holding dialogue on key issues.
Pakistan says Kashmir is key to peace
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -Marking the second anniversary of Pakistan's nuclear tests yesterday, the army chief, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, said India and Pakistan have to settle their dispute over the shared territory of Kashmir to remove "the threat of a nuclear holocaust."
He told a public gathering in the capital that Pakistan was not interested in embarking on a nuclear arms race. However, he warned that Pakistan would not be left behind if neighboring India forges ahead with nuclear weapons development.
The military chief said he has repeatedly offered talks with India to settle the Kashmir dispute. "We don't want the people of South Asia to live under the threat of a nuclear holocaust. But India shouldn't take our offer as a sign of weakness."
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Pakistan: Kashmir Is Key to Peace
Associated Press
May 28, 2000 Filed at 3:24 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Pakistan-Nuclear.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Marking the second anniversary of Pakistan's nuclear tests, army ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Sunday that Pakistan and India have to settle their dispute over Kashmir to remove ``the threat of a nuclear holocaust.''
The military chief said he has repeatedly offered talks with neighboring India to settle the long-running dispute, which sparked a bitter border battle last summer and has led to two full-scale wars in recent decades.
``We don't want the people of South Asia to live under the threat of a nuclear holocaust,'' Musharraf said. ``But India shouldn't take our offer as a sign of weakness.''
He told a public gathering in the federal capital that Pakistan is not interested in embarking on a nuclear arms race. However, he warned that Pakistan would not be left behind if neighbor India forged ahead with nuclear weapons development.
The speech came exactly two years after Pakistan ran underground nuclear tests in response to Indian tests weeks earlier.
Today, depending who you ask in Pakistan, it's either a safer Asian subcontinent because of the tit-for-tat nuclear explosions -- or it's the likeliest spot for the world's first nuclear war.
Musharraf says nuclear deterrence has ensured Pakistan's security and created a strategic balance in a region that has seen three wars in the last 53 years. As recently as last summer, the border dispute over Kashmir -- a mountainous region divided between Pakistan and India and claimed in its entirety by both -- threatened to escalate into an all-out confrontation.
This week, Musharraf said he didn't believe either side would be foolish enough to take their nations to the brink of a nuclear war.
But others in Pakistan are not so certain. Some fear that many in Pakistan and in India -- where the literacy rate is barely 30 percent, even less among women -- may not realize the effect of a nuclear explosion.
``The ... consequences of nuclear weapons are too horrible to think of, but in India and Pakistan most people don't know about it,'' said Mohammed Illyas, who owns a camera shop in the federal capital. ``They are emotional. They think of each other as a rival and they want to kill each other even if it means their own death.''
During the last year, Pakistan built monuments to its nuclear capability. Replica ballistic missiles were erected at major intersections. On the outskirts of the federal capital, a giant fiberglass rock was erected to represent Chagai Hills, where the underground explosions took place.
Ahmed Kamal, who runs a roadside business, said Pakistan's decision to conduct underground nuclear tests on May 28, 1998, made him feel proud.
``We feel safe because now everybody knows about our power, our neighbor knows,'' he said.
But analysts worry that unless the two countries begin talking -- and quickly -- the South Asian subcontinent will be launched on a nuclear arms race.
``The reality of a nuclear South Asia is there and that is not going to go away,'' said Dr. Riffat Hussain, a political scientist at Islamabad's Qaid-e-Azam University.
Both Pakistan and India have said nuclear weapons are a part of their arsenals. Both countries possess ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, though neither country is believed to have developed a nuclear warhead. Hussain says they have to start talking before they cross that threshold.
``We have this small window of opportunity now and if we don't take advantage of it we are heading toward deployment and a nuclear arms race,'' he said.
But relations between India and Pakistan are hardly conducive to dialogue. India refuses to talk to Pakistan unless it withdraws militant secessionists from Indian Kashmir. Pakistan, meanwhile, denies all involvement in arming or training the militants fighting in the Indian-ruled section of Kashmir.
Aziz Saddiq, a spokesman for the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a fierce opponent of nuclear development, said Pakistan is worse off today than two years ago. The economy is in ruins, international pressure has persisted and relations with India are at an all-time low, he said.
``What have we gained?'' he asked. ``Nothing. Two years ago everyone knew we had the nuclear capability. We could have not tested, gained economically and internationally from it.''
---
Bomb Father Wants Pakistan to Look Ahead
Reuters
May 28, 2000 Filed at 3:28 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-pa.html
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The father of Pakistan's atomic bomb says the country should now look ahead to peaceful scientific advancement rather than harp on the nuclear prowess it proved two years ago to compete with arch-rival India.
Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan said in an interview with Reuters Television on the anniversary of Pakistan's May 28, 1998, nuclear tests that those blasts were necessary to give the country a credible deterrence after India did the same.
But he said the feat, mainly credited to him as the country's top nuclear scientist, was messed up economically by the then government of prime minister Nawaz Sharif with the much-resented freezing of foreign currency bank accounts.
Khan, 64, lamented that Pakistan was doing little in science and technology and said he and his colleagues had been advising government authorities that ``please don't keep on harping what happened two years ago.
``It was a good thing, it gave us a viable deterrence, but please forget it now. Now concentrate on the development of science and technology,'' he said.
``One should not live in the past. The nuclear weapons or whatever we produced is not something that really we should be very, very proud of,'' said Khan, who also created the 2,000-km (1,250-mile) range Ghauri ballistic missile that can carry nuclear warheads.
``We should look forward now.''
Islamabad says it conducted six nuclear tests in 1998 -- five on May 28 and one two days later -- because India had exploded five devices and its leaders were threatening to take over the Pakistan-ruled part of the disputed Kashmir region.
Khan said Pakistan ``had no option'' but to carry out the tests in the southwestern Chagai mountains to prove its capability to deter India, with which it has fought two of its three wars since independence from Britain in 1947 over Kashmir.
``But unfortunately the government of the time...made a mess of it. Instead of benefiting from it, getting the people behind it, due to one step of usurping the foreign exchange of expatriates and local Pakistanis, it killed the whole spirit.''
Islamabad has said the freeze was ordered to avoid a run on banks in light of fears of international economic sanctions, which were later imposed on both India and Pakistan.
That shook the investors' confidence, greatly reducing remittances from overseas Pakistanis through banking channels and adding to the economic woes triggered by the U.S.-led sanctions.
``We could have earned a lot of goodwill of expatriate Pakistanis and other people but just by one step we made them our enemies, those within the country and outside,'' Khan said.
PAKISTAN SEEN SAFER
He acknowledged the nuclear deterrent did not lessen Indo-Pakistan tensions, which led the two sides to the brink of a fourth war last year because of a two-month standoff in Kashmir, but said it made Pakistan ``safer than before.''
``Definitely the enemy thinks hundred times before embarking on any adventure against Pakistan,'' he said.
Both India and Pakistan declared unilateral moratoriums on further nuclear tests after the 1998 blasts. But Khan said his secret nuclear research laboratories at Kahuta, southeast of Islamabad, were still perfecting and refining their products.
``Anybody who is manufacturing something...always tries to improve, makes them better, makes them safer. So that is what the Pakistani scientists and engineers are doing.''
But he said Pakistan need not compete with India's 28 percent defense budget increase for fiscal 2000-2001. ``Whatever capability we have is enough to safeguard our interests. So if somebody jumps over the balcony we don't have to jump. Let them.''
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Washington Times
May 29, 2000
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-letters-2000529172647.htm
Conflicting views about U.S-Indian relations [p]
Contrary to Richard Fisher's claim that "the U.S. should cheer when later this year India sends its navy into the South China Sea" ("Welcome India's help," Commentary, May 18), there is no reason for the United States to support this action.
It is true that China is a threat to the United States and to our ally, Taiwan, but disagreements between India and China center on each country's drive to achieve hegemony in the region.
India introduced nuclear weapons into the subcontinent last year. Also last year, according to the Times of India, India played host to a meeting with the ambassadors of Fidel Castro's Cuba, Communist China, Serbia, Libya, Iraq and Russia to discuss setting up a security alliance "to stop the U.S." George Fernandes, Indian defense minister, described the United States as "vulgarly arrogant."
India is portrayed as a trade partner, but half of its people live below the international poverty line and 86 percent make less than $2 a day. India is a poor country, but it spends 25 percent of its development budget on nuclear development, according to the British documentary "Nuclear India," while spending only 2 percent on health and 2 percent on education.
According to the Hitavada, an Indian English-language newspaper, India paid the late governor of Punjab, Surendra Nath, $1.5 billion to organize and support covert state terrorism in Punjab, Khalistan and Kashmir.
More than 700,000 Indian troops are stationed in Kashmir and more than half a million in Punjab. Amnesty International reports that there are tens of thousands of political prisoners being held without charge or trial. Many Sikh political prisoners have been in this illegal custody since 1984. The Indian government has killed more than 250,000 Sikhs since 1984, more than 200,000 Christians in Nagaland since 1947 and more than 70,000 Kashmiri Muslims since 1988, as well as tens of thousands of Dalits, Assamese, Manipuris and others.
Two months ago, the Indian government killed 35 Sikhs in the village of Chatti Singhpora while President Clinton was visiting New Delhi. The government's involvement was confirmed by two extensive investigations, one conducted by the Punjab Human Rights Organization and the Movement Against State Repression and the other conducted by the Ludhiana-based International Human Rights Organization.
Recently, six Christian missionaries were beaten by Bajrang Dal members. The Bajrang Dal is a part of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor of the ruling Bharatiya Janta Party.
Shortly before the Chatti Singhpora massacre, a Sikh family saved four nuns from an RSS attack. Since Christmas 1998, RSS members and government forces have destroyed Christian churches, schools and prayer halls, murdered priests and raped nuns. One nun was abducted and forced to drink her own bodily fluids. Missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons (ages 8 and 10) were burned to death by militant Hindu fundamentalists chanting "Victory to Hannuman," a Hindu god. A Christian religious festival was broken up by police gunfire.
America is a moral country dedicated to democratic principles. It should not be supporting a country that engages in these practices. India, however, remains one of the top recipients of U.S. aid.
Instead of encouraging Indian military adventurism in the South China Sea, we should stop U.S. aid to India and declare American support for self-determination for the people of Khalistan, Kashmir, Nagaland, and all the nations within India's artificial borders.
An internationally supervised plebiscite on independence should decide the political futures of these nations. It is the democratic way.
Only when all the nations and peoples of South Asia are free can real peace and stability come to that troubled region, which will contribute to world peace.
GURMIT SINGH AULAKH President Council of Khalistan Washington m
Richard Fisher has put his finger precisely on the spot with regard to the differences between India and China as global powers and the attitude that the United States should take in Asia.
India is a vibrant, functioning democracy, while China is a hegemonistic, communist dictatorship bent on military expansionism in Asia. China also is the greatest contributor to nuclear and missile proliferation worldwide.
For many decades, Indians have found it difficult to understand why a democratic nation like India, as large as China in population and in many respects similar to the United States, should be ostracized and ignored by the United States, while a communist dictatorship with a deplorable human rights record should be given most favored nation status by the world's most powerful and richest democracy.
President Clinton's visit to India has resulted in the potential for forging a most rewarding relationship between the two countries economically, politically and even militarily.
Even hard-boiled skeptics on both sides have realized that there exists today a window of opportunity for both countries to advance the cause of peace and prosperity across Asia and the rest of the world.
Let democracy be the yardstick by which the civilized nations of the world greet and work with each other. Dictatorships and authoritarian states should not be rewarded and equated with democratic nations.
The 21st century must see a return to the basic principles that govern humankind, not a return to the cynical methods of appeasement and indifference.
PHILIP FOWLER Tamilnadu, India m
I hope Richard Fisher's column is an indication that U.S. analysts are finally beginning to understand the security nightmare being faced by India, and why it is in the U.S. interest to support democratic India against its authoritarian rivals (China and Pakistan) in the region.
India has long been invisible to the power brokers in the United States, but it is clear that economic and strategic compulsions will induce Indo-U.S. relations to improve in the future.
What is urgently needed is a new breed of South Asia experts (such as Mr. Fisher) who are not blinkered by the Cold War conventional wisdom of the past.
NAGARAJA RAO Minneapolis
---
Indian Leader Opens China Visit
Associated Press
May 28, 2000 Filed at 10:24 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-India-China.html
BEIJING (AP) -- India's president arrived in China's capital Sunday, opening a weeklong visit to bolster relations between the often uneasy Asian neighbors.
President Kocheril Raman Narayanan was greeted at Beijing's airport by Chinese Foreign Ministry officials and groups of expatriate Indian children waving Indian flags.
Narayanan's formal agenda begins Monday with an honor guard review in Tiananmen Square and talks with Chinese President Jiang Zemin. He will also meet Prime Minister Zhu Rongji and National People's Congress Chairman Li Peng during his stay, the United News of India news agency reported.
The visit will carry forward attempts by India and China to soothe years of bitterness by holding dialogue on key issues.
India and China fought a 21-day war in 1962 and have been holding talks since 1988 to settle a boundary dispute. There has been no breakthrough in 12 rounds of discussions, although the two sides last month agreed to accelerate the talks.
Tensions caused by the territorial dispute have been compounded by rivalry between the two for influence in Asia. For much of the past 50 years, China has forged close relations with Pakistan, India's nemesis, to offset Indian power.
But desire for stability on its southwestern flank and fears of an Indian-Pakistani nuclear arms race have caused Beijing to take a more evenhanded approach, while still favoring Islamabad.
Narayanan also plans to meet with agriculture and industry experts and travel to the northeastern port of Dalian and the southwestern city of Kunming. Two-way trade between Indian and China is valued at $2 billion a year.
Narayanan, whose position as president is largely ceremonial, first visited China in 1994 when he was vice president. He also served as India's ambassador to China in the 1980s.
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A short report of anti-nuclear seminar, Pakistan
By Farooq Sulehria
29 May 2000 From
Labour Party of Pakistan
Via: Harsh Kapoor aiindex@mnet.fr
Labour Party Pakistan organized a seminar on 28th May to protest against the nuke blast of Pakistan two years before. Moeen Nawaz Panoo, president of Rustum Sahrab Cycle factory workers union presided over the seminar. Farooq Tariq, secretary general LPP, Shahtaj Qazalbash, convener Joint Action Committee for Peoples Rights, Yousaf Baluch, secretary information Pakistan Workers Confederation, Zafar Mahmood Awan, chairman All Pakistan Para Medical Staff Federation, Rezwan Atta, member National Committee LPP spoke on the occasion.
Speakers stressed the need to organise public support against the nuke blasts. They exposed the hypocricy of many of the arguments used by the religious fundamentalist in favour of atom bombs. There were several friends who spoke of a close relationship of India and Pakistan on people to people basis. They demanded a total destruction of all the nuclear weapons world wide.
It was the only public activity in Lahore to oppose the celebration of the two years and Youme-i-Takbir. Most of the participant were young and from different organizations of youth and labour.
Labour Party Pakistan has kept its tradition of organizing an event on the day. last year it organized a very successful demo on main Mall Road.
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Pakistan becoming threat to world peace: UK
By Aamir Ghauri
The News International,
Pakistan 29 May 2000
From: Harsh Kapoor aiindex@mnet.fr
LONDON: Britain's Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain has accused Pakistan of rapidly becoming "a threat to world peace" and claimed a link between Pakistan's export of nuclear capability and terrorism. In his brief write-up for a Sunday newspaper that carried a story of a Pakistani tribal warlord who offered to sell nuclear bombs to undercover British weapons experts, the British minister asked Pakistan to immediately act to halt this threat to world peace. "It is no good for their government to say they have no control over third parties or private companies who sell nuclear materials. If they were determined to put a stop to this, they could." He went on to say that when nuclear material falls into the hands of private parties it is a step short to getting into terrorist hands. "There is a link between Pakistan's exports of nuclear capability and terrorism. The country is rapidly becoming a threat to world peace." Peter Hain said: "The export of nuclear capacity from Pakistan is a deadly threat to the region and the world I will investigate this matter and take action to alert the international community, the United Nations and other bodies as to what is going on in Pakistan." Hain's bitter comment which is bound to generate a heated debate as to whether Pakistan could be accused of the personal acts and trade of people living on the porous border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, came after the Sunday Mirror published a story as to how its "undercover investigation" found out that any one with £20,000 can buy material needed to make a nuclear bomb in the tribal belt between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The paper claimed that doomsday weapons were stocked but never used by the Soviet army during their invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. "Now they are in the hands of Afghan Muslim extremists and Pakistani tribal warlords with close links to black market arms dealers in Britain." It is also claimed by the paper that the team of its undercover investigators, which also included a former Royal Marine sergeant, inspected the "deadly canisters" containing uranium and plutonium for missile warheads in tribal Pakistan and returned to the UK with photographic material and other evidence to be analysed by nuclear experts.
