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-------- argentina
ARGENTINA: CRIME-FIGHTING ACCORDS
New York Times World Briefing,
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/00/06/17/news/world/world-briefing.html
Justice and interior ministers from six South American nations meeting in Buenos Aires agreed to share more information to fight organized crime. Ministers from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay signed eight accords to share information regarding missing children, illegal movement of radioactive products, and joint police training to fight drugs.
(Reuters)
-------- biological weapons
Clinton: Tighter Bio Weapons Ban
By The Associated Press
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Clinton-Poison-Gas.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Clinton on Saturday renewed his suggestion that a new global inspection system be created to detect and deter cheating on international agreements that outlaw biological weapons.
The president's appeal came on the 75th anniversary of the Geneva agreement that first banned chemical and biological weapons from the battlefield.
``Today, one of the greatest threats to American and global security is the danger that adversary nations or terrorist groups will obtain or use chemical or biological weapons,'' the president said in a statement. ``The international agreements we have reached banning these weapons are a critical component of our effort to protect against this threat.''
More than 140 nations are parties to the ban, reached at Geneva, Switzerland, on June 17, 1925. The pact, called the Geneva Protocol, resulted from worldwide revulsion to the use of poison gas during World War I and prohibited the use in warfare of chemical or biological weapons.
Later international agreements tightened the restrictions.
The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention barred the development, production and possession of biological or toxin weapons. The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention did the same for chemical weapons. The United States has ratified both agreements.
Clinton renewed his call, first made in his 1998 State of the Union Address, to strengthen the biological weapons agreement ``with a new international inspection system to detect and deter cheating.''
He said ``significant progress'' has been made at talks in Geneva toward achieving that goal and urged all participants ``to work toward the earliest possible conclusion.''
``On this 75th anniversary of the Geneva Protocol, I call on the countries of the world who have not yet done so to join'' the chemical and biological weapons agreements, Clinton said.
Quoting the language of the Geneva agreement, he said it is more urgent than ever that the ban be ``universally accepted, binding alike the conscience and practice of nations.''
The 1925 agreement prohibited ``the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases'' and all related liquids, materials and devices.
-------- china
U.S. Anti-Drug Czar Starts China Visit
By Reuters
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-china-u.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. government drug czar Barry McCaffrey began his first visit to China on Saturday for talks aimed at stemming the ``cancer'' of narcotics.
He said his visit, the first to China by a director of U.S. drug policy, was an historic opportunity to broaden their dialogue on an issue of enormous importance to both countries.
China is a major transshipment point for drugs from Myanmar, which produces more than 100 tons of heroin annually, McCaffrey said.
Although China had nearly eliminated growing of opium poppies, whose juice is used to process heroin, the production of crystal metamphetamine -- or ``ice'' -- and the drug ''Ecstasy'' was a growing problem, he said.
``I think what our purpose during this visit will be to broaden the dialogue to ensure that it includes not just police cooperation but scientific, medical and drug prevention messages,'' McCaffrey said.
Plagued by opium addiction before 1949, China nearly wiped out drug abuse after the Communist revolution, but narcotics have staged a comeback since free market reforms in 1978.
Alarmed by a rapid rise in drug smuggling, China's top police drug-buster Yang Fengrui unveiled plans in March to step up the war on drugs.
Yang, National Narcotics Control Commission vice director, told state media that 16 tons of ice was seized last year -- 10 times more than in 1998 -- as well as 5.3 tons of heroin.
GOLDEN TRIANGLE
Much of that came from border regions near the so-called Golden Triangle, the area where Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet, Yang told a national narcotics conference.
McCaffrey, who is on a three-nation tour, will survey treatment programs and discuss anti-trafficking cooperation.
He will meet drug officials in Beijing and visit a treatment center in Kunming, a city near the drug-infested border with Myanmar, the U.S. embassy said.
With a delegation including U.S. drug research experts and Coast Guard officials, he will also visit Hong Kong, a Special Administrative Region of China, Vietnam and Thailand.
The U.S. delegation would also seek China's viewpoint on neighboring North Korea, McCaffrey said.
There was growing evidence that North Korea produced opium and metamphetamine, which was smuggled to other countries, but it was hard to determine if such activity was state-sponsored, he said.
Kunming, which the U.S. drug czar will visit on June 20, is the capital of Yunnan, an ``embattled frontier province'' and a gateway for heroin from Myanmar, McCaffrey said.
The southwestern province has the country's biggest drug problem and executes some 400 drug dealers each year after public denunciations.
China sentenced 4,193 citizens last year for growing opium poppies, Yang said.
It had 680,000 registered drug addicts by the end of 1999, a rise of 14.3 percent over the previous year, state media said. Heroin dominated the list, with 490,000 addicts.
Eighty percent of Chinese drug addicts were male and 78 percent were between the ages of 17 and 35, Yang said.
----
China Executes Five Xinjiang Activists - report
By Reuters
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-china-x.html
HONG KONG (Reuters) - China has executed five members of an organization which seeks independence for the restive northwestern province of Xinjiang, Hong Kong's Ming Pao Daily News said on Saturday.
Xinjiang People's High Court on Wednesday found 13 members of the organization guilty of committing a range of crimes including splitting the country, illegal dealing and transport of arms, murder and robbery, the newspaper said.
Five of the convicts were executed immediately. Two of them were sentenced to life imprisonment and the remaining six received jail sentences ranging from 17 to 20 years.
Xinjiang is home to Turkish-speaking Uighur militants who have been struggling for decades to establish an independent East Turkestan in the region, which borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and three former Soviet Central Asian republics.
The region has been rocked by anti-Chinese riots, bombings and assassinations since 1996. The worst rioting left nine dead and more than 200 injured in Yining city on February 5, 1997.
Ming Pao said members of the Xinjiang independence organization had received military training outside the country and were responsible for the Yining riots.
Chinese officials were not available to comment on the report.
-------- colombia
Washington's war on Columbia
EDITORIAL •
June 17, 2000
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-2000617183911.htm
Confronting a line of fire to bust up a viciously defended drug lab is surely one of the most dangerous missions a law-enforcement official can undertake. Imagine having to carry out the task with a pre-World War II, single-barrel machine gun attached to your helicopter that frequently jams, while your well-financed rivals have modern weapons that can spit out bullets at least four times as fast with far superior precision.
This is precisely what the Clinton administration has proposed the Colombian police do, after sending the old ammunition in error. Based on this and other appalling errors, lawmakers have called for hearings to investigate the State Department's inability to get the right equipment to Colombia on time. Congress had set aside $8 million for fiscal year 1999 to buy ammunition and defensive weaponry. By recommending the Colombians use old guns and ammunition, the State Department reprehensibly set a low value to the lives of brave officers.
The State Department's proposal was also outrageous in economic terms. Using outdated guns on helicopters whose value ranges anywhere from $2 million to $14 million is utter folly, especially when new ammunition costs only about $2.20 a round, compared to $1.48 for the old kind. Unfortunately, the ammunition fiasco is only one example of the State Department's incompetence. In addition, the agency has failed to ship Colombia urgently needed helicopters, helmets, trucks and other equipment on time.
But the State Department isn't the only party to blame for Colombia's dwindling counter-narcotics resources. The Senate leadership has demonstrated an indefensible apathy towards the dire situation in Colombia. Although Colombia provides at least 80 percent of the cocaine that enters the United States, and narco-traffickers are increasingly controlling and wreaking havoc in the country, the Senate failed this year to give emergency priority to an aid bill of about $1 billion. Instead, this aid will be voted on during the Senate's drawn-out appropriations cycle.
Colombian authorities have proven they can make remarkable advances against drug traffickers when given the necessary means. Since March, when the Colombian police finally received six new Black Hawk helicopters, the force has eradicated more acres of poppy, used to make heroin, than they did in all of 1998. In the month of May the police took down over 100 cocaine laboratories using the Black Hawks.
Although conservative lawmakers have traditionally taken a lead in combating this problem, the Senate has failed to give fighting drugs at their source the priority it deserves. The White House, meanwhile, has contributed to the problem through bewildering incompetence and mismanagement. The drug producers are certainly enjoying Washington's inaction.
-------- germany
Germany Opens Wind-Power Plant
By The Associated Press
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Germany-Wind-Power.html
BERLIN (AP) -- Europe's biggest wind-power plant was inaugurated Saturday outside Berlin, bolstering Germany's claim as a leader in the use of renewable energy.
The plant's windmills will feed power into the regional electricity network from the town of Klettwitz, about 75 miles south of Berlin, officials said. The 38 windmills will provide electricity for 30,000 households.
Germany has about 8,000 windmills that generate power. The government recently embarked on a major program to promote solar and wind power.
----
Putin, in Berlin, Says Germany Is `Russia's Leading Partner'
By ROGER COHEN
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/061700germany-russia.html
BERLIN, June 16 -- "What do you want us to say," President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia asked today after his fourth meeting in three days with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany, "that we're in love?"
He was joking, of course. But there was no mistake that the summit meeting that ended today produced a vigorous rapprochement between Russia and Germany. Mr. Putin seemed entirely serious when he added, "Germany is Russia's leading partner in Europe and the world."
The meeting led to agreements on German investments in Russia worth $1.7 billion, cautious German backing for a Russian plan to involve itself in the defense of Europe against missile attack, and the establishment of an apparently excellent rapport between Mr. Putin and Mr. Schroeder.
"They are two cool cookies, and they took to each other," said one Foreign Ministry official who attended several of the meetings. "Theirs is not the old bear-hugging style" of the former leaders, Boris N. Yeltsin and Helmut Kohl, "but they see eye-to-eye and they get along."
This easy understanding stands in marked contrast to the sometimes awkward relationship between Mr. Schroeder and President Clinton. But the official added: "There is no equidistance in the German-Russian and German-American relationships. We are intimate with the United States; with Russia we are still trying to create a benign and stable power to the east."
Still, the sudden closeness of Berlin and Moscow is certain to cause some concern among Germany's European partners, always worried that Europe's central power may again seek its fortunes to the east.
Michael Steiner, the chief diplomatic adviser to Mr. Schroeder, insisted several times today that Germany was acting for Europe in seeking a "strategic partnership" with Mr. Putin's Russia.
A senior American official said that the Clinton administration favored all efforts to draw Russia closer to the West, adding that he doubted that room existed for Russia to drive a wedge between the United States and its European allies.
But in many respects, Germany appeared closer to Russia than to the United States on the question of missile defense. Mr. Schroeder said today that a proposal by Mr. Putin to place Russia at the heart of a European missile defense system from the Atlantic to the Urals "deserves thorough consideration and should be discussed both in the NATO-Russia Council and through bilateral relations."
The chancellor has been much cooler on the American proposal for a national missile defense system. He has warned that it must not be allowed to lead to a new arms race or undo existing agreements, including the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, which Mr. Clinton wants Russia to agree to amend.
Russia is proposing the use of "theater" antimissile systems allowed under the 1972 treaty to shoot down short- and medium-range missiles that threaten Europe. The United States is deeply skeptical of both the feasibility and the desirability of the idea.
Mr. Schroeder showed little such skepticism. "We agree on the necessity of political measures with regard to arms control in order to preserve the Antiballistic Missile Treaty," he said.
In practice, German officials privately hope that Mr. Clinton will avert a decision on the national missile defense system in the remaining months of the presidency. They say such a decision would only put Mr. Putin in a corner and provoke what one called an "unnecessary crisis with the alliance partners."
Mr. Putin, who speaks good German as a result of his five years in East Germany as a K.G.B. spy, said today that a "united Europe" should join a body set up by Russia and the United States to monitor missile launches around the world and provide an early warning system.
Much of the talks were devoted to economic issues. Germany is Russia's largest creditor, and Mr. Putin is looking to German companies to invest heavily in his country and to provide access to industrial technology. He spent much of his time here -- described as a "charm offensive" by one official -- trying to convince executives that Russia could prove a reliable marketplace governed by the rule of law.
