------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
*Halliburton Shares Slump on News
*Czechs firmly behind Temelin N-plant launch
*German nuclear power plant Biblis needs repairs
*Albright urges full disclosure of nuclear program
*North Korea hints at end to missile launches
*Albright: Pyongyang must disclose nuclear program
*Progress cited in N. Korea missile talks
*No More Missile Launches
*Albright reports progress in Korea
*U.S.: Korea will restrain long-range missile plans
*N. Korea Mulls Curb Of Missile Program
*Albright wants nuclear program disclosed
*Albright, Kim talk missile restraint
*Albright Briefs South Korean, Japanese Leaders
*Lithuanian PM nominee favours new nuclear reactor
*Greenpeace eyes Russian referendum on nuclear waste
*Divers recover first Kursk crew members
*N-Weapons Expert Argues Bigger Is Not Better Anymore
*China scandal victim Notra Trulock III
*Bioethics Panel Mulls Human Research
*'Blue glow' reported at Paducah plant
*Workers were unprotected in contaminated buildings
*Nelson, Stenberg on nukes
*Radon May Be Source Of WIPP Contamination
*New Mexico
*Ex-top officials concerned over Gore's secret Russian deal

MILITARY
*Seoul and Tokyo Are Ready for Albright's Report on Trip
*China marks anniversary of Korean War
*Europe's Aid Plan for Colombia Falls Short of Drug War's Goals
*Venezuela bristles at border crossings
*Iraqi trade doing fine despite sanctions
*Containing Iraq: A Forgotten War
*ITALY: REDUCING THE MILITARY
*In the Land of Kim Jong Il
*Russian Officials' Plane Crashes
*Russian military plane crashes
*Discovery Touches Down in California Desert
*TURKEY: PLEA ON GREEK TIES
*Dutch Figure Seen as Choice for U.N. Post With Refugees
*Jordan plans pullout from Sierra Leone
*Top Pentagon Gulf Official Resigned
*Lessons From the Cole
*The High-Tech Cole Was Highly Vulnerable
*No Special Alert for Cole Before Bombing
*Local helped USS Cole attackers
*Analyst quits, says threat reports unheeded
*U.S. forces prepare against new threats
*Robb says military 'stretched too thin'
*NSA's warning arrived too late to save the Cole

OTHER
*State Failed to Use Alternative Fuel for Cars
*Nevada
*Green with envy
*Delaware
*Genetically Modified Corn From U.S. Reported in Japan
*QUEENS: MODIFIED FOOD CRITICIZED
*Unapproved corn found in more taco shells
*Ex-Peru Spy Chief Says He'll Avoid Politics
*RUSSIA: SWITCH IN ESPIONAGE TRIAL
*Spy case in Moscow called incoherent
*The Bill for Terror
*Guilty Plea in Bomb Plot Is Rejected
*MANHATTAN: ALGERIAN TERROR TRIAL
*EGYPT: ELECTION DEATH

ACTIVISTS
*CANADA: 30 HELD IN PROTEST
*Anti-U.S. Fury in Jordan's Streets Overshadows a Trade Pact
*Thousands Call For Resignation of Philippines President

-------- NUCLEAR

-------- britain

Halliburton Shares Slump on News

Associated Press
October 25, 2000 Filed at 2:07 p.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Halliburton-Restructuring.html

DALLAS (AP) -- Shares of oil-services firm Halliburton Co. slumped Wednesday after the company announced a restructuring of its engineering and construction units.

Company officials said after the close of markets Tuesday that a slowdown in new orders was threatening profits in the units.

ING Barings lowered its rating on the stock from ``buy'' to ``hold,'' Southwest Securities downgraded from ``buy'' to ``accumulate,'' and Dain Rauscher Wessels said that because of ``too many uncertainties'' in the non-oilfield units investors should focus on purely oil-service stocks.

Halliburton shares fell $4.50 to $37.125 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

The Dallas-based company, which was led until August by Republican vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney, said it plans to restructure and shrink its engineering and construction businesses into a single unit.

The company made the announcement while releasing its third-quarter results. Excluding one-time items, Halliburton earned $109 million, or 24 cents per share, a penny better than expected by analysts surveyed by First Call/Thomson Financial.

In the same quarter a year ago, the company earned $58 million, or 13 cents a share. Revenue edged higher to $3.02 billion from $2.97 billion.

Chairman and chief executive Dave Lesar the company is not satisfied with profits in the engineering and construction business, as customers have delayed major projects.

Lesar said profit margins at Kellogg Brown Root will shrink as it finishes a backlog of jobs and customers delay decisions on major new construction.

Kellogg Brown Root does work mostly for clients in the energy and chemical industries, including design and construction of refineries and chemical plants.

Another unit, Brown Root Services, works on prisons, stadiums and highways. In recent months, it has won contracts to eliminate Russian missiles and their silos, retrofit a British nuclear submarine port, consult on British transport systems and design a Virginia toll road.

-------- czech republic

POLL - Czechs firmly behind Temelin N-plant launch

Planet Ark
CZECH REPUBLIC: October 25, 2000
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8671

PRAGUE - Support among Czechs for the launch of the controversial Temelin nuclear power station is increasing despite vehement protests from neighbouring Austria that it is unsafe, an opinion poll showed yesterday.

The poll, conducted by the IVVM agency among 998 Czechs, showed that 71 percent supported the launch of the Soviet-designed Temelin plant, located just over 50km (30 miles) from the border with nuclear-free Austria.

That is up from 63 percent in June and a long-term low of 52 percent in April 1999.

The power station, which has been upgraded with Western control systems that the Czechs say bring it up to EU standards, started chain reactions at the first of its two units earlier this month.

The survey showed 16 percent opposed the launch, and 13 percent were undecided.

Opposition to the plant in Austria has grown into the Czech Republic's biggest diplomatic row since the end of Communism, with thousands of Austrians repeatedly blocking border crossings between the two countries.

The Austrian government, which is demanding further safety checks which it says will show the plant should be scrapped, has even threatened to block the Czech Republic's negotiations to join the European Union over the issue.

The IVVM poll showed that 58 percent of Czechs believed foreign protests against the launch were unsubstantiated, while 21 percent said they were justified.

-------- germany

German nuclear power plant Biblis needs repairs

Planet Ark
GERMANY: October 25, 2000
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8668

AHAUS - Germany's Biblis A nuclear power plant will be closed for several weeks longer than planned because of necessary repairs, Biblis director Klaus Distler told reporters.

The 1,167 megawatt (MW) reactor in the German state of Hesse has been closed since August 19 for routine safety checks and had orginally been due to reopen on November 3, he said.

"We will not meet the original schedule according to which the plant would have been reopened on November 3," he said.

Utility RWE , which operates Biblis, would have to buy additional electricity in the market to make up for arising shortfalls, he added.

Distler said a welded seam in the plant's cooling system showed signs of tearing, which probably dated back to 1973 when the plant was built, and escaped safety checks made in 1992.

There was no danger of radioactive pollution, he said. A precise schedule for the repairs would be worked out early next week and the environment ministry of Hesse had been informed about the problem.

Distler made the remarks during a RWE-organised press visit to the central German nuclear waste storage site at Ahaus in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia.

-------- korea

Albright urges full disclosure of nuclear program
Top U.S. envoy says North Korea must remove any doubts

MSNBC
October 25, 2000
MSNBC STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
http://www.msnbc.com/news/479598.asp?cp1=1

SEOUL, South Korea, Oct. 25 - U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Wednesday that North Korea must remove lingering uncertainty about its nuclear weapons activities if efforts at accommodation with the United States are to succeed.

October 24, 2000 North Korea pledged to curb its missile defense program and cut sales of weapons. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.

ALBRIGHT was in Seoul to brief South Korean and Japanese diplomats on her historic two-day visit to Pyongyang where she appeared to make strides in winning agreement on a sharp cutback in North Korea's missile program as well as on the sales of weapons to so-called rogue nations.

A 1994 U.S.-North Korean agreement was designed to freeze a suspected nuclear weapons program in Yongbyan but there are concerns Pyongyang may have stockpiled one or more such weapons beforehand.

Some experts believe North Korea had acquired sufficient materials in the pre-agreement period for one or two weapons while others doubt Pyongyang has any.

Albright told a news conference she raised the weapons issue with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

"Obviously the nuclear issue has been one of central importance to us," Albright said, stressing the importance of full disclosure by the North Koreans.

"I made the point any number of times in my discussion with Chairman Kim whatever the subject that confidence building measures generally and transparency were absolutely essential if our relationship is to move forward," she said.

NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports on Pyongyang's pledge to halt missile sales.

Mitchell talks about President Clinton's possible visit to Pyongyang.

Mitchell talks about North Korea's prospects for broader opening to the world.

Albright came here to brief the South Korean Foreign Minister Lee Joung-binn and Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono on her talks in Pyongyang. Both welcomed her initiative and vowed to continue the close three-way coordination on the North Korea issue that they established last year.

On returning to Washington later in the week, Albright will report to President Clinton on her discussions. Clinton has said he will travel to North Korea next month if Albright's talks went well.

NUCLEAR ISSUE

North Korea's development of missiles and its missile exports to the Middle East have been a key area of U.S. concern but outside experts said the nuclear issue should not be underestimated.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, says peace on the Korean Peninsula "can't be achieved without verified assurances that North Korea is free of nuclear weapons."

"A single nuclear weapon could cause tremendous havoc to Seoul," says Albright, no relation to the secretary of state.

As for North Korea's missile exports, a senior official aboard Secretary Albright's plane said Kim sees these sales as profitable but also recognizes he will never have a sound relationship with the United States as long as these sales continue. This could be detrimental to the economy over the long run, the official said.

"There are other ways to make millions of dollars," the official said.

AN IMPORTANT QUIP

On Tuesday, Albright disclosed that Kim had raised the missile issue Monday night while they attended a gymnastics performance.

An image of Taepo Dong I missile was flashed before the audience. "He quipped that this was the first satellite launched and it would be the last," she said.

Asked if she interpreted that as a pledge for a permanent moratorium on missile launches, Albright said, "I take what he said as serious as to his desire to move forward to resolve various questions."

She did not elaborate, but said lower-level technical talks on the missile question would be held next week.

The visit marked a decisive thaw in relations between the United States and isolated communist North Korea. Toasting Kim in palatial Magnolia Hall, where she was host for a parting dinner, Albright noted the improbability of it all. "I never expected to play the role of host for such a gathering as this," she said. An aide to Kim said in his toast that North Korea looked forward to more steps toward a reconciliation

As evidence of the unexpected cordiality of relations struck up between Albright and Kim, the secretary of state told the North Korean leader, while presenting him with a parting gift of a Michael Jordan autographed basketball, to "pick up the phone any time."

Madeline Albright's visit to North Korea allowed the world a rare glimpse into the closed state.

Kim replied, "Please give me your e-mail address."

These lighter moments belied a more serious purpose behind the talks. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported that U.S. State Department officials interpreted Kim's quip about the Taepo Dong missile as a trigger for serious talks about a test moratorium linked to a proposal that other countries help North Korea launch its satellites.

"A missile can't hit the U.S. unless it goes into space," the official said. "So the kind of missiles that we're really worried about, he's pledged to never launch again."

In addition, the senior official noted that for the first time North Korea has agreed to negotiate halting the export of weapons to nations such as Syria, Iran and Pakistan.

The impoverished country has exported medium-range missiles for the past 15 years and has counted on the sales to boost its hard currency reserves.

There was speculation ahead of Albright's visit that the United States would offer aid and access to international lending agencies to North Korea in exchange for halting the exports. The U.S. official did not comment on the details of the negotiations.

North Korea test-fired the medium-range Taepo Dong I on Aug. 31, catching the U.S. government by surprise and triggering outrage in Japan. It also has a longer-range version of the missile, the Taepo Dong II, which never has been test-fired but is believed capable of reaching American territory.

Newsweek: Why the U.S. doesn't mind North Korea's totalitarian state

"Chairman Kim was quite clear in explaining his understanding of U.S. concerns," Albright said, describing him as "a good listener and very decisive."

Before opening the talks Tuesday, Kim told Albright, the first U.S. official he had ever met, "I don't think the three hours of discussions we had yesterday were enough to break the silence of 50 years."

Albright said they also discussed security issues, terrorism, human rights, missing persons and "the need for concrete steps toward tension reduction on the Korean peninsula."

"It is important that we work to overcome the enmities of the past and focus on a brighter future for our peoples," Albright said.

BRIEFING SEOUL

Albright's stop in Seoul took place amid some concern in South Korea that it was being ignored as the United States moved to unfreeze relations with the North.

Many South Koreans also believe that the process of engagement between the United States and North Korea, as well as between the two sides of the Korean Peninsula, may be moving too quickly. They cannot see that North Korea is giving anything in return for all the promises that Washington and Seoul are making, MSNBC's Correspondent Don Kirk reported.

South Korean officials also worry that the North has failed to follow up on promises for more family visits since the reunions in August of families divided by the Korean War. The North also did not dispatch a delegation for talks on economic matters this week as planned.

Most disconcertingly, North Korea did not send a congratulatory message when South Korean President Kim Dae-jung was awarded this year's Nobel peace prize for his efforts.

There has been speculation that Kim Jong Il believed he should have been a co-winner and may find reasons to put off a return visit to Seoul promised at their summit.

However, a U.S. official said on Wednesday that improving relations between both sides of the Korean Peninsula was of paramount importance. "Without that, what the rest of us are doing will not get us to where we want to go," the official said. "It's very important that the North know that the three countries move together."

NBC's Andrea Mitchell in Pyongyang, MSNBC's Don Kirk in Seoul, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

---

North Korea hints at end to missile launches
There is, apparently, a historic strategic policy change in North Korea

Irish Times
Wednesday, October 25, 2000
Conor O'Clery
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2000/1025/wor4.htm

NORTH KOREA: On Monday evening North Korean leader Mr Kim Jong-il proudly showed off to the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, an activity in which the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) excels - creating flashy images in a stadium by getting 100,000 performers to hold aloft pieces of cardboard.

As they watched from a reviewing stand in a Pyongyang arena, the boards formed a picture of the Taepodong missile, the long-range projectile which North Korea fired over Japan two years ago, causing a regional security crisis.

Mr Kim turned to his American visitor, and quipped, according to Ms Albright yesterday, "that this was the first satellite launch and it would be the last".

Thus, apparently, is a historic strategic policy change made known, DPRK style. Ending the North Korean long-range missile tests is, for the US, an essential part of a remarkable deal being cooked up with the reclusive Stalinist state which could lead to the normalisation of ties and the further lessening of Cold War tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

Washington has apparently taken up an initiative of the Russian President, Mr Putin, that in exchange for North Korea freezing its missile programme, the West would help it launch its satellites. The US also wants North Korea to restrain severely the launch, production and export of its missiles to Pakistan, Iraq and Iran, and is reported to have offered in exchange aid worth some $300 million a year.

Ms Albright disclosed the remark which revealed North Korea's apparent agreement at a press conference yesterday after six hours of "serious and constructive" talks over two days with Mr Kim.

"During the October 23rd mass performance an image of a Taepodong missile launch appeared," she said. "He turned to me and quipped that this was the first satellite launch and it would be the last." She said she took this as a serious sign of a desire to move forward.

A senior US official was later quoted as saying that the DPRK leader had confirmed in the formal talks his pledge to end missile launches.

US and North Korean missile experts will meet next week to continue the discussions after what seems a remarkable breakthrough in relations frozen for half a century.

China yesterday said it was "welcoming and supportive" of Ms Albright's trip, which it hoped would lead ultimately to the normalisation of diplomatic relations between the US and North Korea.

At stake now is a new peace mechanism to replace the armistice which ended the Korean War in 1953. Last night Ms Albright hosted a dinner in Pyongyang for Mr Kim, and today will travel to Seoul to brief the South Korean President, Mr Kim Dae-jung, on her talks and the strong possibility of a visit by President Clinton to North Korea next month.

Despite reservations in South Korea that the US was moving too fast, President Kim said yesterday that he believed North and South could not move forward without the US and North Korea moving forward as well.

Joe Carroll adds from Washington: If North Korea effectively abandons its nuclear missile programme, the US will have to review its present plans for building a defence system against a possible nuclear attack from socalled rogue nations.

Congress ordered the President to deploy a nuclear missile defence following an intelligence report that North Korea would be able to fire a missile against the US by 2005.

However, Mr Clinton has postponed a deployment decision until there are further tests on the US anti-missile system. Two out of three tests have so far failed.

---

Albright: Pyongyang must disclose nuclear program

Miami Herald
Wednesday, October 25, 2000
http://www.herald.com/content/wed/news/brknews/docs/084093.htm

SEOUL, South Korea -- (AP) -- Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said today that North Korea must remove lingering uncertainty about its nuclear weapons activities if efforts at accommodation with the United States are to succeed.

A 1994 U.S.-North Korean agreement was designed to freeze a suspected nuclear weapons program in Yongbyan but there are concerns Pyongyang may have stockpiled one or more such weapons beforehand.

Some experts believe North Korea had acquired sufficient materials in the pre-agreement period for one or two weapons while others doubt Pyongyang has any.

Albright, who arrived here today after two days in Pyongyang, told a news conference she raised the weapons issue with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

``Obviously the nuclear issue has been one of central importance to us,'' Albright said, stressing the importance of full disclosure by the North Koreans.

``I made the point any number of times in my discussion with Chairman Kim whatever the subject that confidence building measures generally and transparency were absolutely essential if our relationship is to move forward,'' she said.

Albright came here to brief the South Korean Foreign Minister Joung Binn Lee and Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono on her talks in Pyongyang. Both welcomed her initiative and vowed to continue the close three-way coordination on the North Korea issue that they established last year.

On returning to Washington later in the week, Albright will report to President Clinton on her discussions. Clinton has said he will travel to North Korea next month if Albright's talks went well.

North Korea's development of missiles and its missile exports to the Middle East have been a key area of U.S. concern but outside experts said the nuclear issue should not be underestimated.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, says peace on the Korean Peninsula ``can't be achieved without verified assurances that North Korea is free of nuclear weapons.''

``A single nuclear weapon could cause tremendous havoc to Seoul,'' says Albright, no relation to the secretary of state.

As for North Korea's nuclear exports, a senior official aboard Secretary Albright's plane said Kim sees these sales as profitable but also recognizes he will never have a sound relationship with the United States as long as these sales continue. This could be detrimental to the economy over the long run, the official said.

``There are other ways to make millions of dollars,'' the official said.

---

Progress cited in N. Korea missile talks
Albright: Kim may end testing

Miami Herald
Published Wednesday, October 25, 2000, in the Miami Herald
BY MICHAEL DORGAN Herald World Staff
http://www.herald.com/content/wed/docs/096352.htm
http://www.pioneerplanet.com/seven-days/3/news/docs/011793.htm

PYONGYANG, North Korea -- North Korea's leader hinted to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that his country might end testing of its long-range Taepodong ballistic missile, Albright said Tuesday as she neared the end of the first trip by a high-ranking U.S. official to North Korea.

Albright, who met for six hours over two days with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, said progress had been made in efforts to curb North Korea's missile program. She described the talks as ``serious and constructive'' and said missile specialists from both countries would meet next week.

Albright must decide whether to recommend that President Clinton visit North Korea before he leaves office. Clinton will decide whether to make the trip after Albright returns.

Kim made the comment about missile tests in a casual remark to Albright. But it would be of top importance to the United States if it proves to be a promise kept. North Korea has been developing missiles capable of hitting the United States and has sold missiles to Iran and other countries.

North Korea alarmed Asia and drew protests from Japan and the United States when it test-fired Taepodong I, a medium-range ballistic missile, over Japan in 1998. North Korea said it was trying to put a satellite in orbit. The attempt failed.

Albright said that on Monday evening, during a massive performance of theatrical propaganda that included video footage of the launch, Kim turned to her and said: ``This was the first satellite launch and will be the last.''

The United States is also concerned about North Korea's extensive stockpiles of chemical weapons and its capability of producing biological weapons and possibly one or two nuclear weapons.

North Korea has frozen its nuclear weapons program, and a Pentagon report said recent inspections showed the freeze was holding.

Albright said at a news conference Tuesday that she also discussed terrorism, human rights and tensions between North Korea and South Korea.

The two Koreas face off across the heavily armed Demilitarized Zone, and technically have remained at war since hostilities in the Korean War ended in 1953. The conflict has eased greatly since an unprecedented meeting between the Koreas' leaders in June.

North Korea has been on the U.S. list of countries that support terrorism since 1988, after its agents blew up a South Korean airliner and killed 115 people. The United States also lists North Korea as one of the worst abusers of human rights in the world.

``It is important that we work to overcome the enmities of the past and focus on a brighter future for our peoples,'' Albright said Tuesday.

Asked her impressions of Kim, a reclusive leader often viewed as a playboy despot by outsiders, Albright gave cautious praise.

She acknowledged that Kim, who at 58 sports a fluffy hairdo and wears elevated heels, has been ``somewhat a mystery.'' But she said she found him to be ``a good listener and interlocutor.''

``He strikes me as decisive and practical,'' Albright said. ``We had serious discussions.''

Albright gave Kim, a basketball fan, a ball signed by Michael Jordan. She also told him to call her anytime, and he responded by asking for her e-mail address.

---

No More Missile Launches,
North Korean Leader Say/Breakthrough `quip' to Albright at extravaganza

San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday, October 25, 2000
Robin Wright, Los Angeles Times
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/10/25/MN49818.DTL

Pyongyang -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has promised that his nation will not launch another ballistic missile, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said yesterday.

Kim's pledge appears to extend a temporary moratorium and open the way for a long-term deal that would involve the United States helping his nation launch a satellite for nonmilitary uses, probably with the help of a third country, in exchange for North Korea abandoning ballistic missile development and export.

Albright announced that the U.S.-North Korean dialogue will move into a more detailed phase, with an agreement that will bring American missile experts to Pyongyang next week to work on specifics for a permanent arrangement.

``We made important progress, but much work remains to be done,'' she told a news conference yesterday after the conclusion of her two days of talks with Kim.

In his mercurial style, Kim gave Albright the first indication that North Korea had changed its position on missiles during a spectacular show Monday night featuring 100,000 singers, dancers, musicians, gymnasts and other performers. At one point, a wall of constantly changing placards depicted a ballistic missile taking flight.

Kim turned to Albright, who was his guest of honor at the extravaganza, and quipped, ``This was the first satellite launch and this will be the last,'' the secretary told the news conference.

The picture and comment referred to the testing of a Taepodong missile across Japanese airspace in 1998, which engendered concern well beyond Asia about North Korea's military capability. The launch led to widespread support in the U.S. government for a national defense system taking years to construct and costing tens of billions of dollars. North Korea insisted that the missile was simply carrying a satellite, which explained Kim's reference Monday night.

In light of the comment, Albright pursued yesterday what is now being referred to as ``the quip'' in further negotiations and gained North Korea's commitment to limit its missile effort.

``He's accepting the fact of serious restraint on all long-range missile programs,'' both development and export, said a U.S. official involved in the negotiations. ``We're now exploring ways of accomplishing that.''

North Korea is one of only six countries, including the five major nuclear powers, known to have a longer-range ballistic missile capability. It also provides missile technology to two more, Iran and Pakistan.

U.S. officials are still unclear why one of the world's poorest countries is so intent on having a satellite in space, beyond its prestige value, especially since it could not be used for military purposes.

Kim's pledge marks a major policy about-face for the Communist regime. Just last year, a task force from the independent Council on Foreign Relations concluded that North Korea was unlikely to respond positively to U.S. proposals to swap aid for changes that might weaken its military clout.

