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

-------- australia

Olympic 'bomb plot' foiled
Police accidentally uncovered the threat to the Olympics

Saturday, 26 August, 2000
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_896000/896660.stm

New Zealand police have uncovered a possible plot to blow up a nuclear reactor in Sydney during next month's Olympic Games.

The reactor is in Sydney's suburbs

Australian police have been informed and the two forces are working together on the case involving a group of Afghan refugees who had suspicious material in their possession.

The group was reportedly linked with Afghanistan-based terrorist Osama bin Laden.

Detective superintendent Bill Bishop, New Zealand's National Crime manager, said: "That material included a map of Sydney highlighting a nuclear reactor and highlighting entrance and exit routes."

In Sydney, a New South Wales police spokesman said they had been briefed by New Zealand on the potential threat to the Lucas Heights nuclear research reactor in the city's outer suburbs.

Sydney has a population of about 4.5 million which could swell by another million people during the games.

Security tactics

Detectives in Auckland stumbled on the apparent reactor conspiracy during an investigation into people-smuggling by organised crime syndicates.

They conducted a series of house raids in March and in one the lounge had been converted into a virtual command centre, with detailed maps of Sydney and notes on police security tactics, the New Zealand Herald reported.

The bomb plot was reportedly linked to Osama bid Laden

The site of the reactor, built in 1958 for research purposes, and access routes to it were highlighted.

Entries in a notebook outlined police security tactics, standards and chains of command for the Commonwealth Games held in Auckland in 1990.

It is understood no arrests have been made connected to any plot, but investigations are continuing.

The US State Department calls Saudi multi-millionaire Mr bin Laden "one of the most significant sponsors of Islamic extremist activities in the world today."

According to the US - which has offered a $5m reward for the capture of Mr bin Laden - he was involved in at least three major attacks: the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1996 killing of 19 US soldiers in Saudi Arabia, and the targeting of US embassies in 1998 with bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

----

NZ, Australia say no arrests in Olympic nuclear plot

By Brian Williams
08-26-00
From: Ndunlks@aol.com

SYDNEY, Aug 26 (Reuters) - New Zealand police said on Saturday they had uncovered a possible plot to blow up a nuclear reactor in Sydney during next month's Olympic Games but officials in Australia and New Zealand quickly downplayed the seriousness of the threat.

News of the possible plot set off shock waves in Sydney, Australia's largest city, but authorities said the risk of such an attack was low.

The officials said they believed there was ``no credible threat'' at this time to the research reactor, some 25 km (16 miles) from the main Olympic stadium on the outskirts of Sydney.

The New Zealand government and police stressed there had been no arrests linked to a possible plot by Afghan refugees, the biggest security scare to hit the Games.

Residents near the Lucas Heights research reactor urged that it should be shut immediately, but Australian officials rejected the demand.

``Relevant Australian authorities have made an assessment and have advised that the risk is low,'' a statement by Australian Science Minister Nick Minchin's office said.

Sydney has a population of about 4.5 million which could swell by another million people during the Games, which run from Sept 15 to Oct 1.

New Zealand police said they had found evidence of a possible plan to attack the reactor during raids on several houses in the country's largest city Auckland in March.

``That material included a map of Sydney highlighting a nuclear reactor and highlighting entrance and exit routes,'' detective superintendent Bill Bishop, New Zealand's National Crime manager told New Zealand Radio.

The New Zealand Herald newspaper said police had stumbled onto the possible plot when they raided the homes of some Afghan refugees during an investigation into a people smuggling racket to get illegal immigrants from Afghanistan into the country.

``The lounge of a Mt Albert (Auckland) home was converted into a virtual command centre, complete with conference table and maps,'' the newspaper reported.

Entries in a notebook outlined police security tactics for the Commonwealth Games held in Auckland in 1990.

``It is circumstantial and suspicious. If it was not for the Sydney Games, they (Australian authorities) would not be so tetchy,'' a senior detective told the newspaper.

LAW AGENCIES IN OTHER COUNTRIES ALSO INVESTIGATING

Security forces in the United States, Canada and Britain were also looking into the possible plot, the newspaper said.

About 20 refugees from Afghanistan and possibly Iran were involved, the newspaper said.

New Zealand Police Minister George Hawkins said arrests were made during the raids but the people involved were charged with only minor offences like passport and immigration offences.

``The police have not arrested anybody for any terrorist act or any potential terrorist act,'' New Zealand deputy prime minister Jim Anderton said.

New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff said when the Games were only a few weeks ago ``you err on the side of caution.''

``There is nothing...that suggests there is a threat on the ground other than somebody had marked the reactor and access to it in a notebook.''

But Sydney residents were not placated and said the city should follow the example of Atlanta which shut a similar plant during its 1996 Games.

``Our federal government expects Australians to put up with a huge terrorist threat right on our doorstop, because they don't want people to know it (the reactor) is there,'' said local council woman Genevieve Rankin.

The New Zealand Herald speculated that the plot may have been hatched by sympathisers of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, suspected by the United States of masterminding the 1998 bombings of two U.S embassies in Africa that killed 220 people might.

Last week Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, in a review of Olympic security, said bin Laden was ``an example of the sort of people we clearly monitor as best we can.''

Fears of a possible terrorist threat to the Sydney Games were raised in May when police arrested a man whose home near the Olympic Village was packed with explosives.

Australia's terrorist-free reputation goes on the line during the Olympics and security chiefs have prepared for everything from attacks by groups to rogue, Atlanta-style bombers.

Australia is mounting its largest peacetime security operation for the Games, fearing the biggest global gathering of the new millennium will be a prime target for terrorists.

----

Officials downplay terrorist plot

CNN Sports Illustrated
Saturday August 26, 2000 01:34 AM
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/olympics/news/2000/08/25/sydney_terrorist_ap/
http://www.usatoday.com/olympics/25terror.htm

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Australian authorities have played down an Olympic terrorist threat after reports emerged that New Zealand police had foiled a plot targeting a nuclear reactor in Sydney.

Police raids in Auckland last March on suspected people-smuggling operations allegedly run by organized crime gangs uncovered evidence of the terrorist plot, the New Zealand Herald newspaper reported Saturday.

The newspaper report described the group as an Afghani terrorist cell with links to fugitive terrorist Osama bin Laden.

But Australian officials said there was no serious risk to the small research reactor, and they had no plans to shut it down.

The Australian government had been monitoring the New Zealand police investigation since March, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio reported Saturday, citing an unnamed government source.

Milton Cockburn, a spokesman for the Sydney 2000 organizing committee, said security during the Sept. 15-Oct. 1 Olympics was the responsibility of the New South Wales police. He declined to make any further comment.

New South Wales police, which has overall control of games security, confirmed that it was monitoring the New Zealand investigations.

"The New South Wales police service is aware of an investigation conducted by New Zealand police into the activities of an organized group in New Zealand," a police spokesman said Saturday.

The threats was being treated seriously, as were all matters relating Olympic security, the spokesman added.

Detective Superintendent Bill Bishop, of New Zealand police national headquarters, told Radio New Zealand that three men had been arrested during the raids in March and that investigations were continuing.

He said the group, reported to be Afghanis living in Auckland under residency permits, were in possession of Sydney maps and plans of detailed access and exit routes to the targeted nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights.

Police raided an Auckland home that had been converted into a virtual command center and located the maps plus notes on police security tactics, the Herald reported.

The reports led to renewed calls from local residents and environmental group Greenpeace to shut the Lucas Heights reactor down, at least for the duration of the Olympics.

A similar reactor in Atlanta was closed down during the 1996 Olympics.

But federal Science Minister Nick Minchin said the reactor would not be closed during the games because there was no credible threat to the Lucas Heights facility or to the Olympics.

"With regards to the Olympics, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO) received an assessment from relevant Australian authorities last year that any threat of serious attack was very low and any threat to technology or material was also very low," he said.

"ANSTO requested an update on this assessment last week and has been verbally advised that there is no change to this assessment."

All nuclear materials and facilities were protected in accordance with national and international physical protection obligations, although security would be strengthened at Lucas Heights, Minchin said in a statement.

"The ANSTO facility is a research reactor and, as such, its fundamental design greatly limits the risk to public safety from an accident."

A spokeswoman for Australia's Attorney-General, Daryl Williams, said official inquiries had revealed that "there was no credible threat to Lucas Heights."

The 1950s-vintage nuclear reactor in southern Sydney, in the suburb of Lucas Heights, is not a power plant. It is used for scientific and medical research and operated by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization.

It is similar to thousands of such reactors at research facilities around the world which are commonly found in or near residential areas.

The Lucas Heights reactor is tiny in comparison to an electricity-generating nuclear reactor. Lucas Heights has 25 fuel elements containing about 7 kilograms (15 1/2 pounds) of uranium. At normal operating capacity it produces about 10 megawatts of thermal energy, the ANSTO said.

A typical electricity-generating reactor holds more than 150 tons of fuel and produces around 3000 megawatts of thermal energy.

Georgia Tech shut down a test reactor on its campus before the Atlanta Olympics and moved all of its nuclear fuel because of concerns that terrorists could commandeer the fuel.

The 30-year-old reactor was seen as a major security issue for Olympic organizers, because it was in the middle of the campus just north of downtown Atlanta and not far from the Olympic Aquatic Center and near the Olympic Village.

The 5-million-watt reactor was the second most powerful university-based reactor in the United States. It was used for teaching, research and testing materials for strength and endurance.

---

Protesters Gather at Olympic Plot Nuclear Plant

Fox News
Saturday, August 26, 2000
http://www.foxnews.com/world/082600/olympics.sml http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-newzeal.html
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28863-2000Aug26.html

The lives of Americans spectators and Olympic athletes are at risk if a Sydney nuclear plant reported to be the possible target of a terrorist attack remains active, residents living near the site said Saturday.

New Zealand police found evidence of a possible plot to blow up the nuclear reactor during the Olympic Games in Sydney five months ago, during an operation against a suspected organized crime ring with links to Afghanistan. Australian officials were notified of the evidence in March, but the public was just informed of the information on Saturday.

Australian and New Zealand officials played down the seriousness of the threat to Australia's largest city and said the risk of an attack was low.

Australian officials insisted there was "no credible threat" to the 1950s research reactor, some 15 miles from the main Olympic stadium on the outskirts of Sydney. However, the reactor scenario has always been high on Australian security forces' "hit list" of possible terrorist targets, as has involvement of fundamentalist Afghan extremists in any attack.

Security around the plant will be upgraded during the Games, but the site will stay open.

This is the first major security scare for the Sydney Olympics, which will take place September 15th through October 1.

The New Zealand government and police stressed there had been no arrests linked to the suspected plot.

"Relevant Australian authorities have made an assessment and have advised that the risk is low," a statement by Australian Science Minister Nick Minchin said, rejecting the idea of a shutdown.

But residents, Greenpeace and conservation groups all said authorities were taking the threat too lightly.

Sydney has a population of about 4.5 million which could swell by another million during the Games.

The New Zealand Herald newspaper said police found the evidence of a possible terror plot in March, when they raided the homes of Afghan refugees during an investigation into a people-smuggling racket to get illegal immigrants from Afghanistan into the country.

"The lounge of a Mt. Albert home was converted into a virtual command center," the newspaper reported.

Police found a map of Sydney highlighting a nuclear reactor and highlighting entrance and exit routes, Detective Superintendent Bill Bishop, New Zealand's national crime manager, told New Zealand Radio.

Entries in a notebook outlined police security tactics for the Commonwealth Games, held in Auckland in 1990.

Law Agencies in Other Countries Also Investigating

Security forces in the United States, Canada and Britain were also looking into the possible plot, the Herald said.

About 20 refugees from Afghanistan and possibly Iran were involved, the newspaper said.

Saturday: A protester at the gates of the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor near Sydney.

New Zealand Police Minister George Hawkins said arrests were made during the raids but the people involved were charged with only minor offences like passport and immigration offences.

But Sydney residents said the city should follow the example of Atlanta, which shut a similar nuclear plant during its 1996 Games.