The mission was partially successful. Wintershall, a German gas company, agreed to invest about $1 billion in a joint development of an offshore oilfield in the Arctic north with Russia's state-controlled gas company, Gazprom.
Other investments worth more than $700 million were signed by three other German companies with Gazprom, and Mr. Schroeder said about $500 million in new export credits should soon be available.
But little progress was made on a debt-restructuring deal. Russia has been looking for some forgiveness of its large debt, but Germany has made clear this is impossible. "We have told them, we are not going to treat them like Angola," said one official. "Russia is a potentially rich country."
Differences over debt were not allowed to cloud the meeting. The two leaders strolled together through the Brandenburg Gate to symbolize the healing of history's wounds in a city battered by Soviet troops when they took Berlin in 1945 and then long divided as the eastern half fell into the former Soviet empire.
Mr. Schroeder said that he and his wife, Doris, had accepted an invitation to spend Christmas with the Putins in a Kremlin that is to be equipped with a new hot line to the Berlin Chancellery.
"We have agreed to breathe new life into our relationship," the chancellor added. "That should not be negative for anyone -- not for our European partners and certainly not for our American friends. When relations are good with Russia, that is good for Europe."
-------- guatemala
Guatemalans Fear Crime Wave
By The Associated Press
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Guatemala-Crime.html
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) -- In the city, guns will soon outnumber people. In the countryside, heavily armed private security forces are becoming more common than electricity and phone service.
Crime has gotten so out of hand that 4,000 rifle-toting Guatemalan soldiers took to the streets Saturday to aid an overworked police force.
Even the vice president, a camera-shy bureaucrat known here mainly for blending into the furniture, surprised Guatemalans by appearing on television May 29 to plead for the crime wave to abate, if even just slightly.
But for many Guatemalans none of it is enough.
There are no reliable figures for the crime rate, but gun sales give a gauge of how rampant fear of crime is. In the last six months, purchases of security services and weapons are up 50 percent on rates that were already among the highest in Central America.
Already in Guatemala City there are 1.5 million guns, about as many firearms as people. Even conservative estimates show guns will outnumber people by the end of the summer.
``I can't keep any popular models on the shelves,'' said Ricardo Umana, owner of Gun Depot, a small store in a wealthy suburban Guatemala City neighborhood, packed from floor to ceiling with handguns, shotguns and assault weapons.
``Most of my customers used to be hunters, but now everyone everywhere is buying guns,'' Umana said.
The capital sports concealed-weapon laws more lenient than Texas. Security guards brandishing assault rifles and shotguns guard every bank, electronics store and shopping mall and can even be found keeping an eye on McDonald's in some of the city's rougher neighborhoods.
Outside Guatemala City, where guns have become harder to find since the end of the 36-year civil war in 1996, residents have begun forming armed groups, known as ``security juntas``, aimed at scaring would-be criminals out of town.
``There are now easily more of these groups than there are police officers,'' said Cesar Saldavar, police chief for rural Peten, Guatemala's northernmost state. ``All the guns left over from the war are going into the hands of groups organizing to kill and frighten criminals.''
In the western, mostly Indian state of Quiche, authorities report that security juntas have arisen in the region's five largest municipalities and are growing.
``We really don't know how many guns there are here in Quiche now. We may be up to civil war levels,'' a police spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity. ``We have to be worried a little.''
The groups serve mainly to intimidate potential criminals, but that doesn't stop citizens from taking matters into their own hands: Lynchings have become common throughout rural Guatemala.
Even as Guatemalans mobilize to protect themselves, some say the simplest way to end crime problems would be to return to the country's dictatorial past.
``Everyone says if (former dictator Gen. Efrain) Rios Montt took power again all of the criminals would flee, that they would leave the country,'' said Enrique Lucero, 41, as he waited for a bus in an affluent southern Guatemala City neighborhood where he works as a housepainter. ``The general doesn't tolerate crime, and everyone knows that.''
Rios Montt, the current president of the legislature, ruled Guatemala with an iron fist from 1982-83, an 18-month tenure in which he oversaw arguably the bloodiest days of the civil war. The December 1996 peace accords finally brought fighting between state forces and leftist guerillas to an end, but only after some 200,000 Guatemalans had been killed.
Guatemala's 1985 constitution bars Rios Montt, 71, from assuming Guatemala's highest office again. But President Alfonso Portillo, who is a member of the party Rios Montt founded and campaigned closely with the ex-dictator during last fall's elections, is lobbying for a special congressional session to repeal the constitution -- and clear the way for another Rios Montt presidency.
Rios Montt has refused to talk to the news media about apparent attempts to return him to power. But he supported a new law that lets an army that once went to war against its own people to take to the streets again, this time to protect them.
``Fighting this kind of violence in whatever manner we can is a good idea,'' Rios Montt said.
-------- india / pakistan
BOMB BAY : MUSLIM NUKE VERSUS HINDU NUKE:
Tariq Ali ON A NEW ATOMIC ENDGAME
From: aiindex@mnet.fr
South Asians Against Nukes Post
The Guardian
17 June 2000
New Nukes: India, Pakistan and Global Nuclear Disarmament by Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik 312pp, Signal Books, pounds 12.99
The nuclear games being played by India and Pakistan are both dangerous and obscene. They are dangerous because there are Taliban-type elements within the Pakistan army (and, I'm sure, their equivalents in India) who could, in extremis, press the dreaded button.
They are obscene because both countries are racked by poverty of the most abject sort, illiteracy, mass unemployment and the lack of basic amenities for countless millions. The lack of these necessities of life is not considered to be a denial of 'human rights' as far as western policymakers are concerned, a view increasingly contested by the young on the streets of Seattle and Washington.
The figures speak for themselves. Following the nuclear tests of 1998, the Indian government announced an allocation of Dollars 9.9bn for defence spending in 1999, an increase of 14 per cent on the previous year. Pakistan mimicked this increase with one of 8.5 per cent, pushing its spending to Dollars 3.3bn. South Asia today is one of the world's most heavily militarised regions. The Indian and Pakistani armies form part of the world's 10 largest war machines. There are six soldiers to every doctor. The social cost of arms expenditure is horrendous.
If nothing else, the extension of the nuclear race to South Asia should compel policymakers in Washington to pause and reflect on their own actions since the official end of the cold war. The fact is that the US military budget remains inflated and accounts for over a third of the world's spending on armaments. The old enemy no longer exists, but the Cold-War scenarios remain in place. US military planners continue to target Russia and China. The latest wave of Nato expansion, followed by a Balkan war, only hardened Russian opposition to nuclear disarmament. When Nato patrols the Black Sea, what price the 'partnership for peace'? Herein lies the crux of the problem. Unless the West begins the process of unilateral nuclear disarmament, it has no moral or material basis to demand that others do the same. It is a twisted logic that accepts that while London and Paris can have the bomb, New Delhi and Islamabad, not to mention Seoul and Pyongyang, cannot.
Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik are two of India's most courageous radical journalists. Like others who tell the truth, they are sometimes heaped with ridicule, but they remain steadfast. They interrogate power and often venture into dangerous territory. They are immune to the usual pressures and inducements with which governments, eastern and western, seek to intimidate or bribe journalists. Among the most valuable sections of New Nukes is the account of India's previous stance on the question of atomic weapons. Jawaharlal Nehru was a firm believer in nuclear abstinence. 'Coming from a warm country,' he informed the United Nations in 1960, 'I have shivered occasionally from these cold blasts.' Now the blasts have overpowered the political elites in India and Pakistan.
Bidwai and Vanaik are in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament by both India and Pakistan: for them, this is a moral and a political imperative. The case they make is unanswerable, but politicians and generals usually concede only to mass pressure; rational arguments leave them unmoved. The authors complain that the Indian left (India's two communist parties) is part of the problem: 'The socialist bomb has been seen as the progressive weapon against the imperialist bomb. The adjective has been made more important than the noun in perverse understanding of the history and politics of nuclearism. The left's claim that deterrence has sometimes worked is a self-serving delusion.' In any event, the conflict in the region is seen by fanatics on both sides as the 'Muslim' bomb versus the 'Hindu' bomb. The former believe they will end up in paradise anyway, and for the latter there is always the hope of reincarnation, if this time in the shape of ants. Bidwai and Vanaik argue that unilateral nuclear disarmament in South Asia should not be seen in a national context, but as a stepping stone towards global disarmament.
This is an extremely useful book, and not just for India. The projected scenarios in the case of nuclear conflict would not remained confined to South Asia. Nuclear rain is no respecter of frontiers: it will cripple humans and plants alike. Western leaders in the grip of a triumphalist fever appear to have given up on disarmament, blighting the harvest of hopes that arose briefly during the time of Gorbachev. It could turn out to be a fatal error.
-------- japan
Arrest Made in Japan Radioactive Mail Case-Police
By Reuters
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-japan-r.html
TOKYO (Reuters) - A 42-year-old Japanese man was arrested on Saturday on suspicion of sending letters containing radioactive material to the prime minister's residence and other government agencies earlier this month.
Police said the man was alleged to have sent to 10 government agencies envelopes that contained a small amount of a sand-like powder, including the radioactive element thorium.
They said his action was prompted by a belief that a Japanese Education Ministry foundation was smuggling uranium to North Korea.
The envelopes were thought to contain ground monazite, which includes thorium, government officials said, adding the level of radioactivity was not harmful.
The suspect runs a salvage shop in Tokyo and was arrested for allegedly violating postal laws.
The suspect admitted mailing the radioactive substance and told police he acted alone, Kyodo News reported citing police sources.
-------- korea
China Congratulates Koreas
By The Associated Press
June 16, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-China-Koreas.html
BEIJING (AP) -- Chinese President Jiang Zemin has congratulated North Korea and South Korea on their breakthrough summit and offered assistance to bring about unification, China's state media reported Friday.
In separate letters Thursday, Jiang told North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung that: ``I heartily rejoice'' at the successful summit.
Jiang praised North Korea's Kim for his ``statesman's vision and wisdom.'' To South Korea's Kim, Jiang said the summit made ``valuable contributions'' to regional peace.
``China will continue its consistent stand of actively supporting North and South Korea in their efforts to achieve independent, peaceful unification through dialogue and negotiation,'' the Xinhua News Agency quoted Jiang as writing Kim Jong Il.
Among the major powers involved in the convoluted politics of the Korean peninsula, China alone has good relations with both North Korea and South Korea and perhaps gains the most from a prospective era of easing tensions.
A less volatile Korean peninsula means China can concentrate on its foremost goal of economic development. It also blunts U.S. arguments for deploying an anti-missile shield as protection against North Korea's missile program. Beijing fears the defense systems are ultimately aimed at countering China's missile arsenal.
Peace between the Koreas also removes the reason for deployment of 100,000 U.S. troops in South Korea and Japan. Their withdrawal would give Beijing a freer hand in intimidating Taiwan and open the way for China to exercise its traditional political influence over the Korean peninsula.
----
After Korean Talks, Albright Plans Seoul and Beijing Trip
By JANE PERLEZ
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/061700korea-albright.html
WASHINGTON, June 16 -- In an effort to capitalize on the momentum of the Korean summit meeting, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright has decided to visit South Korea next week and will stop immediately afterward in China, where officials said she would also focus on Korean developments.
Dr. Albright's mission in Seoul will be to bless the policies of the South Korean leader, Kim Dae Jung, that resulted in the summit accord and to stress that the United States supported the ultimate goal of reunification, officials said.
"The main objective of direct North and South Korean dialogue is that if you can move the discussion on reunification, you begin to get momentum on other issues," an administration official said. "There are opportunities here we don't want to miss."
The major issues for the United States include North Korea's long-range ballistic missile program, for which the administration has proposed a $60 billion missile defense system.
A senior United States official is to meet North Korean officials at the end of the month to try to persuade Pyongyang to agree to a permanent moratorium on the flight testing of its long-range missile.
