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

G-8 Countries List Their International Goals

Monday, July 24, 2000
The Associated Press
http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/MON/IN/glance.2.html

NAGO, Okinawa - Here are the main points of a communiqué issued Sunday at the G-8 summit meeting of top industrialized countries and Russia:

World Economy: The Group of Eight praised the recent growth of the global economy but pledged to concentrate on tackling the root causes of poverty. It called for reforms to expand investment in developing countries, ensure sustainable growth, prevent instability, strengthen competition and make labor markets more flexible.

Information Technology: Wealthy countries should try to maximize the benefits of information technology and ensure they are open to all.

Debt Forgiveness: Total debt relief for highly indebted countries should amount to more than $15 billion. Indebted countries need further reforms to reduce poverty, while richer countries should promote lending and borrowing practices to prevent further debt crises.

Health: All nations, international groups and industry should work against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Education: The G-8 nations committed themselves to achieve universal primary education by 2015 and gender equality in schooling by 2005.

World Trade Organization: There should be a new round of WTO trade negotiations this year with a ''balanced and inclusive'' agenda to open markets, strengthen WTO rules and support growth in developing nations.

Environment: The G-8 urged cooperation to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

Nuclear Safety: An international financing plan should be developed to handle and dispose of weapons-grade plutonium for the next summit meeting. Also, international contributions toward the destruction of Russian chemical weapons should be increased.

Terrorism: The group expressed concern at the increasing number of terrorist acts, particularly from Afghan territory under control of the hard-line Taleban government.

-------- armenia

U.S., Armenia Plan Weapons Control

July 24, 2000
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-US-Armenia.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Armenia will receive $300,000 worth of U.S. equipment and training for improved border control as part of an agreement on limiting the spread of weapons of mass destruction, Defense Secretary William Cohen said Monday.

At a signing ceremony with his Armenian counterpart, Cohen said the equipment will include nuclear and contraband detection kits to help Armenian authorities stop unauthorized movement of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and components.

``We have similar agreements with nine other countries that want to work with us to control weapons of mass destruction,'' Cohen said.

Serzh Sarkisyan, the Armenian defense minister, said his country expects to develop military-to-military relations with the United States once the conflict between Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh is resolved.

Armenia has had a cease-fire with Azerbaijan for five years, but has failed to resolve disputes over independence claims by Nagorno-Karabakh, which is controlled by Armenia but is located within Azerbaijan.

The United States' primary concern in the region is a planned pipeline to carry Caspian Sea oil, being extracted by U.S. and European oil companies, across Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean at Ceyhan, Turkey.

Cohen said no U.S. troops will be sent to Armenia in connection with the agreement on controlling weapons of mass destruction.

-------- australia

A-bomb scientist rejected nuclear weapons
Obituaries Mark Oliphant Helped win the war

July 23, 2000
Sunday Telegraph UK
http://www.suntimes.co.za/2000/07/23/insight/in09.htm

PROFESSOR Sir Mark Oliphant, who has died in Canberra aged 98, played a central role in the development of the first atomic bomb.

But the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki left Oliphant with a burden of guilt that ever after affected his public life and work, and accounted for some puzzling inconsistencies.

Oliphant was already renowned for his work on sub-atomic particles at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge, when, in the darkest days of World War Two, the refugee German scientists Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls delivered to him their famous memorandum arguing the feasibility of the uranium bomb. Oliphant backed Frisch and Peierls, and, through Henry Tizard, scientific adviser to the Air Ministry, the British quest for the bomb took shape.

Oliphant feared the outcome, but feared even more that the Nazis might get the bomb first.

Later, he was second only to James Chadwick (who had discovered the neutron) in the British team which from 1943 worked with the Americans on the Manhattan Project, the wartime atomic bomb programme.

But the use of the atom bomb in Japan in 1945 horrified Oliphant, who found the slaughter of animals for food so disagreeable that he observed a strict vegetarianism.

At Bertrand Russell's urging, he joined Albert Einstein and others as a founder member of the Pugwash Movement of scientists against nuclear weapons and came to avoid all research of a military nature.

Oliphant spoke up for J Robert Oppenheimer, the American nuclear scientist who became a victim of McCarthyism, and he marched in the streets against the Vietnam war. At the same time, he held some strongly conservative views. After his appointment as Governor of South Australia, he strenuously opposed the libertarian policy of the Labour Premier, Don Dunstan, towards pornography.

Marcus Laurence Elwin Oliphant was born in Adelaide, South Australia, on October 8 1901, the eldest of five sons.

His father was a civil service clerk whose reading encompassed theology and the classics; his mother was a schoolteacher.

After the Unley and Adelaide secondary schools, Oliphant went on to Adelaide University, where, in 1925, while working as a science demonstrator, he attended an Ernest Rutherford lecture. Inspired by the great man, he reached Cambridge two years later as an exhibitioner at Trinity.

Working under Rutherford in nuclear physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, he made his mark among a brilliant collection of scientists, including John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, who split the atom; James Chadwick; and Patrick Blackett, who traced the electron and positron.

As war approached, Oliphant turned to developing microwaves that would transform radar into a war-winning device.

After his work on the atomic bomb, the post-war years were a period of growing frustration for Oliphant. From 1950, as director of the Research School of Physical Sciences at the newly founded Australian National University, he was determined to build the world's most powerful accelerator for particle research. It was destined to be mocked as Canberra's "White Oliphant".

In 1971, the South Australian premier, Don Dunstan, secured Oliphant's appointment as Governor - the first native South Australian to hold the post.

In his five lively years he spoke out in unprecedented fashion for causes such as conservation and the environment and against drunken drivers, racism, violence and single-sex schools.

For many years, he was followed by baseless smears suffered during the McCarthyist days, when the eminent scientist who had helped to win the war was unable to obtain an American visa.

Yet immediately after the war, the US decided to award Oliphant the Medal of Freedom with gold palm, the highest among various honours for nearly 100 foreign scientists, and intended for him alone.

But the Australian government of the day refused to allow foreign awards for civilians, and not until 1980 did Oliphant's case come to light, through the researches of Oliphant's joint biographer, Stewart Cockburn.

Oliphant was appointed Knight of the British Empire in 1959 and a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1977.

He married, in 1925, Rosa Wilbraham, of Adelaide, who died in 1987. A son died in 1933, another in 1971; a daughter survives. - (c) The Telegraph, London

-------- britain

Clear and present danger

July 24, 2000
Margaret Thatcher
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-column-2000724191434.htm

According to the State Department we are not meant to talk about rogue states any longer, only "states of concern." But I think we should all be extremely "concerned" about attempts to whitewash unpleasant regimes like those in North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya. All these countries have promoted or practiced violence. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction affords them new opportunities to threaten us and our allies.

The danger is already with us. In 1998 the Rumsfeld Commission noted that countries like North Korea, Iran and Iraq "would be able to inflict major destruction on the United States within about five years of a decision to acquire the capability," adding that for much of the time America might not know that such a decision had been taken.

With more and more countries acquiring nuclear capabilities, we must be resolute in retaining and updating our nuclear deterrent. This is still the ultimate guarantor of our security. I believe that the Senate did the world as well as the United States a huge service when it refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty.

Nuclear weapons cannot be disinvented. Nuclear arsenals can certainly be reduced as a result of the ebbing of the threat of a major nuclear exchange. But a nuclear weapons-free world is an infantile fantasy. That is why all those, including Britain, who shelter beneath America's nuclear umbrella should support its right to test its nuclear weapons.

With the end of the Cold War the nature of the threat has fundamentally changed, as has our ability to respond to it. It is the activities of rogue states and the possibility of unplanned launches of missiles armed with warheads which should now be our main concern. We must also be able to prevent the intimidation of friendly states like Taiwan. The way to achieve this is through the construction of an effective system of ballistic missile defense.

I suppose that one should never look for much intellectual consistency on the left of British politics. The left once engaged in noisy protests against nuclear weapons, because - I presume - they believed that having nuclear bases on our soil would make us targets for attack, and thus lead to our incineration. Yet they now evince a passionate desire to leave us wide open to just such incineration by contemptuously refusing to participate in ballistic missile defense, the only system that can prevent it. Such attitudes remind us, yet again, of why even the reconstituted left is a menace in high office.

Nuclear arsenals can certainly be reduced as a result of the ebbing of the threat of a major nuclear exchange. But a nuclear weapons-free world is an infantile fantasy. That is why all those, including Britain, who shelter beneath America's nuclear umbrella should support its right to test its nuclear weapons.

Of course, the recent failure of the test of a missile interceptor over the Pacific has given comfort to these people. But it shouldn't. The whole purpose of tests - whether of missiles or missile interceptors - is to improve them. I have no doubt that America has the capability to get the technology right. The soundest experts in this field advise that we need to build a fully integrated system which combines both space- and sea-based components, rather than the fixed, land-based one favored by the present administration.

There are, indeed, very strong reasons for building a global rather than merely a national missile defense system. Technically, it is safer for us, and more dangerous for our enemy, if their missiles can be destroyed in the boost-phase, before they are able to send out decoys. Politically, it will solidify the NATO alliance if all its members can be brought within this defense system. Strategically, global ballistic missile defense will reinforce America's position as the only truly global superpower, on which the security of all nations from missile attack rests.

To achieve these goals will be expensive. America's allies should meet a share of the cost. And delay must be avoided.

It is not for me to prescribe the precise technical solutions. But we should certainly avoid heavy investment in an unsatisfactory system determined by the constraints of an unsatisfactory treaty. The Antiballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), which rules out sea- and space-based systems, is a Cold War relic. It is therefore rather surprising that today's liberals show such misplaced affection for it. In fact, the best lawyers tell us that the treaty has lapsed, because the other party to it, the Soviet Union, has ceased to exist. Moreover, whatever rationale it once had has certainly ended, now that an increasing number of unpredictable powers can threaten us with weapons of mass destruction. The ABM treaty is not, as the present U.S. administration believes, the "cornerstone of strategic stability." It is a worthless document that deserves to be consigned to one of history's many shredders.

In the course of a series of penetrating speeches on security matters, Gov. George W. Bush has spoken about the need for an effective ballistic missile defense which would also protect America's allies. I applaud his vision. The peace and security of the whole world depend on wise and courageous leadership from the White House.

Only America has the technology to build a global system of ballistic missile defense. Talk by Russian President Vladimir Putin, for example, of an alternative European system is simply that - talk.

Indeed, America's technological lead is so great, and growing so fast, that it has changed the whole basis of war-fighting. This is the shape of the future.

Margaret Thatcher was prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. This article is based on a speech given at the Hoover Institution and was distributed by the United Press International.

-------- business

Uranium for Power Plants Available Online

By Cat Lazaroff
July 24, 2000 (ENS)
http://ens.lycos.com/ens/jul2000/2000L-07-24-06.html

NEW YORK, New York, U.S. utilities that generate electricity from nuclear power plants are entering the world of e-commerce to buy fuel for their reactors. New York Nuclear Corporation, a nuclear fuel brokerage company founded in 1982, is now operating the world's only nuclear fuel electronic marketplace.

Nuclear fuel auctions at UraniumOnLine.com (UOL) are private and open only to qualified buyers and sellers from the commercial power industry.

"We're only involved with the fuel that is moved on a commercial basis for the generation of electricity," said Becky Battle of the New York Nuclear Corporation (NYNCO). "When you say nuclear materials, a lot of people think of the defense industry, but we only handle fuel for power plants."

A worker inspects fuel rods (Photo courtesy Department of Energy)

Nuclear fuel is used by 430 nuclear power plants around the globe to supply about 20 percent of the world's electricity needs.

Utilities are generally the end users of uranium in its many forms, said Battle. In the past, when a utility needed more uranium for its reactors, it would send invitations to various suppliers for bids. The suppliers would fax back quotes, which the utility would select from to find the most attractive bid.

Information about the availability of materials is often limited in the traditional bidding process. Pricing under this method did not always reflect the fair market value of the materials, Battle said. "The onus was on the supplier to try and pick a fair price."

"Nuclear fuel prices have always been difficult to determine because important details of transactions are often unknown," said NYNCO president Joseph McCourt. "The published prices that are currently used by the industry involve a fair amount of guess work. With UOL, the market can actually see what the deal is and what exactly buyers and sellers are bidding."

"With UraniumOnLine, the suppliers are bidding against one another, and they can see what prices their competitors are offering," said Battle. This can drive prices down - or up, she said.

In some reactors, uranium fuel is placed in long, thin stainless steel rods, which are then assembled in bundles (Photo courtesy DOE)

"There is the feeling on the supply side that the auctions will drive prices down, but there's nothing that says that when a utility asks for bids, they have to be lower than the market value," said Battle. "The bidding party determines the opening price."

At its second online auction, UOL saw bids start above the current market value of uranium, and then drop to the market value. The July 6 auction of 125,000 pounds of uranium took 22 minutes to reach a closing price of $8.18 per pound. Uranium prices during the past year have fluctuated from between $10.40 to the UOL auction result of $8.18 per pound. The auction reflected a typical spot nuclear fuel market transaction in terms of quantity and delivery requirements, NYNOC said.

"The price of uranium or any commodity is obviously determined by supply and demand," said Battle. "Right now we have not very much demand, and a lot of supply."

When asked how the brokerage firm ensures that uranium is only bought by companies that are licensed to handle it, Battle said, "The commercial nuclear industry is a very small one. We are familiar with the buyers and sellers, and their faces don't change much. It really is a very small community."

When a utility, or another company in the uranium processing fuel cycle, need uranium, they invite bids from particular suppliers and ask NYNOC to set up an auction. Only those suppliers who are invited to offer bids are given passwords to enter the online auction.

"You're not going to have anyone off the street," participating in an auction, Battle said.

"We believe with UOL the multi-billion dollar international nuclear fuel industry will finally have a specialized trading platform capable of handling procurement with low transaction costs and complete price transparency," said McCourt. "Moreover, UOL will, with the help of its worldwide clients and its in-house nuclear fuel expertise, provide the nuclear fuel industry contractual and other standards that will define and greatly facilitate nuclear fuel trade around the world."

-------- depleted uranium

DU - Exposures to Civilians and Military Personnel

Message: 4
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 23:47:27 +0100
From: "Viviane Lerner" <vlerner@interpac.net>

Paper prepared for the 14th Low Level Radiation and Health Conference ñ Reading, UK, 14 July 2000
Cat Euler

[I am not a scientist; although I have done research in the social sciences,my doctorate is in history. I am a grassroots anti-nuclear campaigner, not a radiation expert.]

With few exceptions, of the millions of tons of uranium mined since the 1940s, only 0.7% of it, the fissionable U235, can be used in power and weapons production. The enrichment process has thus left about 1 billion tons of U238 as nuclear waste in the US alone, some of which the DoE has given to the arms manufacturers, and other industrial interests, for free. U238 is primarily an alpha emitter, with beta and gamma decay products. It has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. An equal mass and density of natural uranium, compared to DU, is about 45% more radioactive than DU. However, natural uranium ore does not naturally appear with the levels of purity that DU does, because it has not been processed. This material is made into munitions of various calibres. Some 320 tons of it was fired on Iraq during the Gulf War, and about 10 tons was fired during 1999ís bombing of Yugoslavia, according to official estimates. The US has been testing DU munitions since 1954 (Hanson, 1976; LAKA Foundation, 1999).

However, DU has also been produced by re-enriching spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors, and this DU is contaminated with varying amounts of transuranics. The US DoE has been aware of this problem since the 1960s. Some depleted uranium was sampled in 1963 and 1985, and found to have minimal amounts of plutonium, while other samples had levels of plutonium several hundred times above ìestablished limits.î (Fahey, 2000, p. 36). Some DU munitions are contaminated with plutonium, but no one knows the extent of the problem, as insufficient tests have been carried out, or at least the information has not been published. The US DoE is currently investigating plutonium levels in DU munitions in its stock. Some US DU was also imported to the UK for weapons manufacture here, but there has been no public announcement of intentions to profile the radioisotopes present in these weapons.

If the level of 12,400 Bq. per gram of U238 is extrapolated to munitions, the Low Level Radiation Campaign estimates, from mathematical calculations, that, (assuming the use of non-Pu-contaminated DU), one 1-micron sized particle, lodged in the lung, will give a dose to the surrounding tissue of 0.9 mSv/day or 332mSv a year for as long as it is present (Busby, 1999). Urine tests on veterans indicate that the biological half-life of inhaled insoluble uranium oxides may be as long as twenty years. Before these urine tests were done, the ICRP estimated that the biological half-life of insoluble oxides might be one year. However, their estimates were mistaken. On the other hand, soluble uranium particles are eliminated from the body much more quickly ñ in some cases within 24 hours (Bertell, 1999).

Inhalation is the main problem, although some 120mm DU shells also give off an external reading of 2.5mGy an hour, the dose equivalent of 50 chest x-rays per hour (Busby, 1999). The Pentagon considers this a harmless external exposure. Once a shell of this type penetrates an armoured tank, the resulting fire can change up to 70% of the round into inhalable-sized particles, most of which are insoluble. Soldiers entering such a tank might find some seven pounds of a fine black dust, one lungful of which could severely increase their risk of cancer and the other major health effects associated with low-level radiation. ìDirect comparison of the concentration in air at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston and that in the 100m radius of a DU tank shell impact show that the levels near the tank shell impact exceed the NRPBís General Derived Limit by a factor of 6.75 times. This level would be illegal in the UK. The radius of effect can be used together with the amount of DU fired in the Gulf War to show that this level of contamination could have been produced over the whole of Southern Iraq. ECRR risk factors based on dose calculated using NRPBs GDLs predict an increase in cancer rate in adults of 50% following this exposureî (Busby, 1999). Civilians living in an area which had been contaminated by several such weapons impacts could be exposed to DU particles for eternity, particularly through resuspension in dusty, dry climates. Even the notorious NRPB has issued a warning to those visiting or working in Kosovo to avoid disturbing potentially contaminated areas, but this information has not been passed on to the returning refugees and existing civilian populations (NRPB, 1999). The UN Environmental Protection office maintains that while the contamination is not a sufficient reason for people not to return to Kosovo, ìat places where contamination has been confirmed, measures should be taken to prevent access. The local authorities and people concerned should be informed of the possible risks and appropriate precautionary measuresî (UNEP, 1999). There is no indication that any of this is actually happening in practice.

Although the majority of DU particles present after a fire are insoluble, the Pentagon, NATO and the MoD have all released practically identical statements which largely discuss soluble forms of uranium, and which emphasise its chemical, rather than radiological, toxicity. In the US, five federally mandated health investigations have repeatedly published inaccurate information about the numbers of veterans potentially exposed to DU. Originally the investigators said only 35 veterans were exposed, counting as ìexposureî only those with embedded shrapnel. Now the Pentagon admits some 107-113 veterans were hit with DU shrapnel from ìfriendly fire incidents.î Estimated numbers of those exposed to inhaled DU range up to around 300,000. Some 100,000 US vets are registered with the Veterans Administration as having Gulf War related illnesses (Fahey, 2000). In the UK, the situation is worse, as some veterans here, despite failing health and the inability to work, are not recognised as having Gulf War Syndrome illnesses of any sort, and receive no assistance.