Back in Britain, experts confirmed the components were genuine, the paper claimed and added that the British foreign minister Peter Hain has promised to investigate the matter. The names of the tribal warlords, who the paper claimed were offering to sell the nuclear material, were Waheed Malik Khan and Kamal Akir. Apart from the nuclear material, the paper claimed these warlords offered to sell sarin nerve gas shells (at £15,000 each) and mustard gas phosgene grenades (at £5,000 each). These tribals have also claimed to have given one of the (nuclear) canisters to the Pakistani government nuclear weapons development programme for testing, the paper further claimed.
-------- iraq
The greatest threat
Washington Times
May 29, 2000
Embassy Row James Morrison News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
http://www.washtimes.com/world/embassy-2000529214654.htm
The United Nations undercut him when he tried to stop Saddam Hussein from building weapons of mass destruction. The Russians took "payoffs" from Iraq, and the French, eager to do business with Iraq, undercut efforts to make Saddam comply with U.N. sanctions.
Those are among the sensational charges made in a new book by Richard Butler, the former head of the U.N. Special Commission responsible for preventing Iraq from building nuclear, biological and chemical weapons after its defeat in the Persian Gulf war.
Mr. Butler, now a diplomat in residence at the Council on Foreign Relations, warns that Saddam is placing the world at risk today because he has been able to rebuild his arsenal in the two years since Iraq forced out the U.N. inspectors.
Mr. Butler's book, "The Greatest Threat: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Crisis of Global Security," reads like a "suspense novel populated by fascinating characters," said James F. Hodge Jr., editor of the council's Foreign Affairs magazine.
"His message, however, is deadly serious. Unchecked development of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons is the greatest threat to life on earth."
Mr. Butler blames U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for being too weak to force Saddam to comply with U.N. inspection of his suspected weapons sites.
He accuses the Russians of taking payoffs from Iraq and complains that the French ignored Saddam's violations of U.N. mandates because they were too eager to do business with Iraq.
-------- japan
Inamine wants details on storage of depleted-uranium rounds
Kyodo News Service
NAHA, Japan, May 29 (Kyodo) - Okinawa Gov. Keiichi Inamine said Monday he will ask U.S. military officials to provide more details on a disclosure that depleted-uranium bullets are being stored at an ammunition depot near Kadena Air Base in the prefecture.
Inamine also wants to commission a study to look into how the radioactive ammunition is being stored, he told a regularly scheduled news conference.
''There are deep-seated fears among citizens of the prefecture,'' the governor said. ''I want to take appropriate measures to confirm safeguards and determine the reasons why the depleted uranium shells are being stored and their necessity.''
Inamine said the request would be made sometime this week.
On Wednesday, Brig. Gen James Smith, commander of the U.S. Air Force's 18th Wing, told reporters that depleted-uranium shells for antitank machine guns are being kept at the Kadena Ammunition Storage area.
The bullets, which are denser than steel and can penetrate a tank's armor, are feared to pose a risk to human health. Some veterans of the Gulf War, in which depleted-uranium rounds were used for the first time, have blamed them for a series of illnesses known as Gulf War syndrome.
However, Smith said the weapons at Kadena do not pose any health risks and that there are no plans to remove them.
On a related topic, Inamine told reporters he plans to ask the U.S. military to put up fences to demarcate private property and land used by U.S. forces. The comment was in reference to an incident Tuesday when U.S. soldiers mistakenly conducted drills on farmland in the village of Higashi.
Local residents reported seeing the soldiers fire their rifles, although U.S. military officials said they did not use live ammunition.
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JCP in Okinawa requests Govt to make U.S. forces remove depleted uranium bullets
Japan Press Service jpspress@twics.com
FIRST TRANSMISSION, MONDAY, MAY 29, 2000 JPS 05-09091
TOKYO MAY 29 JPS -- Japanese Communist Party in Okinawa on May 26 made representations to the Foreign Affairs Ministry Okinawa Office and the Naha Regional Defense Facilities Administration Bureau in protest against the U.S. Marines firing training at civilian sites.
The JCP also demanded that the radioactive depleted uranium ammunition stored at Kadena Ammunition Depot be immediately removed, and made a similar petition to the Okinawa prefectural government.
The Foreign Ministry and the DFAA supported the U.S. Forces explanation that the units lost their way, and said they will ask the U.S. Forces not to do it again.
On the DU ammunition storage, they said that the U.S. Forces have the policy of not acknowledging where and how much they are in storage.
Seiken Akamine, JCP Okinawa prefectural committee chair, refuted their going astray argument by saying that the U.S. Forces conducted the training at the same place (wrong) even the day after it was reported. He said, "Although the government talked about 'efforts to prevent such things from recurring,' similar things have taken place many times. Such leniency on the part of the Japanese government towards the U.S. forces is encouraging misconduct."
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Cheating Diplomacy of Japan
From: "Hiro Umebayashi" CXJ15621@nifty.ne.jp
Date: Mon, 29 May 2000 22:05:00 +0900
The Japanese policy of requesting the U.S. "nuclear umbrella" is closely linked with the cheating diplomacy of Japan. The following is a memo to let you know our struggle to get rid of such cheating.
In peace,
Hiro Umebayashi, President/Executive Director, Peace Depot
e-mail: CXJ15621@nifty.ne.jp
--
Japan Was Asked and Accepted to Homeport a Nuclear-Armed US Aircraft Carrier in 1972
Peace Depot' Revelation Made a Front Top Article of the Asahi-Shimbun
A recent research by the Peace Depot on the declassified U.S. diplomatic documents revealed for the first time that a new interpretation of the "prior consultation" arrangement between Japan and the United States under the Security Treaty was invented when the U.S. Government attempted to homeport the USS Midway, a nuclear-armed aircraft carrier, in Yokosuka Japan in 1971-73. This new interpretation, tacitly approved by the Government of Japan (GOJ), was intended to nullify further than ever the "prior consultation" system which had been established to be utilized whenever the U.S. wanted to "introduce" nuclear weapons to Japan. The GOJ has been explaining to the public that the system is valid and therefore, as long as a prior consultation is not requested by the United States, it believes there is no bringing-in of nuclear weapons into Japan. The Asahi-Shimbun, one of the most respected and most widely distributed newspapers in Japan, carried the Peace Depot's finding at the very top of the front page on April 3, 2000.
Last summer, Professor Kan of Kyushu University, revealed a secret document reporting a 1963 agreement between Ambassador Reischauer, then U.S. Ambassador to Japan, and Ohira, then Japanese Foreign Minister, in which Ohira confirmed the Reischauer's understanding that the "prior consultation" clause applies neither to the transit of vessels with nuclear weapons aboard in Japanese waters nor to the portcall in Japan by such vessels. The GOJ denies the existence of such agreement.
The concept of homeport is different from that of portcall as well as from that of transit, and it is much closer to the concept of "stationing" and "placing" which have been used to paraphrase the word "introduction" appearing in the "prior consultation" clause. Therefore, the plan to homeport a nuclear-armed aircraft carrier necessitated inventing a new interpretation. The U.S. Government suggested that homeporting just meant frequent portcalls caused by the residence in Japan of crew families and could be dealt with under the extended understanding of the Ohira-Reischauer agreement. The U.S. asked about the view of the Japanese Foreign Ministry on this specific point, but the latter didn't comment and tacitly accepted.
The finding was made in the course of study on the whole process of U.S.-Japan negotiation during the period from 1970 to 1973 regarding the first overseas homeporting of a U.S. aircraft carrier. Among others, two key documents, both labeled secret, are "Memorandum of Conversation" among officials including the U.S. Under Secretary Johnson and Japanese Foreign Minister Ohira at Kuilima Hotel Hawaii in August 31, 1972 and a telegram dated Oct. 16, 1972 from Ambassador Ingersoll in Tokyo to the State Department. A fuller article written by Hiro Umebayashi, President the Peace Depot will be published in the meantime. (Hiro Umebayashi)
-------- korea
Missile May Be On Koreas Agenda
Asociated Press
May 29, 2000 Filed at 6:46 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-SKorea-Japan.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- South Korean President Kim Dae-jung said today he may bring up Japan's concern over North Korea's missile program during a June summit with North Korea.
Kim made the remarks after meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who was on a half-day visit to South Korea, his first since took the post in April. He replaced Keizo Obuchi, who died after suffering a stroke.
Kim Dae-jung is scheduled to meet his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong Il, in the North's capital, Pyongyang, on June 12-14 in the first summit of the two Koreas.
``We have not fixed the agenda for the summit,'' Kim said at a joint news conference with Mori. ``But by bringing up various topics (in the summit), each side can know what the other side thinks and misunderstands.''
After weeks of tough negotiations, the two Koreas recently adopted a broadly defined agenda for the summit, calling for efforts to promote peace and national unification.
That opens the way for North Korea to raise the sensitive issue of the U.S. military presence in South Korea. South Korea in turn can focus on promoting peace through economic exchanges and cooperation.
Kim has said he would not rush to reap any big success from the summit. ``I would rather try to agree on whatever is feasible. More can be agreed on at the second and third summit,'' he said.
During a visit to Berlin in March, Kim offered South Korean investment to help build the North's dilapidated economy, hoping that would ease deep-rooted tension and distrust between the two sides.
Japan's concern over North Korea's missile and nuclear programs rose to a fevered pitch after the North lobbed a multistage missile in mid-1998 over Japan. It landed in the Pacific.
Japan resumed normalization talks with North Korean in April for the first time in eight years. However, the next round of talks, originally scheduled for last week, were postponed indefinitely.
The Japanese media attributed the postponement to Pyongyang's unwillingness to investigate allegations that about a dozen Japanese citizens were kidnapped by North Korean agents decades ago.
Mori asked President Kim to convey Japan's eagerness to normalize ties with the North during his visit to Pyongyang, Mori's spokesman, Ryuichiro Yamazaki, said.
During his visit to South Korea, Mori was criticized for his recent remark about Japan being a ``divine nation centered on the emperor.''
The comment has been harshly criticized in Japan as being linked to the emperor-worship that fueled Japanese aggression against Asian neighbors in the 1930s and 1940s. Mori has apologized for the comment.
Anti-Japanese sentiment is strong in South Korea, especially among older people who vividly remember Japan's oppressive colonial rule of Korea from 1910-45.
There were no reports of protests against Mori's visit. Despite the lingering historical animosity, Japan and South Korea have become close economic and political partners. Their navies held their first joint exercise last summer.
-------- puerto rico
The Battle of Vieques
May 29, 2000
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/issue/000529/0529morales.shtml
Forty-six years after Lolita Lebrσn and fellow Puerto Rican nationalists shot up the House of Representatives, wounding five members in a desperate act of defiance, Lebrσn, along with Puerto Rican members of Congress Luis Gutiιrrez and Nydia Velαzquez, were arrested for an act of nonviolent resistance against the federal government. On May 4, 300 US Marshals and FBI agents cleared about 200 demonstrators from a Navy bombing range on the embattled island of Vieques. "Puerto Rico has been invaded again," said New York City Councilman Josι Rivera as he was led away. For Puerto Ricans on the island and the mainland, this was just another display of nineteenth-century gunboat diplomacy.
President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno were pleased that the removal played out nothing like the Eliαn-retrieval horror show, but the Vieques issue will not die out like a trash-can fire on a Little Havana boulevard. Puerto Ricans' opposition to the Navy's ecologically harmful, suffocating presence had been brewing long before the yearlong sit-in on Vieques, triggered by last April's bombing run that killed private security guard David Sanes. In 1989 I observed it firsthand during a reporting trip when I heard and felt the Navy's thundering assault on the beaches of Vieques.
The President's Vieques strategy appears to be dictated by a need to placate the military lobby. His plan, negotiated in conjunction with Puerto Rican Governor Pedro Rossellσ, provides for an immediate $40 million boost to the Vieques economy and the resumption of limited Navy training using "dummy bombs"--which occurred a few days after the FBI action. A referendum, to be scheduled at the whim of the Navy, would allow the residents of Vieques to vote on whether the Navy should pull out entirely after three years; a vote to retain the Navy would garner the island another $50 million in aid. This combined stalling tactic and overt bribe might pave the way for the Navy to resume its flouting of agreements, as it did when it ignored a 1983 accord to improve the local economy.
Rossellσ's complicity with this agreement has turned Puerto Ricans solidly against the pro-statehood politics of his New Progressive Party. The day after the removal of the protesters, Rossellσ activated units of the National Guard, and an angry crowd of more than 1,000 demonstrators forced the cancellation of a ceremony at a renovated federal building in Old San Juan. The demonstrators smashed the windshield of pro-statehood former Governor Luis Ferrι's car as he tried to drive through them. Rossellσ's party is absorbing a blow it will probably not recover from in this year's gubernatorial elections, and the Independence Party, whose leader, Rubιn Berrνos, was virtually canonized as the patron saint of the Vieques squatters, will score some gains. But the big winner will probably be the status quo Commonwealth Party, which has always absorbed voters with nationalistic sentiments who are not ready for the left-leaning independentistas.
But while the Vieques fallout will likely only signal another change in power on the island in what is essentially a two-party system, its effect on mainland Puerto Ricans could be significant. When she was arrested, Representative Velαzquez predicted that New York's Puerto Rican Day Parade on June 11 would become a massive rally supporting the Navy's removal from Vieques. The outrage demonstrated by Velαzquez, Gutiιrrez and Representative Josι Serrano, who was arrested at a Washington protest on May 4, may inspire a community of voters to become energized as never before. Senate candidate Hillary Clinton has called for an immediate and permanent end to the bombing. Presidential candidate Al Gore has issued only nebulous statements against the bombing while expressing support for the Clinton-Rossellσ agreement, which is tied to the dubious referendum proposal.
Far from being resolved, the Vieques problem is just beginning to get serious. With the possibility of protesters still hidden deep inside the tangled brush of the Navy range and the vow of a coalition of clerical, union and Vieques activists to return to the protest site, Washington's only choice is increasing militarization of the island, which will bring more resentment. Vieques fishermen, the bulwark of the island's economy, have been denied access to lobster traps set offshore of Navy firing ranges.
President Clinton and Governor Rossellσ, who claimed to support the people of Vieques, have betrayed Puerto Ricans by allowing bombing to resume. It is increasingly clear to Puerto Ricans on the island and on the mainland that the yearlong sit-in on Vieques was the referendum, and it is time for the United States to cease its duplicitous attempts at "fairness" and remove the Navy from Vieques once and for all.
Ed Morales
Ed Morales, who writes about politics and culture for various publications, is writing a book, Speaking in Spanglish, for St. Martin's Press.
---
Veterans Return Medals in Protest
Yahoo News
Monday May 29 2:25 PM ET
By RICARDO FIGUEROA, Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000529/wl/puerto_rico_veterans_protest_1.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Puerto-Rico-Veterans-Protest.html
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - About 30 U.S. veterans from the Puerto Rican island of Vieques turned in their medals on Memorial Day to protest a U.S. Navy bombing range.
``In protest and for peace in Vieques,'' the veterans said as they laid their ribbons and discharge papers in a wooden box during a ceremony at the Veterans' Memorial in San Juan.
Organizers plan to send the box to President Clinton with a letter demanding that the Navy stop exercises on Vieques. On May 4, U.S. marshals arrested more than 200 demonstrators who had camped out on the bombing range and thwarted exercises for nearly a year.
Resentment over the U.S. Navy's presence on Vieques boiled over in April 1999, when a jet dropped two 500-pound bombs off-target, killing a civilian security guard at the bombing range. Soon afterward, the Navy admitted that it had accidentally fired ammunition tipped with depleted uranium at the island in February 1999, a violation of federal laws.
``The moment I heard of them using depleted-uranium shells, that's when I stopped feeling pride for having served,'' said Jose Soto, 62, a Vietnam veteran who served for 20 years in the Navy. He turned in 10 medals on Monday.
The Navy owns two-thirds of Vieques and has used the training ground to prepare for every major armed conflict since World War II. It says Vieques is the only site where its Atlantic fleet can practice shelling, bombing, amphibious landings, ship-to-ship warfare, air attacks and anti-submarine operations at the same time.
After the bombing accident, Clinton agreed to order the Navy out if the island's 9,400 residents vote in a referendum to expel them.
Exercises are to continue without explosives until the vote, which is expected next year. Protesters want the Navy to withdraw immediately, saying they fear a new president may cancel Clinton's agreement if a military emergency arises.
As U.S. citizens, Puerto Ricans can serve in the U.S. armed forces and are subject to the military draft.
-------- russia
'Grand bargain' with Putin not likely in summit
Washington Times
May 29, 2000
By David Sands THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/default-2000529222342.htm
High hopes have given way to sharply lower expectations as President Clinton leaves today for his last major European tour and his first summit with new Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A much-touted "grand bargain" at the summit, calling for a new round of deep nuclear missile cuts and Russian acceptance of a limited U.S. national missile defense system, now appears all but dead, killed by fears in Russia and much of Western Europe that Mr. Clinton is moving too fast and by fears from missile defense supporters at home that he is not moving fast enough.
Some conservative critics suspect the Clinton administration may be low-balling its ambitions for the summit Sunday and June 5, but top U.S. officials conceded last week the grand bargain had been shelved for now.
"I have never expected an issue as complex as this to be resolved in this summit," National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger told reporters last week. "It's the first time that President Putin and President Clinton will have an opportunity to discuss this."
