------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
*500 jobs may be lost at Sellafield
*Senate to Pass China Pact in Historic Vote
*U.S. China trade vote milestone on rocky road
*Senate Approves PNTR for China
*A Day in the Life Of a Lobbyist
*Greenland's Chilly View Of U.S. Missile Defenses
*India Successfully Tests Surface-To-Air Missile
*India Under No Pressure For Test Ban
*U.S., N. Korea Talks to Resume
*U.S.-North Korea Talks Set
*U.S. Asks Putin Not to Sell Iran a Laser System
*Putin Considers Clinton Warning
*Putin Orders Salvage of Sunken Sub
*Sweden nuclear phase-out sparks power debate
*US Helps Ukraine Probe Illness
*Payments to sick nuclear workers in jeopardy
*Now Let's Catch the Real Spy
*The Wen Ho Lee Diversion
*Wen Ho Lee made 20 tapes, 10 were copies
*Asian Americans Urge Probe of Handling of Wen Ho Lee Case
*It's An Outrage (Never Mind What)
*Truck carrying radioactive waste struck; no contamination found
*Murkowski says gov't needs nuke waste action or be sued
*Technology Boom Too Tempting for Many Government Scientists

MILITARY
*Teaching Europeans To Study War No More
*Senate clears PNTR to China
*New era dawns for U.S.-China relations
*Backers hope pact will promote reform
*Bomb Explodes in Pakistan's Capital
*Bomb Kills 13 in Pakistan Fruit Market
*World-Wide Oil Shortage Grants Iraq Newfound Bargaining Power
*U.S. urges U.N. to try Iraq's Saddam
*U.S. seeks a court for Saddam
*Japan Stands Firm on U.S. Suit by 'Comfort Women'
*WWII Asian 'comfort women' file suit
*Cross-Border Railway Aims to Open Economic Exchanges Between Koreas
*Divided Koreas lay down tracks to bolster trade
*Inquiry Into Abuse by G.I.'s in Kosovo Faults Training
*Peacekeepers Foil Kosovo Bomb Plot
*Peru Spymaster Stays Out of View as Rumors Swirl
*Berezovsky: Putin a threat to freedom
*With Test, Boeing Strikes First
*Kauai economy getting lift from many areas
*Navy to Award Big Outsourcing Deal Linking Computers to Single Network
*Firm gets pact for upgraded missiles
*Air Force: Security delays are a threat
*Army punishes troops for abusing Kosovars
*Report Calls for Improvements in Housing for Servicemen

OTHER
*German green energy firms surge on high oil price
*EU denies axing green energy research projects
*Earthworms Help Sydney Games Become Environment-Friendly
*Herbal remedy quiz
*IMF Says Weak Euro, High Oil Prices Pose Risks to World Outlook
*IMF sees global economy growing
*Fujimori Visits Army HQ; Spy Chief Drops Out of Sight
*C.I.A. Says Chilean General in '76 Bombing Was Informer
*Spy chief's fate a mystery in tense Peru
*Jordan Military Court Sentences Six Men to Death for Terror Plans
*Six sentenced to die for terror attacks

ACTIVISTS
*Editorial Civil rights
*It's a commitment, not a spring-break romp.
*Protesters Begin Practicing Techniques Ahead of IMF, World Bank
*Thousands of Haitians March, Demand the Legislature Resign
*Fuel Protests Persist in Europe While Governments Negotiate
*Europe-Wide Fuel Protest Spreads to Middle East
*Indigo Girls Announce Honor The Earth Tour Dates
*Farm Aid Reaps a Tuneful Bounty
*Chili Peppers, Foos, Dave Matthews To Do Bridge School Benefit

*

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

-------- britain

500 jobs may be lost at Sellafield

Irish Times
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
From Rachel Donnelly, in London
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/ireland/2000/0919/hom1.htm

Up TO 500 jobs at the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing installation in Cumbria could be lost and a mixed oxide fuel (Mox) producing plant abandoned if British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) does not secure vital Japanese contracts, the company has said.

BNFL recently reported losses for 1999/2000 had reached £337 million sterling following the controversy about the falsification of quality control data at its Mox Demonstration Facility last year. Further problems could be in store for the company because without the Japanese orders, jeopardised because of the falsification scandal, BNFL says the Mox plant cannot operate.

The chief executive of BNFL, Mr Norman Askew, warned yesterday that unless the Japanese orders were secured by January or February next year it could not justify opening the Mox plant, which reprocesses fuel into Mox fuel that can then be converted into electricity.

"If the plant does not secure new orders, then it will not be economically viable to run and it will not open," Mr Askew said. "Sellafield Mox plant has already been more than three years in gaining regulatory approval to operate. Clearly we need to get the plant operating commercially in the future."

If the Mox plant begins work, Sellafield has said up to 500 people would be employed.

A BNFL delegation will travel to Japan at the end of this week to continue the process of rebuilding the company's profile with its customers.

The company's reputation was badly damaged by the data falsification incident involving paperwork accompanying a Mox fuel consignment sent to the Kansai Electric Power Company in Japan, and BNFL has now agreed to bear the cost of bringing eight fuel consignments back to Britain. It has also agreed to pay £40 million compensation to Kansai, which has lifted its suspension on new Mox reprocessing business.

At least six Japanese utilities have entered into "variable commitments" with BNFL to receive mixed oxide fuel, but a BNFL spokeswoman said these letters of intent needed to be turned into firm orders.

But Mr Mark Johnston, of Friends of the Earth, said BNFL's warning about the Mox plant was its way of "preparing the ground" for the British government to refuse authorisation for its operation: "The company has never been able to show convincingly that it had the clients to justify the plant.

"The Environment Department will want the issue cleared from its desks before the general election," Mr Johnston said.

"The reason for this is not the collapse in confidence in BNFL but the collapse in confidence in plutonium. The plutonium Mox fuel option is more dangerous and more expensive compared to conventional nuclear fuels.

"Using it makes no commercial sense. The fact that BNFL, a publicly owned company, has already sunk £450 million into building such a white elephant is a national scandal."

-------- china

Senate to Pass China Pact in Historic Vote

Yahoo News
Tuesday September 19
By Adam Entous
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000919/ts/wto_china_dc_4.html

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a victory for big business that could transform Sino-U.S. relations, the U.S. Senate will give final approval on Tuesday to a hotly contested bill granting permanent normal trade relations to China despite stiff opposition from organized labor and human rights groups.

One of President Clinton (news - web sites)'s top foreign policy objectives for his final year in office, the legislation would end the 20-year-old annual ritual of reviewing China's trade status and guarantee Chinese goods the same low-tariff access to the U.S. market as products from nearly every other nation.

``If we fail to pass PNTR (news - web sites) legislation, we would be sending a signal to the world that the United States wants to isolate China,'' Sen. Mike DeWine, a Ohio Republican, told the Senate as the final debate opened.

In exchange for the benefits, China has agreed to open a wide range of markets, from agriculture to telecommunications, under the terms of a landmark agreement setting the stage for Beijing to join the World Trade Organization (news - web sites) (WTO) this year.

A bitterly divided House of Representatives approved permanent normal trade relations in May after an unprecedented lobbying campaign by pro-trade business groups eager to tap the vast Chinese market place, potentially the world's largest with 1.3 billion consumers.

The White House said final passage by the Senate would mark a turning point in relations between the world's richest and most populous nations, comparing it to former President Richard Nixon's milestone 1972 visit to China.

``Granting PNTR for China not only provides tremendous economic opportunities for U.S. workers, farmers and businesses, it is also the best way to promote reform in China and stability in the region,'' U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said.

Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York called Tuesday's vote one of the most important since World War II.

Labor unions, a key Democratic constituency, fought unsuccessfully to defeat the trade bill, warning that the pact could cost hundreds of thousands of American workers their jobs as Chinese goods flood the U.S. market and companies move their factories to China to take advantage of lower wages.

Human rights groups also opposed the bill, arguing that annual reviews of China's trade status were needed to keep pressure on Beijing. Others warned that the bill would exacerbate an already huge U.S. trade deficit with China, which hit a record $68 billion last year.

A small but determined band of China critics tried to scuttle permanent normal trade relations in the Senate by bogging it down with amendments -- the most contentious of which would have imposed sanctions on Beijing for its alleged role in weapons proliferation.

But the amendments were soundly defeated. A Reuters poll showed at least 70 of the chamber's 100 senators would back the measure in Tuesday's long-awaited vote, more than enough to ensure final passage.

Historic Shift In Relations

White House officials said China's accession to the Geneva-based WTO would bolster national security by encouraging economic and political reform in China.

Business groups, which spent millions of dollars lobbying lawmakers, said it would boost exports and create high-paying jobs. The Farm Bureau predicted that it could double agricultural exports to China.

``This legislation means that we've overcome the rising forces of protectionism,'' said Jerry Jasinowski, president of the National Association of Manufacturers.

The China bill will be Clinton's biggest trade policy victory since the passage in 1993 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which tore down barriers between the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Earlier this year, Clinton signed a sweeping trade pact with Vietnam and successfully pushed through legislation extending billions of dollars in trade benefits to Africa, the Caribbean and Central America.

But Barshefsky said the China pact was by far the ``most significant and far-reaching'' of the administration's accomplishments. ``Nothing that members of Congress do this year or any other year could be more important,'' Moynihan said.

In addition to granting permanent trade benefits to Beijing, the bill would set up a special commission to monitor human rights in China. This panel would have the power to recommend sanctions, such as a halt to U.S. Export-Import Bank and U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corp. support for Beijing.

China has already protested what it sees as U.S. interference in its internal affairs.

Once China becomes a member of the Geneva-based WTO, the U.S. administration will launch its biggest-ever trade enforcement drive in hope of ensuring that Beijing lives up to its market-opening obligations.

U.S. trade officials said major disputes were inevitable. Already China has sought to delay the phase-out of certain tariffs on information technology products, including computers, semiconductors and telecommunications equipment.

``Frankly, as difficult as PNTR seemed to be, that was the easy part. The hard part is going to be implementation. That is where the rubber meets the road,'' said Max Baucus of Montana, the ranking Democrat on the Senate subcommittee on trade.

-----------

U.S. China trade vote milestone on rocky road

Excite News
Updated 3:13 PM ET September 19, 2000
By Christopher Wilson
http://news.excite.com/news/r/000919/15/wto-china-foreign

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congress' approval of permanent trade privileges for China removes a regular irritant in bilateral relations but the question remains whether Washington can convince Beijing's communist leaders to focus on growing richer, more open and less unpredictable.

Permanent trade status will avert the need for a divisive annual review of U.S. trade links with China and pave the way for it to enter the World Trade Organization.

Although Congress has voted every year to renew the ties with China, the 20-year-old ritual handed lawmakers, many of whom are resolute Taiwan supporters, a regular opportunity to assail Beijing over human rights and nuclear proliferation.

Despite these outbursts most U.S. politicians on both sides of the Republican-Democrat divide see normalization of trade with China as a milestone on a rocky road, fraught with hidden hazards and hairpin bends.

The hope is that freer trade will moderate Beijing's actions as prosperity grows in the giant nation, home to nearly one fifth of the world's people. But there are no guarantees.

President Clinton lobbied hard for the China trade deal which he set as a major goal of his presidency.

The big prize is that it will throw open China's huge market to American commerce and smooth the way for U.S. companies, whose operations in China often are ensnared in the bureaucracy of a one-party state.

New York Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, widely respected for his intellect, called this the most important Senate vote since World War II. But he noted also that China's record on human rights and its role in spreading weapons of mass destruction still worry U.S. policymakers.

"The truth is that the United States-China relationship is our most complex and difficult bilateral relationship," Sen. John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, noted during the trade debate. "Thirty years of engagement with China has taught us that you can't advance one issue at the expense of another."

"CONSTRUCTIVE ENGAGEMENT"

Since "constructive engagement" began in the early 1970s, Washington has tried to cajole China to channel its energy and ambition into building a world-class economy in the hope that would dissuade it from clashing with the world's democracies.

But can free trade tilt China into evolving peacefully, easing what U.S. authorities see as repression of its own people and tone down the menace over Taiwan, where China and the United States have come close to armed confrontation?

There is a feeling in the Republican-controlled Congress that the Clinton administration has trodden too softly around Beijing on issues like nuclear weapons sales to Pakistan and other nations, its continued threats against Taiwan, and mounting evidence of China's own arms build-up.

Accusations of "appeasement" are sometimes bandied about, but the stronger belief on Capitol Hill is that while China may not quite be an enemy, it is certainly not a friend either.

Many lawmakers agree with the view articulated by George W. Bush, the Republican presidential nominee, that Washington should engage China "without ill will but without illusion."

Bush aides have indicated that if the Texas governor wins the White House in November elections there will be no fundamental shift in America's long-standing China policy. But there are signs that Republicans would press for a tougher line on China's growing nuclear arsenal and weapons proliferation.

They also want more overt signals of U.S. support for Taiwan, which China views as a renegade province and has threatened to invade if Taipei declares independence.

"Congressional foreign policy would be much more firm with China," said Peter Brookes, east Asia adviser to the House of Representatives International Relations Committee."The only way to deal with a realist nation like China is to be realist yourself and not an idealist."

Just as America's China policy is constructed partly on hope, it also contains an element of fear. This is reflected in the debate over a proposed national missile defense, which some believe should be used to guard America from China.

The limited system envisaged by the Clinton administration is aimed only at protecting America from attack by smaller countries or from accidental missile firings, not from assault by Russia or China.

Bush has already outlined a plan to build a much more ambitious missile shield -- using both space and sea-based interceptors -- which would protect not only the United States but U.S. allies too, including some countries in Asia.

"The Clinton administration has had this fig leaf on missile defenses saying that it is (worried about) all the rogue regimes," said Brookes. "China is really the daunting missile power in Asia. I think we need to bring this front and center in our conversations with China."

--------

Senate Approves PNTR for China

Washington Post
Tuesday , September 19, 2000
By Matthew Vita Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37769-2000Sep19.html

The Senate by a huge margin gave final congressional approval today to granting permanent normal trade relations to China, capping one of the biggest legislative battles in a decade and giving President Clinton what he had hoped for: a signature trade victory in his final year in office.

The decision sets the stage for China's accession to membership in the World Trade Organization, possibly before the end of the year, and creates the conditions for a historic economic opening by the world's largest communist country.

Ending two weeks of debate, the Senate voted 83-15 to end a 20-year practice under which Congress reviewed China's trade status annually and instead to grant Beijing permanent normal trade relations, guaranteeing Chinese goods the same low-tariff access to the U.S. market as products from all but a handful of countries.

In exchange, China agreed to open up its vast market of 1.3 billion people to U.S. farm products, cars, telecommunications equipment and an array of other U.S. products as part of last year's trade accord with Washington that created the conditions for its admission to the 138-nation WTO, the body that sets the rules of global commerce.

The legislation now goes to the White House for the president's signature. Clinton had made passage of of the China trade bill one of his top priorities this year, hoping to cement a free trade legacy for his presidency that began in 1993 with passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada.

The Senate vote capped an expensive, months-long lobbying campaign by big business, organized labor, human rights and other organizations who are joined on the broader dispute over the pros and cons of increasing trade and globalization. It followed two weeks of debate in which the Senate's solid, pro-trade majority-under the watchful pressure of leading business organizations-turned back a succession of amendments aimed at addressing China's human rights, religious, trade and weapons proliferation record.

"I think the Senate is about to make a grave mistake," Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) told his colleagues shortly before the vote. Referring to the recently fired Indiana University basketball coach, Byrd said China has behaved "like the Bobby Knight of the international community" in its saber-rattling toward Taiwan, suppression of religious freedom and exports of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

The House approved the trade bill by 40 votes in May after an even more contentious debate in which labor organizations and other leading Democratic constituencies battled to defeat the legislation amid dire warnings that Democrats who voted yes risked losing union support in this November's closely fought congressional elections. Reps. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) and Dennis Moore (D-Kan.) did not receive the national Teamsters endorsement because of their support for the bill, and Rep. David Wu (D-Ore.) has suffered a decline in business backing because of his opposition. But none is expected to suffer at the polls as a result, and what was once seen as a potentially decisive campaign issue has largely dissipated as organized labor focuses on broader themes such as an increase in the minimum wage and health care.

"We've got lots at stake in this election," said Peggy Taylor, the AFL-CIO's legislative director. "It's not just trade policy."

---------

A Day in the Life Of a Lobbyist

Washington Post
Tuesday, September 19, 2000; G09
By Ariana Eunjung Cha
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35228-2000Sep19.html

More than two years of work was on the line last Wednesday for Cynthia Johnson.

Johnson has been a member of the coalition of Washington technology lobbyists working to persuade policymakers and legislators to smooth the way for U.S. companies wanting to sell to China's billion-plus consumers.

As director of government relations for international trade for Texas Instruments Inc., Johnson has argued vehemently for normalizing trade ties with China. Instead of Washington renewing the trade agreement on a year-to-year basis, China would be granted permanent normal trade relations as part of its ascension to the World Trade Organization.

The House approved the bill by 40 votes in May, but not without a bitter debate between proponents of free trade and organized labor and human rights groups. Opponents argued that the United States shouldn't establish such strong ties with a country that has been cited for human rights violations and worried about how such a relationship would affect Taiwan.

On Wednesday, with the bill facing a crucial test in the Senate, Johnson was in action all day--working the Hill, making calls, firing off e-mails, trying to shore up support. She and other backers of the bill argued that it would be doomed if the lawmakers adopted an amendment sponsored by Sens. Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.) and Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.) to impose sanctions against China for exporting nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

The Senate voted 65 to 32 to table the amendment, delighting supporters who saw it as the last major hurdle. Thompson sharply criticized what he called "an unprecedented lobbying and pressure effort" by corporate leaders to defeat the proposal.

Johnson, whose company already does a lot of business in China, said she believes that establishing a freer export relationship is critical if the United States is to maintain its technology leadership.

A native of Dallas, Johnson, 37, previously served as legislative director for Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Calif.) and counsel for former Rep. Michael J. Kopetski (D-Ore.). She said that in general lawmakers "are receptive to high-tech companies because we are an important part to growing the economy."

-------- greenland

Greenland's Chilly View Of U.S. Missile Defenses

International Herald Tribune
Paris, Tuesday, September 19, 2000
By James Brooke New York Times Service
http://www.iht.com/IHT/TODAY/TUE/FPAGE/green.2.html

NUUK, Greenland - First, the French foreign minister jetted into this seaside capital, which currently has more humpback whales in the fjord (two) than stoplights (one). Then a knot of Washington officials, dressed in business suits and smiles, arrived for what one newsweekly here headlined in Danish as the American ''Charmoffensiv.''

This month, it was the turn of the Russian ambassador to Denmark, who was out among the icebergs in the fjord, fishing for arctic char with Greenland's prime minister, Jonathan Motzfeldt.

What is at stake is Greenland's eventual acquiescence to the use of the U.S. air base in Thule as part of a national missile defense. Although Denmark, the old colonial power here, retains control over Greenland's foreign and defense policy, Copenhagen insists that the Greenlanders' wishes will be taken into account.

Whoever becomes the new U.S. president next year will probably find that public opinion is skeptical, bordering on hostile, in the two proposed North American partners, Greenland and Canada.

''No one in Greenland wishes to take actions that would lead to recreating the atmosphere of the Cold War era,'' Mr. Motzfeldt said in an interview. ''I am content that NATO has not greeted the NMD plans with cheers.''

Even though the proposed U.S. defensive program, known as the National Missile Defense, or NMD, would not involve placing weapons at Thule, Greenland's deputy prime minister, Josef Motzfeldt, attributed the missile plan to lobbying by ''big shots in the weapons industries'' and said in an interview, ''The United States is very alone in the project.''

The Russian ambassador, Nikolai Bordyuzha, asserted in Greenland that the defense system would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, who visited Canada with similar warnings this month, told Danish officials this summer that if they allowed Thule to be used for the U.S. defense system, ''Copenhagen will be responsible for pulling down the ABM Treaty.''

Markus Elias Olsen, a youth leader, was outside Parliament when it opened this month, leading a protest against the proposed system. Not satisfied with President Bill Clinton's postponement, announced Sept. 1, of a decision on whether to begin building the system, he said: ''In the case of ballistic missile wars, they will probably drop down on our heads, not on the Americans.''

Although in the past Denmark has pointed to the Thule installations as helping fulfill its NATO obligations, Danish officials now insist that island opinion will be taken into account.

Denmark has yet to take an official position on Thule's role in a missile defense system, but Gunnar Martens, the Danish high commissioner in Greenland, stressed: ''It should be in accordance with the ABM Treaty, it should live up to international obligations between the United States and Russia.''

Although Canada was a partner of the United States for almost half a century in North American Aerospace Defense, known as NORAD and involving dozens of radars strung across Canada's north to detect Russian bombers or missiles coming over the North Pole, the loudest voices there oppose the plan.

''Put simply, the National Missile Defense system is a dumb idea,'' the influential Globe and Mail newspaper of Toronto editorialized, hailing Mr. Clinton's delay. It advised whoever is the new president to substitute ''sense for macho posturing.''

Canada's military establishment supports the missile defense plan. But in a speech to the UN General Assembly, the Canadian foreign minister said the Pentagon's plan ''doesn't screen out cruise missiles, doesn't screen out drones, doesn't screen out terrorist operations or tramp steamers or whatever other - you know, Greyhound buses or ferries. And those are real security issues.''

In Greenland, U.S. advocates of the missile defense want first to make $50 million worth of improvements to an early warning radar in Thule, and then build an expanded radar that would focus on threats from the Middle East and the Korean Peninsula.

''Thule is a basic element in the NMD architecture,'' John Holum, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said in an interview. In an attempt to assuage the fears of the 55,000 people living here, on the world's largest island, he said, ''Greenland is not a target.''

At the height of the Cold War, Thule had 7,000 U.S. soldiers and an array of nuclear-tipped missiles. It still has Greenland's largest road network and the island's northernmost airfield capable of accommodating jets, but the U.S. presence has been reduced to 200 soldiers who maintain early warning radars.

For some people in Greenland, the U.S. military presence bears a legacy of mistrust.

For almost 40 years, U.S. and Danish officials assured Danes and Greenlanders that Greenland was a ''nuclear-weapons-free zone.'' Then in 1995, a 1957 memo came to light in which H.C. Hansen, then Denmark's prime minister, gave the United States secret permission for storage at Thule of nuclear bombs and warheads for Nike Hercules missiles. According to a recent investigation by a Danish government institute, all nuclear arms were removed in 1965.

Dealing with another source of rancor, a Copenhagen court last year ordered the Danish government to pay up to $3,500 to each of 53 Inuit villagers who sued over the forcible removal of their village in 1951 to make way for construction of the base at Thule.

Today, the Thule mayor and many Inuit in the area ''are scared and are unanimous in their opposition to NMD,'' said Aqqaluk Lynge, a Greenlander who is president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, an organization that often speaks for the 150,000 Inuit of Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Russia.

''We don't like that superpower attitude that says, 'We can do what we want with our air bases,''' the conference president said.

''The Arctic has always been looked at as a desert, with a only a few Eskimos and polar bears. Well, we see ourselves as the guardians of the environment up here.''

-------- india / pakistan

India Successfully Tests Surface-To-Air Missile
Wall Street Journal
September 19, 2000
Dow Jones Newswires
http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve@6.cgi?guinstigator/text/autowire/data/DI-CO-20000919-005956.djml/&NVP=&template=atlas-srch-searchrecent.tmpl&form=atlas-srch-searchrecent.html&from-and=AND&to-and=AND&sort=Article-Doc-Date+desc&qand=&bool_query=Missile&dbname=%26name1%3Ddbname%26name2%3Ddbname%26name3%3Ddbname&location=article&period=%3A720&from=08/21/2000&to=09/19/2000&HI=

NEW DELHI (AP)--India successfully test-fired its most sophisticated surface-to-air missile Tuesday from a remote range off the country's eastern coast, military officials said.

The Akash missile was fired over the ocean from India's testing range at Chandipur, a coastal town in Orissa state, according to the United News of India, which quoted Indian officials.

The missile targeted an unmanned flying vehicle, said officials on condition of anonymity.

The Akash, meaning "Sky" in Hindi, is one of five missiles under development by India's Defense Research and Development Organization. The missile has a range of 25 kilometers and a capacity to strike several targets.

The missile can carry a payload of 50 kilograms, track 64 targets and engage four simultaneously using its Rajendra multifunction radar, according to the news agency.

India's missile arsenal includes Trishul, a surface-to-air missile that targets aircraft and counters sea-skimming missiles; the intermediate-range Agni, which can reach 2,480 kilometers; the short-range ballistic missile Prithvi with a range of 150 kilometers; and the anti-tank Nag missile.

India conducted five nuclear tests in 1998 and plans to perfect a missile capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

Tuesday's exercise at Chandipur, 1,200 kilometers southeast of New Delhi, represented the ninth in a series of tests.

--------

India Tests Surface - to - Air Missile

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-India-Missile-Test.html

NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- India's most sophisticated surface-to-air missile was successfully test-fired Tuesday off the country's eastern coast.

The Akash (sky) missile was fired from India's testing range at Chandipur, off the coast of Orissa state, United News of India news agency quoted military officials as saying.

The Akash, one of five missiles being developed by India's Defense Research and Development Organization, has a range of 15 miles.

The missile can carry a payload of 110 pounds. With its multifunction radar, it can track 64 targets and engage four simultaneously, the news agency reported.

India conducted five nuclear tests in 1998 and is perfecting a delivery system.

Tuesday's exercise at Chandipur, 750 miles southeast of New Delhi, was the ninth of a series of tests.

--------

India Under No Pressure For Test Ban

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-India-US.html

NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- On his way home from the most friendly visit to Washington by an Indian prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee said he felt no pressure to sign the nuclear test ban treaty.

Stopping in Frankfurt, Germany, late Monday, Vajpayee said his government would take time to achieve a national consensus on the treaty, and he believed the agreement would be to sign it, Star News television reported Tuesday.

The Press Trust of India quoted Vajpayee as saying in Frankfurt that some in India had been concerned that he would be pressured in Washington to sign the treaty. ``But these doubts had no foundation, and there is no change in the stand.''

Despite U.S. economic sanctions imposed on India after May 1998 nuclear tests, Vajpayee had friendly discussions with President Clinton.

India opposes the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, saying it restricts nuclear weapons to certain countries, rather than eliminating them.

``We want a world in which nuclear weapons are not used,'' United News of India quoted Vajpayee as saying. ``We also regret that not enough progress has been made on the issue of nuclear disarmament.''

India and the United States had strained relations during the Cold War, as Indian governments followed socialist economic ideas patterned on the Soviet Union, and the United States supported the governments in Pakistan, India's biggest rival.

Since Clinton visited India in March, both governments have proclaimed a shift in relations, as India privatizes state monopolies and opens its market. Washington's relations with Pakistan are not as close after Gen. Pervez Musharraf ousted an elected government last October and set up military rule.

Clinton hardly spoke to Musharraf during the U.N. Millennium summit earlier this month, but feted Vajpayee at a lavish state dinner and accompanied him to the inauguration of a statue in Washington of Mohandas Gandhi, India's independence leader.

-------- korea

U.S., N. Korea Talks to Resume

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-NKorea.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. and North Korean negotiators will resume talks next week in New York in an attempt to end a stalemate over Pyongyang's development and export of missiles.

The talks also will focus on U.S. allegations that North Korea sponsors terrorism and on terms of an accord that froze North Korea's nuclear weapons program in exchange for two civilian reactors and supplies of energy.

The last round of missile talks ended in July with North Korea insisting its program was a sovereign exercise in self-defense, but also with indications from economically distressed Pyongyang that it might curb the program in exchange for payments of about $1 billion a year.

From Pyongyang's standpoint, the meetings that begin Sept. 27 offer an opportunity to air complaints that energy supplies under the nuclear freeze agreement have been inadequate.

The third issue, terrorism, needs to be resolved before North Korea can hope to win U.S. acceptance. The Stalinist North is listed by the State Department as a supporter of terrorism, and thereby under U.S. law is barred from receiving other than humanitarian assistance such as food.

A senior U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity Monday, said the talks could go on a few days or longer, depending on the progress made.

U.S. relations with North Korea have been on the upswing since South Korean President Kim Dae-jung two years ago undertook a process of reconciliation with Pyongyang, North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Il gradually warmed to the overture and they met at the summit in June.

But a search at the Frankfurt, Germany, airport of the North Korean delegation to the United Nations' Millennium Summit earlier this month touched off a ripple of ill will.

The delegation canceled its trip to New York, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright subsequently said she regretted the incident and that the search by German security personnel was not authorized by U.S. policy.

Meanwhile, North Korean Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun decided not to attend the U.N. General Assembly meetings last week. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said ``unavoidable reasons'' were behind the cancellation and it was not aimed at slowing momentum toward improved relations.

The visit had been foreseen as a possible opportunity for Albright to meet with the foreign minister, which would have shifted the improving relationship into higher gear.

Traveling in Thailand, Defense Secretary William Cohen cautions that despite easing of tensions on the Korean peninsula, the United States will stay vigilant as long as North Korea keeps a huge army on its border with South Korea.

``We are encouraged by the steps that we see being taken. But we must remain vigilant because of the size of the army that the North Koreans still maintain,'' Cohen said.

Cohen was heading to South Korea later Tuesday for a three-day visit.

``It is clear that there has been a reduction in the tensions that previously existed,'' Cohen acknowledged. But, he added, this is only the ``first stages ... toward a reconciliation.''

``We have to be very cautious,'' he said.

North Korea is believed capable of targeting virtually all of Japan as well as other Asian countries with its missiles. And a potential long-range threat was cited by the Clinton administration as one reason for considering a U.S. missile defense program -- a decision President Clinton has deferred to his successor.

At the same time, North Korea's export of missile technology to Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and other countries has alarmed U.S. officials as a devastating challenge to American attempts to curb proliferation.

The State Department formally announced the talks Tuesday.

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

U.S.-North Korea Talks Set

By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/19/world/19KORE.html

WASHINGTON Sept. 18 - North Korea and the United States will discuss the North's missile and nuclear programs and its place on an American list of state sponsors of terrorism in New York this month, negotiating all three subjects at the same forum for the first time, an American official said today.

The announcement, expected to be made officially on Tuesday, comes two weeks after no delegate from North Korea was able to attend the United Nations summit meeting.

Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright sent a letter of regret to Pyongyang after airport security officials in Frankfurt tried to carry out special search procedures reserved for passengers boarding United States airlines from countries on its terrorism list. The North Koreans flew home after the incident.

The talks are scheduled to last until Sept. 29 but they could go on longer, the United States official said.

-------- russia

U.S. Asks Putin Not to Sell Iran a Laser System

By JUDITH MILLER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/19/world/19ARMS.html

The United States has been pressing Russia not to proceed with plans to sell Iran laser technology that Washington says can be used to make fuel for nuclear weapons, according to administration officials.

Officials said that since July President Clinton has raised the prospective sale of laser technology at least two times in meetings with President Vladimir V. Putin. The most recent occurred this month at the United Nations summit meeting.

Mr. Putin assured Mr. Clinton then that Russia would work with Washington to resolve the dispute, officials with knowledge of the discussions said. American officials said they were encouraged by that pledge.

But they also called the response ambiguous, because Russian and American technical advisers disagreed with each other over whether the equipment could help Iran in what Washington contends is a secret program to acquire nuclear bombs.

The administration officials said that Russian sales of nuclear technology to Iran had been a longstanding concern, but that the administration grew particularly worried about the laser equipment after an American private fuel provider abandoned the product, deciding that it was not economically competitive in a civilian nuclear program. And given America's own troubles in trying to develop a cost-efficient laser technology, the United States is said to believe that Iran was more likely to want to make weapons than to develop commercial plants. The United States apparently believes that the technology is too expensive for refining nuclear fuel for commercial uses and is mostly suited to producing fissionable material for bombs. As a result, the United States has been working for three months to dissuade Russia from letting a center associated with the D. V. Efremov Institute of St. Petersburg, part of the Atomic Energy Ministry, from proceeding with a contract to sell the technology to Iran.

Mr. Clinton raised the prospective deal with Mr. Putin in July in private talks at a Group of 8 meeting in Japan. The contract has also been raised by Vice President Al Gore and Samuel R. Berger, the national security adviser, with their counterparts.

Officials said the issue was also scheduled to be discussed over the weekend by Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, who met on Sunday with the Russian atomic energy minister, Yevgeny O. Adamov, at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency. That organization helps states that rule out nuclear weapons and monitors their civilian nuclear centers to ensure that they are not being used for military purposes.

American allegations that Russia provides critical technology to Iran has roiled their relations for years. American intelligence agencies have long believed that Iran has a secret program to develop nuclear weapons, as well as biological and chemical weapons, dating from the rule of Shah Mohammed Riza Pahlevi, which ended with the 1979 revolution. Given its ample oil and gas resources, Iran's desire to generate electricity with nuclear power, the analysts argued, was automatically seen as suspicious.

Russian nuclear contacts with Tehran have expanded since 1995, when cash-strapped Moscow signed a contract with Iran to complete the Bushehr nuclear power station, which its German builders abandoned in 1979, at the onset of the revolution. Despite pressure by the Clinton administration and sanctions by Congress, which halved foreign aid to Russia's central government in the last two years, Russia has refused to abandon the project.

American officials reportedly do not regard Bushehr as a source of nuclear material that could be diverted to a bomb-making program. But the administration apparently fears that the project will train an entire generation of Iranian physicists and engineers in nuclear technologies, thus enhancing the nuclear scientific base, including any program to develop nuclear weapons.

Russian and Iranian officials argue that Iran has ruled out nuclear weapons and has put the Bushehr plant under the international agency's rules and safeguards.

Russia has refused to forgo revenue from Bushehr and future reactor sales, each of which could run up to $1 billion. But former President Boris N. Yeltsin pledged not to expand nuclear cooperation with Iran beyond Bushehr, which plans up to four reactor and turbine units.

Last spring, however, the United States learned that the Science and Technology Center of Microtechnology, a unit of the Efremov Institute, had signed a contract to provide the laser equipment to Iran. Separating isotopes is costly, intensive in time and energy and essential to making nuclear bombs or fuel for light water civilian reactors to generate electrical power.

To make a nuclear bomb or reactor fuel, uranium 235, whose atoms are used in chain reactions, has to be separated from the dominant uranium 238 isotope. The United States uses gaseous diffusion. Some Europeans and Russia use centrifuge technology to separate the U-235 from U-238, which is not good for making weapons.

The United States has developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory a third method, laser isotope separation, that can be used to separate fissile isotopes from both uranium and plutonium, both of which can be used in nuclear bombs.

The United States also had an extensive program to develop the laser isotope separation technology, known as Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation, or Avlis, for commercial purposes. It hoped that Avlis reactor fuel could be enriched with one-tenth as much electricity, a boon to the nuclear power industry.

But after having invested almost $2 billion in the technology, the United States Enrichment Corporation, America's privatized nuclear fuel provider, abandoned the technology last year, saying the method was too expensive to commercialize and would probably always be so.

With that experience, Washington reacted with alarm to intelligence reports from multiple sources indicating that Iran was trying to buy such technology from Russia.

That is only the latest point of tension between Russia and the United States in terms of Iran.

In February, Russia promised to stop making plutonium out of fuel from its civilian power reactors as part of a $100 million joint research and aid package from Washington. The administration put a condition on the part of the package most attractive to Moscow, namely the $25 million for joint research into new reactors. Washington insisted that Russia had to stop all new sales and transfers of nuclear technology to Iran that could be used in a nuclear weapons program.

But Mr. Adamov, the atomic energy minister, has said since then that Russia would not stop competing to sell light water power reactors to Iran.

The Russian Foreign Ministry declined to comment today on the dispute. A spokesman for Mr. Adamov said he was traveling and could not answer questions.

A spokesman for the Iranian mission to the United Nations said Iran's cooperation with Russia posed "no threat of proliferation." Iran "does not seek a nuclear weapon and has exercised utmost transparency with regard to its program," he said.

But the spokesman added, "We do not accept any country's deciding in an arbitrary manner what type of peaceful technology we can or cannot have."

As a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran was "entitled" to technology "for peaceful purposes," the spokesman said.

"If the U.S. has any complaints," he added, "the proper forum is the I.A.E.A."

Administration officials said Washington and Moscow would continue talks. Otherwise Washington could decide to reduce the more than $250 million a year that the Energy Department gives Russia to support its hard-pressed nuclear sector and secure its arsenal from theft and accident.

--------

Putin Considers Clinton Warning

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Russia-Iran.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Clinton is urging Russian President Vladimir Putin to shelve plans to sell laser technology to Iran, telling him it could be adapted to a nuclear weapons program, an administration official said Tuesday.

The Russian leader took the request seriously, but the follow-up is critical, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Clinton has raised the prospective sale with Putin at least twice -- at an eight-nation economic summit meeting in Japan in July and this month while the two leaders were in New York for the U.N. Millennium Summit -- the official said.

The appeal was framed in the context of the campaign the administration undertook in 1993 and accelerated in 1996 to stop the ``leakage'' of dangerous technology to Iran.

The official told The Associated Press he was convinced Clinton had managed to get Putin focused on the problem. His promise to consider the appeal was reassuring, the official said.

Still, Russian experts apparently are not so convinced as Americans that the laser technology could help Iran in what the United States believes is a secret program to acquire nuclear bombs.

Iran contends the technology it seeks would be used for peaceful purposes, but U.S. officials are skeptical.

Russia, strapped for money, has pursued a lucrative relationship with Iran, often at the cost of roiling Russia's relationship with the United States.

A second U.S. official, insisting on anonymity, said the process, atomic vapor laser isotope separation, was internationally recognized as sensitive nuclear technology.

The official said the United States would strongly object to transferring this technology to any country whose nuclear activities are suspect.

--------

Putin Orders Salvage of Sunken Sub

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Submarine.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- President Vladimir Putin has decided to go forward with an operation to retrieve the bodies of 118 crewmen who died aboard a nuclear submarine that sank in the Barents Sea, Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov said Tuesday.

Some recent reports had said that the proposed operation was being delayed because of disputes over financing, but Klebanov said after meeting with Putin that contracts have been drafted and are expected to be signed within a few days.

The contracts are with the Norwegian company Stolt Offshore, whose divers were able to open the hatch of sunken submarine Kursk after Russian efforts failed for days. The amount of the contracts was not immediately announced.

The retrieval effort is expected to take place in October or November, Klebanov said, according to the news agency Interfax. The Kursk sank on Aug. 12 after massive explosions.

The blasts shattered the submarine so severely that divers are unlikely to be able to retrieve the remains of sailors who were in the first four of the Kursk's nine compartments, Klebanov said.

Putin also has ordered that an operation be conducted to raise the wreck of the Kursk from its resting place 350 feet below the surface, Klebanov said. That effort is expected to start next summer.

Interfax said the cost of raising the wreck is estimated at $45 million. No contracts have been signed for the salvage operation, but Klebanov said the work will most likely include Dutch and Belgian companies, Interfax reported.

The cause of the explosions has not been determined. Russian officials say they are focusing on indications that the Kursk collided with an underwater object, possibly a foreign submarine.

The United States says two of its submarines were monitoring the naval exercises in which the Kursk was taking part but denies that either was involved in a collision.

-------- sweden

Sweden nuclear phase-out sparks power debate

SWEDEN: September 19, 2000
Story by Eva Sohlman
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8226

BARSEBACK, Sweden - Towering on the plains of southeast Sweden and surrounded by wind turbines, the Barseback nuclear power station has become the symbol of a debate about how fast Sweden should phase out nuclear power.

The government will announce on September 20 whether it will pursue a 1997 decision to close another reactor at Barseback.

"Why close a plant which is operating perfectly when this would mean power shortages and increased emissions of carbon dioxide?", said Lars-Gunnar Fritz, head of information at the plant.

Swedes, fearing an environmental disaster, voted in a 1980 referendum to phase out nuclear power, which presently meets 47 percent of the country's electricity needs. But no date was set for a complete closure.

In 1997 the government decided to shut down one of Barseback's two 615 megawatt (MW) reactors in November last year - the first of Sweden's 12 reactors to be closed. The second is due to be shut down by 2001.

The shutdown of Barseback-1 cost the state 8.3 billion crowns ($928.4 million) in compensation to plant owner Sydkraft , Sweden's largest listed power company.

The decision provoked protests from employees and people living near the plant who say it is completely safe.

During the 1980 referendum campaign, a leading opposition politician offered to take a bath in the reactor container pool to show how safe the energy source was.

HOW TO REPLACE LOST POWER?

A shutdown by 2001 would leave a gap of four terawatt hours (TWh) a year in Sweden's total electricity output of 155 TWh and increase its need to import power on the deregulated Nordic power market.

The 1997 decree said the government must prove that energy lost by shutting down Barseback could be replaced with clean power from renewable sources such as wind, solar, biomass and hydropower.

Several reports have subsequently suggested that planned substitutes will produce only 2.5 TWh by 2001.

Sweden's national grid says closure would double the risk of shortages when demand surges. Shortages would increase the need to import electricity from neighbouring countries such as Denmark and Poland which produce most of their power from coal - boosting Sweden's emissions of carbon dioxide.

Because of these concerns the government has apparently back-tracked, saying in August that the second reactor would not close as originally scheduled.

"For the government, it is obvious that the preconditions of the 1997 decision must be met," said Industry Minister Bjorn Rosengren.

COST EFFICIENCY

Sweden's National Energy Administration says the country could afford a closure without jeopardising power supplies.

"A closure is financially viable as power prices are so low and Sweden could import electricity in times of shortages," said Thomas Korsfeldt, the administration's chief executive.

Sweden no longer needs to be self-sufficient in energy as power prices have fallen to unexpectedly low levels. Power imports have become possible following the deregulation of power markets in Sweden and its neighbours.

"Today it is more expensive to keep reserve capacity and cheaper to import power on the Nordic power market," Korsfeldt said.

As a result production costs for nuclear power now exceed prices on the hydropower-intensive Nordic power market.

The production costs for nuclear power stand at around 0.11-0.17 crowns ($0.011-0.018) per kilowatt hour (kWh) compared with the production costs for hydropower at 0.005-0.030 crowns per kWh.

The market price for electricity in mid-August was about 0.08 crowns.

MORE PRESSURE ON PRODUCERS

Nuclear power producers suffered from last year's unusually mild winter and above-average snow and rainfall which forced them to curb output when demand was low and reservoir supplies plentiful.

A new fixed tax on installed capacity at nuclear power plants rather than on actual production, ending a loophole allowing generators to cut output and evade taxes when demand was low, added pressure to shrinking profit margins.

"This is a way to phase out nuclear power by stealth," said Bertil Tiusanen, former head of Sweden's largest power producer, Vattenfall .

But Barseback's Fritz said he believed the government was in no hurry to shut the second reactor, and Sydkraft aimed to operate it until 2017.

"The fact that it is still unclear where we will store the waste in the long run indicates that Sweden does not seem to be in such a hurry to phase out its nuclear power," he said.

He said Sweden should imitate Germany which decided in June to phase out nuclear power without compensating producers but gave them the right to generate a fixed amount of power with control over the period over which it would be produced.