On Monday, the administration will publish in The Federal Register the provisions of a broad lifting of economic sanctions that have been in place since North Korea invaded the South 50 years ago. President Clinton announced the easing of sanctions in September as a reward for North Korea's suspending missile testing while talks proceeded on a more permanent ban.
In a sign of the importance that the Clinton administration places on the broad accord that North and South Korea reached, the national security adviser of South Korea, Hwang Won Tak, who attended the summit meeting, briefed Mr. Clinton today in New York.
On Thursday night, Kim Dae Jung, who is receiving accolades from United States officials for the success of his "sunshine policy" toward the North, telephoned Mr. Clinton to tell him details of the meeting, a senior administration official said.
Dr. Albright, who had been planning to visit China next month for probably her last visit there as secretary, pushed forward that trip so she could encourage Beijing to continue to be helpful on North Korea. The United States and China have some shared interests on the Korean peninsula, primarily in avoiding armed conflict between the North and South.
----
A Cease-Fire Takes Hold in Korean Propaganda War
By CALVIN SIMS
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/061700korea-summit.html
SEOUL, South Korea, June 16 -- The propaganda war in the DMZ fell silent today for the first time in at least 50 years, and President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea could be heard declaring that "the danger of war on the Korean peninsula has disappeared."
Just a day after talks between North and South Korea ended in Pyongyang, the South ordered an end to anti-Communist broadcasts that its military had transmitted for decades from giant loudspeakers along the heavily fortified border with North Korea.
The order was issued in response to North Korea's decision on Tuesday to switch off its loudspeakers, which had blared anti-South insults over the demilitarized zone through the years.
The end to the broadcasts was one of several steps the two nations have taken to signal that the half-century of hostilities on the divided peninsula are indeed coming to an end. They were also hoping to dispel critics who had questioned whether a broad agreement reached at the recent summit meeting between President Kim and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong Il, would actually lead to specific actions toward peace.
For its part today, North Korea allowed a South Korean fishing boat that had strayed across its heavily patrolled sea border to sail back to its home port without incident.
This was in marked contrast to the situation a year ago this week, when North and South Korean naval vessels exchanged gunfire over fishing rights in the same area. One North Korean warship sank, and about 30 Communist sailors were believed to have died.
Also today, South Korea's Defense Ministry announced that it would reconsider a $40 million program to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War on June 25, 1950.
The agency had planned numerous parades, ceremonies, battle re-enactments and other events that were to be attended by thousands of veterans and dignitaries, many from the United States.
"We are looking for ways to commemorate the anniversary in compliance with the spirit of the agreement reached at the summit," a ministry spokesman, Yoon Il Young, said.
And Kim Dae Jung told his cabinet today that Kim Jong Il had agreed to his suggestion to invite Pope John Paul II to visit North Korea.
"Chairman Kim asked the pope's age and told me to tell the pope to come to North Korea," President Kim said while meeting with the cabinet, according to his aides.
The South Korean president, who is a Roman Catholic and visited the pope in March, said he had instructed the Foreign Ministry to convey the wishes of his North Korean counterpart to the Vatican.
It was while he was meeting with the cabinet that President Kim said that the danger of war had passed. "The summit opened a new chapter for national unification," he said.
North Korea is widely considered to be the world's most totalitarian society, and organized religion there has long been suppressed in favor of leader-worship, first for the country's founder, Kim Il Sung, and now for his son, Kim Jong Il. Of a population of 22 million, 4,000 are believed to be Catholics.
In addition to today's actions, Kim Dae Jung instructed his cabinet to carry out a wide variety of reconciliation measures growing out of the three-day talks, which concluded in an agreement calling for the two Koreas to pursue peace, economic and other exchanges, including family visits.
The South Korean president said that he hoped the efforts would coax North Korea out of its self-imposed isolation and help rebuild its faltering economy.
South Korean officials said they hoped that the two heads of state could meet again in Seoul on or around the Aug. 15 holiday that celebrates the anniversary of Korea's liberation from nearly 40 years of Japanese colonial rule.
The South Korean president also said that he had a 20-minute telephone conversation with President Clinton today in which he informed the American leader that he raised North Korea's nuclear and missile programs in talks with Kim Jong Il.
"I told him that the missile and nuclear problems do not help regional and world peace as well as inter-Korean cooperation," aides to the Korean president quoted him as having told Mr. Clinton.
The presence of 37,000 American troops in South Korea was also discussed, Kim Dae Jung told Mr. Clinton.
The South Korean leader's position is that the United States military presence is needed for regional security even after the unification of the Korean peninsula. The aides said that Mr. Clinton thanked Kim Dae Jung for raising the North's nuclear and missile issues, saying that "those issues are important for all of us."
-------- kosovo
NATO Removing Kosovo Arms Cache
By The Associated Press
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Kosovo-Arms-Find.html
KLECKA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- NATO-led peacekeepers started removing ordnance Saturday from the biggest illegal weapons cache uncovered in Kosovo since the end of fighting last year -- arms a British commander said were ``almost certainly'' hidden by ethnic Albanian extremists.
``I think that this is a very significant find,'' Brig. Gen. Richard Shireff, commander of British forces in Kosovo, said of the stacks of grenades, machine guns and other weapons. ``It is almost certainly, almost entirely Albanian. All evidence we got here suggests that it is former KLA material.''
KLA is an acronym for the Kosovo Liberation Army, a group of ethnic Albanian separatists who fought a Serb crackdown in this province. The leadership of the now formally disbanded KLA must have known about the weapon cache, and not divulging it as part of Kosovo's peace settlement reflects a ``degree of noncompliance,'' Shireff said.
NATO officers said the weapons and ammunition were found Friday in this former KLA stronghold 20 miles southwest of Pristina.
Two underground bunkers were stacked to the ceilings with grenades, mortars, ammunition, heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and other ordnance. Shireff said it appeared that some weapons had been recently removed. Other storage areas were found Saturday but it was unclear what they contained.
Diplomats speaking on condition of anonymity said that Agim Ceku, the former military chief of the KLA, met Saturday with senior representatives of Kosovo's Western diplomatic community. The arms find apparently was at the center of discussion.
Ceku now heads the Kosovo Protection Corps. The corps is officially a civil emergency response unit, but the Serbs say it actually is the successor to the KLA, which fought them in Kosovo until NATO forced an end to the bloodshed a year ago.
In September, NATO-led peacekeepers declared that the KLA had complied with orders to turn over all its weapons. On Sept. 20, NATO agreed to reorganize the KLA into the protection force under a deal personally negotiated by NATO's supreme commander for Europe, Gen. Wesley Clark.
British Lt. Col. David Allfrey, who commanded the search operation, suggested some of the missing weapons could have been used in recent attacks against Serb civilians. Serb community leaders believe such attacks are part of a campaign by ethnic Albanians to drive them from the province.
``What their designs are, it's not my position to say,'' Allfrey said. ``But there have been a few killings in the Serb community in the last couple of weeks.''
The cache was discovered as part of an exhaustive search for weapons. The search, which began Thursday, involved hundreds of peacekeepers and covered more than 38 square miles of central Kosovo.
A military training area was near the bunkers, which appeared to be well-kept. There were fresh footprints, according to NATO personnel on the scene.
``It's clearly been used for training. There is a very large quantity of ammunition,'' Allfrey said. NATO officers suggested that they expected to find even more arms, saying there appeared to be tunnels leading to other depots nearby.
-------- puerto rico
Navy Detains 56 Vieques Protesters
By ISMAEL TORRES
The Associated Press
06-17-00 1623EDT
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Navy officers detained 56 demonstrators Saturday after they invaded the U.S. Navy bombing range on Vieques island and demanded that the Navy leave.
Among those detained on the small Puerto Rican island were 20 doctors - from surgeons to general practitioners - who said in a statement: ``We are a group representing Puerto Rican doctors who are concerned about the health and future of the people of Vieques.''
All the protesters were cited to appear in federal court to be charged with trespassing, Navy spokesman Robert Nelson said. They were subsequently released. Nelson said he did not know when they will appear in court.
Decades of resentment over the Navy's presence on Vieques boiled over in April 1999, when a jet dropped two 500-pound bombs off-target and killed a civilian security guard. It was the first fatality in 60 years since the Navy took over two-thirds of the 20-mile-long island, dislodging thousands of residents and using part of the island as a practice bombing range. Some 9,300 civilians now live on Vieques.
People's anger was compounded when the Navy admitted it had illegally and accidentally fired 263 armor-piercing bullets tipped with depleted uranium on the range in February 1999. Puerto Rican officials said they were never informed.
Dozens of protesters occupied the range for a year to prevent more bombing. They were forced out in a federal raid May 4, and the Navy resumed training under a deal that calls for a referendum before February 2002 and the use of non-exploding practice bombs until after the vote.
If the Navy loses the referendum, it would have to leave the island by May 2003, giving up a site it says is crucial for the kind of realistic training that saves lives in combat.
But many Vieques residents accuse the Navy of contaminating their environment, destroying fishing grounds and coral reefs, keeping away tourists and contributing to a 14 percent unemployment rate. Dozens are filing lawsuits claiming their health problems, from respiratory illnesses to cancers, are related to the military exercises.
----
Navy Detains 56 Vieques Protesters
New York Times
June 17, 2000 Filed at 4:23 p.m. EDT
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Puerto-Rico-Vieques-Protesters.html
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- Navy officers detained 56 demonstrators Saturday after they invaded the U.S. Navy bombing range on Vieques island and demanded that the Navy leave.
Among those detained on the small Puerto Rican island were 20 doctors -- from surgeons to general practitioners -- who said in a statement: ``We are a group representing Puerto Rican doctors who are concerned about the health and future of the people of Vieques.''
All the protesters were cited to appear in federal court to be charged with trespassing, Navy spokesman Robert Nelson said. They were subsequently released. Nelson said he did not know when they will appear in court.
Decades of resentment over the Navy's presence on Vieques boiled over in April 1999, when a jet dropped two 500-pound bombs off-target and killed a civilian security guard. It was the first fatality in 60 years since the Navy took over two-thirds of the 20-mile-long island, dislodging thousands of residents and using part of the island as a practice bombing range. Some 9,300 civilians now live on Vieques.
People's anger was compounded when the Navy admitted it had illegally and accidentally fired 263 armor-piercing bullets tipped with depleted uranium on the range in February 1999. Puerto Rican officials said they were never informed.
Dozens of protesters occupied the range for a year to prevent more bombing. They were forced out in a federal raid May 4, and the Navy resumed training under a deal that calls for a referendum before February 2002 and the use of non-exploding practice bombs until after the vote.
If the Navy loses the referendum, it would have to leave the island by May 2003, giving up a site it says is crucial for the kind of realistic training that saves lives in combat.
But many Vieques residents accuse the Navy of contaminating their environment, destroying fishing grounds and coral reefs, keeping away tourists and contributing to a 14 percent unemployment rate. Dozens are filing lawsuits claiming their health problems, from respiratory illnesses to cancers, are related to the military exercises.
-------- russia
Putin Urges Joint Missile-Warning Center
Washington Post
Saturday , June 17, 2000 ; A16
By William Drozdiak Washington Post Foreign Service
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13546-2000Jun17.html
BERLIN, June 16 -- Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed today that Europe join the United States and Russia in creating an early warning center in Moscow that would monitor missile launches around the world.
The initiative appeared to be part of a diplomatic offensive by Putin to block U.S. plans to build a national missile defense system by exploiting European concerns about the impact it would have on global security. Both Russia and Germany have warned that such a system could trigger a new arms race.
Speaking at a news conference with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder at the close of a three-day visit to Germany, Putin said he envisioned the cooperative venture he proposed as an alternative to the missile defense plan contemplated by the United States, one that is supposed to shield U.S. territory from surprise attacks by terrorist groups or states suspected of sponsoring them, such as Iran and North Korea.
