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

-------- australia

Argentine firm signs Australian reactor contracts

AUSTRALIA : July 14, 2000
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=7459

CANBERRA - Australia's nuclear agency and Argentine company INVAP yesterday signed the contracts to build a nuclear reactor in Sydney's Lucas Heights suburb, the Australian federal government said yesterday.

INVAP, joined by Australian companies John Holland Construction and Engineering and Evans Deakin Industries Ltd , won the contract to build the controversial reactor facility last month for A$278.5 million in 1999 dollars.

The construction of the research facility in a metropolitan area has been condemned by opposition parties and the environmental group Greenpeace Australia.

The Democrats have called for an independent inquiry into the awarding of the contract, which Senator Natasha Stott Despoja said puts public and environmental safety at risk.

"Officials have had trouble getting to and from the site to sign the contract, clearly showing the problems waste transport or evacuation in the event of a nuclear accident may pose," Stott Despoja said in a statement.

"The government's determination to fast-track the contract approval and announcement process has further increased the urgency for an inquiry."

The Senate will vote on the call for an inquiry on August 14 when parliament resumes.

The reactor, scheduled to be commissioned in 2005, will repace an existing reactor commissioned in 1958.

-------- brazil

Brazil starts up nuclear plant after 17-year delay

Excite News
Updated 1:40 PM ET July 14, 2000
Shasta Darlington
http://news.excite.com/news/r/000714/13/energy-brazil-nuclear2

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazil began starting up its second nuclear reactor on a picturesque bay down the coast from Rio de Janeiro Friday, 17 years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.

The Angra 2 station won authorization late Thursday night from the National Nuclear Energy Commission (CNEN) to partially begin operations despite opposition from environmental groups and some residents concerned about its cost and safety.

"In a matter of days we should begin actually producing energy after we complete a series of tests," said Ronaldo Fabricio, president of Eletronuclear, the nuclear arm of the state-owned Eletrobras utility.

Angra 2 hopes to produce at 30 percent of capacity in the first month. Following tests and further approval, it aims to reach 100 percent in the second month, according to Nuclear Industries of Brazil (INB), another unit of Eletrobras.

The uranium-fueled reactor is located inside Brazil's nuclear complex at Angra dos Reis, an island-dotted bay 80 miles west of Rio, known as the summer playground for the city's rich and famous.

With more than twice the power of Brazil's first nuclear station, Angra 1, the reactor will supply energy for 5 million people. The two plants together will meet 32 percent of Rio state's energy demand.

"This will be very important for Rio which still imports a lot of its energy ... and it will help Brazil as a whole," Fabricio said. Brazil's energy demand is expected to surge 6 percent this year.

But not everyone is cheering.

NO-NUKES ACTIVISTS FAIL

"Brazil stupidly spent billions of dollars to complete a nuclear station that is completely unnecessary to meet its energy demands," said Ruy Goes, coordinator of Greenpeace's anti-nuclear campaign in Brazil.

Angra 1 and 2 combined will only account for 3 percent of Brazil's energy producing capacity. Almost 88 percent of Brazil's electricity comes from hydroelectric dams and another 9 percent from natural gas-fired plants.

"In the rest of the world, nuclear energy is being abandoned because of the high risks and lack of solutions for nuclear waste," Goes added.

The INB said in a statement that at 12 billion reais, or almost $7 billion at the current exchange rate, Angra 2 "was two and a half times above the normal cost of a nuclear station of the same model."

Still, energy from Angra 2 will be 13 percent cheaper than electricity produced at Brazil's biggest hydroelectric dam.

Critics also worry about escape routes and the plant's proximity to Rio, Brazil's second biggest city. Angra 1, which began commercial operations in 1985, has become notorious for its many shutdowns.

Officials counter that the proximity to Rio, as well as the country's No. 1 and No. 4 cities, Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte, give the Angra complex an ideal location.

Construction of Angra 2 began in 1976 but was mired for years in funding delays. With energy demand rising, the government decided to revive the project in 1993. There are also talks of developing a third nuclear station, Angra 3.

-------- business

Lockheed Agreement Tests U.S. Policy British Firm Buying Defense Tech Unit

By Greg Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 14, 2000; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/14/080l-071400-idx.html

Lockheed Martin Corp. agreed yesterday to sell its Aerospace Electronics Systems business to Britain's BAE Systems North America for $1.67 billion, putting a major portion of the nation's most sensitive electronic warfare technology into the hands of a foreign-owned company.

The proposed sale will give Lockheed Martin cash to reduce its $11.7 billion in outstanding debt but will result in a charge of $1 billion, or $2.50 per share, against third-quarter earnings.

The deal also tests the Clinton administration's willingness to allow foreign investment in the U.S. defense industry.

"Up to this point, the discussion of transatlantic defense integration has been mostly theoretical. Now it becomes a real policy matter, and this becomes a key test of the Pentagon's sincerity," said Loren Thompson, a defense expert with the Lexington Institute in Arlington.

The Aerospace Electronics Systems unit, based primarily in New Hampshire, makes aircraft self-protection systems, infrared sensors and surveillance and navigation systems for both aircraft and ships.

The Defense Department will review the transaction "to ensure that U.S. national security interests are properly addressed," spokeswoman Cheryl Irwin said.

She added that while Lockheed Martin is the Pentagon's top supplier, BAE North America also "has many important contracts, some of which involve very sensitive technology."

Those include contracts for aircraft mission planning systems, aircraft ground test equipment and communication and radar countermeasures equipment, Irwin said.

Lockheed Martin's board of directors selected BAE over a competing bid from Northrop Grumman Corp. during a special meeting called yesterday at 3 p.m. at corporate headquarters in Bethesda. Analysts said the BAE offer was higher than expected.

Northrop Grumman, based in Century City, Calif., had offered slightly less money, sources said--between $1.5 billion and $1.6 billion. That offer also carried some of the same antitrust concerns that led the Pentagon to oppose Lockheed Martin's attempt to buy Northrop Grumman in 1998, because Northrop specializes in many of the same areas of electronic warfare as the unit being sold.

The competing bids generated much attention within the industry, and pressure from Wall Street mounted for Lockheed Martin to pick a buyer that could pass regulatory review. Yesterday morning, sources said, Pentagon acquisitions czar Jacques Gansler signaled that he would not oppose a BAE transaction, paving the way for the Lockheed board's vote.

Some observers expect the move to generate concern on Capitol Hill. "There will be some members in this election year that will make some comments," said one industry source who asked not to be identified.

But others said the sale had to be expected after years of rhetoric from the Pentagon encouraging transatlantic cooperation in the defense industry, a push that crested after military operations in Kosovo demonstrated that NATO allies suffer from technology gaps.

Brian Dailey, the head of Lockheed Martin's Washington operations, said he believes there will be support in Congress for the deal.

"Overall, we expect the reaction to be positive," Dailey said. "We have spent a considerable amount of time . . . receiving the reactions of certain key members in the national security area to ensure they are informed about our decision."

He said the fact that BAE is already the Pentagon's sixth-biggest contractor and "has an exemplary record as a protector of United States national security information" will assuage concerns about foreign ownership of key technology.

"We believe the sale supports U.S. Department of Defense objectives and trans-Atlantic cooperation," Lockheed Martin chairman and chief executive Vance D. Coffman said in a news release.

The chief executive of BAE's North American operations, Mark Ronald, said the company is "proud of our security record, which I believe is among the best in the industry. We will work closely with regulatory authorities to successfully complete this transaction in the coming months."

Sources said the Clinton administration began examining the situation three or four weeks ago when it became clear that BAE was a serious contender.

BAE Systems is one of two new Goliaths formed from the consolidation of the European defense industry in the past year. It encompasses the former Marconi Electronic Systems, which British Aerospace bought last year and rolled into the rechristened BAE.

The other European giant is EADS, formed this year from the consolidation of defense companies in Germany, Spain and France.

With global sales of almost $20 billion, BAE employs more than 100,000 people worldwide. Its U.S. component employs 18,000 and expects to log $2.5 billion in sales this year. Just last month, the company paid $510 million for the Lockheed Martin unit that manufactured engine and flight-control systems.

The nucleus of the operation it agreed to buy yesterday is the Sanders electronics business in New Hampshire, with 3,900 employees, but Lockheed Martin Aerospace Electronics Systems also includes Space Electronics & Communications in Manassas (450 employees) and Fairchild Systems in New York (950 employees).

The unit posted revenue of $1.2 billion in 1999. Although military electronics is one of the few growth areas in the defense budget, Lockheed announced last year that it would sell the unit to generate cash. The Sanders business--which Lockheed bought in 1986--was never a natural fit for the company, analysts said.

Lockheed Martin's staple is the big aerospace system--airplanes and rockets--and it was awkward for Sanders to compete with outside companies to put electronics gear on those platforms, analyst Thompson said.

Northrop Grumman was keen to combine Sanders's expertise with its own formidable electronics business, creating a truly fearsome rival to the similar operations of Raytheon Co.

But a source familiar with Lockheed Martin's thinking said Northrop was too risky because so much of its existing business overlapped with Sanders, creating potential regulatory challenges.

"Both bidders had issues with the regulatory authorities, but . . . the BAE ones were far more consistent with what the regulators wanted. The antitrust problems that existed on the Northrop side were more serious--not to say they weren't solvable," the source said.

"We are disappointed to learn of the decision," Northrop spokesman Bob Bishop said. "Sanders would have been a good acquisition for us, and we were poised to successfully manage and grow the business."

Lockheed Martin said it expects the deal with BAE to close by the end of the year. After fees and taxes, it will generate $1.3 billion, most of which Lockheed will apply to debt reduction.

-------- china

Beijing Issues Warning On U.S. Missile System
Shielding Taiwan Could Spark Confrontation

International Herald Tribune
Paris, Friday, July 14, 2000
By John Pomfret Washington Post Service
http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/FRI/IN/china.2.html

BEIJING - China's top arms control negotiator warned Thursday that the whole architecture of China's arms control and nonproliferation agreements with the West risked collapsing if the United States deployed an anti-missile defense system.

Sha Zukang, the director general of the department of arms control and disarmament at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, warned that deployment of the system could spark an expansion of China's nuclear forces and could threaten treaties China has already signed, such as agreements not to proliferate nuclear and chemical weapons and a pact to ban the testing of nuclear devices.

He also stressed, in an interview at the ministry, that sale of missile-defense technology to Taiwan to construct what is known as a theater missile-defense system would ''lead to serious confrontation'' because it would be tantamount to restoring a military alliance between Taipei and Washington.

''This is of supreme national interest,'' Mr. Sha said. ''It will be defended at any cost.''

''I have spent the most valuable and important part of my life - 16 years - on these issues,'' said the veteran diplomat, who led China's team negotiating the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and is known as the most knowledgeable and vocal Chinese official on the issue. ''Now all of these achievements are at risk,'' he said.

While Mr. Sha's comments contained an element of bluster, they are serious because China has been accused of serious proliferation. It is widely believed that China supplied Pakistan with at least the design for a nuclear weapon. Pakistan detonated a nuclear device in 1998. China also has sold Pakistan, Iran and Libya either missiles or missile technology. It also has sold intercontinental ballistic missiles to Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Sha's warning marked an escalation of China's war of words against the plan to protect the United States and its troops abroad from missile attack. It is significant also because, to date, the discussion about missile defense in the United States has generally been limited to the technical difficulties of the system and has skirted the potentially disastrous strategic consequences of the plan.

Mr. Sha made his comments as the U.S. secretary of defense, William Cohen, wrapped up his first trip to China in almost three years. While Mr. Cohen was upbeat about his visit, on the subject of the national missile-defense system, known as NMD, he acknowledged: ''I don't know if our differences on NMD have been narrowed.''

Mr. Sha predicted that the American plan to protect the United States from missile attacks would backfire and create enormous security headaches for Washington.

''Instead of enhancing your security, your security policy will be further compromised,'' he said. ''The United States will play the role of a fire brigade, rushing from one place to another to extinguish fires.''

Mr. Sha rejected U.S. assurances that the plan was not aimed at China but rather at ''states of concern,'' such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq. ''That doesn't matter, the consequences are still terrible for us,'' he said.

