-------- NUCLEAR (by country)

Latest news from Vandenberg
Sender: wslf@mail.earthlink.net
Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 23:59:29 -0700

Dear Colleagues -- Greetings from Vandenberg Air Force Base (on the central coast of California). The Air Force is scheduled to launch the 3rd Ballistic Missile Defense interceptor test this Friday. Check out Greenpeace's new website: stopstarwars.org for the latest information about ongoing protest activities at Vandenberg (including photos) and other relevant information. Also, sign and send the on-line message to President Clinton urging him to stop the test and cancel the entire dangerous and destabilizing "Son of Star Wars" program. -- Jackie Cabasso

----

Russia, China, Talk Tough on U.S. Arms Plan

New York Times
July 5, 2000
By Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-tajikis.html

DUSHANBE (Reuters) - Russia and China talked tough about opposing U.S. plans to create a missile umbrella on Wednesday as leaders from Moscow, Beijing and three Central Asian states wrapped up a summit in this volatile region.

Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are members of the ''Shanghai Five,'' set up in 1996 to resolve border issues along the old Sino-Soviet frontier, but now focused on fighting terrorism, separatism and religious extremism.

Leaders from the five states signed a declaration vowing to deepen cooperation on those issues and Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed the meeting as a success.

``This organization has become a significant factor for stability in the region and has a serious influence on the international stage,'' Putin told reporters in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan, which borders both China and Afghanistan.

Earlier, Putin and Chinese leader Jiang Zemin exchanged notes on their joint opposition to Washington's proposal to build a Star Wars-like anti-missile shield.

``The leaders spoke about the fundamental importance of maintaining the strength of the 1972 ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) treaty,'' Kremlin spokesman Sergei Prikhodko told reporters after the meeting.

China and Russia say the proposed shield, aimed at blocking missile attacks by ``rogue states,'' would threaten existing arms control agreements by violating the ABM treaty.

Putin was quoted by another Kremlin spokesman as saying the ''global balance could be undermined'' if the U.S. plan proceeded.

Cash-strapped Russia is keen to reduce nuclear stockpiles which are expensive to maintain and China relies on a relatively small arsenal for its nuclear deterrent. Opponents of nuclear shields say they encourage countries to build up missile stocks to increase their chances of puncturing the shield.

TERRORISM A CONCERN, RUSSIA SUPPORTED ON CHECHNYA

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said on Tuesday the Shanghai Five had been forced to shift their attention from border issues to terrorism because of the ``activisation of international terrorism'' in the region.

Moscow says its war in rebel Chechnya was sparked by ''terrorists'' in its backyard and Russian news agencies quoted officials as saying on Wednesday that all participants at the summit had voiced their support for Russia's campaign.

Ivanov had singled out Afghanistan as the chief source of instability outside Central Asia's borders and said the conflict there would feature high on the agenda.

Jiang and Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov, both of whose countries border Afghanistan, met on Tuesday and urged the ruling Afghan Taliban movement and opposition alliance to halt the bloodshed.

Uzbekistan, alarmed at a Muslim revival in its densely populated Fergana Valley, also accuses Afghanistan of sponsoring terrorism and religious fundamentalism in Central Asia. The country attended the Shanghai Five meeting as an observer.

The Taliban denies exporting its strict form of Islam.

Uzbek leader Islam Karimov says he was the target of bombings in the capital Tashkent last year organized by a radical Muslim movement. Kyrgyzstan was invaded by hundreds of rebels linked to the same Uzbek network.

China is concerned about festering separatism among Muslim Uighurs in its western Xinjiang province bordering former Soviet Central Asia.

For Tajikistan, the summit is recognition that the impoverished mountainous state of six million has returned to some kind of normality following a 1992-1997 civil war.

Three years after a peace deal between Moscow-backed government forces and an Islamic-led opposition, shootings and bombings are still common, but tight security in the hot, dusty capital has reassured leaders of their safety.

-------- britain

BRITISH STAR WARS PROTEST REPORT

From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" <globalnet@mindspring.com>
Date: Wed, 5 Jul 2000 18:43:03 -0400

July 4th - Independence from America at Menwith Hill

About 50-60 people gathered outside the main gate of NSA Menwith Hill, Yorkshire England on a greyish (but not too cold) day to protest against the building of Star Wars there. The receiver dishes for the Space Based Infra Red System (to be part of the NMD system) are now in place and due to come "on-line" within the next few months. People going into the base to join in the Independence Day celebrations - fun fair, sideshows, etc. - were leafleted by demonstrators throughout the day. Every year July 4th is celebrated in the base - this year it was celebrated behind a newly erected 12ft high security fence topped by coils of brutal looking razor-wire.

The demonstration at Menwith Hill (perhaps better known for its telephone, fax and email tapping activities) was organised by the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases (CAAB) and Yorkshire Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It started when a few members of CAAB turned up at the base in time for the flag-raising ceremony at 7.30am. Other groups of people slowly arrived throughout the morning and the press, radio and TV were all present. A number of interviews with demonstrators were held - some live on local radio.

As more people gathered musicians appeared and outbreaks of singing were heard and demonstrators were confronted at the main gate of the base by a number of Ministry of Defence police. One of the policemen had been told to film everyone who turned up for the protest (which he did). The others tried to keep te protest confined to the "designated protest area" - a small car park outside the fence.

At 12.30 the following Declaration was read out by all of the protestors:

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE FROM AMERICAN MILITARISM

When, in the course of human events, a greater state imperils the safety and continuance of a lesser, under the appearance of being a protector, it becomes necessary for the greater to remove its military powers from the other's land to its own territory. The Laws of Nature and of Nations entitle the people who seek this removal to declare the causes which impel them to make this demand.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable Rights, that among these is the Liberty together to determine the means by which they, as a free nation, would seek to defend themselves. If another State, through its imposing military power, usurps this Liberty of choice, then the independent nation must resist and reject the usurpation; otherwise it would be acquiescing to Tyranny. The injuries and usurpations, all tending to subvert the freedom of the British people. To justify this claim, let facts be submitted to the candid world.

The Government of the United States has called together and sustained an alliance at place unusual, uncomfortable and distant from the British Parliament and insisted that this Alliance should prepare the barbarous act of being first to use weapons of mass destruction.

It has been used by this Alliance to impose upon the people of the United Kingdom an increasing levy of taxes to finance the preparation of barbarity.

It has placed within the boundaries of Britain weapons in such numbers and of such power vastly to exceed any reasonable need; there is no need.

It has combined with some within the Government of Britain to infiltrate and use for its own ends the British systems of communication.

It has conspired with some of the citizens of the United Kingdom seriously to distort the truth concerning threats supposed to be against the British State and people.

It has kept amongst us, in times of peace, military powers without the consent of British people.

It has with no agreement from the British people occupied many parts of our Common land as places from which to mount defence of its own territory.

It has combined with others to render its own military personnel immune from prosecution for crimes committed against our laws.

It has excited fears among our people in an endeavour to gain assent to a savage and merciless rule of warfare, which seeks an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

We do not wish the people of the United States to see in this Declaration any contempt for them. We are confident that the people of the United States acknowledge that what we seek is nothing less than that which their own forebears sought in declaring themselves a free and separate nation. To the people of the United States we offer nothing else but friendship and a recognition of our common dignity as human beings.

We, therefore, the representatives of a more gentle and peaceful persuasion, appealing to the Moral Law and Laws of Nations for the rectitude of our intentions, DO on behalf of the people of our country, solemnly PUBLISH and DECLARE, that this United Kingdom is, and of Right, ought to be free and independent in the choice of how we exercise our Right of Self-Defence.

We call upon the Government of the United States of America to cease from occupation of any part of British land and withdraw its military powers, as we call upon all Governments everywhere to cease their occupation and control of any foreign territories. And for support of this Declaration, we, the representatives of a more gentle and peaceful persuasion, mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honour.

--

And, with specific reference to this gathering today, we, the undermentioned, do solemnly demand the return of the land, once within the boundaries of the ancient townships of Birstwith, Felliscliffe, Norwood and Menwith, now occupied by the United States National Security Agency.

We do also solemnly demand that any connection with or preparation for the American Ballistic Missile Defense programme at NSA Menwith Hill ceases forthwith. We declare that the American Government is in breach of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty 1972 which has since kept the strategic balance of nuclear power. We will not be party to the 'aiding and abetting' of the said breach.

We use our intelligence to imagine the consequences of the space around our dear planet Earth and other celestial bodies being filled with weapons of desperate destruction. We speak from our hearts which beat in terror at the legacy we might leave the children of this world.

Once again, we call upon all American people connected with the workings at NSA Menwith Hill to imagine our roles reversed and to remember their own ancestors' Declaration of Independence from our ancestors.

There was then an attempt to hand this declaration in to the base. The declaration had been carefully and beautifully scripted onto a large scroll some 20 feet long with a view to presenting it to the American Commander of the Base. However, no American would come to the gate to accept it. The British police at the gate offered to accept the scroll but the protestors insisted on handing it to a US citizen. For a long time demonstrators waited, blocking the entrance and singing - hoping to be able to present the scroll and demand independence from US militarism. In the past petitions, letters of protest and even flowers had not been accepted at the gate because they might contain "concealed devices". We showed that our Declaration did not conceal anything - quite the opposite - it attempted to proclaim loudly our disgust and sense of injustice at the presence of a foreign force occupying British soil that could effectively do as it wished without being able to be challenged by British citizens.

Eventually someone did accept the scroll - but it was not the US commander of the base or anyone of any significant rank or station.

At around 2.30pm a number of intrepid trekkers set off to walk the 60 odd miles across the Yorkshire Moors to Fylingdales - where the US Ballistic Missile Early Warning Radar System is likely to be upgraded for NMD. The walkers will arrive on Saturday July 8th - to join a national demonstration against Star Wars at the Fylingdales base.

Bruce K. Gagnon Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 90083 Gainesville, FL. 32607 (352) 337-9274
http://www.globenet.free-online.co.uk
globalnet@mindspring.com

-------- china

China denies missile technology sale to Pak.

The Hindu
Wednesday, July 05, 2000
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2000/07/05/stories/03050006.htm

BEIJING, JULY 4. China today categorically denied that it was selling missile technology to Pakistan.

``I want to state clearly that there is no such thing as Chinese sales of missile technology to Pakistan,'' the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mr. Sun Yuxi, told a press conference in response to a report by The New York times. ``The report is totally groundless.''

The newspaper said on Sunday that in a series of classified briefings in Congress, intelligence agencies described how China stepped up the shipment of specialty steels, guidance systems and technical expertise to Pakistan.

Islamabad, which conducted nuclear tests in 1998 shortly after similar tests by India, said on Monday that it had no missile cooperation with China ``at the present moment''.

---

China denies helping Pakistan to develop nuclear technology

BridgeNews
July 5, 2000

Beijing--July 4--China on Tuesday vehemently denied reports indicating that it had been helping Pakistan to develop long range missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons. A foreign ministry spokesman said that such reports were completely untrue and had been written with " ulterior motives".

"I would like to point out explicitly that allegations that China exported missile technology to Pakistan, are entirely unfounded and were reported with ulterior motives," spokesman Sun Yuxi told a regular press briefing.

"I would like to stress that China strictly observes the joint communiques issued...on missile tests in South Asia and the UN Security Council resolution 1172, and does not assist relevant countries in the region to develop nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles that may serve as carrier vehicles," he said.

In a recent classified briefing at the U.S. Congress, lawmakers were presented with evidence that China has continued to ship guidance and other systems to Pakistan, and was also offering technical expertise, U.S.-based media reports said last week.

Chinese experts also had been sighted around Pakistan's newest missile factory, which appears to be based on a Chinese design, the New York Times quoted intelligence officials as saying.

The allegations are set to be discussed by a high-level U.S. delegation, led by senior State Department advisor John Holum, which will hold negotiations in Beijing on July 7-8.

The meeting will constitute a resumption of a Sino-U.S. non-proliferation dialogue which was broken off by Beijing last year following NATO's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.