All of the US federally-funded research has focused on embedded fragments, finding, for instance, that the urine of DU-implanted rats is mutagenic, that such exposure induces genetic instability, and forms tumors in these mice (Armed Forces Radiobiology Institute, 1998). Populations in several areas of the planet where DU munitions have been tested or used report a myriad of health effects they associate with exposure, including cancers, neurological damage, increased miscarriages and birth abnormalities, exhaustion, breathing difficulties, and intermittent mental unclarity. Some 17 countries now have these weapons in their arsenals. They are considered a superior weapon because they easily penetrate armoured steel, but other, more costly, non-radioactive alternative metals (such as tungsten) are available.

With such an enormous cohort, including Danish, Belgium, French, Italian, UK, Canadian and US soldiers, as well as civilians in Iraq and Kosovo, a large-scale epidemiological study is both possible and imperative. However, NRPB and Euratom representatives say they are in no position to recommend such a study to governments (informal conversation). The current UK Royal Society study is widely expected to be another desk study, based on previous, not always relevant secondary sources, rather than on field work or experiment (Radioactive Times, 2000). Studies on the children of Danish Gulf War vets apparently show that some 50% are suffering from immune system-related problems, like skin rashes and asthma (Danish TV report). Doctors in Serbia are beginning to register what they say is a previously unseen lung disease, which may be related either to DU exposure or chemical exposures (Email message). Cancer rates among Bosnia refugees, where DU munitions were used in 1994-1995, are twice the rates in other refugee groups, according to Serbian physicians. Lack of resources due to sanctions has also resulted in a reduction of early cancer screening, which results in an increase independently of any environmental pollutant (Bezanijska kosa, 1999). Scientists in Iraq have found a 4-6 fold increase in cancers since before the Gulf War, and the infertility rate in Basra, is 2.7 per 1000, as compared to 1.7 in Iraq as a whole. Congenital abnormalities in Basra are reported to be 3.1 per thousand, as compared to 1.8 in Iraq as a whole (Iraq Committee for Pollution Impact, 1999). These may also be related to DU, other radiological exposures, or chemical exposures or, more likely, a mixture of all three. Sanctions against both Iraq and Yugoslavia make adequate health care monitoring and responses difficult, if not impossible, due to the lack of resources. Successful treatment of childhood leukaemia in Iraq is now almost unknown.

NATO is aware that challenges to the legality of DU weapons can be made under existing international humanitarian law, but insists there is ìinsufficient information to conclude that DU munitions have a long-lasting nefarious effect which could affect civilian populations. Nevertheless, in light of media coverage of its use in both the Gulf War and in Kosovo, of the imposition of safety guidelines issued to KFOR soldiers, and indications that DU promotes the growth of cancerous cells in lab cell cultures, the lawfulness of its use could be challenged under IHLî (NATO Parliamentary Assembly Committee Reports, 1999). Of course, there wonít be any data as long as no one collects it, and, while the WHO would be the natural organisation to conduct a large-scale epidemiological study of the kind needed to provide scientific evidence, it unlikely this will happen, partly because of the 1959 agreement between the WHO and the IAEA, which places limits on what the WHO can study, if it involves radiation (WHA12-40, 28.5.59).

There have already been challenges to DU munitions under international humanitarian law, put forth largely by Karen Parker, JD, an international lawyer who says that DU fails the four main tests of legality, even without a specific treaty banning it. In fact, she maintains that a specific treaty would merely give the US another escape clause when it failed to sign it. The UN Subcommission on Human Rights has condemned DU munitions as weapons of indiscriminate effects. DU munitions fail the temporal test (their effects continue after the war ends), the environmental test (they pollute food and water and soil), the humanness test (they have effects beyond those necessary to achieve military objectives), and the geographical test (the particles can potentially travel to noncombatant countries) (Parker, 2000). Weapons manufacture and testing can also affect civilians even if the weapons arenít used, as those near the Wolverhampton Royal Ordnance Speciality Metals factory found last year after a fire potentially exposed both workers and nearby prison personnel, and as those in the Kirkcudbright area have found, as they look for ways to explain increases in leukemias and miscarriages. In neither case has the NRPB or the Environment Agency responded appropriately.

The Pentagon and the MOD are fighting hard against the idea that exposure to inhaled DU may be harmful to health, partly because arguments about DU are central to arguments about low-level radiation overall, and are thus tremendously threatening to the multi-billion pound, multi-national nuclear industry. An international movement against these weapons is growing daily, with DU activist groups now in the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, the US, and Yugoslavia. Overall, demands include full health care provision for all those affected, including veterans and civilians of all sides; US and UK responsibility for clean-up and decontamination of those areas where DU has been used; and an immediate cessation of the manufacture, use and sale of these weapons. We must continue to say ënoí to these weapons, and if the ways that we find of saying ënoí arenít working, then we must find new ways of saying ëno.í In the US and UK, non-violent direct action against DU has already taken place. In the US, four members of a plowshares group are currently spending time in prison after damaging the A-10 planes that fire the 30mm rounds, and pouring vials of their own blood into the petrol tanks (Jonah House, 2000). Conferences, email lists, lobbying, demonstrating, and ongoing campaigning are also essential to remove the threat of these radioactive weapons. Funding for more primary research would help, too. The Campaign Against Depleted Uranium will be holding an international conference on these weapons from 4-5 November, 2000, in Manchester, where scientists and activists from around the world will be speaking.

List of References [Peer-reviewed literature is not always available in the field of low-level radiation, due to huge resistance by the nuclear authorities. This paper has relied on information from both formal and informal sources. I can report what others have reported, but these reports do not always involve primary research or, if they do, they are not always published.]

Armed Forces Radiobiology Institute (1998) DU research abstracts available on the internet at: [http://homepage.jefnet.com/gwvrl/]

Bezanijska kosa Medical Center Expert Group (1999) A Report on Current Cancer Episemiology in Serbia Based on Available Data. Belgrade, Bezanijska kosa Medical Center of the Belgrade University School of Medicine.

Bertell, Rosalie (1999) Gulf War Veterans and Depleted Uranium. Paper prepared for the Hague Peace Conference, May. [Internet: http://www.pgs.ca/pages/nl/rb990504.htm]

Busby, Chris (1999) Expert witness statement given in the trial of Helen John, Middlesex Crown Court, 15 December. Unpublished. Available from the Low Level Radiation Campaign Research and Publications Department, The Knoll, Montpelier Park, Llandrindod Wells, Powys, LD1 5LW. See also: [Internet: http://www.llrc.org]

Fahey, Dan (2000) Donít Look, Donít Find ñ Report from Gulf War Veterans, the US Government and Depleted Uranium. Military Toxics Project, Lewiston, ME, USA. Internet: [http://miltoxproj.org].

Hanson, Wayne C., and Miera, Felix R., Jr (1976) Long-Term Ecological Effects of Exposure to Uranium. Los Alamos National Laboratory, LA-6269. [Internet: http://www.lanl.gov/]

Iraq Committee for Pollution Impact (1999) Unpublished paper given by Prof. Mona Kammas, University of Bagdad. Mariam Appeal Conference on the Effect of Sanctions in Iraq, London, England, December. 1 Northumberland Ave, London, WC2N 5BW.

Jonah House (2000) Press release, Plowhares action of 19 December 1999, relating to the prison sentences of Philip Berrigan, 77, Susan Crane, 56, Stephen Kelly, 50 and Elizabeth Walz, 33. Jonah House, 1301 Moreland Ave., Baltimore, MD, 21216, USA.

LAKA Foundation, ed. (1999) Depleted Uranium: A Post-war Disaster for Environment and Health. Laka Foundation, documentation and research center on nuclear energy, Ketelhuisplein 43, 1054 RD, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. laka@laka.antenna.nl.

NATO Parliamentary Committee Assembly Reports (1999) Kosovo and International Humanitarian Law. Mr Volker Kroning, Civilian Affairs Committee, October. Internet: [http://www.naa.be/publications/comrep/1999/as245cc-e.html]

NRPB (1999) Background Information on Depleted Uranium. NRPB Website. [Internet: http://www.nrpb.org.uk/D-uran.htm].

Parker, Karen (2000) Depleted Uranium at the United Nations: A Compilation of Documents and an Explanation and Strategy Analysis. Campaign against Depleted Uranium and International Educational Development, February. Copies of the report and UN documents are available for £10 from the CADU office, One World Centre, 6 Mount St., Manchester M2 5NS, UK. [Internet: http://www.cadu.org]

Radioactive Times (2000) Royal Society: The Final Frontier. Royal Society to Braoden DU panel. June, p. 6. [Internet: http://www.llrc.org]

UNEP (1999) The Kosovo Conflict: Consequences for the Environment and Human Settlements. Internet: http://www.unep.org]

WHA12-40, 28.5.59. Agreement Between the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organisation. United Nations, Geneva.

Danica Razlag Ethical Environmental Observatory Italian Committee Against Depleted Uranium http://stop-u238.i.am
-------- germany

Absence of A-bomb Were the Nazis duped-or simply dumb?

BY WARREN P. STROBEL
July 24, 2000
US News & World Report
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/000724/mysteries/nazi.htm

'But why?... Why did he come to Copenhagen?" With that pregnant question, Michael Frayn's Tony Award-winning play opens. Copenhagen has revived a mystery so raw it still moves historians and physicists to flights of rage. Why did Hitler's Germany fail, utterly, to develop nuclear weapons? And why did brilliant physicist Werner Heisenberg, a central figure in Germany's nuclear research, visit Nobel laureate Niels Bohr in occupied Denmark in September 1941? Did he go as a loyal German, to learn how much Bohr (and the Allies) knew about atom bombs? Or as a scientist-hero, trying to stall Nazi research and naively hoping to persuade Bohr to restrain the Allies?

After a German and an Austrian discovered fission in 1938, almost everyone thought Germany would be the first to build nuclear weapons. In August 1939, Albert Einstein warned President Roosevelt of the threat. Dread of a Nazi A-bomb drove the Manhattan Project. Yet an Allied mission code-named Alsos, following on the heels of troops liberating Europe, found only a primitive program. No working nuclear reactor. No large quantities of separated Uranium-235, a basic bomb ingredient. No credible bomb design. "Sometimes we wondered if our government had not spent more money on our intelligence mission than the Germans spent on their whole project," wrote Alsos scientific director Samuel Goudsmit.

Uncertain man. To understand Germany's failure, historians (and playwright Frayn) focus on the enigma that is Heisenberg. The brash German patriot was just 32 when he won the Nobel Prize for the uncertainty principle, which states that it is possible to know a subatomic particle's position or momentum, but not both. In simplified form, the principle means that the very act of observing something changes its behavior.

"Uncertainty" is the leitmotif of Heisenberg's life. Touring the United States in the summer of 1939, he had offers of refuge but returned home. He regarded Hitler as a thug and transitional figure, and said he stayed to salvage German science for later. After the war, most physicists in America reviled his attempts to justify himself-and the mysterious wartime trip to Copenhagen to talk about fission with Bohr. He died in 1976. "Time and time again I've explained it," Frayn's Heisenberg laments from beyond the grave. "To interrogators and intelligence officers, to journalists and historians. The more I've explained, the deeper the uncertainty has become."

Frayn's play reignites the animosities. "It has to do with Nazis and atomic bombs, so emotions are dredged up," says Heisenberg biographer David Cassidy. After all, if Heisenberg and the Germans never got close to the bomb, what does that say about those who did build-and use-it?

There are many possible explanations of the German failure, and Heisenberg's actions. But then the questions cascade like neutrons in a chain reaction. If Heisenberg wanted to build a bomb, say his sympathizers, he would have sold the powerful Nazi armaments minister Albert Speer on the idea at a key June 1942 briefing. By then, German physicists realized that if they constructed a nuclear reactor, it would make plutonium, a substitute bomb fuel for U-235, which was hellishly hard to separate from natural uranium. Yet Heisenberg downplayed hopes of making a bomb and asked Speer for a paltry few million marks for research. His bomb program coasted. Overseeing nuclear research was merely a means for Heisenberg to rehabilitate himself, Cassidy says. Nazi fanatics had called him a "white Jew" because of his links with Einstein's physics.

Mind reader. Copenhagen is based on the 1993 book Heisenberg's War. Author Thomas Powers argues that the physicist heroically hid key calculations proving a bomb was possible. Frayn, whose play is largely sympathetic to Heisenberg, won't go as far: "It's a question of what was going on in Heisenberg's mind."

Or perhaps the German didn't want to promise a bomb he couldn't deliver. A brilliant theorist, Heisenberg was a lousy engineer who often had trouble with basic calculations. After Germany's defeat, Heisenberg and nine colleagues were interned at Farm Hall, a British country house. Hidden microphones recorded their stunned reaction to the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The tapes, released in 1992, reveal a Heisenberg who did not understand bomb physics and vastly overestimated how much U-235 was needed for "critical mass." "You're just second-raters and you might as well pack up," a colleague gibed on the tapes.

So why did Heisenberg come to Copenhagen? By September 1941, he knew nuclear weapons were a theoretical possibility for Germany-and its enemies. He raised the subject with Bohr, who was horrified at Heisenberg's hint. Their pre-war friendship was shattered. In a postwar letter to journalist Robert Jungk, Heisenberg wrote that he merely wanted to discuss physicists' ethical responsibilities. Jungk later concluded he had been duped by Heisenberg and other German scientists trying to justify their actions.

The visit was "an intelligence mission, nothing more or less," agrees Manhattan Project physicist Arnold Kramish. Two weeks before, a Swedish newspaper had published news of U.S. bomb research. Heisenberg wanted to learn more from his former teacher. Bohr himself disputed Heisenberg's account of the meeting in a letter so angry he never mailed it. Gerald Holton, a Harvard University historian of science who has seen the letter, says it takes "serious issue" with Heisenberg's claims. It will be made public in 2012, the 50th anniversary of Bohr's death.

-------- india / pakistan

Government regulates export of nuclear materials

DAWN 24 July 2000
From: Harsh Kapoor aiindex@mnet.fr

ISLAMABAD, July 24: Pakistan announced its procedures for commercial exports of nuclear materials from the country today. An advertisement placed by the Ministry of Commerce in newspapers said prospective exporters would need a "no objection certificate" from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission in order to export specified nuclear substances and equipment. The ad listed nuclear substances as: natural uranium, depleted uranium, enriched uranium, thorium, plutonium, zirconium, heavy water, tritium, beryllium, natural or artificial radioactive materials provided the activity is not less than 0.002 microcuries per gram, and nuclear grade graphite with a boron equivalent content of less than five parts per million and density greater than 1.5 gm/cubic centimetres. These substances could be in the form of metal alloys, chemical compounds or any other material containing one or more of them. The list of nuclear equipment "for production, use or application of nuclear energy and generation of electricity" included nuclear power reactors; reactor pressure vessels; reactor fuel charging and discharging machines; primary coolant pumps; reactor control systems; reactor internals; any other items directly attached to the reactor vessels that control the level of power in the core and/or that control the primary coolant inventory of the reactor core; nuclear research reactors; neutron flux measuring equipment; equipment for the fabrication of fuel elements, including welding machines for end caps; equipment for separation of uranium isotopes, including gas centrifuges, magnets baffles, bearing, etc; UF6 mass spectrometers; frequency changers; special shut-off and control valves; equipment for the production of heavy water, including exchange towers, neutron generator systems and industrial gamma irradiators. According to the advertisement, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission will have the authority to verify and inspect all nuclear exports.(DPA)

-------- israel

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE
To Serve and Go Public

TheStandard.com
July 24, 2000
Posts By Industry Standard Staff
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,17009,00.html

In Israel, military service is mandatory after high school. Because of the high-tech job market, however, some older Israeli civilians are looking to re-enlist. The surge in interest is due in part to the Israeli military's high-tech intelligence projects, which are highly regarded in the civilian world. What's more, the military encourages intelligence personnel of all ranks to innovate by letting them keep patent rights to their ideas, which helps former soldiers start companies after they are discharged. Meanwhile, venture capitalists are taking notice of the business success rate of former intelligence veterans.

"The [five years'] experience I got was more like 15 years of experience in the U.S.," says Yaacov Ben-Yaacov, CEO of Yazam.com. "I was in [service] during the Gulf War, and they used our systems to know where the Scuds were falling."

This reputation, according to Maj. Gen. Amos Malka, director of Israel Defense Forces Military Intelligence, helps the military avoid a brain drain to private companies. Some 300 hopefuls at a recent Tel Aviv job fair registered for the ultrasecretive "8200" unit, a counterpart of the U.S. National Security Agency. Interest is significant enough that the army's Mamram technology corps can demand a six-year tour of service, twice the standard length.

The military may recruit civilians, but the system also works the other way. Mamram corps Lt. Col. Avi Kochba has encountered recruiters for civilian companies outside army-base gates. They were inviting soldiers and officers to a conference that discussed "how to come up with ideas for new technologies, and whom to approach." - Sharone Parnes, Tel Aviv, Israel

----

Dimona Photographic Interpretation Report

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/facility/dimona_pir.html

New high-resolution satellite imagery provides important new insights into Israel's nuclear weapons capabilities. The imagery of the Dimona nuclear reactor was acquired by Space Imaging Corporation's IKONOS satellite on July 4th 2000 on behalf of the Public Eye Project of the Federation of American Scientists. These new revelations, coincide with a debate in Israel over nuclear weapons policy, prompted by the June 2000 publication in Hebrew in Israel of Avner Cohen's book Israel and the Bomb. Israel is by now the only nuclear weapons state that does not acknowledge the fact that it possesses nuclear weapons.

The most significant finding derived from the new imagery is that Israel's nuclear weapons stockpile probably consists of between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons. Some previously published estimates had suggested that Israel might possess as many as 400 nuclear weapons. We do not believe this is the case.

The Dimona nuclear reactor, in operation since early 1965, is the source of plutonium for Israeli nuclear weapons. The number of nuclear weapons that could have been produced by Israel can be estimated on the basis of the power level of this reactor. Information made public in 1986 by Mordechai Vanunu, Frank Barnaby and other analysts suggested that the reactor might have a power level of at least 150 megawatts, about twice the power level at which is was believed to be operating around 1970. To accommodate this higher power level, analysts had suggested that Israel had constructed an enlarged cooling system.

An alternative interpretation of the information supplied by Vanunu was that the reactor's power level had remained at about 70 megawatts,as French sources had maintain (e.g. Pierre Pean), and that the production rate of plutonium in the early 1980s reflected a backlog of previously generated material.

The cooling towers associated with the Dimona reactor are clearly visible and identifiable in satellite imagery. Comparison of IKONOS imagery acquired in July 2000 with declassified American CORONA reconnaissance satellite imagery taken in the 1960's indicates that no new cooling towers were constructed in the years between 1971 and 2000. This strongly suggests that the reactor's power level has not been increased significantly during this period. Based on plausible upper and lower bounds of the operating practices at the reactor, Israel could have thus produced enough plutonium for at least 100 nuclear weapons, but probably not significantly more than 200 weapons.

