------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
*Gore's Russian Relations Examined
*ERA sees uranium market still depressed for year or more era
*AUSTRIA: TALKS ON NUCLEAR PLANT
*Rockville Firm Gets Navy Contract
*China Spy Probe Shifts to Missiles
*ACA Conference on Albright's Visit to N. Korea
*Russia Repeats Calls for Arms Cuts
*Submarine Recovery May Be Canceled
*Doubts Raised about Kursk Recovery
*Russia Puts American On Trial in Secrets Case
*Did cost-cutting sink the Kursk?
*Ukraine Briefly Shuts Down Reactor
*Energy Secretary Plans Break
*Connecticut Approves Plan for Takeover by Con Ed
*States
*Morale Improves at Los Alamos
*The Wen Ho Lee Case
*Sandia to Put Nuclear Reactor Underground
*Review Leads to New View on Chinese Spying
*Spy papers show focus on missiles
*Inmates Sue Over Experiments
*Senators fear aiding Chinese military
*For the Record
*Ancient Bacterium Is Reported Found

MILITARY
*Southern Colombia Brought to a Standstill by Fighting
*Girls swap diapers for rebel life
*Afghan Opium Crop Declines, but Neighbors Still Worry
*Missing troops a threat to truce
*Overheard
*Privacy Becomes Issue For UPS, FedEx As Drug Seizures Surge
*Killings of 4 Churchwomen Not Policy, Salvadoran Says
*Ex-Salvador soldier accuses superiors
*Russia Nears a Decision on Keeping Mir in Orbit
*Astronauts Test Space Station
*Discovery Astronauts Complete Work on Space Station
*Space surveillance complex changes hands
*A Day After Sharm el Sheik Accord, Palestinians Mount U.N. Offensive
*Sentence upheld against Rwandan
*Clinton Leads Tribute to the Cole's Crew
*Ship Bomb Inquiry Focuses on Safe Houses and Deserted Car
*Police investigate Islamic activists in attack
*'They died protecting us'
*USS Cole investigation under way
*U.S. seeks exemption on global court cases
*Taps for USS Cole dead
*Casualties of a Shadow War
*DALE McFEATTERS: War wardrobe

OTHER
*BRITAIN: TORTURE REPORT
*House Passes $7.8 Billion Plan to Save the Florida Everglades
*Lieberman Cites Religion as Foundation of Environmentalism
*States
*Jobs in the balance
*BIOTECH CORN IS WIDESPREAD
*Biotech Corn in Various Foods
*IMF, World Bank are failures
*Official Sees Attempt to Halt His Overhaul of State Police
*Selfish silence enables justice abuses
*Lapses Cited in Disciplining of the Police
*Illinois
*Report: China Spy Probe Shifting
*Terror Suspect Asked Officer to Kill Him, Interrogator Says

ACTIVISTS
*Cubans March in Protest Against U.S. Bill on Embargo
*World Briefing
*NEW HAVEN: UNION PROTESTS
*Arkansas


-------- NUCLEAR

Gore's Russian Relations Examined

New York Times
October 20, 2000 Filed at 7:43 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Gore-Russia.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Clinton administration is refusing to cooperate with a Senate investigation into a 1995 arms deal with Russia negotiated by Vice President Al Gore, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee said Thursday. A Gore spokesman accused the Republican senator of ``despicable'' political behavior.

Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., said the committee will hold a hearing Wednesday to determine whether the understanding between Vice President Al Gore and then-Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin of Russia is legal.

White House press secretary Jake Siewert denied the administration was involved in a ``secret agreement'' with the Russians and said the Senate hearings are meant to embarrass Gore, the Democrats' presidential candidate.

The New York Times reported last week that Gore promised the United States would not interfere with Moscow's fulfillment of existing sales contracts for conventional arms to Iran on condition such sales would end by the end of 1999. The report said Washington agreed not to penalize Moscow under a 1992 law banning arms sales to countries the United States views as exporters of terrorism.

The Washington Times reported Tuesday that Chernomyrdin urged Gore in a classified ``Dear Al'' letter on Dec. 9, 1995, to keep Russian nuclear cooperation with Iran confidential and said it was ``not to be conveyed to third parties, including the U.S. Congress.''

At a news conference, Smith said the White House has refused Republican senators' requests for documents related to the deal, which Smith said may have to be subpoenaed for the hearing.

``We are bringing young men and women home in body bags right now,'' Smith said, referring to 17 sailors killed in the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. ``We should not be aiding and abetting those who would do us harm. That may have happened here.''

Gore spokesman Jim Kennedy replied, ``That's a despicable exploitation of a national tragedy for political purposes, and he ought to be ashamed of himself.''

``Using the tragedy of the Middle East crisis as an excuse to hold a partisan hearing so close to the election is an outrageous use of power and a dangerous mix of politics and national security,'' Kennedy added.

Gore and Chernomyrdin mentioned an arms agreement in general terms at a news conference the day it was signed, but details have not been disclosed. Russia continues to sell arms to Iran over protests of the Clinton administration.

Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who joined Smith at a news conference, said Gore lacked authority to ignore the 1992 law without Congress' permission. ``I think it's completely illegal what they did in several of these instances here,'' Brownback said.

Brownback also referred to a Jan. 13 letter from Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov -- also first reported by The Washington Times. Brownback said the letter makes it clear that Russian sales to Iran should have been subject to sanctions under U.S. law but were not because of Gore's agreement with Chernomyrdin.

The White House's Siewert denied wrongdoing involving agreements between Gore and Chernomyrdin.

``We distributed a fact sheet to reporters on the ground at the time in 1995,'' he said. ``We also briefed the House International Relations Committee at the time. So if members of Congress have some problem with their briefings, they ought to look to themselves.''

Siewert said, ``There's no doubt that some of these hearings right now are more about the election season than about the real substance here.''

Smith said the timing of Wednesday's hearing is not politically motivated. ``Frankly, I don't think The New York Times is working for the Bush campaign,'' the Oregon senator said. ``They're the ones that broke the story.''

On the Net: Senate Foreign Relations Committee: http://foreign.senate.gov

-------- australia

ERA sees uranium market still depressed for year or more era

Australian Financial Review
Thursday Oct 19, 10:31 AM
http://www.afr.com.au/update/20001019/A60531-2000Oct19.html

ERA managing director Bob Cleary said the uranium market is depressed and prices are expected to remain depressed for at least another year or more. The company needs to undertake several significant changes to remain profitable in light of this environment, he told shareholders at the annual general meeting.

"The situation in the uranium market at present, with more than half the demand being supplied from secondary sources, has led to depressed prices which are anticipated to last at least another year or more," he said.

"In order to remain profitable, faced with this prospect, management have undertaken a number of significant changes to address the reality of this market."

Mr Cleary said it is essential that ERA achieves major cost reductions while making the most of its assets.

Many of these changes are already in train and include a major downsizing and relocation of ERA's corporate office from the Sydney central business district to lower cost premises at the northern suburb of St Leonards.

Negotiations have allowed ERA to almost halve its stocks of finished product while still being capable of meeting customers expectations, Mr Cleary said.

Chairman Barry Cusack told shareholders that the company is selling uranium into a buyers' market.

"With very little material being sold on the spot market, it is unlikely that spot prices will increase substantially. ERA does not expect the market to pick up for at least the next year," Mr Cusack said.

The uranium oxide spot price has decreased this year to $US7.40 per pound today compared with the average spot price for the 1999/2000 year of $US9.34 per pound.

Earlier, Mr Cusack told shareholders that Rio Tinto Ltd, which recently took over North Ltd and has become ERA's largest shareholder, is currently undertaking a strategic review of all North assets, including ERA.

-------- austria

New York Times
October 19, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/world/19BRIE.html

EUROPE

AUSTRIA: TALKS ON NUCLEAR PLANT Chancellor Wolfgang Schýssel and Prime Minister Milos Zeman of the Czech Republic plan to meet on Oct. 31 in the Czech city of Brno to try to resolve a dispute over a nuclear plant in Temelin, some 35 miles from the Austrian border. The Czech foreign minister, Jan Kavan, said the meeting would take place only if a suspended blockade of the border by antinuclear protesters was officially called off. Victor Homola (NYT)

-------- business

Rockville Firm Gets Navy Contract

Washington Post
Thursday , October 19, 2000 ; Page M10 Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36962-2000Oct19?language=printer

BAE Systems North America, a global systems, defense and aerospace company based in Rockville, has been awarded a $41 million contract to provide support to the Navy's missile system programs on submarines.

The work will include assisting with system engineering and integration efforts in test planning and analysis, system coordination, information systems and material support for the Navy's Strategic Systems Programs.

-------- china

China Spy Probe Shifts to Missiles

By Walter Pincus and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 19, 2000 ; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34437-2000Oct18?language=printer

A new review of Chinese military documents provided by a defector in 1995 has led U.S. intelligence agencies to conclude that Chinese espionage has gathered more American missile technology than nuclear weapons secrets, senior U.S. officials said.

The conclusion was reached only this year because the CIA and other intelligence agency linguists did not fully translate the huge pile of secret Chinese documents, totaling 13,000 pages, until four years after the agency obtained them, according to a senior law enforcement official, who described the delay as a major blunder.

The belated translation and analysis has prompted a major reorientation of the FBI's investigation into Chinese espionage. From 1996 until late last year, the FBI probe centered on the suspected loss of U.S. nuclear warhead data, and quickly narrowed into an investigation of Wen Ho Lee, a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Now, however, the FBI--which never found evidence that Lee spied for China--has shifted its focus to the Defense Department and its private contractors.

That is because the documents provided by the defector show that during the 1980s, Beijing had gathered a large amount of classified information about U.S. ballistic missiles and reentry vehicles. The missile secrets are far more likely to have come from defense officials or missile builders than from Los Alamos or other U.S. nuclear weapons labs, officials said.

The shift in the investigation's focus follows several years of highly public and controversial efforts by the FBI, CIA and Energy Department to determine whether China stole the designs of advanced nuclear warheads from the United States, and if so, whether Beijing was aided by U.S. spies.

Plagued by internal disputes between agencies, partisan pressures from Congress, and an apparently mistaken decision to focus on Lee, counterintelligence investigators were slow to review the full 13,000 pages that originally sparked the inquiry.

The CIA concluded several years ago that the defector who supplied the documents was a Chinese double agent, casting doubt on the information he delivered and delaying its translation from Mandarin to English. But the FBI, which has interviewed the defector in the United States, believes that he is legitimate. The CIA now says the evidence about the defector is "inconclusive," but agrees that the information he handed over has proven accurate, a senior government official said this week.

The FBI, officials said, pressed for translating more of the document and, to support its case, began to question directly the Chinese informant, a former Chinese missile specialist whom the bureau brought to the United States. Although the FBI refused to say where he is now living, a senior intelligence official said earlier this week, "We know his whereabouts."

Because the informant was a volunteer who approached the United States with an unsolicited offer to provide Chinese secrets, he is known in intelligence jargon as a "walk-in." He smuggled the documents out of China through DHL, the private delivery company, according to a former intelligence official who has reviewed much of the translated material. The documents appear to be a five-year "strategic plan" for development of China's new generation of missiles, the former official said.

Another intelligence expert familiar with the material described it as "an embarrassment of riches."

When the walk-in first delivered the documents, a senior U.S. official said, the CIA read and translated the titles of each major portion, then ordered a full translation of a 76-page section dealing with "nuclear" information--data on U.S. warheads, including the most advanced weapon in the U.S. arsenal, the W-88.

One nuclear weapons official familiar with the process said the CIA had Chinese linguists read the documents for "intelligence purposes," to see whether they contained valuable information about Chinese missiles and warheads, and decided they did not. The agency did not perform a "counterintelligence review" to determine whether they contained classified information about U.S. missiles and warheads, the official said.

Because of the CIA's belief that the walk-in was a double agent, a full translation of the documents seemed less pressing. "He failed an agency polygraph," one intelligence official explained. The CIA's suspicions about the informant also slowed the FBI's already limited investigation at Los Alamos of Wen Ho Lee.

Another reason for the FBI's limited inquiry at Los Alamos in 1996 and 1997, a former FBI agent said, was that the bureau's Chinese counterintelligence agents were "already swamped" by highly publicized allegations of Chinese campaign contributions to the 1996 Democratic presidential campaign.

One official who did pay attention to the CIA's 76-page translation on nuclear warheads in 1995-96 was Notra Trulock III, then the Energy Department's intelligence chief. Trulock was given a copy of the material about the W-88 before it was officially circulated within the intelligence community, triggering a complaint by then-CIA Director John M. Deutch, who had concerns about the document being properly secured, a CIA official confirmed.

Trulock used the translation to draft an "administrative inquiry" calling for an investigation of Chinese espionage, which in turn led the FBI to open a formal investigation that focused on Lee in 1996.

In 1997, a team led by former CIA deputy director Richard Kerr reviewed the small portion of translated material. Kerr felt that it showed "how very aggressively the Chinese were pursuing [U.S.] secrets," according to a participant in the study, who added that the team decided that if the walk-in was a bona fide double agent, it was "baffling that such valuable information was planted with him."

In late 1998, after a House select committee chaired by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) received testimony about alleged Chinese espionage at the weapons lab, the FBI "pushed hard to get the entire document translated," said one government official.

A CIA damage assessment in early 1999 by Robert Walpole, a senior intelligence officer, was based on further, partial translations of the documents. But the CIA did not order a full translation until after Walpole's assessment was made public in March 1999.

"They brought Chinese linguists from all over the government to take part," said one former senior intelligence official.

As the full translation began to unfold, the Department of Defense was called in to help determine the sensitivity of information pertaining to missiles and reentry vehicles. The Pentagon concluded the information was highly classified and had been stolen by Beijing, a former senior official said.

In September 1999, Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis J. Freeh told congressional committees they were widening the investigation of nuclear espionage beyond Lee to include other potential suspects at numerous defense facilities.

The announced reason for the expansion was the government's realization that the information about the W-88 warhead contained in the walk-in documents could have come not just from Los Alamos, but also from hundreds of other facilities within the nation's nuclear weapons complex.

But as authorities expanded the investigation into alleged nuclear espionage, they started looking for possible sources of compromised missile data as well.

-------- korea

ACA Conference on Albright's Visit to N. Korea

US Newswire
19 Oct 15:40
http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/1019-131.html

Arms Control Association Press Conference on Secretary of State Albright's Visit to North Korea

To: Assignment Desk, Daybook Editor Contact: Wade Boese of the Arms Control Association, 202-463-8270

News Advisory: What: Arms Control Association Press Conference on Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's Visit to North Korea

When: Friday, Oct. 20, 9-10:30 a.m. Where: National Press Club, 14th and F Streets, 13th Floor, Lisagor Room

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il next Monday and Tuesday in Pyongyang, North Korea, marking the highest-level visit ever by a U.S. official. The meeting was agreed to at the Oct. 9-12 visit to Washington by Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok, right-hand man to Chairman Kim. Secretary Albright will present President Clinton's views on the North Korean situation, including arms control, directly to Chairman Kim and prepare for a possible visit to North Korea by President Clinton. The visits, which constitute a breakthrough in U.S.-North Korean relations, potentially have far-reaching implications for security in Northeast Asia, efforts to control nuclear and missile proliferation, and U.S. national missile defense plans.

Panelists:

-- Spurgeon M. Keeny, Jr., president and executive director of the Arms Control Association; former deputy director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

-- Alan Romberg, senior associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center; former principal deputy director of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State

-- David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security and editor of the forthcoming book "Solving the North Korean Nuclear Puzzle"

-- Joel Wit, guest scholar of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution; former U.S. State Department Coordinator of the U.S.-North Korean Agreed Framework

-- Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; former staff member of the Armed Services Committee and deputy staff director of the Government zrkW-Ko4* 3/4qcommittee on Legislation and National Security

-------- russia

Russia Repeats Calls for Arms Cuts

Associated Press
October 19, 2000 Filed at 12:41 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-US-Arms.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- In the latest session of arms control talks, Russia repeated its proposal of deep cuts in U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads to 1,500 each, and rejected U.S. plans for a missile defense system.

A Foreign Ministry statement said Russia supported the deeper cuts under a potential START III treaty, which originally envisaged both sides reducing arsenals to about 2,000-2,500 warheads.

But Russia warned that such a marked reduction would depend on the United States not breaking the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty.

The Foreign Ministry's statement came after the end of meetings Wednesday between U.S. Undersecretary of State John Holum and Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Mamedov. Holum has been in Moscow since Monday for talks on nuclear disarmament and missile defense.

Washington has proposed amending that ABM treaty to permit a limited national missile defense. Russia is strongly opposed to the U.S. missile defense plans, warning it could spark a new arms race. President Clinton has decided to leave the decision to build such a U.S. system to his successor.

The START II treaty, concluded in January 1993, calls for cuts in warheads to 3,000-3,500 on each side. It has yet to take effect.

---

Submarine Recovery May Be Canceled

Associated Press
October 19, 2000 Filed at 9:24 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Russia-Nuclear-Submarine.html

MOSCOW (AP) -- The chief of Russia's Navy said Thursday that he may scrap the recovery of crewmen's remains from the sunken Kursk nuclear submarine if experts decide the operation would risk deep sea divers' lives.

``If the analysis of the situation inside the submarine's hull shows it's dangerous and too risky for the divers, I will be forced to give orders to cancel the operation,'' Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov said in a statement. ``We mustn't allow the operation at the site of the catastrophe to turn into yet another severe shock for all of us.''

Many naval experts have pointed out that the divers would be in mortal danger by working in their bulky pressure suits inside the cramped submarine compartments, which are likely littered with jagged pieces of metal and other debris.

Kuroyedov described the task as a ``serious challenge ... in the technological and moral and psychological sense.''

British, Scandinavian and Russian divers have sailed from the Norwegian port of Hammerfest on the mother ship Regalia and are expected to reach the site where the Kursk sank early Friday.

If the government cancels the salvage effort, the public seems prepared to accept it calmly. For weeks, Russian newspapers and television channels have described its dangers and suggested that the remains should be left in the sunken submarine.

``For relatives and for us, the crew have forever gone to sea,'' the Komsomolskaya Pravda today said in a commentary. ``Should we break the tradition that says that a crew's grave is their ship?''

Marine specialists have also pointed out that cutting holes in the submarine's hull to reach the bodies could jeopardize the safety of the Kursk's nuclear reactors, which automatically shut down after the explosion. No radiation leak has been spotted yet.

Some media have speculated that the government is actually interested in retrieving weapons, secret equipment and naval codes inside the Kursk, and will leave the bodies behind. But Kuroyedov dismissed the claims, saying the site was being duly guarded by the Navy.

All 118 seamen on board the Kursk died in the Aug. 12 accident, when the submarine exploded and sank during naval exercises in the Barents Sea. Russian officials have not determined the cause of the accident. The three main theories supported by Russian officials are an internal malfunction, a collision with a Western submarine or striking a World War II-era mine.

Most experts point to a new torpedo undergoing tests as a likely cause of the disaster. Without citing any evidence, the daily Izvestia claimed Thursday that the new torpedo was a modification of the older Shkval underwater missile, a device that glides on huge air bubbles it creates as goes along.

The newspaper said the Navy was in a hurry to test it, because the government planned to sell the torpedoes to Iran.

----

Doubts Raised about Kursk Recovery

Washington Post
Thursday , October 19, 2000
By David Hoffman Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40007-2000Oct19.html

MOSCOW, Oct. 19 - The Russian Navy commander today raised fresh doubts about whether divers will be deployed to try and recover the bodies of sailors lost in the sunken nuclear attack submarine Kursk.

Admiral Vladimir Kuroyedov said in an unusual formal statement that he will cancel the operation to recover the crew if conditions inside the submarine looks too hazardous. The mission to dive to the wrecked submarine is to begin shortly. A Norwegian floating derrick, the Regalia, is now making its way toward the scene of the Aug. 12 disaster and is expected to arrive there Friday.

President Vladimir Putin had ordered that an effort be made to recover the bodies, but top Russian officials have given conflicting signals in recent days about whether the mission will be fulfilled. Kuroyedov said the Navy felt an obligation to the memory of the 118 who were killed to try and make an effort.

However, he added, in what was seen here as a strong hint that the mission might be called off. "We must also think about the lives of the people who will go underwater and work at a 100-meter depth in the complex conditions of the Barents Sea." The stricken vessel lays at the seabed at a depth of 354 feet.

The submarine suffered two explosions during a torpedo practice session. The explosions are said by Russian officials to have ripped through the first four of the submarine's 10 watertight compartments. Most of the crew, located in these forward compartments, was probably killed instantly.

Russian officials issued misleading statements in the early days after the disaster, at first saying the crew did not need a rescue and later suggesting that there might have been some survivors of the blast; they finally acknowledged that most if not all the crew died at the outset.