"Our federal government expects Australians to put up with a huge terrorist threat right on our doorstop, because they don't want people to know it [the reactor] is there," said local Councilwoman Genevieve Rankin.

The plant, used for scientific and medical research, is much smaller than an electricity-generating nuclear reactor, producing only about 10 megawatts of thermal energy compared with 3,000 megawatts from an electricity-generating reactor.

A meltdown would take just eight minutes, leaving no time to evacuate suburbs, anti-plant campaigner Dr. Helen Caldicott told a parliamentary inquiry two years ago.

Dr. Caldicott said that while normal reactors take 40 minutes to melt down, as happened at Chernobyl, Lucas Heights was a highly enriched uranium reactor.

The Herald speculated that the plot may have been hatched by sympathizers of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, suspected by the United States of masterminding the 1998 bombings of two U.S embassies in Africa that killed 220 people.

Last week, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, in a review of Olympic security, said bin Laden was "an example of the sort of people we clearly monitor as best we can."

Fears of a possible terrorist threat to the Sydney Games were raised in May when police arrested a man whose home near the Olympic Village was packed with explosives.

Australia is mounting its largest peacetime security operation for the Games, fearing the biggest global gathering of the new millennium will be a prime target for terrorists.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

---

OCEANIA: New Zealand police foil Olympic terror plot

Atlanta Journal-Constitution
WORLD IN BRIEF
Staff reports and news services
Saturday, August 26, 2000
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/saturday/news_937a85b65402b1f9004f.html

Police detectives in New Zealand reportedly have foiled a terrorist plot targeting a nuclear reactor in Sydney, Australia, during the Sept. 15-Oct. 1 Olympics. Auckland police raided a New Zealand home that had been converted into a virtual command center, the New Zealand Herald reported today. The group reportedly was linked with Afghanistan-based terrorist Osama bin Laden.

---

NZ, Australia Say No Arrests in Olympic Nuclear Plot

Yahoo News
Saturday August 26 4:49 AM ET
By Brian Williams
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20000826/ts/newzealand_olympics_dc_7.html

SYDNEY (Reuters) - New Zealand police said on Saturday they had uncovered a possible plot to blow up a nuclear reactor in Sydney during next month's Olympic Games but officials in Australia and New Zealand quickly played down the seriousness of the threat.

News of the possible plot set off shock waves in Sydney, Australia's largest city, but authorities said the risk of such an attack was low.

The officials said they believed there was ``no credible threat'' at this time to the research reactor, some 25 km (16 miles) from the main Olympic stadium on the outskirts of Sydney.

The New Zealand government and police stressed there had been no arrests linked to a possible plot by Afghan refugees, the biggest security scare to hit the Games.

Residents near the Lucas Heights research reactor urged that it should be shut immediately, but Australian officials rejected the demand.

``Relevant Australian authorities have made an assessment and have advised that the risk is low,'' a statement by Australian Science Minister Nick Minchin's office said.

Sydney has a population of about 4.5 million which could swell by another million people during the Games, which run from Sept 15 to Oct 1.

New Zealand police said they had found evidence of a possible plan to attack the reactor during raids on several houses in the country's largest city Auckland in March.

``That material included a map of Sydney highlighting a nuclear reactor and highlighting entrance and exit routes,'' detective superintendent Bill Bishop, New Zealand's National Crime manager told New Zealand Radio.

The New Zealand Herald newspaper said police had stumbled onto the possible plot when they raided the homes of some Afghan refugees during an investigation into a people smuggling racket to get illegal immigrants from Afghanistan into the country.

``The lounge of a Mt Albert (Auckland) home was converted into a virtual command center, complete with conference table and maps,'' the newspaper reported.

Entries in a notebook outlined police security tactics for the Commonwealth Games held in Auckland in 1990.

``It is circumstantial and suspicious. If it was not for the Sydney Games, they (Australian authorities) would not be so tetchy,'' a senior detective told the newspaper.

Law Agencies In Other Countries Also Investigating

Security forces in the United States, Canada and Britain were also looking into the possible plot, the newspaper said.

About 20 refugees from Afghanistan and possibly Iran were involved, the newspaper said.

New Zealand Police Minister George Hawkins said arrests were made during the raids but the people involved were charged with only minor offences like passport and immigration offences.

``The police have not arrested anybody for any terrorist act or any potential terrorist act,'' New Zealand deputy prime minister Jim Anderton said.

New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff said when the Games were only a few weeks ago ``you err on the side of caution.''

``There is nothing...that suggests there is a threat on the ground other than somebody had marked the reactor and access to it in a notebook.''

But Sydney residents were not placated and said the city should follow the example of Atlanta which shut a similar plant during its 1996 Games.

``Our federal government expects Australians to put up with a huge terrorist threat right on our doorstop, because they don't want people to know it (the reactor) is there,'' said local council woman Genevieve Rankin.

The New Zealand Herald speculated that the plot may have been hatched by sympathizers of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, suspected by the United States of masterminding the 1998 bombings of two U.S embassies in Africa that killed 220 people might.

Last week Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, in a review of Olympic security, said bin Laden was ``an example of the sort of people we clearly monitor as best we can.''

Fears of a possible terrorist threat to the Sydney Games were raised in May when police arrested a man whose home near the Olympic Village was packed with explosives.

Australia's terrorist-free reputation goes on the line during the Olympics and security chiefs have prepared for everything from attacks by groups to rogue, Atlanta-style bombers.

Australia is mounting its largest peacetime security operation for the Games, fearing the biggest global gathering of the new millennium will be a prime target for terrorists.

---

Officials Assert Olympics Safety

Associated Press
August 26,, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/s/AP-OLY-Sydney-Terrorist.html

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) -- Australian officials sought to reassure the world Saturday that the Sydney Olympics were safe from terrorist attack after a possible plot against the country's only nuclear reactor was exposed.

In the first major security scare for the games, New Zealand police last March stumbled across evidence of a possible plan to attack the reactor. The information was found during an operation in Auckland against a suspected organized crime ring with links to Afghanistan.

With the games scheduled to start Sept. 15, officials were quick to say that there was no direct evidence of a terrorist threat. They expressed confidence in the massive security operation -- headed by the New South Wales state police and including Australian military forces and international intelligence services.

``We have been at pains to assure the Australian public, and visitors to Australia for the games, that we have put in place the most well-rehearsed and practiced cooperative arrangements between all relevant authorities -- law enforcement, intelligence security and otherwise,'' attorney general Daryl Williams said.

International Olympic Committee chairman Juan Antonio Samaranch said he was not worried.

``Security is the responsibility of the governments of Australia and New South Wales and we have no fears,'' Samaranch told Spanish television. ``I feel calm, although I will feel even more so the day of the closing ceremony.''

Milton Cockburn, a spokesman for Sydney Games organizers, said security during the games was the responsibility of the New South Wales police and declined to comment further.

The plant -- located in the western Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights -- will have upgraded security during the games. But because of the lack of a credible threat to the facility or to the Olympics, it will not be closed, Australia Science Minister Nick Minchin said.

During raids on a house in Auckland five months ago, police found street maps of Sydney, other maps marking entry and exit routes to the reactor and notes on police security tactics, said Bill Bishop, the New Zealand police detective superintendent.

Four people were arrested, although none was charged with terrorist activities and there was no direct evidence of a terrorist threat.

The New Zealand Herald, the first to report the raid and terrorism suspicions, described the house as a virtual command center. The newspaper said that those arrested may have been supporters of fugitive Afghanistan-based terrorist Osama bin Laden.

``It is certainly true that we think there may be some connections to overseas terrorist groups,'' Bishop said. ``Other details gave us cause for concern.

``Nobody has been arrested for terrorist activities or for being part of a terrorist group or anything like that.''

Bin Laden is accused of masterminding the deadly August 1998 bombings of United States embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

Australian authorities have been aware of the Auckland suspicions since the March raid, but said there is no serious risk to the reactor, which is used for scientific and medical research.

It is Australia's only nuclear reactor, and produces less than 1 percent of the energy produced by a reactor that generates electricity.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff also downplayed any terrorist threat, but said authorities had to fully investigate the case.

``There is nothing that suggests there is a threat on the ground other than somebody had marked the reactor and access to it in a notebook,'' Goff said. ``When you get circumstantial evidence and the Olympic Games are only weeks away, you err on the side of caution.''

Bishop said three of the suspects were arrested on passport fraud and smuggling charges in March, and the fourth was arrested last week. All face a court hearing in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, this week.

The reactor is about 16 miles from the Olympic Stadium and less than six miles from where some members of the U.S. Olympic team administration will stay before the games.

It was built in 1958 on what was then Sydney's rural fringe. The reactor has been absorbed by Sydney's sprawling suburbs.

A similar reactor located near the Olympic site in Atlanta was shut down during the 1996 Olympics because of concerns terrorists could commandeer the fuel.

New South Wales police confirmed they were monitoring the New Zealand investigation, and said all Olympic threats were taken seriously.

Fears of terrorist attacks on Sydney surfaced in May when police arrested a man whose home near the Olympic Village was packed with explosives.

Alexander Downer, the foreign affairs minister, said last week that there was no direct threat of terrorist attack on Australia during the Olympics, but that groups around the world were being monitored.

Australia has never been the target of a serious terrorist attack.

---

Police Foil Terrorist Plot in Sydney

New York Times
August 26, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/00/08/26/late/26sydney.html

SYDNEY, Australia -- Authorities minimized an Olympic terrorist threat after reports Saturday that New Zealand police may have foiled a plot targeting a nuclear reactor in Sydney.

Documents suggesting plans for an attack turned up during raids in March on a suspected people-smuggling operation, the New Zealand Herald newspaper reported.

But Australian officials said there was no serious risk to the small research reactor in suburban southern Sydney, and said they had no plans to shut it down.

They also said there was no direct evidence of a terrorist threat and expressed confidence in the massive security operation for the games -- headed by the New South Wales state police and including Australian military forces and international intelligence services.

"We have been at pains to assure the Australian public, and visitors to Australia for the games, that we have put in place the most well rehearsed and practiced cooperative arrangements between all relevant authorities -- law enforcement, intelligence security and otherwise," Attorney General Daryl Williams said.

Security around the plant -- located in the western Sydney suburb of Lucas Heights -- would be upgraded during the games but it would not be closed, he said.

Raids in March on a home in Auckland that had been converted into a virtual command center turned up street maps of Sydney, plans detailing entry and exit routes to the Sydney nuclear reactor and notes on police security tactics, the Herald reported.

Three men, Auckland residents with ties to Afghanistan, were arrested on suspicion of people-smuggling and of passport fraud in March and a fourth suspect was taken into custody last week, New Zealand police Detective Superintendent Bill Bishop said.

All four were expected to appear in court next week, he said.

"Nobody has been arrested for terrorist activities or for being part of a terrorist group or anything like that," he told The Associated Press.

There was no evidence specifically pointing to an attack during the Olympics, but the map and other material aroused investigators' suspicions, Bishop said.

Police alerted Australian authorities after the raid, and several security agencies have been monitoring the investigation, he said.

The New Zealand Herald said the group was reportedly linked with Afghanistan-based terrorist Osama bin Laden, but there was no independent confirmation of the claim.

Bin Laden is accused of masterminding the deadly August 1998 bombings of United States embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

Milton Cockburn, a spokesman for the Sydney 2000 organizing committee, said security during the Sept. 15-Oct. 1 Olympics was the responsibility of the New South Wales police. He declined to comment further.

New South Wales police confirmed they were monitoring the investigations and said all Olympics threats were taken seriously.

Fears of terrorist attacks on Sydney surfaced in May when police arrested a man whose home near the Olympic Village was packed with explosives.

Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer said only last week that there was no direct threat of terrorist attack on Australia during the Olympics, but also said bin Laden was "an example of the sort of people we clearly monitor as best we can."

The reports led to renewed calls from local residents and Greenpeace to shut down the reactor, at least for the duration of the Olympics.

The reactor is in the suburb of Lucas Heights, about 16 miles from the Olympic stadium and less than six miles from where some members of the U.S. Olympic tea administration would be staying before the games.

