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

Text of the Declaration

New York Times
September 09, 2000
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/09/world/09SUMMITTEXT.html

UNITED NATIONS -- Text of the declaration being adopted by the U.N. General Assembly at the Millennium Summit:

The General Assembly,
Adopts the following Declaration

I. Values and Principles

1. We, Heads of State and Government, have gathered at United Nations Headquarters in New York from 6 to 8 September 2000, at the dawn of a new Millennium, to reaffirm our faith in the Organization and its Charter as indispensable foundations of a more peaceful, prosperous and just world.

2. We recognize that, in addition to our separate responsibilities to our individual societies, we have a collective responsibility to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity at the global level. As leaders we have a duty, there free, to all the world's people, especially the most vulnerable and, in particular, the children of the world, to whom the future belongs.

3. We reaffirm our commitment to the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, which have proved timeless and universal. Indeed, their relevance and capacity to inspire have increased, as nations and peoples have become increasingly interconnected and interdependent.

4. We are determined to establish a just and lasting peace all over the world in accordance with the objectives and principles of the Charter. We rededicate ourselves to support all efforts to uphold the sovereign equality of all States; respect for their territorial integrity and political independence; resolution of disputes by peaceful means and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law; the right to self-determination of peoples which remain under colonial domination and foreign occupation; non-interference in the internal affairs of States; respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; respect for the equal rights of all without distinction to race, sex language or religion; and international cooperation in solving international problems of economic, social, cultural or humanitarian character.

5. We believe that the central challenge we face today is to ensure that globalization becomes a positive force for all the world's people. For while globalization offers great opportunities, at present its benefits are very unevenly shared, while its costs are unevenly distributed. We recognize that developing countries and countries with economies in transition face special difficulties in responding to this central challenge. Thus, only through broad and sustained efforts to create a shared future, based upon our common humanity in all its diversity, can globalization be made fully inclusive and equitable. These efforts must include policies and measures, at the global level, which correspond to the needs of developing countries and economies in transition, and are formulated and implemented with their effective participation.

6. We consider certain fundamental values to be essential to international relations in the twenty-first century. These include:

-- Freedom. Men and women have the right to live their lives and raise their children in dignity, free from hunger and from the fear of violence, oppression or injustice. Democratic and participatory governance based on the will of the people best assures these rights.

-- Equality. No individual and no nation must be denied the opportunity to benefit from development. The equal rights and opportunities of women and men must be assured.

-- Solidarity. Global challenges must be managed in a way that distributes the costs and burdens fairly in accordance with basic principles of equity and social justice. Those who suffer, or who benefit least, deserve help form those who benefit most.

-- Tolerance. Human beings must respect each other, in all their diversity of belief, culture and language. Differences within and between societies should be neither feared nor repressed, but cherished as a precious asset of humanity. A Culture of Peace and Dialogue among all civilizations should be actively promoted.

-- Respect for nature. Prudence must be shown in the management of all living species and natural resources, in accordance with the precepts of sustainable development. Only in this way can the immeasurable riches provided to us by nature be preserved and passed on to our descendants. The current unsustainable patterns of production and consumption must be changed, in the interest of our future welfare and that of our descendants.

-- Shared responsibility. Responsibility for managing worldwide economic and social development, as well as threats to international peace and security, must be shared among the nations of the world and should be exercised multilaterally. As the most universal and most representative organization in the world, the United Nations must play the central role.

7. In order to translate these shared values into actions, we have identified key objectives to which we assign special significance.

II. Peace, Security and Disarmament

8. We will spare no effort to free our peoples from the scourge of war, whether within or between States, which has claimed more than 5 million lives in the past decade. We will also seek to eliminate the dangers posed by weapons of mass destruction.

9. We resolve, therefore:

-- To strengthen respect for the rule of law, in international as in national affairs and, in particular, to ensure compliance by Member States with the decisions of the International Court of Justice in compliance with the Charter of the United Nations, in cases to which they are parties.

-- To make the United Nations, more effective in maintaining peace and security, by giving it the resources and tools it needs for conflict prevention, peaceful resolution of disputes, peacekeeping, post-conflict peace building and reconstruction. In this context, we take note of the Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations and request the General Assembly to consider its recommendations expeditiously.

-- To strengthen cooperation between the United Nations and regional organizations, in accordance with the provisions of Chapter VIII of the Charter.

-- To ensure the implementation, by States Parties, of treaties in areas such as arms control and disarmament, and of international humanitarian law and human rights law, and call upon all States to consider signing and ratifying the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

-- To take concerted action against international terrorism, and to accede as soon as possible to all the relevant international conventions.

-- To redouble our efforts to implement our commitment to counter the world drug problem.

-- To intensify our efforts to fight transnational crime in all its dimensions, including trafficking as well as smuggling in human beings and money laundering.

-- To minimize the adverse effects of United Nations economic sanctions on innocent populations; to subject such sanctions regimes to regular reviews; and to eliminate the adverse effects of sanctions on third parties.

-- To strive for the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons and to keep all options open for achieving this aim, including the possibility of convening an international conference to identify ways of eliminating nuclear dangers.

-- To take concerted action to end illicit traffic in small arms and light weapons, especially by making arms transfers more transparent and supporting regional disarmament measures, taking account of all the recommendations of the forthcoming United Nations Conference on Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons.

-- To call on all States to consider acceding to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, as well as the Amended Mines Protocol to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

10. We urge Member States to observe the Olympic Truce, individually and collectively, now and in the future, and to support the International Olympic Committee in its efforts to promote peace and human understanding through sport and the Olympic ideal.

------

III. Development and Poverty Eradication

11. We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected. We are committed to making the right to development a reality for everyone, and to freeing the entire human race from want.

12. We resolve, therefore, to create an environment -- at the national and global levels alike -- which is conducive to development and to the elimination of poverty.

13. Success in meeting these objectives depends, inter alia, on good governance within each country. It also depends on good governance at the international level, and on transparency in the financial, monetary and trading systems. We are committed to an open, equitable, rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory multilateral trading and financial system.

14. We are concerned about the obstacles developing countries face in mobilizing the resources needed to finance their sustained development. We will, therefore, make every effort to ensure the success of the High-level International and Intergovernmental Event on Financing for Development, to be held in 2001.

15. We also undertake to address the special needs of the least developed countries. In this context, we welcome the Third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries in May 2001 and will endeavor to ensure its success. We call on the industrialized countries:

-- to adopt, preferably by the time of that Conference, a policy of duty- and quota-free access for essentially all exports from the least developed countries;

-- to implement the enhanced program of debt relief for the heavily indebted poor countries without further delay and to agree to cancel all official bilateral debts of those countries in return for their making demonstrable commitments to poverty reduction;

-- and to grant more generous development assistance, especially to countries that are genuinely making an effort to apply their resources to poverty reduction.

16. We are also determined to deal comprehensively and effectively with the debt problems of low- and middle-income developing countries, through various national and international measures designed to make their debt sustainable in the long term.

17. We also resolve to address the special needs of small island developing States, by implementing the Barbados Programme of Action, and the outcome of the twenty-second special session of the General Assembly, rapidly and in full. We urge the international community to ensure that, in the development of a vulnerability index, the special needs of small island developing States are taken into account.

18. We recognize the special needs and problems of the landlocked developing countries, and urge both bilateral and multilateral donors to increase financial and technical assistance to this group of countries to meet their special development needs, and to help them overcome the impediments of geography, by improving their transit transport systems.

19. We resolve further:

-- To halve, by he year 2015, the proportion of the world's people whose income is less than one dollar a day and the proportion of people who suffer from hunger; and also, by the same date, to halve the proportion of people who are unable to reach, or to afford, safe drinking water.

-- To ensure that, by the same date, children everywhere, boys and girls alike will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling; and that girls and boys will have equal access to all levels of education.

-- By the same date, to have reduced maternal mortality by three-quarters, and under-5 child mortality by two-thirds, of their current rates.

-- To have, by then, halted, and begun to reverse, the spread of HIV/AIDS, the scourge of malaria and other major diseases that afflict humanity.

-- To provide special assistance to children orphaned by HIV/AIDS.

-- By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers as proposed in the "Cities Without Slums" initiative.

20. We also resolve:

-- To promote gender equality and the empowerment of women, as effective ways to combat poverty, hunger and disease and to stimulate development that is truly sustainable.

-- To develop and implement strategies that give young people everywhere a real chance to find decent and productive work.

-- To encourage the pharmaceutical industry to make essential drugs more widely available and affordable by all who need them in developing countries.

-- To develop strong partnerships with the private sector, and with civil society organizations, in pursuit of development and poverty eradication.

-- To ensure that the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communication technologies, in conformity with recommendations contained in ECOSOC 2000 Ministerial Declaration, are available to all.

IV. Protecting our Common Environment

21. We must spare no effort to free all of humanity, and above all our children and grandchildren, form the threat of living on a planet irredeemably spoiled by human activities, and whose resources would no longer be sufficient for their needs.

22. We reaffirm our support for the principles of sustainable development, including those set out in Agenda 21, agreed upon at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development.

23. We resolove, therefore, to adopt in all our environmental actions a new ethic of conservation and stewardship, and, as first steps we resolve:

-- To make every effort to ensure the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, preferably by the tenth anniversary of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 2002, and to embark on the required reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases.

-- To intensify our collective efforts for the management, conservation and sustainable development of all types of forests.

-- To press for the full implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention to Combat Desertification in Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa.

-- To stop the unsustainable exploitation of water resources, by developing water management stratagies at the regional, national and local levels, which promote both equitable access and adequate supplies.

-- To intensify cooperation to reduce the number and effects of natural and manmade disasters.

-- To ensure free access to information on the human genome sequence.

------

V. Human Rights, Democracy and good Governance

24. We will spare no effort to promote democracy and strengthen the rule of law, as well as respect for all internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right to development.

25. We resolve therefore:

-- To fully respect and uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

-- To strive for the full protection and promotion in all our countries of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights for all.

-- To strengthen the capacity of all our countries to implement the principles and practices of democracy and respect for human rights, including minority rights.

-- To combat all forms of violence against women and to implement the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

-- To take measures to ensure respect for and protection of the human rights of migrants, migrant workers and their families, to eliminate the increasing acts of racism and xenophobia in many societies, and to promote greater harmony and tolerance in all societies.

-- To work collectively for more inclusive political processes, allowing genuine participation by all citizens in all our countries.

-- To ensure the freedom of the media to perform their essential role and the right of the public to have access to information.

VI. Protecting the Vulnerable

26. We will spare no effort to ensure that children and all civilian populations who suffer disproportionately the consequences of natural disasters, genocide, armed conflicts and other humanitarian emergencies are given every assistance and protection, so that they can resume normal life as soon as possible.

We resolve therefore:

-- To expand and strengthen the protection of civilians in complex emergencies, in conformity with international humanitarian law.

-- To strengthen international cooperation, including burden sharing in, and the coordination of humanitarian assistance to countries hosting refugees; and to help all refugees and displaced persons to return voluntarily to their homes, in safety and dignity, and to be smoothly reintegrated into their societies.

-- To encourage the ratification and full implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and its Optional Protocols on the involvement of children in armed conflicts, and on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.

------

VII. Meeting the Special Needs of Africa

27. We will support the consolidation of democracy in Africa and assist Africans in their struggle for lasting peace, poverty eradication and sustainable development, thereby bringing Africa into the mainstream of the world economy.

28. We resolve, therefore:

-- To give full support to the political and institutional structures of emerging democracies in Africa.

-- To encourage and sustain regional and subregional mechanisms for preventing conflict and promoting political stability, and to ensure a reliable flow of resources for peacekeeping operations on the continent.

-- To take special measures to address the challenges of poverty eradication and sustainable development in Africa, including debt cancellation, improved market access, enhanced Official Development Assistance (ODA), and increased flows of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as well as transfers of technology.

-- To help Africa build up its capacity to tackle the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and other infectious diseases.

VIII. Strengthening the United Nations

29. We will spare no effort to make the United Nations a more effective instrument for pursuing all of these priorities: the fight for development for all the peoples of the world, the fight against poverty, ignorance and disease; the fight against injustice; the fight against violence, terror and crime; and the fight against the degradation and destruction of our common home.

30. We resolve, therefore:

-- To reaffirm the central position of the General Assembly as the chief deliberative, policy-making and representative organ of the United Nations, and to enable it to play that role effectively.

-- To intensify our efforts to achieve a comprehensive reform of the Security Council in all its aspects.

-- To further strengthen the Economic and Social Council, building on its recent achievements, to help it fulfill the role ascribed to it in the Charter.

-- To strengthen the International Court of Justice, in order to ensure justice and the rule of law in international affairs.

-- To encourage regular consultations and coordination among the principal organs of the United Nations in pursuit of their functions.

-- To ensure that the Organization is provided on a timely and predictable basis with the resources it needs to carry out its mandates.

-- To urge the Secretariat to make the best use of those resources, in accordance with clear rules and procedures agreed by the General Assembly, in the interests of all Member States, by adopting the best management practices and technologies available and by concentrating on those tasks that reflect the agreed priorities of Member States.

-- To promote adherence to the Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel.

-- To ensure greater policy coherence and to improve better cooperation between the United Nations, its agencies, the Bretton Woods institutions, and the World Trade Organization, as well as other multilateral bodies, with a view to achieving a fully coordinated approach to the problems of peace and development.

-- To further strengthen cooperation between the United Nations and national parliaments through their world organization, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, in various fields, including: peace and security, economic and social development, international law and human rights, democracy and gender issues.

-- To give greater opportunities to the private sector, non-governmental organizations and civil society in general, to contribute to the realization of the Organization's goals and programs.

31. We request the General Assembly to review on a regular basis the progress made in implementing the provisions of this Declaration, and ask the Secretary-General to issue periodic reports, for consideration by the General Assembly and as a basis for further action.

32. We solemnly reaffirm, on this historic occasion, that the United Nations is the indispensable common house of the entire human family, through which we will seek to realize our universal aspirations for peace, cooperation and development. We therefore, pledge our unstinting support for these common objectives, and our determination to achieve them.

-------- britain

High Court Challenge to Trident Warheads

Sat, 9 Sep 2000
From: Stephen Kobasa <skobasa@pop.snet.net>

A legal case challenging the UK Government's continued manufacture of Trident warheads will take place at the High Court, London on 13th - 15th September 2000.

Two applicants, a local resident and a pressure group, have been granted permission for a judicial review. The basis of the applicants' case is that the Environment Agency acted unlawfully in granting authorisations for radioactive discharges to AWE Plc (a consortium of BNFL, SERCO and Lockheed Martin) for the Atomic Weapons Establishments at Aldermaston and Burghfield near Reading in Berkshire.

"We argue that the Environment Agency had to carry out a proper justification exercise in accordance with the Euratom Treaty. We are pleased to note that the Secretary of State for Defence believes this is a point that should be referred to the European Court of Justice." Phil Shiner, Solicitor

There is enormous public interest in this decision given that these are the sites of manufacture and servicing of Trident warheads. Although the Environment Agency has decided that radioactive discharges are safe, the public is concerned that past, present and future discharges from AWE accumulate. They contaminate the environment and pose a long-term threat to public health.

"Why has a proper justification not been provided for radioactive discharges from Aldermaston and Burghfield? And why did the Environment Agency not examine the justification for themselves?" Pam Vassie for NAG

"According to the Environment Agency's decision document, 45% of alpha discharges to air from AWE Aldermaston are caused by the continuing production of Trident. It is now time to concentrate on cleaning up this site. We need the government to publish a timetable to reach ZERO DISCHARGES." Pam Vassie for NAG

" I'm not convinced that the Environment Agency has taken into account the concerns of people who actually live near the Atomic Weapons factory." Emanuela Machiori, peace campaigner

The Applicants are aware that Aldermaston is a very dangerous site and will remain so for many years. They wish to see an end to the creation of nuclear discharges and waste, with a legally regulated programme of decommissioning over a time-scale governed by public health and safety, rather than military, financial or political considerations.

For more information contact:
the applicants lawyer, Phil Shiner 0121 212 1868 (phone) 07715 485248 (mobile) phil_shiner@publicinterestlawyers.co.uk
Di McDonald, NAG 02380 554434 (phone) 07880 557035 (mobile) nis@gn.apc.org
Pam Vassie, NAG 01189 780148
Evelyn Parker, NAG 01635 253231

-------- china

Clinton, Jiang Air Differences

Yahoo News
Friday September 8
By Steve Holland
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000908/pl/clinton_jiang_dc_4.html

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In a frank but friendly exchange, President Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin on Friday aired differences over religious repression in China and Tibet, China's relations with Taiwan and a U.S. missile defense system, U.S. officials said.

During the 1-1/2 hour meeting at a luxury hotel in New York, the two leaders discussed U.S. concerns about human rights practices in China but Clinton said the issue should not hold up approval of permanent normal trade relations between the two countries.

In their first meeting in a year and one of the last before Clinton leaves office in January, the president raised the issue of China's repression of religion within China as well as in Tibet.

This prompted Jiang into a commentary about the history of religion in China and how Christianity is a relatively new phenomenon in his country, brought into China by Western incursions over the last 200 years, and compared this to the longer histories of Buddhism and Islam.

Clinton, according to a senior U.S. official at the meeting, stressed ``his belief that religious freedom is good'' for China but Jiang disagreed that religion is restricted in his country.

The United States on Tuesday accused China of trying to stem a surge in religious activity by harassing, detaining and physically abusing believers.

The criticism of Beijing's treatment of Tibetan Buddhists, Falun Gong spiritual practitioners and members of unregistered groups came in the second annual report on religious freedom written by the State Department by order of the U.S. Congress.

At a luncheon speech later to American businessmen and policy makers, Jiang said his government respected Tibet's cultural traditions and had cracked down on the Falun Gong spiritual movement because it was a cult that broke up families.

Jiang said China protected religious freedom and ``normal religious activities'' and that state agencies should not discriminate against believers.

``But Falun Gong is by no means a religion,'' he said. ``It is a cult. It has been outlawed by the Chinese government according to law. It has broken up, ruined and displaced many families. All governments ... would oppose cults like this.''

At their meeting, Clinton urged Jiang to engage in a peaceful dialogue with Taiwan, which Beijing considers a breakaway province that must eventually be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary.

China said this week new Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian was showing a ``very dangerous'' drift toward separatism.

``Our feeling is that we would like this relationship not to kind of remain where each side is warily watching the other, but rather would like to see a dialogue begin to move the relationship forward,'' said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

There was no sign of movement from the Chinese on this issue.

Indeed, officials said, the entire meeting ``wasn't designed to reach specific decisions,'' but was more of a broad discussion.

``They know each other well enough, they kind of do this back and forth, and stress that they're good friends, and smile at the end. So the tone was good, but this was not a lot of fluff. This was quite substantive all the way through,'' one said.

Clinton discussed with Jiang his decision a week ago not to take steps to deploy a national missile defense but would leave it up to his successor. Despite his decision, he told Jiang that the threat of missile attack from so-called ``rogue states'' was real and must be confronted.

China bitterly opposed the missile defense plan as a destabilizing one.

Clinton told Jiang he would urge his successor, be it Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites) or Republican George W. Bush (news - web sites), to engage in a ''serious dialogue'' with the Chinese and urged Jiang to be reciprocal.

Jiang agreed it was a serious issue, the U.S. official said.

The China trade bill cleared key hurdles in the U.S. Senate on Thursday, putting it on track for expected final passage next week after months of delay.

Once approved by the Senate and signed into law by Clinton, the bill would end the annual ritual of reviewing Beijing's trade status and guarantee Chinese goods the same low-tariff access to the U.S. market as products from nearly every other nation.

``I believe the legislation will pass,'' Clinton said during a picture-taking session as he began a meeting with Jiang. ``I am pleased with the progress it is making in the Senate, but of course we still have some work to do.''

-------- korea

N.Korea to Watch for Next U.S. Steps After Apology

Yahoo News
Saturday September 9
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000909/ts/korea_north_dc_1.html

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea said on Saturday it hoped for practical follow-up to a United States apology for the treatment of a North Korean delegation as they headed to the U.N. Millennium Summit.

``We pay attention to the official apology made by the U.S. side for this incident,'' the North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported in English, quoting a statement from the North's Foreign Ministry.

``Taking note of the fact the U.S. side, feeling responsibility for the incident, made an apology, we decided to follow the U.S. future practical deed,'' it said.

The delegation, led by designated head of state Kim Yong-nam, were body-searched by U.S. airline staff at Frankfurt airport on their way to New York, and promptly flew back to Pyongyang in protest at the ``rude and provocative'' act.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said on Friday she had sent a letter of apology to North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam-sun and had received a reply.

``They accepted the letter and expressed understanding of the fact that this is not a position of the United States government and will not affect in any way our continuing evolutionary relationship,'' she said.

The Foreign Ministry statement also said the incident had seriously infringed the sovereignty of the state.

``The DPRK (North Korea) values its sovereignty like its life and soul,'' it said.

``Putting It Behind Us''

Albright told reporters in New York: ``We are putting all this behind us.''

Kim Yong-nam, chairman of the People's Supreme Assembly Standing Committee, would have been the highest official from communist North Korea to visit the United States.

The United States had already publicly expressed regret about the incident, which could have upset its policy of trying to draw Stalinist North Korea out of its isolation.

State Department officials said the problem had arisen because the North Korean delegation had changed its travel plans.

It said the search had not been carried out by U.S officials but by American Airlines staff observing Federal Aviation Authority security procedures for nationals of countries on Washington's list of ``state sponsors of terrorism.''

Despite having no diplomatic relations, North Korea and the United States are engaged in several tracks of talks -- on the future of the Korean peninsula, on North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs and on its inclusion on the list.

North Korea is anxious to get off the list but the United States says it has not yet met the conditions.

The main conditions are that it expel Japanese Red Army members who hijacked a Japanese airliner to North Korea in 1970, and that it make a public denunciation of terrorism.

Albright said the North Korean foreign minister, but not the head of state, would come to New York to take part in the meetings of the U.N. General Assembly next week.

-------- russia

Russia denies it sunk own sub

Australian Broadcasting Network
Sat, 9 Sep 2000 1:54 AEDT
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/default.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newslink/weekly/newsnat-9sep2000-10.htm

Russia has dismissed as "totally false" a German newspaper report that the ill-fated Kursk nuclear submarine was sunk by a Russian missile.

The Berliner Zeitung had claimed that the Kursk was sunk by a radar-guided missile fired by the Peter the Great, a nuclear-powered cruiser, during exercises by Russia's Northern Fleet.

The office of Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who is heading the inquiry into last month's tragedy, says the actual cause of the disaster should be known when the commission presents its report next week.

Mr Klebanov has indicated that three possible scenarios are still under scrutiny.

He says an explosion in the submarine's torpedo compartment, a collision with another submarine, or with an unexploded World War Two mine could have caused the tragedy.

---

Russia eyes defense cuts
Nation plans to slash troop strength by 30%

Lincoln Journal Star
09/09/00
BY DANIEL WILLIAMS
The Washington Post
http://www.journalstar.com/nation?story_id=1450&date=20000909&past=
http://www.herald.com/content/sat/docs/045770.htm

MOSCOW - Russia will reduce military troop strength by nearly 30 percent within the next three years as part of a far-reaching effort to hoard resources in the country's decaying armed forces, the defense minister announced Friday.

By 2003, about 350,000 troops will be cut from the 1.2 million-member armed forces, including 180,000 infantry and tank troops, 50,000 sailors and 40,000 members of the air force. Another 20,000 will be released from the Interior Ministry's armed police units, and further reductions will be made in missile and logistical groupings, border troops and railroad guards.

The downsizing measures were worked out a month ago by President Vladimir Putin and senior defense officials during a meeting designed to fashion a 15-year military development plan. At the meeting, Putin decided to shift money away from maintaining Russia's nuclear arsenal and into ground forces. With Friday's announcement of specific cuts, it is clear that the conventional forces are being pinched as well.

In the defense policy meeting last month, Putin decided to let Russia's nuclear arsenal shrink to 1,500 warheads, less than half the number permitted under the START II nuclear arms reduction treaty signed in January 1993 with the United States. The combination of deep slashes in nuclear and conventional forces have left the impression among some commentators that Putin, for all his touting of Russia as a great power, is transforming the country into a lesser, regional one. The armed forces of the Soviet Union once numbered about 5 million troops, and equipping them consumed 70 percent of the country's economic production; at the time of the Soviet Union's collapse a decade ago, 2.5 million soldiers were stationed on the territory of what is now Russia.

"This is a rational move. The Kursk incident made it especially clear that even now, Russia cannot support what has been created," said Eugenia Albats, a journalist and close observer of Russian intelligence. The nuclear-powered submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea following an explosion on Aug. 12 in which all 118 crewmen perished, and the stumbling Russian response laid bare a wide range of military deficiencies.

Putin is a strong rhetorical booster of armed strength, but he has also made it clear that Russia ought to live within its means. The country's annual defense budget stands at about $7 billion - 40 times smaller than U.S. expenditures. In the wake of the sinking of the Kursk, Putin expressed his intention to supply Russia with a "compact" but modern armed forces. To finance the modernization, he is asking for an increase in spending, which could come from the revenue increase Russia has experienced from the booming price of oil, its main export.

"The country, even with an economy that is more successful than it was a year ago, simply cannot support a military of 1.2 million," said Alexander Golts, a defense analyst for Itogi magazine.

One newspaper predicted that Russia will go so far as to reduce its national air defense systems, concentrating them only in key areas around Moscow, the northwest Arctic and the Pacific.

"A few years ago, Russian generals couldn't have dreamt about this type of selectivity, even in a nightmare," said Mikhail Kozyrev, a defense writer for the newspaper Vedomosti.

Friday's announcement was made by Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev during a visit to a tank division headquarters near Moscow. "Decisions . . . have been made, and proposals to the president on implementation are being worked out," Sergeyev told reporters as he toured an armored vehicle museum. Word of the cuts had been circulating for several days in the Russian media.

The poverty of Russia's armed forces is in plain view. On city streets, soldiers beg for cigarettes and prostitute themselves in public parks. In Chechnya, where Russia is bogged down in a war with guerrillas, soldiers warmed themselves during winter months by burning ammunition boxes. Discipline problems are rampant, and Russian troops in Chechnya looted homes and committed atrocities against civilians in several towns.

Conventional troop cuts will be accompanied by a reorganization of units in charge of offensive nuclear weapons. The days of Russia's ballistic missile force as a separate branch of the armed forces are coming to an end. Last month, Putin decided to retire silo-housed intercontinental ballistic missiles as their service lives expire. As the number of land-based missiles declines, Russia's strategic rocket forces will be folded into the air force and almost half of its units disbanded, the newspaper Sevodnya reported.

The end of the missile force's separate identity is galling to officers who regard nuclear weaponry as a symbol of Russian greatness. The debate over shifting resources was bitter. Sergeyev, a general and former rocket force commander, opposed a campaign by Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, chief of the general staff, to reduce spending on the nuclear arsenal. Their unusual public spat spotlighted the sensitivities over Russia's military decline.

---

Russia Announces Deep Military Cuts

NewsMax
Saturday, Sept. 9, 2000
CNSNews.com
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/9/8/180653

LONDON - Russia announced Friday it will slash the size of its armed forces by almost one-third over the next two years. Reports from Moscow quote officials as saying strategic missile forces will be among those affected.

Russian news agencies quote Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev as telling journalists the cuts would be completed by the end of 2003.

Of its active troop strength of 1.2 million, 350,000 men will be shed, the majority from land forces. Former President Boris Yeltsin over the past decade already cut the size of Russia's forces drastically, from 5 million.

Sergeyev, who was speaking at a military ceremony outside Moscow, also reportedly announced that the independent command of the Strategic Rocket Forces, which oversees land-based nuclear missiles, would end.

The minister, himself a former commander of the strategic missile forces, was involved in a major dispute last summer with generals who called for their radical restructuring, to free badly needed resources for conventional forces.

Military sources were quoted as giving the following breakdown for the cuts: 180,000 from land forces, 50,000 from the navy, 40,000 from the air force, 25,000 from Federal Government Communication Service (involved in securing communications) and from the FSB intelligence service, 20,000 from interior ministry forces, and the rest from other branches of the armed services.

An official is quoted as saying, "The most radical cuts will affect the strategic missile forces, support and auxiliary services."

