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

"Russia-China," the New World Superpower <br>
<br>
NewsMax.com<br>
August 19, 1999<br>
Col. Stanislav Lunev<br>
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=1999/8/18/185851<br>
<br>
Seminal change has taken place in the balance of world power, and scant notice has been be paid to this dramatic shift. Russia and China, for decades hostile enemies, are moving ever closer to forming a political and military alliance to challenge the United States and the West. Fearing an aggressive NATO in the wake of the Yugoslavia campaign right on Russia's doorstep, the Russian Federation seeks new military allies as a counterbalance to NATO. So the Russian elites are now turning to "the great neighbor to the East," China, as the foremost among their new partners.<br>
<br>
China also fears NATO. Chinese leaders believe that NATO, especially after NATO bombed its embassy in Belgrade, is not genuinely a defensive organization. Also, President Clinton's justification for the Kosovo war, the human rights issue, has been worrisome for China. What is to stop the Western countries from attacking China for human rights abuses in Tibet and other areas with large national minorities, numbering in all close to 100 million people.<br>
<br>
"Democratic" Russia and totalitarian Red China are proving to be natural allies. Both have buried the hatchet on the ideological differences that imbued hatred between the two states for almost three decades. And China continues to present to the whole world the prospect of "real socialism- -Chinese style" under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This, no doubt, has impressed Kremlin leaders, who never really wanted democracy, just the riches that come from it.<br>
<br>
Economic ties between the two neighbors are stronger than ever and are continuing to stablilize. The shelves of Russian stores are filled with Chinese food products and industrial goods, and trains full of high-quality Russian raw materials cross the Chinese border every day, supplying Chinese industry and increasing its competitiveness on the world market.<br>
<br>
Internationally both countries are standing together. This became apparent during the Kosovo crisis when China and the Russian Federation officially condemned NATO and supported Yugoslavia's ruling regime. The military ties between Russia and China began to develop in 1992. These were, and still are, characterized by active military sharing on the highest levels, with ongoing cooperation in the development and production of the most modern weapons systems. The Russian-Chinese Intergovernmental Commission on Military and Technical Cooperation is working quite well. It meets twice a year in Moscow and Beijing under the headship of the Russian First Deputy Prime Minister and the Deputy Chairman of the Chinese Central Military Commission.<br>
<br>
The last session of the Intergovernmental Commission took place in June and was attended by then Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, who, on June 9, met privately with Chinese delegation-head Zhang Wannian, deputy chief of the Central Military Commission of the CCP. According to the Russian press, Mr. Stepashin made it absolutely clear that building close ties with China is one of Russia's top foreign-policy priorities and that the two nations desire a strong strategic partnership. Also, he told his Chinese visitor that he was born in China where his father was an advisor to the Chinese military. "Meeting you, I am in a way continuing my father's work," he told Mr. Zhang.<br>
<br>
Clearly President Yeltsin, who has favored an alliance with China to counter Washington, looks with favor on these developments. And the military relationship is moving at great speed. Both nations have already introduced compatible weapons systems. By integrating the weapons systems of the Russian Armed Forces and the Chinese People's Liberation Army, the two countries are rapidy becoming a superpower.<br>
<br>
Moreover, cooperation between Russia and Red China is expanding in the area of intelligence, which is laying the foundation for a climate of mutual trust in Russian-Chinese relations, including guarantees of each other's mutual security. Thus, all the necessary preconditions for the strategic alliance between the Russian Federation and Communist China are in place. And this alliance could threaten the United States and the West much sooner than anyone thinks.<br>
<br>
President Yeltsin is set to visit China sometime this summer or fall (the precise date is not yet established). Perhaps a formalized treaty may come of the visit, or a verbal agreement, which is sometimes more important to the Chinese leadership.<br>
<br>
The West should be alarmed by such an alliance. The two countries together would combine the largest conventional army, the Chinese army, with the largest atomic arsenal, the Russian nuclear stockpile. Again, this menacing shift of power, which will likely be realized in the next few months, will have dramatic consequences for our civilization that cannot be overestimated.<br>
<br>
-------- australia

A glowing recommendation

Sydney Morning Herald
Date: 19/08/2000
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0008/19/text/review8.html

What began as just another reception at the home of Australia's Ambassador to Argentina soon became a night of great celebration. It was one of the last dinners Martine Letts would host in the grand old ambassadorial residence in Buenos Aires before completing her posting.

The affable career diplomat had invited a group of executives from Argentina's leading nuclear technology company, INVAP, to dine with her on the night of June 5 so she could be the first to tell them the good news.

At the same time, halfway around the world in Canberra, that news was being broken at an official function by the Industry Minister, Senator Nick Minchin. The Howard Government had awarded INVAP the $326 million contract to build a new medical research reactor at Lucas Heights. It was a great victory for INVAP, by far its largest contract ever and the one it hoped would finally deliver the international recognition it had dearly sought for so long. At last, it could add an OECD customer to a client list dominated by Third World dictatorships.

The Australian wines flowed freely at the ambassador's home that night.

The following morning, Letts joined all the heads of Argentina's nuclear industry at Government House in Buenos Aires for a rare press conference by an obviously delighted President Fernando de la Rua.

"This is good news for all Argentines," the President said proudly. "We have won this bid by competing with the most important companies in the world." De la Rua invited the ambassador to add a few words, noting the assistance she had given the company in promoting the bid.

"This signifies an important change in relations between Argentina and Australia," Letts said. "This is the first really important Argentine investment in Australia. It will help us strengthen the relationship between our countries at the highest level ever."

It was good news all around. Yet very little was known about the background of the company Australia was embracing so readily to undertake such a politically sensitive project.

Back in Canberra, Minchin was attempting to head off the inevitable controversy over the selection of the Argentine group.

"INVAP has a solid track record constructing research reactors, with five constructed around the world over the past two decades," he said in a media statement.

"Argentina has ratified the Non-Proliferation Treaty and is a responsible and active participant in the activities of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA]."

But just how "solid" is INVAP's record? And how "responsible" has Argentina really been as a member of the international nuclear community? The company completed work on its first overseas facility in 1989, supplying a one-megawatt reactor to the military dictatorship in Algeria.

Such a small reactor cannot produce uranium with anywhere near the enrichment levels necessary for bomb-making, yet it still managed to become the centre of an international nuclear firestorm.

In mid-1992, British intelligence agents claimed the reactor, in Draria, outside Algiers, was being used to stockpile high-grade uranium for Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program in Iraq.

Britain's Sunday Times reported that Saddam had sent 10 tonnes of uranium to Algeria at the end of the Persian Gulf War to hide it from the prying eyes of the (IAEA) and the United Nations weapons inspectors.

INVAP denied any knowledge of the facility being used as an Iraqi hiding place. It was not the first time an INVAP project had become embroiled in international controversy. And it would not be the last.

In the mid-'80s, INVAP entered discussions with Ayatollah Khomeini's fundamentalist Islamic regime in Iran to help build up the country's nuclear industry at a time when the bloody war with Iraq was at its peak.

The contract with Iran was brokered by the IAEA, which suggested INVAP modify the country's existing reactor to use less-volatile fuel, to produce uranium well below bomb-grade enrichment.

The US was uneasy about the deal from the outset. It became considerably more concerned when it heard that Iran had also asked INVAP to build an additional medium-sized research reactor and another plant to produce what is known as "heavy water".

Heavy water is used with a minimum of uranium to power large-scale reactors and produce spent fuel that can be transmuted into bomb-grade plutonium. The US State Department learnt to its great distress that Iran was negotiating with China to build a facility for exactly that purpose and pressured the Argentines into dropping the contract.

That left INVAP without an international client until Egypt invited tenders for an experimental reactor in 1993. INVAP won that bidding process and the resulting 22-megawatt research reactor was commissioned in 1998.

The only other facility built by INVAP outside Argentina is a small reactor in Fidel Castro's Cuba, which is used to produce radio-pharmaceuticals.

INVAP's income has collapsed since the Egyptian project. The company's 1999 returns show that its sales revenues had plummeted from $US47 million ($79 million) in 1996 to $US26 million.

"INVAP is a company which obtains most of its income from large projects, and a slight slump is normal after one such project has been completed," the company's chief executive, Hector Otheguy, said in reply to written questions from the Herald this week.

But INVAP did feel the pinch hard enough to put its hand out to the Argentine Government. The 2000 Budget papers show that the company asked for a cash injection of $US132 million to fund its research on a reactor prototype known as CAREM.

That request was eventually denied amid uproar from the Argentine scientific community, which argued that the money could be put to much better use in other areas.

INVAP has been conducting tests on the CAREM technology for some years. In 1998, the company was hauled before the Federal Court of Justice in the Patagonian city of San Carlos de Bariloche for allegedly conducting some of those tests without the necessary government approvals.

Senator Minchin told Federal Parliament this week that the case was dismissed in September 1998. However, the man who lodged the initial complaint, Argentine environmentalist Dr Raul Montenegro, contends that it was simply deferred and remains active on the court's list.

He said the major complication with the case was that the provincial government of Rio Negro, whose regulations INVAP allegedly breached, was also the company's major shareholder.

Montenegro is a professor of evolutionary biology at the National University of Cordoba and president of Argentina's leading environmental group, the Environment Defence Foundation (FUNAM).

He is a long-time critic of INVAP, accusing it of engaging in the unsafe disposal of large quantities of radioactive waste in the Patagonian countryside and of continually misrepresenting its corporate history.

Now, Montenegro is also critical of the work the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) did during the tendering process for Lucas Heights, claiming that it has not looked deeply enough into INVAP's credentials.

"I have read ANSTO's documents describing the excellent, nice background of INVAP," Montenegro said this week.

"But ANSTO has only spoken with INVAP. Australia should also hear about all the problems with the nuclear program in Argentina and the problems with the management of radioactive waste."

The Senate voted this week to establish a select committee inquiry into aspects of the tendering process, a move that was immediately dismissed by Minchin as a political stunt by the Opposition and the Democrats.

Montenegro said he would be pleased to supply the hearings with a "long collection of problems" associated with INVAP in Argentina. Moves are already under way to have him give evidence via a video link-up.

The environmental lobby in Argentina is eager for Australians to know that INVAP's relationship with Third World despots did not end with the severing of its contract in Iran.

In September last year, the Zimbabwean strongman, Dr Robert Mugabe, made an official visit to Buenos Aires to meet President De la Rua and discuss the possibility of developing a large nuclear power plant to address Zimbabwe's acute electricity problems. The Argentine President said he would have INVAP work on a proposal.

Minchin told the Senate this week that the "initial information" sent by INVAP was as far as the discussions went.

However, the Herald has learnt that the Argentine ambassador to Zimbabwe, Enrique Parejo, held meetings with at least six key Zimbabwean Government ministers in February to present a proposal from INVAP to build a research reactor that could later be replaced by a large power-generating facility.

INVAP's Hector Otheguy said the discussions with Zimbabwe have had "no further consequences".

The Australian Federal Government and ANSTO would no doubt hope it stays that way.

-------- israel

Scientists Question Size of Israeli Nuclear Cache Mideast: Satellite image of secret facility indicates the count may be half that previously believed, U.S. experts say. Others claim pictures may be misleading.

Los Angeles Times
Saturday, August 19, 2000
By ROBERT LEE HOTZ, Times Science Writer
mailto:Lee.Hotz@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/science/20000819/t000077902.html
http://www.journalstar.com/nation?story_id=1204&date=20000819&past=
http://www.courierpress.com/cgi-bin/view.cgi?200008/19+nuke081900_news.html+20000819

Israel may possess only half as many nuclear weapons as previously believed, according to a prominent group of American scientists who on Friday made public a high-resolution satellite image of Israel's top-secret nuclear reactor facility.

Long a subject of speculation and controversy, Israel's nuclear military capabilities are among the most closely held secrets in the Middle East. Israel has never publicly confirmed or denied having nuclear weapons, although the fact of their existence is not in doubt.

Widely published estimates have suggested that the country has as many as 400 nuclear weapons in its arsenal. But the new image of the Dimona Negev Nuclear Research Center shows that the reactor there probably could not have produced enough plutonium during the last several decades for many more than 200 bombs, according to analysts with the Federation of American Scientists, which studies national security issues.