The new satellite imagery also provides insights into other aspects of Israel's nuclear weapons capabilities. Israel could also use highly enriched uranium to build nuclear weapons, or to increase the yield of nuclear weapons using plutonium. Published reports suggest that beginning in the 1980's Israel began work on at least two different techniques for production of uranium for nuclear weapons; gas centrifuge and laser separation. Evaluation of several satellite images provides probable indication of which buildings at Dimona may be associated with such activities. The size of these buildings suggests, but cannot prove, that Israeli uranium enrichment activities remain at a relatively small scale. Israel does not appear to have built industrial-scale uranium enrichment at Dimona facility. Existing pilot-scale facilities would not appear to have the potential to substantially increase the total size of the Israeli nuclear weapons stockpile.

A number of other structures and areas are visible in the new imagery, though their functions are not entirely apparent. A probable nuclear waste disposal area is visible about a kilometer from the main facility, as suggested by previously published reports. It has long been reported that Dimona is defended from aerial attack by a battery of Hawk anti-aircraft missiles, and a complex possibly associated with such defenses is evident in the satellite imagery.

A rather larger nearby complex, constructed sometime between 1986 and 2000, may possibly be associated with new defenses for Dimona, and may represent the future site of either a Patriot or Arrow anti-missile battery. As many as four Scud-derived missiles were fired towards the vicinity of Dimona by Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War.

Facility Expansion
Overview

An examination of CORONA, SPOT and IKONOS imagery of the central part of the Dimona complex reveals only modest change over the past 30 years. Although dozens of smaller building have been build between 1971 and 2000, only two medium size buildings measuring 26,500 and 30,100 square feet, have been added since 1971. A larger 84,000 square foot building has been expanded to 103,700 feet as well.

Reactor Detail

The cooling towers associated with the Dimona reactor are clearly visible and identifiable in satellite imagery. Comparison of IKONOS imagery acquired in July 2000 with declassified American CORONA reconnaissance satellite imagery taken in the 1960's indicates that no new cooling towers were constructed in the years between 1971 and 2000. This strongly suggests that the reactor's power level has not been increased significantly during this period.

The Big Dig
1965 Excavation

Corona Imagery from 1963 and 1965 reveal a large excavation measuring 100 x 100 meters could have contained a large underground facility - possibly the Machon 2 reprocessing facility. The Israelis removed an estimated 66,000 to 81,000 cubic yards of soil.

IKONOS IMAGERY 04 July 2000
2000 - Excavation filled in

Later imagery shows Israeli efforts to fill and landscape the terrain where the excavation took place. According to published reports the Israelis have taken numerous camouflage, concealment, and deception measures at Dimona. This excavation is consistent with this type of activity.

Security Perimeter Dimona is surrounded by three security perimeters covering 14 square miles (36 square kilometers), and over 22 miles (36 kilometers) of fenceline. Each perimeter has an inner and outer patrol road. The inner most perimeter has two security fences with a 40 foot (12 meter) exclusion zone between.

There are at least three Entry Control Points (ECPs). The first is 300 meters south of the Highway 29, the second is one Kilometer from the facility, and the third at the edge of the inner perimeter.

Low Level Waste Burial

For years, Israel has reportedly buried low level radioactive waste at Dimona. The waste is mixed with tar and encased in 200 liter barrels and buried a site about one kilometer from Dimona.

Unidentified Areas

There are several interesting terrain features and building groupings at Dimona. As of this writing, their purpose remains unclear.

-------- japan

Japan is too lenient with U.S. forces

Mon, 24 Jul 2000
Japan Press Service jpspress@twics.com
JPS 07-097

TOKYO JUL 24 JPS -- Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and U.S. President Bill Clinton in the Japan-U.S. Summit talks on July 22 in Okinawa agreed on maintaining the current level of Japan's funding for the U.S. forces in Japan known as the "sympathy budget" with a cut of just 3.3 billion yen (30.8 million dollars) a year.

Akahata's editorial of July 24 criticized the agreement for virtually maintaining the budget at the present level, because the "cut" represents only 1 percent of the 275.5 billion yen (2.57 billion dollars) sympathy budget for FY 2000. Excerpts of the editorial follow:

Such a humiliating agreement shows that the Japanese government has shamelessly given in to U.S. pressure.

The proposed cut will arise from the new way of shouldering burdens: the U.S. will pay for water, gas and electricity supplies for houses for U.S. military personnel outside U.S. bases and the upper limit of payment of costs for public utilities on the bases will be lowered. This can't be worth calling a "reduction."

From the outset, Japan has no obligation to furnish the sympathy budget under the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). In 1978, Shin Kanemaru, then Defense Agency director general, introduced this type of budget for paying part of labor cost on U.S. bases on the pretext of the U.S. financial difficulty at the time. However, the initial payment of 6.2 billion yen (58.7 million dollars) increased year by year under U.S. pressure.

Japan now pays wages for 23,000 Japanese workers on U.S. bases, as well as for costs for the construction of facilities and transportation of U.S. troops traveling for exercises at distant bases. The facilities include luxury housing, bowling lanes and golf courses.

Japan also pays the costs related to the Special Action Committee on Okinawa (SACO), which is just for relocation of bases. In the FY 1999 budget, Japan's payment for the U.S. forces totaled 674 billion yen (6.28 billion dollars).

Japan's extraordinary host nation support for the U.S. forces is clear from U.S. Secretary of Defense's report on "contribution by allies for common defense." In the 2000 edition of the report, Japan's payment of 4 billion dollars for the U.S. forces in Japan is the greatest among the 22 allies, and the amount is even greater than the other 21 countries combined. The U.S. Secretary of Defense extols Japan as the most generous host.

Apart from budgetary concerns, the role assigned to the U.S. forces in Japan should be questioned. No U.S. forces stationed in Japan are assigned to defend Japan. Both the U.S. Marines, which account for 60 percent of the U.S. forces in Okinawa, and the Yokosuka-based U.S. 7th Fleet are mainly for expeditionary missions abroad.

In Okinawa, these U.S. soldiers and military bases are sources of crimes, accidents, noise pollution, exercise-related accidents and forest fires. Other U.S. bases in Japan are threatening the lives of Japanese people with low-altitude flying and night landing practice (NLP) by the U.S. forces.

To end the abnormal situation in which foreign military forces are stationed in a sovereign country more than 50 years after the war's end, it is essential to completely end the "sympathy budget." There is neither legal basis for the payment nor needs for "sympathy."

--

JPS 07-098
Scandalous agreement on new U.S. base construction efforts: Akahata

TOKYO JUL 24 JPS -- Akahata's editorial of July 23 criticized the summit talks between Japan's Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and U.S. President Bill Clinton as follows:

The Japanese people, especially Okinawans wished that the Group of Eight nations Okinawa summit will be a turning point towards the reduction and removal of U.S. bases. However, these wishes were betrayed by the governments of Japan and the U.S.

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and President Bill Clinton agreed to push ahead with the implementation of the agreement of the Japan-U.S. Special Action Committee on Okinawa (SACO), which includes U.S. base relocations within Okinawa prefecture.

Clinton demands Okinawa play "vital role"

Mori promised Clinton to accelerate work on basic plans for the new U.S. base in Nago City to be constructed as a replacement of the U.S. Marines Futenma Air Station. He said that details of the new base construction, including the construction site, engineering methods, and the size of the base, will be discussed immediately after the G-8 summit.

Newspaper headlines read: "Okinawa's wishes were ignored," "What was Summit about?" "Reduction of U.S. bases: Did he really call for?" Clearly, the two governments used the G-8 summit as an opportunity to perpetuate and strengthen the U.S. bases in Okinawa and accelerate the construction of the new base.

Clinton was saying that he didn't want to come to Okinawa before the pending problem was solved. Since last year, when Okinawa was chosen to host the G-8 summit, the U.S. government has urged the Japanese government to solve the problems concerning the relocation of U.S. Futenma Air Station as early as possible.

The U.S. government intention was clear in the speech Clinton delivered at the Cornerstone of Peace at the Peace Memorial Park in Itoman City prior to his talks with Mori.

He said, "The strength of our alliance is one of the great stories of the 20th century. Asia is largely at peace today because our alliance has given people throughout the region confidence that peace will be defended and preserved. That is what alliances are for." and "Okinawa has played an especially vital role in the endurance of our alliance."

Clinton was distorting the concept of the Cornerstone of Peace when he spoke about the role U.S. bases in Okinawa have in maintaining peace by force, and requested Okinawans to continue playing a vital role needed by the U.S. strategy.

How abnormal it is for Okinawa to continue to be an island of U.S. bases today, more than 50 years after WWII's end! How absurd it is for Okinawans to continue to shoulder heavy burdens of U.S. bases! Now that Okinawa's real condition has been made known to the rest of the world, Japan's politics and government must answer questions: whether U.S. bases in Okinawa should be maintained, and how the present problems will be resolved?

However, Mori, who should be well aware of this, willingly promised Clinton to push ahead with the new base plan, far from refuting the U.S. government demand imposed on the people of Okinawa Prefecture.

No discussion took place on the question of the 15-year limit on the use of the new base, a premise set out by Okinawa Governor Keiichi Inamine. Mori didn't mention a term '15-year term ' and just said he would consult the U.S. about U.S. military arrangements in Okinawa.

Rather, the Liberal Democratic Party and the government is trying hard to accept the new base plan as an accomplished matter by closing its eyes on the '15-year' issue. Since the very beginning of the story, Mori has little intention to discuss it with the U.S. How arrogant they are to deceive the prefectural people!

Let's join the movement for peace in Asia

As said by Governor Inamine, "Okinawa's discontent is magma beneath a volcano. It could erupt any time," Okinawa's magma will never disappear so long as U.S. bases remain on the island. The Japanese and U.S. governments policy to reinforce and perpetuate U.S. bases will only help increase contradictions with the islanders.

Now the situation concerning the new base will become more critical. Since its reversion to Japan in 1972, Okinawa has not allowed any new U.S. base on the island. Japan's public opinion and movement for 'No new U.S. base in Okinawa' are playing a great role in creating integrating a major tide toward peace in Asia, including the Korean Peninsula, which calls for negotiated settlement of disputes without depending on military means.

--

JPS 07-099 Non-Nuclear Government Assn. places emphasis on increasing public opinion calling for annulment of secret agreements

TOKYO JUL 24 JPS -- As Japan's nuclear policy called into question, the national organization advocating the establishment of nuclear-free Japanese government has called for new efforts toward its goal.

The Association for a Non-Nuclear Government held its 15th general meeting on July 22 in Tokyo, and adopted an action program to disclose and annul Japan-U.S. secret agreements on allowing nuclear weapons to be brought into Japan, strictly observe and legislate the Non-Nuclear Three Principles, make representations to authorities, publish appeals by public figures, and take initiatives to make more ports nuclear-free throughout the nation.

The association's executive board reported that anti-nuclear weapons movements are spreading around the world, criticizing Japan's government for going back on the world's current.

The board proposed that local governments move toward the practical application of the Three Non-Nuclear Principles, taking advantage of the fact that 76 percent of all municipalities in Japan have declared themselves nuclear weapons-free.

In order to promote the Non-Nuclear Kobe Port Formula at other civil ports and harbors, the association will hold exchange meetings and symposiums.

Japanese Communist Party Vice-Chair Hiroshi Tachiki spoke on behalf of the association's executive board.

Tachiki said that the promise nuclear weapons possessing countries made to abolish all nuclear weapons at the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference, has great significance for the peace movement.

He said that Japan keeps abstaining from voting on U.N. resolutions calling for the immediate abolition of nuclear weapons, but repeats proposing the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons.

Japan's vague attitude internationally is so unacceptable that Japan's subordination to the nuclear power U.S. is now at an impasse, Tachiki said.

--

JPS 07-100
NGOs communique on G-8 Okinawa summit calls for peace

TOKYO JUL 24 JPS -- At the close of the G-8 Okinawa summit on July 23, NGOs wrapped up their activities by issuing their communiques calling for the withdrawal of U.S. bases and opposing any plan to build a new military base in the island.

During the three days of the summit, scores of NGOs, both domestic and international, carried out their activities in Okinawa to send their messages to the world.

A communique issued by Okinawa's 16 NGOs, endorsed by eight organizations, including international NGOs, was entitled "Peace in the new millennium is now starting here." It puts forward four demands: The reduction and withdrawal of U.S. bases in Okinawa; sustainable economic development based on renewable resources and environmental protection at the responsibility of the 8 developed countries; refusal of imposition of global standards on local cultures and economies endowed with local diversities; and the cancellation of a plan to build a new U.S. base in Nago City, Okinawa.

Another communique by 18 Japanese and international NGOs put emphasis on the importance of giving priority to peace, environment, health, welfare, and human rights and calling for the peaceful settlement of international disputes through dialogue.

--

JPS 07-101
PSIA pays bonuses for illegal investigations of citizens movement

TOKYO JUL 24 JPS -- The Public Security Investigation Agency, notorious for espionage activities on people's grassroots movements, has paid extra money to its personnel who spy on citizens movements and organization.

Akahata on July 24 reported that this was revealed in a document submitted by a former PSIA officer. The document was included in the complaint submitted to Japan Federation of Bar Associations calling for the protection of the human rights

The complaint was made by 38 organizations, including the Japan Democratic Lawyers Association and the Japan P.E.N. Club. They demanded the protection on June 6 because PSIA targets its illegal investigation at such activists as ombudspersons who check the waste of tax money by the government.

Takao Noda, who handed in the document is a former PSIA officer. He himself had investigated Kobe residents who were concerned about land readjustment after the great earthquake in January 1995. The authority dubbed it as "impediment action against the national and local governments' plan".

He also infiltrated a meeting of judicial trainees in Kyoto in which a participant denounced the Supreme Court for refusing to appoint him as an assistant judge. Noda reported the list of the attendants. He received the bonuses of 2,000 (about 18 dollars) yen for each reporting from PSIA for the two "good reports".

He resigned the agency in 1998 and presented the copy of the envelopes used for the delivery of bonuses as evidence material. (end item) (END)

----

Oil leak forces halt of second Japan nuke reactor

July 24 2000
Reuters
Ndunlks@aol.com

TOKYO, Japan's largest power utility said on Monday it had shut a nuclear reactor after discovering an oil leak, two days after an earthquake forced the shutdown of another reactor at the plant.

Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc (TEPCO) stopped output at the 784-megawatt reactor at its Fukushima nuclear plant, 250 km (155 miles) northeast of Tokyo, on Sunday night.

Kyodo news agency quoted TEPCO officials as saying 300 litres of oil leaked through a crack in a duct. The oil was being pumped to a valve to control the flow of steam from the reactor to a turbine.

TEPCO officials were not immediately available to comment.

The news comes amid growing public uneasiness with the industry in Japan, beset with accidents in recent years, which has forced the government to delay its nuclear energy plans.

TEPCO earlier said it found a small amount of radiation in a pool of water below a network of control rods, but stressed no radiation had escaped into the outside environment.

``We shut down the reactor on Sunday in order to check the cause of the oil leakage,'' a TEPCO spokesman said.

``Soon after the reactor was shut down, we detected a pool of water. The amount of water that had leaked was about 150 litres (33 gallons) and that is radiated,'' the spokesman said.

No workers had been exposed to the radiation and it was unclear when the reactor would be restarted, he said.

On Friday, TEPCO shut another nuclear reactor at the same plant to investigate a rise in waste gas following an earthquake earlier in the day.

Public anger after several major accidents at nuclear facilities over the past five years, including Japan's worst-ever accident last September that killed two uranium plant workers, has forced delays in the government's nuclear programme.

Last month, TEPCO shut a nuclear reactor on the Japan Sea coast after a small amount of radiation was detected in a leaked pool of water.

The government is now expected to cut its target for constructing reactors when it completes an energy review.

Japan has 51 commercial nuclear reactors providing about 30 percent of the country's electricity.

----

Clinton reiterates "especially vital role" of U.S. forces in Okinawa

JPS <jpspress@twics.com>
FIRST TRANSMISSION, MONDAY, JULY 24, 2000

TOKYO JUL 24 JPS -- In his speech to the people of Okinawa, U.S. President Bill Clinton said that the U.S. will maintain the Japan-U.S. military alliance and keep the U.S. Forces stationed in Okinawa.

Clinton arrived in Okinawa on July 21 to attend the Group of Eight summit. Visiting the Cornerstone of Peace Park in Itoman City, a memorial to the victims of the 1945 Battle of Okinawa, he said, "Asia is largely at peace today because our alliance has given people throughout the region confidence that peace will be defended and preserved," and "Okinawa has played an especially vital role in the endurance of our alliance."

Clinton is the first U.S. President to visit Okinawa in 40 years after President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

After recalling the tragedy of the Battle of Okinawa, Clinton referred to the 'endurance' of the Japan-U.S. alliance and said, "I know the people of Okinawa did not ask to play this role," and "we will continue to do what we can to reduce our footprint on this island."

However, as regards the Japan-U.S. Special Action Committee on Okinawa (SACO), Clinton said that the U.S. would "keep all our commitments," which means that he would push ahead with the plan to reinforce and relocate U.S. bases within the island, such as a new base plan in replacing the U.S. Marine Corps Futenma Air Station.

He uttered no words of apology for recent crimes committed by U.S. soldiers in Okinawa. No hint was made on measures to root them out. What he said was just the U.S. "would take seriously our responsibility to be good neighbors."

--

JPS 07-093
"Lay down your weapons and take up musical instruments!" a conference in Okinawa appeals

TOKYO JUL 24 JPS -- In the Henoko district of Nago City in Okinawa, where the government plans to construct a state-of-the-art U.S. base, a peace festival was held from July 17-23.

The festival called "Niraikanai-Matsuri (Utopia-festival)" was proposed by Shokichi Kina, a famous Okinawan musician, and organized by the Lay Down the Weapons and Take Up Musical Instruments Committee.

As part of the festival,the committee held a "Peace-8 Crisis Watch Conference" on July 21 in the prefectural capital city of Naha to discuss native (Okinawan) culture, civilizations and the Earth. Discussion themes included "From conflict to harmony" and "Reality of Okinawa and solidarity with the rest of the world." People with various backgrounds, including Native Americans, environmentalist, writers, and poets participated in the conference.

In opening the conference Kina said that "harmony" between diverse cultures, races, religions and politics will help to solve conflicts. (end item)

--

JPS 07-094 Don't build military base in sea of dugongs

TOKYO JUL 24 JPS -- An NGO-sponsored movement on July 21 took action in Nago City, Okinawa Prefecture, to call for all U.S. military bases to be removed from their islands.

It was to appeal to the foreign press and government officials visiting Okinawa for the Group of Eight Okinawa Summit.

Demonstrators on the "Family Peace Walk" called for the cancellation of the plan to construct a new U.S. base in the sea of beauty where dugongs, known as mermaids, inhabit.

A young mother with two sons in her hands, said, "We want to live in peace with nature-rich Nago. We don't want a U.S. base in our sanctuary."

A Japanese Communist Party district committee chair gave foreign reporters JCP leaflets written in English about problems of the U.S. military bases in Okinawa. (end item)

----

Water Leak at Japan Nuclear Plant

July 24, 2000
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Japan-Nuclear.html

TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's largest power company on Monday found radioactive water leaking from a nuclear reactor that was shut down to check for an oil leak, days after an earthquake prompted them to turn off another reactor at the plant.

The leak at the Fukushima No. 1 plant in northern Japan caused no injuries and the water did not escape from the facility, Tokyo Electric Power Co. spokesman Yoshimi Hitosugi said.