Reports of the weaponry transfer are also complicating U.S. President Bill Clinton's efforts to ensure the smooth passage through Senate of a bill granting China permanent normal trade relations (PNTR). The U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill in May.

---

China denies missile charges

Florida Today
July 5, 2000
http://www.flatoday.com/space/explore/stories/2000b/070500c.htm

BEIJING (AP) - China on Tuesday denied assisting Pakistan's nuclear missile program, saying it adhered fully to international appeals to discourage the buildup of nuclear weapons in South Asia.

Allegations that China has provided Pakistan with weapons' grade steel, missile guidance systems and technical advice were ``totally unfounded and with ulterior motives,'' said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi.

The claims were published by The New York Times on Sunday in a story that quoted U.S. intelligence officials saying they have informed President Clinton and Congress that China is helping Pakistan build nuclear-capable missiles.

Alleged transfers of missiles and missile technology by China to Pakistan have repeatedly bedeviled Beijing's relations with Washington. The latest claims surfaced ahead of a visit to Beijing by John Holum, a top Clinton administration arms control negotiator.

Sun said Holum would hold ``extensive discussions'' with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Guangya in talks Friday and Saturday.

Worries about proliferation to Pakistan have sharpened since it and rival India each tested nuclear bombs in 1998. Those tests drew international condemnation and sanctions against both countries.

China abides by U.N. communiques condemning the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests and urging nations not to assist the two countries' nuclear weapon programs, Sun said.

``China does not assist relevant countries in the South Asian region in developing nuclear weapons or vehicles for delivering nuclear weapons,'' Sun said.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar on Monday also dismissed the Times report about Chinese missile assistance, although both India and Pakistan say they possess a minimum nuclear deterrence.

U.S. intelligence agencies over the past decade have reported suspected Chinese transfers to Pakistan of M-11 missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and related technologies. China and Pakistan denied the report then.

While Clinton imposed sanctions on China in 1993 for supplying missile components and technology to Pakistan, he is now under pressure from Congress to sanction China anew for transferring a whole missile system in the early 1990s.

China is a longtime ally of Pakistan's and has built a nuclear power plant in that country. Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf last week said his regime would order several fighter jets from China.

-------- france

France to review nuclear safety procedures after errors

FRANCE : July 5, 2000
Story by Gillian Handyside
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=7353

PARIS - French power generator Electricite de France (EdF) is to review safety procedures at its nuclear power stations after three were found to be ignoring them, the French Nuclear Safety Authority said yesterday.

The incident, classed as "serious", was recorded at the Dampierre, Tricastin and Bugey nuclear power stations between June 23 and 26, the authority said in a statement which criticised "lack of precision" at the plants.

"In the wake of the incident, EdF has begun verifying normal procedures on its 900 MW reactors. The Nuclear Safety Authority will monitor the work to ensure it is carried out properly," the statement said.

State-owned EdF owns 19 nuclear power stations, which have a total of 58 reactors and supply 80 percent of France's power.

The authority said operatives trying to shut down reactors at the plants - situated in the centre and south-east of the country - had closed hatches in their safeguard systems several hours too early, before pressure in the main circuits had been reduced to under five bars.

The error, which contravened EdF's national rules on safety procedures, had been repeated five times at Dampierre since February 1999, 10 times at Tricastin and six times at Bugey, it said.

The authority attacked the "lack of precision with which each site translated nationally agreed codes of conduct into local procedures for operators" and the time they took to examine whether their procedures were valid.

"Teams at Dampierre only queried after the sixth occasion whether it was acceptable to use a procedure which led them to carry out an act which contravened the technical specifications for the operation of the plant. And the teams at Tricastin and Bugey only detected the error after Dampierre reacted," the authority said.

It said however that the errors were unlikely to have had serious safety consequences because "operators at the plant could if necessary have reopened hatches that were shut" before a serious radioactive leak took place in the main circuit.

The faulty procedure was the first serious indicent recorded in France in 2000. There were three in 1999, including the exposure of a worker to radiation at Tricastin and the failure of the safety circuits during flooding at the Blayais plant on the Atlantic coast.

-------- india / pakistan

India, Russia sign agreement on nuclear co-operation
India and Russia have signed an agreement to expand their cooperation in nuclear sciences.

Rediff on the Net 5 July 2000


The three-year protocol signed in Moscow by the secretary, department of science and technology, Prof V S Ramamurthy, and Yevgeny Velikhov, director of Russia's nodal nuclear research centre, Kurchatov Institute, yesterday provides for extensive Indo-Russian cooperation in the nuclear field, Science and Technology and Human Resources Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi told reporters.

Under the agreement India and Russia would exchange visits of nuclear scientists and experts, he said.

Joshi, however, declined to divulge the details of the accord saying nuclear science does not mean only "bomb". It has medical applications as well.

Briefing reporters on his talks with Russian Science and Technology Minister Dr Alexander Dondukov, Joshi said that India and Russia had agreed to extend their integrated long-term programme on scientific and technological cooperation for another 10 years.

An agreement to his effect would be signed during Russian President Vladimir Putin's India visit in October, Joshi said.

Russian Education Minister Prof Fillipov said his country was willing to offer educational and training facilities to Indian students and scholars. Joshi arrived here on Sunday on a weeklong official visit. He inaugurated the joint Russian-Indian Centre for Advanced Computing Research yesterday.

RICCR, setup jointly by the Pune-based advanced computing Centre (C-DAC) and Russian Institute for Computer Aided Design, is equipped with the Indian supercomputer 'Param 10,000' and will provide a unique opportunity to experts and scientists of the two countries to develop new software applications for use in various spheres of human activity including space research and defence, experts told PTI.

Joshi addressed the students and professors of Moscow State University today. Rector of the MSU, Prof Sadovnichy said that Moscow University would train specialists for the Indo-Russian computing centre.

The minister is scheduled to hold talks with the Russian deputy premier Viktor Khristenko and release a book on Hinduism, written by a top Russian indologist, Dr Irina Glushkova, a scholar of the Oriental Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences
==
South Asians Against Nukes Post is distributed
by South Asia Citizens Web
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex since 1998.

----

India Expresses Concern at U.S. Missile Shield Testing

Xinhua
July 5, 2000
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=v0704169.1xi&level3=139501&date=20000705

NEW DELHI (July 4) XINHUA via NewsEdge Corporation - India on Tuesday expressed concern at the ballistic missile shield to be tested by the United States on July 7 and asked Washington to "give up this whole exercise."

Briefing reporters on his recent visit to Russia, Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes said Moscow and New Delhi could cooperate in a joint missile defense system if the situation arose.

"One will pursue that if the situation arises," Fernandes said when asked whether the two countries would join hands in the matter if the U.S. went ahead with the exercise.

A U.S. shield against ballistic missiles will face a crucial test on July 7, which is regarded as a major step in the U.S. attempt to deploy a National Missile Defense system.

"U.S. should give up this whole exercise as it will lead to far too many problems than one can visualize now," Fernandes told the reporters.

The defense minister also noted that during his five-day visit to Russia, he had meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other top leaders, which focused on the menace of international terrorism that had "emerged as destabilizes in several parts of Asia and the world."

India and Russia would formalize cooperation in combating international terrorism when President Putin comes to India on an official visit in October, he said.

-------- iran

A 'High Wall of Mistrust' Still Divides U.S. and Iran
Both Countries Are Wary Of Moves Toward Detente

Washington Post
Wednesday, July 5, 2000; Page A15
By Howard Schneider Washington Post Foreign Service
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/05/108l-070500-idx.html

TEHRAN, July 4-It's U.S. Independence Day, and there is not a hot dog or a beer to be found. There is a nice portrait of the Statue of Liberty with a skeletal death mask, however, and some modest words of encouragement from the citizens of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

"Americans . . . "

Pause for thought.

" . . . are less sneaky than the British," said one of the administrators of Iran's new, reform-oriented parliament.

"We . . . "

Pause for thought.

" . . . are glad you kicked out the British," said a salesman at a state-owned handicrafts store, going about as far as many Iranians will go in saying nice things about a country whose people are well liked but whose government is still seen as bent on world domination.

Three years into an era of detente promised by reformist President Mohammed Khatemi, there is little evidence that his hoped-for "dialogue of civilizations" has changed the basic dynamic of Iran's relations with the United States, severed after the takeover of the U.S. Embassy by Islamic militants in 1979.

A nation of more than 60 million, with one of the world's largest reserves of oil and one of the best educated work forces in the region, Iran's earlier radicalism has given way to a reform movement under which it is mending ties with its Arab neighbors, sending officials and trade delegations throughout Europe and preaching "Asian convergence" with the Far East. But the cycle of suspicion between the United States and Iran rewinds and replays as regularly as ever, forestalling renewal of a relationship that could be central to maintaining stability in the Middle East.

The goodwill of recent sports and academic exchanges is, to Iranians, marred by the fingerprinting of Iranian nationals when they arrive at the U.S. border. The advance of democracy here is, in the eyes of U.S. officials, tainted by such events as the recent trial of 13 Iranian Jews accused of spying for Israel.

The regret expressed by U.S. officials over American involvement in the 1953 coup that toppled a popular Iranian prime minister is lost on Iranians amid memories of U.S. support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s; the downing of a crowded Iranian airliner over the Persian Gulf by a U.S. warship in 1988; or the hundreds of millions of dollars in Iranian assets that remain frozen by the United States from the days of the embassy takeover.

In the American view, the apparent move toward moderation by parts of the Iranian government is offset by earlier alleged Iranian involvement in anti-U.S. terrorism in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, by the recent closures of newspapers and attacks by security forces on democracy activists, and by Tehran's purportedly continuing pursuit of nuclear weapons. The two countries remain divided as well on the Middle East peace process.

Khatemi, who started his term three years ago by dressing down demonstrators who hollered "death to America," now speaks of the "high wall of mistrust" that remains between Iran and the United States. During a recent trip to China, he said that "the cultural, economic and political system of the world cannot be left to the whims of the imposing wishes of the dominant powers."

"Iran is a nation that tries to have contacts with all the world," said Jamileh Khadivar, a member of the reform coalition whose dominance in the current Iranian parliament has held out the hope of improved ties with the United States. "But in the case of a government that has hegemonic tendencies, that won't work."

U.S. officials responded to Khatemi's recent remarks by saying that repairing ties with Iran will require, foremost, "patience."

Beyond the rhetoric, there are some signs that diplomats and other analysts here read as boding well for better U.S.-Iranian ties. Most notable are Iran's improved relations with U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf region and its conversation with Egypt about restoring diplomatic relations severed two decades ago when Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel and sheltered Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Iranian monarch deposed by the Islamic revolution.

Many Iranians say they would like relations with the United States to improve, although it is a sentiment inevitably couched in terms of equality and mutual respect. Memories here run deep, and even casual conversations may meander from pleasantries about relatives among Iran's large expatriate population in the United States to discussion of the shah's repressive regime. It's a past Iranians want to avoid repeating, even if they also would like to end the feud with the United States.

"We've always liked American values, as long as the American government doesn't take advantage of us," said Yousef Mashayakee, 24, who works for the Iranian Oil Company in the southern city of Shiraz. "No country wants to have enemies. . . . Normal people want normal relationships."

That the United States remains a target of suspicion runs counter to the viewpoint of several decades ago, when it was seen as a democratic counterweight to British influence, said Davood Bavand, a veteran Iranian diplomat and lecturer on international affairs. Back then, Iranians perceived the United States as interested in building schools and hospitals, not, as was the case later, as preoccupied with selling weapons and controlling oil supplies, he said.

"It is in Iran's interests to solve these problems" with the United States, Bavand said, noting the almost daily discussion in the Iranian press and political circles of the need to modernize the country's technology and court more foreign investment. Iranian youths, the dominant demographic group in the country, meanwhile, chafe under Islamic social strictures, and, despite the threat of fines or imprisonment, are avid consumers of Western pop music and videos.

Bavand and others said Iran's domestic politics will make it difficult for any rapprochement to begin without a move by the United States--such as the unfreezing of Iranian assets or the lifting of an economic embargo so that American technology and capital can begin to enter the country.