-------- ukraine

US Helps Ukraine Probe Illness

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Ukraine-Poisoned-Villages.html

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- A group of U.S. experts have arrived in Ukraine to help the former Soviet republic investigate a case of mass poisoning possibly caused by leaks of Soviet-era rocket fuel, officials said Monday.

The team, which arrived Sunday, includes two scientists from the Environment Protection Agency and three from the Atlanta-based Center for Disease Control.

They will spend a week in Ukraine, meeting with officials in Kiev and traveling to the four poisoned villages in the southern Mykolaiv area, said an official with the U.S. Embassy.

The experts are expected to take water and soil probes to determine the cause of the mysterious illness, which affected about 400 people in July and August in the villages.

The illness caused burning eyes, difficulty breathing, upset stomachs and skin rashes. Those hospitalized have been released, and no new cases were reported.

A base with solid-fuel SS-24 nuclear missiles, which now have no warheads and are to be dismantled in 2001, is located in the region. The area once housed other Soviet missiles powered by liquid fuel.

Some health experts have cited possible leaks of missile fuel as the cause of the illness, though the defense ministry has denied the possibility.

The ministry's medical service said the disease was most likely caused by the burning of plastic in the presence of copper, such as burning the insulation off cables stolen by scavengers with the aim of selling the metal.

Other government officials said the supposedly high concentration of nitrates in the area's water and soil was to blame.

The government has declared the region a disaster zone and set up a commission to investigate the poisonings. Its findings are expected later in the week.

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

Payments to sick nuclear workers in jeopardy
Jurisdictional dispute endangers plan to compensate arms plant employees

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Wednesday, September 20, 2000
By MATTHEW L. WALD THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/national/nuke203.shtml

WASHINGTON -- An administration plan to compensate private-sector workers who were made sick by exposure to hazardous chemicals or radiation while building nuclear weapons may fall victim to a jurisdictional dispute, according to administration officials.

A provision that would authorize compensation passed the Senate on a voice vote, as part of the Defense Authorization bill, but there was no similar provision in the House legislation, so the issue is now before a House-Senate committee.

Agreement in the conference committee has been held up because the Senate bill calls for the program to be administered by the Labor Department, but members of the House Judiciary Committee want it channeled through a Justice Department office that also handles radiation claims against the government arising from nuclear weapons testing.

The legislation would cover thousands of people who worked for private contractors on weapons projects. Nearly all are ineligible for workers' compensation because their illnesses developed years or decades after their exposures, according to the Energy Department.

The department acknowledged earlier this year that hundreds of workers had a lung illness that could have been caused only by their work on nuclear weapons components.

The Energy Department says the Senate version of the program would cost about $1.8 billion in the first five years and less thereafter.

It would provide each worker with reimbursement for lost wages or $200,000, whichever is larger, plus health care expenses.

The Senate provision, though, is only an authorization, not an appropriation, leaving it to a future Congress to provide the money.

The Judiciary Committee favors a package modeled after the one already on the books for uranium miners and people who were exposed to fallout for weapons tests, which offers $100,000 per victim. Among the issues before the conferees is why one group of victims should be compensated more generously than another.

It plans hearings tomorrow, although the issue could be decided by conferees today.

One hundred four members of the House, many with victims in their districts, wrote to the conferees asking them to adopt the Senate version.

Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., whose district includes a defunct plant where workers were exposed to beryllium and where some now suffer a debilitating lung disease as a result, said he was "cautiously optimistic" that the Senate version would be approved.

Robert Alvarez, a former Energy Department official who is now a consultant for a union representing some of the workers, said the House program amounted to an "apology payment" as opposed to reimbursement for losses, because it does not offer reimbursement for lost wages.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson early this year became the first head of that agency to acknowledge that weapons manufacture had sickened or killed some of the 600,000 people who have worked in the plants.

In a letter sent Monday to Floyd Spence, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, he said: "The men and women who worked for the Department of Energy and served our nation in the nuclear weapons industries of World War II and the Cold War labored under difficult and dangerous conditions with some of the most hazardous materials known to mankind. It is time for Congress to act to ensure that they get the help they have long deserved. These workers, many of whom are now seriously ill, should not have to wait to be compensated."

-------- new mexico

Now Let's Catch the Real Spy

Wall Street Journal
September 19, 2000
By Francis Fukuyama, a professor of public policy at George Mason University.
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB969321014818874332.htm

Commenting on the meltdown of the government's case against Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, President Clinton said he was "very troubled" by the behavior of government prosecutors and suggested he will be talking to Attorney General Janet Reno soon about her department's handling of the case.

This takes, as his wife Hillary has learned to say, a lot of "chutzpah," reminding one of the French official Reynaud in the film "Casablanca" who professed to be "shocked, shocked!" to learn that gambling was going on at the nightclub as he was being handed his winnings. The Justice Department has had a history of lurching between lackadaisical enforcement of security issues and "police state" overreaction, something the president should have intervened to fix long ago.

Questions Remain

Mr. Lee is guilty of a felony count of mishandling classified information, and has yet to explain what he did with the large amount of classified data that he downloaded to computer tapes that were subsequently destroyed. This is a serious offense, but the government's case began to crumble when it became increasingly clear that it could not show Mr. Lee was a spy. There are a number of plausible explanations for why Mr. Lee would have downloaded the data, explanations that would have made the act a very stupid one but not a matter of criminal espionage.

As outlined by the Cox Commission report, the Chinese government sometime in the late 1980s acquired sensitive nuclear design information, in particular regarding the miniaturized W-88 warhead used on the Trident D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missile. We know this because a "walk-in" showed U.S. intelligence officials classified Chinese documents containing the stolen information. It seems pretty clear at this point that whoever passed the W-88 information to the Chinese was not Mr. Lee, whose downloading didn't occur until after 1993.

This has two implications about the way that the Clinton administration has handled the charges of Chinese spying. First, that Mr. Lee was the victim of overzealous prosecutors and an administration that wanted desperately to finger someone so as to evade charges of lax security in the U.S. weapons labs. And second, that the real spy or spies responsible for the W-88 theft are probably still out there, uncaught, and at this point are probably pretty safe from further scrutiny.

Federal Judge James A. Parker, who said that the government's behavior embarrassed the nation, appears to have been particularly angry at the behavior of John Kelly, the U.S. attorney for New Mexico who was lead prosecutor in the case. Mr. Kelly, now running for Congress as a Democrat, told the judge that releasing Mr. Lee on bail would lead to a catastrophic loss of strategic information, which justified the use of solitary confinement and shackles to imprison Mr. Lee for nine months. Ms. Reno refused to apologize on the grounds that Mr. Lee should have agreed to reveal what he did with the downloaded documents, something his lawyers in fact offered some time ago. (Why Mr. Lee should have given away his only bargaining chips to the Reno Justice Department is another question.)

Ms. Reno, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Louis Freeh, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and Mr. Clinton are now all busy pointing fingers at each other trying to deflect criticism for the debacle. In point of fact, they all share in the blame: Everyone in the Clinton administration had a powerful interest in pretending that by prosecuting Mr. Lee they were getting to the root of the espionage. Parallels to the case of Richard Jewel -- the man accused falsely of setting off a bomb at the Atlanta Olympic Games -- are apparent.

The charges of "racial profiling" and racism raised by various Asian-American advocacy groups are overdone. Chinese military intelligence has been known to target ethnic Chinese abroad for recruitment, so it is not prima facie racist to scrutinize members of that group. Mr. Lee was not, moreover, caught in a broad net cast over all ethnic Chinese. He came under suspicion because he was one of very few Americans with privileged access to the nation's most secret weapons data -- one on a list of 12 top suspects compiled during the Energy Department's 1996 investigation of the W-88 theft.

To the extent that ethnicity may have been misused, the real problem came when the FBI discovered the downloaded documents and fastened onto Mr. Lee to the exclusion of all other suspects. Unless the government proves willing to release more information linking Mr. Lee directly to espionage, it appears that its case was circumstantial, based entirely on contacts that Mr. Lee and his wife Sylvia had with various Chinese scientific institutes. The FBI appears to have put little effort into investigating the 11 others on the Energy Department's list, not to speak of the many other individuals outside Los Alamos who had access to the W-88 design information. Indeed, failure to follow up with other suspects was the main reason that the Justice Department twice turned down the FBI's request for authority to wiretap the Lees.

Given the government's bungling of this case, we now have the worst of all worlds. On the one hand, the problem of espionage of sensitive weapons secrets has not been resolved. There are likely still spies out there who have not been caught, and the inattention to security procedures at the national labs has continued to be a problem (as the subsequent misplacing of a pair of extremely sensitive hard drives -- also unsolved -- demonstrates).

On the other hand, the hysteria over spying in the wake of the Lee case has led a number of government agencies to impose heavy-handed restrictions on contacts with foreigners that will produce utterly counterproductive results. Our national labs risk losing access to manpower and compartmentalizing themselves into a ghetto where they will be cut off from the most vital currents in the civilian economy.

In a high-tech region like Silicon Valley, more than 40% of the engineers are foreign born, the vast bulk of them Chinese. Of the approximately 1,200 Ph.D.s granted by American universities last year in mathematics, only 43% were granted to native-born Americans. As Annalee Saxenian of Berkeley has recently shown, there is a huge and enormously beneficial exchange of technological expertise, managerial know-how, and entrepreneurship that takes place as a result of ethnic Chinese and Indians shuttling between California and their home countries. The ability of our national labs to recruit scientists and engineers from this pool, as well as to collaborate with the civilian technology community, has been seriously damaged by the events surrounding Mr. Lee's prosecution.

Where the Buck Stops

The Republicans were far from blameless in the Lee affair, since they were the ones demanding that the administration clamp down hard on the weapons labs and were all too ready to accept the prosecutors' claims that they had solved the problem. Congress needs to demand that the executive branch explain the grounds of its prosecution of Mr. Lee, now that his plea bargain forecloses the courts from doing this.

If there were, indeed, no grounds for thinking that Mr. Lee was the source of the W-88 information, Congress should demand that the administration go back to the drawing board in figuring out how the information was compromised. And the president needs to move from being "very troubled" to actually replacing those officials responsible for this debacle.

---

The Wen Ho Lee Diversion

Wall Street Journal
September 19, 2000
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB969320356814054085.htm

The Wen Ho Lee case ended last week with the former weapons scientist pleading guilty to a single felony charge, with the President of the United States distancing himself from his own Justice department, and now with Asian-American activists charging that the Lee case was the product of racism. This has the look of a classic fiasco. We're not so sure, though, that the case didn't end just about the way Bill Clinton would have liked -- in a fog of non-conclusions. Before our jovial President saunters away from another stinkpile, it might be worth putting this affair in its proper context.

Incredible to behold, "Wen Ho Lee" somehow became a household word in the United States. To the casual viewer, the storyline ran that a sole Chinese-American computer scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Wen Ho Lee, managed to become the conduit for passing some of the nation's most sensitive nuclear weapons data to China's government. Lee himself participated in his inflation, appearing on "60 Minutes" last August to proclaim his innocence. By then, needless to say, he had become an ethnic martyr.

Let's review the actual timeline on the Lee affair:

Start with the atmosphere of unseriousness about security that pervaded the administration. Early on, Rep. Frank Wolf held hearings into the White House's slovenly process for issuing security clearances to its own personnel. Russian intelligence managed to place wiretaps in one of the most presumably secure floors of the State Department, with sensitive laptop computers disappearing. There was as well the gaudy cast of characters rolling through the White House for campaign-contribution coffees and photo-ops -- Macau gangsters, Chinese arms dealers, Johnny Chung and Charlie Trie, who later fled to China.

At an amazing press conference on Dec. 7, 1993, Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary unveiled the DOE's "openness initiative." "The Cold War is over; we're coming clean," she said. She announced that 32 million pages of classified documents were now subject to review and possible release to "put the United States out in front as a nation willing to share." She joked: "During the Cold War, I would have been arrested for what I said."

No wonder Wen Ho Lee thought the rules had changed. They had.

Indeed, in mid-1997, Attorney General Janet Reno turned down the FBI's request to put a wiretap on Wen Ho Lee, whom they'd been investigating for years. Given the stakes here, and the by-the-books use of a wiretap under such circumstances, the request should have been a routine slam dunk. But Ms. Reno blocked it. Her justification: The evidence against Lee was too fragmentary.

We know, however, that Wen Ho Lee copied sensitive data onto 10 computer tapes, a warehouse of information. Seven of those tapes are still missing. He repeatedly failed polygraph tests. A prima facie case was obvious; the wiretap was warranted. In the event, he entered a guilty plea to one count and promised to cooperate with investigators over the next year.

The Hazel O'Leary "willing to share" national security policy ended in January 1999, with the release of the Cox Report, asserting: "The PRC thefts from our National Laboratories began at least as early as the late 1970s. Significant secrets are known to have been stolen, from the laboratories or elsewhere, as recently as the mid-1990s. Such thefts almost certainly continue to the present."

Exactly two months later, the Energy Department announced that it had fired Los Alamos computer scientist Wen Ho Lee. Quickly, Lee ended up carrying responsibility for the whole sieve of data leaking out of Los Alamos.

On March 19, 10 days after the Wen Ho Lee firing and two months after the Cox Report, President Clinton was asked at a news conference whether any of these Los Alamos security breaches took place on his watch. The President replied: "To the best of my knowledge, no one has said anything to me about any espionage which occurred by the Chinese against the labs during my presidency."

This is almost certainly a false statement. A New York Times story the next day notes "different accounts" of when Mr. Clinton was informed of China's espionage. A House committee was told Mr. Clinton was briefed in 1998. But in the weeks prior to the March 19 news conference, White House aides said National Security Adviser Sandy Berger had briefed the President in July 1997.

According to the Times, NSC spokesman David Leavy "said that since the completion of [the Cox] report, Berger and other aides had refreshed their recollections. 'After the Cox committee process, we've remembered more,' Leavy said."

Also at his March 19 news conference, Mr. Clinton hotly denied that his administration suppressed reports of Chinese spying to avoid association with reports of laundered Chinese contributions to the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign. "That is not true," the President asserted.

Our view of this "fiasco" would run like this:

With the issuance of the Cox Report, it was obvious that the administration faced a massive security embarrassment involving the very nation alleged to have funneled money into the President's reelection. And so to divert attention from a genuine fiasco, the Clinton brain trust found a scalp, a fall guy, in Wen Ho Lee.

We may never know the truth about Lee's activities or guilt (of a piece with the Chinese contributions), but the notion, allowed to run for a year, that somehow this one man constituted the Los Alamos breakdown was preposterous; it was a diversion. Now the chase has ended in a predictable plea-bargain, and the "investigation" will soon disappear into the mists, carrying with it this presidency's responsibility for what happened at the Energy Department on its watch, as with so many other security lapses.

As we've learned, however, even embarrassments can be turned to political advantage. Rendering the whole affair into mush the day after the plea agreement, the President said, "It's very difficult to reconcile the two positions -- that one day he's a terrible risk to the national security, and the next day they're making a plea agreement for an offense far more modest than what had been alleged."

But yesterday, just four days later, a report appears in the New York Times, in which government sources lay the primary blame for the Wen Ho Lee case on FBI Director Louis Freeh: "The FBI sold Janet Reno a bill of goods," says a voice from the shadows. Director Freeh, with Charles La Bella, is the one administration official in the Justice Department who recommended that Janet Reno appoint an independent counsel to investigate Bill Clinton's and Al Gore's fundraising activities in the 1996 campaign.

Looking at this from top to bottom, it would appear that the one thing the Clinton administration has shown the energy and skill to protect is itself.

---

Wen Ho Lee made 20 tapes, 10 were copies

USA Today
09/19/00- Updated 08:11 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncstue12.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Preparing for a tell-all interview with Wen Ho Lee, the FBI has learned from the Los Alamos scientist that he made a total of 20 tapes with nuclear secrets, half of which were duplicates, government officials said Tuesday.

Only three have been recovered, but Lee's lawyer said his client will tell the FBI the remaining tapes were destroyed.

The FBI told congressional investigators this week that one of the key questions for Lee to answer is why he made as many as 10 duplicate tapes of information he downloaded from secure Energy Department computers, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The government learned about the duplicates from Lee's attorneys as they prepared for a plea bargain earlier this month, the officials said. The revelation caused a brief delay in a planned plea bargain with the scientist, the officials said.

FBI agents are slated to begin interviewing Lee on Sept. 26 under a court-approved deal in which the government dropped 58 felony charges against the scientist and released him from solitary confinement in a case that has raised questions of excessive prosecution.

One of Lee's lawyers, Brian Sun, said Tuesday his client will tell the FBI he destroyed all missing tapes with nuclear secrets but otherwise could not comment on any issues related to the interview.

''Our position has been and will continue to be he destroyed all tapes that had classified information on them, and we will honor our commitment to the bureau to describe the circumstances surrounding the tapes,'' Sun said.

''All of this is supposed to be handled confidentially in the context that all of this is under seal by order of the court,'' Sun said.

When Lee was charged in December 1999, the government alleged he had made only 10 tapes of nuclear secrets, seven which were missing. An FBI agent later told the court investigators believed he had made as many as 15 tapes.

Now the FBI has told Congress it believes Lee made a total of 17 tapes that are unaccounted for - in addition to three originals that were recovered from his office. The 17 include seven originals and 10 copies, the officials said.

Next week, while agents interview Lee, senators will begin exploring the government's conduct in the Lee case, including whether he was singled out because he was Asian American, why he was imprisoned without bail when the government had no evidence he engaged in espionage and why so many charges were brought, only to be dropped.

That Senate hearing is slated to begin Sept. 26.

Attorney General Janet Reno has defended the Justice Department's handling of the case, even as her boss, President Clinton, has questioned it.

Reno has said Lee's lengthy detention without bail was necessary to protect the government until he admitted what he did with the tapes.

''With all my heart and soul,'' Reno said, she wished ''Dr. Lee had come forward, said, 'This is what I did with the information ... (and) I'll ... try to give you as much information as possible to permit you to confirm and corroborate it.''

A Senate subcommittee led by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., wants to question prosecutors.

A key question is prosecutor's decision to reject a cooperation offer from Lee's attorney just before the December 1999 indictment. The scientist offered to give the government ''credible and verifiable'' proof of what he did with the tapes and take a lie detector test to prove he was telling the truth.

''We will immediately provide this credible and verifiable explanation,'' Lee's attorneys wrote the U.S. attorney in Albuquerque, N.M., on Dec. 10, 1999.

''Specifically, we are prepared to make Dr. Lee immediately available to a mutually agreeable polygraph examiner to verify our repeated written representations that at no time did he mishandle those tapes in question and to confirm that he did not provide the tapes to any third party,'' the letter said.

Prosecutor George Stamboulidis said the government pursued the offer but concluded it was ''cosmetic, not a real offer.'' Defense attorneys would only allow two questions - Did Lee destroy the tapes or pass the tapes to others? - and wouldn't agree to an FBI polygrapher. ''How can you test his credibility with only two questions,'' the prosecutor asked.

The government proceeded with a 59-count indictment against the scientist that carried a penalty of life in prison and asked the court to keep him in solitary confinement in prison without bail - a position it held for more than nine months until it abandoned the lion's share of its case earlier this month.

The latter action caused the judge in the case to apologize to Lee for his ''unfair'' solitary confinement and to lambast the government for embarrassing ''our entire nation and each of us who is a citizen of it.''

--------

Asian Americans Urge Probe of Handling of Wen Ho Lee Case

Washington Post
Tuesday , September 19, 2000 ; A06
By Susan Schmidt Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31268-2000Sep18.html

Asian American leaders condemned the federal government's prosecution of nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee yesterday and called on the White House to create an independent commission to examine the way the case was handled.

Members of a presidential commission, in New York yesterday for a previously scheduled "town hall" meeting with Asian groups there, heard angry demands for an examination of ethnic profiling and government missteps in Lee's case. Lee, branded a threat to national security and held on 59 counts in solitary confinement for nine months, was able to plead guilty to a single charge and leave jail a free man last week after a federal judge in Albuquerque demanded prosecutors show their evidence to the court.

"There is a great deal of national anger on the part of all Asian Americans," said Henry S. Tang, chairman of the Committee of 100, a Chinese American advocacy group. Lee, said Tang, was kept in a "Kafkaesque condition," shackled and isolated, the victim of "a national hysteria which caused a national shame." Tang's group is particularly concerned about racial profiling as practiced by federal security officers in the defense industry and at laboratories like Los Alamos, where Lee worked.

The Committee of 100 and Asian American legal groups that attended the town hall meeting called for the creation of a investigative body to review the evidence that led the government to make Lee, who was born in Taiwan, the subject of an espionage probe. They pressed their demands on members of the White House commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, who hosted yesterday's session.

Martha Choe, head of the presidential advisory commission, issued her own statement criticizing the government's actions. "Dr. Lee's treatment and his case disturbs us greatly," she said. "We as a commission have expressed our concerns--in the strongest manner possible--on how this case was handled." She said the 15-member commission is preparing recommendations for President Clinton on such issues as racial profiling.

Clinton has voiced doubts about how the government could have had such damning evidence to warrant nine months of pretrial detention, only to agree to a plea bargain for time served. "The president has asked his staff to work with the Justice Department to supply answers to some of the questions surrounding this case," a White House spokesman said last night.

Lee worked at Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory until last year, when he was ousted as a result of the investigation. He was charged with improper handling of classified documents and of violating the Atomic Energy Act by allegedly intending to damage national security. He pleaded guilty to one count for downloading classified nuclear weapons design data onto an unsecure computer at the lab.

Important elements of the government's case against Lee fell apart as his trial neared. An FBI agent recanted some of the assertions that led to Lee being held without bail, and questions deepened about how he ended up in the cross hairs of an earlier aborted espionage probe involving the possible transfer of nuclear secrets to China.

---------

It's An Outrage (Never Mind What)

Washington Post
Tuesday , September 19, 2000 ; A23
By Michael Kinsley
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32706-2000Sep18.html

Schieffer: "You said at one point that this was maybe the biggest security breach of 'of our lifetime.'"

Senator Lott: "Yeah, yeah."

That was host Bob Schieffer and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday.

By now Republican criticism of the Clinton administration, and Attorney General Janet Reno in particular, is beyond political calculation and beyond cynicism. They do it by rote, like a ritual incantation of the faith. You would think that even a politician's vestigial sense of irony would give a U.S. senator pause before piling on about the injustice done to Los Alamos nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, who was kept in solitary confinement for nine months on lurid charges of spying and then released after pleading guilty to something like pocketing paper clips. There is, after all, plenty of other material available if you wake up one morning and say to yourself, "Y'know, I feel like denouncing the Justice Department today." And if you've run out, someone at Louis Freeh's FBI will be happy to leak you some more. Of all the reasons one might attack the administration, many of them justified, why choose one that puts you at the mercy of any hack columnist with access to Nexis (the news media data base)? To do so suggests an unhealthy compulsion, if not severe short-term memory loss.

It was only last June, after all, that Lott was promising to make the Wen Ho Lee case an issue in the election campaign. Way back then--three months ago--the case was said to illustrate the administration's disregard for American national security, not the railroading of a basically innocent man because of his race. "What I want to know is what actions are we going to take to stop this kind of misconduct," Lott huffed, referring to Lee's alleged spying, not the administration's prosecution of him.

Now Lott says the question of Lee's guilt is "not clear," but "there's a real dichotomy" between the way Lee was treated and the wrist-slap for former CIA director John Deutch, who "apparently did the same thing." No one has ever suggested that Deutch was a superspy for a foreign government, so "the same thing" apparently means that Lott now no longer believes that Lee was a superspy either. So "what is the difference?" According to Lott, it's that Deutch is "a buddy of the White House" whereas Lee is Asian American. (That's actually two differences. But who's counting?) "It's unsettling," Lott piously concluded, though not so unsettling that he had ever bothered to mention it in his many calls for Reno's resignation during the past year.

The day Wen Ho Lee was arrested, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Shelby said, "I think they've been too late, or at least very tardy, in doing this." For the next year--while Wen Ho Lee languished in solitary--Chairman Shelby had other concerns. He bounced from talk show to hearing to press conference, denouncing administration laxness in cracking down on Chinese spies. "This problem could be more serious, more widespread and potentially more dangerous than most Americans realize," he foretold.

And now? A modest mea culpa, perhaps? A morsel of apology? Not quite. "All I can say is I thought from the beginning that that was a botched investigation," Shelby said last week, like a man who warned that the Titanic was burdened by too many lifeboats.

Sen. Arlen Specter is not a person who brakes for ironies on his way to a microphone. "You have the grandest case of grand larceny in the history of the world on the espionage and the theft of vital American secrets" was his summary of the situation during a "Media Availability" (actual name of the event) last year. Specter accused the administration of "incredible bungling" that "put millions of Americans at risk." Everyone thought at the time that the "bungling" charge referred to the Clinton administration's failure to arrest Wen Ho Lee, or at least wiretap him, earlier. This might have been a convenient time for Specter to mention his real concern thatthe only person arrested in this grandest of grand larcenies was an innocent man being railroaded because of his race. If he happened to think so.

But Specter modestly suppressed his civil libertarian concerns until the case against Lee collapsed. Maybe he was waiting for an appropriate occasion. At a recent ceremony for the 213th anniversary of the Constitution, no less, Specter said, "It's hard to understand how a man can be a major threat to national security one day and walk free the next." And lest you think it's the walking free part he objects to now, he added that the Justice Department "threw the book at Dr. Lee to make up for their own failings." Specter promises hearings on this outrage, needless to say.

A year ago Sen. Phil Gramm thought Janet Reno ought to resign because the belated nabbing of the arch-spy Wen Ho Lee added to "the cumulative weight of all her failures." Now Gramm's well-known passion for racial justice makes him even more adamant. "I don't understand an administration that stands up and damns racial profiling and yet engages in it when it suits," he said last week. Reno ought to resign "if she had any honor and any shame," observed this expert on those qualities.

In short, the porridge is too hot. No, wait, it's too cold. Whatever. The important thing is, it's Clinton's fault. Oh yeah, and Reno should resign.

Michael Kinsley, editor of Slate (www.slate.com), writes a weekly column for The Post.

-------- ohio

Truck carrying radioactive waste struck; no contamination found

Columbus Dispatch
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
http://www.dispatch.com/news/newsfea00/sep00/426307.html

Health officials found no contamination yesterday after a tractor-trailer hauling low-level radioactive waste was rear-ended yesterday afternoon near I-270 and Rt. 33 on the Southeast Side.

The crash occurred just after noon when a garbage truck struck the rear end of a flatbed trailer hauling radioactive sludge. Neither driver was injured.

The truck was hauling three large steel crates filled with radioactive sludge, including uranium and thorium compounds, said Jim Colleli, a health physicist with the Ohio Department of Health.

The shipment, from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, was traveling to the Alaron company in Pennsylvania, where it was to be processed.

A liquid, thought to be water, was found leaking from the side of one of the crates and health officials were notified. They found no radioactivity, Colleli said.

Eastbound traffic on I-270, which runs parallel to stretches of the Big Walnut Creek, was backed up for more than seven hours.

The Portsmouth plant produces enriched uranium used as fuel for the nuclear-power plants that supply about 20 percent of the country's electricity.

-------- us nuc politics

Murkowski says gov't needs nuke waste action or be sued

USA: September 19, 2000
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8236

WASHINGTON - Alaska Sen. Frank Murkowski criticised the Clinton administration yesterday for not accepting legislation passed by the House and Senate for storing hazardous nuclear waste, saying a recent court decision cleared the way for massive lawsuits by utilities over the issue.

A federal court last week ruled that nuclear utilities can receive monetary rewards - estimated at billions of dollars - from the Department of Energy for the government's breach of an agreement to store 40,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel starting in 1998.

"Clearly the federal government and taxpayers bear responsibility" for the Clinton administration not acting to remove the waste from the nation's commercial nuclear plants, Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, said in a speech from the Senate floor.

In April, President Clinton vetoed a bill mandating the construction of a permanent nuclear waste repository in Nevada's Yucca Mountain by decade's end, citing environmental concerns.

The Senate in May failed by one vote to override the veto.

Murkowski said he would hold a hearing on the utilities and lawsuits before Congress adjourns this autumn, and pushed for an override "re-vote" as quickly as possible.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade group for owners of the country's 103 nuclear plants, said 11 utilities have filed individual suits in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims seeking monetary damages ranging from $70 million to $1 billion.

The total total tops $5 billion. Some of the suits are being filed by defunct utilities that no longer operate plants or have shut down units but still store the waste.

The utilities are: Yankee Atomic Electric Co., Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Co., Maine Yankee Atomic Power Co., Northern States Power Co., Florida Power & Light Co., Duke Energy, Indiana Michigan Power Co., Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Southern Nuclear Operating Co., Commonwealth Edison Co. and Boston Edison Co..

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

Technology Boom Too Tempting for Many Government Scientists

New York Times
September 19, 2000
By KATIE HAFNER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/19/technology/19TECH.html

Throughout the high-tech era, government research laboratories have been seedbeds for some of the most important advances in computing, detecting nuclear weapons, robotics, gene sequencing and other fields. And for engineers and computer scientists, the laboratories have been havens of job permanence.

Now, the technology boom in Silicon Valley and across the nation has changed all that. The lure of the private sector and its many start-up companies is so strong that national research laboratories are losing their best and brightest in growing numbers.

Senior scientists making $90,000 at a government laboratory can go to private companies and increase their salaries by 50 percent. Add a lucrative stock-option package and the appeal can be irresistible.

Financial rewards are not the only motivation. At the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the case of Wen Ho Lee, the scientist who admitted mishandling nuclear secrets, has also had an effect.

"I used to wake up and think I had the best job in the world," said Pete Beckman, a 36-year-old computer scientist who spent nearly four years at Los Alamos before leaving in April. "It was so much fun, and I was working with absolutely the smartest people in the world. I didn't mind making 30 percent less than if I were at a private company. But you can only put up with so much."

He took a job in the Santa Fe, N.M., area with TurboLinux, a software company, for a salary that he said was much higher than the $100,000 he made at Los Alamos, and stock options. Four others from Los Alamos left at the same time to join him.

Many administrators fear such departures could erode the quality of government-sponsored technical and scientific research over the next several years, including some work affecting national security.

"If the attrition continues to escalate, at some point you get behind the power curve, no matter what you do," said David Pehrson, deputy associate director of engineering at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. "You ultimately weaken the ability of the lab to do the things we're asked to do. It's a slow, creeping kind of thing."

Over all, the annual attrition rate at leading research centers like Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories, which has headquarters in Albuquerque, traditionally around 4 percent, has recently been in double-digit percentages, especially in the growing fields of advanced computation (the application of sophisticated hardware and software to complex problems) and biotechnology, in which expertise is in high demand. That is still less than the turnover in private industry, typically close to 25 percent, but that is of little comfort to the government.

"We've had management consultants who've come in and said, `Your turnover is too low; it's unhealthy,' " said Mim John, vice president of Sandia's California division in Livermore. "Now we can say, `It's healthy, thank you, and I don't like it.' "

The rate of attrition among scientists in the computing division at Los Alamos has more than doubled in two years. Hardest hit is Advanced Computing Laboratory, where 14 of 34 full-time employees, or 41 percent, have left in the last year or are preparing to leave. In some of Sandia's computing groups, the attrition rate has risen to 11 percent, and in some parts of Lawrence Livermore it is 12 percent.

The departures have not only caused the usual disruptions that occur when employees leave, but have also affected work related to national security. Dr. Beckman and his colleagues had been working on advanced software for simulating the testing of nuclear weapons.

Similarly, six scientists at Sandia in California, who had invented a technology for hand-held sensors to detect chemical and biological agents, left earlier this year to start a new company, called Eksigent, based on their invention.

Even departures of scientists not involved in research related to weapons can have an indirect effect on security-related research, and that also causes concern. Robert Dye, 39, a Los Alamos materials scientist who worked on the reduction of global warming, left the laboratory last month to join Technanogy, a company in Newport Beach, Calif., involved in the growing field of nanotechnology, which produces molecular- scale devices.

"I'm not a direct weapons guy, but I'm in strategic support," said Dr. Dye, who was at Los Alamos for 11 years. "There's a bunch of weapons people who know they can come consult with me. It's an entangled web, and you're ripping out these entangled webs when people leave."

Dave Rakestraw, 39, who had been at Sandia for 12 years and is one of the co-founders of Eksigent, said the prosecution of Wen Ho Lee had an effect at Sandia and other labs. But Dr. Rakestraw pointed to a more general decline in the attractiveness of working at Sandia.

"The environment in the lab is not as desirable as it used to be," he said. "In olden days, very large sums of money were poured into national labs, which gave really smart scientists an environment where they could be the best they could be. Now competition for resources has been much more a part of everyone's lives."

Dr. Rakestraw also said, "There's always the lure of winning the lottery by joining some start-up, and you get much richer than you ever imagined."

In Northern California, the gradual spread of Silicon Valley into less congested cities has compounded the situation. Livermore, 40 miles southeast of San Francisco, used to be considered the far outskirts of Silicon Valley. In the last year or so, a number of high-tech companies have arrived in the area; housing prices have soared; and technical talent of all stripes is highly prized.

And the problem is not confined to national security laboratories. NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., in the heart of Silicon Valley, has been particularly vulnerable to recruitment from the computer industry.

In recent years, NASA Ames has lost several high-level engineers who have gone to work for a variety of start-ups and become millionaires.

In competing for talent, the laboratories are constrained by budgets determined by Congress and administered by the Department of Energy. Matching a salary offer from a private company can take weeks or months. Before leaving Sandia, Dr. Rakestraw said, he tried to recruit a scientist from an outside company into a management position, but after two months of negotiations, the laboratory could not come up with the $135,000 the scientist wanted.

But the laboratories are trying to find ways to fight back, taking measures to keep people from leaving and make themselves more appealing to recruits. Sandia, Lawrence Livermore and NASA Ames now offer signing bonuses, and Los Alamos is likely to do so. Sandia's California division is also considering housing assistance.

Scientists like Dr. Rakestraw and Dr. Beckman said they were torn about leaving their government work, partly because of the sense of civic duty they felt as laboratory employees. "A lot of us felt a lot of pride working at the lab, focused on protecting the country and developing the next generation of technology," Dr. Beckman said. "There's a lot of patriotism that goes with that."

That sense of loyalty has prompted some to seek ways to keep a foot in both worlds, perhaps by continuing to consult part time. Ronald Reisman, 46, an engineer at NASA Ames, has been working for 12 years on improving the nation's ailing air- traffic-control system.

But as a government employee, Mr. Reisman was making far less than he could at a private company. He was so dedicated to his work that when he finally agreed to take a high- paying job at an e-commerce software company recently, after months of soul-searching, he insisted on being allowed to continue to work at NASA part time until he finished his project.

"I've been a civil servant for a dozen years and I'm not going to throw it away for a few shekels," Mr. Reisman said. "There's honor involved."

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

Teaching Europeans To Study War No More

Wall Street Journal
September 19, 2000
By GEORGE MELLOAN
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB969322341490895802.htm

The cover of this week's Economist depicts a fuel gauge showing empty with the headline, "Euroshambles." The London-based weekly cites: "No fuel, roads blockaded, a vanishing currency and blundering governments."

Well, it is indeed not a pleasant September for Europe. The sagging euro has augmented the dollar rise in crude-oil prices by another 40%. When you add on the huge percentages that European taxes add to fuel prices (more than 70% in some countries) the price at the pump is leveraged still higher.

No wonder Europeans are up in arms. Some observers fear this experience could scuttle the euro experiment by provoking national rebellions when it comes time for citizens of the 12 euro-zone nations to give up their national currencies and accept euro coins and bills in the first half of 2002. That could precipitate a serious breakdown in the steady movement toward a single European market, possibly delay progress toward European Union enlargement and -- worst horror of all -- even return Europe to the paralyzing grip of nationalism, xenophobia and statism.

It could spoil big plans. The biggest of all is the goal of enlarging the union to as many as 27 member countries from the present 15 over the next several years, and then going even larger. European Commission President Romano Prodi assured Journal editors some days ago that further steps toward enlargement will be taken on schedule at the EU summit in Nice in December. Problems of cohesion will be addressed by reducing the number of areas in which new policies must be approved unanimously.

French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine also averred, at a press breakfast in New York last week, that France and other member nations remain fully committed to enlargement. But the mere fact that questions are now being raised, in Germany particularly, about the advisability of more open borders is itself a reflection of Europe's current disquiet. Traditionalists fear the impact on national cultures of migrants from the new entrants.

The historical importance of the further coalescing of European nation states can hardly be exaggerated. But, doubts aside, the process appears to have a powerful momentum that overrides reaction and objections. Perhaps it is partly because the memory of war and tyranny is still fresh enough to drive Europe toward greater unity. Europeans also are enjoying the economic benefits of the single market. Most importantly, they have attained a greater sense of freedom as they move easily across national borders.

Some thought the drive toward unity would stall over the Maastricht Treaty, which set in motion the process that led to the creation of the euro. But despite a close vote in France and constitutional objections in Germany, Maastricht carried the day and the euro came into being 20 months ago. Some Europeans don't really mind the euro's weakness. There still is enough mercantilist thinking in their minds to persuade them that a cheap currency offers trade advantages, as it does for some in the short term.

That a spirit of progress exists, particularly among young people, offers reasons to be hopeful about the future of some of the continent's more backward areas. The first benighted region to come to mind, of course, is the Balkans. There has been much ink spilled on articles and papers offering proposals for pacifying this violent corner of Europe. One favorite idea is to redraw borders along ethnic lines. Kosovo would become a state and Bosnia and Serbia would have their borders redefined to take account of the contentious ethnicity of Muslims and Serbs.

Aside from the practical difficulties, however, this is a bit like turning back the clock to the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which carved Europe up with new, partly artificial borders after World War I. Instead of laying the ghosts of nationalism to rest, it kept them alive, at great cost. Europe's new, younger leaders, such as the thoughtful Greek foreign minister, George Papandreou, think a better answer is to go the opposite direction and diminish the importance of borders. Cultural and ethnic affinities could be exercised naturally through free movement, rather than being dictated by government.

That is happening naturally in many parts of the world as globalization expands cross-border trade and investment. It is being brought about more deliberately within the EU through the dismantling of most of the border checkpoints and the passport and customs controls in EU airports and train and ferry stations.

The EU is making an effort to open up some of the benefits of membership to states that begin to show promise. Croatia, a product of the Yugoslav breakup and a participant in the Balkan wars, has attracted notice by virtue of the free election it recently conducted and some forward-looking social and economic policies. In a speech in Washington last week, Chris Patten, the EU's commissioner for external relations, described the EU efforts:

"We have put forward radical proposals -- which I hope our ministers will approve in the next few weeks -- to further open the EU market to Balkan exports. We are working to integrate the countries of the region as fully and rapidly as possible into European structures through our Stabilization and Association process -- agreements with each country will offer much closer ties to the EU in exchange for serious political and economic reforms. And we have made clear that the countries of the region are all potential candidates for EU membership."

It is possible that this vision is already beginning to change the politics of the region. Slobodan Milosevic, the vicious nationalist Yugoslav president responsible for much of the slaughter in Bosnia and Kosovo, must face voters in the first round of a presidential election next weekend. He is trailing badly in opinion polls which show that a formerly unknown Europeanist lawyer, Vojislav Kostunica, is leading handily. It is widely expected that Milosevic will try to steal the election, but if he does he will have to do it with the whole world watching. My contacts with several Serb politicians indicate that they want to move out of the nationalistic mindset that has caused them and their neighbors so much grief and become a part of this larger thing called Europe.

All that's needed is for Europe to keep its own progress going, retaining the liberal attitude that has served it so well. Chances are that it will do that despite its recent adversities.

-------- china

Senate clears PNTR to China

USA Today
09/19/00- Updated 11:14 PM ET
By Bill Nichols and James Cox, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncstue15.htm

WASHINGTON - The Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to normalize trade with China on a permanent basis, ending two decades of annual congressional tussles over U.S economic relations with Beijing's communist leadership.

The measure, approved 83-15, paves the way for U.S. companies to gain greater access to China's vast market of 1.3 billion consumers.

President Clinton made passage a top priority, arguing that increased commerce with China would help plant democratic values in the country.

"This landmark agreement will extend economic prosperity at home and promote economic freedom in China, increasing the prospects for openness in China and a more peaceful future for all of us," Clinton said.

Both Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush and Democratic rival Al Gore backed the bill.

U.S. companies spent millions on a lobbying campaign to win passage. "If the world is rapidly becoming a digital planet, China is its new frontier," said Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America.

Labor leaders and human rights activists decried the bill as a bad deal for U.S. workers and Chinese citizens. They said it would prompt a flood of Chinese imports that would cost U.S. jobs and rob future presidents of leverage for pressuring Beijing to improve its record on human rights, labor standards and the environment.

"Congress has sold out to corporate interests and betrayed the concerns of working Americans," Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook said. "When American businesses look to China, they see extraordinary profits made possible by the current regime's continued human rights violations and tolerance for inhumane treatment of workers."

The bill's key moment came in May, when it cleared the House of Representatives, where opposition was stronger than in the Senate. "This is one for the history books," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., a key supporter.

---

New era dawns for U.S.-China relations

USA Today
09/19/00
http://www.usatoday.com/news/comment/columnists/tmoran/tm23.htm

How can the United States best influence the internal affairs of China?

By isolating the Chinese with restricted trade? Or by integrating the nations' markets, developing greater ties with the Chinese people and ensuring that China is pressured into adhering to international trade standards?

Having a foothold in China through eased trade relations, in my opinion, would give the United States more of an opportunity to affect the communist nation's internal affairs.

Since 1974, the United States has reviewed trade relations with China on an annual basis because China is a communist nation. But restrictions have done nothing to stamp out communism or human rights abuses in China.

So U.S. leaders are embarking upon a new course in economic policy toward China.

On Tuesday the Senate voted to grant permanent normal trade relations to China.

The proposed legislation has enabled China to seek membership in the World Trade Organization, and approval is expected later this year. Membership will require China to cut tariffs and open its markets to products and investors from the United States and other member nations while requiring it to adhere to international business standards.

Membership is expected to force Chinese leaders to be more accountable for their trade practices, which would allow other nations to get a behind-the-scenes view of Chinese business.

The U.S. legislation itself is largely one-sided: The United States will make no concessions in the deal. Changes concern only China, and they include:

Cutting agricultural tariffs. Liberalizing imports of agricultural products. Cutting tariffs on industrial products. Cutting auto tariffs by 75%. Ending all import quotas and licensing requirements. Granting Americans full market access in the banking and securities sectors. Accepting stiff American anti-dumping safeguards against Chinese exports and special safeguards to prevent surges in specific Chinese imports. Enforcing international standards. Granting import and distribution rights to Americans.

Opponents, including labor and trade unions, believe that granting China normal trade relations will strip the United States of its ability to hold China accountable for human rights abuses while costing Americans precious jobs as American firms move to China in search of cheap labor. They also fear that increased trade with China will deepen the already huge U.S. trade deficit with China, which was $68 billion in 1999.

Proponents say just the opposite: that greater influence in Chinese markets will help promote reform. Supporters also say China's concessions would grant Americans greater access to cheaper products and create jobs. And as a result of the drop in agricultural tariffs, U.S. farmers soon could export twice as much into Chinese markets.