"I do not expect a definitive answer at this summit," added Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright.
A letter released last month by 26 Republican senators warning the lame-duck president against any far-reaching strategic arms deals sucked a lot of the air out of the summit, according to Joseph Cirincione, an arms expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a skeptic of the national missile defense (NMD) idea.
"That told the Russians that Clinton doesn't even own the bridge he is trying to sell them," Mr. Cirincione said.
Mr. Clinton nevertheless will enjoy some photo opportunities and bully pulpits on his weeklong trip, including a two-day summit with European Union leaders in Portugal beginning tomorrow; the first-ever address by a U.S. president to the State Duma, the lower chamber of the Russian parliament; and a post-summit visit to Ukraine, identified by U.S. officials as a key security and economic partner in the region.
In addition, Mr. Clinton will hold talks with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Berlin and stage yet another "Third Way" symposium with 17 heads of state from around the world, including Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and South African President Thabo Mbeki.
But the centerpiece of the trip is clearly the meeting with Mr. Putin, the enigmatic former KGB agent elected in March to succeed Boris Yeltsin. Mr. Berger said the agenda in
Moscow will include security policy, economic and political reforms in Russia, control of Russian military exports and the war in Chechnya.
But the collapse of any prospect for a major breakthrough on arms cuts and NMD has made the Clinton-Putin get-together "a summit in search of a purpose," according to Kim Holmes, director of the Heritage Foundation's Davis Institute for International Studies.
"They're not going to resolve their differences on Chechnya, they won't break any new ground on economic reform or Russia's path to democracy, and any real arms-control breakthrough would run into trouble in the Senate," Mr. Holmes said.
Administration officials counter that a face-to-face meeting between the leaders of the globe's two biggest nuclear powers is always useful.
Mr. Clinton, who highly values personal relations with fellow world leaders, formed a close partnership with the gregarious Mr. Yeltsin, but so far has failed to establish a similar bond with the contained Mr. Putin.
Michael McFaul, an expert on Russian politics at Stanford University, said Mr. Clinton should try to engage the Russian president in a broad philosophical discussion of democracy, free markets and Russia's role in Europe.
"I think there is a whole list of things on which President Putin doesn't have firm views because he never had to think about them, from freedom of the press to the Balkans to the economy," Mr. McFaul said.
"Now is the time to try to influence him, because in six to 12 months all these views will be locked in."
With the new Russian government consumed with its domestic reform programs, Mr. Putin is not expected to offer any major new security or policy initiatives at the summit.
But many analysts say the Russian leader may reap far more benefits politically from the meeting than his American counterpart. Even holding the summit in Russia is something of a coup because past diplomatic practice suggests it is Washington's turn to play host.
The Russians remain deeply suspicious of the NMD idea, fearful that it eventually will overwhelm their shrinking nuclear missile force.
Administration officials insist the system they are contemplating would be aimed only at "rogue" nations such as North Korea and Iraq, not at Russia with its thousands of nuclear warheads.
GOP presidential nominee George W. Bush complicated Mr. Clinton's selling job by signaling that he is prepared to accept much deeper missile cuts while proceeding with an NMD system far more ambitious than anything Mr. Clinton is likely to approve.
The Pentagon plans another test of the anti-missile system in early July, and Mr. Clinton has said he will decide whether to proceed soon after that. With the issue now emerging in the presidential campaign, pressure is growing on Mr. Clinton to defer the decision to the next administration.
Russians are using the confusion in Washington and the unease in Europe to prepare a strong push against any revision of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the 1972 pact that the administration says must be modified if the missile defense system is to proceed.
"We are carrying out all our talks with the American side - not with the goal of finding a way to to resolve the issue of changes to the ABM Treaty - but to have this issue struck off the agenda," Gen. Valery Manilov, first deputy chief of Russia's general staff, told reporters Friday.
Mr. Berger said he expects one concrete achievement of the summit to be an accord to dispose of 34 tons of military-grade plutonium that could be used to make tens of thousands of new nuclear weapons.
In Lisbon, Mr. Berger said Mr. Clinton and EU leaders will discuss the "unfinished business" of reconstruction in the Balkans, just less than a year after NATO's bombing campaign forced Serbian troops to withdraw from Kosovo.
Trans-Atlantic ties have been strained in recent days by U.S. charges that EU nations have been slow to deliver promised aid to the area, and by European unease over the NMD idea.
More broadly, EU leaders are expected to voice concerns about what they see as U.S. "unilateralism," according to Fiona Hill, director of strategic planning at the Eurasia Foundation.
"There is growing European resentment of American domination - this feeling that we need to do things our way and European views are only marginally taken into account," she said.
U.S. officials, in turn, are expected to press EU leaders about plans for a European defense force and how it fits inside NATO. They also say they've made some headway in getting European leaders to accept the concept of NMD.
"If minds haven't been changed, they've certainly been opened," a senior administration official said Friday.
Adding to the lessened intensity of the U.S.-Russia summit is the fact that Mr. Clinton and Mr. Putin will have plenty of opportunities to resume their conversation.
The two are set to meet at least three more times before the end of the year - at the Group of Eight summit in Japan next month, at the United Nations in September and at the APEC gathering of Asian-Pacific nations in November.
---
Russia-US Missile Deal Not Expected
Associated Press
May 29, 2000 Filed at 1:09 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-US-Russia.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Clinton's national security adviser, Sandy Berger, doesn't expect any arms agreements from next weekend's summit in Russia, but he dismissed George W. Bush's suggestion that Clinton ought not try.
Bush, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, suggested last week that Clinton refrain from signing any arms pact. No agreement would be better than one that ``ties the hands of the next president and prevents America from defending itself,'' the Texas governor said.
``The American people elect their presidents for four years, not for three years,'' Berger said Sunday on CNN's ``Late Edition.'' ``The United States can't say to the world `we're out of business' for one year out of four.
He recalled that Clinton's predecessor, Bush's father, signed the last strategic arms control treaty in December 1992, after he lost the election. Clinton ``is not going to act for the sake of acting,'' Berger said, ``but he's not going to not act for the sake of not acting.''
He said Clinton will use the summit on June 4-5 to urge Russian President Vladimir Putin to accept treaty modifications that would allow deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system. He said Putin is not expected to agree.
Berger said the leaders will have a full agenda for their first official get-together, with three additional meetings probable this year. Subjects will include Russian economic change, regional issues such as Korea and Chechnya and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.
``And we're certainly going to talk about these arms-control issues,'' Berger said, but ``I do not expect any agreements to be reached.''
As ordered by Congress, the United States is working to develop a system to intercept missiles fired by countries that the administration calls ``rogue states.'' Those mentioned Sunday by Berger and by Defense Secretary William Cohen, on NBC's ``Meet the Press,'' are North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Libya.
``I think it's a good opportunity for us to explain our view of the threat and President Putin to talk about his concerns,'' Berger said. The idea is to ``see whether we can understand each other better.''
Clinton leaves tonight for Portugal, which currently heads the 15-nation European Union, to meet with EU ministers. En route to Russia, he stops over in Germany for an informal gathering of world leaders. A stop in Ukraine has been added after Russia.
In their discussions Wednesday at Queluz Palace outside Lisbon, EU leaders plan to discuss such questions as the Balkan problem, Internet matters and AIDS in Africa. The meeting is the latest in a series that began in 1990 between the world's two largest trading blocs.
---
Leaders of Russia, EU See New Era of Cooperation
Reuters
May 29, 2000 Filed at 9:59 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-russia-.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The leaders of Russia and the European Union hailed the start of a new era of economic and political cooperation Monday following their first summit meeting since the election of President Vladimir Putin.
But Romano Prodi, president of the EU Commission, said Russia still had to do more to attract sorely needed foreign investment and urged Moscow to allow a full and transparent investigation into alleged human rights abuses in Chechnya.
``I am convinced we are really starting a new era of cooperation,'' Prodi told a joint news conference with Putin in the Kremlin also attended by other senior EU officials.
He said Russia's improved economic situation, with lower inflation and a tight budget, created the framework for boosting trade between the ex-communist superpower and the 15-nation EU.
Prodi, a former Italian prime minister, said the new Putin administration needed to focus now on reforming Russia's onerous tax regime and securing property rights for foreign investors.
The EU already accounts for some 40 percent of Russia's foreign trade and Prodi said the figure would rise to around 60 percent as the bloc expands to include former Soviet satellite states in central and eastern Europe.
Addressing Russian concerns about this expansion, Prodi said Moscow stood to gain from the emergence of a single market with lower tariffs and more than 500 million consumers with high incomes -- twice the population of the United States.
PUTIN EYES COOPERATION, EVEN ON CHECHNYA
Putin said Monday's talks had been ``very constructive, very frank and very fruitful'' and said Russia was committed to closer ties with the EU in a wide range of spheres, including security.
He said Russia was cooperating with international organizations in rebel Chechnya, where its eight-month military campaign against Islamic guerrillas has drawn strong criticism in Western capitals as excessively brutal.
But Putin, who says Moscow is fighting ``international terrorists'' in Chechnya, made clear cooperation had its limits.
``We are categorically opposed to any thesis of human rights being used to try to prevent Russia from bringing order to that territory,'' said Putin, a former KGB spy elected on March 26.
In a speech after the Kremlin meeting, Prodi repeated the EU call for peace talks. ``We still believe that there is no solution in Chechnya without the launch of a tangible political process, however complex and arduous this may be,'' he said.
Earlier Putin, who spent part of his career in the former East Germany and speaks fluent German, said Russia -- a vast, nuclear-armed nation stretching over two continents and 11 time zones -- saw itself as fundamentally a European power.
``Russia was, is and will remain a European country because of its location, its culture and its relation toward economic integration,'' Putin said.
WIDER SECURITY ISSUES ALSO ON AGENDA
Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, told the news conference that Russia and the EU also sought greater cooperation in the area of international security, notably in the Balkans where Moscow retains cordial ties with internationally ostracised Yugoslavia.
A joint statement released after the Kremlin talks said Putin had expressed interest in EU plans to develop its own military force which would complement NATO. The force is seen by some commentators as an embyronic European army.
But Guterres said the United States also had to be part of any broader security cooperation between the EU and Russia.
Putin is due to hold a summit meeting next weekend with President Clinton likely to be dominated by arms control -- an issue largely absent from Monday's agenda.
Also attending Monday's talks were the EU's foreign policy supremo Javier Solana, External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten and Portuguese Foreign Minister Jaime Gama.
On the Russian side, Putin was joined by Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, recently approved in his post by parliament, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Putin's liberal economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov.
-------- ukraine
U.S. Says Chernobyl Close Date Would Help Raise Funds
Reuters
May 29, 2000 Filed at 11:20 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-ukraine.html
KIEV, Ukraine (Reuters) - Ukraine could improve its chances of winning foreign funds to shore up the crumbling tomb over Chernobyl's destroyed fourth reactor by announcing a date to close the power plant, the U.S. envoy to Ukraine said Monday.
U.S. Ambassador Stephen Pifer said a definite closure date, which Western governments have been seeking for years, might help open purses at an international donor conference on Chernobyl early next month.
``There have already been about $400 million raised to build a new sarcophagus over the destroyed reactor. We still need about $350 million and I expect that my government will shortly be announcing a fairly sizeable contribution,'' Pifer said.
``So if Ukraine has announced a concrete (closure) date I think that would give an impetus that the United States and other countries can use to attract as many donors as possible so that at that congress we can raise that $350 million.''
Ukraine, which is also fighting for foreign funds to help complete two new reactors to replace Chernobyl, has said it will close the nuclear power plant's last remaining reactor by the end of the year but has so far not announced a definite date.
Pifer said negotiations between the Ukrainian government and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) over the terms and size of a loan package to cover part of the cost of completing the new reactors were continuing.
He said Chernobyl would be one of the issues on the agenda when President Clinton visits Ukraine Monday, along with the ex-Soviet state's efforts to reform the economy and improve its record on intellectual property rights.
Clinton would also discuss Ukraine's process of closer integration into Europe and its political structures, he said.
The international community is keen to avoid a repeat of the world's worst civil nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in 1986, when the fourth reactor exploded and dumped radioactive fallout over many parts of Europe.
-------- us military
Bans on military recruiters stymie enlistment efforts
Washington Times
May 29, 2000
By Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-2000529221736.htm
The San Francisco Unified School District bans military recruiters on campus as a protest against arms spending in general and the Pentagon's homosexual ban in particular. Up the coast, the Portland, Ore., school board takes the same stance.
In fact, over 1,000 high schools nationwide bar Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps recruiters from visiting students in school. The off-limits comes at a bad time for the 1.4 million armed forces. It is having a historically tough time attracting the number, and the quality, of recruits it needs. Barring recruiters from its No. 1 hunting ground only makes matters worse.
"That is where a large majority of our target audience is," said Lt. Steve Zip, spokesman for Navy Recruiting Command, which has added 1,700 recruiters and over 200 recruiting stations since the crunch began two years ago.
Now, the Senate Armed Services Committee is proposing a new law designed to sway uncooperative school boards, even in a liberal stronghold like San Francisco.
Legislation in its fiscal 2001 budget would require all school districts to permit recruiters on campus unless its board votes to enforce a ban. The language also sets out a procedure for the state governor, the secretary of defense and U.S. Department of Education to lobby recalcitrant school districts.
"The committee believes that every high school student deserves the opportunity to learn of the opportunities of military service just as they learn of the opportunities associated with college or private-sector employment," the committee said.
But Elaine Koury, spokesman for the San Francisco Unified School District, said pressuring boards "might backfire on them."
"One of the things people need to remember is that local school districts really have jurisdiction in terms of their educational policy," she said.
She said the district does operate junior ROTC programs for 1,400 students and invites military personnel on campus for educational purposes.
"We are not throwing the military out," she said. "We're throwing military recruiters out."
In the heat of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, the board passed a resolution banning recruiters. The commissioners bashed arms spending and the military's gay ban.
"Unbridled military spending in the last 40 years has, in large part, been responsible for the growing national debt and for inadequate spending on education and other necessary social services," the resolution stated. "The military branches of the United States government blatantly advocate and practice discrimination against gay and lesbian enlistees."
The resolution also said, "The burden of military combat falls most heavily on minority and poor youth."
There are about 21,000 secondary schools in America, and nearly one-quarter place some restrictions on recruiters, according to Air Force figures.
Over 1,000 deny access, and, of those, 200 will not provide a list of students' names. Nearly 4,700 schools allow entry but will not provide the lists.
Brig. Gen. Peter U. Sutton, until recently the commander of the Air Force Recruiting Service, disagrees with the practice. A spokesman quoted him saying that "It seems to be a shame that an institution that enjoys freedom of expression would basically censor the information that is available to students."
Said Ms. Koury: "They can hear the opportunity. They just won't hear about it on school campuses in San Francisco.
The Air Force fell 1,700 inductees short of a 33,800 recruiting target last year, the first time it missed the mark since 1979. This year, it lags by about 2,000.
"Our recruiters simply want to present an opportunity to students," said Master Sgt. Tom Clements, an Air Force spokesman. "All we are asking for is an opportunity to present what the Air Force has to offer."
Lt. Col. Katherine Abbott, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to criticize individual school districts, but said students are missing an opportunity.
"We feel that we offer a wonderful opportunity for young people for a career in the military and by allowing recruiters on campus that will allow students to make an informed decision on their futures," she said. "We are working very hard with schools and the administration to gain access."
Pentagon figures differed somewhat from the Air Force's. They show that 600 high schools ban all recruiting, while 2,000 ban one or more of the services.
---
Up in Arms: Department of Defense Families Seek Honors for Cold War Dead
Washington Post
Monday, May 29, 2000; Page A21
By Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writer
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/29/061l-052900-idx.html
On Jan. 15, 1961, an Air Force radar station on a platform off the coast of New Jersey collapsed in a storm, killing all 28 people aboard. Casualties, their families feel, of the Cold War.
Now, almost 40 years later, relatives are seeking to commemorate those who were lost aboard the radar post, part of the NORAD early-warning system to protect against Soviet bombers or missiles.
"What we're looking for is a presidential citation similar to ones they've given out in the past for people who served their country," said Donald Slutzky of Germantown, who worked as a civilian computer technician aboard the platform, leaving it two months before it collapsed.
Organizers also are planning a September memorial service for the 28 dead. But they haven't been able to locate about half of the families. They ask that relatives contact Donald Abbott, the son of a welder who died on the tower, at 800-397-0648.
In another effort related to Memorial Day, the U.S. military plans to pause at 3 p.m. today in each time zone for one minute of silence. The observance is in accordance with President Clinton's order that all government agencies stop at that time "to remember and reflect on the sacrifices made by so many to provide freedom for all."
READING LIST: Defense Secretary and sometime author William S. Cohen during an interview mentioned three books of note. The first was Patrick Tyler's "A Great Wall," a history of U.S. relations with China since Nixon's day.
"He writes beautifully," Cohen said, patting the volume on his desk. "It's really worth reading."
