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

-------- china

China To Use UN Forum To Oppose Missile Shield

Inside China Today
Aug 31, 2000
http://www.insidechina.com/news.php3?id=194765§ion=default

BEIJING, -- (Reuters) Chinese President Jiang Zemin will use a speech at the United Nations next week to stress Beijing's opposition to a U.S missile shield plan, a senior Chinese diplomat said on Thursday.

"There are still certain countries which seek so-called absolute security for themselves and are speeding up the development and deployment of advanced anti-missile systems," the official said of Jiang's September 7 UN speech.

He was referring to U.S. proposals to build a theater missile defense (TMD) system in Asia and national missile defense (NMD) system to protect the United States from ballistic missiles from hostile states.

Jiang would probably repeat at the UN Millennium Summit in New York China's frequent charge that the United States was driven by "Cold War thinking" in its proposal to build missile umbrellas, the official said.

The proposed systems would "seriously undermine the positive trend in international disarmament efforts", the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

Jiang would probably also drive home Beijing strident opposition to the U.S. plans in his bilateral meetings with he leaders of Japan, Russian and South Korea on the summit sidelines, the official said.

Chinese parliamentary chief Li Peng slammed the U.S. proposals in talks on Tuesday with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the official China Daily reported on Thursday.

The United States wants to have a missile defense system in place by 2005 to shoot down a limited number of missiles from hostile states such as North Korea and Iran.

But Russia and China bitterly oppose the plan, yet to be given the go-ahead, fearing that a U.S. missile defense system could rapidly evolve to threaten their nuclear missile arsenals.

Beijing fears the TMD system proposed by Washington for its troops and allies in Asia would be used to shelter Taiwan from mainland missiles, removing the threat of attack that is China's main means of deterring the island from declaring independence.

European allies of the United States worry about the nuclear arms control fallout from any U.S. break with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty between Washington and Moscow.

---

HONG KONG ECONOMIC TIMES

Inside China Today
Local Press Digest - Hong Kong - Aug 31
Aug 31, 2000
Reuters
WEN WEI PO

HONG KONG, Experts say mainland China may be forced to develop nuclear weaponry as the US has broken the world's strategic balance with plans for new weapon systems.

-------- iraq

U.N. Arms Inspectors Back Down Security Council Members Urge Agency Not to Confront Iraq

Washington Post
Thursday, August 31, 2000; Page A25
By Colum Lynch Special to The Washington Post
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-08/31/347l-083100-idx.html

UNITED NATIONS, Aug. 30-To avoid a confrontation with Baghdad at an inopportune time, the United States and other permanent members of the Security Council have persuaded the chairman of a new U.N. arms agency to cancel his planned announcement that weapons inspectors are ready to return to Iraq.

The move follows repeated statements by the Iraqi government that it will never submit to inspections by the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC).

Diplomats said U.S., Russian, Chinese and French members of a panel that oversees UNMOVIC advised its chairman, Hans Blix of Sweden, to drop a conclusion from a draft report that 44 inspectors have completed training and are "now in a position to start activities in Iraq," including "baseline" inspections of facilities that might be involved in building prohibited weapons.

The final version of the report, released to the council today, says the arms experts "could plan and commence" preliminary tasks to prepare for future inspections.

Given the uncertainty, more than half of the newly trained weapons specialists have been sent back to their home countries. Their names will go on a roster and they may be called up for service in the future.

"The U.S. and Russia agreed that it was not appropriate to give the impression that Mr. Blix and the commission was ready to go back into Iraq," said a Security Council diplomat. "They cautioned that this might create a climate of confrontation at an inappropriate time."

The Security Council's five permanent members--the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain--want to avoid a clash over Iraq policy when their heads of state meet at the United Nations next week during the so-called Millennium Summit of World Leaders, according to diplomats.

A U.S. official also contended that it would be premature to re-launch weapons inspections in Iraq. "They have more work to do," the official said. "While UNMOVIC has finished its first stage of preparation, it's a plain fact that they are not yet ready to launch a full-scale program in Iraq."

Despite the reversal, Blix reported that he would continue preparing for a resumption of on-site inspections. He said a new team of inspectors would be trained in France from Nov. 7 to Dec. 8, and U.N. officials said he was talking with various countries about technical assistance, such as communications equipment and surveillance aircraft.

Under the terms of the 1991 cease-fire that ended the Persian Gulf War, Iraq is prohibited from possessing medium- and long-range missiles or nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

A former inspection agency, known as the U.N. Special Commission, or UNSCOM, pulled its inspectors out of Iraq on the eve of a U.S.-British air campaign in December 1998.

UNMOVIC may face a renewed challenge from Iraq's allies when the council debates the future of inspections during the week of Sept. 11. Russia has told Blix that the participation of some former members of UNSCOM on the new team--particularly two Russian arms experts, Nikita Smidovich and Igor Mitrokhin--would make it difficult for Moscow to press Baghdad to cooperate.

"We warned [Blix] that he should take into account that Iraq might not be satisfied with this decision" allowing former UNSCOM members to serve in UNMOVIC, said Gennadi Gatilov, Russia's deputy representative to the United Nations. He noted that the two inspectors were associated with some of the U.N.'s most aggressive inspections. "We will see how this situation develops in the future, but I personally envisage difficulties," he said.

In an unusual twist, the United States and Britain have defended the Russian inspectors while their own government has pressed Blix to get rid of them or push them into the background. U.S. officials praised the Russians as experienced and professional inspectors with unparalleled knowledge of the Iraqi weapons program.

-------- japan

Asahi Shimbun confirms JCP Fuwa's revelation of Japan-U.S. secret documents on nuclear weapons

Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 17:50:46 +0900
From: JPS <jpspress@twics.com>

TOKYO AUG 31 JPS -- Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan's largest newspapers, on August 30 reported that declassified U.S. documents show the "whole picture of Japan-U.S. secret agreements, under which Japan has turned blind eye to U.S. nuclear weapons on board warships entering ports without prior consultation."

The Asahi report confirms what Japanese Communist Party Chair Tetsuzo Fuwa revealed during March and April during his one-on-one debate with prime ministers in the Diet.

This latest revelation of secret agreements will make it more difficult for Japan's government to continue to deny the existence of such secret agreements.

Fuwa has disclosed a secret agreement in a document called "Record of Discussion" (*) concerning the Japan-U.S. Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security. The agreement was signed on January 6, 1960 by Japan's Foreign Minister Aiichiro Fujiyama and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Douglas MacArthur 2nd.

When Fuwa showed the original text of the "Record of Discussion" and its Japanese translation before the Diet committee, the government insisted that no such document existed and refused to raise the matter with the U.S. government.

Asahi's revelation was based on a document included in the Congressional Briefing Book, a State Department file declassified at the U.S. National Archives, which confirmed that the U.S., since the beginning of bilateral negotiations, had regarded the "Record of Discussion" as an integral part of the treaty agreements.

P.M. Yoshiro Mori on August 30 told the press that there is no secret agreement between Japan and the U.S.

Japan Press Service has published a booklet in its Japan Press Weekly Special Issue in August, titled "Nuclear Deception--Japan-U.S. Secret Agreements."

The full text of the Record of Discussion is as follows:

Treaty of mutual cooperation and security Record of Discussion Tokyo June 1959

1. Reference is made to the draft exchange of notes concerning the implementation of Article VI of the Treaty, the operative part of which reads as follows:

"Major changes in the deployment into Japan of United States armed forces, major changes in their equipment, and the use of facilities and areas in Japan as bases for military combat operations to be undertaken from Japan other than those conducted under Article V of the said Treaty, shall be the subjects of prior consultation with the Government of Japan."

2. The notes were drawn up with the following points being taken into consideration and understood:

A. "Major changes in their equipment" is understood to mean the introduction into Japan of nuclear weapons, including intermediate and long-range missiles as well as the construction of bases for such weapons, and will not, for example, mean the introduction of non-nuclear weapons including short-range missiles without nuclear components.

B. "Military combat operations other than those conducted under Article V" is understood to mean military combat operations that may be initiated from Japan against areas outside Japan.

C. "'Prior consultation' will not be interpreted as affecting present procedures regarding the deployment of United States armed forces and their equipment into Japan and those for the entry of United States military aircraft and the entry into Japanese waters and ports by United States naval vessels, except in the case of major changes in the deployment into Japan of United States armed forces."

D. Nothing in the exchange of notes will be construed as requiring "prior consultation" on the transfer of units of United States armed forces and their equipment from Japan. (end item)

----

Stop U.S. Night Landing Practices

Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 10:20:28 +0900
From: Japan Press Service <jpspress@twics.com>

TOKYO AUG 30 JPS -- Protest actions were organized against the U.S. Navy's Night Landing Practice (NLP) to be held at three U.S. bases in Japan plus Iwojima Islands with aircraft from the Yokosuka-based U.S. carrier Kitty Hawk. Akahata on August 30 reported:

NLPs are scheduled to be held at the U.S. Misawa Air Base (Aomori Pref. September 5-8), the U.S. Atsugi Air Station (Kanagawa Pref. September 5-8 and 18-22), the U.S. Yokota Air Base (Tokyo, September 18-22), and Iwojima Islands (Tokyo's Pacific island, September 15-21).

In Aomori in northeastern Japan, the prefectural government, Misawa City and its assembly requested the central government and the U.S. Forces in Japan to cancel the NLP, saying that the residents can't endure any longer the fear from noise and possible accidents caused by the NLP which will be held from 7:00 a.m. till 10:00 p.m.

In Misawa City, the liaison council of neighborhood associations located below approaches to the U.S. Misawa Air Base made representations to the U.S. Forces in Japan, saying that they can't condone the NLP. They also requested the central government, Aomori Prefecture and Misawa City to take up their demand.

The Peace Committee and other organizations in Hachinohe City in Aomori Prefecture sent a protest telegram to the U.S. Navy Commander in Japan Robert C. Chaplin calling for the NLP to be canceled.

In Tokyo, the liaison council of the Metropolitan Tokyo Government and the governments of cities and towns adjacent to the U.S. Yokota Air Base on August 29 requested the central government and the U.S. Forces to stop the NLP. (end item)

JPS 08-109 JCP Chair gives A-bomb survivors full support for their cause

TOKYO AUG 30 JPS -- In their renewed effort to get the government to revise the criteria for determining atomic bomb survivors as having illness caused by the atomic bombing, the A-bombs survivors organization made representations to the government and political parties on August 29.

At the Japanese Communist Party head office in Tokyo, Nori Tohei of the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bombs Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo) was received by JCP Chair Tetsuzo Fuwa.

Nihon Hidankyo's petition took place in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision which upheld Nagasaki hibakusha Hideko Matsuya's claim that the government certify her as a hibakusha with illness caused by for the atomic bombing who is entitled to special government assistance.

At present, a hibakusha can be certified as having A-bomb diseases based on doses of radiation the hibakusha had at the time of the A-bombing.

The court ruling was taken as a clear signal to the national government about the need to review its assistance policy for A- bomb survivors.

Fuwa said, "A hibakusha who is believed to have effects of the atomic bombing should be certified as having illness caused by the atomic bombing."

Referring to Matsuya's case, Fuwa said, "It is a pity that the government asked for her burden of proof and she had to go through three court rulings to be certified as a hibakusha with A-bomb diseases."

Earlier in the day, Hideko Matsuya accompanied by her lawyers and supporters visited the Health and Welfare Ministry to ask for apology. They also called on the government to cancel all the lawsuit pending between the government and hibakusha and sit at the table for out-of-court settlements.

A ministry official who met Matsuya had no word of apology. The official told Matsuya that the government will decide by October what to do with other lawsuits. He expressed his sympathy for the long struggle Matsuya had to endure but stopped short of making an apology. (end item)

-------- kazakhstan

Kazakhstan to close nuclear power plant next year

Aug 31, 2000
Reuters
From: Ndunlks@aol.com

Kazakhstan will close its nuclear power plant at Mangyshlak in the west of the country next February, the Ministry of Energy, Industry and Trade said on Thursday.

``Work on closing the reactor began in December 1998 and will be completed in February 2001,'' a ministry statement said.

The United States will give $3.8 million for the closure. Washington is already helping Kazakhstan, which has given up its nuclear arsenal, to resolve non-proliferation issues and to protect nuclear installations.

Kazakhstan closed its Semipalatinsk nuclear weapons testing ground in July, bringing to an end nearly 40 years of nuclear testing at the site.

The Mangyshlak power station was built to provide power for a plant producing drinking water from sea water for the city of Aktau on the Caspian and for a number of large industrial enterprises in the region.

The water plant will receive electricity from thermal power plants now under construction.

-------- mongolia

Pressing a case for antinuclear status

Philadelphia Inquirer
Thursday, August 31, 2000
By Steve Goldstein, Philadelphia INQUIRER WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://web.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/08/31/national/MONGOL31.htm?template=aprint.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/083100-01.htm

NEW YORK - How can remote, underdeveloped, peaceful Mongolia (population, 2.6 million) pose a threat to the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France (population, 1.5 billion)?

The answer is a lesson in why diplomats are never out of work.

Mongolia's ambassador to the United Nations has launched a campaign that is both quixotic and compelling - especially for other small nations interested in taking on the global giants.

He is trying to win a guarantee from the five permanent members of the Security Council that Mongolia can be the world's first individual nation designated as a nuclear-weapons-free zone.

The issue may be discussed during next week's U.N. Millennium Summit, an unprecedented gathering expected to draw more than 150 heads of state and government to a three-day convocation on the challenges of the 21st century.

Formal recognition of Mongolia as a nuclear-weapons-free zone would mean not only a prohibition on basing nukes on its territory, but also that no weapons could be shipped through the country, and they might even be barred from its airspace.

The leader of the push, Mongolia's ambassador, Enkhsaikhan Jargalsaikhany, has already made a name for himself here - and he's forced his colleagues to learn how to pronounce it.

In his nearly four-year tenure, Enkhsaikhan has served as vice president of the General Assembly, chairman of its legal committee, and chairman of the 30-nation group of Landlocked Developing Countries.

He has been the lead representative in developing "principles of negotiation" that protect the rights of smaller nations from being bulldozed by larger, more powerful countries.

In 1998, Enkhsaikhan - Mongolians traditionally use only a single name - scored his most impressive success when the General Assembly adopted a resolution giving Mongolia nuclear-weapon-free status.

Now, he wants the five permanent Security Council members to endorse the same status.

Fresh from a trip to Geneva to meet with the five, Enkhsaikhan remained hopeful. He said, however, that he had encountered deep-seated concern that a Mongolian zone would encourage other countries to apply, and thus limit freedom of movement for the nuclear powers.

"They [the P-5] are worried about setting what they called a dangerous precedent," Enkhsaikhan said during an interview at the Mongolian mission on the Upper East Side.

What could be dangerous about banning nuclear weapons?

Bracketed by Russia and China, Mongolia is only a decade removed from its 70-year domination by the Soviet Communist empire.

Until 1992, when the last Russian troops left Mongolia's territory, Soviet nuclear weapons were based at a site about 20 miles from the capital, Ulan Bator, and in the southern part of the country, near the border. The devices were trained on Beijing. China, in turn, targeted these bases with its weapons.

Although Mongolia's first freely elected president declared Mongolia a nuclear-weapons-free zone, the country set about trying to gain international recognition for this status. The first step was the General Assembly resolution.

Mongolia would be the first single state to win such a designation. There are multination nuclear-weapons-free zones currently in Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America.

If Mongolia sets a precedent for a single state, then other nations such as New Zealand, Canada and Nepal might seek the same designation.

"We support the U.N. resolution and, in light of Mongolia's unique geographical situation, we've taken the further step of negotiating a formal statement from the P-5 that follows up on the resolution," a U.S. official said yesterday.

The statement should be forthcoming in the next few weeks, the official said. He conceded that it would not go quite as far in providing security assurances as the Mongolians would have liked.

Amin Tarzi, a nuclear specialist with the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif., said the nuclear powers were worried this designation would hurt their defense capabilities. New Zealand, for instance, already bars nuclear-powered ships from its harbors.

"I don't think the Mongolians will get their wish of official implementation of this resolution," said Tarzi. "The P-5 countries are saying it's a wonderful idea. But privately they are worried about the precedent."

Enkhsaikhan said Mongolia needed the security provisions that a nuclear-weapons-free zone would offer. It is a landlocked country, with access to the sea only through Russia and China.

"We have good relations with Russia and China," he said, "but that doesn't mean we're problem-free."

Enkhsaikhan has lived with these problems his entire life. His father, Bayar, was ambassador to China and established Mongolia's mission to the United Nations in 1962, where his 12-year-old son first learned English.

After returning to Mongolia, Enkhsaikhan was dispatched to Moscow's elite diplomacy school, the Institute for International Relations, and later earned his doctorate in international law.

Despite his youth, Enkhsaikhan became the second-ranking official at the Mongolian Embassy in Moscow in 1988. Three years later, he played a bit part in a historic drama, the attempted coup against the Gorbachev government.

On the second day of the coup, Enkhsaikhan was contacted by some of his old schoolmates, aides to then-Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin, who was leading the anti-coup forces. The aides asked for his help and fax machines in sending out translations of Yeltsin's decrees to Asian nations to demonstrate that the government forces were still in charge.

The coup failed two days later.

Shortly after he arrived in New York in 1997 as ambassador, Enkhsaikhan began drawing the attention of his colleagues. Speaking seven languages doesn't hurt.

He soon won appointment as chairman of the legal committee, which considers reports from U.N. bodies dealing with such issues as terrorism or international legal affairs, then adopts resolutions that are recommended to the General Assembly for approval.

"He was an excellent chairman. He has a very nice personality and he was very good at getting people to reach consensus," said Manuel Rama Montaldo, the deputy secretary of the committee.

Enkhsaikhan eventually spearheaded the drafting of principles of negotiation, which declare that all states are equal, and that no undue pressure should be used by large nations against the less powerful.

"He was very active and effective in negotiating that document," said Rama Montaldo, noting the difficulty of getting the General Assembly to support any resolution.

Enkhsaikhan performed an even more impressive diplomatic feat when he persuaded New York City officials to stage a Festival in Mongolia in Central Park this summer. The event drew more than 25,000 visitors.

And he has even learned a bit about the Manhattan real-estate market.

"Recently, I was offered $8 million for this building, which my father purchased in the 1960s for $220,000," said Enkhsaikhan.

He declined the offer. "I'm sure the value is only going to go up," he said with a smile.

Steve Goldstein's e-mail address is slgoldstein@krwashington.com Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.

-------- russia

Associated Press
September 01, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Russia-Putins-Enemies.html

---

Richardson Visits Russia

Associated Press
August 31, 2000 Filed at 2:01 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-BRF-Russia-US-Energy.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson discussed U.S.-Russian nuclear cooperation during a visit Thursday to the Primorye region in the Far East, home to Russia's rusting Pacific Fleet.

Richardson was to meet with top government and naval officials during his two-day visit to Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan. He was scheduled to attend a commissioning ceremony Friday marking the completion of work to upgrade security for nuclear materials being stored at two naval sites.

Russia has had to decommission hundreds of vessels for lack of funds, raising worries about proper removal and storage of nuclear materials.

On Saturday, Richardson is expected on Sakhalin Island, where he is to visit an oil platform.

Richardson on Wednesday visited a military conversion project in the central Russian city of Sarov and promised $13 million to accelerate the transformation of the town's nuclear weapons production facility into a civilian technology park.

---

Energy Secretary Visits Russia

Associated Press
August 31, 2000 Filed at 2:32 a.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Russia-US-Nuclear-Cities.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson visited a flagship Russian military conversion project and promised $13 million to accelerate the transformation of a nuclear weapons production facility into a civilian technology park.

On the first day of a four-day tour of Russia, Richardson attended a ceremony Wednesday inaugurating the Avangard Technopark on the premises of a nuclear weapons design facility in Sarov, which was the closed city of Arzamas-16 in Soviet times.

The park has carved out 10 acres from the nuclear complex in Sarov, one of 10 such cities that the U.S. Energy Department is helping to turn over to civilian enterprises. Ten buildings in Avangard's Weapons Design Facility complex have been earmarked for civilian use.

``Clearly, their welcoming me to this forbidden site is a positive development and an encouraging sign for U.S.-Russian relations,'' Richardson said.

``Our non-proliferation programs are working and must continue, as it is in America's best interest to help Russia convert these massive Cold War-era facilities into non-weapons work.''

Richardson inaugurated a computer center in Sarov last October. A firm producing kidney dialysis equipment, to be operated by Fresenius Medical, has moved into one of the other buildings. Richardson said that an automotive parts manufacturing plant was to take over another.

Credit Suisse First Boston announced Wednesday that it would establish a banking software center in the Avangard facility. The center will employ former weapons scientists.

Conversion work has begun in three of Russia's 10 closed nuclear cities, and U.S. officials are hoping to accelerate it. Officials in Sarov, Russia's equivalent of the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, said Wednesday that the Avangard facility will no longer be assembling or disassembling nuclear weapons by 2003.

---

U.S. and Russia Open a Nuclear Swords-to-Plowshares Project

New York Times
August 31, 2000
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/library/financial/083100us-russia-nuclear.html

MOSCOW -- American and Russian officials dedicated a 10-acre industrial park on Wednesday at what was until recently a nuclear-weapons factory east of Moscow. It was the second step in a joint project that American experts hope will provide jobs for up to 4,000 Russian weapons scientists and workers.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson attended the ceremony, in the once-closed nuclear city of Sarov, several hundred miles east of Moscow. The stop was part of a weeklong sweep through Russia and other former Soviet states in which Richardson is promoting programs to curb the spread of nuclear materials and technology.

The United States will contribute $4.5 million next year to help prepare buildings at the Sarov site for private businesses, and hopes to spend $8.5 million more on other programs there in 2001, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. Richardson said the first tenant at the new Sarov Technopark at Avangard, as the site is called, would be a German-American venture to make kidney-dialysis machines and supplies.

A Michigan company also is studying prospects for manufacturing auto parts in the park, he said.

Richardson toured the remaining operating section of the top-secret Avangard weapons plant, which is now devoted to dismantling nuclear arms. In an interview, he said his tour, the first by an U.S. official, was evidence that "despite American-Russian relations suffering a few glitches, in the area of transparency of nuclear weapons there has been quite a bit of progress."

Military cooperation between Russia and the United States has cooled considerably since NATO's air war against one of the Kremlin's closest European allies, Yugoslavia, last spring.

"This is a breakthrough in securing Russian nuclear materials and persuading Russian scientists to stay home and not sell their expertise to rogue states," Richardson said.

About 3,500 people worked at the Avangard plant. The kidney-dialysis venture should employ about 200, and 100 more work at a second Russian-American project, a computing center at which scientists and programmers turn their expertise to commercial ventures.

Officials said that Credit Suisse First Boston has awarded a contract to the center to develop electronic-banking and e-commerce software. Motorola Corp. also is considering employing the computing center for software projects, officials said.

The computing center already conducts research for the petroleum industry and in high-energy physics, among other programs.

The Energy Department's Nuclear Cities Initiative has targeted Sarov and nine other weapons centers for programs to retrain employees for commercial work, primarily to prevent rogue states from buying Russian nuclear expertise.

The 3-year-old conversion program is under way so far in only two cities. But U.S. officials said on Wednesday that the effort at Sarov has succeeded well enough to allow Russian officials to move up by two years, to 2003 from 2005, the timetable for closing the entire weapons plant, the oldest of four that manufactured nuclear bombs for the Soviet Union.

-------- ukraine

Ukraine Region Declared Disaster

Associated Press
August 31, 2000 Filed at 12:38 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-Ukraine-Illness.html

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- President Leonid Kuchma on Thursday declared four southern Ukrainian villages an ecological disaster zone, following an outbreak of a mysterious illness some have blamed on leaks of Soviet-era rocket fuel.

About 400 residents of the villages near Mykolaiv, 320 miles south of the capital Kiev, have been reported sick since July 4, but only a few new cases were registered this week, Health Minister Vitaliy Moskalenko said.

Health officials were checking nearly 6,000 residents of nearby villages for signs of the illness, a chemical poisoning that causes skin rashes and affects the liver and pancreas, he told a state investigative commission.

Tests conducted in the troubled area found high concentrations of nitrates in 57 percent of drinking water supplied through a pipe system, 98 percent of water from wells and every tenth food product checked, Moskalenko said in comments cited by the Interfax news agency.

Officials said Ukraine would appeal to the World Health Organization and foreign governments to help it deal with the emergency.

The government, meanwhile, appeared split on what caused the illness, with some officials blaming rocket fuel and others denying the possibility.

In the region is a base holding solid-fuel SS-24 nuclear missiles, which are to be dismantled in 2001. It once housed other Soviet missiles powered by liquid fuel.

Health experts have said the area's soil and water contained substances that are usually produced by decomposing rocket fuel, but Kuchma's spokesman Oleksandr Martynenko insisted on Wednesday that rocket fuel could not be blamed. Instead, he suggested that the illness could have resulted from high amounts of nitrates in the soil.

But the head of the government commission, deputy premier Mykola Zhulynskyi, said missile silos in the area had remained open after liquid-fuel rockets were dismantled there in the late 1970s. Fuel spills could have occurred during the missiles' dismantling, he said.

Ukraine inherited 46 SS-24 and 130 SS-19 nuclear missiles following the 1991 Soviet collapse. Kiev has since surrendered all its nuclear warheads to Russia and eliminated the last SS-19 missile in 1999.

Most of the SS-24s along with missile silos remain to be destroyed under a disarmament plan running through 2001.

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

Utilities Can Seek Damages for Waste

Associated Press
August 31, 2000 Filed at 7:34 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Nuclear-Waste.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that four electric utilities may seek millions of dollars in damages from the government for the Energy Department's failure to accept highly radioactive waste from their nuclear power plants.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dealt a blow to government attempts to negotiate out-of-court settlements with scores of utilities over the waste issue.

The Energy Department has acknowledged it is contractually obligated to accept the waste, but has argued that it missed a January 1998 deadline because there is no place to put the used reactor fuel now kept at reactor sites.

MaryAnne Sullivan, the Energy Department's general counsel, said no decision has been made on whether to appeal the ruling. ``We will be discussing our litigation options with the Department of Justice in the coming weeks,'' she said in a statement.

It was not clear how the ruling will affect other utility cases, or if it will affect them at all. Still, lawyers for the utilities called the ruling a major victory.

``This is a clear affirmation that the government is liable for breaching these contracts and has to pay damages to these utilities and the damages are going to be huge,'' said Jerry Stouck, an attorney for the three utilities involved in the litigation.

The court rejected the government's argument that relief was available through the administrative process and concluded the utilities have authority to seek civil damages from the Court of Federal Claims.

``Failure to perform a contractual duty when it is due is a breach of the contract,'' the appeals court found in the case involving Maine Yankee Atomic Power Co., Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Co., and the Yankee Atomic Electric Co.

The utilities own three reactors in New England that have been shut down, but tons of used reactor fuel remain on site.

The court in a separate ruling found that Northern States Power Co., in Minnesota also could seek damages through the Court of Federal Claims, citing the same reasoning as in the Yankee case.

It's unclear how much in damages the utilities may get.

Stouck said that the three Yankee companies are seeking a total of about $300 million. Northern States Power is seeking ``in excess of $1 billion,'' according to court filings.

``It means these utilities are going to get a chance to prove their damages. ... It's a major victory,'' said Alex Tomaszczuk, an attorney for Northern States Power.

About a dozen utilities, including those involved in the two cases before the appeals court, have sought damages in filings with the claims court over the failure of the government to take used reactor fuel.

It was unclear Thursday how the appeals court decision will affect these other cases or some of the other utilities that want the government to accept some 40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel building up at reactors in 31 states.

``We remain persuaded that the quickest and most efficient ways to get relief to those utilities that are incurring costs as result of our delay in accepting spent nuclear fuel is direct negotiations between individual utilities and the department,'' said Sullivan, the government attorney.

She said this was made clear by a recent settlement agreement between the Energy Department and PECO Energy Co. over the disposal of reactor waste at its Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

-------- iowa

USA Today
08/31/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Iowa

Middletown - Researchers got a break in tracking down nuclear weapons employees who worked at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant from 1943 to 1975. Index cards found at the plant's current contractor contain information on as many as 60,000 workers. The Department of Energy is trying to determine what hazardous materials the workers may have been exposed to and whether any suffered lifelong illnesses.

-------- new mexico

Treatment of Wen Ho Lee Questioned

Associated Press
August 31, 2000 Filed at 4:46 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Scientist-Academies.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The leaders of three of the nation's most prestigious scientific organizations are taking issue with the treatment of fired Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee.

``Although we make no claim as to his innocence or guilt, he appears to be a victim of unjust treatment,'' the three said in an open letter Thursday to Attorney General Janet Reno.

The letter was signed by Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences; William A. Wulf, president of the National Academy of Engineering and Kenneth I. Shine, president of the Institute of Medicine.

The three organizations are independent research groups chartered by Congress to provide scientific advice to government.

The Taiwan-born Lee is waiting to learn if the government will appeal a judge's order that he be freed on $1 million bail.

Lee, 60, has been jailed since his arrest Dec. 10 on 59 counts alleging he transferred restricted data about nuclear weapons to unsecure computers and tape at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The three scientists said in their letter to Reno that they were making their concerns public because previous inquiries about Lee's treatment had been responded to only by a form letter.

``We are concerned that inaccurate and detrimental testimony by government officials resulted in Dr. Lee needlessly spending eight months in prison under harsh and questionable conditions of confinement,'' the scientists wrote.

In their earlier letters the three had asked about Lee family complaints that Lee was being held in solitary confinement, that restraints had been used on him and that contact with family was restricted.

In their letter to Reno the scientists contended that ``the handling of this case reflects poorly on the U.S. justice system.''

``The concerns that we have expressed and the questions that we have posed in our letters are identical to those our Committee on Human Rights regularly poses to foreign governments, some of which have had the courtesy to respond. Surely we cannot expect less from our own government.''

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge James Parker ordered the government to disclose documents that could help him determine whether Lee was a target of selective prosecution and ethnic profiling.

U.S. Attorney George Stamboulidis said an area of concern if Lee is freed on bail is the unrestricted communication allowed between Lee and his wife, Sylvia, in their home.

``Here, national security is at stake,'' Stamboulidis said, complaining that the judge's proposed conditions were not strict enough to protect government secrets.

Parker's proposed release conditions included limits on communication, travel, home visits and required removal of all electronic communication devices except for one telephone line from Lee's home. Lee would have to remain under electronic monitoring except when being driven by his lawyers to court or the lab to work on his defense. His mail also would be inspected.

---

Appeals court orders scientist held for now

USA Today
09/01/00- Updated 08:04 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsfri05.htm

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - An appeals court halted the release of jailed Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee on Friday, acting even before government prosecutors requested a delay, a justice department spokeswoman said.

U.S. District Judge James Parker, who last week ordered Lee's release on $1 million bail, was critical of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals' decision.

He said the court likely wouldn't have ordered the last-minute delay if it had seen the government's information that he's spent the past three months reviewing.

The appeals court's brief order read: ''Release of (Lee) is stayed pending further order of this court.'' Justice Department spokeswoman Carole Florman said the court acted on its own before the government had a chance to ask for a stay.

Defense attorneys were angered that the timing of the stay left them no chance to respond. They filed a petition Friday asking the 10th Circuit to reconsider.

''Dr. Lee has spent more than eight months shackled in solitary confinement because the prosecution misled Judge Parker (and this court) about the significance of the information at issue and the nature of Dr. Lee's conduct. He should not spend a single day more in prison,'' the petition said.

Defense attorney John Cline told Parker, ''This isn't the way the judicial system is supposed to work. It just isn't.''

Parker raised the possibility of bail last week when he held that the information presented by the government ''no longer has the requisite clarity and persuasive character necessary'' to keep Lee in jail. He ruled after an FBI agent whose testimony last December was a key in denying bail acknowledged that some of his testimony was incorrect.

Parker expressed concern that the 10th Circuit judges don't have easy access to all the materials he has reviewed since taking the case in June.

''I don't know how you're going to get all the classified information to the 10th Circuit quickly,'' he told prosecutors Friday.

Lee, 60, is accused of downloading restricted data about nuclear weapons to unsecure computers and tapes at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He has been jailed since December awaiting trial, which is now scheduled Nov. 6. If convicted of all 59 counts, Lee could face life in prison.

The prosecution, which filed a motion to halt Lee's bail Friday, has contended there are no acceptable terms of release as long as seven computer tapes remained unaccounted for.

FBI agents searched Lee's home Thursday for any additional evidence, including any evidence of those tapes. The defense insists the tapes were destroyed; the prosecution insists on proof.

Lee attorney Nancy Hollander, who kept watch during the search, said she knew of nothing seized from the house. The FBI agents put a video surveillance camera in the Lee's backyard and attached tracking the their cars.

On Thursday, affidavits were unsealed saying two former counterintelligence chiefs believe Lee was singled out for prosecution because of his race, as the Taiwan-born scientist's supporters claim. Prosecutors deny the allegation.

The counterintelligence chiefs' statements were submitted by the defense to support its petition for disclosure of a huge volume of documents that it says shows a pattern of racial profiling in the Energy Department.

Parker has not decided whether to turn the materials over to the defense.

Charles Washington, who led the Energy Department's counterintelligence branch for several years in the 1990s, said he knows of other employees who eluded prosecution for more serious offenses. He said his agency routinely handles infractions like Lee's by merely counseling violators.

''I have concluded that if Dr. Lee had not been initially targeted because of his race ... he may very well have been treated administratively like others who had allegedly mishandled classified information,'' he said in the affidavit.

Robert Vrooman, former head of security at the lab, said Lee became the focus of an investigation to the exclusion of other potential suspects who fit a profile based on access to certain nuclear warhead information and travel to China. Others with those characteristics were not pursued, he said.

''It is my opinion,'' he said in the statement, ''that the failure to look at the rest of the population is because Lee is ethnic Chinese.''

---

FBI agents search Wen Ho Lee's home

USA Today
08/31/00- Updated 07:07 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsthu07.htm

WHITE ROCK, N.M. (AP) - FBI agents searched the home of Wen Ho Lee on Thursday as the former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist accused of security breaches waited in jail for his Friday release on bail.

''It's going to be a long day,'' FBI Special Agent Doug Beldon said. Numerous agents were searching Lee's White Rock home and weren't expected to finish until noon Friday, the time set by the judge for Lee's release after more than eight months behind bars.

U.S. District Judge James Parker on Tuesday proposed what he described as ''highly restrictive terms'' for Lee's release, including a search of the home, and ordered prosecution and defense attorneys to negotiate the final conditions.

The final conditions were not released, but the judge's proposal included limits on communication, travel, home visits and required removal of all electronic communication devices except for one telephone line. Lee would have to remain under electronic monitoring except when being driven by his lawyers to court or to work on his defense. His mail also could be inspected. Lee's neighbors are to serve as his custodians during his release.

Parker said Lee should be freed by Friday on $1 million bail, barring an appeal by the government. An appeal could delay Lee's release, but there was no word on any such filing by Thursday afternoon.

Lee has been jailed since Dec. 10 on charges involving the alleged transfer of restricted data about nuclear weapons to unsecure computers and tape at the lab.

On Thursday, the area around Lee's home was cordoned off by police cars and cones. About 10 people were going in and out of the home, some carrying clipboards.

''We don't expect them to find anything in this house,'' said one of Lee's attorneys, Nancy Hollander of Albuquerque.

One of Lee's neighbors, Nora Aubert, said: ''I want it to be over. I want them to release him or do something.

---- new york

Inspector General Condemns Nuclear Agency Safety Evaluation
NRC Safety Evaluation at Indian Point 2 Flawed

Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project
Aug. 31, 2000
From: "Noel Petrie" <npetrie@citizen.org>

WASHINGTON, D.C. The inspector general of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has released a report condemning the agency's handling of safety problems at the Indian Point 2 nuclear reactor in Buchanan, N.Y., approximately 25 miles from New York City. The failure of both the NRC and the plant's owner, Consolidated Edison, to adequately review information in their possession resulted in the February steam generator tube rupture that released radiation into the environment.

According to the report released today:

The flaw in the steam generator tube that caused the February 2000 accident at Indian Point 2 was nearly 100 percent through the tube wall in 1997.

NRC senior engineers failed to review the documents submitted by Consolidated Edison, including the 1997 steam generator tube inspection report.

The NRC and Consolidated Edison could have identified the flaw and thus avoided the accident if someone with technical expertise had evaluated the 1997 inspection findings.

Despite the fact that the NRC's junior engineer had concerns regarding the steam generator tubes that were not addressed by Consolidated Edison's license amendment request, the NRC failed to ask follow-up questions because a second round of questioning was "frowned upon" by NRC senior management.

"The NRC is in regulatory retreat and has shirked its responsibility to protect the health and safety of the people of New York," said James Riccio, senior policy analyst with Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy & Environment Program. "The NRC's senior management needs to be held accountable. They are too concerned with allowing nuclear reactors to run, and as a result, safety has been sacrificed."

-------- ohio

Congressman asks Energy Secretary to settle ownership question

Akron Beacon-Journal
Thursday, August 31, 2000
http://www.ohio.com/bj/news/ohio/docs/005122.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Rep. Ted Strickland on Thursday asked Energy Secretary Bill Richardson to settle a dispute over who owns the coolant used at southern Ohio's uranium enrichment plant.

Strickland, the Democrat whose district includes the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, has joined the plant's major union in declaring that the valuable refrigerant should be left behind when operations are shut down in 2002.

Strickland and the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union say the Freon-like coolant should be left behind under contract terms requiring the plant to be returned in operating condition.

In a letter sent Thursday, the congressman asked Richardson to agree with that interpretation of the contract.

U.S. Enrichment Corp., which operates the government-owned plant, told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the company owns the coolant.

-------- tennessee

BWX Technologies Wins DOE Contract At Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant

Excite News
August 31, 2000
http://news.excite.com/news/bw/000831/va-mcdermott

LYNCHBURG, Va. (BUSINESS WIRE) - A joint venture led by BWX Technologies, Inc. (BWXT), a subsidiary of McDermott International, Inc. (NYSE:MDR), has been awarded a $2.5 billion contract by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to oversee management and operations at the Y-12 Plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The five-year contract at Y-12 begins November 1, 2000. The BWXT Y-12 team is a joint venture of BWXT and Bechtel National, Inc. (BNI).

"We are very pleased by the confidence DOE has placed in us," said Dr. E. Allen Womack, president of BWXT. "We are committed to providing leadership at Y-12 worthy of the vital role this facility has in the nation's defense."

BWXT, in addition to being the single supplier of nuclear fuel and reactor components to the U.S. Navy, is the sole source of research and test reactor fuel for DOE's National Laboratories, including the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) in Oak Ridge. From its Naval Nuclear Fuel Division in Lynchburg, Virginia, BWXT performs enriched uranium processing and recovery operations comparable to the Oak Ridge Y-12 operations. The company also is active in the management and operation of several other DOE nuclear sites.

McDermott International, Inc. and its subsidiaries manufacture steam-generating equipment, environmental equipment, and products for the U.S. Government. They also provide engineering and construction services for industrial, utility, and hydrocarbon processing facilities, and to the offshore oil and natural gas industry.

Contact: BWXT/Lynchburg Ron Hite, 804/522-5937 or McDermott/New Orleans Pierre DeGruy, 504/587-6451 (Media Relations) Don Washington, 504/587-4080 (Investor Relations) http://www.mcdermott.com

----

McDermott Gets Five-Year, $2.5 Billion Contract to Run Weapons Plant

Excite News
August 31, 2000
http://news.excite.com/news/dj/000831/20000831-000839

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. -(Dow Jones)- The Department of Energy has awarded a $2.5 billion, five-year contract to BWX Technologies Inc., a unit of McDermott International Inc., and Bechtel National Inc. to manage and operate the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant.

The decision came only three days after the agency announced it was seeking a record $1 million fine against current Y-12 manager Lockheed Martin Corp.'s (LMT) Lockheed Martin Energy Systems for a series of safety violations leading up to a chemical explosion in December.

McDermott's (MDR) BWX team will assume full responsiblity of the plant on Nov. 1, the Associated Press reported.

Y-12's primary mission is making parts for the MX missile system and storing highly enriched uranium for the nation's nuclear weapons complex. The plant employs about 4,000 workers and has a budget of $500 million a year.

Lockheed Martin, which has managed the plant since 1984, was cited by the Energy Department Monday for a Dec. 8 chemical explosion that injured 11 workers. The contractor also was sanctioned for improper handling of nuclear materials and other safety violations that led to a government-ordered "stand down" of the plant on Nov. 5.

The Energy Department noted some problems were identified by the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board as early as 1994, but that penalties were deferred then because of the contractor's promises to make improvements.

Lockheed spokeswoman Dianne Knippel told the Associated Press Monday that company officials didn't think the fine would hurt the company's chances of getting a new Y-12 contract.

In April, Lockheed Martin lost a similar $2.5 billion, five-year contract to the University of Tennessee and Battelle Memorial Institute Inc. to manage the 4,500-employee Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the AP reported. The lab had also been run by Lockheed Martin or its corporate predecessors since 1984.

-------- washington

Sharp discord at hearing greets plan to restart Hanford test reactor

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Thursday, August 31, 2000
By LISA STIFFLER SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
mailto:lisastiffler@seattle-pi.com
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/local/flux31.shtml

There was no common ground at a public hearing last night over restarting a Hanford Nuclear Reservation reactor.

The room at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center was virtually divided between those who favor exploring alternative forms of energy and producing priceless isotopes for cancer treatment and those opposed to starting the reactor and creating more radioactive waste on the contaminated site.

Each side accused the other of lying, highlighting the confusion surrounding the issue.

This was the third of four recent public hearings in the Pacific Northwest hosted by the Department of Energy.

Built in the 1970s, the Fast Flux Test Facility, or FFTF, was used by researchers to produce radioisotopes for medical use, to test nuclear materials and to study reactor safety.

The Department of Energy shut down the facility in 1993. Last year, it began looking at the idea of using the facility for civilian research and for developing and producing isotopes.

The agency is considering six options:

It could keep the reactor on standby, which would cost about $50 million a year. It could permanently shut down the reactor, which would cost $281 million. It could open it with existing facilities for about $320 million plus $15 million annually. It could spend more than $382 million to restart the reactor and then spend an additional $82 million a year to operate it. Or it could spend $1.5 billion on a new accelerator -- another source of isotope production -- or $700 million on a new reactor.

A decision will be made in December.

During last night's forum, Nick Licata, a Seattle city councilman, raised concerns about transporting plutonium through the Puget Sound region and chastised the Department of Energy for an incomplete environmental impact statement on restarting the reactor.

Suzanne Heaston, a regional representative for Republican Sen. Slade Gorton, read a letter in which Gorton said he supports restarting the facility.

"Developments are thwarted and treatments are suppressed because our country lacks the production capability . . . of life-saving isotopes that are necessary to conduct research and treat our (cancer) patients," Gorton said in the statement.

Isotope production, however, is only one of the reasons the Energy Department wants to restart the reactor. The agency also wants to produce plutonium-238 for space missions and to conduct nuclear research.

In a report released in April, a subcommittee studying whether to restart the reactor found that "production of radioisotopes on the FFTF is not justified as a primary mission," said Richard Reba, a University of Chicago professor who chaired the committee.

He said cancer research is a project that has been promoted by the facility for years, but that there is no data to support this use.

"It's all theoretical as far as we can tell," Reba said.

Henry Kramer, also a member of the subcommittee examining isotope use, said there is already a surplus of isotopes currently used for medical treatment.

Some have proposed that the Hanford reactor could be used to make new isotopes for research. Kramer, who used to conduct nuclear medicine research, said he wouldn't embark on a project for which there was only one supplier of a unique isotope.

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

On Crucial Nuclear Shield Work, It's Military vs. Diplomats

International Herald Tribune
Paris, Thursday, August 31, 2000
By Steven Lee Myers New York Times Service
http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/THU/FPAGE/missile.2.html

WASHINGTON - The Defense Department and the State Department are sharply divided over how far work on a limited missile-defense system could proceed before the United States would be required to give formal notice to Moscow that Washington was moving to violate a crucial arms-control treaty.

Officials in the Pentagon and State Department said that disagreement within the administration was a primary reason for Defense Secretary William Cohen's delay in making a recommendation to President Bill Clinton this month on whether to proceed.

The debate has focused on the point at which construction of the missile system, which involves elaborate radar installations, would violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, which lies at the heart of the arms controls built up over the Cold War.

The Russians have steadfastly refused any changes in the treaty to permit elaborate new radar installations, fearing that these would open the door to a larger system that would undermine the value of Russia's nuclear force.

Officials from the agencies said Mr. Cohen was wrong when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month that administration lawyers had reached a consensus.

Mr. Cohen said then there was agreement that building a radar station on an Aleutian island could continue until 2002 before the United States would violate the treaty.

That represents just one of three interpretations drafted by administration lawyers, the officials said. But senior policymakers at the State Department and the National Security Council are strongly opposed, the officials added.

The opponents contend that this interpretation would be overly aggressive and unilateral and would surely anger the Russians and U.S. allies in Europe.

A spokesman for the Pentagon, Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, said Mr. Cohen and his aides declined to discuss his Senate testimony. Mr. Cohen is the administration's leading advocate of building missile defenses.

Aides to President Clinton declined to discuss the internal debate but confirmed that officials were considering several options and that Mr. Cohen's statement last month did not reflect a consensus view.

''It is true that there are a number of options available to the president,'' said P.J. Crowley, a National Security Council spokesman.

The question of when the United States would violate the treaty is a pivotal one that Mr. Clinton has to answer before approving even limited steps to begin building a radar station on Shemya Island, at the western edge of the Aleutians. The Russians would be certain to object to the United States and to American allies.

Washington officials' interpretations vary on when in the construction process the treaty violation would occur.

Mr. Cohen is widely expected to make a recommendation to Mr. Clinton in a few weeks on how to proceed. But the officials said the legal questions could delay a decision to move ahead.

The division is so sharp that Mr. Clinton may be forced to choose among conflicting advice, if he decides to move ahead at all.

''This is really squishy business,'' a senior military officer said. ''Smart lawyers can disagree.''

Under the Pentagon timetable, the first contracts for the Shemya radar work, as well as a site for the missile interceptors, would have to be awarded this year so that work could begin next spring and a working system could be in place within the goal of 2005. Intelligence officials have warned that the United States could face a threat by then from some countries, including North Korea.

There is universal agreement that building the radar would amount to a violation of the treaty. The administration had hoped to negotiate amendments with the Russians that would permit the limited system now being developed, but Moscow has refused.

Officials previously said that Mr. Clinton would decide this summer whether to deploy a system. But with the Russians objecting, the officials have since signaled that Mr. Clinton simply planned to decide whether to move ahead with an initial development. He would leave a final decision to deploy - and thereby break the treaty - to the next administration.

That is why the legal interpretations have become so important, because each interpretation sets a different moment when Mr. Clinton must, as the treaty requires, give the Russians six months of notice about American intent to withdraw from the anti-missile restrictions.

At the White House's request, lawyers from the State Department and the Pentagon have drafted the three legal interpretations of the treaty that, in their view, would allow some work to begin without breaking the treaty.

In his appearance before the Armed Services Committee on July 2, Mr. Cohen said that administration lawyers had reached a consensus that the United States would not violate the treaty until workers laid down rails that would support the radar itself at the station.

---

U.S. Envoy Defends Proposed Space Defense System

Yahoo News
Thursday August 31 8:04 AM ET updated 3:42 PM ET Aug 31
By Stephanie Nebehay
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000831/pl/arms_space_dc_1.html
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/08/31/arms.usa.space.reut/index.html

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States on Thursday defended the national missile defense (NMD) system being considered by President Clinton, saying it would be a ``far cry from the 'weaponization' of outer space.''

U.S. disarmament ambassador Robert Gray told the U.N. Conference on Disarmament in a speech that the proposed anti-missile shield was not directed at Russia or China, but rather intended to protect the United States from a limited ballistic attack by certain hostile states.

Defense Secretary William Cohen is to make his recommendation shortly to President Clinton on whether to proceed with building an anti-missile radar in Alaska.