The legislation is heralded by President Clinton and both presidential candidates as a historic step in the right direction.

In purely economic terms, trade relations for China makes sense.

The United States should not restrict itself from an emerging economy in this era of global commerce and prosperity. For any jobs that Americans lose as a result of firms moving overseas, more jobs will be created at home to help sustain the increased trade. Lower costs for high-tech and automotive products as well as increased U.S. agricultural exports could help promote a better American way of life.

Moreover, American businesses have much to gain by being able to set up shop in China, making direct connections with Chinese businessmen and women and learning more about the internal workings of the communist leadership.

This new course for relations with China also moves forward because U.S. leaders are beginning to realize that greater economic reform in China eventually could lead to a breakdown in the communist stranglehold over the Chinese people.

It's a liberal notion, the success of which could take years to measure. But the simple fact is that our previous approach wasn't working. Why not try something new?

I applaud this historic change in U.S. policy toward China. It's about time that China become a full-fledged member of the global economy. The only problem I foresee is the stalled implementation of these reforms by the Chinese leadership. But if the Chinese want to enjoy the fruits of increased trade and membership in the WTO, then they'll have to learn to play by our rules.

Nothing dramatic is going to happen in the next few years with regard to China's human rights record or its communist system. But greater economic freedom and exchange could lead the Chinese people to demand political reform as well. And with foreign investors and businesses in place, it will be harder for Chinese leaders to hide human rights abuses and other unsavory practices.

This new course for Sino-American relations spells greater opportunity for American business and a new chance at seeking political reform within China. The only question now is whether our next target for this liberal approach should be Cuba.

Tracy Moran is the opinion editor for USATODAY.com. To talk back to Tracy Moran, click here.

mailto:tmoran@usatoday.com

---

Backers hope pact will promote reform

USA Today
09/20/00- Updated 01:18 AM ET
By Bill Nichols and James Cox, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncstue05.htm

WASHINGTON - President Clinton has packed his final year in office with a rush of last-minute goals that might burnish his legacy. Tuesday, he secured his top legislative priority: establishing permanent normal trade relations with China.

Tuesday's 83-15 Senate vote to normalize U.S.-China trade hands Clinton a victory he had seemed close to losing earlier this year. The lopsided Senate margin, which had been expected, follows a much closer 237-197 vote in the House of Representatives last May. Opponents complained about China's lack of political freedom and worker protections.

The trade legislation represents a capstone to eight years of aggressive trade expansion efforts by Clinton. He has argued that promoting free trade is not just a strategy to increase U.S. exports in an increasingly global economy but a means for spreading American-style democracy around the world.

"China will more fully join the community of nations governed by the rule of law," U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said after Tuesday's vote. Normalizing trade "not only provides tremendous economic opportunities for U.S. workers, farmers and businesses, it is also the best way to promote reform in China and stability in the region."

Clinton's rationale for passing the legislation: By drawing China's communist leadership further into the community of nations on trade, Beijing's adoption of more democratic practices will follow.

"I believe this is the most important step in U.S.-China relations since normalization in 1979," when Congress first began reviewing trade with China on an annual basis, national security adviser Samuel Berger said in an interview.

Chi Lo, an economist with Standard Chartered Bank in Hong Kong, agreed that the trade bill "will act as a lever Chinese leaders can use to push through economic reforms that have been meeting resistance."

U.S. corporations, which waged a relentless and expensive lobbying campaign in favor of the bill, praised the Senate for giving a final blessing to a deal that opens China's markets to American business.

"This is the most important trade vote of the decade," said Dave McCurdy, a former Oklahoma congressman who now heads the Electronics Industries Alliance. "What distinguishes this from other trade votes is that this is all about opening the world's largest untapped market...this is the last frontier."

Supporters of the measure say agriculture and high-tech producers will be among the first U.S. sectors to benefit. Goldman Sachs predicts U.S. exports to China will rise from $13.1 billion last year to as much as $27 billion by 2005.

The administration says farm exports to China could triple in five years, from a current $1 billion to $3.2 billion. The agreement expands access for such key U.S. commodities as corn, cotton, wheat, rice, barley, soybeans and beef.

But opponents of the trade deal say China has a terrible record of living up to past international agreements, and they warn that the new policy could cost U.S. jobs if American markets are flooded with Chinese imports, particularly textiles.

Even supporters of the measure admit that the U.S. trade deficit with China - a record $69 billion last year - won't instantly vanish.

"Products we used to get from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan are now produced in China. Our deficit with those countries will decrease, and our deficit with China will increase," said Calman Cohen, president of the Emergency Committee for American Trade, a corporate lobbying organization.

"This is not a slam-dunk where all the benefits accrue overnight to Americans, but we have an opportunity to access the China market in a way we never have before," Cohen says.

Critics also contend that ending the annual review of China's trade status robs Washington of a lever for pressuring China to improve its labor, human rights and environmental records.

Just two weeks ago, the State Department blasted China's continuing crackdown on religious groups, including Falun Gong, the Buddhist-styled meditation sect.

In response to such criticisms, the bill includes a provision that sets up a permanent congressional commission to monitor China's human-rights record and submit an annual report to the president.

But supporters of normal trade say positive economic and diplomatic results will take time to develop.

China must first enter the World Trade Organization before the market-opening agreement with the United States goes into effect. And before it joins the Geneva-based WTO, which governs world trade, China and 30 other WTO members must agree on how China will change its laws, regulations and licensing requirements to comply with WTO rules. Administration officials expect those negotiations to conclude next month, at which time China will be invited to join the WTO.

Any of the 138 WTO members can launch an unfair trade complaint against China - and China can file against any member - immediately after it formally joins. But in reality, new members seldom face such challenges right away. In the early going, the United States and other countries are likely to be patient and demonstrate goodwill toward China by trying to resolve trade disputes through diplomatic channels or by sending negotiating teams to Beijing

As for a transformation in China's way of life and system of government, Chi said the world will see "radical changes only after five to eight years." Berger said he expects "long-range" economic and security benefits from the vote.

Supporters of normalized trade are willing to wait patiently for diplomatic and economic gains.

"Passage of this bill means that the United States is helping to keep the national strategic boat from rocking," said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., one of the measure's leading supporters in the Senate.

Baucus said the trade measure ensures greater U.S.-China stability and therefore greater stability throughout Asia.

"Were we not to pass this, we might find that the waters would get very rocky indeed," he said.

Contributing: Paul Wiseman in Hong Kong.

-------- india/pakistan

Bomb Explodes in Pakistan's Capital, Killing 16 and Injuring More Than 80

Wall Street Journal
September 19, 2000
Associated Press
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB969348882219825784.htm

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- A powerful bomb placed in a crate of grapes ripped through a crowded market Tuesday morning, killing 16 people and wounding more than 80 in Pakistan's capital, police said.

The blast was the deadliest of 40 bombings that have rocked Pakistani cities this year, and the government has blamed rival India for many of the previous attacks.

Pakistan's military ruler Gen. Pervez Musharraf condemned Tuesday's "dastardly act of terrorism," but did not place blame.

India has consistently denied any involvement in the Pakistani bombings.

The explosion, the first in Islamabad this year, occurred while workers were unloading the crates from a truck, witnesses said. The blast triggered a stampede of workers and shoppers from the city's largest fruit and vegetable market.

"I heard the explosion and saw fruit flying in the air," said Hasan Khan, a shop owner who was just 20 yards from the blast. "People started running and screaming. We pulled down the shutters on our shop and left."

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Police detained seven truck drivers in Islamabad for questioning. Authorities later arrested three men in the Kurram Agency in northwest Pakistan, near border with Afghanistan, where the truck with grapes began its journey.

Hospital doctors and police said Tuesday evening that 16 people were confirmed dead and several of the wounded were in serious condition.

The vegetable market is located on the city's outskirts in a relatively poor neighborhood. Many of the victims were Afghan refugees who work unloading trucks.

Pakistan has been plagued by political violence, including periodic bomb blasts, for years. However, since Gen. Musharraf seized power last October, ousting an elected civilian government, overall political unrest has declined. And Islamabad has traditionally been calm even when other Pakistani cities were aflame.

---

Bomb Kills 13 in Pakistan Fruit Market

Yahoo News
Tuesday September 19 8:46 AM ET updated 10:11 AM ET Sep 19
By Mian Khursheed
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000919/wl/pakistan_bomb_dc_4.html

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A bomb ripped through a busy fruit market on the edge of Pakistan's capital of Islamabad on Tuesday, killing at least 13 people and wounding about 60 in what the military government called an act of terrorism.

The bomb -- the latest in a series to hit crowded, vulnerable targets in major Pakistani centers -- was hidden in a crate of grapes imported from neighboring Afghanistan and went off as the fruit was being auctioned to retailers, police said.

The blast killed or wounded most of those who had been bidding to buy the grapes, witnesses said. Bloody clothing and sandals along with grapes were scattered around the site but damage was confined to the immediate area.

Military ruler General Pervez Musharraf issued a statement calling the bombing ``a cruel act of terrorism'' and asking authorities to ``arrest the culprits and give them an exemplary punishment under the law.''

Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, now living abroad in self-imposed exile, said in a statement the blast in the capital showed ``the (ruling) generals had completely lost control over the situation'' and demanded that they return to barracks.

The death toll, originally estimated at seven, rose steadily to 13 by early afternoon as wounded died. Another 60 were wounded, police said.

``It is an act of terrorism,'' Nasir Khan Durrani, senior superintendent of Islamabad police, said at the site of the blast at Islamabad's main vegetable and fruit market on the outskirts of the city.

``There has been a series of bomb blasts in the (central) province of Punjab and elsewhere to terrorize the population and it appears to be a link of the same chain,'' Durrani said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, which police said occurred at 7.45 a.m. (0245 GMT) when the market was crowded with retailers buying vegetables and fruit from wholesalers.

Several bombs have rocked Pakistani cities in recent months, including two in Lahore this month that killed eight people.

Pakistani officials routinely blame such attacks on the intelligence agencies of arch-rival and neighbor India, which denies involvement and in turn accuses Pakistan of sponsoring terrorist acts in its rival's territory.

But there have been bomb attacks for years in Pakistan, with no one claiming responsibility and authorities presenting little evidence about the source.

As well as the conflict with India, centered on their mutual claims to Kashmir, Pakistan has had a tumultuous political history. The army seized power last October at the end of a decade in which four elected governments were forced from office amid charges of corruption.

Pakistan has also been deeply involved in the civil war in neighboring Afghanistan, backing the Taliban movement that has captured 90 percent of the country since the mid-90s but has failed to win international recognition as the government.

Pakistan, which served as a major arms conduit to Afghans fighting the Soviet occupation of their country in the 1980s, is awash in weapons and explosives.

-------- iraq

World-Wide Oil Shortage Grants Iraq Newfound Bargaining Power

Wall Street Journal
September 19, 2000
By BHUSHAN BAHREE and NEIL KING JR. Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB969311300743079678.htm

PARIS -- An international pariah for the past decade, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein now has the world over a barrel.

Iraq exports about 2.3 million barrels a day of crude oil into a world market so thirsty for oil that prices have soared recently, spurring an international wave of consumer backlash. The Iraqi exports are significantly more than the combined spare production capacity of all other producers at this time. So the world now depends on Iraqi oil, right?

"You're damned right," snapped Amer Rasheed, Iraq's oil minister, during an interview after a ministerial meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Vienna last week.

Mr. Rasheed wouldn't answer whether Iraq is likely to use its oil weapon -- threatening to halt oil exports -- to seek an end, for instance, to United Nations sanctions imposed a decade ago.

Saddam has played this game before. Late last year, Iraq shut its oil taps in a dispute over the sanctions, and oil prices surged.

No sooner had Mr. Rasheed returned to Iraq last week than he accused Kuwait of stealing oil from Iraq's southern oil fields through wells drilled horizontally across the border. The accusation seemed ominous since it was the same charge Iraq leveled against its neighbor before invading Kuwait in 1990. Mr. Rasheed said Iraq would take unspecified action to protect its oil riches.

Monday, the Iraqi press reported that Saddam told a cabinet meeting Sunday that even Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, didn't have enough spare capacity to relieve the world of worries about an impending oil shortage.

"This is one of those serious times when the threat of a suspension of Iraqi [oil] exports needs to be taken seriously," said Raad Alkadiri, country analyst at Petroleum Finance Corp. in Washington.

Nobody knows just what the Iraqi leader may decide to do with his oil power. Some diplomats and industry officials figure Saddam may seek some gains by using the threat of a halt in oil exports, while others say he may reckon that things are going his way anyway, with support for the longstanding U.N. sanctions growing increasingly weak.

There is little doubt that Iraq is getting more assertive. An Iraqi fighter jet two weeks ago flew over part of Saudi Arabia for the first time in a decade, leading U.S. officials to warn that Washington would strike back if Baghdad provoked neighboring Kuwait or Saudi Arabia. U.S. officials have also warned against thinking they are too distracted by presidential politics to react.

Yet diplomats at the U.N. acknowledge that any concerted effort to get arms inspectors back into Iraq won't advance until after the U.S. presidential election. Hans Blix, head of the new inspection team, made the same point to reporters Monday, saying "nothing serious will happen" until U.S. voters go to the polls Nov. 7.

No one at the U.N. suggests that the Clinton administration has put a hold on Iraqi diplomacy. But a spike in tensions with Iraq, especially if it led to steeper gas prices, could easily ripple through the presidential campaign.

European oil executives familiar with Iraq, meanwhile, say the U.N. sanctions against trading with Iraq are breaking down in the region. Turkey, Jordan, Qatar, Dubai and Oman are all openly trading with Iraq, says one senior European oil executive. "There is a feeling that except for bombing [against radar sites], the U.S. is turning a blind eye" to these transgressions, he says.

Western diplomats and industry officials say one potential flash point is a Sept. 26 meeting in Geneva of the U.N. Compensation Commission, which was set up after the Gulf War to decide on claims of losses resulting from Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The body's governing board is scheduled to consider a claim of some $16 billion by state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Co., a claim that irks Iraq and may have provoked the counterclaim that Kuwait has been stealing Iraqi oil.

The commission has already paid out more than $8 billion to claimants. The U.N. supervises Iraqi exports of oil and directs 30% of the receipts from such sales to fund the commission and finance the awards. Depending on oil prices and Iraqi export levels, the commission is getting some $400 million every month from the Iraqi oil sales. Claims on Iraq total more than $320 billion. Though the commission's awards are expected to be significantly below that, Iraq has long argued that it wouldn't pay damages for decades to come.

If there is a political flare-up now that results in Iraq halting exports, the consequences could be serious at a time when supplies are tight, oil prices already are at 10-year highs of more than $36 a barrel, and consumers have been protesting across Europe. "It would be devastating ... the price of a barrel would double," the European oil executive said.

Most OPEC countries are producing flat out to meet strong world demand for oil. Kuwait, for instance, has made clear that it can't even meet the latest quota increase it was allocated as part of last week's OPEC agreement to raise the group's output by 800,000 barrels a day. The increase was aimed at helping to cover world demand, which is running at some 76 million barrels a day.

Iran's output actually declined in August, perhaps because of production difficulties at its fields. Exporters that aren't members of OPEC also are producing as much oil as they can. Norway and Mexico, for instance, have both said they are producing to capacity.

That's not to say that the rest of the world would be helpless. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates could produce some extra oil to offset at least part of any shortfall from Iraq. Saudi Arabia's exact surge capacity -- the ability to produce extra volumes for a short period of time -- isn't precisely known. But given its huge capacity base of more than 10 million barrels a day, the kingdom could produce at a much higher rate for a short period. It also could try to increase its capacity, which would take at least some months.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and other industrial countries that have strategic reserves of petroleum could release them. The U.S. alone has some 570 million barrels of oil stored in salt caverns, and U.S. officials say they are prepared to tap the reserves immediately should Iraq cut off its oil exports.

"We could cover all Iraqi production for a year if we had to," one senior U.S. official said.

Altogether, industrial-country members of the Paris-based International Energy Agency have some 112 days of net import coverage through stocks that can be released in case of a 7% decrease in supplies from the average levels of the previous year.

The IEA has released reserves only once in its quarter century of existence. That was just before the start of the Gulf War in 1991. But the war ended quickly, and the industry returned to working well within its production capacity limits.

Write to Bhushan Bahree at bhushan.bahree@wsj.com and Neil King Jr. at neil.king@wsj.com

---

U.S. urges U.N. to try Iraq's Saddam

USA Today
09/19/00- Updated 06:46 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncstue01.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - Determined to hold Saddam Hussein accountable, the Clinton administration is calling for a new war crimes tribunal to try the Iraqi president and other officials in the deaths of 100,000 to 250,000 civilians in Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and elsewhere.

''Our primary objective is to see Saddam Hussein and the leadership of the Iraqi regime indicted and prosecuted by an international criminal tribunal,'' David J. Scheffer, ambassador at large for war crimes, said Monday.

''It is beyond any possible doubt that Saddam Hussein and the top leadership around him have brutally and systematically committed war crimes and crimes against humanity for years,'' he said in a speech at the National Press Club.

World governments have been negotiating since 1997 the establishment of an International Criminal Court, which would be the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal.

Establishment of the court could take at least two years, and it would lack jurisdiction over crimes committed earlier, Scheffer said.

That is why, he said, a special court is necessary to judge ''the continuing criminality'' of Saddam's rule.

Special tribunals already are sitting in judgment over war crimes in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia. At the request of the United States, the Yugoslavia panel has indicted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for crimes in the Balkans.

In its last months, the Clinton administration has stepped up an already vigorous campaign against Milosevic and Saddam, accusing the Serbian leader of intimidation and other tactics designed to ''steal'' Yugoslavia's presidential election in November, and alleging countless human rights abuses and crimes by Saddam.

Getting a tribunal to hear charges against the Iraqi president would not be easy. Several members of the U.N. Security Council do not share the administration's zeal to punish him.

Scheffer suggested as an alternative that a commission of experts could be appointed to judge Saddam and his associates. Or, he said, courts in various nations may be able to investigate and indict Iraqi government leaders.

Detailing what he said the United States knows about Saddam's record, Scheffer said approximately 5,000 Iranians were killed by chemical weapons between 1983 and 1988 during the Iran-Iraq war, an estimated 5,000 Kurdish civilians died from chemical weapons in the Iraqi town of Halabja in 1988, and poison gas killed an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 Kurds in Iraq in 1987-1988.

Also, Scheffer said, during Iraq's occupation of Kuwait in 1990-91 more than 1,000 Kuwaitis and nationals from other countries were killed, and Iraq committed war crimes against American service members.

Many civilians were among 30,000 to 60,000 Iraqis killed by Iraqi forces in suppressing an uprising that began in the south of the country in 1991, after the end of the Persian Gulf War in February. In addition, the country's southern marshes were drained, beginning in the early 1990s, to deprive thousands of Iraqi Shiites of their livelihoods, Scheffer said.

The use of poison gas and the draining of the marshes are crimes against humanity, he said.

In the meantime, Scheffer said, Saddam has used murder, torture and, lately, rape in a campaign against political opponents. And, he said, Saddam is carrying out a systematic campaign of murder and intimidation of clergy.

''Like Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein did not commit these crimes on his own,'' Scheffer said. ''He has built up one of the world's most ruthless police states, using a very small number of associates who share with him responsibility for these criminal actions.''

---

U.S. seeks a court for Saddam

Washington Times
September 19, 2000
By Tom Carter THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-200091922614.htm

The United States is looking at other legal venues in case no international tribunal can be established to prosecute Iraqi President Saddam Hussein for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, a senior U.S. official said yesterday.

"Our primary objective is to see Saddam Hussein and the leadership of the Iraqi regime indicted and prosecuted by an international tribunal," said David Scheffer, the State Department's ambassador at large for war crimes issues.

If that proves too difficult to accomplish politically, he said, "there still may be opportunities in the national courts of certain jurisdictions to investigate and indict the leadership of the Iraqi regime."

Addressing a gathering of the Middle East Institute and the Iraqi Foundation at the National Press Club, Mr. Scheffer said the United States is gathering evidence in eight areas, any one of which would be enough to warrant prosecution.

He said at least 12 members of Saddam's inner circle are complicitous in such crimes, including Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, who was in New York this month for the Millennium Summit and the formal opening of the U.N. General Assembly.

"It is beyond any possible doubt that Saddam Hussein and the top leadership around him have brutally and systematically committed war crimes and crimes against humanity for years, are committing them now, and will continue committing them until the international community finally says enough," said Mr. Scheffer.

The ambassador said Mr. Aziz was not arrested in New York because he had diplomatic immunity while attending the U.N. event. But he said the United States was pursuing an indictment in other forums.

"If there were a world court, it would be a much easier process," said Mr. Scheffer, who represents the United States in negotiations for an international criminal court. The United States opposes the treaty, saying it does not do enough to protect American soldiers serving overseas.

But he appealed for the United Nations to establish an ad hoc international tribunal, similar to the one pursuing Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic, to prosecute Saddam.

Mr. Scheffer listed the eight areas in which the United States is researching and documenting Iraqi war crimes and crimes against humanity:

• The Iran-Iraq War, during which 5,000 Iranians were killed by chemical weapons from 1983 through 1988.

• The chemical bombing of Halabja in northeastern Iraq, which killed 5,000 people in March 1988.

• The Anfal campaign against the Kurds in 1987-88, resulting in the deaths of between 5,000 and 10,000 Kurds.

• The 1990 invasion and occupation of Kuwait.

• The suppression of a 1991 uprising against Saddam that caused the deaths of between 30,000 and 60,000 Iraqis, mostly civilians.

• The draining of marshes to deprive southern Shi'ites of their livelihood after the Gulf war.

• The ethnic cleansing of Persians from Iraq to Iran and a campaign against non-Arabs in the northern city of Kirkuk.

• The continuing murder of political opponents and the use of rape as a method of intimidation.

Mr. Scheffer said the United States has collected millions of documents, some of which have been scanned onto 176 CD-ROMs, which will be made available on the Internet.

He said his staff is sifting through "crate upon crate" of classified U.S. intelligence on Iraq, as well as working with Kuwaiti prosecutors and other groups interested in prosecuting Saddam for war crimes.

-------- japan

Japan Stands Firm on U.S. Suit by 'Comfort Women'

Yahoo News
Tuesday September 19
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000919/wl/japan_women_dc_2.html

TOKYO (Reuters) - A lawsuit filed in the United States by Second World War sex slaves of the Japanese military drew an expression of ``remorse'' on Tuesday from Tokyo and a reminder that the government considered the issue closed.

Fifteen Asian women filed a class-action suit against Japan in a U.S. federal court on Monday, seeking compensation and an apology for being forced to work as sex slaves for Japan's army in the 1930s and 1940s.

The 15 so-called comfort women -- Japan's euphemism for women from occupied or colonized countries who were forced into sexual slavery -- are elderly and frail now and deserve an apology for Japan's actions, their lawyers said. The women come from Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines and Taiwan.

Ryuichiro Yamazaki, a spokesman for the Japanese Foreign Ministry, declined to comment on the specific case but said that Japan's stance on such issues remained unchanged.

``It is our position that this has been solved legally by the San Francisco Peace Treaty (of 1951, settling claims for war compensation) and other related treaties and documents,'' he said.

``Feeling Of Apology And Remorse''

``We recognize that the honor and dignity of many women involved have been hurt by this issue, and we have been using various occasions to express our feeling of apology and remorse,'' Yamazaki added.

Until July 1992, the Japanese government denied that its military ran brothels, and it still denies legal responsibility.

In 1995, however, then Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama issued profound apologies, saying Japan's actions were ''entirely inexcusable.''

That year Japan set up the Asian Women's Fund, a private group with heavy Japanese government support, to make cash payments to all surviving wartime sex slaves.

``The government, in cooperation with the people of Japan, has been doing its best to cooperate with this foundation as it endeavors to do its work,'' Yamazaki said.

In the U.S. suit, the elderly Asian women say the ``Japanese government built, operated and controlled hundreds of brothels,'' or so-called comfort stations, which were staffed with some 200,000 women and girls, who were beaten, raped and made to live in under miserable conditions.

Inhabiting tiny cubicles and nearly starving, the women were held for up to eight years and were tortured and beaten on a regular basis, the lawyers said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.

Abandonment, Starvation, Disease

``After the war, those who were in combat zones were abandoned, often in dense jungles, while their Japanese captors fled; many of those died of starvation and disease,'' while others were executed, the lawsuit charges.

``Survivors returned to what were often lifetimes of isolation and societal rejection, compounded by deeply instilled feelings of guilt and shame ... and they suffer grievously to this day,'' the statement said.

It is the first lawsuit filed in the United States against Japan seeking compensation for the comfort women, and the first U.S. lawsuit against Japan for what the lawyers described as ''World War Two atrocities.''

Earlier cases were filed against Japanese companies for their use of slave labor during the war.

Named in the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, are six women from South Korea, four from China, four from the Philippines and one from Taiwan. But the suit represents ``all women who were forced into sexual slavery by Japan between 1931 and 1945, as well as their heirs,'' according to the statement.

Lawyers representing the women said the suit was filed under U.S. and international law prohibiting war crimes and crimes against humanity. They did not say how much compensation they were seeking for the plaintiffs.

Attorney Barry Fisher, who has also been involved in a series of lawsuits filed on behalf of Holocaust survivors against Switzerland, Germany and Austria, said it was time for Japan finally to put its past to rest.

``I'm optimistic. ... I think Japan could be encouraged to follow suit and close the book on the war years rather than let it fester further,'' Fisher told Reuters. ``After all these years -- while some of these woman are still alive -- there should be an apology and some kind of restitution.''

---

WWII Asian 'comfort women' file suit

Washington Times
September 19, 2000
By Lesley McKenzie THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-20009192298.htm

Asian women used as sexual slaves by Japan's army in World War II filed suit in District Court yesterday against the Japanese government, seeking unspecified damages.

The filing was announced in the presence of several of the now-aged "comfort women" by lawyer Michael Hausfeld, who successfully sued the German government and German companies on behalf of Europeans who were forced into slavery by Japan's Axis ally, the Nazi Third Reich.

Japan today dismissed the suit, saying it felt that "all issues related to compensation were already settled by postwar treaties," according to a Foreign Ministry official in Tokyo. The official was referring to the 1951 San Francisco peace settlement with the Allies, as well as bilateral agreements with Asian countries, including China, in which they renounced demands for reparations.

"It is up to the plaintiffs to file suit, but as I said, compensation issues were already settled," the official said.

Yesterday's filing comes 69 years to the day after Japan began its aggression in Asia by invading Manchuria. Mr. Hausfeld described the subsequent abuse of Asian women as "mass, systematic, premeditated rape."

"It was hell on earth," said Liu Huan Ar-Tao from Taiwan, one of the women represented in the lawsuit. She had been forced to have sexual relations with 20 Japanese soldiers a day after being transported to Indonesia.

She told reporters that as a 20-year-old woman, she was promised work by a Japanese soldier - first as a nurse, then as a cook - and was coerced into leaving her homeland.

Twenty-three girls were removed from her hometown; three died on the journey that led them to Bali, Indonesia, where Miss Liu was placed in a hut of coconut leaves and told that she was now part of the Japanese military, subject to military discipline.

It is estimated that between 100,000 and 200,000 women were forced into this form of sex slavery during the war.

Fifteen of the so-called "comfort women" from China, Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines are plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed under the Alien Torts Act, passed by Congress in 1789.

This law enables foreign citizens to file lawsuits against other foreign nationals where "customary international law" has been violated. It was first used in human rights cases in the 1980s.

As required by the act, the Japanese foreign minister is named as the defendant.

Miss Liu, like many others, was physically and emotionally scarred. She lost the sight in her left eye, had her ovaries removed and suffered from numerous diseases.

The mental anguish she and many others also struggled with has been equally tormenting. Following their ordeals, many women returned to their communities where they lived and died in silence, afraid to tell what happened lest they be shunned and unable to marry.

Miss Liu and the others hope that their lawsuit will prompt the Japanese government to accept legal liability, to apologize and pay compensation to all the women involved.

The Japanese government has defeated similar cases at home, instead endorsing the establishment of a private fund that has promised each surviving victim about $20,000 apiece.

It also has offered formal apologies, including one in January 1997 by then-Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, said Kazuo Kodama, spokesman for the Japanese Embassy in Washington.

"We are not saying that is sufficient," Mr. Kodama said of the $20,000 payments, "but this is at least a part of our effort."

The current crusade is led by a team of lawyers, including Mr. Hausfeld, most noted for his successful role in winning $5.2 billion for slave-labor victims from the German government and corporations.

The efforts are backed by many Asian and human rights organizations that also seek compensation for the victims. "This case is long overdue," said Ignatius Ding of the organization Global Alliance.

-------- korea

Cross-Border Railway Aims to Open Economic Exchanges Between Koreas

Wall Street Journal
September 19, 2000
Associated Press
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB969275069424601956.htm

IMJINGAK, South Korea -- South Korea started rebuilding a railroad line across the world's most heavily armed border on Monday, saying the new link will serve as an avenue for exchanges with isolated communist North Korea and trade with fast-growing markets in China and Russia.

When completed by next fall, the railway, and a new $91 million four-lane highway running alongside it, will link the two capitals, Seoul, South Korea, and Pyongyang, North Korea.

The railway and highway will become the first direct transport link between the two Koreas since the 1950-53 Korean War and set a new milestone in improving ties between the two Cold War foes.

South Korean President Kim Dae Jung presided over the groundbreaking ceremony in Imjingak, a village just south of the demilitarized zone, which has separated the two Koreas since the 1945 division of the peninsula and the Korean War.

"Today, we started reconnecting our divided fatherland," Mr. Kim said in a nationally televised speech from a platform above the groundbreaking ceremony. "For a half century, the severed rail link has been a symbol of national division and the Cold War."

Thousands of colorful balloons were released to celebrate the occasion, and firecrackers soared into the clear autumn sky with plumes of rainbow-colored smoke. A steam locomotive whistled and rolled on a 66-foot rail line laid for Monday's ceremony. Steering the locomotive was Han Joon Ki, 73 years old, who drove the last train that ran on the cross-border line in late 1950, transporting military equipment for U.S. troops fighting for South Korea.

Following the historic summit meeting by their two leaders in Pyongyang in June, the two countries agreed last month to reconnect the major railway. It continues to Shinuiju, a major city on the North's border with China, and was last used commercially shortly before the Korean War started in 1950.

Until now, the only link between the two countries has been a winding, heavily guarded two-lane road that stops at the truce village of Panmunjom, which serves as the sole contact point between democratic South Korea and the North.

---

Divided Koreas lay down tracks to bolster trade

Washington Times
September 19, 2000
By Jae-suk Yoo ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-200091922139.htm

IMJINGAK, South Korea - South Korea yesterday began rebuilding a railroad line across the world's most heavily armed border, saying the new link will serve as an avenue for exchanges with isolated communist North Korea and trade with fast-growing markets in China and Russia.

When completed by next fall, the railway, and a new four-lane highway running alongside it, will link the two capitals: Seoul and Pyongyang, North Korea.

The railway and highway will become the first direct transport link between the Koreas since the Korean War and will set a new milestone in improving ties between the Cold War foes.

South Korean President Kim Dae-jung presided over the groundbreaking ceremony in Imjingak, a village just south of the Demilitarized Zone, which has separated the Koreas since the 1945 division of the peninsula and the 1950-53 Korean War.

"Today, we started reconnecting our divided fatherland," Mr. Kim said in a nationally televised speech from a platform above the groundbreaking ceremony. "For a half-century, the severed rail link has been a symbol of national division and the Cold War."

Thousands of colorful balloons were released to celebrate the occasion, and firecrackers soared into the clear autumn sky with plumes of rainbow-colored smoke.

Following June's historic summit meeting by their leaders in Pyongyang, the countries agreed last month to reconnect the major railway.

It continues to Shinuiju, a major city on the North's border with China, and was last used commercially shortly before the Korean War started in 1950.

Until now, the only link between the countries has been a winding, heavily guarded two-lane road that stops at the truce village of Panmunjom, the sole contact point between democratic South Korea and the North.

A steam locomotive whistled and rolled on a 66-foot rail line laid for yesterday's ceremony. Steering the locomotive was Han Joon-ki, 73, who drove the last train that ran on the cross-border line in late 1950, transporting military equipment for U.S. troops fighting for South Korea.

North and South Korea still have to negotiate how the railway and highway will be used, but Seoul officials expect them to be limited to cargo shipments at first.

"My hope to reunite with my family in North Korea is higher than ever," said Kim Han-keun, 70, one of millions of Koreans separated from their families during the war.

The war ended in an uneasy truce, not a peace treaty. The Korean border is the world's most heavily fortified, lined with an estimated 1 million mines and guarded by 2 million troops on both sides.

Seoul will spend $50 million to rebuild the 12-mile stretch of railway between Munsan city and the Demilitarized Zone, which separates the two countries. Thousands of South Korean soldiers will be used to clear land mines inside the 2 and 1/2-mile-wide DMZ.

North Korea is expected to use soldiers to rebuild the five miles of rail line on its side of the border, between the DMZ and Bongdong, a train station near Kaesung city. Its construction costs were not known.

The war ended in an uneasy truce, not a peace treaty. The Korean border is the world's most heavily fortified, lined with an estimated 1 million mines and guarded by 2 million troops on both sides.

Yesterday, South Korea also started building the $91 million, four-lane highway that will connect major expressways already in service in both Koreas.

In another sign of reconciliation, South Korean Defense Minister Cho Sung-tae and Kim Il-chul, minister for North Korea's People's Army, will meet in Cheju Island, South Korea, on Sept. 25-26 to discuss military cooperation in reconnecting the railroad line.

President Kim said the railway and highway will boost trade between the two countries, which amounted to $330 million last year, and give South Korea a long-sought land route to China and Russia's trans-Siberian railway, through which Seoul hopes to deliver exports to Europe.

The new link will drastically reduce shipping costs for South Korean exporters, Kim said.

In a congratulatory message to President Kim, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori said he strongly expected the rail and highway reconnections to "proceed in nurturing trust in the military area and bring about an easing of tensions on the Korean Peninsula."

Inter-Korea relations have thawed significantly since Mr. Kim visited Pyongyang to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. The two leaders are expected to hold another summit in Seoul by next spring.

Since the summit in Pyongyang, the two sides have stopped propaganda broadcasts and reopened border liaison offices. Last week, their athletes marched together behind a unification flag during the opening ceremony at the Sydney Olympics in Sydney, Australia.

The two Koreas also allowed 200 persons to cross the border in August for temporary reunions with relatives they haven't seen in half a century. Two more such reunions are planned before year's end.

-------- kosovo

Inquiry Into Abuse by G.I.'s in Kosovo Faults Training

By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/19/world/19MILI.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 - More than 800 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division, one of the Army's elite fighting units, were sent to Kosovo last year with little training in the subtler arts of policing the streets and preventing violence between ethnic factions, according to an Army investigation into accusations that members of the unit beat and manhandled ethnic Albanians.

A report released by the Army today on the investigation, which began after a member of the unit was accused of murdering a Kosovo Albanian girl in January, cast a far wider blame for the misconduct than officials had previously disclosed. It suggested that decisions by Army leaders in Kosovo and in the United States had contributed at least in part to violations of "basic standards of conduct, human decency and the Army values of treating others with dignity and respect."

The report accused the soldiers' commanders in Kosovo of displaying a "propensity toward Serb favoritism" and an overly hostile attitude toward Kosovo's Albanians. It concluded that they either knew or should have known about complaints that soldiers were using excessive force and mistreating women by groping their breasts and buttocks during searches.

While the report said the misconduct had been relatively isolated, the most striking finding involved the 82nd's lack of training for an operation that stopped short of what the Army calls "high-intensity conflict." The report said the troops received little peacekeeping training before they were deployed and had not conducted a peacekeeping mission rehearsal exercise.

As a result, the lead investigator, Col. John W. Morgan 3rd, concluded, the soldiers "experienced difficulties tempering their combat mentality" and adapting to the sort of low-level violence and intimidation found between Kosovo's Serbs and Albanians.

In the report, which was released after the newspaper European Stars and Stripes requested it under the Freedom of Information Act, the Army also disclosed that on Sept. 8 the chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, had ordered a new review of training, leadership and readiness of the division to address the investigation's findings. He ordered the commander of the Army's Forces Command, Gen. John W. Hendrix, "to take corrective actions as appropriate" within 30 days.

It was not clear why the 82nd's soldiers did not receive more training before being sent to Kosovo for six months beginning in September 1999. Army officials in Washington and at the 82nd's headquarters at Fort Bragg, N.C., declined to discuss the unit's training, though one official said the division's soldiers underwent all the training required by the Army at the time.

Army officials said today that all of the 6,000 American soldiers now in Kosovo received specialized training for the operation, but they could not say whether it was more extensive than the 82nd's had been.

The issue of having some of the nation's most highly trained combat units keeping peace abroad has been a delicate one at the Pentagon and in Congress, and has been raised in the presidential campaign. Many people in uniform argue that elite combat divisions like the 82nd, whose mission is to seek out and destroy enemy forces, are ill-equipped to handle the tasks required by peacekeeping.

While some military experts argue that the United States should create special peacekeeping units, the military counters that all of its forces have to be prepared for the ultimate war-fighting mission, since operations like those in Kosovo, initially at least, involve the dangerous task of separating warring factions and can spiral back into all-out combat.

In the 82nd's case, however, it appears that soldiers received little preparation at all for what they would face in Kosovo.

Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen, who is traveling in Asia, released a statement today expressing support for General Shinseki's steps but warning that the Army had to ensure that the misconduct did not happen again.

"The incidents described in that report are a source of grave concern and reflect behavior that cannot be allowed to recur," Mr. Cohen said.

The investigation detailed today grew out of the rape and murder in January of an 11-year-old Albanian girl, Merita Shabiu. Last month, Staff Sgt. Frank J. Ronghi, a member of the Third Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne, pleaded guilty to the crime and was sentenced to life in prison by a military court.

The investigation into Sergeant Ronghi confirmed accusations that others in his unit, Company A, had mistreated civilians in the town of Vitina in the days and weeks before the girl's death. The report detailed several incidents in which soldiers beat or threatened Albanian men and indecently assaulted women.

Last summer, information from the investigative report, which at the time was still classified, was cited often during Sergeant Ronghi's court-martial. Defense lawyers sought leniency by arguing that a "negative command climate" - the exact words used in the report - had created an highly unstable situation in Vitina.

Last March, the 82nd Airborne disciplined five enlisted soldiers and four officers for their involvement in the misconduct. Colonel Morgan, the officer who conducted the investigation, had recommended that some of those military personnel face criminal charges at a court-martial, but the punishments meted out involved less severe administrative actions.

The Army has declined to identify those punished, but officials said today that they included the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Michael D. Ellerbe, and the company commander, Capt. Kevin J. Lambert, whose actions were singled out for criticism in the report released today.

The report, said Colonel Ellerbe had directed his soldiers to carry out one specific order - identifying and neutralizing Albanian factions - that went beyond his superiors' intentions, fostering a climate that led to misconduct.

"The unit's overly aggressive tendencies were manifested in practices such as the unit slogan - `shoot 'em in the face' - and their standard operating procedure of pointing the M-4 carbine weapon system with attached maglight in the face of local nationals in order to illuminate their faces," the report said.

--------

Peacekeepers Foil Kosovo Bomb Plot

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Kosovo-Crackdown.html

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) -- NATO-led peacekeepers foiled a plot to detonate a bomb in Kosovo, following a massive search Tuesday in a Serb enclave outside the province's capital.

Hundreds of NATO-led peacekeepers swept into the Kosovo Serb village of Gracanica, just outside the capital, Pristina, before dawn, uncovering plastic explosives, weapons and detonators, peacekeepers said.

Three people were arrested, two of whom are believed to be current or former members of the Yugoslav army's special forces unit based in the southern Serbian town of Nis, the province's top U.N. administrator Bernard Kouchner said.

All three were turned over to U.N. police and were being held in the provincial capital Pristina. Six people were originally detained, but three were later released, peacekeepers said.

``This is very serious. It is an obvious attempt to destabilize Kosovo and to target the democracy, peace and security of Kosovo, and the world must know about it,'' Kouchner said. ``Be assured that if others attempt to come to Kosovo, we will stop them too.''

The gravity of the find was particularly troubling to Kosovo's administrators, coming less than a week before upcoming presidential elections in Yugoslavia on Sept. 24.

Western officials administering Kosovo decided to permit balloting in the province, which is still officially part of Yugoslavia even though Slobodan Milosevic's forces pulled out last year after a 78-day alliance bombing campaign. The campaign forced the Yugoslav president to end his crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

Yugoslav authorities have reportedly said they will set up 300 polling stations around Kosovo. Although authorities in Kosovo say they have not been informed on where they will be set up, Kouchner said no public or municipal buildings may be used.

Peacekeepers will not prevent voting stations being set up in churches or private homes, he said.

Voting will occur mainly in Serb enclaves around the province, as Kosovo's ethnic Albanians have said they will boycott the vote.

Tuesday's search involved some 300 British and Swedish peacekeepers, who raided two houses and a bar. The search began at midnight and lasted until just after dawn, said Brig. Robert Fry, who heads peacekeepers in central Kosovo.

The find included three pounds of plastic explosives, detonators, wiring, assorted ammunition, three pistols and an AK-47 assault rifle.

``The purpose of the equipment we confiscated and the intention of all three people detained ... was to create fear and intimidate the people of Kosovo,'' said Lt. Gen. Juan Ortuno, commander of the NATO-led peacekeeping force.

Military and civil authorities in Kosovo ``will not allow any external or internal threat to undermine the stability of the province,'' Ortuno said.

-------- peru

Peru Spymaster Stays Out of View as Rumors Swirl

By DAVID GONZALEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/19/world/19PERU.html

LIMA, Peru, Sept. 18 - Dozens of protesters held a vigil today outside the compound of Peru's shadowy and powerful intelligence chief, demanding his arrest. He is believed to be at the heart of President Alberto K. Fujimori's unexpected call for new elections.

But the intelligence chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, remained out of sight; a radio station reported that the military had arrested him, and his sister filed a writ of habeas corpus. But late tonight the minister of justice, Alberto Bustamante, appeared on television and said he "cannot say where he is for security reasons.

"I know he is in Lima," he added, "and he is not being detained."

The uncertainties surrounding Mr. Montesinos added to the swirl of rumors and speculation that was unleashed when Mr. Fujimori shocked the nation on Saturday night by announcing that he was dismantling the National Intelligence Service and was calling for new elections in which he would not seek office.

At a rally downtown tonight, the opposition leader, Alejandro Toledo, spoke of the need for elections soon.

Saying "you cannot democratize a dictator," Mr. Toledo insisted that voting should be held within four months, and in the meantime, there should be an emergency transition government, headed by a person "of credibility." Mr. Toledo challenged Mr. Fujimori for office earlier this year, and then withdrew from the runoff after he charged that the president was manipulating the race.

By contrast, the justice minister, Mr. Bustamante, talked of having elections months later.

Mr. Toledo told the crowd tonight: "The moment has come for reconciliation and national unity among all Peruvians who want democracy. We did not fight abuse for so many years for ourselves to practice the same thing."

The crowd of some 10,000 people chanted in front of Mr. Toledo: "Democracy already! The dictatorship will fall!"