Plant workers found 39 gallons of radioactive water that had leaked near the plant's No. 2 reactor late Sunday, Hitosugi said. The discovery came an hour after the reactor was manually shut down because of an oil leak.

``No one was injured and nothing radioactive leaked outside the plant,'' Hitosugi said.

The radioactive water leaked from a joint in a pipe linked to the hydraulic pressure system for controlling rods, utility official Kazuyoshi Takahara said. Officials were investigating whether the fissure that caused the oil leak resulted from an earthquake, Takahara said.

The six-reactor plant is in Okuma, a town of 10,900 on the Pacific coast in Fukushima state, 150 miles northeast of Tokyo.

On Friday, the No. 6 reactor at the Fukushima nuclear plant was shut down after a 6.1-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of eastern and a leak of waste gas was detected in a tank where steam used to power the turbines was turned back into water. No radiation leak was reported.

Japan, a resource-poor nation which relies on nuclear power for a third of its electricity, had its faith in the industry shaken last year after a deadly accident at a fuel-processing plant northeast of Tokyo.

The nuclear accident killed two workers and injured another seriously. Dozens of people are believed to have been exposed to less harmful radiation in that accident, which set off an uncontrolled atomic reaction.

----

Oil Leak Forces Japan to Shut Down Nuclear Plant

July 24, 2000
Australian Financial Review
http://www.afr.com.au/update/20000724/A26977-2000Jul24.html

Japanese energy company officials launched an investigation today after a radioactive oil leak within a nuclear power plant forced operators to shut down a reactor.

Another reactor at the same Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant, 200 km north of Tokyo, was shut down on Friday after a strong earthquake measuring 6.1 on the open-ended Richter scale rocked the region. The oil leak yesterday was confined to within the plant in the town of Okuma and "we consider there is no danger to the surrounding environment," said Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) spokesman Ichiro Kudo. About 150 litres of radioactive oil had collected from a drip out of a turbine valve, he said. Operators had shut down the No.6 reactor manually by 9.17pm (11.17pm AEST).

"We detected radiation, but the level was not high enough to pose a threat to people," Kudo told AFP. "We are currently continuing our investigations to identify the cause," he said.

After Friday's powerful quake, the No.2 reactor was shut down on fears that control systems monitoring exhausts may have been damaged. But there was no radiation leak and no danger, officials said. Concerns over nuclear power have escalated in Japan since the country's worst non- wartime nuclear disaster last September, which was also classified as the world's worst since Chernobyl in 1986. A critical reaction at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, 120 km north-east of Tokyo, killed two plant workers and exposed 439 people to radiation.

----

Oil Leak Forces Halt of Second Japan Nuke Reactor

July 23, 2000
By Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-japan-n.html

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's largest power utility said on Monday it shut down a reactor at a nuclear plant after discovering an oil leak, four days after an earthquake forced the shutdown of another reactor at the plant.

Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc (TEPCO) cut output at the 784-megawatt No.2 reactor at its Fukushima nuclear plant, 155 miles northeast of Tokyo, on Sunday night to investigate the oil leak.

Afterwards, it found a small amount of radiation in a pool of water below a network of control rods. It said no radiation had escaped into the outside environment.

``We shut down the reactor at 2117 on Sunday in order to check the cause of the leak of oil near a turbine,'' a TEPCO spokesman said. Oil is used to control the pressure in the turbine.

``Soon after the reactor was shut down for investigation, we detected a pool of water. The amount of water that had leaked is about 33 gallons and that is radiated,'' the spokesman said.

No workers had been exposed to the radiation, he said.

Public anger after several major accidents at nuclear facilities over the past five years, including Japan's worst-ever accident last September that killed two uranium plant workers, has forced delays in the government's nuclear program.

On Friday, TEPCO shut down another nuclear reactor at the same plant to investigate a rise in waste gas following an earthquake earlier in the day.

The TEPCO spokesman said the cause of Sunday's leak was still being investigated, including whether it was caused by an earthquake. It was unclear when the reactor will resume operating, he said.

Japan has 51 commercial nuclear reactors providing about 30 percent of the country's electricity.

-------- korea

Albright will meet with North Korean foreign minister
Missile concerns set the stage for talks

Monday, July 24, 2000
By KYONG-HWA SEOK THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/national/nkor241.shtml

SEOUL, South Korea -- Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun will meet this week in Bangkok, Thailand, North Korean media reported yesterday.

The officials will meet Wednesday to discuss "issues related to bilateral relations," the Korean Central News Agency said in a one-sentence dispatch.

The meeting would mark the highest-level contact between the two countries.

The announcement was made as North Korea, desperate for outside economic aid to rebuild its dilapidated economy, actively seeks contacts with the outside world.

The meeting, which had been expected, would take place before the ASEAN Regional Forum, part of an annual round of ministerial meetings held by the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Uncertainty over Albright's travel plans hinged around the Middle East negotiations at Camp David, Md. Albright has canceled other engagements because of the talks.

The announcement of the meeting comes amid North Korea's suspected missile ambitions, which are a key factor in the U.S. drive to develop a missile-defense system to protect the United States from nuclear attack.

North Korea shocked Asia by test-firing a long-range missile that flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific Ocean nearly two years ago. Pyongyang claims it launched a scientific satellite and accuses Washington and Tokyo of fabricating missile threats to justify a missile-defense program.

Talks between the United States and North Korea ended in a stalemate early this month, with Washington refusing to pay Pyongyang to curb exports of missile technology.

North Korea restated that it wants $1 billion a year in exchange for a halt to missile-technology exports. It also refused to stop developing such weapons for self-defense.

But North Korea reportedly indicated it may abandon its missile program in exchange for help in putting peaceful satellites into orbit during a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang last week.

The two leaders also urged Washington to give up on its proposed construction of a limited missile-defense system, claiming North Korea's missile program was solely for peaceful uses.

Yesterday North Korea reiterated its accusation that the United States was trying to gain military supremacy through the missile-defense system.

The shield is "aimed at containing other big powers advocating a multipolar world and implementing its strategy to build a unipolar world and establish world supremacy," said Rodong Sinmun, official newspaper for the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, in a commentary.

The commentary was carried by the Korean Central News Agency.

Long-icy relations between communist North Korea and pro-Western South Korea have begun to thaw since leaders of the two Koreas held a historic summit last month.

During his stay in Bangkok, Paek is scheduled to meet his South Korean counterpart, Lee Joung-binn, to discuss "cooperation in the international arena," Seoul's Foreign Ministry said.

----

Cohen Wary of N.Korea Missile Report

July 24, 2000
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Missile-Defense.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- North Korea's offer to abandon its long-range missile program in exchange for international assistance in launching space satellites is ``fairly ambiguous'' and not reliable evidence that the missile threat from North Korea has lessened, Defense Secretary William Cohen said Monday.

``It's unclear to me exactly what the offer is,'' Cohen said. ``It is still fairly ambiguous in terms of the scope of the proposal. It would require a great deal more clarification before I could comment that it was a positive proposal or not.''

Cohen discussed the matter with reporters during an appearance in his Pentagon office with Armenian Defense Minister Serzh Sarkisyan.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who met recently with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, told President Clinton on Friday that North Korea was willing to abandon its missile program if other countries helped it launch space satellites.

Cohen's skepticism stems from a concern that what North Korea may have in mind is importing a booster rocket capability that could be used to launch intercontinental weapons as well as satellites. If, on the other hand, it is seeking to use other countries' space launch facilities, that might be acceptable, U.S. officials have said.

North Korea's test flight of a long-range rocket in August 1998 shocked the world and helped convince Cohen that the United States should develop a national missile defense as soon as possible. The Pentagon currently is aiming to have a national missile shield ready for use by 2005, and Cohen is due to recommend to Clinton this summer whether he should take the first steps toward building such a system.

Some argue that North Korea's reported interest in abandoning its missile program undercuts the urgency of deploying a national missile defense.

Cohen, however, said he remains skeptical of North Korea's intentions. During U.S.-North Korean missile talks early this month in Malaysia, the lead negotiator for North Korea told American officials, ``Our missile policy is to develop, to produce and to deploy powerful missiles continuously,'' Cohen said.

``So we have to weigh one statement against the other and get clarification before any judgment could be made about the validity and the advisability of the proposal,'' the defense secretary said.

Cohen said Pentagon missile defense officials are now assessing the technical feasibility of the proposed U.S. national missile defense project, and he expects to weigh that and other factors in making a recommendation to Clinton ``within about three or four weeks.''

One additional factor to be considered, Cohen has said, is the urgency of the missile threat against the United States. He said he has reviewed a draft of the CIA's updated assessment of the missile threat. The CIA's previous assessment, published in September 1999, said North Korea could deploy a long-range ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States as early as 2005. Since then, North Korea has frozen its missile development program to allow for negotiations, but it has not abandoned it.

Cohen would not comment on the substance of the updated CIA threat assessment.

-------- russia

U.S.-Russian Nuclear Talks Open Monday

Jul 24, 2000 --
Agence France Presse
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=181631

MOSCOW, Russian and US energy officials begin talks on nuclear power here Monday after a week's delay due to disagreements between Moscow and Washington, Itar-Tass reported.

The meeting, between Russia's nuclear energy minister Yevgeny Adamov and officials from the US energy ministry, were delayed due to US criticism of Eussian cooperation with some other nations on nuclear matters, as well as Moscow's strong opposition to the United States' mooted missile defense shield system, the Russian minister was quoted as saying.

On Tuesday, Russia signed an agreement with China to build a nuclear reactor. Russia is also building a nuclear reaction in Iran.

Washington insists that its National Missile Defense (NMD) project will not target either Russia or China, but is designed to counter threats from "rogue states," such as North Korea Iran and Iraq.

Moscow is pressuring Washington to scrap the anti-missile defense shield plan, arguing that it would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty and trigger a new global arms race.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Tuesday that Russia and China will respond if the United States deploys such an anti-missile system.

Two weeks ago, the United States admitted an interceptor rocket had failed to shoot down an incoming dummy warhead during a 100-million-dollar test of its prototype NMD system.

The botched test was an acute embarrassment to the Pentagon and US President Bill Clinton.

Clinton is to decide in the next few months whether to order the controversial NMD system which would cost an estimated 60 billion dollars.

----

Russia and US begin talks on nuclear power

Mon, 24 Jul 2000
Australian Broadcasting
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-24jul2000-37.htm

Russian and United States energy officials begin talks on nuclear power today after a week's delay due to disagreements between Moscow and Washington.

The meetings between Russia's nuclear energy minister Yevgeny Adamov and officials of the US energy ministry were delayed due to US criticism of Russian cooperation with some other nations on nuclear matters.

The meetings were also delayed because of Moscow's strong opposition to the United States' mooted missile defence shield system.

On Tuesday, Russia signed an agreement with China to build a nuclear reactor. Russia is also building a nuclear reactor in Iran. Washington insists that its National Missile Defence (NMD) project will not target either Russia or China, but is designed to counter threats from "rogue states" such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

Moscow is pressuring Washington to scrap the anti-missile defence shield plan, arguing that it would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty and trigger a new global arms race.

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned last Tuesday that Russia and China would respond if the United States deployed such an anti-missile system.

Two weeks ago, the United States admitted an interceptor rocket had failed to shoot down an incoming dummy warhead during a $170 million test of its prototype NMD system.

The botched test was an acute embarrassment to the Pentagon and US President Bill Clinton.

Mr Clinton is to decide in the next few months whether to order the controversial NMD system, which would cost an estimated $100 billion.

----

Russia Whistle-Blower Case Appealed

July 24, 2000
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Russia-Whistle-blower.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- Alexander Nikitin, the Russian researcher acquitted of giving state secrets to a Norwegian environmental group, returned home Monday to prepare for another prosecution attempt to reopen his case.

Nikitin was acquitted of spying in December. Prosecutors with the Federal Security Service alleged he revealed state secrets while working on a 1995 report for the Norwegian-based Bellona environmental group about unsafe storage of nuclear waste by the Russian navy.

Russia's Supreme Court rejected an appeal to reopen the case this spring. Its presidium was set to hear an appeal by the prosecutor general on Aug. 2 asking that the case be sent back for further investigation.

Returning to St. Petersburg after a trip to the United States, Nikitin expressed disbelief that prosecutors were trying to resurrect the case against him. He said Russia's secret services were behind the appeal.

``The special services are already the losers from the political and public point of view,'' Nikitin told the Interfax news agency.

Human rights groups portrayed Nikitin's acquittal as a victory for civil freedoms in Russia.

Nikitin was in the United States to receive an environmental award and testify before Congress.

----

Putin Makes Strong Bid For Equal Role in G-8
Other Leaders Praise Russian's Performance

By Clay Chandler
Washington Post
Monday, July 24, 2000; Page A16
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/24/105l-072400-idx.html

NAGO, Japan, July 24 (Monday)-In the two years since they invited Russia to become a full-fledged member, other leaders of the Group of Eight have treated the president of the former superpower as something of a poor relation.

They've barred him from purely economic discussions at their annual summits and excluded Russian finance officials from ministerial meetings. The clownish antics of Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, at the last two summits in Birmingham, England, and Cologne, Germany, only cemented their perception that Russia--notwithstanding its nuclear arsenal--lacked a government that could be taken seriously.

But with his confident and polished performance at this weekend's summit here in Okinawa, Russia's new president, Vladimir Putin, has begun to reverse that image. Comments by several G-8 leaders and top officials suggest that Putin, a 47-year-old former intelligence agent, has moved Russia closer to acceptance as a credible global power.

"Very impressive," declared Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien of Putin's mastery of the issues. Putin's comments were spontaneous and informed, said Chretien, and it was clear that he had read his briefing papers. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder declared Putin's conduct this weekend to be nothing short of "brilliant." Officials from Germany and from Italy--host of next year's summit, in Genoa--even suggested ending the two-tier system that excludes Russia from some discussions.

Such warm words for Putin--who has been sharply criticized elsewhere over the Russian military campaign in Chechnya, Kremlin attacks on the media and efforts to centralize power in Moscow--were among the few surprises at an otherwise carefully scripted gathering.

Putin and the other seven leaders wrapped up their discussions today with a promise to move more quickly in forgiving foreign debts owed by 41 impoverished countries and a flurry of ambitious promises to bridge the "digital divide" between rich and poor countries, halve the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015, and cut the number of AIDS cases by 25 percent over the next decade. But the leaders did little to set these objectives in motion before departing this subtropical Pacific island, prompting anti-poverty advocates to decry the proceedings as an elitist sham and fueling criticism in many member countries that the annual summits have become pointless.

Putin's quiet, analytical manner at the Okinawa summit accounted for part of his appeal to the other G-8 leaders, but senior officials of member countries said Putin demonstrated his political savvy in several specific ways.

Putin's report on his stop in North Korea en route to Okinawa and his assessment of that country's reclusive leader, Kim Jong Il, was easily the most interesting item on the leaders' foreign policy agenda and helped him grab the limelight. A genuine peace overture from North Korea would transform the security dynamics of the Pacific, and all the leaders were interested to hear Putin's assessment of Kim's proposal to abandon his missile program in exchange for help from other countries in launching North Korean satellites. North Korea's strategic missile capability is one reason given by the Clinton administration for the need to build a limited U.S. missile defense system.

Putin also seems to have impressed the other leaders by not using the summit to demand that Russia be relieved of $42 billion in debt inherited from the Soviet Union. Many concluded that Putin avoided the issue because he thought raising it would undermine Russia's stature in the discussions if it had its hand out.

And it was Putin's suggestion that the leaders begin to correspond by e-mail--even though several of them are confessed computer novices.

In his final news conference here this afternoon, Putin made clear that he hopes Russia can become a major player at G-8 meetings. "We cannot hide our heads in the sand like ostriches," he told reporters. "It is important for Russia to act as an equal partner in global affairs. . . . Russia cannot be an idle observer of international developments."

Some officials credited Putin's relations with the other seven leaders for ensuring that Russia received favorable treatment in the final summit communique. That document omitted passages from an earlier version that urged Russia to repay its debts and expressed support for Russia's bid to become a full member of the World Trade Organization. Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato told reporters the references were deleted at the last minute at the Russian leader's request. "Putin asked us not to mention a single country in the G-8 final document, and we did that," Amato said.

After his final round of discussions with the other leaders, Putin, who holds a black belt in judo, visited a local sports center, where he faced off against a Japanese youth. He threw his opponent to the mat, then allowed himself to be thrown.

----

Clinton, Putin Talk Missiles
Leaders discuss North Korean proposal for satellite assistance

Doug Struck,
Washington Post
San Francisco Chronicle
Saturday, July 22, 2000
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/07/22/MN50419.DTL

Nago, Japan -- President Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin talked at length yesterday about a new North Korean offer to give up its missile program if it gets international assistance in launching space satellites, according to senior White House officials.

The leaders' discussion on the sideline of the Group of Eight summit on Okinawa signaled U.S. interest in pursuing the idea, which Putin brought from Pyongyang after meeting Wednesday with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

``If what's envisioned here would be for North Korea to give up, to forswear, its ballistic missile program . . . that would be something we would be prepared to pursue,'' an administration official said.

Clinton and Putin met privately for 75 minutes. Much of their discussion was about weapon proliferation, but they did not bridge their differences over America's proposed National Missile Defense (NMD) system.

Instead, Putin reaffirmed his country's opposition to the limited system that is under consideration by President Clinton. That system would place 100 interceptor rockets in Alaska to defend against missile attacks from unpredictable hostile nations.

The United States has cited the North Korean missile threat as a principal reason for building a missile defense system, though opponents of the plan say North Korea's recent, swift moves toward diplomatic openness lessen the need for missile defense.

Putin announced this latest twist in the issue after traveling to Pyongyang Wednesday, the first visit to North Korea by a Russian leader.

In a separate media briefing yesterday, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov told reporters that North Korea is not interested in receiving missiles or missile technology to independently launch satellites but, rather, wants other nations to launch satellites for it.

``If such assistance is offered, North Korea is ready to stop ballistic missile tests,'' Ivanov declared.

``We need further discussions,'' said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. ``If it was clearly understood that the launch capability was going to be outside the territory of North Korea and thoroughly subject to international technology controls,'' the United States might agree, he said.

U.S. and Russian officials will be meeting again over the weekend to get a clearer understanding of the proposal.

Russia and China both see a decision to pursue the NMD as a violation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which they view as the cornerstone of international weapons control agreements. Clinton has said he will decide by fall whether to start building the system. He is scheduled to meet Putin again in early September at the United Nations.

Putin and Clinton yesterday issued a joint statement promising to find new ways to cooperate in controlling the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The statement charted a course for the ``transparent'' disposition by each side of at least 34 metric tons of weapon-grade plutonium -- an amount sufficient for thousands of nuclear weapons.

The goal is to dispose of at least two metric tons per country per year by 2007.

Several other leaders at the G-8 summit expressed their wariness of the American missile defense plan yesterday.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said, ``I'm skeptical about it.'' French President Jacques Chirac said the proposed shield is technically unpredictable, would cost a lot of money and could lead to a new nuclear arms race.

``Everything that goes in the direction of proliferation is a bad direction,'' Chirac said.

The G-8 leaders approved a statement yesterday applauding last month's historic meeting between leaders of North and South Korea, and saying they ``welcome the constructive attitude'' shown by North Korea.