Since then, officials who have seen video tape of the wreck say they believe the inside of the compartments has been turned into a jagged tunnel of sharp edges, twisted metal and dangling pipes that may make it impossible to work under water. They said there is also a strong current where the vessel lays which looks "like a river" on video tapes.

Igor Dygalo, chief of the Navy press service, told Interfax today, "First, a serious factor is weather. The conditions on the Barents Sea at this season of the year are rather difficult, and even at the moment, wind and waves are complicating the work of ships in this area." The second factor, he said, is what the divers see when they reach the sub and try to enter the hull.

"If first reports give a negative analysis and this analysis shows that the further work could be risky, the naval commander-in-chief, as the highest official in these sphere, will have the right to issue an order canceling the operation so as not to risk the lives of the divers," he said.

Russian officials have said they are investigating three possible explanations for the catastrophe: a torpedo explosion, a collision with another vessel or a World War II mine. Western specialists and some Russians have said the most likely is the torpedo explosion.

Meanwhile, the widow of the ship's captain, Irina Lyachina, today touched off a furor with a public letter announcing her resignation from a 10-member commission designated to look after the families of the sailors.

She said the commission had been packed with bureaucrats and complained that 23,000 rubles (the equivalent of $821) was squandered for a commemorative book on the Kursk while the families have more urgent needs. Support for the families "was never an issue," she complained.

-------

Russia Puts American On Trial in Secrets Case

By Anna Dolgov
Associated Press
Thursday , October 19, 2000 ; Page A28
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36214-2000Oct18?language=printer

MOSCOW, Oct. 18 -- After six months of detention, U.S. businessman Edmond Pope went on trial in a Moscow court today on charges he illegally bought secret weapons technology.

Pope has maintained his innocence. The United States has called repeatedly for him to be released, and warned that the case could discourage American investment in Russia. Russian officials said the U.S. criticism was meddling in Russia's legal system.

Pope, a retired Navy officer from State College, Pa., was arrested April 3 by Russia's Federal Security Service on charges that he tried to buy plans for a high-speed Russian torpedo, the Shkval. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Pope's supporters and family say he was seeking information on an underwater propulsion system that is at least 10 years old and has already been sold abroad.

But the Russians say the Shkval underwater missile is leading-edge Russian military technology.

The missile glides on huge air bubbles it creates as it goes along, and can build up speeds of hundreds of miles per hour.

Pope's lawyer, Pavel Astakhov, told reporters at the Moscow city court that he did not see the 26-page indictment until today, and that Pope had not been permitted to study it closely because it was based on classified materials.

The judge, Nina Barkina, is to read the indictment at the next session on Friday.

The court hearing was closed, and U.S. Embassy officials were not permitted to attend.

"At this stage our concern is about the trial process, about the lack of information," said U.S. Undersecretary of State Thomas R. Pickering, who was in Moscow for talks on terrorism.

Astakhov said his client was pessimistic about the outcome of the trial, expected to last four weeks.

The judge also agreed today to an independent medical examination to determine whether Pope, who has suffered from a rare form of bone cancer, was healthy enough to remain in prison.

Astakhov said he would insist on an American doctor--a request that so far has been denied.

The bone cancer was in remission when Pope was arrested. His wife, Cheryl, has visited him several times in Moscow and said she fears the cancer has returned.

--------

Did cost-cutting sink the Kursk?

MSNBC
By David Hoffman
THE WASHINGTON POST
10/19/00
http://www.msnbc.com/news/478441.asp?cp1=1

Russian sub may have been testing cheaper torpedo fuel Crew members who died aboard the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk stasnd on the deck of the sub during a naval parade in July. The sub's captain, Grigory Lyachin, salutes at far right.

MURMANSK, Russia, Oct. 19 - It was a simple farewell. Irina Lyachina didn't think twice about it. She waved goodbye to her husband through the window.

GENNADY LYACHIN, the 45-year-old commander of Russia's most modern nuclear-powered attack submarine, the Kursk, left their dilapidated apartment complex at Vidyaevo, a naval base on the rocky shore near here, in early August for a short training exercise in the Barents Sea.

"Just usual exercises," Irina recalled thinking. Lyachin had piloted the Kursk on a solo voyage in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea the previous year. This time, he would be gone only a few days.

But the exercises, it turned out, were hardly routine. They were biggest naval training event of the year, with about 30 surface ships and submarines, in preparation for an ambitious mission to the Mediterranean. Their timing was important for another reason: They came on the eve of a critical Kremlin debate over military spending and priorities.

Budgetary pressures on the navy were felt throughout the fleet, even aboard the Kursk. In fact, it sailed from Murmansk carrying guests from a torpedo engine facility in Kaspiysk, in the southern region of Dagestan. According to sources, it may have been testing a newly configured torpedo engine that required less expensive - though highly volatile - fuel.

The tests were never completed. On Aug. 12, the Kursk suffered a catastrophic breach and sank, with the loss of all 118 crew members. It was Russia's most deadly peacetime seafaring disaster. While its cause has not been disclosed, investigators and other specialists are focusing on what occurred in the torpedo room.

A FALTERING FLEET

The pride of Russia's Northern Fleet is berthed along the shore of the Kola Peninsula. The missile-launching submarines and surface vessels - including the mammoth guided-missile cruiser Pyotr Veliky - still mark Russia as an aspirant to global power.

But they share the coastline with signs of decline. Submarines sit dockside for lack of money to undertake the globe-spanning missions for which they were designed. A mountain of spent nuclear fuel has been backing up for years in storage sites.

The story of the Kursk's last voyage is intertwined with the Russian navy's struggle for scarce resources.

Often unable to afford maintenance, spare parts and even food, the navy has been desperate to keep what had been the Soviet Union's vast armada afloat. There has been an inexorable slide as ships become obsolete, a constant reminder that Russia's Third World economy cannot easily support a naval force of the kind the Soviet Union once boasted.

Russia's navy has one-third the number of ships in operation than did the Soviet navy at its peak combat strength a decade ago. In 1991, the Soviet Union had about 180 nuclear-powered submarines; today there are 75. Russia has one operative heavy aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov. The country's defense budget for 2000 is the equivalent of about $5 billion, of which the Navy share is believed to be about $650 million, although this does not include other funds typically channeled to the military.

Russian naval officials have lobbied hard for more money, and Vladimir Putin's ascension to the Russian presidency offered a fresh chance this year. Putin joined a debate about military spending, not only in the navy, but also among competing factions in the strategic missile forces and the conventional army.

According to Russian and Western analysts, the navy vigorously courted Putin, who on March 4 signed a 10-year plan for naval development. The navy feted him on a visit to the Northern Fleet last April 5-6. Putin boarded a nuclear missile submarine and witnessed a test-firing of an intercontinental ballistic missile. He visited Northern Fleet headquarters in Severomorsk, north of Murmansk, and reportedly heard a plea by navy officials for more cash.

Despite money troubles, the navy's ambitions were running high. "Russia must not lose its status as a great naval power," declared the naval commander in chief, Vladimir Kuroyedov, in a Russian newspaper interview in July.

Kuroyedov vowed that Russia would return to the Mediterranean for its first massive naval deployment there in years.

-------- ukraine

Ukraine Briefly Shuts Down Reactor

Associated Press
October 19, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Ukraine-Nuclear.html

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- A nuclear reactor at Ukraine's Zaporizhia atomic power plant shut down temporarily because of a malfunction, the state nuclear company Energoatom said Thursday.

Engineers switched off the No. 5 reactor for five hours on Wednesday after a transformer broke down, Energoatom said. The reactor was restarted early Thursday morning, the company said. The shutdown posed no danger of releasing radiation into the environment.

Zaporizhia, in southern Ukraine, operates six nuclear reactors and is Europe's largest atomic power plant.

Currently, 12 out of the 14 reactors at Ukraine's five nuclear power plants are working. They produce more than 40 percent of the country's electricity output.

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

Energy Secretary Plans Break

Associated Press
October 19, 2000 Filed at 1:45 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Richardson-Future.html

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) -- U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson says he intends to take a break from public life after President Clinton's administration ends in January.

He said he won't decide immediately whether to run for governor of New Mexico in 2002.

``I believe that New Mexicans are tired of campaigns right now, and I don't want to have a two-year governor's race,'' Richardson said.

``I want to pursue, at least for a short period of time, a little bit of a breather away from public life. But I certainly intend to return to public life,'' he said in an interview published Wednesday in The Santa Fe New Mexican.

Asked if he would turn down a Cabinet position if Democrat Al Gore wins next month's election, Richardson said, ``I hope to assist President Gore as citizen Richardson.''

Richardson, the highest-ranking Hispanic in the Clinton administration, was a congressman from New Mexico for 14 years before being tapped in 1997 to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. In 1998, Clinton named him to head the Energy Department.

At one time, he was considered a frontrunner to be Gore's running mate until he encountered troubles in the Energy Department including soaring gasoline prices and security problems at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab.

Richardson said he has no firm plans but expects to teach, write a book, go on a speaking tour and serve on a corporate board of directors. He also said he may establish a conflict-resolution center in New Mexico.

Other Clinton administration officials are departing before the end of Clinton's term. Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner announced plans to step down next month, and Barry McCaffrey announced his resignation Monday as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

---

Connecticut Approves Plan for Takeover by Con Ed

New York Times
October 20, 2000
By PAUL ZIELBAUER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/20/nyregion/20CONE.html

Over the objections of Connecticut's attorney general, the state's regulatory authority gave its final approval yesterday to Consolidated Edison's proposed $3.8 billion acquisition of Northeast Utilities.

If the deal is approved by New Hampshire and two federal agencies, it will create the largest gas and electric utility in the Northeast, with 6.5 million customers in eight states.

The acquisition would be the latest in a string of East Coast utility mergers, prompted by competition in a market where electricity generation is no longer regulated, though its distribution is.

There is some doubt, however, whether the two companies will agree to the terms of the merger set today by the State Department of Public Utility Control.

The agency's five commissioners voted 4 to 1 to accept a modified version of a 146-page draft document that set the conditions the companies will need to fulfill. But yesterday the department issued only a three-page news release, not its detailed final approval document. Beryl Lyons, a spokeswoman for the authority, said the details of the state's approval would be released this morning.

Spokesmen for both companies declined to comment on the state's approval until they reviewed the details.

Two weeks ago, Con Ed's chairman, Eugene R. McGrath, criticized the Sept. 22 draft document approving the merger, saying that its conditions were too harsh and that the deal did not benefit company shareholders.

Richard Blumenthal, the state attorney general, said yesterday that he was so opposed to the merger that he was considering challenging the state's ruling in court, and he called Con Ed "the worst possible partner" for Northeast Utilities, which also owns Yankee Gas and is based in Berlin, Conn.

"The rate reductions are trivial and totally inadequate," Mr. Blumenthal said referring to the state's conditions. "The threat to the environment is real and immediate," and the conditions set by the state utility control board, he added, "are weaker than they were in the draft."

He, along with many Connecticut residents, also expressed concern over Con Ed's reputation for unreliability and poor customer service in light of blackouts and brownouts that New York City customers have endured in recent years.

Connecticut is the sixth state to approve the merger conditionally, following in the regulatory footsteps of Maine, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Vermont and New York, whose Public Service Commission approved the deal early last month. The deal also appears to be on track in Massachusetts, where there is no formal approval process, only a requirement that the two companies submit a letter describing their plans.

Each state's assent follows different guidelines, and Connecticut's approval of the deal includes many requirements that could deter the companies.

For instance, Connecticut requires Con Ed to pay an "acquisition premium" of $1.5 billion, which is included in the $3.8 billion takeover price. Within two months of the merger, Connecticut would also require one of Northeast Utilities' subsidiaries, Connecticut Light & Power, to take measures that would reduce residential nonheating prices by about 1 percent, saving consumers $45 million over three years.

The state would also impose a two- year ban on Con Ed's ability to impose involuntary layoffs of Connecticut workers and would forbid the utility to recover costs incurred from the merger by raising consumer prices. In addition, the state would add hundreds of acres of utility- owned land that the merged companies, to be known as New Consolidated Edison, would have to offer to sell to Connecticut municipalities before selling them elsewhere.

Ms. Lyons, the state agency's spokeswoman, said the merger, as arranged by the authority, would be good for the companies and for Connecticut consumers.

The utility companies said banding together was the only way to survive in an increasingly competitive market for gas and electric power.

If the two companies agree to Connecticut's merger conditions, there will be three other regulatory hurdles to clear. The first is New Hampshire, which recently completed its review and is expected to issue a decision within weeks.

After that, final assent will have to come from the United States Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, officials said.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the merger on Aug. 22, said Mr. Poirot, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved it on June 1.

-------- maine

USA Today
10/19/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Maine

Wiscasset - Workers have resumed the dismantling of the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant. Work stopped Oct. 2 after five welders were exposed to what officials described as a minor dose of radiation. Their clothing was contaminated when two waste-shipping containers were mistakenly moved from the nuclear to the non-nuclear side of the plant.

-------- new mexico

Morale Improves at Los Alamos

Associated Press
October 19, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Los-Alamos-Morale.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Morale at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab is improving now that the Wen Ho Lee case is dying down, a lab official and a researcher told a scientific group Thursday.

``Los Alamos has turned the corner and is coming back,'' said atmospheric researcher Manvendra Dubey, head of the lab's Asian-American diversity working group.

Lee, a former Los Alamos computer expert, is talking to federal authorities this week after his guilty plea in September to one count of improperly transferring nuclear secrets to portable computer tapes. He had been charged with 59 counts and held in solitary confinement for nine months, but prosecutors agreed to the deal as problems with the case arose.

Lee's supporters say he was targeted, because of his ethnicity, in an investigation of possible Chinese spying at the lab. He was born in Taiwan and is a naturalized U.S. citizen. Two groups of scientists of Asian heritage called for Asian scientists to avoid working at the national laboratories because of the Lee case.

Dubey said the case prompted some ethnic Asian scientists to leave the national laboratories, and the number of Asian postdoctoral fellows at Los Alamos dropped from about 70 in June 1999 to fewer than 50 today.

But the experience has improved communications between ethnic Asian scientists and Los Alamos managers, and many of the security measures that lab workers objected to have been eased, Dubey said.

``In Los Alamos, there is a silver lining to all of this,'' Dubey said at a forum held by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. ``I see Los Alamos as a place where these things will get fixed first.''

Meanwhile, the Energy Department announced the creation of a blue-ribbon commission to study how best to combine the varied interests of science and security at the nation's weapons labs.

The commission will be headed by John Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary who is president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a nonpartisan think tank.

On the Net:
Los Alamos National Laboratory: http://www.lanl.gov/
American Association for the Advancement of Science: http://www.aaas.org/

---

The Wen Ho Lee Case

New York Times
October 19, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/opinion/L19TRU.html

To the Editor:
Re "From the Editors: The Times and Wen Ho Lee" (Sept. 26):

In their review of coverage of the Chinese nuclear espionage scandal, your editors wish they had taken "a closer look at Notra Trulock, the intelligence official at the Department of Energy who sounded some of the loudest alarms about Chinese espionage." What do they think they could have learned?

I was a principal in the government's detection of China's theft of United States nuclear weapons secrets, and my role in the handling of this case has been subject to great scrutiny.

Allegations by officials that ethnic profiling and racism drove my selection of Dr. Wen Ho Lee for prosecution have appeared in the news media, including in The New York Times. I reject those allegations.

Furthermore, my role in the investigation of Dr. Lee ended in June 1996. From that point on, the Federal Bureau of Investigation ran this case, and it was the F.B.I. that singled out Dr. Lee, not the Energy Department.

NOTRA TRULOCK III Falls Church, Va., Oct. 17, 2000

--------

Sandia to Put Nuclear Reactor Underground

Albuquerque Journal
Thursday, October 19, 2000
By John Fleck Journal Staff Writer
mailto:jfleck@abqJournal.com
http://www.abqjournal.com/scitech/153631scitech10-19-00.htm

Sandia National Laboratories plans to spend $20 million moving a small nuclear reactor underground.

Security for the reactor was costing far more than reactor operations, said Ken Reil, so Sandia and the Department of Energy decided to build an underground, high-security building.

The Sandia Underground Reactor Facility - SURF - will hold the Sandia Pulsed Reactor, known by its initials SPR (pronounced "spur").

Located in a high-security area south of Kirtland Air Force Base's runways, the reactor has been used to study the effect of radiation on electronic components.

Radiation is a problem for electronic components used in spacecraft and in nuclear weapons, which must be able to function reliably in the midst of a nuclear barrage.

In the Sandia reactor, pieces of uranium are used to create bursts of radiation to simulate either the low-radiation environment of space or the higher radiation found on a nuclear battlefield.

The problem, Reil said, is the high cost of security to guard the uranium.

Running the reactor costs $2 million a year, he said, but providing security costs $10 million a year because of the large number of guards required to surround the building where the reactor is housed.

Security at the new building will be $4 million per year, meaning the project will pay for itself in less than four years, Reil noted.

Because of the current high costs, officials decided several months ago to shut down the reactor while a building is built.

The building is designed to be more easily guarded by fewer people.

In the meantime, radiation tests have been halted for the next two years, Reil said, and the uranium has been locked away in a protective vault.

---

Review Leads to New View on Chinese Spying
Missile secrets sought, not nuclear data

San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, October 19, 2000
Walter Pincus and Vernon Loeb,
Washington Post
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/10/19/MN89753.DTL

Washington -- A new review of Chinese military documents provided by a defector in 1995 has led U.S. intelligence agencies to conclude that Chinese espionage has gathered more American missile technology than nuclear weapons secrets, senior U.S. officials said.

The conclusion was reached only this year because CIA and other intelligence agency linguists did not fully translate the huge pile of secret Chinese documents, totaling 13,000 pages, until four years after the agency obtained them, according to a senior law enforcement official, who described the delay as a major blunder.

The documents appear to be a five-year "strategic plan" for development of China's new generation of missiles, according to a former intelligence official. Another intelligence expert familiar with the material described it as "an embarrassment of riches."

The belated translation and analysis has prompted a major reorientation of the FBI's investigation into Chinese espionage. From 1996 until late last year, the FBI probe centered on the suspected loss of U.S. nuclear warhead designs, and quickly narrowed into an investigation of Wen Ho Lee, a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Now, however, the FBI -- which never found evidence that Lee spied for China -- has shifted its focus to the Defense Department and its private contractors.

That is because the documents provided by the defector show that during the 1980s, Beijing had gathered a large amount of classified information about U.S. ballistic missiles and re-entry vehicles. The missile secrets are far more likely to have come from defense officials or missile builders than from Los Alamos or other U.S. nuclear weapons labs, officials said.

The shift in the investigation's focus follows several years of highly public and controversial efforts by the FBI, CIA and Energy Department to determine whether China stole the designs of advanced nuclear warheads from the United States -- and if so, whether Beijing was aided by U.S. spies.

Plagued by internal disputes between agencies, partisan pressures from Congress, and an apparently mistaken decision to focus on Lee, counterintelligence investigators were slow to review the full 13,000 pages that sparked the inquiry.

The CIA had concluded several years ago that the defector who supplied the documents was a Chinese double agent, casting doubt on the information he delivered and delaying its translation from Mandarin to English. But the FBI, which has interviewed the defector in the United States, believes that he is legitimate. The CIA now says the evidence about the defector is "inconclusive," but agrees that the information he handed over has proven accurate, a senior government official said this week.

The FBI, officials said, pressed for translating more of the document and, to support its case, began to question directly the Chinese informant, a former Chinese missile specialist whom the bureau brought to the United States.

---

Spy papers show focus on missiles
Chinese documents untranslated while other angle studied

Pioneer Planet
Thursday, October 19, 2000
NATION/WORLD WALTER PINCUS and VERNON LOEB
WASHINGTON POST
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/4/news/docs/020935.htm

WASHINGTON - A new review of Chinese military documents provided by a defector in 1995 has led U.S. intelligence agencies to conclude that Chinese espionage has gathered more American missile technology than nuclear weapons secrets, senior U.S. officials said.

The conclusion was reached only this year because CIA and other intelligence agency linguists did not fully translate the 13,000 pages of secret Chinese documents until four years after the agency obtained them, said a senior law enforcement official, who called the delay a major blunder.

The belated translation and analysis has prompted a major reorientation of the FBI's investigation into Chinese espionage. From 1996 until late last year, the FBI probe centered on the suspected loss of U.S. nuclear warhead designs, and quickly narrowed into an investigation of Wen Ho Lee, a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Now, however, the FBI -- which never found evidence that Lee spied for China -- has shifted its focus to the Defense Department and its private contractors.

That is because the documents provided by the defector show that during the 1980s, Beijing had gathered a large amount of classified information about U.S. ballistic missiles and re-entry vehicles. The missile secrets are far more likely to have come from defense officials or missile builders than from Los Alamos or other U.S. nuclear weapons labs, officials said.