Putin's concept won cautious endorsement from Schroeder, who said it "merits attention" and should be welcomed as part of a broad Western effort to encourage Russia to play a role in bolstering continental security. "In the long term, there can be no peace in Europe if Russia is not included," Schroeder said.
The United States has said it is willing to consider Putin's ideas but insists they should not be considered a substitute for its own missile defense plans. In addition to the early warning center, Putin has suggested that a regional defense system that could shoot down missiles during the early, boost phase of their launch, could be built to shield Europe from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural Mountains.
But Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, who met Putin in Moscow early this week, has said the Russian idea of a boost-phase missile defense system would prove a formidable technical challenge that could not be mastered before 2005, when the United States estimates North Korea and Iran could be able to strike North America with long-range missiles.
Nonetheless, Putin's first trip abroad since he was sworn in as president last month won a sympathetic hearing for Russia's security concerns. First in Spain and then in Berlin, Putin's criticism of the United States' unilateral missile defense plans was echoed by America's NATO allies. They fear the United States is exaggerating the threat of attack while underestimating the destabilizing consequences of such a system.
Putin said it would be up to a "united Europe" to decide on who would serve as the "third partner" at the early warning center, which he said was discussed with President Clinton at their summit meeting in Moscow this month as a way to avert misunderstandings that could lead to nuclear war. "We have no preference at all as to who represents Europe in this center," he said. "But we expect this initiative will get a positive reception."
Schroeder expressed satisfaction with what he called "a really comprehensive new beginning in German-Russian relations." Referring to the special rapport between their predecessors, Boris Yeltsin and Helmut Kohl, both Putin and Schroeder said they were determined to establish close relations between their nations based on interests that are more enduring than personalities.
The leaders agreed on a new export credit deal that will make $500 million in German funds available for projects in Russia and restructure Russia's $43 billion in debts to Western governments, half of which are held by Germany. German firms also signed four contracts for oil and gas development in Russia.
---
Fuel leak from Russian missile injures 10
USA Today World
June 17, 2000
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm
VLADIVOSTOK, Russia - Fuel leaked from a missile as it was being unloaded from a ship Friday, unleashing a yellow cloud of toxic fumes that burned the respiratory tracts of 10 Russian servicemen, officials said. The R-29 missile leaked fuel, which then oxidized when it touched water and produced a cloud containing nitric acid, said Irina Andriyanova, spokeswoman for the Emergency Situations Ministry in the Far East region of Vladivostok. The 1.6 million-square-foot toxic cloud drifted east along the shore toward Nakhodka, a large port for sea traffic from Japan, Andriyanova said. It was unclear if the servicemen, employed at a nearby military base, were on site when the missile was being unloaded. They were hospitalized, but their conditions were not revealed.
-------- us nuc facilities
Trouble in store
Stresses lurking in damaged reactors could scupper plans to dismantle them
From New Scientist magazine,
Rob Edwards
17 June 2000.
http://www.newscientist.com:80/news/news_224334.html
PLANS to decommission the wrecked reactor responsible for Britain's worst nuclear accident have been shelved because of fears that it could catch fire again. The move has serious implications for the dismantling of other reactors, such as Britain's ageing Magnox plants and the damaged reactor at Chernobyl in Ukraine.
The damaged British reactor is Windscale pile 1 at the Sellafield complex in Cumbria. The problem is a type of energy called Wigner energy, which becomes trapped in the reactor's graphite moderator when neutrons dislodge carbon atoms from their crystalline lattice. Wigner energy was the main cause of the accident at Windscale in 1957.
Pile 1 started operation in 1950, making plutonium for Britain's first nuclear weapons. But after the accident, which spread radioactivity over northern England, the reactor was shut down permanently.
In 1997, the pile's owners, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, hired a consortium of British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), Rolls-Royce and Nukem of Germany to dismantle it by 2005 for a fee of £54 million. But BNFL engineers suspect that some of the 15 tonnes of uranium fuel left in the pile have formed uranium hydrides, which could ignite spontaneously in the presence of oxygen.
They say such a fire could cause a "runaway release" of the Wigner energy trapped in the 2000 tonnes of graphite surrounding the core, which they say would stoke the flames. The worst outcome could be a repeat of the 1957 conflagration in which temperatures soared to over 1200 °C.
The consortium was planning to dismantle the reactor using remote manipulators, while enveloping it in the inert gas argon to prevent the uranium hydrides bursting into flames. But engineers are worried that pumping argon over the reactor core could lead to an escape of radioactive gas because the pile's concrete shield may not be airtight. Attempting to minimise leakage by reducing argon pressure around the core would suck in oxygen and increase the fire risk. The consortium has abandoned this plan for the time being and is considering replacing the argon with water.
Barry Hickey, the UKAEA manager in charge of the decommissioning, is disappointed at the delay. "We recognise that the consortium has encountered some difficulties in translating their original concept into a detailed design," he says. "But there is no tearing hurry to get it done quickly. The important thing is to get the best solution."
There could be similar risks, says industry newsletter Nucleonics Week, when it comes to dismantling Chernobyl reactor 4, which was destroyed by an explosion in 1986. The Ukrainian reactor also contains uranium compounds and graphite. Britain's first generation of Magnox nuclear power stations also used graphite to moderate the nuclear reaction, so may also contain Wigner energy. Four of them have already been closed, and BNFL announced last month that the other seven would shut by 2021.
BNFL claims that there has not been a significant build-up of Wigner energy in the Magnox reactors because their high operating temperatures return the graphite crystal lattice to its original state through a process called annealing. But John Large, an independent nuclear consultant, argues that temperature variations within the reactors could have stored up enough Wigner energy to release 21 megawatts of heat. "Wigner energy is a problem," he told New Scientist.
----
Marine Corps Leader Boards Osprey
By The Associated Press
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Marines-Osprey.html
CHINA LAKE NAVAL AIR WEAPONS STATION, Calif. (AP) -- Hoping to quell fears about the safety of the military aircraft that crashed and killed 19 Marines, Gen. James L. Jones boarded an MV-22 Osprey on Saturday for the aircraft's first passenger flight since the crash.
Jones took the flight as a gesture of confidence in the hybrid aircraft that hovers like a helicopter and flies like a plane. The Osprey has been under heavy scrutiny since April 8, when one of the five then in operation crashed while trying to land at an airfield near Tucson, Ariz.
After taking the noisy 30-minute flight seated next to his wife, Diane, Jones called the Osprey a ``wonderful aircraft'' that is ready to begin carrying passengers.
``If there was the slightest doubt, I mean the slightest doubt, we would not have done this today,'' he said.
The general, two aerospace executives and the pilot chatted calmly over a radio during the flight that carried 11 passengers and a crew of four.
The aircraft reached a maximum speed of 200 knots after its engines tilted forward, rocking in the winds and leaving some reporters feeling queasy as furnace-like desert air blew in through an open rear hatch.
``We wouldn't put the commandant or any Marine on an aircraft that was not sound,'' said Capt. Aisha Bakkar-Poe. a spokeswoman who flew on a second Osprey that trailed the one carrying Jones during the flight.
On June 5, the Ospreys resumed ``operational evaluation'' flights to determine their readiness to join the Marine Corps' active air fleet, but have not been carrying passengers. Evaluation flights were halted while the crash was investigated.
The Marines last month ruled out mechanical failure as a cause of the crash, although the investigation is continuing. It was the deadliest air disaster for the Marines since 22 died in a helicopter crash in South Korea in 1989.
Analysts were skeptical that Saturday's flight would prove much about the Osprey, which also has been criticized as too expensive and strategically unnecessary.
For one thing, cruising with dignitaries over the Southern California desert doesn't involve the complex maneuvers of a combat situation or even military exercises, said Lawrence Korb, a former assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration who has criticized the Osprey project.
``What are they going to simulate here? How much are they going to stress (the aircraft),'' said Korb, director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
It's also a little late to be trying to prove the plane is safe, he added.
``Theoretically all these problems should have been behind us because this thing is into production already.''
Plans call for the Marine Corps to buy 360 MV-22s. The Air Force also intends to acquire 50, and the Navy 48.
Each one costs $42.9 million, although Korb and other analysts put the price tag much higher, factoring in research and development.
The Osprey would be a key tool in rapid amphibious assaults by the Navy and Marine Corps.
But one problem, said Christopher Hellman, a senior analyst with the Center for Defense Information, is that the United States isn't likely to be making such amphibious assaults any more.
``Whether it's a good investment, I'm not convinced,'' Hellman said.
-------- us nuc facilities
The following exchange took place between Congressman and Chairman Ed Markey and the NRC at an NRC Authorization Hearing April 17, 1985:
http://www.geocities.com/mothersalert/probability.html
Question 21: Chairman Markey: "What does the Commission and NRC staff believe the likelihood of a severe core melt accident to be in the next twenty years for those reactors now operating and those expected to operate during that time?"
Answer: "The Staff has available to guide its judgement on this matter close to two dozen plant and site-specific probabilistic risk assessments [PRAs]. The most complete and recent PRAs suggest core-melt frequencies in the range of 10 to the minus 3 per reactor year to 10 to the minus 4 per reactor year. A typical value is 3 times 10 to the minus 4, were this the industry average, then in a population of 100 reactors operating over a period of 20 years, THE CRUDE CUMULATIVE PROBABILITY OF SUCH AN ACCIDENT WOULD BE 45%.[OUR CAPS].
Commissioner Asselstine Adds the Following: " The PRA estimates given above have substantail uncertainties that span a factor of 10 above and below the reported values. I believe it is mandatory that consideration of these uncertainties be factored into any application of such point estimates. Thus, the cumulative probability of a core meltdown accident in the next 20 years, based only on PRA estimates and their uncertainties, ranges anywhere from 0.99 to 0.06."
-------- kansas
Testing starts on KC weapons workers exposed to toxic metal
By KIT WAGAR and CAIT PURINTON -
The Kansas City Star
Date: 06/17/00
http://www.kcstar.com/item/pages/home.pat,local/37748b35.617,.html
Nearly 6,400 former workers at the Honeywell International plant on Bannister Road are being asked to undergo tests this year to determine whether they were exposed to toxic levels of beryllium dust.
The Kansas City plant is one of 26 facilities in at least 10 states that the Department of Energy has cited as possible sources of beryllium-related disease. The illness, which has been linked to lung cancer, is an incurable and often fatal ailment that eats away lung tissue and causes breathing to grow increasingly difficult.
Plant officials insist that the risk of exposure is minimal for most workers at the plant, which makes triggers and other precision parts for nuclear weapons.
"This facility from a safety standpoint is at world-class levels," spokeswoman Sharon Tiley said. The Kansas City plant, she said, has never had a confirmed case of chronic beryllium disease, also known as CBD.
The government has offered to test all 2,850 current workers at the Kansas City plant. Of 268 current workers who have been tested, four were found to be sensitive to beryllium, a condition that can be a precursor to CBD.
The plant is owned by the Department of Energy and operated by Honeywell International, which until last December was known as AlliedSignal.
Honeywell officials said plant management took significant steps over the past four decades to limit exposure to beryllium as the dangers of the metal became known.
But Energy Department officials acknowledge that, for most of the plant's 51 years in operation, government standards for protecting workers from the harmful effects of beryllium dust were far more lax than they are today.
"Our handling of beryllium was a lot like the way we handled asbestos," said David Caughey, the Energy Department's acting assistant manager for safety and security at the plant. "Our knowledge of the dangers improved over time. Remember, we used to put asbestos in schools. We stopped when we realized it wasn't a good idea."
Several former workers at the plant said they were rarely warned about the dangers of beryllium. And today the government wants to know if those days in the Kansas City plant have harmed them.
Testing for exposure
The tests in Kansas City are part of a Department of Energy effort to find former workers who contracted beryllium-related ailments on the job and to provide compensation. Nationwide, the testing and compensation program for workers involved in the nuclear weapons industry is expected to cost at least $111 million a year for the foreseeable future.