The second was the somewhat more obscure "The Rise of the Virtual State: Wealth and Power in the Coming Century," by Richard N. Rosecrance. "Virtual State" predicts, Cohen said, that "there will be less conflict over natural resources. The real race will be between those countries that are developing the intellectual capital to be able to move assets and take advantage of others' resources."
Cohen added that in their most recent meeting, South Korean President Kim Dae Jung twice mentioned Alvin Toffler's "The Third Wave."
FIGHTING IN THE STREETS: The Marine Corps is trying hard to reduce the high casualty rates suffered by the infantry in urban warfare. A year ago, officers were startled in one exercise to have units lose an average of 38 percent of their troops in each day of simulated city fighting, with one unit losing 70 percent. In a round of exercises last month, the Marines cut the simulated casualty rate to below 20 percent.
Col. Gary Anderson, chief of staff of the Marine Warfighting Laboratory, says there were three differences: "better training," more use of tanks to support the infantry and the introduction of extra radios, allowing members of a squad to talk to one another without exposing themselves to enemy fire.
ARMY BOOSTER: The Army, which is going through tough times as it struggles to become more flexible and deployable, is getting some unexpected support from a senior Marine, Gen. Anthony C. Zinni.
In a behind-closed-doors talk at the Pentagon earlier this spring, the outspoken Zinni, who oversees U.S. military operations in the Mideast, argued that the Army needs to have at least 12 or 13 divisions, rather than the 10 it has now.
KOSOVO MORALITY: Was the Kosovo campaign unethical? Yes, argues a provocative paper by three West Point teachers that is getting high-level attention inside the military.
Retired Army Col. Don M. Snider and active-duty Majors John A. Nagl and Tony Pfaff contend in their monograph that NATO violated the rules of land warfare by using tactics that protected combatants by placing civilian bystanders at greater risk.
"By not using Apache helicopters, A-10s [ground attack aircraft] or NATO ground troops . . . NATO forces failed to take risks they should have taken," the West Pointers write. "Under the rules of land warfare, NATO forces had at least a prima facie obligation to take risks to preserve innocents' lives, and they did not do so."
The authors worry that the U.S. military, by focusing too much on protecting itself while on missions, is losing touch with the ethos of self-sacrifice: "We see [a] serious corrosion, even violation, of the professional military ethic."
"Army Professionalism, the Military Ethic, and Officership in the 21st Century," is online at: www.usafa.af.mil/jscope/JSCOPE00/
Snider/Snider00.html
ON THE WEB: One of the best military-related Web sites is the extensive and straightforward one offered by the Federation of American Scientists at www.fas.org, under "Peace and Security" issues. For example, under "US Navy Ships," the discussion of the "arsenal ship"--a small-crew craft that could fire on ground forces--provides a thorough explanation of that now-dead Navy program and a set of helpful links, including to the Navy's thorough internal report on what killed the program--a study that doesn't seem to be available anymore on Defense Department Web sites.
-------- us nuc facilities
-------- iowa
'FORGOTTEN' NUCLEAR WEAPONS FACTORY POISONS IOWA TOWN
by Dennis J. Carroll
May 29, 2000
Boston Globe
From: Winston Weeks wweeks@mail.aros.net
MIDDLETOWN, Iowa - The assignment in an environmental issues class at Southeastern Community College seemed innocuous: Write a letter to a local official about the environment.
So Bob Anderson, 60 years old,wrote to US Senator Tom Harkin. In seven paragraphs, Anderson told about his experiences as a security guard at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant from 1968 to 1973, and suggested that exposure to radioactive materials may have given him and others cancer.
The letter, and the off-and-on inquiry it triggered, ultimately unleashed a stream of startling disclosures in recent months from federal officials and former plant workers who broke decades of silence to talk about the plant.
Radioactive uranium clouds routinely floated above the military compound, while workers, often unprotected by safety gear, probably came into contact with plutonium and other radioactive and hazardous materials. A few weeks ago, a groundwater test well at the plant showed radiation far above the levels considered safe for drinking.
The inquiry also found a huge institutional memory loss at the US Department of Energy, which had forgotten that the plant was once the nation's only producer of nuclear weapons, and had completely lost track of plant records.
At the peak of production, almost 10,000 workers toiled around the clock at the 19,000-acre plant, making everything from bullets to atomic bombs. Almost anyone who lived in southeastern Iowa for any length of time, it seemed, either worked at the plant or knows someone who did.
The Department of Energy and the University of Iowa have begun a survey of health problems among the plant's nuclear workers, and the department recently began testing workers for possible exposure to beryllium, a toxic metal used in constructing nuclear weapons.
Harkin said he never knew the plant produced nuclear weapons. When he received Anderson's letter in the fall of 1997, he asked the Energy Department about it and was told that the plant never produced nuclear weapons. So he sent Anderson a letter thanking him for his interest, and let the matter drop.
But last August, after a Harkin aide touring the plant learned of its nuclear-weapons history, the senator's office contacted Anderson and asked for more information. In the meantime, Harkin stepped up his questioning of the Energy Department and the US Army. But finding answers was difficult because workers' health had never been monitored, as it was at designated nuclear arms plants.
On top of that, the records of plant operations and working conditions were in cardboard boxes scattered among Energy Department facilities and archives across the country. Many of the records turned up in boxes at the Pantex nuclear weapons facility near Amarillo, Texas, where Middletown's nuclear operations were moved in the mid-1970s.
Finally, Energy Department officials confirmed for Harkin and themselves that the Atomic Energy Commission did indeed make nuclear weapons in Middletown from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s. In fact, from 1949 to 1951, the facility was the nation's only nuclear weapons assembly plant.
''When I learned the extent of IAAP's role in creating the US nuclear arsenal, I was astonished to learn that some key federal officials knew little or nothing of its history,'' Harkin told the Hawk Eye, a daily newspaper in Burlington, Iowa.
''In other words, the IAAP's nuclear history fell between some big bureaucratic cracks,'' Harkin said.
''Senator Harkin was correct when he said that the plant fell through the cracks,'' said Earl Whiteman, an official at the Energy Department's office in Albuquerque. ''Many people outside of [southeast Iowa] forgot about the important work that was done there.''
Anderson said he and the guards he supervised often boarded train cars loaded with metal barrels of radioactive materials. He said that at the time, he wasn't sure just exactly what was in the drums that he walked among and touched. ''I just knew that it must be pretty important ... to have people with machine guns guarding a railroad car,'' Anderson said.
Fifteen years after Anderson left the plant, doctors diagnosed his non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph system that they suspected was caused by exposure to radiation.
Several of his friends, who had also worked at the plant, had died of similar diseases, Anderson told Harkin.
''We always prided ourselves on following everything by the rules,'' Anderson said of his work on the nuclear production line. ''Little did I know that we didn't have a rule book. We were writing it as we went along.''
Anderson's account and the subsequent disclosures have prompted dozens of other workers or their relatives to come forward with stories of health problems and unsafe conditions.
''Is there anything the government is going to do to find out what's going on with these people?'' asked Terri Bailey, whose parents worked at the plant. She said her stepfather has throat cancer and her mother suffers from brain aneurysms.
''She carried live powder,'' Bailey said of her mother's work in the plant. ''If she dropped it, she'd blow up.''
For decades, workers, sworn to secrecy about what they did at the plant, had been reluctant - even fearful - about coming forward with their stories.
Vaughn Moore, a former guard at the plant, painted a dark picture of conditions at the plant.
''Talking about your work was strictly taboo. Back in them days, they would tell you, `Run your mouth and you're going to Leavenworth'' Penitentiary, said Moore.
''They had 15 FBI agents stationed in this town,'' he said. ''All they did was run around in bars listening, grocery stores listening. They knew what clubs you belonged to, they knew where you ate, they knew where you went fishing.
''They knew all about you,'' Moore said. ''They knew more about you than you knew about yourself.''
Harkin has been pushing the Defense Department to lift its secrecy about the plant so workers will feel free to tell their stories. Even now, the Army refuses either to confirm or deny that nuclear weapons were assembled there.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson in January traveled to the area to talk to former workers, calling them Cold War heroes. He promised to conduct a radiological review of the nuclear arms production line at the plant and to explore ways of compensating former workers for their health problems.
Last month, Richardson announced a nearly $500 million proposal to compensate the nation's nuclear weapons workers for their medical expenses and lost wages.
It will not be easy to attribute health problems to nuclear arms production specifically.
The plant is already part of a $110 million Superfund cleanup supervised by the Environmental Protection Agency. The cleanup generally does not involve former Atomic Energy Commission areas of the plant, and is focused on restoring soil and groundwater contaminated by decades of producing conventional weapons and improper disposal and burning of hazardous wastes.
But Energy Department officials have said that if workers can show they were exposed to certain hazardous materials, they will be given the benefit of the doubt in determining compensation.
As for his reaction to all that has happened since his letter to Harkin, Anderson said: ''All of my life [as a policeman or security guard] has been one of observation and reporting if something is wrong, and basically that's what I wanted to do.''
-------- tennessee
Guest Column: Persistence may pay off for sick workers
Monday, May 29, 2000
Oak Ridger
http://www.oakridger.com/
On this day in American history (May 17): In 1946, President Harry Truman seized control of America's railroads.
In 1954, the United States Supreme Court ordered American schools desegregated, in Brown v. Board of Education.
In 1973, the U.S. Senate began its Watergate investigation.
In 1983, in response to a November 1982 Appalachian Observer newspaper declassification request, the DOE Oak Ridge Operations office admitted it "lost," emitted and dumped 2.4 million pounds of mercury in Oak Ridge.
The DOE ORO telephone call came at about noon on our weekly deadline day, requesting I send someone to DOE HQ in Oak Ridge to pick up a FOIA response.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Some said that I was "crazy" and "out to destroy Oak Ridge" for seeking this information, and that no one would care. They were wrong. Others in Oak Ridge shared information confidentially, and encouraged me to seek the truth.
DOE now admits that there were 4.2 million pounds of mercury "lost."
Since 1983, DOE has spent some $4.5 billion on "cleanup" in Oak Ridge, with no end in sight. DOE and its allies euchred ATSDR into changing the cleanup standard for mercury, and serious problems remain as a result.
On May 17, 1983, few of us envisioned just how widespread DOE and contractor misconduct had been, or the vast numbers of people affected by it. While I predicted "a potential environmental health disaster" in AO editorials, and was churlishly chided by DOE for "alarmist language," the simple truth is that I did not then imagine just how big that DOE "environmental health disaster" might become.
Seventeen years later, our leaders need the steely determination of Harry Truman, Earl Warren, Thurgood Marshall and Sam Ervin.
Seventeen years later, that 26-year-old Appalachian Observer newspaper editor is a public interest lawyer representing whistleblowers and other DOE victims. He is still hated by DOE Oak Ridge managers. He is still seeking the truth. I am now honored to have my views shared by DOE's victims -- workers and residents from across the country, with an apology by the Secretary of Energy and bipartisan compensation legislation supported by editorial writers and Congressmen. This is a very special day, with meaningful legislation possible, if not this year, then next year.
The lesson of history: Never give up. Individual efforts can change history.
See, e.g., Jimmy Breslin's book on Watergate, "How the Good Guys Finally Won."
In tribute to all of the DOE/AEC victims whose sacrifice made victory in the Cold War possible, Congress should pass full and fair compensation legislation for all of DOE's Cold War radiation and toxicant victims, whether babies with genetic damage, Downwinders/residents, plant workers, Atomic Veterans or Gulf War veterans.
Our struggle is righteous and it can and should be won. The bill should not be limited only to plant workers, but should include family members and residents poisoned by DOE or suffering genetic abnormalities.
Rep. Zach Wamp pressed the need for compensating residents at the April 12 press conference held by Secretary Richardson, televised by C-SPAN: Secretary Richardson only frowned at these words.
In my humble opinion, if Congress has to kill a bad bill now to pass a good bill later, then so be it. DOE should not control compensation of its own victims, or pick and choose which victims it will compensate. This is a blatant conflict of interest.
Longtime Oak Ridge lawyer Gene Joyce made excellent suggestions on enacting compensation legislation in his column, and I salute him.
If hindsight is 20/20, it is only reasonable that DOE should not be allowed to rush things so as to make the nuclear weapons compensation bill a joke, covering only a few people, holding out cash over their heads and then dashing peoples' hopes and prayers in the details. What do you think?
----
Nickel recycling vs. coal ash recycling [and a whole lot more!]
By James S. Johnson, Jr., Ph.D.,
Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee Newsletter,
May, 2000
http://local-oversight.org/news5_00.html#nickel
Recycling of nickel from the gaseous diffusion process is on hold, in part because of concerns raised about residual radioactivity that would remain after decontamination.
The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation has evaluated the process and issued a permit to Manufacturing Sciences Corporation (MSC). The permit allows release of nickel decontaminated to a level, averaged over a shipment, of no more than 3 disintegrations per second per gram of nickel from technetium-99, and 0.6 from uranium. These limits are considered protective of health and consistent with existing regulations here and abroad.
However, the Department of Energy has suspended recycling activities and has instituted a task force in Washington to review this and related matters. Because sale of the recycled nickel is planned to defray a large fraction of the cost of remediation of old gaseous-diffusion facilities at K-25 and return of the area to private-sector industrial use, the matter is of considerable interest to the Oak Ridge community.
It seems worthwhile to make comparisons with other operations not favored with such attention. Babb International plans to build a plant near the Bull Run Steam Plant to make aerated concrete blocks from fly ash. If the fly ash contains the average amount of natural uranium and thorium, there will be about 2.2 disintegrations/sec per gram of the product. This may be compared with the 3.6 disintegrations/sec per gram permitted for the nickel. The actual unit activity of the released nickel may, in fact, be lower. MSC reports that its pilot results attained an average of 1.8 disintegrations/sec per gram from technetium, below the allowed value of 3.
There appears to be a disparity between the level of concern over release of radioactivity to the public sector in the form of nickel and of concrete blocks. When comparing the uses of these materials, keep in mind that the nickel is diluted twenty-fold when alloyed to make stainless steel, while concrete blocks may be used to construct houses, office buildings, and public facilities.
The LOC Board of Directors has written to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson to express concern about the recent DOE decision to curtail commercial recycling of metals with volumetric residual radioactivity. The letter states in part "the moratorium on release of this material will inevitably delay the cleanup and industrial reuse of these buildings."
--
[Other stories from http://local-oversight.org/news5_00.html]
From the Executive Director
What's going on with NEPA at Oak Ridge Operations?
By Susan Gawarecki
According to the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, a federal agency must evaluate the potential environmental impact of any significant action. Major actions normally require an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), while more routine projects are typically evaluated in a less-detailed Environmental Assessment (EA).EISs and EAs are documents prepared for the public as well as for agency decision-makers. They help concerned stakeholders understand the implications of federal decisions.
NEPA documents are meant to ensure that proposals receive appropriate scrutiny for all aspects of their potential impact on the human environment. This scrutiny is not limited to matters such as ecology and pollution; it also includes economic impacts, effects on historical sites, and other quality-of-life issues. A cost-benefit analysis may also be included.
Unfortunately, recent NEPA documents prepared for DOE proposals in Oak Ridge have been less than adequate. In the case of the Spallation Neutron Source EIS, for example, much of the information was either outdated or completely in error, and detailed comments were required from interested members of the community to set the record straight.
The stakeholder community assumed the weakness of this document was an aberration, but the recent draft EIS on managing ORNL's transuranic waste suffered from similar deficiencies. And so did the recent draft EA on the proposed lease of Parcel ED-3, a proposed parcel for development by CROET near East Tennessee Technology Park.
LOC and CAP members have concluded that DOE's contractor for NEPA documents must have cut-and-pasted information from earlier reports, including draft documents, with little consideration for later revisions or even applicability to the activity in question! Why else would a discussion of the fire-response capabilities at ORNL (inaccurately said to be provided by the Oak Ridge City Fire Department) appear in the ED-3 EA?
It turns out that NEPA document preparation is one more area where DOE has decided it can save money by contracting work out to the low bidder. In taking this approach, DOE has decided against doing these documents in house using the resources of ORNL or another national laboratory with similar qualifications. When cost becomes the primary concern, it is too easy to allow the quality of the product to suffer. In this case, the low-bid contractor is producing documents with poor quality control, and DOE has not provided adequate management to rectify the situation.
Before becoming LOC's Executive Director, I worked in the environmental consulting field. I know this routine-low-cost jobs are assigned to entry-level or low-ranking employees who often lack the background or writing skills to produce a quality piece of work. These employees are then given a limited amount of time to churn out their "deliverable"-their work product. Too often the result is substandard.
DOE may be saving money, but it's a slap in the face to concerned stakeholders. The intangible costs outweigh the monetary savings when the community loses faith in DOE's ability to effectively evaluate and communicate its decisions.
Hot Flashes
Sampling eases concerns about contamination spread
Sediment and substrate being disturbed by construction of the new Highway 58 bridge in Roane County have no significant radiological contamination from cesium-137, according to a TDEC investigation. The agency's DOE Oversight Division responded to recent concerns in investigating construction practices for the bridge, which spans the Clinch River. Cesium-137 is the primary contaminant of concern historically released from the ORR via White Oak Creek. TDEC sampled two areas of spoil material removed from the river, as well as a water sample with suspended sediment. A copy of the two-page report is available from the LOC office.