Anti-U.S. rhetoric and policies were a staple in the rise to power of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 and afterward and remain a core principle of his successor as the country's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Under Iran's system of theocratically monitored democracy, Khamenei's power is greater than that of the elected president, Khatemi, and he retains explicit authority over Iran's relationship with the United States.

"On the day when the U.S. should praise us, we should mourn," Khomeini is quoted as saying in a sign along the outside wall of the former U.S. embassy building, decorated still with a flowing mural depicting perceived U.S. misdeeds against Iran.

The country's conservative establishment won't easily abandon such a mainstay of their ideology, unless they can control the pace of any change and take credit for a step that many Iranians would likely welcome, said Hamidreza Jalaie-Pour, publisher of a recently banned reformist newspaper.

"Conservatives in this country would not like Iran-U.S. relations to be normalized by the hand of Khatemi," he said. "They would want to normalize [relations] themselves."

Some motivation may come from the new parliament. With the legislature behind him, said new member Ali Reza Nouri, Khatemi may be more inclined to initiate better relations with the United States than he was a few months ago, when a conservative-dominated parliament questioned his every move.

"The youth want to involve themselves with the world's progress," and were a key constituency in the success of Khatemi and the reform candidates for parliament, Nouri said. "You can feel how curious they are. . . . They want to get involved with the outside world."

-------- mexico

Ally of Mexico's Fox favors nuclear shutdown

By Adolfo Garza 17:39
07-05-00
Reuters
From: Ndunlks@aol.com

MONTERREY, Mexico, July 5 (Reuters) - A key ally of Mexican President-elect Vicente Fox said on Wednesday he supported the shutdown of the nation's only nuclear power plant -- which has been compared by experts to Ukraine's Chernobyl.

The Laguna Verde plant is ``one of the greatest absurdities'' of past governments, said Jorge Gonzalez Torres, president of the Green Party that formed an alliance with the conservative National Action Party (PAN) to nominate Fox.

Laguna Verde is on Mexico's Gulf coast -- some 450 miles (725 km) south of Texas -- and experts say that in the event of a disaster, the fallout would reach the southern shores of the United States within hours.

Outgoing President Ernesto Zedillo's administration has said it would allow a thorough inspection of the plant, expressing confidence it would pass independent tests.

In a telephone interview, Gonzalez Torres told Reuters, ``It is already a junk plant, just a few years after it was inaugurated, and it is destined to be closed as soon as possible if we don't want to run the growing risk of a big nuclear explosion, or nuclear damage in the area.''

Fox and his PAN-Green Party alliance will take power on Dec. 1 following their win in Sunday's national election.

Gonzalez Torres said he would also strongly oppose the construction of any other nuclear plants.

Last month, Greenpeace released a report by British consulting engineers Large and Associates that said Laguna Verde was ``on the verge of institutional failure,'' a complete collapse of the reactor's systems.

The study was based on a World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) inspection, which compared the plant to Ukraine's Chernobyl, the site of the world's worst nuclear accident in 1986.

Laguna Verde is just 175 miles (275 km) east of Mexico City, the world's second-largest urban area, with a population of 17.8 million.

WANO is an international organisation set up after Chernobyl to monitor nuclear safety in member nations.

It visited the plant at the request of the Mexican government in 1999. A spokesman for the government's Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) said on Wednesday no date has been set for a new inspection.

Laguna Verde, in the Gulf state of Veracruz, began operations in 1989 and generated 3.67 percent of Mexico's electric power during the third quarter of 1999, the latest period for which data was available.

-------- ukraine

Donors Pledge Fresh Millions to Make Chernobyl Safe

New York Times
July 5, 2000
By Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-environ.html

BERLIN (Reuters) - Countries backing a fund to build a new concrete shell to encase the disaster-hit Chernobyl nuclear reactor agreed Wednesday to pledge most of the $768 million needed.

Delegates from 37 governments, led by the G7 leading industrialized nations, and the European Union boosted promised contributions to $715 million from $393 million already promised, allowing work to start on the steel-latticed ``tomb'' due for completion in 2005.

``Our expectations have been surpassed,'' German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin said. His Greens party colleague, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, agreed.

``The small sum outstanding will be committed at a third pledging conference,'' Fischer said.

Officials said the existing total was sufficient to launch an international tender for construction of a new ''sarcophagus'' around ruined Chernobyl reactor number four, which exploded in 1986 in the world's worst nuclear disaster.

Germany, hard hit by fallout and with a strong anti-nuclear lobby, has been a driving force behind the fund. It praised Ukraine's decision to close the accident-prone Chernobyl plant, which has cost Kiev billions of dollars, by the end of 2000.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko thanked Germany and the international community for their support and promised to continue a safety drive with the country's other reactors.

But he said that Kiev intended to press ahead with controversial plans to complete two new nuclear plants to replace lost power supply from Chernobyl.

Trittin told Yushchenko that a 1995 international commitment to help fund alternative sources of energy would be fulfilled more quickly if Ukraine scrapped plans for the reactors.

The tomb project reflects only a fraction of the cost of closing Chernobyl. Experts say that decommissioning the plant, completing the two new reactors and constructing safe waste storage sites might cost up to $2 billion in total.

Environmental group Greenpeace puts that figure even higher.

The G7 and the European Union are due to decide in the autumn on funding under the 1995 deal, following a report from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

A 1997 donor conference pledged $393 million to the EBRD's Chernobyl Shelter Fund, $300 million from G7 nations and the EU.

Ukraine relies on nuclear power to supply nearly half of its electricity. Chernobyl's still-active reactor number three generates about eight percent of the country's electricity.

----

Donors To Rebuild Chernobyl Casing

Associated Press
July 5, 2000 Filed at 12:42 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Germany-Chernobyl.html

BERLIN (AP) -- Work to replace the leaky cement shell covering the ruined nuclear reactor at Chernobyl can begin now that Western nations have pledged to pay almost the entire estimated cost of $768 million, officials said Wednesday.

``We can get started quite soon and we can put all our efforts into it,'' German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin said at the end of a conference of more than 40 donor nations in Berlin.

Chernobyl, a Soviet-built nuclear power plant in Ukraine, was the site of the world's worst nuclear accident when an explosion and fire at one of its reactors in April 1986 spewed radiation over much of Europe.

Experts say the new cover -- which will replace one the Soviets hastily constructed over the ruined reactor -- is needed to prevent new releases of radiation. But Ukraine, still struggling to rebuild its economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, has pushed for outside help to pay for the work.

Wednesday's donor conference, following one in New York in 1997, raised additional pledges of $319 million from major industrial nations including the United States, bringing the total funding promised to $715 million of the $768 million needed.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said he expected the ``relatively low'' amount remaining -- about $53 million -- could be raised at a third donor conference in the future.

At a news conference with his German hosts, Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko said he was satisfied with the pledges. ``There were expectations and the expectations have been surpassed,'' he said.

Ukraine was less receptive to German efforts to persuade it to give up plans to replace the energy lost from shutting Chernobyl by building two new Russian-type reactors.

Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma promised in early June to shut down Chernobyl's last working reactor on Dec. 15, and wants additional international aid to help build the replacement plants.

At the news conference, Yushchenko said only that his country would continue with efforts to ``improve safety in using nuclear facilities.''

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-------- new mexico

Back Channels: The Intelligence Community
In His Defense, Lee Raises Race Issue

Washington Post
Wednesday, July 5, 2000; Page A19
By Vernon Loeb Washington Post Staff Writer
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/05/099l-070500-idx.html

Attorneys representing Wen Ho Lee have filed their long-awaited selective prosecution motion, arguing that the former Los Alamos physicist was singled out for investigation as a possible spy and ultimately charged in December with downloading nuclear warhead design codes because he is an ethnic Chinese American.

The motion, filed June 23 in Albuquerque, states that Lee is the only person ever charged under the "draconian" life imprisonment provisions of the Atomic Energy Act for mishandling information that wasn't classified and wasn't transferred to unauthorized individuals.

The motion includes a sworn declaration by Robert Vrooman, former chief of counterintelligence at Los Alamos, which reads: "I state without reservation that racial profiling was a crucial component in the FBI's identifying Dr. Lee as a suspect."

Lee's attorneys filed the motion to force the government to turn over documents from numerous other cases in which individuals were not criminally prosecuted for mishandling secrets. Among them: former CIA director John M. Deutch, who drafted secret memos on unsecure home computers.

Government officials, who deny targeting Lee on the basis of race, must respond by July 14.

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Fretting about the Atomic City's image

July 5, 2000
By Frank Munger
News-Sentinel staff writer
http://www.knoxnews.com/editorsview/munger/fm07052000.shtml

Leah Dever, the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge manager for the past year, made an interesting observation about her new hometown: "Let's face it, Oak Ridge is proud of its past."

Actually, I think that's an understatement.

There is a virtual obsession with Oak Ridge history, especially when you consider the place is little more than a half-century old (if you ignore the pre-existing farming community and begin with the World War II encampment for the Manhattan Project).

As Oak Ridge heads into the 21st century, however, there's an obvious conflict.

Some folks would like for Oak Ridge to be known for more than its nuclear past. In fact, the mere mention of "Atomic City" makes them duck and cringe and worry about the impact on local business. They'd prefer Oak Ridge emphasize its other scientific attributes and put an end to all of those glow-in-the-dark jokes that outsiders like to tell about -- and tell to -- Oak Ridgers.

Others, however, are a bit more nostalgic and think Oak Ridge should forever be defined by its nuclear roots.

I suppose I favor this latter group because I must admit I got a little weepy with the passing of the late, great Reactor Room (which went the way of Oak Ridge's Holiday Inn). Where else could one truly appreciate sipping a cold one while listening to the Pointer Sisters sing "Neutron Dance"?

Yes, indeed, many fine folks reached critical mass in that little lounge.

Other atomic landmarks have been stripped of their identity, too -- such as Atomic City Auto Parts (which, unfortunately, became just another Superfund cleanup site).

The nonnuclear trend may have started years ago when the American Museum of Atomic Energy got renamed as the more generic American Museum of Science & Energy and the Oak Ridge Institute for Nuclear Studies became Oak Ridge Associated Universities.

Other atomic places and things just disappeared without explanation or went out of business.

One recent evening while sitting at my desk, having just met another work deadline, I realized I didn't have enough to worry about, so I decided to worry about Oak Ridge losing its image.

Soon, however, I was reassured.

Driving along the Oak Ridge Turnpike, I looked up and saw the atomic symbol prominently displayed on the side of the city's high school. And there it was again, dotting the "i" in The Oak Ridger, the community newspaper.

There are still a few atomic businesses in town, also. Like Atomic City Tool and Atomic Pawn and Title and Atom Sciences.

While the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers Union decided a couple of years ago to become something called PACE, the biggest union organization in town retains the title of Atomic Trades and Labor Council.

Mostly, though, the town's atomic nomenclature survives through its social and cultural life.

For instance, there's the Atomic City Aquatic Club, the Atomic City Stamp Club and the Atomic City Racing Pigeon Club. Then there's Atomic Beagle Club, the Atomic Bass Club, the Atomic City Sportsmen's Club and the Atomic City Academy of Gymnastics. And the Order of the Eastern Star has an Atomic Chapter in Oak Ridge, and the Order of the Amaranth has Atomic City Court No. 6.

As it's popular to say, Oak Ridgers don't have a life -- they have a half-life.

*DUTCH TREAT: On the topic of atomic heritage, the visit of Dutch Van Kirk, the navigator of the Enola Gay (the aircraft that dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima, Japan) was an astounding success.

Van Kirk's weekend visit drew big crowds and helped raise about $3,000 for the foundation that supports the American Museum of Science & Energy.

He reportedly signed more than 4,000 autographs while in Oak Ridge.

"That 79-year-old man wore us out," said Gordon Fee, former manager of the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant and one of Van Kirk's hosts.

Van Kirk's appearance was the second largest draw in the museum's history -- second only to an exhibit of moon rocks brought back by the Apollo astronauts.