A similar reactor in Atlanta located near the Olympic site was closed down during the 1996 Olympics because of concerns that terrorists could commandeer the fuel.

Australia's Science Minister Nick Minchin said security would be tightened but the reactor would not be closed during the games because there was no credible threat to the facility or to the Olympics. Nuclear experts at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization determined last year that the threat of a serious attack "was very low and any threat to technology or material was also very low," he said. An update last week upheld that report, Minchin said.

The 1950s-vintage nuclear reactor is not a power plant. It is used for scientific and medical research. It is also much smaller than an electricity-generating nuclear reactor. It produces about 10 megawatts of thermal energy compared with 3,000 megawatts by a typical electricity-generating reactor.

-------- depleted uranium

DU found in Japan

From: Kumiko TANAKA <tr2k-tnk@asahi-net.or.jp>
Sat, 26 Aug 2000 01:52:57 +0900

I need your help find what the depleted uranium, found in Japan 2 months ago at an ironworks factory, was used for. Please tell me what it is if you know.

The DU was found at an ironworks factory in Okayama prefecture on 19th June this year. The owner of the factory says he didn't notice that it was DU when he bought it together with other nonferrous scraps 15-16 years ago, but as he couldn't find what it was, he has just kept it till 2 months ago. He then scoured the DU in June and found the word of URANIUM on its surface.

The shape of DU found is:

Height-10centimeters (4 inches), width-7-8cm, depth-4cm, weight 5.3Kg Upper part (2cm) is another metal, probably tantalate according to the Science and Technology Agency. This metal is whiter than lower part. The lower part (8cm) is black metal - DU.

There are four projection (height 1cm, diameter 1cm) like electrode on top of the body. Conductors like wire are twined around two of the projection.

Numbers and words below are inscribed on one side,

-------- iraq

German Agency Locates Iraqi Missile Factory

Salt Lake Tribune
Saturday August 26, 2000
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.sltrib.com/08262000/nation_w/15820.htm
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/saturday/news_937a85b65402b1f9004f.html

MUNICH, Germany -- Germany's intelligence agency Friday confirmed a report that it had discovered the location of a secret Iraqi missile factory near Baghdad, supporting allegations that Saddam Hussein has continued to build up his arsenal.

About 250 technicians are working on short-range missiles at the Al Mamoun Factory, said a spokeswoman from the German Bundesnachrichtendienst.

The report in the Bild newspaper said the complex, which has many buildings, is located 25 miles southwest of Baghdad, and gave the precise latitude and longitude.

Although the ARABIL-100 missiles have a range of less than 93 miles, the production shows "the Iraqi will and personnel for missile development exists as before," the agency said.

There is also proof Iraqis have studied making missiles that could reach 1,865 miles -- far enough to strike central Europe, the agency said.

---

MIDDLE EAST
IRAQ: REPORT OF MISSILE FACTORY

New York Times
August 26, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/00/08/26/news/world/world-briefing.html

Germany's intelligence agency says it has detected a factory 25 miles southwest of Baghdad where Iraq is making missiles able to carry conventional, chemical or biological weapons. "There is a real danger that sooner or later Germany will be within the range of these weapons," the agency was quoted as saying in the daily Bild.

Victor Homola (NYT)

-------- russia

Kursk Rescue Diver Would Go Back to Find Bodies

Russia Today
08/26/00
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=193044§ion=default

OSLO, Norway, Aug 26, 2000 -- (Reuters) One of the divers who tried in vain to rescue the crew of the sunken Russian nuclear submarine Kursk said on Friday he would be prepared to return to the floor of the Barents Sea to help recover the bodies.

The Norwegian company whose divers opened the Kursk - only to find it completely flooded - has agreed to a Russian request to study the feasibility of salvaging it or retrieving the bodies of the 118 crew.

Alistair Clark's job normally involves diving around North Sea oil platforms or pipelines. Any recovery mission is likely to be dangerous, and might not be possible until the spring.

"I know this job is different. Someone has to do this job, and yes, I would go back," he told Reuters by telephone after coming out of a decompression chamber, his home for five days since he dived to the Kursk.

Clark, 43, was one of eight Britons on the diving team working for Norway's Stolt Offshore.

EIGHT HOURS UNDERWATER

He spent eight hours underwater, and was one of the men who concluded on Monday, after opening a hatch and finding that the Kursk was completely flooded, that there was no hope that anyone had survived its accident a week earlier.

Stolt has said any operation to raise the Kursk or recover bodies - potentially dangerous for divers entering the hulk, with its nuclear reactor and possible other hazards - is likely to have to wait until after the winter.

Clark said his family had been worried about the risk to him from the submarine's nuclear reactor.

"But I have to stress that Stolt Offshore risk assessments are very stringent and there is no way they would have put us down there if there was any danger to us," he said.

So far Norwegian experts have found no traces of radiation.

Clark, now eager to return to shore from the diving support ship the Seaway Eagle, said the next order of business was to try to raise money for the families of the dead sailors.

Stolt has set up the Seaway Eagle Kursk Fund in Aberdeen, Scotland, to gather public donations. Clark said the money raised would be passed to the Norwegian embassy in Moscow for distribution to the sailors' families.

WORKING WITH RUSSIANS

A Norwegian military commander and a British rescuer bitterly criticized the Russians for failing to give them timely or accurate information to help the rescue bid on what was one of Russia's newest and most advanced submarines.

But Clark said he was confident, if Stolt agreed to take on a recovery operation, that the Russians would provide detailed information on the Kursk's interior.

He said he personally had not encountered difficulties working with the Russians.

"What you have to appreciate here is the interpretation going through three or four people to get to the Russians and three or four people to get back to us," Clark said.

"There is a little bit of a time delay and the translation gets a little changed."

Clark had time to ponder the mission during his five days in the decompression chamber, breathing a mixture of helium and oxygen, to help his body readapt to normal atmospheric pressure.

In addition to watching films and listening to music, he and the other divers talked about their ill-fated mission:

"It would have been nice to have gotten someone out of the Kursk alive," he said. "My heart goes out to these families."

---

Kursk Salvage Operation "Could Take Two Years"

Russia Today
08/26/00
http://www.russiatoday.com/news.php3?id=193035§ion=default

MURMANSK, Russia, Aug 26, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) With official mourning ceremonies over and the grieving relatives of the Kursk crew preparing to return to their homes, Russian authorities are pondering the options for recovering the wreck still lying 100 meters (350 feet) under the Barents sea.

They are under pressure from public opinion to recover the bodies of the 118 seamen as quickly as possible, with the families complaining angrily that the mourning process cannot be properly completed until they have seen their loved ones a last time.

However the technical problems involved in lifting the 14,000-tonne Kursk are formidable and the imminent onset of winter means that a salvage operation is unlikely to begin this year.

Valery Chernokozov, a long-serving rescue and deepwater specialist with the Northern Fleet based at Severomorsk, said he believed the authorities might choose to separate the two operations, concentrating on bringing out the bodies next spring, and spreading the lifting operation over a period of two years.

"The process is going to be extremely complicated and costly. Even drawing up a plan is going to take months," he told AFP.

Bringing out the dead men without raising the Kursk from the seabed could be achieved by cutting into each of the sub's nine compartments individually, though this would be long and arduous in view of the double hull and would itself take several weeks, Chernokozov said.

Norwegian agreement would be required, since Russia has no deepwater divers capable of working below a depth of more than 60 meters. Also the wreckage inside the submarine would make it extremely dangerous for the divers involved.

Chernokozov said the Rubin construction company which built the 154-long Kursk submarine, launched in May 1994, would be in charge of the operations. A Norwegian company contacted by Moscow has agreed to help.

A midway solution currently under consideration would be to move the submarine to shallower waters using massive pontoons, simplifying operations and allowing Russian divers to join in.

However even detaching the wreck from the seabed will involve major technical problems, with pumps needed to remove sand from around the vessel and work straps around the hull.

There would be the constant danger of pieces or sections of the vessel -- damaged during the unexplained explosions that sent it plunging to the bottom -- falling off during the operation.

The submarine's two nuclear reactors are a further hazard, requiring particular attention to avoid radiation leaks.

Although the reactors were shut down before the Kursk crashed into the sea bed on August 12, and no radiation leaks have as yet been detected, engineers have warned of the danger of damage to the reactors if the vessel should break up while it was being raised.

There is believed to be a ton and a half of highly enriched uranium in each reactor.

Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who is heading the inquiry into the disaster, said last week that a salvage plan was being prepared but would take at least two weeks to finalize.

At a tense and emotional meeting with the bereaved family members on Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin attempted to prepare them for the prospect of a long wait by warning them of the technical difficulties that lay ahead.

He told them he could not guarantee the operation would begin this autumn before the winds and storms of winter set in next month, but promised that everything possible would be done to allow them to recover their menfolk's bodies and bury them. ((c) 2000 Agence France Presse)

---

EUROPE: Sub reactors set to shut off, Russia assures world

Atlanta Journal-Constitution
WORLD IN BRIEF
Staff reports and news services
Saturday, August 26, 2000
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/saturday/news_937a85b65402b1f9004f.html

The two nuclear reactors aboard the Kursk submarine were programmed to shut down automatically within a minute of the disaster that sent it crashing to the sea floor, Russian experts said as worries mounted worldwide about radiation leaks. Norwegian sensors that have been monitoring the site daily have not reported any increase in radiation levels.

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Putin Beefs Up Sea Rescue He Orders New Facilities and Increases Salaries

International Herald Tribune
Paris, Saturday, August 26, 2000
Reuters
http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/SAT/IN/uboat.2.html

MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin moved Friday for the creation of new sea- rescue centers and more money for Russia's nuclear-weapon workers, in his latest handouts since the Kursk submarine disaster.

Mr. Putin's decisions followed a 20 percent pay raise for members of the armed forces and also for the police, which he ordered Thursday.

The sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk, and Russia's inability to respond with a quick and effective rescue effort, highlighted the weakened state of the Russian military since the fall of communism.

Because Russia was unable to mount an effective rescue after the Kursk sank in the Barents Sea on Aug. 12 with 118 men aboard, it turned out to be a Norwegian team of divers that finally managed to open a hatch and determine that all aboard had died in the water-filled submarine.

Sergei Shoigu, minister of emergency affairs, said Friday that rescue centers would be set up for each of Russia's four naval fleets: the Northern, the Baltic, the Black Sea and the Pacific.

Moscow was forced to admit after the Kursk sank that it had no divers trained and equipped to operate below 60 meters (195 feet).

Mr. Putin said in an emotional television interview Wednesday that more money for the military would be forthcoming. He said his goal was a small and professional force that would meet Russia's needs despite economic difficulties.

Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, visiting a top-secret nuclear research center, said the Moscow's intention was not to start a new arms race but rather to bring Russia's nuclear arsenal down to a ''minimum level'' needed to ensure national security.

Mr. Putin, who rose to power on the heels of a military campaign in the breakaway Chechen Republic, has presided over a struggle among the top brass over how far to cut back nuclear forces to focus limited resources on conventional arms.

His advisory Security Council called for broad nuclear weapons cuts a week before the Kursk sank, but the details of the plan and the extent of the cuts have not been made public.

Mr. Putin's moves to increase military spending in the wake of the Kursk disaster may prove popular.

A poll of 1,500 Russians by the Public Opinion Fund showed 49 percent felt that Russia was ''a great power and needs a strong army at any cost,'' up from 29 percent four years ago.

''During these tragic days, the president has received his strongest support from those millions and millions of non-naval specialists, who feel it was wrong, if not criminal, to 'reform' the military as they have in recent years,'' Nezavisimaya Gazeta said Friday.

Highlighting the government's focus on the nuclear sector, Mr. Kasyanov said on his nuclear-site tour:

''Russia is not working toward a buildup of nuclear arms, but toward lowering them to the minimal possible level,'' Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.

He also said the sunken Kursk did not pose an environmental threat. ''The level of radiation is normal and we have no concerns,'' he said, according to Interfax.