Delays in BCV ROD raise concerns about delays
DOE believed it had jumped through all the necessary regulatory hoops to create an acceptable interim Record of Decision (ROD) for Bear Creek Valley (BCV). EPA, however, refused at the last minute to sign the document. Delays associated with gathering additional documentation sought by EPA are having a ripple effect, causing delays in milestones associated with remediation of the Boneyard/Burnyard and groundwater pathways from the S-3 Ponds. This situation may also delay construction of the on-site disposal cell, which could delay cleanup activities on other areas of the ORR. By the way, TDEC's DOE Oversight Division found the ROD acceptable and signed it, fully expecting EPA to do the same.
Monoliths on the road to NTS
Oak Ridge has begun shipping concrete monoliths of low-level waste to the Nevada Test Site, according to a report from DOE's team leader for waste management. Clayton Gist reported at the CAP's May 9 meeting that Oak Ridge began shipping the monoliths on April 11 at a rate of about two per week. By the end of this year's shipping campaign in early July, Clayton hopes to have shipped 60 monoliths, three times more than originally planned. Over the past three years, the LOC has actively promoted the opening of NTS to Oak Ridge's waste. Clayton assured us that our letters and networking efforts were a significant contribution to achieving this goal.
Did you know ... ?
The solid wastes (ash) that the TSCA incinerator produces from burning non-Oak Ridge wastes are returned to the shipper or to a generator-approved landfill. Each task requires the approval of the state of Tennessee. With modern instruments and analytical technology, very small amounts of radioactivity and other pollutants can be detected. Just because it can be measured does not mean it is harmful. Under Federal law, the U.S. government is forever responsible for cleanup of the Oak Ridge Reservation, even if the land passes to private ownership.
Alphabet Soup
(Initials and acronyms to make this newsletter and other DOE-related documents easier to read)
CAP = Citizens' Advisory Panel
CROET = Community Reuse Organization of East Tennessee
DOE = Department of Energy
EA = Environmental Assessment
EIS = Environmental Impact Statement
EPA = Environmental Protection Agency
LOC = Oak Ridge Reservation Local Oversight Committee, Inc.
MSC = Manufacturing Sciences Corp.
NTS = Nevada Test Site
ORNL = Oak Ridge National Laboratory
ORO = DOE Oak Ridge Operations
ORR = Oak Ridge Reservation
ROD = Record of Decision
TDEC = Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation
-------- us nuc weapons
US missiles may spark Asian arms race:
China, India and Pakistan could react by raising their own arsenal
MAY 29, 2000
Singapore Press Holdings
NEW YORK -- US intelligence officials are warning the Clinton administration that a decision to build a limited national missile defence system could set off an arms race between China, India and Pakistan, according to administration officials.
While US officials have repeatedly said an anti-missile defence was not aimed at Beijing, they acknowledged that the defence system being designed could undercut significantly or even neutralise China's small nuclear force.
That could lead China to add to its nuclear arsenal.
And if China built up its force, its regional rival India could do the same, as could India's rival Pakistan, heightening tensions along the world's newest nuclear frontier.
Officials are expected to outline such a scenario for President Bill Clinton in an official intelligence estimate due next month.
""If China increases the number of missiles it has, would India think it has to increase its missiles?'' said a senior US official familiar with the analysis being prepared.
""And if India increases its missiles, then Pakistan does.''
Mr Clinton is expected to make a deployment decision on a national missile defence later this year based on four criteria -- cost, threat, technical feasibility, and overall impact on national security.
Some senior intelligence experts believed that a missile defence system, intended to counter relatively small, unsophisticated missile threats from countries like North Korea, Iran and Iraq, will prompt the Chinese to build up their strategic force beyond what they had previously planned, in order to ensure that it remains viable.
Officials said that while China's expanded force of nuclear-tipped long-range missiles might not be directed at India, it would be a capability New Delhi could not ignore, and as a result India might build up the short-range missiles it used to defend against China.
Administration officials were divided over whether India would respond in such a way, but the emerging analysis has dramatically raised the stakes, the New York Times said.
India and Pakistan conducted tit-for-tat nuclear tests in May 1998 which were condemned by the international community. -- New York Times, Reuters
----
CIA WARNING
The risk of missile defense
US News & World Report
05/29/00
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/000529/dea.htm
The national missile defense system President Clinton is considering is supposed to make Americans safer. But would it? Opponents have long argued that a U.S. defense shield would force small-time nuclear powers like China to deploy more missiles to preserve their deterrent. The critics now have a new ally: the CIA. A classified report due soon at the White House predicts dire consequences if Clinton-or his successor-moves ahead. Russia, it says, might market countermeasures to defeat U.S. defenses, further proliferating missile technology worldwide.
The report seems certain to add megatonnage to the missile defense debate. Proponents last week began an ad campaign to increase the heat on Clinton, who meets early next month with a skeptical Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Costly.
The envisioned system of 100 ground-based missile interceptors is supposed to stop a salvo from, say, North Korea. But it has taken its lumps. Cost projections have ballooned to $60 billion. Former top Pentagon officials are calling for a new approach.
The new National Intelligence Estimate says North Korea's and Iran's missile programs have not advanced recently. Clinton has been lukewarm on missile defense, and the CIA may have to fend off charges of politically motivated intelligence. But the president, due to decide on deployment this fall, has said one factor will be the system's effect on U.S. national security.
Warren P. Strobel
---
Threat of 'Rogue' States: Is It Reality or Rhetoric?
Washington Post
Monday, May 29, 2000; Page A01
By Steven Mufson Washington Post Staff Writer
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/29/132l-052900-idx.html
In North Korea, a dozen U.S. arms experts began their second annual inspection of a mysterious tunnel complex. In Moscow, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott haggled with Russian officials over amending a 28-year-old arms agreement. In Washington, Republican presidential hopeful George W. Bush made a strong pitch for a still unproven global missile defense system. And addressing graduates at the U.S. Military Academy, Vice President Gore called for a more limited missile defense.
The common goal of these disparate events last week? Stopping a "rogue" state--irrational, reckless and armed with nuclear missiles capable of striking American shores.
The existence of such a threat has become an article of faith, widely accepted by the Clinton administration and some of its Republican critics, but questioned by some policy experts here and by many abroad. Many U.S. policymakers warn that a rogue state--whether an isolated and paranoid North Korea, a religiously motivated Iran or a vengeful Iraq--might attack the United States even if the inevitable result would be retaliation so massive that the attacking state would be obliterated.
"There are new threats in the world," said Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, President Clinton's national security adviser. "One of those is the growing capability of North Korea and Iran, who may not be as susceptible to deterrence as the Soviet Union was."
When President Clinton visits Moscow next week for his first summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, rogue states will be the ghosts at the negotiating table. Fear of their still-theoretical capabilities has made winning Russia's agreement for a limited American missile defense the Clinton administration's top priority in Russia policy, overshadowing the war in Chechnya, economic reform and future NATO expansion.
Yet some policy experts question the assumption that there are such irrational rogues.
"The unexamined assumptions about this are extraordinary, and the biggest is the presumption that a variety of misbegotten states are not subject to the same constraints of nuclear deterrence that everybody else has been subject to," said Jonathan Pollack, an Asia specialist at the Rand Corp., a consulting firm.
Robert S. Litwak, a former director for nonproliferation policy at the National Security Council, argues in a recent book that the rogue epithet "demonizes a disparate group of states" and "significantly distorts policymaking."
There is ample evidence that North Korea, Iran and Iraq have sought, and may still be seeking, weapons of mass destruction and long-range missile technology. North Korea unexpectedly fired a missile over Japan in 1998, and U.N. inspectors discovered massive stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq after the Persian Gulf War.
But critics of the theory of rogue states say the allegation that these countries are irrational or suicidal is more questionable. Their leaders appear to be very concerned about self-preservation, and the United States has successfully employed diplomatic as well as military initiatives to engage or contain them.
Nearly a decade after the end of the Gulf War, Iraq remains bottled up by sanctions and a steady U.S.-British bombing campaign. In the wake of electoral victories by moderates in Iran, the Clinton administration has made some conciliatory gestures to Tehran while still seeking to block technology transfers.
North Korea, meanwhile, has largely complied with a 1994 agreement aimed at making sure its nuclear program is peaceful. Within the past two months, workers under the supervision of an Atlanta-based company finished putting spent fuel from a North Korean nuclear reactor into sealed canisters, bringing to roughly 8,000 the number of radioactive rods sitting under lock, key and camera in a murky pool. Only about a dozen fuel rods are missing, a U.S. official said, far short of the amount needed to build a nuclear bomb. Last week, North Korea also fulfilled a commitment to let U.S. inspectors return to the mysterious tunnel complex once suspected of concealing a nuclear weapons or missile program. And it is preparing to hold its first summit with South Korea, its longtime foe.
"You speak about North Korea as an irrational country when you have been negotiating with North Korea for six years," said a European diplomat. "The 1994 agreement was a rational agreement."
French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine noted that there is no translation for rogue state in French. "It's not a geopolitical category we use," he said. "It is difficult for Europeans to imagine one of these rogue states attacking the United States."
Noting that U.S. officials could just as easily call Libya, Pakistan or India rogue states, and that the United States appropriately pursues different policies toward different so-called rogues, Vedrine suggested the label was simply a rhetorical tool.
Dmitri Rogozin, chairman of the international relations committee in the Russian Duma, said the United States was exaggerating the North Korean threat. "A cannon is not the best weapon to shoot at flies," he said.
Moreover, Rogozin predicted that the United States would react strongly if it detected North Korean preparations to fire a missile. "I highly respect the U.S. military, and I can't imagine that the U.S. military would sit idly by and watch the threat from North Korea," the Russian parliamentarian said. "They will simply smash this country."
A U.S. official who has been deeply involved in negotiations with impoverished North Korea said that despite its philosophy of self-reliance, Pyongyang has always relied on outside assistance. Now that its former patron, the Soviet Union, is defunct, North Korea is clumsily seeking a new sponsor.
"North Korea is one of the few totally parasitic countries," the official said. "It has lost its host. But parasites don't commit suicide."
He added, "They are not going to nuke Hawaii because they realize they will be annihilated. People who say we need national missile defense because North Korea is crazy are only those who don't know anything about North Korea. North Korea is mainly a threat to itself."
Yet fear of rogue states remains widespread. The term "rogue" originally was applied about 20 years ago to countries whose internal policies were oppressive. (It was once applied by the Wall Street Journal to Ohio for its environmental policies.) Beginning in the mid-1990s, the term was attached to countries that might act irrationally in the international arena.
In a Foreign Affairs article in early 1994, then-Clinton national security adviser Anthony Lake called for "confronting backlash states" that were characterized by "chronic inability to engage constructively with the outside world." In April 1996, then-Secretary of Defense William J. Perry warned of a "future threat that a rogue state, that may be impossible to deter, will obtain ICBMs that can reach the United States." In September 1997, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright said that "dealing with the rogue states is one of the great challenges of our time . . . because they are there with the sole purpose of destroying the system."
A commission headed by former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld enshrined the rogue threat as official doctrine. When the commission released its report in 1998, it declared that "concerted efforts by a number of overtly or potentially hostile nations to acquire ballistic missiles with biological or nuclear payloads pose a growing threat to the United States, its deployed forces and its friends and allies." The report added that those states "would be able to inflict major destruction on the U.S. within about five years of a decision to acquire such capability."
That put time pressure on the Clinton administration. And so with the Cold War over, deep cuts in the nuclear arsenals of the superpowers, American military might unparalleled and the nation at peace, both Democrats and Republicans have been edging closer toward a decision to build one of the most expensive weapon systems in history.
To be sure, some people worried about rogue states nonetheless oppose the current national missile defense proposal. Richard Garwin, a member of the Rumsfeld commission, argues that it would be easier to put a lid over a handful of rogues than to put an umbrella over the entire United States. He favors a modest missile defense known as boost phase, which would be based close to rogue state borders and intercept missiles on their way up. Other experts warn that rogue states could deliver weapons of mass destruction in boats, suitcases, cars or vials instead of intercontinental missiles.
Still other policymakers warn of letting concern about small rogue states prompt the shredding of major accords, like the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that the administration is trying to persuade Russia to amend.
But national missile defense remains an alluring prospect for those worried about preserving America's latitude for action in a crisis, when a small country with nuclear missiles might threaten to use them.
"Deterrence is probably good enough," former Clinton national security adviser Lake said in an interview. "But when the stakes are so high, I'm not sure that 'probably' is good enough."
Bush adviser Condoleezza Rice said the United States should press ahead with national missile defense even if it means the end of the ABM Treaty. "The ABM Treaty is an artifact of a different period of time," she said. "ABM was designed to prevent national missile defense. It is not clear to me how, with minor changes, you get around that. It's a new world."
---
A Missile Shield: Tread Carefully
New York Times
May 29, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/00/05/29/letters/l29saf.html
To the Editor:
William Safire (column, May 25) doesn't mention a number of important issues in the debate about a national missile defense system.
Is the United States prepared to discard an arms control system that has been a policy goal of every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower? Is it prepared to ignore the concerns of key allies like Germany, France and Japan? Is it prepared to undermine the deterrence capacity of other nuclear countries, including Russia, China, India and Pakistan?
On the one hand, we have a proven system that situates the assurance of retaliatory destruction within a framework of treaties. On the other hand, we have an unproven system that could provoke a new arms race.
Whether the threat of "rogue states" is serious enough to require a missile defense system is an assessment that should not be made during the heat of an election campaign.
MICHAEL BYERS Durham, N.C., May 25, 2000
The writer is director of the program in international and comparative law at Duke University.
---
Nothing ventured
Washington Times
EDITORIAL May 29, 2000
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-2000529172214.htm
For a member of an administration that has boasted of boldly taking the United States across the bridge to the 21st century, Vice President and Democratic presidential contender Al Gore is a surprisingly nervous sort of fellow. Dangers are all around in Mr. Gore's world, so it would seem.
Now Mr. Gore is trembling at the thought of Texas Gov. George W. Bush's National Missile Defense and arms reduction proposal - as laid out on the opposite page of this news paper last week. "An approach that combines serious unilateral reductions with an attempt to build a massive defense system will create instability and thus undermine our security," Mr. Gore told graduates at the West Point graduation ceremony. "Nuclear unilateralism will hinder, rather than help, arms control." Even when unilataralism means cutting nuclear arms on our side? That's hard to imagine.
Clearly, the Democratic candidate, who has been floundering in the polls since the spring primaries, has hit on the theme for his candidacy - timidity.
---
Cohen Offers Bush an Arms-Cut Briefing
Washington Post
Monday, May 29, 2000; Page A08
By Dan Balz
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/29/136l-052900-idx.html
Defense Secretary William S. Cohen took issue yesterday with nuclear weapons cuts that George W. Bush proposed last week and offered to have the Joint Chiefs of Staff brief his fellow Republican on the issue.
"I hope that national security will not become politicized because it's too important to have a Republican or a Democratic label on it," Cohen said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Cohen said reductions on the scale proposed by Bush could produce a "tyranny of numbers" that ultimately would encourage the use of nuclear weapons.
Cohen said a Bush briefing with the Joint Chiefs would encourage future debate on the issue in a "way that's responsible . . . and informed."
The secretary also said that his vote in November would be "a matter of private choice."
---
Cohen on Bush's missile briefing rejection: 'That's the end of it'
CNN
May 29, 2000
http://cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/05/29/bushbrief.cnn/index.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Secretary of Defense William Cohen said Monday that, because Texas Gov. George W. Bush had rejected his offer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff to brief the Republican presidential candidate on the national missile defense system, "that's the end of it."
"This certainly was an effort on my part to say there are issues involved here in terms of the balance between offense and defense, and I think that it (a briefing) would be helpful, if Governor Bush wanted that opportunity, to take advantage of that. Since he's not, I think that's the end of it," Cohen said.
The defense secretary said missile reductions below those agreed to by President Bill Clinton and Russia's former President Boris Yeltsin could heat up the arms race.
"What happens, as you get down to lower numbers, your strategic commanders and their recommendations to the president tend to become less flexible," he said, referring to a theory called the "tyranny of small numbers."
"It could cause a future president to be in a position of having to use our systems or lose them under the threat of attack; it could cause a change in our targeting policies, and it could also compromise our ability to maintain a sufficient number of bombers in our force, which would compromise our conventional capability of using them during times of conflict, such as we did in Kosovo. So there are some intricacies involved."
"I think these need to be discussed," Cohen continued. "Apparently, Governor Bush would simply rely upon his own advisers, and that's fine. I made the offer, it's been rejected and, again, that's the end of it."
Cohen had extended the offer Sunday, on NBC's "Meet the Press." It came in response to a speech last Tuesday in which the GOP presidential candidate proposed unilateral reductions in nuclear weapons below the Clinton administration's proposed floor of 2,000-2,500 and a funding increase for the so-called "Star Wars" missile-defense shield.