Fee has been a leader in the foundation, which supports the Oak Ridge museum and tries to ensure its future success by lending a private base of support.

"As it is now, the museum depends on the whims of Congress and good graces of the U.S. Department of Energy, so we have to take care of this," Fee said.

Funds raised by the foundation are used to upgrade museum exhibits and help pay expenses, especially for some things that the federal government is not allowed to do by law (advertising, refreshments for visiting teachers, etc.).

Many of the city's atomic scientists are no longer living, and Fee said the museum is an important means of preserving the history.

Frank Munger covers the Department of Energy for the News-Sentinel. He can be reached at 423-482-9213 or at twig1@knoxnews.infi.net. This column is also available on the Web at www.knoxnews.com/editorsview/munger/

----

Tennessee air doesn't comply with new clean-air regulations

July 5, 2000
The Associated Press
http://www.oakridger.com/

CHATTANOOGA -- All Tennessee regions where ozone levels are monitored are out of compliance with new clean air regulations, Gov. Don Sundquist said in a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency.

That includes all of Tennessee's major metropolitan areas. Areas not in compliance could lose federal transportation money.

The state had 99 percent compliance under the old standards.

"We're no worse than we have been -- in fact the air is cleaner -- but the standards have changed," Tennessee Environment and Conservation Commissioner Milton Hamilton told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Sundquist's letter met a June 30 deadline to advise the EPA on Tennessee's status in meeting the new clean air regulations. State officials have four months from July 1 to come up with a plan to bring Tennessee's air quality into compliance.

Hamilton said it will be difficult for Tennessee to meet the new regulations, based on data collected from ozone monitors.

Ozone is a colorless gas that forms when nitrogen oxides emitted by power plants, factories or gasoline-burning engines mix with hydrocarbons in the presence of sunlight. In addition to causing environmental damage, it poses a health hazard, particularly for children, the elderly and anyone with asthma or lung disease.

The new clean air regulations limit the allowed ozone level to 0.08 parts per million, from 0.12 parts per million. States also are required for the first time to regulate microscopic particulates, or soot, from power plants, cars and other sources down to 2.5 microns, or 28 times smaller than the width of a human hair.

The regulations have been challenged in court by the Tennessee Valley Authority and other utilities, and Hamilton said it is not clear how many of the new regulations will be upheld.

EPA is allowing states to decide whether to crack down on power plant emissions or use another strategy to meet the new regulations, such as attacking pollution from the exhausts of cars and trucks. The agency says it is cheapest to go after utility emissions.

Last week a federal appeals court lifted a stay on one regulation that forces additional controls on coal-fired power plants. The ruling gives 19 states, including Tennessee, four months to plan for reducing nitrogen oxide emissions by May 2003.

Still tied up in litigation is EPA's new ozone standard.

Errol Reksten of the Air Pollution Control Bureau in Chattanooga said the city has been in compliance for years, but the new regulations will make it virtually impossible to remain that way without geography changes or stringent new rules.

One solution might involve mandatory vehicle exhaust inspections and repairs, he said.

"At the risk of being run out of town, the truth is this is going to wind up as a mobile source problem -- cars and trucks," he said.

----

Oak Ridger Letter on Senator Thompson's Farce of a CONpensation Bill
Thompson blasted on sick worker bill

Your Views Letters to the Editor
The Oak Ridger,
July 5, 2000
From: easlavin@aol.com

The recent Senate floor amendment by Sen. Thompson does not meet the reasonable expectations of sick Oak Ridge workers and residents for meaningful compensation legislation. On June 10, by e-mail, I asked Sen. Thompson 50 questions about it: I have not received any substantive response.

Sadly, U.S. Sen. Fred Dalton Thompson, on advice from DOE, passed an inept compensation bill, Senate Amendment 3250 to S.2549 does not pass the laugh test. http://www.downwinders.org/victims.html

Sen. Thompson has staged a farce for his colleagues and the American people. The Thompson-DOE amendment does not meet minimum standards of due process -- set in black lung compensation -- as discussed by Oak Ridge lawyer Gene Joyce in his columns. Sen. Thompson has dashed reasonable expectations of probity of the sick workers and residents.

The Thompson-DOE amendment does not require:

1. Coverage of all sick workers and residents hurt by DOE toxicants.

2. Full funding of lifetime compensation and medical benefits by making the polluters pay.

3. Open public hearings with testimony under oath before independent DOL administrative law judges, as provided for black lung claims (instead, the Thompson amendment uses government doctors to decide claims).

4. Subpoena power and easy access to documents and answers from DOE and contractor managers (incredibly, Thompson amendment requires a separate federal court lawsuit to force discovery, after first waiting 180 days!).

5. Appeals to the DOL Benefits Review Board and judicial review by the Court of Appeals, as provided for black lung and longshore workers' compensation claims.

6. Strict action-forcing deadlines for government action, with claims being granted if the government waits too long.

7. Payment of full reasonable attorney fees, expert witness fees and other litigation expenses at market rates and a ban on attorney solicitation and percentage contingency fees, as in black lung (instead, attorneys would be free to charge contingency fees, reducing the $200,000 lump sum to as little as $100,000 after expenses).

8. An end to the Federal Tort Claims Act discretionary function exemption for ultrahazardous activities, preserving worker rights to sue.

9. Coverage for genetic injuries to spouses, families, children and grandchildren of workers and for injuries caused by dangerous chemicals and heavy metals like cyanide, mercury and hydrogen fluoride.

10. Independence of the Department of Energy in deciding compensation and independent lifetime medical care and research, free of influence by DOE and its contractors.

Rather than a fitting memorial to sick workers and residents whose suffering made the Cold War victory possible, Sen. Thompson's bill is a snare and a delusion, guaranteed to result in denials and delays.

Just what does Sen. Thompson think his weak DOE-drafted amendment is going to accomplish? Is his intention to pass a reform that is not worthy of the word? How many sick workers does Sen. Thompson really think will be compensated under this restrictive bill?

Why does Sen. Thompson think that U.S. government doctors lacking in independence could fairly decide cases? He must not remember the Reagan administration's efforts to pressure independent Social Security Administration administrative law judges to deny benefits, sending SSA judges those who found too many workers disabled to what Rep. Barney Frank called "remedial judging school."

In one of my favorite movies, "The Hunt for Red October," a U.S. Navy admiral (portrayed by none other than veteran character actor Fred Dalton Thompson) said (I must paraphrase): "The Russians don't (go to the bathroom) without a plan." What is Sen. Thompson's plan in fronting for and passing such a monstrous piece of DOE-drafted legislation and acting like it is progress?

Sen. Thompson's fatally flawed floor amendment shows no character and makes it appear that Sen. Thompson was indeed acting when he promised to help DOE's victims. If the devil is in the details, then the Thompson Amendment is an energumen: it will not silence the victims or meet their needs.

The U.S. House of Representatives and House-Senate conference committee must devise a just compensation system to cover all victims with full benefits, making polluters pay. We don't need another farce, written and run by the same DOE that created the ultrahazardous facilities and covered them up for nearly six decades.

Edward A. Slavin Jr. Box 3084 St. Augustine, FL 32085-3084

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Greenpeace to Launch Media Center to Protest "Star Wars"

US Newswire
5 Jul 12:55
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/0705-110.html

"Stop Star Wars" Media Center Goes Up At Missile Launch Site To: National Desk Contact: Carole Gregory of Greenpeace, 805-598-2516 or Media Coordination Center 805-598-2527; E-mail: mary.macnutt@wdc.greenpeace.org Web: http://www.stopstarwars.org

News Advisory:
Where: Main Gate, Vandenberg Air Force Base, near Lompoc, California
When: July 5, 2000, 12 noon PST

The international anti-nuclear organization Greenpeace will set up a media center across the street from Vandenberg Air Force base to highlight worldwide concern over the Star Wars missile defense system scheduled for testing at the base on July 7.

Greenpeace will be joined at Vandenberg's front gate by arms control and disarmament experts. Also on site will be a 50 foot inflatable missile and banners reading "Stop Star Wars."

From the center, Greenpeace will launch its Web site www.stopstarwars.org which will allow citizens from around the world to record their concern about the Pentagon proceeding with the Star Wars program.

Greenpeace opposes Star Wars because it will ignite a new nuclear arms race. Campaigners and arms controls experts will be available at the site as the final countdown for the missile launch approaches.

---

Critics Thwart Clinton Missile Defense Plan While the president may give the go-ahead, it is expected that his successor will make the key decisions.

Los Angeles Times
Wednesday, July 5, 2000
By PAUL RICHTER, Times Staff Writer
ttp://www.latimes.com/news/nation/updates/lat_missile000705.htm

WASHINGTON--With President Clinton now widely expected to defer the key decisions on a national missile defense system to his successor, U.S. officials and outside experts say the president's own plan no longer commands broad support and may be abandoned soon after he leaves office.

For more than seven years, Clinton's blueprint for building a limited, land-based missile shield has been the focus of intense planning and debate. It was the administration's carefully calibrated response to growing concern about a possible small-scale missile attack by a "rogue state" such as North Korea, and the momentum behind it seemed to be building.

But in recent months, Clinton's plan has come under blistering attack from both left and right. Advocates from both camps now say it is increasingly regarded as a political "orphan" that may be quickly cast aside after a new administration takes office next year.

The implications of the shift are substantial. At the least, it could delay deployment of a system beyond 2005, when U.S. officials believe North Korea may become capable of hitting the United States with a long-range missile. And it could open the door to development of a different kind of missile shield. Possibilities include an expanded land-based system, a sea-based "boost-phase" system, or a bigger, more complex "Star Wars"-like system with land, sea and space components.

Administration officials say they expect Clinton will offer his final word on the issue this fall, by proposing to take the first steps toward construction of his proposed system. But he will leave the pivotal deployment decisions to his successor, officials say, thus minimizing the immediate political and diplomatic fallout.

The handoff is expected to ease the pressure for rapid deployment of a missile shield, some analysts predict, as the new president studies his options on an issue with enormous political and diplomatic ramifications.

Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the presumptive GOP nominee, has said he wants a missile shield "as soon as possible." But he also wants to thoroughly research alternative technologies, including sea-based and space-based components that are not as fully developed as the components of Clinton's land-based plan. "I want to make sure we explore all options," Bush said last week in Cleveland.

Vice President Al Gore, the expected Democratic nominee, has declared that he, too, generally favors a missile defense program, but has stopped short of offering specifics on what kind of system he would advocate.

Gore presumably would be more eager to preserve the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia, which bans any kind of national missile system in an effort to avoid a greater arms race. The Clinton administration has been pressing the Russians--so far, without success--to rewrite the treaty to permit a limited missile defense system. Moscow is instead advocating development of a "boost-phase" system that would shoot down rogue state missiles shortly after they are launched but would not affect the U.S.-Russian nuclear balance.

Current Debate Like That on MX Missile

U.S. officials and outside analysts compare the current situation to the polarizing debate that occurred 21 years ago over plans for a new missile called the MX. President Carter, worried about an increasing Soviet missile threat and under pressure from the right, in 1979 ordered full-scale development of a scheme that would have involved moving U.S. missiles from place to place, making them harder to find and kill.

But two years later, President Reagan, although an advocate of a forceful response, scrapped that plan and ordered new studies.

"We have seen this kind of thing before," said one defense official.

Clinton's current plan calls for an initial system of 100 interceptor missiles based in silos in Alaska. Working with a network of radars and satellites, these missiles would be designed to knock down enemy warheads in mid-flight. The system would defend against as many as 20 missiles launched simultaneously by a nuclear foe.

Earlier this year, there was considerable momentum behind deployment of such a system because of increasing anxiety about the threat posed by countries such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq. Two years ago, North Korea alarmed the world by unexpectedly firing a three-stage missile that, while inaccurate, suggested Pyongyang was on the way to developing a missile that could reach the United States.

Yet as the administration's self-imposed deadline for making a deployment decision drew near, arms control advocates and other critics increasingly complained that the Clinton model would fail because it couldn't reliably distinguish a warhead from the various decoys that the enemy might release in space to fool the interceptor.