Albright described her two days of intensive talks with Kim as ``serious and constructive'' and said they covered everything from the terms of opening diplomatic relations to missile restraint and security issues such as terrorism.

The two governments concluded no formal agreements, but on all issues they moved ``from ideas and possibilities'' to talking about ``details and specifics,'' according to a senior U.S. official in the delegation.

Albright described the North Korean leader, son of the country's founding father, Kim Il Sung, as a ``very good listener, a good interlocutor. He strikes me as decisive and practical, and we had serious discussions.''

In a reflection of the new mood between the two countries, she told Kim at their farewell dinner to pick up the phone any time to talk. He responded, ``Please give me your e- mail address.''

On other issues, Albright also raised North Korea's poor human rights record, one of the reasons it is a pariah. ``It's something, as they emerge into the world, we expect them to meet international standards,'' the senior U.S. official said.

On establishing relations with Washington, Kim told Albright that he is interested in having ``across- the-board'' improvement in informal and formal relations, the secretary said.

Although she again mentioned hopes that terms could be worked out for President Clinton to visit North Korea, Albright would say only that she'll report on her two days of talks to the president.

The administration is hoping that enough progress is made on one of the main issues between the two countries to provide substance for a presidential visit, possibly as early as next month.

But Albright also took pains to rebut criticism that the administration is rushing into this diplomatic initiative and ignoring North Korea's brutal history and continuing domestic policies.

Referring to the tightly synchronized extravaganza, which had involved 10 months of preparation and was originally prepared for the 55th anniversary of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party, Albright said somewhat defensively that she had been a student of Communist affairs all her life and knows ``perfectly well how these performances are put together.''

While describing it as ``spectacular and amazing,'' she added: ``These glasses I have on are not rose-colored.''

As a parting gift to Kim, an ardent fan of Michael Jordan, the secretary presented a basketball autographed by the former Chicago Bulls star.

Albright flew on to Seoul early today for meetings with South Korean and Japanese officials about her talks with Kim. She had meetings scheduled with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and the foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan.

---

Albright reports progress in Korea
Curbing missile program is focus of top-level talks

Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Wednesday, October 25, 2000
By JANE PERLEZ THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://seattlep-i.nwsource.com/national/nkor252.shtml

PYONGYANG, North Korea -- Secretary of State Madeleine Albright last night reported "important progress" in trying to persuade North Korea to "restrain missile development and testing, as well as missile exports."

Missile specialists from the United States and North Korea will meet next week to explore specific ways that North Korea could limit its missile program, she said.

"Everyone leaves here rather struck by the breadth and depth of the discussions," a senior U.S. official said. He said that was largely because the Americans had heard firsthand from North Korean leader Kim Jong Il -- the only decision-maker who counts in this country -- about "what he was prepared to do."

The six hours of talks yesterday and Monday between Albright and Kim were the first between such a high-level U.S. official and a North Korean leader.

The two-day visit ended on a cordial note. As a parting gift, Albright presented a basketball autographed by Michael Jordan to Kim, an ardent fan.

As they said their farewells in the lobby of the guest house yesterday, Albright encouraged Kim "to pick up the telephone any time," a U.S. official said.

And Kim -- the leader of one of the few countries that denies its people Internet access but who is himself a keen Internet browser with three computers in his office -- replied, "Please give me your e-mail address."

In explaining the headway made on the missile issue in the last two days, Albright said Kim told her in an aside at a theatrical performance here that North Korea does not intend to make any more long-range missile launches.

On her first night here, Albright was Kim's guest at a spectacle of song and dance during which the image of a Taepodong missile launch was superimposed on the wall of the stadium.

"He immediately turned to me and quipped this was the first satellite launch and it would be the last," she said at a news conference after the two days of talks ended.

Asked if she interpreted that as a pledge for a permanent moratorium on missile launches, Albright said, "I take what he said as serious as to his desire to move forward to resolve various questions."

In August 1998, North Korea tested a ballistic missile, the Taepodong, over Japan and threatened to launch a second test last year. Under severe pressure from the United States, North Korea agreed to a moratorium on missile testing last year and reaffirmed it this month.

Next week's talks will include discussion of a proposal that North Korea shut down its missile program in exchange for launches of its satellites by foreign governments, a senior official said. Such a tradeoff was proposed by Kim in July to President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

One of Albright's goals on this trip was to plan for a possible visit to North Korea by President Clinton, but she declined to be drawn out on whether Clinton would make the trip.

Another goal was to get to know the North Korean leader who, in his six years in office, has remained virtually unknown.

Albright said that after negotiating with Kim and socializing with him at two dinners and at the performance in honor of the 55th anniversary of the North Korean Communist Party, she found him a "very good listener, a good interlocutor." And, she added, "He strikes me as very decisive and very practical."

During the talks with Kim in a government guest house here, they discussed North Korea's human rights record, Albright said. The annual human rights report by the State Department, based on interviews with refugees and defectors, paints a picture of a country that tolerates no dissent and allows no religious freedom.

Albright and her aides avoided questions on what Kim had to say about the possibility of reducing tensions between North and South on the Korean peninsula. About 37,000 U.S. troops are based in the South as a deterrent to an attack from the North and its 1.1 million troops.

On the possibility of North and South Korea opening liaison offices in the other's country, Albright said that while Kim was interested in having "more informal and formal relations," no decision had been reached.

The North Koreans went out of their way to show their friendliness toward Albright, and she acknowledged that at her news conference, saying she was shown "exceptional hospitality."

Albright ended her visit here on a high note, holding a dinner for Kim at which she served California wines and cross-cultural cuisine, including roast turkey and fried pigeon.

Of the propaganda spectacle extolling the virtues of 55 years of communism in North Korea, Albright said she was fully aware of what she had watched. "I have been a student of communist affairs all my life, and so one knows perfectly well how these performances are put together," she said. "I just can assure that these glasses that I have on are not rose colored."

Albright later flew across the heavily armed border to Seoul for meetings with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and the foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan.

This report includes information from The Associated Press.

---

U.S.: Korea will restrain long-range missile plans

Lincoln Journal Star
October 25, 2000
The Associated Press
http://www.journalstar.com/nation?story_id=2025&date=20001025&past=
http://www.bergen.com/morenews/korea25200010254.htm
http://www.sltrib.com/10252000/nation_w/36629.htm
http://detnews.com/2000/nation/0010/25/a11-138999.htm

PYONGYANG, North Korea -- North Korea has accepted the idea of working toward restraint in its missile program, U.S. officials said Tuesday, citing progress on a critical issue dividing the two countries as they explore reconciliation after 50 years.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright ended her historic talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il struck by the improbability of it all -- a cordial visit to a Stalinist land that the United States until recently called a rogue state.

But both sides knew they had a long way to go to bury enmity arising from the Korean War and the vast differences between the open democracy and the closed communist regime.

"The glasses I have on are not rose-colored," Albright said.

Kim, commenting before their final meeting Tuesday, said: "I don't think the three hours of discussions we had yesterday were enough to break the silence of 50 years."

Albright told reporters she took seriously a remark by Kim -- delivered seemingly offhand at a gymnastic exhibition -- that his state would refrain from long-range missile launches.

Kim had raised the issue when an image of a Taepo Dong I missile was flashed before the audience. "He quipped that this was the first satellite launch and it would be the last," Albright said.

Asked if she interpreted that as a pledge for a permanent moratorium on missile launches, Albright said, "I take what he said as serious as to his desire to move forward to resolve various questions."

A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said after Albright and Kim finished their talks that the North Korean leader has accepted the idea of "serious restraint" in missiles.

Albright was going to Seoul, South Korea, on Wednesday to tell South Korean and Japanese officials about her talks with Kim. President Clinton is considering whether to visit North Korea himself, a trip that could come next month.

The American delegation held a farewell dinner for Kim and his officials, serving roast turkey, beef steak and trout, with California wine.

They dined in a six-sided room in the palatial Magnolia Hall, glowing with brilliant lights shining on marble -- all this in a state where many North Koreans, even near the capital, use candles and oil lamps to cope with an electricity shortage and their poverty.

"I never expected to play the role of host for such a gathering as this," she said, toasting Kim and remarking upon the recent moves toward a rapprochement.

"Pick up the phone anytime," she told Kim in farewell, giving the leader -- a basketball fan -- a ball signed by Michael Jordan.

Kim replied: "Please give me your e-mail address."

Diplomats offered no further elaboration of Kim's words in the meetings. Lower level talks on missiles were planned for next week.

Many analysts are convinced North Korea already has the capacity to strike at the perimeter of the United States with a long-range missile.

That concern has been the main impetus for proposals to build a U.S. national missile defense system. North Korea already has agreed to freeze its nuclear weapons program and to stop selling missiles to regimes the United States considers hostile.

"Chairman Kim was quite clear in explaining his understanding of U.S. concerns," Albright said of her meetings, describing him as "a good listener and very decisive."

Albright said they also discussed security issues, terrorism, human rights and "the need for concrete steps toward tension reduction on the Korean peninsula."

"It is important that we work to overcome the enmities of the past and focus on a brighter future for our peoples," Albright said.

China expressed hope that the U.S.-North Korean talks would help bring stability to the Korean peninsula.

"We hope that this momentum will be maintained so that relations will be further improved," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao told a news conference in Beijing.

Earlier in the day, Albright ventured into the countryside for a lunch held by Jo Myong Rok, Kim's top aide, at a rural guest house. Trees along the route from the capital were ablaze with the colors of autumn.

Toasting her host there, Albright said: "The U.S. loves peace and we want to see Cold War divisions end. We want countries to feel secure from threats, conflict and war."

In his remarks, Jo said the U.S.-North Korean relationship "that has been frozen so deep over the past several decades is now reaching the historic moment of thawing."

Clinton said Monday: "We have some hope of resolving our outstanding differences with North Korea and looking forward to the day when they will truly close the last chapter in the aftermath of the Korean War."

No other secretary of state had ventured to North Korea, nor had any other U.S. officials met Kim, who took over after his father, Kim Il Sung, commonly referred to as "Great Leader," died in July 1994. The father had been in charge since 1948, before the Korean war.

---

N. Korea Mulls Curb Of Missile Program

Washington Post
Wednesday, October 25, 2000 ; Page A01
By Doug Struck and Steven Mufson Washington Post Foreign Service
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5146-2000Oct24.html

PYONGYANG, North Korea, Oct. 25 (Wednesday) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Il accepted "the idea" of a deal to curb its missile programs during six hours of historic talks with Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, a senior U.S. official said Tuesday.

Albright pressed the issue with Kim, whom the United States considers a chief supplier of missiles to what the State Department terms "states of concern." But she will leave Pyongyang today with no firm agreement and without announcing whether President Clinton will visit here before he leaves office.

"We made important progress, but much work remains to be done," Albright said after two days of discussions in the North Korean capital. As they parted after dinner Tuesday night, Albright told Kim to "pick up the phone any time."

"Please give me your e-mail address," Kim replied.

It was a similar spontaneous moment that Albright cited as a hopeful sign on the missile issue. As the two sat together in a stadium Monday night watching a celebration of achievements, an image of North Korea's 1998 Taepodong rocket launch flashed onto a giant TV screen as part of the show.

Kim "immediately turned to me and quipped that this was the first satellite launch--and it would be the last," Albright said.

He repeated that sentiment in his conversations with Albright on Tuesday, the official said, and U.S. and North Korean missile experts were ordered to meet next week to talk over the details. North Korea said at the time that the Taepodong was built to launch satellites, but such a long-range rocket could carry warheads.

"He is accepting the idea of serious restraint on his missile program," the senior State Department official said.

U.S. officials portrayed Albright's visit, the highest-level talks ever between the countries, as a success despite the lack of a firm agreement. Part of her agenda was to explore the possibility of a presidential visit, and "I will be reporting to the president, and he will make the decision on future steps," she said.

Earlier Tuesday, Kim also suggested they were engaged in a lengthy process. "I don't think the three hours of discussions we had yesterday were enough to break the silence of 50 years," Kim said.

Pyongyang's newspapers, accustomed to a diet of anti-American rhetoric, gave prominent play to pictures of Kim meeting Albright. The secretary of state gave Kim a letter from Clinton about methods of improving relations. Getting a solid deal that would muzzle North Korea's perceived missile threat is a top U.S. goal, one for which the United States would likely be prepared to offer North Korea diplomatic normalization and some form of economic assistance in return.

During their talks, the two sides discussed in detail ways to fashion a package that would restrain North Korea's missile program. A deal involving the launching by another country of North Korean scientific satellites "is one of those ways," the State Department official said. Another person familiar with the talks said that another possibility might be to arrange for a consortium of countries to "piggy back" a small North Korean satellite onto another launch at a modest expense. A European consortium currently launches commercial satellites.

But imposing questions remain. It is unclear whether North Korea might agree to make permanent its temporary freeze on test launches, or whether it also would stop work and research on development of a new missile that Americans worry could reach the United States. Also unclear is whether North Korea would agree to end exportation missiles it already produces, a main source of desperately needed income.

The United States is hoping to come up with a "package deal" that might cover all those areas, the official said. It has previously rejected the idea of paying compensation to North Korea for halting missile exportation out of fear this could encourage other countries to engage in missile blackmail. But another possibility, sources said, might be to put together a package of commercial ventures, sanctions relief and other benefits similar to those arranged for other countries that have "shifted their economies out of one way of doing business and into another."

At a news conference, Albright said that "Chairman Kim and I discussed the full range of our concerns on missiles, including both [North Korea's] indigenous missile programs and exports."

"We also discussed Chairman Kim's ideas of exchanging [North Korea's] restraint in missiles for launches of [North Korea's] satellites," she said.

That "swap" was an idea originally mentioned by Kim in conversations in July with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The United States has been trying ever since to pursue the idea and resolve questions about whether Kim was serious.

During Albright's groundbreaking visit, she applauded U.N. food aid to North Korea and offered polite praise for the host country. She said Kim "was interested in having, just generally across the board, more informal and formal relations with the United States." But she noted, "These glasses I have on are not rose-colored."

Albright wound up her visit to this closed and usually secretive society by hosting a reception for Kim and other North Korean officials at Pyongyang's grandiose Magnolia Hall. She remarked, "I never expected to play the hostess for such a gathering as this in Pyongyang." Albright brought two California wines, and the Americans served up an elaborate imported menu ranging from beefsteak to caviar to steamed rainbow trout.

Asked her impressions of Kim, Albright said: "I think I would describe him as a very good listener and a good interlocutor. He strikes me as very decisive and practical. And serious."

Albright hinted she will recommend that Clinton come to North Korea, which would be an extraordinary visit by the outgoing president to a country with which the United States fought a bloody war costing 33,000 American lives.

"I will report to the president the value of face-to-face discussions," she said. Such talks are "a very good way, I think, to learn more about his intentions and those of his country."

Earlier Tuesday, Albright lunched with army Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok, whose visit with Clinton earlier this month in Washington led to the return visit by the secretary of state. The inclusion of Jo, who ranks second only to Kim in the military hierarchy, in the diplomatic process was seen as a significant signal that the military supports rapprochement with North Korea's longtime enemy.

"We want to see the Cold War divisions end," Albright said in a toast at the luncheon. "We want countries in the region to feel secure from the threat of war. We want every nation to participate in the international system and to observe global norms."

---

Albright wants nuclear program disclosed

USA Today
10/25/00- Updated 01:43 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nwswed03.htm
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Albright-Korea.html

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Wednesday it is ''absolutely essential'' for North Korea to disclose details of its nuclear weapons capabilities if its relations with the United States are to reach their potential.

Albright made the comment at a news conference here after ending a historic two-day visit to North Korea. She flew to Seoul to brief Foreign Ministers Lee Joung-binn of South Korea and Yohei Kono of Japan on the outcome.

A 1994 U.S.-North Korean agreement was designed to freeze a suspected nuclear weapons program in Yongbyan but there are concerns Pyongyang may have stockpiled one or more such weapons beforehand.

Some experts believe North Korea had acquired sufficient materials in the pre-agreement period for one or two weapons while others doubt Pyongyang has any.

Albright said she raised the weapons issue with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

''Obviously the nuclear issue has been one of central importance to us,'' Albright said, stressing the need for full disclosure by the North Koreans.

''I made the point any number of times in my discussion with Chairman Kim whatever the subject that confidence-building measures generally and transparency were absolutely essential if our relationship is to move forward,'' she said.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, says peace on the Korean Peninsula ''can't be achieved without verified assurances that North Korea is free of nuclear weapons.''

''A single nuclear weapon could cause tremendous havoc to Seoul,'' says Albright, no relation to the secretary of state.

The United States, South Korea and Japan have been moving in lockstep on North Korea, holding frequent consultations on the issue.

Like the United States, both South Korea and Japan have been consulting with North Korea on ways to reconcile with Pyongyang.

Albright encouraged North Korea to try to make progress on the Japan track in talks next week between officials of the two countries.

There is a lot of history to overcome, dating from the 35-year Japanese occupation of Korea early in the last century. Japan has paid compensation to South Korea for the abuses committed during that period, and North Korea believes it is no less deserving.

Japan has its own list of concerns with Pyongyang, including North Korea's missile program and its alleged abduction of many Japanese over the years at the hands of North Korean agents. The abductees are believed to have been taken to North Korea to teach Japanese to spies.

U.S. officials believe it is important for North Korea and Japan to overcome their differences because of the key role Japan can play in helping Pyongyang revive economically.

Kono, the Japanese foreign minister, said the progress in U.S.-North Korean relations will ''definitely have a positive impact'' on Japan-North Korea relations.

At next week's talks in Beijing, ''we would like to build on the report we heard from Secretary Albright,'' Kono said.

He added that he, Albright and Lee all agreed that the respective relations of their three countries with the North ''will progress in a way that positively influence each other.''

---

Albright, Kim talk missile restraint

Washington Times
October 25, 2000
By Willis Witter THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-20001025233316.htm

PYONGYANG, North Korea - An impromptu quip by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il led to "serious" discussions with Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright yesterday to curtail North Korea's long-range missile program.

The talks came as Mrs. Albright wrapped up two days of precedent-shattering meetings with top North Korean officials here, including two lengthy private sessions with the reclusive Mr. Kim.

Mrs. Albright was to brief South Korean and Japanese officials on her talks in Seoul before returning home tonight.

U.S. officials traveling with Mrs. Albright said the potential breakthrough was spurred by a remark Mr. Kim made at a welcoming ceremony Monday night, as he and Mrs. Albright watched a 300-foot-high image of North Korea's three-stage rocket lifting off.

As the image faded from a giant screen covering the bleachers at Pyongyang's May Day Stadium, "he immediately turned to me and quipped that this was the first satellite launch, and it would be the last," Mrs. Albright said.

The discussions focused on fleshing out a deal to end North Korea's testing of long-range missiles in exchange for U.S. and international help in launching North Korean satellites into space.

North Korea stunned its neighbors and U.S. military planners with the 1998 launch of its new Taepo-dong rocket over Japanese air space into the Pacific.

Though North Korea claims it was merely sending a satellite into orbit, the missile test proved especially troublesome because it demonstrated for the first time a capability of hitting Alaska, Hawaii and possibly the West Coast.

The test fueled an all-out push by proponents of a U.S. national missile defense to deploy a system to protect Americans from missiles of rogue states, with North Korea often cited as the most likely culprit.

Mr. Kim had floated the possibility of giving up his country's long-range missile in a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin this summer - if other nations would provide rockets to send its satellites aloft.

The unorthodox proposal created a stir when Mr. Putin disclosed it. But interest waned when Mr. Kim subsequently told visiting South Korean journalists it was only a joke.

But Mr. Kim's quip Monday evening suddenly made the idea the centerpiece of three hours of talks yesterday with Mrs. Albright -their second such session in two days.

"We're dealing with the idea of exchanging launching for serious restraint" of North Korea's entire missile program, said a senior U.S. official traveling with Mrs. Albright.

The official, who asked not to be named, said the two discussed a broad package in which North Korea would halt its own missile development efforts and stop exporting missiles to such customers as Iran and Syria.

North Korea claims it earns $1 billion yearly by selling missile technology as well as its own version of a single-stage, Soviet-style Scud missile like the ones used by Iraq during the Gulf war.

After the successful launch of the far more advanced multistage rocket two years ago, North Korea offered to abandon the missile business if the United States or another international power compensated it for lost income - an idea dismissed by Washington at the time as ludicrous.

In contrast, the senior U.S. official said after yesterday's talks: "What they've accepted is the idea of serious restraint on their missile programs and exports. We're discussing ways to achieve that."

Mrs. Albright said technical experts from the two nations would meet next week to begin discussing details.

The notion of using American rockets, or even having the United States help broker a deal to use other rockets, could produce friction among skeptical lawmakers on Capitol Hill, however.

Many, including House International Affairs Committee Benjamin A. Gilman, New York Republican, have accused the Clinton administration in the past of caving in to North Korean blackmail.

Some U.S. critics also have complained that the administration is moving too quickly to achieve a rapprochement with North Korea, the only nation to survive the Cold War without a substantial opening of its communist system to the outside world.

Both nations hailed the two-day visit, which ended today with Mrs. Albright's departure for Seoul, as a historic breakthrough.

The fact that the visit took place at all was remarkable.

The two nations have been bitter foes since the North's 1950 invasion of South Korea, which triggered a three-year war in which more than 30,000 American soldiers died.

Today, the United States maintains 37,000 troops in South Korea to deter North Korea.

Mr. Kim's willingness to meet Mrs. Albright for six hours over two days, host two banquets and bring the secretary of state to a spectacular gala of dancing acrobats Monday night took U.S. officials by surprise.

Equally surprising was the detail of negotiations between the two.

"The fact that we are talking at this level, face to face on these issues, is itself noteworthy and important," the senior official said.

Though overshadowed by missiles, which dominated the discussions, Mrs. Albright and Mr. Kim also sought to arrange a visit by President Clinton to Pyongyang before he leaves office.

Mrs. Albright said she would discuss her visit with the president before any decision is made on whether to come.

Mrs. Albright and Mr. Kim also discussed North Korea's past sponsorship of terrorism, but the senior U.S. official said the North Korean leader offered no new commitments.

North Korea wants to be removed from the U.S. list of nations that sponsor terrorism, a move that would make it eligible for aid from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Mrs. Albright also pledged that the United States would continue to provide food aid as requested by the U.N. World Food Program to alleviate a severe food shortage.

In addition, she raised the issue of human rights for the first time at the Cabinet level.

"We have just begun our discussions on the subject. They obviously will continue," she said.

---

Albright Briefs South Korean, Japanese Leaders

Washington Post
Wednesday, October 25, 2000
By Steven Mufson Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12109-2000Oct25.html

SEOUL, South Korea, Oct.25 - Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright left North Korea this morning and came here to brief officials from South Korea and Japan, allies with huge stakes in whether the backward, Communist state emerges from half a century of isolation and eases military tension in the region.

Albright met with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, South Korean Foreign Minister Lee Joung Binn and Japanese Foreign Minister Yohei Kono and said afterward that "our unity is crucial if we are to make further gains" in relations with North Korea. Lee called their efforts "mutually complimentary."

The Clinton administration has tried to coordinate its North Korea policy with South Korea and Japan to prevent Pyongyang from playing one ally off against the other and driving wedges between them. And the administration believes that if North Korean leader Kim Jong Il chooses to open up to the outside world that South Korea would play the central role in transforming the North - and Japan will end up footing much of the bill through aid and investment.