Independent U.S. national security analysts, however, cautioned that even the best pictures of the nuclear weapons complex could be misleading. The Israeli government operates the reactor facility with a self-conscious security eye to what can be observed from orbit, they said.

"The Israelis have put enormous amounts of attention and care to methods of concealment," said Avner Cohen, a senior research scholar at the National Security Archive and the University of Maryland who is author of the book "Israel and the Bomb."

"They are very much aware of the abilities of satellites," Cohen said. "Even though now we have for the first time a very nice visual sense of the site, this is not sufficient to draw firm conclusions about what is going on inside."

The pictures of the classified nuclear complex are the newest in an online archive of satellite images showing secret nuclear weapons complexes and missile facilities around the world. They were taken July 4 by a private surveillance satellite called Ikonos, operated by Space Imaging Corp. in Colorado, and posted Friday by the federation's Public Eye Project on the Internet at http://www.fas.org.

The black-and-white image reveals in new detail an elaborate complex encompassing a heavy-water reactor, a fuel reprocessing installation, two cooling towers, office buildings and waste disposal sites sprawling across tens of square miles of the Negev Desert between Beersheba and the Dead Sea, about 25 miles from the Jordanian border.

About 2,700 scientists, technicians, administrative staff and other workers are employed there. The facility is concealed from sightseers by groves of palms and landscaped gardens. It also is set off by three cordons of security fencing and defended by what may be antiaircraft missile sites.

To draw their conclusions, the federation analysts gauged the Dimona reactor's capacity for producing weapons-grade plutonium by counting the cooling towers clearly visible in the picture taken from orbit. They also compared the new imagery with recently declassified pictures taken by U.S. spy satellites in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Taken together, these satellite images suggest that the Dimona reactor could have produced about 20 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium every year, about half what some experts have speculated. That is enough plutonium for no more than "between 100 and 200 bombs over the last third of a century," said federation analyst John Pike.

In the United States, Israel enjoys a special legal protection from prying public eyes in space that is not provided to other countries.

"Even though American remote sensing satellites can take pictures at 1-meter resolution, U.S law requires [the firms] to sell it at 2-meter resolution" if the pictures show sites in Israel, said Mark Brender, the satellite firm's director of Washington operations. "It is still pretty good."

Search the archives of the Los Angeles Times for similar stories about: Nuclear Weapons - Israel, United States - Intelligence Services, Scientists. You will not be charged to look for stories, only to retrieve one.

---

Weapons estimate revised

Pioneer Planet
Published: Saturday, August 19, 2000
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/2/news/docs/017704.htm

JERUSALEM

Israel might possess only half as many nuclear weapons as previously believed, according to a group of American scientists who on Friday made public a high-resolution satellite image of Israel's top-secret nuclear reactor facility. Published estimates have suggested the country has as many as 400 nuclear weapons. But the new image of the Dimona Negev Nuclear Research Center indicates that the reactor probably could not have produced enough plutonium for much more than 200 bombs, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

-------- russia

Rescue Capsule Fails to Dock With Sub

NewsMax.com
Saturday, Aug. 19, 2000
UPI
http://www.NewsMax.com/articles/?a=2000/8/18/172435

MURMANSK, Russia - A Russian rescue capsule briefly latched on to the sunken Kursk submarine, but it was unable to properly dock with the escape hatch, which was said to be damaged, state-run RTR television reported Friday.

RTR correspondent Arkady Mamontov, the only reporter allowed on the main rescue ship, said the rescue pod had docked for between 10 and 15 minutes, but was unable to properly attach itself to the damaged platform around the hatch and could not pump out water to create an air lock.

The report raised new concerns over the ability of a British mini-submarine to eventually dock with the Kursk, which was carrying a crew of 118 and remains stuck at the bottom of the Barents Sea, at a depth of 320 feet. The LR5 mini-sub and a dozen civilian divers from Norway were due to arrive Saturday.

Officials had estimated this week that there was enough oxygen to last only until Friday.

The RTR reporter said rescue operations were continuing at a frantic pace, and that 10 attempts by Russian pods to attach to the submarine had been made over the past 24 hours, with an 11th attempt continuing, as the ship carrying the British LR5 sailed to the area.

The Russian rescue craft have to resurface to recharge as batteries run low, but several capsules are taking turns in their so-far futile attempts.

A naval official involved in the rescue operation said it appeared the landing platform around the emergency exit hatch had been deformed, preventing a proper, air-tight connection.

Adm. Vyacheslav Popov, the commander of the Northern Fleet to which the Kursk belongs, told RTR that he was extremely concerned with the situation as, according to estimates and calculations, the air pressure on board the sunken sub was much higher than normal, which could significantly cut the time the crew could survive.

The Kursk went down Saturday with 118 sailors and officers on board, and naval experts now believe that many of the crew perished in the first two minutes after disaster struck the vessel.

"The rescue team is collapsing from exhaustion, but continues to work," Popov said.

"All the energy of our fleet has been concentrated on one task: to save people, to save our sailors. The rescue team is not going to rest. They understand that down below are their comrades," Popov said. "I will remain here until we complete our mission."

Popov confirmed reports circulating in the northern port city of Murmansk, where many of the relatives of the sub's crew have gathered, that there had been no sign of life from inside the Kursk since Monday.

Earlier, officials had said that the last SOS signal tapped out by survivors on the inside of the damaged sub's hull had been Wednesday morning.

"I can confirm that there has been no sound since the 14th. I hope, I believe, that the crew is saving its energy," Popov said.

The RTR correspondent, who has been allowed exclusive access to the rescue operation that is continuing at the site of the disaster, 85 miles from the Russian naval base of Severomorsk, said the near-successful docking had taken place sometime during the night or early Friday.

Russian rescue pods have been fighting low visibility and strong currents on the ocean floor, unable to dock with the sub's only usable emergency hatch because of the degree at which the submarine is tilted.

Russian media, concentrating on the growing role of the British LR5 mini-sub as the Kursk crew's last hope, have been tracking the movement of the vessel along the Norwegian coast, with television and radio stations providing hourly progress reports.

Newspapers and television channels not under the Kremlin's control have pulled out all the stops in their criticism of the navy's - and the president's - decision to delay accepting British and other foreign aid offers until Russia's own rescue attempts had failed, leaving little time for international crews to arrive at the scene and attempt to save the crew while they still had a sufficient amount of oxygen.

Putin on the Defensive

On Friday, President Vladimir Putin responded to the criticism and the increasing public anger over his decision to continue vacationing at the Black Sea resort of Sochi while more than 100 of his sailors were struggling to stay alive.

"Of course, my first wish was to fly to the region," Putin told reporters covering a summit of leaders of former Soviet republics at another Black Sea resort, Yalta.

"I didn't do so, and I think I did the right thing because the arrival of non-specialists at the disaster area would not help and would only hamper work," Putin said.

The Kremlin said Putin would return to Moscow later in the day, Reuters reported.

The president defended the two-day delay in announcing the disaster, saying the navy had needed time to find out precisely what had happened to the submarine.

Putin said he had asked Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev about the chances of saving the Kursk and its crew immediately upon being informed of the accident, and was told that "there is an extremely small chance for rescue, but it exists."

U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen told reporters Friday that the Russian minister had finally responded to a letter offering U.S. help. Questions had been raised over the lack of a formal response from Russia to the Americans' repeated offers of help.

---

Putin Defends Moscow's Response to Submarine Crisis

Washington Post
Saturday, August 19, 2000 ; A15
By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service
http://www.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=wpni/print&articleid=A51554-2000Aug18

MOSCOW, Aug. 18 -- President Vladimir Putin, seeking to subdue a political uproar over the government's handling of the Kursk submarine crisis, said today that military officials responded "immediately" when the sub failed to make a scheduled contact on Saturday night and informed him quickly that the chances of rescuing any survivors from the sunken vessel were slim.

Putin's clarifications were delivered to a Russia engulfed by an atmosphere of despair and recrimination over the sinking during a military exercise and the fate of the 118 crew aboard. There was no sign of life from the vessel today, and rescue efforts failed for the fourth day.

When told of the problems with the Kursk, "my first question was how things stood with the nuclear power" aboard the ship, Putin said. He was told there was no threat of leakage or explosions. Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev then told him that "chances the crew will survive are few, but they exist."

In the frigid waters of the Barents Sea today, mini-submarines made 10 forays to the area where the stricken sub is lying at a depth of about 350 feet. At least one of the rescue subs filled partly with water and had to be pulled to the surface, Russian television reported. One docking attempt was successful but was aborted because the sub's escape hatch was so badly damaged that a watertight seal to the rescue vessel could not be made. Naval officials said strong currents and poor visibility in the silty waters also were hampering the four rescue capsules in use.

British and Norwegian rescue teams were traveling by ship to the scene but were not expected to arrive until Saturday evening. The teams include divers as well as a state-of-the-art British mini-sub on its first crisis mission. But if the escape hatch is bent, it is uncertain whether the foreign crew will be able to succeed where the Russians have failed.

The United States will work through NATO, rather than on its own, to help in the rescue effort and is most likely to provide technical expertise, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said in Washington.

Cohen spoke to reporters after receiving a letter from Sergeyev, thanking the United States for prior offers of assistance and suggesting that U.S. officials formally join consultations at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Western participation in rescue and recovery efforts.

"We stand ready to provide whatever assistance would be required and called for," Cohen said at a Pentagon news conference.

A team of three or four experts was being assembled today for possible deployment to the rescue scene within 24 hours if the Russians ask for it, Cohen said. In addition, the United States was ready to help coordinate international efforts and provide some special diving suits, he said.

Adm. Vyacheslav Popov, commander of Russia's Northern Fleet, said the Kursk was felled by a massive internal explosion when it went down Aug. 12. Officials said Thursday that the Kursk had been in a collision, but Popov said the explosion could have been triggered from inside.

"There may be two causes of the explosion--an external impact, that is to say a collision, or internal," he said on the RTR television channel.

Putin, under sustained fire this week for the first time since he took office Dec. 31, sought to respond to public and press questioning of whether rescue efforts were delayed for reasons of secrecy and whether the naval command responded with its full resources. Contradictory information about the sinking, including its date and cause, raised suspicions that the government had something to hide. Putin was attacked for failing to cut short his Black Sea vacation to take charge of the crisis.

Speaking in Ukraine, where he was meeting with leaders of former Soviet republics, Putin said, "Right away, as soon as the submarine did not make contact at 11 p.m. on Aug. 12, it became clear that the military was facing an emergency. Rescue work began immediately. The fact that this information got to the mass media late is a different thing. One can criticize it, but one can also understand that the sailors needed to sort things out themselves before official information was given."

In answer to criticism of his decision to continue his vacation, Putin said he considered flying to the disaster site. "But I stopped myself," he said, because he would only have gotten in the way.

Criticism of Putin had focused on his failure to return to Moscow. He returned today.

The president contended that Russia did not reject foreign help, although other officials said publicly earlier in the week that Russia could handle the crisis on its own. Indeed, Putin said he was assured early on by Sergeyev and Navy commander Adm. Vladimir Kuroyodev that "Russia has all the means for rescue work." He said other officials quickly contacted foreign colleagues about possibly providing assistance. The delay in settling on Britain and Norway, a decision announced Wednesday, was due to deciding "which craft was suited for this job."

"It did not make sense just to bring scrap metal there," Putin concluded.

Officials continued to give pessimistic assessments of the fate of the sailors. Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov told reporters in Murmansk, near the submarine's home port, that "there have been no sounds for quite a long time from" inside the submarine. He also suggested casualties were heavy.

"A rather big part of the crew was in the part of the boat that was hit by the catastrophe, which developed at lightning speed," he said. "The situation is critical." According to government television, water quickly flooded into the front of the Kursk and knocked control rooms out of action.

Klebanov repeated the Russian contention that the Kursk hit a "huge, heavy object" about 60 feet below the surface. He offered no explanation of why the Kursk's sensing equipment had not spotted the object.

The civilian head of the Transport Ministry's northern seas region said no commercial vessels were in the area. Cohen reiterated today that "no American ships"--in the area to monitor last week's exercise--were involved in the Kursk's accident.

The Pentagon has denied that any of its ships, which monitored last week's exercise, were nearby.

Speculation here about a possible collision with an American vessel took on Cold War tones. The Sevodnya newspaper reported that Russian vessels picked up a radio broadcast from a U.S. submarine asking to dock at a Norwegian port. The report said the American sub moved slowly, "which could be a sign of serious damage."