Meanwhile, conservatives have grown more disgruntled with the Clinton blueprint because of their view that it would fail to fully protect the country at a time when, according to the Pentagon, many medium-sized "regional powers" are developing ballistic missiles.

Both liberal and conservative analysts have been increasingly interested in the possibilities offered by "boost-phase" interceptor systems. These systems seek to avoid the problem of decoys by trying to hit the enemy missile in the first five minutes of its flight, when it is a large, hot target that is easy to pick out. John M. Deutch and John P. White, former deputy Defense secretaries under Clinton, and Harold Brown, Carter's Defense secretary, have stepped forward to advocate this approach.

These growing dissatisfactions have made the Clinton plan a political orphan--a term used by both Baker Spring, an analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation, and John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, an arms control advocacy group.

There are reasons why the next president may move carefully before committing to a system, some analysts point out.

A move to build a missile defense system would galvanize opposition from Democrats in Congress and "would unify our allies, Russia and China against us," said Ivo H. Daalder, a Brookings Institution scholar who was on the National Security Council staff earlier in the Clinton administration. To take on such adversaries "is a big deal in your first 100 days in office."

"The political incentive is to defer, under Gore, and even under Bush," he said. "So Clinton's decision to defer could in fact be a decision to defer this for quite some time."

One defense official said that even if the lame-duck Clinton offers a ringing endorsement of the missile defense technology, it would not necessarily create great pressure on the next president.

The momentum would be "really not all that much," said this defense official. Citing the example of the MX missile, he said: "There's really nothing [Clinton] could do that couldn't be undone."

The next key step in the administration's program will come Friday night, when the Pentagon is scheduled to launch a missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the third of 19 planned flight tests of its missile defense technology.

If all goes as planned, the missile will be detected by defense satellites, which will send tracking data to a "battle management" center, which in turn will launch an interceptor missile from Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific. Less than half an hour later, a 40-pound "kill vehicle" should break free from the nose of the interceptor, and maneuver to collide with a dummy warhead released by the target missile.

Test Aims to Gauge 'Kill Vehicle' Capacity

The $100-million test is designed to evaluate, among other issues, whether the components of the system can work together smoothly, and whether the "kill vehicle" can maneuver itself into the path of the dummy warhead.

Pentagon officials have played down the chances of a direct collision, or "kill." They say they may declare the flight test a success even without an intercept, provided other aspects of the system perform suitably.

A satisfactory result would clear the way for Clinton to keep the program alive, but defer the critical decisions to the next president.

Administration officials say the process will unfold in this fashion:

Sometime this fall, Clinton will declare that the missile defense proposal has shown promise, and that the nation should leave its options open by taking the first steps toward deployment.

Clinton will then authorize the Pentagon to seek bids for initial site preparation for a radar station at Shemya, a wind-swept Alaskan island at the western end of the Aleutian chain.

The contract must be awarded late this year for construction to begin in the spring; that, in turn, is necessary if the Pentagon is to finish a system by 2005.

But actual construction wouldn't begin until next year, enabling Clinton to contend that he has taken no action that would violate the ABM treaty's ban on building a missile defense system. That would prevent a diplomatic showdown with Russia, which adamantly opposes the administration's missile defense program.

Thus, Clinton will leave the big decisions to his successor, these officials say, while offering enough of an endorsement of missile defense that Republicans won't be able to use the issue to attack Gore in the fall election.

---

Missile silo blasts into Cold War past

CNN
July 5, 2000 Web posted at: 3:08 p.m. EDT (1908 GMT)
http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/07/05/silo.implosion.02/index.html

PILLSBURY, North Dakota (CNN) -- A blast echoed across a remote North Dakota wheat field Wednesday and another remnant of the Cold War disintegrated into history.

http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/07/05/silo.implosion.02/north.dakota.barnes.jpg

U.S. Air Force demolitions experts blew up "M-6," the 44th of 150 Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile silos across the eastern plains of North Dakota being dismantled to comply with the most recent phase of the 1993 U.S.-Russia Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II).

Another 300 silos already have been destroyed in Missouri and South Dakota.

The military on Wednesday cleared nearby roadways and warned onlookers of the impending blast, which took place in a field about 30 miles outside of Grand Forks. Munitions experts then pushed a small button on an orange box connected to 69 dynamite charges inside the silo, igniting a muted blast that took only seconds to destroy the structure.

Tech. Sgt. Steven Marback, a member of the demolitions team that once staffed the silo when it was operational, said he was ambivalent about Wednesday's work. "It's disheartening at times because they did maintain this facility for 16 years, but it's also a good thing," Marback said. "I don't think we've lost any of our protection."

Missiles still on alert

Five hundred Minuteman III ICBMs and 50 Peacekeeper missiles remain on 24-hour alert, according to Air Force officials.

"There's no particular sadness because we support arms control agreements," said Col. Charles Carpenter with the Air Force Command. "This is a great day for the Air Force, the people of North Dakota and the nation to move forward in an arms control agreement."

At the height of the Cold War, missile silos like M-6 occupied some 15,000 square miles of U.S. land, an area roughly the size of New Jersey, Massachusetts and Washington D.C. combined.

The demolitions team Wednesday rigged the M-6 silo with 800 pounds of explosives aimed at imploding one of the country's most durable structures -- a two-story hole where a launch pad 92 feet below ground held a missile, since removed, protected by a 110-ton door. Air Force officers once were stationed in the silo with the codes and keys to launch a nuclear attack against Russia.

The implosion filled the hole with rubble and steel cable. Eventually the site will be covered with top soil and reconverted to farmland, some 30 years after it was appropriated for the nation's defense. Enough of the debris, however, must remain evident over the next 90 days to allow Russian satellites to detect the destruction.

'ICBM plays a central role'

Watching the blast was Col. Kimber McKenzie, who commands some of the remaining missiles deployed at Minot, North Dakota. "This may seem a thing of the past that we just saw here today, but in this new century the leadership of this nation has recommitted us to the deterrence mission and ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile system) plays a central role in that mission," McKenzie said.

Under START II, the United States and Russia agreed to reduce their nuclear forces by 30 to 40 percent. The United States, for the most, is required to implode some silos and their support facilities.

For Russia, the treaty requirements include imploding silos and moving nuclear warheads from neighboring republics back to Russia.

CNN Chicago Bureau Chief Jeff Flock and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

---

U.S. Study Reopens Division Over Nuclear Missile Threat

New York Times
July 5, 2000
By ELAINE SCIOLINO and STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/070500missile-defense.html

WASHINGTON, July 4 -- Intelligence officials, military officers and policy experts in the Clinton administration are deeply divided over the seriousness of missile threats posed by countries like North Korea, Iran and Iraq, even as the administration says the United States needs to build a national missile defense system.

Officials at the State Department dissented from an intelligence report last fall that stated that North Korea could soon develop a ballistic missile that could threaten the United States. They are also quite likely to dissent again as intelligence agencies prepare a new assessment for the president, administration officials said.

Some officials in the White House, State Department, Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency argue that the threat has been almost exclusively defined by technological abilities and that the emerging analysis discounts political, economic and social factors that could make a threat less likely.

The officials said the intense focus on missiles that could hit American soil also obscured the more immediate threat posed by nuclear weapons carried by terrorists or fired from ships. The officials said the change in focus devalued the concept of deterrence, by which the sheer force of the American arsenal would inhibit even the most irresponsible leader from attacking American soil.

Dissension exists even on the technological side. A senior Pentagon official acknowledged that Iran's ballistic missile program had problems and was "certainly not clicking along really fast."

The Pentagon schedule to build a missile defense is entirely driven by the belief that North Korea will have a long-range missile by 2005.

Indeed,

the coming intelligence report will reportedly find that North Korea could develop a missile that could strike the United States by 2005, the same finding that was in the report last year.

In the case of Iran, the study last year reported that some experts believed that the threat was "likely before 2010." Others have said there is "less than an even chance by 2015," a split that persists.

As for Iraq, officials agree that Iraq will pose no concrete threat to the United States as long as international sanctions remain in place.

The assessments are crucial, because they are driving the decision by President Clinton to decide in the fall on proceeding with a $60 billion program to build a limited missile defense in five years. Mr. Clinton has repeatedly said -- as recently as this week -- he will make his decision on four factors, the cost, the technological feasibility, the effects on other countries and the urgency of the threat.

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen has declared the existence of a threat in five years.

"I believe by the year 2005 a threat will be present that could threaten the security of the United States," Mr. Cohen said in an interview on CNN on Saturday.

That finding is being fiercely contested by some officials, including experts on Korea, who point to North Korea's suspension of its missile tests in the fall and the progress between the leaders of North and South Korea since their successful meeting last month.

The intelligence report being completed for Mr. Clinton is known as a National Intelligence Estimate and is supposed to reflect the consensus of all the intelligence agencies, including, among others, the C.I.A., the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research. But as experts from those agencies have contributed their views and information to drafts in recent weeks, there is little consensus.

In fact, as a missile defense has emerged as an important difference between Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush in the presidential campaign, many intelligence officials have complained that what is supposed to be a coldly analytical process has evolved into a roiling political debate.

In the report last year, the rules of classic intelligence analysis were altered, the officials said, to measure not whether countries were likely to threaten the United States, but whether they "could" do so. The officials said that change skewed the results toward the most alarming assessment.

"There's a lot of pressure from the Hill driving this process," said a longtime intelligence official involved in preparing the new report. "You end up with realms of possibility, including what is least likely to what is unthinkable. We are writing in worst-case language. Frankly, from my perspective, this is nonsense."

Senior administration officials defended the process. "We don't live here to make anybody happy," a senior intelligence official said. Still, that official acknowledged that people on all sides of the debate were "looking for something in what we say to support their own arguments."

The intensely partisan politics swirling around the urgency of the threat were on display on Thursday at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. At one point, John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, pressed Larry D. Welch, a retired Army general who heads an independent team that is reviewing the Pentagon's plans, to enunciate the extent of the nation's vulnerability to missiles.

"Look straight into the cameras and say, 'We are as a nation defenseless,' " Mr. Warner demanded after trying several ways to have the witness say that affirmatively.

General Welch replied: "We as a nation have no missile defense to deal with these threats. That's correct."

But at another point, John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, said, "There's nothing that I'm aware of that suggests that the threat of an attack on the United States is 'increasingly likely' in the next few years."

Mr. Kerry said the threat depended on not only the ability to build weapons, but also on "analysis of the nature of the relationships with a country, the rationale for an attack, the possibilities of an attack, the levels of deterrence."

The central question asked by many critics of the national missile defense is why its advocates appear to have discounted deterrence as a counter to the missile threat, even though deterrence governed American strategic thinking throughout the cold war.

Many senior officials have said deterrence no longer held when it came to countries like North Korea, Iran and Iraq. The officials regard the leaders of those countries as capable of irrational self-destructive behavior.

"We didn't like the Soviets, but we roughly understood them to be extremely cautious," said Leon S. Fuerth, Mr. Gore's national security adviser. "We never have had the depth of understanding about what makes the North Koreans tick to give us that confidence."

As for Iran, a senior Pentagon official pointed out that Iranians seized American hostages 20 years ago; still chanted, "Death to America"; and were involved in state-sponsored terrorism.

Intelligence officials say Iran is considering developing a rocket that can put satellites in orbit, a move that would represent a significant step toward possessing an intercontinental ballistic missile. Tehran has begun discussing the project with France, India and Russia.

The officials also cite Iran's efforts to develop a longer-range missile, the Shahab-4. But Iran is still faces difficulties in its program to build the Shahab-3, a missile with a range of 780 miles. Those problems have prompted experts to question the Iranian missile threat to the United States. "There is an Iranian threat to U.S. forces in the region, not to the continental United States," said an official.

Some officials complain that all the attention focused on the potential missile threat diverts attention from more likely threats like chemical or biological weapons prepared in the United States and hidden in a truck or even a cruise missile carried aboard a ship.