The shift in the investigation's focus follows several years of highly public and controversial efforts by the FBI, CIA and Energy Department to determine whether China stole the designs of advanced nuclear warheads from the United States -- and if so, whether Beijing was aided by U.S. spies.

Plagued by internal disputes between agencies, partisan pressures from Congress and an apparently mistaken decision to focus on Lee, counterintelligence investigators were slow to review the full 13,000 pages that originally sparked the inquiry.

The CIA had concluded several years ago that the defector who supplied the documents was a Chinese double agent, casting doubt on the information he delivered and delaying its translation. But the FBI, which has interviewed the defector in the United States, believes that he is legitimate. The CIA now says the evidence about the defector is ``inconclusive,'' but agrees that the information he handed over has proven accurate, a senior government official said this week.

The FBI, officials said, pressed for translating more of the documents and, to support its case, began to question directly the Chinese informant, a former Chinese missile specialist whom the bureau brought to the United States.

Because the informant was a volunteer who approached the United States with an unsolicited offer to provide Chinese secrets, he is known in intelligence jargon as a ``walk-in.'' He smuggled the documents out of China through DHL, the private delivery company, according to a former intelligence official who has reviewed much of the translated material. The documents appear to be a five-year ``strategic plan'' for development of China's new generation of missiles, the former official said.

Another intelligence expert familiar with the material called it as ``an embarrassment of riches.''

-------- pennsylvania

Inmates Sue Over Experiments
Suit Alleges Psychological, Physical Harm
By Maryclaire Dale
The Associated Press
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/inmates001019.html

The 1998 book, Acres of Skin, explored the physical and psychological effects of medical testing and inspired a lawsuit filed this week in Philadelphia on behalf of 298 former inmates. (www.amazon.com)

PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 19 - Allen Hornblum's first job out of graduate school in 1971 was teaching literacy at Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison.

Inside the imposing walls, he says he was shocked to see dozens of inmates with adhesive tape on their faces, their arms and their backs.

At first he thought there had been a knife fight, but he soon learned that the bandages betrayed widespread medical experiments that had gone on for 23 years inside the city-run prison.

Hornblum's 1998 book, Acres of Skin, explored the physical and psychological effects of the testing and inspired a lawsuit filed this week in Philadelphia on behalf of 298 former inmates.

The lawsuit claims the testing exposed the inmates to infectious diseases, radiation, dioxin and psychotropic drugs - all without their informed consent.

Doc Denies Long-Term Harm

It names as defendants the city of Philadelphia; Dr. Albert Kligman, a University of Pennsylvania dermatologist who conducted much of the research and is credited with developing the acne and anti-wrinkle treatment Retin A; the university; and drug makers Johnson & Johnson and the Dow Chemical Co., whose products were allegedly used on inmates.

Kligman, who is now in his 80s but keeps an office at the university, did not return a call seeking comment Wednesday. However, in 1998 he said: "To the best of my knowledge, the result of these experiments advanced our knowledge of the pathogenesis of skin disease, and no long-term harm was done to any person who voluntarily participated in the research program."

The university declined to comment on the lawsuit, and officials for the city and Dow Chemical did not immediately return telephone calls.

Johnson & Johnson confirmed that it had tested cosmetic and skin-care products on inmates at Holmsburg during the late 1960s and early 1970s. But it said none of the ingredients cited in the part of the lawsuit it had seen were used in the company's products.

Using inmates for testing was common practice during the 1950s and 1960s, but it is now frowned on by the university, University of Pennsylvania spokeswoman Rebecca Harmon said.

Inmates Want Apology, Assurances

While medical testing took place in other prisons, Holmesburg was well-known among scientists because of Kligman's research and because of the prison's willingness to have its inmates tested in exchange for annual fees in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, Hornblum said.

Most of the inmates involved were black men and relatively uneducated.

"There are men who do have cancer, severe lung problems, all sorts of maladies," Hornblum said. "I am not a doctor, so I can't confirm that there is a direct linkage. You need to have some serious epidemiological studies, but no one has ever been interested."

The inmates' attorney, Thomas Nocella, said the inmates received only a dollar or two a day to be used as subjects for lucrative commercial product testing. Since they did not know what drugs they were being given, they could not have given informed consent, even if they signed waivers, he said.

"As human beings, they want an apology for being treated the way they were treated back then. Secondly, they want some kind of assurance that medical treatment will be available to them," Nocella said.

The lawsuit, filed in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, seeks $50,000 in damages from each defendant.

The medical testing at Holmesburg began in 1951 and didn't end until 1974, when it was banned, said Hornblum, now an adjunct professor at Temple University. The ban was prompted by congressional hearings into allegedly coerced medical experimentation, including Tuskegee University tests that infected black men with syphilis

A few Holmesburg inmates sued the university and the city in 1984, and settled for sums in the $20,000 to $40,000 range.

Holmesburg was closed in 1995.

-------- us nuc politics

Senators fear aiding Chinese military

October 19, 2000
By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2000101923615.htm

The Senate has identified 50 Chinese weapons firms that are eligible to buy advanced U.S. computers under new Clinton administration rules easing controls on overseas high-technology sales.

All the Chinese companies are involved in developing advanced conventional weapons or nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missiles, according to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms, North Carolina Republican.

Mr. Helms and Sen. Russell D. Feingold, Wisconsin Democrat, listed the companies in an Oct. 6 letter to President Clinton asking that they be included on a government list of high-risk buyers. The letter also is intended as a warning to U.S. manufacturers that sales of advanced computers to these firms and institutes should require export licenses.

"The new rules will allow computers performing up to 28,000 MTOPS (million theoretical operations per second) to be sold without government review to military organizations in . . . China, India, Pakistan and Russia," the senators wrote.

"The new controls drop any distinction between military and civilian customers, thereby allowing powerful American computers to be purchased directly by foreign entities building weapons of mass destruction," they said.

The White House announced in August that it was loosening controls on overseas sales of U.S. supercomputers, systems that have numerous military applications ranging from designing long-range missiles to testing nuclear warheads.

The administration announced then that it would help U.S. manufacturers identify weapons makers but failed to produce a comprehensive list.

For example, the current warning list on Chinese companies contains only six entities, Mr. Helms and Mr. Feingold noted.

"To reduce the potential that computers manufactured in the United States may help fuel nuclear and missile proliferation, Mr. President, we respectfully urge that your administration publish a comprehensive list as soon as possible," the senators said.

"We are confident that American companies do not want their reputations damaged by inadvertent sales of computers to China's weapons manufacturers, and further that they would prefer to spend their marketing dollars on buyers presenting no proliferation problem."

The 50 companies identified in the letter "are well-known parts of China's nuclear, missile and military complex," they said. The companies fit the description of firms that pose a risk of weapons proliferation or diversion of civilian high-technology products to weapons programs.

Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, which tracks foreign weapons programs, said the export decontrol will benefit China's strategic nuclear warhead modernization and missile program.

"The boost to China's military will be dramatic," Mr. Milhollin said.

The firms identified by the Senate are the "strategic backbone" of China's advanced military weapons complex, he said in an interview.

"I think it's too dangerous to let powerful technology to flow to the Chinese military without a review," Mr. Milhollin said. "These are the most dangerous entities."

The relaxation of the controls followed an intense lobbying effort by the U.S. computer industry, which was eager to do business abroad.

A White House spokesman could not be reached for comment.

U.S. intelligence officials told The Washington Times in June that China's main nuclear weapons center was using U.S. supercomputers illegally to simulate warhead detonations.

A special House committee that investigated Chinese spying and technology acquisition in 1998 said that supercomputer sales increased sharply during the Clinton administration. Between 1996 and 1998, China purchased 603 high-speed computers.

---------

Here's how some major bills fared recently in Congress and how local congressional members voted, as provided

For the Record
Thursday , October 19, 2000 ; Page V04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36828-2000Oct19?language=printer
by Thomas's Roll Call Report Syndicate. NV means Not Voting.

HOUSE VOTES
DEFENSE BUDGET
For: 90 / Against: 3

The Senate on Oct. 12 approved the conference report on a bill (HR 4205) authorizing nearly $310 billion for defense programs in fiscal 2001, including a 3.7 percent military pay raise, a major expansion of health care and prescription drug benefits for Medicare-eligible career veterans (below), special payments of up to $500 a month to keep the lowest-paid personnel off food stamps and $2.1 billion to advance the National Missile Defense System.

The bill authorizes U.S. military involvement to fight illegal drug trafficking in Colombia but omits a House-passed cap on troop deployment. It provides special funding for workers who were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation and toxic substances, such as beryllium and silica, while building the United States' nuclear arsenal. If Congress fails to develop a compensation plan by July 31, workers with illnesses traced to nuclear weapons exposure will receive a lump sum payment of $150,000, plus medical care.

A yes vote was to pass the bill.

MARYLAND
Mikulski (D): Yes
Sarbanes (D): Yes

VIRGINIA
Robb (D): Yes
Warner (R): Yes

BUDGET ISSUE
For: 84 / Against: 9

The Senate on Oct. 12 waived budget rules to clear the way for a new health care entitlement program for veterans with at least 20 years' service. Because the $60 billion, 10-year program will break statutory budget caps, this vote was needed to authorize it. The program will pay for treatments not covered by Medicare and provide a prescription drug benefit. Out-of-pocket doctor and hospital expenses will be capped at $3,000 annually, and the prescription drug benefit will have a $150 annual deductible. The vote occurred during debate on HR 4205 (above).

A yes vote was to waive budget discipline to fund the new health entitlement program.

MARYLAND
Mikulski (D): Yes
Sarbanes (D): Yes

VIRGINIA
Robb (D): Yes
Warner (R): Yes

-------- us nuc waste

Ancient Bacterium Is Reported Found

New York Times
October 19, 2000
By NICHOLAS WADE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/science/19SPOR.html

A bacterium that last flourished before dinosaurs tore flesh or the Appalachian Mountains emerged has been revived from a drop of fluid trapped in a crystal of rock salt for 250 million years, say biologists at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. But their result was immediately challenged by another biologist.

The crystal was excavated from 1,850 feet below the earth's surface, from the air duct supplying a radioactive waste dump deep underground near Carlsbad, N.M., in the thick salt beds left by a vanished Permian-age ocean.

The authors of the new report are Dr. Russell H. Vreeland and Dr. William D. Rosenzweig, together with Dr. Dennis W. Powers, a consulting geologist from Anthony, Tex. In an article in today's issue of Nature, they say they sterilized the surface of the salt crystal, one of 53 they examined, and drilled into a tiny pocket of fluid trapped within it. When the fluid was mixed with nutrients, a lawn of bacteria appeared.

Because the crystal was intact, and comes from a salt bed known to have been formed 250 million years ago, the authors say they believe a bacterium was "trapped inside a crystal at that time and survived within the crystal until the present."

Though other biologists claim to have isolated living bacteria from ancient salt beds in Europe, some experts do not believe that DNA, the genetic material, can survive for more than a few thousand years at best, let alone millions.

"I just find it a silly and unbelievable report," said Dr. Tomas Lindahl, an expert on the stability of DNA who works at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London.

Dr. Bill Grant, a microbiologist at the University of Leicester in England, said he found the new result plausible because he and others had made living bacteria grow from salt beds as ancient as the one in New Mexico. Though critics would always explain such results as contamination of the sample by present day bacteria, the rigorous sterilization procedures followed by the West Chester biologists was "nudging closer and closer to the situation where you say it can't really be contamination," Dr. Grant said.

DNA in living cells is under constant attack from chemicals and radiation. Every cell in the human body loses 5,000 letters a day from the sequence that makes up the genetic code, but the damage is repaired by a suite of repair enzymes. After a cell dies, the DNA is usually degraded although fragments of meaningful sequence can survive in special conditions. Short DNA sequences about 40,000 years old have been recovered from the bones of Neanderthals.

Bacteria can form spores, a tough, hunkered down form in which most metabolism stops. Dr. Lindahl said that spores could survive a few hundred years, maybe even a few thousands, but not for longer. There are no active repair enzymes in a spore, he said, and radioactivity alone would eventually break the DNA into pieces that would make a spore no longer viable.

For even a spore to survive 250 million years is "just incredible," Dr. Lindahl said.

The West Chester biologists found that one gene of the bacteria that grew from their crystal was 99 percent similar to that of Bacillus marismortui, a present day bacterium isolated from near the Dead Sea.

Dr. Lindahl said the sequence similarity was evidence of contamination because through evolution and random change a bacteria that lived 250 million years ago would have a very different DNA sequence from that of present day bacteria.

Despite the sterilization procedures undertaken by the West Chester biologists, a present day bacteria might have survived in some invisible crack in the crystal, Dr. Lindahl suggested.

"I am sorry to see that Nature still publishes papers in this vein," he said, referring to previous reports of ancient DNA that have been discredited.

Dr. Henry Gee, a Nature editor, said that the experts he consulted were "absolutely satisfied that this is a bacterium cultured from spores deposited in a salt deposit some 250 million years ago."

Dr. Rosenzweig said he believed that the bacterium from the crystal survived as a spore. He said that it differed in three aspects of its metabolism from Bacillus marismortui and that the similarity of one gene did not mean that all were similar. In any event, the DNA sequence of the gene in question might be almost identical to that of Bacillus marismortui because that bacterium, too, he suggested, might have been trapped in salt for millions of years and only recently released into the environment.

He was unable to look for any spore or bacterium in the fluid trapped in the crystal because to have placed the fluid under the microscope would have exposed it to contamination, Dr. Rosenzweig said.

In response to Dr. Lindahl's criticism, Dr. Rosenzweig said there were no apparent cracks in the crystal. "All I can say is that our sterility checks indicate there was no contamination here," he said.

-------- MILITARY

-------- colombia

Southern Colombia Brought to a Standstill by Fighting

New York Times
October 19, 2000
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/world/19COLO.html

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Oct. 18 - Fierce fighting in southern Colombia has halted commerce and made hundreds of people seek refuge in Ecuador and elsewhere in Colombia, officials said today.

Guerrillas of the largest rebel organization here, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, are controlling roads throughout the area. As a result, isolated towns and hamlets have seen supplies of food, gasoline and drinking water dwindle.

More than 1,000 people have left their houses this month, said Gloria Echeverry, a spokeswoman for the Network of Social Solidarity, a government agency that is shipping food to the region.

Of the refugees, 225 have reportedly crossed the San Miguel and Putumayo Rivers into Ecuador, fleeing the chaos that has gripped the Putumayo Province since heavy fighting began last month. Several hundred Ecuadoreans who work in Putumayo are reportedly stranded in its capital, Mocoa.

The people who remain are said to subsist on whatever food and water they had stored since roadblocks all but ended the deliveries.

"Now the people are hungry," said Francisco Segura, director of the Association of Municipalities of Putumayo, a nongovernment group that has been in contact with elected officials. "They are not allowing any food in or out through any route, not through Ecuador or anywhere else. What the government is doing is not much. They are helping people in the cities. But what about the people in the little communities and farms?"

The confrontations between left- wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitary forces are in a region the size of New Hampshire, an area of steamy jungles and coca fields where an ambitious American- backed effort at eradicating 135,000 acres of coca fields is widely expected to go into high gear by early next year. Two counternarcotics battalions trained by American soldiers are beginning operations.

The training, along with helicopters and other assistance to help them operate, is part of $1.3 billion in United States aid that is meant to curtail the northbound flow of cocaine.

Critics have said the program, which is top-heavy with military spending, will lead to increased fighting and displaced farmers.

The rebel group, known as FARC, has long been involved in the cocaine trade in the region, where half the Colombian coca is grown, American officials say. The paramilitary groups, privately financed groups that human rights workers say have often operated with tacit support from elements of the military, have in recent weeks engaged the guerrillas for control of the lucrative business.

One result, Colombian officials say, has been a series of skirmishes that has left scores of guerrillas, paramilitaries and farmers dead.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry here, Raúl Gutiérrez, said: "In these zones, 50 percent of Colombian coca is produced. And now there is a dispute between the paramilitaries and the guerrillas for the territory, for the business."

Mr. Gutiérrez said the government had not foreseen "the blockade and the isolation of the people and, much less, that the blockade would stop the flow of food."

The government has flown 120 tons of rice, milk, beans, cooking oil and other food items to the region. A 100- ton shipment is to be sent beginning on Thursday.

Mr. Gutiérrez said, "We have only gotten the food to the big towns."

----

Girls swap diapers for rebel life

Thu, 19 Oct 2000 11:31:34 -0700
Subject: RadTimes # 75
RadTimes # 75 - October, 2000
<http://www.csmonitor.com/durable/2000/10/06/p6s1.htm>

Colombia's main leftist group, notorious for drugs and kidnapping, gives women equality, freedom By Martin Hodgson Special to The Christian Science Monitor

SAN VICENTE DEL CAGUAN, COLOMBIA Eliana Gonzalez was married at 14 and gave birth to her daughter a year later. Her husband, a landless peasant, would disappear on drunken binges for days at time, she says, "But he was the kind of man who believed a woman should always stay at home. I had to get his permission just to visit my parents. "I wanted to do something with my life. I wanted things to change," says Ms. Gonzalez, explaining why 26 years ago she left her family, chose a new name, and became a guerrilla fighter in what is now Colombia's largest - and most feared - rebel army.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, are best known in the wider world for their reliance on kidnapping and extortion, close ties with the illegal narcotics trade, and casual use of extreme violence.

So why are increasing numbers of Colombian women choosing to join them? When Gonzalez became a guerrilla in 1974, the FARC had fewer than 900 members, of whom only a handful were women. Now the group fields some 15,000 fighters, including more than 5,000 women.

The figures alone illustrate the escalation of Colombia's bloody 34-year conflict, which pits leftist rebels against state security forces and their de facto allies, illegal right-wing paramilitaries.

And as the US prepares to send nearly $1 billion worth of aid to Colombia's military, the fighting is likely to get worse, observers say. According to military analyst Alfredo Rangel, the FARC are stepping up their recruiting drives throughout the country. "A growing army needs whoever it can get, and women are an important source of new recruits," he says.

But while the numbers indicate the scale of the violence, they also reflect the social conditions that helped trigger Colombia's war.

"Young people in rural areas have no alternatives. Their families don't have money for education and there are no jobs," says Mariluz Rubio, human rights ombudsman in San Vicente del Caguan, the largest town in a southern region ceded to the rebels to enable peace talks that began in January, 1999.

In much of rural Colombia, there has never been a consistent state presence, or investment in any kind of infrastructure or legal economy. A nationwide recession has pushed urban unemployment above 20 percent, so rural youngsters have little hope of escape to the cities

"And this is still a very macho country. For women, the possibilities are even fewer," says Ms. Rubio, adding that many families still see educating daughters as a waste of time. In rural communities, girls are married and start childbearing when they are as young as 12 years old. For many, the only job opportunities are in the drug trade, or with the armed factions.

East of San Vicente, a two-hour drive down a rutted track leads to a rebel camp deep in the jungle. At the sound of a whistle blast, 24 guerrillas in drab green uniforms line up on a makeshift paradeground. Each one bears an assault rifle, a harness with spare ammunition, and a stubby machete.

None is older than 25, and almost half are women.

The drill commander is Sandra. The guerrilla in her 20s, who didn't want to give a last name, takes roll call in a school composition book, then assigns cookhouse and sentry details.

"We all have the same duties and responsibilities, man or woman," she says later, sitting on her rough wooden cot while she and two friends paint their fingernails with red and pink nail polish.

Like Gonzalez, Sandra grew up in a remote farming town, where she scraped through one year of primary school before the money ran out. She started working when she was 10, keeping house and looking after her five younger brothers and sisters.

"Lots of women are here because their parents beat them, or just to get away from the poverty. I got on well with my parents, but I had to work harder at home than I do here."

"It's tough, but at least you don't have to worry about where you'll get food and clothes from," agrees Ana Maria, also in her early 20s.

Now Sandra has three sets of clothes - identical camouflage uniforms - and a pair of rubber boots, as well as an AK-47 that rests against her bed while her fingernails dry.

"In Colombia, money and weapons are the only things that confer power. In a country where women are usually ignored, [women guerrillas] are surrounded by symbols that give them an identity," says anthropologist Maria Eugenia Vasquez, who is writing a book on female rebels.

"The first time you pick up a weapon you feel proud, you feel more important. When you're a civilian, you don't belong anywhere, but when you're a guerrilla, people treat you better," says 16-year-old Lusia, who also declined to give her last name. She worked as a maid in the capital, Bogota, before joining the rebels.

The guerrilla bands offer women equality and freedom from the expectations of a macho culture, they say, but charge a high price in return. "Once you're a soldier, you're always a soldier," says Gonzalez. In her mid-40s, she is one of the oldest and longest-serving women in the FARC. "But if you're a mother, you're always a mother," she adds in a soft tone. After she joined the rebels, she didn't see her daughter for nine years. "I got used to this life very quickly, but you can never adapt to leaving your child," she remembers.