Both China and Russia bitterly oppose the $60 billion system, which they say would shatter the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. They fear that the shield, to be deployed by 2005, could also rapidly evolve to threaten their nuclear arsenals.

But Gray told the 66-state body in Geneva: ``A system capable of defending against a large-scale attack with sophisticated weapons would be both qualitatively and quantitatively different from that which the U.S. is considering.''

North Korea And Iran

U.S. officials say the system would be geared to shoot down missiles from ``rogue'' states such as North Korea and Iran.

The U.S. envoy said the weapons, interceptors, launchers and radar being considered for the shield were terrestrial, not space-based. Satellites would be used only to provide early warning and data on missile threats. ''This is a far cry from the 'weaponization' of outer space,'' Gray declared. ``There is no arms race in outer space -- rather, there is unprecedented cooperation.''

He added: ``Satellites belonging to a number of countries here, including those strongly supporting outer space negotiations, already orbit the earth by the dozens, providing various types of data for military purposes to ships, aircraft and ground forces worldwide. Should we prohibit these, too?''

The United States and Russia have been discussing how to ''preserve and strengthen'' the ABM, according to Grey. The 1972 pact bans either country from having a national missile defense.

``During these discussions, the United States has proposed modifications to the treaty that would permit the deployment of the initial NMD systems. The United States remains firmly committed to these bilateral discussions,'' the U.S. envoy said.

Arms Control Talks

The latest round of confidential talks between senior U.S. and Russian arms control negotiations on a START-3 treaty and related ABM issues took place in Geneva two weeks ago.

``The U.S. remains committed to the arms control and disarmament process and sees no contradiction between that process and pursuit of a limited NMD system,'' Gray said.

``The ABM treaty is an integral part of our mutual efforts with the Russian Federation to reduce offensive nuclear arms.''

Diplomats say that the United States is the lone member of the world's only multilateral arms control negotiating body to oppose formal negotiations on preventing an arms race in space.

Gray reiterated that the U.S. delegation could agree to their establishment of a committee to ``discuss'' outer space issues.

But he accused other states of using a lack of consensus on outer space as a pretext to stall negotiations to halt production of nuclear bomb-making fissile material -- plutonium and highly-enriched uranium -- widely seen as the next step in global nuclear disarmament. U.S. officials in Geneva named the states as Russia, China and Pakistan.

---

U.S. Seeks To Allay Nuclear Fears

Excite News
August 31, 2000
ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, Associated Press Writer
http://news.excite.com/news/ap/000831/17/disarmament

GENEVA (AP) - The United States said on Thursday that its planned missile defense shield is not directed against China or Russia, and denied that it will set off an arms race in space.

Ambassador Robert T. Grey, head of the U.S. delegation to the 66-nation Conference on Disarmament, told the grouping the defense system being considered would defend the United States against "certain countries of concern."

U.S. officials have said such nations include North Korea and Iraq.

Grey said concerns about the proposed missile defense shield were keeping the conference from tackling more pressing concerns such as the need to ban fissionable materials - plutonium and enriched uranium - that are used to make nuclear weapons.

"There is no arms race in outer space," he said.

Grey said U.S. consideration of a limited missile defense system has nothing to do with an arms race in outer space.

"It would use satellites only to provide early warning and data on threat missiles," Grey said. "This is a far cry from the 'weaponization' of outer space."

Gray said the United States remains committed to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, even though it wants to make changes in it.

The United States has been trying to persuade Russia to amend the ABM treaty to permit deployment of a shield against limited missile launches by "rogue" nations.

The Russians have been reluctant to change the ABM treaty on grounds that it is a keystone of the global effort to reduce the risk of nuclear war.

---

U.S. Seeks To Allay Nuclear Fears

Associated Press
August 31, 2000 Filed at 5:46 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Disarmament.html

GENEVA (AP) -- The United States said on Thursday that its planned missile defense shield is not directed against China or Russia, and denied that it will set off an arms race in space.

Ambassador Robert T. Grey, head of the U.S. delegation to the 66-nation Conference on Disarmament, told the grouping the defense system being considered would defend the United States against ``certain countries of concern.''

U.S. officials have said such nations include North Korea and Iraq.

Grey said concerns about the proposed missile defense shield were keeping the conference from tackling more pressing concerns such as the need to ban fissionable materials -- plutonium and enriched uranium -- that are used to make nuclear weapons.

``There is no arms race in outer space,'' he said.

Grey said U.S. consideration of a limited missile defense system has nothing to do with an arms race in outer space.

``It would use satellites only to provide early warning and data on threat missiles,'' Grey said. ``This is a far cry from the 'weaponization' of outer space.''

Gray said the United States remains committed to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, even though it wants to make changes in it.

The United States has been trying to persuade Russia to amend the ABM treaty to permit deployment of a shield against limited missile launches by ``rogue'' nations.

The Russians have been reluctant to change the ABM treaty on grounds that it is a keystone of the global effort to reduce the risk of nuclear war.

---

Clinton defers missile defense decision

USA Today
09/01/00
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsfri01.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Clinton, saying he lacks ''absolute confidence'' in existing technology, announced Friday he would leave to his successor a decision on whether to deploy a national missile defense system.

In a speech at Georgetown University, Clinton said he would not authorize the Pentagon to award contracts to begin building a new high-powered radar in the Aleutian Islands. By putting off this initial step, Clinton effectively pushed the decision on finishing the project into the next presidency.

''We should use this time to ensure that NMD (national missile defense), if deployed, would actually enhance our overall national security,'' Clinton said.

Clinton said it is still possible for the system to be operational by 2006 or 2007. It was initially targeted for completion in 2005.

Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee, has been noncommittal on whether there should be a national missile defense, saying he supported continued development work. Gore's Republican opponent, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, has said he would push hard for a missile defense even more robust than the one currently on the drawing board.

The decision not to authorize the radar in the Aleutians came in the face of strong objections from Russia and reservations among many Democrats in Congress. The radar is an essential element of the missile defense system because it would track incoming warheads.

Work on the project will go forward with additional testing of a ''kill vehicle'' to destroy warheads in flight and development of other key components, including a new booster rocket.

In his speech, Clinton said he was not assured that the United States has ''enough confidence in the technology'' to move forward with the project now. He asked Defense Secretary William Cohen to ''continue a robust program of testing'' to make sure the system will work properly.

''A national missile defense, if deployed, should be part of a larger strategy to preserve and enhance the peace, strength and security we now enjoy, and to build an even safer world,'' Clinton said. ''I have tried to maximize the ability of the next president to pursue that strategy.''

Clinton said his decision gives the United States time to work with the Russians to overcome their opposition to the system, and to court the support of U.S. allies.

''The United States and Russia still have nuclear arsenals that can devastate each other, and this is still a period of transition in our relationship,'' Clinton said. ''Therefore, for them, as well as for us, maintaining strategic stability increases trust and confidence on both sides; it reduces the risk of confrontation; it makes it possible to build an even better partnership, and an even safer world.''

Awarding the contracts this fall would have allowed the radar construction to begin next spring - a timetable that, on paper at least, would have kept the missile defense project on track to completion by 2005.

By putting off the initial step, Clinton in effect has pushed back the 2005 target date by at least one year.

In previous public comments on missile defense, Clinton had never given a clear signal of what course he would take. In a May 31 news conference he seemed to indicate that missile defense was justified by a growing threat, not from Russia or China but from so-called ''rogue states'' like North Korea.

''Is there a threat which is new and different? The answer to that, it seems to me, is plainly, yes, there is, and there will be one.''

The proposed national missile defense, projected to cost about $60 billion, is designed to protect all 50 states against attack by a limited number of long-range ballistic missiles from North Korea or the Middle East. It is a scaled-down version of the global missile defense pursued during the Reagan administration that came to be known as Star Wars for its focus space-based lasers and other exotic weaponry.

In weighing his decision, Clinton faced conflicting pressures. Republicans in Congress have pushed hard for years for a national missile defense, and last year they gained passage of a law requiring the Pentagon to deploy such a system as soon as ''technologically feasible.'' The anti-missile testing program, however, has suffered numerous technological setbacks, including a failed flight test in July.

Clinton based his decision on recommendations from Cohen, who is perhaps the administration's strongest proponent of national missile defense, as well as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the president's national security adviser, Sandy Berger. Cohen had not publicly discussed his recommendation, but he had indicated recently that he saw reason to consider whether going forward now might put undue pressure on Clinton's successor to affirm or reverse the decision.

Putting off the start of construction of the X-band radar on Shemya Island in the Aleutians gives the Clinton administration and its successor more time to negotiate a deal on the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty. The 1972 treaty prohibits a national defense against ballistic missiles, and the administration has tried unsuccessfully to persuade Moscow to amend the treaty to allow a limited defensive system.

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A New U.S. Nuclear Weapon?

Center for Defense Information
The Weekly Defense Monitor, August 31, 2000
by: Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll, Jr. USN (Ret.), Vice President ecarroll@cdi.org

A number of sources are now generating arguments in favor of the United States developing a new low-yield nuclear weapon with earth penetrating capability. As always in nuclear matters, there is more going on in the Pentagon, Congress, White House, and U.S. nuclear laboratories than is revealed in this rather bland proposal for one new nuclear weapon design. An extract from a commentary which appeared in the Los Angeles Times on July 14 provides some context.

"The U.S. Senate is preparing to take a major step to abandon all pretense that U.S. nuclear forces exist only to deter war. An amendment to the pending Defense Authorization Act for 2001 would lead to the development of a new nuclear weapon designed expressly for fighting."

The new weapon is to be a low-yield device with earth penetration capability, intended to destroy deeply buried bunkers. Paul Robinson, Director of Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM, which would build the device, is a strong advocate of it. Robinson apparently favors a new, low-yield device because U.S. leaders presumably would be more ready to employ smaller weapons than to use the larger city- and silo-busting high-yield weapons in our current arsenal. He considers large weapons "self-deterring."

Not only is the Senate's action a throw-back to those unlamented days of preparing to prevail in nuclear war, but it also is a flagrant repudiation of a solemn pledge the United States made in May at the Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York. We joined with Britain, France, China and Russia in a commitment to accomplish the total elimination of nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament.

Regrettably, this action is merely one more blatant signal that the United States is determined to pursue nuclear dominance indefinitely through enhanced readiness to fight a nuclear war. Additional preparations include the decision to resume production of tritium and plutonium pits for thermonuclear weapons, continued subcritical explosive testing in Nevada, and rejection of Russian proposals to reduce nuclear numbers 75% below START II levels. The thinking behind all of this was revealed by then Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre when he said in March: "Nuclear weapons are still the foundation of a superpower...and that will never change."

It is the conflict between the true believers in U.S. nuclear supremacy and America's obligation to work for nuclear disarmament that should stimulate resistance to producing a new, "more usable" nuclear weapon. The low yield strategy must be blocked or our nation will affirm its adherence to a nuclear warfighting doctrine and thereby weaken the entire global non-proliferation regime. A new weapon design would also strengthen the voices of those in our nuclear laboratories who continue to agitate for resumption of explosive nuclear testing.

In short, design and production of a new warfighting weapon would weaken every element of restraint embodied in current restrictions on U.S. nuclear programs. At the same time, coupled with U.S. failure to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and plans to deploy a National Missile Defense system, it would send a clear signal to the world that America is actively preparing for nuclear war. This signal might well ignite a new nuclear arms race and end non-proliferation efforts globally. Far from increasing national security, a new weapon would imperil the safety of all Americans.

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Low-Yield Nuke Bombs Endorsed

Tuesday, August 15, 2000
By Ian Hoffman Journal Staff Writer
http://www.abqjournal.com/scitech/101181scitech08-15-00.htm

New and precise, low-yield nuclear weapons - perhaps built on designs so simple and rugged they don't require testing - could aid the United States in attacking a range of modern targets, a U.S. weapons executive says.

Los Alamos' chief weaponeer, Stephen M. Younger, envisions a flexible U.S. strategic arsenal of conventional and nuclear weapons of low and high yields. He suggests in a recent paper that accurate, low-yield nuclear weapons could be better suited to attacking buried, concrete bunkers and mobile missiles than today's U.S. arsenal of silo-busting weapons.

A rogue nation threatening biological or chemical attack against the United States or its allies might view a massive, ballistic missile attack "as overkill and hence not a realistic threat."

"Such a reliance on high-yield strategic weapons could lead to 'self-deterrence,' a limitation on strategic options and consequently a lessening of the stabilizing effect of nuclear weapons," Younger writes in "Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century," a paper invited by the Pentagon's ranking defense scientist.

Critics say Younger's proposals are the latest in a persistent lobbying campaign by some nuclear weaponeers for work on new bombs and warheads, theoretically made usable by limited damage and radioactive fallout.

"This is all premised on the notion that you can cross the nuclear threshold if you don't make too much of a mess," said physicist Frank von Hippel, a Princeton University professor of public and international affairs.

"This isn't deterrence," von Hippel said. "This is trying to use these things."

That alarms disarmament advocates.

"Right now there is a global norm against use of nuclear weapons," said Greg Mello, head of the Los Alamos Study Group in Santa Fe. "To use a nuclear weapon would martyr the enemy, give cover to (nuclear) proliferants and open us to attack by weapons of mass destruction."

Younger declined interview requests but said through a spokesman that he intended his paper to provoke a discussion of the role of nuclear weapons.

The Persian Gulf War and fear of Saddam Hussein's biological and chemical arsenals fueled a round of low-yield weapons research in the early 1990s, but the effort collided with a moratorium on nuclear testing and lackluster political support. Congress added an extra barrier in 1994 by forbidding engineering work on nuclear weapons detonating at less than the equivalent of 5,000 tons of TNT. Younger's paper coincides with a recent push by conservative lawmakers to bend and perhaps break that six-year prohibition.

A proposed Senate defense bill would overrule legal objections at the U.S. Department of Energy, based on the 1994 law, to research into nuclear weapons to attack hardened command or weapons bunkers buried under hundreds of feet of rock. Colorado Republican Wayne Allard sponsored a provision calling on the Energy and Defense departments to report those targets and ways to destroy them by July.

Thick-walled concrete bunkers and weapons factories buried under mountains, as suspected in Russia and Libya, could be immune even to high-yield nuclear weapons, says Younger, Los Alamos' associate lab director for nuclear weapons.

An array of other targets could be vulnerable to simple but high-precision nuclear weapons exploding at five kilotons - roughly a third the power of the Hiroshima bomb - or less, he says.

Current weapons could be modified to reduce their yield or tailor their radiation effects, for example, to destroy electronics or biological agents, Younger says, but those changes could be expensive and require nuclear testing.

Younger suggests that fielding precision low-yield weapons could be less expensive and easier than trying to maintain the full, current arsenal of sophisticated, high-yield weapons at a time when weapons designers are leaving the nation's weapons labs.

"We could use gun-assembled or other simple, rugged designs that might be maintained with high confidence without nuclear testing," Younger wrote. "Such designs would require a significantly smaller industrial plant for their maintenance than our current forces. ... Finally, simpler weapons might be maintained with higher confidence for longer periods by a weapons staff that has little or no direct experience with nuclear testing."

Los Alamos' Hiroshima bomb, Little Boy, was a gun-assembled design. A charge of high explosive blasts two chunks of enriched uranium together to create a runaway chain reaction. Scientists were so sure of its operation that the Little Boy model was never tested before it became the first nuclear weapon used in war.

Most weapons designers who exploded their handiwork before a 1992 end to U.S. nuclear testing are expected to retire in the next 20 years.

Younger's ideas "express the ongoing crisis of legitimacy that the laboratory suffers," Mello said. "There is a fairly desperate attempt to stay in nuclear-weapons work, to be legitimate and attractive to new hires."

Younger argues that the time to open the debate on the future of U.S. strategic forces is now, given the typical 10-year or greater delay in fielding new weapons technologies.

"The time is right for a fundamental rethinking of the role of nuclear weapons in national security," he writes. "Prudent thought given to the role of nuclear weapons in the 21st century will reap handsome dividends for the national security of the United States and the stability of the whole world."

Arms-control advocates wince at Younger's ideas but say the debate is overdue.

"It would be great if this was a first word in a discussion of what nuclear weapons are really for," von Hippel said.

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Mini-Nukes: A Threat to Global Security

8/16/00
FCNL News
http://www.fcnl.org/issues/arm/sup/min_threat800.htm

Deeply-buried in the Senate-passed version of the FY 2001 defense authorization bill (S 2549), is a short section (Sec. 1018) that calls for the Departments of Defense and Energy to conduct a study. Sound innocuous? Read on.

Sec. 1018, introduced by Sens. Warner (VA) and Allard (CO), calls for a study on "the defeat of hardened and deeply buried targets" and includes "any limited research and development that may be necessary to conduct such assessment." The targets include underground bunkers. The kind of weapon that could burrow into the ground to destroy such a bunker would likely contain low-yield nuclear warheads. These weapons are known as mini-nukes.

Although Sec. 1018 does not explicitly mention nuclear weapons, the fact that it calls for Dept. of Energy (DOE) involvement is significant. The DOE does research on nuclear, but not conventional weapons. Officials at U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories have, for several years, argued in favor of the development of low-yield nuclear warheads. They argue that the U.S. needs a weapon which can, on the one hand, destroy a bunker built into solid rock, a hundred yards or more underground, but which will, on the other hand, spare populated areas located near the bunker.

Sec. 1018 would overturn mini-nuke ban

In 1993, former Rep. Furse (OR) and Rep. Spratt (SC) succeeded in attaching to the FY94 defense authorization bill a provision that prohibits nuclear laboratories from conducting research and development work that could lead to a precision, low-yield nuclear weapon. This provision has, thus, blocked the development of mini-nukes.

The Warner-Allard provision in the FY01 defense authorization bill would not explicitly override the Furse-Spratt provision, but it would take the first step in that direction. If the proposed study were to conclude that mini-nukes were feasible, the next step would be to authorize their development.

Mini-nukes could restart the nuclear arms race

Since mini-nukes would be a new nuclear weapon, testing would be necessary. If the U.S. were to break the global moratorium on nuclear test explosions, the moratorium would collapse. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) would almost certainly dissolve. Other nuclear powers would begin nuclear testing. Pressures from non-nuclear countries could spell the end of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The world could, once again, find itself at the brink of nuclear holocaust.

Is this just alarmist hype? We do not think so.

The proponents of mini-nukes argue that such weapons are needed in order to destroy the weapons of mass destruction stockpiled by Saddam Hussein. Proponents believe that mini-nukes will, thus, help to increase the United States' and global security.

We believe that they are missing the bigger picture. The first line of defense against nuclear weapons, for the U.S. and the world, is the fabric of non-proliferation and test ban agreements that the international community has been weaving. Any strategy that destroys those international agreements will increase, not reduce, nuclear dangers.

Can mini-nukes be derailed?

The Senate passed the FY01 defense authorization bill with the mini-nukes proposal on July 13. However, the House-passed version of the FY01 defense authorization bill does not contain this provision. Thus, it will be up to the conference committee to decide whether to retain or drop the Warner-Allard provision. The conference committee, composed of senior members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, will be meeting in September. The final version of the FY01 defense authorization bill will then go back to the House and Senate for approval.

You Can Help

Please contact your members of Congress before September 5. If they are members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, urge them to delete the Warner-Allard provision (Section 1018, "Report on the Defeat of Hardened and Deeply Buried Targets") from the final conference report. If your members are not on the Armed Services Committees, ask them to convey your message to committee members. (Committee members may be found here on FCNL's web site and in the FCNL Washington Newsletter Directory for the 106th Congress, published in May 1999.)

Use FCNL's web site to make letter-writing easier. Start with the sample letter to members of Congress posted in our Legislative Action Center, personalize the language, then send your message as an email directly from our site or print it out and mail it.

This article was originally published in the July/August 2000 FCNL Washington Newsletter.

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8/16/00

Warner-Allard Provision: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001, S. 2549 [As adopted by the Senate Armed Services Committee]

http://www.fcnl.org/issues/arm/sup/min_sec1018.htm

SEC. 1018. Report on the Defeat of Hardened and Deeply Buried Targets.

(a) STUDY- The Secretary of Defense shall, in conjunction with the Secretary of Energy, conduct a study relating to the defeat of hardened and deeply buried targets. Under the study, the Secretaries shall--

(1) review the requirements and current and future plans for hardened and deeply buried targets and agent defeat weapons concepts and activities;

(2) determine if those plans adequately address all requirements;

(3) identify potential future hardened and deeply buried targets and other related targets;

(4) determine what resources and research and development efforts are needed to defeat the targets identified under paragraph (3) as well as other agent defeat requirements;

(5) assess both current and future options to defeat hardened and deeply buried targets as well as agent defeat weapons concepts, including any limited research and development that may be necessary to conduct such assessment; and

(6) determine the capability and cost of each option.

(b) REPORT- The Secretary of Defense shall submit to the congressional defense committees a report on the results of the study required by subsection (a) not later than July 1, 2001.

National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 Report [To Accompany S. 2549], Senate Report 106-292

Study and report on hardened and deeply buried targets (sec. 1018)

The committee recommends a provision that would require the Secretaries of Defense and Energy to assess requirements and options for defeating hardened and deeply buried targets. The provision would expressly authorize the Department of Energy (DOE) to conduct any limited research and development that may be necessary to complete such assessments.

The committee notes that a recent legal interpretation of existing law raised questions regarding whether DOE could participate in or otherwise support certain Department of Defense (DOD) studies and options assessments for defeating hardened and deeply buried targets. This provision removes any uncertainty and expressly allows DOE to assist the DOD with a review of these targets and the options for defeating such targets. The committee believes that DOE should provide information and all other assistance required to help DOD make informed decisions on whether: (1) to proceed with a new method of defeating hardened and deeply buried targets and; (2) to seek any necessary modifications to existing law.

The committee is concerned that the ability to defeat hardened and deeply buried targets will continue to be a significant challenge for the foreseeable future.

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We Are Taking a Detour From Deterrence

By Eugene J. Carroll Jr
Friday, July 14, 2000
Los Angeles Times

http://www.cdi.org/issues/proliferation/carroll71400.html The U.S. Senate is preparing to take a major step to abandon all pretense that U.S. nuclear forces exist only to deter war. An amendment to the pending Defense Authorization Act for 2001 would lead to the development of a new nuclear weapon designed expressly for fighting.

The new weapon is to be a low-yield device with earth penetration capability, intended to destroy deeply buried bunkers. Paul Robinson, director of Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., which would build the device, is a strong advocate of it. Robinson apparently favors a new, low-yield device because U.S. leaders presumably would be more ready to employ smaller weapons than to use the larger city- and silo-busting high-yield weapons in our current arsenal. He considers large weapons "self-deterring."

This thinking is an eerie throwback to the days of the Cold War, when weapon designers provided the U.S. military with an array of explosives to "prevail" in a survivable limited nuclear war. Among the 70,000 U.S. nuclear weapons produced during the Cold War were suitcase bombs, neutron bombs, torpedoes, depth charges, artillery shells, air-to-air missiles and anti-tank rockets. The laboratories were like nuclear ice cream factories, churning out the flavor of the day to meet the latest craving of the customers.

Not only is the Senate's action a throwback to those unlamented days of preparing to prevail in nuclear war, but it also is a flagrant repudiation of a solemn pledge the United States made in May at the Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York. We joined with Britain, France, China and Russia in a commitment to accomplish the total elimination of nuclear arsenals, leading to nuclear disarmament.

Nothing could be more contrary to that commitment than a congressional order to develop a new, more usable nuclear weapon. Regrettably, this action is merely one more blatant signal that the United States is determined to pursue nuclear dominance indefinitely through enhanced readiness to fight a nuclear war. Additional preparations include the decision to resume production of tritium and plutonium pits for thermonuclear weapons, continued subcritical explosive testing in Nevada and rejection of Russian proposals to reduce nuclear numbers 75% below START II levels. The thinking behind all of this was revealed by then-Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre when he said in March: "Nuclear weapons are still the foundation of a superpower . . . and that will never change."

All of these actions are supportive of President Clinton's signing in 1997 of a directive whose overarching principle was that nuclear weapons would remain the cornerstone of U.S. security indefinitely. Far from emphasizing deterrence, the document reasserted the need for all three arms of the U.S. triad of nuclear forces--intercontinental ballistic missiles, sea-launched ballistic missiles and long-range strategic bombers. It declared the U.S. right to make first use of nuclear weapons and to target not only Russia and China but also any prospective nuclear states that might threaten U.S. interests in the future.

Authoritative sources subsequently have revealed that the U.S. has expanded the list of worldwide targets planned for destruction under the new doctrine. In short, with plans for new nuclear weapons, Congress is joining the White House in putting into place all of the elements of a war-fighting strategy. There is no way a deterrent strategy can justify or rationalize developing new nuclear weapons to make them more usable for fighting purposes. This is the ultimate antithesis of deterrence and a total abrogation of the legal and moral obligation of the U.S. to work for the elimination of all nuclear weapons.

Retired Navy Rear Admiral Eugene J. Carroll Jr. Is Vice President of the Center for Defense Information in Washington.

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The Warner-Allard FY01 Defense Authorization Provision:
Mini-Nukes and the Nuclear Test Moratorium July 2000

7/27/00
http://www.fcnl.org/issues/arm/sup/tesban_mininuke.htm

Senators Warner (VA) and Allard (CO) placed an apparently innocuous research and study provision (Section 1018) in the Senate defense authorization bill (S2549), which calls for the Defense and Energy Departments to conduct a study on "the defeat of hardened and deeply buried targets...including any limited research and development that may be necessary to conduct such assessment." This refers to weapons that are able to burrow deep into the ground to destroy buried targets such as bunkers. These weapons would likely contain low-yield nuclear warheads, or "mini-nukes."

While the provision does not specifically mention nuclear weapons, the Energy Department develops only nuclear, not conventional weapons. For several years, officials at the nuclear weapons labs have argued for new low-yield nuclear warheads, or "mini-nukes." Developing this new weapon will require resumption of U.S. nuclear testing. The Washington Post, "Senate Bill Requires Study of New Nuclear Weapon," (Monday, June 12, page A2 - see over) puts Senators Warner and Allard on record that their purpose in passing Section 1018 is to override the 1993 law, the Furse-Spratt provision of the FY94 defense authorization bill, that prohibits nuclear laboratories from all research and development which could lead to a precision, low-yield nuclear weapon.

Senators Warner and Allard portray their effort for new low-yield, bunker-busting nuclear weapon as necessary for national security. This new U.S. nuclear weapon, they say, would enable the Pentagon to go deep into Saddam Hussein's bunkers to wipe out nuclear or other weapons of destruction. Others like him would be vulnerable too. With their tunnel vision focused only on a new weapon, the senators miss the bigger and more important picture. Their provision, if it leads to resumed nuclear testing, would destroy our first line of defense against weapons of mass destruction - non-proliferation and test ban agreements. In that case, their "mini-nuke" would not reduce the nuclear danger; it could actually increase the risk.

If the United States breaks the global moratorium on nuclear test explosions to develop new nuclear weapons, the moratorium will collapse. With the collapse of the moratorium, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty would almost certainly dissolve. Other nuclear powers will also resume nuclear testing. Some non-nuclear powers will feel emboldened to join them. Senators Warner and Allard's provision would have started up the engines for a new and probably more dangerous nuclear weapons arms race. No one will be the winner at that finish line.

What you can do:

This issue will be decided in a House-Senate conference committee. The House version of the bill does not have similar language. Contact your senators and representative and urge them to oppose the retention of this provision in the final version of the bill. This is an especially important message for members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. Contact: Capitol Switchboard, (202)244-3121. Senator XX, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC 20510; Representative XX, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515.

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$9 Billion for What?

BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS,
July/August 2000,
by Jeff Shaw
From: Stephen Kobasa <skobasa@pop.snet.net>

On April 28, the Alaska, the first of four Ohio-class nuclear submarines slated for a controversial missile system upgrade, sliced its way through the waters of Hood Canal on its way to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington state. The sub was greeted by protesters objecting to the plan to modify four subs to carry Trident II (D-5) missiles, which are larger, more powerful, and more expensive than Trident Is. The Bangor Naval Submarine Base, the subs' home port, will also have to be modified.

The protesters questioned the wisdom of starting a multi-billion dollar upgrade immediately after Russia's mid-April ratification of the START II treaty. That treaty requires the United States to substantially shrink its warhead totals by 2007, and brings the logic of the upgrade into serious question.

It's elementary

Brian Watson of the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, the anti-nuclear group leading the protest, said the issue is "simple mathematics" because the United States already possesses more nuclear warheads than the arms accord will allow. Even though the START II deadline is seven years away, he said, the United States ought to be moving toward the treaty guidelines now.

The U.S. Navy already deploys more warheads aboard submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) than will be allowed under START II. The 24 Trident II missiles aboard each of the 10 Trident submarines stationed at Kings Bay, Georgia, carry up to eight W76 or W88 warheads each, for a total of 1,920 warheads. The eight submarines based at Bangor carry an additional 1,536 W76 warheads aboard 192 Trident I missiles, bringing the total to 3,456 warheads. Under START II, the United States would be required to reduce its total inventory of SLBM warheads to 2,160 by the end of 2003, and then to no more than 1,750 by the end of 2007, roughly half of current levels.

When the Bush administration signed START II in 1993, it planned to reduce the Trident fleet to just those 10 submarines carrying Trident IIs, but the number was raised to 14 after the Pentagon's 1994 "Nuclear Posture Review." Current plans call for the four oldest subs, out of 18 total, to be decommissioned, with the Alaska, the Henry M. Jackson, the Alabama, and the Nevada set to receive D-5 upgrades.

But if the United States is ever to comply with START II, all the warheads scheduled to be installed in the four subs will have to be retired. And since the accord's obligations kick in on December 31, 2007, the deadline makes this missile system upgrade little more than an expensive warhead "rental."

The price tag

How expensive? After purchasing the missiles themselves, the price tag will crack $9 billion. On the other hand, if the United States were to decommission eight subs instead of four--which would be in line with the 10-boat fleet proposed by the Bush administration--the navy would save more than $14 billion over the next 20 years, according to Bob Aldridge, a former Trident engineer.

Kevin Stephens, a Bangor Submarine Group public affairs officer, disagrees. He claims that the dollar figures associated with the upgrade are misleading. "Even though it's a big up-front cost, it will be cheaper over the long run to have one weapons system."

He explained that all 10 vessels in the Kings Bay fleet are outfitted with the newer Trident II, while the Bangor-based Pacific fleet is home to eight vessels with the Trident I. Stephens said that having two separate missiles results in redundant purchases and added expenses.

"If you don't make the conversion, you're going to have to be training for two different sets of skills," he added. "But when you have a commonality in the kinds of weapons systems, you can have commonality in terms of training."

But do different training procedures really cost $9 billion? That is how much upgrading these four submarines will cost in the short term, and the cost of operating the ships instead of retiring them will inflate the bill further over the long term.

First, there's the $3.86 billion cost of modernizing the four subs to handle the larger missiles, an 18-month process for each. Then add another $462 million to refuel the subs' reactors, which will be done during the Trident II overhaul, and the cost comes to about $4.32 billion.

Then there's the $173 million needed to upgrade Bangor's facilities for the new weapons system--including funds for establishing a missile-processing capability at the Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific, outfitting a training program, and supporting construction projects. Not including shipyard costs, that puts the project at about $4.5 billion.

Now add the missiles

Most cost estimates that have appeared in the media--which have estimated the project at $5 billion based on the preceding numbers--don't include the missiles themselves.

Each Trident II missile costs $40.9 million, and the navy plans to purchase 106 of them by the end of 2005 for a cool $4.3 billion. That brings the total near the $9 billion level. And, as Aldridge is quick to point out, that doesn't include projects for which no costs have been specified.

Among those projects are extensive modifications and additions to five key buildings, which should boost the total upgrade cost substantially.

If the United States went with the Bush administration's initial plan to retire these subs, an additional $6 billion in operating costs could be saved over the next 20 years, Aldridge estimates. Cancelling the upgrade, he concludes, would not only help bring the United States in line with START II--it would save taxpayers a great deal of money.

Jobs, jobs, jobs

Usually when such a whopping expenditure is presented to the public, it's sold as an opportunity to create more jobs. That's particularly true in places like Kitsap County where the navy is the region's leading employer by a wide margin.

However, although the Trident II project may mean new, more complex work for existing employees at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, it doesn't require new workers.

Instead, current shipyard personnel will stop their work deactivating submarines and will be charged with upgrading the four Tridents. Shipyard public affairs officer Mary Anne Mascianica admitted this when she said that the existing work force of about 7,850 employees will perform the upgrade largely on its own, taking minimal assistance from outside contract workers. The Trident II conversion, she said, "will not create additional jobs" at the shipyard.

Re-enter the activists

In addition to public demonstrations and leafletting actions, activists from Ground Zero have waged a fervent campaign against the upgrade, including acts of civil disobedience. In 1998 and 1999, groups of activists were arrested and charged for blocking roads into Bangor with their bodies. In both cases they were acquitted.

And it was the cost issue that prompted members of the group to demonstrate against the Alaska's arrival on April 28. But even if the upgrade didn't carry such a high cost, they say, long-term economic stability in the region shouldn't be based on the Trident system.

"We have to honestly assess the effectiveness of pouring billions of dollars into the defense budget every year. That's not the kind of product you want to base economic stability on," Ground Zero's Watson said.

The Alaska demonstration was not as dramatic as other Ground Zero protests, where many individuals have risked arrest. Instead, the event focused on representing the issue visually with a paper mach� replica of a missile, which activists hit with sticks until it "exploded" in a flurry of monopoly money. The group then "flushed" the money down a gold-painted toilet.

More demonstrations are planned, including attempts to block the trucks that will carry nuclear warheads into Bangor. The Kitsap County prosecuting attorney has already announced he will no longer pursue charges against the protesters because past juries appear unwilling to convict them.

Does Ground Zero expect to stop the upgrade?

"Realistically, no," said activist Brian Sorensen. "I just want the word to get out that not everybody is following the lemmings off the cliff."

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

Israel eyes Iraq after report of U.S. alert

USA Today
09/01/00- Updated 11:03 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncsfri02.htm

JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ehud Barak said Friday he saw no reason for concern that Iraq might attack Israel with missiles during the coming months but said the government was monitoring the situation.

Barak was responding to a report that the U.S. military put a Patriot antimissile battery on alert for a possible deployment to Israel because of concerns that Iraq might decide to strike during the U.S. presidential campaign.

The Washington Post said the unit on alert is the 69th Air Defense Artillery Brigade, based near Frankfurt, Germany.

Barak said he did not believe Israel needed extra Patriot batteries.

''We are following everything that is going on. We are ready for any development,'' he said. ''I am not sure that we need to be concerned now, and I am not sure that the Patriot missile battery needs to be bothered.''

In Germany, Lt. Cmdr. Dave Lee, a spokesman at the U.S. European Command, said that certain units ''are in a heightened state of alert in response to potential future operations.'' He did not elaborate.

Israel has two Patriot batteries, originally posted here during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel. The Patriots, originally designed as antiaircraft missiles, had limited success in downing the incoming missiles.

Israeli Transport Minister Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, who was the army chief of staff until 1998, said Friday he did not know about warnings of an Iraqi attack. ''If there are even scraps of information like that in the hands of the Americans, serious American information, we will find out about it,'' Shahak said.

However, the danger of an Iraqi attack cannot be discounted, said Efraim Inbar, an analyst with the Begin-Sadat Strategic Studies Institute at Bar Ilan University outside Tel Aviv. Inbar said Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein is unpredictable and has an account to settle with the United States.

Iraq might be motivated by the presidential campaign, Inbar said. ''They (the Iraqi leaders) have long memories,'' Inbar said, and might want to harm the chances of Republican candidate George W. Bush by ''reminding the people that his father was a failure.''

President George Bush directed the U.S.-led coalition's military strike against Saddam in 1991 but stopped short of deposing the Iraqi ruler.

Though Saddam has been trying to persuade the world that U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War should be lifted, he has sought confrontations with the United States from time to time.

Since the end of the war, there have been several alerts about possible Iraqi attacks on Israel, sending citizens rushing to distribution centers to update their army-issue gas masks and chemical warfare antidotes. No unusual activity was reported at the centers Friday.

In partnership with the United States, Israel is developing a more advanced antimissile system, called the Arrow. The Arrow is designed to intercept incoming ballistic missiles in the stratosphere, far from their targets. The first battery was turned over to the Israeli air force in March.

Another test launch of the Arrow system is expected in the coming days, the Israeli military said.

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South America's Presidents Hold First-Ever Summit

Yahoo News
Thursday August 31
By Mary Milliken
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000831/wl/latam_summit_dc_3.html

BRASILIA (Reuters) - South American presidents began assembling in Brazil's futuristic capital on Thursday for a first-ever summit aimed at putting the continent's disparate countries on more similar economic and political paths.

The ``Declaration of Brasilia,'' to be signed Friday by 12 presidents, should include a pledge to adhere to democracy in a region where threats of military coups and unclean elections loom.

And while no concrete deals on trade and integration are expected, Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso hopes to lay a cornerstone to unite the region's two trade blocs into a single free-trade zone with 340 million consumers.

The closed-door summit also promises much debate on Colombia's launch of a U.S.-backed, $7.5 billion offensive on drugs and rebels after three decades of bloody civil war.

``Plan Colombia'' was in South America's spotlight on Wednesday as President Clinton made a one-day visit to the Andean nation. He assured Colombians that the $1.3 billion aid for the package did not constitute ``Yankee imperialism'' or a new Vietnam.

But neighboring countries Brazil, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela say they are concerned about an escalation of violence as the U.S. bolsters Colombia's military might.

``This could generate a medium-intensity conflict in all of the northern part of South America, not affecting just Colombia,'' Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told reporters in Brasilia on Thursday.

Counterweight To U.S. Dominance

Chavez is one of the most outspoken supporters of a stronger and independent South America, capable of ironing out its own trouble spots and providing a counterweight to U.S. domination in regional trade talks.

On Wednesday, Chavez said the region would be ``wiped off the map'' if it did not unite before the creation in 2005 of an Americas free-trade area, an endeavor led by the United States.

But it is Brazil, as the region's largest country and one of the world's top emerging economies, that is spearheading the drive toward South American unity after 50 years of lukewarm regional commitments.

Cardoso wants to build a 10-country-strong trade bloc out of Mercosur in the south and the Andean Pact in the north. Mercosur comprises Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay and associate members Bolivia and Chile, while the Andean Pact countries are Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. Guyana and Suriname do not belong to either bloc.

In spite of disputes stemming from Brazil's 1999 currency devaluation and Argentina's recession, Mercosur has evolved in five years into the world's third largest trade bloc behind the European Union and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), formed by the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

The Andean Pact, however, has made little headway in its 31-year-history and its members' economies are the least developed in the region.

``We have to unite to open the possibility that our block...can have a greater chance of selling our products,'' Ecuadorean President Gustavo Noboa told Reuters.

But even with a firm commitment to join the northern and southern countries in free trade, the movement of goods through the region still faces daunting geographical obstacles.

The presidents will also make space in their tight agenda to discuss how they can finance the roads, bridges and energy lines to carry products and services over the Andes and through the Amazon forest to their neighbors.

-------- australia

Australian Action Reopens Dispute on Human Rights Monitors

New York Times
August 31, 2000
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/083100australia-rights.html

UNITED NATIONS -- A decision by Australia to limit its cooperation with the United Nations on human rights reporting has reopened a debate about whether international monitors are sometimes harder on democracies than on closed societies.

Some democracies, aware that information is more accessible and independent advocacy groups are more influential in their countries, are wary of the monitoring.

In Australia, a campaign has been building for months to curb access to United Nations monitors after reports came out critical of the government's judicial treatment of Aborigines and foreigners who seek asylum.

Politicians from Prime Minister John Howard's conservative Liberal Party have been particularly angry over criticisms from the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that relate to mandatory sentencing laws in Australia. The committee found that they fell hardest on Aborigines, some of them children.

On Tuesday, Australia said that it would demand that United Nations monitors produce compelling reasons to visit Australia before granting permissions for fact-finding trips. The government also said it would reject requests from the United Nations to stay the deportation of unsuccessful asylum seekers.

Mr. Howard told Parliament today that the decision to reduce cooperation did not amount to "a turning away by Australia from the principles of the United Nations."

"But it does represent a determination by this government to ensure that matters affecting Australia are resolved by Australians within Australia," he said.

United Nations human rights activities are fragmented. The office of the high commissioner for human rights is less than a decade old.

An older group, the Human Rights Commission, is a body of government representatives that meets annually to hear reports from monitors assigned to specific countries or issues and may censure governments.

Then there are treaty committees set up to monitor individual covenants against torture, on children's rights, on eliminating discrimination against women, on eliminating racial discrimination and on civil and political rights. Those are expert panels whose candidates are nominated by governments and elected by nations that have signed the relevant treaties or covenants.

Only countries that have signed the treaties are required to submit reports for scrutiny, leaving some countries known for abuses free of monitoring. Other signing nations submit perfunctory or late reports or ignore the requirement altogether.

Australia has been a strong supporter of the treaties and has submitted regular reports. The Australian decision to restrict cooperation was a shock for many rights groups. "For the Australians, who have done so much to build the international human rights system and the treaty system, to say this is a particularly sad moment," said Felice Gaer, director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights and a member of the United Nations committee against torture.

Of the 25 core treaties that Secretary General Kofi Annan has asked governments to sign or ratify next week at a summit meeting in New York, "13 of them are human rights treaties," Ms. Gaer said.

"What kind of a message does this send to the rest of the world about the importance of global norms?"

Australia's decision reflects opinions shared by some Americans who oppose what they see as a growing tendency toward international scrutiny. John Bolton of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, a former assistant secretary of state in the Bush administration, said his objections were constitutional.

"What Australia has done is a triumph for democracy," he said in an interview. "Within a constitutional system of representative government, you're allowed to struggle for policy outcomes. In a democracy, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. What Australia is objecting to is the idea that a losing side in a democratic country can ask for a lifeline to a U.N. agency."

Speaking to Parliament today in Canberra, Mr. Howard contended that Australia, which has signed all the main human rights treaties, was under greater scrutiny than the United States and as much as Britain.

-------- brazil

Latin summit briefing

Washington Times
August 31, 2000
Embassy Row James Morrison
News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
http://208.246.212.80/world/embassy-2000831222610.htm

Brazilian Ambassador Rubens A. Barbosa holds a 9 a.m. news conference tomorrow at the National Press Club to discuss the first summit of South American presidents.

The two-day summit, which begins today in Brazil, is designed to strengthen democracy, expand trade and combat drug trafficking and other crimes.

To contact James Morrison, call 202/636-3297, fax 202/832-7278 or e-mail morris@twtmail.com

-------- britain

British accused of Rambo-style military tactics

FROM SAM KILEY IN FREETOWN AND MICHAEL EVANS, DEFENCE EDITOR,
London Times,
August 31, 2000
http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/2000/08/31/timfgnafr02002.html

Journey into captivity THE United Nations commander in Sierra Leone accused the British Army yesterday of running "Rambo" operations in the country, saying that the 11 soldiers captured by gunmen had been driving in a no-go area.

As efforts to secure the release of the men began to bear fruit last night, with the release of five of the 11 soldiers of The Royal Irish Regiment, Brigadier General Mohammed Garba, the Nigerian acting UN commander, contradicted the British military's version of events leading up to the men's capture by the militia group.

The Ministry of Defence says that the soldiers, based in Benguema, were engaged on a routine visit last Friday to the Jordanian peacekeeping battalion at Masiaka, and were captured on the way back by the West Side Boys militant group.

General Garba said, however, that he did not believe that the British team, which was led by a major and included a captain and several non-commissioned officers, was engaged in routine "liaison" with the Jordanians.

"They use the word 'liaison' when they go out on their own patrols to do their own thing. We have complained about this for months - these Rambo movements," the Nigerian veteran said.

General Garba added that the captured men had been "travelling in an area way beyond the limits of their training mandate with the Sierra Leone Army".

Backing General Garba's report, Brigadier General Ahmed Sirhan, commander of the 2,000-strong Jordanian contingent, said that the British team had dropped in to his men's base at Masiaka unannounced. "There was no co-ordinated visit with the British, we didn't know they were coming and it was by chance that they stopped by."

According to General Sirhan, the British unit had initially driven through Masiaka and gone about eight miles further on, as far as Rokee Bridge on the road to Port Loko, the scene of heavy fighting between Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels and Sierra Leone's Army at the end of last week.

He said they turned back and headed for Masiaka once again, where they stopped in on the Jordanians, who invited them for a brief lunch. The British team, travelling in three Land Rovers, one of which was mounted with a 50mm heavy machinegun, stayed for about only 20 minutes and then set off back towards Benguema.

"But when they reached Lyar Junction about four miles from Masiaka, where there is a Jordanian checkpoint, instead of continuing down the highway as expected, they suddenly turned right and headed [down a track] towards the Occra Hills," General Sirhan said. "Everyone in Sierra Leone knows that you don't go into the Occra Hills because this is where the West Side Boys are based in three or four villages. It is a dangerous area."

Lieutenant Commander Tony Cramp, spokesman for the British Forces in Sierra Leone, said that it remained a mystery why the British team left the main road in an area known to be infested with the militia group.

The disagreements over their movements have soured relations between the UN and British forces in Sierra Leone. "We've had several incidents over the past few months in which the British have not told us what they have been doing and our soldiers have come across them," General Garba said.

The MoD said: "Regarding liaison visits, there is no obligation for the British training team to notify UN units in advance. We would not notify the UN headquarters in Freetown of routine liaison visits."

An MoD spokesman added: "Whether we would contact UN units in advance would depend on the local circumstances and on the relationship with that unit."

Rebels who took hundreds of UN peacekeepers hostage earlier this year returned seven UN armoured troop carriers yesterday in a ceremony a UN military official described as a "turning point". The vehicles were handed over by representatives of the RUF.

-------- china

China's President Talks To '60 Minutes'
Disagrees On Democracy Suggests U.S. Bombed Belgrade's Embassy On Purpose
Watch Sunday Sept. 3 at 7 p.m. ET/PT

CBS News
60 Minutes
Aug. 31, 2000
http://cbsnews.cbs.com/now/story/0%2C1597%2C229619-412%2C00.shtml

(CBS) On the eve of his visit to the United States, China's president, Jiang Zemin, sat down for a rare interview with Mike Wallace.

In a wide-ranging and surprisingly frank interview, Jiang talked about many topics, including relations between the United States and China, Tiananmen Square and American morals.

The two met recently inside the presidential compound in the seaside resort of Beidaihe, in what Chinese officials say is the first visit there by a Western television news crew.

Jiang, the leader of one of every five people on the planet, has not been interviewed for U.S. television in more than a decade. Wallace's interview will air two days before Jiang is scheduled to visit the United States.

Recently, one of China's government newspapers, The China Daily, called the United States, "a threat to world peace." Asked if he agrees with that assessment, Jiang treaded lightly.

"Candidly speaking, maybe it is because of the economic power and leading edge in science and technology that the United States enjoys, that more often than not [the United States] tends to overestimate itself and its position in the world," he said. "But today I want to convey a nice message to the American people, so I don't want to use too many tough words in our talk."

Asked about the presidential election, and future U.S.-Chinese relations, Jiang said that he has a lot of friends among both parties.

"So you gave money to both their campaigns?" Wallace asked.

"Are you just joking?" Jiang responded. "We have never done such things. I have read the campaign platforms of both parties, and I believe whoever becomes president will try to improve the friendly relations between China and the United States for this is in the strategic interest of the whole world. Someone asked me not to pay attention to unfriendly remarks candidates might make about China during the campaign because once elected they will be friendly. I only hope that's true."

Prior to the interview, Jiang had agreed to give short answers so the two men could cover more ground. When Wallace reminded him of that, a smiling Jiang was ready with a reply, pointing out that his answers had also been long. "I think my answer is roughly the same length as your question."

Beidaihe, the site of the interview, has been called China's Camp David. Beidaihe is where the country's leaders meet in private every August to develop their plans for the coming year. The president agreed to speak candidly with 60 Minutes, emphasizing that he wants better relations with America.