The leaders expressed satisfaction about escaping a global recession after the 1997-98 Asian currency crisis but said they were concerned that rising oil prices could threaten growth.

They promised to share global prosperity with poor countries, speeding up the process of forgiving or rescheduling their heavy burden of debt.

The summit countries were also expected to offer increased help to fight AIDS in poor nations and educate the estimated 100 million poor children not in school.

-------- turkey

Turk PM says could scrap nuke plant tender - paper

By Ercan Ersoy
Reuters
July 24, 2000
From: Ndunlks@aol.com

ANKARA - Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit was quoted on Monday as saying a tender for the country's first nuclear power plant project could be cancelled because of worries over nuclear energy.

With the deadline for bids to build the multi-billion-dollar tender expiring later on Monday, officials from Turkey's power authority TEAS told Reuters they had asked the consortia to extend the validity of their bids again.

They said the consortia had been asked to wait until a new TEAS board of directors is appointed, expected within the coming weeks. The tender has been postponed eight times already.

Ecevit told reporters in Ankara that the nuclear tender would be discussed at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

The prime minister had earlier been quoted as expressing serious doubts about the future of nuclear power.

``Our worries have been increasing. (The tender) may be cancelled,'' Ecevit told the Milliyet newspaper. ``The world is abandoning this technology. Germany has decided to scrap them over a period of time...We will have a final assessment.''

Turkey's state power generator TEAS collected bids from three consortia in 1997.

It has been repeatedly postponed ever since, most recently because of treasury refusal to provide financial guarantees, which it fears would disrupt a IMF-backed anti-inflation programme.

``The treasury is insisting on its view that such an investment may upset balances and may force Turkey into trouble in the next few years,'' Ecevit said.

U.S. Westinghouse Electric Co (a unit of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd BNFL), Canada's AECL and Franco-German Nuclear Power International (NPI) are competing to build the $2.5-$4.5 billion plant on Turkey's Mediterranean coast.

Westinghouse has said it would withdraw from the tender if TEAS requests another extension on Monday. The energy ministry last week asked the prime ministry to decide whether the tender could continue with two bidders instead of three.

Both Westinghouse and AECL have offered new proposals to overcome the treasury's reluctance to provide guarantees.

Greenpeace and Turkey's influential Chamber of Electrical Engineers staged a demonstration in front of the energy ministry building in Ankara.

``We want Energy Minister Cumhur Ersumer to resign as he and his management team are number one responsible for Turkey's energy deficit,'' said Melda Keskin, Greenpeace's Turkey representative.

Turkey's energy deficit could reach 7.5 billion kiloWatt-hours this year, compared to about 124.5 billion kWh in targeted generation for 2000.

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

-------- arizona

Navajo Uranium Miners Never Warned Work Could Kill Them

By DEBORAH HASTINGS
Associated Press,
July 24, 2000
Don Eichelberger done@energy-net.org

COVE, Ariz. (July 30) - Inside the stifling cinderblock house of Dorothy Joe, nothing moves but waves of grief.

One by one, the old widow and her children begin to sob, as if despair were contagious. The weeping circle begins and ends with her, sitting at the dining room table, staring at weathered hands as if they held answers.

She murmurs in Navajo, describing the white man's prized uranium and how it destroyed her husband.

''They never told us it would kill us,'' says David, 38, choking on his tears. ''I'm sorry,'' the son says, drawing a deep breath. ''I'm sorry.''

They received $100,000 from the government, a check drawn to equal the life of Raymond Joe, who scraped radioactive rock from surrounding mountains to fuel the Cold War. It was never fought, but it killed Ray Joe just the same.

He died six years ago but his family is inconsolable, as if he were just now drawing his last breath from these stagnant rooms.

Lung disease has killed at least 400 uranium miners on this reservation, according to the Uranium Radiation Victims Committee, a Navajo advocacy group.

The Navajo Nation covers 27,000 square miles in the Four Corners area, where the boundaries of Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico intersect like the cross hairs of a rifle scope.

Here lies the world's largest deposit of uranium ore, and the Navajo who have lived on it for seven centuries. Neither troubled the other until the 1940s, when mining companies began blasting holes in stippled sandstone cliffs.

Virtually unburdened by health, safety or pollution regulations, the mines ran at least two shifts every day for nearly 40 years. By the 1980s, decreased demand closed the mines.

By then, Navajo men happy for the work and ignorant of radiation had loaded millions of tons of ore into open rail cars.

They wore no protective masks or clothing. They ate their lunches in holes choked with radioactive dust. They drank mine water that would have triggered a Geiger counter. They staggered home to wives who washed their filthy overalls with the family laundry.

The dying started in the 1960s. In places such as Cove, there are hardly any old men left. Instead, there are poisonous dumps, contaminated springs and thousands of gaping mines.

Recently declassified documents show the government knew from the start it was playing with poison but concealed the dangers.

In 1990, Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act and apologized for failing to protect uranium workers and their families. It ordered payments of up to $100,000 to miners in Wyoming, Washington state and the Four Corners area, as well as to others who lived in the Nevada Test Site's fallout.

The money did not come easily. To get it, the Navajo had to produce documents which have no place among their people. Marriage certificates. Death certificates. Pieces of paper unable to convey whole truths.

A special tribal court was convened to verify marriages, births and deaths, a process that takes months. Witnesses must appear ''to verify, sometimes, a person's existence,'' said Timothy Benally, a former miner who leads the victims committee. ''We had six people die while their claims were pending.''

On July 12, Congress amended the compensation act, increasing benefits and reducing paperwork. Still, the Navajo say it is not enough.

''Nothing can equal a human life,'' says Mrs. Joe.

Like the reservations, radiation is now part of the white man's legacy - a primer on what happens when the government tries to make amends for debts no man can pay.

The Navajo call themselves Dine (DinEH), meaning ''the people.''

Four Corners looks much as it did when they arrived in the 1300s from Northwest Canada. Red rock rises from upland plains. Deep canyons give way to barren badlands. The mountains, always green, sprout cedar and locoweed.

To the Navajo this is the Promised Land. The natural wonders of Shiprock, Canyon de Chelly and Rainbow Bridge are the dwelling places of their Holy Ones.

They plotted life according to nature's cycles. Many still do. In summer, when the valley shimmers in 110-degree heat, they climbed to the mountains. In winter, when howling winds batter the highlands, they returned to their hogans - dome-shaped dwellings of logs and clay - on the lowland.

From the Spaniards, they learned to herd. From the pueblo people, they learned to plant.

White soldiers came in the 1800s. During the Long Walk of 1864, more than 8,000 starving Navajo were driven 300 miles in the dead of winter to Fort Sumner on the Pecos River. There, they were prisoners. Nearly four years later, in during a searing drought, they were sent back to a ravaged homeland now called a reservation.

Decades passed. With each one, it became increasingly clear that a life on the reservation wasn't much of a life at all. There was little work and less to do.

In the middle of World War II, when the government wanted something, it came calling in the name of patriotism.

First it courted men to be Code Talkers. The Japanese, who broke nearly every U.S. radio code, never cracked spoken Navajo. Then, the government wanted uranium to make atomic bombs.

When Kerr-McGee and other corporations arrived to run the mines, no one on the reservation thought twice about the work. Navajo miners were paid $45 a week, a small sum even then but better than nothing.

Kerr-McGee declined comment. ''This is a subject that is under litigation,'' said a spokeswoman. The company is being sued for allegedly causing the deaths of two Navajo by exposing them to radiation.

The Oklahoma-based company gained notoriety for environmental accidents and the 1970s saga of employee Karen Silkwood, which was turned into a film. The energy conglomerate was America's leading producer and refiner of uranium.

Johnny Sam, now 60, worked a hopper for five years beginning in 1975, examining chunks of rock under a special light to identify high-grade uranium. The good stuff was blue. The low-grade was gray.

Most was yellow, meaning average. ''Leetso'' is the Navajo word for uranium. It means ''yellow brown'' or ''yellow dirt.''

''They didn't explain to us what it did to you,'' says Sam, his dark eyes scanning the hillsides of Church Rock, which is 17 miles northeast of Gallup, N.M., and site of one of the biggest nuclear accidents in U.S. history.

In 1979, a dam collapsed at United Nuclear Corp., unleashing 93 million gallons of radioactive waste that flowed 115 miles into Arizona. Regulators say there was no long-term environmental damage.

Residents including Benally say there is so much radiation sickness and contamination in Four Corners, who can isolate the effect of a specific incident?

Sam remembers foremen ordering miners into smoky shafts minutes after a TNT blast. The longest tunnels ran 1,800 feet, often with no ventilation. The men trudged in, their hats beaming shafts of light, their lungs filling with radioactive dust.

It's been 20 years since Sam wore a miner's hat. His breath comes hard now and his lungs burn. He's never smoked cigarettes; he blames the mines.

''Nothing bothered us right away,'' he said. ''Fifteen or 20 years later, things bother you.''

Cove Mesa, which rises more than 100 feet above the tiny outpost of Cove, is a four-hour drive to the west. Here, nothing moves but a lizard trailing a fine rain of dusty rock.

Donald Ellison Jr., 39, points to blank mine faces, each bearing a spray-painted number. Ellison left a well-paying highway job in Shiprock for temporary mine reclamation work in Cove. He wanted to come home. His 89-year-old father has been diagnosed with lung cancer.

Donald Ellison Sr. mined uranium for seven years at 40 cents an hour, starting in 1947. He spends his last days herding sheep, walking the land he was born on.

The son's job was to blast shut the abandoned shafts. His crew counted 2,000 of them within a 20-mile radius of here. No one is sure how many pockmark the rest of the reservation.

''The people use these mines to shelter their sheep,'' Donald Ellison Jr. says. ''They store hay and grain in there and then feed it to the sheep. Then they eat the sheep.''

Benally first walked into these holes in 1948 when he was 14. ''The mining company said, 'The government needs a lot of this stuff.' That's all they told us,'' Benally said.

He worked on and off until 1964. He says he cannot get compensation because the government decided that he hadn't been blasted with enough radiation to meet its exposure standards.

Anger is not the Navajo way.

''What would you have us do?'' Benally asks. ''To say 'Enough is enough' means I take up a gun and start killing people.'' He stops, lets this hang in the dusty air.

''What we would really like,'' he says evenly, ''is for the government to come in and clean up this mess they made.''

Lung cancer is a torturous and humiliating way to die.

Breathing is agony. Control is lost over private things.

To his family, the swift demise of Ray Joe was stupefying. Suddenly, the sturdy bear of a man weighed less than 100 pounds and couldn't get out of bed.

''He tried to stay strong 'til the end,'' says David Joe. ''But there was nothing left of him.''

It started with wheezing. Ray Joe couldn't catch his breath. He found himself unable to haul well water to the house he had built with his two hands. His family took him to hospitals in Albuquerque, Gallup and Farmington. But the cancer in his lungs was too far gone.

Six months after his diagnosis, Ray Joe died.

His 66-year-old widow touches the tip of each finger, ticking off the names of other widows. When she runs out of fingers, she looks past the weeping faces of her children, scanning a list in her head.

''Some remarried,'' she says. ''I married my husband. I still have feelings for him. That is why I am single.''

It was the widows who first petitioned the government in 1960 for redress. As their husbands died, they began to talk among themselves. And to notice things. Like the way death started with not being able to catch a full breath.

The wives remembered other things that seized their hearts. How they used to bring uranium chunks in the house at night so their children could watch them glow in the dark. How their husbands' work clothes, covered in radioactive muck, sometimes sat in the kitchen for a week because running water didn't come to this reservation until the 1980s.

''The government destroyed this community,'' said David Joe. ''They destroyed our lives.''

The $100,000 from Washington, D.C., does not ease his mother's pain. Most of it went toward her husband's medical bills.

The government should give more, says Mrs. Joe.

''A new home,'' she says, as if that might mend her heart. ''They should build us new homes.''

She looks down at the wrinkled hands clasped in her lap. They hold no answers.

-------- new york

GONE FISSION
The Power of E-Commerce

TheStandard.com
July 24, 2000
Posts By Industry Standard Staff
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,17009,00.html

Pssst! Wanna buy 125,000 pounds of uranium? Just log on to UraniumOnLine.com. The business-to-business Web marketplace recently auctioned a batch of nuclear fuel that size for just over $1 million.

If you've got a warhead in your basement, however, don't get too excited. UraniumOnLine deals only in commercial-grade fuel, which is 5-percent-pure uranium 235, not the 90-percent-pure stuff that goes into nuclear bombs. What's more, the auctions are open to qualified buyers by invitation only. A spokesperson at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission was unaware of the online marketplace, but said all buyers and sellers of uranium have to be licensed.

Government observers also monitor facilities to make sure reactor fuel isn't converted to bomb-grade material, but the reach of the Internet makes watchdogs nervous about uranium falling into the wrong hands. "Someone would have to set up a dummy company and pull off a huge deception. Iraq pulled it off," says Tom Clements, director of the Nuclear Control Institute. "This will always be a concern."

"We know all of the buyers and sellers in the industry," counters Becky Battle, director of marketing for New York Nuclear Corp., which runs UraniumOnLine and conducts background checks on parties it's not familiar with.

The world's 430 nuclear reactors generally use faxes and phones to communicate with suppliers, and the process to request and take bids can take weeks. UraniumOnLine aims to connect everyone more quickly. The latest million-dollar auction lasted just 20 minutes. - Mark Roberti

----

Environment Uranium for Power Plants Available Online

Environment New Service
07/24/00
By Cat Lazaroff
http://209.196.143.239/ens/jul2000/2000L-07-24-06.html

NEW YORK, New York, July 24, 2000 (ENS) - U.S. utilities that generate electricity from nuclear power plants are entering the world of e-commerce to buy fuel for their reactors. New York Nuclear Corporation, a nuclear fuel brokerage company founded in 1982, is now operating the world's only nuclear fuel electronic marketplace.

Nuclear fuel auctions at UraniumOnLine.com (UOL) are private and open only to qualified buyers and sellers from the commercial power industry.

"We're only involved with the fuel that is moved on a commercial basis for the generation of electricity," said Becky Battle of the New York Nuclear Corporation (NYNCO). "When you say nuclear materials, a lot of people think of the defense industry, but we only handle fuel for power plants."

A worker inspects fuel rods (Photo courtesy Department of Energy)

Nuclear fuel is used by 430 nuclear power plants around the globe to supply about 20 percent of the world's electricity needs.

Utilities are generally the end users of uranium in its many forms, said Battle. In the past, when a utility needed more uranium for its reactors, it would send invitations to various suppliers for bids. The suppliers would fax back quotes, which the utility would select from to find the most attractive bid.

Information about the availability of materials is often limited in the traditional bidding process. Pricing under this method did not always reflect the fair market value of the materials, Battle said. "The onus was on the supplier to try and pick a fair price."

"Nuclear fuel prices have always been difficult to determine because important details of transactions are often unknown," said NYNCO president Joseph McCourt. "The published prices that are currently used by the industry involve a fair amount of guess work. With UOL, the market can actually see what the deal is and what exactly buyers and sellers are bidding."

"With UraniumOnLine, the suppliers are bidding against one another, and they can see what prices their competitors are offering," said Battle. This can drive prices down - or up, she said.

In some reactors, uranium fuel is placed in long, thin stainless steel rods, which are then assembled in bundles (Photo courtesy DOE)

"There is the feeling on the supply side that the auctions will drive prices down, but there's nothing that says that when a utility asks for bids, they have to be lower than the market value," said Battle. "The bidding party determines the opening price."

At its second online auction, UOL saw bids start above the current market value of uranium, and then drop to the market value. The July 6 auction of 125,000 pounds of uranium took 22 minutes to reach a closing price of $8.18 per pound. Uranium prices during the past year have fluctuated from between $10.40 to the UOL auction result of $8.18 per pound. The auction reflected a typical spot nuclear fuel market transaction in terms of quantity and delivery requirements, NYNOC said.

"The price of uranium or any commodity is obviously determined by supply and demand," said Battle. "Right now we have not very much demand, and a lot of supply."

When asked how the brokerage firm ensures that uranium is only bought by companies that are licensed to handle it, Battle said, "The commercial nuclear industry is a very small one. We are familiar with the buyers and sellers, and their faces don't change much. It really is a very small community."

When a utility, or another company in the uranium processing fuel cycle, need uranium, they invite bids from particular suppliers and ask NYNOC to set up an auction. Only those suppliers who are invited to offer bids are given passwords to enter the online auction.

"You're not going to have anyone off the street," participating in an auction, Battle said.

"We believe with UOL the multi-billion dollar international nuclear fuel industry will finally have a specialized trading platform capable of handling procurement with low transaction costs and complete price transparency," said McCourt. "Moreover, UOL will, with the help of its worldwide clients and its in-house nuclear fuel expertise, provide the nuclear fuel industry contractual and other standards that will define and greatly facilitate nuclear fuel trade around the world."

----

NRC to meet with ConEd on Indian Pt 2 nuke plant

Monday July 24, 2000,
"Elie" elie@highlands.com

NEW YORK, July 24 2000 (Reuters) - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said Monday it will meet with Consolidated Edison Inc (NYSE:ED http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ed&d=t - news /n/e/ed.html) (ConEd) on Friday, July 28, related to the safety of the steam generators at the idled Indian Point 2 nuclear power plant in upstate New York.

The meeting will review ConEd's response to a July 20 letter from the NRC requesting additional information on ConEd's proposed plan to restart Indian Point 2 using its existing steam generators, the NRC said in a statement. The NRC said it is concerned about what it called ``assumptions and uncertainties'' in the analysis provided by ConEd as part of the plant restart plan.

The meeting is scheduled to begin at 10:00 EDT at the Indian Point 2 plant site in Buchanan, N.Y., about 35 miles north of New York City. Indian Point 2 was shut on February 15 when a small amount of radioactive water leaked from a crack in one of the thousands of tubes inside one of the steam generators.

A steam generator, which stands about 70 feet high and 40 feet wide, transfers heat from the reactor systems to the power-generating portion of a nuclear power plant.

-------- us nuc politics

The Myth of Perfect Nuclear Security

July 24, 2000
By RICHARD RHODES
http://www.nytimes.com/00/07/24/oped/24rhod.html

MADISON, Conn. -- When the Los Alamos National Laboratory opened for business in April 1943, the irony of volunteering to live behind barbed-wire fences was not lost on the Jewish physicists who had escaped from Nazi Germany and would now lead the development of the world's first atomic bombs. Understandably, they found the implication that they might be disloyal to the United States offensive.

Despite aggressive security, which extended to mail checks, telephone tapping and covert surveillance, two Manhattan Project scientists independently passed the detailed plans for the Fat Man plutonium implosion bomb to the Soviet Union late in the war; the first Soviet atomic bomb was a close copy of the American bomb.

Paradoxically, the transfer of the plans by Klaus Fuchs, a German, and Theodore Alvin Hall, a young American, delayed rather than accelerated the Soviet weapons program. Russian scientists under Igor Kurchatov independently designed a weapon twice as powerful and half as large as Fat Man, but Joseph Stalin and Lavrenti Beria, who was the head of the Soviet bomb program as well as the K.G.B., distrusted the very scientists they relied upon and insisted on building the cruder but "proven" American version.