"I think it would be important, because if this is going to become an area of debate in the fall elections, then I think both candidates ought to have equal opportunity to have access to the information," Cohen said.
After such a briefing, "I think, he and Vice President [Al] Gore will be in a better position to debate this in a way that is responsible and, I think, informed," Cohen told NBC.
Bush's proposal could wind up heating up the arms race, encouraging the world's nuclear powers to develop more nuclear weapons, said Cohen, himself a Republican.
"That would be, I believe, the end result, because you can overwhelm defenses by proliferating the numbers," added Cohen.
Bush's rejection came Sunday, a few hours after the offer was made.
"Surely he's [Cohen's] not suggesting that Governor Bush's advisers," such as former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin Powell, "who have led our defenses in the past, don't understand them," said Mindy Tucker, spokeswoman for the Bush campaign.
"We are confident that the Joint Chiefs would welcome Governor Bush's approach, because it makes sure military planners are involved in determining the appropriate levels of security based on new guidance in a new security era," said Tucker.
Tucker said Bush would be "happy" to attend briefings at the "appropriate time."
Typically, presidential candidates receive briefings from the administration after they are formally nominated at the political conventions.
Tucker added the Bush campaign hoped that those briefings would not be "politicized."
The Russians have indicated they are against the U.S. building any missile defense system.
Cohen argued Sunday in their favor. By 2005, he said, North Korea, Iran, Libya and Iraq might "be in the position to have an intercontinental ballistic missile capability that could threaten the United States."
"I believe we have to have a method of protecting our people against threats from rogue nations, those that have limited capacities to launch an attack, or threaten to launch an attack," Cohen said.
---
Bush gains access to Pentagon files
Associated Press
May 29, 2000
BY WILLIAM C. MANN ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/defen29.html
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/p/AP-Cohen.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defense Secretary William Cohen offered George W. Bush access to the same Pentagon information Vice President Al Gore is privy to, saying that would keep politics out of national security and produce a more informed debate in the presidential campaign.
Cohen, a Republican like Bush, said Sunday he believes proposals the Texas governor made last week likely would lead to dangerous new arms races. Gore had similar criticisms Saturday in a speech at the U.S. Military Academy.
Cohen said President Clinton appointed a Republican as defense secretary ``to take the politics out of national security debates.''
``I hope that national security will not become politicized, because it's too important to have a Republican or Democratic label on it,'' he said on NBC's ``Meet the Press.''
To that end, Cohen said, ``It would be beneficial for (Bush and his advisers) to have this information today, before the election, so that there can be a real serious and solid debate on the issue.''
Bush campaign spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said Cohen's implication that the GOP candidate might be ill-informed on security ignores the quality of his advisers.
``Surely Secretary Cohen is not suggesting that Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin Powell, who led our (national) defenses, don't understand them,'' Tucker said. ``We are confident that the Joint Chiefs of Staff would welcome Gov. Bush's proposal, because it allows military planners to be involved in determining the appropriate levels of security based on new guidance in a new security era.''
Bush proposed last week that the United States develop a national missile defense system and sharply cut back the number of nuclear weapons in its arsenal even if Russia does not. Bush would renegotiate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to allow the national missile defense, which the treaty bans.
The Clinton administration wants a more limited missile defense and would implement smaller, negotiated and bilateral reductions in nuclear stockpiles.
Clinton heads to Moscow this week where he will discuss with Russian President Vladimir Putin a framework agreement already in place to reduce the missile levels to 2,000 to 2,500, from current levels of 3,000 to 3,500 missiles, Cohen said. Cuts much larger than that could hamstring U.S. policy in ``a tyranny of numbers,'' the secretary said.
``You could find yourself in a situation where you're forced to `use it or lose it,' which is something we don't want to be in position to do,'' he said. ``It may force you to change your strategy as far as targeting not strategic assets but humans, which we don't want to do.
``And then the third component of that is, as you get smaller, you may have to give up some of your bomber force, which takes away from your conventional capability, the kind of capability we used in Kosovo.''
Also, lowering missile numbers forces development of ``a much more robust defense system,'' Cohen said.
``That contradicts entirely the need for the Russians and others to lower the numbers, because any ... military commander will tell you it's far better to have more numbers against a defense than to have a higher defense,'' Cohen said. ``And so what you do by going up higher in defense, you will force the Russians and others to raise their limits much higher.''
Cohen said he believes that would encourage Russia, China, Pakistan, India and other countries to develop more nuclear weapons.
Such ``internal inconsistency'' in nuclear policy should be considered carefully, Cohen said, ``and ... in order to make it fair, I think Governor Bush should have an opportunity to meet with the joint chiefs, meet with Admiral (Richard) Mies, who is commander of the Strategic Command, ... so we can deal with the situation as it is and likely to be.
``And then I think that he and Vice President Gore will be in a better position to debate this in a way that's responsible and, I think, informed.''
Presidential candidates normally receive security briefings after they are nominated. The GOP convention is July 31-Aug. 3 in Philadelphia.
In other matters, Cohen said:
--There will be a ``national moment of remembrance'' at 3 p.m. on Memorial Day for Americans to remember and ``commemorate those who have died on our behalf.''
--His spokesmen, Kenneth Bacon, ``made a big mistake'' when he released information from Linda Tripp's personnel file to a reporter in 1998. Tripp, who secretly recorded conversations with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, worked for Bacon in the Pentagon's public affairs office.
``I could have fired him, but I took into account his total service to the public,'' said Cohen, who sent his aide a letter ``to express my disappointment'' in his judgment.
Cohen also dismissed talk of a conspiracy coordinated with the White House or executive branch. ``This was done spontaneous on his part.''
--He intends to return to private life after December. Asked what he would do if Gore asked him to be his running mate, Cohen said: ``That is a product of irrational exuberance on the part of some of my friends.'' He said he intends to return to private life after December.
---
Defense Chief Invites Bush to Pentagon for Briefing
New York Times
May 29, 2000
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/052900wh-cohen-missile.html
WASHINGTON, May 28 -- Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen today invited Gov. George W. Bush of Texas and his national security advisers to the Pentagon for a briefing on the state of the nation's strategic nuclear arsenal after criticizing Mr. Bush's recent pledge to reduce the number of American nuclear warheads.
Mr. Bush's campaign aides responded by pointing to the military credentials of his advisers and suggesting that the campaign of Vice President Al Gore was playing politics with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Mr. Cohen extended the invitation after Mr. Bush proposed last week to consider making unilateral reductions in nuclear weapons, possibly deeper than those now being negotiated between the United States and Russia. Mr. Bush, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, also pledged to construct a far larger antiballistic missile defense than the one now contemplated by the Clinton administration.
Mr. Cohen, appearing today on NBC's "Meet the Press," said Mr. Bush's proposals contained "internal inconsistencies." Building a larger missile defense than the administration's limited one, Mr. Cohen added, would force the Russians and other nations, like China, to increase their own offensive nuclear arsenals, making negotiated reductions far less likely.
"Any military commander will tell you, it's far better to have more numbers against a defense than to have a higher defense," Mr. Cohen said. "And so what you do by going up higher on defense, you will force the Russians and others to raise their limits much higher."
Mr. Cohen's objections echoed those Mr. Gore made during his commencement address at the United States Military Academy on Saturday, when he said Mr. Bush's proposals were harmful to arms control and threatening to global stability.
Mr. Cohen tried to couch his remarks as a nonpartisan effort to inform the emerging political debate over the nation's nuclear arms and military strategy. Mr. Cohen, a former senator from Maine and the only Republican in Mr. Clinton's cabinet, expressed his "high regard" for the governor and his advisers, who include a number of members from past Republican administrations.
He said he would invite Mr. Bush to meet with members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Adm. Richard W. Mies, commander of the American nuclear arsenal, as a matter of fairness in the presidential campaign.
"I think the Joint Chiefs would be willing certainly to do this, and I think it would be important," Mr. Cohen said, "because if this is going to become an area of debate in the fall elections, then I think both candidates ought to have equal opportunity to have access to the information that the vice president does."
"I think that he and then Vice President Gore will be in a better position to debate this in a way that's responsible and, I think, informed," he said.
Mindy Tucker, the Bush campaign's press secretary, said in response to Mr. Cohen's proposal, referring to two key Bush advisers:
"Surely Secretary Cohen is not suggesting that Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and General Colin Powell, who led our defenses, don't understand them. And we are confident that the Joint Chiefs of Staff would welcome Governor Bush's proposal because it allows military planners to determine the appropriate levels of security based on new guidance and a new security era."
"We would hope that Al Gore would call on his administration not to play politics with these briefings or the Joint Chiefs of Staff," Ms. Tucker said.
Pentagon officials said the invitation to Mr. Bush was Mr. Cohen's idea. While it is common for a president-elect to receive high-level national security briefings as part of the transition to the White House, it is unusual to extend such an early invitation to a presidential candidate from the party out of power, especially one who has not yet received his party's formal nomination.
For his part, Mr. Cohen said he "was appointed in this position to take the politics out of national security debates." The invitation, nonetheless, offered tantalizing political implications.
In light of Mr. Cohen's criticism, the invitation could be seen as a suggestion that Mr. Bush's ideas are ill-formed. At the same time, having Mr. Bush discuss nuclear strategy with senior commanders could lend weight to the governor's handling of military issues in the campaign.
Pentagon officials said they had not yet made arrangements for a briefing. One potentially knotty problem could be the degree of secrecy concerning nuclear weapons. Since Mr. Bush does not have a security clearance, his briefing might be limited to unclassified information.
In his proposal last week, Mr. Bush did not say he would reduce the number of nuclear weapons automatically. Instead, he said he would consider reductions based on recommendations by the Pentagon's military commanders. Last Tuesday, even as Mr. Bush made his proposals, those commanders appeared on Capitol Hill and said they would oppose reducing the number of warheads below the 2,000 to 2,500 being negotiated under the third strategic arms reduction treaty, or Start 3.
Under Start 2, which Russia's Parliament recently ratified, the American and Russian arsenals are supposed to come down to 3,000 to 3,500, from roughly 6,000 today.
In his remarks today, Mr. Cohen defended the administration's efforts to negotiate the Start 3 reductions with the Russians, as well as changes to the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 that would allow for a limited missile defense against emerging threats from countries like North Korea.
"I think we have to do it in the context of how we balance the defense and the offense," Mr. Cohen said. "And we should do so in a very methodical, thoughtful, and intellectually sound way."
---
Test Rocket Successfully Launched
Associated Press
May 28, 2000 Filed at 7:47 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Missile-Launch.html
VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) -- An Air Force rocket built from parts of scrapped missiles made a successful launch on Sunday from this Central California coastal base.
The rocket, designed to be used in creating the nation's national missile defense system, was a hybrid made up of three stages from different Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missiles, including one built in 1966, said Tech. Sgt. Buzz Ritchie, a spokesman for the base's 30th Space Wing.
The launch under the military's Orbital Suborbital Program was a test to determine if the hybrid could be used as a cheaper target for interceptor missiles. The recycled rocket launch cost $11 million, compared to $21 million for the use of a regular Minuteman II, said Staff Sgt. Rebecca Bonilla, another base spokesperson.
The rocket's stages successfully separated, carrying the target launch vehicle into space for only about 30 minutes.
It was not immediately clear whether the target vehicle burned up in the atmosphere or fell back to earth.
The military will determine whether the mission was a success by examining data to see how closely the rocket kept to its specified course, Ritchie said.
-------- us politics
Gore and Bush both served honorably
Washington Times
May 29, 2000
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-2000529221558.htm
In campaign ads, Al Gore displays a photo of his Vietnam-era self in fatigues with an M-16 slung over his shoulder. On the trail, he asks campaign crowds: "How many other Vietnam veterans are here? Welcome home. I'm a Vietnam veteran."
Among veterans, Mr. Gore is running as one of them - right down to the American Legion hat he likes to wear at a jaunty angle when campaigning at American Legion halls - although he was a noncombat information officer.
As an Army journalist, Mr. Gore said he "carried a reporter's notepad and pencil in one pocket and a fully loaded M-16," which he said he never aimed or fired.
"You carry an M-16, a fully loaded M-16, for a reason. You hope to never have to use it," he told the Associated Press in an interview.
The campaign sees his Vietnam service as "an important piece of his biography and background," Gore spokesman Chris Lehane said.
Republican George W. Bush, on the other hand, rarely talks about his stateside service with the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam years.
He is far from nostalgic in public about his days as a pilot. Asked recently if he still flies, Mr. Bush brusquely answered "no" and walked past.
Mr. Bush, who in a bitter GOP primary had to face Sen. John McCain's heroic story of being a POW in Vietnam, instead talks about restoring morale to U.S. troops by bringing honor and dignity back to the Oval Office.
He also promises to rebuild the military and stresses, through a proposed $3 billion-per-year spending increase on veterans' health care, repayment of a "debt of honor" to American veterans who he says have been neglected by the Clinton administration.
The separate appeals to veterans are offshoots of each candidate's drive to be seen as having what it takes to be commander in chief. For now, national polls give Mr. Bush the lead among veterans, almost 2-to-1 in a recent CNN/USA Today/ Gallup survey.
The contest played out again this weekend in Memorial Day appearances: Mr. Gore gave the commencement address Saturday at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., and planned to visit with veterans in western Pennsylvania today, while Mr. Bush was to spend the holiday with soldiers at Texas' Fort Hood.
Mr. Gore recently told a veterans' gathering in Little Rock, Ark., that he has made it his project in the White House to give President Clinton recommendations on how to resolve the problem of armed services personnel who make so little that they are eligible for food stamps. The Gore camp has not offered details.
By way of connecting with veterans, Mr. Gore notes that, as a member of Congress from Tennessee, he co-founded a caucus of Vietnam-era veterans.
For Mr. Gore, images from his Army days also are part of a broader attempt to introduce his life story to voters who have gotten to know him only as Mr. Clinton's No. 2.
Mr. Gore's strategists blame his stagnant poll numbers on what they say is the public's unfamiliarity with the candidate, and they are expected to focus their first wave of general-election TV ads on his biography. Those biographical spots, as during the primaries and in his 1988 presidential campaign, are likely to feature a snapshot of him in Army fatigues.
During the primaries, Mr. Bush said war stories are less likely to influence veterans' votes than leadership experience.
"I think voters are going to say I'd be a better commander in chief because I've had chief executive experience. I know how to set goals. I know how to make decisions. I know how to rally people," Mr. Bush said, at the time comparing himself to Mr. McCain.
His spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said: "The governor has military service, the governor is a veteran. . . . But he does not view this election as a personal referendum on his resume, and he doesn't think the voters are going to base their choice on Al Gore's resume. They're going to base it on who they think will make a stronger leader."
Mr. Gore's biography - right out of Harvard, he enlisted in the Army, then volunteered for Vietnam duty - includes five months in-country as a military information specialist, a noncombatant role that he says included brushes with enemy fire.
Mr. Gore and his aides are sensitive about not over-trumpeting his military days.
Friends have said that one reason that Mr. Gore, who opposed the war, enlisted was his fear that dodging the draft might hurt his senator-father's re-election chances. As it turned out, the late Al Gore Sr. lost anyway.
Mr. Gore shies away from talking about Mr. Bush's National Guard service.
"I don't pass judgment on the decisions that anybody else made during that time of the Vietnam War, because everybody faced a different situation, and the country was in the midst of a big mistake," he said. "So much time has passed we ought to give everybody a break on whatever decisions they made considering whether to serve or not to serve."
How much does military background matter? Not that much, suggested Charles Wright of Corning, Ark., a past state commander for the Veterans of Foreign Wars who recently turned out to hear Mr. Gore in Little Rock.
"I don't support Gore. I support the man in office who supports veterans' issues," said Mr. Wright, who served in the Navy in Vietnam. "I vote for the person who is going to do the job properly."
---
Bipartisan Vows Lead Ex-DNC Official to Bush
Washington Post
Monday, May 29, 2000; Page A08
By Dan Balz
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-05/29/136l-052900-idx.html
George W. Bush has promised to bring a spirit of bipartisanship to Washington, and at least one Democrat in town believes him. Brian Lunde, who was executive director of the Democratic National Committee in the mid-1980s, recently announced that he was supporting the presumptive Republican nominee.
"I have been watching him since he ran against Ann Richards in 1994 and have become convinced that it's not just rhetoric when he says he wants to govern in an inclusive, bipartisan manner," Lunde said. "He seems to have proven it in Texas, and I think he'll bring that to Washington."
Lunde said he had received queries about his decision from Democratic friends, among them former DNC chairman Paul Kirk and former Illinois senator Paul Simon. "They seem to understand, and that's been encouraging. It's only the hard, partisan people who have a problem with it."
Lunde said that he has no plans to launch a "Democrats for Bush" operation. "It is kind of Pollyannaish," Lunde said of the reasons for his decision to support Bush over Vice President Gore. "I'll feel good on Election Day win or lose."
Quotable
Asked on "Fox News Sunday" to assess Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura's claim that if he entered the presidential race he would win, DNC Chairman Edward Rendell said: "I think he took too many hits in the ring."
Staff writer Marc Kaufman contributed to this report.