Even Mr. Cohen acknowledges those facts. "I think the act of terrorism taking place on the United States is more likely than intercontinental ballistic missile," he said in his interview on Saturday.

But at another point he added, "To say that we can't protect against everything doesn't mean that we shouldn't protect against those that can cause us catastrophic harm."

Administration officials vehemently deny that the missile program is aimed at curbing the military ability of Russia or China. The analysis last year and the report being prepared find that the United States defines those two countries as a threat only in the case of an accidental unauthorized launching.

But especially on Capitol Hill there are those who argue that the ultimate threat is China's ability to strike the United States. Five years ago, an unpublished report prepared for the House National Security Committee by the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization cited the possibility of China's "using its ballistic missiles to prevent U.S. action in Korea" as a pivotal threat that justifies a defensive shield.

"It's easy to talk about North Korea, Iran and Iraq, but people don't like to talk about Russia or China," said Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona. "But people privately also are a little worried that there could be another threat from China. I'm candidly telling you that behind closed doors you hear some people expressing some concerns about ultimate threats like China."

----

For the love of ABM

Washington Times
EDITORIAL • July 5, 2000
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-house-200075172027.htm

Time may be running out for the Clinton-Gore administration to make a meaningful contribution in the nuclear arms arena. President Clinton dreads the idea that his lasting contribution would be the abrogation of the anachronistic Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Both Mr. Clinton and Vice President Gore continue to argue that the ABM treaty represents the "cornerstone of strategic stability."

At the summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin last month, however, the Russian leader refused to acquiesce to changes to the ABM treaty that would permit Mr. Clinton to approve a very limited land-based national missile defense system based in Alaska. This represents a problem for the White House. In order for the Alaska-based system to become operational by 2005 construction on its ABM treaty-busting radar would have to begin by next spring. That means that Mr. Clinton would have to make the decision to proceed during the fall of 2000.

The administration is so wedded to the ABM treaty that it apparently never occurred to it that Russia should not have veto power over a U.S. decision to defend itself against ICBMs launched by rogue states like North Korea, Iraq and Iran. In fact, in an apparent rhetorical effort to downplay the risk posed by these nations, the administration has inexplicably withdrawn the whole notion of "rogue states." In announcing that terrorism-exporting "rogue states" would now be known as "states of concern," Secretary of State Madeleine Albright unilaterally downgraded her earlier declaration that "dealing with rogue states is one of the great challenges of our time." That hasn't been the administration's only semantic response to strategic nuclear policy. When Mr. Putin refused to give his "permission" to amend the ABM treaty, a bevy of administration national-security lawyers simply reversed long-standing policy and concluded that any decision about the Alaskan radar's construction that Mr. Clinton would make during his term would not abrogate the ABM treaty.

In other words, Mr. Clinton does not have the guts to make the decision to abrogate the ABM treaty even if it is in pursuit of a relatively inferior missile-defense strategy. According to a law Mr. Clinton reluctantly signed last year, he is committed to approving the deployment of a national missile defense system as soon as it is technologically feasible - with or without Mr. Putin's permission. An independent review of the land-based national missile defense program recently concluded that the United States has the "technical capability to develop and field the limited system" against a threat posed by the likes of North Korea.

Were Messrs. Clinton and Gore truly in favor of a reliable missile-defense strategy, they would supplement the limited land-based system (which would seek to destroy nuclear warheads after they have been released in space) with a more promising sea-based system (which could more easily destroy long-range or medium-range missiles in their "boost" phase before they release their warheads). A sea-based system would also protect American allies. But that would require even more changes in the ABM treaty, or, preferably, its complete abrogation. That is a development the Clinton-Gore administration seems determined to preclude even at the expense of the defense of the American population. And that appears to be the legacy Mr. Clinton will bequeath.

<a name="military"></a>
-------- ukraine

Donors Pledge Fresh Millions to Make Chernobyl Safe

By Reuters
July 5, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-environ.html

BERLIN (Reuters) - Countries backing a fund to build a new concrete shell to encase the disaster-hit Chernobyl nuclear reactor agreed Wednesday to pledge most of the $768 million needed.

Delegates from 37 governments, led by the G7 leading industrialized nations, and the European Union boosted promised contributions to $715 million from $393 million already promised, allowing work to start on the steel-latticed ``tomb'' due for completion in 2005.

``Our expectations have been surpassed,'' German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin said. His Greens party colleague, Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, agreed.

``The small sum outstanding will be committed at a third pledging conference,'' Fischer said.

Officials said the existing total was sufficient to launch an international tender for construction of a new ''sarcophagus'' around ruined Chernobyl reactor number four, which exploded in 1986 in the world's worst nuclear disaster.

Germany, hard hit by fallout and with a strong anti-nuclear lobby, has been a driving force behind the fund. It praised Ukraine's decision to close the accident-prone Chernobyl plant, which has cost Kiev billions of dollars, by the end of 2000.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko thanked Germany and the international community for their support and promised to continue a safety drive with the country's other reactors.

But he said that Kiev intended to press ahead with controversial plans to complete two new nuclear plants to replace lost power supply from Chernobyl.

Trittin told Yushchenko that a 1995 international commitment to help fund alternative sources of energy would be fulfilled more quickly if Ukraine scrapped plans for the reactors.

The tomb project reflects only a fraction of the cost of closing Chernobyl. Experts say that decommissioning the plant, completing the two new reactors and constructing safe waste storage sites might cost up to $2 billion in total.

Environmental group Greenpeace puts that figure even higher.

The G7 and the European Union are due to decide in the autumn on funding under the 1995 deal, following a report from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

A 1997 donor conference pledged $393 million to the EBRD's Chernobyl Shelter Fund, $300 million from G7 nations and the EU.

Ukraine relies on nuclear power to supply nearly half of its electricity. Chernobyl's still-active reactor number three generates about eight percent of the country's electricity.

-------- MILITARY (by country)

-------- africa

Unruly Militia Defends Sierra Leone

Associated Press
July 5, 2000 Filed at 4:41 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Unruly-Defenders.html

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) -- Naked except for thong underwear, a teen-ager hefts a rocket launcher to his shoulder and curses loudly as he runs into the street. His fellow fighters, many wearing charms around their necks, swirl into a mob bristling with rifles.

Unruly and untrained, these traditional hunters are the ragged line of defense for Sierra Leone's weak elected government against brutal rebels who systematically slaughtered tens of thousands and maimed many more during nine years of civil war.

The recent scene at the headquarters of the Kamajor hunter militia is a recipe of how the pro-government faction prepares to battle the rebel Revolutionary United Front: First, liberally apply mysticism, then whip into a frenzy.

The fighters' gray-haired commander, Pa Harding, was shirtless; his pot belly was smeared with a greasy paste to give him the supposed magical ability to repel bullets.

The militia also known as the Civil Defense Force is made up of primarily hunters and uneducated teen-age boys. Most use juju (voodoo) fetishes to protect themselves from their enemies and some openly practice cannibalism, eating the heads and hearts of enemies killed in action. Often they execute suspected rebels first and ask questions later.

But in a country devastated by the rebels who have discarded three peace deals in four years, including last July's accord giving them amnesty for war crimes, many Sierra Leoneans revere -- or at least respect -- the Kamajors.

Part of that popularity stems from the fact that the other factions arrayed against the rebels are just as controversial and their loyalty less certain.

Many army members have previously fought alongside the rebels, and some committed the same atrocities -- cutting off hands, legs and lips of innocent civilians -- that have become the rebels' battle signature. The Kamajors have not veered in their allegiance to the government since the militia was formed in 1995.

The United Nations' troubled peacekeeping force, the world's largest at more than 12,000 troops, has also failed to inspire public confidence.

The U.N. has vowed to give more muscle to its force here and U.N. peacekeepers said Tuesday they had captured a strategic town from rebels. A rebel attack the night before forced government troops to pull out of Masiaka, which lies on a key junction 45 miles from the capital.

Kamajor strongholds, like the southern towns of Bo and Pujehun, are virtually the only areas of Sierra Leone unscathed by the civil war. In the rebel-held north, the group has had less success.

In Bo, Kamajors rule the streets, patrolling in elaborate headdresses and leather fetish tunics. All other pro-government factions are unwelcome.

At their Freetown base, the abandoned Brookfields Hotel, what was once a lively nightspot now has a swimming pool filled with garbage and rooms blackened by smoke from cooking fires. Young fighters while away spare time playing soccer inside the empty restaurant.

The Kamajors, a name which means ``hunter'' in Mende, are nothing if not fierce.

Victor Palmer, a Kamajor fighter in the capital who says he is 19 but looks younger, hefts a British-made SLR rifle and promises to ``kill a rebel'' in honor of a foreign visitor.

His friends slap his back and joke that Palmer's chosen nickname ``Unamsil'' -- the acronym of the U.N. peacekeeping force -- suggests he may instead give up his gun to the rebels. Palmer responds by growling threats and pointing his gun threateningly at his colleagues.

Despite their undisciplined nature and frequent marijuana use, the Kamajors have found an unlikely ally in the former colonial ruler, Britain, which sent 1,000 troops to bolster Freetown's defense in May. Those soldiers are now gone, but British military advisers continue to supply pro-government forces such as the Kamajors with arms and ammunition and are training at least 1,000 army recruits.

Brig. David Richards, the departed British commander, said he expected the Kamajors to play a major role in the defense of the West African nation despite their unwillingness to give up their free-spirited independence and join the new British-trained army.

``There is an important place for a strong militia,'' Richards said, adding they are able to muster up to 100,000 volunteer fighters on short notice.

Despite the rivalry that exists between the Kamajors and other pro-government factions, many Sierra Leoneans agree.

``Our army is in shambles and if we depend on the U.N., then we might as well give up now to the rebels,'' said Ismael Conteh, a 32-year-old unemployed businessman, who said he was planning to join the Kamajors. ``The militia understand the rebels because they are brothers. They are the only ones who can fight them and solve Sierra Leone's problem.''

---

UN Council Plans to Ban Sierra Leone Diamonds

Reuters
July 5, 2000 Filed at 12:47 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-leone-u.html

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - After several days delay, the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday hopes to impose a global embargo on diamond exports from Sierra Leone, where a thriving gems-for-guns trade is fueling a simmering civil war.

The resolution would ban all rough diamonds from Sierra Leone until the government of the West African nation could set up a proper certification system for the gems -- as well as regain access to lucrative diamond-mining areas under the control of the rebel Revolutionary United Front.

Among the points of dispute still to be settled is whether the embargo should run for 18 months as France wants, or 36 months as the United States prefers.

In either case the diamond ban resolution, which includes a tightened arms embargo on the rebels, would expire unless the council took another vote. France has insisted that all future sanctions resolutions have a sunset clause because of the never-ending embargoes against Iraq, now in their 10th year.

Britain, the sponsor of the resolution, wants Sierra Leone to be a building block in the banning of ``conflict diamonds'' from countries whose mineral wealth were fueling wars.

Diamonds, gold, iron ore and bauxite accounted for about two thirds of Sierra Leone's exports before war in 1990s wrecked the economy of the former British colony. Rebels control some 90 percent of the diamond mines, which yield among the best stones in the world.

The resolution should have been adopted on Friday but members were unable to agree on the length of the embargo.

``The principle of diamond regime has been agreed and will stick. The section on the arms embargo remains as it is and will stick. There are discussions over the time limit,'' British Ambassador Sir Jeremy Greenstock told reporters. ``The United Kingdom will take the resolution to a vote on Wednesday.''

LIBERIA SINGLED OUT AS DIAMOND CONDUIT

Much of the diamond trade goes through Liberia, whose President Charles Taylor was a close ally of RUF chief Foday Sankoh and for years supported the rebels.

The resolution singles out Liberia by referring to reports that the diamonds ``transit through neighboring countries, including Liberia.'' This phrase may be eliminated, after objections from some African nations

Sierra Leone's envoy, Sylvester Rowe, said his country was ''not asking for punitive measures against Liberia because both of our countries would suffer. But we do want to shame them.''