Letters about the tests were sent Nov. 30 to 2,571 retirees and former employees of the Kansas City plant. Those that failed to respond were sent another letter in March.
About 1,270 people have responded. The tests are voluntary, and 673 persons were scheduled for blood tests. The rest chose not to be tested, said Donna Cragle, an Oak Ridge, Tenn., researcher who oversees the testing of former workers nationwide.
Letters will be sent later this year to 3,800 more former employees at the Kansas City plant, she said. The notifications have been staggered because so few laboratories perform the tests.
The Energy Department testing also covers employees of subcontractors who came into the plants to install machinery, make repairs or perform other tasks.
So far, Cragle said her program has tested about 15,700 current and former nuclear weapons plant workers across the country for beryllium exposure. About 400, or 2.5 percent, showed sensitivity. About 140 have CBD, though not all of them suffer symptoms.
The government is so concerned about beryllium exposure that plants involved with nuclear weapons were ordered last year to develop a CBD prevention program. In January, a new regulation took effect that cut the maximum allowable exposure level by 90 percent.
And in April, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced that the government would reverse its longstanding practice of opposing workers' claims for compensation based on exposure to hazards at nuclear weapons plants.
The Clinton administration proposed a package of benefits worth at least $100,000 to each worker suffering diseases caused by exposure to beryllium or radiation.
On June 8, the Senate approved an even more generous proposal. The plan would allow workers who are victims of beryllium, radiation or silicosis to receive a minimum of $200,000 in benefits. No price tag has been put on the Senate plan.
"This is part of the cost of the Cold War," said David Michaels, assistant secretary of energy for environment, safety and health.
"We call it making peace with the past. We spend millions each year to clean up environmental problems associated with nuclear weapons. We have an obligation to meet the human costs as well."
Beryllium's dangers
Beryllium is a gray metal lighter than aluminum but stiffer than steel. It is used to make other metals stronger and more resistant to bending. It makes golf clubs harder, bicycle frames lighter and nuclear weapons more powerful.
The metal is so toxic that in 1949 the government adopted a maximum exposure limit of 2 micrograms per cubic meter of air over eight hours. That is the equivalent of pulverizing a beryllium marble and dispersing it into the air six feet high over one square mile.
Last year, the Department of Energy concluded that the standard should be only one-tenth that amount. But there was no standard at all in the early 1940s, when beryllium became an element vital to the nation's nuclear weapons program. And it was used in Kansas City from the time the plant began making nuclear weapons components in 1949.
The greatest danger comes from breathing beryllium dust. So those most at risk are the craftsmen who drilled, ground and shaped beryllium-copper alloys into the parts that make warheads work. The metal included about 2 percent beryllium to add strength to the copper.
But other workers -- including hundreds of people who tested, inspected or processed beryllium copper alloys at the Kansas City plant -- could have been exposed, Energy Department officials said.
Because people react differently to beryllium, even incidental exposure to the metal's dust can trigger the disease in some people.
At other weapons plants, some secretaries, security guards and others who never handled beryllium were diagnosed with CBD. Even some women whose only contact with the dust was through handling their husbands' dirty work clothes came down with the disease.
CBD is particularly insidious because it often does not show up for 10 to 30 years after exposure, government researchers said. That means even people who originally test negative to beryllium sensitivity can become sensitive years after the last exposure.
"Some people develop the sensitivity within months of exposure," Cragle said. "Others won't show sensitivity for more than 20 years. ... We have no idea how long after sensitivity that a person will develop CBD. Those data are just now being gathered."
Retiree Paul Abma died before the government advised former Kansas City workers to get tested.
Abma, who worked at the plant from 1955 to his taking of early retirement in 1992, died last November in New Mexico. His death certificate lists lung cancer and emphysema as the causes of death. CBD causes emphysema and is often accompanied by lung cancer.
His widow, LaVerne Abma, said her husband's job was to mix, pot and bake various metals, including beryllium. In January, LaVerne Abma filed a workers' compensation claim against AlliedSignal, saying his CBD was identified in October 1999.
She said company officials acknowledged her husband's breathing problems in 1982. They advised him to quit smoking. Abma retired in 1992 and the Abmas later moved to New Mexico to help his breathing problems.
Honeywell officials would not discuss Abma's case. The only response to the claim was filed on behalf of Honeywell and its insurance carrier. It denied Abma's allegations and demanded "strict proof ... on all elements of this claim."
Rosemary Mainprize, who worked at the plant from 1979 to 1994, said she had known about Abma's lung problem when they worked together. But she said she didn't connect it to the job.
"I think his death brought realization to a lot of us that we could test positive, too," Mainprize said.
Questions about safety
Several retired workers said they feared that their exposure to beryllium at the Kansas City plant will lead to lung problems.
They said they often lacked protective equipment and for years used production techniques that would never be allowed today. They said they were rarely warned about the toxic nature of the materials they handled.
Barbara Andrews, who worked at the plant from 1968 to 1997, said that when she started, her group routinely sanded or filed beryllium copper bars to get rid of adhesives or metal burrs -- a now prohibited technique that could create the toxic dust.
Andrews' test results show abnormalities that could mean she's on her way to developing sensitivity to beryllium. So Andrews will undergo tests annually to determine whether the ailment is developing inside her lungs.
Still Andrews is not bitter.
"It was a good place to work," said Andrews, who lives in Independence. "But there was a lot of ignorance."
Mike Roepke, the business representative for Lodge 314 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, said many workers told him they were never warned about the dangers of the materials they handled.
"You were told what not to do," said Roepke, who worked in the plant for 20 years. "But you weren't told why, and you were never told what the ramifications were if you did do it that way."
Company officials told The Kansas City Star that supervisors instructed employees in the proper handling of beryllium at least since 1958. At least since 1963, the company also gave beryllium workers annual physicals.
The plant also used techniques, such as wet machining of parts and the use of exhaust fans, that minimized beryllium dust. But officials said at least two common grinding and polishing procedures were done dry at least until the mid-1990s.
To reach Kit Wagar, call (816) 234-4440 or send e-mail to kwagar@kcstar.com.
To reach Cait Purinton, call (816) 234-5900 or send e-mail to cpurinton@kcstar.com.
-------- kentucky
USEC jobless to get more aid
By Joe Walker jwalker@paducahsun.com--270.575.8650,
June 17, 2000
Paducah Sun
http://www.paducahsun.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?/200006/17+00T3_news.ht ml+20000617+news
Hundreds of displaced workers at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant are now eligible for more unemployment benefits because of a U.S. Labor Department ruling that importing Russian uranium was "a major factor" in the job cuts by USEC Inc. Issued Thursday in Washington, the ruling affects all workers â€" union and salaried â€" who have lost jobs partly or entirely at the plant since April 10, 1999, or who will lose jobs through June 15, 2002. It also applies to workers at Paducah's sister plant near Portsmouth, Ohio.
State unemployment insurance normally lasts six months. Federal Trade Adjustment Assistance provided by the ruling will basically extend unemployment benefits for plant workers to a year. It will also pay retraining expenses such as tuition and books for about two years, said Randy Morgan, field office assistant manager of the Department for Employment Services at Paducah.
"We have not been notified of this, but if it goes the way the program normally goes, there's money set aside for retraining people," he said. "There are many factors involved, but in most cases it would give another 26 weeks or so of unemployment insurance."
Morgan said the federal funds are funneled through the state, and workers apply at the employment office at 418 S. 6th St. Compensation, which normally covers voluntary and involuntary job cuts, has helped workers of other firms in the Paducah area, he said.
"If a person wants to take advantage of it, it's a good deal," Morgan said. "The problem is the unemployment insurance will run out before two years."
The ruling affects workers who lost jobs because of competition caused by an agreement to buy enriched uranium from dismantled Russian nuclear warheads. As agent, USEC is paying prices higher than the plants' production costs, and the 500 tons of Russian uranium displaces the production of one plant.
Facing serious financial trouble, USEC will cut 625 more jobs at the two plants, including about 250 at Paducah, starting July 14. That will raise the number of job losses at the plants to more than 1,100 since USEC was privatized two years ago.
USEC's board of directors is expected to meet Wednesday, and various sources have said it will decide to close one of the plants. USEC has not commented.
In his ruling, Trade Adjustment Assistance program manager Grant Beale said the Russian agreement "contributed importantly to the decline in sales or production (of USEC) and to the total or partial separation of workers of that firm."
Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell said the Labor Department report is more evidence that the Russian agreement, negotiated by the Clinton administration, is "a bad deal" for Paducah plant workers. "While this package will provide valuable assistance to those affected by layoffs, it doesn't make up for the hardships unemployment brings," he said.
On Thursday, Gov. Paul Patton met with USEC officials to discuss the Paducah plant and pledge state support for its continued operation. Patton said his "very positive and frank discussion" with USEC Chief Executive Officer William "Nick" Timbers dealt with the economic factors considered for continued production at Paducah.
In a statement, Patton said Timbers expressed appreciation for community support of the plant and "had special praise for the work force. Timbers was also grateful for the help he's received from other businesses in the community."
The labor ruling culminated an investigation based on an April 24 petition filed by Paducah and Portsmouth plant locals of the international atomic workers' union known as PACE. Leaders of the union, which represents more than half the plants' employment, have been highly critical of USEC's predicament and especially the Russian pact.
Attempts to reach David Fuller, president of the Paducah local, and Richard Miller, PACE's policy analyst, failed Friday.
----
Two Koreas Embark on New Era of Reconciliation
By Reuters
June 16, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-s.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea on Friday switched off loudspeakers that for years had blasted insults across the border with North Korea as the two long-time enemies embarked on a new era of reconciliation made possible by this week's summit.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff announced it was ending its propaganda broadcasts on the heavily militarized border, noting that North Korea had shut off its own giant loudspeakers just before the historic three-day summit that began on Tuesday.
The loudspeakers, mounted on hills along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates the two Cold War rivals, had for decades hurled insults and pleaded for soldier to defect across the four-km (2.4-mile) wide no-man's land that cuts a 242 km (150 mile) rift across the Korean peninsula
For it's part, the North allowed a southern fishing boat that had strayed across the disputed Yellow Sea border to sail back to its home port at Paengnyongdo Island with its two crew members.
A year ago Thursday North and South Korean naval vessels clashed on the Yellow Sea border in their worst naval firefight since the 1950-53 Korean war.
PROJECTS ORDERED
South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, basking in the acclaim of global leaders and his own people, ordered his cabinet to find ways of implementing a summit accord with the North's Kim Jong-il that would coax the Stalinist state out of its self-imposed isolation and help rebuild its feeble economy.
Kim said the Unification Minister should be in charge of preparing for reunions of families torn apart when the Korean War broke out in 1950. The reunions are set to take place around August 15, when both countries mark the liberation of Korea from Japanese occupation at the end of World War Two.
He told other ministers to introduce detailed projects for North Korea and implement them.
An early priority for the president is to restore the 25-km (15-mile) rail link between the two countries, severed at the start of war.
When restored, the line would link the strategic peninsula to the Asian mainland and Europe. Kim called it ``a silk road in the new millennium.''
Contacts between government officials on economic cooperation would begin next month, South Korea's Finance Minister Lee Hun-jai said on Friday.
Success could mean far greater aid for the impoverished North from the South Korean government, which currently offers modest assistance indirectly.
Seoul provided the North with 4.61 billion won ($4.13 million) in aid through organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) in the first quarter of this year.
The first-ever summit between leaders of the rival Koreas made considerable headway on a reunification proposal, Kim said.
Pyongyang has now accepted Seoul's confederation idea of ''two governments and two systems'' in which North and South Korea would exercise their own diplomacy and defense, Kim said.
BIG SPLASH
North Korea's heretofore enigmatic and reclusive leader Kim Jong-il made a huge splash at the summit, raising expectations the secretive regime was ready to end its self-imposed isolation.
He surprised the world and his own people by personally greeting Kim Dae-jung at the airport, bantering with Kim during the hours of meetings that ensued, holding hands and singing a hymn to reunification at a farewell lunch, and hugging the president at the airport before departure.
