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-------- canada
CANADA DETAINS AND DEPORTS OIL CONGRESS ACTIVISTS
From: Julie Light cwatch@corpwatch.org
Subject: Activists Detained & Deported--Urgent Release
PROJECT UNDERGROUND www.moles.org
TRANSNATIONAL RESOURCE & ACTION CENTER www.corpwatch.org
Contacts: Joshua Karliner, TRAC 415-561-6567
Shanna Langdon, Project Underground 510-705-8981
Currently In Jail: Amit Srivastava, TRAC cell: 415-786-4327
Carwil James, Project Underground cell: 510-421-0119
San Francisco, June 8-Bay Area activists set to speak at a teach-in on the human rights and environmental impacts of the oil industry were arrested by Canadian immigration officials last night at Calgary's international airport.
The officials told Carwil James of Project Underground and Amit Srivastava of the Transnational Resource & Action Center (TRAC) that they were detained because of their involvement in activities critical of the World Petroleum Congress-a global oil industry gathering.
"The Canadian government should be ashamed of itself for pre-empting free speech in such a heavy-handed manner. It appears that Canada is more interested in protecting oil corporations than human rights," said Joshua Karliner, Director of TRAC.
Using a law that apparently allows them to deny entry to individuals with two or more arrest convictions, Canadian officials detained James and Srivastava as they arrived for the Counter Petroleum Congress where they were scheduled to speak. Both activists have been convicted of misdemeanors in the past for engaging in non-violent civil disobedience. Mr. James was most recently arrested at the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in Seattle. Mr. Srivastava hasn't been arrested in nine years.
Immigration officials used this pretext to read through and copy paper and electronic documents the activists carried, including Mr. Srivastava's year long work plan.
"This detention is part of a systematic government effort at the behest of oil corporations--something we are more used to witnessing in dictatorships like Nigeria," said Danny Kennedy, Director of Project Underground. "Withfree trade, corporations move freely across border; people, especially those critical of corporate globalization, apparently cannot."
Both activists are people of color (Amit is Indian American and Carwil is African American). Other white activists with multiple civil disobedience charges were apparently let into Canada without any problem. "While this may be coincidence, we are also concerned that they may have been singled out as activists of color" said Kennedy.
The activists who were jailed over night and transported in chains and shackles were given two choices: either fight deportation and risk a life-long ban from Canada or withdraw their application to enter the country and leave immediately. Mr. James is staying and fighting deportation, working with Canadian immigration attorneys. Mr. Srivastava has withdrawn his application. He should be available to interview from 8 PST onward
-------- germany
REPORT ON BERLIN SPACE DEMO
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 02:22:54 -0400
From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" globalnet@mindspring.com
In Berlin, the Anti-ILA campaign (ILA = International Air and Space Fair) tried to do a blockade of the main gate of the fair area at airport Berlin-Schoenefeld. Police had gained advance knowledge about that, however, and did a thorough check of cars that came from closeby Potsdam. They arrested 8 people who wanted to take part in the blockade. At the entrance, they arrested a few more and prevented the blockade.
They also prevented a protest action in the fair at a military Tornado airplane. On Saturday, we built up an information table at subway station Berlin-Rudow where shuttle buses to the main fair entrance left. We had (toy) balloons filled with helium which we handed to children. The balloons said "Use space peacefully" on one side. On the other they showed the CPIS logo (which we also use in Germany" and the words "Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space". The Mutlangen group had published a special edition of the "Weltraum Aktuell" ("News on Space") newsletter.
People were rather in a hurry to get on the buses and get to the trade show. But we handed out many leaflets, had some talks. And the kids took the ballons with them to the fair - I don't think anyone would have dared to take the balloons away from them! We were about 20 people who participated in the Rudow action. At the fair, they had several display areas in the open. In the main display area, most planes were military ones - the Eurofighter, the stealth bomber, and many others which names I don't know. People were allowed to climb up some of them and sit in the cockpit and were explained how they worked. There were many young boys keen to do that. They also had a Eurofighter flight simulator there. All the large military and aerospace/space campanies (with the exception of Boeing) were there. In addition to the fair, there were dozens of conferences and expert meetings during the the fair time. About 70% of these were on military subjects.
This year, the fair had a focus on (military) cooperation with Eastern Europe countries. Because France and Germany had decided to use the Airbus 400 as the new large transport plane for the military, the Russians were angry and did not display the Antonov...
Regina Hagen Darmstaedter Friedensforum Teichhausstrasse 46 D-64287 Darmstadt Germany Tel. [49] (6151) 47 114 Fax [49] (6151) 47 105
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German Nuclear Phaseout Deal Near, Gaps Remain
June 12, 2000
ENS
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jun2000/2000L-06-12-04.html
BERLIN, Germany, The German government and electricity industry look set to formally agree a phaseout plan for nuclear power this week, following a breakthrough achieved in a meeting between chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Manfred Remmel, president and CEO of the power firm RWE Energie, on June 7.
However, the agreement does not have a deadline by which all of Germany's 20 nuclear power stations would have to shut down.
Siemens Pressurized Water Reactor at Grohnde (Photos courtesy Siemens)
Tough negotiating is expected to continue on several areas, but a draft of the consensus paper leaked to the German press shows most of the agreement is in place.
One stumbling block, the fate of the Mulheim-Karlich nuclear reactor, has been overcome. It was closed in 1988 after only 13 months in service, but now its owner, RWE has won the government's acceptance of the station's inclusion in what the leaders called a "burden sharing" framework.
Under this arrangement, the industry will be allowed to generate a set volume of electricity and to share this between power stations - including the generating capacity of Mulheim-Karlich.
A key element of the deal yet to be decided is how much electricity the industry will be allowed to generate from nuclear plants, though figures of 2,600 to 2,700 terawatt hours of electricity are reported to be under discussion.
It is unclear how this will translate into reactor lifetimes. Previously, the government was pushing for a maximum 30-year lifespan per reactor, while the industry wanted each reactor to be allowed 35 years of actual operations.
Siemens Boiling Water Reactor at Gundremmingen
Utilities that generate power will be free to trade or share whatever level of production is allowed. This, and the fact that the agreement still lacks a final cap date by which power stations would have to shut down, is expected to lead to friction within the Red/Green coalition government, especially if the power generators win generous terms.
The minority Green coalition partner has already compromised significantly on its initial demands in agreeing to a common position with its Social Democratic Party (SPD) partner.
Other elements of the draft deal include a commitment by the government not to require closure of Germany's two oldest reactors - started up in 1968 and 1972 - before the end of 2002 at the earliest. This marks a further setback for the Green party, which wanted some power stations closed before the next general election, due in 2002.
In addition, the government is pledging not to change current safety standards for nuclear power stations or to introduce new taxes or other measures that would discriminate against the industry.
The deal will include a ban on transport of spent fuel for reprocessing from July 1, 2005, with companies being urged to stop the practice sooner if possible. This provision will be a blow to nuclear fuel reprocessors French owned Cogema and British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., already under fire for radiation leaks and safety management problems.
{Published in cooperation with ENDS Environment Daily, Europe's choice for environmental news. Environmental Data Services Ltd, London. Email: envdaily@ends.co.uk}
-------- health
EPA: Toxic Dioxins Put Human Health at Risk
June 12, 2000 (ENS)
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jun2000/2000L-06-12-11.html
WASHINGTON, DC, A group of environmental contaminants called dioxins are most dangerous for infants and children, but the health of adults exposed to the chemicals is also at risk, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said today in a long awaited reassessment of dioxin toxicity.
Dioxins can alter the fundamental growth and development of cells in a way that results in cancer and adverse effects upon reproduction and development in animals and potentially in people, the EPA said in a draft report.
Based on a more complete understanding of dioxins, the report finds that risks to people may be somewhat higher than previously believed, even though actual exposure seems to be declining among the general population.
The EPA released draft chapters of its reassessment of the health risks from dioxins for scientific and public review. The process includes review by an independent peer review panel in July and review by EPA's Scientific Advisory Board planned for October.
Aluminum plant beside a Catholic church, belches fumes over a New Orleans, Louisiana residential area. 1973. (Photo courtesy EPA)
A group of about 30 chemically related compounds is collectively referred to as dioxins. Dioxins are produced by waste incineration and other industrial processes. Collectively, they are one of 12 persistent organic pollutants which are the subject of a international treaty negotiation. These pollutants build up in the human and animal tissue, accumulating as they ascend up the food chain.
More than 100 prominent physicians, public health professional and scientists concerned about the effects of dioxins have appealed to President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore "to develop a plan of action, which should include national and international commitments to the long-term goal of the virtual elimination" of the dangerous chemicals.
The EPA reassessment report has been in the works for nearly a decade and has been the target of much industry pressure, the health officials say. "The industries flooding our environment with dioxin have denied its dangers while this report has been held up for nine years," said Robert Musil, Ph.D., CEO and executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
"This reassessment tells the truth they don't want you to hear: dioxin is a dangerous cancer causing chemical that must be phased out," said Dr. Musil.
Child plays frisbee on a smoke-filled street in North Birmingham, Alabama, the most heavily polluted area of the city. 1972. Dioxins accumulate in fatty tissues and are not eliminated. (Photo courtesy EPA)
Dioxins are especially dangerous to children. As the physicians' letter to the President explains, "developing fetuses, nursing infants, and young children are at greatest risk from current levels of dioxin exposure. EPA's draft risk characterization warns that young children consume more than three times - and nursing infants 100 times - the amount of dioxins as adults, on a body weight basis."
The reassessment released today is the product of an exhaustive review by EPA scientists and other government and non-government scientists begun in 1991. It reflects comments received since release of an earlier draft in 1994, recommendations received from EPA's Scientific Advisory Board in 1995 and extensive additional data on dioxin obtained by the Agency.
Following completion of scientific and public review, EPA will issue the final dioxin reassessment document and at the same time will publish a draft dioxin Risk Management Strategy for public comment. The strategy will propose EPA policy and programs for dioxin using the reassessment as its scientific basis.
In addition to the two draft chapters for which the Agency is inviting comments, the entire reassessment and other background information are now available on EPA's dioxin reassessment web site: http://www.epa.gov/ncea/dioxin.htm.
Limited paper copies of the summary chapter, and a CD-ROM of the reassessment (not including the summary chapter), are available from the National Service Center for Environmental Publications at 1-800-490-9198.
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WHO Issues Antibiotic Alert
June 12, 2000
Associated Press - Intelihealth
http://ipn.intelihealth.com/IPN/ihtIPN?st=23883&t=7223&c=285768
WASHINGTON (AP) - The World Health Organization warned Monday that increasingly drug-resistant infections in rich and developing nations alike are threatening to make once-treatable diseases incurable.
Scientists have been urging action for years to fight the growing problem of infections becoming impervious to treatment. The WHO's new report adds to the alarm.
"We're losing windows of opportunity," said WHO infectious diseases chief Dr. David Heymann. "It's something we have to really address immediately or we're going to start losing our antibiotics."
"This is a major problem for us, and it isn't going to go away," added Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who helped WHO unveil the report. "We use the same antibiotics as other countries do," so resistance in one country is bad news for everybody.
Bacteria, parasites and viruses all naturally evolve to fight treatment. It's classic survival of the fittest: Bugs exposed to drugs that don't kill them become stronger, able to withstand subsequent treatment attempts, and pass on that drug resistance to their next generation.
Misuse of medications, particularly antibiotics, speeds this process.
In developed countries, people often overuse antibiotics, demanding them for viruses like colds. The body always harbors germs, so each unneeded antibiotic dose is an opportunity for them to evolve. U.S. and Canadian doctors are estimated to overprescribe antibiotics by 50 percent, the WHO report said.
Impoverished developing countries have the opposite problem. Many patients can't afford the full course needed to cure an infection. Antibiotics may be sold at market stalls where people buy a few doses without a doctor's exam. In Vietnam in 1997, researchers found more than 70 percent of patients were prescribed inadequate doses to cure serious infections.
Then there's misinformation: In the Philippines, people mistakenly use low doses of an anti-tuberculosis drug as a "lung vitamin," WHO said.
Animals add to the problem. Half the world's antibiotics are used on the farm, sometimes to treat illness but mostly to help healthy animals grow bigger. That encourages drug-resistant germs that cause food poisoning, WHO said.
What effect does all this have? Among the report's sobering examples:
-Gonorrhea was once easily curable with penicillin and tetracycline. "Today, you can't touch it anywhere in the world with those drugs," Heymann said. Poor nations can't afford more expensive alternatives and, to make matters worse, untreated gonorrhea is fueling spread of the AIDS virus.
-In Estonia, Latvia, and parts of Russia and China, more than 10 percent of tuberculosis patients have strains resistant to two powerful medicines. Overall, up to 2 percent of the world's 16 million TB sufferers have multi-drug resistant strains, particularly frightening because TB is airborne, spread when people cough.
-Malaria, the mosquito-spread infection that kills a million people a year, is resistant to the top medication 80 percent of the time.
-Some 5,000 Americans may have suffered longer-lasting food poisoning in 1998 from drug-resistant germs in chicken.
Nobody counts deaths from drug-resistant infections. The CDC says 88,000 Americans a year die of infections they catch in the hospital, and many are resistant to at least one antibiotic, complicating treatment attempts.
Wiser use of antimicrobial drugs is the solution, the WHO said. It recommended increased funding to help poor countries afford enough antibiotics, and education for poor and rich nations alike to avoid misuse.
WHO also recommended that human antibiotics not be used as growth promoters for animals. Europe already has banned several such drugs. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has debated stricter rules here for several years, but is under industry pressure not to tighten animal drug restrictions.
-------- imf / world bank
Court bars Romanian IMF deal
By Phelim McAleer in Bucharest
Financial Times
June 12 2000 17:32GMT
From: Robert Weissman - rob@essential.org
Article highlight: "Successive governments have promised austerity, only to cave in to electoral pressures."
A key element of the Romanian government's agreement with the International Monetary Fund, which introduced a salary cap for employees in state-run companies, has been declared illegal by the Bucharest appeal court.
The decision represents a setback for the country's plans to rejuvenate its economy with the help of IMF funds. Last week, the IMF approved, after a number of delays, the extension of a $535m standby credit and the immediate release of $116m. This approval was expected to trigger further funds from the World Bank and the European Union.
However, the release of the funds was only sanctioned after firm commitments from the country's centre-right coalition government that state spending would be reduced, with salaries pegged and performance-related. Previously, managers at state-run industries could award themselves and their employees bonuses despite incurring huge losses and mounting arrears. It is not unusual for large state enterprises in Romania to owe considerable sums to state utilities and have large outstanding tax bills.
The court ruling followed a complaint from the Meridian Trade Union and an announcement by other unions that they would be initiating strikes and protests. It is likely to add to the problems of the government, which is unpopular in opinion polls, and which may lose power after parliamentary and presidential elections in the autumn. The former communist Social Democrat party (PDSR) gained crucial seats in recent local elections.
The forthcoming election was one of the main reasons the IMF had delayed granting the standby credit. Successive governments have promised austerity, only to cave in to electoral pressures. Cracks in the previously firm commitments from the government to the current IMF deal have already started to emerge. The trade and industry minister has disowned the law on state company salaries passed by the cabinet two weeks ago. Radu Berceanu, of the Democratic party, told the Romanian newspaper, Curentul, he was opposed to the new regulations. "The ordinance was signed in a hurry by some secretaries of state because [Prime Minister Mugur] Isarescu was leaving for the IMF meeting," he said.
----
Flip Side - Barbara Ehrenreich Anarkids and Hypocrites
from the june edition of The Progressive www.progressive.org
In retrospect, it looks like a case of false advertising. Posters for the April 16 anti-IMF actions in Washington, D.C., promised a "nonviolent demonstration." But what actually happened was that thousands of demonstrators were tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, and/or beaten with police batons.
The Midnight Special Legal Collective, which provided legal support for the demonstrators, reports that one protester had three ribs broken during his arrest. Another was beaten bloody, then tossed into a paddy wagon with the instruction that he be driven around for a few hours before being taken to a hospital. In jail, hundreds of protesters were denied food or water for twenty-four hours, leading in at least one case to a severe hypoglycemic reaction. According to the legal collective:
"One group of men was taken into a basement, put into a cage, and told by a U.S. marshal, 'There are no cameras here. We can do whatever we want.' Anyone who looked up while the marshal was speaking was punched in the face. People were being released from prison in the middle of a cold, rainy night, without jackets, shoes, in some cases without shirts, and without any money to take a bus or cab anywhere--all had been taken from them by officials."
If this is nonviolence, you'd be better off taking up extreme boxing.
The anti-IMF posters were, of course, promising that the demonstrators themselves would behave in a nonviolent fashion, but nonviolence on one side is, at least in theory, connected to nonviolence on the other. If the protesters are civil and predictable in their actions, then, it is generally hoped and believed, the police will be moved to emulate them. And if the police should fall short of perfect nonviolence, then--the reasoning goes--the poor, martyred, demonstrators will at least have the moral upper hand. Hence, in no small part, the excessive reaction by organizers of the Seattle anti-WTO protests to the black-clad anarchists who threw rocks through the windows of NikeTown, Starbucks, the Gap, and a few other chain stores last November.
No humans were harmed in the rock-throwing incidents--the stores were closed at the time. Yet anti-WTO organizers from the Direct Action Network reacted as if their protest had been taken over by a band of Hell's Angels. Instead of treating the young rock-throwers like sisters and brothers in the struggle--wrongheaded, perhaps, but undeniably enthusiastic--protest organizers swept up the broken glass. They hinted that the perpetrators were agents provocateurs paid by the police. Some proudly assert--though I cannot confirm this--that Direct Action Network folks helped finger the rock-throwers for the police.
Will somebody please call Hypocrisy Watch? The same people who administered a public spanking to the anarkids featured, as one of the anti-WTO's honored guests, one José Bové, the French farmer who famously torched a McDonald's. The double standard for what counts as "violence" was never explained.
Seattle organizers also fretted that the anarkids' actions would upset the unions, although no union leaders issued a peep of complaint. It would have been odd if they had, since America has one of the most violent labor histories of any industrialized nation in the world, and not every little bit of that violence was perpetrated by the Pinkertons. Nor did the rock-throwing demonstrably "ruin" the Seattle protests in the eyes of the public. In fact, it probably doubled the media attention, with most press accounts carefully distinguishing between the 50,000 rock-less protesters and the twenty or so window-smashers.
And it would be interesting to know how many of the anarkid-bashers ever took the time to denounce the riot that swept Los Angeles just after the Rodney King verdict in 1990. Yes, I said "riot"--including attacks on people as well as property, much of it belonging to merely middle class, mostly Korean American, citizens. But the oh-so-politically-correct, whose numbers no doubt include some of today's self-righteously nonviolent protesters, prefer to call that an "uprising."
The events in Seattle and D.C. are in many obvious ways enormously heartening, but they also illustrate how absurdly ritualized leftwing protests have become, at least on the side of the protesters. Once, back in the now prehistoric sixties, a group would call for a demonstration, with or without a police permit, and the faithful would simply show up. If you were fortunate or fleet of foot, you got away unscathed. Otherwise--well, everyone knew there were risks to challenging the power of the state.
Sometime in the early 1980s, demonstration organizers started getting smarter--or, you might say, more scientific and controlling--about the process of demonstrating. In the anti-nuclear power and anti-war movements of the day, they carefully segregated protesters who wished to be arrested from those who did not and insisted that the potential arrestees be organized into "affinity groups" that had been trained for hours or even days in the technology of "nonviolent civil disobedience." It made sense at the time. Affinity groups provided a basis for consensual decision-making among large numbers of people. The training--in linking arms, going limp, and "jail solidarity"--helped assure minimal bodily harm to the arrestees. Besides, everything gets professionalized sooner or later: Why not the revolution?
But there are problems with the new liturgy of protest. For one thing, not everyone has a master's degree in nonviolent civil disobedience, and many potential protesters, even quite militant ones, would be put off by the counter-cultural atmosphere of the trainings. I can remember almost being turned away from an anti- nuclear action in 1982 until one of my companions had the wit to lie and claim that we had indeed gone through extensive training.
Then there is the numbingly ritual quality of the actions: Protesters sit down in a spot prearranged with the police, protesters get carried off by the police and booked, protesters get released. Sometimes safely ritualized protests can be effective, as when, in March 1999, almost 1,200 people--including dignitaries like former New York City Mayor David Dinkins--got themselves arrested to protest the shooting of Amadou Diallo. But even one of the organizers of that protest, longtime activist Leslie Cagan, points out the irony in the protesters' harmonious relationship with the very police force whose homicidal behavior they were protesting.
Worst of all, nonviolence on the part of protesters does not guarantee nonviolent behavior on the part of the police. In Seattle, as well as in D.C., many protesters were rewarded for their civility with pepper spray, beatings, and gas. These are not crossing guards we are up against, but some of the most highly militarized police in the world. In a few decades, they have moved from terrorizing communities of color to deploying torture as a tactic against anyone, of any color, who steps out of line: starving detainees in D.C., rubbing pepper spray in the eyes of anti-logging protesters in California, confining prisoners to potentially lethal restraint chairs, as Anne-Marie Cusac reported two months ago in this magazine.
Clearly the left, broadly speaking, has come to a creative impasse. We need to invent some new forms of demonstrating that minimize the danger while maximizing the possibilities for individual self-expression (sea turtle costumes, songs, dancing, and general playfulness). We need ways of protesting that are accessible to the uninitiated, untrained, nonvegan population as well as to the seasoned veteran. We need to figure out how to capture public attention while, as often as possible, directly accomplishing some not-entirely-symbolic purpose, such as gumming up a WTO meeting or, for that matter, slowing down latté sales at a Starbucks.
Rock-throwing doesn't exactly fit these criteria, nor did the old come-as-you-are demos of the sixties. But neither do the elaborately choreo-graphed rituals known as "nonviolent" civil disobedience. The people at Direct Action Network, Global Exchange, and other groups were smart enough to comprehend the workings of the WTO, IMF, and World Bank. Now it's time for them to figure out how large numbers of people can protest the international capitalist cabal without getting clobbered--or trashed by their fellow demonstrators--in the process.
---
Report on Federal Anti-Activist Intelligence Network
Chris Belcher <cbelcher@alchymedia.com>
Organization: Alchymedia
Subject: Re: Fwd: FW: INFO -- Fed Spy and Military Intelligence (fwd)]
By Frank Morales
On May 4, 2000, the Intelligence Newsletter, based in Paris, France, published a report which stated that "sources close to the Washington DC Metropolitan Police have given Intelligence Newsletter details about intelligence units that gather information on anti-globalization militants in the US and elsewhere". (1) In addition, the same sources said that during the April 17 Break the World Bank DC protests, "reserve units from the US Army Intelligence and Security Command helped Washington police keep an eye on demonstrations staged at the World Bank/IMF meetings." In addition, the French intelligence service report notes that "the Pentagon sent around 700 men from the Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir to assist the Washington police on April 17, including specialists in human and signals intelligence. One unit was even strategically located on the fourth floor balcony in a building at 1919 Pennsylvania Avenue with a birds-eye view of most demonstrators."
According to the report, information on the protest movements is collected and stored by six Regional Information Sharing System (RISS) centers funded by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Assistance. Ostensibly these intelligence centers are set up to counter organized crime, drugs and terrorism but it takes no great stretch to comprehend how civil disobedience, once defined as a terrorist threat and/or criminal conspiracy would, or has become a target. According to the Intelligence Newsletter report, "the RISS also act against any political activist group deemed to be a threat and over the last year has found itself focusing on anti-globalization groups." In addition, the report notes that in order "to justify their interest in anti-globalization groups from a legal standpoint, the authorities lump them into a category of terrorist organizations. Among those considered as such at present are Global Justice (the group that organized the April 17 demonstration), Earth First, Greenpeace, American Indian Movement, Zapatista National Liberation Front and Act-Up." Although this story has yet to be verified, given the> existence of RISS and the paranoid proclivities of the US national security state and its civil disturbance planning apparatus, we should assume the report is accurate.
According to RISS program documents (2), the agency is set up to "share intelligence and coordinate efforts against criminal networks that operate in many locations across jurisdictional lines." The program "serves more than 5,300 member law enforcement agencies" across the country including the FBI, DEA, IRS, Secret Service, Customs and the BATF. It is overseen by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, State and Local Assistance Division, 810 Seventh Street, NW, Washington, DC (202-305-2923). Its immediate overseer is the Institute for Intergovernmental Research (IIR), PO Box 12729, Tallahassee, Florida, (850-385-0600). The IIR also sponsors the State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training program (SLATT) which provides, via its "extremist research experts", "training and information to state and local law enforcement personnel in the areas of domestic anti-terrorism and extremist criminal activity." (3) The FBI's National Security Division Training Unit is a partner with IIR in providing SLATT training nationally.
According to a 1999 Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) report on RISS,the six federally funded Regional Information Sharing System centers are financed "to support law enforcement efforts to combat multi-jurisdictional criminal conspiracies and activities." (4) The six centers, the Middle Atlantic-Great Lakes Organized Crime Law Enforcement Network, Newtown, PA, the Mid-States Organized Crime Information Center, Springfield, MO, the New England State Police Information Network, Franklin, MA, the Rocky Mountain Information Network, Phoenix, AR, the Regional Organized Crime Information Center, Nashville, TN, and the Western States Information Network, Sacramento, CA, are set up in such a way that "each center's staff possess sufficient flexibility to tailor the individual center's priorities and operations to the particular - perhaps unique - needs of the region." According to the BJA report, the centers "maintain pools of specialized investigative equipment for loan to participating member agencies", including "photographic, communications (and) surveillance" equipment. In addition, "all six RISS Intelligence Centers have confidential funds available to member agencies for the purchase of investigative information, contraband, stolen property, and other items of an evidentiary nature. The net amount of confidential funds provided by the centers to member agencies totaled $265,526 for 1998."
According to the Intelligence Newsletter report cited earlier, it's the Mid-Atlantic Network, based in Newtown, Pennsylvania, whose region includes New York and the District of Columbia, that is particularly efficient in activist spy work. According to the report, that center "distributes intelligence on the groups to other police departments via RISSNET, enabling investigators to find links between the movements and look into their finances, telephone calls and membership lists." According to Mid-Atlantic Network documents, it was "initiated by the US Congress in 1974 to aid law enforcement agencies in targeting, identifying, and removing multi-jurisdictional criminal elements." The Network offers a "secure database containing information concerning known or suspected criminals, businesses, organizations and their related identifying information", along with "training in the seizure of computers." (5)
As mentioned earlier, the Intelligence Newsletter report claims that hundreds of Army intelligence operatives were present during the DC anti-World Bank demo. Again, with a premonition of tens of thousands of protesters, it is quite likely that the report is accurate. After all, one can rest assured that the Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan, code-named Garden Plot, is especially fixated on defending the seat of government (corporate) power in America. (6) That DC was flooded with intelligence operatives and assorted government spies is, lamentably, quite likely. The US Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), cited in the French report, is a "a major army command", which "conducts dominant intelligence, security and information operations for military commanders and national decision makers." (7) Based at Fort Belvoir, Flagler Road, Virginia, (the Nolan Building) since 1989, INSCOM recently redesignated a number of units including "the Continental United States Military Intelligence Group that supported the National Security Agency and a number of field stations."
According to military documents, during the course of the 90's, "INSCOM was drawn into contingency operations other than war all over the globe" These "contingency operations" or domestic military operations other than war, are law enforcement "support missions" in civil disturbance suppression. Quite possibly they are run out of the "Emergency Operations Center" at Fort Belvoir. These operations have been enhanced with the recent creation of the "National Ground Intelligence Center." Further, according to INSCOM, "the mission of the Special Security Group that had disseminated Sensitive Compartmented Information since World War II was drastically realigned. The unit was redesignated and resubordinated to the 902nd Military Intelligence Group." Some of this "sensitive" information is contained in so-called top secret SAP programs. In this regard, INSCOM is in the business of "providing counterintelligence support to the Army's growing number of Special Access Programs -- highly sensitive projects which required exceptional security measures." Actually, the gathering of intelligence during the DC protest involves an even higher source, given that "in 1993 the Secretary of Defense ordered service human intelligence assets consolidated under Defense Intelligence Agency control", at which time "INSCOM turned over most of its human intelligence operations"
Regional Information Sharing Systems (RISS) Program, www.iir.com/riss/
State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training (SLATT) Program, www.iir.com/slatt/
Bureau of Justice assistance, The RISS Program, 1998, www.iir.com/Publications/RISSProgram1998.pdf
Middle Atlantic-Great Lakes Organized Crime Law Enforcement Network, www.iir.com/riss/magloclen/index.htm
Frank Morales, "US Military Civil Disturbance Planning The War at Home", CovertAction Quarterly #69, Spring/Summer 2000, www.covertaction.org/
US Army Intelligence and Security Command, www.vulcan.belvoir.army.mil/
---
Daybook
Wasington Times
June 12, 2000
http://www.washtimes.com/national/daybook-2000612212854.htm
HOUSE
World Bank meeting - all day - The World Bank begins the 15th meeting of the Caribbean Group for Cooperation in Economic Development.
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Washington Times
June 12, 2000
Embassy Row
James Morrison News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
http://208.246.212.80/world/embassy-2000612213852.htm
Wednesday
Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar, who meets Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott Thursday for talks on security, nonproliferation and peace issues in South Asia.
Thursday
Financial Secretary Donald Tsang of Hong Kong, who has meetings with the International Monetary Fund and several think tanks.
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China, in the W.T.O., Won't Become Free
To the Editor:
New York Times
June 12, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/l12chi.html
In "Commies and Demmies" (column, June 6), Thomas L. Friedman writes that because "China is now committed to capitalism with W.T.O. characteristics," it will have to move toward "an independent judiciary" and "W.T.O. rules, not Communist Party whims."
But while Chinese membership in the World Trade Organization is a worthwhile experiment, every act of that government leads to the reverse logic. The power-shrinking unacceptability of an independent judiciary and loss of party control probably means that China is not in fact committed to capitalism with W.T.O. characteristics.
Unfortunately, I expect to see Communist Party stonewalling and tokenism on the liberalizing front, while the party exploits whatever painless gains it can extract from W.T.O. membership.
CHARLES FRED Maspeth, Queens, June 6, 2000
To the Editor:
In "Commies and Demmies" (column, June 6), Thomas L. Friedman made this parenthetical remark referring to the China trade bill:
"It would help if the unions got their heads out of the sand. Imagine if all the money and energy they wasted lobbying against China were applied to health or education funding?"
Well, imagine if all the billions that companies pay their executives were used to improve education. Imagine if the millions spent on each Osprey were used to pay for health care for the poor. Imagine if all the money that Microsoft's lawyers spent on its defense were used to help Angolans get clean water. Imagine . . .
DOUGLAS NILLES Madison, Wis., June 6, 2000
-------- japan
Japan Cops Probing Radioactive Mail
By SHIGEYOSHI KIMURA,
Associated Press Writer
June 12 6:21 AM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000612/wl/japan_radioactive_letters_1.html
TOKYO (AP) - Police were investigating reports Monday that envelopes containing small amounts of a radioactive powder were mailed to the prime minister's residence and other government offices, a police official said Monday.
At least one of the envelopes, all dated June 6, contained an anonymous message warning that radioactive materials were being sent from Japan to North Korea, a police official said. One government official reported getting a letter containing a sand-like substance.
The letters contained quantities of radioactive material too small to be harmful, Kyodo News agency reported, citing unidentified police sources. The report said nine government offices received the mysterious mail.
A spokesman at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police confirmed on condition of anonymity that officials were investigating the reports, but refused to elaborate. The office of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori refused to comment.
The Education Ministry received an envelope containing the mysterious substance with a letter warning that ``radioactive substance is being sent to North Korea and police should investigate because it is dangerous,'' said Hajime Kajiwara of the Kojimachi police station near the ministry.
Kazunobu Asada, an Education Ministry spokesman, said the envelope contained ``a very small amount of a sand-like substance.'' Asada said the letter was addressed to the education minister and did not include the sender's name.
Kyodo said the envelopes were mailed around June 6. An initial examination indicated the substance may be ground monazite, a mineral containing thorium, a nuclear fuel material, the report said. The envelopes were postmarked in Tokyo.
Similar envelopes were sent to the Home Affairs Ministry, the national police, defense and public security investigation agencies, as well as the Agency of Natural Resources and Energy, and the National Public Safety Commission, Kyodo said.
Yoshinori Inoue, an official at the Home Affairs Ministry, said the ministry received a letter dated June 6 but did not accept it because the sender's name was not on the envelope.
Also Monday, a package bomb exploded at a lawyers' office in Tokyo, slightly injuring a woman's right hand, police said, refusing the release further details. The office was located near major government offices in Tokyo.
## Magpie comment (by K. Hosokawa, editor, hosokawk@cc.saga-u.ac.jp): Contained in the envelopes were fragments of monazite, not processed thorium. They are radioactive anyway. R eportedly the mineral was accompanied by a letter demanding that the authori ties should investigate into "the uranium smuggling to North Korea." There seems to be little to substantiate the claim.
A bizarre incident indeed.
----
Police Check Radioactive Mail Sent to Japan PM
Yahoo News Monday June 12 5:42 AM ET
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000612/ts/japan_radioactive_dc_3.html
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-japan-r.html
TOKYO (Reuters) - Police have launched an investigation after envelopes containing radioactive material were sent to Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's residence and several government agencies, Japan's government spokesman said Monday.
The envelopes contained a small amount of a sand-like powder, including the radioactive element thorium, and the level of radioactivity was not deemed harmful, the Jiji news agency said.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Metropolitan police were investigating the incident, the top government spokesman, Mikio Aoki, told a regular news conference.
But the material contained in the envelopes -- about three grams in each -- had not been harmful, he said.
``The Metropolitan Police are handling (the investigation) and making all possible efforts,'' Aoki said. ``But at present, it is our judgment that there was no impact on human life.''
An Education Ministry official said an envelope had been received on June 6 containing a letter and a small amount of a sand-like substance.
``We didn't know what was in it, but because it was a mysterious package we sent it to the police and they are looking into this,'' the official told Reuters.
An official at the Science and Technology Agency confirmed receiving a similar package on June 7 and said it had been handed over to local police at Tokyo's Kojimachi station for further investigation.
Aoki said a similar envelope had been delivered to the prime minister's official residence and several other ministries, including the Home Affairs Ministry, on June 8.
Asked why the incident had not been made public before, Aoki said: ``It would have been unfortunate if, by making this public, the perpetrator had been influenced and the incident had spread.''
A total of nine government agencies including the National Police Agency and Defense Ministry received similar envelopes, Kyodo news agency said.
Mori is gearing up for a general election on June 25, with campaigning due to start Tuesday and his popularity sagging after comments reviving memories of Japan's wartime militarism.
Opinion polls have shown Mori's ratings battered down to levels last seen for a premier in 1989, when the LDP suffered a stunning Upper House defeat, after he said Japan was a ``divine nation with the emperor at its core.''
Although the election's outcome is tough to call, Mori's governing coalition still has a good chance of keeping a big enough majority in parliament's Lower House to stay in power, and maybe even let Mori keep his job, analysts said.
A series of opinion polls indicated a win, although by a smaller margin, for Mori's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that has held power almost uninterrupted for 45 years and its two coalition partners.
---
Japan Cops Probing Radioactive Mail
Associated Press
June 12, 2000 Filed at 6:35 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Japan-Radioactive-Letters.html
TOKYO (AP) -- Envelopes containing small amounts of radioactive powder were mailed anonymously last week to the prime minister's residence and other government agencies, officials said Monday.
At least one of the envelopes, dated June 6, contained a message warning that radioactive materials were being sent from Japan to North Korea, a police official said. Another government official reported getting a letter containing a sand-like substance.
Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's residence received one of the envelopes last Thursday, said Chief Cabinet Secretary Mikio Aoki. The envelope contained 3 grams of powder of about 1 micro-sievert of radioactivity -- too little to harm humans, he said.
The Science and Technology agency said the average person is exposed to about 1,000 micro-sieverts of radioactivity a year.
Kyodo News agency reported that an initial examination indicated the substance may be ground monazite, a mineral containing thorium, a nuclear fuel material. The envelopes were postmarked in Tokyo.
Nine government offices received the mysterious mail, and the government has warned ministries and agencies not to accept packages without the name of the sender, said Kazuhiko Koshikawa, a Mori spokesman.
It was not immediately clear if the mailings were meant to injure anyone. The threat brought memories of the Aum Shinri Kyo cult's 1995 nerve gas attack on subways in Tokyo's central government district, which killed 12.
The Education Ministry received an envelope containing the mysterious substance with a letter warning that ``radioactive substance is being sent to North Korea and police should investigate because it is dangerous,'' said Hajime Kajiwara, an official of the Kojimachi police station near the ministry.
Kazunobu Asada, an Education Ministry spokesman, said the envelope contained ``a very small amount of a sand-like substance.''
Similar envelopes were sent to the Home Affairs Ministry, the national police, defense and public security investigation agencies, as well as the Agency of Natural Resources and Energy, and the National Public Safety Commission, Kyodo reported.
Yoshinori Inoue, an official at the Home Affairs Ministry, said the ministry received a letter dated June 6 but did not accept it because the sender's name was not on the envelope.
Also Monday, a package bomb exploded at a lawyers' office in Tokyo, slightly injuring a woman's right hand, police said, refusing the release further details. The office was located near major government offices in Tokyo.
----
Okinawa Ad
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 17:23:18 -0500 From: CHoffman@CI.Cambridge.MA.US (Catherine B. Hoffman) Organization: City of Cambridge, Massachusetts
Dear Friend:
Thank you for joining Daniel Berrigan, Elise Boulding, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Di Gia, Mel King, Arthur Kinoy, Martha Matsuoka, Margo Okazawa-Rey, Rep. Byron Rushing, Roland Simbulan, Rep. Roy Takumi, Cornel West, Rev. Michael Yasutake, Howard Zinn and a thousand others in signing a petition for the removal of U.S. bases from Okinawa. We have taken the signatures to create an ad which will run in Okinawa in July. We hope you might be able to help us with a $10 donation for the ad.
Washington plans to construct a new state of the art base at Nago City in Okinawa. This base is to be the home of the Osprey, a warplane of great speed and long range with helicopter capabilities, much favored by the U.S. Marine Corps a division of which is based in Okinawa. The purpose of this new base, widely unpopular in Nago City and Okinawa, is to heighten the Pentagon's interventionist posture in the Asia-Pacific region and the Mideast. It coincides with Washington's effort to annul the status of Hiroshima and Kobe as nuclear-free port cities.