Today, Los Alamos is once again defending itself against charges of lax security. The laboratory's security system certainly needs a tune-up, but fears of espionage are overblown. Worse, the remedies being proposed threaten a more fundamental kind of national security: the ability to attract and keep a staff of talented, dedicated scientists and engineers.

When it comes to developing nuclear weapons, there are no real secrets anymore. The technology reached maturity decades ago. Building a bomb is a matter of money, industrial resources and bad judgment; every nation that has undertaken to build an atomic bomb has succeeded on the first try. The only real differences today from nation to nation concern skill at making weapons smaller and more efficient, a technological disparity that more robust delivery systems can compensate for.

Weapons scientists know this fundamental truth, even if senators don't. It's the reason scientists chafe at overzealous security restrictions -- and the reason some of them devise ways to work around these restrictions. As long ago as 1970, a Defense Department task force on secrecy judged it "unlikely that classified information will remain secure for periods as long as five years."

Thus, the indictment of Wen Ho Lee, a Chinese-American physicist at Los Alamos now awaiting trial, for downloading old weapons-design files onto an unsecured computer has already damaged security more than it can possibly protect it.

Mr. Lee was charged with security violations only because the Federal Bureau of Investigation was unable to document its working assumption -- that he had passed weapons secrets to China. But what would he have told China's scientists that they don't already know?

Mr. Lee is not the first government employee to find secure computers frustrating and inconvenient. John Deutch, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, also loaded classified information onto his unsecured home computer. (He, however, has not been subjected to arrest and extended incarceration for doing so.)

Moreover, blame for the other Los Alamos security scandal -- the temporary misplacement of two hard drives that almost certainly contained information about the electronic locks that prevent unauthorized use of nuclear weapons -- certainly deserves to be shared.

In 1993, President George Bush authorized a cost-saving program that eliminated accountability for merely "secret" material. And the Pentagon last year blocked a proposal by former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary that would have declassified many of the department's files, while securing the most sensitive nuclear weapons information.

Under Ms. O'Leary's proposal, the hard drives would have been upgraded from secret to top secret, which would have prevented them from being absentmindedly carried away and forgotten. Whoever wanted them would have had to sign them out and in.

Why was the proposal blocked? The Pentagon cited "substantial" costs.

Before we straitjacket our national weapons laboratories further with security restrictions like polygraph tests, which have already lowered morale and discouraged recruitment, we should consider their past record of accomplishment -- a better measure of loyalty than any number of mandatory polygraph tests. Across nearly 60 years, their work has contributed in major ways to our security and technological advantage.

Ten years after the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer opened Los Alamos, he was subjected to a vindictive security hearing for the sin of advising his government not to waste its limited nuclear resources on a crash program to develop a hydrogen bomb it did not yet know how to build. One of his defenders before the security board, I. I. Rabi, the plainspoken Nobel laureate and Columbia University physicist, listed Oppenheimer's outstanding contributions to United States security -- first of all, the bomb itself -- and then asked the exasperated question I would ask of the present-day detractors of the Los Alamos lab: "What more do you want -- mermaids?"

Richard Rhodes is the author of "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," "Dark Sun" and, most recently, "Why They Kill."

----

The Missile Defense Program

Monday, July 24, 2000; Page A22
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-07/24/005l-072400-idx.html

The July 9 editorial "The Missile Misses" correctly cited the missile threat from rogue states such as North Korea, the possibility of an accidental launch and the desire to preserve America's freedom of action as compelling reasons for national missile defense.

The editorial also reminded us of China's reason for opposing American plans: that such a defense would reduce Beijing's ability to threaten the United States with nuclear missiles, thereby eroding its ability to deter the United States from coming to Taiwan's aid in a crisis.

The mere possession of nuclear missiles alters behavior. I have wondered whether the United States and its allies would have been as willing to enter the Gulf War if Saddam Hussein had possessed long-range missiles armed with nuclear weapons.

In fact, Iraq, which does not have such weapons, routinely is bombed by the United States in order to enforce U.N. directives and no-fly zones, while North Korea, which possess long-range missiles and nuclear weapons, is the largest recipient of U.S. aid in Asia.

JON KYL
U.S. Senator (R-Ariz.)
Member

----

Senator Wants Missile Shield in N.D.

July 24, 2000
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Conrad-Missile-Shield.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad, trying to get the missile shield installed in his state instead of Alaska, has an answer to critics who say it won't protect Alaska's lightly populated Aleutian Islands and Hawaii's uninhabited outer islands: Pay the unprotected people.

``Are we really going to say we aren't going to protect the whole rest of the country because of 1,500 people in the Aleutian chain, who could be offered a generous buyout package?'' asked Conrad, who says he hasn't decided what a fair payment might be. ``Especially in light of the fact that it would make no strategic sense for them to be a target in the first place?''

The Democratic senator's argument sat poorly with Alaska's congressional delegation.

``I can tell you that we aren't willing to sell our right to be defended,'' said Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska.

Lt. Col. Rick Lehner of the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization did not comment on Conrad's idea but said any missile defense system, by law, must protect all 50 states.

The Pentagon has said the Alaska site provides the best defense for the ``most prevailing threat'' -- North Korea.

President Clinton is expected to decide whether to move forward with a plan for 20 missile interceptors operating with a network of tracking radars and high-speed computers in Alaska.

Under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed with then-Soviet Union, the United States designated its anti-missile site as near Nekoma, N.D. Any location change requires approval from the Russians.

If the Russians won't accept the change, keeping the site in North Dakota could save the United States from choosing between breaking the treaty or not deploying a system, Conrad says.

Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, accused Conrad of ``playing to the hometown audience'' in economically struggling North Dakota.

``I think it's very shortsighted and relatively small of himself to just excuse 1,500 people as not really worth that much,'' Young said.

Bob King, a spokesman for Alaska's Democratic governor, Tony Knowles, called the proposal ``somewhat callous,'' and added: ``I'm sure the senator would not so easily propose leaving out a certain part of his state from a national missile defense initiative and attempt to buy off his constituents.''

North Dakota Gov. Ed Schafer said putting the shield in his state makes fiscal sense, since the Pentagon already has poured billions into the site near Nekoma.

``Taxpayer money, foreign relations, treaty negotiation -- all of that points to North Dakota,'' Schafer said.

-------- u.s. nuc weapons

Breakthrough computer tests of thermonuclear devices

24/07/2000,
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0007/24/text/pageone14.html

Washington: Three leading US nuclear weapons laboratories had found a way to conduct three-dimensional computer tests of key components of thermonuclear devices, according to The Washington Post.

The breakthrough could take a key argument away from nuclear test ban opponents by removing the need for underground nuclear tests to check the reliability of thermonuclear bombs in the US arsenal.

It took three months and the world's fastest supercomputers to compute a three-dimensional simulation of a secondary hydrogen explosion, according to scientists at the Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

Scientists were also able to simulate the plutonium trigger, the primary explosion that sets off a hydrogen blast, the Post said.

Until now, computer simulations had worked only in two dimensions, which scientists said had failed to give them the full picture of how weapon components operated, the Post reported.

According to the paper, US weapons laboratories will receive another generation of supercomputers in the next five years, which will allow them to conduct virtual tests of existing and new nuclear weapons.

The United States has been observing a moratorium on nuclear testing since 1992. But the Republican-controlled Senate refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty last October, with opponents of the measure arguing the US still needed real-life nuclear tests to ensure the reliability of its arsenal.

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

-------- u.s.

DIAGNOSIS UNKNOWN: GULF WAR SYNDROME
THE SEARCH FOR CAUSES

By David Brown
Sunday, July 24, 1994 ; Page A19

Gulf War syndrome is an example of the medical truism that when there is no obvious explanation for a person's illness, the list of possible explanations is likely to be very long. Into this void has rushed a small universe of theories, hypotheses, rumors and anecdotes. A partial catalogue follows. Medical experts believe it is unlikely that a single cause will be found for the undiagnosed illnesses among veterans, though many of these possibilities are likely to prove correct in some cases.

SMOKE

Smoke from burning oil wells was the most visible and, for a while at least, the most likely candidate to cause Gulf War syndrome.

The army of Iraq ignited 605 oil wells and uncapped 46 others as it fled Kuwait in February 1991. Between early May and early December (about a month after the last fire was extinguished), the U.S. Army Environmental Hygiene Agency took more than 4,000 air and soil samples, testing some for a dozen or more toxic chemicals.

At the request of Congress, the Army in the summer of 1992 reported on the fires' potential health effects. Its calculations were based on sampling data from eight locations in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and guidelines employed by the Environmental Protection Agency to judge the risk of "Superfund" toxic waste sites.

The conclusion was that in the spring and summer of 1991, Persian Gulf air, despite its appearance, was about as dirty as that of Houston and Philadelphia.

The Army determined that exposure to air and soil contaminants may result in 2 to 5 more cancers per 10 million people, an increase well below the level considered serious by EPA. The increased risk for noncancer health problems also was below the EPA threshold.

Blood and urine tests on a sample of soldiers from the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment done before, during and after deployment showed no increases in nickel or vanadium (two metals known to be in Kuwait crude oil) and none of other toxic metals, such as lead and mercury.

A Navy study showed that Marines stationed in Kuwait for six weeks were more likely to have mild respiratory symptoms (such as cough, runny nose and wheezing) and intestinal complaints than Marines who were in Kuwait for only a week, or a third group that spent all of Operation Desert Storm in Saudi Arabia. The epidemiologists attributed this to blowing sand and dust, pollen from an agricultural site, possibly pollution from the fires, and an outbreak of infectious diarrhea.

The military's measurements of oil fire smoke, however, are incomplete. In particular, they do not account for March and April 1991, a period that preceded the arrival of the Shamal winds, which blow from northeast to southwest between May and September each year. A computer model of weather conditions and smoke content is now estimating the pollution during that period, when the smoke was closer to the ground.

Evidence that the oil fires are not the smoking gun of Gulf War syndrome also comes from the experience of the civilian firefighters, mostly Texans, who capped the wells.

Gary K. Friedman, at the time head of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Texas Medical School, examined and tested about 30 employees of the Red Adair Co. before and after their sojourn in Kuwait. (He later got data from two other companies as well.) These men spent an average of 105 days extremely close to burning or gushing wells, with no respirators and little protective clothing. None has experienced anything resembling Gulf War syndrome, or any illness of delayed onset.

"If a 'Desert Storm syndrome' is defined ... raw or burning oil should be dismissed as a probable etiology," Friedman said at a three-day meeting on Gulf War illnesses held in April at the National Institutes of Health.

SAND

One airborne pollutant the Army detected in high concentration was sand. Illness that resulted from inhaling the unusually fine particles of Saudi desert sand was among the first environmental health problems noted in the Gulf War.

Two Army physicians coined the name "Al Eskan disease" to describe an acute respiratory illness that appeared when U.S. soldiers moved into the Al Eskan high-rise "village" in Riyadh. Built for Bedouins a decade earlier but never occupied, the apartments were full of fine sand mixed with pigeon droppings.

A report published in the journal Military Medicine in 1992 described chills, fever, malaise, dry cough and nausea as the usual symptoms. No infectious organism was found, though studies of the sand found a few types of fungus. In most cases the illness was resolved in two weeks. In a few cases, it returned.

The doctors speculated that retained particles of sand could alter the immune defenses of the lungs and cause chronic illness. (Permanent lung scarring, and greater susceptibility to tuberculosis, is seen with silicosis, a condition that occurs after much greater or longer exposure.) In general, however, sand, or contaminants in it, has not received much attention.

STRESS

One possible cause of Gulf War syndrome that has been mentioned most widely is also the one most disputed among ill veterans: psychological stress.

The best-known war-related psychiatric illness is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), described after the Vietnam War but also seen by survivors of non-combat disasters or assaults. PTSD sufferers reexperience traumatic events, often in terrifying "flashbacks," which leads them to avoid situations reminiscent of the events. Some experience amnesia, and most also report both an emotional numbness and a state of hypervigilant arousal. These are not the symptoms of Gulf War syndrome; nevertheless, some people feel it is a variant of PTSD.

Though U.S. forces experienced little ground combat in the Persian Gulf, there were many situations of extreme stress. Frequently cited are threats of gas attack (and the rush to put on protective clothing), missile attacks and exposure to corpses.

PTSD has been found among Desert Storm veterans in varying rates. A study of 78 soldiers from the 123rd Army Reserve Command in Indiana found overall high levels of stress, but only a few cases fitting PTSD.

A survey of 2,280 veterans, mostly National Guard members and reservists, done at Fort Devens in Massachusetts, found PTSD in 1.3 percent of men and 4.7 percent of women on return to the United States. Eighteen months later the rates had risen to 4.6 percent and 11.5 percent, respectively. Depression and anxiety were seen in 20 to 25 percent of the group when it was first studied, and were higher at the second round of interviews.

Psychological stress, depression and anxiety affect hormone regulation and immunity in human beings. They theoretically could have made some soldiers more susceptible to conventional illness or infection. On the other hand, mental disorders can directly cause physical symptoms. In the family of "somatoform disorders," psychic states are directly expressed as physical complaints.

Lying somewhere between a strictly somatic and the strictly psychiatric diagnosis is chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), whose symptoms are nearly identical to those of Gulf War syndrome.

Many researchers have sought a viral (or other infectious) cause for CFS, without success. The disorder is currently best treated with a combination of understanding and support from a physician, physical rehabilitation and exercise, behavior change, and in some cases medications, often antidepressants.

Some veterans with Gulf War syndrome have been given a diagnosis of CFS, and many more probably will. If so, it is unlikely to help explain the syndrome because the cause of CFS is unknown.

CHEMICAL WEAPONS

Perhaps the most controversial claim is that Iraq used chemical or biological weapons, and that chronic toxicity or infection is behind the undiagnosable illnesses.

Rumors of gas attacks began during the war, and have circulated widely since. In May, the staff of Sen. Donald W. Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.) released a report citing 17 events in which soldiers believed they smelled, saw or felt the effects of poison gas.

Perhaps the best known is the report by a chemical monitoring team from the Czech Republic, which said it detected two chemical agents in January 1991: once the nerve agent sarin, and another time a skin-blistering mustard liquid. The American military has termed this report "credible," but added it is also unconfirmable because no samples were kept. In a report delivered in June, a Pentagon-appointed panel of scientists said it had found only one case of clinical poisoning in a soldier who may have touched a blistering agent while searching an Iraqi bunker after the war. But even this was uncertain.

Overall, the military has concluded that no chemical or biological agents were used in the Gulf War. It also rejects the notion that troops were accidentally exposed to gas released into the atmosphere during the bombing of enemy munitions dumps.

Any chemical weapon release capable of causing low-level toxic effects in thousands of troops, the Pentagon argues, would have had to produce many fatal or severely symptomatic cases among Americans, soldiers of other nations or civilians. No such casualties have been found.

Furthermore, there were no massive die-offs of animals, as some veterans contend. But there may have appeared to Americans to have been unusual numbers of camel, goat and sheep carcasses because of the slow decay of bodies in the desert and the practice of bringing dead animals to the roadside, where they can be enumerated by local officials, according to military authorities.

KNOWN ILLNESS

There is no evidence so far that soldiers in the Persian Gulf were objects of widespread or lingering infections from conventional sources. Though many did suffer from diarrheal disease traced to bacteria-contaminated lettuce, the overall rate of illness during the gulf campaign was one-third that seen in Vietnam and one-fifth that seen in Korea.

There was one intriguing medical discovery, however, that ultimately may shed light on many unexplained cases. In the last three years, researchers at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research have diagnosed 12 cases of "viscerotropic leishmaniasis," an infection by the parasite (Leishmania tropica), which is carried by sand flies.

This illness is distinct from a well-known (and relatively mild) skin disease caused by L. tropica, and from an often-fatal illness, called kala azar, caused by a different strain of Leishmania.

Ten of the 12 soldiers had at least some of the common Gulf War syndrome symptoms of fever, malaise, muscle aches, diarrhea and fatigue. In each case, the parasite was found in sampled tissue, making the diagnosis indisputable. In a half-dozen others, researchers found evidence of L. tropica infection with less direct and less certain tests.

One hypothesis is that this novel, low-grade form of leishmaniasis has symptoms caused by immune system activation and the production of substances known as cytokines. In fact, interferon alfa, a cytokine used to treat viral hepatitis, can cause side effects (including depression) remarkably similar to those seen in Gulf War syndrome.

Viscerotropic leishmaniasis, however, appears to be very difficult to diagnose. There are few parasites, and finding them almost always requires painful bone-marrow sampling. The diagnostic accuracy of conventional tests, such as antibody measurements, is unknown.

Screening of Gulf War veterans is not practical. Even less practical -- or desirable in the absence of a firm diagnosis -- is treating large numbers of people with 30-day infusions of sodium stibogluconate, the toxic and sometimes ineffective drug used against leishmaniasis.

Major Alan J. Magill and his colleagues at Walter Reed have developed a new battery of diagnostic tests for L. tropica that they hope to study among soldiers who served in the same units as the 12 confirmed cases.

If the new test performs well, it could eventually be used to help determine how much of Gulf War syndrome is actually undiagnosed leishmaniasis.

"We assume that there are more infections. I think that is safe to say," Magill said recently. "Whether it is 10 more or a hundred more or a thousand more we don't know."

ORGANIC CHEMICALS

Use of such compounds pervaded the Gulf War:

Oil was sprayed on the ground to suppress dust.

Pesticides and insect repellents were applied liberally.

Kerosene heaters, many fueled with petroleum products other than kerosene, burned inside poorly vented tents.

Heaters for showers frequently leaked fuel into the water supply, coating soldiers with a thin layer of oil.

Pesticides were used around latrines and, according to military officials, applied by trained workers. There are no records of use other than total pounds ordered before the war and returned after.

Acute pesticide poisoning of the sort that occasionally befalls farm workers can cause permanent damage of the nerves of the arms and legs. Recent research also suggests that even long after recovery, poisoning victims report high levels of tension and confusion, and have poorer ability to sustain visual attention on psychological testing. But there were no reported cases of acute, high-dose poisoning, according to military authorities.

One theory, however, is that exposure to other chemicals, or possibly psychic stress, made some soldiers unusually susceptible to pesticide effects. It is relatively common in medicine for one drug (or an illness) to alter the "dose-response curve" of a second drug. Whether this can occur with pesticides is unknown.

PYRIDOSTIGMINE

Some believe that the drug given to soldiers as a "pretreatment" against possible Iraqi nerve gas attacks is the cause of Gulf War syndrome.

Physicians for decades have prescribed pyridostigmine at doses 10 times higher than those used by U.S. troops to treat myasthenia gravis, a neurological disorder characterized by extreme muscle weakness. Prevention of nerve-gas poisoning, however, is not one of its approved uses. In that sense, pyridostigmine was an "experimental" drug.

As U.S. forces prepared to ship out, the Food and Drug Administration granted the military's request to distribute pyridostigmine without first getting informed consent normally required with experimental drugs.

Soldiers carried 21-pill blister packs of the medicine. Orders to start taking it came through each unit's command structure, and thus differed from group to group. The military collected some information on who took how much when, but overall the picture is sketchy at best. Many soldiers took the drug daily for at most a few weeks during the air war. Some, however, report taking it for as long as five months, and others at doses higher than the prescribed one pill every eight hours.