---
Gore Recalls Vietnam Doubts Before Enlisting
Yahoo News
Monday May 29 9:44 PM ET
By Thomas Ferraro
http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news?p=Al%20Gore&c=&n=10
http://dir.yahoo.com/Government/U_S__Government/Politics/Parties/Democratic_Party/2000_Presidential_Election/Candidates/Gore__Al/
ELIZABETH, Pa. (Reuters) - Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites), helping to lead a Memorial Day salute on Monday, recalled the doubts he had about the Vietnam War before volunteering to serve in it three decades ago as a young college graduate.
``When I went to Vietnam, I had many misgivings,'' the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said. ``There were a lot of friends I had who had even greater misgivings.''
Gore said he ultimately decided to go because of his devotion to his country and because he realized that if he did not, someone else would have to go in his place.
``On that day long ago that I enlisted, I felt a love for my country, and, like you, I feel that love for my country today,'' he told a flag-waving crowd of about 1,000 people in Elizabeth, Pennsylvania, a Pittsburgh suburb.
``I know that my service does not in any way match that of the heroes we honor on this day,'' Gore said. ``I was (an Army) reporter. And when I went into the field, I carried a pencil and an M-16.''
While Gore said he searched his conscience before deciding to enlist in 1969, the action was also seen as a way to give a political lift to his father, then Sen. Albert Gore, a Tennessee Democrat and a foe of the Vietnam War who was up for re-election. It did not help; Gore senior lost.
Would Have Known Substitute
The younger Gore made no mention of his father's 1970 election fight on Monday but said if had not gone to Vietnam, he would have known the person called up instead.
One of only two members of Harvard's Class of 1969 who chose to go to Vietnam, Gore noted that his draft board was in his tiny hometown of Carthage, Tennessee.
``If you found some way not to go, you would know the person who went in your place,'' he said. ``That person would have a face and a name and a family and a fate.''
Gore's Vietnam experience has become part of his White House campaign. He has often told how he wrestled with the question of going and has bristled at any suggestion that his time in the war zone did not count because he was there as a journalist.
Gore was introduced to the crowd on Monday by an former Army buddy, Bob Delabar of Seattle.
``Al Gore decided to follow his conscience and enlist in the Army of the United States,'' Delabar told the gathering.
Afterward, talking with reporters, Delabar said: ``I was always impressed with Al Gore. As the son of a U.S. senator, he could have had strings pulled and avoided Vietnam. But he decided instead to put his life on the line with the rest of us.''
Bush Address Texas Guardsmen
Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush (news - web sites) spent part of Memorial Day at the U.S. Army base in Fort Hood, Texas, where he spoke by satellite to 400 Texas National Guard troops stationed in Tuzla, Bosnia.
http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news?p=George%20W.%20Bush&c=&n=10
http://dir.yahoo.com/Government/U_S__Government/Politics/Parties/Republican_Party/2000_Presidential_Election/Candidates/Bush__George_W_/
Later he spoke at a ceremony in nearby Killeen, where he asked guests to ``pause in (your) busy lives to remember the price of liberty, measured in young lives.''
``America won world wars, a cold war, they opened death camps, their character was tested in death marches and jungle stalemates. And in the end, we won an epic struggle, the struggle of the century to save liberty itself,'' he said.
The Texas governor paid tribute to Americans who lost their lives in the service of their country and said the nation must honor them by maintaining ``a military of high morale, a military that's well-paid and well-housed, a military well-prepared and well-equipped.''
Alluding to his proposal last week to build a robust missile defense system to protect the United States from ``rogue'' or accidental weapons launches, Bush called for a ``modern defense system aimed to protect our homeland and to protect our allies.''
``New threats are replacing old enemies. Unstable dictators seek weapons of mass destruction. Regional power grabs become global crises. And it is still America that preserves the peace,'' he said.
Gore's visit to Pennsylvania, a big and potentially pivotal battleground in the race for the White House, was his sixth in less than three months.
A poll by the American Research Project on May 9 showed Bush leading Gore by 45 percent to 42 percent. But that difference was within the survey's margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.
---
Nader vs. Buchanan
Washington Times
Democratic National Committee Chairman Edward G. Rendell was asked on "Fox News Sunday" about the relative strength of two third-party presidential candidates - consumer advocate Ralph Nader of the Green Party and Pat Buchanan, who's seeking the Reform Party nomination.
Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard pointed out that Mr. Nader is "running very strongly in California: 9 percent in one poll." He also noted that the United Auto Workers in Michigan has said "nice things" about Mr. Nader.
"Is [Mr. Nader] a much bigger threat to Gore than Pat Buchanan is to George W. Bush?" Mr. Barnes asked the Democratic Party chairman.
Mr. Rendell said he does not think so "in the end."
Right now, he said, Mr. Nader is a "lightning rod for some of the dissatisfaction that you've already talked about.
"I think, come Election Day, Ralph Nader won't get more than 2 percent or 3 percent in any state. And I think Pat Buchanan will get more than that. So I'm not concerned about Ralph Nader," said Mr. Rendell.
No, again
Pundit Bob Novak says some Republican House members from California are telling him they believe having Sen. John McCain as George W. Bush's running mate could return the White House to Republicans in November.
"They feel that, in their state, the presidential election of 2000 could determine who's elected president, because reapportionment could determine the makeup of the House of Representatives for the next decade," Mr. Novak told Mr. McCain Saturday on CNN's "Evans, Novak, Hunt & Shields."
Mr. Novak also told Mr. McCain California Republicans "really believe that you being on the ticket could make the difference between victory and defeat in California."
"Considering that . . . would you, at least, reconsider your decision not to even leave open the possibility of being considered for vice president?" Mr. Novak asked the Arizona Republican, who defeated likely presidential nominee George W. Bush in seven GOP primaries.
"I would obviously prefer not to, Bob," Mr. McCain replied.
The senator noted he will be out in California this week and will be campaigning for the congressional candidates. "Yes, there's a 10-seat swing possibly with reapportionment. I believe that California can be won by the Bush campaign," Mr. McCain said.
He went on to say that "despite all the hype, who the running mate is really doesn't matter that much at the end of the day in elections."
Mr. Novak was still pondering Mr. McCain's statement that he "would prefer not to run" for vice president.
"Did I just detect a sliver of an opening?" the syndicated columnist asked.
"No, no," the senator said.
Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or by e-mail: Pierce@twtmail.com
-------- us toxics
OUTRAGED BY PCB CONTAMINATION, AN ALABAMA TOWN UNEARTHS A COMPANY'S PAST.
What Monsanto Knew
The Nation
May 29, 2000
by NANCY BEILES, The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/issue/000529/0529beiles.shtml
In a small brick house strung year-round with Christmas lights, behind curtains made of flowered sheets, Jeremiah Smith is listening to his favorite preacher on the radio. As tonight's installment of the Gospels winds down, Smith, who has warm brown eyes and a shock of graying black hair, takes a seat at a table draped with a zebra-print cloth and piled high with papers and drifts back thirty years, to the brief period when he was a hog farmer. Like others in Anniston, Alabama, an industrial town with rural traditions, Smith used to raise vegetables and livestock in his yard to provide additional food for his family. "We were poor people," he says in a thick drawl. "We had to raise food ourselves.... We were trying to survive and live."
Smith planted potatoes and greens in his backyard. He also had a cow and rabbits, but most of his time and attention went to his hogs. In 1970 he had about fifty--too many for his small plot of land, so he led them, Pied Piper-like, past the old Bethel Baptist Church, the Lucky-7 Lounge and the labyrinth of pipes and smokestacks that surrounded the Monsanto chemical plant his father helped build, to a grassy hill where they could graze. Each evening before heading off to work the night shift at a pipe company, Smith would check on them, give them some feed and, when the need arose, he'd bring home some bacon.
One night, as he was feeding the hogs, a man from the Monsanto plant drove up the hill in a flatbed truck and made him an offer: $10 apiece for the hogs and a bottle of Log Cabin whiskey. The offer was intriguing. Smith had begun to notice that something was wrong with some of his hogs anyway; their mouths had turned green. And Smith, ever in need of cash, could hardly afford to pass up $500. He sold. But for more than twenty years, he wondered what on earth a chemical company would want with his hogs.
Problem: Damage to the ecological system by contamination from polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB).
Legal Liability: Direct lawsuits are possible. The materials are already present in nature having done their "alleged damage." All customers using the products have not been officially notified about known effects nor [do] our labels carry this information.
--Memo from Monsanto committee studying PCBs, 1969
People Jeremiah Smith's age are old enough to remember Monsanto's glory days in Anniston. The company provided well-paying jobs and helped nurture this friendly Southern town's sense of community. Residents used to marvel at the plant's well-manicured grounds, which the company sometimes let them use for Easter-egg hunts. Most never thought to connect Monsanto to some of the odder features of life in Anniston. Like the creek, known locally as "the ditch," which passed through town carrying water that ran red some days, purple on others and occasionally emitted a foggy white steam.
Public Image: The corporate image of Monsanto as a responsible member of the business world genuinely concerned with the welfare of our environment will be adversely affected with increased publicity....
Sources of Contamination: Although there may be some soil and air contamination involved, by far the most critical problem at present is water contamination.... Our manufacturing facilities sewered a sizable quantity of PCB's in a year's time....
--Monsanto committee memo, 1969 *
Over time, the residents of West Anniston, Alabama, came to believe they had been silently poisoned for decades by Monsanto. Many also believe that if the contamination had occurred in the more affluent (and more heavily white) east side of town, there would have been more scrutiny by the government. The change in attitude was spurred by what at first seemed like a straightforward real estate transaction between Monsanto and a local church.
In December 1995 Donald Stewart, a former state legislator who served briefly in the US Senate, was taking some time off from his legal practice when he received a phone call from a former client, Andrew Bowie. Bowie, a deacon at the Mars Hill Missionary Baptist Church, explained that a Monsanto manager had approached him about buying the church. "It doesn't seem like we're going to achieve a satisfactory deal," Bowie told Stewart. "I think we need a lawyer." Stewart agreed to help. "I thought it was a simple case," Stewart says. "And then it just mushroomed."
Stewart soon learned that Monsanto wanted to buy the church's property, which was across the street from its plant, because it had discovered high concentrations of PCBs in the area and was planning a cleanup. After an open meeting at the church, Stewart began fielding a flood of calls from concerned residents, who had a dizzying array of health problems they now attribute to the contamination. The neighborhood around the plant is populated by people with cancer, young women with damaged ovaries, children who are learning-impaired and people whose ailments have been diagnosed as acute toxic syndrome. (Medical studies have shown that PCBs cause liver problems, skin rashes and developmental and reproductive disorders in humans. The EPA says that, according to animal studies, they probably cause cancer.) In addition to the church, which filed its own suit against Monsanto, more than 3,000 Anniston residents who have high levels of PCBs in their blood and on their property have filed suit against the company since 1996, alleging that beginning in the sixties, the company knew it was introducing PCBs into the environment, knew the hazards of doing so, failed to inform the community and tried to conceal what it had done.
Monsanto denies the allegations. While it concedes that much of Anniston is contaminated by PCBs, the company says its chemical discharges were negligible--and maintains that it did not fully understand how PCBs affected the environment at the time they were released. "As soon as we discovered there were PCB discharges from the plant, we began our operations to limit and hopefully eliminate those discharges," says Bob Kaley, director of environmental affairs for Monsanto's now spun-off chemical division. "At the time, there were no federal regulations with regard to PCBs.... Everything was done voluntarily, and there was really almost no understanding of the effect of PCBs on the environment and human health." Kaley adds, "I think as we've moved forward in the past thirty years, there are potentially some effects at high levels in the environment. But we do not believe even today that there are concerns for human health at those environmental levels."
he case is beginning to attract the attention of environmental activists, 150 of whom will be taking a bus tour of the contaminated areas this month. The EPA is currently considering whether to order a federally monitored cleanup, and it may declare the area a Superfund site. The likelihood of that is enhanced by PCBs' number-six spot on nthe agency's list of toxic substances at contaminated sites.
Monsanto lawyers have had plenty of practice defending against liability, since the company has been named as a co-defendant in dozens of PCB suits across the country. The company's track record in court on this front is excellent; while Monsanto has settled a few suits, it has succeeded in getting the vast majority of complaints--most of which have been brought by companies that purchased the chemicals from Monsanto--thrown out by arguing that these companies knew what they were getting into.
But the Anniston case stands out in the annals of PCB litigation in the extent of damage to property and people it alleges. It is also among the first brought by ordinary citizens rather than sophisticated corporations. And this time Monsanto will have to confront its own paper trail in court. The black binders that the plaintiffs' lawyers have stuffed full of internal memorandums and reports, branded "Hot Documents" and "Hottest Documents" with yellow Post-it notes--many of which have never been seen by the public but which will become public record when the trial begins--make this an especially difficult defense to mount. *
Karen McFarlane lives in plain view of the plant. It's a mild morning in February, and Karen didn't sleep much last night. Clothed only in a T-shirt and underwear, with a sweater draped over her lap, she lights her first cigarette of the morning--a bent Basic--and promptly drops it on the shaggy blue rug. Dakota, Karen's 16-month-old, is playing with the severed head of a Barbie knock-off and there's not much to eat in the house. But Karen has other worries. Outside, a chain-link fence, six feet high and capped by barbed wire, surrounds the gray Buccaneer trailer where she lives with her husband, Ryan, and their five children, blocking access to gray-green fields once populated by neighbors and small businesses that have been chased away by PCB contamination. "I never thought I'd say it, but I just want to get away from here," says Karen, who has lived in Anniston her whole life.
She has PCBs in her body fat. According to tests done by a local doctor, Ryan's blood has nearly triple the level considered "typical" in the United States; for Tiffany, their 6-year-old, it's double. Nathan, 8, has severe developmental problems, and everyone in the family suffers from respiratory problems and the skin rashes associated with PCB exposure. Chris, Karen's 11-year-old son, who's home from school with an upset stomach and is splayed out on the couch, lifts his Panthers basketball T-shirt to reveal brownish-red blotches climbing up the sides of his chest. "It smells like decaying flesh," Ryan warns. "Like it's rotten."
Most of their friends and family have already left, but the McFarlanes can't afford anything other than the small dirt lot where they park their trailer. Karen was recently hospitalized for respiratory-stress disorder and had two strokes at age 30. Her most recent Pap smear was abnormal, but she says she's too scared to have a follow-up exam. Ryan, who has small pink growths dotting his neck, wistfully talks of going to an oncologist for a full cancer screening, something he's unlikely to get soon because he doesn't have health insurance. The McFarlanes are stuck in a place where, according to the Alabama Department of Public Health, cancer rates are 25 percent higher than in the rest of the state. *
Anniston was founded as a company town. In 1872, Samuel Noble, a British-born businessman, and Daniel Tyler, a Union general and a cousin of Aaron Burr, established Woodstock Iron in a then-barren outpost at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. The company built a church, a schoolhouse and a general store. To guarantee the moral fiber of their fabricated utopia, the townspeople threw away their whiskey bottles, declared their own Prohibition and erected a fence around the town's perimeter, creating one of the nation's earliest gated communities. During World War I, chemical producers arrived, and in 1929, the Theodore Swann Company became the nation's first maker of PCBs, nonflammable chemicals that lubricate industrial systems that generate heat. By 1935 the Monsanto Company recognized PCBs as big business and bought Swann's Anniston facility. For close to forty years, Monsanto sold PCBs to companies like General Electric and Westinghouse, helping them insure that webs of electrical wires wouldn't burst into flames.
In the sixties Monsanto encountered a serious threat to its success. While chemical manufacturers throughout the country were scrutinizing the environmental impacts of their products amid growing pressure to reduce emissions, a team of Swedish researchers discovered PCBs in wildlife. For every electrical wire kept from overheating, some of the chemical had been escaping. This discovery, which received wide publicity in 1966, raised concerns for Monsanto, which worried that it would usher in governmental regulations limiting PCB use. "Truly the PCBs are a worldwide ecological problem," declared a company memo that included a list of concerns under the heading "Business Potential at Stake on a Worldwide Basis."
At the time, the government had not yet declared PCBs to be hazardous to human health, but suspicions had been growing for quite a while. As early as 1937 the medical community was examining PCBs to see if they were a public health hazard--a study published that year in the Journal of Industrial Hygiene and Toxicology suggested links between PCBs and liver disease. In the mid-fifties Monsanto researchers and executives began writing confidential memos describing their fears about the chemicals' toxic effects, but they drafted plans for continuing to sell them despite these suspicions. In 1956 Monsanto considered the chemicals toxic enough to give workers protective gear and clothing, and encourage them to hose off after each shift. Along with other chemical manufacturers, the company publicly expressed skepticism about PCBs' association with disease, but over the next decade the evidence became harder and harder to dismiss. In 1968 the links between PCBs and disease won wide credibility when residents of a Japanese town were harmed by consuming PCB-contaminated rice oil. Subsequent studies published in leading medical journals showed that PCBs damage the immune system, the reproductive system and the nervous and endocrine systems.