As the head of intelligence agency, Mr. Montesinos was an important figure in the government, and a primary factor in its fall. He emerged into an uncomfortable spotlight last week when a videotape surfaced that apparently showed him offering a $15,000 bribe to an opposition congressman. The disclosure prompted Mr. Fujimori, his patron, to make his stunning announcement to the nation.

The armed forces, over which Mr. Montesinos wielded substantial influence, were silent today on his whereabouts - and even on where they stood on Mr. Fujimori's decision. That prompted fears among citizens that the armed forces might be planning a coup.

Many Peruvians say they will not believe Mr. Fujimori's promise of a democratic transition until Mr. Montesinos is arrested and brought to trial. All day long, dozens of people lined up on the street along the wall that encircles the intelligence office seeking the arrest of a man they said had long been Mr. Fujimori's most trusted dirty-tricks operative.

"We are going to be here and not rest until the criminal, Vladimiro Montesinos, is brought up on charges and jailed, because he is the one who deserves it," said Victor Delfin, one of the protesters who belongs to the Civil Society Collaborative. "He has been the boss of corruption with the acceptance of his partner, Alberto Fujimori. We cannot let down our guard. It is our moral obligation."

Mr. Delfin was at the head of a long line of silent protesters who held spotless red and white Peruvian flags that they have washed each week in protests to call attention to fraud and electoral abuses. To them, Mr. Montesinos embodied the worst of the leadership that has been in power for a decade and has been accused of corruption, fraud and rights abuses.

Mr. Montesinos, who was born into a family of Marxists who named him after Lenin, is seen by many as the power who lurked in Mr. Fujimori's shadow. He was an intelligence officer who reached the rank of captain, but was discharged in 1977 for selling state secrets to the Central Intelligence Agency. He later studied law and defended drug traffickers.

His association with Mr. Fujimori, an engineer who entered politics as a virtual unknown a decade ago, have benefited both men. Mr. Montesinos was said to have helped Mr. Fujimori sort out a number of messy personal and political problems. A book published in Peru earlier this year alleged that he was instrumental in closing the Congress and the Supreme Court in 1992, when Mr. Fujimori mounted the "auto-coup" that solidified his power as he embarked on an increasingly authoritarian route in the name of fighting the Shining Path terrorist group.

But he was also suspected of being behind the manipulations and ballot fraud that marked Mr. Fujimori's third run for office earlier this year. Yet, throughout his tenure as intelligence chief, Mr. Montesinos clearly regained the influence, if not prestige, he had from his early spying days as he maintained files on opponents and allies alike. He clearly had the support of Mr. Fujimori, who credited him with masterminding the successful rescue of dozens of people who had been held hostage at the Japanese Embassy by a guerrilla group in 1997.

The unraveling of his influence began a few weeks ago when Mr. Fujimori announced the discovery of an arms-smuggling ring that sent rifles from Jordan to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Jordanian and American officials discounted the story, and opposition parties began to say that Mr. Montesinos and military colleagues themselves had been engaged in arms-running to the Colombian guerrillas.

International groups had already been pressuring Mr. Fujimori to jettison his intelligence chief, and the evidence of a bribe on videotape presented him with such an opportunity. But it appears that the military may have hesitated to go along, whether out of concern for other secrets Mr. Montesinos may possess or uncertainty over Mr. Fujimori's intentions. The military command's silence has only increased speculation about what is happening behind the brick wall around its compound.

"As hours pass without any signal that Montesinos is relieved of his post and jailed, the speculation increases," said Diego García-Sayan, the executive director of the Andean Commission of Jurists. "Are they resisting or planning or negotiating? Who knows?"

Although opposition groups were buoyed by Mr. Fujimori's initial declarations, they have grown worried about his prolonged silence on his spymaster. If the opposition resumes talks with the government, sponsored by the Organization of American States, they could try to find a path to new elections. The opposition distrusts the Congress, and some have called for its dissolution because of the bribery allegations. One option for passing the laws that would enable elections would be to form a panel of political parties that would negotiate a framework with Mr. Fujimori.

"The agenda is very simple," Mr. García-Sayan said. "I do not believe that in either Peru or South Africa that you can have a transition without such an accord between the parties in the conflict. If not, you will have a Pandora's box of instability."

And while some have called for Mr. Fujimori himself to step down before elections, that is doubtful.

"The few reins of power that Fujimori still has will be used to assure certain things in a transition," Mr. García-Sayan said. "He wants assurances. After 10 years of a government accused of corruption and human rights violations, he may be worried."

-------- russia

Berezovsky: Putin a threat to freedom

Washington Times
September 19, 2000
By David Sands THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-200091922411.htm

Russian President Vladimir Putin poses a threat to Russian political liberties and press freedoms, powerful Moscow businessman Boris Berezovsky warned yesterday.

Mr. Berezovsky, perhaps the best known of Russia's small group of superwealthy "oligarchs," was in Washington yesterday to tout his new "unified opposition" movement after publicly breaking with Mr. Putin last month over the new president's bid to centralize power in the Kremlin.

Mr. Putin "wants to combine all political power - executive, legislative, judicial - in his own hands," Mr. Berezovsky said yesterday. "There is no real opposition in Russia today whatsoever."

Mr. Berezovsky, who last month resigned his seat in the State Duma, the more powerful of Russia's two legislative chambers, charged that moves by Mr. Putin's government to control the country's three dominant television networks posed a direct threat to freedom of the press in Russia.

"Forget the words, watch the actions," said Mr. Berezovsky, who said he was divesting his own holdings in one of the three networks.

"Their moves mean a final end to freedom of expression in Russia," he said.

As Mr. Berezovsky was speaking, in Moscow media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky, whose NTV media empire has been the most critical of the government, told reporters he had been forced to relinquish control of his Media-MOST press empire under heavy pressure from the government.

Mr. Gusinsky, who was briefly jailed this spring on vague charges of fraud, said he was backing out on an agreement to sell his media companies to Russia's gas monopoly, Gazprom, saying he only agreed to the $773 million deal under pressure from Russian state prosecutors.

"I was set free like a hostage," Mr. Gusinsky charged yesterday, saying he agreed to the sale in June "at gunpoint." Gazprom has denied the charges and said the sale was negotiated in part to settle a $473 million debt Mr. Gusinsky's company owed to the gas company.

Mr. Berezovsky emerged as one of the most controversial of the oligarchs in the 1990s, with heavy political clout to match his vast holdings in mineral rights and other assets of the old Soviet Union. His money and influence are credited with helping Boris Yeltsin squeak past Communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov in the 1996 presidential election, and he was initially seen as a close adviser to Mr. Putin as well.

But Mr. Berezovsky has become one of Mr. Putin's fiercest domestic critics in the wake of a Kremlin-backed plan to strip Russia's powerful regional governors of much of their power and enhance the powers of the central government.

Unwinding his business affairs from his political ambitions is still proving difficult for Mr. Berezovsky. Several questions at yesterday's press briefing focused on a complicated proposal by Mr. Berezovsky to divest his 49 percent share in ORT, Russia's top-rated television station.

Despite the grinding war in Chechnya and the Kursk nuclear submarine disaster, Mr. Putin remains easily the most popular politician in Russia, with the economy picking up and the Kremlin enjoying firm support in the Duma.

But Mr. Berezovsky maintained yesterday that the president had alienated the country's "business and political elites" with its government overhaul program, and that his high ratings in the polls could prove only temporary.

"When you look at the speed at which his popularity went up, I think it could go down just as fast," the Russian magnate said, accusing Mr. Putin of trying to establish a "quasi-Chilean" model for Russia combining economic liberalism with political authoritarianism.

But Mr. Berezovsky was vague about the mechanics of his proposed opposition movement, indicating it would not be like a traditional political party and that he would not be a candidate to challenge Mr. Putin in the future.

He said a key base of support will be Russians living abroad, including the large Russian emigre communities in Israel and the United States. In addition to talking to reporters and meeting privately with U.S. government and business leaders here, Mr. Berezovsky said he planned to travel to Brooklyn to meet with the large Russian-American community there.

-------- space

With Test, Boeing Strikes First

Washington Post
Tuesday , September 19, 2000 ; E02
By Greg Schneider Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32690-2000Sep18.html

Boeing Co. successfully flew a demonstration version of its Joint Strike Fighter warplane yesterday in California, turning up the heat on Lockheed Martin Corp. to fly its entry in the competition for what could be the biggest military contract ever.

Lockheed Martin's version of the plane is still a few weeks from flying. The Pentagon plans to judge the companies by how their demonstrators perform, then pick a winner next June for a contract potentially worth about $300 billion over nearly two decades.

Neither side claims that being first to fly offers any real advantage, but Boeing yesterday enjoyed a boost in morale.

"This is a great day for the Boeing company," President Harry C. Stonecipher said in a conference call with reporters. But he and other executives were careful not to crow too extravagantly.

The aircraft that Boeing flew yesterday, dubbed the X-32A, took only baby steps after its takeoff just before 8 a.m. Pacific time from the Palmdale, Calif., plant where it was built. It kept its landing gear down, stayed under 10,000 feet and flew no faster than 200 mph.

The scheduled flight time of 40 minutes was cut in half after the pilot of an escort plane noticed hydraulic fluid spitting out of the aircraft's right side. The X-32A landed at Edwards Air Force Base, 30 miles from Palmdale.

Fred Knox, the company's chief test pilot, called the leak "pretty much a non-event," adding that "we elected to have a precautionary landing." Knox, who was at the controls and praised the plane's handling as "outstanding," said the leak will be repaired and another flight will occur this week.

The thick-bodied plane that flew yesterday, with a gaping, shark-like scoop of an air intake in the front, is not precisely the aircraft that Boeing will send into the final competition. The company has significantly modified its design since building the initial demonstrator, adding horizontal tails and changing from a single delta wing to a more traditional pair of wings.

The scrappy Boeing team had pushed hard to get their demonstrator in the air first. "Clearly, this is a marathon, not a sprint, but we're very proud to be flying in the position we're in," said Jerry Daniels, president of Boeing's military aircraft and missiles group.

Lockheed Martin released a statement congratulating its rival but noting that safety and meeting Pentagon requirements are more important than being the first to fly.

The Joint Strike Fighter program is an ambitious attempt to build a single family of planes to replace a whole host of current-day aircraft beginning in 2008. It will serve as a versatile, low-cost fighter-bomber for the Air Force; a bulkier version will have to withstand carrier landings for the Navy; and yet another version must be able to hover before landing for the Marines and the British navy.

The basic Air Force version is supposed to carry a sticker price of about $30 million--far below the comparable cost of about $84 million apiece for the more sophisticated F-22--and the Pentagon plans to buy nearly 3,000 copies.

But as the military services jockey to fund an increasingly costly menu of competing weapons programs, the Joint Strike Fighter could prove vulnerable to cuts or delays. The military spending bill before Congress for 2001 delays picking a Joint Strike Fighter winner by three months--until next June--and program officials say the award date could slip as late as September.

The massive program's impact on the defense industry is expected to be so profound that the Pentagon has debated picking a design and then awarding the actual work to both Lockheed and Boeing and their teams--partly out of concern that the losers could go out of the military aircraft business.

Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems are partners on the Lockheed Martin entry.

Without mentioning their rival by name, Lockheed Martin executives make much of the fact that their demonstrator is far more similar to the plane they plan to build if they win the competition.

"The more accurate your information is at this phase, the more accurate it is as you get into the [next] phase," said Tom Burbage, the head of customer requirements for Lockheed Martin's aircraft company.

But Boeing's Joint Strike Fighter program manager, Frank Statkus, argued yesterday that it doesn't make any difference if his company's demonstrator is built in an outdated design. Computer technology now allows the plane to be flown with software that mimics the flying qualities of the "preferred weapon system concept," or final design, Statkus said.

Experts were mixed yesterday on the value of Boeing's accomplishment. Richard Aboulafia, an aircraft expert at the Teal Group consulting firm in Fairfax, said Boeing had been seen as the underdog in the contest.

"Getting airborne first helps to redress Lockheed Martin's perceived lead in the competition," Aboulafia said.

But Paul Nisbet, a financial analyst for JSA Research in Newport, R.I., said that first flight "is about nothing more than bragging rights."

Boeing stock rose 6 cents yesterday to close at $56.94 per share, while Lockheed Martin lost 25 cents per share to close at $29.31.

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

Expert: Kauai economy getting lift from many areas
Increased visitors, movie filming, the Navy's missile facility and agriculture are among the contributors cited State explores Amfac land options

Honolulu Star-Bulletin
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
By Anthony Sommer Kauai correspondent
http://starbulletin.com/2000/09/19/business/story3.html
http://starbulletin.com/2000/09/19/business/story2.html

POIPU, Kauai -- Tourism gains, film production, the Navy's high-tech missile range and growth in diversified agriculture are fueling Kauai's economy, according to economist Leroy Laney.

In a speech to the 26th annual Kauai County Business Outlook Forum last night, Laney said Kauai hotel occupancy averaged 76 percent in the first six months of 2000, contrasted with 73 percent during the same period last year. Laney is a professor of economics at finance at Hawaii Pacific University and appeared at the forum representing First Hawaiian Bank, where he is an economic consultant.

The percentage of eastbound visitors, who traditionally have not been high on Kauai, was 18.5 percent of total arrivals, far ahead of the 13.4 percent recorded in the first six months of 1999, he noted.

The percentage of Kauai-only visitors also is up, largely due to new nonstop flights from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Lihue, Laney said.

Filming of both "To End All Wars" and "Jurassic Park III," being shot on Kauai this month, have been a boon to the island.

"The Kauai economy owes more to various types of film projects on island than any of Hawaii's other counties," Laney said.

The Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility, where shipboard anti-missile defenses are being tested, will receive an additional $150 million in federal appropriations in the coming year, he noted. The range has some of the world's most advanced systems for missile tracking and telemetry. "It is hard to overestimate the economic importance to Kauai of the Pacific Missile Range Facility. In today's world, as all economies everywhere brainstorm to find some way to participate in the emerging high-tech new economy, the facility is invaluable," Laney said.

Diversified agriculture continues to grow on former plantation lands. Papaya production was up 30 percent for the first six months of 2000 compared with the same period a year ago. Taro production in all of 1999 was 4.3 million pounds, the highest in the last five years, he said.


---------

Navy to Award Big Outsourcing Deal Linking Computers to Single Network

Wall Street Journal
September 19, 2000
By GARY MCWILLIAMS Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB969322072286095490.htm

The U.S. Navy is preparing to award the biggest government outsourcing deal ever, a contract exceeding $6 billion that will link the Navy's computers into a single network and set a precedent for all future federal computer-service purchasing.

An award could be made as early as Thursday, say people close to the process, with Computer Sciences Corp. and General Dynamics Corp. considered the leading candidates.

The contract, a five-year deal to own and operate the Navy and Marine Corps' desktop computers and to consolidate network operations, marks a major turning point in federal computer outsourcing awards, say experts, who view it as a milestone in the military's embrace of commercial business practices.

The Nominees Are...

Rivals for the Navy's outsourcing plum COMPANY

LOCATION

Alliances

Computer Sciences El Segundo, Calif. An odds-on favorite because of its extensive military work, CSC leads the 'flagship alliance' of Verizon, Cisco Systems and Dell Computer.

Electronic Data Systems Plano, Texas Its 'Information strike force' includes WorldCom and Raytheon as key members.

General Dynamics Falls Church, Va. Its bid signals this long-time military systems contractor's move into new territory. Co- bidders are Sprint, Unisys, Compuware, and Wang Government Systems.

IBM Armonk, N.Y. The largest corporate outsourcer assembled a team including AT&T, Lockheed Martin, Qwest and Lucent Technologies.

Unlike earlier Navy practices, in which each base could establish its own performance criteria, the new contract attempts to set Navy-wide specifications for such matters as how the system ought to perform and how often equipment should be replaced.

The contract intends to combine hundreds of existing networks and outsourcing contracts into a single "intranet" connecting bases stretching from the U.S. west to Guam and east to Iceland.

When the project is completed in 2005, a Marine Corps sergeant in the field will be able to check data about biological agents directly on the computers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Under the current set up, a commander in the Navy's Pacific fleet can't even send an e-mail attachment to his counterpart on the Atlantic fleet because of network differences, said Navy spokeswoman Lt. S. Jane Alexander.

Also competing for the winner-takes-all contract are Electronic Data Systems Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. The contract includes an optional, three-year extension that could boost the winner's take to $12 billion over the next eight years.

Computer Sciences, based in El Segundo, Calif., and General Dynamics, Falls Church, Va., are favorites because they are the best positioned of the four companies competing, according to those close to the award. "CSC has always been the team to beat because it has such a high win rate on these competitions," said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, a think tank in Arlington, Va. Computer Sciences gets about a quarter of its revenue from federal contracts.

General Dynamics, a navy shipbuilder that cobbled together computer-services business from acquisitions, also has close ties to the U.S. Navy, and ranked just below Computer Sciences on early evaluations, says Mr. Thompson. General Dynamics has argued it has Navy and congressional clout needed to assure the contract's future.

Marvin J. Langston, the Navy's former chief information officer and now executive vice president at software company Salus Media Inc., says a key goal was to standardize the Navy's information technology and put it on regular upgrade schedules.

Olga Grkavac, executive vice president at the Information Technology Association of America, an industry group that represents the bidders, said the consolidation of many networks into a single system managed by one group sets an important precedent for other government agencies. "We view it as a landmark contract," said Ms. Grkavac.

The Navy spends about $1.6 billion annually on desktop computers and services that will be wrapped into the outsourcing agreement. The combined savings could be about $200 million a year once all the work is transferred, Lt. Alexander said.

Some 1,900 employees now operate and maintain an estimated 360,000 Navy and Marine Corps' desktop PCs and associated networks. The bulk of those jobs will be shifted to other work and about 300 civilian employees will be offered positions with the winning bidder, she said.

Each of the major bidders has put together extensive lists of supporters. Computer Sciences is bidding with Cisco Systems, Dell Computer and Verizon Communications; EDS with WorldCom and Raytheon; General Dynamics with Unisys, Wang Government Systems and Sprint. IBM's partners include AT&T, Lockheed Martin, Qwest and Lucent Technologies.

-- Anne Marie Squeo contributed to this article.

Write to Gary McWilliams at gary.mcwilliams@wsj.com

---

Firm gets pact for upgraded missiles
Raytheon division will build 4,000 improved TOWs for $125 million

Alabama Live
09/19/00
By SHELBY G. SPIRES Times Aerospace Writer
http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/Sep2000/19-e16096.html

The Army Aviation and Missile Command awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to an Arizona company to produce an upgraded version of the Army's 30-year-old anti-tank missile.

A $125.9 million, 48-month contract to produce 4,000 upgraded versions of the TOW missile was awarded to Raytheon Systems' Tuscon, Ariz., Missile Systems division.

The new missile is an improvement over previous versions of the TOW, which stands for Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire-guided missile. The new system replaces the wire-controlled guidance with a ''fire-and-forget'' seeker. It will be called TOW F&F, for ''fire-and-forget.''

Previous versions of the TOW missile used a wire to guide the missile to a target. A soldier had to guide the missile by hand, increasing his exposure to enemy fire.

''It's what we call 'shoot-and-scoot,' '' said Claude Higginbotham, TOW fire-and-forget program manager. ''It allows (soldiers) to identify a target and shoot at it, then move to a different location before somebody can attack them.''

The missiles will be newly manufactured weapons, with the addition of a seeker head on the front of the missile to identify the target. Older versions of the TOW would relay television pictures of the target back to the operator, who had to keep a set of crosshairs on the target while the missile was in flight.

The improved TOWs will be used on the Humvee-mounted version of the TOW missiles. The contract also includes 1,841 kits to upgrade the targeting systems on the Humvee vehicles.

---

Air Force: Security delays are a threat

USA Today
09/20/00- Updated 01:10 AM ET
By Edward T. Pound, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncstue14.htm

WASHINGTON - Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Ryan has told Congress that lengthy delays in security clearance investigations have ''put at risk'' critical Air Force programs, including one that ''assures the reliability'' of personnel who support President Clinton and Air Force One.

Ryan also said that delays have had an ''adverse impact'' on the nuclear weapons program. ''Without current investigations,'' he wrote Congress, ''we cannot ensure the reliability'' of personnel who ''perform such critical duties.'' He said the Air Force has worked with other Pentagon agencies ''to keep vital Air Force activities fully operational throughout this crisis.''

His statements were made in response to questions posed by Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., vice chairman of a House Armed Services subcommittee. In his response sent this summer, Ryan said the delays have caused the Air Force ''to accept a higher level of risk to keep critical missions operational.'' In some cases, he added, the delays have prevented personnel from going to work in important programs.

The security checks often involve lengthy reviews of drinking habits and other personal conduct, as well as individual finances, that might make a candidate a security risk or susceptible to espionage.

Air Force officials maintained Tuesday that Ryan's comments were outdated and represented his views at the time Hostettler posed the questions in February. Since then, they said, the Air Force and the agency responsible for the background reviews, the Defense Security Service, have ''worked diligently'' to reduce the delays and cut a backlog of investigations.

Though the most senior, Ryan is not the only top Air Force general to raise concerns. Gen. Charles T. Robertson, commander of the U.S. Transportation Command, expressed concern this summer about delayed reviews of Air Force personnel who support the White House, known within the Pentagon as ''Yankee White'' investigations.

In a statement, the Air Force said: ''At no time during this process has the Presidential Support Program, the president or Air Force One, been affected.''

No security incidents resulted from the delays, officials said.

The Defense Department's security clearance program, which covers 2.4 million people, has been plagued with problems. The Pentagon has an estimated backlog of more than 500,000 security investigations. A House panel will hold a second hearing on the backlog Wednesday.

Charles Cunningham, the retired Air Force general who runs the Defense Security Service, said his staff had made ''major progress'' in clearing the backlog of reviews done on Air Force personnel who support the president, Air Force One and Air Force Two. About 1,600 people - onboard crews, mechanics, security and administrative personnel and even painters - work in the program. According to the Air Force, the backlog was cut to 61 from 300 earlier this year.

In the case of the weapons program, known as the Personnel Reliability Program, the Air Force began issuing interim clearances in the spring, pending final reviews. Officials said about 14,000 people work in the program, including missile launch officers, bomber pilots, navigators and maintenance personnel. The backlog now stands at about 1,500 cases.

The Air Force said fully cleared officials are supervising personnel with interim clearances. ''All of our missions have been accomplished,'' the Air Force said, ''and no work stoppage has occurred.''

---

Army punishes troops for abusing Kosovars

Washington Times
September 19, 2000
By Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-2000919222737.htm

The Army yesterday released a report documenting a pattern of abusive behavior toward Kosovar civilians by nine members of the storied 82nd Airborne Division during peacekeeping operations in the last two years.

The voluminous report also indicts the Army itself. The investigation found that the 3rd Battalion of the 504th Parachute Regiment received little training in the intricacies of keeping the peace in a chaotic land - even after the aggressive combat unit was picked to enter Kosovo in September 1999.

Once in the town of Vitina, the soldiers became, in effect, law enforcement officers, wedged between minority Serbs and some violent Kosovar Albanians bent on revenge.

The report said the battalion commander exceeded his authority by trying to disband dissident movements. It accused his soldiers of head-butting demonstrators, beating criminal suspects, fondling women and intimidating civilian pedestrians.

The Army said yesterday that five enlisted members of the battalion's A Company were disciplined. Four battalion officers were also punished. None faces court-martial.

The investigation was ordered by Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, after an A Company staff sergeant was charged with raping and murdering a Kosovar Albanian girl in January.

The investigative report, submitted by Col. John W. Morgan III, said both the battalion and company commanders favored Serbian citizens over the majority ethnic Albanian population.

The report also criticized the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Michael D. Ellerbe, for failing to take seriously numerous reports that his men were mistreating civilians.

It also said Col. Ellerbe exceeded his authority by trying to wipe out organized Kosovar resistance. The commander "created a setting that allowed an opportunity for subordinate officers, noncommissioned soldiers and enlisted soldiers to step over the line of acceptable conduct," it said.

The report concluded:

"Unit members violated the limits and terms of their military assignments by intimidating, interrogating, abusing and beating Albanians and by traveling outside of their physically assigned sector to conduct some of these activities," the report states. "The facts reveal several incidents of soldier misconduct towards females, including inappropriate touching, grabbing of breasts and buttocks and the perception of Kosovar females of improper searches conducted by soldiers."

In one incident, the report describes how 1st Lt. John S. Serafini, an A Company platoon leader, and Sgt. Adam B. Gitlin mistreated an ethnic Albanian suspected of a grenade attack on a Serbian bar.

The suspect claimed Sgt. Gitlin beat him during a hostile interrogation. "1st Lt. Serafini attempted to stick his sheath knife with a six-inch long blade into the wall," the report says. ". . . When 1st Lt. Serafini was unsuccessful in sticking the knife in the wall, he repeatedly stuck the knife into a table."

In another incident, Lt. Serafini unloaded his revolver, walked back into a room and held it to the back of the head of a suspect. "Do you want to die?" he asked.

The battalion entered Kosovo last September shortly after NATO bombing forced Serbian troops to vacate the province. The 800-soldier unit completed the tour in March.

The Army released a statement yesterday saying Gen. Shinseki has directed Gen. John W. Hendrix, who heads Army Forces Command, to review the Morgan report and take corrective action.

"The incidents detailed in this report of investigation are not in keeping with the Army's core values and should never have occurred," the Army said. "Even though this behavior appears to have been limited to a small number of soldiers, Army leaders at all levels must remain vigilant to ensure this behavior or the conditions that might foster this type of behavior do not reoccur."

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, who is visiting countries in Asia, expressed "grave concern" over the report.

Col. Morgan made special note of the fact the battalion received little instruction in the dicey mission of peacekeeping.

"As a result, the [battalion] experienced difficulties tempering their combat mentality for adapting and transitioning to the Kosovo [mission]," Col. Morgan concluded. "In [this] environment, the unit's overly aggressive tendencies were manifested in practices such as the unit slogan, 'shoot 'em in the face' and their standard operating procedure of pointing the M-4 carbine weapon system with the attached maglight in the face of local nationals in order to illuminate their faces."

Robert Maginnis, a retired Army infantry officer and a military analyst at the Family Research Council, said the service is so stretched by overseas deployments it lacks the funds for adequate training.

"If they're not going to take the time and expend the resources to properly train these young men to perform these extraordinary difficult tasks, then we need to re-evaluate whether these peace enforcements are truly in our national interest," Mr. Maginnis said. "You can't take 18- and 19-year-olds and throw them in the middle of a foreign country in absolute chaos and expect them to be a perfect saint. They don't have the training."

The investigation began after an A Company soldier, Staff Sgt. Frank J. Ronghi, was charged with raping and murdering an 11-year-old Kosovar Albanian girl in Vitina in January. Ronghi was convicted at court-martial and sentenced to life in prison. He was not one of the nine soldiers disciplined separately for mistreating civilians.

The report accuses Ronghi of roughing up Albanian Kosovars. It said he had repeated sexual relations with a woman nicknamed "Yugoslavia."

Maj. Gary Tallman, a 82nd Airborne spokesman, said the five enlisted soldiers were reduced in rank, fined and given extra duty. An officer also received nonjudicial punishment, but was not demoted, he said.

Three officers received administrative punishment in the form of written reprimands from Lt. Gen. Dan K. McNeill at a time when he was 82nd Airborne commander. Gen. McNeill is now a corps commander. Reprimands typically end an officer's career since they limit any chance for promotion.

---

AUSA Report Calls for Improvements in Housing for Servicemen, Servicewomen

Yahoo News
Tuesday September 19, 9:39 am Eastern Time
Press Release
SOURCE: Association of the United States Army
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/000919/va_ausa_im.html

ARLINGTON, Va., Sept. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- The Association of the United States Army released the second report in its new Torchbearer series of publications on quality of life and well-being. ``Crisis in Military Housing: If Only the Walls Could Talk'' provides an in-depth analysis of how to address the serious questions now confronting military housing on and off post. Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, USA, Ret., and AUSA president, said on the release of the report, ``Congress and the Department of Defense must get serious about improving on-post ''family housing, providing decent barracks accommodations for single/unaccompanied soldiers, and reducing, then eliminating, the money taken out of soldiers' pockets for rent.``

Over 10,000 copies of the report are being distributed worldwide.

The report lists five critical areas that the Department of Defense and Congress need to address.

They are:

1. Invest $600 million per year in Army Military Construction (MILCON) through 2008 to renovate or replace permanent-party barracks to the DoD "1+1" standard. The cost to complete the program (2001 to 2008) is $5.6 billion from all funding sources.

2. Increase the Army Family Housing account by $1 billion through FY 2010 and support privatization to eliminate all inadequate Army family housing.

3. Authorize a five-year extension (through FY 2005) of the privatization initiative to expand privatization in the United States to 20 projects (four pilot plus 16 additional); this is included in the Defense Authorization bill for FY 2001.

4. Fund real property maintenance accounts to appropriate levels for upkeep of existing housing and infrastructure (streets, water, sewer, power, etc.) by leveraging privatization.

5. Reduce soldiers' out-of-pocket expenses for housing to 15 percent in 2001, with continued reductions each year thereafter, eliminating the expense entirely by 2005.

Point of Contact: John Grady Director of Communications Association of the United States Army (703) 907-2613 jgrady@ausa.org

SOURCE: Association of the United States Army

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

German green energy firms surge on high oil price

GERMANY: September 19, 2000
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8227

FRANKFURT - Shares in German green energy companies surged yesterday, boosted by higher oil prices, with wind power equipment maker Energykontor AG gaining more than 24 percent.

By 1055 GMT Energykontor gained 24.26 percent to 96.80 euros after reaching a 101.50 euro all-time high. The company is trading 200 percent above its 32 euros issue price in May.

The Neuer Markt All Share index was down 1.37 percent.

Wind power company Umweltkontor Renewable Energy gained 20.68 percent to 42.60 euros after earlier reaching a 44.80 all-time high, 290 percent higher than its July issue price of 11.50 euros. Fellow Neuer Markt-listed renewable energy service company Plambeck Neue Energien AG was up 22.08 percent to 47 euros. The company reached an all-time low of 29 euros on September 12.

Traders said the firms are profiting from higher oil prices as well as positive media reports on the alternative energy companies in the last weeks.

IPE Brent crude oil futures shot to 10 year highs last week of $34.38 per barrel, some 75 percent up on the $19.70 at the beginning of this year. November Brent was at $33.75 yesterday just below the 10-year highs.

The slightly lower oil price took pressure off German utilities, with E.ON AG gaining 0.75 percent to 53.80 euros and RWE AG up 0.29 percent to 41.21 euros.

----

EU denies axing green energy research projects

EU: September 19, 2000
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8223

BRUSSELS - The European Commission denied yesterday a British newspaper report that it planned to scrap its research programmes into energy efficiency and renewable sources of power.

The Independent on Sunday said the commissioner in charge of energy policy at the European Union's executive body, Loyola de Palacio, was planning to scrap the Save and Altener schemes which channel 143 million euros ($122.3 million) into research over a five-year period.

De Palacio's spokesman denied the claim. "There is no plan to scrap Save and Altener. I deny it clearly and strongly," Gilles Gantelet told Reuters yesterday.

However, the Commission has mooted scrapping the research programmes.

In an internal document seen by Reuters, Save and Altener are among the activities that could be axed if the Commission were forced to cut its staff as part of an on-going reform of the institution.

Gantelet played down the significance of the proposal. "It is an internal exercise, a virtual exercise, based on the scenario that if we needed to make personnel cuts...Save and Altener could effectively be reoriented and perhaps incorporated into more global research programmes."

He added: "There are several scenarios and...we consider all the possibilities, but that does not mean it is our wish or that we have started anything in this regard."

An industry group reacted furiously to the suggestion that the schemes could be cut. EuroACE, a grouping of companies involved in energy efficiency activities, said in a statement: "(We) condemn and deplore the proposal...to abandon Europe's only energy efficiency programme.

"This is bad for employment, bad for the environment and bad for the economy. The decision must be reversed at once."

Energy saving and renewable sources of energy, such as solar and wind power, are considered by environmentalists to be the keys to breaking the industrialised world's reliance on fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal.

De Palacio, described in the newspaper as pro-fossil fuels and nuclear energy, faces questions from the European Parliament's Energy Committee on Tuesday where she is likely to be asked clearly to state her position on EU energy research.

-------- environment

Earthworms Help Sydney Games Become Environment-Friendly

Wall Street Journal
September 19, 2000
Associated Press
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB969333792766473341.htm

SYDNEY, Australia -- Keep the temperature comfortable; if they start to sweat, they won't eat as much. Don't stress them out, either, or the chowing-down will ebb. And if they mingle and look lively, you'll know they're having a good time.

Good advice for any restaurateur. But these particular diners, who cluster by the thousands behind eating areas at the Olympics, won't be leaving a tip -- only a pile of dirt.

These are, after all, worms -- eating their way through Olympic garbage morsel by delicious, rotting morsel. And they're supposed to be there.

In refrigerator-sized units behind four key Olympic sites -- the Sydney organizing committee headquarters, the Main Press Center, the International Broadcast Center and the Olympic Park Novotel -- three varieties of earthworms work around the clock, chewing through scraps to help realize Sydney's promise of an environmentally conscious games.

Call 'em Ring Worms: the Olympic equivalent of hundreds of thousands of tiny vacuum cleaners, devouring anything organic in their path. They work all but silently, squishing a bit if you put 'em near your ear (most people don't).

"People don't realize it's there, but it's silently chewing away," said Peter Ottesen, the organizing committee's environment program manager.

Garbage in, garbage out, it's said. But here, what comes out is better than what goes in. The byproduct, "vermicast," is as rich as anything around the Olympic Village -- except maybe certain members of the International Olympic Committee. Unlike them, though, it'll be used to fertilize soil on Australian farms.

Overseeing the project is Steve Scott, general manager of Enviro-Waste Solutions and keeper of the collections of genus Lumbricus. One needs a commitment to the environment and a dry sense of humor for such a job, and Mr. Scott possesses both.

Consider his thoughts on maintaining adequate supplies when the only way to increase your wormload is to feed 'til they breed: "You've got to drive around Sydney looking for waste until you have enough worms."

These worms can double their mass every three months, and can eat more than half their own weight in a single day.

Sydney's Olympic organizing committee is depending on them. At its 2,000-person headquarters, they've chewed shredded documents since 1998, worming more than 90% of the site's secure papers into oblivion.

They consume and process about 500 pounds of waste per week, squirming inside metal crates. One, marked "CAUTION," contains the snacking wormage.

Mr. Scott yanks open a huge metal drawer and pulls back a grassy layer, revealing a wriggly mix of carrots, lettuce, bits of celery and shredded paper. There's no dressing; sauces, gravies and meats slow 'em down.

Mr. Scott reaches in for a gloved handful of squirmy goodness, and a rich, meaty smell wafts up. All liquid drips to the bottom and is put back in, like basting some unholy earthen roast.

A chef in full dress whites -- from the "Fine Dining Area" whence the garbage comes -- happens by. "Never mind the Olympics," he cracks. "The worms are the biggest show."

----

Herbal remedy quiz

Tuesday, June 6, 2000 By Kris Thoreson

Cure-all or sham? Depending on whom you put your faith in, herbal remedies may be the best alternative to heal what ails you, or they may present a risk that should be avoided at all costs. Either way, herbal remedies and dietary supplements are in greater and greater demand. In 1996 alone, consumers spent $6.5 billion on supplements.

Some of the confusion - and skepticism - about herbal remedies stems from the lack of scientific evidence required to make claims about their effectiveness. Nor are there set standards for the potency and dosage of many herbs.

If you're interested in taking an herb for a specific ailment, you should research the herb first. It's also wise to consult a physician about potential reactions if you're combining an herbal remedy with prescribed medication.

Supporters of herbal medicine maintain that most remedies are safe and offer far fewer side effects than prescription medication. They point to studies on the effectiveness of more popular herbs such as Saint-John's-wort, commonly used to treat depression.

Herbal medicine may be effective in combating symptoms of many ailments. As with prescribed medicine, caution and moderation are always advised.

How much do you know about herbal remedies? Take ENN's herbal remedies quiz.
http://enn.com/features/2000/06/06062000/Feature_Story_13491.asp

For more information, read the Mayo Clinic's position on herbal products.
http://www.mayohealth.org/mayo/9703/htm/herbs.htm

Prevention's herbal remedy guide has numerous tips on how to use herbal products.
http://www.healthyideas.com/healing/herb/

Finally, the Garden Guides has a good list of ailments and remedies.
http://www.gardenguides.com/herbs/remedy.htm

-------- imf / world bank

IMF Says Weak Euro, High Oil Prices Pose Risks to World Economic Outlook

Wall Street Journal
September 19, 2000
By DAMIAN MILVERTON Dow Jones Newswires
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB969358934187798873.htm

WASHINGTON -- The International Monetary Fund's latest semiannual review of the global economy argues that the world is on track for its best economic performance in 10 years, but the risks posed by recent movements in the euro and oil prices could swiftly derail this rosy scenario.

In its latest World Economic Outlook, the IMF also sees continuing danger in overvalued asset prices in the U.S. and the timid and fragile nature of the nascent recovery in Japan.

"While the overall outlook is encouraging, there are significant risks and uncertainties," the IMF said in the WEO, released as officials gather in Prague, Czech Republic for the joint IMF-World Bank spring meeting.

World gross domestic output is seen growing by 4.7% in 2000 before slowing to 4.2% in 2001. This compares with an IMF forecast in May of 4.2% growth in the global economy in 2000 and a 3.9% increase next year.

However, the skyrocketing price of oil casts a shadow over the projections. In formulating their projections, IMF economists assumed that the oil price would average $26.53 a barrel this year and $23 a barrel in 2001. But early this week, the spot price for crude oil was at a 10-year high approaching $37 a barrel. Worse yet, the IMF believes there is little hope that further action by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which last week agreed to raise output by 800,000 barrels a day, will be able to force prices down anytime soon.

"While non-OPEC exporters are producing close to capacity, some estimates indicate that OPEC member countries could increase supply by about three million barrels a day," the IMF said. "However, this excess capacity is concentrated in a few countries, while an adjustment in supply targets would need to be agreed to by all OPEC members. In an environment of strengthening global demand, and low oil inventories, the risks to oil prices would appear to be on the upside," the Fund said.

Oil Price Rise Threatens Current-Account Balances

In addition to contributing to inflationary pressures globally, steep energy prices depress demand and directly restrict economic growth. The IMF estimates that every $5 increase in the spot price of crude oil trims global gross domestic product by 0.2 percentage point.

Higher oil prices obviously also wreak havoc with national current-account balances, with the IMF estimating in its WEO that a $5 rise in the price of oil "raises net oil imports by advanced economies by about $40 billion annually."

This development poses a particular threat to developing countries that already face numerous barriers to bringing down inflation, boosting growth and reducing poverty. But, as the WEO notes, it also has ominous implications for the U.S. economy.

Fund economists are uncertain what a higher oil price portends for the U.S. economy -- or other major economies, for that matter -- but they make clear they are concerned by the swelling U.S. current-account deficit and its implications for world currencies.

The IMF has long argued that the Federal Reserve needs to push interest rates higher to dampen domestic demand, reduce the risk of inflationary pressure and temper the seemingly insatiable U.S. appetite for imports.

However, with the threat of a steep climb in oil prices, the need to slow demand further to prevent a balance of payments blowout assumes greater importance, the IMF argues.

Additionally, the IMF found that "underlying price and wage pressures and non-oil import prices have begun to rise," suggesting an uptick in consumer price inflation. "Business surveys also point to exceptionally tight labor markets and increasing evidence that enterprises are beginning to raise prices," it added.

Weak Euro Seen Posing Threats to Europe, U.S.

Overall, the IMF puts U.S. growth at 5.2% this year, slowing to 3.2% next year, assuming an "orderly resolution" of imbalances between the U.S. and its major economic partners in Europe and -- to a lesser degree -- Japan.

The growth imbalance is expected to narrow somewhat, the IMF forecasts, taking the steam out of the U.S. current-account deficit and most likely easing the threat of severe corrections in the dollar and U.S. asset prices.

The weakness of the euro, when viewed against economic fundamentals, remains as mysterious as it is troubling, the IMF contends. The IMF said factors contributing to the euro's dismal 27% slide since launch in January 1999 include growth imbalances and interest-rate differentials between Europe and the U.S., and may also reflect concern about Europe's medium-term growth prospects.

It also suggested the euro has been hurt by foreigners issuing bonds in the European market in euros then switching the proceeds into other currencies. The IMF also cited analysts who have blamed the European Central Bank for a communications strategy that "has lacked clarity."

A persistently weak euro could exacerbate the current-account imbalance between the U.S. and Europe as European exporters gain market share at the expense of their U.S. competitors. It would also increase inflationary pressures within the euro zone, forcing the ECB to tighten monetary policy before growth in Germany and Italy has caught up with France, Ireland and Portugal.

Japan Domestic Demand Remains 'Sluggish'

The outlook in Japan is also far from rosy. With growth continuing at an anemic pace below 2% annually, the IMF said the Japanese government will need to draft yet another supplementary budget, providing an injection of public spending to make up for a lack of domestic demand in the second half of the fiscal year ending March 21, 2001.

However, with the public-debt-to-GDP ratio nearing double digits, the government also needs to begin plotting a medium-term course toward fiscal consolidation. "With retail sales sluggish and only a modest gain in consumer confidence, a sustained recovery in consumer demand is still not assured and could be derailed by adverse macroeconomic developments," the IMF said.

Japanese GDP is expected to grow 1.4% this year and 1.8% next year, while euro-zone output is seen climbing 3.5% and 3.4% over these periods.

The IMF expects growth in other regions to be on the rise. GDP in Asia is expected to grow 6% this year and 6.5% next year, thanks to the continuing recovery in the former Asian Tiger economies. Growth in Latin American and the Caribbean is seen up 4.25% in 2000 and 4.50% next year, although the region retains too high a level of debt and is too reliant on fickle foreign capital inflows, the IMF said.

China and Russia are expected to impress, with the weak ruble and high oil price driving the Russian economy to a stunning 7% jump in GDP this year, moderating to 4% growth next year. The IMF sees the Chinese economy maintaining its sensational expansionary pace, with GDP to rise 7.5% in 2000 and 7.3% in 2001.

---

IMF sees global economy growing

USA Today
09/19/00- Updated 09:13 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncstue02.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The world economy should achieve its best growth in more than a decade this year, with conditions remaining strong in 2001, the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday.

It warned of numerous risks to its optimistic forecast, however, which include rising world oil prices and record trade deficits in the United States.

The IMF said in its new World Economic Outlook that conditions continue to improve after severe recessions caused by Asia's financial crisis in 1997-98.

The projection of 4.7% growth in world output this year represents a 0.5% upward revision from the IMF's last forecast, issued in May. If realized, it would mark the world's strongest economic growth since another 4.7% rise in 1988.

Growth was projected at a strong rate of 4.2% in 2001, a 0.3% increase from prediction in May.

''This improvement has been led by the continued strength of the U.S. economy, a robust expansion in Europe and a nascent - albeit still fragile - recovery in Japan,'' IMF economists said.