Guerrillas are not allowed to keep their children with them, explains Commandante Mariana Paez, a member of the FARC's negotiation team. "You can't be a guerrilla and a mother. You either neglect one or the other - and usually it's the children," she says.

Female fighters are given obligatory birth-control advice. If they become pregnant, they are told to leave the babies with their families.

In the camp, Sandra admits that she sometimes finds the rule a little harsh.

"Most of us would like to have children, but you can't. Well ... you shouldn't," she says.

Lusia disagrees. "If you have a husband, it's worse. They just cheat and fill you up with children. It's much better here," she says, remembering her best friend, who became a mother at 14. "We used to play hide and seek together, but I haven't seen her for years now," Lusia says. "I chose a different path. I think it was the right one."

-------- drug war

Afghan Opium Crop Declines, but Neighbors Still Worry

New York Times
October 20, 2000
By DOUGLAS FRANTZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/20/world/20ASIA.html

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, Oct. 19 - Opium production in Afghanistan dropped 28 percent this year because of widespread drought and a United Nations crop-substitution program, the senior United Nations drug-control official said today.

Afghanistan supplies an estimated 75 percent of the world's illicit opium, and the decline was one of the few bright spots at an international conference on drug trafficking and terrorism in Central Asia sponsored by the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Despite the decline, regional and international leaders warned that illegal drug trafficking from Afghanistan and its rulers' links to insurgent movements pose the major threat to the tenuous political and economic stability of the five Central Asian nations: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. All were republics of the Soviet Union before that country dissolved at the end of 1991.

"The threat is increasing and the major reason is the situation in Afghanistan," said Erlan Idrisov, the Kazakh foreign minister. "It is the source of instability in the region."

An estimated 80 percent of Europe's heroin flows through the region. The drugs come across hundreds of miles of poorly policed borders and through remote mountain passes so high that drug-sniffing dogs are rendered useless by the altitude, then pass through Russia. The bulk of the shipments is heroin, concealed in cars, buses and trucks and carried by small groups of people on foot and horseback.

This summer border guards in Kazakhstan, acting on a tip, stopped the car of the ambassador from Tajikistan. They slit open the tires and discovered a large amount of heroin. The ambassador was not implicated.

Col. Zhanybek S. Bakiev, the chief of Kyrgyzstan's new international drug-control office, said last week that finding heroin is almost impossible without tips. He illustrated the difficulty by describing a recent incident in which border guards scouring a suspicious bus found heroin concealed in the brakes' compressor.

Thus, in a region where most trade travels by truck and roads built in the Soviet era lead deep into Russia, stopping drugs is a difficult task.

The conference is intended to promote cooperation on border controls and regional security. Organizers said they want to develop a "security belt" around Afghanistan to curb the flow of drugs and the spread of insurgent violence, which many believe is financed by drug money.

But speakers emphasized that the republics lack the money to fight the flow of drugs. They appealed for more aid to hire and train border guards and improve communications and detection equipment. And some chastised the United Nations and Western governments for promising assistance that never arrived.

Tajikistan provided evidence that outside aid can make a difference. A new drug-control agency established with help from the United Nations seized 1.3 tons of heroin in the first nine months of this year, about the same amount seized in a year in the United States or Western Europe, according to United Nations officials. Most of the seizures occurred along the Afghan border.

Heroin is refined opium, and Pino Arlacchi, executive director of the United Nations antidrug program, said opium production fell this year in Afghanistan to about 3,600 tons, after doubling last year, to 5,100 tons. While drought caused most of the decline, Mr. Arlacchi said a crop- substitution program accounted for about one-third of the drop.

---

Missing troops a threat to truce

Washington Times
October 19, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://208.246.212.80/world/worldscene-20001019215428.htm

LA PAZ, Bolivia - A fragile truce between Bolivia's coca growers and the government threatened to unravel yesterday after officials promised to intensify their search for four missing members of the security forces.

Interior Minister Guillermo Fortun said the missing security force members were probably "tortured or killed" and said their absence put in jeopardy the agreement with the coca producers.

"I never signed an accord that wasn't going to fall through if there are disappeared," Mr. Fortun said.

---

Overheard

Washington Times
October 19, 2000
Inside the Beltway
John McCaslin
Political tidbits and other shenanigans from around the nation's capital.
http://208.246.212.80/national/inbeltway.htm

"This drug czar lecturing on national security is like Janet Reno teaching a class on treason."

- Democratic Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. of Ohio, reacting to word that White House drug czar retired Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey is stepping down from the Clinton administration to teach national-security issues at two colleges.

--------

Privacy Becomes Issue For UPS, FedEx As Drug Seizures Surge

Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 11:31:34 -0700
Subject: RadTimes # 75
RadTimes # 75 - October, 2000
<http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1533/a06.html?999>

Do Delivery Firms Have Police Responsibilities?

October 11 - When the "Detroit Boys" absolutely, positively had to get drug money to their suppliers, they sent it via "X-Daddy" - code for FedEx Corp., king of the overnight-delivery industry and the preferred service of the cocaine ring that ran at least 12 crack houses in Minneapolis. To pay drug suppliers, the dealers regularly bundled piles of cash into FedEx packages in 1995 and 1996 and let the express carrier take it from there. For less-urgent shipments, the Detroit Boys used "Pri-Daddy," the U.S. Postal Service's slower-moving Priority Mail. Until the gang was busted four years ago, it was known not only for its shipping savvy, but also for wrapping enemies it thought had cheated the group in duct tape and beating them.

In recent years, drug traffickers across the country have leapt enthusiastically onto the New Economy bandwagon of supply-chain efficiency, motivated by the speed and dependability of express-delivery services and increased law-enforcement pressure on airlines and other forms of transport. "I wasn't going to put it on the plane with me," says Maurice Clark, a Knoxville, Tenn., drug dealer who nevertheless was arrested and sentenced last year to 87 months in federal prison after sending roughly four pounds of cocaine in two shipments through United Parcel Service Inc.

Divided Loyalties

The trend has fueled a conflict, reaching as high as the office of U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, between law-enforcement agencies around the country and big express-delivery services over just how much the companies and the Postal Service should help police.

After a string of run-ins with police over access to its clients' packages, UPS began requiring warrants before allowing police to search packages. And the Postal Service still won't let outside law-enforcement officials inspect outbound international mail.

The tension between police and delivery services highlights a broader debate about privacy and law enforcement as telecommunications companies, Internet service providers, banks and other institutions amass huge electronic databases about their customers' activities.

Among the prominent examples: "Carnivore," the Federal Bureau of Investigation's new software system for performing court-ordered wiretaps at ISPs, which has prompted strong criticism from privacy advocates.

For their part, the big parcel carriers, particularly FedEx and UPS, operate elaborate digital information systems that compile troves of data about all the packages they carry - in all, about 8% of the country's economic output at any moment.

Express-delivery services are "the best way to smuggle dope," says San Diego police detective Steve Sloan, who uses an eight-year-old Labrador retriever named Alvin to sniff out drugs at package-handling facilities in southern California. "Pick any night at random, and we can seize anywhere from 50 to 200 pounds ... and sometimes higher."

U.S. Customs Service drug seizures from express-delivery parcels ballooned to 970 in 1999, from 69 in 1996, and the amount of drugs seized from the U.S. mail by postal inspectors jumped 22% last year alone, reaching 15,436 pounds. The seizures involve dozens of different criminal organizations.

And despite those big numbers, law-enforcement officials say, most of the drugs and drug money flowing through the system still goes undetected.

The Postal Service and private carriers such as FedEx and UPS insist that this is a business they don't want. The carriers also say that the use of their delivery networks by drug dealers is tiny compared with the amount of drugs hauled by trucks, cars, boats and human couriers, and that the spike in drug seizures at least partly reflects the companies' vigilance in helping police spot suspicious packages.

Taking Umbrage

The four giants of the U.S. express-delivery industry - UPS, FedEx, Airborne Freight Corp. and DHL Airways Inc. - and the Postal Service won't talk in detail about their security procedures, citing concerns that doing so might reveal drug-detection secrets.

Privately, though, industry officials bristle at the suggestion that they have become major players in the drug business or aren't cooperative enough with drug-law enforcers.

UPS trains its 68,000 brown-uniformed drivers to look for suspicious packages. FedEx, based in Memphis, Tenn., has mustered a global army of more than 500 security personnel whose duties include scouring its fleet of air freighters and trucks for drugs, while DHL, the U.S. affiliate of Brussels-based DHL International Ltd., relies on more than 100 security officers. Postal officials point out that they seized $12.8 million in drug money during the past two years.

Drug dealers like the express-delivery services for many of the same reasons that law-abiding customers do - delivery is fast and reliable, and customers can track their packages. A drug-courier ring busted in New York earlier this year entered its tracking numbers at the Web sites of Airborne, DHL, FedEx, UPS and the post office to determine when the deliveries would arrive at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Under current postal rules, drug dealers also can mail a foreign-bound letter holding roughly $200,000 in cash without much worry that it will be intercepted.

Law-enforcement experts say the increase in use of high-speed deliveries by drug dealers started in the mid-1990s. A string of stepped-up investigations and new police techniques had rattled many dealers and their human drug couriers. Some were particularly spooked by the new antiterrorism practice, prompted by the 1996 crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800, of quizzing airline passengers about their carry-on luggage, police say.

As police noticed more drug shipments entering delivery systems, federal Drug Enforcement Administration offices around the country began negotiating local guidelines with private carriers over how the companies would handle suspicious packages.

FedEx in 1993 reached one of the first agreements, promising to notify the DEA anytime the overnight-delivery giant intercepted a shipment of at least 500 pounds of marijuana or 500 grams of cocaine. FedEx says the aim of the agreement, which was in essence copied later in other areas of the country, "was to try to bring some clarity and discipline to the process."

Sluggish In Richmond

Still, tensions flared as drug agents around the country began more aggressively scrutinizing shipping companies.

In 1997, the U.S. Attorney in Alexandria, Va., accused UPS of slowing down an investigation into a cocaine-dealing gang in Richmond by refusing access to suspicious packages at a critical point in the investigation.

"UPS was not as cooperative with the interdiction efforts of the law-enforcement community as it could be," says James B. Comey, lead prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Richmond office, which eventually prosecuted more than a dozen dealers in the case.

UPS declines to comment on the matter.

Several months later, state and local police showed up unexpectedly at a UPS package-handling facility in Cincinnati to look for drugs, angering UPS officials.

In response to incidents like that one, Atlanta-based UPS issued new guidelines in May 1998 that sharply restricted police access to its parcel-handling facilities, according to an internal company memo. The rules required police to get a search warrant or subpoena to search any suspicious item, to make appointments to search for drug packages and to stay out of the way of UPS employees. UPS refuses to lend uniforms or delivery trucks to undercover agents, as does FedEx except in rare circumstances, making it harder for police to arrest dealers after they receive a drug shipment.

Seattle-based Airborne, on the other hand, often provides uniforms and trucks to law-enforcement officials, while DHL, based in Redwood City, Calif., occasionally lends uniforms but not delivery vehicles. "There is no consistent policy, or there is no policy at all, so guys don't know what to expect day to day," says Clayton Searle, a former Los Angeles police detective who now leads a nonprofit police-training organization called the International Narcotics Interdiction Association.

Customs officials became so frustrated that they started to air their complaints publicly.

In a presentation at an air-cargo conference near Washington in 1998, Phil Metzger, a high-ranking Customs Service official, described an ominous surge in drug seizures from private carriers and suggested that express-delivery companies appeared to have become a top choice for drug dealers.

'Copious Efforts'

The Air Courier Conference of America, an industry trade group with a board of directors that includes UPS and FedEx executives, fired back.

James A. Rogers, chairman of the group's international committee, sent a letter to Customs that said any "assertion that the increased drug seizures are evidence that the express industry is now the preferred conduit for drug traffickers is a huge jump to a very wrong conclusion." The drug-seizure increase, he said, was the result of "copious efforts" by carriers to work with law enforcement. "At the very least, we believe a public apology is in order," Mr. Rogers demanded in the letter.

He didn't get one.

Instead, top Justice Department officials suggested to Attorney General Reno in early 1998 that she convene a working group from officials at the DEA, the FBI, the Postal Inspection Service, FedEx, UPS, Airborne, DHL, the Emery Worldwide Airlines unit of CNF Inc. and state and federal prosecutors to discuss a coordinated, nationwide approach to interdicting drug movements.

A key element promoted by some of the law-enforcement officials, according to a top postal-inspection official, was to give law enforcement access to the private databases of the big shippers.

That was a particularly thorny proposition for FedEx and UPS, which have spent fortunes to build the information systems needed to orchestrate their clockwork deliveries. Each package moving through their systems - about 18 million a day combined - is hit by electronic scanners at least a half-dozen times during even a short journey within the U.S. As a result, at any instant, the companies' computers can zero in on the exact locations of items in transit and the history of other shipments by the same sender or to the same recipient.

The private-sector delivery companies - but not the Postal Service - are required to supply Customs agents with an electronic record of delivery-manifest information on all international shipments destined for the U.S. Customs officials then use their own computers to check for clues of drug smuggling hidden in the addresses, descriptions of contents and other data about each package.

A box speeding via FedEx, for example, toward the same address as a previous package nabbed by a drug-sniffing dog usually will be flagged by the computer. And agents may inspect any international package on a private carrier without a search warrant.

But the private carriers aren't required to provide the same data to law-enforcement agencies about packages being shipped within the U.S., and all foreign-bound Postal Service shipments are exempt from scrutiny without a warrant. Postal officials say the law is clear: Mail is just as protected from warrantless searches as someone's house.

"There is a delicate balance between defending the borders and protecting the privacy rights of our citizens," says Kenneth Newman, deputy chief in the Postal Inspection Service's criminal-investigations unit.

The Postal Service currently is fighting draft federal legislation that it claims would allow Customs to freely search mail leaving the U.S.

In the meetings of the Justice Department task force last year and early this year, which weren't attended by Ms. Reno, officials from the express-delivery companies insisted that they must walk a similarly fine line, even though the constitutional protections of the mail don't apply to them, according to people who attended the sessions.

A Legitimate Crush

FedEx, UPS and other package-delivery companies acknowledge that it's largely up to them whether parcels in their systems are searched, but the companies insist that there is a limit to how much they can cooperate with police while still delivering the crush of legitimate parcels that flood their systems every day.

UPS requires warrants but won't comment on whether other parts of the policy it issued in 1998 remain in force.

DHL says it usually requires a warrant from local or state police but not from federal agencies.

In the end, the Justice Department backed away from the proposal to tap private databases, concluding that any such effort might further complicate relations with the companies.

"We didn't want to turn an army of FedEx people into policemen," a senior Justice Department official said.

For their part, the companies promised to be as cooperative as possible without violating the privacy of their customers.

After the talks, Justice Department staffers recommended to Ms. Reno that no national interdiction agreements be pursued, and she agreed, according to Justice Department officials. The task force hasn't met since then.

In May, federal law-enforcement officials at a House criminal-justice subcommittee hearing said relations with the big package carriers had improved.

Only the Postal Service was sharply criticized because of its continuing refusal to let overseas mail be opened without a warrant.

FedEx was praised for tipping off police in 1998 to a huge marijuana-trafficking organization that allegedly included more than 20 FedEx drivers and other employees, including a security officer at a FedEx facility at Pier 40 in Manhattan. The resulting investigation led to more than 100 arrests and the April breakup of a drug ring that smuggled about 120 tons of marijuana.

-------- el salvador

Killings of 4 Churchwomen Not Policy, Salvadoran Says

New York Times
October 19, 2000
By DAVID GONZALEZ
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/world/19SALV.html

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., Oct. 18 - Almost 20 years after Salvadoran soldiers beat, raped and shot four American churchwomen to death, the country's former defense minister testified in court for the first time today, saying that while men in his forces "could have" committed abuses, such crimes were in no way emblematic of the military as a whole.

"I have accepted that there were abuses committed in the forces, but not to point a finger at the institution making it responsible for everything that is going on," said former Gen. José Guillermo García, who was El Salvador's defense minister at the time of the killings.

In his daylong testimony in Federal Court here, Mr. García also asserted that whenever his office investigated press and diplomatic reports of killings and torture against unarmed civilians, the conclusion his subordinates brought him was always the same: the events were military operations.

And he repeatedly refused to acknowledge the occurrence of massacres by the Salvadoran military, even though the killings were later classified as such by an international Truth Commission that investigated the 12-year civil war, which claimed the lives of some 75,000 people.

Relatives of the churchwomen are seeking punitive and compensatory damages from the general and his co-defendant, former Gen. Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova. who was director of El Salvador's National Guard. Mr. García's testimony came in response to attempts by the plaintiffs' lawyers to set the historical context for their lawsuit.

The case has been brought in Florida, where the two men have lived in retirement for about 10 years, under the 1992 Torture Victim Protection Act. The law allows victims or their surviving relatives to sue individuals who may have known of crimes or the probability of their occurring but took no action to stop them.

While about a dozen such cases have been brought since the statute was enacted, this is one of the few where the defendants have appeared in court.

The day's testimony centered on Mr. García's knowledge of illegal acts by the military and the actions he took to address them, a central part of the plaintiffs' case.

The four women who were killed - Ita Ford and Maura Clarke, Maryknoll sisters; Dorothy Kazel, an Ursuline sister; and Jean Donovan, a lay missionary - were abducted, raped and shot to death while driving from the airport near San Salvador on Dec. 2, 1980.

Five Salvadoran national guardsmen were convicted of the crime in 1984, but Salvadoran authorities did not press charges against the military's leaders. Three of the guardsmen were later released after serving part of their 30-year sentences.

Members of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights traveled to El Salvador in 1998 to interview four of the five convicted guardsmen, who said then that they had acted on orders from superiors.

Speaking briefly after his testimony, Mr. García said he wanted to prove he had nothing to do with the murders of the churchwomen.

"I came here to demonstrate my innocence in participating in the crime against the nuns," he said. "But that was the least of what was discussed today."

When asked during his testimony about the 1981 massacre at El Mozote, where the elite Atlacatl Battalion killed 600 men, women and children, Mr. Garcia said he could not remember what information he had or what conversations he held with American diplomats at the time. One declassified cable projected on a screen behind Mr. García said he had told the American ambassador, Deane Hinton, that the account of the killings was "a soap opera."

"I am a very honest man and I do not recall having used those words," Mr. García said.

He later said: "I do not remember. I never denied there had been operations. What I say is, as it is referred to, a massacre, we were not able to accept it as such at the time."

When asked what inquiries he made, he said: "Yes, something was done. The corresponding level did an investigation. But the response was always the same, military action.

"It is easy in a time of peace to establish what really happened," he said. "But I agree, there were abuses that should not have been committed and which brought with them the consequences the result of which you talk about."

Mr. García was repeatedly asked about a newspaper advertisement in which the military published a list of "traitors to the Fatherland," which included the names of priests, political opponents and others accused of "discrediting" the country.

Despite being shown a newspaper article in which the military explained its decision to publish the list, which a plaintiff's lawyer called "a death list," Mr. García said that it was never authorized by the military commanders but that an investigation he ordered to determine its origin failed.

At the same time, he stunned onlookers when he said the publication of the list was "proof that there was freedom of expression" in El Salvador.

The killings of the churchwomen came at the beginning of an escalation in El Salvador's civil war, which also claimed the lives of Archbishop Oscar Romero and six Jesuits slain at the University of Central America. The church, along with proponents of liberation theology and its social interpretation of religious teachings, had been both an advocate for the country's poor and a target of its military.

The deaths of the Jesuits in 1989 caused outrage around the world and helped to galvanize international opposition to the Salvadoran regime.

The relatives of the slain women said that both officers had planned the attack and its subsequent cover- up. Although the two men denied knowing anything about the murders beforehand, a report by the United Nations after conflict ended said that Mr. García had failed to seriously investigate them.

In his testimony today, Mr. García said that he had requested that the killings be investigated and that he had not obstructed anything.

He said that he had been restricted by resources in investigating reported abuses and that the violence of the time resulted in claims of abuses being made by both sides. A later report by the Truth Commission, however, attributed some 85 percent of the abuses to the military and its allies in paramilitary death squads.

---

Ex-Salvador soldier accuses superiors

Washington Times
October 19, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://208.246.212.80/world/worldscene-20001019215428.htm

SAN SALVADOR - A former Salvadoran soldier convicted in the slaying of four American churchwomen 20 years ago has repeated his claim that orders to kill came from superior officers, according to an interview published yesterday.

The claim by Daniel Canales comes as two Salvadoran ex-generals are on trial in West Palm Beach, Fla., in a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the slain women's families. The lawsuit claims retired Gens. Jose Guillermo Garcia, 67, who lives near Fort Lauderdale, and Eugenio Vides Casanova, 62, who lives near Daytona Beach, allowed the slayings.

"If there had not been an order from above, we would never have been involved in something so stupid," Mr. Canales was quoted as telling the newspaper La Prensa Grafica.