---

Putin Honors Sunken Submarine's Crew

Yahoo News
Saturday August 26
By JIM HEINTZ,
Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000826/wl/russia_nuclear_submarine_149.html

MOSCOW (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin conferred posthumous state honors Saturday on the 118 men who died aboard the Kursk, two weeks after the nuclear submarine sank in an accident that shocked the country.

The Hero of Russia order, one of the country's highest honors, was awarded to the submarine's commander, Capt. Gennady Lyachin. The Order of Courage was awarded to the others, news agencies reported, citing the presidential press service.

Putin also ordered that the crew, whose bodies still lie at the bottom of the Barents Sea, be commemorated with a display at the Central Military Museum in Moscow, the reports said

The order came as the country grapples with the loss of one of Russia's most modern navy vessels.

Military prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation into allegations that the Kursk collided with an unidentified vessel that later escaped, the Interfax news agency reported Saturday. Citing unidentified sources, Interfax said the prosecutors believe the vessel violated safety rules and was directly responsible for the sinking of the Kursk.

A spokesman at the military prosecutor's office could not confirm the report Saturday. An investigation by the prosecutor-general's office had been announced previously.

Russian experts have not conclusively determined what was responsible for two explosions aboard the Kursk, which went down Aug. 12 during military exercises in the Barents. Military officials claim the most likely scenario was that the Kursk collided with another vessel, most likely a foreign submarine.

Both Britain and the United States denied their submarines collided with the Kursk.

Interfax said the alleged vessel was being investigated for ``violation of safety rules in the movement and use of rail, air or water transport, which resulted in the death of two or more people because of carelessness.''

Some observers say the most likely reason for the sinking was an internal malfunction and explosion in the submarine's torpedo compartment. Russian officials also have not ruled out the possibility that the Kursk hit a World War II-era mine.

The cause of the disaster probably won't be known until experts study the shattered submarine more closely to see if it can be raised. Russia is negotiating with Norwegian and Dutch companies to bring up the wreckage.

Russian officials have sought to quash concern around the world over the Kursk's two nuclear reactors. Officials say there is no sign of unusual radiation levels around the submarine, but there is growing concern that the reactors are not safe and may begin leaking.

Many Russians accused the government of being slow to react to the sinking and of bungling rescue efforts. Some observers have said the allegation that a foreign vessel was responsible for the disaster is an attempt to deflect blame away from faults within Russia's poorly maintained and cash-strapped armed forces.

During several days of attempts by Russian mini-submarines to dock with the sunken Kursk's aft escape hatch, officials said the hatch was severely damaged. But a Norwegian-British team of divers that eventually succeeded in opening the hatch said it was in good shape.

``There was evidence of what looked liked cracking, but it turned out to be signs of regular movement of the rubber panels ... and that could be construed as damage,'' one of the divers, Tony Scott, told The Associated Press on Saturday.

``When the Russians were performing their operations in the beginning, I think the conditions were a lot different and there was less visibility,'' he said by telephone from Tromsoe, Norway.

---

Final Moments of a Doomed Submarine

Yahoo News
Saturday August 26
By BARRY RENFREW,
Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000826/wl/fatal_voyage_1.html

MOSCOW (AP) - With an honor guard in crisp blue uniforms standing at attention on the deck and its flags snapping in the breeze, the nuclear submarine Kursk glided silently out to sea, a symbol of Russian power and pride.

It was the last time anyone on land would see the nuclear-powered warship that the Russian navy boasted was unsinkable. As it headed into the Barents Sea for maneuvers, the Kursk's crew expected to be home in a few days.

The Kursk was named after the region in southern Russia where Soviet troops in 1943 turned the tide against Nazi Germany's army in the biggest tank battle in history. Like the old land battle, the Kursk was intended to turn the tide at sea if there was ever another world war.

The submarine was a 500-foot-long underwater missile base. Its sides bristled with 24 silos, each housing a cruise missile capable of slamming a nuclear warhead at supersonic speed into a target hundreds of miles away. The submarine and a dozen like it were designed during the Cold War to destroy the U.S. Navy's aircraft carriers with swarms of missiles.

The Cold War ended a decade ago and the Kursk's nuclear warheads were locked up ashore. The Soviet Union had disappeared and Russia was falling apart, sinking deeper into poverty and backwardness.

With most of its warships too dilapidated to put to sea, the navy staked what little money it had on keeping up the nuclear submarine fleet - a potent threat that the navies of the United States and other Western nations could not ignore.

The Kursk was just five years old. The crew, nearly half of them officers with advanced technical skills, had been hailed as the navy's elite, a chosen few who could handle any challenge.

President Vladimir Putin had big plans for the navy and the Kursk. The navy exercises that the Kursk sailed to join on Aug. 10 were a prelude for a major step in putting Moscow back on the world stage: the return of a Russian fleet to the Mediterranean in 2001 for the first time in a decade.

The exercises were big news. Russian television showed film of the Northern Fleet in action, the hulking cruisers and nimble destroyers cutting through the waves and warships firing missiles.

Then on Aug. 14, a Monday, the navy announced that the Kursk had experienced a malfunction. The situation was not critical - the submarine was in radio contact, air and power lines had been hooked up and arrangements were being made to bring the crew up, the navy said.

Mounting evidence suggests the crewmen were already dead and almost every utterance by top officials about saving the Kursk would turn out to be untrue.

The Kursk was rising to the surface, possibly preparing to fire a torpedo on Aug. 12 when disaster struck. Nothing is known about what the crew was doing in those last few moments.

Norwegian monitors later reported detecting an explosion in the vicinity of the Kursk, followed within minutes by a much larger blast that registered at 3.5 on seismic monitors, equivalent to a small earthquake. All the signs suggest a problem in the torpedo compartment at the front of the Kursk.

The submarine was carrying a new type of torpedo with a liquid fuel system that some officers complained was unstable, according to some reports. Or the young, inexperienced conscript sailors may have fumbled one of the torpedoes or the test firing may have gone wrong, the weapon jamming in a torpedo tube.

The first blast must have convulsed the Kursk, knocking out control systems and pitching it into a sharp dive toward the bottom 350 feet below the waves.

Crewmen would have been knocked sprawling as the submarine plunged out of control. Officers in the command center would have been shouting for reports, trying to determine what had happened. Maybe there was time to hit the alarm system, but the whole crew already knew they were in serious trouble.

The first blast probably killed and injured some of the sailors. Survivors would have been shouting for help, for first aid crews, frantically trying to reach injured comrades.

Plunging down at mounting speed and with the decks slanting sharply forward, sailors would have been fighting to stay on their feet or in their seats as the Kursk plunged into the depths. They never regained control.

A second, catastrophic explosion ripped through the Kursk, probably as it slammed into the bottom. This blast was probably torpedoes and anti-submarine missiles detonating. Russia's navy says it was about 2 tons of explosives going up; some officers say it could have been more than 10 tons.

The hull was twisted like a wet towel being squeezed dry.

The Kursk was built of immensely strong steel to withstand the enormous pressures of diving hundreds of feet. The hull would have contained and intensified the explosion. Following the path of least resistance, the blast ripped backward, breaking through the thinner walls of the crew compartments.

Most of the crew were within yards of the blast. Navy officers say that many were probably vaporized by the detonation; others were ripped to bits.

Anybody still alive after the second explosion was almost certainly stunned, probably deafened and unconscious. Kursk's nuclear reactors appear to have shut down, plunging the submarine into darkness.

The explosions ripped at least one large hole in the hull. Tons of water surged in, quickly filling the submarine. Anyone who survived the explosions almost certainly drowned, the navy says.

There may never be an exact reconstruction of the last moments of the Kursk. It did not have black boxes like those which can tell what happened to a crashed airliner. Raising the Kursk may be impossible, meaning that its secrets will be lost forever.

---

Prosecutors Open Kursk Probe

Yahoo News
Saturday August 26
By NICK WADHAMS,
Associated Press Writer
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000826/wl/russia_nuclear_submarine_148.html

MOSCOW (AP) - Russian prosecutors have begun a criminal investigation into allegations that a nuclear submarine that crashed to the sea floor had collided with a vessel that later escaped, the Interfax news agency reported Saturday.

Military prosecutors believe that vessel, which has not been found, violated safety rules and was directly responsible for the sinking of the Kursk, Interfax said, citing unidentified sources. All 118 sailors aboard were killed.

A spokesman at the prosecutor's office Saturday could not confirm the report.

Russian experts have not determined what caused two explosions aboard the Kursk, which sank Aug. 12 during exercises in the Barents Sea. Military officials claim the most likely scenario was that the Kursk collided with another vessel, most likely a foreign submarine.

Interfax said the alleged vessel was being investigated for ``violation of safety rules in the movement and use of rail, air or water transport, which resulted in the death of two or more people because of carelessness.''

The United States and Britain have denied having any vessels nearby that could have collided with the Kursk. Norway, which monitored the explosion and played a key role in the rescue effort, reported no evidence of a collision.

Some observers say the most likely reason for the sinking of the Kursk was an internal malfunction and explosion in the submarine's torpedo compartment. Russian officials also have not ruled out that the Kursk hit a World War II-era mine.

The cause of the disaster probably will not be known until experts study the shattered submarine more closely, if it can be raised. Russia is negotiating with Norwegian and Dutch companies to raise the Kursk.

On Friday, Russian officials sought to quash concern around the world over the Kursk's two nuclear reactors. Officials say there is no sign of unusual radiation levels around the submarine, but there is growing concern that the reactors are not safe and may begin leaking.

Many Russians accused the government of being slow to react to the sinking and bungling rescue efforts. Some observers have said the allegation that a foreign vessel was responsible for the disaster was an attempt to deflect blame away from the poorly maintained and cash-strapped armed forces.

---

Kursk Rescue Divers Come Ashore, Ready to Go Back

Yahoo News
Saturday August 26
By Jeff Coelho
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000826/wl/russia_submarine_dc_123.html

TROMSOE, Norway (Reuters) - A team of civilian divers who tried to rescue the crew of a sunken Russian submarine returned to Norway on Saturday and said they were ready to return to the Barents Sea to help recover the bodies.

The Norwegian company whose divers opened the Kursk last Monday, only to find it completely flooded and all 118 crew dead, has been asked by the Russian military to return to the chilly Barents Sea to help recover the bodies or raise the 17,000 ton submarine from the seabed.

The six divers used in the operation emerged early on Friday from a five-day stay in a decompression chamber aboard the private diving support ship the Seaway Eagle. The vessel returned to the northern city of Tromsoe on Saturday morning.

Of the six divers used in the underwater operation, two stayed aboard the ship for work. One diver immediately left for his family in Thailand. The other three were to go home to their families on Sunday.

Bente Baerheim, public relations manager for Stolt Offshore, said a feasibility study into the recovery would likely be completed within two weeks.

``The Russian Northern Fleet has asked us to do this feasibility study which we have accepted,'' she said. ``They have asked us to recover the bodies and said a lifting of the submarine would be one solution to recovering the bodies.''

Baerheim declined to provide further details of the study.

Alistair Clark, a Briton whose job normally involves diving around North Sea oil platforms or pipelines, said recovering the bodies would be an emotional task.

``You are not going down there just to grab a body, you are going down there to bring the body back for someone, somewhere, to be buried,'' he said. ``It is not an easy job to do.''

A Russian human rights group said on Saturday it would sue President Vladimir Putin and the government for a cover-up and inefficient action after the sinking of the Kursk.

The submarine tragedy has provoked a national storm of sympathy for the victims and anger toward the government, which was slow in giving details about the tragedy and in bringing in foreign help to try to rescue the crew.

Russia's failure to mount an effective rescue was highlighted when the Norwegian team finally managed to open the submarine only to discover all the crew members dead. ''They (Russian's) didn't have the means for deep sea diving,'' said Jan Are Hvalbye, one of the divers to approach the crippled submarine on the seabed 354 feet down.

``Our job could have been technically more demanding if there had been people alive in there.''