U.S. military analyst Edward B. Atkeson said Friday it was difficult to assess the significance of the announcement without knowing how hard the strategic rocket forces would be hit.

But he thought that area would be the most likely to be targeted for reductions, because "they've been held at essentially their potential wartime strength" while much of the rest of the Russian military had been allowed to stagnate.

"If they're going to make some significant cuts to their strategic forces, that could signal a change in their basic philosophy that they've been pursuing over the last eight to 10 years - putting the emphasis on the nuclear forces."

Atkeson, a former Army deputy chief of staff intelligence, said the Russian move could be in reaction to President Clinton's recent announcement delaying a decision on developing a national missile defense system until the next administration.

"It may be in recognition of that, that they (the Russians) feel they could take some reductions from their strategic forces."

Had Clinton not made the decision, Atkeson said he would have been very surprised if any cuts had been made to the strategic forces.

"They put enormous emphasis on the nuclear side from the political point of view because they've had such dry rot in the rest of the forces. So they try to husband the strategic forces for whatever political leverage can be gained from that."

Atkeson questioned whether the forces would in fact be cut by as large a proportion as suggested by the reports.

"They haven't been able to get the recruits to fill out the forces anyway. So a lot of them will be 'cutting out spaces rather than faces.'

"That's a game that every government plays - if you can't get the troops to fill the authorized quotas, then you change the quotas and claim you've reduced your forces."

He noted that Russian armed forces had been terribly underfunded. The recent Kursk nuclear submarine disaster had been "a manifestation of the problems they'd had throughout the whole system, with the exception of their strategic forces."

After the sinking last month of the Kursk and the deaths of all 118 crewmen, President Vladimir Putin said conclusions about the future of the army and the navy would be drawn in light of the disaster.

Meanwhile, Russia Friday denied a report in a German newspaper saying the Kursk had been hit by a live ship-to-ship missile fired from the Russian cruiser Peter the Great during naval exercises.

Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov said no live missiles had been used in the exercises, while a naval spokesman said the vessels concerned would not have been within striking range of each other.

---

Analysis: Putin Hopes to Save Sinking Ship

NewsMax
Saturday, Sept. 9, 2000
UPI
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/9/8/194435

WASHINGTON - On his around-the-world tour, which took him to Tokyo and New York, President Putin behaves as the strange mix of a Soviet leader and a post-modern media artifact that he is.

Most of all, he is a leader of a weak power, a country that cannot afford to pay for its ambitions but is trying to use every trick in the book to minimize its failings. Putin is trying to divert attention from domestic disasters, such as the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk and the unprecedented fire that gutted the huge Ostankino TV tower in Moscow.

The Russian leader and his image-makers hope that by acting like a head of a superpower and making the Russians proud again, the disasters would be put behind and forgotten.

But in Tokyo, Putin missed an opportunity to sign a peace treaty with Japan that would formally end the conflict between the two countries.

Tokyo refuses to sign a peace treaty with Russia until Moscow returns four small islands known in Japan as the Northern Territories and in Russia as the Kurile Islands.

When the Soviet communist dictator Joseph Stalin broke his 1941 Non-Aggression Treaty with Japan at the end of World War II, he did it as a part of his obligation to Western allies. As the result, Moscow captured the southern part of Sakhalin Island and the Northern Territories.

In 1956, then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev promised to return at least two of the islands to Japan, but later repudiated his position.

Putin Still Popular in Russia

Putin, who still enjoys high popularity at home - 65 percent, according to the last poll - could have returned the islands and thus end the dispute during his visit to Japan last week.

Instead, he stuck to his guns, refused to negotiate, and instead promoted joint economic activities between Russia and Japan, including in the Kurile Islands. Putin upheld his image as a tough statesman, preferring to squander the opportunity for a number of small business deals he concluded in Tokyo.

A power station fueled by natural gas will be constructed on Sakhalin Island and will sell electricity to Japan. A feasibility study will look at two tunnels connecting Japan with Russia (and further, with the rest of Asia and Europe). And a minor agreement on joint farming of sea urchins, a Japanese delicacy, was signed. Putin has invited Japanese Prime Minister Yashiro Mori to visit Moscow once again.

But what Putin lacked in substance, he compensated for in his martial arts public relations stunts.

Dressed in white judo uniform with a black belt of the accomplished martial artist that he is, Putin threw down another black belt judoka, while allowing himself to be thrown down by a 10-year-old girl. The Japanese public loved it. Putin won hearts and minds.

The Russian president appeared much more conventional at the United Nations Millennium Summit. His agenda and speech were vintage Soviet. Putin suggested conducting a conference aimed to ban weapons in space and to improve handling of weapons-grade nuclear materials and nuclear waste. He also called to strengthen the United Nations and step up the fight against international terrorism.

In New York, as in Tokyo, Putin's was an act of the head of a weak power attempting to use the international system to maximize Russia's advantage while covering up Russia's military decline, as was demonstrated by the Kursk disaster.

There are three ironic aspects of Putin's performance.

Soviets Militarized Space, Not U.S.

First, it was the Soviet Union that militarized space and pioneered space-based weapons.

To this day, the Russian space program is run by soldiers. Unlike the United States' NASA, which is a civilian agency, the Russian space effort is fully militarized.

It was developed by the visionary rocket designer Sergey Korolev in the 1950s and 1960s as an off-shoot of the Russian nuclear strategic missile program, which gave the Soviet Union an advantage in throw-weights.

The Soviet Union also pioneered anti-satellite spacecraft aimed at blinding America, space-based lasers and early space-based missile defense systems.

Secondly, handling of nuclear materials indeed needs international attention as the Russians are the major suppliers of nuclear technology and materials to the ambitious Iranian civilian and military nuclear program.

Moscow also acts as the international protector of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, who hs not given up his dangerous nuclear ambitions. In fact, at the Millennium Summit Russia lobbied to end U.N sanctions against Saddam.

President Clinton raised the issue with Putin, as he did with his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, but so far to no avail.

And thirdly, the terrorism threat Russia is facing today is a blow-back of two trends from the 1970s and 1980s.

The massive Soviet program to train terrorists was focused at the Arabs and Western Europe, to attack Israel and the pro-Western regimes of the Middle East and destabilize NATO members.

The program, ran by the KGB, the former employer of Putin, and supervised by the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, diffused weapons knowledge and terrorist tradecraft throughout the Middle East.

Even more important was the growth of Mujahadeen, the Islamic fighters who volunteered to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Some of these fighters are now confronting the Russians in Chechnya. They also are leading the challenge to secular, pro-Russian regimes of Central Asia.

Those Military Cuts

And while Putin was calling for improving international cooperation to benefit Russia, back home his minister of defense, Marshal Igor Sergeyev, announced unprecedented cuts in the Russian armed services.

These cuts, which amount to 350,000-400,000 men in the military, and another 60,000 in the interior, railroad and border guard troops, will be implemented in the years 2001-2003.

The cuts come because Russia cannot afford the troops. Moscow already has abolished its Space Forces as a separate branch of the military and will proceed to downgrade its once-proud Strategic Rocket Forces, collapsing them into the Air Force. Sergeyev fought and lost the battle to preserve the missile forces as a separate service of the military.

From now on, Russia will concentrate on countering conventional and low-intensity security challengesz and will have to gradually abandon expensive tools for implementing global ambitions.

Russian and foreign observers, military leaders and the public, will certainly take note. And the Russian public will not forget the pain and humiliation of the Kursk, and the symbolism of the Ostankino fire anytime soon.

Putin may try to behave as a leader of a superpower, but his performance at the Millennium Summit reminded one of a captain of a slowly sinking ship.

* By Ariel Cohen, Ph.D., research fellow of the Heritage Foundation and author of "Russian Imperialism: Development and Crisis" (Praeger, 1998).

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

Ex-Shattuck chief: No enriched uranium at site

Denver Post
Sept. 9, 2000
By Theo Stein Denver Post Environment Writer
http://www.denverpost.com/news/news0909h.htm

Sept. 9, 2000 - The former manager of the Shattuck Chemical Co. site in Denver said his company never handled special or enriched uranium material and never extracted scrap uranium for nuclear weapons programs in the 1960s.

Responding to a story in Wednesday's edition of USA Today, Tom Millensifer, vice president of the firm from 1956 to 1974, said Friday that his firm handled only naturally occurring radioactive materials and depleted uranium, for which it was licensed by the Atomic Energy Commission.

"We did not supply anything to any weapons program for any purpose, and that includes naturally occurring and depleted uranium," he added. The USA Today story, based on an examination of Atomic Energy Commission documents, looked at 300 sites nationwide. But it had local EPA officials scratching their heads.

A chart that ran with the story contained this reference to Shattuck: "Extraction of scrap uranium for reuse by the weapons program in the 1960s."

"At this point, we have no evidence at all that Shattuck was involved in any kind of nuclear weapons work," said Barry Levene, head of the EPA's Colorado Superfund cleanups.

Millensifer scoffed at the claim in USA Today.

"That's ludicrous," he said. "You don't take depleted uranium and make a weapons-grade uranium out of it. Two-thirds of the U-235 isotope was removed."

Bob Sperling, a member of the citizen group CLEANIT, said he wouldn't be surprised if the allegation were true, but he added that it shouldn't stop the ongoing cleanup.

Levene said the regional EPA office provided the paper with some documents relating to Shattuck. After reading the story, Levene contacted USA Today reporter Peter Eisler and asked if Eisler would cite the documents used in the paper's report.

"He told me he wasn't sure where the reference was found," Levene said. "Obviously, it's very much of an interest to us. We want to know if there's something else we're not aware of."

The paper said it had reviewed more than 100,000 documents of declassified federal records and identified more than 300 private companies and properties that "apparently were engaged in weapons work."

However, the paper acknowledged that it obtained basic information for only about 150 sites, and that in other cases reporters were unable to confirm the specific nature of the contracting operations.

Millensifer said that at one point, the company did look at reprocessing scrap from a Remington Arms plant that made armor-piercing rounds out of depleted uranium.

But it discovered the depleted uranium material did not meet the needs, and shipped it to a licensed waste site, he said.

The allegation is potentially explosive because neighbors have long suspected that the company and the EPA have not been forthright about what went on at the site, located near West Evans Avenue and South Santa Fe Drive.

Hugh Kaufman, an investigator for the EPA's Office of Ombudsman, had previously alleged that Shattuck performed Defense Department work.

The EPA's inability to describe the scope of contamination on site with certainty was the lever that citizen groups used to force the agency to reopen the decision-making process. In 1992, the EPA decided to entomb more than 50,000 cubic yards of contaminated dirt mixed with concrete and fly ash on site. This past June, the agency formally reversed itself and authorized a plan to remove the waste.

If Shattuck handled even "lowlevel" radioactive waste, it could significantly alter the cleanup plan.

-------- new mexico

Lee Tapes Called a Danger to U.S.

Albuquerque Journal
Saturday, September 9, 2000
By Ian Hoffman Journal Northern Bureau
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/120781news09-09-00.htm

SANTA FE - Wen Ho Lee's tapes of U.S. nuclear-weapons data - seven still unaccounted for - pose a greater danger to the United States than anything else in the annals of federal criminal courts, prosecutors said this week.

In a continuing fight to keep Lee jailed, prosecutors warned the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that only imprisonment in a solitary cell can protect national security from the 60-year-old scientist.

A federal judge in Albuquerque rejected those arguments last week but was blocked at the last minute from releasing Lee into "house incarceration."

Prosecutors now argue U.S. District Judge James A. Parker went too far by turning Lee's suburban White Rock home into a prison. But even if Lee is kept to his house, under video cameras and phone taps, prosecutors suggest that Lee's wife, Sylvia, his next-door neighbors and anyone they talk to also could "inadvertently" become risks to national security.

Lee might use them as conduits to secretly signal the hiding place or use of the seven tapes of U.S. weapons data that the former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist created, mostly in 1993 and 1994, prosecutors said.

Three 10th Circuit judges will hear arguments for and against Lee's release Monday in Denver. The debate is likely to touch on issues as intriguing as the value of nuclear secrets and whether justice can translate into imprisonment at home.

On Friday, the New York Academy of Sciences joined the nation's top scientific societies in urging Lee's release. Academy leaders told the 10th Circuit in a letter that his jailing is steering the brightest scientists away from the nation's laboratories and eroding U.S. authority to protest the jailing of scientists by Third World dictators and communist regimes.

"We do believe," academy leaders wrote, "that continued pretrial incarceration of Dr. Lee is inimical to our fundamental concepts of human rights and does a disservice to our national interest."

Before taking a job at U.S. national labs, wrote academy president Rodney W. Nichols, any scientist would wonder whether a security slip-up "real or alleged" could pose "the risk of many months of onerous pretrial solitary confinement should the government for whatever reason seek to assert a risk of disclosure of national security 'crown jewels.' ''

Also Friday, Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader said the Lee case seemed to be politically driven but crumbling.

"Given what the judge has been ruling in this case, it doesn't look like the government has a very strong case," Nader said while campaigning in Santa Fe. "I think it's largely a desire to cover their political flanks and find the culprit. We saw this during witch hunts during the McCarthy period, for example."

Last week, Parker found the nature of Lee's alleged mishandling of nuclear-weapons data is still "serious and of grave concern."

But the judge ruled Lee's defense had amassed enough new evidence to merit his release, most notably doubts among experts about the value of the Lee tapes and an FBI agent's admission to giving incorrect testimony that made Lee look deceptive.

Parker concluded that prosecutors failed to prove that Lee is so great a danger to the United States that even "Draconian" conditions of release can't protect national security.

Federal prosecutors now say the danger of Lee somehow giving his tapes to a foreign nation appears to be unprecedented.

"The harm feared by the government should an unauthorized group or country acquire the tapes is unparalleled" in reports on any federal court case to date, prosecutors argued this week in filings with the 10th Circuit.

The tapes contain rough designs of proven U.S. nuclear warheads and bombs, plus software used to simulate their detonation. They also store hard-to-acquire scientific data on, for example, the behavior of plutonium when crushed by high explosives.

Noted weapons scientists testifying for Lee's release told Parker that the tapes would be of little or no use to a foreign power and would not "change the global strategic balance," as government prosecutors claim. One acknowledged, however, that under some hypothetical scenarios, the tapes could "alter the military landscape in a significant negative way," prosecutors said.

Lee attorneys say the tapes were destroyed, but they have not offered details of their fate. They argue that the scientist is no danger to national security and deserves to go home under tight control of federal court authorities and the FBI, pending a November trial.

The proposed conditions of Lee's release prohibit his adult children from living at home and allow the FBI to be present when they visit, arranged by faxed notice. Sylvia Lee would have to notify the FBI four hours before leaving the house for groceries or other purposes.

The houses of Lee, his brother in San Francisco and next-door neighbors Don and Jean Marshall would be forfeited to the federal government if Lee broke any conditions of his release.

That still isn't enough to protect the nation, prosecutors told the appeals court.

"If the government is truly to protect our interests here, it will also have to identify and surveil not only Mrs. Lee, but those with whom she is seen to be conversing," wrote lead federal prosecutor George A. Stamboulidis, an assistant U.S. attorney.

"Allowing Mrs. Lee unlimited and unmonitored movement outside the home and ... conversations with both her husband and any other third party, is insufficient to reasonably assure the safety" of the nation, he argued.

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

Bomb dropped off Tybee still a mystery
Kingston says weapon dropped in 1958 is safe; retired vet wants to find it.

Savannah Morning News
Web posted Saturday, September 9, 2000
By Doug Gross Savannah Morning News

It happened 42 years ago and 35,000 feet above the coast of Tybee Island.

But a Cold War-era crash between two Air Force planes that ended up dumping a nuclear bomb in Wassaw Sound is still raising questions.

U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., said a new report this week verifies what Air Force documents have been saying for years -- that the bomb dropped in the 1958 incident wasn't armed and poses no danger.

But Derek Duke, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, says conflicting reports raise enough doubt that the government should fund a new mission to locate the bomb.

And, for about $1 million, Duke, president of an underwater recovery company, said he'll be happy to conduct that search.

Kingston asked the Air Force to look into the incident, which will be part of a Sept. 17 documentary on The Learning Channel, after being contacted by Duke in July.

On Thursday, he said, "the Air Force finalized their research and confirmed that the bomb is not nuclear-capable."

"We now want to know if the Air Force thinks it's still out there, if it's dangerous and if they need to search for it," Kingston said in a news release.

On Feb. 8, 1958, a bomb was jettisoned after a B-47 bomber and a F-86 jet fighter collided during a training exercise.

After attempting to land several times, the bomber pilot decided he couldn't land his plan while carrying the bomb and received permission to drop it off the coast.

The pilot was finally able to land the aircraft safely, and was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for his efforts. The fighter plane crashed near Sylvania after the pilot parachuted out.

Navy and Air Force crews searched for the bomb for more than a month, but finally abandoned their search that March.

Tybee Councilman Jack Youmans, 73, remembers the crash.

He said that fresh from a World War II era when German subs camped out off the coast of Tybee, the bomb raised some eyebrows but didn't cause too much concern.

"Back during the war, a whole plane crashed right out there in the marsh," Youmans said. "That was a bigger commotion.

The councilman said he's not too concerned about any danger the bomb poses now.

"It's been there long enough now that I don't think it's any worry," he said. "Why would they have been hauling around an armed atom bomb, or whatever kind it was? They don't train with live bombs."

But Duke said there are enough questions about potential danger from the bomb that a new search is in order.

Even if the weapon wasn't set to detonate, it could still contain plutonium, tritium and other "extremely bad stuff."

He cites a 1966 report in which a Department of Defense official included the bomb on a list of missing nuclear bombs.

"That was a very serious error if he did make that mistake," said Duke, in a telephone interview from Aruba, where the Statesboro resident was working as a commercial airline pilot.

"I've never seen a document that corrects that mistake."

Duke said he's assembled a team under the business name of American Sea Shore Underwater Recovery Expedition (ASSURE). He submitted a plan to the federal government offering to conduct a 90-day search for the bomb for just under $1 million.

He said the technology available now, compared to the hand-held grappling hooks used to trawl for the bomb in 1958, would have a good chance of finding it if it's still in the area.

"The smart thing to do is to find the weapon," said Duke, who served in Vietnam and retired after being called back to active duty during Operation Desert Storm. "Either way, it needs to be found."

Kingston has asked the Air Force to review Duke's proposal.

"We'll continue to work closely with the Air Force to bring final resolution to any remaining questions, such as any environmental impact or any potential danger the bomb's carcass might still have," Kingston said.

Civic reporter Doug Gross can be reached at 652-0314 or at dougg@savannahnow.com.

---

Army vets in town for reunion of missile unit Field Artillery Missile Battalion was formed to counter Soviet system

Alabama Live
September 09, 2000
The Huntsville Times.
By SHELBY G. SPIRES Times Aerospace Writer
http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/Sep2000/9-e7341.html

Retired Army veterans from around the country plan to converge on Huntsville this weekend as part of a reunion of a missile unit with a special heritage.

Members of the 246th Field Artillery Missile Battalion share the distinction of being in the first surface-to-surface missile battalion formed by the Army to counter a similar Soviet missile system in Europe.

In 1950, the Russians were known to have fielded a missile based on V-2 technology they captured from the Germans at the end of World War II. Called the R-1 by Allied forces in Europe, the missile stood as a threat to American troops in post-war Europe, and then-President Harry S. Truman wanted a similar system to counter the Russian threat.

''We were told that the word came from the president to get something in the field in Europe within two years, and we did that,'' said retired Army Maj. Gen. Grayson Tate, who was part of the outfit.

Tate and about 90 other retired Army missile men will be in Huntsville Sunday through Tuesday at the Hilton. It is the fourth reunion of an outfit which disbanded 42 years ago.

''To me, that is what is amazing about this unit,'' Tate said. "It was one of many that were disbanded and people went on about their lives and then, almost 40 years later, people started finding each other and they got back together.''

In the late 1940s, the Army didn't have a true surface-to-surface attack missile. The military was years away from having a system designed, tested and manufactured for that purpose.

To save time, the Army used a research missile that was already in production and fitted it with a guidance and warhead section. Called the Corporal, the missile could send a 30-kiloton nuclear warhead or a 1,500-pound high explosive warhead up to 75 miles. The system was designed and managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, Calif.

The Army outfitted the 246th with six launchers and 600 men. Then, they spent two years training and figuring out if the Corporal system would work.

Aside from proving the concept of an Army surface-to-surface missile unit, the 246th also participated in the first simulated nuclear-training exercise in 1954 - Operation Flashburn, Tate said.

''At the time, we didn't know the practicalities of how these types of weapons would work. They had the concept down on paper, but we had to prove the concept in the field,'' Tate said. ''We literally went in the field on a training exercise, moved sandbags around like they were nuclear weapons, signing for them and such, and learned how to get these things in the field and to work.''

Early on, the Corporal had reliability problems, though. Battery operators were told not to use the missile too close to friendly positions because of the fear of hitting their own men.

''Well, it was something we had there as an early presence,'' Tate said. ''But, no, it didn't work too well sometimes. It was the first of its kind.''

Tate said the targeting system was a challenge because map coordinates had to be translated into military grid coordinates and then entered into the rockets guidance system by hand.

''This was before computers and calculators, and it was an involved, time-consuming process,'' Tate said.

The missile was 45 feet long and about 30 inches in diameter. The long, narrow body made the Corporal an ungainly missile sometimes.

Tate remembers one episode during the unit's early training days in El Paso, Texas, when a wind storm hit the missile team in the field.

''We were trying to get the missile down and secure it, but the vehicle we needed for that was at another site, about two hours away," he said. "About the time we got it there, a huge gust of wind came through, twisted the missile, and it just fell over on its side.

''I sat there and saw my entire career flash before my eyes,'' said Tate, who was a captain at the time. ''It was the only training rocket we had.''

---

GOP aims to use missile defense as a campaign weapon Clinton's delay of system will be touted as weakness on defense

Alabama Live
September 09, 2000
The Huntsville Times.
By BRETT DAVIS Times Washington Correspondent
http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/Sep2000/6-e34561.html

WASHINGTON - President Clinton's announcement that he will not let the National Missile Defense program start early construction doesn't mean the subject is dead for this year.

Republicans will revive the missile defense issue on speech platforms and maybe even television screens in coming weeks.

They will seek to paint the outgoing Clinton-Gore administration and Democrats in general as soft on defense and will say the solution is to elect Republicans.

''We will use every opportunity to talk to voters about the fact there are 13 intercontinental ballistic missiles that are pointed at our children and our grandkids, and we have no missile defense system to knock them down,'' said Mark Pfeifle, the deputy communications director for the Republican National Committee, referring to Chinese missiles.

Pfeifle said although there are no official plans to air campaign ads against Clinton's decision to delay the system, the issue will definitely appear on the campaign trail as part of GOP criticism against the way the White House and Democrats have handled defense issues.

Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., is wasting little time. He was to hold a press conference today to release a report he said shows the Clinton administration first denied the missile threat, then underfunded missile defense programs.

Clinton announced last week he has decided not to allow early contract work on the National Missile Defense program to proceed this year. The program employs about 1,300 defense and contractor workers in Huntsville.

Texas Gov. George W. Bush said Clinton's decision shows that Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, Bush's Democratic opponent in this fall's Democratic election, failed to lead on the issue of missile defense, and vowed he would deploy one as soon as possible.

''Once the facts are laid out, a compelling case can be made that Republicans should be entrusted with rebuilding our military, implementing a missile defense system to protect our families and ensure that America is ready to meet the challenges of the next century,'' Pfeifle said.

He said an RNC poll of 800 registered voters conducted in June 1998 showed 76 percent favored missile defenses and only 19 percent were opposed.

Not everyone thinks missile defense is a winning campaign theme. Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers, a group that praised Clinton's postponement, said it's not an issue that resonates with voters once they hear all the facts.

He said his group sponsored a poll this year and found 59 percent of those polled wanted to wait until system tests were complete before making a deployment decision. Only 20 percent wanted the president to decide now, and another 21 percent said they didn't know.

Kimball said those polled were told about technological problems the program has faced, as well as its cost, which is estimated to top $60 billion once all its systems are in place.

''The American public is very much split on this issue,'' Kimball said. ''Any time that a candidate might spend talking about deployment of national missile defense is time . . . not spent talking about the issues that the public seems to care about the most, such as Social Security, education and health care.''

Joseph Cirincione, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he agreed the issue doesn't click with voters. He noted that Republican advisers thought missile defense would be a hot issue in 1996, but candidate Bob Dole dropped it because most voters didn't care. He predicted Bush will do the same.

''It just isn't a key voting issue for the American public,'' Cirincione said. ''I don't think the Republicans will get any traction on this issue at all, and I would be very surprised if Gov. Bush raised it in the debates or very much in the campaign at all.''

No more missile intercept tests are slated before the election this November, and the next one may not even occur before the end of this year.

---

Russia To Cut Armed Forces

Washington Post
Saturday , September 9, 2000 ; A01
By Daniel Williams Washington Post Foreign Service
http://washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=wpni/print&articleid=A36747-2000Sep8

MOSCOW, Sept. 8 -- Russia will reduce military troop strength by nearly 30 percent within the next three years as part of a far-reaching effort to hoard resources in the country's decaying armed forces, the defense minister announced today.

By 2003, about 350,000 troops will be cut from the 1.2 million-member armed forces, including 180,000 infantry and tank troops, 50,000 sailors and 40,000 members of the air force. Another 20,000 will be released from the Interior Ministry's armed police units, and further reductions will be made in missile and logistical groupings, border troops and railroad guards.

The downsizing measures were worked out a month ago by President Vladimir Putin and senior defense officials during a meeting designed to fashion a 15-year military development plan. At the meeting, Putin decided to shift money away from maintaining Russia's nuclear arsenal and into ground forces. With today's announcement of specific cuts, it is clear that the conventional forces are being pinched as well.

In the defense policy meeting last month, Putin decided to let Russia's nuclear arsenal shrink to 1,500 warheads, less than half the number permitted under the START II nuclear arms reduction treaty signed in 1993 with the United States. The combination of deep slashes in nuclear and conventional forces have left the impression among some commentators that Putin, for all his touting of Russia as a great power, is transforming the country into a lesser, regional one. The armed forces of the Soviet Union once numbered about 5 million troops, and equipping them consumed 70 percent of the country's economic production; at the time of the Soviet Union's collapse a decade ago, 2.5 million soldiers were stationed on the territory of what is now Russia.

"This is a rational move. The Kursk incident made it especially clear that even now, Russia cannot support what has been created," said Eugenia Albats, a journalist and close observer of Russian intelligence. The nuclear-powered submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea following an explosion on Aug. 12 in which all 118 crewmen were found to have perished, and the stumbling Russian response laid bare a wide range of military deficiencies.

Putin is a strong rhetorical booster of armed strength, but he has also made it clear that Russia ought to live within its means. The country's annual defense budget stands at about $7 billion--40 times smaller than U.S. expenditures. In the wake of the sinking of the Kursk, Putin expressed his intention to supply Russia with "compact" but modern armed forces. To finance the modernization, he is asking for an increase in spending, which could come from the revenue increase Russia has experienced from the booming price of oil, its main export.

"The country, even with an economy that is more successful than it was a year ago, simply cannot support a military of 1.2 million," said Alexander Golts, a defense analyst for Itogi magazine.

One newspaper predicted that Russia will go so far as to reduce its national air defense systems, concentrating them only in key areas around Moscow, the northwest Arctic and the Pacific.

"A few years ago, Russian generals couldn't have dreamed about this type of selectivity, even in a nightmare," said Mikhail Kozyrev, a defense writer for the newspaper Vedomosti.

Today's announcement was made by Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev during a visit to a tank division headquarters near Moscow. "Decisions . . . have been made, and proposals to the president on implementation are being worked out," Sergeyev told reporters as he toured an armored vehicle museum. Word of the cuts had been circulating for several days in the Russian media.

The poverty of Russia's armed forces is in plain view. On city streets, soldiers beg for cigarettes and prostitute themselves in public parks. In Chechnya, where Russia is bogged down in a war with separatist guerrillas, soldiers warmed themselves during winter months by burning ammunition boxes. Indiscipline is rampant, and Russian troops in Chechnya looted homes and committed atrocities against civilians in several towns.