When asked whether China would reconsider its commitment to nuclear disarmament and to halting sensitive weapons sales, he said, ''Our enthusiasm and our participation in all of those regimes, particularly in cooperating with the United States, our mood, let me say, would be severely dampened.''

China has already taken practical steps to block U.S.-backed disarmament proposals because of the missile-defense issue. In Geneva, China's delegation to the Conference of Disarmament is holding up talks on a treaty to cut off the production of fissile materiel, said Bates Gill, a specialist on China's security at the Brookings Institution. China wants the conference to focus on a treaty to limit or control space-based weapons systems, a foundation of national missile defense.

When asked if a decision to deploy a national missile-defense system would also affect China's existing arms control treaties, Mr. Sha used a similar formula: ''To say the least, it would seriously dampen our interest,'' he said. ''We have not reached a stage to say we will forget our commitments,'' yet.

He added that China would link its attitude toward nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and modernization of nuclear forces to the success of the national missile-defense program. ''It is too early to say what we will do,'' he said.

The idea behind the missile-defense system is to construct a mechanism to shoot down incoming missiles. The United States is considering deploying the system in two places - one inside the United States and one outside to protect its troops abroad and its allies.

----

China denies missile sales to Pakistan

The Hindu,
July 14, 2000
http://www.indiaserver.com/thehindu/2000/07/14/stories/03140001.htm

BEIJING, JULY 13. China today denied reports about its assistance to Pakistan's nuclear missile programme and dared Washington to impose sanctions on Beijing over the issue ``one time, two times, four times or even ten times.''

``As far as China is concerned, we believe this matter is over,'' the director-general of the Department of Arms Control and Disarmament, Mr. Sha Zukang told presspersons at an informal briefing on China's arms control policies here.

Denying the sale of nuclear-capable M-11 missiles to Pakistan, he said, ``China was party to three solemn occasions, where it undertook not to provide technology to Pakistan and India that would enable the development of missile-carrying nuclear warheads.'' However, he did not comment on his U.S. counterpart, Mr. John Holum's statement last Saturday that ``we made progress, but the issue remains unresolved.''

----

China Criticizes U.S. Role in Halted Arms Sale

Associated Press
Friday, July 14, 2000; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/14/090l-071400-idx.html

BEIJING, July 13-President Jiang Zemin complained to U.S. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen today about Israel's cancellation of a planned military aircraft sale to China.

"It certainly was a concern to China that the sale was canceled," Cohen told reporters after meeting with Jiang. Other U.S. officials said Jiang did not directly accuse the United States of sabotaging the deal.

The United States was concerned that selling China the Phalcon advanced airborne radar system could have affected the military balance between China and Taiwan by giving China an improved capability to coordinate offensive airstrikes.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry criticized the United States for pressuring Israel to drop the deal. "No other country has the right to interfere in bilateral cooperation that China has with other governments," spokesman Zhu Bangzao said.

At a news conference on his second and final day of talks with Chinese officials, Cohen said U.S. opposition to the $250 million sale was not a sign of U.S. efforts to limit China's military.

"It does not signal any attempt to contain China," Cohen said, adding, "I don't believe China can be contained."

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, seeking to boost prospects for Middle East peace, informed President Clinton on Wednesday of his decision to suspend the sale.

----

China's Missile Business

Friday, July 14, 2000; Page A22
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/14/033l-071400-idx.html

INTELLIGENCE reports indicate that China is helping nuclear-armed Pakistan build long-range ballistic missiles. The problem persists after the visit to Beijing last weekend by John D. Holum, the State Department's senior arms control adviser. Though Mr. Holum claimed some progress in the talks, the Chinese took the occasion to deliver yet another lecture about U.S. missile defense development and arms sales to Taiwan--and to link resolution of those complaints to the issue of Beijing's exports of missile technology.

The question, then, is whether U.S. policy needs more teeth. Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) are sponsoring the China Nonproliferation Act, which would require the president to make an annual report on China's distribution of potentially dangerous technology, and to impose sanctions on persons or companies within China that appear responsible, as well as on the Chinese government.

The Clinton administration says this would make an improving situation worse. Dialogue with China has produced results, such as a 1994 Chinese promise to stop selling M-11 missiles to Pakistan and to abide by the "guidelines" of the Missile Technology Control Regime (which China has still not formally joined). Beijing also foreswore "new" nuclear help to Iran. The administration further contends that the bill's sweeping language could mean punishing U.S. businesses that innocently sold "dual use" technology to China that was passed on to Pakistan.

Yet, as Mr. Holum has just experienced, the U.S.-China dialogue on nonproliferation--recently resumed after Beijing suspended it over the accidental bombing of China's Belgrade embassy--remains hostage to Chinese pique over, and designs on, Taiwan. And Beijing clearly interprets its promise to observe the Missile Technology Control Regime as permitting assistance to Pakistan short of actually transferring weapons. This aid may obey the letter of the 1998 public joint pledge by President Clinton and China's President Jiang Zemin not to provide ballistic missiles to any South Asian country--but it's not exactly in keeping with the spirit. Yes, Mr. Clinton already has authority to sanction China under current law. But he has doggedly declined to do so without a "smoking gun" from U.S. intelligence.

No doubt the Republican sponsors of the China Nonproliferation Act are playing election-year politics. And the White House has a point when it asks why the bill addresses only China when other countries, such as Russia and North Korea, engage in similar behavior. Still, China's continuing assistance to Pakistan's weapons program in the face of so many U.S. efforts to talk Beijing out of it shows the limits of a nonconfrontational approach. Clearly, China views certain missile-making projects abroad as vital to its national security strategy--vital enough to trump some other economic and diplomatic interests. By the same token, the United States should make clear that a certain amount of Chinese missile-making is incompatible with business as usual. Sen. Thompson is negotiating with Senate Democrats and the White House to modify the clumsier aspects of his bill, so that it can be brought to a Senate vote without obstructing passage of permanent normal trade relations (which we support). If the bill is appropriately refined and separated from the trading relations legislation, then its passage will send Beijing a useful signal.

----

Beijing hits U.S. for role in killing of Israel deal

July 14, 2000
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20007140751.htm

BEIJING - Chinese President Jiang Zemin criticized the United States Thursday for its role in pressuring Israel to cancel its sale of airborne warning and control aircraft to China, according to U.S. officials.

"It was certainly a concern to China that the sale was canceled," Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said when asked by a reporter about the canceled sale from Israel of a Phalcon airborne warning and control aircraft.

A U.S. official said later that Mr. Jiang expressed concern that the sale was canceled under pressure from the United States. "They made it clear they were not happy with it," the official said.

The issue was discussed during a 90-minute meeting between Mr. Cohen and Mr. Jiang inside the Communist Party's leadership compound known as Zhongnanhai, once the residence of Mao Tse-tung.

Meanwhile, Israel said Thursday it wanted the United States to compensate it for scrapping the sale of the $250 million radar system to China, and experts warned the cancellation could damage future Israeli arms sales.

A spokeswoman for Israel's defense ministry said Israel and the United States had not yet begun to talk about compensation, but she added: "It is clear that the cancellation of the deal causes Israel grave economic damage."

Former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens said that canceling the deal had dealt a "severe blow" to Israel's credibility in the lucrative international arms market.

"The defense industry cannot exist without exporting some goods. This will affect its ability to make this deal and others because it raises questions in the mind of customers that Israel will cancel future deals," he said.

Israel informed the United States on Wednesday that it is calling off the sale of an airborne warning and control plane produced by Israeli Aircraft Industries known as Phalcon. The aircraft is being outfitted on a Russian-made Il-76 and was being worked on in Israel.

The United States opposed the sale because it would significantly increase China's ability to conduct long-range combat operations, against Taiwan or U.S. warships in the Pacific.

Congress had threatened to sharply curtail U.S. aid to Israel over the sale and discussion had been ongoing in Washington between U.S. and Israeli officials over the deal.

The Phalcon sale was to be part of a major push by the People's Liberation Army to develop better command, control and communications for its forces.

An Israeli diplomatic source said last month that the first of several Phalcon aircraft was to be delivered in October of 2001. The Israeli government was weighing carefully the aircraft sale and that the matter had been "under discussion." Israel did not view the sale as a threat to the United States, this source said.

However, U.S. military officials said the Phalcon would give China's military new capabilities to conduct long-range warfare.

The Chinese have been building an aerial-refueling capability and have purchased advanced warplanes from Russia.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said China was upset at both Israel and the United States over the Phalcon decision.

"No other country has the right to interfere in the bilateral cooperation that China has with other countries," Mr. Zhu told reporters, referring to U.S. pressure on Israel to cancel the aircraft deal.

"Any agreement and understanding between states should be honored. This is the basic understanding of state-to-state relations," Mr. Zhu said in a reference to Israel.

After giving a speech to junior military officers at the National Defense University, Mr. Cohen spent Thursday in meetings with several high-ranking Chinese officials, including Central Military Commission Deputy Chairman Gen. Zhang Wannian, who officials said spent most of the meeting urging the defense secretary not to sell advanced arms to Taiwan.

Mr. Cohen also met with Chinese Vice Prime Minister Qian Qichen. Thursday night, he held a dinner in honor of Chinese Defense Minister Chi Haotian.

During the press conference, Mr. Cohen said his two days of talks were "constructive" and helped to improve communications between the U.S. and Chinese militaries.

Asked if the United States will sell advanced Aegis warships to Taiwan, Mr. Cohen indicated that the weapons sale is still under consideration.

"The needs for Taiwan will be made as we have been doing in the past . . . no decision has been made on the sale of the Aegis system to Taiwan," Mr. Cohen said, noting that he hopes there can "be a reduction in tensions" between China and Taiwan.

Mr. Cohen also said during his meeting with Mr. Jiang that he raised U.S. concerns about the transfer of missile technology to Pakistan and other rogue states. "Chinese officials have indicated that they are complying with their agreements that missiles are not being transferred to Pakistan," Mr. Cohen said.

"The question that has to be resolved, in terms of whether technology itself is being transferred, that's precisely the reason why these discussions have been under way," he said.

Mr. Cohen travels to Shanghai Friday for meetings with Chinese officials and will give a speech at the stock exchange. He then travels to Sydney, Australia, for the weekend.

----

U.S. and Top Chinese Officials Try to Smooth Over Differences

New York Times
July 14, 2000
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/071400china-pakistan.html

BEIJING, July 13 -- The American defense secretary and Chinese leaders made hopeful pledges of cooperation and friendship today despite evidence of deep rifts over important military policies and Chinese suspicions about American intentions in Asia.

Two days of high-level meetings began and ended with smiles and handshakes, a sign of how strongly both sides want to avoid open, dangerous antagonism.

But officials also struggled with potentially explosive disputes, including American plans for missile defense and continued arms sales to Taiwan, as well as American contentions that China recently helped Pakistan develop ballistic missiles.

Chinese officials endured a new humiliation after Israel said on Wednesday that it was reneging on a $250 million deal, five years in the making, to sell Beijing an advanced airborne radar system. Israel canceled the sale under heavy pressure from the United States, which fears that the system could be used to track fighter planes in a battle over the Taiwan Strait, the most likely scene of direct Chinese-American conflict.

In a 90-minute meeting this afternoon, President Jiang Zemin brought up the canceled sale, Defense Secretary William S.

Cohen said. "It was certainly of concern to China," Mr. Cohen told reporters, but he said the tone of his meetings was generally positive. Mr. Cohen met nearly every top political and military leader and spoke to military officers at the National Defense University.

As he greeted Mr. Cohen today, China's top soldier, Zhang Wannian, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, stressed "how important it is for China and the United States to have a healthy and stable relationship."

Officials from both sides said they were pleased that military visits and talks, suspended after the United States bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade last year, were largely restored.

But Mr. Cohen could offer the Chinese no convincing answers to concerns about proposed missile defenses and arms sales to Taiwan. And it was also clear that China had not effectively countered American contentions that it has aided Pakistan and Iran's missile development, possibly violating pledges.