However, retired naval officers interviewed by Sevodnya said they doubted that the other submarine could have kept going after the kind of cataclysmic collision that would have sunk the Kursk.

In any case, suspicions of an American connection were further fed in the media by the visit of CIA Director George J. Tenet to Moscow today. The Interfax news agency said the visit was planned before the Kursk went down. But Vladimir Gundarov, a reporter for Krasnaya Zvezda, the official army newspaper, said it "was not by chance" Tenet was visiting Russia.

Staff writer Roberto Suro in Washington contributed to this report.

----

Soviet-Style Secrecy Endures in Sub Crisis

Washington Post
Saturday , August 19, 2000 ; A01
By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service
http://www.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=wpni/print&articleid=A51781-2000Aug18

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia, Aug. 18 -- Boris Kolyada almost broke down in tears when he first heard the news of the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk. Until his retirement two years ago, he was a sub commander himself, and he felt a kinship with the stranded crew.

But when asked, in view of intense public interest, whether the Russian navy ought to release the details of events leading up to the accident, he answered with a sharp no.

"Not every housewife in Russia needs to know what's going on in the Barents Sea," he said.

His response betrayed a mind-set that navy veterans and civilian observers say dominates the thinking of the Russian military and government: the urge for secrecy. A paralyzing fear of openness, the critics assert, explains why the government waited a day and a half to announce the Kursk was missing and accounts for the subsequent conflicting reports that have left Russians befuddled and suspicious.

Militaries are secretive the world over, but in Russia the lack of accountability can be traced to a virulent tradition inherited from the Soviet Union. In Soviet times, an accident like the Kursk's would be kept secret. Now, total secrecy eventually gives way to the pointed questions of experts and common citizens who are willing to speak up--but not without officials first entangling an event in misstatements, evasions and apparently fanciful versions and counter-versions.

"This is a new country, sure, but its leaders were brought up under the old system. It's impossible to change their mentality," said Yevgeny Aznabayev, another veteran submarine officer.

Aznabayev was on a nuclear submarine that suffered an explosion in the Atlantic Ocean in 1986, five years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The sub limped into Havana harbor. Back in Russia, the wives of crewmen were told to gather suitcases of clothing for the sailors' return, but were not told why. And four widows were not informed that their husbands had died. They arrived at the base with the clothing and only then learned of the accident and the deaths of their husbands. "It was cruel," said Aznabayev. "But secrecy ruled everything."

The official impulses toward deception in the past week recalled Soviet times, military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer wrote in today's Moscow Times. He pointed out that the navy waited more than a day and a half to announce the sinking, and that the first accounts said the Kursk had simply "descended" to the seabed. Reports went on to say that oxygen and electrical power were being provided from surface ships and that the crew was alive. Later, it emerged that the sub had crashed into the seabed and neither oxygen nor power had been delivered to the stricken vessel.

Felgenhauer attributed the apparent lies to Soviet habits, which "die hard." To the military mind, revealing secrets is a graver offense than letting crew members die, he asserted. "Russian admirals know too well that disclosing secrets to the West may easily land them in the clink, while risking the lives of sailors will not," he wrote.

Some of the secrecy and misinformation in the case of the Kursk seems designed to protect individual bureaucracies. The Kursk's designers have discounted any theory implying that a design flaw made the accident worse. The navy high command's insistence that the accident was caused by a collision diverted attention from possible malfunctions or incompetence. President Vladimir Putin, having declared himself a promoter of the armed forces, said today that he is not looking for guilty parties.

It is a measure of change in post-Soviet Russia that hiding or twisting the truth does not go unpunished in public opinion. Russians from all walks of life have unleashed criticism on military spokesmen as well as Putin for the lack of information. Newspapers across the political spectrum also attacked the endless zigzagging in official statements.

So far, the outcry about government misinformation distinguishes the Kursk episode from other national crises. The public tolerated misinformation on the progress of the war in Chechnya. Underreporting of casualties, optimistic tales of conquests and coverups of military atrocities raised few complaints.

This time, criticism of the government has been harsh. "Our state is explaining things by euphemism," wrote the newspaper Izvestia. "Lies and fear are the features of Russian authority. Russia has been persecuting and punishing its people for so long that by now it has simply forgotten how to save their lives."

Today, the government opened a campaign to mollify the public. Putin appeared on television to give assurances that rescue efforts were going full speed. He corrected the navy's report that the Kursk had sunk Sunday, saying it went down Saturday. But he gave no explanation for the discrepancy.

Television stations showed images of rescue subs in action after reporters complained that they had no access to the rescue site. Northern Fleet commander Vyacheslav Popov appeared on TV for the first time, and in a brief interview, mentioned five times that saving the crew is the priority.

In the past week, a succession of contradictions in government statements has put Russians on an emotional seesaw. One day, Adm. Vladimir Kuroyodev, the navy commander, said the crew had only enough oxygen to survive until Friday. The next day he said oxygen would last until Aug. 25. On Thursday, the deputy naval chief of staff, Vice Adm. Alexander Pobozhiy, said oxygen was sufficient for another two or three weeks. No one explained how these divergent conclusions were reached.

Ilya Klebanov, the deputy prime minister in charge of investigating the sinking, said Tuesday that Russia would not ask foreign governments for rescue assistance. Today, Putin said naval officials were in touch with foreign counterparts immediately after the disaster to work out ways to get help.

On Wednesday, navy spokesman Igor Dygalo reported that coded messages from inside the Kursk were being heard, an indication that crew members were still alive. Shortly afterward, Kuroyodev said no sound had been heard since Tuesday.

A peculiar trait of the information flow has been the habit of offering assessments without supporting facts. In particular, Russian officials have pressed theories of what caused the sinking without evidence. Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said Thursday that the boat sank because of a collision. He based the opinion on the belief that the sub had suffered extensive damage. Throughout the week, officials also have cited an on-board explosion and a mine as likely causes.

Often in Russia such conjecture signals that an incident will go unresolved. After an air crash, a murder or a car theft, investigators habitually expand the number of theories over time rather than eliminate them. In the case of the 1998 assassination of politician Galina Starovoitova, for example, investigators strung out ever more fanciful scenarios, including one in which her aide, wounded in the head the night she was shot, was the culprit and had shot himself to cover up the crime.

A notable exception to this pattern has been the series of bombings in Moscow and other Russian cities in recent months, which officials immediately blamed on Chechen separatists.

----

Heat decay fuels reactor fears

Sydney Morning Herald
Date: 19/08/2000
The Guardian
http://www.smh.com.au/news/0008/19/text/review2.html

There are about 1.2 tonnes of enriched uranium in the twin reactors which powered the submarine Kursk, a modern Oscar II class.

Constant monitoring by the Norwegians has found no evidence of a radioactive leak, however, despite the two explosions reported, which must have ruptured the hull. But the massive damage to the bow revealed by five hours of Russian video and the news that the submarine was crippled in a flash increased fears last night that the crew had no time to shut down the reactors.

Kursk is 18-metres wide and has two hulls which are designed to withstand an impact from an average torpedo. If it was sunk by an explosion in the torpedo compartment then it was probably a very big explosion.

The power output is given as 190 megawatts for each reactor, and each reactor on Kursk is likely to contain around 600 kilograms of uranium, so there will be about 1.2 tonnes on the submarine. Uranium 235 has a half life of 710 million years. When a submarine reactor is shut down, a significant amount of heat is still produced by radioactive decay. For this reason, there normally has to be a supply of electricity to power the cooling pumps, but these reactors are designed to cool by convection, without the need for power.

Igor Kudrik, a nuclear researcher at the Norwegian group Bellona, says if this system has been disrupted there is a danger of a reactor cracking in the heat, allowing sea water to surge in. This would produce a plume of radioactive water on the current.

A meltdown of the core was less likely. But this heat decay will remain a potential problem for several weeks.

Over a longer period the metalwork which contains the radioactive material will decay, allowing it to be released into the sea.

---

Permanent Nuclear Nightmare Contamination remains Soviet's deadly legacy

San Francisco Chronicle
Friday, August 18, 2000
Carl T. Hall, Chronicle Science Writer
mailto:cthall@sfgate.com
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/08/18/MN39883.DTL

While rescuers struggled yesterday to save the crew trapped aboard the Kursk, horrified observers around the world warned that a much wider-ranging disaster may be unfolding with the slow decay of the Soviet-era war machine.

Worries about a potential threat to the ocean environment and human health were circulating long before the Russian submarine sank -- just the latest incident in a continuing saga of budget woes and official neglect for Russia's nuclear fleet.

A sunken submarine might withstand corrosive forces for many decades, but the odds are overwhelming that radioactive materials will eventually find their way into the sea, ultimately posing a threat of radiation poisoning to marine organisms.

More than 100 Soviet-built subs await decommissioning, most of them said to be tied up in ports where they are ostensibly being guarded. In fact, they are virtually abandoned, according to nuclear watchdog groups in the United States and Europe.

The doomed Kursk rests in the relatively shallow waters of the Barents Sea, where ocean currents would be most likely to spread contamination far and wide. Meanwhile, at least five other nuclear-powered subs, two American and three Soviet, have sunk in much deeper water, some nearly four decades ago.

``Eventually, unless it's all retrieved, this material will leak into the ocean and get into the food chain,'' said Diane D'Arrigo, a radioactive- waste specialist at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit group. ``It's a significant concern.''

The Kursk represents one of the more modern nuclear-powered vessels in Russia's beleaguered Northern Fleet, now a crumbling relic of the once-formidable Soviet navy.

``The Northern Fleet is in bad shape,'' said Thomas Jandl, director of the U.S. arm of Bellona, a Norwegian environmental group that has closely tracked Russia's military for years.

He cited breakdowns in troop morale and discipline caused by money shortages so bad that payrolls cannot always be met, leaving almost nothing for adequate maintenance and training. Accidents are an ever-present danger even when authorities try to follow international arms-disposal agreements.

In June, for example, a worn-out crane being used to unload a disarmed nuclear missile dropped its payload at a dock near Vladivostok, creating a toxic cloud that killed five people.

Gordon Thompson, a nuclear engineer at the Institute for Resource and Security Studies, a think tank in Cambridge, Mass., said the issue of how to deactivate Russian nuclear submarines safely has been building for more than a decade.

``There are a bunch of these subs now awaiting decommissioning, most of them stored with pretty minimal supervision,'' he said. ``There's a concern about those subs sinking. There are also barges containing radioactive material that are often moored alongside, and those also could sink and wind up contaminating the oceans.''

``The quantity of material we are talking about is considerably greater than just what's on this one sunken sub,'' he said.

Thompson noted that the Russians have been reluctant to discuss some of the key details about military operations needed to get an accurate picture of the problem, which has made it hard to estimate the cost of a cleanup.

The costs of doing nothing are even more difficult to calculate.

Radioactive materials are potentially toxic for tens of thousands of years. ``It might be decades before environmental contamination would ensue, but you are dealing here with some very long-lived radioactive materials,'' Thompson said.

Enough exposure can cause cancer, DNA damage and birth defects many years later, effects that may be difficult to blame on any particular pollution source.

Some experts say the biggest problem might be if the Kursk breaks up during a rescue operation or in attempts to raise it to the surface. But the more likely eventuality is that it will remain on the sea floor.

Jandl said there is virtually no chance of any significant contamination from the Kursk itself if that happens -- even if the stricken sub turns out to have been carrying a full arsenal of nuclear-tipped warheads, which Russian military officials have denied.

A much more serious problem, he and other experts said, has to do with the decommissioned nuclear-powered vessels and listing barges, nearly all of which are loaded with dangerous cargo. Many of these corroding hulks are clustered around the northern port region of Murmansk, home to half a million people.

``There is a broader issue here,'' Jandl said. ``Even at this point, with the Kursk still sitting there at the bottom of the ocean, it presents much less risk than hundreds of other old chunks of war apparatus that nobody is talking about.''

Dismantling one submarine costs about $25 million, said Cristina Chuen, research associate at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. She noted that until only recently have other countries besides Norway and its neighbors begun to take the problem seriously.

The United States and other NATO powers also have their share of military-related toxic disposal issues, but those problems seem to pale against the near-anarchic situation in the cash-starved former Soviet system.