Conventional troop cuts will be accompanied by a reorganization of units in charge of offensive nuclear weapons. The days of Russia's ballistic missile force as a separate branch of the armed forces are coming to an end. Last month, Putin decided to retire silo-housed intercontinental ballistic missiles as their service lives expire. As the number of land-based missiles declines, Russia's strategic rocket forces will be folded into the air force and almost half of its units disbanded, the newspaper Sevodnya reported.

The end of the missile force's separate identity is galling to officers who regard nuclear weaponry as a symbol of Russian greatness. The debate over shifting resources was bitter. Sergeyev, a general and former rocket force commander, opposed a campaign by Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, chief of the general staff, to reduce spending on the nuclear arsenal. Their unusual public spat spotlighted the sensitivities over Russia's military decline.

Today's announcement attracted responses ranging from the angry to the resigned. "If there are cuts just because there is no money, this is not the way out. There are limits," said Nikolai Bezbodrov, a member of the parliament's defense committee.

Countered Vladimir Zhirinovsky, an ultranationalist politician: "If we are unable to allocate money to support a million-sized army, it would be better to allocate it for a reduced one. In this case, soldiers would be better fed [and] clothed and possess up-to-date equipment."

In addition to the armed forces cuts, government communications units and the Federal Security Service, Russia's domestic intelligence agency, are facing staff reductions, the Interfax news agency reported.

RUSSIA TIGHTENS ITS BELT

Financially strapped Russia announced cuts in its armed forces over the next three years. Here is a comparison with troop strengths of other nations:

Troop strength in 1998, in millions

NATO: 4.23
China: 2.82
U.S.: 1.4
India: 1.18
Russia: 1.16
N. Korea: 1.06
Russia--After reductions are complete in 2003: 0.84
S. Korea: 0.67
Turkey: 0.64
Pakistan: 0.59
Iran: 0.54
Vietnam: 0.48

-------- MILITARY (by country)
-------- arms sales

News from the Gulf region Saudis seek $2.7 billion in US arms, maintenance

Gulf News
09/09/00
http://www.gulf-news.com/09092000/rightlink1.htm

Washington (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia is seeking $2.7 billion in U.S. arms and technical support to help modernise its National Guard and maintain a fleet of F-15 fighter jets bought from the United States, the Pentagon said yesterday.

One of the three military packages requested by the Gulf kingdom would include $416 million in light-armoured vehicles, anti-tank missiles and advanced communications equipment made by General Motors Corp. and Raytheon Corp., the Pentagon said.

A second deal valued at $690 million would involve parts, maintenance, training and modification facilities for the large Saudi fleet of F-15 jets built by Boeing Co. The prime contractor for that would would be Al-Salam Aircraft Co., which is 50 percent owned by Boeing.

The Defence Department said the prime contractor had not yet been determined for the biggest package, valued at $1.6 billion for flight simulators, parts and technical services for Royal Saudi Air Force F-15s. "The prime contractor will be determined in joint negotiations as the programme proceeds," the announcement said.

The planned military deals, which require approval by the U.S. Congress were announced at a time when the Clinton administration is calling on Saudi Arabia and other members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to reduce high oil prices. But such U.S. sales have been routinely approved in the past for one of Washington's biggest arms customers over the past two decades.

"Saudi Arabia remains a highly valued, friendly nation and continues to lead the way for improvements in U.S.-Arab relations," the U.S. Defence Department said in a statement.

"It's strategic location, proven oil reserves and moderate stance in the Arab world link its international interests and security with those of the United States. The Royal Saudi Air Force was a valuable participant in the Gulf War coalition and provides a tested deterrent force against aggression in the region," the statement added.

The request for 132 light armoured vehicles built by the Diesel Division of General Motors of London, Ontario, in Canada, along with 1,827 "TOW" anti-tank missiles and sophisticated radio communications equipment made by Raytheon are part of a major effort by the Saudis since the 1991 Gulf War to upgrade their National Guard ground forces.

The Pentagon said the high-frequency radio equipment would provide the Saudi guard "with the modern command, control and communications needed to provide security throughout the region."

-------- china

China Blast Kills 60, Injures 309

NewsMax
Saturday, Sept. 9, 2000
UPI
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/9/9/95849

BEIJING - A truck carrying explosives in China's western Xinjiang province blew up Friday night, killing at least 60 people and injuring another 309, state media reported Saturday morning.

The truck, traveling in the provincial capital Urumqi, was in a populated area in the city's suburbs when it exploded at around 7:30 p.m. local time, killing and injuring people as well as destroying more than 20 other vehicles and nearby houses, Xinhua news agency said.

The truck was carrying a large load of explosives on their way to be destroyed, according to officials in the province.

Police, fire fighters and local medical teams tended to the wounded and extinguished fires before clearing the area by around noon Saturday.

Xinjiang province is China's most volatile region and has seen a crackdown in recent years since ethnic Uyghur militants began a campaign of bombings and assassinations in the early 1990s demanding a separate state. Three were put to death in July for separatist and terrorist activities.

Authorities said there was no reason to suspect Friday's incident was a terrorist attack, but the cause of the explosion is still under investigation.

-------- u.n.

Millennium Summit on Disarmament

Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000
From: Felicity Hill <flick@igc.org>

Please find below the portion of the Millennium Declaration related to disarmament.

II. Peace, Security and Disarmament

8. We will spare no effort to free our peoples from the scourge of war, whether within or between States, which has claimed more than 5 million lives in the past decade. We will also seek to eliminate the dangers posed by weapons of mass destruction.

9. We resolve, therefore:

* To strengthen respect for the rule of law, in international as in national affairs and, in particular, to ensure compliance by Member States with the decisions of the International Court of Justice, in compliance with the Charter of the United Nations, in cases to which they are parties.

* To make the United Nations, more effective in maintaining peace and security, by giving it the resources and tools it needs for conflict prevention, peaceful resolution of disputes, peacekeeping, post-conflict peace building and reconstruction. In this context, we take note of the Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations and request the General Assembly to consider its recommendations expeditiously.

* To strengthen cooperation between the United Nations and regional organizations, in accordance with the provisions of Chapter VIII of the Charter.

* To ensure the implementation, by States Parties, of treaties in areas such as arms control and disarmament, and of international humanitarian law and human rights law, and call upon all States to consider signing and ratifying the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

* To take concerted action against international terrorism, and to accede as soon as possible to all the relevant international conventions.

* To redouble our efforts to implement our commitment to counter the world drug problem.

* To intensify our efforts to fight transnational crime in all its dimensions, including trafficking as well as smuggling in human beings and money laundering.

* To minimize the adverse effects of United Nations economic sanctions on innocent populations; to subject such sanctions regimes to regular reviews; and to eliminate the adverse effects of sanctions on third parties.

* To strive for the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons and to keep all options open for achieving this aim, including the possibility of convening an international conference to identify ways of eliminating nuclear dangers.

* To take concerted action to end illicit traffic in small arms and light weapons, especially by making arms transfers more transparent and supporting regional disarmament measures, taking account of all the recommendations of the forthcoming United Nations Conference on Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons.

* To call on all States to consider acceding to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, as well as the Amended Mines Protocol to the Convention on Conventional Weapons.

----

U.N. Leaders Spell Out Plans for New World

Los Angeles Times
Saturday, September 9, 2000
By MAGGIE FARLEY, JOHN J. GOLDMAN, Times Staff Writers
mailto:Maggie.Farley@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/20000909/t000084682.html

UNITED NATIONS--The largest-ever gathering of global leaders ended Friday with the adoption of an ambitious Millennium Declaration--an eight-page plan to cure the world's direst problems.

Now all they have to do is live up to it.

"Ultimately, you yourselves are the United Nations," Secretary-General Kofi Annan declared at the close of the summit. "It lies in your power, and it is your responsibility to reach the goals you have defined. Only you can determine whether the U.N. rises to the challenge."

The declaration pledges, among other things, to halve the number of the world's people in poverty, reverse the spread of AIDS and strengthen the U.N.'s ability to keep peace. Delegations had six months leading up to the summit to prepare plans on exactly how to translate their promises into practice, and Annan stressed that there will be an aggressive follow-up program to monitor implementation.

Annan convened the summit to breathe new life into a troubled organization that is confronting challenges never envisioned when it was founded in 1945 with only 51 members. Today, it has 189 members but is deeply underfunded and under-equipped to deal with its core mission of maintaining global peace and security.

One of the key products of the summit was an agreement to strengthen peacekeeping operations. It mandates an overhaul of U.N. forces to enable them to respond more quickly and robustly to conflicts that are not only between countries but also within them, in which warlords and terrorists often target civilians and children.

The specifics of the peacekeeping reforms, especially financing, will be taken up next month by the General Assembly in a relatively speedy follow-up to the summit's pledges.

Not many of the overarching problems discussed in the three-day convocation had such concrete responses. The benefits and disparities of globalization quickly emerged as a key theme in four free-form sessions attended by the leaders.

"The discussion was not whether globalization is good or not. It was that it is here and how to deal with it," said the leader of one panel, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. The dignitaries tried to address the social and economic gaps that exist in this era in which developing countries are confronted with unforgiving markets and dazzling technology yet half the world's people have never made a phone call.

Agencies inside and outside the U.N. are already working to translate promises into practice. Across the street from U.N. headquarters, the man who must head the mission to reduce the number of people who live on less than $1 a day is ready to begin.

"Halving poverty in 15 years seems like the most pie-in-the-sky goal imaginable," said Mark Malloch Brown, head of the U.N. Development Program. "But it's really quite doable. And the people who can do it are right here.

"This week they talk about doing something about poverty," he said. "Well, next week they can carry through."

On Monday, some of the government ministers who came for this week's summit will stay on for a meeting to make policies designed to reduce poverty: building schools, improving health care and creating jobs through small businesses.

The three days of intense diplomacy opened new dialogues, with hundreds of encounters both official and accidental. In a notable first, Cuban President Fidel Castro approached President Clinton to shake his hand. It was the first time Castro, who has lasted as long as nine U.S. presidents, has had such contact with a sitting president, but Clinton was quick to downplay any musing that it might lead to a rapprochement. "It just happened, you know," he said.

There were also portents of future concerns for U.S. policymakers. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who recently visited Iraq, stayed out talking with Castro until well after midnight two nights in a row, solidifying what U.S. officials might see as a "bad-boy alliance" in the making.

And then there were the disappointments. Attempts to pick up the pieces of a Mideast peace agreement failed this week, despite Clinton's shuttling between Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

Africa's leaders pressed for greater recognition of the continent's struggles against poverty, disease and strife--but specific solutions remained elusive. No progress was reported on a diplomatic way of ending the war in Congo. In Zimbabwe, the government-sanctioned seizures of land from white farmers continued unabated.

And the grim dangers of peacekeeping were underscored when Annan, with deep sorrow, announced the killing of three U.N. refugee workers in West Timor by a mob of Indonesian militia members and supporters angered by the death of a militia leader.

The summit came in the midst of a U.S. presidential campaign, and some U.N. staffers observed that decision-makers were hindered by not knowing what the attitude of the next administration will be toward the world body. A major unanswered question was the degree of vigor with which Washington will follow the problem-solving blueprint ratified by the leaders at the historic meeting.

The U.S. is the largest financial contributor to peacekeeping operations. However, by the world body's tally, it also owes $1.7 billion, and its contributions are diminishing while the world's trouble spots multiply.

* CLINTON, JIANG MEET

The president and his Chinese counterpart disagree on the issue of religious persecution. A8

Search the archives of the Los Angeles Times for similar stories about: United Nations, World Politics, World Economy, Kofi Annan. You will not be charged to look for stories, only to retrieve one.

---

U.N. Summit Ends with Bold Goals, Little Peace

Yahoo News
Friday September 8
By Paul Taylor
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000908/ts/un_summit_dc_22.html

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A unique U.N. Millennium Summit ended on Friday by adopting ambitious goals for the United Nations to strengthen peacekeeping and reduce poverty, disease and illiteracy in the 21st century.

But three days of set speeches, round tables and closed-door diplomacy by the largest gathering of world leaders in history yielded scant progress toward resolving conflicts and defuse tensions in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

A Millennium Declaration, adopted by acclamation, pledged a renewed drive in pursuit of peace, security, disarmament and the eradication of poverty, especially in Africa.

``We are determined to establish a just and lasting peace all over the world in accordance with the objectives of the Charter,'' the roughly 150 kings, presidents and government leaders vowed.

They endorsed targets set by Secretary-General Kofi Annan to halve by 2015 the 22 percent of the world's population existing on less than $1 a day, and halt and reverse the spread of AIDS, malaria and other major diseases by that date.

The most practical measures adopted call for a radical overhaul of chronically underfunded and overstrained U.N. peacekeeping operations to provide better trained and equipped troops faster to defuse conflicts and prevent massacres.

The summit's co-chairs, presidents Sam Nujoma of Namibia and Tarja Halonen on Finland, hailed the birth of a new spirit of global solidarity in the world organization, but Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez cautioned: ``Many of our peoples are at the gates of hell.'' On the sidelines, President Clinton's bid to break a Middle East peace deadlock appeared to be foundering and Africa's troublespots defied diplomatic efforts at resolution.

The final hours of the sprawling conference mirrored the ebbing months of Clinton's presidency -- full of bold ambitions for peace and world economic development but with few solutions to stubborn regional conflicts.

The president vented frustration at his unsuccessful efforts to bridge the gap between Israel and the Palestinians, telling Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern during a photo session: ``This Middle East thing -- it's maddening.''

Clinton also sought with little success to promote a peace dialogue between China and Taiwan in his first meeting in a year of bumpy relations with Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

In an exchange described as frank but friendly, they aired differences over Taiwan, religious freedom in China and Tibet, and U.S. missile defense plans.

Africa's Plight To The Fore

African leaders expressed satisfaction that they had pushed their continent's life-and-death struggle with poverty, disease and war higher up the world's agenda -- at least momentarily.

Led by South Africa's Thabo Mbeki and Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo, they made impassioned pleas for debt relief, funding to combat the scourge of AIDS and an overhaul of U.N. institutions to cope speedily with crises and conflicts.

But hardline stances by the protagonists dashed any prospect of a diplomatic resolution to the long-running war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and to Zimbabwe's violent campaign of land seizures from white farmers.

President Robert Mugabe unleashed an anti-colonial tirade against critics of Zimbabwe's land reform program, seeming to slam the door on efforts by Annan to mediate an end to the crisis that has killed at least 31 people since February.

Growing concern among both industrialized and developing countries at soaring world oil prices was another theme on the sidelines of the summit.

On the eve of important meetings of OPEC countries, Annan expressed concern at the potential effect on the world economy of high energy prices and urged producers to be ``especially sensitive'' to the impact of their decisions.

Palestinian President Yasser Arafat returned home without meeting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to attend a session of the Palestinian Central Council on Saturday, expected to authorize him to delay the declaration of a Palestinian state on Sept. 13 to allow time for further talks with Israel.

A Palestinian official said low-level negotiations would resume soon, but such talks have rarely yielded breakthroughs and the sides are still deadlocked on control over Jerusalem, which thwarted an agreement at the Camp David summit in July.

Indonesia Under Scrutiny

The start of the summit was overshadowed on Wednesday by the savage killing of three U.N. refugee workers in West Timor by Indonesian militiamen hostile to the independence of East Timor, dramatizing perils facing U.N. staff in crisis spots.

As the summit ended, the Security Council was debating a toughly-worded resolution that would demand Indonesia take action to disarm the militias and send a U.N. fact-finding mission to West Timor.

Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid, whose shaky hold over his sprawling country and its armed forces was exposed by the incident, told reporters the situation was now under control and ``very good'' in West Timor.

But the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, told reporters it was unclear how much control Wahid had over the military. He said it was the responsibility of Indonesia to end what he called the terrorizing of East Timorese refugees in camps in West Timor.

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

Boeing Introduces the C-40A Clipper for U.S. Naval Reserve

Yahoo News
Saturday September 9,
Press Release
SOURCE: The Boeing Company
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/000909/wa_boeing_.html

SEATTLE, Sept. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- The Boeing Company today rolled out the first Boeing 737-700C airplane, designated as the C-40A Clipper by the U.S. Naval Reserve, at a festive celebration held at Boeing Field in Seattle.

Hundreds of Boeing employees along with U.S. Navy personnel who worked on the program attended the ceremony for their first look at the C-40A Clipper painted in U.S. Navy colors.

``We are very pleased to celebrate the premiere of the C-40 Clipper today,'' said Mark Rogers, director of Boeing Derivative Airplane Programs. ``This airplane will serve the U.S. Naval Reserve well, and we look forward to providing the government with many more 737 Next-Generation airplanes in the future.''

The U.S. Naval Reserve, which will operate and maintain the aircraft, is the first customer for the newest member of the Boeing Next-Generation 737 family and is purchasing the aircraft to replace its fleet of aging C-9 Skytrains. Currently, the Naval Reserve provides 100 percent of the Navy's worldwide in-theater medium and heavy airlift.

``Nearly 25 percent of our C-9s are more than 30 years old,'' said Rear Adm. John Totushek, Commander of Naval Reserve Forces. ``We are excited about having the Clipper join our fleet and eventually replace all 27 of our C-9 aircraft.''

Once the transition to the C-40A is complete, the Naval Reserve is expected to save more than $27 million per year in fuel and maintenance costs.

The military version of the 737-700C aircraft will be certified to operate in an all-passenger (121 passengers), all-cargo or combination (combi) configuration that will accommodate up to three cargo pallets and 70 passengers on the main deck.

A commercial version will be certified to operate in two configurations: an all-passenger configuration and an all-cargo layout that can carry up to eight pallets.

The C-40A made its first flight on April 14, upon entering its flight test program. This fall, the aircraft will be delivered to Boeing in Wichita, Kan., for modifications that will allow it to be flown in the combi configuration.

The Navy is purchasing the airplanes using commercial practices and has ordered five of the 737-700C models. A sixth aircraft is in the U.S. defense budget for 2001.

The first four aircraft will be based at Naval Air Station Carswell Joint Reserve Base, Ft. Worth, Texas, with the first to be delivered in early 2001. The fifth and sixth aircraft will be based at Naval Air Station Jacksonville, Fla.

NOTE: A photo of the 737-700C/C-40A premiere showing is available at: www.boeing.com and www.boeingmedia.com.

SOURCE: The Boeing Company

-------- OTHER
-------- environment

TN Nuke waste incinerator sold
Perma-Fix Environmental Services acquires mixed waste treatment facility

9/7/2000
From: Mike Ewall <catalyst@envirolink.org>

Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Inc. of Atlanta, GA announced today that it has completed the acquisition of Diversified Scientific Services, Inc. (DSSI), a mixed waste facility that is permitted to treat radioactive and hazardous (mixed) and low-level radioactive waste from a subsidiary of Waste Management, Inc. The purchase price of this acquisition totaled approximately $8.5 million, consisting of $2.5 million in cash and the balance in notes.

DSSI provides mixed waste disposal services for industry, including prominent international pharmaceutical companies as well as agencies of the U.S. Government, including the Department of Energy and Department of Defense. The company operates a 30,000 sq. ft. treatment facility in Kingston, TN, and is the only commercial facility of its kind in the U.S. that is currently operating and licensed to destroy liquid organic mixed waste. During 1999, DSSI had revenues of more than $10.1 million. It is anticipated that the operations of DSSI will have an immediate benefit, allowing Perma-Fix to expand its mixed waste service capabilities.

Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Inc. provides unique hazardous, mixed and industrial waste management services. The Perma-Fix Process is a proprietary mobile treatment technology that converts hazardous waste into a non-hazardous material.

Source: Perma-Fix Environmental Services, Inc. Edited by Kate Goff Managing Editor, Solid Waste Online http://www.solidwaste.com/

----

For Recyclers, a Silver Lining in the Treads

Los Angeles Times
Saturday, September 9, 2000
By SCOTT GOLD, Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/news/front/20000909/t000084689.html

MECCA, Calif.--The Firestone tire recall, an operation that could cost $500 million, has spawned its own trickle-down economy, carrying ripples out to everyone from Native Americans who run a desert recycling station to a Garden Grove tire hauler working so much overtime that he has nearly doubled his weekly paycheck.

The Cabazon Band of Mission Indians said Friday that it has reached a deal to accept almost 5,000 Firestone tires a day for the next year from dealers across the Southwest. The tribe will grind the tires into crumbs at a plant near Mecca, east of Palm Springs. The crumbs will be turned into asphalt, playground surfaces and floor mats.

The deal appears to be the biggest yet resulting from the national panic to unload possibly flawed tires--a stampede that has created a sudden and very large pile of trash, and a cottage industry to get rid of it.

Bridgestone/Firestone Inc. last month voluntarily recalled 6.5 million tires in the United States, used mainly on Ford Explorers, because their treads could peel off. Regulators are investigating reports that the tires may be linked to 69 traffic deaths.

Eventually, experts estimate, millions more tires could be involved--a substantial addition to the estimated 275 million that are dumped, burned or recycled in the United States and Canada each year. The Cabazon deal and others could help answer a nagging question: Just what will happen to all those tires?

Thousands of them will go from driveways to car dealers to tire haulers to Los Angeles-based Rubber Technology International, where the recall has galvanized the 4-year-old company's business.

Like the Cabazon operation, RTI grinds up used tires and turns the chunks into everything from traffic cones to garden hoses. The company expects the number of tires it handles to nearly double, from 55,000 in July to 100,000 in September--almost entirely because of the recall, said President and CEO Trevor Webb.

Most of the additional tires are coming from Ford Motor Co. and Firestone dealers across Southern California. Webb has rented a tire-shredding machine called a rasper for $10,000 a month.

Because stored tires create fire and health hazards, state regulators allow him to keep just 30,000 at a time in his Washington Boulevard yard. Tires are stacking up so fast that Webb is running his rented rasper 19 hours a day--almost twice as much as he did before the recall.

"These are unfortunate circumstances," Webb said. "But for our business, it's great. I hate to say that. But it's true."

Also benefiting from the surge in business is a company called Redwolf, based in East Los Angeles. The company picks up the recalled tires, for $1 apiece, and delivers them to Webb. Redwolf pays Webb about 45 cents each to take the tires, thus making about 55 cents for every tire delivered.

Owner Vernon Redwolf has hired three extra drivers, and all of his drivers are working at least six days a week.

One of them is 18-year-old Manuel Figueroa, whose paycheck-to-paycheck life has suddenly changed dramatically.

With overtime because of the Firestone recall, his pay has jumped from $400 a week to $700--and that means he can afford to stock up on diapers for his 3-week-old daughter, Alissa, and give a little extra cash to his girlfriend.

"It started slowly, and then it just came up on us," Figueroa said. "Now it's exploded. Business is good. There are a lot of tires out there."

Before the recall, Redwolf picked up about 7,000 tires a week from car and tire dealers for disposal. These days, the company is picking up 17,000 a week.

Redwolf used to sort through the tires he picked up and sell the good ones to used-tire stores. "Not any more; I don't have time to sell them," he said. "Before this, there were days when we didn't have anything to do. Now, we're working seven days a week, we're backed up and we can't take any more accounts. We're swamped."

Tribe Cashes In With Recycling

The biggest recipient of the Ford tires so far, apparently, is the 42-person Cabazon Band. The tribe, which also owns a casino, has set aside 590 acres of its desert reservation for an "eco-industrial park," which includes First Nation Recovery Inc., the only tire-recycling facility in the country owned and operated by Native Americans.

On Friday on the reservation, about 30 miles southeast of Palm Springs but a world away from the desert's ritzy resorts, First Nation General Manager Dan Swanson pulled out a pocketknife and sliced through a blue plastic seal covering the lock of an unmarked tractor trailer.

He flung open the doors of the truck--the first of four that would arrive at the reservation that day--revealing 1,250 spanking new Firestone tires.

The truck backed up to the recycling warehouse and the tires were tossed onto a conveyor belt, which carried them into a shredding machine that moaned and groaned before spitting out chunks of rubber. By the end of the day, those chunks of rubber, with fragments of steel removed by magnets, had been reduced to fine, clean crumbs to be shipped to manufacturers of various rubber products.

First Nation is being paid $20 per ton to take the Firestone tires, and will further profit by selling the recycled rubber. If the contract lasts for a year, it will be worth about $368,000 just for taking the tires.

It is the largest contract ever signed by First Nation Recovery, but it is unclear how much the deal will be worth overall. Tim Bent, Firestone's senior environmental manager, disputed experts' projections that the number of tires affected by the recall could soar beyond 6.5 million, and he said the deal with the Cabazons may not last a full year because the recall may be over by then.

"The sooner the better, obviously, from our perspective," Bent said.

He said Firestone is "actively seeking" other deals, similar to the one struck with the Cabazons, that would help handle the sudden flood of tires.

He said the company is trying to make the best of the situation by making sure that as many of the recalled tires as possible are recycled. After tires have been piled in a dump, they carry contaminants that make them difficult, and too expensive, to recycle.

Firestone has based a four-person security team on the reservation to make sure that none of the tires leave intact. The tires are also slashed before they arrive, and Firestone offers $10 to any recycling worker who finds one undamaged.

Making Good Things From Bad Tires

Operations like First Nation and RTI will turn Firestone's recalled tires into materials for a variety of products:

* An asphalt blend that is softer than traditional pavement, making it quieter, more durable in harsh weather and easier on cars.

* Playground surfaces, running tracks, equestrian arenas and basketball courts.

* Garden hoses, favored by some gardeners because tire rubber is already treated to repel ultraviolet light--which means the hoses last longer in the sun.

Business is also booming at the Quantum Group, a Tustin-based incubator for technology that allows businesses like RTI to find new ways to reuse tire rubber.

For example, because of the recall, Quantum President and CEO Ehrenfried Liebich is moving full speed ahead with a new technology to produce new tires from used tires. The method had been on the back burner.

The sudden rush of tires, he said, means that companies are already lining up to buy his $500,000, 50-ton machines, which will now be ready in two months.

Liebich said he expects the numbers of tires affected by the recall to soar even more because drivers with tires similar to the recalled ones will get rid of them to alleviate any safety concerns--even if they can't get Firestone to pay for it.

"Everything is moving at a much more rapid pace," Liebich said. "All of a sudden, we are in the right place at the right time."

---

$47 Million Fine for ExxonMobil in Nigerian Spill

Yahoo News
Saturday September 9
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000909/wl/nigeria_exxonmobil_dc_1.html

LAGOS (Reuters) - A Nigerian court has ordered U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil to pay 4.8 billion naira ($47 million) to some communities in the oil-producing Niger Delta, as compensation for an oil spillage from the firm's facility, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

An ExxonMobil's offshore pipeline in southern Nigeria burst open in 1998, spilling an estimated 40,000 barrels of crude into the environment.

The independent Thisday said the court, siting in the southern city of Calabar, gave the ruling in the suit filed against the oil firm by communities in Akwa Ibom State, host to ExxonMobil's Qua Iboe export terminal.

``After listening to the argument by both counsels (for plaintiffs and defendant), Justice C.C. Nwogwugwu passed judgement in favor of the plaintiffs,'' it said.

It did not however, give the date the ruling was made.

Officials of the Nigerian unit of ExxonMobil were not immediately available for comments.

The oil company, which accounts for over 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Nigeria's daily output of more than two million barrels of oil, faced a deluge of legal suits following the oil spillage which spread along Nigerian coastal lines stretching across seven states.

Fishermen groups and other coastal dwellers in Nigeria's commercial capital Lagos have also filed suits claiming several billions of naira as compensation from ExxonMobil.

-------- police

To Warn, or Not to Warn The case of the fantasizing policeman was trouble for his therapist. Would calling those possibly in danger prevent tragedy, or breach a confidence?

Los Angeles Times
Saturday, September 9, 2000
By BARRY SIEGEL, Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/news/front/20000909/t000084687.html

SMYRNA, Ga.--Anthony Stone's predicament began on the summer afternoon he first met Gordon "Jack" Garner III. Stone was a clinical psychologist, Garner a police officer who'd come to him for an evaluation. As they sat together in Stone's office here, the therapist began to realize that this cop suffered from more than the usual stress and burnout.

Much in life left Jack Garner disgruntled and frustrated. He had to deal with an unsympathetic supervisor and whiny citizens. He didn't fit in. He rarely slept well. It was a chore to get his uniform on some mornings. He felt himself "on a roller coaster." Some days he felt "out of control."

Also--he had fantasies.