The IMF outlook was released in advance of annual meetings of the 182-nation IMF and its sister lending agency, the World Bank, scheduled to start this weekend in Prague, Czech Republic. Those meetings are expected to attract thousands of anti-globalization protesters.

While optimistic about prospects for growth, the IMF said the economic outlook is clouded by potential risks that include America's soaring trade deficit, its high-flying stock market and supercharged growth that could trigger inflation troubles in the United States.

The imbalance in America's current account, the broadest measure of U.S. trade, hit a record $331.5 billion last year and has been running this year at an annual rate above $400 billion.

A huge U.S. trade deficit could turn into a serious problem for the American economy if foreigners were to decide suddenly to dump dollar-denominated assets, which could push the U.S. currency down sharply and trigger steep declines in U.S. stock and bond markets.

Briefing reporters in Prague, IMF chief economist Michael Mussa said it is possible the U.S. economy could once again surprise forecasters with stronger-than-expected growth next year. But he said the IMF believes ''more risks are on the downside.''

The IMF said it worries also about the euro, the new currency of 11 European countries, which has been hitting record lows in recent weeks.

Referring to the various threats, the IMF said, ''The possibility that these imbalances may unwind in a disorderly fashion remains a risk to the global expansion.''

As for oil, the IMF said oil prices are about 20% higher than the IMF had assumed in its economic forecast, an increase of $5 a barrel. It estimated this should add $40 billion over a year's time to the oil import bills of industrial countries and cut their economic growth by 0.2 percentage points.

A senior IMF official who briefed reporters on the coming meetings said that ''high oil prices are a risk for next year, but in our judgment we should not exaggerate the situation.''

This official, who spoke on condition his name not be used, said the IMF currently calculates that the 4.7% estimate for overall world growth could be trimmed next year by between 0.3 percentage point and 0.5 percentage point if oil prices remain above $30 per barrel for an extended time.

On Monday, oil prices soared to a new 10-year high of $36.88 on spot markets amid escalating tensions between Iraq and Kuwait and doubt among traders that OPEC's promise to increase output would have much impact. For the United States, IMF economists predicted growth this year of 5.2%, 0.8 percentage point higher than the May estimate, slowing to 3.2% in 2001.

The IMF said this would represent the hoped-for ''soft landing'' in the United States that the Federal Reserve has been trying to bring about by raising interest rates to slow growth and keep inflation in check.

While U.S. economists think the Fed's six interest rate increases since June 1999 will be enough to get the job done, the IMF cautioned that the Fed may have to boost rates further to ensure that the slowdown occurs.

For Japan, the world's second biggest economy, the IMF predicted modest growth of 1.4% this year and 1.8% in 2001. It warned, however, that Japan, which has been struggling economically for a decade, has a recovery that ''remains fragile and subject to downside risks.''

Economic prospects were much brighter in Europe, with the 11 nations using the euro currency projected to turn a growth of 3.5% this year and 3.4% in 2001, significant increases from the 2.4% growth of 1999.

-------- spying

Fujimori Visits Army HQ; Spy Chief Drops Out of Sight

Yahoo News
Tuesday September 19 3:39 AM ET updated 10:11 AM ET Sep 19
By Jude Webber
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000919/wl/peru_leadall_dc_14.html

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori (news - web sites) paid a visit to the army headquarters, known as the ''Pentagonito'' (Little Pentagon) in the early hours of Tuesday after meetings with ministers, witnesses said.

But Vladimiro Montesinos, the notorious ally and spy chief with the ear of the military who Fujimori appeared to have broken with over a damaging corruption scandal, dropped out of sight.

Fujimori, who had been closeted in the presidential palace since a bombshell address on Saturday in which he announced he was calling new elections but would not run again, arrived at the army bunker just after 1 a.m.

His high-speed motorcade returned to the presidential palace some 15 minutes afterward but there was no immediate confirmation the president went too.

It was not extraordinary for Fujimori to go to the army headquarters -- but his every move is being scrutinized closely because of fears his announcement, which signaled a radical split with his Montesinos, would spark further instability.

Fujimori's decision to dump the man who has been his eyes and ears -- as well as his chief henchman -- throughout his decade in power, was sparked by an escalating corruption scandal after a television station broadcast a video of Montesinos allegedly bribing an opposition congressman.

Peru was aflame with speculation about the fate and whereabouts of Montesinos after Justice Minister Alberto Bustamante told reporters that contrary to earlier reports, he had not been arrested.

Military action to detain him would be astonishing if true, since he is believed to have hand picked the top brass. Bustamante and Montesinos have been friends for 30 years and the minister earlier defended the notorious spymaster.

The opposition has demanded the detention of Montesinos as a precondition for discussing elections that Bustamante said could happen in March with a new president installed in July.

Montesinos And The Military

Montesinos was believed to have hand picked the military top brass -- the army chief is an old friend -- making a split between him and Fujimori particularly dangerous. Montesinos' brother-in-law was believed to head a key wing of the army.

The military has been silent since Fujimori's announcement and many commentators believed Fujimori had lost support of at least some sections of the armed forces.

``I think there are some divisions within it ... I think they are taking positions, some of support, some are maintaining neutral and I understand that very few are supporting President Fujimori,'' opposition challenger Alejandro Toledo told Reuters Television in an interview.

``But in any case there is a lot of uncertainty that generates space for speculation and that speculation generates anxiety in the people,'' he added, speaking in English.

Politicians and commentators said a coup was not unlikely -- but no one was willing to rule anything out in a political drama that analysts said had barely begun.

The cabinet was due to meet later to flesh out some of the hotly awaited details of the election process ahead.

``The idea is for the new president to take office from July 28, 2001. The elections could be held in March -- the president calls them,'' Bustamante said. July 28 is Peru's national day.

Montesinos Still Untouchable

Despite his abrupt switch from hunter to hunted, Montesinos maintained his untouchable aura.

Indeed, Bustamante defended him. ``Don't forget that Dr. Montesinos has been a very special protagonist and decisive in the successful battles the government of the last 10 years has waged against terrorism and drugs trafficking,'' he said.

Montesinos, a 56-year-old disgraced army captain, is variously accused of having spied for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, trafficked drugs and built Peru's national intelligence service (SIN) into an octopus whose phone-tapping, torturing tentacles can reach into every corner of society.

Fujimori, Latin America's longest-serving elected leader, has also pledged to disband the SIN -- an institution which has helped give Peru one of the region's worst rights records.

Peru's crisis badly rattled financial markets on Monday. The Lima stock market plunged by 5.72 percent -- its biggest fall all year -- the sol currency touched four-month lows and Brady bonds fell four percent in New York.

Toledo, who boycotted the May runoff claiming widespread fraud, wants to rally Peru's divided opposition around his candidacy. He called for a six-month transitional government to lead Peru while the country's tarnished institutions were readied for a new vote. Fujimori has groomed no heirs.

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C.I.A. Says Chilean General in '76 Bombing Was Informer

By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/19/world/19CHIL.html

WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 - The former chief of Chile's secret police, convicted of masterminding a lethal car bombing here in 1976, was an informer for the Central Intelligence Agency when the bombing occurred, a year after he had received a one- time payment for his cooperation, newly released documents show.

The official, Gen. Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, former head of DINA, the secret police, under the 17- year military dictatorship in Chile, was enlisted by the C.I.A. beginning in 1974, a year after Gen. Augusto Pinochet led a coup that toppled the elected government of President Salvador Allende Gossens, the documents show.

The American spy agency maintained its contacts with General Contreras until 1977, a year after General Contreras and his deputy, Brig. Gen. Pedro Espinoza Bravo, organized the attack on Embassy Row in Washington, according to the documents released today by the agency in a declassified report to Congress.

The bombing killed Orlando Letelier, Mr. Allende's former ambassador to the United States, and a 25- year-old American associate, Ronni Moffitt.

The spy agency's relationship with General Contreras continued although "almost immediately after the assassination, rumors began circulating that the Chilean government was responsible," and "at that time, Contreras's possible role in the Letelier assassination became an issue," the report says. It also says the C.I.A. later received "specific detailed intelligence reporting concerning Contreras's involvement in ordering the Letelier assassination" but does not make clear when that information was obtained.

In 1993 in Chile, Generals Contreras and Espinoza were sentenced to seven and six years, respectively, in prison for the crime, one of the worst cases of foreign-sponsored terrorism on American soil.

"During a period between 1974 and 1977, C.I.A. maintained contact with Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, who later became notorious for his involvement in human rights abuses," said the intelligence agency report.

The relationship with General Contreras was viewed as "necessary to accomplish the C.I.A.'s mission, in spite of concerns that this relationship might lay the C.I.A. open to charges of aiding internal political repression," the report said.

Although the C.I.A. said it had warned General Contreras that it would not support any of his repressive activities, it ultimately issued a one-time payment to him, even after it had found that "Contreras was the principal obstacle to a reasonable human rights policy" in the military government.

The payment, an unspecified amount in 1975, was made in error, the report said, after leaders of the C.I.A. had overruled their agents' recommendations to establish a paid relationship with General Contreras, "citing the U.S. government policy on clandestine relations with the head of an intelligence service notorious for human rights abuses."

Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, a nongovernmental clearinghouse for declassified documents, said the report sheds light on the contacts with forces that toppled a democratic government and killed thousands of people. "This is in fact the unraveling of a cover-up of U.S. ties to repression during the Pinochet dictatorship," Mr. Kornbluh said. "This is the first step toward a candid disclosure of the truth about that dark era."

Central Intelligence Agency officials could not be reached for comment late this evening.

The spy agency acknowledged in the report that its behavior in Chile would not meet more rigorous standards in place today.

"As a result of lessons learned in Chile, Central America and elsewhere, the C.I.A. now carefully reviews all contacts for potential involvement in human rights abuses and makes a deliberate decision balancing the nature and severity of the human rights abuse against the potential intelligence value of continuing the relationship," the report said.

"These standards, established in the mid-1990's, would likely have altered the amount of contact we had with perpetrators of human rights violators in Chile had they been in effect at that time," it said.

In a similar case in Guatemala in 1996, the CIA acknowledged that it had maintained a paid relationship with Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, during a time in which it concluded that the Guatemalan officer had been involved in covering up the 1990 murder of an American citizen, Michael DeVine, and Efraín Bámaca, a captured Guatemalan guerrilla.

The C.I.A. report on Chile, which was required by legislation written by Representative Maurice D. Hinchey, a New York Democrat, said the spy agency was "not involved in facilitating Pinochet's accession to president nor the consolidation of his power as Supreme Leader."

But Mr. Hinchey, after studying the report, reached a different conclusion. "The C.I.A. funneled millions of dollars to strengthen opposition political parties working against the Allende government," he said. "That can cover a multitude of sins."

Mr. Hinchey called the relationship with General Contreras a mistake. "It just shows the zeal with which the C.I.A. operators at that time proceeded," he said. "They made league with some very vicious people."

---

Spy chief's fate a mystery in tense Peru

USA Today
09/19/00- Updated 12:33 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nwsmon02.htm

LIMA, Peru (AP) - Peru's justice minister denied reports Monday that the nation's shadowy intelligence chief has been detained, saying the military was not holding the powerful behind-the-scenes figure who is at the center of a growing political crisis.

The reports and denial of spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos' arrest further deepened the mystery surrounding his whereabouts and raised questions about the stability of the government.

Earlier Monday, independent radio station CPN reported that Montesinos had been detained on orders of the commander of Peru's armed forces. Then, a lawyer claiming he represented Ana Montesinos, whom he identified as the spymaster's sister, sought out reporters alleging that her brother was being detained at the headquarters of the National Intelligence Service.

He presented a writ of habeas corpus saying the detention was illegal and demanding that Montesinos be freed.

However, Justice Minister Alberto Bustamante denied that Montesinos had been taken into custody and cast doubt on the identity of the lawyer and the sister he claimed to represent.

''I know that he is in Lima and I know that he is not detained,'' Bustamante told a news conference late Monday.

Referring to Ana Montesinos, whose name appears on the writ, he said that ''she is not a sister or a relative of Mr. Montesinos.''

A retired army general and several opposition leaders also charged that the reports of Montesinos' detention were a ruse to buy time.

''Vladimiro Montesinos is not detained, but I don't know exactly where he is,'' said retired army Gen. Jose Salinas Sedo, who led a failed coup against President Alberto Fujimori in 1992. ''They're protecting him. They're playing with the Peruvian people and winning time to see how to manage the situation.''

The lawyer, who gave his name as Jose Carmen Ojeda, did not answer his cell phone later to respond to the accusations. There was no listing for Ana Montesinos in the Lima telephone directory.

Despite the tumult in the media, the streets of Lima were quiet Monday evening. Peru has been thrown into political turmoil since the release of a videotape allegedly showing Montesinos bribing an opposition lawmaker to support Fujimori.

On Saturday, Fujimori said the video had damaged the credibility of his government and that he was deactivating the National Intelligence Service. In the bombshell announcement, he said he would call new elections and not run himself, ending his decade-long hold on power. He did not say when the new elections would be held, or whether he would remain in office until then.

Meanwhile, some 10,000 people packed into a downtown plaza Monday night and roared their approval as opposition leader Alejandro Toledo called on Fujimori to have Montesinos arrested.

''There cannot be a healthy democracy in Peru with Montesinos free,'' he told the crowd.

Toledo, the leading opposition candidate in May's presidential runoff against Fujimori, demanded between choruses of ''the dictatorship will fall'' that an emergency transition government be put in place immediately and that elections come within four months.

The reports of Montesinos' detention came after opposition leaders had angrily demanded that Fujimori order his detention.

Miguel Gutierrez, a member of the investigative unit at the opposition paper La Republica, said earlier Monday that high-ranking military officers had confirmed Montesinos' detention.

Lima Mayor Alberto Andrade earlier charged that Montesinos was still running the intelligence service and was holed up in the agency's headquarters. Unconfirmed news reports said he was feverishly destroying documents that would incriminate him.

The CPN radio report, citing unidentified military sources, said the arrest order had been issued by Montesinos' close associate, Gen. Jose Villanueva Ruesta, commander of Peru's armed forces.

Fujimori's critics say Montesinos has manipulated Peru's intelligence network to infiltrate illegally all branches of government for Fujimori, and they have accused him of masterminding a campaign of smear attacks and dirty tricks to assure Fujimori's political power.

Mario Vargas Llosa, the famed novelist defeated for the presidency by Fujimori in 1990, warned that the generals placed in key positions by Montesinos were dangerous because ''they are defending the little power they still have left.''

''A wounded beast is more dangerous than a healthy beast,'' he said in a radio interview from Puerto Rico. ''Montesinos is a person who has no place to run to, who is known to the whole world for his misdeeds.''

Military experts said Fujimori's decision to deactivate the intelligence service was likely supported by discontented midlevel officers, fed up with Montesinos' meddling in the armed forces.

Retired army Gen. Daniel Mora said he doubted Montesinos had enough pull in the military to launch a barracks revolt over Fujimori's decision.

Fujimori's decision to step down from power was a shocking announcement from the man who recently won a disputed election for an unprecedented third term.

The United States cheered the decision, and appealed to the country's military to ''work toward a peaceful transition'' of power.

-------- terrorism

Jordan Military Court Sentences Six Men to Death for Terror Plans

Wall Street Journal
September 19, 2000
Associated Press
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB96928155887418382.htm

AMMAN, Jordan -- A military court sentenced six men to death Monday for planning terrorist attacks against Israeli and U.S. targets during New Year's celebrations in Jordan.

The three-man State Security Court acquitted six others and handed down prison terms ranging from life to seven and a half years in prison for the remaining 16 men. The verdict can be appealed.

Those sentenced to death "had a determined will to carry out terrorist attacks against American and Jewish interests in Jordan," said Col. Tayel Raqad, the court's presiding judge.

There was no immediate reaction from the U.S. Embassy in Jordan, and Israeli Embassy officials declined comment on what they described as an internal Jordanian affair.

Prosecutors charged the men with crimes including "conspiracy to carry out terrorist attacks" against Israeli and American tourists visiting Mount Nebo, where tradition says Moses saw the promised land, and a Christian settlement along the Jordan River, which is said to be the site where Saint John the Baptist baptized Jesus.

Other charges included manufacturing explosives to use unlawfully in bombing attacks and affiliation with the al-Qaeda group allegedly led by Saudi militant Osama bin Laden.

The tribunal, however, contradicted prosecution charges that all 28 charged, 12 of whom remain at large and were tried in absentia, were linked to al-Qaeda. The men "had no organizational affiliations," the court said.

Mr. bin Laden, who has taken refuge in Afghanistan, is wanted by the U.S. for the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people.

The accused had pleaded innocent and denied links to Mr. bin Laden, claiming their confessions were obtained under duress.

---

Six sentenced to die for terror attacks

Washington Times
September 19, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://208.246.212.80/world/worldscene-200091921179.htm

AMMAN, Jordan - A military court yesterday sentenced six Muslim militants to death by hanging for planning terror attacks against U.S. and Israeli targets in Jordan. All but four remain at large and were tried in absentia.

The three-man State Security Court acquitted six other men and handed down prison terms ranging from 7 and 1/2 years to life on the remaining 16 defendants.

The ruling absolved all 28 men, including 12 fugitives tried in absentia, of "affiliation with an illegal organization" - al-Qaeda, reportedly led by Saudi militant Osama bin Laden

-------- activists

Philadelphia Inquirer
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
Editorial Civil rights
http://web.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/09/19/opinion/ONETUE19.htm

There are still abuse allegations to check, but cooler heads are prevailing on protesters.

What happened to the communist plot? Over the weekend, Philadelphia authorities offered to let dozens of Republican National Convention protesters get off lightly. Just fines and a warning.

These were among the folks caught up in the Aug. 1 police raid on a West Philadelphia warehouse - groups funded, in part, by what Pennsylvania State Police termed red-leaning interests.

While protesters said they were just making puppets, police said they knew better: The warehouse operation was hell-bent on mayhem. For such would-be troublemakers, is it right to offer probation, a $300 fine, and their arrest records expunged after six months?

You bet it's right.

It signals that a welcome sense of perspective concerning the majority of protesters arrested has returned to the city's justice system.

With the exception of people charged with violence or serious property damage - and there were some among the nearly 400 nabbed - most convention protesters have already received more than their due punishment for disturbing the peace. That included days spent in the city's spartan and crowded holding cells, with some people held on ludicrously high bail.

By beginning to process the first 103 cases with an offer of accelerated rehabilitative disposition - a type of probation that leaves no criminal record - the city begins to strike a balance befitting the birthplace of the Constitution.

It has to do more, though. That is to examine what possibly went wrong - amid so much that went right - with law enforcement's handling of the convention protests.

The high marks for patience by Commissioner John F. Timoney's police still stand. The restraint was remarkable - hardly a baton swung in anger.

But two big issues remain: Were all protesters treated properly and humanely in jail? And were First Amendment rights - particularly for the 75 protesters arrested at the warehouse - trampled in a ham-handed or even calculated effort to make the city look good?

Look to the American Civil Liberties Union to lead the push on these questions, with one federal civil rights lawsuit already filed. The city's Police Advisory Commission (215-686-3991) also stands ready to investigate. Despite nearly 100 calls there about the handling of the protests, no formal complaint has been lodged.

The warehouse arrests may prove the most troubling aspect, since the roundup seemed excessive and possibly unwarranted.

Mr. Timoney's hair-splitting denial of police infiltration - it was state police, not his officers, doing the undercover work - was weak. And, based on documents released so far, it's not clear police had the evidence of violent criminal intent to justify the raid. (Be careful, though, about seeking a blanket ban on police infiltration; what if the group in question next time is an Aryan Nations cell planning violence?)

What's needed is for courts to rule on whether individuals' rights were violated, and whether the city police breached a 1987 agreement not to spy on protest groups without approvals.

Philadelphia is the last place where authorities should wink at violations of First Amendment freedoms.

---

It's a commitment, not a spring-break romp.

Philadelphia Inquirer
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
Editorial Civil disobedience
http://web.philly.com/content/inquirer/2000/09/19/opinion/TWOTUE19.htm

Granted, it takes a lot of commitment to sit down in the middle of an expressway on-ramp for a cause; a lot of courage to stay put once you have the full attention of even the most well-behaved police department, and a lot of character to keep cool as you're singled out and carted off to an unknown fate.

But translating those actions into societal change takes a vision. Achieving a vision takes planning, training and discipline. It takes an awareness of the possibly dire consequences of your actions, and a willingness to accept those consequences. It takes a desire to embrace the opposition, not do harm.

Many protesters showed commitment, courage or character during the Republican National Convention. But vision? Planning? Discipline? Accepting consequences? Doing no harm?

Let's admit to some hometown biases. First, many local folks wanted more than a well-run convention. They wanted the event to transform Philly into a brighter star in the tourism firmament. Anything off message was taken personally.

Second, we have some issues. Our city government's motto could be: "Please don't make us bomb ourselves again." Our region collectively gasped when Thomas Jones was beaten into submission by Philadelphia police on July 12, and we held that breath until the last convention delegate left town safely.

And that grim record, the underbelly of Philly's new and fragile can-do image, was one of the protesters' targets.

But they missed. Because the city had a plan. For the most part, the police were disciplined. From the roving bicycle squads to the officers arresting Vine Expressway squatters, the police had a better handle on nonviolence training and strategies than the protesters.

It's not the police department's fault that the protests misfired. (And let's distinguish the civil disobedience, which occurred mostly on one day, Aug. 1, with events such as the Unity 2000 march, which offered a vision of cooperation and common cause, not anarchy.)

Protest organizers were unable to present an overarching vision connecting that week's issues with a realistic plan for change or call to action.

Many of those involved in the Aug. 1 events acted as if they didn't realize that breaking a law meant going to jail - and maybe staying there and being uncomfortable long after what they considered an appropriate time-out.

The public face of these protests has often been a childish, angry attitude that everyone else - police, media, corporations, commuters, meat-eaters, Republicans, Democrats, you name it - is an enemy to be vanquished. That if only everyone would just sit through the same indoctrination sessions- voila! - a world of social justice.

The protest organizers need to be reminded of some basics.

Nonviolent protest is not a cloak of invincibility or self-righteousness. It's a deep moral commitment.

Gandhi wasn't some naive holy man fresh off the mountaintop who stumbled upon injustice and in the blink of a feature-length movie overthrew an empire. He was a great soul who used moral means in a decades-long struggle to achieve a political end, gaining the respect of his foes along the way.

He forced confrontations over injustice but refused to be violent or unjust. If his followers caused violence, he shouldered the blame, ending actions rather than risk more injury. He increased his moral authority by accepting the consequences of protest, whether physical abuse or imprisonment. That willingness to suffer for his cause is what won many people over.

Should protesters be physically abused, their rights abridged? Absolutely not. If that happened, let those who did it be punished.

But have any protesters stood up and accepted responsibility for the undisciplined and violent among them? Have they stepped forward to pay for property damaged, for expenses incurred? Has anyone been won over to the cause by the plaint that the handcuffs were too tight?

Around the world, people have suffered and died for causes while employing nonviolent civil disobedience.

Treating protest like an episode of MTV's Road Rules risks cheapening the message along with the messenger. That would be a shame. Because the issues spurring the recent wave of protest are indeed real: injustice in the justice system, economic inequalities, labor and environmental abuses committed in the name of global trade.

Tackling those issues will take vision. The question is, do the rest of us have a plan to address the issues, one that will provide an outlet for the energy and talents of those who showed courage in Philadelphia?

---

Protesters Begin Practicing Techniques Ahead of IMF, World Bank Meetings

Wall Street Journal
September 19, 2000
By RICK JERVIS Special to THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB969311455750838615.djm&template=doclink.tmpl

DOLNI SLIVNO, Czech Republic -- Not much happens in this quiet farm town one-and-a-half hours northeast of Prague. It has a single pub and residents occupy much of their time plowing and replowing rolling fields of corn and wheat.

But lately they have had reason to gawk and murmur, as streams of protesters, followed by media, descend on one of the town's farms to practice protesting techniques for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings, which officially start in Prague next week. As IMF and World Bank delegates checked into Prague hotels for preliminary meetings, activists at the Tak Dem Action Camp learned the correct way to form human-chain blockades and the best way to be dragged off by police. They also picked up legal advice and basic medical training, such as how to treat eyes shot with tear gas.

Around 80 protesters from around the world pitched tents at the camp and took the weeklong training course, organized by the Initiative Against Economic Globalization, the umbrella group organizing most of the protests. Twentysomethings from Norway, Finland, Italy, Israel and the Czech Republic, some nose-ringed, others wearing Reeboks and "Meat is Murder" T-shirts, branched off into groups to learn the intricacies of nonviolent demonstration.

Sharing Experience

Protesters with past experience taught the young activists the correct way to form a human chain -- arms linked, back row hugging the front -- and how to communicate with one another during protests. They taught quick primers on Czech law, such as the law that those arrested must be fed every six hours.

Around the farm, organizers used mobile phones to field questions from the media or connect with other organizers, while volunteers used a gutted barn to paint color-splashed banners in English, German and Spanish. One read: "Our resistance is as global as capitalism." Meanwhile, volunteer cooks from the Dutch cooking collective, Rampenplan, peeled 20 kilograms of potatoes for a vegan dinner of baked potatoes and white cabbage salad.

Protest organizers have steadfastly played down the possibility of violence during protests, stressing that their technique is strictly nonviolent. Ways to avoid violence, such as "puppy piling," were also taught at the camp.

Puppy piling, explained Tedd Cain, 26 years old, a carpenter from Chicago who participated in the recent antiglobalization protests in Seattle and Washington, is a popular technique where a group of protesters pile on top of another protester being beaten by police. Someone then pulls the beaten protester out from under the pile. "The idea is not to attack the police," Mr. Cain said, as a translator relayed the instructions into Czech. "The idea is to keep it on our side."

Swallowed by the Amoeba

In another technique, the "amoeba," a protester in the front row of a human blockade who is being beaten by police is dragged to the back row by fellow protesters, essentially being "swallowed" by the blockade.

"I'm really impressed we can do all this without a lot of money, without computers, without much of anything," said Anne-Kathrine Vabeo, a 20-year-old activist from Norway. "People are feeling much more prepared."

Protesters at the camp spoke excitedly of a renewed wave of activism they feel is sweeping the globe, sparked by protests in Seattle late last year against the World Trade Organization. There, 40,000 free-trade demonstrators battled for five days with hundreds of police and National Guard troops for control of the streets.

In Prague, more than 20,000 protesters are expected to show up. Czech police have readied 11,000 riot troops to keep order and have increased scrutiny at border crossings to keep back protesters from neighboring countries. In the past week, more than 40 foreigners have been turned away by North Bohemian border guards, Czech media reported.

At the root of the protests is a difference of opinion on the role the IMF and its companion World Bank are playing in poor countries. Protesters insist IMF and World Bank projects and policies have squeezed spending on health and education needs, devastated the environment and routinely benefited only global corporations. IMF and World Bank backers say the institutions, using money provided by rich nations, work to improve conditions through economic development in the world's poorest countries.

Czech government officials have stressed their willingness to open a line of dialogue with the more moderate protesters. On Saturday, President Vaclav Havel, a former protester himself, will meet with representatives of different protest groups at Prague Castle to discuss issues.

But, for many protesters, talk won't be enough.

"We hope this movement gets bigger and stronger and all these institutions that have the power see it's not possible to keep going," said Ms. Vabeo, the Norwegian activist. "Something has to change."

---

Thousands of Haitians March, Demand the Legislature Resign

Wall Street Jouornal
September 19, 2000
Associated Press
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB969321370879884946.htm

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Thousands of protesters marched in central Haiti on Monday to demand the resignation of a legislature controlled by the Lavalas Family Party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Radio stations reported that about 5,000 people marched, which would be the biggest protest since recent elections.

"Down with Lavalas! Down with Aristide!" demonstrators shouted as they marched from the village of Papaye to nearby Hinche, about 45 miles northeast of Port-au-Prince.

Sporadic gunfire toward the end of the march triggered panic among the demonstrators, but no injuries were reported and the protest ended peacefully.

The march was organized by the Papaye Peasants' Movement, the biggest rural workers' organization in Haiti, and was endorsed by the opposition Convergence coalition.

The opposition accuses President Rene Preval's government of rigging local and legislative elections in May, June and July in favor of Lavalas. Mr. Preval's critics have also charged the Lavalas party with being behind street violence aimed at opposition leaders.

"The Lavalas Family is trying to gag any expression of opposition to [Aristide's] plan to establish a dictatorship," said Gerard Pierre-Charles, spokesman for the former parliamentary majority.

The Organization of American States has expressed doubts about the way candidates were selected for the second round of the elections. The European Union and the U.S. have threatened to withhold funds, or channel them through non-governmental agencies, if Haiti does not revise the results.

---

Fuel Protests Persist in Europe While Governments Negotiate

Wall Street Journal
September 19, 2000
Associated Press
http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB969322484714939095.htm

MADRID -- Angry fishermen blocked Spain's second-busiest port, and protests over the high price of diesel fuel spread to Israel with truckers threatening to paralyze the nation's roads.

In Europe, truckers in Sweden, Norway and Finland blocked ports and oil terminals as governments held talks aimed at ending the actions.

About 20 fishing boats dropped anchor just outside the mouth of Barcelona, Spain's second-busiest port, before dawn, and remained there as night approached.

At least 13 vessels were waiting to dock in Barcelona and two cruise ships were diverted to other ports, one to the Mediterranean island of Mallorca and another to Valencia.

In the city of Salamanca, protesters clashed with police -- injuring one protester -- while a local union leader and a farmers' representative were detained as the police tried to break up the demonstration, the state news agency EFE reported.

The Spanish government held talks with truckers associations that are part of the National Platform of Fuel Consumers, a coalition that includes fishermen, taxi drivers and farmers who depend on fossil fuels.

The coalition is threatening to put a stranglehold on the nation's fuel supply by blockading refineries and other facilities unless the government lowers taxes that make up as much as 60% of the pump price in Spain.

The government is refusing to reduce taxes, saying Spain's percentage is low compared to what consumers in other European Union countries pay.

Europe adopted high gas taxes decades ago as an environmental measure to discourage excessive fuel consumption. Taxes range from 51% in Greece to 73% in Britain, where diesel cost an average of $4.33 a gallon last month.

The platform says diesel fuel sold to farmers at a special rate has gone up 55% since August of 1999, agricultural associations say. Diesel fuel sold to farmers costs $1.70 a gallon.

In Israel, cab drivers slowed traffic on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway Monday and truckers threatened to block roads for more than a week to protest an increase in the price of diesel fuel.

On Tuesday, two convoys of trucks are to set out from the northern Israeli ports of Acre and Haifa and drive slowly down the coastal highway. A third will leave the southern port of Ashdod and drive north to the center of the country.

Diesel fuel prices went up more than 13% at midnight Saturday in response to rising prices worldwide. Finance Minister Avraham Shochat said the protesters have no case because the government has no control over the price of imported fuel.

The Finance Ministry is holding contacts with the truckers in an attempt to avoid the protests, but "under no circumstances will we subsidize hauling prices," spokeswoman Orit Reuveni said.

The European protests over rising fuel prices began in France, where truckers began the blockades Sept. 4, winning a tax break from Paris and inspiring protests in other countries.

In Britain, where fuel supplies were gradually returning to normal after last week's blockades, a senior British minister met with the oil companies to discuss ways to avoid a repetition of the fuel protests that that brought the country to a standstill last week.

Eleven terminals in southern and western Norway were blocked for several hours until the state oil company Statoil filed a police complaint. The truckers withdrew rather than face possible police action.

In Sweden's second-largest city and major port Goteborg, truckers blocked freight traffic while in southern Finland, some 20 trucks blocked traffic Monday morning on a highway a few miles from the Porvoo oil refinery.

---

Europe-Wide Fuel Protest Spreads to Middle East

Yahoo News
Tuesday September 19 9:38 AM ET updated 10:13 AM ET Sep 19
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000919/ts/energy_europe_dc_18.html

LONDON (Reuters) - Farmers, truckers and fishermen launched fuel protests from the North Sea to the Mediterranean Tuesday with crude oil prices close to 10-year highs.

The European demonstrations spread to the Middle East, where Israeli truckers mounted a ``go-slow'' along the main north-south road linking the ports of Haifa and Ashdod.

Crude prices saw 10-year peaks Monday, a level not seen since Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Tuesday November Brent dipped 19 cents to trade at $36.69.

Farmers demonstrated across Spain against soaring fuel prices, and a convoy of tractors arrived in Madrid.

Spain's national fuel distribution company CLH said access to five of its centers in the cities of Leon, Rota, Cartagena, Burgos and Girona had been blocked by demonstrators.

Members of the Spain's two biggest farming associations, ASAJA and COAG, said the demonstrations called for ``urgent and effective solutions'' to the crisis.

Farmers say they will not accept temporary solutions offered by the government and are demanding lower taxes on fuel. The government has ruled that out.

Fifty tractors crept down Madrid's central artery, Paseo de la Castellana, toward the economy ministry.

Fishing Boats End Protest

In Barcelona, a blockade by fishing boats of the country's biggest port ended early Tuesday. But fishermen have warned of more protests if negotiations stall, state radio reported.

Fishermen in the eastern port of Castellon had blocked the mouth of the port, the radio said.

Protests have also been called by fishermen in Huelva, on Spain's southern Atlantic coast. Demonstrations by taxi drivers and other transport workers have been set for next week.

In Germany, truckers and farmers staged a series of protests, holding up traffic, but there was little sign the government was about to yield to demands for cuts in fuel duty.

Police said about 300 trucks, taxis and buses, blowing their horns in unison, rode around Hamburg's inner ring road.

In Israel, Gabi Ben-Haroush, chief of the Haulers and Drivers Council, said truckers could widen their protest on Wednesday and the go-slow was only a ``warning shot.''

``We are making preparations for every possibility,'' said David Sadeh, deputy chief of Israel's traffic police.

Barak Threatens Action

Prime Minister Ehud Barak vowed to take unspecified action to intervene if the protests disrupted daily life, saying the price of diesel fuel used by the truckers was low in Israel compared with Europe -- 60 cents a liter ($2.30 a U.S. gallon).

Far to the north dozens of Swedish truck drivers blocked goods terminals in the North Sea port of Gothenburg, police said, as protests continued against high taxes on diesel fuel.

A blockade of Sweden's oil terminals was lifted Monday night amid fears that petrol stations would run dry.

Gothenburg, Sweden's second-largest city, reported the greatest disruption Tuesday, but blockades of terminals in the Malmo and Stockholm ports continued. Swedish media also reported trucks blocking access to Swedish Railway's goods terminals and a blockade of ferry terminals in Stockholm.

The truckers want government to scrap a planned tax increase of 0.10 crowns and to cut the present tax by 1.12 crowns.

The price of diesel in Sweden was 9.23 crowns ($0.938) of which 56 percent is tax, the Swedish Petroleum Institute said.

Although British protests were called off last week, Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites)'s Labor government was hit by new evidence of a drop in popularity when an opinion poll put the opposition Conservatives four points ahead.

The ICM poll in the Guardian newspaper gave the opposition Conservatives a four point lead over Labour's 34 percent. Labour's popularity has slumped 10 points in a month.

Petrol costs about 80 pence ($1.13) a liter in Britain.

British police chiefs Tuesday urged the public not to start panic buying of petrol again as they investigated rumors that truckers and farmers might resume petrol blockades.

In Ireland, most of the country's fishermen turned back to shore in a 24-hour-long protest against high fuel prices.

In Brussels, European Union energy chief Loyola de Palacio said governments would be playing into oil producers' hands if they cut energy taxes to combat economic hardship caused by high crude prices.

---

Indigo Girls Announce Honor The Earth Tour Dates

Launch.com
(9/19/00, 6 p.m. ET)
http://www.launch.com/Features/fs_Start/?contentType=NEWS&contentId=8071

The Indigo Girls will hit the road at the end of the month with their fourth annual Honor The Earth tour. Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, David Crosby, Shawn Mullins, Joan Baez, and others will also appear on various dates. The tour sheds light on environmental and cultural issues in the Americas, with this year's focus being on the dumping of nuclear waste on Native lands and the decimation of free-range buffalo in Yellowstone National Park.

Amy Ray, one half of the Girls, told LAUNCH the work for Honor The Earth doesn't stop when the tour is over. "The next step we have is board meetings to take all the money and grant it to all the different groups that we'll take proposals from and give grants to," she explained. "And then after that we'll just continue through the year to keep people informed about the issues that we're working on."

The Honor The Earth tour kicks off in Billings, Montana, on September 30, just four days before the release of the duo's latest album, Indigo Girls: A Retrospective. They'll follow the tour with a series of college dates, beginning at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, on October 20.

Here are the scheduled dates for the Honor The Earth tour 2000 (subject to change):

September 30 - Billings, MT - The Shrine (with Bonnie Raitt, Indigenous, Joan Baez)

October 1 - Blackfeet Reservation, MT (with Bonnie Raitt, Indigenous, Joan Baez, Ed Juneau

October 2 - Great Falls, MT - Civic Theatre (with Bonnie Raitt, Joan Baez, Ed Juneau)

October 3 - Bozeman, MT - Brick Breeden (Indigo Girls' Emily Saliers only, with Bonnie Raitt, Indigenous, Joan Baez, Dar Williams

http://www.launch.com/music/artistpage/1,,1029216,00.html

October 4 - Missoula, MT - Adams Event Center (with Bonnie Raitt, Indigenous, Dar Williams)

October 6 - Salt Lake City, UT - Univ. Of Utah/Huntsman Ctr. (with Bonnie Raitt, Indigenous)

October 8 - Verde Valley, AZ - Sedona Festival

October 9 - Windowrock, AZ - Windowrock Civic Ctr. (with Jackson Browne, Indigenous)

October 11 - Albuquerque, NM - Kiva (with Jackson Browne, Indigenous)

October 12 - Denver, CO - The Fillmore (with Edwin McCain, Vonda Shepard, Bill Miller

October 13 - Lawrence, KS - Haskell College Political Rally

October 14 - Lawrence, KS - Lied Center (with Indigenous, Shawn Mullins)

October 16 - Minneapolis, MN - Orpheum (with David Crosby, Shannon Curfman, Annie Humphrey)

October 17 - Chicago, IL - Chicago Theater (with Jackson Browne, David Crosby, Annie Humphrey)

October 18 - Stevens Point, WI - Univ. Of Wisconsin/Quand (with Jackson Browne, Annie Humphrey)

October 19 - Menominee Reservation, WI (with Jackson Browne, Annie Humphrey)

Here are the dates for the college tour 2000 (subject to change):

October 20 - Richmond, IN - Earlham College, Athletics & Wellness Center

October 21 - Columbus, OH - Newport Music Hall

October 22 - Morgantown, WV - West Virginia Univ., Creative Arts Center

October 26 - Boone, NC - Appalachian State Univ., Farthing Auditorium

October 27 - Winston-Salem, NC - Wake Forest Univ., Wait Chapel

October 28 - Atlanta, GA - Earth Challenge Benefit, Centennial Park

-- Darren Davis, New York, and Neal Weiss, Los Angeles

Got news tips, comments, or questions? Send them to newstips@launch.com

---

Farm Aid Reaps a Tuneful Bounty

Washington Post
Tuesday , September 19, 2000 ; C10
By Joe Heim Special to The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33688-2000Sep19.html

That the Farm Aid concert has become something of an institution must trouble its founders, musicians Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp.

The three were on hand Sunday at Nissan Pavilion for the 15th anniversary of the concert, an event begun in 1985 as a one-shot fundraiser for struggling family farmers. But farms are still failing--lately at the rate of 500 a week--Young repeatedly remarked.

And so Farm Aid continues: a celebration of music, but also an admission that family farmers remain an endangered species. The gloom-and-doom forecast for farmers, however, seemed incongruous with the pluperfect late-summer day and the bountiful talent onstage. The musical marathon, broadcast live on the CMT cable channel, kicked off with Nelson joining country singer Pat Green on "Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys."

Country stars Travis Tritt and Alan Jackson gave the crowd a healthy dose of energetic twang, while two young acts offered great hope for the blues. Shannon Curfman's powerful and emotive voice belied her 15 years, and an electrifying set by the North Mississippi All-Stars delivered the blues in all its soulful funkiness.

Arlo Guthrie, whose father, Woody, sang about Dust Bowl farmers in the Depression, was joined by two of his children during a thoughtful set that began with his father's "Deportees," an elegy to Mexican migrant farm workers killed in a plane crash.

Before the crowds arrived, Nelson convened a farm issues forum in a corner of the Nissan parking lot. Though all the presidential candidates were invited, only Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan showed up. Vice President Gore sent Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) as an emissary, but the Bush campaign took a pass.

Tipper Gore was also on hand, and, at concert's end, accompanied Nelson on congas during "Whiskey River."

"I must be getting more normal," said Guthrie with a laugh. "Thirty years ago they wouldn't let me within five miles of the vice president's wife, and now she walks right past me."

Young, who played solo and also with former band mates David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, was most vocal about attacking corporate farming. Wearing a straw hat and a Stop Factory Farming T-shirt, he used breaks between such songs as "Powderfinger" and "Cowgirl in the Sand" to appeal for contributions. "I want to set a record here tonight," he said. "Let's make Jerry Lewis move over to the left or something."

John Mellencamp's acoustic set was subdued, perhaps more so than his fans wanted. Beginning with a cover of "Street Fighting Man," he also mixed in introspective versions of "Little Pink Houses" and "Rain on the Scarecrow."

The hour had grown late by the time Nelson took the stage. He rushed through a few songs before bringing all the performers out for a finale of "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." It featured a respectable harmonica solo by Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.).

Then, even as most of the crowd headed for the exits, Nelson returned to the stage with his band and soldiered on. Through the years, Nelson's reedy tenor has gone in and out of fashion, but he has never altered his style, as a musician or otherwise. Playing for the faithful fans who remained, it was as if Nelson were trying to will small farmers his own craggy, deep-rooted resilience. And who knows, maybe he did.

---

Chili Peppers, Foos, Dave Matthews To Do Bridge School Benefit

Launch.com
9/19/00
http://www.launch.com/Features/fs_Start/?contentType=NEWS&contentId=8061

The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Dave Matthews Band, and Foo Fighters will join host Neil Young and previously announced Beck at the 14th annual Bridge School Benefit at the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California, on October 28-29.

The lineup will also feature classic rockers Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and Young's other storied band, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Opening the shows will be Tegan & Sara, the folk-hop sister duo whose debut album, This Business Of Art, came out earlier this year on Vapor Records, the indie label co-owned by Young.

The annual event benefits the Bridge School for individuals with severe speech and physical impairments.