In a separate news conference, China's chief arms control official, Sha Zukang, said his country had on three occasions, most recently in a joint statement by Presidents Jiang and Clinton in 1998, pledged not to help either India or Pakistan develop missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. He scoffed at reported American intelligence findings that China had provided such technical aid to Pakistan, its strategic ally, in the last 18 months.

This afternoon Mr. Cohen said of the missile questions only that "these issues are still under discussion."

Mr. Sha repeated China's vehement warnings that it saw the proposed American missile defense as negating China's small nuclear forces. China also opposes the American-Japanese program to develop regional missile defenses, which could be used to shield Taiwan. China considers Taiwan part of the nation that has to return eventually, if not by peace then by war.

In a speech to military officers this morning at the National Defense University north of Beijing, Mr. Cohen described the American military presence in Asia as a benign, stabilizing factor rather than, as many Chinese believe, intended to hem in an increasingly confident and powerful China.

Noting the American military's strong presence in South Korea and Japan; its close ties with Australia, Thailand and, increasingly, the Philippines; and its pledge to help Taiwan defend itself, Mr. Cohen said:

"The truth is that this region is safer, more secure, and more stable because of the United States. And that peace and stability has benefited every nation, including China."

"I know there are calls in China for the United States to vacate Asia," Mr. Cohen added, departing from his text. "But I ask you who will fill the vacuum?"

Mr. Cohen complained that the Chinese press often unfairly characterized the United States as out to dominate the world and working against China.

His military audience listened intently and applauded. In a brief relaxed question period, in an apparently unscripted outburst, the wife of a Chinese officer won loud applause when she said that the American press maligned China on human rights and that the United States could promote peace by halting arms sales to Taiwan.

But the generally polite reception belied a growing suspicion about American intentions. The military journals and newspapers that are studied by these officers, the cream of the People's Liberation Army, describe American policy in ever-more sinister terms.

A recent article in The Liberation Army Daily on the proposed missile defense was headlined "$60 Billion to Crush China." The American military is routinely described as encircling China and arming Taiwan to diminish China's power.

The visiting Americans saw an editorial this morning in The China Daily, the official English-language newspaper, titled "U.S. a Threat to World Peace." The editorial, translated from the overseas edition of the People's Daily, said the United States was causing a global arms race by seeking military supremacy and that the American alliance with Japan, the core of American Asia policy, "constitutes a threat to regional stability."

The editorial said that American military spending last year -- $276 billion -- was 2.5 times the total spending of Russia, Britain, France, Germany, Japan and China combined and that the United States was seeking military control of outer space.

The United States, the editorial added, is most responsible for the global spread of missile technologies, because by working with Japan to develop missile defenses it had provoked other countries to seek better missiles of their own.

China does not like to concede its dependence on foreign purchases for advanced weapons, and today, despite anger and dismay over the canceled Israeli sale, the public response was subdued.

At a regular Foreign Ministry news conference, a spokesman, Zhu Bangzao, obliquely criticized the United States for its role, saying, "No country has the right to interfere with the bilateral cooperation between China and other countries."

He also implicitly criticized Israel, saying, "Agreements and understandings reached between states should be observed."

----

China Threatens Arms Control Collapse
Top Negotiator Says Missile Defense Puts Treaties at Risk

By John Pomfret
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 14, 2000; Page A01
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/14/179l-071400-idx.html

BEIJING, July 13---China's top arms control negotiator warned today that U.S. deployment of a national missile defense system would risk collapsing the whole architecture of China's arms control and nonproliferation agreements with the West.

Sha Zukang, director general of the Foreign Ministry's department of arms control and disarmament, also stressed that sale of U.S. technology to Taiwan for a smaller-scope theater missile defense system would "lead to serious confrontation" because it would be tantamount to restoring a military alliance between Taipei and Washington.

"This is of supreme national interest," Sha said in an interview. "It will be defended at any cost."

Sha's warnings marked an escalation of China's war of words against plans to protect U.S. territory and U.S. troops abroad from missile attack. China had previously indicated it might expand its nuclear forces to compensate for the proposed U.S. defense system, but Sha broadened the possible consequences to include a renunciation of previous undertakings barring nuclear or chemical weapons proliferation and nuclear testing.

"I have spent the most valuable and important part of my life, 16 years, on these issues," said Sha, a veteran diplomat who led China's team in negotiations on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty--which the Senate rejected--and is considered the most knowledgeable and vocal Chinese official on this issue. "Now all of these achievements are at risk."

Sha made his comments as Defense Secretary William S. Cohen wrapped up his first trip to China in almost three years. While Cohen was upbeat about his visit, on the subject of the national missile defense system, he acknowledged: "I don't know if our differences . . . have been narrowed."

Sha predicted that if President Clinton or his successor goes ahead with plans to protect the United States from missile attacks, the decision would backfire and create enormous security headaches for the United States.

"Instead of enhancing your security, your security policy will be further compromised," he said. "The United States will play the role of a fire brigade. Rushing from one place to another to extinguish fires."

He rejected U.S. assurances that the plan is not aimed at China but rather at what Washington regards as unpredictable and hostile "states of concern," such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq. "That doesn't matter, the consequences are still terrible for us," he said.

Asked if China would reconsider its commitment to nuclear disarmament and a halt to sensitive weapons sales, he responded: "To say the least, our enthusiasm and our participation in all of those regimes, particularly in cooperating with the United States, our mood, let me say, would be severely dampened."

China has already taken practical steps to block U.S.-backed disarmament proposals because of the missile defense issue. In Geneva, Beijing's delegation to the Conference on Disarmament is holding up talks on a treaty to stop production of fissile material, said Bates Gill, a China security specialist at the Brookings Institution. China wants the conference to focus instead on a treaty to limit or control space-based weapons systems, which could be part of an expanded, multi-tiered missile defense scheme.

When asked if a decision to deploy missile defenses would also affect China's existing arms control treaties, Sha used a similar formulation: "To say the least, it would seriously dampen our interest. . . . We have not reached a stage to say we will forget our commitments . . . yet." But he added that China would link its attitude toward nonproliferation and modernization of its nuclear forces to the success of the national missile defense program.

"It is too early to say what we will do," he said. "All I can say is that China will do everything possible to ensure its security, and the measures it will take will be in proportion to the success" of national missile defense.

While Sha's comments seemed calculated to affect the debate in the United States, they nonetheless could have serious consequences, because the United States already has accused China of extensive proliferation. It is widely believed China supplied Pakistan with at least the design for a nuclear weapon; Pakistan detonated a nuclear device in 1998. China has also sold missiles or missile technology to Pakistan, Iran and Libya, and ballistic missiles to Saudi Arabia.

The idea behind missile defense is to shoot down incoming missiles. The United States is considering beginning construction of a limited national missile shield system within its borders, as well as other, more limited systems outside the United States to protect its troops abroad and its allies. Currently, for instance, the United States and Japan are working together on a theater missile defense program for northeast Asia.

The technology and politics surrounding the systems are equally complex. So far, the United States has conducted three tests of the proposed missile defense interceptors, two of which have failed. In addition, going ahead with a national system would necessitate amending the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union.

That treaty banned construction of missile defense systems and was, Sha said, the "cornerstone" of arms control agreements during the Cold War. Citing the treaty, Russia has strongly opposed national missile defenses, as have several European countries. China has opposed both national and theater missile defense, for different reasons.

China, which first detonated a nuclear device in 1964, has never tried to match U.S. or Russian nuclear arsenals, preferring to keep a small number of strategic weapons for defense. China is believed to possess about 20 rockets that can deliver single warheads, and it is working on a multiple-warhead delivery system.

Any effective national missile defense system, Sha said, would risk negating China's limited arsenal and upending the "strategic stability" that ensures deterrence around the world.

Beijing fears theater missile defense, which would cover a more limited area, because the Chinese army is well-equipped with missiles but weak in almost everything else. Removing China's strategic and conventional missile threat in the Asian theater--particularly as regards Taiwan--would cripple its plans to regain what it feels to be its rightful place in regional security.

Sha said exporting theater missile defense technology specifically to Taiwan would also constitute a belligerent act on the part of the United States and would mark the first step in resumption of a U.S. military alliance with Taipei. That alliance was abrogated in the 1970s as a condition of the historic rapprochement between Washington and Beijing.

"Wear our cap for a moment," he said. "Imagine we are pumping arms to one of your states and supporting their independence. How would America feel about it?"

China regards Taiwan as a renegade province and believes U.S. high-tech weapons exports to the island democracy of 22 million people encourage Taiwan's government to avoid unification with China.

Although most of the Clinton administration's diplomacy on missile defenses thus far has concentrated on mitigating the concerns of Russia and Europe, the Democratic Party defense intelligentsia is almost unanimous in arguing that the impact on relations with China would be the strongest negative fallout on national security.

John Deutch, Harold Brown and William Perry, all former senior U.S. security officials, have argued publicly that China can be expected to increase its arsenal and drop cooperation on arms control and nonproliferation. That, in turn, could spur India, which also detonated a nuclear device in 1998, and then Pakistan, to do the same, they have warned.

Staff writer Roberto Suro in Washington contributed to this report.

-------- europe

Sanctions against Yugoslavia - a continuation of NATO aggression

From: "Nancy A. Hey" cattynancy@hotmail.com
Fri, 14 Jul 2000 10:22:14 EDT
By Karin Wegestal
MP, on behalf of the Swedish Committee for Solidarity with the Yugoslav People

During the last decade, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has received more than 500,000 refugees from Croatia and Bosnia, and another 300,000 internally displaced persons, mainly from the province Kosovo and Metohia. For a country with about ten million inhabitants, such an influx of homeless people is obviously a very heavy burden - even under peaceful conditions. But in addition to that, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has been the subject to sanctions from the western powers for close to ten years and its infrastructure was badly hurt through Nato's intense bombardment during 78 days in 1999. The result of all this is that Yugoslavia, once the most developed industrial country in Eastern Europe, is today the poorest country in Europe. In Serbia excluding Kosovo, with about ten million inhabitants and close to a million refugees and displaced persons, about 30 international aid organisations operate. This should be compared to the Kosovo province, with about one million inhabitants, where no less than 400 aid organisations operate. There, one could talk about overheated aid activity. A delegation from the Swedish Committee in support of the Yugoslav people, the Yugoslavia Committee, visited the country during one week in January, on the invitation of the International Red Cross and Crescent Society. We saw with our own eyes the great relief efforts made for suffering people. We visited refugee camps, soup kitchens and warehouses for humanitarian relief in Uzice, Pozega, Cacak, Novi Sad and other places. We met representatives of the Roma people (gypsies) and saw the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's Minister for refugees, displaced persons and humanitarian aid, Mrs Bratislava Morina.

This visit gave us a strong impression of the very difficult situation of the Yugoslav people, but also of the great efforts done to relieve the situation for the refugees and displaced persons and other people driven into misery, and to repair the damage done by Nato's bombs.

All the refugees and displaced persons must be given lodging, food, clothes, school and if possible also a new job. In the beginning, many families opened up their homes for refugees. Through great personal sacrifice, most could be taken care of in that way. But we also met refugees who have lived for nine years in provisional refugee camps with all their personal possessions squeezed into a few square metres. Many have to suffice with food rations containing only 20 grams of meat a day.

The refugee situation is made worse by the country's stagnating economy. Many companies have been deprived, through the sanctions, of their possibilities to import raw material, to re-invest and to export their products. Therefore they have been forced to stop production or to continue working on a low level. The result is falling salaries and excessive unemployment. 1.2 million people are totally jobless. The figures have increased gradually, but took a great leap through the bombardment in March-May 1999, when many factories were destroyed. Over two million people - one out of five citizens - are under the line of poverty. Except for the refugee problem, there are 300,000 social cases.

Many people who have volunteered to take care of refugees, have themselves become dependent of social assistance. About one million people get assistance through the Red Cross, which has a well functioning organisation with offices in 180 places - a fantastic structure and an impressive work both from the employees and from many unpaid volunteers.

For those people who are lucky enough to have a job, the average salary is about 82 D-marks (equivalent to some 40 British pounds) a month. A well-educated university graduate can have 150-300 D-marks (75-150 GBP), which is regarded as a very good salary. Many young people - the best educated and most productive ones - leave the country to find jobs abroad if given a chance.