The unpredictable North Korean leader even gave a thumbs up to the idea of a visit by Pope John Paul, Kim Dae-jung's spokesman said on Friday.
``It would be great if you invite the Pope to visit Pyongyang,'' the spokesman quoted Kim Dae-jung as saying.
``Let him come!,'' Kim Jong-il was reported to have replied.
Praise for the summit agreement poured forth from around the world. Singapore's Straits Times newspaper said if its promise is fulfilled ``the two Kims must be worthy candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize.''
ROGUE MISSILES
``Today is a new day of hope for the future of the Korean peninsula,'' Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said.
But other U.S. officials said the summit had no impact on U.S. plans for a national missile defense system aimed at protecting against attacks from North Korea or other ``rogue'' states.
President Kim said he told President Clinton by telephone that he had urged Pyongyang to cooperate in missile talks with Washington because that would further peace and cooperation between the two Koreas.
The two Koreas have been on the verge of breakthroughs in the past -- agreeing to a Joint Declaration in 1972 and signing non-aggression treaties in 1991 -- only to lapse back into sullen confrontation that spilled over into occasional clashes.
The difference this time is the top leaders of both countries have put their names to an agreement.
On the economic front, tough questions must also be answered about South Korea's ability to foot the bill for co-habitation with the hunger-wracked North, where living standards are about 10 times lower.
-------- new mexico
Los Alamos in Unwanted Spotlight
By The Associated Press
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Secret-Science.html
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) -- Reports of security breaches and missing computers have thrust the Los Alamos National Laboratory into an unwanted spotlight. But guarding the nation's nuclear secrets has been a daunting task for the lab since its scientists began working on the atomic bomb more than half a century ago.
Experts say it was a clash of cultures -- scientific vs. military -- that made security difficult from the lab's earliest days during World War II.
Manhattan Project scientists, cloistered in the remote New Mexico foothills, insisted they needed to share information with colleagues to advance their work. Military security officers had other ideas, seeking to keep scientists from knowing how their individual work fit into the mission of creating an immensely destructive weapon that might help shorten the war.
Security quickly became a problem as the scope of the Manhattan Project grew. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the top civilian on the project, had envisioned a cohort of a couple dozen scientists, but that number grew to between 1,000 and 2,000 by 1943.
Eventually, atom bomb secrets were stolen by spies who passed the information to Soviet couriers.
``By 1944, it was breaking down,'' Richard Melzer, a University of New Mexico history professor, said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. ``They just couldn't keep up. ... The ultimate proof of how bad it was is that the spies (who stole the atom bomb secrets) were amateurs.''
During those early days, Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves, the commanding officer at Los Alamos, was obsessed with scientists who vocally advocated freedom of academic speech.
Security measures bordered on paranoia. Microphones were hidden in scientists' offices and homes, and other methods of Army surveillance were so ``dishonorable'' that they still haven't been disclosed, according to Melzer's new book, ``Breakdown: How the Secret of the Atomic Bomb was Stolen during World War II.''
Richard P. Feynman, a Nobel laureate in physics, arrived at Los Alamos during the war years before the complex was completed. He took delight in finding holes in the security system -- easy-to-crack safes, for example -- and challenging the censors who edited incoming and outgoing mail.
At one point, Feynman wrote in his book, ``Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!'' that he had found a hole in one of the security fences. He left through a well-guarded gate and returned through the hole, retracing his route a number of times before a guard got suspicious and called his superior with the intent of throwing Feynman in jail.
Melzer quotes Groves as saying: ``If this were a country like Germany ... there were a dozen (scientists) we should have shot right off. And another dozen we could have shot for suspicion and carelessness.''
More than 50 years later, the issues facing the lab have a similar ring. According to a presidential intelligence panel report released last year: ``Organizational disarray, managerial neglect and a culture of arrogance -- both at DOE headquarters and the labs themselves -- conspired to create an espionage scandal waiting to happen.''
That report came on the heels of an alleged security breach involving former Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee. Lee is accused of mishandling nuclear weapons secrets by putting them on an unsecured computer and downloading them onto portable tapes. He is in jail awaiting trial.
Last week, the lab became the target of more criticism after reports that two computer hard drives containing information used to disarm nuclear warheads had been lost. The drives were found Friday behind a copier in a secure area of the lab.
At least a half-dozen Los Alamos scientists -- among 26 people with access to the vault where the devices had been kept -- have been given polygraph tests and some answers have raised suspicions among investigators, according to government sources. Six Los Alamos managers already have been put on leave with pay pending completion of the investigations.
In response to the troubles, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has promised to centralize control over security under a single ``security czar'' and beef up computer security at the national labs.
But Chris Mechels, a former Los Alamos scientist who had the highest security clearance before he retired in 1994, says there's another problem to overcome: Everything nuclear is ``born classified.''
He said less information should be classified and the protection of the items that remain classified should be intensified.
``I consider the security too lax. They treat security like a damn joke,'' he said. ``If the classification system was more discerning, he said, ``Maybe, just maybe, then you could get people to take classification more seriously.''
Others say lab security will always come down to a simple bottom line: Can you trust the people who work there?
``We could put the best physical security envelope in place today, but if the individual does not live up to the authority and responsibility they were given, there can be a breach,'' said Gene Tucker, deputy director of security at Los Alamos.
----
Los Alamos hard drives investigated
Missing Los Alamos Data Found Behind Copying Machine in Lab
By JAMES RISEN
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/061700los-alamos-theft.html
WASHINGTON, June 16 -- A pair of computer hard drives believed to contain nuclear secrets that had been missing from the Los Alamos National Laboratory were found this afternoon behind a copying machine under conditions that were highly suspicious, administration officials said today.
The hard drives were found in a secure area of the New Mexico laboratory's X Division, where nuclear weapons are designed and where the drives had been stored. The X Division employee who found them is being questioned by the F.B.I.
Officials were highly skeptical of the circumstances surrounding the recovery because the area where the hard drives were found had already been closely searched twice, by the F.B.I. and the Energy Department.
Officials said the F.B.I. was intensifying its criminal investigation of the security breach, one of several at the laboratory in recent years. The bureau is trying to determine why the hard drives were removed from a secured vault and how they could have ended up behind a photocopier.
"They were recovered under very questionable circumstances," a senior law enforcement official said.
Another official said: "It seems like a lot of inconsistencies here. All of a sudden these things appear, in a place that had been searched twice."
While investigators believe the two drives that were recovered are probably the ones that have been missing since at least May 7, the officials said the F.B.I. was planning to conduct a more thorough examination to ensure that the hard drives were authentic and that they contained the missing data.
Investigators will be checking for fingerprints and other evidence that might pinpoint who removed them, and the F.B.I.'s computer experts also plan to see if the data had been copied or downloaded before it was returned. The F.B.I. has nearly 60 agents working on the investigation, officials said.
The recovery of the computer drives was the latest twist in a case that has prompted harsh criticism of security at Los Alamos. Republicans have vented much of their anger at Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who had been mentioned as a possible running mate for Vice President Al Gore.
Mr. Richardson expressed outrage this week over the security lapses, especially after it was learned that Los Alamos employees had waited more than three weeks before reporting the loss of hard drives, which contained some of the nation's most important nuclear secrets.
The hard drives hold data on nuclear weapons and are intended to be used in emergencies by the government's Nuclear Emergency Search Team, or NEST, which is responsible for responding to nuclear accidents and terrorist threats.
The data includes information needed by the team to disarm nuclear devices designed by the United States and other nations, including Russia.
In response to the loss of the hard drives, the laboratory's director, John C. Browne, placed six managers on leave, pending possible disciplinary action. Among them was the laboratory's head of nuclear weapons programs.
Mr. Richardson also asked former Senator Howard H. Baker Jr., Republican of Tennessee, and former Representative Lee H. Hamilton, Democrat of Indiana, to conduct an independent review of the disappearance.
Senior Energy Department officials received word of the discovery this afternoon while they were meeting to discuss how to deal with the crisis over the loss of the hard drives.
The case dates to May 7, when NEST members discovered that the hard drives were missing while team members were ensuring that equipment stored in the X Division vault was still secure as a forest fire raged near the laboratory.
They did not inform Mr. Browne for more than three weeks, until the night of May 31. The Energy Department and the F.B.I. were notified the next day.
Officials say that a total of 86 people had access to the vault where the hard drives were stored and that among them were 26 scientists who could enter without escorts and remove material without logging it in or out.
This week the F.B.I. began conducting polygraph examinations of those with access to the material, and officials said three people had failed as of today. It was not known whether those test results suggested knowledge of what happened to the hard drives.
While the discovery of the hard drives seemed to suggest a mundane explanation for their disappearance, officials emphasized that it was too soon to draw strong conclusions about what had happened.
Some officials speculated that the person who took the drives might have panicked in the face of a major investigation and dropped them behind the copying machine in the last day or so. Yet the intense scrutiny the case by the F.B.I. could make it difficult to maintain such a cover-up for long.
"I will continue to aggressively pursue this serious matter," Secretary Richardson said in a statement. "There will be accountability and disciplinary actions regarding the Los Alamos incident."
The loss of the hard drives was only the latest security lapse involving Los Alamos.
Last year, the laboratory came under national scrutiny in the wake of evidence that China may have stolen nuclear data from Los Alamos. Last December, a former scientist at Los Alamos, Wen Ho Lee, was arrested for mishandling classified material after it was discovered that he had downloaded and copied vast amounts of nuclear data from the classified computer network at Los Alamos into an unsecure network and onto portable computer tapes.
Dr. Lee, who was not charged with espionage, is in jail awaiting trial. He has said he is innocent of the charges that he violated security rules.
----
6/17/00-
USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncssat01.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal investigators are closely examining two computer hard drives containing nuclear secrets that were found at the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, believing they are the ones missing for more than a month.
They want to determine whether the information has been compromised.
Authorities hoped to know by late Saturday whether the two drives definitely are the same ones that disappeared and, after an electronic examination, learn whether the contents have been copied or otherwise tampered with, said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The two devices, each about the size of a deck of cards, contain highly technical information that would be used by a nuclear emergency response team to locate and dismantle not only U.S., but some Russian and other countries' nuclear devices in case of an accident or terrorist act.
''They were found in a secure area. The area is being treated as a crime scene,'' Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said at a news conference in Phoenix, where he was informed of the discovery Friday while holding a meeting on summer electricity reliability.
Richardson said the two devices were found within the secure ''Division X'' area of the New Mexico weapons lab in an area that had been searched previously.
Another official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they were discovered behind a copying machine.
The highly restricted area includes the vault where the two drives, which belong to the Nuclear Emergency Search Team had been kept.
They were last reported seen April 7 and found missing a month later, although senior lab and Energy Department officials were not informed until recently.
While relieved that the drives were found within the secure area of the lab, Richardson said ''this is not a victory speech'' and that the FBI and the Energy Department ''would continue to aggressively pursue'' the criminal investigation. Even with the drives recovered those responsible could face criminal charges for security breaches.
''We are going to hold people accountable. There are going to be people disciplined,'' Richardson said.
At least a half-dozen Los Alamos scientists - among 26 people with free access to the vault where the devices had been kept - have been given polygraph tests and some answers have raised suspicions among investigators, according to government sources.
And six Los Alamos managers, including the chief of the emergency response team that used the devices and the head of the lab's nuclear programs already have been put on leave with pay pending completion of the investigations.
The disappearance of the hard drives had evoked anger and frustration both in Congress and at the White House and Energy Department, which didn't learn of the security breach for nearly a month after the devices were found missing from the vault.
The discovery of the two drives did not stem the criticism.
''It raises more questions about security than it answers,'' said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. ''The hard drives were apparently discovered in an area that had been previously searched, raising the strong possibility that they were returned to the site after being stolen.''
Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee called the missing drives ''a major security failure'' that had ''potentially devastating'' consequences if the information were compromised.