"I hope to convey through your program my best wishes to the American people," he said.

Jiang said that relations between the two countries are, on the whole, good. But he compared Chinese-U.S. relations to "nature," because of its variability: "Our relations have experienced wind, rain, and sometimes clouds or even dark clouds. However, sometimes it clears up. We all sincerely hope to build a constructive partnership between China and the United States."

"That's spoken like a real politician," Wallace responded. "There's no candor in it."

"I don't think politician is a very nice word," Jiang said.

"No, it's not a nice word," Wallace said. "It is a diplomatic word in this case."

Although Jiang is gregarious and likes attention, he has not given an extended interview to an American television reporter for 10 years. He says this is partly because Americans refuse to believe that the vast majority of Chinese are actually satisfied with one-party rule. Jiang, in fact, disagreed strongly when Wallace called China a dictatorship.

"Your way of describing what things are like in China is as absurd as what the Arabian Nights may sound like," Jiang said. "The National Peoples Congress selects the Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Central Committee has a Politburo. And the Politburo has a standing committee of which I'm a member. And no decision is made unless all members agree."

Wallace asked Jiang if he admired the courage of the student who stood down the tank during the student uprising in Tiananmen Square.

"He was never arrested," Jiang said. "I don't know where he is now. Looking at the picture I know he definitely had his own ideas."

"You have not answered the question, Mr. President," Wallace said. "Did a part of Jiang Zemin admire his courage?"

"I know what you are driving at, but what I want to emphasize is that we fully respect every citizen's right to freely express his wishes and desires," Jiang said. "But I do not favor any flagrant opposition to government actions during an emergency. The tank stopped and did not run the young man down."

"I'm not talking about the tank," Wallace said. "I'm talking about that man's heart, that man's courage, that man, that lonely man, standing against that."

Wallace then mentioned that Jiang himself had been a student protestor in Shanghai, during World War II. Was there any parallel?

"In the 1989 disturbance we truly understood the passion of students who were calling for greater democracy and freedom," Jiang said. "In fact, we have always been working to improve our system of democracy. But we could not possibly allow people with ulterior motives to use the students to overthrow the government under the pretext of democracy and freedom."

A month after Tiananmen, Jiang wrote a speech in which he said, "Corruption is growing. If all our party and our government organs use that power to seek material benefits, isn't this just like fleecing the people in broad daylight?"

Wallace pointed out that the Tiananmen demonstrators had also been protesting against corruption. Had they had an effect on the Party, Wallace asked.

"I hate corruption," Jiang said. "You are right that during the 1989 disturbance students were changing slogans against corruption, so on this specific point the Party shares the same position as the students."

As an aside, and to underline his credentials as a student demonstrator in times past, the president himself sang a protest song he had used back in 1943 against Japanese troops who were occupying parts of China: "Arise Fellow Students to Defend the Motherland."

The president's aides suggested it would be unfair to show pictures of the violence at Tiananmen Square because, they say, Jiang Zemin had nothing to do with it. But they were glad to give 60 Minutes pictures of their embassy in Belgrade, which had been demolished by American bombers, during NATO's air war last year.

When asked if he believed that the United States purposely bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Jiang answered obliquely.

"The United States has state-of-the-art technology," he said. "So all the explanations that they have given us for what they call a mistaken bombing are absolutely unconvincing."

"The identification marks of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade were too clear for people to miss," he continued. "So why has there been such an incident? It is still a question. But we have decided to look forward, to improve China-U.S. relations."

Afterward, the U.S. government had tried to convince China that the bombing had been a horrible mistake.

"President Clinton apologized to me for the bombing, many times, on the telephone," Jiang said. "I told him, since you represent Americans and I Chinese, it would be impossible for us to reach total agreement on this issue."

To find out what Jiang thinks about American morals, the Gettysburg Address and the Falun Gong, go to the second part of the story.

--

Jiang Zemin Talks With Wallace They Discuss Lincoln And The Internet

CBS News
Aug. 31, 2000
http://cbsnews.cbs.com/now/story/0,1597,229663-412,00.shtml

(CBS) In his recent interview, President Jiang told Wallace that accused spy Wen Ho Lee was not a spy for China.

"I can tell you frankly, China was not in any way involved in Wen Ho Lee's case," Jiang said during the interview. "But we do know that he is a scientist."

It is not strange, Jiang said, that Lee came to China and talked to Chinese scientists. "It's just as normal as some Chinese scientists travelling abroad," he said. "Allow me to quote a Chinese proverb which goes, 'If you are out to condemn someone, you can always trump up a charge.' We don't know what political motives are behind it. Today the Chinese still see Wen Ho Lee as a renowned scientist."

When Wallace said that Jiang seemed nervous for the first time in the conversation, Jiang laughed, adding that he was not nervous and he asked Wallace whether he thinks Wen Ho Lee is a spy. When Wallace declined to answer, Jiang chuckled some more.

Years ago when Jiang was a middle-school student learning English, he had studied the speeches of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. When he was a teacher, he used the Gettysburg Address in his course.

Wallace asked him about this, and Jiang offered to recite part of it.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," Jiang recited from memory.

Wallace asked him why he learned part that so well.

"I focused on the words, 'All men are created equal,'" Jiang said. "This had a great influence on students when I was young. And I think what Abraham Lincoln described still remains the goal of American leaders today."

"Especially the last paragraph, 'The government of the people by the people and for the people shall never perish from the earth,'" he added.

Wallace then asked Jiang about democracy: "Why is it that Americans can elect their national leaders, but you apparently don't trust the Chinese people to elect your national leaders? "

"I am also an elected leader, though we have a different electoral system," Jiang said. "Each country should have its own system because our countries have different cultures and historic traditions, and different levels of education and economic development."

Jiang was chosen by the top leaders of the Communist Party. Public elections occur only in some villages and small towns, and candidates must either be members of the Communist Party or run as independents.

Wallace asked Jiang why China had a one-party state. "Why must we have opposition parties?" Jiang responded. "You are trying to apply the American values and the American political system to the whole world. But that is not very wise."

"Let me be frank," Jiang said. "China and the United States differ greatly in terms of our values. You Americans always use your values in making judgments about the political situation in other countries. We want to learn from the West about science and technology and how to manage the economy, but this must be combined with specific conditions here. That's how we have made great progress in the last 20 years."

China's standard of living has been rising dramatically. In China, as in America, the economy largely determines the level of the people's satisfaction with their government. Jiang maintains that the vast majority of Chinese believe a strong one-party rule is the best way to hold the huge population together and to keep the economy growing. Stability is the top priority, sometimes at the expense of human rights.

Wallace asked him about human rights and about the Chinese government's persecution of the religious group Falun Gong.

"Their leader, Li Hongzhi, claims to be the reincarnation of the chief Buddha, and also a reincarnated Jesus Christ," Jiang said. "Can you believe that? He said that doomsday was about to come and that the Earth was going to explode. In fact what he says are just fallacies to deceive people. But as a result of his preaching, many families were broken and many lives were lost. So after careful deliberations, we concluded that Falun Gong is an evil cult."

Jiang pointed out that no Falun Gong followers have ever been sentenced to death.

But 26 of them have reportedly died in police custody.

Jiang told 60 Minutes the Falun Gong has driven thousands of its members to commit suicide.

The Falun Gong said that's ridiculous - that it does not encourage suicide and that it's still going strong despite the Chinese government's efforts to quash it.

Asked about the Chinese government's persecution of Christians, Jiang said that Christians have not been persecuted in China, and that the constitution protects religious freedom, including Christianity. "But Falun Gong is a cult," he said. "It is totally different from Christianity."

Jiang has always favored tough government controls of the press. "The press," he said, "should be a mouthpiece of the Party."

"I think all countries and parties must have their own publications to publicize their ideas," Jiang told Wallace. "We do have freedom of the press, but such freedom should be subordinate to and serve the interests of the nation. How can you allow such freedom to damage the national interests?"

Wallace asked Jiang why it had blocked certain Internet sites, including the BBC's and the Washington Post's.

"We hope people will learn a lot of useful things from the Internet," Jiang said. "However, sometimes there is also unhealthy material - especially pornography on the Internet - which does great harm to our youngsters."

Wallace pointed out that the BBC and The Washington Post sites did not have pornography. "They might be banned because of some of their political news reports," Jiang said. "We need to be selective. We hope to restrict as much as possible information not conducive to China's development."

China's previous leader, Deng Xiaoping, once said, "to get rich is glorious." Jiang said that while this outlook does allow some people to become wealthy before others, "The ultimate objective is prosperity for all."

Wallace asked him if he thought America was more decadent than China.

"Let me put it this way," Jiang said. "Due to many differences between our countries in historical traditions, ways of life, religious beliefs, etc., things you don't regard as decadent in the States, we may regard as decadent in China. That's why we have to be very selective."

When he travels to America, Jiang will meet with American business leaders to urge them to increase their investments in China. Corporate America has long lusted after China's billion-buyer market, but China still sells a lot more to the United States than America sells to that country.

In effort to change that, the White House has said that if the U.S. Senate approves permanent normal trade relations with China, as the House already has, that would force China to reduce tariffs and trade barriers, and therfore to buy more American goods.

Jiang wants normal trade relations, too, and he ended the interview by underscoring that point.

"I'm convinced that this interview will further promote the friendship and mutual understanding between our two peoples," said Jiang, who told Wallace that he admires America. "I want to promote mutual understanding between our two peoples."

---

China Head Sympathized at Tiananmen

Associated Press
August 31, 2000 Filed at 4:02 p.m. EDT
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/i/AP-CBS-Jiang.html

NEW YORK (AP) -- In a rare admission for a Chinese communist leader, President Jiang Zemin says he sympathized with the passions for freedom and democracy that drove students into Tiananmen Square 11 years ago.

Jiang recalled his own days as a student protester against Japan's occupation of China in the 1940s in an interview with CBS' ''60 Minutes.'' The comparison was brought up by correspondent Mike Wallace.

``In the 1989 disturbances we truly understood the passion of students who were calling for greater democracy and freedom. In fact, we have always been working to improve our system of democracy,'' Jiang said, according to a transcript of the interview to be broadcast Sunday.

His comments were the most sympathetic portrayal of the student movement by a senior Chinese leader since the leadership ordered tanks and troops to oust the demonstrators. Hundreds, if not thousands, died in the military assault on June 3-4, 1989. The Chinese government has never given a credible account.

Jiang reverted to the party line, however, in defending the crackdown. He accused people he did not identify of trying to ``use the students to overthrow the government under the pretext of democracy and freedom.''

When asked whether he felt inspired by the courage of the lone protester who faced down a tank during the assault, Jiang said ``we fully respect every citizen's right to freely express his wishes and desires.

``But I do not favor any flagrant opposition to government actions during an emergency,'' Jiang said. ``The tank stopped and did not run the young man down.''

The ''60 Minutes'' interview was conducted at the Chinese leadership retreat at the seaside resort of Beidaihe, a first for Western television.

Jiang is due in New York next week to attend a U.N. summit. Polite but at times feisty, Jiang said he agreed to the interview to underscore his government's desire to work with the United States -- even in the aftermath of the U.S. bombing of China's embassy in Yugoslavia last year.

Given the United States' state-of-the-art military technology, China cannot accept Washington's explanations that the bombing was a mistake, he said. He said he told President Clinton that they will never agree on this.

``The identification marks of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade were too clear for people to miss. So why has there been such an incident? It is still a question. But we have decided to look forward, to improve China-U.S. relations,'' Jiang said.

Jiang also denied that the Wen Ho Lee, the ethnic Chinese scientist accused of mishandling nuclear secrets from a U.S. government lab, was a spy for China.

He turned aside U.S. criticisms of communist authoritarian one-party rule, saying that Americans find it hard to believe Chinese support their government.

``Why must we have opposition parties? You are trying to apply American values and the American political system to the whole world,'' Jiang said.

---

Rights Lawsuit Filed in U.S. Vs Ex-Chinese Premier

Yahoo News
Thursday August 31 3:13 PM ET updated 3:39 PM ET Aug 31
By Jeanne King
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000831/ts/china_lawsuit_dc_2.html

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A leader of the 1989 Chinese pro-democracy protests and other dissidents filed a civil lawsuit on Thursday against former Chinese Premier Li Peng, accusing him of crimes against humanity for ordering the massacre of demonstrators at Tiananmen Square.

Wang Dan, jailed in China before being released two years ago on medical parole to exile in the United States, three other dissidents and the brother of a woman shot and killed by troops in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, were seeking millions of dollars in damages in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

Plaintiff Zhang Liming said he ``was absolutely stupefied'' when he saw his sister, Zhang Xianghong, shot in the back by soldiers in June 1989 as troops and tanks crushed crowds that had gathered for months of pro-democracy rallies, killing hundreds, possibly thousands, of unarmed demonstrators.

``I will never forgive myself for my not being there to stand between my sister and the bullets,'' Zhang said in a statement. ''But with this lawsuit, I am standing up to Li Peng. I could not protect my sister's life, but I will defend her spirit.''

Human rights groups, including the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the dissidents, say that as premier, Li gave the order for the Chinese military to crack down on the protesters. The lawsuit alleged that Li should have ``sought to halt the egregious abuses of human rights that occurred when troops began their assault.''

The claims against him include crimes against humanity, summary execution, torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, arbitrary arrest and detention, assault and battery, wrongful death, inflicting intentional emotional distress on victims and their survivors, false imprisonment and denying protesters the right to demonstrate.

Plaintiffs in past lawsuits against foreign leaders have had little success in U.S. courts, so the current suit could be seen as largely symbolic.

The protests began April 17, 1989, when thousands of students from various campuses rallied at Tiananmen Square demanding their constitutional rights to freedom of expression and assembly and to press their demands for political reform and an end of widespread official corruption.

The lawsuit charges that starting on June 3, 1989, the soldiers of the People's Liberation Army and the People's Armed Police used force to clear Beijing streets of demonstrators and civilians using semi-automatic machine guns mounted on tanks and armored cars.

Li Peng is now China's head of parliament. His security men were served the lawsuit early on Thursday morning at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, where Li is staying while attending this week's Conference of Presiding Officers of National Parliaments at the United Nations.

Relatives of the Tiananmen Square victims unsuccessfully demanded that Li be barred from the U.N. meeting. Li's visit to New York is only his second to the United States since the June 1989 crackdown.

Four of the plaintiffs, Zhou Suo Fen, Liu Gang, Xiong Yan and Wang Dan, were on communist China's ``most wanted list'' of 21 student leaders after the Tiananmen massacre.

``Some of those who were detained for up to two years did not have a fair trial or were held without any charges lodged against them,'' said Jennie Green, attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights advocacy group that filed the lawsuit.

``These people lived in horrible conditions, were subjected to electric shock and had little or no contact with families. They were arrested when their names were posted on a 'most wanted list' with 17 other student leaders,'' she added.

---

Rights Groups Has Summons Served on Li Peng in New York

New York Times
August 31, 2000
By EDWARD WONG
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/31cnd-china.html

Four Chinese student dissidents and a man whose sister was killed in the Tiananmen Square massacre are suing Li Peng, the leader of China's Parliament, in a federal court in New York, accusing him of human rights abuses. The case is the first of its kind in this country against a Chinese official.

The lawsuit was filed on Monday in U.S. District court in Manhattan by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a non-profit legal group that specializes in human rights cases. Among the five plaintiffs, all of whom are living in the United States, are Wang Dan, a prominent student dissident who organized democracy seminars at Beijing University, and Zhang Liming, whose sister was killed by a single bullet in the chaotic early morning hours of June 4, 1989.

Mr. Li was attending a conference of world leaders at the United Nations this week and was served with a court summons early today at the condominium tower where he was staying in Manhattan. In a tense confrontation, the summons was handed by a process server to State Department employee who was guarding Mr. Li.

The lawsuit charges Mr. Li, who was prime minister during the Tiananmen Square incident, with being ultimately responsible for "crimes against humanity, including summary execution, arbitrary detention, torture, and other torts."

"We want to prove that he is accountable for the crime, and that this kind of crime, the human rights violation, is beyond China's borders," said Xiao Qiang, executive director of Human Rights in China, a Mew York-based group that brought together the plaintiffs and the lawyers. Mr. Qiang said that the lawsuit was quickly assembled this summer in anticipation of Mr. Li's visit to New York, which provided the lawyers with the opportunity to serve the court summons.

There was no immediate reaction from the Chinese Consulate General in New York or the embassy in Washington, D.C.

Dozens of similar lawsuits have been filed in the United States, most of them brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of human rights victims in other countries.

The Chinese government has never apologized for sending in soldiers who killed hundreds of student demonstrators at Tiananmen Square.

The government continues to insist that the student-led demonstrations of the spring of 1989 constituted a counter-revolutionary rebellion justifying the military intervention.

"The Chinese perception of this will be that once again we are attempting to interfere in what they view as a domestic matter," said Bob Berring, a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley who studies the Chinese legal system. "I think they would view this as the height of American arrogance. But for the human rights community, they have to seize on an opportunity like this to put human rights issues on the table. It's a purely symbolic act, but that's what they need to get things like this back on the agenda."

---

Chinese officers learn U.S. warfare

Washington Times
August 31, 2000
By Bill Gertz
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-2000831224129.htm

Several high-ranking U.S. military officials are lecturing visiting Chinese military officers on sensitive military topics, including lessons of recent wars and future war-fighting concepts.

Speakers at the two-week Harvard University program include two U.S. generals and two admirals - including the four-star chief of the U.S. Pacific Command - who are teaching a group of 25 senior Chinese military officers at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

It is the second ongoing exchange involving Pentagon support for Chinese military officers who are given access to sensitive U.S. war-fighting data. Many of the officers are intelligence officers or deal with covert technology, according to U.S. officials.

Several Pentagon officials and members of Congress said the official Defense Department role in sharing the data circumvents U.S. law restricting such exchanges.

On Tuesday, the colonels heard from Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Henry Osman, director of operational plans and interoperability for the Joint Staff. Gen. Osman spoke on the "lessons learned from recent conflicts," a topic known to be of interest to China's military, said Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Terry Southerland.

A second key speaker yesterday was Army Col. Jason K. Kamiya, chief of staff for the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky. Col. Kamiya spoke on the future of the U.S. Army, although defense officials said the Chinese were expected to ask him about his current mission, Pentagon officials said.

China's military is working on improving its airborne assault capabilities, a key war-fighting skill that would be needed by Beijing's forces in a conflict with Taiwan.

Other speakers include Rear Adm. Jay M. Cohen, chief of naval research, and Air Force Lt. Gen. William J. Begert, assistant vice chief of staff. They will speak on the future of their respective services.

Last week, three Chinese generals and other officers from the Academy of Military Sciences were briefed on U.S. joint war-fighting training and simulation at the U.S. Joint Forces Command in southern Virginia.

That visit prompted criticism from Sen. Robert C. Smith, New Hampshire Republican, and Rep. Tom DeLay, Texas Republican, who challenged the legality of the visits. The two lawmakers co-sponsored legislation passed into law last year that prohibits the Pentagon from enhancing Chinese military capabilities through visits and exchanges.

Critics said the Harvard program will give the Chinese military important insights on U.S. government decision making, information that could be used against the United States during a conflict over Taiwan.

"There is no doubt the Chinese military is gaining militarily useful information through these exchanges," Mr. Smith said yesterday.

Mr. DeLay said yesterday that the Chinese exchange programs show the administration is "recklessly disregarding American national interests."

"To offer the Chinese military briefings on sensitive defense information makes absolutely no sense," Mr. DeLay told The Washington Times.

A senior House aide said lawmakers are expected to seek further restrictions on the Pentagon exchange programs.

Pentagon officials said the Defense Department largely has ignored the legislation based on a legal ruling that said its language is vague. The lawyers assert "there are no legal limits on what can be said to the PLA" - the People's Liberation Army - during the exchanges, an official said.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, California Republican, said exposing the Chinese military to U.S. war-fighting capabilities "poses a direct threat" because U.S. forces might have to fight Chinese forces over Taiwan.

"This is reminiscent of the military advice and support that the British and United States gave to Japan's military in the years prior to World War II," Mr. Rohrabacher said. "How can anyone possibly claim it's in the U.S. interest?"

At the Pentagon, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a spokesman, said the aim of the exchanges are to "engage" the Chinese military. "We think there is value in engagement with their military," he said.

Asked about concerns that the Chinese will glean militarily useful information, Adm. Quigley said: "We're very scrupulous so as to not provide information that would be useful in that regard."

---

No permanent enemies

Washington Times
August 31, 2000
Embassy Row James Morrison
News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
http://208.246.212.80/world/embassy-2000831222610.htm

A Chinese government spokesman yesterday insisted that Chinese have "positive feelings" about Americans but cannot understand why the U.S. media and some American officials hold such negative views about China.

Zhao Qizheng also fears that anti-China attitudes will infect the American presidential election, causing Vice President Al Gore and Texas Gov. George W. Bush to try to outdo each other with China-bashing campaign speeches.

Mr. Zhao, minister of the State Council Information Office, tried to present a modern face of China that wants to expand trade, promote the Internet for commercial benefits and end political tension with the United States.

Meanwhile, a public opinion poll released yesterday showed most Americans view China as one of the most unfriendly countries.

"When it comes to negative perceptions, 63 percent rate China as not friendly or as an enemy, followed by 54 percent who feel this way about Russia," according to a Harris poll of 1,010 adults.

They rate Britain and Canada as the closest U.S. allies.

Mr. Zhao, speaking at the National Press Club, said: "I believe, in international relations, there are no such things as permanent enemies. There's no reason for our countries to be eternal antagonists - absolutely no reason."

Mr. Zhao noted some of the "stumbling blocks" in U.S.-Chinese relations - listing "the Dalai Lama, Taiwan and human rights" - but tried to place the blame for diplomatic tension on the United States.

China's state-controlled media tries to be "balanced" in reporting about the United States, he said.

"But Chinese feel that American media does not treat China that way, that American coverage of China tends to be inadequate and often inaccurate, sometimes downright prejudicial. . . . There are some people in the United States who want to find a reason to contain China," he said.

"Over time, this will distort how American people see China, so that during an American presidential election, candidates will feel that they have to say something negative about China.

Mr. Zhao also criticized the United States for proposing U.N. resolutions that denounced China's human rights record and for supporting Taiwan.

"Chinese people, especially young people who may have relatively positive feelings toward Americans . . . wonder why the U.S. likes to tell China how to run its own affairs," he said.

Mr. Zhao is touring the United States on a visit sponsored by major U.S. corporations, including Boeing Co., Viacom Inc. and Time Warner Inc.

-------- colombia

Colombian Rebels Give Clinton Fiery Welcome

Thursday, August 31, 2000
Manchester Guardian (UK)
by Martin Hodgson
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/083100-03.htm

President Bill Clinton flew into Colombia yesterday amid a countrywide outbreak of rebel violence and protests against a massive boost in US military aid to the government.

Leftwing guerrillas attacked police stations and army posts, bombs exploded outside banks and masked students clashed with riot police.

The violence took place mostly around the three main cities and in rural areas hundreds of miles from Cartagena, the Caribbean tourist resort where 5,000 troops, 350 US agents, helicopter gunships and an American aircraft carrier provided security for Mr Clinton's nine-hour visit.

On Tuesday night, rebels attacked 12 police stations in six of the country's 32 departments. Five civilians, including two children, died when guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) rained mortar bombs on a police station in the village of La Bateca, near the border with Venezuela.

In south-west Cali, the second largest city, Farc guerrillas detonated bombs outside three banks, causing widespread damage but no injuries, police said.

In the north-eastern oil- producing province of Arauca, another Farc unit attacked an army barracks near the town of Fortul on Tuesday afternoon, injuring six soldiers, an army spokeswoman said. Guerrillas also attacked an army post in the nearby town of Saravena. US-made Blackhawk helicopters flew to the region to strike back at the rebel column.

Rebel commanders have denounced the US aid package, which includes 60 helicopters, equipment and training for the Colombian army, saying that money will cause an escalation in the civil war, and eventually US-backed military action against the guerrillas.

"Clinton isn't here to support social investment but a military plan. We don't want to make threats, but the Colombian people have the rights to take to the streets and protest against this visit," the Farc commander, Andres Paris, told the Guardian.

In a videotaped address to the Colombian people broadcast on Tuesday night, Mr Clinton stressed the social development programmes included in the aid package, and denied that Washington planned military intervention.

"We have no military objective. We do not believe your conflict has a military solution. We support the peace process. Our approach is both pro-peace and anti-drug," Mr Clinton said.

Yesterday the Miami Herald reported that the Pentagon is planning to send an army general to oversee the military element of the aid package.

According to US law, a maximum of 500 American troops and 300 civilian contractors may be in Colombia at any time, but the president may waive the limit in the event of an "imminent involvement" of US forces in hostilities.

The largest chunk of American money will pay for 60 helicopters to support a military offensive in the rebel-dominated jungles of southern Colombia, where most of the world's cocaine is produced. The helicopters and three US-trained anti-narcotics army battalions will lead the advance, securing control of drug plantations to allow the police to eradicate illegal crops.

Mr Clinton waived strict human rights conditions to approve the aid last week, despite fears that the Colombian military maintains close ties with illegal rightwing paramilitary groups.

In its 1999 report, the state department reported "credible allegations of co-operation with paramiltary groups, including both silent support and direct collaboration."

Monitoring groups in Colombia fear that the American money will exacerbate the country's 35-year civil war and cause up to 200,000 people to flee their homes.

----

In Visit to Colombia, Clinton Defends U.S. Outlay

New York Times
August 31, 2000
By MARC LACEY
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/americas/083100clinton-colombia.html

CARTAGENA, Colombia, Aug. 30 -- President Clinton made a one-day visit today to this secure oasis of Colombia to lend backing to the nation's counternarcotics program.

He insisted that the $1.3 billion in military aid that Washington recently agreed to is limited to the drug fight, not directed toward ending the government's decades-long battle with rebel groups.

"This is not Vietnam," Mr. Clinton said, "nor is it Yankee imperialism."

He was reacting to critics at home and in and around Colombia who fear the consequences of an growing fight to stop the drug traffickers of Colombia, who supply 90 percent of the cocaine and most of the heroin that enters the United States.

Accompanied by Republican and Democratic lawmakers, Mr. Clinton said the United States was helping Colombia with its $7.5 billion five-year program to destroy much of its drug crop, root out traffickers and rebuild its judiciary and other government operations. Part of those funds are coming from Europe and international agencies.

But Mr. Clinton said continuing support would depend on the Bogot� government's breaking ties with paramilitary groups and adhering to strict human rights standards.

In the hours before Mr. Clinton arrived, rebels bombed three banks, blockaded a road east of Bogot� and engaged in skirmishes with government troops, the authorities said.

Protesters also were active. In Bogot�, a riot policeman was killed at a university, and a protest outside the American Embassy also turned violent. In Cartegena, the police said they had arrested three men who had bomb materials in a house six blocks from one of Mr. Clinton's stops.

The president urged the country's neighbors to stand by Colombia in its struggle against the drug trade, even if they suffer from an overflow of refugees, coca growers and guerrillas. Some of those neighbors are worried about the American attack helicopters and military advisers headed here. Rebel activity has increased since Congress voted the aid.

"If you really say Colombia can't attack this in an aggressive way because there will be some negative consequences on our border," Mr. Clinton said, "the logical conclusion is that all the cancer of narco-trafficking and lawless violence in this entire vast continent should rest on the shoulders and burden the children of this one nation. And that's just not right."

Mr. Clinton, the first president to visit Colombia in 10 years, toured one of the main ports used by smugglers, and, with President Andr�s Pastrana acting as a translator, held emotional meetings with a dozen wives and mothers of slain soldiers and drug agents.

"Please help us," Diana Viveros, a widow, pleaded to the president, sobbing and clutching his hand. Mr. Clinton looked her in the eyes and said: "I came to help. We have to make sure your husband did not die in vain."

Tears streamed down the face of Yina Torres, a pregnant woman whose husband, a soldier, was struck down in the drug war. "Remember, my mother carried me as a widow," Mr. Clinton said to console her, words that caused her to sob deeply. The president wiped the tears from her face and gave her a hug.

It was the president who became choked up when Carmen Elisa N��ez handed him a medal that her husband had won for his heroics.

The army captain had escaped from rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia last year but was tortured and later killed by them when caught.

"I will put this up in the White House," the president said of the medal.

The meetings were arranged by Mr. Pastrana, who in his two years in office has cooperated closely with the United States, and were intended to show the depth of the government's struggle against drug lords and rebels.

Mr. Pastrana, addressing the concerns of human rights groups, vowed to continue to press for improvements in the government's performance. He asked for time, though, to revamp his army and police force. "We are asking the rest of the world to understand the complexities we have in this country," he said.

At Mr. Clinton's side for much of the day was J. Dennis Hastert, the Republican speaker of the House, and other lawmakers who voted to back Mr. Pastrana's "Plan Colombia."

"We share a great burden," Mr. Hastert told the Colombian president, noting that thousands of people in the United States and thousands more in Colombia die every year as a result of drug abuse and violence.

At the port of Cartagena, the entourage of United States officials viewed a high-speed boat used by narcotics agents to intercept smugglers at sea and a submarine-like vehicle used by the traffickers.

Strolling at the water's edge, Mr. Clinton stopped to pet a drug-sniffing dog and inspect a variety of hidden compartments used to smuggle drugs. "Very clever," he remarked as a captain with the Colombian Navy showed him a boat battery that doubled as a cocaine hideaway.

Mr. Clinton also visited a Casa de Justicia, one of the United States-financed centers aimed at rebuilding the tattered criminal justice system across Colombia.

There was extraordinary security in place for Mr. Clinton's visit, the first by an American president since President Bush made a similar trip 10 years ago. Cartegena is a tourist haven and one of Colombia's safest cities, unlike the capital, Bogot�, and various cities where drug cartels rule. Similarly, Mr. Clinton spent part of last week in Nigeria in the new capital, Abuja, avoiding the tumult of Lagos, the largest city.

In Bogot� today, union and student groups protested the president's visit, on the ground that the nation's war will just go on longer with the new aid. A police spokesman said 20 people have been killed since early Tuesday, including 11 civilians, 3 guerrillas and 6 police officers.

The riot policeman was killed in the capital when hooded students threw a home-made explosive during running battles outside the National University.

---

Cartagena resents U.S. travel warning

Washington Times
August 31, 2000
By Richard Slusser
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-200083122730.htm

Cartagena, hundreds of miles from the killing fields and coca plantations of this violence-wracked South American nation, is Colombia's major tourist attraction and a popular port of call for large cruise ships.

Cartagena de Indias, as it is officially known, is a city of 1 million people. It was founded in 1533 by the Spanish, and by the middle of that century was the center for shipping gold and other products to Spain from its colony.

In the 18th century, Cartagena, with the protection of its San Felipe de Barajas fortress, withstood a siege by the English forces led by Adm. Edward Vernon. During the English attacks, which ended with the loss of many lives and defeat, Lawrence Washington, elder half-brother of George Washington, led a contingent of Colonial troops, many of them from Virginia, and later named his Virginia plantation Mount Vernon in honor of the admiral.

Cartagena was the center of the Spanish Inquisition in South America, and its Palace of the Inquisition now is a museum.

As a city, it is a gem, although the $850,000 spent to spiff up the city, remove beggars from the streets and to repave sidewalks and roads for President Clinton's visit yesterday was criticized by some people as excessive. Others approved.

Even before the cleanup, the city's oldest section, San Diego, charmed visitors with its narrow streets and numerous and colorful balconied buildings from the Spanish colonial period. The modern buildings in the upscale peninsular Bocagrande section include high-rise condominiums and hotels; from the water, the skyline is reminiscent of Miami Beach.

"Cartagena is just the opposite of the United States," said one businessman. "Here the poor people live by the water and in your country that is an area for wealthy."

Two of the city's five-star hotels are in San Diego, and both formerly were convents: the Sofitel Santa Clara and the Santa Theresa Charleston. They retain large open courtyards and offer travelers modern amenities such as swimming pools, spas and fitness and business centers. Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, has a home near the Santa Clara.

Tourism once boomed, but it has been down since the U.S. State Department issued a travel warning about Colombia. In the Santa Theresa Charleston Hotel, a large air-conditioned room with high ceilings in the original part of the convent, costs about $110 per night; an equally impressive suite costs about $135 per night.

City tourism officials insist Cartagena is safe. They say the Marxist guerrillas waging the war with the Colombian government are hundreds of miles away in the jungles, and that Cartagena is even 400 miles north of Bogota, the capital. These Cartagenians want an exemption from the State Department's advisory about the whole country.

They also want more air service between their city and the United States. The only scheduled nonstop daily U.S. flights are Cartagena-Miami, operated by Avianca, the Colombian airline. American and Continental airlines as well as Avianca fly between the United States and Bogota. Avianca has connecting flights to Cartagena.

City officials are excited and hopeful about upcoming visits from several U.S. airlines. These officials were also concerned about the daylong closing of their airport during Mr. Clinton's visit, an action they said was taken by the Colombian government and not at the request of the United States, which requested a few hours' closure before and after the president's arrival and departure.

"Cartagena is safe," said the businessman. "The war is not here. Look how many visitors we have from cruise ships. They haven't reported serious crimes.

"What we need are Americans," he said.

---

Clinton: U.S. won't get involved in war

USA Today
08/31/00- Updated 12:12 AM ET
By Sibylla Brodzinsky, Special for USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncswed01.htm

CARTAGENA, Colombia - President Clinton, ignoring a bomb scare, pledged political and financial support for Colombia's anti-drug effort Wednesday but said the United States "is not going to get into a shooting war" with drug traffickers.

The eight-hour visit to this port city followed Clinton's approval last week of a $1.3 billion aid package to help in Colombia's war against rebels and drug cartels.

The aid has drawn sharp protests, including clashes Wednesday in the capital, Bogota, between police and thousands of workers and students. The package is the largest military assistance to any Latin American country since the civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s.

"A condition of this aid is that we are not going to get into a shooting war," Clinton said.

"This is not Vietnam, neither is it Yankee imperialism," he said.

The plan, however, will involve U.S. pilots and military advisers training Colombian forces for anti-drug operations. It also will give Colombia 60 U.S. helicopters, including 18 modern Blackhawks.

The aid is part of Colombian President Andres Pastrana's $7.4 billion plan to fight trafficking and end decades of civil war. Ninety percent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States is believed to have come from Colombia.

Meanwhile Wednesday, police said they had arrested two people trying to plant a 4.4-pound bomb about 400 yards from the House of Justice that Clinton was to visit .

Secret Service officials said only explosive materials had been found. National Police spokesman Carlos Perdomo said the device was not designed to cause injury but rather to create chaos and spread propaganda for Colombia's leftist rebels. He said two rebels were seen planting the device.

-------- drug war

Clinton defends drugs war

BBC News
Thursday, 31 August, 2000, 05:10 GMT 06:10 UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_902000/902179.stm

The presidents discussed Pastrana's anti-drugs plan President Clinton has pledged solidarity with Colombia's government in its war against drug traffickers.

Speaking during a brief visit to the Colombian city of Cartagena, Mr Clinton said the US was not going to get into a "shooting war" and that the people of Colombia had suffered enough.

Washington has pledged to provide $1.3bn, mainly in military aid, to help fight the drug barons.

Security around Mr Clinton's entourage is tight, and three people were arrested in Cartagena in possession of bomb-making equipment.

Elsewhere, one policeman was killed during clashes between the security forces and students opposed to the visit.

Mr Clinton said the drive against illegal drugs could not be separated from the quest to end almost four decades of civil conflict in Colombia.

"I reject the idea that we must choose between supporting peace and fighting drugs... for the sake of our children and our grandchildren, we can't afford to let this fail," he said.

Mr Clinton also rejected suggestions that US military aid could draw the US into another Vietnam.

"There won't be American involvement in a shooting war, because they don't want it and because we don't want it," he said.

Colombian President Andres Pastrana said the presence of Mr Clinton on Colombian soil was a sign of solidarity and that Colombia was "no longer isolated in our struggle".

Clashes

Thousands of workers and students marched on the US embassy in Bogota where they threw rocks at police and burned effigies of Mr Clinton and Mr Pastrana.

"Clinton's visit is to give money so that Colombians will keep killing each other in the name of the Americans, and we believe Colombians should not accept this," said union leader Wilson Borja.

In a protest at Bogota's National University on Wednesday, students clashed with security forces in violence that killed an 18-year-old policeman and left three injured.

Left-wing rebels have carried out a series of attacks in protest at his visit - the first by a US president in a decade.

Drug war

Some 5,000 police and hundreds of US agents sealed off Cartagena to ensure Mr Clinton's safety in one of the world's most dangerous countries.

Colombia is the source of some 80% of the world's supply of cocaine.

The rebels and other left-wing groups see the US money as part of a plan for increased US military assistance against guerrillas threatening the Colombian Government.

On Tuesday night, the biggest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) launched a series of attacks across the country, which left two police officers and three civilians dead.

Another group - the ELN - said it would attack oil installations in protest at the president's visit.

Correspondents say the guerrillas are becoming increasingly involved with the lucrative drugs trade.

----

From Colombia to Columbia, The 'War on Drugs' Is A War On Poor and Black People

www.commomdreams.com
Published on Thursday, August 31, 2000
by Tom Turnipseed
http://www.commondreams.org/views/083100-103.htm

COLUMBIA, SC - From Colombia, South America to Columbia, South Carolina, the "Drug War" is being exposed by human rights organizations as a failed war on drugs, but a disastrously effective war on poor South Americans and black citizens of the United States. The phony drug war is being escalated by a President who "didn't inhale" when they passed the joints around and it's primary victims are Colombian peasants and racially profiled blacks in the U. S.

This week Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Washington Office On Latin America called on President Clinton to make the protection of human rights the priority in his meeting with Colombian leaders on August 30. These leading human rights groups released a 43 page document demonstrating how Colombia failed to meet a single human rights condition contained in a $1.3 billion military aid package, that totals more than the military aid we give all the other countries in Latin America combined.

On August 23, Clinton signed a so-called national security interest waiver of human rights conditions placed on the military aid by Congress, and Human Rights Watch said Clinton's action was a "grave mistake" and not only made America complicit in ongoing abuses but risks converting a failed drug war into a disastrous human rights policy.

This past weekend, 28 people lost their lives in Colombia in the Western hemisphere's oldest civil war. According to Human Rights Watch, 35,000 people have been killed and most of them were poor civilians accused by the Colombian Army or right-wing paramilitaries of collaborating with left-wing guerrillas. Last Sunday 60 armed men entered a poor neighborhood in the town of Cienaga and dragged 10 residents from their homes to an isolated part of town where they were questioned, then executed.

While poor people are being slaughtered by U. S. armed thugs, The New York Daily News reports that nearly 2 million Colombians have been displaced by the war and 10% of Colombia's population now lives abroad. Arturo Sanchez, a Colombian born professor in New York, said that middle class professionals are leaving the country in droves and that "this could be the beginning of another Vietnam".

Many neutral observers believe "Plan Colombia" is a U.S. State Department devised plan to enter the counter-insurgency war against the left-wing guerrillas in the U.S. tradition of armed intervention in Latin America. But the sudden rise in the strength of the right-wing paramilitaries is alarming some Washington strategists, and reports state that U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency agents have offered to pay paramilitary leaders to help them fight the drug trafficking. Columbia's drug production, which is estimated to provide 90% of the cocaine consumed in the U.S., has doubled in 5 years as more armed insurgent groups have entered the drug trade to pay for military campaigns.

As the "War on Drugs" kills and dislocates the poor people of Colombia, in the U.S. it is incarcerating an alarmingly disproportionate number of black people. Human Rights Watch released a comprehensive study on June 8, 2000 describing the stark racial disparities in drug incarceration. Blacks comprise 13% of the U.S. population, but comprise 62% of drug offenders in our state prisons! Nationwide, black men are sent to prison on drug charges at 13 times the rate of white men, although studies reveal that five times as many whites use illegal drugs.

In South Carolina, with a black population of 30%, the South Carolina Department of Corrections reported that blacks comprise 86% of the drug offenders in our state prisons. Along with most other states those with felony convictions forever lose their right to vote and prospects for good jobs after prison.

The hypocrisy of "didn't inhale" Clinton, "recreational" smoker Gore, and "born again" party boy George W. Bush, now a fierce drug warrior like his dad, is sickening when we are faced with such unjust and tragic consequences of the "Drug War"!

Human Rights Watch suggests solutions to blatant racial and class inequity. States should eliminate racial profiling; repeal mandatory sentencing laws for drug offenders; increase the availability of alternative sanctions; increase the use of drug courts; and increase the availability of substance abuse treatment.

White privileged politicians who never spent a day in jail for their illegal substance abuse activities must end the dirty "War on Drugs" that oppresses poor and black people. Can they muster the courage and empathy to advocate such sensible solutions?

Tom Turnipseed, former President of the SC Trial Lawyers Association, is a plaintiff's and civil rights attorney in Columbia, SC. He was co-counsel for the Macedonia Baptist Church, an African American congregation in Clarendon County, SC which won a $37,000,000.00 (Thirty Seven Million Dollar) verdict in 1998 against the Ku Klux Klan for burning their church. A former SC State Senator, he is active in state politics and has been the democratic nominee for state Attorney General and Congress. Tom is President of the Center for Democratic Renewal (formerly the Anti-Klan Network) a nationally recognized civil rights organization based in Atlanta. In 1998, he received the Holmes-Weatherly Award, the Unitarian-Universalist Association's highest honor for the pursuit of social justice. For many years, Tom has spoken and written on political and human rights. He has hosted radio and television shows in Columbia, SC and recently appeared on PBS' American Experience in "George Wallace: Settin' the Woods on Fire", April 23rd and 24th, 2000, MSNBC's "Equal Time" with Oliver North and Paul Begala, February 18th, 2000 and C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" with Brian Lamb, January 14th, 2000. His work has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Constitution, The Charlotte Observer and other papers.

Common Dreams NewsCenter is a non-profit news service providing breaking news and views for the Progressive Community.

http://www.commondreams.org/

----

Drug-War Victory: What's the Value?

New York Times
August 31, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/l31dru.html

To the Editor:

Even the most skeptical critic of America's war on drugs cannot help but be impressed with the latest international drug bust (news article, Aug. 27). This major battle involved 200 agents from 12 countries and lasted two years. And what a victory: a major cartel leader extradited to America to be tried, many more conspirators arrested, and the seizure of $1 billion worth of cocaine!

But information is needed regarding this victory's strategic value. What will its impact be on cocaine supply? Will there be fewer users, or less use, in America and Europe? Will drug-related crime be decreased? And who will be monitoring the experience in coming months to justify the conclusion that successes like this support continuation of our costly war and the strategy it reflects?

ROBERT G. NEWMAN , M.D. New York, Aug. 28, 2000 The writer is president of Continuum Health Partners.

-------- india/pakistan

Indian visitor

Washington Times
August 31, 2000
Embassy Row James Morrison
News and dispatches from the diplomatic corridor.
http://208.246.212.80/world/embassy-2000831222610.htm

An Indian Foreign Ministry official is in Washington today to prepare for the visit of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Foreign Secretary Lalit Mansingh is scheduled to meet with Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering.

India's top foreign official, Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, is expected to meet with Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright next week at the U.N. Millennium Summit in New York.

In New Delhi yesterday, the Foreign Ministry announced that Mr. Vajpayee will delay his scheduled U.S. visit by two days. He is now due to leave on Sept. 7 for the summit in New York.

Reports in India noted that the announcement came amid concern for the health of the 73-year-old leader, who suffers from osteoarthritis and has had to cut short recent appearances at domestic events.

Mr. Vajpayee is due to speak at the Millennium Summit on Sept. 8. He has some events with the Indian-American community in New York after the summit and is due to arrive in Washington on Sept. 13.

Mr. Vajpayee addresses a joint session of Congress on Sept. 14 and meets President Clinton the next day.

His visit follows Mr. Clinton's trip to India in March.

-------- iraq

Another Voice Calling For An End To Sanctions In Iraq

www.commondreams.org
Thursday, August 31, 2000
by Mary Alice Davis Austin American-Statesman
http://www.austin360.com/statesman/editions/today/
http://www.commondreams.org/views/083100-106.htm

When you leave the land of the lucky and enter geopolitical purgatory, a few props help bridge the conversational gaps.

"I always take balloons," says Austin lawyer D'Ann Johnson, explaining her reliable street strategy for playfully connecting with children as a traveling human-rights advocate.

On recent travels in ravaged Iraq, she took an extra ice-breaker -- a sweetly evocative black-and-white photo of herself and her 9-year-old daughter. Without fail, the parents and children she met kissed the photo. The gesture moved her, communicating without words a universal benediction: "Blessed be this child."

Iraq's children have not been blessed. International aid agencies estimate that about 500,000 of them have died from assorted horrors during a decade of economic sanctions: starvation, ruined schools, lack of medicine, undrinkable water, ruined sewers, land mine explosions, birth defects. The toll runs around 5,000 children a month. At 22 million, the nation's population is just ahead that of Texas.

Of the myriad wretchedness caused by the lingering trade embargo, one thing in particular makes Johnson's voice waiver as she describes it: No longer can Iraqis obtain enough wood for coffins. She said an old man wept as he described how the bodies must be placed directly into the ground.

Also disheartening was evidence of the deteriorating status of women in a nation in which they had once marked progress. Girls are now infrequently educated, she said. Mothers have sold their jewelry and furniture to buy their children food. "After 10 years of sanctions, they have nothing left to sell," she said.

The trade embargo was imposed by the United Nations and the United States in August 1990 after Iraq under Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and began the Gulf War. The sanctions were justified as a way to make Saddam's military disarm. Their actual effect has been quite different.

As the world marked the 10-year anniversary of the sanctions, Johnson toured Iraq with a group that works to end them, Voices in the Wilderness. For about a week, she left her job as executive director of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association and assumed the role of reporter and representative of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers. The society supports efforts in Congress to end the sanctions.

Also on the tour was her partner, the Austin-based documentary photographer Alan Pogue. It was Pogue who had taken the picture, titled Mother Love, that Johnson used to introduce herself to people she met while touring hospitals, women's sewing co-ops and other sites.

At one hospital, she delivered to physicians a gift from the Austin Quakers, a basic book on pediatric medicine. She also peered into empty hospital supply shelves and wept to see doomed infants with birth defects or leukemia from weapons radiation.

Unemployment in Iraq is running above 50 percent, she said, and estimates of per capita income have plummeted by half or more. The United Nations says deaths among children have doubled under the trade embargo.

Before the embargo, Iraq imported about 70 percent of its food. The United Nations "food for oil" program that lets Iraq sell some oil in exchange for life-giving goods is capriciously implemented and meets only a fraction of the need, Johnson said.

Are the sanctions helping achieve U.S. foreign-policy goals? Few think so. An unlikely alliance of human-rights activists and export-conscious business interests are attacking the sanctions as not only cruel but politically pointless. Human-rights advocates stress the cruelty, noting that more people have died as a result of the sanctions in Iraq than died in the atomic bomb destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Business interests point to the loss of exports. The sanctions cost the United States as much as $19 billion a year in lost exports, according to a study by the Institute for International Economics. The same study found that since 1970 economic sanctions have achieved policy goals only about 13 percent of the time.

A U.N. subcommittee on human rights this month released a report also concluding that the sanctions in Iraq have been ineffective. That report augments mounting cries for change -- in Congress, in board rooms, among international aid agencies and in the news media.

Johnson adds one voice to the chorus, asking that the children be remembered. And be blessed.

For information about the sanctions on Iraq, one good place to start is the special report of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer last year. "Life and Death in Iraq," based on staff research in Iraq, is posted on the Web at www.seattlep-i.com/iraq. Reprints also are available from the Seattle newspaper.

Some data in this column was taken from the series.

Davis is an American-Statesman editorial writer.