Stone, taking notes, looked up. What kind of fantasies?

This very morning, Garner reported, he had an image of shooting his precinct captain, Mike Cowart. He envisioned going to Cowart's office. He'd use his service revolver. He'd shoot Cowart lots of times. He'd hit him in his fat gut. He also might go to police headquarters. If he decided to kill himself, he'd take with him the police chief, the assistant chief and anybody else who got in his way.

Garner fixed Stone with a steady eye. He'd had other violent thoughts before, but nothing so vivid as the one about Cowart. "That's when I caught myself. . . . I scared myself thinking that way."

It's fair to say that Garner was scaring Stone as well.

Were Jack Garner's thoughts mere fantasies, or harbinger of a coming massacre? It was a nearly unanswerable question--but one Tony Stone had to answer.

If he concluded Garner was truly dangerous, his dilemma only deepened. A therapist in Stone's position is obliged to keep his clients' revelations confidential. Yet he also has a moral, professional and possibly legal duty to protect third parties from harm.

"Duty to warn" rules are sometimes defined by state statute, sometimes by case law, sometimes by professional boards, sometimes not at all. The model is a 1976 California Supreme Court ruling, Tarasoff vs. Regents of the University of California. Yet the Tarasoff rule is tricky. It's unclear how direct the threat must be, how imminent the danger, how "reasonably" certain the mental health professional.

So counselors grope about. So Stone groped.

After Garner left his office, days passed. One week stretched to two. In 23 years of practice, seeing some 30,000 people, Stone had never once issued a Tarasoff warning. Yet now he picked up the phone and called those whom Garner had imagined harming.

What followed has confounded Stone and many of his colleagues. Instead of the usual pitfall--being sued for failing to warn--he ended up being sued for violating confidentiality. What's more, he lost: In a civil trial that was possibly the first of its kind in the country, a DeKalb County jury in December delivered a $280,000 judgment against the psychologist.

* That summer in 1995, Jack Garner knew he needed help. The weather, so uncommonly hot and humid, was wearing him down. He was working in a fast-growing county northeast of Atlanta, in its busiest precinct. His job was a grind--call after call after call. At 51, he was the oldest patrol officer, working with cops half his age.

His colleagues resented him because he was making more than others, because he once was a big-city police officer in Atlanta. A supervisor called him a loner. A written evaluation indicated that he wasn't "sociable."

Well, sure, he didn't backslap and tell jokes like when he was in his 20s. What could he say? Older cops did seem to be loners. That's just the way he was.

Garner's father died when he was 9, turning his mother to drink. He quit high school to join the Navy. Then he worked 12 years on the Atlanta force, until he got demoted from a sergeant's post over what he saw as "racial politics." Later he left a suburban police department because it was "full of cliques." He went through a difficult divorce--"like a death." After that came a suicide attempt and solitary drinking. Twenty-eight days of inpatient rehab got him sober. He remarried. He had a son.

His problem now wasn't his personal life but his job. He hated work; he didn't trust his supervisors; he didn't like the public. He was going after citizens, making excessive traffic stops, running background checks. He felt tired, stressed out. He didn't know how much longer he could keep going.

That's why, on the morning of Aug. 17, 1995, he went to see James Gonzales, an ex-cop turned psychologist whose business card promised "solutions for change." On and on Garner talked, animated and expressive.

This officer, Gonzales recorded in his notes that day, had a history of suicidal and violent, aggressive thoughts. He currently had feelings of violence toward the Gwinnett County Police Department. He had "passive suicidal thoughts" and "nonspecific urges to hurt someone."

Gonzales thought Garner depressed, paranoid and--most disturbing--highly agitated. While talking, Garner had stared at him--long stares, and infrequent blinking. The therapist saw anger; he sensed instability.

Two days later, Gonzales, wanting help, called Tony Stone, a psychologist who specialized in police evaluations. Tony Stone was an expert--the expert in their region.

I've got a troubled Gwinnett County police officer, Gonzales explained. Would you do a fitness for duty evaluation?

Stone hesitated. These fitness for duty exams often were so ambiguous, so painful. Sometimes his judgment cost a cop his job. It couldn't be avoided, of course. You had to play the gatekeeper.

OK, Stone said. I'll see him.

* As he rose to greet Jack Garner that Aug. 30, Anthony Stone had good reason to feel assured about himself and his accomplishments. He'd grown up in Washington, D.C., the son of a physicist and a social worker. He'd been drawn to psychology for its insights into human behavior, for the way it resonated with his own introspective bent. Armed with a master's degree in public health and a doctorate in clinical psychology, he'd worked as staff psychologist for the Atlanta police force, then had rolled the dice and opened his own private practice.

The gamble had paid off: At 48, he now lived with his wife, a criminal justice professor, and their two children in a big comfortable home set in the woods just north of Atlanta. He wrote journal articles, he contributed chapters to textbooks, he gave speeches. Working with police officers fascinated him. He liked cops, he enjoyed the intensity of their work. That the Atlanta force had sent him through the police academy and given him a squad car with siren and emergency lights pleased him no end. So did his ability to help troubled officers.

Jack Garner's casual attire, shorts and a T-shirt, caught Stone's attention. It didn't look as if this officer had shaved that morning. Garner appeared younger than his 51 years. Although listed as 5 feet 10 and 180 pounds, he seemed smaller, lighter--not the least imposing.

Stone thought him intense and distraught, hardly able to contain himself. He was talking loudly and rapidly, his words rambling. Yet he was quite open, and clearly wanted to be helped.

Right near the start, Garner told of his latest problem: "My captain called me a liar."

The day before, he'd been summoned to Capt. Mike Cowart's office to discuss a citizen abuse complaint. Cowart hadn't believed Garner's account. He drove home deeply disturbed. He changed clothes. He sat back. He felt so mad. He began to envision walking into Cowart's office. He imagined saying, "What about this? Is this a liar in uniform?" He imagined pumping bullets into the fat SOB. He imagined pumping bullets into eight to 10 others. Stone stiffened at Garner's words. This officer had his full attention now. He began writing faster on his note pad.

Garner talked on. He expressed a hatred for his job. He railed at individuals on the force. He griped about "crybaby" citizens who "complain if you look the wrong way." He described various compulsions, among them washing his hands as many as 20 times a day.

When Garner finished, Stone reflected. It was fairly common for him to hear violent fantasies. Usually, though, they were vague and general. Garner had gone further. Garner had offered names of specific potential victims.

No, he hadn't said he intended to kill these people. Yet hardly anyone ever did. Most threats were conveyed as vague metaphors. Who knew? Maybe Garner had a simmering plan, or maybe he had a daydream.

Stone--as do most clinicians--freely admits he can't predict violent behavior. He only can offer opinions based on probabilities. Not until someone kills can therapists know. Then they look back and do studies. Then fingers get pointed. Then anguished cries fill the air, and lawsuits the courtroom.

Stone did what he could: He searched for patterns and signposts. What he saw was a man with massive amounts of pain. One way to deal with such feelings is through compulsive rituals. Another way is to attack those you feel are causing them.

Stone thought Garner might just do that. He was naming names. He was saying he felt scared of his fantasies. He was saying he wanted someone to intervene.

Stone weighed his options. He'd never violated a client's confidence. If he did it now, he'd likely end Garner's career. The prospect made Stone uncomfortable--enough so that he cast about for a compromise. He didn't believe Garner qualified for involuntary commitment, but what if Garner were willing on his own to enter structured treatment? That might be a way to protect Garner and those he imagined hurting.

As their session drew to a close, Stone recommended to Garner an increased level of care, a hospital or day program. When Garner agreed, Stone relaxed.

He still had strong concerns, but given Garner's cooperation, he didn't see an imminent danger. He didn't think a Tarasoff warning was warranted.

Later, in court, he said of this moment: "I did not feel that it was the time to do it."

* Tony Stone had good reason to waver over his course with Jack Garner.

Ever since the 1976 Tarasoff case first established the duty to warn, mental health professionals have struggled with issues of confidentiality and their questionable ability to predict behavior. Tarasoff left many therapists worrying that they were caught in a no-win situation. They could be liable for a patient's violence, or they could be liable for breaching that same patient's confidentiality.

In the Tarasoff case, two therapists treated an obsessed patient who told them of his intention to kill a former girlfriend. They informed not the girlfriend but the police, who questioned and then released the patient when he denied plans to harm anyone. Two months later, he killed his former girlfriend. When the victim's family sued, the court found that "once a therapist does in fact determine . . . that a patient poses a serious danger of violence to others, he bears a duty to exercise reasonable care to protect the foreseeable victim of that danger."

Tarasoff applies only in California, but has proved a model and prod elsewhere around the country. A duty to warn has become part of the professional standards of care outlined by various boards and associations. It also has become the law in some states. Yet responses by state courts and legislatures have varied widely: Some have restricted the application of the Tarasoff rule, some have broadened it, and some have not addressed it in any fashion.

Georgia, as it happens, is among those that have done nothing. As Anthony Stone agonized over Jack Garner, he knew only that his state Board of Examiners of Psychologists did recognize situations in which therapists should reveal a confidence "to protect the patient, client or others from harm."

He could choose his lawsuit. Which would he rather face, a client suing for breach of confidentiality, or widows suing after a massacre?

Early on the morning after he met Jack Garner, Stone called the referring therapist, Gonzales. He thought Garner clearly unfit for duty. He also thought they might have a Tarasoff situation. As Gonzales recalls it, Stone wanted to notify right then and there.

Gonzales didn't. He wasn't in the session with Stone and Garner, he didn't know firsthand what Stone had experienced. All he knew was that Garner hadn't told him about specific violent fantasies. In fact, to him, Garner had denied any intent to harm.

Let's hold off, Gonzales proposed to Stone. Let me work with Garner. Let's get him into a structured program. Based on that, we can reevaluate.

Stone embraced this notion, it being his own first impulse. Things are going to be OK, he told himself. There are issues, but we've got a handle on them.

* What transpired in the two weeks after Stone saw Garner remains, even now, murky at best. Notes are scarce, memories are blurred.

It's known that Gonzales, on that first day, wrote a letter recommending that Garner be placed on 30-day paid leave. It's known that, as a result, Garner went on leave. The rest is open to some conjecture.

Stone says he thought he was "handing Garner off to Gonzales," and that "something would happen imminently, in a day or two." Yet Gonzales' records contain no references to any contact with Garner between Aug. 31 and Sept. 11, 1995. As the days passed, Stone kept calling Gonzales, only to learn that Garner had neither come for another visit nor entered a structured program.

Things weren't playing out as Tony Stone thought they would. Events weren't allowing him to set aside his Tarasoff concerns.

Stone's customary assurance began waning. One evening, he spoke of the case to his wife as they sat in their lush backyard garden, a labyrinth of ponds and paths that he'd designed and built himself. Azaleas and coleus teemed; a dense stand of pine and magnolia and Japanese maple reached to the sky. Psychology had always given Stone a way of looking at things that made sense; now it didn't. "This is not OK," he said. "I don't know quite what to do."

Jack Garner, meanwhile, was sitting at home enjoying his leave. By all accounts he was feeling better. He spent time with his 2-year-old son. He did chores around his apartment building. He cooked dinner for his wife--lots of outdoor grilling. He still had a key to all the precincts and headquarters. He also still had his own guns. "I could do anything," he later pointed out. "But I'm just sitting there, thinking, 'I'm glad I'm off.' "

Days turned into a week. Late on Sept. 6, Stone learned Garner still hadn't entered a program. The next morning, as much to protect himself as to inform, he wrote Gonzales:

"This officer . . . verbalized recent vivid fantasies of murdering his captain and discussed vague fantasies of gunning down his chief, assistant chief and others, in part so he could be killed. It seems appropriate to notify the captain consistent with Tarasoff guidelines and possibly the chief and assistant chief. I strongly recommend that his level of care be increased. I suggested to [Garner] that full or partial hospitalization made sense to me and that I would talk to you [which I did last week]."

Still, Gonzales didn't act. Four more days passed. Stone was rushing around--a steady stream of clients, his kids' school plays, racquetball with friends, golf and biking with his son. At the start, Garner had only occupied his mind in a few quiet moments, driving home or late at night. Now, more and more, Garner commanded his central attention. He was there when Stone awoke in the morning. He was there shooting people whose names Stone knew.

On Sept. 11, 1995, Stone sent Gonzales a formal report, with a cover letter that betrayed his sense of desperation: "I want to reemphasize my intention to notify specific persons named by Officer Garner in reference to his homicidal thoughts; however, I wish to do this in a way that is minimally disruptive to your treatment of him. Hence, I will wait your review of this report and your next session to plan the next move. I have no choice but to warn named persons under the Tarasoff guidelines, and it may be that you have no choice either, being the recipient of my report."

The next day, at their appointment, Gonzales told Garner about Stone's intent to issue Tarasoff warnings. Garner grew agitated and animated. His voice rose. He'd made no threats, he insisted. He had no intent to act violently toward himself or others. He and Stone had only discussed hypothetical situations. He'd be hung out to dry by the department if anyone issued warnings.

Gonzales urged Garner to enter a structured program. Tony Stone will feel better then, he said. Tony Stone might not follow through.

Garner consented. Gonzales called a psychiatrist, Dr. Jeffrey Flatow, to arrange the necessary admitting appointment. Flatow could see Garner in two days--on Sept. 14.

After Garner left, Gonzales punched in Stone's number. "Good news," he said. "Jack has agreed to go into a program."

Stone celebrated. Suddenly the world was a lot cleaner, a lot simpler.

Or so it seemed. Not until he was driving home from Gonzales' office did everything hit Jack Garner squarely in the face.

He'd overheard Gonzales on the phone to the admitting people using the word "homicidal." He didn't believe that's what he was. Yet his therapists did. Stone and Gonzales obviously had been doing a lot of talking together, not including him.

That night, Garner shared his concerns with his wife. "Something's not kosher," he said. "They're setting me up for an involuntary commitment." *

It's most likely that Tony Stone learned late on the morning of Sept. 14 that Garner had canceled his 3:30 p.m. appointment with Flatow. It's also possible that Stone learned then that Garner intended to terminate his relationship with Gonzales.

Whatever the exact timing, on this morning Stone saw a crippling cloud of ambivalence evaporate. Now he didn't have a choice: He and Gonzales had lost the ability to control the situation, to control Jack Garner. Stone had to act, had to give the warnings.

Yet still he paused. For one last confirmation, he called the law firm that provides legal advice to members of the Georgia Psychological Assn. Yes, a lawyer there advised, you have an affirmative duty to warn.

Sitting in his office, Stone reached for the phone. It felt sort of like diving into cold water, yet it wasn't hard now, it wasn't a struggle. At 4:07 p.m.--37 minutes after Garner failed to show for his appointment--Stone made his first call, to Capt. Mike Cowart. At 4:30, he made his second, to the Gwinnett County police chief. At 3 p.m. the next day, he called the assistant chief.

The Police Department responded with dispatch. Within hours, Chief Carl D. White wrote Garner, ordering him "to remain on leave." Soon after, a sergeant arrived at Garner's home to seize everything from his badge to his battery charger. Weeks later, White, rejecting recommendations from Garner's new therapists to take him back, instead offered a job at the county pound.

There, Garner lasted just four months before getting fired. He eventually moved to Savannah, where he now drives a truck, delivering pharmaceuticals each night over a 400-mile route. He makes half his police salary, with no benefits. "After a 31-year police career," he asks, "what else am I going to do?"

* When Garner vs. Stone came to trial, lawyers, jurors and judges found themselves in midair, creating rules on the come, just as Tony Stone had. All the relevant case law involved doctors who failed to warn, not one who did warn. "A case of first impression," the lawyers call it.

Stone won every battle along the way.

Garner's attorneys first asked for summary judgment, arguing there was no Tarasoff provision in Georgia code, so no exception to confidentiality. The judge turned them down. Then they argued that if the judge was going to recognize a Tarasoff rule, he should tell the jury it requires a specific threat and imminent danger. Again the judge turned them down. All you need to violate confidentiality, he essentially ruled, is a reasonable chance of harm.

Stone, though, took a few hard blows inside the courtroom. The opposing attorneys and expert witnesses pointed out that Stone had seen Garner for just one session, with no follow-up, not even a call before issuing the warnings. They pointed out that Garner described fantasies, not threats; that Garner hadn't been Stone's patient; that Garner had been feeling much better since going on leave. Garner didn't represent imminent danger, two therapists suggested, and nothing indicated he would ever become violent. "Grandstanding," one lawyer called Stone's conduct; "unbridled arrogance."

In the end, these criticisms weren't what cost Stone. Despite the therapist's possible missteps, lawyers and jurors alike agree they would have allowed him his clinical judgment if he'd reached it right away. Stone's two-week delay was his undoing.

One of Garner's attorneys, William G. Quinn III, said: "If Stone had issued his warnings on the first day, we'd have no case."

Instead, Stone, recognizing ambiguity, wavered. That left him obliged--at least by the lawyers--to point to an intervening act that changed the equation, that drove him finally to act.

It's when we lost control, Stone claimed. It's when Garner canceled his hospital appointment and terminated Gonzales.

Courtroom testimony, however, didn't serve Stone well here. What Gonzales said on the stand obscured just when Garner terminated him--before or after Stone began making his calls. Stone's letters to Gonzales didn't help either: They made clear he felt compelled to issue Tarasoff warnings days before Garner broke relations.

That Stone had struggled with ambivalence for two weeks was obvious. So was the fact that the events of Sept. 14 provided a final impetus. Yet in the courtroom, this untidy tale got squeezed between two therapists' poor record keeping and the exacting rules of law.

Gonzales, for one, was stupefied: "The way psychologists think and lawyers think is entirely different. Human behavior is just more complex than the legal system or written laws. What goes on in a courtroom is just not a rational process, though it tries to appear rational."

Quinn had his own interpretation: "I think Stone just thought on it some more and changed his mind. Over time, he stewed. He should have just said that. It would have worked."

The DeKalb County jury ended up awarding Garner and his wife $176,471 in damages and $103,779 in attorneys' fees. Rather than try to appeal, Stone settled in early May this year: Garner got paid, and in exchange, the judge vacated the formal judgment.

That means there technically is no legal finding against Stone. Yet he remains on a national database of malpractice settlements. He also remains seized by a new reticence when he hears clients in his office voice possible threats. It all has become a matter of legal chess to him, rather than trying to do the right thing.

"It makes me feel sad and cynical," Stone said. "It's like I'm in this kind of crazy world that doesn't make sense. I have obligations but no protection. I did the right thing; I would do it again. Maybe not all my I's were dotted. But it's not like there's a preset method for doing this."

In the end, Garner vs. Stone highlighted rather than resolved a difficult situation. Instead of setting legal precedent, it fueled an already confused debate, and the sense among many therapists that they had better get it right whichever way they land.

In fact, what therapists really must do, at least for the lawyers, is carefully document their reasoning process. Yet that won't ease the underlying problem. No matter how many sessions or phone calls, therapists cannot with certainty answer Garner vs. Stone's most haunting question: Were Jack Garner's vivid fantasies just that, or harbinger of a coming tragedy?

Only if Garner had sprayed a volley of bullets would that be known. That he didn't could mean he never would have. Or it could mean that Stone's intervention had an impact.

Talking about all this one recent afternoon in Savannah, Jack Garner offered a sort of confession: "When we won the case, I actually felt sorry for Anthony Stone. It's true, I felt sorry for him. Now tell me--is that weird?"

---

Council Will Try to End Stalemate on LAPD Decree
Reform: Failing to finalize agreement, city negotiators hand lawmakers more than a dozen unresolved issues on deal to avert civil rights suit by U.S. Justice Department.

Los Angeles Times
Saturday, September 9, 2000
By TINA DAUNT, Times Staff Writer
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/locpol/todays.topstory.htm

Unable to reach agreement among themselves after months of talks, the Los Angeles city representatives negotiating with the U.S Department of Justice over police reform sent a proposed settlement to the City Council on Friday that leaves more than a dozen issues for the lawmakers to resolve.

Among the critical points on which the 15-member council must decide is the basic question of whether the city should enter into a consent decree to prevent the Justice Department from filing a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city over the LAPD's conduct. A consent decree is a binding settlement whose implementation is overseen by a monitor and federal judge.

Other issues unresolved by the sharply divided panel of negotiators include:

* Whether a federal monitor should be appointed to oversee a lengthy list of reforms in the problem-plagued Police Department.

* Whether the LAPD should be required to compile statistics on the race of individuals subjected to warrantless searches and pedestrian stops.

* Whether the department should have to undertake a study of how it treats mentally ill suspects.

* Whether federal authorities should have a role in designing a computerized system to track officers' misconduct and in accelerating its implementation.

* Whether the civilian Police Commission's inspector general should be hired under a contract rather than serve at the pleasure of the commissioners, all of whom are appointed by the mayor.

The negotiators and their federal counterparts did agree on many points, including expansion of the LAPD's internal affairs division, as well as establishment of a special unit to investigate officers' use of force. The agreement also envisions numerous audits of operations and reforms with regular reports to the civilian Police Commission, and so-called integrity checks of officers in the field.

For more than four years, federal officials have been investigating allegations that the LAPD routinely employs excessive force and infringes on the rights of minority residents. Their inquiry accelerated amid the allegations growing out of the Rampart scandal.

The council members--who were hand-delivered the 84-page agreement at their homes Friday night--are expected to meet Tuesday in closed session to determine whether they can reach some consensus on issues that have aroused the greatest contention since Washington announced its willingness to file a lawsuit to force Los Angeles into police reform.

On Friday, some council members expressed dissatisfaction with the number of difficult issues the negotiators left unsettled and wondered if the inconclusive result might not scuttle chances for accord.

"If there is a list of unresolved issues, it does cause one to wonder what it is they have agreed upon in terms of reform," said Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas. "There seems to be a fair amount of unfinished business. Are they expecting the council to resolve the outstanding issues or are they taking the more cynical view that the council will be hopelessly deadlocked and, therefore, incapable of resolving the matter?

"I suspect the anti-police reformers on the negotiating team are hoping for the latter, and that's unfortunate," he said.

From the start, the talks with representatives of the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division were marked by deep divisions among the four members of the city team, which included City Atty. James K. Hahn, Police Commission President Gerald L. Chaleff, Chief Legislative Analyst Ronald Deaton and Mayor Richard Riordan's chief of staff, Kelly Martin. LAPD Deputy Chief Martin Pomeroy was also active in the negotiation sessions as Chief Bernard C. Parks' representative. On most issues, sources said, Martin and Pomeroy were arrayed against the other negotiators.

"Clearly there was a sense from the mayor's office and the Police Department that this was something they were going to be dragged into kicking and screaming," said one source close to the negotiations.

Hahn, who has pushed strongly for settlement since the talks began, said Friday that he will tell the council members that they have no choice but to accept the Justice Department's demands.

"I don't think it will be difficult for the Justice Department to establish there has been a pattern and practice of civil rights violations by LAPD," Hahn said. "The whole Rampart issue brought to light that there are still officers who feel that they can do anything they want and their colleagues will keep a code of silence. We as a city can no longer say, 'Trust us.' The LAPD can not longer say 'Trust us, we can get the job done,' " the city attorney said.

"A consent decree gives the citizens the confidence that the job will be done. If we are serious about reform, we shouldn't be afraid of a consent decree."

Furthermore, Hahn said, taking the matter to court would prove very "harmful and destructive to the image of the Police Department" as the Department of Justice presents the grim details of years of police misconduct to a jury.

"No one in the world thinks we are going to win this case in court," Hahn said.'

According to sources close to the talks, this week's negotiations were conducted in the offices of the downtown law firm in which Chaleff is a partner. On Wednesday and Thursday, the talks stretched into the early morning and became so tense that at various points they dissolved into shouting matches between Martin and federal officials.

Martin said Friday night that the mayor opposes city agreement to a consent decree because he believes Parks should be given the chance to make the required reforms.

"The mayor's position is that he is very interested in making the necessary reforms and we have negotiated a package that the Justice Department acknowledges is significant," Martin said. "The city intends to live up to those reforms and we don't need a federal judge telling us how to do it."

On the issue of the Justice Department's threat to sue the city if there is no consent decree, Martin said: "If we reach consensus on every other open issue, that's a decision they have to make."

* PRESCRIPTION FOR LAPD

For any reform to work, Police Department's internal culture must change, a study says. A19

-------- terrorism

Libya Says Sanctions Are Terrorist

Associated Press
September 09, 2000 Filed at 3:11 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-UN-Summit-Libya.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Economic sanctions imposed on poor countries are just as threatening as terrorist acts of violence, Libya's foreign minister told world leaders at the U.N. Millennium Summit.

``In order for the international community to combat terrorism, we should, first and foremost, define terrorism and the causes which lie behind it, as well as all acts of violence,'' Libya's foreign minister, Abdurrahman Shalghem, said Friday.

Then he defined terrorism, as Libya sees it: sanctions; resorting to brutal force; the threat to use such force; conditions laid down by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization; nuclear arms and weapons of mass destruction.

Blamed for the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jetliner, Libya became a target of U.N. sanctions in 1992 when it refused to hand over two suspects. It relented, and the men are on trial in the Netherlands, charged with planting a bomb that killed 270 people in the air and on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988.

The sanctions were suspended, but not lifted, because the United States will not agree to dispense with them until Libya renounces terrorism. Libya remains on the U.S. State Department list of countries supporting terrorism.

In a rambling speech, Shalghem also called for apologies and compensation for former colonies ``for the persecution inflicted upon them, the destruction caused to their environment, and for their resources and cultural properties that have been plundered.''

Libya is a former Italian colony.

-------- activists

NUNS PLOWSHARE ACTION AT SPACE COMMAND

Date: Sat, 09 Sep 2000
From: Elizabeth McAlister <disarmnow@erols.com>

Five women , Carol Gilbert OP, Jackie Hudson OP, Anne Montgomery RSCJ, Liz Walters IHM, and Ardeth Platte OP, representing three religious orders in the Catholic Church, naming themselves the SACRED EARTH AND SPACE PLOWSHARES entered Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs for the purpose of "hammering swords into plowshares" (Micah 6:8.) Their prophetic action which commenced at about 10:15 AM, consisted of all five women acting in concert against a mockup of the Milstar communications satellite and a Warthog A-10 aircraft. In each case the activists hammered on and then poured blood on the objects of war in question. As they were being arrested they unfurled two banners which contained an earth -sky logo and an inscription reading "Sacred Earth & Space Plowshares 2000". They then began to read their statements (cf. statement below) They were detained by Air Force security and were later taken into custody by local police and taken to the El Paso County jail. Charges are pending.

Anne Montgomery who was part of a plowshares action September 9, 1980, said: "Twenty years ago, during the first plowshares action at the King of Prussia G.E. Plant, I realized that if there is a weapon before me, I must disarm it."

Ardeth Platte added: "All within us and our religious congregations place our trust and security in the God of creation who made heaven and earth. We renew that pledge today by saying 'no, not in our names', to the idols (weapons of false security), of the U.S. Space Command and their vision of dominating and exploiting outer space to protect U.S. investments and vested interests. We refuse to allow false gods to be placed before us. We accept all sisters, brothers. resources and creatures as one with us in the web of life."

In their letter to friends Carol 52, Liz 57, Anne 73, Ardeth 64, and Jackie 65 state: "It is our love for God's people, Earth, and all creation that compelled us to disarm directly and symbolically these war-making idols. We acted with all love in our hearts. Now we await the legal consequences of our disarmament action..."

Local peace activist Bill Sulzman, Director of Citizens for Peace in Space noted that the action was signicant in that " the cutting edge of Christian anti war resistance has for the first time come head to head with the cutting edge of futuristic, space based war making."

THE STATEMENT OF THE SACRED EARTH AND SPACE PLOWSHARES 2000 "Friends, what do you think you are doing? We are only human beings, mortal like yourselves. We have come with good news, to make you turn from these empty idols to the living God who made sky and Earth and the sea and all that these hold. " (Acts 14:15)

We, women religious, naming ourselves SACRED EARTH AND SPACE PLOWSHARES, enter Peterson AFB, CO to unmask the false religion and worship of national security so evident at this U. S. Space Command Center, Schriever AFB (the Space Warfare Center), Cheyenne Mountain (NORAD), the Air Force Academy and Buckley Base in Denver (referred to as Total Force Base).