The medical situation is all but catastrophic, with acute lack of medicine and spare parts. The insulin was almost used up. At our visit at Bezanijska Kosa Medical Center in Belgrade, we learnt that X-ray equipment stood idle because X-ray tubes are regarded as "strategic spare parts" and therefore cannot be imported - even with hard currency!

We can now see the paradoxical result of the Yugoslav wars during the 90s.

Several ethnically cleaned states and areas have been established and today receive extensive international assistance, while Serbia, the most multinational society with 26 nationalities living peacefully together, are exposed to the punishment of the western world.

The sanctions against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia were not imposed by the United Nations but single-handedly by the USA and EU. Officially they are not intended as a punishment against Yugoslavia or its population, but as a pressure to make the government "co-operate with the world society" and "respect human rights for all citizens of the country".

In reality, however, they are a continuation of Nato's war of aggression.

Their intention is to achieve what Nato could not achieve at Rambouillet, i.e. total political, economic and military control of the whole country. It is blatant big power aggression against a sovereign country and gross interference in its internal affairs.

The sanctions hit hard against the people. They are obviously intended as one of several means to force the people to overthrow their government and replace it with an administration which can be manipulated and dominated from abroad. That is a travesty of democracy; in fact its very opposite.

What is now required is common action to force the EU countries to stop its hostilities. The sanctions and interference in Yugoslavia's internal affairs must come to an end and normal inter-state relations be established. Relief assistance must be increased to alleviate the human suffering. International assistance must be given unconditionally to help repair the damages after Nato's bombing.

In Sweden, an appeal against the sanctions was published in connection with the anniversary of the start of Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia. It was signed by representatives of various political parties, former government members, bishops and priests, scholars and writers, athletics, and many other well-known people representing a broad political and social opinion among the Swedish people. The appeal was published in a number of papers, including the dominating dailies Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter, and on international web-pages including www.antiwar.com and www.transnational.org. That appeal shows that there is a broad support in the Swedish society for a normalisation of relations.

It would be very useful if a similar initiative could be carried out in all EU countries, to mobilise broad strata of the people. Such an appeal, of course, must be supplemented with other forms of mobilisation of public opinion and mass actions to increase the pressure on our governments to stop their hostile actions and change their present hostile policy against Yugoslavia.

Karin Wegestal is a Member of the Swedish Parliament for the Social Democratic Party. She is a member of the Defense Committe and of the Swedish Parliamentary Delegation of the OSCE. She is one of two spokespeople of the Committee for solidarity with the Yugoslav people, which started in April 1999, as the Stop the bombings now! Committee.

-------- france

ACDN.FRANCE : Request for a referendum in France about nuclear disarmament

As soon as it was founded in 1996, the french "Citizens' Action in favour of Nuclear Disarmament" (Action des Citoyens pour le Désarmement Nucléaire = ACDN), called to a referendum in favour of nuclear disarmament, which would be both biological and chemical as well as complete, worldwide and controlled. One thousand citizens, famous or not, adopted this request which was addressed May, 02, 2000, that is during the Conference in New York about NPT, to the french President of the Republic and to the Prime Minister.

Now, important personages, like mayors, deputies, and so on support this call.

----

France says no plans to pull out of nuclear power

By Gillian Handyside
July 4 2000
Reuters

PARIS, - The French government said on Wednesday it had no plans to follow Germany and end its reliance on nuclear power.

``Our situation and therefore our energy policy is different,'' junior Industry Minister Christian Pierret told a colloquium in Paris entitled ``The end of nuclear power.''

``France gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, Germany gets 30 percent...France has no oil, very little gas and its coal seams were already running out in the 1950s. Its hydroelectric resources are used to the full and other non-fossil energy sources are in their infancy,'' Pierret said.

He added that France's nuclear industry had given birth to three ``worldclass'' companies -- power generator Electricite de France (EdF), nuclear fuels group Cogema and nuclear engineering company Framatome.

``They export, they create wealth and therefore create jobs,'' he said.

Framatome and Germany's Siemens signed an agreement on Wednesday merging their nuclear activities. Siemens said on Tuesday Germany's decision to phase out nuclear power by around 2030 would not jeopardise the merger.

FRANCE SEES SCANT ALTERNATIVES TO NUCLEAR

Pierret said it would be wrong to ``idealise'' any one source of energy. But he rejected calls for France to switch to greater use of combined-cycle power plants fired by gas, which is expected to be in abundant supply worldwide for up to 50 years.

``A short while ago, experts from around the world were forecasting sustainable low prices for oil and therefore for gas. They have tripled in less than a year,'' he said.

He said France planned to invest more in renewable resources, as an alternative to nuclear power, but said the decree obliging EdF to purchase power from renewable-fired generators of over 12 megawatts had not yet been adopted.

Prime Minister Lionel Jospin said on May 29 the government planned to invest two billion French francs ($291.3 million) a year in developing renewable resources over the next few years.

``Up until 1999 we only had marginal recourse to solar and wind power or geothermal energy,'' Jospin said.

European Union figures show France's use of renewables excluding hydropower to be well below the average in the 15-nation bloc and likely to stay that way for the next decade.

In 1997 renewables contributed 2.2 percent to France's fuel mix, compared to an EU average of 3.2 percent and Austria in the top spot with 10.7 percent.

Forecasts for 2010 show France with 8.9 percent of electricity derived from renewables, compared to the EU average of 12.5 percent and leader Denmark's 29.0 percent.

-------- israel

BACKWARD ARABS NO MATCH FOR ISRAELIS
ISRAELI/US MILITARY CONTROL OF ENTIRE REGION

MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org -
7/14/00:

Washington - While Camp David and the "Peace Process" have the ever-compliant mass media preoccupied with the things the political leaders want in the headlines, the Israelis, with their alliance with the Americans, continue to build-up their military forces and weapons of mass destruction in order to control and dominate the Middle East region... come what may.

Israel's new laser, biological, chemical and nuclear weapons are all still under feverish development and in some cases deployment.

The Arabs remain backward and outclassed in ever measure and at every turn -- despite a population some 20+ times greater than Israel and all the oil wealth that is so terribly squandered by the "royal" families.

And so the Israelis, now about to annex the great majority of settlements across the "Green Line" camouflaged by the "peace process" -- and foisting a unique Middle Eastern apartheid scheme on the Palestinians camouflaged by Arafat's disingenuous "Palestinian State" and huge payments (i.e., bribes) to his corrupt regime -- remain supreme.

It is this overall supremacy of course which explains what is happening at Camp David and why the Arabs are about to be shafted by one more international conference taking place not in their own world but in that of their modern-day conqueror.

--

ISRAEL'S COVERT NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM

By Eric Margolis

LONDON - 2 July: In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at Israel's Dimona reactor center, revealed to the `Sunday Times' of London that Israel had secretly developed 100-200 nuclear warheads, using French and American-supplied technology. Vanunu was lured to Rome in a classic `honey trap' and kidnapped by Israeli agents. He was convicted of treason and has been held in solitary confinement for the past 14 years.

Earlier this month, the `Sunday Times' broke a second major story about Israel's covert nuclear programs. According to leaked information supplied to the `Times,' Israel used a newly acquired Dolphin-class submarine to test a hitherto secret cruise missile designed to carry a nuclear warhead.

The cruise missile is said to have hit a target 900 miles from its launch point off the coast of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean, and may have a maximum range of 1,200 mile. Israel has become increasingly involved in Sri Lanka's civil war, supplying the embattled Colombo government with weapons, munitions, and military advisors to combat Tamil Tigers rebels.

The state-of-the-art, 1750-ton Dolphin diesel subs were supplied to Israel by Germany as near freebie `guilt payments' because Iraq used some German-made components in its military programs during the Gulf War. Revelations that Israel is using the $440 million each subs as nuclear launch platforms has deeply embarrassed Germany's ardently anti-nuclear socialist government.

This also raises the fascinating question of how and where the Dolphins were modified to accept missiles. The cruise missile used by the Israelis is believed too large to be fired from the Dolphin's 21-inch torpedo tubes. The original 1990 design called for lengthening the hull to accommodate a `wet and dry' compartment for frogmen - unusual in an attack sub- and for `extra torpedo storage.' This was clearly the cover for what became a missile compartment of four vertical launch tubes.

If true, this suggests full German collaboration in Israel's covert nuclear program - in spite of Berlin's anguished denials. The United States was originally to have supplied the subs to Israel, but claimed to lack the capability to build modern, conventional powered boats, and bucked the job to German yards, who have a century of experience in building U-boats. A cynic might suspect the US pressured Germany into supplying Israel's latest nuclear weapons platforms to escape an inevitable firestorm of protest by its Arab oil clients.

Israel now has a complete nuclear triad: air-delivered bombs; intermediate-range Jericho missiles; and now the sea-launched cruise missile. This important development means Israel has a counter-force nuclear capability that can ride out any enemy nuclear attack and riposte with a devastating strike from the sea. Israel will reportedly base one Dolphin in the Mediterranean, the second in the Red Sea, and the third in port for maintenance.

The Dolphin `roving launch platforms' also give Israel the ability to strike almost anywhere on the globe, and particularly against Iran and Pakistan, which Israel singles out as `long-range' enemies. Israel's Mossad long claimed Iran would deploy nuclear weapons by 2000. When proven wrong, Mossad now claims the date is 2002. US intelligence estimates Tehran will not even have a prototype weapon before 2010, and no deliverable warhead until 2012-13 - if ever. Iran denies developing nuclear weapons.

Revelations of Israel's new cruise missile have provoked a storm of outrage in the rest of the Mideast at an exceptionally delicate time when regional peace negotiations hang in the balance. One might suspect Israel's missile test may have been leaked to scupper Arab-Israeli peace talks.

Some defense analysts maintain Israel's sea-launched missiles are actually a stabilizing factor that eliminated the threat of a decapitating nuclear attack. Israel's Jericho missile base at Kfar Zachariah near Tel Aviv lacks hardened silos and is thus vulnerable to a surprise nuclear attack. The same applies to airbases where nuclear bombs are stored for Israel's US-supplied F-15E's. Inadequately protected nuclear forces lead to a `use or loose' mentality in time of crisis.

But the latest revelations about Israel's nuclear arsenal - now the world's fourth or fifth most powerful - will likely spur the Arab states and Iran to intensify efforts to acquire a nuclear counter-force, and to develop `poor man's' weapons of mass destruction to match Israel's extensive nuclear, chemical and biological arsenal.

This bombshell also comes as Israel faces growing pressure in the UN over its nuclear weapons. Israel is the only Mideast nation that refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty(NPT). Egypt insists Israel must sign NPT as part of a comprehensive Mideast peace. Cairo is pressing for a Mideast nuclear-free zone and demands Israel allow inspection of its nuclear complex at Dimona. Egypt claims Israel's 40-year old, French-supplied reactor there is unsafe and a hazard - a sort of Mideast Chernobyl.

The United States, in an unusual volte face, is quietly backing Egypt's position. Washington is doubtlessly expressing its growing displeasure with Israel over recent sales of high-tech Israeli arms and technology to China, much of them American origin, and over Israeli espionage against the United States.

The first battery of Israel's `Arrow' anti-missile system just went operational; THEL, a new laser anti-tactical missile system, follows soon. Now, sea-launched cruise missiles. What next? An Israeli landing on Mars?

-------- japan

Heliport issue tears apart close-knit Henoko village

Asahi Evening News
TOSHIO JO
July 14, 2000
http://www.asahi.com/english/asahi/0714/asahi071401.html

NAGO, Okinawa Prefecture-Katsuo Shimabukuro is extremely worried. Debate over a planned heliport as a replacement site for the U.S. Marines' Futenma air station has split the close-knit Henoko district in the city of Nago.

Shimabukuro, a leader of a residents group that backs the relocation plan, is concerned that the rift could scuttle the village's traditional summer event-grand tugs of war.

Practically all the villagers have helped prepare for the ritual, which is held every three years to pray for good harvests in the area. This year, however, things could be different. ``I am wondering if everyone will take part in the preparations this year,'' Shimabukuro said.