The CIA has been asked to make an assessment of potential harm.
Meanwhile, six Democratic members of the House, led by Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, ranking member of the Commerce Committee, urged Richardson to cancel the government's contract with the University of California for managing the Los Alamos lab.
They said the university, which has managed Los Alamos as well as the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California for the government for more than 50 years, is ''incapable of carrying out its ... obligations'' to provide security.
-------- south carolina
S.C. Firm Checking Security Breach
By The Associated Press
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-SRS-Security.html
AIKEN, S.C. (AP) -- The parent company of the top contractor at the Savannah River Site nuclear weapons complex says it might fire some workers over a security breach in which some of the complex's computers were sold as scrap overseas.
Morrison Knudsen, owner of Westinghouse Savannah River Co., will take ``appropriate personnel actions,'' said John Roberts, director of administration for the company based in Boise, Idaho. ``We take this matter very seriously.''
His announcement Friday came two days after confirmation that some surplus computers from the complex wound up in China. The Department of Energy, the agency's inspector general and Westinghouse all have investigated the year-old incident.
DOE spokesman Bill Taylor said the lapse did not result in the release of classified information.
The computers had been sold as scrap to Allied Fabricators and Constructors Inc. of Aiken.
``I think they sold it by the pound in some instances,'' Taylor said.
The Energy Department's inspector general said Wednesday that at least two disks from a security system at the government-owned complex were found among items at a reseller's business last fall.
Earlier this month, Westinghouse Savannah River Co., which operates the complex for the Energy Department, lost $1 million in incentive fees from the government because of the security breach.
``The flaw in our handling of these computers should not have happened,'' Taylor said. ``We had procedures in place. They were not followed. We've since refined our procedures.''
Roberts said Morrison Knudsen will tighten security at the complex so that ``nothing like this'' ever happens again.
-------- washington
Hanford entering a new era
Barrels of least hazardous debris first to go under 10-year-old pact
More coverage of Hanford fallout.
Spokane Spokesman review
June 17, 2000
Craig Welch - Seattle Times
http://www.spokane.net/NewsTrak/newstracks.asp?Direc=lists&ID=L29
http://www.spokane.net/covers/people/staff.asp?ID=bio154
http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=061700&ID=s815844&cat=
CARLSBAD, New Mexico _ The contents sound innocuous: a pair of scissors, rubber gloves, cloth rags, paper floor mats.
Housed in barrels in simple sheet-metal potato sheds at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, it's the debris of workers who assembled an arsenal, everyday Cold War stuff now spotted with plutonium.
Later this month, the first shipments of this contaminated trash will leave the Tri-Cities bound for permanent burial in the same southwestern mesquite, sage and oak desert that gave birth to the Atomic Age.
It will be the first nuclear waste to leave Hanford since a cleanup agreement was reached 10 years ago.
The 80,000 barrels of waste to be trucked across the West over the next 35 years is Hanford's least hazardous. Corroding nuclear fuel rods still rest near the Columbia River, waiting to be moved. A 50-year project to turn the deadly nuclear soup in the reservation's 177 underground tanks, one-third of which leak, into glass is over budget and facing potential delays.
Still, the shipments will be a small but perceptible sign of cleanup at a place where progress is slow..
"Unless you work at Hanford, it's just out there. It's hard to tell what's getting done," State Rep. Jerome Delvin said. "Now people will start seeing these shipments go by and know they're making progress."
On Monday, 33 ordinary 55-gallon drums will be loaded into three gargantuan stainless steel Thermoses -- 6-ton containers that can't be burned, frozen, gored or shattered.
Under police escort, they'll be hauled by flatbed truck to an underground grave in a 225-million-year-old salt seam -- a spot chosen by government scientists so mindful of security they initially pondered whether it could survive asteroids and, if need be, space aliens.
There, a half-mile into the earth, the salt will creep, a few inches each year, a foot or two each decade. A sort-of natural trash compactor, it will slowly crush the drums like beer cans, isolating radiation until it eventually decays, 250,000 years from now.
That, at least, is the plan.
A rocky start
The science is 50 years in the making, but the nature of the waste leaves little room for error. The mathematical modeling used to predict the future is only reliable to 10,000 years.
And in its first year, the world's only permanent Cold War nuclear dump, New Mexico's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), has had its public-relations gaffes.
Shipments from one lab veered off course in New Mexico through sacred tribal lands. And a package from Colorado arrived with a spot of radiation outside a container -- a blob WIPP general manager Joe Epstein insists didn't come from the waste. The cause was never pinpointed, and Epstein said it was naturally occurring.
For the Department of Energy and Westinghouse, the private contractor in charge of the facility, Hanford's shipments are another chance to convince a skeptical public that hauling and burying radioactive substances is safe.
"It's better to be transported and deposited a half-mile down ... than to be sitting where it can be hit by earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and fire," Epstein said.
Northeast of the 8,000-foot Guadalupe Mountains and the caves of Carlsbad Caverns, in the corner of New Mexico that cuts sharply into Texas, the Chihuahuan desert flattens to a desolate moonscape of brush. Temperatures can hit 120 degrees, and yearly rainfall is less than Seattle gets in a month.
It was not far from here that Pat Garrett killed Billy the Kid. Closer still, a wealthy land baron named Charles Eddy founded a cowtown he named for himself, until citizens later found underwater springs, and renamed the town after mineral-springs-rich Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia.
The region subsisted on ranching and tourism, as visitors came to nearby national parks. Residents also mined potash, potassium salts used for fertilizer, until the market bottomed out in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In 1974, seeking a place to discard its least-hazardous nuclear detritus, the Atomic Energy Commission came calling. Carlsbad residents were eager rather than fearful. They'd grown up with the nuclear industry and were in need of jobs.
They had seen light from the 1945 Trinity test, the world's first atomic-bomb explosion, 200 miles away. Others recall seeing the dust dance off the earth during Gnome, an underground explosion outside town in 1961.
Scientists were convinced the region was ideal for storage. Tests 1,000 feet below revealed a salt bed devoid of moisture. They chose a 16-square-mile tract 26 miles east of town, 10 miles from the nearest home, and began carving a system of tunnels in the earth. By the time WIPP began receiving waste in 1999, it employed more than 1,000. Carlsbad residents and workers are fiercely loyal.
"I have family in Lubbock who say, `You should change the name of your town to Carlsglow,"' said WIPP miner Armando Rodriguez, who feels perfectly safe in the caverns. "They just don't understand."
Emphasis on safety
The garbage brought here is primarily low-level alpha- and beta-emitting waste. Alpha and beta rays are considered highly carcinogenic but easy to shield with paper or glass, dangerous only when inhaled or ingested. But small amounts of the waste are loaded with deadly pure energy known as gamma rays, typically containable by lead -- and salt.
Eventually, 6.2 million cubic feet of waste will travel here from 10 Energy Department sites, transported on 18-wheelers by specially trained drivers.
The truckers will use high-tech satellite devices to monitor weather patterns, while state, federal and tribal officials will keep tabs on the trucks with tracking devices. Safety rules governing drivers are strict.
"If one of them gets a speeding ticket on his way to church Sunday, he might as well not show up for work Monday," said Donovan Mager, spokesman for WIPP contractor Westinghouse.
The radioactive materials will be packed in $330,000 vacuum-packed stainless steel cocoons. In tests, the containers have survived being frozen, burned in jet fuel, dumped three stories onto battleship armor and slammed onto upturned steel spikes. The containers are so impregnable, drivers are told to abandon them at sign of trouble from protesters.
Not that officials expect any. Early shipments had opponents, including a physicist and anti-nuke protester who had fasted 82 days. But the only attempt to interrupt a trip came when an activist blocked a road with his Volkswagen.
2,150 feet below surface
From the outside, WIPP looks like a power station: stark cream-white buildings and pipes surrounded by fences. Only on the inside are there reminders of the dangerous material stored here.
Visitors pass through a radiation detector and run their palms over an electronic counter, which prompts guards to search every 11th person.
To enter the "waste-handling room," a mammoth warehouse where trucks unload, workers pass through airlocks, which can be slammed shut in emergencies. Radiation-blocking "monkey suits" aren't necessary, but eating or drinking is prohibited. In a release, radiation could settle on food and be ingested.
Inside the warehouse, waste is removed from the cocoons and carted to a dual-chambered mining elevator -- one chamber for people, the other for toxic waste -- which drops 2,150 feet below the surface.
Underground, WIPP seems busy as a city. Salt dust swirls like snow, gathering on clothing and hair. Workers travel on golf-cartlike people-movers. Tunnels are wide as a street and a dozen feet tall. Mining machines chew through the crystalline salt building an ever-expanding maze.
Garage doors separate intersecting corridors and are opened with cords hanging from the ceiling. Several lead to dead ends, where drums of waste have already been gathered, stacked in honeycomb patterns.
Experts insist that this method of storage is safe. The waste contains little moisture so is unlikely to leach into a water supply. Because salt acts as a shock absorber, even the rare earthquakes this region experiences shouldn't disturb it.
If barrels were dropped or damaged down here, an alpha or beta release would not likely harm workers, Energy Department administrators say. A more harmful gamma release couldn't reach the surface.
Scientists fear only that future miners searching for oil, basalt or hydrogen could accidentally bore into WIPP and smash a waste container. Even so, from these depths, radiation would be unlikely to reach any humans, Epstein said.
-------- us nuc weapons
GAO Report Finds Fault With Missile Shield Plan
Senator: 'Serious Concerns' Raised
Washington Post
Saturday, June 17, 2000; Page A07
By Roberto Suro and Steven Mufson Washington Post Staff Writers
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-06/17/113l-061700-idx.html
A new report to Congress warns that the Clinton administration's plan for a national missile defense system is based on uncertain assessments of the potential threats and is vulnerable to delays and escalating costs.
The General Accounting Office, in a report that circulated on Capitol Hill this week but has yet to be made public, also concluded that it will be difficult to know whether the missile shield will function properly during an attack because of strict limitations on the Pentagon's ability to test the system of powerful targeting radars, interceptor missiles and high-speed computers.
"The GAO report raises serious concerns," said Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii), who requested the report. "As a longtime supporter of national missile defense, I believe that the increase in performance risks because of flight-test restrictions and uncertainties regarding the nature of the threat need to be addressed sooner rather than later in the testing phase."
Under a schedule pressed by Republican leaders in Congress, the Pentagon hopes to have 100 interceptor missiles based in Alaska by 2007, with the first 20 ready to fire by 2005. The Pentagon concurred with all of the GAO's findings and has often stated that the development plan is highly accelerated and thus highly risky. As it proceeds on an emergency basis to defend against potential threats by such "rogue nations" as North Korea and Iran, the Pentagon has said the deadlines require testing and refining the system even as it is being built.
"Right now we appear to be pushing the envelope of our technical capabilities," Akaka concluded.
The next evaluation of those capabilities will come after a July 7 flight test over the Pacific in which a "kill vehicle" will attempt to collide with an incoming warhead high in space. The results of that test will weigh heavily in a decision President Clinton is to make this fall on whether to go forward with construction of the system.
The GAO report analyzes the findings of studies conducted by the Pentagon and government agencies. The technological uncertainties of the system greatly increase the prospects for delays, and the GAO concluded that each month of delay in the program could increase its costs by $124 million.
Questioning the rationale behind the system, the GAO found that intelligence estimates of the threat posed by rogue nations are "uncertain." The 100-missile system is designed to handle no more than 20 incoming warheads of fairly simple design, but the GAO report said, "The intelligence community is uncertain about what countermeasures a rogue nation would employ in attempting to defeat a missile defense system." The Pentagon acknowledges that sophisticated countermeasures, such as multiple decoys, could make it much more difficult for a kill vehicle to find its target.
----
Congress 'doubtful' on missile scheme
BBC News
Saturday, 17 June, 2000, 19:25 GMT 20:25 UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_795000/795304.stm
After January's failure, the system has only one test left US Congressional investigators are reported to have cast fresh doubt over a planned national missile defence system, saying that it would be hard to know whether it would work.