"The Japan track is a critical track, because ultimately it probably provides the greatest economic benefit to the North," said a senior State Department official traveling with Albright. Another State Department official said that if North Korea reforms its economy it will be pressed most vigorously, not by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, but by South Korean companies seeking assurances before making large investments.

While North Korea has said in the past that it expects compensation for cutting off its missile exports, U.S. officials believe that North Korea's export might be smaller than the benefits it would receive from certain tourist projects alone, let alone other economic benefits if it changed its hostile posture toward its neighbors in the region.

For now, however, the three allies are still grappling with diplomatic and security issues, and Albright assured the South Korean and Japanese ministers that she raised the matters that concern them most, in addition to the North Korean missile program that worries them all.

For South Korea, easing tensions at the demilitarized zone that divides it from the North is a top priority. U.S. officials said that Albright spoke to Kim Jong Il about military confidence-building measures. North Korea has done nothing to reduce the size of its forces and artillery at the border. South and North Korean defense ministers are scheduled to have another round of talks on scenic Cheju island off the southwest coast of the penninsula. Many South Koreans honeymoon on the island.

Japan, which is scheduled to hold its own meetings in Pyongyang next week, has its own special concerns. In addition to curbs on North Korea's missile program, Japan wants North Korea to turn over Japanese Red Army members who hijacked a plane almost 30 years ago and who took refuge in North Korea. In addition, it seeks an accounting of Japanese civilians, who disappeared mostly from the shores of Japan and mostly in the 1970s and 1980s. The number of Japanese citizens believed to have been abducted by North Korea ranges between nine and 71.

But North Korea still nurses grievances against Japan for World War II, for which it still hopes to obtain reparation payments from Tokyo.

North Korea "has a somewhat different view of the history here and who has grievances," said the senior State Department official. "But it is very important that the North know that the three countries move together and move each other's agenda together."

-------- lithuania

Lithuanian PM nominee favours new nuclear reactor

LITHUANIA: October 25, 2000
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8666

RIGA - Lithuania's former Prime Minister Rolandas Paksas, who is tipped to lead a new government, said yesterday that he supported the construction of a new nuclear reactor.

Lithuania is committed to closing the first of its two reactors at the Chernobyl-style Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant by 2005 as a condition for discussions on joining the European Union (EU).

Paksas, who was being presented to parliament by President Valdas Adamkus as a candidate to lead a new coalition government, defended the country's decision to close the first reactor but indicated that he favoured the construction of a third one.

"This decision (to close the first reactor) was right and the only possible one for Lithuania," Paksas said.

"I would like to believe that Lithuania's future lies in a third, modern, Western-made nuclear reactor," he added.

Paksas did not elaborate further. The EU has pressed Lithuania to close the Ignalina plant, built in the 1980s to the same design as Ukraine's disastrous Chernobyl plant, which blew up in 1986 in the world's worst civilian nuclear disaster to date.

The government will make a decision on the second reactor in 2004, although the EU has said it expects it to be shut down by 2009.

Ignalina supplies Lithuania with more than 70 percent of its electricity, making it one of the most nuclear-dependent countries in the world. Its existence is a source of worry for Lithuania's Nordic neighbours across the Baltic sea.

Parliament votes on Paksas' nomination on Thursday. His party came second in an October 8 parliamentary election and he formed a minority coalition with the third-place New Union. Parliament will also have to approve his new government.

-------- russia

Greenpeace eyes Russian referendum on nuclear waste

RUSSIA: October 25, 2000
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=8664

MOSCOW - Environmental group Greenpeace said yesterday it had collected enough signatures to force President Vladimir Putin to call a referendum on Russia's plans to go into the nuclear waste disposal and storage market.

Greenpeace said in a statement it had collected 2.5 million signatures from several Russian regions. Two million are needed under the constitution for a referendum to be called.

Greenpeace said the Atomic Energy Ministry was planning to change environment laws to allow it to import, store and dispose of nuclear waste from foreign states, earning funds which it could use to upgrade Russia's nuclear plants.

"The legal change being promoted by Russia's cash-strapped Atomic Ministry is designed to allow Russia to become the world's nuclear waste dump," the group said.

But the ministry said on its website (nuclear.ru) that it did not intend to import nuclear waste but nuclear fuel which had been used once and could again be used in the nuclear cycle.

It said the fuel could be safely stored in Russia and the country could earn billions of dollars from its import.

Greenpeace said around a fifth of the signatures collected for the referendum appeal would probably be declared invalid, leaving two million.

If two million were declared valid, Putin had to call a referendum within two to four months, it said.

If he chose not to call a vote, the matter would be sent to the Constitutional Court, which had 30 days to accept or reject Putin's decision.

---

Divers recover first Kursk crew members

USA Today
10/25/00- Updated 12:59 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nwswed08.htm

MURMANSK, Russia (AP) - Deep-sea divers entered the hull of the sunken nuclear submarine Kursk on Wednesday and found the bodies of three of the 118 victims, a Russian navy official said.

The bodies were found several hours after a team of Norwegian and Russian divers succeeded in cutting the first hole in the thick hull of the submarine on the bottom of the Barents Sea, Northern Fleet Chief of Staff Mikhail Motsak said on state-run RTR television.

The bodies were removed from the hull in preparation for bringing them to the surface, Motsak said.

The divers are getting the first close-up look at the interior of the stricken submarine since it sank after a massive explosion on Aug. 12.

It took a team of divers five days to cut one hole through the Kursk's thick steel double hull, 356 feet below the surface in the cold waters of the Barents Sea. Divers used a stream of pressurized water mixed with diamond dust to slice through a 2{-inch-thick steel plate.

The recovery team lowered remote-controlled video cameras through the hole first to inspect the eighth compartment in the submarine's stern, and pumped out silt to improve visibility, said Northern Fleet spokesman Vladimir Navrotsky.

The divers also smoothed the jagged edge of the 3-foot-wide hole with a special cushion for safe entrance into the wreck, he said.

The divers must contend with darkness, currents, floating debris and confined spaces. The head of the Russian Navy, Adm. Vladimir Kuroyedov, had earlier warned that he might cancel the recovery effort because of the danger of divers ripping their pressure suits or cutting their air hoses on mangled equipment and debris.

Kuroyedov flew to a Russian naval vessel at the scene Wednesday. He was accompanied by two widows of Kursk crew members, who brought flowers to cast into the water and home-baked pies for the divers, the Interfax news agency reported.

Only Russian divers entered the Kursk. Their foreign colleagues were to assist from inside a diving bell lowered to the Kursk from the divers' mother ship, the Regalia.

To cut their way into the submarine, divers had to wrestle with a layer of industrial rubber between the outer and inner hulls, and used a robotic arm to sever pipes and wires obstructing their work.

The divers hope to pull bodies or body parts out into the ocean, then bring them to the surface to return to their families for burial.

Russian naval officials said they only hope to recover about one-third of the 118 seamen's bodies, the rest likely destroyed by the powerful explosions that ripped through the submarine. The cause of the accident has not been officially established.

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

N-Weapons Expert Argues Bigger Is Not Better Anymore

Salt Lake Tribune
Wednesday, October 25, 2000
BY WALTER PINCUS THE WASHINGTON POST
http://www.sltrib.com/10252000/nation_w/36621.htm

WASHINGTON -- A leading U.S. expert on nuclear weapons is challenging decades of military thinking by suggesting that precision-guided conventional explosives could replace nuclear warheads on most of America's strategic missiles.

Stephen Younger, the associate director of Los Alamos National Laboratory and head of its nuclear weapons work, also says the United States should consider developing a new generation of small nuclear bombs to handle the few military tasks for which nuclear weapons are still theoretically required.

The proposals, which would allow a drastic reduction in the U.S. nuclear stockpile, are stirring debate among Pentagon war planners, State Department arms controllers, White House security advisers and academic defense experts, partly because they come from a fellow member of the so-called nuclear priesthood.

But Younger said that he made his views public in an unclassified 20-page paper, Nuclear Weapons in the Twenty-First Century, because he hoped to stimulate a broader, national debate on the future of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, which he believes has been largely overlooked in the presidential campaign.

Early in the campaign, Texas Gov. George W. Bush called for deep, possibly unilateral cuts in the nuclear stockpile, along with development of a still unproven missile-defense system and a rethinking of the Cold War doctrine of mutually assured destruction. But neither the Republican candidate nor his advisers have explained how deeply they think the stockpile should be cut, what design they foresee for the missile shield or what concept should replace mutual deterrence.

Vice President Al Gore has endorsed the limited national missile defense plan already under development by the Clinton administration, but he has spoken little about it, or about nuclear weapons, on the campaign trail.

Younger argues that the U.S. nuclear stockpile of more than 5,000 high-yield missile warheads and bombs -- each capable of wiping out any major city in the world -- remains a credible deterrent against Russia or China, discouraging those nations from using nuclear weapons against the United States.

But, he warns, those weapons might not be an effective deterrent against smaller countries, such as Iraq, Iran or North Korea. Their leaders may calculate that a U.S. president would hesitate to respond to a major provocation, such as a chemical-weapons attack on American troops overseas, by ordering a nuclear strike.

In place of most of today's strategic nuclear weapons, Younger proposes precision-guided, conventionally armed missiles, which the United States could credibly threaten to use against a smaller adversary.

He argues that the United States needs to retain only a relatively small number of the most powerful or "high-yield" warheads to deter a full-scale strike by Russia or China and to threaten their most protected targets, such as reinforced concrete command bunkers deep underground. He does not cite a specific figure, but other experts have said that a few dozen to several hundred of today's high-yield nuclear warheads might suffice.

One of the most controversial elements of Younger's plan is that he suggests building low-yield weapons with enriched uranium and an old, well-proven design, the "gun assembly" used for the Hiroshima bomb in 1945. At its heart is a block of enriched uranium that explodes when just the right amount of uranium to cause fission is shot into it by a chemical explosive trigger. Scientists are so confident of that design, Younger argues, that the new weapons could be fielded without testing.

Other scientists expressed fear that building more accurate, less destructive nuclear weapons could lower the threshold for using them. In an interview, however, Younger denied that he was advocating a more "usable" nuclear weapon.

"We have an overwhelming conventional force and that should be enough for any threat," he said. Nuclear weapons should be "the last to be used," he added, "but if we have to use them, they should have the minimum yield."

The cost of Younger's proposals is difficult to calculate. He concedes that developing new weapons and dismantling older ones would take money, at least in the short term. But reductions in the number of missiles and warheads eventually could produce some cost savings. Maintaining the current arsenal is hugely expensive: the United States spends about $4.5 billion a year on "stockpile stewardship" for the more than 5,000 thermonuclear weapons now deployed.

Whether they agree with Younger's recommendations, many defense specialists applaud his effort to spark new thinking.

Retired Gen. John Vessey, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a "fresh look" at America's nuclear arsenal is badly needed, "because the stockpile of today will not meet the needs of the world we are going to live in."

"We have always been looking at numbers, but for the future we should think in terms of differences in the characteristics and purpose" of U.S. nuclear weapons, said Daniel Goure, deputy director for international security programs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

---

China scandal victim Notra Trulock III

Washington Times
October 25, 2000
http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/ed-column-20001025191117.htm

The Clinton administration's deft handling of the Chinese nuclear espionage scandal has claimed another victim. The administration's cleanup crew has ensnared one of the premier nuclear weapons experts in the country, John L. Richter. The sad thing is that Mr. Richter probably doesn't even realize his reputation has been sacrificed to deflect attention away from the administration's handling of the case.

Of course, no sacrifice has been too great to make for the sake of protecting the administration on this (or any other) issue. Reputations have been destroyed as a matter of routine policy; just ask Gordon Oehler, the CIA's top nonproliferation expert. His mistake? He refused to lie to Congress about China's spread of weapons of mass destruction to Pakistan and elsewhere. He was forced into retirement after he wouldn't trim his assessment of China's proliferation behavior to suit the administration's policy.

The overriding objective was to have at least one agreement to tout at the U.S.-China presidential summit later that fall. U.S. companies wanted to sell nuclear energy technologies in China's expanding power market, but couldn't until Mr. Clinton certified China's good behavior. For months, the intelligence community fought-off administration efforts to "certify" China's good behavior. The intelligence facts clearly went the other way, but this administration has never let the facts get in the way of (their) truth. So Mr. Oehler had to go. His CIA masters, including Winston Wiley, the current CIA deputy director for intelligence, promised their political masters that Mr. Oehler would not appear on Capitol Hill again to testify on this or any other China-related topic.

Or ask Bill Richardson, the hapless secretary of energy. Mr. Richardson watched his hopes of a place on the Gore ticket go up in the smoke of the Los Alamos fires and the furor of the missing computer hard drives. Even his own president left him swinging in the wind when the Wen Ho Lee prosecution disintegrated. Mr. Richardson had urged Attorney General Janet Reno to hold Lee in solitary confinement, but the decision was made in a Saturday morning meeting in the White House with National Security Adviser Sandy Berger in charge. Maybe Mr. Berger forgot to tell Mr. Clinton; he doesn't appear to have told him much else about this case.

And speaking of Wen Ho Lee, Mr. Richter now becomes known to history as the man "who blew a prosecution to pieces" in the words of a recent Washington Post puff piece lauding Mr. Richter. Mr. Richter is credited with issuing Lee a get-out-of-jail card when he testified that 99 percent of the Lee tapes were unclassified and out in the public domain. That seems to have been the last straw for the federal judge hearing the pleadings on Wen Ho Lee's detention. But Mr. Richter wasn't satisfied at that; no country would use these codes to build nuclear weapons and the damage was "marginally harmful, at worst," he went on to testify.

Mr. Richter's role in all this is supremely ironic. Mr. Richter is a nuclear weapons expert almost without peer. He has 40 live nuclear shots at our Nevada Test Range to his credit. If he were a country, he would come in fourth in terms of testing experience after the United States, Russia, and China. It was Mr. Richter who lent his credibility to the initial suspicions of Chinese espionage first raised in 1995. It was Mr. Richter who was a key participant in the 1995 Energy Summer Study that validated the initial suspicions and determined that China's acquisition of nuclear weapons data helped China's efforts to field mobile ballistic missiles.

Mr. Richter stayed on in Washington to assist intelligence analysts understand foreign nuclear developments over the next two years. At the conclusion of his Washington tour, the CIA awarded him a medal for his services to the U.S. intelligence community. Mr. Richter did some groundbreaking work on Russian, Chinese, and South Asian nuclear developments, most of which he appears to have now "forgotten." Most ironic is an exchange on the subject of Mr. Richter during a China espionage briefing to Donald M. Kerr, former Los Alamos director and now the director of the FBI's science lab.

Mr. Kerr, cited in The Washington Post, asked if John Richter had seen the briefing. "Many times and he helped write it" was the response. "Good enough for me," replied Mr. Kerr. Still good enough, one wonders? Mr. Richter recanted his testimony that 99 percent of the Lee tapes were unclassified. Only the software and physics principles, he now says, but not the nuclear warhead dimensions or physical properties of materials under the stress of a nuclear explosion.

By the way, the latter knowledge was acquired only after hundreds of nuclear tests at the cost of billions to the taxpayer. Does Mr. Richter seriously want us to believe that no country could really do much with this information?

Mr. Richter also claims that no country would build weapons without resort to nuclear testing. Really? What about North Korea? Who disputes that they have a couple of nuclear weapons, at least? One of the two weapon types the U.S. dropped on Japan had never been "tested" before its use. The CIA doesn't appear to believe it either. According to its "damage assessment," China would benefit the most from the information contained on these tapes.

Whatever Mr. Richter's reasons, was it really worth his reputation and integrity to give the Clinton administration yet another free pass on the Chinese nuclear espionage scandal?

Notra Trulock III is director of media relations at the Free Congress Foundation.

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

Bioethics Panel Mulls Human Research

Associated Press
October 25, 2000 Filed at 6:18 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bioethics-Commission.html
http://www.enn.com/news/wire-stories/2000/10/10252000/ap_bioethics_39543.asp

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Federal regulations that cover medical testing on human subjects were written 25 years ago -- before cloning and the human genome project were possible.

Updating those regulations will be a daunting task, acknowledge the scientists, law experts and other advisers who comprise the National Bioethics Advisory Commission.

``It's an aging system from a philosophical perspective,'' said Eric Meslin, the committee's executive director. ``There are lessons to learn from history that we don't want to repeat.''

Notorious examples include a 1940s government study in which black men with syphilis were not treated so that the disease's progression could be recorded, and another in which citizens were secretly injected with plutonium or uranium so the effect could be studied.

``In light of this history, oversight is required to ensure these abuses to not occur again -- that research participants are selected fairly, adequately informed and otherwise protected,'' the commission's draft report reads.

The 18-member group met Tuesday and will again Wednesday to draft recommendations for overseeing human research. The 5-year-old commission has already written reports on the ethical questions raised by human cloning, embryo cell research and studies of the mentally impaired.

The test subject project may be its broadest undertaking yet, Meslin said. It covers everything from gene scanning to surveys about drinking habits, from international drug studies to experiments at local medical schools.

The full report should be completed in December and opened up for public comment before being submitted to President Clinton. Federal agencies can then either implement the recommendations, or Congress can draft such legislation.

One topic of debate among the advisers was whether, in these days of gene mapping and medical testing, researchers should protect their subjects' secrets.

``Researchers come to me and ask, 'I'm doing a study on mental illness and I'm finding people who are suicidal. Should I report it?''' said Dr. Bernard Lo, director of medical ethics at the University of California at San Francisco.

Another hotly contested issue during Tuesday's session was how to protect confidential information about subjects.

Privacy ``is without question one of the hot-button issues of today,'' especially as more databases full of personal information go online, said Alta Charo, a University of Wisconsin law and medical ethics professor.

They recognized the value of laws that require a breach of confidence -- such as when a researcher uncovers child abuse -- but the panel said such incidents can damage the scientific integrity of the study or scare off volunteers.

``Suppose I was solicited to participate in a research project on mental issues,'' said commission member Bette Kramer, president of the Richmond Bioethics Consortium in Virginia. ``I would want to be absolutely certain I know a question that will be asked is how protected this information will be. Will it get out into the hands of others?''

Such questions take time to answer, even as technological advances come faster and faster, said Howard Mann, chairman of an institutional review board for Intermountain Health Care.

``The deliberations that need to occur to help us make use of this change is necessarily slow,'' Mann said. ``The technological change far outpaces our ability to consider its ramifications.''

On the Net:
National Bioethics Advisory Commission: http://www.bioethics.gov

-------- kentucky

'Blue glow' reported at Paducah plant
Memo says nuclear reactions may have occurred in pit

By JAMES MALONE,
The Paducah Courier-Journal,
Wednesday, October 25, 2000
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2000/0010/25/001025blue.html

PADUCAH, Ky. -- A "blue glow" reported by workers at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant could indicate nuclear reactions occurred underground in a top-secret burial pit for atomic-weapons parts, according to an internal memo obtained by The Courier-Journal.

The memo, written Thursday by a health physicist employed by the plant operator, says "a 'blue glow' that looked like 'blue fire' above the ground" was first observed in the early 1980s over the southwest corner of the C-746-F classified burial yard and was reportedly seen a number of times after that.

Ray Carroll, a health physicist for the U.S. Enrichment Corp., wrote that the "blue glow" could be a type of radiation resulting from nuclear fission processes, and added, "If the cause is a fission source, personnel entering the area could potentially receive a lethal dose of radiation."

But the U.S. Department of Energy's site manager at Paducah, Don Seaborg, said yesterday, "We don't have any indication" that a fission reaction occurred. He said that after receiving the memo last week, he had not been able to find supporting data, such as elevated radiation readings on the landfill's surface or worker exposure measurements.

"That's the concern, if you have a blue glow, then that's indicative of a criticality and of course a major safety concern," Seaborg said. "My background experience tells me that it was unlikely something was going on of a criticality (nuclear reaction) nature. I'm bringing in the right people with the right certifications to verify that."

The plant has been in the news since August 1999 when three employees filed a whistleblower lawsuit alleging that contamination and conditions were much worse than had been disclosed by former operators. A cleanup effort is underway.

The Energy Department leases production facilities to the U.S. Enrichment Corp., a publicly traded company, but still owns the burial pit and other areas where radioactive and hazardous waste was dumped or stored during a half-century of enriching uranium for weapons and power plants.

According to the memo, the burial yard was covered with five to nine feet of dirt at an undisclosed time after the first observations of a "blue glow." But it notes that there was another reported sighting in 1996, long after the earthen cover was applied. The glow has only been seen immediately after a heavy rain, when there was a mist or moisture in the air, the memo said. Carroll wrote that the glow could be Cerenkov radiation, a phenomenon in which charged radioactive particles from a fission reaction give off a blue glow in water.

On the chance that a fission reaction is occurring, Carroll recommended barring employees from within 1,000 feet of the site and installing a continuous radiation monitor with an audible alarm and "a red warning light that can easily be read from a distance."

Carroll also recommended taking core samples in the burial yard to determine if radioactive products of fission are present. "If these radio-isotopes are present, a much more extensive environmental remediation of the whole area will be required," he wrote.

But GeorgAnn Lookofsky, a USEC spokeswoman, said yesterday that Carroll's safety recommendations had not been put into effect, because in radiation surveys of the area, "we haven't found anything to raise our concerns."

She said Carroll wrote the memo after a plant employee raised concerns about the glow.

There could be other explanations for the glow, according to Kimberlee J. Kearfott, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of Michigan.

For the glow to be from a fission reaction, there would have to be "extremely large sources" and a vast amount of energy being expended to cause the Cerenkov effect, she said yesterday. She said the only places she has seen the blue glow are in a university research reactor under water or in spent fuel rods immersed in water.

She said a more likely scenario is either a chemical fluorescence or phosphorescence or a glow from tritium -- a radioactive material that reports say was buried in unknown quantities in the plant's landfills.

Seaborg, the Energy Department site manager, raised the possibility that the glow was the result of something going on underground, possibly from spontaneously burning metals, such as uranium or aluminum. The reports of a glow, however, do not mention any smoke accompanying the blue effervescence.

A metals fire also could release radioactivity, but on a much smaller scale than from a fission reaction, Seaborg said.

John Volpe, manager of the Radiation Control and Toxic Agents Branch of the Kentucky Cabinet for Health Services, said he does not have enough information about the incidents to even speculate as to what may have happened. But Volpe said this is an example of why the Energy Department should make available information about the landfill's contents.

"We have asked them to take samples and basically they said they would not," Volpe said.

Robert Daniel, director of the Kentucky Division of Waste Management, the state regulatory agency overseeing the Paducah cleanup, said the report of a blue glow "is news to me." Daniel said he will ask his staff to review the matter but added that the Energy Department in the past has gone to court to successfully prohibit the state from regulating disposal of nuclear material inside the plant's fence.

According to Bechtel Jacobs, the Energy Department's environmental cleanup contractor at the Paducah plant, the landfill was used from 1965 to '87 for burial of classified weapons components contaminated with radioactive isotopes. Many of the weapons were sent from the Pantex atomic bomb plant in Texas.

Energy Department records show that the Paducah plant received several hundred tons of weapons parts to be dismantled so that precious metals could be recovered.

Apparently by mistake, 20 radioactive atomic bomb neutron generators containing tritium also were shipped to the plant in the 1960s. Very likely other unrecognized shipments of radioactive materials were in the weaponry the Paducah plant was asked to dismantle, because the shipments were not scanned, Energy Department records show.

Tom Clements, executive director of the Nuclear Control Institute, a Washington, D.C., nuclear non-proliferation group, said if a fission reaction is confirmed, "it is most troubling." Clements said if such a reaction had occurred, "a remediation plan needs to be developed immediately."