He has good reason to worry.

Henoko, a small village of about 1,400 residents, has been divided since an area off the district's coast and within Camp Schwab's boundaries was selected to take over the functions of the Futenma base in Ginowan, central Okinawa. Relocation of the air base's functions was part of the Tokyo-Washington deal to return the Futenma site to Japan.

Shimabukuro's group, called the Henoko Rejuvenation Committee, backs the reclamation of the Henoko coast for the heliport.

And in late December, Nago Mayor Tateo Kishimoto formally expressed his readiness to accept the heliport plan. His official acceptance was followed by the central government's announcement of a 10-year package of economic promotion measures worth 100 billion yen.

Opponents say the heliport will lead to U.S. military problems for the village. Supporters say the area needs the central government's economic measures.

The Henoko district is a typical traditional rural area in Okinawa where all villagers know each other. The community consists of 10 han (units), each with its own representative.

The strain over the heliport issue was apparent on June 18, when the 10 han held their annual sports festival.

``Members of four or five families in our 10th han, which has about 40 families, did not mingle with other families of our group,'' said Fuminori Kinjo, 45, a farmer who also works part time for a Nago company.

Kinjo supports the heliport project, saying that the future economic prosperity of the district should be the overriding priority for residents.

With the Group of Eight summit in Okinawa scheduled for July 21-23, the district appears very calm. But some call it the lull before the storm.

After Kishimoto expressed his backing for the proposed heliport project, the Council to Block the Heliport Construction, a group of about 20 residents, tried to recall the mayor. The council's campaign, however, never got off the ground.

Yuji Kinjo, a leader of the council, admits that they were fighting an uphill battle.

The council is now trying to collect anti-heliport signatures from across the country and submit the petition to U.S. President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori when they gather in Nago for the G-8 summit.

But the signature campaign is apparently not going so well. ``You see, it is not the number of signatures that really counts,'' Kinjo said. ``We just want to submit the signatures to Clinton, who is the leader of a nation that prides itself as the front-runner of the world's democracies.''

The central government has practically ``frozen'' the heliport project for the past few months because of the summit. After the summit, more specifics on the proposed heliport project will be announced. ``This will make our once-peaceful district even more divided,'' Kinjo said.

Muneyoshi Kayo, a leader of a campaign to protect dugongs, said: ``The government's selection of our district as the site of the new heliport is tantamount to declaring a death sentence. If we have to die, we want to die after being given a convincing explanation by the government on why Henoko is selected.''

Kayo said adults have the responsibility to protect the environment for future generations. ``Even if we are poor, we will be happy as long as we are healthy and have a good natural environment,'' he said.

Tsuneo Miyagi, chairman of the Henoko Commerce and Industry Association, has expressed conditional support for the heliport project. The association's position is that the proposed heliport must be built at least 3 kilometers offshore.

``Please don't call those baking the heliport project supporters,'' Miyagi said. ``No one would want bases here. We just have to think about the economic development of our village.''

Soken Kayo, the administrative head of the village who has been caught up in the tug of war between villagers, said: ``I just want to ask the press to leave our village alone for a while. This is such a delicate issue that the villagers are trying not to let it affect their daily lives.''

----

NUCLEAR REACTOR PLAN OK'd

Asahi Shimbun
July 14, 2000
http://www.asahi.com/english/asahi/0714/asahi071402.html

The governor's approval in Hokkaido is the first since the disaster at the uranium processing plant in Tokaimura.

SAPPORO-Plans to build a nuclear reactor in Hokkaido was approved today despite lingering public fears stemming from the criticality disaster last year that killed two workers.

Hokkaido Governor Tatsuya Hori gave the green light to build a new nuclear reactor at Hokkaido Electric Power Co.'s plant near the village of Tomari on the southwest coast of Hokkaido.

In Shimane Prefecture, meanwhile, Governor Nobuyoshi Sumita was to OK a plan in a prefectural assembly session today to build a third reactor at Chugoku Electric Power Co.'s nuclear plant in Kashima.

Hori's approval is the first for a governor since Japan's worst-ever nuclear accident struck JCO Co.'s uranium processing facility in Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture, in September. The accident, caused by apparent time-saving and illegal uranium processing procedures, killed two workers at the facility and shattered public confidence in the government's nuclear power generation policy.

In a special budget committee in the Hokkaido Assembly early today, Hori acknowledged Hokkaido Electric Power Co.'s forecast that a new power source of 900,000 kilowatts will be needed after 2008.

Hori said he had no choice but to approve the reactor project because there are no plans for an alternative energy source.

Under the power company's plan, the 912,000-kilowatt No. 3 reactor will start operating in December 2008.

Around the nation, however, power demand has not grown as expected amid the still-sluggish economy.

But the two plans in Hokkaido and Shimane have proceeded smoothly because the reactors will be added to existing nuclear facilities, power company officials said.

Observers said it is easier for governors to approve additional reactors because local autonomies housing nuclear power plants receive special central government subsidies for a limited period of time. Many small communities rely on the stable income from the subsidies and endorse new reactors to receive fresh funds.

In stark contrast, plans to build nuclear power plants from scratch have faced strong opposition.

Chubu Electric Power Co. scrapped its plan in February to build a nuclear power plant in Ashihama, Mie Prefecture, in line with the prefectural governor's wishes.

Tohoku Electric Power Co. postponed its original plan for a new nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture until the term of an anti-nuclear mayor ends.

----

World Conference against A and H Bombs will raise anti-nuclear weapon cooperation to a new stage

FIRST TRANSMISSION, FRIDAY, JULY 14, 2000
From: Japan Press Service jpspress@twics.com
JPS 07-058 2000

TOKYO JUL 14 JPS -- Japan Council against A and H Bombs (Japan Gensuikyo) Secretary General Hiroshi Takakusagi in an interview reported by Akahata on July 14 spoke about this year's World Conference against A and H Bombs which begins on August 2 in Hiroshima.

The task is for this year's world conference to give a concrete shape to the world's increasing aspirations for a nuclear-free 21st century.

An important change toward this goal took place at the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in April-May in New York. Member states rejected the proposal by the U.S. and some other nuclear weapons states for making the elimination of nuclear weapons a task for an indefinite future. This was unexpected for a conference on the NPT, which provides a mechanism that definitely serves the five nuclear weapons states maintaining their nuclear weapons monopoly.

This change has been brought about by the cooperation between the New Agenda Coalition, the Non-Aligned States, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which helped the conference adopt the final document stating an "unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapons states to accomplish the total elimination of nuclear arsenals."

A great advance also took place in the Millennium Forum which started on May 22 at United Nations headquarters. The forum was for drafting a final report on the consensus of the world's NGOs, which is to be submitted to the Millennium Summit at the beginning of the U.N. General Assembly in September.

The agreed document cites the warning of the survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that the error of the 20th century must never be repeated in the 21st century. It calls on the U.N. to convoke a special General Assembly session devoted to disarmament. It also calls on member governments to hold by early 2001 an international conference devoted to the elimination of nuclear weapons. It proposes that governments take maritime measures for rejection of the entry of vessels into their ports unless they produce certificates that they have no nuclear weapons aboard.

Such points were generally agreed on in an international conference which was open to various organizations. This development can be taken as a certain progress in the world's public opinion for peace and also as a new condition for increased common action and cooperation.

Against this backdrop, the Japanese government is standing at a crossroads. Its position of eliminating nuclear weapons in an indefinite future, which is a consequence of its subordination to U.S. policy, has become bankrupt internationally. Will it be able to change its position to earnestly addressing the task of nuclear elimination in the U.N. and in other forums?

Another question for the Japanese government is whether it discloses at its own responsibility all secret agreements with the U.S. which allow U.S. nuclear weapons being brought in Japan.

Japan's Three Non-nuclear Principles (not to manufacture, possess, or allow nuclear weapons to be brought in) will be violated as long as these secret agreements on nuclear weapons exist. The voices of an overwhelming majority of the people of the A-bombed Japan calling for a nuclear-free Japan must be allowed to take a lead in the coming world conference.

For this year's world conference we will emphasize cooperation and solidarity. The conference will move out of the boundary of a peace movement. Delegates of national and local governments abroad will be invited. Victims abroad of nuclear tests will be invited to discuss with Japan's hibakusha (A-bomb survivors).

The 2000 World Conference against A and H Bombs will propose tasks for anti-nuclear peace movement in the 21st century and sums up the remaining tasks of the 20th century before the Millennium Summit and the UNGA in the latter half of the year 2000.

--

Okinawa's village mayor must fight against U.S. Forces to protect villagers' life

JPS 07-059

TOKYO JUL 14 JPS -- Tokushin Yamauchi served as the mayor of Yomitan Village in Okinawa from 1974 to 1998. The 24 years of his mayoralty is the history of his struggles against the U.S. Forces to protect Yomitan Village people's lives and to improve their living standards. Recalling what he had done, he said:

When I was elected as village mayor in 1974, I decided to establish public facilities for villagers' benefits on the U.S. base site, which occupied 73% of the village land at the time.

In the early 1980s, a welfare center was constructed. Its major buildings were outside the U.S. base and lavatories and parking lots were inside it. The U.S. Forces didn't allow us to put lighting equipment in the lavatories on the grounds that night lighting could cause jamming in the U.S. Sobe Communication Site located within one mile from the facility.

The U.S. Forces expropriated a large area of the people's land and refused to allow lights on in the lavatories. I couldn't accept such unreasonableness. There were already many outdoor lights to prevent crimes within one mile of the communication site and they didn't cause any jamming. Showing the map of the lights, I urged the U.S. Forces to approve my plan, and they finally gave in.

If a local government head is made fool of by the U.S. Forces, he won't be able to protect his people's lives and living. To both Japan's government and the U.S. Forces, I always said that the villagers have sovereign power in Yomitan Village. U.S. soldiers were all tall and big. But they would surrender to us, if we are firmly determined with reason.

Based on this principle, I called on the U.S. Forces to carry out my plan and realized the construction of the village office, baseball grounds, an athletic field, and a cultural hall on the U.S. base site.

Okinawan people are allowed to have the basic human rights as the Americans are. I want U.S. President Bill Clinton to be aware of this.

--

Schedule for 2000 World Conference against A & H Bombs and its related events

JPS 07-060

TOKYO JUL 14 JPS -- The 2000 World Conference against A and H Bombs will be held from Aug.2 to Aug.9. The schedule for major events is as follows:

World Conference/ International Meeting Hiroshima *August 2 (Wed) Opening plenary at Hiroshima Intl. Conference Hall *Aug 3 (Thu) plenary meeting and group discussions at Hiroshima Kosei Nenkin Kaikan *Aug 4 (Fri) Closing plenary at Hiroshima Kosei Nenkin Kaikan

World Conference Hiroshima *August 4 (Fri) Opening plenary at Hiroshima Prefectural Gym *Aug 5 (Sat) Group discussions / Special programs at various places in the city / "Peace Jam" at Hiroshima Pref. Gym / Women's meeting at Hiroshima Postal Saving Hall, followed by Women's March 2000 *Aug 6 (Sun) 10:30a.m.-1p.m. -- Closing Plenary at Hiroshima Prefectural Gym

World Conference Nagasaki *August 8 (Fri) Special Programs; workshops *Aug 9 (Wed) Plenary at Nagasaki Prefectural Gym

--

Scholars and union oficials call on Hitachi for early settlement of dispute

JPS 07-061

TOKYO JUL 14 JPS -- Calling for the retraction of the dismissal of a Hitachi Ltd. worker, six scholars and union officials along with the fired employee on July 13 visited the electronics giant's head office in Tokyo, calling for an early settlement of the dispute.

They submitted to the company 362 scholars' signatures calling for a compensation and reinstatement of Hideyuki Tanaka, who has been sacked for more than 32 years on the grounds that he once refused overtime work.

Setsu Ito, secretary general of an institute for female workers' problems, said that all researchers are interested in the Hitachi-Tanaka dispute, because a breadwinner's long working hours affect his or her family's well-being.

Michio Goto, a professor at Tsuru University, demanded that the company not intervene in an employee's life after the day's work.