Pyridostigmine indirectly enhances the effect of acetylcholine, one of the more important and widespread "neurotransmitter" substances in the body. Short-term side effects -- nausea, light-headedness, salivation and wheezing -- are common. The chronic symptoms of Gulf War syndrome are not seen in myasthenia gravis patients, who take the drug for years. However, some people dispute the relevance of that observation, noting that myasthenic patients have a neurological disease that could make their response to pyridostigmine untypical.

Another theory is that pyridostigmine itself did not cause problems, but enhanced the effect of pesticides or chemical warfare agents, some of which are closely related and also affect acetylcholine.

Proponents of this view point to a neurological phenomenon called "kindling" in which the brain becomes supersensitive to certain seizure-inducing chemicals. They argue that the cocktail of chemicals (including pyridostigmine) has made some Gulf War veterans unusually sensitive to pesticides encountered in civilian life. Only in this case, they say, the effect is not seizures, but more subtle mood, sleep and thinking problems. This scenario is highly speculative.

MULTIPLE CHEMICAL SENSITIVITY

Another theory is that Gulf War syndrome is really "multiple chemical sensitivity" (MCS) disorder, a controversial diagnosis that has a growing following of patients and practitioners, but which is not yet widely accepted in medicine.

Believers in MCS say that through unknown biological mechanisms, some people can become "sensitized" to a vast array of synthetic chemicals. Smells of perfume, paint, gasoline and other ubiquitous substances can trigger allergic reactions, or more subtle symptoms, such as headache and malaise, when encountered in previously tolerable amounts. Though no laboratory tests are able to diagnose MCS, patients sometimes find relief by, among other things, living in extremely clean environments and eating food with no additives.

At the NIH meeting in April, Myra Shayevitz, a physician at the VA hospital in Northampton, Mass., said she believes MCS and Gulf War syndrome "are synonymous." Of the veterans she has seen, 86 percent attribute their symptoms to chemical exposure. She says she has had good results treating them with filtered air, bottled water, family support and a graded exercise program. The Department of Veterans Affairs is in the process of establishing three centers for research on MCS disorder.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTAGION

Under this inflammatory theory, the rumor of widespread illness, passed by word of mouth and validated in some sense by news reports and official attention, has made veterans fear long-term health consequences from their Persian Gulf service.

A certain number will focus on ailments, many of which might otherwise be given little importance, as evidence they are among those destined to become ill. Thus as "evidence" mounts that gulf-derived illness exists, more and more people find it. Eventually, its symptoms may spread to new populations as, in fact, symptoms of Gulf War syndrome are now sometimes said to be spreading to veterans' families.

Psychological contagion exists. But it is extremely difficult to prove. And it is the one explanation that most researchers into Gulf War syndrome are likely to consider only after every other plausible alternative is eliminated.

- Rev. Rus Cooper-Dowda Compiled, Edited and Updated July 2000

----

Why We're in Okinawa: For a Stable Asia

July 24, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/00/07/24/letters/l24oki.html

To the Editor:

Jacob Heilbrunn ("Take the Marines Off Okinawa," Op-Ed, July 21) is right to point out that United States forces on Okinawa are "dangerously vulnerable to chemical and ballistic missile attacks." But he does not mention that this vulnerability helps explain their presence -- and the Japanese government's desire to keep them there.

Much as American forces in West Germany acted as a "trip wire" to guarantee United States involvement in any cold-war confrontation in Europe, the very vulnerability of United States troops in Okinawa means that the United States would find it difficult to stay out of a future war in East Asia.

This certainty of American involvement brings stability to the region, reducing the incentive for countries there to enter an arms race to defend themselves from one another.

PAUL G. HARRIS Wolfeboro, N.H., July 21, 2000

-------- OTHER
-------- drug war

U.S. Presses Colombia to Use Herbicide on Coca

July 24, 2000
By Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-drugs-c.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is pressing Colombia to use a controversial fungus to kill coca plants, U.S. officials and others familiar with the program say.

Advocates of the fungus Fusarium oxysporum, such as Florida Republican Rep. Bill McCollum, see it as what he calls the ''silver bullet'' that can defeat coca and win the war on drugs.

The hope is that eradicating Colombia's coca industry will cripple a guerrilla movement that controls up to 40 percent of Colombia, where a 30-year internal conflict has left more than 35,000 people dead since 1990.

The program's supporters say the fungus kills only coca, used to make cocaine, and opium poppy, used to make heroin, without hurting food crops. But its detractors warn that using even an apparently benign biological agent can damage the environment and possibly hurt the farm families who grow coca.

While various strains of Fusarium have killed coca, tomatoes, corn and a host of other crops for decades, this particular strain was discovered accidentally when it decimated a coca crop in Hawaii that researchers planned to use to test chemical herbicides, said Eric Rosenquist, head of international programs at the Agriculture Department's Research Service in Beltsville, Maryland.

Rosenquist said the next step was to do field tests in Colombia to determine if the fungus killed enough of the coca it attacked to drive farmers into planting other crops, usually 40 to 50 percent.

``Conceptually it seems to work,'' he said, adding: ``It certainly is not ready to use.''

But Colombia has balked at field trials, and Environment Minister Juan Mayr said in Madrid in early July that Bogota believed Fusarium may pose ``serious risks to the environment and human health.''

Still, Bogota is under heavy pressure from U.S. drug czar Barry McCaffrey's office, the State Department and elsewhere, said a source familiar with the project.

Colombia wants to find a strain of the fungus already in the country, rather than risk introducing one from outside. This means that tests must start from the beginning and sets the program back two to three years, Rosenquist said.

In the United States, Florida has considered using Fusarium to kill marijuana plants but that program appears to have been put on a back burner because of environmentalists' objections.

David Struhs, the state's secretary of environmental protection, said in an April 6, 1999, memo that he was concerned that Fusarium applied to kill drug plants could mutate into something more dangerous.

``Mutagenicity is by far the most disturbing factor in attempting to use a Fusarium species as a bioherbicide. It is difficult if not impossible to control the spread of Fusarium species. The mutated fungi can cause disease in a large number of crops, including tomatoes, peppers, flowers, corn and vines,'' he wrote.

But Jim McDonough, director of the state Office of Drug Control Policy, said that Florida officials were ``watching to see where the research goes'' in terms of efficacy and safety.

``Personally it appears to me that the research is showing promise,'' he told Reuters.

Some of the debate over whether to use Fusarium centers on what danger, if any, the fungus poses to people.

Agriculture Department spokeswoman Sandy Miller-Hays said that the coca-killing strain of Fusarium oxysporum does not produce mycotoxins that could hurt farm families.

However, even without the mycotoxins, it is not clear that it is safe for humans to be around large amounts of the fungus, said Dr. Michael Rinaldi, a clinical mycologist who directs a fungus testing laboratory at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

People who are severely immunosuppressed because of AIDS or cancer treatments, for example, are vulnerable to Fusarium infections, and a minor eye injury may lead to blindness if Fusarium is involved, said Rinaldi, who estimates he has seen at least 100 Fusarium oxysporum infections over 10 years.

Ramon Sandin, director of microbiology and virology at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, said he had treated cancer patients with Fusarium infections, and had been frustrated to find anti-fungal treatments often did not work.

``We're not very happy when somebody comes down with a Fusarium infection. We know the potential for demise,'' he said. ''We've lost several in the past couple of years.''

Still, a U.S. official was derisive about the notion that the fungus could hurt people, likening concerns about it to warning labels in microwaves telling people not to use the ovens to warm pets.

``There are a number of people in the U.S. Congress who are enthusiastic about this,'' the official said.

In addition to concerns about its safety, Rosenquist seemed unconvinced that Fusarium would kill enough coca to be worth pursuing. Overall, he said, just 20 percent of released biogens do what they are supposed to.

In Peru's coca-growing Upper Huallaga Valley, the fungus is endemic and has caused real economic losses to farmers. But while the Upper Huallaga Valley is tropical mountains, coca in Colombia is grown on drier savanna so it is not clear that the fungus would survive, he said.

Currently, crop-dusting planes spray Roundup (glyphosate) on coca to kill the plants. But the aircraft must fly so low that they are vulnerable to ground fire from coca-growers or rebels. Pilots would be safer spreading the fungus.

``One of the methods of applying this fungus is using an airplane to eject seeds infected with the fungus,'' the U.S. official said. ``If it could be worked out, it would enable airplanes to fly higher than when applying liquid herbicide.''

-------- prisons

Bill Requires Jail Deaths Reported

July 24, 2000
By The Associated Press
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Prison-Deaths.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- State and local prison authorities would be required to report the circumstances behind prison deaths under legislation that the House approved Monday.

Rep. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., the bill's sponsor, said about 1,000 men and women die questionable deaths every year while in police custody or in jail. ``This is an obvious sign that something needs to be done to restore accountability in prisons,'' he said.

The legislation, which passed by a voice vote, now goes to the Senate.

Hutchinson cited a report by the Asbury Park Press of Neptune, N.J., which found that many who die behind bars are listed as suicides. But those conclusions often come into question because of inadequate record keeping.

``With no one looking at these deaths from a systematic point of view, we don't know whether there is any pattern or practice relating to such deaths nor whether there is any training needed among law enforcement officials which should limit such occurrences,'' said Rep. Robert Scott, D-Va.

The information to be reported to the Justice Department must include the name, gender, race, ethnicity, and age of the deceased; the date, time and location of death, and the circumstances surrounding the death.

The bill number is H.R. 1800.

-------- spying

Ex-Energy Official Faults F.B.I. in Nuclear Inquiry

July 24, 2000
By JAMES RISEN
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/072400nuclear-inquiry.html

WASHINGTON, July 23 -- A whistle-blower's manuscript that the government suppressed on security grounds contains little new information, but strongly criticizes the F.B.I. as having mishandled the government's investigation into whether China stole United States nuclear secrets.

On July 14, F.B.I. agents seized a computer hard drive from the home of Notra Trulock, the former chief of intelligence at the Energy Department, who wrote the manuscript. The Federal Bureau of Investigation acted in what officials described as a preliminary investigation to determine whether the paper disclosed classified information about the espionage case.

But a review of the 62-page manuscript, obtained by The New York Times, shows that while it is heavy on criticism of the F.B.I. and other agencies, it contains little information about the spy case that has not already been disclosed in the news media or in Congressional hearings.

The manuscript, which Mr. Trulock had submitted to the Central Intelligence Agency for possible publication in one of its internal journals, presents Mr. Trulock's views of how the investigation into China's possible theft of United States nuclear secrets unfolded. In it, he attacks the F.B.I., as well as other officials from the Energy Department and its Los Alamos National Laboratory.

A spokesman for the bureau said last week that its investigation had not come in reaction to the criticisms in the manuscript.

A C.I.A. official who screened the manuscript decided that it was an unauthorized release of classified material, and referred the matter to the F.B.I. for investigation. But Mr. Trulock said he had told the F.B.I. that he did not believe the manuscript contained classified information and that he had not had access to classified documents about the case since he left the Energy Department last August.

The manuscript contains many references to newspaper articles and Congressional testimony as source material.

Mr. Trulock was a frequent critic of how the government handled the investigation of possible nuclear espionage, asserting that the investigation into China's possible theft of data from the W-88, America's most advanced nuclear warhead, had not been pursued aggressively within the government. He subsequently became the target of criticism himself, as scientists and Asian-American groups attacked the F.B.I. and the Energy Department for making Wen Ho Lee, a scientist at Los Alamos, the focus of the counterintelligence investigation.

The most controversial passages in his manuscript concern whether the Energy Department and the F.B.I. prematurely focused on the Los Alamos laboratory, and Dr. Lee in particular, as the source of the possible leak of nuclear information to China. Since news of the spy case broke last year, the initial administrative inquiry by the Energy Department and the F.B.I. has drawn widespread criticism within the government for having been too narrowly focused. The F.B.I. has now reopened the investigation to take a broader look at ways in which the nuclear data could have reached the Chinese.

Mr. Trulock defends the actions of his team of Energy Department and F.B.I. investigators who conducted an initial administrative inquiry in the case, and says that problems came after they turned the case over to the F.B.I. for a full criminal investigation, code-named "Kindred Spirit." His manuscript is called "Kindred Spirit: The D.O.E. Nuclear Spy Follies."

The administrative inquiry was conducted by the Energy Department, with F.B.I. assistance, in late 1995 and early 1996.

The administrative inquiry considered 70 leads, and eventually narrowed the list to 12 possible suspects, including employees at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, Mr. Trulock writes. Before paring the list, the Energy-F.B.I. team also visited Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico, which was responsible for the nonnuclear firing components of the warhead. His team considered the Energy Department's Rocky Flats plant in Colorado and the Pantex nuclear complex in Texas, but ruled them out after learning "that there were no records of foreign travel and no visits by Chinese officials" at either plant.

While the inquiry did not focus exclusively on Los Alamos, "within the overall complex the security vulnerabilities at Los Alamos were striking," he writes. "Los Alamos had largely abandoned security measures intended to track individuals' access" to classified documents. "At Lawrence Livermore, we could review records of individuals that had accessed W-88 documents and blueprints, but no such records were maintained at Los Alamos. Employment within Los Alamos' X Division, the laboratory organization responsible for the W-88 design, apparently afforded these employees unmonitored access to nuclear warhead design information."

While his team focused on Energy Department facilities as possible sources of the compromise, the F.B.I. was supposed to check other, non-Energy Department facilities as part of a broader investigation.

But he later learned that the F.B.I. never did look elsewhere, Mr. Trulock writes.

"There are several unexplained and unexplored inconsistencies in the F.B.I.'s handling" of the case, Mr. Trulock writes.

--------

Site publishes CIA documents

07/24/00- Updated 10:47 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cti267.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - A private Web site has published a secret CIA overview of the U.S. intelligence community prepared for Japanese intelligence officials who visited the agency's headquarters in 1998.

The briefing containing information on the CIA's budgets and personnel trends was posted by John Young, 64, a New York City architect whose Web site has displayed government documents on intelligence and encryption issues since 1996.

Last month, Young published an unedited version of a secret history of the 1953 CIA-mastered coup in Iran that was originally published on The New York Times Web site with portions blacked out.

Young said he received the 1998 CIA briefing by e-mail from an anonymous source in Japan.

"We have a standing invitation for anyone who wants to have something published that governments don't want published," Young said Saturday in an interview, noting that he does not verify the authenticity of what he publishes. "We put it up and let people tell us if it's a spoof or if it's genuine."

CIA spokesman Bill Harlow wouldn't comment on the documents, but an unnamed senior intelligence official quoted in The Washington Post's Sunday editions said official visitors from the Japanese agency were authorized to receive the secret briefing at CIA headquarters in June 1998.

"Public disclosure of that information is troubling," the official said. "In terms of the information (in the briefing), it is not insignificant. We're always concerned when classified information is disclosed publicly."

The CIA briefing materials, described as presented by Charles E. Allen, the assistant director of central intelligence for collection, say that the number of people working for the National Foreign Intelligence Program, encompassing all civilian and military foreign intelligence activity, fell by more than 20% - 20,559 employees - between 1991 and 1998.

Allen's calling card, including his home telephone number, is part of the materials. Allen could not be reached immediately for comment.

Young has also posted a file obtained from the same source that shows the names, birth dates and titles of hundreds of employees of Japan's equivalent of the FBI, the Public Security Investigation Agency.

Young said he was contacted Thursday by two FBI agents from the New York field office who passed along a request from the Japanese Ministry of Justice that he remove the lists of agents from his site. Young said he refused the request and was told to expect direct contact from the Japanese government.

FBI headquarters spokeswoman Julie Miller said she wasn't familiar with Young or his Web site. James Margolin, FBI spokesman for the New York office, was not immediately available for comment.

Ichiro Shinjo, head of the General Affairs Department of Japan's Public Security Investigation Agency, was quoted by the Post as saying the Japanese government believes the source of the materials is an agency employee who resigned under pressure in December 1998.

-------- terrorism

Possible Terrorist Links Sting Quiet Neighborhood

July 24, 2000
By DAVID FIRESTONE
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/072400nc-hezbollah.html

HARLOTTE, N.C., July 23 -- The meetings would always start after dark. Three nights a week, as the stream of cars turned onto the residential street and parked, the neighbors would start wondering all over again: what was going on inside that house?

It had a basketball goal, and a barbecue grill, and appeared to be an unremarkable two-story emblem of suburban conformity except for those strange gatherings that lasted past the normal bedtime of Donnefield Drive. By breakfast, all the cars were gone.

"We all had theories," said Scott Furr, who lives across the street. "My girlfriend thought they were religious meetings, because she thought she heard some singing. Some people thought it was drugs. But I just thought it was a party house, where they got together and had a good time. Boy, were we wrong."

The mystery was solved on Friday, when the owner of the house was arrested, with 17 other people, and charged with being part of a conspiracy to smuggle cigarettes and send the profits to Hezbollah, the radical Islamic group based in Lebanon. The federal government said the homeowner, Mohammed Youssef Hammoud, was the leader of a Hezbollah support group that met regularly in his home and elsewhere to denounce the United States and collect money that was sent to the organization in Lebanon.

Because the State Department lists Hezbollah as a terrorist group, Mr. Hammoud and several of those arrested were charged with, among other things, providing aid to a foreign terrorist organization. It is one of the first major arrests under the antiterrorism law passed in 1996 in the wake of the bombing in Oklahoma City.

None of those arrested were charged with planning violent acts, but the possible presence of a Hezbollah group on a quiet street in Charlotte -- a financial capital that lacks even the slightest trace of intrigue or subversion -- was oddly unsettling to residents here.

"It doesn't make any sense to me," said Dwayne Eldridge, another neighbor of Mr. Hammoud. "I mean, we thought they were strange because they didn't wave back or talk to anybody on the block. But that doesn't mean we thought they were helping terrorists or anything. I guess you never really know your neighbors."

One possible explanation for the group's presence here may lie in the nature of the charges against its members. According to an affidavit filed by United States Attorney Mark T. Calloway in Federal District Court here on Friday, the group raised money by buying large quantities of cigarettes in North Carolina, where the tax is only five cents a pack, and smuggling them to Michigan, where the price of cigarettes is much higher because of the 75-cent state tax. The 70-cent profit on each pack produced hundreds of thousands of dollars that, the government charged, was helping to finance Hezbollah activities.

"With one load of illegal cigarettes in a panel van, you can make a profit of $8,000 to $10,000," said Earl Woodham, a spokesman for the Charlotte office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Those arrested will be able to enter formal pleas to the charges at hearings beginning on Wednesday. At least six of the 18 were released on bond over the weekend.

In Beirut on Saturday, Hezbollah issued a statement denying that it had any ties to those who were arrested, or to any other "organizational structures" in the United States.

Several Muslims who showed up this weekend at the Cedars Lebanese Restaurant and grocery store in Charlotte -- only to find it had been shut down by the government as a money-laundering front for the group -- insisted that those arrested had nothing to do with Hezbollah.

A man who identified himself only as Ahmed said he was a friend of some of the suspects. Brandishing the business cards of two Federal Bureau of Investigation agents as proof, he said his home had been searched by agents on Friday before he was allowed to go. He said the only money sent to Lebanon by those arrested went to relatives or to legitimate charities.