Earlier this month, the Energy Department released a series of maps it had prepared a year ago but never made public that showed that radioactive contamination had leaked into the environment around the plant at distances greater than a mile.

----

Workers were unprotected in contaminated buildings
Memo says training performed without gear to prevent exposure

By JAMES MALONE,
The Paducah Courier-Journal
Wednesday, October 25, 2000
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2000/0010/25/001025risk.html

PADUCAH, Ky. -- Security guards and firefighters at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant during the 1980s and possibly the early 1990s conducted anti-terrorist training inside heavily contaminated buildings without protective clothing or equipment, a plant memo obtained by The Courier-Journal shows.

"The training included accessing the rafters, roof areas, and crawling on the floors plus other exposed surfaces that were, and some still are, highly contaminated," the memo says. Many of the production and maintenance buildings have been closed, some because of their high level of radioactivity.

The safety personnel wore no coveralls, gloves or booties and did not use respirators to protect themselves from radiation, says the memo written Thursday by health physicist Ray Carroll.

They wore their uniforms, and their dirty clothing was sent out to a commercial laundry or taken home to be washed, the memo says.

Carroll recommended notifying off-site laundries where the uniforms were washed that the clothing may have been contaminated. He also said there should be an offer extended to survey the homes and the affected laundries for contamination.

"To my knowledge, there has been no effort to account for the internal dose these individuals might have received," Carroll said in his memo.

He called for an investigation to identify the people who might be affected, learn where and how they trained and to determine the extent of contamination of other hazards in these areas, including possibly asbestos and beryllium, a metal that causes fatal lung disease.

The memo has been forwarded to the U.S. Department of Energy because the events took place before the United States Enrichment Corp.'s leasing of production facilities at the plant, said Georg-Ann Look-ofsky, a USEC spokeswoman. The Energy Department said it is reviewing the memo, which it received last week.

Guard and firefighter uniforms are now laundered at the plant, Lookofsky said.

-------- nebraska

Nelson, Stenberg on nukes

Lincoln Journal Star
October 25, 2000
BY DON WALTON Lincoln Journal Star
mailto:dwalton@journalstar.com
http://www.journalstar.com/nebraska?story_id=1358&date=20001025&past=

OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE - The nukes and bombers are long gone.

So is the Strategic Air Command.

But Offutt Air Force Base south of Bellevue still stands tall as a premier U.S. military presence in the Great Plains.

SAC was replaced in 1992 by STRATCOM, the U.S. Strategic Command. All American strategic nuclear forces - the bombers, the nuclear missile submarines, the intercontinental ballistic missiles - are under its command.

While Offutt's role has changed over the years, so has the mission of the American military. And with the end of the cold war has come the need for new decisions about national defense, many of them involving nuclear weapons issues.

The next Congress will help make some of those judgments - with the participation and votes of Nebraska's next senator.

One of the first decisions will be whether to build a missile defense system. And, if so, how extensive it should be.

"I support deployment of an anti-missile system as soon as we can develop one that is reliable," Republican Senate nominee Don Stenberg said. "And if the most effective system is space-based, that's what it should be."

Democratic nominee Ben Nelson agrees the United States "needs some sort of missile defense system to protect us from rogue nations," but he says America should proceed carefully, clearing the way with negotiation and diplomacy.

"We should be cautious in its implementation so we don't start another arms race," he said.

Development of a missile defense system needs to be accompanied by talks with Russia about amending - or bending - the provisions of the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty negotiated with the old Soviet Union, Nelson said.

Stenberg dismissed the three-decade-old agreement as a cold war relic, "a treaty with a nation that has ceased to exist."

Nelson and Stenberg have a more clear-cut disagreement over the global nuclear test ban treaty.

Stenberg opposes Senate ratification; Nelson would vote to ratify if other nations demonstrate they are willing to follow suit.

"We need to periodically test these weapons," Stenberg argued. "Both we and other nations need to know they will work."

The United States should play a leadership role in attempting to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons, Nelson said.

Both candidates said they could support U.S. funding to help Russia destroy or decommission its nuclear weapons as America's old cold war adversary reduces its nuclear force.

"I support providing money to assist them in downsizing," Nelson said. "One of the risks if we don't is those weapons could fall into the wrong hands."

Stenberg said: "If we can be sure we get the results, I could be persuaded to support that."

Both nominees said they'd be willing to further reduce the U.S. arsenal of nuclear arms beyond already-negotiated levels if they can be satisfied America would retain an adequate and superior force.

"The key is the United States always needs to maintain a sufficient number of nuclear weapons to be an effective deterrent to war," Stenberg said. "And we may be able to do that with a smaller number of weapons."

Nelson said he'd be guided by the goal of being "militarily prepared for the risks in the world today, not yesterday."

That mirrors the history of Offutt Air Force Base.

Offutt claims a rich military heritage, beginning with construction of Fort Crook in the 1890s. The first air unit to occupy this ground was the 61st Balloon Company in 1918.

During the 1940s the base was the site of a Martin bomber plant. By the end of World War II, 531 B-29s and 1,585 B-26s had been built at Offutt. Among them: The "Enola Gay," which dropped the first atomic bomb.

In 1948, Offutt gained international fame when it was selected as SAC headquarters. First, there were tankers and bombers on alert; then the base mission turned to reconnaissance. Offutt today is home to the 55th Wing and its big RC-135 reconnaissance jets that roam the world.

Sixty feet beneath the earth at Offutt, down a maze of stairs and corridors, is STRATCOM's underground command center. This is a military nerve center that collects and assesses information from high-tech "eyes and ears" across - and above - the globe.

At Offutt, they "see" every launch of a missile on earth. They count how many Russian subs are at sea and how many are in port. They "heard" the Russian sub Kursk explode last August and plunge to the bottom of the Barents Sea.

Both Senate candidates are acutely aware of Offutt's economic importance to Nebraska in addition to its military significance.

Offutt is a community of 11,000 military and civilian employees with 20,000 dependents. Its annual payroll exceeds $350 million. Its estimated annual economic impact in the area is more than $1 billion.

Nelson has declared his desire to serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee. That would follow the path of former Democratic Sen. Jim Exon, who rose to a senior leadership position on the committee.

Armed Services is also one of the prospective committees on Stenberg's list.

Stenberg designated "rebuilding the military" as one of his priorities from Day One of his campaign. Nelson also promises to modernize and strengthen America's military.

Reach Don Walton at 473-7248 or dwalton@journalstar.com.

-------- new mexico

Radon May Be Source Of WIPP Contamination

Albuqueque Journal
October 25, 2000
The Associated Press
http://www.abqjournal.com/news/1radon10-25-00.htm

CARLSBAD, N.M. - Radon - not nuclear waste stored underground - apparently caused two radiation contamination incidents at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant this month.

The first was reported Oct. 2, shortly after five workers placed drums of waste in an underground storage room, said Chris West, a spokesman for Westinghouse, which runs WIPP for the U.S. Department of Energy. The second involved three workers Oct. 5, he said.

In the first incident, the workers were checked for radiation when one worker detected radiation on his gloves, West said.

The material on the gloves was tested and was found to be "radon daughters," decayed particles from radon gas, said WIPP radiation safety manager Don Harward. WIPP radiation specialists believe the workers touched materials with such particles on them while handling the waste, he said.

He also said the radiation readings were "minor, very low."

Details of the second incident were not available, but DOE spokeswoman Susan Scott said both incidents were similar.

None of the exposed workers required medical attention, but worker training was being increased so workers better understand the types of radiation found underground, Harward said.

Radon, a naturally occurring radioactive gas, was detected after WIPP's air monitors found "minute amounts of airborne radiation," according to a fact sheet for employees provided by West.

Radiation specialists believe radon gas is being sucked underground through the repository's 16-foot-wide air intake shaft, Harward said. They are looking into installing equipment that will detect radon levels in the air outside the facility, he said.

WIPP is designed to permanently store plutonium-contaminated waste some 2,150 feet underground in ancient salt beds east of Carlsbad. The waste, in 55-gallon drums, consists of such things as contaminated clothing, tools, debris and residue and comes from the nation's defense work.

Barrels of nuclear waste are checked for contamination before being taken underground, and the checks have never turned up radiation on the outside of a barrel, Harward said.

Radon is not a health hazard to people working at WIPP, said Tom Goff, a WIPP radiological engineer.

"Radon is more often an interference than it is an occupational hazard," he said.

---

USA Today
10/25/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

New Mexico

Los Alamos - Five months after wildfires left 400 Los Alamos families homeless, researchers want to know if innovative techniques can ease post-disaster trauma, including nightmares. Barry Krakow of the Sleep and Human Health Institute in Albuquerque is teaming with the University of New Mexico. They will use methods tried with crime victims and other trauma survivors. Krakow says the $50,000 study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health may be a first for natural disasters.

-------- us nuc politics

Ex-top officials concerned over Gore's secret Russian deal

Washington Times
October 25, 2000
By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/national/default-20001025232220.htm

A bipartisan group of 11 former secretaries of state and defense and top national security officials yesterday expressed concern over Vice President Al Gore's secret dealings with Russia.

"The military balance in regions of vital interest to America and her allies - including the Persian Gulf, which is a critical source of the world's energy supplies - is the essential underpinning for a strong foreign policy," the group said in a statement issued through the office of former Secretary of State George P. Shultz.

"That is why we are deeply disturbed by the agreement made between Vice President Gore and then Russian Premier Chernomyrdin in which America acquiesced in the sale by Russia to Iran of highly threatening military equipment such as modern submarines, fighter planes and wake-homing torpedoes.

They added: "We also find incomprehensible that this agreement was not fully disclosed even to those committees of Congress charged with receiving highly classified briefings - apparently at the request of the Russian premier.

"But agreement to his request is even more disturbing since the Russian sales could have brought sanctions against Russia in accordance with a 1992 U.S. law sponsored by Senator John McCain and then Senator Al Gore," the former officials said.

In addition to Mr. Shultz, the signers included former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger, James A. Baker III and Lawrence S. Eagleburger; former Clinton administration CIA Director R. James Woolsey; Zbigniew Bzezinski, national security adviser in the Carter administration; and former defense secretaries Caspar Weinberger, James R. Schlesinger, Donald Rumsfeld and Frank C. Carlucci. Former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft also signed.

The former officials were commenting on recent newspaper reports, including those in The Washington Times, revealing the back-channel dealing by Mr. Gore.

The statement was issued on the eve of a Senate hearing on the issue. The Senate will conduct hearings today on Mr. Gore's agreements with Mr. Chernomyrdin that allowed Russian conventional arms and nuclear weapons technology to be sold to Iran without U.S. sanctions.

State Department officials will testify on the dealings before Senate Foreign Relations subcommittees on Near East affairs and European affairs, a spokesman said.

The administration tried to have the hearing closed, but it will be open to the public.

The Times reported last week that a secret 1995 agreement between Mr. Gore and Mr. Chernomyrdin, which was called an "aide memoire," stated that the United States would not impose sanctions on Russia for its conventional arms sales as required under U.S. law.

The 1992 law and a 1996 amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act requires sanctions to be imposed on nations that sell advanced conventional arms or lethal aid to terrorist nations. Iran is designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the State Department.

The Times also reported a secret 1995 letter from Mr. Chernomyrdin to Mr. Gore detailing Moscow's nuclear cooperation with Iran. The letter stated that Mr. Gore should not disclose the information to "third parties, including the U.S. Congress," and noted that Mr. Chernomyrdin was "counting" on Mr. Gore's cooperation in keeping Congress in the dark.

The Times also disclosed a Jan. 13 letter from Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright to Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov. In that letter, stamped "secret," Mrs. Albright stated that the United States would have imposed sanctions on Russia for its conventional arms sales to Iran if there were no Gore-Chernomyrdin pact.

The document contradicted public statements by the Clinton administration that Russia's arms sales to Iran did not trigger U.S. laws aimed at stemming the sale of weapons to Iran.

-------- MILITARY

Seoul and Tokyo Are Ready for Albright's Report on Trip

New York Times
October 25, 2000
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/world/25SEOU.html

SEOUL, South Korea, Oct. 24 - When Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright arrives here on Wednesday to brief her South Korean and Japanese counterparts on her ground-breaking visit to North Korea, behind their smiles and obligatory congratulations, they will also have serious questions.

Already there have been signs of concern in both countries, the United States' closest Asian allies, that the breakthrough could upset South Korea's own diplomacy with the North and make the possibility that Japan will obtain satisfaction on its longstanding grievances toward North Korea even more remote.

The disparate displays of public enthusiasm and private concern about Dr. Albright's trip, and about a possible visit by President Clinton, vividly illustrate the awkward geometry of diplomacy, even among close allies, in northeastern Asia.

Each partner is eager to see North Korea emerge from its cocoon and cease being a threat to stability. But for reasons of domestic politics and priorities, each ally might like to see events unfold in a slightly different sequence. It is a measure of the concern for sequencing and, above all, for avoiding major surprises that present and former officials in Japan and South Korea privately warn against repeating the so-called Nixon shock that they felt when the United States established high-level contacts with China nearly 30 years ago.

For South Korea, by far the most enthusiastic about engagement with the North since President Kim Dae Jung took office more than two years ago, a quickly arranged visit by Mr. Clinton is being discussed as North Korea has frozen substantive cooperation with the South on a series of recent agreements.

On Monday, Mr. Kim's office issued a statement saying, "Inter-Korean and North Korea-U.S. relations are mutually complementary, and an improvement in one has the effect of boosting the other."

But given that it was Mr. Kim who started the ball rolling by pushing hard to bring the two longtime enemies into closer contact, the dramatic improvement in North Korea's relationship with the United States is reviving fears in foreign policy circles here of seeing inter- Korean ties relegated to the distant background. Indeed, for years before their summit meeting in June, North Korea had treated South Korean governments as nonentities and insisted on direct negotiations with the United States.

The scant movement by North Korea on issues like regular visits between separated families, military and economic cooperation and a return visit here of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, has become an embarrassment for the South Korean president. Many here fear that North Korea's success in engaging the United States at the highest levels will only worsen things.

"There is that concern among people, because that is the pattern that Pyongyang has been following through the years," Han Seung Joo, a former South Korean foreign minister, said. "Even now, North Korea is not carrying out the promises already made such as on issues like family reunification, economic cooperation, railroad development and on other things. Of course, there has been no progress at all on military issues."

---

China marks anniversary of Korean War

USA Today
10/25/00- Updated 10:27 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nwswed06.htm

BEIJING (AP) - China marked the 50th anniversary Wednesday of its entrance into the Korean War with patriotic tributes to those who died and praise for ''long overdue'' peace overtures between the conflict's former enemies.

Members of the ruling Communist Party's inner circle took part in somber ceremonies in Beijing and the North Korean capital of Pyongyang - evidence of the ties forged fighting South Korean and U.S.-led forces in the 1950-53 conflict. But the ceremonies carried traces of changes afoot in the region.

Defense Minister Chi Haotian, himself a Korean War veteran, stood with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in May 1st Stadium - where Kim entertained U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright two days earlier.

This time, instead of costumed, dancing children, the stadium was a sea of green-uniformed soldiers, footage on Chinese state television showed.

In Beijing's Great Hall of the People, President Jiang Zemin urged Chinese seeking to build the country into a new power to draw inspiration from the sacrifices made by China's ''volunteer'' army in Korea.

''To the very end, the volunteer officers and men placed the motherland's and the people's interests above everything else,'' Jiang said addressing the communist elite, among them aged veterans with strings of medals hanging from Mao suits. ''That spirit will always be the precious riches of the Chinese people.''

Jiang mentioned the valiant fight against ''American aggression'' during the Korean War. But Beijing has in recent years used its influence to push North Korea toward reconciliation with former foes South Korea and the United States.

China, the only major power to have good relations with both Koreas, welcomed the June summit between the leaders of the two Koreas, Albright's visit to North Korea and announcements last week that Britain, Germany, Spain and Belgium will normalize relations with North Korea.

''The world is witnessing a long overdue thaw of relations,'' the China Daily said.

''All such positive developments are well received in China because peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula and permanent peace there are exactly what our heroes and heroines fought for half a century ago.''

China Daily and articles and editorials in state-run newspapers said that war's economic cost and loss of 140,000 Chinese lives were worthwhile.

The Korean War ''tells us that for a country to stand up among the world's people, to not be humiliated and to receive respect it must develop production and increase its overall strength,'' the Communist Party's flagship newspaper, People's Daily, said in a front-page editorial.

Wednesday marked the day 50 years ago when China, mustering its forces in North Korea in secret for weeks, opened skirmishes against U.S., South Korean and other allied forces.

The surprise Chinese campaign pushed the allies back, laying the ground for a protracted war that ended three years later with no peace treaty.

-------- colombia

Europe's Aid Plan for Colombia Falls Short of Drug War's Goals

New York Times
October 25, 2000
By JUAN FORERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/world/25COLO.html

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, Oct. 24 - Signaling reservations about Colombia's deep reliance on American military support, the European Union announced a package of nonmilitary aid today that fell short of expectations. The decision could undercut Colombia's $7.5 billion program to curtail coca production and curb the influence of leftist guerrillas.

As envisioned by President Andrés Pastrana, the program - known as Plan Colombia - would require $3.5 billion in international aid to go along with the $4 billion that Colombia had vowed to contribute.

But European diplomats, meeting with officials here at the Foreign Ministry, said the European Community's contribution would now total about $321 million in nonmilitary aid. That appears to leave Colombia short of the total. The United States has earmarked $1.1 billion in mostly military aid. International lending institutions and Japan are providing $1.3 billion in loans, but the Colombians had hoped for much more in donations.

"We don't know if they are disappointed," a European diplomat said of Colombian leaders. "But we can't be dreamers."

Colombia tried to put a positive spin on the European commitment, with Colombian officials saying that, with the loans and donations, about $3 billion of the $3.5 billion expected from the international community would now be available.

"This is a demonstration of the solidarity for Colombia," said Colombia's Foreign Minister Guillermo Fernández de Soto. "We feel very positive that this plan has support."

But in Washington, a senior congressional staff member said that more international money for social programs and development was needed to balance out what the United States was spending.

"Everyone was looking for the rest of the world, particularly the Europeans, to do the soft side," said the official, referring to nonmilitary aid. "We have done the military side. You can't do one without the other."

A high-ranking Colombian official, citing American reports that Europe is consuming 30 percent of the coca that Colombia produces, said Europe should do more. "If they don't do it, we'll never resolve this problem," the official said.

Some people doubt that the Pastrana government can allocate as much as it has said it would contribute. Colombia, for decades a bastion of economic stability, is now in the midst of a debilitating recession.

-------- drug war

Venezuela bristles at border crossings

Washington Times
October 25, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://208.246.212.80/world/worldscene-200010252292.htm

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela said yesterday that 30 Colombians had crossed its border and up to 650 more could seek shelter in coming days from escalating violence related to a U.S.-backed anti-drug offensive in the neighboring Andean nation.

Foreign Minister Jose Vicente Rangel called on the Colombian government to ensure the safety of its frontier regions. He blamed the Plan Colombia, a $7.5 billion offensive against drug trafficking in the world's biggest cocaine-producing nation, for increasing violence in border regions.

-------- iraq

Iraqi trade doing fine despite sanctions

Washington Times
October 25, 2000
By Betsy Pisik THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/world/default-20001025221725.htm

IBRAHIMAL-KHALIL, Northern Iraq - As dusk falls across the Kurdistan region, a ribbon of oil tankers is lined up waiting to cross the border into Turkey.

At least 200 trucks stretch toward the horizon on a typical evening, their drivers waiting to bring black-market oil out of Iraq's Kurdish-controlled north. By some estimates, as many as 2,000 tankers a day make the crossing.

There is no attempt to disguise the cargo. Everyone - the drivers, customs agents, Iraqi officials, U.N. observers and interested governments - knows exactly what is going on.

"Yes, of course," shrugged Taha Houmoud, Iraq's deputy oil minister. "Everyone knows this, even [Washington]."

Ten years after the U.N. Security Council imposed a sweeping economic blockade against Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq, it is apparent that the sanctions regime has begun to rot from within and erode from without.

Nearly a dozen countries have recently sent charter flights into Iraq, each carrying some quantity of ill-defined medical or humanitarian aid. Only one or two technically violated the comprehensive Security Council embargo against Iraq, which makes explicit exceptions for humanitarian assistance.

But diplomats say that as oil prices climb and the embargo grinds into a second decade without accomplishing its purpose, it makes little sense for Iraq's neighbors and former trading partners to honor it.

"The sanctions regime is pretty much crumbling," said one diplomat whose country is a member of the Security Council. The reason, he said, is recognition of the deep humanitarian crisis that persists in once-prosperous Iraq and resentment at the "political points" being scored off Saddam's regime by Western nations.

Opponents of the sanctions regime - including 77 members of the U.S. House and Senate - say the disintegration is a good thing because the people of Iraq have been starved and humiliated for too long.

In a letter to President Clinton, they said, "the time has come to turn a new page in our dealings with Iraq." But such advice carries little weight in an election year.

Those who support the Iraq embargo acknowledge the devastating humanitarian impact but contend that the strictures are the only way to weaken the repressive regime and prevent President Saddam Hussein from building weapons of mass destruction.

They add that Iraq is pumping record amounts of oil and should be able to lessen the crisis with better planning and cooperation with U.N. programs.

Indeed, many in Washington and among its Persian Gulf allies wonder with apprehension about how much oil is being pumped from Iraqi to an eager foreign market.

No one knows how much Iraqi oil seeps through increasingly porous borders with Turkey, Jordan, Iran and Syria. But there is no question that the black market is thriving, and revenues are quietly accruing for the Iraqi regime and its supporters.

Take those trucks on the Turkish border, for instance. Are any of them legal under U.N. sanctions?

"In the north, the only recognized export is through the pipeline into Ceyhan," said John Mills, a spokesman for the U.N. Iraq program. In the south, he said, there's the Min Al-Bakr facility in the Persian Gulf.

Iraq officially exported 16 million barrels of oil in one recent week, depositing some $450 million for the U.N. program that monitors the sales and then approves Baghdad's expenditures. The U.N. Office of the Iraq Program (OIP), has for four years managed a complicated rationing program that supplements the starvation-level diet of some 22 million Iraqi citizens.

There is no sugar-coating Saddam Hussein's brutal 1990 annexation of Kuwait, nor his continued threats to Israel. So why are foreign states, including U.S. allies, so eager to do business with him?

In some cases it's compassion, in others, greed.

Scores of governments, most major religious organizations and dozens of humanitarian groups around the world have demanded that the sanctions be lifted immediately, without regard to Iraq's disarmament.

"You cannot keep punishing the people of Iraq, regardless of how you feel about their government," said Hussein Hassouna, the U.N. representative of the Arab League, noting the devastating statistics from UNICEF and other aid agencies.

In January, the group issued a unanimous statement that urged Baghdad to cooperate with all Security Council resolutions and the recent expansion of then oil-for-food program. The same statement called for the sanctions to be lifted.

But in other cases, the motive may be less philanthropic.

"Iraq is using the one card it has, and that's oil," said Raad Alkadiri, a political analyst with Petroleum Finance Company, a Washington consultancy. "It's a valuable foreign-policy weapon, providing [oil] to those countries that need it and attracting those countries that would like to invest."

Still trading above $32 per barrel, not far below record prices, oil makes a potent invitation to political leaders and businesses.

Saddam has received with fanfare such figures as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi.

When he was in New York last month for the Millennium Summit, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz had little trouble scheduling meetings with leaders from around the world.