In Hitachi since last March, a labor group of 81 employees and the company management have been negotiating a settlement of disputes on various problems, including wage discrmination based on thought. The group insists that a settlement of Tanaka's case is essential to the settlement of all the other disputs.

The Hitachi-Tanaka dispute caught the attention of government representatives on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in April.

--

USS Essex, world's largest amphibious assault ship, deployed at Sasebo

JPS 07-062

TOKYO JUL 14 JPS -- The world's largest assault ship with the state-of-the art technology of the U.S. Navy arrived at Sasebo in Nagasaki on July 13.

The USS Essex, an amphibious assault ship (40,532 tons) anchored at the U.S. Sasebo Naval Base for a 20-day port call to replace the USS Belleau Wood.

At Maehata pier of the port, peace activists had an emergency rally, chanting "Essex, Go home!"

Prior to the port call, the local shipyard, Sasebo Heavy Industry (SSK) moved a large civil cargo ship to vacate the designated pier at the U.S. Forces request in accordance with the Japan-U.S. Status of the U.S. Forces Agreement.

The evacuation order obliges the shipyard to take a 20-day pause to operation at the pier, which will affect 16,000 jobs during the period.

In the protest rally, a Japanese Communist Party member of the Nagasaki Prefectural Assembly said that Japan, accepting the military build-up which runs counter to the world trend to peace, could be a single nation in the world to host U.S. military bases in the 21st century.

Commenting on the Essex's port call in Sasebo, Akahata argued that the U.S. intends to retain the naval base as its single fixed overseas stronghold of the largest amphibious assault ship and reinforce its functions for operation from the sea towards the 21st century.

The mission of the Essex is to act as a hub of a U.S. Navy strategy, "forward from the sea," and achieve the mission with continuity and agility.

In actual operations from the sea, the Essex will carry Marines equipped with Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC), landing ships, cargo helicopters, vertical landing and takeoff craft MV22 Ospreys and support sortie ashore.

MV22 Ospreys are expected to be deployed on the ship. The U.S. Marines is planning to deploy the newly developed craft in Okinawa for fall in 2005.

Staring with the Belleau Wood, the U.S. Sasebo Naval Base has been strengthened as a home base for amphibious assault ships.

Akahata said the creation of the 31st Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU) with special combat ability spurred the deployment of these vessels in the naval base.

With the U.S. Marines in Okinawa, these vessels have repeatedly participated in U.S. actions abroad from the Asia Pacific region to the Middle East and Africa, including Somalia, Indonesian and Iraq. (end item)

----

July 13, 2000

Friends,

At the end of June, I traveled to Okinawa to participate in a remarkable International Forum on People's Security. It brought together Okinawan scholars and activists, and politically engaged scholars and other activists from across Japan, Korea, China, The Phillippines, Indonesia, and.... Below please find the conference's declaration which is being released on the eve of the G-8 summit in Nago, Okinawa - not coincidentally the town where the U.S. plans to build a major new air base. I am currently working on an op ed article which I hope will see the light of day, and which I will post when appropriate. With best wishes, Joseph Gerson

--
Redefining security

The Declaration of Okinawa International Forum on People's Security
Towards People's Security in the Asia Pacific Region
July 2, 2000

Urasoe, Okinawa We, the participants of the Okinawa International Forum on People's Security, are gathered here today with a strong desire to work towards a world where the genuine peace and security of peoples, individuals, communities, and nations, are guaranteed and protected. We are a diverse community, coming from different parts of Asia, the Pacific, and the United States, sharing a common vision and recognizing that our struggles for peace, justice, and equality are bound together and inter-connected, and believing that our real security as people and peoples lies not in the structures of force, military, and economic power which have dominated our everyday lives and societies and exploited and destroyed our natural resources and environment.

State security contradicts people's security. The military doesn't protect people, it destabilizes societies. We work to create people's security clearly differentiated from the security of the state by coming together, building alliances beyond borders of race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, economic and social status, and transforming the structures that perpetuate and sustain injustices and inequalities. People themselves, particularly those socially oppressed and suffering from lack of security, are the main actors in creating people's security so they can live in justice without fear and anxiety. People's security is based on human rights, gender justice, ecological justice, and social solidarity. It calls for demilitarization. Our means to achieve it is non-violent.

Meeting in Okinawa

The South-North Korean summit which took place just two weeks ago marks a historic process -- a continuing process in which a whole people are taking upon themselves the task of finding solutions to one of the most crucial and difficult issues in East Asia, that of peace, reconciliation, and autonomous national reunification of the divided Korean peninsula. This landmark event opens many possibilities and thus encourages us - and yet it further inspires us and strengthens our resolve to continue to work towards the removal of the biggest sources of insecurity of the peoples in this region: the overwhelming, suffocating, and violently dangerous military presence of the United States of America.

Okinawa represents a most appropriate site of our gathering. Okinawa is the site of the single largest concentration of overseas U.S. military bases --- it is also the site of a dynamic popular protest against a foreign military presence which has been enforced and continues to be enforced on the land, resources, lives, and dignity of a struggling people. Okinawa is where the people have experienced and engraved in their historical memory that the military is nothing but a machinery of organized destruction of human lives and communities.

Preposterously, the G-8 summit is going to be held at Nago in Okinawa where a major new US base is being imposed against the will of the people. U.S. President Bill Clinton declared that the G-8 summit in Okinawa shall clearly demonstrate the value of the U.S.-Japan alliance, while the late Prime Minister Obuchi Keizo of Japan announced that the G-8 summit in Okinawa was intended to send the world a "message of peace."

But what kind of "message of peace" does this bring to the people of the world?

Meeting here in Okinawa, whose very land and people, women and young children, bear witness to the continuing legacy of the folly of war and the machinery of war, we are painfully reminded of the tragedy and violence that have marked our collective histories as Asian and Pacific peoples. Meeting here in Okinawa, therefore, offers us a precious opportunity to express our deepest solidarity with the struggle of the Okinawan people, and at the same time challenges us to confront and address the immediate and long-standing critical issues that threaten the security of peoples of Asia and the Pacific.

Pentagon Refocuses on Asia and the Pacific

Despite the disappearance of the Cold War enemy, the Pentagon recently came out with "Joint Vision 2020" which envisages Asia as the prime focus of U.S. military in the coming decades. It represents a re-focusing of U.S. military might on Asia rather than Europe. It affirms tighter military coordination between the U.S. and Japan and covets continued U.S. military presence in the East Asia region beyond eventual reunification of the Korean peninsula.

Okinawa has for many years been the "lynchpin" of the U.S. military strategy in the Asia-Pacific region and its role is being reinforced as the U.S.-Japan military alliance is being redefined and strengthened by the adoption of a joint war plan called the Joint Defense Guidelines. Under the redefined alliance with the U.S., Japan is heading toward a status of war-capable big power. For the U.S., keeping its bases secure in Okinawa is a key to its strategy of continuing its regional and global hegemonic dominance. There is no doubt in our minds that with the pursuit of such strategy, neither the U.S., nor Japan or its other allies are true bearers of peace.

Militarized Security: A Source of Our Insecurity

We have reached the conclusion that :

Firstly, the U.S. military, whose presence in the region continues to be centered on the Japanese and South Korean territories and is supported by the ruling elites in many of our countries, has no intention of protecting the interests of the vast majority of the peoples of Asia and the Pacific. It serves to safeguard the interest of U.S. hegemony as the core of the neo-liberal globalization which has been plundering our natural resources, destroying our environments, and exploiting the vast majority of our peoples, particularly women, children, farmers, workers, migrant workers, tribal communities and indigenous peoples. In other words, it has no other aim but to protect corporate profit and U.S. and allied economic interests. The expansion of U.S. military power in the region, in alliance with Japan, is a form of military globalization, shaping, protecting, and often enforcing political and economic globalization, and serves as threat to, and not as a guarantee of, our security as peoples.

Secondly, our own experiences with the power of the military in our own countries, as it dominates and influences our everyday lives and the histories of our countries, have also taught us that military establishments, be they regional or local, do not protect the people, but only defend and protect themselves. They are the major source of danger to the rights of the people in many countries. Indeed, the institutionalized linkages between the Pentagon and many of our militaries are a source of great insecurity.

Thirdly, we believe that the military structure and ideology is based on, perpetuates, and multiplies male dominance, gender oppression, and exploitation, often of a most brutal and violent nature. They revolve around aggression and war preparedness targeted against enemies --and where there are no real enemies, enemies are created, constructed, or imagined. It carries values of masculinism and masculine power of domination based on physical strength, and notions of superiority of race, economic status, or national and ethnic chauvinism. It has, therefore, often claimed as its victims and targeted as its objects of violence and domination, women, the girl-child, and children. It is not surprising that some of the strongest criticisms of the military, of military bases, and of militarism, come from women and women's movements. The history of women's struggles and peace-building everywhere, especially of solidarity transcending traditional borders and boundaries amidst situations of war, militarisation, and

Our action toward people's security

It is people's security that is subverted and undermined by corporate-led globalization, the acceleration of which is the agenda of the G-8 Summit in Nago. Ultimately, it is this process of destructive globalization that is guarded by the U.S. military presence. And ultimately, the struggle for equality, decent work and standards of living, gender equality, and ecological stability cannot be separated from the dismantling of oppressive military structures.

Acting together, we must:

- Come to terms with our own histories, with the complicity of our societies, and of our own selves, in the toleration or perpetuation of violence or violent structures, relations and values. We must endeavor to raise our mutual trust by being sensitive to the likelihood of this complicity permeating our mutual relationships.

- This is especially urgent in Japan, whose government and people still have to take responsibility for their imperial past including aggression, colonial domination and accompanying atrocities such as military sexual slavery. Furthermore, they must assume responsibility for the impact of current Japanese economic domination and re-emerging militarism. This applies in different ways to the United States.

- Overcome through frank dialogue and interaction the people-to-people conflicts, hatreds, and suspicions of the past that have often been instigated by the war machinery itself and allow the U.S. military to pose as the "preserver of the peace" and prevent us from creating the regional structures to solve our problems among ourselves.

- Address the situation of conflicts in our own societies and work towards the building of mutual trust and respect amongst our communities, nations, and peoples. One community's security should never be another community's insecurity.

- Work towards a peaceful and de-militarized and nuclear-free Asia-Pacific region which promotes alternative ways of people-to-people and state-to-state cooperation and which is based on multilateral systems enhancing people's security.

- Take action so that people's security is pursued and created not only in the military, diplomatic, and political areas but also in the areas of everyday life, such as family, gender relations, social movement, and culture.

Immediate steps toward peace

As immediate steps towards these, we demand:

1) Unconditional retraction of the new U.S. project of constructing new military bases in Okinawa based on the Special Action Committee on Facilities and Areas in Okinawa (SACO) agreement.

2) Immediate closure of U.S. bombing range at Maehyangri in South Korea.

3) Immediate and unconditional termination of all U.S. military presence from Okinawa, Mainland Japan, Korea, and throughout the region.

4) Immediate and unconditional stop to all nuclear testing and dumping and trans-shipment of nuclear and toxic wastes in the Pacific and the immediate clean-up following the withdrawal of military bases and sites.

5) Abandonment of the Theater Missile Defense (TMD) program that only serves to aggravate arms race, further destabilize the regional relationships, and, in the process of implementation would destroy the Pacific islands' environment and violate the sovereignty and dignity of their citizens and communities.

6) Ending and reversing the process of U.S.' "reentry into Southeast Asia," notably the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, through Visiting Forces Agreement and other arrangements; the U.S. military should not resume military cooperation with the Indonesian armed forces

7) Implementation of drastic and significant cuts in military budgets and military spending and re-channeling the resources towards meeting the basic needs of people especially for schools, hospitals, and the delivery of other social services as well as for conflict prevention.

8) Immediate investigation into acts of military repression and violence against civilian population; perpetrators should be punished and victims should be justly compensated. The human rights abuses by the Indonesian armed forces should be thoroughly investigated and prosecuted.

9) Complete cleaning of the vacated base sites by the governments concerned based on thorough investigations into their ecological conditions, participated in by the people's groups concerned.