-------- space

Russia Nears a Decision on Keeping Mir in Orbit

New York Times
October 19, 2000
By WARREN E. LEARY
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/science/19MIR.html

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 - Russia's aging Mir space station, unoccupied and starved for the money necessary to operate it, may be near the end of its 15-year life, experts said today.

Officials of the Russian Space Agency are to meet in Moscow early Thursday to recommend that the Russian government either keep Mir in space or bring it down early next year. With little prospect of renewed financing coming in quickly enough, several experts said the agency was highly likely to decide against maintaining the station, signaling that the end of Mir is near.

The experts said Russia had little choice but to take Mir from orbit soon for safety reasons, because the 130-ton station is slowly sinking toward Earth and could harm people and property if it fell uncontrollably. Keeping Mir in space would require boosting it with spacecraft that the Russians can no longer afford, the experts said.

"I really don't see Mir lasting too much longer," said Charles Vick, an expert on the Russian space program with the Federation of American Scientists. "The Russians don't have the money to operate it any longer, and I'm not convinced that the private financing is there to do it, either."

The Russian government, which owns Mir, stopped supporting the station last year but has leased commercial rights to MirCorp, a company in Amsterdam. MirCorp is trying to raise money to save the station for commercial ventures, and it continues to lobby hard for a reprieve. Executives of the company, which has spent more than $40 million this year on missions to Mir to keep it operating, said the battle was not over.

"There have been threats of Mir's demise before, and that is nothing new to us," Dr. Chirinjeev Kathuria, an important MirCorp investor and a board member, said today.

The president, Jeffrey Manber, has been in Moscow for more than a week lobbying officials and others about the wisdom of keeping Mir in space, MirCorp said.

"The Russian government is slowly beginning to understand that the money will be coming," Dr. Kathuria said. "And we think they will keep Mir up long enough to see that we will come through with it."

The United States and other partners in the International Space Station have been urging Russia to stop putting its scarce resources into Mir and concentrate on its commitments to the international project.

MirCorp, which is owned 60 percent by Russian interests and 40 percent by American investors, sponsored a 73-day mission by two Russian astronauts to revive Mir and two cargo flights to deliver supplies.

On Monday, the Russians launched an unmanned Progress cargo craft to Mir. It is to rendezvous with Mir on Friday with fuel and supplies. MirCorp promised to pay for the Progress mission, which is intended to boost Mir temporarily to a higher orbit.

Some Russian officials were upset that the money was not immediately available.

Dr. Kathuria said MirCorp would reimburse the government for the Progress flight, but said the $10 million to $12 million required would not be available until Nov. 15 to Dec. 1.

MirCorp announced last week that it hoped to raise $117 million for Mir projects in a stock offering. Dr. Kathuria said the company was arranging details of the offering, including underwriters, which it expects to complete by February.

MirCorp also has signed commercial agreements to bring in tens of millions of dollars, he said, including a $20 million deal to send an American financier, Dennis Tito, to Mir as the first space tourist and another $20 million project, with NBC-TV, for a reality-based television series, "Destination Mir," that would send a winning contestant into space next year.

"We are showing that space can be commercialized profitably," Dr. Kathuria said. "It would be a tragedy if Mir were `de-orbited.' It's an irreplaceable asset."

But Yuri Semenov, president of RSC Energia, the Russian company that built and operates Mir and is a MirCorp partner, expressed skepticism last week that MirCorp could save the station. Dr. Semenov said in an interview here that he doubted whether MirCorp, where he is a board member, could raise enough money soon enough to save Mir. If the money, including the proceeds from the stock offering, could have arrived last spring, there would have been time to order new spacecraft and rockets to service Mir, as well as keep Russia's commitments to the International Space Station.

"I think that we lost the time," he said through an interpreter. "It pains me to say it. MirCorp is a very good company and tried very hard. But it was too late."

---

Astronauts Test Space Station

Associated Press
October 19, 2000 Filed at 7:58 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Space-Shuttle.html

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- Space shuttle Discovery's astronauts gave the international space station another once-over Thursday, testing newly installed equipment, checking for mold and dropping off supplies for the three men who will move in soon.

Commander Brian Duffy said the astronauts took great care to make sure everything is perfect when the space station's first full-time crew arrives in November.

``I think they're really going to be happy to get here,'' he said.

Discovery and its seven astronauts are scheduled to pull away from the space station on Friday after a week of construction work. Their departure will be a little later than planned.

The astronauts fell behind in their work Thursday, so Mission Control gave them until Friday to seal the hatches between the shuttle and the station. That pushed back the shuttle's undocking by 1 1/2 hours, or one orbit.

With Mission Control's help, the astronauts tested the four motion-control gyroscopes they installed earlier in the mission. The massive gyroscopes were spun briefly at 100 revolutions per minute, well below the 6,600 rpm that will be required for operations early next year.

The gyroscopes checked out fine.

And there were no signs of mold or mildew anywhere on board, but the crew wiped behind panels with a fungicide all the same.

``We, I think, can declare victory for all of the major objectives,'' flight director Chuck Shaw said Thursday night.

The mission featured four spacewalks on four successive days.

One of the spacewalkers, Bill McArthur, said he had no idea when he signed up for the mission that it would be so hard. But he compared the experience to Christmas morning when he was a kid.

``There's a difference here, though, as adults and being in space,'' McArthur said. ``On Christmas Day, by afternoon, some of those toys you realize weren't quite as neat as they looked on TV. But here, every day in space is better and better.''

Not quite.

The crew's space station work was interrupted Thursday by an unexpected -- and unpleasant -- job: The solid-waste compactor on the shuttle toilet jammed, and pilot Pamela Melroy and Jeff Wisoff were pressed into duty as plumbers. They put on gloves and unclogged the line.

``Jeff is more of a hero than I think most people will appreciate,'' Melroy reported.

On the Net:
NASA: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/index-m.html

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Discovery Astronauts Complete Work on Space Station

New York Times
October 19, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/science/19SHUTTLE.html

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Two spacewalking astronauts wrapped up construction work outside the international space station on Wednesday, then fired up their jetpacks and cruised around.

Jeff Wisoff and Michael Lopez-Alegria took turns jetting over and around space shuttle Discovery's payload bay to test the small nitrogen-powered rocket backpack that could someday save an astronaut's life.

They were on a leash the whole time. But it was a loose leash.

``Jeff, what's it like being a satellite?'' one of the astronauts inside Discovery asked as Wisoff propelled himself 240 miles above Earth.

``Pretty awesome,'' Wisoff replied. Later he murmured: ``Like falling in love.''

NASA insisted the spacewalkers be tethered for the jetpack demonstration. Because Discovery is docked to the space station, the shuttle could not immediately dash after the astronauts if their jetpacks failed.

The miniature jetpack, called Safer, is meant for use on a space station. Without the jetpack, an astronaut could drift away and become lost in space.

Safer is much smaller and less powerful than the Buck Rogers-like jetpack that was used a few times by shuttle astronauts in 1984. That device has long since been retired.

Earlier Wednesday, the two astronauts completed the Discovery crew's fourth and final spacewalk in as many days to install two new space station components.

The astronauts prepared the space station for the arrival of huge solar panels in December, an American lab module in January, and the orbiting outpost's first full-time residents, scheduled to move in in November.

Wisoff tried out the jetpack first, slowly propelling himself toward the shuttle cargo bay and pausing to perform some twists and turns. It was deliberately slow-going to simulate an emergency.

Lopez-Alegria was at Wisoff's side the entire time. Then they changed places. Each test flight lasted just minutes and spanned only 50 feet.

There was no continuous TV coverage of the gymnastics because the shuttle's main antenna failed earlier in the flight.

The last time Safer was tested in orbit, two years ago, it malfunctioned.

Safer is short for Simplified Aid for EVA Rescue. EVA stands for Extravehicular Activity -- a spacewalk.

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Space surveillance complex changes hands
Telescope becomes operational

Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 11:31:34 -0700
Subject: RadTimes # 75
RadTimes # 75 - October, 2000
10/05/00

MAUI, Hawaii (AFPN) -- The Defense Department's most sophisticated telescope complex, the Maui Space Surveillance Complex here, changed hands Oct. 1, from Air Force Space Command to Air Force Materiel Command. In conjunction with the changeover, Air Force officials announced that the complex's 3.67-meter telescope -- the world's largest for taking pictures of passing satellites -- was now fully operational.

The complex, located atop Mt. Haleakala, is used primarily to track and "photograph" satellites, and for research into technologies and techniques for improving the quality of the images that are taken.

The change reflects a greater emphasis on the site's research activities, on closer collaborations with academic researchers, and on developing and implementing techniques that will further improve the quality of images collected.

A majority of the operations have now transferred from Det. 3, 18th Space Surveillance Squadron, to Det. 15, Air Force Research Laboratory Directed Energy Directorate.

Construction of the telescope was completed in 1998. But for the past two years, scientists have been adding instrumentation and deformable optics (a mirror that can change its shape) that will permit the telescope to compensate for the distorting effects of the atmosphere and get clear images of objects in space.

The telescope, known as the Advanced Electro-Optical System, is available to visiting experimenters. Last year, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation announced they were making more than $2 million available over two years for civilian researchers to use the telescope. The two organizations are also contributing an additional $500,000 for civilian groups to use the telescope for upper atmospheric research.

Multiple groups or institutions can use the telescope, because images captured by the telescope can be routed through mirrors to seven independent experimental labs located beneath the telescope.

"By allowing civilian researchers to use this telescope, the academic community benefits and their involvement can lead to improvements that we can use in our space surveillance work," said Maj. J. Raley Marek, chief of the directorate's Space Surveillance Systems Branch.

The telescope, along with a 1.6-meter telescope, 1.2-meter twin telescopes, a 0.8-meter beam director-tracker and a 0.6-meter beam director are part of a space surveillance network for identifying and pinpointing objects in space for U.S. Space Command.

Earlier this year, the telescope complex received $15 million to continue operations and research and development, and for performance enhancements, in addition to supporting the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA often uses the 1.2-meter telescope to track asteroids passing near earth.

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

THE DIPLOMATS
A Day After Sharm el Sheik Accord, Palestinians Mount U.N. Offensive

New York Times
October 19, 2000
By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/world/19NATI.html

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 18 - Disregarding a plea by the United Nations secretary general, the Palestinians carried their bitter confrontation with Israel into a special session of the General Assembly today. They accused the Israelis of unleashing "savagery and brutality" in the last few weeks in a "deadly campaign of repression" against the Palestinians.

The unrestrained accusations leveled by the permanent Palestinian observer to the United Nations, Nasser al-Kidwa, prompted an angry rebuttal from the Israeli ambassador, Yehuda Lancry.

Mr. Lancry said that today's session, which the Palestinians requested, violated the spirit of their agreement a day earlier at Sharm el Sheik and could disrupt efforts to halt the violence in the Middle East. And the session itself, he said, was a "disgraceful abuse" of the General Assembly's rules of procedure.

Behind the scenes, diplomats said, France pressed the Palestinians to accept a weaker version of a draft resolution they are circulating, which condemns "acts of violence and excessive use of force" by Israel. Other West Europeans asked the French, who hold the rotating presidency of the European Union, to minimize the damage that the Palestinian resolution might cause.

The United States ambassador, Richard C. Holbrooke, vigorously worked the hall to derail or delay the Palestinian resolution, lobbying one delegation chief after another to oppose it, or at least to abstain in the interest of preserving the fragile agreement to seek a truce that President Clinton brokered between Israel and the Palestinians during a day- and-a-half summit meeting in Egypt.

"The U.S. will oppose any resolution that isn't completely balanced and objective," Mr. Holbrooke said in an interview, adding that, "In such a climate, such a resolution seems virtually inconceivable."

Secretary General Kofi Annan, who returned to New York today from Paris after joining the talks at Sharm el Sheik, arranged to address the General Assembly on Friday before the debate resumes.

Apparently at his behest, speakers today were limited to the Palestinian observer and the representatives of Israel, Senegal and South Africa.

Mr. Annan told reporters on Monday before leaving Sharm el Sheik, "We have to watch the language we use if we are going to calm down the situation." In an earlier statement, he appealed to "all Israelis and Palestinians, and to the wider international community, to weigh their words carefully."

"For words can inflame or soothe," he said, "and everyone needs a restoration of calm and quiet so as to create the best possible atmosphere for a resumption of peace talks."

Diplomats and United Nations officials here agreed that Mr. Annan meant to include the General Assembly session.

Mr. Kidwa, who speaks with authority as a nephew of the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, seemed unrestrained in his remarks. "In response to the Palestinian protests," he said, "Israel, the occupying power, has used its huge war machine to launch a bloody campaign of repression against our people, including a number of willful killings, including several children, and willfully causing numerous serious injuries and great pain for the civilians."

Over the last few weeks, Mr. Kidwa added, Israel had killed more than 90 Palestinians and injured more than 3,000. One-third of the casualties, he said, were "children under the age of 18."

The Israeli ambassador called Palestinian assertions of excessive force completely unfounded. "There is no nation on earth that would tolerate such life-threatening attacks against its citizens and not respond in kind," Mr. Lancry said.

He referred to the lynching of two Israeli soldiers at a Palestinian police station last Thursday. "That this unspeakable act could have taken place inside an official building of the Palestinian Authority only contributes to the degradation of mutual trust and confidence that we have worked for so many years to establish," Mr. Lancry said.

Yet there were signs that the Palestinians, in what has become a familiar exercise in assailing Israel at the General Assembly, have found some nations weighing their longstanding support against Mr. Annan's call to lower the decibel level.

Senegal's ambassador, Ibra Deguene Ka, speaking as chairman of the United Nations' Committee for the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, echoed many of the charges voiced by Mr. Kidwa, but also called the agreement reached at Sharm el Sheik "perhaps the last chance for the world to get parties to engage in dialogue and reconciliation."

The South African ambassador, Dumisani S. Kumalo, speaking on behalf of the movement of nonaligned nations, which has traditionally supported the Palestinians, said the movement "pledges full support to the present efforts of the U.N. secretary general in the quest for peace."

By opposing the Palestinian resolution, Mr. Holbrooke said, the United States was trying to protect the United Nations' ability to play a role in bringing Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table.

"We firmly believe the best resolution is no resolution," he said.

---

Sentence upheld against Rwandan

USA Today
10/19/00- Updated 11:46 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/world/nwsthu02.htm

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) - An international tribunal Thursday upheld a life sentence for genocide against a former Rwandan prime minister for having ''instigated, aided and abetted'' the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994.

The ruling by the U.N. appellate court against Jean Kambanda permanently validated the world's first conviction of a head of government for the crime of genocide.

The Hague-based appeals chamber is the court of last resort for the Rwandan genocide and its verdict may not be appealed further.

Kambanda stood quietly flanked by U.N.-guards in the bulletproof encased courtroom as the verdict was read out by French judge Claude Jorda, president of the five-member appellate panel.

Jorda said the court ''unanimously rejects the eight grounds of appeal'' and ''affirms the sentence for the remainder of his life'' against Kambanda, who turned 45 Thursday.

Kambanda ''was capable of understanding the consequences of the crimes he confessed to,'' the judges ruled.

The panel had deliberated its decision since June, when hearings on the appeal were held. The Rwandan ambassador to The Hague watched the proceedings from the public gallery, but declined to comment on the outcome.

Kambanda, the most senior Rwandan official in U.N. custody, was the first head of government ever convicted by an international tribunal. He was found guilty Sept. 4, 1998, on six counts of genocide and crimes against humanity for the murder and extermination of civilians.

Kambanda's eight grounds of appeal included claims that he was misrepresented in the trial and that judges failed to take account of mitigating circumstances such as his guilty plea on all six counts.

During the trial, Kambanda testified extensively against other alleged leaders of the blood bath.

But in June, he testified that his confession was made under duress at the advice of a court-appointed lawyer who allegedly misrepresented him. He said he had not personally committed any crimes.

''I signed (a plea) agreement which I did not believe in, and which I still do not believe in, in the hope that I would later have a good lawyer,'' Kambanda told the appeals court.

The 1998 trial and appeal hearings earlier this year were heard at the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania.

However, the judgment was handed down in The Hague by the five-judge appellate court that also serves the U.N. war crimes tribunal on the former Yugoslavia.

The Kambanda trial recounted horrific tales of slaughter, when Hutu civilians were handed weapons and told to hunt down and kill Tutsis.

More than 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred by extremist Hutus during Rwanda's 1994 government-orchestrated genocide.

Established in 1994, the Rwanda tribunal has more than 40 suspects in custody but has completed trials of only a few of the accused. Another major genocide conviction was handed down in 1998 against village mayor Jean-Paul Akayesu, who has also appealed.

In the Kambanda trial ruling, the court said his crimes carried ''an intrinsic gravity and their widespread, atrocious and systematic character is particularly shocking to the human conscience.''

The judgment was the first genocide conviction ever handed down by an international court. The crime of genocide, now considered the most serious under international law, was not legally defined at the time of the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders after World War II.

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

Clinton Leads Tribute to the Cole's Crew

New York Times
October 19, 2000
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/world/19MEMO.html

NORFOLK, Va., Oct. 18 - Beneath skies as gray as the warships looming behind him, President Clinton paid tribute today to the crew of the destroyer Cole, the living and the dead. He vowed that those who bombed the ship in the Yemeni port at Aden six days ago would not escape American justice.

"To those who attacked them we say: you will not find a safe harbor," Mr. Clinton said, speaking slowly at an emotional memorial service held at the sprawling naval base here. "We will find you, and justice will prevail."

Appearing before thousands of sailors and their families, including those of the 17 sailors killed on the Cole, Mr. Clinton pledged that the attack would not deter the United States from "working to keep peace and stability in a region that could explode and disrupt the entire world."

As the president completed his remarks, John Clodfelter of Mechanicsville, Va., whose son Kenneth is among those listed as missing but presumed dead, stood and directly addressed Mr. Clinton. "When the people who did this are punished, let them go with three words: `Remember the Cole,' " said Mr. Clodfelter, who wept through much of the ceremony.

Mr. Clinton leaned over the lectern and replied simply, "Thank you, sir." Then he saluted.

Even as American investigators on the other side of the world pursued tantalizing yet still inconclusive leads, the president and much of the nation's political and military leadership assembled here to honor the victims of the worst terrorist attack on American forces since the bombing of a barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996 killed 19 airmen. It was, above all, an effort to assure their families that their losses would not be in vain.

Among those who gathered on Pier 12 - flanked on one side by two of the Cole's sister ships, the destroyers Ross and McFaul, and on the other by the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower - were Attorney General Janet Reno, the national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, the secretaries of defense and the Navy, and the uniformed commanders of the Navy and the Marine Corps. Also attending was Yemen's ambassador to the United States, Abdulwahab A. al-Hajjri, in what officials described as a gesture of Yemen's cooperation in the aftermath of the attack.

In Mr. Clinton's remarks and in those of others who spoke today, there was an unmistakable resolution for vengeance.

Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen called the bombing of the Cole "an act of pure evil." Gen. Henry H. Shelton, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed like a thunderclap Mr. Clinton's warnings to those involved in the attack, saying they should "never forget that America's memory is long and our reach longer."

Across the concrete pier, a crowd estimated by the Navy to exceed 10,000 people listened in respectful, mournful silence. Sailors in crisp white uniforms lined the railings of the Ross, McFaul and Eisenhower, standing at parade rest.

Relatives clutched photographs of the Cole's victims and wore black and yellow ribbons (black for the dead, yellow for those missing, one officer said, and also the Cole's colors). Many in the audience wept, including the president's wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton. At the end of the service, after a lone bugler atop the McFaul's prow blew taps, the mother of Seaman Timothy L. Gauna, another of those still missing, wailed uncontrollably, "Oh, Timothy."

All but one of 37 wounded sailors flown back to the Cole's home port here in recent days attended the service - several of them still on hospital gurneys, with intravenous lines stuck in their arms and oxygen tubes in their noses. The only applause of the day came when a fleet of ambulances and buses brought the wounded to the pier.

In his remarks, Mr. Clinton slowly read the names of each of the 17 who died. Since the bombing, the nation has learned a little about each, about their lives, their dreams, their reasons for joining the Navy, he said. One of them, Chief Petty Officer Richard Costelow, 35, of Morrisville, Pa., had once worked at the White House, helping update its communications systems.

The diversity of the victims' backgrounds, he added, reflected the best of America and the values that the military sought to protect abroad.

"In the names and faces of those we lost and mourn, the world sees our nation's greatest strength," said Mr. Clinton, who appeared weary, having returned late Tuesday night from negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt. "People in uniform rooted in every race, creed and region on the face of the earth, yet bound together by a common commitment to freedom and a common pride in being American."

Before the service Mr. Clinton, accompanied by his daughter, Chelsea, met privately at the base with 85 relatives of those killed. A spokesman said the president had huddled closely with several, somberly consoling them. He also met the wounded sailors.