---

U.S. jets bomb Iraq, three injured

USA Today
08/31/00- Updated 07:44 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm#mmon

BAGHDAD, Iraq - An official Iraqi newspaper said Thursday that U.S. jets have bombed a village in southern Iraq, injuring a child and two others. The al-Qadissiya paper also said Iraqi air defenses hit one of the planes. U.S. officials say they targeted military sites and all their planes returned safely. U.S. and British planes patrol skies over northern and southern Iraq in ''no-fly zones'' set up after the 1991 Persian Gulf War to protect Kurdish and Shiite minorities from the Iraqi military. Iraq maintains the zones violate its sovereignty and has been challenging the patrols since December 1998.

---

U.N. arms inspectors ready for Iraq duty

Washington Times
August 31, 2000
World Scene � Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://208.246.212.80/world/worldscene-2000831213525.htm

NEW YORK - The new U.N. arms inspection agency is ready to begin work in Iraq in preparation for checking on clandestine weapons programs, although Baghdad has repeatedly said it will not allow the U.N. teams into the country.

In a written report to the U.N. Security Council yesterday, the head of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, Hans Blix, gave an account of recent recruitment, training and organizational activities.

His agency was set up in December to replace the U.N. Special Commission, which, together with its last chief, Richard Butler of Australia, was repeatedly attacked by Iraq's allies on the council, Russia, China and France.

-------- israel

Arrow test scrubbed again, but Katyusha laser scores

Jerusalem Post
Thursday, August 31 2000 12:37 30 Av 5760
By Arieh O'Sullivan
http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2000/08/31/News/News.11575.html

TEL AVIV (August 31) - After two delays due to technical hitches, technicians are hoping to test launch the Arrow-2 anti-ballistic missile today, sources close to the project said.

Yesterday's test was scrubbed when the F-15 carrying the newly developed target missile developed a technical problem, the sources said. This followed a delay the day before after the IAF's range-tracking system had problems.

Today's test, if all goes according to schedule, will be the eighth for the Arrow-2 and mark the first time it will attempt to hit a live incoming missile, dubbed the Black Sparrow, which is to be dropped from the fighter jet.

But while the Arrow-2 was having problems, in the United States the US Army said it had successfully tested the high-energy laser gun developed to shoot down Katyusha rockets.

The US Army said the Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL) had shot down two Russian-built test rockets at once at its White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

It was the first trial of the THEL against multiple rockets. It had previously shot down a lone Katyusha earlier this summer.

"We've just turned science fiction into reality," Lt. Gen. John Costello, head of the Huntsville, Alabama-based Army Space and Missile Defense Command was quoted as saying.

The THEL is tentatively scheduled for delivery to Israel next February, said SMDC spokeswoman Gerda Sherrill.

-------- korea

South Korea proposes contacts between the two militaries

Washington Times
August 31, 2000
By David Sands
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000831215445.htm

South Korea yesterday proposed regular military-to-military contacts with North Korea, the latest sign of the extraordinarily fluid security debate enveloping the divided peninsula.

The offer, made by South Korean Unification Minister Park Jae-Kyu on the second of three days of Cabinet-level talks in Pyongyang, comes amid reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is showing a new openness to allowing some 37,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea to remain indefinitely.

"Let's have minister- or working-level military talks to take concrete, full-scale measures to restore trust," Mr. Park said, according to pool reports by South Korean reporters accompanying his 35-member delegation.

"Both Koreas could discuss the exchanges of military information and personnel, and cooperation in relinking a railway" across the heavily fortified border, Mr. Park said.

U.S. officials meanwhile reacted cautiously to the report that the North Korean leader believed it was "desirable" for U.S. troops to remain on the peninsula, even if the two Koreas eventually reconcile.

South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, in an interview published yesterday in The Washington Post, relayed his North Korean counterpart's comments from their path-breaking June 13-15 summit when the conversation turned to future defense arrangements after a possible reconciliation.

The Clinton administration has welcomed the unexpected warming of relations between the South and the North but has tried to dampenexpectations that cuts in the U.S. military presence on the peninsula are even being contemplated at this stage.

Beyond protecting Seoul against attack from the communist North, the American troops are seen as a potent symbol of U.S. commitment to the region and a check to the ambitions of South Korea's neighbors.

A State Department official, speaking on background yesterday, said the United States hopes the process begun with the June summit will "reduce tensions and improve relations" between the two countries.

But the U.S. troop presence in South Korea is "something for the United States and South Korean governments to determine," the official said. "We believe that the U.S. forces continue to contribute to peace and stability on the Korean peninsula."

Analysts say North Korea's new diplomatic offensive leaves a large number of questions unanswered.

State Department Counselor Wendy Sherman yesterday was in Moscow seeking more details on another Kim Jong-il initiative - a conditional offer made to Russian President Vladimir Putin in July to give up his country's missile program in exchange for Western help launching its commercial satellites.

The North Korean leader later said he as "only joking" in making the proposal, but Russian diplomats insist it was made in earnest.

The United States, South Korean and Japanese officials are expected to take up the matter again tomorrow at a meeting in Seoul.

Kim Jong-il's apparent openness to the presence of U.S. troops on a lasting basis plays into delicate calculations being made across northeastern Asia. The prospect of a reunited Korea would have profound ramifications for Russia, Japan, China and the United States in the bid for influence in the region.

While Pyongyang has regularly denounced the U.S. forces in the South as an "occupying army," Kim Jong-il's reported comments voice openly what many privately have been saying - that the U.S. troops in effect provide a bulwark for both North and South Korea against potentially hostile moves by its neighbors.

"In a sense, Koreans on both sides of the border know they're trapped in a bad neighborhood," said Cato Institute analyst Doug Bandow, who has just published an analysis urging a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from the peninsula.

"The United States is the most benign outside power that is a major player in the region," he said.

-------- myanmar

Myanmar Opposition Says Suu Kyi Won't Back Down

Yahoo News
Thursday August 31
By Aung Hla Tun
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000831/wl/myanmar_leadall_dc_18.html

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi entered the second week of a grueling roadside protest Thursday with her supporters pledging she would not back down from her confrontation with Yangon's generals.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), which won elections by a landslide in 1990 but has never been allowed to govern, demanded that the 55-year-old Nobel laureate be allowed to travel south of the capital Yangon to meet party members.

Myanmar's government, which has been stepping up its attacks on Suu Kyi and the NLD after adopting a conciliatory tone at the start of the protest, said Suu Kyi was trying to stir up trouble.

``This action is seen as a deliberate move to engage in an act of confrontation with the government and to attract world attention,'' it said in a new statement Thursday.

Suu Kyi was halted by police on Aug. 24 as she headed out of Yangon to meet NLD members south of the capital.

It was the first time she had tried to leave Yangon since another roadside confrontation in 1998 that lasted 13 days until deteriorating health and dehydration forced her to return home.

This time Suu Kyi appears to have planned in advance for a possible roadblock and has taken ample food and water with her. She also has access to fresh supplies from local people and supporters, and analysts say her protest could last much longer.

``Unfortunate Challenge''

The government in its statement lashed out at international critics who have condemned its treatment of Suu Kyi, and insisted it was committed to democracy.

``It is unfortunate that the government in every positive move or step in the right direction has been challenged, ridiculed and impeded, creating unnecessary obstacles in (the) orderly transition to a multi-party democracy,'' the government said.

The NLD vowed that Suu Kyi would stand firm.

``It is hereby declared again that General-Secretary Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will not turn back until and unless she has fully completed her intended organizational tasks,'' the NLD said.

In a statement, it said the site south of Yangon where Suu Kyi, her driver and 14 NLD members have been camped since Thursday was infested with mosquitoes, and the authorities would be responsible if any harm came to her.

Photographs released by the government during the stand-off show the group's two vehicles -- a saloon car and a pickup truck -- parked by a dirt track and surrounded by umbrellas and tarpaulins to shade them from the sun.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, as well as the United States, Canada and the European Union, have attacked Myanmar's treatment of Suu Kyi.

Neighboring Thailand has warned the stand-off may damage a planned summit between the Association of South East Asian Nations and the EU in Laos in December. It would be the first ministerial-level meeting between the two groups since relations soured after ASEAN controversially admitted Myanmar in 1997.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said it had sent letters to ASEAN foreign ministers urging them to persuade Myanmar's ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) to lift restrictions on Suu Kyi.

``We are aware of discussions within ASEAN about the possible creation of a human rights body,'' the rights group said in excerpts from the letters, dated Aug. 30.

``Persuading the SPDC to lift restrictions on the country's most prominent opposition leader would be a useful demonstration by ASEAN members of their commitment to upholding basic freedoms,'' it said.

---

7-day standoff with Suu Kyi jeopardizes foreign outreach

Washington Times
August 31, 2000
By Joshua Kurlantzick
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-2000831215642.htm

BANGKOK - A week-old standoff with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has focused attention on Burma's repressive regime at a time when Asian neighbors and Western countries are exploring closer commercial and military ties.

Mrs. Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, has been living in or next to her car for seven days outside the capital, where she and a dozen supporters are surrounded by police while they refuse to return to Rangoon.

It is the second protest of its kind mounted by Mrs. Suu Kyi since she led a pro-democracy uprising against the military in 1988, and has drawn statements of concern from around the world, including several countries that have been warming up to Burma's government.

Regional neighbors China, India and Pakistan are prominent among those said to be cultivating relations with Burma, which is under crippling international sanctions because of massive rights violations by the ruling junta, who call the country Myanmar.

More surprisingly, the European Union has openly begun a "dialogue" with the Burmese rulers and Western intelligence sources give credence to published reports of Israeli military assistance to the pariah nation.

Western diplomats based in Rangoon say high-profile business delegations from India have visited Rangoon several times in the past four months, and the two countries are considering building a natural gas pipeline between them.

China meanwhile has sold Burma jet fighters and heavy arms and is working with Rangoon on cross-border development projects, according to one diplomatic source, who declined to be identified.

Both Pakistani and Western newspapers have reported that Pakistan has sent weapons specialists to Burma, while several Burmese military officers have attended training programs in Pakistan.

Even the European Union, which along with the United States has led the campaign to impose sanctions, has inched closer to embracing Rangoon.

The EU, which broke off ministerial-level contact with Burma in 1996, is in the process of establishing a "critical dialogue" with Rangoon, EU External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten said during a recent visit to Thailand.

In this critical dialogue, "We will discuss all issues but will remain free to criticize Burma," he said.

The EU reportedly will be sending a delegation of officials to Rangoon within the next four months.

Western military analysts also say Israel is helping Burma to modernize its military forces, renewing a relationship that began in the 1950s after both nations gained independence from British rule.

Israel has routinely denied such reports in the past. However, Jane's Intelligence Review reported in March that the Israeli defense manufacturing company Elbit won a contract in August 1997 to upgrade three squadrons of Chinese-built F-7 fighters and FT-7 trainers for Burma.

The Jane's article also cited "several reports" that Israel was providing electronics and other assistance in the construction and fitting out of three new warships being built in Rangoon.

Such military and political ties will face growing scrutiny in the light of the latest confrontation outside Rangoon, where Mrs. Suu Kyi has camped by a roadside since Aug. 24.

She and 12 supporters, traveling in a car and a pickup truck, were stopped by police in the suburb of Dala and forced to move to a muddy mosquito-infested area. Refusing to return to the capital, Mrs. Suu Kyi and her party have spent the week sleeping in the vehicles or under makeshift tents.

Thai officials warned this week that the standoff could hurt relations both with the European Union and with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which took the controversial step of admitting Burma as a member in 1997.

At an annual meeting of Nordic foreign ministers on Tuesday, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden condemned the infringement of Mrs. Suu Kyi's democratic rights and expressed worries about her safety and health.

Also Tuesday, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Secretary-General Kofi Annan "is increasingly concerned about the well-being" of Mrs. Suu Kyi, and the other leaders of her National League for Democracy.

The junta, which freed Mrs. Suu Kyi from house arrest in 1995 but still limits her movements, signaled this week that its patience with her defiance was wearing thin.

It said her party was prevented from traveling farther to "protect them from being harmed by those who have sound reasons for resentment and indignation toward her." Her calls for a boycott of investment and tourism in Burma had caused widespread unemployment, it said.

Mrs. Suu Kyi last tried to leave Rangoon in 1998, resulting in a similar six-day standoff that generated international attention. Journalists have not been allowed to go near the area where her car is parked.

Burma has faced a decade of increasingly tighter sanctions, imposed by foreign states after the junta nullified the 1990 general election victory of Mrs. Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy.

It also stands accused of atrocious human rights abuses. In its most recent report on Burma, Amnesty International accused the junta of perpetrating torture, slavery, forced labor and extrajudicial executions.

� This article is based in part on wire service reports.

-------- israel

More egg on the face of elite Duvdeven unit

Friday, September 1 5:08 AM SGT
http://sg.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/afp/article.html?s=singapore/headlines/000901/world/afp/More_egg_on_the_face_of_elite_Duvdeven_unit.html

JERUSALEM, The death of three soldiers from the elite "Duvdevan" -- or 'Cherry' -- unit, killed by their own men is just the latest gaffe in the history of this highly controversial "special unit" which has killed more than 150 Palestinians since its creation.

Ten days earlier "Duvdevan" committed a bloody mistake August 16, killing Mahmud Assad Abdallah, 73, the traditional chief of the small village of Surda

The "special units" were set up in the greatest secrecy at the end of the 1980's to combat the Intifada, the popular Palestinian uprising between 1987 and 1993.

Their members were order to take Palestinians being sought for "terrorist activities" dead or alive, disguising themselves as Arabs and operating in close contact with the Israeli internal security service, Shin Beth.

This force was the size of a battalion at the time, with two groups: "Samson", operating in the Gaza strip, and "Duvdevan" in the West Bank.

But in 1994, Samson was dismantled followed the agreements on autonomy and the Israeli withdrawal from most of the Gaza strip.

As soon as their operations were publicly known in 1988, the "special units" came under fire, accused by Israeli human rights organisations of systematically people being hunted and compared by the Palestinians to 'death squads.'

According to a report from B'Tselem, one of the main human rights organisations in Israel, the undercover units killed 162 Palestinians between the start of the Intifada and the end of 1998.

"The speed with which the action occurs, the element of surprise, and the fatal fire not preceded by milder methods, in many cases prevents positive identification, and leaves the way wide open for error and for inflicting harm on innocent persons," the report continues.

B'Tselem says "In the zeal to capture wanted persons, deviations from the official orders are understood to be an unavoidable necessity," adding that the message passed to soldiers "is that even if the killing of wanted persons is not a goal in itself .. it is not viewed as wrong."

The organisation condemns this message as being "as immoral as it is illegal."

The Israeli army has always denied that the units had orders to assassinate wanted people, but veterans of these commando groups have told the press that they were trained to be trigger-happy, and from that has come a series of blunders.

At the start of the 1990's, Lieutenant Colonel "Amos" was sacked following the death of a soldier killed by one of his colleagues.

Later, four Duvdevan officers were prosecuted for the death of an Israeli car driver, killed by the unit by mistake.

-------- space

USA Today
Maryland
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Wyoming

Casper - Natrona County residents could get a chance to view something not normally seen in the state a rocket launch. The rocket built by Casper-based Wickman Spacecraft and Propulsion Co. is scheduled for takeoff Sept. 23. The company won a NASA contract to test a design for the space shuttle.

-------- u.n.

UN Getting Into Bed with Big Business
The UN is no longer just a joke. It is becoming the villain of the piece

www.commondreams.org
Published on Thursday, August 31, 2000
Manchester Guardian (UK): by George Monbiot
http://www.commondreams.org/views/083100-102.htm

Pity the UN, for it is not powerful enough even to be hated. While other global bodies are widely reviled, the UN has become little more than a joke.

Ignored and undermined, its treaties unratified, its fees unpaid, the sometime saviour of the world has sunk toward irrelevance. The general assembly is permanently sidelined. The security council is heeded only when its decisions don't interfere with the plans of any of its members. Next week's Millennium Summit, the biggest meeting of heads of state in the history of the world, is likely to be just another scene in an ever more ludicrous pantomime.

UN officials have long been aware of the problem. They have spent much of the past 10 years desperately seeking to be taken seriously by the world's great powers. They are in danger, as a result, of exchanging the role of clown for the role of villain.

The UN's metamorphosis began at the Earth Summit in 1992. The UN Centre on Transnational Corporations, which tried to help weak nations to protect themselves from predatory companies, had recommended that businesses should be internationally regulated. The UN refused to circulate its suggestions. Instead the summit adopted the proposals of a very different organisation: the Business Council for Sustainable Development, composed of the chief executives of big corporations. Unsurprisingly, the council had recommended that companies should regulate themselves. In 1993, the UNCTC was dissolved.

In June 1997, the president of the general assembly announced that corporations would be given a formal role in UN decision-making. Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, suggested that he would like to see more opportunities for companies - rather than governments or the UN - to set global standards.

At the beginning of 1998, the UN Conference on Trade and Development revealed that it was working with the International Chamber of Commerce to help developing countries "formulate competition and consumer protection law" and to facilitate trade. The UN, which until a few years before had sought to defend poor countries from big business, would now be helping big business to overcome the resistance of poor countries. The ICC repaid the favour by asking the world's richest nations to give the UN more money.

In January 1999, Mr Annan launched a new agency, called the Business Humanitarian Forum. It would be jointly chaired by the UN High Commissioner on Refugees and the president of a company called Unocal. Unocal was, at the time, the only major US company still operating in Burma. It was helping the Burmese government to build a massive gas pipeline, during the construction of which Burmese soldiers tortured and killed local people. "The business community," Annan explained to Unocal, Nestle, Rio Tinto and the other members of the new forum, "is fast becoming one of the UN's most important allies ... That is why the organisation's doors are open to you as never before."

Two months later, a leaked memo revealed that the UN Development Programme had accepted $50,000 from each of 11 giant corporations. In return, Nike, Rio Tinto, Shell, BP, Novartis, ABB, Dow Chemical and the other companies would gain privileged access to UNDP offices, acquiring, in the agency's words, "a new and unique vehicle for market development activities", as well as "worldwide recognition for their cooperation with the UN". The UNDP would develop a special UN logo which the companies could put on their products.

After fierce campaigning by human rights groups, this scheme was suspended. But in July this year, Mr Annan launched a far more ambitious partnership, a "global compact" with 50 of the world's biggest and most controversial corporations. The companies promised to respect their workers and the environment. This, Annan told them, would "safeguard open markets while at the same time creating a human face for the global economy". The firms which signed his compact would be better placed to deal with "pressure from single-issue groups". Again, they would be allowed to use the UN's logo. But there would be no binding commitments, and no external assessment of how well they were doing.

The UN, in other words, appears to be turning itself into an enforcement agency for the global economy, helping western companies to penetrate new markets while avoiding the regulations which would be the only effective means of holding them to account. By making peace with power, the UN is declaring war upon the powerless.

----

Religion's Many Faces Meet in New York for Peace

New York Times
August 31, 2000
By GUSTAV NIEBUHR
http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/083100un-religion.html

UNITED NATIONS -- One religious leader among hundreds who have come from around the world to New York this week to talk about peace, Dastur Firoze M. Kotwal said he hoped the four-day gathering fosters friendships across faith boundaries, a sharing of viewpoints and "unity among religions."

"And this," added Dr. Kotwal, a soft-spoken, bearded dastur, or high priest among Zoroastrians in Bombay, India, "will suppress violence and terrorism that is going on in the name of religion."

He was not alone in expressing such hopes for the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, which convened late Monday afternoon at the United Nations and has since moved to a nearby hotel.

Funded largely by corporations, the conference has brought together people as distinguished by their professed good intentions as by the diversity of their theologies and the different hues and shapes of their dress.

Talking about how they might work together to stifle conflict, ease poverty and help the environment are Shiite Muslims in dark turbans, Buddhist monks in saffron robes, black-suited Christian clerics and men and women from tribal groups.

After a formal opening at the United Nations, group discussions have been closed.

On Thursday, the conference is to issue a declaration endorsing specific measures on behalf of world peace.

In interviews, several participants called the event significant for its venue, having allowed religious leaders access en masse to the United Nations -- a forum typically reserved for political leaders -- and for having afforded people of such diverse backgrounds the chance to meet.

"This is very important," said Gensho Hozumi, chief priest of a Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan. "For the first time, to be heard in the United Nations."

But a major shadow over the conference has been the absence of the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibet, whose participation at the United Nations was blocked by China's objections.

Some of the conference's business has been taking place informally in the hotel corridors, where participants meet one another, exchange business cards, even take each other's photos.

For some, the sight of such harmony has imparted the sense that a common purpose is at work. "It's good to see we are all here to work for peace, and for the love of God, and to do something for the society," said Sister Marie-Odila Perochan, dressed in a full nun's habit, a crucifix around her neck. She is a member of Fraternit� Notre-Dame, a Roman Catholic order based in France, which runs charitable projects worldwide, including one in Harlem.

Among participants, a frequent theme is that government officials need to know that religious leaders still carry considerable influence and thus could help in large-scale good works.

Sayyed Mohammed Musawi, secretary general of the World Ahlul Bayt Islamic League, a Shiite Muslim organization based in London, said that "the United Nations' noble causes cannot be implemented by governments only, unless there is participation" by people within those nations. "And nobody can influence the people of the nations more than the religious leaders," he said.

In addition to talking about peace, some have come with specific concerns, particularly related to the environment. Paul Gualingua Toala, a member of a three-man delegation representing the Quichua, an Indian group in Ecuador, said the delegation wants to spread the word about ecological problems in the Amazon.

Wylee LaRocque, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of the Chippewa, from Belcourt, N.D., voiced a broadly similar concern. "To take care of the earth," he said, when asked what message the Chippewas wanted to send.

"If there's a thing that all people have in common, regardless of race or income level, we all live on the same planet," said Mr. LaRocque, whose eagle feather headdress, rabbit bone vest and beaded moccasins made him a person with whom a stream of delegates wanted to have their pictures taken.

But some participants also said they were disappointed that time allotted for individual speakers was too short to allow much depth of discussion in the formal sessions.

Rabbi Ren� Samuel Sirat, former chief rabbi of France and currently vice president of the conference of rabbis of Europe, said, "There are so many people here who would like to express themselves, and they're only given a limited time to get their message across." He suggested that another such meeting, perhaps in two or three years, could build on the momentum.

And at least one person at the conference voiced concern about the challenge posed by religious leaders not attending, whose views are antithetical to peaceful encounters between faiths.

"We have to marginalize religious leaders who are peace spoilers and are inciting hatred and nationalistic passions, which destroys life," said Rabbi Arthur Schneier of New York, president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, which has sought to foster interfaith dialogue.

"It's nice to come together here," he said, "but we have a lot of those who are out there who are not in sync, and who are seeking to undermine our peacemaking, bridge-building efforts."

---

USA Today
Maryland
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Massachusetts

Auburn - When the United Nations celebrates its 55th anniversary on Oct. 24, this town near Worcester won't be joining the party. In a 3-2 vote, town selectmen declined an invitation from the United Nations Association of Greater Boston to mark the anniversary. Selectmen George Briggs, an Air Force veteran, said American money is misspent on U.N. operations.

---

Religious leaders vow to work together

Washington Times
August 31, 2000
By Betsy Pisik
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-200083123238.htm

NEW YORK - Hundreds of religious leaders yesterday vowed to work together with the United Nations to defuse conflict, protect the environment and eradicate poverty.

In a landmark document, some 700 to 800 religious and spiritual leaders pledged to "practice and promote inner and outer conditions that foster peace and the nonviolent management and resolution of conflict."

Scores of priests, prophets, rabbis, cardinals, nuns, swamis, monks and chieftains gathered in New York this week to celebrate their common goals and affirm their responsibility to work for equality and peace.

"There can be no real peace until all groups and communities acknowledge the cultural and religious diversity of the human family in a spirit of mutual respect and understanding," the religious leaders said in their two-page Commitment to Peace, which has been presented to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

"We accept that men and women are equal partners in all aspects of life and children are the hope of the future," declared participants of the Millennium World Peace Summit, which wraps up today.

But despite such lofty ideals, political divisions intruded on the conference over the exclusion of the Dalai Lama.

Conference organizers declined to invite the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize laureate out of respect for China's "sensitivities" regarding all things Tibetan. The spiritual leader of Tibet, which was annexed by China in 1959, did send a delegation to the conference.

Although grumbling was still heard yesterday, most of the participants were eager to get on with interfaith roundtables organized around regional and religious conflicts such as the Balkans, Middle East, Russia and Central Asia.

In their Commitment to Global Peace, the religious leaders also promised to protect the environment, work to abolish nuclear weapons, and "combat those commercial practices and applications of technology that degrade the environment and the quality of human life."

The group plans to convene an interfaith "advisory panel" to counsel the secretary-general on using religious solutions to global problems.

Mr. Annan's spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said yesterday that "he would probably be more comfortable with a less-formal yet active relationship in the future."

The secretary-general in the past three years has consistently reached out to business leaders, nongovernmental groups, high-profile sports and entertainment figures, and other segments of "civil society" to get involved with the international organization.

In his remarks to the group on Tuesday, Mr. Annan reaffirmed the universal right to freedom of religion and assembly and said "there must be no room in the 21st century for religious bigotry and intolerance."

He also challenged the religious leaders to reject religious extremism and noted that they "have not always spoken out when their voices could have helped combat hatred and persecution, or could have roused people from indifference."

Among the conferees' commitments: � To collaborate with the United Nations and all men and women of good will locally, regionally and globally in the pursuit of peace in all its dimensions.

� To appeal to all religious communities and ethnic and national groups to respect the right to freedom of religion, to seek reconciliation, and to engage in mutual forgiveness and healing.

� To combat those commercial practices and applications of technology that degrade the environment and the quality of human life.

� To promote the equitable distribution of wealth within nations and among nations, eradicating poverty and reversing the widening gap between rich and poor.

� To practice and promote in our communities the values of the inner dimension of peace, including especially study, prayer, meditation, a sense of the sacred, humility, love, compassion, tolerance and a spirit of service, which are fundamental to the creation of a peaceful society.

---

'Fig leaf' democracies blasted by U.N. chief

Washington Times
August 31, 2000
World Scene � Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://208.246.212.80/world/worldscene-2000831213525.htm

NEW YORK - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the world's parliaments yesterday to reject the "fig leaf democracy" of elections held in nations without free speech and a free press.

Opening the first global conference of presiding officers of national parliaments from 141 countries, he said "rights cannot be guaranteed simply by holding elections."

"We have, in a number of recent instances, witnessed attempts to cloak the outright subversion of democracy in the mantle of defending it. We have heard governments claim to be acting in the best interests of the people, even when showing contempt for their choices," he said.

"Constitutional rule is not always reversed suddenly in one dark night of terror. Often it is done slowly and incrementally, institution by institution, under the guise of defending democracy," he added, warning against the new threat of "fig-leaf democracy."

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

Cheney Steps Up Criticism Of Military Readiness

Washington Post
Thursday, August 31, 2000; Page A01
By David Von Drehle Washington Post Staff Writer
http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-08/31/354l-083100-idx.html

ATLANTA, Aug. 30-Former defense secretary Richard B. Cheney, the Republican vice presidential nominee, intensified the GOP attack on the administration's leadership of the U.S. military today, lamenting "eight years of neglect and misplaced priorities."

Cheney and presidential nominee George W. Bush have been locked in a back-and-forth with administration and Pentagon officials in recent days over whether U.S. forces are sufficiently equipped, trained and ready to fight. The Republican ticket got support in that fight today from retired Gen. Colin L. Powell, a prominent Bush backer, who said in an interview that "our troops are great" but that President Clinton has allowed investments in the future of the military to dwindle perilously.

In a formal speech to a conservative foreign policy group here, Cheney gave a grim assessment of trends facing U.S. forces around the world. The services cannot recruit enough troops, hold on to enough officers, get enough planes and helicopters into the air or maintain adequate training, he argued.

"Overseas deployments have multiplied, stretching the services to the limit, and causing shortages of spare parts and equipment," Cheney charged. "All of this has brought on serious problems of readiness, recruiting, retention and morale."

Adding to the problem, Cheney suggested, is a lack of trust in the commander in chief. As he told a group of GOP contributors here tonight, the country needs to "give our young men and women who put on the uniform the kind of commander in chief they can respect."

Cheney said Clinton and his would-be successor, Vice President Gore, have squandered the military power built up in the 1980s by Ronald Reagan, leaving weaknesses that will take years to repair.

"A commander in chief leads the military built by those who came before him," Cheney said. "Decisions made today shape the force of tomorrow."

On board Air Force Two tonight, Gore said, "We have the strongest military in the world, by far, and we reversed the declines that began in the Bush-Quayle years and I have advocated additional steps to continue the rebuilding and strengthening to make sure it's always the best and always more than adequate."

However, Cheney tried to distinguish between cuts made necessary by the fall of the Soviet Union and the further reductions in military spending made during the first six years of Clinton's leadership. But the main purpose of the speech was to add significant detail to a criticism Bush has been making throughout his presidential campaign, most recently in a speech last week to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Cheney offered a flurry of numbers: "Over the last decade," he said, "commitments worldwide have gone up by 300 percent, while our military forces have been cut by 40 percent. . . . Pilots are flying more missions on older aircraft. . . . The Navy had only enough cruise missiles to satisfy a little over half" the strategic need.

The specifics seemed designed to shore up an important theme to Bush and to generations of Republicans--that they are the party of military strength. Bush's credibility on the topic took some knocks last week when Pentagon leaders, including Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, himself a Republican, rebutted a claim Bush made in his acceptance speech that two Army divisions are not ready for duty. That was true last year but was quickly fixed.

But while Cheney added counts to the indictment of the Clinton administration record, his speech to the Southern Center on International Studies did little to outline solutions. "Our military today is overused and under-resourced," he said--but he did not get into the thorny questions that flow from this belief, questions often wrestled with in Washington: When and where should U.S. force be used, and how much is enough to pay for that?

Both Bush and Gore are promising increases in defense spending if they are elected.

Among the experts Cheney quoted today was his Democratic counterpart, Connecticut Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman. According to Cheney, Lieberman said last year that "our military faces readiness problems, including falling recruitment and retention in critical skill areas; aging equipment that costs more to keep operating at acceptable levels of reliability; a need for more support services for a force with a high percentage of married personnel; and frequent deployments."

Cheney insisted that saying these things is not a criticism of the military. It is "a criticism of a president and a vice president and the record they have built together." And Powell, who was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when Cheney was defense secretary under President George Bush, echoed that view.

In his speech to the VFW last week, a day after Bush addressed the veterans, Gore argued that his opponent was giving comfort to America's enemies by criticizing troop readiness. Today, Powell objected to that line of thinking. "It's not fair to say 'Don't talk about this.' Our enemies don't need to hear this in a speech, they can see it for themselves," Powell said. "It isn't a matter of giving comfort to our enemies--we need to give comfort to our young men and women in the military. I don't think we have done that well over the last seven or eight years."

Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks in Washington contributed to this report.

---

Bush and Cheney Would Consider Reducing Overseas Troops

New York Time
August 31, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/late/31cnd-cheney.html

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- Dick Cheney said Thursday that if he and George W. Bush are elected they will look at scaling back U.S. troops in the Balkans and letting European allies take on more responsibility for peacekeeping.

"I haven't seen yet any proposal from the administration to get out of Kosovo or Bosnia," Cheney said at a school in south Florida where he was campaigning for the Republican ticket.

"One approach would be to have our European friends and allies pick up a bigger share of the burden there," Cheney said. He commented a day after he delivered a stinging assessment of a Clinton-era military he said was stretched too thin by overseas peacekeeping missions.

Cheney has accused President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore of running down the military, but he said Thursday he's not ready to say where he would recommend increases until a new Bush administration does a complete military review.

The Balkans mission, however, is the first place that he'd recommend reductions.

"We need to make those kind of choices given that the size of our forces has been pretty dramatically reduced," Cheney said.

Clinton has been scaling back troops in the Balkans from the nearly 20,000 who were sent to the region in 1995.

Cheney, who as defense secretary in the Bush administration helped craft U.S. strategy in the Persian Gulf War, said there are times when it's appropriate for the United States to send troops on peacekeeping missions, either in a coalition through the United Nation Security Counsel or unilaterally when circumstances require the nation to "act aggressively and independently."

Asked which Clinton-era deployments he thought should not have been made, Cheney said he would not have sent soldiers to Haiti.

---

THE REPUBLICANS
Clinton Mishandled the Armed Services, Cheney Contends

New York Times
August 31, 2000
By MICHAEL COOPER
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/083100wh-cheney.html

ATLANTA, Aug. 30 -- Dick Cheney, the Republican vice-presidential candidate and former defense secretary, delivered a harsh assessment today of the condition of the armed forces under President Clinton, accusing him of "running down" a military that has succeeded in recent conflicts only because of the military buildup of past Republican administrations.

Mr. Cheney said the American military was stretched over too many foreign theaters and hampered by low morale, low pay, inadequate training and unreliable weapons and equipment. He accused Mr. Clinton, and by association Vice President Al Gore, of neglecting the national defense to the point where military planners were no longer certain that the United States could meet its stated goals of being prepared to fight two medium-size conflicts at the same time.

"Decisions made today shape the forces of tomorrow," he told several hundred veterans and political supporters in a hotel ballroom here. "That is why we were able to win the gulf war -- because we were commanding a military that had been rebuilt in the 1980's.

"And that is why the current administration has been able to conduct its vast deployments, from Baghdad to Belgrade. The ships and planes were ready. The pilots and crewmen were prepared. The missiles, the ammunition, the equipment and the men and women to use them were all there. That is the military they inherited. The question today is what future presidents will inherit." [Excerpts, Page A18.]

Defense analysts acknowledged several of Mr. Cheney's arguments, but cautioned that he exaggerated some of the criticisms and ignored positive trends in the military under the Clinton administration.

"There are a lot of valid points in the speech -- things aren't quite as good as they were under Cheney," said Michael O'Hanlon, a defense policy specialist at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"But he greatly overstates the case."

Mr. Cheney's appearance, which was scheduled only in the last few days, seemed to signal a shift in tactics.

Mr. Cheney's aides had said he would spend the week talking about education. But after more than a week in which the Republican campaign found itself defending its policies on tax and health care, Mr. Cheney returned to more familiar ground for the party with an appeal on national security.

Mr. Cheney also seemed to be trying to play the role that Republicans had hoped he would take in the campaign -- lending his age, experience and authority as a former defense secretary to the Republican presidential nominee, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas. Indeed, Mr. Cheney not only framed his remarks as the words of the defense secretary who helped defeat Iraq, but portrayed himself as a man who had returned to public life in large part because of his desire to repair the damage he said had been done to the military.

Mr. Cheney offered few concrete proposals in his speech today. But in the past the Bush campaign has called for a $20 billion increase in the military budget for research and development from 2002 through 2006, for directing the Defense Department to spend a fifth of its procurement budget on new technologies and for increasing the recently enacted pay raise for members of the armed services by a further $1 billion a year.

Mr. Gore responded tonight to Mr. Cheney's criticisms. "We have the strongest military in the world by far, and we reversed the decline that began in the Bush-Quayle years," Mr. Gore told reporters. "And I have advocated additional steps to continue the rebuilding and strengthening to make sure it's always the best and always more than adequate."

The Gore campaign has said that the vice president advocates a 10-year, $127 billion increase in spending on military salaries, training and modernization, and that amount may increase when Mr. Gore adjusts his budget proposals to reflect a growing surplus.

In his speech, Mr. Cheney also sought to counter the Democratic response to the criticism directed by Mr. Bush at President Clinton's military policies. Since those attacks began in recent weeks, Mr. Gore and his running mate, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, accused Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney of denigrating the American military, which they said sent a bad signal to allies and potential adversaries.

"To point out that our military has been overextended, taken for granted, and neglected -- that is no criticism of the military," Mr. Cheney said today. "That is a criticism of a president and a vice president, and the record they have built together."

Mr. Cheney said that Mr. Gore had expressed concerns that criticism about the military would send the wrong message to potential adversaries, and he used it to make another dig at the Clinton administration. "If our potential adversaries have received any 'wrong messages' recently," he said, "it was not from the newspapers, but from the nuclear lab at Los Alamos.

And what lesson do they draw from the fact that this administration has failed to safeguard our nation's most vital national secrets?"

Mr. Cheney attributed the Clinton administration's military successes, like the NATO bombing that led to the withdrawal of of Serb forces from Kosovo, and the air strikes on Iraq, to the military buildup under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. And he said that the Republicans in Congress deserved the credit for recent increases in the defense budget.

While many of the examples Mr. Cheney cited echoed his past remarks -- that fewer units were ready for combat, recruitment was down, aging equipment posed a danger and low pay was damaging morale -- he cast his criticisms in a much more partisan light.

"It is the record of eight years of stewardship over the American armed forces by President Clinton and Vice President Gore," he said. "Eight years of neglect and misplaced priorities.

Eight years of multiplying missions and unclear goals. Eight years during which the enemies of freedom have not been idle. Eight years is a long time -- and eight years is long enough."

Mr. O'Hanlon, the Brookings Institution analyst,

criticized Mr. Cheney for not proposing a specific alternative for overseas commitments or enlarging the military. "As much as Cheney says we've overdeployed and overcut, there's been no proposal by the campaign to reverse either of those policies," Mr. O'Hanlon said.

"The idea they'll review U.S. commitments and find any big cutbacks is illusory."

A former national security budget specialist under Mr. Clinton, Gordon Adams, said many of the problems Mr. Cheney cited, including substandard military housing, was prevalent during the Bush administration.

"He's selectively culled barnacles of the readiness issue, but many are out of context," said Mr. Adams, who now directs the security policy studies program at George Washington University.

"This is not neglect, I'm sorry."

Mr. Adams said the former defense secretary was not giving the military enough credit.

"When called upon, this force has performed spectacularly well," Mr. Adams said.

"To the rest of the world, the U.S. military isn't just the toughest kid on the block, it's the toughest by far."

Pentagon officials have countered Mr. Cheney's assertion that morale is declining, citing improvements in the number of troops re-enlisting, which they attribute to two years of increases in pay and benefits. They have also pointed to improvements this year in recruiting, although reserve recruiting has declined and there has been a shortage in commissioned officers, with a drastic increase in the number of captains leaving the Army.

Mr. Cheney offered few concrete proposals to bolster the nation's military in his speech, although he did say that a Bush-Cheney administration would spend more money researching new technologies and deploying missile defenses, that it would raise pay for the troops and improve their housing and schools.

To underscore the importance of what aides billed as a major policy speech, Mr. Cheney's aides encouraged reporters to interview another gulf war colleague of Mr. Cheney's -- Colin L Powell, the retired general who led the joint chiefs of staff. "I share his view," General Powell said in a telephone interview. "We still have a great force, and I don't think anybody would say we don't. But we owe them everything they need to get the jobs done."

And Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, released a statement in support of the speech. "Congress deserves a share of the blame for this problem for annually treating the defense budget as just another pork barrel," Mr. McCain said. "But the lion's share of our failure belongs rightfully to the man honored to serve as commander-in-chief."

Perhaps Mr. Cheney's most pointed dig at the opposition came when he quoted an "observer of the military" in his speech.

"One observer of the military," he said, "had this to say last year: 'Our military faces readiness problems,' he cautioned, 'including falling recruitment, and retention in critical skill areas; aging equipment that costs more to keep operating at acceptable levels of reliability; a need for more support services for a force with a high percentage of married personnel; and frequent deployments.' "

"That is a fair summary of the problem," Mr. Cheney said, "and it came from Senator Joseph Lieberman."

---

Excerpts From Dick Cheney's Speech

New York Times
August 31, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/083100wh-cheney-text.html

Remarks prepared for delivery yesterday at an Atlanta hotel at an event sponsored by the Southern Center for International Relations:

"Our military today is overused and underresourced.

Defense spending today is lower as a percentage of G.N.P. than at any time since 1940 -- the year before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

At the same time, overseas deployments have multiplied, stretching the services to the limit, and causing shortages of spare parts and equipment.

All of this has brought on serious problems of readiness, recruiting, retention and morale.

Let me be specific.

Over the last decade, commitments worldwide have gone up 300 percent, while our military forces have been cut by 40 percent.

As of January 1993, 85 percent of Air Force combat units were fully ready for their mission. Today that number is at 65 percent.

Part of the problem, according to the secretary of the Air Force, is that pilots are flying more missions on older aircraft. The average plane is 20 years old. And even with new planes coming online, by the year 2015, the average plane will be 30 years old.

The Army reports that 40 percent of its helicopter fleet is not up to performing its mission. The main reason is aging rotary-wing aircraft.

The Army also reports a 'dramatic decline' in aviator experience.

Flight hours of aviation battalion commanders have declined from an average of 2,000 hours 10 years ago to 1,000 today.

Budget shortfalls have slowed some training missions and brought others to a complete stop, as when the U.S.S. Decatur was forced to return to port a month early this summer -- because there wasn't enough money for fuel. General Zinni, the recently retired commander of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, has said that our military has inadequate resources and too many commitments for the size of the force. Not long ago, he said that America would have trouble mounting another major operation like Desert Storm.

In that conflict, we had no more effective weapons than the cruise missile, which destroyed the main power grid in Baghdad on the first night of the air war.

It was among the weapons of choice in Kosovo as well.

The Procurement Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee found that at the end of that campaign last year, the Navy had only enough cruise missiles to satisfy a little over half of what is required for two major theater wars . . .

The Air Force was left with only one-tenth of what it needed.

. . .

For the fifth consecutive year, the Army and Navy will fail to meet their targets for commissioned officers.

Both branches are facing a situation where junior officers are increasingly headed for the door. In a recent G.A.O. survey of more than a thousand officers and enlisted men, a majority said they intended to leave rather than stay and pursue a career. Why are they leaving? For many, the question really is, why stay -- when training is inadequate, equipment is lacking, units are undermanned and forces are deployed in more than a hundred places across the globe, often with unclear missions and inadequate support? . . .

A much easier call is where to place responsibility for all of this. It is the record of eight years of stewardship over the American armed forces by President Clinton and Vice President Gore. Eight years of neglect and misplaced priorities.

Eight years of multiplying missions and unclear goals. . . .

They claim to have turned things around, but the only thing that has kept it from falling further has been Congress, which has added $50 billion to the administration's defense budget requests over the last several years.

The needs of our nation's defense, and the needs of our defenders, are not merely relevant in a national campaign. They must be front and center. For his part, Governor Bush has been raising these issues for more than a year.

He has offered specific proposals to rebuild the strength and morale of the armed forces, and make them fully capable of meeting every challenge the new century will bring.

Seizing this opportunity will require not just spending more, but spending more wisely.

It means giving today's military what it needs.

It means beginning to create the military of the future, by capitalizing on new technologies and placing greater emphasis on R & D.

It means accelerating research and deployment of missile defenses.

But the first order of business is to renew the bond of trust between the commander in chief and the military.

This includes very practical steps, like higher pay, improved housing, and better schools for their children. It certainly means reviewing our overseas deployments in dozens of countries, and insisting that deployments have well-defined objectives.

It means keeping faith with our veterans, by providing first-rate health care and treating them with dignity.

Above all, it means respecting the military and earning their trust in return."

---

Cheney: military 'overused and under-resourced'

Washington Times
August 31, 2000
http://208.246.212.80/national/nobyline-2000831221718.htm

Richard B. Cheney yesterday charged the Clinton-Gore administration has "neglected" America's military.

"Our military today is overused and under-resourced," the Republican vice-presidential candidate said in a speech in Atlanta.

Mr. Cheney, who was defense secretary during the 1991 Gulf war, said the administration had reduced the defense budget "far beyond any careful weighing of the national interest."

Meanwhile, campaigning in New Hampshire yesterday, Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush outlined a five-year, $6.7 billion plan to help low-income college students.

The Bush-Cheney ticket took the offensive on defense and education issues as polls showed Vice President Al Gore gaining ground in the Midwest and widening his lead in California.

In Illinois, a poll shows Mr. Gore ahead 46 to 41 percent, while the presidential race is a dead heat in Michigan, where Mr. Bush had enjoyed an advantage in earlier polls. Mr. Gore was also ahead by 15 percentage points in Maryland, where the race had been even in July.

While Mr. Gore campaigned in Oregon yesterday, promising to protect Medicare funding "in an ironclad lockbox," Mr. Bush blamed the Clinton-Gore administration for failing to close the "achievement gap" of low test scores for minority students.

"While some [students] are flourishing, others are languishing," the Texas governor told an audience of 800 at a high school in Hampton, N.H.

He called the Clinton-Gore record on education "seven years of stagnancy."

Mr. Bush proposed increasing the maximum amount for a first-year Pell grant to $5,100 from the current $3,300. Pell grants are federal tuition subsidies for low-income college students.

Mr. Bush also advocated establishing a $1.5 billion "college challenge" grant to help states establish merit-scholarship programs.

Appearing at the Southern Center for International Studies in Atlanta, Mr. Cheney pledged that a Republican administration would boost military pay and benefits, and improve housing for service members and their families.

Mr. Bush's running mate made clear he was criticizing the Clinton-Gore administration, not the military.

"To point out that our military has been overextended, taken for granted and neglected - that is no criticism of the military. That is a criticism of a president and a vice president and the record they have built together," said Mr. Cheney, who is making a campaign swing through several Southern states, including North Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Florida.

Gore campaign spokesman Doug Hattaway yesterday accused the Republican ticket of "twisting facts about our military for partisan gain" and insisted: "Our military is the strongest, most capable, most ready fighting force in the world."

A recent Army report showed the lowest possible readiness levels at more than half of Army training centers. Congressional reports and studies by civilian defense analysts have recently noted the U.S. military suffers from a shortage of Air Force and Navy pilots, aging equipment and aircraft, and declining morale.

The Gore campaign yesterday sought to turn attention to the vice president's health-care proposals for the elderly. Mr. Gore has already proposed a $253 billion prescription-drug benefit program for retirees under Medicare.

Mr. Gore yesterday proposed $400 billion in new funding to prop up the Medicare program, which he promised to put out of reach of "politicians."

"Let's remove the temptation to raid the cookie jar," the vice president said of his "lockbox" promise.

But the Gore campaign faced a new attack on the health-care front, as a Republican group announced a new television ad warning that the Democrat's drug benefit would dip into seniors' Social Security checks.

Featuring an elderly woman who says, "Get your hands off my Social Security check," the Republican Leadership Coalition spot begins today in Pittsburgh and Washington.

"We believe we caught Gore trying to pull a fast one," said Republican consultant Scott Reed. "He hasn't admitted his [prescription-drug] plan is to take it out of Social Security checks."

---

Couple's Tailhook accusation not supported by hotel film

Washington Times
August 31, 2000
By Rowan Scarborough
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-2000831222433.htm

A purported altercation between Navy Tailhook fliers and a civilian couple was captured by a hotel security camera and apparently shows no "inappropriate touching," a hotel spokesman said yesterday.

The unidentified married couple have revived memories of the notorious 1991 Tailhook convention by charging that the wife was inappropriately touched by a group of fliers in the hallway earlier this month. The Navy began an investigation last week.

Mike Greenan, spokesman for the Nugget Casino Resort, near Reno, Nev., said hotel security officers reviewed soundless film of the couple passing through a group of fliers as the husband and wife headed to their third-floor room. It was about 12:30 a.m., Saturday, Aug. 19, as the Tailhook Association convention concluded its second day.

Mr. Greenan said the film "apparently" reveals no wrongful touching, but he added that the captured images are not high quality.

He said the couple had called security to complain of noise and profanity in the hallway.

When security arrived, the fliers - some in the company of their wives - complied with a request to return to their rooms.

Mr. Greenan said the couple never complained of any touching, just the noise.

"They dispersed the group and took a report from the couple," said Mr. Greenan. "The only complaint the couple made at the time was noise and profanity. From what I know, it wasn't even mentioned. It wasn't part of the complaint. There's no mention in the report of inappropriate touching."

The tape and security's report have been turned over to the Navy Inspector General's Office. The Navy ordered an investigation after the husband registered a complaint on a Navy sexual harassment advice line.

The fliers were mingling near rooms for VFA-122, an F-18 Super Hornet squadron based at the Naval Air Station, Lemoore, Calif., near Fresno.