Oluyeme Adeniji, the U.N. special representative for Sierra Leone, who visited New York last week, said he was against naming Liberia as a conduit for the diamonds because Taylor was trying to free 233 peacekeepers, mainly Indian troops, who have been surrounded by the RUF since early May.

Taylor has been instrumental in gaining the release of 500 U.N. peacekeepers taken hostage by the rebels in May when they ventured too close to the diamond mines.

The resolution calls for hearings within the year on ``the role of diamonds in the Sierra Leone conflict.'' And it asks Secretary-General Kofi Annan to name a panel of experts for an initial period of four months to report to a council sanctions committee on any violations.

While diamond smuggling is difficult to stop, a public probe or a ``name and shame'' report is expected to deter some violations.

Liberian diamond mining output is estimated between 100,000 and 150,000 carats a year. But the Belgian Diamond High Council records imports into Belgium of over 31 million carats from 1994 to 1998, an average of more than 6 million carats a year, the London-based Global Witness environmental group reported.

The resolution also calls on all countries to report to the council about what they have done to enact legislation making it a criminal offense to deal in weapons for the RUF rebels.

Sierra Leone reached a peace agreement with RUF last summer that ended a brutal 8-year-old civil war, during which the rebels maimed, killed and raped men, women and children. But the RUF refused to disarm and fired at anyone who ventured near their strongholds in the north and east of the country.

The council is also considering two other resolutions on Sierra Leone, on devising a formula to prosecute Sankoh and to increase peacekeepers by 3,000 troops to 16,500.

----

Ivory Coast Soldiers Disarmed

Associated Press
July 5, 2000 Filed at 11:11 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Ivory-Coast-Army-Protest.html

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) -- Presidential guardsmen and paramilitary police were disarming mutinying soldiers Wednesday, the second day of an army protest that paralyzed Ivory Coast's commercial capital and degenerated into a looting spree.

Military leader Gen. Robert Guei's spokesman, Desire Paulin Dakoury, said some mutineers were willingly disarming while others were fleeing. Residents in the Abidjan neighborhood of Marcory saw protesting soldiers handing over their guns to contingents of constabulary police.

It was unclear whether some mutineers planned an organized armed resistance. On one occasion, shots were exchanged between groups of soldiers and an officer was seriously injured, Dakoury said.

Speaking to Radio France-Internationale, Information Minister Henri Cesar Sama said one person was also killed by a stray bullet during gunfire in a town in central Ivory Coast on Tuesday.

In parts of Abidjan, meanwhile, the protest erupted in a spree of looting. Gas stations and stores, including a car dealership, were robbed by soldiers who left with carloads of booty.

For the second straight day, nearly all shops were closed and the streets were largely abandoned except for civilians wandering around on foot while soldiers sped by in commandeered vehicles, firing guns randomly in the air.

Looting was also reported Wednesday in the central town of Bouake and the northern town of Korhogo where several banks were robbed overnight.

Soldiers broke into a prison in Abidjan and freed several former government officials jailed on corruption charges, journalists from the daily Soir Info newspaper reported, explaining two prisoners were killed in the action. The report could not be independently confirmed.

The mutiny by young army officers demanding perks began before dawn on Tuesday when soldiers poured into the streets, firing guns in the air and erecting makeshift roadblocks. Later, they began seizing cars.

Despite moves Wednesday to disarm the protesting soldiers, authorities had not arrested any of them, said Dakoury, the military leader's spokesman.

The disarmed protesters, whom Dakoury called ``our young brothers,'' were instead ordered to return to their barracks while the mutineers' representatives continued talks with senior officials.

The protesters have asked for $9,000 each to buy houses. Military leader Gen. Robert Guei said Tuesday the government was building 2,500 houses, but stopped short of promising to fulfill the protesters' demands.

Earlier Wednesday, state radio urged civilians to return to work, saying their security was guaranteed. But few people heeded the plea and Western embassies advised their citizens to stay indoors for a second day.

All flights were suspended to and from Abidjan's international airport, airport officials said. The borders were also closed.

Guei was expected to meet with heads of the country's political parties Wednesday in a bid to prevent the crisis from escalating, state radio reported. In another radio broadcast Wednesday, a senior military official, Gen. Lassana Palenfo, blamed unnamed political parties for engineering the unrest. He did not elaborate.

The protest closely resembled a brief mutiny that led to the nation's first coup d'etat last Christmas Eve. Many civilians feared another takeover in what had long been one of Africa's most stable and prosperous nations.

Although the December coup was initially popular with Ivorians who had grown tired of corruption and ethnic favoritism under ousted President Henri Konan Bedie, many have since become disillusioned with the new regime.

Guei has promised elections for Sept. 17. He has not said whether he will run.

----

Misery Index of U.N. Panel Finds Africa Is Worst Off

New York Times
July 5, 2000
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/070500un-africa.html

Africans south of the Sahara, an area convulsed in wars and weakened by natural disasters, also suffer the broadest range of social and economic disadvantages, a United Nations survey says.

The survey, the Human Development Report, examines the availability of schools, clean water and medical care, and whether people can play a role in politics. It began 10 years ago as an experiment to measure a nation's growth not by economic figures but by statistical profiles of its people and what they can expect from life.

This year, 30 of the 35 countries at the bottom of the index were in sub-Saharan Africa.

In that region, where the spread of AIDS and other diseases has begun to shorten life spans after decades of slow improvement, people can no longer expect to live beyond their 40's or 50's. Fewer than half go to school and fewer than half -- sometimes 25 percent or less -- can read, the survey shows. It also shows that a large proportion of people -- as high as 66 percent in the case of Sierra Leone -- lack access to clean water, and that even larger majorities lack basic sanitation.

Apart from Sierra Leone, which is ranked last, the other most disadvantaged nations, from the bottom up, are Niger, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Burundi, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Chad, the Central African Republic and Mali.

At the other extreme, the countries with the highest human development indicators are, from the top, Canada, Norway, the United States, Australia, Iceland, Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan and Britain. In the Western Hemisphere, only Haiti ranks in the bottom 35.

Every year the report, produced by the United Nations Development Program, focuses on new themes that experts say should be factored into studying why some countries remain poor and others grow in economic and human terms. This year the report tried to connect human rights and political freedom with economic and social conditions, saying the two can no longer be separated. It challenges the view that people are not "ready" for democracy until there has been economic growth.

"Human rights are not, as has sometimes been argued, a reward of development," said Mark Malloch Brown, the development program's administrator, in an introduction to the report. "Rather, they are critical to achieving it. Only with political freedoms -- the right for all men and women to participate equally in society -- can people genuinely take advantage of economic freedoms."

In another departure, this year's report, which was issued last week, calls for the increased collection and more effective use of statistics to aid in promoting human rights by quantifying more effectively the conditions under which many people live.

"Statistical indicators are a powerful tool in the struggle for human rights," the report says. Among other benefits even the simple collection of information can provide, it adds, is help in monitoring the actions of government and in curbing corruption.

-------- argentina

Argentines Seek Damages For Sinking

Associated Press
July 5, 2000 Filed at 1:34 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-European-Rights-Court-Falklands.html

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- Argentine relatives of sailors killed in Britain's sinking of a warship in the Falklands Islands war presented a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights for damages from the British government.

The relatives' lawyers contended the cruiser General Belgrano was torpedoed beyond the 200-mile military ``exclusion zone'' imposed by Britain around the Falklands Islands during the 10-week war in 1982. Of the General Belgrano's 1,093 crew members, 323 died.

The lawyers, Jorge Appiani and Jorge Antonio Olivera, also contend the only aim ``was to frustrate peace negotiations'' for the islands, called Las Malvinas by Argentines.

A three-judge panel is expected to take several months before deciding whether the complaints are admissible at the European court based in Strasbourg, France.

A military government in Argentina ordered an invasion of the islands in 1982 to back its claim that it inherited the Falklands from the Spanish crown before they were occupied by Britain in 1833. The archipelago is populated by about 2,200 people of mostly British ancestry.

The war claimed at least 970 lives before British forces regained control of the islands.

Argentina never sought damages after the war and only restored diplomatic relations in 1990. Argentina still maintains its claims to the islands.

---

Taiwan: China Is Boosting Military

NewsEdge
July 5, 2000
By MARCOS CALO MEDINA Associated Press Writer
http://www.individual.com/frames/story.shtml?story=h0704100.902&level3=139498&date=20000705

LUNGTAN, Taiwan (AP) via NewsEdge Corporation - Taiwan's president accused China on Tuesday of ``vigorously'' building up its military in recent years, a sign he said showed that it has become more serious than ever about attacking Taiwan.

President Chen Shui-bian made his comments during his first visit as president to the army's headquarters in this suburb of the capital, Taipei.

One theme of his trip was that Taiwan still faces a Chinese threat. He said the army was crucial to the defense of the island, which split from China amid civil war in 1949.

``In recent years, communist China has been vigorously developing its forces and weaponry and strengthening its military power,'' Chen said in a speech to officers. ``This makes its intention to invade Taiwan more obvious than ever before.''

China has been aggressive in building up its arsenal of missiles and buying Russian-made destroyers and fighter jets to counter Taiwan's U.S.-made planes and ships. Military analysts have predicted that China could have air superiority over Taiwan by 2005.

Last month, Chen commented that the decisive battles with Chinese forces would be fought in the air and water and that Taiwan's air force and navy would become more crucial to the defense of Taiwan.

But on Tuesday, Chen stressed the need for all of Taiwan's forces to be ready to engage Chinese forces. He also said he wanted to modernize the army with tanks and other new equipment.

Taiwan's defense budget is $12.6 billion, or 18 percent of the total national budget.

The army has long been the most influential branch of the Taiwanese military, which was established on the mainland and moved to Taiwan after its defeat in the civil war with the communists.

China has threatened to invade Taiwan if the island declares independence or indefinitely postpones reunification. In recent months, Beijing stepped up pressure on Taiwan to reunify.

Most Taiwanese oppose reunification as long as China is communist.

Since Chen was elected in March, he has struggled to find a way to start talks with Chinese leaders. The main hindrance has been a long-standing dispute over Taiwan's political status.

Chinese leaders want Chen to agree that Taiwan is an inseparable part of ``one China'' before talks begin.

However, Chen fears that endorsing the principle would mean he agrees that the communist government in Beijing is the lawful ruler of Taiwan.

In Beijing on Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said: ``The ball is in Taiwan's court. The Taiwan side should accept the one China principle as soon as possible. Only by so doing can the two sides resume discussions as soon as possible.''

Sun indicated that China was waiting for initiatives from President Chen. China's policy remained one of ``listening to his words and watching his deeds,'' Sun said.

Sun said China remained committed to peaceful unification but would not renounce force as an option in bringing Taiwan to heel.

The military threat is aimed at deterring a permanent and formal split from China, Sun said, adding: ``Taiwan independence means war.''

-------- colombia

Fighting Drugs With Choppers And Poison

by Ana Arana,
July 5, 2000 Salon.com
http://www.salon.com/
From: Paul Wolf <paulwolf@icdc.com>

Even advocates of U.S. military aid think the anti-narcotics package will only unravel the peace with Colombian guerrillas.

July 5, 2000 - As President Clinton prepares to sign the bill to send $1.3 billion in anti-narcotics military aid to Colombia, criticism from Colombians and Europeans has gotten more and more severe. Angry that the plan was not subject to a national debate, Colombians fear the military solution to fight decades of drug trafficking will unravel peace negotiations and worsen its civil war. Europeans are threatening to pull out their aid for social programs that would have gone along with the U.S. aid. And in the middle of it all, Colombian President Andres Pastrana is under fire for not letting Colombians have a bigger say in developing the plan.

On Friday, Congress passed the aid package to help Colombia fight drug traffickers and their guerrilla allies. The U.S. aid is a contribution to Colombia's $7.5 billion total development plan. The House approved a $1.7 billion version last March, and the Senate approved a package with less money last month, attaching tougher human rights conditions. The lion's share of the aid will be for Blackhawk and Huey helicopters and training of two Colombian anti-narcotics battalions that will operate in southern Colombia, a drug-producing area largely protected by guerrillas from the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC). The aid also includes $200 million for nonmilitary social and human rights programs.