``America had a plan to dismantle subs even while they were being built,'' Chuen said. ``Although some things have changed, the issue was planned out ahead of time, and there's money set aside for it. In Russia, they didn't plan to decommission these subs anytime soon. They thought they would just dump all the radioactive waste into the sea.''

Now, the problems caused by such neglect seem to be getting more intractable -- even with international assistance.

A Japanese-financed program to construct a nuclear-waste processing facility -- to limit open-sea dumping -- wound up costing at least double the initial $25 million construction estimate. With few operating funds in sight, the project has yet to begin full-scale operations after years of delay.

It might take 100 years for the radioactive material to start entering the ocean environment. Although it is hard to gauge how bad such pollution might be, some experts argue that it is a problem that must be reckoned with soon.

``Right now, we have all these reactors sitting in submarines slowly corroding somewhere,'' Chuen said. ``The longer it sits there, the harder it is to do something about it.''

------

Some Russians Feared Worst for Sub

Associated Press
August 19, 2000 Filed at 3:05 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Russia-Anguish.html

MURMANSK, Russia (AP) -- When word finally came Saturday that the men on the sunken submarine Kursk were almost certainly dead, few people in this navy city were surprised. It was the news they had been expecting all along.

``We have known for a long time that this would happen,'' said Valentina Boldyreva, a retiree. Like many others discussing the tragedy Saturday, she had known there was little chance of rescuing anyone.

``It was just a waste of time,'' she said sadly. ``It's horrible.''

The Russian navy, which gave wildly contradictory accounts of the chances of rescuing the 118 men who went down Aug. 12 on the Kursk, said Saturday there was little hope that anybody could still be alive. Word had been leaking out for days that the Kursk was shattered by a huge explosion, and glum-faced navy officers said most of the crew probably died in seconds.

The Kursk, one of the newest and most powerful nuclear submarines in the Russian navy, belonged to the Northern Fleet, which is headquartered in the Murmansk region above the Arctic Circle. Relatives of the Kursk's crew, who had been trickling into Murmansk from all across Russia, were closeted Saturday at a nearby navy facility.

Murmansk stretches for 11 miles along the Kola Bay, with navy bases dotting the area. The gray concrete apartment blocks on the hills are home to many who served in the navy or have friends or relatives who still serve. For days, they had watched every television bulletin and exchanged endless rumors.

Sergei Ramnev, a sailor who knows how heartless the sea can be, shook his head with contempt when he heard the top brass saying that hope had run out.

``I expected nothing else. If an explosion happened and there was no light, there could have been no other outcome,'' he said.

Peoples' despair and resignation was mixed Saturday with anger and disgust about how the government handled the rescue effort.

Why, people asked, did the government wait so long before accepting offers of help from Britain and Norway? Help finally arrived Saturday, a week after the Kursk sank.

``It was absurd that they were misleading us for so long. It was clear that if people were not saved in the first two or three days that they're no longer alive,'' said Galina Klimova, an engineer.

President Vladimir Putin was criticized by the press and many ordinary people for not interrupting his summer vacation to return to Moscow to deal with the crisis.

``Putin's conduct was ludicrous. He looked fresh and well-rested and talked calmly about ... that we need to support the victims,'' Tatyana Volkov said. ``As if they could be supported at the bottom of the Barents Sea.''

---

Endless Disasters Hitting Russia

Associated Press
August 19, 2000 Filed at 12:15 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Russia-Endless-Disasters.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- The loss of a Russian nuclear submarine is just one more catastrophe in a nation that has been transformed by years of decline and stagnation from a superpower into a technological junkyard.

Disasters ranging from crashing airplanes to industrial accidents have become commonplace in Russia, an increasingly poor country that can't afford to purchase new equipment or maintain aging Soviet-era machinery. In industry and the military, the problem has been compounded by carelessness, lack of training and pilfering.

President Vladimir Putin describes the increasingly worn-out equipment as one of the main obstacles to economic growth. ``Only 5 percent of our enterprises are actively using modern technologies,'' Putin said at a recent meeting with scientists.

Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu has repeatedly warned that Russia faces disaster as everything from airplanes to elevators go without the maintenance vital to keep aging machinery running safely. In their annual forecast released in January -- one which drew quick comparisons to Nostradamus' darkest prophecies -- Shoigu's experts predicted that the country could face a steady string of technological disasters starting from fires, collapsing buildings and breaking pipelines and ending with leaks of radiation and poisonous chemicals.

Experts have warned that if the current shortage of funds for new equipment and maintenance goes on, most of Russia's industrial equipment could be unusable by 2007. Companies struggling to stay afloat and workers desperate to get any kind of pay continue to use aging equipment that should have been junked years ago, experts say.

``This danger is augmented by the popular neglect of safety rules in the run for profit,'' said Marina Ryklina, a spokeswoman for the Emergency Situations Ministry.

Unlike in Soviet times, when discipline and fear of punishment were stronger, safety rules are commonly ignored in modern Russia. A string of plane crashes were blamed on overloading after pilots accepted bribes to take extra cargo, weighing down their aircraft.

Natural gas explosions have become commonplace in apartment buildings because of a lack of maintenance. In rural areas, people hack holes into oil pipelines to siphon fuel, often causing fires or explosions.

Hundreds of people are electrocuted every year while trying to pilfer communication wires, electric cable and train and plane parts for sell as scrap metal. Large areas are left without electricity after power lines are looted.

Compounding the problem, many Russians say, is a tendency to minimize or dismiss danger -- a trait that is sometimes boasted of as a national characteristic.

Thousands of people drown in Russia every summer, mostly men who swim when drunk. Drownings in Russia and other ex-Soviet republics are up to 500 percent higher than in Western nations, according to officials.

The Russian military is a glaring example of the breakdown, experts say. Even though the Kursk was one of the most modern vessels in the navy, its safety systems apparently failed to work.

``Not a single rescue system functioned on this top-of the-range submarine, so what can be said about the older ones?'' said Alexander Golts, a military analyst for the weekly magazine Itogi.

Insisting it is still a world power, the navy refuses to scrap hundreds of rusting Soviet-era ships and submarines even though there is no money for maintenance. Navy officials admit that 70 percent of their ships need major repairs, and scores of vessels simply sank because their hulls rusted out.

``Why should we keep a huge and expensive nuclear fleet if we are short of funds to send it to sea for even three days?'' the daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta said Friday. ``We must live in accordance with our means and not turn the seamen into kamikaze when they go on an exercise.''

Low military wages have contributed to a steady decline of skill and morale.

Officers, who earn the equivalent of $100 a month when they get paid, have to moonlight as gypsy cab drivers or security guards to feed their families. Theft is endemic in the military, with servicemen stripping ships and planes of parts and metal to sell for food and other necessities.

Earlier this year, four Russian sailors and a retired officer were arrested on charges of stealing radioactive fuel from a nuclear submarine. And an officer on another nuclear submarine stripped the vessel of a filtration unit that controlled the air supply. The crew would have suffocated if the theft hadn't been discovered in time.

---

Russian Admiral Acknowledges Explosion Inside Sub

New York Times
August 19, 2000
By PATRICK E. TYLER with STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/081900russia-sub.html

MOSCOW, Aug. 18 -- The commander of Russia's Northern Fleet acknowledged today that a terrible internal explosion devastated the nuclear submarine Kursk before it went down last Saturday, confirming Western intelligence reports of huge underwater explosions.

The report by Adm. Vyacheslav Popov on Russian television came as the Russian Navy finally docked a rescue vehicle to the spine of the wrecked submarine after many unsuccessful attempts. But rescuers said they had found the deck area around a rear escape hatch so deformed that they were unable to make a water-tight connection and enter the sub.

One hundred eighteen men were on board the Kursk when it sank. Navy officials said they would keep trying to reach them, and there remained the possibility that a British submersible, which is to arrive on Saturday night, might manage to enter the Kursk with a more flexible docking mechanism.

Admiral Popov said the last sounds of crew noise from the submarine were monitored on Monday. Other naval officials have been saying survivors were tapping on the hull of the vessel through Tuesday.

The admiral also said he was "very worried that according to our calculations, the pressure in the submarine is higher than the normal atmosphere," indicating a dangerous threat to normal respiration. He said estimates of the time limit for the crew's survival "have been based on the fact that the air pressure is normal," adding, "The situation is very grave."

Most Russian officials have said the oxygen in the Kursk would be depleted by today.

Though Admiral Popov confirmed internal explosions, he did not rule out earlier Russian claims that the Kursk sank after a collision with an unidentified object or vessel. He said the investigation into what set off the explosion centered on an outside impact, for instance a collision, or something inside. He did not elaborate.

Some American officials in Washington said today it was conceivable that a collision had preceded the large explosion detected aboard the Kursk. Others said such a collision also would have been heard by Western intelligence sensors monitoring the Russian naval maneuvers in the Barents Sea last weekend.

One theory circulating among American defense officials today was that the Kursk was in the process of firing an antisubmarine rocket from one of its forward weapons tubes when the rocket jammed in the tube. With the warhead outside the hull still attached to the rocket body and flaming engine, that would have set off a fire and an explosion, the first of two monitored by Western intelligence sensors.

In the 2 minutes and 15 seconds between the explosions, the crew might have had the chance to try to free the missile and douse the fire, the American officials theorized.

But after the two minutes, they say, the missile's warhead of high-yield conventional explosive could have detonated with the force of one to two tons of TNT, causing extensive damage to deck structures in the front and near the conning tower.

The American experts estimated that a high-yield exploding warhead and a shock wave from the explosion could have destroyed an estimated 40 percent of the submarine, splitting and deforming parts of the hull. This may have given the appearance that the ship had been pummeled by the glancing blow of another ship and opened a gaping hole in the hull.

Norman Polmar, an independent naval expert, said one torpedo carried by this type of submarine was designed to be fired underwater, shoot up through the air and then drop back into the water to home in on another submarine.

American officials have said the Russians had been practicing missile and torpedo firings in a large naval exercise just before the explosions were heard.

Mr. Polmar said that in the 2 minutes and 15 seconds before the torpedo's warhead exploded, it is possible that sailors in the back of the submarine would have shut watertight doors. He said those crew members could have survived as the sub plummeted to the bottom, while most men in the front of the sub would have perished quickly.

Other experts said the sub's batteries lay below the front compartments. So they probably would have been knocked out, making it unlikely that survivors would have had any battery power and decreasing the odds that any could have survived more than three or four days.

A Norwegian seismic institute joined with Western governments in saying today that it detected two underwater explosions in the area where the Kursk went down. The explosions were a little more than two minutes apart, the first one much smaller than the second.

"The first explosion we recorded was probably the equivalent of less than 100 kilograms of TNT," said Frode Ringdal, scientific director of the institute, referring to about 220 pounds. But the second explosion, occurring at 7:30 a.m., Coordinated Universal Time, was the equivalent of one to two tons of TNT, he added. The explosion sent powerful shock waves through the water that could be detected by seismic equipment on Norway's northern coast, near where American intelligence sensors aboard submarines operating in the Arctic Sea area also detected the powerful explosions.

Meanwhile, President Vladimir V. Putin, facing biting criticism in the Russian media and among some leading political figures for vacationing at a Black Sea resort while any survivors on board the Kursk slowly asphyxiated 350 below the surface of the Barents Sea, flew back to Moscow after attending the opening in Yalta, Ukraine, of a meeting of leaders of former Soviet republics. There, he defended his five-day delay.

"Of course, my first wish was to fly to the region, to the fleet base in order to study the situation on the spot," Mr. Putin told reporters before leaving Yalta.

"But I decided against that, and I think I made the correct decision," he said, explaining that "the arrival in the disaster area of high-ranking officials who are not specialists" does not "help rescue either people or equipment."

Still, criticism was intense. The leader of Russia's liberal Union of Right Forces Party, Boris Y. Nemtsov, said in a statement today that Mr. Putin, "as commander-in-chief" has "no right to vacation while his subordinates, Northern Fleet sailors, face this drama."

Mr. Putin defended his actions by saying the first assessment he received of the sea disaster from Marshal Igor D. Sergeyev, the defense minister, indicated that "the chances the crew will survive are few, but they exist, and specialists will do their utmost." The Russian leader said he had also been assured that "Russia has all the means for rescue work." When this proved not to be the case, Mr. Putin said active discussions were carried out with Western countries as soon as help was offered.