"They are only doing this because we are Arabs and this is not an Arab place," he said. "I know the people in this store. They are regular businessmen who would never smuggle cigarettes or get involved with terrorism. The F.B.I. took the Koran from my home. It just shows the real reason they are doing this." In the store window, tongs were dripping with crumbs next to a pan of baklava.

Around the corner, at the only other store here that sells halal meat approved for use by orthodox Muslims, patrons said several thousand Muslims lived in the area, only a small portion of whom were Lebanese. No one in the store said they believed the charges were true, and several said the civil liberties of the suspects had been violated.

When the antiterrorism law was passed, civil libertarians said they were concerned that the law infringed on free speech and free association. Damon Camp, an associate professor of criminal justice at Georgia State University in Atlanta who specializes in domestic terrorism, said that prosecutions under the law have been rare, and this could provide an interesting test case if the defendants challenge that charge.

He noted, however, that the suspects were also charged with cigarette smuggling, a more routine crime that does not raise the same civil liberties issues.

An interesting twist in this case is the group's extensive use of computers, several of which were seized as evidence. Mr. Eldridge, the neighbor of Mr. Hammoud, said he saw five desktop computers removed from the house, and an empty Dell computer carton was in the garbage can outside the house. The affidavit, citing confidential sources, said that Mr. Hammoud downloaded speeches and songs from Hezbollah sites on the Internet to use at the meetings.

Another man charged on Friday, Said Mohammed Harb, was accused of running a fraudulent Internet Web site design business that had done so well he recently bought a $36,000 BMW and a Lincoln Navigator.

The confidential source "believes this business is fraudulent, and involves the theft of credit card numbers, but Harb is being extremely secretive about it," the affidavit said. "The business is called Digital Karma."

OneList subscribers:

1. Fw: [downwinders] Archival Article (http://libpub.dispatch.com/cgi-bin/slwebcli.pl?DBLIST=cd00&D
From: "Vina Colley" <vcolley@earthlink.net>

2. So Whatever Happened to the Promised House of Reps Hearings???
From: easlavin@aol.com

3. House Republican Leaders Promised Hearings, Broke Their Word
From: easlavin@aol.com

4. FW: DU - Exposures to Civilians and Military Personnel
From: "Viviane Lerner" <vlerner@interpac.net>

-------

Message: 1
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 09:08:34 -0700
From: "Vina Colley" <vcolley@earthlink.net>
http://libpub.dispatch.com/cgi-bin/slwebcli.pl?DBLIST=cd00&D

BILL WOULD ATTACH STRINGS TO REFUGE FUNDING Date: Sunday, July 23, 2000 Section: NEWS Page: 06A Illustration: Graphic Byline: Compiled by Roger K. Lowe and Jonathan Riskind Source: Of the Dispatch Washington Bureau. Column: D.C. Dispatches

The Little Darby Wildlife Refuge would get $1 million in federal money under a bill that passed the Senate last week, but the money could not be spent unless the park's creation is backed by an environmental-impact statement, Sen. Mike DeWine said.

The funding -- with strings attached -- for creation of the park was part of the Interior spending bill passed by the Senate last week. The bill now goes to a House-Senate conference committee.

The measure also contains a provision to prohibit governments from using eminent domain to secure land for the refuge, unless the owner requests it in order to get market value.

"If a complete and thorough environmental-impact statement supports creation of a refuge area, it is important to have the resources ready to give private property owners the choice to preserve farmland and protect the Little Darby from potential development,'' said DeWine, R-Ohio.

"I believe this is a unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to save a special place for future generations,'' he said.

"It is also our best chance to protect valuable farmland -- specifically, 25,000 acres of farmland located in central Ohio -- that is rapidly disappearing.''

The legislation includes $148 million for the federal program that provides federal money to counties and local communities that contain tax-exempt federal lands, such as the Wayne National Forest. The $148 million is $13 million more than is budgeted this year.

"This increase directs more federal dollars to communities with a great deal of federal acreage, and will serve as an important source of funding for such local needs as capital investments for local schools, law enforcement, road maintenance and garbage collection,'' DeWine said.

In addition, $1.3 million would be allocated for construction planning for the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historic Park, with another $365,000 for renovations to the boyhood home, in Georgetown, Ohio, of former President Grant.

Strickland wants repurchase of USEC

Rep. Ted Strickland last week introduced legislation requiring the government to buy back the privatized federal corporation that runs southern Ohio's uranium-enrichment plant.

The Lucasville Democrat says the $1.9-billion privatization has proved a failure since it was carried out in July 1998.

"In two very short years, USEC's management has driven our domestic uranium-enrichment industry into the ground,'' Strickland said. "It's time for the government to admit that privatization was a mistake and take steps to renationalize this crucial industry.''

USEC, as the United States Enrichment Corp. is known as a private company, announced last month that it will shut down the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, in June 2001. USEC also runs a sister plant in Paducah, Ky., which would be the sole remaining plant in the country producing low-enriched uranium used for nuclear power plant fuel.

USEC officials say they can operate the enrichment industry more efficiently with one plant, and say they are working on new technology that will maintain their operations well into the future.

But Strickland says, "Without government action now, USEC will continue to jeopardize our domestic nuclear-fuel industry and a critical national-security interest,'' referring to USEC's role carrying out a key arms-control deal with Russia.

Lima tank plant spared budget cut

The 2001 defense-spending bill includes good news for workers at a Lima tank plant: It restores money for a new type of heavy assault equipment that had been on the chopping block.

President Clinton's budget had no money for the Wolverine Heavy Assault Bridge, but the final House-Senate defense bill provides $77 million in the budget year that begins Oct. 1.

"The question of whether the Wolverine program should continue has been decided, and the answer is yes,'' said Rep. Michael G. Oxley, R-Findlay, whose district includes the tank plant.

"The military bean counters in the administration were being penny wise but pound foolish,'' Oxley said. "The idea that we would have the most modern tank in the world but an antiquated way of moving that equipment across rough terrain did not fly here in Congress.''

Republican Sens. George V. Voinovich and Mike DeWine fought for money for the project.

"This is good news, not only for the men and women of Lima who build the Wolverine Bridge, but for our troops in the field who rely on the best and most modern equipment available,'' Voinovich said.

Kasich heads to Cooperstown

While his name is being bandied about as a possible vice-presidential pick, Rep. John R. Kasich has baseball on his mind this weekend.

Kasich is spending the weekend in Cooperstown, N.Y., for the Hall of Fame induction ceremonies.

His wife, Karen, is a huge fan of former Cincinnati Reds star Tony Perez, who is being inducted. As a child, she persuaded her father to take her to Florida for spring break to watch the Reds train.

The Kasichs also were to meet with Cleveland Indians Hall-of-Famer Bob Feller, who supported Kasich's presidential bid last year.

Caption: Graphic

All content herein is (c) 2000 The Columbus Dispatch and may not be republished without permission.

--------

A-bomb workers closer to deal
Panel to hammer out compensation

Message: 2
From: easlavin@aol.com
July 20, 2000
By Lisa Pevtzow Staff Writer
http://www.dailysouthtown.com/southtown/dsnews/201nd6.htm

Chicago-area workers exposed to the toxic metal beryllium while developing the atomic bomb during the Manhattan Project 50 years ago are a step closer to receiving compensation for their illnesses.

A committee composed of members of both houses of Congress will review the Thompson Amendment, a Senate proposal to compensate U.S. Department of Energy workers harmed by exposure to hazardous materials.

On July 13, the Senate approved 97-3 a defense spending bill, which includes

the compensation provision giving defense workers a choice of lost wages and

medical care or a lump sum payment of $200,000 and medical care.

Illness, according to the bill, is assumed to be work-related if the employee worked at a facility where exposure was likely.

It also would compensate federal employees, whose illnesses are likely to be

connected to exposure from radiation and other toxic substances at bomb factories and labs.

However, since the House of Representatives already passed its own version of the defense spending bill, which does not include the compensation provision, the matter will be hammered out in the coming weeks by legislators from both houses, said Burson Taylor, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), who sponsored the Senate amendment.

If the amendment makes it through the conference committee, the final bill will be sent back to both houses for a vote this fall.

Larry Kelman, a retired scientist at Argonne National Laboratory who was exposed to beryllium during his work on the Manhattan Project, expressed cautious optimism about the legislation Wednesday.

"I guess it reassures us that, yes, they mean business," said Kelman, who suffers from beryllium-induced disease. "They've made motions in the direction of doing something and reneged on it so many times. But I don't have confidence until I actually see something (passed into law)."

Hundreds of Manhattan Project staff inhaled tiny particles of beryllium while helping develop the atomic bomb at a University of Chicago laboratory, now Argonne National Laboratory near Lemont.

Energy Department officials have estimated that 2,300 people in Illinois were exposed to beryllium while doing government weapons work, mostly at Argonne.

Disease rates suggest that between 75 and 125 have or will develop the debilitating lung disease, which is fatal to about a third of its sufferers.

It can develop up to 40 years after exposure.

Until recently, the government has fought lawsuits demanding compensation, and argued that there is no proof the illnesses were caused by their work. But in January, a federal panel concluded there was "credible evidence that the illnesses were related to work exposure."

The Energy Department has since proposed minimum lump sum payments of $100,000 for employees of DOE contractors who developed cancer as a result of radiation exposure at the weapons plants.

"Workers ... across the country who served our nation during the Cold War have waited too long for the federal government to address their grievances," Thompson said in a statement. The Senate action "is an important step toward

remedying a grave injustice."

The Argonne high-energy lab, operated by the University of Chicago for the DOE, has not produced large amounts of beryllium dust since the early 1970s, and no workers now handle the toxic metal on a daily basis, according to a lab spokeswoman.

---------

House Republican Leaders Promised Hearings, Broke Their Word

Message: 3
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 22:23:20 EDT
From: easlavin@aol.com

Good evening:

Below are excerpts from the May 18, 2000 Congressional Record (House), previously circulated, showing that House Republican Leadership PROMISED HEARINGS on DOE worker compensation legislation.

The House Republican Leadership has not kept its word. DOE's and contractors' influence runs deep. DOE does not want an open hearing discussing procedures, rights, wrongs, remedies and alternatives (like NWWVARCHA). DOE is manipulating the process. This corruption of our Congress by DOE and its minions must be ended at once.

With kindest regards, Ed Slavin

Mr. WHITFIELD. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 1/2 minutes to the gentleman South Carolina (Mr. Graham), for the purpose of a colloquy.

(Mr. GRAHAM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of the Whitfield amendment and enter into a colloquy with the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Hilleary), the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Sisisky), the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence) and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) about the need for comprehensive legislation to address worker exposures at Department of Energy facilities during the Cold War.

Mr. Chairman, I along with the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spence) represent a large number of Cold War veterans at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina who helped this great Nation win the Cold War through their dedication and hard work. We have heard the last several speakers talk about DOE workers across the Nation who were exposed to levels of radiation greater than they should have been, and other DOE workers who were exposed to other substances, including beryllium, which have had an adverse effect on their health.

I think that all Members will agree that if through the course of producing nuclear weapons for this great Nation, Department of Energy or Department of Energy contract employees were caused physical harm, we owe it to them to seek a remedy for their lost wages and medical treatment.

Mr. Chairman, I know that as of late there has been a concerted effort on the part of the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Whitfield), the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Gibbons), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland), the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kanjorski ), the Department of Energy and others to come up with a plan to offer these workers compensation .

I believe the smart and responsible thing for us to do is to take a look at this situation and make sure we do the right thing for the workers.

Mr. Chairman, I have a letter from the gentleman from Texas (Chairman Smith) of the Committee on the Judiciary's Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims in which he states, `I hope to work with you and other Members to address the need to compensate workers at DOE weapons production facilities whose health has suffered as a result of their employment. Furthermore, I expect to hold hearings on this subject in the coming months.'

I appreciate the willingness of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith) to hold a hearing on this issue.

Mr. Chairman, I believe that the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Hilleary) has a similar letter from the chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Mr. HILLEARY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GRAHAM. I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee.

(Mr. HILLEARY asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. HILLEARY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Graham) for yielding, and I rise in strong support of the Whitfield amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I want to make sure we do the right thing for these workers. Many Tennesseans, in my opinion, are Cold War heroes and they deserve to be compensated if, through the course of their work, their health was adversely affected by exposure to radiation or other harmful effects.

I do have a letter from the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) addressed to myself and the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Graham) in which he too commits to hold a hearing this year on this important matter.

In this letter, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) states, and I quote, `I will work with you and the other Members interested in this issue by holding hearings this year and by otherwise helping them in whatever capacity I can to help them pass reasonable workers' compensation for DOE and DOE -contract employees where concrete documentation proves they were adversely affected by their exposure to either radiation or other substances through the course of their work at DOE weapons facilities during the Cold War.'

I want to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) for his willingness to work on this matter, and as a member of the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Education and the Workforce, I look forward to participating and finding a real solution that benefits these injured workers and also look forward to assisting the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp), who represents Oak Ridge, and other Congressmen from the surrounding area around Oak Ridge in their efforts to help these workers.

Congress of the United States, Washington, DC, May 17, 2000.

Hon. Lindsey Graham.

Hon. Van Hilleary.

[Page: H3376] GPO's PDF Dear Lindsey and Van: I appreciate your interest in resolving the issue of compensating Department of Energy workers for damage done to their health due to exposure to radiation and other substances during their employment at DOE weapon's production facilities during the Cold War.

I understand that Mr. Whitfield, Mr. Wamp, Mr. Kanjorski , Mr. Strickland and others have introduced legislation to compensate these workers for their injuries. I'm also aware that the Department of Energy has proposed legislation to address the problem. These bills have been referred to the Education and Workforce committee for consideration.

I will work with you and the other Members interested in this issue by holding hearings this year and by otherwise helping them in whatever capacity I can to help them pass reasonable workers' compensation for DOE and DOE contract employees where concrete documentation proves they were adversely effected by their exposure to either radiation or other substances through the course of their work at DOE weapons facilities during the Cold War.

I appreciate you bringing this matter to my attention.

Sincerely,

Bill Goodling, Member of Congress.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Chairman, I would ask the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Sisisky) if they will agree to assist us in holding a hearing on this matter this year and make serious efforts to pass comprehensive workers compensation legislation? Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GRAHAM. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, I agree to work with this gentleman and with all the Members who have shown so much concern for these folks who are Cold War warriors and veterans in practically every sense of the term. I think we realize three things on the committee. One is that we do have a duty to take care of our Cold War veterans, including people who experienced exposure in trying to develop the strategic systems of this country that even today keep this country safe.

Number two, science has shown that there has been exposure, fairly major exposure, to a lot of our workers.

Number three, the fact that we do have a responsibility to take actions and perhaps to abandon this position that we have taken, which has been a presumption against the worker in the past.

So let me just thank all of my friends who have worked on this, and I support totally the Whitfield amendment and I want to let everybody know that we will be holding hearings. We will be working in cooperation with the gentleman, and we did put a couple of million dollars in the bill already to direct DOE to start to construct a program. So let us all work together and put this thing together and we will work with the gentleman.

Mr. SISISKY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GRAHAM. I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. SISISKY. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the work of Members of both sides of the aisle on this issue and look forward to working with the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter) in doing what is right for these workers, and I support this amendment and urge the House to accept it.

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Philly & L.A. Cops Ready Battle Plans

New York Post
Monday, July 24, 2000
http://www.NewsMax.com/articles/?a=2000/7/24/45832

The battle lines are drawn.

On one side are the organizers of the upcoming Republican and Democratic conventions, who hope to get their candidates and political platforms across to voters.

On the other side are a small cadre of left-leaning activists who have vowed to shut down Philadelphia and Los Angeles, the cities hosting the four-day events.

Both sides are vying for the attention of some 15,000 members of the media.

Caught in the middle are two police forces - both battling videotaped images of their cops beating up suspects - that must walk a thin line between keeping order and protecting free speech.

Up to 50,000 protesters are expected to converge on the two cities, and police have set up protest areas complete with public address systems and toilets.

Both plans are for protesters - including labor activists, feminists, anti-globalists, environmentalists and those who want to free convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal - to take turns airing their views.

But some protesters have vowed to try to paralyze the cities by marching without permits, blocking traffic or taking other illegal action in a bid to gain attention.

"We have a couple of hundred protesters who have publicly said they are out to shut the city down," said Lt. Horace Frank, an LAPD spokesman.

"If it's their intent to break the law and engage in decadent criminal behavior, our response will be swift, decisive and appropriate," he warned.

To prepare for the threatened showdowns, police brass have been studying the tactics of the protesters who shut down last year's World Trade Organization talks in Seattle.

"We think we're prepared," said Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney. "We've been training for a long time. Our officers fully expect to be provoked and taunted."

Timoney's 7,100-member force - recently rocked by footage of cops beating a carjacking suspect - will be put to the test starting on July 30, the day before the GOP National Convention gets under way at the two-year-old First Union Center.

That's when a march of up to 20,000 people is planned by a workers' rights and social justice group called Unity 2000.

"There may be problems because you may get some outside folks coming in as they did in Seattle," Timoney said.

The march is expected to include Corpzilla - a papier-maché monster symbolizing big business that sits atop the cab of an 18-wheeler. The truck will pull a flatbed containing a giant tuxedo-wearing pig surrounded by mock bags of cash, as well as two men wearing Bush and Gore masks wrestling in a mud pit.

The following day, the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, whose director was busted in the WTO protest in Seattle, plans to march on the convention center without a permit.

"We are prepared to go to jail," said KWRU director Cheri Honkala, who claims she has been arrested more than 60 times. "We have this one window of opportunity to make it real loud and clear to people that too many of us are not part of the economic boom."

KWRU also will set up a shantytown encampment dubbed "Bushville" and give hourly tours of rundown sections of the city.

Cops have wasted no time in keeping tabs on protesters.

On Friday they padlocked a local theater where protest signs and puppets of elephants and homeless figures were being made.

They have spied on known activist sites, passed around a tip sheet describing potential troublemakers as young whites in ragged clothing who dye their hair, and secured the use of jail space in surrounding areas.

When the convention starts, cops will freeze the area around First Union Center, allowing only those with proper credentials in. Secret Service agents will be guarding the candidates, as well as former presidents George Bush and Gerald Ford and former first lady Nancy Reagan.

The city also will be guarding the Liberty Bell and Constitution Hall against terrorist attacks because of their symbolic importance.

Republicans fear that if the protests get out of control TV networks might focus on demonstrations instead of speeches.

"Anytime you have 15,000 members of the media here, people are going to want to come and take advantage of the spotlight," one planner said.

"Our goal is to provide a safe and enjoyable convention experience for our guests, as well as the people who live and work here in Philadelphia," convention spokesman Tim Fitzpatrick said.

The 9,200-member LAPD will be watching Philadelphia to see what they can expect when the Democratic National Convention opens on Aug. 14.

Los Angeles has roughly the same number of groups seeking permits and cops expect up to 30,000 protesters, including a handful who have threatened to shut the city down.

To minimize disruptions, the LAPD has taken many of the same precautions as its counterpart in Philadelphia. But it has a plan to barricade a 10-acre area around the Staples Center to keep protesters at bay, and the force has canceled vacations for its members.