-- Neal Weiss, Los Angeles

Got news tips, comments, or questions? Send them to newstips@launch.com

-------

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

1. WAGING WAR IN SPACE
From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" <globalnet@mindspring.com>

2. Final House Judiciary Subc.testimony, fact sheet, analysis and draft legislation
From: easlavin@aol.com

3. NRC & NEI Plans For Gutting Nuclear Safety- Deregualtion for Dollars pamphlet
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

4. Alliance Landfill Accepted 'Hot' Truck (PA)
From: df7332@aol.com

5. NRC PNO: LLW Tractor Truck Burns
From: df7332@aol.com

6. SIGN ONS NEEDED BY NGOs-NIX MOX sign-on letter
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

7. NucNews 00/09/20 - Daybook; Presidential Candidates; Activist Announcements
From: Ellen Thomas <prop1@prop1.org>

---------

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000
From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" <globalnet@mindspring.com>

Waging War From Space

By C. V. Gopalakrishnan
http://www.the-hindu.com/stories/05192524.htm

THE RUSSIAN President, Mr. Vladimir Putin's criticism of the militarisation of Space, while addressing the United Nations on the challenges it is facing in the 21st century, has obviously been provoked by his anxiety over the scope for use of outer space for waging war. The same technology which is now extensively used for instant telecommunication, accurate cloud mapping, weather forecasting, broadcasting and television can be used with the required adapations for geo-strategic spying from space. Missiles hurled into space to zero in on their targeted locations by ill-advised military decisions could spark a war which could be directed from space. If the missiles are nuclear- tipped, their destructive potential will be enough to depopulate the globe.

This is not a horror or a science-fiction inspired scenario but the projection of what could become dreadfully real if the militarisation of Space, which has in fact already begun, is pursued to its logical end. The other danger, which is just as unnerving, is that the technology for the breakthroughs in Space- oriented missile operations are now being achieved through commercial and not secret military research as was the case earlier. This could, therefore, lead to global, commercial use of the same. ``Among these technologies´´, says the Strategic Survey 1996-97 carried out by The International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, ``are cheap guidance and navigation systems based on the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS)´´ which can provide ``one-metre satellite resolution imagery to target fixed objects, new guidance and navigation technology for cruise missiles´´ which can ensure accurate delivery. Intelligence- gathering satellite capability to carry high-powered optical equipment with a resolution of 2 to 3 metres and electronic devices and radar for all weather and night observation has in fact a history dating back to the 1970s. (Nuclear Command and Control in NATO by Shaun R. Gregory, Macmillan Press Ltd., London). It was the Space-based GPS with its night and low light vision devices which were deployed by the U.S. in the Gulf War. The NATO, however, could not allay fears of France about the vulnerability of its strategic nuclear command and control to a variety of threats from the Warsaw Pact countries during the Cold War.

The launching of Sputnik, the world's first spacecraft, by the erstwhile Soviet Union in 1957 set the pace not merely for making Space the arena for surveillance, communication, navigation and meteorology but also for military applications. Though the U.S. moon-landing was generally seen as the first step towards further space exploration, the fearsome military possibilities it held out were hinted at in something like a hiss when President Kennedy said ``No one can predict what the ultimate meaning will be of the mastery of space´´. (Quoted in War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century. By Alvin and Heidi Toffler. Little Brown Company, U.S.). The Gulf War of 1990-91 gave very clear indications of how Space could be used to target locations on Earth with infrared devices. Later in 1993, the Chief of the U.S. Air Force left no one in any doubt when he said that it must find a way to get on with the construction of capabilities aimed at ensuring that no nation denies it part of its hard-won space superiority. The Gulf War was in fact won by the U.N.-led operations against an enemy who could not blind and disable the U.S. military satellites and had no access to Space.

``Military Space Forces: The Next 50 Years´´, a study commissioned by the U.S. Congress, is an exhaustive discussion of how Space is bound to become the military base of the future. The relevance of the moon landing to military operations is clearly spelt out in the study when it points out that the decisive control of the L4 and L5 ``liberation points´´ (which are locations in Space where the gravitational pulls of the earth and the moon are exactly equal) would be the decisive requirement for the prospective winner. This is more clearly spelt by the study when it says that ``Who controls circumterrestrial space commands Planet Earth. Who rules the moon commands circumterrestrial space´´.

Space, however, does not hold out a wholly safe haven for military operations because of the technology now available for frustrating them. The Gulf War itself revealed the vulnerability of U.S. satellite communications which would have come to light if Iraq had the time to design and develop devices for interception, jamming and deception. There is now global availability of technology, over which neither the U.S. nor any other country can acquire exclusive control, for getting sophisticated images of tanks or troops or missile emplacements with a 15-foot accuracy. The ring of satellites which commercial firms are planning to put around the Earth could ensure communications which are invulnerable to jamming. Terrestrial proliferation of electronic networks could provide satellite intelligence to whoever needs and could pay for it. Apart from enabling snooping of strategic military locations, the satellite-based Open Skies military inspection facilities developed by the U.S. imparted a fitness to aerial reconnaisance. The space-based sensors of the synthetic aperture radar could see through any weather and operate at night and take a close look at objects which could not otherwise be seen beyond ten feet. The inexcusable folly of militarisation of space, already begun at a cost of several million dollars, for waging wars which cannot be won decisively by any country can be seen in the neglect of a great many possibilities held out by Space.

The positive achievements so far are led by the communications satellites, which have made the world a global village by enabling instant voice and visual transmission around the world. Weather forecasts can now save thousands of lives by tracking down cyclones. ``Unless we spend more, not less money, on the practical uses of Space,´´ writes Mr. Arthur C. Clarke in his ``Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds´´ (HarperCollins Publishers), ``millions will be condemned to live ignorant, disease-ridden lives when they live at all´´.

As for the billions of dollars spent on the military use of Space, he is happy that the same military establishments launched the reconnisance satellites which exposed them. ``We may well thank the secret reconnaisance satellites which make it impossible to conceal large scale military operations for the fact that our planet is not already a radioactive ruin.´´

The orbiting velocity of the Geostationary Launch Vehicle (GSLV) is the same as that of the Earth and it provides for the unrestricted use of a band not less than 100,000 megacycles per second wide. Though the initial cost of launching will be high, it would be just a fraction of what is required for the present world networks. The promises held out for not merely enriching life on Earth but also for the exploration of the galaxies should reveal the utter stupidity of using Space for military purposes.

Moves of militarisation of Space can only be reflective of a mad death wish given the possibilities for annihilation they could unleash, from which the end of the Cold War should have saved the human race.

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: Tue, 19 Sep 2000
From: easlavin@aol.com

Final House Judiciary Subc.testimony, fact sheet, analysis and draft legislation

Good morning: Attached are the final version of my written House Judiciary Committee testimony, fact sheet, analysis and draft legislation, the Nuclear Weapons Workers, Atomic Veterans and Residents Compensation and Health Act of 2000. Regards, Ed Slavin

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

Message: 3
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

NRC & NEI Plans For Gutting Nuclear Safety- Deregualtion for Dollars pamphlet
Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project

Deregulation for Dollars details the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Nuclear Energy Institute's plans for gutting nuclear safety regulations.

Now you can view Deregulation for Dollars on our website at this address:
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/nuclearsafety/dereg%20pamphlet.PDF

Questions about the CMEP-list can be directed to cmep@citizen.org

To learn more about this and other issues Critical Mass Energy Project works on, visit our website at www.citizen.org .

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

Message: 4
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000
From: df7332@aol.com

PENNET - PENNSLYVANIA ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK <http://www.penweb.org/>
9/19/00 Eastern Daylight Time
catalyst@envirolink.org (Mike Ewall) Thursday, September 14, 2000

Alliance accepted 'hot' truck
By John Decker
TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

The truck that was turned away from a Berks County landfill after setting off the facility's radiation detector was spray-painted with the word "HOT" on both sides of the trailer before being sent on its way.

Still, the truck managed to get through the gates of Alliance Landfill in Taylor, where the radioactive load was eventually dumped.

The message on the truck was painted by a worker at Allied Waste's Conestoga Landfill in Morgantown.

Mark Carmon, a Department of Environmental Protection spokesman, said Conestoga workers mark the trucks as a "control mechanism."

The workers do so because it's not unheard of for a truck detected for radiation to leave the facility and re-enter in hopes that the monitor will not pick up radiation levels a second time, he explained.

"Trucks are going in and out all the time," Mr. Carmon said. "This way they can't get lost in the crowd and get in."

Mr. Carmon said DEP investigators are concerned how such an obvious message could have gone undetected by Alliance workers when the truck pulled into the landfill a day later.

DEP's ongoing investigation into the situation also has revealed that the truck's manifest was doctored, with the drop-off date and point of disposal scratched out and changed.

"No flags went up. No questions were asked. And that's what concerns us," Mr. Carmon said of Alliance's control system.

At the time, Kephart Trucking, the company responsible for delivering the load from a Connecticut transfer station, was a customer of both Alliance and Conestoga, which are competitors.

Because of this incident, Alliance district general manager Chris Ruane said a Kephart truck will never again enter the facility. It's Mr. Ruane's position that the truck driver knowingly and willingly delivered the load to Alliance, knowing it was not permitted. The nature of the dumped material has not been determined. "In some ways, we feel like we are a victim," Mr. Ruane said Wednesday.

As far as the "HOT" message, Mr. Ruane said that is in no way an industry method and "would not mean anything to us."

Mr. Ruane recommends DEP institute a system that would immediately notify all landfills of a rejected load to lessen the chance of something like this happening again. He said Alliance was not notified until 30 hours after the rejection at Conestoga. "You can't see radioactivity," he said.

Alliance plans to install its own monitors in the near future, Mr. Ruane added.

He pointed out that a sweep by DEP and Alliance's emergency response contractor showed radiation was below normal levels. Mr. Carmon acknowledged Conestoga's radioactive monitors are set very low and can be easily triggered. Mr. Ruane said discarded smoke detectors have been know to set off monitors.

Mr. Carmon also pointed out that a bandage or adult diaper that has come in contact with bodily fluids of a person receiving medical treatment with radioactive material could also activate a meter.

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

Message: 5 Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 23:07:06 EDT From: df7332@aol.com Subject: NRC PNO: LLW Tractor Truck Burns

<http://www.nrc.gov/OPA/pn/pn200035.html>

PNO-II-00-035 - BWX Technologies, Inc.
September 11, 2000
PRELIMINARY NOTIFICATION OF EVENT OR UNUSUAL OCCURRENCE PNO-II-00-035

This preliminary notification constitutes EARLY notice of events of possible safety or public interest significance. The information is as initially received without verification or evaluation, and is basically all that is known by Region II staff (Atlanta, Georgia) on this date.

Facility BWX Technologies, Inc. Mt. Athos Rd.- Route 726 Lynchburg, VA 24504 Dockets:70-27

Licensee Emergency Classification Notification of Unusual Event Alert Site Area Emergency General Emergency Not Applicable

Tractor Truck Hauling Low Level Nuclear Wastes Burns

On September 9, 2000, BWXT notified the NRC Senior Resident Inspector that at approximately 4:00 p.m. a tractor truck hauling a trailer of low level wastes burned on I-24 west near Nashville, Tennessee. The trailer containing the wastes was not breached and there was no damage to the low level waste in the trailer. There were no injuries and no other vehicles were involved.

The trailer contained low level wastes with a total of 394 grams of uranium-235 being shipped from BWXT to a disposal site in Utah.

The Tennessee State Police, the Department of Transportation, and a local fire department responded to the scene. The trailer was opened and it was determined that no damage to the shipment had occurred. The trailer was moved to a secure hazardous materials storage area until arrangements could be made to return it to the BWXT facility for reinspection.

There was media interest at the scene by a local television news crew.

This information was discussed with the licensee, and is current as of 11:00 a.m., Sunday, September 10, 2000. The State of Tennessee was notified. Region II will continue to follow the licensee's actions.

Contact: Charles Hughey Deborah Seymour (804) 847-7343 (404) 562-4725

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

Message: 6
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

SIGN ONS NEEDED BY NGOs-NIX MOX sign-on letter
nirs.se@mindspring.com

PLEASE ADD YOUR VOICE TO OPPOSE PLUTONIUM FUEL -- Groups Please Sign the Nix MOX Action Day 2000 Statement Below.

To "sign on" please send your name, group name, city and state to Mary Olson nirs.se@mindspring.com THANK YOU Questions? call 828-251-2060

Statement by World Nongovernmental Organizations Opposing the Use of Plutonium (MOX) Fuel

We, the undersigned representatives of nongovernmental organizations around the world, call on the governments of the United States and Russia to forego the fabrication and use of plutonium (mixed oxide) fuel as a means to render surplus weapons plutonium unsuitable and unavailable for reuse in weapons, and demand that they pursue safer and more proliferation-resistant disposition methods.

We acknowledge that each countrys declaration of roughly 50 metric tons of plutonium as surplus to military needs is a positive step toward worldwide nuclear disarmament and support the goal of preventing this plutonium from being diverted, stolen, or reused in weapons.

In an attempt to achieve this goal, the US and Russian governments have agreed to a plan to convert most of this plutonium into mixed oxide (MOX) plutonium fuel for use in commercial nuclear power reactors (mainly light water reactors) in both Russia and the United States and possibly Canada or other countries. Russia also plans to use weapons MOX in plutonium breeder reactors, which are capable of producing more plutonium than they consume (though during the life of the program they will operate the reactors in such a way as not to produce more plutonium).

We oppose the MOX plan for the following reasons:

It would create a proliferation threat particularly while it is being transported to or stored at reactor sites, as the plutonium in fresh MOX fuel can be separated and used for weapons purposes.

It would establish a MOX infrastructure, thus encouraging reprocessing of plutonium-bearing spent fuel both in the US and Russia. Reprocessing generates vast amounts of high level liquid radioactive waste and increases stockpiles of separated plutonium. (Russia has specifically stated that it would reprocess and re-extract the plutonium at the end of the disposition program.)

It raises many unresolved technical and safety questions as weapons-grade plutonium has never been used as a fuel in commercial reactors. At minimum, it would complicate safe reactor operation and increase the consequences of a severe nuclear reactor accident.

It is likely to take longer and cost more to dispose of plutonium using MOX compared to the current alternative, immobilization.

It would not prevent plutonium from entering the environment. It would merely incorporate it into high-level radioactive waste.

It would breach the barrier between civil and military nuclear activities and undermine global nonproliferation efforts.

We believe that immobilization is a far better option for plutonium disposition. It involves putting plutonium into a non-weapons usable form by mixing it with other materials and making the resultant waste form proliferation resistant, that is, resistant to theft and re-extraction by non-governmental parties or nuclear-capable states.

Under current US-Russian agreements, only the US will pursue immobilization and just for a portion of its surplus plutonium not deemed suitable for MOX. At this time, Russia is not planning on pursuing this option at all, and must be pressed by the international community to reverse its position.

We believe the full amount of plutonium declared surplus by each country should be immobilized and that research and development for immobilization, along with the necessary funding, should be increased to improve and further develop this technology. In the period before immobilization technologies are available, all plutonium should be stored securely and safely and placed under international safeguards.

Further, we believe that any plutonium disposition program must ensure public access to information including, but not limited to: adequate notification of decision timelines, information on program costs, knowledge of operating records of the various actors involved, detailed data on projected environmental impacts, and reliable data on safety and health risks. The public in the communities most directly affected in both countries should have ample opportunity for meaningful input into the decision-making process, including the right to intervene legally.

In both countries there should be sound independent oversight of the program and all aspects of the program should adhere to all relevant environmental or public process laws.

Therefore, we, as concerned colleagues across the globe who embrace efforts to reduce nuclear arms and safely dispose of surplus weapons plutonium, declare International Nix MOX Action Day, September 28, 2000. We pledge to expand a united international movement that will challenge every effort to develop, encourage, or use MOX fuel as a means of plutonium disposition, will work toward the goal of having all plutonium declared surplus, and vow to continue our efforts to ensure the isolation of plutonium from the environment.

Signed,
Pat Ortmeyer Women's Action for New Directions
Kathy Crandall Alliance for Nuclear Accountability
Kimberly Roberts Physicians for Social Responsibility
Michele Boyd Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
Tom Clements Nuclear Control Institute
Mary Olson Nuclear Information Resource Service
Linda Gunter Safe Energy Communication Council

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Message: 7
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000
From: Ellen Thomas <prop1@prop1.org>

NucNews 00/09/20 - Daybook; Presidential Candidates; Activist Announcements

Washington Times Daybook, September 20, 2000, Agence France Presse .http://www.washtimes.com/national/daybook-2000920211633.htm

Transnational organized-crime conference - all day -Jane's Information Group holds a conference, "Transnational Organized Crime." Location: Ronald Reagan Building/International Trade Center, 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. Contact: 703/683-3700, Ext. 204.

-- PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

- George W. Bush and Al Gore - unknown

- Ralph Nader -

- Wednesday, Sept 20,

1:00 PM - Milwaukee, WI - Rally with Ralph Nader and Michael Moore, UW Milwaukee University, Student Union

5:00 PM - Madison, WI - Reception with Ralph Nader and Michael Moore, Madison Civic Center, Starlight Room, 211 State Street, RSVP to Robert McChesney (mailto:rwmcches@uiuc.edu)

7:00 PM - "A Wisconsin Night with Nader" Rally for Open Debates, With Ralph Nader, Ed Garvey, and Michael Moore, Followed by The Great Mobilization: DJs, Bands, & Videos, Orpheum, 216 State Street

NADER DENOUNCES PLAN TO STORE NUCLEAR WASTE IN NEVADA

LAS VEGAS, NV, Sept. 15--Ralph Nader today denounced plans to transport 70,000 tons of nuclear waste to a permanent storage site in Nevada's Yucca Mountain 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas.Nader said the project puts at risk the health and safety of 50 million people in 43 states who would be in the path of the cross-country nuclear waste transports. He said each truck could hold up to 40 times the long-lasting, deadly radiation that was released by the Hiroshima bomb. If the waste is transported by rail, a single train cask could hold more than 200 times the radiation released at Hiroshima.

Nader, the Green Party candidate for President, warned that the Department of Energy and the nuclear power industry are intensifying efforts to get the Yucca Mountain site approved. He noted that DOE had recently attempted to persuade Congress to strip the State of Nevada of its power to enforce federal and state environmental and other regulations. The state government opposes the project on the basis of concerns about the public health, safety, environmental and financial risks. There is also concern about fairness to Western Shoshone whose land would be occupied by the project.

Nader said he agreed with local groups which are arguing that it is in public's best interest to keep the country's nuclear waste on site instead of transporting it across the nation to Nevada. The sites around the nation where the waste is currently located have been licensed for nuclear reactors and this should mean that they are on solid, stable ground with no serious earthquake risks.

In contrast, Nader said, the Yucca Mountain site is affected by geologic faulting. As recently as 1992 an earthquake of 5.6 on the Richter scale struck an area less than 12 miles south of Yucca Mountain followed by several hundred aftershocks.

Nader said the major push for the nuclear repository comes from lobbyists for the nuclear industry who are nervous about keeping the waste on their property and retaining liability for accidents. "It is much more to the advantage of these corporations to abdicate their responsibility by turning the waste over to the federal government and letting it be a problem for Nevada," Nader said.

-- ANNOUNCEMENTS --

- Implementing Plan Colombia: The U.S. Role DATE: Thursday, September 21, 2000, TIME: 9:30 AM OPEN meeting of the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere to be held in Room 2172 Rayburn HOB

- Don't forget September 28th is International Nix-MOX Action Day. Please sign and send the following statement to: mailto:nirs.se@mindspring.com (Mary Olson). Questions? call 828-251-2060 - http://www.nirs.org/mox/moxtrit.htm - NIRS home page: http://www.nirs.org/

- INVITATION TO ISSUE AN INTERNATIONAL CALL TO PRAYER, FASTING AND ACTION FOR PEACE IN VIEQUES, PUERTO RICO - OCTOBER 2, 2000

This date marks Gandhi's birthday and is the day following a "Grand March" in Vieques. It also takes place just as the U.S. Navy plans another round of bombing. Many who signed the June 28 letter, including religious leaders in Puerto Rico, have already decided to co-sponsor this call. The invitation is open to all who want to co-sponsor.

Please inform us by Thursday, September 21 if you plan to be part of the initial group of leaders and others who issue the call. We will announce the call in a Press Conference across from the White House soon thereafter. Forthcoming announcements will be made as more sponsors sign-on.

For more information contact: Fast for Justice and Peace in Vieques, Puerto Rico, 1804 S Street, NW, Washington, D.C., 20009, tel: 202-232-1999, fax: 202-328-0627

- You are invited to the Great Basin Nuclear Free Gathering October 6TH - 9TH, 2000, Peace Camp - Newe Sogobia Across from the main entrance to the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles Northwest of Las Vegas, NV, Mercury Exit off Hwy 95.

For more information please call: 702-647-3095 Sponsored By: Shundahai Network, and Citizen Alert http://www.shundahai.org/great_basin_2k.html

- CALL Gore Campaign HQ - Nashville, TN - 615-341-0230, 615-340-2000 and Democratic National Committee HQ - Washington DC, 202-863-8000 WHAT TO SAY:

Stop bombing Iraq! Bombing Iraq will not help Gore out in the polls, and could embarrass him with coordinated, noviolent protests at Gore Campaign HQs across the country. The Democratic party should think twice if they believe killing thousands of Iraqi civilians will help elect their candidate President. [From: "Ramsey Kysia" <mailto:mbakery@erols.com>]

- Fax Congress your objections to radiating food -- Now available on the Public Citizen web site is a way for you to send faxes directly to Congress at no cost to you. By going to the following page: http://www.citizen.org/cmep/rad-food/takeaction/radfoodfax.htm

- Ever wonder where the peace symbol came from? CND - http://fotw.digibel.be/flags/pea-cnd.html

- And while you're at it, have you seen Shundahai's website lately? Good work, guys! Especially liked the picture of Ralph Nader and Corbin Harney. Had no idea Ralph was so tall. http://www.shundahai.org/

- RAND Report summary on Plutonium For those of us looking at the "inextriciable link" between nuclear weapons and nuclear power, here's an interesting publication. [Alice Slater <mailto:aslater@gracelinks.org>] http://www.rand.org/publications/RB/RB7405/index.html

- Deregulation for Dollars details the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Nuclear Energy Institute's plans for gutting nuclear safety regulations. Now you can view Deregulation for Dollars on our website at this address: http://www.citizen.org/cmep/nuclearsafety/dereg%20pamphlet.PDF The pamphlet is saved in Adobe Acrobat. You can download Adobe Acrobat for free at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html [From: "Noel Petrie" <mailto:npetrie@citizen.org>]

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DOEWatch List ----A Magnum-Opus Project
Subscribe online: http://www.onelist.com
DOEWatch page: http://members.aol.com/doewatch

1. French to Check Liaison Officers for Gulf Syndrome
From: magnu96196@aol.com

2. Platts - Tuesday, September 19, 2000
From: "Paul Maser" <pmaser@govmail.state.nv.us>

3. Truck carrying radioactive waste struck; no contamination found
From: magnu96196@aol.com

4. Tractor Truck Hauling Low Level Nuclear Wastes Burns
From: magnu96196@aol.com

5. $12.2 million contract awarded to cap old nuclear dump at ORNL
From: magnu96196@aol.com

6. FW: Fw: Neil Aiken vs Pacific Gas and Electric
From: "Paul M. Blanch" <pmblanch@home.com>

7. Supplement to FOIA 2000-2070
From: "Paul M. Blanch" <pmblanch@home.com>

8. NRC & NEI Plans For Gutting Nuclear Safety- Deregualtion for Dollars pamphlet
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

9. Alliance Landfill Accepted 'Hot' Truck (PA)
From: df7332@aol.com

11. Isn't it time to give Persian Gulf War veterans benefit of the doubt?
From: magnu96196@aol.com

12. Ole Inky and K-25, Y-12, and X-10
From: magnu96196@aol.com

13. SIGN ONS NEEDED BY NGOs-NIX MOX sign-on letter
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

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

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

French to Check Liaison Officers for Gulf Syndrome

September 14, 2000

PARIS (Reuters) - France, which suspects vaccines given to U.S. and British soldiers were responsible for so-called Gulf War Syndrome, is to check the health records of Frenchmen who served as liaison personnel with allied forces in the conflict.

``We're pretty well convinced that certain Frenchmen were vaccinated together with the (allied) troops they were stationed with,'' defense ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau told reporters.

Defense Minister Alain Richard announced on Wednesday the creation of an independent commission into the health of the French military who served in the Gulf War.

The decision came after about 80 veterans said they suffered from mysterious illnesses ranging from flu to chronic fatigue and asthma -- just like U.S. and British veterans complaining about ``Gulf War syndrome.''

France will also ask Washington whether American troops who served under French command, receiving U.S. vaccines, had medical records any different from other U.S. troops.

A U.S. artillery brigade of about 3,000 men was attached to the French Daguet light armored division in the 1991 conflict.

Armed forces medical corps spokesman Colonel Michel Estripeau, himself a doctor, said France's belief that allied troops were victims of their own protective measures were based on a long series of meetings with U.S. medical experts.

``About 100,000 of the 600,000 Americans who served in the Gulf complain of ailments tentatively been lumped under the Gulf War syndrome heading.

``No one has yet come to definitive conclusions but we note that of 25,000 Frenchmen who served in the Gulf, only 180 have ailments whose origin could be in question. The only really major difference between the two groups is vaccinations,'' he said.

Estripeau said U.S. troops received massive ``cocktails'' of drugs for long periods as preventive treatment against possible chemical or biological attacks, while the French received limited treatments only when they might be in danger.

Defense Minister Richard said on Wednesday that, contrary to the U.S., the French did not make their soldiers take regular doses of pyridostigmine bromide -- a drug used to protect against nerve agents Iraq is known to possess.

Comments:

Vaccines contain mercury compound as a preservative. Infants when vaccinated are often overdosed on mercury. Many vaccines give at once in the Gulf War did not help this effect. The asthma, CFS, and flu like ills match exposure to an air toxic and the effects of low level fluorides over a long exposure time. Similar health effects happen around gas diffusion plants

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Message: 2
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 08:59:34 -0700
From: "Paul Maser" <pmaser@govmail.state.nv.us>

Platts - Tuesday, September 19, 2000
Nuclear News Flashes

London

Sellafield MOX Plant could be abandoned before it operates British Nuclear Fuels plc (BNFL) could abandon its completed Sellafield MOX Plant (SMP) if Japanese orders for mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel don't materialize, BNFL Chief Executive Norman Askew said late last week. "Without Japanese orders we cannot justify opening the MOX plant," he said, adding, "We have until about next January or February to convince the Japanese" before terminating the 462-million-pound (U.S.$650-million) plant. BNFL had hoped by now to have regained Japanese confidence following the MOX quality control data falsification scandal that unfolded during the last year, so Japanese utilities could start new contract negotiations for the plutonium-based MOX fuel. That hasn't happened. In order for SMP to break even, it must operate at 30%-40% of its so-called "reference case" load, yet only 6.7% is now subject to firm contracts. Until recently, BNFL executives had pressed the U.K. government to authorize full SMP operation on grounds it would encourage the Japanese to commit to further business. Askew's comments appear to acknowledge that sufficient orders upfront are essential to SMP's operation. SMP has awaited regulatory approval for more than three years, and added to the drain on BNFL operations, which last week reported a fiscal 1999/2000 loss of 337-million pounds (U.S.$476-million).

--------
Nuclear News Flashes
September 18, 2000

Stockholm

Stolt to continue training Kursk divers After tough negotiations, Russian officials and Stolt Offshore have agreed to continue training for Russian divers expected to help in salvaging the Kursk nuclear submarine, which sunk in the Barents Sea last month. Diver s will begin final training for the operation tomorrow. It has not yet been decided, however, whether divers will bring up the crew's bodies now and wait until next summer to try to bring up the sub, or whether the entire operation will be done at once next summer. Negotiations had broken down over the cost of the job, which the Russians want to limit to $3-million. Stolt says that depending on how work is done, the cost could be much hig her. The Russians have said Norwegian divers will not be permitted to enter the Kursk. Stolt is the private Norwegian company whose divers attempted to rescue the sub's crew after the accident.

--------
Nuclear News Flashes
September 18, 2000

Vienna

IAEA will support non-proliferating reactors The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stands ready to support Russian President Vladimir Putin's initiative to develop new non-proliferating nuclear technology, Director General Mohamed ElBaradei told the opening of the agency's 44th General Conference. At the United Nations' Millennium Summit in New York earlier this month, Putin called for an international project to develop new reactors and fuel cycles that would not produce separated weapons-grade material and could burn long- lived materials from weapons stockpiles. The project is expected to be discussed by delegates to the IAEA General Conference, which runs through this week.

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Message: 3
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 12:00:12 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Truck carrying radioactive waste struck; no contamination found

September 19, 2000
http://www.dispatch.com/news/newsfea00/sep00/426307.html

Health officials found no contamination yesterday after a tractor-trailer hauling low-level radioactive waste was rear-ended yesterday afternoon near I-270 and Rt. 33 on the Southeast Side.

The crash occurred just after noon when a garbage truck struck the rear end of a flatbed trailer hauling radioactive sludge. Neither driver was injured.

The truck was hauling three large steel crates filled with radioactive sludge, including uranium and thorium compounds, said Jim Colleli, a health physicist with the Ohio Department of Health.

The shipment, from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, was traveling to the Alaron company in Pennsylvania, where it was to be processed.

A liquid, thought to be water, was found leaking from the side of one of the crates and health officials were notified. They found no radioactivity, Colleli said.

Eastbound traffic on I-270, which runs parallel to stretches of the Big Walnut Creek, was backed up for more than seven hours.

The Portsmouth plant produces enriched uranium used as fuel for the nuclear-power plants that supply about 20 percent of the country's electricity.

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Message: 4
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 14:03:10 EDT
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Tractor Truck Hauling Low Level Nuclear Wastes Burns

http://www.nrc.gov/OPA/pn/pn200035.html

PNO-II-00-035 - BWX Technologies, Inc. September 11, 2000
PRELIMINARY NOTIFICATION OF EVENT OR UNUSUAL OCCURRENCE PNO-II-00-035

This preliminary notification constitutes EARLY notice of events of possible safety or public interest significance. The information is as initially received without verification or evaluation, and is basically all that is known by Region II staff (Atlanta, Georgia) on this date.

Facility BWX Technologies, Inc. Mt. Athos Rd.- Route 726 Lynchburg, VA 24504 Dockets:70-27

Licensee Emergency Classification Notification of Unusual Event Alert Site Area Emergency General Emergency Not Applicable


Tractor Truck Hauling Low Level Nuclear Wastes Burns

On September 9, 2000, BWXT notified the NRC Senior Resident Inspector that at approximately 4:00 p.m. a tractor truck hauling a trailer of low level wastes burned on I-24 west near Nashville, Tennessee. The trailer containing the wastes was not breached and there was no damage to the low level waste in the trailer. There were no injuries and no other vehicles were involved.

The trailer contained low level wastes with a total of 394 grams of uranium-235 being shipped from BWXT to a disposal site in Utah.

The Tennessee State Police, the Department of Transportation, and a local fire department responded to the scene. The trailer was opened and it was determined that no damage to the shipment had occurred. The trailer was moved to a secure hazardous materials storage area until arrangements could be made to return it to the BWXT facility for reinspection.

There was media interest at the scene by a local television news crew.

This information was discussed with the licensee, and is current as of 11:00 a.m., Sunday, September 10, 2000. The State of Tennessee was notified. Region II will continue to follow the licensee's actions.

Contact: Charles Hughey Deborah Seymour (804) 847-7343 (404) 562-4725

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Message: 5
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

$12.2 million contract awarded to cap old nuclear dump at ORNL

September 19, 2000
By Frank Munger, News-Sentinel Oak Ridge bureau
http://www.knoxnews.com /business/15225.shtml

OAK RIDGE -- A Colorado-based company has received a $12.2 million contract to cap an old dump at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and take other actions to prevent nuclear pollutants from seeping into local streams. MACTEC Inc., an environmental engineering firm, was awarded the four-year contract by Bechtel Jacobs Co., the U.S. Department of Energy's environmental manager in Oak Ridge.

The contractor will build a cap on Solid Waste Storage Area No. 4 and other contaminated areas nearby, thus reducing the infiltration of rainwater. The old burial site received vast amounts of radioactive waste during the 1950s and '60s, as well as construction debris in later years.

MACTEC, based in Golden, Colo., with offices in Knoxville, will remove several acres of contaminated soil from the floodplain of White Oak Creek and reroute a road that runs through the area to be capped. The Oak Ridge project also includes construction of a groundwater collection and treatment system at the site.

Mark Musolf, a spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs, said the actions are expected to improve the water quality in White Oak Creek. The work is to be completed by October 2004.

The project is the first of several to be done in the next few years to clean up pollution in the Melton Valley portion of DOE's Oak Ridge reservation.

Frank Munger can be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net.

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

Message: 6
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000
From: "Paul M. Blanch" <pmblanch@home.com>

Neil Aiken vs Pacific Gas and Electric

NRC OI Fails to Successfully Hide Smoking Gun in Aikens Case

Prior to ignoring evidence in the Neil Aikens case, OI ignored evidence of whistleblowers targeted in the Millstone 1996 layoffs. After sitting on employee allegations for about a year, OI closed the Millstone investigation after a review of the layoff methods used, finding no discrimination. Problem is, the outraged employees had been claiming discrimination not in the layoff method, but prior to the layoffs, pointing to a pile of evidence. Apparently OI did not want to turn over any rocks that could lead to the difficult and contentious path of criminal prosecution, so OI put blinders on, saw what they wanted to see, and made the case they wanted to make: no discrimination. The message from the company was: "although OI found no widespread evidence of discrimination, the changes being made at Millstone will ensure it will not happen again". The handling of the OI investigation of Neil Aikens was no great surprise to people at Millstone. One has to expect the AEC (excuse me - I mean the NRC) to be somewhat aligned with the sensibilities of plant owners.The NRC is paid by the owners, the resident inspectors live in their house, and most of their interactions are with plant managers. Add on top of this the fact that exposing any wrong-doing at the plant makes the NRC look almost as bad as the owners, and the surprise is the times that the NRC sides with employees. Notice these times include smoking guns, shells with fingerprints, and dead bodies. Much harder to hide than mere smoking guns.

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

Message: 7
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000
From: "Paul M. Blanch" <pmblanch@home.com>

Supplement to FOIA 2000-2070

Dear Ms. Brown:

The above FOIA request was for the OI report discussing the treatment of Neil Aiken of Pacific Gas and Electric. Your office responded to this request in its entirety on August 30, 2000.

The US Department of Labor also conducted an investigation of the same allegations and came to an opposite conclusion from the NRC. It appears that the DOL based its conclusion in part, on notes from Dr. Park Dietz and PG&E executives. In these notes, according to the DOL, PG&E consulted with Dr. Dietz and discussed three different ways to remove Mr. Aiken from his position at Diablo. This discussion took place shortly after PG&E became aware of Mr. Aiken making his safety concerns public at the annual shareholders meeting.

The NRC has informed me that they have reviewed the entire DOL investigation along with all exhibits and the OI conclusion remains unchanged.

My initial FOIA request did not request exhibits or copies of interviews. OI apparently had a copy of the Dietz notes but chose not to include or discuss these notes as supporting documentation in its investigation.

As the NRC has stated to me they have reviewed the entire DOL file I can assume the NRC has a copy of these notes from Dr. Dietz.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, please provide me with a copy of these notes from Dr. Dietz documenting discussions with PG&E executives the various means to remove Mr. Aiken from his position at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.

Paul M. Blanch 135 Hyde Rd. West Hartford, CT 06117 860-447-1791 x0555 FAX 305-847-6223

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Message: 8
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000 16:30:00 -0400
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

NRC & NEI Plans For Gutting Nuclear Safety- Deregualtion for Dollars pamphlet

Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project

Deregulation for Dollars details the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Nuclear Energy Institute's plans for gutting nuclear safety regulations.

Now you can view Deregulation for Dollars on our website at this address:
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/nuclearsafety/dereg%20pamphlet.PDF

Questions about the CMEP-list can be directed to cmep@citizen.org

To learn more about this and other issues Critical Mass Energy Project works on, visit our website at www.citizen.org .

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

Message: 9
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2000
From: df7332@aol.com

Alliance Landfill Accepted 'Hot' Truck (PA)

To All:
FYI
If you haven't done so already, you may want to take a look.
PENNET - PENNSLYVANIA ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK <http://www.penweb.org/>

Thursday, September 14, 2000
By John Decker TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

The truck that was turned away from a Berks County landfill after setting off the facility's radiation detector was spray-painted with the word "HOT" on both sides of the trailer before being sent on its way.

Still, the truck managed to get through the gates of Alliance Landfill in Taylor, where the radioactive load was eventually dumped.

The message on the truck was painted by a worker at Allied Waste's Conestoga Landfill in Morgantown.

Mark Carmon, a Department of Environmental Protection spokesman, said Conestoga workers mark the trucks as a "control mechanism."

The workers do so because it's not unheard of for a truck detected for radiation to leave the facility and re-enter in hopes that the monitor will not pick up radiation levels a second time, he explained.

"Trucks are going in and out all the time," Mr. Carmon said. "This way they can't get lost in the crowd and get in."

Mr. Carmon said DEP investigators are concerned how such an obvious message could have gone undetected by Alliance workers when the truck pulled into the landfill a day later.

DEP's ongoing investigation into the situation also has revealed that the truck's manifest was doctored, with the drop-off date and point of disposal scratched out and changed.

"No flags went up. No questions were asked. And that's what concerns us," Mr. Carmon said of Alliance's control system.

At the time, Kephart Trucking, the company responsible for delivering the load from a Connecticut transfer station, was a customer of both Alliance and Conestoga, which are competitors.

Because of this incident, Alliance district general manager Chris Ruane said a Kephart truck will never again enter the facility. It's Mr. Ruane's position that the truck driver knowingly and willingly delivered the load to Alliance, knowing it was not permitted. The nature of the dumped material has not been determined.

"In some ways, we feel like we are a victim," Mr. Ruane said Wednesday.

As far as the "HOT" message, Mr. Ruane said that is in no way an industry method and "would not mean anything to us."

Mr. Ruane recommends DEP institute a system that would immediately notify all landfills of a rejected load to lessen the chance of something like this happening again. He said Alliance was not notified until 30 hours after the rejection at Conestoga. "You can't see radioactivity," he said.

Alliance plans to install its own monitors in the near future, Mr. Ruane added.

He pointed out that a sweep by DEP and Alliance's emergency response contractor showed radiation was below normal levels. Mr. Carmon acknowledged Conestoga's radioactive monitors are set very low and can be easily triggered. Mr. Ruane said discarded smoke detectors have been know to set off monitors.

Mr. Carmon also pointed out that a bandage or adult diaper that has come in contact with bodily fluids of a person receiving medical treatment with radioactive material could also activate a meter.

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Message: 11
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Isn't it time to give Persian Gulf War veterans benefit of the doubt?
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/ed-letters-2000919235310.htm#3

For years we have listened to elected officials and bureaucrats claim that when our nation's war veterans return from combat we must not split hairs in caring for their battle-related injuries and illnesses. In 1998, Congress passed and the president signed the Gulf War Veterans Act, which listed a number of toxic substances to which the veterans may have been exposed. Now, two years later, the Institute of Medicine has come forward with a report on one of those substances, the chemical warfare agent sarin.

The report concludes that "there is sufficient evidence of a causal relationship between exposure to sarin and a dose-dependent acute cholinergic syndrome that is evident seconds to hours subsequent to exposure [and symptoms begin to disappear] in days to months." The report cites "limited or suggestive evidence of an association between exposure to sarin at doses sufficient to cause acute cholinergic signs and symptoms and subsequent long-term health effects." Finally, it reports "inadequate/insufficient evidence to determine whether an association does or does not exist between exposure to sarin at low doses insufficient to cause acute cholinergic signs and symptoms and subsequent long-term adverse health effects." In the case of low-dose exposures, the committee recommended that additional studies should be conducted and also that surveillance continue of the health of the survivors of a 1996 terrorist attack in Japan involving the use of sarin.

These conclusions raised several questions during one Institute of Medicine briefing upon the release of this report. Notably, it was asked what the signs of acute sarin exposure are. The institute responded that among the symptoms were muscle cramping, stinging eyes, excessive sweating and miosis (contraction of the pupils of the eyes). It was then asked whether these symptoms would be distinguishable (in the absence of knowledge of an actual sarin attack) by a typical lay individual, a troop commander, or medic from the general sweating, eyes stinging from sweat, and the stomach churning anxiety of the type that might be experienced while actually engaging in or preparing for combat. The answer was no, that quite possibly an untrained observer would not be able to tell the difference.

Also in the report is an analysis of the symptoms being suffered by the victims of the Tokyo subway sarin terrorist attack of 1996. Remarkably, the individuals who were exposed to the deadly gas during the attack and who exhibited signs of acute sarin exposure have symptoms similar to those being reported by Gulf War veterans. And while many of these symptoms were noted in a control group of unexposed individuals, the rate at which they were reported was two to eight times greater in the exposed Japanese populations.

Coincidentally (or not), this was the same phenomenon that was observed when Gulf War veterans were compared with their fellow soldiers who were not deployed to the Middle East in studies published over the past several years.

With the issuance of this report and the publication of the many congressional reports and scientific articles that contributed to these conclusions, the secretary of Veterans Affairs now has 60 days to determine whether Gulf War veterans suffering from the symptoms being reported by the survivors of the sarin terrorist attack in Japan will be given the benefit of the doubt by ruling that their illnesses are service connected.

Do we really give our veterans the benefit of the doubt? Or will we continue to study this until no doubts, and perhaps no veterans, remain?

JAMES J. TUITE III Annandale

The author is the director of the Interdisciplinary Sciences, Chronic Illness Research Foundation and the former director of an investigation into the "Health Consequences of the Persian Gulf War" conducted by the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs from 1993 to 1995.

=========

Comments:

Excessive sweating is one of the signs of fluoride toxic effect. Sarin is unstable in air and breaks down into other reactive chemical compounds and the fluoride ones cause the problems. Fluorides also cause retention of toxic metals, like DU from penetrator hits and Hg from the vaccines.

Gulf Vets have squalene problems, which can be caused by damage to the skin membranes from the chemical toxic effects of sarin breakdown products.

Other problems like mycoplasmas show up, which can be caused by the chemical oxidation effects on lymph nodes slowing the immune cell response.

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Message: 12
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000
From: magnu96196@aol.com

Ole Inky and K-25, Y-12, and X-10
http://www.oakridger.com/

I worked here most of my career but no one has ever been able to tell me what the names X-10, K-25 , and Y-12 mean. Can you tell me if there is any meaning to these names?

According to "The Oak Ridge Story" by George O. Robinson, there is little significance to these names. The X was used by the University of Chicago in its original description of the site. The 10 had no significance. The K was used because the Kellex Corp. designed the plant. The number 25 was used throughout the Manhattan Project to designate U-235. There is no significance to the Y or 12. Local tradition has it that the plants were given code names that were false map coordinates to fool enemy spies.

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Message: 13
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000
From: "Bill Smirnow" <smirnowb@ix.netcom.com>

SIGN ONS NEEDED BY NGOs-NIX MOX sign-on letter

PLEASE ADD YOUR VOICE TO OPPOSE PLUTONIUM FUEL -- Groups Please Sign the Nix MOX Action Day 2000 Statement Below.

To "sign on" please send your name, group name, city and state to Mary Olson nirs.se@mindspring.com THANK YOU Questions? call 828-251-2060

Statement by World Nongovernmental Organizations Opposing the Use of Plutonium (MOX) Fuel

We, the undersigned representatives of nongovernmental organizations around the world, call on the governments of the United States and Russia to forego the fabrication and use of plutonium (mixed oxide) fuel as a means to render surplus weapons plutonium unsuitable and unavailable for reuse in weapons, and demand that they pursue safer and more proliferation-resistant disposition methods.