Though there were reports in Murmansk that Mr. Putin would fly straight to the northern submarine base to console the families, Russian officials remained silent about whether Mr. Putin had reached Moscow.

Tonight, the Russian government announced that each family of Kursk crew members would be allocated the equivalent of about $18,000 in immediate financial assistance to cover their needs.

Earlier in the week, Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov, the Russian Navy's commander, said he would remain optimistic "until Aug. 18." Other navy experts have suggested that any surviving crew members already have run out of oxygen and that most of the 86 officers, 31 enlisted men and one civilian perished in the first minutes after a catastrophic blow or explosion tore ruptured the hull and destroyed the watertight containment of the ship.

The Murmansk edition of the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda today published a full listing of the 118-member crew of the Kursk with an editorial note stating that after repeated attempts to obtain the list through officials navy channels, the newspaper finally resorted to bribery and paid 16,000 rubles for the list, the equivalent of about $650.

Inflaming the mystery were many unconfirmed reports and theories spun out in the Russian press, several of them asserting that the Russian Navy suspected that one of the two American submarines said to have been operating in the area might have been involved in a collision with Kursk and then sought refuge at a Norwegian port.

Those reports were further fanned by the arrival in Moscow of George J. Tenet, the United States director of central intelligence. Mr. Tenet's agenda was not clear, but Russian officials said Mr. Tenet's visit had been planned before the Kursk disaster.

The United States has denied that any of its submarines was involved in the disaster.

---

Russian Navy Says All on Sunken Sub Are Probably Lost

New York Times
August 19, 2000
By PATRICK E. TYLER
http://www.nytimes.com/00/08/19/late/19russia.html

MOSCOW, Aug. 19 -- The Russian Navy said today that all 118 members of the crew of the wrecked nuclear-powered submarine Kursk are now probably dead, or will be before a British rescue submarine and a team of Norwegian divers can undertake another desperate attempt to open a rear hatch and look for survivors.

In a statement broadcast on Russian state television from the Northern Fleet headquarters at Severomorsk, Adm. Mikhail Motsak, the chief of staff, said the powerful explosion that ripped through the vessel a week ago had killed most of the crew in the first minutes of the disaster. There was extensive flooding of the submarine's nine compartments, he said, meaning that any sailors who survived the explosion had to endure flood conditions that further compressed any breathable air in the submarine to what he called lethal "high-pressure pockets."

"Slow flooding in the tail sections was taking place, which inevitably shortened the time for the crew to survive there and shortened the maximum time of sustaining life that we could count on," Admiral Motsak said. "It is possible that pressure in the compartments is very high. There are air pockets there, but in fact we crossed that critical line for the sustaining of life which is envisaged in all the guiding documents. This line, in fact, was being crossed yesterday, today and maybe tomorrow."

The absence of any crew noises emanating from the boat since Monday led the navy command to conclude "that the critical state of the personnel has come," he said, adding, "No matter how hard it is to say this, it is quite likely that we will have to admit the worst expectations."

The admiral, speaking in a grim voice, said the accident "was the worst catastrophe that I personally have known, and the worst in the history of the submarine fleet." He described some of the drama that had accompanied the detection of noises from the crew after the giant attack submarine, with twin nuclear reactors in its power plant, went down in 350 feet of water.

"We heard noises by crew members acting in accordance with the rules of organizations of communication with sunken submarines," he said. "Analysis of the noises from the tail sections showed that the crew members were telling us that water was coming into the sections -- it was infiltrating -- and they asked us to supply air." Later, he said, some crew members, desperate to escape the flooding, might have tried to open the rear hatch of the Kursk, causing sea water to flood in and kill them.

"The systems responsible for a tight seal in that compartment broke down," he said, perhaps because "some submariners tried to leave the sub from more than 100 meters depth, which is not envisioned."

Only deep sea divers, he said, can verify whether the hatch seal has been broken. If it was, he said, that would explain why navy rescue vehicles that have managed to dock on the hatch have not been able to evacuate water from the airtight corridor that must be established for rescue to occur.

Rescue crews have reported that when they tried to pump water out of this docking corridor, water just kept flooding in. At first, navy officials believed that deformed deck plates around the hatch were preventing a tight lock. Now, Admiral Motsak said, they also believe that the rear compartment under the hatch may be flooded and so water was rushing into the docking corridor from inside the submarine.

The causes of the explosion that proved fatal to the ship and crew are still unknown, the admiral said. He went through the range of options, saying that while the navy believed that the ship might have been involved in a collision, there might also have been an internal explosion of unknown origin.

Investigators also believed, he added, that it was possible that the 14,000-ton submarine had hit a World War II mine. He said that between 1992 and 1999, six such mines have been discovered in the Barents Sea.

The admiral said it was difficult to pronounce the crew beyond hope "because I have known the submarine's commander," Capt. Gennadi Lyachin, "for many years."

"I appointed him to that post," Admiral Motsak said, "I went to sea with him to inspect the training of that crew, and this was one of our best crews."

He said the rescue operation would now move to the "second stage," but he did not specify whether that would mean calling off the current rescue operation, or whether it would proceed at a more deliberate speed aimed at penetrating the 490-foot submarine to begin evacuation of bodies.

At least two efforts to dock on the wrecked hull took place in the hours before the admiral spoke today.

Admiral Motsak said that the navy would eventually raise the submarine to remove its weapons and nuclear reactors from the seabed, but that "it may take time."

A British-built minisubmarine loaded on the Norwegian ship Normand Pioneer was within sight of the rescue flotilla in the Barents Sea. Navy officials said some period of consultations among Russian, British and Norwegian rescue teams would be necessary before the British vehicle could make its first dive, late tonight or early Sunday.

A navy spokesman, Igor Dygalo, cautioned that the arrival of foreign experts and their equipment "should not be viewed as a panacea."

"We do not know the degree of damage inside the submarine and do not know what the crew has done," he said.

Naval experts in the United States and Russia said a buildup of air pressure inside any flooded compartments could have killed members of the crew within a few days of the sinking.

Adm. Eduard Baltin, the former commander of Soviet submarine forces in the Pacific, said the most dangerous condition in such an accident was the rupture of high-pressure air pipes in the submarine. He said this would cause a buildup of pressure that can reach 10 times normal atmospheric pressure, a level that is lethal to humans and which can burst the seals separating airtight compartments.

---

Trapped Crew's Families Lash Out as Hope Fades

New York Times
August 19, 2000
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/europe/081900russia-murmansk.html

MURMANSK, Russia, Aug. 18 -- The weather lightened today, but tempers lashed out, on the day when authorities had said that 118 Russian sailors trapped under the sea would run out of air.

Morose and angry, families gathered here, in the biggest city in the Arctic Circle, and in the nearby naval town of Vidyaevo, in a final vigil.

At Vidyaevo, home to many of the sailors on board the Kursk, the nuclear submarine that sank last weekend, drawn-looking government officials explained the sputtering rescue efforts to mothers and wives in the town's officers club. On local television, pictures of a dazed woman, unable to sit up, preceded frames of women hurling accusations at the officials, their voices shrill and full of pain.

"Can't you say anything? This is a shame before the whole world," one woman yelled.

"More waiting, another week?" another shouted.

"How long can this go on?" yelled another. "They are closed up in a canning jar!"

Officials stared back in silence, their shoulders slumped. Once they discovered the cameramen, uniformed guards demanded they leave.

Life is difficult enough in this northern place where gardens don't grow, and where satellite television broadcasts barely reach. The town has two schools, and the officers club is its main meeting place. Residents have not had hot water for three months now. City authorities shut it off in the summer, as they do in many of Russia's northern cities.

"Women held the officials responsible," said one woman, who gave her name only as Galina, and whose daughter Sveta is terrified that she has lost her husband, Victor Kuznetsov. Galina has lived in Vidyaevo for more than 20 years.

"It would have been better if the officials didn't come at all," she said, over the phone. "Either they needed to put a checkmark on their lists, or they were pressured to come by their bosses."

Family members continued to arrive from all over the country, frantic for news. As of this morning, 25 relatives of crew members had arrived in Murmansk and were taken to Vidyaevo. Many had endured long train rides, and one woman traveling with her sister even told of having to pay a bribe to get a seat.

It was rumored that President Vladimir V. Putin would arrive late today. He has been criticized by the Moscow press for not being at the scene of the disaster. But no one here seemed to blame him, and said only that Mr. Putin should fire the military leaders responsible for such bad decisions.

The governor of the Kursk region, the submarine's namesake and home to seven of the sailors on board, arrived this morning.

News reports fleshed out new details for the local people, who have been intently watching their televisions. State television RTR sent afternoon newscasts from one of the base boats, the Pyotr Veliki, and showed, for the first time, the striped yellow rescue vehicles plunging into choppy sea.

Interviews with the rescuers, in orange rain gear, attached faces to some of the people involved in these long days of rescue attempts that until now have been off limits to the public. The stony-faced captain of the rescue operation, Vyacheslav Popov, spoke for several minutes about the task.

He gave little cause for reassurance.

"The conditions are very difficult," he said. "Half the fleet is here. We've been working only to save the people, save our people, save our sailors."

The news coverage has become eerily routine. Flocks of journalists in expensive raincoats stop passengers arriving in the train station, combing crowds for signs of crew members families. Northern Fleet headquarters today began to hold regular press conference twice daily. People tune into news broadcasts every morning, but with little hope.

Meanwhile, in Vidyaevo, Galina was picking cranberries today to soothe her nerves. Her daughter, Sveta, 23, is planning to celebrate the third birthday of her son Dima next week, and Galina expressed the hope that the family will be reunited by then.

"We do have faith," she said.

----

Was the Kursk carrying nuclear weapons?

From: "Steven Starr" - shadesahoy@mail.socket.net
Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2000 22:55:45 -0500

I would like to call into question the validity of the Russian government's insistence that the Kursk was not carrying nuclear weapons. I believe it was highly unlikely that the only Oscar II sub in the Russian Northern Fleet was armed only with conventional warheads.

Janes Defense Weekly states that, "Commissioned in 1995, the Kursk was the Northern Fleet¹s most modern SSGN, and was maintained at a high level of combat readiness."

The following is a description from Jane's of the weapons carried by the Kursk:

Missiles: SSM: 24 Chelomey SS-N-19 Shipwreck (Granit) (improved SS-N-12 with lower flight profile); inertial with command update guidance; active radar homing to 20-550 km (10.8-300 n miles) at 1.6 Mach; warhead 750 kg HE or 500 kT nuclear. Novator Alfa SS-N-27 may be carried in due course.

A/S: Novator SS-N-15 Starfish (Tsakra) fired from 53 cm tubes; inertial flight to 45 km (24.3 n miles); warhead nuclear 200 kT or Type 40 torpedo.

Novator SS-N-16 Stallion fired from 65 cm tubes; inertial flight to 100 km (54 n miles); payload nuclear 200 kT (Vodopad) or Type 40 torpedo (Veder).

Does it make sense that the only Oscar II sub the Russians can put to sea would be carrying strictly conventional weapons?

Consider the international ramifications of admitting that there are a large number of nuclear warheads sitting at the bottom of the Barents sea? Especially if some of them are on top of SS-N-19 missiles and A/S Novator torpedoes.

I think we are missing an enormous opportunity by failing to bring up this topic for discussion.

The following articles are from Jane's, from which this information is taken.

Sincerely, Steven Starr

--

Kursk: did collision trigger explosion?

Jane's Defense Weekly,
By Richard Scott JDW Naval Editor,
London 18/08/00

Uncertainty surrounds the cause of the sudden and massive damage which took the Russian ŒOscar II¹ nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine (SSGN) Kursk (K 141) and its 118 crew to the bottom of the Barents Sea.

The 14,000-ton submarine apparently experienced two major explosions which devastated the front of the boat. However, it remains unclear whether these were the cause of the catastrophe, or occurred as a result of a previous incident near the surface which saw the Kursk plunging to the bottom.

As Jane¹s Defence Weekly went to press, Russian naval and government sources were suggesting that the Kursk was involved in a collision with a surface ship at periscope depth. However, initial claims that the SSGN collided with a foreign submarine have been discounted.

An alternative theory is that a weapon malfunction had triggered a massive explosion in the boat¹s forward weapon compartment. The Kursk was apparently about to conduct a torpedo firing as part of a North Fleet exercise at the time contact was lost.