The Clinton administration first asked for emergency aid to Colombia last February, and Pastrana banked heavily on getting the aid sometime this year. But the aid is not expected to arrive in Colombia until the last year of Pastrana's term in office. The delay has cost Pastrana heavily. He had managed to keep unity in the country by waving the millions of dollars the U.S. package would bring, but as the months have passed, his leadership has weakened considerably. The fact that the aid package, which is known in Colombia as Plan Colombia, was not debated nationally, has added to the perception that the initiative was written by the U.S. and not by the Pastrana government.

Just as Washington congratulates itself for supporting Latin America's oldest democracy and making an investment in the fight against drugs, Colombians are questioning the strategy the anti- narcotics package will finance. Groups that are traditionally against military aid, such as human rights organizations and trade unions, view the package as a direct threat to the incipient peace process with leftist guerrillas. And even those who support U.S. military aid are criticizing the package. They fear that some of the plan's anti- drug techniques, such as fumigation of coca plantations, will only turn the affected coca growers into full supporters of the leftist guerrillas.

Colombians with sophisticated knowledge of the drug war and the insurgency accept that the U.S. is more comfortable fighting a drug war than helping a government besieged by well-armed leftist guerrillas. But they worry that the new U.S. initiative will end up as muddled as the U.S. anti-drug mission of the early 1990s, when Colombians fought against the Medellin and Cali drug cartels.

The plan to use fumigation as a main weapon is a major controversy in Colombia. Under the aid package, planes will spray hundreds of hectares of coca plantations in southern Colombia with glysophate, a herbicide known in the U.S. as Roundup. In order to avoid the FARC guerrillas who patrol the coca plantations, the planes will spray from higher than normal, increasing the danger that the herbicide could fall on local inhabitants. U.S. officials maintain that the herbicide is safe to humans.

"I support the concept of U.S. aid in global terms," said Enrique Santos Calderon, a respected analyst and editor in chief of the daily El Tiempo. "We need a more professional army, we need the helicopters; we need the aid with human rights conditions, so the army can fight off the guerrillas and the paramilitary groups. But I am worried to see we are too focused on fumigation. After so many years of fighting drugs, it becomes a charade that Washington wants to keep using methods that have failed," he said.

Despite five years of fumigation programs in Colombia, drug production has increased by 20 percent. "It is a balloon effect," Calderon said. "I press here and the coca growers are displaced there," he said.

Calderon is among many Colombians who feel that Washington's emphasis on seeing the war in Colombia through the narcotics prism -- and believing that only police work and fumigation will weaken leftist guerrillas and make the Colombian army more professional -- has the potential of creating more chaos in Colombia.

"I understand that Washington has to say they are not going to chase guerrillas. That they will only attack guerrillas if they attack the fumigating planes. But for Colombians fumigation is a problem, it affects our ecosystem and it could unravel other elements in the civil war. The fumigation part is the Achilles' heel of the Plan Colombia," he said.

Knowing all along that the United States would back a military, drug- war solution, Colombian leaders were banking on money from Europeans to fund peace-based social programs to resolve civil conflicts and help the besieged government. The Colombian government has asked Europe for up to $1 billion in aid for crop substitution, judicial reform and other projects. But Europeans are balking at the U.S. package and threatening to cut their aid.

At a meeting of European donors in London late last month, a constituency of Colombian nongovernmental organizations brought a message that worried the European community. After years of working in the countryside, they said the government had ignored their concerns that the U.S. military option would only threaten the peace process launched with the FARC last year.

In response, some European representatives said their countries will only provide aid if the Colombian government allows the dissenting organizations more say in the future of the social aid. In general, Europeans believe the Colombian government has mishandled Plan Colombia by combining the peace initiative they want the Europeans to finance with the U.S. military aid.

"It was to be expected that many European nations would not go for Plan Colombia," said a representative from an international organization who was present at the London meeting. "The plan has become controversial. The Colombians should have realized that although the U.S. and Colombia have a bilateral interest in the drug issue, in Europe the concerns are different. There should have been two different plans." Europeans envision a kind of Marshall Plan for Colombia, to help it rebuild after four decades of conflict.

Colombia's credibility with Europeans took an especially big hit when a key mediator dropped out. The Program for Development and Peace for the Magdalena Medio, a conflict resolution and development NGO, declined the government's request to pilot the social investment aspects of Plan Colombia. In addition, the Rev. Francisco Le Roux, a centrist who has been attacked both by paramilitary and guerrillas, publicly said he could not collaborate with the government's plan as it was drafted.

But some European community representatives have tried to save the issue. Jan Egeland, the United Nations special advisor to the secretary general for Colombia, a Norwegian national, has urged the international representatives to continue to support the peace process in Colombia. Obviously there is a lack of agreement on some issues, he told participants at the meeting, but this should not be an obstacle to providing aid to those social groups in Colombia who will clearly be desperately in need of European support. A final answer from the Europeans will come after a meeting in Madrid on July 7.

The U.S. package is not strictly military. It does contain $200 million for social programs and stipulations on human rights conduct. Some here think Colombians might see the package in a more positive light if only U.S. politicians pushing for the aid weren't so focused on the drug war.

"Washington needs to understand the concerns of our citizens," Pardo said. Colombians know all about the drug war, "because we have fought it for a long time. Colombians fear that Washington will not help us with the peace process, and that their help will be limited only to the fumigation issue," he said.

According to Raphael Pardo, a peace negotiator in the 1990s and Colombia's first civilian defense minister, things aren't as bad as many Colombians believe. The social impact of fumigation has been exaggerated and few Colombians understand that the U.S. military package already has $200 million for social changes. "That's a lot of money, which will have an impact in the country," he said. Pardo has studied other fumigation programs that were successful in Bolivia and Peru. "None of those projects had the social investment we have now," he explained.

But for Pastrana, things do look bad. The showdown over the aid has come down while Pastrana's political arsenal has been devastated. His conservative party, including top members of his cabinet, has been rocked with accusations of corruption and misuse of public funds. He has also fallen out of favor with the Liberal Party-dominated Congress, which has put the brakes on a number of legislative pieces needed to get the peace program going.

Meanwhile, the FARC has not made any pronouncements since the congressional approval of U.S. aid. But its representatives have been traveling throughout Europe discussing their willingness to sign peace agreements. The guerrillas and the government will exchange cease-fire proposals in the next few weeks. While nobody expects a cease-fire to be reached soon, analysts worry about the military reaction the guerrillas could make when President Clinton signs the final bill. "They won't get up from the negotiating table, but they will do something to express their discomfort," said Pardo.

Critics of the Pastrana government, both at home and in the United States, say the Colombian government has created many of its problems itself by not debating the aid package robustly in Colombia. "President Pastrana has always played his cards close to the chest," says Miles Frechette, a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia. "I don't agree with the Colombians' analysis of what glysophate does, but there should have been a more open discussion of the entire aid package, including fumigation and its impact."

Thus a lack of debate has cost Pastrana the political boost he was counting on, and it might also have cost Colombians knowledge about the plan that could calm their concerns.

About The Writer

Ana Arana is an investigative journalist who focuses on criminal organizations in Latin America. She is a senior fellow at the Center for War, Peace and the News Media.

-------- drug war

Putin, Jiang Agree To Fight Terror

Assciated Press
July 5, 2000 Filed at 8:51 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Tajikistan-Summit.html

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan (AP) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin on Wednesday joined the leaders of three Central Asian countries in promising to fight terrorism, drug-trafficking and separatism.

The joint statement with Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakstan at the one-day summit in the Tajik capital Dushanbe reflected shared concerns about Islamic and other insurgencies.

Putin said that Russia should establish a permanent military base in Tajikistan, where Russian troops are already stationed.

``We know for certain, and Tajikistan agrees, that without the presence of Russian troops, we will lose what we have succeeded in achieving, including the securing of peace for the population of Tajikistan,'' Putin was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency during a separate meeting with Russian military officials.

All five nations are trying to rein in separatists or rebel groups, many of them drawing inspiration if not concrete aid from the Taliban, Afghanistan's militant Islamic rulers.

Moscow, for its part, has moved to capitalize on those fears and re-establish its influence over the region's former Soviet republics after a decade of seeing its clout in the area decline.

Russian troops help patrol the Tajik border with Afghanistan against frequent incursions by intruders, including smugglers ferrying drugs to Central Asia, Russia and western Europe.

The Tajik government fought a five-year civil war with Islamic rebels, ending with a 1997 peace deal.

Putin and Jiang, in their first meeting since Putin was elected president March 26, separately discussed plans for Putin's July 18-19 visit to China.

They also talked over issues surrounding their 2,600-mile border and their opposition to the U.S. plan to deploy a limited national missile defense system, Tajik President Emomali Rakhmonov's press office said.

The five leaders also expressed support for Moscow's military campaign in Chechnya. They said they backed China's push for reunification with Taiwan, which broke away amid a 1949 civil war.

In one-on-one talks Tuesday, Jiang and Rakhmonov signed documents aimed at promoting cooperation and peace in the restive region.

The Chinese president condemned the violence in Afghanistan but cautioned against foreign interference beyond efforts already under way by the United Nations and other intermediaries.

``The Afghan problem should be solved by the Afghan people themselves in peaceful talks and in the absence of foreign interference,'' Jiang said.

-------- environment

EU hits Greece with landmark fine over waste

BRUSSELS: July 5, 2000
Story by Dina Kyriakidou
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=7352

BRUSSELS - The European Union's Court of Justice ordered Greece yesterday to pay a fine of 20,000 euros ($18,980) a day for failing to clean up a waste dump in Crete - the first time the court has used its powers to fine a country.

The EU's executive Commission said the landmark ruling sent an important signal to EU countries that they faced tough financial penalties if they did not comply with EU law.

"The (court) decision shows that EU institutions are serious about ensuring full and effective implementation of EU law through all means available," Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom said in a statement.

In Athens, the Greek government said the fine was "unpleasant" but pledged to pay up until waste management on Crete was improved.

"We are working feverishly to create this new space of waste treatment," spokesman Dimitris Reppas told reporters.

The Luxembourg-based court ruled in 1992 that Greece had failed to bring a waste dump in Crete, the country's largest island, into line with EU law.

Despite further rulings, Greece has not cleaned up the dump containing hazardous industrial, medical and military waste that has posed a potential threat to human health and the environment contrary to EU law, the court said.

GREEK GOVERNMENT BLAMES LOCAL AUTHORITIES

Following the ruling, Greece will have to pay the fine for every day from July 4 that it remains in breach of the law.

Reppas blamed the local authority for failing to comply with waste treatment regulations.

"Indeed there was a delay, and we must condemn the reaction of local forces who refused to comply with something that is in their own interest," he said.

He said the fine could come from funds destined for local projects. "It would be unfair to burden all Greek taxpayers with this cost. This financial burden must be borne by those it concerns."

A Commission spokesman said the pioneer ruling against Greece would make future cases easier, although he stressed that fining countries remained a last resort.

Two similar cases are pending, one against France for sexist employment laws on night work and one against Greece over its refusal to recognise some foreign college degrees.

A Commission spokesman said the fine imposed on Greece was a "considerable sum" but that higher fines could be imposed in future cases.

The Commission, which has the power to suggest to the court how large fines should be, said it based its calculations on Greece's gross domestic product as well as the gravity and duration of the infringement.

In this case the Commission had recommended a fine of 24,600 euros a day, slightly more than the court's final ruling.

-------- fiji

Fiji Military Defuses Troop Protest

Associated Press
July 5, 2000 Filed at 3:25 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Fiji-Unrest.html

SUVA, Fiji (AP) -- Fiji's military on Wednesday stepped up the pressure on rebels holding 27 hostages in parliament, declaring an off-limits military zone around the area and offering amnesty to anyone who leaves within two days.

The roughly one-square-mile zone was to be closed to all but military personnel st