President Clinton and the late Prime Minister Obuchi arranged to have the July Summit meeting of the Group of Eight (representing the most heavily industrialized nations) in Nago City. This location will have the effect of putting extraordinary, pressure on the people of Nago and Okinawa to accept the new base; it could also serve to impress the representatives of the wealthy industrialized nations with the U.S. capacity to police Asia and the Mideast (areas of capital investment and natural resources important to the United States and other wealthy nations).
We think it essential that the voice of those in the United States who stand for peace be heard at this Summit meeting. This is why we are planning to place a full-page ad with the petition and signatures in a newspaper of Naha City, the capital of Okinawa, in Japanese and English on the day of the Summit.
The cost of this ad will be $10,000 of which $4,000 has already come in even before the campaign for funds has been launched. (We believe this indicates recognition that the ad represents a unique and internationally important opportunity to challenge Pentagon aggrandizement and express solidarity with the peace movement in Okinawa and mainland Japan.) The ad money must be secured by July 1, so please do not delay if you wish to contribute. Checks should be made out to the American Friends Service Committee and earmarked "Okinawa Work." Such contributions are tax deductible.
In addition, here in Boston, we are planning a noontime vigil on Friday, July 21, the first day of the summit and the day the ad will be released. We encourage others to do the same. If you would like materials to help you, please let us know. Also please tell us if you decide to do something. Even if there are small efforts all across the U.S., this would be very impressive.
Thank you for signing the petition....
Sincerely, Joseph Gerson, AFSC; Cathy Hoffman, Cambridge Peace Commission; Madge Kho, Boone Schirmer, Friends of the Filipino People and Yuichi Moroi for the Boston Okinawa Network.
Boston Okinawa Network c/o AFSC, 2161 Massachusetts Ave. Cambridge, MA 02140 617-864-0999, 617-661-6130 JGerson@AFSC.org
-------- korea
Rumors Fly Over N.Korean Summit Delay
Yahoo News
Monday June 12 7:21 AM ET
By Jean Yoon
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000612/ts/korea_summit_dc_8.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - The secretive North Korean regime's postponement of a landmark inter-Korean summit has sent Seoul's hyperactive rumor mill into overdrive about the reasons behind the 24-hour delay.
Television snags, security concerns and rows over the format of the three-day summit -- the first between the leaders of two countries still technically at war -- were among the rumored reasons for the false start to the keenly awaited meeting.
An aide to South Korean President Kim Dae-jung told Reuters that North Korea, which requested the delay Sunday, was having problems with the television-transmitting facilities that will be broadcasting live parts of the meeting, which will now start Tuesday.
``We believe it's a technical problem linked to the poor quality of live broadcast tests from Pyongyang a few days ago,'' said assistant presidential press secretary Yoon Sock-joong.
``It has to be a minor problem to take just one day to fix. If it was something major it would have taken longer,'' he said.
But Yoon did not rule out the possibility that Pyongyang's security concerns could also have prompted the postponement.
``Security matters can also be viewed as a part of technical problems,'' he said.
Secret Itinerary
South Korea's National Assembly was due to hold a candlelight prayer meeting later Monday to wish for the success of the summit and unification of the Korean peninsula, which has been divided for more than half a century.
``All 70 million people of Korea share the single hope that the summit meeting will be a success,'' said Kim Young-jin, a South Korean lawmaker who organized the prayer meeting.
President Kim and his wife will attend a sendoff ceremony at a Seoul airport Tuesday morning and then address the nation.
``At the meeting with the northern side, I will say everything I want to say,'' a presidential statement said, paraphrasing Kim's planned remarks. ``I will make efforts so that the people in the South and North will understand each other better.''
Upon arrival in Pyongyang, about 180 km (110 miles) northeast of Seoul, Kim will tell the North: ``Let us seek ways for all Koreans in the South and North to live peacefully and happily,'' the statement said.
Kim is to have at least two exclusive meetings with Kim Jong-il, the Stalinist state's reclusive, mysterious leader, and one expanded meeting with a full complement of officials.
The two leaders will also get together at a welcoming banquet and possibly an end-summit dinner, Blue House officials said.
Local media quoted a senior government official as saying Pyongyang was upset about publication of Kim's itinerary.
``The South Korean media released too many reports, mostly based on speculation, on the president's schedule, including where he will stay, which places he will visit and who he will meet, and even his transportation methods,'' the Korea Herald quoted one official as telling reporters.
Rumored Disagreements
Some analysts said the problem may be bigger than just security.
``There may be disagreements between the two governments over the number of summit meetings between the leaders or whether they'll have an expanded meeting with ministers from both sides attending,'' said Hong Yong-pyo, a researcher at the Korea Institute of National Unification.
``Or North Korea might have protested to live broadcasting of the visit and wanted to limit it to just few hours,'' he said.
Of intense curiosity in Seoul is whether Kim will visit the mausoleum in Pyongyang where Kim Jong-il's father, former ''Great Leader'' Kim Il-sung, lies embalmed for public viewing. Such a visit would provoke controversy in South Korea, analysts said.
The presidential Blue House has confirmed that the President will present to Kim Jong-il a pair of Jindo dogs, a rare South Korean breed known for fierce loyalty to their owners. He may get a North Korean breed of dog in return.
Kim, leading a delegation of 130 officials and 50 South Korean reporters, will return by car Thursday, passing through the U.N. truce village of Panmunjom on the most heavily militarized border in the world.
---
Korean Summit - Hope And Skepticism in Washington
Yahoo News
Sunday June 11 1:14 PM ET
By David Storey
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000611/pl/korea_usa_dc_3.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is upbeat about this week's historic summit between South Korea and its reclusive northern neighbor, but memories of ax murders, aircraft bombings and nuclear brinkmanship by Stalinist North Korea darken the sense of hope.
With the United States preparing commemorations this month for the 50th anniversary of the Korean War, in which 37,000 U.S. troops died, no one is forgetting that there are almost exactly that number of American troops stationed in the south today near a border that U.S. President (Bill) Clinton calls the most dangerous place on the planet.
No one is forgetting that it is essentially the same Stalinist leadership making diplomatic overtures today that sent ax-wielding killers to slay American soldiers guarding a peaceful border post in 1976 and blew up a South Korean airliner over the Indian Ocean in 1987.
And it is the risk of possible missile attack from the comparatively tiny and impoverished country that has prompted plans for a $60 billion U.S. defensive shield which could undermine the panoply of international arms agreements that have helped secure peace between the superpowers for decades.
``I wake up every day nervous that something might happen in North Korea,'' Stanley Roth, Assistant Secretary of State for Asian and Pacific Affairs, said last week.
``It is very nice to create reassuring scenarios,'' he said as he listed signs that the reclusive North Korean leadership was finally starting to crack the shell of its Cold War isolation. ``But given the long history you cannot preclude the possibility of North Korea doing something'' provocative, he told a group of reporters.
Nevertheless, Washington appears buoyant over this week's Pyongyang summit, with a senior official even waxing lyrical about the ``courage'' and ``vision'' of President Kim Jong-il, who appears to have emerged as a possible force for change after taking years to consolidate power since succeeding his late father Kim Il-sung in 1994.
A ``Remarkable'' Time
``This really is a remarkable time,'' said the official, who set out the U.S. stance before the meeting but asked not to be identified. ``North Korea has made a decision to reach out and end its isolation -- to try to engage with the world,'' the official said.
Apart from an increased willingness to talk with the United States about controlling its nuclear development and plans to make long-range missiles in return for economic and other help, Pyongyang has shown a willingness to open up on many different fronts -- in Europe, Asia and with both Russia and China.
``Many people thought North Korea could only do one thing at a time. It is clear they can do many things, `` the senior official said.
Washington does not expect big concrete results from the summit, which has been put back a day to start on Tuesday after a request from North Korea, and sees it more as a symbol of a new process that could bring a permanent peace to the Korean peninsula. The 1950-53 war ended only in an armistice.
With a combination of toughness and fulfilled promises, Washington has worked closely with Japan and South Korea to coax North Korea, whose policy of total self-reliance has failed, to emerge from its 50-year defensive crouch.
U.S. officials ascribe much of the credit for the apparent success of that approach to South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, a former pro-democracy activist who has embraced a policy of engagement while facing down any threats to move to this summit.
Courage And Vision Of Two Kims
``We always knew Kim Dae-jung was a leader of enormous courage and vision,'' the senior official said. It had not been clear whether Kim Jong-il also had such qualities. ``It now appears he does,'' the official said.
However rosy the prospects may seem after the Kims meet, Washington is not expecting to lower its guard on the peninsula and in the region.
North Korea consistently makes as its first demand the withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea, but Roth said even if there were a final peace agreement it would not necessarily lead to a pull-out.
``We are committed to forward deployment in the Pacific region,'' he said. ``We may change the role of the troops (in Korea) but it is not at all inevitable that we would leave,'' Roth said.
And, although Washington plans to shortly ease its trade and travel sanctions on the North, officials say normalization will be a long and convoluted process. The delay in this week's summit is emblematic of the kind of stuttering progress Washington has had in bilateral initiatives with the North and expects after decades of hostility and mistrust.
Kim Dae-jung has shifted the focus of the peace initiative, putting the idea of reunification on a back burner. ``He is not looking for the collapse of North Korea, a hard landing, but for peaceful coexistence,'' Roth said.
The challenge in dealing with North Korea, he said, was to effect change gradually, ``so they are not so desperate.''
Roth was careful not to suggest the North is showing any signs at this stage of reforming either its moribund economy, which has left hundreds of thousands hungry, or its monolithic communist system.
``But certainly its diplomacy is changing and we suspect the possibility of greater change is coming,'' Roth said.
---
Korean Summit Delayed by One Day
North Korea Asks Day's Delay in Summit to Prepare
Yahoo News
Last Updated Jun 12 12:58 PM EDT
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000611/ts/korea_summit_dc.html
http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/fc/World/Korea/
(Reuters) - North Korea has asked for a one-day delay in the summit between leaders of the two Koreas to better prepare for the three days of meetings, South Korea's presidential Blue House said Sunday. President Kim Dae-jung will now fly to Pyongyang Tuesday to meet his enigmatic counterpart Kim Jong-il for the first summit between leaders of the rival Koreas.
---
Promise of summit inspires mass youth-led celebrations
Washington Times
June 12, 2000
By Edward Neilan THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-200061223551.htm
SEOUL - The streets of Seoul took on a carnival atmosphere over the weekend as enthusiastic South Koreans brushed off the news that President Kim Dae-jung's historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had been postponed until tomorrow.
Music, placards, caricature masks of the summit participants, balloons and confetti were all in evidence in the downtown shopping and entertainment district of Myongdong over the weekend.
South Korean officials said they were not too worried by a notice from the secretive North Korean government on Saturday night asking that the three-day meeting between the two Kims be delayed for "minor technical reasons."
"The chief executive believes that waiting for one extra day is not a major issue since the two sides have waited over half a century," said Park June-young, chief spokesman for the South Korean president.
The postponement delayed the departure of Mr. Kim, who was to travel aboard a special flight to Pyongyang accompanied by his wife, Lee Hee Ho, a 130-member official delegation and 50 South Korean reporters.
Most of the celebrants in the streets were young men and women, not unlike the students who in past years have staged running battles on the same sidewalks against police with tear gas.
"These kids would do anything for a party," said Shim Jun-kun, a bus driver. "Most of them, even many of their parents, weren't even born when the Korean War started in 1950."
Despite the celebrations, government officials have sought in recent days to dampen expectations from the summit, warning citizens not to expect too much.
"What is most significant is that the leaders of both nations have the historic opportunity to talk directly," Kim Dae-jung noted cautiously.
World Research, a private public-opinion polling institute, found in April that 73.2 percent of South Koreans support the summit.
As a result, the long-feared North is enjoying a surge of interest, with its leader portrayed improbably as a likable folk hero. "Kim Jong-il: When are you coming to Seoul?" asks one large banner in the South Korean capital.
The craze is most evident in bookstores, where titles on North Korea that used to gather dust are attracting browsers and buyers.
Last week's best seller at the Korea Book Center was "100 Questions and 100 Answers About Kim Jong-il." The Shinsegae department store says it is suddenly selling $4,000 a day in North Korean products - mainly edible herbs and liquor.
The Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) aired a program yesterday on Kim Il-sung University, one of a series that will run through next Wednesday.
Other programs in the series include a comparison of North and South in a program about the unification process in Germany, a documentary on the life of women in the North and a documentary disclosing virtually unknown instances of diplomatic negotiations between the two Koreas over the past 50 years.
There is less enthusiasm among those families that have worked in vain for years to be reunited with close relatives living on the other side of the border.
The Dong Hwa Institute, a private organization representing such families, found in a poll that more than half its members do not expect progress at the summit. Officials said the families have been betrayed every time the relationship between the two Koreas shows signs of even slight improvement.
A note of caution also was struck by Keizo Nabeshima, former chief editorial writer for Kyodo News and one of several respected Japanese commentators among the large foreign press delegation.
Mr. Nabeshima said he was struck by "the close policy coordination" among Tokyo, Seoul and Washington that made the summit possible and suggested U.S. special envoy William Perry did a good job getting everyone in the mood.
"Keep in mind, though, that the three nations have delicate differences in policy priorities when it comes to North Korea," he said. "Pyongyang is likely to exploit these differences to drive a wedge in the three-nation coordination arrangement."
---
A note from the editor on the Korean summit
Washington Times
June 12, 2000
By David Jones THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000612231531.htm
The Korean summit
Asian affairs always have been of special interest to this newspaper, which maintains one of our only two overseas bureaus in Tokyo, and we intend to provide definitive coverage of the historic summit between the two Korean presidents beginning tomorrow in Pyongyang.
That will be a tall order, given the closed and highly secretive nature of the regime in Pyongyang - a government that often leaves even its few friends in the international community confused about its intentions.
That bewilderment extends even to China, North Korea's nearest thing to an ally since the collapse of the Soviet Union, or so I was told during a visit to Beijing in February.
During a briefing with a senior Chinese official, I asked whether visiting North Korean officials were not impressed with the explosion of economic growth in China and anxious to emulate the free-market reforms that have produced Beijing's towering skyscrapers and modern factories.
The official grimaced and gave me a frustrated shake of his head.
"You know, we bring them here to Beijing, and we take them to Shanghai," now the most modern and developed city in China, he said. "We show them the buildings and the factories. And all they do is accuse us of having betrayed the revolution."
With that conversation in mind, I was particularly interested when the news broke just over a week ago that North Korean President Kim Jong-il had made a secret visit to Beijing, presumably to consult with Chinese leaders ahead of the summit.
It was Mr. Kim's first visit to China in 17 years, so far as anyone knows. Could it be, I wondered, that the "Dear Leader" would be affected by the sight of China's economic transformation in ways that his subordinates had not?
There have been plenty of signs that North Korea is toying with the idea of opening up to foreign investment, if not to political influences, and we have done our best to report them in our pages.
Ben Barber noted in the paper on Wednesday that North Korea has opened diplomatic relations this year with Italy and Australia and is negotiating with at least five other countries, including Britain and Germany.
And South Korea's commerce minister told us in a surprisingly frank interview a month ago that his country expects the summit to open the door to a "rush" of foreign direct investment in the North.
Our correspondent
Readers will find a very different interpretation of Mr. Kim's trip to China in our scene-setting article yesterday by Ed Neilan, our Tokyo correspondent, who is in Seoul for the summit and hopes to get to the North Korean capital.
Mr. Neilan, a longtime Asia hand with close connections in the region, writes that for many in South Korea, Mr. Kim's visit to computer installations and talks with Chinese officials were "ominous signs."
He supports his argument with comments from Lee Hwang-jin, a North Korean-born banker now living in Seoul, and from Chin Chul-soo, a one-time Seoul bureau chief for the Associated Press.
It is sometimes the fate of a foreign editor to be contradicted by his reporters. While I will resolutely not allow anything into the paper I believe to be factually wrong, it is another matter with analysis and interpretation, especially when it is supported from quotes from credible sources.
Mr. Neilan, after all, knows the region better than I do. He has lived continuously in Asia since he moved to Tokyo in 1986 at the end of a four-year stint as foreign editor of The Washington Times.
Mr. Neilan left the paper in 1992 but remained in Japan. Over the next several years, he enjoyed a distinguished career as a self-syndicated columnist, as a fellow with the Hoover Institution and as a visiting scholar or professor at various Asian universities. He came back to The Times as our Asia correspondent last year.
I expect that readers will become familiar with Mr. Neilan's byline in the coming days as he brings his special experience and insights to his coverage of the Pyongyang summit.
David W. Jones is foreign editor of The Washington Times. His e-mail is jones@twtmail.com.
mailto:jones@twtmail.com
---
Villain or 'capable leader'?
South Korea softens view of North leader as summit nears
Baltimore Sun
Jun 12 2000
By Frank Langfitt Sun Foreign Staff
http://www.sunspot.net/content/cover/story?section=cover&pagename=story&storyid=1150340227833
SEOUL, South Korea - Until recently, North Korea's Kim Jong Il was widely regarded as one of the world's nastiest and most eccentric leaders. Cutting a distinctive figure in a black pompadour, platform shoes and a gray Mao-style suit, the pudgy, 58-year-old dictator has been famous for his taste in nubile actresses, luxury cars and movies.
He presides over a hermit government that, having failed to feed its citizens, routinely imprisons and even executes those who try to flee abroad so that they can eat. So why are so many people saying such nice things about Kim Jong Il these days?
As the summit between the leaders of North and South Korea opens tomorrow, a day later than scheduled, Kim is undergoing a makeover. South Korea, which once portrayed him as a ruthless sadist, praises Kim as a competent leader. Chung Ju Yung, founder of South Korea's Hyundai Group, has described him as "courteous and well-mannered."
Last week, South Korean elementary school children included Kim Jong Il's bespectacled face in an outdoor mural alongside that of their president. All of that for a man who is alleged to have ordered the bombing of a South Korean airliner in 1987 that left 115 dead.
"Everything that we have heard or seen about Kim Jong Il of recent is positive," said a U.S. diplomat in Seoul. "He strikes those who meet him ... as reasonable, intelligent and capable. That's a fairly uniform impression that people seem to have."
This week's summit is the first between the leaders of the two Koreas since the peninsula was divided after World War II. The meeting could provide the greatest chance for peace between the Cold War rivals and shed light on the mysterious man behind one of the world's most reclusive governments.
Before the recent rapprochement, South Korea spared no effort to savage Kim Jong Il. In 1993, the English-language Korea Herald published "The True Story of Kim Jong Il," an entertaining hatchet job that portrayed him as a man without a redeeming feature.
The 145-page paperback, produced by the Institute for South-North Korea Studies, says the dictator was bad from the beginning. A former assistant to Kim's father, North Korea's founding leader Kim Il Sung, describes Kim the younger at age 4 stomping on every insect and earthworm he could find.
As an adult, he created a "pleasure team" of young women who served the sexual needs of him and his father. Kim ordered the kidnapping of South Korean actress Choi Eun Hui in 1978 to improve North Korea's film industry. After her escape in 1986, she described the Stalinist leader's lavish lifestyle.
"At the parties, we usually danced to the band music of foxtrot or disco and occasionally gambled playing blackjack or mah-jongg," Choi wrote. "Kim Jong Il was constantly offering me drinks, disregarding my weakness in drinks. They were drinking Western liquor, cognac." Choi also had some nice things to say about Kim, but they're not in the book. She said she found him bright, confident and self-deprecating at times. Given the secrecy surrounding Kim and his country, separating spin from substance is practically impossible. Recent attempts to cast Kim in a new light might be as much a function of the diplomatic demands of peacemaking as a re-evaluation of biased intelligence reports based largely on information from North Korean defectors.
Moon Chung In, director of the Institute of Korean Unification Studies at Seoul's prestigious Yonsei University, says earlier South Korean governments suppressed positive information about Kim because they wanted to topple his government.
After South Korean President Kim Dae Jung began pushing for reconciliation with Pyongyang, the government took a second look at North Korea's "Dear Leader," as Kim Jong Il is officially known.
"I think there has been some distortion," said Moon, who credits Kim for surviving politically after his father died in 1994. "Everyone predicted that he would collapse when Kim Il Sung died, but on the contrary, he was able to consolidate power."
In the past year, Kim has gone on a diplomatic offensive, establishing relations with Australia and Italy while perpetuating the notion that he is a changed man. In what might have been his first trip outside the country in 17 years, he secretly traveled to Beijing last month to meet with Chinese leaders.
During the three-day trip, he toured the Legend Group, China's mammoth computer company. Chinese television showed a grinning Kim giving President Jiang Zemin a bear hug and a kiss on each cheek. In a suggestion that he was maturing, Kim told Chinese officials that he had quit smoking and cut back on his drinking.
After Kim's return home, the New China news service quoted him as praising Beijing's market economic reforms, raising the possibility that he might someday adopt similar measures to rescue his impoverished, famine-stricken, Communist state.
It's hard to know whether Kim was trying to send a genuine message. China's government-controlled news media routinely quote visiting dignitaries saying flattering things about the country's economy. State media in Pyongyang rebroadcast the comments in North Korea.
Given past propaganda wars, South Koreans view the attempt to rehabilitate Kim with great skepticism. Moon acknowledges that embracing him presents Seoul with a difficult dilemma. But peacemaking requires reconciliation.
"If [the late Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin and the Israeli people just consider [Yasser] Arafat as a permanent enemy, there is no chance for peace," Moon said.
Some in South Korea think a few carefully chosen pleasantries might be a small price to pay to begin to put 55 years of animosity behind them.
Park Hang Joo, a 29-year-old environmental activist from Seoul, believes Kim is evil. "First and foremost, he's obsessed with power and he totally disregards the needs of the North Korean people," Park says.
But he adds: "If Kim Jong Il can provide us an opportunity to have a talk and live in peace, I think you can treat him as a legitimate partner. What is important is the future, not the past."
---
North Korea economy on knees ahead of summit: analysts
Agents France Presse
Monday, June 12 8:54 PM SGT
http://sg.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/afp/article.html?s=singapore/headlines/000612/world/afp/North_Korea_economy_on_knees_ahead_of_summit__analysts.html
WASHINGTON, June 12 (AFP) -North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il was reportedly left agape by the power of technological wonders on show at a Chinese computer factory during his surprise visit to Beijing last month.
But should the Stalinist state's reclusive leader use this week's Korean summit to follow Communist China on the path of market reform, he will be handicapped by an economy choked by years of isolation, state control and drought-induced famine.
If North Korea liberalises and is to survive, it will need to be propped up for years by massive foreign aid and imported expertise, analysts here said.
The historic summit between Kim and South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung has come about partly because the Pyongyang regime believes only reform of its crude economy can guarantee its survival, some observers believe.
"There is a perception that North Korea is doing this out of economic desperation," said James Lilley, a former US ambassador to South Korea and China.
Originally scheduled to start Monday, the two-day meeting is now expected to begin Tuesday, after North Korea requested a one-day delay on Saturday night, citing "technical" reasons.
Kim's trip to China last month was seen here as a sign that he would be willing to undertake some change and even welcome Western investment.
But close observers say there is little evidence North Korea is keen to match its recent diplomatic emergence with economic reform.
It is also questionable whether a government reportedly paranoid about political opposition would be ready to relax control, which economic liberalisation would entail.
Whether proceeds of reform would be directed to alleviating the plight of the impoverished population or be poured into one of the world's largest armed forces is also unclear.
Many analysts say North Korea's economy is far more disadvantaged than were other centrally planned systems of China, Vietnam and the former Soviet Union when they set out on moderately successful but painful transitions.
North Korea's economy is highly politicised, stifled by years of totalitarian control. In addition to its woefully unskilled workforce, the infrastructure is non-existent in places and no independent legal framework exists to govern business transactions.
Still, countries including the United States, which has a huge strategic interest in the Korean summit, hope the potential payoffs from liberalisation will convince North Korea to step back from confrontation.
"If the international community can increase the stakes that North Korea has in engaging with the world, it decreases the likelihood that they will do things that will cut off that engagement," said a senior State Department official.
The United States has 37,000 troops supporting South Korea against its old Cold War foe, and is concerned North Korea's missile program could one day threaten its own security.
"The potential payoffs for reform are gigantic," said Marcus Noland of the Institute for International Economics.
But skeptics point out that investors from South Korea who have tried to set up projects in North Korea have already been frustrated.
"You have South Korean businessmen saying, I would invest but not with the regulations, I would invest but not with the labour market as it is right now," said Gordon Flake, of Washington's Mansfield Centre for Public Affairs.
Potential partners could also be put off by the lack of a dispute resolution system and the absence of guarantees their funds and projects are safe in a country where it is against the law to make a profit.
"The legal system is very political, there is no such thing as the rule of law as we know it in the West," said Jeong-Ho Roh, a law lecturer at Columbia University.
"Why on earth would you invest in North Korea when you have China or other countries?" he asked.
Given time and good training, many analysts say, North Korea's desperately unskilled workforce could compete -- but only if the government takes foreign advice to target salable products it can make more economically than anyone else.
Despite interest already expressed in North Korea by US firms like Coca-Cola and Pepsi Co Ltd, the north's best hope lies to the south, Noland said.
Just as China tapped the expertise of expats in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the former East Germany used West German knowledge, North Korea must learn from its "sugar daddy" South Korea, he added.
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US closely watching summit for clues on North Korea's Kim
Agents Presse France
Monday, June 12 8:53 PM SGT
http://sg.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/afp/article.html?s=singapore/headlines/000612/world/afp/US_closely_watching_summit_for_clues_on_North_Korea_s_Kim.html
WASHINGTON, June 12 (AFP) -The United States will watch this week's Korean summit with close interest, keen to flesh out its knowledge of an enigmatic regime in Pyongyang responsible for frequent foreign policy headaches.
As successive political crises have erupted over North Korea, US diplomats have been dealing largely in the dark -- handicapped by a sketchy knowledge of Kim Jong-Il, the reclusive figure who in 1994 succeeded his father, the "Great Leader" Kim Il-Sung.
"We and everyone else will be very interested in General Kim at the summit and getting a better understanding of what his thinking is, how he approaches such meetings and events," said a senior State Department official.
After Kim burst out of isolation with a visit to China late last month, US officials were briefed by Chinese diplomats on his meetings with the leadership in Beijing.
But they will receive a much closer analysis of Kim's character and intentions after he meets his South Korean counterpart Kim Dae-Jung in Pyongyang on Tuesday.
The two-day summit was scheduled to begin Monday, but North Korea requested a one-day delay late Saturday, citing "technical" reasons.
Reform in Pyongyang and a less confrontational attitude could eventually "pave the way for normalisation (of relations) with the US and ease tensions in Southeast Asia," said Marcus Noland, a Korea expert at the Institute for International Economics.
US relations with North Korea have been highly tense for the half century since US troops fought against Communism with international forces in the 1950-53 Korean War.
Washington's strategic interests on the Korean peninsula are immense and, following China's emergence in the late 20th century, cut to the heart of its East Asia policy.
It still maintains 37,000 troops in South Korea, with tens of thousands more supporting its ally Japan.
Officials here dread the thought of war with North Korea. A Pentagon study forecast that thousands of US soldiers and many more Koreans would be killed in a conflict across the world's last Cold War border.
The benchmark of US-North Korean relations is a 1994 deal known as the Agreed Framework, under which Pyongyang committed to freeze its nuclear weapons program in return for US-built atomic power stations needed to meet a chronic energy shortage.
But after North Korea sparked alarm with a missile launch across the Sea of Japan in 1998, and amid the belief it was selling rockets to US enemies, the US government launched a policy review under former defense secretary William Perry.
Perry recommended offering trade and political incentives to draw North Korea back from confrontation and urged the government to work closely with Japan and South Korea, which under President Kim Dae-Jung adopted a policy of engagement with North Korea.
The three nations formed a joint commission which has so far met 11 times to discuss a unified approach to North Korea.
"We have all been clear that peace and stability on the peninsula cannot happen without an Inter-Korean dialogue," said the State Department official.
The United States has been talking to North Korea on its missile program and the promised limited easing of US sanctions, which an official said Friday would take place before the end of the month.
New talks on missile proliferation are expected to get underway soon.
North Korea is still accused by the United States of sponsoring terrorism and of being involved in drugs trafficking.
North Korean policy is also having an impact on the US domestic scene, as the threat from Pyongyang is often cited as a major justification for a proposed missile defence system, a topic hotly debated in the volatile politics of an election year.
The United States and North Korea have been engaged in other talks, which ended successfully Friday in Kuala Lumpur, on remains of US servicemen still missing from the Korean War.
Investigators will launch five operations lasting 25 days each in North Korea beginning on June 25.
Attention is also turning to what the United States, which has already donated large sums of humanitarian aid to Pyongyang, might do to assist the country further if it embraced reform.
Officials here are as yet unwilling to speculate on what measures might be put forward, stressing that policy cannot be formed until Kim's objectives become clear.
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Clinton's instructive success in Korea
Boston Globe
6/12/2000
By Jonathan Power
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/164/oped/Clinton_s_instructive_success_in_Korea+.shtml
LONDON, Today in South Korea, Kim Dae Jung, a former political prisoner and human rights activist who is now the democratically elected president, will meet his opposite number, Kim Jong Il, president of North Korea, who inherited his position from his notorious father, Kim Il Sung, the Communist warlord who initiated the Korean War 50 years ago.
For this, much of the credit must go to President Clinton.
There have been any number of reasons why over the last six years the United States could have chosen to get tough with a country that gave many indications that it had serious ambitions not just to build a nuclear bomb but to develop a long-distance missile to deliver it. Even today, North Korea is the archdemon for those who advocate the necessity of building an antimissile shield to protect the United States from nuclear attack by a rogue nation.
Yet contrary to many of its basic instincts, the Clinton administration has used the soft glove rather than the mailed fist. Indeed, North Korea is now the main recipient of US aid in Asia. The United States supplies for free much of the country's fuel oil needs and a good part of its food requirements. At the same time, South Korea and Japan are building in North Korea, free of charge, a state-of-the-art light-water nuclear reactor capable of supplying most of the North's electricity needs for years to come.
In retrospect it seems amazing that the debate in Washington six years ago was dominated by those discussing the best way of bombing North Korea. US intelligence had discovered that North Korea was about to remove spent nuclear rods in a cooling pond to recover enough plutonium to make four to six nuclear bombs to add to its supposed (but never proved) stockpile of two or three.
Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and former CIA chief Robert Gates went loudly public with calls for battle. Fortunately, they ended up shooting themselves in each other's feet. Gates and Scowcroft argued that the United States should immediately bomb the North Korean reprocessing plant before the cooling rods could be transferred to it. This, they said, would minimize the risk of radioactive fallout.
Kissinger advocated immediate tough sanctions and unspecified military action. But his timetable miraculously allowed time - a short three months while the rods cooled - for both a conference of the nuclear haves and for sanctions to work. Military action should occur, he said, only if North Korea refueled its reactor or started to reprocess its plutonium from the cooling rods.
However, this seemed to ignore Scowcroft's and Gates's warnings about the dangers of an aerial bombardment of reprocessing facilities. Nor did any of them appear to worry that North Korea might use the two or three nuclear bombs it supposedly had to repulse an American attack.
In fact, the three of them talked themselves into the ground and made it easier for former president Jimmy Carter to journey to the North Korean capital in Pyongyang on a peace mission and pave the way for a deal in which Kim Il Sung would accept a nuclear freeze. In return, the United States would be committed to working with South Korea and Japan to build two conventional power-producing nuclear reactors.
In the intervening six years there have been all manner of ups and down in the US-North Korean relationship. Congress nearly sabotaged the agreement by reneging on White House commitments to begin liberalizing its trade and investment and ending sanctions. In 1998, when North Korea test-fired a long-range rocket over Japan, it seemed that Pyongyang was determined to play out its role as the world's number one agent provocateur. Later in 1998, US intelligence spotted a massive hole being dug suitable to explode triggers for a nuclear weapon. In the end, for a payment, the United States was allowed to inspect the hole and found that a hole was all it was.
Not without a great deal of political contortion, the United States over the years has managed to convince Pyongyang of its good faith. North Korea, for its part, has reciprocated by drawing in its horns, albeit often at the last moment. Most important, it has honored the freeze.
Meanwhile, Kim Dae Jung in the South has pursued his so-called sunshine policy with the North. Despite immense opposition from the old guard, he has succeeded in sustaining it to a point where the Cold War temperature between North and South has risen enough for this summit to take place.
Everyone knows that holding the summit raises the stakes. There can be no going back. But can the North and the South agree on which way forward is? Also, how much further is the United States prepared to go? Having made so much progress in dampening the North's nuclear ambitions, is it prepared to throw this gentle course to the wind and move into a tougher, more antagonistic, stance, building its antimissile shield and in the process undermining the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and alienating both Russia and China, perhaps triggering a new round of the nuclear arms race between the big powers?
The North Korean peace is one of Clinton's three great positive foreign policy achievements. (The others are his North American Free Trade Area and his recent victory to persuade Congress to give China normal trading status.) If only he had applied the same determination to engagement in disarmament with Russia, detente with Iraq and Iran, and support of the United Nations. Perhaps the problem is that Clinton has not quite digested just how much progress his policy of the carrot more than the stick has made in North Korea. Maybe the summit will provide a measure of his achievement and, although too late to have any influence on his presidency, do something to make sure his successor doesn't imitate his mistakes.
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Korean-Americans hope talks help reunite families
Millions were separated during their civil war
USA Today
06/12/00 Page 13A
By Valerie Alvord Special to USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20000612/2351401s.htm
LOS ANGELES -- Dae In Kang found a brother. Harry Bang still looks for a sister.
They are two Korean-Americans whose families were torn apart when Korea was split after World War II and then fell into civil war.
Fifty-five years after the division, the culture -- and even the language -- are changing, these men say. People like them, who remember their native country the way it was and who have emotional ties to close relatives, are dying off.
If there isn't some kind of reunification soon, there won't be anyone who remembers or cares, Korean-Americans fear.
They, and others in the USA's Korean communities, don't believe significant progress toward reunification of North and South Korea, or even an easing of the tensions between the two countries, will come out of this week's historic meeting between the heads of state of the two countries.
Even so, they hope that amid talk of nuclear disarmament and economic aid, some small agreement might be forged to help unify families before it's too late.
Dae In Kang, 49, a human-rights activist in Los Angeles, had believed his older sibling died in 1951 when their family was separated during the Korean War.
''Friends told us they had seen his dead body,'' Kang says of his brother, Dae Young Kang, now 66. ''But my mother never believed it.'' By the time the Kangs could arrange a family reunion in 1991, their mother had died. The brother was able to attend her funeral in Los Angeles.
In that, the Kangs consider themselves unusually fortunate. It's estimated that as many as 10 million Koreans were separated from family members in the early 1950s by the country's civil war.
Harry Bang, a retired college professor in Oakland, is one of those 10 million.
''I don't know if I would recognize her,'' says Bang, 71, of the sister he desperately hopes is still living. ''I have a picture of her in my mind. But all our photographs were lost during the war.''
If alive, she would be in her 70s. Her children would be in their 50s.
Years ago, an aunt who escaped North Korea told Bang that his sister had almost gotten out, too. In 1953, she made it all the way to the 38th parallel, the line that separates the two countries, Bang says.
''But then one of her two sons became ill with a fever, and she had to go back.'' He worries that the family might not have survived a famine that swept across North Korea recently. Droughts, floods and economic disaster have also devastated the country.
No contact is permitted between North and South Koreans without approval of both governments, which is rarely forthcoming.
Some Korean-Americans have found relatives through church missions or scholarly exchanges, but most of those who were separated don't even know whether their loved ones are still alive.
As for the summit, hope is modest within the Korean-American community.
An agreement on unifying families is possible, says Gi-Wook Shin, a professor of Korean politics at UCLA. But North Korea would want something in return, he says.
''Something fairly big, like economic aid. They'll use family reunification as leverage.''
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N. Korean nuclear menace exaggerated?
USA Today
06/12/00- Updated 10:58 PM ET
By Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwsmon09.htm
WASHINGTON - Children in North Korea line the roads and bow when jeeps that carry U.S. charity workers pass.
It's widely known in the North that the United States has been feeding a third of the country's 22 million people for the past three years. The knowledge is so widespread that it dilutes Korean government propaganda that describes Washington as a hostile force, says Kenneth Quinones, a former State Department expert on Korea. He works with Mercy Corps International, a relief and development group.
But in Washington this presidential election year, North Korea remains a bogeyman. Democrats and Republicans say North Korea is unpredictable and irrational. They cite its growing arsenal of ballistic missiles as justification for developing U.S. missile defenses. That could upset long-established policy that the best defense against nuclear weapons is to have no defense.
Fifty years after the start of the Korean War, how big a threat is North Korea and to whom?
Quinones says the menace is being exaggerated and manipulated by U.S. politicians and North Koreans, who have frightened the world into propping up a failed regime.
"In reality over the past decade, North Korea's ability to threaten the United States has diminished, but the U.S. perception of the threat has grown," says Quinones, who has visited North Korea 14 times in the past decade, most recently in March. "North Korea is a threat but primarily to U.S. interests in Northeast Asia."
No one disputes that should another war break out between the Koreas, the North could inflict devastating punishment on the southern half of the peninsula. In a briefing last year, a senior U.S. military official said the North was improving long-range artillery and missiles capable of striking Seoul and the nearly 36,000 U.S. troops that patrol the Cold War's last frontier.
While much of the 1 million-member North Korean army is substandard, the North has 80,000-100,000 special operations troops. They are well-fed in comparison with the rest of the population, which suffered a catastrophic famine three years ago because of floods and government neglect.
"They would use those forces to neutralize airfields and ports in South Korea, so the United States would have trouble bringing in reinforcements," says Joseph Bermudez, a military intelligence expert who writes for the Jane's defense publications.
Han Sung Joo, a former South Korean foreign minister and now director of the international relations institute at Korea University in Seoul, says, "Their equipment is dilapidated for sure. But they have chemical weapons. They have biological weapons. They can wreak tremendous havoc even if they cannot win a war. They can completely paralyze and largely destroy South Korean society."
With the North relying on food from the United States and China and seeking foreign investment to rebuild its crippled economy, experts say North Korea is unlikely to start hostilities, unless it believes its political survival is at stake.
Still, the North has three key reasons for focusing on its military:
Deterrence. Without its ability to inflict hundreds of thousands of casualties, North Korea believes that South Korea and the United States would have staged a pre-emptive strike long ago.
Economics. With North Korea's antiquated civilian factories largely shut, arms production has become the North's main source of hard currency. North Korea is the world's leading seller of ballistic missiles. Its customers include Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Iran, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.