The sanctions are collapsing, said Mr. Aziz, "but not all at once. They can last another one, two, three years. But in the end, people will act in their own interests."

Government after government has sent trade missions into Iraq, often traveling over land on an arduous 12-hour journey from Amman, Jordan, to promote contracts with Baghdad.

Russian, Italian, Yugoslav, Syrian, Indian and other government delegations have turned up in the Iraqi capital, bidding for the opportunity to sell the government goods and services. Salesman from private industry make regular pilgrimages here to sell trucks, machine parts, building supplies and anything else that could be approved under exceptions to the U.N. embargo.

Baghdad has been using oil to grease friendships and cement alliances.

Iraq announced in March that it would sell Lebanon as much as $10 million worth of discounted crude oil to help it rebuild after Israel's air strikes last summer. Beirut said recently it had signed a deal with Baghdad to buy up to 400,000 barrels of oil this year at concessionary rates.

This arrangement is similar to one under which Iraq is permitted to supply its neighbor Jordan with nearly 5 million tons of crude oil and by-products annually, sometimes in barter for humanitarian goods.

This deal, which is outside the U.N. oil-for-food program, is renewed every year without objection from the United States or the United Nations. It is designed to ease the burden on indebted Jordan, whose economy was badly damaged by the Gulf War and continued sanctions.

The Turkish government -which is said to have lost at least $3 billion through Iraqi sanctions -now makes no effort to hide or justify the oil tankers arriving from northern Iraq. Turkey has even begun charging import taxes on it, like any other imported commodity.

"It's one of the great cynical political secrets," said Mr. Alkadiri in Washington. "If you want to keep Turkey on board, you have to let the oil go through." He said Washington is not likely to object to Turkey's black-market trade, given that Syria and Iran are considered hostile to U.S. goals.

The Iraqi Kurds who control the Ibrahim Al-Khalil border crossing collect as much as $15 from every truck that leaves Iraq, and a similar amount from those entering. They also get a small share of oil to use or sell, as they wish, according to a spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of Jalal Talebani in Northern Iraq.

In western Iraq at the border with Jordan, a U.N. inspector said: "For every one truck that we search, at least 20 just speed right past." He said that on the Turkish border, the smuggling is even more flagrant: "Into Ceyhan, it's just a joke. There are maybe 200 trucks for every one we we look at."

And so the neighbors benefit from open or illicit trade, but what about the Iraqis themselves?

It's hard to say.

In theory, every item in every Iraqi shop should be grown or manufactured inside Iraq, or imported under a program of U.N. exemptions. This is clearly not the case.

In most Baghdad neighborhoods, residents wear mended garments and plastic sandals.

But goods of all varieties are available in wealthy neighborhoods, from designer sunglasses and gold jewelry to freshly imported fish and perishable French chocolates. State-of-the-art dentistry and expensive prescription drugs exist for those who can afford them.

There are large walled-in residences going up in Baghdad's richer areas, and business remains steady and strong at private clubs. There is no shortage of luxury cars in the traffic that clogs downtown Baghdad and the major arteries.

The problem isn't the extra oil that reaches the market, nor even the luxury items imported. The concern is that Saddam Hussein uses unregulated billions to build new weapons of mass destruction.

Meanwhile, the Security Council appears as ossified as ever when it comes to how to define and enforce the sanctions, and how to eventually lift them.

Under current resolutions, the embargo stays until the new weapons inspection commission certifies Iraq as fully disarmed of proscribed chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

But Baghdad refuses to allow the new inspectors to do their jobs, and the council is divided over how to advance the stalemate.

Some suggest that foreign governments are taking advantage of a perceived pre-election vacuum in Washington.

Even Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, says his teams are unlikely to get the green light from the Security Council before the end of November.

"No question they are seizing on the inertia created by the American elections," said Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury, who represents Bangladesh on the Security Council. "They know that Washington is not in a position to do anything about it right now."

--------

Containing Iraq: A Forgotten War

Washington Post
Wednesday, October 25, 2000 ; Page A01
By Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5823-2000Oct24.html

INCIRLIK, Turkey -- Most of the year, Bernard Yosten pilots Boeing 727s for American Airlines out of Miami. But in mid-September, he came here for two weeks of flying Air Force F-16 fighters in the "no-fly zone" over northern Iraq, where he was shot at with both antiaircraft guns and surface-to-air missiles.

The Iraqi fire "was pretty damned close," reported Yosten, who has since gone back to hauling tourists around the Caribbean.

To a surprising degree, Operation Northern Watch, as the Air Force calls this mission, is conducted by part-timers. Other members of Yosten's Alabama Air National Guard unit on temporary duty here usually fly for Delta, United, Southwest, Northwest, Federal Express and United Parcel Service.

Northern Watch is characteristic of U.S. military missions in the post-Cold War era: It is small-scale, open-ended and largely ignored by the American people. Even though U.S. warplanes are routinely dropping bombs on a foreign country, it has not been an issue in the presidential campaign and has hardly been mentioned by the candidates.

Partly because Turkey and Arab allies want to keep their assistance quiet, the Defense Department makes public little information about the joint U.S.-British effort to prohibit Iraqi aircraft from flying over northern and southern Iraq, thereby protecting Kurds in the North and Shiite Muslims in the South who oppose Saddam Hussein's rule. But behind the official veil, the no-fly operation has undergone major changes and embarrassments that might have made headlines if it had a higher profile:

* After patrolling aggressively last year, in a manner that one pilot says was intended to draw antiaircraft fire, the Air Force has pulled back and is avoiding known antiaircraft emplacements. Top commanders recently approved an order formalizing the de-escalation.

* The Air Force also has stopped dropping "cement bombs," emptied of explosives, on antiaircraft batteries near mosques and other sensitive sites. For the most part, it now leaves those batteries alone.

* The Turkish government has interrupted the flying schedule several times, sometimes to bomb Kurdish villages in Iraq and sometimes to protest America's refusal to sell Turkey certain precision-guided bombs.

* U.S. aircraft mistakenly bombed and strafed a group of Iraqi shepherds last year because intelligence analysts misinterpreted satellite imagery and thought a water trough for sheep was a missile launcher.

Iraq says the U.S. airstrikes have killed about 300 people, mostly civilians, since December 1998. American officials admit that there have been casualties but say they do not know how many. Ian Roxborough, a historian at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, calls this "fire-and-forget foreign policy," after the modern munitions that help make such an operation possible.

But if Northern Watch isn't particularly controversial, neither is it particularly popular. At a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, conservative Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) and liberal Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) took turns questioning it, with Thurmond calling it "a failure."

As the United States enters its 10th year of confronting Hussein, military strategists are frustrated, too. "I no longer have any sense of what the 'containment' of Iraq is all about," said retired Army Col. Andrew Bacevich, now a military expert at Boston University. "We just fly missions and drop bombs from time to time because we've been doing it for 10 years and no one can stop us from doing so."

Even some of the fighter pilots who have flown Northern Watch said they do not understand why it continues. "I think almost everybody thinks it is a waste of time," said a National Guard pilot who has done four tours of duty here.

There are some indications that the operation may end, but not soon and not because it has achieved any enduring success. Support for sanctions on Iraq appears to be waning both in the Arab world and in Europe. Only Britain continues to patrol the no-fly zones with the United States, operating reconnaissance aircraft that do not carry weapons.

'A Certain Level of Combat'

A day of Operation Northern Watch, which is conducted from Incirlik Air Base, a few miles east of the Turkish city of Adana, begins with the roar of F-15C fighters emerging from a hardened shelter. The pilots have been briefed on intelligence, weather and the day's mission.

"Puggsley," an Air Force captain from Alexandria who asked that his real name not be used, climbs into his F-15, which bristles with weaponry: heat-seeking Sidewinder missiles near his wingtips, bigger radar-guided Sparrows on pylons closer in and four even bigger AMRAAM missiles under his fuselage. He taxies to the arming area, where the missiles are activated, and screams down the runway.

But the Air Force approach to patrolling the skies of Iraq involves much more. The fighters are followed by an RC-135 "Rivet Joint" reconnaissance jet, a Boeing 707 laden with surveillance gear. Next come two Navy EA-6B electronic jammers, then some of the Alabama Air National Guard F-16s carrying missiles to home in on Iraqi radar. One of the Alabamians flies a jet borrowed from the Colorado Air National Guard that says "Mile-High Militia" on its tail. The final plane in the 25-aircraft "package" is a big KC-10 tanker, a flying gas station.

As the pilots head east toward Iraq, the Syrian border is just 20 miles to their right. Some of the pilots believe that the Syrian government, which can see them on radar, reports their movements to Baghdad, giving Iraqi gunners about an hour's warning. It takes that long for the American planes to travel 400 miles to the ROZ, the "restricted operating zone" over eastern Turkey where the pilots get an aerial refueling and then turn south into Iraq.

The pilots disagree about whether they are truly in combat. "If I can shoot, and if I'm getting shot at, yes, it's combat," argues "Sluggo," a lieutenant colonel from Charlevoix, Mich., who also asked that his name not be used.

But Lt. Col. Dave "Mega" Watt scoffs. Even though the Iraqis shoot to kill, says the sandy-haired veteran of 17 years in F-16s, "the threat isn't that high. You're probably in higher danger on the Beltway."

Yosten, the American Airlines pilot, comes down in the middle. "It's not full-blown combat, but it is a certain level of combat," he says. "It's a new type of mission."

'De-Emphasis on Ordnance'

Most patrols last four to eight hours, with the fighters and jammers flying over Iraq and then darting back to the ROZ to refuel two or three times. In 16,000 sorties since the beginning of 1997, Air Force pilots have launched more than 1,000 bombs and missiles against more than 250 targets in northern Iraq.

But they are much less likely to drop bombs and shoot missiles than they were a year ago. Brig. Gen. Bob D. DuLaney, the American commander of Operation Northern Watch since October 1999, has backed away from the confrontational tactics that the Air Force used for most of last year.

In early 1999, said Mike Horn, who flew F-15s in two tours of duty in Northern Watch, "sometimes we flew in such a way that we provoked them to shoot at us." Under the operation's rules of engagement, they could not bomb unless the Iraqis fired upon them first.

One sure-fire way to get the Iraqis to start shooting, Horn recalled, was to buzz a heavily defended area north of the city of Mosul. "F-16 guys would pop flares over Saddam Dam, which makes a big smoke trail, and the Iraqis would open up," said Horn, who has left the Air Force and now flies for American Airlines.

"That's not my style," DuLaney said in his office just a few steps from the runway at Incirlik. Under his command, he added, there has been a "big de-emphasis on ordnance."

Air Force Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, the top U.S. commander in Europe, codified the change this month in Operations Order No. 2, only the second general order governing the campaign. "We're not looking for a fight," Ralston said. "But we will do everything in our power to protect our air crews."

The change has produced some grumbling among pilots who miss the more aggressive posture. DuLaney said they lack "a complete understanding of our mission," which he argued is a success as long as it deters Iraq from crushing the rebellious Kurds in the North. "Every day we're here is a day that Saddam's forces can't attack," he said.

For more than a year, the Air Force has declined to release information about the number or type of missiles and bombs it unleashes on Iraq. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said the clampdown protects pilots. But the pilots, along with others here, say it has more to do with the sensitivities of U.S. allies and the message the Air Force wants to emphasize. "If all you do is talk about the number of bombs you've dropped, then people think that's your mission," DuLaney said.

DuLaney, a soft-spoken Texan, also said changes have been made to reduce the chance of repeating a mistake that killed many Iraqi civilians on May 12, 1999. In that incident, an F-15E launched a 3,000-pound bomb into a shepherd's camp after intelligence analysts--perhaps stretched by the Kosovo air campaign going on at the same time--looked at blurry satellite imagery and misidentified a metal tank that was used for watering sheep. They thought it was a surface-to-air missile launcher.

The mistake was compounded when F-16 pilots, believing the surrounding tents to be camouflaged military facilities, swept the area with their guns. Iraq says the attack killed 19 people and wounded 46 others. Villagers told a visiting Washington Post reporter in June that relatives ran to the site after the first explosion, only to fall victim to the strafing.

"We put some things in place that will eliminate those kinds of errors," DuLaney said, without elaborating. "I seriously doubt whether we've hurt any civilians since I've been up here."

The dilemma, he added, is that most antiaircraft weaponry in northern Iraq has been placed next to mosques or populated areas. Last year, the Air Force tried to hit some of those emplacements with bombs filled with cement, not explosives, to soften the impact. DuLaney said that tactic has been abandoned because a bomb could still go awry and kill civilians or damage a mosque, which he said would play into the hands of Hussein.

"If I'm going to err, I'm going to err on the side of right," he said.

'They Morph Into Warriors'

One reason the Air Force has been able to sustain the operation for a decade is that many personnel come from the National Guard and Reserves, which make up 20 percent to 40 percent of U.S. air crews. (There are 1,176 Americans assigned to the operation, plus 162 British service members operating Jaguar reconnaissance aircraft. The Turkish military provides some ground staff.)

"We got Alabama in here now," said Col. Maurice H. Forsyth, commander of the air component of the operation. "Terre Haute's coming out in four days."

Surprisingly, there is general agreement that the Guard and Reserves have better pilots than the regular Air Force, which may be one reason the United States has not lost a pilot or plane despite flying about 250,000 sorties over Iraq since 1991.

Reservists sometimes are denigrated by active-duty troops as weekend warriors. But here, the Guard and Reserve pilots are the seasoned fighter jocks who lord it over the green, active-duty pilots. "The majority of them [on active duty] are what we call punks," Yosten said.

Watt, commander of the active-duty 522nd Fighter Squadron, said that of his 12 pilots now at Incirlik, nine have been flying the F-16 for less than two years. He uses the mission to help season these newcomers. "I tell them to check out the triple A [antiaircraft artillery], see the muzzle flashes and the airbursts," he said. "It's good for them to see it, get that bile in the back of your throat."

Contrast that with Col. Scott "Zapper" Mayes of the Alabama Air National Guard, who was dodging antiaircraft fire over Hanoi before most of the active-duty pilots were born. The pilots under his command have an average of 2,000 hours flying F-16s, compared with 100 for some of the active-duty pilots.

As commander of the fighter wing closest to the Atlanta airport, a major airline hub, Mayes has a waiting list to get into his unit. When commercial fliers come to Incirlik, he said, "They morph into warriors."

Still, some are dismayed by what they have seen. Horn said that on more than one occasion he and his comrades received a radio message that "there was a TSM inbound"--that is, a "Turkish Special Mission" heading into Iraq. Following standard orders, the Americans turned their planes around and flew back to Turkey.

"You'd see Turkish F-14s and F-16s inbound, loaded to the gills with munitions," he said. "Then they'd come out half an hour later with their munitions expended."

When the Americans flew back into Iraqi airspace, he recalled, they would see "burning villages, lots of smoke and fire."

The Turkish and U.S. militaries last year established separate air lanes so that U.S. aircraft patrolling the no-fly zone would not cross paths with Turkish planes bombing alleged Kurdish terrorist bases. Turkey has been fighting for years against the PKK, a Kurdish group seeking an independent homeland in the border region between Iraq, Iran and Turkey.

Another source of friction has been the U.S. refusal to sell Turkey a particular precision-guided missile coveted by the Turkish military. As a result, since spring, Turkey has refused permission for the U.S. military to bring that weapon to Incirlik for use against Iraq, officials said.

DuLaney insisted that since he took command a year ago, "the Turks have been wonderful" and have not blocked any U.S. flights. "Relationships are better than in '99," he said.

Asked about interruptions of the operation, Baki Ilkin, Turkey's ambassador to Washington, said, "I don't know every detail about the operations. . . . I know that from time to time, the operations are suspended for one reason or another."

'All the Comforts of Home'

When the day's mission is over, the pilots give the planes back to the mechanics, turn in their 9mm pistols and attend a debriefing.

Most pilots prefer flying the southern no-fly zone, which is three times as large as the northern one, and so makes aircraft movements lesspredictable to Iraqi gunners. But the ground crews prefer it here, where the weather is cooler and where, unlike in Saudi Arabia, they are frequently allowed off base.

When they go off duty, some pilots work out in the base's gym. Others while away the evenings drinking what one happily called "mega-gallons of beer." On a recent evening in the "tent city" where most troops passing through here live, maintenance crew chiefs from the Alabama Air National Guard were barbecuing chicken and ribs. "We're doing covered dish tonight," said Tech. Sgt. Dave Shows.

About 1,200 people live in the tent city, something of a misnomer because the tents are now semi-permanent, air-conditioned structures with four or five bedrooms, a small living room with a TV and VCR, and a kitchenette. "We pretty much have all the comforts of home," said Master Sgt. Sidney Burk, a maintenance specialist with the 71st Fighter Squadron.

After dinner, many head to a "morale tent" to use 15 computer terminals dedicated to their e-mail needs. About half the troops on temporary duty use the terminals every day. The biggest complaint they have, said Marine Lt. Col. Rick Shamburger, commanding officer of a Marine Reserve unit from Stewart, N.Y., is that "you have to wait sometimes five or 10 minutes to go online."

The morale tent also lends out video and digital cameras. Some troops use them to tape themselves reading bedtime stories, which they send home to their kids.

At the end of the tent is a travel desk that offers weekend getaways. One of the most popular is the seven-hour run to the topless beach at Alanya, on the Mediterranean. One tent over, Lt. Col. C.B. Goodwin, the Northern Watch chaplain, offers a competing excursion to Antakya, also known as Antioch, where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians. It is closer but apparently less popular than the topless beach.

Many of the troops get off base one or two nights a week, with most eading for the street they call "the Alley," just outside the gates. The shops there overflow with Persian carpets, ornate brassware and leather coats--items aimed at a mature, prosperous, married force. "My wife keeps sending over orders," sighed "Bob," a combat search and rescue helicopter pilot on his third Northern Watch tour.

The walls at Enver & Sedat's, a jewelry shop dripping with gold chains, are covered with photos and certificates of appreciation from the 180th Fighter Wing of the Ohio Air National Guard, the Virginia Air National Guard, even the Maryland State Police. Down the street, Angel's Clothing shop sells a T-shirt that lists the "Top 10 Reasons You Know It Is Time to Leave Turkey," which mainly involve lusting for one's spouse.

What is missing, for the most part, are the girlie bars and discos that surrounded foreign bases in the Vietnam era. To be sure, there is one sign promising a Saturday night performance by "Eight Russia Strip Girls." But most of the troops out here on short rotations seem more intent on picking up Christmas presents.

-------- italy

New York Times
October 25, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/world/25BRIE.html

ITALY: REDUCING THE MILITARY Seeking to reduce the Italian military, the Senate approved a law abolishing obligatory military service. The changes will go into effect over seven years, gradually bringing down the number of Italian service men and women from 270,000 to 190,000. Men born in 1985 will be the last to be drafted. Alessandra Stanley (NYT)

-------- korea

In the Land of Kim Jong Il

New York Times
October 25, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/opinion/25WED2.html

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's visit to North Korea this week illustrated the opportunities and risks of defrosting relations with the world's last Stalinist state. Dr. Albright was given a gracious reception and spent six hours in constructive talks with Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader. But she and the reporters accompanying her saw a highly regimented society organized around a slavish personality cult even as it struggles with severe shortages of food, electricity and most of the basic conveniences of modern life.

Coaxing North Korea out of its long international isolation and limiting its development of advanced weapons are important American goals. The Clinton administration has handled North Korea well, but diplomacy has now reached a critical stage as President Clinton weighs whether to visit Pyongyang in the waning days of his presidency.

Dr. Albright reports "important progress" toward agreement on restraining the North's development, testing and export of longer-range missiles. Firm agreements on these and other subjects, like a North Korean commitment to distance itself from international terrorism and return abducted Japanese nationals, could justify a Clinton trip. But Mr. Clinton should go only if concrete results are assured in advance.

North Korea has good reasons for cultivating improved relations with Washington. If Pyongyang wins removal from America's list of countries supporting terrorism, it will become eligible for badly needed loans from the World Bank and other international institutions. North Korea also wants the prestige of establishing formal diplomatic ties with the United States.

For the past six years North Korea has frozen its nuclear weapons development program in exchange for American and international help in constructing two civilian power reactors. For more than a year the North has abided by an agreement to suspend long-range missile testing. More recently it offered to abandon its missile development effort in exchange for foreign help in launching space satellites. Specialists from both countries will soon meet to discuss specific steps North Korea can take to limit its missile program.

The North also enhanced its credibility when Kim Jong Il met with South Korea's president, Kim Dae Jung, in June, although it has lagged in following up with further gestures of reconciliation. Dealing with North Korea remains full of uncertainties, as Dr. Albright discovered when Kim Jong Il brought her to an elaborate tribute to the achievements and military strength of North Korean Communism. That is not the kind of spectacle Mr. Clinton should attend if he travels to Pyongyang.

-------- russia

Russian Officials' Plane Crashes

October 25, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Georgia-Crash.html

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) -- A Russian Defense Ministry plane with at least 75 passengers and crew slammed into a mountain while trying to land in bad weather Wednesday evening in Georgia. Officials said everyone on board was feared dead.

A search and rescue team sent to the crash site about 15 miles east of the city of Batumi found pieces of the plane and scorched earth, Georgia's Emergency Situations Department said. Russia's RTR television reported that bodies had been found, and showed footage of flaming pieces of wreckage lit by rescue workers' floodlights.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known.

The plane veered off course on approach in ``difficult weather conditions,'' said Alexander Silagadze, head of the civil aviation agency Sakaeronavigatsiya.

It was unclear exactly how many people were on board. Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry said the plane carried 82 people -- 11 crew members and 71 passengers -- but Russian military officials said there were 11 crew members and 64 passengers, the Interfax news agency reported.

Russian military officials said the plane, an Il-18 transport, was at an altitude of 5,300 feet when communications with it were lost, Interfax reported. Both military and civilian personnel were aboard, the agency said.

Interfax said passengers aboard the plane included servicemen and their wives and children returning from vacation. Although Russia and Georgia became independent countries when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Russian still maintains troops in Georgia.

A spokesman for the Georgian emergency department said on condition of anonymity that it was unlikely anyone survived.

The plane was flying from the Chkalovsky military airfield outside of Moscow to Batumi, home to a Russian military base. It was a mail plane that made twice-monthly flights along the route, military officials said.

The Russian emergencies ministry was sending a plane carrying a search and rescue team, and an investigation committee had been formed.

Russia is in the process of removing its troops and equipment from two bases in Georgia and is negotiating withdrawal from two more. Equipment from the bases is being shipped through Batumi.

The Il-18 is a Russian-made, four-engine turboprop. In 1997, an Il-18 owned by a private Russian carrier crashed on a charter flight while trying to take off in Johannesburg, South Africa. All five people survived, and the reason for the crash was not determined.

The Il-18 model, which can seat up to 100, first flew in 1957, and production ceased in 1970. The plane was used as a submarine hunter and airborne command post by the Russian military and as a passenger plane by the Soviet national airline Aeroflot.

---

Russian military plane crashes

USA Today
10/25/00- Updated 07:04 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/nwswed09.htm

BILISI, Georgia (AP) - A Russian Defense Ministry plane slammed into a mountain while trying to land in bad weather Wednesday evening in Georgia. Officials said all 75 people on board were feared dead.

A search and rescue team sent to the crash site about 15 miles east of the city of Batumi found pieces of the plane and scorched earth, Georgia's Emergency Situations Department said. Russia's RTR television reported that bodies had been found, and showed footage of flaming pieces of wreckage lit by rescue workers' floodlights.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known.