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Ship Bomb Inquiry Focuses on Safe Houses and Deserted Car

New York Times
October 19, 2000
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/world/19SHIP.html

ADEN, Yemen, Oct. 18 - Yemeni and American teams investigating the bombing of the destroyer Cole centered their inquiry today on two safe houses and a car found abandoned across the harbor from where the ship was attacked last Thursday, killing 17 sailors.

Al Ayyam, Aden's main newspaper, said today that bomb-making equipment had been found in at least one of the houses, which had been rented, and that traces of explosives had been found in the car.

A senior Yemeni police officer confirmed that investigators had questioned the landlord of a house and a real estate agent involved in renting it to a man shortly before the attack. The man has since disappeared.

Other Yemeni sources, including Al Ayyam, said that two men had used the houses. The two had raised walls around one house but had still been seen doing welding work.

In a television interview broadcast throughout the Middle East tonight, the Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, said investigators had found "the house that the people who carried out the crime were living in," as well as a workshop where the engine of the boat used in the attack had been assembled.

He said a 12-year-old Aden boy had provided a crucial lead. President Saleh said the boy had described a bearded man with glasses who gave him small change and told him to watch a car near Aden harbor on the day of the bombing.

The president said that according to the boy, the man then took to the sea in a rubber boat he had transported to the harbor on the roof of the car, and did not return. Mr. Saleh said that the boy's story had led the police to an apartment in Aden, the scene of further discoveries.

The reference to a rubber boat supported descriptions of the boat involved in the attack as a small and inflatable, with an outboard motor. United States Navy officials, citing debris aboard the Cole, have suggested that the boat could have had a fiberglass hull.

The car, and a boat trailer near it, were found across from the city and ports of Aden, at the north end of a peninsula known as Little Aden, a place with a sweeping harbor view. Last Thursday it would have been a short journey from there across the water to the Cole.

Witnesses said that a small boat carrying two men approached the destroyer from its port side, weaving among other boats involved in refueling and servicing the destroyer. The small boat then detonated against the side of the Cole. Mr. Saleh said investigators had determined that the two men were killed in the blast.

From the sketchy accounts of the investigation's early efforts, it was not clear whether the Yemenis or the American team, led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had conclusively linked the houses, the car and the trailer to the attack on the Cole. American officials leading the inquiry and overseeing recovery efforts have refused to discuss their progress, to avoid compromising chances of tracking down those ultimately responsible.

American officials said that Louis J. Freeh, the F.B.I. director, was scheduled to arrive in Yemen on Thursday to oversee the inquiry.

The recovery over the past 24 hours of 8 more bodies left 4 of the 17 dead sailors still unaccounted for. Navy officials said divers and metal- cutting specialists were still working aboard the destroyer.

The Navy has described the search for the bodies as dangerous. It involves working in a heavily blasted area of tangled metal, much of it underwater, not far from where large amounts of unexploded ordinance, including cruise missiles, were stored when the attack occurred. Some of the Navy divers involved worked in the salvage operations off Long Island after the crash of of T.W.A. Flight 800 in July 1996.

As eight metal coffins were loaded aboard a United States military plane for the journey home, it was clear there had been a major breakthrough in the case. But it was less certain whether any of the evidence had given investigators a better idea which group carried out the attack, or what the motives were.

By midafternoon the chief of Saudi Arabia's intelligence services, Prince Turki bin al-Faisal, arrived in Aden, apparently to help with the investigation.

Prince Turki, who remained in Aden overnight, has more than two decades of experience monitoring leftist and Islamic radical groups.

In the 1980's, the prince led Saudi Arabia's effort to finance and train Muslim guerrillas fighting Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan, and it was these guerrilla groups that later spawned many of the Islamic terrorist organizations operating in the Middle East.

Although the Saudi Embassy in Yemen insisted that the prince's visit was unrelated to the Cole investigation, a Middle East specialist said, "Nobody knows the Islamic radical groups operating in Yemen any better than Prince Turki."

Tonight, American officials here reiterated that they had no firm leads on the Cole's attackers. Partly because of Yemen's history as a refuge for Islamic and leftist radical groups, theories in Aden have covered a broad spectrum of possibilities. The most common one is that the attack may be linked to Osama bin Laden, the exiled Saudi millionaire believed to be hiding in Afghanistan, who has been indicted in the United States in connection with the bombings of two American Embassies in Africa in 1998.

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen plans to announce on Thursday that two senior military leaders will be pulled from retirement to head a Pentagon inquiry, with special emphasis on force protection and any security lapses, Kenneth H. Bacon, the Pentagon spokesman, said.

The two men are Adm. Harold W. Gehman, Jr., the recently retired commander of the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., and Gen. William Crouch, who commanded United States troops in Europe at the beginning of the Bosnia peacekeeping operation.

Pentagon officials also said the Camden, an oiler, arrived in Aden this evening to refuel the six Navy ships already in the harbor with the Cole. The Tarawa arrived on Tuesday, joining the Anchorage and Duluth, which are part of an amphibious group that includes 2,100 Marines sent to Aden to provide protection.

---

Police investigate Islamic activists in attack

USA Today
10/19/00- Updated 08:31 AM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/ndswed03.htm

ADEN, Yemen (AP) - Investigators widened their probe into the bombing of the USS Cole to Saudi Arabia and to a far eastern Yemeni province known for its outlaw tribes, Yemeni officials said Thursday.

Also Thursday, FBI director Louis Freeh arrived and went directly into talks with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

At a news conference later, Freeh said that the FBI is supporting Yemen's investigation in a ''junior'' role and is in the country by invitation. He complimented Yemeni authorities' police work in the case.

Freeh said he toured the U.S. warship, which was attacked as it arrived to refuel a week ago, and described the crime scene as a ''tangled mess of metal and wire.''

The FBI director said it was far too early to speculate who may have sponsored or be responsible for the bombing, which killed 17 sailors and injured 39. ''We are looking at this with an open mind,'' he said.

Yemeni security officials said Thursday that a search earlier this week of an Aden apartment where bomb-making equipment was found also yielded documents they believe originated in Hadhramaut, an eastern Yemeni province. A vehicle believed used by the attackers also contained documents traced to Hadhramaut, the sources said on condition of anonymity.

They said investigators were dispatched Thursday to Hadhramaut, seeking more information to try to identify two men who used the Aden apartment and who have not been seen since the bombing.

Hadhramaut, a conservative region along the eastern border with Oman, is home to lawless tribes that have kidnapped foreigners for ransom.

Yemeni sources said another team of investigators was going to neighboring Saudi Arabia on Thursday. The sources provided no information on the leads that took them there. Many Yemenis from Hadhramaut have settled in Saudi Arabia.

Investigators also were questioning the owner of a welding shop who had done welding for the suspects, security officials said without elaborating.

The landlord of the Aden apartment and a real estate agent who found the apartment for the two men also have been questioned. Yemeni officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, identified the possible suspects only as non-Yemeni Arabs.

A Yemeni boy told authorities that a bearded man wearing glasses gave him small change and told him to watch his car near the port on the day of the bombing, President Saleh said Wednesday on the popular Arab satellite news station Al-Jazeera.

According to the child, the man then took to the sea in a rubber boat he had carried atop the car, and did not return, Saleh said. Yemeni police were apparently able to trace the man back to the apartment.

Officials believe a small rubber boat packed with explosives was maneuvered next to the Cole by two suicide bombers and then detonated.

At a tearful service in Norfolk, Va., President Clinton mourned the dead and sternly warned those who organized the Oct. 12 attack. ''You will not find a safe harbor, for we will find you and justice will prevail,'' he said Wednesday.

Sailors aboard the Cole had held a small memorial on Sunday. On Wednesday, they continued bailing water from the crippled vessel and searching for the bodies of four crew members still missing.

Thirteen bodies have been recovered and flown to the United States.

The apparent death toll of 17 in the bombing, for which no one has claimed responsibility, makes it the deadliest terrorist attack on the U.S. military since the 1996 bombing of an Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia that killed 19.

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'They died protecting us'

USA Today
10/19/00- Updated 08:38 AM ET
By Blake Morrison and Jessie Halladay, USA TODAY
http://usatoday.com/news/ndsthu02.htm

NORFOLK, Va. - Drenched in applause, using crutches and canes, the wounded from the USS Cole stepped slowly off buses Wednesday at the Norfolk Naval Station. Moments later, seven ambulances brought those who couldn't walk.

Some lay strapped to stretchers and propped up by pillows, wearing slings and bandages and pristine white uniforms altered only hours before.

Under drizzling skies just a shade lighter than battleship gray, they joined President Clinton and thousands of others at the Norfolk Naval Station to mourn 17 comrades killed in Yemen last week during a terrorist attack on the USS Cole.

"Their tragic loss reminds us that even when America is not at war, our military still risks their lives to keep peace," Clinton told mourners, many who wept during much of the ceremony. "To those who attacked them, we say you will not find safe harbor. We will find you, and justice will prevail."

The hour-long service included a speech by Navy Secretary Richard Danzig. "We grieve because we couldn't protect them," he said. "Instead, they died protecting us."

As Clinton read the names of each victim softly, family members clutched each other. "He was such a pleasant boy," recalled Dorothy Saunders, the aunt of Timothy Saunders, 32, one of the sailors killed. "You would have loved him," she assured, "as your son, as your brother, as your neighbor."

Hours before the service, a crowd that eventually stretched the length of Pier 12 - longer than an aircraft carrier - had begun to gather. Some were friends of the dead; others were former Navy sailors long since retired. As all reminded, on this day, in this Navy community, everyone was family. And despite their injuries, 36 of the 39 wounded in the attack made it here to pay their respects - some straight from the Naval Medical Center in nearby Portsmouth, still hooked to IVs for pain medication.

"One told me, 'Doc, you couldn't hold me here with a chain of wild horses,'" said Capt. Martin Snyder, a senior attending physician.

Some in attendance reminisced about homecomings lost. Sailor Rebecca Cessna, 20, a firefighter currently stationed at the base, hadn't seen cousin Craig Wibberley since she was 13. Cessna discovered that Wibberley, 19, had died when she called home the day of the attack. She had been looking forward to seeing him again, she said, when the Cole returned to port.

"I don't think there will be too much closure, but I hope it will ease the minds of the families," Cessna said.

---

USS Cole investigation under way

USA Today
10/19/00- Updated 12:43 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/washdc/navy1.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Yemeni coastline, where an apparent terrorist bombing of the USS Cole last week killed 17 sailors, is a ''sieve'' for terrorists, the former U.S. military commander in the Persian Gulf region said Thursday. But it was the best option available for refueling Navy ships, he said. Gen. Anthony Zinni, who was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command at the time the Pentagon contracted for refueling services in the Yemeni port of Aden in December 1998, took responsibility for the decision.

''I pass that buck on to nobody,'' he told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Meanwhile, the search for trapped bodies aboard the Cole yielded one set of remains Thursday, leaving three still to be found.

At a Washington news conference, Attorney General Janet Reno said the United States is doing all it can to help the Yemeni police in their investigation.

She would not say whether any eventual prosecution might take place in Yemen. The United States apparently has no arrangements with Yemen to extradite suspects, but could still seek to prosecute anyone arrested for involvement in the bombing.

Zinni, who retired earlier this year, said he and the rest of the American government were well aware that terrorists use Yemen as a transit route into Saudi Arabia.

''Their coast is a sieve,'' he said.

Yet there were no better alternatives and Navy ships must refuel in that area while moving to and from the Persian Gulf, Zinni said. The port of Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa and just across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen, had been used but the refueling contract there was terminated in about 1997 because the facilities were unsatisfactory and ''the threat conditions were far worse.''

That left him with ''options that were not very good,'' Zinni said.

The retired general told the committee that he personally checked on the refueling arrangements in a series of visits to Aden between May 1998 and May 2000.

Each time, Zinni said, it was clear to him that the Yemeni government was sincere in wanting American help in controlling its coastline. Zinni said his chief of security also visited Aden in May 1998 to check on security arrangements.

Zinni said Aden was one of the few ports in the region where U.S. intelligence had not detected specific threats to American interests.

The threat conditions in Yemen, he said, ''were actually better than we had elsewhere,'' including Saudi Arabia.

While the Senate committee began to examine the circumstances behind the Navy's use of Aden as a refueling stop, the Pentagon was preparing to move ahead with its own investigation.

A retired Navy admiral, Harold W. Gehman, and a retired Army general, William Crouch, will head an independent investigation of security practices on the USS Cole at the time the ship was hit by an apparent terrorist attack Oct. 12.

Meantime, the commander of the Atlantic Fleet, Adm. Robert Natter, said Thursday he is very confident that those responsible for the attack will be found, and he added that they must be punished. ''We have got to go and attack the enemy.''

''There has been an attack on U.S. sovereign territory - that U.S. Navy warship. That's sovereign territory,'' Natter said on NBC's Today. ''If we are going to defend ourselves, we have got to go on the attack.

''You cannot continue to allow yourself to be attacked and attempt to defend yourself without at some point saying 'this is inappropriate,''' Natter said.

The Pentagon planned to announce on Thursday that Defense Secretary William Cohen had requested the probe be led by Gehman, who retired this summer as commander in chief of U.S. Joint Forces Command, and Crouch, who retired in 1999 as Army deputy chief of staff, a senior defense official said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Crouch also is a former commander of U.S. Army Europe and chief of NATO's Allied Land Forces Central Europe. In that capacity he commanded the U.S.-led NATO peacekeepers in Bosnia in 1996-97, a mission that placed a high priority on troop security, or ''force protection measures,'' in military parlance.

Gehman had extensive at-sea experience during his career, including tours in Vietnam and as commander of a destroyer. He later served as vice chief of naval operations, the No. 2 post in the Navy.

The investigation will examine the circumstances at the time of the bombing and assess ways in which standard security precautions during visits to foreign ports can be improved.

Natter, the Atlantic Fleet commander, said: ''To my knowledge, I'm very pleased with what the ship was doing with respect to self-defense.'' But he declined to say whether he has seen evidence of a security lapse.

U.S. officials believe that a small boat sidled up to the Cole while it was preparing to refuel in the middle of Aden's harbor and detonated a bomb powerful enough to rip a hole 40 feet high and 40 feet wide in the Cole's hull. Seventeen sailors were killed and more than 30 were injured.

The impact wrenched open hatches and buckled parts of the deck on the 4-year-old destroyer, whose modern construction may have helped it say afloat.

The Cole will have to be moved from Aden for major repairs by a vessel known as a heavy lift ship, which is like a floating dry dock capable of carrying ships of up to 30,000 tons. The unloaded Cole is 8,300 tons.

---

U.S. seeks exemption on global court cases

Washington Times
October 19, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://208.246.212.80/world/worldscene-20001019215428.htm

NEW YORK - With time running out for the Clinton administration, the United States warned legal experts yesterday to exempt U.S. soldiers and officials from prosecution abroad by a new global criminal court.

If such a provision were not approved in November, David Scheffer, the U.S. ambassador at large for war crimes, said Washington would have to reconsider its overall support for the world's first criminal court and perhaps even peacekeeping.

"A negative result at the next session could have a major impact on the ability of non-party states to participate in certain types of military contingencies, including those with critical humanitarian implications," Mr. Scheffer told a committee the U.N. General Assembly.

Since the treaty in Rome, 114 countries have signed the treaty and 14 have ratified it. A total of 60 ratifications are needed for the treaty to go into force, expected in about three years.

---

Taps for USS Cole dead

Washington Times
October 19, 2000
By Daniel F. Drummond THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/metro/default-20001019224026.htm

NORFOLK - More than 15,000 mourners gathered at Pier 12 at the naval base here yesterday to pay homage to the 17 sailors lost in last week's attack on the USS Cole.

In a short speech open only to the families of the Cole's crew, civil servants and other military personnel, President Clinton told the crowd that those who were killed or injured never will be forgotten.

"To all they have given us, we must give them their meaning," Mr. Clinton said, looking directly at the relatives of the dead and missing sailors.

Mr. Clinton also said the United States will hunt down the terrorists who attacked the destroyer.

"You will not find a safe harbor, for we will find you, and justice will prevail," Mr. Clinton said.

In the invocation, Rear Adm. Barry C. Black, chief of chaplains, asked for God to shed light on the darkness and sorrow in the families' lives.

"Give a sense of comradeship to this act of inhumanity," Adm. Black said.

Thirty-six of the 39 sailors injured in last Thursday's blast made their way through the crowd to sit with family members.

Some with scrapes and bruises and an occasional bandage walked with ease to embrace loved ones. Others came out on crutches or walked with canes. Each was greeted with a round of applause.

Seven sailors with more serious injuries were carried on stretchers from ambulances and welcomed with a standing ovation.

One sailor who was hooked up to oxygen, a heart monitor and intravenous drip wore a blue USS Cole cap. Another wore his dress whites, complete with black-brimmed cap and Navy insignia.

The 17 sailors died when a rubber dinghy believed to be filled with explosives ripped a hole in the Cole as it stopped to refueled off the coast of Yemen.

Yesterday, the remains of three sailors who died were released from a military mortuary in Dover, Del., and began the journey to families' homes.

The remains of eight other sailors were expected to arrive at Dover Air Force Base today. Five bodies arrived there Saturday. The mortuary was preparing the bodies of two others.

Four more remained trapped in the damaged part of the guided-missile destroyer. "For our tomorrow, they gave their today," said Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Last week we lost a part of America, a part of ourselves."

Those who died gave their lives for freedom, he said.

"They are now and forever more part of a family of patriots. They clearly answered their call to duty," said Gen. Shelton, who then echoed the president's warning: "Those who perpetrated this act of terrorism should never forget America's memory is long and our reach longer."

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said, "No one should pass by an American in uniform without saying, 'Thank you.'"

Also attending were congressmen from states that were home to lost or injured sailors, Attorney General Janet Reno, first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Clintons' daughter, Chelsea.

Two other destroyers, the USS Ross and USS McFaul, flanked the stage where Mr. Clinton and other dignitaries spoke. Behind the more than 3,000 seats set aside for the families and injured crew was the carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. Sailors from all three ships lined the railings.

Cries from young widows and mothers who lost sons could be heard as a sailor played taps from the bow of the McFaul.

Mr. Clinton - who met privately with each family about two hours prior to his arrival at the pier -said that in reading the names of the sailors, he understood these were men and women whose lives and dreams were cut short.

John Clodfelter, father of one of the missing, Hull Technician 3rd Class Kenneth Eugene Clodfelter, rose from his front-row seat to address Mr. Clinton after his speech.

Mr. Clodfelter later said he had told the president, "[When] those who are responsible are punished, say these words: 'Remember the Cole.' "

The president mouthed "Thank you" to Mr. Clodfelter and saluted.

Theirs is a military family, Mr. Clodfelter said, and until the Navy tells him otherwise, he holds out hope that his son is alive.

"I'm not giving up on my son," Mr. Clodfelter said, noting his anger hasn't subsided. "Them people are going to regret that they touched the Cole."

Family members, wearing black and yellow ribbons, said the service provided some level of comfort, but nothing, they said, will erase the hurt.

"He was doing something for his country," Zola Saunders said of her cousin, Operations Specialist 2nd Class Timothy L. Saunders, 32.

Ms. Saunders said her cousin, an 11-year veteran, was making the Navy his career.

Seth Vancour came to be with the family of his best friend, Seaman Recruit Craig B. Wibberley of Williamsport, Md.

"It's because I love him," Mr. Vancour said. "I couldn't stop thinking about him."

Mr. Vancour and a cousin of Seaman Wibberley, Aaron Wibberley, said they were proud to have known and been a friend to the 19-year-old sailor, who had graduated from high school in June 1999 and enlisted the next month.

Later in the afternoon, about 200 attended a public memorial service at High Street Landing in Portsmouth.

"They just want to come out and support the Cole," city official Sheila Pittman said. "This week was a reality check for all of us, that people are willing to die."

A demonstration by Navy SEALs and a concert, previously scheduled as part of Fleet Week activities, followed the brief ceremony.

"Last Thursday, the world stopped and Americans were reminded of the price of freedom," Portsmouth Mayor James Holley said.

The spirits of his city and the Navy remain high, the mayor said, and no act of terror could change that.

"It's definitely sobering," said Delia Cartier, 25, of Anchorage, Alaska, who was visiting her hometown with fiance James Jones. "[The area] has been more supportive, and there is more of a concern for the families."

As each name of the dead and missing was read, a bell tolled.

Rear Adm. Clinton E. Adams, commander of the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, said the Navy family is pulling through because of the towns they call home - Norfolk and Portsmouth.

"You don't know how important it is to have a community that loves its military. We, the military, need to be loved," he said.

The House and Senate passed resolutions yesterday honoring the USS Cole's crew and condemning the attackers.

• This article is based in part on wire service reports.