Diplomatic leverage. In 1994, the North was able to trade its nuclear program at Yongbyon, which U.S. intelligence believed had produced enough plutonium for one or two weapons, for an agreement with the Clinton administration that included fuel oil and the promise of two modern civilian nuclear reactors. The cost of fuel oil and food aid has totaled $645 million over the past five years; that makes North Korea the largest U.S. aid recipient in Asia.
"The North Koreans have played us like a violin, and we have overreacted massively starting in 1994," says Donald Gregg, a former U.S. ambassador and CIA station chief in South Korea who heads the Korea Society in New York. "At the time, they had maybe two nukes that were deliverable by pushing them off the back of a truck."
William Perry, a former Defense secretary whom the White House named to review U.S. policy toward North Korea and deflect Republican complaints, told Congress last year that the 1994 accord has prevented the North from producing enough plutonium for 10 bombs a year.
But reports, possibly spread by North Korea , suggest the North has clandestine nuclear programs.
The White House, in a diplomatic gesture, waived in February a congressional requirement that it certify that North Korea "is not seeking to develop or acquire the capability to enrich uranium or any additional capability to reprocess spent fuel."
Equally worrisome, the nuclear accord did not freeze the North's missile program, which has accelerated. Two years ago, the North launched a three-stage ballistic missile over Japan.
Even though the third stage failed, outsiders were stunned. An advisory group set up by the House of Representatives' Republican leadership concluded last year that "it became clear for the first time that North Korea could deliver a weapon of mass destruction not just to Seoul but also to Seattle."
While North Korea is not a threat compared with the former Soviet Union, "it has the ability to do things that can wig out the neighborhood," says Henry Sokolski, a former Pentagon official who directs the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. "North Korea can be a catalyst for nasty change, such as significant militarization by Japan and an arms race with China."
Since the launch in 1998, the North has forgone further tests. But it has continued to develop expertise by observing launches in countries, such as Iran and Pakistan, to which it has sold missiles.
Will the outside world be able to curb this potential? Or will North Korea change in a way that makes its arsenal less of a concern?
"The jury's still out on both these questions, but with the Korean summit and other events, we're hopeful," says Wendy Sherman, the senior State Department official on policy toward North Korea.
In recent months, North Korea has established diplomatic relations with Australia and Italy and patched up ties with Russia.
"They want to show they aren't a rogue state," says Chung-in Moon, a political scientist from Yonsei University, who will accompany Kim Dae Jung to Pyongyang. "They want to show they can be part of the world community."
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il himself paid an unannounced visit to Beijing earlier this month. It reportedly was his first trip outside North Korea since 1984. Like Chinese leaders in the 1980s, Kim is clearly hoping to modernize the Korean economy without opening a closed society to foreign cultural and political influence. But like China, North Korea will be hard pressed to succeed.
"I don't think North Koreans will all be on the Internet in five years but a pretty good chunk will be watching CNN," says Quinones, who has been asked by North Koreans to bring Disney movies on his next visit. "The pace of change should quicken and broaden."
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History at their shoulder, two Kims to meet today
Sydney Morning Herald
06/12/00
By MICHAEL MILLETT, Herald Correspondent in Seoul
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0006/13/world/world01.html
At a still-undisclosed time today, Kim Dae-jung will make a 180-kilometre journey into both the past and the future.
He will step down from his chartered plane and touch North Korean soil - the first South Korean president to do since the Korean peninsula was carved in two after World War II.
It could prove to be the most decisive event in ending what is, to the rest of the world, an inexplicable remnant of Cold War politics.
But international fascination with the first inter-Korean summit pales in comparison with the emotions being stirred on the peninsula itself.
A South Korean newspaper yesterday described the event as "as dramatic and awe-inspiring event as Neil Armstrong's setting foot on the moon".
The personal dynamics involved in the first-ever meeting promises to be as captivating as the agenda itself.
Apart from their surnames and Korean heritage, the two Kims have almost nothing in common.
Kim Dae-jung is quiet, bookish and soft-spoken, but with a keen interest in his international image.
While assessments of the reclusive Kim Jong-il come third-hand, he is still living down his reputation as a Mao-suited playboy, with a liking for women, Hennessy cognac, tobacco and Hollywood movies. James Bond is said to be a favourite.
For the southern Kim, an outwardly fragile 76 but with an inner steel, it has been a career that would have been rejected as improbable for a Hollywood movie script. He escaped from a North Korean prison during the 1950-53 war and spent the next three decades being harassed by South Korean military regimes.
He narrowly survived two assassination attempts, was sentenced to death in a 1980 court martial (commuted to life imprisonment), won a release on medical grounds and was exiled to the US. He endured two years of house arrest before full political rights were restored.
It took four attempts before he was elected president in December 1997 - the first real postwar transfer of power.
Kim Jong-il, the North's "Dear Leader", Supreme Commander of its People's Army and chairman of the National Defence Commission, was born in straitened circumstances but enjoyed a much smoother run to the top.
Kim, 58, was groomed by his father, the towering Kim Il-sung, to maintain his unique blend of self-sufficient communism and cargo cultism that has held North Korea in an iron grip for 55 years.
Despite mutterings of internal dissent - mainly over chronic economic problems that cost the lives of millions through starvation - there is little evidence of his authority being under threat.
In fact it was the realisation by the southern Kim and other South Korean policymakers that the North was not going to implode that forced them to revise their tactics, making overtures across the demilitarised zone.
Summit euphoria in Seoul has turned normal Korean preconceptions on their head.
Even before he took over in Pyongyang in 1994, following the death of his father, Kim Jong-il was reviled as the epitome of northern evil - a babyfaced assassin believed responsible for masterminding such crimes as the pre-Seoul Olympics bombing of a civilian aircraft.
Kim's brinkmanship over the past few years - most notably his missile testing - has done little to alter the image.
But now Seoul street stalls flog coffee mugs with cuddly Kim caricatures and competitions are held to find lookalikes.
Experts say the new sentiment results from painstaking efforts by Kim Dae-jung to reshape South Korean views of the northern Kim.
"He has never accepted this image of Kim as a maniac, suffering from some genetic defect that made his behaviour completely unpredictable," one Korea watcher said.
"In fact, recent evidence suggests that he is quite methodical in his thinking."
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The meaning in the meeting of the two Koreas. Out of Isolation
Washington Post
Monday, June 12, 2000; Page A21
By Marcus Noland
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-06/12/014l-061200-idx.html
North Korea's self-imposed isolation from the outside world has been so great as to earn it the sobriquet the "Hermit Kingdom," after an earlier Korean dynasty. Tomorrow the leaders of North and South Korea are scheduled to hold their first-ever summit. Analysts have pondered whether this signals a strategic reorientation by North Korea's increasingly confident leader Kim Jong-il or is a ploy designed to extract even more resources from South Korea. The secret visit to Beijing last week by Kim Jong-il supports the argument that this is the real deal and that the North Koreans are serious about opening to the outside world.
In the decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the break up of the Eastern Bloc, the North Koreans in general and Kim Jong-il in particular have been scathing in their denunciation of reforms undertaken in Eastern Europe, which have been likened to "germs," "mosquitoes" and other vermin. In 1994 the North Koreans described the Chinese as "traitors to the socialist cause" but toned down the rhetoric as their growing desperation required increasing reliance on Chinese beneficence. When North Korean Supreme People's Assembly Chairman Kim Yong-nam visited Beijing last year, the two countries agreed to pursue socialism according to their respective national characteristics.
During Kim Jong-il's visit last week, the public pronouncements were different. Kim noted the "great achievements" of "opening up the country" by Chinese reformer Deng Xiaoping and announced that North Korea "supports the reform policy pursued by the Chinese side." These comments suggest a new receptiveness to economic reform on the part of the North Koreans and open the possibility of the Chinese adopting their natural role as mentors in this regard. A visit to a Chinese computer factory reportedly left Kim's mouth agape.
Intention does not necessarily translate into achievement, however. North Korea is (or was) a more industrialized economy than China when China inaugurated its reforms, and carrying out successful economic reform in North Korea could be considerably more difficult than in China or Vietnam, Asia's other major transitional economy. Moreover, the divided nature of the Korean peninsula means that the North Koreans face a more difficult ideological task than did the Chinese and Vietnamese reformers. As North Korea opens and becomes more like the South, the fundamental ideological underpinnings of the society increasingly could be called into question. The dynastic aspect of the North Korean regime would make this political balancing act harder still.
Yet suppose the North Koreans were to pull off this trick. What would it mean for U.S. interests? The question cuts to the basic intentions of the North Korean regime. If Kim has decided that his regime can be strengthened by greater engagement with the outside world and adherence to international norms, this could pave the way toward normalization of relations with the United States and greatly reduce tensions in Northeast Asia. A growing North Korean economy and a North Korea with a greater stake in external relations presumably could be weaned from missile sales, drug trafficking, counterfeiting and other illicit activities that today earn it considerable sums. Indeed, a "domesticated" North Korea might be willing to reopen its Agreed Framework with the United States and scrap the deal's promised nuclear reactors in favor of far more useful forms of economic assistance.
If, however, the regime funnels economic gains into military modernization, then the United States could be confronted with a stronger adversary on the Korean peninsula, one that through its increased engagement with other powers could constrain U.S. diplomacy. This is not mere paranoid speculation: In the past year, while relying on international assistance to deal with its famine, the North Koreans went on an arms-buying spree and increased spending significantly on costly military training exercises.
Clearly, North Korea's ultimate intentions are ambiguous. But Kim Jong-il's visit to China suggests that the upcoming summit represents more than tactical maneuvering on his part and carries significant implications for the United States whatever his motives.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics.
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Another Divide for Two Koreas: Atmosphere Over Summit Delay
New York Times
June 12, 2000
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/00/06/12/late/12cnd-korea-summit.html
SEOUL, South Korea, June 12 -- For more than 50 years, North and South Koreans have been kept apart by the world's most heavily fortified border, by fiercely hostile ideologies and even by postal and telephone systems that pointedly never connect.
In the final hours before the first summit meeting between their heads of state, South Korea's Kim Dae Jung and North Korea's Kim Jong Il, the two countries were separated by yet another factor today: atmospherics.
In the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, where the summit meeting is to take place, there was no perceptible reaction to the surprise request by the government Sunday that the meeting be delayed a day, according to South Korean officials who monitor the north's state-controlled media. In fact, they said, there has been no public announcement about the delay at all.
In contrast, in the bustling and optimistic city of Seoul, which has been living in a state of heightened anticipation over the three-day summit meeting for at least a week, people paused for a round of obligatory hand-wringing when news of the unexplained delay by the North Korean hosts -- who cited "minor technical reasons" but did not elaborate -- was suddenly announced on Sunday.
Then it was back to the festivities over an event that was already being celebrated as the most significant news here in years.
Two priorities for the long-reclusive leadership of North Korea are givens, and both shine through brightly in the run-up to the summit: strict control over the population, and absolute security for the leadership.
South Korean officials say that the most plausible explanation for the delay in the summit meeting was the increasingly detailed leaks in the scoop-driven South Korean media over the itinerary of Kim Dae Jung during his brief stay in the North.
Details on where the two leaders would meet, the routes they would travel and where the visiting South Korean president would stay are believed by many here to have given the government of Kim Jong Il security jitters.
After all, when the North Korean leader traveled to China last month for his first overseas trip since succeeding his father in 1994, he secretly boarded a special train for Beijing, and kept his itinerary tightly veiled throughout.
The North Korean government has reportedly worked feverishly in recent weeks to beautify Pyongyang, a run-down Stalinist-era show city, dispatching workers to sweep streets, paint public buildings and houses, and plant trees and flowers along expected travel routes.
For security reasons, Pyongyang has remained all but sealed. Business people and tourist groups were banned weeks ago, and even accredited diplomats caught outside of the country during the preparations have been made to postpone their return.
The contrast with Seoul could not be more stark. Here, the summit meeting has been the occasion for mass prayer sessions and parties alike, neither of which the tightly controlled and economically devastated North is particularly known for.
Many South Koreans say their most immediate hope is for a reunification of the 1.8 million so-called first generation separated Koreans, or survivors of the war years whose families were split by the conflict.
For many, though, a close second is a reduction of military tensions on the shared peninsula, where both sides maintain huge armies, and where North Korea has tested ballistic missiles and is suspected of developing weapons of mass destruction, from nuclear warheads to chemical weapons.
"People don't talk about war like they did when I was a child," said Park Kil Tae, a 38-year-old department store employee. "But every now and then you stop to think that Seoul could be destroyed in a matter of minutes. I have a family, and that is no way to have to live."
While people wait expectantly, this city has witnessed the kind of runaway commercialization usually reserved for the Olympics or maybe the Super Bowl, with trinkets in the likenesses of the two leaders for sale everywhere.
Leaving no doubt about its feelings about the event, the government has issued commemorative postage stamps.
The official summit press center, set up at a large downtown hotel, rivals the control room of the Kennedy Space Center with wall-to-ceiling television screens that will broadcast the summit meeting live to journalists seated at row after row of tables equipped with computers and fax machines.
Hotel workers, sensing a captive audience, launched a strike this week, holding loud but disciplined rallies just outside.
North Korea, which only rarely allows foreign journalists in anyway, has rejected all requests to cover the summit, save for a delegation of 50 South Korean journalists who were allowed to travel with Kim Dae Jung only after protracted negotiations. Their movements in Pyongyang, like most everything else there, are expected to be carefully controlled.
In comparison to the reticent and secretive northerners, South Korean officials made no bones about their enthusiasm for the summit meeting, and described the officially encouraged festivities as necessary to encourage the people to think differently about the North and the two countries' shared future.
Some foreign diplomats have suggested that under Kim Dae Jung, a former political prisoner and longtime campaigner for democracy who became president in 1998, South Korea has allowed itself to become slightly intoxicated with the idea of détente and eventual reunification with the North.
This enthusiasm, the diplomats warned, could ultimately bring the relatively rich South to ruinously underwrite the North's badly faltering economy, and perhaps to make unwise political concessions, as well.
Government officials here, however, scoff at that notion.
"What is our alternative to engaging with the North?" said Kim Myong Shik, a government spokesman. "To see Seoul destroyed one day by missiles, or our country attacked by submarines? This summit represents a historic chance for the Korean people, and we must shift our mentalities a bit to seize it."
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North Korean Leader Kim Jong Il
Associated Press
June 12, 2000 Filed at 5:02 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Koreas-Kim-Jong-Il.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Little is known about Kim Jong Il, leader of North Korea, the world's most isolated country, which can't feed its own people but produces long-range ballistic missiles.
One thing is known for sure, however. Kim, 58, is exalted at home as a ``greater leader'' and the ``lodestar of the 21st century.''
Kim was communism's first hereditary successor. He took over power from his late father President Kim Il Sung who died in 1994 at age 82 after ruling North Korea, a Stalinist state, for nearly a half century.
His throne owed much to Korea's ancient Confucian monarchies which had inherited power along family lines.
Kim Jong Il is revered in his homeland by a personality cult second in its effusiveness only to that of his late father. The portraits of the two Kims are hung side by side in all homes and buildings.
The junior Kim had been groomed to succeed his father since the 1970s. Since the mid-1980s, he has been head of the 1.1 million-strong People's Army, the world's fifth largest.
When his father died, Kim inherited a government that could not feed its 22 million people without outside help. Some observers estimate that up to 2 million North Koreans have died of malnutrition or related ailments since 1996.
To pull his country out of poverty and diplomatic isolation, Kim is now trying to improve ties with the United States, Japan and other Western countries.
As a bargaining chip, North Korea is developing and test-firing ballistic missiles that can reach Hawaii or Alaska, experts say. In 1994, the country froze its nuclear weapons program under a deal with Washington.
North Korean TV seldom shows Kim or broadcasts his voice. When he does appear on TV, Kim wears a Mao-style jacket and stands with his hands clasped behind his back in his father's trademark stance.
Biographical data on Kim are extremely sketchy. He is short and pudgy at about 5-foot-3. North Korean defectors say Kim wears thick heels and has his hair done in a distinctive puffy bouffant to add another two inches to his stature.
North Korea says he was born Feb. 16, 1942, in a ``secret camp'' at a sacred mountain. Western officials say he was born in the Soviet Union.
South Korean officials have typically described Kim as an arrogant, testy, ambitious, crude and temperamental person with a fondness for drinks and beautiful women.
Today, many South Koreans are beginning to take another look at the man.
``I think he is a man of great insight and he is a pragmatist,'' South Korean President Kim Dae-jung said in a recent television interview.
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End game in Korea?
USA Today
06/12/00- Updated 04:05 PM ET
By Andrew Scobell
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/ncextra1.htm
As the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War approaches, the world anticipates a historic summit this week between the leaders of North and South Korea. The hope is that the meeting between President Kim Dae Jung of the Republic of Korea (ROK) and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il will be a meaningful first step in a significant rapprochement between Seoul and Pyongyang.
As Defense Secretary William Cohen noted earlier this year during a news conference with his South Korean counterpart, "Dialogue between Seoul and Pyongyang is a necessary precondition to lower tensions on the peninsula." If such a dialogue were under way, then we could move gradually closer to a day when U.S. forces might no longer be needed on the Korean Peninsula.
It is still far too premature, however, to talk about any withdrawal of the 38,000 U.S. troops in Korea. The 38th Parallel remains the most dangerous and heavily fortified border in the world. As Adm. Dennis Blair, commander in chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific, said earlier this year, the Korean Peninsula is the world's "single biggest flashpoint." North Korea possesses the world's fifth-largest army, with more than 1 million troops in the regular armed forces and millions more men and women serving in the reserves or drilling in the militia.
Pyongyang also possesses a large amount of military hardware and has a ballistic missile development program that threatens not only the ROK but also other countries in the region. And North Korea's military capabilities do not seem to have eroded despite the country's serious economic difficulties.
American men and women in uniform will remain steadfast side-by-side with their ROK allies as long as they are needed. That is to say, U.S. forces will stay as long as it is in the national interests of the ROK and the national interests of the United States. American troops have been stationed in Korea since the armistice was signed in July 1953 to deter an attack by the North Korean People's Army. As the commander of U.S. forces in Korea, Gen. Thomas Schwartz, testified before the Senate this spring, the "No. 1 mission [of U.S. forces] is deterrence." They have been remarkably successful in this mission.
It is often said that North Korea is an irrational and erratic rogue state. Pyongyang is certainly a rogue regime with a penchant for lashing out erratically, but it is not irrational. The most powerful evidence that Pyongyang is a rational actor is that since 1953 no all-out attack has been launched across the 38th Parallel. That's because North Korea's communist rulers believe that such an attack would fail with disastrous and perhaps even fatal results for the regime.
North Korea is without question the most militarized state on Earth. About 70 percent of its active-duty forces are deployed within 100 miles of the Demilitarized Zone. Why does it need such a massive forward-deployed military? Their ultimate goal is to unify the Korean Peninsula by force.
When North Korea no longer poses a grave threat to the ROK and regional stability, it might be possible to consider a decline or departure of U.S. forces. Under what circumstances would North Korea no longer pose a threat to the ROK and regional stability? These scenarios would include the total collapse of the party-state, the complete demilitarization of North Korea or the peaceful unification of the Koreas. The likelihood of any of these scenarios is difficult to assess, but progress in a North-South dialogue and Pyongyang's wider opening to the outside world could unleash rapid and tumultuous change in the north.
It is possible, of course, that even when North Korea no longer poses a threat, the ROK will decide that is it still desirable to maintain some type of U.S. military presence. Indeed, Kim Dae Jung has indicated such a preference. And a U.S. military presence on the peninsula probably would have an important stabilizing effect on the region.
The long-run American objective remains a peaceful resolution of the Korean conflict with a non-nuclear, democratic, reconciled, and ultimately reunified peninsula.
The best means to achieve this is for the United States to retain its forces in Korea so that they can continue to serve the same deterrent function they have for the past half-century. The end game may be approaching, but it is not here yet.
Andrew Scobell is research professor of national security affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Army, Department of Defense or the U.S. government.
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WORLD ATTEMPT TO END KOREAN COLD WAR
Leaders on geopolitical blind date
N. Korea's readiness for change will dictate success of tomorrow's planned summit.
Christian Science Monitor
MONDAY, JUNE 12, 2000
Cameron W. Barr Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/06/12/p1s3.htm
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA, Underlying the planned historic encounter between leaders of North and South Korea is a hope that the North's leader, Kim Jong Il, is a reformer at heart.
Once portrayed as a terrorist mastermind and the rigidly Communist leader of a collapsing nation, South Korean officials now see someone different.
Mr. Kim appears firmly in power and his once reclusive regime is establishing relations with Western nations. His recent visit to Beijing has shown that he is "not a disaster at a cocktail party," in the words of one diplomat here who spoke on condition of anonymity.
WILL IT FLY? South Koreans in Seoul rallied for reunification Saturday. One issue on the agenda of the inter-Korean summit is family reunions between the North and South. GREG BAKER/AP
The price of admission to a new era on the Korean peninsula, it seems, is to bury the past and to trust Kim - at least for now.
The three-day summit, set to begin tomorrow with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung's arrival in the North's capital of Pyongyang, is an opportunity to ease the conflict between the two Koreas, the last nation on the planet still severed by the cold war. It is also the geopolitical equivalent of a blind date. The leaders of these nations have never met and in the past half-century the paths of the two countries have dramatically diverged.
Kim Jong Il, whose official title is chairman of North Korea's National Defense Commission, leads a brutal Communist dictatorship and a decrepit centrally-planned economy. His Korea is a land of scarcity in which food and political freedom are in short supply.
South Korean President Kim heads a vibrant democracy and free-market economy. A summer evening in the Myongdong neighborhood of Seoul puts his land of plenty on display: Protesters rail against the government while sidewalk evangelists bid to save the souls of blasé shoppers pondering a cornucopia of international brand names.
Kim Dae Jung is a longtime democracy activist who struggled for decades against South Korea's military dictators before being elected president in December 1997. Kim Jong Il inherited the leadership of North Korea from his father.
"We don't know how the two sides will react and what their first conversation will be like," says Moon In-Chung, a South Korean political scientist who will accompany President Kim to Pyongyang. "It will be a total surprise to Koreans as well as to foreigners."
For an encounter that is apparently so unscripted, a lot is at stake. North and South Korea technically remain at war, since a 1953 armistice was never converted into a peace treaty. Some 37,000 US troops stationed in the South help deter conflict along a 150-mile demilitarized zone.
The North has practiced global blackmail for the past decade, winning aid packages from the US and other countries in exchange for backing away from controversial nuclear- and missile-development programs. This week's summit is a glory moment for President Kim, who has pushed a "sunshine" policy of engaging North Korea that has been endorsed by the US.
The idea is to tempt Chairman Kim with aid and investment and gradually convince him to abandon his nation's threatening stance toward South Korea and stop building weapons of mass destruction.
An undesired opposite effect
The risk is that in agreeing to the summit, Chairman Kim is gaining more room to maneuver diplomatically and angling for more aid, while lacking any intention to change the belligerent character of his regime. The United States and other countries have insisted that North Korea improve relations with the South to pave the way for better ties with their own nations. "I hope this is a step toward peace," says Lho Kyongsoo, a Seoul National University political scientist known for his conservative views. "But depending on whether Kim Jong Il is reformist or not, it could also be a step toward entrenching the leadership that's been in place since 1994-95," when Kim took over.
Professor Lho worries that South Korea - in practicing engagement - may end up enhancing North Korea's ability to make war. President Kim's sunshine policy isn't the only reason North and South Korea are coming to the negotiating table. There is also the surprising durability of Kim Jong Il.
When North Korean founding father Kim Il-Sung died in 1994, the ability of his son Kim Jong Il to stay in power was uncertain. South Korean and US officials had long portrayed him as an eccentric and untested figure whose philandering lifestyle would shame a rabbit. He was blamed in particular for ordering the 1987 bombing of a South Korean jetliner that killed 115 people.
Even today, a video at the Eradication of Communism Museum, on the southern side of the demilitarized zone, explains that North Korea's use of secret tunnels to infiltrate South Korea can only be attributed to "madness ... madness ... madness."
But Kim Dae Jung has led a reappraisal of his North Korean counterpart, this March calling him an intelligent and capable leader whose control of his country deserved acknowledgment.
So Kim Jong Il may be feeling like he is getting the respect he deserves from Kim Dae Jung and from other governments. Kim Jong Il's recent visit to China, adds the diplomat, demonstrates that he "obviously has some ability to deal with affairs of state with one of the most important countries in the world."
REFLECTIONS ON THE OTHER SIDE: South Korean troops, in mirror, look toward the North. Divided by a 150-mile-long border since 1945, both sides are cultivating more trust, which has led to this week's summit. DAVID GUTTENFELDER/AP
Delaying reunification
A key byproduct of South Korean President Kim's policy of openness is that his fellow citizens are learning more than they ever have about North Korea. The result is a growing desire to delay reunification, since South Koreans recognize that they will have to make major sacrifices to raise the standard of living of their northern neighbors.
That is not to say that the 7 million or so South Koreans with family in North Korea are willing to forsake their kin - indeed, family reunions are a priority item for President Kim. But as a whole, South Koreans like "peaceful coexistence" much better than the idea of absorbing the North.
This popular sentiment tends to reinforce President Kim's own promises to respect the national integrity of North Korea, and may also account for Kim Jong Il's willingness to talk. Observers of North Korea have long surmised that the first priority of the country's leadership - whether under Kim Il-Sung or Kim Jong Il - has been its own survival.
But there is some evidence to suggest that Kim is contemplating reform as a means to preserve his regime. During the China visit, Kim praised his neighbor's free-market economic reforms, indicating that he may break from North Korea's long-standing policy of economic self-reliance.
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Freed N. Korean Ex-Spies Remain South's Captives
Los Angeles Times
Monday, June 12, 2000
By VALERIE REITMAN,
Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/news/asection/20000612/t000055753.html
KWANGJU, South Korea--Kim Dong Ki was a 35-year-old North Korean intelligence agent when he was caught spying by archenemy South Korea in 1966 and thrown into jail.
Thirty-three years later, when Kim was freed in an amnesty program, an astonishing thing happened: South Koreans embraced him with a hero's welcome.
Taxi drivers here in Kwangju gave him free rides when they learned his identity. A human rights group rented an immaculate house for him. Townspeople donated new appliances. The local government sent two women to cook and clean for him.
In striking contrast to Kim's worst fears, much of South Korea practically hung yellow ribbons for him and 18 other long-term North Korean prisoners, nearly all of them self-confessed spies, who have been released from the cells where they had languished for decades. Hundreds of their compatriots either died in prison or in years past signed documents renouncing their Communist ideology to secure their releases from prison.
In the months since their releases, the former prisoners have learned about the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of their old Communist ally, the Soviet Union. In contrast to the severe hunger reported in their home country, the former prisoners' tables groan with donated food.
Yet they yearn to go home, and cannot, because the two Koreas technically still are at war nearly 50 years after the Korean War ended in a truce, and the South won't allow them to leave. Now that the historic summit between the two Koreas is about to take place, their hopes are high that they'll be able to go home at last.
"Ideology aside, it's human nature to want to be with your family," said Kim, now 68, who longs to see the wife and child, then just 2 years old, he left behind--and hasn't seen for 34 years. "Even animals or birds can freely cross the DMZ [the no man's land between the two countries known as the demilitarized zone]. It's a shame that human beings, the masters of all animals, cannot do so."
The prisoners' predicament poses a political and humanitarian dilemma for South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, who has promoted a "sunshine policy" toward his country's northern neighbor, encouraging dialogue and cooperation between the two Koreas even though their border is the most heavily fortified in the world.
His policies have ushered in a spirit of hope that is manifest all over South Korea. Long lines snake around new restaurants in Seoul, the capital, that feature special cold noodles from North Korea. A basketball game between the North and South Koreans tipped off in December.
And the remarkable welcoming party for the spies would have been unimaginable only a few years ago, before Kim's inaugural. Although North Korean spy submarines have been caught along the coast as recently as last year, many in the South sympathize with the released prisoners.
"How can they be compensated for the youth they wasted in jail?" said Choi Young Ho, 37, a taxi driver in Kwangju, who believes the men were pawns in a game between politicians. "Words like 'agent' are a product of the Cold War ideology--times have changed, and we shouldn't even be using those terms," he said.
But more conservative citizens, including members of the opposition Grand National Party, are as fearful as ever about the North.
"If they repent, they should be given a chance, but if they continue to refuse cooperation, they should be sent back to North Korea," said Shin Chang Shik, 66, the president of a real estate firm who lived through the Korean War but was too young to join the army. "The younger generation is idealistic--they have no experience in communism, but people over 60 have different thoughts. I'm not ready to forgive them."
Now old men, the former prisoners seem more like grandfathers than spies--except perhaps when one of the four former inmates interviewed, Hong Myong Ki, 71, opens a beer bottle with his mouth, a skill he said he learned in prison.
When Kim Dong Ki left North Korea in 1966 as an agent infiltrating the South, the North was a far brighter place than South Korea: The more prosperous Korea before the South's meteoric economic rise in the 1980s, the North possessed far more factories, resources and electricity than the South. Kim was recruited as an intelligence agent after studying at the University of Pyongyang and learning Russian.
Kim bristles at the term "spy." He was known as a "unification agent" and said he prefers to be known as a "patriot."
His mission: slipping into South Korea under the cover of night to persuade a former politician in the North to return home. But Kim was shot and taken prisoner.
The last time he saw his wife and son, the Beatles were in their international prime. He was thrown into a prison cell just more than a yard wide and three yards long, with a ceiling so low he could touch it with his hands. When the lid of the cell's non-flush toilet was lifted, clouds of black flies swarmed out. A 30-watt bulb provided only enough light for guards to keep watch over him. There was no heat and no blankets.
One writer described it as a "living grave," Kim recalled.
Until the 1980s, the prisoners received "fourth class" daily provisions, Kim said, of two swallows of gruel--about 80% barley mixed with a few grains of rice. "We were always hungry," Kim said. "There is a proverb: Nobody can climb over a wall if they are hungry for three days."
The goal: to encourage the prisoners to "convert" their ideologies. Guards were rewarded with promotions if they could get conversions. The officers were so desperate to win kudos for conversions that on one occasion, they took the fingerprint of a prisoner who had died and affixed it to a conversion statement.
"They beat me all the time, till my flesh was torn; they hung me from the ceiling, then would drag me down to the basement, to a special room for water torture," Kim said. "Those who weren't accustomed to it could die." Some prisoners did die. Others committed suicide.
The barbed wire on the blacked-out window was what kept Kim alive. "I always knew that if it got so bad, I could hang myself on that barbed wire."
At one point, the only book they were allowed to read was the Bible.
"It's ironic," Kim said. "A socialist in prison reading the Bible."
Another year, all he could get his hands on was an English dictionary. "Have you ever read sections A through G of the dictionary completely?" he asked an American reporter. (Kim doesn't understand much English, but when an interpreter translated one of his phrases using the word, "cunning," he laughed in recognition and muttered, "Cunning.")
Prison conditions began to greatly improve after the 1988 Seoul Olympics. "Our treatment became known to the world and the U.S. recommended that [South Korea's] National Security Law be abolished, and treatment changed," Kim said.
Today, Kim shares a small, tidy house in the southwestern part of the country with three other former prisoners. It is called "Unification House," named by the civic groups that support it.
"This nation shouldn't be divided," Kim said. "We witnessed the division, and all this tragedy stems from the division. We shouldn't let the next generation inherit a divided nation."
One of the four former prisoners interviewed says he wasn't a spy and was falsely imprisoned for 29 years. Lee Jai Young, 54, says he was a fisherman who mistakenly sailed across the DMZ into South Korean waters and was accused of spying. He wouldn't convert on principle, saying, "As they kept beating and torturing me, I became more favorable to the North."
Said his fellow prisoner, Lee Kyong Chang, 65: "If you strike a weak iron constantly, it becomes very strong."
Working, but Under Government's Wing
Since their releases, the men sweep the streets in return for a meager monthly pension of $150 each, which doesn't go far in South Korea. Ironically, it is paid by the South Korean government.
Awed as they are by the televisions, videocassettes, personal computers and all sorts of technical marvels that have swept the economy since they were imprisoned, they are just as awed by the things they once took for granted. They are fascinated, for instance, by children, whom they didn't see for decades.
"I thought they were living dolls," Lee said.
What they've also found is the antithesis of the harsh treatment they expected. "We've encountered so much love," Kim said. "It reaffirms that I'll contribute to society and unification."
But they still haven't given up on socialism. "If I have 10 loaves of bread and there are 10 people who should share it, I still don't think I'm entitled to two and someone else is entitled to half a loaf," Kim said. "That equality applies to money, food and clothes."
Former prisoner Hong lives in Seoul with his sister, Hong Myong Ja. They talked of how their family split before the war--they lived in a town near the border. While his family fled south, Hong volunteered to join the North Korean army in 1950 because he was disappointed with the South Korean government and thought the North a "more moral, legitimate government." He was particularly attracted to North Korea's "land reforms," in which he said land was distributed to all of the country's farmers equally.
Paid Dearly for Handing Out Fliers
He was captured in 1962, caught distributing political propaganda in the South. "In South Korean terms, I was a spy, but we never considered ourselves spies. We only wanted an independent country free of foreign intervention."
He bristles at the constant watch the South Korean government keeps on him now, even though he has been released from prison. He gets official calls asking what his plans are for the day.
He and his sister good-naturedly ribbed each other about their differing ideologies. Another sister died in the war when U.S. planes bombed her school. Hong says that North Korea "is isolated not from the people of the world but from power politics." His sister laughed, and he laughed too. "I'm an idealist--she's mundane. All people under capitalist influence are mundane and vulgar," he said with a teasing tone.
Having her brother out from behind bars is a dream that Hong Myong Ja thought would never come true. She grimaced at the thought that, if he returns to the North to find the wife he left behind, as he yearns to do, it might mean never seeing him again.
But she added, "I hope his dream will be realized--a unified country in which he can travel back and forth freely. I never give up hope."
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Hopes Remain High After a Late Delay in Korean Meeting
New York Times
June 12, 2000
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/061200korea.html
SEOUL, South Korea, Monday, June 12 -- South Korean officials remained confident today that the first summit meeting with North Korea would proceed normally on Tuesday despite an unexpected 24-hour delay by the North.
North Korean officials surprised their southern counterparts on Sunday with a request for the delay of the three-day meeting for unspecified "minor technical reasons."
The postponement set off rife speculation over the cause, with analysts here focusing on security arrangements, the death of President Hafez al-Assad of Syria, a longtime ally, or matters as mundane as the erratic electricity supply and telecommunications networks in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, where the meeting is to be held.
Nonetheless, South Korean officials say they are still hopeful that the meeting can yield progress on reducing the tensions that have made the divided peninsula the most heavily armed place in the world, ultimately including a pledge by Pyongyang to forswear nuclear weapons development.
In addition, Seoul's main allies, the United States and Japan, have pressed for emphasis on reducing the threat from North Korea's ballistic missile program, which has helped provoke proposals in Washington to spend billions of dollars on an elaborate missile defense system.
Despite a half-century of military hostilities and fierce ideological competition between the two countries, not to mention the North's renowned unpredictability, officials here said they had few doubts that the delay would prove to be only a momentary setback.
Among other reasons for this confidence, they cited the presence of a 30-member advance team already in North Korea. "We will definitely go on Tuesday," said Moon Chung In, an academic who is part of the official southern delegation. "There is no major problem."
North Korea's first leader, Kim Il Sung, died in July 1994, just days before the only other previously scheduled summit meeting between the two countries, and the gulf between the two countries widened drastically in the ensuing years. Just last year, the two countries engaged in a fierce naval skirmish in the Yellow Sea, raising anew the prospect of war across the border.
Diplomats said, though, that the uncharacteristically intense recent diplomatic activity by North Korea was the best gauge of its seriousness about engaging the South and lifting the country's reclusive veil.
This month, the Korean president, Kim Jong Il, paid a surprise visit to China, his first trip outside the country since he succeeded his father. Since then, Mr. Kim has invited the Russian leader, Vladimir V. Putin, for a visit to Pyongyang that is expected to take place in July.
Pyongyang has also recently busily established diplomatic relations with a wide range of nontraditional partners. These have included countries from Italy to Australia, and talks aimed at restoring or establishing ties with others are proceeding.
Last week, Washington announced that it could soon lift most economic sanctions that remain in place on North Korea, most of which are tied to the the State Department's listing of the country as a supporter of terrorism.
"It is clear that something important is going on here, and the North-South meeting is obviously the centerpiece," one senior Western diplomat said.
"It is hard to say just how far or how fast this will all proceed, but to not have spoken to someone for 50 years and then be seated at the same table is itself historic."
In recent days, a major concern of the South Korean government has been controlling high public expectations over the first meeting between leaders of the countries. In briefing after briefing, South Korean officials have stressed that the summit meeting should be seen as only the beginning of what they hope will be regular, high-level contacts between the two countries.
The two presidents, Kim Dae Jung and Kim Jong Il are expected to meet at least twice during the three days, and there have been persistent but unconfirmed reports of a reciprocal visit to Seoul by the North Korean leader in the coming months.
In a reflection of the huge differences separating the countries, the agenda has been left deliberately vague.
The South Korean leadership would like to achieve something that lowers military tensions on the peninsula, focusing on North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, which have generated anxiety throughout the region. Tensions rose sharply in 1998, for instance, when North Korea made a surprise test launch of a long-range Taepodong 2 missile that flew over the main Japanese island of Honshu.
For its part, North Korea can be expected to make renewed demands for the withdrawal of the approximately 37,000 American troops based in the South. And after years of disastrous shrinking of its economy following the loss of its Soviet-bloc allies, Pyongyang is also eager to receive a large increase in economic assistance and investment from the far richer South.
Seoul has already promised large amounts of development assistance in exchange for a real détente. And southern companies, many of whose leaders are flying to Pyongyang in the 130-member presidential delegation, are eager to expand their presence in the north.
To expand greatly, however, will require new agreements on everything from technology transfer and legal protections from expropriation to monetary exchange and ordinary banking procedures.
Given the daunting amount of groundwork required in these areas, South Korean officials say privately that they will consider the summit meeting a success if the two sides can announce progress on human issues like the restoration of mail service between the countries, or visits between millions of families separated by the war.
---
N.Korea Asks Day's Delay in Summit to Prepare
Yahoo News
Sunday June 11 8:51 AM ET
By Bill Tarrant
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000611/ts/korea_summit_dc.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has asked for a one-day delay in the summit between leaders of the two Koreas to better prepare for the three days of meetings, South Korea's presidential Blue House said Sunday.