Later, Vice Adm. Mike Bowman, then the outgoing commander of Navy Pacific air forces, spoke to the couple and expressed regrets for any inconvenience. The Nugget did not charge them for the night's stay.

Retired Navy Capt. Lonny McClung, president of the Tailhook Association of retired and active naval fliers, has sent an e-mail to his board of directors predicting his members will be exonerated. He disputes the couple's account.

"Hotel security has stated to me that it didn't happen that way and that the accuser was clearly the one who started the verbal altercation after he arrived," Capt. McClung's message states, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Times from fliers.

He said in an interview yesterday, "We're not afraid of the truth of this, and we're confident our guys are going to be cleared."

He said the hotel owner telephoned him this week. "He basically said he was looking forward to getting to the bottom of this. . . . He's looking forward to having us back next year."

Tailhook relocated the annual convention to the Nugget after the disastrous 1991 session at the Las Vegas Hilton, where naval fliers were accused of drunkenness and groping women.

The Aug. 17-20 convention was the first officially supported by the Navy since 1991. The service had cut ties, but resumed an affiliation after members agreed to a code of conduct.

Mr. Greenan said the 2,000 Tailhook conventioneers produced two noise complaints over the four days.

"It was fine," he said. "They had 850 rooms a night for three nights. That's over half our hotel. This is the sixth year in a row they've been here. For a group that size we actually had fewer complaints than we normally would on a full week of conventions on a busy weekend."

A Navy spokesman at the Pentagon said yesterday he did not know if the civilian couple, who reside in the San Francisco Bay area, have been interviewed by investigators.

"Until we find some substantive information on this, we will revert to the statement we released last week," he said.

The four-day meeting featured symposiums on air safety, naval aviation's future and the Kosovo campaign. Top Navy admirals spoke to those in attendance. Navy officials said afterward the sessions will help them retain more experienced pilots.

There also was socializing and what organizers said was moderate drinking.


-------- OTHER

-------- environment

Hoover Essay in Public Policy: In Sickness or in Health: The Kyoto Protocol versus Global Warming

Yahoo News
Thursday August 31, 1:34 pm Eastern Time
By Thomas Gale Moore
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000831/ca_hoover_.html

STANFORD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 31, 2000--We have nothing to fear from global warming.

Challenging the dire predictions of the White House and some scientists, Hoover fellow Thomas Gale Moore says that fears about the health effects from global warming are overblown and highly speculative.

In tackling the most pressing questions surrounding the issue -- Will there be outbreaks of epidemic diseases? Will there be more frequent and more violent hurricanes? Will cutting greenhouse gas emissions improve the health of Americans? -- Moore's research has prompted him to answer every question with a simple and emphatic ``no.''

His viewpoint is shared by other established organizations. The World Health Organization and the Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy are among those that say there is little cause for alarm over recent warming trends.

In his Hoover Essay in Public Policy In Sickness or in Health: The Kyoto Protocol versus Global Warming, Moore attacks the ``scare tactics'' of those who want to reduce greenhouse gases, pointedly refuting each of the major claims of the supporters of the Kyoto Protocol.

Moore says global warming will not lead to the spread of tropical diseases, like malaria, or give rise to major pandemics like those the world saw in centuries past. And there is simply not enough evidence to support the claim that a warmer climate will increase the frequency and violence of storms. On the contrary, he says, it is possible that global warming will diminish the temperature difference between the poles and the equator and thus diminish the likelihood of dangerous weather.

Ultimately, the Kyoto Protocol will do little to stop the buildup of greenhouse gases. In fact, Moore warns, it could threaten the very people it aims to protect by destabilizing the economies of participating nations.

Thomas Gale Moore is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution who specializes in environmental issues, international trade regulation, and privatization. He has written on airline deregulation, trucking regulation and deregulation, stock market margin, minimum wages, energy policy, and privatization. Recently he has been researching the structural adjustment process in Eastern Europe. He is the author of Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn't Worry about Global Warming (The Cato Institute, 1998), Global Warming: A Boon to Humans and Other Animals (Hoover Essays in Public Policy, 1995), and Central Planning USA-Style: The Case Against Corporate Average Fuel Economy (Cafe) Standards, (Hoover Essays in Public Policy, December 1991).

The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, founded at Stanford University in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who went on to become the 31st president of the United States, is an interdisciplinary research center for advanced study on domestic and international affairs.

Working Press: The complete text of Thomas Gale Moore's Essay in Public Policy, In Sickness or in Health: the Kyoto Protocol versus Global Warming, can be found on the Hoover Institution website at www.Hoover.org. Complimentary copies of the essay are available from the Office of Public Affairs at the Hoover Institution, 650/723-0603.

Contact:

Hoover Institution Stanford University Caleb Offley, 650/723-1454 F: 650/725-8611 Offley@Hoover.Stanford.edu Website: www.Hoover.org or Thomas Gale Moore, 650/723-1411

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Hoover Institution
Essays in Public Policy

In Sickness and in Health: The Kyoto Protocol versus Global Warming Thomas Gale Moore

1.Executive Summary (pdf)
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/epp/104/104a.html
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/epp/104/104a.pdf

2.Essay (pdf)
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/epp/104/104b.pdf

3.References (pdf)
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/epp/104/104c.html
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/epp/104/104c.pdf

4.Complete PDF
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/epp/104/104.pdf
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/epp/104/104b.html

ESSAY

In promoting the Kyoto Protocol, which would require a major cut in greenhouse gas emissions, the White House claims that "scientists agree that global warming and resulting climate disruptions could seriously harm human health (projections include 50 million more cases of malaria per year)" (http://www.studyweb.com/). President Clinton has asserted: "Disruptive weather events are increasing. Disease-bearing insects are moving to areas that used to be too cold for them. Average temperatures are rising. Glacial formations are receding" (address at the National Geographic Society, October 22, 1997).

In his 1997 exhortation to the environmental ministers at Kyoto, Vice President Al Gore warned that "disease and pests [are, will be?] spreading to new areas." The White House's home page continues that theme: Americans better watch out; global warming will make them sick.

The Sierra Club has also weighed in, asserting that "doctors and scientists around the world are becoming increasingly alarmed over global warming's impact on human health. Abnormal and extreme weather, which scientists have long predicted would be an early effect of global warming, have claimed hundreds of lives across the US in recent years. Our warming climate is also creating the ideal conditions for the spread of infectious disease, putting millions of people at risk" (http://www.sierraclub.org/global-warming/factsheets/health.html).

The Public Interest Research Group, a left-leaning environmental organization, fears "Health Threats-Climate change is projected to have wide-spread impacts on human health resulting in significant loss of life. The projected impacts range from increased incidence of illness and death due to heat stress and deteriorating air quality, to the rise in transmission rates of deadly infectious diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, and hanta virus" (http://www.pirg.org/environ/). Other environmentalists and health experts have also forecast that global warming would bring death and disease (Danzig 1995; IPCC 1996a; Jackson 1995; Epstein and Gelbspan 1995; Cromie 1995; Stone 1995; Monastersky 1994; Patz et al. 1996; Kalkstein 1991, 1992; Kalkstein and Davis 1989; Epstein et al. 1998).

This analysis will explore whether Americans do indeed confront a health crisis. If global warming were to occur, would the United States face an epidemic of tropical diseases, malaria being the prime suspect; would Americans face increased heatstroke and summers that brought a surge of deaths; would global warming bring more frequent and more violent hurricanes wreaking havoc on our citizens? Is it true that warmer climates are less healthy than colder ones? Would cutting greenhouse gas emissions, as the Kyoto Protocol requires, improve the health of Americans? This essay will show that the answer to all those questions is a resounding no.

Not only does my own research demonstrate that the claims of imminent doom are unwarranted, but other studies have found little cause for alarm (WHO 1990; Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy 1991; Taubes 1997; White and Hertz-Picciotto 1995; Shindell and Raso 1997; Cross 1995; Singer 1997; Moore 1998a, 1998b; Murray 1996; Michaels and Balling 2000; Reiter 2000). Knowledgeable organizations, such as the World Health Organization (WHO 1997, 1998, 1999) and the American Medical Association (Council on Scientific Affairs 1996) have ignored the subject, suggesting that, in their eyes, it is unimportant.

After examining the potential impact of global warming on poor countries, the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) took a realistic view and reported that

Nearly all of the potential adverse health effects of projected climate change are significant, real-life problems that have long persisted under stable climatic conditions. Bolstering efforts to eliminate or alleviate such problems would both decrease the current incidence of premature death and facilitate dealing with the health risks of any climate change that might occur.

Policies that weaken economies tend to weaken public health programs. Thus, it is likely that implementation of such policies would (a) increase the risk of premature death and (b) exacerbate any adverse health effects of future climate change. (Shindell and Raso 1997)

As the ACHS concludes:

From the standpoint of public health, stringently limiting such emissions [greenhouse gases] at present would not be prudent. Fossil-fuel combustion, the main source of human induced greenhouse-gas emissions, is vital to high-yield agriculture and other practices that are fundamental to the well-being of the human population. A significant short-term decline in such actions could have adverse health repercussions.

The optimal approach to dealing with [the] prospect of climate change would (a) include improvement of health infrastructures (especially in developing countries) and (b) exclude any measures that would impair economies and limit public health resources.

The World Health Organization's World Health Report 1998: Life in the 21st Century, gave the globe an A for progress. The WHO showed that remarkable advances have been made in increasing life spans, decreasing disease and suffering, and improving health for virtually all age groups and that the future looks even rosier (see chart 1). To quote the Executive Summary: "As the new millennium approaches, the global population has never had a healthier outlook." How can this be? After all, the White House tells us the next century promises to be one of rising temperatures, spreading disease, and increasing mortality. Somehow, the WHO didn't get the word. The World Health Report 1999: Making a Difference again fails to address this problem that the White House believes is so worrisome.

According to the WHO, the only significant and growing threat to human health is HIV/AIDS, a disease that has nothing to do with climate. Indeed, we have made substantial progress in controlling many major infectious diseases. By 1980, for example, smallpox had been eradicated; yaws had virtually disappeared (except to medical students, even the name of this tropical skin disease is unfamiliar). As a result of antibiotics and insecticides, the threat of plague has declined; improvements in sanitation and hygiene have made outbreaks of relapsing fever rare. Unbelievably, for those who remember summers of fear and polio insurance, poliomyelitis is scheduled for eradication this year.

A LOOK TO THE FUTURE

Looking to the future, the WHO report identifies three global trends affecting health-none is global warming. One is economic: the WHO reports (1998) on the "unparalleled prosperity" between 1950 and 1973, which resulted in marked improvements in health and life expectancies. The organization identifies the years since 1993 as another era of economic "recovery," which has once again contributed to reduced mortality. The other trends singled out as having significant health effects are population growth and social developments, particularly urbanization.

Over the last forty years, the growth in the world's economy has brought about a doubling of the world's food supply, while the number of human mouths has grown much more slowly. This has led to a decline in the proportion of people who are undernourished. Since 1970, literacy rates have increased by more than 50 percent. Physical well-being has also grown apace. More people have access to clean water, sanitation facilities, and minimum health care than ever before. Like the 1999 review, prior World Health Reports largely ignored global warming as a significant threat to the health and well-being of the globe's population. And rightly so.

Of the 50 million plus deaths in 1997, about one-third stemmed from infectious and parasitic diseases, most of which have nothing to do with climate. The remaining deaths were from such killers as cancer, circulatory diseases, and prenatal conditions, none of which would be aggravated by a warmer world. Most infectious and parasitic diseases are unrelated to climate.

The WHO has identified AIDS, one of the most devastating afflic-tions, as a growing menace in Africa, but it bears no relationship to temperature or rainfall. Only insect-spread diseases, such as malaria and dengue fever, and diseases like cholera and typhoid that are spread through contaminated water, could be worsened by climate change (and then only if swampy polluted areas were allowed to expand without thought to sanitation, window screens, and other precautions that have all but eradicated those diseases in the northern latitudes).

But bear these statistics in mind: In the developed world, as recently as 1985, infectious and parasitic diseases accounted for 5 percent of all deaths; in 1997, they caused only 1 percent of all deaths. In short, even for such insect-borne diseases as malaria, climate is much less important than affluence. Singapore, located two degrees from the equator, is free of that dreadful malady, while the mosquito-carried scourge is endemic in rural areas of Malaysia, only a few hundred miles away. Singapore's healthy state stems from good sanitary practices that reduce exposure. The wealth of the island-state allows it to maintain an effective public health program.

Nor should we be overly concerned with the diseases spread by mosquitoes in tropical areas. If climate change were to occur, according to the global warming models, the poles would warm more than the equator while temperatures would increase more in the winter and at night than during the day. In consequence, the tropics, including Africa, would warm less than the United States or Europe. Any increased burden on health in Africa or southern Asia would, therefore, be small.

With or without climate change, public sanitation should be emphasized as the most effective means of attacking water- and insect-borne diseases everywhere. A warmer world will not add significantly to morbidity in Third World countries. A poorer world most certainly will.

Both the scientific community and the medical establishment assert that the frightful forecasts of an upsurge in disease and early mortality stemming from climate change are unfounded, exaggerated, or misleading and do not require reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Science magazine reported that "predictions that global warming will spark epidemics have little basis, say infectious-disease specialists, who argue that public health measures will inevitably outweigh effects of climate" (Taubes 1997). The article added: "Many of the researchers behind the dire predictions concede that the scenarios are speculative."

Global warming as currently forecast by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would not bring tropical diseases to Americans or shorten their lives or inflict more violent storms bringing death and destruction to the United States. Moreover, the warmer climate predicted for the next century is unlikely to induce a rise in heat-related deaths. As the article in Science magazine points out, "people adapt. . . . One doesn't see large numbers of cases of heat stroke in New Orleans or Phoenix, even though they are much warmer than Chicago."

TROPICAL DISEASES

Concern about tropical and insect-spread diseases is overblown. Inhabitants of Singapore, which lies almost on the equator, and of Hong Kong and Hawaii, which are also in the tropics, enjoy life spans as long as or longer than those of people living in Western Europe, Japan, and North America. Both Singapore and Hong Kong are free of malaria, but that mosquito-spread disease ravages nearby regions. Modern sanitation in advanced countries prevents the spread of many scourges found in hot climates. Such low-tech and relatively cheap devices as window screens can slow the spread of insect vectors. The World Health Organization (WHO 1990, 21) notes:

until recent times, endemic malaria was widespread in Europe and parts of North America and . . . yellow fever occasionally caused epidemics in Portugal, Spain and the USA. Stringent control measures . . . and certain changes in life-style following economic progress, have led to the eradication of malaria and yellow fever in these areas.

Under the stimulus of a warmer climate, insect-spread diseases might or might not increase. Many of the hosts or the insects themselves flourish within a relatively small temperature or climatic range. Plague, for example, spreads when the temperature is between 66� and 79� with relatively high humidity but decreases during periods of high rainfall (White and Hertz-Picciotto 1995, 7.7.3). Higher temperatures and more rainfall are conducive to an increase in encephalitis. Malaria-bearing mosquitoes flourish under humid conditions with temperatures above 61� and below 95�. Relative humidity below 25 percent causes either death or dormancy.

Parasitic diseases, such as AIDS, Lyme disease, yellow fever, malaria, and cholera, can usually be controlled through technology, good sanitary practices, and education of the public. Even without warming, it is certainly possible that dengue fever or malaria could invade North America. Unfortunately, some of the government's well-meaning environmental policies may make the vector more likely. The preservation of wetlands, although useful in conserving species diversity, also provides prime breeding grounds for mosquitoes that can carry these diseases. If the United States does in the future suffer from such insect-borne scourges, the infestation may have less to do with global warming than with the restoration of swampy areas.

Cholera

In 1996, diarrhoeal diseases, such as cholera and dysentery, killed 2.5 million people out of the 52 million who died worldwide (WHO 1997). Through the provision of fresh water and proper sanitation, those diseases are easily preventable. Although a warmer climate might increase the incidence of cholera and similar diseases in unprotected areas, chlorination and filtration could halt their spread.

A manifestation of fear mongering about the health effects of global warming is an article in Science (Colwell 1996) taken from a modified text of Rita Colwell's 1996 presidential address to the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). That address presents a careful analysis of cholera and its recent resurgence in the Americas. What is most singular is not what Colwell says but what she fails to mention.

Despite the title of the address, "Global Climate and Infectious Disease: The Cholera Paradigm," climate change is scarcely broached; the one reference to it comes in connection with malaria, not cholera. Certainly Colwell makes no effort to tie global warming to the spread of cholera. Furthermore, in a section entitled Global Climate, Global Change, and Human Health, the word climate does not appear or the words warmer, temperature, or global. Also puzzling for such a careful exposition is the absence of any reference to the role that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may have played in creating the conditions that led to the explosion of cholera in Peru in 1991. But more on that later.

First a few dry facts about cholera, an infectious disease caused by the Vibrio cholerae, a bacterium that can bring on diarrhea, vomiting, and leg cramps. Without treatment, a person can rapidly lose body fluids, become dehydrated, and go into shock. Death can come quickly. Treatment is simple: the replacement of the fluids and salts with an oral rehydration solution of sugar and salts mixed with water. Less than 1 percent of those who contract cholera and are treated for it die.

Cholera cannot be caught from others but comes from ingesting food or water that contain the bacterium. Eating tainted shellfish, raw or undercooked fish, raw vegetables, or unpeeled fruits can lead to infection. Drinking unpurified water can be dangerous as well. The bacterium thrives in brackish warm water but can survive, in a dormant state, both in colder water and saline water. V. cholerae is also associated with zooplankton, shellfish, and fish. It often colonizes copepods, minute marine crustaceans. Ocean currents and tidal movements can sweep the bacterium, riding on copepods, along coasts and up estuaries where it can remain dormant until conditions are ripe for it to multiply.

In 1817, the British first identified this dreaded disease in Calcutta, whence it spread throughout India, Nepal, and Afghanistan. Ships infested with rats carried it into Asia, Arabia, and the ports of Africa. It reached Moscow, its first port of call in Europe, in 1830, creating panic as locals fled the city. From there it traveled to Poland, Germany, and England. In the decade after it first appeared in Europe, it killed tens of thousands in Paris, London, and Stockholm. It reached North America in 1832, appearing first in New York and Philadelphia, then spreading along the coast to New Orleans. In that same year, the disease killed more than 2,200 people in Quebec. Apparently cholera is not a tropical disease; it can sicken and kill in any climate, although in high latitudes it may do so only in the summer.

Prior to the most recent outbreak, the world suffered six cholera pandemics. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, Europe and North America were free of the disease. The solution was simple: filtration and chlorination of the water supply. Filtering alone reduces not only the spread of cholera but also typhoid. Combining filtration with chlorination eliminates waterborne diseases. A warmer climate, if it were to occur, would not reduce the effectiveness of these water purifi-cation measures.

In January 1991, after many disease-free decades, cholera began sickening villagers in Chancay, Peru, a port less than 40 miles north of Lima. It then spread rapidly up and down the coast. From that outbreak to the end of 1995, Latin America reported more than 1 million cases-many went unreported-and 11,000 deaths. The illness traveled from Peru to Ecuador, Colombia, then to Brazil. Eight months after appearing in Peru, it reached Bolivia. By the end of 1992, virtually all of South and Central America, from Mexico to Argentina, had confirmed cases. In the early 1990s, cholera also entered the United States; however, with the exception of a few cases brought on from eating raw tainted shellfish, virtually all cases were contracted abroad. Seventy-five cases, nearly half of the total 160 reported to the CDC between 1992 and 1994, originated on a single flight from Lima in 1992!

What went wrong to bring an end to Latin America's 100 years of freedom from cholera? Rita Colwell theorizes that an El Ni�o* led to a plankton bloom that multiplied the hosts of V. cholerae. But El Ni�os have been occurring with some regularity for many decades without producing a cholera epidemic. The coast of Peru in 1991 was not even particularly warm compared with a number of other years (see chart 2). Even if El Ni�o were in part the culprit, the basic cause lies elsewhere. Based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency studies showing that chlorine might create a slight cancer risk, authorities in Peru decided not to chlorinate their country's drinking water (Anderson 1991). In all probability, they also were saving money. Chlorination, however, is the single most effective preventive of cholera and other waterborne diseases. After the fiasco in Peru, the EPA determined in 1992 that there was no demonstrable link between chlorinated drinking water and cancer. It was too late; the harm had been done. Peru's misplaced environmentalism led to more than 300,000 cholera victims in that country alone.

*A warming of the ocean surface off the western coast of South America that occurs every four to twelve years when upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water does not occur. It causes plankton and fish to die and affects weather over much of the world.

Cholera is a disease of poverty, crowding, and unsanitary conditions. A warmer climate will not carry this disease to affluent countries; in the Third World, however, economic growth can bring freedom from this and many other diseases. We should not impose costs on ourselves or on others that would reduce the resources needed to bring clean water and good sanitation to Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

Malaria and Dengue Fever

A growing chorus has been chanting that global climate change will spread the insect-borne diseases, malaria, dengue fever, and yellow fever, to temperate latitudes. In the last few years, the health effects of global warming have been the subject of lengthy journal articles in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) (January 17, 1996), and Lancet (June 8, 1996, and August 31, 1996), an international journal of medical science and practice. In 1996, the Australian Medical Association sponsored a major conference on the subject. Professor Paul Epstein of the Harvard School of Public Health has claimed that in the past few years mosquitoes carrying malaria and dengue fever have been found at higher altitudes in Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Epstein et al. 1998). For North America, David Danzig, in a Sierra Club publication (1995), has contended that only the tip of Florida is currently warm enough to support malaria-carrying mosquitoes but that global warming could make most of us vulnerable. He should check his history.

Malaria and cholera were both major health problems in the United States in the nineteenth century. Prior to the 1950s, malaria was endemic in the southern portions of the United States. Malaria was also widespread in southern Europe until shortly after World War II, when insecticides and good health practices eliminated it. As mentioned above, a number of epidemiologists stated in Science magazine (November 7, 1997), in the event of climate change, public health measures in the industrialized countries of the world would prevent the spread of such diseases.

Few now realize that, before the Second World War, malaria was common in the United States. The government recorded more than 120,000 cases in 1934; as late as 1940, the number of new sufferers totaled 78,000 (Centers for Disease Control and the Statistical Abstract of the United States). After the war, reported malaria cases in the United States plunged from 63,000 in 1945 to a little over 2,000 in 1950 to only 522 in 1955. By 1960, DDT had almost totally eliminated the disease; only 72 cases were recorded in the whole country. In 1969 and 1970, the Centers for Disease Control reported a resurgence to around 3,000 cases annually, brought in by service personnel returning from Vietnam. Subsequently, immigrants from tropical areas have spawned small upticks in new cases.

In the 1980s and 1990s, as chart 3 shows, the number of reported cases has averaged around 1,200 to 1,300 annually. The CDC reports that since 1985 approximately 1,000 of those cases have been imported every year, with visitors and recent immigrants accounting for about half. The rest come from travelers arriving from tropical countries, service personnel returning from infested areas, and a handful of individuals, typically those living near international airports, bitten by a mosquito that hitched a ride from a poor country. The recent outbreak of West Nile Fever on Long Island shows how vulnerable communities are that host major international airports. More stringent efforts to keep out these unwanted "immigrants" may be called for if the problem worsens.

Yellow and dengue fevers were both widespread in the United States from the seventeenth century onward. Epidemics of yellow fever ravaged New Yorkers and killed tens of thousands of people. In one year, 1878, of 100,000 cases reported along the East Coast, 20,000 people died. Between 1827 and 1946, eight major pandemics of dengue fever overran the United States. In 1922, the disease spread from Texas, with half a million cases, through Louisiana, Georgia, and Florida. Savannah suffered with 30,000 cases, of which nearly 10,000 had hemorrhagic symptoms, a very serious form of the disease. In contrast, for 1996 the CDC listed 86 imported cases of dengue and dengue hemorrhagic fever and eight local transmissions, all in Texas. There were no reported cases of yellow fever.

As a public health issue, those diseases, which did plague the United States in the reputedly colder nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, have been largely exterminated. There is no evidence that resurgence is imminent. Certainly the climate is not keeping the spread of these diseases in check. If it was warm enough in the cold nineteenth century for the mosquitoes to thrive, it is warm enough now!

Is there any basis at all for those scare-mongering prophecies? Is malaria rising worldwide? Not according to the World Health Organization. Over the twentieth century, the number of deaths from malaria has fallen sharply for the world as a whole (see chart 4). Even in sub-Saharan Africa malaria mortality declined until 1970, after which, with the deterioration of the economic situation on that continent, deaths from malaria have risen.

What brought down those scourges? The introduction of DDT clearly played a major role. From the end of World War II until it was banned in 1972, this pesticide worked wonders in eliminating harmful insects, especially mosquitoes. But it wasn't just insecticides that did the trick. Simple steps, such as screens on windows, the elimination of standing water, and the movement to the suburbs, which reduced population density and thus the risk of transmission, have played a critical role in eliminating mosquito-borne diseases.

In 1995, however, a dengue pandemic afflicted the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico, generating around 74,000 cases. More than 4,000 Mexicans living in the state of Tamaulipas, which borders Texas, came down with the disease. Yet Americans living a short distance away remained unaffected. The contrast between the twin cities of Reynosa, Mexico, which suffered 2,361 cases, and Hidalgo, Texas, just across the border, is striking. Including the border towns, Texas reported only eight nonimported cases for the whole state.

The only reasonable explanation for the difference between the spread of dengue in Tamaulipas and its absence in Texas is living standards. Where people enjoy good sanitation and public education, have the knowledge and willingness to manage standing water around households, implement programs to control mosquitoes, and employ screens and air-conditioning, these mosquito-borne diseases cannot spread. If the climate does warm, those factors will remain. In short, Americans need not fear an epidemic of tropical diseases.

DEATHS IN WINTER VERSUS SUMMER

Deaths from Cold versus Heat

Recent summers have sizzled. Newspapers have reported the tragic deaths of the poor and the aged on days when the mercury reached torrid levels. Prophets of doom forecast that rising temperatures in the next century portend a future of calamitous mortality. Scenes of men, women, and children collapsing on hot streets haunt our imaginations.

Heat stress does increase mortality, but it affects typically only the old and the infirm, whose lives may be shortened by a few days or perhaps a week. There is no evidence, however, that mortality rates rise significantly. The numbers of heat stress-related deaths are very small; in the United States; the number of deaths due to weather-related cold exceeds them. During a recent ten-year period, which includes the very hot summer of 1988, the average number of weather-connected heat deaths was 132, compared with 385 who died from cold (see chart 5). Even during 1988, more than double the number of Americans died from the cold rather than from the heat of summer. A somewhat warmer climate would clearly reduce more deaths in the winter than it would add in the summer.

Humans also seem to be able to adapt to hot weather. Adjusting for demographic differences and economic factors, people in cities with hot climates enjoy longer life spans than those in cold areas. A warm climate does not increase mortality. Moreover, the spread of air-conditioning reduces the discomfort of extremely high temperatures.

Let us review the documentation supporting the supposition that human mortality will rise with rising temperatures. Death rates during periods of very hot weather have jumped in certain cities, but above- normal mortality has not been recorded during all hot spells or in all cities. Moreover, research concerned with "killer" heat waves has generally ignored or downplayed the reduction in fatalities that warmer winter months would bring.

In a 1991 paper, Laurence Kalkstein, one of the most respected and careful scholars in this field, finds that deaths are related to the length of the hot spell. He suggests that it takes an extended heat wave to raise the death rate. In a later work, he reports that heat spells early in the summer or quick rises in temperature trigger deaths; in other words, unseasonal or rapid warming produces mortality (Kalkstein 1992). But if rapid warming causes deaths, we should find that most of the mortality during heat spells occurs on the first day or so and that fatalities then taper off, rather than increase with the length of the warm spell. As indicated, Kalkstein finds the opposite: deaths go up after a long spell of hot weather.

Kalkstein also finds that a particular weather pattern in St. Louis-characterized by high temperatures, strong southeast winds, moderate humidity, and relatively clear skies with little cloud cover-is correlated with increased mortality. For other cities, either no weather pattern was related to mortality or the patterns that correlated with extra deaths differed. Even in St. Louis, many of the days that exhibited the suspect weather showed no unusual number of fatalities. Moreover, very hot days, those with temperatures over 100�, failed to show death rates higher than the rates on those days when the thermometer made it only to 95�. In fact, the number of recorded deaths in St. Louis during that particular weather pattern varied considerably more than during other periods, which reduces our confidence in the results.

Researchers analyzing hot days and deaths have found no constant relationship; even when extremes in weather and mortality are correlated, the relationship is inconsistent. Cities with the highest average number of summer deaths are found in the Midwest or Northeast; those with the lowest number are in the South (Kalkstein and Davis 1989, 56). Typically analysts have failed to find any relationship between excess mortality and temperature in southern cities, which experience the most heat (Kalkstein 1992, 372). Other studies have found that people who move from a cold to a subtropical climate adjust within a very short period (Rotton 1983). Moreover, Kalkstein and others have reported without explanation that the "threshold" between temperatures that lead to excess deaths and those that have no effect varies significantly among the cities. In some, such as Los Angeles, San Fran-cisco, Boston, and Pittsburgh, the threshold was below 85� while in Phoenix and Las Vegas, it exceeded 110�.

Scholars have also reported contradictory and implausible results. According to several analyses, air pollution is not correlated with premature deaths (Kalkstein 1991). Some researchers have shown that, during hot spells, mortality goes up sharply in females; other researchers have measured increased deaths among males (Kalkstein 1992, citing Applegate et al. 1981; Bridger et al. 1976; Ellis 1972). Blacks are apparently more susceptible in St. Louis; whites, in New York. The lack of agreement on the effects of weather and on premature deaths again raises suspicions about the robustness of the results.

Measurement error may also foul up daily figures. In 1995, for example, Chicago suffered through an extraordinarily hot July that the press characterized as a harbinger of global warming. The coroner reported a marked increase in deaths. What was very curious was that on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, July 14, 15, and 16, the reported deaths were way below the normal of seventy-eight per day-only fourteen people were reported to have died on Saturday-but on the two following days, Monday and Tuesday, fatalities were well above normal (Chicago Tribune, July 14-July 22, 1995). The previous record low body count for any day in the last thirty years had been forty-six! Given that on Friday, July 14, a record temperature of 106� was measured at Midway Airport, those numbers are not only remarkable but also suspicious. Could it have been that most people in the coroner's office took the hot weekend off and counted bodies on Monday and Tuesday?

Researchers have attributed the absence of heat-related deaths in southern cities to acclimatization and the prevalence of housing that shields residents from high temperatures. In the North, the housing of the elderly and the poor is usually old and dilapidated. Over the next hundred years, if not sooner, most of those buildings will be torn down and replaced. Should the climate warm, builders will move toward structures that protect the inhabitants from extreme heat, as housing in the South allegedly does now.

These findings may imply simply that out-of-the-ordinary high temperatures increase the mortality of those in a weakened state. Little attention has focused on the question of whether the excess deaths represent premature mortality of a few days among the old or sick or whether the excess deaths point to a significant shortening of life. Studies examining excess deaths by months fail to find any positive correlation with high temperatures, indicating that any daily excess is offset by a reduction in fatalities over the next few days. In the South, where temperatures are routinely very high during the summer, even the elderly adjust. Consequently, if the climate becomes warmer, no excess deaths can be expected.

Fear of killer heat waves appears exaggerated. If temperatures rise slowly over the next century, possibly by the 2� to 6� Fahrenheit currently predicted, people will become acclimated while housing can and, in the normal cycle, will be replaced. After all, half the housing stock in the United States has been built during the last twenty-five years. Consequently, if warming takes place, people and housing will adapt; even if extended warm spells occur, mortality should not rise sharply. Moreover, the models and the evidence to date suggest that most of the warming will take place in the winter and at night. Consequently spells of extreme heat are unlikely to become much more common.

HURRICANES AND TORNADOES

Typically, global-warming prophets claim that climate change will increase the threat from more frequent or violent storms. Their argument, which has some plausibility, is that a warmer climate means that more heat energy will be trapped in the atmosphere, leading to bigger and stronger weather systems. On the other hand, warming is most likely to be greatest near the poles and less at the equator. The strength of weather systems is actually a factor of the differential in temperatures between the two regions. Since this differential will diminish, so too will the likelihood of more intense cyclones.

Major weather disasters do kill. The evidence, however, simply fails to support the proposition that weather is becoming more violent. In the Atlantic basin, the number of intense hurricanes, those scaled between three to five (five being the most violent), has actually declined during the 1970s and 1980s. The four years from 1991 to 1994 enjoyed the fewest hurricanes of any four years over the last half century. Researchers have found that the average number of tropical storms and hurricanes has not changed over the previous 52 years, while there has been a major decrease in the number of intense hurricanes (see chart 6) (Landsea et al. 1996).

For the Pacific around Australia, other researchers have found that the number of tropical cyclones has decreased sharply since 1969/70 (Nicholls et al. 1998). Of the ten deadliest hurricanes to strike the continental United States, all raged prior to 1960, notwithstanding the huge expansion of population in coastal areas vulnerable to such storms.

According to Christopher Landsea (1999b), a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) expert on hurricanes: "it is highly unlikely that global warming has (or will) contribute to a drastic change in the number or intensity of hurricanes. We have not observed a long-term increase in the intensity or frequency of Atlantic hurricanes. Actually, 1991-94 marked the four quietest years on record (back to the mid-1940s) with just less than 4 hurricanes per year." In its 1995 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N. scientific body studying global warming, noted that (IPCC 1996b): "Knowledge is currently insufficient to say whether there will be any changes in the occurrences or geographical distribution of severe storms, e.g. tropical cyclones." In other words, there is no reason to expect more or less hurricanes.

Weatherwise magazine rated the ten worst weather events of the twentieth century. First was the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, which brought heat and drought to the heartland of America, leading to the migration of thousands to California from the great plains. Second were the tornadoes that killed more than three hundred people in early April 1974. These storms devastated a dozen states from Alabama to Michigan to North Carolina to Ohio. The third worst disaster occurred on Septem-ber 8, 1900, when a mammoth hurricane destroyed Galveston, killing maybe as many as twelve thousand people. The 1990s experienced three storms that made the list: the March 12-15, 1993, winter storm that shut every airport from Washington to Boston (ranked fourth); Hurricane Andrew (1992) that wreaked devastation on Florida and Louisiana (ranked sixth); and the 1997-98 El Ni�o (ranked ninth). The choice of the latter event is strange. A paper, in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (September 9, 1999), finds that the benefits from savings on heat, snow removal, lack of spring flood damages, and transportation were almost five times higher than the costs to the economy. Moreover, climatologist Stanley A. Changnon, who authored the study, found that El Ni�o on net saved more than 650 lives.

Thus, leaving aside the recent El Ni�o, only two storms in recent years were rated as horrendous. Each of these caused a great deal of property damage but few fatalities. Economic growth explains both the high dollar costs and low loss of human life. As more structures are erected in areas subject to storm damage, dollar costs rise. But improvement in technology brings not only ample warning about the approach of large weather events but also leads to better construction that can more easily withstand nature's forces.

The two strongest hurricanes to strike the United States occurred in 1935 and 1969. If the warm decade of the 1990s has not brought bigger storms or more of them, and computer models fail to show any relationship between global warming and the ferocity of storms, we should refuse to be frightened by unsubstantiated speculation.

HISTORY OF CLIMATE CHANGES

History demonstrates that warmer is healthier. Since the end of the last Ice Age, the earth has enjoyed two periods that were warmer than the twentieth century. Archaeological evidence shows that people lived longer, enjoyed better nutrition, and multiplied more rapidly in warm periods than during epochs of cold.

That Ice Age ended about 12,000 to 10,000 years ago when the glaciers covering much of North America, Scandinavia, and northern Asia began to retreat to approximately their current positions. In North America the glacial covering lasted longer than in Eurasia because of topographical features that delayed the warming. Throughout history warming and cooling in different regions of the world have not correlated exactly because of the influence of such factors as oceans, mountains, and prevailing winds.

As the earth warmed with the waning of the Ice Age, the sea level rose as much as 300 feet; hunters in Europe roamed through modern Norway; agriculture developed in the Middle East, the Far East, and the Americas. Some seven thousand years ago and lasting for about four millenniums, the earth was more clement than today, perhaps by 4� Fahrenheit, somewhat higher than the IPCC's best guess (3�) from a doubling of CO2. Although the climate cooled a bit after 3000 B.C., it stayed relatively warmer than the modern world until sometime after 1000 B.C., when chilly temperatures became more common. During the four thousand warmest years, Europe enjoyed mild winters and warm summers with a storm belt far to the north. Rainfall may have been 10 to 15 percent greater than now. Not only was the country less subject to severe storms, but the skies were less cloudy and the days, sunnier (Lamb 1988, 22).

From around 800 A.D. to 1200 or 1300, the globe warmed again and civilization prospered. This warm era displays, although less distinctly, many of the same characteristics as the earlier period of clement weather. Virtually all of northern Europe, the British Isles, Scandinavia, Greenland, and Iceland were considerably warmer than at present (Lamb 1968, 64-65). The Mediterranean, the Near East, and North Africa, including the Sahara, received more rainfall than they do today. During this period of the high Middle Ages, most of North America also enjoyed better weather. In the early centuries of the epoch, China experienced higher temperatures and a more clement climate. From Western Europe to China, East Asia, India, and the Americas, mankind flourished as never before.

This prosperous period collapsed at the end of the thirteenth century with the advent of the "Mini Ice Age," which, at its most frigid, produced temperatures in central England for January about 4.5�F colder than today. Although the climate fluctuated, periods of cold damp weather lasted until the early part of the nineteenth century. During the chilliest decades, 5 to 15 percent less rain fell in Europe than does normally today; but, due to less evaporation because of the low temperatures, swampy conditions were more prevalent. As a result, in the fourteenth century the population explosion came to an abrupt halt; economic activity slowed; lives shortened as disease spread and diets deteriorated.

Although the influence of climate on human activities has declined with the growth in wealth and resources, climate still has a significant effect on disease and health. A cold wet climate can confine people to close quarters, abetting contagion. In the past, a shift toward a poorer climate led to hunger and famine, making disease more virulent. Before the Industrial Revolution and improved technology, a series of bad years could be devastating. If transportation were costly and slow, as was typical until very recently, even a regionalized drought or an excess of rain might lead to disaster, although crops might be plentiful a short distance away.

For people in premodern times, perhaps the single best measure of their health and well-being is the growth rate of the population. Over history the number of humans has been expanding at ever-more rapid rates. Around 25,000 years ago, the world's population may have numbered only about three million. Fifteen thousand years later, around 8000 B.C., the total had probably grown by one-third to four million. It took 5,000 more years to jump one more million; but, in the thousand years after 5000 B.C., it added another million. Except for a few periods of disaster, the number of men, women, and children has mounted with increasing rapidity. Only in the last few decades of the twentieth century has the escalation slowed. Certainly there have been good times when man did better and poor times when people suffered-although in most cases these were regional problems. However, in propitious periods, that is, when the climate was warm, the population swelled faster than during less clement eras (see chart 7).

Another measure of the well-being of humans is their life span. The existence of the hunter-gatherer was less rosy than some have contended. Life was short: skeletal remains from before 8000 B.C. show that the average age of death for men was about thirty-three and that for women, twenty-eight. Death for men was frequently violent, and many women must have died in childbirth.

The warmest periods-the Neolithic and Bronze Ages and England in the thirteenth century-enjoyed the longest life spans of the entire record (see chart 8). The rise in life expectancies during the latter warm period easily explains the population explosion that took place during the high Middle Ages. In contrast, the shortening of lives from the late thirteenth to the late fourteenth centuries with the advent of much cooler weather is particularly notable.

Good childhood nutrition is reflected in taller adults. Icelanders must have suffered from lack of food during the Mini Ice Age: their average stature fell by two inches (see chart 9). Only in the modern world, with greatly improved food supplies and medicines, has their height risen to levels exceeding those enjoyed in the medieval warm period.

In summary, the evidence overwhelmingly supports the proposition that, during warm periods, humans have prospered. They multiplied more rapidly, they lived longer, and they were healthier. If the IPCC is right and the globe does warm, history suggests that human health is likely to improve.

STATISTICAL STUDIES OF DEATH RATES

A number of researchers have found a negative relationship between temperature and mortality and/or a correlation between season and death rates (Momiyama and Katayama 1966, 1967, 1972; Momiyama and Kito 1963; Bull and Morton 1978; Rosenwaike 1966). For example, Bull and Morton, British researchers, reported that deaths from myo-cardial infarction, strokes, and pneumonia fell in England and Wales with higher temperatures. In New York, however, they fell only until the temperature reached 68�, then rose with the heat. Momiyama and his colleagues found that deaths followed a seasonal path but that, in the United States, this pattern became less pronounced in the period from the 1920s to the 1960s. Even though a regimen of increased deaths in the winter is apparent for all portions of the United States, England, and Wales, as well as Japan, many subsequent researchers have emphasized summer deaths attributed to high temperatures.

Seasonal Effects

If climate change were to manifest itself as warmer winters without much increase in temperature during the hot months, which some climate models predict, the change in weather could be especially ben-eficial to human health (Gates et al. 1992). The IPCC reports that, over this century, the weather in much of the world has been consistent with such a pattern: winter and night temperatures have risen while summer temperatures have fallen (Folland et al. 1992).

A warmer globe would likely result in the polar jet stream's retreating toward higher latitudes; in the Northern Hemisphere, the climate belt would move north (Lamb 1972, 117-18; Giles 1990). Thus an average annual 6.7� Fahrenheit increase in temperature for New York City, for example, would give it the climate of Atlanta. NYC's summertime temperatures, however, would not go up commensurably: the average high temperature in Atlanta during June, July, and August is only 4� warmer than New York City's, which has on record a higher summer temperature than does the capital of Georgia. Summer temperatures generally differ less than winter temperatures on roughly the same longitude and differ less than average temperatures.

A sample of forty-five metropolitan areas in the United States shows that for each increase of a degree in the average annual temperature, July's average temperatures go up by only 0.5 degrees while January's average temperatures climb by 1.5�.* Since warming will likely exert the maximum effect during the coldest periods but have much less effect during the hottest months, the climate change should reduce deaths even more than any summer increase might boost them.

*The data were collected from the Department of Commerce, National Climatic Data Center, 1979.

Deaths in the United States and most other advanced countries in the middle latitudes are higher in the winter than in the summer. Except for accidents, suicides, and homicides, which are slightly higher in the summer, death rates from virtually all other major causes rise in winter months; overall mortality from 1985 to 1990 was 16 percent greater when it was cold than during the warm season (Moore 1998b). These data suggest that, rather than increasing mortality, warmer weather would reduce it, but that possibility is rarely discussed.

Earlier studies have also reported the relationship between season and death rates. Professor F. P. Ellis of the Yale University School of Medicine noted that deaths in the United States between 1952 and 1967 were 13 percent higher on a daily basis in the winter than in the summer (Ellis 1972, table II, 15). This difference is smaller than that experienced during the 1985-90 years, a period that included some of the hottest summers on record. Ellis's study covered a time during which recorded average temperatures in the United States were somewhat lower than during the 1985-90 period. If hot weather were detrimental to life, the differential between summer and winter death rates during the latter period should have been smaller, not larger.

The increase in average temperatures during this century has apparently been accompanied by a decline in hot weather deaths relative to winter mortality. Before the early or middle part of this century, deaths during the summer months were much higher relative to winter than is currently the case (Momiyama 1977). Perhaps the decline in physical labor, which carries with it a much higher rate of fatal accidents than office work, helps explain the change. The Japanese scholar Ma-sako Momiyama, however, reports that for most advanced countries, such as the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, mortality is now concentrated in the winter.

A number of studies, as indicated above, have examined death rates on a daily basis (Bull and Morton 1978; Kalkstein and Davis 1989; Kalkstein 1991). This allows the authors to compare extreme temperatures with mortality. Although the research has shown that it is typically the elderly or the very sick that are affected by temperature extremes, the analyses ignore the degree to which this shortens life. Is it only a few days or a few weeks? That cities in the South fail to show any relationship between deaths and high temperatures suggests that the correlation in the North may stem from deaths of the most vulnerable when the weather turns warm. One way to parse out whether climate extremes shorten lives by only a few days, or whether they lead to more serious reductions in the life span, is to consider longer periods.

Monthly data on deaths and temperatures, for example, show that deaths peak in the cold period. My own research finds that monthly figures on various measures of warmth are correlated with monthly deaths in Washington, D.C. (Moore 1998b). The results support the proposition that climate influences mortality.

Although deaths peak in the winter, factors other than cold, such as less sunlight, could induce the higher mortality. The peaking itself does not prove that warming would lengthen lives; it could be that the length of the day affects mortality. The day's length is closely correlated with temperature, of course, but, unlike the amount of sunlight, which remains constant each year, how cold it is fluctuates from year to year. My research, however, indicates that the length of the day, although correlated with the death rate, is less statistically significant than temperature (Moore 1998b). Moreover, if measures of temperature are combined with the length of the day, the amount of sunlight loses its statistical significance. Temperature remains the most important variable.

The District of Columbia study probably underestimates the relationship of deaths to temperature since some elderly from the capital winter in warm climates and die there. Nevertheless, the results imply that a 4.5� Fahrenheit-the "best estimate" of the IPCC in 1992 under a CO2 doubling-would cut deaths for the country as a whole by about 37,000 annually (IPCC 1992, 16).

Climatic Effects

Comparing death rates in various parts of the United States can provide us with evidence on how humans are affected by different climates. Within the continental United States, people live in locales that are subtropical, such as Miami, and cities that are subject to brutally cold weather, such as Minneapolis. The contrast between American cities makes the climate variables stand out. Within the United States, most people residing in big cities eat a more or less similar diet, live roughly the same way, and employ the same currency. Differences between the population of various parts of the United States are largely confined to the age distribution, ethnic concentrations, income, and, of course, weather.

In a recent study, I expanded the research from a single city to the effect of climate on death rates around the country. Clearly many factors affect mortality. Within any population, the proportion that is old influences death rates. Since African Americans have lower life expectancies than whites, the proportion that is black affects mortality rates. Income and education are also closely related to life expectancy. As is well known, smoking shortens lives. Severe air pollution has pushed up mortality, at least for short periods.

As expected, age had the largest effect on death rates. The proportion of African Americans was also highly significant in explaining death rates across counties. The higher the median income, the lower the death rate. Holding demographic and economic variables constant, I found that death rates were lower in warm climates. Various measures of climate demonstrate that warmer is healthier or at least extends life expectancies; once the age structure is held constant, there is a well-established direct relationship between death rates and life expectancies. The analysis implies that if the United States were enjoying temperatures 4.5�F warmer than today, 41,000 fewer people would die each year (Moore 1998b). This saving in lives is quite close to the number I estimated based on monthly Washington, D.C., data for the period 1987 through 1989.

In summary, the monthly figures for the city of Washington between 1987 and 1989 indicate that a 4.5�F warmer climate would cut deaths nationwide by about 37,000; the analysis of climate in counties around the United States points toward a saving in lives of about 41,000. These data sets produce roughly the same conclusion: a warmer climate would reduce mortality by about the magnitude of highway deaths, although the latter deaths are more costly in that they involve a much higher proportion of young men and women.

Morbidity

Presumably, if a warmer climate reduced deaths, it would also cut disease. In the early 1970s, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) sponsored a series of conferences on climate change that examined, among other things, the effect of climate on preferences of workers for various climates and on health care expenditures. At that time, the government and most observers were concerned about a possible cooling of the globe. The department organized the meetings because it planned to subsidize the development and construction of a large fleet of supersonic aircraft that environmentalists contended would affect the world's climate.