The report, in the Washington Post newspaper, is another blow for President Clinton's efforts to secure international acceptance of the system, which is opposed by Russia and received a lukewarm reception earlier this month from the European Union.
The Post quoted an unpublished report by the investigative arm of the General Accounting Office (GAO), the Congress' research department, which it said had been circulating in Congress in the past week.
The National Missile Defence (NMD) system, which is currently being developed by the United States, is designed to deploy interceptor missiles guided by early warning satellites, radar and computers to shoot down long-range missiles launched by a "rogue state".
Cost and effectiveness
Analysing the findings of studies conducted by the Pentagon and government agencies, the investigators reportedly said that the technological uncertainties of the system greatly increased the chances of delays, with each month of delay adding $124m to the cost.
The GAO said that the intelligence community was uncertain about what countermeasures so-called "rogue nations" like North Korea or Iran would employ in attempting to defeat the system.
Finally, the paper said that because of limitations on the Pentagon's ability to test all of the missile shield's components, it would be hard to know if it would work during an attack.
It is unclear whether or not the system passed its first test in October, it failed a second test in January and there is only one more test to go.
However the Pentagon wants the system, which has been dubbed "Son of Star Wars" up and running by 2005.
US President Bill Clinton will decide in the autumn whether to go ahead with its construction.
Opposition
Lobbying on behalf of the scheme formed a major part of Mr Clinton's European tour earlier this month, which culminated in a summit with President Putin in Moscow.
Mr Clinton failed to overcome Russian opposition - and even that of some of Washington's Nato allies - to the planned defence shield.
Russia fears the system would undermine the effectiveness of its own nuclear deterrent.
Before the summit President Putin even warned that Russia might abandon all arms-control agreements with the United States if the NMD went ahead.
The US admits that the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Russia would need to be amended to allow the NMD system to ahead.
---
Missile Defense Plan Questioned
By The Associated Press
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Missile-Defense.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional investigators say the Clinton administration's national missile defense plan is based on uncertain assessments of potential threats and could face rising costs and delays, The Washington Post reported.
In a report circulated in Congress that hasn't been made public, the General Accounting Office concluded that because of limitations on the Pentagon's ability to test all of the missile shields' components, it would hard to know whether the system would work during an attack, the newspaper said in Saturday editions.
Analyzing the findings of studies conducted by the Pentagon and government agencies, the investigators said the technological uncertainties of the system greatly increase the prospects for delays, with each month of delay increasing costs by $124 million.
The report by GAO, Congress' investigative arm, also said the intelligence community is uncertain about what countermeasures a ``rogue nations'' like North Korea or Iran would employ in attempting to defeat a missile defense system.
The Pentagon wants to have 100 interceptor missiles based in Alaska by 2007, with the first 20 ready to fire by 2005. President Clinton is to decide this fall on whether to go forward with construction of the system.
-------- us politics
"Nobles and knaves"
EDITORIAL •
June 17, 2000 -
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-2000617184228.htm
Knave: Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, for not showing up to explain his department's repeated failure to hold on to national security secrets. A year ago, when nuclear secrets up and disappeared, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson promised to put a stop to such breaches of national security. Now it has happened again; two hard drives containing nuclear secrets are missing from the lab at Los Alamos. This time, Mr. Richardson isn't talking tough. Actually, he didn't even show up to tell the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence why these hard drives are missing. For this Mr. Richardson is The Washington Times' knave of the week.
One may now wonder if Mr. Richardson is doing everything in his power to plug the leaks at Los Alamos. By snubbing Congress, the energy secretary subtly revealed that he doesn't take the apparent theft of these hard drives that seriously. If Mr. Richardson doesn't take this matter seriously, who in his department will?
The American people deserve more from their government officials. Los Alamos is the lab where many of the first crucial steps to developing nuclear weapons occurred. It is also the lab the government uses to continually refine the nation's nuclear arsenal. Keeping that arsenal on the cutting edge of the arms race has long been a staple of national security - even in the post-Cold War world. Letting the secrets there leak out is doubly harmful to national security, because it arms the nation's enemies with weapons developed here.
Mr. Richardson should be held accountable for these lapses. Luckily, it seems that Mr. Richardson won't be promoted for his failures. Until recently he was seen as a strong contender to be the vice presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket. That possibility seems to have vanished along with those two hard drives.
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Bush Criticizes Lab Security Lapse
By The Associated Press
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/p/AP-Bush.html
KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) -- George W. Bush chastised the Clinton administration Saturday for its handling of nuclear secrets at the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, saying that ``America's nuclear security should not be a matter of lost and found.''
Bush, appearing with his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, at the state convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, also blamed the administration for a ``slow slide to military weakness'' shown through poor military recruiting and low morale within the armed forces.
The Texas governor pledged to rebuild military strength with lighter and more lethal weapons, and to restore morale by giving troops clear missions and reducing peacekeeping assignments.
At Los Alamos, two computer hard drives containing nuclear secrets were found Friday and federal investigators believe they are the ones that were missing for more than a month. Investigators now are trying to authenticate the contents and determine whether the information was copied or tampered with.
The Republican presidential candidate told an audience of 700 that the administration was to blame for the ``chaos and confusion.''
Bush added: ``I'd like to make another pledge to you: I will bring this sorry chapter to a close in my administration. Our national labs will be secure again, our vital information will be sealed again, and our nuclear secrets will be secret again.''
In his first comments on the missing drives, Bush said Thursday he supported the investigation already under way and blamed the administration for ``another major security lapse'' that he said was of ``great concern.''
Earlier Saturday, brother Gov. Jeb Bush predicted that his older brother would win Florida and contended Al Gore's campaign was ``bluffing'' about its ability to compete in the state.
Jeb Bush said Democrats also exaggerated strength in Florida 12 years ago when his father, George Bush, beat Democrat Michael S. Dukakis.
``This reminds me a little of '88, where the Dukakis campaign came in with a field organization and they were talking about how they were going to compete and do all these things, and then by the end, we had a going-away party for them with a vote,'' Jeb Bush told reporters aboard his brother's campaign plane.
``I don't know if Gore will leave the state entirely, but I think there's a lot of bluffing going on right now,'' he said between fund-raising appearances with the Texas governor.
Democrats outnumber Republicans in the state, which has 25 electoral votes, fourth most in the country. But a Florida poll in May put George W. Bush at 47 percent and Gore at 40 percent.
On Saturday, Bush gained more support, winning the endorsement of the Florida chapter of LULAC, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the nation's oldest and largest Hispanic organization.
In 1988, George Bush won the state with 62 percent of the vote. He barely carried Florida while losing to Bill Clinton four years later. In 1996, Clinton won by a 48-42 margin over Republican Bob Dole.
Many political observers feel Gore's standing with voters, particularly in South Florida, with its large Cuban American population, has been hurt by the Clinton administration's efforts to return 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez to Cuba.
Gore believes a family court, rather than federal judges, should decide the case -- a position counter to the administration's. He also broke with the administration by supporting legislation to grant permanent resident status to Elian, his father and other relatives.
George W. Bush's swing through Florida was a chance for the brothers to enjoy campaigning together.
The Texan bragged he was a better runner. Jeb Bush said he was a better golfer. They seem to share the same tailor: Each wore a blue dress shirt and red tie.
Joked older brother: ``You can see mine's a little kind of a softer tone. It's a little more presidential look.''
Jeb Bush, 47, was seen by some family members as the more likely presidential contender until he lost his first bid for Florida governor in 1994 -- the same time his 53-year-old brother won his first term in Texas.
Jeb Bush, however, said he is happy with his lot.
``I am consumed by my work and my family and I've got the best job in the world,'' he said.
Asked about the prospect of a George W. Bush-Jeb Bush GOP ticket this fall, the older brother said that combination would save campaign money on bumper stickers.
He added, ``If all else fails, then he's in the running.''
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The legacy of America's largest nuclear test
Response to "30 years after"
by Jeffrey St clair, in 000610nn.htm]
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2000 23:57:37 -0500
One minor note, the half-life of plutonium 239 is, unfortunately for mammals, 24.000 years. For plutonium 240, it is even longer. Let's just say that thousands of centuries from now, it will still be around to cause cancer.
I would also be worried about Cesium 137 and Strontium 90, too. Cesium 137 concentrates in the muscle tissues of fish and other animals as it works its way up the food chain (half-life 30 years). Strontium 90 gets into your bones (half-life 28 years).
It takes about 20 half-lives for the isotopes to effectively disappear.
One-millionth of a gram of Pu-239 will give you lung cancer (If inhaled); one-thousandth of a gram in your lungs will cause pulmonary fibrosis and kill you in a few hours. Pu 239 can find its way into the food chains through the soil and water. It is 486 million times more poisonous than arsenic.
Plutonium is named after the God of the Underworld. It didn't exist on Earth until the mid-19th century. In our infinite wisdom, we have manufactured many hundreds of tons of the stuff in nuclear reactors (and continue to do so).
I am concerned about the effects of the plutonium which was vaporized and released as global fallout during the atmospheric testing in the 1950's and 1960's. At least one-half of the plutonium from the weapons did not undergo fission, but became radioactive dust. This means that hundreds of thousands of pounds of the stuff was let loose.
How big a role is this playing in the current epidemic rates of cancer?
Best Wishes, Steven Starr
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Building a Missile Shield, Holes and All
New York Times
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/00/06/17/letters/l17mis.html
In June 15 front-page articles, you report on both legal approval of a limited missile shield and the United States' plans to drop sanctions against North Korea.
Proponents of national missile defense say that the North Koreans are a looming nuclear threat, and that we must spend $60 billion to stop missiles they don't even have.
Yet the United States is planning to lift sanctions on North Korea because the Korean leadership showed vision and courage; because it stopped testing its missiles and took diplomatic steps that worked.
So why do timid Democrats and hawkish Republicans still say we need this technologically unsound missile shield when it will risk starting a new arms race with Russia and China?
The wise course is to seek complete elimination of nuclear weapons, something the United States has promised to do for 30 years with little progress.
ZACHARY ALLEN San Francisco, June 15, 2000 The writer is program coordinator at the Global Security Institute.
To the Editor:
Re "Clinton Lawyers Give a Go-Ahead to Missile Shield" (front page, June 15): International understanding -- not unilateral advice from sneaky lawyers -- should guide President Clinton's deployment decision on national missile defense.
There is no question that the defense system will create an arms control crisis. Seeking loopholes in the Antiballistic Missile Treaty sets a precedent that will encourage other countries to do the same, thereby undermining our own national security.
BRE REIBER New York, June 15, 2000 The writer is executive director of Physicians for Social Responsibility.
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Strip Mining Banned At Tenn. Park
By The Associated Press
June 17, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Strip-Mining.html
PIKEVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Strip mining has been banished from most of a Tennessee state park, ending a decades-long struggle between environmentalists and coal mining interests.
After a brief hike through Fall Creek Falls State Park on Saturday, U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt officially designated more than 61,000 acres of the park's 86,000-acre watershed off-limits to surface coal mining. The designation is one of the largest ever in the United States.
``I'm here to acknowledge your victory,'' Babbitt told a group of cheering activists who have petitioned for the designation for years.
Babbitt's decision follows a federal agency's recommendation to protect the 61,000 acres of watershed in the eastern part of the state.
Strip mining is a technique in which the top of a ridge is sheared so coal can be extracted, pushing leftover rock and sediment elsewhere. Environmental activists have denounced the practice, saying acid drainage from the mines can pollute streams and waterfalls and threatens the habitat of park wildlife.
No coal companies currently mine within Fall Creek Falls. However one company, Skyline Coal Co. of Dunlap, has a lease to mine thousands of acres on the park's watershed.
Jim Lawson, an engineering technician at Skyline, said the company would had no immediate comment on the ban.
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