Monsanto had hundreds of millions in PCB sales to lose if regulators placed restrictions on their use. By 1969 the company established a committee to keep abreast of the state of knowledge on PCBs. The issue was beginning to look like "a monster," in the words of one former executive.
Make the Govt., States and Universities prove their case, but avoid as much confrontation as possible.... We can prove some things are OK at low concentration. Give Monsanto some defense.... We can't defend vs. everything. Some animals or fish or insects will be harmed.... The Dept. of Interior and/or state authorities could monitor plant outfall and find [discharges] ofchlorinated biphenyls at...Anniston anytime they choose to do so. This would shut us down depending on what plants or animals they choose to find harmed.... --Monsanto researcher, September 1969
At issue in the lawsuit is whether the company was aware of the extent of the PCB contamination and whether it couldtected or warned the community. Many of the answers may be found in the documents.
In the late sixties Monsanto began keeping track of its PCB discharges in an attempt to reduce emissions. According to the company's July 1970 progress report, Monsanto was dumping about sixteen pounds a day of PCB waste into the town's waterways. It was a significant amount, but in the closed world of Monsanto executives, it almost seemed like good news--the year before, the company had been dumping about 250 pounds a day.
Monsanto went on the offensive, reporting to regulators at the now-defunct Alabama Water Improvement Commission that it was finding PCBs in the water near the plant. But the regulators, according to a company memo, agreed that "all written effluent level reports would be held confidential by the technical staff and would not be available to the public unless or until Monsanto released it." Monsanto never did.
To predict whether federal or state regulators would find the chemicals to be a threat to the environment or human health, Monsanto began commissioning animal toxicity studies; the results, in the early seventies, didn't look good. "Our interpretation is that the PCBs are exhibiting a greater degree of toxicity in this study than we had anticipated.... We have additional interim data which will perhaps be more discouraging," a company executive wrote. "We are repeating some of the experiments to confirm or deny the earlier findings and are not distributing the early results at this time."
Testing continued, but the results didn't get any better. In 1975 the lab submitted its findings from a two-year study of PCBs' effects on rats. An early draft of the report said that in some cases, PCBs had caused tumors. George Levinskas, Monsanto's manager for environmental assessment and toxicology, wrote to the lab's director: "May we request that the [PCB] 1254 report be amended to say 'does not appear to be carcinogenic.'"
The final report adopted the company's suggested language and dropped all references to tumors.
Anniston residents got their first glimpse of Monsanto's troubles with PCBs in late 1993. A contractor doing dredging work on the nearby Choccolocco Creek noticed largemouth bass with blistered scales. Tests showed the fish contained extremely high levels of PCBs. Around the same time, the Alabama Power Company broke ground on land it had acquired from Monsanto in the sixties, opening up a PCB landfill that bled black tar. Alabama Power insisted that Monsanto take back the land and reported its discovery to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management. Testing ordered by ADEM and carried out by Monsanto found that a wide swath of West Anniston and local waterways were highly contaminated with PCBs. Soon after, the company made its quiet buyout offer to the church.
The contamination came as news to residents, but Donald Stewart quickly discovered that Monsanto had known about it for decades. "There have been some big bonanzas," Stewart says of the internal company documents he has collected. "Someone's going to have to sit down somewhere in the bowels of that company and make it right."
Since Stewart had never handled a case like this before, he enlisted the help of a Mississippi firm and Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman, a New York firm that represented Liggett in the tobacco suits. Even with all that legal firepower, Stewart still has a formidable task ahead. "It just seems these folks have the skill and the capability to avoid having somebody pin the tail on their donkey. I mean, they've just been able to walk away from it," he says. "I can't wait to get before a jury to say, 'Well, this is what happened.' I'm looking forward to hearing how they're going to explain this away."
Early in 1970, we established a target of 10 ppb [parts per billion] of PCBs in our plant waste streams which we expected to achieve by the third quarter 1971. No specific target was established for the quantity of PCBs we could tolerate in the atmosphere. During the year as the plant gained tighter control of known sources of PCB pollution, it became increasingly obvious that the high levels would continue because of the PCBs trapped in the soil and in the sewer systems. Clean-up of these sources can be economically impractical.
--Former Monsanto plant manager, January 1971
Adam Peck, one of Monsanto's lawyers, isn't sweating it. The company, which spun off its chemical division as a stand-alone firm, Solutia, in 1997, assigned an environmental manager to lead a $30 million cleanup focusing on everything from a landfill where 150-200 million pounds of PCB waste are buried to waterways and contaminated land in the neighborhood. Beginning with the Mars Hill church, the company began buying out small businesses and residents in West Anniston. They bulldozed buildings, laid thick plastic tarps over the contaminated soil and covered them with clean soil. The company plans to convert some of the contaminated land into a wildlife refuge. It has built perching posts near the landfill to attract purple martins, and recently released salamanders into a pond that catches runoff water from the landfill.
In Peck's mind, these activities demonstrate convincingly that the corporation has behaved responsibly. "Our position is that when a jury hears all the evidence they will conclude that Monsanto and Solutia acted responsibly in the manufacture of PCBs and in efforts to remediate," he says. "I think liability will be for a jury to determine. We have offered to acquire property. We've offered to clean property. What does that mean? Does that mean we acted responsibly or that we should have done more?" After a pause, he adds, "I'm not sure what more we could have done."
Peck says Monsanto didn't notify the community about the PCB releases years ago because at the time there wasn't sufficient understanding of how the chemicals migrated through the environment. Yet one of the documents Stewart obtained, a sample Q&A on PCBs produced by Monsanto for its customers in 1972, reads in part: "PCB is a persistent chemical which builds up in the environment. It, therefore, should not be allowed to escape to the environment." Peck continues: "And if you think about it from the perspective of the plant manager and the folks who were there at the time, the levels that were escaping the plant were extremely small compared to the levels that those guys were working with on a daily basis. They weren't worried for their own health. Why should they be thinking the minute levels that are escaping are of any concern to anybody outside there?" The protective gear worn by workers, Peck insists, was simply routine. *
Ryan McFarlane is lumbering across the dirt lot outside his trailer. Overweight and easily winded, he moves slowly past a broken trampoline to a set of wire pens that house his chickens. Undersized and lethargic, they huddle in the corners of the rusty pens, occasionally exhaling a thin cluck. For years, Ryan raised chickens for food. But these days, knowing they are probably contaminated, and since his health problems have kept him from working for the past five years, Ryan keeps chickens around to give him something to do.
Until the PCB contamination came to light, the McFarlanes, like many of their friends and former neighbors, regularly ate fish from the creeks, and chicken and vegetables raised in their yards. They might have given the practice up long before if Monsanto had told Jeremiah Smith in 1970 when it bought his hogs that it made the purchase because it was worried that people were eating PCB-contaminated pork. (Monsanto admits that the hogs were later shot and buried, although the company contends that its concern about PCB contamination was secondary to its concern about the hogs' trespassing on its property.) The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, a division of the US Department of Health and Human Services, completed a health study in Anniston in February, which found that PCB exposure in the town is a public health hazard. It also suggested that eating local pork, fish and chicken has been a major source of PCB contamination. The EPA says eating PCB-contaminated food is one of the most dangerous means of exposure because PCBs biomagnify, or increase in intensity, as they travel up the food chain.
Residents are anxiously awaiting the EPA's decision on whether to order a federal cleanup. "All they want to do, seem like, is study, study, study, we got to study some more," says one plaintiff in the case. The lawsuit is also taking longer than residents anticipated. Two weeks before the case was to go to trial, in March 1999, Monsanto appealed to the state Supreme Court to establish procedural rules for the circuit court. Now, more than a year later, the Court still hasn't returned its rulings. In the meantime, Stewart prepares for trial and works on other cases. He's hoping the jury will award compensatory damages for the property contamination and punitive damages for the fear the exposure has engendered. He also wants Monsanto to pay for regular health screenings. Early settlement talks went nowhere, both sides say.
Monsanto did settle the original suit on behalf of the Mars Hill congregation. It made no admission of guilt but paid $2.5 million to rebuild the church at another location. "In the Mars Hill case they protested all the time that they didn't do a thing," Stewart says. "Then they paid $2.5 million for a church they said was worth $400,000. Sounds like they did something, to me. Now, I'm just a small-town country lawyer, but I wonder how they arrived at that decision."
-------- genetic engineering
Uncertain future seen for gene sugar
Planet Ark
UK: May 29, 2000
Story by Peter Blackburn
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=6881
LONDON - Consumer resistance to genetically modified food, including sugar, may result in farmers stalling in planting GM crops, the International Sugar Organization (ISO) said in a study.
"GM hysteria has overtaken any rational debate over the merits of GM foods," the study by ISO economist Lindsay Jolly said.
That made it dificult to separate the health, environmental and regulatory elements from the popular and political debate about GM foods.
Transgenic beet, modified to resist herbicides, had been grown in the United States and was awaiting marketing approval in the European Union. Transgenic sugar cane could be ready for marketing in the next few years.
Sugar producers said that transgenic beet and cane improved disease resistance, productivity and quality.
However, consumers remained concerned even though white sugar is 99.9 percent sucrose, which means it is almost totally chemically pure and does not contain any transgenic DNA.
---
Brazil recommends simple test for transgenetic soy
Planet Ark
BRAZIL: May 29, 2000
Story by Reese Ewing
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=6879
SAO PAULO - Some soybeans, paper towels and a few drops of biotech weed killer - cost: $2 - have given Brazil's soy industry a cheap alternative to $500 DNA scans to test for genetically modified material in its soybeans.
The Agriculture Ministry's research arm, Embrapa, said exporters of Brazil's soybeans may avoid the expensive tests to prove to discerning buyers that their soybeans are free of genetically modified (GM) strains with a simpler method.
Soybeans placed in paper towels moistened with a diluted solution of herbicide designed for GM soybeans will reveal whether they are conventional or GM seeds, Embrapa said.
"Once the beans germinate in the diluted solution, the transgenic seeds will have normal root development but the conventional soybeans will not develop any roots," Embrapa researcher Warley Marcos do Nascimento said Friday.
Planting any genetically-tampered grain is technically illegal in Brazil. But farmers in Rio Grande do Sul state have planted super-seeds from the U.S. Monsanto Co. biotechnology unit of Pharmacia Corp., smuggled in from Argentina where they are legal.
The presence of transgenic beans in Brazil's third largest soybean state may throw the industry's sales to health-conscious European buyers in jeopardy. Some foreign markets have prized Brazilian products because they are GM-free.
But Brazil has not yet developed standardss for testing GM soybeans. Embrapa is hoping that the cheap, simple method will become an industry-wide litmus test to improve the confidence of foreign buyers that Brazilian soy is GM-free.
The test has a margin of error of about 5 percent, and some DNA testing companies are saying the test is imprecise and primitive. But Nascimento said the test is 95 percent reliable, simple and cheap.
"The test could be a preliminary screening which should be reliable enough for European buyers," Nascimento said. Currently, only Rio Grande do Sul, accounting for 15 percent of the nation's soybean output, practices systematic GM testing on its beans.
---
UK farmers mull legal move against govt on GM seed
Planet Ark
UK: May 29, 2000
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=6877
LONDON - British farmers who unwittingly planted genetically modified seeds are considering legal action against the government after it advised them to destroy their contaminated crops but refused compensation, officials said.
The National Farmers' Union (NFU) said it was also considering what legal steps farmers could take against Advanta Seeds, the company that mistakenly supplied them with the cross-pollinated oilseed rape seeds.
"We are taking legal advice because we want to look into the position of Advanta...and of course the government because of the delays in letting farmers know," NFU spokesman Ian Gardner told BBC radio.
"If farmers had been told early enough, a large part of this crop would not have been in the ground," he added, referring to the fact that the government knew about the mistake for a month before making it public.
Hundreds of farms have been affected. Around 9,000 hectares were sown with the affected seeds in 1999 and 4,700 hectares in spring 2000.
Agriculture Minister Nick Brown ruled out any compensation for farmers, placing the blame squarely on Advanta, and said on Saturday that were he a farmer, he would destroy the crops quickly.
"It is clear to me there is a loss to farmers," he told the BBC. "The responsibility lies with the people who sold them the defective product."
Advanta, a joint venture between Anglo-Swedish group AstraZeneca Plc and Dutch co-operative Cosun, believes its rape seed was contaminated by pollen from a GM crop in a neighbouring field in Canada in 1998.
-------- chemicals
Louisiana Derailment Cleanup Set to Start Tuesday
Yahoo News
Monday May 29 11:16 PM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000529/ts/crash_train_8.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=unp&d=t
http://biz.yahoo.com/n/u/unp.html
EUNICE, La. (Reuters) - Hazardous-chemical specialists plan to put out fires still burning in two tank cars of plastics Tuesday and then begin moving some of 30 freight cars that derailed Saturday in southwest Louisiana, forcing 2,500 people from their homes.
``We think the possibility of another major explosion is at an end,'' Louisiana State Police Sgt. Chris Guillory said.
``Once we get those fires out, we can remove some of the cars and get a better look at one other hot spot underneath some of the wreckage.
``We'll put some water on that and then can get close enough to better evaluate what's going on,'' he said.
Smaller fires continued to burn around some of the chemical-laden freight cars that derailed from a Union Pacific (NYSE:UNP - news) train shortly before noon Saturday on the outskirts of Eunice, a town of 12,000 people in southwestern Louisiana.
Residents were ordered to flee from a 2-1/2-mile radius around the site within minutes of the accident as the force of chemical explosions rocked buildings and sent fireballs hundreds of feet into the air. Dense smoke poured from the scene for almost 24 hours, police said.
Early Monday morning, authorities set off a controlled explosion to release pressure inside a dangerously overheated tank car of acrylic acid that had flipped upside down, Guillory said.
Other Tankers Could Have Ruptured
By controlling the blast, specialists averted an uncontrolled explosion that could have ruptured other tankers and increased the danger of toxic releases, he said.
Guillory said inspections Monday afternoon indicated that the majority of derailed cars had ruptured. Earlier, officials had said that only seven cars were believed to have leaked.
Two cars that overturned in a bayou did not appear to be leaking chemicals, but the waterway was dammed to avoid possible contamination, officials said.
``I wish we had better news, but we don't know when the evacuees will be allowed to go home,'' State Police Lt. Mike Edmundson said Monday night.
No injuries have been reported, police said.
Authorities have not been able to determine where some chemicals were located amid the wreckage because the derailment and ensuing explosions left tank cars in tangled heaps.
The train's manifest listed the contents in the order in which the cars were connected before the derailment.
No dangerous levels of chemicals have been detected in the air, nearby water or the houses of evacuees, officials said.
Hazardous chemicals carried on the train included dichloropropane, acrylic acid, methyl chloride, toluene diisocyanate, sodium hydroxide, hexane and phenol.
Reactions from exposure to at least some of the chemicals can range from skin irritation, burning eyes and respiratory distress to central nervous system damage, convulsions and cardiac arrest, hazardous-materials specialists said.
A team from the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the cause of the accident once the threat of toxic releases ends.
---
Controlled Blast Cuts Threat From U.S. Derailment
Yahoo News
Monday May 29 4:22 PM ET
EUNICE, La. (Reuters) - Fire crews ignited an overturned tank car loaded with a toxic chemical on Monday to prevent a possible explosion at the site of a weekend freight train derailment in southwest Louisiana that forced the evacuation of more than 2,500 people.
Emergency officials calculated that burning the tanker in a controlled fire was preferable to the threat of explosion and a potentially larger fire at the site of Saturday's Union Pacific (NYSE:UNP - news) derailment in which 29 cars of the 113-car train left the tracks in the outskirts of Eunice.
``It was a controlled, safe, planned explosion to let the pressure out,'' Louisiana State Police spokesman E.J. Chesney said of the damaged tanker filled with acrylic acid.
Fire crews also contended with a number of smaller fires still burning at the site where the force of chemical explosions after the derailment rocked buildings and sent fireballs hundreds of feet (meters) into the air. Dense smoke poured from the scene for a day.
Officials said seven cars burned before the controlled explosion began. Two more cars were overturned but did not appear to be leaking any cargo.
More than 2,500 people who lived within a 2-1/2-mile (4 km) radius of the derailment were evacuated and not allowed to return by late on Monday. There was no word on when those people would return home.
No injuries had been reported, police said. State Police Sgt. Chris Guillory said hazardous materials specialists prepared to make new assessments later on Monday. ''We'll have to extinguish some of the fires before starting to clean up,'' he said.
Cargo must be identified before attempting to put out the smaller fires because some chemicals react violently to foam and were positioned next to some that react violently to water, Chesney said.
Authorities have not been able to determine all of the chemicals involved because the train is now a tangled wreck. The train's manifest apparently listed freight contents in an order not consistent with how the cars were arranged before the derailment.
No dangerous levels of chemicals have been detected in the air, water or in the houses of evacuees, officials said. Hazardous chemicals carried on the train included dichloropropane, acrylic acid, methyl chloride, toluene diisocyanate, sodium hydroxide, hexane and phenol.
Reactions from exposure to at least some of the chemicals can range from skin irritation, burning eyes and respiratory distress to central nervous system damage, convulsions and cardiac arrest, hazardous materials specialists said.
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