Reports from seismologists in Norway say that a monitoring station registered two explosions at the time the Kursk sank. The first, recorded just before 0730GMT on 12 August, registered 1.5 on the Richter scale. A second, stronger explosion measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale ­ equivalent to 1-2tons of TNT underwater ­ was recorded just over 2 mins later.

Video film of the Kursk lying more than 100m down on the seabed shows the starboard side of the submarine¹s hull ripped open by the force of the blast. Damage extends back to the sail, suggesting that those spaces forward of the reactor compartment ­ including the control room and accommodation spaces ­ were rapidly flooded, leaving no time for personnel in those compartments to escape. According to the Russian Navy, both the submarine¹s reactors have been shut down. They also insisted that there were no nuclear weapons on board.

Attempts to rescue any surviving crew in the after compartments were hampered by bad weather, strong currents and turbid waters in the vicinity of the Kursk. To assist the Russian effort, the UK deployed its LR5 submarine rescue vehicle, while Norway sent a diving team.

Commissioned in 1995, the Kursk was the Northern Fleet¹s most modern SSGN, and was maintained at a high level of combat readiness. It made a high-profile deployment to the Mediterranean in September 1999 and was due to return later this year as part of a planned task group deployment to the region.

Crippling economic constraints have plagued the Russian Navy in recent years, forcing the early retirement of numerous ships and submarines, and the disruption of fleet repair and maintenance activities.

However, there is nothing yet to suggest that the loss of the Kursk, a modern submarine with a well-trained crew, was the result of any inadequacy in maintenance or training.

OSCAR II (ANTYEY) (TYPE 949A) (SSGN)
ACTIVE: 8
BUILDING: 1

Name No Builders Launched Commissioned
VERONESH K 173 Severodvinsk Shipyard Dec1988 Dec1989
SMOLENSK K 410 Severodvinsk Shipyard Jan1990 Dec1990
CELJABINSK K 442 Severodvinsk Shipyard June1990 Jan1991
WILIUCZINSK (ex-Kasatka) K 456 Severodvinsk Shipyard July1991 Nov1992
OREL (ex-Severodvinsk) K 266 Severodvinsk Shipyard May1992 Jan1993
OMSK K 186 Severodvinsk Shipyard May1993 Oct1993
KURSK K 141 Severodvinsk Shipyard May1994 Jan1995
ST GEORGE THE VICTORIOUS (ex-Tomsk) K 512 Severodvinsk Shipyard 18 July1996 May1997
BELGOROD K 530 Severodvinsk Shipyard Aug1999 -

Displacement, tons: 13,900 surfaced; 18,300 dived
Dimensions, feet (metres): 505.2 ¥ 59.7 ¥ 29.5 (154 ¥ 18.2 ¥ 9)
Main machinery: Nuclear; 2 VM-5 PWR; 380 MW; 2 GT3A turbines; 98,000 hp(m) (72 MW); 2 shafts; 2 spinners

Speed, knots: 28 dived; 15 surfaced
Complement: 107 (48 officers)

Missiles: SSM: 24 Chelomey SS-N-19 Shipwreck (Granit) (improved SS-N-12 with lower flight profile); inertial with command update guidance; active radar homing to 20-550 km (10.8-300 n miles) at 1.6 Mach; warhead 750 kg HE or 500 kT nuclear. Novator Alfa SS-N-27 may be carried in due course.

A/S: Novator SS-N-15 Starfish (Tsakra) fired from 53 cm tubes; inertial flight to 45 km (24.3 n miles); warhead nuclear 200 kT or Type 40 torpedo.

Novator SS-N-16 Stallion fired from 65 cm tubes; inertial flight to 100 km (54 n miles); payload nuclear 200 kT (Vodopad) or Type 40 torpedo (Veder).

Torpedoes: 4-21 in (533 mm) and 2-26 in (650 mm) tubes. Combination of 65 and 53 cm torpedoes (see table at front of section). Total of 28 weapons including tube-launched A/S missiles.

Mines: 32 can be carried.
Countermeasures: ESM: Rim Hat; intercept.
Weapons control: Punch Bowl for third party targeting.
Radars: Surface search: Snoop Pair or Snoop Half; I-band.
Sonars: Shark Gill; hull-mounted; passive/active search and attack; low/medium frequency.
Shark Rib flank array; passive; low frequency.
Mouse Roar; hull-mounted; active attack; high frequency.
Pelamida towed array; passive search; very low frequency.

Programmes: There is some doubt whether K 530 will be completed. Name/Number attribution is still uncertain, and Omsk may have been renamed Petropavlosk Kamchatsky.

Structure: SSM missile tubes are in banks of 12 either side and external to the 8.5 m diameter pressure hull; they are inclined at 40º with one hatch covering each pair, the whole resulting in the very large beam. The position of the missile tubes provides a large gap of some 4 m between the outer and inner hulls. Diving depth, 1,000 ft (300 m) although 2,000 ft (600 m) is claimed.

Operational: ELF/VLF communications buoy. All have a tube on the rudder fin as in Delta IV which is used for dispensing a thin line towed sonar array. Pert Spring SATCOM. K 173, K 410, K 266 and K 141 are based at Litsa South in the Northern Fleet and the remainder at Tarya Bay in the Pacific. In 1999 one Northern Fleet unit deployed for the first Russian SSGN patrol in the Mediterranean for ten years. At the same time a Pacific Fleet unit sailed to the western seaboard of the United States. The first three of the class K 148, K 132 and K 119 are laid up awaiting disposal . The only two Oscar Is are laid up in the Northern Fleet.

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

-------- california

Obituaries in the News
Associated Press
August 19, 2000 Filed at 8:52 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Deaths.html

ATLANTA (AP) -- Harllee Branch Jr., a former president of Georgia Power Co. who led the company to the construction of its first nuclear generating plant, died Wednesday of a stroke. He was 94.

Branch was president of Georgia Power Co. from 1951 to 1957 and served as chief executive of its parent, Southern Co., from 1957 to 1970.

Under his leadership, the company began building its first nuclear powered unit, Plant Hatch, in 1968.

Branch served President Lyndon Johnson's administration as a member of the Federal Advisory Council on Employment and President Richard Nixon appointed him to the National Commission on Productivity.

-------- new mexico

Prosecutors Say Scientist's Meeting in Beijing Was Suspicious

New York Times
August 19, 2000
By JAMES STERNGOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/081900lee-trial.html

ALBUQUERQUE, Aug. 18 -- Prosecutors sought to bolster their case today against a former Los Alamos scientist accused of mishandling nuclear weapons secrets by arguing that a visit to Beijing in 1988 had transformed him into a virtual spy for China.

The government argument was the strongest statement to date that the scientist, Wen Ho Lee, was functioning as a spy, even though he is not charged with espionage.

The government's aim in making these points, which came during testimony by an F.B.I. agent, appeared to be to impress the judge with the risks of releasing Dr. Lee on bail, as his lawyers are seeking.

The defense countered that Dr. Lee had done nothing to conceal the meeting and that nothing classified had been discussed. Judge James A. Parker of Federal District Court expressed exasperation about the hearing's having lasted three days rather than the expected half-day.

The F.B.I. agent, Robert Messemer, described an approved professional visit Dr. Lee made to Beijing in 1988 as highly suspicious. Dr. Lee has said that he was visited in his hotel room by two senior Chinese weapons scientists, Zheng Shaotang and Hu Side, and that he was asked about a mathematical problem related to nuclear weapons.

Mr. Messemer said that the meeting typified standard Chinese spying maneuvers in a number of ways. It excluded other American scientists, including Dr. Lee's wife, and that Dr. Lee had been asked a fairly narrow technical question. In addition, the question was posed not by an intermediary, but by the scientist who might use the information.

The government contends that Dr. Lee did not disclose this meeting at the time and only described what happened when he was interviewed by the F.B.I. early last year. But Mark Holscher, one of Dr. Lee's lawyers, countered that in an official report filed after the trip Dr. Lee mentioned he had met with Mr. Zheng and had not been questioned about the matter until last year.

The judge did not announce his decision and indicated that he might not for several days so he could review the transcripts.

---

A 'Spoiled Brat' Transformed Into Her Father's Defender

New York Times
August 19, 2000
PUBLIC LIVES
By JAMES STERNGOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/081900lives-profile.html

ALBUQUERQUE -- By her own admission, Alberta Lee was a contentious handful as a teenager and a willful, self-absorbed young woman whose lack of direction concerned her conservative immigrant parents.

"I was the spoiled brat of the family," Ms. Lee, 26, stated bluntly. "I had a hard time getting on my feet."

She finds it easy sharing such reflections because in the past 18 months she has left that needy girl light-years behind. She speaks proudly of the sense of purpose that has transformed her into a confident woman, then notes bitterly that the man whose own life-changing experiences forced her to grow has not been able to share the experience. That is because the man, her father, is being held in a federal prison.

Ms. Lee is the daughter of Wen Ho Lee, the scientist formerly with Los Alamos National Laboratory who is charged with mishandling some of the country's most sensitive nuclear weapons secrets. A small, reed-thin man tucked into a plain gray suit, Mr. Lee has sat in a federal courtroom here much of this past week seeking, for the third time since his arrest in December, to be released on bail. He is represented by a team of lawyers and one lioness who now gives speeches, raises funds for her father's defense, exhorts his lawyers, meets with civil rights groups and cajoles or browbeats reporters.

Ms. Lee, who says she still cannot hold back the tears when she visits her father, says she is determined to do more than just see him exonerated. Because she and his supporters believe he has been singled out by the government because he is Chinese-American, she wants to use his case to fight against discrimination.

Her determination has astounded those who know her.

"There's a positive side to all this, how my sister sort of matured," said her brother, Chung Lee, 27, a soft-spoken medical student. "I never would have imagined she could have done this. It's amazing really."

Victor Hwang, the managing attorney of the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco, a civil rights group that filed a brief supporting Dr. Lee's assertion that he is a victim of racial discrimination, said Ms. Lee has "been one of the most interesting people to work with. She's the first person I've seen who has had this kind of growth. She's still in shock and denial, like, 'How can this happen?' But then she goes back and works very hard."

Ms. Lee described herself as a somewhat rebellious, emotional young woman while growing up in Los Alamos, sometimes more than her conservative father could handle. She recalled how once, when a friend showed up with torn jeans, her father was aghast and offered to patch them up right then and there. "That's how conservative he is," Ms. Lee said. "It also shows how, you know, clueless he is."

But while her father was in many ways a man of tradition, who spoke Mandarin at home, Ms. Lee never had strong feelings about her Chinese heritage. She attended the University of California at Los Angeles, where she took a few courses on Asian-American history, but said they made little impression. "I just felt that the problems with discrimination didn't apply to me," she said.

It was only when her father became entangled in the criminal investigation that she began to see her ethnicity in a different way.

She was working as a technical writer with a computer company in North Carolina, in late 1998, living with her boyfriend, now her fiancé, when she started getting worried phone calls from her father and brother. Her father was being investigated, she was told. Suddenly she felt herself once again in the uncomfortably familiar role of family drama queen. She urged her father to get a lawyer, but was ignored.

"My dad and I told her, 'Just chill out,' " said her brother, Chung. "I'd just be telling her she was overreacting."

Ms. Lee found the experience doubly painful. "Maybe that's the theme of this whole story, that I had to fight my whole life for someone to listen to me in my family, even on this," she said. "I don't mean to sound super bitter, but I feel that way."

ONCE her father's name surfaced, after officials said they suspected that he had given nuclear secrets to China, she found that not only were people listening, but that they eagerly sought her out. She gave her first speech on her father's birthday, last December, just a few weeks after he was arrested. Her real coming of age, she said, dates from a few months later, when she was asked to address a group of Asian-Americans at Harvard.

"That was really when I realized you could make an impression on a crowd," she recalled. "I really felt like, 'Now, I have a voice, I have a purpose.' I realized I wasn't just speaking for my father. I was speaking for Asian-Americans, too."

So now she is booked for speaking engagements through October, while still holding a job as a technical writer in San Francisco, and helping support some family members.

"Honestly, I don't think she was viewed within the family as someone they would really listen to before this," said Brian Sun, the family's lawyer. "But Wen Ho tells me now how proud he is. He just asks me to make sure she doesn't overdo her involvement. He wants her to have her own life."

As ever, Ms. Lee has her own ideas and is talking about becoming a civil rights lawyer.