President Kim Dae-jung will now fly to Pyongyang Tuesday to meet his enigmatic counterpart Kim Jong-il for the first summit between leaders of the rival Koreas.
North Korea asked for the delay in a message sent late on Saturday, the presidential Blue House said in a statement. ``We decided to accept the North's request in consideration of the position of the host of the summit,'' it said.
``We have waited for the summit for 55 years, why can't we wait one more day?'' spokesman Park Jun-young quoted President Kim Dae-jung as saying in a reference to the division of Korea into communist North and capitalist South after World War Two.
Kim and his 180-member delegation will fly direct to Pyongyang -- the first flight between Seoul and Pyongyang since war broke out on the peninsula 50 years ago.
The short flight -- Pyongyang is only 108 miles northeast of Seoul -- could represent a giant step in ending the Cold War stalemate on the peninsula.
The two Kims are scheduled to talk with each other at several meetings and banquets at a summit that may be more notable for the symbolism of the meeting than for signings of agreements.
The South Korean president will present a pair of Jindo dogs, a rare breed native to the southwestern island of Jindo, known for fierce loyalty to their owners. North Korea's Kim is expected to return the gesture with a northern breed of dogs.
Aid For Reunions
South Korea's Kim wants to swing a deal giving North Korea aid and investments in exchange for Pyongyang's agreement to hold reunions of families separated when the Korea War broke out.
Underlining the tensions that persist on the Cold War's last flashpoint, North Korea has sent a note guaranteeing the personal security and safe return of the delegation.
North Korea Saturday also repeated its demand that the United States withdraw its 37,000 troops from South Korea.
``It is...prerequisite for peace and stability in the region to force U.S. troops to withdraw from Northeast Asia, including the Korean peninsula,'' the state-run newspaper Minju Jolson said in a commentary carried by the Korean Central News Agency.
Seoul wants to avoid talk about U.S. forces, a legacy of the Korean War, which it sees as a deterrent to North Korean threats.
U.S.-led U.N. forces fought Chinese- and Soviet-backed North Korea in the Korean War. It ended in an armed truce that has left the rival Koreas armed to the teeth and technically still at war.
A Singaporean journalist who visited Pyongyang last week with a big tour group said there were hardly any visible preparations in the city for the summit -- no banners or bunting, just a few signs of a clean-up around the five-star Koryo hotel where the South Korean delegation is expected to stay.
Radio journalist Shima Roy told Reuters: ``Women and some men were cleaning window sills, dusting all around the flats near the hotel.''
Heightened Diplomacy Over Korea
The Pyongyang summit has taken center stage in heightened diplomacy surrounding the strategic Korean peninsula, for centuries the object of great power contests.
Washington was expected to announce soon an easing of Korean War-era sanctions that could pave the way for trade and investments in a wide range of goods and services.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will make an unprecedented visit to North Korea next month to push efforts at reconciling the Koreas and draw the Stalinist regime out of its shell.
U.S. officials, who see North Korea as a ``rogue'' state and a key reason for Washington's plans for a controversial national missile defense system, said they hoped Putin would persuade North Korea to halt its missile development program.
In August 1998, North Korea test-fired a missile that flew over Japan and into the Pacific, breaking the big-power monopoly on such weapons, and sending alarm bells ringing in the region.
Like Russia, China is unhappy about Washington's missile defense plan, fearing it could be extended to shield Taiwan, which Beijing considers a renegade province.
Statesman Than Rogue
Beijing this month hosted a surprise visit by Kim Jong-il, the first overseas visit in 17 years by the reclusive son of North Korea's first and ``eternal'' president, Kim Il-sung.
Analysts say the Beijing visit and this week's summit are aimed at showing Kim as more statesman than rogue to undercut one of the rationales for the missile defense system.
The moves appear to have made an impression in Washington.
``We did not know whether General Kim, Kim Jong-il, had leadership abilities, courage and vision,'' said a senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
``It now appears that he does have at least some of those qualities,'' the official said.
Four great powers -- China, Russia, Japan and the United States -- have dictated events in Korea for the past century.
For most of its recorded history, Korea was a tributary state of China. Japan annexed the country in 1910 after defeating Russia in the Russo-Japanese war in a conflict over who would have hegemony on the peninsula.
Soviet and U.S. forces ousted the Japanese at the end of World War II and divided the peninsula at the 38th parallel.
---
South Korea unruffled by north-south summit delay
CNN
June 12, 2000 Web posted at: 10:44 a.m. HKT (0244 GMT)
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ASIANOW/east/06/11/koreas.summit.02/index.html
SEOUL, South Korea -- A historic summit of longtime foes North and South Korea has been pushed back to Tuesday, one day later than scheduled, with Pyongyang reportedly citing technical reasons for the delay.
"We have waited for the summit for 55 years, why can't we wait one more day?" said South Korean spokesman Park June-young from the capital of Seoul, quoting President Kim Dae-jung.
Kim and his 180-member delegation will travel to the North Korean capital of Pyongyang on Tuesday rather than Monday. They will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and others in a three-day session.
North Korea requested the delay late Saturday in a telephone message sent through Panmunjom, a border village inside the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas. Officials cited "technical reasons" for the delay, including taking steps to provide adequate security for South Korean visitors.
North Korean authorities also were said to be annoyed after South Korean media disclosed details of Kim's itinerary in North Korea. The two countries had agreed not to disclose the summit schedule.
Meeting has global implications
The Koreas have been locked in a Cold War standoff more than 50 years. In the early 1950s, U.S.-led forces fought Chinese-and Soviet-backed North Korean troops in the Korean War, which ended in an armed truce and unwavering political tension.
As the years passed, the fortunes of the two countries, one communist and one pro-Western, have changed. Previously disdainful of its southern neighbor, an impoverished North Korea now is hoping for help from prosperous South Korea in the way of food and other aid.
The two countries agreed to a summit in 1994. But North Korean leader Kim Il Sung died at age 82 only weeks before he was to meet with South Korean counterpart, Kim Young-sam.
Although the South Korean government has warned not to expect too much from this first-ever summit, South Korean citizens view the meeting as a chance to ensure peace for future generations.
"It is historically significant and potentially very important to the security of the United States and the international community," Bob Gallucci, a former U.S. State Department official, told CNN on Sunday.
U.S. troops could be discussed
In exchange for economic aid, South Korea hopes to convince Pyongyang to permit the reunions of families separated when the Korean War broke out.
North Korea on Saturday repeated its demand that the United States withdraw its 37,000 troops from South Korea.
"It is ... prerequisite for peace and stability in the region to force U.S. troops to withdraw from northeast Asia, including the Korean peninsula," North Korea's state-run newspaper Minju Jolson said in a commentary carried by the Korean Central News Agency.
Seoul, however, wants to avoid talking about the American troops, which it sees as a deterrent to North Korean threats.
World leaders wish summit well
The prospect of warmer relations between North and South Korea is drawing international attention.
Washington is expected to announce soon an easing of Korean War-era sanctions that could pave the way for trade and investments in a wide range of goods and services.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will make an unprecedented visit to North Korea next month to support efforts to reconcile the two Koreas.
On Sunday, Pope John Paul II praised the two Korean leaders for agreeing to meet.
"I join all people of goodwill in congratulating the leaders of the two countries for this initiative in the hope that dialogue and exchange can contribute to the reconciliation of the two peoples and the reunion of families which have been separated for half a century now," the pope said in his weekly address.
Seoul Bureau Chief Sohn Jie-Ae, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
-------- pacific
CHEMICAL WEAPONS INCINERATOR TO BEGIN SHUTDOWN
June 12, 2000 (ENS)
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jun2000/2000L-06-12-09.html
JOHNSTON ISLAND, Pacific Ocean, Ten years ago this month, the U.S. built its first chemical weapons destruction facility on this remote atoll. Next year, the plant will start shutting down. As part of its goal of destroying the entire U.S. stockpile of chemical weapons, the U.S. began testing and operating an incinerator on Johnston Island, a remote Pacific atoll 825 miles southwest of Hawai'i. After three years of testing, the incineration technology was adopted by the federal government as the method of choice for destroying America's chemical weapons stockpiles by 2007 as required by law. The entire stockpile is stored at eight depots across the country. Though incineration has faced heavy opposition from groups that warn the process releases toxins into the air and water, the government says the process is the fastest and most cost effective means of destroying the lethal poisons in chemical rockets and other weapons.
Work at the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System (JACADS) has led to improvements in the incineration process, including faster and more complete incineration of all weapons components. These improvements have since been implemented at a similar facility in Tooele, Utah. To date, JACADS has destroyed 3.6 million pounds of nerve and blister agents, and more than 388,000 chemical weapons stockpiled on Johnston Island. With 94 percent of its chemical weapons stockpile destroyed, JACADS is fast approaching a new milestone - closure of the facility. "It's been a long process full of challenges and lessons learned," said JACADS project manager Gary McCloskey. "We've had to overcome many hurdles operating the first fully-integrated system of its kind. But we can look at our accomplishments with pride because we're setting the example for future facilities. We've paved the way for others to follow." Closure activities for JACADS are scheduled to begin in January 2001.
----
Island Strategy: Why Fiji May Matter
12 June 2000
KABAR IRIAN ("Irian News")
www.kabar-irian.com
Summary
Last month a political crisis erupted in Fiji. Last week, another exploded in the Solomon Islands. So far, the world has largely shrugged. After all, these are isolated islands in a region that has become a bit of a strategic backwater. But taken together with the steady crumbling of Indonesia, instability on these islands can allow an outside power to gain a strategic advantage. Why? To keep the U.S. Navy out of Asia.
Analysis
Last month, a political crisis erupted in Fiji: an attempted coup, followed by the seizure of political hostages and a confrontation that continues. Last week, a political crisis exploded in the Solomon Islands. Both cases involve complex internal political, economic and ethnic issues that, in general, are of great interest to the citizenry but not of particular interest to the outside world.
It is therefore startling to step back and realize that with these two crises, a virtually unbroken belt of instability now stretches from the Straits of Malacca in western Indonesia to the south central Pacific. It is easy to dismiss this as an interesting coincidence. And it may well be that purely local forces exploded simultaneously. Nevertheless, the strategic implications of events may be very real, if not at all intended by the actors involved.
So far, the world has largely ignored the events in the Pacific. No calls for international intervention have gone up. The government in Australia, which has sought a larger role in the region, has in effect shrugged. Alone each of these events means little. But taken as a whole, they could threaten commercial shipping and naval traffic. If, in the course of a few years, hostile forces emerge in control of these islands and portions of Indonesia, the world will find every reason to care.
At one level, there is both a common element and a common force driving events from Indonesia to Fiji. All of these societies are complex mixtures of traditional political arrangements coexisting poorly with approximations of modern states. But the tension between tradition and modernization has not been dealt with satisfactorily in any of these societies. As a result, long-standing ethnic tension has mixed with divergent economic interests to produce the ingredients of instability.
This region has, as of late, been a bit of a strategic backwater. But it was not always. During the U.S.-Japanese competition for preeminence in the Pacific from the 1920s until 1945, these islands made up the centerpiece of a great strategic struggle. American power projection into the Western Pacific toward China, Japan, Australia and the Philippines depended on the ability of the U.S. Navy to navigate past these islands. Japanese airfields denied the U.S. fleet passage during World War II. Brutal fighting from Guadalcanal [Solomon Islands] to Tinian [Saipan] revolved around the use of these islands as unsinkable, if immobile aircraft carriers.
Defeating the Japanese at Guadalcanal prevented them from moving east through Polynesia. And so the line of supply stretching from Pearl Harbor to Australia was never cut by Japanese air power. The United States could project power to Australia, blocking any plan to invade Australia, and allowing American forces to begin rolling back the Japanese in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea.
More than a half-century later, the U.S. Navy still enjoys unchallenged access to and through all of these routes, the most important of which are the sea-lanes through the Indonesian archipelago. Through here pass the U.S. carrier battlegroups on their way to the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. Choking these off would cripple Washingtons modern-day ability to project power. This is not as unthinkable as it might seem. Every day, Indonesia crumbles literally one island at a time.
But what power would be in a position to benefit from this situation? There is but one: China. The government in Beijing is clearly intent on becoming the dominant East Asian power; it has an interest in keeping U.S. forces at bay and it has the means to take advantage. So long as American fleets lurk just over the horizon, China will fail in its ability to redraw a new regional order.
Consider the problem from the Chinese viewpoint. The presence of U.S. naval power near and sometimes just off the mainland coast makes it difficult for Beijing to control coastal political interests that are naturally inclined to be more oriented toward the outside world than inland China. Today, coastal entrepreneurs have the navy of their foreign financial partners reassuringly over the horizon. The government is acutely aware that the U.S. 7th Fleet affects both the regional balance of power and the domestic psychological fabric. The fact that Beijing cannot solve its Taiwan dilemma is testimony to this fact.
For now and the foreseeable future, Beijing has few conventional military levers at its disposal. A blue-water navy capable of challenging the U.S. Navy could be generations away; it certainly wont put to sea in the lifetime of Chinas current leadership. There is no powerful navy in the world with which the Chinese can ally.
But if the current situation in the Pacific continues to deteriorate, it could allow Beijing to reach for an unconventional lever. The goal is not the destruction of the U.S. 7th Fleet; the goal is merely to make access, transit and the concentration of forces thorny. All China would need to do is take advantage of this emerging belt of instability, increase the risk of passage through the central and southern parts of the Pacific Ocean and divert U.S. ships. Instead of, say, showing up unchallenged off of an Asian coast, American forces would have to first figure out how to get there.
The problem is partly political and partly technological. The Chinese have worked hard on the technical problem. Knowing that they are weak in both surface weaponry and air power, and aware that U.S. anti-submarine warfare capabilities could probably rapidly diminish Chinas submarine force, China has concentrated on the use of missiles. In particular, the Chinese have concentrated on developing a generation of land-based anti-ship missiles, including cruise missiles. Already, these missiles have made American planners pause and consider that Beijing can at least partly enforce a blockade of Taiwan.
Now, imagine that these missiles are transferred to irregular forces operating on a string of unstable islands in Indonesia and the western and central Pacific Ocean. The United States is suddenly facing an equation very similar to the one it wrestled with in 1942. If the Chinese or any other power emulate the Japanese strategy with modern missiles, the American navy would find its way much riskier than ever before.
Since the Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is already at work on the technical problem, Beijing would have to grapple with the political problem. Even in a crisis, placing Chinese forces on these islands is a difficult task. All of these nations are heavily exposed economically and politically to the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Penetration is not easy, but at the same time Pacific Islanders have been extraordinarily neglected, in many cases by these same countries. Particularly north of the equator, the level of development is so primitive that it is hard to find a government to influence. South of the equator, in Polynesia and some of Melanesia, the problems are so complex and idiosyncratic that it is difficult to get a handle on them.
This, of course, is the precise atmosphere in which a relatively low-cost campaign of destabilization and influence-buying could achieve a great deal. Given the fact that no one really is watching, the situation that is now unfolding can present a tremendous strategic opportunity for China. It does not take a lot of resources to buy influence in these places. And it doesn't take a great deal of acumen to trigger crises in societies that are tinderboxes anyway. Certainly, no matter who triggers the crisis, it does not take much to exploit it.
Is there any evidence that China is behind any of the crises? Very little, although over the past year some straws have blown in the wind:
1.) Rumors have circulated that conflict in Guadalcanal was related to a struggle between pro-Chinese and pro-Taiwanese factions. Taiwanese foreign ministry spokesman Chen Ming-cheng responded to questions saying, "The turmoil should not be used as an excuse to influence ROC (Taiwan)-Solomon Islands relations." It is interesting that the spokesman didn't just reject the question out of hand.
2.) Nauru, an island nation just northeast of the Solomon Islands, applied for membership into the United Nations and for a time its application was deferred due to Chinese opposition. China objected on the grounds that Nauru had recognized Taiwan. Taiwanese Foreign Minister Jason Hu has called the Chinese policy "naked hegemony" and said that the Chinese stance was intolerable.
3.) China endorsed the application of Kiribati for U.N. membership. The Chinese maintain a satellite and missile tracking facility on Kiribati, which is located on the equator, east of Nauru. Interestingly, Kiribati's government has given final approval to Japans national Space Development Agency to build a spaceport on remote Kiritimati, or Christmas Island. On the equator and at 180 degrees longitude, Kiribati occupies an extremely strategic position for missile launches and communications satellite management. Boeing has plans to launch communicates into geostationary orbit from oil drilling platforms towed to the region.
4.) Vanuatu's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade and Business Development visited China last summer. The invitation was extended by Chinese Vice Prime Minister Qian Qichen. Vanuatu is sandwiched between Fiji and the Solomons.
The point here is that the governments in Beijing and Taiwan are unlike much of the rest of the world acutely aware of the importance of this region. The Chinese are not acting aggressively to expand their influence, but they are acting. Too aggressive a course would undoubtedly trigger a U.S. response. Quiet bridge building is the key. And the Chinese are quietly building bridges.
For about 50 years, no one has had any interest in increasing their influence in this region. This may not continue to be the case for much longer. China's need to counter American power combined with Beijing's limited naval capability makes a Pacific Island strategy as natural to them as it was to the Japanese decades ago.
There is, however, ample time for the United States, Australia and New Zealand, acting in concert, to developing a blocking strategy that is both effective and cheap. The governments in Australia and New Zealand, however, are relatively impervious to strategic thinking these days, tending to look at events piecemeal instead of eyeing long-term threats. And right now U.S. strategy is on autopilot.
A potentially important chapter is opening in the Pacific. It will be interesting to see if Beijing takes advantage of it and whether anyone will care enough about this ignored region to devise a counter-strategy.
----
CHEMICAL WEAPONS INCINERATOR TO BEGIN SHUTDOWN
June 12, 2000 (ENS)
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jun2000/2000L-06-12-09.html
JOHNSTON ISLAND, Pacific Ocean, Ten years ago this month, the U.S. built its first chemical weapons destruction facility on this remote atoll. Next year, the plant will start shutting down. As part of its goal of destroying the entire U.S. stockpile of chemical weapons, the U.S. began testing and operating an incinerator on Johnston Island, a remote Pacific atoll 825 miles southwest of Hawai'i. After three years of testing, the incineration technology was adopted by the federal government as the method of choice for destroying America's chemical weapons stockpiles by 2007 as required by law. The entire stockpile is stored at eight depots across the country. Though incineration has faced heavy opposition from groups that warn the process releases toxins into the air and water, the government says the process is the fastest and most cost effective means of destroying the lethal poisons in chemical rockets and other weapons.
Work at the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System (JACADS) has led to improvements in the incineration process, including faster and more complete incineration of all weapons components. These improvements have since been implemented at a similar facility in Tooele, Utah. To date, JACADS has destroyed 3.6 million pounds of nerve and blister agents, and more than 388,000 chemical weapons stockpiled on Johnston Island. With 94 percent of its chemical weapons stockpile destroyed, JACADS is fast approaching a new milestone - closure of the facility. "It's been a long process full of challenges and lessons learned," said JACADS project manager Gary McCloskey.
"We've had to overcome many hurdles operating the first fully-integrated system of its kind. But we can look at our accomplishments with pride because we're setting the example for future facilities. We've paved the way for others to follow." Closure activities for JACADS are scheduled to begin in January 2001.
-------- puerto rico
Bombs Away
By Juan Gonzalez,
June 12, 2000
In These Times
http://www.inthesetimes.com/gonzalez2414.html
Early on the morning of May 4, a small army of FBI agents and U.S. marshals arrested 216 people on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques in an attempt to regain control of Camp Garcia, the Navy's bombing range there. Among those arrested were two members of Congress, Nydia Velazquez of New York and Luis Gutierrez of Chicago, as well as the Roman Catholic bishop of Caguas and the mayor of Carolina, one of Puerto Rico's biggest cities.
Many of those arrested had been occupying the range since a Puerto Rican security guard was killed last April by Navy bomber pilots who missed their targets. During that time, local fishermen, religious leaders, independence activists and environmentalists all had joined the peaceful occupation. Their actions, as previously reported in this column, ignited an unprecedented movement among all sectors of Puerto Rican society calling for an end to nearly 60 years of Navy bombing on Vieques.
The Vieques raid was the second time in a two - week span that the Justice Department found itself sending armed agents into action against Hispanic Americans. Vieques was preceded, of course, by the Elián González raid in Miami's Little Havana. In both assaults, the groups defying federal authorities had massive support from their ethnic compatriots. In both cases, they were preceded by stand - offs that stretched for months and became enmeshed in the web of presidential politics. But the Elián saga, with its soap opera plot, irresistible child star and that shocking photograph, garnered far greater media attention than Vieques, even if the latter crisis touched on far more weighty matters than some international family feud.
If you listen to Congress and the Pentagon, the entire combat - readiness of our nation hangs in the balance with Vieques. The Puerto Rican protesters, the military brass say, were undermining American defense by preventing use of the Navy's premier training range. The drum roll reached such a crescendo that few Americans could hear the nearly unanimous plea of Puerto Rico's 3.8 million people against the bombing of their inhabited Isla Nena, as Vieques is known. That bombing - and the destruction of the island's coral reefs and environment - was not only a violation of human rights, Puerto Ricans insisted, but a sign of continued U.S. colonial arrogance toward Puerto Rico.
Despite those pleas, the Pentagon and its supporters in Congress kept pressing President Clinton to move against the protesters. In January, Clinton made one of his infamous compromises with Puerto Rico's governor, Pedro Rossello. The accord called for the Navy to temporarily resume training on a sharply reduced schedule, using dummy bombs and ammunition.
In return, Rossello agreed to hold a referendum among the residents of Vieques that would decide whether the Navy should leave permanently after 2003. In addition, the White House promised $40 million in infrastructure aid to Vieques immediately and another $50 million if the referendum allowed the Navy to stay.
The agreement allows the Navy to set the date of the referendum at any point during an 18 - month period that begins this August 1. This is perhaps the first time in history that the Navy has been charged with setting the date for a civilian referendum. White House officials privately conceded that the 18 - month window was designed specifically to give the Navy time to mount a campaign to win (or buy) the backing of the Vieques population. In Puerto Rico, the governor's about - face led to a massive public outcry, especially by the island's church leaders, who organized a silent march of nearly 100,000 people in support of the protesters several weeks ago, and who continued to urge civil disobedience against the Navy.
The actual raid was classic White House image management. It was launched soon after the death of New York City Cardinal John O'Connor, an event the president's aides knew would knock all other news from the front pages for several days in New York, which is home to the country's largest Puerto Rican community, and where Hillary Clinton is seeking a U.S. Senate seat. To limit the embarrassment of having to arrest congressmen and clerics, federal agents were ordered to release all protesters without charges.
The press promptly and dutifully dropped Vieques from its radar screen. But anyone familiar with Puerto Rico's history knows this battle is far from over. At least a half dozen protesters were still hiding in the hills and the underbrush of the Vieques range as I penned these words. They include two sons of Carlos Zenon, the Vieques fisherman who sparked the first protests against the Navy's presence nearly two decades ago. The day before the federal raid, one of the Zenon brothers assured a colleague of mine that he had stashed enough food and supplies in several hiding places on the Vieques range to survive for several months. For the Navy to resume massive bombing while any civilians are still on the range is a very risky gamble.
At the same time, pro - independence leader Ruben Berrios Martinez and hundreds of others are vowing to reoccupy the range and to disrupt future Navy bombing attempts. No matter what Clinton and Rossello say, it's evident that only an immediate referendum and a speeded up timetable for Navy withdrawal will end the crisis. In Puerto Rico, the days of gunboat diplomacy, even in its liberal guise, are over.
Juan Gonzalez is a contributing editor of In These Times.
---
A 42-Block-Long Party in Honor of Puerto Rico
New York Times
June 12, 2000
By ERIC LIPTON
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/regional/ny-pr-parade.html
Politicians and protesters vied for attention yesterday at the National Puerto Rican Day Parade. But there was no mistaking what drew the hundreds of thousands who jammed the sidewalks for a 42-block stretch of Fifth Avenue: a chance to be part of a high-spirited celebration of Puerto Rican culture, music and ethnic pride.
Though the parade itself went off without incident, hundreds of bystanders were overcome by the heat, and the celebration's aftermath was marred by violence. Three men were stabbed near the end of the parade route, the police said yesterday, in unrelated attacks in a 20-minute span beginning shortly after 5 p.m. All three were hospitalized in stable condition last night.
It was an unfortunate coda to an otherwise upbeat parade, traditionally one of the city's largest and most boisterous.
The celebration turned the Upper East Side into a undulating sea of red, white and blue Puerto Rican flags displayed on T-shirts, bandannas, nail polish, necklaces and even a cape worn by a dog.
Hillary Rodham Clinton and Representative Rick A. Lazio, New York's candidates for the United States Senate, were there, along with a long list of other state and local politicians. Hundreds of marchers and spectators held signs urging the United States Navy to stop using Vieques, a Puerto Rican island, as a bombing range.
Still others at the parade, which choked traffic from Midtown through the Upper East Side, rallied in memory of Pedro Albizu Campos, a figure in Puerto Rico's separatist movement who called for islanders to start an armed struggle against the United States.
But it was the dancers, the competing salsa and marching bands and the floats sponsored by towns and villages from Puerto Rico that drew the biggest roars from the crowds. So too did the various tributes to Tito Puente, the jazz musician of Puerto Rican heritage who died on May 31.
"It's about Puerto Rican people being together, proud of being Puerto Rican and celebrating our day," said Violet Colon, 49, from the Bronx. "I am just happy to be here, proud."
But the tropical sun that beat down on Fifth Avenue proved too much for many paradegoers. As temperatures reached the low 90's, about 250 people were treated for heat-related health problems, mostly sunstroke and dehydration, said Firefighter Vito Berretta, a department spokesman. While a number of people were taken to hospitals, none of the cases were serious, Firefighter Berretta said.
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani marched alongside Mr. Lazio, who replaced him last month as the Republican candidate for the Senate. Mrs. Clinton was escorted by Fernando Ferrer, the Bronx borough president, with whom she broke into dance at one point, as the two passed a 12-member salsa band.
Last Sunday, Mrs. Clinton was jeered and booed intensely as she marched up Fifth Avenue in the Salute to Israel Day Parade, in part because of her previous support for an independent Palestinian state. But yesterday, it was Mr. Giuliani who drew a symphony of boos and occasional rude gestures, evidence of his decline in popularity among the city's Hispanic population since first being elected mayor in 1993, particularly after a series of recent police shootings of unarmed men.
Mr. Giuliani seemed impervious to the often bitter response, rushing back and forth to the sidewalks to greet spectators even when he was being booed.
"It was a better reception than I usually get," said Mr. Giuliani, a reference to the heckling he had received at recent Puerto Rican Day Parades. "I think it is wonderful. I think more people applauded for me."
Mrs. Clinton clearly relished the turnaround that a week had brought.
"That is democracy in action," she said of the reversal from last Sunday. "We are so blessed to live in a country where everyone is free to express their opinion."
The parade -- which at times seemed to extend throughout much of Manhattan, with the streams of cars and motorcycles festooned with Puerto Rican flags -- illustrated the growing economic force of Latinos in the United States economy.
There were, of course, floats sponsored by traditional Latino-oriented products, like Café Bustelo coffee and Corona, the Mexican beer. But Showtime cable network was also there, promoting its new television series Resurrection Blvd., which features a Latino family in East Los Angeles. There were also floats sponsored by several Latino-oriented Internet sites, like Latino.com and LaMusica.com, as well as major retailers and consumer product companies like Sears and Colgate-Palmolive.
What most of these and other promotions had in common, though, was music, pulsating, rhythmic and loud, loud, loud, like the Mazola Corn Oil float, which feverishly rocked back and forth to the tunes of the Barrio Boyzz, in a performance that had the young girls in the crowd swooning. Actors Jimmy Smits and Rosie Perez also drew intense cheers, as did the boxer Felix Trinidad.
The parade was dedicated to both Vieques and to Pedro Albizu Campos, the onetime leader of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party who was imprisoned in the 1950's for trying to overthrow the United States government.
But it was the concern about Vieques that drew the most attention.
-------- russia
Russia publishes nuclear arms book
Washington Times
June 12, 2000
By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-200061222196.htm
Russia's Defense Ministry and military industry have produced the first public encyclopedia on its strategic nuclear arsenal that provides unprecedented details about Moscow's weapons systems.
The book was produced in cooperation with arms exporters and is a comprehensive collection of photographs and diagrams on most Soviet, and now Russian, strategic weapons systems, including intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear missile submarines, bombers, and testing and support facilities and equipment.
For example, the book lists the nuclear yield of the warhead for Russia's newest road-mobile ICBM, the SS-27, at 0.55 megatons - or the equivalent of 550,000 tons of TNT. It also states that the missile is accurate enough to place the warhead within 0.9 kilometers of its target.
A diagram shows the flight path of a 10-warhead missile fired from a submarine. The re-entry vehicle maneuvers during flight and guides each warhead to a target over an ocean - an implicit reference to the United States.
The book also shows a photograph of the 1-kiloton nuclear warhead used on Russia's anti-aircraft missile interceptors that is "designed to engage single and multiple air targets at altitudes of 7.5 kilometers . . . up to 40 kilometers."
The highly detailed information contained in the book on Russian missiles has raised questions among some U.S. national security officials and experts that Moscow is preparing to put its nuclear warhead and missile know-how up for sale.
One U.S. defense official said the book appears to be a "sales brochure" for Moscow's weapons exporters, who helped to produce the publication. The information also could be used by states like North Korea, Iran and Iraq to assist the development of their long-range missiles, the official said.
A copy of the book, "Russia's Arms and Technologies: The XXI Century Encyclopedia," was obtained by The Washington Times from its U.S. distributor, TommaX Inc., a New Jersey company that specializes in defense and aerospace technical data. The 511-page first volume on Strategic Nuclear Forces costs $495.
TommaX President Thomas J. Langan said the book provides a never-before look inside the Russian nuclear complex. "Some specific information has been released for the first time and will be very useful to our intelligence community," Mr. Langan said.
A Defense Intelligence Agency spokeswoman had no immediate comment on the book.
Russia's Defense Minister Marshal Igor Sergeyev stated in the introduction that the series on the Russian weapons will help boost exports of Russian arms and technology.
In addition to providing information about Russia's weapons systems and equipment, the series will show the "major directions of the Russia's military-technical policy at the beginning of the 21st century and its potentialities to export arms, military equipment and defense technologies," the defense minister said.
As for the strategic nuclear arsenal, Mr. Sergeyev stated that nuclear weapons still are needed after the Cold War because of new dangers, including the increasing number of countries with nuclear arms.
"Under these circumstances, Russia's nuclear weapons, strategic above all, continue to be the most important deterrent and strategic stability factor," he said.
Mr. Sergeyev did not say Moscow intends to sell nuclear weapons and equipment. However, he said conventional arms sales will continue. The book will "help Russia implement its new strategy in the field of military-technical cooperation with other countries," he said.
He made no mention of Russia's new nuclear doctrine that places a greater reliance on the use of nuclear weapons in conflicts because of the decline in conventional forces since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The book has new details on Russian nuclear command and control facilities, including mobile command posts, spy satellites and communications networks used to send orders to nuclear missile submarines.
It also contains diagrams that show the layout of nuclear missile submarines and mock-ups showing the placement of components inside missiles.
Facts about Russia's mobile missile launchers, including important specifications that could be useful in making copies, also are included.
The book reveals details about once-secret Russian nuclear research centers, and contains photographs of the remote arctic nuclear weapons test facility at Novaya Zemlya, where several secret tests were recently detected by U.S. intelligence agencies.
As for bombers, Russia's air-launched nuclear cruise missiles are shown and details about the characteristics of the missiles are included, as well as diagrams showing aerial refueling capabilities.
Nuclear storage facilities, bomb containers and their security systems also are shown, information that analysts say would be useful to saboteurs or thieves.
Henry Sokolski, a former Pentagon weapons proliferation specialist, said the book highlights the danger of spreading strategic nuclear weapons information to rogue states. "It is not just people pulling stuff down from the Internet or from the United States that people can learn about strategic weaponry or procedures for their use," said Mr. Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.
Russia has been identified by the CIA as a major proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and missile systems, including sales to China, Iran, Egypt, Libya and Syria.
---
Cohen in Moscow for Missile Defense Talks
Yahoo News
Monday June 12 11:10 AM ET
By Tabassum Zakaria
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000612/ts/russia_usa_dc_3.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Defense Secretary William Cohen arrived in Moscow Monday saying he aimed to learn more about a Russian-proposed alternative to U.S. anti-missile defense plans.
But shortly before his arrival, he said the Russian plan was ``vague'' and did not seem capable of facing a threat Washington believes could emerge within five years from long-range missile technology falling into the hands of ''rogue'' states like North Korea or Iraq.
Russia opposes a U.S. plan to build an umbrella-like shield to protect U.S. territory by shooting down incoming missiles in space, saying the system would violate the landmark 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and could start a new arms race.
Moscow has proposed an alternative plan to shoot down ''rogue'' missiles shortly after take-off, whatever their target.
But Washington has said Russia's alternative, the so-called theater missile defense (TMD), appears geared toward shorter-range missiles and not the type that could reach the United States or parts of Western Europe.
``I will try to find out more about their proposed NMD (national missile defense) system,'' Cohen said on the plane en route to Moscow from Stockholm.
``So far it's a very vague concept or idea which has no defined parameters and so it's hard for me to have a responsible comment on it until I know more about it,'' he said.
Cohen left the door open for some type of cooperative program with Russia on dealing with shorter-range missiles.
``We can look for ways to cooperate on joint projects,'' he said. ``We already have a number of projects underway working with our allies and we certainly could work with the Russians on TMD programs.''
``But based on what I've heard to date, this concept doesn't really effectively deal with the issue that we're confronting.''
Cohen To Make Recommendation In August
Cohen is due to make a recommendation in August to President Clinton on whether to move forward with the missile defense system, with Clinton to decide the next step later this year.
Cohen was scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev and Russian lawmakers on Tuesday, ending a week-long European visit during which he and Sergeyev discussed missile defense with NATO states in Brussels.
European allies have been concerned about the potential for a renewed arms race if the United States deploys its defense. Cohen said their views would be taken into account when Washington makes its decision.
``You cannot have an effective NMD system unless you have the cooperation of key allies,'' Cohen said. ``So their interest should be taken into account, which is one reason why I've spent so much time explaining our system to them,'' he said.
``We will continue to work with the allies, and if we can work with the Russians we will do so,'' Cohen said.
Sweden's Defense Minister Bjorn von Sydow said after a meeting with Cohen earlier Monday that any missile defense programs should be developed in the context of international agreements and treaties to avoid creating potential instability.
``All capabilities related to nuclear, to biological, and chemical warfare...we argue should be regulated in international regimes,'' von Sydow said. ``Otherwise...we can foresee a development of more instability.''
U.S. and Russian defense officials were also expected to discuss joint training to prepare peacekeepers for deployment to Kosovo, where Russian forces serve alongside NATO troops.
``We will look for areas of cooperation, understanding there are always going to be areas of dispute,'' Cohen said.
Monday evening he was to meet with Russian academics and intellectuals, including world chess champion Gary Kasparov.
---
Russia's Strategic Rocket Chief Against ABM Shield
Yahoo News
Sunday June 11 4:34 PM ET
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The commander of Russia's strategic missile forces said on Sunday that proposed new anti-missile defense shields could lead to ``nuclear anarchy,'' but acknowledged a system could be built with Washington if both sides agreed.
A senior defense ministry official, meanwhile, was quoted as saying that if Russia developed such a system it would not cover all of Europe or the United States and would be subject to conditions.
Strategic missile commander Colonel-General Vladimir Yakovlev said proposals to develop such systems, regulated by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, could only destabilize the international situation.
``Ideally, we would not like to develop an ABM system. Such a system incites other countries to develop their arsenals or try to circumvent the system,'' Yakovlev told RTR state television.
``This provides no stability for the world. On the contrary, it destabilizes the situation and leads to nuclear anarchy.''
Russian opposes U.S. plans to alter the ABM treaty and build a new anti-missile system which Washington says is aimed at ''rogue states'' like North Korea.
But President Clinton and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin agreed at summit talks last week to pursue contacts on the issue. Putin has proposed an alternative system, in concert with western Europe or NATO, to knock down missiles immediately after launch.
Yakovlev said Russia had the technological potential to proceed with its own anti-missile system, but its aims had to be clear and a political decision was required.
``We could work out the outlines of a system for a joint anti-missile system if such a political decision is taken,'' he said. ``But it must be directed only against a specific potential threat to either the territory of Russia or Europe.''
He said Russia recognized a threat from five to eight states ``on the brink'' -- meaning they were not far from acquiring nuclear capability -- but he declined to name them.
Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, head of the Defense Ministry's international relations department, said development of an anti-missile system would be time consuming and would not cover the entire territory of Russia or the rest of Europe.
He told RIA news agency that future consultations with NATO or other bodies had to assess the threats posed and which contributions to a joint system could be made by each partner.
``Radar systems could be completed on the basis of Western European or even U.S. technology and anti-aircraft systems linked with them could be Russian, even with some NATO components,'' he told RIA.
Such systems, he said, could cover peacekeeping missions and both civil and military sites, particularly if their destruction would cause harm to civilians.
Ivashov said China, which also opposes the U.S. plan, had nothing to fear from Putin's proposal.
``Our Chinese friends have no reason to fear that ideas advanced by Russia for a European ABM system could pose a threat to them and that Moscow is acting behind their backs,'' he said.
---
Russia's Strategic Rocket Chief Against ABM Shield
Russia Today
06/12/00
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=167986
MOSCOW, Jun 12, 2000 -- (Reuters) The commander of Russia's strategic missile forces said on Sunday that proposed new anti-missile defense shields could lead to "nuclear anarchy", but acknowledged a system could be built with Washington if both sides agreed.
A senior defense ministry official, meanwhile, was quoted as saying that if Russia developed such a system it would not cover all of Europe or the United States and would be subject to conditions.
Strategic missile commander Colonel-General Vladimir Yakovlev said proposals to develop such systems, regulated by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, could only destabilize the international situation.
"Ideally, we would not like to develop an ABM system. Such a system incites other countries to develop their arsenals or try to circumvent the system," Yakovlev told RTR state television.
"This provides no stability for the world. On the contrary, it destabilizes the situation and leads to nuclear anarchy."
Russian opposes U.S. plans to alter the ABM treaty and build a new anti-missile system which Washington says is aimed at "rogue states" like North Korea.
But U.S. President Bill Clinton and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin agreed at summit talks last week to pursue contacts on the issue. Putin has proposed an alternative system, in concert with western Europe or NATO, to knock down missiles immediately after launch.