We reject the U.S. Space Command Vision for 2020: -to dominate space for military operations -to exploit space for United States interests and investments -to control and own space as a U.S. 4th frontier making all other nations vulnerable to U.S. conventional and nuclear attacks -to integrate space forces for warfighting -to abuse the Aleutian Islands and other land with interceptors and spy satellites -to waste more billions and billions of dollars and more human and material resources, causing the destruction of Earth and desecration of space.

We reject the breaking of International Law, including the ABM Treaty of 1972 and the Outer Space Treaties. Above all we reject the breaking of God's Law. We reject the vision of the Space Command that "the way a nation makes wealth is the way it makes war." We reject that the United States must control space "as critical to both military and economic instruments of power - the main sources of national strength."

Our security is neither in wealth nor in war. It is in the God of the universe who calls us "to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. " (Micah 6:8) We believe deeply in the vision and practice of the nonviolent Jesus, in the Beatitudes (Mt.5), and the spirit of our religious vows.

We choose: -to open obedient ears to what justice requires: to act to unmask the heresy which equates power with violence and rejects the essential relationship between humanity and God's universe. -to walk humbly in the way of Christ, a way of solidarity with the victims of violence and the impoverished, and to resist military technology, which increasingly targets the innocent and vulnerable, and poisons the resources on which they depend. -to love mercy: to act to heal rather than increase the division between the "haves" and the "have nots" whom the Space Command fears will challenge a widening economic gap.

In this spirit we act as an invitation to all to "hammer swords into plowshares...that nation will not lift sword against nation or will they ever again be trained to make war. " (Micah 4:3)

We'll get back to you as we get more information Love, Liz and all at Jonah House

----

2,000 Colombians Protest Drug Plan

Los Angeles Times
Saturday, September 9, 2000
By JUAN PABLO TORO, Associated Press Writer
http://www.latimes.com/wires/20000909/tCB00V0960.html

PUERTO ASIS, Colombia--About 2,000 people, including schoolchildren and farmers, protested Saturday against a U.S.-backed anti-drug offensive that is being planned for this cocaine-producing region.

Security forces brandishing assault rifles and grenade launchers kept a close eye on the demonstration in the main plaza of this sweltering Amazonian town. One child held a cutout of a dove with the word "peace" written across it. Another held a sign that read: "Don't kill us -we are the hope of Latin America."

Many demonstrators said they feel threatened by President Andres Pastrana's "Plan Colombia," which the United States is supporting with $1.3 billion in mostly military aid and is aimed at eradicating drug trafficking.

Under the plan, elite U.S. soldiers are training Colombian troops. Ferried aboard 60 combat helicopters provided by the United States, Colombian soldiers are to seize Colombia's vast coca-growing areas, which are protected by leftist rebels and rival right-wing paramilitary squads, and allow their fumigation by airplanes.

Farm leader Eber Sanchez said the simple mention of the name Plan Colombia strikes fear in farmers in the area, located near the Ecuador border, about 350 miles south of Bogota.

"Between 30 and 40 families have already fled the region," Sanchez said. His claim could not be immediately verified, but thousands of people are expected to be displaced when the counter-drug offensive gets fully underway next year.

Delegates of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees have already visited the Ecuador border region, and are considering building a camp to hold some 5,000 Colombian refugees.

---

French Fuel Tax Protesters Lift Blockades

Yahoo News
Saturday September 9
By Noah Barkin
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000909/wl/france_protests_dc_1.html

PARIS (Reuters) - French truckers and farmers began lifting their blockades on Saturday, signaling an end to six days of tax protests which have choked fuel supplies and disrupted daily life throughout the country.

The retreat, which followed appeals from the major French trucking and farming groups to end the protests, comes as a major relief to Prime Minister Lionel Jospin whose reputation and presidential ambitions have been tarnished by the unrest.

On Saturday afternoon, the French Interior Ministry reported that 56 blockades of refineries and depots had been lifted, with 66 still remaining.

``The retreat is accelerating,'' a ministry spokesman told Reuters.

France's National Road Hauliers Federation (FNTR), the largest truck owners group, said that at 1200 GMT only a scattering of its blockades remained in place in isolated regions of the country.

``If barricades in certain regions still exist, it's because they are being maintained by other groups in the movement,'' it said in a statement.

On Saturday morning, French truckers group Unostra, which represents small haulage firms, reversed its hard-line stance and joined the larger FNTR in calling for an end to blockades of oil refineries and depots.

Earlier, French agricultural union FNSEA and the young farmers' group CNJA announced they had made enough progress in late-night talks with Agriculture Minister Jean Glavany to call off the protest.

``Considering this progress, and in the general interest of the country, I ask farmers to lift the barricades in the coming hours,'' FNSEA head Luc Guyau said in a statement.

The protesters have been pressing the government for a 20 percent cut in diesel fuel taxes. Jospin, under pressure from Green Party members of his coalition government, has insisted on not conceding more than 15 percent.

Relief For Jospin, Risk Of Protests Elsewhere

The apparent end to the nation-wide protests comes just in the nick of time for Jospin, who is expected to battle incumbent Jacques Chirac in the 2002 presidential race.

On Friday, Jospin canceled a weekend trip and held a crisis session with his transport, agriculture, interior and budget ministers.

Adding to the government's dilemma, an opinion poll showed this week that 88 percent of the French were sympathetic to the protesters, who have choked off fuel supplies to four-fifths of all petrol stations in France and disrupted air traffic, school buses and garbage collection.

Major oil companies moved quickly into action on Saturday as barricades were lifted and the government issued a special order allowing them to supply stations over the weekend.

But it is expected to take two to three days for petrol supplies to return to normal.

Meanwhile, the risk of protests spreading to other European countries appeared to grow.

On Saturday, Italian fishermen occupied quays around the country and warned the government they would blockade ports if it refused to reduce duties on diesel fuel used to power their boats.

Irish truckers said they would stage nation-wide protests next week unless the government took action to cut the price of diesel. And in Britain, two men were arrested and a fuel tanker was damaged as British truckers continued protests outside several oil depots.

Ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) meet on Sunday in Vienna, under pressure from both the United States and the Europeans to boost output and reduce prices, which at over $30 a barrel are three times their price of just over a year ago.

OPEC is expected to lift supply to soothe concerns that rising energy costs could spark inflation and hamper world economic growth.

---

African-Americans Threaten Burger King Boycott

Yahoo News
Saturday September 9 10:18 AM ET updated 11:04 AM ET Sep 9
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000909/ts/burgerking_boycott_dc_1.html

MIAMI (Reuters) - Burger King, the world's second largest fast-food chain, faces a boycott threat from African-American leaders over a dispute with a black businessman in Detroit, the Miami Herald reported on Saturday.

The Rev. Al Sharpton planned to make the boycott call in New York on Monday, when he would urge African Americans to stop eating at the hamburger chain, the Herald said.

A Sharpton spokesperson told Reuters on Friday that he planned to announce such an action against a major Miami-based company but he declined to say which one.

A Burger King spokeswoman told Reuters on Friday the company had no knowledge of any possible boycott although she noted a pending dispute with Detroit restaurateur and entrepreneur Lavan Hawkins.

According to the Herald, Burger King hired Hawkins to help it expand into inner-city markets. He filed a suit against Burger King in April, saying it had discriminated against him. He also said the company had broken a promise to help him open 225 inner-city restaurants.

Burger King then sued Hawkins, saying he owed it more than $6.5 million in royalties and loans.

Sharpton spokeswoman Rachel Noerdlinger told the Herald the boycott would be called off only if Burger King reached a settlement with Hawkins ``in a way that meets the standards of all African Americans.''

Burger King is owned by the British-based Diageo.

---

Miami Lawyer Faces Trial in Wake of Reno's Raid

NewsMax.com
Saturday, Sept. 9, 2000
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/9/8/224435

A Miami lawyer and radio commentator is facing trial after being arrested while trying to help raise bail for protesters jailed in the wake of Attorney General Janet Reno's predawn armed raid to snatch Elian Gonzalez.

Immigration lawyer Grisel Ybarra is one of a handful of people to face trial out of the 435 protesters originally arrested in the aftermath of the raid, according to the Miami Herald.

The rest were allowed to plead guilty and assigned to community service or so-called psychological counseling. Others, such as the brother of Miami Mayor Alex Penelas and an 11-year old boy, simply had the charges against them dropped.

Incredibly, Ybarra is facing up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine, plus a possible investigation by the Florida Bar Association that could endanger her license to practice law, all for two measly misdemeanor charges involving her alleged refusal to obey police orders to stop blocking traffic. She is charged with resisting arrest nonviolently and disobeying a police officer's order.

In pursuit of this two-bit case, prosecutors have compiled a court file on two misdemeanor charges of 200 pages, with testimony from 10 law enforcement officers, giving credence to her belief that she is being made an example to show the exile community what can happen if they dare confront federal power as they did in the Elian Gonzalez matter.

"I am the example, so that the ghetto never rises again,'' Ybarra told the Herald.

"Think about it. For the first time in the history of the United States an immigrant community stood up to the Justice Department. That was an embarrassment for the United States, and I am the most high-profile person that was arrested and I'm being the example.''

Ybarra's troubles began April 25, when Cuban exiles called for a shutdown of Dade County to protest Reno's raid.

Together with TV host Tomás García Fusté, Ybarra set out to collect money to bail out protesters still in jail after weekend protests. Before setting out, the two talked to Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle and, convinced they had her approval, went on the air to announce the campaign for bail money. By early afternoon cars jammed the parking lot of Telemiami, a cable station, as people flocked to donate money.

Around 4 p.m., as Ybarra ran between cars to collect donations, Miami police officer Jennifer Pastor, acting on orders from Lt. Rene Landa to take Ybarra aside, approached Ybarra and grabbed her arm. The two then got into a scuffle over the lawyer's collection box.

"Ybarra either was pushed or fell into the crowd, gathered on the sidewalk, and police began to spray tear gas," the Herald reported.

Ybarra told the police she had Rundle's OK to collect the money, but in a deposition Rundle later said she tried to urge Ybarra to wait until they could further investigate how many people were still in jail. She conveniently couldn't remember if they discussed the possibility that Ybarra would be standing in the street while collecting bail funds.

Because Rundle is to be a witness in Ybarra's trial, it has been moved north to Broward County, where prosecutors told the Herald they think they have a strong case. According to court documents, three officers had warned her to stay out of the street.

Miami Lt. Rene Landa says he warned Ybarra to get out of the street.

"You can't stand in the middle of the street,'' he said he told Ybarra. "She said, `No, it's OK.' ... I said, `No, if you stand in the middle of the street you may get hit by a car. I can't let you stand there,' " according to Landa's deposition.

"And she turned to me in Spanish and told me, `M'ijo (short for my son) ... don't worry. I'm not going to get hit by a car.''

Ybarra, who said she was actually helping traffic move along, said she wasn't explicitly warned.

"They never said, `You are going to be arrested unless you get out of the streets,' '' said Ybarra, who told the Herald she was doing nothing more than what firefighters and other groups do to collect money for charity.

Ybarra has asked a judge to dismiss the case. A hearing is set for Sept. 15.

-------

OneList subscriber submissions:

NucNews - Please circulate -- help educate! - http://prop1.org

1. BMDO CHIEF DEFENDS NMD
From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" <globalnet@mindspring.com>

2. House Judiciary I&C Subcommittee Hearing 9/14
From: easlavin@aol.com

3. NucNews 00/09/09 - Daybook; Presidential Candidates; Activist Announcements
From: Ellen Thomas <prop1@prop1.org>

4. NUNS PLOWSHARE ACTION AT SPACE COMMAND
From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" <globalnet@mindspring.com>

-----------

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000
From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" <globalnet@mindspring.com>

BMDO CHIEF DEFENDS NMD
Chief Defends Missile Defense

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
Fri., Sept. 8 - 4:34 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AP) - In his first public comments since President Clinton's decision last week to put off construction of a national missile defense, the Pentagon's missile defense chief told a House panel on Friday there is ``no technical reason´´ that an effective defense against missiles could not be built.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, said his office provided technical information about the project's status and prospects as part of the Pentagon's input to Clinton's decision, but it made no recommendation on whether to proceed or to defer deployment.

Defense Secretary William Cohen recommended that Clinton give the go-ahead to begin deployment of a national missile defense in hopes that it could be ready for use by 2007 or perhaps a little earlier. Clinton, however, announced last Friday that he would leave a deployment decision to his successor because he was not convinced the technology is at hand to build a reliable anti-missile shield.

``We should not move forward until we have absolute confidence that the system will work,´´ Clinton said. Clinton said there was an emerging threat of long-range missile attack on the United States, but he did not believe the benefits of extra security from a missile shield would outweigh diplomatic difficulties with countries like Russia and China, which oppose the project. Kadish, in his appearance before the House Government Reform subcommittee on national security, did not comment directly on his view of Clinton's decision. But in his written testimony he made clear that he believes some critics of national missile defense are underestimating the Pentagon's technical prowess.

``There is no technical reason at this point, validated by independent review teams, indicating that we could not develop an effective NMD system,´´ Kadish said, using the acronym for national missile defense.

The three-star general addressed one of the major criticisms of the system now under development - namely, that it cannot cope with the kinds of decoys and other countermeasures that hostile nations might use to overcome it.

``Given our extensive toolbox and the 40 years of experience the United States has with offensive and defensive weapon systems, we know how to play the countermeasures/counter-countermeasures game,´´ Kadish said. ``And we know how to win.´´

Kadish said that despite setbacks and delays in the development and testing of a national missile defense, 93 percent of the system's ``critical engagement functions´´ have been demonstrated to work properly.

``We had planned to be at about 94 percent at this stage, so we are very nearly where we expected to be,´´ he said. The last two major tests, in which prototype interceptor rockets failed to hit their target in space, were disappointments, Kadish said, but they are not evidence of insurmountable technological barriers. ``The problems are fixable,´´ he said.

The next test was scheduled for November, but the Pentagon said earlier this week that it probably would be delayed until January because analysis of the results from July's failed test are not yet complete. In an appearance before the same House panel Friday, the Pentagon's head watchdog on weapons testing submitted a schedule chart, dated September 2000, which said the next test would not happen until March 2001. Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's director of operational test and evaluation, told the panel that national missile defense tests need to be made more realistic in order to show that the system would work reliably.

``Such a capability is yet to be shown to be practicable for NMD,´´ Coyle said, adding later in response to questions that by ``practicable´´ he meant ``that you could count on it´´ in an actual missile attack.

Bruce K. Gagnon Coordinator Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 90083 Gainesville, FL. 32607 (352) 337-9274 http://www.space4peace.org globalnet@mindspring.com

-------

Message: 2
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000
From: easlavin@aol.com

House Judiciary I&C Subcommittee Hearing 9/14, 9AM, 2226 Rayburn House Ofc Bldg

From 9/8 Congressional Record (no witness list yet available online): September 14, 9 a.m., 2226 Rayburn. U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims, hearing on the following bills:

H.R. 675, Beryllium Exposure Compensation Act; H.R. 3418, Energy Employees' Beryllium Compensation Act; H.R. 3478, Federal Beryllium Compensation Act;

H.R. 3495, Department of Energy Nuclear Employees Exposure Compensation Act;

H.R. 4263, Atomic Workers' Compensation Act; and H.R. 4398, Energy Employees Occupational Illness and Compensation Act of 2000,

------------

Message: 3
Date: Sat, 09 Sep 2000
From: Ellen Thomas <prop1@prop1.org>

NucNews 00/09/09 - Daybook; Presidential Candidates;
Activist Announcements

- Message from Andres Thomas Conteris <mailto:andres@viequesfast.org>, who's been fasting for Vieques since July 25th.

"Please take action by coming to Washington on Friday, Sept. 22, 2000 at noon, Lafayette Park across from the White House for the National Day in Solidarity with the People of Vieques. If President Clinton does not grant the long-requested meeting prior to then, the fast will enter Day 60 with 40 on water-only. If you cannot make it to Washington, plan to go to New York City on Saturday October 21, 2000 for a March for Peace in Vieques. For details see: www.viequesfast.org "

- Coordinating meeting for the Global Peace Walk 2000 - D.C.- next Wednesday, September 13th at 6pm @ The Gray Panther Office, 711 8th St., NW. The submission deadline for many publications is Sept. 15th and so we need to ground the schedule. We need help!

Around October 4th or 5th, the walk will be arriving, crossing over the Memorial Bridge. Thus we will be discussing how to gather people to walk together and how to best communicate the many messages/angles that comprise "Global Peace Now!"

We will also talk of a big ceremony/action/prayer day for Columbus Day, October 9th...how to get a big circle of people to hold hands around the Washington Monument in a universal human resolve for "Global Peace Now!" We would also like to put on a concert.

After October 12th, Indigenous Peoples' Day, we will head up the East Coast Corridor to the UN by October 23rd and 24th and create a Spiritual Environemental Summit of indigenous elders and environmental NGO's. -- [Crispin Clarke, walk co-coordinator, 202 244 3407, -7373 fax, mailto:GPZONE2000@aol.com]

- WILPF NY Metro is organizing a seminar on National Missile Defense: From the Local to the Global - WHEN: September 16, 2000; 11:00am - 4:00pm WHERE: New School Graduate Faculty Building, Swayduck Auditorium, 65 5th Avenue, New York City - [Stephanie Fraser <mailto:sfraser@igc.org>

- LAS VEGAS DECLARED NUCLEAR-FREE ZONE On September 7, 2000, the Mayor and City Council of Las Vegas passed resolution R-85-2000, declaring Las Vegas a Nuclear Free Zone. This resolution opposes legislation that would allow the transportation, storage or production of spent nuclear fuel, high-level nuclear waste, and low-level radioactive waste within the City of Las Vegas. The resolution also supports the on site storage of spent nuclear fuel, a shift in federal funding for nuclear waste disposal studies, and the research and use of alternative renewable energy sources. [Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2000 17:47:34 -0700 <mailto:shundahai@shundahai.org>]

- The Institute of Medicine report which includes a discussion of depleted uranium can be read online by going to http://www.nap.edu, entering 'Gulf War' in the title search, and then clicking on the title of the report. The report recommends a substantial amount of research on the health effects of DU, in addition to better exposure estimates. And so the debate continues. [From: Daniel Fahey <mailto:duweapons@hotmail.com>]

- SURVEY OF PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES EXPOSES DIFFERENCES ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS; Bush and Gore Fail to Answer Morality Question

WASHINGTON, DC ­ On behalf of 48 religious leaders from a cross-section of faith groups, Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton and United Methodist Bishop C. Dale White have released a new ten question survey of presidential candidates on nuclear weapons and disarmament. Replies from George W. Bush, Al Gore, and Ralph Nader reveal policy differences on several issues. Only Nader answered all ten questions of the survey. Neither Reform Party candidate responded. The complete survey results are available online at http://www.umc-gbcs.org/whatsnew.htm . [CONTACT: Adam Eidinger or Howard Hallman, 202-986-6186 or 301-896-0013.]

- Harry Browne for President, Libertarian Party http://www.harrybrowne2000.org/ [Carol Moore <mailto:Carolmoore@kreative.net>]

----------------

Message: 4
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000
From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" <globalnet@mindspring.com>

NUNS PLOWSHARE ACTION AT SPACE COMMAND
SEPTEMBER 9, 2000

Five women , Carol Gilbert OP, Jackie Hudson OP, Anne Montgomery RSCJ, Liz Walters IHM, and Ardeth Platte OP, representing three religious orders in the Catholic Church, naming themselves the SACRED EARTH AND SPACE PLOWSHARES entered Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs for the purpose of "hammering swords into plowshares" (Micah 6:8.) Their prophetic action which commenced at about 10:15 AM, consisted of all five women acting in concert against a mockup of the Milstar communications satellite and a Warthog A-10 aircraft. In each case the activists hammered on and then poured blood on the objects of war in question. As they were being arrested they unfurled two banners which contained an earth -sky logo and an inscription reading "Sacred Earth & Space Plowshares 2000". They then began to read their statements (cf. statement below) They were detained by Air Force security and were later taken into custody by local police and taken to the El Paso County jail. Charges are pending.

Anne Montgomery who was part of a plowshares action September 9, 1980, said: "Twenty years ago, during the first plowshares action at the King of Prussia G.E. Plant, I realized that if there is a weapon before me, I must disarm it."

Ardeth Platte added: "All within us and our religious congregations place our trust and security in the God of creation who made heaven and earth. We renew that pledge today by saying 'no, not in our names', to the idols (weapons of false security), of the U.S. Space Command and their vision of dominating and exploiting outer space to protect U.S. investments and vested interests. We refuse to allow false gods to be placed before us. We accept all sisters, brothers. resources and creatures as one with us in the web of life."

In their letter to friends Carol 52, Liz 57, Anne 73, Ardeth 64, and Jackie 65 state: "It is our love for God's people, Earth, and all creation that compelled us to disarm directly and symbolically these war-making idols. We acted with all love in our hearts. Now we await the legal consequences of our disarmament action..."

Local peace activist Bill Sulzman, Director of Citizens for Peace in Space noted that the action was signicant in that " the cutting edge of Christian anti war resistance has for the first time come head to head with the cutting edge of futuristic, space based war making."

THE STATEMENT OF THE SACRED EARTH AND SPACE PLOWSHARES 2000 "Friends, what do you think you are doing? We are only human beings, mortal like yourselves. We have come with good news, to make you turn from these empty idols to the living God who made sky and Earth and the sea and all that these hold. " (Acts 14:15)

We, women religious, naming ourselves SACRED EARTH AND SPACE PLOWSHARES, enter Peterson AFB, CO to unmask the false religion and worship of national security so evident at this U. S. Space Command Center, Schriever AFB (the Space Warfare Center), Cheyenne Mountain (NORAD), the Air Force Academy and Buckley Base in Denver (referred to as Total Force Base).

We reject the U.S. Space Command Vision for 2020:

-to dominate space for military operations

-to exploit space for United States interests and investments

-to control and own space as a U.S. 4th frontier making all other nations vulnerable to U.S. conventional and nuclear attacks

-to integrate space forces for warfighting

-to abuse the Aleutian Islands and other land with interceptors and spy satellites

-to waste more billions and billions of dollars and more human and material resources, causing the destruction of Earth and desecration of space.

We reject the breaking of International Law, including the ABM Treaty of 1972 and the Outer Space Treaties. Above all we reject the breaking of God's Law. We reject the vision of the Space Command that "the way a nation makes wealth is the way it makes war." We reject that the United States must control space "as critical to both military and economic instruments of power - the main sources of national strength."

Our security is neither in wealth nor in war. It is in the God of the universe who calls us "to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. " (Micah 6:8) We believe deeply in the vision and practice of the nonviolent Jesus, in the Beatitudes (Mt.5), and the spirit of our religious vows.

We choose: -to open obedient ears to what justice requires: to act to unmask the heresy which equates power with violence and rejects the essential relationship between humanity and God's universe. -to walk humbly in the way of Christ, a way of solidarity with the victims of violence and the impoverished, and to resist military technology, which increasingly targets the innocent and vulnerable, and poisons the resources on which they depend. -to love mercy: to act to heal rather than increase the division between the "haves" and the "have nots" whom the Space Command fears will challenge a widening economic gap.

In this spirit we act as an invitation to all to "hammer swords into plowshares...that nation will not lift sword against nation or will they ever again be trained to make war. " (Micah 4:3)

______________________

We'll get back to you as we get more information
Love, Liz and all at Jonah House

Bruce K. Gagnon Coordinator Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 90083 Gainesville, FL. 32607 (352) 337-9274 http://www.space4peace.org globalnet@mindspring.com

--------------------------------------------------------

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1. Record-setting Ozone Hole Antarctica's ozone hole has expanded
From: magnu96196@aol.com

2. Platts - Saturday, September 09, 2000
From: "Paul Maser" <pmaser@govmail.state.nv.us>

3. Findings Mixed On Gulf War Hazards
From: magnu96196@aol.com

4. Asthma
From: magnu96196@aol.com

5. Iowa senator joins call for Cold War radiation hearings
From: magnu96196@aol.com

6. Hearings urged on worker exposure
From: magnu96196@aol.com

7. Sick miners might not get help
From: magnu96196@aol.com

8. Cold War Contracts EVERYWHERE
From: "Paula Elofson-Gardine, Exec. Dir." <pelofson1@home.com>

9. DOE'S TROJAN HORSE BILL/($100k bribe bill)
From: easlavin@aol.com

------------

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Record-setting Ozone Hole Antarctica's ozone hole has expanded to cover an area three times larger than the United States.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast08sep_1.htm?list

Sept. 8, 2000 -- A NASA spectrometer has detected an Antarctic ozone "hole" (what scientists call an "ozone depletion area") that is three times larger than the entire land mass of the United States - the largest such area ever observed.

The "hole" expanded to a record size of approximately 28.3 million square kilometers on Sept. 3, 2000. The previous record was approximately 27.2 million square km on Sept. 19, 1998.

The ozone hole's size currently has stabilized, but the low levels in its interior continue to fall. The lowest readings in the ozone hole are typically observed in late September or early October each year.

Above: Readers can monitor ozone concentrations for themselves thanks to near-realtime global maps published at NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer web site. In this map, completed on Sept 6, 2000, the Antarctic ozone hole is prominent as a purple region surrounding the south pole. The column density of ozone, expressed in Dobson Units (DU), above any point on the map is represented by its color. Dark grey denotes low concentrations and red denotes high concentrations. [more information about this image]

Sign up for EXPRESS SCIENCE NEWS delivery "These observations reinforce concerns about the frailty of Earth's ozone layer. Although production of ozone-destroying gases has been curtailed under international agreements, concentrations of the gases in the stratosphere are only now reaching their peak. Due to their long persistence in the atmosphere, it will be many decades before the ozone hole is no longer an annual occurrence," said Dr. Michael J. Kurylo, manager of the Upper Atmosphere Research Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

Ozone molecules, made up of three atoms of oxygen, comprise a thin layer of the atmosphere that absorbs harmful ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Most atmospheric ozone is found between approximately 9.5 km and 29 km above the Earth's surface.

Scientists continuing to investigate this enormous hole are somewhat surprised by its size. The reasons behind the dimensions involve both early-spring conditions in the southern hemisphere, and an extremely intense Antarctic vortex. The Antarctic vortex is an upper-altitude stratospheric air current that sweeps around the Antarctic continent, confining the ozone hole.

Above: This image from the TOMS web site shows how the size and depth of the 2000 Antarctic ozone hole (red line) compare with 1999's (black line) and with the mean values from 1979 to 1992. The grey shaded region indicates the range of values observed during the interval 1979 to 1992. [more information]

"Variations in the size of the ozone hole and of ozone depletion accompanying it from one year to the next are not unexpected," said Dr. Jack Kaye, Office of Earth Sciences Research Director, NASA Headquarters. "At this point we can only wait to see how the ozone hole will evolve in the coming few months and see how the year's hole compares in all respects to those of previous years."

"Discoveries like these demonstrate the value of our long-term commitment to providing key observations to the scientific community," said Dr. Ghassem Asrar, Associate Administrator for NASA's Office of Earth Sciences at Headquarters. "We will soon launch QuickTOMS and Aura, two spacecraft that will continue to gather these important data."

The measurements released today were obtained using the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) instrument aboard NASA's Earth Probe (TOMS-EP) satellite. NASA instruments have been measuring Antarctic ozone levels since the early 1970s. Since the discovery of the ozone "hole" in 1985, TOMS has been a key instrument for monitoring ozone levels over the Earth.

SEND THIS STORY TO A FRIEND

TOMS-EP and other ozone-measurement programs are important parts of a global environmental effort of NASA's Earth Science enterprise, a long-term research program designed to study Earth's land, oceans, atmosphere, ice and life as a total integrated system.

Web Links TOMS Web Site -- data and information about the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) instrument aboard NASA's Earth Probe (TOMS-EP) satellite.

Recent Ozone Hole Measurements -- quicktime movies and still images from NASA

Ozone and the Atmosphere -- a tutorial on Earth's present day atmosphere, ozone creation and depletion, and the complex interactions under study by scientists worldwide

Stratospheric Ozone: An Electronic Textbook -- a comprehensive tutorial about the chemistry and dynamics of the ozone layer

------------

Message: 2
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000
From: "Paul Maser" <pmaser@govmail.state.nv.us>

Platts
Nuclear News Flashes
Saturday, September 09, 2000

Washington --September 8, 2000 Senate passes $22.4-bil energy and water funding bill The Senate approved a $22.4-bil energy and water funding bill for fiscal 2000 late yesterday, and already there's speculation that hammering out a final bill with the House will be difficult. "We face a difficult conference because the House has $600- mil less than the Senate for defense work at our national laboratories," said Sen. Pete Domenici (Republican-New Mexico), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that crafted the bill.