We acknowledge that each countrys declaration of roughly 50 metric tons of plutonium as surplus to military needs is a positive step toward worldwide nuclear disarmament and support the goal of preventing this plutonium from being diverted, stolen, or reused in weapons.

In an attempt to achieve this goal, the US and Russian governments have agreed to a plan to convert most of this plutonium into mixed oxide (MOX) plutonium fuel for use in commercial nuclear power reactors (mainly light water reactors) in both Russia and the United States and possibly Canada or other countries. Russia also plans to use weapons MOX in plutonium breeder reactors, which are capable of producing more plutonium than they consume (though during the life of the program they will operate the reactors in such a way as not to produce more plutonium).

We oppose the MOX plan for the following reasons:

It would create a proliferation threat particularly while it is being transported to or stored at reactor sites, as the plutonium in fresh MOX fuel can be separated and used for weapons purposes.

It would establish a MOX infrastructure, thus encouraging reprocessing of plutonium-bearing spent fuel both in the US and Russia. Reprocessing generates vast amounts of high level liquid radioactive waste and increases stockpiles of separated plutonium. (Russia has specifically stated that it would reprocess and re-extract the plutonium at the end of the disposition program.)

It raises many unresolved technical and safety questions as weapons-grade plutonium has never been used as a fuel in commercial reactors. At minimum, it would complicate safe reactor operation and increase the consequences of a severe nuclear reactor accident.

It is likely to take longer and cost more to dispose of plutonium using MOX compared to the current alternative, immobilization.

It would not prevent plutonium from entering the environment. It would merely incorporate it into high-level radioactive waste.

It would breach the barrier between civil and military nuclear activities and undermine global nonproliferation efforts.

We believe that immobilization is a far better option for plutonium disposition. It involves putting plutonium into a non-weapons usable form by mixing it with other materials and making the resultant waste form proliferation resistant, that is, resistant to theft and re-extraction by non-governmental parties or nuclear-capable states.

Under current US-Russian agreements, only the US will pursue immobilization and just for a portion of its surplus plutonium not deemed suitable for MOX. At this time, Russia is not planning on pursuing this option at all, and must be pressed by the international community to reverse its position.

We believe the full amount of plutonium declared surplus by each country should be immobilized and that research and development for immobilization, along with the necessary funding, should be increased to improve and further develop this technology. In the period before immobilization technologies are available, all plutonium should be stored securely and safely and placed under international safeguards.

Further, we believe that any plutonium disposition program must ensure public access to information including, but not limited to: adequate notification of decision timelines, information on program costs, knowledge of operating records of the various actors involved, detailed data on projected environmental impacts, and reliable data on safety and health risks. The public in the communities most directly affected in both countries should have ample opportunity for meaningful input into the decision-making process, including the right to intervene legally.

In both countries there should be sound independent oversight of the program and all aspects of the program should adhere to all relevant environmental or public process laws.

Therefore, we, as concerned colleagues across the globe who embrace efforts to reduce nuclear arms and safely dispose of surplus weapons plutonium, declare International Nix MOX Action Day, September 28, 2000. We pledge to expand a united international movement that will challenge every effort to develop, encourage, or use MOX fuel as a means of plutonium disposition, will work toward the goal of having all plutonium declared surplus, and vow to continue our efforts to ensure the isolation of plutonium from the environment.

Signed,
Pat Ortmeyer Women's Action for New Directions
Kathy Crandall Alliance for Nuclear Accountability
Kimberly Roberts Physicians for Social Responsibility
Michele Boyd Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
Tom Clements Nuclear Control Institute
Mary Olson Nuclear Information Resource Service
Linda Gunter Safe Energy Communication Council

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NUCLEAR POWER CONTENTS

1 China Urges Respect of Rights of Nations to Peaceful Use of
2 IAEA to discuss nuclear reactors in North Korea
3 Murkowski says gov't needs nuke waste action or be sued
4 Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Energy Scarcity
5 Firm wins $4 million TVA contract on waste
6 Truck carrying radioactive waste struck; no contamination found
7 Chem-Nuclear wants to recover costs
8 Settlement reached in dispute over mining venture
9 U.S. Energy Corp. and Crested Corp. to Receive $3.25 Million and
10 ICF Consulting Awarded $19 Million Radiological Emergency
11 American Ecology Subsidiary Lands Waste Processing and Disposal
12 Perry Plant to Host Public Open House
13 Chernobyl Newborns at Risk From 1986 Reactor Blast
14 Clinton Asks Senate to Ratify Spent Fuel Pact
15 New Polymer Coating Immobilizes Chernobyl Radioactive Waste
16 China Rejects Moves to Tighten Regulation of Nuclear Materials
17 IAEA Supports Putin Nuclear Power Initiative
18 More N-dump hearings sought
19 A logical approach to N-waste
20 Hatch Joins N-Waste Opposition
21 Mayors Seek More Time to Comment On Nuclear Storage
22 Utah working to stop Goshute nuclear waste,

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

NUCLEAR POWER ARTICLES

1 China Urges Respect of Rights of Nations to Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
People's Daily Online

A senior Chinese nuclear energy official, in an address to a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) here Monday, urged the respect of justifiable rights of IAEA member states to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

Zhang Huazhu, head of the Chinese delegation to the 44th session of the IAEA General Conference, said that China opposes hampering justifiable rights of member states of the IAEA to peaceful application of nuclear energy under the pretext of non-proliferation.

He said that nuclear non-proliferation and peaceful application of nuclear energy are two well-balanced functions of the IAEA, and that the IAEA should not over-emphasize one aspect while neglecting the other.

Zhang, who is the Director of State Agency of Atomic Energy of China, said that nuclear energy is clean, safe and economical.

Nuclear power accounts for one sixth of the world's power generation at present. In the long run, nuclear energy should play an important role.

According to Zhang, the Chinese delegation believes the IAEA should utilize its advantages to scientifically assess and objectively popularize the function of nuclear energy in the world's sustainable development.

Zhang pointed out that the IAEA should organize information exchange and answer difficult questions about technology to settle the public's common concerns on nuclear safety and disposal of radio-active waste.

Coordinating the research and development work of the member states, improving training and helping developing countries establish and improve nuclear infrastructure should be the IAEA's missions, Zhang added.

Zhang urged developed countries to transfer more technology and provide expert service to developing countries while increasing technological cooperation.

On nuclear safety and disposal of nuclear waste, Zhang said these are the major issues contributing to the public's negative view on nuclear energy and require urgent attention.

The Chinese delegation believes the IAEA, as an authoritative international organization, could improve international conventions and standards on nuclear safety and improve technological exchange to help member states maintain their nuclear safety levels.

On the issue of establishing a reliable shield for non-proliferation, Zhang said the Chinese delegation supports the IAEA in setting up more safeguards and establishing a reliable non-proliferation shield within its mandate.

China also holds that establishing a world-wide stable security environment is key to preventing nuclear weapons proliferation. Promoting international cooperation will also play a role, as will removing double or multiple non-proliferation standards.

Non-proliferation should be supplementary to promotion activities rather than hamper member states' justifiable rights to peaceful application of nuclear energy.

The IAEA is an inter-governmental organization established in 1957. Its main objectives are to enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world and to ensure nuclear assistance under its supervision is not used for military purposes. China became a member state in 1984.

The 44th Session of the IAEA General Conference started on Monday and will conclude this Friday.

A senior Chinese nuclear energy official, in an address to a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) here Monday, urged the respect of justifiable rights of IAEA member states to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

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2 IAEA to discuss nuclear reactors in North Korea
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
THE JAPAN TIMES

VIENNA (Kyodo) A five-day general conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency opened Monday, with participants expected to seek North Korea's approval to send a team to the country to inspect the site of two nuclear power reactors being built there by an international consortium.

The reactors are being constructed by the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), an international consortium established by Japan, South Korea and the United States under an October 1994 agreement between North Korea and the U.S.

The accord stipulates that North Korea accept an inspection deemed necessary by the IAEA before the main parts of the light-water nuclear reactors are set up.

Despite a long delay in the start of construction, the program is now proceeding, and the main reactor parts are expected to be set up next year.

The agreed framework commits Pyongyang to suspend and eventually dismantle its weapons-grade nuclear power facilities in exchange for the two reactors and a stopgap supply of fuel oil.

Robert Gallucci, who headed the U.S. delegation in negotiating the agreement, said at the time that the inspections will be realized within five years.

Pyongyang originally refused to have the sites inspected, claiming they were military facilities.

Meanwhile, IAEA Director General Mohamed el Baradei expressed hope at a meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors last week that North Korea "will soon be ready to commence active cooperation with the agency."

The U.S. government reportedly suspects that prior to June 1993, when North Korea rejected an IAEA inspection of its two facilities, North Korea had extracted at the locations enough plutonium to create two atomic bombs.

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

3 Murkowski says gov't needs nuke waste action or be sued
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 18

WASHINGTON, Sept 18 (Reuters) - Alaska Sen. Frank Murkowski criticised the Clinton administration on Monday for not accepting legislation passed by the House and Senate for storing hazardous nuclear waste, saying a recent court decision cleared the way for massive lawsuits by utilities over the issue.

A federal court last week ruled that nuclear utilities can receive monetary rewards--estimated at billions of dollars--from the Department of Energy for the government's breach of an agreement to store 40,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel starting in 1998.

``Clearly the federal government and taxpayers bear responsibility'' for the Clinton administration not acting to remove the waste from the nation's commercial nuclear plants, Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, said in a speech from the Senate floor.

In April, President Clinton vetoed a bill mandating the construction of a permanent nuclear waste repository in Nevada's Yucca Mountain by decade's end, citing environmental concerns.

The Senate in May failed by one vote to override the veto.

Murkowski said he would hold a hearing on the utilities and lawsuits before Congress adjourns this autumn, and pushed for an override ``re-vote'' as quickly as possible.

The Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade group for owners of the country's 103 nuclear plants, said 11 utilities have filed individual suits in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims seeking monetary damages ranging from $70 million to $1 billion.

The total total tops $5 billion. Some of the suits are being filed by defunct utilities that no longer operate plants or have shut down units but still store the waste.

The utilities are:
Yankee Atomic Electric Co.,
Connecticut Yankee Atomic Power Co.,
Maine Yankee Atomic Power Co.,
Northern States Power Co.(NYSE:NSP),
Florida Power & Light Co.(NYSE:FPL),
Duke Energy(NYSE:DUK),
Indiana Michigan Power Co.(NYSE: AEP),
Sacramento Municipal Utility District, Southern Nuclear Operating Co.(NYSE:SO),
Commonwealth Edison Co.(NYSE:UCM) and
Boston Edison Co.(NYSE:NST)

--------

4 Nuclear Power Is the Answer to Energy Scarcity
Monday, September 18, 2000
Los Angeles Times
By BERTRAM WOLFE

In the next half-century there is a projected increase of world population from 6 billion to 10 billion people. If the 10 billion people use an average of only one-third the energy per person used today in the U.S., then there will be a tripling of world energy use. We face the possibility of international hostilities over scarce oil and gas supplies and possible disasters from global warming because of fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions.

It is hoped that none of these will happen. Maybe we'll find unlimited cheap fossil fuel supplies, and maybe global warming won't take place. But should we relax and wait to see what happens, or should we take actions that can mitigate the projected calamities?

If such future energy crises prove real, there is only one available solution. Solar and wind power cannot meet the large new energy needs. A solar or wind plant with the same output as a few-acre coal or nuclear plant requires about a hundred square miles of land, leading to environmental problems and excessive costs. It's hoped that fusion will be developed in a few decades, but that cannot be counted on. Perhaps some new source like cold fusion will be developed, but again one can't count on it. The only available solution to the projected energy problems is a worldwide expansion of nuclear energy, which can provide almost unlimited energy supplies and emits no atmospheric contamination.

With the rising costs of fossil fuels, nuclear energy will be the most economical energy source. Indeed, with just the increased cost of natural gas today, a new U.S. nuclear plant could be competitive here, as it is abroad. But in this country, unnecessary bureaucratic and legal impediments can prevent the economical construction of a new nuclear plant. U.S. companies build nuclear plants abroad in four years, whereas it has taken 10 to 20 years to build them here, with a doubling to quadrupling of costs. The government has changed its licensing procedures to eliminate the unnecessary delays, but the new system has not been demonstrated.

The public has been frightened of nuclear energy by anti-nuclear rhetoric, but it has not received perspective views. Not a single member of the public has been harmed by peaceful nuclear energy plants, including Three Mile Island, or by nuclear wastes or their transportation that meet U.S. and Western standards. Chernobyl would not have been permitted here; and the Russians are adopting Western safety standards at their sites. Like all human endeavors, nuclear energy has its risks, but with U.S. standards they are small compared potential fossil fuel explosions and emissions.

The major nuclear energy problems are not technical, but political. California's proposed Ward Valley low- level nuclear waste repository, which was studied and approved by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences and by California and federal organizations, has been held up politically. Similarly, Yucca Mountain, the high-level waste repository in Nevada, was delayed for years by anti-nuclear groups that prevented the start of exploration. There are no basic technical problems that would prevent the safe storage of nuclear wastes in either of these facilities. Indeed, President Clinton's recent veto of the congressional bill to allow centralized above-ground storage at Yucca Mountain while the underground storage facility is being completed is clearly a political action that unnecessarily leads to many more costly above-ground storage facilities.

Nuclear energy may be vital to U.S. and the world's future welfare. But even if the projected fossil fuel calamities turn out not to be real, nuclear energy will benefit us. Its use will prevent deaths occurring now from breathing fossil fuel emissions. It will extend the availability of fossil fuels for special needs. We worry about nuclear wastes 10,000 years out, but without nuclear energy, how will fossil fuels be available in the next century?

Our government should remove the unnecessary impediments to nuclear energy. It should speed the development of our waste repositories. Perhaps most important, it should immediately demonstrate that our licensing system now matches those abroad and that in the U.S. we too can build economical nuclear energy plants in a timely way. Considering the expected anti-nuclear court cases, what private enterprise would risk billions of dollars to test the new licensing system without a demonstration that it works?

Let us hope that we do not lose our nuclear energy capability, as is now happening. Indeed, let us hope that in the future, when the need becomes urgent, we will be able to meet our energy needs without having to import nuclear plants from abroad. - - -

Bertram Wolfe, a Physicist and Engineer, Is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society

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

5 Firm wins $4 million TVA contract on waste
Oak Ridger Online
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
Oak Ridger staff

U.S. Ecology Inc. has landed a $4 million contract to conduct low-level radioactive waste processing for the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The five-year contract encompasses a broad range of waste handling services for TVA's Sequoyah, Watts Bar and Brown's Ferry power stations.

Waste from the power stations is already being transported to U.S. Ecology's Oak Ridge Nuclear Materials Management Center, a press release from U.S. Ecology stated.

The Oak Ridge Nuclear Materials Management Center, located at 109 Flint Road, uses specialized decontamination processes and proprietary "survey and release" programs to permit most metals and other solid waste materials to be recycled or safely landfilled as non-radioactive material.

In addition to the Oak Ridge deal, U.S. Ecology's hazardous waste facility in Beatty, Nev., has extended its contract with TAMCO Steel to dispose of air emission control waste from a steel mill in Southern California.

U.S. Ecology, a subsidiary of American Ecology Corp., has been providing nuclear management services since 1952 and hazardous waste management services since 1968. During this time, the company has managed more than 100 million cubic feet of radioactive, hazardous and toxic wastes.

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6 Truck carrying radioactive waste struck; no contamination found
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
The Columbus Dispatch

Health officials found no contamination yesterday after a tractor- trailer hauling low-level radioactive waste was rear-ended yesterday afternoon near I-270 and Rt. 33 on the Southeast Side.

The crash occurred just after noon when a garbage truck struck the rear end of a flatbed trailer hauling radioactive sludge. Neither driver was injured.

The truck was hauling three large steel crates filled with radioactive sludge, including uranium and thorium compounds, said Jim Colleli, a health physicist with the Ohio Department of Health.

The shipment, from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, was traveling to the Alaron company in Pennsylvania, where it was to be processed.

A liquid, thought to be water, was found leaking from the side of one of the crates and health officials were notified. They found no radioactivity, Colleli said.

Eastbound traffic on I-270, which runs parallel to stretches of the Big Walnut Creek, was backed up for more than seven hours.

The Portsmouth plant produces enriched uranium used as fuel for the nuclear-power plants that supply about 20 percent of the country's electricity.

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7 Chem-Nuclear wants to recover costs
Tuesday, September 19, 2000, in The State.
FROM STAFF REPORTS

The manager of the Barnwell County low-level nuclear landfill began proceedings Monday to recover its operating costs as South Carolina moves to gradually reduce the amount of radioactive waste it receives.

Chem-Nuclear Systems filed an application with the S.C. Public Service Commission that marks a new relationship with a state seeking to shed its image as the nation's nuclear dumping ground. Earlier this year, lawmakers adopted an agreement that gradually shuts off the landfill to every state except South Carolina, Connecticut and New Jersey, the three states comprising the new Atlantic Compact.

Over eight years, the nuclear landfill will be closed to all states except those in the compact. The Barnwell County site is one of three of its kind in the nation and the sole landfill open nationally to all forms of low-level nuclear waste.

Under the new law, the Public Service Commission is charged with determining the costs of operating the Barnwell County site. Chem- Nuclear submitted its application that outlined the company's costs.

The law reimburses the company for "allowable costs" to operate the facility and factors in a 29 percent profit margin. The Public Service Commission has the discretion to determine what costs are allowable.

Chem-Nuclear's filing launches formal proceedings that might last several months.

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

8 Settlement reached in dispute over mining venture
Tuesday, September 19, 2000

RIVERTON, Wyo. (AP) - U.S. Energy and Crested Corp. reached a settlement with Kennecott Uranium Co. resolving disputes over the Green Mountain Mining Venture, one company official said.

"The companies are pleased to bring closure to this legal matter, " said Keith Larsen, president of U.S. Energy Corp.

Under the terms of the settlement, all interest in the Green Mountain Mining Venture will be transferred to Kennecott, Larsen said.

U.S. Energy and USECC will receive $3.25 million in cash; a 4 percent net profits royalty interest on any future uranium production from certain Green Mountain Mining Venture properties; various mining equipment and inventories; and certain mining claims that Kennecott may abandon.

Kennecott has agreed to assume all reclamation liabilities on the Green Mountain properties, including the Sweetwater Uranium Mill.

The Green Mountain Mining Venture is a joint project of the companies that has been hurt by low uranium prices.

Larsen said U.S. Energy plans to invest the money it gets in the deal into the booming coal bed methane play.

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

9 U.S. Energy Corp. and Crested Corp. to Receive $3.25 Million and Other Consideration as the Companies Reach an Agreement With Kennecott Uranium Company to Settle Litigation

SETTLEMENT WILL ALLOW THE COMPANIES TO FOCUS ON COALBED METHANE DEVELOPMENT IN MONTANA AND WYOMING

At Home Corporation
September 13, 2000

USEG and Crested Corp. (OTC Bulletin Board: CBAG), d/b/a/ USECC, announced today that Kennecott Uranium Company (Kennecott) and USECC have reached an agreement to settle all remaining issues in the litigation between Kennecott and USECC pending before the District Court of Fremont County, Wyoming.

Under the terms of the settlement, USECC is to transfer all of its interest in the Green Mountain Mining Venture (GMMV) to Kennecott. In consideration for the transfer, USE and USECC will receive $3, 250,000 in cash; a 4% net profits royalty interest on any future uranium production from certain of the GMMV properties; various mining equipment and inventories that have substantial resale value located on the GMMV properties, and certain mining claims that Kennecott may abandon. Kennecott has agreed to assume all reclamation liabilities on the GMMV properties including the Sweetwater Uranium Mill.

"The Companies are pleased to bring closure to this legal matter, " stated Keith Larsen, President of U.S. Energy Corp. "Not only will the Companies receive an inflow of cash, but will receive a substantial amount of equipment and inventory; the release of reclamation liabilities currently bonded at $26,084,079 of which the Companies were obligated for one half; and the reclassification of a deferred revenue item of $4,000,000 on U.S. Energy's consolidated financial statements and $2,000,000 on Crested's financial statements from a liability to revenue."

Keith Larsen added, "The Green Mountain Mining Venture properties have been financed for over 10 years awaiting a turn around in the prices for uranium which just hasn't happened. During this period of time, over $60,000,000 was expended and at least an additional $50,000,000 more would be required to bring the GMMV mines and mill into production. The holding costs of the mine and mill properties are currently exceeding $2,000,000 per year and management believes it prudent to exchange its working interest in the project for cash and a royalty, thus eliminating the exposure to the ultimate reclamation costs."

"Given the current status of the uranium market and market conditions (uranium price at $7.50/lb, the lowest price ever), the current conditions of the natural gas market (natural gas is at an all time high of $5.00 per thousand cubic feet and projected to go higher) management has concluded that it would be in the best interest of the Companies' shareholders to place less emphasis on the Companies' uranium holdings and focus on the development of their substantial natural gas properties, " Mr. Larsen concluded.

Headquartered in Riverton, Wyoming, U.S. Energy Corp. and Crested Corp. are diversified natural resource exploration and development companies focused on providing the natural resources for the two cleanest viable power sources (natural gas and uranium) used for generating electricity.

This press release includes statements which may constitute "forward- looking" statements, usually containing the words "believe," "estimate, " "project," "expect," or similar expressions. These statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements inherently involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Factors that would cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, future trends in uranium, gold and other minerals prices, the availability of capital for development of mining and other projects, acceptance of the Company's products and services in the marketplace, competitive factors, dependence upon third-party vendors, and other risks detailed in the Company's periodic report filings with the "Securities and Exchange Commission." By making these forward-looking statements, the Companies undertake no obligation to update these statements for revision or changes after the date of this release.

CONTACT: Keith G. Larsen, President, 307-856-9271, or Rob Kindle, Corporate Communications, 970-266-0321, both of U.S. Energy Corp.; or RJ Falkner & Company, Inc., Investor Relations Counsel, 800-377-

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10 ICF Consulting Awarded $19 Million Radiological Emergency Preparedness Contract

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 18, 11:10 AM EASTERN TIME
Press Release
SOURCE: ICF Consulting

FAIRFAX, Va., Sept. 18 /PRNewswire/--ICF Consulting has been awarded a U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) contract to help assure public health and safety in communities surrounding nuclear generating facilities. Under the contract, ICF Consulting will support FEMA to implement the Radiological Emergency Preparedness (REP) Program by helping to evaluate emergency management exercises around the country. Funding for this $19 million contract comes from licensing fees collected by the federal government from commercial nuclear power plants. The contract will be for a period of one year, with four one-year options.

Following the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident in Pennsylvania, President Carter transferred the federal lead role in offsite radiological emergency planning and preparedness activities from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to FEMA. FEMA established the REP Program to ensure that the public health and safety of citizens living around commercial nuclear power plants would be adequately protected in the event of a nuclear power station accident, and to inform and educate the public about radiological emergency preparedness. FEMA's REP Program responsibilities encompass only ``offsite'' activities while onsite activities continue to be the responsibility of the NRC.

``This is the first time the private sector has been allowed to compete for this critically important effort--thereby using market competition to achieve the best value for FEMA and its customers in state and local government,'' said Peter Linquiti, executive vice president at ICF Consulting.

``Winning this contract will greatly strength our partnership with FEMA to ensure the health and safety of communities,'' said Anita Kellogg, ICF Consulting's vice president of emergency management.

ICF Consulting's team of more than 130 qualified evaluators and subject matter experts has outstanding experience in supporting FEMA programs, building state and local capacity for nationwide emergency preparedness programs, providing radiological and hazardous materials services, and ensuring sound project management.

ICF Consulting, with more than 30 years of experience, is one of the world's leading professional services firms advising clients on managing global resources in a sustainable way. ICF Consulting helps clients optimize energy resources, meet environmental challenges, foster economic and community development, enhance transportation projects and policies, and manage information technology resources. ICF Consulting's more than 750 employees are based in Fairfax, Virginia and in 15 other offices throughout the world. The firm reported gross revenue of more than $100 million in 1999.

SOURCE: ICF Consulting

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

11 American Ecology Subsidiary Lands Waste Processing and Disposal Contracts
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 18,
Press Release

Work Underway on Hazardous and Radioactive Waste Projects Valued at $6.3 Million

BOISE, Idaho--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 18, 2000--Zaki Naser, executive vice president and operations manager at American Ecology Corporation Inc. has extended a major hazardous waste disposal contract and entered a new low-level radioactive waste processing contract.

The recent awards have a combined value of approximately $6.3 million.

``Last week, our Beatty, Nevada, hazardous waste facility and Oak Ridge, Tennessee, nuclear materials management center began receiving the first waste shipments stemming from these two important contracts, '' stated Naser.

US Ecology's Beatty facility extended an existing contract with TAMCO Steel, one of the nation's premier steel manufacturers, to dispose of air emission control waste from a steel mill in southern California. ``We are proud of the confidence this major customer places in our Beatty disposal facility, which we believe is the environmentally superior disposal alternative in the western United States,'' Naser added. Work under the contract extension is expected to be completed by year end.

US Ecology's Oak Ridge team entered a five year, $4 million contract with the Tennessee Valley Authority (``TVA''). ``The job, secured through an intensely competed bidding process, encompasses a broad range of waste handling services for TVA's Sequoyah, Watts Bar and Browns Ferry Nuclear Power stations,'' Naser explained.

American Ecology Corporation, through its subsidiaries, provides a variety of radioactive, PCB, hazardous and non-hazardous waste services to commercial and government customers throughout the United States, such as nuclear power plants, medical and academic institutions and petro-chemical facilities. The company provides scientific solutions that protect people and the environment from radioactive and hazardous materials. Headquartered in Boise, Idaho, the Company is the oldest radioactive and hazardous waste services Company in the United States.

This press release contains forward-looking statements that are based on our current expectations, beliefs, and assumptions about the industry and markets in which American Ecology Corporation and its subsidiaries operate. Actual results may differ materially from what is expressed herein and no assurance can be given that the company will secure additional contracts. For information on factors that could cause actual results to differ from expectations, please refer to American Ecology Corporation's Report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Contact: American Ecology Corporation Stephen Romano, 208/331-8400

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12 Perry Plant to Host Public Open House

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 18
Press Release
SOURCE: FirstEnergy Corp.

Sept. 18 /PRNewswire/--The Perry Nuclear Power Plant will host a free public open house Saturday, September 23, 2000, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The plant is located at 10 Center Road, North Perry Village.

Visitors will board buses equipped with video presentations to tour the cooling towers and buildings housing the reactor, turbine and the control room. Additional tours of the control room simulator and the tour center will also be conducted. Refreshments will be provided.

For children, there will be a special appearance by local magician John Steven Bloom, recently voted Most Upcoming Act at the Professional Performers Workshop in Los Angeles. Photographs with Louie the Lightning Bug, The Illuminating Company's safety mascot, as well as games, face painting, and balloon art will be available.

For more information, please call the Perry Plant at 440-280-7668. The Perry Plant is owned by FirstEnergy Corp. of Akron, Ohio and is operated by its subsidiary, FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC). FENOC also operates the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Oak Harbor, Ohio and the Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport, Pennsylvania.

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13 Chernobyl Newborns at Risk From 1986 Reactor Blast
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 19
By Laureen Fagan
Yahoo

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Babies born now in Chernobyl face as great a risk of radiation-related illnesses as the children who lived there when a nuclear reactor exploded in 1986, Israeli experts said on Tuesday.

Research conducted by Israel's Selikoff Centre for Environmental Health and Human Development showed that the longer children stayed in the Chernobyl area in Ukraine, the more likely they were to become ill.

The results of the study were released at a news conference by the Hassidic Jewish Chabad movement's Children of Chernobyl project, which marked the arrival of the 2,001st Jewish child it has brought to Israel from the region in the last 10 years.

``Not only are children at risk, but every day they stay in the Chernobyl area, that risk increases,'' said Jay Litvin, medical liasion for Chabad. ``We literally consider ourselves to be in a race against time.''

Most of the children brought to Israel from affected areas in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia arrive without their parents. But the movement said they were later reunited and families usually stayed in Israel.

Mikhail Gechtin sent his children on the first Chabad flight to Israel in 1990.

``We didn't know what happened,'' he said of the Chernobyl accident. ``We were out parading for May Day and no one said anything.''

Later, when Gechtin measured radiation around his home he was afraid for his family and sent his son and daughter to Israel and later joined them.

``I felt that I came from hell,'' Gechtin said. ``For me, the sooner I got them out of there, the better.''

The medical study found that infants and children in the Chernobyl area were as much at risk now as youngsters were at the time of the disaster because their rapidly developing cells were especially vulnerable to radiation.

``Radiation is very insidious,'' Litvin said. ``It can enter the body, mutate cells and lie dormant, slowly doing its work.''

The report studied 1,080 children brought to Israel since 1990.

Dr Yogesh Choudhri, chief epidemiologist for the study, found thyroid, liver and other diseases more prevalent than in unexposed children. A high incidence in breast cancer was also found in young women who were exposed to the radiation as girls.

The Chernobyl disaster exposed more than three million children to radiation.

A U.N. report in April said the worst health effects were yet to come and radiation levels would remain high until the middle of the century.

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14 Clinton Asks Senate to Ratify Spent Fuel Pact
September 18, 2000 ENS
Environment News Service

WASHINGTON, DC, - President Clinton has sent the 1997 Joint Convention on Spent Fuel and Radioactive Waste Management to the U.S. Senate for ratification. The Convention, as part of a broad effort to raise nuclear safety standards around the world, establishes a series of commitments for proper management of spent fuels and radioactive waste in the civilian sector. It complements the earlier Convention on Nuclear Safety, which entered into force in July 1999. The treaty now before the Senate was adopted by a diplomatic conference convened by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in September 1997 and was opened for signature in Vienna on September 5, 1997. President Clinton has delayed sending the Convention to the Senate due to concerns that not enough votes could be found to ratify the agreement.

"The Convention is an important part of the effort to raise the level of nuclear safety around the world," said Clinton. "I urge the Senate to act expeditiously in giving its advice and consent to ratification." The Convention does not delineate detailed mandatory standards that participants must meet. Parties are instructed to take appropriate steps to bring their activities into compliance with the general obligations of the Convention. The agreement does not apply to military radioactive waste or spent nuclear fuel unless a participating country opts to declare these wastes as spent nuclear fuel or radioactive waste for the purposes of the Convention. Parties to the Convention have absolute discretion as to what information is reported on material from military sources.

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15 New Polymer Coating Immobilizes Chernobyl Radioactive Waste
Environment News Service
September 18, 2000

WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS) - A newly developed white silicon polymer coating known as EKOR can completely encapsulate nuclear waste and prevent radioactive contaminants from dusting or seeping into the environment. The substance which is now being demonstrated at the damaged Chernobyl nuclear reactor could solve problems of nuclear waste management anywhere in the world, its developers say.

In March, the EKOR coating was applied in a successful demonstration that contained radiation from the destroyed nuclear reactor at Chernobyl near Kiev, Ukraine. Robots applied the polymer to cover the largest fuel containing mass under the failed Reactor 4 at Chernobyl, the most radioactive spot on the planet.

EKOR coating covers a pile of a molten nuclear fuel located under the Chernobyl reactor. It was dusting and leaching before it was covered by EKOR. This photo was taken after about four months after the coverage and demonstrates no changes in EKOR. (Photos courtesy

Another, more extensive application, is planned for October to develop and fine tune the methods and equipment for applying EKOR coatings to nuclear waste.

When Reactor 4 was destroyed by an explosion and fire in April 1986, molten nuclear fuel collected beneath the ruined reactor where it has been emitting deadly radiation ever since. Many substances have been applied in attempts to contain radiation from the fuel masses and surrounding radioactive dust at Chernobyl, but all have disintegrated within three or four months from the effects of the radiation.

The ruined reactor and the nuclear fuel masses on the ground floor below are not really protected by the concrete structure that now partially covers the mess. Rainwater enters the building and carries the radioactivity into the soil and groundwater. Birds fly through and become contaminated.

International donors have collected millions of dollars to build a new concrete structure over the reactor, but construction has not yet begun.

EKOR was certified for use by the Ukrainian government in August after an initial application of the composite at Reactor 4 proved that EKOR is radiation resistant, does not degrade even after long term exposure to radiation, and can withstand extreme physical, chemical and biological assaults on its structural integrity.

The substance was developed by Russian scientists at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow. Some of these scientists went to Chernobyl shortly after the explosion and realized that a way of containing the deadly radiation must be found. The Institute covered the costs of research and development of the polymer.

Kurchatov Institute scientists also developed advanced robots to apply the EKOR coating in the dangerous working conditions under the failed Reactor 4 where humans would suffer the lethal effects of the radiation.

Don Hahnfeldt is president of Eurotech

Once created in the laboratory, the rights to produce and market EKOR were acquired by Eurotech, a publicly traded international technology holding and marketing company based in Washington, DC. Eurotech provided the funds to take the polymer from the laboratory stage to testing and demonstration in the field.

Eurotech president Don Hahnfeldt estimates the total development cost of EKOR to date is approximately $3 million.

Eurotech is currently working with NuSil Technology in Santa Barbara, California to test and prepare EKOR for commercial production in North America where hundreds of nuclear waste sites are emitting radiation.

EKOR is non-toxic, highly fire and heat resistant and can be applied wherever the radioactive material is located, on all surfaces, wet, dry, clean or dirty, according to Peter Gulko, a major shareholder and former director and president of Eurotech. Originally from Kiev himself, Gulko provides liaison between Eurotech and its affiliates in Russia and Ukraine.

To prevent radioactive waste and contaminants from spreading, the ideal encapsulating material must not degrade or decay over centuries of prolonged exposure to radiation and environmental corrosion.

Closeup of EKOR coating in Chernobyl reactor 4

Once applied, the material must form an impervious barrier to water and prevent contaminated materials from leaching into the environment. The substance must be nonflammable and non-toxic, causing no harmful effects to the environment. After exposure to radiation, the material must be disposable as environmentally safe non-radioactive waste if necessary. Gulko says EKOR meets all these criteria.

Recent fires near the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory illustrate the potential for future nuclear accidents.

At power plants across the United States and in other countries, thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel are waiting for safe disposal. Radioactive wastes left from Cold War plutonium production for nuclear weapons at Department of Energy facilities across the United States, at the Mayak nuclear complex in Russia, and elsewhere around the world. All of these materials are emitting radiation.

An underground scaling machine removes loose rock from walls and ceilings in the WIPP underground to create a storage area for transuranic waste. (Photo courtesy WIPP)

Only one facility in the world, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in the state of New Mexico, USA, is an operating geological repository designed for permanent disposal of long lived radioactive wastes. It accepts transuranic, but not high-level nuclear wastes for storage in salt caverns half a mile below the surface of the Earth.

Scientific evaluation of Yucca Mountain, Nevada for the permanent disposal of high-level nuclear waste has found that even in this arid environment, water might come in contact with the containers in which the waste would be held, eventually eroding the containers and allowing radioactivity to escape.

The greatest problem in nuclear waste management is that many of the facilities designed to store and dispose of these wastes have failed to prevent the leakage into the environment, leaving the groundwater, surface water, soil and air at risk of contamination.

If the EKOR coating continues to perform as it has in the first demonstrations, some of the most dangerous nuclear waste in the world might be more manageable.

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16 China Rejects Moves to Tighten Regulation of Nuclear Materials
Inside China Today Daily News -
Sep 19, 2000
Agence France Presse

VIENNA, Austria, -- China rejected proposals Monday for tighter international regulation of how countries store their nuclear materials.

At a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) here, China's representative said the nuclear watchdog body should concentrate instead on its core function of promoting the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

"It is not the appropriate time now to lay down binding regulations on the physical protection of nuclear materials within a country in the form of an international legal document," said Zhang Huazhu.

"The Chinese delegation holds that the physical protection of nuclear materials is mainly the responsibility of governments, who have formulated their respective measures ... by referring to the Agency's standards, " he said.

The IAEA's 44th annual conference, which ends Friday, aimed to propose a common approach on the treatment of nuclear waste to the organization's 130 member states.

China is one of the five major declared nuclear powers--along with the United States, Russia, Britain and France. India and Pakistan have also acknowledged holding nuclear weapons.

Referring to the IAEA's core functions, the Beijing delegate said China "sincerely wishes that the agency would continue to ... make new contributions to the peaceful application of nuclear energy for mankind."

Meanwhile Japan insisted that the IAEA, which has suffered funding problems through late payments from its member states, should tighten its belt.

"We believe that the IAEA should continue to meet the needs of the international community by achieving further cost reductions in all operations," said Japan's science and technology minister Tadamori Oshima. ((C) 2000 AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE)

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17 IAEA Supports Putin Nuclear Power Initiative
Russia Today
Reuters

Agency (IAEA) said on Monday it backed an initiative by Russian President Vladimir Putin to develop technology for generating nuclear power without using or producing weapons-grade material.

Putin called for such an international project under the auspices of the Vienna-based IAEA at the recent UN Millennium Summit in New York.

Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, addressing the IAEA general conference, said the IAEA would discuss with Russia and the United States how it could monitor their progress regarding the recent accord on the disposal of plutonium stockpiles.

The pact obliges each country to render a total 34 tons of weapons- grade plutonium into a form unusable for nuclear weapons and to pledge never to use it for that purpose again.

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18 More N-dump hearings sought
3 mayors call for an extension of 6 months on input
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
Deseret News staff writer

MURRAY - Three Utah hearings on a proposal to store 40,000 tons of radioactive waste in Tooele County are simply not enough, Wasatch Front mayors say.

And now they have petitioned the nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to not only hold more public hearings but to extend public comment another six months. Thursday is the NRC deadline to receive input on an environmental study on the proposal.

"We plead for additional time to comment," Midvale Mayor JoAnn Seghini said.

"Many questions are still unanswered," Riverton Mayor Sandra Lloyd added. "We as elected officials owe this to residents to speak to this issue."

Their comments came during a Monday press conference next to railroad tracks that ostensibly would be used to transport spent nuclear fuel rods from Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of Eastern and Midwestern nuclear power companies, to Goshute tribal lands about 50 miles west of Salt Lake City.

"This proposal carries enormous health and financial risks," Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson said.

"No one can guarantee there won't be a major terrorist incident. Cleanup costs are estimated at between $13 billion and $300 billion," he added. "It is not at all clear who would bear these costs."

Mayors are not the only ones concerned. About 3,000 people have signed a petition urging the NRC to extend the deadline.

Utah's congressional delegation and Gov. Mike Leavitt are united in their opposition to the proposal. Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, has also formally requested the NRC extend the public comment period.

But the NRC so far has turned a deaf ear on the Utah pleas.

In a letter to Citizens Against Radioactive Waste in Utah, an NRC official wrote, "We believe that 90 days is a sufficient time period for review and comment (on a draft environmental impact statement) . . . There has been ample opportunity for public involvement."

Comments received after the deadline will be considered "to the extent practical," said E. William Brach, director of the Spent Fuel Project Office for the NRC.

Mayors recited a litany of reasons why Utah should not become a dumping ground for nuclear waste. But chief among them was the fact railroad lines run through the hearts of their cities and towns - routes that would likely

be used to move the waste from temporary storage casks to Skull Valley.

"If there were an accident, it would be an accident directly near people's homes," Seghini said.

Scott Northard, project manager for Private Fuel Storage, says the fears are overblown.

"While there is certainly a possibility there may be rail accidents involving our shipments, we are confident that the shipping casks will prevent radiological injury or contamination, " he writes in a letter addressed to the mayors. "Even so, each utility that ships fuel to the facility is required to carry private and industry pool insurance to cover the cost of clean-up, property damage and personal injury."

Yet Clearfield Mayor Tom Waggoner isn't buying the argument that the chances of an accident are, as Private Fuel Storage says, more than a million to one. Winning the lottery is also a million to one long shot, "and people win the lottery every month," he said.

Mayors echoed Leavitt's mantra that nuclear waste, if it is indeed as safe as the power companies say it is, should be left where it is until a permanent storage site is ready. Yucca Mountain, Nev. is the proposed site for a permanent, underground repository.

"We're not happy being the dumping ground for Eastern utilities," Murray Mayor Dan Snarr said.

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19 A logical approach to N-waste
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
DESERET NEWS EDITORIAL

Utah Sen. Bob Bennett is right when he says that the proposed "temporary" nuclear waste dump on the Goshute tribal reservation will likely turn into a permanent facility if it's approved by the federal government.

The senator's also wise to raise concerns that the dump could interfere with Air Force training operations on the nearby Utah Test and Training Range.

Private Fuel Storage, the consortium that represents various nuclear power plants in the East and Midwest, wants to ship the waste from those sites to Utah's West Desert. The 10.4 million spent nuclear fuel rods would be housed on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Tooele County until a permanent facility is established. Yeah, right.

As Bennett aptly notes, Congress ordered the Energy Department in 1980 to establish a permanent repository by 1998. Not only was that date not met, but there are no indications it will be met anytime soon. Yucca Mountain, Nev., has been proposed as a permanent site, but Nevada's residents and their political representatives are understandably fighting it.

If, before a permanent site is determined, nuclear material is shipped to the Goshute reservation, that will give the administration and other politicians an excuse for further delaying the permanent site or turning Utah into that permanent site.

Comparing political clout to water, Utah is like the Sahara Desert. No administration will take much of a political hit by dumping on Utah. That has been proved by the shenanigans regarding Hill Air Force Base and the ongoing threats to close it as opposed to shutting down bases in more populous states.

That is why all legitimate efforts to halt the nuclear storage facility in Utah's West Desert from becoming a reality need to be encouraged. This page recently supported one of those efforts, a bill by Rep. Jim Hansen, R-Utah, that would prevent a limited liability corporation from transporting high-level nuclear waste through a military zone unless it assumes full responsibility for any mishap. According to the governor's office, a rail accident involving such waste could range from $9 billion to $200 billion in cost, which might preclude any business from bankrolling such an enterprise.

The best and most fair solution is to leave the nuclear waste at the sites where it's generated until a permanent site is established. If that takes another 10 to 20 years, so be it.

nuclear waste is going to be around for thousands of years. It therefore doesn't make sense to deal with it in a temporary way. Utah shouldn't have to pay for the lack of foresight by those

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20 Hatch Joins N-Waste Opposition
TUESDAY, September 19, 2000
BY JIM WOOLF
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

WASHINGTON --Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch added his voice to those opposed to storing highly radioactive spent fuel from America's nuclear power plants on the Skull Valley Band of the Goshute reservation in Tooele County.

"I'm absolutely opposed to it," Hatch said during a recent interview. He noted Congress has voted to place the waste in a permanent disposal facility proposed for a mined cavern beneath Nevada's Yucca Mountain, located about 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas, so "there is no reason to allow it into our state."

Hatch's statement came shortly after Utah Sen. Bob Bennett took a similar stance against the waste storage proposal. Both had stayed out of the debate until now.

State Sen. Scott Howell, the Democrat who is challenging Hatch in the Nov. 7 election, said Hatch's belated entry into the Goshute debate is evidence of how "out of touch" the four-term senator is with the issues that interest his Utah constituents. Howell said he is "adamantly and totally opposed" to having leaders of the 120-member tribe making decisions that will affect the safety of 2 million Utahns.