The third gathering, held in February 1974, examined the implications of climate change for the economy and people's well-being and included a study of the costs to human health from cooling, especially any increased expenses for doctors' services, visits to hospitals, and additional medication (R. Anderson 1974). For that meeting, the DOT asked the researchers to consider a cooling of 2� Celsius (3.6� Fahren-heit) and a warming of 0.5�C (0.9�F). Robert Anderson Jr., the economist who calculated health care outlays, made no estimate of the costs or savings should the climate warm; but his numbers show that for every 5 percent reduction in the annual number of heating-degree days, a measure of winter's chill, health care costs would fall by $0.6 billion (1971 dollars) (Anderson 1974).* In a paper summarizing the various studies on economic costs and the benefits of climate change, Ralph D'Arge (1974), the principal economist involved in the DOT project, indicated that a 10 percent shift in heating-degree days would be equivalent to a 1�C change in temperature. Thus the gain in reduced health costs from a warming of 4.5� Fahrenheit would be on the order of $3.0 billion in 1971 dollars, or $21.7 billion in 1994 dollars, adjusting for population growth and price changes (using the price index for medical care).

More recently, I examined the relationship between the number of hospital beds per 100,000, the number of physicians per 100,000, and the average annual temperature (Moore 1998b). Although the number of physicians is only weakly related to climate, the number of hospital beds is significantly inversely related. In other words, holding income, race, and age constant, the warmer the climate, the lower the number of hospital beds or doctors. Assuming that the number of hospital beds and physicians reflects correctly the health care needs of their communities and is an index of health care costs, the numbers suggest that, had the climate been 4.5� Fahrenheit warmer, private expenditures on health care in 1994 would have been lower by $19 to $22 billion. Those numbers are remarkably close to the updated figures reported by Professor Robert Anderson ($22 billion). Assuming that government health expenditures would be affected comparably, the total national savings in medical costs would be about $36 billion.

*Each degree that the average temperature for a day falls below 65� Fahrenheit produces one heating-degree day. If the mean temperature on a particular day were 60�, for example, the number of degree days would be five. If the high for a day were 60� and the low 40�, the average would be 50� and the number of degree days would be fifteen.

That figure understates the benefits of warming since it does not include the gains from a reduction in suffering or from a cut in working days lost through disease. A minimum estimate of those gains would include the wage cost of people with jobs who, in the absence of warming, would have been absent from work because of illness. The $36 billion also neglects the gain to those who, because of the better climate, remain healthy and are not in the paid workforce or would have come to work despite suffering from a cold or the flu. If we assume that a 4.5�F warmer temperature would reduce illness by the same amount it is estimated to reduce deaths (1.8 percent) and apply the average workers' compensation, the savings come to around three-quarters of a billion dollars (Statistical Abstract of the United States 1994, tables 631 and 660). These numbers also do not include any lowering of government expenditures on health care. Conservatively, health care saving would amount to about $37 billion a year.

Statistical Conclusions

Although it is impossible to measure the gains exactly, a moderately warmer climate would likely benefit Americans in many ways, especially in health. Contrary to many dire forecasts, however, the temperature increase predicted by the IPCC under a doubling of greenhouse gases, which is now less than 4.5�F, would yield health benefits for inhabitants of the United States.

In summary, If the IPCC is correct about a warmer climate over the next hundred years, Americans and probably Europeans, the Japanese, and other people living in high latitudes should enjoy improved health and extended lives. High death rates in the tropics appear to be more a function of poverty than of climate. Thus global warming is likely to prove positive for human health.

European Evidence

Further confirmation of the beneficial consequences of heat comes from a German study. That research shows that colder weather, rather than hotter, is a more significant killer. Not only is mortality higher in the winter, but a very cold winter produces a higher number of deaths. During the summer, according to the analysis, heat spells do lead to more deaths; but the increase is relatively small compared to deaths from the cold (Lerchl 1998).

Now a researcher in the United Kingdom has confirmed that those findings apply in his country as well. Prepared for the UK's Department of the Environment, the report finds that a warmer world would bring even greater health benefits for England and Wales than I found for the United States in the two studies outlined above. Ironically the British research was carried out as part of a study of the impacts of the extraordinarily warm year of 1995.

In his analysis, C.G. Bentham, director, Centre for Environmental Risk, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, looked at the relationship between the mean monthly temperatures and monthly deaths from 1976 to 1995 (with the exception of two years for which no figures exist). Although heat waves in Britain kill people, cold weather fells more. A greater number die in the winter months of December, January, and February than leave this world during the hot months of June, July, and August. The highest mortality occurs in January; the lowest, in August.

Bentham's data (1997) indicate that, for every month except July and August, hotter than normal weather reduces deaths (see chart 10). In July and August, temperature increases of 2� or 3�C, about 3.6 or 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit, boost mortality slightly; but similar increases in other months cut deaths more significantly. In January and December, with a warming of 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit, he estimates deaths would fall by 5 percent. By the same token, an annual increase in temperatures of 3� Celsius would cut mortality by 3 percent. In England and Wales this means a savings of 17,500 lives for the entire year. For a total population of only about fifty million, that constitutes a significant reduction in fatalities.

The study examined whether lower than expected deaths might occur following heat spells or periods of extraordinary cold. Such a pattern would have been observed if extreme weather simply culled those who would have died shortly in any case. Bentham, however, failed to find any relationship between temperature extremes and deaths in subsequent periods, suggesting that it was not simply the weak or the sick elderly who expired.

That 1995 was exceptionally warm in the United Kingdom shows up in Bentham's figures. In particular, the very mild month of February 1995 tallied fewer deaths than usual for that time of year. Deaths were, however, slightly higher than is typical during the unusually hot summer.

As Bentham puts it, temperatures in England and Wales are suboptimal for human health. Since humans evolved in Africa in a much warmer climate, it is unsurprising that the cold weather of the northern portions of the globe should be less than beneficial for most. Undoubtedly a warmer climate would promote health and well-being. People generally prefer a warm to a cold climate, as shown by the tendency to vacation in tropical areas during the winter and to move to the south on retirement.

Although Bentham's results are similar to those I found for the United States, he actually unearthed a strikingly larger effect. As mentioned, he estimated that an increase of 3 degrees Celsius would reduce mortality in a population of 50 million by 17,500; I calculated that, for the U.S. population, a world 2.5-degrees-Celsius hotter would save about 40,000 lives annually. Extrapolating, a 3�C boost in temperature would save roughly 48,000 lives in America out of a population of 275 million. If applied to the United States, Bentham's results indicate that a 3�C warmer world would prevent 65,000 deaths, a markedly greater number. The greater effect of temperature in Great Britain may be attributable to a climate cooler in the summer than in the United States. Consequently the effects of warming would be greater in that country.

In terms of percentages, my Washington, D.C., results imply that a 3�C boost in temperatures would reduce deaths by 2 percent; the nationwide data indicate that the same increase in warmth would cut mortality by 2.2 percent. In England and Wales, 3�C would reduce deaths by 3 percent.

As the data show, there seems no reason to fear global warming and a number of reasons to welcome it. Except for population fanatics who fear a drop in mortality, most people would welcome increases in life.

KYOTO'S EFFECT ON THE ECONOMY AND ON HEALTH

Lower Income Means More Deaths

Most of the concern with climate's effects on health relates to mortality in the poor tropical portions of the globe. Reducing incomes in the industrialized nations, however, is no remedy for sickness and deaths in Africa and Southeast Asia. Economics is not a zero-sum game in which the poor benefit from making the rich less wealthy, but Kyoto would do just that. It requires the affluent countries of the world to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases by 5 percent from 1990 levels during the years 2008 to 2012. For the United States and Canada as well, this implies a major cutback, over 30 percent, from levels that would exist under a business-as-usual scenario. On a per capita basis, Canada is a more prolific user of energy even than the United States and would suffer much more from slashing fossil fuel consumption.

Since the Kyoto Protocol exempts Third World countries from any need to curb emissions, calculations show that the growth in greenhouse gas emissions from such countries as China and India would soon dwarf any reductions from the industrialized countries (Bolin 1998). Thus meeting Kyoto would do nothing significant about warming, meaning that further and more drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions-perhaps as much as 60 to 80 percent-would be necessary to stabilize CO2 in the atmosphere at levels less than twice preindustrial concentrations. Even that would result in some warming. According to the Climate System Model of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, stabilizing carbon dioxide concentrations at 50 percent above current levels would still lead to a 2.7�F boost in temperatures worldwide. Cutting fossil fuel consumption by enough to stabilize emissions in the next few decades would produce a worldwide depression with falling incomes, rising unemployment, poorer health, and increased mortality. If electricity prices are boosted due to Kyoto, poor families will not be able to afford the electricity needed to run their air conditioners!

KYOTO KILLS!

The improvements in health and life expectancies during the twentieth century have brought great benefits to the human race. What led to this remarkable improvement in health? Greater use of ever cheaper energy and, of course, higher incomes. The Kyoto Protocol threatens both those sources of human gains. Higher incomes, coupled with falling energy prices, have produced the greatest improvements in the well-being of men and women in all of history. Where incomes are high, so is life expectancy. Where incomes are low, disease and death are all too prevalent. Economists studying the relationship of income and earnings to mortality have found that the loss of $5 to $10 million in the U.S. GDP leads to one extra death.

Recently the Energy Information Administration (EIA), part of President Clinton's Department of Energy, released its estimates of the cost of meeting the Kyoto targets. According to that agency, which was surely under pressure to minimize its estimate of the burden on the American people, the cost, depending on whether trading emission reductions were possible and how many emission credits could be purchased abroad, would be between $77 billion and $338 billion annually.

Given the opposition of Europe to trading emission credits across national boundaries, the United States is unlikely to be able to purchase much of its quota in reduced greenhouse gas emissions from overseas. Assuming, therefore, that trading across national boundaries does not take place, the EIA estimates imply that somewhere between 33,800 and 67,000 more Americans will die annually between 2008 and 2012.

The Kyoto Protocol would devastate Third World countries as well. Even if they remain exempt from the limits on CO2 emissions, they will find that the United States buys fewer of their goods and services. Imported goods from the advanced countries will also cost more. As a result, the poor countries will become even poorer. We cannot estimate the toll on those countries-it would vary greatly from country to country-but we know that being poorer will increase their already too high death rate.

What these countries need is higher, not lower, incomes. With greater earnings, their people can look forward to longer life expectancies and reductions in disease. Higher incomes may also reduce violence between and within these states. All in all, the Kyoto treaty is a far more violent killer than any climate change could be. Let's arrest it before it kills someone.

Since climate change will have only a very small effect on the world's health, why are so many rushing to impose onerous taxes and controls on U.S. industry? The carbon tax that the administration suggested and then withdrew would have cost Americans about $180 billion per year. If preventing a rise in disease in poor countries were the purpose of restricting emissions, then it would be much more effective to deal with that problem directly than to put constraints on our energy use. Spending only one-tenth of that amount to provide clean water or mosquito netting would contribute far more to the world's health than attempting to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

CONCLUSIONS

Fears of health effects from global warming are overblown and highly speculative. Those who want to reduce greenhouse gases have resorted to scare tactics. In truth the health and well-being of people in rich countries will be largely unaffected by global warming should it occur. The effect of climate change on even poor countries will be small. Warming will be minor in tropical areas, and most diseases are related more to income than to climate.

However, abiding by the Kyoto Protocol will hurt people's health. It will make them poorer. Even though they are exempted from the protocol's provisions, Third World countries would be harshly affected by a poorer West. Moreover, as is well known, the Kyoto treaty will neither stop the buildup of greenhouse gases nor prevent climate change. To reduce carbon dioxide emissions, more drastic steps will be necessary. Some believe that, in order to stabilize the climate, our use of fossil fuels must be cut by more than 60 percent. That would certainly be disastrous for mankind, far worse than any climate change. Global warming would have minimal effects on human health and life expectancy. Kyoto kills; climate change does not.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY (pdf) ESSAY (pdf) REFERENCES (pdf)
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/epp/104/104a.html
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/epp/104/104a.pdf
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/epp/104/104b.pdf
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/epp/104/104c.html
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/epp/104/104c.pdf

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200,000 Homes in Illinois to Be Searched for Mercury

New York Times
August 31, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/083100mercury-chicago.html

CHICAGO, Aug. 30 -- The company that sells natural gas to people across much of northern Illinois plans to inspect as many as 200,000 suburban Chicago homes for traces of mercury, having discovered it in 44 during a preliminary investigation.

The company, Nicor Gas of nearby Naperville, Ill., will inspect houses where workers may have spilled liquid mercury while removing natural-gas meters that were being updated in a project that has been under way in the northwest suburbs for a decade. Before 1961, in a practice that was once common, two teaspoons of elemental mercury, or quicksilver, was placed in Nicor meters to regulate the flow of natural gas.

In its liquid form, elemental mercury, the type in the meters, is not nearly so dangerous as organic mercury, or methylmercury, which can cause extreme levels of toxicity in lakes and fish. As a liquid, elemental mercury is slow to be absorbed through the skin and into the bloodstream.

As a vapor, however, elemental mercury rapidly enters the bloodstream once breathed in. It can then cause disorders ranging from hand tremors and appetite loss to vast brain and kidney damage.

A Chicago spokeswoman for the Environmental Protection Agency said the number of residences to be inspected by Nicor apparently made this the largest single search for toxicity in the home that a company had ever undertaken. The spokeswoman, Phillippa Cannon, said that she had been speaking to colleagues at the agency's headquarters in Washington and that no one there "is aware of anything this big."

The mercury scare began on July 20, when a Nicor customer reported the presence of a silvery substance in his basement. Since then, the company has been testing for mercury in hundreds of houses, and in some cases finding it. As of this morning, inspectors had been to 358 homes, with 44 testing positive and 314 negative.

Nicor at first attributed the leaks to the faulty work of an outside contractor that the company had hired to work on the meter-updating project.

But then a crew detected mercury in a home where Nicor employees themselves had removed the meter. As a result, the number of suspect homes leaped overnight, to 200,000 from 200.

Inspecting that many homes will take six months, Nicor said, although a company spokesman, Lee Haines, could not estimate

the cost of the inspections and cleanups combined. Varying conditions in the home, Mr. Haines said, will cause costs of a cleanup to differ from house to house.

Daphne Magnuson, a spokeswoman for the American Gas Association, said it appeared that most gas utilities had already replaced their mercury-containing meters, in updating programs that began in the 1970's.

Ms. Magnuson noted that those programs had nothing to do with any concern about the mercury. The old meters were replaced, she said, in favor of new technology that made the readings more precise.

---

The Environment, and Our Votes

New York Times
August 31, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/l31glo.html

To the Editor:

Your Aug. 28 editorial "Protecting the Earth" praises Al Gore for his "detailed" and "muscular" energy policy statement as opposed to the vacancy of George W. Bush's. In fact, neither has anything to show in this area.

The global-warming response plan of Mr. Gore would save the planet without recourse to nuclear and hydroelectric energy, the only available nonemitting industrial-strength energy technologies.

Their omission from his "policy" is the surest sign that it is not one.

MICHAEL W. GOLAY Cambridge, Mass., Aug. 29, 2000 The writer is a professor of nuclear engineering at M.I.T.

To the Editor:

Re "Protecting the Earth" (editorial, Aug. 28): At the center of any global warming debate is the issue of developing a national energy strategy. Such a strategy would include establishing controls on fossil fuel emissions while developing alternative-energy technologies that will wean us off fossil fuels.

The agency charged by law with the responsibilities for these issues is the Department of Energy. Although the evisceration of the department began under the Reagan administration, the lack of leadership in energy policy has continued through every administration since, including President Clinton's.

The next president must understand that department leadership and a national energy strategy are critical to economic and national security.

PAUL FALKOWSKI New Brunswick, N.J., Aug. 28, 2000 The writer is a professor of geology at Rutgers University.

To the Editor:

Re "Protecting the Earth" (editorial, Aug. 28): The discussion about global warming highlights the opportunity to protect the environment while strengthening the economy.

Those who suggest that reducing fossil fuel emissions will cause economic deprivation have it exactly wrong. The most cost-effective way of reducing such emissions is to use energy more efficiently. Doing so reduces costs, enhancing productivity and competitiveness. Global-warming remediation policies therefore become a tool to achieve sustainable economic growth.

Al Gore's proposals to increase energy efficiency and to promote nonpolluting renewable energy sources are deserving of universal support.

JAMES J. FLORIO Metuchen, N.J., Aug. 29, 2000 The writer is the former governor of New Jersey.

---

Dirty air drives some park visitors away

USA Today
08/30/00- Updated 10:34 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/ndswed10.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The growing problem of dirty air over national parks is disappointing tourists and keeping some away, costing nearby businesses millions of dollars in lost revenue, concludes a study commissioned by several environmental groups.

Pollution from coal-burning power plants, cars and factories often drifts hundreds of miles causing serious haze problems in otherwise remote and pristine parks and forest areas, a variety of studies have determined in recent years.

In the East, places like the Great Smoky Mountain and Shendandoah national parks have had summer-time visibility reduced dramatically because of severe haze caused by man-made pollution from sources miles away. Some parts in the West have seen visibility plummet from 140 miles to 35 miles on some summer days.

But the findings by Abt Associates Inc., an environmental research firm in Bethesda, Md., sought to examine the economic impact of dirty air and poor visibility in parks.

The study acknowledges that its findings are ''very rough estimates of economic benefit'' because it is ''difficult'' to measure what visibility is worth to the public.

Still, the report assumes that cleaner air would bring additional people to the parks - based on the fact that surveys have shown that clean air and unobstructed views are a top priority of park visitors.

''When confronted by poor visibility ... travelers shorten their stay or go elsewhere,'' said the study.

Examining seven national parks which pollution problems, the study estimated that a 25% increase in visitors would translate into an additional $13 million to nearly $300 million in additional economic benefits to local businesses, depending on the park - as well as increased fees for the park.

''We've known for years that hazy skies in our national parks disappoint tourists and local residents alike,'' said Angela Ledford of the National Campaign Against Dirty Power, one of the environmental groups that commissioned the study. ''Now we know that cleaning up the pollution that cause haze will pump millions into the local and national economies.''

The Environmental Protection Agency last year issued regulations requiring that visibility at 156 national parks be improved by 15% each decade, returning to pristine conditions over a 60-year period. The agency is expected to issue new requirements on pollution controls to meet those goals later this year.

The study examined haze and visitor statistics at Acadia National Park in Maine; Big Bend National Park in Texas; Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona; Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina; Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in Indiana; Mt. Rainier National Park in Washington; and Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.

Other environmental groups involved in the report are the Clean Air Task Force, National Environmental Trust, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

---

Clear the Air
NEW! Out of Sight: Haze in our National Parks

http://www.cta.policy.net/proactive/newsroom/release.vtml?id=19060

110 Million Americans Live In Areas With Unhealthy Air
Are you one of them?

http://www.cleartheair.org/

Air pollution has created a public health and environmental crisis:

Fine particle pollution cuts short the lives of an estimated 45,000 Americans each year.

Smog triggers over 6 million asthma attacks and sends nearly 200,000 people to the hospital each year.

Greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, cause global warming, threatening dramatic weather changes and the spread of tropical diseases.

Coal-Burning Power Plants are the Single Largest Industrial Source of Air Pollution.

Cleaning up coal-fired power plants is the single greatest thing we can do to protect public health, curb global warming, reduce acid rain, and stop mercury contamination. From coast to coast, citizen groups have been fighting for years to clean up the po wer plants in their states. But pollution doesn't stop at the state line. A national solution is needed to fully protect our families' health and the environment. Join Clear the Air in the fight to clean up old, dirty power plants.

---

USA Today
Maryland
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Luke - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is asking a federal judge to shut down Westvaco Corp.'s pulp and paper mill in western Maryland until the company installs new air-pollution safeguards. The EPA contends that Westvaco expanded its Luke mill by 40% since 1981 without obtaining permits or installing required pollution controls. Westvaco calls the claims misguided.

New Jersey

Evesham - A threatened species of wildflower has been disappearing from a stream here, and environmental officials fear the flower's decline is an indication of changes to the region's wetlands. Many of the swamp pink plants, named for the color of their blossoms, began to disappear after Kettle Run dried to a trickle.

New York

Lake George - Zebra mussels that threatened the health of an Adirondack lake have apparently been eliminated by an aggressive program. The eradication of the mollusk in Lake George would be the first program to squelch the mussel, which has plagued the Great Lakes and other waterways. Scientists pulled more than 19,000 mussels out of Lake George in April. None were found in summer sampling.

Utah

Park City - The water is safe to drink again after higher lead levels were discovered in mid-July in the main source of Park City's water system. Lead levels averaging 40 parts per billion and peaking at double that were reported from the samplings at the Judge Tunnel. The Federal Safe Drinking Water Act allows 15 parts per billion. Officials think the spike may have been caused by maintenance work.

Virginia

Richmond - The Sierra Club released two radio ads urging the public to speak out against garbage imported from other states. The environmental organization wants people to write Gov. Gilmore and ask him to deny a permit for construction on the Charles City garbage port. In 1998, some imported rubbish leaked into the nearby James River. No garbage barges have docked at the port since then.

---

THE INTEREST GROUPS
ENVIRONMENTAL FRIENDS AND FOES

New York Times
August 31, 2000
Campaign Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/083100campaign-briefings.html

The Sierra Club has returned to the airwaves in seven states with television and radio commercials praising a few Republicans and many more Democrats on many environmental issues. One radio spot in the $8 million campaign praises a Republican and a Democrat -- each of whom represent districts served by stations in the Quad Cities area of Illinois and Iowa. Listeners are asked to thank Representatives Jim Leach, Republican of Iowa, and Lane Evans, Democrat of Illinois, for supporting higher standards on arsenic in drinking water. The advertisements, which will run for about two weeks, are costing the Sierra Club more than $200,000, said Dan Weiss, the group's political director.

Positive advertisements will be broadcast about Representatives Mark Udall of Colorado, Joseph M. Hoeffel of Pennsylvania and Brian Baird of Washington, all Democrats. Radio commercials will support Senators James M. Jeffords of Vermont and William V. Roth Jr. of Delaware, both Republicans, along with three Democratic Representatives, Rush D. Holt of New Jersey and Jay Inslee and Adam Smith, both of Washington. Critical advertisements are being run against two Republicans, Senator Slade Gorton of Washington and former Gov. George Allen of Virginia, a Senate hopeful. (AP)

Compiled by B. Drummond Ayres Jr.

---

Earth to activists

Washington Times
August 31, 2000
Kenneth D. Smith
http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/ed-column-200083118507.htm

A scientist, said famed philosopher Will Rogers, "is a man that can find out anything, and nobody in the world has any way of proving he really found anything or not." It is a continuing complaint of those predicting imminent environmental apocalypse that they rarely have sufficient evidence to prove it to the uncomprehending Americans who stolidly decline to share activists' enthusiasm for the cause. It is not for want of effort by the media.

Consider the case of the New York Times, which had bad news, very bad news for readers this month. The North Pole, it reported solemnly Aug. 19, is "melting," a grim portent of global warming and a major disappointment to a boatload of tourists who had gone there hoping to have their pictures taken standing at the top of the world. Why all the journalistic concern? "The last time scientists can be certain the pole was awash in water," New York Times reporter John Noble Wilford explained, "was more than 50 million years ago." Mr. Wilford helpfully quoted a Harvard University scientist named James McCarthy to the effect that passengers on the trip could see with their own eyes that global warming "was real."

A spate of similarly troubling accounts followed. ABC News spoke to another scientist on the voyage who expressed shock that "Santa's Workshop is now underwater." A day later, The Washington Post reported, "The world, it seems, is melting from the top down." The Christian Science Monitor cited "growing evidence" that the Earth's climate is changing, particularly in the Arctic region, a "bellweather" for the rest of the world.

The implication of the stories was that man had somehow tipped the world out of a delicate environmental balance - perhaps through his insatiable appetite for luxuries like electricity, agriculture and ESPN - into a dizzying descent toward death and destruction. He would have to repent his ways or else.

As it turned out, however, things weren't quite as bad as all that. Ten days after the original New York Times story ran, the paper ran a correction on the story, not on the front page, of course, but on page 2. The Aug. 19 account "misstated" the routine conditions of sea ice at the North Pole, the paper said. In fact: "A clear spot has probably opened at the Pole before, scientists say, because about 10 percent of the Arctic Ocean is clear of ice in a typical summer." In other words, it hasn't been 50 million years since the sea was "awash" in water, but, well, last year. Further, the correction said, the fact that there is water rather than ice "is not necessarily related to global warming." Perhaps, as The Post reported, the fluid conditions have more to do with the 50 degree temperatures at the Pole during the summer when the days there are 24 hours long. At any rate, Santa need not worry about getting his workshop rezoned for resort activities yet.

One can just imagine a gathering of editors at the Times weighing requests for a correction because it turned out that the story had erred by about 49,999,999 years on the date there had last been open water at the North Pole. How could one get it so wrong?

One explanation is that science is a complex business, it is constantly changing and reporters have a hard time keeping up. Scientist James Hansen, who began a 1998 paper with the quote from Will Rogers above, this month produced a study which argues that governments focused on reducing carbon dioxide emissions to stave off global warming may be concentrating on the wrong ones. Better to try cutting other kinds of heat-trapping emissions first. Such reductions, by the way, might not be so threatening to coal and oil industries crucial to the workings of this economy. Reporters who have been busy writing about the crucial need to cut carbon dioxide emissions to save the planet may find themselves explaining to editors that the scientific agenda and their reporting may have to change.

Some journalists, however, assume an activist agenda as their own. In 1994, Boston Globe reporter Diane Dumanoski acknowledged to the Los Angeles Times that she had manipulated news about a "hole" in the ozone layer for something less than scientific or journalistic reasons: She wanted to get top billing for a story. Told that the mere "probability" of the "hole" wasn't good enough to warrant Page One, she called a scientific source back and "negotiated something that really wasn't accurate . . . something much balder than what was true." The story ran on Page One. A New York Times story reporting that this summer, like last summer, there is open water at the North Pole, probably wouldn't make the front page. It might not even be considered fit to print at all.

What we know most about climate change these days is how little we know about it. Said a report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Although studies "suggest that there is some [man-made] component in the observed temperature record, they cannot be considered as compelling evidence of a clear cause-and-effect link" between man and climate change. That means scientists have a long way to go before they can pass the Will Rogers test.

E-mail: smithk@twtmail.com

Kenneth Smith is deputy editor of The Washington Times editorial page.His column appears on Thursdays.

---

Donation Fund Established for Wild Horses and Burros

Yahoo News
Thursday August 31, 2:40 pm Eastern Time
Press Release
SOURCE: Bureau of Land Management

RENO, Nev., Aug. 31 /PRNewswire/ -- In response to the public's offers of donations to benefit drought-stricken wild horses and burros, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced today the establishment of a national donation fund. The fund will help those animals that the Bureau has removed from Western rangelands because of extreme drought and wildland fires.

Contributions will be used to purchase vaccines, antibiotics, milk for orphaned foals, and other items that will directly improve the health of wild horses and burros. Donations may be submitted to: 4 Mustangs and Burros, Bureau of Land Management, P.O. Box 12000, Reno, Nevada 89520-0006, Attn: Business Manager. Contributions are tax deductible.

The BLM must find homes for the 4,000 animals in its corral facilities gathered as part of routine and emergency herd management, along with up to 4,000 more animals to be gathered as a result of the drought and wildland fire situation. The BLM has a nationwide adoption program and offers wild horses and burros to qualified individuals. Since the program began in 1973, more than 175,000 animals have been placed in private homes.

A new Web page has also been added to the BLM's National Wild Horse and Burro Program Web site at www.blm.gov/whb. The new page provides information about the Bureau's Adopt-A-Horse or Burro Program and explains how the public can help the BLM find good homes for wild horses and burros.

Also, the BLM has changed its national wild horse and burro toll-free number to 1-866-4MUSTANGS. ``This new number is much easier to remember than the old one,'' said Lee Delaney, Group Manager for the BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Program. ``We realize the new number has too many digits, but it will begin ringing after the 'n' is entered. We encourage the public to call the new toll-free number for more information about the adoption program.''

For more information about the Bureau's Adopt-A-Horse or Burro Program or how you can help, call the BLM toll-free at 1-866-4MUSTANGS or visit the agency's Web site at http://www.blm.gov/whb.

SOURCE: Bureau of Land Management

-------- imf / world bank

Mexico repays remainder of IMF loan

USA Today
08/31/00- Updated 07:44 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm#mmon

MEXICO CITY - Mexico has repaid its debt to the International Monetary Fund. The Treasury Secretariat said Thursday it had repaid all of its remaining debt to the IMF - ''about $3 billion'' - dating from a 1995 bailout package that helped rescue Mexico's then-plummeting economy. Repayment had been due between September 2000 and March 2005. The funds are expected to come from the country's international reserves, which stood at $33 billion last week. Mexico's debt with the IMF stemmed from a $40 billion credit package offered by the IMF, the U.S. government and other international lenders in 1995 following a sudden devaluation of the peso that sent the economy into a dangerous plunge.

-------- police

Moscow Cops Raid Rights Meeting

NewsMax.com
Thursday, Aug. 31, 2000
UPI
http://www.NewsMax.com/articles/?a=2000/8/30/214604

MOSCOW - Special units of police raided the Glasnost Foundation earlier this week, disrupting a planned conference on human rights abuses, the group announced Wednesday.

The head of the foundation, Sergei Grigoryants, said the police tactics reminded him of the methods used by the Soviet KGB.

Grigoryants said the group was preparing for a conference called "KGB: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" when a group of commandos armed with rifles and wearing ski masks entered the building without a search warrant and ordered everyone to lie on the floor with their hands behind their heads.

After digging through papers and files for about 20 minutes, the police left, Grigoryants said, noting that the operation was probably planned to intimidate the human rights group.

"They knew exactly where they were going. This was a conscious government action aimed at intimidating civil society," he said.

The Glasnost Foundation was set up in the 1980s by a group of dissidents, and has tried to record human rights violations committed by the security services.

Police refused to comment on the raid. A similar raid was carried out recently at the Moscow offices of Greenpeace, the international environmental group that has exposed violations of the law by officials of Russia and other governments.

See more articles about Russia in Hot Topics.

http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=1998/12/20/205309

----

Rethinking International Peacekeeping
White House Dusts Off Plan For Worldwide Civilian Police Force
$10 Million Strategy Could Take Load Off U.S. Troops

CBS
August 31, 2000
http://cbsnews.cbs.com/now/story/0,1597,164698-412,00.shtml
Diplomatic Dispatch By State Dept. Correspondent Charles Wolfson

WASHINGTON, D.C. - (CBS) The Clinton Administration has dusted off an old idea: create an international civilian police force which would be on standby for rapid deployment to international trouble spots.

According to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "The recent slowness in deploying desperately needed civilian police to Kosovo provides only the latest evidence that present international capabilities are not adequate."

Indeed, after less than perfect experiences in Bosnia, Haiti and East Timor, as well as Kosovo, the Clinton administration's foreign policy and national security teams are admitting the obvious:

"...we must recognize," says Albright, "that old models of peacekeeping do not always meet current challenges."

The current proposal takes advantage of lessons learned -- the hard way -- during the past five years. It has the added advantage of appealing to the Pentagon, which has never been in favor of deploying highly trained military forces for what most often turns out to be police work.

Many members of Congress have been frustrated with the UN's peacekeeping operations in the past. They might be supportive of this plan because having an international police force, albeit with some U. S. participation, answers the question which most often arises in these situations: Why does the United States have to be the world's policeman?

Congress will want to see the details. And whether those who hold the purse strings will think it's worth the $10 million price tag in next year's budget is another matter.

Currently more than 700 Americans serve in so-called CIVPOL (Civilian Police) operations under UN supervision, and administration officials say they'd like to have a list of about 2,000 trained professionals to draw from when the call goes out.

Most of those chosen would be from active duty police forces around the country and would serve a one-year tour of duty. Other professionals being sought would help set up civilian legal systems, courts and penal institutions.

For the past fifty years foreign policymakers spent their careers worrying about the Soviet Union launching nuclear missiles. Now that the Cold War is over, a major concern becomes whether an American soldier in Bosnia or Kosovo can keep the peace between ethnic groups, put down civil disturbances and avoid being killed by a sniper with a grudge.

---

L.A. Police Misconduct Likened to Racketeering

Washington Post
Thursday , August 31, 2000 ; A04
By Rene Sanchez Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50317-2000Aug30.html

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 30 -- Of all the ugly names the police department here has been called since it became mired in a massive corruption scandal last year, none may be worse than the one a federal judge invoked this week.

In a ruling that startled city officials, U.S. District Judge William J. Rea said that the pattern of extreme misconduct shown by the LAPD suggests that it could be considered a "criminal enterprise," subject to lawsuits under federal anti-racketeering laws that could inflict a staggering financial toll on Los Angeles.

The judge's decision is unprecedented, legal analysts say. After all, the laws were enacted nearly 30 years ago to give law enforcement officials more power to crack down on organized crime gangs involved in extortion, bribery or obstruction of justice--not a police force.

But this force is facing extraordinary charges. In a scandal still unfolding, officers are being investigated for allegedly orchestrating a widespread, violent conspiracy: shooting unarmed suspects, framing others by planting weapons or drugs on them, falsifying police reports and lying under oath in court.

Since the scandal erupted, five officers have been charged with felonies. About 70 more are under investigation. Nearly 100 criminal cases linked to their actions have been thrown out, and a few people who were wrongly convicted have been released from prison.

Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at the University of Southern California, said the potential implications of the federal judge's decision are enormous. In essence, he said, the LAPD could be brought to trial "for acting like an illegal mob."

"It's a novel theory, and it could tremendously expand the scope of liability the city could be facing," Chemerinsky said. "The racketeering statute is one of the most powerful tools a plaintiff has because it is so broad."

Most important, the federal law provides a 10-year statute of limitations on racketeering crimes, which could leave the LAPD vulnerable to more lawsuits concerning alleged misdeeds by officers and give attorneys of alleged victims more time to prepare cases. California law provides just a one-year statute of limitations.

The federal law also allows juries to triple damage awards to any plaintiff they decide has been wronged.

Until now, city officials have been bracing to pay between $100 million and $200 million to settle lawsuits stemming from the scandal. The financial stakes suddenly could be much higher.

Today, city attorneys announced they were preparing an appeal of the judge's ruling. "We believe this order is wrong on the law," said Mike Qualls, a spokesman for city attorney James K. Hahn.

The corruption scandal is rooted in the police department's Rampart Division, which covers a blighted immigrant neighborhood near downtown. Most of the officers being investigated have been part of elite squads that the department created to fight street gangs.

The controversy began when a former Rampart officer, Rafael Perez, began telling investigators about police misconduct in exchange for leniency on charges he faced for stealing cocaine from a police evidence locker. Perez is now in prison.

The federal judge issued his ruling in a lawsuit filed against the city by Louie Guerrero, an alleged victim of police abuse. Guerrero contends that as he walked along a street in the Rampart neighborhood in November 1997, officers choked, kicked and punched him, then arrested him on phony charges. Guerrero's suit includes other plaintiffs who allege the LAPD violated their civil rights in similar ways.

City attorneys had sought dismissal of the suit in part because the one-year statute of limitations for suing under state law had passed. But the judge rejected the city's motion.

Stephen Yagman, a lawyer representing Guerrero and other plaintiffs, praised the move. He said it could be just the weapon that victims of police abuse have long needed to force reform upon the LAPD, whose image has been tarnished by the infamous Rodney G. King beating of 1991 and conduct by some officers that became known during O.J. Simpson's 1994 trial.

"Now we will be able to expose up to 10 years of misconduct," Yagman said, "and to finally clean up a rotten department that the city just won't clean up on its own."

----

Board of Inquiry Final Report

The "Executive Summary" and the "Board of Inquiry into the Rampart Area Corruption Incident" are available in both a clickable version and in Portable Document Format [PDF] to be viewed as published.

The public is encouraged to forward their comments directly to the Board of Police Commissioners.

Chief Park's Correspondence to the Police Commission [PDF]
http://www.lapdonline.org/pdf_files/boi/letter.pdf

Preface to the Executive Summary and Board of Inquiry Report
http://www.lapdonline.org/whats_new/boi/boi_preface.htm

Executive Summary [Clickable]
http://www.lapdonline.org/whats_new/boi/boi_exec_summary.htm

Board of Inquiry Report [Clickable]
http://www.lapdonline.org/whats_new/boi/aboi_toc.htm

Executive Summary [PDF]
http://www.lapdonline.org/pdf_files/boi/boi_exec_summary.pdf

Board of Inquiry into the Rampart Area Corruption Incident [PDF]
http://www.lapdonline.org/pdf_files/boi/boi_pub.pdf

Rampart Independent Review Panel [PDF]
http://www.lapdonline.org/pdf_files/boi/rampart_panel.pdf

The PDF (Portable Document Format) files can be viewed with the help of Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not have this software component, you can download it for free from the Adobe Web site.

---

USA Today
Maryland
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Ohio

Defiance - This northwest Ohio city says it will hire four more officers within a year to settle a lawsuit that claimed police were illegally denied a choice of days off or money for working overtime. The city had said it couldn't offer time off because of staffing problems. Defiance agreed to pay $25,000 to be split among the department's 24 officers and the union's lawyers.

-------- spying

U.S. Suit Filed Seeking to Show

Yahoo News
Thursday August 31 11:26 AM ET updated 3:39 PM ET Aug 31
Diana Murdered
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000831/ts/crime_diana_dc_2.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tycoon Mohamed Al Fayed, who owns London's Harrods luxury department store, filed a suit on Thursday to gain access to secret documents he says may prove his son and Britain's Princess Diana were murdered in a car crash three years ago.

Speaking outside the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, a lawyer for Fayed told reporters his client believed U.S. security agencies, like the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, had relevant documents.

``We know the NSA has documents regarding Princess Diana although they've indicated there's nothing pertaining to the tragedy itself,'' said lawyer Mark Zaid, who is representing Fayed in the United States.

The Egyptian-born Fayed has charged that ``evil and racist forces'' working through Britain's security service killed the couple and that the documents would finally reveal the truth -- that the royal family wanted to prevent his son Dodi from marrying Diana.

Court officials said the lawsuit was filed and assigned to U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.

The filing was made to coincide with the third anniversary of the death of Diana and Dodi in Paris.

Fayed has unsuccessfully tried to subpoena the U.S. documents through another U.S. court case and will now sue for them under the Freedom of Information Act.

A French judge closed an investigation into the crash in September 1999, concluding the accident occurred because the couple's driver from the Ritz Hotel, Henri Paul, was drunk.

The White House said on Wednesday that any suggestion the United States played a part ``involving this terrible accident is totally unfounded.''

---

Fayed Plans to Sue U.S. For Data on Deaths of Diana and His Son

New York Times
August 31, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/diana-death-suit.html

WASHINGTON -- Mohamed Al Fayed, owner of Harrods department store of London, said Wednesday that he would sue the United States government for all information that it has on the high-speed automobile accident that killed his son Emad Mohamed Al Fayed and Diana, Princess of Wales, three years ago in Paris.

The suit, which he said would be filed in U.S. District Court here under the Freedom of Information Act, requests that several government departments and agencies -- including the National Security Agency, the CIA, the Justice Department, the Defense Department and the FBI -- turn over documents, photographs and audio tapes related to the crash.

Previous requests for documents from the federal government were denied in the interest of national security, said Fayed's lawyer, Mark S. Zaid.

Diana and Fayed's son, known as Dodi, died on Aug. 31, 1997, after leaving the Ritz Hotel in a chauffeured car. Fayed owns the hotel and employed the driver, Henri Paul, who also died in the crash, and was found to have had alcohol in his system.

Fayed contends that the NSA spied on Diana and his son, and passed the information to MI6, the British foreign intelligence service. Further, Fayed alleges that the Justice Department failed to investigate and prosecute individuals who attempted to extort $20 million from him for CIA documents describing the involvement of MI6 in the accident.

---

Rein In the C.I.A.

New York Times
August 31, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/letters/l31chi.html

To the Editor:

Re "A C.I.A. Cover-Up on Chile" (editorial, Aug. 29):

The defiance by the director of central intelligence of a presidential order to release documents about the 1973 coup in Chile again raises the question of whether the Central Intelligence Agency, as presently constituted, is compatible with our democracy.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan long ago suggested that an institution so unaccountable to the citizenry for its actions was incompatible with our system of government.

The C.I.A. is supposed to be accountable to a Congressional oversight committee. But any organization that can defy a presidential order can even more easily ignore or manipulate a committee. Radical reform of the C.I.A. is long overdue.

FRANK MAUROVICH Ossining, N.Y., Aug. 30, 2000

---

Good guys must keep up

USA Today
08/31/00- Updated 08:48 AM ET
By Stephen R. Colgate
http://usatoday.com/news/comment/ncoppf.htm

None of us wants anyone listening to our phone calls - or reading our e-mail. But most would agree that when a court finds that agents need to tap a phone line to catch a drug dealer or terrorist, they should be able to do so. The same goes for e-mail or other computer transmissions, like those used by hackers against computer systems central to commerce, as well as national defense. As the bad guys go high tech, the good guys have to keep up.

The FBI's Carnivore software was not designed to "read everyone's e-mail." It allows law enforcement to track a specific subject's cyberspace communications, gathering only the information authorized by a court order.

It is fair to ask whether the government can intercept one suspect's e-mail without disrupting network operations, or violating other customers' privacy. That's why the attorney general asked for an independent technical review: to verify that the system works the way it is supposed to and collects only the information it is supposed to. She has asked that the review be made public, to hear any concerns, and for a report to be made back to her.

We are committed to an independent review that is just that: independent. The reviewers will have access to anything they need. If the system doesn't work, or crashes networks, or invades the privacy of users other than those identified in a court order, or if we fail to cooperate in any way, we expect the reviewers to say so. The only thing we won't do is make public system details that would provide a virtual roadmap to avoid court-ordered surveillance. Criminals - especially hackers - aren't stupid, and law enforcement can't afford to be stupid either.

As for the freedom of information request, the FBI is working as fast as possible to collect, review and release 3,000 pages of material. The FBI is committed to providing as much as possible while protecting information that belongs to third parties, who also have rights under the law, or that helps criminals evade law enforcement.

We are proud of the trust the public has placed in us to enforce the law fairly and effectively. We are undertaking the Carnivore review to preserve and justify that trust.

Stephen R. Colgate is assistant attorney general for administration.

---

Internet probe tainted

USA Today
08/31/00- Updated 08:48 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/comment/nceditf.htm

When the FBI's secret Internet snoop program, aptly named "Carnivore," burst into the national headlines last month, reaction was swift. Privacy advocates from across the political spectrum complained that it could allow the government wide and unmonitored access to private e-mail. Attorney General Janet Reno promised an "independent" review with "total access" by tech-savvy researchers outside the government.

"It's important, as you develop new technology and utilize it, that you try to explain it to the people (so they) feel they are the master of technology, not that technology is mastering them," Reno said.

But a month after Reno's promises, the follow-through falls somewhere between laughable and outrageous.

The contract for the outside researchers to be hired next month is riddled with opportunities for the FBI and Justice to interfere:

Justice gets a veto over who can work for the "independent" researchers.

The government decides whether the researchers can analyze questions and "scenarios" other than those in the contract.

Justice decides to what extent the researchers will be able to evaluate the "off-the-shelf'' parts of Carnivore, such as Microsoft's Windows operating system.

Also embedded in the contract paperwork are two assumptions that will bias any review. The department requires researchers to "assume" that the technical people at the FBI and Internet companies talk to each other without any misunderstandings that might make the systems work improperly.

And the contract requires that researchers assume all legal questions will be resolved according to the Justice Department's interpretation. Privacy advocates say technical and legal questions are so thoroughly entangled that this clause alone would tilt the researchers' analysis.

The FBI won't even say who created Carnivore. Reno is fighting in court to keep that information until some undetermined date - maybe until next year. Yet, without that detail the public can't judge who is independent and who is not, or whether Carnivore works as intended.

Justice's argument is that agency staffers can't fully sort through 3,000 Carnivore-related documents, deciding what to release and what to hide, until next year. Meanwhile, Reno is promising that her "independent" researchers starting from zero in mid-September can produce a credible report in November. The logical conclusion is that the "independent" report is just for show.

A public whose e-mail could be invaded deserves better. Until the Justice Department can shoulder its responsibilities, including an independent review worthy of the name, Carnivore should be shut down.

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-------- terrorism

Justice for Lori Berenson

www.commondreams.org
Thursday, August 31, 2000
Editorial Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/globe
http://www.commondreams.org/views/083100-101.htm

The decision by Peru's military this week to throw out the 1996 terrorism conviction of Lori Berenson and grant her a new trial by civilian authorities is an unexpected but welcome turn in a case that has been a black mark on that country's human rights record. While the new trial may afford the former Massachusetts Institute of Technology student no more due process than the first, it offers hope that there will be at least some measure of justice. Both the circumstances of Berenson's conviction and the severity of her prison conditions - for the first three years in a special jail for terrorists at an altitude of 12,700 feet - have strained relations between Lima and Washington.

The agreed-upon facts in the case are few. Berenson was a sympathizer of Latin America's oppressed poor who was trying to establish credentials as a journalist in the mid-1990s, a time of frequent outbreaks of violence by leftist guerrillas in Peru. In late 1995, government forces arrested her and members of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement who were sharing a house with her. The military said she helped plan an attack on Peru's Congress. Berenson has denied it, but she did not help her cause in the court of public opinion in Peru when she was videotaped angrily screaming support for the group.

She was convicted and sentenced to life in prison by a military tribunal whose members met in secret and wore hoods to hide their identities. According to Berenson and her supporters, her lawyers were not allowed to cross-examine prosecution witnesses or present evidence at the trial.

This week's decision came as a surprise because during the presidential election this spring, the incumbent, Alberto Fujimori, attacked his opponent for proposing to review Berenson's case if he won. Irregularities and outright voter fraud in that election, which was won by Fujimori, have shaken the credibility of Peruvian democracy. One explanation for the new trial is that Fujimori is seeking to improve his country's image overseas.

Peru's prime minister has specifically denied that the action had anything to do with talks on a reform agenda for Peru that have been sponsored by the Organization of American States and have included both the government and opposition parties. But if, in fact, the OAS talks were a factor, more power to that organization. The new trial has sparked criticism on the Peruvian home front, where newspapers that usually support Fujimori have accused him of caving in to foreign pressure.

Whatever the motive behind the military's decision and Fujimori's role in it, the action is overdue. With guerrilla violence now suppressed, Peruvian officials have regularly been reviewing the cases of persons convicted in circumstances like Berenson's, and more than 1,000 have been pardoned and released. A new trial for Lori Berenson with high standards of due process should both clarify what her role, if any, was in the violence of the

---

Peru Moves Jailed U.S. Woman Ahead of Retrial

Yahoo News
Thursday August 31
By Miguel Zegarra
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000831/wl/peru_berenson_dc_2.html

SOCABAYA, Peru (Reuters) - Peruvian authorities on Thursday moved Lori Berenson, a U.S. woman jailed on terrorism charges, from a southern jail where she was has been serving a life sentence for treason ahead of a fresh civilian trial.

Berenson, a New Yorker who came to Peru in 1994 to work as a reporter for leftist U.S. magazines, and whose case has been a source of friction between Peru and the United States, left Socabaya jail near Arequipa, some 620 miles (1,000 km) from the capital Lima, under heavy police escort, witnesses said.

She was expected to be flown to Lima for the new trial, which is sure to put Peru's much questioned judiciary in the spotlight after the May reelection of President Alberto Fujimori in a vote the opposition boycotted and called rigged.

Berenson was expected to be taken to a women's prison in Chorillos, a southern Lima suburb, and to be questioned by Judge Romel Borda later in the day.

In her first public sighting in nearly two years, Berenson, 30, wearing glasses and with her long dark hair loose, sat flanked by four police officers in a car as it headed for the airport.

Three other police cars from the national special operations unit were also in the convoy, as well as an ambulance and five police outriders on motorcycles.

Berenson was sentenced to life by a hooded military judge in 1996 for treason after being found guilty of being a leader of the Cuban-inspired Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) and plotting to attack Congress.

Berenson says she is innocent.

In a surprise U-turn this week, Peru's top military council, which President Alberto Fujimori is widely believed to control, annulled the verdict and said the case had been passed to a civilian court for a retrial the president has long resisted.