Yakovlev said Russia had the technological potential to proceed with its own anti-missile system, but its aims had to be clear and a political decision was required.
"We could work out the outlines of a system for a joint anti-missile system if such a political decision is taken," he said. "But it must be directed only against a specific potential threat to either the territory of Russia or Europe."
He said Russia recognized a threat from five to eight states "on the brink" - meaning they were not far from acquiring nuclear capability - but he declined to name them.
Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, head of the Defense Ministry's international relations department, said development of an anti-missile system would be time consuming and would not cover the entire territory of Russia or the rest of Europe.
He told RIA news agency that future consultations with NATO or other bodies had to assess the threats posed and which contributions to a joint system could be made by each partner.
"Radar systems could be completed on the basis of Western European or even U.S. technology and anti-aircraft systems linked with them could be Russian, even with some NATO components," he told RIA.
Such systems, he said, could cover peacekeeping missions and both civil and military sites, particularly if their destruction would cause harm to civilians.
Ivashov said China, which also opposes the U.S. plan, had nothing to fear from Putin's proposal.
"Our Chinese friends have no reason to fear that ideas advanced by Russia for a European ABM system could pose a threat to them and that Moscow is acting behind their backs," he said.
---
Putin Challenges U.S. Fears, Denies Threat of Nuclear Rogue States
Russia Today
06/12/00
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=168223
HAMBURG, Jun 12, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Russian President Vladimir Putin denied Sunday there was nuclear threat from potential "rogue states" in the Middle East or Asia whose existence the U.S. has invoked to justify its controversial plan for an anti-missile shield.
In an interview with the newspaper Welt am Sonntag, Putin reiterated Moscow's opposition to the U.S. national missile defense system, saying it was a grave strategic miscalculation.
"The threat of missiles from 'problem countries' in the Middle East or in the Asian region invoked by the U.S. does not exist in principle, neither today nor in the near future," Putin said.
"The American position on a national missile defense system is a serious error of strategic calculation that could lead to an increase in the strategic threat to both the U.S. and Russia, as well as other states," he stressed.
Russia particularly objects to the 60-billion-dollar anti-missile system because it would breach the landmark Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), the cornerstone of arms control accords since its signature in 1972.
The American project "would lead to the destruction of the stable basis represented by the 1972 ABM accord," Putin said.
The U.S. wants to build a national missile defense system to confront the perceived threat posed by "rogue states" such as Iran and North Korea.
During a Moscow summit last week the two sides failed to agree on how to confront the threat posed by emerging nuclear powers.
Putin has vowed to rip up all arms control accords if Washington proceeds with the system without taking Moscow's security concerns into account.
"Russia is not seeking to become a world power," the Russian leader told Welt am Sonntag: "It is a world power."
The Russian leader said he would raise his own proposal of an anti-missile defense system during an official visit to Germany starting Wednesday.
Putin made a surprise proposal last Monday for a joint Russia-NATO missile defense system to protect Europe and Russia against an emerging ballistic missile threat.
"In this way a destruction of the balance of forces can be avoided and security for all European states ensured," he said Sunday.
Moscow claims the proposal would not violate the ABM treaty. But US Defense Secretary William Cohen objected to the Russian proposal, saying it apparently leave much of Europe and the U.S. defenseless against long-range missiles.
Asked in his interview about hopes of three Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to join NATO, Putin reiterated Moscow's warnings against the three former constituent republics of the Soviet Union joining the western alliance.
Eastward extension of NATO would not favor European stability, and would have "very serious consequences for the continent's entire security system," Putin said. ((c) 2000 Agence France Presse)
---
Russia again sounds warning against U.S. missile shield
Putin: 'Destruction of strategic stability'
MSNBC
06/12/00
MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
http://www.msnbc.com/news/419287.asp
June 11 - Russian leaders from President Vladimir Putin on down stepped up their warnings Sunday that a U.S. anti-missile defense shield could threaten disarmament pacts and pressed their call for a common system instead.
'The price (of a U.S. anti-missile shield) could be very high.' - VLADIMIR PUTIN President of Russia
PUTIN TOLD the Berlin newspaper Welt am Sonntag (The World on Sunday) in a written interview that the U.S. plan could "run the risk of entering a process that could lead to an unpredictable destruction of strategic stability."
"The price could be very high," he said. Putin called on Europe instead to support the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty, which President Bill Clinton wants to amend to allow the United States to build a limited space-based shield to intercept missiles launched by so-called rogue states, such as North Korea.
Putin's comments were part of an apparently coordinated public relations offensive by Moscow to rally European opposition to Clinton's plan.
In Moscow, the commander of Russia's strategic missile forces said Sunday that the proposed U.S. missile shield could lead to "nuclear anarchy," but, echoing Putin, he, too, said a system could be built with Washington if both sides agreed.
Col. Gen. Vladimir Yakovlev said the unilateral U.S. proposal could only destabilize the international situation. "Such a system incites other countries to develop their arsenals or try to circumvent the system," he said on RTR state television.
"This provides no stability for the world. On the contrary - it destabilizes the situation and leads to nuclear anarchy."
Yakovlev said that Russia has the technological potential to proceed with its own anti-missile system but that its aims had to be clear and that a political decision was required.
"We could work out the outlines of a system for a joint anti-missile system if such a political decision is taken," he said. "But it must be directed only against a specific potential threat to either the territory of Russia or Europe."
WOOING EUROPE
The Russian proposals came against the background of Putin's campaign to win support in Europe, which he has made a priority since taking office last month. He is touring major European states to rally European leaders against Clinton's plans; he first flew to Rome last week after meeting with Clinton in Moscow and will visit Spain and Germany this week.
Putin, who was a KGB officer in then-communist East Germany from 1984 to 1990, stressed the importance of Russia's ties with Germany ahead of his visit.
"In many ways, the shape of Europe in the 21st century will depend on cooperation between our two countries," he said. "Politicians in Moscow and Berlin are obliged to take history into consideration and promote the positive traditions in the Russian-German relationship."
Putin was more relaxed and straightforward in two German television interviews over the weekend, conducted in near-flawless German.
"There are no secrets here. I lived in Germany for five years," Putin told German public television Friday.
The Russian leader appears to be making headway in what some Western analysts say may be an attempt to drive a wedge between Berlin and Washington. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder this month issued a warning that Clinton's missile-shield plan risks rekindling a global arms race and weakening NATO.
EXPANSION OF NATO
In the Welt am Sonntag interview, Putin warned against expanding the NATO alliance, specifically criticizing proposals to admit the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.
"The eastward expansion of the organization would not be favorable for European stability," Putin said. "The expansion of NATO behind the former Soviet borders would create a completely new situation for Russia and Europe. It would have extremely serious consequences for the whole security system of the continent."
MSNBC.com's Alex Johnson and Reuters contributed to this story.
-------- spying
INFO -- Fed Spy and Military Intelligence (fwd)]
Report on Federal Anti-Activist Intelligence Network
By Frank Morales
Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 01:06:38 -0400
From: Chris Belcher - cbelcher@alchymedia.com
RENEGADE News_Service: http://fornits.com/renegade/
On May 4, 2000, the Intelligence Newsletter, based in Paris, France, published a report which stated that "sources close to the Washington DC Metropolitan Police have given Intelligence Newsletter details about intelligence units that gather information on anti-globalization militants in the US and elsewhere". (1) In addition, the same sources said that during the April 17 Break the World Bank DC protests, "reserve units from the US Army Intelligence and Security Command helped Washington police keep an eye on demonstrations staged at the World Bank/IMF meetings." In addition, the French intelligence service report notes that "the Pentagon sent around 700 men from the Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir to assist the Washington police on April 17, including specialists in human and signals intelligence. One unit was even strategically located on the fourth floor balcony in a building at 1919 Pennsylvania Avenue with a birds-eye view of most demonstrators."
According to the report, information on the protest movements is collected and stored by six Regional Information Sharing System (RISS) centers funded by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Assistance. Ostensibly these intelligence centers are set up to counter organized crime, drugs and terrorism but it takes no great stretch to comprehend how civil disobedience, once defined as a terrorist threat and/or criminal conspiracy would, or has become a target. According to the Intelligence Newsletter report, "the RISS also act against any political activist group deemed to be a threat and over the last year has found itself focusing on anti-globalization groups." In addition, the report notes that in order "to justify their interest in anti-globalization groups from a legal standpoint, the authorities lump them into a category of terrorist organizations. Among those considered as such at present are Global Justice (the group that organized the April 17 demonstration), Earth First, Greenpeace, American Indian Movement, Zapatista National Liberation Front and Act-Up." Although this story has yet to be verified, given the existence of RISS and the paranoid proclivities of the US national security state and its civil disturbance planning apparatus, we should assume the report is accurate.
According to RISS program documents (2), the agency is set up to "share intelligence and coordinate efforts against criminal networks that operate in many locations across jurisdictional lines." The program "serves more than 5,300 member law enforcement agencies" across the country including the FBI, DEA, IRS, Secret Service, Customs and the BATF. It is overseen by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, State and Local Assistance Division, 810 Seventh Street, NW, Washington, DC (202-305-2923). Its immediate overseer is the Institute for Intergovernmental Research (IIR), PO Box 12729, Tallahassee, Florida, (850-385-0600). The IIR also sponsors the State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training program (SLATT) which provides, via its "extremist research experts", "training and information to state and local law enforcement personnel in the areas of domestic anti-terrorism and extremist criminal activity." (3) The FBI's National Security Division Training Unit is a partner with IIR in providing SLATT training nationally.
According to a 1999 Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) report on RISS,the six federally funded Regional Information Sharing System centers are financed "to support law enforcement efforts to combat multi-jurisdictional criminal conspiracies and activities." (4) The six centers, the Middle Atlantic-Great Lakes Organized Crime Law Enforcement Network, Newtown, PA, the Mid-States Organized Crime Information Center, Springfield, MO, the New England State Police Information Network, Franklin, MA, the Rocky Mountain Information Network, Phoenix, AR, the Regional Organized Crime Information Center, Nashville, TN, and the Western States Information Network, Sacramento, CA, are set up in such a way that "each center's staff possess sufficient flexibility to tailor the individual center's priorities and operations to the particular- perhaps unique - needs of the region." According to the BJA report, the centers "maintain pools of specialized investigative equipment for loan to participating member agencies", including "photographic, communications (and) surveillance" equipment. In addition, "all six RISS Intelligence Centers have confidential funds available to member agencies for the purchase of investigative information, contraband, stolen property, and other items of an evidentiary natureThe net amount of confidential funds provided by the centers to member agencies totaled $265,526 for 1998."
According to the Intelligence Newsletter report cited earlier, it's the Mid-Atlantic Network, based in Newtown, Pennsylvania, whose region includes New York and the District of Columbia, that is particularly efficient in activist spy work. According to the report, that center "distributes intelligence on the groups to other police departments via RISSNET, enabling investigators to find links between the movements and look into their finances, telephone calls and membership lists." According to Mid-Atlantic Network documents, it was "initiated by the US Congress in 1974 to aid law enforcement agencies in targeting, identifying, and removing multi-jurisdictional criminal elements." The Network offers a "secure database containing information concerning known or suspected criminals, businesses, organizations and their related identifying information", along with "training in the seizure of computers." (5)
As mentioned earlier, the Intelligence Newsletter report claims that hundreds of Army intelligence operatives were present during the DC anti-World Bank demo. Again, with a premonition of tens of thousands of protesters, it is quite likely that the report is accurate. After all, one can rest assured that the Department of Defense Civil Disturbance Plan, code-named Garden Plot, is especially fixated on defending the seat of government (corporate) power in America. (6) That DC was flooded with intelligence operatives and assorted government spies is, lamentably, quite likely. The US Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), cited in the French report, is a "a major army command", which "conducts dominant intelligence, security and information operations for military commanders and national decision makers." (7) Based at Fort Belvoir, Flagler Road, Virginia, (the Nolan Building) since 1989, INSCOM recently redesignated a number of units including "the Continental United States Military Intelligence Group that supported the National Security Agency and a number of field stations."
According to military documents, during the course of the 90's, "INSCOM was drawn into contingency operations other than war all over the globe" These "contingency operations" or domestic military operations other than war, are law enforcement "support missions" in civil disturbance suppression. Quite possibly they are run out of the "Emergency Operations Center" at Fort Belvoir. These operations have been enhanced with the recent creation of the "National Ground Intelligence Center." Further, according to INSCOM, "the mission of the Special Security Group that had disseminated Sensitive Compartmented Information since World War II was drastically realigned. The unit was redesignated and resubordinated to the 902nd Military Intelligence Group." Some of this "sensitive" information is contained in so-called top secret SAP programs. In this regard, INSCOM is in the business of "providing counterintelligence support to the Army's growing number of Special Access Programs -- highly sensitive projects which required exceptional security measures." Actually, the gathering of intelligence during the DC protest involves an even higher source, given that "in 1993 the Secretary of Defense ordered service human intelligence assets consolidated under Defense Intelligence Agency control", at which time "INSCOM turned over most of its human intelligence operations"
* NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Feel free to distribute widely but PLEASE acknowledge the source.
*Regional Information Sharing Systems (RISS) Program, http://www.iir.com/riss/
State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training (SLATT) Program, http://www.iir.com/slatt/
Bureau of Justice assistance, The RISS Program, 1998, http://www.iir.com/Publications/RISSProgram1998.pdf
Middle Atlantic-Great Lakes Organized Crime Law Enforcement Network, http://www.iir.com/riss/magloclen/index.htm
Frank Morales, "US Military Civil Disturbance Planning The War at Home," CovertAction Quarterly #69, Spring/Summer 2000, http://www.covertaction.org/
US Army Intelligence and Security Command, http://www.vulcan.belvoir.army.mil/
-------- terrorism
CIA, FBI Say Iran Defector Is Impostor -Wash Post
Yahoo News
Sunday June 11 9:17 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An Iranian defector who said he could prove Iran was responsible for the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing has been exposed by the CIA and FBI as an impostor, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.
The man, who had given his name as Ahmad Behbahani and said he was a former Iranian intelligence officer, had told an associate producer of the ``60 Minutes'' CBS television program that he had documents showing Tehran was behind the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie.
Two Libyans have been on trial for the bombing -- which killed all 259 people on board and 11 on the ground -- since May 3 at a special Scottish court in the Netherlands.
But following debriefing sessions in Turkey, where the man is in protective custody, the CIA and FBI have concluded the 32-year-old defector is not Behbahani, the Post quoted a senior U.S. official as saying.
The man ``lacks basic knowledge of Iran's intelligence apparatus'' and ``has been lying about lots of stuff,'' said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The man's real identity had not been established, the newspaper said.
``He knows a few things, but nothing very much -- stuff that could have possibly come from somebody else,'' the official was quoted as saying. ``But when it comes to serious stuff that he should know, he comes up empty. He still has not provided anything that has led CIA and FBI folks to believe his story.''
The defector told the CBS producer that he had documents to prove Iran trained a group of Libyans to carry out the Lockerbie bombing.
The United States had said that while it stood by Scottish prosecutors trying the two Libyans for the bombing, it would fully assess the defector's claims.
Tehran has dismissed the charges, with Iranian Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi saying that no one named Ahmad Behbahani had ever worked for the country's intelligence service.
On Friday, Iran's former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, slammed the Western media as a ``mafia network'' out to tarnish Iran's image with false claims that Tehran was behind the Lockerbie bombing.
-------- ukraine
Kiev would have shut Chernobyl even without funds
UKRAINE : June 12, 2000
Story by Natalya Zinets
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=7071
KIEV - Ukraine, which has agreed to close the Chernobyl nuclear plant with Western financial aid, has said a lack of funds for repairs would have forced its closure by the end of 2000.
In the last six years, Ukraine has been locked in difficult talks with the West aimed at winning hundreds of millions of dollars in return for the closure of the troubled station.
But addressing a government meeting President Leonid Kuchma said Chernobyl would have had to be closed regardless of the Western aid.
"We would have been forced to halt (nuclear) energy block number three for capital repairs, and this would have required $158 million and a year and a half of work," Kuchma told the meeting, devoted to Ukraine's energy crisis.
Kuchma told visiting U.S. President Bill Clinton that Ukraine would close the station on December 15.
He conceded on Thursday that Chernobyl, located just 110 km (70 miles) north of the capital Kiev which has 2.6 million people, was no longer safe from a technological point of view.
"Should we have such a block near the capital - a block which was built on (technological) principles that are no longer recognised elsewhere in the world?" he said.
On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl's Soviet-designed reactor number four exploded, spewing tonnes of radioactive dust and contaminating vast territories in neighbouring Belarus, Russia and much of Europe.
A huge fire in October 1991 forced the closure of reactor number two, while reactor number one was halted in November 1996, after its safe lifespan expired.
Ukraine expects the West to provide funds to complete two replacement reactors at its Rivne and Khmelnitska power plants.
Different official sources estimate the set of measures needed to close Chernobyl and complete the replacement reactors at between $1.2 billion and $2 billion. They would be financed by the Group of Seven leading industrialised nations and the European Union.
Fourteen years after the Chernobyl accident, Ukraine still heavily relies on nuclear plants which generate over 40 percent of its electricity. Depending on the season, Chernobyl accounts for four to eight percent of all Ukrainian electricity output. UKRAINE Kiev would have shut Chernobyl even without funds
Natalya Zinets
KIEV - Ukraine, which has agreed to close the Chernobyl nuclear plant with Western financial aid, has said a lack of funds for repairs would have forced its closure by the end of 2000.
In the last six years, Ukraine has been locked in difficult talks with the West aimed at winning hundreds of millions of dollars in return for the closure of the troubled station.
But addressing a government meeting President Leonid Kuchma said Chernobyl would have had to be closed regardless of the Western aid.
"We would have been forced to halt (nuclear) energy block number three for capital repairs, and this would have required $158 million and a year and a half of work," Kuchma told the meeting, devoted to Ukraine's energy crisis.
Kuchma told visiting U.S. President Bill Clinton that Ukraine would close the station on December 15.
He conceded on Thursday that Chernobyl, located just 110 km (70 miles) north of the capital Kiev which has 2.6 million people, was no longer safe from a technological point of view.
"Should we have such a block near the capital - a block which was built on (technological) principles that are no longer recognised elsewhere in the world?" he said.
On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl's Soviet-designed reactor number four exploded, spewing tonnes of radioactive dust and contaminating vast territories in neighbouring Belarus, Russia and much of Europe.
A huge fire in October 1991 forced the closure of reactor number two, while reactor number one was halted in November 1996, after its safe lifespan expired.
Ukraine expects the West to provide funds to complete two replacement reactors at its Rivne and Khmelnitska power plants.
Different official sources estimate the set of measures needed to close Chernobyl and complete the replacement reactors at between $1.2 billion and $2 billion. They would be financed by the Group of Seven leading industrialised nations and the European Union.
Fourteen years after the Chernobyl accident, Ukraine still heavily relies on nuclear plants which generate over 40 percent of its electricity. Depending on the season, Chernobyl accounts for four to eight percent of all Ukrainian electricity output.
-------- us military
Litton Wins $30 Million U.S. Army III Corps and Ft. Hood Ranges Services Contract
Yahoo News
Monday June 12, 12:50 pm Eastern Time
Company Press Release
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000612/va_litton_.html
ARLINGTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 12, 2000--PRC, Inc., a subsidiary of Litton Industries (NYSE:LIT - news) announced today that it was awarded a $30 million contract by the U.S. Army for Operations and Maintenance (O&M) Services to the Range Complex at Fort Hood, Texas.
The O&M contract calls for Litton PRC to operate and maintain 10 major multi-use ranges, 60 smaller ranges, and training facilities such as the two Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) facilities. The facilities will operate 24 hours-a-day, seven days-a-week. This contract also includes operation and maintenance of all equipment and facilities for the live-fire range.
Litton PRC won this consolidated contract after an industry competition and a comparison against the Government's Most Efficient Organization requirements. The Government's OMB A-76 regulations require a contractor's proposal to be at least 10% more efficient than the Government proposal before an award goes to industry.
For the past 10 years, Litton PRC has provided live-fire range O&M support to III Corps and Fort Hood. During this period, PRC has operated and maintained gunnery ranges supporting M-1 Abrams tanks, M-2/3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and AH-64 Apache attack helicopters assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division and the 4th Infantry (Mechanized) Division. Over this period, Litton PRC has implemented several cost-saving O&M methodologies praised by its customers in regular contract reviews.
``We are proud Litton was chosen to continue providing range operations at Fort Hood,'' said Harry Halamandaris, Litton executive vice president and chief operating officer, Electronics and Information Systems. ``Over the last decade, the scope of Litton PRC's work at Fort Hood has expanded several times. We appreciate this most recent note of confidence which confirms the quality of PRC's past performance.''
The O&M services contract to the Range Complex at Fort Hood, Texas is one of several range support contracts won recently by Litton PRC. Others include the Navy East Coast Tactical Training Range Complex Contract with a potential value of $78 million and the NASA Sounding Rocket program reporting a potential value of approximately $300 million.
Litton PRC is a leading provider of scientific, engineering, and information technology-based solutions for public sector clients and is one of the divisions that comprise Litton's Information Systems Group (ISG). Litton PRC has achieved the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) capability maturity model (CMM) Level 5 rating, the highest software development process improvement level a company can earn. This rating indicates that Litton PRC has achieved an ``optimizing'' level of maturity, which translates to reduced risk for their customers. Litton ISG, headquartered in Woodland Hills, California, employs more than 9,200 in 150 offices nationwide, and is ranked as one of the Federal government's top 10 contractors. More information on Litton PRC may be obtained at Litton PRC's Web site (www.littonprc.com).
Litton is the largest builder of non-nuclear ships for the U.S. Navy and designs, builds, and overhauls surface ships for government and commercial customers worldwide. The company is a leading information technology (IT) contractor to the U.S. government and provides specialized IT services to commercial customers and government customers in local/foreign jurisdictions. Litton is a leading provider of defense and commercial electronics technology, components, and materials for customers worldwide. Headquartered in Woodland Hills, California, Litton has more than 40,000 employees and more than $5 billion in annual revenue. For more information, visit Litton's Web site at www.litton.com.
---
Warrior Spirit Put to the Test In Combat With New Twists
Washington Post
Monday , June 12, 2000 ; A01
By Roberto Suro Washington Post Staff Writer
http://washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=wpni/print&articleid=A39487-2000Jun11
FORT KNOX, Ky. -- To the jumpmasters' shouts of "Go! Go! Go!," 22 Army Ranger captains launch themselves into the night. Their parachutes open, and they float toward the rain-softened ground, expecting a mock battle to rescue American hostages in a fictitious African country.
Then the lights go on.
Instead of enemy troops, the first obstacle the elite young officers face in this training exercise is a bunch of television reporters who appear out of the bush and demand to know what U.S. special forces are doing in an African civil war.
Rangers are fond of describing themselves as "the tip of the spear," the vanguard for invasions since D-Day. Being able to lead a charge is still an important qualification for a Ranger officer, but this exercise is aimed at developing new skills for a new military era.
With characteristic Ranger bravado, it is called the Mangoday Warrior Exercise, after Genghis Khan's legendary cavalrymen who trained beyond exhaustion and fought without fear. Once a year, captains from the 75th Ranger Regiment go with little sleep or food for five days of grueling marches and mock battles. But they have to contend with more than just snipers, hunger and confusion. At Mangoday (pronounced mongo-day), Rangers who hope to command soldiers in real battles must learn to cope with reporters, diplomats and political crises.
"The Army needs leaders who have the warrior spirit, first and foremost--who can close on the enemy and destroy him--but who are also smart enough and conceptual enough to maneuver in a battlefield full of civilians, watched by the media, a battlefield where the rules of engagement are highly restrictive but the combat is brutal nonetheless," said Col. P.K. Keen, commander of the Ranger regiment.
"In the world of today, the Army needs to identify and keep leaders who can accomplish the objective without losing the war."
The Drone Zone
Throughout the exercise, an all-terrain ambulance shadows the 22 captains, and a doctor watches over them. The objective is not to break the men physically, but to force them to make decisions in conditions that approximate the stress of combat.
As soon as the Rangers assemble away from the glare of TV lights, Keen gives them a new set of orders. Their objective is a bridge eight miles away. It is about 10 p.m., and they are told to complete the march by 2 a.m.
Operating by committee, the captains spend nearly an hour picking a route and organizing themselves before setting out. Despite fast hiking up and down the steep Kentucky hills, they arrive at the bridge nearly 15 minutes late. Keen criticizes them later for accepting the orders without asking whether the deadline was arbitrary or significant because, for example, the bridge was going to be hit by an airstrike at 2 o'clock.
"They are still acting like a bunch of captains," Keen grumbles.
And, even though they have slept for only a few hours and each has received only half of a Meal Ready to Eat, the standard military field ration, they are still relatively fresh. Keen's next order goes a long way toward rectifying that. So far they've been hiking roads; now he directs them to bushwhack cross-country to another objective 10 miles away.
As they work their way out of a ravine through wet brush in the dark, Capt. Matt Seifert, tall and muscular enough to be a tight end in the NFL, admits: "I was talking to God coming up that hill."
The captains have spent an average of about 10 years in the Army, and most are around 30 years old. To become Ranger officers, they have gone through a rigorous selection process with seven or more applicants for each slot. After three or four years as Rangers, they will be rotated back into regular Army units to spread the benefit of their training.
Keen says Ranger captains typically are in the top 2 percent of all officers at their grade, and they are considered promising material for future commands. But like all captains, thus far they have spent their careers carrying out orders rather than originating them. At Mangoday, there is no rigid hierarchy. They are all peers, and Keen constantly shuffles who is in charge.
It takes until midday Wednesday for the Rangers to reach a cemetery where they are to meet a soldier playing the part of a Marine guard from the U.S. embassy in the imaginary African capital. Two days ago, in civilian clothes, they looked like Olympic athletes. Now their pace has slowed. The combat camouflage on their faces is smeared with sweat, and their eyes are glassy.
The captains spend an hour questioning the Marine guard, then set up a perimeter on a ridge to await orders to evacuate the embassy. The afternoon sun and the breezeless forest air push several of the men into the "drone zone," a Ranger term for sleepwalking. They are startled out of the trance by gunfire from at least two directions.
They had been warned that an "OpFor," or opposition force--actually a contingent of Marines--was in the area. After the first volley of the ambush, at least one of the Rangers is cursing as sensors on his camouflage uniform emit a nasty whine, electronically announcing that he's been hit by an OpFor soldier firing a laser and noisy blanks.
The patrol leader of the moment shouts an order for a machine gun to come forward, and up sprints Capt. John Paganini, who at 5 foot 3 and 145 pounds is by far the smallest of the Rangers but insists on carrying the largest weapon, the 28-pound M-240B machine gun. With defiant howls, Paganini lays suppressing laser bursts on a cluster of trees where muzzle flashes have been spotted. Meanwhile, a squad of captains runs into the woods to flank the assailants.
When the OpFor is in a cross-fire, the Rangers stand and charge through the underbrush. Within a minute the forest is filled with the scream of laser alarms. Three Rangers use keys attached to their weapon barrels to silence the devices and pull an index card from their pockets describing the wounds they have suffered. Using real medical supplies, other captains administer first aid, then call for a helicopter evacuation. The wounded are carried to a clearing where Keen declares them restored to full health.
The Big Army
Spared both peacekeeping missions abroad and routine garrison duty at home, the Army's 2,200 Rangers constantly train for their specialty--going on the attack. One of the three Ranger battalions is always on alert for deployment within 18 hours.
While kept at the ready, the Rangers have not had much work recently. The last invasion they spearheaded was of Panama in 1990, and the last time they saw combat was in 1993 in Somalia, where 18 American soldiers died in a single day of fighting with militiamen.
"I'm living for a chance to fight," said Paganini, a 1992 West Point graduate who has yet to go overseas on a major deployment, let alone see combat. "I realize that most people do 30 years without hearing a shot fired in anger, but I've got to believe it is out there for me."
With such frustrations and a booming civilian economy, the rate of attrition among Army captains has nearly doubled in the past decade. To many of the Rangers, Mangoday embodies the mix of machismo, tradition and challenge that keeps them in uniform--for now.
"It is times like this, when you get to train hard and test yourself . . . that make it worthwhile," said Capt. Roy Zinser, who has seen roughly half of his West Point classmates resign their commissions. "It's that challenge, and the sense of service and the mission, that keep you in the Army when you have friends that are dropping out for big-dollar jobs. You get that reward that makes you stay when you are in the Rangers, but it is hard to come by in the big Army."
The "big Army" is what Rangers call the rest of the service, sometimes with a hint of disdain.
At dusk, after more tangles with the OpFor and less dramatic encounters with ticks and poison ivy, the Rangers are ordered to move into the embassy and evacuate the Americans. The mock embassy is part of a facility for training in "Military Operations in Urban Terrain"--otherwise known as house-to-house fighting. Opened this spring, the site at Fort Knox has large buildings, rows of houses, alleyways and streets all wired for videotaping, sound effects and pyrotechnics. There are cars that explode into flame on command and even a small bridge that will turn to rubble and cut off a lane of retreat.
In the post-Cold War era, urban fighting has become a preoccupation for the U.S. military because it is difficult, costly and ever more common. For the Rangers it has been an obsession since their bloody sojourn in the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, nearly seven years ago. In this kind of combat, the Army has learned, small units often find themselves isolated, and leaders must be prepared to improvise.
Col. Larry Lewis, a psychologist from Special Operations Command, which oversees the Rangers, Navy SEALS and other U.S. special forces, has made extensive use of a psychological test originally developed for athletes. The Mangoday captains score high for competitiveness and self-confidence but low for impulsiveness and introspection; they concentrate on executing plans rather than considering how best to achieve an objective.
"They are just at the stage where they need the encouragement of exercises like Mangoday to start breaking out of the box," Lewis said. "They have it in them. It's a matter of whether they stick it out until the Army starts rewarding them for being conceptual thinkers."
The Ambassador
When it comes time for the Mangoday captains to begin urban warfare, Keen puts Paganini, 33, in charge. And with his designated squad leaders gathered around him in the woods about a mile from the mock city, the Brooklyn-born Paganini lays out a simple plan: "We are going to fight our way in, take the building, secure the Amcits [American citizens], secure the LZ [landing zone] and disappear into the night."
His colleagues are enthused but raise questions. What if the enemy has taken over the embassy and they have to fight their way through dozens of rooms?
"I don't care if there are 700 rooms in this embassy, you get me the first room and I can win from there," Paganini replies.
Another captain, who has scouted the area, notes that Paganini's plan is to attack from the rear of the building, which means they will have to cross difficult terrain. "It absolutely sucks," he warns.
Paganini considers for a moment, thanks his colleague and then says with deadly seriousness: "Pass the word to your boys that it is going to suck, absolutely suck." He then orders the patrol to move out.
More than 48 hours since they received their last rations, the dazed Rangers struggle across a hillside so steep that rocks knocked loose by their boots careen down into the trees. It takes them half an hour to travel the last quarter mile, but they arrive undetected at the back wall of the embassy.
Laying down smoke grenades and covering fire, the captains burst into the building from two sides while OpFor troops snipe at them from across the street. Inside, however, they find more than they expected. Hysterical civilians, intrepid television crews and an angry ambassador--all role players--converge on the Rangers at once. A Marine guard lies severely wounded in a back room, the realism heightened by copious chicken meat and fake blood. Before the captains can begin to sort out the situation, the OpFor launches an attack.
"I want to talk to Madeleine Albright or Wes Clark, right now, right here, on your radio," shouts the ambassador, referring to the secretary of state and the recently reassigned U.S. commander in Europe. "I don't deal with captains."
Outside, a mortar barrage lands on the building. The ambassador adds, "I just want you to know Wes was my roommate at Oxford."
For the next five hours the Rangers are presented with unrelenting chaos. Another wounded Marine lies across the street and must be rescued. The leader of the rebels wants to parlay with the ambassador. A member of the embassy staff has dysentery. The news media are constantly demanding information.
The ambassador, played by the regiment's Yale-educated intelligence officer, harangues the Rangers constantly. At one point, when he tries to negotiate with the rebels outside, a captain wrestles with the ambassador to keep him from exposing himself to gunfire.
"This sucks," says Paganini. "This is not what I signed up to do. I shoot people. I'll do all this stuff when I am a general."
As the Rangers approach a state of sensory overload, Keen whispers into his radio mike. A few minutes later the OpFor launches an all-out assault, and some of the enemy make it through the front doors of the embassy before being driven off.
By 1 a.m. the lobby of the embassy is filled with so much smoke from gunfire and grenades that throats go raw and eyes sting. The floor is slippery with shell casings. Everywhere there is the whine of laser sensors marking casualties. Within minutes, the ambassador announces that he wants to leave. The civilians and the media join the demand for immediate evacuation. The Rangers have to fight their way through the town to reach a helicopter landing zone but are happy to see their meddlesome charges fly away.
Offering a congratulatory present of sorts, Keen orders the captains to assault rebel headquarters. It's nearly 3 a.m., but this is pure fun: With a diversionary feint and simultaneous attacks from two directions, the Rangers finally destroy the OpFor. Then, just before dawn, they are off to a theater-sized conference room for an after-action review.
Keen and the other supervising officers critique the confusion at the embassy, where the Rangers failed to devise an efficient division of labor. Pointed comments center on their handling of the ambassador. They are warned that in a real-life situation an ambassador would call the shots; but they get credit for not losing their tempers despite all his goading.
The second-guessing continues for an hour and a half, and the participants frequently stand up and walk around the room so they will not fall asleep. Finally, Keen wraps up: "I tried to rattle people, but they did not shake."
By noon the captains are in a barracks at Fort Knox with time to kill before heading back to Ranger headquarters at Fort Benning, Ga., for a celebratory dinner.
Hungry and too wired to rest, some decide to head for a Taco Bell a few blocks away. But before going out in public, they clean their weapons, shave, then shine their boots.
---
More soldiers are committing suicide
USA Today
06/12/00- Updated 02:45 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsmon09.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Soldier suicides are on the rise.
In hopes of rallying his troops to confront this sensitive issue, the Army chief of staff has issued an unusually public - and deliberately blunt - call for commanders to take the offensive.
''We have a serious problem with suicides,'' Gen. Eric K. Shinseki wrote in a message published in the latest issue of Soldiers, an Army magazine. The matter is urgent, he said. ''We must take better care of our people.''
Official statistics do not indicate any general increase in suicides for the military as a whole, although the Army says its suicide rate has gone up the past two years, to one of the highest levels since the 1970s.
In the first five days of 2000, the Army had four suspected suicides, Shinseki said.
The Army is taking steps to ''fine tune'' its approach to suicide prevention, said Lt. Col. Glen Bloomstrom, the family ministry officer for the Army chief of chaplains. Shinseki's plea is part of that new push, he said in an interview.
The Army last year had 65 confirmed suicides and 12 deaths suspected to be suicides, a rate of 15.5 suicides per 100,000 soldiers. That rate climbed for the second year in a row and is the highest among the services; only twice before over the past two decades was the Army's rate higher.
The Marine Corps last year had a rate of 15 suicides per 100,000 service members, the Navy's was 11 and the Air Force was at 5.6.
The actual number of military suicides may not seem large, considering that the active-duty force now stands at 1.3 million. But suicides over the past 10 years have been the second-leading cause of death, after accidents.
During that time, about 10 times as many troops have died at their own hand as from hostile fire.
A Pentagon-sponsored study in 1997, triggered by the shocking suicide of the Navy's top officer, Adm. Mike Boorda in May 1996, said it was not clear whether life in the military carries unique risks of suicide. Indeed suicide rates in the military traditionally have been slightly lower than in the civilian population.
On the other hand, some aspects of the military culture may inhibit some who need help from seeking it, according to Dr. John F. Mazzuchi, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for clinical policy.
''The military is a macho institution,'' he said in an interview. ''There is the perception that if I let them know I'm weak they won't want me around.''
It is that stigma which the Army hopes to eliminate, following an approach taken by the Air Force in recent years.
The Air Force has put extra emphasis on encouraging people who may be prone to suicide to seek help on their own and on creating a ''buddy'' system in which co-workers who identify danger signs in a colleague refer that individual for counseling.
The Air Force alone among the services has managed to significantly lower its suicide rate, which stood at 15.2 per 100,000 service member as recently as 1996. Mazzuchi and others say it is not clear, however, what accounts for that success.
''There are two questions: Why, and can they sustain it?'' said Navy Capt. Frances Stewart of the Pentagon's health affairs office.
The Army is trying to emulate the Air Force's success, in part by attacking the stigma problem. Shinseki wants to get the word out to commanders that erasing the stigma is their responsibility.
''To be effective, you must be willing to stand before your soldiers and tell them with sincerity that it takes a strong, courageous person to admit to having emotional problems and seek help for suicidal feelings,'' the Army says in a new booklet, ''Suicide Prevention: Could I Have Done More?''
There is some evidence to support the notion that Army commanders are not in tune with the problem.
An internal Army paper last summer described in general terms the findings of ''psychological autopsies'' of five suicides - analyses of the personal and psychological conditions under which the suicides happened.
The report found that one soldier had attempted suicide several times previously; two others had talked about committing suicide, including one who had been treated at a psychiatric ward several times.
In only one the five cases - the soldier who had been treated - did their superiors suspect a problem, the analyses found.
Statistically, the typical military suicide is committed by a white male in the upper levels of the enlisted ranks. Frequently the person has suffered a recent breakup of a marriage or other close personal relationship, and often alcohol or personal financial problems are involved, Mazzuchi said.
Among the military occupations at highest risk for suicide: Army infantryman, Marine small-arms technician, Navy seamen recruit, and law enforcement specialists in all services, according to a recent analysis by Stewart.
---
Northrop Grumman to Sell Aerostructures Unit to Carlyle Group
New York Times
June 12, 2000
By CAROLYN KOO NYTimes.com/TheStreet.com, 5:45 p.m.
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/12tsc-grumman.html
U.S. defense contractor Northrop Grumman has agreed to sell its commercial aerostructures business, which makes airplane parts, to private investment firm The Carlyle Group for $843 million in cash and securities.
The move is part of Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman's efforts to consolidate its business and focus purely on defense electronics and information technology.
Under the terms of the agreement, Washington, D.C.-based Carlyle will also assume more than $400 million in employee health benefits, bringing the deal's total value to $1.2 billion. The transaction is expected to close in about 30 days.
The aerostructures business is the largest supplier of aircraft structures to Boeing , the world's biggest maker of commercial jets and the No. 1 aerospace company. Carlyle, which has an aerospace/defense portfolio with over $4 billion in revenue, will rename its commercial aerostructures business Vought Aircraft.