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Sunken Russian Sub Poses No Immediate Danger

NewsMax.com
Saturday, Aug. 26, 2000
UPI
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/8/25/235635

NEW YORK - The entire crew of the sunken Russian submarine Kursk died, but the two nuclear reactors on board the vessel are not an immediate hazard to life at the bottom of the Barents Sea, much less the world's population, U.S. and Norwegian experts said this week.

In contrast to a recent warning from a Greenpeace activist that the Kursk, which sank Aug. 12, is "a ticking environmental time bomb that must be made safe," three experts - a reactor specialist for the U.S. Navy, an American university radiation safety officer and the Norwegian government agency that monitors northern seas - say the sub poses no short-term danger.

The Kursk, far from being the first nuclear sub to end up at the bottom of the ocean, is the seventh such vessel to sink after an accident, and both the Navy and international agencies have decades of experience monitoring such wrecks for radiation leakage.

"The reactors on both American nuclear powered submarines which sank - USS Thresher in 1963 and USS Scorpion in 1968 - shut down automatically, as they were designed to do, and they are not leaking," Jonathan Kiell, a 23-year veteran of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, told United Press International.

"We have extensively monitored the water, seabed and fish around these sites several times, most recently in 1998, and have found no evidence of fission products from the fuel. In sediment samples taken within a few feet of the hulls, we have found only very low levels of radioactivity associated with the reactor coolant, and not the fuel. These low levels are only slightly above the naturally occurring background radiation levels, and represent no danger to people, fish or the environment."

Kiell added that 37 years of monitoring have led the Navy to regard short-term danger such as that of the Kursk as minimal.

"We expect, based on our experience, that the reactor compartments, the shielding, the reactors themselves and the uranium fuel in these ships will, over the course of thousands of years, slowly corrode," he said. "This should be true of the Russian reactors as well. During this time, much of the radioactivity will decay away naturally and thus will not represent any future danger. As the corrosion process continues, most of the remaining materials will simply settle into the seabed where they currently lie."

Although NATO member Norway does not have any nuclear subs, it has had the bad luck to endure two Russian sub wrecks near its territory - the Komsomolets in 1989, and now the Kursk. Norway's Radiation Protection Authority, or NRPA, has closely monitored the Komsomolets' grave in the Norwegian Sea, near Bear Island, and is now testing the waters around the Kursk. But the NRPA stated last week that although it has found "elevated concentrations of radioactive substances" near the downed submarines, "the hazard posed to health and the environment is generally minor."

When the Komsomolets sank, it was carrying two nuclear torpedoes, as well as its nuclear reactor. The NRPA reports that it has detected "minor releases" of radioactivity from the sub's reactor ventilation tube, and that future corrosion of the hull and then the torpedoes will release some of the uranium and plutonium in their warheads. Uranium is soluble in seawater, the authority notes, but the environmental consequences of its release "will be essentially insignificant" compared to the natural uranium content in the sea.

As for the insoluble plutonium, it "is likely to be retained in sediments" very close to the wreck, the report concludes.

The Kursk will pose new challenges, and opportunities, for both the Russians and Norwegians.

Lying at a depth of 335 feet, the Kursk - 500 feet long and estimated to weigh 28,000 tons after it was flooded - is the first nuclear submarine wreck to be close enough to the surface for human divers to reach. In shallow water, and damaged only in the forward section, it could conceivably be raised for salvage. The reactors - as well as the bodies of its crew - could then be removed.

But would this be the wisest choice?

Andrew Karam, radiation safety officer at the University of Rochester in upstate New York, has worked with reactors and radiation safety for 19 years, including eight years in the Navy aboard the USS Plunger, a nuclear attack sub. He told UPI that the Kursk is not an immediate hazard where it is.

"A submarine's reactor is well shielded from the environment, even in the case of a sub that sinks after an accident," Karam said. "First, there is the hull, which protects the ship and the reactor, then the reactor wall and piping, of very thick steel, and finally the fuel rods themselves are covered with stainless steel or zirconium cladding."

When a sub has sunk and is lying on the sea floor, it is in some ways even safer, he said: "If the reactor is shut down - and the Russians have said the Kursk's reactor was shut down - it is no longer subject to high-temperature nuclear reactions. And at 335 feet, the water around the Kursk will keep the reactor cool."

Russian officials also have said the Kursk is not a threat. Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov told journalists that authorities were constantly monitoring radiation levels, while Yuri Yevdokimov, governor of the northwestern Murmansk region, near the site of the sinking, said radiation measurements of air and water taken four times a day had not detected an increase.

On Friday, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, making a visit to the top-secret nuclear research center in Sarov, central Russia, said, "The background level of radiation is normal now, we have no concerns," Russia's Interfax news agency reported.

---

Russian Reality Rises to Surface

Washington Post
Saturday , August 26, 2000 ; A01
By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25366-2000Aug25.html

MOSCOW, Aug. 25 -- During a town meeting at the naval base near Murmansk the other day, a female relative of a sailor who perished aboard the sunken submarine Kursk berated a representative of President Vladimir Putin. As her voice and her complaints over the botched Russian rescue effort reached an explosive pitch, a medic moved up from behind to inject her with a sedative.

It was one moment of many during the past two weeks that captured the overwhelming sense of Russia as a place of deep and sometimes dangerous contradictions. It is a country that pretends to send a magnificent and powerful war fleet to sea, but cannot find a way to open hatches on its submarines. Its leaders aspire to greatness but are dogged by complaints of incompetence and corruption. Russia is at once open and secretive. Dissent is tolerated until it gets too loud. Then out come the syringes.

Which of these conflicting sides of the country will prevail rapidly became a matter of intense conjecture in the aftermath of the Kursk disaster. Will the deaths of 118 crew members lead to fundamental changes in Russia's military and political landscape? And in which direction?

One consensus was quickly reached: Russia will not be the same. "We don't know what is ahead of us tomorrow," wrote the newspaper Novaya Gazeta. "But we feel that something happened. We cannot live this way. Our patience is over."

The immediate question on the minds of observers and the government seemed to be the state of Russia's military in general and the navy in particular. A decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia still possesses a formidable military machine--nuclear warheads, a deep-sea navy, thousands of tanks, a million-man army and powerful intercontinental ballistic missiles. But it is all in a state of decay.

For the past decade, Russian leaders and citizens observed the decomposition passively. No one stepped in to manage the decline. The Kursk episode exposed the dangers of that approach.

"The state has become a time bomb, comprised of its nuclear subs, nuclear power stations, plants, chemical factories and many other components of the Soviet military-industrial complex," wrote Yevgenia Albats, an expert on Russian intelligence and a columnist at the Moscow Times. "Stripped of finances to keep these 'bombs' under control, the dying body has started to decompose. The problem is that this agony is extremely dangerous, not just for Russia but for the entire world."

The weekly Moscow News wrote, "A poor country, a perennial debtor and beggar, continuing to rattle its obsolete missiles and state-of-the-art nuclear cruisers, can only scare its own citizens."

In his televised interview Wednesday about the Kursk, Putin alluded to Russia's dilemma. The lesson to be drawn is the need for sweeping military reform, he said.

"We should stop talking and act," he declared. "We have been talking about military reform for how long? At least eight years and perhaps the whole of 10 years. But there has been little change in this area.

"There can only be one answer. Our armed forces should match . . . the possibilities of the state."

He said he took steps toward providing Russia with a "compact" army in a recent meeting of the Kremlin's Security Council, where he decided to shift financial resources from strategic nuclear to conventional forces. Putin said Russia's failed efforts to rescue the crew of the Kursk proved he made the right decision.

A tour of Severomorsk, the naval base near Murmansk, offered stark evidence of the military's decomposition. Warships are being cut up for scrap iron. On the shore lay a rusting Priz rescue mini-submarine, one type of vessel used in the futile attempt to save the Kursk's crew. Next to it lay the Titov, a rescue ship that has been under repair for months. Mikhail Vinokur, a ship's captain, wondered aloud about the absence of trained rescue divers. "How could we get to this point? It's not normal. We wait for a disaster to think about this."

Putin exhibits a split personality on the issue of Russia's military future and, by extension, its role as a world power. Much of his public rhetoric suggests Russia is somehow capable of playing its Soviet-era global role. A few months ago, while inspecting one of Russia's nuclear submarines, he said the navy was the symbol of a "great state." Russian ships have begun cruising far from its shores; military officials occasionally propose renting a naval base in Vietnam to return Russia to Southeast Asia. The navy was preparing to send a flotilla into the Mediterranean Sea in November to remind the West of its long reach.

Putin acted cautiously and declined to place blame on anyone for the sinking of the sub while it was on training maneuvers or rescuers' failure to penetrate the sub's hull at the bottom of the Barents Sea. He declined to accept the proffered resignations of three high military officials: Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, Adm. Vladimir Kuroyodev, the navy's commander, and the Northern Fleet commander, Adm. Vyacheslav Popov. Explaining the decision, Putin suggested he was rejecting the example of his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, who frequently fired ministers. In fact, during the disastrous first war in Chechnya from 1994-96, top military commanders also offered resignations and Yeltsin declined to accept them.

Putin appears to have survived the political storm over his handling of the crisis, according to opinion polls. His approval rating dropped from a high of about 70 percent, but still stands at around 60 percent despite the intense public anger at Putin's tardy cancellation of his Black Sea vacation in the first days of the crisis.

Pollster Yuri Levada attributed Putin's staying power to the unwillingness of Russians, especially those from the provinces, to abandon a person they have supported wholeheartedly for months.

"Putin remains popular because there is no other choice," said Valery Solovei, an analyst at the Gorbachev Foundation, a research institute. "However, he may have learned that he cannot ignore public opinion."

Boris Makarenko, an analyst at the Center for Political Technologies, detected a more cynical explanation for Putin's staying power. Focus groups expressed "dislike and mistrust of authorities before and now," he said. "People think that nothing has changed, that everything is in a poor state."

Two sides of Putin were on view this week, and it is not yet clear which one will prevail. There was the Putin who remained aloof and the Putin who talked publicly about the tears he had shed. There was the Putin who lambasted media criticism of the rescue effort and the Putin who sat stoically during a meeting of relatives of the Kursk crew and listened to their harsh critiques.

His performance with the relatives was a remarkable display of political savvy. He followed the first rule of post-Soviet politics: Put yourself on the level of the people, but make sure they know you are in charge. At first he was apologetic. "Like you, I have been hoping for a miracle," he told the grief-stricken relatives.

Later, he began to speak more firmly and occasionally employed slang, even vulgarities.

He defended the initial decision not to ask for foreign help. At the beginning of the crisis, he asked the defense minister, Sergeyev, if the military needed aid. "The answer was clear," Putin recalled. "They thought they had all the means of rescue."

About a third of the three-hour meeting was spent talking about financial help for the families. Some of this talk repelled the mourners, but many in the crowd were eager to discuss figures. A woman from Ukraine feared that she would have to pay taxes on the money. With a faint smile on his lips, Putin responded, "We will give you the money here, in cash."

Every family will be given an apartment in "central Russia," Putin promised. People pressed him on what that meant. "St. Petersburg or Moscow," he replied.

Patience for the relatives' complaints did not extend to an unusually aggressive media. In his interview, Putin took pains to criticize business moguls, several of whom own media outlets, for owning villas abroad. This, too, was a clever move for a politician under fire: Putin's recent campaign to tame the oligarchs has been among his most popular activities. "Putin mentioned no names, nor did he say precisely why the oligarchs were to blame for the tragedy on the Barents Sea. But people understood him," noted the newspaper Izvestia.

In Moscow, Putin's government pulled out its own version of the medic's syringe. On the day of his interview, tax inspectors raided the office of Ekho Moskvy, an independent radio station that broadcast numerous public complaints and surveys critical of the government's response to the submarine crisis.

Of Putin's campaign against the media, Moscow News remarked that Putin is conditioned by his previous career as a KGB secret police agent. "The world is divided into 'them' and 'us.' The divide between the two worlds is unbridgeable."

---

Final Moments of a Doomed Submarine

Associated Press
August 26, 2000 Filed at 1:48 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Fatal-Voyage.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- With an honor guard in crisp blue uniforms standing at attention on the deck and its flags snapping in the breeze, the nuclear submarine Kursk glided silently out to sea, a symbol of Russian power and pride.