Domenici is a key proponent in the Senate of the national labs. The Senate bill contains $4.88-bil for DOE atomic energy defense activities, including stockpile stewardship and management programs at Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories in New Mexico and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. The suggested allocation is $244-mil over the budget request and $456-mil more than this year's level. A House-Senate conference committee has not yet been scheduled, but Domenici's office said the senator would push for a quick completion of the bill.

German utilities are being pressed to accept plutonium fuel deliveries from Russian production beginning in 2007, sources said today. According to German nuclear fuel cycle officials, vendor Siemens AG, the US government, and the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom) seek advance binding commitments from German utilities to burn mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel before Siemens goes ahead with a planned export of process equipment from the Hanau MOX plant to Russia. Thus far, utilities have balked at proposals to burn more MOX, on the grounds they are already committed to burn MOX using plutonium separated in France and Britain from German spent fuel.

According to one southern German utility official, reactor owners may ask for a subsidy from G-8 funds to cover the additional costs, compared to uranium oxide fuels, of managing plutonium fuels they would accept from Russian production. G- 8 funds are pledged by governments for disposition of Russian excess weapons plutonium.

-------------

Message: 3
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Findings Mixed On Gulf War Hazards

By THOMAS D. WILLIAMS
The Hartford Courant September 08, 2000
http://www.ctnow.com/scripts/editorial.dll?bfromind=1007&eeid=3039053&eetype =article&render=y&ck=&ver=1.41

A study of the scientific literature of the hazards faced by Persian Gulf War veterans reveals insufficient evidence to link the chemicals to long-term illnesses suffered by hundreds of thousands veterans, says a national Institute of Medicine report released Thursday.

An institute committee said there is limited data available to gauge the long-term health effects of low level exposure to the warfare nerve agent sarin; the anti-nerve agent pill, pyridostigmine bromide (PB); the shell hardener for ammunition and armor, depleted uranium, and the vaccines to prevent anthrax and botulism. The panel will now turn to scientific studies of other chemicals the veterans were exposed to during what is known as one of the dirtiest environmental wars ever.

Most of the studies the committee scrutinized involved exposures in occupational settings, terrorist attacks, and clinical trials. Only a small number of the studies looked at veterans who may have been exposed to hazardous agents while serving in the Gulf War.

Congress mandated the committee's study of 33 hazards after a four-year investigation of gulf war illnesses by a House Committee, chaired by U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Fourth District, criticized government care for war veterans. The report simply confirms part of what the committee found, Shays said Thursday.

"Gulf veterans were exposed to toxic agents during the war; due to poor military records during the war, levels of exposure are not known, and there is need for more research on Gulf War illnesses,'' he said.

Some of the veterans and their families, including those in Connecticut, expressed frustration with the findings 9 1/2 years after the war ended in light of all of the serious sicknesses they and others have experienced.

Since the war, at least 6,584 of the 690,000 Americans who served have died and 186,600 have applied for disability compensation for war-related injuries or illnesses, including various heart and neurological diseases and cancers, federal officials have said. The average age of all U.S. service members during the war was 28.

"Nine and a half years later, how many dead veterans have we got? There are thousands,'' said Windsor Locks resident Diane Gates-Dulka. "How many of these veterans are still sick and getting progressively worse? Now the doctors don't have a clue how to treat them, and they are out there waiting for answers, waiting for help. I don't think they care any more what did it. They just want to stay alive and be able to function and to get healthy.''

Joseph Dulka II, her husband, also of Windsor Locks, a 15-year veteran of the National Guard's Military Police, died of pancreatic cancer Aug. 28, 1994, three years after the war. He was 37, almost 20 years younger than the average pancreatic cancer victim.

Gates-Dulka believes he died from among other exposures, breathing the benzene-based insecticide, lindane, he and others sprayed on prisoners to delouse them. Gates-Dulka is still fighting for government compensation for health costs for herself and her two children, one of whom was born with a deformity that may have been caused by his father's exposures.

"We'd like to give veterans and their families definitive answers, but the evidence simply is not strong enough," said the committee's chairman, Dr. Harold C. Sox Jr., professor and chairman of the department of medicine at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire. "Without data on the levels of exposure in the Persian Gulf theater, answers will remain elusive."

One of the biggest impediments to reaching any definitive conclusions, said Sox, is limited knowledge of the long-term effects of the types of hazardous exposures the veterans experienced. The institutes panel of medical experts, whose inquiry is continuing, is calling for additional studies on the hazards it considered.

The panel did look at findings by a group of doctors at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, led by Robert W. Haley, that showed it is likely Gulf War veterans did indeed suffer long-term neurological damage from low level exposures to sarin. "His work is intriguing. It raises interesting questions, but it needs to be strengthened,'' said Charles Phelps, provost at the University of Rochester, a committee member.

The health panel said there is limited evidence from three studies, not involving gulf war veterans, that might suggest a link between long-term health effects and exposure to sarin at levels great enough to cause an immediate, intense reaction. But alternative explanations for this link could not be ruled out, said the panel.

But Patrick Eddington, a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency who has written a book called, "Gassed In The Gulf, said he believes the committee should have looked closer at war related documents.

"Iraqi military manuals dealing with chem-bio warfare explicitly talk about the benefits of using low-dose nerve agent attacks to increase casualities over time," he said. "A 1988 Iraqi Air Force manual explicitly states that [Nerve agents] have a cumulative effect; if small doses are used repeatedly on a target, the damage can be very severe. The Iraqi's would not have made such a statement in a military manual unless they already had the medical data to back up the claim."

Comments:

Appears the sarin breakdown products are the biggest driver. Sarin breaks down and loses its vectorization that pulls fluorine into the nervous system. When this happens the fluoride goes after its natural seeking zone of bone and thyroid. It is long term retained at that point and is a very cumulative low level toxin when its in reactive chemical forms.

Fluorides cause increased metals retention times as well, so the DU will stay internalized longer. Also the mercury preservatives in vaccines will stay longer.

Very simialar thing is happening around the gas diffusion plants of DOE that are exposed to low levels of HF in air, which is cumulative and long term retained in the body. It causes ills and chronic complaints very close to GWI.

---------------

Message: 4
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Asthma

Living Nutrition Magazine vol. 9
by Roe Gallo, M.A.
http://www.livingnutrition.com

More and more babies, children and adults are suffering from asthma. More than 17 million Americans have asthma. The number of cases increased by 75% between 1980-1999; it continues to increase. According to the just-released report from the Pew Environmental Health Commission at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, "America is in the middle of an asthma epidemic--an epidemic that´s getting worse, not better."

What is asthma? The word asthma originates from an ancient Greek word meaning panting. Essentially, asthma is an inability to exhale.

When you inhale, you breathe oxygen into your lungs through progressively smaller airways called bronchioles. Your lungs contain millions of bronchioles, all leading to alveoli: microscopic sacs where oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged. Once the exchange is made, you breathe out carbon dioxide.

While inhaling oxygen, you are also breathing in other airborne particles, which I´ll refer to as "irritants." In the body's natural survival system, the lungs respond by constricting when exposed to any irritants. If the body is working properly, the irritant is either coughed or sneezed out or the bronchioles relax so that the irritant can be released with carbon dioxide.

People with asthma are unable to relax the bronchioles; the breath gets trapped and the panting begins. Because the bronchioles cannot relax, they become inflamed. This signals the immune system to deliver white blood cells and other immune factors to the airways. These so-called inflammatory factors cause the airways to swell, to fill with fluid, and to produce thick sticky mucus. This not only makes the breathlessness and the inability to exhale properly worse, it also creates a phlegm-producing cough and wheezing. If the breath cannot get out, you suffocate and die.

Twenty-five years ago, when I was told I was going to die because of this disease, I did research on the cause, treatment and cure of asthma. I found that the cause was unknown. The triggers were pollutants (air and household), animal dander, emotions, hormones, and food allergies. The treatment was usually oral and inhaled corticosteroids and there was no cure.

Twenty-five years later, I find that the cause is still unknown to orthodox physicians and researchers. The triggers are still pollutants (air and household), animal dander, emotions, hormones, food allergies and everything from thunderstorms to cockroaches. Researchers attribute the escalation of the disease to the increase of pollutants in the air. The treatment is still oral and inhaled corticosteroids along with one or more of the following: antileukotrienes, cromolyn sodium, nedocromil, inhaled beta2-agonists, methylxanthines, and anticholinergics. And there still is no cure.

Interesting!

I had asthma. I had allergies to animals, dust pollen-- almost everything. I spent most of my younger years in bed or visiting the doctor. I couldn´t run and play with the "normal" kids because my asthma was so bad my chest would constrict with pain and I would wheeze and gasp for breath.

After 25 years of trying to cure me, the doctors gave up and admitted that the drugs that were keeping me alive were also killing me. Dissatisfied with the results of my own research, I studied how the human body works. I found out the facts about health and disease. I discovered that most disease is preventable and that the cause of most disease is toxicity. The only diseases that are not preventable are rare degenerative genetic conditions.

Common diseases and conditions such as cancer, diabetes, obesity, arthritis, asthma, and the rest, are pervasive, preventable and totally unnecessary. I also found that the mind and emotions play a large part in the overall health of the body. I knew the first thing I had to do was believe I could get better.

It took only two weeks on a water fast for my body to clean up most of the toxins. I can still remember the first deep breath I took without pain. I cried. Now I eat mostly organic fruit because fruit provides the organic nutrients supplied by nature, without toxins.

Also, learning to breathe properly is a must. I used yoga and visualization. My friend Anita worked with the Boteyko Breathing Method and has had incredible results.

Taking responsibility for my body was the most frightening thing I have ever done, because it went against everything I was told. Remember that the research told me there was no cure and the doctors told me I was going to die. But I made changes, and the rest is history. I´m alive today, I'm healthy--and I have two dogs!

Do you have asthma? You can choose to be part of the epidemic or be free of this crippling and scary condition by taking responsibility for your body, cleaning out the toxins, being positive and trusting yourself.

Roe Gallo is a dynamic speaker, trainer, author and motivator on health and fitness. Visit her web site at www.roegallo.com

Comments:
Asthma is one of the ills that is high these days. Air pollution.

It is also high in workers exposed to low level HF, an oxidizer chemical, and one common to pesticides. Interesting connection.

Lower the toxic exposures and many diseases get better.

-------------

Message: 5
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Iowa senator joins call for Cold War radiation hearings

By Dennis J. Carroll The Hawk Eye
9/8/2000
http://www.thehawkeye.com/daily/stories/ln080912.html

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, joined in calling Thursday for hearings into reports that thousands of workers at previously undisclosed sites were exposed to extreme levels of radiation and other hazardous substances as the U.S. rushed to produce nuclear weapons in the 1940s and '50s.

The move by Harkin, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate labor and health subcommittee (Harkin is the ranking Democrat), and Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Texas, comes on the heels of reports in USA Today that thousands of workers were left in the dark about their exposure to hazardous materials at sites owned by private companies around the country, including two in the Quad Cities.

The newspaper is reporting in a series of articles this week that as the Soviet Union was launching its nuclear weapons program, the United States rushed to step up its own arsenal using private companies that ignored worker safety or environmental consequences.

The private company sites, including one in East Moline, Ill., and another in Davenport, do not include military installations such as the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant in Middletown.

"It is shameful that the federal government has allowed facilities in (Iowa) and across the country to fall between the bureaucratic cracks," Harkin said of the USA Today revelations.

Dangerous working conditions and exposure to hazardous materials at those sites also have recently come to light.

The lawmakers also called for full disclosure of information about the history of the private facilities, the examination of possible environmental contamination and monitoring of former workers, their families and communities exposed to the hazardous conditions.

The Quad Cities companies cited in the USA Today reports are American Machine and Metals in East Moline and Pioneer Division of Bendex Aviation in Davenport.

The current status of the companies, or whether they still even exist, was not immediately clear.

------------

Message: 6
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Hearings urged on worker exposure
Harkin wants more information on nuclear weapons production

By JANE NORMAN
Register Washington Bureau
09/08/2000
http://www.dmregister.com/news/stories/c4788998/12294248.html

Washington, D.C. - Sen. Tom Harkin wrote government officials Thursday demanding to know more about private companies that were secretly hired to work on nuclear weapons production in the 1940s and "50s, including two in the Quad Cities.

An investigative report in USA Today this week revealed that private manufacturing facilities across the nation handled uranium, thorium, polonium, beryllium and other radioactive substances. Thousands of workers were exposed to risk, but both the companies and the government engaged in a cover-up of the hazards, USA Today said.

"It is shameful that the federal government has allowed facilities in my state of Iowa and across the country to fall between bureaucratic cracks," said Harkin, the top Democrat on the Senate appropriations committee that doles out money for federal health programs. He called for congressional hearings.

Bendix Aviation's Pioneer Division of Davenport was a subcontractor to Feed Materials Production Center in Fenald, Ohio, at unknown dates, according to declassified federal records. There were "very small amounts of testing" done in Davenport on decontamination techniques on 20 uranium storage drums.

American Machine and Metals in East Moline, Ill., tested methods for dehydrating uranium compounds over a two-day period in 1960. At least 25 pounds of material was involved and records suggest a limited potential for environmental contamination or radiation exposure to workers, the newspaper said.

No Iowa telephone listings are available for either company. According to the National Aviation Hall of Fame, Bendix Aviation was extensively involved in developing military material for World War II.

Harkin said it is unclear to him how many Iowa workers may have been exposed to hazardous materials. "For all I know, the people working there didn't even know they were exposed," Harkin said in a conference call with Iowa reporters.

------------------

Message: 7
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Sick miners might not get help
Reid lobbies administration on behalf of ailing Nevada Test Site workers

September 09, 2000
By KATHERINE RIZZO THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.lvrj.com/cgi-bin/printable.cgi?/lvrj_home/2000/Sep-09-Sat-2000/news/14350734.html

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration might ask Congress to enact a compensation program that offers nothing to miners who got sick from silica dust in nuclear testing tunnels, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Friday.

Reid said he asked Budget Director Jack Lew to support keeping those ailing Nevada Test Site workers in the compensation proposal.

"It's imperative that we do something," Reid said. "Some of these test site workers are getting real old."

Lew has been evaluating a Senate-passed compensation proposal now under consideration by a conference committee. The legislation would give government-paid medical care and a minimum of $200,000 apiece to workers who got sick at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, its sister facility in Paducah, Ky., a closed plant in Tennessee and others.

By some estimates, the proposal could cost taxpayers more than $3 billion, and congressional aides have talked about trimming that cost by making it more difficult to qualify for compensation.

Reid said he went to Lew after learning that eliminating help for the silicosis victims was one of the cost-cutting moves under consideration.

"I think Lew understood the problem better" after the meeting, he said.

Nevada's other Democratic senator, Richard Bryan, also lobbied Lew, suggesting a policy favoring coverage of the workers with lung-clogging silicosis.

The administration is expected to issue a policy statement on compensation for sick workers early next week.

OMB spokeswoman Linda Ricci would not discuss any aspect of that policy decision, saying only, "We're working through some of the details in order to move forward on this issue.

"It's important that we move quickly in order to get this done this session," she said.

Giving money and medical care to workers sickened by their Cold War-era exposure to silica, beryllium and radiation is one of the issues before Congress in the final weeks of a legislative session tentatively scheduled to end Oct. 6.

The Senate attached a compensation proposal to an unrelated military bill, and questions have been raised about how many people might be covered and how much such a program might cost.

The House is scheduled to have its first hearing on compensation next week, with lawmakers querying medical experts, workers' compensation experts, victims and representatives of the Justice Department, Labor Department, Energy Department and Department of Health and Human Services.

------------

Message: 8
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000
From: "Paula Elofson-Gardine, Exec. Dir." <pelofson1@home.com>

Cold War Contracts EVERYWHERE

Dear Jena,

If you are interested in looking farther, you might find that there are far more "secret cold war contracts" than you ever imagined. They are literally everywhere. My sister found a manifest for "empty drums" being transported on commercial carriers from Rocky Flats to Martin Marietta on the other end of town, but each drum weighed 200 to 500 pounds. Empty? Seems suspicious, doesn't it?

Here's a brief look at Denver's polluted sites:

-the Shattuck site fiasco (uranium recovery)

-Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Facility (DOE) plutonium waste discharges to reservoirs,

-Swartzwalder Uranium mine near Rocky Flats(discharges uranium to Arvada's drinking water reservoir)

-Rocky Mountain Arsenal (Army chemical weapons site) pesticide & CWA releases,

-Martin Marietta hydrizine discharges to reservoirs, and

-COORS, which had some secret contracts in their ceramics division including "Project Pluto" to neutron bombard uranium for the Snap 9A satellite RTG program. One of their nuclear excursions resulted in waste going to Rocky Flats for disposal.

You would be amazed at what you will find once you delve below the surface of this quagmire. The radioactive metals recycling goes hand in hand with these secret contracts, some of which ended up in Apollo, Pennsylvania as radioactive frying pans & silverware.

What's a little uranium with you're steak and scrambled eggs? A little dab will do ya.

If you have the people or connections, you could do a tremendous service by tracking all of these under the table sweetheart deals via the "presidential kitchen cabinet" of cronies and special interest sources.

Sincerely,

Paula Elofson-Gardine, Biologist Executive Director Environmental Information Network From the fallout zone of Rocky Flats (303) 233-6677

-------

Texas companies among reported secret nuclear sites

By Jena Heath
American-Statesman
September 7, 2000
http://www.austin360.com/statesman/editions/today/metro_state_1.html

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Energy is being asked to release information about possible health and environmental harm from four plants in Texas that reportedly secretly produced material for nuclear weapons during the Cold War.

Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Beaumont, is set to hold a news conference this morning to call attention to the private companies: Sutton, Steele and Steele in Dallas; AMCOT in Fort Worth; Mathieson Chemical Pilot Plant in Pasadena; and Amoco Chemical Co., formerly Texas City Chemicals, in Texas City. Lampson said he suspects a fifth site, the federally run Medina facility near San Antonio, also should be investigated.

The four private sites were identified Wednesday in the first of a three-part USA Today investigation into some 150 newly revealed nuclear weapons sites around the country.

During the 1940s and 1950s, the federal government contracted with private plants, mills and shops to process and produce toxic and radioactive materials for making nuclear weapons, exposing thousands of workers to potential health risks, the newspaper reported. Information about these "forgotten sites" came to light, in part, from declassified Energy Department documents.

A White House panel was set up in 1994 to investigate health risks from various secret Cold War studies, and other government inquiries have focused on risks to workers who handled nuclear material.

Although some of the most dramatic cases involving private companies have been written about previously, USA Today said it documented for the first time the scope of the programs.

Lampson, a member of the House Science Committee, is not sponsoring legislation concerning the sites but may suggest hearings, an aide said. His office has contacted Local 4-449 of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union for reports of any worker health problems.

Union members familiar with the request were unavailable Wednesday.

"All the affected communities and former workers in the forgotten sites across the nation deserve at least the same level of attention as other nuclear weapons sites," Lampson wrote Wednesday in a letter to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson.

According to USA Today, some workers at the plants have suffered from severe illnesses, such as kidney failure, after years spent exposed to uranium and thorium dust and other chemicals.

Sutton, Steele and Steele was hired in 1951 to test ways of removing uranium from processing equipment, according to the paper's investigation. The Dallas site is considered at little risk for contamination.

At Mathieson Chemical, a 1977 federal survey found small amounts of radioactive material in a sink drain, and limited amounts of radiation may have been released at AMCOT in Fort Worth. At Texas City Chemicals, above-average radiation levels were found in the soil, although the site has not been definitely linked to weapons production.

The Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission said it has no information about the four private Texas sites.

Among the major findings of the USA Today review:

- At least a third of the 300 private companies hired by the government handled large amounts of radioactive and toxic material even if they did not have the proper equipment or knowledge to protect workers.

- The government regularly documented worker health risks at many private facilities, producing highly classified reports that detailed radiation exposure rates hundreds of times above safety standards.

- Dozens of private companies contaminated the surrounding air, soil and water with toxic and radioactive waste.

- Both the government and private executives at the companies hid the health and environmental problems.

You may contact Jena Heath at jenah@coxnews.com.

--------

Message: 9
Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2000
From: easlavin@aol.com

DOE'S TROJAN HORSE BILL/($100k bribe bill)

In a message dated 9/9/00 1:04:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time, magnu96196@aol.com writes, quoting article:

By some estimates, the proposal could cost taxpayers more than $3 billion, and congressional aides have talked about trimming that cost by making it more difficult to qualify for compensation.

Good afternoon: DOE never did anything to make it "more difficult" for workers and residents to get sick. How dare Congressional staffers with yellow ties and silk dresses try to "trim that cost by making it more difficult to qualify for compensation."

Talk about a pig in a poke. Talk about a TROJAN HORSE. Color me angry. Aren't they just tryng to rush to cram this nonsense before the House goes Democratic and Richard Gephardt is Speaker? What do you think?

Ed Slavin


-----------------------------------------------------------

NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS

1 REID AMENDMENT WILL BAN TAXPAYER-FUNDED ADS FOR YUCCA MOUNTAIN
2 Vit plans possible budget booster
3 Poor communications suspected in incidents at nuclear reactor
4 Zirconate Material Will Resist Radiation, Improve Safety Of
5 PEMA Trains Radiological and Hazardous Materials Responders
6 GREENS ADD PROVISO TO EU AID FOR UKRAINIAN N-PLANTS
7 FRENCH NUCLEAR SAFETY BODY QUESTIONS FIRE VIGILANCE
8 GREENPEACE URGES CLIMATE TALKS TO REJECT NUCLEAR
9 Nuclear safety strategy for candidate countries and Newly
10 Nuclear waste landfills plan
11 U.S.-Built Radwaste Facility Opens in Severodvinsk
12 ENTERGY EXPANDS DECOMMISSIONING CAPABILITIES
13 EX-SHATTUCK CHIEF: NO ENRICHED URANIUM AT SITE
14 Justice: no buried poison - By Bill Bartleman

--------------------

NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES

1 REID AMENDMENT WILL BAN TAXPAYER-FUNDED ADS FOR YUCCA MOUNTAIN TOURS
September 8, 2000

Washington, D.C. ­ Nevada Senator Harry Reid's amendment to H.R. 4733, the FY 2001 Energy and Water Appropriations bill preventing been fighting for years to keep Yucca Mountain from being turned into a dump site for the country's high-level nuclear waste.

"I was appalled when I saw these advertisements on a recent trip back home," said Reid. "This is a thinly-veiled attempt to lobby for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site. The DOE should nuclear dump that Nevadans don't want."

the Yucca Mountain project. Congressional opponents argued that Nevada was using money set aside for nuclear waste disposal to lobby against building a national nuclear waste repository.

"It would be hypocritical of Congress to accuse Nevada of misusing public funds to lobby against the proposed Yucca Mountain dump while allowing the DOE to use the same public funds to advertise for the dump," said Reid. "This amendment will help ensure that all future decisions about Yucca Mountain are based on sound science, not on politics."

-------------

2 Vit plans possible budget booster
This story was published 9/9/2000
BY JOHN STANG HERALD STAFF WRITER

SEATTLE--Hanford's cleanup budget request for fiscal 2002 could end up at about $1.7 billion or $1.8 billion--$250 million to $300 million more than what is expected for fiscal 2001.

Most of that increase would be for designing and starting to build plants to turn Hanford's radioactive tank wastes into glass.

And part of it would be likely be because of a Department of Energy proposal to shift more money and attention to speeding cleanup along the Columbia River shore.

Harry Boston, manager of DOE's Office of River Protection, and Keith Klein, DOE's Hanford manager, both voiced cautious optimism their agency will ask Congress for the increases.

Finding the extra money will seriously challenge DOE's long-term plan of keeping annual cleanup budgets about level.

In other budget news, the U.S. Senate on Thursday night passed the Energy and Water Appropriations bill for fiscal 2001, which includes money for Hanford cleanup. According to Sen. Slade Gorton's office, the bill includes about $1.5 billion for Hanford, covering projects such as $950,000 for a B Reactor museum.

In June, the House of Representatives approved spending at least $1.5 billion at Hanford in fiscal 2001. After House and Senate versions are reconciled, a final version will be sent to the president for his signature.

Boston and Klein discussed their proposals for 2002 before the Hanford Advisory Board Friday in Seattle.

The Office of River Protection, which supervises all tank farm matters at Hanford, plans to ask for about $1 billion annual budgets from fiscal 2002 through at least fiscal 2006. Actual construction of the glassification plants--the reason for the big budget bump - - is tentatively scheduled to begin in 2002 between April and December.

Hanford's tank farm program cost $300 million to $400 million a year through the 1990s. Close to $759 million--in appropriations and leftover money--is expected to be spent in fiscal 2001, which begins Oct. 1.

Boston said DOE's Washington, D.C., headquarters appears committed to getting the extra money to begin the delay-plagued glassification project. And he said the Northwest's congressional delegation has been pushing hard for the project.

And Boston noted the state of Washington and DOE are negotiating consent decrees to govern parts of cleaning up the tank farms-- adding legal pressure on DOE and Congress to keep to cleanup schedules. A consent decree is a legal agreement allowing the state to go directly to a federal judge to seek an enforcement order if DOE cleanup efforts fall behind.

Meanwhile, Klein is asking a "modest increase" in the approximately $720 million annual budget for cleanup projects not related to the tanks.

About a month ago, Klein proposed to accelerate cleanup along the rivershore so most of the work--including cleaning out the heavily built-up 300 Area just north of Richland--would be done by 2012.

The proposal would drastically shrink the contaminated portion of Hanford by 2012, he said. That would be politically valuable in showing significant cleanup progress over the next 10 years to a skeptical Congress.

Klein, HAB members and regulatory officials also have noted major tradeoffs would have to happen. It appears much of the soil study and decontamination work in the 200 Area would have to be delayed in favor of the rivershore work.

Also, some ground water decontamination, some demolition and sealing of old reactor complexes and dealing with the highly contaminated, complicated and possibly leaking 618-11 burial site would still be unfinished along the shore area in 2012--even if rivershore cleanup is accelerated.

DOE will have to decide by early next year whether to shift extra efforts to speeding up rivershore cleanup, Klein said, because DOE is scheduled to send its fiscal 2002 budget request to Congress in February.

Klein also proposes Hanford's new environmental restoration contract, which focuses mostly on rivershore projects, be designed to run until most of the riverside work is done, supposedly in 2012.

"The next contract will be based on an end state," Klein said.

The contract of Bechtel Hanford Inc., the site's environmental restoration contractor, expires in mid-2002. A new long-term contract linking profits to getting work done by or before 2012 will likely take about 18 months to draft, put out for bids and then award, Klein said.

The Hanford Advisory Board's members want to provide input into the proposal because of the major tradeoffs and significant budget questions involved.

Two HAB committees have all-day meetings scheduled Tuesday in Richland at Bechtel headquarters and Wednesday at the Federal Building.

On Friday, the whole board told those two committees to figure out how the board can study and provide feedback on Klein's proposal by November.

----------

3 Poor communications suspected in incidents at nuclear reactor
The Monett Times Story
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published September 08, 2000 8:17 PM CDT

Missouri incident under federal investigation

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) _ An investigation of two "apparent" violations at the University of Missouri Research Reactor this year is focusing on poor communication and ineffective policies.

Officials of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission met with Chancellor Richard Wallace and reactor administrators on Wednesday to exchange information and clarify issues about the two incidents.

"These violations are an embarrassment to me and the institution, " Wallace said. "Both are still alleged violations. Regardless, it leads to the conclusion that policies have been inadequate."

The information gained at Wednesday's conference will be used to help the federal agency decide what action­­if any­­ will be taken against the university, said David Matthews, director of the NRC's Division of Regulatory Improvement. A decision is likely within 30 days, he said.

One incident occurred April 12 when employees allowed the release of 10 units of radiation over three minutes. The NRC allows no more than five units of exposure during a single year to a reactor worker. No workers were in the area at the time of that incident.