"She really believes her father's fate rests with her," Mr. Hwang said. "She feels tremendous pressure. The main flaw I find in her is she hasn't developed much selectivity in who she will deal with. She won't let any opportunity go by without making the effort. I'm afraid she's going to burn herself out."

----

U.S. Argues Against Lee's Release

Associated Press
Saturday, August 19, 2000 ; A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=wpni/print&articleid=A50979-2000Aug18

ALBUQUERQUE, Aug. 18 -- A fired nuclear scientist could help someone build a bomb or help a country's nuclear weapons program if he is released from jail, a federal prosecutor told a judge at a bail hearing today.

"Hundreds of millions of people could be killed," Assistant U.S. Attorney George Stamboulidis said. "The breadth of the potential harm is so great that . . . even a reduced risk is too great to take that gamble."

Wen Ho Lee is charged with illegally transferring top-secret nuclear weapons files to unsecure computers and computer tapes at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Stamboulidis urged U.S. District Judge James Parker to again refuse bail for Lee, who has been in custody since December. Lee, 60, could face life in prison if convicted of the 59 counts involving the file transfers.

He is not accused of espionage. Instead, the prosecution has suggested Lee meant to use the files to help get a new job.

Defense attorney Mark Holscher said: "There is no evidence in the record that Dr. Lee has the political motivation, the financial motivation or the destructive intent" to do anything harmful with the material he is accused of downloading.

Holscher said, however, that Lee was "naive" and had made some stupid mistakes.

After court adjourned, the scientist's daughter, Alberta Lee, said: "I think the notion of my father having the intention to kill hundreds of millions of people is completely absurd."

Parker indicated that he would rule later, possibly next week, on whether to grant bail. Holscher said $2.2 million in bond money has been assembled by Lee's family and friends.

Defense Attorney John Cline said the material Lee allegedly downloaded was not the "crown jewels" of American science. He said the information could not be used to build a nuclear bomb. Cline added that the information was not even classified secret by the government. He said such material is allowed to be sent via public mail.

Earlier today, an FBI agent whose testimony was key in denying bail to Lee said that the scientist passed non-FBI polygraph examinations with flying colors.

However, Agent Robert Messemer said the polygraphs administered by Wackenhut Corp. on behalf of the Department of Energy did not follow guidelines accepted by the FBI. Messemer said the FBI does not agree with the Wackenhut polygraph outcome, and that he believes Lee was "deceptive" during an FBI examination.

Messemer was also asked about contacts Lee had with Chinese scientists in China in 1988. He said two high-ranking Chinese nuclear officials visited Lee in a hotel room.

Messemer said Lee did not mention the contact in a debriefing, but Holscher said Lee included it on a written report. Holscher said the discussion concerned information in the public domain since 1969, so Lee did not consider it an approach for classified information.

But Messemer said Lee should have told the debriefer anyway. He said it was significant because the scientists ranked so high in China's nuclear establishment, and it would have been useful to know what Lee was asked.

Messemer acknowledged Friday that during a March 7, 1999, FBI interrogation, Lee was threatened with a potential death penalty if he did not cooperate. Messemer said he was aware of the threat but not present.

Stamboulidis objected that the defense implied Lee was threatened with death if he didn't cooperate. Stamboulidis asked Messemer if the interrogation implied Lee would be murdered if he didn't cooperate.

"I concluded he was not under any immediate threat of death if he did not cooperate and he was free to leave at any time," the agent said.

Another FBI agent withdrew from the Lee investigation after the interview, but Messemer said he could not confirm that she quit over the death penalty issue. He said he understood the agent withdrew because she became ill.

-------- texas

Re: US to import 50t DU metal waste from UK

From: Peter Diehl - peter.diehl@sz-online.de,
19 Aug 2000

Philotechnics' import application is available at ADAMS now. The TIFF image file (460k) is available at ADAMS - http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/ADAMS/index.html

Surprise, surprise ... some citations:

"(e) Ultimate disposition: Land burial of depleted uranium aircraft counterweights at Waste Control Specialists, L.L.C. facility in Andrews County, TX."

and:

"Because the counterweights will be disposed of in a facility that is not a radioactive waste disposal site and is not subject to the jurisdiction of the Texas Natural Resources Conservation Commission and because they are not regulated domestically as a low-level radioactive waste, specific approval by the state agency responsible for licensing the Waste Control Specialists' site, the Texas Department of Health, is not required."

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

Laser Project Is Delayed and Over Budget
Report Highlights Troubles at Nuclear Weapons Testing Project

New York Times
August 19, 2000
By JAMES GLANZ
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/081900sci-laser-missiles.html

A giant laser being built at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will cost nearly $2 billion more than the laboratory originally announced, and will be delayed by at least six years, according to a report released on Thursday by the General Accounting Office.

The project, the National Ignition Facility, or N.I.F., had been expected to cost $2.2 billion and to be finished by 2003 or 2004. By heating and compressing pellets of nuclear fuel with 192 converging laser beams, the project is designed to help in the study of nuclear weapons without exploding them.

So many technical questions surround the project, the report found, that "the cost of N.I.F. could grow even higher and completion of the project could take even longer" than the revised estimates suggest.

The report by the accounting office, the investigative arm of Congress, also found that the former director of the project withheld information about the problems from the laboratory at Livermore, Calif., and from the Energy Department, which runs it.

The project forms part of the nation's program to ensure the safety and reliability of its nuclear stockpile. Because other parts of this "stockpile stewardship" program may have to absorb cost overruns at the ignition facility, its political support has eroded.

Senator Pete V. Domenici, the New Mexico Republican who heads the energy subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which recommends funding levels for the project, said that the accounting office's numbers were "not out of the estimating ballpark from what we expected."

But Senator Domenici said that despite its importance as an element of stockpile stewardship, "N.I.F. is a very controversial one now because of these very excessive, these huge overruns."

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has pledged to cover the overruns largely using money from Livermore's part of the stockpile stewardship budget. On June 1, he sent a letter to Senator Domenici asking that the project's construction allocation for the fiscal year 2001 be increased by $95 million, more than doubling the Clinton administration's original request. The money "will come from other Stockpile Stewardship Program activities," Mr. Richardson wrote.

The proposal is likely to meet with resistance, partly because some of the money would probably come from other laboratories' stewardship budgets. Senator Domenici said he did not favor the change and predicted that the effort would fail.

"My own assessment would be that that G.A.O. report will haunt it," the senator said.

He added that he would press the Energy Department to study alternative versions of the project that would use a smaller number of laser beams and cost less to build.

Madelyn Creedon, deputy administrator for defense programs at the Energy Department, said in an interview that money for the overruns could be found within the stewardship program without damaging it.

The department "is in the business of maintaining the stockpile," Ms. Creedon said. "It's not in our best interests to skew the balance of the program."

The report also found that the ignition facility's director until last year, E. Michael Campbell, deliberately failed to report the problems to senior management at Livermore and at the Energy Department. That decision led to a major embarrassment for Mr. Richardson, who in June 1999 gave a speech hailing the project as on time and within its budget shortly before learning of the problems.

Mr. Campbell left the laboratory in August 1999 when it was disclosed that he never completed a doctorate from Princeton that he had allowed the laboratory to believe he held. The overruns and delays became public at about the same time.

"Whatever things were going through his mind, he convinced himself and his senior people that everything was O.K.," said Gary Boss, the assistant director at the accounting office who oversaw the report.

Mr. Campbell, now a vice president at General Atomics, a privately held government contractor, objected to the findings. He said that in any project as large and complex as the ignition facility there was bound to be a range of opinion about how to proceed and when to report shortcomings.

"I'll be accused of enthusiasm and commitment to the project and excitement about it, but that's it," Mr. Campbell said yesterday. "I can't apologize for that."

The conclusions on Mr. Campbell's responsibility were in line with findings earlier this year by Mr. Richardson. But in a sharp contrast to a report by a panel appointed by the secretary, the accounting office investigation largely exonerated Dr. Victor H. Reis, a former assistant secretary of energy who was the principal architect of the stockpile stewardship program.

Dr. Reis had been insulated from the problems by lower-level Energy Department officials who "should have been more aggressive in acting on their suspicions," Mr. Boss said.

But the report found numerous shortcomings in the fiscal management of the project. Aside from over $1 billion in overruns on the construction, more than $600 million for fabricating the nuclear fuel pellets, or targets, for the laser should have been included in the original construction estimates, but were not, the report said.

While conceding the construction overruns, Ms. Creedon said the money for target fabrication had always been in the laser's operating budget, though not in the announced construction costs.

"It's not that this is not known to Congress or that this is an overrun," she said. "It just sort of depends on how you rack, stack and package it."

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

-------- colombia

Colombia Cites 'Human Error' in Child Killings

Reuters
August 19, 2000 Filed at 1:08 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-colombi.html

BOGOTA (Reuters) - The Colombian government has admitted that an army ambush of a school group and the killing of six students may have been caused by ``human error.''

``This is not an issue of a human rights violation but of possible human error,'' Defense Minister Luis Fernando Ramirez told a news conference late Friday.

Six children aged six to 11 were killed Tuesday in a confused incident near the town of Pueblo Rico in violence-wracked Antioquia province when army troops apparently opened fire on 60 students on a field trip. Five others were injured.

``There was never any intention by the soldiers to kill the children,'' Ramirez said.

Local media reported Saturday that a military criminal tribunal had ordered the 41 soldiers and officers involved in the incident suspended from combat duty pending an investigation to establish responsibility for the shooting.

The army initially said the youngsters had been accidentally caught in the cross-fire of a clash between troops and rebels of the National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia's second largest rebel force. But survivors insisted there were no guerrillas in the area at the time of the shooting.

President Andres Pastrana has said he would personally oversee the probe into the killings.

-------- drug war

Drug suspect extradited

Pioneer Planet
Published: Saturday, August 19, 2000
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/2/news/docs/017704.htm

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA - The alleged leader of one of Colombia's most powerful drug cartels was sent to the United States Friday to stand trial, days after drug dealers threatened violence if authorities carried out the extradition. A small army of security forces escorted Alberto Orlandez Gamboa onto the tarmac at Bogota's international airport, where he left on a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration plane. Gamboa will face charges in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that he conspired to import and distribute thousands of pounds of cocaine from Colombia to the U.S.

-------- indonesia

Indonesian Military Wins Legal Amnesty

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 19, 2000 ; A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=wpni/print&articleid=A51871-2000Aug18

DILI, East Timor, Aug. 18 -- Indonesia's top legislative body amended the constitution today to prevent any new human rights laws from applying to military abuses committed in the past.

The change, approved overwhelmingly, effectively provided an amnesty to the country's disgraced armed forces for their sometimes brutal tactics in the former Indonesian province of East Timor and other parts of the strife-torn archipelago.

The amendment is expected to scuttle large portions of a new human rights law making its way through parliament. That groundbreaking law would have created special courts to try human rights cases, bypassing Indonesia's notoriously corrupt judiciary. It also would have criminalized an officer's failure to stop abuses by soldiers under his command.

Both provisions were aimed at prosecuting senior military leaders for their roles in the East Timor violence, including the armed forces commander at the time, Gen. Wiranto. Human rights investigators have accused Wiranto of failing to prevent his soldiers from engaging in widespread destruction in East Timor after the territory voted for independence last August.

The Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association called the amendment "disturbing."

"They are saying that past violations will not be tried and will be neglected," said Handardi, the group's executive director, who like many Indonesians uses only one name.

The amendment was part of Indonesia's first bill of rights, which attempts to guarantee civil rights in the emerging democracy. The amendment also provides Indonesians with freedom of speech and outlaws torture and discrimination.

The provision at issue protects people from being charged under a law that was not in effect when a crime was committed. Although legislators pointed out that such a provision is a universal legal principle, human rights activists contended an exception should have been made to deal with the military.

The vote, by the People's Consultative Assembly in Jakarta, likely will intensify calls for an international human rights tribunal for East Timor akin to those for war crimes committed in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Indonesian leaders have long objected to such a tribunal, insisting they would be allowed to bring perpetrators to justice under domestic laws.

"How can you talk about democracy and civil rights without bringing the perpetrators of all the crimes in East Timor to justice?" said Aderito de Jeses Soares, a human rights activist in Dili who is a member of the East Timor Jurists Association. "Bringing the military to justice should be the starting point for democracy."