The plane veered off course on approach in ''difficult weather conditions,'' said Alexander Silagadze, head of the civil aviation agency Sakaeronavigatsiya.

Russian military officials said the plane, an Il-18 transport with 64 passengers and a crew of 11, was at an altitude of 5,300 feet near Mount Tirava when communications with it were lost, the Interfax news agency reported. Both military and civilian personnel were aboard, Interfax said.

Mount Tirava means ''Weeping Mountain'' in Georgian, RTR said.

Interfax said passengers aboard the plane included servicemen and their wives and children returning from vacation. Although Russia and Georgia became independent countries when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Russian still maintains troops in Georgia.

A spokesman for the Georgian emergency department said on condition of anonymity that it was unlikely anyone survived.

The plane was flying from the Chkalovsky military airfield outside of Moscow to Batumi, home to a Russian military base. It was a mail plane that made twice-monthly flights along the route, military officials said.

The Russian emergencies ministry was sending a plane carrying a search and rescue team, and an investigation committee had been formed.

Russia is in the process of removing its troops and equipment from two bases in Georgia and is negotiating withdrawal from two more. Equipment from the bases is being shipped through Batumi.

The Il-18 is a Russian-made, four-engine turboprop. In 1997, an Il-18 owned by a private Russian carrier crashed on a charter flight while trying to take off in Johannesburg, South Africa. All five people survived, and the reason for the crash was not determined.

The Il-18 model, which can seat up to 100, first flew in 1957, and production ceased in 1970. The plane was used as a submarine hunter and airborne command post by the Russian military and as a passenger plane by the Soviet national airline Aeroflot.

-------- space

Discovery Touches Down in California Desert

New York Times
October 25, 2000
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/science/25SHUTTLE.html

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- Space shuttle Discovery and its seven astronauts landed in California's Mojave Desert on Tuesday after dangerously high wind prevented a touchdown in Florida for the third day in a row.

The shuttle swooped through a clear sky and touched down on the runway at Edwards Air Force Base about 2 p.m. PDT, ending a 13-day flight during which the astronauts got the international space station ready for the arrival of its first full-time residents next week.

It was the 100th space shuttle flight for NASA and the first time in 4 1/2 years that a shuttle was detoured to California. The shuttle zoomed across the Pacific and right over Los Angeles, then northward into Edwards on the final approach.

``Welcome back to Earth after a super successful mission,'' Mission Control said after Discovery rolled to a safe stop.

``Great to be back,'' replied commander Brian Duffy.

Gusts of close to 30 mph forced NASA to pass up a landing attempt at Cape Canaveral, Fla., earlier in the day. The wind also kept the shuttle from landing in Florida on Sunday and Monday, while rain clouds at Edwards on Monday scuttled landing plans there.

To the astronauts' relief, the weather was ideal at Edwards on Tuesday.

``After a rough couple days of weather, Edwards is giving you the best it has to offer,'' Mission Control said.

During their flight, Duffy and his crew installed two new segments on the outside of the space station and also spruced up the inside for the three men who will be moving in for four months. They conducted four spacewalks on four consecutive days, an exceptional -- and exhausting -- amount of work.

The astronauts toiled from morning to night, from the time they rocketed into orbit on Oct. 11 until their departure from the space station on Friday. A broken antenna and a short circuit made their work even more difficult.

Now the spotlight shifts to Russia and Kazakstan.

Astronaut Bill Shepherd and two cosmonauts are scheduled to lift off aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket from Kazakstan on Oct. 31. They will arrive at the 240-mile-high space station two days later.

The next shuttle flight is a trip to the space station by Endeavour in early December, to carry up giant solar panels. Discovery, meanwhile, is supposed to return to the space station in February, to pick up Shepherd and his crew and drop off their replacements.

That retrieval mission may be delayed, however, because of the landing in California. The ferry trip to Florida takes about one week and costs nearly $1 million.

Space shuttles have landed 45 times before at Edwards. Until the early 1990s, it served as NASA's main touchdown site.

-------- turkey

New York Times
October 25, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/world/25BRIE.html

TURKEY: PLEA ON GREEK TIES Foreign Minister Ismail Cem said a dispute with Greece over military boundaries in the Aegean Sea should not derail yearlong efforts to bring the two countries closer together. Greece withdrew its forces from joint NATO maneuvers on Sunday after its military jets were refused permission to fly over two disputed Aegean islands. Turkey had objected, claiming the flights violated airspace designated as demilitarized. Douglas Frantz (NYT)

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

Dutch Figure Seen as Choice for U.N. Post With Refugees

New York Times
October 25, 2000
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/world/25REFU.html

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 24 - A former prime minister of the Netherlands, Ruud Lubbers, will be nominated to be United Nations high commissioner for refugees by Secretary General Kofi Annan, Dutch government officials said today.

Mr. Lubbers, who was an unsuccessful candidate for NATO secretary general and for president of the European Commission in recent years, would be a surprise choice for the agency, which assists 30 million refugees and people displaced within their own countries. His name did not figure in a list of candidates circulating here for several months.

The high commissioner for refugees, who is based in Geneva and is appointed to five-year terms, holds one of the most important jobs in the United Nations. The role of the commissioner's large agency, with a budget of nearly $1 billion and staff of about 5,000 working in more than 120 countries, has grown in importance during the last decade of civil war, as millions of people have been driven from their homes in Africa, Europe and Asia.

Mr. Lubbers would replace Sadako Ogata, a Japanese academic and diplomat whose term is ending. She has held the job for nearly a decade.

The secretary general's nominee must be approved by the 189-member General Assembly.

At the United Nations, Mr. Annan's spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said that an appointment would be announced on Wednesday, but he declined to identify the nominee. However officials here and in The Hague said that Mr. Lubbers had been asked to come to New York as soon as possible.

"In all likelihood, the Netherlands will lay claim to the post," the Dutch prime minister, Wim Kok, said on Dutch television today.

The appointment of Mr. Lubbers, 61, prime minister of the Netherlands from 1982 to 1994, would add another high-level political leader to Mr. Annan's team of administrators. In 1997, the secretary general named Mary Robinson, a former president of Ireland, as high commissioner for human rights. Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former Norwegian prime minister and public health expert, was elected director general of the World Health Organization in 1998 by that body's board.

---

Jordan plans pullout from Sierra Leone

Washington Times
October 25, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://208.246.212.80/world/worldscene-200010252292.htm

NEW YORK - Jordan has said it intends to withdraw its 1,800-strong contingent from the U.N. peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone - the second setback in a month for the world body's peace mission there.

Jordan officially informed Secretary-General Kofi Annan of its decision in a letter, U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said yesterday.

Jordan had been the third-largest contributor to the 13,000-strong force. It had 1,753 troops and other staff on the ground and had been considered one of the better-prepared and equipped battalions.

Last month, India announced it was withdrawing its 3,059-strong contingent - the second-largest after Nigeria - but said it would pull out the troops in phases to avoid a security vacuum as the United Nations tried to find replacements.

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

Top Pentagon Gulf Official Resigned

New York Times
October 25, 2000 Filed at 12:29 p.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-US-Forces-Gulf.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon's top intelligence expert on terrorist threats in the Persian Gulf region resigned the day after the USS Cole was attacked in Yemen, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Wednesday.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the official quit in protest of what he believed was an unjustified lack of attention by his Pentagon superiors to terrorist threat warnings he had provided before the Oct. 12 attack on the warship.

The actual threat warnings this official provided, and the official's name, have not been made public.

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the committee, said the panel decided not to release a letter the unidentified Defense Intelligence Agency official provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday. Roberts said the official was interviewed for six hours by the Intelligence Committee's staff.

``What he felt is that his assessment was not given that proper level of consideration by his superiors and, as such, was not incorporated in'' the final intelligence reports provided to military commanders in the Gulf, Warner told reporters after the hearing.

Roberts said the official resigned from the DIA's Office of Counterterrorism Analysis on Oct. 13. He said the official's resignation letter refers to an intelligence assessment in June that apparently predicted a terrorist attack in the Gulf.

``He indicates his analysis could have played a critical role in DIA's ability to predict and warn of a potential terrorist attack against U.S. interests, and goes further to say he is very troubled by the many indicators contained in the analysis that suggests two or three other major acts of terrorism could potentially occur in the coming weeks or months,'' Roberts said.

Roberts said he wanted to know whether the official's reference to a potential for additional acts of terrorism in coming weeks played a role in the decision last weekend to put U.S. forces in Bahrain and Qatar on high alert.

U.S. military officials have said there were no intelligence warnings of specific terrorist threats against American targets in Yemen at the time of the attack on the Cole, which killed 17 sailors and injured 39.

In opening remarks to Wednesday's Armed Services Committee hearing, the commander of U.S. forces in the Gulf said the attack on the Cole will not trigger an American military retreat from the region even though troops remain at risk to terrorism.

``The U.S. Central Command will not back away from this mission,'' Army Gen. Tommy Franks, commander in chief of the central command, told the committee. But Franks, who is responsible for all U.S. military personnel in the Gulf, said there is no escaping terrorist threats in that area.

``We will never reduce the risk to our people to zero, but we will reduce the risk to our people in every way we can,'' he said in an opening statement.

Warner said the committee would hear details of the FBI's investigation into the Oct. 12 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen later Wednesday. Warner said the testimony from Adm. Vern Clark, chief of naval operations, would be closed to the public out of concern for safety of U.S. troops in the Mideast.

The attack on the Cole was believed to be the work of terrorists and has raised questions about the vulnerability of U.S. forces elsewhere in the region.

The Pentagon said Tuesday that in response to specific terrorist threats against U.S. forces in Bahrain and Qatar, troops based there have been put on the highest possible state of alert. The Pentagon would not describe the nature of the threats and said it had not determined whether they were credible.

``We've got fairly specific information, but the credibility is unknown,'' Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said. ``You're not quite sure what to make of it, so you do the cautious course of action and go up to the higher level'' of alert.

The USS Cole attack also figured in the decision to raise the alert level for troops in Bahrain and Qatar, Quigley said. U.S. officials have not yet pinpointed the culprit.

The threat condition in Bahrain and Qatar was raised to ``Delta,'' the highest possible level, this past weekend, he said.

Immediately after the Cole attack, all 23 ships in the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet were sent out of port to reduce their vulnerability to terrorist attack. Quigley said Tuesday that all ships -- including the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, two cruisers, five destroyers, two frigates, one attack submarine, two mine hunters and various other assault and support ships -- will remain at sea ``for the foreseeable future.''

Some of the 5th Fleet ships are in or near Aden to support the Cole, which sustained a huge hole in its hull.

A destroyer, the USS Paul Hamilton, is escorting a Norwegian-owned heavy-lift ship, the Blue Marlin, as it sails from Dubai to Aden. The Blue Marlin is due in Aden on Saturday and will immediately begin preparing to take on board the 505-foot Cole for its return to the United States, Quigley said Tuesday.

The two senior retired U.S. military officers chosen to head a Pentagon investigation of the security practices of the Cole -- Adm. Harold Gehman Jr. and Army Gen. William Crouch -- are making plans to travel to Aden. Quigley said they met Monday at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary William Cohen, who told them their main goal is to improve the military's ability to protect itself against terrorist attack.

Quigley said the decision to raise alert levels at Bahrain and Qatar was based on intelligence reports of ``multiple threats'' from ``multiple sources.'' He said the threats were specific, but the credibility of the sources was unknown.

---

Lessons From the Cole

New York Times
October 25, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/opinion/L25COL.html

To the Editor:

An Oct. 18 letter writer states, "There is simply no excuse for the security lapse in the bombing of the United States destroyer Cole."

It is important to remember that security, especially for military personnel overseas, is not a secondary job. It is a dangerous mistake to reason, as many obviously did, that because there had not been a major terrorist attack for several months, one would not happen to them.

The Defense Department could use the lessons learned in the Cole attack (small groups of terrorists using powerful weapons) to test security periodically at both domestic and international military installations to prevent a repeat of this tragedy.

ALEXANDER VASSAR San Luis Obispo, Calif., Oct. 18, 2000

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The High-Tech Cole Was Highly Vulnerable

Los Angeles Times
Wednesday, October 25, 2000
By JAMES R. HOLMES
http://www.latimes.com/news/comment/20001025/t000101995.html

While American and Yemeni investigators appear to be closing in on the identities of the two suicide bombers responsible for the apparent terrorist attack against the U.S. destroyer Cole, at least one important question has not been addressed: Why was such a state-of-the-art, sophisticated warship so vulnerable? How could a couple of men in a 20-foot boat have approached a guided missile destroyer--505 feet long and 8,600 tons--and inflicted so much damage?

Thus far, news reports have focused on the Cole's price tag and advanced technology--a $1-billion, high-tech warship that boasts the gee-whiz Aegis combat system and was the shotgun of the fleet. But the damage sustained by the Cole was less about bells-and-whistles technology than about its structural strength--its intrinsic ability to sustain damage and remain operational.

Most news stories took only passing note of the thickness of the ship's armored hull--a key determinant of its "survivability," in Navy parlance. Indeed, the media have conveyed the false impression that only an exceptionally well-planned attack featuring advanced munitions could inflict a gaping 40-foot-by-45-foot breach in its hull.

In truth, American warships since World War II have been so lightly constructed that puncturing their sides is a fairly simple matter.

An assailant has only to get close enough.

Battleships such as the Missouri, best known for hosting the Japanese surrender ceremony in 1945, represent the popular image of Navy surface warships. These floating citadels were built to withstand the one-ton (or greater) explosive projectiles meted out by enemy battleships and would have been impervious to an attack such as that carried out in Aden. As an example, both the Missouri and Wisconsin, which last saw action in the Gulf War, featured armored belts as thick as 17 inches at the waterline.

After World War II, however, the new military threat to the United States was no longer from enemy battleships, but rather from aircraft and anti-ship missiles deployed by the Soviet Union. This impelled naval architects to rely on high-tech air defenses to defeat enemy aircraft and anti-ship cruise missiles.

Newer warships, particularly those built from the 1960s on, would shoot down attacking aircraft and missiles before they could approach the fleet--or so U.S. military planners thought--and thus could be built without the luxury of armor plating. Lighter construction also restrained the escalating cost of warships and permitted greater fuel economy.

After reactivation during the Reagan defense buildup of the 1980s, the battleships were retired in the early 1990s, giving way to more technologically advanced ships. Aegis destroyers like the Cole are equipped with deadly anti-air missiles and a radar suite that far outstrips the capabilities of the battleships.

But these new warships, while in most respects more powerful than the Missouri and Wisconsin, lack the stout, low-tech armored sides that protected key areas of the battleships. The obsession with high-intensity naval warfare has left ships such as the Aegis destroyers, designed for battle on the open seas, vulnerable to low-end, unconventional threats such as terrorist bombings.

In 1987, the inadvertent Iraqi missile strike on the frigate Stark, in which the missile's rocket booster actually ignited the flimsy aluminum superstructure and multiplied the damage, belied ship designers' misguided faith in the invincibility of missile-armed warships. The Stark debacle prodded the Navy to insist on more rugged construction for the Aegis destroyers, then on the drawing board.

In fact, Aegis destroyers such as the Cole are the Navy's premier surface warships and are the first ships since the 1950s built entirely of steel. Innovations such as the use of Kevlar (the lightweight substance used in bulletproof vests) to shield vital combat and propulsion systems represent a welcome improvement over surface ships built in recent decades.

Still, the Cole's armored hull is a paltry half-inch thick, clearly inadequate to withstand any significant degree of punishment. The Navy continues to rely predominantly on advanced technology to offset threats and modern U.S. warships are ill-suited to resist even unsophisticated terrorist attacks.

As American investigators examine the wreckage and search out the culprits in the Cole attack, they should not automatically assume that the likes of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein's Iraq or a lavishly equipped, state-sponsored militant group such as Hezbollah are responsible.

Any number of splinter groups with access to explosives, a working knowledge of American naval procedures, a grudge against the United States and patience could have carried out the bombing.

That covers a lot of ground.

James R. Holmes Is a Doctoral Candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. During the Gulf War, he Served as a Gunnery Officer on the Battleship Wisconsin

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No Special Alert for Cole Before Bombing

New York Times
October 25, 2000
By JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/world/25SHIP.html

ADEN, Yemen, Oct. 24 - American naval officials said today that the destroyer Cole, at the moment of the bombing that killed 17 sailors, was at a medium-level alert, no different from that routinely in force in the Persian Gulf, despite the violence in Israel and a general warning of a possible terrorist attack on an American warship.

The alert level meant there were only a handful of sailors with rifles mounting a watch on deck as the Cole entered Aden harbor, the officials said. There were no sailors manning the ship's machine guns or cannons, and no American or Yemeni boats guarding the waters around the billion-dollar ship as a flotilla of service boats moved in to assist with mooring and refueling.

The Navy's account, given at a briefing here today, was the most detailed so far of the security arrangements in effect on Oct. 12 when two men in a small fiberglass boat slid alongside the Cole and detonated a cargo of high explosives that blew a 40-by-40-foot hole in the hull.

American officials have said the Federal Bureau of Investigation has a "working theory" that the attack was carried out by Islamic militants who have repeatedly attacked American targets as part of a holy war against the United States, possibly inspired or directed by Osama bin Laden, an exiled Saudi financier who tops the F.B.I.'s most-wanted list.

In a fresh revelation today, Yemeni security officials confirmed that they had found a house overlooking the Aden harbor from which the conspirators appeared to have monitored previous Navy ships entering Aden for refueling and possibly watched and directed the attack.

The Yemenis said investigators had found a pair of binoculars in the house, and that with these, conspirators would have been able to keep a moment-by-moment watch on the area where the Cole was moored.

The officials said the house, at least the fifth one in the Aden area now identified by investigators as having been used in the attack, was empty when it was raided last weekend. F.B.I. experts are examining it, using fingerprinting, DNA tests and other evidence-gathering techniques.

The latest information appeared likely to reinforce the F.B.I.'s conclusion that the attack involved more than the two suicide bombers, that they spent weeks and possibly months preparing the attack, and that they were amply financed and technically sophisticated.

The details disclosed today about the alert level on the Cole added significantly to what the Navy had previously disclosed. The risk status in effect, known as Bravo, is the second lowest on an ascending scale; the lowest level is Alpha, and the scale ascends through Bravo, Charlie and Delta.

From the outset, Navy officials had said that the Cole was at Bravo level. But the officer commanding the Navy-led force assisting the investigation, Rear Adm. Mark Fitzgerald, had first described this as the second-highest risk status, instead of the second lowest.

Because Admiral Fitzgerald made this observation while saying any American ship in the region knew it was operating in "a dangerous area," this seems to have been an inadvertent slip made under the pressure of dealing with the attack's aftermath.

Today Cmdr. Hal Pittman, a spokesman for the Fifth Fleet, which directs operations in the Persian Gulf area, attempted to place the facts surrounding the Cole attack in a wider perspective, rather than revising the earlier version.

From the facts given by Commander Pittman and what is now suspected about how the attack was carried out, it is still not clear that a higher alert level would have foiled the attack. Indeed, a senior Pentagon official said the little skiff would not have been perceived as a threat. In any alert status of Bravo or higher, the Cole's guards would have been authorized to open fire if it was clear an attack was under way.

The Pentagon official said the Cole's captain reported that the crew believed the skiff was part of the flotilla of harbor boats helping the destroyer moor.

"In order to exercise deadly force, you have to perceive a deadly threat," the official said. "The questions of whether they were right not to have perceived it as a threat will all be part of the investigation."

Today the Cole, listing and low in the water, was on a Delta alert, and looking at it from shore suggested that this made it much less vulnerable than when it was attacked.

Under awnings erected on the bow and tern, crew members were in position near machine guns and cannons, and a large inflatable picket boat, about 60 feet long and carrying two machine guns of its own, patrolled with about 15 sailors in helmets and flak jackets, back and forth along the Cole's port flank about 300 yards of the ship.

Delta alerts are currently in effect for American troops and officials in Bahrain and Qatar, in the Persian Gulf, because of threats of another attack, according to Adm. Craig Quigley, a Pentagon spokesman.

Navy officials have said they did not cancel the Cole's refueling stop in Aden because there had been no "credible and specific" threat to the vessel of the kind necessary to enforce a Delta alert. The ship's fuel tanks were still 50 percent full.

The Navy has also played down the significance of two stark warnings that military and intelligence officials heard before the attack here.

The first, on Sept. 22, came in a videotape apparently made by Mr. bin Laden in his hideout in Afghanistan and delivered to Al Jazera Television in Qatar, a satellite station that Mr. bin Laden has chosen before as a conduit.

On the tape Mr. bin Laden, wearing a dagger in his belt in a tribal tradition widely favored in Yemen, where his family originated, vowed to free an Egyptian Islamic leader, Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, who was jailed for life after being convicted in New York of ordering the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Mr. bin Laden, accompanied by two Egyptian militants who are thought to be among his closest aides and by Assad Allah, Sheik Rahman's son, vowed new attacks on the United States to achieve the sheik's release.

"Enough of words!" he said. "It is time to take action against this iniquitous and faithless force that has spread troops through Egypt, Yemen and Saudi Arabia." Assad Allah could be heard saying "Forward to shed blood!" three times.

Officials in Washington have said another warning, of an impending Islamic attack on an American warship, was also received in the weeks before the Cole attack, but that risk levels were not raised because the warning did not say what kind of ship would be hit, where or when.

With more than 300 ships around the globe, Navy officials here have said, this was too unspecific to have served as a basis for changing threat levels in the Persian Gulf area, despite the upsurge of passion in the Arab world after the violent clashes in Israel and the Palestinian lands.

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Local helped USS Cole attackers

USA Today
10/25/00- Updated 06:28 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/navy1.htm

ADEN, Yemen (AP) - At least one local man helped the attackers who bombed the USS Cole, sources close to the investigation said Wednesday. The Yemeni sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the man, a carpenter, confessed Tuesday that he had helped two men modify a small boat to carry explosives and then helped them load the explosives into the boat.

President Clinton calls on Americans to honor those who lost their lives in the attack

It was not immediately clear if the man knew what the two planned to do with the bomb-laden boat or if he had been charged in the Cole bombing. He was not named.

Officials believe two suicide bombers maneuvered a small boat next to the Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden and detonated it on Oct. 12, killing 17 U.S. sailors and injuring 39.

The man had rented the men the Aden house they used to work on the boat, the sources said. They said he had been detained since a day after the bombing, but only provided details of his involvement on Tuesday.

The two men have not been seen since shortly before the bombing and their identities and nationality were unknown.

Also Wednesday, security officials in Taiz, northwest of Aden, said they had detained a woman who confessed the men gave her money to buy a car in her name that they used to haul their boat to shore. The women was identified only as a Somali. No other details were immediately available.

Yemeni investigators have increasingly turned their attention to the network the bombers used to plan and carry out the attack.

If terrorism is proved, the Cole bombing would be the deadliest terrorist attack on the U.S. military since 19 Air Force personnel died in a 1996 truck-bomb explosion in Saudi Arabia.

A U.S. official, meanwhile, slightly altered the account of conditions at the time of the bombing.

A senior U.S. official said on condition of anonymity Wednesday that the Cole was in the third-highest state of alert when it entered the port Oct. 12. The Navy had earlier said the Cole and its crew were at the second-highest level.

Ships normally enter Aden at the third-highest level, known as bravo, and there was apparently no reason to suspect Oct. 12 would be out of the ordinary. At bravo, a number of rifle-toting sailors would have been keeping a watchful eye on the area from stations on the ship's deck. At the next highest level, a security boat might have accompanied the Cole, among other measures.