Northrop Grumman -- which supplies missile systems for the U.S. Air Force's B-2 Stealth bomber planes -- now expects revenue for 2000 to be restated at $7.6 billion, because of the reduction of about $1.2 billion in recorded and projected sales for the aerostructures unit. The company also expects the deal to have no effect on its expected earnings for fiscal 2000 of $9.30 to $9.60 a share.
However, $70 million required to restructure and relocate its integrated systems and aerostructures unit without the commercial aerostructures business may reduce fiscal 2000 earnings per share by about 50 cents a share. "This EPS estimate may be revised following the close of the transaction to reflect the gain or loss from the sale and any impact on pension income," the company said in a statement.
Back in April, Northrop Grumman said that it was looking into "strategic alternatives" for the business.
Separately, Northrop Grumman said it will buy Comptek Research, a designer of electronic defense systems, for about $155.6 million in stock.
Northrop will pay around $20.75 of its shares for each share of Comptek. Northrop will not pay more than 0.2804 a share or less than 0.2470 a share for Comptek. Comptek, based in Buffalo, N.Y., retains the right to terminate the deal, should shares of Northrop Grumman be less than $74 before the transaction closes.
The deal is expected to close in 60 days and should not change Northrop Grumman's earnings expectations for fiscal 2000.
Northrop Gruman closed down 4 1/4, or 5 percent, at 75 3/8.
---
OBITUARIES
Washington Post
Monday, June 12, 2000; Page B06
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-06/12/058l-061200-idx.html
J. William Grady
Intelligence Analyst
J. William Grady, 81, a retired Army Department intelligence analyst who worked as a consultant after his civil service career, died of cancer May 18 at his home in Bethesda.
Mr. Grady, who served in the Navy during World War II and the Korean War, spent the early part of his civil service career with the Office of Naval Intelligence, which included assignments in Frankfurt, Germany.
In the 1960s, he was a staff officer with the strategic reconnaissance branch of the collection division of the office of an Army assistant chief of staff. He retired from the Army Department in the 1970s.
Mr. Grady was born in Newport, R.I., and was an engineering graduate of George Washington University. He entered the Navy in 1940 and was commissioned a year later. He attended Mine Warfare School in Yorktown, Va. His World War II service included being a mine disposal expert at Pearl Harbor shortly after the Japanese attack. He later worked on minefields off Florida and with explosives in the Philippines. He retired from the Navy reserve as a commander in 1963.
He was a member of the Military Order of the World Wars, the Military Order of the Carabao, the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Association, the American Legion and the Elks.
His first wife, Jeanette Grady, died in 1987. Survivors include his wife, Martha C. Grady of Bethesda; two sons from his first marriage, J. William Grady Jr. of Washington and R. Michael Grady of Damascus; a brother, Raymond J., of Bethesda; a sister; four grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
-------- us nuc facilities
OBITUARIES
Washington Post
Monday, June 12, 2000; Page B06
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-06/12/058l-061200-idx.html
NRC Official
William G. Dooly Jr., 81, a retired Nuclear Regulatory Commission special projects branch chief who also had worked for a trade group and operated his own antique business, died June 8 at Frederick Memorial Hospital after a heart attack. He lived in Frederick.
From 1945 to 1964, he worked for Associated General Contractors of America, where he became editor of its publication, the Constructor. In 1964, he joined the Atomic Energy Commission as a reports officer in the office of its regulation director. He retired from the NRC, a successor agency of the AEC, in 1981.
He and his wife had operated Grey Goose Antiques from their home in Clarksville from 1974 until retiring to Frederick in 1992. Mr. Dooly also wrote two books, "Fifty Years of Suburban Banking" and "Great Weapons of World War I."
He had done volunteer work at the Frederick Memorial Hospital gift shop and had been active in the Boy Scouts. He was a member of the National Press Club and the American Legion. His hobbies included bridge and Scrabble.
Mr. Dooly, who came to the Washington area during World War II, was born in Georgia and raised in Alabama. He was a 1940 English graduate of Birmingham Southern College and served with the Navy in the Pacific during World War II.
He worked briefly as a copy editor at The Washington Post before joining General Contractors.
Survivors include his wife of 58 years, Rozanne Greene Dooly of Frederick; two sons, William III, of Purcellville, and Richard, of Germantown; four daughters, Patricia Engleman of Albuquerque, Nancy White of Gaithersburg, Louise Runion of Clarksville and Cathryn Dooly of Butler, Pa.; and nine grandchildren.
-------- idaho
Smaller N-reactors promoted
Scientist says lead-cooled N-plants ideal for developing countries
Jennifer Langston
Seattle Post Register,
June 12, 2000
http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=061200&ID=s814109&cat=
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho -- It's probably fair to say few nuclear engineers have seriously thought about using reactors to make tofu.
But Eric Loewen, an Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory engineer working on a new generation of lead-cooled reactors, has a broad vision of what they could do for the world.
He'd love to design small nuclear reactors that would bring more than electricity to developing countries.
The power plants could produce clean drinking water in the Third World, using gamma rays to kill bacteria. Instead of releasing waste heat into the environment, it might be diverted to help a local business make tofu.
Those kinds of partnerships could build trust in the plant, he said, with local people acting as independent overseers to make sure it runs properly.
"The next generation should really be aimed to do more for the community than make electricity," said Loewen. "These are the things I think nuclear engineers and the white lab coats need to be thinking about."
Loewen, who began working at the INEEL last July, is researching how to prevent corrosion in a new generation of lead-cooled nuclear reactors.
The reactors would be smaller, cheaper, safer and would produce less waste than the ones operating today. They might not be politically palatable in this country, but other parts of the world may invest in improved nuclear reactors.
"You could put one in the Third World and burn it for 15 years without refueling," Loewen said.
Liquid lead has several advantages over water, which has traditionally been used as a coolant in this country's commercial power plants.
Lead is much denser, which means you can make the reactor smaller while removing the same amount of heat from the radioactive core to make electricity. The metal also makes a better radiation shield.
Neutrons also move much faster in lead than in water. For starters, that means the fuel in the reactor core would last much longer. It would also allow the splitting of radioactive elements in spent nuclear fuel at the same time.
"The neat thing about lead is that the neutrons bounce around a lot," he said. "Because of that, you can put old nuclear waste in there and burn it up."
Metal-cooled reactors aren't new, although almost no research has been done in this country with lead since the 1950s. But liquid lead has its own flaw, which Loewen is trying to overcome. It eats away the metal pipes or vessels that it flows through.
"The lynchpin of the whole thing is corrosion," he said. "It's still not really licked."
(feel safer now?)
-------- new mexico
Los Alamos Nuclear Secrets Missing
Associated Press
June 12, 2000 Filed at 5:07 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Missing-Secrets.html
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/1lab06-12-00.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Computer-held nuclear secrets stored in a vault at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have disappeared, prompting a top-level investigation, laboratory and Energy Department officials disclosed Monday.
Officials learned of the missing secrets and other sensitive material on June 1 and have not ruled out the possibility that the disappearance of the data is related to the forest fire that threatened the lab and forced its evacuation last month.
``This is an extremely serious matter, and we are taking swift actions to deal with it,'' said John Browne, director of the federal weapons research lab in New Mexico. The laboratory was embroiled in an espionage controversy involving a former lab scientists for much of last year.
The scientist, Wen Ho Lee, was arrested in December for misuse of secret nuclear data and awaits trial. Although under investigation for three years in connection with the alleged loss of U.S. nuclear secrets to China, Lee has not been charged with espionage.
Ed Curran, director of the Energy Department's counterintelligence office, said there is no indication espionage is involved in the latest disappearance.
``At this point there is no evidence that suggests espionage is involved in this incident,'' Curran said.
The secret material was contained in hard drives and discs in containers in a vault in Los Alamos' most highly classified area, the so-called ``X Division,'' where designers of nuclear weapons do their work. Sources said the empty containers were found inside the vault.
Additional details about the nuclear material was not immediately available.
``Officials are conducting an exhaustive search of computers, safes, containers and vaults and have interviewed all staff members who had access to the vault where the media (nuclear materials) were stored,'' the laboratory said in a news release.
When the loss was discovered, the Energy Department's new security chief, retired Air Force Gen. Eugene Habiger, went to Los Alamos and directed an intensive search of but did not find the material, said officials who spoke on condition they would not be identified further.
The possibility has not been ruled out that the material disappeared during the turmoil that surrounded the evacuation of the Los Alamos laboratory, when the facilities were threatened by the massive wild fire that destroyed much of the community of Los Alamos and parts of the lab itself.
The disappearance of the documents also was being investigated by the FBI and the University of California, Berkeley, which manages the weapons laboratory for the Energy Department.
Browne said in a statement that ``certain and appropriate'' disciplinary action would be taken ``if the inquiry reveals that individuals did not fulfill their responsibilities'' in safeguarding the material.
It's not clear when the material was first discovered missing, although the incident was reported to the Energy Department on June 1.
The investigation and search for the material has become more difficult because many of the lab's scientists left the area last month because of the wild fires that swept the region. The lab itself was evacuated May 10 for five days. Officials repeatedly have said that all nuclear material was safeguarded and not threatened by the fires.
``Our inquiry has been conducted during a period in which employees are still recovering from the effects of a major emergency disaster,'' Habiger said in a statement. ``Part of the laboratory's rigorous process for resuming operations has included a look at the physical integrity of all its buildings and security systems.''
Habiger could not be reached for comment.
---
Secret Nuclear Weapons Data Missing From Los Alamos Lab
New York Times
June 12, 2000
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/12cnd-intel.html
WASHINGTON, June 12 -- Investigators at Los Alamos National Laboratory have discovered that computer hard drives containing nuclear weapons data and other highly sensitive material stored in a vault at the laboratory have disappeared, according to several United States Government officials.
The hard drives were stored in locked containers inside a vault in the nuclear weapons division of the national laboratory. Officials reported that the hard drives were missing on June 1 after officials went to search for them following the forest fires in the area. The containers remained in the vault, but the hard drives were gone.
The material, stored in the vault of the laboratory's X Division, where nuclear weapons are designed, contained what officials described as nuclear weapons data used by the government's Nuclear Emergency Search Team, or NEST, which responds to nuclear accidents and nuclear-related threats from terrorists. The material includes all the data on American nuclear weapons that the team needs to render nuclear devices safe in emergencies.
In addition, the missing material included intelligence information concerning the Russian nuclear weapons program, law enforcement officials said.
Eugene E. Habiger, a retired Air Force general who heads the Energy Department's office of security and emergency operations, conducted an intensive search and investigation at Los Alamos but did not find the data, officials said. He has written a secret report on the matter, and the F.B.I. has been brought in to assist with the investigation. Officials said they remained uncertain whether the data has been misplaced or stolen.
"This is an extremely serious matter and we are taking swift actions to deal with it," the Los Alamos laboratory director John Browne said in a statement. "If the inquiry reveals that individuals did not fulfill their responsibilities with respect to this matter they will face certain and appropriate disciplinary actions."
Edward Curran, the director of the Energy Department's office of counter-intelligence, said in another statement this afternoon that "at this point there is no evidence that suggests espionage is involved in this incident."
General Habiger stressed that the forest fire has slowed the investigation. "Our inquiry has been conducted during a period in which employees are still recovering from the effects of a major emergency disaster, the fire," he said in a statement. "Part of the laboratory's rigorous process for resuming operations has included a look at the physical integrity of all its buildings and security systems."
Officials said that the disappearance of the nuclear weapons data represents a major embarrassment for a laboratory that has already spent the past year under scrutiny for lax security in connection with the Wen Ho Lee case. Dr. Lee was a scientist at Los Alamos who was fired in March 1999 for security violations after being the subject of a counter-intelligence investigation that looked into evidence that China had stolen American nuclear secrets.
Dr. Lee was never charged with espionage, but after he was dismissed, investigators accused him of downloading and copying vast amounts of secret nuclear weapons data from a secure computer at Los Alamos into an unclassified computer network and onto portable tapes. Dr. Lee was arrested last December on charges of mishandling classified material, and is now in jail awaiting trial. He is contesting the charges.
The discovery of Dr. Lee's unauthorized downloads last April prompted Energy Secretary Bill Richardson to order a shutdown of the lab's computer systems, while mandating security training sessions for Los Alamos employees. Congress later passed legislation creating a new nuclear weapons agency within the Energy Department to oversee Los Alamos and the nation's other nuclear weapons laboratories.
Gen. John A. Gordon of the Air Force, who has been serving as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has been nominated to head the new National Nuclear Security Administration.
The new security breach is believed to have occurred long after Dr. Lee was dismissed, officials said.
Energy Department officials said they notified the F.B.I. as soon as they discovered that the material was missing. But some law enforcement officials say that officials at the lab downplayed the fact that the data was missing from the vault, and assumed that the hard drives would turn up somewhere else in the lab. The officials are said to have assumed that the material was in use somewhere in the lab by Los Alamos scientists. But an extensive search has failed to turn up the data. Officials say that some employees have already been interviewed in connection with the disappearance, and some of them will be asked to take polygraph exams this week.
The fact that the missing data included intelligence reports has led law enforcement officials to become skeptical that the material was simply misplaced.
One senior energy department official stressed that it is too soon to determine if the disappearance is anything more than an internal foul-up. The fact that many lab employees dispersed around the country after the forest fire has complicated the investigation. "This could still be a situation where the hard drives could be misplaced or lost in the labs," the official said. "In my opinion it is premature to call this a security breach."
---
Los Alamos Lab Says Nuclear Weapons Secrets Missing
Reuters
June 12, 2000 Filed at 5:11 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-crime-nuclear-dc.html
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (Reuters) - U.S. and Russian nuclear secrets stored on hard drives at the Los Alamos National Laboratory are missing from a vault there, the New York Times said on Monday.
Laboratory director John Browne confirmed that electronic classified information was missing but declined to give details. He said that the FBI and investigators from the Department of Energy, which operates the world-famous nuclear facility with the university of California, were hunting for it.
``This is an extremely serious matter and we are taking swift actions to deal with it,'' Browne said in a statement.
Ed Curran, Director of the Department of Energy's Office of Counterintelligence, said, ``At this point there is no evidence that suggests espionage is involved in this incident.''
The Times, in a Washington-datelined report on its Web site, said the hard drives were missing when investigators searched for them after a wildfire threatened the facility. The disappearance was reported to officials in Washington on June 1.
The hard drives were stored in locked containers in a vault in the laboratory's X Division, where nuclear weapons are designed, the Times reported.
The paper added that the hard drives contained nuclear weapons data used by the government's Nuclear Emergency Search Team, which responds to nuclear accidents and threats from terrorists.
The paper said the missing material also included information about the Russian nuclear weapons program.
The Times said the Energy Department's new security czar, Eugene Habiger, conducted an exhaustive search and investigation at Los Alamos but did not find the data, according to officials, and that he had written a secret report on the matter.
It was not immediately known if the hard drives were misplaced or stolen, the paper said.
Browne said a major effort was under way to find the missing electronically-stored data and it was not known if they were just misplaced, stolen or inadvertently destroyed.
``If the inquiry reveals that individuals did not fulfill their responsibilities with respect to this matter, they will face certain and appropriate disciplinary actions,'' Browne said.
---
Nuclear secrets missing from Los Alamos
USA Today
06/12/00- Updated 06:05 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/ndsmon04.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Computer-held nuclear secrets stored in a vault at the Los Alamos National Laboratory have disappeared, prompting a top-level investigation, laboratory and Energy Department officials disclosed Monday.
Officials learned of the missing secrets and other sensitive material on June 1 and have not ruled out the possibility that the missing data are related to the forest fire that threatened the lab and forced its evacuation last month.
''This is an extremely serious matter, and we are taking swift actions to deal with it,'' said John Browne, director of the federal weapons research lab in New Mexico. The laboratory was embroiled in an espionage controversy involving a former lab scientist for much of last year.
The scientist, Wen Ho Lee, was arrested in December for misuse of secret nuclear data and awaits trial. Although under investigation for three years in connection with the alleged loss of U.S. nuclear secrets to China, Lee has not been charged with espionage.
Ed Curran, director of the Energy Department's counterintelligence office, said there is no indication espionage is involved in the latest disappearance.
''At this point there is no evidence that suggests espionage is involved in this incident,'' said Curran.
The secret material was contained in hard drives and discs in containers in a vault in Los Alamos' most highly classified area, the so-called ''X Division,'' where designers of nuclear weapons do their work. Sources said the empty containers were found inside the vault.
Additional details about the nuclear material was not immediately available.
''Officials are conducting an exhaustive search of computers, safes, containers and vaults and have interviewed all staff members who had access to the vault where the media (nuclear materials) were stored,'' the laboratory said in a news release.
When the loss was discovered, the Energy Department's new security chief, retired Air Force Gen. Eugene Habiger, went to Los Alamos and directed an intensive search of but did not find the material, said officials who spoke on condition they would not be identified further.
The possibility has not been ruled out that the material disappeared during the turmoil that surrounded the evacuation of the Los Alamos laboratory, when the facilities were threatened by the massive wild fire that destroyed much of the community of Los Alamos and parts of the lab itself.
The disappearance of the documents also was being investigated by the FBI and the University of California, Berkeley, which manages the weapons laboratory for the Energy Department.
Browne said in a statement that ''certain and appropriate'' disciplinary action would be taken ''if the inquiry reveals that individuals did not fulfill their responsibilities'' in safeguarding the material.
It's not clear when the material was first discovered missing, although the incident was reported to the Energy Department on June 1.
The investigation and search for the material has become more difficult because many of the lab's scientists left the area last month because of the wild fires that swept the region. The lab itself was evacuated May 10 for five days. Officials repeatedly have said that all nuclear material was safeguarded and not threatened by the fires.
''Our inquiry has been conducted during a period in which employees are still recovering from the effects of a major emergency disaster,'' Habiger said in a statement. ''Part of the laboratory's rigorous process for resuming operations has included a look at the physical integrity of all its buildings and security systems.''
Habiger could not be reached for comment.
-------- tennessee
Howard Baker to lecture at lab Tuesday
from staff reports
June 12, 2000
http://www.oakridger.com/
Howard Baker Jr., former Tennessee senator and White House chief of staff under President Reagan, will visit Oak Ridge Tuesday in his role as co-chairman of the Department of Energy's Russian Nonproliferation Blue Ribbon Panel.
Baker, his panel co-chairman, former White House counsel Lloyd Cutler, and other members of the panel will be briefed at the meeting on Oak Ridge's nonproliferation programs and activities.
Baker will present the annual Weinberg Lecture at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday at Weinberg Auditorium, Building 4500N, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
His topic will be "At the Nexus of Science and Public Policy." Prior to the lecture, Baker and panel members will be guests at a luncheon hosted by the East Tennessee Economic Council.
Baker served in the U.S. Senate from 1967 to 1985. He was minority leader from 1977 to 1981 and majority leader from 1981 to 1985. He served as Reagan's chief of staff from 1987 to 1988.
The blue-ribbon panel was appointed by Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson to review and assess the Energy Department's nonproliferation programs in Russia and recommend how its nonproliferation efforts can be enhanced.
The Oak Ridge briefing includes Initiatives for the Proliferation Prevention Program, the Nuclear Cities Initiative, the Material Protection Control and Accounting Program, the Second Line of Defense Program, the Highly Enriched Uranium Purchase Agreement, the International Nuclear Safety Program, and the Plutonium Disposition Program.
The lecture series was established in 1995 on the occasion of Alvin Weinberg's 80th birthday. Weinberg was director of ORNL from 1955 to 1973.
A member of the wartime team of theoretical physicists at Chicago headed by Eugene Wigner, Weinberg moved to Oak Ridge in 1945, headed the Physics Division and served as research director before becoming director.
------ us nuc weapons
Senate Bill Requires Study of New Nuclear Weapon
By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 12, 2000; Page A02
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-06/12/082l-061200-idx.html
The Senate has paved the way for the Energy Department's nuclear weapons laboratories to aid Pentagon research into a new low- yield nuclear weapon that could destroy hardened and deeply buried targets by penetrating far into the ground before exploding.
The purpose of the study is to develop "a deep penetrator that could hold at risk a rogue state's deeply buried weapons or Saddam Hussein's bunker without torching Baghdad," said one former senior Pentagon official who is still involved in government military and intelligence research.
The most recent modernization of a U.S. strategic nuclear weapon, the B-61 thermonuclear bomb, took place in the early 1990s. At that time the bomb, which has a variety of yields above 50 kilotons (or 50,000 tons of TNT, more than three times the power of the Hiroshima bomb), was given an earth-penetrating capability great enough to destroy "a garden variety underground bunker, 100 meters into solid rock," the former official said.
"What's needed now is something that can threaten a bunker tunneled under 300 meters of granite without killing the surrounding civilian population," he said.
Last year, a Pentagon effort to get assistance from Energy's weapons labs in researching the options for such a weapon was blocked when Energy lawyers said a 1994 provision in the law prohibited the government's nuclear laboratories from "all research and development which could lead to a precision, low- yield nuclear weapon," according to a senior Energy official who asked not to be identified.
To overcome that roadblock, Senate Republicans this year put a provision in the fiscal 2001 defense authorization bill that specifically requires the secretaries of Defense and Energy to undertake such a study and permits the nuclear labs to "conduct any limited research and development that may be necessary" to complete it, according to a Senate Armed Services Committee report.
The measure is expected to pass the Senate this week and eventually be approved by a House-Senate conference, according to its supporters.
Supporters of this new low-yield nuclear weapon include a small group of senior Republican senators and some top officials within the nuclear weapons community who, in the wake of Senate defeat of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty last October, believe the United States may soon need to resume underground testing to design new warheads and maintain old ones.
"The United States will eventually need a new, low-yield nuclear weapon" because the explosive power of silo-busting thermonuclear warheads designed for the Cold War is "too high" to deter small nations in today's multipolar world, said Paul Robinson, the head of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories, one of the nation's leading weapons labs.
Without building such a new weapon, "we would end up being self- deterred," Robinson said at a forum in New Mexico last March.
Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services strategic subcommittee, sponsored the defense bill amendment because, as he said at a May 23 committee meeting, the legislative language from 1994 prohibited Energy's nuclear laboratories "from conducting any research related to the design of a new low-yield nuclear warhead."
"I understand the attorneys have blocked the Energy weapons labs from conducting any studies or research to support the Defense Department in assessing options for addressing current or future threats because of this 1994 provision," Allard said.
Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) said at the May 23 hearing: "I do not believe that, in the foreseeable future, we're going to see the abolishment totally of nuclear weaponry. . . . And, therefore, we've got to maintain a capability in the United States for a future president or presidents to initiate a program, to build a new warhead."
In a recent telephone interview, Warner said, "The next president has got to put this on top of his agenda." He added, "We should do research and analysis" that could lead to new weapons because "there is a dwindling industrial base and dwindling category of capable people to build weapons."
Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the presumptive GOP presidential candidate, who opposed approval of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, has supported a moratorium on testing "because it gives more flexibility," said Condoleezza Rice, Bush's foreign policy adviser and a member of the National Security Council staff during his father's administration.
Bush foresees any resumption of testing in the near future as being based on "questions of reliability and safety" of current weapons, Rice said in a telephone interview. As for developing new weapons, Bush is "reserving judgment. . . . It has not come up, but it is not inconceivable," she said.
Bush, in a May 23 speech, said that "America should rethink the requirements . . . for nuclear deterrence and a new security environment." He said that if elected president, he would get his defense secretary "to conduct an assessment of our nuclear force posture."
The last full Pentagon nuclear posture review was in 1994, with an update in 1997 before the Helsinki summit between President Clinton and Russia's Boris Yeltsin. The current Senate version of the fiscal 2001 defense authorization bill not only permits research on the new low-yield weapons but also calls for the secretary of defense, "in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, to prepare a plan for the long-term sustainment and modernization of U.S. strategic forces."
That nuclear posture study, the panel said, "would look beyond current efforts to modernize existing systems and lay out a comprehensive vision for the maintenance of deterrent forces."
----
Senate Bill Requires Study of New Nuclear Weapon
Washington Post
Monday, June 12, 2000; Page A02
By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-06/12/082l-061200-idx.html
The Senate has paved the way for the Energy Department's nuclear weapons laboratories to aid Pentagon research into a new low-yield nuclear weapon that could destroy hardened and deeply buried targets by penetrating far into the ground before exploding.
The purpose of the study is to develop "a deep penetrator that could hold at risk a rogue state's deeply buried weapons or Saddam Hussein's bunker without torching Baghdad," said one former senior Pentagon official who is still involved in government military and intelligence research.
The most recent modernization of a U.S. strategic nuclear weapon, the B-61 thermonuclear bomb, took place in the early 1990s. At that time the bomb, which has a variety of yields above 50 kilotons (or 50,000 tons of TNT, more than three times the power of the Hiroshima bomb), was given an earth-penetrating capability great enough to destroy "a garden variety underground bunker, 100 meters into solid rock," the former official said.
"What's needed now is something that can threaten a bunker tunneled under 300 meters of granite without killing the surrounding civilian population," he said.
Last year, a Pentagon effort to get assistance from Energy's weapons labs in researching the options for such a weapon was blocked when Energy lawyers said a 1994 provision in the law prohibited the government's nuclear laboratories from "all research and development which could lead to a precision, low-yield nuclear weapon," according to a senior Energy official who asked not to be identified.
To overcome that roadblock, Senate Republicans this year put a provision in the fiscal 2001 defense authorization bill that specifically requires the secretaries of Defense and Energy to undertake such a study and permits the nuclear labs to "conduct any limited research and development that may be necessary" to complete it, according to a Senate Armed Services Committee report.
The measure is expected to pass the Senate this week and eventually be approved by a House-Senate conference, according to its supporters.
Supporters of this new low-yield nuclear weapon include a small group of senior Republican senators and some top officials within the nuclear weapons community who, in the wake of Senate defeat of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty last October, believe the United States may soon need to resume underground testing to design new warheads and maintain old ones.
"The United States will eventually need a new, low-yield nuclear weapon" because the explosive power of silo-busting thermonuclear warheads designed for the Cold War is "too high" to deter small nations in today's multipolar world, said Paul Robinson, the head of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories, one of the nation's leading weapons labs.
Without building such a new weapon, "we would end up being self-deterred," Robinson said at a forum in New Mexico last March.
Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services strategic subcommittee, sponsored the defense bill amendment because, as he said at a May 23 committee meeting, the legislative language from 1994 prohibited Energy's nuclear laboratories "from conducting any research related to the design of a new low-yield nuclear warhead."
"I understand the attorneys have blocked the Energy weapons labs from conducting any studies or research to support the Defense Department in assessing options for addressing current or future threats because of this 1994 provision," Allard said.
Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) said at the May 23 hearing: "I do not believe that, in the foreseeable future, we're going to see the abolishment totally of nuclear weaponry. . . . And, therefore, we've got to maintain a capability in the United States for a future president or presidents to initiate a program, to build a new warhead."
In a recent telephone interview, Warner said, "The next president has got to put this on top of his agenda." He added, "We should do research and analysis" that could lead to new weapons because "there is a dwindling industrial base and dwindling category of capable people to build weapons."
Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the presumptive GOP presidential candidate, who opposed approval of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, has supported a moratorium on testing "because it gives more flexibility," said Condoleezza Rice, Bush's foreign policy adviser and a member of the National Security Council staff during his father's administration.
Bush foresees any resumption of testing in the near future as being based on "questions of reliability and safety" of current weapons, Rice said in a telephone interview. As for developing new weapons, Bush is "reserving judgment. . . . It has not come up, but it is not inconceivable," she said.
Bush, in a May 23 speech, said that "America should rethink the requirements . . . for nuclear deterrence and a new security environment." He said that if elected president, he would get his defense secretary "to conduct an assessment of our nuclear force posture."
The last full Pentagon nuclear posture review was in 1994, with an update in 1997 before the Helsinki summit between President Clinton and Russia's Boris Yeltsin. The current Senate version of the fiscal 2001 defense authorization bill not only permits research on the new low-yield weapons but also calls for the secretary of defense, "in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, to prepare a plan for the long-term sustainment and modernization of U.S. strategic forces."
That nuclear posture study, the panel said, "would look beyond current efforts to modernize existing systems and lay out a comprehensive vision for the maintenance of deterrent forces."
---
U.S. Antimissile Plan Hit With One-Two Punch
Yahoo News
Monday June 12 1:31 PM ET
By Jim Wolf
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000612/ts/arms_missiles_dc_1.html
http://www.foxnews.com/elections/061200/abm.sml
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Physicists and foreign policy experts mounted twin assaults Monday on the hurry-up schedule for possible deployment of a U.S. antimissile shield.
About 40 physicists and engineers, descending on the U.S. Capitol from 16 states, trumpeted charges that the proposed national missile defense was long on politics and short on science.
In a news release, they said the shield under development, estimated to cost as much as $60 billion, could be undone easily by relatively simple countermeasures, such as hiding nuclear warheads in mylar balloons with empty balloons along side.
``Any country that can deploy a long-range missile with a nuclear or biological weapon can deploy these countermeasures,'' said Joseph Lach, a physicist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Chicago.
Alternatively, a nuclear warhead could be covered by a shroud cooled to very low temperatures, preventing the system's heat-seeking interceptor missiles from homing on the target, he said.
President Clinton is to decide whether to start construction of a powerful radar station in Alaska, the kickoff to deployment, after a third intercept test next month followed by a Pentagon review of cost, arms control implications, technology readiness and missile threat. The first intercept test in October succeeded; the next one, in January, missed.
The initial phase of the system, designed to be upgraded over the subsequent 10 years, would be to cope with potential long-range missile threats from North Korea by 2005.
In a letter to Clinton Monday, 33 experts on Russia said starting to build a national missile defense now may undermine U.S. security, notably by straining ties with Moscow, a strong opponent on arms-control grounds.
``More time is needed to assess (national missile defense's) impact on international relations, develop cooperative approaches to curbing missile proliferation, and avoid reigniting a new nuclear arms race,'' the letter said.
The signatories -- including Timothy Colton and Marshall Goldman of Harvard University and Arthur Hartman, President Ronald Reagan's ambassador to the Soviet Union -- said Russia was likely to put arms control on a back burner for fear that its deterrent force would be undercut by a U.S. anti-missile defense.
``We urge you not to endorse deployment at this time,'' the letter to Clinton said.
Boeing is the lead system integrator for the proposed national missile defense. TRW builds the system's battle command, control and communications system. Raytheon builds NMD's Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicle. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor on the current booster system.
---
Daybook HOUSE
Washington Times
June 12, 2000
http://www.washtimes.com/national/daybook-2000612212854.htm
Missile defense news conference - 3 p.m. - The Union of Concerned Scientists holds a news conference on national missile defense. Location: Capitol, House Triangle. Contact: 202/225-5801.
---
Missile Defense, for All
New York Times
June 12, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/00/06/12/letters/l12mis.html
To the Editor:
Why not let the Russians get in on the American-led initiative to establish an anti-missile defense system (front page, June 5)? The more nations joining up, the better.
Furthermore, every country that can afford to help pay for such a defense system should be pressed to join the project. The defense system should be independently programmed and maintained to destroy airborne weapons, no matter where the missiles originated, including the United States.
FRANK G. STERLE White Rock, British Columbia, June 5, 2000
---
SDI Redux Edwin Meese III and Emily Stimpson
Washington Times
June 12, 2000
http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/ed-column-20006121666.htm
Recently, Republican presidential hopeful George W. Bush announced his decision to develop and deploy a comprehensive anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defense system. He paired this announcement with a pledge to negotiate reductions in American and Russian nuclear arsenals.
Within 24 hours of the Bush press conference, the same coalition of scientists, politicians and pundits who lambasted Ronald Reagan's call for similar technology 17 years ago shook the dust off their old arguments and started launching them at the Republican candidate. Dubbing the proposal fiscally impractical, scientifically impossible and strategically imprudent, the Union of Concerned Scientists and a host of other liberal, pseudoscientific interest groups made haste to link Mr. Bush's plan to Mr. Reagan's "Star Wars."
But, associating George W. with Mr. Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) is hardly the kiss of death ABM opponents might think. Rather, it just might put the Republicans one step closer to the White House.
Throughout the 1980s, comedians reveled in their depiction of SDI as the half-baked brainchild of a simple-minded president. Their liberal cohorts trotted out an array of pundits to condemn the "militarization of space," while thousands of university researchers refused to engage in missile defense research. Try as they might, however, the intelligentsia could not sink SDI.
Between 1985 and 1988 - the peak of "anti-Star Wars" hysteria - missile defense enjoyed the steady support of 70 percent of the American public, and Democratic and Republican Congresses alike consistently funded ABM research. When Mr. Reagan refused at Reykavijk to trade away SDI for Soviet arms concessions, ABM critics thought the American public would be outraged. But the president's move had the exact opposite effect.
Within a week of the October 1986 summit, Mr. Reagan's approval ratings jumped 11 points. That November, as even SDI critic Frances Fitzgerald concedes, the initiative's popularity forced several Democratic congressional candidates to pledge fealty to the president's program to secure victory at the polls. The public's attachment to the proposal mystified its critics. Focused on their own perceptions of SDI's geopolitical implications, they failed to grasp the strategic and symbolic significance of missile defense. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the cornerstone of America's defensive strategy since the 1960s, had never sat well with the American public. Resting American security on the assured slaughter of millions of innocent Russians directly contradicted the nation's desire to see itself as a benevolent agent abroad.
With unilateral disarmament as impractical as MAD was disconcerting, SDI offered a more attractive and more moral response to the nuclear threat. Furthermore, protestations that SDI was technically infeasible fell on deaf ears. In its short history, America had overcome a series of seemingly insurmountable technological feats. From the bridging of a continent via telephone wires and railroad ties to Wilbur and Orville Wright's first flight at Kitty Hawk and Neil Armstrong's Moon landing, scientific achievements became an integral part of the national identity.
To most Americans doubting the country's ability to produce an effective ABM system was the equivalent of doubting the country itself. In the 1980s the Strategic Defense Initiative spoke directly to the needs of the day. It offered America the chance to escape from the delicate balance of terror wrought by the nuclear age through the strengths which the country had always prided itself on - creativity, technology, and old-fashioned willpower. Americans responded to the president and his proposal with nearly unequivocal support. Now, 12 years after Mr. Reagan left the White House, George W. Bush has picked up the gauntlet of missile defense.
The Clinton administration, in its efforts to ward off domestic political criticism, occasionally toys with the idea of a very limited ABM system. But not since the days of Mr. Reagan has a bold call for full scale deployment been sounded.
Just as SDI rallied the populace during the waning days of the Cold War, Mr. Bush's plan for simultaneous ABM deployment and arms reductions promises to do the same today. The old appeal of strategic defenses still holds. Americans no more like the idea of massive nuclear retaliation today than they did 15 years ago. The explosion of "smart bombs" and "surgical strikes" in the 1990s has further weakened the national stomach for the type of confrontation demanded by MAD. Those same military advancements, combined with unprecedented growth in the American economy and the dot-com revolution have fed America's technological arrogance. In 1985, with computers still moving at a snail's pace, two-thirds of Americans ignored the experts and believed in the feasibility of ABM deployment. In 2000, those numbers are unlikely to dip any lower. If history repeats itself - and in the world of politics it almost always does - George W. stands to reap the same benefits from ballistic missile defense as Ronald Reagan.
Nuclear stockpile reductions and ABM technology offer more than a literal break with America's Cold War past and the beginning of an American military ready to face the challenges of a new century. They also symbolically encompass the confidence, energy, and strategic thinking currently dominating the country. Mr. Bush, by embracing missile defense, has aligned himself with a new generation. Al Gore, with his fretting and nay-saying, is entrenched in a campaign of negativity and doubt that stands in sharp contrast to the steps both his opponent and the nation are taking.
Edwin Meese III was attorney general and also served on the National Security Council during the Reagan administration. Emily Stimpson is a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University.
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Star Wars: Episode Two The Pentagon's Latest Missile Defense Fantasy
In These Times
June 12, 2000
By Jeffrey St. Clair, In These Times
http://www.inthesetimes.com/stclair2414.html
It's wrong to say that Star Wars is back. The hare - brained scheme hatched on the fly by Ronald Reagan in 1983 has never gone away. Quietly but relentlessly a Star Wars industry, under the rubric of Ballistic Missile Defense, has mushroomed.
The corporate press, which rightly heckled the plan in its early days, soon got bored with the story and left it for dead. Then in 1992, the missile shield's putative critics took over the White House and became its new masters. In the intervening years, billions of dollars poured into the Pentagon's Space and Missile Defense Command Center in Huntsville, Alabama, to production plants spread across key congressional districts, and into the plump accounts of a portfolio of defense contractors and high - tech firms.
In a 1995 review of the program in DefenseIssues, an internal Pentagon newsletter, Lt. Gen. Malcolm O'Neill, then head of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, rhapsodized about a "synergized" network of high - powered, space - based lasers, satellites, radar and sea - , air - and ground - launched "exoatmospheric kill vehicles" that would save U.S. cities from "theater - class ballistic missiles, advanced cruise missiles and other air - breathing threats as well." Feel safer?
Now the Pentagon is seeking approval to put part of its system into operation. The first phase is a ground - based system of 100 Interceptor missiles and a ring of new radar stations, both to be based in the Alaskan tundra. Clinton has said he will make a final decision on the system this summer. All indications are that he will give it the green light.
Of course, there are problems. Namely, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and corporate America's coddling of China, why in the world would the United States need to deploy such a system? Such questions prompt the most absurd frenzy of threat - inflation since the notion that the Marxist government of Grenada posed a grave danger to the Western Hemisphere. A coven of atomic warriors has been rolled out to fulminate about "rogue nations" and "global terrorists" who threaten what the Pentagon brass calls the "early post - Cold War paradigm." Of course, if Osama Bin Laden ever decides to strike back at his former friends in the U.S. government, his payload is much more likely to be delivered via FedEx in a Louis Vuitton suitcase than a rocket launched from his camp in the Hindu Kush.
Another stumbling block is the 1972 Anti - Ballistic Missile Treaty that flatly prohibits such a system, which the architects of the ABM treaty rightly saw as a destabilizing force that would spur proliferation and stockpiling of weapons. But the Clinton - Gore administration views the ABM treaty as outmoded and, in a now customary display of hubris, on April 25, U.S. Ambassador James Collins delivered a draft copy of proposed changes to Moscow. The tenor of the U.S. rewrite didn't sit well with Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who warned it could prove a "fatal mistake." "Everyone should be aware that the collapse of the ABM treaty would have a destructive domino effect for the existing system of disarmament agreements," he said. "We would be back in an era of suspicion and confrontation."