Legislators contended the amendment will not foil prosecutions of human rights violations. They argued that crimes such as murder, rape and arson always have been illegal in Indonesia. "This regulation is not an obstacle to prosecuting past cases," said Yakob Tobing, the head of the assembly commission that drafted the amendment.

But human rights lawyers argued that without new courts and provisions that hold officers responsible for failing to rein in their troops, senior military leaders will not be able to be brought to justice.

In a separate decision that represents another key victory for the military, the assembly passed a decree that allows the armed forces to retain their 38 seats in the 700-member legislative body until 2009. Government reformers had hoped the military would be removed from the assembly this year.

-------- korea

Candor and the Kursk

Saturday, August 19, 2000 ; A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=wpni/print&articleid=A54195-2000Aug19

DISASTER AND democratization are linked in recent Soviet and Russian history. The 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, too catastrophic to deny, forced the Soviet Union to end its systematic coverup of defects in its civilian nuclear program. Accountability for the disaster was imposed on responsible officials, and changes in nuclear policy were implemented. Chernobyl had terrible human consequences, but one salutary political result: It catalyzed Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika.

In a different way, the sinking of the submarine Kursk in the Barents Sea poses a test for the post-Soviet political system still taking shape in Russia. Under President Vladimir Putin, the trend has been toward more official suffocation of independent media and less governmental candor, especially in military matters. A steady stream of disinformation has emanated from the Kremlin regarding the war in Chechnya, for example.

Chaos and confusion must have gripped the navy officers in the storm-tossed area when the Kursk went down. And military establishments generally, not just the Russian one, are instinctively tight-lipped. Still, Russia's handling of the accident seems of a piece with the broader recrudescence of old Soviet standards of candor and competence. The Russian navy took two days to admit what had happened. Officers have put out conflicting information about facts as basic as the cause of the sinking--even suggesting, apparently with no foundation, that a U.S. sub might be to blame. Worst of all, offers of help from the United States, Britain and Norway were initially refused. British and Norwegian help has now been accepted--almost a week after the sub sank. U.S. assistance, however, is apparently still more than the Russian military can countenance. In light of the Clinton administration's effort to engage and reassure Moscow, this is frustrating and, as a measure of Russian officialdom's basic capacity for trusting the former Cold War adversary, sobering.

Russia's electronic and print media have covered the plight of the crew's families and voiced skepticism about the government's performance. "If this were a NATO submarine, the crew would already have been rescued," one Russian newspaper declaimed. Given Mr. Putin's recent hostility toward press critics, this coverage suggests that all is not lost for press freedom in Russia. But no matter how the Kursk drama ultimately ends, many questions must still be addressed: Was the accident preventable? Why the refusal to let other countries help? And, most fundamental, what does this incident reveal about whether Russia truly possesses the money and trained personnel to operate safely the large fleet of nuclear-powered ships--not to mention the vast arsenal of nuclear weapons-- that the great-power ambitions of its current leaders seem to require?

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U.S. to Close Its Seoul Firing Range

Washington Post World In Brief,
August 19, 2000
http://www.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=wpni/print&articleid=A54224-2000Aug19

SEOUL--The United States has agreed to stop using a firing range in South Korea following complaints from local residents, South Korea's Defense Ministry said.

Anti-U.S. protesters have held rallies demanding the closure of a strafing area and a nearby bombing range since May, when a U.S. Air Force pilot with engine trouble was forced to drop six 500-pound bombs near a village.

Residents said the bombs shattered windows and caused other damage in Maehyang-ri village, on the Yellow Sea southwest of Seoul. They have been demanding compensation and the closure of both the strafing and bombing ranges.

Gen. Lee Han Ho, deputy director of the South Korean air force, said in a news conference that the U.S. Air Force would close the strafing range and stop using live bombs at the bombing range. Lee also said approach paths for jets would be moved offshore, residents would be notified of exercises, and the special area for emergency bomb drops would be moved 700 yards further offshore.

-------- russia

Where worlds collide

The Economist
August 19th - 25th 2000
http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/current/index_sa5744.html

BAKU, TBILISIANDYEREVAN - THERE are more than 3,000 kilometres (1,800 miles) of international borders in the Caucasus. Only the smallest, the 9 km stretch between Azerbaijan's Nakhichevan province and Turkey, is truly friendly. The two countries understand each other linguistically, economically, politically and, increasingly, militarily. A former adviser to the Azeri president has even suggested a confederation, creating a short cut for Azerbaijan into NATO and, eventually, the EU.

There should be that kind of closeness, and carelessness about formal sovereignty, everywhere in the Caucasus: both between the three former Soviet republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, and with their neighbours: Russia, Turkey and Iran. Russian is a common language across much of the region; there are common cultural heritages (Christian, Persian, Ottoman and Soviet) and common economic problems and opportunities. The Caucasus is-or should be-a splendid transit route between east and west, north and south, for goods, money, people and ideas.

For energy firms, the Caucasus is a way out for the oil and gas around the Caspian Sea. Proven reserves are estimated at 18 billion-35 billion barrels-about as much as America and the North Sea combined. This could rise threefold if a big new find off the Kazakh coast proves as promising as results announced in July suggest.

But most borders in the Caucasus divide rather than unite. Armenia and Azerbaijan are still technically at war. Turkey blockades Armenia in sympathy. Russia keeps a tight grip on its southern border. Iran is chilly to Azerbaijan, Georgia to Armenia. Even when political ties are cordial, as with Georgia and Azerbaijan, physical ones are not. Roads are bumpy and narrow, railways slow and squalid. Customs offices in all the region's countries are notorious for stealing time and money from travellers. The easiest flight connections are via Moscow or Istanbul.

This is surprisingly disappointing. After the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the three republics of the Caucasus seemed to have the best chances of all the other inmates of the Soviet prison when communism started collapsing. Georgia was the former Soviet Union's favourite wine maker and tourist destination; Armenia had high technology and a large, rich, influential diaspora; Azerbaijan had oil, agriculture, and the helping hand of Turkey. All had been independent before, after 1918, if only briefly. Unlike Soviet creations such as Moldova, each had a national cultural identity.

But while the reinvented Baltic states have returned happily to Europe, the three countries of the Caucasus have suffered a miserable decade of war, bad government, isolation and impoverishment. In Georgia, a wrong-headed nationalist government and Russian-backed separatists in the provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia fought two disastrous civil wars. Armenians fought and won a war for their Nagorno-Karabakh ethnic exclave in Azerbaijan. Oil wealth in Azerbaijan stayed in the pockets of the ruling elite. Living standards all across the region have plunged relentlessly.

The most pathetic example is Abkhazia, once (give or take a few cockroaches) the Côte d'Azur of the Soviet Union. By its own account, it is a success story. "Every hour of every day works in favour of independence. Poverty is the mother of invention. Abkhazia has huge possibilities," intones the president, Vladislav Ardzinba, rattling off Soviet-era nut-production statistics to underline his point. But his country is one of the most depressing sites on the Eurasian landmass. Uniquely for a self-described capital city, Sukhumi has no Internet connection, no mobile phones, and no hotel of any kind. In one day of the civil war in 1992, it lost all its main cultural buildings-equivalent to a terrorist attack in Washington destroying the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian and the Kennedy Centre. Nobody has tried to rebuild them, or the ghostly city's many other ruins. There is practically no work, no money, no hope, and seemingly no effort. The airport is littered with bits of crashed planes. Nobody bothers to clear them away.

For all its rulers' bombast, Abkhazia exists on Russian sufferance. Without Russian military help, the Abkhaz, who made up less than a fifth of the pre-war population, would have lost the civil war. Russian energy keeps it ticking over now, just. But apart from the rulers and their thuggish security people (who live well enough) almost everyone who can leave has done so, either as refugees to Georgia, or as economic migrants to Russia. That leaves, essentially, the old, sick, handicapped, lazy, or drunk. The only decent jobs in town are working for the earnest foreign soldiers at the United Nations mission, which monitors the Russian-run peacekeeping forces. Cynics pun that these forces are actually piece-keepers, protecting the Kremlin's real interest in its former empire: Abkhazia's 180 km of Black Sea coastline.

Abkhazia is a concentrated example, but the same cocktail of bad government, spite-thy-neighbour and poverty poisons life in the rest of the Caucasus. South Ossetia, another Russian-backed puppet state that survives on the money it makes, more or less illegally, from a tunnel leading through the Caucasus mountains to Russia, is a bit less isolated but still poor. Nagorno-Karabakh is richer, a kind of political Disneyland for the Armenian diaspora whose donations support it. But it has little to show for its military success. The resulting breach between Armenia and Azerbaijan practically cuts the Caucasus in half.

Couldn't they get along?

The political and military stalemate disguises an economic and social catastrophe. Public health services are collapsing; a tuberculosis epidemic, for example, is raging unchecked in Azerbaijan's jails. People are voting with their feet. Western diplomats estimate that fully 2m people have emigrated from Armenia since independence-more than half the population. According to the same figures, Georgia and Azerbaijan have each lost around a fifth of their population (1m and 1.5m people respectively). It is the best people who are going: "The DHL minority-decent, honest, law-abiding-is the most endangered in the Caucasus," quips Alex Rondeli, a Georgian analyst.

There is no shortage of clever solutions for this mess. A Brussels think-tank, the Centre for European Policy Studies, has just produced a bag of ingeniously cooked fudge*-including, for example, the creation of a South Caucasus Community, based on "modern European models of shared sovereignty, interdependence and multi-tier (sometimes asymmetric) governing structures." Translated, this means, for example, a common passport for all three countries, a lot of foreign money (including for Russia's southern fringe) and a security pact backed by big outsiders.

The reaction has been cool so far. Azerbaijan and Georgia want the victors to back down before becoming friends. Armenia and the puppet states would like the status quo entrenched. But places like Taiwan, Puerto Rico, Northern Ireland, Montenegro and Hong Kong show how far formal sovereignty and independence can be fudged when politics or convenience require, even if the result is not always happy. At a practical level, an American expert, Paul Goble, has suggested an ingenious territorial swap in which Armenia would give Azerbaijan a corridor to its exclave of Nakhichevan, in exchange for Azeri concessions on Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia is cool towards this, because it would cut off access to its only friendly neighbour, Iran. But a senior official says that with outside monitoring, some sort of corridor would be worth discussing.

Peace making has shown little progress. The best news is that only a handful of people get killed each year. Political leaders do talk to each other: the Armenian and Azeri presidents will meet again this Friday, August 18th, in Yalta at a regional summit. Georgia made a huge concession recently by referring to Mr Ardzinba as a "president". But even such limited steps are risky. Hundreds of thousands of refugees in Georgia and Azerbaijan see the separatist leaders who drove them from their homes as criminals and traitors, not partners in peace. The victorious sides believe only independence saved them from extermination by their neighbours. There has been almost no preparation of public opinion for peace deals, which would strike many as sell-outs. Some suggest that the mysterious killing of Armenia's prime minister in October last year was a (so far successful) attempt by hardliners to sabotage a tentative peace deal with Azerbaijan.

Certainly there seems little reason for any of the weaker parties to back down on their own. If there is going to be bad government, most people's inclination is to prefer their own. Abkhazia is depressing. But if you are Abkhaz, returning to the unpredictable, corrupt, ethnocentric and perhaps vengeful rule of the Georgian government probably looks even worse.

As poverty increases, so may instability. Georgia's most miserable region is Armenian-populated Javakheti, where the main employer is a large Russian military base. Azerbaijan has a large ethnic minority, the Lezghin, on the border with the volatile Russian republic of Dagestan. Latent territorial claims abound. Those who blame Russian meddling for the conflicts fear it is only a question of time before shooting starts again.

The long-term way out of this must involve the creation of well-governed, prosperous countries that people want to live in, not leave. That is a huge task. The Baltics aside, no state in the former Soviet Union works well. Communist rule is not the only culprit. The Caucasian virtues of family loyalty and extravagant hospitality are not those from which transparent and accountable bureaucracies naturally spring. The governing elites set such a bad example that no ordinary citizen feels inclined to pay taxes or obey laws.

The short-term fix is external pressure. Russia could make its proxy states accept a fudged deal on independence by turning off the energy tap. The West could push its allies, Georgia and Azerbaijan, to be more flexible; and Turkey to open i