It was the last time anyone on land would see the nuclear-powered warship that the Russian navy boasted was unsinkable. As it headed into the Barents Sea for maneuvers, the Kursk's crew expected to be home in a few days.

The Kursk was named after the region in southern Russia where Soviet troops in 1943 turned the tide against Nazi Germany's army in the biggest tank battle in history. Like the old land battle, the Kursk was intended to turn the tide at sea if there was ever another world war.

The submarine was a 500-foot-long underwater missile base. Its sides bristled with 24 silos, each housing a cruise missile capable of slamming a nuclear warhead at supersonic speed into a target hundreds of miles away. The submarine and a dozen like it were designed during the Cold War to destroy the U.S. Navy's aircraft carriers with swarms of missiles.

The Cold War ended a decade ago and the Kursk's nuclear warheads were locked up ashore. The Soviet Union had disappeared and Russia was falling apart, sinking deeper into poverty and backwardness.

With most of its warships too dilapidated to put to sea, the navy staked what little money it had on keeping up the nuclear submarine fleet -- a potent threat that the navies of the United States and other Western nations could not ignore.

The Kursk was just five years old. The crew, nearly half of them officers with advanced technical skills, had been hailed as the navy's elite, a chosen few who could handle any challenge.

President Vladimir Putin had big plans for the navy and the Kursk. The navy exercises that the Kursk sailed to join on Aug. 10 were a prelude for a major step in putting Moscow back on the world stage: the return of a Russian fleet to the Mediterranean in 2001 for the first time in a decade.

The exercises were big news. Russian television showed film of the Northern Fleet in action, the hulking cruisers and nimble destroyers cutting through the waves and warships firing missiles.

Then on Aug. 14, a Monday, the navy announced that the Kursk had experienced a malfunction. The situation was not critical -- the submarine was in radio contact, air and power lines had been hooked up and arrangements were being made to bring the crew up, the navy said.

Mounting evidence suggests the crewmen were already dead and almost every utterance by top officials about saving the Kursk would turn out to be untrue.

The Kursk was rising to the surface, possibly preparing to fire a torpedo on Aug. 12 when disaster struck. Nothing is known about what the crew was doing in those last few moments.

Norwegian monitors later reported detecting an explosion in the vicinity of the Kursk, followed within minutes by a much larger blast that registered at 3.5 on seismic monitors, equivalent to a small earthquake. All the signs suggest a problem in the torpedo compartment at the front of the Kursk.

The submarine was carrying a new type of torpedo with a liquid fuel system that some officers complained was unstable, according to some reports. Or the young, inexperienced conscript sailors may have fumbled one of the torpedoes or the test firing may have gone wrong, the weapon jamming in a torpedo tube.

The first blast must have convulsed the Kursk, knocking out control systems and pitching it into a sharp dive toward the bottom 350 feet below the waves.

Crewmen would have been knocked sprawling as the submarine plunged out of control. Officers in the command center would have been shouting for reports, trying to determine what had happened. Maybe there was time to hit the alarm system, but the whole crew already knew they were in serious trouble.

The first blast probably killed and injured some of the sailors. Survivors would have been shouting for help, for first aid crews, frantically trying to reach injured comrades.

Plunging down at mounting speed and with the decks slanting sharply forward, sailors would have been fighting to stay on their feet or in their seats as the Kursk plunged into the depths. They never regained control.

A second, catastrophic explosion ripped through the Kursk, probably as it slammed into the bottom. This blast was probably torpedoes and anti-submarine missiles detonating. Russia's navy says it was about 2 tons of explosives going up; some officers say it could have been more than 10 tons.

The hull was twisted like a wet towel being squeezed dry.

The Kursk was built of immensely strong steel to withstand the enormous pressures of diving hundreds of feet. The hull would have contained and intensified the explosion. Following the path of least resistance, the blast ripped backward, breaking through the thinner walls of the crew compartments.

Most of the crew were within yards of the blast. Navy officers say that many were probably vaporized by the detonation; others were ripped to bits.

Anybody still alive after the second explosion was almost certainly stunned, probably deafened and unconscious. Kursk's nuclear reactors appear to have shut down, plunging the submarine into darkness.

The explosions ripped at least one large hole in the hull. Tons of water surged in, quickly filling the submarine. Anyone who survived the explosions almost certainly drowned, the navy says.

There may never be an exact reconstruction of the last moments of the Kursk. It did not have black boxes like those which can tell what happened to a crashed airliner. Raising the Kursk may be impossible, meaning that its secrets will be lost forever.

---

Kursk mother denies she was drugged
Nadya Tylik harangued officials over the disaster

BBC News
Saturday, 26 August, 2000
By Orla Guerin in Murmansk
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_897000/897467.stm

The mother of a victim of the Kursk disaster, filmed berating a senior Russian minister, has said she was only given medication for her heart, not a tranquiliser, according to reports.

But the woman, Nadya Tylik, has continued her attacks on the Russian authorities, saying the rescue effort was not intensive enough.

Footage of the distraught mother, apparently being injected with a sedative, caused controversy abroad.

While the use of sedatives is common here, the injection came as she publicly attacked Russia's deputy prime minister, shouting that he should take off his medals.

Ms Tylik collapsed within seconds of the injection and was taken away. Cameramen who recorded the incident were prevented from filming any further.

Now, according to a news agency report, the woman says what she received was medication for her heart. The agency says she made the statement in a telephone interview.

But the foreign media cannot gain direct access to the woman to confirm this report. With many other relatives, she remains in the closed naval town of Vidyayevo, from which the Kursk set sail.

The bereaved families have been promised new apartments and generous compensation.

President Putin is anxious to bring the recriminations to an end.

But many of the relatives have accused the authorities of denying them information and too little, too late.

---

New York Times

August 26, 2000

World Briefing

http://www.nytimes.com/00/08/26/news/world/world-briefing.html

EUROPE

RUSSIA: TRANQUILIZER REPORTS DENIED

The mother of a sailor who died on the submarine Kursk angrily denied that officials had tranquilized her to halt her denunciation of a Kremlin official at a stormy meeting on the disaster. Videotape showed that Nadya Tylik collapsed in mid-tirade after being injected during a confrontation with Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov. But Ms. Tylik said her husband had asked a doctor for the injection because he feared the confrontation would worsen a heart ailment. Contrary suggestions in the Western press, she said, were "lots of lies." Michael Wines (NYT)

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

Report Minimizes Risks of Radiation

Albuquerque Journal
Saturday, August 26, 2000
By John Fleck
mailto:jfleck@abqJournal.com
http://www.abqjournal.com/scitech/109391scitech08-26-00.htm

If you worry about the danger of radiation, you should probably be more afraid of a coal-fired power plant than one using nuclear energy, according to Bernard Cohen of the University of Pittsburgh.

But both fears are probably misplaced, Cohen said in talks this week in Albuquerque, because the risk of cancer from low-level radiation is vastly overestimated today.

Risk estimates based on data from uranium miners and Japanese atomic bomb survivors, both of whom suffered high radiation doses, overstate the risk from low radiation doses, Cohen said in talks to University of New Mexico physicists.

A new report from the General Accounting Office supports his position, saying the evidence does not support the claim that low doses of radiation are dangerous.

Much of the fear today, Cohen told a Friday afternoon audience, is based on the sort of high-risk, low-probability accident scenarios that are easy to conjure up, but unlikely to happen.

"I can kill almost everybody in the world with any technology," he said.

The problem for scientists, he said, is to come up with realistic risk assessments to allow decisions to be made between competing choices for our energy generation.

And Cohen takes issue with the nuclear risk assessments now in vogue.

Current standards are rooted in the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs at the end of World War II.

Soon after the war, researchers began tracking atomic bomb survivors, all of whom received high doses of radiation.

Studies in the years since show clear evidence of cancer, allowing epidemiologists to estimate the cancer risk of high-dose radiation.

Similar studies of uranium miners, exposed to high doses of a radioactive gas called radon, also show high cancer rates, Cohen said.

The question: Do low doses of radiation have a similar but smaller effect, or is there a level below which radiation poses no danger?

All living things are bathed in low doses of radiation - from radiation banging into Earth from outer space, natural radon seeping out of our soil, even from potassium in the bananas we eat.

Without clear evidence one way or the other about the risk of that low-level radiation, U.S. government regulators have taken the cautious approach and assumed there is an effect.

They use the large-dose effects to estimate the small-dose effect.

A dose of 1 percent received by Hiroshima survivors, for example, is assumed to cause one-hundredth the cancer rate.

That has led to strict standards on radiation emissions.

But when Cohen set out to see if he could find evidence for that low-dose effect, he failed.

He and his colleagues looked at lung cancer mortality rates in 1,729 U.S. counties. If there was a connection between low-dose radiation and cancer, they expected to find higher lung cancer rates in places with more naturally occurring radon.

But as radon went up, the cancer rate went down.

Other studies have found the opposite. So to try to settle the argument, the U.S. General Accounting Office surveyed 82 separate studies looking at the issue.

While a minority showed "slightly elevated cancer risk" from low-dose radiation, the GAO found, the studies taken as a whole suggest "that low-level radiation effects are either very small, or nonexistent."

As a result, U.S. low-dose radiation safety standards "lack a conclusively verified scientific basis," said the GAO report, commissioned by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.

But even if you assume low doses are dangerous, nuclear power appears to be safer than the alternatives, Cohen argued Friday.

Radon emissions from coal-burning are far more significant than the long-term risks from leaking nuclear waste, he argued.

Coal mining kills 100 miners a year, he said, making it far more dangerous than uranium mining.

And even the alternative of energy conservation has its risks. Better sealing of your home to prevent heat loss has the consequence of trapping more radon inside, he said.

And do not forget, he added with a smile, the risks associated with putting solar panels on your home.

"Then," he said, "you can talk about falling off of your roof."

-------- new mexico

Bail Ruling for Scientist Puts Federal Case in Jeopardy

New York Times
August 26, 2000
By JAMES STERNGOLD
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/082600lab-lee.html

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 25 -- Decisions on bail rarely have much influence over the outcome of criminal trials, because they focus on the narrow questions of the risk that the defendant might flee or endanger the community, not guilt or innocence.

But when Judge James A. Parker of federal District Court in Albuquerque decided on Thursday to release the nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee on bail, the order cast this important national security trial in a different light and created potentially difficult problems for the government.

The importance of the decision, which may take a week or more to be carried out, is that it followed an extraordinary three-day hearing at which the government laid out a significant portion of its evidence against Dr. Lee. That meant the defense lawyers were able to attack not just the notion that Dr. Lee might present a threat if released, but also the credibility of assertions at the heart of the government's case.

For instance, the government claimed that Dr. Lee acted deceptively when he improperly downloaded a vast library of nuclear weapons secrets. That has now been called into question because of a series of misstatements by an F.B.I. agent testifying for the government.

And the government's more important claims that any leak of the data Dr. Lee is accused of improperly downloading could alter the global balance of power -- one expert called any release of Dr. Lee on bail a "you bet your country" decision -- now appears exaggerated, particularly after the defense presented respected experts who insisted that most of the information was already in the public domain and would be of little use to any other country.

In presenting their case for releasing Dr. Lee after more than eight months in jail, the defense introduced no new evidence about Dr. Lee's actions, such as alibis or information that he had not actually engaged in the specific actions cited in his indictment. Instead, the defense used facts unearthed in discovery to hammer relentlessly on the credibility of the government's descriptions of Dr. Lee's supposed deceit.

The judge's decision, which reversed a December order, suggests that at least some of that was persuasive.

The government's case "no longer has the requisite clarity and persuasive character," needed to hold Dr. Lee, Judge Parker wrote.

"Certainly, judges don't look kindly on F.B.I. agents who mislead them, and they are upset if they are told something that's not true," said George Cardona, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and until recently the head of the criminal division at the United States attorney's office here.

"That can affect how the judge views the credibility of the case. That's not a position anyone wants to be in."