New Russian President Vladimir Putin has already upped the nuclear ante by authorizing changes in Russia's military doctrine that would allow it to launch a "first strike" nuclear attack. Anti - nuclear activist Daniel Ellsberg, the former government researcher who leaked the Pentagon Papers, says that may have been the bizarre intention of the Pentagon all along. "In order to advance a domestic political agenda," he says, "the United States is encouraging the Russians to remain on and advance a launch - on - warning system."
It's the old game of escalating threats. The cheerleaders for the new Star Wars system now realize that the "rogue state" threat isn't credible. For one thing, North Korea, nearly crippled by drought and economic isolation, seems ready to consider a rapprochement with the South. Iran, the Pentagon's other favorite devil, doesn't have missiles that could reach the United States. And Iraq, still smoldering from years of unceasing U.S. air strikes, is barely able to maintain its water supply system, never mind construct a fleet of transcontinental ballistic missiles. Even that normally reliable intermediary for U.S. strategic interests, U.N. Secretary - General Kofi Annan, has publicly voiced his doubts about the new Star Wars scheme, saying it could reignite a global arms race.
Even some unrepentant cold warriors chafed at this chilling dialogue. North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms, who rules the Foreign Relations Committee, vowed that any changes to the ABM Treaty agreed to by Russia would be "dead on arrival." The Republicans have a political motive to drag their feet. They don't want to give Al Gore a "hawkish" victory on the eve of the election or allow Clinton to add some more military luster to his legacy. "So, Mr. Clinton is in search of a legacy," Helms blustered. "La - de - da - he already has one. The Russian government should not be under any illusion whatsoever that any commitments made by this lame - duck administration will be binding on the next administration."
To top it off, the system doesn't work. There have been two high - profile tests of the Interceptor missile to date. One was an unmitigated failure. The other was initially touted as "a direct kill," but it later emerged that the Pentagon had fixed the test. The next firing is slated for June 26. A few months ago, Defense Secretary William Cohen pointed to this date as a make - it - or - break - it final exam for the program. But now top Pentagon officials are beginning to show signs of test anxiety. "It will depend on what caused the failure," hedges Pentagon spokesman Mike Biddle. "A mechanical failure isn't necessarily terminal."
Even the program's biggest boosters now concede that the missile shield would be all but useless against a nuclear strike launched by Russia, China or, one supposes, France, should Parisians ever seek to retaliate for the crimes of EuroDisney. A newly declassified State Department document, obtained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, shows that a minimum of four U.S. Interceptors would be needed to "kill" one incoming missile. This means that the entire system would be exhausted trying to down 20 missiles.
The Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization projects the cost of the system at $36 billion, a typically modest appraisal. The Congressional Budget Office has come up with a slightly more robust number of $60 billion - a figure the government auditors admit is little more than a rough guess, since the administration hasn't yet put forward details on the next two phases of the plan. But even that number was enough to stagger some of the plan's most ardent backers. "That's out of sync with anything I've seen," said Rep. Curt Weldon, the Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the House Armed Services Committee's panel on military research and development. "But you can't put a price tag on protecting American cities."
Despite the dearth of media coverage, the public is beginning to sour on the plan. According to a recent ABC News poll, public support for the Clinton/Gore version of national missile defense is sliding; 44 percent of Americans support the plan, down from 55 percent in 1985. So what's driving the bipartisan push for an increasingly unpopular new missile defense system that is extravagant, inept, unnecessary and destabilizing? You don't have to dig very deep to find an answer: Raytheon, TRW, Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Each of these firms has secured a lucrative sector of the Star Wars program.
Of course, the companies do have to make some political offerings. And they haven't been miserly. Together these four companies have flushed more than $2.6 million to the two political parties in soft money alone since 1996. On top of that, the defense giants' PACs have sluiced $3.7 million to federal candidates in the past three years, making the Star Wars coalition one of the prime sponsors of our political system. What money can't buy, direct persuasion often can. These four companies spent more than $18 million lobbying Congress in 1998, sending out a legion of former senators, congressmen and retired Pentagon chieftains as their hired guns on the Hill.
This all gives a bracing new meaning to getting more bang for the buck.
Jeffrey St. Clair is a contributing editor of In These Times.
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Missile Defense
Los Angeles Times
Monday, June 12, 2000
http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20000612/t000055597.html
Re "The Gipper Had This Defense Figured," Commentary, June 6: Although it was President Reagan who first proposed "Star Wars," James Pinkerton infers that this so-called nuclear shield would actually work. To date, all real tests of the various components that would make up the shield have failed. The Pentagon has rigged several tests that met with only limited success in spite of its bias in favor of a positive outcome. Successive administrations have wasted billions of dollars on this highly improbable and dangerous (because of its destabilizing effects on nuclear deterrence) concept. The fact that the Clinton administration continues to pursue "Star Wars" is to its shame, not to Reagan's credit. MIKE GREENE Tustin
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Issues Count, Too
New York Times
June 12, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/00/06/12/letters/l12cor.html
To the Editor:
Is it not possible that Jon S. Corzine swamped former Gov. Jim Florio in the race for the New Jersey Democratic primary for the Senate (front page, June 7) because he spoke to the issues that trouble most Americans?
We are constantly subjected to overwrought threats of nuclear disaster and anthrax attacks, and expressions of a need for more military spending by politicians who pay only lip service to our real worries -- health care, education, humanitarian needs.
Mr. Corzine addressed these worries in a way rarely seen from politicians today. Perhaps his victory should be taken as a warning that the American people are fed up with politics, as they have been for three decades.
ERSKINE GALLANT Edgartown, Mass., June 7, 2000
-------- us politics
Clinton's legacy quest on a dead-end course
USA Today
06/12/00- Updated 04:42 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/columnists/tmoran/tm9.htm
To say President Clinton looked disappointed when he learned Syrian President Hafez Assad had died is an understatement: He looked defeated, and he probably is. Assad's death was the latest blow to Clinton's quest for a final foreign policy triumph.
Some say Clinton already has a legacy. He has had some success in the on-again, off-again peace in Northern Ireland. He oversaw the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993. He reformed welfare and balanced the budget. He made it clear that missile defense was inevitable. He promoted greater access to technology and education. And, oh yeah, he fooled around with a young intern and was impeached.
The history books, of course, will lead with the impeachment and work back. That's why Clinton needs a foreign policy coup, such as comprehensive peace in the Middle East. Short of that, he would like to forge peace between Israel and Syria or a final agreement between the Palestinians and Israel. But thanks to a number of obstacles, all of which have emerged in recent weeks, a solution in the Middle East may be beyond even Slick Willie's grasp.
Assad's death destroyed any chance for a formal peace between Syria and Israel in the near future. The Syrian leader is now being touted as a statesman devoted to the peace process, but that's hogwash. It's just the West's way of playing nice with Syria during this time of transition as the untested son takes the reins.
Assad always made it clear that there would be no treaty with the Jewish state until he received a promise that Israeli troops would withdraw from the Golan Heights, a territory captured by Israel in 1967. Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's last offer, which Clinton delivered to Assad in Geneva last March, was for all of the Golan save for a slice of land along the Sea of Galilee. Assad flatly refused the offer. To do otherwise would have been to compromise like other Arab leaders had in the past - something he was loath to do.
Assad's son and heir, 34-year-old Bashar Assad, is intelligent and well-educated, but he's an ophthalmologist and hardly a politician. He has never held political office, and he only recently has started working as an envoy for his father. In Syria, however, he has earned some credit for pushing modernization and market reforms and for fighting corruption. Those in power have every reason to ensure Bashar Assad's success: They'll continue to enjoy elite privileges and stay in power. Only time will tell whether the young man will consolidate his power. It will take even longer before he can think about peace with Israel.
Barak had intended to reach an agreement with Syria before fulfilling his campaign promise to pull Israeli troops out of southern Lebanon, a country run by Hafez Assad's puppet and fortified by Syrian troops. Barak also wanted the agreement and transition to be completed before the American presidential race shifted into high gear this fall.
But thanks to the debacle with Assad in March, strong domestic pressure and Hezbollah guerrilla attacks on Israeli troops, Barak had to pull out of the region unilaterally two weeks ago. The pullout already was a gamble in terms of security without Assad's word that Syria would contain guerrilla fighting in southern Lebanon and Israel. With Assad dead, the odds for stability in that region are worse.
Barak also hoped to reach a final agreement with the Palestinians before Palestinian Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat declares statehood in September. That time frame works for Clinton. He hopes to have Arafat and Barak on the White House lawn for a broad peace signing before he leaves office.
Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams are en route to Washington this week to discuss a framework for a final-status agreement. But the issues are complex: refugees and release of prisoners, control of the Jordan Valley and, the toughest of all, the status of Jerusalem. Both Jews and Palestinians claim the city as their capital, and the subject has yet to be broached at negotiations.
Barak has said he'll put any agreement reached with the Palestinians to a national referendum, and with Barak's popularity soaring after the pullout from Lebanon, he might be able to get something done. But Barak has an internal problem he needs to address. His governing coalition is falling apart because the religious parties are up in arms. So the Knesset, Israel's parliament, moved to dissolve itself last Thursday. Setting aside his political situation, Barak said he'd let the fractious coalition bicker while he focused on Middle East peace.
Barak may be popular with Israelis, but making concessions to Palestinians could quickly cost him support. If the Knesset dissolves, Barak could find himself in a weakened coalition. Also, Arafat's popularity is at an all-time low, making a PLO compromise on Jerusalem unlikely. So neither side has much room for maneuvering.
These are the obstacles Clinton faces in seeking peace in the Middle East. If Bashar Assad is as smart and forward-thinking as some believe, he could become a champion for peace in a year or two. But first he must get a firm grip on his father's reins.
As for an Israeli-Palestinian peace, Barak's majority in the Knesset might disappear soon, Arafat is losing support and northern Israel could be vulnerable to guerrilla attack. Moreover, Arafat is going to up the ante by declaring statehood soon, and Clinton is leaving office. These ingredients spell disaster for any significant peace negotiations or signings on the White House lawn this fall.
If Clinton does pull it off, with final agreements on Jerusalem's status, then he deserves to have Monica's name drop to at least the second paragraph in future accounts about his presidency. I just wouldn't hold my breath.
Tracy Moran is the opinion editor for USATODAY.com. To talk back to Tracy Moran, click here.
mailto:tmoran@usatoday.com
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Burton vows long probe of fund raising
Washington Times
June 12, 2000
By Joyce Howard Price THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/default-200061223116.htm
Rep. Dan Burton, chairman of a House panel probing Democratic fund-raising abuses in the 1996 presidential campaign, yesterday vowed to refer President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and Attorney General Janet Reno for prosecution if Texas Gov. George W. Bush is elected president.
In appearances on NBC's "Meet the Press" and "Fox News Sunday," the Indiana Republican said Mr. Clinton and Mr. Gore knew of illegal campaign contributions from foreign donors. Miss Reno, he said, shielded them from legal scrutiny by failing to seek an independent counsel to investigate their activities.
"I think that borders on obstruction of justice," Mr. Burton, chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, said on Fox.
He went much further on NBC. "I believe that Janet Reno . . . and her chief lieutenants knew that the [now-defunct] independent counsel statute mandated that they appoint an independent counsel, and they didn't do it," Mr. Burton told Tim Russert.
"If she did not appoint an independent counsel because she thought her job was in jeopardy, even though the law required it, she broke the law and obstructed justice," the congressman said.
"After this election, assuming we get a new attorney general, I think I will be sending criminal referrals. The reason that I'm waiting is because I don't think this Justice Department is going to do anything," he said on NBC.
Mr. Burton was later asked specifically if he will send a "criminal referral urging the indictment of Bill Clinton and Al Gore" if Mr. Bush, the presumptive Republican nominee, is elected president in November.
"Yeah," he replied, and added Miss Reno's name to the list. "I think Janet Reno has blocked for the president, as have her top officials over at the Justice Department. I think they've made a mockery of justice."
White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, interviewed on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer," countered that Mr. Burton's comments are designed to harm Mr. Gore in the presidential race against Mr. Bush.
"I think it's becoming a smaller and smaller group of Americans who actually pay attention to people like Chairman Burton, whose main purpose, I think, is really to try to do political damage to the vice president in the upcoming election," said Mr. Podesta, the president's top adviser.
Mr. Burton's appearances on Sunday-morning political talk shows followed his committee's release last week of unedited versions of 2- and 3-year-old reports in which FBI Director Louis Freeh and prosecutor Charles LaBella, former head of the Justice Department's Campaign Finance Task Force, recommended the appointment of an independent counsel to probe Mr. Gore's fund-raising practices. Miss Reno had refused to release the documents, in which her decision not to seek an independent counsel was sharply criticized.
The memos made public by the the House committee also suggested Mr. Gore may have lied to campaign-finance task force investigators when he denied knowing that 1996 donations he solicited from his White House office were illegally diverted to the Democratic National Committee.
Documents released by the committee cast doubt on Mr. Gore's claim that he did not know soft-money contributions he solicited were transformed into hard money by the DNC -meaning they were used for specific candidates' campaigns. Notes from a November 1995 White House meeting, which Mr. Gore attended, indicate the subject was discussed there.
Mr. Gore was not on the talk shows yesterday, but a number of others familiar with the fund-raising scandal were. They included Mr. LaBella and Lee Radek, a career prosecutor who heads the Justice Department's public integrity section.
Mr. Radek, who followed Mr. Burton on "Meet the Press," is an adviser to Miss Reno on independent counsel matters. Unlike Mr. Freeh and Mr. LaBella, Mr. Radek did not believe appointment of an independent counsel was warranted to investigate campaign finance irregularities by Mr. Gore and Mr. Clinton.
On NBC yesterday, Mr. Radek said Justice investigators who looked into the campaign fund-raising charges did not find evidence of wrongdoing that met the legal requirements for
appointment of an outside investigator. As for Mr. Gore's claim that he knew nothing of DNC plans to use soft money he raised in candidates' campaigns, Mr. Radek said, "Clearly there was some evidence that he may have known that what he said was false."
At the same time, the prosecutor said, only two of the 15 persons who attended the White House meeting with Mr. Gore in November 1995 recall hearing the information Mr. Gore denies hearing. "The other 13 did not," said Mr. Radek.
The Justice section chief also denied that he told two FBI agents he was "under pressure" not to recommend an independent counsel, because such a decision would leave Miss Reno's job "hanging in the balance."
"I'm sure I did not. It wouldn't have been true. I did not feel any pressure because of the attorney general's job status," Mr. Radek said. He added that he has to assume someone misunderstood him.
"I certainly don't remember the conversation [with the two FBI agents], but the fact is the public integrity section was under a lot of pressure at the time," he said.
"We were under pressure from the Congress, from the press, and particularly from the attorney general, who's a tough taskmaster, to do a good job."
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Gore Campaign Enlists 'Character Witnesses'
New York Times
June 12, 2000
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/061200wh-gore.html
WASHINGTON, June 11 -- When he was in Seattle last week, Vice President Al Gore dropped by a fund-raising reception for Gov. Gary Locke of Washington. The governor, in introducing the vice president to the crowd, followed a script suggested by Mr. Gore's presidential campaign. And here is what the campaign wanted these people to know:
"He's not only a great person, but he's very funny," Governor Locke said. He is "a person who is committed to his family," Mr. Locke went on. "He is always picking up the phone to check on his mom."
Governor Locke, like countless others who are introducing Mr. Gore around the country these days, is what is known in the trade as a "validator," or a character witness, someone who can attest to the nature of the real Al Gore and reassure voters that he is a decent man, a family man, a good guy.
Although Mr. Gore has been campaigning intensely for more than a year now and has been in public life for nearly a quarter-century, he is still having trouble getting across this basic message. That is one reason why the campaign is enlisting scores of validators -- Democrats like Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana and Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts -- and deploying them on talk shows and the campaign trail.
Their job is not just to attest to Mr. Gore's humanity, although that is a large part of it. They must also make the case for his policy proposals and be prepared to scold Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, Mr. Gore's Republican rival, so that Mr. Gore does not have to do it himself and thereby contradict the positive, good-guy image that the campaign is so desperately seeking to convey.
The deployment of validators is just one element of a new phase of the Gore campaign, one that the vice president agreed last week in an interview could be as dramatic a turning point as one last fall when he moved his campaign headquarters from Washington to Nashville and started engaging his now-vanquished Democratic challenger, former Senator Bill Bradley, with zeal. And he and his advisers hope the payoff is as great.
The new phase is marked by a concerted effort to transmit more of Mr. Gore's personal side along with a positive presentation of his policy proposals. It includes a media blitz he plans to begin on Tuesday in New York, one so extensive that it will almost seem like a relaunching of his campaign, as he begins a "progress and prosperity tour" across the Middle Atlantic States and the Midwest.
The new phase also features a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign, a retreat by Mr. Gore from his harsh assessments of Governor Bush and a cheery message of optimism. As he told a group of financial contributors on Thursday night in Beverly Hills, Calif., "We'll make this decade the brightest time in American history."
Unfortunately for Mr. Gore, the shift in strategy plays into one of the Republicans' chief criticisms of him: that he lacks consistency.
"Al Gore Reinvents Himself -- Again!" blares a news release from the Bush campaign. It goes on to list six Gore incarnations since last summer: the underdog, the average Joe, the alpha male, the crusading reformer, the negative attacker and, now, the thinking man with a heart.
The strategy also reflects some concern by the campaign that Mr. Gore needs to inspire core Democratic constituencies with whom he should be comfortably ahead. The tour will take him to places like Scranton, Pa., and Cincinnati, conveniently located in battleground states.
Chris Lehane, Mr. Gore's spokesman, said that this period was less a shift than a reflection of "the natural ebb and flow" of any campaign. "There will be plenty of time down the road to draw the comparisons and contrasts with the options that Governor Bush wants to pursue," he said.
On the first day of his "progress and prosperity tour," in New York, Mr. Gore is to stand with Robert E. Rubin, the former treasury secretary and Wall Street giant, at his side, and begin a national discussion on the upbeat subject of how best to use the burgeoning budget surplus and keep the economy roaring. The White House projects a surplus of $746 billion over the next decade, and the Gore tour, scheduled to span the next two weeks, is designed to coincide with forecasts of an even greater surplus.
The emphasis on the nation's prosperity will give Mr. Gore a chance to remind voters that he has been part of the administration that has presided over the longest economic expansion in the nation's history. This, his advisers say, is his strongest suit and provides the most compelling argument for his election as president.
Already, President Clinton -- another validator -- is out making this case. On Saturday in Minneapolis, Mr. Clinton told 700 donors at a fund-raising reception: "You need to know that there has never been anybody in that job who had more of an impact on more issues across a broader range of areas and that a lot of the success we enjoy today would not have been possible if it hadn't been for him."
Mr. Gore is to push proposals for helping to pay down the national debt, protect Medicare by removing it from the budget process, eliminate the long-term Social Security deficit, provide tax incentives, make investments in education, health care and job training, and create a new kind of personal retirement account, one based on a Clinton proposal for Universal Savings Accounts.
The prosperity tour coincides with the opening of a two-month $25-million advertising campaign financed by the Democratic National Committee but produced by Gore consultants. The first commercial, running in 15 states, touts his support for a Medicare benefit to help the elderly pay for prescription drugs.
Future commercials leading to the Democratic convention in August are to focus on parts of Mr. Gore's personal biography and his life outside Washington -- as a soldier in Vietnam and a divinity student and journalist in Tennessee, and, of course, as a family man.
His wife, Tipper, who has been keeping a separate campaign schedule, has been appearing with him lately. On Monday night, at a town meeting with women in New Jersey, he is to be accompanied by his oldest daughter, Karenna.
"We want people to have an opportunity to learn more about Al Gore the person, where he learned his values and how he would lead," said Doug Hattaway, a Gore spokesman.
Mr. Gore has also ceased attacking Mr. Bush. Although he spent much of the spring denouncing Mr. Bush as inexperienced and proffering "risky" schemes, he has not mentioned Mr. Bush's name in public since May 26, when he derided his call for an expansive missile-defense system. Since then, Mr. Gore has only sparingly referred to him as "the other fellow" or "the other side."
At the same time, Mr. Gore is stepping up his pleas to Democrats to work hard for him. As he said to a group of Democratic mayors last week: "I'm asking you to really turn it on for me."
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Bush Draws Campaign Theme From More Than 'the Heart'
New York Times
June 12, 2000
By ALISON MITCHELL
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/061200wh-bush-conserve.html
WASHINGTON, June 11 -- Ask Gov. George W. Bush of Texas about the intellectual origins of his campaign's mantra and he says, "Compassionate conservatism is first and foremost springing from the heart."
Yet well before Mr. Bush began building his presidential campaign around the words "compassionate conservative" -- reshaping the image of his party to follow suit -- a cadre of thinkers on the right had been trying for years to fashion a form of conservatism that rejected the welfare state but did not turn its back on the poor. And with his campaign strategist, Karl Rove, acting as his guide, Mr. Bush began reading their books and meeting them, even before his first race for governor.
Mr. Rove gave the governor "The Dream and the Nightmare," a book by Myron Magnet of the Manhattan Institute that Mr. Bush said helped crystallize his thinking about culture. The book is an indictment of the attitudes of the 1960's counterculture and its legacy to the poor. Mr. Rove also introduced Mr. Bush to Marvin Olasky -- a proponent of 19th century-style charity over the entitlements of the welfare state -- whom the governor calls "compassionate conservatism's leading thinker" in a foreword to Mr. Olasky's newest book.
Those introductions amounted to the first building blocks of the "compassionate conservative" platform Mr. Bush is running on today: tax incentives that he predicts will lead to an explosion of charitable giving; an emphasis on using religious institutions to deal with poverty, drug abuse and other social problems and a pledge to "usher in the responsibility era," to replace the notion that "if it feels good, do it."
The core concept of this platform is that while government has a responsibility to the needy, it does not have to provide the services itself. This approach can be seen in everything from Mr. Bush's proposals for a tax credit to help people buy health insurance to his call to divert some Social Security payroll taxes into individual investment accounts.
As Stephen Goldsmith, Mr. Bush's chief domestic policy adviser, describes it, "compassionate conservatism means providing help in such a way as to stimulate and reinforce self-governance."
Such thoughts have been germinating for years, and the Bush campaign drew from several different schools of conservative and neo-conservative thinkers.
Some, like Mr. Magnet, start with a scathing critique of the attitudes of the 1960's and essentially blame liberalism for creating an entrenched underclass. Others base their views on Roman Catholic teachings that say social problems are best dealt with by the institution closest to those who are suffering.
And still others are Republican politicians, like Representative John R. Kasich of Ohio and former Senator Dan Coats of Indiana, who have argued that the Republicans who put time limits on welfare benefits in 1996 could not just wash their hands of the poor.
"Can we match our skepticism about government with a bold new definition of public compassion?" Mr. Coats asked four years ago. "Can we dismantle a destructive welfare culture, and still fulfill our responsibilities to the disadvantaged?"
Mr. Bush describes "compassionate conservatism" as being rooted in values rather than as an intellectual movement. "It is the understanding that lives can be changed and that cultures can change," he said in a recent interview. "The origins are not just logical thought and inspirations from writings."
And he does not seem as steeped as his aides in the lineage of the ideas.
"News to me," Mr. Bush said when told that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had been captivated by many of the same writers as he had.
And while Mr. Gingrich not only read Mr. Olasky's "The Tragedy of American Compassion" but gave copies to freshmen lawmakers in 1995, Mr. Bush said he had primarily learned about Mr. Olasky's concepts from talking with him, rather than from reading his books.
But Mr. Bush is clearly devoted to the new conservatism.
As governor he has promoted hostels for welfare mothers and legislation that encouraged religion-based drug treatment centers and prison ministries.
And when the time came to assemble his campaign staff, he tapped two apostles of compassionate conservatism: Michael Gerson, his chief speechwriter, had been a senior aide to Mr. Coats; and Mr. Goldsmith, his chief domestic policy adviser, had tried to create a laboratory for compassionate conservatism as the mayor of Indianapolis in the 1990's.
"If you go back to 1996," Mr. Goldsmith said, "the Republicans' message was that government had been harmful. Therefore, eliminate government, and people in tough circumstances will suddenly be better off. Both the public and many Republican mayors said that's naďve. Merely the absence of bad action is not going to be sufficient."
When Mr. Bush made welfare's overhaul one of the main planks of his first campaign for governor and later wrestled with it after his election, Mr. Rove arranged for Mr. Bush to meet conservative academics like James Q. Wilson, who has studied character and social policy, urban problems and crime, as well as Mr. Olasky and Mr. Magnet, who were looking into the causes of entrenched urban poverty.
As Mr. Magnet, who had been a scholar of Dickens, put it, "Weren't dizzying contrasts of wealth and poverty supposed to have gone out with Dickensian London?"
Mr. Magnet, whose book is subtitled "The Sixties' Legacy to the Underclass," charged that the youth of the 1960's, with their sexual revolution, disdain for bourgeois culture and praise for alternative lifestyles, "permitted, even celebrated, behavior that when poor people practice it will imprison them inextricably in poverty."
And in "The Tragedy of American Compassion," Mr. Olasky, whose personal pilgrimage led him to become first a Marxist and then an evangelical Christian, concluded that 19th-century America's religious-based charity was preferable to the welfare state. He thought that the social revolution of the 1960's was "disastrous" because it emphasized public assistance as an entitlement, asking nothing in return. The "key contribution" of the War on Poverty, he wrote, was "the deliberate attempt to uncouple welfare from shame." Religious charities of the last century, he argued, were more effective because they made demands in exchange for aid and because they required donors to give time as well as money.
The attack on the counterculture struck a chord with Mr. Bush. "It really helped crystallize some of my thinking about cultures, changing cultures," he said in the interview, "and of part of the legacy of my generation." Mr. Bush quickly acknowledged, though, that "positive things" also came out of the activism of the baby boom generation, like environmentalism and the women's movement.
As governor, Mr. Bush also met David Horowitz, once a voice of the New Left, who later turned conservative. In his book "Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the 60's," written with Peter Collier, Mr. Horowitz branded the 1960's as a time when "the System -- that collection of values that provide guidelines for societies as well as individuals -- was assaulted and mauled."
The Bush campaign also owes an intellectual debt to Catholic neo-conservatives who have based their advocacy of empowering grass-roots groups on concepts articulated by several encyclicals. As described by John J. DiIulio, Jr., a University of Pennsylvania professor who has become a leading researcher of faith-based social services, the idea is that "charity begins at home. You always try to solve serious social problems as close to the people as possible." In other words, the federal government steps in only when problems become too big for other institutions.
Critics of compassionate conservatism argue that it erodes the wall between church and state and may use charity to force religion on the poor. They also ask whether the concept really offers a way to eliminate government's responsibility to the poor. Arianna Huffington, once an acolyte of the Gingrich revolution who ran an organization with Mr. Olasky to promote such ideas, now counts herself a skeptic.
"How do you take what works and make sure it reaches enough people?" Ms. Huffington asks. "Can that really be done without the raw power of government appropriations given that the private sector has not been forthcoming?" She said she once thought that if government were scaled back, the private sector would step forward. Instead, she realized "how much easier it was raising money for the opera or a fashionable museum."
And even among proponents of compassionate conservatism there is debate about how far to go. Mr. DiIulio, a professed New Democrat who has also advised some of Vice President Al Gore's aides, said he did not believe that the civic sector could replace government as a means to help the poor.
By contrast, Mr. Olasky, though he proposes a step-by-step testing of faith-based programs and tax credits for charity, seems eager to use them to eventually replace the federal safety net.
"We must place in the hands of state officials all decisions about welfare and the financing of it, and then press them to put welfare entirely in the hands of church and community based organizations," Mr. Olasky has written.
Some of these differences of opinion were hashed out for Mr. Bush in early 1999 when a group assembled by Mr. Goldsmith in Texas met with Mr. Bush and his top aides to prepare for the coming presidential campaign.
Mr. DiIulio and Mr. Olasky were there. So, among others, were Mr. Wilson and Robert L. Woodson Sr., the founder of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, a nonprofit organization that assists neighborhood groups battling drugs, youth gangs and teen pregnancy.
Mr. Woodson, too, had gone on an intellectual journey, parting ways with former activists in the civil rights movement to become a leading black conservative in favor of social programs built around class not race.
For perhaps four hours that day, as the group discussed policies for the poor, Mr. Bush asked what would work and what would not.
They did not all agree. "True to my New Democrat profile I made very clear, for me at least, it's not about ministry versus Medicaid," said Mr. DiIulio. "You're not going to solve these problems with just faith-based approaches. There's not enough money in civic society."
Mr. Olasky recalled that Mr. Bush was less interested when the conversation touched on tax policy and tax credits and more engaged by the discussion of particular faith-based institutions.
He attributes Mr. Bush's interest in faith-based charitable institutions to Mr. Bush's personal conversions in the 1980's.
"He seems to me to feel a real connection with these inner-city faith-based groups," Mr. Olasky said. "He went through religious change at the same time he gave up drinking, so he understands even though he is from a very different economic background."
Mr. Bush straddled the views that had been aired that day in Texas months later when he spoke in Indianapolis about using churches and neighborhood groups to help the needy.
Like Mr. Olasky, Mr. Bush said charities should make demands of the recipients of aid.
"At Teen Challenge -- a national drug treatment program -- one official says, 'We have a rule: if you don't work, you don't eat,' " the Texas governor said. "This is demanding love," he said, "a severe mercy. These institutions, at their best, treat people as moral individuals, with responsibilities and duties, not as wards or clients or dependents or numbers."
But he also reflected the ideas of Mr. DiIulio, saying, "We will recognize there are some things that government should be doing -- like Medicaid for poor children. Government cannot be replaced by charities -- but it can welcome them as partners not resent them as rivals."
---
POLITICAL MEMO
Bush About to Walk Abortion Tightrope
New York Times
June 12, 2000
By ROBIN TONER
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/061200wh-bush-abortion.html
WASHINGTON, June 11 -- Gov. George W. Bush of Texas and his fellow Republicans are beginning seven weeks of difficult politics around the issue of abortion. It is a potentially divisive element in his decision on a running mate, his handling of the party's platform and the moderate, upbeat image he seeks to project at the party's convention in Philadelphia.
Some analysts give Mr. Bush high marks so far for sending conciliatory signals to both sides on the issue, including openly considering potential running mates who support abortion rights while embracing his party's strict anti-abortion stand.
Mr. Bush's opponents assert that his overtures to the middle are mere symbolic gestures.
The next seven weeks, they say, will show Mr. Bush siding, ultimately and firmly, with his party's social conservatives on abortion. "We think this flirting with moderation is very cynical, and we hope American women will see it for what it is," said Alice Germond, executive vice president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, which has endorsed Vice President Al Gore.
Ari Fleischer, spokesman for the Bush campaign, said, "The governor's record and his inclusive tone speaks for itself."
Already, Mr. Bush and Gov. Tommy G. Thompson of Wisconsin, the party's platform chairman, have served notice that they want to preserve the current platform position on abortion, which calls for a ban on the practice, without exception, and the appointment of judges who respect "the sanctity of innocent human life."
The political risk for Mr. Bush is that his effort to satisfy his conservative base could undermine his appeal to the center. The latest New York Times/CBS News Poll, conducted May 10-13, showed that 15 percent of the independents said abortion should not be permitted; 22 percent of the suburban voters responded that way. Among Republicans, 32 percent supported a total ban.
Another risk for Mr. Bush: If Republican abortion rights supporters decide to fight on the platform, it would inject a rough ideological struggle into the upbeat convention he seeks.
Just because Mr. Bush has signaled his intentions on the platform, "it doesn't mean everything is in his control," said Ann Stone, head of Republicans for Choice.
"Ask Bob Dole." She was alluding to the Republican nominee's efforts four years ago to add a "tolerance" provision expressing room for other views on abortion, an effort that was quashed by social conservatives.
Republican leaders are trying their best to mute the issue this time around.
Party strategists grumble that the news media will, nevertheless, declare what one called "abortion month" -- a focus that will be intensified when the Supreme Court soon hands down an important ruling on the constitutionality of Nebraska's law on a procedure opponents call "partial birth" abortion.
Moreover, the abortion issue has become a major subplot in Mr. Bush's selection of a running mate. "They've got a situation where if they pick a pro-choice candidate, they've got enormous worries about the convention," one Republican strategist said of the Bush campaign, speaking on the condition that he not be identified. "And if they don't pick one," the strategist added, the criticism will be "you guys didn't have the guts to pick a pro-choice vice president."
Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, said: "If Bush doesn't pick a pro-choice running mate, it gives the pro-choice movement credibility to say he also won't pick pro-choice judges for the Supreme Court."
In general, both sides argue that Mr. Bush could pay a price if he rebuffs their constituents.
Anti-abortion leaders have long argued that their rank and file has greater intensity on the issue than supporters of abortion rights -- and is far more likely to cast a vote on the basis of it.
Indeed, the New York Times/CBS News Poll in February found that 70 percent of those supporting a ban on abortion said it was "very important" that their presidential candidate shared their views; only 26 percent of those who supported abortion being available to all said it was "very important" that their candidate agreed.
"It's been very beneficial for the Republican Party to be a pro-life party," said Darla St. Martin, associate executive director of the National Right to Life Committee.
"And I think they will continue to be a pro-life party."
Republicans who support abortion rights, though, argue that the party's position hurts its candidates and its image in subtle and complicated ways. "It's representative of a number of issues beyond abortion," said Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine.
"We have to demonstrate that we're not reflexively ideological.
Clearly, Governor Bush is not." She added, "I would think the logical step would be to have platform reflect an inclusive tone."
Ms. Stone said that she told Governor Thompson, in a meeting last week, that the party needs to ease the fears of Republican abortion rights supporters who worry about the impact of a Republican Congress and White House on Supreme Court nominees.
While Mr. Bush has declined to embrace an abortion litmus test for judicial nominees, his support for a platform that includes one is sure to be used against him this fall, many strategists agree.
(Mr. Bush has indicated that he also supports exceptions to a ban on abortion for cases of rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at stake, although the platform includes none.)
Ms. Stone said efforts are already under way to influence the makeup of the platform committee; down the road, abortion rights supporters also have the option of trying to gather a majority of six state delegations necessary to suspend the rules and allow a debate on abortion on the floor of the convention.
But, after eight years out of power, with a nominee ahead in the polls, no wing of the party may be in the mood for a messy internal fight.
Former Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts, a veteran of the abortion rights struggle in the Republican Party, said, "It's a lose-lose proposition in a way."
"On the one hand, pro-choice Republicans don't really want to do anything to help the chances of the Democrats in presidential elections," Mr. Weld said, "and to the extent there's a huge buzz on the issue, it calls attention to the pro-life plank, which is a distinct negative in the election as a whole."
On the other hand, Mr. Weld said that not changing the platform made it easier for Democrats to portray the Republicans as "a monolithic bloc" on abortion, and hurt them in the general election.
"So there's no clear way out of that box," Mr. Weld added.
---
Pitchfork Pat's Reform Grab Perot Supporters Ousted By Texas Reform Party Buchananites Sweeping State Parties Nationwide Will Ross Fight Pat For Reform White House Nod?
CBS News
06/12/00
http://cbsnews.cbs.com/now/story/0,1597,204693-412,00.shtml
"Our goal is to create a new broad populist traditionalist conservative party, but there's no doubt if I'm gonna lead that party it's gonna have respect for the right to life and it's gonna want to put together a Supreme Court that respects religious traditions and the right to life in America." Pat Buchanan
"I've just seen the most stupid political move of my life." Paul Truax Texas Reform Party founder
HOUSTON (CBS) In Texas over the weekend and across the country, Pat Buchanan's backers are ousting old time Reform Party members, who are now having seconds thoughts about inviting the conservative commentator into their party to seek their presidential nomination, reports CBS News Correspondent Phil Jones.
"When you're invited to somebody's house and you evict them before dinner is served, evict the host before dinner is served, you don't make friends that way," said former national party chairman Russell Verney, an aide to party founder Ross Perot.
In a coup described by longtime Texas Reform Party leaders as a "storming by the Pat Buchanan brigade," several Perot supporters in Houston were unseated Saturday after hours of infighting before a meeting of state party leaders.
"The Buchanan brigade has unseated the black and Hispanic delegates of Bexar County," said Paul Truax, founder of the Reform Party of Texas and a national committee member. "Apart from being highly illegal, this is a terrible political blunder."
As Buchanan's backers fought off Perot loyalists in Texas, Buchanan himself was on hand in Langhorne, Pa., to accept the nomination of the Pennsylvania Reform Party. The conservative commentator accepted the nomination amid chants of "Go, Pat, Go!" from 150 delegates after giving a speech in which he renewed calls for tougher trade restrictions on China.
In Texas, Buchanan supporters faced a more hostile environment. Ousted delegates from Bexar and Dallas said they were unseated because Buchanan supporters wanted more power. Buchanan supporters said they were simply trying to follow the rules.
"I've just seen the most stupid political move of my life," said Truax. He said he plans to contact the Texas Election Commission on Monday to report violations by Buchanan supporters and to investigate whether violations of the Voting Rights Act occurred.
But Tim Haley, director of Buchanan's presidential campaign, said: "I think those accusations are outrageous. These people are just trying to go by the rules."
The Reform Party has always focused on economic and trade issues, avoiding divisive social issues like abortion. Now, party loyalists are accusing Buchanan of hijacking the party for his own agenda.
"It's about right to life and after the election it will be the right to life political party in the country," said Verney.
In an exclusive interview with CBS News on Sunday, Buchanan was adamant on where he's headed.
"Our goal is to create a new broad populist traditionalist conservative party, but there's no doubt if I'm gonna lead that party it's gonna have respect for the right to life and it's gonna want to put together a Supreme Court that respects religious traditions and the right to life in America," he said.
That's exactly that kind of rhetoric that has many in the party frightened. A few days ago, Iowa Reform Party chair Sheryl Blue resigned.
"We're afraid that he (Buchanan) is going to bring his social issues into the platform and change it."
And New Jersey Reform Party chairman Ira Goodman is so fed up he's boycotting this week's party convention.
"These people are radicals, they want radical change within our organization."
But Buchanan said, "I think some of these folks have decided that what they have and what they hold onto, their small fiefdoms, are more important that this larger agenda that we see."
And Buchanan predicts that by the party's August national convention, it will be as united and organized as the Rockettes in Radio City Music Hall.
Perot loyalists have also launched a petition drive to get Perot's name on the Reform Party ballot. Aides to Perot say the Texas billionaire has not said what he would do if wins the nomination.
---
White House criticizes GOP drug plan
USA Today
06/13/00- Updated 12:24 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsmon18.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton said a Republican-backed health care plan ''claims to help everybody but is a false hope for most,'' as the White House and congressional Republicans touted dueling programs to help older Americans pay for medication.