Fujimori told reporters fresh evidence had emerged showing Berenson was not a MRTA leader. State prosecutor Maria del Pilar Peralta said Berenson faced a minimum sentence of 20 years -- although her life term could be reconfirmed -- under the new trial, which is expected to last two to three months.

Peru's Judiciary In The Dock

Prime Minister Federico Salas said on Tuesday he personally opposed the retrial but the fact that it was going ahead was proof of the independence of the Peruvian judiciary.

Peru is under international pressure to clean up one of the worst human rights records in Latin America and to restore credibility to its democracy after Fujimori's reelection.

Judicial reform is high on the 29-point agenda of democratic reforms demanded by the Organization of American States that are being debated by the government and opposition parties in tough talks that began 10 days ago.

The Berenson case, which has proved a thorn in the side of relations between Fujimori and Washington, has inflamed political passions in Peru.

Defeated presidential challenger Alejandro Toledo called the retrial a ``smoke screen'' and other opposition figures said it was a sop to Washington to win support for a government that has become increasingly isolated internationally.

Even staunch Fujimori allies questioned the retrial, while opposition figures immediately demanded the same treatment for four Chilean MRTA members also serving jail terms in Peru. Fujimori said there was no fresh evidence in those cases.

Peruvians, who suffered fierce guerrilla wars in the late 1980s and early 1990s that were halted by a Fujimori crackdown, generally have little sympathy for Berenson, believing she got the same treatment as anyone accused of being a rebel.

---

Waiting for Justice in Peru

New York Times
August 31, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/editorial/31thu2.html

Peru has taken a step in the right direction by revoking the life sentence that a military tribunal imposed on Lori Berenson four and a half years ago after a sham trial. Now it must ensure that the civilian court that will retry the Berenson case observes the basic standards of justice that the military court ignored.

Ms. Berenson was originally charged with helping terrorists of the T�pac Amaru Revolutionary Movement plan an attack on Peru's Congress. At her trial she was not allowed to challenge the prosecution's evidence or cross-examine its witnesses. Neither could she call witnesses in her own behalf. Now Peru says it has uncovered new evidence suggesting that Ms. Berenson never played a leadership role in the guerrilla organization, something that might have been discovered much earlier had she not been denied a fair trial.

The exact nature of her relationship with T�pac Amaru has yet to be established. A fair trial could help clarify it. She openly supports the group's political aims, but claims she was unaware of its violent methods. A year after her trial, T�pac Amaru guerrillas invaded the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima, seizing hostages.

Like Ms. Berenson, thousands of Peruvians arrested in President Alberto Fujimori's anti-terrorist sweeps of the mid-1990's were denied due process and subjected to years of harsh imprisonment. Many of those Peruvians have now been released. Ms. Berenson's fate depends on the outcome of her second trial.

The Clinton administration has been rightly critical of President Fujimori for rigging his own re-election earlier this year. By assuring a fair trial for Ms. Berenson, he can help make relations with Washington somewhat less frosty. But until Peru is again a democracy and its judicial system fully independent, there can be no return to the traditional cordiality between the two countries.


-------- activists

Political organs

Yahoo News
August 31, 2000
Inside the Beltway John McCaslin
Political tidbits and other shenanigans from around the nation's capital.
http://208.246.212.80/national/inbeltway.htm

First there was the tasteless and unauthorized "Got Prostate Cancer?" ad - a knockoff of the familiar "Got Milk?" ads - featuring New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Now, Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, says PETA's next ad targeting dairy products will feature former Senate majority leader and Viagra poster boy Bob Dole beneath the slogan "Got Impotency?"

Miss Newkirk cites medical studies showing that a majority of American men over age 60 have erectile dysfunction because a meat-and-dairy diet clogs arteries to other vital organs, not just the heart.

While conceding that Mr. Dole is a nice guy, Miss Newkirk contends that tasteless ads featuring public figures are fair play if those people have discussed their ailments in the press, or received money for it.

PETA says Mr. Giuliani received campaign contributions from New York's dairy industry and Mr. Dole from the pharmaceutical industry. The 1996 Republican presidential candidate has also appeared in television commercials about erectile dysfunction.

Miss Newkirk suggests that men like Mr. Dole clean out their arteries by adopting a "vegan dietary regime" - even though such a diet subjects carrots and turnips to a horrible and merciless death by boiling, thereby avoiding any risk of heart attack that may be associated with sex drugs.

---

Rickshaw, anyone?

Yahoo News
August 31, 2000
Inside the Beltway John McCaslin
Political tidbits and other shenanigans from around the nation's capital.
http://208.246.212.80/national/inbeltway.htm

Finally, regarding the memo we intercepted on Climate Action NOW, a grass-roots movement fighting climate destabilization from greenhouse-gas emissions that is organizing an "International Day of Outrage Against the Automobile" in Detroit, reader Edward Sorensen points out:

"Though a specific date was not mentioned for those wishing to attend . . . it would have been prudent of you to suggest that those in the far outlying regions of Detroit (such as California, etc.) start pedaling."

And along those same lines, Tom Lynch, a modeling analyst for Houston's NeuroCorp Inc., says, "One good thing about a protest in Detroit over cars is that they will not have to provide any parking."

John McCaslin can be reached at 202/636-3284 or by e-mail at mccasl@twtmail.com.

---

French Fishermen Block Access to Channel Tunnel

Yahoo News
Thursday August 31
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000831/wl/france_ports_dc_3.html

CALAIS, France (Reuters) - French fishermen blocked vehicle access to the Channel Tunnel Thursday after a scuffle with British tourists stranded by suspension of ferry services due to the fishermen's protests against high fuel prices.

About 20 policemen with riot gear stood by as the fishermen, who have blocked most French ports this week to push their demands for lower fuel prices, stationed eight vans across the vehicle entry to the tunnel.

The protest had no effect on the Eurostar passenger trains, which were running regularly. Trucks and cars are ferried through the tunnel on special flatbed wagons.

About 300 trucks were lined up in a queue about four miles long waiting to enter the tunnel. About 100 cars were also waiting, with more arriving regularly.

``We've been blocked here for two days, it's inhuman,'' British Tourist Martina Patel told Reuters. ``Now they're stopping us from taking the tunnel.''

The tourists tried at one point to dismantle a barricade the fishermen had erected. ``We've got nothing to do with this!'' one British tourist cried during the short scuffle that ensued.

---

French Fishermen Win Deal to End Blockade

Yahoo News
Thursday August 31
By Yann Tessier
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000831/wl/france_ports_dc_8.html

CALAIS, France (Reuters) - Fishermen lifted their blockade of the Channel Tunnel and most French ports on Thursday after claiming victory in a three-day battle with the government over high fuel prices.

News of the deal cheered British tourists at Calais, where scuffles had earlier broken out between fishermen and angry motorists stranded on their way home.

``We won. All French port blockades will be lifted,'' a union leader told a cheering crowd of fishermen at Calais as he got news of the agreement on his portable telephone.

Traffic resumed in Channel ports, Marseille and most oil terminals. But radical fishermen voicing doubts about the deal with the government kept up a blockade of several Mediterranean ports.

Protesters removed vans that blocked car traffic from the Tunnel terminal. Trucks which had been backed up for more than six km (four miles) began moving toward the Eurotunnel rail shuttle.

UK ferry operator P&O Stena Line (PO.L)(SLABb.ST) said it had resumed full passenger and freight services from the British port of Dover after fishermen began dismantling the blockade.

``P&O Stena Line ferries will now leave Dover and Calais every 45 minutes and will revert to their usual sailing patterns overnight,'' the company said in a statement.

Earlier, the ferry company said passenger cars were facing about nine hours of delay crossing the Channel from Britain while truckers faced six hours of delays.

Britons were incensed at being caught up in a domestic French dispute and the government insisted this must not recur.

``We'll not accept Britain should be blockaded and held to ransom simply because of a social problem in France, said British deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.

He wrote to French Transport Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot saying the blockade would have had a ``serious impact on bilateral relations'' if it had carried on much longer.

``The actions of the protesters are contrary to European Union legislation on the free movement of goods (and) will badly tarnish the image of France in Britain and elsewhere in the Union,'' Prescott wrote.

In Paris, Agriculture Minister Jean Glavany said he had reached ``a good agreement'' with protest leaders who were seeking relief from a 75 percent rise in the price of their untaxed fuel to around 2.10 French francs (29 cents) per liter.

Jean-Marc Barrey, leader of the seamen's branch of the CFDT union, said Glavany had agreed to come up with a compensation package that would ensure fishermen effectively paid no more than 1.30 francs per liter.

Grievances Answered

Glavany said details of the deal would be worked out by Monday. His office said measures would be taken to compensate fishermen for the fuel price hike ``because of the exceptional difficulties confronting the industry.''

The fishermen say the steep rise in fuel prices, following increases in the price of crude oil, threatens their livelihood.

Agreement was not unanimous and hard-liners kept blocking the Mediterranean ports of Port-la-Nouvelle, Sete and Port-Vendres.

``The minister rolled us in flour and wants to fry us like fish. Lifting the blockade is out of the question,'' said Jean-Luc Cabrol, the fishermen's leader in Port-la-Nouvelle.

However, traffic resumed in Marseille and nearby major oil terminals such as Fos-sur-Mer and Martigues.

Reluctant fishermen who denounced the deal as favoring bigger fishing companies at the expense of small trawlers eventually lifted the blockade of a TotalFinaElf refinery at Gonfreville in Normandy.

---

French fishermen reach deal, end protest

USA Today
08/31/00- Updated 07:44 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nw1.htm#mmon

PARIS - French fishermen on Thursday called an end to a nationwide wave of protests, including an hours-long traffic blockade of the Channel Tunnel, after the Agriculture Ministry promised to offset the costs of rising fuel prices. Earlier, fishermen had lined up cars to form a picket line at the Channel Tunnel terminal at Coquelles, near the northern port city of Calais, leaving hundreds of tourist buses and other vehicles unable to board the trains that pass under the English Channel. The deal puts an end to the demonstrations that have left many French ports in gridlock for more than a week.

---

New movie about Abbie Hoffman has friends furious

Yahoo News
Thursday August 31 11:51 AM ET updated 6:10 PM ET Aug 31
By Jon Kalish
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000831/en/film-hoffman_1.html

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Abbie Hoffman, the court jester of 1960s radicalism, is not around to review ``Steal This Movie,'' a film biography of him. But many of his friends are, and they say it should be called ``Forgive this Movie.''

http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=info&id=1800419885

Many Hoffman comrades in and outside the Yippie movement he founded say film star Vincent D'Onofrio has a major problem: He bears no physical resemblance to Hoffman and lacks the activist's spark. And they say the film so fouls up historic facts that the ``Chicago 7'' are reduced to the ``Chicago 5.''

``It should really be called 'Forgive This Movie,' because it's absolutely awful,'' said Paul Krassner, editor of irreverent journal ``The Realist'' and a co-founder of the Yippies.

``I think what really damns the film is that it fails as a piece of entertainment,'' said Meyer Vishner, a member of a group that aided Hoffman when he was a fugitive from drug charges in the mid-1970s.

``D'Onofrio doesn't evoke Abbie. He doesn't communicate Abbie's energy. So you have to ask what's the point?''

Unofficial Yippie archivist Sam Leff complained: ``Spend ten minutes with Abbie and you could laugh, chuckle, or guffaw a half a dozen times. Spend two hours in 'Steal This Movie' and you hardly crack a smile.''

Approved By Proxy

The film, produced and directed by Robert Greenwald, drew material from two books: ``To America With Love: Letters From the Underground'' -- correspondence between Hoffman and his wife Anita during his fugitive years -- and ``Abbie Hoffman: American Rebel,'' a biography by Marty Jezer, who was intimately involved in the '60s counterculture.

The film co-stars Janeane Garofalo as Anita Hoffman, who consulted on the movie before she committed suicide, after a devastating bout with breast cancer, in December 1998, while it was being filmed. Her involvement prompted Slate columnist Jared Hohlt to label the film an ``authorized-by-proxy biopic.''

http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=Janeane%20Garofalo

At the premier of ``Steal This Movie'' in Santa Monica, actor D'Onofrio conceded: ``It's difficult to play somebody that had that much charisma.''

Asked his impression of the late anti-war radical, D'Onofrio replied: ``I think he had a lot of guts. I think he stood up.''

There is a widespread perception that D'Onofrio's attempt at Hoffman's Worcester, Massachusetts, twang missed the mark. Depending on who you talk to, the actor sound more like he is from Texas or Brooklyn -- or has a speech defect.

On the movie's official Web site, the producers reveal that Anita Hoffman was troubled by the casting of the tall actor to play Hoffman, barely 5-foot-7 ``on a good day.''

Krassner says Greenwald wanted Robert Downey Jr. to play Hoffman, but the actor, who can certainly relate to Hoffman's drug use amd run-ins with law enforcement, turned it down.

Paging Mel Gibson
http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=Mel%20Gibson

When Universal Pictures was developing a screenplay in the 1980s based on Hoffman's autobiography, ``Soon To Be a Major Motion Picture,'' the aging activist made it known he thought Mel Gibson would make a good Abbie, according to Johanna Lawrenson, who was Hoffman's ``running mate'' for 15 years, from the time he was underground until his suicide in 1989 at the age of 52.

She, too, is displeased with the casting of D'Onofrio. ``It doesn't have to be someone who looks like Abbie. It just has to be someone who gets his sense of humor and what he was saying,'' Lawrenson told Reuters.

She said the screenplay for ``Steal This Movie'' was sent to her anonymously before shooting began and she asked Greenwald to have her name removed from the credits. She is steamed that the Johanna Lawrenson character in the film is portrayed as someone who tried to rein in her companion's eagerness to organize against environmental threats to the St. Lawrence River.

Hoffman's old Yippie pals are also grumbling about attorney Gerald Lefcourt, who defended Hoffman on many occasions over the years, being shown on screen as a member of the defense team at the Chicago 7 conspiracy trial.

Lefcourt, listed as an associate producer in the credits, did not serve as defense counsel at the raucous conspiracy trial. William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass did, but there is no mention of them in the movie.

``In fact,'' Krassner noted, ``two of the defendants aren't included in the movie. At the screening, I whispered, 'Hey, it's the Chicago Five.'''

Vishner, one of Hoffman's closest friends, is fuming that the filmmakers present the fiction that Hoffman's son America did not know who his father was when he was underground. And he says the film distorts the history of 1960s and ``oversimplifies the treachery of COINTELPRO,'' the federal government's dirty tricks campaign to disrupt the New Left.

He says the film should be called ``Loot This Legacy.''

Others criticize the film for its softball treatment of Hoffman's cocaine connection. Larry Sloman's oral history of Hoffman, ``Steal This Dream,'' quotes a friend as saying, ``Abbie really loved coke.'' And in his Slate column, Hohlt quotes one of Hoffman's Yippie associates as saying the radical icon dealt cocaine for about two years prior to his 1974 bust.

Most of Hoffman's intimate friends, though, have no problem with his legendary sexual appetite, which is reduced to a couple of quick encounters in ``Steal This Movie.''

---

Thomas Mapfumo Creates Music Of Struggle Zimbabwean star's Chimurenga Explosion criticizes Mugabe government, raises singer's profile.

SonicNet.com
08/31/00
MUSIC NEWS Today's Music News
http://www.sonicnet.com/news/;$sessionid$K1TUKKAAAA5X4CQBIAMCFEY
Chris Nickson
http://www.sonicnet.com/artists/ai_singlestory.jhtml?id=1123511&ai_id=616078

The three mbira players of Blacks Unlimited work at their thumb pianos, creating hypnotic, interlocking riffs. Then the band kicks in over the top with a tune from their new album, Chimurenga Explosion.

Center stage, unmoving, completely focused on his words, stands the "Lion of Zimbabwe," singer Thomas Mapfumo, who has been touring the United States this summer.

"This is chimurenga music. Chimurenga means struggle, and the struggle continues," Mapfumo explained

Mapfumo, 55, lives the struggle. At one point he was imprisoned for the political content of his music. Even now, a musical icon in his country, he can still feel the hand of censorship. Two tracks from his new album, including "Disaster" (RealAudio excerpt), have been banned from the national radio station for criticizing the government of the country's president, Robert Mugabe.

http://media.addict.com/music/Mapfumo,_Thomas/Disaster.ram

"He's experiencing a huge new relevance because of his willingness to publicly defy Mugabe," journalist and Mapfumo biographer Banning Eyre said. "A lot of his songs through the '90s talked about the problems of AIDS and poverty, and he gradually became more direct in his criticisms of Mugabe. In London, he told newspapers flat out that Mugabe had to go."

Throughout the late '70s, Mapfumo's chimurenga music, with guitar and bass mimicking the rippling of the mbira, was the soundtrack of the native population's fight to end the colonial era in what was then Rhodesia.

"I had always been suspicious about Mugabe's people because of the way they operated during the liberation struggle," Mapfumo said. "So many innocent people lost their lives, and some of them were killed by our own boys from the bush."

Inspiring Insurrection

After many years of playing covers of white rock 'n' roll, Mapfumo joined forces in 1973 with the Hallelujah Chicken Run Band to record in his own language, Shona. This, he felt, was "a way of identifying myself with my own people."

That group fell apart, but it planted the seed for the music he recorded with another band a few years later. It was the songs on the album Hokoyo that led to Mapfumo's imprisonment after the government came to the conclusion that his traditional music was encouraging insurrection.

Mapfumo was arrested in 1979 and spent three months in a prison camp. "Then they decided to let me go, because they found no case with me," he said. "To be released, they made me play for a political rally. But my music remained revolutionary." In fact, at the show he played his most revolutionary material. "I'd been jailed, and had no time to write new songs."

Mapfumo was a hero by the time independence arrived in 1980. He shared a stage in Harare, the country's capital, with reggae legend Bob Marley, a man of similar principles. Marley's music, Mapfumo said, "is like my music. It stands for those who can't speak for themselves." Marley's lingering influence still shows in the reggae-ish kick of "Musanyepere" (RealAudio excerpt).

http://media.addict.com/music/Mapfumo,_Thomas/Musanyepere.ram

Although the rhythms and patterns of the mbira had long been the base for Mapfumo's music, it wasn't until the late '80s that the instrument actually became a part of his Blacks Unlimited band.

"We had to find the right people who could work well with modern instruments," he explained. "We finally found them. The way we mix those things, nobody else could ever do it. They're the heartbeat of the band." That heartbeat is especially strong in songs such as "Chisi" (RealAudio excerpt).

http://media.addict.com/music/Mapfumo,_Thomas/Chisi.ram

Adulation At Home And Abroad

Now an international star, Mapfumo still shines brightest at home. While he's out of the country, "people are missing our music and phoning here, asking when we're going back," he said proudly.

"He's become the top artist in Zimbabwe once again," Eyre said. "At a time when people can barely afford to eat, his shows are sold out."

For now, Mapfumo is looking forward to completing a new album before he returns to Zimbabwe. He recorded recently in Eugene, Ore., with guitarist Henry Kaiser and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, musicians who have lately been playing the '70s electric music of Miles Davis.

With elections looming in the next two years, Mapfumo expects to be a vocal presence in Zimbabwean politics.

"Part of his strength is his willingness to say what's on his mind," Eyre said. "He's a real danger. He's creating the cultural and rhetorical space where people can reject Mugabe."

"I want to live in a democratic country where everyone has a voice," Mapfumo said. "And I want my music to keep being something that brings a change to the people."

SUBSCRIBE to Thomas Mapfumo

-------- chemical bombs

USA Today
08/31/00
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Delaware

Wilmington - A makeshift chemical bomb exploded at a public telephone, splashing the face of an 8-year-old girl with chemicals. Police said the bomb, apparently intended as a prank, was made from a plastic soda bottle filled with liquid chemicals and aluminum foil. The girl was treated Tuesday at a hospital and released.

--------

OneList subscribers:

NucNews - Please circulate -- help educate! - http://prop1.org

1. NucNews 00/08/31 - Daybook; Presidential Candidates; Announcement
From: Ellen Thomas <prop1@prop1.org>

2. August ATRC Update
From: "Frida Berrigan" <BerrigaF@newschool.edu>

3. FW: News Release
From: "Viviane Lerner" <vlerner@interpac.net>

4. A Reactor in Search of a Mission
From: ivan buchbinder <pentaske@memes.com>

5. NMD Media Items
From: FoE Sydney - Nuclear Campaign <nonukes@foesyd.org.au>

6. NYT - Pentagon Likely to Delay New Test for Missile Shield
From: "Viviane Lerner" <vlerner@interpac.net>

7. NucNews 00/09/01 - Daybook
From: Ellen Thomas <prop1@prop1.org>

------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 08:15:15 -0400
From: Ellen Thomas <prop1@prop1.org>

Subject: NucNews 00/08/31 - Daybook; Presidential Candidates; Announcement

1) Washington Daybook - August 30, 2000 - Washington Times, Agence France-Presse http://www.washtimes.com/national/daybook-200083122253.htm

8:30 a.m. - Nuclear Regulatory Commission holds a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards. Location: Conference Room T-2B3, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville. Contact: 301/415-6805.

Naval forces' capability discussion - all day - The National Academy of Sciences hosts a meeting on "Naval Forces' Capability for Theater Missile Defense." Location: Cecil and Ida Green Building, 2001 Wisconsin Ave. NW. Contact: 202/334-3523.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson travels to Vladivostok, Russia to meet with government and naval officials and attend commissioning ceremonies for cooperative work done at Russian Navy sites to enhance protection of nuclear materials - CONTACT: 202-586-5806

2) Presidential Candidates

- Vice President Al Gore - Seattle, WA August 31, 2000 11 a.m. - Promotes a real enforceable Patient's Bill of Rights with vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman, Westlake Park, 4th Avenue and Pine Street, Seattle, WA; CONTACT: 202-456-7035

- G.W BUSH - Toledo, OH and Louisville, KY Toledo, Ohio: 10:00 a.m. - 100th School Visit, Springfield High School, 1470 South McCord Road, Holland, Ohio, (419) 867-5633 Louisville, Kentucky: 1: 45 p.m. - 101st School Visit, Location: Butler Traditional High School, 2222 Crumf Lane, Louisville, Kentucky, (502) 485-8220

3) Announcements

- Colorado Senator Allard and Rep. Udall announced a press conference to be held at 2pm on Thursday, 8/31 at the east side of Rocky Flats, in the buffer zone, to announce the joint legislation for a National Wildlife Refuge at the defunct nuclear weapons facility. This is not a site for a future petting zoo. It needs to be off limits for perpetuity, as the contamination will outlive our civilization. Environmental Information Network suggests that this area be called the Rocky Flats Nuclear Reserve, and to have very restricted access - permanently. This should preclude any further development or road construction immediately adjacent to this facility. As researchers having worked on this issue for over 15 years, EIN is happy to provide information resources for interested parties, and can be contacted at: pelofson1@home.com, or (303) 233-6677.

- New book by Noam Chomsky http://www.southendpress.org/books/rogue.shtml In his newest book, Chomsky holds the world's superpowers to theirown standards of the rule of law-and finds them appallingly lacking. "Chomsky contends that the U.S. (and, sometimes, its allies) has ... behaved as the biggest rogue state, ignoring international laws and norms and acting only in the richest American's interests.... Chomsky's research can bring home disturbing issues that the mainstream media miss.... Chomsky has delivered another impressive argument that the U.S. flouts international law when it finds it convenient to do so."-Publishers Weekly

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Message: 2
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 14:35:25 -0400
From: "Frida Berrigan" <BerrigaF@newschool.edu>

August ATRC Update
August 30, 2000

Dear Friends,

August has almost past and we at the Arms Trade Resource Center are glad to see it go. August has been a whirlwind of activity, from the relocation of our offices to the Republican and Democrat conventions, to new late breaking news on National Missile Defense on an almost daily basis.

We thought August would be our rest month, instead it has turned into our busiest month ever. We have articles on National Missile Defense awaiting publication in the Multinational Monitor, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's Extra, the Progressive (to name a few). In addition, Bill has appeared on countless radio programs, even before he has a desk in his new office, and Frida was interviewed by Brazilian TV. Stealing moments from her exhaustive writing schedule on our NMD articles, Michelle penned a letter to the editor calling attention to the U.S.'s position as the global arms merchant which appeared in the New York Times on Sunday, August 27th.

After Labor Day we will hit the ground running, making room for our new interns, Tyrone Savage, a South African Fulbright scholar who will be splitting his time between the ATRC and the War Resisters League, and Dena Montague, a Masters Degree student here at the New School. We look forward to introducing them to you more completely once they settle in.

IN THIS ISSUE:
I. ATRC MOVE
II. PREZ ELECTION MADNESS
III. ACTIONS
IV. EVENTS

I. ATRC MOVE

The Arms Trade Resource Center, along with it's parent organization World Policy Institute, has moved to new offices within the New School University. Our new contact information follows:

Arms Trade Resource Center World Policy Institute 66 Fifth Avenue, 9th floor New York, NY 10011

212.229.5430 ext. 106 Bill Hartung ext. 107 Michelle Ciarrocca ext. 112 Frida Berrigan

We are pleased with our new space (offices with DOORS instead of cubicles) and once the kinks are all out you are all invited to an office warming party.

II. PREZ ELECTIONS

We meant to do a comprehensive wrap up of the Conventions and the problem of defense money in politics (which gets more "bang" for its buck than larger contributors like oil or insurance) but the conventions happened weeks ago, so we are running a little late. Instead, this section will direct you to a number of great resources to help you make it through the Fall campaign season.

1. VEEP NOMINEES: A CLOSER LOOK Many inches of newsprint and minutes of network television have been devoted to introducing Republican and Democrat Vice Presidential Nominees to the American public. Not enough attention has been paid to their links to defense corporations. The Arms Trade Resource Center released press briefings during each convention on each Veep hopeful that are now available on the web:

Dick Cheney: http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/updates/july31.htm#cheney Joe Lieberman: http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/updates/bluedogs.htm

2. MONEY IN POLITICS: Holly Bailey from Center for Responsive Politics did a great series of reports from the Conventions called BEYOND THE VELVET ROPE, documenting the parties thrown by corporations for members of Congress and Presidential candidates. You can access Bailey's reports at http://www.opensecrets.org/parties/dailies/day1.asp?Cmte=DPC. CRP's Presidential Race site is a worthwhile excursion for anyone interested in influence peddling in this, the most expensive Presidential race in history. http://www.opensecrets.org/2000elect/index/AllCands.htm

3. PEACE VOTER: Peace Action's Peace Voter project has resources comparing Presidential and congressional candidates and their record on issues of interest to progressives. They pledge to "hold both Democrats and Republicans accountable for their votes, and make sure they hear the voice of the people-calling for an end to building nuclear weapons, shifting money to human needs, and making "do no harm" our first principle as global neighbors."

To get involved with Peace Voter, contact Van Gosse, Peace Voter Fund Director at (202) 862-9740 ext. 3002. Check out their Presidential Voting Guide which compares the stances of Gore, Bush and Nader on key issues. These guides are available in English and Spanish at http://www.PEACE-action.org/voter-guides.html

II. ACTIONS:

The ATRC doesn't take a break in August, and neither does the bad news. Here is some of the bad news and what you can do about it: 1. "MINI-NUKE" PROVISION: Sens. Warner (VA) and Allard (CO) introduced a provision in the FY 2001 Department of Defense Authorization Bill (S 2549) which threatens the moratorium on nuclear test explosions. This provision, which passed the Senate on July 13th, would require the Secretaries of Defense and Energy to undertake a study and report on the "defeat of hardened and deeply buried targets," a reference to weapons that are able to burrow deep into the ground to destroy buried targets such as bunkers. These weapons would likely contain low-yield nuclear warheads, or "mini-nukes." Developing this new nuclear weapon will require resumption of U.S. nuclear test explosions. Though this provision simply calls for a study of this new weapon, it is not as benign as that. Sens. Warner and Allard have made clear their intention to pursue nuclear testing of new weapons designs. Since there is no similar provision in the House-passed version of this bill, this issue will be decided in conference committee late this summer.

Write a letter to you senators and representative to save the nuclear test moratorium by opposing the Warner-Allard provision (Section 1018, "Report on the Defeat of Hardened and Deeply Buried Targets") in the FY 2001 Defense Authorization bill. Use FRIENDS COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL LEGISLATION website to make letter-writing easier. Start with the sample letter to members of Congress posted in the Legislative Action Center, personalize the language, then send your message as an email directly from our site or print it out and mail it. For the sample letter go to: <http://congress.nw.dc.us/fconl/elecmail.html>.

Check out FCNL's mini nuke website at <http://www.fcnl.org/issues/arm/minnukeindx.htm>.

An op-ed on mini-nukes by Michelle Ciarrocca and Frida Berrigan will be available on the Global Beat website soon. Check it out at http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate/

2. COLOMBIA AID PACKAGE: As Clinton travels to Colombia today to shore up support for his billion dollar aid package to Colombia, only one out of the seven human rights criteria that accompanied the primarily military aid package have been met. President Clinton chose to waive the criteria because of a "drug emergency." But groups working to ensure that the aid package does not bolster a military already accustom to operating with lethal force and impunity, say this is a step in the wrong direction. "This is the wrong Policy and the wrong time," said Jos� Miguel Vivanco, Executive Director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch. "The message is that the bad apples with the armed forces shouldn't be worried. Ultimately, the waiver defeats the purpose of any Policy meant to improve human rights."

For more information see COLOMBIA CERTIFICATION, published jointly by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Washington Office on Latin America as part of the certification process mandated by U.S. law. Available on the web at http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/colombia/certification.htm

3. Support the GOOD efforts out there like IMPORT RESTRICTIONS ON CONFLICT DIAMONDS: In June we shared with you what we had learned about the role that the diamond trade plays in fueling and exacerbating conflicts. Luckily, members of Congress are paying attention. Representative Tony Hall plans to reintroduce the so-called "Carat Act," when Congress reconvenes after Labor Day, a bill that places import restrictions on diamonds.

Control of Sierra Leone's diamonds by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) turned a band of thugs into a formidable fighting force that virtually destroyed an entire country. Diamonds have similarly enriched UNITA, Angola's rebel group.

Representative Hall's proposed legislation makes a very valuable contribution to the process that has already begun by the diamond industry. It calls for "birth certificates" for finished diamonds entering the U.S. within two years. Maintaining the threat of certificates of origin on finished diamonds, the Hall legislation would keep the pressure on both industry and diamond producing, finishing, exporting, and importing countries to move forward with the Rough Controls process. It also provides a valuable nudge to the industry to more quickly develop means of sourcing cut and finished diamonds-- technology that is currently still in the developmental stages.

If you are concerned about the role of diamonds in fueling cruel conflict in Sierra Leone and Angola to immediately contact your Congress member urging them to act favorably on the revised "Carat Act" if and when it comes before them. For more information, please contact Vicki Lynn Ferguson of the ADVOCACY NETWORK FOR AFRICA at 202-546-7961 or e-mail vlf@africapolicy.org . The Network is on the web at http://www.africapolicy.org/adna

III. EVENTS

As the summer winds down, the event calendar winds up, with almost back to back offerings throughout September and October. We don't have the room to clue you in on everything that's happening and since most of it is in New York it wouldn't be fair to burden the non-New Yorkers wit too much, but here are a few gleanings.

1. GLOBALIZATION AND the ROLE OF THE UN: Can the United Nations Be Salvaged? September 5, 2000 1 p.m. - 11 p.m. The Town Hall, 123 West 43rd Street, New York, NY. The whole schedule of this event can be found at http://www.ifg.org/events.html

2. UN MILLENNIUM SUMMIT: The People's Summit On September 6-8, 2000, the United Nations will host the Millennium Summit, the largest gathering of heads of state in history, to set the agenda for the world for the new millennium. Political and corporate leaders will consider the ratification of over 500 treaties that declare the need for economic, social, political, and cultural human rights for all peoples. However, the hierarchical structure and openness to corporate influence of the UN make it close to impossible for the will of the people to be implemented and renders it a forum for impotent rhetoric. The PEOPLE'S SUMMIT is a coalition of international organization coming together to reclaim the United Nations for all and to advance a people's agenda for the 21st century. For more information visit www.peoplessummit.org.

3. NMD FORUM: September 16, 2000 On Saturday September 16th, the Arms Trade Resource Center will host a forum on National Missile Defense, featuring the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

The event will be held in the Swayduck Auditorium in the New School Graduate Faculty Building at 65 Fifth Avenue (between 13th and 14th), from 11 am to 4 pm. All are welcome to this event.

We have a fantastic line up of speakers, experts in a wide range of fields addressing economic, legal, congressional, media and local organizing aspects of NMD. The speakers will include: Lucy Webster, from Economists Allied for Arms Reduction, John Burroughs from Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, Bill Hartung and Michelle Ciarrocca from the World Policy Institute, Stephen Young from the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers (a DC based group), Karl Grossman, SUNY Professor and Stephanie Fraser from WILPF NY Metro.

We will also have someone from NY Peace Action to talk about the Missile Stop Tour they have organized over this year, with appearances at the RNC and the DNC!

This event will explain the history, the present and the future of the Star Wars plans, including the plans for militarizing outer space (with the U.S. dominating the heavens in the 21st century like the British dominated the seas in the 19th century).

This seminar promises to be informative and exciting. WILPF NY Metro will be making a video documentary from the seminar, which will be given to Congress at the beginning of next year by a delegation of WILPF women and other peace activists. To join in the organizing for the delegation to visit Congress, or for more information about this exciting event, please contact the Metro office by phone 212.533.2125 or email sfraser@igc.org.

Frida Berrigan Research Associate, World Policy Institute 65 Fifth Ave., Suite 413 New York, NY 10003 ph 212.229.5808 x112 fax 212.229.5579

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Message: 3
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 13:21:01 +0100
From: "Viviane Lerner" <vlerner@interpac.net>

News Release
For Immediate Release: Aug. 28, 2000
Contact: Jim Riccio (202) 546-4996

Inspector General Condemns Nuclear Agency Safety Evaluation
NRC Safety Evaluation at Indian Point 2 Flawed

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The inspector general of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has released a report condemning the agency's handling of safety problems at the Indian Point 2 nuclear reactor in Buchanan, N.Y., approximately 25 miles from New York City. The failure of both the NRC and the plant's owner, Consolidated Edison, to adequately review information in their possession resulted in the February steam generator tube rupture that released radiation into the environment.

According to the report released today:

� The flaw in the steam generator tube that caused the February 2000 accident at Indian Point 2 was nearly 100 percent through the tube wall in 1997.

� NRC senior engineers failed to review the documents submitted by Consolidated Edison, including the 1997 steam generator tube inspection report.

� The NRC and Consolidated Edison could have identified the flaw and thus avoided the accident if someone with technical expertise had evaluated the 1997 inspection findings.

� Despite the fact that the NRC's junior engineer had concerns regarding the steam generator tubes that were not addressed by Consolidated Edison's license amendment request, the NRC failed to ask follow-up questions because a second round of questioning was "frowned upon" by NRC senior management.

"The NRC is in regulatory retreat and has shirked its responsibility to protect the health and safety of the people of New York," said James Riccio, senior policy analyst with Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy & Environment Program. "The NRC's senior management needs to be held accountable. They are too concerned with allowing nuclear reactors to run, and as a result, safety has been sacrificed."

The entire report is available on Public Citizen's web site: http://www.citizen.org/cmep/nuclearsafety/nrcreport.PDF

Jeffrey Vinson Editor Public Citizen News 202-588-7741 (phone) 202-588-7799 (fax) jvinson@citizen.org (work e-mail) jandc@peoplepc.com (home e-mail) www.citizen.org (Public Citizen Web site)

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Message: 4
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 18:28:26 -0700
From: ivan buchbinder <pentaske@memes.com>

A Reactor in Search of a Mission

http://www.citizen.org/press/pr-cmep73.htm

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Message: 5
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 19:39:04 +1000
From: FoE Sydney - Nuclear Campaign <nonukes@foesyd.org.au>

NMD Media Items

Dear All,

Its quite likely you will have seen at least the first two of these items as they have already been posted by others.

The Aug 31 items may however be new to you.

The uncertainty over the timing of an announcement of an NMD decision by the administration would appear to reflect uncertainty within the administration over the advisability of proceeding.

Given the uncertainty within the administration, and the closeness of the timeframe, it would appear that now is the best time to send messages opposing NMD to Clinton, Cohen, and presumably, Albright.

Clintons fax number os 1-202-456-2461. Albrights is 1-202-647-6047 Cohens is 1-703-695-1149

John Hallam

Contains: 1) NYT August 30, 2000 Washington Split Deepens in Debate Over Missile Plan 2) Wednesday August 30 Missile Defense Splits Administration (Reuters) 3) Thursday August 31 China to Use U.N. Forum to Oppose Missile Shield (Reuters) 4) Thursday August 31 U.S. Envoy Defends Proposed Space Defense System (Reuters)

1) Washington Split Deepens in Debate Over Missile Plan
NYT August 30, 2000
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

[W] ASHINGTON, Aug. 28 -- The Pentagon and the State Department are sharply divided over how far work on a limited national missile defense system could proceed before the United States would be required to give formal notice that it was violating a crucial arms control treaty with Russia.

Officials in the Pentagon and State Department said that disagreement within the administration was a primary reason for Defense Secretary William S. Cohen's delay in making a recommendation to President Clinton this month on the project.

The debate has focused on the point at which construction of the missile system, which involves elaborate radar installations, would violate the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, which lies at the heart of the arms controls built up over the cold war.

The Russians have steadfastly refused any changes in the pact to permit elaborate new radar installations, fearing that they would lead to a larger system that would undermine Russia's strategic nuclear force.

Officials from both agencies said Mr. Cohen was wrong when he told the Senate Armed

Services Committee last month that administration lawyers had reached a consensus. Mr. Cohen said then that there was agreement that building a crucial radar station in Alaska could continue until 2002 before the United States would violate the treaty.

That represents just one of three interpretations drafted by administration lawyers, the officials said. But senior policy makers at the State Department and the National Security Council are strongly opposed, the officials added. The opponents contend that this interpretation would be overly aggressive and unilateral, and would surely anger the Russians and European allies.

A Pentagon spokesman, Rear Adm. Craig R. Quigley, said Mr. Cohen and his aides declined to discuss his Senate testimony. Mr. Cohen is the administration's leading advocate of building missile defenses.

Aides to President Clinton declined to discuss the internal debate but confirmed that officials were considering several options and that Mr. Cohen's statement last month did not reflect a consensus view. "It is true that there are a number of options available to the president," said P. J. Crowley, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

The question of when the United States would violate the treaty is a pivotal one that Mr. Clinton has to answer before approving even limited steps to begin building a radar station on Shemya Island at the western edge of the Aleutians. The Russians would surely object to the United States and its allies.

Mr. Cohen is now widely expected to make a recommendation to Mr. Clinton in a few weeks on how to proceed. But the officials said the legal questions could delay a decision to move ahead further.

The division is so sharp that Mr. Clinton may be forced to choose among conflicting advice, if he decides to move ahead at all.

"This is really squishy business," a senior military officer said. "Smart lawyers can disagree."

Under the Pentagon timetable, the first contracts for the Alaska radar work, as well as a site for the missile interceptors, would have to be awarded this year so that work can begin next spring and a working system can be in place within the administration's goal of 2005.

Intelligence officials have warned that the United States could face a threat from some countries, including North Korea, by then. There is universal agreement that building the radar site would amount to a treaty violation. The administration had hoped to negotiate amendments with the Russians that would permit the limited system now being developed, but Moscow has refused.

Officials had previously said Mr. Clinton would decide this summer on deploying a system. But with the Russians objecting and even the allies expressing concern, the officials have signaled that Mr. Clinton simply planned to decide whether to move ahead with an initial development. He would leave a final decision to deploy -- and break the treaty -- to the next administration, whether that of the Democratic nominee, Al Gore, or the Republican, George W. Bush, who has advocated a much more encompassing system.

That is why the legal interpretations have become so important, because each interpretation sets a different moment when Mr. Clinton must, as the treaty requires, give the Russians six months' notice of American intent to withdraw from the antimissile restrictions.

At the White House request, State Department and Pentagon lawyers have drafted the three interpretations of the treaty that, in their view, would let some work begin without breaking the treaty.

In his appearance before the Armed Services Committee on July 25 and at a news conference the next day, Mr. Cohen said that the administration's lawyers had reached a consensus that the United States would not violate the treaty until workers had laid rails to support the Shemya radar, a move scheduled for 2002.

Mr. Cohen emphasized that Mr. Clinton had not yet made a decision. But at the news conference he added, "There is a consensus that until such time as the construction is under way that would lay the rail, so to speak, for the actual radar being deployed there, that would not constitute a breach."

Defense and administration officials said Mr. Cohen, the lone Republican in the cabinet was expressing his support for the most liberal interpretation of the treaty. That view, the officials said, is being challenged by senior aides to Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, including the under secretary of state for arms control, John D. Holum, who is the chief arms control negotiator.

"You have to have an aggressive interpretation of the treaty to argue that the rails are the point at which you would be in violation," a senior administration official said.

All the lawyers' interpretations would overturn a legal understanding dating from the Reagan administration that even the most minimal steps to build parts of a missile defense, including pouring concrete, would breach the treaty. For years in the 80's, Reagan aides insisted that a half-built radar station near Krasnoyarsk in Siberia violated the treaty and eventually forced the Russians to halt work there.

The second interpretation holds that the United States would be in violation at the point workers begin pouring concrete, which is scheduled to begin in May. Given the fact that the treaty requires either the United States or the Russians to give six months' notice of an intent to build, Mr. Clinton would have to then notify the Russians by December, just as his second term ends.

Officials have said Mr. Clinton is loath to be the president who brings an end to the ABM Treaty, which has been strongly supported by arms control advocates since it was negotiated in the Nixon administration.

The third interpretation argues that a violation would not occur until the concrete foundation for the radar site is complete. That is expected later next year or even in 2002, depending on weather and other potential delays. That would leave the decision on breaking the treaty to the next president.

The senior administration official said the question was proving especially difficult, because the treaty does not specify what exactly would amount to a violation. "There is some room for legal interpretation," the official said. "But I think it's fair to say that not all of the options are equally defensible."

Opponents of the proposal said moving ahead -- while arguing that the first steps toward a missile defense would not be a violation -- would amount to a diplomatic disaster.

The Pentagon schedule has increasingly been called into question because of test failures and delays in building a booster rocket for the missile interceptors. "If the technology isn't there, you don't have much of a choice," one official said. "If you can foresee that the system won't be ready until 2006 or 2007, why would you push it now?"

2) Missile Defense Splits Administration
Reuters
Wednesday August 30
By Charles Aldinger

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sharp differences have emerged within the Clinton administration over how far initial work could go on a U.S. National Missile Defense before violating a 1972 arms treaty with Russia, administration officials said on Wednesday.

``There is no consensus. You can't put three lawyers in a room and get them to agree on anything,'' said one of the officials as Defense Secretary William Cohen prepared to soon recommend to President Clinton whether or not to take steps to begin building an anti-missile radar in Alaska.

The officials, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty between Washington and Moscow -- which forbids either country to have a national missile defense -- is open to broad interpretation.

And that is dividing a cautious State Department and the Pentagon, where many defense officials want Clinton to approve letting contracts later this year in order to begin building the new X-band radar on Alaska's Shemya Island next spring.

``The question here is when would we be in violation of the treaty?'' one official told Reuters. ``Some think we already are by just saying we intend to develop a missile defense. Others say the whole system would have to be ready five years from now before the break comes.''

The United States wants to have a missile defense system in place by 2005 to shoot down a limited number of missiles from hostile states such as North Korea and Iran.

But Russia and China bitterly oppose such a defense. Moscow has refused to agree to amend the 1972 treaty and has said it would stop proceeding with nuclear arms cuts under other treaties if Washington broke the ABM accord.

Cohen Mistaken On Lawyer Unity

Two officials said on Wednesday Cohen was mistaken when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee at a July 25 hearing that administration lawyers agreed Washington would not be in violation of the ABM treaty until at least 2002, when rails would be laid for the radar on Shemya.

``There is a consensus that there would be no violation of the ABM treaty until such time as the actual rails are laid down for the radar system itself,'' Cohen said then.

``In other words, you could actually start site preparation, you could start clearing some of the land, you could do all of that without violating the ABM,'' he told senators.

But one administration official said, ``I think he might have gotten a little ahead of the curve. As we move closer to Secretary Cohen's recommendation and a decision by the president, dissenting opinions are emerging.''

The Pentagon and State Department were sharply divided on how far the radar work could go before breaking the ABM treaty, the New York Times said on Wednesday.

``You have to have an aggressive interpretation of the treaty to argue that the rails are the point at which you would be in violation,'' the newspaper quoted one senior administration official as saying.

A senior State Department official, who asked not to be identified, said it was natural for U.S. leaders to hear many different views before making a decision.

Russia and China fear that a U.S. missile defense system could rapidly evolve to threaten their nuclear missile arsenals, and Washington's European allies worry about the nuclear arms control fallout from any U.S. break with ABM.

Clinton Could Pass On Decision

Any decision by Clinton to start bids on contracts for the radar work would leave open to his successor, who will be elected in November and take office next January, a decision on whether to proceed with the missile defense work.

Pentagon officials have said that unless work begins next spring on the radar, it would not be ready in 2005 when initial deployment of the system has been tentatively set.

The ABM treaty is ambiguous on exactly when work on a missile defense system would violate the treaty, but it makes clear that construction of a base would do so.

``Each Party undertakes not to deploy ABM systems for a defense of the territory of its country and not to provide a base for such a defense...'' the treaty says.

Cohen has been on vacation over the past two weeks and has been awaiting a key technical analysis from Pentagon officials before deciding whether to urge Clinton to proceed with initial steps that would keep open the option for the next president to deploy the system by 2005.

But major criticism has come from leading scientific groups, which said U.S. technology has not matured enough to guarantee the United States could shoot down even a limited number of missiles in flight.

Noting that two of three U.S. attempts to shoot down a missile with a missile over the Pacific Ocean have failed since October 1999, opponents say technology is deeply flawed and that missile-defense system deployment would shatter the structure of international arms control.

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3) China to Use U.N. Forum to Oppose Missile Shield
Reuters
Thursday August 31

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese President Jiang Zemin will use a speech at the United Nations next week to stress Beijing's opposition to a U.S missile shield plan, a senior Chinese diplomat said Thursday.

``There are still certain countries which seek so-called absolute security for themselves and are speeding up the development and deployment of advanced anti-missile systems,'' the official said of Jiang's September 7 U.N. speech.

He was referring to U.S. proposals to build a theater missile defense (TMD) system in Asia and national missile defense (NMD) system to protect the United States from ballistic missiles from hostile states.

Jiang would probably repeat at the U.N. Millennium Summit in New York China's frequent charge that the United States was driven by ``Cold War thinking'' in its proposal to build missile umbrellas, the official said.

The proposed systems would ``seriously undermine the positive trend in international disarmament efforts,'' the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

Jiang would probably also drive home Beijing strident opposition to the U.S. plans in his bilateral meetings with he leaders of Japan, Russian and South Korea on the summit sidelines, the official said.

Chinese parliamentary chief Li Peng slammed the U.S. proposals in talks Tuesday with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, the official China Daily reported Thursday.

The United States wants to have a missile defense system in place by 2005 to shoot down a limited number of missiles from hostile states such as North Korea and Iran.

But Russia and China bitterly oppose the plan, yet to be given the go-ahead, fearing that a U.S. missile defense system could rapidly evolve to threaten their nuclear missile arsenals.

Beijing fears the TMD system proposed by Washington for its troops and allies in Asia would be used to shelter Taiwan from mainland missiles, removing the threat of attack that is China's main means of deterring the island from declaring independence.

European allies of the United States worry about the nuclear arms control fallout from any U.S. break with the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty between Washington and Moscow.

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4) U.S. Envoy Defends Proposed Space Defense System
Reuters
Thursday August 31
By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United States on Thursday defended the national missile defense (NMD) system being considered by President Clinton, saying it would be a ``far cry from the 'weaponization' of outer space.''

U.S. disarmament ambassador Robert Gray told the U.N. Conference on Disarmament in a speech that the proposed anti-missile shield was not directed at Russia or China, but rather intended to protect the United States from a limited ballistic attack by certain hostile states.