---

Casualties of a Shadow War

Washington Post
Thursday, October 19, 2000 ; Page A31
By Jim Hoagland
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36200-2000Oct18.html

The terrorists who bombed the USS Cole in Aden climbed an important rung on the ladder of terrorism. Americans can no longer turn away from the ugly realities of the shadow war directed against their nation. Nor can they ignore the ineptness of U.S. responses.

The Aden massacre was an intelligence success of major proportions for at least one of America's enemies in the Middle East. The tradecraft used shows it was not executed by a band of freelancers who got lucky. It is no longer possible to treat a dozen years of high-profile terror attacks on U.S. targets as random, episodic and self-contained events that can be left to the normal procedures of criminal justice and government bureaucracy.

Modern terrorists climb the ladder of technology with determination. They progress from car bombs to truck bombs to nerve gas, as experts like David Kay have pointed out. They have moved on to packing a ton of sophisticated explosives on a small boat to slaughter U.S. sailors.

But a ladder of objectives is being climbed as well. American airliners, the World Trade Center in New York, United Nations headquarters, U.S. military barracks and embassies abroad--and now a warship--have been the actual or intended targets of bombers with roots in the Middle East.

Easy explanations are available: That's the price of being a global superpower. Somebody somewhere is always going to be angry at you for treading on his culture. Bring the boys back home, or grin and bear it. Either answer will seemingly do.

But what if these targets are being attacked because of the principles and policies of the United States? What if the extensive state resources needed to infiltrate the Aden port operation and gather intelligence on the Cole's movements were mobilized by a state friendly enough to Yemen and hostile enough to the United States to achieve the bombing of the Cole?

The outgoing administration has not made a serious effort to confront and answer similar questions in the earlier attacks. It has appointed ineffectual commissions and left anti-terror policy to mid-level bureaucrats at the National Security Council. A policy heavyweight, a Sam Nunn or a Warren Rudman, should be named to head up a blue-ribbon panel to investigate the operational failures that exposed the Cole to disaster and the larger questions about terrorism.

Bureaucracies instinctively understand when they are being asked to avoid forcing hard choices on leaders. And no president welcomes evidence that may require him to undertake acts of warfare in such murky circumstances.

President Bush faced such a choice shortly after his election in 1988 when Pan Am 103 was blown up over Scotland. His administration responded to evidence implicating Libya's intelligence service by ruling out military retaliation and opting for economic sanctions and the slow path of criminal justice.

The sanctions, and the legal case finally brought against two Libyan underlings under Scottish law, were both unraveling as the Cole tragedy happened.

Investigative author Laurie Mylroie's new book, "Study of Revenge," argues that significant leads that tie the Feb. 26, 1993, bombing of the World Trade Center to Iraq have not been followed up effectively either.

Her case is far from airtight. But she advances what former CIA director James Woolsey calls "a testable hypothesis" that has studiously not been tested by the administration. After the attack on the Cole--on its way to enforce U.N. sanctions against Iraq--such views cannot be dismissed as Iraqophobia or paranoia.

Iraqi intelligence has long maintained a significant presence in the former British coaling station of Aden. The CIA upgraded its presence there in recent years to try to penetrate Saddam Hussein's operations. And Saddam has long-standing political and financial ties with Yemeni leader Ali Abdallah Salih, who initially insisted the Cole explosion was just an accident.

That explanation echoes uncomfortably in my ears. In 1987 an Iraqi jet hit the USS Stark with an Exocet missile and killed 37 sailors. Saddam insisted that was an accident, and the Reagan administration quickly accepted his apology rather than aggressively pursue a difficult inquiry. The U.S. team sent to Baghdad meekly accepted the Iraqi refusal to allow it to question the attacking jet's pilot.

Covering that pseudo investigation was my last trip to Baghdad. Three years later Saddam went to war against Kuwait and dared an American nation he was convinced would never respond. Somewhere someone is watching the American response to the attack on the Cole and thinking about the future. So must America, without further illusion.

---

DALE McFEATTERS: War wardrobe

Nando Times
October 19, 2000 12:01 a.m. EDT
Scripps Howard News Service
http://www.nandotimes.com/opinions/story/0%2C1098%2C500270154-500420754-502614143-0%2C00.html

In the U.S. Army the beret has been reserved for elite units - black for Rangers, green for Special Forces, maroon for Airborne. But Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki has just announced that as of next June 14 the black beret will become standard issue for all soldiers.

This is probably a mistake. One major function of military dress is to express status, achievement and experience, hence the medals, ribbons, emblems and chevrons. Ranger training is brutal and those who survive it should get to broadcast that fact. And the decision seems unfair to the Rangers because the paratroopers and Green Berets will get to keep their distinctive colors.

Shinseki said, "When we wear the black beret it will say that we, the soldiers of the world's best army, are committed to making ourselves even better." That's asking a lot of a hat, especially one associated with the French.

The Army chief said he got the inspiration at a change-of-command ceremony for the Army's Special Operations Command. It was a good thing he wasn't presiding, say, at a review of the Italian army's Bersaglieri, who wear broad-brimmed hats with a large panoply of feathers.

The Army has weathered uniform changes before, notably in the 1950s when the powers-that-be scrapped the brown uniform, oddly called "pinks," that had been worn during World War II. Maybe Shinseki could commission a brown beret for the Army at large; it would be a homage to the greatest generation and would let the black beret remain distinct to the Rangers.

In any event, the Army will survive and thrive because it's not the hat, it's the soldier under it.


-------- OTHER

New York Times
October 19, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/world/19BRIE.html

BRITAIN: TORTURE REPORT Amnesty International said torture is increasing around the world, in dictatorships and democracies. At a news conference, Pierre Sané, secretary general of the London-based rights group, said it had uncovered evidence of beatings, rape, electric shock and other forms of torture in more than 150 countries, including Britain and the United States. Between 1997 and 2000 there was evidence of widespread torture by state agents in more than 70 countries, the group said. Sarah Lyall (NYT)

-------- environment

House Passes $7.8 Billion Plan to Save the Florida Everglades

New York Times
October 19, 2000
By ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/national/19CND-EVER.html

WASHINGTON, Oct. 19 - The House approved one of the largest environmental-restoration projects in the country's history today, voting overwhelmingly for a $7.8 billion program to revive the Florida Everglades over the next four decades.

The 394-to-14 vote, following the Senate's approval by 85-1 on Sept. 25, clears the way for an undertaking to revamp South Florida's water supply by capturing more rainwater and redirecting much of its flow into the Everglades.

The plan, drafted by the Army Corps of Engineers, is aimed at resuscitating the 12 million-acre "river of grass" that cuts across South Florida. At the same time, the plan is supposed to ensure an adequate supply of fresh water for cities and farms.

Before the bill goes to President Clinton, who has pledged to sign it, differences between the Senate and House versions must be resolved. But Congressional staff members familiar with the language in the two versions say the differences are largely technical and should not prevent final enactment before the lawmakers adjourn just before the election.

The Everglades project, part of a package approving various Corps water projects, calls for the federal government to split the $7.8 billion cost with the state of Florida. The initial spending would be more than $1 billion.

The few political opponents of the project have expressed fears that it would take federal "pork barrel" spending to new levels. But the project has such overwhelming support - from liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, including both Presidential candidates - that there seems little chance of its being derailed at this stage.

Representative Sherwood Boehlert, an upstate New York Republican who heads the House Transportation water-resources panel, called the bill "our best hope to save the Everglades, to protect the egrets and alligators and to restore the balance between the human environment and the natural system in South Florida."

Passage of the bill is an acknowledgment that what Congress did in 1948 was wrong. That year, the lawmakers ordered army engineers to construct a series of levees and canals to curb flooding in South Florida, then in the first stages of its modern building boom. By changing the water flow, the engineers inadvertently guaranteed that the Everglades got too little water in the dry season, too much in rainy weather.

A half-century is a mere instant in the history of the earth, but a long time in human reckoning - long enough for the levees and canals ordered up in 1948 to destroy half the Everglades.

---

Lieberman Cites Religion as Foundation of Environmentalism

New York Times
October 18, 2000
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/politics/19VEEP.html

WAUSAU, Wis., Oct. 18 - Once again citing religion as a foundation for policy, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman said today that he and Vice President Al Gore would be good stewards of nature, while Gov. George W. Bush would spoil it.

"For Al Gore and me, this begins, if you will, by our faith," Mr. Lieberman told more than 1,000 people in a park here. "If you believe in God, I think it's hard not to be an environmentalist, because you see the environment as the work of God."

Mr. Lieberman referred to the biblical story of the Garden of Eden, where "it said that God put Adam and Eve there to work the garden, but also to guard it."

With a lake as a backdrop, Mr. Lieberman spoke of a long list of environmental successes over the last generation and the role Mr. Gore has played in many of them. And he attacked Mr. Bush's environmental record in Texas, a regular theme of his speeches.

"When it comes to the environment and so much else, do we want to keep moving forward, or are we going to move backward?" Mr. Lieberman asked. "The record makes clear that George Bush and Dick Cheney will take America backwards."

He noted that Texas has the highest rate of toxic industrial air emissions of any state, the worst smog, and the third-highest rate of toxic water emissions. "Given the chance to stand with people, families, or side with the polluters, Governor Bush has too often chosen to side with the polluters," Mr. Lieberman said.

The Bush campaign has noted, in response to such criticism, that Texas' environmental problems predate the governor, and has argued that he is making headway on them. Environmental groups say that Mr. Bush's record on the issue is weak, and that he had little to do with the advances that Texas has made.

The speech today marked the second time this week that Mr. Lieberman, the first Jew nominated for national office by a major party, cited religion as a basis for a part of his ticket's platform. On Monday, he said that providing health care to older Americans was "an expression of the basic idea that's true to all religions and all groups, which is to honor our fathers and our mothers."

In August, speaking in a Detroit church, he called for a greater role for religion in public life, and seemed to suggest that morality could not exist without religion. Those remarks made some in his party, and many Jews, uncomfortable, and he insisted afterward that he had not meant to say that people lacking religious beliefs were immoral.

Over the next six weeks of campaigning, Mr. Lieberman spoke far less about religion, but his statements this week seem to signal a return to the themes of that Detroit address. They might also be seen as contradicting his assertion that his religious beliefs do not determine his policy positions, a distinction that he and his aides have said sets him apart from conservative Christians.

And Mr. Lieberman's statement that belief in God should lead to environmentalism could be taken as a dig at Mr. Bush, who is avowedly religious, but who the senator and other Democrats say is no friend of the environment.

This week, Mr. Lieberman has repeatedly presented his and Mr. Gore's policies as a broad vision growing out of basic values.

"We started out with the values," that led to the creation of environmental laws, he said today.

"Those laws gave birth to a broadly held ethic among people in this country," he continued. "That they accepted their responsibility without the pressure of law to preserve the great natural environment and protect themselves from damage to their health and well-being from environmental pollution."

---

USA Today
10/19/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

D.C. - Anacostia Marina Inc. and its owner pleaded guilty to environmental violations. Owner Thomas Long admitted lying about a January oil leak from a boat and failing to notify authorities. Prosecutors said marina workers allowed cleaning liquids and debris to run into the Anacostia River in June. Inspectors also found tires and other junk at the marina.

Kentucky

Lexington - An estimated 997 Kentuckians die prematurely each year as a result of soot from coal-fired power plants, The Clean Air Task Force says. The death rate from soot-related illness is 44.1 per 100,000 adults, the highest in the USA, the Boston-based group said. Utility companies disagree.

Minnesota

Hibbing - Nearly 70% of the frogs found in an artificial pond near Hibbing had physical deformities, making the site among the worst in the state since such abnormalities surfaced in 1995. Scientists still haven't determined the cause of the deformities.

New Mexico

Alamogordo - Environmentalists want the U.S. Forest Service to withdraw a proposed fire salvage timber sale on burned portions of the Lincoln National Forest. Forest Guardians has threatened to sue to stop next month's sale. The Santa Fe-based group says commercial logging within the burned forests disrupts the recovery of the ecosystem.

Wyoming

Cody - The U.S. Forest Service will prosecute those involved in a monster truck rally that caused untold damage in the Bighorn National Forest last June. The trucks were caught on videotape driving through muddy ground in riparian areas in the Little Goose Creek Drainage. Bighorn Forest Supervisor Bill Bass said he expects to issue numerous citations.

---

Jobs in the balance

Washington Times
October 19, 2000
Inside Politics Greg Pierce
News and political dispatches from around the nation.

The Detroit News yesterday published the first of three editorials on Al Gore's opposition to the internal-combustion engine, as explicated in his book, "Earth in the Balance."

The newspaper predicted Mr. Gore "would press an environmental agenda at the expense of Michigan," and said his election "threatens to expose Detroit to unparalleled government interference."

"Clearly, it's the auto industry that's in the balance in this," the newspaper said, forecasting job losses that could total 96,500 in Michigan alone.

-------- genetics

THE MORROCK NEWS DIGEST
THURSDAY :: OCTOBER 19, 2000 :: EMAIL EDITION
http://morrock.com

BIOTECH CORN IS WIDESPREAD: Millions of bushels of a controversial genetically engineered type of corn ave reached the food supply chain, the Washington Post said Thursday. Government officials are trying to track it all down and pull it back to keep it out of such things as taco shells and corn flakes. The corn, engineered to resist pests, has not been approved for human consumption because testing hasn't been done to show it won't set off allergic reactions. It first showed up in taco shells sold in grocery stores under the Taco Bell label.

---

Biotech Corn in Various Foods

Washington Post
Thursday , October 19, 2000 ; Page A01
By Marc Kaufman Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35975-2000Oct18?language=printer

Millions of bushels of genetically engineered corn approved only for animal use have made their way into the human food supply chain, officials said yesterday, raising the possibility that the corn will be found in a wide array of foods.

As a result, industry and federal officials are working to find the corn and buy it back before it's made into more taco shells and chips, corn flakes and other corn products.

"A lot has gone downstream," said John Wichtrich, vice president and general manager of Aventis FoodSciences of Research Triangle Park, N.C., the developer of the corn. "We're working with the grain elevators, the flour mills and processors to identify the commingled corn, and we're getting it out of the food chain."

Although the corn was not approved for humans because of fears it might trigger allergic reactions, officials do not think its presence in food poses an imminent health risk. But the incident raises serious questions about whether genetically engineered products can be kept segregated from conventional ones in the nation's food system.

Investigators thought the corn had made its way into a limited number of food products through a single Texas corn flour miller that had inadvertently used the corn from last year's crop to make taco shells. That prompted the recall of all taco shells made from that miller's flour, including Taco Bell grocery store and Safeway brand taco shells.

Those recalls triggered a series of investigations by federal regulators and Aventis to determine how the corn had gotten to the Texas miller. While the federal investigations are continuing, Aventis now says the corn from this year's crop apparently was sold by farmers to dozens--and perhaps hundreds--of grain elevators across the country, which unknowingly distributed it to millers and processors for use in making food.

About 260 grain elevators have received the corn this year, Aventis officials said yesterday. Based on completed surveys of 107 of those grain elevators, the company said that about half were forwarding the corn on for unapproved human uses.

Wichtrich estimated that about 88 percent of the Aventis corn, called StarLink, was either being stored on farms or used for animal feed. But an additional 9 million bushels had already left farms this year, and that is the missing corn company officials are tracking down and buying back when they can.

An official with the Department of Agriculture, which is monitoring the Aventis effort, said yesterday that there is "a plausibility" that some of this year's StarLink corn has made it into food products. But he also said that "there is an enormous effort underway to pull back as much of the corn as possible."

The Food and Drug Administration is testing a variety of corn products for the presence of the unapproved corn.

StarLink corn is the only genetically modified variety that was approved by the Environmental Protection Agency for animal use, but not for humans. Aventis officials now echo the opinion of others in the food and biotech industries that the decision to accept only the animal approval was a serious mistake.

Aventis agreed to buy the entire crop at a 25-cent premium this month, and is selling much of it to feedlots and ethanol producers. The company is also paying to test commingled corn in many grain elevators, and will buy any corn in storage that has even a small amount of StarLink in it. Analysts estimate the cost will approach $100 million.

Wichtrich said yesterday that in conversations with growers of StarLink corn, the company learned that some did not know that the corn was approved only for animal or industrial use, and that some knew the restrictions but forgot them.

"A lot of this corn was grown on a small section of larger farms, and sometimes farmers just harvested it all together," he said. "Sometimes they didn't advise the grain elevators of the restrictions, and sometimes they were too busy to remember. It just didn't work out."

Wichtrich said that Aventis has identified about 352,000 acres planted with StarLink--a yellow corn mostly grown in the Midwest and upper Midwest--and an additional 168,000 acres of buffer crops planted to protect against pollen spread from the biotech corn. None of that corn was supposed to enter the human food supply. He also said some farmers did not know that StarLink had been planted near their crops, which were within the official buffer zones.

-------- imf / world bank / wto

IMF, World Bank are failures

Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 20:37:18 -0700
From: radman <resist@best.com>
Subject: RadTimes # 76
RadTimes # 76 - October, 2000
Published Tuesday, October 3, 2000, in the Miami Herald
by Mark Weisbrot

PRAGUE -- When thousands of people converged from throughout Europe to demonstrate against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank at their annual meetings last week, many in Prague wondered what all the fuss was about. Security was tight, and residents told to stay off the streets.

Czech police were on every corner, an unusual sight in a city where the streets are safe and people generally aren't arrested for minor drug offenses. Many Europeans who traveled here to participate were turned away at the border, and permits for peaceful marches denied.

The threat of violence was grossly exaggerated by the authorities for their own purposes; as in the Washington, D.C., demonstrations last April, the organizers and protesters were committed to nonviolence. The real danger was that of embarrassment for the IMF and the Bank. They are fighting to preserve their legitimacy, which has been badly damaged over the last three years.

For half a century hardly anyone knew these institutions existed, and they operated in the shadows. Those days are over, although many of their most important documents and deliberations remain secret. The IMF and the Bank operate a cartel for credit, much like the OPEC runs an oil cartel. Neither one is leak-proof, but they both confer considerable power on the men who control them.

While OPEC uses its monopoly power simply to raise oil prices, these financial giants use theirs to influence and often dictate the economic policies of dozens of countries. The IMF is the leader, and a country that falls out of its favor will not be eligible for most credit from the larger World Bank, other multilateral lending institutions, governments and often private sources of credit as well.

This arrangement gives the IMF and Bank powers vastly greater than they could ever have from their own resources. Power is even more concentrated in that the IMF is basically controlled by the U.S. Treasury. This fact illustrates what dinosaurs these institutions really are. If the IMF did not exist, nothing like it could be created today.

At the very least the Europeans and Japanese would demand to have their say, as they do in the World Trade Organization; and the underdeveloped countries would demand a voice in shaping the policies that now victimize them. To illustrate IMF policies with an example close to home: The United States is now running a record current-account deficit. (The current account measures foreign trade plus other noninvestment international transactions). At 4.5 percent of our economy, this deficit is as big as the one that Brazil was running three years ago when the IMF proposed an austerity policy as a loan condition.

If we were an IMF client, we would get rid of our trade deficit in the following manner: The Fed would raise interest rates as high as necessary in order to throw the economy into a recession. Our economy would shrink as borrowing for housing and other large purchases dropped, people were thrown out of work and businesses cut back on their investment. As spending plummeted, so would the purchase of imports and our trade balance would improve.

Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist at the World Bank and a likely candidate for a future Nobel Prize, has called this a ``beggar thyself'' -- as opposed to ``beggar thy neighbor'' -- policy for getting rid of a trade deficit. He resigned under pressure last year after criticizing these and other policies that have caused enormous economic damage in countries such as Indonesia, Russia and Brazil.

Because IMF and World Bank policies have failed so miserably and so often, and because these organizations are so completely unaccountable and anti-democratic, they have few defenders outside of a narrow foreign-policy elite. And their opposition is growing by leaps and bounds. Organized labor has increasingly come to see these institutions as major adversaries, since they use their creditors' cartel to enforce the global ``race to the bottom'' in wages and working conditions that has hurt American workers as well.

Recently, the Communications Workers of America took the unprecedented step of pledging to not buy World Bank bonds, joining a worldwide movement to use the pension funds of unions, churches, local governments and universities to bring pressure on the Bank. The street heat is working.

As the protesters like to chant, ``This is what democracy looks like.''

Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

-------- police

Official Sees Attempt to Halt His Overhaul of State Police

New York Times
October 19, 2000
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/nyregion/19TROO.html

TRENTON, Oct. 18 - In a testy rebuttal to recent news reports that New Jersey law enforcement officials concealed evidence of racial profiling for years, Attorney General John J. Farmer Jr. suggested today that some unnamed adversaries of the state police were trying to tarnish the reputation of the agency and derail his attempts to overhaul the force.

Mr. Farmer became attorney general in May 1999, less than a month after Gov. Christine Todd Whitman acknowledged for the first time that many troopers had illegally targeted minority drivers because of their skin color, and much of his time in office has been spent addressing profiling. In December he agreed to let a monitor appointed by a federal court oversee the state's efforts to deter profiling.