"I'm sympathetic with the Goshutes," said Howell. "I respect their sovereignty, but I don't respect their judgment."

A consortium of eight electric utilities that own nuclear power plants has proposed building an above-ground storage facility for the deadly waste on the Goshute reservation, located about 60 miles west of Salt Lake City. They want to store the waste in Utah for up to 40 years while work on the Nevada disposal site is completed.

State officials fear that once the waste arrives in Utah there will be no incentive to complete the Nevada disposal site. That would mean what is being proposed as an "interim" storage facility on the Goshute reservation could become a permanent disposal site. Opponents also have raised concerns that the storage facility could restrict the training of military pilots in the Utah Test and Training Range--a vast expanse of air space that covers much of western Utah.

Hatch said he respects the right of the Skull Valley Band of the Goshute "to be an independent, sovereign nation in some respects," but added: "That doesn't give them the right to transport nuclear waste across our highways or other lands owned by Utahns."

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21 Mayors Seek More Time to Comment On Nuclear Storage
TUESDAY, September 19, 2000
BY JUDY FAHYS
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

Salt Lake Valley mayors, wary of possible economic harm, want federal regulators to take more time examining the proposed nuclear waste storage site on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Tooele County.

The mayors said Monday the public needs more time to weigh in before the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission ends its public comment period on Thursday. They also said the financial risks to tourism, private property values and Hill Air Force Base deserve more comment and study.

"We need more time so people [at NRC] can understand the point of view of Utahns," said Midvale Mayor JoAnne Seghini, who pointed out some back yards are along the rail route the waste will use on its way to Skull Valley.

"I don't know if we can afford to" allow the storage site, she said. "The risks are too great."

The NRC is taking comment for two more days on its draft environmental impact statement for the high-level nuclear waste site. The licensing agency fielded public comments at hearings last month, and they have logged roughly 100 written statements so far over three months.

The mayors showed off petitions they will send to the NRC seeking six more months for public comment. The petitions bear about 3,000 signatures.

The massive impact study explores the effects on health, the ecology and local economies if spent nuclear-fuel rods are shipped to the Skull Valley Reservation and stored there for up to 40 years, until a permanent storage site is built.

Private Fuel Storage, an eight-utility consortium that wants to build the facility, has promised the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians and Tooele County cash payments.

But others worry more about costs.

At a news conference with four other city leaders, Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson challenged the wisdom of using the storage project to enrich communities.

"If Tooele needs some economic help, this is not the way to do it; if the Goshutes need some economic help, this is not the way to do it," Anderson said. "It's a hazard. We don't want a legacy like that."

The Utah Association of Realtors has estimated property values would decline 15 percent, or up to $5 billion, along the 100-mile railroad corridor the nuclear waste casks will travel.

Clearfield Mayor Tom Wagganor said the storage site could harm Hill Air Force Base and diminish its value as the nation's only live-ordnance test-bombing range on the U.S. mainland.

"This is a national asset," Wagganor said. Hill will lose one of its most valuable resources if the new storage facility forces the military to limit access around the storage site, he said.

The mayors also questioned who would get stuck with the cleanup costs if casks were damaged in an urban center. Cleaning up an accident could run between $14 billion to $ 313 billion, which is 47 times the state's annual budget of $ 6.7 billion, and the utility consortium would be liable for only up to $9.43 billion, the mayors said.

Bruce Whitehead, a Utah spokesman for PFS, expected many of the comments the NRC has received would be negative and reflect the "scare tactics" seen in the hearings.

"It [the opposition campaign] is the fear of the unknown, getting people scared to death," he said.

The NRC has told Citizens Against Radioactive Waste, a group that opposes the storage facility, there are no plans for a comment-period extension. "Ninety days is a sufficient period of time for review and comment on this document," said the NRC's E. William Branch, whose agency has set a February date for its decision on the impact plan. "There has been ample opportunity for public involvement."

In addition to the impact study, the NRC is conducting a separate legal review through the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board. That panel's work is scheduled to be complete in the fall of next year.

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22 Utah working to stop Goshute nuclear waste,
NewsNet@BYU
BY MIKI MEEK

Although Utah government officials have rallied in recent weeks against a proposal to store nuclear waste on the Goshute Indian Reservation in Tooele County, the tribe's sovereignty is a hurdle that stands in its way.

"We are using every legal and political avenue available to us," said Connie Nakahara, director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality.

In an effort to delay the licensing process, the state has submitted petitions to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requesting it reject the license application and extend the public comment period on licensing of the storage facility past its Sept. 21 expiration date, Nakahara said.

Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, denounced the Goshutes' plan on the Senate floor Thursday. And earlier this month, Gov. Mike Leavitt and Rep. Jim Hansen announced the formation of the High Level Nuclear Waste Opposition Coordinating Council, which has begun consolidating the opposition efforts of several groups against the waste proposal. Hansen vowed to introduce legislation that would increase the liability insurance required of electric utility companies that want to ship their waste to Utah.

In 1997, Goshute tribal leaders signed a lease agreement with Private Fuel Storage, a consortium representing eight electric utilities from California, the Midwest and the East. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing their application for a license to build and operate a temporary storage site that would hold up to 40,000 tons of spent fuel.

Goshute Tribal Chairman Leon Bear said the state has not treated them as "equals" and efforts by Utah government officials to shut down the proposal are only attempts to undermine American Indian sovereign rights protected by the U.S. Constitution.

"As long as I've known the state we've never got anything from them. I guess they think we should just be out here doing nothing," Bear said. "But that isn't going to happen. We have a right to be out here in Skull Valley working on our economics."

The Goshutes have been exempt from many state and local environmental regulations since the federal government designated them an 18,000- acre reservation in 1914. As a reservation they are considered a domestic dependent nation that has a government relationship with the United States.

"Governor Leavitt and I just don't see eye to eye on this issue," Bear said. "His opinion and everyone else's doesn't have any weight because the decision has already been made."

Alberta Mason, executive director of Environmental Justice, said the sovereign status of the Goshutes' tribal land makes their Skull Valley Reservation a prime target for nuclear waste.

"PFS is using their sovereignty because it is the path of least resistance, " said Mason, whose organization supports members of the Goshute tribe who are opposed to the project. "Nobody else wants it and the reservations are vulnerable because they are usually low-income."

Nakahara said the main issue is about safety, not sovereignty. The state is concerned that the proposed temporary storage site might make its final home in Skull Valley because the permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., is undergoing extensive geologic testing.

If the storage site were built in Skull Valley, the spent nuclear fuel would have to travel across the country from as far away as Maine, passing through Utah cities on its way to the reservation. These long transportation routes would only increase the risk of an accident, Nakahara said. Some of the waste may even pass by railroad through Spanish Fork Canyon, Springville and other areas of Utah County.

The state conducted an accident scenario to assess the harm that would result from one damaged railcar. For the population density of Salt Lake City, 117 cancer deaths were projected and clean-up costs were estimated between $14 billion and $333 billion, Nakahara said.

Sue Martin, spokeswoman for PFS, said the state's arguments are political and not based on the actual safety of transporting and storing spent nuclear fuel. PFS has conducted several in-depth safety studies and has no intent of turning the temporary storage site on Skull Valley into a permanent repository, she said.

If a permanent facility hasn't been determined by the time the Goshutes' 25-year lease expires, then it may be extended for another 25 years. During that extension, the federal government is required to take the spent fuel for long-term storage and disposal.

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NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONTENTS

1 TRIDEC, DOE change revitalization plan after snag
2 DOE: $1.2 BILLION MORE NEEDED FOR NIF
3 Costly Projects Cast Science in a Harsh Light
4 $12.2 million contract awarded to cap old nuclear dump at ORNL
5 Audit recommends clarifying DOE role in technology transfer
6 Report on K-25 Site water due to be released Wednesday
7 Nuclear FreeGreat Basin Gathering
8 Commodore Awarded $4.4 Million Rocky Flats Contract
9 Ananova - Jury out in Trident damage case
10 Putin Orders Salvage of Sunken Sub
11 18-00 Further degradation would result

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NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARTICLES

1 TRIDEC, DOE change revitalization plan after snag
Mon, Sep 18, 2000
BY JOHN STANG HERALD STAFF WRITER

A proposal to rent Hanford buildings cheap in return for cleanup help has died.

Bottom line: The prototype building for this program was too radioactive to use--and no good substitute could be found.

It cost $203,000 in federal grant money to find that out.

Now, the Tri-City Industrial Development Council believes it can make the original concept work--with old Hanford heavy equipment instead of old Hanford buildings.

Last week, TRIDEC and the Department of Energy found a way through some legal red tape to try this idea with some Bechtel Hanford Inc. equipment, said Sean Stockard, the Tri-City Industrial Development Council official in charge of the project.

Here is how Hanford and TRIDEC's 17-month experiment with "reindustrialization" evolved:

Jim Hall, DOE's interim Hanford manager from January through April 1999, brought the "reindustrialization" concept to Hanford from Oak Ridge, where he'd spent most of his career.

Reindustrialization had a decent track record there, and he wanted to try the idea at Hanford.

The idea was that DOE would lease slightly contaminated Hanford buildings to an economic development group, such as TRIDEC, which would sublease the facilities at bargain rates to private companies. In return, the companies would pick up the cost of decontaminating the buildings.

Consequently, unused buildings could be used for economic growth, and taxpayers would save money on cleanup costs.

In April 1999, DOE gave a one-time grant of $500,000 to TRIDEC to set up a pilot project to try out the concept.

Using $150,000 of that grant, TRIDEC created Assets Reinvestment Co. to act as the middleman.

And in Hanford's built-up 300 Area just north of Richland, Building 314 was picked as the guinea pig. Building 314 is a former World War II and Cold War plant that molded uranium fuel for Hanford's reactors.

The 25,000-square-foot building--filled with leftover furnaces, presses and labs--later became a chemical and radioactive analytical lab until it closed in 1996.

Reinvestment Co. wanted to find a potential tenant by December 1999. But in the fall of 1999, a Pacific Northwest National Laboratory survey showed that Building 314 is more contaminated than originally thought--and is impractical for the experiment.

Reinvestment Co. and DOE looked for another building--and didn't find any likely candidates, Stockard said.

Overall, checking out Building 314 and related work cost $203,000, on top of the $150,000 to create Reinvestment Co. That left $147, 000 of the original grant money.

At the same time, Bechtel and Reinvestment Co. began talking about Bechtel getting rid of two front-end loaders, two water wagons and a tractor used by workers digging up contaminated soil in the B Reactor and C Reactor areas.

Bechtel wants to get rid of the items because they have too many operating hours on them, and it would be expensive to dispose of them in central Hanford's huge landfill for slightly radioactive equipment and debris, said Bechtel officials Sue Kuntz and Douglas Duvon.

Although the equipment is considered uncontaminated for use on Hanford, the pieces have not been checked for radioactivity sufficiently for public use.

Reinvestment Co. wants to funnel $70,000 to Bechtel for those checks. But complicated legalities prevented such a transfer, until now.

But while Reinvestment Co. has an inside track on obtaining surplus Hanford equipment, it does not have the expertise nor contacts to sell the items outside of the Tri-City area.

So, Reinvestment Co. contracted several months ago with Aerospace Designs Fabrications of Oak Ridge, Tenn., to handle that aspect.

After the first five pieces are checked, possibly decontaminated and sold, Bechtel has eight more in waiting.

Any profits from the equipment sales would be split between Reinvestment Co. and the Oak Ridge firm that's marketing the equipment.

COPYRIGHT 2000 TRI-CITY HERALD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS

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2 DOE: $1.2 BILLION MORE NEEDED FOR NIF
Albuquerque Tribune Online: News
TRIBUNE REPORTER

A revised budget to prop up the nation's biggest and most troubled science project, a nuclear weapons simulation laser in California, will call for spending another $1.2 billion.

The Department of Energy late last week said that despite congressional objections it will propose new funding and the diversion of existing funds from other nuclear weapons programs -- including those of New Mexico's two national laboratories--to cover cost overruns at the National Ignition Facility fusion energy laser in Livermore, Calif.

The new budget proposal, which aims to complete NIF by 2008--five years behind schedule--was sent Friday to congressional leaders.

DOE says an average of $117 million per year--in new or reallocated funds--will be needed to complete the project, which has been under construction since 1997.

"We think we know how to do that," Madelyn R. Creedon, deputy administrator for DOE defense programs, said.

She acknowledged the new NIF budget assumes substantial increases from Congress, in addition to DOE reallocations. "There isn't going to be any negative impact on any of the rest of the (nuclear weapons) program," she insisted.

Creedon said she could not provide budget specifics beyond the 2001 budget, in which DOE seeks $135 million more for NIF, including: ; $95 million in new funds.

$15 million from other Livermore Lab programs.

$25 million from the budgets of Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories in New Mexico.

Creedon said that plan so far "has been rejected by all" of the congressional committees with jurisdiction over the DOE budget and nuclear weapons programs.

Efforts to reach U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, the Albuquerque Republican who is chairman of the powerful Budget Committee and the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development that has jurisdiction over NIF, were unsuccessful.

Domenici has said NIF will not be funded at the expense of the other labs or the rest of the nuclear weapons Stockpile Stewardship Program, in which scientists are using expensive machines like NIF and supercomputers models to maintain the security of the nuclear arsenal without bomb tests.

The purpose of the laser array is to generate the fusion energy conditions of a thermonuclear bomb blast. It will cost $2.2 billion to finish building the project, Creedon said.

But its total projected cost has ballooned to $3.5 billion when all research and development costs are factored in, said Creedon and DOE's Kathy Carlson, manager of a field office in Las Vegas near the Nevada Test Site.

Congressional investigators at the General Accounting Office last month said $3.9 billion would be needed to cover NIF cost overruns and delays, and that it could take an additional six years. Criticizing past NIF reviews, GAO said the project urgently needs an independent, external, expert analysis.

The Senate recently stunned NIF proponents by voting to cap funding for next year at the $74.1 million--a funding level that would only maintain its current budget activities. It also ordered a full scientific review of NIF, as well as competing technologies, by the National Academy of Sciences.

Creedon warned if the recent Senate vote prevails in Congress, NIF will be crippled and there will not even be sufficient funds to close out existing vendor contracts. Despite widespread criticism that the laser has no nuclear weapons applications, Creedon insisted NIF remains the core of the Stockpile Stewardship Program.

The troubled project continues to claim the loyalty and support of the old and new at DOE. In a press release titled "Energy Department Report Confirms National Ignition Facility is on Track," Energy Secretary Bill Richardson stated:

"NIF is essential for our stockpile stewardship program to maintain the long-term reliability and safety of the nation's nuclear stockpile without nuclear testing.

"This report details the extensive work performed in getting NIF back on track . . . so that we can move ahead with confidence."

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3 Costly Projects Cast Science in a Harsh Light
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
Los Angeles Times

Technology: A giant laser being built at Livermore is the latest to be plagued by delays and cost overruns.

LIVERMORE, Calif.--The effort to construct the world's most powerful laser is at least a billion dollars over budget and four years behind schedule, raising disquieting questions about the way large science projects in the United States are managed.

Easily the country's largest science construction project, the stadium-sized National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is the keystone of the effort to ensure the safety and reliability of the nation's nuclear weapons.

Sixty times more powerful than any laser ever built, the NIF laser is designed to focus the energy of 192 beams on a target the size of a rice grain in the hope of igniting fusion--thus allowing scientists to study safely the raging heart of a thermonuclear reaction. It offers a way to experiment with the forces in a nuclear explosion without detonating a bomb.

Not so long ago, a formal review judged the colossal laser effort "by far the best-managed of any U.S. government project."

Federal auditors, however, recently reached a different conclusion. In all, the laser project could cost as much as $4 billion, twice what was expected, and could be up to six years late. So many scientific uncertainties remain that, even with more money and time, there is no guarantee that the laser will ever perform as promised, they said.

Now some in Congress are angry enough to kill it. While it is unlikely that they will succeed, their ire underscores a disenchantment with the way that large science projects are sometimes managed and the half-truths that scientists tell to keep them funded.

"They sold me a bill of goods and I am not happy about it," said U.S. Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.). A former project supporter, he is now among those arguing to kill it.

"I cannot tell you how angry I am that [the Department of Energy] and the national laboratories consistently do this sort of thing to Congress. They over-promise and underdeliver at a vastly inflated price.

"Enough is enough."

In that sense, the problems of the NIF laser are emblematic of a number of scientific mega-projects in recent years, from the space station to the ill-fated Superconducting Supercollider: A bold idea captures the official imagination and wins funding, only to have its proposed solutions to scientific conundrums grow increasingly complex as money starts to flow, deadlines loom and second thoughts set in.

Costs soar. Schedules stretch like Silly Putty. High expectations conceived with what one analyst calls "giddy techno-optimism" are scaled back.

Indeed, when management experts at the Rand Corp. examined 52 major civilian projects ranging in cost from $500 million to more than $10 billion, they found that the average cost growth was 88%. Only four of them were completed for the promised cost. The average schedule slip was 17%.

The bigger and more innovative the project, the more likely it was to go awry.

Since it was proposed a decade ago, the National Ignition Facility has been controversial, embroiled in arms control politics.

But what unsettles even some project proponents is that despite numerous contract compliance reports and outside peer review panels, so many of its problems went unnoticed for so long. They worry that the need to find new funding for the laser project will mean that other, perhaps equally important, nuclear weapons safety projects will be curtailed.

Ask Livermore director Bruce Tarter how so many bright, talented scientists got into so much trouble, and his answer is simple: "We screwed up. We missed it. Every review missed it. We all missed it."

U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who seeks to withhold extra funding for the project, puts it differently. "We've seen this pattern before: massive cost overruns, schedule delays, poor management, unresolved technical problems," he said.

FRONTIER OF KNOWLEDGE IS UNCERTAIN TERRAIN

The frontier of knowledge is uncertain terrain for any scientific enterprise.

Cost overruns, delays and technical snafus are occupational hazards for anyone steering a major project toward completion, whether it is a mountaintop observatory, a space probe or a sprawling particle accelerator. This is especially true when the elements most crucial to the effort's success have yet to be invented when the project begins.

When Livermore researchers conceived the laser facility, they did not know how to make the tons of ultra- pure glass it would require, how to grow the huge, 700-pound crystals for its lenses or how to protect its optics from the fierce light that would assault them. Only recently did they recognize that they also did not even know how to properly assemble its maze of super- clean laser tubing.

In just this way, several experts said, the laser project grew in a decade from a $400-million proposal to a multibillion-dollar project.

"The problem for large scientific projects is to do something that is being done for the first time, balanced against cost, schedule and promises to the government," said Caltech physicist Barry Barish.

He is overseeing construction of a $271- million Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Hanford, Wash., and Livingston, La., meant to detect ripples in the fabric of space and time.

"That is a hard balancing act," he said.

Barish knows firsthand just how hard. When he took over the LIGO project in 1994, it was in so much trouble that Congress balked at funding it anymore. Costs had grown by 40% and it looked to be three years behind schedule.

Now, six years later, the sophisticated gravity wave detectors, each with five miles of underground vacuum pipes, are nearing completion. The LIGO met its revised budget and schedule in part by stepping back from the cutting edge to more modest goals.

In the same period, NASA's space station project blossomed from an eight-year, $3-billion U.S. flagship to a $60-billion, 16-nation project that has been in the works for 16 years.

The first of many crews to live aboard the 14-story orbital outpost on a long-duration basis isn't expected until later this fall, almost a decade later than originally planned. It could be five more years before the station is finished.

In any project, the quest for technical perfection can be unmanageable.

Over the past decade, for example, the Gravity Probe B project at Stanford University has spent about $500 million to build and orbit the world's most perfect gyroscopes in a test of Einstein's theory of relativity. Now university project managers need $72 million more to fix last-minute technical problems before the experiment can get off the ground. No one is sure where the extra money will come from.

Even when costs and schedules are tightly controlled, the complexity of today's technical endeavors is such that a single misstep can be fatal, as a recent string of failed Mars probes demonstrated. They came in on time, on budget, and were lost in space one after the other, because of simple math errors and programming glitches.

But not since Congress canceled an $8- billion particle accelerator called the Superconducting Supercollider in 1993 has a large science project like the laser facility been mired in such financial and engineering difficulties.

Certainly, none has been so central to the future of the nation's nuclear weapons program.

CONTROLLING EXTREME CONDITIONS

Inside the National Ignition Facility, the 75-ton neutron shield is ajar, suspended on its massive hinges like the door of a vacant bank vault.

In hard hat and safety glasses, Bruce Warner strolls across the threshold to face an immense, 500-ton target chamber designed to contain conditions that normally exist only in the interior of stars or in an exploding nuclear weapon.

Warner, an experienced laser physicist at Livermore, is one of several newly appointed program managers on the NIF laser project. He has been on this job nine months, and he bristles at the suggestion that it won't meet its goals.

"Given the opportunity to finish NIF, we are more optimistic now than when we started that we will get [fusion] ignition," Warner said.

Slathered with a thick coating of blue gunite like the shell of a swimming pool, the 32-foot-high spherical chamber is studded with holes for the 192 laser tubes that will converge there.

One day, if the project is completed, it will be the heart of the largest and most complex optical system ever built, pieced together from about 7,500 optical elements, including 3,000 slabs of special optical glass, 2,500 fused silica lenses and 1,600 mirrors and polarizers. Other parts of the system will require about 25,000 other optical elements.

Its thousands of tubes and other components will have to be put together and maintained at a level of cleanliness as strict as a computer chip fabrication plant.

This federal beam machine will focus all its combined energy inside this sphere onto a BB-sized pellet of deuterium and tritium, with peak energies equal to 1,000 times the electrical generating power of the United States.

In the instant of ignition, as temperatures flare to several million degrees, the tiny target will be compressed to a plasma six times denser than at the center of the sun.

If all goes as planned, the result will be brief bursts of self-sustaining fusion reactions similar to those occurring in a star.

But for the moment, the sphere in front of Warner is simply the center of a cavernous construction site the length of two football fields, ripe with the smell of fresh concrete and new paint. It is the unfinished foundation of what its builders hope will be the showplace of 21st century laser physics.

To make that all happen, the project needs an additional $1 billion and about four years more than originally planned, even by the laboratory's own accounting.

Madelyn Creedon, deputy administrator for defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration, part of the Department of Energy, said Friday that total project- related costs are now estimated to be $3.5 billion, compared to an original cost estimate of $2.1 billion. Even that figure, she said, does not include the cost of developing the laser's special fusion target, estimated at $491 million.

The extra costs, Livermore managers said, include about $50 million for additional project management, $252 million for contingencies, and $200 million for manufacturing costs. About $250 million is the price in salaries and other fixed costs of taking so much longer to do it all.

Project managers said they expect to have all 192 laser beams operational by 2008, with initial experiments beginning as early as 2004.

When the full laser facility is up and running, they expect to conduct about 800 "shots" a year--about two a day--one-third as many as the laboratory promised in 1995.

As they began to revamp the project recently, one of the first things that Livermore's new project managers realized is that they don't know how to assemble the laser properly.

So, earlier this month, they announced they had hired an outside engineering company to do it for them at a contract cost of $230 million.

"The thing we really stubbed our toe on was a classic engineering of a big, complex thing," said George Miller, Livermore's most experienced weapons designer, who is now the laboratory's associate director for NIF programs. Miller oversaw the development of the 150-kiloton W84 thermonuclear warhead used for ground-launched cruise missiles.

"We thought we knew how to put it together, " Miller said. "The fact of the matter is what we did not appreciate is that NIF is a project whose scale is significantly beyond the experience of the laboratory. Putting this thing together is like putting together a Rubik's Cube."

OUTSIDE REVIEWS CALLED FLAWED

There were many outside reviews of the laser project before construction began. But most were compromised by conflicts of interest or a lack of independence, according to Stephen Bodner, former head of the laser fusion program at the U.S. Naval Laboratory, and Christopher Paine, a senior researcher at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has long opposed the project.

Caltech Provost Steve Koonin was chairman of a panel that evaluated the project for the National Academy of Sciences in 1990 and again in 1997. So many members of the 1997 panel were project supporters, consultants or advisors that the Resources Defense Council obtained a federal court injunction barring the Energy Department from using the report or disseminating it for several years.

After the laser's problems came to light recently, Koonin chaired a review of the project for the University of California, which manages the three national weapons laboratories. The Department of Energy had fined the university $2 million of its normal management fee for its failure to properly oversee the laser project.

Until this year, Koonin had no serious doubts about its feasibility or the ability of those in charge to manage it.

"Frankly, there was not a hint we should have been concerned," Koonin said. However, he said, the project "should have been watched more carefully."

Now, after months of management reviews and official recriminations, the people in charge of the laser project at Livermore are contrite.

"NIF had some significant problems," said laser project manager Edward Moses, who took over last year. "They had to be faced and fixed. We expected to take our lumps and we did take our lumps for the past year."

The visionaries have been reassigned or found new jobs, Livermore officials say. There is a new team in charge: practical people with a more realistic attitude born of decades managing complex projects.

"Essentially, the whole top management team of the project is different," Miller said.

Ask Miller, Moses and their colleagues at Livermore today about issues raised by the federal auditors, and they say they are confident that they have fixed their most serious problems. Unlike their predecessors, they are more open to outside advice, and optimistic that they can solve any remaining scientific difficulties.

They cite a stringent review by 40 Energy Department scientists and consultants, which was released Friday, to demonstrate that they are back on the right track. That review concludes that Livermore's new project plan is "reasonable, self- consistent and credible." The laser can be built on time and on budget under the new schedule and cost estimates, they said.

The problem now is that no one may believe them.

Whatever the laser project ultimately costs the taxpayer, Livermore itself has already paid a high price in its credibility, several congressional analysts and independent critics of the program said.

Not so many months ago, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson stood before an audience of Livermore employees to laud their skill in keeping the country's largest science construction project within budget and on time. They had earned their government's "admiration and gratitude," he said.

Listening in the audience that day in June 1999, however, were as many as two dozen laboratory scientists who knew that the laser project was in serious trouble. Some had known for months. Lab director Bruce Tarter had known formally for three days before the secretary's visit, he later acknowledged.

Even so, they all kept their concerns to themselves, allowing Richardson to make his speech unchallenged by what they knew and to then pass on his misleading assessment to Congress a few weeks after the ceremony.

It was another three months before the full scope of the project's troubles began to reveal themselves.

"They lied to us," Harkin said. "They simply lied to us."

STAR CHAMBER

By igniting a fusion reaction, the 192 lasers of the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory could allow researchers to study thermonuclear reactions, like those inside a star or in an exploding nuclear weapon, without actually detonating a bomb or a warhead in a test.

The laser beam path

The laser beam travels hundreds of yards from the point where an optical pulse is generated to the target chamber. When the light reaches the target, it has been amplified more than 10 trillion times and changed from infrared light to ultraviolet light.

What is fusion?

Just as the large nucleus of an atom can split, releasing the energy of fission, so the neutrons and protons at the center of some atoms can fuse together to release energy. The Livermore facility will use lasers to fuse atoms of deuterium and tritium.

Source: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Researched by LEE HOTZ and LYNN MEERSMAN/ Los Angeles Times

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4 $12.2 million contract awarded to cap old nuclear dump at ORNL
The Knoxville News-Sentinel

OAK RIDGE--A Colorado-based company has received a $12.2 million contract to cap an old dump at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and take other actions to prevent nuclear pollutants from seeping into local streams.

MACTEC Inc., an environmental engineering firm, was awarded the four- year contract by Bechtel Jacobs Co., the U.S. Department of Energy's environmental manager in Oak Ridge.

The contractor will build a cap on Solid Waste Storage Area No. 4 and other contaminated areas nearby, thus reducing the infiltration of rainwater. The old burial site received vast amounts of radioactive waste during the 1950s and '60s, as well as construction debris in later years.

MACTEC, based in Golden, Colo., with offices in Knoxville, will remove several acres of contaminated soil from the floodplain of White Oak Creek and reroute a road that runs through the area to be capped. The Oak Ridge project also includes construction of a groundwater collection and treatment system at the site.

Mark Musolf, a spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs, said the actions are expected to improve the water quality in White Oak Creek. The work is to be completed by October 2004.

The project is the first of several to be done in the next few years to clean up pollution in the Melton Valley portion of DOE's Oak Ridge reservation.

Frank Munger can be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net.

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5 Audit recommends clarifying DOE role in technology transfer
Oak Ridger Online
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
Oak Ridger staff

A recently released audit report suggests action needs to be taken to clarify the Department of Energy's role in technology transfer and to address an increasing number of private sector complaints.

Prepared by DOE's Inspector General's Office, the audit states the number of complaints related to patents and licensing have increased in recent years. These complaints were a result of confusion and misunderstanding relating to patent infringement and competition with the private sector.

"These are serious concerns which, if not addressed on an ongoing basis, can undermine the relationship between the department's laboratory system and the private sector," the audit states.

Two specific problems the audit points out are an apparent misunderstanding regarding the national laboratories' authority to use the patents of others in their research and development activities and confusion regarding DOE contractors competing with the private sector.

Several private sector complaints are cited in the audit including an allegation from Silicon Designs Inc. stating EG&G Mound employees had access to Silicon Designs' Small Business Innovative Research data through Los Alamos National Laboratory and that the EG&G Mound employees used the data for private gain.

The national laboratories have been actively involved in transferring government-funded technology to the private sector for development and commercialization for only about 10 years--the typical time period for new technology to reach the marketplace. Thus, the audit states the number of complaints is expected to increase.

Credit is given to the Technology Transfer Working Group for developing initiatives to help the private sector when disputes arise. The group was established by Energy Secretary Bill Richardson in 1999 to oversee technology transfer policy and procedures.

In the audit, the Technology Transfer Working Group states it disagrees with the Inspector General's observation that the number of complaints has increased.

"We are unaware of statistics to corroborate this statement," David Heyman, senior adviser for the Technology Transfer Working Group, said in a letter to the Inspector General's office. "Indeed, the small number of complaints relative to the large and increasing amount of activity is rather remarkable."

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6 Report on K-25 Site water due to be released Wednesday
Oak Ridger Online
Tuesday, September 19, 2000
Oak Ridger staff

While the Department of Energy says K-25's water is safe, a report and a second batch of tests to prove that statement are still not available.

DOE spokesman Steven Wyatt said it could be Wednesday before a report on the K-25 water tests is released.

Tests on the water were conducted after employees voiced concerns that cross-connecting lines for sanitary, firefighting and cooling waters and steam and storm drains were a possible way employees were exposed to hazardous materials at K-25.

Personnel with OMI, the contractor for the water plant and distribution system at K-25, assisted by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, took the water samples and put them in sealed containers. The samples were then sent to a state-certified laboratory for analysis.

However, DOE has been criticized for its efforts by several community members who say the federal agency was not independent in its action. Many of those community members say they suffer from illnesses related to workplace exposures to hazardous chemicals.

In addition to the tests authorized by DOE, the Environmental Protection Agency conducted its own sampling of the water at half of the 25 selected areas at the K-25 site.

A spokesman for the EPA told The Oak Ridger Monday that the agency's tests have not been completed. It could be a week or two before those results are available.

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7 Nuclear Free Great Basin Gathering
"SHUNDAHAI" IS A NEWE (WESTERN SHOSHONE) WORD MEANING "PEACE AND HARMONY WITH ALL CREATION"

October 6th - 9th, 2000,
Peace Camp - Newe Sogobia Across from the main entrance to the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles

You are invited to join us in the heart of the beautiful but fragile Great Basin Desert to learn about and strategize on nuclear and indigenous issues within our bio-region. Study the successes of other anti-nuclear campaigns, Celebrate our uniqueness and diversity and help build a strong and unified Alliance for a Nuclear Free Great Basin. The Great Basin bioregion is a beautiful, diverse and fragile areas stretching through five states. Home to strong indigenous people and cultures, high mountainous alpine lakes and forests, as well as many endangered and threatened plants and wildlife. Sadly, this land has experienced the deadly effects of nuclear weapons testing as well as the disposal of radioactive and toxic waste in leaking dumps. Man made low level radiation causes cancer, premature aging, immune system suppression, birth defects and genetic mutations. Daily shipments of nuclear and hazardous materials travel on our roads and railways to be dumped in the Great Basin. A serious nuclear accident could cause deaths and sickness, irreversibly contaminating large areas, and the U.S. has plans to continue and expand the radioactive assault on our air, water and land. Now is the time to create a Nuclear Free Great Basin. Together we can work effectively with other regional Nuclear Free alliances to change nuclear policies, protecting Mother Earth

FRIDAY, OCT 6TH: Nuclear issues within the Great Basin, panel discussion and strategizing workshop National and International Nuclear Free campaigns, successes and failures. Plan Yucca Mountain Citizens Inspection Team Action

SATURDAY, OCT 7TH: Indigenous issues within the Great Basin, panel discussion and workshop Strategy proposals for Great Basin Nuclear Free Campaign, discussion Concert and Celebration

SUNDAY, OCT 8TH: Create time-line for Great Basin Nuclear Free Campaign, workshops Building an Alliance for a Nuclear Free Great Basin, workshop. Plan Yucca Mountain Citizens Inspection Team Action

MONDAY, OCT 9TH: Pre Dawn Convoy to Yucca Mountain Sunrise Ceremony at the base of Yucca Mountain Rally and Yucca Mountain Citizens Inspection Team Action Daily Sunrise Ceremonies and Sweatlodges will be held. Meals and water will be provided Be prepared for Desert Camping, hot days

FOR CEREMONIES & SWEAT LODGE

CLOTHING: Please keep in mind when you dress, that Traditional Native Peoples, with their elders and family members, attend these ceremonies. Women's attire should be a sweat dress (shift/sun dress) or long skirt and top. No tank tops, undergarments, or bathing suits. Some extra clothing may be available-- ask at the Welcome Center. Men can wear shorts without shirts. No nudity of any kind.

SUNRISE CEREMONY: This ceremony is a traditional daily 'spirit- directed' practice, which gives thanks for all that we enjoy and depend upon. Concerns about 'human-directed' things and announcements can be shared at meal circles, scheduled announcement times.

This sacred fire must be respected, so do not put anything other than prayer tobacco, or other sacred offerings into it. You may bring your own personal tobacco and offer it to the Ceremony Fire. Please leave starting the fire and arranging the wood to the Firekeeper. We move around the fire in a clockwise direction when we pray. Corbin asks that we each pray in our own tradition and not emulate others.

Please allow elders and Native people to make offerings first, following Corbin's prayer. Four people may then enter at one time to make offerings. After the offerings are completed, the appointed coordinator will make short announcements about the day's schedule.

HEAD COVERINGS: Native Peoples, during prayer, stand and remove all head coverings.

Unless your religion specifies a head covering, we ask that you respect this and do the same. As we stand and pray together, we are each like an antenna or crystal connecting the Earth to the Sky above, linking male and female energy. This is best done without obstruction.

CRYSTALS, SHINY JEWELRY: Some Native traditions specify that during ceremonies, sweat lodges, etc., that all shiny objects and adornments (jewelry and hair ties) be left behind, as they discourage participation of the spirit world. They can also cause burns in the sweat lodge. SWEAT LODGE: Sweats will be no longer than two hours, following the Sunrise Ceremony. Please bring everything you need to the Sunrise Circle so that you can go directly to the Sweat Lodge. If needed, additional sweats can be scheduled after dinner.

Please only go to the Sweat Lodge area if you intend to participate in the ceremony. (Women on their moon time cannot participate at this time.) This is not a gathering place. Respect the sacred fire. Once the fire is lit, the ceremony has begun, even though people may not go into the lodge for a long time because the rocks are heating. Move around the fire and lodge in a clock-wise direction. No one should come and go, or ever cross the path between the fire and the lodge. Avoid loud talk and use this time for humble reflection and prayer. Please, no joking or curse words of any kind.

When entering or exiting the sweat lodge, we get down on all fours and say "All My Relations'. The Sweat Leader's voice should be the only one that is talking; you speak only when you are asked to by the Sweat Leader. These are Native ceremonies, therefore please allow the Sweat Leader to lead. Please, no spitting on the rocks or getting sick on them. If it gets too hot for you, ask the Sweat Leader to open the door.

WOMEN/MOON TIME: In many traditional cultures, women during their menstrual cycle do not enter food preparation or ceremonial areas. They are able to spend time apart from their usual responsibilities in the Moon Lodge to perform their own ceremonies, reflect on their dreams and receive teaching from the Grandmothers.

This is due, not to the fact that they are considered "unclean" as dominant culture dictates, but that the female power is strongest at this time and could overbalance others. Opposite energies do not always mix well. This is the time for women to rest, be honored, and be assisted by others. Please feel free to ask for assistance in getting your meals, washing your dishes, etc. If you do not have anyone to assist you, ask for help at the Welcome Center or Cafe.

SAFE SPACE

We want Peace Camp to be a safe space for everyone who lives there. This doesn't mean we expect everyone to feel 100% safe all the time, but it does mean that all of us, decades-long residents as well as first-time visitors, should feel safe to be open and honest about what they are feeling-- the bad as well as the good.

To create and maintain an environment of safety, we encourage you to feel empowered to turn to a friend, a Peace Camp veteran, or anyone here that they feel comfortable with, and share discomforts, questions and concerns.

We will also have people in camp whose time is dedicated to serving the community as mediators, advocates, mentors, advisors and friends. If you and your confidante can't make headway by yourselves, we encourage you to stick together until you find the right person to address your needs. The process will be different for everyone, but the results will be the same: resolving conflicts before they escalate, finding your niche in the family, demystifying your, and our, fears. For more information please call: 702-647-3095Sponsored By: Shundahai

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8 Commodore Awarded $4.4 Million Rocky Flats Contract
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 18, 12:51 PM EASTERN TIME
Press Release
SOURCE: Commodore Applied Technologies, Inc.

NEW YORK, Sept. 18 /PRNewswire/--Commodore Applied Technologies, that its subsidiary, Commodore Advanced Sciences, Inc., has been awarded a five-year subcontract from Kaiser-Hill Company, LLC, the management contractor at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site (RFETS). The subcontract was awarded for engineering and technical administrative services and has an estimated value of $4.4 million.

Since 1995, Commodore has provided RFETS with design package reproduction, distribution and document control and engineering information systems management, including design and maintenance of the engineering web site that allows engineers to retrieve and view drawings on-line. The new award allows Commodore to continue providing these services through September 30, 2005. RFETS, formerly a DOE nuclear weapons plant, is scheduled for closure in 2006.

Under a separate contract, Commodore's support to RFETS also includes the Surface Water Sampling Program, Bioassay and Sample Receiving Program, specialized hazardous and radioactive material sampling services and nuclear safety support services.

Peter E. Harrod, president and Chief Operating Officer of Commodore Advanced Sciences, Inc., said, ``I am particularly pleased with this award since one of the major selection criteria was based on technical capability. It highlights the strength of the Commodore personnel and the firm as a whole.''

In a further statement, Commodore announced that its joint venture Commodore, LLC has received authorization to continue its Chemical Weapons energetics tests at Dugway Proving Ground, Utah at its own expense.

Commodore Applied Technologies, Inc.--headquartered in New York, N.Y. and traded publicly on the American Stock Exchange--is a diverse technical and financial solutions company focused on high-end environmental markets. The Commodore family of companies includes subsidiaries Commodore Solution Technologies, Commodore Advanced Sciences and Dispute Resolution Management, and a joint venture, Teledyne-Commodore, LLC. The Commodore companies provide negotiated financial solutions, technical engineering services and patented remediation technologies designed to treat hazardous waste from nuclear and chemical sources. //www.commodore.com.

These materials contain forward-looking statements based on a series of projections and estimates regarding economics within the company's markets, the industries in which the company operates, the effects of legislation and regulations, as well as business and competitive outlook.

SOURCE: Commodore Applied Technologies, Inc.

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9 Jury out in Trident damage case
Ananova

A jury has retired to consider its verdicts on two anti-nuclear protesters accused of carrying out an attack on a Trident submarine.Thousands of pounds of damage was caused when Rachel Wenham, 28, and Rosie James, 25, used a hammer on testing equipment in the conning tower of HMS Vengeance.They also daubed slogans on the vessel in the Devonshire dock in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, in February, 1999.Wenham, of Leeds and James of London, each deny two counts of criminal damage.The women, of the protest group Trident Ploughshares 2000, admit the action but claim they were justified because of the threat caused by the Trident programme.The submarine was due to leave Barrow shortly after the attack, but had not been armed with its nuclear missiles at the time, Manchester Crown Court was told.Judge Gerard Humphries told the jury at the end of the week-long trial that if they were to acquit the women they had to be satisfied they had taken their action with a lawful excuse or necessity.He said: "Whether you sympathise with the views of the defendants on nuclear submarines and missiles, whether you consider them misguided or wrong or whether you think of them as brave crusaders, that must not influence your decision."

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10 Putin Orders Salvage of Sunken Sub
LAS VEGAS SUN
September 19, 2000
ASSOCIATED PRESS

MOSCOW (AP)--President Vladimir Putin has decided to go forward with an operation to retrieve the bodies of 118 crewmen who died aboard a nuclear submarine that sank in the Barents Sea, Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov said Tuesday.

Some recent reports had said that the proposed operation was being delayed because of disputes over financing, but Klebanov said after meeting with Putin that contracts have been drafted and are expected to be signed within a few days.

The contracts are with the Norwegian company Stolt Offshore, whose divers were able to open the hatch of sunken submarine Kursk after Russian efforts failed for days. The amount of the contracts was not immediately announced.

The retrieval effort is expected to take place in October or November, Klebanov said, according to the news agency Interfax. The Kursk sank on Aug. 12 after massive explosions.

The blasts shattered the submarine so severely that divers are unlikely to be able to retrieve the remains of sailors who were in the first four of the Kursk's nine compartments, Klebanov said.

Putin also has ordered that an operation be conducted to raise the wreck of the Kursk from its resting place 350 feet below the surface, Klebanov said. That effort is expected to start next summer.

Interfax said the cost of raising the wreck is estimated at $45 million. No contracts have been signed for the salvage operation, but Klebanov said the work will most likely include Dutch and Belgian companies, Interfax reported.

The cause of the explosions has not been determined. Russian officials say they are focusing on indications that the Kursk collided with an underwater object, possibly a foreign submarine.

The United States says two of its submarines were monitoring the naval exercises in which the Kursk was taking part but denies that either was involved in a collision.

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11 18-00 Further degradation would result
Oregon Live
Monday, September 18, 2000

Let me add my voice to that of "In My Opinion" author William Kinsella, who warns of the risks associated with the restart of Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility (Sept. 11).

Several of my Northwest colleagues and I recently sent a letter to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson stating our concerns with the Department of Energy's proposal. Later, I testified at a public hearing in Portland, where I joined hundreds of citizens in opposition to the project.

Restarting FFTF would involve tremendous new costs to taxpayers that are not included in the Department of Energy's Environmental Impact Statement. Yet contamination at Hanford is so severe that any diversion of resources could pose a tremendous setback to our goal to achieve total cleanup.

We live in an age where it is unacceptable to impose any new stress on our environment that would leave it in a condition that is worse than before. Restarting the FFTF facility at Hanford fails this simple test.

EARL BLUMENAUER Member of Congress
Washington, D.C.
Saturday, September 16, 2000