Clinton noted bipartisan support for an expansion of Medicare to cover the cost of prescription drugs, but said only his plan offers the elderly an honest deal. Adding the coverage - which was left out of the original Medicare program created in 1965 - is a popular election year issue.
Clinton and fellow Democrats claim the GOP plan covers too few people, while Republicans claim the White House plan to too expensive.
''If we were in deficit and trying to do this, I would understand why we would say, 'Well, we can't help everybody so we'll just help a few.''' Clinton said.
''But that's not the situation. We can afford to do this right, and we must not pass a plan that claims to offer something to everybody and is a false hope to most and therefore inadequate.''
Both plans would cover the cost of prescription drugs for older people and the disabled - differences come in the cost and scope of coverage.
Clinton proposes a uniform price for drugs, which would be available to all elderly and disabled people who use the federal program. Those who opted for the drug coverage would pay a small co-payment toward their prescriptions.
The competing Republican plan being detailed Tuesday relies in part on an idea that Clinton claims has already failed - the so-called ''Medigap'' coverage offered by private insurers to cover the cost of drugs.
Many elderly in the audience for a White House press conference Tuesday said they cannot afford that private coverage.
Clinton and about a dozen lawmakers from rural areas also pointed Tuesday to a new White House analysis of the plight of the rural elderly, who generally pay more for their drugs.
''In short, rural areas are being denied lifesaving treatment because of where they live,'' said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who asked for the study.
Older Americans who live far from major cities are 60% less likely to get the drugs they need, and they pay around 25% more for the medications, the White House study of Medicare recipients said. About 29% of rural elderly spend more than 5% of their income on out-of-pocket prescription drugs, compared to 21% of city-dwelling seniors, the same study found.
In addition, rural Medicare recipients are 50% less likely to have any coverage for the cost of prescription drugs, the White House claims.
---
Reality check
Washington Times
June 12, 2000
Inside Politics
Greg Pierce
http://208.246.212.80/national/inpolitics.htm
"To hear President Clinton tell it, he's a regular spendthrift, hanging out at the Big K and paying cash for the Blue Light Special on tube socks while hobnobbing with us regular folks," Paul Bedard notes in U.S. News & World Report.
" 'I try to go out and shop every - buy something every few months, anyway, just so I keep in touch with people,' he says. Well . . . almost, associates say of the president's claim on Russian radio.
"Reality check: He's a rare shopper who's more likely to have an aide pay the tab with the president's credit cards - Visa, MasterCard and American Express. What's more, when he does get the itch to buy a book, normally a stack at a time while on vacation at a fancy resort, or shop for his girls, typically at boutiques in Georgetown or Washington's Union Station, the Secret Service keeps people at bay, insiders say.
" 'The fact is he doesn't get a chance to shop. No president does,' says one friend. Nonetheless, it's true that he carries cash, typically about $200 in small bills. But it gets little use: He tosses it to an aide when golfing or shaking hands so it doesn't get in the way or get stolen."
Honesty and trust
Rep. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, yesterday chastised Vice President Al Gore for breaking his pledge that the Democrats would not be the first to use soft money to finance advertising in the presidential contest.
The Democratic National Committee last week began running ads to boost Mr. Gore's image. They were paid for in part with soft money given to the party rather than the candidate.
"The problem the vice president has this week is that on March 15th he got on national television, he looked the American people in the eye. He made a bold political statement," Mr. Graham said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
"A few months later when the polls go down he's backing off. This manipulation and deception has continued for 7 1/2 years. This is about honesty and trust. I can vote for somebody I disagree with politically. I can't vote for somebody I don't trust to tell me the truth."
Promoting Rubin
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle says he does not have a favorite to be Vice President Al Gore's running mate in November, but the South Dakota Democrat was willing to provide names of Democrats he believes would be "great candidates."
Mr. Daschle offered his suggestions yesterday on CNN's "Evans, Novak, Hunt & Shields."
He mentioned six Democratic U.S. senators: Evan Bayh of Indiana, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, John Kerry of Massachusetts, Dianne Feinstein of California, Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and Bob Graham of Florida.
Show co-host Rowland Evans wondered aloud why Mr. Daschle did not initially mention former Treasury Secretary Richard Rubin, whom Mr. Evans described as "one of the hottest tickets in town."
"You didn't get me a chance. You interrupted," said Mr. Daschle, who by that point had mentioned Mr. Rubin.
Asked what Mr. Rubin would bring to the Democratic ticket, Mr. Daschle said: "Class, experience, articulate nature. He's got networks all over the country."
The Senate Democratic leader then got some help from Mr. Evans, who mentioned the economy.
"The economy, absolutely," Mr. Daschle said, adding: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Bob Rubin."
Daschle's prediction
Sen. Tom Daschle, in his appearance yesterday on CNN, said he isn't scared off by polls that indicate very strong popular support for the Social Security reform plan proposed by Texas Gov. George W. Bush.
The Bush plan would allow Americans to take 2 percentage points out of the Social Security tax and invest it.
Pundit Bob Novak asked the South Dakota Democrat if Mr. Gore should "modify his total opposition" to this plan, given the public support for it.
"It would be a disaster," Mr. Daschle said.
He pointed out that just last week "four respected analysts from nonpartisan organizations said that this would be a devastating blow to Social Security." Mr. Daschle said the critics predicted such a change would "shorten the life of the Social Security trust fund" and would sharply reduce Social Security benefits for those under 40 years old.
Mr. Novak wanted to know if Mr. Daschle will counter the favorable public opinion.
The Democratic leader replied: "I think public opinion is based on what they know at the time. What they know is that it provides them with a little more flexibility. What they don't know is that it takes about a trillion dollars out of the trust fund" and that it "means a reduction of about 40 percent in the benefits that people would be entitled to today."
"Once those facts are known, you're going to see entirely different" poll results, Mr. Daschle predicted.
Ex-candidate convicted
Former congressional candidate David Giles, a Democrat who lost races in Washington state against Republican Rod Chandler in 1986 and 1990, has been convicted of raping and molesting a teen-age girl.
A 12-member jury found Giles guilty last week. In December, a mistrial was declared after a jury deadlocked 6-6.
No sentencing date was set, but King County prosecutors said Giles should be sent to prison for at least 11 years, the Seattle Times reports.
No funds, please
Libertarian Party presidential candidate Harry Browne says he doesn't want taxpayer money and is refusing to accept matching campaign funds from the federal government, Cox News Service reports.
Mr. Browne said he is eligible to receive up to $750,000 for the primary season. He explained that taking the cash would betray his party's drive for a minimal government with no national tax, no gun-control laws, and no anti-drug law-enforcement programs.
Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or by e-mail: Pierce@twtmail.com
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Presidential field includes all kinds
Washington Times
June 12, 2000
By Jennifer Harper THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-2000612222110.htm
There are those who really, really want to be the leader of the Free World.
Along with Al Gore and George W. Bush, another 217 hopefuls have officially declared their candidacies for president with the Federal Election Commission, for better or worse, come hell or high water.
They've dutifully filled out FEC Form No. 2 Statement of Candidacy and sent it off, left with the heady sensation that they are, well, running.
"There are those who want to run for president," said Kelly Huff of the FEC. "And this is what they do."
Vera Watts of Lansing, Mich., is in the race, along with George Reid of Pinnacle, N.C., and Caesar Saint Augustine of Malibu, Calif., who represents the "Get Even with the State" party.
Jack Lee Murphy of Santa Fe, Texas, Martin McNally, who resides in the U.S. Penitentiary in Marion, Ill., and Billy Joe Clegg of the Biloxi-based Foundation for Drug Annihilation and Save America Progressive Party are also in the mix.
All told, there are 219 candidates on record with the FEC.
"That figure is fairly typical," said Miss Huff. "We usually get 200 to 300 applications each presidential election year for those who decide, for whatever reason, they want to run. They fill in the form; there's no fee, no nothing. That's it."
The names are all right there on a 24-page, alphabetical list called "All Individuals Who have Filed Statements of Candidacy and/or Organization - 2000 Presidential Campaign."
Would-be candidates don't have to register with the agency until they have raised $5,000 in campaign funds.
"They send in the form anyway," Miss Huff notes. "Many don't understand that the next step is getting their name on the ballot in every state through petitions. That's where the weeding out starts."
There are 29 hopefuls from California, 24 from Virginia and 10 out of Texas. Nine of the candidates hail from North Carolina, six from New Hampshire and five from Oregon. Others come from New Mexico, Michigan, South Dakota and Alabama, among other spots.
Beyond the FEC, there's a vast crop of candidates who didn't send in an application but declared their intent nevertheless. Most bloomed for a short time in the political landscape, then opted out.
When Gary Bauer withdrew from the race in February, 14 other GOP candidates also left, according to the Politics I Web site (www.lobbyforme.com), a political resource that includes 72 persons on its list of GOP candidates for president.
Forty-nine Democrats were also in the running alongside Mr. Gore. To date, all but five are still active, according to the list.
Then there are the true independents, representing groups like the New Direction Party, the Priorities Party, the Veterans Industrial Party and the Socialist Equality Party, to name just a few.
New Yorker Thomas Bentley of the Progressive Bull Moose Party is now running for president for the fifth time while the Light Party's Da Vid, a California physician/ ecologist/artist, is in for his second try.
Lightist ideology combines "Republican, Democratic, Libertarian and Green Parties," he said, "to create a new reality with health, peace and freedom for all."
Beyond the pale, there are also candidates whom a determined and often imaginative few would like to see in the White House.
Spaceman Darth Vader is running, along with Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln and Bingo the Dog - all supported in one fashion or another through Web sites, occasional hoaxed and printed parody.
Mr. Lincoln's supporters note that their candidate has hired political consultant Dick Morris for advice, paying him "two heifers and some kindlin' wood."
Mark Twain is also running.
At his official Internet site (www.twain2000.com), there are all the usual polls, campaign news, endorsements and other trimmings. Mr. Twain is confident, supporters say, that he is fit to run, and has come clean with his sins.
"The rumor that I buried a dead aunt under my grape vine was correct," the waggish group quote their candidate as saying. "The vine needed fertilizing, my aunt had to be buried and I dedicated her to this higher purpose. Does that unfit me for the presidency?"
---
Dr. Laura makes Buchanan short list
USA Today
06/12/00- Updated 12:35 PM ET
By Tom Squitieri, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/e98/e2030.htm
WASHINGTON - Reform Party presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, sensing the party's nomination is within his grasp, has drawn up a list of six possible running mates, including radio talk show host Laura Schlessinger.
Also on the list are three-term Rep. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., Teamsters President James Hoffa, GOP presidential hopeful Alan Keyes, radio talk show host Oliver North and John Silber, former president of Boston University, according to members of Buchanan's staff who participated in the discussions.
Schlessinger is a conservative who has sparked controversy by calling homosexuality "deviant" and single mothers "immoral." Hoffa has already told Buchanan he is not interested in running.
Keyes has said if the Republicans remove the anti-abortion plank from the party platform, he will quit the GOP and join the Constitution Party. Silber was the unsuccessful 1990 Democratic candidate for Massachusetts governor.
North, the former Iran-contra figure, ran unsuccessfully in 1994 as a Virginia GOP Senate candidate.
Buchanan's thoughts on a running mate came as he used a raucous Texas state convention and a calm Pennsylvania convention to build up his delegate lead to 293. That's one delegate shy of 50% of the total number available.
---
Buchanan Forces Unseat Perot's
New York Times
June 12, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/061200wh-reform.html
HOUSTON, June 11 -- In a coup longtime Texas Reform Party leaders describe as a "storming by the Pat Buchanan brigade," several supporters of the national party founder, Ross Perot, have been unseated before a meeting of state party leaders here.
"The Buchanan brigade has unseated the black and Hispanic delegates of Bexar County," said Paul Truax, founder of the Reform Party of Texas and a national committee member. "Apart from being highly illegal, this is a terrible political blunder."
As backers of Patrick J. Buchanan fought off Perot loyalists in Texas on Saturday, Mr. Buchanan was in Langhorne, Pa., to accept the nomination of the Pennsylvania Reform Party.
Mr. Buchanan, a conservative commentator, accepted the nomination amid chants of "Go, Pat, go" from 150 delegates after giving a speech in which he renewed calls for tougher trade restrictions on China.
His supporters in Texas faced a more hostile environment.
Ousted delegates from Dallas and Bexar said they were unseated because Buchanan supporters wanted more power. Buchanan supporters said they were trying to follow the rules.
"I've just seen the most stupid political move of my life," Mr. Truax said. He said he would consult the Texas Election Commission on Monday to report violations by Buchanan supporters and to investigate possible violations of the Voting Rights Act.
Tim Haley, director of Mr. Buchanan's presidential campaign, said: "I think those accusations are outrageous. These people are just trying to go by the rules."
Mr. Buchanan, who left the Republican Party last year, defeated John Hagelin of Fairfield, Iowa, and Charles E. Collins of Forsyth, Ga., for the nomination in Pennsylvania.
But his campaign for his new party's national nomination has been met with opposition from Perot supporters, who fear he could make the party's platform more conservative.
They have begun a petition drive to put Mr. Perot's name on the Reform Party ballot. Aides say Mr. Perot has not said what he would do if he wins the nomination.
---
McCain States Firmly Will Not Be Vice President
Yahoo News
Monday June 12 12:22 PM ET
By Alan Elsner, Political Correspondent
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000612/pl/campaign_mccain_dc_1.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sen. John McCain (news - web sites) of Arizona on Monday firmly squelched renewed speculation that he might consider serving as Texas Gov. George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s vice presidential running mate on the Republican ticket.
McCain told Reuters in a telephone interview he could not understand the sudden burst of speculation that had followed publication of the article by conservative columnist Robert Novak in Monday's Washington Post.
``I've made it very clear I don't want to be considered and I don't want to be vice president of the United States and I will not be,'' McCain said.
He said he had not been contacted by Bush's vice presidential search team headed by former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney.
``I know that Gov. Bush is honoring my request not to be considered for vice president,'' McCain said.
Bush, the son of former President George Bush, defeated McCain in winning the Republican nomination earlier this year.
The two men have only met once since then, in early May, to mend fences, which were bruised after the tough campaign. At that meeting in Pittsburgh, McCain endorsed Bush. But their relations have remained chilly.
Novak wrote in his column that McCain told Republican lawmakers at a private breakfast on May 17 he might change his mind about the vice presidency under certain circumstances.
He quoted McCain as saying that if it became clear Bush needed him to win the election, ``then I would do it.''
McCain said he did not recall saying that and if he had, with 50 people at that meeting, the news would not have taken several weeks to leak out.
In a CBS interview on Monday, McCain put it another way: ''Well, I may have said it, but what I meant to say was that I asked Gov. Bush not to consider me. There's a process that you go through that Dick Cheney is now heading up. I'm not part of that process, so the scenario is just not there.''
One reason McCain's name may have resurfaced is that some Republicans, looking down the long list of potential vice presidents, see few who would add excitement to the ticket or bring any solid electoral benefits.
Another is that conservative Republicans, especially fierce opponents of abortion rights, are growing increasingly worried that Bush may opt for Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, a supporter of abortion rights.
Bush has been leading his Democratic opponent, Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites), in most recent polls by a slim, single digit margin. But some analysts say Gore retains the advantage in the election because of the strength of the economy and the general prosperity the nation is enjoying.
-------- environment
Warming Effects to Be Widespread Significant Changes for U.S.,
Good and Ill, Seen in Study
New York Times
June 12, 2000
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/061200sci-environ-climate.html
A warming of the global climate is likely to have substantial consequences -- for better and worse -- around the United States in coming decades, including bumper crops in the heartland, chronic erosion of coasts, summer water shortages and winter floods in the West and a future New York City that steams in summer like present-day Atlanta.
These are a few of the predictions made in the first thorough federal assessment of the possible effect on the country, region by region, of a warming trend that many scientists expect will characterize coming decades.
Increasingly, mainstream scientists are concluding that a buildup of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has contributed to warming in the last 100 years, and they say the trend is likely to carry well into the new century.
Some of the growth in these so-called greenhouse gases, scientists say, is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, destruction of forests and other human activities.
Temperatures nationwide rose about one degree in the 20th century, and the report estimated the potential effects of further warming by using a "business as usual" assumption, in which carbon dioxide levels continued to grow at the rate of recent years. At this pace, the average temperature in the country would rise 5 to 10 degrees in the next century, although the authors stressed that this was only one possibility. To put that in perspective, the world is 5 to 9 degrees warmer than in the last ice age, 18,000 to 20,000 years ago.
The study, which is to be released today by the Clinton administration for 60 days of public review, was ordered by Congress in 1990 to help lawmakers identify vulnerabilities and potential benefits of the warming trend. But it kicked into high gear only three years ago, when computer models grew sophisticated enough to analyze links between the atmosphere and oceans and local systems like crops and forests.
The assessment includes an illustrated summary and a series of technical analyses of the effect of a warmer world on forestry, fresh water, farming, coasts and human health. The report will be on the Internet at www.nacc.usgcrp.gov.
The report forecasts some profound changes, with many regions of the country seeing conditions shift to those of their present-day neighbors to the south.
In the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, rising stream temperatures are very likely to harm migrating salmon, the report said.
In California, less snow in winter would lead to less runoff from melting snow in the late spring, reducing water supplies during the summer growing season. The Southwest would see rising precipitation that could cause shrubby forests to overtake desert landscapes.
The study says one of the most likely of all consequences from continued warming would be coastal erosion and destructive storm surges as sea level steadily rises.
In Eastern cities, the summer heat index, combining humidity and temperature, is likely to rise, so that as New York City takes on Southern steaminess, Atlanta will see hot spells more typical of Houston.
The biggest benefits are likely to come from the positive effect of rising carbon dioxide concentrations on plants, which rely on the gas for photosynthesis. Using computer models of climate, crops and forest health, the study found that the country could see rising yields and falling prices for food and timber. The falling prices would be good for consumers but could hurt some timber companies and farmers as already tenuous profit margins shrink.
But scientists who conducted the study cautioned that the benefits would not be uniform. For example, while farmers in the Northern plains could see gains, those in Southern states could see losses because of increased risk of droughts and damaging floods as more rain falls in drenching downpours.
The good news should be tempered, too, because the study did not calculate possible agricultural losses because of flourishing weeds or migrating insect pests, its authors said.
And the composition of wild forests is likely to change, with some species that are considered hallmarks of particular regions disappearing. For example, the sugar maple, the New York state tree and an important species for tourism, is likely to vanish from all but the most northern parts of the state as its preferred colder climatic zone moves north.
The warming is likely to keep shipping lanes in Alaska and the Great Lakes free of ice longer, easing the movement of oil and other goods.
But other effects could negate any savings, the study concluded. Water levels in the Great Lakes are expected to drop, increasing the need for costly dredging of channels.
In Alaska, the effects of the warming have already been felt and are requiring costly adjustments, with roads and air strips requiring constant repair as underlying permafrost thaws and buckles, scientists said. Native Alaskans, who rely on ice-dwelling seals for food, are finding it more difficult to hunt, said Gunter Weller, a climatologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, who is participating in the project.
"For the native community or the oil industry or the fishing industry, this is no longer some nebulous global thing coming in 100 years," Dr. Weller said. "These are real things in real time that are really occurring."
Scientists from dozens of government agencies, universities, private groups and industries conducted the studies and more than 300 independent reviewers offered comments, the authors said. The overview's three principal authors were Dr. Thomas R. Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.; Anthony Janetos of the World Resources Institute in Washington; and Dr. Jerry M. Melillo of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass.
As the overview moved from early to final drafts in the last few months, the politics of climate intruded, with intense tugs of war being felt by some scientists involved in the work over how to word conclusions.
Indeed, in recent weeks the emphasis changed, participants said, with the focus shifting somewhat toward the positive consequences for agriculture, for example.
Also, the 145-page overview was released even though not all the underlying regional studies are complete, a decision that drew criticism from scientists from both ends of the political spectrum.
"There's been pressure all along that the synthesis had to come out first because of the election," said a scientist who shares the Clinton administration position that global warming is a serious problem, but who is still involved in the report and thus spoke only on condition of anonymity. "It's unfortunate, because the whole process would have been stronger if you did it the right way. Then the critics wouldn't have anything to say."
Over the weekend, officials at the White House said the summary was released ahead of time only because the final work on some of the underlying studies had been delayed.
Apart from the timing, a variety of experts involved in preparing the document, including people from industry and advocacy groups, say it represents a real consensus and that its findings are significant.
Thomas F. Cecich, vice president for environmental safety at the drug company Glaxo Wellcome and a member of the team that wrote the national overview, called the report a first look at a dizzyingly complicated system. He said that everyone involved tried to filter out politics and preconceptions. "I think it's been a fair and open and scientifically valid process," he said.
In particular, many scientists said, the effort, if continued and refined, could offer the first opportunity for the country to incorporate long-term climate projections into its planning for everything from bridge building to crop planting.
The report concludes that society, for the most part, will probably be able to adapt to many of the coming shifts, but that some natural systems -- alpine meadows, coral reefs, mangrove swamps and the like -- will be damaged or disappear because they are either hemmed in by man-made structures or geography or simply cannot keep pace with the rate of temperature change.
The authors stressed that the consequences described in the study -- like the visions of Scrooge's future in "A Christmas Carol" -- mainly represent developments that may be, not things that must be.
And there will always be surprises, said Dr. Karl, one of the main authors. "There are a lot of uncertainties with respect to interactions between natural systems, human systems and climate."
Even if the surprises are good news, he said, humans will not necessarily be able to exploit them. "Usually, if something is not anticipated, you can't take advantage of it."
-------- health
EPA: Toxic Dioxins Put Human Health at Risk
June 12, 2000 (ENS)
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jun2000/2000L-06-12-11.html
WASHINGTON, DC, A group of environmental contaminants called dioxins are most dangerous for infants and children, but the health of adults exposed to the chemicals is also at risk, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said today in a long awaited reassessment of dioxin toxicity.
Dioxins can alter the fundamental growth and development of cells in a way that results in cancer and adverse effects upon reproduction and development in animals and potentially in people, the EPA said in a draft report.
Based on a more complete understanding of dioxins, the report finds that risks to people may be somewhat higher than previously believed, even though actual exposure seems to be declining among the general population.
The EPA released draft chapters of its reassessment of the health risks from dioxins for scientific and public review. The process includes review by an independent peer review panel in July and review by EPA's Scientific Advisory Board planned for October.
Aluminum plant beside a Catholic church, belches fumes over a New Orleans, Louisiana residential area. 1973. (Photo courtesy EPA) A group of about 30 chemically related compounds is collectively referred to as dioxins. Dioxins are produced by waste incineration and other industrial processes. Collectively, they are one of 12 persistent organic pollutants which are the subject of a international treaty negotiation. These pollutants build up in the human and animal tissue, accumulating as they ascend up the food chain. More than 100 prominent physicians, public health professional and scientists concerned about the effects of dioxins have appealed to President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore "to develop a plan of action, which should include national and international commitments to the long-term goal of the virtual elimination" of the dangerous chemicals.
The EPA reassessment report has been in the works for nearly a decade and has been the target of much industry pressure, the health officials say. "The industries flooding our environment with dioxin have denied its dangers while this report has been held up for nine years," said Robert Musil, Ph.D., CEO and executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
"This reassessment tells the truth they don't want you to hear: dioxin is a dangerous cancer causing chemical that must be phased out," said Dr. Musil.
Child plays frisbee on a smoke-filled street in North Birmingham, Alabama, the most heavily polluted area of the city. 1972. Dioxins accumulate in fatty tissues and are not eliminated. (Photo courtesy EPA) Dioxins are especially dangerous to children. As the physicians' letter to the President explains, "developing fetuses, nursing infants, and young children are at greatest risk from current levels of dioxin exposure. EPA's draft risk characterization warns that young children consume more than three times - and nursing infants 100 times - the amount of dioxins as adults, on a body weight basis." The reassessment released today is the product of an exhaustive review by EPA scientists and other government and non-government scientists begun in 1991. It reflects comments received since release of an earlier draft in 1994, recommendations received from EPA's Scientific Advisory Board in 1995 and extensive additional data on dioxin obtained by the Agency.
Following completion of scientific and public review, EPA will issue the final dioxin reassessment document and at the same time will publish a draft dioxin Risk Management Strategy for public comment. The strategy will propose EPA policy and programs for dioxin using the reassessment as its scientific basis.
In addition to the two draft chapters for which the Agency is inviting comments, the entire reassessment and other background information are now available on EPA's dioxin reassessment web site: http://www.epa.gov/ncea/dioxin.htm.
Limited paper copies of the summary chapter, and a CD-ROM of the reassessment (not including the summary chapter), are available from the National Service Center for Environmental Publications at 1-800-490-9198.
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Geron Surges After Celera Genomics Deal
New York Times
June 12, 2000
By TIM ARANGO NYTimes.com/TheStreet.com, 3:01 p.m.
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/12tsc-geron.html
Shares in biotech company Geron jumped 15 percent Monday on news that it had entered a cooperation agreement with Celera Genomics .
The objective of the collaboration is to identify and assign function to genes important in early human development, and use the information to develop drugs, protein therapies, cell and gene therapies, diagnostics and tools for use in drug discovery and testing.
In essence, the collaboration brings together Geron's research on pluripotent stem cells -- which are cells that can be used by any part of the body -- and Celera's vast database of information on genes, Gibbons said.
"It's a marriage, really, of the best in human embryonic stem cell research and the best of the genome project," said Dr. Tom Okarma, the president and chief executive officer of Menlo Park, Calif.-based Geron.
Rockville, Md.-based Celera is expected to complete its human genome project, which decodes a human being's genetic makeup, later this summer, according to Winton Gibbons, an analyst at William Blair & Co. who covers Celera. Gibbons has a strong buy rating for Celera, and his firm has not performed any underwriting.
Geron's shares were lately up 3 5/8 to 29 7/8. Celera, meanwhile, was up only 3/8, or 1 percent, to 108 5/8.
Gibbons said Celera's stock price didn't move as much as Geron's because the market has been inundated lately by good news on Celera, such as a deal for information technology company Paracel, which shareholders accepted last week. "A lot of positive news has been incorporated into Celera's stock price," he said.
-------- activists
LEONARD PELTIER REVIEWED FOR PAROLE
United States Parole Examiner Refuses to Consider New Evidence
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee's Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 12, 2000
Native American rights activist, Leonard Peltier was reviewed for parole today during a hearing held at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas. The Hearing was held to determine whether there is any reason why the Parole Commission should change their 1993 decision to deny Peltier parole. Today Peltier's representatives told the Commission that Peltier's health, serious family needs, and his positive program achievements were all reasons for the Commission to reconsider their denial of parole to Peltier. They also argued that the Commission's original decision to deny parole was wrong. They said the Commission has yet to justify their reasons for denying his release in excess of what their guidelines recommend.
The Parole Examiner refused to read a report from Dr. Peter Basch who, after reviewing Peltier's recent medical records, determined that problems with Peltier's health could result in "recurrent central retinal vein occlusion, stroke, heart disease, and kidney failure." The doctor also noted that several of Mr. Peltier's health problems had not been treated appropriately by prison medical staff.
Attending the parole hearing were representatives for Amnesty International, the National Council of Churches, the National Congress of American Indians, and the Assembly of First Nations. Legal council included attorneys Jennifer Harbury, Carl Nadler, and former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark. Jean Ann Day, survivor of the Pine Ridge "reign of terror" also testified.
The Parole examiner did not respond to pleas from Amnesty International or the National Council of Churches, and he showed no interest in the eight parole plans offering Peltier housing and employment from various Native Organizations and tribes.
Furthermore, the examiner refused to accept or consider the 10,000 letters collected over the last three months from US citizens, human rights organizations, luminaries and members of the international community supporting Peltier's release.
Without deliberation or the consideration of any documents presented, the parole examiner recommended that Peltier's sentence be continued until his next full parole hearing in 2008. Those in attendance reported that the examiner wrote the denial while the presentation was still being made.
Peltier's defense council will continue to protest the Parole Commission's denial of parole to Peltier in federal court. Supporters will continue efforts to gain Peltier's release through a grant of Executive Clemency. Leonard Peltier was originally convicted for the murders of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. However, formerly withheld documents supporting Peltier's innocence would later force the prosecution to admit that they could not prove who actually killed the agents. Despite this, Peltier has remained in prison for 24 years. Amnesty International considers him to be a political prisoner who should be immediately released.
Call the White House Comments Line Today Demand Justice for Leonard Peltier! 202-456-1111
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee PO Box 583 Lawrence, KS 66044 785-842-5774 www.freepeltier.org To subscribe, send a blank message to lpdc-on@mail-list.com
For NPR's June 12, 2000 story on Leonard for Democracy NOW!
http://www.webactive.com/webactive/pacifica/demnow/
(scroll down half the page to story)
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Death Sentences Being Overturned in 2 of 3 Appeals
Reversals Are Attributed to Errors by Defense Lawyers, Police and Prosecutors
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
June 12, 2000
New York Times
The most far-reaching study of the death penalty in the United States has found that two out of three convictions were overturned on appeal, mostly because of serious errors by incompetent defense lawyers or overzealous police officers and prosecutors who withheld evidence.
The study, an examination of appeals in all capital cases from the time the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, in 1973, to 1995, also found that 75 percent of the people whose death sentences were set aside were later given lesser sentences after retrials, in plea bargains or by order of a judge. An additional 7 percent were found not guilty on retrial.
Eighteen percent were given the death penalty on retrial, but many of these had their convictions overturned again in the appeals process. The study, to be released today, is based on a search of state and federal court records. It was conducted by a team of lawyers and criminologists at Columbia University led by James S. Liebman, a professor of law who has served as a defense lawyer in a number of death penalty trials and appeals.
The report is likely to intensify an already gathering debate about the death penalty, which has been provoked by the release of some death row inmates after new DNA technology helped exonerate them. Concerns about the death penalty were heightened by the decision in March by Gov. George Ryan of Illinois, a Republican, to declare a moratorium on executions in his state after 13 men on death row there were cleared by new evidence.
While some death penalty supporters have argued that Illinois is an aberration and produces less reliable death sentences than other states, the Columbia study found that the rate of serious error detected by court reviews in Illinois capital cases was 66 percent, slightly below the national average of 68 percent.
Support for the death penalty is overwhelming, but recent Gallup polls have shown it slipping, from a peak of 80 percent in 1994, to 66 percent, its lowest point since 1978, when it was 62 percent.
Even many death penalty supporters have expressed serious concerns about its fairness. Last month, the historically conservative New Hampshire Legislature voted to abolish the death penalty, though the bill was vetoed by the state's Democratic governor, Jeanne Shaheen.
The debate has even made a surprise entrance into the presidential race, where Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee who has been an outspoken supporter of the penalty, postponed the execution of a convicted killer earlier this month to allow DNA testing. It was the first stay Mr. Bush had granted, after presiding over 131 executions, the most of any governor since the death penalty was reinstated.
A spokesman for Governor Bush, Ari Fleischer, said that "Some people will use this study to call for the abolition of the death penalty." But, Mr. Fleischer said, the finding of so many errors in the appeals process "shows that there is an extra level of vigilance and caution in death penalty cases, appropriately so."
As for the study's finding that of the death row inmates whose sentences were set aside on appeal 75 percent were later given lesser sentences and 7 percent were found not guilty, Mr. Fleischer said, "This shows that 93 percent are still found guilty" of some crime.
"It's not an error about their innocence. It's just a question of the appropriate punishment," he said.
The study had its origin in a request in 1991 by Senator Joseph F. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to Professor Liebman to calculate the frequency with which federal judges found errors in appeals of death penalty cases and then set aside the sentence.
The high national rate of serious errors leading to verdicts being set aside in the cases stands in sharp contrast to the error rate found in appeals in other criminal cases, which is estimated to be below 10 percent, several legal experts said.
The rate of error found in appeals in death penalty cases ranged from 100 percent in three states -- Kentucky, Maryland and Tennessee -- and 91 percent in Mississippi, to 18 percent in Virginia, by far the lowest of any of the 34 states with the death penalty, raising questions about whether Virginia's court system is unusually fair or works to make it hard to detect errors.
In fact, 24 of the 26 states with the death penalty where there have been fully completed appeals had an error rate of 52 percent or higher, the report said.
The report also shows that there is little, if any, relationship between the number of death sentences or executions in a state and its homicide rate or population.
Instead, said Franklin Zimring, director of the Earl Warren Legal Institute at the University of California at Berkeley, "This study tells us that the enormous inconsistencies, the justice by geography and the sheer luck nature of the death penalty system" that the Supreme Court criticized when it invalidated death penalty laws in 1972 remains true today. In that decision, Justice Potter Stewart suggested that the administration of the death penalty was so capricious that the chances of receiving it were like being hit by lightning.
In 1973, the court began to uphold rewritten death penalty laws that addressed its concerns.
Beth Wilkinson, a former assistant United States attorney who won a death penalty conviction against Timothy McVeigh for the Oklahoma City bombing, said the report provided important data to help sort out the issues in the debate over the death penalty. "Up to now, the debate has been heavily ideological; this gives us some data," said Ms. Wilkinson, a lawyer with Latham & Watkins in Washington who is a member of the National Committee to Prevent Wrongful Executions.
She said it had long been known that there was a high error rate in death penalty cases. "But what was really shocking to me," she said, "was that 82 percent of the cases that are sent back after review receive some lesser penalty."
Professor Liebman, the main author of the study, acknowledged that some death penalty advocates might seize on the 68 percent rate of serious errors to say that this proves the system works, that mistakes are caught and innocent people are not put to death. But he said the fact that "there are so many mistakes," and that it takes an average of nine years to complete the review process, "raises grave doubts whether we do catch all the mistakes." In fact, one of the 13 cases that led Governor Ryan to suspend executions in Illinois, that of Anthony Porter, went through the entire review process without any error being detected, said Lawrence C. Marshall, a professor of law at Northwestern University and director of its Center on Wrongful Convictions. Mr. Porter came within 48 hours of execution, only to win a stay from a state court because of a psychologist's test showing he had an I.Q. of only 50, raising doubts whether he was mentally competent. After the stay, journalism students at Northwestern, under the direction of a journalism professor, David Protess, found evidence to exonerate Mr. Porter and lead to the conviction of another man.
"To me, this is compelling evidence that the appeals process still does not screen out all the innocent people," Professor Marshall said, "and that the number of people who ought to be taken out of the death penalty pool is far higher than the 68 percent in the study." For example, if a defense lawyer was truly incompetent, he said, the lawyer might never do the work necessary so that legal and factual issues could be raised later on appeal.
The number of errors, and the number that go undetected, may have risen since the study was completed, Professor Liebman said, because since the mid-1990's several states and Congress have curbed appeals by death row inmates and sped the execution process. A 1996 federal law, signed by President Clinton, put a one-year limit on the time death row inmates have to appeal to federal courts after exhausting their appeals in state courts. And a number of states have shut down special public defender units that formerly helped death row inmates with their appeals.
From the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1973 to the end of 1995, there were a total of 5,760 death penalty convictions, of which 4,578 were appealed. The study looked at all three possible stages of appeal -- direct appeal to a state's highest court, what is known as post-conviction review, usually by the original trial judge, and habeas corpus review, under which convictions in state courts are reviewed for error in federal courts.
(The study did not include New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, states in which either no cases have been appealed or no appeals have gone through the full three-stage process.)
Although state court judges, many of whom are elected, are usually thought to be less likely to find in favor of a convicted killer on appeal than federal judges, the report found that 46 percent of all death penalty cases in which error was found were in state courts. Federal judges reversed 40 percent of the capital cases that survived and were appealed to them.
In cases where no error was found, it took an average of nine years from the time of sentencing to execution, the report found. As a result, the study reported, only 5 percent of all people who had been given the death penalty since 1973 had been executed.
The authors of the report said their findings confirmed a complaint by supporters of the death penalty who say the appeals process takes a long time. But, the authors said, "Judicial review takes so long precisely because American capital sentences are so persistently and systematically fraught with error." It takes years of review to catch the mistakes, they said.
As for the cause of so many errors in death penalty cases, the study found that 37 percent were the result of incompetent defense attorneys, who are often poorly paid or inexperienced in capital trials. An additional 19 percent of the errors were caused by misconduct by the police or prosecutors in suppressing evidence that would have helped the defendant.
In addition, 5 percent of the errors were the result of bias by the judge or jury, such as a judge telling the news media what he thought about the defendant during the trial. A further 20 percent were errors caused by faulty instructions given to juries by the judge. And the remaining 19 percent were in a miscellaneous category that included coerced confessions, prosecutors keeping African-Americans off the jury when a black defendant was on trial or the police planting informers in jails to listen to conversations between defendants and their lawyers.
"These are not the kind of technicalities people complain about helping a defendant," Professor Liebman said. Indeed, some of them amount to overzealous law enforcement railroading suspects, he said.
A major factor, Professor Liebman and other lawyers, judges and prosecutors said, is that in capital cases there is no plea bargaining. In other felony indictments, 90 percent of the defendants end up pleading guilty, often in exchange for a reduced sentence, a process that leads to conversations between the prosecutor and the defense attorney and a less adversarial situation.
But in murder cases, particularly those that have received a lot of publicity and the prosecutor decides to go for a death sentence, there is intense public interest, creating enormous pressure to win and leaving little room for the kind of plea bargaining in other criminal cases.
"In death penalty cases, the prosecutor feels pressure," said William Broadhus, a former attorney general of Virginia who tried death penalty cases and is now in private practice. "So maybe you press harder than the situation warrants."
And juries in death penalty cases often feel a rush to convict, Mr. Broadhus said, as they sit in the courtroom looking at pictures of the dead person and see the victim's family members in court.
The report also finds that there is no apparent reduction in homicide in states with the death penalty. For the nation as a whole, in the period from 1973 to 1995, the murder rate was 9 per 100,000. But in the states with the death penalty, it was 9.3 per 100,000.
In addition, the report found huge variations among the states with the death penalty in the rates at which the penalty is handed out and and in the rates of executions. The variations seemed to have no relation to the states' population or number of slayings.
In Wyoming, for example, almost 6 percent of all homicides result in a death sentence, more than four times the national average among states with the death penalty, while in Maryland less than six-tenths of 1 percent of homicides result in the death penalty.
Three states that have a high number of executions -- Texas, Virginia and Louisiana -- rank fourth, second and seventh in executions per homicide. But Texas is only 18th in death sentences per homicide, Virginia is 22nd and Louisiana is 25th. In other words, the report concluded, these states convert death sentences into executions more swiftly and in larger number than other states.
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