On June 12, workers conducting routine maintenance failed to take extra precaution in changing a control rod. Reactor administrators said personnel were not adequately trained to do that and that the university's procedure manual was poorly written.

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4 Zirconate Material Will Resist Radiation, Improve Safety Of Long-Term Plutonium Storage

ScienceDaily Magazine
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN (HTTP://WWW.UMICH.EDU)
Posted 9/8/2000

ANN ARBOR --- An international research team, led by University of Michigan scientists, has found that gadolinium zirconate is much more resistant to radiation than the ceramic currently being considered for disposal of plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons in the United States. This highly durable material---a zirconate pyrochlore---is calculated to resist radiation damage for up to 30 million years.

The research team performed a systematic study of the radiation resistance of gadolinium titanate, the ceramic currently proposed for plutonium immobilization, and zirconate compositions. Results indicate that the titanate will be damaged by radiation in less than 1,000 years. The zirconate will not sustain damage for periods up to 30 million years. Considering that plutonium is an environmental contaminant with a radioactive half-life of 24,500 years, the multi-million-year calculation of the zirconate's durability makes it a leading candidate for the immobilization of plutonium.

"This is a significant scientific discovery with major environmental impact for future generations," said Dr. Yok Chen, Program Manager in the Office of Basic Energy Sciences at the U.S. Department of Energy, which funded this research at the University of Michigan and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).

Rodney Ewing, professor of nuclear engineering and radiological sciences at the U-M College of Engineering, and William Weber, a senior staff scientist at PNNL, led the team of researchers that included scientists at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization and the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research in India.

The team's findings were first published in the December 1999 Journal of Materials Research (JMR). This past week, another international team of researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, working independently from the U-M team, announced similar results with an erbium zirconate ceramic.

The safe disposal of plutonium is a relatively new environmental problem. Both the United States and the former Soviet Union have agreed to dismantle nuclear weapons, resulting in 100 metric tons of plutonium, approximately 50 from each side. This plutonium is only a small part of a growing global inventory of plutonium that is already greater than 1,300 metric tons.

"What to do with this plutonium is a science and policy issue of great national and international importance," said Ewing. "Two independent research teams have shown that zirconate-based materials offer an excellent solution to the serious problem of this ever-increasing amount of plutonium. Taken together, these startling results confirm that there are radiation-resistant and chemically durable materials that can safely contain plutonium."

This new material is capable of incorporating a large variety of chemical elements in its structure, including plutonium. The zirconate withstands the radiation that results from the decay of plutonium. The ability to sustain high levels of damage without a disruption of the atomic structure accounts for the radiation stability of this material.

"The currently considered titanate became completely disordered at relatively low exposures to radiation," said Shixin Wang, a U-M postdoctoral fellow and lead author on the JMR article. Wang presented these findings at the Plutonium Futures 2000 conference on July 10 in Sante Fe, N.M.

"The disordered titanate material leads to an increase in the loss of plutonium when the material is in contact with water," added Weber at PNNL.

The team will continue to investigate the chemical durability of gadolinium zirconate by leaching tests. The radiation behavior of the zirconates with high concentrations of impurities will be studied to ensure a complete knowledge of the long-term performance of this material.

The original news release can be found at http://www.umich.edu/ ~newsinfo/Releases/2000/Aug00/r081100.html

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5 PEMA Trains Radiological and Hazardous Materials Responders
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 9, 6:01 AM EASTERN TIME
Press Release
Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency

FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, Pa., Sept. 9 /PRNewswire/--The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) today hosted a training session at Fort Indiantown Gap for responders to accidents involving the shipment of spent nuclear fuel, radio-pharmaceuticals, radiation terrorism and lost radioactive sources. The training exercise continues tomorrow.

``This training is a unique opportunity to have more than 140 specialized hazardous materials response team members and radiological officers demonstrate their skills in a team setting,'' said Lt. Gov. Mark Schweiker, Chairman of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Council. ``Should an accident ever occur with radioactive materials or the transport of spent nuclear fuel, it is important that these experts from across the Commonwealth effectively communicate and work as a precision team.''

The training was offered in cooperation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), and several corporations that provided training materials and expertise.

The two-day exercise includes demonstrations of survey and detection equipment, training sessions on the use and capabilities of the new equipment, and team sessions that include the Incident Command System and Emergency Operation Center interaction and cooperation.

This is the third year the specialized training has been provided. It has been recognized by FEMA and the Department of Energy as an outstanding training tool for response to radiological emergencies.

No actual radioactive materials were used in the training.

CONTACT: Marko Bourne of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, 717-651-2139.
SOURCE: Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency

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6 GREENS ADD PROVISO TO EU AID FOR UKRAINIAN N-PLANTS

Story by Janet McEvoy
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
September 7, 2000

BRUSSELS - THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION YESTERDAY PUT A QUESTION MARK OVER ITS PLANS TO HELP UKRAINE BUILD TWO NEW NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS TO REPLACE CHERNOBYL, THE SCENE OF THE WORLD'S WORST CIVILIAN NUCLEAR DISASTER.

Michaele Schreyer, a German and the only Green on the 20-member Commission, forced a change in a policy document adopted at its weekly meeting on how to help contribute to nuclear safety in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe.

The paper drawn up by External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten outlines a commitment to helping Ukraine and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) complete two new nuclear plants at Rivne and Khmelnitsky.

EU sources said a phrase was added saying the EU would help Ukraine with alternative energy sources on the basis of the "least cost principle", a principle embodied in a 1995 memorandum of understanding struck on closing Chernobyl.

A Greenpeace spokesman said there were conflicting assessments of whether the two new plants would be cheaper than other energy sources, so the phrase introduced a possible obstacle to EU aid being granted.

A European Commission spokesman said a final decision by the EBRD on funding for the plants was expected in October.

Although he acknowledged that different assessments over cost existed, he said the EBRD itself considered the nuclear plants to be the most cost-effective energy source.

Ukraine has promised the west that on December 15 it will close the last remaining nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl plant, where the number four reactor exploded in 1986.

The ex-Soviet state relies on nuclear power to supply half of its electricity, and EU officials said it maintained a preference for nuclear power to prevent increased dependence on energy sources from Russia.

In its document, the Commission said that it remained concerned about nuclear safety in the former Soviet Union.

The EU has forced the early closure of Soviet-style reactors in three countries seeking to join the bloc, notably at Kozloduy in Bulgaria, Bohunice in Slovakia and Ignalina in Lithuania.

It admitted it had a harder task in cash-strapped former Soviet Union states like Russia and Ukraine.

"Safety levels...continue to give cause for concern in western countries and it will take time and considerable financial investment to raise them," the document said.

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7 FRENCH NUCLEAR SAFETY BODY QUESTIONS FIRE VIGILANCE
FRANCE: September 6, 2000
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

PARIS - FRENCH NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS ARE NOT VIGILANTE ENOUGH AGAINST FIRE HAZARDS, THE COUNTRY'S NUCLEAR SAFETY AUTHORITY (DSIN) SAID YESTERDAY.

"Those who run nuclear installations have to worry about prevention, they have to prevent fires. There is a lack of fire awareness," Andre- Claude Lacoste, head of the DSIN, told a news conference.

Statistics showed a fire started every two years at nuclear installations in France, sometimes causing a risk of disseminating radioactive substances, he said.

DSIN recommendations prompted the state-owned electricity firm EDF in 1998 to start a review of fire procedures on 54 reactors, which will be completed in 2006 at a cost of 2.8 billion francs ($382.7 million).

France's most serious incident occurred in 1981, when fire affected a nuclear waste storage room at the nuclear reprocessing plant in La Hague.

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8 GREENPEACE URGES CLIMATE TALKS TO REJECT NUCLEAR
FRANCE: September 6, 2000
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE

PARIS - ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP GREENPEACE YESTERDAY URGED EXPERTS AT INTERNATIONAL TALKS ON CLIMATE CHANGE TO REJECT NUCLEAR POWER AS A SOLUTION TO GLOBAL WARMING.

"France and Britain are leading the lobby for nuclear to be included in the list of 'acceptable technologies' that can be used for 'clean development' projects. We want it to ruled out," Greenpeace France director Bruno Rebelle told Reuters.

Representatives of 180 countries are meeting in the central French city of Lyon this week and next to thrash out how an international agreement to curb the greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming will be made to work in practice.

The negotiations, between experts from the countries which signed the Kyoto Protocol (treaty) in 1997, are a crucial preparation for ministerial-level world talks on climate change in the Dutch city of the Hague in November.

The Kyoto Protocol commits industrialised countries to cutting emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide to around 5.2 percent below the 1990 level by 2008-2012.

After three years of negotiations, the Kyoto signatories have still not agreed if there should be sanctions for countries which fail to meet their reductions targets.

Nor have they agreed how systems for buying the right to pollute - either by purchasing emissions credits from states which more than meet their reductions targets or by funding projects for curbing emissions in other countries - will work.

Environmental groups want recourse to these so-called flexible mechanisms kept to a minimum, so that governments take genuine action at home to cut greenhouse gas emissions from oil, gas and coal consumption, transport and heavy industry.

They also want the Kyoto rules explicitly to prevent countries earning emissions credits by building nuclear power stations abroad. "Otherwise they could use the Protocol as an excuse to revive the ailing nuclear industry," Greenpeace France energy specialist Helene Gassin said.

French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin - whose country obtains 80 percent of its electricity from atomic energy - is due to attend the talks on September 11.

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9 Nuclear safety strategy for candidate countries and Newly Independent States -
8 Sep 2000

Overall EU policy on nuclear safety in the candidate countries and the Newly Independent States (NIS) is set out in a new Communication adopted by the European Commission on 7 September. The Communication also a streamlining of the delivery of EU assistance in this area, and responds to requests made by the European Parliament and the Court of Auditors.

The main objectives are to support the candidate countries and NIS in their efforts to improve operational safety and to enhance regulatory systems; shutdown and decommission reactors that cannot be upgraded to internationally accepted levels of safety at reasonable cost; and upgrade nuclear plants of more recent design.

Following agreements by the governments of Lithuania, Bulgaria and Slovakia to close non upgradable reactors, Commission policy is now to concentrate on implementing the closure agreements for Ignalina (2 units out of 2), Bohunice (2 units out of 4) and Kozloduy (2 units out of 6), and on enhancing the level of nuclear safety at other units at these sites and at other nuclear power plants.

In the NIS, the approach is to concentrate on supporting the development of better safety culture at the level of the regulator and of plant operators. The Commission is seeking closer co-operation with the Russian authorities and the Commission is prepared to consider Euratom loans for safety upgrading investments as well as for the completion of reactors to Western safety levels.

The Commission has also reviewed procedures in the Tacis and Phare programmes on nuclear safety, taking account of the absence of normal competition in the sector. Revised procedures will speed up contracting and deal with several of the issues raised in the past by the European Parliament and the Court of Auditors.

In future, for on-site assistance, Commission general policy will be to conclude direct agreement contracts directly with utilities following calls for proposals (for new sites) and to entrust them with tasks for supplies which in the past were handled by procurement agents. The Commission's Joint Research Centre will be used for technical follow up of projects, for dissemination of Tacis Phare project results press release

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10 Nuclear waste landfills plan
JAMES FREEMAN

A GOVERNMENT watchdog has recommended that better use should be made of landfills for the disposal of low-level radioactive waste generated by small users such as hospitals, universities and research faculties.

The Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee suggests that, as long as the selected landfills could guarantee the long-term safety of the wastes, such "controlled burial" would provide direct benefits for small users, both in waste management and cost terms, and would also save capacity at the Drigg national repository, in Cumbria, for more active low-level wastes.

But Dr Richard Dixon, of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: "This idea has been around for four years. We know, however, the problems associated with landfill sites. They will not keep the material completely safe.

"You are storing up trouble for the future because some of it may escape into the wider environment and even the Government admits that there is no safe level of radiation. You are adding measurable risk to people's lives."

The answer, says FoES, is to add on capacity for low-level waste at the nuclear waste repositories which will have to be built at nuclear power stations. Many small users, including universities and hospitals, have been accused in the past of flushing wastes down toilets and into the public sewer system.

The RWMAC report states that the small user sector produces very large volumes of low or very low-level solid waste and more short half-life waste than the nuclear operators. The UK's hospitals collectively discharge more radio-iodines to the environment than the nuclear utilities.

The chairman of the independent committee, Professor Charles Curtis, said: "We often forget that radioactive materials are used extensively in hospitals, universities and non-nuclear industries. The benefits to the public are immense but the difficulties experienced by these 'small users' in dealing with radioactive wastes should not be underestimated."

The committee is seriously concerned over the lack of funding in hospital and university budgets for dealing with spent, sealed, radioactive sources (SSRSs).

With the focus of financial resources on achieving Government targets, little priority is given to managing these wastes. It urges the Government to consider whether the practice of driving down discharge limits at all costs will imbalance actual health risk versus benefit, possibly prejudicing access to some forms of treatment in hospitals.

They also ask for consideration of ring-fencing additional resources for managing the wastes and of provision for a dedicated organisation for collecting and disposing SSRSs.

Another idea, encouraging arrangements for all sales of new radioactive sources to have the cost of disposal covered through the purchase price, also finds favour with FoES.

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11 U.S.-Built Radwaste Facility Opens in Severodvinsk
GENERAL NEWS
Thomas Jandl, 2000-09-09

Topics like social tension in the Northern Fleet and projects related to the new areas of use for nuclear powered submarines.

(Washington D.C.): Lockheed Martin Environmental Technologies announced the commissioning of the first Low-Level Radioactive Waste Volume Reduction facility in Russia. The commissioning ceremony is planned for October 18, 2000.

An international team under prime contractor Lockheed Martin Environmental Technologies (LMET) announced it will commission a Low-Level Radioactive Waste (LLRW) Volume Reduction facility in Russia's naval port of Severodvinsk next month. The ceremony on October 18 marks the completion of a contract awarded in August of 1998.

The contract for the design, fabrication, installation and certification of the facility was awarded by the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency under the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, also known as Nunn-Lugar. This program assists the Russian Federation in dismantling 31 ballistic missile submarines.

The Russian Federation is obligated under the START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) to dismantle a large number of nuclear-powered submarines, thus creating significant volumes of both liquid and solid LLRW. In addition to a lack of treatment facilities, a severe shortage of storage space for LLWR exists in Russia. Consequently, Nunn-Lugar funded the construction of two LLRW treatment facilities, one at the Zvezdochka shipyard in Severodvinsk, one at the Zvezda yard in the Far East. Both contracts were awarded to the LMET team, which includes the American companies Booz Allen & Hamilton and Kvaerner Process Services, Norway's Kvaerner (now Moss) Maritime, France's Cogema Technologies and Russia's Aspect.

According to a program document, LMET is the only Western company to achieve Russian regulatory approval for a radwaste treatment facility in the Russian Federation.

The original contract value for the two facilities was $23.45 million, but due to changes in design and project scope, the contract expanded to $40 million, the company said.

The Zvezdochka facility is now undergoing operational testing; the Zvezda facility will be finished in 2001.

Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway Reuse and reprint recommended

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12 ENTERGY EXPANDS DECOMMISSIONING CAPABILITIES
Digital Marketplace for the power generation industry

Edited by April C. Murelio
Power Online:

Entergy plans to buy TLG Services (Bridgewater, CT) in a deal that makes the New Orleans-based energy company one of the most experienced companies in decommissioning in the American nuclear industry, said Jerry Yelverton, Entergy Nuclear's CEO.

"TLG Services is a globally recognized expert in decommissioning engineering, related cost estimation, and field services. Their expertise strengthens Entergy's capabilities as one of the nation's premier nuclear operators," Yelverton said. "We already are doing decommissioning work in the utility industry, and acquiring TLG solidifies our position as an industry leader."

According to Yelverton, the expertise of TLG Services reduces the decommissioning risk, a potentially significant liability, at Entergy Nuclear's existing nuclear plants and the additional plants it buys as Entergy pursues its principal growth strategy of acquiring more nuclear generation.

"TLG's knowledge is necessary for a national nuclear company and fits well with our growth strategy," he said.

Thomas LaGuardia, president of TLG, plans to remain in that position. TLG Services, he said, has actively participated in the cost estimating, program planning, mechanical and structural engineering, waste management, radiological engineering, health physics, and quality assurance support for all recent and current commercial nuclear power plant decommissioning projects.

TLG, established in 1982, specializes in the decommissioning of both nuclear and fossil-fueled sites. TLG Services, which was originally established to pursue decommissioning services within the electric utility industry (primarily nuclear), has performed work for 85% of the commercial nuclear plants in the United States, all nuclear plants in Canada and some facilities overseas.

It has also provided consulting services to the Nuclear Energy Institute, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, U.S. Department of Energy, government contractors, and the non-utility commercial nuclear market, including the medical and health care industry.

TLG has prepared decommissioning engineering and cost studies for 128 nuclear power units and more than 200 fossil-fueled units, and has been asked to provide expert testimony in more than 110 state public utility commission and U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rate cases.

Based on all of this experience, Yelverton said, the TLG acquisition further strengthens Entergy's life cycle management services to the nuclear industry. Earlier this summer, Entergy Nuclear and Framatome Technologies signed a memorandum of understanding to offer operating license-renewal and life extension services to nuclear power plants in the United States.

The nuclear businesses of Entergy are based in Jackson, MI. Entergy ranks as the third largest power generator in the nation with more than 30,000 MW of generating capacity, about US$11 billion in revenue and more than 2.5 million customers. Entergy's nuclear businesses encompass five power reactors at four locations in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

Entergy purchased the Pilgrim Station, Plymouth, MA in 1999, the first nuclear plant sale in a competitive bidding process, and has agreed to purchase the Indian Point 3, Westchester County, New York and FitzPatrick, Oswego County, New York plants from the New York Power Authority this year. Entergy is also managing decommissioning activities at Maine Yankee, Wiscasset, ME, and Millstone Unit 1, Waterford, CT.

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13 EX-SHATTUCK CHIEF: NO ENRICHED URANIUM AT SITE
DenverPost.com - News: Colorado and Denver
DENVER POST ENVIRONMENT WRITER

SEPT. 9, 2000 - The former manager of the Shattuck Chemical Co. site in Denver said his company never handled special or enriched uranium material and never extracted scrap uranium for nuclear weapons programs in the 1960s.

Responding to a story in Wednesday's edition of USA Today, Tom Millensifer, vice president of the firm from 1956 to 1974, said Friday that his firm handled only naturally occurring radioactive materials and depleted uranium, for which it was licensed by the Atomic Energy Commission.

"We did not supply anything to any weapons program for any purpose, and that includes naturally occurring and depleted uranium," he added.

The USA Today story, based on an examination of Atomic Energy Commission documents, looked at 300 sites nationwide. But it had local EPA officials scratching their heads.

A chart that ran with the story contained this reference to Shattuck: "Extraction of scrap uranium for reuse by the weapons program in the 1960s."

"At this point, we have no evidence at all that Shattuck was involved in any kind of nuclear weapons work," said Barry Levene, head of the EPA's Colorado Superfund cleanups.

Millensifer scoffed at the claim in USA Today.

"That's ludicrous," he said. "You don't take depleted uranium and make a weapons-grade uranium out of it. Two-thirds of the U-235 isotope was removed."

Bob Sperling, a member of the citizen group CLEANIT, said he wouldn't be surprised if the allegation were true, but he added that it shouldn't stop the ongoing cleanup.

Levene said the regional EPA office provided the paper with some documents relating to Shattuck. After reading the story, Levene contacted USA Today reporter Peter Eisler and asked if Eisler would cite the documents used in the paper's report.

"He told me he wasn't sure where the reference was found,"

Levene said. "Obviously, it's very much of an interest to us. We want to know if there's something else we're not aware of."

The paper said it had reviewed more than 100,000 documents of declassified federal records and identified more than 300 private companies and properties that "apparently were engaged in weapons work."

However, the paper acknowledged that it obtained basic information for only about 150 sites, and that in other cases reporters were unable to confirm the specific nature of the contracting operations.

Millensifer said that at one point, the company did look at reprocessing scrap from a Remington Arms plant that made armor-piercing rounds out of depleted uranium.

But it discovered the depleted uranium material did not meet the needs, and shipped it to a licensed waste site, he said.

The allegation is potentially explosive because neighbors have long suspected that the company and the EPA have not been forthright about what went on at the site, located near West Evans Avenue and South Santa Fe Drive.

Hugh Kaufman, an investigator for the EPA's Office of Ombudsman, had previously alleged that Shattuck performed Defense Department work.

The EPA's inability to describe the scope of contamination on site with certainty was the lever that citizen groups used to force the agency to reopen the decision-making process.

In 1992, the EPA decided to entomb more than 50,000 cubic yards of contaminated dirt mixed with concrete and fly ash on site. This past June, the agency formally reversed itself and authorized a plan to remove the waste.

If Shattuck handled even "lowlevel" radioactive waste, it could significantly alter the cleanup plan.

TO DONATE Amemorial fund has been established.
Those wishing to make donations can send them to the Dennis Licata Fund, Denver Police Federal Credit Union, 700 W. 39th Ave., Denver, CO 80216.
Specify account No. 23000694.

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14 Justice: no buried poison
Dig ends; mountain of drums all but gone
By Bill Bartleman
The Paducah Sun
Saturday, September 09, 2000

BARKLEY THIELEMAN/The Sun--Nearly done: As a clamshell grappler picks up crushed drums from the remaining part of 'drum mountain' Friday, the crusher (left) fills a scrap container with the processed drums.

U.S. Department of Justice officials say they find no evidence of illegally buried drums of contaminated water in or near a closed landfill at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

The search for contaminated drums was conducted in response to wide- ranging allegations in a federal whistle-blower lawsuit that past plant operators falsified records and disposed of contaminated waste improperly in order to earn millions of dollars in operating bonuses. One former worker told investigators that contaminated drums were buried in the landfill, which was designated for nonhazardous waste.

In an unrelated matter, the task of removing 85,000 rusted drums from a scrap pile known as "drum mountain" should be completed early next week, according to Greg Cook, spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs Co., which has the contract to remove the drums.

The shredded drums have been placed in more than 130 containers that, beginning Oct. 1, will be shipped to a hazardous waste landfill in Utah.

The removal of drum mountain is the first visible sign of the U.S. Department of Energy's effort to clean up the almost 50-year-old uranium enrichment plant.

The drums were once used to store hazardous, mildly radioactive uranium tetrafluoride, or UF4. The barrels were crushed and moved to the scrap yard after the plant stopped the manufacturing process that produced UF4, also known as "green salt." Water runoff from the drums is suspected to be the cause of groundwater contamination.

Removal of the drums is costing DOE about $7 million.

The Department of Justice investigation into claims of falsified records is to determine if there is evidence to prove the allegations of misdeeds by the former contractor, Lockheed Martin, and its predecessors. If there is evidence, the federal government would become a party in a lawsuit that is seeking to recover millions of dollars from the former operator.

Justice officials have until Nov. 1 to decide whether to join the suit. Hancy Jones, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Louisville, said investigators are continuing to review thousands of pages of documents. "The investigation is a long way from being over," Jones said.

The investigation involves reviewing plant records, interviewing current and former workers, and digging at locations on the plant grounds identified in allegations as sites of illegal dumping. Some digging was done last year, but was halted when investigators weren't finding evidence of any problems.

The digging resumed last month in new areas where there had been claims of illegal dumping.

"We have finished with that dig, and I can confirm that we found a railroad tie and some fence posts," said Jones said. "If we have new allegations, we will consider looking into those."

---------------------------------------------

NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS

1 Hanford Tanks Removed from Watch List
2 Hanford may need more waste tanks, state says
3 Bid to boost NIF funding falters
4 Draft report snubs lab's uranium conversion
5 CANDIDATES TAKE AIM AT LASER PROJECT
6 Sick miners might not get help
7 Scientists must lead the public debate over the ethics of their work
8 Report: Kursk Sunk by Warship Missile
9 Russian Military Deny Berliner Zeitung Report On Kursk Submarine
10 Labor Unions: Ex-worker sues test site contractor
11 Putin: Norway important in nuke co-operation
12 Pakistan a responsible nuclear state, says minister
13 Hearings urged on worker exposure
14 Iowa senator joins call for Cold War radiation hearings
15 Senate pushes DOE site cleanup funds - By Joe Walker

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NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES

1 Hanford Tanks Removed from Watch List
September 8, 2000

RICHLAND, WA, - The Department of Energy's Office of River Protection (ORP) and CH2M HILL Hanford Group (CHG) have successfully resolved the organic solvent safety issue with Tanks C-102 and C-103, allowing both tanks to be removed from the "Wyden Watch List," named for Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon.

The tanks were placed on the watch list in 1990 because of concerns that a floating layer of organic material similar to kerosene could be ignited, releasing radioactivity into the environment. Results of subsequent sampling and detailed analyses show it is extremely unlikely that a fire could ever be ignited in either tank.

"Our work enabled us to quantify the risks associated with this issue, " said Fran DeLozier, CHG president and general manager. "We've determined, and DOE agreed, that the possibility of an event and its consequences to the environment are so low, Tanks C-102 and C-103 no longer meet the requirements for the watch list."

Based on analyses, the chance of the waste in these tanks being ignited is extremely unlikely. Further, the data gathered help DOE and CHG to understand and communicate the actual hazards presented by the waste in the tanks.

"Removal of these tanks from the watch list represents years of hard work brought to a successful conclusion for the River Protection Project," said Harry Boston, Acting Manager of the Office of River Protection. "This is another example of the real progress that the ORP team is making to protect the Columbia River, our workers and the surrounding communities. I am very pleased with this progress and proud of our team."

In 1990, Congress enacted the Wyden Amendment establishing a watch list of potentially dangerous waste storage tanks. The maximum number of Hanford tanks on the list was 56 in 1994. A total of 31 tanks have been taken off the list after safety concerns were resolved. Most recently, 18 tanks were removed from the list in 1998, and one more in 1999. Now Tanks C-102 and C-103 have been removed.

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2 Hanford may need more waste tanks, state says

Fri, Sep 8, 2000
TRI-CITY HERALD
BY JOHN STANG HERALD STAFF WRITER

SEATTLE--The math goes like this.

Hanford's latest master plan calls for glassification of its radioactive tank wastes to be at full speed by 2011.

But Hanford's 28 double-shell tanks, the safest ones, are expected to be filled by 2006.

The bottom line: Hanford might have to seriously look at building new, expensive underground double-shell tanks to accept wastes removed from less-safe tanks from 2006 to 2011.

That has been a course of action Hanford's officials had planned to avoid by building and running tank waste glassification plants.

But if extra tanks have to be built, that likely will add another expensive burden to a long-range Hanford cleanup program already facing huge budget woes.

Washington Department of Ecology officials briefed the Hanford Advisory Board on this increased possibility Thursday in Seattle.

This latest development unfolded like this.

When the Department of Energy fired BNFL Inc. in June as the glassification project's contractor, the program had operated with a proposed 2007 deadline to glassify the first wastes, and a 2009 deadline to have the plants fully operating.

In DOE's recent request for proposals for contractors to replace BNFL, the procurement document calls for the first waste to be glassified in 2007 and for glassification to be fully under way by 2011.

Hanford has 149 old, leak-prone single-shell underground tanks whose liquids are being pumped into 28 newer, safer double-shell tanks to await glassification. After all the liquids are pumped out, Hanford still must remove the solids and stiffer sludges and transfer them to the double-shell tanks.

The majority of the liquids have been transferred. And now, the 28 double-shell tanks have enough empty space to accept another 2 million gallons, said Suzanne Dahl, the state Ecology Department's tank waste disposal project manager.

Those 2 million gallons of space are expected to be filled by 2006, said Mike Wilson, the state ecology department's nuclear program manager.

"We'll most likely run out of tank space before the (glassification) plants are up and running," said Hanford board member Susan Leckband, representing Hanford's work force.

Board member Harold Heacock, representing the Tri-City Industrial Development Council, said: "If we start talking about adding double-shell tanks, that's almost a double whammy, budget-wise."

Here is how that double whammy would likely occur.

Hanford's current annual budgets run about $1.2 billion for work on and off the tank farms. DOE's long-range plan foresees no major budget increases for the next several years.

When BNFL was fired, DOE also dumped the so-called "privatization" approach that called for extra money to be set aside until at least 2007--a move that did not count as part of Hanford's predicted $1.2 billion annual budget.