Judge Parker has yet to issue a new written order, so his reasoning is not clear. But he suggested that he still saw Dr. Lee as somewhat of a potential threat.

He proposed that Dr. Lee be held under strict home detention, with severe limits on whom he can see, where he can go and even on what he can say; the government, in the judge's proposal, would have the right to monitor all of his telephone calls and to cut them off if sensitive issues were discussed.

But the symbolism of the judge's decision was plain, and it triggered some quiet finger-pointing among government officials apparently concerned about a collapse of the case, and who might catch the blame.

Some people hinted that John Kelly, the former United States attorney who oversaw the indictment of Dr. Lee and is now a candidate for congress from New Mexico, might have rushed to get the charges filed before he left office in January.

Mr. Kelly argued the case against granting Dr. Lee bail in December and forcefully insisted that the threat was too great. He released a written statement today in which he did not directly address any of the questions of a rushed indictment. He said, "I respect Judge Parker's decision on this matter."

Some other officials expressed anger at scientists at Los Alamos, who had reportedly told prosecutors there was no question over the significance of the data Dr. Lee downloaded.

"Either more questions should have been asked before there was an indictment, or there needs to be some explanation of why the government was told it could rely on claims that now appear pretty unreliable," one official said.

But the judge's decision may have also affected the case in another way that could be subtle but decisive. A critical defense claim is that it needs to introduce all of the information that Dr. Lee downloaded, a total of 806 megabytes, at his trial to back up its assertion that nearly all of the nuclear weapons design and test data is already public.

The government has fought this effort, insisting that the information is classified and so sensitive that it would compromise national security. Judge Parker has already ruled that the information is relevant to the trial, but he has said the prosecutors can try offering unclassified summaries of at least some of the data, and some of those substitutions are due next week.

After the bail hearings, the defense appears to have made at least some headway in proving the centrality of this data to the credibility of the charges against Dr. Lee.

If the defense lawyers can persuade the judge that terse summaries will not go far enough in allowing them to demonstrate that the information was already public -- a big if, but not as much of a long shot now -- then the government will be faced with a stark choice: it would have to permit what it has said are the "crown jewels" of the nuclear weapons program in open court, or it would have to drop the charges.

That is not a new defense tactic. That is how Oliver L. North succeeded in getting government charges dropped in his celebrated Iran-contra case several years ago, when one of his lawyers was John Cline. Mr. Cline has since moved from Washington to Albuquerque, where is an attorney for Dr. Lee.

-------- south carolina

Report to delay SRS cleanup to allow more research

Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeffrey McMurray
Associated Press
Wednesday, August 23, 2000
http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/wednesday/news_933a17b731c011fd0084.html

Washington --- A proposal to begin cleaning up nuclear waste immediately at South Carolina's Savannah River Site nuclear complex might not be the safest or cheapest option, according to a study released Tuesday by the National Research Council.

The report written by an independent committee of experts at the request of the Energy Department will stall the cleanup project at least several months while more research is done.

However, the committee says the additional time and money necessary for more research is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of building a $1 billion disposal facility that doesn't work.

Officials at the department said they were not surprised by the conclusions, in part because they had read the committee's interim report last October that detailed the highlights.

As a result, the department will implement nearly all of the recommendations, and it won't pick a disposal plan until next summer at the earliest.

''It has been said we're slowing down,'' said Carolyn Huntoon, the Energy Department's assistant secretary for environmental management. ''But you know, if you have technical uncertainty, you don't want to build a plant to process something when you don't know exactly what you're doing.''

SRS, in Aiken, S.C., was established in 1950 to produce isotopes, mainly plutonium and tritium, for defense purposes.

During the years, liquid and solid wastes have been stored in 48 underground storage tanks at the site.

Much of the solid waste --- or sludge --- is being removed and transformed into glass for storage in a geological repository.

However, some of the most radioactive portions --- including cesium and plutonium --- still exist in the bottom of the tanks. Their high salt concentration makes it nearly impossible to transform them into glass, so SRS has been struggling for years to find a solution.

In 1995, researchers devised a way to separate the high-level radioactive waste in the storage tanks with the help of two chemicals.

The cesium, plutonium and similar compounds would be stored as grout --- or cemented --- in an on-site storage facility. Everything else would be made into glass.

Despite successful tests, researchers were shocked when benzene gas was released while they tried to implement the plan. That sent them back to the drawing board --- at a huge cost.

''The concern was you could build up a lot of benzene, have a spark, and blow the top right off the tank,'' said Kevin Crowley, one of the study directors for the National Research Council. ''You could release that waste right into the atmosphere.''

Four years after the experiment fell flat, SRS proposed a similar version to the Energy Department. But the department asked the National Research Council for a second opinion on that process, which would have been conducted in smaller tanks to control any benzene leaks.

Milton Levenson, a retired chemical engineer who served as chairman of the review, dismissed any pressure to speed up the cleanup effort rather than slow it down for research.

He said there was no immediate environmental harm, and the only potential future harm --- the degradation of the tanks --- probably would not occur for decades.

''The thing I would hope would be a factor is that we would make most of our decisions based on risk reduction, not political perceptions,'' Levenson said. ''The tanks certainly need to be cleaned up as quickly as possible, but that has different connotations.''

-------- washington

Photos by the thousands will now tell Hanford workers' story

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Saturday, August 26, 2000
By LINDA ASHTON
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/hanf264.shtml

RICHLAND -- For years, thousands of people worked side by side at the Manhattan Project site here, never talking about what they were doing, often not knowing themselves.

Loose lips, after all, sank ships.

In 1943, scientists in the United States and Nazi Germany were racing to build an atomic bomb.

In the isolated desert of Eastern Washington, miles from the population centers of Seattle and Portland, the federal government and its contractors built the first large-scale reactor to make plutonium.

Most of the 50,000 workers on the site were not told what they were making until after the first atomic bombs were dropped on Japan.

But government photographers were taking pictures of the work, and now some of those pictures have been released to the public.

"They wanted a living story of Hanford," said Dave Briggs, manager of the national security analysis team for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. "At the end of the war effort, it was supposed to be torn down and gone -- then the Cold War came along."

The Hanford atomic works sprang out of the sagebrush in just a few months. The prospect of feeding, housing and entertaining 50,000 people in a place where there had been little more than a string of small farm towns and orchards was daunting.

The photographs detail life at Hanford from 1943 to 1967. They reflect it all, from construction of the Plutonium Uranium Extraction plant -- for removing plutonium from irradiated uranium fuel -- to shots of people in the universal pastimes of fishing, cooking, dancing.

There are pictures of bandleader Kay Kyser, children learning to swim, Election Day 1944.

Some photos are available now for public viewing on the Hanford Web site. A photo disk of the images should be available by Oct. 1.

"They were classified because of the time period they were taken. Almost everything was classified just by definition," Briggs said.

Briggs and Rick Stutheit, a classification officer for the U.S. Department of Energy, are among the dozen modern-day film detectives reviewing boxes and boxes of negatives, stored in aging manila envelopes, and compiling the photographic library. The project is part of the Energy Department's openness policy, and it also reduces costs of storing the material -- classified storage is very expensive.

"We, the people, paid for this effort. We, the people, ought to see what we got for the money," Briggs said.

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

-------- arms sales

PERU, JORDAN: ARMS RUNNING DENIED

New York Times
August 26, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/00/08/26/news/world/world-briefing.html

Jordan angrily denied accusations by President Alberto K. Fujimori of Peru that top Jordanian commanders were involved in the trafficking of thousands of Russian assault rifles through Peru to Colombian guerrillas. Foreign Minister Abdelelah al-Jatib said Jordan and Peru were involved in legal arms sales, and that corrupt Peruvian officials "are not capable of controlling the activities of traffickers in their own country." Clifford Krauss (NYT)

-------- britain

BRITAIN: JOINING INTERNATIONAL COURT

New York Times
August 26, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/00/08/26/news/world/world-briefing.html

The government said it would publish legislation enabling Britain to join an international criminal court that would try suspects on charges of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. So far 15 countries have passed such laws; 60 must do so before the court can come into existence. The United States opposes the court, saying it would make American soldiers vulnerable to politically motivated prosecutions abroad. Sarah Lyall (NYT)

-------- china

China Agrees to Free Poet After Protests From Writers

New York Times
August 26, 2000
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/082600china-arrests.html

BEIJING, Aug. 25 -- A Boston-based Chinese poet who was arrested two weeks ago in connection with a literary journal he edits will be released and deported to the United States on Saturday, an American Embassy official in Beijing said today.

The Aug. 11 arrest of Huang Bei ling, who is a Chinese citizen with permanent-residence status in the United States, drew protests from literary figures worldwide as well as from the American Embassy in Beijing. The police also confiscated hundreds of copies of his journal, Tendency, which is published in the United States.

The police never said why they had detained Mr. Huang, also known by his literary name Bei Ling, who has lived in the United States for more than a decade and had come back to China for a visit in June. But a spokesman for China's State Council Information Office said on Thursday that he had been "detained for further review by the Public Security organization" because of "illegal business activity."

Chinese police can keep suspects in criminal detention for up to 30 days without filing formal charges.

Mr. Huang's release defuses a situation that threatened to become a major political embarrassment for China, at a time when its government is preparing to open a $7 million celebration of Chinese culture this week in the United States.

Some leading Western writers and scholars had said they would probably boycott the event -- which includes performances, lectures and exhibits in nine American cities -- if Mr. Huang were still in prison.

Last week, PEN American Center, the writers group, sent a letter of protest to President Jiang Zemin signed by well-known literary figures including Susan Sontag, Arthur Miller and Seamus Heaney.

"Mr. Bei's arrest represents an especially alarming escalation of the repressive and inhuman treatment of dissident writers and intellectuals in China during recent months," it said.

Although China's publishing industry and intellectual life generally have become more lively and open in the last few years, the Chinese government has recently attempted to rein in the trend.

Distributing foreign magazines like Tendency is illegal in China, where the state still officially owns and controls all publications. Although visitors may generally bring in reading matter for personal use without interference, the import of foreign publications requires permits. Still, many are available in intellectual circles and even more widely available on the Internet.

The Web sites of foreign publications are sometimes blocked by the government, but many educated Chinese know how to circumvent the restrictions and individual articles are often posted in Chinese chat rooms, which are more difficult for the government to monitor.

Still, the Chinese government clearly regards the burgeoning of information and intellectual discussion as a threat to its control. And it has tried hard to discourage it in a serious, if scattershot, way.

In the last eight months, it has closed down or warned several publishers whose books were deemed unacceptable. A few private Web sites posting politically sensitive material have been shut and their owners detained. Several prominent academics have been publicly criticized by top government officials, and some have lost their teaching positions.

But since the government has turned a blind eye to similar activities by many other Chinese intellectuals, Mr. Huang, who had visited China numerous times in the past decade without incident, may not have expected any trouble.

Mr. Huang had come to conduct a forum on the latest issue of Tendency, which focuses on Mr. Heaney, the Irish poet and Nobel laureate. The Chinese-language journal offers a mix of translations and original works by Chinese writers.

Although it occasionally publishes work by and about dissident Chinese authors -- and runs a list of underground Chinese literary publications -- Tendency has little overt political content.

Mr. Huang is to leave on Saturday on a plane for San Francisco. His younger brother, Huang Feng, who lives in Beijing and is also a writer, was detained last week. He was freed late tonight.

In a statement, the executive director of PEN American Center, Michael Roberts, said his group was "thrilled" with Huang Beiling's release, but added, "The international market in which China seeks full and normal status also includes a marketplace of ideas, and it cannot expect to be welcomed into the one while rejecting the other."

---

U.S. Evangelists Are Released Following Detention in China

New York Times
August 26, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/beijing-evangelists-nyt.html

BEIJING, Aug. 25 -- Three American evangelists who were detained in central China on Wednesday along with a large group of Chinese Christians were released this afternoon, Chinese officials told the United States Embassy.

Officials in Henan Province, where the arrests occured, told an American diplomat that the three American citizens had been detained for "activities incompatible with the tourist status under which they entered China," the embassy said.