Defense Secretary William Cohen is to make his recommendation shortly to President Clinton on whether to proceed with building an anti-missile radar in Alaska.

Both China and Russia bitterly oppose the $60 billion system, which they say would shatter the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. They fear that the shield, to be deployed by 2005, could also rapidly evolve to threaten their nuclear arsenals.

But Gray told the 66-state body in Geneva: ``A system capable of defending against a large-scale attack with sophisticated weapons would be both qualitatively and quantitatively different from that which the U.S. is considering.''

North Korea And Iran

U.S. officials say the system would be geared to shoot down missiles from ``rogue'' states such as North Korea and Iran.

The U.S. envoy said the weapons, interceptors, launchers and radar being considered for the shield were terrestrial, not space-based. Satellites would be used only to provide early warning and data on missile threats. ''This is a far cry from the 'weaponization' of outer space,'' Gray declared. ``There is no arms race in outer space -- rather, there is unprecedented cooperation.''

He added: ``Satellites belonging to a number of countries here, including those strongly supporting outer space negotiations, already orbit the earth by the dozens, providing various types of data for military purposes to ships, aircraft and ground forces worldwide. Should we prohibit these, too?''

The United States and Russia have been discussing how to ''preserve and strengthen'' the ABM, according to Grey. The 1972 pact bans either country from having a national missile defense.

``During these discussions, the United States has proposed modifications to the treaty that would permit the deployment of the initial NMD systems. The United States remains firmly committed to these bilateral discussions,'' the U.S. envoy said.

Arms Control Talks

The latest round of confidential talks between senior U.S. and Russian arms control negotiations on a START-3 treaty and related ABM issues took place in Geneva two weeks ago.

``The U.S. remains committed to the arms control and disarmament process and sees no contradiction between that process and pursuit of a limited NMD system,'' Gray said.

``The ABM treaty is an integral part of our mutual efforts with the Russian Federation to reduce offensive nuclear arms.''

Diplomats say that the United States is the lone member of the world's only multilateral arms control negotiating body to oppose formal negotiations on preventing an arms race in space.

Gray reiterated that the U.S. delegation could agree to their establishment of a committee to ``discuss'' outer space issues.

But he accused other states of using a lack of consensus on outer space as a pretext to stall negotiations to halt production of nuclear bomb-making fissile material -- plutonium and highly-enriched uranium -- widely seen as the next step in global nuclear disarmament. U.S. officials in Geneva named the states as Russia, China and Pakistan.

-----------

Message: 6
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 23:57:46 +0100
From: "Viviane Lerner" <vlerner@interpac.net>

Pentagon Likely to Delay New Test for Missile Shield
NYT
September 1, 2000
By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, Aug. 31 -- The Pentagon will probably postpone the next test of a national missile defense system until January, administration officials said today. Any decision to deploy the antimissile shield now seems certain to pass out of President Clinton's hands to his successor's. Administration officials had previously said Mr. Clinton would decide this summer on deploying a $60 billion antimissile system that would be ready by 2005. To meet that schedule, the Pentagon has been under heavy pressure for two years to conduct enough flights to show Mr. Clinton and his advisers whether the system was technologically feasible.

But now officials are signaling that Mr. Clinton merely plans to decide whether to go ahead with the program's initial development. The change follows events that include test failures, opposition from Russia as well as European allies and a legal dispute over how far the system could proceed before violating an important arms control treaty.

Read on http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/global/090100missile-defense.html

---------

Message: 7
Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2000 08:23:49 -0400
From: Ellen Thomas <prop1@prop1.org>

NucNews 00/09/01 - Daybook

1) Washington Daybook - August 30, 2000 - Washington Times, Agence France-Presse http://www.washtimes.com/national/daybook-20009122041.htm

8:30 a.m. - Nuclear Regulatory Commission holds a meeting of the advisory committee on reactor safeguards. Location: Conference Room T-2B3, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville. Contact: 301/415-6805.

Vigil - 7:30 p.m. - The Free Burma Coalition begins an around-the-clock vigil and fast in front of the Burmese ambassador's residence to protest the current situation in Burma. Zaw Zaw, former Burmese political prisoner, participates. Location: 2223 R St. NW. Contact: 202/387-8030 or on-site cell phone, 703/731-1167.

Vigil -- 5:00-8:00 pm -- in front of White House, daily until President Clinton meets with Vieques Leaders. Contact Andres Thomas, viequesfast@mail.com, 202-232-1999

2) Presidential Candidates

G.W. Bush - LAFAYETTE, LOUISIANA, AND TEXARKANA, ARKANSAS 9:00 a.m. - Lafayette Regional Airport, The Main Terminal Gate 1A, 200 Terminal Drive Lafayette, Louisiana 12:15 p.m. - College Hill Elementary School, 200 Artesian Street, Texarkana, Arkansas (870) 774-9111


----------------------------------------------------------------

DOEWatch List ----A Magnum-Opus Project
Subscribe online: http://www.onelist.com
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1. $8.4 million to aid people laid off finds them no jobs
From: magnu96196@aol.com

2. Platts Thursday, August 31, 2000
From: "Paul Maser" <pmaser@govmail.state.nv.us>

3. Other's Views An editorial from The Cincinnati Enquirer
From: magnu96196@aol.com

4. DOE seeks metal-companies responses by Sept. 8
From: magnu96196@aol.com

5. Officials wage three-front effort to get DOE funds
From: magnu96196@aol.com

6. Clock ticking on Y-12 contract
From: magnu96196@aol.com

7. Screening plan announced for beryllium dust exposure
From: magnu96196@aol.com

8. Rocky Flats water discussed
From: magnu96196@aol.com

9. Pushing Limits at Lab? Weapons test plan sparks BNL debate
From: magnu96196@aol.com

10. Energy Secretary Visits Russia
From: magnu96196@aol.com

11. POLLUTION DAMAGES INTELLIGENCE
From: df7332@aol.com

12. Inspector General Condemns Nuclear Agency Safety Evaluation
From: "Paul M. Blanch" <pmblanch@home.com>

13. Free radicals in chronic fatigue syndrome: cause or effect?
From: magnu96196@aol.com

14. Standing in PuNo3 in north Rocky Flats drainage basin
From: "Paula Elofson-Gardine, Exec. Dir." <pelofson1@home.com>

15. Fluorine lasers - New Scientist -------> star wars
From: magnu96196@aol.com

16. U.S. and Russia Open a Nuclear Swords-to-Plowshares Project
From: magnu96196@aol.com

17. Greens pledge to stop nuclear sale to Russia
From: magnu96196@aol.com

------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 09:11:41 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

$8.4 million to aid people laid off finds them no jobs

August 31, 2000
The Courier-Journal
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2000/0008/31/000831pac.html

$8.4 million to aid people laid off finds them no jobs Agency was created to ease loss of work at uranium plant By JAMES MALONE, The Courier-Journal

PADUCAH, Ky. -- An organization that received $8.4 million from the federal government to offset job losses at the Paducah uranium plant has not found work for any of the laid-off employees.

In its first year, the Paducah Area Community Reuse Organization has made three small-business loans, and it says it has helped to create or retain 22 jobs -- but none went to the more than 400 victims of downsizing at the plant during the past year.

The group also is causing controversy by claiming the potential proceeds from selling radioactive scrap nickel stored at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant -- money originally set aside for cleaning up the site.

The executive director of PACRO, John Anderson, said it has tried to strike a balance between two competing interests: finding new jobs for laid-off workers in the short term, and developing the area's industrial base for the long term.

The organization has pledged about $5 million to help economic-development agencies and industrial parks erect buildings and make road and other improvements to attract tenants. It also is paying for a marketing effort to rehabilitate Paducah's image, which has been tarnished by negative publicity about radioactive and chemical contamination at the plant.

"Our mission was to prepare the community for the demise of the plant," Anderson said.

He said PACRO still expected to meet its three-year goal of creating or retaining 242 jobs, and he added that PACRO has not made more loans because it didn't receive its money until April. He said two other loans are pending.

PACRO's mission is to soften the impact of layoffs at the aging uranium-enrichment plant, which now employs fewer than 1,600 people, and of its eventual closure as more efficient technology is developed. A sister plant in Piketon, Ohio, is to close next year.

Community Reuse is a national Energy Department initiative modeled after a Defense Department program to develop job opportunities in communities hit hard by the closure of military bases. Energy Department spending for the 12 active reuse groups has fallen from $28.3 million in 1998 to $9.7 million in this fiscal year.

Jim Martin, who coordinates economic-development efforts in Graves County, which is just south of McCracken County, is among those who supports PACRO. It has given his organization $750,000 to erect a building in Mayfield. He said the region desperately needs buildings to show to prospective employers.

"If you don't have a building to show, an industry is not going to bother to stop and look," Martin said. "Having a building available doesn't guarantee you'll get industry, but it gets you in the game."

But the local chapter of the energy workers union thinks PACRO ought to be doing more to help keep the plant open and to find jobs for laid-off workers.

"We need to put all of our efforts toward keeping the facility open," Tim Cooper, who has represented the Paper, Allied Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers Union at PACRO board meetings, said last Thursday after attending a meeting where efforts to market the radioactive nickel ingots were discussed. "We need to secure jobs for workers on the plant site as opposed to building industrial parks."

Union officials have seats on the PACRO board, as do Energy Department officials, business people and representatives of economic-development agencies in the region.

In the past year, PACRO received 54 inquiries and three applications for its loan program for business ventures involving former or current plant employees or their families, according to records obtained by The Courier-Journal. All three loans were approved, including one for $56,000 to Bovine Butlers Inc., a company owned by Carol Rodgers, a lieutenant in the plant's security department. Other loans went to an ice cream shop and a home advertising business.

The loan

Rodgers, of nearby Metropolis, Ill., said the low-interest loan was part of a financing package her company used to buy a carryout steak restaurant in Paducah. Without it, she said, "it would have been tough."

The Steak Out restaurant employs 19 full- and part-time workers but has not hired laid-off plant workers because they haven't applied, Rodgers said. Typical wages are $6 to $7 an hour, with managers making more. That compares with about $25 an hour paid by the plant.

The below-market-rate loans from PACRO -- intended for entrepreneurs who have trouble obtaining capital -- do not require the borrowers to hire laid-off workers, said Norma Drouin, who administers the loan program from the Purchase Area Development District in Mayfield.

"Maybe we can consider a requirement that they hire some (plant) people," she said. "The important thing is that we keep people laid off from the plant in the area, and we can do that by offering opportunities."

The nickel

PACRO's scrap-nickel initiative has made some people wary. At a PACRO board meeting in late 1999, an official of a state-funded planning agency that provides staff for the reuse group said it had received a "political commitment" from the Energy Department to use the potential proceeds from selling millions of pounds of radioactive scrap.

"We really think (nickel) is the only asset out there," the official, Henry Hodges, executive director of the Purchase Area Development District, said in a recent interview.

Selling the nickel "is a plan that has support in the business community," said Elaine Spalding, president of the Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce."

But the idea of using the money for anything other than cleaning up the plant has struck a nerve with members of a community advisory board overseeing the cleanup. Last fall, the Energy Department's cleanup plan for Paducah allocated any proceeds from the sale of scrap metal to the cleanup. And the department told the advisory board in writing that the money would be used to speed up the $2 billion cleanup in an effort to meet a deadline of 2010.

"I have a sense of betrayal and of being misled," said Craig Rhodes, the advisory board's chairman and a middle school science teacher in nearby Brookport, Ill.

Rob Daniel, director of the Kentucky Division of Waste Management, said no federal officials had told the state the scrap-metal proceeds would be used for anything other than the cleanup. Kentucky regulators have been critical of the cleanup's slow pace and lack of funding.

Last month Energy Secretary Bill Richardson declared a temporary moratorium on the sale of potentially contaminated scrap from DOE facilities. And Energy Department spokesman Walter Perry now stops short of repeating the agency's earlier pledge to plow the proceeds back into the cleanup. "If there is any value from the nickel, the benefit will be realized in the Paducah area," Perry said.

On Tuesday, the Energy Department announced that it was studying whether to use scrap metal from its nuclear facilities, including the Paducah plant, for waste containers or other items the department needs. Depending on the study's outcome, Richardson "could direct the department to internally recycle metals rather than sell them as scrap or dispose of them as waste," the agency said in a news release.

Estimates have put the value of the 9,700 tons of radioactive nickel at Paducah at $40 million to $80 million. The higher number is roughly what the federal government is spending this year on cleaning up contamination from years of dumping, leaks and discharges at the plant.

Energy and PACRO officials in Paducah said recently that they expect Richardson's moratorium to be lifted by December or January.

An internal PACRO document released to The Courier-Journal under the state Open Records Act predicts "fierce political competition" for the nickel and its proceeds.

PACRO has hired consultants, and it sent board members to meet with members of Congress in June.

PACRO records show they pitched their plan for using the scrap metal in visits with Sens. Jim Bunning and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky; Rep. Ed Whitfield of the 1st District, which includes Paducah; and another congressman. Federal law prohibits PACRO from using tax money to lobby Congress, but PACRO officials say they are not barred from providing information to members of Congress who requested it.

Still, such contacts "are getting into a very gray area, extremely gray," said Reuben Guttman, a lawyer with Provost Umphrey, a Washington law firm. The firm represents the energy workers union, which has hundreds of members at the Paducah plant.

PACRO also has awarded a $200,000 contract to ELR Consultants of Oak Ridge, Tenn., to study ways to use the radioactive nickel.

Records show ELR has recommended that PACRO join with a small Canadian company, Chemical Vapor Deposition, to build a plant at the Paducah site to decontaminate the nickel. Talks are still in the early stage and no agreements have been signed. But Hodges, of the Purchase Area Development District, is optimistic about the future.

"It looks as if (the nickel) can be cleaned cleaner than natural," Hodges said.

-----------

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 08:45:56 -0700
From: "Paul Maser" <pmaser@govmail.state.nv.us>

Platts
Thursday, August 31, 2000

Commentary & Analysis from Platts Spot U3O8 price holds steady in U.S this week Washington (NuclearFuel) Aug. 30 Although the spot U3O8 price in the U.S. appeared to remain steady last week, analysts are suggesting that the spot price will continue to drop in the near future. Both TradeTech and the Uranium Exchange Co. reported that the spot U3O8 price as of Aug. 25 was $7.80 a pound U3O8, the same price the companies reported a week earlier. The NuclearFuel forward two-week range (published Aug. 21) was $7.50-$7.90/lb U3O8. Although a number of analysts see a bottoming of the spot price around $7.50/lb U3O8, any rebound is likely to be gradual and small, with many analysts predicting a spot price only in the $8.50-$9.00/lb range this time next year. In the longer term, most market participants do not see a dramatic rise in prices. A recent survey by the Uranium Exchange Co. indicated that the majority of both suppliers and utilities expect the U3O8 price to rise only to somewhere in the range of $10 to $13/lb in 2005. (The last time the spot U3O8 price in the U.S. was $10/lb was in August 1999; the last time it was $13/lb was in March 1997.)

London (Platts)--31Aug2000 German ministry orders safety upgrade at Biblis A nuke Germany's environment ministry has ordered RWE's nuclear power plant Biblis A to be upgraded for safe electricity production until its next maintenance in 2001, the ministry said Thursday. The ministry also asked the local environment ministry in the state of Hessen, where the plant is based, to speed up the process after checks to the nuclear plant. 20 faults have to be put right by the time the plant rest arts in 2001 to guarantee its safe running. Regular talks between the nuclear watchdog of Hessen, the national nuclear watchdog and plant operator RWE will speed up Biblis A's upgrading. Biblis A must only generate 62TWh of power from Jan 1, 2000 until it is phased out.

Washington (Nuclear News Flashes)--August 30, 2000 German chancellor supports MOX plant export Germany Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said Siemens should be able to export the Hanau mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel fabrication plant to Russia. Speaking on Germany's ARD television today, Schroeder said the G-8 had agreed to hel p Russia manage its weapons plutonium and waste, and burning Pu as MOX is one management method. He said Siemens, which filed for the export license last week, is legally entitled to it unless Foreign Minister Joschka Fis cher can find the license would negatively affect German national interests, and this isn't the case. He urged Fischer's fellow Greens to understand that Fischer would have little choice in signing the license. Fischer is one of two Greens in the cabinet of Schroeder's Socialist-Green coalition government. U.S. officials say export of the completed plant, which never operated because of opposition led by Fischer when he was Hesse environm ental minister, is key to a U.S.-Russian plan to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons Pu. The German government acceded to that plan at the recent Okinawa G-8 summit. Siemens expects to be paid DM 100-million (about U.S.$ 50-million) for the plant; it has cost DM 1-billion. Greens and environmental groups immediately denounced the decision, saying it carries "incalculable ecological" risks.

Washington (Nuclear News Flashes)--August 30, 2000 NRC issues draft report on plant aging issues The NRC has released its draft report on generic aging issues learned (GALL), which generically evaluates companies' programs to manage aging effects on plant systems, structures and components. The programs found to effectively manage aging will be credited for license renewal applicants, while those programs not deemed adequate will be subject to NRC review. The report, which is more than 1,000 pages, will be posted on NRC's web site (http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/REACTOR/LR/index.html). Also being released are a draft Standard Review Plan for License Renewal, which provides guidance to NRC staff reviewers on renewal applications, and a draft regulatory guide (DG-1104), which endorses an industry guidance document on structuring format and content of renewal applications. NRC will accept comments through Oct. 16.

-------------

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 13:45:03 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Other's Views An editorial from The Cincinnati Enquirer

August 31, 2000
http://www.oakridger.com/

A jurisdictional dispute in Congress threatens workers sickened at nuclear weapons plants in Ohio and elsewhere with an unconscionable delay in money and health benefits.

A defense spending bill being considered in a House-Senate conference committee would give up to $200,000, plus benefits, to workers sickened by toxic exposures at the federally owned gaseous diffusion plants near Piketon, Ohio, and Paducah, Ky., and a closed plant in Tennessee.

A DOE investigation found that thousands of workers in these plants were exposed to such things as uranium, fluorine, asbestos and PCBs, often without their knowledge. The plants were involved in nuclear weapons production during the Cold War.

Many workers now suffer from leukemia and other cancers. Many more face haunted futures waiting for such diseases to surface. There are lawsuits pending.

The government, slow to acknowledge the problems, at least seemed willing to act once the truth came to light in investigations by The Washington Post, The Louisville Courier Journal and others. A letter urging the conference committee to approve compensation was signed by a bipartisan group of 26 senators and 104 representatives, including Ohio Sens. Mike Dewine and George Voinovich. The defense bill is expected to be voted on Sept. 12th, in time for the Oct. 6th adjournment of Congress.

The amendment had hearings in the Senate. Congress estimates it would benefit more than 10,000 workers at a cost of $2.3 billion over five years. But Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, could kill the amendment. The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on immigration and claims insists his committee didn't get to review the proposal. Mr. Smith wants hearings -- after the conference committee is scheduled to vote on the overall spending bill. The delay would halt benefits for the injured workers for at least a year.

Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, whose district includes the Piketon plant, said some critics in Congress complain of the amendment's cost; "they ask, where do we draw the line?"

Mr. Strickland's answer is that the line against such spending should not be drawn as long as the claims are legitimate. Those workers were loyal employees, laboring in what they thought was a patriotic endeavor. If that work damaged their health, then the government owes them.

Mr. Smith calls it "irresponsible" to pass such benefits until his subcommittee gets to weigh in. On the contrary, delaying help for injured workers would be irresponsible.

--------------

Message: 4
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 13:47:30 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

DOE seeks metal-companies responses by Sept. 8

August 31, 2000
by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff
http://www.oakridger.com/

Those companies within the metals industry wishing to participate in the Department of Energy's proposed metals recycling project have until Sept. 8 to express their desire to do so.

The proposed project could see 60,000 tons of steel recycled annually at a private-sector-owned steel mill for internal use by the federal agency instead of being sold as scrap metal or disposed of as waste.

The metals would come from closed DOE facilities and other environmental management activities belonging to the federal agency and could be recycled into waste containers or other items with restricted uses by the department.

By Sept. 8, those companies wishing to participate in the study should contact Simon Friedrich, EE-20, U.S. Department of Energy, 1000 Independence Ave. SW, Washington, DC 20585-0121.

A DOE headquarters official said interest has already been expressed in the project and that some of the companies are from Oak Ridge.

Then, by Sept. 25, those companies should have provided to the same address their expression of interest in a melting and casting contract along with relevant comments.

Among the information desired by DOE in the expression of interest are capacity, restrictions on feed and output, environmental controls, waste management capacity, operational considerations, and cost estimates.

DOE anticipates providing additional details at a meeting in September for interested owners, corporate officers and other accredited representatives of electric-powered metal melt production furnaces. People can attend the meeting either in person or by conference call.

-------------

Message: 5
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 13:49:29 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Officials wage three-front effort to get DOE funds

August 31, 2000
by Amy L. Lee Oak Ridger staff
http://www.oakridger.com/

A three-front initiative to seek funds from the Department of Energy for alleged damages to the city's marketability and economic development has developed in Oak Ridge.

The Local Government Federal Assistance Task Force at its meeting Monday in the Municipal Building agreed to act as an advisory panel to the Committee for Enhancement of DOE-Related Remuneration, an ad hoc committee recently formed by Oak Ridge City Council.

"We at the three directly affected local governments are impacted by having economic difficulties as a result of (the) DOE (presence), and we each have taken individual opportunities to seek assistance -- and we now have three different initiatives," Oak Ridge Mayor Jerry Kuhaida said.

Kuhaida said there have been major efforts among the three local governments of Anderson and Roane counties and the city of Oak Ridge about every 10 years since 1946.

"That's really the driver behind all this," Kuhaida said. "The efforts have been made and they haven't been successful."

The first move to seek financial assistance is the payment in lieu of taxes, or PILT initiative, which is being led by Roane County Executive Ken Yager, Anderson County Executive Rex Lynch and Kuhaida along with advisory assistance from the congressional staff of U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-3rd District.

>From 1986 to 1996, the local governments were receiving annual federal assistance payments in lieu of taxes that amounted to about $2.3 million per year. The issue or decision to pay a lump sum of a 10-year equivalent during that time was an effort to eliminate local dependency on the federal government. Currently, about $20 million remains in the city's Fund Balance, of which about $1 million is used annually to balance the budget.

According to Kuhaida, the resumption of the payment-in-lieu-of-taxes initiative occurred in 1996, at which time local government entities received payments from DOE based on the land use at the time of the federal takeover in 1942. At that time, the land was being used primarily as farmland. The cost of the land at that time, $4,610 per acre, was the basis for the payments in lieu of taxes.

However, "What we have seen in the counties is a 15-percent increase in property assessments," Kuhaida said. "So taxpayers are paying 15-percent more on their property assessment, yet DOE is still paying that agreed-upon number. That $4,610 doesn't increase, and it should be $5,300 annually. We don't receive that benefit -- the values of our property are going up, but DOE is staying down."

Lynch added, "(Look) back to when the new tax rate was set; DOE did not get re-appraised."

"PILT payments are discretionary funds and can't be projected. We don't know what they are from year to year," Kuhaida said.

Kuhaida illustrated how this results in a burden on citizens by noting although the federal government provides an employee base, it also produces a burden on the education system. "If Anderson County budgets a percent of PILT toward schools and then they don't receive the amount expected, it could result in a property tax increase to cover costs," Kuhaida said. "By state law, you can't cut your school system's budget below the previous year's budget. Once you make that commitment ... it doesn't work that way."

A case cited as a similar situation is that in 1998 the city of Kingsport received $7.2 million from Tennessee Eastman. At the same time, Oak Ridge received $700,000 from DOE as payment in lieu of taxes.

Assistant Oak Ridge City Manager Steve Jenkins, noting local government has lost about $10,000 over the last eight years, said further impacts on the economy are:

* A lack of a diversified tax base.
* An economy dominated by the federal government.
* Inadequate land available for industrial development.
* Organized, high-priced labor.
* Adverse environmental impacts.

Roane County Commissioner Una Coffman noted she was in California and encountered people who asked her where she was from. Upon telling them she lived near Knoxville and Oak Ridge, she said they would ask her if she glowed at night.

"That's the impact that's out there in the world," she said.

These reasons have resulted in the second effort of the Task Force whose basic function is to try to determine what the avenues of assistance might be to offset negative financial impacts.

As Oak Ridge City Council member David Bradshaw noted, the Task Force would serve as a complementary entity -- as staff support or an advisory panel -- to the ad hoc committee formed by council.

Anderson County Commissioner Larry Dickens said, "This has got to be a three-party effort. Council just got the ball rolling. You all need to participate and be ready for that," he charged the Task Force.

Bradshaw said, "What we need is a law firm that specializes in special burdens. I think it's going to take a professional who understands, and we've got to agree to go down that path together."

Upcoming meetings will be Monday, Sept. 25, and Monday, Oct. 23, in the City Manager's Conference Room of the Municipal Building.

-----------

Message: 6
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 13:51:17 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Clock ticking on Y-12 contract

August 31, 2000
by Paul Parson Oak Ridger staff
http://www.oakridger.com/

Although hesitant to pin it down to a specific date, Department of Energy officials have insisted for more than a month now that the winner of the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant management contract would be announced in late August.

Today marks the end of that touted month and, as of 1:30 this afternoon, a winner has not been publicly announced.

Representatives from several of the companies competing for the contract and DOE spokesman David Page said this morning they are still expecting the announcement to be made sometime today.

"I haven't heard any different," Page said.

The four entities vying for the five-year, performance-based contract to manage and operate Y-12 are:

* Oak Ridge Defense Systems (a partnership among Lockheed Martin Energy Systems, Duke Engineering and Services and TENERA).

* Westinghouse Government Services.

* Defense Operations of East Tennessee LLC (a partnership among EG&G Technical Services Inc., Brown & Root Services, M.H. Chew and Associates Inc., Informatics Corp. and Arthur D. Little).

* BWXT-Y-12 (a partnership between Bechtel National Inc. and BWX Technologies Inc.).

The bidding companies submitted proposals on the management of the nuclear weapons plant in May and finished making oral presentations in July.

A 60-day transition period will begin on the date the contract is awarded. A number of contract requirements are specified to facilitate a smooth transition of incumbent employees to the selected contractor. These requirements include retention of substantially equivalent base pay and benefits and recognition of the current bargaining units.

Y-12 is the last of DOE's three Oak Ridge facilities to go through a contract rebidding process. It has been managed by Lockheed Martin Energy Systems since 1985.

Lockheed Martin once managed all three major DOE facilities in Oak Ridge. But since 1997, two of those operations -- Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the environmental cleanup work at the Oak Ridge K-25 Site -- have gone to other contractors after the management contracts were rebid by DOE.

Located on 811 acres in Bear Creek Valley, Y-12 is the nation's production facility for several nuclear weapons components, including uranium and lithium parts.

The Oak Ridger will continue to cover this issue and, if the contract is announced this afternoon, information will be available at oakridger.com.

------------

Message: 7
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 13:57:47 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Screening plan announced for beryllium dust exposure

August 30, 2000
By Glenn Roberts Jr. STAFF WRITER
http://search.newschoice.com/GPC_StoryDisplay.asp?story=d:\index\newsarchives\angdr\loc\20000830\412846_r5bs130.txt&searchtext=nuclear

LIVERMORE -- Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and other Energy Department sites are launching screening programs to diagnose the health effects of beryllium, a rare metal used in nuclear weapons development, on former employees.

Chronic beryllium disease, or berylliosis, is an incurable condition that is directly linked to beryllium exposure.

Tiny beryllium dust particles, produced during machining activities, can lodge in the lungs and cause respiratory problems. Excessive shortness of breath, fatigue and a persistent dry cough are among the symptoms, though in some cases there are no apparent symptoms.

About 3,000 letters have been sent to former Livermore Lab workers to notify them about the free medical screening, and there are plans to notify 28,000 former Livermore Lab workers. And it is possible that the testing will be expanded to include other employees.

It is part of a broader program, coordinated by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education in Tennessee, to screen former employees across the nuclear weapons complex.

Also eligible for the screenings, which include a questionnaire and a blood test, are non-lab employees who contracted berylliosis while working at Energy Department lab and production sites.

Five current employees at Livermore Lab have been identified as "sensitized" to beryllium, which means they are more likely than others to suffer from berylliosis and they have a 45 to 55 percent chance of already being afflicted.

One former lab employee has been diagnosed with berylliosis, and that employee died of lung cancer, said lab officials.

Donna Cragle, director of the Center for Epidemiologic Research at the Oak Ridge Institute, said it could take about three years to test all employees who may have been exposed to beryllium dust.

"All of the former Livermore (Lab) people do not still live in the Livermore area," she said, and employees can visit other screening clinics set up across the country at walk-in community clinics and other Energy Department sites.

Former workers can call (800) 269-0157, exts. 8373 or 2405, to set up an appointment at a nearby screening location. At Livermore Lab, the screening is conducted in the lab's Health Services Department. Screenings take about an hour, Cragle said.

Edmund Kozlow, who helped to machine beryllium parts for the nuclear weapons complex at a company in Hayward from 1958 to the early 1970s, said he has had a "spot" diagnosed in his lung and is hoping to get tested to see if he could have berylliosis.

"I want to know why do I have this pain in my upper chest," he said.

New health standards were introduced this year for working with beryllium that limit the recommended exposure to beryllium dust to 10 times less than earlier standards.

Earlier this year, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced a plan to compensate Energy Department workers for illnesses related to their work, though the plan hasn't yet been enacted. Energy Department workers who may be suffering from any work-related illnesses can call (877) 447-9456.

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Message: 8
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 14:00:36 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Rocky Flats water discussed

By Jennifer Hamilton
Camera Staff Writer
http://www.bouldernews.com/news/local/31lflat.html

BROOMFIELD - The only guarantee to maintain drinking water quality in the streams that crisscross Rocky Flats would be to remove large swaths of soil on the site, a U.S. Department of Energy spokesman said Wednesday.

"If you want a 100 percent guarantee, we have to remove all of the source" of radiation, Joe Legare said.

On the eve of the introduction of a bipartisan effort to turn the Cold War-era nuclear weapons plant near Broomfield into a wildlife refuge, city leaders, federal representatives and local residents met to discuss water quality standards once the site is cleaned up.

"There are a number of potential alternatives, all of which have some drawbacks," said John Rampe, an official of the Energy Department at Rocky Flats.

They include the development of wetlands that would help revegetate in the site's most contaminated areas, slowing the water flow and reducing its sediment loads. Another option would be to improve the current pond-retention system. It allows workers to test the water that fills on-site ponds and then release it if they find it meets quality standards.

"We know that the ponds as managed now are doing a good job," Rampe said. "We are not discharging water that is bad in any way, shape, or form."

Once cleanup is complete, a person who drinks on-site water, showers in it and cooks with it should have no significant increase in cancer risk, according the official Rocky Flats cleanup agreement.

Because the site's regulators have said it would be difficult for all the water on the site to meet the quality standards, it might be necessary to adopt different rules for individual pieces of the site.

But most Broomfield and Westminster leaders are insisting that any agreed-upon process should promise that water on the site will meet quality standards after cleanup is complete. Completion is expected by 2006.

"A standard is a standard, just like a speed limit is a speed limit," said Broomfield Mayor Pro Tem Hank Stovall.

Today, two Colorado congressmen will introduce legislation that would preserve the 6,000-acre Superfund site as a wildlife refuge.

Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., and Rep. Mark Udall, D-Boulder, have drafted a bipartisan proposal similar to legislation that Allard introduced in the early 1990s to turn the Rocky Mountain Arsenal into a refuge. Under the measure, Rocky Flats would continue to be federally owned and a buffer zone of undeveloped land around the site would remain indefinitely.

Contact Jennifer Hamilton at (303) 466-3636, ext. 126, or at hamiltonj@thedailycamera.com.

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Message: 9
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 14:04:47 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Pushing Limits at Lab? Weapons test plan sparks BNL debate

August 31, 2000
by EARL LANE Washington Bureau
http://www.newsday.com/news/daily/nuke831.htm


Washington -- As part of an effort to ensure the reliability of the nation's nuclear arsenal, weapons scientists want to use a particle accelerator at Brookhaven National Laboratory to help develop better ways to "photograph” small-scale implosions that mimic the triggering of a nuclear warhead.

Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico is expected to submit a proposal to use Brookhaven facilities for the studies, which some senior Brook.haven scientists have questioned as going beyond the lab's traditional mission of open, non-weapons-related research.

John Marburger, Brookhaven's director, stressed yesterday that Brookhaven is not a weapons lab, but said it has no bar against doing work related to national security, including classified research.

"If this lab has a technology that is valuable for another federal mission, then, in general, it is reasonable to expect that we would make that technology available,” Marburger said.

Since 1996, Brookhaven has allowed Los Alamos researchers to use a proton beam from the lab's Alternating Gradient Synchrotron to do static tests on a variety of classified and non-classified metallic objects. The proton beam can be used like an X-ray to reveal density, structure and composition of stationary materials.

Such proton radiography, as it is called, also can be used to create a "movie" of how materials change under the impact of a shock wave from an explosive detonation.

The Los Alamos researchers have done more than 50 such dynamic tests, as they are called, with a less powerful proton beam at their home laboratory. The Brookhaven beam -- about 30 times more powerful -- allows studies of thicker objects at fine resolution. So the scientists are eager to use the Brookhaven beam for the first time in dynamic tests involving small-scale explosions in a chamber. No nuclear materials would be involved.

The ultimate goal is to develop technology that could be adapted to a next-generation test facility at Los Alamos, perhaps using protons rather than conventional X-rays, to obtain high-resolution pictures of imploding mock warheads in which the nuclear material has been replaced by surrogates.

In a warhead, conventional explosives surrounding a nuclear trigger create a spherical shock wave that compresses the material to such density that a runaway chain reaction creates a nuclear explosion.

Marburger said proton radiography also has applications in non-weapons fields such as metallurgy. But the prospect of more active tests at Brookhaven involving small amounts of explosive for the first time has prompted some internal debate at the lab. On Friday, about 100 people attended a departmental seminar on the proposed tests at which several Brookhaven scientists spoke against them.

"I think there are issues about doing this kind of research at Brookhaven, and I wanted to raise them,” said Alan Carroll, an accelerator specialist at Brookhaven who gave a presentation at the seminar. He declined to elaborate.

A senior Brookhaven physicist who asked not to be named said: "Los Alamos would say this is guaranteeing the stockpile. The line between guaranteeing the stockpile and actually developing triggers [for nuclear warheads] is a fuzzy one. From our point of view, this is not appropriate for the lab.”

"No one is proposing to make Brookhaven a weapons lab,” said Alessandro Ruggiero, a Brookhaven accelerator physicist who is not involved with the Los Alamos-sponsored effort. He worked on a competing proposal with a team at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The team wanted to build a small proton accelerator at the Department of Energy's Nevada test site to do the same sort of dynamic tests being considered for Brookhaven.

Ruggiero said proton radiography is a promising method for assessing the safety and reliability of warheads in the absence of periodic underground tests. The United States has adhered to a self-imposed moratorium on such tests since 1992.

The decision on whether to proceed with the Brookhaven tests is months away. John McClelland, deputy director of the physics division at Los Alamos, said no formal proposal has been made and no funding set aside. Any proposal would include evaluation of any environmental hazards, he said. The dynamic tests done at Los Alamos typically involve less than two pounds of explosive. McClelland said the containment vessels for the possible Brookhaven tests are designed to hold up to 40 pounds of high explosives. "We have experience with these vessels,” McClelland said. "We know they are safe.”

Brookhaven has been criticized by local residents for past environmental problems and, more recently, a leak of radioactive tritium. Scott Cullen, an attorney with STAR (Standing for Truth About Radiation), a local environmental group, said, "They should be careful to involve the community and get people's thoughts on [the tests] before they do it.”

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Message: 10
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 14:08:24 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Energy Secretary Visits Russia

August 30, 2000
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2000/aug/30/083100358.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson visited a flagship Russian military conversion project and promised $13 million to accelerate the transformation of a nuclear weapons production facility into a civilian technology park.

On the first day of a four-day tour of Russia, Richardson attended a ceremony Wednesday inaugurating the Avangard Technopark on the premises of a nuclear weapons design facility in Sarov, which was the closed city of Arzamas-16 in Soviet times.

The park has carved out 10 acres from the nuclear complex in Sarov, one of 10 such cities that the U.S. Energy Department is helping to turn over to civilian enterprises. Ten buildings in Avangard's Weapons Design Facility complex have been earmarked for civilian use.

"Clearly, their welcoming me to this forbidden site is a positive development and an encouraging sign for U.S.-Russian relations," Richardson said.

"Our non-proliferation programs are working and must continue, as it is in America's best interest to help Russia convert these massive Cold War-era facilities into non-weapons work."

Richardson inaugurated a computer center in Sarov last October. A firm producing kidney dialysis equipment, to be operated by Fresenius Medical, has moved into one of the other buildings. Richardson said that an automotive parts manufacturing plant was to take over another.

Credit Suisse First Boston announced Wednesday that it would establish a banking software center in the Avangard facility. The center will employ former weapons scientists.

Conversion work has begun in three of Russia's 10 closed nuclear cities, and U.S. officials are hoping to accelerate it. Officials in Sarov, Russia's equivalent of the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory in New Mexico, said Wednesday that the Avangard facility will no longer be assembling or disassembling nuclear weapons by 2003.

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Message: 11
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 16:30:47 EDT
From: df7332@aol.com

POLLUTION DAMAGES INTELLIGENCE

Saturday, 22 April, 2000
By environment correspondent Alex Kirby
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_722000/722907.stm

Pollution and other environmental threats are harming the intelligence of millions of people across the world, says a United Kingdom review of the available evidence.

The causes are poisons such as lead, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls, synthetic compounds used in electrical equipment), and radiation.

A further problem is the loss of micronutrients like iron and iodine through soil erosion, impoverishing food crops. And scientists say it is hard to know the full extent of the problem, because of the difficulty of gathering data.

The author, Dr Chris Williams, a social scientist at the Institute of Education, London University, said one problem could compound another, with iron deficiency in children, for example, able to increase their lead uptake.

"We only have single-substance science, which does not account for compounding effects. So the overall scale of the problem is far greater than previously estimated."

GLOBAL REVIEW

Dr Williams is a fellow of the Global Environmental Change Programme, a 15m social science initiative of the Economic and Social Research Council. He undertook a global review of science-based research into the impact of environmental factors on intelligence. One of his most disturbing findings is that epidemiologists have detected a statistically significant increase in the birth of children with Down's Syndrome which is linked to radiation from the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.

CHERNOBYL: RADIATION LINK TO DOWN'S SYNDROME

The increase was dependent on rainfall in the period following the explosion. Excess Down's Syndrome births were recorded in parts of Germany, Scandinavia and the Lothian region of central Scotland nine months after the disaster.

Dr Williams found a study by the Russian Academy of Sciences which said that radiation from a uranium mine had caused mental impairment in 95% of the children of one town in Russia.

In south east Asia 1.5bn people are affected by the iron deficiency of many Green Revolution crops, especially maize, and even more in the poor world are at risk from iodine deficiency.

In parts of the Himalayas and China the problem is exacerbated when deforestation allows rain to wash the soil away, taking with it nutrients which are essential in the human diet.

GROWING THREAT TO CHILDREN

The phenomenon is not new, but is becoming worse with increased logging and growing population pressure.

Lead in the environment is a threat, with the blood-lead level of one child in 10 in the UK high enough for intelligence to be affected.

In some African cities the proportion is nine children in ten. The intelligence of Inuit children in the Arctic is being damaged by PCBs which originate in the tropics and arrive in Canada within a week.

Dr Williams told BBC News Online: "The big feeling I have about this is in the context of evolution.

"The human brain is now at risk from its own behaviour, and nothing else in the ecosystem is harming itself in the same way.

"Even lemmings don't really behave like lemmings. That's a myth. But we are acting like lemmings.

NEED FOR ACTION

"I've seen Indian villages where the wells have been poisoned with fluoride, causing a loss of intelligence. The bright people move out, the spiral continues, and you see what can happen to a community.

"I'm afraid there'll be many more underfed, poisoned people in the poor world unless we recognise what is happening."

The director of the Global Environmental Change Programme, Dr Frans Berkhout, said: "This issue reveals a wider problem that science has when faced with complex and uncertain environmental issues.

"Some of the most difficult environmental challenges are not being adequately addressed simply because of the difficulties of collecting the necessary evidence and establishing cause and effect."

--------------

Message: 12
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 17:56:09 -0400
From: "Paul M. Blanch" <pmblanch@home.com>

Inspector General Condemns Nuclear Agency Safety Evaluation

Paul M. Blanch
135 Hyde Rd.
West Hartford, CT 06117
860-447-1791 x0555 FAX 305-847-6223

Hey Folks, NRC IG has finally issued their report on the steam generator tube rupture at Indian Point. The report is dense but it is damning if you read closely enough. I've attached our press release and the entire report is now available on our web site. http://www.citizen.org/cmep/nuclearsafety/nrcreport.PDF I'm sorry if you receive this more than once! But I wanted to make sure everyone got it! No Nukes! Jim

For Immediate Release: Aug. 28, 2000
Contact: Jim Riccio (202) 546-4996

Inspector General Condemns Nuclear Agency Safety Evaluation NRC Safety Evaluation at Indian Point 2 Flawed

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The inspector general of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has released a report condemning the agency's handling of safety problems at the Indian Point 2 nuclear reactor in Buchanan, N.Y., approximately 25 miles from New York City. The failure of both the NRC and the plant's owner, Consolidated Edison, to adequately review information in their possession resulted in the February steam generator tube rupture that released radiation into the environment.

According to the report released today:

The flaw in the steam generator tube that caused the February 2000 accident at Indian Point 2 was nearly 100 percent through the tube wall in 1997.

NRC senior engineers failed to review the documents submitted by Consolidated Edison, including the 1997 steam generator tube inspection report.

The NRC and Consolidated Edison could have identified the flaw and thus avoided the accident if someone with technical expertise had evaluated the 1997 inspection findings.

Despite the fact that the NRC's junior engineer had concerns regarding the steam generator tubes that were not addressed by Consolidated Edison's license amendment request, the NRC failed to ask follow-up questions because a second round of questioning was "frowned upon" by NRC senior management.

"The NRC is in regulatory retreat and has shirked its responsibility to protect the health and safety of the people of New York," said James Riccio, senior policy analyst with Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy & Environment Program. "The NRC's senior management needs to be held accountable. They are too concerned with allowing nuclear reactors to run, and as a result, safety has been sacrificed."

The entire report is available on Public Citizen's web site: http://www.citizen.org/cmep/nuclearsafety/nrcreport.PDF

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Message: 13
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 19:33:14 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Free radicals in chronic fatigue syndrome: cause or effect?

Redox Rep 2000;5(2-3):146-7
Richards RS,
Roberts TK,
Dunstan RH,
McGregor NR,
Butt HL

Department of Biological Sciences,
University of Newcastle,
New South Wales, Australia.

[Medline record in process]

We have demonstrated that certain morphological and biochemical changes occur in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). These changes in RA can be explained by the well-established inappropriate increase in free radical generation. The similar changes in CFS suggest a similar explanation and a possible role for free radicals in the aetiology of this condition.

PMID: 10939298, UI: 20393292

==========

Comments:

Many of the workers in Oak Ridge have the symptoms of CFS, and they were highly exposed to fluorides, which are highly retained in the body and cause free radical, oxidant like cell damage

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Message: 14
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2000 20:20:23 -0600
From: "Paula Elofson-Gardine, Exec. Dir." <pelofson1@home.com>

Standing in PuNo3 in north Rocky Flats drainage basin

8/31/00

Dear Doug,

We were very surprised to see Senator Allard and Congressman Udall standing in NE Rocky Flats buffer zone, in the Walnut Creek upper drainage area, downgradient from the old Solar Evaporation ponds - that had severe PuNO3 (plutonium nitrate) contamination from the leaking cracked clay liners of the Pu process waste ponds. This is a bad area, putting people at risk, not to mention the resuspended dust. BTW: this is the area that the researchers grazed the Rocky Flats herd at, for 3 months, that were radiologically hotter than the Nevada Test Site cattle herds that grazed year round. Most notable was the uptake in the tracheo-bronchial lymph nodes and gonads. This Actinide Uptake in Cattle Study can be viewed on our website at: http://members.aol.com/magnu96196/EINHome.html

We had hoped that Rep. Udall would have read the materials that we submitted on the first bill go around, but can only assume that he has not, from reading the revised bill. It seems incongrous when compared to the press statements. We would very much like to work with you to explain the issues of concern, and to be a part of the comment and improvement process on this bill. Please include us in your comments distribution so we can provide the backup data to our comments, and an analysis on how that fits (or doesn't) with the other positions presented.

Here is a copy a page from the Americium aerial gamma survey from 1989, that showed the 903 Pad lateral seepage reaching about 3/4 toward Indiana Street, which of course the plume head has migrated beyond now, according to employees. I have scanned and reduced a jpeg copy of the Am plume derived from the EG&G Remote Sensing Lab's derivations from the HPGe crystal array detectors, and it is attached here for you. This is why this area should have restricted access permanently, and be called: Rocky Flats Nuclear Reserve - no tours, no museum, or hiking trails.

Did everyone have their shoes radiologically scanned before leaving the field? Just curious. Remember what RF did to the Ahearne Commission, a high level DOE safety committee that was deliberately lead through a "respirator only" contamination zone after a radtech "deposted" the area, without PPE or warning. They were found to have positive assay samples after we called Ahearne at home to alert him. It could happen to Udall & Allard too, so please be careful out there.

Sue would like me to ask: What is driving Udall and Allard to persist in attempting to use this land area, especially so prematurely? Can you please respond to this question?

Sincerely,

Paula Elofson-Gardine Executive Director Environmental Information Network (303) 233-6677/(303) 601-9271

P.S.: I thought you might be interested in the concerned email I received from Dr. Snow, FYI.


Thank You Dr. Snow. We indeed gave warnings, and if you saw Channel 9 news at 6pm, you might notice they look decidedly pale, especially after driving past my sister and I with our huge "radiation alert" banner.

Yours, P.

Dear Ms. Pelofson:

If you interpret the invitation for press to attend a press release within the east plume area on native soils, rather than on the paved approaches to the East Gate, then the personnel protections are clearly warranted. It would be a flagrant disregard for safety to hold a meeting on the grounds within the plume, and no one should attend such a meeting.

I have forwarded my email to Senator Allard and Congressman Udall, suggesting practical means of safe roadway construction within the Buffer Zone. That involves deposition of uncontaminated soils to form road beds without disturbing the native soil cover, well-known to be contaminated. I had suggested that method of forming gravel firebreaks within the zone, and suggest it again to widen Hwy 93 at the west edge of the Buffer Zone. No highway need ever be built across the Buffer Zone.

Yours truly, David T. Snow, Ph.D., P.E.

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Message: 15
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2000 00:07:14 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Fluorine lasers - New Scientist -------> star wars

Stunning developments 24 Jun 00

If you thought laser weapons were science fiction, think again. At www.trw.com/thel, there's the first evidence that they are becoming a reality: watch the US Tactical High Energy Laser detonate the warhead of a Katyusha rocket in flight. The rocket nose glows briefly and then explodes-viewed in three short clips taken from different cameras. The US Army and the Israeli Ministry of Defense paid weapons contractor TRW $200 million to build the chemical laser, in which atomic fluorine reacts with the heavy hydrogen isotope deuterium to generate a powerful infrared beam that can pass through the atmosphere.

Israel wants lasers to blast Hezbollah missiles apart, since, as the US Army says at www.smdc.army.mil/FactSheets/THEL.html, firing artillery shells at rocket launchers "may not be an option in densely populated areas". But the system itself is quite a target, amounting to several truckloads of hardware (www.trw.com/seg/sats/THEL.html). What the army really wants are more mobile solid-state lasers.

Meanwhile, the US Air Force has hired Boeing, TRW and Lockheed Martin to pack a chemical oxygen iodine laser into a Boeing