The elimination of privatization means glassification funding will now count as a regular budget expense each year. That means several hundred million dollars theoretically would have to be added, despite DOE's master plan of level annual budgets.

And all that never included the dozens, maybe hundreds, of millions of dollars that would be needed to build new tanks, which now loom as an extra expense.

Meanwhile, DOE and the state have agreed to fill the remaining 2 million gallons with dissolved semi-solid and solid wastes from the single-shell tanks.

Even after the liquids are pumped from the singe-shell tanks, they still contain solids, salts cakes and thick sludges that still have to be removed. Hanford's scientists and engineers are still groping for the best way to remove those solids and semi-solids

A tentative plan to test removing solids is supposed to be adopted if no showstoppers materialize from a public comment period from Oct. 2 through Nov. 17. The tentative plan calls for:

-- A sprinklerlike system to be put inside Tank S-112 to dissolve the solid salt cakes in the tank's bottom enough for the resulting goo and liquids to be pumped out.

-- A second, yet-undetermined method to be tried in Tank C-104.

However, this method cannot be the current technique of sluicing the solids with water like a fire hose to break up the waste and pump it out. The problem is that it floods a leak-prone tank with radioactive water that might seep into the ground.

-- Tank S-102's solids would be removed by one of the methods tried in S-112 or C-104.

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3 Bid to boost NIF funding falters
Key senator criticizes DOE project overruns
September 08, 2000
By Lisa Friedman WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON--The scramble for dollars to keep the already beleaguered National Ignition Facility on course took another nosedive Tuesday night when U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici recommended a slower pace of funding for the laser project.

"The Department (of Energy) has experienced tremendous difficulty in constructing its special experimental and computational facilities within budget and within schedule. The National Ignition Facility is only the most recent example," said Domenici, a New Mexico Republican who chairs the funding subcommittee in charge of water and energy programs.

He and the highest-ranking Democrat on that subcommittee, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, said NIF should receive only $74 million in next year's budget.

"That's the amount that the Clinton Administration initially suggested the program receive, and it would have been adequate if the project was within its original budget. But it's not."

NIF is one of several projects that will be used to make sure America's NUCLEAR arsenal is safe without actually having to do weapons tests. It is designed to focus 192 laser beams on a tiny capsule of NUCLEAR energy, compressing it and causing it to "ignite." That ignition would simulate a thermoNUCLEAR explosion.

The project was approved in 1995 at a cost of $2.1 billion with a construction end date of 2002. But according to lab and Department of Energy officials, the project will cost closer to $3.3 billion. A recent federal audit puts the price tag even higher.

Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, has been pushing to get more money for NIF next year, arguing that the program's management problems are behind it and extra funding is needed to keep it on track.

Susan Houghton, spokeswoman for Livermore National Laboratory, said officials there still hope to raise funding levels for next year.

Obviously this is a crucial week for NIF," she said.

Members of Congress likely will come to a decision on the project's 2001 funding level by the end of the month.

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4 Draft report snubs lab's uranium conversion
Other laser processes 'are more promising'
September 08, 2000
By Glenn Roberts Jr. STAFF WRITER

LIVERMORE--A draft federal report on options for about 800,000 tons of depleted uranium--left over from decades of NUCLEAR weapons development--rejects a Livermore Lab laser technology that could convert some of the material to NUCLEAR fuel.

Lawrence Livermore Laboratory spent 26 years and $2 billion developing a technique that used colored lasers to separate radiation-rich uranium from depleted uranium, which is mildly radioactive and more stable.

The draft report, "Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride Materials Use Roadmap, " states that "other laser-based processes are more promising," and the Energy Department "should not invest" in using that technology for reducing the vast stores of depleted uranium.

The report, released Thursday, instead recommended disposal, long- term storage and the production of heavy concrete as more promising options for the depleted uranium, which is stored in many forms at Energy Department sites across the nation.

Reusing the material as electrodes, counterweights, high-traction devices, oil well equipment or as a catalyst for automotive exhaust are among the other options that should be considered, the report states.

Depleted uranium, a dense metal that is three times heavier than steel, has been used to strengthen tank armor and to produce armor- piercing weapons, such as bullets and tank rounds.

The material was first used in combat by U.S. troops in the Gulf War. Some governments and environmental groups have condemned its use in warfare, as uranium dust from exploding munitions can lodge in the lungs if inhaled and possibly cause respiratory problems.

The draft report seeks to convert depleted uranium hexafluoride to more usable forms, such as uranium oxide, uranium metal or a combination of both.

Known as Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation, the Livermore Lab uranium enrichment project employed 550 workers when it was abandoned by its corporate sponsor in June 1999.

Lab researchers attempted to demonstrate that the technology was ready for a full-scale enrichment factory to supply the NUCLEAR power industry with enriched uranium, a key ingredient for NUCLEAR fuel.

United States Enrichment Corp., the major sponsor in the research effort, cited technical troubles with AVLIS and the emergence of more promising technologies among the reasons for ditching the project.

Though the project was terminated, a small group of Livermore Lab researchers have continued to tout the AVLIS technology as a promising tool for enriching uranium and creating NUCLEAR medicines.

The draft report states that AVLIS "has only been demonstrated at laboratory scale" and will not be a competitive technology "until the natural uranium price increases."

In addition, AVLIS technology could only convert about 1 percent to 5 percent of the depleted uranium stores, the report states.

http://NUCLEAR.gov.

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5 CANDIDATES TAKE AIM AT LASER PROJECT
Albuquerque Tribune Online: News
TRIBUNE REPORTER

A troubled California fusion-energy laser project that could siphon money for New Mexico's national labs has become an issue in congressional politicking.

Green Party candidate Dr. Dan Kerlinsky of Albuquerque says the laser project is way off target in both its funding and its science.

In a press release issued this week, Kerlinsky blasted the $3.9 billion National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., "as a failure" that threatens U.S. national security rather than enhances it.

Kerlinsky is a candidate in the state's 1st Congressional District, which represents the Albuquerque area. Incumbent Rep. Heather Wilson, an Albuquerque Republican, declined comment through a press aide.

But Democratic challenger John Kelly said he is very worried about the laser's budget impact on New Mexico's two national laboratories, which according to a Department of Energy NIF funding plan will have to cough up $25 million to help cover NIF cost overruns next year alone.

In particular, Kelly cited his fear that NIF would severely handicap funding of the proposed $400 million Microsystems and Engineering Science Applications project at Sandia National Laboratories, in Albuquerque.

In MESA, Sandia scientists plan to develop the next generation of optical, computer and miniature technologies for both military and civilian uses, including virtually invisible micromachines.

"I take a dim view of any government project that has a cost overrun of 100 percent," said Kelly, noting that the NIF by some accounts actually "will have a cost overrun of some 200 percent."

Asked if he would pull NIF's plug as Kerlinsky suggests, Kelly said, "I'm not ready to go there from my current vantage point," but if elected he said the NIF issue would get priority scrutiny "early in my term."

Kerlinsky's statements were directly challenged by Livermore spokeswoman Susan Houghton, who said Wednesday that "he is entitled to his opinion, but his opinion, in our opinion, is wrong."

The Department of Energy, which considers the NIF its cornerstone project, this month is expected to press an increasingly skeptical Congress to fully fund the cost overruns and delays for the NIF, a fusion-energy laser intended to simulate nuclear-weapons blasts in lieu of further underground nuclear testing. The General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm, estimated it will take more than three times NIF's original budget of $1.2 billion and six more years to complete the troubled project.

The Green Party presidential candidate, Ralph Nader, campaigning in Albuquerque on Thursday, called the NIF project "part of the same madness" that is driving U.S. obsession to identify a global enemy to justify continued excessive military spending.

Nader criticized U.S. nuclear-weapons policy in general, which he said seems aimed at "making the (nuclear) rubble bounce."

"What are we doing here?" he asked.

In creating devices to advance nuclear weaponry that have no strategic value, Nader said, the United States is "missing its greatest opportunity to disarm the world."

He said Los Alamos and other nuclear- weapons labs should turn their talents to resolving human concerns, such as the coming energy crisis, by researching and advancing energy alternatives like solar power.

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6 Sick miners might not get help
Reid lobbies administration on behalf of ailing Nevada Test Site workers
Saturday, September 09, 2000
Las Vegas Review-Journal
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON-- The Clinton administration might ask Congress to enact a compensation program that offers nothing to miners who got sick from silica dust in nuclear testing tunnels, U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Friday.

Reid said he asked Budget Director Jack Lew to support keeping those ailing Nevada Test Site workers in the compensation proposal.

"It's imperative that we do something," Reid said. "Some of these test site workers are getting real old."

Lew has been evaluating a Senate-passed compensation proposal now under consideration by a conference committee. The legislation would give government-paid medical care and a minimum of $200,000 apiece to workers who got sick at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio, its sister facility in Paducah, Ky., a closed plant in Tennessee and others.

By some estimates, the proposal could cost taxpayers more than $3 billion, and congressional aides have talked about trimming that cost by making it more difficult to qualify for compensation.

Reid said he went to Lew after learning that eliminating help for the silicosis victims was one of the cost- cutting moves under consideration.

"I think Lew understood the problem better" after the meeting, he said. Nevada's other Democratic senator, Richard Bryan, also lobbied Lew, suggesting a policy favoring coverage of the workers with lung-clogging silicosis.

The administration is expected to issue a policy statement on compensation for sick workers early next week.

OMB spokeswoman Linda Ricci would not discuss any aspect of that policy decision, saying only, "We're working through some of the details in order to move forward on this issue.

"It's important that we move quickly in order to get this done this session," she said.

Giving money and medical care to workers sickened by their Cold War-era exposure to silica, beryllium and radiation is one of the issues before Congress in the final weeks of a legislative session tentatively scheduled to end Oct. 6.

The Senate attached a compensation proposal to an unrelated military bill, and questions have been raised about how many people might be covered and how much such a program might cost.

The House is scheduled to have its first hearing on compensation next week, with lawmakers querying medical experts, workers' compensation experts, victims and representatives of the Justice Department, Labor Department, Energy Department and Department of Health and Human Services.

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7 Scientists must lead the public debate over the ethics of their work
9 September 2000
Uk; Independent

Science is the new economics. Back in the Sixties and Seventies, it was economics that politicians struggled to understand, to turn into workable public policy and to communicate to people. Today, the dismal science is a flat millpond of truths accepted the world over: free trade, sound money and lightly managed competition. It is science that is contested and difficult, which causes politicians to falter and about which their publics are sceptical.

Suspicion of science and scientists is an ancient theme. When Archimedes leapt from his bath shouting "Eureka!" there were probably villagers around who shook their heads and warned of the loss of jobs in the cheap jewellery market. Galileo was persecuted, while the mad, bad and dangerous scientist has been a staple of popular fiction from Dr Frankenstein through Dr Jekyll to Dr Strangelove.

Aptly, Peter Sellers' portrayal of Strangelove featured among the hundreds of papers reported at the British Association for the Advancement of Science this week, as scientists identified the "anarchic hand syndrome" which could have caused his involuntary Nazi salutes.

Dr Strangelove is interesting because it represented the dark side of popular attitudes to science at a time (1964) when optimism was probably uppermost. Possibly because of the historical accident of the democratic nations discovering the atom bomb during the Second World War, the Fifties and Sixties were a scientifically upbeat period, almost as brashly confident as the Victorian age of discovery.

The failure of nuclear power to deliver its early utopian promise of cheap, clean, limitless energy began a long slide of disillusionment - culminating recently in the BSE scandal which unfairly undermined our faith in "experts". Scientists are less trusted than they were to make the right decisions about human cloning, embryo research or genetically modified food.

The trouble is that politicians are trusted even less, which opens up an opportunity for the new irrationalists, from Prince Charles denouncing genetic manipulation on religious grounds to anti-abortion fundamentalists demanding an end to embryo research. That way lies a new dark age.

The real arguments are not about science itself, which is currently enjoying something of a renaissance in this country, with most of the public - despite the doubts of the irrationalists - engaged with the excitement of discovery. The arguments are about the application of scientific discoveries and the means by which democratic societies decide what is right and wrong. Technological advance presents us with different decisions, but the morality that has to be applied does not change. Some years ago doctors would not have been able to separate the conjoined twins whose case will be decided by the Appeal Court next week, but similarly difficult decisions had to be taken even in King Solomon's day.

Sadly, our political leaders do not seem to have Solomon's qualities so they might be able to lead public opinion through some of the harder questions thrown up by scientific progress. Tony Blair in particular is compromised by his uncritical adoption of the enthusiasm of Lord Sainsbury, a Labour Party donor and government minister, for biotechnology. If the Government is to pronounce with authority on questions of genetics, it must be - and appear to be - above the commercial interests involved.

Meanwhile it is up to the scientists to take a lead. At the British Association this week they have shown they have a flair for producing headlines. They need to use their increasing media savvy to engage more vigorously in public debate about the ethical dimension of their work.

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8 Report: Kursk Sunk by Warship Missile
Saturday, September 09, 2000
The Moscow Times
By Simon Saradzhyan Staff Writer

German journalist Gizbert Mrozek of the Rundfunk Nachrichten Nachrichten Agentur gesturing during an interview with Reuters television in his Moscow office on Friday.

An experimental missile fired off a Russian navy warship during exercises hit the Kursk submarine, killing all 118 sailors on board, a German newspaper reported Friday. But top Kremlin officials and military experts quickly cast cold water on the report, saying it was far- fetched. The respected Berliner Zeitung daily said a cruise missile fired from the Peter the Great cruiser inadvertently homed in on the Kursk on Aug. 12. Peter the Great was the first ship to arrive at the site of the distressed submarine.

The newspaper cited an Aug. 31 report by the Federal Security Service to President Vladimir Putin as saying that a "Granit-type" cruise missile was launched from the ship and flew 20 kilometers before diving into the icy waters above the Kursk. The missile had a new warhead designed to seek and destroy underwater targets, according to the report. The newspaper said the study was prepared under the supervision of FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev. Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who heads an investigation into the Kursk accident, and Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev denied the allegations in the report. Klebanov told reporters his commission is probing three possible scenarios - none of which include a missile being fired from a warship.

The theories look into whether an inadvertant blast on board or a collision with another submarine or a World War II mine sank the Kursk. A Federal Security Service spokesman also called the German report "groundless." And navy spokesman Igor Dygalo said in a telephone interview that no Granit missiles were fired from the cruiser during the exercises that began Aug. 2 and involved about 30 vessels. Berliner Zeitung said that either an error in the missile's new warhead or a breakdown of a friend-or-foe identifier in the Kursk was to blamed for the disaster. The original Granit missile does not have a friend- or-foe identifier, which it would need to have had to be recognized by the Kursk, military experts said.

The newspaper said a small blast occurred after the missile dove into the water and was followed by a more powerful underwater detonation. Navy officials acknowledge that two explosions took place aboard the Kursk. The newspaper said both explosions were seen from the bridge of the cruiser, which had been test-firing Granit missiles since Aug. 2. The Granit cruise missile, designed by the Yekaterinburg-based Novator, is built to attack surface ships - not submarines, military experts said.

A missile expert in London said that a rumor had been floating around that Novator was building a modified Granit missile capable of attacking submerged submarines. But the expert, who asked not to be named, said he strongly doubted that it was true. "No one has seen it," the expert said by telephone. Also, the navy already boasts powerful anti-submarine weapons like RPK-6 missiles, so the probability that it would convert a surface-to-surface cruise missile into an anti- submarine missile was unlikely, he said.

Still, the Peter the Great warship does carry anti-submarine missiles like the RPK-6, which could have theoretically hit the Kursk, he said. Navy spokesman Dygalo said he had no knowledge of RPK-6 missiles being fired from the cruiser during the exercises. He declined to say whether any of the other 30 or so vessels participating in the exercise could have fired those missiles. Meanwhile, an officer claiming to be a crewmember of the Mikhail Rudnitsky ship in the Northern Fleet said a submarine of the General Staff's Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, had inspected the Kursk just hours after it sank.

The unidentified man told NTV's "Independent Investigation" program Thursday that the submarine had retreived classified documents from onboard. Sergyev and Klebanov dismissed that claim Friday, arguing that GRU has no submarines capable of such a mission. Klebanov said he would be able to shed more light on what may have caused the disaster after meeting with his investigators Wednesday. A team of Russian and Norwegian divers will travel to the site of the accident later this month to try retrieve the bodies of the Kursk crew members, he said. n Putin said that the 118 sailors aboard Kursk probably died quickly after the submarine sank and they never sent any signals from the distressed sub after it went down, The Washington Post reported Friday.

Speaking to media executives on the sidelines of the UN Millennium Summit in New York, Putin made no attempt to blame Western submarines for the disaster even though Sergeyev has repeatedly claimed that the Kursk went down after colliding with a British or American sub. Shortly after the sinking, Russian naval officials said that survivors trapped on board were tapping on the ship's hull. But Putin said flatly that this never happened. The signals that were picked up from the sunken sub came from "a mechanical device on board'' that went off automatically, he said. Oksana Yablokova contributed to this report.

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9 Russian Military Deny Berliner Zeitung Report On Kursk Submarine

ALLNEWS.RU: NEWS:
http://lenta.ru/english/2000/09/08/sub_report/

A spokesman for the Russian Navy today denied that a report published earlier in the German daily Berliner Zeitung could be true, Interfax news agency reported.

The daily said in an article published today that the nuclear-powered submarine Kurk sunk last month, because it was hit by a "Granit" missile, fired by another Russian vessel taking part in military exercises in the Barents Sea.

But Igor Dygalo, an aide to the head of the Russian Navy, denied the report, saying that that missiles used during Navy exercises are not supplied with explosive parts.

The German daily published a report on the disaster, allegedly prepared by the FSC security service for Russian President Vladimir Putin. FSB officials have denied the existence of such a report.

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10 Labor Unions: Ex-worker sues test site contractor
Saturday, September 09, 2000
Las Vegas Review-Journal

A group of plaintiffs claim it lost valued severance benefits when Bechtel Nevada forced it to join a labor union

A group of former Bechtel Nevada workers claims in a federal suit that the Nevada Test Site contractor forced union representation on a unit of employees so it could avoid paying generous severance benefits when the workers were laid off.

One of the plaintiffs, Ralph Smith, said a subsequent loss of benefits led to one man dying from cancer without life insurance, leaving his family destitute, and another, himself, unable to get insurance because of pre-existing cancer.

Bechtel's attorney, Mark Ricciardi, claims the company merely followed labor law.

Smith and the other plaintiffs were long-time employees of the previous test site contractor, E.G.&G Energy Measurements, when the contract was turned over to Bechtel in January 1996.

The plaintiffs claim that in May 1996 they were forced to sign up with Operating Engineers Local 12.

"We were only given one and a half days to sign with the union and were advised that our previous benefits would expire in that amount of time," Smith said. "We signed with Operating Engineers number 12 under duress of losing our jobs."

The union could not be reached Friday afternoon.

Because underground nuclear testing was ended at the site, many in Smith's unit were laid off within six months -- though some have subsequently been rehired.

"In the original contract we had with (Bechtel) we could have kept our insurance and kept all of our benefits basically intact (after being laid off)," Smith said.

Smith said those benefits included a generous severance package that paid workers at least one month's salary and more depending on length of employment. Ricciardi said severance pay as a motive was "ridiculous" because it would be reimbursed by the federal government. Because Nevada is a right-to-work state, workers cannot be forced to join a union but employees subject to a collective bargaining agreement are represented by a union in contract negotiations.

Ricciardi said before Bechtel's takeover, there were several companies at the test site, some of which had union and nonunion workers performing similar duties. When those workers joined Bechtel they were covered under existing collective bargaining units through "accretion."

"By National Labor Relations Board law, the union had the right to add those employees to the existing bargaining unit," Ricciardi said. "Under the law of accretion, Bechtel really doesn't have any say about it." The plaintiffs argue they had to agree to accretion, which they did not, and that other Bechtel employees were permitted to interview prospective unions. Bechtel had the case moved from state court to federal court because it believed the case to be a question of federal labor law. More than two years later it was sent back to state court by federal judge Johnnie Rawlinson.

The case is now scheduled to be heard early next year. Bechtel may try to get the case dismissed before then.

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11 Putin: Norway important in nuke co-operation
NUCLEAR WASTE MANAGMENT
Thomas Nilsen,
2000-09-09

Section on handling and storing of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel in Russia.

President Putin announced a more thorough co-operation with Norway in the field of nuclear safety in the Russian Arctic.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoletenberg and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed nuclear waste co-operation at the UN millennium meeting in New York on Friday.

Meeting at the UN-millennium summit in New York, President Vladimir Putin and the Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said the co-operation in the field of nuclear safety in the Arctic region of Russia is one of the most important bilateral projects between the two countries.

-Norwegians are worried about the risks for nuclear accidents and radioactive contamination in the northern areas. Therefor, we have to do what we can to co-operate with Russia in order to minimize this risk, said Jens Stoltenberg.

President Vladimir Putin responded:

-I want to thank Norway for the fast and positive rescue actions during the Kursk accident.

-This is a positive sign for our co-operation in the future. We (Russia and Norway) have several important projects for securing nuclear waste, and we know that all countries in the northern regions have interests in these projects, said Putin.

The accident with the nuclear submarine Kursk in the Barents Sea in August has once again actualised the question about the importance of Russia to inform its neighbouring country when accidents happens. Norway and Russia have an agreement on sharing information in case of nuclear accidents involving civilian installations, but this agreement does not include possible releases of radioactivity from the Northern fleets submarines and overfilled nuclear waste sites.

One of the most delaying factor for an increased co-operation in the field of nuclear waste cleanup at the naval sites at the Kola Peninsula is the lack of openness, lack of information and lack of public insights into the issue from the Russian military side. President Putin did, however, sign the UN millennium declaration where the text on Human Rights says:

"To ensure the freedom of the media to perform their essential role and the right of the public to have access to information."

If Putin's Russia will follow the millennium declaration signed in New York yesterday will first be indicated on September 13th. Then the Presidium of the Supreme Court in Moscow will hear the appeal from the procurator in the Nikitin case. Aleksandr Nikitin was charges for revealing information about accident on Soviet nuclear submarines. On December 29, 1999 the St. Petersburg City Court acquitted Nikitin of all charges. The Supreme Court's Collegium on Criminal cases confirmed this legal opinion on April 17, 2000.

No information has so far been revealed from the New York meeting about President Putin's position in the Nikitin case. The Norwegian authorities have raised the issue of Aleksandr Nikitin with its Russian counterparts by many occasions the last five years. Nikitin himself has thanked Norway for its assistance to Russia to secure nuclear waste in the Murmansk-region.

-Norway will give economical aid to secure nuclear waste near the Russian boarder to Norway, said Stoltenberg.

These projects will be discussed in detail during Russia's Prime Minister Sergey Kasyanov visit to Oslo on September 27-28th.

Grunerlokka, 0505 Oslo, Norway Reuse and reprint recommended

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12 Pakistan a responsible nuclear state, says minister
SATURDAY 9 September 2000
Times Internet

ISLAMABAD: Information Minister Javed Jabbar said Pakistan is a responsible nuclear state and that it would not allow its nuclear weapons to be put to use in an irresponsible fashion.

"It has been repeatedly said that Kashmir was a nuclear flashpoint and a hint given that Pakistan was an irresponsible country and would use nuclear weapons. I want to reject this because Pakistan has given clear proof of its responsibility and enlightenment," Jabbar told the Voice of America in an interview monitored by NNI news agency.

He said Pakistan had set up a nuclear command and control authority and that it would not allow the use of nuclear weapons in an irresponsible way.

Pakistan carried out a series of nuclear tests in May 1998 in response to nuclear detonations by India.

Jabbar said Pakistan was sincere in its offer of a no-war pact with India.

"When we offer specific proposals in such clear terms how can they remain diplomatic ploys? We are prepared to hold talks. We will adhere to our stand," the minister said. (India Abroad News Service)

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13 Hearings urged on worker exposure
Harkin wants more information on nuclear weapons production
THE DES MOINES REGISTER
REGISTER WASHINGTON BUREAU
09/08/2000

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Sen. Tom Harkin wrote government officials Thursday demanding to know more about private companies that were secretly hired to work on nuclear weapons production in the 1940s and "50s, including two in the Quad Cities.

An investigative report in USA Today this week revealed that private manufacturing facilities across the nation handled uranium, thorium, polonium, beryllium and other radioactive substances. Thousands of workers were exposed to risk, but both the companies and the government engaged in a cover-up of the hazards, USA Today said.

"It is shameful that the federal government has allowed facilities in my state of Iowa and across the country to fall between bureaucratic cracks," said Harkin, the top Democrat on the Senate appropriations committee that doles out money for federal health programs. He called for congressional hearings.

Bendix Aviation's Pioneer Division of Davenport was a subcontractor to Feed Materials Production Center in Fenald, Ohio, at unknown dates, according to declassified federal records. There were "very small amounts of testing" done in Davenport on decontamination techniques on 20 uranium storage drums.

American Machine and Metals in East Moline, Ill., tested methods for dehydrating uranium compounds over a two-day period in 1960. At least 25 pounds of material was involved and records suggest a limited potential for environmental contamination or radiation exposure to workers, the newspaper said.

No Iowa telephone listings are available for either company. According to the National Aviation Hall of Fame, Bendix Aviation was extensively involved in developing military material for World War II.

Harkin said it is unclear to him how many Iowa workers may have been exposed to hazardous materials. "For all I know, the people working there didn't even know they were exposed," Harkin said in a conference call with Iowa reporters.

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14 Iowa senator joins call for Cold War radiation hearings
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2000

The Hawk Eye

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, joined in calling Thursday for hearings into reports that thousands of workers at previously undisclosed sites were exposed to extreme levels of radiation and other hazardous substances as the U.S. rushed to produce nuclear weapons in the 1940s and '50s.

The move by Harkin, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate labor and health subcommittee (Harkin is the ranking Democrat), and Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Texas, comes on the heels of reports in USA Today that thousands of workers were left in the dark about their exposure to hazardous materials at sites owned by private companies around the country, including two in the Quad Cities.

The newspaper is reporting in a series of articles this week that as the Soviet Union was launching its nuclear weapons program, the United States rushed to step up its own arsenal using private companies that ignored worker safety or environmental consequences.

The private company sites, including one in East Moline, Ill., and another in Davenport, do not include military installations such as the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant in Middletown.

"It is shameful that the federal government has allowed facilities in (Iowa) and across the country to fall between the bureaucratic cracks," Harkin said of the USA Today revelations.

Dangerous working conditions and exposure to hazardous materials at those sites also have recently come to light.

The lawmakers also called for full disclosure of information about the history of the private facilities, the examination of possible environmental contamination and monitoring of former workers, their families and communities exposed to the hazardous conditions.

The Quad Cities companies cited in the USA Today reports are American Machine and Metals in East Moline and Pioneer Division of Bendex Aviation in Davenport.

The current status of the companies, or whether they still even exist, was not immediately clear.

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15 Senate pushes DOE site cleanup funds

By Joe Walker
The Paducah Sun
Saturday, September 09, 2000

Two area lock and dam projects are also in the bill, as well as extending Paducah plant lung screening.

Legislation containing nearly $160 million for cleanup of the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant and two area lock and dam projects passed the Senate on Friday and is headed to a conference panel to resolve differences with the House version.

The funding, part of the 2001 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill, includes $78 million for environmental work at the gaseous diffusion plant, $27.7 million to expand the Kentucky Lock at Gilbertsville, and $53.1 million for continued construction of the Olmsted Lock and Dam.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Louisville, said the bill includes his request for $33 million for new facilities to convert nearly 60,000 cylinders of uranium hexafluoride waste at the Paducah plant and its sister plant near Portsmouth, Ohio, into safer material. The funding is $9 million more than requested by the Department of Energy and would go toward having the facilities completed by 2004, he said.

The bill also contains $1.75 million for the University of Louisville and the University of Kentucky School of Public Health for epidemiological studies of workers at the Paducah plant.

McConnell inserted language urging DOE to extend its current screening for early detection of lung diseases until all Paducah plant workers and former workers are tested. The project is in the fourth year of a five-year contract and will fall short without the extension, he said.

McConnell and Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Southgate, said the bill has funding for many river transportation needs, notably the two lock and dam projects.