The U.S. Navy five days ago had altered its account of events leading to the bombing, saying earlier statements were based on initial reports from the ship that were either wrong or were misunderstood by Pentagon officials.

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Analyst quits, says threat reports unheeded

USA Today
10/25/00- Updated 12:45 PM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncswed04.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon's top intelligence expert on terrorist threats in the Persian Gulf region resigned the day after the USS Cole was attacked in Yemen, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Wednesday.

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the official quit in protest of what he believed was an unjustified lack of attention to terrorist threat warnings he had provided before the Oct. 12 attack on the warship.

The actual threat warnings this official provided have not been made public.

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the committee, said the panel decided not to release a letter the unnamed Defense Intelligence Agency official provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Monday. Roberts said the official was interviewed for six hours by the Intelligence Committee's staff.

''What he felt is that his assessment was not given that proper level of consideration by his superiors and, as such, was not incorporated in'' the final intelligence reports provided to military commanders in the Gulf, Warner told reporters after the committee's hearing.

Roberts said the official resigned Oct. 13 and provided a copy of his resignation letter to the Intelligence Committee on Monday.

U.S. military officials have said there were no intelligence warnings of specific terrorist threats against American targets in Yemen at the time of the attack on the Cole, which killed 17 sailors and injured 39.

In opening remarks to Wednesday's Armed Services Committee hearing, the commander of U.S. forces in the Gulf said the attack on the Cole will not trigger an American military retreat from the region even though troops remain at risk to terrorism.

''The U.S. Central Command will not back away from this mission,'' Army Gen. Tommy Franks, commander in chief of the central command, told the committee. But Franks, who is responsible for all U.S. military personnel in the Gulf, said there is no escaping terrorist threats in that area.

''We will never reduce the risk to our people to zero, but we will reduce the risk to our people in every way we can,'' he said in an opening statement.

Warner said the committee would hear details of the FBI's investigation into the Oct. 12 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen later Wednesday. Warner said the testimony from Adm. Vern Clark, chief of naval operations, would be closed to the public out of concern for safety of U.S. troops in the Mideast.

The attack on the Cole was believed to be the work of terrorists and has raised questions about the vulnerability of U.S. forces elsewhere in the region.

The Pentagon said Tuesday that in response to specific terrorist threats against U.S. forces in Bahrain and Qatar, troops based there have been put on the highest possible state of alert. The Pentagon would not describe the nature of the threats and said it had not determined whether they were credible.

''We've got fairly specific information, but the credibility is unknown,'' Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said. ''You're not quite sure what to make of it, so you do the cautious course of action and go up to the higher level'' of alert.

The USS Cole attack, which also wounded 39 sailors, also figured in the decision to raise the alert level for troops in Bahrain and Qatar, Quigley said. U.S. officials have not yet pinpointed the culprit.

The threat condition in Bahrain and Qatar was raised to ''Delta,'' the highest possible level, this past weekend, he said.

Immediately after the Cole attack, all 23 ships in the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet were sent out of port to reduce their vulnerability to terrorist attack. Quigley said Tuesday that all ships - including the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, two cruisers, five destroyers, two frigates, one attack submarine, two mine hunters and various other assault and support ships - will remain at sea ''for the foreseeable future.''

Some of the 5th Fleet ships are in or near Aden to support the Cole, which sustained a huge hole in its hull.

A destroyer, the USS Paul Hamilton, is escorting a Norwegian-owned heavy-lift ship, the Blue Marlin, as it sails from Dubai to Aden.

The Blue Marlin is due in Aden on Saturday and will immediately begin preparing to take on board the 505-foot Cole for its return to the United States, Quigley said Tuesday.

The two senior retired U.S. military officers chosen to head a Pentagon investigation of the security practices of the Cole - Adm. Harold Gehman Jr. and Army Gen. William Crouch - are making plans to travel to Aden. Quigley said they met Monday at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary William Cohen, who told them their main goal is to improve the military's ability to protect itself against terrorist attack.

Quigley said the decision to raise alert levels at Bahrain and Qatar was based on intelligence reports of ''multiple threats'' from ''multiple sources.'' He said the threats were specific, but the credibility of the sources was unknown.

---

U.S. forces prepare against new threats

USA Today
10/25/00- Updated 11:23 AM ET
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncswed01.htm

WASHINGTON (AP) - American forces in the Persian Gulf region are taking extra precautions against threats of terrorist attack, including keeping all Navy 5th Fleet ships at sea ''for the foreseeable future'' and raising the alert level of U.S. troops in the tiny Gulf states of Bahrain and Qatar.

The commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, whose area of responsibility includes the Gulf, was testifying before Congress on Wednesday about the Oct. 12 bombing of the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen. The attack, believed to be the work of terrorists, has raised questions about the vulnerability of U.S. forces elsewhere in the region.

Gen. Tommy Franks was to be joined at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing by Walter Slocombe, the undersecretary of defense for policy, and Adm. Vern Clark, the chief of naval operations.

The Pentagon said Tuesday that in response to specific terrorist threats against U.S. forces in Bahrain and Qatar, troops based there have been put on the highest possible state of alert. The Pentagon would not describe the nature of the threats and said it had not determined whether they were credible.

''We've got fairly specific information, but the credibility is unknown,'' Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said. ''You're not quite sure what to make of it, so you do the cautious course of action and go up to the higher level'' of alert.

The USS Cole attack, which killed 17 sailors and wounded 39, also figured in the decision to raise the alert level for troops in Bahrain and Qatar, Quigley said. U.S. officials have not yet pinpointed the culprit.

The threat condition in Bahrain and Qatar was raised to ''Delta,'' the highest possible level, this past weekend, he said.

Immediately after the Cole attack, all 23 ships in the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet were sent out of port to reduce their vulnerability to terrorist attack. Quigley said Tuesday that all ships - including the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, two cruisers, five destroyers, two frigates, one attack submarine, two mine hunters and various other assault and support ships - will remain at sea ''for the foreseeable future.''

Some of the 5th Fleet ships are in or near Aden to support the Cole, which sustained a huge hole in its hull.

A destroyer, the USS Paul Hamilton, is escorting a Norwegian-owned heavy-lift ship, the Blue Marlin, as it sails from Dubai to Aden.

The Blue Marlin is due in Aden on Saturday and will immediately begin preparing to take on board the 505-foot Cole for its return to the United States, Quigley said Tuesday.

The two senior retired U.S. military officers chosen to head a Pentagon investigation of the security practices of the Cole - Adm. Harold Gehman Jr. and Army Gen. William Crouch - are making plans to travel to Aden. Quigley said they met Monday at the Pentagon with Defense Secretary William Cohen, who told them their main goal is to improve the military's ability to protect itself against terrorist attack.

Quigley said the decision to raise alert levels at Bahrain and Qatar was based on intelligence reports of ''multiple threats'' from ''multiple sources.'' He said the threats were specific, but the credibility of the sources was unknown.

There are fewer than 50 U.S. troops in Qatar, who manage a large stock of prepositioned Army war-fighting equipment.

U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were not included in the heightened state of alert, Quigley said.

Clinton administration officials have said it is too early to consider specific plans for military retaliation for the Cole bombing, but more than enough Air Force and Navy warplanes are in the area to carry out an attack.

After the terrorist bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, President Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes against suspected terrorist training camps in Afghanistan run by alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and against a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan suspected of having links to bin Laden.

---

Robb says military 'stretched too thin'

Washington Times
October 25, 2000
By Stephen Dinan THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://208.246.212.80/metro/default-20001025223857.htm

U.S. Sen. Charles S. Robb yesterday said the nation's armed forces are "stretched too thin" but the solution isn't to withdraw from conflicts around the world but to spend more to effectively support military missions.

In a luncheon meeting with editors and reporters at The Washington Times, Mr. Robb questioned some of commitments of the Clinton administration, specifically Haiti.

However, he said, the United States could have played a nonmilitary role in Rwanda and recalled that he urged involvement in Bosnia and Kosovo far earlier than the administration did.

"I don't think anybody would quarrel with the fact that we're stretched too thin. The question is, how do you extricate yourself from this situation? And we're doing the best we can."

The two-term Democratic senator, locked in a tight re-election bid with former Gov. George F. Allen, the Republican candidate, acknowledged that his focuses on issues like fiscal responsibility and military readiness have left him open to the charge that he is an "invisible" senator to Virginians.

However, he said, education as his prime campaign issue. To the Allen challenge of his record, he cites projects around the state to which he has funneled federal money.

"There are some that make a difference, when you get down in southside, when you get particularly over in the coal fields, where some of those water projects are -they're all small potatoes, but they make a major difference," he said.

Mr. Robb said his low profile is a consciously taken decision that has made him an effective senator.

"I developed a very high profile 33 years ago [after he married President Johnson's daughter Lynda], so I haven't had to go out and push as hard to get attention. So I've been very comfortable in a very low-key way, and I think it's fair to say my colleagues are comfortable with me," he said.

"It isn't just a numbers game. A number of them, they really want me to win, and it's because I'm someone they can work with. But I won't always be trying to get to a microphone before they do."

Mr. Robb led troops in combat in Vietnam as a Marine Corps captain and has been a staunch defender of Virginia's military installations. He served terms as Virginia's lieutenant governor and governor, and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1988. In 1994, he survived a bruising election challenge by Iran-Contra figure Oliver North. He was one of the few Democrats who supported President George Bush's the use of force against Iraq in the Gulf War in 1991.

He said the Clinton administration's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which allows homosexuals to serve in the military so long as their sexual orientation isn't made known and bars military officials from asking about sexual preferences isn't working. "It can't work," he said.

"I argued against it, voted against it. It's in effect requiring individuals to live a lie. My own sense is that we ought to use criteria that are objective and we can prohibit, preclude any conduct we want to but we ought to apply it evenly."

Mr. Robb said he supports enabling women to perform military service as long as they meet the same physical and mental standards as men. "Culturally, I have difficulty with that," he said. "But I also have difficulty with the fact that, particularly since we're a volunteer force, if a woman wants to do that and can meet whatever criteria . . . then it's hard for me to rationalize why we should deny her that."

Whether to allow women to participate in actual combat should be left up to the services, he said.

Asked whether, with the passage of time, he regrets having voted to confirm the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, he said he disagrees with several Thomas decisions, but "trying to revisit those questions, you just open up a can of worms."

He doesn't support the effort to revoke the Boy Scouts' federal charter in the wake of last summer's Supreme Court decision upholding the Boy Scouts rule against homosexuals as Scout leaders. But he is "disappointed" that the Scouts do so.

Mr. Robb opposes Mr. Allen's education tax credit plan because, he said, the money it would cost could be better used by the federal government to buy computers, hire teachers and modernize schools.

The senator declined to say whether, if re-elected, this would be his final term in the Senate. "I don't want to answer that too directly because I don't want to be viewed in a lame-duck status, but I made it very clear I have no intention of dying in the Senate," Mr. Robb said.

• Gerald Mizejewski contributed to this report.

---

NSA's warning arrived too late to save the Cole

Washington Times
October 25, 2000
By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-20001025232422.htm

The National Security Agency issued a top-secret intelligence report on the day the destroyer USS Cole was bombed, warning that terrorists were planning an attack in the region, The Washington Times has learned.

The warning was not received until after the ship was attacked. Intelligence officials say this raises questions about whether the military could have taken steps to prevent the attack if the alert had been received earlier.

Despite worldwide instantaneous communications, the agency usually requires 24 to 48 hours to gather, translate and disseminate the highly classified reports. The information contained in the report could have been known before the attack, the officials said.

The final report was not distributed until several hours after the bombing, which took place in the early morning hours of Oct. 12, Washington time. The blast killed 17 sailors and wounded 39, and ripped a 40-foot hole in the hull of the Cole.

The NSA warning stated that terrorists, whom intelligence officials did not identify, were involved in "operational planning" for an attack on U.S. or Israeli personnel or property in the Middle East.

One official said the warning was specific to an attack in Yemen, but other officials said it was more general and referred to the Persian Gulf region.

U.S. intelligence and military officials said the warning was not disseminated soon enough and was not reported on the U.S. intelligence community's worldwide computer network called Intellink, the most widely used intelligence reporting channel.

"There was nothing in the normal intelligence reporting on this," said one official.

NSA reports normally are not widely disseminated within government because of their sensitivity. The system for reporting terrorist threat alerts is carried out through separate reporting channels.

NSA reports are sent to the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, State Department intelligence and the intelligence arms of the military services for inclusion in their reporting. Those reports then are made available to the policy-makers and military commanders.

The NSA reported that members of the group were tracked to Dubai and Beirut as part of planning for the terrorist operation, said officials familiar with the report who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Pentagon, meanwhile, announced yesterday that it had received a "specific threat" of attack in the past 48 hours that prompted commanders to order U.S. forces in Qatar and Bahrain to go to their highest state of alert.

"Given the circumstances, the recent attack on the Cole and the generally higher level of threat throughout that region, we thought it was simply the prudent thing to do, to go to that higher threat condition in those two specific areas," Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley told reporters.

About 1,100 military personnel are posted in Bahrain where the Fifth Fleet has a headquarters. About 50 troops are in Qatar to manage a stockpile of war material that could be called on for a regional conflict.

The issue of specific warnings and the Pentagon's handling of the Cole incident will be discussed during a House Armed Services Committee hearing set for today. Defense Intelligence Agency Director Rear Adm. Thomas Wilson is scheduled to testify.

The terrorist organization identified in the NSA report was described by the officials as "a known group," but was not identified.

Suspects for the attack have been identified by U.S. officials as terrorists linked to Saudi expatriate Osama bin Laden and an associated group, Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

In examining intelligence reports leading up to the bombing, intelligence officials uncovered several key indicators but no solid information about the specific attack.

The officials said that in addition to the NSA report, two other pieces of intelligence are being investigated:

• A Yemeni national was invited on board one of two U.S. Navy destroyers that docked in Aden in August. The Yemeni was invited to a meal in an officers' stateroom but insisted on eating on the mess deck - the same area that was hit on the Cole's midsection as sailors were eating a meal.

Intelligence officials suspect the Yemeni could have been conducting surveillance of the ship.

• On previous Navy ship visits to Aden, no visitors were on the shoreline. However, when the Cole arrived in port, its docks were lined with people, an indicator that local residents may have anticipated some type of attack.

Spokesman for the CIA, NSA and the Pentagon declined to comment on the NSA report, citing a policy of not commenting on intelligence.

An intelligence official said that "if such a threat report existed, you can be sure that it was disseminated widely and certainly shared with the military."

A senior military official said since the bombing that intelligence officials checked the message traffic and found no specific terrorist threat warnings issued on Oct. 12. "We have no traffic that points to a specific threat to Yemen regarding Cole or a ship visit," the official said.

The Navy on Friday revised its account of the bombing. It initially stated that the suicide bombers had been part of a group of boats about 21 feet to 25 feet long that were helping the Cole tie up to a refueling buoy.

The blast initially was said to have occurred at 12:15 p.m. local time, or 5:15 a.m. EDT, as the ship was being helped by the small boats in tying up to a refueling buoy.

The later account said the blast occurred at 11:18 a.m. (4:18 a.m. EDT) after the ship had moored. The revised account is significant because it indicates the ship was attacked by a lone boat as the ship was in the process of refueling. It also indicates a possible breakdown in security.

Defense officials said the latest warning of an attack was received in the past two days and was specific enough to alert U.S. forces to increase their defensive posture from Threat Condition Charlie to Threat Condition Delta - the highest alert status.

Adm. Quigley, the Pentagon spokesman, said local military commanders around the world are apprised of terrorist threat information and are in charge of taking precautions against attack.

"The information on the threats that was perceived by the intelligence community against the U.S. forces in those areas is communicated not only to the local commanders but up and down the chain of command," he said. "So it was not like it was only shared with the local commanders."

He described the warning system as "a continuous iterative process."

The threat condition at the time of the Cole bombing was Threat Condition Charlie, the second to highest alert level.

The warning announced yesterday covers the staff of the U.S. Fifth Fleet and support activities related to it in Bahrain and Qatar.

The Threat Condition Delta is based on conditions when a terrorist attack has occurred, "or intelligence indicates likely terrorist action against a specific location," Adm. Quigley said.

-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

State Failed to Use Alternative Fuel for Cars

New York Times
October 25, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/nyregion/25CAR.html

TRENTON, Oct. 24 - An audit found that the majority of the state's alternative fuel cars have not used a special fuel considered less harmful to the environment, meaning the state has wasted $3.6 million in extra costs for the vehicles.

The audit said that of the 1,100 environmentally friendly cars that also take unleaded gasoline, 73 percent had never been filled with the alternative, compressed natural gas.

The study, released Monday by the state auditor, covered July 1, 1998, through Sept. 22, 2000.

A 1992 federal energy law requires that a certain percentage of the vehicles the state buys be able to use an alternative fuel. The state bought 900 such cars this year, exceeding federal and state requirements.

Each car costs an extra $5,000, and the audit concluded that the state would needlessly spend $3 million annually if it continued to buy 900 cars without using the alternative gas.

State officials said the problem is the lack of stations that offer compressed natural gas, which the audit notes. Only two stations exist, one in Trenton and the other in Hackensack.

"We have the vehicles and we're getting use of the vehicles," said Lana Sims, director of the state Treasury Department's purchase and property division. "We'll address the fueling problem. You can't do it all at the same time."

Ms. Sims said the federal energy law requirement was recently increased to 75 percent of vehicles from 10 percent, with an additional 5 percent mandated by the state.

---

Nevada

USA Today
10/25/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

North Las Vegas - A $4.5 million pilot project will test a French-made electric-powered bus that operates like a train or monorail. Service along the northern section of Las Vegas Boulevard would begin in April 2002. The bus, with low floors and multiple doors, has a driver but is steered by an optical guidance system. A camera reads marks on the road that trace the route, and a sensor automatically keeps the vehicle on course

-------- environment

Green with envy

Washington Times
EDITORIAL • October 25, 2000
http://208.246.212.80/op-ed/ed-house-20001025191045.htm

Although Green Party candidate Ralph Nader polls only 4 percent nationally, he has recently come under fire from Democrats who fear that he will win enough votes in several traditionally Democratic states to allow Gov. George W. Bush to win the presidency.

Yet it should come as no surprise that true liberals find Mr. Nader a far more appealing candidate than Mr. Gore, since he has a far more straightforwardly liberal vision of America. Mr. Nader proposes a Marshall Plan on poverty, immediate universal health care and a defense budget slashed in half. He has endorsed the platform of the National Organization for Women and is completely in favor of Vermont-style civil unions for homosexuals. On education, Mr. Nader would fully fund Head Start, shrink class sizes and guarantee free college tuition to all high school graduates. He is against educational vouchers, Social Security privatization and, unlike Mr. Gore, he is also against the death penalty.

Mr. Nader even has a far stronger history of environmental advocacy than Mr. Gore, having argued for tough action on automobile companies longer than many of his younger supporters have been alive. In a letter to Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, Mr. Nader wrote, "The current administration has largely bowed to the will of entrenched big business interests at the expense of human health, biodiversity, and the environment." In contrast to Mr. Gore's call to release millions of carbon dioxide-producing barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Mr. Nader would insist on abiding by international agreements to reduce so-called greenhouse gases.

True progressives undoubtedly find campaign-finance a strong reason to support Mr. Nader. His Web site claims that he does not accept soft-money contributions.

Yet Mr. Nader's most potent attacks come on Mr. Gore's credibility and long legacy of broken promises. One of the features on Mr. Nader's Web site is "Gore's Broken Promise of the Day," which links to an archive of more than a dozen.

While Mr. Nader's version of Morning in America may yet bring mourning to the Democratic Party, Democrats may find it awkward to tell him to terminate his race. Aren't Democrats, after all, the pro-choice party?

---

Delaware

USA Today
10/25/00
States
http://usatoday.com/news/states/all50.htm

Millsboro - Divers searched murky water trying to find and free a sea turtle trapped in a canal near the Indian River power plant. The power company Conectiv hired the divers, who plan to release him back into the ocean about a mile offshore. The sea turtle, believed to have been in the canal for several weeks, may have been attracted by the relatively warm canal water temperature, officials said.

Maine

Millinocket - Two federal agencies have challenged the state's issuance of an air quality permit for an upgrade at the Great Northern Paper mill. The Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service fear the project could generate haze at Acadia National Park and other parks and wilderness areas. State environmental officials deny that the 400-600 tons of additional sulfur dioxide generated annually will have a significant impact on air quality.

Mississippi

DeLisle - State environmental officials will test an old landfill for groundwater contamination to see if it is the cause of mysterious ailments among DeLisle residents. Officials will examine the landfill closed 12 years ago to see if it contaminated groundwater wells. Samples taken from six other sites in the city showed no health hazards, said state Rep. Diane Peranich.

Virginia

King William - The Mattaponi Indian tribe is putting together a multimillion-dollar deal to reclaim land that was part of its original reservation granted by the British crown in the 17th century. The Nature Conservancy bought the 2,000 acres last December for $2.8 million. The tribe is trying to buy it from them for $3 million in two payments.

-------- genetics

Genetically Modified Corn From U.S. Reported in Japan

New York Times
October 25, 2000
By STEPHANIE STROM
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/science/25CND-CORN.html

TOKYO, 25 October - A Japanese consumer group today offered what they said was the first evidence that a genetically modified corn from the United States has made its way across the sea and into cornmeal manufactured here for human consumption.

The results of the group's tests are likely to fuel protests across Asia and in Europe, where consumers strongly oppose the use of genetically modified food products and are increasingly suspicious that the world's largest producer, the United States, is doing little to protect against the spread of such products outside its boundaries.

"The problem originates in the United States," said Makiko Irisawa, a representative of the No G.M.O. Campaign, the 6,000-member citizens' group that conducted the test. The group opposes genetically modified foods.

A scientist from the United States Department of Agriculture was expected to arrive in Tokyo this evening in an effort to assuage rising concerns. The president of the United States Grains Council flew to Japan to address the issue, and grain importers said representatives of the North American Export Grain Association were also on the way.

This is the second time the United States government has dispatched officials to Japan because of the grain, according to a spokesman at the American Embassy here. He said a team from the Agriculture Department came to Japan late this spring, after the same consumer group released test results showing traces of StarLink, a genetically modified corn made by Aventis, in chicken feed.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare said it had asked the cornmeal's manufacturer, Kyoritsu Shokuhin, an unlisted company, to recall it, and to conduct an investigation to determine the source of the StarLink in its product.

"We've been conducting these tests for some time because we are skeptical about the Japanese distribution system for food staples," Mrs. Irisawa said. "We are also skeptical that the United States doesn't have a distribution system that can detect whether foods are genetically modified or not."

Others pointed the finger at the Japanese government, which often relies on the honor system for regulatory enforcement. "I had thought it was a possibility we would have this kind of problem," said Tomoko Nakagawa, a member of the lower house of parliament from the opposition Socialist Party who is a strong opponent of genetically modified foods.

"In Japan, there are no checks on products intended for use in animal feeds, and even if Japan says it isn't going to allow a genetically modified product into the country, the system of checks at the time of import are almost zero," he said.

The consumer group's statements sent government officials here scrambling to determine how any genetically modified corn might have arrived in Japan. The corn is brand-named StarLink and is not approved for use in Japan, even in animal feed.

After a meeting of its officials this morning, the Ministry of Health and Welfare said that the National Institute of Health Sciences would obtain samples of the cornmeal, found in a product called "Homemade Baking" that is used to make scones and other baked goods, for testing.