10) An end to foreign military training and arms export/sales in the region.

11) An end to the neo-liberal globalization exploiting our people and destroying our environments, which is being safeguarded and protected by an expanded and globalized military hegemony.

We call on all peace-loving peoples of the world, and all peoples desirous of building a world where the genuine security of peoples is protected and guaranteed, to join hands with us, to act together with us, for we believe that it is in our creative power and our own people-to-people alliance, crossing borders and boundaries, where lie the beginnings of our people's security.

----

TEPCO says to reopen radiation-hit nuclear plant

07-07-00
Reuters

TOKYO, July 7 (Reuters) - A 1,100-megawatt nuclear reactor in Japan, closed last week after radiation was found in water that had leaked from cracked pipes, will soon be reopened by Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc (TEPCO), the firm said on Friday.

The June 29 closure was the latest incident in a series to raise concern about the trouble-plagued industry in Japan.

TEPCO, the world's largest publicly traded utility, shut the No. 2 Kashiwazaki-Kariwa power plant on the Japan Sea coast after it found a small amount of radiation in a pool of water below a network of pipes linked to a high-pressure turbine.

A crack of about two cm (0.8 inch) was discovered where the pipes had been welded, TEPCO said in a statement.

It added no radiation leaked into the environment from the incident, classified as level zero on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

A TEPCO spokesman said it expected to fix the problem in the next few days and resume operation of the reactor soon after.

Japan's 51 commercial reactors account for roughly a third of the nation's electricity supply and a series of accidents at nuclear facilities, most notably one last September at a uranium processing plant in which two workers died from radiation exposure, has led to mounting public mistrust of the industry.

The government said in March it would review its nuclear policy and is expected to cut its target of building up to 20 more reactors by 2010.

-------- russia

Sea Launch sets sail for equator

By Associated Press
Friday, July 14, 2000
http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2000/07/07142000/ap_launch_14777.asp

A Russian-Ukrainian rocket and its floating platform have departed for the equator to prepare for the Sea Launch venture's first liftoff since a $100 million satellite was destroyed.

The massive pad - a converted offshore oil rig - left Thursday and will travel 3,000 miles to a site 1,400 miles south of Hawaii. A Zenit-3SL rocket carrying an 8,000-pound communications satellite is scheduled to blast off July 28.

The international consortium's last launch ended minutes after liftoff March 12 when a second-stage valve failed to close.

Nobody was injured, but the $100 million payload - a satellite for London-based ICO Global Communications - was destroyed. The problem was traced to a software glitch.

"We have eliminated the possibility of this error in the future," said Sea Launch Co. President Will Trafton.

The July 28 launch, which would be the fourth for Sea Launch, will loft PanAmSat's PAS-9 into a transfer orbit about 2,100 miles above the Indian Ocean. It will then move to 22,500 miles from Earth.

The satellite will provide broadcast and general communications services for the Americas, the Caribbean and Western Europe.

Launches at the equator allow a rocket to carry more weight into space than they can from other latitudes. Because the platform is surrounded by the ocean, there is little chance of the rocket's stages falling on populated areas.

The Boeing Co. is the venture's U.S. partner.

-----

Rift Deepens In Leadership Of Russian Armed Forces
Defense Minister Rejects Rival's Plan for Troop Cut

By David Hoffman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, July 14, 2000; Page A16
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/14/103l-071400-idx.html

MOSCOW, July 13-A rift in the Russian military leadership deepened today when Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev publicly rejected a proposal by Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, chief of the general staff, to slash the country's missile troops and downgrade their status.

Sergeyev told a key Defense Ministry meeting Wednesday that the existing armed forces structure should be preserved, the Interfax news agency reported today. Under that structure, the strategic rocket forces are a separate branch of the military responsible for Russia's land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles. Sergeyev is a former head of the rocket forces.

In the same meeting, Kvashnin called for subordinating the missile troops to the army and slashing the number of missile troops seven-fold, Interfax said. Kvashnin, long a champion of conventional forces, said the cuts could be made because Russia's missile arsenal is shrinking.

Kvashnin's proposal would boost the general staff's role in managing Russia's nuclear forces and was seen as part of a power struggle within the military. Last year, Sergeyev proposed a plan that would have reduced the influence of the general staff over nuclear weapons, but it was not implemented.

Sergeyev, who was appointed by former president Boris Yeltsin, is eventually expected to step down and let President Vladimir Putin chose his own defense minister; Kvashnin is thought to want the job.

Gen. Valery Manilov, a deputy chief of the general staff, elaborated on Kvashnin's proposal today. He said the conventional forces were "rapidly deteriorating" because of "extremely limited financing," while "the military threats that should be parried" by these troops have increased. "The scale of these threats has become dangerous to national security," he said.

But Sergeyev, who is Kvashnin's boss, made clear that he was against the plan. According to military sources quoted by Interfax, Sergeyev told the Wednesday meeting that any change in the military structure should be "approached reasonably" and that Kvashnin's proposal was a "remote" idea given the course of arms control talks.

Manilov said that Sergeyev ordered documents on the dispute to be prepared immediately and submitted to the Kremlin Security Council for a decision by Putin before the end of the month.

Meanwhile, both sides acknowledged today that a special commission of military experts expressed alarm over the state of Russia's conventional troops. Kvashnin was quoted by Interfax as saying that a pledge to devote 3.5 percent of Russia's gross domestic product to defense each year has not been implemented, and that an increase is not expected for five to 10 years. Kvashnin proposed that the Russian military be turned into a land-sea-air triad by 2003, which would mean eliminating the rocket forces as a separate branch.

It was also announced that Russia has decided to add 50,000 troops to its southern and southwestern flanks out of concern about instability in central Asia and the northern Caucasus.

----

Russian Defense Minister Openly Criticizes Missile Proposal

New York Times
July 14, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/00/07/14/late/14ap-russia.html

MOSCOW -- Using exceptionally strong language, Russia's usually low-key Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev on Friday criticized a plan to downgrade Russia's nuclear forces, a news report said.

Sergeyev is embroiled in an unusual public battle with Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, the head of the General Staff. Kvashnin wants to fold the Strategic Rocket Forces, which Sergeyev used to head, into the Air Force. That would lower the rocket forces' status.

Kvashnin's idea is ``criminal stupidity and an attempt to harm the national interests of Russia,'' the Interfax news agency quoted Sergeyev as saying.

The move would ``destroy'' the rocket forces and constitute ``a crime against Russia and simply madness,'' he was quoted as saying.

Russian generals usually settle their differences behind closed doors, and the outburst was a departure from Sergeyev's usually placid public demeanor.

Sergeyev called for public support ``from all who are not indifferent to Russia's fate, to the security of its people and its place in the world,'' Interfax said.

Kvashnin's plan, discussed at a meeting of military officials earlier this week, would overturn Sergeyev's competing idea to put the nuclear capabilities of the Navy and Air Force under an expanded missile force, to be renamed the Strategic Deterrent Force.

At the heart of the dispute are inter-service rivalries as well as differing views of how to guarantee Russia's security, analysts say.

Sergeyev and others think nuclear deterrence is the key to Russia's security as its conventional forces have deteriorated due to economic woes. They have put scarce funds into developing Russia's new Topol-M strategic missile.

Other generals, however, argue that Russia needs to buy conventional equipment to meet threats like the rebellion against Russian rule in Chechnya. Military analysts say Russian soldiers in the region even lack night-vision equipment, essential for fighting guerrillas.

Sergeyev was accompanying President Vladimir Putin at an arms show Friday in the Sverdlovsk region, 900 miles east of Moscow. Putin fired off a 1938-vintage howitzer to open the show.

----

A New Russian Revolution?

By Esther Dyson
Friday, July 14, 2000; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/14/041l-071400-idx.html

"No one will help Russia except ourselves!" So announced a pay-your-taxes poster plastered around Moscow last year. It was just one more invitation to cynicism among my honest friends, since Russian taxes tend not to deliver much in benefits to the deserving poor. In fact, for most of the 11 years I have been visiting Russia, these honest friends have stayed as far away as possible from government and politics; in Russia both are dirty business.

But in the past year or two, these same people have realized that they can't live honestly in a dishonest country. And if they want to change it, it's up to them.

Their challenge now is to change Russia's business culture rather than try to ignore it. There is no guarantee they will succeed, but their new activism and their increasing sophistication (as opposed to cynicism) are good signs. If they can win some popular support, as well as business success, their numbers will grow and their example might foster more honest entrepreneurs.

Last year a number of them--about 30 youngish business owners and managers in areas ranging from high-tech and forest products to executive search--formed a political discussion group called Club 2015. Their tactics are not to buy a couple of politicians, the usual Russian approach, by which you get what you pay for, but something more long-term (hence the name). They want to reshape the Russian political/economic mentality--to change the politicians and their behavior by changing what the voters expect from their politicians.

One step in this movement came recently in Salzburg at the summer meeting of the World Economic Forum, devoted to Central and Eastern Europe--a sort of off-Broadway version of the main gig held each winter in Davos. Over the years, Russia's "oligarchs"--business leaders who seem to have made their fortunes more from access than from effort--have made special use of Davos, both for deals among themselves and for reaching out to the world. It was at Davos that many of the sleaziest, most lucrative deals were cut.

But for last winter's session, the forum's organizers decided to invite a new kind of Russian: honest businessmen, including several members of Club 2015. They showed up in force at Davos in January, somewhat disorganized, and few noticed them--certainly not the oligarchs. But in Salzburg this summer the group decided to seize the opportunity, leverage the forum's clout and promote its own program of reform. Organized as the Russian Task Force, they met, argued and came to a rough consensus.

They are pushing three concrete proposals: adoption of international accounting standards as the Russian standard, free movement of capital and reform of the tariffs/customs system. None of these ideas is terribly new, and all have been rejected many times, often (by former premier Viktor Chernomyrdin, for example) as the self-serving demands of "inostranni [foreigners] charlatani."

The difference now is that Russia's own business community wants them; it wants a world in which honest companies do not compete at a disadvantage. All three proposals would make the economy more transparent, more open and more honest. The reformers' hope is that the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and others will promote them from "above," while the country's honest business people promote them from below.

Who are these people? Most of them would rather be running their businesses than dealing with politicians and reporters. They include Anatoly Karachinsky, head of Russia's largest ($200 million) software company (IBS), who blames Microsoft and others for stealing Russian programmers, and Olga Dergunova, head of Microsoft Russia. They also include Stan Shulman, founder of Syktykvar Forest Enterprise, and Sergei Vorobiev, head of the Russian office of the Ward Howell worldwide recruiting firm. One thing they have in common: All built their businesses independent of government largess.

They are united not by industry or ethnic background but by a common culture of building, rather than trading, businesses. They want the world to recognize the changes within Russia and support them, and they want Russians to understand that satisfying customers is the best way to get rich. They want to create a business culture in which companies like theirs succeed and those that manipulate and speculate are exposed.

They know they have much to learn about how to operate in such an open, competitive environment, and they want to do so. "Don't give us any more fish," Sergei Vorobiev said. "Teach us how to fish."

The writer is an active investor in high-tech startups, including six based in Russia.

----

A conflict on weapons in Russian military

ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 14 2000
http://web.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/07/14/national/RUSSIA14.htm

MOSCOW - A proposed reform of Russia's nuclear forces has exploded into a major conflict among the military's top brass, causing what the Russian media described yesterday as an unprecedented "coup attempt" against Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev.

A former chief of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces, Sergeyev insists Russia must develop its nuclear weapons to deter potential aggressors at a time when its conventional forces are in disarray. But as Russia's offensive against rebels in Chechnya drags on, commanders of conventional forces are demanding more money for tanks and artillery. Some have suggested that nuclear weapons programs take too much military funding.

The conflict escalated Wednesday, when military leaders discussed how to restructure the armed forces. Sergeyev advocated his longtime plan to beef up the Strategic Missile Forces.

But Anatoly Kvashnin, chief of the military's General Staff, urged significant cuts in the Strategic Missile Forces and called for incorporating them into the Air Force.

"For the first time in the history of the Russian army, the General Staff chief openly went against the defense minister," the daily Kommersant said. "What happened . . . can only be described as a coup attempt . . ."