An assortment of civil lawsuits alleging racial profiling have moved through the courts, and a judge recently ordered the state police to turn over 50,000 pages of internal documents to plaintiffs' lawyers. Last month, Mr. Farmer took the unusual step of announcing that he would also make those documents available to the public by establishing a profiling archive.

Those plans were disrupted last week, however, when newspapers obtained 11,000 pages of those records, including memos indicating that the state police superintendent, Col. Carl A. Williams, had detailed statistical evidence of profiling as early as the fall of 1996, and that the attorney general at the time, Peter G. Verniero, participated in a January 1997 meeting with state police officials at which they decided to limit what was given to federal investigators.

Mr. Verniero, who is now a justice on the State Supreme Court, has declined to comment on the matter, even as state legislators have begun investigating whether he misrepresented his knowledge about racial profiling in testimony during his confirmation hearings in May 1999.

Mr. Farmer insisted today that when all 50,000 pages of the documents were available, it would be apparent that his predecessors in the attorney general's office had cooperated fully with investigators.

"There is no insinuation by the Justice Department that we didn't cooperate, that we withheld information," Mr. Farmer said at a news conference in the Statehouse. "You can pick out the documents that have been leaked and it would look that way. But when all the documents are out there, you can see what we've shown what we've sent the Justice Department on a regular basis over the years."

Mr. Farmer added that he was "offended" that only selected documents had been provided to the newspapers and suggested that the leaks had been intended to counter a recent report by the federal monitor that praised the state's efforts to discourage profiling.

He said he did not know who might have released the information or wish to impede the agency's overhaul.

State legislators from both parties have called for an inquiry into profiling and whether Mr. Verniero misled lawmakers during his confirmation hearings. Senator William L. Gormley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has asked a former United States attorney, Michael Chertoff, to review the evidence and begin questioning state officials. Mr. Gormley said he would decide later whether to call for public hearings or ask for subpoena power.

Democrats have been pushing for a more aggressive response. The Senate minority leader, Richard Codey, has asked the Senate to form a special committee, with subpoena power, to examine the documents.

--------

Selfish silence enables justice abuses

Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 20:37:18 -0700
From: radman <resist@best.com>
Subject: RadTimes # 76
RadTimes # 76 - October, 2000
<http://news.excite.com/news/uw/001018/university-80>

October 18, 2000
By Kelly Sarabyn
Cavalier Daily, U. Virginia (U-WIRE) CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.

Your new name is 73645. Your new room is Cell Block 386. And your new roommate is a convicted rapist. You can have all this, and more, courtesy of the Los Angeles Police Department.

But wait, you say, don't I need to commit a crime to receive this wonderful prize package?

The answer, of course, should be yes. But in the case of the LAPD, and a growing number of police departments across the nation, the answer is a surprising no.

Four officers in the Los Angeles Police Department stand accused of lying, fabricating evidence, and falsifying police records in order to "send innocent men to jail." ("In L.A. police scandal, 4 go on trial for faking cases," The Washington Post, Oct. 13).

This incident epitomizes the corruption that has flooded through the pearly gates of our criminal justice system. Racial profiling, police beatings and sleepy public defenders have all become regular facets of American justice.

The majority of Americans would agree this is a problem. A huge problem.

Yet the incident in California, and many other recent ones, have provoked no public indignation. No protest rallies. No overflow of letters in the Congressional mailbox.

This silence is unacceptable.

Society needs to stop making excuses, and realize the criminal justice system is not going to fix itself. Citizens often think the justice system is not under their control, and consequentially they cannot change its operations. There are no public elections for police officers. Judges usually are appointed. Police departments are sprawling bureaucracies with lives of their own.

These facts are true, but it does not mean the public does not have power over the justice system.

Ultimately, all governmental appointments can be traced back to an elected official. People can write their representative or governor and let elected officials know corruption is an issue. Representatives can enact legislation that provides for checks on police abuse. Governors can appoint judges who are strong advocates of procedural rights.

Elected officials can enforce responsibility. Elected officials only will o this, however, if they know the issue is important to their constituents. It is the responsibility of the people to make their interests known.

Another excuse people use to justify their inaction is the claim that police abuses are unfortunate, but inevitable accompaniments to any justice system. Officers are, after all, humans. We cannot expect humans to be perfect.

This is also true.

We should not expect our officers to be perfect. Errors made in good faith and judgment are tolerable.

We should not, however, stand for intentional procedural abuses.

Police who toss aside the truth in order to bolster their conviction rate have not erred. They have deliberately broken the law.

The main reason for the public's inaction, however, is not a consideration for the moral fallibility of police officers.

It is pure selfishness.

The abuses of the criminal justice system are directed at one demographic, poor minorities.

The LAPD incident occurred within their Rampart Division, a unit that operates in a neighborhood of lower class immigrants. Middle- and upper-class citizens generally do not have to worry about police officers planting drugs in their cars. Nor do they have to worry about inept public defenders botching their cases. Most people, in fact, can rest assured that they will not be wrongly imprisoned.

The problem of police corruption is therefore neither a pressing concern, nor an issue for public outrage.

There are numerous reasons, however, why it should be a pressing concern for all citizens, and not just the citizens who are targeted.

Justice should be blind. Innocent men should be free. Police are supposed to protect and serve.

Poor minorities have few political or economic resources in which to respond to the abuses.

Americans pride themselves on living in the land of the free. Yet, citizens sit idly by, watching as the government robs citizens of their freedom.

Corrupt police officers are imprisoning innocent people.

You are paying their salaries. You are involved. Stop deflecting responsibility.

Speak out on behalf of those who do not have the resources to be heard.

Bringing the Military and the Law together

4th Non-Lethal Weapons 2000 'Operational and practical challenges' Bringing the Military and the Law together

Caledonian Hilton Hotel, Edinburgh, UK 5-6 December 2000

Ensure that you are equipped with the latest assessment of the key practical, legal, ethical and technological issues facing operational units. This unique conference ensures you can develop your understanding of NLW's through expert speakers with first hand experience and in-depth knowledge of Non-Lethal Weapons.

For more information on NLW 2000 visit: http://www.janes.com/defence/conference/nlw/nlw.shtml

---

Lapses Cited in Disciplining of the Police

New York Times
October 19, 2000
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/nyregion/19POLI.html

Federal prosecutors investigating how the Police Department handles brutality cases have briefed police union officials on findings that they contend show how serious lapses in department procedures allowed brutal officers to go unpunished, according to several union officials.

The lapses, detailed in a series of meetings, include what the prosecutors characterized as the department's failure to find witnesses who were readily available, the failure to track problem officers with repeat violations and the premature dismissal of serious cases.

The overview described by the union officials represents the most detailed picture to emerge from a three-year inquiry by the United States attorney in Brooklyn. The investigation stems from accusations that the Police Department's failure to discipline officers in excessive force cases has fostered a climate of brutality.

Protracted negotiations between the city and federal prosecutors have continued for more than a year in efforts to reach agreement on proposed changes. Federal authorities have threatened that if the talks fail, they will sue under a 1994 civil rights law and seek to impose a federal monitor. The city's corporation counsel, Michael D. Hess, would not comment, and Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, said it would be inappropriate for any interested party to discuss the case publicly.

The union officials, who sought the meetings to present rebuttal evidence, said that in recent weeks they have attended two sessions with prosecutors in New York and one at the Justice Department in Washington. They said no evidence presented to them so far seemed to constitute anything more than isolated instances of the failure of the department's disciplinary system.

"We're trying to show them that the number of cases, even if they are 100 percent correct, is so minute in the overall scheme of 41,000 law enforcement officers that it certainly shouldn't warrant a federal monitor," said Thomas J. Scotto, the president of the Detectives' Endowment Association, one of five unions represented at the meetings.

The officials said that prosecutors told them that they had found instances where the Police Department appeared to have done a very sloppy job of investigating brutality complaints against officers. In a number of instances, the prosecutors said, interns working for them had been able to easily identify and contact witnesses in brutality cases even though seasoned police investigators had maintained that those witnesses were unreachable, thereby forcing cases to be dismissed.

Union officials, however, said they had not been given any indication that this problem was widespread. They said there was ample evidence to suggest that the department's attitude toward internal discipline was not cavalier, like the increased number of officers disciplined for a wide range of offenses in recent years.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, a staunch defender of the department, recently said that there was merit to the findings of the federal inquiry, acknowledging that there had been problems with some department procedures in brutality cases. But he strongly resists the imposition of a court-ordered federal monitor for the department.

Mr. Giuliani said this month that he supported improvements in how the department handles abuse cases substantiated by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent city agency, but he provided no specifics.

There has been some agreement between the two sides on several important changes sought by the prosecutors, but among the sticking points has been the mechanism that would be used to enforce them. Federal authorities want any agreement enforced by a consent decree signed by a federal judge. The city favors an oversight plan in which a monitor would be appointed by the mayor, and in the event of an insoluble disagreement between the parties, the prosecutors could sue.

The federal inquiry into how the department investigates and disciplines officers accused of using excessive force began in August 1997 after the torture of Abner Louima in the 70th Precinct station house in Brooklyn. Using a federal civil rights statute passed after the videotaped police beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles, the prosecutors sought to determine whether the department's failures in handling brutality cases resulted in "a pattern or practice" of violating people's civil rights.

The prosecutors conducted an exhaustive review of records provided by the Police Department, examining hundreds of cases in which officers were accused of using excessive force, in some instances re-investigating the cases, and reviewing the discipline that was meted out.

The recent meetings with union officials stemmed from their complaints that they had not been brought into the process, the officials said. At the sessions, the prosecutors also outlined several other areas in which they said their investigation had uncovered problems, the union officials said.

The prosecutors said they found that "systemic deficiencies are leading to constitutional deprivations," and they cited the failure to investigate officers accused of brutality in civil lawsuits or to effectively monitor those against whom many complaints had been filed, union officials said.

The prosecutors also said the department dismissed some serious cases based on the expiration of the 18-month statute of limitations that applies to administrative discipline, even though a 1995 decision by the corporation counsel said the 18- month rule did not apply to cases that involve a potential criminal violation, the officials said.

But union officials said that the federal prosecutors had not described the scope of the lapses in detail, leading them to believe that the actual number of missteps uncovered by the investigation was small. They acknowledged, however, that the briefings were not intended to present them with all the evidence that had been collected. Federal prosecutors have declined to disclose the breadth of their findings, citing the continuing negotiations.

The union officials contended that the premise of the inquiry- that systemic failures have emboldened brutal officers to act with impunity - is belied by statistics showing that the number of excessive force complaints against officers has steadily dropped since 1995.

"It is my position that if officers were acting with impunity, the number of force allegations would not be going down," said John Driscoll, president of the Captains' Endowment Association, which represents several ranks of supervisory officers. In addition to Mr. Driscoll and Mr. Scotto, the heads of the unions for police officers, sergeants and lieutenants attended the sessions, along with their lawyers.

---

USA Today
10/19/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Illinois

Wood Dale - A wing flap from a jet landing at O'Hare International Airport fell into the back yard of one of suburban Chicago's most vocal critics of airport expansion. David Tolemy said he was lucky the 5x3-foot flap didn't land on his roof or on a family member. The Boeing 727 jet belongs to the U.S. Marshal's Service.

-------- spying

Report: China Spy Probe Shifting

New York Times
October 19, 2000 Filed at 12:39 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Chinese-Espionage.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A belated review of Chinese military documents provided by a defector in 1995 has led U.S. intelligence agencies to conclude that Chinese espionage has gathered more American missile technology than nuclear weapons secrets, The Washington Post said Thursday.

As a result, the investigation into alleged Chinese spying has shifted from U.S. nuclear weapons facilities to the Defense Department and its private contractors, the Post said.

The CIA and other intelligence agency linguists did not fully translate the 13,000 pages of secret Chinese documents until four years after the agency obtained them, according to an unidentified senior law enforcement official quoted by the Post. The official described the delay as a major blunder.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the report.

From 1996 until late last year, the FBI investigation had focused on the suspected loss of U.S. nuclear warhead data. That led to the investigation of Wen Ho Lee, a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The FBI never found evidence Lee spied for China.

The documents provided by the defector show that during the 1980s, Beijing had gathered a large amount of classified information about U.S. ballistic missiles and re-entry vehicles. The missile secrets are more likely to have come from defense officials or missile builders than from Los Alamos or other U.S. nuclear weapons labs, officials said.

The documents appear to be a five-year ``strategic plan'' for development of China's new generation of missiles, said a former intelligence official who reviewed much of the data. Another intelligence expert familiar with the material described it as ``an embarrassment of riches.''

The shift in the investigation's focus follows several years of highly public and controversial efforts by the FBI, CIA and Energy Department to determine whether China had stolen the designs of advanced nuclear warheads from the United States and whether U.S. spies aided.

The CIA concluded several years ago that the defector who supplied the documents was a Chinese double agent, casting doubt on the information he delivered and delaying its translation from Mandarin to English, the Post said. But the FBI, which has interviewed the defector in the United States, thinks he is legitimate. The CIA agrees that the information he handed over has proven accurate, a senior government official was quoted as saying.

-------- terrorism

Terror Suspect Asked Officer to Kill Him, Interrogator Says

New York Times
October 19, 2000
By BENJAMIN WEISER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/nyregion/19TERR.html

A man charged with participating in a global terrorism conspiracy pleaded to be shot during a lengthy interrogation in Germany before he was brought to the United States for trial, a German police official testified yesterday.

The official said that the suspect, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, who was arrested in Munich after the bombings of the United States embassies in East Africa in 1998, started to bang his head against the wall and said: "You have a pistol. Why don't you use this pistol on me, and then the whole thing will be finished."

Prosecutors say Mr. Salim, who is from Sudan, was a senior deputy to the Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, and that he tried to obtain materials on Mr. bin Laden's behalf that could be used to develop nuclear weapons. Mr. Salim was placed on a suicide watch in a Munich jail cell, the German official, Rupert Folger, said.

Mr. Folger's testimony came during a somewhat contentious pretrial hearing in which Mr. Salim's lawyers asked Judge Leonard B. Sand of Federal District Court in Manhattan to suppress a lengthy statement Mr. Salim gave after his arrest.

By Mr. Folger's account, Mr. Salim talked almost nonstop to investigators from Sept. 16 until Sept. 28, 1998.

"He said to me: `I'm going to tell you everything you want to know. I'm going to prove my innocence,' " said Mr. Folger, a police inspector in Munich.

Mr. Salim did not testify yesterday but appeared highly agitated, interrupting the proceedings several times and asking to be heard.

When the judge refused his request, Mr. Salim placed cotton balls in each of his ears, and buried his face in his arms.

The issue of whether his statement should be ruled admissible in an American court comes at a time when terrorism investigators for the United States government have become increasingly reliant on police agencies in other countries, as in the embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, which killed more than 200 people, and more recently, in the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 sailors.

Mr. Salim and his lawyers have challenged whether Mr. Salim's statement was voluntary, and thus admissible at his trial, saying he was deprived of food, medication and sleep by German and American interrogators and that his requests for a lawyer were refused.

But Mr. Folger denied any mistreatment of Mr. Salim. He said Mr. Salim was repeatedly advised of his German rights, and that he was also advised of his American rights, including his right to counsel and to call his embassy, by the American interrogators, who included agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a prosecutor.

"It was Mr. Salim who wanted to - insisted on continuing with this interrogation," Mr. Folger testified. "He wanted to prove that the accusations were not valid."

He said Mr. Salim was given pizza and soft drinks, allowed to phone his family and to pray, and that when he said he was too tired, the questioning was cut off for the night.

"Had Mr. Salim made any complaints to you about his treatment?" asked a federal prosecutor, Michael J. Garcia.

"No," Mr. Folger said.

Mr. Salim's outbursts began as the hearing started. Seated in leg irons and surrounded by federal marshals, he raised his hand, and declared that he wanted to speak, but Judge Sand denied the request. He seemed upset at his lawyers, and that the hearing was taking place despite his sending a letter to the court trying to withdraw the motion to suppress the statement.

"I already withdraw this motion, so you're wasting your time," Mr. Salim told Judge Sand. "They are wasting the money of the government."

At one point, the judge said, "You have a mistaken understanding of what it is within your power to do and what it is within the court's power to do."

After more exchanges, Judge Sand declared that he would not delay the hearing or trial any further.

"This matter is going to proceed," the judge said sternly.

Later, when the judge denied a request that Mr. Salim be able to cross-examine Mr. Folger himself, he protested again, drawing repeated admonitions from the judge.

"Sir, I've asked you now several times to be quiet," he said. "Now please obey that instruction."

Afterward, Judge Sand held a closed hearing, attended only by Mr. Salim and his lawyers, to address the defendant's concerns.

Mr. Salim's defense lawyers said they had no comment after the hearing. One lawyer, Charles D. Adler, said, "The court has imposed very strict rules regarding our discussions with the press and I will adhere to them."

-------- activists

Cubans March in Protest Against U.S. Bill on Embargo

New York Times
October 19, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/world/19HAVA.html

HAVANA, Oct. 18 - Waving placards with portraits of Abraham Lincoln, hundreds of thousands of Cubans marched today in hopes of convincing Americans that legislation passed by both houses of Congress will make it harder for them to visit the island.

The march was being held to show the world, "and especially American public opinion, what our people think of the gross lie that the genocidal blockade has been softened," the Communist daily Granma said.

Wearing his usual olive green uniform with white athletic shoes for marching, Fidel Castro led a crowd that the government estimated at 800,000 down Malecón coastal highway. Such a crowd would total 40 percent of the capital's population.

The Havana government insists that the legislation passed by the House last week and by the Senate today will toughen rather than ease the nearly four-decade embargo against the island. The bill has been described in Washington as offering the first opportunity in 38 years for American farmers to sell food to Cuba, as well as the first step in the easing of trade sanctions.

But because the legislation would bar the United States government and banks from financing the food sales, Cuba would have to pay cash or get credit from a third country.

"In practice, it will be totally impossible to buy food and medicine from the United States," read an editorial published on Monday in state newspapers. In protest, "our country will not buy a single cent of food or medicine from the United States," it asserted.

Among the authorities' biggest complaints about the legislation is that it will further restrict American travel to Cuba. Most Americans are already effectively barred from visiting Cuba because of spending restrictions imposed by the embargo, and the Congressional proposal would codify those regulations.

The Cuban government has also complained that support among Americans for the lifting of the embargo has been eroded in recent months by election-year politics. It worries that many Americans believe the current measure will do much more to ease sanctions than it actually will.

"Down with the blockade!" a series of speakers chanted today over a public address system set up outside the American mission here. "Long live the revolution!"

---

New York Times
October 19, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/world/19BRIE.html

ZIMBABWE: PROTESTS IN THIRD DAY Protesters angered by soaring food prices clashed with the police in the townships near Harare for a third day. Police officers and soldiers patrolled several townships, searched houses and sprayed tear gas when protesters tried to block roads. With the economy unraveling, inflation is soaring, and the price of bread and sugar surged by 30 percent this month. Rachel L. Swarns (NYT)

CHILE: TRUCK STRIKE CONTINUES Striking truckers obstructed roads throughout the country for a second day, and concern grew over possible food and fuel shortages. Leaders of the National Confederation of Truck Owners, who transport 92 percent of the freight hauled in Chile, said more than 7,500 vehicles were involved in the protest against a tax on diesel fuel. The government put the figure at 2,000 vehicles. (Reuters)

ASIA

CHINA: FALUN GONG DEATHS Three more followers of the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement have died in police custody, bringing the known total to 57 since the group was banned last year, according the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, based in Hong Kong. A 61-year-old man in Shandong Province died last week after he was arrested for distributing Falun Gong literature, the group said. Another follower jumped from a train and died while being repatriated to Shandong, while a third follower died after he fell from a building during police questioning. Erik Eckholm (NYT)

---

New York Times
October 19, 2000
Metro Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/19/nyregion/19MBRF.html

NEW HAVEN: UNION PROTESTS Hundreds of union members held a rally yesterday to urge Yale University and Yale- New Haven Hospital to develop a stronger partnership with their workers. The demonstration sought to pressure the university to grant union recognition to hundreds of graduate teaching assistants seeking collective bargaining rights. Yale officials say they are students, not employees, and therefore not allowed to organize. The demonstrators also called on the hospital, which is run by an administration separate from Yale, to stop fighting efforts to unionize 1,800 hospital workers. Steven Greenhouse (NYT)

---

USA Today
10/19/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Arkansas

Pine Bluff - Teachers protested the school board's decision to give Superintendent Frank Anthony a $21,000 raise in salary and benefits. As the board and the superintendent returned from a closed-door session, more than 100 teachers chanted, "We want a big fat raise just like you." The teachers want the board to bargain with the Pine Bluff Education Association.

------- Onelist (submissions from subscribers)