The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, which is supposed to monitor agricultural imports, tried to explain why it had dragged its feet in testing a chicken feed in which the same consumer group said it had found evidence of StarLink in April.

At the time, the ministry said the consumer group's sample was too small and statistically flawed, but it did not move to conduct its own tests of the feed immediately.

Rather, it is conducting tests of the feed as part of a policy that started this year to test varieties of feed one by one, said Yutaka Kunugi, an official in the feed distribution section of the Agriculture and Fisheries Ministry. The ministry is in the middle of testing the feed in question, he said.

Neither ministry nor Kyoritsu Shokuhin criticized the consumer group's test, which was conducted by Genetic ID Japan, a unit of Genetic ID of the United States.

StarLink touched off widespread protests and product recalls in the United States last month when it was discovered in taco shells manufactured by Kraft Foods using cornmeal supplied by a Texas mill.

Today, the Kellog Co., based in Battle Creek, Mich., said it had partly shut down production at a cereal plant in Memphis, because a supplier could not insure that its corn was not free of StarLink, The Associated Press reported. The company called the move a "precautionary measure."

With the discovery of StarLink in Japan, the controversy is fast becoming an international one.

Two days ago, John Richardson, the deputy chief of mission at the European Union's mission in Washington, said that discussions with United States officials had failed to persuade E.U. officials that StarLink had not found its way to grocery shelves in Europe.

Not all United States officials are eager to bless the gene-spliced corn, bred to kill off a pest that ruins natural corn, for human consumption, either. Despite pressure from the agricultural industry and the Agriculture Department, the Environmental Protection Agency has refused to grant even temporary approval for StarLink corn, which the United States Food and Drug Administration fears may produce allergic reactions in some people. StarLink is the only genetically engineered food that is approved for consumption by animals but not humans.

Representatives from the food and biotechnology industry are expected to present new data to United States government regulators on Wednesday in an effort to win approval for StarLink, but it will take several weeks for the E.P.A. to determine whether the evidence is strong enough.

The controversy is pitting the agency against the Agriculture Department, which has been arguing that there is no evidence that StarLink causes allergic reactions. "Though StarLink corn was only approved for use as animal feed or for industrial processes, some Starlink corn appears to have entered the food supply and might find its way into products oversea," the United States Embassy spokesman said. "I want to emphasize that even though the E.P.A. did not approve StarLink for use in food, the E.P.A. has no evidence that food containing this corn poses any threat to public health. Our scientist believe the risks, if any, are extremely low."

The spread of genetically modified corn is difficult to contain, experts say. Because seed corn is cross-pollinated, it is extremely difficult to isolate genetically modified corn from unmodified corn. Sifting through millions of tons of harvested corn to separate natural kernels from those that have been genetically modified is an even bigger challenge.

Japan grows almost no corn of its own, although corn soup is a staple of menus in many Japanese restaurants. The country imports about 12 million tons of corn for animal feed and 4 million for human consumption.

---

New York Times
October 25, 2000
Metro Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/nyregion/25MBRF.html
NEW YORK

QUEENS: MODIFIED FOOD CRITICIZED Environmental and consumer groups testified at a public hearing yesterday on a possible statewide ban on genetically modified foods. They cited last month's Taco Bell recall of products with modified corn that had been approved only for animal consumption. "The Taco Bell scandal shows that the federal regulations aren't working and that's why we need the state to step in," Andy Zimmerman, a coordinator for the New York Biotech Action Network, said in an interview. Food companies say modification increases crop yields and poses no danger to humans. The State Assembly is considering a five-year ban on genetically modified crops.

Tara Bahrampour (NYT)

---

Unapproved corn found in more taco shells

USA Today
10/25/00- Updated 06:25 PM ET
http://usatoday.com/news/digest/nd1.htm#goodyear

WASHINGTON - An unapproved variety of gene-altered corn has been found in another brand of taco shells in testing done for anti-biotech groups that first disclosed the presence of the grain in the nation's food supply. The taco shells, labeled with the name of Western Family Foods of Tigard, Ore., were purchased in Eugene, Ore. in late September, the groups said. The Food and Drug Administration says that any health risk from the corn is remote. Opponents of genetically engineered crops say the discovery of StarLink in the food supply shows that federal regulation of the technology is inadequate.

-------- spying

Ex-Peru Spy Chief Says He'll Avoid Politics

New York Times
October 25, 2000
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/world/25PERU.html

LIMA, Peru, Oct. 24 - President Alberto K. Fujimori's shadowy intelligence chief, whose surprise return from exile in Panama plunged the country into a crisis, said today that he had no intention of playing a role in politics.

The former chief, Vladimiro Montesinos, fled a month ago after a videotape was broadcast on cable television that showed him handing $15,000 to a newly elected opposition legislator to change parties.

The video led Mr. Fujimori to call for new elections four years before the end of his third term and to promise to leave office in July.

Calling a radio station, Mr. Montesinos said he had to leave Panama because he was in immediate danger of being assassinated by elements of two Peruvian terrorist groups and drug traffickers who operate in Panama. "That's the only reason for my return, not to destabilize the country," Mr. Montesinos said. "All I want to do is dedicate myself to my work as a lawyer."

It was the first time in years that Mr. Montesinos had spoken publicly, but the interview raised more questions than it answered.

The former spy chief did not disclose his whereabouts, which have been subject to great speculation since he landed at an air force base on Monday in Pisco. He did not say whether he had been in contact with Mr. Fujimori since he returned, although he described calling Mr. Fujimori from an airport in Ecuador, where his private jet refueled.

---

New York Times
October 25, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/world/25BRIE.html

RUSSIA: SWITCH IN ESPIONAGE TRIAL The espionage trial of the American businessman Edmond Pope took an unexpected turn after a court agreed to allow a key witness to testify. The court had previously rejected the defense's request to call Anatoly Babkin, who Russia's Federal Security Service says sold Mr. Pope blueprints of a torpedo. Mr. Pope, who says the court is biased, continued his testimony. Sabrina Tavernise (NYT)

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Spy case in Moscow called incoherent

Washington Times
October 25, 2000
World Scene Combined dispatches and staff reports
http://208.246.212.80/world/worldscene-200010252292.htm

MOSCOW - The lawyer for an American accused of spying in Russia said yesterday the prosecution's case is incoherent and fails to explain how Edmund Pope communicated with his supposed contact when they don't speak each other's languages.

"The man is accused of holding negotiations with the purpose of obtaining secret materials although he has absolutely no Russian. And the person who is accused of stealing those documents speaks no English," lawyer Pavel Astakhov said after yesterday's hearing.

"They couldn't have reached an agreement without a translator, and a translator would become an accessory. But only Pope is sitting in the dock," he said.

British secret agents fight to block book

AUCKLAND, New Zealand -Members of Britain's Special Air Services (SAS) have flown to New Zealand in an effort to block publication of a book about the secretive unit, local media reported today.

The British government is attempting in the Auckland High Court to halt publication of "Soldier 5" by a New Zealander writing under the pen name Mike Coburn, the New Zealand Herald reported. The author served in the British SAS between 1990 and 1997, the newspaper said.

He was captured during the Persian Gulf war after being dropped behind enemy lines as a member of the Bravo Two Zero patrol. Three of the eight-man patrol were killed and four, including himself, were captured.

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The Bill for Terror

New York Times
October 25, 2000
By SUSAN and DANIEL COHEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/opinion/25COHE.html

President Clinton is ready to sign a bill that would authorize huge payments to American victims of international terrorism. Under the new law, more than $213 million in compensatory damages would be paid to eight families that have won judgments against Iran over terrorist acts.

And more payments - to satisfy court judgments against other countries found to have sponsored terrorism - are expected to follow.

We stand to benefit from this bill. Our 20-year-old daughter Theo was killed in the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Along with most other families of victims from that flight, we filed a wrongful death suit against Libya in a United States federal court, and we are almost certain to win it - no matter what the verdict is in the criminal trial of two Libyan agents that is still dragging through a court in the Netherlands.

But if the damage award is to be paid under the provisions of the current bill, we will not accept it.

This is not because we don't need the money. We are not wealthy and are coming up on our Social Security and Medicare years without children to help us. Our daughter was our only child. Nor do we doubt that the Libyan government is guilty as charged. We feel no hesitation about the prospect of taking money - lots of it - from Libya.

The reason for our rejection of payment under this proposed law is that the money is not to be paid by a country convicted of sponsoring terrorism, but by the Treasury Department - or, to put it more bluntly, the American taxpayer.

Over the past dozen years, we have seen an array of schemes intended to get terrorists to pay money damages for their crimes. This bill is only the latest of them. The sponsors of these proposals usually say they are not really about money but about "punishment." This is a dubious proposition at best; indeed, the putrid scent of "blood money" - the idea that a murderer can somehow wipe away his crime by paying the family of the victims - clings to it.

But the current bill doesn't even rise to the blood-money level. Yes, the bill includes provisions stating that the United States will try to recoup the millions from a nation convicted of terrorist acts, either through an international tribunal or negotiations - somehow, someday. But don't bet that the money will ever be paid by such countries, certainly not all of it.

This bill is not anti-terrorism legislation; it's an evasion. It sets a precedent that will haunt us for years to come. Given current political conditions, there are bound to be a lot more American victims of international terrorism. One can almost imagine the lawyers salivating, now that our government is acting as a guarantor for terrorist nations ordered by American courts to pay their victims.

The eight families scheduled to receive payments have suffered horribly at the hands of terrorists and their sponsors. They deserve a lot of money. We deserve a lot. But from the terrorists, not the taxpayers.

Susan and Daniel Cohen are authors of "Pan Am 103: The Bombing, the Betrayals, and a bereaved Family's Search for Justice.

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Guilty Plea in Bomb Plot Is Rejected

New York Times
October 25, 2000
By BENJAMIN WEISER
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/nyregion/25TERR.html

In a surprising twist in the embassy bombings case, a second defendant appeared yesterday in Federal District Court in Manhattan and said he wanted to plead guilty to the conspiracy charges against him. Just Friday, another defendant in the terrorism prosecution pleaded guilty after making a deal with the government.

But yesterday, Judge Leonard B. Sand took the unusual step of rejecting the guilty plea that was sought by Wadih El-Hage after he said his reasons for pleading guilty did not turn on his culpability in the case.

"Do I understand," Judge Sand asked, "that you are offering to plead guilty because you believe that you are guilty?"

"No - some other legitimate reasons," replied Mr. El-Hage, 40, who has maintained his innocence. He said that he was pleading guilty because he saw no chance of winning his case and did not want to undergo the humiliation of coming to court daily, waiting in cold holding cells, and undergoing routine strip searches.

The government has described Mr. El- Hage as a close associate of and former personal secretary to Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi financier who has been accused of leading a terrorism conspiracy that included the August 1998 attacks on two United States embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The nearly simultaneous blasts killed more than 200 people and injured thousands.

In the two years since Mr. El-Hage's arrest, his lawyers have mounted an aggressive defense of the conspiracy charges against him and were preparing for trial. He and four other co-defendants are scheduled to go to trial next January. Last Friday, a sixth defendant in the case, Ali A. Mohamed, admitted to being a top aide to Mr. bin Laden after entering into negotiations with the government and pleading guilty to terrorism conspiracy charges.

But Mr. El-Hage's decision to try to plead guilty was clearly a surprise to all others involved. A federal prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, told Judge Sand that there was no plea bargaining or agreement reached with the government. And one of Mr. El- Hage's lawyers, Sam A. Schmidt, said he had advised his client against such a move.

In court, Judge Sand also seemed troubled by Mr. El-Hage's proposed plea as the defendant began to respond to the judge's questions - an inquiry mandated by federal law whenever a defendant pleads guilty.

"There is a whole ritual for pleading guilty," said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics professor at New York University School of Law, "that requires the defendant to state, on the record, the truth of the facts that establish the crime."

He added, "If you get up before the judge, and say you are not guilty but want to plead guilty, that is a contradiction the law almost never recognizes."

The colloquy between defendant and judge at times recalled a law school seminar, touching on issues of guilt and innocence, the rationale behind a plea bargain and, as the judge suggested bluntly, the usual tactic of pleading guilty in order to obtain something beneficial in return, like a reduced sentence. In response to one of the judge's questions, Mr. El-Hage said he understood that by pleading guilty without a deal with the government, he faced life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

The problems with the plea surfaced more clearly when Judge Sand asked whether Mr. El-Hage was acting "by reason of any fear, force, pressure, anything of that nature?"

Mr. El-Hage replied, "Well, there are reasons that are forcing me to plead guilty."

He said the restrictive jail conditions had made it impossible for him to prepare an adequate defense for trial. Like his co-defendants, Mr. El- Hage is barred from communicating with outsiders, except for his lawyers and family. He said he could not contact business associates, friends and neighbors who might assist him, but who were unwilling to confer with his lawyers.

He was convinced, he said, that he would lose at trial, "which is the same as if I am pleading guilty."

Later, after court, Mr. El-Hage's lawyers, Mr. Schmidt and Joshua L. Dratel, said their client was not being held under the normal conditions of pretrial confinement. And they cited the report of a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist who examined Mr. El-Hage last year and found that he was so mentally devastated by the conditions of his imprisonment that he might not be able to assist meaningfully in his defense.

At yesterday's hearing, Judge Sand noted that in asking to plead guilty, Mr. El-Hage was not receiving anything in return.

"What I gain from pleading guilty right now," Mr. El-Hage said, "is that I save myself the agony and humiliation of going back and forth between the prison and the court for one whole year, every day." That, he said, "would be a great benefit for me."

But Judge Sand said the jail conditions, which have been upheld on appeal, had nothing to do with whether a jury would find him guilty or acquit him.

"You are saying that, although you are innocent, the cards are so stacked against you that it is not worth even the effort of trying to convince a jury that you are not guilty?" Judge Sand asked.

When Mr. El-Hage complained about the strip searches he must undergo whenever he is taken to court, the judge recalled a June 1999 incident in which Mr. El-Hage leapt out of his chair and charged toward the bench, before being subdued by a federal marshal. The judge said he would not second-guess security measures in the case.

Asked for his opinion, Mr. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor, said the government was against the judge's accepting the plea.

Judge Sand told Mr. El-Hage that it would be easy for the court to accept the plea, which would save taxpayer money, reduce the burden on jurors and shorten the trial. "The only reason why I would not accept the plea," the judge said, "is because we do think that we are engaged in a process of administering justice."

The judge ultimately rejected the plea request. "I do that not out of malice or any desire to inflict pain or suffering," he said. "I do that because, regardless of your view as to whether it is worth it or not, I can't equate the avoidance of the unpleasantness associated with coming to court on a daily basis with a relinquishment of any possibility, however remote you may believe it to be, of your not being found guilty."

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New York Times
October 25, 2000
Metro Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/nyregion/25MBRF.html

MANHATTAN: ALGERIAN TERROR TRIAL A judge ruled yesterday that statements to authorities made by an Algerian accused of helping smuggle explosives into the United States could be used at his trial because they had been given voluntarily. The ruling by Judge John F. Keenan of Federal District Court came after a hearing during which the Algerian, Abdel Ghani Meskini, 32, described his interviews with the authorities after he was arrested in Brooklyn on Dec. 30. Mr. Meskini and Mokhtar Haouari, another Algerian, who was arrested in Canada and brought to the United States for trial, are charged with conspiring since 1997 to support a terrorist group.

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New York Times
October 25, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/world/25BRIE.html

EGYPT: ELECTION DEATH Angry at being turned away from polling stations, supporters of opposition candidates backed by the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood clashed with the police in the first stage of runoff elections for Parliament. At least one man was killed when policemen fired into a crowd in Ashmun, about 25 miles north of Cairo. Similar disturbances were reported in Port Said and Ismailia. Susan Sachs (NYT)

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New York Times
October 25, 2000
World Briefing
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/world/25BRIE.html

CANADA: 30 HELD IN PROTEST Montreal police arrested 39 people protesting a meeting of finance ministers from industrialized and developing nations. Brandishing signs that read "Stop the Corporate Greed" and "Eat the Rich," the demonstrators threw rocks and horse manure at the police. James Brooke (NYT)

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Anti-U.S. Fury in Jordan's Streets Overshadows a Trade Pact

New York Times
October 25, 2000
By WILLIAM A. ORME Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/25/world/25JORD.html

AMMAN, Jordan, Oct. 24 - On the day that Bill Clinton held a White House ceremony with Jordan's king to sign a trade pact, Muhammad Nubeni and his friends paraded through the streets here today denouncing the American president.

Tens of thousands of Jordanians - most of Palestinian origin, like Mr. Nubeni - marched toward the border with Israel, demanding an end to Jordan's diplomatic and economic relations with Israel and condemning American support for Israel.

"To hell with Clinton! To hell with Barak!" they chanted as they filed out of town, furious at the televised scenes they had watched Monday night of Israeli tanks in Jerusalem shelling nearby Palestinian villages.

The marchers converged with protesters from other Jordanian cities at a point a few miles from the West Bank, and then skirmishes with the Jordanian police quickly became open battles and enveloped the crowd in billows of tear gas. Police helicopters hovered overhead and youths pelted riot squads with stones, in scenes that marchers and other witnesses said mirrored the daily clashes on the western side of the Jordan River.

Scores were injured, though few seriously, said march organizers, who criticized "the exaggerated response of the security forces."

Such a display of turmoil and anger would have been unusual in Jordan before the past month's battles between Israelis and Palestinians set off raucous demonstrations here. And by the end of the day, the protests had completely overshadowed the trade pact.

The government had hoped the deal would present Jordan and its economy in an attractive light abroad, while convincing critics at home that the country was getting tangible rewards for its support of American mediation in the region.

"The timing is a bit awkward," said Rami Khoury, a Jordanian political commentator, "because the U.S. is now seen here to be the bad guy." What's at issue, he said, is the "overpowering importance of the Palestinian issue here."

The events in Washington and on the streets of Jordan underscored the competing pressures on the Amman government as it tries to maintain ties with Israel and the West while paying allegiance to Arab nationalism and the Palestinian cause.

The government recently challenged the United Nations sanctions against Iraq and played host to the Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi. Both steps scored points with critics of Jordan's ties to Israel. Still, outrage at the deaths of more than a hundred Palestinians in the recent conflict in Israel and the Palestinian lands intensified public sentiment against Israel and the United States.

Business leaders and diplomats praise the trade accord as a personal triumph for King Abdullah, who has ruled now for 20 months, capping an ambitious economic liberalization program that he hopes will attract investors and jobs to his country, which has few natural resources.

Jordan is just the fourth country to sign a free-trade agreement with the United States, and the first Arab nation to get barrier-free access to the American market.

The agreement, which is subject to Congressional approval, would put Jordan on an equal footing with Israel and with the Palestinian Authority, which enjoys duty-free access to the American market under the umbrella of the Israeli agreement.

Though trade between Jordan and the United States barely exceeds $300 million a year, the potential of such a big market has great appeal to investors. Such investors are the key to providing good jobs to the young, underemployed and largely Palestinian work force.

But the market potential does not overcome fears of upheaval.

"Everything falls down like a house of cards when there is political instability," said Omar Salah. Three months ago, based largely on the pending trade accord, Mr. Salah's company was asked to start a $100 million venture with Vishay Intertechnology, an electronics manufacturer based in Pennsylvania.

Last week, after watching televised scenes of demonstrations here and hearing warnings from the State Department about travel to Jordan, Vishay executives told Mr. Salah they were pulling out.

"With everything that is going on, we decided to put it on hold," Felix Zandman, Vishay's chief executive, said in a telephone interview. "Most of Jordan's population is Palestinian, and we weren't sure that our people would be safe there."

For the thousands of Jordanians who marched towards Israel's border today, a trade pact is at best a distant abstraction, and at worst an unwelcome symbol of Jordanian dependence on the United States.

Today's march was organized by professional groups - including the lawyers' and doctors' associations - that have campaigned against the peace treaty with Israel that Jordan signed six years ago. They have also fiercely opposed any normalization of economic and cultural relations with a country they see as an enemy.

Opponents of normalization have been gaining momentum for several years, propelled by widespread disappointment that the peace treaty failed to deliver much in economic benefits. But the government was able to portray the opposition as a movement on the wrong side of history. Not only Jordan and Egypt, but Morocco and Tunisia and Qatar and Oman were also quietly establishing trade links with Israel. So was Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation.

But with the violence of the past month and the Arab League's call over the weekend for a freeze in relations with Israel, all Islamic countries except Egypt and Jordan, the two with peace agreements, have severed their tentative ties.

"The most disturbing thing that has happened is that any regional cooperation or integration has practically ended," said Taher Masri, a former prime minister of Jordan. "The Arab League summit effectively ended any hope of integration. And now Barak, for his own political reasons, is also shutting the door."

Jordan is also pulling back, refusing to dispatch its newly appointed ambassador to Israel and asking state employees to donate a day's salary to support the Palestinians.

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Thousands Call For Resignation of Philippines President

New York Times
October 25, 2000
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/25WIRE-PROT.html

MANILA -- Thousands of demonstrators marched through the streets of the Philippine capital Manila on Wednesday, calling for the resignation of embattled President Joseph Estrada over his alleged involvement in gambling scams.

Police were on high alert for the protest which followed similar rallies in the provinces.

Earlier, former Philippine President Fidel Ramos dismissed any chance of a coup in the Philippines and said it was unlikely that martial law could be declared in a bid to resolve the country's political crisis.

Estrada has rejected accusations that he received bribes and has denied opposition claims that he planned to declare a state of emergency to curb growing opposition and a move to impeach him on bribery and corruption charges.

The bribery scandal has confronted Estrada's 28-month presidency with its most serious political crisis to date, triggered the resignation from his cabinet of Vice-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and provoked calls from church and other groups for him to step down.

The impeachment move is led by a minority group of lawmakers from Ramos' Lakas party, while Arroyo, the next in line of succession after Estrada, has vowed to unite the country's fragmented opposition.

Ramos said figures involved in previous coup attempts in the Philippines were no longer in positions of power.

``On both counts (coup d'etat and martial law), the possibilities are very, very little, very slim,'' Ramos, a former army general and Estrada's predecessor, told a breakfast forum.

``The players are not there anymore,'' Ramos said, referring to a cabal of colonels who launched six failed coup attempts in the Philippines in the late 1980s and who had since either gone into politics or business.

As armed forces chief and later defense secretary, Ramos played a key role in crushing the army uprisings against then President Corazon Aquino.

CURBS TO MARTIAL LAW

Ramos said provisions in the constitution which authorize Congress and the Supreme Court to overturn a president's martial law proclamation also limited a leader's option to call in the army.

``I hope we shall have no coup attempt, much less martial law, because if this would happen, I will be there to resist, to do what must be done,'' he said.

Ramos, who was president from 1992 to 1998, dismissed an accusation by Estrada linking him to an alleged campaign to destabilize the administration.

But he said he supported the impeachment move in Congress.

Congressman Pacifico Fajardo, chairman of the Lower House committee on justice which will initially hear the impeachment case, said he was now involved in deliberations on the national budget and his panel might not be able to hold hearings on the charges against Estrada until next month.

Political uncertainty drove the peso currency close to 50 to the dollar in early trade on Wednesday to another all-time low of 49.80.

Estrada's ruling coalition controls a majority of the seats in both the House of Representatives and in Congress, virtually ensuring the defeat of the impeachment action, barring major defections.

Estrada, speaking to supporters in the central city of Mandaue on Wednesday, again reiterated he had no intention of resigning and appealed for a political truce with his opponents.

He said the accusations against him were undermining investor confidence in the country and added: ``Let us set aside politics for a while.''

------- Onelist (submissions from subscribers)