Leonid Ivashov, a Defense Ministry official, downplayed the conflict, saying: "When a reform of the armed forces is under way, there are always a lot of discussions."

-------- turkey

Reppas: The Greek Government Is Opposed To Nuclear Plant at Akkuyu

Jul 14, 2000:
Macedonian Press Agency
From: "Jim Karygiannis" <krygnsmp@yesic.com>

Greek government spokesman Dimitris Reppas responding to a question by a reporter stated that the Greek government is opposed to the opening of a nuclear plant in Akkuyu, Turkey that will produce electric power.

Mr. Reppas stated that Greece was opposed to the use of atomic energy from the beginning and has appealed to international organizations citing among others the risks behind the opening of such a plant in a region with intense seismic activity.

The government spokesman stated that Greece will continue to make representations and reports both to the countries involved in the construction of the plant and to international organizations.

-------- u.s. nuc facilities

-------- colorado

Nuclear bomb parts as souvenirs
Rocky Flats workers took scrap items, federal report says; all have been returned

By Berny Morson
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer,
July 14, 2000
http://www.insidedenver.com/news/0712flat2.shtml

Nuclear bomb parts ended up as candy dishes, paperweights and curios on the desks of workers at the defunct Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant.

Thirty workers wrongly took the parts, none of which were radioactive, from trash bins, according to a report released last week by the Energy Department's inspector general. All of the parts have been returned.

"Some folks want to have a souvenir or memento of what happened here," said Paul Golan, the Rocky Flats deputy manager.

But the inspector general's report suggests that sloppy inventory controls at the plant in Jefferson County 13 miles northwest of downtown Denver could have allowed classified parts to fall into the wrong hands.

"There can be no assurance" that some radioactive parts weren't shipped to recycling companies along with harmless scrap metal, the report said.

----

Gift ideas for the nuclear family?

July 14, 2000
By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20007140214.htm

There's nothing like a couple of sentimental old bomb components to brighten up a place.

That was the theory, anyway, among workers at Colorado's now-defunct Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. They just wanted a little atomic cachet - some nukeknacks, really - to remind them of time spent at a Cold War pulse point.

And the workers got them, right from a scrap bin which contained a mother lode of obsolete or rejected stainless steel tubes, reservoirs and "hemi-shells" - bomb innards.

Nothing was "hot," in the radioactive sense. But they came in shapes ideal for reinvention as ironic candy dishes or paperweights.

"They were proud of the stuff they made," said John Corsi of Kaiser-Hill, the company charged with cleaning up the defunct site, which opened in 1952 and made plutonium bombs for decades.

"But it became a property management issue. Taking those items was inappropriate because they were government property," Mr. Corsi said.

Indeed. The Department of Energy (DOE), which oversees the site, would have none of it. During an inspection, DOE officials saw the purloined parts in a few offices and mentioned it in a recent report for the inspector general that assessed overall inventory control.

Thirty workers filched the shiny pieces around 1995; at least one took a prize home. Was inventory control lax?

"There was no assurance," the report said, that radioactive materials might not end up in trash, or in routine shipments to metal recycling companies. Yet watching over every little piece of equipment was not cost-effective, either.

This is, however, the first time a nuclear bomb plant has been dismantled. There is no real protocol. DOE officials said yesterday that efforts were under way to "develop the mechanism" for one.

All of this hubbub would hardly register on a Geiger counter, compared to the facility's woes of yesteryear.

Rocky Flats - often billed as "infamous" - was on report with various federal agencies for years.

There were fires in 1957 and 1969 which released plutonium into the air; an estimated 5,000 tons of contaminated solvent leaked from the plant in the 1960s. The FBI eventually raided it for "environmental crimes" in 1989 and the facility was closed.

But Rocky Flats was - and remains - an icon of the Cold War era, and not without its pride and patriotism, judging from an official on-line history found at www.rfets.gov.

Sequestered behind miles of barbed wire in the foothills north of Denver and guarded by security teams who could shoot to kill, the site maintained a compartmentalized, but tight-knit existence.

Employees had "Q," or atomic-level clearance, requiring a 15-year background check. They had white radiation safety uniforms, right down to their underwear and boots.

Workers were forbidden to talk about their daily activities; most didn't. They could not refer to such bomb-making staples as plutonium, uranium or americum and used code words instead. In the old days, supervisors would place a black "8-ball" on the desks of those who slipped up.

Only cleanup personnel now staff a $4 billion, six-year reclamation project that will eventually turn the compound into pristine grasslands.

Kaiser-Hill's Mr. Corsi is not unaware of the historic value of it all and has investigated possibilities of starting a community museum on his own time.

He would have a ready audience among those curious or even nostalgic about the Cold War. Already, decommissioned nuclear missile silos have been turned into museums and even private homes; fund raising is under way for a Cold War Museum to be located near Dulles airport.

Rocky Flats is still burdened with age and a dangerous pedigree. A 1999 Newsweek story claimed that 2,400 pounds of plutonium was still unaccounted for; a General Accounting Office report noted that $21 million in equipment was missing.

Anything which is both "missing" and nuclear in nature almost guarantees media coverage which smacks of a Tom Clancy novel -such as the oft-hysterical press garnered by the lost Los Alamos computer disks last month.

In recent years, curious stories have surfaced of radioactive recliner chairs and floor scrubbers, missing courier packages full of radioactive iridium, uranium fragments in old U.S. Archives files, misplaced portable nuclear bombs and U.S. Navy cook pots contaminated by cobalt-60.

In the big picture, the Rocky Flats nuclear curios are a small-scale problem.

"Things get misplaced sometimes," said a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which regulates safety procedures in private industry and medicine.

"The loss of those obsolete parts does not compare to someone walking off with a classified part. And these parts, most importantly, were not radioactive."

-------- new mexico

Study Group meeting

Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2000 19:14:10 -0600
From: Miranda Haley <mhaley@lasg.org>

The Los Alamos Study Group will hold its next public meeting on Monday, July 17. This meeting will provide basic information about radiation, an overview of the types and quantities of radioactive contaminants at Los Alamos, and an exploration of the risks likely to be involved with various levels of exposure.

This is a discussion oriented forum, so please bring your questions. The meeting will be held in the Community Room at the Santa Fe Public Library from 6:00pm-8:30pm. After July 17, there will be a break in the meeting schedule until September, at which time Study Group public meetings will resume on a regular, probably bi-monthly basis.

We hope to see you on Monday!
Miranda Haley Outreach Coordinator Los Alamos Study Group

-------- us nuc politics

Clinton Is Urged to Defer to Successor on Missile Shield
Top Senate Democrats Cite Recent Test Failure

By Helen Dewar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 14, 2000; Page A18
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/14/178l-071400-idx.html

Leading Senate Democrats yesterday called on President Clinton to let his successor decide whether to build a national missile defense system, while Republicans rejected a proposal to require more extensive tests before deploying the missile shield.

Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.), flanked by ranking Democrats on military and foreign policy committees, said he had been open to the possibility of a decision this fall to go ahead with the system, until it failed a critical flight test last weekend.

Considering the failure and other factors, "it just does not make sense to me that we would make any decision to move forward until we have more information" about the system's technological feasibility, impact on arms control agreements and overall implications for national security, Daschle said.

Daschle, along with Sens. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) of the Armed Services Committee and Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) of the Foreign Relations Committee, urged Clinton to set aside plans to decide soon whether to build the missile shield. Under the administration's plan, the first 20 interceptor missiles would be based in Alaska by 2005 and the force would grow to 100 interceptors by 2007, at a cost estimated by the Pentagon at $26 billion and by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office at $30 billion.

Although Daschle emphasized that he and his colleagues were speaking only for themselves, their comments underscored misgivings among many congressional Democrats about the missile defense program, especially after the failure of two out of three attempts to intercept dummy warheads high over the Pacific.

Pentagon experts are still analyzing data from the latest test, in which the interceptor "kill vehicle" failed to separate from its booster rocket. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, who is discussing missile defense on a visit to China this week, is expected to review the data and make a recommendation to the White House by mid-August.

In Beijing yesterday, a top official warned that China might halt cooperation on arms control and anti-proliferation efforts if the United States erects a missile shield. Russia and U.S. allies in Europe also have objected to the antimissile system on grounds that it would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and could ignite a nuclear arms race in Asia.

Asked whether Cohen would consider recommending that Clinton postpone the first step toward deployment of a missile defense, construction of a high-powered radar station in the Aleutian Islands, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman, said, "I don't think Secretary Cohen has put any bounds on recommendations that he'll make to the president."

Daschle's appeal to Clinton to put off a decision came as the GOP-controlled Senate voted 52 to 48, largely along party lines, to defeat a proposal that would have required more extensive testing of the antimissile system against decoys and other countermeasures that an enemy might use to fool U.S. interceptors.

The proposal, sponsored by Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and backed by all other Democrats, also would have required an independent review of ground and flight tests before the system could go into operation.

The proposal was described by Levin as a "common-sense, fly-before-you-buy" approach. But Republicans argued that it was unwarranted. If it had passed, it would have been an "unprecedented effort by the Senate to micromanage a weapons system testing program," Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) said.

Cochran and John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, argued that the Pentagon already is planning tests that include countermeasures. But Philip E. Coyle, director of the Pentagon's operational test and evaluation program, endorsed Durbin's proposal, saying it would "reinforce the need for realistic testing."

Warner initially indicated he could accept Durbin's proposal, then opposed it, contending the issue had become politicized. Only three Republicans--Olympia J. Snowe and Susan M. Collins of Maine and James M. Jeffords of Vermont--supported it.

Durbin denounced the vote, saying Republicans "ran like scalded cats" when asked for "an honest test" of the missile defense system.

Durbin's proposal was an amendment to legislation authorizing defense programs for next year, including $4.5 billion more than Clinton requested and $19 billion more than current spending. The bill itself was approved, 97 to 3.

In his comments urging Clinton to forgo a decision on missile defenses, Levin said the pressure is off for a decision this fall because the target date of 2005 for deployment of the shield is no longer viable. "Since no deployment could occur until a later date, there is no reason for a decision to be made this year," he said.

Biden was more sweeping in his condemnation of the plan. "This system is not ready for prime time," he said. "No president--this one or the next one, unless things change drastically--should in fact deploy this system."

Staff writer Roberto Suro contributed to this report.

----

Senate approves $1.9 billion for missile defense

July 14, 2000
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-200071401543.htm

Republican senators Thursday beat back Democratic efforts to delay implementation of the National Missile Defense program and authorized $1.9 billion for development of the system.

They defeated a Democratic amendment by a 52-48 vote. Three Republicans - Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, James M. Jeffords of Vermont and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine - joined all 45 Democrats in support of the amendment.

The defeated measure would have required the Pentagon to test the system against all possible countermeasures to the program, including warheads surrounded by decoys.

"This amendment is an unprecedented effort by the Senate to micromanage a weapons system testing program," said Sen. Thad Cochran, Mississippi Republican, and a leading missile defense proponent.

"In no other program has the Senate tried to legislate in this way, to dictate to the Department of Defense how a classified national security testing program should be conducted."

He said adequate measures are already in place to ensure that the missile system is properly designed and tested to account for any potential counteraction.

"There is no need for a third layer of requirements, levied in an overly broad statute, to deal with some vague technical notions that someone, somewhere, has imagined," Mr. Cochran said.

Democrats, however, said moving forward with the system without even more tests than those scheduled would harm, rather than increase, U.S. security.

"A Senate that is misled by blind faith in a missile system that cannot defend America is as pitiful as a $60 billion missile system that can be misled by a cheap decoy," said Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, who offered the defeated amendment.

Mr. Durbin said that to prove the effectiveness of the defense shield, it was necessary to test it against countermeasures used to disguise incoming warheads and confuse missiles launched to destroy them. Those could include decoy balloons and nuclear warheads shrouded in cooled metal, he said.

A panel of prominent U.S. scientists that opposes the system recently said warheads could be enclosed in cool shrouds or placed in balloons with numerous empty balloons deployed with them, making it impossible for the U.S. missile to select the right target.

Mr. Durbin's amendment also required an independent review team convened b