All three were Taiwan-born members of a Protestant church in California that sends members on brief missions into China to lend moral and financial support to the so-called house churches. These are fervent Christian groups that refuse to accept the leadership of the government-sponsored church, and often suffer police harassment and the jailing of leaders.

The three were detained along with nearly 130 Chinese followers of the China Fangcheng Church, a large Protestant group whose top leaders were sent to labor camps last year.

The whereabouts of the released missionaries was unclear tonight, but in similar cases in the past, people declared in violation of their visas have been required to leave the country quickly.

Chinese officials have not discussed whether any of the detained Chinese believers would face criminal charges or imprisonment.

-------- colombia

THE AMERICAS: U.S. ambassador seeks to speed Colombian aid

Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Saturday, August 26, 2000
WORLD IN BRIEF Staff reports and news services http://www.accessatlanta.com/partners/ajc/epaper/editions/saturday/news_937a85b65402b1f9004f.html

Washington's new envoy to Colombia has formally taken over her post, saying she wants speedy delivery of a $1.3 billion U.S. aid package to fight the drug trade in this war-torn country. Ambassador Anne Patterson previously served as U.S. ambassador to El Salvador.

---

Officials bust Colombian drug ring

By Tracy Moran
USA Today
08/26/00- Updated 09:27 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/gallery/dea/frame.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncssat02.htm

WASHINGTON - Federal agents announced the conclusion Saturday of a two-year, multinational operation to dismantle a Colombian-based drug trafficking organization that authorities said helped cartels ship tons of cocaine to the United States and Europe.

Agents arrested 43 suspects in South America and Europe and seized nearly 25 tons of cocaine, which would have brought an estimated profit of $1 billion in Europe. Officials believe at least 68 tons of cocaine were transported by the organization to 12 nations in the past three years.

The effort, dubbed "Operation Journey," will provide a "powerful new blueprint for fighting the international drug trade," U.S. Customs Service Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

Two of the arrests included the suspected leader of the drug organization, Ivan De La Vega, a Colombian citizen, and Luis Antonio Navia, a U.S. resident and Cuban national. Both were arrested Aug. 16 in Venezuela and escorted to the United States three days later. De La Vega, 49, faces federal drug charges in Fort Lauderdale. Navia was a U.S. Customs fugitive.

"Operation Journey" involved the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, the U.S. Customs Service and the Joint Interagency Task Force-East, as well as law enforcement agencies from 11 other nations.

Authorities said the De La Vega organization shipped cocaine by land and air from Colombia to the Orinoco River Delta in northeastern Venezuela. From there, the organization used commercial freighters to haul cocaine to U.S. and European destinations. Speedboats brought the cocaine from the organization's jungle hideouts to ships anchored offshore, where it was stashed among other cargo, including sugar and fruits, or hidden in secret compartments, authorities said. At the ships' destinations, speedboats again were used to meet the crews offshore, unload the cocaine and bring it to the coast.

Officials said the ring used a number of sophisticated methods to avoid detection, including the running of regular cargo shipments, or "dry runs." Investigators also discovered coded messages and high-tech communications equipment.

Greek, American and Colombian authorities first identified European connections to the drug trafficking operation in 1998. British, U.S., Colombian and Venezuelan authorities then found South American connections in 1999. European and South American investigations then were merged into a multinational effort.

DEA Deputy Administrator Julio Mercado said the multinational effort of "Operation Journey" was essential to its success. "Criminals operate with no borders," Mercado said, also explaining that the syndicates are far too powerful for one nation to fight alone. Other nations involved in the operation included Albania, Belgium, Colombia, France, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Panama, Spain, the United Kingdom and Venezuela.

"Operation Journey," Mercado said, shows that "there's no hiding from effective law enforcement."

The most recent seizure came on Aug. 17 when agents boarded and searched the Suerte I, a Maltese-flagged merchant ship, off the coast of Grenada. Investigators found no cocaine and later learned that the ship had been awaiting the arrival of a drug shipment. U.S. authorities seized the vessel as part of the organization's fleet - bringing the total number of ships seized from the organization to five. The Suerte I now is being escorted to Houston.

Meanwhile, Venezuelan police and U.S. agents also began raiding cocaine storage facilities in the Orinoco River Delta. The first raid led investigators to several boats used to transport the cocaine to ships offshore and communications equipment, but no cocaine was found. On Aug. 17, authorities raided another storage facility in the region and found 3,900 kilograms of cocaine. Another raid yielded 2,500 more kilograms on Aug. 23. Officials believe the last few seizures were shipments intended for the Suerte I.

Authorities in Greece conducted raids in Europe and made eight arrests in connection with the De La Vega organization. Two arrests also were made in Italy and another was made in France.

While the operation delivered a "crippling blow" to the Colombian-based drug trafficking organization, Kelly said, demand on the street for narcotics will keep the Colombian drug trade in business. "No one is claiming victory," he said.

-------- drug war

Noam Chomsky on U.S. Drug Policy

Saturday, August 26, 2000 8
From: Paul LeBreton <wizzard9@earthlink.net>

Since the discussion of the U.S. drug "war" has come up recently, list members might be interested in Noam Chomsky's analysis of the motivations behind it. Chomsky, if you don't know him, is a political writer and academic who teaches linguistics at MIT and is widely reputed to be the most quoted political writer in the world. This excerpt is from his short book, _What Uncle Sam Really Wants_, Tucson: Odonian Press, 1992, pp.82-86.

. . .[for the American government after the collapse of the Soviet Union] the end of the Cold War brings problems too. Notably, the technique for controlling the domestic population has had to shift, a problem recognized through the 1980s, as we've already seen. New enemies have to be invented. It becomes harder to disquise the fact that the real enemy has always been "the poor who seek to plunder from the rich"--in particular, Third World miscreants who seek to break out of the service role.

The War on (certain) Drugs

One substitute for the disappearing Evil Empire has been the threat of drug traffickers from Latin America. In early September 1989, a major government-media blitz was launched by the President. That month the AP wires carried more stories about drugs than about Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa combined. If you looked at television, every news program had a big section on how drugs were destroying our society, becoming the greatest threat to our existence, etc.

The effect on public opinion was immediate. When Bush won the 1988 election, people said the budget deficit was the biggest problem facing the country. Only about 3% named drugs. After the media blitz, concern over the budget was way down and drugs had soared to about 40% or 50%, which is highly unusual for an open question (where no specific answers are suggested).

Now, when some U.S. client [i.e., a small foreign country dependent on US dollars] complains that the US government isn't sending it enough money, they no longer say, "we need it to stop the Russians"--rather, "we need it to stop drug trafficking." Like the Soviet threat, this enemy provides a good excuse for a US military presence where there's rebel activity or other unrest.

So internationally, "the war on drugs" provides a cover for intervention. Domestically, it has little to do with drugs but a lot to do with distracting the population, increasing repression in inner cities, and building support for the attack on civil liberties.

That's not to say that "substance abuse" isn't a serious problem. At the time the drug war was launched, deaths from tobacco were estimated at about 300,000 a year, with perhaps another 100,000 from alcohol. But these aren't the drugs the Bush administration targeted. It went after illegal drugs, which had caused many fewer deaths--over 3500 a year--according to official figures. One reason for going after these drugs was that their use had been declining for some years, so the Bush administration could safely predict that its drug war would "succeed" in lowering drug use.

The Administration also targeted marijuana, which hadn't caused any known deaths among some 60 million users. In fact, that crackdown has exacerbated the drug problem--many marijuana users have turned from this relatively harmless drug to more dangerous drugs like cocaine, which are easier to conceal.

Just as the drug war was launched with great fanfare in September 1989, the US Trade Representative (USTR) panel held a hearing in Washington to consider a tobacco industry request that the US impose sanctions on Thailand in retaliation for its efforts to restrict US tobacco imports and advertising. Such US government actions had already rammed this lethal addictive narcotic down the throats of consumers in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, with human costs of the kind already indicated.

The US surgeon General, Everett Koop, testified at the USTR panel that "when we are pleading with foreign governments to stop the flow of cocaine, it is the height of hypocrisy for the US to export tobacco." He added, "years from now, our nation will look back on this application of free trade policy and find it scandalous."

Thai witnesses also protested, predicting that the consequence of US sanctions would be to reverse a decline in smoking achieved by their government's campaign against tobacco use. Responding to the US tobacco companies' claim that their product is the best in the world, a Thai witness said" "Certainly in the Golden Triangle we have some of the best products, but we never ask the principle of free trade to govern such products. In fact we suppressed them." Critics recalled the Opium War 150 years earlier, when the British government compelled China to open its doors to opium from British India, sanctimoniously pleading the virtues of free trade as they forcefully imposed large-scale drug addiction on China.

Here we have the biggest drug story of the day. Imagine the screaming headlines: "US government the world's leading drug peddler." It would surely sell papers. But the story passed virtually unreported, and with not a hint of the obvious conclusions.

Another aspect of the drug problem. which also received little attention, is the leading role of the US government in stimulating drug trafficking since WWII. This happened in part when the US began its postwar task of undermining the anti-fascist resistance and the labor movement became an important target.

In France, the threat of the political power and influence of the labor movement was enhanced by its steps to impede the flow of arms to French forces seeking to reconquer their former colony of Vietnam with US aid. So the CIA undertook to weaken and split the French labor movement--with the aid of top American labor leaders, who were quite proud of ltheir role.

The task required strikebreakers ands goons. There was an obvious supplier: the Mafia. Of cours, they didn't take on this work just for the fun of it. They wanted a return for their efforts. Ands it was given to them: they were authorized to reestablish the heroin racket that had been suppressed by the fascist governments--the famous "French connection" that dominated the drug trade until the 1960s.

By then, the center of the drug trade had shifted to Indochina, particularly Laos and Thailand. The shift was again a by-product of a CIA operation--the "secret war" fought in those countries during the Vietnam War by a CIA mercenary army. They also wanted a payoff for their contributions. Later, as the CIA shifted its activities to Pakistan and Afghanistan, the drug racket boomed there.

The clandestine war against Nicaragua also provided a shot in the arm to drug traffickers in the region, as illegal CIA arms flights to the US mercenary forces offered an easy way to ship drugs back to the US, sometimes through US Air Force bases, traffickers report.

The close correlation between the drug racket and US sponsored international terrorism (sometimes called "counter-insurgency," "low intensity conflict" or some other euphemism) is not surprising. Clandestine operations need plenty of money, which should be undetectable. And they need criminal operatives as well. The rest follows.

----

U.S. Officials Say They've Dismantled Major Drug Organization

New York Times
August 26, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/26colombia.html

WASHINGTON -- U.S. officials said Saturday that they have broken up a major drug trafficking operation that used commercial ships to haul Colombian cocaine around the world.

The Drug Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Customs Service said 43 people have been arrested and almost 25 tons of cocaine confiscated during the two-year investigation, dubbed "Operation Journey." Officials believe the organization transported at least 68 tons of cocaine to 12 nations over three years.

A big part of the operation was announced in recent days by Venezuelan officials, who said they seized 10 tons of cocaine and arrested 16 people in a series of raids.

Among those in custody is the suspected leader of the organization, Ivan de la Vega, a Colombian citizen arrested Aug. 16 in Venezuela. He has been turned over to U.S. custody and faces charges in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

The operation began as separate investigations by the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Athens, Greece, the Customs office in Houston and other agencies. The investigations were eventually united and coordinated by the Justice Department.

In a statement, Customs described the organization as "a one-stop shipping service for Colombian cartels interested in moving cocaine via maritime vessels to U.S. and European markets."

The organization used eight to 10 freighters. Some were owned by the organization; others by shipping companies in Greece and other nations.

Cocaine would be transported by land or air from Colombia to the Orinoco River Delta in northeastern Venezuela. It would be hidden in the jungle before being taken by boats to offshore freighters. It would then be stored in secret compartments until it reached its destination, where boats carried it ashore.

The organization would try to throw off investigators by making "dry runs" with legitimate cargo. But working with foreign police agencies, the DEA and Customs obtained information about specific cocaine shipments heading to Europe, Customs said.

"This case demonstrates what can be achieved whe